Month: September 2009

While reading “Here Comes Everybody”, I came across an illustration that I believe is more useful as a parable. Think about it.

The Ise Shrine, a Shinto shrine in Ise, Japan, has occupied its current site for over thirteen hundred years. Despite its, advanced age, however, UNESCO, the UN cultural agency, refused to list the shrine in its list of historic places. Why? Because the shrine is made out of wood, never a material prized for millennium-scale structural integrity, and so it can’t be thirteen hundred years old. The Imbe priests who keep the shrine know that too, but they have a solution. They periodically tear the shrine to the ground, and then, using wood cut from the same forest that the original was built from, they rebuild the shrine to the same plan, on an adjacent spot. They do this every couple of decades and have done it sixty-one times in a row. (The next rebuilding will be in 2013.) Because the purpose of the shrine is in part to delineate the difference between sacred and ordinary space, from their point of view they have a thirteen-hundred-year old shrine, built out of renewable materials. This argument didn’t wash with UNESCO; the places they list enjoy the solidity of edifice, not of process.

A wrecked castle that has stood unused for five hundred years makes the cut; a shrine that is rebuilt once a generation for a thousand years doesn’t.

Miracles never cease. Today it was cloudy and cool with occasional showers. The high temp was around 76. I cannot remember experiencing this kind of weather in Abilene in September. I think they are getting a needed blessing after experiencing 100+ days for much of August.

Ann and I arrived last evening and expect to leave next Thursday. On our trip out, our van acquired a disturbing noise in the left front wheel. No need to worry though, a trip to the local Ford dealer and a sum of money for a new front hub resolved the noise.

If you follow Ann’s blog, you will know that she has been diagnosed with celiac disease. This has precipitated some major life style changes for her, and to some extent, for me. I have been amazed at the complexity and stringent requirements for treatment. She is doing well and we have received a lot of assistance from people who have experience and knowledge about living with celiac disease. She has been most encouraged to find out that chocolate is OK.

I not been posting a lot lately. I think it is just temporary funk. There are a number of subjects that have been on my mind and would be worthy of some comment but I’m having trouble pulling the trigger. I plan to attend some of the lectures at ACU next week. Perhaps that experience will stimulate some posting.

I have started reading Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. It is stimulating and appears to have some very interesting ideas about managing organizations and new technology. I found this quote worthy of some pondering:

Running an organization is difficult in and of itself, no matter what its goals. every transaction it undertakes – every contract, every agreement, every meeting – requires it to expend some limited resource; time, attention or money. Because of these transaction costs, some sources of value are too costly to take advantage of. As a result, no institution can put all of its energies into pursuing its mission; it must expend considerable effort on maintaining discipline and structure, to simply keep itself viable. Self-preservation of the institution becomes job number one, while the stated goal is relegated to number two or lower, no matter what the mission statement says. The problem inherent in managing those transaction costs are one of the basic constraints shaping institutions of all kinds.

I agree completely. What I’m excited about is understanding how this can be addressed. More to come. Hopefully.