Windy Ideas Make Waves

32

Managing PartnerPhenomena Communications

Dr. Ali Anani - Managing Partner

Dr. Ali Anani : As General Manager, Dr. Ali Anani heads and supervises a team of talented young professionals, and manages the overall brand strategy - ensuring the cohesiveness and creative parts of each campaign for all Agency clients.

Dr. Ali Anani holds a PhD from the UK (1972). He has a wide experience in many fields. His accomplishments include the writing of more than eighty publications in international journals, the writer of three printed books in Arabic and one E-book in English. He has written widely for the media and presented a TV program and many radio programs.

Dr. Anani main credit is his creativity thinking where he scored among the top %5 creative people worldwide. Dr. Anani is an invited lecturer for more than fi�y international conferences and an author of many business slogans. Moreover, he has travelled to more than fi�y countries as an invited speaker and consultant and has consulted for many international agencies including UNIDO, Atomic Energy Agency, UNDP, ESCWA, private businesses and governmental agencies.

54

The Hidden Marketing ForcesThe Forgotten Chemistry of ManagementMore on Balancing ActsManagement Lessons from the KitchenBecause I loved you so much I stopped loving youDrowning in the River of TimeHunting a Specific Fish in a Stormy OceanComfortably Uncomfortable in the Comfort ZoneThe New Mirrors of Social MediaNuggets of Wisdom/ Part 2The Dance of ComplexityCheating that is notThe Tree Metaphor Guide for UsThe Hidden Paradox of PredictabilityMusical IceCommon Sense that has no senseIdeas Are Like Dancing PendulumsPockets of Creative ThoughtsPut Your Head Deep in Your PocketThe Wave-Based StrategiesListen to the Lesson of LeysenBe Transparent, or NotThe butterfly effect of collaborationSimple Rules Are the Anchors for EmergenceWhy I really didn›t leave beBee?A give on a giveWhy the Best Make the Worst?A Hive of Ideas

681014161820222426283032343638404244464852545658606264

index

76

The Hidden Marketing Forces

Nature has a treasure of hidden marketing forces. They are to be uncovered or made use of. This buzz tries to reveal some hidden marketing secrets. I may call them «The Green Marketing Forces» because they are derived from nature.

Let me start with a real story of an entrepreneur who had very little formal education, but with the wisdom of King Solomon. He started with a small shop selling basic foods and beverages besides cigarettes and host of other items. His shop was located in a very hot area and the intense summer made it harsh for walkers. He kept a big jar of water outside with disposable cups so that thirsty and exhausted passersby could drink cold water for free. There is a great attraction for a thirsty human and water. Soon, those passersby felt deeply appreciated for the owner to offer them free water when other shops sold it. That led them to become regular and loyal customers. Soon, the owners› business developed into a huge supermarket. Years later he became a prime manufacture of electrical appliances in the Middle East for an international brand. I met with him and he amazed me with his humility and sharpness.

A little kindness resulted in a hugely successful business. If we ponder deeply on what the shop owner did we find that he emulates bees. Bees need nectar and pollen to survive. Flowers produce both. Bees are like flying customers of today as they may easily change their sources of supply. Flowers realize this fact and they have the colors, shapes and fragrance to attract selectively certain bees. However; lately a new way has been lately uncovered by which flowers attract bees. Flowers use electrical field to communicate with bees. Scientists

at Bristol University revealed that blooms give out electrical signals to attract bumblebees to their pollen - with their voltage changing to warn others when their nectar is low. Flowers don›t cheat their customers (bees) and warn them if they are short of resources. Bees do exceptional work identify a suitable nectar and pollen resources and in respect of this efforts flowers warn bees that their resources are depleted for now. Plants are usually charged negatively and emit weak electric fields. Bees acquire a positive charge as they fly through the air. It appears that this is the way bees and plants communicate.

Flowers are very smart because they know they may only produce huge amounts of nectar and a limited amount of pollen. They want bees to go for the nectar and while sucking it pollen would stick to their bodies so that they may drop on other flowers later to pollinate. If we go back to the story of the shop we find that the owner used free water as nectar to attract customers and his hidden intention were that eventually passersby would walk in and buy his pollen. It worked. Giving free needed water at the right time and place (arid areas) was the real attractant for people to drink water and then feel the gratitude and become a regular customer.

Today Sara Jacobovici shared a great buzz titled «A Good Digital Strategy Creates a Gravitational Pull». This is a great article for it uses the gravitational force as a marketing strategy. Every object is pulling on every other object in the universe, a fact that is known as Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. Gravity is an attraction (pulling) force. Great as this is what flowers do precisely. They attract bees because of their powerful attracting fragrance and the power of being honest to their bee customers.

We need to generate forces of attraction. Creative thinking may easily make this force available at a very low cost and as little as the shop owner paid. It is a force that may grow exponentially with time so that its effect may become rewarding beyond imagination. beBee is avoiding the pitfalls of other platforms in reverting free attracting forces into a costly repelling ones. Javier beBee and the beBee team are aware of the value of keeping the fragrance of beBee platform.

98

The Forgotten Chemistry of Management

What do I mean by the title? Don›t worry as I shall be giving few examples below for your consideration. My exchange of comments on sugar solutions with the brainy CityVP Manjit resulted in a detour leading to the writing of this buzz. I know Manjit is writing few buzzes on sugar solutions and this one is a diversion of our discussions.

The first example is dissolving sugar in water. Try dissolving powdered sugar, granular sugar and sugar cubes. No matter what you can only add the same amount of sugar to a determined amount of water. Yes, powdered sugar dissolves faster than sugar cubes because it has more surface areas to contact with water, but the final amount that you can dissolve is the same.

The managerial lesson from this experiment is that no matter how much effort we may do, we have to be cautious that we may only reduce the time required to reach our objectives, but not change the end result. Changing shapes of the same effort may reduce time, but shall not affect the final result.

There is another lesson from above experiment. If we try to dissolve more sugar at the same temperature it shall be fruitless. We may dissolve more sugar by increasing the water temperature. Same with employees, we need to motivate them and increase their eagerness to the work they are doing to «dissolve» more work assignments. It is the same with your customers. If they are saturated they shall not buy any more from a business. However; by finding a way to increase the warmth of our offers or the warmth by which we treat customers then they might do more business with us. Simple facts, but unfortunately they are often than not forgotten.

I would say that motivation employees and customers are like increasing their «solubility in the waters of our offers.Ali Anani, PhDWe may dissolve gases in sugar solutions by applying pressure, but never with solids. If you have employees with high volatility and are inflammable like gases then you may apply pressure to «dissolve» them. The question is do you want more of them? Solid quality employees don›t dissolve more in the sugary waters of your business. To the opposite you may lose them. Solid employees need motivation and not pressure to dissolve more.

Employees are not all the same. Some employees dissolve readily in the organization. Others don›t and precipitate. Still other employees get together and form colloids that scatter light. I wish to introduce a new definition of shadow teams and groups. They are in fact the colloids of any organization and they scatter the light of information from others to keep their «shadow Power». Beware of colloidal groups. Have a great purpose that makes colloid groups less effective.

Some managers want to «freeze» few employees or add them to teams. Well, the team might be functioning well. Adding a salt to its waters shall lower its freezing point. This is called freezing point depression. When we add salt to water the water molecules freeze they get organized. However; because the salt is there the water molecules are more difficult to meet and freeze. We increased disorder by adding salt to a sugary solution.

One of my best acclaimed researches based itself on avoiding above pitfall. People used to grind waste tires and grind the rubbery part. They added this ground rubber to the asphalt and aggregate to improve the performance of roads and increase their resilience. The cost of mixing three ingredients instead of two and other reasons proved the efforts were hopeless. Unfortunately, many researchers keep their «stirring» in the same direction. My approach was different. I used the ground rubber of tires first to cover the aggregate using a simple chemical approach. The rubberized aggregate became organic and was very easy to mix with asphalt being organic too. Now, mixing asphalt and the rubberized aggregate proved easy, economic and compatible.

It amazes me how often we forget simple facts in managing our works. It is time to wake up.

1110

More on Balancing Acts

Use right brain or left brain or both?

Be a manager or a leader?

Be internally or externally motivated?

To answer these deceptively easy questions and the like let me start with personal story.

Recently, I visited an ear specialist. He asked me to walk with eyes closes forward and backward between two parallel lines. He then concluded that I had infection in my left ear. It is not enough to walk balanced with one ear. The two ears must work in synchronicity.

The idea that crossed my mind from this experience is why not extend the same concept to all activities give us a choice between this and that? For example, if leadership is the right ear, then management is the left ear. The right brain and the left brain must work in synchronicity to keep our balanced thinking. Our minds and hearts must also be in synchronicity if thoughts and emotions are to work in balance. External and internal motivators must be in harmony and work together. The concept of space and time being fused together into one entity may be extended to other concepts in life.

We need both external and internal motivation to maximize output. Having one is like having an infected ear and we lose balance accordingly. The question is whether they should be fused into one or that we oscillate between the two motivations so that they act in harmony? Should a leader at this moment be a manager the next one or the two must be fused into one entity? The analogy that comes to my mind is a husband and wife. The optimal result happens when they are both so immersed in each other that you have a new entity like space and time fusing into space time. You see the couple as one body. The kids

see them as one.

Imagine a scenario in which a person goes from one success to another. This person experiences no failure. Contrasting this person with another one who experienced successes and failures and who shall be more matured and experienced? In the first case the person has experienced the smell of success and is unaware of the smell of failure. There is no symmetry in his/her experience. It is one sided. The left ear is not operational and he/she is out of balance.

Maxwell demonstrated that electricity and magnetism are two balancing aspects of a greater force, the electromagnetic force. One doesn›t exist without the other. Should we look at leadership as the electrical force and management as the magnetic force? They only work their best when they are the components of a greater force and I may call it the «ManLead Force», in emulation of spacetime.

Symmetry generates balance. Fusion of two bodies creates a greater body. Are we seeking symmetry or fusion? In all cases we need to think of having dual qualities such as both external and internal motivations to keep the symmetry and the resulting balance. Much better if the two motivations would amalgamate into one force. It is more than oscillating between this and that. It is more than balancing this and that. It is the symmetry that leads to balance and the fusion that creates a new force.

What do you think? I would love to hear your views.

1312

1514

Management Lessons from the Kitchen

Kitchens are a great source of creative ideas and innovations. It amazes me when we probe cooking instructions on what to do and not to do how many ideas relevant to management surface out. I intend to show by examples what I mean.

The Salted SweetsTaffy is one great example. Taffy is a candy that is widely known as saltwater taffy. Rarely salt water is used as an ingredient and if used only in small amounts. In contrast sugar is a main ingredient and still we don›t call the product sugar taffy. Is it our tendency to make the sweet salty, or is it to elude ourselves that we balance the sweet with some salt?

I imagine each ingredient of making taffy as a team member. How me tackle the ingredients, process them, store them and the order by which we add team members (ingredients) may provide us with a fresh look to team formation. The main ingredients are sugar, corn syrup, corn starch, butter and small amounts of colorants and flavoring ingredients.

The paradox is although the main ingredients are sugars and sugar polymers (Starch); yet we may end up with salty results. Here we may derive many lessons pertinent to management.

The process of making taffy involves boiling the mixture of ingredients (excluding colorants and flavoring materials) in a kettle using while stirring using a wooden spoon and not a metal one. We add the syrup ingredient (equivalent to a team member) to mainly stop the crystallization of simple sugars. The long chains of the sugary syrup cage the simple sugar molecules from crystallizing.

We notice two paradoxes here. The first one is that long chain sugars cage in short chain sugars. A sweet cages a sweet. We tend to deal with sweet employees or team members by using salty approaches or show them salty faces. It might be far better to handle faulty sweet team members by caging them with extended «sugary arms».

The second paradox is that we add syrup to deter the crystallization of simple sugars; however we keep stirring the mixture vigorously and sometimes with metal stirrers. The simple sugars in the resulting syrup are then allowed to react and form table sugar. The resulting taffy shall not be what we desired for. Not only that, but we tend also to scratch the sugars deposited on the sides of the pot back into the resulting syrup. Stirring will splash more sugar on the sides of the cooking pot and only to make inferior taffy.

The analogy to management here is that we tend to keep stirring employees when it is not needed. In fact, sweet employees will even be the cause of having inferior products and services. Sweet employees once reach their «boiling point» need not be stirred and better are left alone. To worsen the situation more, we may break those sugary employees into harmful products. Sugars heating may lead to some very useful products; the complete burning of sugars will only produce water and carbon dioxide as a pollutant to the work environment.

This reminds me of burn out employees. Some managers tend to burn out sweet employees completely by stressing them overly. Yes, these employees are likely to produce more with little burning out, but to burn them completely is simply an action of crime.

Dan Rockwell of Leadership Freak says that “Research indicates that if you put someone who is not a team player on a team that is functioning well, that one person can impact the performance of that team by 40 per cent.” My question is how about management that burns sweet employees and burn them and the organization and how much they cost? Or, they sideline the sweet employees to the sides of the organization and make them salted sweets how much more they cost their organizations?

We don›t only cook meals; more we cook managerial lessons.

1716

Because I loved you so much I stopped loving you

We experience the fast passing of time and we need to pause to think and make choices. However; there are few quotes that make us pause frequently because they cut deep in our emotions. One quote is that of my daughter Sara shown below:

«Dad, because I loved you so much I stopped loving you»Sara Ali Anani My beloved daughter Sara Ali Anani

Too much love generates caring and too much caring becomes an emotional load. Sara experienced the emotional load and the more she loved me, the more this emotional load increased.

I am writing this because of Louise Smith. Louise shared two buzzes on emotions. I thank Louise not only for sharing the first a chart on emotion, but also dedicating it to me.

The other chart on equations of emotions stirred my mind. Inspecting the emotions reveal great thinking and trigger many ideas, which I wish to share with you here.

Joy = Love - Fear

This equation reminded me of one of my most popular buzzes on beBee on I Love You- What Does it Mean? So many great ideas resulted on the meaning of love. Here, I find explanation of what my daughter Sara meant. Love is accompanied with fear of losing that you love. So, if we rearrange the equation above on love it shall read:

Love = Joy + Fear

Sara explained the meaning of love in her innocence as she was only few years old when she expressed her love as both love and fear.

The meaning of love could be further verified by the first equation in the chart.

Despair = Suffering - Meaning,

Despair + Meaning = Suffering

Do we suffer by realizing the meaning of love? Or, should love remain an obscure feeling and chasing its meaning is like a dog chasing its tail in despair?

One other equation that attracted my eye is the following equation:

Calling = Pleasure/ Pain

We need to maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain in our offers for customers to gain their hearts. Can we maximize the pleasure without any pain? It is the same like can we maximize our love without being also whelmed by the fear of losing who we love? When we make customers fall in love with our products because we pleased them greatly should be also fear that we made them worried of losing what they loved?

These equations make me think if we need to always consider that emotions don›t exist in isolation. They interact and their produce is a complex one. Do we need to review all our offers so that we become more balanced in our communications and offers.

Nobody seems shall get anything for nothing.

1918

Drowning in the River of Time

The complexity of human behavior is evidenced by the controversial concepts we have on many issues. One issue is time. The definition of time varies. Another issue is our focus on the past, present and future times. What is gone is gone. Others say live the moment. Others adopt the wisdom that if we do can›t plan for the future then we shall fail.

I have a simple analogy. If you are driving a car would you only use the back mirror (or camera) representing the past, the side mirrors (the present time) or the front mirror (the future time)? Would you dispense with any of them?

Let us take a simple example. If a smoker smokes few cigarettes a day then this person sight would say I am delighted smoking and I am not failing the pain. The delight outweighs the pain. Only years later this person might feel the pains of his retreating health, the cost of medicines, the loss of his job and other pains. If we only take the value of the present time things may look quite different from the future. When the future arrives it shall leave little room for correction. The delight of smoking becomes so meager and the pain becomes significant. Thinking of the present and neglecting the past can be very costly. Time will still tick constantly at every second, but the pain may grow exponentially.

There is what I call Compound Pain Rate in emulation of compound interest rate.Ali Anani, PhDA friend sent me recently a video on a person who kept eating junk food for three consecutive months. The shocking results was that his health deteriorated and became equivalent to a person in his seventies. This form of accelerated simulation of human behavior may be very helpful in accelerating time so that we see much sooner the deteriorating effects of small pains that reach a critical level and beyond which curing becomes almost impossible.

Small actions at the present time might be the wings of a butterfly that cause us great pains in the future. Ali Anani, PhDI can hear somebody say then what is the value of planning? I say that with accelerated simulations we may see the consequences earlier and therefore plan better. We human are cells that connect to form tissues, then organs, subsystems and the whole body. Like any system there are systemic errors. These errors we may not interfere with. If we try we make things worse. If you haven›t seen the Deming›s Funnel it is about time to see it in action to realize the effect of not leaving systemic errors alone now or in the future.. You may try this simulation for free here.

http://www.symphonytech.com/funnelexp.htm

Or, you may wish to watch this video

It is a different story when errors aren›t systemic. Here we may interfere and may make plans to reduce variations.

Our thoughts lead to our actions. Small actions may lead to catastrophic results in the future. However; it is about time to realize that actions are the products of thoughts. If thoughts are negative and they become a little bit more negative everyday then something damaging might become catastrophically damaging in the future. Thoughts are the actual butterflies. We need first to plan the correction of our thoughts and beliefs so that they may kill us in the future.

The present time flows into the future. The river of time might overflow and get out of control in the future. Remember what is small today and manageable could become huge and very impacting tomorrow. Don›t wait for the tide of time to drown you.

A comment by dear Sara Jacobovici for one of her deep comments prompted me to write this buzz.

2120

Hunting a Specific Fish in a Stormy Ocean

Two years ago I wrote a presentation on «Getting the fish (ball) in the net». In this presentation I compared the strategies and tactics employed in scoring goals and their similarities to catching fish in the ocean. The fish could also be your customer and how to win customers in turbid oceans. It is not only a blue or red ocean; it is also the quietness or not of the ocean and the clarity of its waters.

A recent post by Paul Wingate on LinkedIn titled «Marketing Lessons Learned from Fishing». In this post Paul concludes five steps to correlate marketing with fishing. These are:

STEP 1: Let›s Catch Some Fish- This crucial decision frames where you are going to find these fish and what they like to eat which are the first steps in the process.

STEP 2: You can’t catch fish without knowing what they eat- Before heading out to sea; you need to know what your fish eats and insights to their habitat.

STEP 3: Only Dead Fish Swim with the Stream- If the field you are playing in is crowded with competitors, then is critical to understand how you stack up.

STEP 4: You›re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat: The goal is to create the most prolific fish-catching boat on the sea.

STEP 5: Bait the Hook well; This Fish Will Bite- Content is the bait of today and the marketing fuel in a digital world. It builds credibility and provides searchable answers to your target market’s pain.

Step 6: Let the Fishing Commence- This is self-explanatory

These are practical steps. In my presentation I offer few other ideas on linking marketing strategies with fishing. A winning marketing team can net more fishes in the net as a football team that nets more goals in the opponents› goal. No matter what such as possessing the ball or making many tricks or the maximum number of successful passes or hitting the woodworks it is the team that scores emerges as the winner. It is the same in fishing for customers as you need to capture more of the golden fish than your competitors.

One issue that I discussed in my presentation is being aware of the mood of your fish (customers). The fish has to be in the right mood to enter the net. Always consider the mood of fish and the environment they are in. This will help you find the best speed. Mood is defined by weather and the time of year. High and low barometric pressure is a part of the weather question. They both have a significant impact on the mood of all fish. The speed to approach your customers is linked to their need. You must know what the weather has been preceding your fishing trip. This information will set the stage giving you the information you can use to your advantage. A clear blue high sky after a low pressure front is every angler›s nightmare. Fish get spooky, neutral or negative in these conditions. Approaching customers when they are in their blues is a recipe for failure. You may also catch your competitors when they are in the wrong mood because you may lure them with your tactics.

Fish have low tolerance to temperature. You need to know the temperature of your competitors to take advantage of. By putting your competitors on the wrong «waters» you may win. If they are hot on you be cold to their tactics and vice versa. However; with your customers the opposite is true.

It is not only a blue ocean strategy or red ocean strategy; much more it is what is the status of the ocean and how comfortable in its waters are your customers and competitors. Without these understandings our strategies and tactics shall be likened to trying to catch a specific fish in a stormy ocean.

2322

Comfortably Uncomfortable in the Comfort Zone

You are setting happily in your comfortable zone. It might be uncomfortable; yet you enjoy the familiarity you have with the pain. Sometimes the pain of staying in the painful trough of the comfort zone is greater than the desire to move out of it. This is a paradox that needs further study.

Standing objects tend to remain so. Humans setting on a trough are the same. There are opposing forces in tension. The negative emotions of fear, negative thinking, regret, self-blaming and self-mistrust that tend to draw us back. The desire to move to a better place, the creativity of finding simple and effective solutions, curiosity to know what awaits us outside the trough and ambition are forward moving emotions. It is sad that we tend to magnify the negative emotions and therefore end up going deeper in the trough.

Falling to the negative emotions shapes our characters. Character is not what we experience; it is more how we respond to what we experience. When we experience negative emotions and allow ourselves to be the prey of these predators we lose our character. We lose hope, the desire to be better, the power of imagination and the creativity to realize these imaginations. We limit ourselves to stay in the trough and yield to fear and self-mistrust. This happens and we forget that there is the needle of opportunity hidden in haystack of impossibilities.

It is sad that we prefer to stay in the trough painfully for we think what is outside id more painful or we become fearful of change. There is also the pain of change. This reminds me of

few people I know who refuse to go to a dentist even they suffer badly from a rotten tooth. They imagine the pain of treatment is greater than the pain of its suffering. Only when the tooth becomes extremely painful they go for treatment.

When we focus our attention to the place we are in and assume other places are more gloomy then we have mostly developed characters that see negativity as a blessing because it is still better than the miseries we imagine awaiting us elsewhere. We lose the spirit of discovery, of trying and breathing new air. We become the prey and the predator in one body. We fail to think of the hidden losses by staying where we are and the opportunities that await us if we move on.

We experience pain always in doing new things to start with. For example, moving into a new country speaking a language that you don›t understand word of is painful. The pain of leaving home and the pain of not communicating compound and may force you to return home. It is at these difficult moments that we need to think what comes after pain? Sooner or later you shall gain a new language, knowledge of new cultures and habits and new opportunities might emerge. It is these moments that we need to move on by the positive emotions, thoughts and actions with readiness to accept the initial pain. It is at these moments that we need to weaken or repel the negative thoughts to keep our characters strong to face the new challenges.

Some ladies try to shrink there facial pores, but no matter what they stay the same. Deceptively, they look smaller on well-washed faces. Unfortunately we tend to do the same. We may scale down the pores of problems so that may look smaller. This doesn›t serve the issue. It is the acceptance of facts and moving on that make sense. The syndrome of Alex in the Wonderland is still alive.

It is the instability that leads to self-organizing and the emergence of new possibilities. It is about time to move out of the trough.

2524

The New Mirrors of Social Media

Our world is changing fast. I feel that the globe isn›t only like a small village; more it has coalesced into a forest. Social media has disrupted our lives in many forms, including communications and increasing flows of information.

There is the convergence factor resulting from the advanced technologies of communication. The blending of personal lives, social lives and work lives are increasingly intertwining. There is an increasing trend to share our private news. We know about people with whom we have never met. The question is finding the hidden pearls of information in the flowing waters of information. The opportunity to know about people and customers are widening. I give two examples.

One example is by looking at the background image of this buzz. You see the founders of beBee (Javier beBee and Juan Imaz) together sharing smiles of hopes. What other information may we get from their photos? The increased trend of sharing selfies is noticeable. You may monitor those selfies over time and study their dynamism. If we notice selfies of the same person repeatedly then we may be exposed to the «Mere Exposure Effect». We may feel the familiarity with a person because we keep seeing his/her photos and may result in our increasing liking of him/her. I expect this phenomena to increase in its impact as sharing photos is instant. Technology has opened new «windows of exposure».

The availability of many photos of the same person allows for studying facial variation. I wonder if the «first snap effect» will prevail. It is analogous to the same first impression is a lasting impression. We tend to have impressions about people from their face images. These images might be derived from our expectations. A military person is expected to

look serious and with a baby face a soldier shall fail our expectations. There have been studies relating facial looks and shapes with personalities. Because we mostly meet people virtually these types of studies shall gain momentum. Who could have thought of collecting photos of faces and relate them to human characters? The availability of photos of people and their activities have opened new venues of doing even the unthinkable research.

The written words by a person and the way the «landscape of writing» changes provide new approaches of profiling people. I recall my father telling somebody after reading an essay by him «you have no sisters». The man responded «true, but how did you know». My father responded by saying his words were as dry as wood exposed to sun for long times. «If you had sisters then you would have written few watery words in your essay», was the response of my father. Now, we are able to read all written communications over time and draw impressions. Our words reveal our character. Our thoughts are expressed in words and these worlds reflect how we think, feel and act.

People reflect their thoughts in words and photos they share. If I keep writing or saying «I did» it could mean I am egoist or I am honest. I did the mistake is different from I completed the job or I thought of it. The first I reflects accepting responsibility while the second I reflects a self-centered character. The patterns of my words shall appear over time and these patterns shall be the mirrors that reflect my image to the world.

It is an opportunity to review what you have written over the last few years or what photos you have shared and look for patterns about you.

2726

Nuggets of Wisdom/ Part 2Writing a buzz of value is a challenge. More challenging is writing a buzz that would invite for illuminating comments. I have been fortunate to have so many valuable comments on my buzzes that are worthy of lasting quality. I extract some nuggets of wisdom from these comments to share with you. They deserve to be compiled in a buzz for easy reference and quick referencing to. This is a way of conserving their value. The extracted comments are shown in reverse chronological order. The link to part 1 is:https://www.bebee.com/producer/@ali-anani/nuggets-of-wisdom Language is our way of communicating meaning, then adaptation is linked with meaning. Adaptation can only be successful when we understand what it is we are adapting to. Sara JacoboviciIf the education system prepares us for work, the entertainment system alleviates us, to create a rest-bite from work. What does that say about us is that we study to make a living and then in making a living find ways to distract ourselves from this very process. CityVP🐝Manjit However, when people believe they have, or have found, the «perfect» strategy or process, that is when they have already lost the end result they desire. Edward Lewellen We should grow people out of their trough and not add to their walls of discontent. Harvey Lloyd«The force of going forward» should lead us. To succumb as prey to negative things puts us back, hinders us from human advancing, makes us more «animals» than we really are. David Navarro LópezStaying in our comfort zones is safe for many of us at times or through life. We need to be bigger than our fears and take leaps of faith to expand our horizons. Ivette K. Caballero Whether you determine to make a change, or not, like a tornado change can roar into your life. Leaving in its wake destruction which could take months, even years, to understand, deal with and/or repair. Jean L. Serio CPC, CeMAAgain... if we can identify threats and obstacles then we are more capable to move ahead than we were in a state of ignorance. Devesh Bhatt

Take away smell and you take away taste. And in business if we only look at one part, costs without looking at customers or benefits, or culture we make ill-informed choices. Deb🐝LangeLove surfaces from the depth of emotions. Savvy RajYou›ve touched base on a very important topic Love. An emotion that is so easy to kindle and develop but so difficult to stop using. Fatima WilliamsOh and I always understood that joy is happiness without reason. Jed WisniewskiI discovered something from the Balinese. They live not for today but for the moment!!! Their philosophy is that, yesterday is gone and tomorrow is a mystery so live for the moment. Paul WaltersYes we can›t go back in time, but we can (with rear mirrors) stop the past catching up with us. John Rylance Present help you to build the floor under your feet more strongly which ultimately leads into a good future. Jeet Sarkar If we cannot see, observe or touch the minute form of matter, such as atom, will we ignore its presence? debasish majumderWe move forward in our youth, but we back in to our old age. I think the point when our gaze reverses is different for each person. Phillip HubbellThe ability to travel through time safely is related to the ability to see all around you. Steve ChapmanI would like to mention Jason Silva›s words that «What we design, designs us back», so what we do today affects the future including technology, food & thoughts. Yogesh SukalManagers can indeed stir employees too much to the point of being counterproductive and in worst cases burnout. Gert ScholtzLeadership ought to galvanize/electrify the endeavor while Management (magnetism) ought to bring the work resources together and provide the (right) direction. Praveen Raj GullepalliI therefore feel that every individual and even an organization needs to have its own needle and compass to gauge points of drifting and imbalance.. namita sinhaBenefiting by learning «1) from others failures or success 2) by keeping them ahead (using push or promoting strategy) further for utilizing only» is a common phenomenon siraj shaik…though many may consider it pessimistic to look at the negative what ifs up front, I think ‹the bubble› of positivity needs to always have a dose of reality close by. Donna-Luisa EversleySometimes, leaving a sick person is far better than sticking with him. Javier beBeeI often say that the best art regardless of its form is the art that is poured out from the soul and that›s what touches their souls. Max 🐝J. Carter…the neatly stacked, but vast number of toothpaste choices tipped my rationality into a chaotic state, and a debilitating tension. I don›t know how I did it, but I eventually chose one, paid for it, and then escaped from the supermarket as fast as I could! Steve BradySometimes, I think, it is better to rely on what the visions of others have for you. Joyce BowenExtremely few of us end up doing what we want to do in life....for any number of reasons. How do we quantify that without condemnation? Somebody always has to clean the toilets. Lisa VanderburgI›ve never been capable of following through with a perceived passion if I learn it bores me to death. Lisa GallagherIt is a sad environment with sunken attitude. That is why we all need to be reminded to Rise & Shine from time to time. Olga LawsonSelf forgiveness is hard for us all. Caring not what others perceive seems to be harder to let go of. Awareness of this brings relief. Kevin Baker

2928

The Dance of Complexity

We are mostly dancing bodies. The water in our bodies dances. We may see the calm surface of water, but researchers using have shown how water molecules dance. Molecules in our bodies dance too. A new method which uses tightly confined light trapped between gold mirrors a billionth of a meter apart to watch molecules ‘dancing’ in real time could help researchers uncover many of the cell processes that are essential to all life, and how small changes to these processes can lead to diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer’s. The butterfly effect is in action is our bodies.

Swans dance together. Dolphins dance together. Ideas dance in our heads. Apparently ideas too have molecular structures that enjoy dancing in our heads. We dance with joy in celebration of new ideas and good news. The stock markets have their wavy fractal dancing patterns. Pendulums dance to make waves that remind me of the waves of stock markets.The dance of pendulums serves as a good metaphor for complexity and visualizing its dance as well. The pendulums forms pattern as they dance. It is when we push them violently that they may swing to the extremes. More importantly is the interaction of multi layered pendulums. The image below shows first from left two pendulums attached to three pendulums in the middle and then to five pendulums to the left. I chose the numbers 5 ,3 ,2 because these are Fibonacci numbers. The dance of the two pendulums affect the dance of the three pendulums and these in turn affect the dance of the five pendulums. The five pendulums are affected by the environment and may affect their dancing pattern. This effect is then cascaded to the middle three pendulums, which in turn affect the dance of the two pendulums. There is no way by which we may predict how the new dance would be.

The complexity of business today is reflected in this mode. Businesses are getting more interconnected and the dance of one partner shall affect the dance of all partners. The environment of business is getting like our natural environment. We can see how «partners» affect each other. We have witnessed how the Greenhouse Effect impact on the environment. The formation of tornadoes and the flooding of some cities are direct consequences of how the dance of many pendulums has been disturbed. This is similar to disturbing the molecular dance in our cells and eventually leading to cancer. One disturbance cascades into hugely impacting results. The warming up of the earth leads to the fast evaporation of water, which gets carried away by the wind and deprive some lands from the water necessary for agriculture. The formation of arid zones with not enough water to water plants lead to health problems, loss of jobs, death of animals and drying up of plants.

The Greenhouse Effect leads me to suggest the Greenhouse Effect of Businesses. The fall of one business leads to the fall of many businesses such as suppliers to the fallen business, banks that gave loans to the business, the insurers who may suffer similar destiny and to the job market where many people lose their jobs as well.

The increasing interconnections of global business means that that the emerging complexity of the global business will have more vitality, but also greater risks to the rippling effect that may cascade to many sectors of the business domain.

We need to think and imagine the future and how it may look like to prepare for it now. We need then to take small steps at a time so that the system doesn›t swing violently and may cause earthquakes› to occur.

We have a hard game to predict the movements of the multi-layered global financial system.

I dedicate this buzz to Laurent Boscherini for his constant support, illumination and friendly gestures.

3130

Cheating that is not

It amazes me how structures replicate in nature. Is this a coincidence or luck by chance (serendipity)? Or, more is it a form of legal cheating? Let me explain by example.

If I ask the reader this question- is there a relationship or connection between bees honeycomb structure and our bone structure, or flying birds bone structure? What would be the answer? We know that bones and bees don›t talk to each other, don›t communicate and how on earth would they have any commonality?

It turns out that there are similarities. All flying birds have a honeycomb-like bone structure to make them as light as possible. Bees use the least amount of materials in constructing honeycomb structure. Birds may flight easier with bones of honey comb structure. This structure, even though light, it gives birth added strength to continue on with their flying.

Still more surprising is the structure of high plants. Bamboo, for example, grows very fast and needs to save material as much as possible to grow high and not fall under because of its heavy weight. It turns out that bamboo has similar structure to bones with fractal tube-like structure. If we compare our bone structure and the bamboo «be» structure they turn out to be strikingly similar.

The same honeycomb-like structure extends to the eyes of cockroaches. These creatures have compound eyes (honeycomb-like light sensors). Again, the honeycomb structure appears in the eyes of cockroaches. Are cockroaches stealing or cheating the honeycomb structure from bamboos or bees?

The advancement of technology has allowed researches to probe into domains that were unimaginable years ago. For example, the use of colored scanning electron micrograph of empty fat cells in our bodies has revealed that these cells too have a honeycomb structure. Normal lipid (fat) deposits of the cells were removed and this approach revealed the honeycomb structure of the cell membranes. We humans too have honeycomb structures in our bodies.

Honeycomb structures reveal more than that. The concept of honeycomb structures extends into different domains. Is there a hidden force that allows this legal cheating of the honeycomb structure and copying it? What would you call it?Are their secretive forms of silent communication? Is this the hidden power? May be your comments guide me in finding an answer.

3332

The Tree Metaphor Guide for Us

I paused to think while reading these lines « We all know that entrepreneurs and business owners have to think fast to survive. It›s in their blood; moving quickly is a natural instinct to them. Still, it›s difficult to overstate the importance of speed in business». This brought my attention the book titled «Of 2 Minds: How Fast and Slow Thinking Shape Perception and Choice» by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman. In this book the idea of «The automatic operations of System 1 generate surprisingly complex patterns of ideas, but only the slower System 2 can construct thoughts in an orderly series of steps» Our minds think in two systems. These are the fast and slow systems. System 1 operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. System 2 allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations.

We have fast minds and slow minds and they serve different functions. We have a call for fast business and life, and I feel the need too for slow business and life. Or, am I wrong? I shall probe the value of this thinking starting by the tree metaphor first.

Fast growing trees provide great canopies for us. We enjoy them. However; it is because of their fast growth that we initially desired that we suffer. Trees that grow fast to high levels may suffer from large branches or whole sections of the tree simply splitting away from the trunk because of strong winds or heavy snow. Some trees start to decline as soon as they reach their maximum heights. We have seen businesses suffer the same effect. Fast growing trees may become fragile and weak and therefore subject to attacks by insects and bacteria. Some undesirable effect to us may result from under our feet. One example is the walnut tree. Its side roots may excrete a toxic chemical that kills other plants such as potatoes. We have seen some fast growing companies throw their toxic chemical in huge

amounts and killing the fish in the sea or causing the warming up of our globe.

Fast businesses and fast growing trees remind me of fast talkers as well. When you speak too fast, you do the same thing with your spoken words. You don›t leave any nice spaces of silence between phrases and sentences, thus making your listeners work too hard. Remember the key problem: listeners are intrinsically lazy. If you don›t make it easy for them, they won›t exert themselves to listen. These facts remind me of the great buzz of Sara Jacobovici titled «We Listen with our Balance». We are off balance when we talk fast and get the listeners inattentive. Talking fast shall not allow room for listening with our balances. Fast growing companies might be doing the same to the customers by talking too fast to them and providing them with too many products at short time intervals and getting them to listen without balance.

Our call for fastness must not neglect the side effects of going fast. Fast food is another example of what going fast might lead to- the least is to make customers wary of listening. Fast food may cause many problems such as increasing sugar levels in our bodies, increasing blood pressure and shortness of breath. Can we listen attentively being short of breath?

Do we need to go fast? I shall love your thoughts. If you have fast hopes, driving fast, fast changing ambitions and plans would you pause and listen with balance?

Would you recommend to beBee growing very fast?

3534

The Hidden Paradox of Predictability

The weather forecast hasn›t been very accurate in our region this year. Warnings of heavy snow storms were mostly false warnings. The response to the warnings was peoples started to store food supplies, fill tanks with fuel for heating homes and cancellation of some scheduled activities. The perceived risk acted as an external force for people to plan.

This is the irony. The unpredictable weather forecast led to the predictable behavior of people to snowy weather. This isn›t the whole story. We live in an open system and we change the environment. By doing so, we increase the unpredictability of the weather forecast at the same time we depend on this unpredictability to determine our deterministic future plans!

We may heat limestone in a closed vessel. The volatile produced gas, carbon dioxide, has no way to escape. However; if we use an open vessel this gas may escape, release into the atmosphere, leading to the warming up of the atmosphere and make the weather more unpredictable. We still depend on weather forecasts to make plans for the future.

We interact socially. Like attracts like and we find people forming clusters of people that are bonded by a shared hobby. A cluster of fans supporting a soccer team in opposition of another cluster of fans who support another team is an example. The two clusters may be closed and information circulates among the cluster members. We may predict the behavior because of the closeness of the two clusters. Freedom and free will are confined because the shared denominator among the clusters› members is the support for their favorite teams. But football is a game and so is life. The rules of the game change, the players change, the tactics change, the coaches change, the referees change, the playing grounds change and the weather at playing times change. A soccer match may start in a sunny weather and only

to be later interrupted by thunder and rain. How the players adapt will decide to a great extent the result of the match. The closed clusters of supporters can›t change the result of the match. It is more what happens at the varying playing ground. It is the creativity of finding new ways to deal with changes and the individual creativity that decide more than anything else the result of the game.

We are like the waters in our bodies that may exist in solid, liquid or gas phases over a short range of conditions. We warm up the environment to warm us and produce more volatiles. As these volatiles escape they cause further warming up of the environment and making it more unpredictable. Yet; we still draw definite plans from the increasingly less predictable weather.

We prison ourselves in determinism. And we are the cause of making the environment (natural environment and work environment alike) less predictable. Back to the soccer example, one team scores a goal that the referee disallows. Tempers boil up, warming and warning heat up, volatility increases and arguments scale up in rejection for the referee›s decision. The ball didn›t cross the line and the referee shouldn›t have crossed the line. New ideas emerge. Why not use video recording? Suddenly the rules of the game change.

May be in future matches we have self-tracking balls such as the self-tracking keys developed for cars. No matter what it is from the chaos that new ordering ideas shall emerge. We take our system to new levels of order that emerges from the chaos we induced.

Do I plan? Yes, but only to change the rules of planning.

3736

Musical Ice

My eyes were scrolling new buzzes on beBee and suddenly noticed two titles related to the freezing of ice. Sara Jacobovici contributed the first buzz on A man isolated himself in the Arctic for 20 years. What he reveals inside this cave is incredible. It is the story of Tim Linhart who carved solid ice blocks into musical instruments. Not only that, he also built an Igloo (snow house) in Northern Sweden in which musicians use instruments of ice to play music. Tim managed to stop sound contamination, melting of ice because of human breath and other problems to make the igloo suitable for playing different genres of music.

The second buzz was a contribution by Liesbeth Leysen, MSc. Brand Ambassador beBee, Inc wrote a buzz on «Freeze Your Brain and Live Forever». Liesbeth started her buzz with this lovely introduction « Would you like to live forever and let your brain be frozen? In the name of science. Or would you rather opt for living your life to the fullest now and be the best version of you ever possible? Tell me the name of your game. I will tell you what›s in it for you. Your choices and trust in life will make all the difference». Liesbeth highlighted in her buzz these points: points are: trust yourself to trust others, life, love and the universe. When we trust ourselves and life we freeze our minds in calmness.

We need to clean our minds from contaminants. Freezing is one way of purifying ice from its contaminants. Humans are bodies of water. In fact, %80 of our brain is water. The stress of life is surmounting and we need to crystallize out doubts, mistrust and negative thoughts from our mind. If we don›t we shall not be able to freeze the water in our minds into pure ice blocks from which we may carve musical instruments that may play great music. In fact, if we don›t we may still freeze our minds and make instruments that keep drumming noisy sounds in our heads.

Breathing out anger, mistrust and skepticism shall only lead to inferior ice that produces noise. Not all water freezes into molds. Some ice may crystallize into solid cubes. You may have heard of Frazil Ice. Frazil ice is a collection of loose, randomly oriented needle-shaped ice crystals in water. It resembles slush and has the appearance of being slightly oily when seen on the surface of water. Grease ice is a very thin, soupy layer of frazil crystals clumped together, which makes the ocean surface resemble an oil slick. Grease ice is the second stage in the formation of solid sea ice after ice floes and then frazil ice. Negative thoughts that make us shiver with fear may lead to having Grease Thoughts in our mind and we end up living in an oil slick of negativity.

Let the water in our brains freeze into clear and workable ice from which we may make musical instruments chanting our trust and love for life. It is amazing that the heat of trust produces the freezing of waters in our brains to beat musical tones. Make your ice musical. This is a great self-motivator.

It is the emerging choices that make things more complex. Increase the rate of population growth or the tax rate (r) shall eventually create the first tension. A tension gives birth to new tensions and the system increasingly may lose its «Tension-holding capacity».

We may choose to increase happiness, taxes, population or whatever. However; we must watch out for the emergence of new tensions that may have a rippling effect of producing more tensions and more instability of the system. For every action there is a reaction. I would also add that for every action there is the possibility of creating a new choice and at one point choices will be placed on a rugged path towards a peak. Once the system stays on this peak it is a new game in play.

I dedicate this buzz to CityVP Manjit. I have one choice here to admire your mind and appreciation of others.

3938

Common Sense that has no sense

This buzz is about real life story of what started I am reading this quote

«The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong». Carl JungThis quote sent my mind on an inquiry path. Why don›t we say this is logical? Or, this makes logic to me to keep the rhyme of saying makes sense? That is not all. When we say this makes sense to me- does it relate to our senses and how?

We are sensory beings. Are senses enough to guide us to the truth? Aren›t logical thinking, systemized steps of thinking, form a better way to arrive at facts?

We don›t say it is logical. Is saying it makes sense to me? Does this common sense relate to our five traditional senses of smell, taste, hearing, sight and touch?

Logical thinking may help us reach accurate solutions as much as possible. This is true. However; logical thinking has betrayed us from finding more possibilities, more discoveries and tied up our minds with the chains of inherited beliefs. For one thousand year Aristotle led us to believe that the earth is composed of four materials: water, air, earth and fire. Where is the logic in accepting misleading theories or concepts for such long times? Had

we used our senses would have realized the wrongness of this theory.

Do I dare say that senses and logic should be aligned or pointing to the same direction before we may say something is right or wrong? In other words I would change the quote of Carl Jung to the pendulum swinging between logic and senses more than sense and nonsense.

We accepted that our senses are five for centuries. Now, we add knowledge as a sense, to give one example. The pendulum swings between senses and logic- but we need to define more what we mean by senses. Does this make common sense?

We are using common sense to accept long-term quotes that make no sense!

What is your opinion?

4140

Ideas Are Like Dancing Pendulums

My previous buzz on «Common Sense that makes no sense» produced a huge array of comments of varying senses. Three comments by the brainy bees of CityVP Manjit, Harvey Lloyd and Deb Lang in the chronological order urged me to write this buzz. The ideas may seem distant from each other, but they evoked an amazing connectivity in my mind. I am sharing my thoughts here.

Harvey wrote in his comment «There is no proof required that your publications are most alive other than the common sense to see the kind of minds that are discussing these publications right here.What I look at here is not publication but this solitary quote and that brings to question whether the pendulum metaphor serves the realities of the 21st Century, a century that Carl Jung never saw. What the pendulum metaphor serves is the realities of the 20th Century that continue to reside in our century - which are the swings between extremes».

In fact, what Carl Jung never saw was also how connected pendulums may produce chaotic movement that may hide within some order. A pendulum by itself may behave in an orderly

fashion. Linear thinking would extend this movement to connected pendulums. However; life is different as the connected pendulums produce varying shapes that go beyond our logical thinking. For every cause there is an equal effect. For the novice thinker he/she shall see the resulting movement as an error or fault in the experimental design or that pendulums are wrongly manufactured. They see the «noise» in the movement and discard it as an anomaly.

This tendency to ignore noise and not give it fresh perspectives has blinded us for long times from advancing our knowledge. We also lacked the sense a new meaning for such unwanted «noises». We lost our sense of hearing the noise. Cricket can hear using their legs. The cricket›s front legs have a thin membrane that moves with the vibration of the sound. We lack the membrane to realize that the noisy sound is there to awaken us to new realities. Our lack of common sense deprived us from developing our senses to extraordinary ones; even more to deprive us of our basic sense of hearing.

Bats navigate through by using noisy sounds in what we know as echolocation. We make noises, but we lack the sense to use them to echolocate our wrong positioning, our lack of connecting senses to what knowledge we have and therefore misuse what we know. Instead of turning data that make a noise we tend to discard them. We failed to use the sound for echolocation. We end up not knowing where we stand or making use of the noise we generate. We combine pendulums and we hear the noise, but fail to understand that new thinking is needed. CityVP Manjit expressed this well in his comment by writing « …that alternative then can inform my learning journey because whereas common sense is a group dynamic, the alternative at the individual level becomes extraordinary sense. That journey of focusing on extraordinary sense distances me from common sense. Harvey Lloyd elaborated more in his comment « critical thinking and logic have their place when we consider our own well being and inner monologue. Short of being independently wealthy and living in the wilderness, the value of our critical thinking will need to manifest itself within the community in which we live. In this phase is where our knowledge is tested against the end game where results are expected.To recognise this process of logic relieves the strain of being right and wrong. Gaining knowledge is an expansive process that only after we consolidate our thoughts and beliefs might we test it in public. This public test is where wisdom is born. The theory that is always in play is each of us is within an end game. Whether social, knowledge gathering or executing around goals. Critical thinking will always be a part of the process but not the whole».

Further Elaboration came later from the comment of Deb Lange. She wrote «Dear @Ali Anani I sense we can be comfortable with uncertainty when we are grounded from within. Like the eye of the storm - no matter what is happening around us we can sense a still centre. I have had a very unsettled life post mid life and I often would say, my home is within me. That is where I felt secure - within my body grounded and connected to the things I value. So no matter what happens on the outside I have my inner safety». This comment reminded me of the trout. They use the complexity or noisy waters to their advantage. The two illustrations below explain what I mean. They use the center of the vortex to navigate easily because trout have extraordinary senses. This explains why the comment of Deb is extraordinarily sensible.

Ideas are like dancing pendulums- they dance together to form a complex pattern. Complexity requires extraordinary senses and, unfortunately, we don›t listen enough to the sound of our senses.

4342

Pockets of Creative Thoughts

Some ideas crossed my mind while exchanging comments or reading buzzes here on beBee. I wish to share them with you. If you find me hallucinating it is because of the depth of what I have been reading. I share with the readers what I experienced as it happened to show how our minds jump from one idea to another without planning.

The inception of the thinking process started when my eyes fell on the image of ice lens.

My curiosity ignited. I felt I am like an ice lens. If you focus the sunlight on an ice lens carefully underneath which are straws a fire from the burning of straws shall initiate. It is possible then to cause fire from ice, but only if ice is very clear! I find this relevant to motivation and we may make of ice-like employees a source of burning desire to ignite and work purposefully and with clear purposes.

The ice lens and the tortoise shell looked to have the shape of pockets. Are these pockets of time? A comment flashed in my mind. It is the comment that Anne Thornley-Brown wrote on my previous buzz «Ideas Are Like Dancing Pendulums». In her comment Anne

wrote «There is so much of value here. I find the concepts of «the eye of the storm» and «my home is within me» shared by you, @Harvey Lloyd and @Deb Lange intriguing. These concepts are particularly relevant to fast-paced organizations that are undergoing constant change. One of the implications is that organizations need to create quiet spaces of calm for reflection. These can be actual physical spaces within the office or envelopes of time that are earmarked as quiet time. The «quiet hour» should be an envelope of time for a couple of hours after lunch when employees book no meetings and phones go through to voice mail. This can be once a week, a couple of times a week or a literal hour every day after lunch. I think of it as an oasis, a place of calm and growth in the midst of turbulence. If you have ever visited the waterfall gardens at the Sheraton Centre Hotel in downtown Toronto, that is exactly what I envision both physically and metaphorically.

From these quiet spaces employees can pause, reflect, and emerge refreshed with ideas to resolve some of the challenges they are facing or pressing organizational issues. After all «oasis» is, first and foremost, a state of mind and being». Is Anne suggesting a structure similar to the Ice lens structure? If so, we have the possibility of having «pockets» or «lenses» structure to reflect and ignite the straw of ideas beneath. I responded to the comment of Anne in part as follows», I felt my head turning with surprise having finished reading your first comment. This in an incredibly comment with its «brainy power». I am bewildered by your comment not only because of its depth, but because it went deep in....guess what? By your writing «One of the implications is that organizations need to create quiet spaces of calm for reflection». I am truly too stunned to focus on writing this comment. I am currently preparing a new post with the initial title one of the following titles. These titles are «Pockets of Time» or «Time Lens». The theme that I plan to focus on is having pockets of time to reflect and why using a metaphor from nature. I hope that I kept my promise.

The mention of the «the eye of the storm» by Anne reminded me of the buzz of Ian Weinberg titled «A stillness in the eye of eternity». This is a very deep and insightful article. I am planning to write a buzz about it. However; this buzz is getting too long and now I am focusing on the word eye- eye of the storm and eye of eternity. The background image drove my attention to the very interesting work of Rose-Lynn Fisher on «topography of tears». This research has found that images using a scanning electron microscope from frozen tears reflect their predominant emotions. The topography of the tears shows that the degree of complexity we humans live in.

Our bodies excrete chemicals in line with our emotions. Stressed people have different structural pattern of tears than relaxed people. I wonder what patterns the eye of eternity would have. These findings also provide a great support of what Anne called for. Her call for relaxation should give the pattern of those of relaxed people. We shouldn›t wait to relax. An added note is that turtles don›t have tears. The drops of tears are just the salt the turtles release to get rid of the salt from the waters they live in. These tears don›t reflect how turtles feel.

I still have more thoughts- but the buzz got so long. I defer the rest of the ideas for another buzz.

The eyes of eternity, of the storm and of our bodies reveal much more than we may think of. In your eyes, how do you find this buzz? I would love to hear from you.

I dedicate this buzz to Anne Thornley-Brown for she has been an instrumental force in her inspiration for me to write this buzz. I thank you Anne heartedly.

4544

Put Your Head Deep in Your Pocket

In my previous buzz I shared my inspiration of seeing a relationship between ice crystals and the shells of turtles. Soon afterwards Sara Jacobovici published a buzz and the image below. Sara wrote in her buzz «The picture of the fireworks turtle is an image I found that reminded me of what @Ali Anani writes in his buzz «Pockets of Creative Thoughts».

The fractal image of repeating patterns looked to me as pockets and reminded me of what I discussed in my buzz about pockets of time. However; my mind stretched more in the domain of pockets. I found myself asking with what we fill our pockets of time. We all have fractal pockets, but do we keep the beauty of these fractals by filling them with useful thoughts and hence actions? My journey of inquiry started.

There are many animals that have pockets (small bags). One animal is the seahorse. The female seahorse spouts eggs in the pocket of the male seahorse. The pocket is filled with eggs for reproduction. We may fill our pockets of time with fertile eggs of ideas so that we may produce more ideas and creative ones too. This is creation in action.

What if eggs are filled in dirty pockets? We may get inspiration from the Marsupials (animals with many pockets). Some of these animals exude antimicrobial liquid in their pockets

before fertilizing. We need to keep our pockets of time free of microbes as well if we are to keep «the eggs of ideas» healthy so that they may deliver «healthy ideas babies». It is unfortunate that we contaminate our pockets of time with negative thinking instead of having clear and clean pockets. No wonder then that placing even great ideas in infected pockets that we get poor idea product. Fertilizing ideas in unclean pockets simply doesn›t work. When we set aside pockets of time to relax and kick the microbes out of the pockets we must ensure that we do this perfectly well. That is why I go to nature where I feel all negative ideas are poured out of my pockets and then the eggs of new ideas fill the clean pockets.

We need to clean our pockets of silence from the microbial noisesAli Anani, PhDSome animals show us how to create pockets. The Sea Otter is one example. This animal folds its loose skin to form two pockets. And what do they keep in these pockets? They keep a piece of rock to break eggshells. So, do we need rocks in our pockets to «break the shells of solid ideas»?

Some trees have pockets. However; these pockets are due to bacterial attack like the brown pockets you see on maple leaves. These bacteria sneak in through any wound in the tree. These bacteria thrive in low-oxygen environment and infect the tree for many years. Not only that, they produce chemicals with very nasty smells. I liken toxic employees as the employees «who thrive in low-oxygen environment». They seek weak points to sneak in and once they do they form dirty pockets of associations that last for long times. The best cure is prevention by not allowing the formation of weak points in the organization so that these toxic employees may be not allowed in.

We say put your hands deep in your pocket. It is about time that we also we put our heads in the pockets of time. It is our choice to put our heads in clean pockets or not.

4746

The Wave-Based Strategies

In my previous buzz I shared my inspiration of seeing a relationshipDo strategic thinking and poetry have a meeting point, or are they an ocean apart from each other? My eyes fell on a poem by Franci Eugenia Hoffman on bee titled «Clouds of Time» and the picture of molecular clouds jumped in my head. Is there a similarity between clouds of time and clouds of molecules? As soon as I started reading the opening lines of the poem:

You know, it wasn’t that long ago

Clouds of time scattered your mind

Life, indeed, not tied with a bow

There were the highs and also the lows

I found my thinking scattered. Time is like a wave with highs and lows. It is at this point the poem scattered my mind and I am trying to focus them again. Waves have series of troughs with each trough followed by a crest. Waves are phenomenal and have many hidden secrets. Birds use them to navigate their migration when flying over the sea. More stunning may be is the findings that flying birds don›t follow a leader or the neighboring

birds; instead, they anticipate sudden changes in the flock’s direction of motion zoologist Wayne Potts who first published on this observation added «once a change in direction begins in the flock, it then “spreads through the flock in a wave.” Birds follow sea waves and make their own waves while flying. Waves are everywhere. Birds follow them and make them. The propagation of this manoeuvre wave, as he called it, begins relatively slowly but can reach speeds three times faster than would be possible if birds were simply reacting to their immediate neighbors. Potts called this ability among flocking birds the chorus line hypothesis.

https://youtu.be/eakKfY5aHmY

Life is about waves. Birds travel in waves. The stock markets move in waves. Our breath pattern is wave-like. Sound and light travel in waves. Molecules create waves. Water moves in waves and these are just few examples. The question that jumped to my mind is do we need strategies that move in waves and how? To answer these questions we need I searched other forms of flying and the two relevant examples I found are the Albatrosses and pelicans and how they fly. White pelicans, like turkey vultures, rise up on thermals (pillows of hot air), wheeling around in great circles–up, up, up. Then they drop, floating downward–losing altitude while gaining distance. Pelicans also take advantage of strong winds and wave action by a flight strategy called dynamic soaring. Actually, the true masters of this are albatrosses, which can fly for days without flapping. These birds take advantage of the slight air pressure differences created by rising and falling waves. They rise against the air backed up by the wave crest and then drop down again. Life moves in waves and when we feel desperate and fall in the trough we should remember it is this trough that shall eventually push us up to the crest. We don›t need to follow the crowd and remain authentic by moving against the wind and we don›t even need flapping. I wonder what the flapping butterfly effect would disappear when we fly without flapping!

The clouds are colored. Birds feathers are colored even though some of them have no pigment. It is the reflection of light waves that gives the feathers some very interesting colors.

From the cloud waves that reflect a wide range of colors to the flying birds that fly against the wind and without flapping their wings to save energy we may develop new thinking strategies of different colors..

4948

Listen to the Lesson of Leysen

I like writing that send me in a mood of metaphorical imagination. May be best is to show by example first. These are extracts from the buzz of Liesbeth Leysen titled «Running Rivers».

She slept like a rose

Fragrance of a new adventure

Sometimes there were simply no answers in life

‹I crave you›, said the mirror

He sensed that she could handle it. ‹You are unstoppable, my darling›, was this his thought, or hers? The phrase turned around in her mind, spreading its force everywhere. Suddenly her energy level was higher than ever.

River running without any hesitation

Her sensual lips curling deliciously like a fine woman sculpture made by Michelangelo.

The universe showing its endless beauty. Making the impossible possible

I then decided to get more extracts from another buzz of Liesbeth. This time from her buzz «Haunted By The Unexplainable».

Her heart reacted. Her breathing faster. Suddenly it was very quiet. So quiet. As if the whole

universe was frozen.The sun uncovered the secret.His name echoed in her thoughts. Scenes playedThe unexplainable was playing with her mind.These extracts tell me a lot about Liesbeth and are an example of my saying our writing act as a mirror to our personality. Liesbeth has a wide imagination and her words are like a camera picturing events without saying a lot. I would say that Liesbeth doesn›t like controlling people because she follows no controls in her writings. She writes in short and imaginative lines that have no verbs. Incomplete sentences that make complete sense is the paradox that she masters.

I wonder how patient is Liesbeth because of the shortness of her sentences. I feel as if her sentences have wings and fly. Most of the sentences average less than five words. As I wrote earlier it is her imaginative writing power that makes her write with a camera rather than a pen. This is the proof in the result of analyzing her second-mentioned buzz, which shows the following:

Number of words :765.00

Number of sentences :149.00

Average number of characters per word :4.20

Average number of syllables per word :1.39

Average number of words per sentence:5.13

Flesch Kincaid Grade level :2.78

(three years of academic years are enough to make her well-understood).The word cloud for the same buzz is as follows:

Postit is a repeating theme in Liesbeth›s buzzes. You can see the prominent words in her writing in bold and size of words in her buzz. The mixture of emotions include smiled, sound, louder, grabbed, warm, quiet reflect her ability to see the warm and cold emotions and use them to her advantage.

Liesbeth teaches us that in simplicity we gain hearts.

5150

5352

Be Transparent, or Not

I was writing a buzz on senses when the idea of this buzz interrupted me and I found it so capturing that I decided to write this one first.

The birth of the idea came from olive trees and oil. Olive tree needs sunlight to carry photosynthesis; yet its olive oil shouldn›t be exposed to sunlight because if it does it shall lose some of its aroma and may even degrade. The sunlight is desired for the olive tree and not much so for its olive oil product. To remain transparent the olive oil must not be stored in transparent bottles or exposed to the sunlight. Exposure to light also causes the breakdown of antioxidants leading to the deterioration of the olive oil. Transparency can be harmful!

We need to be transparent and yet we may lose our transparency if we are exposed to the sunlight of reality. This is a paradox that got me thinking. Is transparency always a good thing to abide by? There are animal species some of which are transparent and others are not. Is this transparency put for good use?

The first example that came to my mind is the startling behavior of the Sea Salp. These small organisms have the shape of barrels. They may live individually or attach together to form a unique illuminating chain. Just watch the video below to see what these almost about 10-4 cm long organisms can do collectively.

Transparency may have other useful uses such as giving buoyancy. One example is snails.

These snails excrete transparent mucus from their feet to form a raft that help them float on water in the upside down position. Transparency requirements that keep them float in the upside down position. Does transparency cause us to do the same sometimes?

Do we need transparency all the times and regardless of where we live? The marine organisms are sometimes only translucent to avoid predators. Plants change their leaves color and size depending on where they live.

In arid zones leaves are small with red pigmentation; shade plants are large and green. Plants growing in shade often show differences compared with plants of the same species growing in full sunlight. Do we need to be transparent in the same way or could this be adapted in shape and functionality to cope with the prevailing cultures in organizations? If the prevailing culture is full of transparency would it require an adaptation different than organizations whose prevailing culture is shady?

Does transparency have different faces?

5554

The butterfly effect of collaboration

While preparing a lecture on complexity the idea of showing examples from nature popped up. Two examples from nature that seemed distant from each other proved to be related. I refer here the complexity of sand dunes and ant›s colonies. It amazes me how these seemingly unrelated «societies» have much in common. More, these two examples show us how small acts of collaboration a butterfly effect in which unexpected and overwhelming results may emerge.

Let me start with the ants› colonies example. Ants collaborate in many ways to build their nests, to prevent their sinking in water and to build bridges from their bodies to speed their forage excursions. Recent studies have revealed the simple rules to which every single ant abides by without having a central authority. These three simple rules or guidelines are:

1. The ants should pick up grains of sand at a constant rate

2. To drop the collected grains near other grains to form a pillar, and

3. To preferentially select grains that were handled by other ants (they have a smell from the excretion of certain pheromones).

Equally amazing is the ants› ability to change excavation rules depending on the type of soil they encounter to build their nests. Simple rules allow for the emergence of wonderful ants› nests. Ants know how to build castles from sand grains. Equally striking the ants protect their nests. Guard ants hold themselves at the mouths of tunnels to seal the moisture into the nest. In extreme temperatures these ants forgo their lives in order to keep those inside safe.

The collaboration of ants extends into many facets of their lives using simple rules. This has a price. Collectively, the ants can build and defend their nests; individually they are less able to face an approaching predator. For the sake of the colony, the individual must be ready to sacrifice.

There is no collaboration without effective communication. The queen ants are characterized by a coating of chemicals. It doesn›t pass orders as a central authority. The division of labor follows simple rules. Young ants work in the nest. Worker ants go for foraging. Some ants build bridged of their bodies to accelerate the reach to the food source. Ants allow individual ants to choose the work they enjoy most, interactions with other ants and the needs of the environment. Some ants are ready to sacrifice their lives if needed during harsh weathers to save the lives of young ants inside.

The amazing fact is now the similarity of self-organizing in both ants and sand dunes. Sand dunes show wavy patterns. Studies have shown that such ripples self-organize. They do not result from some predetermined pattern in the wind that is somehow impressed on the surface, but rather from the dynamics of individual grains in motion across the surface. The sand grains slowly organize themselves into more regular waves whose low crests are aligned perpendicular to the wind direction and begin to march slowly downwind. This is a very interesting finding as sand grains don›t communicate; yet they self-organize to produce sand ripples of repeating patterns. Is self-organizing then a force with such strength so that even sand grains may be prompted to self-organize?

The power of self-organizing is amazing. Look at ants carrying more than ten times their weight of objectives. An individual ant is weak; in self-organized ants collaboration makes a giant out of the weak. It is the butterfly effect of collaboration leading to self-organizing.

The «I» mentality in humans may be the main barrier to adapting to the environment by all individuals so that the effort of collaboration may show the butterfly effect. Transparency is following simple rules by all individuals so that new structures may emerge. Ants build varieties of colony structures by following same rules and by adapting to the soil and climate requirements. Are humans less able to do so?

5756

Simple Rules Are the Anchors for Emergence

While reading a quote by David O. McKay my mind started nagging me. The quote reads:We sow our thought>>>> we reap our actionsWe sow our actions>>> we reap our habitsWe sow our habits>>> we reap our charactersI felt the beauty of this quote with the simultaneity that we may add to it. The main addition is related to our purpose in life and whether we want to be self-centered, or if we want to use our talents and knowledge in growing others. Having a great purpose expands on our horizons and allows more room for interchange of ideas. We don›t remain as silos of different talents if we devote them to help others grow. When people grow they help us grow. So, in order to create space for interactions I found myself adding the first line to the above quote to read:We sow our purpose>>> we reap our thoughtsWe sow our thought>>>> we reap our actionsWe sow our actions>>> we reap our habitsWe sow our habits>>> we reap our characters.If we have the purpose right, our thoughts shall be right and our actions shall be right. If our actions are rights then we may build healthy habits and build great characters. It is the lack of greater than we purpose that ends up in our adopting bad habits and faulty characters.

“Without a clearly defined purpose, we are just a haphazard combination of goals and non-goals, actions and non-actions meandering through space and time.” Brad KlontzThe above discussion reminds me of the great comment No. 54 that Harvey Lloyd wrote on my previous post. Harvey wrote in his comment «That word again «purpose». The ants serve the queen, without fail, with their lives and without the self gratification mentioned

by Robert Cormack. The duality you and Sara Jacobovici have discussed is the challenge to purpose. The ants do not engage in such duality. They have a singularity of purpose. The ant serves the community and the community serves the ant.

If I am building my brand and you are building yours, can a higher purpose really be served?

The rules would have to establish that my brand is based on the communities› success. Most animals require a habitat and the basic elements of existence. Humans have the same but we also have a higher level of social need. This social need requires us to exist cohesively within a community, yet personal brands are sometimes in direct conflict with this need».

If you wish to explore the depth of the comment of Harvey then I strongly advise you to watch the video below and see how serving others leads to self-organizing and the emergence of great patterns. Have a grand purpose shall lead to the coherence and resilience of any society to challenges and hard times.

We might think of satisfying our own needs. This shall be a limiting factor. Watch this video. It shows six hungry puppies interacting as they normally do: randomly. However, when milk is given to them in a single bowl, an excellent example of emergent behavior is produced. Even if the puppies show emerging behavior and pinwheel pattern; still they are limiting their space by fighting over milk. We humans may compete, but also restrict or expansion.

I see the simple rule of having a purpose to serve others is a cornerstone in our development. Simple rules are everywhere and they are the rules that birds, for example, abide by and allow them to form great flying patterns. The rules are derived from the desire to serve others. In our changing world in which everything almost changes it is the simple rules that should remain invariant. They are the anchors to our development and the emergence of new habits, solid characters and opening of new horizons.

If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations.If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities.If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors.If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home.If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart.

Laozi

Peace in the heart starts by loving for others what you love for yourself.

5958

Why I really didn›t leave beBee?

My memory takes me back to the early seventies of the last century. That time I was a fresh PhD graduate. My first job was a lecturer at the chemistry department of the University of Petroleum and Minerals in Saudi Arabia. I had great times and profitable relationship with my peers. My relationship with the students was outstanding. Upon the completion of my two years contract I decided that I wanted to do more scientific research. I accepted an offer from the Kuwait Institute for Scientific Research and resigned from the university. The students tried their best to withdraw my resignation. One day I found an envelope on the doorstep of my apartment. I t turned out to be a heart-breaking call from the students urging me to stay. The letter was written in both languages in Arabic and English. The English translation read as follows:

«If somebody leaves some people when they could have him stay with them then shame on those people».Author in Source TitleNo matter what I departed, but the touching emotions remained very positively engraved in my heart. Leaving a social platform is the same for me. You may stay or leave, but it is different if you leave to do so with a sweet smell in the heart. I left LinkedIn after almost three years having contributed more than 165 posts. I have some bitter tastes in my mouth, but I should never forget that LI gave me the exposure to thousand of readers. We tend to forget the good things and highlight the negative ones and I think this isn›t very ethical. I enjoy being on beBee far greater than I was on LI, but still I had my share of joy and disappointments. I see it immoral to deny the good experiences and focus alone on the negative ones.

I have connections that left beBee. One example is Anees Zaidi. He is a prolific writer and

a great human to deal with. I haven›t read a comment or read a buzz by him for months now. He departed (and hopefully not for long) quietly and without noise. We can make our absence noisy, but this is a short-lived approach. It is like a kid swimming in water and splashing the water around to draw attention. Sooner, he shall annoy people and see him as noisy. People shall pay attention to noisy people, but soon the noise shall be ineffective. You decide in which color your leaves look like when you leave.

Nobody will make me stay in a place unless I feel I am desired to. Upon leaving and if I do I shall carry with me my great memories and good times. If for any reason I decide to leave beBee (and surely not) I shall remember the great exchanges of comments, ideas, the challenges, the pumps, the sweet and the sour. If not, why the hell I accepted to publish on beBee platform to start with? The fact that I have been on beBee for more than a year means I at least experienced some great moments. If I leave and start cursing beBee this simply reflects on me. Nobody forced me to stay that long on a decaying platform unless I wanted to.

Remember to leave only when people want you to stay. This is the real test. To leave on your terms and then start cursing the place you «lived in» will surely question the quality of the person who is cursing more than the place being cursed.

6160

A give on a give

Preston Vander Ven wrote a great buzz on Top Ways to Market Yourself on beBee. Javier beBee wrote a buzz in response to this buzz titled «Give without expecting anything in return». In his buzz Javier wrote «Give. This is important to do on any social networking site, not just beBee, but it’s particularly important to do on here. It is human nature for people to be focused on wanting to receive something for themselves or their business. Give before you take- is this a wise advice?

Before responding I want to highlight one important fact. Not all actions in this world are completely reversible and they may favor one direction. To explain this fact visually I refer to a buzz by Louise Smith. The buzz shared the following image:

Imagine this situation now. You have a person with his feeling thermometer is 1. This person meets with a colleague with whom he had recently a conflict with. This second man has his feeling thermometer reading 10. Now, ask yourself this simple question. Would person one with feeling thermometer 1 talk to person 2 with same thermometer reading 10? Or, would it be better if the second out of control person start talking first? Is the same A talking to B or if B talks to A? Well, we never add cold water to boiling oil and it is much safer if we add boiling oil to cold water gradually. If not, the oil shall splash and cause us burns. It is one way- add B to A.

So, this discussion leads me to give and take. Give first and then take or take first and then give. They aren›t the same. Taking the right direction is immensely important. I discovered this and showed why it is give and then take. You may read my presentation on Fixed Vs. Variable and see ample proofs why it should be give and then take.

Click on the image to go to the presentationI give many real life examples of my own experiences in the presentation why it should be give before you take. I don›t need to repeat them here. I only explain the common rational here. If I recommend and comment on the buzzes of one author and share them Even, I write a buzz on a buzz then how much cost in time or money this will infect on the author? Zero cost for getting the attention of his work. The delight of the author is a maximum while the cost or pain is zero. Now divide the benefit or delight (maximum) over the cost or pain (0) and the result is infinite delight. When we make people delightful we send them in the mood to acknowledge and eventually they shall respond wholeheartedly by commenting and sharing on my buzzes. Give infinite delight to your fellow bees and eventually you shall take their gratitude.It is not take and then give. It doesn›t work. You want the proof? See the reaction to this buzz.

6362

Why the Best Make the Worst?

It surprises me sometimes to have experienced the following:

· A notable trainer giving training on time management. The trainees distracted him to the extent that he discussed many business issues, but not time management.

· A famous professor lecturing on change management for an organization. Two years later he gave the same training to the same company using exactly same slides. As if nothing changed in the world in two years.

· A trainer giving training on marketing to a big company. All his examples focused on sales.

· A university professor teaching statistics to second year students. All his students dropped the course. Upon his replacement with a teacher with less qualification he got the same students engaged.

· Norwich City Football Club got promoted to the Premier League with a coach who wasn›t he football player.

Why the best fail to produce the best? In fact, they could produce the worst. This paradox that the best oozes the worst kept my mind busy over the weekend. Ali Anani, PhDIntoxicated SensesOne reason that occurred to me is that may be the senses of the qualified people may be intoxicated by focusing on the technical staff and leaving out the spiritual part, the purpose part and the communication part. I still recall the great discussions I exchanged with Sara Jacobovici, Fatima G. Williams and then Franci Eugenia Hoffman on the importance of the triad factor WPD (Wonderment, Passion, Drive). These discussions resulted in the establishment of the WPD Hive. Which of these elements did the professors lack to fail miserably and making their worse?

Phil Johnson, MBL wrote recently a lively buzz on beBee in which he wrote «Employees start giving away their power as they walk through their company’s front door. In our rapidly expanding global economy emotional labor is now worth far more than the intellectual labor pursuits of the industrial and information ages». Is part of the problem of the best producing their worst because of the lack of passion and drive leading others to lose same qualities?

Harvey Lloyd made a fitting comment on my last buzz «A hive of ideas». Harvey wrote in his comment «You were there, I saw you @Ali Anani, you were at the brink of the fundamental aspects of our society propelling it forward. The rules from your previous posts and comments are the foundation of spreading our seeds. More importantly the rules help us explore new places of planting. Your word «rules», i believe you thought there might be three, can be interchanged with perception, goals or success.

What we do should be guided by «why» we are doing it in the first place. The rules of social existence establish the «why». All of this to say that each of us require a meaning that we can hang on to and master. In our current phase we are looking for unique meaning in which to expand our thoughts and social interactions».

Do we fail when we lack unique meaning for what we do? I believe this issue is pressing because we might all fail in the trap of becoming better only to produce worse? This is a paradox that warrants our attention.

I invite you to share your thoughts.

6564

A Hive of Ideas

Ideas may blow in our minds abruptly. I experienced this while reading a buzz by David B. Grinberg on «Spread the Honey». Honey is viscous and spreading it may be challenging as much as rewarding. If not done properly, the spread may cause problems. On what surface to spread the honey is also an issue. However; a big question remains: who is willing to spread the honey?

My mind travelled to some trees that spread their seeds. Can we see any relationship between spreading honey and trees spreading their seeds? A buzz is like a seed and we may learn from the ways trees spread their seeds to spread buzzes and other seeds of beBee.

We may revert to some cunning ways of spreading seeds. If we depend on one source of spreading them we may better be cautious of hidden harms. Let me explain by example. The Apple Tree of Death looks innocent; in reality every part of it is poisonous and including its milky sap. The tree depends mainly in growing in clusters along coasts and depends on water to spread its seeds. It doesn›t depend on animals or humans to do the spreading. It

becomes very toxic for self-defense. It doesn›t need us. We need to stay away from it. We too should realize that we need to spread seeds of ideas that don›t come from toxic sources. It is trust that shall motivate us to spread buzzes and only when they come from trusted bees. Authors should do their utmost to keep the trust of others to spread their contributions. Nobody shall be willing to spread poisoned honey.

Once we gain the trust it is possible to spread the seeds. Not all seeds are the same. Some seeds need to be carried by water, air animals or waters. They don›t spread like honey or paints. By sticking the seeds to passing animals, the animals move away and in the process carry the seeds to different locations. Can we develop similar ideas by which passing readers would stick the seeds? This is what I experienced while reading the buzz of David B. Grinberg. I am now in effect distributing his buzz in the process of writing this buzz.

How ethical is it to use a sweet and sour strategy to spread buzzes? Plants have hidden agenda. For example, the cashew has a sweet and juicy stem but a toxic seed, so monkeys eat the fleshy stem and discard the seed. We may write a buzz with a similar approach. The readers may enjoy the sweet part, but discard the sour part by writing comments and circulating the buzz not for the sake of spreading it, but for the sake of spreading their criticism. In the process, the seeds of the original buzz spread. People love to spread the word about things they love and hate. However; mixing the two together might form an efficient way of spreading. I expect even a synergistic effect to emerge. This is a fertile land to explore in a greater depth.

People love stories. They love sharing them as well. They love stories that move them emotionally and cause their tears to flow. If you want a message to spread then you may consider what some plants do. Wind carrying light seeds or seeds with parachute like structure travel long distances and flourish. Dandelion plants use this strategy. You may consider writing a buzz or message about beBee in which you have immersed the seeds for other ideas. These seeds must be mind-blowing to fly with the wind. Your readers might get blown-away and carry the seeds long distances and spread them to unthinkable places.

One last point- spreading the seeds of beBee into different minds might require different nurturing. Not all seeds grow similarly under prevailing climatic conditions. You know to know where to spread your seeds. You may spread the seeds of beBee in hostile climates. Or, in places that have little sunlight and the seeds require plentiful sunlight. Not all spreading works efficiently.

The challenges of spreading are great; however, it is from these difficulties that emerge creative solutions. Plants found the solutions and we can do much better. Spread the challenge and create the solution.

66

Windy Ideas Make Waves