X-Message-Number: 1381 Date: Mon, 30 Nov 92 12:36 PST From: (Keith Lofstrom) Subject: CRYONICS - Dreamers, Detailers, and Diplomats ALCOR PERSONALITIES We are magnificently flakey people. If we were more "normal", we wouldn't be in cryonics yet. If we were very good workers, businessmen, or leaders, we would be out transforming the mundane world rather than doing what we are doing. As a matter of fact, when we succeed making cryonics popular, it will probably be taken over by mundane people with more resources than we have. If we have any smarts, we won't stay and fight, but will move on to the next idea that needs us. As it is, we are still pretty smart, pretty good at doing some things, and have a lot of gumption to do something that we consider right and that other folks think is nuts. We are also fiercely independent, and if cryonics was the sort of thing a person could do by themselves, that's the way we would do it. Our natural tendency is not to work in teams. We are different kinds of people, and when I was at the transport training class I got a chance to observe folks. Three months after the fact, I can pontificate on these types a bit. This is a crude, one page analysis - the fit won't be comfortable, there are many more than 3 types, and gradations between all of them. I won't name names, but you can probably peg yourself or others into one of the groups. These are categories, not factions; people of the same "type" don't always form alliances. DREAMERS, DETAILERS, AND DIPLOMATS I am a dreamer. I am motivated by a dimly seen future, and present activity is merely a step to that future. Without an emphasis on results now, it's easy to let things go undone or partly done, chase too many projects, or forget the practical in the pursuit of the ideal. Slogging through the details usually makes me uncomfortable. Sometimes I share my dreams with others not ready to understand them, and both of us feel threatened by the result. Most of the members are probably dreamers; it is fortunate we are under-represented on the staff and on the board, though I would hate to lose the ones we have. Alcor became a reality because of a Detailer. A detailer can dream, but gets satisfaction from each task in itself, and not just the long-term results (and oh, how I envy that!). A detailer is concerned with doing things right - there are many ways to do cryonics wrong, so a detailer can find plenty of things to find fault with. There are many different ways to do things right, though, and this is where our detailers get in trouble. Cryonics is a legal, social, financial, and even literary activity, as well as a medical and technical one. It's easy for a detailer to slight or ignore the efforts of a detailer in another specialty. It's even easier to have conflicts with detailers with the same specialty - without lots of historical results in maintaining a cryonics organization through crisis, it is easy to disagree about the best steps to avoid future crises. Once a cryonics organization grows beyond the bounds of what one person can comprehend, a detailer is a lousy person to run it - they try to control rather than manage. We don't pay people nearly enough to control them. Cryonics also contains a few Diplomats. A diplomat, at best, resolves conflicts. On the average, a diplomat acts as a conduit for them, and usually gets them out in the open. At worst, a diplomat works for one faction to the detriment of others, and sometimes creates conflict to bind their own faction in their hostility to others. Conflict management is the goal, not adhering to any particular set of rules or morality, though rules and morals are usually the best way to manage conflict. Diplomats often drive detailers and dreamers nuts, but without the diplomats, the dreamers and detailers would be spending all their time battling each other and accomplishing nothing. During a transport training lunchtime, a number of us went out to a restaurant. The waitress, a fundamentalist christian, found out we were cryonicists, and barely maintained her composure as we told her all about how we were preserving people's bodies to bring them back to life. On the way back to Alcor, an Alcor staffer pointed out that it is much more effective to say that our patients are in a very real sense still alive, and we are still caring for them after traditional medicine has abandoned them. This staffer was being a diplomat, and a very effective one - whatever their faults, and whatever their fate in the reorganization, such people are how we grow cryonics, and bind ourselves to the larger community. I hope that person is reading this and knows they are appreciated. Steve Bridge takes the helm of an organization that needs a diplomat. If he does his job right, he will be reviled, called names, perhaps even punched a few times, because he will be rebuilding a coalition out of a bunch of high-strung geniuses and not-so-geniuses who need to learn some manners. As a children's librarian, he may have just the tools to do it. I hope he has the patience to turn his enemies of the moment into friends later. Cryonics needs technical excellence AND friends. Good Luck, Steve! -- Keith Lofstrom Voice (503)-520-1993 KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon" Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Power ICs Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1381