Protocol and that which is sacred

A Photographer’s Unseen Archive of the Hawaiian Renaissance

I am a member of The Well and one of the conversations/conferences I follow is called Hawaii. The above article was shared a while back and I continue to be moved by this article in Aperture magazine. Photographer Franco Salmoiraghi has taken pictures in Hawaii for decades. Not all of those are shared publicly because they are sacred to Hawaiian’s and their culture. There are things that are, by protocol, sacred. Images that are ONLY for native Hawaiians.

I remember working overseas many years ago and heard someone talking about my style and approach as that “casual American disregard of protocol and devaluing the role of the formal.” Guilty as charged and I often perceived that those protocols just slowed things down and did not amount to much. And from one perspective, that felt pretty accurate.

What I did not see nor school myself on was where protocol was, in fact, sacred, and when it was just a way to consolidate and preserve power. Or when it was both. Or neither. So when I read the article above, it opened up a new window through which I am now taking a longer peek. No conclusions here, just appreciation for another view.

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Connecting Infrastructure and Power

I was intrigued by a post from my wonderful friend and colleague, Eva Schiffer, on LinkedIn a while back. Coming off a conversation with the creative Gianluca Gambatesa, Eva quoted him with something that opened up a lot of questions in my mind about power. Gianluca said “There is a tight link between power structure and infrastructure. By making infrastructure more accessible, we can destabilize and open up power structures. Oh. So. Much. To. Unpack! Then Eva went on to ask for examples.

Before I can mine examples, I want to understand what we mean by infrastructure and power structure. In my group process work most often the aim is to distribute power out to engage everyone and support work that distributes agency and responsibility across a group. It is rarely a goal to destabilize power, but to distribute it. So the idea of “opening up” power structures resonates.

Decision making can be a good place to test ideas. In practice that might look like clarity of decision making (as opposed to fake consultation – I’ll listen to you but I already made up my mind), clarity of how power is exercised and by whom in decision making processes. Power structure is expressed in this case by who makes what decisions, how they are communicated and enacted.

So what is infrastructure in this case? In the LinkedIn thread most references were to collaboration tools: Google drive, Slack, etc. Accessibility to tools requires they are available, properly configured to distribute control of the tools, backed up so useful experiments don’t risk mass destruction of stuff, and skills for people to use those tools. Who can choose and mess with the tools is super important – something we learned in our research for Digital Habitats.

I immediately wondered about the role of transparency of tools, how they are configured and who controls them as one sort of accessibility. There are other layers of accessibility: is a tool friendly for those who cannot hear or see? Is it free of embedded bias? Are the use practices built on shared values and goals or is it a free for all? My bias here is finding the sweet spot between over control and under control. For a diverse group, is the tool accessible ENOUGH to allow access and support diversity? Eva, in a latter comment, noted “Transparency is part of it. But also: Does this structure make it easy for me to fully contribute if I’m not highly privileged?”

That takes us to the less visible side of tools-as-infrastructure – the processes we use with the tools, each other and our shared work. Who has the power (there is that word again) to, as Eva called it, “fully contribute” regardless of one’s priviledge and power.

Process is infrastructure. Lack of process is infrastructure. Workarounds to avoid or change process is part of infrastructure as far as I’m concerned. Yet it is rarely noted in ones “infrastructure plans,” eh? It is the place where power is exercised with little visibility, or perhaps little accountability.

Some other stuff:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hbsworkingknowledge/2019/08/08/facebook-and-electio
n-influence-will-history-repeat-itself/

Renee Diresta gave a superb talk at Long Now about the difference
about social media which Long Now retweeted about:

"When people say propaganda has always existed, they're absolutely
right. But what has not always existed is inexpensive,
sophisticated, precision targeting."
- Renee DiResta (@noUpside) on how social media algorithms help
spread propaganda on altogether new scales.

https://twitter.com/longnow/status/1518706648730140672

From the Archives: 2008 Hyper Optimism about MOOCS

I found a REALLY old one full of the hope and optimism of 2008. Leaving it as is, with just the addition of cheerful flowers. I want to feel optimism again!

image of 5 colorful imaginary flowers on a light cream background.

I should be doing a hundred other things than blogging at 8:30 at night. No wonder I have weird dreams. But I really wanted to jump into the flow of posts and conversations about Massive, Open, Online Courses or MOOC’s.

I’m referring to Stephan Downes’ and George Siemen’s generous offering, “Connectivism and Connective Knowledge”, a twelve week, open offering they are getting ready to launch. No small feat. For anyone who has ever designed and offered an online collaborative learning event, it is a lot of work. An act of love. (Yes, Stephen, LOVE!) But what happens when 1200 people want to play? This reminds me of the lovely conundrum Leigh Blackall is in with 90 people signing up for his Facilitating Online Communities course. It is raising all kinds of fun questions about how to scale social learning.

So, can a ‘course’ scale to 1200 people as a social, connected learning event? What does that look like? How do we set our expectations? While Stephen and George are creating a course (see this page) I suspect that something wholely different will be experienced by many. It is a delicious set of possibilities and challenges. I’d like to question if it is even a ‘course’ in the way we have come to understand the word. Of course, with academic institution sponsorship, one can understand the name, but what I think this is is a Massive Online Learning Happening (MOLH!). Or a Massive Online Learn Fest (MOLF!). Or maybe a Massive Love-Learn-In. (MILLI!)

Seriously, this is networked learning.  But what a great learning edge to find out what happens when you really OPEN the doors.

Thanks to Stephen and George’s course blog, we’ll have a line of sight in to the action, even if we aren’t able to jump into the actual event. (I confess, the thought of it alone kind of makes me tired!)

So here are my questions:

  • How much will end up being about content delivery, how much about meaning making through individual reflection (especially evidenced in this case by blog posts) and how much will be socially constructed through interaction and meaning making between people (reading and commenting on other blogs, shared creation on the wiki and conversation in whatever conversation spaces crop up).
  • What are the implications of such a large group and the large possibility that they will have wildly different experiences — will what they learn be wildly different? Does that matter?
  • What are the implications of those paying for credit and support? How do they feel about “sharing” the course with 1000 other people?
  • What is the impact on the learning facilitators? Will the size of the group push them back to the traditional role of information providers? Will they only interact with the paid participants? Will they get any sleep for 12 weeks????
  • How does this compare/is this related to what we know about other types of online events?

Associations Should Consider the MOOC | Mission to Learn
I suspect I don’t really even need to spell out how the MOOC model could be of value in the association sector. Or for nonprofits hoping to engage a large group of stakeholders around a cause. Or for businesses seeking greater engagement with their customer base.

Just taking associations as the main example, imagine bringing together a significant slice of your audience online – member and non-member – over a period of days, weeks, or even months to engage on a topic that is central to their day-to-day work. Not just an online conference with a line up of presenters – plenty of that has already been done with widely mixed results. Rather, an event that is truly facilitated, in which key thought leaders help evoke shepherd audience input and participation, taking advantage of social media-driven Learning 2.0 approaches.

The potential seems tremendous. And not just for professional development or continuing education. I sincerely hope this idea will not be relegated to that. This is the stuff of missions.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating aspects of what Siemens and Downes are doing will not even be the course itself – though I have no doubt that will be incredibly valuable, and I plan to participate – but rather observing the thinking and processes by which the course comes about. Siemens and Downes have been documenting their efforts on the Connectivism and Connective Knowledge blog, and have also engaged in at least one podcast interview so far on EduTech Talk.

Jumping Off Points for Deeper Nuance

Nuance is everything. I saw a very sweet 2×2 from Amy Edmondson while I was taking one of my rare peeks at Twitter. At first glance my reaction was “cool!”

Then the term psychological safety caught my eye because I have been wary of the term. Safety on whose terms? For whom? I have become cautious as I’ve increasingly realized that I have projected my sense of safety on others who have NOT experienced psychological safety at all in the “shared context.”

Here is the tweet, then some comments below.

Amy, I have penned this without reaching out to you to talk about it. If that would be helpful in any way, let me know. I understand that psychological safety is a core of your work, and that my knowledge in this area is experiential and probably peripheral. I have learned a lot from your work over the years. The observations and wonderings I offer here are mostly directed at myself along my learning path.

What I appreciated about Amy’s post is the recognition that learning (or doing, etc.) require us to being open to being challenged, that we need positive, creative abrasion to bring our best to a challenge. It was what she proposed as supporting that state that left me uneasy: the idea of lowering standards, and the perceptions (reality) of being wrapped in cotton wool. The words “apathy,” “anxiety” and “comfort” taking on what sort of judgement? Whose standards are we talking about? Whose perception of who is getting wrapped in cotton wool?

What in this 2X2 honors the individual humans, their identities, as well as the output of a team? What helps the group reveal what is working and what must change to get to “learning.” What values and lived experiences are behind the generalizations?

I am bothered that apathy is the term for “showing up with our hearts and minds elsewhere, choosing self protection over exertion.” At some point, how much do you ignore and when do you choose to self-protect? How is, for example, self protection against racism, ableism and sexism evidence of low performance standards? How much is this the individuals lack of psychological safety and how much is it evidence of an oppressive system? How are self- protection and exertion actually related?

If this were a self reflection tool, a nuance might be “how am I protecting myself through disengagement?” What is causing my disengagement? Who is causing it? What power do I have to change it? Example: how does this land for a woman of color in a male dominated tech meeting who is constantly disrespected or ignored. For a person in the room who is the only person doing primary care giving for a loved one and has a lot on both work and home lines and may appear distracted? For the person with no power in the group? For some, this may be the ongoing experience of white supremacy.

I realize here I may be conflating apathy with anxiety. Thus the simplification continues to break down my understanding… Who knows when most perceived apathy is actually expression of anxiety?

Then to Comfort Zone – what if this was Respect Zone? If we had sufficient understanding of ourselves and each other, then challenging the ideas going into the work or learning itself can be experienced in the space where assumptions about the individual are not subtext for the presence or absence of respect.

So how does the 2×2 help us understand and best choose our approaches and actions? How does it move beyond stereotype or generalization? NUANCE!

If the use of the 2×2 is a reflection by a manager on a member of the team or of the team as a whole, it could feel like judgement, unconscious or conscious bias or even harassment to team members. Or it could be the starting point of asking a new type of question to learn more, understand more deeply rather than judge about people’s experiences and behaviors.

If this is a starting point to reflect as a team about how we all can show up and explore what changes might be useful to the group, how do we do it without perpetuating more oppression and misunderstanding along the way? And if it is for the latter, how could the quadrants be more generative and less judgmental?

Even as I write this I think, whoa, there is so much going on here. How would I represent it in a different way? If we all stood on the same ground, we were homogeneous, shared values (and probably biases), it probably could be done. But in the diverse world we live in, a 2×2 won’t do it.

We could reexamine it from a different 2×2 approach like “Critical Uncertainties” and look at a pair of variables that are important to our work/learning and are out of our direct control. Then we could see what options we could take to get to the “Learning Quadrant” depending on how those variables played out. We would expose our assumptions and uncertainties rather than judge and compartmentalize. I am sketching something now to see if this idea might bear fruit. (Future post! Right now I’m still brainstorming the uncertainties)

So far I have been throwing my own wild generalizations. Probably not helpful. Eugene Eric Kim replied to my Tweet asking for an example of nuance that gets lost in this type of matrix. Good ask, Eugene, as always. Here goes. And I have not written here in my blog about working on my own racism and white supremacy, but that work informs this post – and I recognize I’m still learning and may not get this “right.” I also recognize I can take that risk. Ironic.

As a person who has in the past unconsciously facilitated the loss of nuance, particularly in terms of my privilege as a white person in the US (and even abroad), I will give an example on myself.

I prioritized my world view as a feminist and offered a suggestion to a woman of color with whom I was cofacilitating. We were talking about how men often ignored what women said in meetings. I suggested that mixing high status language with low status body language helped to get men to pay attention to the issue I was putting on the table, instead of being ignored. Some of this was classic self-effacement moves, use of humor to put the men at ease rather than feel intimidated by me.

Turns out this mixing of high/low status is a classic move in the Improv world. Turns out I have been unconsciously using this much of my professional life. AND it turns out it doesn’t work for everyone, particularly if they are the “other” in the room. What creates psychological safety for me may not for you.

My co-facilitator immediately shared that if she used the status mix, she would lose even more credibility as a woman of color. How she talked, how she dressed –everything was always being judged through the lens of the (mostly white) men in the room. So taking a risk with this mixed status approach could actually lower her status. This is not psychological safety from any point of view. While my use of it may launch me into that mythical upper right quadrant of the matrix, Learning, it may move someone else to feeling apathy or anxiety. My using such an approach as a facilitator, let alone as a participant, can (and has) done damage. What worked great for me, didn’t work for her. (By the way, this was a startlingly wonderful learning moment that came from my colleagues generosity and I still feel it cost her a lot to even engage with me about it that has NOTHING to do with apathy or anxiety. My learning cost her labor.)

The nuance of how we understand these quadrants, these words, let alone what psychological safety means and feels like for people different from us, is essential. Boiling it down looks cool. But without nuance, it could be damaging. (Just look at the figured in the image. They might be perceived as white males…)