#eavoices

Regis College Launches Comprehensive IT Strategy

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WESTON, MA—February 17, 2017— Regis, a leading Catholic university in Greater Boston, has launched a long-term information technology strategy with the help of Systems Flow, Inc., a minority, woman-owned consulting firm based in Rhinebeck, NY, which specializes in IT & business architecture. Systems Flow was asked to develop a technology plan in support of the […]

This Is Winter Too, (This is Nature Too)

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This started out as a photo essay on winter. And then I read an article that disturbed me. I’m a strong supporter of rewilding. I think organizations like Rewilding Britain do great work, so it may seem strange that I was unhappy with this article about them. Near the beginning there’s a quote from George Monbiot […]

Systems of Social Systems and the Software Systems They Create

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I’ve mentioned before that the idea of looking at organizations as systems is one that I’ve been focusing on for quite a while now. From a top-down perspective, this makes sense – an organization is a system that works better when it’s component parts (both machine and human) intentionally work together. It also works from […]

In a room full of competent business professionals, what makes you stand out?

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Have you ever invested the time to work out what it is about yourself that got you to where you are today? Or taken it a step further and more importantly worked out what it […]

The post In a room full of competent business professionals, what makes you stand out? appeared first on Enterprise Architects.

Do One Thing and Do It Well

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By The Open Group One significant example of “fake news” in 2016 was the announcement that Dennis Ritchie, one of the original authors of the UNIX® Operating System, had passed away. In fact, he’d done so in 2011, a week after the death … Continue reading →

WTF is a Dyslexic Polymath?

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One Saturday last January, my wife and I were visiting my cousin Andy and his family for the weekend. He and I were in his kitchen; me bending his ear about my new ‘Found In Design’ un-book idea, while he cooked breakfast.

Andy’s a smart cookie who works for Ricardo UK and someone I love to test ideas with. After ten minutes of me machine-gunning my thoughts at Andy, he rested the spatula in the frying pan and turned to face me.

“Look, Nige, you’re a great storyteller, and I like your ideas, you know I do use one of your thinking tools, but isn’t this stuff just common sense”?

I paused for a moment mid-stream, at first not sure whether to be insulted or pleased. I decided pleased – and with a smile retorted with a quote from Voltaire:

“Why is common sense, not so common”?

Andy glanced back down at the pan, and sighed.  He had a moment of reflection; his inner voice telling him that lives with that reality daily. I’d stated the obvious again! 

 He glanced over, and with a withered smile, replied:

“Good, point…” and added,  “Would you like a sausage with your breakfast?”

***

A few days later I was recounting the conversation with Andy to a friend. Once I’d finished, she paused for a moment, and then laughed loudly – looking me square in the eye:

“I know exactly what he means.  It often seems to me that you end up stating the ‘bleeding obvious’, but when I think about it, it wasn’t actually obvious before you started babbling on”.

She then added:

“I think it’s the way your weird ‘dyslexic polymath’ brain works – you seem to see simple patterns that the rest of us don’t see. And when tell us a story that explains one of them, they just do seem like common sense”!

“Oh, thanks”, I said flatly,  feeling a bit insulted, and confused.

I guess I’ve always been embarrassed about my dyslexia. This stems from unhelpful, “old-school”, teachers and, frankly, a fairly unsupportive father (who freely admits now he made a bit of a hash of parenting me). Mum, however, was different she helped me understand Shakespeare’s plays through Lambs Tales and encouraged me to write poetry, lyrics & music. She helped me tell my stories.

So when my friend called out my dyslexia, I felt very awkward at first. But then I realised, she had a point; the way my brain is wired does help me see things a bit differently. And I suppose my fanaticism over SIMPLICITY and PATTERN seeking might be directly related to dyslexia. I think they might be the coping mechanism I’ve used to survive, and thrive, despite my lack of academic qualification. So maybe being a ‘Thicko” isn’t so bad after all; maybe weirdly-wired misfits can help by stating the “bleeding obvious”!

***


Oh, and, by the way, once I’d looked up ‘polymath’ I decided I would buy my friend a pint next time I saw her.