‘Creative People Must Be Stopped!’ is the cornerstone book for a MOOC I’m doing from Vanderbilt University & (US) National Arts Strategies, ‘Leading Innovation in Arts and Culture’ via Coursera
Creative People Must Be Stopped!
This is the recommended reading list for the book, not the course: from Innovator’s Bookshelf
I’ve bolded the authors where I have read the books previously, but some are due a re-visit, not to mention the new ones!
The Conversation is compiling 20 papers before the next election, with a focus on Ideas for Australia
Improving democracy for workers is not easy but it must be done
What to do about employee engagement – aspirations and reality. The threat of the 0.1% and plutocracy; the decline in union influence.
From @XplodingUnicorn
According to Wikipedia, the Modulor is an anthropometric scale of proportions devised by the architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965), as a visual bridge between the imperial and the metric systems. It is based on the height of a man with his arm raised.
Described as the ‘functionalist Modernist man of the six-foot Corbusian detective’ in the Architectural Review in their discussion of Jos Boys’ Doing Disability Differently, Modular represents the dead white male school of architectural perspective. Le Corbusier picked six feet arbitrarily, basing it on the notional height of British detectives in the novels he was fond of using.
‘This Modulor Man is segmented according the “golden section”, a ratio of approximately 1.61; so the ratio of the total height of the figure to the height to the figure’s navel is 1.61. These proportions can be scaled up or down to infinity using a Fibonacci progression. In devising this system, Corbusier was joining a 2000-year-old hunt for the mathematical architecture of the universe, a search that had obsessed Pythagoras, Vitruvius and Leonardo Da Vinci‘
…’What’s really important is that the Modulor puts the human form back at the centre of design. In the present architectural climate of post-modern free-for-all, driven by computer processors and buoyed by parametric ideology, biomorphism runs riot, but human proportions are out of the picture.’
William Wiles. ICON.
One the themes of Doing Disability Differently is, of course, is to see dis/ability from a different perspective. Koolhaas Houselife is a documentary where a cleaner is seen having to haul her vacuum up a tight and enclosed spiral staircase, in a villa in Bordeaux designed for a wheelchair user, and pointedly aimed at getting the attention of the ‘able-bodied’ visitor.
As noted in the Architectural Review ‘This house needs celebrating, because it goes beyond assuming disability is only about accessibility and compliance, treating it instead as a central design generator. But it is also troubling. Despite making a powerful commentary on disability, the project both reproduces disability and ability stereotypically as an unequal binary relationship (albeit reversed) and treats it as a ‘one-off’ − as an issue specific to this building because of its client − rather than building on any wider understanding or more general design approach.’
Excerpt of Koolhaas Houselife on Vimeo
I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Jos Boys on building better universities (29 May 2015, actually). I bought a copy of her book on the day – for obvious reasons – and by chance, I discovered another title that chimed with some work I was doing to assist the University Digital Accessibility Plan (DAP). The book is difficult to read and absorb (for me) but the gist of it is that building with dis/ability ‘front of mind’ can re-frame the design process so the built environment (or online space) can be better for everyone.
My (pretty second rate) take-outs from the chapter on Strategies and tactics:
This think-piece in the Architectural Review is quite a lot more accessible than my own comprehension and it also raised another couple of (new to me) fascinating ideas: Koolhaas Houselife and Le Corbusier’s Modulor Man.
This is a book review I did for a Law journal back in 2010. It presages an interest in different modes of engagement and variations on organisational hierarchy.
When Managers Rebel by David Courpasson and Jean-Claude Thoenig (Translated to English by Matthew Cush) Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 181 pages
The authors, two French sociologists, have worked with a range of organisations for over 20 years, carrying out surveys and running training programmes. They only recently became interested in exploring executive rebellion thematically, having previously considered individual accounts as random aberrant behaviours.
Reviewing two decades worth of notes, Courpasson and Thoenig have examined over 40 instances of managers saying ‘I’ve had enough!’ (or its French equivalent). The authors have analysed these stories to understand and consider if it’s possible to harness the creative energy of office rebellions and if organisations can benefit from structural changes, especially in decision-making.
The accounts come from banking, building, construction, engineering, manufacturing, steel milling and other industries. The narratives focus on the boundaries between individuals and the organization and the points of friction between top management and the plans they seek to implement on middle management and the organisation below. They feel authentic, are engaging and compelling and are written in a clear flowing form.
The closing chapters link the narratives to the need for more evolved organisational forms, proposing concepts and definitions including adhocracy (relatively informal structures favoured by professionals), post-bureaucracy (informed consensus through shared goals) heterarchy (self-managing non-hierarchical networks) and polyarchy (essentially, majority rule).
This a fascinating work, in the ongoing tradition of French philosophical review. The language of rebellion and revolt echoes the Gallic experience and adds energy to the bureaucratic back-room behaviours described in the case studies.
As a reader, I was left with an impression of the wasted potential in organisations, through flawed communication primarily, that left people shaken, disheartened and ‘walking out the door.’
This book is highly readable but I feel the ideas need be liberated from the language of the social scientists and translated, for the rest of us. Not just in words but in models for action. This is a work for business schools, current and future business leaders, HR and organizational development specialists and anyone else interested in making workplaces less wasteful and more humane places to work to engage with.
We need to act, to take these emerging forms and patterns and make them happen to establish and build vital post-hierarchical organisations that support creativity and innovation as well as perform key functions better, faster, cheaper and sustainably.
