Curiouser and Curiouser! on culture

How not to succeed at Consulting

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 22:59:55 +0100

How to Succeed at Consulting. Nice take on how consultants can really help your company. [Blunt Force Trauma]

» Tom DeMarco describes the effects of a "rank & yank" culture very well in his book Slack. It creates a culture of fear where no-one is prepared to help anyone else for fear of falling down and being one of the "yanks."

In his book The E-Myth revisited Michael Gerber talks about a totally different hiring policy. Based around the idea of a turn-key operation with fully documented processes he recommends hiring not A-graders but people who have the skills to do the job and are willing to play the game you have created for them.

It's certainly a different way of thinking.

Collaboration: It's all about people

Tue, 16 Jul 2002 23:36:51 +0100

Located (with thanks) through Column Two:

Technology Confined Collaboration? increasingly, this is the story I'm told. The folks at the big software companies would have you believe that software is always pristine and perfect, and that organizations and their staid cultures are the barriers to reaching collaborative nirvana. Don't believe the hype. When it comes to collaboration, technology (and more precisely, technology architecture) can doom the best laid plans around enterprise collaboration. I've written about it here... [Michael Helfrich's Radio Weblog]

[Ron Lusk: Ron's K-Logs]

» Definitely:

"Collaboration is about people. Collaboration needs technology frameworks that support adaptive, ad hoc interactions. Adaptive from the sense of extending functionality on the fly and securely embracing new members on the fly. Simply put, it's the swarming culture fused with adaptive technology."

and think that ad hoc interactions are the key. As long as ad hoc implies that the technology works with the way you want to work now (rather than you fitting in with how the technology wants to work today!)

Fixing intranets with klogs

Sun, 18 Aug 2002 22:31:55 +0100

Fixing intranets. It's interesting how the same issues seem to come up in bunches. Over the last month, I have now talked... [Column Two]

» James has written an interesting post about some of the common problems with intranets that he encounters with his clients. As someone interested in how klogging (I'll use the term for now!) could affect the role of intranets and content management his issues seem particularly relevant to me. In preface to my remarks I should point out that I am choosing to address static content rather than the possible dynamic web applications you might find on a typical intranet.

The issues, re-ordered slightly to suit my responses, are:

The intranet has grown over time.
Manual processes (using Frontpage or Dreamweaver) are used to publish pages.
A lot of information has been published, but the site isn't being used.
There is little high-level structure, and users are not able to find information.

1. If you want a logical hierarchical structure then organic growth is a problem. It's like running water, it flows down along the path of least resistance and doesn't care about the direction. Same with people, they'll squirrel stuff anywhere that makes sense today (have you taken a good look at your my "My Documents" directory lately?). Of course if you're klogging then this organic growth is part of the package. Whether that bothers you is probably a factor of points (2), (3), and (4).

2. This is most obviously solved by klogging software. It's one of the fundamentals.

3. Hard to say but I guess much of the information published may be of low quality. In my experience no matter how hard publishing to an intranet can be, creating information is harder still. This leads to variable quality in that information. Variable quality leads to low usage. Low usage provides little incentive for new information to be created and so on.

Klogging address this in two ways I think:

When you have something to publish it's dead easy: click, type, click.
You can publish in bite-size chunks. This means that if you have a small but useful piece of information you can just klog it. You don't have to pad it into a long document to make it worthwhile. You also don't have to find "just the right place" for it to go, it just gets klogged. That chunk can exist in it's own right, waiting for the day someone needs it.

Which brings us rather neatly to (4)

4. As it stands klogging is a decentralizing technology that doesn't encourage a formal hierarchical structure. You klog and, if all goes according to plan, people will subscribe to you and they will link to you. Will they be the right people? Does it make information any easier to locate? Not automatically no. But then hierarchical structures don't necessarily make life any easier. Once a hierarchy is more than about 2 levels deep it can cause it's own navigation issues.

Some people might argue that a healthy klogging culture coupled with a Google search appliance (or any search engine that has a pageranking algorithm I guess) could well make it easier to find what you're looking for. I think theres something to be said for that.

My own approach is to allow for easy metadata-enabling of klogs. My hope is that combining klogs with topic maps will allow new structures to be grown from them automagically. This can complement the pagerank based search and provide new ways of finding and traversing group knowledge.

So should you scrap the intranet and replace it with klogs?

I don't think so. But perhaps you should think carefully about what you want your intranet to achieve and whether some of your goals for information publishing and dissemination couldn't be better achieved with a klogging strategy.

A kloggers strength...

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 18:44:09 +0100

Lunch break: switching from work to reflection...

Curiouser and curiouser! in You cannot make people smarter:

My fear is that klogging will only thrive in organisations that are healthy, and that there may not be enough of them. Or, worse, that klogging will thrive as a control mechanism imposed by insecure and fearful management. I don't want to be a part of that.

I don't think that klogging could be imposed: in "no trust culture" even if someone asks me what I'm thinking about, I can always say something else. If imposed, klogs can only capture formal activities, that in many cases go to all kinds of reports in any case.

Klogs can turn in a new kind of reporting tool. This could be not so bad if it replaces all other reports. If we think about klogs as project management tool, why not to extent it to the reporting tool?

Finally, I would put it broader: I don't want to be a part of unhealthy (in cultural sense) organisation. I simply wouldn't be able to realise my ambitions in this case.

[Mathemagenic]

» I feel I should clarify my remark.

I agree that valuable klogging activity cannot be imposed, I am worried about the darker aspects of klogging techniques as they might be employed by weak and insecure management.

To paraphase a master of KM:

"Remember, a Klogger's strength flows from the Force. But beware. Anger, fear, agression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever it will dominate your destiny."

My hope is that they're all too busy giving their employees random drug tests and installing spy cameras to figure out what we're doing.

KM implies culture change

Fri, 06 Sep 2002 09:13:09 +0100

Fostering Change Without Getting Fired.

You may want to check out Tempered Radicals by Debra Meyerson. She writes about the experiences of people who have decided to create change within a work place that doesn't match their values rather than leave the company. She focuses mostly on creating change on issues such as diversity, fair-trade products, family-friendly work hours, etc. However, I think the strategies that she discusses are just as valid and useful for trying to move an organization towards a more knowledge-based organizational culture.

Her key themes are: leading by example, small early wins, turning threats into change opportunities, and taking a long view. No quick fixes, I'm afraid.

[High Context]

» Effective take up of knowledge management practices is going to have to go hand-in-hand with organisational development. Interestingly at yesterdays Knowledge Cafe meeting one of the topics that came up was strategies for persuading decision makers that Knowledge Management was even worth investing in. This was a slightlly disappointing revelation as I had hoped the battle lines were drawn a little further forward than that.

Digesting knowledge management technology

Tue, 15 Oct 2002 20:43:23 +0100

Over today I've been digesting Knowledge Management Technology by A. D. Marwick

It was an interesting although in some ways unsatisfying read. I found the earlier more general sections more interesting and useful than the later sections which actually analysed the technology. That may be because I had more to learn from those earlier sections.

Some preliminary thoughts:

"Knowledge" in this context includes both the experience and understanding of the people in the organisation and the information artifacts, such as documents and reports available within the organisation and in the world outside.

» We value experience and tend to reward it commensurately. In a down economy headcount reduction is often used to pair down expenditure but at the same time it tends to pair down experience. Investment in knowledge management (particularly tacit->tacit and tacit->explicit) is a defensive tactic for dealing with this. For the same reason it could be viewed as a hostile technology by staff who might see themselves as being "in the firing line."

Tacit knowledge is actionable knowledge.

» Not sure I understand this point. Is explicit knowledge not actionable? I guess I'm going to have to understand the term 'actionable knowledge' a little better.

The key to knowledge creation lies in the mobilization and conversion of tacit knowledge.

» A key point from Nonaka.

Creation of new knowledge takes place through the processes of combination and internalization.

» An interesting point. Ref Nonaka, Internalization is defined as:

explicit -> tacit (e.g. learn from a report)

Combation as:

explicit -> explicit (e.g. e-mail a report)

Need to think more on this. I'm not quite there.

Knowledge sharing is often done without ever producing explicit knowledge and, to be most effective, should take place between people who have a common culture and can work together effectively.

» Follow up the Davenport & Prusak reference.

It would be interesting to study the cultural differences and similarities of groups of webloggers who are sharing knowledge successfully. What are the interesting cultural segments in blogland?

Externalization (tacit->explicit): By it's nature, tacit knowledge is difficult to convert into explicit knowledge. Through conceptualization, elicitation, and ultimately articulation, typically in collaboration with others, some proportion of a person's tacit knowledge may be captured in explicit form. Typical activities in which the conversion takes place are dialog among team members, in responding to questions, or through the elicitation of stories.

» Key section.

We're in the meat of klogging here. Attempting to convert our mental models into text the better to share and collaborate with others.

Note: elicitation of stories in this sense could just as well be capturing best practice,...

For example, knowledge creation results from interaction of persons and tacit and explicit knowledge.

» Seems to contradict the earlier point slightly. This one makes more sense to me.

Through interaction with other, tacit knowledge is externalized and shared.

» A key goal must therefore to be to make sure that we are able to interact with the right people and that our information is in a form that is suitable for sharing.

Free text is obviously the most flexible but as many others have observed it may be useful to have templates that provide some form. This might also be useful for introducing those who aren't comfortable with the idea of writing what they think.

Rick Klau made an interesting observation when we met up. To get people into klogging provide them with the Radio aggregator and simply tell them to re-post any item they think is interesting.

This is sharing at it's simplest. In my view once someone gets the hang of this they will make the next step - adding a simple commentary - themself. Even if it is just one word here and there.

What will be required to get full engagement will be an issue that they feel the need to speak out on. A weblog is not just a bunch of text, it is a voice.

the greatest value occurs from their (the 4 processes) combination since, as already noted, new knowledge is thereby created, disseminated, and internalized by other employees who can therefore act on it, and thus form new experiences and tacit knowledge that can in turn be shared with others and so on.

» I think in reading this I was again reminded of the question: What is the value of new knowledge, of a new idea. This idea of creating new knowledge doesn't seem as if it will play well in the downturn "evolution not revolution" "fix the leaky pipes" mindset.

It's far more in tune with the "!garyhamel" mindset: Coming up with discontinuities that create new markets.

In any case, automatic extraction of deep knowledge from documents is an elusive goal.

» True. Although it will be interesting to see what tools like "!cyc" will be able to do as they mature.

However, the candidate pieces of extracted knowledge must still be presented to a human for review and final decision, so that the value of the system is in increasing the productivity of the human analysts.

» Yep

The greatest difficulty in knowledge management identified by the respondents in a survey was "changing peoples behaviour" and the current biggest impedement to knowledge transfer was "culture."

» Key point.

There is little technology can do about culture. This maybe shouldn't worry us since because, as Seb pointed out in a recent post (regarding a Darwin article), "Natural selection will take care of those companies (and individuals) who can't or won't do it".

Technology can come to bear on behaviour though. Two enablers will be:

software that encourages & supports behavioural change

software that requires less behavioural change

as appropriate.

Ackerman refers to this situation as a "social technical gap."

» This is the gap that good software must attempt to bridge. Current paradigm weblog software is I think a step forwards and a step backwards.

Forwards in that it supports the right behaviour, but backwards in that the key to weblogging is writing and hence it smacks straight into the barriers discussed recently about "why won't people write."

Shared experiences are in important basis for the formation and sharing of tacit knowledge.

» Again this relates back to the point about culture. A shared culture implies a set of common experiences that form the culture. Hence why storytelling is important. So we need tools that support shared experience and, hence, the capturing of context. (Again this relates to my recent reading on best practices)

A richer kind of shared experience can be provided by applications that support real-time on-line meetings (i.e. groupware)

» Yep. I've just been musing on an IM client I would like to have to support richer online collaboration than "just text". Also Marc Canter & co. have been working on the idea of multimedia conversations for some time.

For myself I would like to try experimenting with VideoBlogging.

More later...

Creation Companies: Business in the Fast Lane

Wed, 27 Nov 2002 10:32:49 +0000

Wednesday: Burning Platform or Compelling Opportunity?. From Whoosh: Business in the Fast Lane ,Tom McGehee on what makes a company suck or rock : Compliance Companies ... [istori/log]

» An interesting comparison of the attributes of various types of company labelled broadly as "compliance companies" and "creation companies". What might be more interesting still would be to try and take some of the attributes that imply a spectrum and start plotting well known (and maybe less well known) companies and see what patterns emerge.

I'd also like a list of creation companies if anyone has one to hand!

A different view

Fri, 29 Nov 2002 08:42:32 +0000

A different view. Mikela Tarlow talks in "Digital Aboriginal" about a traveler who had spent many years in the Australian outback with an aboriginal tribe. He explained that the aboriginal elders counseled their people to avoid the seduction of agriculture.

"Suddenly, instead of following the weather, you want the weather to be different. And it is now easier to put things in straight lines. And because you have planted, you need fences. And since you have planted, you can accumulate possessions. And once your tribe is bound to a fixed address, forms of hierarchy emerge that were not possible when it had to stay on the move. Because you have put down roots, for the first time you must consider defending your territory. Thus, convenient as it is, planting is the beginning of control. Merely because you put a small seed in the ground, you are now invested in a whole system of maintenance that requires you to stay put. You are no longer free to follow what calls. So, the aboriginal elders wisely teach their people to avoid agriculture. The aboriginal spirit requires the freedom to follow the wind."
Hm, that is certainly different from the way westeners normally think. For us it is often a powerful metaphor that we're putting seeds in the ground and staying around to nuture and defend them. But this makes sense on several levels. Maybe a hint of another way of being, where we don't trap ourselves in our own net of obligations and expectations.
"His profound sensitivity is possible only because he does not have to wait for seeds he has planted. His perceptions can be long and deep, since he has no territory that he must defend. His mind is quiet, since he is not attached to outcomes. Because he does not have to plan, his spirit is free."
[Ming's Meta Mechanics]

More like a gallery than a factory

Fri, 29 Nov 2002 11:40:26 +0000

I was discussing my recent posting on contributing to intranets with a friend to test the water. She said something that made me reflect upon my our experience's and what I see around me, namely, that many intranets are a reflective tool rather than a creative one.

In this I mean that, quite often an intranet lags behind what an organisation does. Documents will be put up, after the fact. A department or project will create a view that must be updated and infrequently is. Basically the intranet is an afterthought and not a living breathing part of the work of the organisation. More like a gallery than a factory.

This seems to me to be dead wrong, but possibly a fact of life.

If it is true then I think it is because there is so little room for peoples lives and work to become part of an intranet. If the intranet is just a repository of corporate documents, policy's and procudures and dry applications then where do the people actually fit in?

I would be interested in knowing whether simply adding workflow changes this somehow?

Calling all conservatives

Tue, 03 Dec 2002 20:35:40 +0000

Common Collective Sense. Britt Blaser suggests , "If you're as sick and tired of being sick and tired as I am, we should ... [istori/log]

Okay I call myself a liberal which I hold to mean:

Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.

Here are some of my views:

I believe very firmly in the freedom and privacy of individuals - especially under the threat of terrorism.
I am concerned about Saddam Hussein yet still believe that a UK/US war on Iraq is a bad idea (especially if it's all about oil).
I am in favour of European integration and the UK adopting the Euro.
I am worried about rising crime but do not think filling jails with young men is the answer.
I am worried about my health and how to pay for all the medical treatment I am bound to require (if I live long enough).
I wonder if we are on the edge of an ecological disaster and we keep building roads.

Are there any people out there who do not see themselves as a liberal who can find themselves in agreement with one or two of these points and would care to discuss some of the others? Or suggest some of their own?

Information, Experience and Judgement

Sun, 08 Dec 2002 11:52:19 +0000

Information and Experience. One thing John Perry Barlow pointed out is that people today often are unable to differentiate between information and experience...[Ming's Metalogue]

A thought provoking post Fleming. I guess I am of the video game generation (I remember Atari consoles when I was kid) so make of my comments what you will.

I agree that there can be a sharp discontinuity between peoples experience of the world and what they get from the mass media. This is, I guess, because the media's job is not accurate reporting and thoughtful commentary but selling media. If you asked us we probably all realise this, we are just apt to forget it in our daily lives. Fear lives in the primitive, old, parts of our brain and it's easy to get us going.

If I have an argument with the "nothings happening to me or my friends so it's maybe not really a problem" line of reasoning it is that it can go the other way and let us ignore 'big picture' problems that do exist. So I think it's not simply about information, or experience, but also about judement. Do we have the perspective required to interpret information correctly and make sound decisions about what is going on in the world around us?

For that I think you need good role models.

Prison stew: Take 110,000 inmates and par boil. You'll know when it's ready

Mon, 09 Dec 2002 15:20:36 +0000

Behind bars at one of Britain's packed prisons. More and more people are being sent to jail. Birmingham Prison is in the frontline of the overcrowding crisis. But what damage is the crisis doing? And what's the view from inside the cells? [BBC News | UK | UK Edition]

Disturbing story (check out the virtual tour of the 2-man cell). What's more disturbing is that instead of asking whether prison is the right solution the debately question seems to be "where can we build more prisons?"

There seems to be little real debate (or willingness to debate) in this country about other approaches to tackling people who commit crimes. My own view is that prison is an incredibly expensive way of achieving very little.

According to HM Prisons in the year from April 1998 to March 1999 the average cost of a prison place for one year was £22,649. My guess is that this figure hasn't gone down in the last two and a half years.

So basically it costs the economy the equivalent of one persons job for every member of the prison population? But worse than that, we can probably assume that some of the 73,000 in prison today would be earning something on the outside and contributing to the economy. To whom does this make any sense at all?

It seems to me that a good idea before we get to 2010 (and an estimated imate population of 110,000) would be to take a good look at what the social aims of a justice system are and how best to achieve them.

Do more harm than good?

Thu, 27 Feb 2003 12:04:03 +0000

If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.

There is danger in the exuberant feeling of ever growing power which the advance of the physical sciences has engendered and which tempts man to try, "dizzy with success," to use a characteristic phrase of early communism, to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will. The recognition of the insuperable limits to his knowledge ought indeed to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men's fatal striving to control society a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows, but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization which no brain has designed but which has grown from the free efforts of millions of individuals.

F.A. Hayek via Lew Rockwell

Good words to think on.

Good culture

Mon, 24 Mar 2003 16:30:21 +0000

War and North American Airlines - Why Southwest Airlines is Different.

I suspect that an important casualty of this war will be the traditional North American "Full Service" airline. I suspect that they cannot be reformed as their basic flaw is one of culture. Yes Southwest have a number of operational differences such as a one model fleet, no hubs, no expensive reservation system and so on. But the real difference is in managerial culture. Southwest is where "Servant Leadership" is exemplified. Where the senior guys take the first pay cuts. Where staffing is mainly on attitude etc. "They don't' have a unions" you say. But Southwest is 85% unionized - they have different relationship with their unions.

Southwests secret is simpleYou fly one type of plane, you concentrate on short, point to point routes, you dont serve food and you dont assign seats. Kelleher slammed his fist down on the desk Anyone can copy that, and they have. But they cant copy the culture!

Here is what the Chairman of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher, thinks about this point. Manage in good times to prepare for bad times. To succeed in todays marketplace, the company cross trains employees and increases their skill base so that individuals at all levels can take personal responsibility for keeping the company marketable, for maintaining high trust relationships, and identifying effective options for dealing with transitions. In addition Kelleher and his leadership team inspire loyalty by communicating openly and truthfully with their staff, respecting the life work balance and fostering continuous learning. Southwest employees know that their voice matters and that they can implement new programs, make decisions and help customers in times of need. A guiding principle is: if you use your best judgment to do what is right, your leaders will stand behind you.

Donna Conover, EVP Customer Service (an interesting tile in itself) at Southwest Airlines explains that the company has high expectations for each employee: Just doing your job well does not make you a good employee. The attitude and spirit towards others complete the needs the company has of the Employee. As leaders if we allow lack of teamwork or low productivity, we are being unfair to the rest of the team.

My bet is that United and Air Canada will be gone in 6 months. For us in Canada this will leave a huge vacuum. The worst move would be to prop up the Zombie. The best would be to allow the vacuum to be filled by a new system. The key will be culture

[Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog]

Rob is delivering some really great content. Some key points from this piece:

Anyone can copy that, and they have. But they cant copy the culture!
Manage in good times to prepare for bad times.
company has high expectations for each employee
Just doing your job well does not make you a good employee

What Southwest seem to have done is internalize a very healthy culture. I wonder what kind of knowledge management practices they have in place.

Is it time to can unrepresentative democracy?

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 12:21:34 +0000

Just been reading a story from Ed Fosters Gripe Log about a proposed new act in the US (H.R. 4127, the Data Accountability and Trust Act) that is intended to override state laws on disclosure of privacy violations (e.g. ChoicePoint, CardSystems, and the newly brewing scandal). The key attribute of the US DATA law:

Rather than emulating California's privacy law, the DATA act would preempt SB 1386 and similar privacy laws enacted in other states. It would also essentially leave it up to the company that suffers the data breach to decide if the risk is great enough to warrant disclosure to the public.

Leave it up to the company. Right... I guess it's fitting that, a year ago today, I wrote about the ChoicePoint scandal. How likely is it that we would have heard anything about that if US DATA had been on the books. How can any responsible person think this is a good idea? I don't think they can. I think the only way this could happen is because government is corrupt and politicians collude with business to further their own political and/or financial ambitions.

In the short-term it is cheaper for companies to ~~bribe~~ lobby those few policians who can bend the laws to their advantage than it is to put their houses in order. And the short term is all most CEO's care about these days. Who cares about the long term?

This is yet another inditement of the system of representative democracy. A system whose heyday is long past and, if it ever was representative, is no longer so today. Indeed I find the very idea of representative democracy ridicuolous. How can one person even attempt to represent thousands of others on a range of issues? And, criticially, why should it be necessary?

I can imagine how in days past, where education was rare and communications slow and unreliable, our system of government may have seemed viable. But I wonder whether representative democracy was seen as the best way forward, or whether those conditions simply made it easier for the better educated, richer, men to grab power and create a system of patronage to keep themselves and their friends wealthy and powerful,

Whatever the true origin people need not be uneducated today and communications have reached the point where nobody should lack for information on any subject. What is required today is discernment, judgement, and a willingness to question.

Yet we continue elect representatives to take part in a corrupt system of government, divesting ourselves of our own power and with it, seemingly, our responsibility for what these people do in our name. Afghanistan? Iraq? Iran? We didn't do it, our politicians did. But we conspire to make them what they are.

This is the terrorists message "There are no innocents." We may not have personally gone to Iraq and shot people but we conspired to make it possible. We just don't learn. "Hey, next time let's time let's vote for the guy on the left!"

I don't know what the answer is. I tend towards the idea that our democracy really should be "one man, one vote." That we should represent ourselves and our own interests. A pessimist might wonder about just how horrible such a world could be: mob rule writ large. But could we really live with it?

Exposure to the consequences of such a system would surely teach us sorely needed wisdom, wouldn't it? If we could survive the first years wouldn't we necessarily learn to take responsibility for our decisions? Wouldn't we gradually become a better and more enlightened people? Isn't this the kind of path we must follow if we are to have a future?

Or would you rather continue to be ruled?

Devolving power can only bring good?

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 15:06:41 +0000

According to an ICM poll 40% of British muslims would like to see Sharia law implemented in predominantly muslim areas of the UK.

Okay some comments first: 40% are in favour, 41% were against. So we could just say "opinion is fairly divided." Additionally, as a commenter at reddit points out:

As a complete non-expert, I'm curious whether "Sharia law" means the same thing to all UK Muslims. The (currently disputed) Wikipedia article makes it seem Sharia can legitimately mean many things.

In fact, if I asked a typical citizen in my own country (US) what the advantages of Anglo-American common law vs. European civil law were... well I wouldn't even know if I were asking a meaningful question. ;)

So opinion is fairly divided on the matter and we're not even sure what either side thinks they are being asked about. I take comfort from the fact that only 1% felt that the July 7th bombers were "right".

But let's assume for a moment that there is a muslim community in the UK who are predominantly in favour of Sharia law and there is some formulation of Sharia law that they can agree upon. Is there some particularly good reason why, if it only applies to their community, they shouldn't have it?

It seems to me that many of todays problems are about arbitrary boundaries and the restriction of choice. I was born in the UK, it didn't take much effort for me to be here. If you are born in Iran and want to come to the UK you probably have a boundary problem. We don't want to let you in. By what right do we make this decision? I'm not sure.

Also our boundaries lead us to form groups. We form emotional attachments to places. We become "of" a place when, in reality, it's just a label we associate with ourselves. However this grouping leads to divisive in-group/out-group thought patterns and to irrational and unnecessary hostility between groups of people who really shouldn't have anything to fight about.

If we could make boundaries more about choice than chance then a lot of the tensions in our societies might be reduced. If a strong majority of people in one place want to live by a set of common principles then they should be free to do so and those who disagree are free to leave and have somewhere to go. I guess it's this last bit that's hardest. Where do you go?

Still quite a lot of thinking to be done here...