The Aesthetics Of Order

Interesting and elegant conceptual photography from Ursus Wehrli:

This video shows how one of the photos sets was made. Watch as the artist organizes a group of sunbathers, and all their gear, into well-ordered groups.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuBg06Oc5i4&feature=player_embedded

Any lessons here?

Organizing takes work! [Suggestion: the next time you have to organize people and beach equipment on a hot day, don't wear a three piece suit].

Some things are more functional and useful in a disordered state. Think of your desk covered with support materials while engaging in a major project. What's the point of going to the beach to lie in a line and segregate beach toys into individual piles? Maybe certain aspects of your work would be more productive and fun if you allowed more disorder.

Apparent disorder can actually be the true state of order. Again think about the sunbathers. True order is when each sunbather is gathered alongside his or her own beach toys and umbrellas. Not when all the umbrellas are grouped together. Most of us put our pens into one area of a drawer, in a group. Maybe true order is to scatter the pens around the office. Several on the desk, one in a notebook, one in the briefcase, and so on.

Finally, order can be beautiful. But disorder -- even with the same constituents which could be ordered -- may be more beautiful.  Such is the night sky.

(via Kottke)

When Does Choosing A Better Computer Become Wasteful?

No, I'm not referring to green computing devices. Though, apparently computers account for 2% of the world's carbon emissions. I'm swapping my nearly four year-old PC notebook for a new 15" MacBook Pro. Can you say upgrade? Like many buyers, I'm tempted to get the fastest possible machine with the most memory, given my budget.

But I keep thinking about over-processing. It's wasteful to get a tool that's more powerful than what's needed for the job. Here's some of my thinking.

• How fast? I do minimal multimedia work. Mostly, I access databases and documents on a local network and remotely, create text-based documents, and work on the web. But time is money (my time ends up being my clients' money, to be precise). So, I decided to get the fastest available processor along with a solid state drive. I can always upgrade RAM, but predict 4 GB will be plenty for 95% of my work.
• How much memory? With a 500 GB hard drive I can save data for years to come without worrying about usable disk space. But I've only got 65 GB of data now. So I decided to get the 128 GB drive. I can always upgrade when I near capacity. And who knows what cloud storage options will look like then.

The hardest decision was whether to get a solid state drive. Ultimately, I chose one because they're more reliable (no moving parts) and run cooler (no motor). The result is a more efficient machine, with the related benefit of a longer battery life. I decided to go with the Apple OEM drive rather than with a third party upgrade. There may be better after-market drives out there, but I'd rather avoid any potential problems with warranties and service. If there's a problem, it's Apple's to fix. Period.

Now, it wasn't that hard to identify the right machine for today's work. The over-processing analysis would have been easy from that standpoint. But predicting the appropriate tool for two to four years from now? Given the extraordinary rate of change in consumer electronics and the web -- who knows what we'll all be doing then. That's what made this a challenge.

Has anyone else experienced this challenge when buying a computer? From an enterprise IT perspective, our firm certainly has, and larger organizations must have it even worse.

Over-processing: Too Much Of A Good Thing

Bruce MacEwen at Adam Smith, Esq. has an interesting post on how the views on quality held by corporate in-house legal counsel diverge from outside counsel. Referencing McKinsey, he divides quality into three segments and explains how he thinks corporate America views them:

• Good enough: Sufficient for almost all purposes almost all the time.
• Excellent: Occasionally needed when germane to reputation, marketplace perception, or positioning.
• Superb: Very rarely required, perhaps only when genuine organizational threats are in play.

He contrasts this with the perspective of outside legal counsel:

• Superb: Why you come to our firm, what we do, and who I am. (Don't for a second underestimate that third element; it's why you get up in the morning and how you hold your head high.)
• Excellent: When we try to execute a representation with some degree of sensitivity to costs, based on a longstanding relationship.
• Good enough: Who do you think we are? You've come to the wrong place.

Assuming outside counsel does the work at a "Good enough" level, Bruce poses the question: "who's to blame-your firm or the client-for the fact that merely sufficient legal advice has come back to bite?"

Good question. And one I'm not prepared to answer.

But let me add a comment from a Lean perspective. The problem with outside legal counsel's view is the willingness to engage in over-processing, one of the seven traditional forms of waste (muda). Over-processing is doing more work, or higher quality work, than is desired by the customer, or using tools that are more expensive or precise than needed.

Outside counsel sees the high quality work as an unqualified good thing (who would want lesser quality?) In-house counsel sees the work as "wasting" their finite budget for legal services. The company wanted a Corolla. Its attorney just built a fully loaded Lexis LS600hl.

The key here is open communication between the client and outside counsel.The client should be clear about what it needs. Counsel should be clear about what it will deliver and at what price. Also, counsel needs to explain the risks of opting for work of lesser quality. And to the extent possible, the client needs to sign off on any such risk.

We also should be careful to distinguish between the quality of work product and the quality of representation. Work product almost always should be high quality. It's the amount or type of work product that should vary depending on the client's needs. For example, a legal brief should be very well written -- no matter what. But whether the brief should be filed should be considered at the outset.

Given the current economic climate, there's sure to be a lot more discussion about the appropriate level of quality, for legal services and virtually everything else we have to pay for.