I phoned my cousin Mike yesterday to make arrangements for dinner.  We were about to compare calendars and I was stalling while Outlook came up on my machine.  Mike laughed.  He was ready.  All he needed was a date book and a pen.   He laughed and said — “I’m 51 and I still use a date book.”

Of course, as always happens whenever there’s a challenge like this — Outlook took it’s sweet time loading.  Actually, it hung for a minute, as if to prove the triumph of high over low tech.  Mike took the moment to gloat.  So he should.  And it’s okay.  In this circumstance, keeping track of a few social engagements — an electronic calendar is overkill.

But I don’t keep track of 5 or 6 things.  I have 20 or more events happening some days.  Some nights I have 2 or more meetings.  I have calls and records of calls.  I could make 10 or 15 in a day.  Each one of those could lead to several items – documents, tasks – often spread out among staff and business contacts.  Many of those people want to book appointments with me via their calendars – sending me electronic invites.   All of those contacts want me to remember them.   So I really want to link dates and events to contacts and be able to easily pull up a great deal of info.  Last, but never least, I have to keep track of a multitude of times and details from the hours that I bill to the mileage and expenses that our government (and she who keeps our books) must have as proof of even the most meager of expenses.

So my calendar is — shall we say — complex.  It has a number of components – Outlook synchronized with our CRM, my smartphone, Google for several calendars with organizations I work with and now – for those who I work with over the web, I’m experimenting with tungle.me.   As complex as all this sounds, it works.  And I’d be lost without it — it’s saved my ass many times, this mass of electronic organization.

With all of this, the guy who can’t remember what he had for lunch yesterday can remember where I have to go, who I have to see, what I did three months ago on Tuesday afternoon and — oh, yes, it’s Mother’s day on Sunday (phone mom) and Happy Birthday Phill  (Saturday).

The point?  You have to understand the task before you comment on the technology.  Yes, cousin Mike’s book may be appropriate  for him, but it’s hopelessly inadequate for me.  This system can be updated and more importantly, can be retrieved from any computer anywhere — or one of my two smartphones.  Okay, that might seem like overkill, but we develop apps for both Blackberry and iPhone.  Got you there, didn’t I?  You thought I was just a toy loving geek.  Which I am.  But there is a rationale for everything.  Not a rationalization.  A rationale.

Mike thinks I’m nuts.  That’s okay.  He doesn’t understand what I do.  That’s where the danger lies.  You have to understand how the technology is used before you can decide if I’m a prisoner of technology or liberated by it.   My cousin Mike will never understand.  Even if he did, he’s still laugh at me.  Mike is a sweet, loveable luddite and although he kids me, I know that he’s actually proud of the stuff I do.  But he has to kid me.  That’s what cousins do.

But there’s another Mike.  Michael Enright.  He has a national radio show on CBC radio.   I was listening to it a few weeks back and heard him say with disdain, “I don’t tweet — or whatever it is.” He said this with the smugness of someone who was “above that sort of thing” and with great pride.

Here’s where I draw the line.

Enright’s smugness bugged me.  Why?  Well for one, he works for the CBC – one of the most sophisticated of broadcasters with some of the best use of technology anywhere.  Their podcast library is amazing.  Their technology journalism on programs like Spark — fantastic.  Picture a show which is created from it’s blog and a mass of people linked by technology.   That’s Spark.  But it’s not just shows about technology.  Another favourite of mine is called Tapestry and it has the most incredible shows on philosophy and spiritual thought that you will hear anywhere in this world.  How do I know?  I listen around the world, thanks to technology.

Enright’s disdain was not just at technology, it was at his fellow journalists and his audience.  The social media revolution that he was poo-pooing was the very wave that was revitalizing his industry and making public broadcasting not an anachronism, but a leader in the the new world of journalism.

When I tweet a Spark episode — or when I email Tapestry or next week, when I can use our new PodPoster app to post my comments, I’m participating in a medium that is increasingly collaborative and far less a one way broadcast.  Enright is dissing — and missing — all of that.

What a shame.  Especially since Enright came to fame because of a show that exploited technology — the telephone.  Years ago, he was a stallwart on a show called “As It Happens”.   That show brought us all around the world to events and people using telephones and recording technology.  It broke the mold for journalism at the time.  It was new, brash and — damned interesting.

Which makes Enright’s little luddite lullaby seem sad.   I pass on Enright’s monologue and click on a Spark podcast — the one with the longer, unedited interview.

I won’t change Enright.  I just tune him out.  Too bad.  He’s a bright guy with a lot to offer.  But if he dropped off the air, I wouldn’t miss him.  Not like I miss Andy Berry.  He hosted the morning show which I could get anywhere in the world.  Andy Berry, who, to the time he retired was still embracing new ideas and new technology, regaling us with stories of is iPhone.  No surprise that he went out at the top of his game.

Staying receptive to new ideas — that’s the ticket to reinventing yourself.  Whether it’s a radio host or a radio network.  Even if your base is a technology that people thought was dead and gone, if you stay open to new ideas, that fusion of new and old can still keep you out in front.

I’m not as old as Andy or Enright, but I’m no kid either.   I hope that I stay open to new ideas — even when they are uncomfortable.  Whether it’s rap music or Twitter, I hope that I don’t close my mind before I really try the experience and even if it’s not for me, I hope I can try to appreciate why it might work for someone else.  Because it’s not always about me.  That’s a lesson that I learned a long time ago.

It’s my hope and my silent prayer.

Because you don’t always realize it.  When you start to calcify, you don’t think that you have a problem, you think that the rest of the world does.  Kids these days!  Or worse, “common sense”.  All those things that we use to hide our denial — when what we really mean is, I’ve closed myself off from options.

Who knows?  Maybe one day it will happen to me.  But for now, I’ll thank my luck stars that I’m not a digital denier.

At 54 there’s still hope for me – and my crazed calendar.

As inevitably happens – he brought out a recent experience where the customer service was appalling.  I’ve heard many of these over the years.  It doesn’t take much prodding and we can all come up with one.  And I want to stress that I’m not talking about simply bad service.  That happens all too frequently to count.  This was appalling service — you’d almost have to try to make it that bad.    In his case, what was promised to be a 24 hour turnaround from a major bank, conveniently done on-line turned into many weeks of trips far out of his way to the only physical location where this business could be done, many phone calls and even with all of this – never a really satisfying conclusion, let alone an apology.

Yet he told it to me, matter of factly, as only one in a history of disappointments.   It was appalling, but nothing special.

Conversations like this have been going on for years in coffee shops all around the world.  But I think something has changed.  I can see it.  We all can see it

In Toronto, where I live, a recent fair hike was handled abysmally by our Transit Commission.   I don’t think there’s any question of it.  Is is a coincidence that a picture of a Transit employee sleeping on the job went viral?  It also sparked a multitude of similar pictures.  Public pressure was so intense that some of the transit workers were considering a work to rule.  That silliness prompted some awful cartoons suggesting that a work to rule would be an improvement in service.   The whole thing threatens yet to spin out of control.

Second case in point.  The Sons of Maxwell, a touring band had a fate that is as old as musicians and flight.  A classic guitar, checked as luggage by a member of the band was thrown and damaged.  If the reports are true, the band member actually saw an employee throwing a guitar.  You have to be brain-dead to not know that throwing a guitar is a bad thing.   It can only be thought of as malicious.

What did the band do?  They complained, certainly and were told that there was nothing that could be done.  So they wrote songs about it.  One of these went viral on youtube and at last count got 7 million hits.  Seven million.   As United Breaks Guitars went into the millions, so did the losses at United Airlines.

What’s unique about these?  Well, you have to remember, this is Canada.  It’s not New York.  We used to be the most polite  nation on the face of the planet.  The old joke was that a Canadian was someone who apologizes when you step on HIS toe.

But you can kiss that s**t goodbye, apparently.  Now if you step on the toes of a Canadian, they’ll shoot you — not with bullets — but with the always ready cell phone camera.  Blame and shame are concealed weapons of choice with Canadians.

Yes, it’s as if we all woke up and discovered that the meak may inherit the earth, but the cranky get revenge.

It’s also no surprise that Canadians are turning to social media to vent that outrage.  We’ve always been the biggest users of social media.  Facebook took off in Toronto.  The groups of Linked In are full of Canadians and Twitter is on fire up here.

Not that we’ve lost our sense of humour.  This is, after all, a nation whose greatest export is comedians – some of America’s funniest are Canadians – Dan Akroyd to Jim Carrey.

When you bring together that sense of outrage, a penchant for comedy and social media a virtual explosion happens.  A recent example?  In a wave of outrage directed at our current Prime Minister, some ingenious sole got the idea of trying to see if an onion ring could have more friends than Stephen Harper, leader of our nation.  Now Stephen has millions to spend on handlers, publicists, web artists  — whatever it takes.  In fact, we seem to have an entire province of millions in population who, if they found Stephen Harper copulating with a sheep would still leap to his defense (as long as it was a girl sheep – he is leader of  a right of centre party).  Yet one lone person with a sense of humour and a social media device was able to trump this and tramp the politician down into the abyss of humiliation.

Last count?  Onion Ring – 80,000 friends.  Harper?  29,000.

Frustration?  Anger?  These are new to Canada, but we’re learning fast.

Someone told me recently that in the US, 20% of people actively hate their cell company.  In Canada?  That number is purported to be more than 60%.  In fact, judging by a recent meeting that a friend was at, it may be more.   When the head of a new upstart cell company was introduced at a recent gathering in Toronto, the audience applauded vigorously at a comment that this new company was going to do some damage to the existing suppliers.

There was an old commercial for tea that ended with the tagline, “Only in Canada?  Pity!”    I don’t think this is a “Made In Canada” phenomenon.   I do think that the fact that the anger has exploded North of the 49th parallel should be a warning sign to companies and even governments.  Canadians are the direct opposite of the the Canary that miners used to take into the coal mines.  These birds were small and sensitive, if they got exposed to gas, they reacted early and gave the miners a chance to escape.

Canadians are more like a tsunami warning device.  By the time you see a sign from them all you can do is get washed away.  It’s simply too late.

I love Prine’s work.  Why?  Because, especially as I get older,  at least part of me becomes more an more like his characters.  I look back nostalgically at a past where things were simpler,  more understandable.  I think to some extent, most of us do.

That idea of a time when things made “common sense” is one those archetypal memories.  You find it throughout history – a yearning for that simpler time.

So it has a seductive appeal.

So why isn’t it more prevalent?  Why isn’t common sense more …. well, common? 

You have to know what I mean.  All of us use the phrase at one time or another – usually to describe the behaviour of someone — or more often — something else.   Because in many cases, the people who don’t have it — or don’t get it are part of large organizations.  Big companies.  Big beauracracies.  Big government – especially big government.   These are the usual suspects, the groups that prove that common sense isn’t – if you know what I mean.

And it frustrates us.   It frustrates me, anyway.  Even though I know it’s not true.

Little known fact – I’m also a song writer.  It was once part of my livelihood.  I actually have a gold record hanging on my wall.  But that was, like my longing for common sense, a time long ago.  Now music  is more  of  a hobby.

But I did write a song that responded to John Prine’s melancholy appeal to the days of yesteryear.   My song started like this:

“Things ain’t like they used to be, in fact they never were…”

And it’s true.  There was no halcyon days when common sense reigned supreme.  It’s a fiction.  Think about it.  When was this golden time.   Let’s go back.   Was it the 1980′s – the disco era?  I’m not even going there.  Sorry.

Was it the 1960′s?  Peace, love and all that?  Well, no.  The 60′s were chaotic.  Nothing made sense.  Trust me.  I was there.

Was it the 50′s?  I don’t think so.  You might believe it — if all you knew about the 50′s was from “Leave it to Beaver”.   The 50′s was a tremendously uptight time, with McCarthism, ideas that you could win a nuclear war and a type of civil repression that Martin Luther King would fight against a decade later.   I could go back.  Hitler.  The Depression.  World War I and on and on.

There was no great time when common sense made sense.   The world has always been chaotic and often troubling.

So why the appeal of “common sense”.  Why do we yearn nostalgically for it?  Well for one reason, it does take us back to a time when we were more certain.   For many of us, that represents a time in our youth.

“Common sense” is just all the predjudices that you accumulate by the age of 18.”  Albert Einstein said that.

Yet, if you have children who are around the age of 18 — or even if you are just honest about how “right” you were at that age, you have to be a little aghast.   If you have an 18 year old you’ll shake your head at how “black and white” the world seems to them.

Now that’s okay — if you are 18.  You have an excuse.  You don’t have the benefit of experience to teach you that things are not always as simple as they seem.  As a part time university prof, I spend a fair bit of time trying to convey this to my students.  Things are not always simple — or black and white.

Some of them get it.  Some don’t.

Even with the benefit of years of experience some don’t get it.   They somehow go through life and never appreciate the real complexities.   It’s as if some people reaching my age have 30 years of experience and others have 1 year of experience repeated 30 times.

Again – what is the harm?  Well, if it makes you nostalgic, there’s probably not much harm.   I no longer believe that the solution to global military conflict is to simply “give peace a chance” — but I do appreciate the sincerity of those views and I respect them to this day.   But I realize that thigs are more complex than that.    But even if you don’t get it.  Even if you sit at the dinner table and rant about how things used to be — if your delusions are your own, there’s probably not that much harm.

Where the harm comes is if you have those views and you are in a position to influence an organization, a company or god forbid — a country.  That’s where the harm comes in.

I could bring up a ton of examples of why common sense just doesn’t work in complex situations.  But I saw a great example this week on the TED talks.

I’ve kept a link to the video here.  You can watch it for yourself.   For those who want the bluffer’s guide, the presenter beautifully shows how our common sense approach to motivation flies in the face of scientific evidence.  He shows, quite conclusively, that when creative approaches to a solution or task are required, external rewards or bonuses are not effective motivation.  In fact, he presents pretty clear evidence that this type of reward system actually decreases effectiveness.

The science is not new.  The experiments that Dan Pink refers to in the video date back to 1945 and as he rightly points out, form the basis of most modern behavioural theory.   Most but not all.  Why hasn’t it made it’s way into management science and compensation theory?  Can in be that those who are engaged in compensation are untrained?  Could it be that they have not studied behavioural science?  It’s possible but not likely.  Are they recommending the right solutions but being ignored?  Possibly.

For whatever reason, flying in the face of good science we continue to see the one trick pony of compensation being used where it is proven to be least effective — with creative jobs and knowledge workers.  Want performance?  Offer a bonus.  The fact that the science doesn’t support this?  Nonsense!   Common sense will tell you…

And off we go.  Back to a world, as Peter Senge once described it, where a group of people with IQs over 130 go into a room and make decisions that you would expect with an IQ of 80.  Even confronted with the facts, people will go back to what they term common sense, which is, as Einstein so aptly described, merely their own prejudices and sometimes their own agenda.   Denial, as my friend John Thorp says, “is not a river in Egypt”  – it’s a fact of modern corporate life.

That’s why we still claim that salaries and bonuses are so important in attracting and motivating senior employees and knowledge workers.  After all, that’s common sense, isn’t it?  Unfortunately, it may make good sense but it doesn’t make good science.

We aren’t going to change the game using “common sense” – however seductive that idea is.  “Common science” might do the trick.  We’d be better off paying more attention to that – even when it tells us things that we don’t want to hear.