Reviews and Comments

"The Meaning in the Making" is a gift to every creative person, but especially to those standing at the crossroads of deepening their artistic passion or shying away from the bumpy road that lies ahead. It sheds some light on the human need to create, on carving "logos" from "chaos", and the importance of treating inspiration as an active, but not pressed process. It talks about finding the right balance between your ego and the need to keep it under control, about the dangers of wanting to impress the wrong people and all the seductions and shortcuts which might hinder you from finding your own voice for some meaningless short time satisfaction.

"The Meaning in the Making" wants to offer some guidance on how you could find the capital "T" Truth for your work so you can identify your inner "deep gladness" and meet it with "the world's deep hunger". It provokes challenging questions which you finally have to ask yourself, since this is – thankfully! – not yet another book on "How to become a better photographer in 10 Weeks" and neither a "This is how it worked for me, so it must work for you" self-help literature scam.

"The Meaning in the Making" is some honest and humble but profound advice. It offers philosophical and personal, sometimes even intimate perspectives that might reassure or surprise you. I hope it resonates with you as it did with me.

Ich habe "Sprache und Sein" von Kübra Gümüşay endlich im Urlaub lesen können und begreife dieses Buch dankbar als unfassbar großzügiges Geschenk, das mich als oft "unbenannten Benennenden" neu sehen und verstehen lässt. Es ist ein wichtiger Essay zur richtigen Zeit, der – entgegen mancher Erwartungen, die sein Titel schüren mag – nur zum Teil eine systematische Analyse der Wirkmechanismen von Sprache ist, sondern sich darüber hinaus viel mit aktuellen Narrativen beschäftigt, die einen vielfältigen Diskurs auf Augenhöhe verhindern oder ermöglichen können. Sicherlich fehlt dem Text akademische Tiefe oder Präzision, aber es ist gerade seine nahbare Zugänglichkeit und die tiefe Erfahrungswelt der Autorin, die ihn für mich an vielen Stellen augenöffnend macht.

2016 habe ich Kübra Gümüşay auf der re:publica TEN in Berlin über ihre unfassbar kräftezehrende Rolle als "intellektuelle Putzfrau" sprechen gehört und das erste Mal eine Ahnung davon bekommen, wie wir, gewollt oder dessen unbewusst, Menschen unsichtbar werden lassen und durch das stete Zuweisen von Gruppenattributen ihrer Individualität und damit letztlich jeder Menschlichkeit berauben – ein Moment, der mich mit unerwarteter Wucht getroffen hat. Jahre später bin selbst ich der immer gleichen Diskussionen müde und möchte allen, die ein echtes Interesse am Verstehen haben, dieses Buch vor jedem weiteren Wort nahelegen.

What strucks me every time I read Deming is how valuable his ideas are still today, and how few of the transformations in government, industry and education he longed for only have happened until now. Deming was a (systems) thinker way ahead of his times, and one can only imagine what the working world would look like if his thoughts and insights had been taken into account on a broad basis from earlier on. (While he was already an influence to the Japanese economy and especially the Toyota Production System in the 1950s, he gained perception in the US as late as in the 1980s).

"The New Economics" is a book with a style that is a bit hard to get used to, but it is full of gems, and large parts could have been written only years ago. Naturally, Deming often focusses on the repetitive nature of manufacturing, which might be less interesting in environments where variation is not necessarily a bad thing per se, but he touches so many different topics here that this might indeed be one of the best introductions to his work, albeit many prefer "Out of the Crisis" in that regard.

Anyways, W. Edwards Deming should be a mandatory read for everyone involved in management.

This book bears many analogies to product (and software) development that, to me, seem much more suitable than many of the manufacturing parallels that are often made when talking about things like Kanban or the Theory of Constraints, albeit they also still hold their value in certain places.

Nevertheless, the nature of product (and software) development is in many parts fundamentally different than the challenges of optimising a production line, and so are the choices to be made. Using analogies like telecommunication networks, CPU scheduling or multi-level caches when talking about queues, priorities or ressources and response times made much more sense to me in that respect.

Finally, the book does not talk about optimisation just for the sake of optimisation (where optimisation can mean a lot of different things), but always stresses the need for holistically and economically founded choices. As I always strive to keep a systemic view when thinking about organizations and processes, this was something that I additionally appreciated.

While I sometimes wished Donald G. Reinertsen would have diven deeper into some of his thoughts and ideas, his book is already packed with lots of thought provoking information, making it a read that is not always easily to digest, especially while commuting.

This is an important book that has two main takeaways for me that hold valid also in non-manufacturing contexts: 1) »It is generally not possible simply to maintain a level of process performance. A process will tend to erode no matter what, even if a standard is defined, explained to everyone, and posted. […] Any organized process naturally tends to decline to a chaotic state if we leave it alone. […] A process is either slipping back or being improved.« 2) And more importantly: The Toyota (Coaching) Kata and its underlying conceptions itself, especially in contradiction to the classical "Action-Item List" approach ("What can we do?" vs. a more focused "What do we need to do?"), which is hard to explain in just a few words – and the reason why you should read this book. It made me think a lot about how we use systems and processes like Kanban or Scrum in our different contexts, about the power of "go and see" over well established reporting lines, and how far we usually are from really challenging the current conditions to adapt and improve.

So why only 4 stars? This book is tailored to a manufacturing world, which means you have to translate a lot of what has been said for your environment that might fundamentally differ, where variety isn't always necessarily a bad thing and work much more non-repetitive at its core. But if you recognize the essence of the Toyota Kata, you will find insights and new perspectives that cannot be over-estimated.

Content-wise, the "Responsibility Process" itself owns a clear 5-star rating to me. Christopher Avery manages to lay out the essence and ingredients to master the "Responsibility Process" in an easily readable, humble and inspiring book. I got in touch with Christopher's concept during one of his talks at the Lean Kanban Conference Europe 2018 in Hamburg, and I instantly knew that this was valuable advice that will positively challenge me within my personal and professional life.

Now that I finished reading "The Responsibility Process", I will use Christopher's writings as a work book and follow the manifold "Responsibility Practices" that he encourages the reader to do. The result might be a life-long journey which will be both frightening and rewarding at the same time.

So why only 3 stars? I wished the book was a bit more dense, and delivered some more background on the scientific foundation that the "Responsibility Process" is built upon. As with many American business and "self-help" books, I am left with the feeling that it contains too many pages that act as fill-ins, repeats itself too often and tries to sell itself to the reader just once more.

After all, if you are up for this kind of approach, read this book. If you are not fortunate enough to listen to Christopher at some conference, you will find talks of him on the Internet, so you can listen and decide if the "Responsibility Process" is something that might benefit the life you want to lead.