Notes from an Open Life

How to make yourself indispensable – inside an organization, or working with an organization

What do organizations do?

They try to hire the best and smartest people they can to address their core business.

As an information professional, will you know more than they do?

No, probably not. 

Will you know more ‘broadly’ than they do?

Yes, probably.

Can you think differently and bring value to them?

Yes.

So what do you do?

• You get a request or a project.
• If at all possible – if it’s of interest to you and to them – you meet with them.
• You talk with them.
• You get interested.
• You understand their challenges, issues, interests, goals more broadly.
• You become a part of the team.
• You trust yourself to provide information that is relevant.
• You then do so.

What then?

• You listen to them.
• You meet whom they are meeting with.
• You listen to those people.
• You get interested.
• You understand their challenges, issues, interests, goals more broadly.
• You trust yourself to provide information that is relevant.
• You then do so.
• You become a part of that team.
• Repeat.

The tactical and strategic discussion - again

As a preface: 

This is one of those posts I have held on to for a couple of months. Why? 

• First, I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to use some of the language I use here. Yes, I've used the language occasionally before, but I wasn't sure if it was appropriate with this topic. 
• Second, I wasn't sure what the reaction would be to the sentiment expressed. I truly do believe in what I'm saying here - but I also found myself second-guessing whether I should express myself. 

I decided, in the end, that it is important to state my true opinion, and to see what happens. 

So here we go: 

So I was sitting in a meeting today with several high-level people in information work, and as we went around the table, I heard several people talk about 'moving from tactical to strategic' work. 

Which is the same fucking theme everyone's been talking about for years. 

And I started to wonder - why is that? Why are we still talking about moving from tactical to more strategic work? Why haven't we moved? 

First, I want to recognize that there is no escape from the tactical. Daily life is tactical. Eating lunch is tactical. There are always going to be tactical things that we need to do, in our lives and in our work. Let's accept it.

But to build on that - if you're doing tactical work and complaining about not being 'strategic', it's because you're choosing to be tactical. You are continually putting yourself in that mode. 

I'm guilty of this just as much as anyone. 

Here's the thing. Being strategic is not inherently in the nature of who we are, as 'information professionals' or librarians. We will never be strategic due to the very way we typically define ourselves. We are transactional by our very nature. By our training. By the roles we accept. 

I would claim that we often intentionally back away from being strategic - from providing perspective, analysis, interpretation. We don't feel comfortable or right saying what we think. We're afraid of taking the leap and not sticking by the data. We feel most comfortable sticking by the data. 

So how do we get out of this conversation? What is the way forward? 

• Let's examine and understand our expertise. Let's own what we do, and then let's apply what we do and be willing to stand by our knowledge - not the data, but our knowledge and understanding of that data. 
• Let's stop having the 'tactical vs. strategic' conversation among ourselves. Please. 
• Let's try giving up our defensiveness about our profession. We either own what we do and do a good job of it and push it forward, or we don't, and the profession goes away naturally. 
• Let's think about this: what if our profession is a mindset and a skillset that can actually be applied in new, interesting and useful ways? What if we're actually intelligent people who can have a conversation with, say, a VP of Strategy or a team trying to forecast the future? What if we can create new information and new understanding? How awesome would that be? 
• Finally, let's stop thinking we're not strategic and go out there and be strategic. 

Gee, that wasn't so bad after all. 

Climate proofing - via networks and looking out for one another

You may or may not be able to link through to this New Yorker article - it's worthwhile, and you can access if you subscribe - but the thing that struck me was the plain statement of something that has been lingering in my mind, mostly unspoken and unformed, for a long time: 

Even if we managed to stop increasing global carbon emissions tomorrow, we would probably experience several centuries of additional warming, rising sea levels, and more frequent dangerous weather events. (bold and italics mine)

And that's where I almost stopped reading because I couldn't quite absorb this statement of what had been lurking at the edges of my mind. 

SEVERAL. CENTURIES. 

Of more frequent dangerous weather events. 

The article gives several examples of physical and structural adaptation to help deal with extreme weather events - like barriers and "lifeline systems" (infrastructure for immediate aftermath of disasters). But it also touches on the differences of impact where there was a strong social network in place. Where people knew each other, or there were community organizations that bring people into contact with one another. These types of 'systems' - where people will even simply look out for one another - significantly contribute to the resilience of a community after a disaster. 

I've heard several stories from people who lived through Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast (and seen a lot of the news footage as well), and the striking thing is the humanity in the stories. People helped each other - and people were and are grateful for the care, the concern, the help. That's what made a difference. 

I'm not sure why I felt compelled to write this post. I guess there was something that shifted for me. In the face of a literally altered reality for the foreseeable future - where we simply accept things like extreme weather, and perhaps, shootings that are becoming a monthly occurance - will we adapt? I like to think that we will. And I have to think that we have to. 

The power of the like (from a therapeutic standpoint)

I don't know why I was thinking of this while running, but for whatever reason I was thinking about Facebook, and 'liking' things. I like 'liking' things that people post on Facebook. And it dropped into my head that the power of the 'like' for the person receiving the like is: 

You see me.

I make sense to you.

Which is a powerful gift to give someone. 

Data visualizations that matter

So I'm toying around with the idea of infographics and data visualization. I was recently inspired by this Mashable article about Jer Thorpe, who is 'Data Artist in Residence at the New York Times' - an awesome title he made up himself. 

Here's one of the key things that struck me about this interview:  

What's your advice for people aspiring to get into design and specifically data visualization?

It's the same thing with almost everything. There are so many people who I hear from who are like, 'I really want to do this, what are some books, what should I read?' You just have to do it. And, the sort of underlying secret about data viz is that it's not that hard. We're doing a very simple act, we're taking (usually) a number, and we're mapping it to something, whether that's mapping it to a color to a size or to a position on the screen. Anybody can take a set of numbers and think about ways you would draw that on a piece of paper. The two things that I always tell people is that: First you need to just get started with it, and admit that the things that your first projects are gonna suck, and that's okay. Y'know, you can't expect to make something beautiful the first time. My first data visualization was terrible.

The second thing I tell my students is to think about something that's close to you, something that's personally relevant to you. If it doesn't resonate with you, you're not gonna do a good job with it. We live in a really cool world right now where there's a lot of data that's accessible to us, whether that's your location data over time, your email transactions.

The reward of data visualization comes from discovery, and if you're not doing something where that discovery is going to feel like a revelation of some kind to you, then you're not gonna get it.

I LOVE THIS. Why? Because it takes the fucking mystery out of it. 

Many years ago when my researcher colleagues and I at Sun Microsystems were interested in getting into competitive intelligence, it felt the same way. CI was this practice shrouded in mystery - none of us could really get at how one did it. We took some courses, we joined SCIP, we read books, but we still seemed stuck when we thought about actually doing it. 

I finally went to a pre-conference workshop at a SCIP conference, and I don't remember a lot of what was taught at that. But the key turned for me at the outset of the workshop. The instructor, Ken Sawka, said simply: "Competitive intelligence is information plus insight."

The light went on. I suddenly felt like the veil had been lifted and it all didn't seem so intimidating any longer. 

I got back and I decided to jump in. I went to one of my long-term clients and I said, 'would you be willing to work with me on a CI project?' He enthusiastically said yes, and so began my competitive intelligence career. 

I've been feeling the same way about data visualizations. Ultra cool, would love to do that. But how? 

Thank you, Jer - for the insight, the removal of the mystery and the permission to create at least a few crappy visualizations. It kind of feels like the birth of punk - you get instruments and you just start playing. It's horrible at first, but sometimes something great emerges. 

So what to visualize? The idea for a first visualization popped into my mind when I was conducting research on chronic conditions in the United States - diabetes, heart disease, hypertension. I came across some information (that I've since lost track of and need to track down again) about how many people in the US - adults and children - are on anti-depressants. It was a striking number, in the millions. IN THE MILLIONS. 

This is data that meant something to me. So I'm going to track it down again and see what I can do with it to make it more visually meaningful. 

In the meantime, I was looking at statistics on suicide in the US. I was struck again by the information I found.

• Since at least 2007, suicide has been the 10th leading cause of death in the US.
• It is the 7th leading cause of death for men in the US.
• It is the 3rd leading cause of death for people ages 15 - 24. 

• Men are four times more likely to successfully commit suicide, but women attempt suicide two to three more times than men. 
• Older Americans are disproportionally more likely to die by suicide, especially white men over the age of 85. 

 These are heartbreaking. But let's look at some other numbers. 

• In 2011, 38,285 people died by suicide in the US - more than twice the number of deaths by homicide. 
• For every death by suicide there are 11 attempts. If we do the math, that means there were 421,135 attempts in 2011. 

So, using these numbers, here's my first visualization - on suicide. 

 

 

Simple graphic. I tried to get the proportions about right.

Maybe not so crappy for a first attempt.

I think it's these kinds of numbers and this kind of information that make visualizations powerful. What could you draw from this? 

• That's a shit ton (I'm pretty sure that's the clinical term) of suicide attempts. 
• There are a shit ton more attempts than successful suicides. 
• These are scary numbers. I think we have an issue on our hands. 

My little visualization won't change the world. But it gives me a different way to grasp the issue. That, to me, is the true power of visualizations. 

Thanks again, Jer. I'm glad you put a guitar in my hands.