A line that I’ve often heard repeated in my industry is “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. The core thought behind this idea is straightforward. No matter the plans laid by the chief executives, the rest of the organization will stick with “The way it’s always been done”. I always found the culture phrase a bit odd.

A few years ago, I noticed something with the language used within the business world and I haven’t been able to unsee it. With the emphasis on developing and improving the culture within a business, many of the words have taken on a decidedly religious tone. Considering that the word “culture” comes from the word “cult” this is not exactly surprising. But considering the large rise of the “nones”, that is, those who have no religious affiliation, this is rather surprising.

The Gospel for today’s Mass was from Luke 4. In his homily, Father focused on Satan’s repeated conditional: “If you are the Son of God…” and how Christ is not insecure about or brought to doubt His purpose by the Tempter.

What came to my mind was that the three temptations of Christ are three different archetypes of the temptations that all of us face. These three may not be exhaustive, but they do cover many, if not most, of them. The first temptation is an archetype of temptations to our carnal appetites: food, sex, etc. The second temptation is an archetype of temptations to control and dominate others and the world. The third temptation is an archetype of temptations to intellectual pride and believing that we can somehow control God.

A few days ago, I removed most of the news sources from my phone. The lack of constant FOMO has been very uplifting so far. I’ve been far more focused on the tasks at hand, more available for my family, and I was surprised that my ability to take in the details of a book was sharpened. I’m hoping that this lack of constant information flow will lead to me being more interested in the people around me.

Just received an ergonomic keyboard and I’m still figuring out exactly how to use it. All the modifier keys are in different places and the keys are not offset the same way. So I don’t think I’ll be able to do a long post tonight.

Besides yesterday’s question, I’ve been mulling over the word “integrity” and how it is supposed to indicate an internal alignment between beliefs and actions. For most business or self-help books that seems to be as far as it goes. However, it doesn’t take much to uncover historical instances of that kind of alignment that is truly horrifying. (I wish I had more time to list a few). Suffice to say that it was the fundamental beliefs that were wrong. so integrity needs to include alignment with the reality outside us. And the reality outside is only properly understood in relation to its Creator. Thus to have true integrity means that a person’s actions arise from beliefs that are aligned with those truths revealed by the Creator within His creation and His revelation.

A question that has been bothering me for some time now:

Can you trust someone who lies to you?

Seems pretty obvious at first, but let’s dig deeper.

Can you trust someone who tells a lie, but who believes they are telling the truth?

Deeper Still.

Can you trust someone who says something he thinks is false that makes you feel better?

Even harder.

Can you trust someone who says something he thinks is false and you think is true?

Because it’s a struggle to post on this blog due to laziness or perfectionism, I’ve decided to start posting every day for Lent. We will all see just how long I can keep it up.

As it is Ash Wednesday, Mass was a little longer than is usual. A section from the Responsory during the distribution of ashes caught my eye:

"...[L]et us not be taken unawares by the day of our death, looking in vain for leisure to repent."

I was introduced to the Masterful Monk series by Owen Francis Dudley during a rather formative time in my teenage years. While it can be a bit preachy, the stories are compelling and challenged my understanding of what being a Catholic meant. Due to how well the series dovetailed with the writings of G.K. Chesterton and Venerable (soon to be Blessed) Fulton Sheen I was very surprised that I hadn’t heard more about it. I and my family promoted it when we could, even getting the reprinted volumes from St. Bonaventure Publications into a local Catholic bookstore. After more than 10 years the uptake is still slow.

At the January meeting of the Catholic Computing club, we had quite the conversation, discussing the decisions from various tech companies and their platforms to suspend or close accounts of various people and companies. While there has been a lot of back and forth depending on where you are in the political spectrum, the two questions that we tackled was whether the actions themselves were ethical according to the Catholic understanding of justice and whether the current laws fit with that understanding.

My last post received a couple of comments that raised a few good points which I think dovetail very nicely with my attempt to “relocate” Agile Conversations to a firmer foundation.

One point was that the distinction between reality and fiction was flat and potentially unhelpful. I will admit that I intentionally shut off certain avenues of consideration as I was afraid I would inject my own meaning into the words used by the authors of the book and who they quoted, rather than what they actually meant. Here I must acknowledge a limitation of human languages: We can use two different words to mean the same thing and use the same word to mean two different things. This limitation is why I focused on the word “fiction” and what was meant when Yuval Harari or Douglas Squirrel or Jeffrey Fredrick used it. Now that I’m not as focused on what they meant, I feel a little freer to explore possible alternative meanings.

While writing about the helpful analysis described in Agile Conversations, I mentioned that I had some concerns with the book. While the analysis method draws upon solid scientific studies and I have personally found the conversation types useful in identifying and engaging in the different interactions that I have with my co-workers, the foundation upon which the authors built bothered me. The fundamental reason that the authors give for why conversations are effective at changing culture is as follows: