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Monthly Archives: March 2015

No One Needs Effectiveness

March 30, 2015
Antimatter principle, Organisational effectiveness, Psychology, Rightshifting
4 Comments

No One Needs Effectiveness

Let’s face it. Few indeed are the executives, managers, investors and even workers who see more effectiveness – more effective ways of working, less waste, quicker delivery, lower costs – as the answer to getting their own personal needs met. As a relevant personal strategy.

Here’s just a few of the needs I’ve seen improved effectiveness meet, on those rare occasions where it has happened:

Affection, appreciation, autonomy, belonging, cooperation, communication, closeness, community, companionship, compassion, consideration, consistency, ego, empathy, inclusion, intimacy, love, mutuality, respect/self-respect, safety, security, stability, support, to know and be known, to see and be seen, to understand and be understood, trust, movement/exercise, safety, authenticity, integrity, presence, joy, humour, beauty, ease, equality, harmony, inspiration, order, choice, freedom, independence, space, spontaneity, awareness, celebration of life, challenge, clarity, competence, consciousness, contribution, creativity, discovery, mastery, artistry, growth, hope, learning, participation, purpose, self-expression, stimulation, to matter, understanding.

Some pay lip-service to effectiveness on behalf of that faceless thing we call “the organisation”. But my own experience tells me their heart is rarely in it.

But the plain fact of the matter is: if folks chose to see increased effectiveness (a.k.a. Rightshifting) as a viable and valid strategy for getting their own and others’ needs met, many more would act to improve effectiveness.

I personally believe awesomely effective organisations are places when folks see their own and their community’s needs met much more often, and to much greater positive effect. Other folks, it seems, do not share this belief.

And this makes me sad. Both for them, for myself, and for the wider world.

(And I could say much the same for nonviolence, restorative justice, therapy, and other lesser-known strategies for better meeting folks’ needs).

Regarding the impact of improved effectiveness as a strategy for getting folks’ needs better met, would you be willing to share what you believe?

– Bob

Further Reading

Ackoff Contrasts Efficiency With Effectiveness ~ Think Different blog post

The Nature of the Problem

March 29, 2015
Organisational effectiveness, Product development, Software development
2 Comments

The Nature of The Problem

It’s my proposition that the “software crisis“, some 50 years old now and still going strong, is a consequence of a widespread failure to grasp – or agree on – the nature of the problem that is “software development”.

Many have guessed at the nature of the problem. Many have created more or less convoluted solutions to the imagined problem. Many more have adopted these so-called solutions, having little idea themselves of the nature of the problem and thus little opportunity to evaluate the fitness of such solutions.

And no, I’m not saying that I have the answer to the nature of the problem. In fact, I’m not even going to pursue here what the nature of the problem is, or might be.

Meta-problem

This post is simply to ask: Have we, as an industry, understood the nature of the problem? Is the lack of such understanding, consensus, the real problem? Is there any mileage in building such shared understanding, such a consensus?

Or will we just go on each ploughing our own separate furrows? Each guessing at the nature of the problem, and each quixotically tilting at our various windmills, all the while taking money off of gullible folks who rely on us, to a greater or lesser extent, to identify the nature of the problem?

Is this the meta-problem? Our Gordian Knot?

– Bob

NeedsFlow

March 28, 2015
Agile, Antimatter principle, Flowchain, Organisational effectiveness, Product development, Software development
6 Comments

NeedsFlow

[Tl;Dr: The essence of software and product development is about continuously exploring and meeting folks’ needs. How about as in industry we stop shilly-shallying and place this reality at the core of our approach to development?]

The Essence Of Software And Product Development

Essentially, every approach to software and product development is about a flow of things (including services) whereby a development team, group or organisation attempts to satisfy some selection of folks’ unmet needs.

In batch-and-queue (e.g. Waterfall, etc.) approaches, needs are batched-up into large batches, and flow (not very effectively) through a sequence of queues. Each batch (in the pathological case, only one) eventually gets dropped onto those assumed to have said needs, and that’s about it.

In iterative (e.g. Scrum, Kanban, etc.) approaches, needs are batched up into many, relatively smaller, batches, and flow (rather more effectively) through a sequence of queues (at its simplest, e.g. Backlog, Doing, Done). Each batch gets dropped onto the folks assumed to have said needs, and these folks get the chance to say if their needs have been met well enough, or not. When budgets and timescales allow, a later iteration can then have another go at better meeting those needs deemed to have been poorly-met, along with a new attempt to address any other priority needs that might have emerged along the way.

Different approaches differentiate themselves on e.g. batch sizes, selecting of the kinds of folks whose needs will be attended to, cadence and strategies.

Needs Trump Value

Why Needs flow? Why not just stick with the more common “value” flow? Well, for me there’s a whole bunch of issues around the notion of value. Including:

  • Value for whom?
  • Who gets to specify how any particular “value” is measured or quantified (most often folks ill-equippped to do so).
  • The whole notion of “value” (often overlooked, often misunderstood).
  • Value is too often though of in simple economic or financial terms. Human beings perceive value differently, and much more richly (e.g. emotionally).
  • How can we tell when we’ve delivered “value”?

So, I propose that needs trump value. And therefore, that when focussing on flow, it’s more useful – and effective – to focus on the flow of needs.

The above diagram shows a system boundary – this could be the whole organisation, the development organisation, or just one development team. Bundles of external needs flow into the system, and merge with other bundles of needs coming from inside the system. These bundles pass though various stages (and queues) where “development” strategies are uses in moving the bundles from stage to stage, and from queue to queue. Ultimately, candidates (things we hope will meet the needs that entered the pipeline) flow back to external parties, and also to internal stakeholders, such as the developers themselves.

Impediments

This perspective allows for the simple integration of dealing with impediments. Things that are impeding e.g. flow or the outflow of effective candidates may themselves be needs. And may enter the pipeline much as any other needs. Of course, there may be some( or many) such impediments than no one has any need of dealing with. These may be filed or ignored.

Abstract FlowChain

Whilst FlowChain was conceived to be awesomely effective at handling bundles of e.g. User Stories, Use Cases, Improvement Stories, etc., it can very easily embrace the unit of flow being bundles of needs, or – in the single-piece-continuous-flow scenario – individual needs.

Limiting WIP, Making Things Visible

From the diagram, you may begin to see how we might simply make the flow of needs visible, should we so choose. And personally, I’d like to make visible the ultimate fate of the candidates too, with a little expansion of the scope of the diagram.

And the queues (particularly the first) can serve as a convenient means to limit Work In Progress (a.k.a. Needs in Progress).

No Projects

It may not be immediately obvious, but the NeedsFlow perspective implicitly removes the need for projects. NeedsFlow decouples development (flow) from products and product lines (each of which meet a more or less related collection of needs).

– Bob

Attending To The Needs Of Others

March 27, 2015
Antimatter principle, Dialogue, Leadership, Listening, Psychology
1 Comment

Attending To The Needs Of Others

Following on from my previous post, some folks may be wondering just how to go about “attending to folks’ needs”. As the brevity of my previous post seemed to find favour, I’ll keep this one (kinda) brief, too.

Giraffe Listening

For me, it all starts with learning to listen with giraffe ears. “Listening to get in touch with what’s alive in a person” as Marshall Rosenberg puts it.

And there’s probably no better place to start learning to listen than with oneself. I mean, listening TO oneself. You can do it in secret, without anyone knowing, until you’ve found a little confidence in the practice of it. Confidence which may help in listening to others.

Empathy

Empathy is “the ability to be wholly present with someone”. It’s not what you say, and certainly not what you think. It’s the ability to just be present, non-judgmentally, with someone.

Again, I’d suggest practicing on yourself first. It’s particularly tricky to empathise with others if you haven’t quite found the knack of empathising with yourself.

Learn To See Your Own Needs

Even with listing to oneself and empathising with oneself, it can take some reflection and further practice to begin to understand one’s own needs. Nonviolent Communication suggests that our needs derive from our feelings about things we have observed. Things someone has said, or done.

Identifying these triggers, objectively (like a fly-on-the-ewall, without judgement) can lead us into exploring the feelings they trigger.

And thence to the needs that the trigger has met – or failed to meet.

And ultimately to making a refusable request of ourself – or another – in an attempt (experiment) to get those needs met.

Experiencing this four-step process for and with ourselves puts us in a better place to begin to do the same with others.

Moving On To Others’ Needs

When you’ve built up a little reservoir of confidence in listening to yourself and empathising with yourself, then it might be time to engage with others.

Ike Lasater suggests it can be helpful to negotiate an explicit agreement with each person you might want to engage with. At least, if they know you and your “habitual” ways of communicating with them. Adopting a new way of relating to people, with new words, can come across as weird or clumsy at first. Even with some self-practice under your belt. So to minimise freaking out your colleagues, and nearest and dearest, making a refusable request of them to allow you to try out you new moves can assuage early confusion and angst.

And a word of caution:

It’s sooo easy to “put yourself into someone else’s needs”. By which I mean, saying to yourself “I just know this person needs…[x]”.

It can be helpful to guess what they might be feeling (we can never know with any certainly) – and try that guess out on them to see if we guessed right:

“I guess you’re feeling [bewildered]?”

The other person is then free to confirm or deny that feeling. If they deny, we might choose to guess again. And if they confirm, then we might guess what need(s) they have (if they don’t volunteer this information) that are or are not getting met:

“I guess that’s because you need [some kind of consistency between people’s words and actions]?”

Again, the other person is free to confirm or deny your guess.

And we can even invite them to make a refusable request:

“Would you be willing to ask something of me (or another) that might help in getting that need (of yours) met?

In summary, when you’ve got a handle on helping yourself identify your own needs (and making refusable requests of yourself, or others) then you’re in a position to begin doing the same with and for others. I take this to be what Marshall Rosenberg meant when he said:

“Empathy gives you the ability to enjoy another person’s pain.”

I find much joy – and enjoyment – in being able to empathise, and attend to others’ needs. Especially when they’re in some kind of pain. The Antimatter Principle is founded on the belief – and confirming science – that every human being similarly finds joy and delight in being able to empathise, and attend to others’ needs.

– Bob

Acknowledgements

My thanks to George Dinwiddie (@gdinwiddie) for suggesting the topic for this post.

Further Reading

Words That Work In Business ~ Ike Lasater
More Time To Think ~ Nancy Kline

The Nine Obsessions of the Extraordinary Software Development Manager

March 26, 2015
Management, Organisational effectiveness, Software development
1 Comment

The Nine Obsessions of the Extraordinary Software Development Manager

The key to successful management is to spot a few things that will make a difference in your organisation and then concentrate on doing them.

If you are looking for ways of fostering sustainable success within your role as a software development manager, whether in a small, medium or large organisation, this list might help provide some insights. Insights which might serve in the task of contributing to the emergence of improved health for your organisation.

  1. Attending to needs
    • Attending to the needs of the folks within the software development group.
    • Attending to the needs of other folks – within the business yet outside the software development group.
    • Attending to the needs of the business (as a proxy for the needs of e.g. customers, executives and shareholders).
  2. Emphasising service
    • Championing the role of the software development group in exploring, monitoring, understanding and serving the needs of the business and its constituent parts.
  3. Aligning to the bigger picture
    • Participating in modelling the business as a whole, and the part the software development function plays in that.
    • Understanding the software development capabilities the business needs now and in the future.
    • Working to evolve those capabilities in a timely fashion.
  4. Nurturing an environment where people find joy in working together and giving of their best
    • Understanding the nature of knowledge work and the fundamental differences this entails for “managing” – compared with e.g. “factory work”.
  5. Working with the grain of your organisation’s mindset
    • Working to minimise organisational cognitive dissonance.
    • Understanding the impact (risk) of specific change initiatives.
    • Preparing for organisational (mindset) transformations (e.g. Analytic to Synergistic) – where feasible.
  6. Getting out of the building
    • Understanding customers and their needs, and the relationship between your organisation and the wider world.
  7. Over-communicating
    • Building a shared mental model of the role of the software development group and its relationship with the purpose of the business as a whole.
  8. Making friends
    • “No man is an island”. Having friends makes the whole experience of being a dynamic software development manager more bearable.
  9. Being seen to be human
    • Nobody likes being treated like a cog in the machine, a drone, a fungible resource. Developers least of all. People have feelings, needs and aspirations. Being seen to be human is the gateway to improving relationships within and without the software development group.

For brevity, I’ve refrained from expanding this list with i.e. narrative explanations. Should you have any specific questions, I’d be happy to elaborate.

– Bob

Further Reading

How to Be a Great Software Development Manager ~ Bob Marshall
Four Obsessions Of An Extraordinary Executive ~ Patrick Lencioni

What’s A Good Job?

March 25, 2015
Antimatter principle, Management, Organisational effectiveness, Psychology
1 Comment

What’s A Good Job?

“If you want people to do a good job, give them a good job to do.”

~ Frederick Herzberg

But what, exactly, constitutes a “good job”?

Looking at this through the frame of the Antimatter Principle, we might choose to say that a good job is one which contributes to everyone’s needs getting met. Note, not just the needs of the person holding the job, but everyone’s needs, to a greater or lesser extent.

What do we mean by “needs”? Let’s not be superficial or utilitarian. I’m talking about core human needs, needs drawn from an emotional place. Employees are, after all, human, are they not?

Here’s a brief list of such needs, to help illustrate what I’m talking about:

CONNECTION

acceptance, affection, appreciation, belonging, cooperation, communication, closeness,
community, companionship, compassion, consideration, consistency, empathy, inclusion,
intimacy, love, mutuality, respect/self-respect, safety, security, stability, support,
to know and be known, to see and be seen, to understand and be understood, trust, warmth

PHYSICAL WELL-BEING

air, food, movement/exercise, rest/sleep, sexual expression, safety, shelter, touch, water

HONESTY

authenticity, integrity, presence

PLAY

joy, humor

PEACE

beauty, communion, ease, equality, harmony, inspiration, order

AUTONOMY

choice, freedom, independence, space, spontaneity

MEANING

awareness, celebration of life, challenge, clarity, competence, consciousness, contribution,
creativity, discovery, efficacy, effectiveness, growth, hope, learning, mourning, participation,
purpose, self-expression, stimulation, to matter, understanding

How About Your Job?

By this yardstick, how would you rate your job? And the jobs you create for others in your organisation? And what does that rating mean for folks’ engagement and motivation?

“We can provide conditions in wich employees are more likely to be motivated or demotivated, but it is a conceit to believe that managers can motivate people.”

~ John Seddon, Freedom From Command & Control

– Bob

Further Reading

One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees? ~ Frederick Herzberg

The Antimatter Proposition

March 24, 2015
Antimatter principle, Leadership, Management, Organisational effectiveness, Rightshifting
2 Comments

The Antimatter Proposition

“88% of Americans feel that they work for a company that does not care about them as a ‘person’.”

~ Raj Sisodia

Why does this even matter? After all, most organisations appear to operate under the assumption that people are simply fungible “resources”. Resources that need a job more than the organisation needs them.

“There is sufficient evidence to show that people can be exceptionally innovative under certain conditions. Working in a [uncaring] machine-like organization is not one of them.”

~ H Jarche

Is workplace democracy a solution? Whatever the solution, there’s an awful lot of money – and joy – being left on the table:

“When businesses successfully engaged their employees… they experienced a 240% BOOST in performance-related outcomes”

~ Gallup, State of the American Workplace Report 2013

 

Think Again?

Maybe recent trends and evidence tempt you to think again about the nature of the workplace you have created, and the state of mind, and morale, of the folks in that workplace?

If so, one question I’m regularly asked is:

“How on earth can we start addressing this issue? How can we even begin to turn things around and create workplaces where folks feel like they might want to become engaged?”

And my answer to this question is: the Antimatter Principle.

Are you sufficiently engaged with your organisation that you might want to explore how this helps?

– Bob

Further Reading

Leadership Yawns As Employees Check-Out ~ Bernie Nagle pp. Craig Daniels
State of the American Workplace ~ Gallup (Report)
Eleven Reasons Your Employees Are NOT Working For You ~ Jim Benson
The Antimatter Why ~ Bob Marshall

Who I Am

March 21, 2015
Organisational effectiveness
2 Comments

Who I am

This blog is named to honour Steve Jobs – and the other “crazy ones”. And to honour his take on what is means to be “in business”. I was reminded of his stance by this video, today. To remind myself, and inform some other folks, I thought I’d revisit an earlier post about what I believe.

Steve put it like this:

“We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.”

~ Steve Jobs

and, more fundamentally, this:

“We believe that those people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that actually do.”

~ Steve Jobs

And What I Stand For

For me, i subscribe to the latter sentiment absolutely. In my case, I have for the past twenty years at least, explicitly stood for people. Developers, yes – who are often the craziest ones. But also for all the other people, managers and bosses included. All those people toiling away in oppressive organisations everywhere. Organisations that suppress or ignore our potential and our humanity, and rob us of the joy of working together on changing the world for the better.

“I believe that a Rightshift of knowledge-work businesses brings improved health, wealth and wisdom for individuals, for the organisations in which they work, and for society at large.”

– Bob Marshall (FlowchainSensei)

So, to be clear, I stand for a world in which businesses serve society and people, and not, as all too often today, vice versa. In particular, I stand for Humane Solutions, in a world where the evil twins of Technology and Bureaucracy appear to have the whip hand – and people and their needs generally go by the board.

The massive irony, of course, is that businesses that truly take to heart the idea of serving society and people find they’re much more successful than those which do not.

Would you be willing to share what you stand for?

Daunted

I often feel daunted by the sheer scale of the challenge. I take comfort from things like the story of the starfish:

A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement.

She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish, there is miles and miles of beach. You can’t begin to make a difference!”

The girl bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied,

“Well, I made a difference to that one!”

— Adapted from The Star Thrower
by Loren C. Eiseley

and this Arthur Ashe quote:

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

~ Arthur Ashe

How about you? Do you, as Steve Jobs invited us, “honour people that Think Different”?

Here’s to the crazy ones. I can identify.

– Bob

Further Reading

The Rightshifting Ethos ~ Bob Marshall
Who Is Bob Marshall? ~ Yves Hanouille
A Personal Charter ~ Bob Marshall
Greetings from Munich ~ Video interview

Antimatter And The Marshall Model

March 13, 2015
Antimatter principle, Organisational effectiveness, Rightshifting
1 Comment

Antimatter And The Marshall Model

OK. So there’s been some pretty strange titles to some of my blog posts. This one, not least. In my head, they make sense.

“How Effective is MY Organisation?”

When I’m explaining the Marshall Model, oftentimes folks will attempt to site their own organisations along the horizontal (relative effectiveness) axis. Whether it’s down to some kind of Dunning-Kruger effect, or something else, many times folks imagine their organisations as being much more effective than I – and the model – would suggest. For example, people in Ad-hoc organisations oftentimes imagine they’re in the “Synergistic” mindset. Still, looking on the bright side – at least these folks have connected with the question. Maybe for the first time ever.

For me, this is just a specific case of the widespread phenomenon of people thinking their organisations are much more effective than they actually are (i.e. relative to the world’s knowlege-work organisations as a whole).

Aside: It was noting this phenomenon, and its pernicious effect on organisations’ motivation to improve, that encouraged me to begin writing and talking about Rightshifting in the first place.

Differences

Recently, I’ve been tussling with how to express the stupendous differences in kind between the different mindsets of the Marshall Model. It’s these differences which in practice account for the huge variations in effectiveness between organisations of differing mindsets.

In this post I’m going to take a look at how the Antimatter Principle might help us understand the key difference between these mindsets. Firstly, to recap from the model:

  • The one thing that most marks Ad-hoc organisations, is their lack of appreciation of the value of discipline.
  • The one thing that most marks Analytic organisations is their lack of common, shared purpose.
  • And the litmus test for Chaordic organisations – vs Synergistic ones – is their focus on seeking out and exploiting new opportunities. For example, new markets or new products. This seeking, above all, is their daily “business as usual”.

Ad-hoc Antimatter

In Ad-hoc organisations, folks’ needs might get attended to as a matter of common decency. I say might, because these organisations, by definition, will have no disciplines in place to address folks’ needs. Nor any common notion that this might be a good thing. So if someone has a bereavement, for example, the boss will most likely approach the situation as a one-off. So too with other things, such as staff promotions, individual performance, holidays, sick leave, bonuses, etc..

And so too with more prosaic issues, such as customer satisfaction (service) levels, billing, marketing, and so on. And in product development, ignorance – and thus absence – of e.g. cost of delay, flow, and other such “organisational” concepts.

This translates to organisations where nobody really knows where they stand. What to expect. Excepting common decency – or something else – from the boss.

Everybody can be pretty sure of one thing though, when the shit hits the fan, it’s the top dogs’ needs that count.

In a nutshell, the Ad-hoc organisation has few to zero disciplines relating to attending to folks’ needs.

Analytic Antimatter

In the Analytic-minded organisation, there will be policies and procedures to address folks’ needs. At least, some needs of some folks. Few Analytic-minded organisations will look at things expressly through the lens of the Antimatter Principle, to be sure. But in the matter of, for example, bereavement, staff promotions, individual performance, holidays, sick leave, bonuses, etc., these organisation will have a raft of gruesomely-detailed policies stipulating where folks stand.

In a nutshell, the Analytic organisation has some coercive, extrinsic disciplines relating to attending to folks’ needs.

Synergistic Antimatter

In Synergistic-minded organisations, there will be a widespread common understanding of how folks’ needs are attended to:

  • Personal development plans and e.g. related quantified objectives may guide people in understanding their own needs and those of others, and thus to apply effort in attending to them.
  • Team and group development capability or capacity plans may serve to guide folks in understanding and attending to the collective needs of groups.
  • Project or product plans – a.k.a. requirements, use cases or user stories – may serve to identify the needs of consumers and other stakeholders in a particular project, product or product line.
  • Financial plans may serve to address the finance-related needs of individuals and groups within and without the organisation.
  • Strategic plans may serve to provide a common context (shared purpose) highlighting the needs of the organisation itself, and how folks’ individual and groups needs relate to that common purpose.

In a nutshell, the Synergistic organisation has a wide range of common, shared, non-obligaory, intrinsic disciplines relating to attending to folks’ needs. And folks’ self-discipline contributes to the continual discovery, and evolution of the understanding of folks’ needs – and the guidelines for attending to them.

Chaordic Antimatter

In a nutshell, the Chaordic organisation actively and continuously monitors folks’ needs, with a view to leveraging positive advantage (meeting more folks’ needs, more often, at less cost) as often as possible. This obviously applies to customers’ – and potential customers’ – needs. But I see no reason to stop there. The chaordic principle of positive opportunism offers benefits in regard to all stakeholders and their needs.

Summary

Has this post helped illuminate the distinctions between the various mindsets (memeplexes) of the Marshall Model? Are you now better placed to site your own organisation amongst its peers?

– Bob

Changing Ourselves

March 9, 2015
Antimatter principle, Dialogue, Psychology
5 Comments

Changing Ourselves

When I wrote, back in January, about my New Hope, I had little idea that it might prompt a blogging hiatus. But I find myself in the midst of a confusion of thoughts about just how my own perspective, assumptions and beliefs have changed, and continue to change, over time.

I’ve have been thinking about it though, more or less often, since that post. And not wanting to remain silent on the subject, and not wanting to have something fully-formed before sharing it, I’ve chosen to write this post as some kind of peg on which to hang some random musings. Maybe sharing something this tentative might encourage others to join a dialogue of mutual exploration – in a way that sharing of full-formed ideas may tend to dissuade.

Learning vs Changing

One theme upon which I’ve been reflecting has been the nature of learning vs changing oneself. When we learn things, the thing(s) we learn tend to change our actions, our behaviours. But although I love learning, and many things I have learned over the years have cause me to change my behaviour, I have difficulty in seeing this as a change in who I am – in my essential perspective, assumptions and beliefs. In my identity.

The latter kind of change, what we might call transformative change, seems much less common, at least in my own life’s experience. (Neuroscientists have a term, self-directed neuroplasticity, which may have some bearing on this).

Distinctions

I see a range of qualitatively different things open to change:

  • New information, adopted and then influencing our decisions.
  • New strategies for living (e.g. for getting our needs met).
  • The way our brains are wired (I’m guessing the training of Kahneman’s System 1 is of interest, here).
  • Behavioural “dysfunctions” (e.g. OCD, phobias, etc.).
  • Aspects of our “personality” (example, from avaricious to generous, or from jackal to giraffe).
  • “Who we are” – e.g. our own self-image, a.k.a. identity.

I guess these various things overlap, to some extent. And I wonder if there’s any mileage to be had in making distinctions between them?

So, there we have it. That’s where my musings have taken me, so far. I don’t know where it’s going, how long it might take, or the sights we may see along the way, but would you be interested in joining me in this journey of discovery?

– Bob

Further Reading

The Neuroscience of Leadership ~ David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz
Can We Change Who We Are? ~ Dr George Simon