http://www.cocomment.com/comments/Kester Copyright 2007 coComment.com 2009-11-22T17:43:04.956+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/images/logo4rss.gif http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=423919&comment_id=7334411 Kester I think that's perhaps one of the key issues Andrew: the leader isn't responsible for carrying the vision. Put the vision down! Share it around! 2007-01-25T15:45:02.857+01:00 2007-01-25T15:45:02.857+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=423919&comment_id=7325283 Kester The other key concept the book I mentioned deals with is our tendency to attribute a character and personality to a 'system'. So your local Anglican church is a 'system' - you talk about it as if it were a singular person, rather than a collective of individual people, each of whom are individually responsible for their decisions. The danger of such attribution? The 'leader' becomes the face of such a system, and thus either is seen as hero (when things are going well - it was all them - amazing!), or demon (when it goes badly - it was their fault, not mine!) This leads to a situation a) where people don't step up to take responsibility for their own work/life/faith and b) where power abuse becomes the norm. In a distributed system both of these are avoided. To take Jonny's situation - and forgive me mate if I shouldn't ( I should add I know very little of it) - the dangers of him being denominated as 'boss' are that a) he'll be tempted to pool the credit if things go well - but also have to take all the blame if things don't and b) others in the team won't step up and take full responsibility for their work. The first of these is really 'external' - the image of the team th 2007-01-25T13:21:33.359+01:00 2007-01-25T13:21:33.359+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=423919&comment_id=7134174 Kester "a leadership structure to start something might not be the best to continue it or even revive it/reimagine it..." Hence the ascension? There appears to be no earthly reason why Jesus couldn't have stuck around. But thank God he didn't. Leadership in a devolved, decentralised structure is fascinating. It certainly doesn't mean no leadership; it probably means lots of people stepping up to the plate with different people exercising leadership different situations. Specialisation / knowledge / power is thus not centred in one person. Good (pricey) book: The Emergence of Leadership - Linking self-organization and ethics. http://astore.amazon.co.uk/thecomplexchr-21/detail/0415249171/203-8082645-0481554 I blogged some thoughts based on it: http://kester.typepad.com/signs/2005/10/leadership_and_.html 2007-01-23T14:29:47.830+01:00 2007-01-23T14:29:47.830+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=405991&comment_id=6405375 Kester Oyster (pre-pay) travelcards have destroyed the possibility of getting on a bus and paying for the next 5 people - used to be a great way to set off a little wave of generosity. The Home Office have actually done studies into this... and it works. You let someone pull out at a junction, they hold a door open for someone, that person makes a coffee for everyone... And so the gift moves on. And you'll never know when that small act of letting someone into a traffic line comes back to you. But you can keep looking out for it ;-) 2007-01-16T09:41:21.127+01:00 2007-01-16T09:41:21.127+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=401367&comment_id=6293439 Kester I think we are probably differing on semantics... I know what you mean about art being 'vital', but it's not at the ground level of something like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. People die because of lack of food, shelter and water. No one died through lack of art. It is, however, 'serious stuff'. And what I think 'reflecting on the soul' is is not a dualistic thing - precisely the opposite. While no one died directly through lack of art, no one can become fully human without it. But, like relationships that are also 'vital', it has to remain in the gift. To reduce it to a salaried position is akin to prostitution: paying for something that should be part of a totally different economy. So I'd still hold that while artists don't deserve destitution, and do deserve our support, they also have to appreciate the economy they are working in and the sacrifices that that entails. We pay politicians handsomely in order to prevent their corruption. We don't pay artists handsomely for the same reason ;-) 2007-01-15T09:47:40.889+01:00 2007-01-15T09:47:40.889+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=401372&comment_id=6201978 Kester Mark Wallinger's 'Angel' - his 'blind man' character walking/speaking backwards/forwards is one of my favorite pieces of all time... 2007-01-14T09:54:01.232+01:00 2007-01-14T09:54:01.232+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=401367&comment_id=6201929 Kester Joel has a wise head on his shoulders. Artists may be poor, but 'advertising makes us all poor'. However, I'd have to disagree with Jon that artists don't make money because we don't properly understand what they do. Artists can't be salaried precisely because their work is in 'the gift'. Their work is 'useless'. If you want salaried work, then you're a craftsman... Which I think is an interesting split. How did art rise away from crafts? And why? It surely has to do with humankind's increasing wealth, that gave time for people to pursue such non-vital work like reflecting on the soul. 2007-01-14T09:51:41.231+01:00 2007-01-14T09:51:41.231+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=394434&comment_id=5911444 Kester In a recent talk I gave to a group of 6th Formers - basically about TCC - I was asked what the difference between a trickster and a terrorist was... And I think this idea of loyal radicals is about right. A terrorist has no loyalty to that which he/she is trying to change. Whereas a trickster, even though they may agitate, frustrate and seriously challenge an organization, do so out of loyalty: the want things to change and can't stand for things to be left to rot. As an aside, we then reflected that perhaps what the Palestinians had lacked - and what the Indians and US Blacks had had in Gandhi and MLK - was someone to play trickster, not terror... 2007-01-11T13:21:17.491+01:00 2007-01-11T13:21:17.491+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=390930&comment_id=5899832 Kester TO get a bit techie, the major problem with free wireless calls is the same one cell phones had initially: how to transfer the call from one wifi station to another (or one cell to another) without a break in the call... Apparently this is some way off, so for now you'd have to stay put per call if you did the wifi thing... 2007-01-11T09:35:03.848+01:00 2007-01-11T09:35:03.848+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=391377&comment_id=5832409 Kester Really good post. Nic - I think it wasn't simply that there was no shared aesthetic, but that we needed to be more open to sharing the aesthetic. Unless we're prepared to engage and transact with people then they are never going to get the best out of us, and we are certainly never going to get the best out of them. The question then is the extent to which we are prepared to negotiate the bounds of the project we are engaged in / planning for. Within a very small group of like-minded people this is less likely to be a problem... But with a larger group the problems above arise. Somehow we need a balance between fresh blood - and hence the opportunity to stretch and be stretched - and creative focus. On the leadership thing, I wrote a series of posts on leadership and self-organization which may be helpful. Url: http://kester.typepad.com/signs/2005/10/leadership_and_.html PS - Jonny, I can never get links to post properly in comments like I can on some other blogs - have you disabled it? 2007-01-10T10:14:25.878+01:00 2007-01-10T10:14:25.878+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=377294&comment_id=5501471 Kester What's SOL? I had a bash at google, and appeared to be top, so hey - we're all winning! On the Ecto thing: 1. I love it. Great app. 2. For images click the little black rectangle/gray circle bottom left. It might help Ed if you create a 'preset' for images - helps a lot if you basically want to do the same sort of image in posts: margin, alignment etc. 3. The delicious feature when you create links isn't working, according to Ecto-guy. Will be in the next release. That said, has anyone had any luck getting it to work? 2007-01-05T17:23:31.168+01:00 2007-01-05T17:23:31.168+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=377294&comment_id=5493143 Kester No, I'm not worried about Jordon ranking more highly than me about the book. And of course higher-ranking bloggers will blow my posts out of the water - they shouldn't try not to and it'd be silly to try to hold back. My signs blog has only just started, and I wouldn't expect it to out-rank Jordon's. Give it a while though, and may be that won't be the case as I'll be talking more regularly about it, and others may just give it a single mention? As a wider point, I do think blogging can cause people to get trapped in the tyanny of numbers. And what I think Jordon was talking about was that a more conversational medium is becoming 'stressed' - check out the spitbox and spiritual oasis 'ads' in these comments. That's the less pleasant side for me - seems to be a desperate race for hits, a sort of cyber attention-seeking. The David and Absolom point is a good one. But I'm not sure that's something that's always in our control. The accusers always shout louder. I guess Jesus found that, so I'll have to try to be OK with it. 2007-01-05T15:17:31.072+01:00 2007-01-05T15:17:31.072+01:00 http://www.cocomment.com/sidebar?object=people&context=explore&mode=detail&id=Kester&conv=377294&comment_id=5486361 Kester Interesting post... and I'm pondering Jordon's thoughts about community and hierarchy. I think I tend to agree with him that community comes above hierarchy for me. At the end of the day, if everyone followed the same points and pushed hard to maximise their rank then we'd be back to square one: you read what you trust, from those you've met and find interesting. Listening to the loudest voice, and trying to shout loudest seemed to be a tactic Jesus wasn't that interested in. Of course, we want people to be able to find good stuff, but I think that's about accurate tagging and intelligent searching than other maximisers. I think Will Sampson is on the money with his resolution - something I think we'll see in 07: blog less, but better. http://willzhead.typepad.com/willzhead/2007/01/new_years_direc.html 2007-01-05T13:00:12.457+01:00 2007-01-05T13:00:12.457+01:00