Bloggers Block, Chaos, Rachel Elnaugh the Dalai Lama & ISO 9000

Again nods to Rob at Learn Sigma for getting our juices flowing today with a very thought provoking and power linked piece on the influence of randomness, chaos and luck on, well, everything really. Our friend Martin over at Fairsnape had intimated an interest in the same field during a bit of email ping pong a couple of weeks ago too.

In particular we were struck by the message of the book “Fooled by Chance: The hidden role of chance in life and in the markets” . What’s the central sacrilegious message of this book? A lot of our greatest business icons might just be a bit jammy. Our beloved Dragon’s Den-ers may just be plain lucky? Surely not, they always get it right, don’t they? But then again Rachel Elnaugh’s luck did desert her a bit a while back. However she does have her celebrity to draw on as an income stream, as her site demonstrates* Hey, bouncing back! But hold on a moment, how does this celebrity status sit with Jack Welch’s view on iconic leadership, where charisma rules. In his words, staff may have “their face towards the CEO and ass towards the customer”. This couldn’t happen at Virgin could it? Duncan Bannatyne need not worry, however, if the stories we’ve heard from a few ex-employees are anything to go by. More of a CEO v Staff “Ass-off” we hear. Move on. (A’rm oot)

Anyhoo, this stirred something way back in the darkest recesses when we used to read a lot of odd books. The Celestine Prophecy, for example. Which does not so much deal with randomness and chance, but more with the creation of the right type of attitude and circumstances and relying on the belief that this will bring about good things in a sort of fatalistic way. Ultimately it is still a cause and effect doctrine (ish). But more … erm … New Age. Urrrgh! But there is a view there that an attempt to control is more effort than what it’s worth and if you trust to luck (ish) things will work themselves out. Apparently Adolf Hitler was also a great believer that most things just sorted themselves out. Ho-hum. Change the subject.

Buddhism works on similar principles of cause and effect, from micro to macro level, Butterfly Effect and all that. However Buddhism’s quite Newtonian when you look at it in a physical context of action and reaction. That’s why we like it and think the Dalai Lama is a top bloke. Not that we’re religious in any way (Capable Blog is a secular site).

Just that it’s difficult to conceive that the world would be a worse place if the DL was in charge. We do believe it was Ghandi who once said (rubs chin thoughtfully, gazes towards the top corner of the room) “An eye for an eye will make us all blind”, to demonstrate the potentially destructive side of the action and reaction principle. He would be wrong of course if that were played out to its end-game, because there’d always be a one-eyed man left standing, and in the world of the blind the one eyed man is king. Some people just can’t think first and speak later.

So let’s make some attempt to pull together our latter ramblings with the chaos at the top of this blog. While Buddhism is rooted fundamentally in cause and effect, it does not attempt to unravel or predict at a macro level, not because it’s chaotic, but because it’s just too complex. It generally encourages everyone to look after their own little corner and suggests that everything will form an aggregate of harmony from all it’s little bits of goodness. Sort of. Nice isn’t it?

This of course is at odds with the ISO 9000 principles of the Process Approach and the Systems Approach to Management, so it is obviously a load of old cods

*We still kind of like Rachel Elnaugh and she has a good blog. We’ve decided to link hers into ours. Hope she notices, thinks we’re great and forgives us for using her recent tribulations to make a fairly frivolous point. All publicity and all that, Rachel. We do it to everybody and you’ll notice we have a stronger pop at your old mucker DB