Some of the best advice I got in UH Futures grad school: Hang with the bad kids. Specifically: find out where they gather, and spend time there. Bad kids are found on the edges of the culture everywhere -- in the arts, in maker spaces, in unpopular subcultures. In corporate contexts, it was specifically suggested that we find the spot outside where the smokers took their breaks, and spend some time listening to them.
Wherever you find the Bad Kids, it pays to hear them out. They'll tell you everything you want to know about the company's dysfunctions, warped power dynamics, incipient failures, delusions and hypocrisies, and faulty assumptions about the future.
What the profs were telling us was: "find the chaos muppets, and listen to them."
Interesting sesame street mashup. But aren't you descirbing Hegel's dialectic model here? Isn't all progress forward a tension between both forces? Reminds me of Peter Rollins' idea that there is a fundamental "lack" or tension at the heart of all reality that cannot be resolved, only held.
Now I am thinking of the chart of possibilities and what they mean. Knight/Chaos Muppet, Gardner/Chaos Muppet, Knight/Order Muppet (Heaven help us.), Gardener/Chaos Muppet.
And can you be a chaos Muppet in an expected order Muppet job?
As usual with Cass's distinctions (which are very useful), I see elements of both Order and Chaos in myself. I started out life as distinctly Order-related, but feel that I have -- with the attainment of life skills and the application of care and intellect to knotty problems -- moved along the scale toward Chaos. I've never gone so far as to lean against a car door, though.
Some of the best advice I got in UH Futures grad school: Hang with the bad kids. Specifically: find out where they gather, and spend time there. Bad kids are found on the edges of the culture everywhere -- in the arts, in maker spaces, in unpopular subcultures. In corporate contexts, it was specifically suggested that we find the spot outside where the smokers took their breaks, and spend some time listening to them.
Wherever you find the Bad Kids, it pays to hear them out. They'll tell you everything you want to know about the company's dysfunctions, warped power dynamics, incipient failures, delusions and hypocrisies, and faulty assumptions about the future.
What the profs were telling us was: "find the chaos muppets, and listen to them."
Interesting sesame street mashup. But aren't you descirbing Hegel's dialectic model here? Isn't all progress forward a tension between both forces? Reminds me of Peter Rollins' idea that there is a fundamental "lack" or tension at the heart of all reality that cannot be resolved, only held.
Now I am thinking of the chart of possibilities and what they mean. Knight/Chaos Muppet, Gardner/Chaos Muppet, Knight/Order Muppet (Heaven help us.), Gardener/Chaos Muppet.
And can you be a chaos Muppet in an expected order Muppet job?
So much fun to ponder.
As usual with Cass's distinctions (which are very useful), I see elements of both Order and Chaos in myself. I started out life as distinctly Order-related, but feel that I have -- with the attainment of life skills and the application of care and intellect to knotty problems -- moved along the scale toward Chaos. I've never gone so far as to lean against a car door, though.