Five things lion tracking taught me about teamwork

My partner and I just returned from a month in Zambia. We went there to track lions on foot. This was our second time in Africa, an amazing experience. We spent most of our time in remote bush camps in North Luangwa and Kafue National Parks. We slept in bamboo huts and listened to the big cats calling in the dark. We tracked a pride of lions from a buffalo kill through pathless wilderness, encountering them unexpectedly and holding our breath as they sprang roaring through the trees. At one point, we were charged by a bull hippo and ran for our lives, saved by a warning shot from Justin, our scout, who stood his ground. We spent our nights about campfires in the bush, sipping whiskey from tin cups and feeling the thrum of nature about us.

I don’t believe I’ve ever felt more present and alive than when walking with small groups of people in the African wilderness. The experience is at once magnificently beautiful and incredibly edgy. At one moment you might be feeling isolated, peaceful, and relaxed. The next moment you encounter a pride of lions, some elephants, or a herd of buffalo and the situation changes. Under these circumstances, people work instinctively as a team. I learned five lessons about teamwork from my experience tracking lions in Zambia that cast light on what is required for the best team-based collaboration.

You little genius! How to cultivate your creative gifts

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will grow up believing it is stupid. — Albert Einstein

‘What is your genius?’ I’d like you to reflect on this for a moment. I find that when I ask people this question, they often don’t know what to say. The G-word can stop us in our tracks. Years ago, when I was first asked: What is your genius? I thought: ‘Genius? What genius? I’m just a guy’.

I am just a guy. But I have come to see that everyone is touched by genius. Perhaps it is just a gentle caress. Perhaps your genius lies in something so uncommon that you’ll have to search the world before you find the opportunity to express it. There may be years of toil, of wanderings near and far, a host of grand adventures in your path before you finally discover your potential. But there is genius in you, waiting to be discovered. This post will explain how to find it.

If everyone is a genius, why is the world so messed up? For creatures who have the capacity for genius, we do a brilliant job of being dumb. Clearly, we are not, at this point in history, living up to our potential. But this is not surprising, since we only put a fraction of the work into cultivating our genius that we could. We doubt ourselves (‘Genius, what genius?’). We aim low (an easy trap to fall into, since that’s where most people are playing). Once we’re out of the education system, few people bother to encourage us to find our inner genius. Can you imagine your boss telling you to find that rare and special thing that makes you great and cultivate it? Not going to happen (‘Get back to work!’). We are the products of cookie-cutter education systems, of ‘knuckle-down-and-conform’ economies, of shallow, hyper-mediated, cultural systems that celebrate cannibalization and incremental innovation over true disruption (Lady Gaga is the incremental innovation of Madonna; the latest superhero blockbuster is the cannibalization of every superhero trope that has come before). Given this, it’s no surprise that we forsake our deeper talent. Really, why should we bother to look for brilliance in ourselves when society as a whole is geared for averageness? Why stick your head up over the edge of the trench? You’ll only get it blown off.

What an appalling waste of talent. Don’t give up on yourself like this. Find that rare and special thing that you do extraordinarily well and make it central to your life. Here’s how you can do it.

Promises to myself: ten philosophical resolutions

Don’t you love the feeling when you realise that your work for the year is done and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t kick up your heels and relax? I woke up with that feeling this morning. I’m off to Vietnam at the end of the week and I can feel myself being drawn towards the plane.

Bon voyage, friends and fellow philosophers, wherever you may venture this holiday season! I’ll see you again in 2014 with more adventures of the cerebral kind.

I’ll leave you with a list of philosophical resolutions for 2014. I’ve lifted them from some of my favourite posts on this blog. I’ll be taking them with me on holiday. Promises to keep.

1. I will say ‘yes’ to life.

‘To complete Nietzsche’s three metamorphoses, the lion must become a child. ‎Maturity, for Nietzsche, means rediscovering the seriousness one had as a child at play.

A child-like spirit is vital to happiness, health, and well-being. “The child”, Nietzsche says, “is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a sport, a self-propelling wheel, a Sacred Yes”. The lion becomes a child when the individual who says “I will” ceases to affirm their values contrary to the law of “Thou Shalt”, and affirms them instead “for the sport of creation: the spirit now wills its own will, … its own world”. Life is no longer a reactive struggle to defeat other forces. Life is a celebration of one’s powers – a sustained act of pure affirmation. The child-like spirit knows the joy of life and the innocence of perpetual creation’.

From Nietzsche’s three metamorphoses (February 2010)

2. I will grow collective.

‘Love is a disruptive event that opens people to a new terrain of possibilities and a common vision of what they might be together. I find this aspect of Badiou’s argument tremendously interesting. When people find love, they realise life offers them more together than it does alone. They realise that they can do more together, and thereby discover a tremendous responsibility and risk. Can they be worthy of this common possibility? What level of dedication and trust is required to realise it? Love, Badiou claims, requires that we reinvent ourselves – together. It is a project of co-construction – the kind of event that we need to constantly work at in order to sustain’.

From Life changing love: Badiou and the birth of possibility (January 2013)

Question everything: scepticism as a way of life

In 155BC, Carneades the Sceptic travelled to Rome to give an important speech to the Roman Senate. Carneades was the head of the Athenian Academy and the most dignified philosopher of his day. He was known as a brillant speaker with a whip-sharp mind and a mastery of sceptical techniques that was second to none. In Rome, there were mixed feelings about Carneades’ speech. Some people were concerned about Carneades’ brand of sceptical philosophy and the effect it might have on the Roman youth. Others, however, were curious to learn what Carnaedes had to offer. Greek scepticism was a mystery to the Romans, yet to immigrate across the Ionian Sea. Carnaedes was an ambassador from the land of skeptikos. Was this a land worth visiting?

Introducing Sceptic philosophy to the Romans was not Carneades’ main objective. Carneades came to Rome as a diplomat, tasked with convincing the Senate to reduce a fine that had been imposed on Athens for the invasion of Oropus. The Romans believed the fine was just, while the Athenians thought it was wildly inappropriate. Carneades had promised to take a sceptical approach to the debate, to see if it were possible to transform the way that both parties thought about things. To achieve this, he’d deliver two speeches in the course of two days, both on the topic of justice.

On the first day, Carneades wowed his audience with a stunning review of Platonic and Aristotelian arguments in favour of justice. Justice, Carneades declared, was the supreme virtue, the Archimedian point that should guide all thought and discussion. The Roman senators were impressed. That evening, there was much talk of Carneades’ oratorical power and persuasiveness. How would he top it on the second day, people wondered?

When Carneades turned up the next day, the Senate was packed with the best and brightest of Rome, ready to imbibe his wisdom. Carneades stood at the podium and calmly refuted everything that he’d said the day before. The senators listened aghast as the great philosopher enumerated the virtues of injustice, which Carneades presented as a natural law that any reasonable person should adhere to. He wound up with some practical advice for the senators. ‘Rome has won her empire by injustice both to gods and men’, Carneades declared. And such is the course that Rome should maintain. Heaven forbid that the capital should explore the virtues of justice. How foolish! Carnaedes claimed: ‘A policy of justice would make Rome again what she was originally – a miserable poverty-stricken village’.

To say that Carneades’ speech went down badly is an understatement. Carneades and his entourage were ejected from the city. Scepticism never set root in Rome and the Greeks, presumably, learned an important lesson: never enlist a philosopher in diplomatic work.

21st century giving: how Facebook’s News Feed catalysed a culture shift

Facebook became a gift economy on September 6^th, 2006. Its users got a shock that morning when they logged on to find a News Feed in the place of their Personal Wall, which is what they’d previously seen in logging on. Everyone’s status updates had been routed into a single feed, which was continuously updated as their friends added content to their Walls. We are so use to aggregating feeds on social media today that it is hard to imagine Facebook without one. But prior to 2006, Facebook was a different kind of environment. Users had to visit each other’s Walls to see what their friends were posting. It made for a more private experience.

News Feed killed the privacy. Now everything was out in the open: posts, shares, likes, comments – everything. Thanks to News Feed, you could see everything that your friends were posting, in real time. Your friends could see everything that you were posting too. There was nowhere to hide. The platform was governed by an implacable transparency.

People freaked out. There was a major backlash. Users screamed violation of privacy. Critics called the site ‘Stalkerbook’ and threatened to decamp for MySpace. Zuckerberg offered a half-hearted apology for introducing the changes unannounced and without consultation, which inflamed the situation even more. Still, Facebook refused to budge. News Feed stayed. Contrary to expectations, News Feed turned out to be central to Facebook’s success.

When the wave of new registrations began the following week, few people had any idea that they were engaging a changed environment. For them, News Feed was what Facebook was all about – ‘sharing’. Once the initial furore had died down, people discovered that they liked News Feed. It meant that life on Facebook was never dull. There was new content every time they refreshed their browser window. It also meant that the more people contributed, they more they were able to stand out. Facebook was a time suck, but there was a reward system built into the design. Every contribution earned a tiny hit of egoboo.

Facebook took off. The site had 50 million users by October 2007 and it had doubled that number by August 2008. By the end of 2011, Facebook would have 850 million users, 50% of the total internet population. Just how much of this success can be attributed to News Feed is impossible to say. But the success of the News Feed concept was confirmed by the viral success of Twitter, another major social media company, which launched with a News Feed and nothing else. Since then, it has become standard practice on social media sites to feature an aggregating feed that compiles everything that people are doing on the site in one place. The all-in News Feed has become central to the social media experience.

Given that the News Feed concept hadn’t been tested in a commercial environment, it is remarkable that Facebook chose to introduce it at such a decisive stage in its development. Where did this idea come from, and what made Zuckerberg so certain that it would work? David Kirkpatrick, author of The Facebook Effect (2010), caught a glimpse of News Feed’s origins in a casual conversation in which he asked Zuckerberg about Facebook’s potential to change society. Zuckerberg responded by talking about the Potlatch, ‘a traditional celebration and feast of native peoples on the northwest coast of North America’. ‘Are you familiar with the concept of a gift economy?’, Zuckerberg asked him.

The Potlatch is a gift economy. So too, by implication, is Facebook.

The word ‘Potlatch’ comes from the Chinook language, meaning ‘to give away’ or ‘a gift’. Chiefs would host a Potlatch by gathering their tribe together and presenting them with a massive gift of food, blankets, furs, weapons, canoes, crafts, and more. The gift was dispensed at the end of a long and elaborate festival that involved speeches, songs, and spirit dances that could go on for days. The gifting ritual was the heart of the Potlatch. Everyone waited patiently to see what the chief would give. The bigger the gift, the better.

For the chief, the point of the Potlatch was to display abundant generosity. Any sign of stinginess would work against him. By amazing his tribe with a massive outlay of gifts, he sought to establish himself as a powerful leader, a figure of true status and nobility.

Sometimes, at a gathering of clans, different chiefs would compete to out-give one another. Each chief would seek to offer up a greater gift than the others, seeking in this way to cast the other chiefs in their shadow. Sometimes, this could lead a tribe to ruin. Sometimes, ruin was what was intended. The Potlatch could be used as a tool of war. By compelling the chief of a rival tribe to engage in an exchange that he couldn’t hope to win, a warring chief could force his enemy to impoverish his tribe in an effort to save face.

As the sociologist Marcel Mauss observed in his classic book, The Gift, the Potlatch inspires exorbitant acts of generosity. ‘The man who [gives] recklessly is the man who wins prestige’. The European settlers who moved west in the nineteenth century didn’t understand the Potlatch at all. European missionaries saw the Potlatch as a scandalous waste of time and resources and an impediment to the ‘civilization’ of the native people. One can imagine that the missionaries were offended by the egoistic nature of the Potlatch ritual. Following Jesus’ example, they aspired to the ‘pure gift’, an act of generosity that brooks of no return. In the Potlatch, by contrast, chiefs gave to establish their reputation and prestige.

The idea of giving to establish status was anathema to the teachings of the Church. The Potlatch was banned by the US and Canadian governments in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, contributing to the decimation of the tribes up and down the Pacific coast.

The traditional Potlatch has faded into history. The age of the digital Potlatch has just begun. When Facebook launched News Feed, it created a virtual Potlatch. By establishing a transparent space in which everyone could see what everyone else was posting, it created an environment in which status and reputation accrue to people who add value. In the transparent space of a real-time News Feed, users put their reputations on the line whenever they post content.  If they want to impress their followers, they need to share content that contributes something valuable. This dynamic ensures that most people think twice about their posts before posting them, which works to the benefit of everyone. It encourages people to curate the content that they share, reflecting on how it will add value for different audiences. As people post content that adds value for their audiences, and their audiences reciprocate by posting content that is valuable for them, the exchange of gifts creates an interpersonal dynamic that keeps people engaging with the feed.

This gifting dynamic is what keeps us coming back to social media, despite complaining about the hours it consumes in our day, how it fills our minds our trivia and distracts us from important tasks. Love it or loathe it, it has changed the mindset of a generation.

For a start, social media has made egoboo part of life for the digital generation. The term egoboo originated in science fiction fandom. Egoboo is the pleasure we get from being recognised for voluntary work and contributions. Facebook is designed to deliver hits of egoboo. Every Facebook user has experienced the thrill of posting something popular on the site. Few are immune to the dopamine rush that we get as ‘likes’, comments, and re-shares come flooding in. Facebook is designed as a gifting-egoboo machine:  we insert what we love, what inspires us, our passions and desires; and the platform delivers crowdsourced recognition and egoboo.

Online gifts can translate into real life reputational rewards. Since, on Facebook, every contribution is tagged with a proper name, users earn reputation capital for their gifts. For knowledge workers and other professionals, this reputation capital can bear real rewards.  By consistently posting quality content, users can establish tribal status that they can use to find work and build a career. Social media professionals most often resemble competing chiefs in a Potlatch, engaged in the effort to out-gift one another to build their reputations.

The success of Facebook and other social media sites has made reputation-based gifting part of contemporary life. The scale of it is staggering. Millions of people around the world are playing the Potlatch reputation game right now. They are sharing family photos on Facebook, breaking news on Twitter, design concepts on Pinterest, and comedy skits on Vine. They are expressing their passions, dreams, desires, and inspirations. They are leveraging their personal gifts in an effort to create value for others. The more that people create value through gifting online, the more they stand out, the more egoboo they earn, and the more they stand to receive from their communities. With every reciprocated gift, an emotional bond is forged between strangers and friends. This gifting dynamic brings the world closer together. It makes us part of a common tribe. It is increasingly flowing offline.

It is easy to underplay the influence of culture on people’s behaviour. Culture is ephemeral. Culture concerns people’s outlook on life, which remains invisible until they get a chance to express it in praxis. It has taken us a long time to appreciate the impact of online gifting on our way of life, probably because most of this activity has no practical consequence. It is only once the cultural approaches started to infiltrate productive activities, in co-design studios, co-working spaces, and corporate innovation labs, that we started to pay attention.

This is what is happening today. The success of Facebook and other social media platforms, from LinkedIn and Twitter to Snapchat, Tumblr, and Vine, has given rise to a new conception of how to get things done. We get things done through an open play of contributions. We get things done by engaging as peers and adding value in a generous and transparent way.

We see these cultural changes happening in a range of sectors today, predominantly environments favoured by digital professionals like co-working and tech start-up spaces. It is particularly evident in the design world. In co-design sessions, people innovate by giving everything they have to give to the session, knowing that it might not represent the final solution that everyone is looking for, or even something particularly useful, but that it is an honest attempt to move things forward. We don’t give with the expectation of return. We give because it is a noble cause, one that we want to be associated with, knowing that the social bonds that we forge through our gifts will pay dividends down the line, as our peers return the gifts that we’ve given them us in their own way.

The success of social media has catalysed a gift culture shift. It has given us a new sense of how to organise for innovation. There is a chasm separating this culture from the way that things get done in most organisations. Kirkpatrick reflects: ‘A world in which each individual has a clear window into the contributions of everyone else, potlatch-style, does not dovetail well with how most companies are run’. This is a problem for companies that want to increase their innovation capability. The only way around this problem is for leaders to let loose of the reins and create safe spaces for gifting and collaborative innovation.

Be a meaning maker: Sartre and existential freedom

Stevens was the butler’s butler. At Darlington Hall, where he’d worked his entire life, he exemplified the butler’s virtues of dignity and forebearance. Stevens’ self-identity hinged on his dignified façade. Over the years, he’d become so adept at maintaining this façade, he’d become it.

Stevens was the butler’s butler. Nothing less – and nothing more.

Stevens is the narrator of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Booker prize-winning novel, The Remains of the Day (1989). Anthony Hopkins owned the role in the Academy Award-nominated film adaptation of 1993. The story begins in the 1950s, when Stevens receives a letter from an old employee, Miss Kenton, who was the housekeeper at Darlington Hall in the years before the War. The letter rewakens old feelings in Stevens and stirs a sense of loss. Miss Kenton (played in the film by Emma Thompson) was an exemplary housekeeper. She and Stevens had an excellent professional relationship. At a certain point, Stevens became aware that Miss Kenton would have liked their relationship to be more than this. Something almost happened between them. But Stevens couldn’t make it work. He was so caught up in the business of being a butler, and of maintaining a demenour of dignity and discipline, that he couldn’t figure out how to integrate love into his world.

Finally, Miss Kenton resigned. Even in their parting conversation, Stevens couldn’t bring himself to speak to her in any other way than as a butler seeing off an employee.

Now it is the 1950s and Darlington Hall needs a housekeeper. Mr Farraday, the new owner of the house, suggests that Stevens take his car and visit Miss Kenton, to see if she’d be interested in reemployment. Stevens drives across country, and as he goes, he reflects on his life in the 1930s. With the benefit of twenty years hindsight, he is able to see that, at a certain point in his relationship with Miss Kenton, he almost changed direction. He almost broke out of his professional role and expressed his true feelings. He almost changed path in life. And yet he didn’t.

Odysseus and the Cyclops: mastery, humility, and fate

Odysseus was the hero’s hero. King of Ithaca, he sailed to Troy with an army of men to liberate the princess Helen from the Trojans. Odysseus’ leadership and prowess at Troy made him a legend among his fellow Greeks. Yet, Odysseus had a fatal flaw, and this would be his undoing. Odysseus could master a chariot and a phalanx of soldiers, but he wasn’t always the master of himself. Every now and then, his pride would get the better of him and he would become wild and unchecked, a primal force of passion and fury.

In these moments, Odysseus would forget the limits of his powers. He would believe that he was god-like and untouchable, the master of fate and destiny. He would lose his grip on reason. He would overreach himself and get himself into all kinds of scrapes.

Finally he messed up big time. The epic misfortunes of Odysseus’ life, dramatized by Homer in The Odyssey, hinged upon a single lapse in self-control. Odysseus’ error presents valuable insights into the kind of self-control that we need to deal successfully with change. Most importantly, it indicates how pride, or hubris, constantly undercuts our attempts at self-mastery. We believe that we are masters of the world. We overreach ourselves and wind up victims of the world instead.

Homer describes Odysseus as a master strategist – a ‘man of twists and turns’. It was Odysseus, at the siege of Troy, who devised the plan for getting the Archaean army into the city. Disguising himself as a beggar, ‘searing his body with mortifying strokes and throwing filthy rags on his back like a slave’, Odysseus stole into Troy and read its defences. The princess Helen, prisoner of the Trojans, recognized him and demanded that he tell her his plan. Odysseus gave it up reluctantly. The Archaeans would build a giant horse and put soldiers in its belly, giving it to the Trojans as a gift. It was a crazy scheme but it just might work! Under the cover of darkness, the soldiers would creep from the horse and throw wide the city gates and the Archaean army would come pouring in. This is how Odysseus, ‘master of any craft’, facilitated the conquest of Troy and liberated Helen.

Social media as gift culture: sharing circles and tribes

This is the second post in a series on social media gift cultures. I am interested in how indigenous gift cultures can help us understand the psychological and motivational dynamics of online social sharing. The first post in the series, Social media as gift culture: the reputation game, used the Potlatch ceremony of native North Americans to reflect on the enticements and rewards of sharing online. Social sharing, I argued, involves a reputation game – a ‘virtuous competition’ premised on the free exchange of gifts. As in the Potlatch, social media prosumers seek to create value for their followers through ‘gifts’ in the form of posts, tweets, pins, shares, comments, vouches, etc. The more value they create, the more reputation they earn and the more support they stand to gain from their communities.

In sharing content online, we are playing a reputation game. The object of the game is not to beat other players but to challenge them to greater expressions of generosity. It is a battle of abundant spirits that contributes to the common good.

This post shifts geographical focus from North America to the Western Pacific. I want to look at the Kula ring of the Kiriwina Islands to reflect on the nature and origins of social media tribes. Your tribes are comprised of people with whom you commonly chat and share online. Sometimes they are based in offline friendships, but not always. Shared values and interests are ultimately all that are required to hold a tribe together. If you are wondering who among your followers count as members of your tribe, make a list of the people who commonly like, favourite, share or RT the things you put online. Make another list of the people whose content you like, favourite, share and RT. Look for names that appear on both lists. These are the members of your tribe.

Nietzsche’s way of the creator: my north star

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is my favourite philosopher and greatest philosophical inspiration. I have spent years defending Nietzsche’s concept of will to power from detractors, explaining why it has nothing to do with domination and control. Nietzsche is a philosopher of creativity and spiritual health. If he comes across like a rabid dog, barking furiously at the world, it was because he dreamed passionately of a better world – a world of free spirits, risk takers and creators, people who selfishly seek to cultivate their powers so that they can unleash themselves on the world in powerful and dynamic ways.

Do we live in a Nietzschean world today? In many respects, we do. Still, creators walk a lonely path, for they engage in disruptive activities, and thereby ruffle as many feathers as they release birds into flight. I dedicate the following passage to the passionate dreamers of the world – the pathmakers, philosophers, and radical entrepreneurs. It comes from Nietzsche’s magnum opus, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-4). It is called, ‘The Way of the Creator’. It has helped me find my way, and I hope it helps you find yours.

Would you go into solitude, my brother? Would you seek the way to yourself? Then wait a moment and listen to me.

“He who seeks may easily get lost himself. All solitude is wrong”: so say the herd. And long did you belong to the herd.

The voice of the herd will still echo in you. And when you say, “I no longer have a conscience in common with you,” then it will be a grief and a pain.

Lo, that same conscience created that pain; and the last gleam of that conscience still glows on your affliction.

But you would go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself? Then show me your right and your strength to do so!

Are you a new strength and a new right? A first motion? A self-rolling wheel? Can you even compel the stars to revolve around you?

Alas! there is so much lusting for loftiness! There are so many convulsions of the ambitious! Show me that you are not a lusting and ambitious one!

Social media as gift culture: the reputation game

This is the first in a series of posts exploring the gift cultural dimensions of online social sharing. It builds on The Gift Shift and The Family History of Facebook, in which I introduced the idea of social media as a gift culture. It also represents a critical response to the position I developed in the Foucault and social media series, in which I used Foucault’s idea of the Panopticon to explore the psychological effects of sharing in the presence of a crowd. The ‘virtual Panopticon’ idea is not wrong but it is incomplete. What it leaves out is the virtuous competition that takes place between participants in the open social space – a competition based in the free exchange of gifts.

It comes down to how we relate to our followers. If we feel alienated from them, or intimated by them, sharing in public can be difficult. We are uncomfortably aware that our content is tagged with an existential marker: ‘I like it – it reflects my values and interests’. Like prisoners in a Panopticon, we can’t help feeling that we are judged on the basis of our posts and shares, and it is hard to shake the sense that we need to prove ourselves in some way. If, on the other hand, we feel supported and empowered by our followers, sharing in public is a different experience. We feel like valued participants in a multi-player game. We feel able to make valid contributions to the mix – to add content that may be passed around and enjoyed, that enriches the social experience. The fact that the content of our posts and shares reflects personally on us becomes a positive thing. We want to be known for the things that we share. We affirm our right to step forth and lead the conversation. It is by leading that we develop a positive reputation.

Don’t think of your followers as judges. Think of them as your tribe. Yes, they implicitly judge your contributions. Yet, for the most part, they value your gifts. Think of yourself as a tribal chief, competing for status in a virtual Potlatch. The crowd is there to witness your gifts, not to judge and condemn them. Your goal is to enrich your tribe with whatever gifts you have to offer.

Play the reputation game. Celebrate the virtual Potlatch and give.