Learning from Genghis

Learning from Genghis

by | Feb 28, 2025 | Leading

“I am the Scourge of God!  If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me among you.”

Bellowed Genghis Khan from horseback outside the sacred Mosque of Bukhara, moments before he ordered the wealthy town elders to surrender gold and jewels, razed their homes and slaughtered them, leaving peasants “scattered to the winds to tell the tale of the horror they witnessed here.”

Not a very nice guy.

My first wife described my political transformation, after going to the London Business school when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister:

“Alan went from Ché Guevara to somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan.”

Most people don’t think of Genghis Khan as a positive model of leadership.  Perhaps he isn’t. He was a conqueror, driven only by territorial acquisition and theft. He was often merciless to his enemies. Genghis Khan has been held up as the archetypal barbarian throughout much of history.

Voltaire described him as “this destructive tyrant . . . bred to arms and practiced in the trade of blood . . . who lays the fertile fields of Asia to waste.”

Karl Marx blamed the Tsars cruelty on him “The bloody mire of Mongolian slavery forms the cradle of Muscovy” (principality around Moscow).

The writer in a 1990 article in The Economist railed:  “Unlike other conquerors, he brought no ideology, no Napoleonic Code, no Roman Law.  His simple fanatical aim was to amass huge areas of territory…Genghis’ empire, if that’s what it was, fell to pieces after his death….”

In 1990, I was working for a propeller aircraft manufacturer in Northern Ireland. I interviewed many people in preparation for the offsite where the CEO intended to win everyone over to an integration plan with the Canadian jet manufacturer acquiring them..

Virtually everyone described my client as “ a really warm supportive guy, who can also be Genghis Khan.” Evidently he had an explosive temper and angry verbal sharpness that people described as “Mongol beheadings.” I was very nervous about the feedback session.

He laughed. ”Yeah, I know. I’m working on that. Hey, let’s have some fun with this. I bet old Genghis was nicer to his people than he was to his enemies.”

I did some research and wrote a whitepaper,  and an exercise for the group to decide what they could learn from Genghis.

I was surprised to learn that Temujen, Genghis Khan, was an extraordinary leader.

A hunted outcast on the steppe from the age of ten until the age of seventeen, he rose in four short years to be elected Genghis Khan (rightful ruler) of the Mongols.  After defeat and desolation two years later, he rose to be Khan again and later to be Emperor of the Steppes and the World Conqueror. In twenty-five years he amassed territory that stretched from the China Sea to the gates of Vienna, from Moscow to South India. His descendants ran the Golden horde in Moscow, the Mughal empire in India, the Ilkhanate in Persia and Iraq, and the Yuan dynasty (Kublai Khan) in China that opened trade with Europe (Marco Polo).

The Mongols before Temujen’s rise were a collection of nomadic tribes: Tatars, Merkit, Kerait, Naiman, and hundreds more.  He took these scavenging, raiding clans, struggling for survival in a forbidding land of extreme hot and cold, and turned them into one of the greatest armies the world has ever known.  The gigantic scale and speed of these Mongol operations were incredible in an age before firearms, mechanized transport and modern communication.

He inspired extraordinary loyalty, even among former enemies, through two-way trust. He divided booty equally. If a soldier was injured Genghis might personally carry his share to his tent. If a soldier was killed, the booty share was transported to his first wife.

Genghis Khan was illiterate. I was shocked to learn that he travelled with Uighur scribes. They wrote propaganda that exaggerated his massacres to soften up the next enemy. Many towns surrendered without a fight. The scribes also recorded the Secret History of the Mongols, only recently translated, and “Bilik and Yasa, the leadership maxims and laws of Genghis Khan,” which was the title of the whitepaper.

The Great Yasa (laws), a few examples:

  • Love one another;
  • Respect wise men of all peoples;
  • Do not steal;
  • Share all food to be eaten; never eat in front of another lest you offer to divide your meal.
  • Never eat offered food before he who offers it first partakes;
  • Consider all sects as one and do not distinguish one from the other. Nor interfere with a man who speaks with his God if he keeps the Khan’s law;
  • Whoever becomes bankrupt thrice is put to death after the third time;

Genghis Khan’s Leadership Maxims (Bilik), examples:

  • Mongols shall not give their nobles laudatory names like other nations. He who sits on the throne shall be called Khan, and swear his allegiance to the Great Khan. (Khan was an elected position.)
  • Ambassadors, emissaries, and messengers, whether of the Khan or his enemies, are protected under the Khan’s law.
  • At the council speak your mind without fear of reproach, but when the wine is poured the council has ended. Debate no more.
  • Any word on which three well-informed men are agreed may be spoken anywhere; otherwise by no means speak them;
  • In council or when accepting a man into your service speak last.
  • When meeting a stranger or a friend, no matter what your troubles, inquire first after the other’s circumstances.  Interest creates friendships.

Learning from Genghis

Genghis killed about forty million people. I don’t glorify his brutal war-lord behavior. However, Genghis Khan did create an organization with several admirable characteristics:

  • A sense of identity. They became Mongols, not a collection of clans.  The word “Horde,” which originally meant “camp with corral for horses,” became synonymous with thundering blitzkrieg cavalry.
  • Discipline. They trained in maneuvers relentlessly until they “moved as one man.”
  • Absolute reward. These Mongols were guaranteed an equal share of plunder, which the Khan might personally deliver to them if they were wounded.
  • Absolute accountability. Clear expectations and punishment were the norm.  Merit promotion was given for loyalty, honesty, and excellent performance.  Death was ordered for deceit, lack of discipline, disobedience, and gluttony.

Since I wrote “Bilik and Yasa” much additional research on Genghis Khan has emerged. Anthropologist Jack Weatherford published several books starting with, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (2005). In this book Dr. Weatherford describes Temujen’s mastery of logistics and infrastructure. The Khan invented siege engines, rapidly built bridges and canals to transport troops and supplies. Weatherford lays out the internationalism of Genghis Khan, including his respect for alliances, diplomacy, and trade and his esteem for philosophy and his protection of religious freedom.

In The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire (2010), Dr. Weatherford shows the crucial role that women played in the Mongol Empire, and, while I doubt the Khan was a feminist, he evidently valued the expertise of his wives.

So maybe, even in a negative example like Genghis, there are lessons for leaders to learn.

Just My Luck

Just My Luck

by | Feb 22, 2025 | Living

This morning, I saw the slender black cat that slinks around our place driving our near thirteen-year-old black Lab crazy. Pip will rouse from her old dog sleep on the back deck or in the sun by the slider, barking ferociously in what is a very unique bark reserved for this cat alone.

“Slinky pissin’ you off again, girl?” We say, as my wife or I quiet Pip down. We have no idea who this cat belongs to or what her name is, but she slinks around just in Pip’s line of sight or smell and we imagine her delighting in “owning” our dog’s territorial emotions.

This morning I saw “Slinky” walk casually across our front walk. “Oh, no! Just my luck! A black cat walked across the front walk! Now I can’t use the front walk or the front door. I’ll have to go out the back and jump over the railing on the deck, fall and break my ankle. See, black cats are bad luck.”

I didn’t actually do that, but my brain did.

I’m not sure where my superstitions come from, but when I describe good fortune, “At least we’re all healthy,” I quickly look for wood to knock upon and if I’m in the car I rap my knuckles on my forehead.

I cringe when driving, if someone says ‘traffic’s not too bad today,” or going to an outdoor event if someone says “looks like the rain’s gonna hold off.” Jinxes are very real to my brain.

Some superstitions I have mostly grown out of. I was about twelve when I spilled the salt at a big family dinner. I quickly grabbed a pinch of the spilled salt with my right hand and threw it over my left shoulder. Unfortunately, at just that moment, my mother was bringing a full gravy boat to the table and reaching across my left shoulder to place it on the table.

The gravy exploded over half the table, my mother’s Madonna-blue dress, the grey and white table cloth, the sage-green plush rug, my hair, my sister’s hair, and the ceiling.

“What were you doing?”

“I spilled the salt. I was pitching the spill over my left shoulder.”

“Why would you do that?”

“For good luck.” I can still hear the echoes of raucous laughter.

Some superstitions make a lot of sense:

Don’t “walk under a ladder,” is to avoid getting paint spilled on you or knocking someone off a ladder. Ouch.

Don’t “open an umbrella in the house’ is to avoid poking someone in the eye or knocking Victorian bric-a-brac off a front hall shelf.

Other superstitions are at least understandable:

Wood, trees were very important to the Celts as was the wooden cross to Christians, so “knock on wood” probably seemed reasonable to ward off evil spirits and bad luck.

The seven years bad luck from a broken mirror, probably came from the historical expense of mirrors and the “magic” of your reflection, which you wouldn’t want to shatter. Salt was similarly precious; Roman soldiers thought useless were described as “not worth his salt,” the ration given to avoid electrolyte damage in the field.

Triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13, is old. Death is the thirteenth card in many Tarot decks. Judas was the thirteenth disciple, perhaps starting the dinner party planning prohibition of “thirteen at table.”  On Friday October 13, 1307 King Phillip IV of France arrested all the leadership of the Knights Templar ultimately killing them all, and starting Friday the 13th trepidation and endless Jason movies.

As children we used to assiduously practice avoiding the “step on a crack, break your mother’s back.” Now in my seventies, I understand the dangers of the dreaded “uneven pavement.”

I get why a lucky penny, found on the ground face up might be considered lucky. Found money is special.

I once won a thousand dollars from the Publisher’s Clearing House, (yes, really). I immediately spent it on a mountain bike. A short time later, I dumped the mountain bike in a big hole in the trail and broke a vertebrae spinous process. A colleague said, “Of course, Alan, everyone knows you don’t spend found money; you save it.”

But why is my brain still superstitious?

People talk about the amygdala, or “lizard brain,”  the part of the brain that holds our deep seated emotions and reactions like “fight or flight” response, Some say that this brain stem holds our ancestral memory, like sabretooth tiger anxiety, and the similarity of an inverted horseshoe to the “sacred vulva” of pagan moon goddess Diana. Maybe.

In my case, more likely it’s behavioral training. If any of us kids dropped silverware while setting the table my mother would say, “Company’s coming.” A dropped knife meant a man was coming. A fork indicated a woman would arrive soon and a spoon meant an extra child for dinner. I imagine my mother meant a neighbor child and not that she was pregnant.

When my father fashioned a bobby pin into a screw driver to fix his glasses or some other little improvised innovation, he always called it “workin’ a rabbits foot.” I never understood why a rabbits foot was considered lucky. It certainly wasn’t lucky for the rabbit.

My dad picked up lucky pennies, lucky pebbles, and had many lucky pocket knives. I still have some of his lucky things and have my own collections of clutter. I’m not sure any of it has made me particularly lucky. I’ve learned that gambling isn’t where my luck lies. I always lose at casinos and always lose too much chasing the “my luck’s about to break” delusion. I don’t gamble anymore.

My luck, I’ve learned, is having the love of family and friends, and staying mostly healthy, (knock on wood) and not listening to my lizard brain about spilled salt and black cats.

Client Bashing? Stop.

Client Bashing? Stop.

by | Feb 16, 2025 | Consulting

“Can you believe how stupid?”

“I know. You’d think they’d see the obvious . . .”

I was in a small group of twenty-something consultants complaining about our client. I’m embarrassed to say I was in my fifties, but I was joining in. Suddenly a founding partner of the firm, seventeen years my junior, joined the group.

“Permission to not client bash?”  he said quietly.

“Oh. . . point taken,” said I sheepishly. I had delivered this message to teams before, but I had backslid into a client bitch session.

Client bashing happens much too easily in consulting, for many reasons.

The “curse of knowledge”

You are hired to help solve a problem. You use the obvious methodology, which you’ve used before, and you wonder how anyone else wouldn’t know that. That’s called the “curse of knowledge;” once you’ve learned something you forget what it was like not to know it. Clients may never have been exposed to zero based budgeting, or whatever specialized knowledge you are peddling. They may be too immersed in the day-to-day and miss what you see as obvious. That doesn’t make them stupid. They just need your help. And you know what? That’s why they hired you.

Insecurity

A senior partner explained the MBA recruiting criteria to me.

“We are looking for smart, nice people, who are just a little insecure. You have to be smart because clients have difficult problems. Clients and the team must like you, so it helps to be nice. We look for those who are a little insecure, because they work harder. This is a tough business which requires people to power up to deliver results.”

Sometimes imposter syndrome, smart people who are insecure and ‘power up’ to compensate, leads to what is perceived as arrogance. Consultants who have learned enough about a business to sound intelligent, may stop listening, or worse privately demean their clients.

Noblesse-Oblige-less-ness

Sheldon Cooper, the main character of the Chuck Laurie television comedy “The Big Bang Theory,” is a genius. We meet him as a Cal Tech theoretical physicist who went to university at twelve, and got his PhD at eighteen. He is almost completely devoid of social skills and completely obnoxious. Sheldon has been the smartest person in the room his whole life and has unmistakable disdain for lesser beings. The twelve season show milks the comedy of his much too slow humanization. There are far too many Sheldons in consulting.

Despite the smart-nice-insecure recruitment specification consulting hires too many Advance Placement, Ivy-Tech, Rich and Famous or RaF wannabees. These folks are not just imposter syndrome arrogant they are the genuine article. They really do believe they know better, do better, are better, than everyone else. Some of these folks, like Sheldon, get humanized as they age. Some do not.

I could go on, but the reasons for client bashing are less important than the effect.

Client bashing impedes service

It took me a while to understand that consulting is a helping profession, like medicine, or psychotherapy or social work. Clients have a problem, not enough revenue, too much cost, or people stuff, – you know, messy-motional-humans getting in the way of a well-engineered technical paradise. Clients ask for help solving the problem, which is a good thing, because as American psychologist Carl Rogers reminded us, “help that isn’t asked for isn’t perceived as help. It is interference.”

This brings us to the first problem. Often the boss asked for the help and the people below him didn’t. Oops. So consultants arrive ready to help people who don’t want the interference. Bash, bash, bash.

Carl Rogers also said, “it is impossible to help someone you don’t like.” He advised “find something about your client that you like.”

The converse is, when you are bashing your client, you are deeming them unworthy of your help. Why would you “serve’ someone you considered unworthy of your service? You would be unlikely to do your best work.

Bashing the client sets up an adversarial relationship. In your mind, they are less, and you must win, and get the credit, rather than helping the client to win, even if they claim to have “done it themselves.”

RIF, Rightsizing, POP

In the 1990s I did a lot of reengineering work. Reengineering was just business process improvement, but it took on a mystical ethos due to the book of that name by Michael Hammer. The firm I worked for was hired for huge projects. We’d arrive with a large team of smart, nice, insecure young people and take over a client’s organization for a year.

Sometimes these projects were run to teach the client process improvement. In those projects there was a large client team, lots of team training, and the organization was left more efficient and productive.

Sometimes the consulting team did most of the work. On those projects, I observed the project leader often promised a specific reduction in force, (15% RIF). They talked about euphemisms like “rightsizing,” or POP (people off payroll). There were no revenue growth goals; marketing processes were never looked at.

In the first kind of project client bashing was minimal. There were real improved business results, some revenue growth, some cost reduction. Downsized people were treated fairly and often redeployed elsewhere in the company. When the project was over, there was often a goodbye party where the client teams sent consultants off with thanks.

In the second kind of project, client bashing was the order of the day. There were often union actions and lawsuits. Sometimes there was virulent “resistance” and on more than one occasion violence.

Correlation is not causation. So the client bashing is probably a symptom. And who is to say where the adversarial relationship began, with the consultant, the hiring client, or both.

When you need people to change, bashing them isn’t service, and in my observation isn’t a success strategy either. If you find yourself tempted to client bash, stop, and repeat:

First, do no harm, be helpful where asked, focus on outcomes and process.

 

 

Traveling the Consulting Road: Career Wisdom for New Consultants, Candidates, and Their Mentors is the story of a consulting career where I learned these values. Click here to learn more.

SUWI or SUWOI?

SUWI or SUWOI?

by | Feb 7, 2025 | Leading

I’ve been thinking about Shakespeare’s play Hamlet recently. Though I trained as an actor, I never played Hamlet. Hamlet is a young prince of Denmark, grieving the loss of his father, and feeling vaguely uneasy about the fact that his mother married his uncle Claudius so soon after his father’s death.

“Thrift, thrift, Horatio. The funeral baked meats did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables” he jokes with his friend.

For those who never read, nor saw Hamlet, let me give a quick synopsis.

Distraught young Ham is told by the ghost of his father, King Hamlet I, that Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius, killed him, “Murder most foul, ” by pouring some poison in his ear. Claudius then married young Hamlet’s mother Gertrude. For the next three hours, like many a young university student, some CEOs and journalists, Hamlet ponders too much of all sides of what is known and unknown, the seen and unforeseen consequences of various strategies. Ham stumbles about the stage stuck in anguished inaction. In the end, Ham and most of his friends and family end up dead, very pricey justice.  At the conclusion, young Norwegian prince Fortinbras, who has the “bias for action” gene that Hamlet lacks, arrives with an Army to avenge the death of his father King Fortinbras I, killed in a duel by Hamlet I. Everyone but friend Horatio is already dead. Sad.

There is quite a lot of other psychodrama in the play, including Ham’s inability to confront either his uncle, nor his mother, his inability to return the love of the Lord Chaberlain Polonius’s daughter, Ophelia, who suicidally drowns in a creek. Ham also sends several innocents, friends Rosencranz and Guildenstern,  and Polonius and son Laertes to perhaps undeserved deaths.

There are several instances where Shakespeare comments on how people shamelessly ingratiate themselves to power. Early in the play Hamlet mocks Polonius.

Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Polonius: By th’ mass, and ‘tis like a camel indeed.
Hamlet: Methinks it is like a weasel
Polonius: It is backed like a weasel.
Hamlet: Or like a whale?
Polonius: Very like a whale.

Later in the play Hamlet mocks Osric

Osric  I thank your Lordship; it is very hot.
Hamlet  No, believe me, ’tis very cold; the wind is northerly.
Osric  It is indifferent cold, my lord, indeed.
Hamlet  But yet methinks it is very sultry and hot for my complexion.
Osric  Exceedingly, my lord; it is very sultry,

Remembering these scenes, sparked a memory of a new executive’s speech to his team.

“Don’t feel embarrassed if you suck up to me. I like it. If you meet a leader who tells you that he or she doesn’t like to be flattered, RUN AWAY, because they’re lying to you. So suck up. Yeah, suck up as much as you want.

But let me share something I learned at MIT. There is a difference between SUWI and SUWOI.

SUWI is sucking up with integrity. Yeah, you say nice things to me. You tell me you like working with me. You put a little smiley face on bad news,  if you know what you believe and don’t shy from TRUTH.

SUWOI, on the other hand, is sucking up without integrity. You accept and parrot everything I say. You always flatter me. You say things to me and then snigger and bitch in the hallway. You have little or no relationship with the truth and your behavior and your espoused beliefs are so far apart you cease to espouse your beliefs out loud.

Let me be clear, SUWI is not required, but it is OK with me, SUWOI is definitely NOT OK.”

People laughed.. There seemed to be less tension in the room. And SUWI and SUWOI became a little inside joke in the leadership team. People would preface difficult news, “In order to avoid SUWOI, . . .” or “definitely SUWI, I want you to know”. . . when they gave a genuine compliment.

It is hard to speak truth to power. This was one leader’s way to avoid the Polonius and Osric trap of agreeing with the leader even on the most trivial of opinions.

Leaders need truth tellers around them. There are still a few leaders, who don’t want that. There are some leaders who are fine if you give them the truth in private, but dislike open contradiction. These leaders may be in a precarious spot or they may be insecure.

There are some leaders who will punish disagreement, no matter the circumstance or whatever SUWI trappings you hang around it. If you work for one of those leaders, RUN AWAY. They are too absorbed in their own personality to see that you are a person, different from them, with any kind of boundaries.

But for everyone else, suck up with abandon, but suck up with integrity, SUWI rules.

Language—Story—Writing—AI (?)

Language—Story—Writing—AI (?)

by | Feb 2, 2025 | Living

Writer

“Would you like to write this with AI?”

I am asked this question, by LinkedIn, WordPress, and several other writing tools and sites where I publish my writing. As I skip the AI button inside my head is an existential scream:

NO! I’M TRYING TO BE A WRITER DAMMIT!

I call myself a writer and I do write a fair amount, no great American novel (yet), but ruminations on wisdom I have stumbled upon and share. I have self-published one book Traveling the Consulting Road, and am getting close on a second Change Leader? Who Me?  Still, as my defensive self-talk might indicate, I’m a little insecure in the writer title, but I definitely don’t want computer code doing it for me.

“Here honey, Let me tie your shoes.”

“I CAN DO IT MYSELF!”

I have always been a storyteller. It is a talent (or affliction) I inherited from my father who could spin a yarn to the delight (or annoyance) of many. I’ve discovered that not everyone has patience with my natural communication mode.

“STOP! We don’t have time for one of your stories,” said Kerry, the twenty-five year old consultant who viewed it as her job to keep the old process guy moving. (I was not even fifty then. I hate to think what Kerry would say now.)

Let’s face it, I like words, spoken or written. I think words are what makes us human. I’ve been thinking about human history embodied in the progression: Language—Story—Writing, and the various technologies that have changed communications.

Language

There is no contemporaneous report of how humans learned to talk. There are various theories about the development of language:

  • The continuation of the gestures we see in animals today. Our ancient black lab is very good at communicating when she wants to eat or go out.
  • A unique event in our evolution, specific DNA gene that spontaneously mutated.
  • Some divine creation event.
  • Some social event like collective labor that produced a rhythmic song – “(Hoh! Ah!) (Well don’t you know).That’s the sound of the men, Working on the chain, ga-ang (Hoh! Ah!)”

We may soon have more idea. The FOXP2 gene has been identified as controlling the development of speech in children. Perhaps by analyzing DNA from the oldest hominid remains we may find the point where FOXP2 develops. Or perhaps we will be left with Buonarotti’s Sistene finger touching moment.

When did language show up? One or three hundred thousand years ago? Dunno

Whenever we came up with the first words, it is apparent that they evolved into stories.

Story

In caves in Lascaux and Chauvet  in the south of France, there are some pretty spectacular pre-PowerPoint hunting story illustrations that date to between 17,000-30,000 BCE. Many early stories are an attempt to explain things, like why we all use different words. In Genesis II in the Bible is an old story that exists in many cultures, The Tower of Babel.

“And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. . . .And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven. . . . And the LORD said, Behold. . . . now nothing will be restrained from them.  . . . let us . . . confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

And that is why, in comedian Steve Martin’s words, “cat is chat, dog is chien, hat is chapeau! Those French! They have a different word for everything!”

Different languages created a challenge for trade, and there grew up a lingua franca, a traders tongue, a combination of gestures and signs, which you can still see in markets around the world.

There are creation and great flood stories in many cultures; there are explanations for the sun and stars, and animal tales with morals like Aesop’s “Hare and Tortoise.” Slow, but steady wins.

Once, we lived in oral cultures where elders and shaman storytellers kept history and educated the young. The transition to writing was uneven. In Europe Germanic tribes developed an alphabet, but the Celtic tribes (Gauls, Belgae, and Helvetii) aggressively shunned writing

Hearing a story uses different neural pathways in our brains than reading the same stories. This is partly due to using different senses. Hearing develops in the womb, whereas vision is refined later. Early childhood research shows that children who are read to, read earlier and more throughout their lives. Story is powerful and fun.

Writing

People who study the evolution of writing talk about “writing systems, which usually start with a glyph or pictogram which represents a product and/or a count, on clay tablet cuneiform in Sumer – Hieroglyphs in Egypt- Chinese characters – Mayan ideograms and phonetic glyphs in Mesoamerica.

These early pictogram systems would have been most useful to traders and tax collectors. So it should be no surprise that the earliest alphabets were developed by the Phoenicians purple-sailed galley traders from Tyre and the Sumerian empire. These alphabets represented the sounds of speech -The Phoenician and Aramaic right to left represented consonants. The Greek left to right, added vowel sounds and cursive writing where one letter flows to another. The Latin alphabet built on the Greek.

Writing began as a specialized skill, practiced by the very educated, or professional scribes. In  1452, moveable type and the Gutenberg press, destroyed the scribe trade, democratized writing, and ultimately led to Palmer method cursive penmanship instruction, wherein I never earned above a ‘C’ in school. For a while in millennials education, the ubiquity of typing, stopped schools teaching cursive writing. Some are reinstating it now.

Research using electrode-net caps and MRIs has found that handwriting uses different neural pathways than listening to a story, and also different from reading. The synapses are strongest with cursive writing, stronger than printing and much stronger than typing. A stronger signal leads to a deeper pathway, and better memory. I discovered that when I took notes by hand, I could sit down and type a lecture or an interview almost verbatim. When I tried to do that by typing, I couldn’t remember more than about forty percent.

Handwriting, as bad as my penmanship has become, helps me. I often begin writing by handwriting an outline, and first sentences of each section. During times of transition, a handwritten journal helps me move forward. Whenever I am stuck, too many things to do and unable to prioritize, I always find handwriting it down helps me see order and the path.

AI

Now, AI wants to write for me, and I ain’t having any of it..

As I understand it, generative artificial intelligence works like our autopilot brain works, what Daniel Kahneman calls System 1 in Thinking Fast and Slow. System 1 scans all available data looking for patterns of behavior and then frequency gambles (In the past, Alan has turned right here 80% of the time, turn right). We use System 1 most of the time and that’s efficient.

AI has a much larger dataset to work with, because it’s trained on everyone else’s writing and so probably puts out copy that is clear and grammatically correct. I admit I may not always do that, but my writing is me, not a homogenous amalgam of everyone, assembled by computer code.

My mother the mathematician, used to decry my use of calculators. “Don’t use those things, Alan. They rot your brain.” She could do compound interest in her head and I catch myself pulling out my phone to divide by ten.

I’m left wondering about the progress (or rot) of the human brain. What did we lose in transition from oral to written culture? What did we lose from scribes to printing? (Have you seen the Book of Kells?) What are we losing as we type rather than handwrite? And what might we lose to AI generated text?

Maybe we’ll just start over.

 “Word, Dude! Reminds me of a story. Say, is anyone writing this down?”