Directing Networks With a "Binary Consciousness"

[weal]

Hello all. This group has gives me an opportunity to share what I think
about the dangers of thinking...

Applying industrial-age models to human interactions has limitations of
which, I believe, we should be aware. I would like to suggest some
discussion on the pros and cons of the following thoughts. (Hmm.
"pros and cons" is certainly one of those industrial-age models
which I fear). In any case...

Humans have achieved noteworthy advances through the ability to model
the physical world with its measurable attributes. It is a grave
mistake, however, to use these industrial-age models to predict and
control the world of human relations. Many philosophers have outlined
this issue (Bateson being, to me, the most relevant), but over and over
today I see that the approaches of businesses and governments (and some
network management practices) are oblivious to its dangers.

Such "engineering-based" mental processes are, in and of
themselves, effective in:
- generating a positive "bottom line" for the next quarter
- building smooth-running elevators
- getting bombs to drop in the right place (or effectively measuring
the difference between the right place and where the bomb actually
dropped)
- acquiring enough votes to get a person elected president

Such mental processes are not, in and of themselves, effective in:
- maintaining peaceful relations between neighbors
- determining successfully how to get people to work together
- creating stories that satisfy

The term I use for the mentality which is used to represent human
relationship is the "binary consciousness." This is a consciousness
that precisely (but not necessarily validly) determines that, among
others:
- success in school accords with objective test scores
- governmental representation accords with vote count
- safety accords with dress (burka? baggy pants? yarmulke?)

As an example, one way of applying the binary consciousness to human
networks is to bring together people who think alike. Taken literally,
this seems a good recipe for fundamentalism (and fear). Perhaps it
would be better to take the edge off and suggest that bringing together
people who think *differently* will evolve in a more broadly applicable
direction. Managing that evolution (not directing it) may be essential
to preserving humanity.

It is very difficult to express in straightforward (i.e., binary)
language the objective limitations of the binary consciousness. Any
attempt at such expression seems to invoke such non-objective
expressions as paradox, poetry, storytelling, humor, and various other
forms of non-objective expression - that is, things for which there
are no words. And, of course, the binary consciousness does not admit
of "things for which there are no words."

I am an obsessive process analyst. I have tried to express the
limitations of the binary consciousness using the central language of
the binary consciousness - flow charts. I use these charts to show
that thinking of human issues in terms of business or engineering
process gets in the way of humanity as well as human experience. Look
at these charts at:

http://www.skillware.com/7)%20Thought%20Flow%20Plans/index.html

Is it possible that a binary consciousness that solidifies networks and
network-based processes can cause harm as well as benefit? How do we
avoid the dangers as we evolve toward the benefit? Any thoughts on the
applicability of these notions?

Thanks for this group,

Neal

--
Neal Margolis
Skillware Designs
n...@skillware.com

[Eileen Clegg]

Neal:

Thank you for these insightful and disruptive (in the greatest sense of the word) thoughts about why we get stuck -- ie, using old tools and frameworks and wondering why we have the same old problems.

Your presentation > http://www.skillware.com/7)%20Thought%20Flow%20Plans/index.html
is one of the best uses of visuals to quickly capture concepts that I've seen.

Thank you, too, for making the point (I tried unsuccessfully to make) about the value and need for diversity of thinking.  Thank you also for explaining the value of visuals to capture “things for which there are no words.”

In my consulting work today I primarily use visuals, highly abstract --with scant few but powerful words -- to help transformational thinking with top executives of Fortune 100 companies, think tanks, and educational thought leaders.

Trying to communicate in this discussion group with strictly words has been a great reminder to me of why I left traditional journalism and book-writing for the more highly conceptual and, I believe, effective communication possible using visuals.

But you have brought back a bit of my faith in words.

Hats off,
-Eileen


--
Eileen Clegg, President
Visual Insight
www.visualinsight.net
P.O. Box 762
Bodega Bay, CA  94923
707.486.2441

Visuals = the language of intuition.

[Verna Allee]

Hi Neal,
Thank you for sharing your whimsical visuals with us. I like them very
much as a way showing the absurdity of trying to apply binary thinking
to human issues and orders of complexity that we find in the natural
world.

You have asked a very important question,

"Is it possible that a binary consciousness that solidifies networks
and
network-based processes can cause harm as well as benefit? How do we
avoid the dangers as we evolve toward the benefit? Any thoughts on the
applicability of these notions?"

Max Boisot reminds us that as a new world view begins to emerge one of
the most critical points is where people think they have actually "got
it" but are still coming from an old mindset. Then there is an awkward
period when people are very enthusiastically and sincerely trying to
engage with the new but are actually trying to pull it back into the
kinds of tools, frameworks and methods that have worked on the issues
of the past. We are in that awkward stage at the moment and I struggle
with holding that edge in my own work. In our eagerness to build a
bridge of understanding we sometimes walk right back over it into the
old mindset! I have found myself in that situation more times than I
like to admit.

All of the network approaches are encountering the tensions of those
who want to believe that network analysis can offer a new kind of
predictability and control and are determined to find the magic formula
where we can say with absolute certainty that one configuration or
pattern is "good" and another is "bad." That is clearly applying binary
thinking inappropriately. As Dave Snowden reminds us, true complexity
is where there are so many variables they simply cannot be controlled
and engineering solutions and simple formulas simply will not work. Yet
people persist in trying to "engineer" "manage" and "lead" networks.
LeaderSHIP is important, but leadING is impossible. (In my view). The
only thing we can engineer and manage is our own roles and
relationships - we cannot engineer or manage a real network - nor
should we waste our energy trying. Wrong question.

There may be certain patterns that are"healthier" than others, we
simply do not have enough cases yet to make a strong case, even though
Oliver's work with the golden mean is very intriguing
www.value-networks.com/Articles/Benchmarking-Golden-OS.pdf.

We know there are structural indicators of healthy knowledge sharing
networks, (Valdis has quite a lot of expertise in this and has some
examples at www.orgnet.com). Also, the work he as been doing recently
with regional economic development is very groundbreaking.

But there are many different kinds of purposeful networks ranging from
knowledge sharing networks and communities of practice to activist
networks, project and business networks. There is probably is a whole
typology of network structures that support different types value
creation. One successful structural pattern for organizing a purposeful
task or work network of course isa hierarchical network, but this would
not be the pattern of a healthy knowledge network. That doesn't make
one pattern "right" and the other "wrong." It just means there are
different patterns according to different variables such as purpose,
values and influencing conditions.

One of my colleagues, Steve Waddell and I have been experimenting with
one such typology,
www.value-networks.com/howToGuides/Allee-Waddell-typology-7.ppt
There are a few others that people are working with as well, although
organizational network typologies are rare. However, collecting
sufficient cases and data to test out a such a typology is always a
challenge. I like that saying, "If you've seen one network, you have
seen one network," but I can't recall where it came from.

At any rate we must be very aware of the kinds of questions that we are
asking and which world view and set of assumptions the questions are
arising from. (Bad grammer but you get the idea.).
Verna

[Snowden Dave]

Neal, Like Verna and others I loved the visuals and blogged them this morning as I think they deserve a wider audience.

Verna's reference to Boisot is apposite and if we look at the history of science, the scientist who makes the breakthrough often stays in the old paradigm and it is left to their successors to pick up and make best use of the implications.  Newton and Einstein would be just two examples in teh domain of Physics.  The Jesuit cardinal, who supported Gallelio still required him to accept that the Helio-centric view of the Universe was a convenient form of mathematical assumption, but did not really relate to reality.  I quote below.

For to say that, assuming the earth moves and the sun stands still, all the appearances are saved better than with eccentrics and epicycles, is to speak well; there is no danger in this, and it is sufficient for mathematicians. But to want to affirm that the sun really is fixed in the center of the heavens and only revolves around itself

(i. e., turns upon its axis ) without travelling from east to west, and that the earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves with great speed around the sun, is a very dangerous thing

Cardinal Bellarmine Letter to Foscarini April 12th 1615

That said I think we need to careful about the binary consciousness statements.  Dichotomies and Dillemmas seem endemic to management thinking and supporting academic theory.  It would be a lot better if we could think in terms of dialectics and paradoxes both of which contain the perspective change and flow concepts that are key to understanding a complex system.

However there is a danger of lapsing into a form of post-modernist relativism or social constructionist approach in which we say that there is not order or structure other than that imposed by ideology, and in extreme cases that there is no knowable reality.  To reject binary consciousness should not involve rejecting concepts of choice, or the need to recognise from time to time that some things are just wrong, while other things have the potential to be right.

When the enlightenment (which I think we can blame for the binary stuff as Taylor was the inheritor of a causal view of the universe) was happily leading people to reject all prior knowledge, some Philosophers such as Vico and others stood up to argue that the new way of looking at the world was very useful, but that we should not reject all that had come before.

Over enthusiasm for new ways of thinking, based, or just loosely connected to the new sciences such as complexity should not lead us to make the same error and reject valid use of flow charts, process engineering, hierarchical structures etc etc.

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

[weal]

Thanks for the comments, Dave, all of which I agree with. What you have
done it to make more clear my own process as I join the ranks of
Einstein et al. What comes to mind is that, in order to make a point,
you must focus on that point and, thus, everything else becomes blurry.

Also, your statement: "from time to time that some things are just
wrong, while other things have the potential to be right" suggests
that, depending on the context, some things are in focus and others are
not. Yes, in order to focus on that tree in the foreground, that
mountain in the background should be out of focus. But just because
it's out of focus does not mean that we won't have to climb it someday.
Let's not confuse the limits of our media with the limits of our mind.

Thanks again (and to Verna and Eileen as well). I have been charting
the limits of the binary consciousness process for many years. Sharing
a process can definitely lead to its update.

Neal

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> -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">Neal, Like Verna and others I =
> loved the visuals and blogged them this morning as I think they deserve =
> a wider audience.<DIV><BR =
> class=3D"khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Verna's reference to Boisot =
> is apposite and if we look at the history of science, the scientist who =
> makes the breakthrough often stays in the old paradigm and it is left to =
> their successors to pick up and make best use of the implications.=A0 =
> Newton and Einstein would be just two examples in teh domain of =
> Physics.=A0 The Jesuit cardinal, who supported Gallelio still required =
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> stands still, all the appearances are saved better than with eccentrics =
> and epicycles, is to speak well; there is no danger in this, and it is =
> sufficient for mathematicians. But to want to affirm that the sun really =
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> class=3D"Apple-style-span" style=3D"font-size: 11px;">Cardinal =
> Bellarmine Letter to Foscarini April 12th 1615</SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT =
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> style=3D"font-size: 11px;"><FONT class=3D"Apple-style-span" =
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> face=3D"Papyrus"></FONT></SPAN></FONT></DIV><DIV><DIV><BR =
> class=3D"khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV> <SPAN =
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> white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; ">That said I think =
> we need to careful about the binary consciousness statements.=A0 =
> Dichotomies and Dillemmas seem=A0endemic to management thinking and =
> supporting academic theory.=A0 It would be a lot better if we could =
> think in terms of dialectics and paradoxes both of which contain the =
> perspective change and flow concepts that are key to understanding a =
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> social=A0constructionist approach in which we say that there is not =
> order or=A0structure other than that imposed by ideology, and in extreme =
> cases that there is no knowable reality.=A0 To reject =
> binary=A0consciousness should not involve rejecting concepts of choice, =
> or the need to=A0recognise from time to time that some things are just =
> wrong, while other things have the potential to be =
> right.</SPAN></DIV><DIV><BR =
> class=3D"khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><SPAN =
> class=3D"Apple-style-span" style=3D"border-collapse: separate; =
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> white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; ">When the =
> enlightenment (which I think we can blame for the binary stuff as Taylor =
> was the inheritor of a causal view of the universe) was happily leading =
> people to reject all prior knowledge, some Philosophers such as Vico and =
> others stood up to argue that the new way of looking at the world was =
> very useful, but that we should not reject all that had come =
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> structures etc etc.<BR class=3D"Apple-interchange-newline"><DIV><BR =
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[Snowden Dave]

Thanks Neal (and repeated thanks for the flow charts)

I find your focus/out of focus reference curious and interesting.  I made a general point about the need to management to switch away from a binary approach, but expressed concern that in making such a switch we should not abandon notions of right and wrong, or lapse more generally into relativism.

Lets take an example - slavery.  This is not only an historical moral issue, but a current one.  When the British slave trade was abolished, as result of the campaigns of Wilberforce and others there were a million slaves in the British Empire.  According to a Unesco there are currently 27 million slaves world wide, and the average price is £60.

Lincoln took a view during the early years of the American Civil War that slavery should not be in sharp focus.  Disputes over slavery issues was certainly one of the causes, but Lincoln is on record as saying that the South could keep their slaves.  The cynical interpretation of what (I think was called) was the New Jersey resolution which abolished slavery and made the abolition an objective came several years into the war and in diplomatic terms was designed to isolate the south from possible French/British intervention.

So if we take this as an example and use your words Lincoln, finally and in context chose to climb his mountain.   However we can (I hope) agree that the rightness or wrongness of slavery was not in dispute.   Regrettably for 27 million people worldwide the issue is not in sharp focus at the moment although we can hope for international attention next year as we come up to a major anniversary and an "international year of ...."

Now the focus argument is one of a pragmatic attention to context.   We cannot address all aspects of wrongness all the time.  However some people in moving away from binary thinking move to complete moral relativism and would argue that for a specific culture slavery, female circumcision, dowry (a form of slavery) and many others may be right and it is not legitimate to criticise them from outside.  Now I assume that you do not buy in to that form of argument and I think a lot of the academics who argue it in theory would not do so in practice, or at least I hope so.  Of course awareness is like attention.  If every one keeps slaves then we are less likely to be aware that it is wrong.

I think this comes back to the principle of bounded applicability and shifts in context that create awareness of shifts in attention/focus.

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

[weal]

David, et. al.

Your comments have prompted the following analysis of where I want to
go:

What has been calling me for over 40 years, and what I have been
following as well, is packaging information in a way that promotes
somebody DOING something. This undertaking has been called (in order of
how much money I could charge): "training" or "instructional
design" or "human performance engineering" or "human
performance technology." As my hair got grayer, this evolved into
"Business Process Improvement," and "Business Improvement." As
I move further, it seems to become ... art.

Seems there might be a way of putting some words and pictures together
that will promote people to look and perceive through what I term the
post-industrial lenses. Most people can look at a "big picture" -
my recent metaphor for "context.". What is more difficult is
looking at the picture and a multiple bigger pictures at the same time
and determining their relationship as well as their utility and their
issues. How would I help people learn this task? My first step is
"target-audience entry-level analysis" -- who needs to know, and
what is their current level on which I have to base further training?

Not in my audience seems to have been those who perceive contextual
relations fairly instinctively and may not relate to such instruction
- they already know how to do it. My hypothesis is that, in my
culture, the audience that has mastered this task is probably the
younger generation who watch TV shows that weave together multiple,
ever-changing, never-ending threads through multiple contexts. Because
they can "re-cognize," they have not been part of my target
audience for instruction in how to see (and act on) multiple,
simultaneous, big and small pictures. Yes, they have stuff to learn,
but that's another lesson.

My "Thought Flow Plan" audience seems to have been the old
engineering-minded farts who grew up chanting: "A is A every day in
every way," or, the people who focus so strongly on this month's
bottom line that they do not notice that profit over here means death
over there, or, those who believe that winning a "war" means
killing parents and, thus, creating orphans -- the best candidates for
suicide bomber training.

I have been trying to show these people that their binary consciousness
is limited. I have not taken on the objective of showing how to
differentiate the contexts in which such processes are appropriate from
those in which such processes are inappropriate. Nor, until my
conversations in this group, have I attempted to outline visually the
alternative cognitive processes that flow across or between contexts to
serve specific objectives.
But, thanks to your inspiration, I press on in these directions. To see
an example, check...

http://www.skillware.com/PIP%20Model.jpg

...and note the authorship credit. How would you make it better?

Also, I'd like to know my audience better. So, who are the current
"experts" at effective application of both binary and cognitive
processes? Who are the most needy of guidance in this area? Who is both
needy and also knows that he/she is needy?

[Snowden Dave]

I liked the picture and the flow charts - but that particular form of representation is Neal's skill and for him to comment.

I will however make a more general comment on visualisation.   We know from multiple cognitive experiments that humans do not pay attention to the whole picture, and our evolution does not permit us to do so.  Two examples drive this home well.  The first is the famous basket ball film in which people focused on counting the number of times the ball is passed fail to see a man in a gorilla suit walk into the middle of players, beat his chest and then exit stage left.  The second is a picture of a tiger coming down to the river to drink.  In this case students were fitted up with equipment which monitored where their eyes were focused as they saw the picture.  Regardless of their verbal reports, what actually happened is that the US students looked first at the Tiger's head and only afterwards scanned the rest of the picture.  Chinese students reversed the process.  In both cases only a partial scan of the available data was made.  This difference supports other evidence and experiments around the co-evolution of the brain and language which show that there are some differences (the brain is slower to evolve than language) related to symbol based as opposed to alphabetic languages.

Now, this is important and a very basic challenge to reductionist methods, process improvement etc etc.  However it also challenges the "whole picture" systems thinkers.   The scientific evidence shows that we have evolved to scan 5-10% of the available data and to make decisions based on a scan of that data against patterns stored in our long term memory.  We perform a first fit pattern match with out previous experience.

I do not think that we should attempt to fight evolution by forcing people into more and more structured processes to make sure they take everything into account, or admonish people to spend time seeing the bigger picture.  Neither will work.  On the other hand, when we realise that this is the nature of human decision making then we can do something more powerful.

We can look to understand the patterns through which people filter data - given that such patterns are either experience or narrative based (and experience is expressed as narrative) if we  focus on gathering narrative from organisations, markets etc. then we will be closer to understanding what is going on.   However we cannot allow experts to interpret that narrative by looking at the raw material (otherwise they will see less than 5% and pattern match against the prejudices of their own experience.  However if we allow people to tag their own material then patterns will emerge (this is the basis of social computing).  Semi-structured tagging (something we have pioneered) creates a flat and open structure of pre-given tags and allows the people who create the narrative material to tag within that structure.

Now this is where visualisation step in.  If I have say 50K self tagged narratives (easy to get and very low cost) then I can represent the tags using the ability of a computer to quickly assemble and present data.  We drew heavily on Tufte in this work.  This means that the interpreter of the material does see the originating narrative, they seek for visual patterns in the tags (metadata) and only when they see a pattern (a cluster, a correlation an absence etc) do they look at the raw material which resulted in that pattern.  This makes far more likely that they will see the Gorilla, which, in the jargon of counter terrorism and increasingly marketing is called a weak signal.

Visualisation is I think key to seeing the wider picture, and for the record, I really don't like the use of the word "binary", it implies a dichotomy.  

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

[John Maloney ( http://kmblogs.com/ )]

 

Hi --

 

News: Visual Complexity turns 1.

 

http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/discussion/1.cfm

 

Note 'knowledge networks' outpace other domains by a wide margin.

 

Cheers,

 

-j

---

From: Value-N...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Snowden Dave
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 10:16 PM
To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Directing Networks With a "Binary Consciousness"

[Valdis Krebs]

Hate to beat a dead horse... well, maybe not...

A while back we discussed whether it was easier to deceive
on-line/phone/F2F... here is an interesting finding:

> Just over half of respondents said using gadgets made them feel less
> guilty when telling a lie than doing it face to face...

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?
type=technologyNews&storyid=2006-12
-28T144304Z_01_L27198468_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRITAIN-LIES.xml

Valdis

[Snowden Dave]

Horse was still alive and kicking when I left it (and at least Charles and I were in agreement) 

But - the web site says the article is not available .......

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

[Valdis Krebs]

Make sure the WHOLE address is typed into your browser's address
window/box...

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?
type=technologyNews&storyid=2006-12
-28T144304Z_01_L27198468_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRITAIN-LIES.xml

[Snowden Dave]

Valdis, I know I play mad professor from time to time but I am not that stupid!

The full address in the browser gets me onto the reuters's web site and the message then comes up 

"We're sorry... this story is not currently available"  By way of proof below is a cut and paste of what went into the browser .....

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?%20type=technologyNews&storyid=2006-12%20-28T144304Z_01_L27198468_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRITAIN-LIES.xml

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

On 29 Dec 2006, at 16:01, Valdis Krebs wrote:

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx? type=technologyNews&storyid=2006-12 -28T144304Z_01_L27198468_RTRUKOC_0_US-BRITAIN-LIES.xml

[John Maloney ( http://kmblogs.com/ )]

 

http://tinyurl.com/y2376h

 

Use: http://tinyurl.com/

 

-j

 

---

From: Value-N...@googlegroups.com [mailto:Value-N...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Snowden Dave

Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 8:09 AM
To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Back to... F2F vs. digital media

[Snowden Dave]

thanks John - that worked

Dave Snowden

Founder & Chief Scientific Officer

Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd

Now blogging at www.cognitive-edge.com

[Charles Ehin]

I like to add to Dave's comments another critical point. I believe it was neuroscientist and Nobel Lauriat Gerald Edelman who stated that we consciously only know about one millionth of what takes place in our minds. That's a very humbling thought.

 

Charlie   

----- Original Message -----

From: Snowden Dave

To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 11:15 PM

Subject: Re: Directing Networks With a "Binary Consciousness"

[Valdis Krebs]

Obviously, not as humbling as all of the other stuff [the other
999,999] ... ;-)

[Scott Allen]

Interesting.  This goes totally contrary to the findings in a previous study:

 

Celeste Biever, “People Lie More on the Phone Than by E-mail,” New Scientist, 12 February 2004

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994663

 

Scott Allen
512-215-9720
LinkedIntelligence.com
TheVirtualHandshake.com
About.com Entrepreneurs Guide
The Virtual Handshake column at FastCompany.com

 

[Valdis Krebs]

Either way, you lie more by Blackberry than by F2F...

Valdis

[weal]

Dave said:

"We know from multiple cognitive experiments that humans do not pay
attention to the whole picture, and our evolution does not permit us to
do so."

And, he said:

"...experience is expressed as narrative."

I might suggest that the "big picture" cannot be framed and,
therefore, cannot be paid attention to or focused upon. The "whole
picture" is not a list of the picture's content.
My experience of the whole picture is that it excludes nothing.
However, when I use various media (speech, writing, photography,
drafting, or other forms of metaphorical narrative) to describe my
experience, I am required to impose bounding processes that may be
referred to as: differentiation, categorization, contrasting,
emboldening, shouting, hand-waving, and so on.

Cheers,

Neal

[Matthew Moore]

Scott,

 

Hmmmm - not sure it does. 

 

1. The 72 Point survey mentioned on Reuters includes cell phones as a gadget used for deceit.

2. The kinds of deceit are also probably important. Those mentioned in the 72 Point survey are premeditated (calling in sick, hiding a mistake). Where as Jeff Hancock's Cornell study dealt with "spontaneous" lying also - which will happen more with synchronous media (F2F, phone).

3. Instant messaging had a higher deceit rate than email in Hancock's research - possibly because it is more synchronous and perceived as less "permanent". I suspect text messaging would have a similar rate.

4. The 72 Point survey seems to be a recall-based survey while Hancock's was based on diary records - different methodologies, different biases.

 

What I think these studies indicate is that it's more complicated than just F2F vs. digital media. The contexts / situations these are tools are used in and the objectives of participants can profoundly influence behaviour and outcomes.

 

Matt

[Scott Allen]

Thanks for the analysis, Matt – I had that on my to-do list for this weekend, but you saved me the time. :-)

 

I kind of figured it would be along these lines… usually when studies seem to produce diametrically opposite headlines you end up finding that the proverbial devil is in the details.

[weal]

In this thread, I have generalized on the concept of deception and
asked about F2F versus media when it comes to *persuasion*. This took
me immediately to *sales." Then, in looking at the difference between
sales contexts and boss-fooling contexts, I saw that the sale context
has an objective measurement associated with it -- the dollar amount of
the sale.

So, my question is: is it true that another way of looking at this
issue is to ask:

1. What sorts of items are likely to get sold on the phone? Which would
never be sold on the phone?

2. What sales dollar values work on the phone? At what dollar level
will phone sales fail? What is the cognitive relationships between
cost, customer needs, and customer acceptance/rejection?

There must be a lot of literature on what makes good/bad phone sellers
(i.e. persuaders, liars, etc.) I'll Google around.

Neal

[David Hawkins]

Neil,

I happen to be one of those phone sales people you are speaking about, and I might shed some insight.

1. I will tell you that I consider myself to have a great deal of integrity and I sell security products to corproate and governement customers. In this endeavor, the only time I have come close to lying about anything I have done is when I am talking about my personal life and don't really want to sare.

2. Regarding how large a deal you can negotiate or how much money is transacted over the phone, I have closed numerous opportunities in excess of 500K over the phone, and have on one occasion, through a combination of phone and written proposal, closed a deal for a 12 year contract at 50 Million. However, read close, there was over 800 pages of written to make this deal happen.

3. As far as results for real information on what makes good vs bad sellers over the phone, I believe you will find only two flavors of answer. First, you will find self promoting "Aces" who are the very best (in their own opinion) sales people, and those who complain about the bad ones. The bad ones probably are not promoting this deficiency.

4. When you speak of Boss Fooling, I have witnessed an individual at one time promoting to his "Boss" that he was a number one field sales person. He apparently was, because he was working for two start up companies at one time, both on opposite sides of the country, in different industries, and who both readily paid his expenses. At the same time, for the same trips. When I became aware of this, I found my exit to this company ASAP and caused him to be forced out of that company at the same time.

Now there is certainly much more to discuss on this topic, but I have one to propose myself!

If you change the charter just slightly, how might Networkers modify this particular set of new years resolutions? Or perhaps more poigniantly, how might networks realizing they were being dammaged by one of these chaps respond to them?

DECEMBER 29, 2006 | 12:55 PM -- Okay, so maybe you wouldn't be surprised to know that most hackers aren't kicking back in front of a crackling fire and toasting their '06 exploits. As a matter of fact, while you were relaxing with the family and roasting chestnuts over the Christmas holiday, many of them were hunkering down and working on new exploits for 2007.

Happily, most hackers don't mind sharing, so we asked some of the industry's top hackers to give us their New Year's resolutions for 2007. As you'll see, some of their resolutions aren't very different from everyone else's, reconnecting with friends, trying something new, and losing weight -- but with a twist, of course.

Here's what they said:

1. Turn my PS3 [PlayStation3] into a dedicated password-cracker. (HD Moore)

Moore spent most of his Christmas holiday weekend working on it and is currently getting about 1.5 million Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP) keys per second via his PS3.

2. Write an exploit for an embedded device -- VOIP phone, router, firewall, or switch. (HD Moore)

3. Work on non-traditional exploits of vulnerabilities outside TCP/IP, such as RF, optical, microwave. (HD Moore)

4. Reconnect with old friends like sprintf and memcpy. (David Maynor)

Maynor says he plans to look for applications that use these C programming functions unsafely (translated: more bugs).

5. Lose weight by leaving more mobile devices and laptops at home. (David Maynor)

It's not safe to carry them around anymore, he says, and it won't be long until smartphones are attacked.

6. Quit drinking the vendor KoolAid that plants the suggestion products are bulletproof. (David Maynor)

Next year will expose more security flaws and weaknesses in vendors' products, he says.

7. Get out of the public eye for some time. (LMH)

8. Play some videogames. (LMH)

The busy bugfinder doesn't get to just play much these days but plans to do so more in '07.

9. "Work" on Vista. (LMH)

"I can't resist [messing] with the fresh meat," he says.

10. Contribute more to the Metasploit project and work on OS X-related support code. (LMH)

Here's to a safer, more secure 2007, regardless of what you and yours may resolve.

— Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, Dark Reading

 

Dave Hawkins
dhaw...@hotmail.com

I love my NEO - instantly organized email... http://www.caelo.com/a/rl.php3?i=AE0PU

• END EMAIL OVERLOAD FOREVER
• OUTLOOK ADD-ON THAT ORGANIZES EMAIL AUTOMATICALLY
• A CURE FOR EMAIL OVERLOAD
• FOR INSTANTLY ORGANIZED EMAIL

---

From: "weal" <n...@skillware.com>
Reply-To: Value-N...@googlegroups.com
To: "Value Networks" <Value-N...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: Back to... F2F vs. digital media
Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:36:04 -0800

[Neal Margolis]

Thanks David, for sharpening my focus: In the sales domain, to what
extent does the media (technical vs. F2F) get in the way of, or support,
a trusting relationship. What forces within the persuader, the
persuadee, or forces within the relationship between them, promotes
trust or gets in the way of trust? Are these forces reinforced or
inhibited by the media or lack thereof. How?

Cheers,

Neal

> *1. Turn my PS3 [PlayStation3] into a dedicated password-cracker. (HD
> Moore)*

>
> Moore spent most of his Christmas holiday weekend working on it and is
> currently getting about 1.5 million Wireless Encryption Protocol (WEP)
> keys per second via his PS3.
>

> *2. Write an exploit for an embedded device -- VOIP phone, router,
> firewall, or switch. (HD Moore)*
>
> *3. Work on non-traditional exploits of vulnerabilities outside
> TCP/IP, such as RF, optical, microwave. (HD Moore)*
>
> *4. Reconnect with old friends like sprintf and memcpy. (David Maynor)*

>
> Maynor says he plans to look for applications that use these C
> programming functions unsafely (translated: more bugs).
>

> *5. Lose weight by leaving more mobile devices and laptops at home.
> (David Maynor)*

>
> It's not safe to carry them around anymore, he says, and it won't be
> long until smartphones are attacked.
>

> *6. Quit drinking the vendor KoolAid that plants the suggestion
> products are bulletproof. (David Maynor)*

>
> Next year will expose more security flaws and weaknesses in vendors'
> products, he says.
>

> *7. Get out of the public eye for some time. (LMH)*
>
> *8. Play some videogames. (LMH) *

>
> The busy bugfinder doesn't get to just play much these days but plans
> to do so more in '07.
>

> *9. "Work" on Vista. (LMH)*

>
> "I can't resist [messing] with the fresh meat," he says.
>

> *10. Contribute more to the Metasploit project and work on OS
> X-related support code. (LMH)*

>
> Here's to a safer, more secure 2007, regardless of what you and yours
> may resolve.
>

> — Kelly Jackson Higgins, Senior Editor, / Dark Reading /
> <http://www.darkreading.com/>
>
>
>
>
>
> Dave Hawkins
> dhaw...@hotmail.com <mailto:dhaw...@hotmail.com>

>
> I love my NEO - instantly organized email...
> http://www.caelo.com/a/rl.php3?i=AE0PU
>

> # END EMAIL OVERLOAD FOREVER
> # OUTLOOK ADD-ON THAT ORGANIZES EMAIL AUTOMATICALLY
> # A CURE FOR EMAIL OVERLOAD
> # FOR INSTANTLY ORGANIZED EMAIL

[David Hawkins]

Trusting relations in sales are a matter of degree in my opinion. I can only speak to my personal experience, and somewhat to training I have recieved or training materials that I have read. In these areas, my experiences include:

1. Trust between parties invariably always takes time, via phone, media or F2F. To break this down I would indicate that:

    a. All trust in direct relations via phone are based on a process of consistant transactions. With consistancy, individuals are able to find commonality that allows for trust. Consistancy includes calling at regular times to make contact for reasons that are significant; calling in relation to some relevant news item, such as an aquisition in either companies that might affect the relationship; calling to initiate, track or close a given transaction.

    b. Trust in relation to media relates to a consistant message, consistant goals, and consistant achievements relevant to the strategy of the company or party producing that media.

    c. Trust for F2F relies on both of the above, plus a chemistry that can only take place in a F2F envrionment. This trust in fact does come from an element of charisma, as well as proof of prior performance, both in media and in proven transactions. A sales person making a connection with a new customer relies on past history, if it is available, and direct charisma if it is not. F2F reps have a few profiles too. If an F2F rep has a long history with a customer that spans his personal employment (ie. he has worked for two, three or more companies, but still calls on the same customers) then he is relying on his personal performance which the customer understands. If it is a new sales person connecting with a new customer and there is no personal history between the rep and the customer, then it branches in two general directions. The first is a customer who knows the company and respects it and relies on that company to hire sales reps with a good ethic. Or, that customer expects to move relatively slowly and learn the character of the sales rep and the vendor over time, giving them time to establish a positive relationship.

in all of these scenarios, there is a measurement of trust that is required. The value of the transaction will require that a. b. or c. will all have an impact on how easily the transacton will go in any given scenario.

If the product being sold is of such low value and from a reasonably reputable source, then it is able to be sold with relatively low trust. If however, the reputation of the buyer is tied up in the sale, and the fiduciary responsibility of that individual is impacted significantly by the sale, then a variety of leveling criteria will be established, and a number of forms and protocols will have to be followed to establish trust before any transaction occurs.

I hope I haven't deviated too far from your core questions, and I do hope this offers some reasonable perspective on the subject.

Dave Hawkins

[David Hawkins]

And after reading my reply, I will decline at this time to offer up item two, reserving that for another response in the near future!

Dave

---

[Matthew Moore]

Hi,

 

Just as a footnote to this, when looking into the recent survey Scott pointed to, I stumbled across this post: http://deception.crimepsychblog.com/?p=139

 

References to the Hancock study already posted. Some interesting work by Lina Zhou in identifying deception in lean media environments.

 

Plus Adam Joinson: http://www.joinson.com/ - this paper in particular is very interesting: http://iet.open.ac.uk/pp/a.n.joinson/papers/self-esteem.pdf

 

Cheers,

 

Matt