Aesthetic Intelligence

Disable anger

When that tiny stream slipped into the tank, three weeks ago, I hardly noticed it. It was pouring with rain, the fuel station wasn’t in good shape and millions of raindrops were dancing all around the bike. My short pre-holiday ride was done, I wanted to set the bike ready for the very post-holiday trip. But bikes’ tanks do not like raindrops, specially inside. Thus yesterday morning, when I tried to turn on my bike, I almost forgot the fuel station episode. When the bike didn’t want to wake up, I carefully took the charger out of its box, I removed the extension cable from the garage lamp, I arranged it in place, I connected the charger to the bike and I went up in the kitchen to drink a glass of water. Water – would this be right topic instead of low battery? My charger is powerful, I trust it, in ten minutes it fixes any problem, as far as the problem belongs to the battery. The problem didn’t, neither the bike cilinders started to move. I suddenly became aware of the pre-holiday accident and anger started to occupy myself. It is not easy to disable anger. But anger is useless. Anger will not turn your bike on, I told myself while calling my mechanic. Anger will not make my your day, it would rather transform it in a nightmare, where your wife and your kids keep themselves away from you because there is no way to see you smile. I forced myself to calmly schedule the meeting with my mechanic – “we need to remove the filter, clean it and place it back, you can’t do it by yourself and I can’t join you until wednesday” -, brought the charger back to its box, replaced the wire at lamps’ feet and decided to bring my kids to the movie. It has been a wonderful day.

Disable instructions

Italsider factory, Genoa, Italy, around 1962.
Eugenio Carmi is working to improve safety within production workshop. Accidents, even serious ones, are weekly matter. Eugenio Carmi is an artist and knows nothing about safety procedures. But he doesn’t trust instructions. He knows human beings don’t like instruction, usually they prefere visions. Furthermore, as Carmi finds out everyday, instructions don’t work: workers are too self confident to follow them, thus accidents happen continuously. Then Carmi understands. It is one of these fruitful and long lasting “aha!” moments. If you want people to take care of themselves you should avoid instructions and provide visions. You can’t force a worker to wear an helmet, a pair of goggles, a pair of working gloves and punish him if he doesn’t; but you can help the worker to look at his head, eyes and hands in a different way. It is very easy and very effective. It worked in Italsider fifty years ago and it still works nowadays everywhere: disable instructions to enable insights.

Disable friendship

Can somebody still perceive the difference between a connection and a relationship?
(thanks to Sir Ken Robinson for the link – you know, Sir Ken Robinson is a friend of mine on Twitter…)

(video by http://moxieinstitute.org/)

Save the date

May the 27h 2013. Save this date on your agenda. Wether you want to join us in Milan or you would prefere to follow us on the web, do not place anything else in your agenda between 9 am and 6 pm Italian time. Further instructions will briefly follow.

One is wrong, two is better, many is best

Monoculture is our enemy, not only within agricultural activities.
Jered Dimond’s last book (here is an interesting review) insists on advantages of speaking different languages, as it use to happen to our ancestors. Perceptions improve through multiplicity. ADDENDUM: here’s an update from my favorite blogger, John Horgan.

Shift your selling perception and learn to improvise

Daniel Pink helps us to move and perceive a wide “so obvious / so unperceived” movement.
His book is worth a careful reading.

Perception of misconception

Ok, no kidding: what’s happening to our certainties?

Layers and lies

Cathedrals mirror citizens’ membership. We all belong to a peculiar city and rank’s signs make us proud of our own town, as Marco Romano elegantly pointed out in his masterpiece. And it is with scaffoldings that we build our cathedrals, both religious and secular, since 1000 years ago. We should appreciate scaffoldings, they lie less frequently then cathedrals.