Monthly notes - Improve Something Today

A summertime check-in: Comfort-Stretch-Panic & Disability Pride Month

A sunset behind mountains across a body of water. There is a golden haze in the distance, reflected off the bottom of some clouds in the sky. — Photo by Brian Kerr.

A simple method for checking in; a reading & a game for Disability Pride Month; plus some recent updates across the site.

Checking in with Comfort-Stretch-Panic

When something big is going on—when bad news arrives, as they say, on horseback—it can useful to check in. One of my favorite ways to do this can be accomplished in only a few minutes, either with a group or by yourself. Here it is.

First, take a look at this diagram:

Then, consider the question:

Where are you right now?

Really, pause for a moment. Point to the screen. Find your spot. Then take a deep breath.

You might think Comfort is the ideal place, but in fact it’s not, at least for long. We can and should rest in comfort, but not abide there. The familiar becomes repetitive, then eventually monotonous and boring.
On the other end, Panic seems like a bad deal, and it is.
In general, a good spot to be is with one foot in Comfort and the other in Stretch. Shift back and forth as needed. In other words, Stretch, but when it’s too much, hopefully you can lean back into Comfort rather than tip forward into Panic.

The diagram is one expression of Tom Senninger’s ‘learning zone’ model. See additional notes on learning zones from a social learning perspective.

In any group of people, individuals will find themselves in different places on the diagram at different times. It’s more of a herd than a formation. This is OK.

When facilitating a meeting or other group session, you might practice guessing where individual people are on the diagram. That can influence whether you need to slow down, mix things up, take a break, or intervene in some other way. Better than guessing: ask. Run the check-in.

And when looking at the broader context of an organization or team, you can identify forces or vectors that push people toward one side or the other of the diagram. Contemporary Amazon-style management practice is to push people to the very cusp of Panic and then to keep up the pressure. On the one hand, people can produce a lot of work in that Stretch zone, which is a way to make numbers in the short term. But on the other hand, when the pressure stays on for too long people get tilted all the way into Panic. This is much worse in the long run, both in terms of (a) how people show up and (b) the damage it does to them personally as human beings over time.

Personally, I am emerging from a little period in the Panic zone, which I barely was aware of while in there. It’s like the feeling after a summer storm. A fresh, crisp breeze and air pressure ticking back up. Time to assess the damage and figure out what’s next.

Celebrating Disability Pride Month

July is Disability Pride Month. Two offerings.

First, I revisited this writing from 2023 and I invite you to as well. “They say the body is a city with nine gates. Two of mine happen to be a little finicky.”

And second, Lissy of Play at the Office shares Find Your Words, a computer game you can play with your team.

On the site this month

I’ve been keeping up the podcast, with short episodes releasing weekly. Listen along or follow the show.

And finally, a recent blog post you might have missed:

Wrapping up the first 10 years of Improve Something Today

Waves lapping onto a rocky, somewhat gloomy shore. — Photo by Brian Kerr.

It’s been a busy two weeks on the site :)

Over the past two weeks I’ve been celebrating the first (?) decade of Improve Something Today by putting together 10 posts. I wanted to share them with you as a bit of a wrap-up, and express again my gratitude for your being a part of this, for reading what I have going on, and for replying or getting in touch with your thoughts in various ways.

So: thanks again. And here are 10 things to read, if you like. Have a great time—I know I did!

I started the series with 10 things I’ve learned during this writing:

These next two posts were drafts I’d had sitting around and welcomed the excuse to dust off and share:

This one completes a four-part series I started in 2022:

Two topics I wanted to write about, but didn’t have as much to say on. Shorter posts work well on this site—I’ll consider more of those in the future:

And wrapping up with some favorite topics from the site, a favorite continuous improvement method, and some favorite books:

Questions along the way

Looking down into a rocky beach at low tide, with a weathered wooden beam in few; a few barnacles and lichen live on this beam. — Photo by Brian Kerr.

The Periodic Table of Questions, ICA’s ORID, Liberating Structures’ W3, and more. How might we organize questions, and to what end?

Dan Klyn offers this Periodic Table of Questions. 20 genres of questions, arranged spatially from left to right as hooks (questions with bounded answers) and nets (questions with open answers), and from top to bottom on an index I sense intuitively but still can’t describe as concisely as he does:

Image of a Periodic Table of Questions, available online at https://danklyn.com/questions.html

This is immediately interesting to click around. Click on each for an example question. Dan has a talk and draft book chapter available.

Also, it’s immediately useful. You can provide a question and the thing will guess what kind of question it is. You can ‘iterate’ a question and it’ll give you restated versions of your question across all 20 genres. (Must be some ill-begotten LLM device behind the scenes; re-roll if you don’t like what you see; use the cut-up method to swipe only the results that are meaningful to you. Meaning comes from you, not the randomization device.)

I told Dan it reminded me of ORID from the Institute for Cultural Affairs:

This is how ICA teachers advise a facilitator to arrange a ‘focused conversation’—one of several basic extremely valuable facilitation methods they teach. To design a focused conversation, you write up a sequence of questions in deliberate sequence across 4 levels: objective, reflective, interpretive, and (the most unlovely word of all) decisional. The Periodic Table of Questions has helped me arrange questions for one focused conversation so far, and I look forward to more. I do a good job of figuring out what the questions should be, but never want to slow down and get the wording just right. And one feature of the focused conversation is that if you have great questions in the right order, there is very little else to do. A group then brings itself to the appropriate ending point for a meeting or activity.

A simpler version of this approach, one which trades away a lot of nuance for being easier to do, is the ‘What, So What, Now What?’ (W3) liberating structure:

W3 is based in part on the work of Chris Argyris (who I’ve written about before—

—and whose writing and ideas I rely on in my consulting practice). The ladder of inference shared in the W3 method feels like a fast-and-loose alternative to ORID.

Simpler still is to ask a single question, my own shortcut method:

When this works, it is because starting with something at the “data” level (as per the ladder of inference), or the “objective” level (per ICA’s ORID/focused conversation), or the lighter/topmost “net” questions (per the Periodic Table of Questions) is always enough to get a conversation started, and often enough to keep a conversation moving along, of its own accord, to its conclusion.

One last point. Jerry Weinberg had remarkable advice about not inflicting help—by which he meant offering known, or supposed, answers before someone is ready to ask for help. Over the last 20 years, this idea has made all the difference for me. The distinction between being (a) this dreary little (presumed) know-it-all and (b) a helpful colleague. Which is to say: people might not want the answer to the question you wish they would ask, but they might listen to your question if you ask it with kind curiosity, in the right way, and at the right time.

Remembering Christopher Alexander: love even for the smallest pebble

A stone walking path going up a gentle incline with winter foliage surrounding. — Photo by Brian Kerr.

Two passages from the architect and writer on the fourth anniversary of his passing.

Podcast episode 0039: Remembering Christopher Alexander

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More podcast episodes online or in your favorite app.

Christopher Alexander, architect, passed away four years ago today. He was a direct influence on several of my teachers, mentors, and friends, although I knew him mostly as a warm writer of challenging ideas. The independent consulting company I ran for a decade was called ‘Different Chairs’ after a passage he cowrote.

First, let’s enjoy the crispness of Alexander’s writing. Here’s a passage from his first book, Community and Privacy, coauthored with Serge Chermayeff, published 1963:

People want to be everywhere. The reason they moved out was to find the country and escape the disadvantages of the city. The reason they are moving back is that the country is no longer there and they would like to regain the advantages of the city. But when everything is everywhere, wherever you go there is nothing tangible to find.

Second, we dwell in the inviting and clarifying nature of his work. This passage is from the concluding pages of his last book, The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth, with Hans Joachim Neis and Maggie Moore Alexander, published 2012:

Again and again we are confronted daily by decisions, by the question, “What should I do, what path should I take, how should I approach this problem?”

There is no human being who does not, in some form, encounter this kind of self-doubt. Every one of us needs help or guidance in doing the best possible thing, in so far as what is available and practical, on the day when you encounter this question, in yourself.

Gandhi-ji, Christ, the Buddha, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, and the man down the street at the gas station. They did it for love. I can do it for love. Any one of us can do it because of love, and because love is simple and so powerful.

Love itself! Not love for this person or that person—but love for a small spider who has fallen into a tin can, love for the field which nourishes, and the individual grasses that sway as the breeze comes gently across.

The ecology of humankind is created by the fabric of buildings, by the human fabric of affection, and by the powerful force of our love for our Earth—love, even for the smallest pebble.

Try to be aware, every waking day and every minute, of the love that lies in your heart. The most tender wakefulness lies in your heart, and gives you the only realistic picture of the world. It can give you access to the ultimate reality. At every moment, remain wakeful and aware of your love for the Earth and for the Universe around you.

I showed up to some consulting work this morning befuddled, tired, and uncertain of which of several alternatives—all equally irritating—to pursue next. This inside the universal local/global backdrop of loss, confusion, and cruelty. Remembering Christopher Alexander’s answer to ‘what should I do?’ has helped me a hundred times over across the years, including today, right now. Maybe it will help you, too.

Thanks, Christopher.

My beefs: notes for February 2026

A little clearing kind of in the middle of a grove of trees on a wet but clear winter day. Everything is slightly mossy and bare looking. — Photo by Brian Kerr.

Given so many big things to be angry about, let’s indulge in some petty beefs instead. I offer four.

A pattern: it’s the first Tuesday of a month, and I have a tidy newsletter drafted with a few useful links and passages, perhaps an upcoming event. This is the newsletter from the mirror world, the one I wish we were in. Twelve hours or so before sending, I delete the draft. It is not suitable to the moment we occupy.

This month, as in the months and years and decades preceding, there is much to be angry about. The future is here, super poorly distributed. There is enough of everything, far too much of it accumulated into the grubbies of the least impressive people on the planet. The Trumpy secret police runs rampant. The rest of the administration is busy too. They know they don’t have much time and they’re not wasting it. What they’ve knocked down in years will take decades to rebuild, if we’re lucky enough and obstinate enough to have that chance. I believe things will get better, and soon, but that they’ll get worse before they get better.

It is with this in mind that I chucked my plans to share the following with you—the beautifully laid-out indieweb invective A Website To End All Websites; then National Design Studio offers a rebrand of government services, a riveting discussion of the aesthetic overlap between the Apple retail experience and the administration’s impetus to ‘simplify’ public sector services (read: to obscure, remove, make scarce); and finally the essay Science at the Edge of the World by Cat Hicks, which had me pondering my own childhood trips to the Museum of Natural History in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I might mention that I’ve resumed the podcast, with short episodes publishing each Wednesday. I could write that newsletter, and I in fact did, and then I scrapped it, in favor of this one:

Beefs with recommendations

Given so many huge things to be angry about, I want to wallow in some small things to be angry about. Inconsequential irritants rather than existential threats. Let’s indulge, together.

Virginia Satir’s ‘temperature reading’ is a useful method I’ll describe in more detail down the road. A key step is ‘complaints with recommendations’, and it is in this spirit that I offer the following, my beefs, with recommendations.

Beef No. 0001. Public readings of that one Mary Oliver poem

You know the one. ‘The Summer Day’. This:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

It’s a truly great poem. But it is totally overdone as the poem to read aloud at your gathering. We’re a month into 2026 and I’ve heard this thing twice already.

Recommendation: Other poems are available. Many of them very good, many of those also written by Mary Oliver. Pick up a book of poetry and find any other poem to read.

Beef No. 0002. Fake Viktor Frankl quote

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.

There are several things I could say about this quote. A basic problem is that is a fabrication, invented in whole cloth—and pretty clumsily at that—by noted self-help clown Stephen Covey, instead of being written or spoken by Viktor Frankl.

A board member at the Viktor Frankl Institute offers this excessively polite explanation:

The true origin of the quotation is somewhat involved. To put it shortly, the author Stephen R. Covey used to recount that he found the quote in a library book and thought it fitting to describe Frankl’s views—but he did not note down the book’s author and title.

Recommendation: when recording inspiring or useful quotations, (1) don’t make them up, and (2) find an original source, or as close to it as you can. For example, see my own little quote barn.

Beef No. 0003. Ghost CMS, where is your automated welcome e-mail?

Ghost is the best content management system I’ve used in 30 years of publishing on the web. But it’s missing one thing: simple, automated welcome e-mail(s) when someone joins the e-mail list. Instead, there is a clumsy thing where it can try to send someone to a page on your site where you can put a welcome note. Guess what? I want the welcome e-mail! When someone signs up for the free e-mail newsletter (as you may now be regretting three beefs deep), I’d love to be able to send them a little e-mail saying: thanks, welcome, here’s a thing or to two to do to ensure future mails get delivered as you like.

This is such an absurd missing feature that Lex Roman brought it up as the very first drawback of Ghost in their recent content management system knife fight/comparison video.

Recommendation: Ghost should add this feature. That’s it.

Beef No. 0004. ‘Tells’ for LLM-generated texts

This whole thing. Lord above, I’m tired of it. For example, one is supposed to avoid em-dashes because they’re a tell for LLM-generated text. Then people bravely continue to use em-dashes for the same reasons they were useful in the initial, actual texts that tech companies stole and used to ‘train’ their things that generate randomized texts.

Ditto other alleged tells—title case at hazard, now? Semicolons? Lists, especially those of three items?

Here’s how you can tell a piece of text was extruded from an LLM instead of written by a human being: it’s boring as shit. It is about nothing. I don’t mean in the relatable, directly observational way that ‘Seinfeld’ was (at risk of dating myself here; remember that thing about decades-old web pages above). It is about nothing in the sense of referring to nothing, being based on nothing, an expression of nothing. No sensation, no memory, no specificity, no intelligence, no personality, no person. Nothing shall come of nothing.

Recommendation: Don’t read things that are boring. Stop reading the instant you are bored. That will help you dodge a lot of LLM-generated writing, as well as a bunch of bad writing, full stop.

In closing, I have to ask

What are your beefs? And what do you recommend? I’d love to know.

We have to remember this: notes for January 2026

Mid-day sunlight through dense fog; treelines on either side of a kettle lake recede into the fog, while the prairie’s edge is underfoot. — Photo by Brian Kerr.

Responding with attention, kindness & action as people return to work in difficult circumstances.

Podcast episode 0032: We have to remember this

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Two Januaries

It’s the first Tuesday of the month—January 6, 2026. I remember where and how I was five years ago today: holed up in my office, up in the finished attic of our previous home, cold but cozy, laboring desperately and fruitlessly to finish some mildly overdue items for a client, making no progress whatsoever, instead watching video feeds on C-SPAN and texting furiously with Liana and various friends. My consulting partner on that project (hi Jennifer! miss you & hope you are well) created a little wiggle room for us that day. People die only the once, but ideals fall again and again, and either way the absence and grief is felt whole-heartedly.

Yesterday was the first day back at work for many of us who had the good fortune to enjoy some downtime or time away around the end of the year. I felt tense going into the weekend, not from apprehension about returning to work but rather from worry about what they’d do on—or for—the fifth anniversary of January 6. I needn’t have waited. In 1992 Leonard Cohen sang that he couldn’t “run no more with that lawless crowd / while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud.” In the current circumstance the killers skipped the praying in favor of congregating in front of a wall-sized display with results of a search on X dot com for ‘Venezuela.’

Square that with the expectation that work happens underneath a context-free, ahistorical capitalist realism dome; in this dome the past is about two months long and the future extends only as far out as the end of the quarter or the next round of asinine bulk layoffs. I see cracks in the dome. I wonder what might shine through.

Three responses

How to respond in these conditions? I see three ways:

The first response is to remember. I wrote recently about undiscussables and shifting baselines. In both cases I think this is what I was really on about. We have to remember this, so we can give an account of what happened, and hold to account those responsible, and produce a better place in its aftermath, restoring rights and generating protections for all.
Another is to take time & show care. People are hurting, worried, scared. These are best antidotes I know of, at least on a the scale of local, daily interactions.
1. Taking time: this looks like 90 minutes with friends instead of 60; showing up early to arrange chairs and cushions into an inviting circle; and joining a few calls or meetings that are not strictly necessary but I hope will be beneficial.
2. Showing care: helping people around me ease back into things. At work this means a deliberate, gentle reiteration of commitments and arrangements. What have we all signed up for? By what method will we try to it get it done? We might adjust as needed, but largely I think people just need to hear it again.
A final response is to do what we can. My city elected its new mayor, someone I know and respect and for whose campaign our whole family was proud to volunteer. He’ll be sworn in at the top of tonight’s city council meeting. There is a sense that this is the start of something good, despite the limitations of that position and other constraints in place.

These three are incomplete, but it’s what I have, and how I’m operating right now.

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