Over forty years is a long time to work on a single task. Yet that has been the lot of the four editors of the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. The massive 3,952 page double volume will be released this month, the culmination of the editors’ entire careers. In our world of fast, it is a timely reminder that, sometimes, good things need time.

This new thesaurus has been pulled together almost entirely by hand. Words from past and present editions of the full dictionary were studiously transcribed onto slips of paper, then sorted, stacked and re-sorted into categories, sub-categories and sub-sub-categories, and finally put into historical context. Nearly a million words were sorted this way into quarter of a million categories. And, as I said, it took over 40 years.

It sounds like the ultimate labour of love (or ‘druery’ (circa 1255) or ‘paramour’ (c. 1350) or ‘passion’ (c. 1588)).

The thesaurus has stumbled over numerous funding obstructions along its journey. It has been kept going by grants and gritty determination, neither of which, luckily for the project, would have been expecting financial recompense. Then, almost ready in 1980, it was delayed for what ended up being a further 29 years when it was decided it wasn’t yet complete.

I wonder whether such a project – open-ended and financially flimsy – would have a chance of getting up today?

There is an episode of the brilliant American police drama, The Wire, in which one of the younger detectives complains at having to spend hours watching a public telephone, in wait for one of their targets. He is chastised by one of the old hands with words along the lines of “what did you think you would be doing when you signed up to be a detective?”

This conversation nicely captured the division between a modern culture of instant gratification and its older counterpart of ‘good things come to those who wait’.

In the fast-paced 21st century, universities are no longer expected to do long term research but instead have to sell instant, industry-ready solutions if they want to remain funded. It’s a time when the instant drama of reality television – unscripted, unrehearsed and undirected – is the favoured child of TV execs. And it’s a time when long term problems with long term solutions (climate change, for instance) are allowed to fester while instant problems offering instant solutions (the GFC, for instance) are provided with the best economic medicine money can buy.

In short, if it can’t be rushed, it won’t be ratified.

On that evidence, the idea of the Oxford thesaurus getting a start in 2009 would seem fanciful, though it would be nice to think I’m wrong.

I love living in a fast-paced world where a bottomless cup of instant information resides inside my iPhone, and where I can sprinkle my own words all over the globe in seconds. But it doesn’t follow that because ‘quick is good’ that ‘quick is the only way’. We need to reserve a place in our lives to snudge (c.1633) up to those good things that take time.

(Image greeblie)

Not two, three, four or five. My latest razor now has five blades – plus one on the back for trimming any recalcitrant hair. Our toilet paper is now three layers thick, has a space-age texture and is quite possibly made from Kevlar. Our toothpaste makes so many promises that our dentist can safely retire. And this is just the bathroom.

The western world is just about feature saturated. In the fight for our precious dollars, marketing departments need a never-ending supply of new, you-beaut features up their sleeves. Run out of ideas and they’ll be shown the door before they can say “now with added…”. No product line is immune: on everything from the dishwasher powder to the dishwasher itself, new features pop up like pimples on a teenager.

The age of technology has exacerbated this situation. When everything contains a microprocessor, the implementation of a new feature becomes a programming challenge, not a mechanical one. In the 21st century, adding a feature requires little more than an idea and a few lines of computer code.

In the world of software, so called ‘feature creep’ would be better called ‘feature sprint’. We – or at least those of us who are into these things – have become conditioned to expect an upgraded, more feature-rich version of all our software every few months.

The marketers love it. Every few months they get a whole new chance to refresh their brands, to buy advertising and, most importantly, to run launch events.

But it has made them lazy.

When having the best product boils down to having the longest list of bullet points, marketers no longer need to get into the mind of their markets. They stop looking to creatively solve their customers’ problems. They stop thinking outside the shiny shrink-wrapped box.

We, as consumers, don’t help the situation because we’ve always been easily seduced by bells, whistles and, more recently, ringtones. Design expert Donald Norman pointed out years ago that when we use products, we like them to be simple, but when we buy them we opt for all the extras we can get.

There are, however, early signs of change. Maybe, just maybe, the summit of this generation’s mountain of features is coming into view. Leading the climb, remarkably, are the predominant computer operating systems from Apple and Windows.

In the last month, Apple has broken a long software tradition by releasing a major upgrade that is not burdened with new features. The ‘Leopard’ version of the OS X environment has been taken to a health farm and come out, as ‘Snow Leopard’, leaner, fitter and, most notably, with no external makeover save a short-back-and-sides.

Later this year, Microsoft will release an upgrade of its operating system, Windows 7, with a similar emphasis. The current system, Vista, has been derided – and largely scorned – for its bloated size, prodigious appetite and fragile ego. Its replacement promises to be slimmer and much easier to get along with. Again, the emphasis is on utility over flamboyance.

2009 has been the breakthrough year for one of the most feature-less software applications in the park: Twitter. The announcement this week of a new, features-lite version of Facebook points to an interesting new battle for less rather than more. It is certainly another sign that there is still a place for vanilla in a chocolate-ripple-with-honeycomb-chunks world.

Next thing you know I’ll be trying to find single-blade Gillette safety razors again.

(Image rockmixer)

To judge from the gender balance in the audience, there aren’t a lot of blokes lining up to see The September Issue, the new documentary feature that gives us a peek inside the walls of Vogue magazine in New York. Which is a pity, because the film has a lot to offer anyone – male or female – with an interest in creativity or innovation.

If we are to believe what we are fed by the media, all conflict and disagreement – especially between those on the ’same side’ – is bad. Daily newspapers magnify any difference in opinion between two politicians of the same party. The sports pages hone in on the smallest sign of disagreement between a coach and a player. And of course the tabloid press couches every tiff between celebrity partners as a sign of impending separation.

So things should not be good at American Vogue. As portrayed in the documentary, editor-in-chief Anna Wintour and creative director Grace Coddington rarely agree. Grace organises spellbinding shoots, only to have Anna curtly discard her work without discussion. There are moments of silence between the two in which we can almost feel the temperature dropping.

Yet something works at Vogue. Anna and Grace have both worked together at the magazine for over 20 years. And the magazine retains a circulation of over a million copies a month despite increasing competition from other magazines, the rise of online and the recession.

Why? Because despite the media intimation, there is nothing wrong with conflicting opinion. In fact the opposite is generally true. Getting the best result, whether in creative pursuits, business decisions or politics, requires a level of disagreement. That’s how creativity works.

It isn’t always easy. Most of us can remember the sinking feeling after a teacher points out a mistake. When I workshop my writing, it is hard – sometimes very hard – to cordially accept the suggestions of others. There are times in The September Issue when Grace looks ready to throw it all in.

But deep down we understand that as long as criticism is not personal, it is probably valuable.

Conflict does go too far occasionally, of course: just ask Noel and Liam Gallagher of perpetually disbanding band Oasis. But this is rare – far more rare than the gossip mags would have us believe. Certainly the faint threat of this happening shouldn’t cause us to shy away from seeking – or giving – our opinion.

The September Issue allows us the luxury of watching a powerful creative partnership from a safe distance. Watch it, and enjoy the tension.

I was listening to a talkback radio discussion last night about what constitutes achievement and success in work and life. While not a particularly original topic for evening radio, I was struck by the tone of the calls. During quite a lengthy discussion, not a single caller suggested that success is about climbing the corporate ladder or making money.

The emphasis was on the simple idea that success is about being happy.

Has something changed? Sure, ‘happiness’ and ‘balance’ have been part of the work-life discussion for many years. But, perhaps until recently, they have been given more lip service than committed embrace. We’ve trotted out the old line about no one going to their death bed saying “I wish I had worked more”, then rushed off back to our 50 hour a week jobs.

‘Downshifting’ is the idea of leaving a demanding career for something less onerous, even if it costs you money by way of reduced earnings. The concept has been around since the mid-1990s, but it has largely been seen as sitting in the same cabinet as organic food and renewable energy: a good idea, but still a bit radical. Something ‘other people’ do.

In the last few years, however, I’ve learnt of at least half a dozen of my ‘normal’ friends who have downshifted. Some from big jobs, some not so big. But in every case looking to work less and spend more time at home, with family or simply doing stuff they enjoy doing.

This is not to say that changing jobs and reducing working hours are the secrets to happiness. Nor even that we are any closer to understanding what happiness is.

What is changing, I perceive, is the willingness to pursue happiness or satisfaction, simplicity or balance, or whatever it is that an individual is looking for in their work and life. There seems to be increased acceptance of the notion that it’s okay to take a career risk if the end result will be greater contentment for yourself and your family. And that maybe, for much of the population, money doesn’t buy happiness.

Hanging around for the gold watch is becoming less hip. Instead, work-life balance and flexibility are fast becoming catch-cries for the twenty first century. Working from home is now both environmentally friendly and socially acceptable. Loyally working a sixty hour week for a corporation who will let you go tomorrow if it needs to buttress the share price is starting to be recognised for the con that it is.

Where is this change coming from? A number of factors are at play. Ceaseless cost cutting and the resultant increased expectations on employees is one. Everyone has an overload threshold and more and more people are being pushed over theirs. Increased overall affluence (even if it was an illusion) is perhaps another factor. Or maybe I just have a skewed perspective. What do you think?

A review of ‘The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work’ by Alain de Botton; ISBN 9780241143537

Ever had that sinking feeling of seeing something that you invented in your mind becoming a huge commercial success … for someone else? As a writer, that’s the same feeling I had when I read The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work. In many ways this is a book I wish I’d written.

Most of us spend a healthy slice of our lives working. We spend additional time thinking about work, but these thoughts are generally focused on the job at hand. We think through an upcoming meeting, worry about a deadline or scheme about our next job change.

Much less often do we think about the wider connection of our work to our community. Rarely, if ever, do we think about the extent to which others’ work impacts on, and is essential to, our way of life.

As is so often the case, it takes someone like modern philosopher Alain de Botton, who as far as I can tell has never had a ‘normal’ job, to expose us to the real goings on under the coat of our existence. In The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, he turns that coat – this time a fluorescent orange safety model – inside out and gives it a damn good shake.

de Botton’s trademark method is to immerse himself in his area of study and to entertainingly share with us his deep insights along the way. In this book we follow a tuna from its capture on a fishing vessel in the Maldives to an eight-year-old’s dinner plate in Bristol in under three days. We spend time immersed in the invention of a new biscuit. We sit in the broom-cupboard of a career counsellor and spy on a counselling session. And we tramp over field and dale following electricity pylons from go to whoa in the grey English countryside.

de Botton’s definition of work is deliberately broad. Apart from accountants and manufacturing managers he also visits an obsessive artist, a number of misguided entrepreneurs and a group of earnest, white-coated rocket scientists launching a Japanese satellite from French Guiana.

A central theme is what de Botton perceives as an increasing disconnection.

“We are now as imaginatively disconnected from the manufacture and distribution of our goods as we are practically in reach of them, a process of alienation which has stripped us of myriad opportunities for wonder, gratitude and guilt.” and later “How ignorant we are … surrounded by machines and processes of which we have only the loosest grasp.”

A similar disconnection occurs within our work, where the increasing specialisation of work leads to greater and greater separation of those doing the job from the goods they ‘produce’.

“It is surely significant that the adults who feature in children’s books are rarely, if ever, Regional Sales Managers or Building Services Engineers. They are shopkeepers, builders, cooks or farmers – people whose labour can easily be linked to the visible betterment of human life.”

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work does have some flaws. There are times when de Botton drifts a fair way from his theme with occasionally disingenuous observations of ‘ordinary’ workers. And the structure is a bit ad hoc at times, with no real effort to bring it all together in the end. On the whole, though, I found the book an engrossing and thought provoking look at both work and modern life as a whole. An accompanying collection of stark black and white photos by Richard Baker beautifully reinforces de Botton’s messages. You won’t look at your work in the quite the same way again.

We recommend BookDepository.co.uk who provide free shipping worldwide. To buy from Amazon.com, click here. Australian buyers might like to check booko.com.au for comparative online pricing. The book is widely available in bookstores.

It is one of the advertising world’s most cherished phrases. Just two words: ‘experts agree…’. This all-powerful call to arms saves so much unnecessary elaboration. It’s like saying: “Look, the experts like this stuff, so you should too. Stop arguing – just get out and buy some.”

The expert is the shaman of our time. The expert offers a guiding arm, steering us through bustling and confusing crowds of information. The expert offers easy, quick answers to almost any question.

Experts help us understand complex issues. Where would we be without Antony Green and his laptop on election night? Or Tim Flannery’s interpretation of climate change science? Or Peter Roebuck’s insights during the upcoming Ashes series?

Experts teach us. It it weren’t for Jamie Oliver, my roast pork would be less than pukka and my souffles would sag. If it weren’t for Jamie Durie I my broccoli wouldn’t flourish nor my basil thrive.

Experts help us make choices. I don’t know how I would get on without Margaret and David helping me to choose which movies to see and which to avoid. And of course I need James Halliday’s advice on exactly which red wine to match with Jamie’s roast pork.

Perhaps most importantly, experts help us solve problems. Bookshelves sag under the weight of expert advice on how to overcome a dip in sales, manage that difficult person, streamline a business and cope with the global financial crisis.

Ah … the global financial crisis. Now this is where the expert thing becomes unstuck.

It was, after all, economics experts who lost their torches as we unknowingly rambled deeper and deeper into the GFC cave. (Explore this Wall Street Journal site to see just how bad some of the forecasts were). And it is those same economics experts who are now grappling for the matches while reassuring us that they can show us the way out.

Unfortunately it is in areas like economics – the larger, more complex areas of our lives, the areas in which we need most help – that expertise tends to be most vulnerable. There are many reasons for this, but the most notable is quite simple: experts are humans too.

Experts are subject to the same cognitive biases as the rest of us, perhaps even more: the saying “give a man a hammer and everything looks like a nail” holds a lot of truth. The more complex the picture, the more the expert can only see one part of it really well. And of course having established oneself as an expert, one is expected to come up with answers, whether they really exist or not.

There is no doubt that experts can make a valuable contribution to our complicated businesses and lives. But no expert is without flaw. We owe it to ourselves to remember that as we seek their advice.

In the last week or so, the International Monetary Fund released another of its major economic outlook statements. Business and financial media all over the world earnestly pored over the numbers as if the future had been foretold by some all-knowing wizard. The strong sense was that, with this new-found certainty, decisions could finally be made.

Which would all be well and good except for one thing: the IMF is a false prophet.

Even a cursory review of the IMF’s fortune-telling performance reveals that their predications are, at best, a reasonable guess. IMF forecasts typically come close to the mark during relatively stable periods. But they nearly always fail to predict major economic adjustments which is, of course, when they would be most useful.

Mistaking complexity for accuracy

We have an unfortunate tendency to reward complexity with excessive authority. To think that because the IMF numbers have been compiled by experts using impenetrable models, they must be right. It is the mistaking of complexity for accuracy.

The same problem frequently rears its crystal-gazing head in business.

About this time of the year, many managers spend more hours than usual parleying with spreadsheets. For an intense month or so, these documents are judiciously filled in, cell by cell, as the next year’s budget takes shape. Eventually, after the requisite amount of argy-bargy between departments, the financial crystal ball is given a last spit-and-polish and displayed to one and all.

This enormous collective effort, along with its underlying level of detail, give the budget impressive influence. More than any single person in the organisation, the budget will drive major decision making during the following year. Levels of employment, levels of output, sales targets, purchasing decisions. All will be governed by this soothsaying set of spreadsheets.

Which would all be well and good except for one thing: the budget is a false prophet.

In most cases, the budget will be out of date before its year begins. External forces change things. Competitors come up with special deals and deplete market share. A new product takes off much better than expected leaving capacity sorely strained, while last year’s star product gathers dust (and ties up cash) as it sits forgotten in the warehouse.

But again, because the budget looks accurate in all its complexity, and because so much blood, sweat and typing went into its compilation, it is given more credence than it deserves.

A widespread weakness

The mistaking of complexity for accuracy is widespread. It could be argued that it played a role in triggering the global financial crisis. Undue faith was put into labyrinthian financial instruments, into unfathomable risk management models, into convoluted – not to mention corrupt – ratings systems.

Which is not to say that budgeting, forecasting and predicting should not be done. But when they are done, whether on a small scale in your office or an international scale, their projections need always to be washed down with a hefty dose of scepticism. No matter how complex and sophisticated they appear.

A good friend comes to see you. He’s setting up a securities company and is looking for investors. This friend has impeccable credentials: former chair of a major stock exchange, senior and well respected member of the financial world. Simple decision? Of course. You jump at the chance to invest and you spread the word to all your friends.

As it turns out, your investment with this friend is a winner. The fund starts providing you with consistently solid returns; it’s astonishing how clever this bloke is. The fund’s reputation grows. Soon everybody who’s anybody wants in – even more so when admission to the fund is restricted by invitation only.

Things continue in this comfortable vein for some time. While the market is strong, the performance of this fund is greenbacks on the cake. Whenever the market starts to head south – and this is the best bit – the fund continues to grow at over 10%! It seems too good to be true.

And it is.

If there is one story that captures the essence of the financial market’s ‘annus horribilis’ in 2008, it must be the emerging story of Bernard Madoff’s gargantuan fraud. (If you’ve missed the story, there’s a good summary at http://is.gd/cp2a.)

The Madoff fraud – like its big brother, the Global Financial Crisis – is characterised by one persistent weakness: the failure of participants at all levels to pursue what Jim Collins calls the Brutal Facts (http://is.gd/cpmI).

The Brutal Facts, put simply, are the truth. While it might seem self-evident that we would want to know the truth in all situations, the reality is that most of us have a strong tendency to avoid the truth when it might hurt.

In finance and business this leads many to ignore the fundamentals. It happened during the internet bubble a few years ago, where businesses without any cashflow were ridiculously overvalued by investors. It has happened in the Subprime crisis, where high risk loans have been disguised behind a heavy camouflage of complex derivatives. And it has happened to Mr Madoff’s faithful investors who have learnt, to their cost, that money doesn’t grow on trees afterall.

We’re all prone to it. Whether it’s suppressing the sinking feeling that a new assistant isn’t going to be up to the task, convincing ourselves that we are indispensable, or putting off a doctor’s appointment for fear of what might be revealed.

It takes a clear head – as well as a fair degree of honesty and courage – to confront the Brutal Facts. This makes it easy to shrug them off when we’re busy, and underlines the reason why we need to give them space during our down time.

Over this New Year period, be wary of friends bearing unbelievable investment opportunities. But don’t miss the chance to think about what Brutal Facts you might be overlooking or ignoring.

Seven years ago, in the first of almost 100 articles for this newsletter, I wrote of the modern complexities surrounding the once simple task of packing an overnight bag for a business trip. I noted that I often spend “more time making sure I have a full set of batteries and power cords than I do making sure I have enough clothes”.

This, I suggested, was an example of a broader complexity we are faced with in our lives, particularly our working lives. “Modern evolution almost requires complexity as a matter of course.” Feedback from many of you over the years has reinforced that I wasn’t alone with these thoughts.

Has anything changed? That depends on your point of view.

On a macro level, our world does seem to have become more complex. Certainly not less. Surveys suggest that workplace stress levels are high and that working hours are long. Email has become more of a burden than a tool. Customers are tired of dealing with companies who bark but don’t bite when it comes to making service simple.

Global markets create opportunity but complicate commerce. In response, governments lay on the laws while businesses battle for their slice of the pie by offering more and more choice. Notice how the typical market response to climate change is simply to extend the range with a ‘green’ product. ‘Carbon neutral’ beer is one of the more bizarre.

The reality is that this societal complexity is not going to go away. It has, in fact, always been with us. All that changes is its form and context. Way back in 1889, poet Banjo Paterson wrote, in Clancy of the Overflow:

“… the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.”

Sound familiar? And he didn’t have to deal with traffic congestion or email or 35 varieties of yoghurt.

Despite all this, a degree of simplicity is still possible at a more micro level – at the level of you and I and the organisations we work in. The trick, as I alluded to in another article, is to avoid fighting against the wind and waves and, instead, to control your own boat as best you can.

Put another way, if your business, your work or even your life is more complex than you would like, there is little point blaming the market, or the times, or the technology. There is even less point waiting for these things to change. Rather than trying to avoid complexity, we need to come to terms with it. To adapt to it. To find, each of us, our own way of steering through it.

In the end, it’s about the choices we make. We can let the waves of complexity break over us, or we can turn around and catch a ride with them. The latter takes a bit of effort but is ultimately much more rewarding.

The red rash around the top of the collar gives it away. The urgent tone of his voice only confirms Kate’s hunch. Mark is angry.

‘You said “no” to that urgent order I sent through,’ says Mark sharply.

‘That’s right. We can’t do it in the time you want.’ Kate surprises herself with her outward calmness.

‘But we … you … we … never say “no”. We’re all about service, remember. Service. The customer as number one and all that. Isn’t that what we talked about only last weekend at the retreat?’

‘Yes,’ replies Kate, ‘but it was “customers” that we talked about. Not “the loudest customer with the most urgent order”. There is a difference.’

‘Oh, come on! These guys have an urgent order themselves which they won’t be able to meet if we can’t supply them today. They’ll go nuts. I’ll be spending the next few weeks getting them back on board.’

‘That might be the price we pay for avoiding a whole lot of cost and hassle for a lot of other people,’ says Kate. ‘I could change all our plans to get this urgent order through. If I do that, I will satisfy this one customer. Given that we are already flat out, other orders – orders that have already been scheduled – will be put back. That will mean at least three customers who’ve been promised delivery today will end up receiving their product late. On that basis alone the maths is simple: three annoyed customers versus one annoyed customer. No change wins.’

By now the redness has crept up and colonised the whole of Mark’s face. Kate’s apparent unflappability only seems to increase the hue.

‘But the factory can run faster if we ask them too. We’ve done it before. Just squeeze the order in. That way everyone is happy: better productivity and extra sales. A win-win.’

‘No. That won’t work. Every time we do that we have quality problems. We end up throwing out defective product and we put our quality reputation at risk by sending out substandard product. In other words, more cost and even more disgruntled customers.’

‘Then let’s run overtime. I need this order to meet my budget,’ pleads Mark.

‘No. I won’t do that either. This product you’re ordering hardly makes us any money – the margin is already low. Run it on overtime and we go backwards. It might make your sales volume look good, but it will cost us more. And on top of that, this customer of yours only orders from us once every two months. They’re not that important.’

‘Not important!’ Mark’s exasperation leaves him momentarily lost for words. ‘Not important. Of course they’re important. Every customer is important. Every sale is important.’

Kate is unperturbed. ‘Relatively less important. The three customers we would irritate are all major customers. You know: big sales, big contributors to our profits. The reality is that moving heaven and earth for this one small customer is simply not worth the trouble or cost if we look at the big picture. That was another catch phrase last weekend, if you remember.’

Mark has no response. He turns away and stares blankly down the corridor, then looks back at Kate.

‘So what am I supposed to tell them?’ he says, subdued.

‘You have to use your least favourite word. You have to tell them the truth. You have to tell them sorry but “no”. N. O. Not this time.’

Kate waits for a response but is met only with a silent stare. She turns her attention to the wall beside her. A large whiteboard summarises the production plan for the next few days. She turns back to her computer and taps away for a moment, then looks back at Mark.

‘Tell them we can get it to them on Friday afternoon. Point out that that will be a day quicker than what we normally promise; that you are doing them a favour.’

‘Sure,’ says Mark dispiritedly. He skulks off.

‘And tell them,’ says Kate loudly after him, ‘to learn how to say “no” themselves.’

As she turns back to her planning board, Kate ponders the stress, extra cost, rework, waste and general complexity she has just avoided for the business.

‘Wow,’ she says quietly to herself. ‘”No” is a powerful word if you want to keep things simple. I’ll have to try using it more often.’