Author: owner

A line that I've often heard repeated in my industry is "Culture eats strategy for breakfast". The core thought behind this idea is straightforward. No matter the plans laid by the chief executives, the rest of the organization will stick with "The way it's always been done". I always found the culture phrase a bit odd.

A few years ago, I noticed something with the language used within the business world and I haven't been able to unsee it. With the emphasis on developing and improving the culture within a business, many of the words have taken on a decidedly religious tone. Considering that the word "culture" comes from the word "cult" this is not exactly surprising. But considering the large rise of the "nones", that is, those who have no religious affiliation, this is rather surprising.

Some examples:

• In sales and marketing, a new paying customer is called a "conversion"
• In scrum, the core activities of "standup", "Sprint review", retrospective", and "sprint planning" are referred to as "ceremonies"
• I've recently begun seeing references to daily routines before beginning work or a meeting referred to as "rituals"
• Another practice that I've heard about is creating a "sacred space" before a meeting, where people can ask each other how they are feeling.

Now, I'm not against these activities or the use of these words, they have a deeper meaning that too often are left at the surface level. It does lead me to wonder about the direction toward which we are changing the business culture. It also makes me wonder about the current tendency that I see with business taking on more and more humanitarian causes and people acting in ways that would make more sense in a cult than in a business. There is a concerted effort to drive organized religion out of the public square through such things as reducing the freedom of religion to the freedom of worship. However, it would seem as though the goal of ridding society of religion is utterly failing. The individuals in society are turning to another organized entity, businesses themselves, and then placing in them a kind of religious fervor.

Sadly, this is not what business is for. Business is about serving others through work, but not by being a religion itself. No business venture can satisfy the religious needs of the human heart, for as St. Augustine puts it "Oh Lord, our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee". To truly satisfy the human heart, we should instead look to the Church that God Himself built on solid rock and filled with His Holy Spirit.

The Gospel for today's Mass was from Luke 4. In his homily, Father focused on Satan's repeated conditional: "If you are the Son of God..." and how Christ is not insecure about or brought to doubt His purpose by the Tempter.

What came to my mind was that the three temptations of Christ are three different archetypes of the temptations that all of us face. These three may not be exhaustive, but they do cover many, if not most, of them. The first temptation is an archetype of temptations to our carnal appetites: food, sex, etc. The second temptation is an archetype of temptations to control and dominate others and the world. The third temptation is an archetype of temptations to intellectual pride and believing that we can somehow control God.

Each of Christ's responses is a perfect response for they point back to our complete and utter reliance on God. First, merely fulfilling our natural needs is insufficient for our lives. Second, God is the ruler of the world and we should embrace Him as the ruler of our own lives. Third, God's Providence transcends our limited understanding of how the universe works.

A few days ago, I removed most of the news sources from my phone. The lack of constant FOMO has been very uplifting so far. I've been far more focused on the tasks at hand, more available for my family, and I was surprised that my ability to take in the details of a book was sharpened. I'm hoping that this lack of constant information flow will lead to me being more interested in the people around me.

It's funny thinking back to when I would hear others say something similar about disconnecting from the firehose of news. I always thought that somebody needed to stay up on what was going on, so that problems could be addressed as they came up. However, I'm starting to wonder if there is something to be said about only staying abreast of what is going on with the people around you. Also, the importance of studying permanent and transcendent realities rather than knowing in detail the current zeitgeist.

This post ended up being more of a ramble. We will see if tomorrow I end up with something more directed.

Just received an ergonomic keyboard and I'm still figuring out exactly how to use it. All the modifier keys are in different places and the keys are not offset the same way. So I don't think I'll be able to do a long post tonight.

Besides yesterday's question, I've been mulling over the word "integrity" and how it is supposed to indicate an internal alignment between beliefs and actions. For most business or self-help books that seems to be as far as it goes. However, it doesn't take much to uncover historical instances of that kind of alignment that is truly horrifying. (I wish I had more time to list a few). Suffice to say that it was the fundamental beliefs that were wrong. so integrity needs to include alignment with the reality outside us. And the reality outside is only properly understood in relation to its Creator. Thus to have true integrity means that a person's actions arise from beliefs that are aligned with those truths revealed by the Creator within His creation and His revelation.

A question that has been bothering me for some time now:

Can you trust someone who lies to you?

Seems pretty obvious at first, but let's dig deeper.

Can you trust someone who tells a lie, but who believes they are telling the truth?

Deeper Still.

Can you trust someone who says something he thinks is false that makes you feel better?

Even harder.

Can you trust someone who says something he thinks is false and you think is true?

The only way I can see a path out of this quandary is if we find something outside of us that is true when we are not. In fact, I don't think it is something but Someone who said "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life".

Because it's a struggle to post on this blog due to laziness or perfectionism, I've decided to start posting every day for Lent. We will all see just how long I can keep it up.

As it is Ash Wednesday, Mass was a little longer than is usual. A section from the Responsory during the distribution of ashes caught my eye:

"...[L]et us not be taken unawares by the day of our death, looking in vain for leisure to repent."

Responsory on Ash Wednesday

This reminded me of a truly terrifying truth: God is the absolute, perfect being and we cannot come into His almighty presence after death unless we ourselves are perfect. I am imperfect because of my sins. Only when I rely on Him to give the required grace, only when I seek to love Him above all else do I have even a chance of making it. I cannot bring even the smallest pet sin with me.

With this reminder of the nearness of death and the urgency to repent, the Catholic Church begins 40 days of preparation for celebrating the most solemn event in human history, the Paschal Mystery. Let us take advantage of this time to die to our sinful selves so that, by the grace of God, we can rise with our Savior at Easter. Know that you are in my prayers.

At the January meeting of the Catholic Computing club, we had quite the conversation, discussing the decisions from various tech companies and their platforms to suspend or close accounts of various people and companies. While there has been a lot of back and forth depending on where you are in the political spectrum, the two questions that we tackled was whether the actions themselves were ethical according to the Catholic understanding of justice and whether the current laws fit with that understanding.

First, we acknowledged that the laws themselves are not prescribed due to ethics, but are generally written to resolve a political or legal problem. So, just because something is unethical, doesn't mean that it should be handled legally. It is also possible for something to be stated legally that creates an ethical difficulty that requires a review of each particular case.

The question of ethical action mostly revolved around whether the actions of users on a platform could be separated from the owners of the platform. To a certain degree, this is true with the understanding that each person is a moral agent and is responsible for the rightness or wrongness of her or his actions. However, failing to curb known bad acts on a platform can be construed as granting license for a person to use a platform or forum for evil. This led us to consider a Catholic concept called "remote cooperation with evil". In Catholic thought, there are roughly four different levels of participating in evil:

1. The person committing the evil act (Shooting an innocent person)
2. The person directly helping the committing of the evil act, known as proximate cooperation. (someone letting the shooter know that the victim is within range)
3. The person who may not intend to help, but whose actions contributed to the evil done, known as remote cooperation (someone driving the shooter and co-conspirator to where they plan to wait on the victim)
4. The person who does not intend, and whose actions do not contribute (someone who sees the shooting and calls 911)

While we should aim to never commit or cooperate with evil, there is a possibility that legitimate and objectively good actions can be taken advantage of to enable an evil act. Nevertheless, the more directly involved a person is with the evil act, the more likely that they are culpable (fancy word for being at fault, deserving condemnation, and needing correction).

While discussing the potential remoteness of a digital platform, we identified two different kinds of platforms: A publishing platform and a services platform. We quickly agreed that a digital publishing platform did not have sufficient remoteness to avoid culpability for the actions take on them. One of the interesting arguments was that while there is a legal distinction between moderating and editing the content on a publishing platform, in practice, there is no clear way to distinguish the two activities. For a digital services platform, there was less clarity, but we eventually settled on private businesses having the ability to "fire the client" for ethical reasons. This was different from moderating and editing, and simply a refusal to do business with a client, which all businesses have (though that could be called into question with some small business owners)

At this point we started to look into other digital goods and how they might be affected by this, such as cryptocurrencies and software. Cryptocurrencies were an interesting case because a currency like bitcoin relies upon the blockchain to function, and arguably each transaction materially relies upon the previous transactions, both good and bad. With software, we might potentially write it so that it can't be used by the wrong person or for the wrong reason, but then we would have to be careful with having that enforced legally. Since source code can be considered the personal property of the owner, forcing it to have certain loopholes for law enforcement could be considered as a violation of the 3rd Amendment of the US Constitution.

Of course, we were well off the original topic, though thoroughly enjoying ourselves. If you thought this was interesting, come join us at catholiccomputing.club

My last post received a couple of comments that raised a few good points which I think dovetail very nicely with my attempt to "relocate" Agile Conversations to a firmer foundation.

One point was that the distinction between reality and fiction was flat and potentially unhelpful. I will admit that I intentionally shut off certain avenues of consideration as I was afraid I would inject my own meaning into the words used by the authors of the book and who they quoted, rather than what they actually meant. Here I must acknowledge a limitation of human languages: We can use two different words to mean the same thing and use the same word to mean two different things. This limitation is why I focused on the word "fiction" and what was meant when Yuval Harari or Douglas Squirrel or Jeffrey Fredrick used it. Now that I'm not as focused on what they meant, I feel a little freer to explore possible alternative meanings.

A second point introduced an excellent alternative meaning. "Fiction" could be interpreted as "model", which would address most of my concerns and still fit the intent of the authors. I like the word "model" and prefer it to "fiction" since all models are an acknowledged attempt to imitate reality. Applying this to Agile Conversations, I see that the authors are giving the reader the tools and techniques to build and improve a conversational model. This model can then be used within a business context to build and improve a shared model of the business constraints and customer needs. So using "Model" definitely fits within the authors' state goals for "Agile Conversations", yet I think only focusing on the model drops an important aspect that exists in the word "fiction".

A third point hinted at this important aspect: for a model to be useful, it must fit within a specific context and scope, and meet certain goals. To evaluate a model, we need something in addition to consider. I think we would need the story of how the model came into existence, the insights that led to its creation, and any oversights that had to be overcome during its creation and development. This story would explain the constraints or invariants that made the model usable in our particular context and gave us confidence that it would met our goals. Sometimes, however, the story does not satisfy because it goes against our experience or previously accepted stories. To truly determine the potential usefulness of the model, we may need to re-examine it based on statements that, once we understand the meaning of the words, we cannot but assent that they are true. These statements are often referred to as first principles.

The first principles can be grasped through the interaction of two different human activities. The first activity is the human ability to sense the world, the second is the human ability to reflect on what it has sensed. Because these principles are grasped from how we can know reality, it means that they apply to all branches of knowledge. Working from these principles is rather slow and difficult, which is why we rely on stories that assume them and the conclusions that come from them.

Conversations build on top of this natural human ability to grasp first principles. According to Merriam-Webster Online the definition of conversation is:

• oral exchange of sentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas
• an instance of such exchange: talk
• Conduct, Behavior

The brief etymology stated that "conversation derived from Middle English conversacioun, which came from Anglo-French conversacion, which in turn came from Latin conversation-, conversatio, from conversari "to associate with", frequentative of convertere "to turn around".

Combining the current definition and the original Latin definition, we end up with the rough meaning of "To turn over with another". When we are in conversation, we are "turning over" the topic being discussed. This aligns with the two human activities relied upon to recognize the first principles. Two or more people sense some reality and then reflect together on what they sensed. As we can see from the limitation of language and human perception, we know that each person will arrive at different conclusions about the same reality. Sharing those different conclusions and seeking to build a consistent and shared model based on those conclusions while weeding out incorrect conclusions using first principles is precisely what the authors of Agile Conversations are seeking to do. Conversations can take what each person can do with grasping truths about the world, and turn it up to 11.

However, without a firm foundation in first principles, we can accept stories that assume wrong conclusions or deny certain first principles. This can make conversations unproductive if not downright impossible. The denial of first principles can arise from either rejecting the senses as a source of knowledge by claiming that they are utterly unreliable, or by rejecting that the human mind can grasp reality and claiming that the senses are the only source of knowledge. Now there is some truth to both statements, as we can see in the cognitive biases or perceptual delusions that human beings can experience. Yet without both actions, the sensing and the reflecting, we would be unable to know anything, which we can prove from first principles.

For a short and inadequate version of the argument:
- Through our senses, we are aware that everything is changing
- Through reflection on what we sense, we can grasp what is fixed, what are the laws the govern the changes that we see.
- If the senses are unreliable, then we couldn't know that things change, and be unable to determine the fixed laws
- If nothing is fixed, then we would not be able to determine that a change had happened, much less be able to predict how something changes or when something would change.

This would contradict the first principle that "Being is, Non-being is not". the changes that we grasp through the senses are too real to be dismissed, and the fixed laws which govern those changes and can only be grasped through the intelligence are also too real to be dismissed. As an example, you cannot say that the law of evolution exists, and then say that evolution proves there are no fixed laws

Taken from God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy by Fulton J. Sheen.

With all this in mind, I now need to turn back to the original concept of "shared fictions" and see if I have laid out a firmer foundation for "Agile Conversations". The problem that I see with "shared fictions" is that it promotes the idea that there are no fundamental truths or first principles about the world. I will admit the possibility that my perception is wrong but it is very difficult to do so when the development of shared fictions arises from an evolutionary process that appears to violate the first principle that the greater cannot come from the lesser. I also don't see what would prevent one shared fiction from being replaced with another, even if they both made the opposite claims about reality. Building upon such a foundation would be like building on sand. However, if the stories and models about our everyday experience are grounded in first principles, while it may not be perfect, would not be liable to shifting around just because an alternative fiction became more popular.

I hope this blog post sufficiently explains my concerns and responds to the comments that I have received while writing the last two. These posts were a lot harder than I thought they would be as I had to think a lot deeper than I probably would have. Since I've now told my story, I would like to open this up for a conversation. Feel free to reach out to me either in the comments or the various platforms that I hang out on.