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    Open Handbook
    Open Handbook
    Open Handbook
    Ebook65 pages47 minutes

    Open Handbook

    By John Baxter

    ()

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    About this ebook

    A guidebook on openness - principles, methodologies, and particularly the mindset and philosophy of being open. Embracing ‘openness’ in all its forms is about a personal relationship of embracing openness.

    Fear obstructs openness more than anything else. Fear tells you that you don’t know who’s out there. You don’t know what they’ll do. And you definitely don’t know what that will do to your project.

    Openness is about embracing what might be, rather than protecting what is. There is an exciting world of possibility out there, in here, or in the spaces in between. All sorts of merry and wonderful things might happen. In fact, amazing things are happening all the time.

    Openness at its best is uncomfortable. It’s disruptive. It requires you to reassess your own position. Openness isn’t straightforward. But it’s worth it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn Baxter
    Release dateDec 16, 2012
    ISBN9781301681464
    Open Handbook
    Author

    John Baxter

    John Baxter is a film critic, novelist, biographer and broadcaster, whose books on the cinema include ‘The Hollywood Exiles’, ‘The Cinema of John Ford’, and highly praised biographies of Ken Russell, Fellini, Bunuel, ‘Steven Spielberg’ and ‘Stanley Kubrick’. His biography of ‘Woody Allen’ was published by HarperCollins in November 1998.

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      Book preview

      Open Handbook - John Baxter

      Open Handbook

      A guidebook for openness

      John Baxter

      @JohnSBaxter

      Smashwords Edition #1

      Copyright 2012 John Baxter

      www.jsbaxter.com.au

      Cover Image: Photograph by Thomas Charbonneau, via CampToCamp reproduced under Creative Commons. Appreciation to Thomas for allowing use of such a beautiful image!

      Licence notes: This book, in its entirety or in part, is available under Creative Commons. Please attribute myself and link to the book homepage. While reproducible, readers are encouraged to show their appreciation by purchasing the book, and also to provide feedback to keep the discussion going and contribute to future versions.

      This the culmination of the One Week Book project, December 2012

      Open Handbook contents

      Forward

      Introduction

      Open work

      Open space

      Dynamics

      Denouement

      -- --

      Forward

      My name is Justin Barrie. I spend my days designing services, trying to get my clients to use evidence and not anecdote to guide their decisions. Trying to get them to rely on planning, strategy and trust rather than fear to build services that people love.

      My son, let’s call him Mr8, spends his days worrying about whether the new Avengers movie will be any good and why his sisters spend so much time in the bathroom. He doesn’t generally hypothesise on how legislative changes based on fear might lead to the ruination of long-loved cultural past times. At least I didn’t think he did, until last week.

      I’ll let him tell the story from here and these are his words:

      Me: Mr8, what was the note you brought home from school last week?

      Mr8: Swimming fun day permission note

      Me: What’s different with the fun day this year?

      Mr8: You don’t get to do any freetime at the pool. They changed the rules. You have to do activities that they make you do instead

      Me: Why did you think they did that?

      Mr8: Because someone nearly drowned earlier in the year and they changed the law...

      Me: One person nearly drowned? Has anyone ever been hurt at your swimming fun days or carnivals?

      Mr8: No, never

      Me: What do you think about them changing the law?

      Mr8: It’s stupid, because now we don’t get to do stuff that we want. So now you just have to do boring stuff

      Me: So what should they have done?

      Mr8: Just kept free time but had more supervisors, we have heaps of teachers and stuff

      Me: So what do you think about people making rules because one thing happened?

      Mr8: They just don’t know how boring it will be. They don’t know what the impact of their rules are...

      Mr8 will still go to the swimming day, but the bureaucrats who drafted the policy won’t, they’ll be reviewing it after their fear based and risk averse policy was put under review by the Minister on just days ago.

      Maybe they should give Mr8 a call in the review ;)

      And BTW, as a designer, I’m not against protective rule based policies - we live with them every day. I, like Mr8 just need them to be weighted in favour of reason and evidence, not fear.

      Justin Barrie, Service Designer

      16 December 2012

      -- --

      Fear obstructs openness more than anything else.

      Fear tells you that you don’t know who’s out there. You don’t know what they’ll do.  And you definitely don’t know what that will do to your project.

      Imagine you’re trying to get a book written.  You know what could happen by exposing your work to the world before it’s finished.  The sting of premature criticism is vivid.  The shame of falling short of expectations is palpable.

      You tell yourself that your idea isn’t even any good anyway, who would be interested in that?  If it is interesting, it’s probably been done.  Right?

      Even if there is some merit in the idea, if someone would find it interesting (heaven forbid), and it actually hasn’t been done before (fat chance)...  well all the more reason to

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