For anyone that knows me, they know that I am a huge van gogh fan. I learned something about van gogh today which was very moving. His variations seem never to be shown together, ever, one beside the other.
Just like all his series: the sunflowers, potato eaters, violets, fields, shoes, etc. all seem to be shown in singles. Single ones, because they are so valuable and are spread everywhere. Like a deck of cards or a calendar, make much more sense when part of a suite or series.
The Mme Roulin, is a perfect example. Each great museum seems to own just one. much of the meaning however seem to be aesthetic beauty from the variations on a theme that he uses.
Why are some organizations efficient and others not?
It occurred that possibly the best way of analyzing and finding inefficiencies in an organization is to use vectors. Like electricity, macro-economics and swimming, aggregate/net action is really the most important thing. Measurement of energy versus application is easily seen with vector relationships. If bureacracy brings you in a circle, your net vector will be zero, but energy applied, will be much higher. The organizations with the greatest absolute vector magnitude divided by energy applied will be the strongest most efficient organization. This ratio, M/E call it should be as important as P/E for finance. It seems that this is the easiest way to create metrics, for bureacracies and to eliminate ‘circles’.
If you have not read any of his work, James Burke is a historian, who mostly writes about the history of science and innovation. He is known for his Connections 1 / 2 / 3 series on BBC. His work is always web-like and built off tangents.
In this book Pinball Effect, he writes about the interconnectedness of the world and how one chance incident triggers another. The style is non-fictional, but he is always telling a story along the way. Think of Umberto Eco coming to your highschool and teaching science class.
This is the fourth book I have read by him, and it is the best in my opinion. James Burke respects no real bounds to speak of, except one: the topic of the first sentence always comes back to finish the chapter. recommended.