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