| Thursday, December 04, 2008 |
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Activists Learning from Business: Recommendations from John Drake
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:01 AM   
Shortly before Thanksgiving, John Drake of Try Reason posted the following comment on William E. Perry's post How Free Is Speech?:
Yes advocacy is essential. But as with anything, understanding reality is essential. If your goal is cultural change, it is important to understand how ideas are adopted by individuals in society. Are there any over-arching trends that might help guide your efforts into a more efficient programs of advocacy? For a partial answer to this question,
I recommend the book Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers. In Rogers terms, innovations can be technology OR ideas (including philosophic ideas). After 1000s of research projects over many decades looking at many different innovations, some overarching trends are observed as to how ideas and technologies spread through society. Like much research today, the work tends to be highly descriptive, not normative. But there are a few practical applications, such as on page 361, where he very briefly discusses "Strategies for Getting to Critical Mass". I will note that [the Ayn Rand Institute] is explicitly pursuing 3 of the 4 strategies.
A couple years ago, I wrote a few notes on Objectivism in relation to Diffusion of Innovation theory: see here. (As a disclaimer, I no longer associate with some groups or websites listed in that post...many thanks to Diana for helping me see the light). There is much more I would add today if I could find the time to write about it. I ordered the book John recommended, then wrote in reply: "Thanks for the book recommendation. Do you have any other books on business management that you think those of us interested in spreading ideas should definitely read?" I also e-mailed John privately to tell him that I'd be interested in posting anything that he might write up as a NoodleFood post. Here it is, with links added. You can also find it on his blog here.
Although my initial recommendation was from the perspective of how best to spread ideas, I thought it might be useful to suggest books about management that may be helpful when speaking or writing to/for businessmen and women. I also thought it might be useful to suggest books on how to run activism campaigns as a business. I've mixed each perspective, but hopefully you can find what you need.
In all honesty, there really are not a lot of management books I would recommend for the express purpose of spreading ideas. I had a seminar in strategic management where we read many of the classic management books. Except for the one by Peter Drucker, they were a cesspool of bad philosophy propagated as intelligent thought. Peter Selzinck, in Leadership in Administration, gives explicit credit to the pragmatists, Dewey and James. Herbert Simon (Nobel prize winner in economics) has a chapter in Administrative Behavior titled "Fact and Value in Decision-making" that would probably make Peikoff's head explode. It was pure philosophic torture getting through that seminar. Interesting enough, most of the authors were Harvard professors of business. According to the professor of our seminar (who was himself a DBA from Harvard's school of business), these books were all part of a seminar required of all Harvard DBAs back then. I'm not sure if these books are still taught at Harvard, but the influence of these authors is felt in the business schools and business research studies throughout the U.S. today. The Harvard influence over the business research has lead to few useful books, in my opinion.
I mentioned Drucker's above as the exception. Pretty much anything he has written I would recommend. His first book, The Practice of Management, is superbly written and the one best books on management and decision-making that I have ever read. While written in the 50s, it largely defined how business evolved over the next 30 years and the best at describing businesses as they are run today. I would recommend it to any Objectivist activist that plans on speaking to business executives and/or business professionals.
I would also recommend a newer book, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman. This book is about globalization and the role technology has played in changing the world workforce, particularly in the past 10 years. While not as essentialized as it could be, it does offer a good view of the changing nature of information exchange and how its effecting businesses, cultures, and personal experiences. I use parts of this book in my Introduction to Information Systems class.
For running your activism as a business, I would recommend Drucker's book as well as The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber (Chapter 1). The E-Myth (entrepreneurial myth) posits that most entrepreneurs fail because they get into business for the wrong reasons. Its been quite a few years since I read it, but my take-away was that many entrepreneurs fail because they are good technicians, but poor businessmen. They think that just because they know the skill or subject (for [Objectivists], read philosophy), they can be effective entrepreneurs (read activists). This book offers various ways to overcome these common failures. For example, think turn-key when designing your activism. Also, use metrics to measure effectiveness.
I don't know much about marketing, but I imagine a good introductory book on marketing may be useful to activists as well.
From other fields:
I've already mentioned Diffusion of Innovations, which is actually from the field of sociology.
Another book from sociology and psychology fields that uses many of the ideas from Diffusion of Innovations without giving it much due is a recent best seller called The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. The focus again is on how ideas spread through society, from cool shoes to Sesame Street. It isn't a great book (not as good as Diffusion of Innovations), but it may be of some value.
I give a very limited recommendation of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. If you have ever heard the phrase "paradigm shift", Kuhn is the one who invented it. Philosophically, the book is way off base. Essentially, Kuhn claims scientists fail to integrate new facts of realty due to their adoption of inbred intrinsicist thinking. The only way to overcome this inbred intrinsicism is with outsiders who come up with new ideas and create scientific revolutions. This leads Kuhn to suggest the cure for intrinicism is subjectivism. That being said, the book contains a number of interesting historic examples about how radical new ideas are rejected and/or adopted by a community. If you can ignore Kuhn's philosophy and focus on the facts illustrated in the book, you may be able to take away something of value.
I've also read a number of other good business books, but I'm not sure how useful they'd be for [Objectivist activists]. And I'm sure there are plenty I haven't read. Thank you, John! That's a very helpful bit of sources and commentary. Anyone else want to add their own recommendations? As always, the comments are open!Labels: Activism, Business, Recommendations
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| Comments on "Activists Learning from Business: Recommendations from John Drake" |
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 | Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 8:46:31 mst
Comment ID: #1
Name: GregM
E-mail: gregsmullen(a)hotmail.com
Great post, thanks. I'll be picking up some of these books for my latest business venture in addition to O-activism. Regarding marketing books I recommend Jay Levinson and his Guerrilla Marketing series. I've only read the Handbook version but it's a very good intro to marketing basics.
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| Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 14:33:18 mst
Comment ID: #2
Name: Jared Seehafer
E-mail: jared(at)seehafer.net
I second the recommendation of Drucker. Keep in mind that like most thinkers he is mixed. He talks too much about the "greater good" and similar concepts, particularly regarding the ultimate purpose of the business. Nonetheless, his treatment of business operations and the principles of management is superb. "The Essential Drucker" a good place to start.
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| Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 15:44:29 mst
Comment ID: #3
Name: Caroline
When I was studying for my M.B.A., I read a lot of the management classics and I think those books are interesting but perhaps a bit broad and not quite relevant for the advocacy task. Diffusion of Innovations is certainly interesting, but I find it most useful for understanding how innovation, generally a new technology, is adopted in the marketplace, i.e. how a product moves from a small "early adopter" audience to the wider mass market. I think the challenge for Objectivism is not quite the same as that of the dispersal of innovation. It is not that Objectivism is so complex that only a small group can understand it. On the contrary it seems quite accessible to the average person, but the roadblock to wider dispersal appears to come from the institutional and cultural forces in power that actively oppose and negatively characterize the values of Objectivism.
I think you will find more valuable lessons in the literature of marketing, and especially advertising, which focuses on the complex process of building awareness, and employing consumer psychology and persuasion to attract a loyal audience. Scientific Advertising, by Claude Hopkins, an early book on advertising, is considered a classic in the field. Ogilvy on Advertising is great; Ogilvy also wrote Confessions of an Advertising Man. I would also suggest Forces for Good, a sort of best practices book for non-profits on which non-profits have been most effective in terms of impact on the culture. Generally, it was those that behaved like a business and embraced real marketing techniques.
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| Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 17:42:16 mst
Comment ID: #4
Name: Robert Speirs
E-mail: robspe43(at)gmail.com
As to philosophy, it's hard to beat David Stove, the Australian essayist who takes apart Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and Feyerabend in "Four Modern Irrationalists", with effective sideswipes at Kant and David Hume for good measure. As an example, he exposes Kuhn's assertion that Ptolemy's irrational assertion that the sun goes around the earth was "valid for him" in the same way that the heliocentric system was for Copernicus. Neither was better, according to Kuhn, there had just been a paradigm shift, not an increase in knowledge. Highly recommended.
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| Thursday, December 4, 2008 at 17:43:18 mst
Comment ID: #5
Name: Robert Speirs
E-mail: robspe43(at)gmail.com
As to philosophy, it's hard to beat David Stove, the Australian essayist who takes apart Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and Feyerabend in "Four Modern Irrationalists", with effective sideswipes at Kant and David Hume for good measure. As an example, he exposes Kuhn's assertion that Ptolemy's irrational assertion that the sun goes around the earth was "valid for him" in the same way that the heliocentric system was for Copernicus. Neither was better, according to Kuhn, there had just been a paradigm shift, not an increase in knowledge. Highly recommended.
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| Friday, December 5, 2008 at 14:35:12 mst
Comment ID: #6
Name: John Drake
E-mail: tryreason(at)gmail.com
URL: http://trhome.blogspot.com
Caroline,
While Diffusion of Innovations generally focuses on technological innovations, it does show similar patterns for spreading ideas. I believe at one point the book discusses the spread of Marxist ideas. There is also a story about the failure to convince a tribe somewhere in South America to boil their stream-fed water supply to avoid water-born illnesses.
As for the complexity of Objectivism itself, I agree to the extent your talking about the Objectivist sense of life - the Rearden types. That is assessable to the average man. However, getting there may require some complex arguments. The only person I have converted to the Objectivist sense of life (he had not read Atlas Shrugged yet), required many nights of discussions of often very complex philosophic topics. He never was an intellectual type, but after a couple years and many beers, he finally came around. He admitted to me several years later that even though he understood the logic behind no god existing, that it took a long time to give up praying. This leads me to believe that the complexity is not just with the philosophy, but with the emotional and habitual patterns that may have to change as well.
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| Friday, December 5, 2008 at 15:27:15 mst
Comment ID: #7
Name: Kevin Clark
"This leads me to believe that the complexity is not just with the philosophy, but with the emotional and habitual patterns that may have to change as well."
This is an excellent point. When people get past their 30s, they have habituated many things including their assessment of reality and of other people. If they have a confessional investment in some religion, post-30 it gets really hard to break it. Not impossible but so difficult that most people will not climb out from the pit of religion. If they are committed altruists or leftists then that too is a type of "confessional investment" which most post-30s will not be able to break. It has been my experience that most people (especially post-30 types) respond to Ayn Rand and her philosophy with cynicism. They just can't get past pragmatism and altruism. No one during my college or graduate school years ever really took my suggestions to read Rand seriously. They just didn't see the need. In the end, changing the culture must start with the young. Post 30, bad philosophy becomes too internalized and automatized for the overwhelming majority of people to shake.
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| Friday, December 5, 2008 at 19:35:24 mst
Comment ID: #8
Name: Robert Speirs
E-mail: robspe43(at)gmail.com
Oops, sorry for the double post. But John Drake, wasn't that the name of the Patrick McGoohan character in Secret Agent? Coincidence?
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