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Today’s post comes from a colleague of my father’s. They are working together in Baghdad as civilian advisors to the Iraqi legal system on IT process and infrastructure matters.
Dear Daniel,
I am working with your Dad in Iraq and he was telling several of us about what you do and how you are trying to get people interested in sharing information in order to move business along more quickly. Your approach sounds exactly like that of Ben Franklin (founding father Ben). He wrote a letter to a friend at one point and said something like “I forward these thoughts to you somewhat unformed but want to get them in front of others because some ingenious soul may be able to refine them more quickly than I”.
His philosophy always was to share information as quickly as possible because someone else might have a different take on it and advance the ides more quickly that he could. He was very open with his work. Another great philosopher of the Enlightenment Period was Joseph Priestley. I commend to you a book called “The Invention of Air” as it explains, in a manner so much better than I, how important the sharing of information was to rapid progress in science, philosophy and religion. It is an easy read.
I wish you success in your endeavor and just want you to realize that you are in the company of some truly great minds.
I hold myself as more of an interested observer than a thought leader in the wide world of workplace collaboration, but I greatly appreciated Rod’s letter all the same. I’d love to see correspondence and collaboration flourish above and beyond current workplace norms. Let’s all continue to share emails and blog posts and comments together, whether they be with coworkers, friends, or with strangers who might share our interests.
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- Enlightenment Man 2.0: Talking Joseph Priestley with Steven Johnson (omnivoracious.com)
- Bill Clinton On The Invention Of Air (stevenberlinjohnson.com)
