#eavoices

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.

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 430

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It’s time for another appearance on Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast. This week’s episode, number 430, features Tom’s essay on product owners, Steve Tendon with more on TameFlow (in this episode, constraints), and a Form Follows Function installment based on my post “Leadership Anti-Patterns – The Thinker” (the third in a series […]

The new European data protection regulation– are you prepared?

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Update: Join webinar on 24 March. The European Union’s new data protection regulation takes effect in 2018 and will have a bigger impact on European organizations than many might yet be aware of. For those approaching the subject from the right angle, the new rules do not just bring obligations, but also a variety of opportunities.

The new European data protection regulation– are you prepared?

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The European Union’s new data protection regulation takes effect in 2018 and will have a bigger impact on European organizations than many might yet be aware of. For those approaching the subject from the right angle, the new rules do not just bring obligations, but also a variety of opportunities.

The post The new European data protection regulation– are you prepared? appeared first on QualiWare Center of Excellence.

Preparing the up and coming virtual cloud Enterprise

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continuing from
Operations as a Service and the Cloud Enterprise
 
With OaaS (Operations as a Service), the enterprise outsources today its operation functions in the value chain (SCOR: Source, Make, Deliver). 
Many enterprises have since lon…

Operations as a Service and the Cloud Enterprise

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While the service paradigm is taking over the enterprise IT now (see this), the concept has since long existed in economies of the past and society. As a result, a society was organised at one time in trade guilds that specialised and gu…