When I first started working, an older and wiser co-worker
told me: “There are two ways to do things: one is the way they tell you how to
do it, written or otherwise and then there is the way that things get done
right.”
I have kept that in my mind and it has more of less rings
true. There have been circumstances, miracles of all miracles, where the two
ways coincide and we get a cosmic convergence of disparate minds, but that’s
not often.
What brings this up is that I have been reading a number of
books written to show the masses how to be creative, how does innovation occur,
how to be gritty and resilient, how to be happy, how change our mindset, how to
cope with the technology invading our world, and all of the other things that
are complicating/enabling our lives. These books are generally written by
journalists or economists, or university researchers. They are categorized as either
leadership books, psychology books, business books, or self-help books.
They all share a structure though. The book and indeed, each
chapter may start with a pithy quote which may or may not be pertinent to the
chapter, but it is there. The quotes are usually coming from someone famous who
has the gravitas to give purpose to the chapter with their really deep
thoughts.
The book starts with a declaration that is supposed to be
evocative if not mind expanding. The author would mark his territory; define
his problem, the parameters, and the constraints. He would also throw in a
bunch of stories which would seemingly give proof to his claims. The stories
would be humorous but meaningful at the same time. Some authors would go for
the anecdotal approach: great stories without much data. Some would go deep
into their research and give you a lot of data, and if they are good scientists
and researchers, they would also provide caveats and forewarnings about
assumptions.
Support and argumentation would proceed in this way through
a number of chapters laying down a recipe or formula: point, anecdote and/or
data, another point, more anecdote and/or data, and so on. In the end there
would be a summary and a unification of all the deep thoughts all boiled down into
an easy to follow, no thinking required on the part of the reader. The promise
is that whichever problem the book is supposed to resolve is so simple, so
uncomplicated that a simple sequence of if-then scenarios could resolve all
situations that may come. Just like the premise I started with: there is a
documented solution.
In real life, we figure out what to do and how to do it.
Sometimes we need to do this because the known wisdom is insufficient and
confusing. Sometimes it is inadequate, but sometimes it is because human
ingenuity just won’t take the status quo for granted and sometimes people come
up with much better solutions by going away from the status quo.
For me that is the road less traveled, injection of human
curiosity and critical thinking and solving things by the seat of the pants, an
experiential approach is usually the most effective.
Indeed there is something to be said for having a reference
book ready to list the best practices, but I would argue that most of these
books are by and large not a list of best practices. They are a list of what
people believe to be best practices and most are just people throwing stuff
out. Even those who have a basis with data and documented successes, the
authors don’t go into far enough depth in their explanation of their thinking
to warn of the potholes along the way. Some of these omissions come from the
fact that you don’t know what you don’t know and you can’t anticipate
everything. Yet some omissions are more insidious: they don’t want their claims
weakened or invalidated AND those careful caveats don’t sell books.
I still read those books, I am not cynical enough to ignore
the possibilities available that comes from unorthodox thinking. But I do it with
a very jaundiced eye. I bring to the task of reading these books with the eyes
of a technical reviewer for engineering papers.
