“Loneliness, I began to realise, was a populated place: a city in itself. And when one inhabits a city, even a city as rigorously and logically constructed as Manhattan, one starts by getting lost”
When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Fascinated by this most shameful of experiences, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Moving fluidly between works and lives – from Hopper’s Nighthawks to Warhol’s Time Capsules, from Henry Darger’s hoarding to David Wojnarowicz’s AIDS activism – Laing conducts an electric, dazzling investigation into what it means to be alone.
“Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city. As to how to inhabit it, there are no rules and nor is there any need to feel shame, only to remember that the pursuit of individual happiness does not trump or excuse our obligations to each another. We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity. What matters is staying alert, staying open, because if we know anything from what has gone before us, it is that the time for feeling will not last.”
About the feeling many of us will know or recognise, that of being the individual, the citizen or the inhabitant, and seeking connection with the city, with that larger Ecosystem City®, Laing formulates precise:
“Imagine standing by a window at night, on the sixth or seventeenth or forty-third floor of a building. The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows, some darkened and some flooded with green or white or golden light. Inside, strangers swim to and fro, attending to the business of their private hours. You can see them, but you can’t reach them, and so this commonplace urban phenomenon, available in any city of the world on any night, conveys to even the most social a tremor of loneliness, its uneasy combination of separation and exposure.”
Humane, provocative and moving, The Lonely City is a celebration of a strange and lovely state, adrift from the larger continent of human experience, but intrinsic to the very act of being alive. Read more at Canongate Books.
Bibliography
Laing, Olivia (2016) The Lonely City: Adventures in the heart of being alone. Edinburgh: Canongate Books Ltd.
Rise of the DEO: Leadership by design
Cover picture Rise of the DEO.
“This book identifies and explores the qualities of a new breed of leaders. The book lays out–graphically and through example–how DEO’s run their companies and why this approach makes sense today. We help readers identify skills in themselves and their colleagues, and we guide them in using these skills to build, revive, or reinvent the next generation of great companies and organizations. Leaders who understand the transformative power of design and embrace its traits and tenets can command in times of change. We call these leaders DEO’s and they are our new heroes.”
– Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland.
Giudice and Ireland bring forward six characteristics of a DEO, which are brought forward many times in books of leadership but in this book placed in a new surprising context. DEO’s are:
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- Change agents: not troubled by change.
- Socially Intelligent: high social intelligence.
- System thinkers: systems thinkers who understand the interconnectedness of their world.
- Intuitive: highly intuitive, either by nature or through experience.
- Risk takers: embrace risk as an inherent part of life and a key ingredient of creativity.
- GSD: “gets shit done.” (i.e. they make things happen).
“Businesses and governments have discovered the power of a creative mind to effect change and produce value. Experts note that CEO’s who possess a design sensibility—or trust others who do—are best suited to thrive in a changing world. Yet not until Rise of the DEO has anyone captured the true potential of a design-oriented thinker at the highest level of an organization. Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland have written a seminal work that will transform the role of the designer and the pace of innovation. This book is a must read.”
– Richard Grefé, executive director of AIGA.
Listen to an interview (by Debbie Millman) with Maria Giudice or at Women talk design.
Bibliography
Giudice, M. and C. Ireland (2013) Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design (Voices That Matter).
Thinking, Fast and Slow
The mind is a hilariously muddled compromise between incompatible modes of thought in this fascinating treatise by a giant in the field of decision research.
Psychologist Kahneman positions a brain governed by two clashing decision-making processes. The largely unconscious System 1, he contends, makes intuitive snap judgments based on emotion, memory, and hard-wired rules of thumb and the painfully conscious System 2, laboriously checks the facts and does the math, but is so “lazy” and distractible that it usually defers to System 1.
Kahneman uses this scheme to frame a scintillating discussion of his findings in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, and of the ingenious experiments that tease out the irrational, self-contradictory logics that underlie our choices.
All described factors play directly and indirectly a role in public governance. All public leaders and managers should be aware of the so thoroughly described systems of our brains and behaviour. They makes thinks clear an understandable. The book is an epiphany.
Review from New York Times: Two Brains Running.
Picture Daniel Kahneman: slate.com
Publieke Waarden en Blauwe Oceanen
De overheid draagt mede zorg voor de publieke waarden zoals veiligheid, leefbaarheid, schoon milieu, maatschappelijke samenhang, goed openbaar vervoer. Om deze waarden te kunnen scheppen binnen het democratisch proces voert zij een gerichte strategie, een koers.
Met de omvang van de financieel-maatschappelijke crisis zoekt de overheid naar nieuwe wegen, naar alternatieve voor deze waardencreatie. Immers de eigen rol van de overheid staat gezien haar uitgavenpatroon (zij geeft meer uit dan beschikbaar is) onder grote druk. Vernieuwing in het proces van denken en handelen, zowel politiek, bestuurlijk als ambtelijk lijkt noodzakelijk.
Die strategie, zo kan de filosofie zijn, zou kunnen lukken als wordt gedacht in termen van nieuwe markten, concepten, producten/diensten en werkwijzen. Niet in het denken en handelen vanuit reeds conventionele, traditionele, gebaande en wellicht ook ‘platgetreden’ paden.
In het boek de blauwe oceaan: creatieve strategie voor nieuwe concurrentievrije markten wordt dit proces van waardencreatie systematisch beschreven. Een benadering die ook van toepassing zou kunnen zijn op de creatie van publieke waarden.
De overheid kan met een blauwe oceaan strategie haar diensten naar burgers, bedrijven en samenleving anders opzetten en vormgeven, waarbij tegelijkertijd de kosten voor de productie van die diensten kunnen worden teruggebracht (een uitgangspunt van deze strategie). De in het boek beschreven concepten, methoden en technieken verdienen een vertaalslag naar het publieke domein.
Kruf Huyssons 'Schetsboek' 