English Hacking

한동안 몸도 아프고 약속도 많고 연말연시에 정신이 없습니다. 그래서 한동안 손을 안댔는데, 내친 김에 연초까지 그냥 쉬려구요… 또 쉬는 동안 블로그 툴을 워드프레스로 바꾸려고 합니다. 왜냐하면, 저 혼자 쓰는 것은 이거(메피스토블로그) 좋은데, 다른 분들과 함께 쓰려니 영… 불편해하셔서… 게다가 연초에는 가능하면 몇 분 더 모셔 보려고 합니다.

teuxdeux 이라는 rememberthemilk 과 비슷한 일정관리(할일 목록 관리) 프로그램이 있는데, 그 프로그램 오랫동안 찜해두고 있다가 오늘 들어가 봤습니다. 이런 글귀가 눈에 띄는군요.

Wisdom is knowing what to do next, skill is knowing how to do it, and virtue is doing it. (David Starr)

지혜란 다음에 무엇을 할지를 아는 것이고, 기술이란 그것을 하는 방법을 아는 것이고, 덕이란 그것을 하는 것이다. – 데이빗 스타

참, 아직 일정관리 없으신 분들은 한 번 써 보세요. 깔끔하고 괜찮아요. 좋은 크리스마스, 좋은 새해 맞으시고, 새해 새로운 모습으로 다시 찾아 뵙겠습니다.

경영서를 읽다 보면, 좀 불만스러울 때가 있죠. 그냥 … 다르다는 점을 인정하기가 좀 쉽지 않을 때도 많구요… 아래에서 읽은 조프리 밀러는 경영서와 과학서의 차이에 대해서 이렇게 말합니다. 이거, 나름대로 리스트로 만들어도 재밌겠어요… 추가해 보는 것도 재밌겠구요…

The advances in evolutionary psychology and individual differences research have rarely been used to understand consumerism, because very few consumer researchers understand the new psychology, and very few psychologists know anything about marketing, advertising, or product development. It is admittedly different to straddle the worlds of science and business. Science strives for cumulative progress through humbly authoritarian respect for one’s predecessors (through citations) and colleagues (through collaboration and peer review), whereas most new business books pretend to offer 100 percent fresh, new, radical, and unprecedented concepts, enabling its authors to profit from corporate speeches and consulting work. Science tries to build coherent, nuanced, testable theories that look gravely intimidating, whereas business books offer bullet-point lists and two-by-two graphs that look winsomely simple. Scientists try to use consistent technical terms that can be understood by them and no one else, whereas business books invent wacky new catchphrases that sound great but that can’t really be understood by anyone (Gung ho! The millionaire mind! Who moved my cheese? Lead like Jesus! Eat that frog! Purple cow!). (Geoffrey Miller, Spent, p. 29)

솔직히 경영서 읽다가 짜증낸 적이 몇 번 있는 것 같은데 (좀 많은 것 같은데), 뭐 꼭 그럴 필요는 없겠죠. 소설 읽으면서 과학서적 읽을 때와 같은 것을 기대하는 것 만큼 어리석은 짓이겠죠… 그런데, 그럼, 경영서는 소설일까요, 과학서적일까요?

ㅎㅎ 제목이 좀 거창하네요… 혹시 그런 적 없으세요? 책이 너무 재미있고, 매력적이어서 나중에 읽으려고 내버려두었다가 그냥 잊어버리는… 저는 그런 책 많습니다. 그 중에 하나를 우연한 계기에 다시 집어 들었습니다. 여기에서 인용합니다. 읽어보세요.

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Marketing Consultants
Cro-Magnons aside, modern society also looks bewildering to children. They are born with paleobrains, built from paleogenes, expecting a paleoworld: a close-knit social environment of kin-based hunter-gatherer clans. Children are wired to learn and play the normal game of life for which they evolved: be cute, grow up, find food, make friends, care for kin, avoid dangers, fight some enemies, find some mates, raise some kids, grow old and wise, die. Instead, they face a bizarre new world of frustrating duties and counterintuitive ideas: sit still, learn math, find a job, move away from friends, ignore kin, drive cars, leave kids in day care, and grow burdensome in old age.
Children face this new world with minimal guidance. Their parents go away all day to make money, to buy things, to look good and special, and to attract extra attention from other men and women, despite having mated and reproduced already. Their parents can’t explain why they pretend that they’re still in the mating market if they don’t actually want a divorce and custody battle. Their high school teachers can’t make sense of the consumerist world for them either, and their college professors can only suggest reading perplexing rants from postmodern French sociologists, such as Jean Baudrillard. So, almost everyone grows up confused, passed through life confused, and dies confused.
Only a few children do ever gain an intuitive grasp of consumerism’s principles, and these typically grow up to be marketing consultants. They learn that people general are motivated, at least unconsciously, to flaunt and fake their personal merits and virtues to one another. They realize that modern consumers in particular strive to be self-marketing minds, feeding one another hyperbole about how healthy, clever, and popular they are, through the goods and services they consume. Marketing consultants build careers around the postmodern insight: at its heart consumerist capitalism is not “materialist,” but “semiotic.” It concerns mainly the psychological world of signs, symbols, images, and brands, not the physical world of tangible commodities. Marketers understand that they are selling the sizzle, not the steak, because a premium brand of sizzle yields a high margin of profit, whereas a steak is just a low-margin commodity that any butcher could sell.
However, even the cleverest marketers still don’t fully understand which merits and virtues consumers are really trying to display through their consumption decisions. They don’t really understand the content of the signals that people send to one another. Typically, marketers get some formal education in outdated consumer psychology research, then they get real jobs at real companies and realize that their formal training is mostly useless in selling real products. In response, they strive to develop an intuitive understanding of consumer behavior and marketing strategies through years of trial-and-error learning, plus the occasional book by Seth Godin of Malcolm Gladwell. They lack the huge practical benefits of having a coherent evidence-based theory about consumer behavior, and this limits their success rate. (Geoffrey Miller, Spent – Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior, pp. 10 – 12)

왜 이런 책을 안읽는지 진짜 모르겠어요. 저도 정말 지겹고 괴로울 때를 대비해서 남겨놨었는데, 우연한 계기로 다시 찾아 읽게 됐어요. 이런 책은 꼭 사서 읽어야 한다는 게 제 생각입니다.

또 땜방 나갑니다. 내일은 반드시 번역놀이 결과를 올리겠습니다. (이건 완죤 마감시간에 쫓기는 느낌…)

질라드, 아주 특이한 사람이죠. 핵폭탄을 만든 뛰어난 과학자인데, 음모이론의 대가이기도 하고(어쩌면 잘나가는 과학자와 음모이론은 밀접한 관계가 있는 것 같기도 하고, 어쩌면 이게 사회현상을 너무 수학적으로 봐서 그런 것 아닌가 생각이 들기도 하고, 그런 점에서 보자면 플라톤의 철인정치야말로 수학적 음모이론의 아버지라는 느낌이 들기도 하고… 뭐 이건 나중에 다시 생각해 보기로 하죠), 원자탄의 위력 앞에서 아인시타인은 “정치에 회의를 느껴” 단식을 하지만 질라드는 “물리학에 회의를 느껴(?)” 분자생물학으로 전향… 나중에 암에 걸리자 자기가 발명한 기계로 자가치료… ㄷㄷㄷ

그가 죽자, 사람들이 한 말이 “밤에 죽음이 왔으니 그도 어쩔 수 없이 당했지 낮에 왔으면 도망갔을 것”이라고…ㄷㄷㄷ

During May 1964, Szilárd died in his sleep of a heart attack at the age of sixty-six. At his memorial it was said that Death was required to come to him while asleep, or otherwise he would have outwitted it. (참고: 위키피디어 및 한글 위키피디어 )

그는 1921년 크리스마스 자기에게 교수가 내 준 재미 없는 박사학위 숙제를 집어치고, 충동적으로 자기가 하고싶은 것을 하겠다고 결심하고, 3주가 지나자 당시 물리학에서 가장 어려운 문제를 풀어버리고, 이걸로 박사학위를 받아버립니다. 이 이야기입니다.

Szilard had already given a year of his life to the Army and two years to engineering. He wasted no time advancing through physics. In the summer of 1921 he went to Max von Laue and asked for a thesis topic. Von Laue gave him an obscure problem in relativity theory. “I couldn’t make any headway with it. As a matter of fact, I was not even convinced that this was a problem that could be solved.” Szilard worked on it for six months, until the Christmas season, “and I thought Christmastime is not a time to work, it is a time to loaf, so I thought I would just think whatever comes to my mind.”
What he thought, in three weeks, was how to solve a baffling inconsistency in thermodynamics, the branch of physics that concerns relationships between heat and other forms of energy. There are two thermodynamic theories, both highly successful at predicting heat phenomena. One, the phenomenological, is more abstract and generalized (and therefore more useful); the other, the statistical, is based on an atomic model and corresponds more closely to physical reality. In particular, the statistical theory depicts thermal equilibrium as a state of random motion of atoms. Einstein, for example, had demonstrated in important papers in 1905 that Brownian motion – the continuous, random motion of particles such as pollen suspended in a liquid – was such a state. But the more useful phenomenological theory treated thermal equilibrium as if it were static, a state of no change. That was the inconsistency.
Szilard went for long walks – Berlin would have been cold and gray, the grayness sometimes relieved by days of brilliant sunshine – “and I saw something in the middle of the walk; when I came home I wrote it down; the next morning I woke up with a new idea and I went for another walk; this crystallized in my mind and in the evening I wrote it down.” It was, he thought, the most creative period of his life. “Within three weeks I had produced a manuscript of something which was really quite original. But I didn’t dare to take it do von Laue, because it was not what he had asked me to do.” (Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, pp. 19-20)

그래서 그 대신 그는 그 논문을 아인시타인에게 보여 줍니다. 아인시타인이 아주 좋아하자, 그는 용기를 내어 자기 지도교수에게도 보여줍니다. 그리고, 그 다음날 새벽 그는 박사학위논문이 통과되었다는 지도교수의 전화를 받습니다.

누구나 질라드가 될 수는 없겠죠. 크리스마스가 다가옵니다.

오늘도 옛날에 읽었던 책으로 땜빵입니다. 아직 좀 집중이 잘 안되고, 게다가 이제 그동안 미뤄뒀던 것들도 해야하고 하니 계속 책 읽을 시간이 많지 않네요… 그래서 좋은 점도 있어요. 옛날에 읽은 책들을 다시 돌아보게 되는…

제가 운전을 처음 배울 때 가르쳐준 사부님께서 그랬죠. 끼어들려 할 때 깜빡이를 넣는 것은 자살행위라고… (뭐, 옛날 이야기입니다) 그 분께서는 정말 운전의 고수였죠. 아직도 그 분께서 가르쳐주신 명언을 항상 명심하며 운전합니다.

방어운전을 하려면 두 가지를 해야 하는데, 첫째는 공격적으로 운전하지 말 것. 둘째는, 공격적으로 운전하는 차가 있으면 멀리 피할 것. 왜냐하면, 어차피 사고가 나는 것은 반반이야. 자기가 잘못해서 나는 경우가 반이고, 남이 잘못해서 나는 경우가 절반이지. 그러니, 사고날 짓은 하지 말고, 사고날 것 같은 짓을 하는 놈이 있으면 피해.

요즘도 와이프는 제가 운전할 때 가끔씩 놀랍니다. 어떨 때는 끼어들어도 될 것 같은데도 그러지 않고, 어떨 때는 꽤 위험해 보이는데도 그냥 끼어들고… 운전은 커뮤니케이션이죠. 운전실력의 절반은 자기 의지를 (얼마나 단호한지까지) 분명히 전달하는 것이고, 나머지 절반은 상대방의 의지를 (얼마나 단호한지까지도) 분명히 이해하는 것이죠. 그러니까, 운전실력은 엔진의 작동원리에 대한 역학적 이해도, 기계공학적 이해도 아니고, 또 정비기술도 아니라는거죠.

영어공부하면서 문법책이나 단어책 끼고 사는 것은 마치 운전연습하면서 정비학원다니는 것과 비슷하다고 생각합니다. 영어도 커뮤니케이션의 문제이기 때문이죠. 차라리, 그 시간에 미국인이 어떻게 하는지 관찰하거나, 아니면 문화인류학책이나 읽어 보는게 더 도움이 될 겁니다.

“저는 공부를 잘 하는 학생은 아니었어요,” 내지는 “저는 성적이 좀 나빴어요”같은 말을 영어로 어떻게 표현할까요? 미국에서라면, 흔히 이렇게 말합니다. 뭐, 미국 있을 때 배운 인터뷰 기술 가운데 하나랄까요…

“I didn’t get straight A’s.” 내지는

“Well, I wasn’t one of the best students in the class.”

영어를 그렇게 잘 못해요라고 말할 때에는,

“I’m not one of the best English speakers in the world.”

약간의 “overstatement”가 생활화되어 있다고 할까요… 얼마전 출장길 공항에서 산 책에서 인용합니다. 이 책의 저자는 영국에서는 정반대로 “understatement”가 기본이라고 합니다. 저자는 좀 특이한 사람인데요, 문화인류학자인데 그냥 게을러서 아프리카 오지로 가지 못하고, 고향인 영국에 대해서 문화인류학적 방법을 적용해 봤다고 합니다. 영국의 술집, 커피숍 등등에서 문화인류학을 한거죠. 그녀가 말하는 선술집 인류학에서 유머에 관한 부분 가운데에서 understatement (겸손이랄까요)에 대해서 한 말을 다시 읽어 보았습니다. 위의 미국과는 대체로 정반대라고 보시면 됩니다. 꽤나 재미 있는 책이에요.

The Understatement Rule
I’m putting this as a sub-heading under irony, because understatement is a form of irony, rather than a distinct and separate type of humour. It is also a very English kind of irony – the understatement rule is a close cousin of the Importance of Non Being Earnest rule, the ‘Oh, come off it’ rule and the various reserve and modesty rules that govern our everyday social interactions. Understatement is by no means an exclusively English form of humour, of course: again, we are talking about quantity rather than quality. George Mikes said that the understatement ‘is not just a specialty of the English sense of humour; it is a way of life.’ The English are rightly renowned for their use of understatement, not because we invented it or because we do it better than anyone else, but because we do it so much. (Well, maybe we do do it a little bit better – if only because we get more practice at it.)
The reasons for our prolific understating are not hard to discover: our strict prohibitions on earnestness, gushing, emoting and boasting require almost constant use of understatement. Rather than risk exhibiting any hint of forbidden solemnity, unseemly emotions or excessive zeal, we go to the opposite extreme and feign dry, deadpan indifference. The understatement rule means that a debilitating and painful chronic illness must be described as ‘a bit of a nuisance’; a truly horrific experience is ‘well, not exactly what I would have chosen’; a sight of breathtaking beauty is ‘quite pretty’; an outstanding performance or achievement is ‘not bad’; an act of abominable cruelty is ‘not very friendly’, and an unforgivably stupid musjudgement is ‘not very clever’; the Antarctic is ‘rather cold’ and the Sahara ‘a bit too hot for my taste’; and any exceptionally delightful object, person or event, which in other cultures would warrant streams of superlatives, is pretty much covered by ‘nice’, or, if we wish to express more ardent approval, ‘very nice’.
Needless to say, the English understatement is another trait that many foreign visitors find utterly bewildering and infuriating (or, as we English would put it, ‘a bit confusing’). ‘I don’t get it’, said one exasperated informant. ‘Is it supposed to be funny? If it’s supposed to be funny, why don’t they laugh – or at least smile? Or something. How the hell are you supposed to know when “not bad” means “absolutely brillian” and when it just means “OK”? Is there some secret sign or something that they use? Why can’t they just say what they mean?’ (Kate Fox, Watching the English, pp. 66 – 67)

영국식으로 말하자면, 뭐 그리 나쁘지는 않은 책입니다. 미국인으로 태어났으면서도 이런 식의 화법을 온몸으로 “학습”하여 뭐 “그리 나쁘지 않은” 작가가 된 사람이 있죠. 빌 브라이슨입니다. 그의 책에는 이런 류의 논조가 “적지 않게” 미국식의 직설법 사이로 녹아들어가 있고, 그 결과는 “그럭저럭 괜찮은” 독서 경험을 제공한달까요…

재미있어요. 같은 영어인데, 그렇게 다른지… 내일이나 모레는 아마 다시 Art of Strategy로 돌아갈 수 있겠죠…

어제와 같은 이유로 오늘도 옛날에 읽었던 책 이야기로 “땜빵”합니다. 인간관계, 어렵죠. 어떤 사람에게는 특히 어려운 것 같아요. 수학보다도, 영어보다도, 그 무엇보다도 배우기 어렵게 느껴질 때가 있어요. 인간관계에 대해서 옛날에 한 번 인용했던 존 맥스웰 목사의 책에서 인용합니다.

인간관계 이야기일 수도 있구요, 프리젠테이션 이야기일 수도 있구요…

William James said, “The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated.”
Have you heard the story about the young politician’s first campaign speech? He was very eager to make an impression on his audience, but when he arrived at the auditorium, he found only one man sitting there. He waited, hoping more people would show up, but none did. Finally he said to the one man in the audience, “Look, I’m just a young politician starting out. Do you think I ought to deliver this speech or dismiss the meeting?”
The man thought a moment and replied, “Sir, I’m just a cowhand. All I know is cows. Of course, I do know that if I took a load of hay down to the pasture and only one cow came up, I’d feed it!”
Principle: We cannot underestimate the value of a single person.”
With the advice from the cowhand, the politician began his speech and talked on and on for two hours as the cowhand sat expressionless. Finally he stopped and asked the cowhand if the speech was all right.
The man said, “Sir, I am just a cowhand and all I know is cows. Of course, I do know that if I took a load of hay down to the pasture and only one cow came up, I surely wouldn’t dump the whole load on him.”
Principle: Don’t take advantage of people. (John C. Maxwell, Be a People Person, p. 16)

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그렇죠. 한 사람의 가치를 무시하지도 말아야 하고, 다른 사람을 이용하지도 말아야죠. 근데, 어렵습니다.

블로그가 좀 느린 것 같아 다른 호스팅으로 옮기려고 이것저것 해 보고 있는데, 딱 떨어지지가 않네요. 게다가 아거님과 함께 하기로 한 이후, 이 블로그의 글쓰기 인터페이스가 좀 익숙하지 않으신 것 같아, wordpress로 갈아탈까 하는 것도 생각하고 있구요. 이것도 꽤나 까다로운 작업이라, 무리 없이 옮기려면 좀 고민하고, 해 보고, 여러번 해 봐야 무리 없이 될 것 같아요. 특히, 댓글은 아시다시피 disqus를 사용하고 있기 때문에 날아가지야 않겠지만, 주소를 똑같이 유지해야 같은 글에 같은 댓글이 다시 붙어 주니까, 주소체계를 똑같이 유지하면서 데이터를 모조리 메피스토에서 엑스포트해서 워드프레스로 옮긴다는게, 게다가 지금 현재 돌아가고 있는 것을 그렇게 한다는게 말처럼 만만치가 않네요. 게다가 몸도 좀 아프고 해서, 머리도 좀 멍하고 집중도 잘 안되고 그래요.

뭐, 그렇다구요. 그래서, 읽고 있는 책이 아니라 옛날에 읽은 책에서 한 귀절 인용할게요. 이 책의 저자인 크리스틴 코마포드-린치는 아주 특이한 사람입니다. 티벳불교 승려도 했다가, 게이샤 훈련도 받았다가, MS에서도 일했다가, 자기 회사도 차렸다가, 나도 나름대로는 아주 다양한 인생을 살았다고 생각했는데, 이 분에 비하면 뭐… 책 제목도 “Rules for Renegades” 번역하자면 “반골들의 (성공) 규칙” 정도 되려나요… 한글 번역본은 좀 뜬금없는 “오프로드를 달리는 여자”인가, 뭐 그런 제목으로 나왔었죠. 이 여자의 회사차리는 방법에 대해서 한 귀절 읽어 보죠. 월요일인데 좀 힘도 나고, 긍정적인 뭔가를 읽어야죠?

The world is one imperfect place. That’s the good news. Every day new messes are created that require someone to come in and clean them up. Opportunities are all around you: pay attention! Learn to listen to someone who’s in “business pain.” Diagnose that pain first: perhaps the competition is crushing them, or markets haven’t materialized, or their inefficient systems are stifling innovation. Then make sure the pain is perceived as a problem that needs a solution. Problems + pain = profit. The second step is key: only then will they open their wallets to get that pain removed.
I’ve created companies in two ways. The hard way is when I have no ideas, and I search for a problem to solve. I’ll get to this shortly. The easy way is when a problem that needs solving pops right into my lap. As we saw in Chapter 1, the idea for Kuvera just dropped into my lap. Microsoft was feeling pain. The contractors like me were feeling pain. If I’d waited a week and a day, I’d have missed my chance to create the painkiller and compete with Volt. (Christine Comaford-Lynch, Rules for Renegades, p. 52)

어딘가 다른 곳에서도 비슷한 글을 읽은 기억이 있는데, ... 어쨌든 아주 흥미로운 사람입니다.

아직 감기기운이 좀 있어서 정신이 없어요. 신종플루는 아닌 것 같지만…

오늘은 잠깐 지금 읽고 있는 것으로부터 벗어나서, 말콤 글래드웰은 어디에서 글쓰기 아이디어를 얻는지에 대해 그가 한 말을 인용해 보죠. 말콤 글래드웰은 스티븐 핑커 교수가 말한 것처럼 자질 있는 사회과학자는 아니겠죠. 그렇지만, 누가 뭐라 해도 그는 뛰어난 작가죠. 그는 아이디어를 어디에서 얻을까요?

The trick to finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell. I say trick but what I really mean is challenge, because it’s a very hard thing to do. Our instinct as humans, after all, is to assume that most things are not interesting. We flip through the channels on the television and reject ten before we settle on one. We go to a bookstore and look at twenty novels before we pick the one we want. We filter and rank and judge. We have to. There’s just so much out there. But if you want to be a writer, you have to fight that instinct every day. Shampoo doesn’t seem interesting? Well, dammit, it must be, and if it isn’t, I have to believe that it will ultimately lead me to something that is. (I’ll let you judge whether I’m right in that instance.)
The other trick to finding ideas is figuring out the difference between power and knowledge. Of all the people whom you’ll meet in this volume, very few of them are powerful, or even famous. When I said that I’m most interested in minor geniuses, that’s what I meant. You don’t start at the top if you want to find the story. You start in the middle, because it’s the people in the middle who do the actual work in the world. My friend Dave, who taught me about ketchup, is a middle guy. He’s worked on ketchup. That’s how he knows about it. People at the top are self-conscious about what they say (and frightfully so) because they have position and privilege to protect – and self-consciousness is the enemy of “interestingness.” In “The Pitchman” you’ll meet Arnold Morris, who gave me the pitch for the “Dial-O-Matic” vegetable slicer one summer day in his kitchen on the Jersey Shore: “Come on over, folks. I’m going to show you the most amazing slicing machine you have ever seen in your life,” he began. He picked up a package of barbecue spices and used it as a prop. “Take a look at this!” He held it in the air as if he were holding up a Tiffany vase.
He held it in the air as if he were holding up a Tiffany vase. That’s where you find stories, in someone’s kitchen on the Jersey Shore. (Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw, pp. xiii – xiv)

사실, 그가 새로 책을 썼다는 것을 알았을 때는 별로 그걸 살 마음이 없었거든요. 왜냐하면, 어디선가 여기 실린 이야기는 모두 다 어딘가 다른 곳(잡지나 신문)에 이미 실렸던 이야기들이고, 사실 이것들은 글래드웰의 홈페이지에 가 보면 다 공짜로 볼 수 있는 내용이라는 것을 알고 있었거든요. 그리고, 솔직히 말콤 글래드웰의 책을 다 샀지만, 끝까지 읽은 것은 하나도 없었어요. 뭐랄까, 좀 읽다보면 좀 가십성 이야기들을 엮어서 뭔가 좀 그럴 듯한 이야기가 나와야 할 것 같긴 한데, 사실 그의 이야기는 대체로 가십이거든요. 스티븐 핑커 교수의 비평을 읽고, 서점에 갔다가 훓어 보고 책을 샀죠.

사실, 솔직히 그가 썼던 아웃라이어나 티핑포인트나 뭐 이런 것에 비하면, 이것이야말로 그의 진가를 알 수 있는 책이라고 생각해요. 왜냐하면, 그는 이야기꾼이거든요. 그 이야기들에 뭔가 일관된 테마가 있는 것처럼 하나의 제목 아래 엮어 놓는 것 보다는, 별로 상관 없는 일련의 이야기들을 아무렇게나 엮어 놓는 것이 진짜 이야기꾼 답다는 생각입니다. 이야기꾼이 가장 재미없어 질 때까 바로, 자기 이야기에서 뭔가 교훈을 끌어내려 할 때잖아요.

그리고, 위에서도 봤듯이 그의 핵심은 이야기입니다. 좋은 글이고, 좋은 글이 될 수 있는 아이디어이고, 좋은 아이디어가 나올 수 있는 좋은 이야기이죠. 그는 타고난 이야기꾼이고, 타고난 글쟁이입니다.

마치 스티븐 핑커의 비판을 예상이라도 했던 듯이, 그는 머릿말을 이렇게 끝냅니다.

Nothing frustrates me more than someone who reads something of mine or anyone else’s and says, angrily, “I don’t buy it.” Why are they angry? Good writing does not succeed or fail on the strength of its ability to persuade. Not the kind of writing that you’ll find in this book, anyway. It succeeds or fails on the strength of its ability to engage you, to make you think, to give you a glimpse into someone else’s head – even if in the end you conclude that someone else’s head is not the place you’d really like to be. I’ve called these pieces adventures, because that’s what they are intended to be. Enjoy yourself. (p. xv)

바로 이 귀절 때문에 책을 샀습니다. 좋은 글은 독자에게 즐거움을 주면 되는 거죠.

오늘은 어제에 이어지는 이야기입니다. 사실, 오늘의 이 이야기가 같이 나누고 싶은 이야기였는데, 아무런 맥락 없이 던져지면 너무 뜬금없다고 할 수도 있을 것 같아서 어제 미리 배경설명을 드렸달까요…

At first glance, such issues may sound unrealistic, a little like the intellectual games with which the philosophers of ancient Greece once amused themselves. But it is precisely by asking questions like these – challenges to the fundamental commonsense premises of business activity – that many outstandingly successful companies have managed to break out of seemingly hopeless competitive stalemates. Consider these examples:
The blankets produced by an electrical appliance manufacturer carried a warning: “Do not fold or lie on this blanket.” One of the company’s engineers wondered why no one had designed a blanket that was safe to sleep on while it was in operation. The engineer’s questioning resulted in the production of an electric underblanket that was not only safe to sleep on while in operation but much more efficient. Being insulated by the other bedclothes, it wasted far less energy than conventional electric blankets, which dissipate half their heat directly into the air.
A camera manufacturer wondered why a camera couldn’t have a built-in flash that would spare users the trouble of finding and fixing an attachment. To ask the question was to answer it. The company proceeded to design a 35mm camera with built-in flash. It was an enormous success, sweeping the Japanese medium-price lens-shutter market. Likewise, a camera company that questioned why exposed film so often came back without any pictures taken discovered that about 50 percent of Japanese women either couldn’t load the film properly or were afraid to try. As a result it introduced an automatic film-loading mechanism that has eliminated the need to insert the end of the perforated film into a reel.
Mr. Taiichi Ohno of Toyota Motor Company wondered why it should be necessary stockpile large quantities of components for production. As a result of his question, the company introduced a computer-based system that sends orders to its vendors, lists them in order of production, and gives the component suppliers – two or three weeks in advance – a production plan specifying type, quantity, delivery time, and order of delivery. A reminder, called kanban, is then circulated to suppliers so that they can deliver on time to meet the company’s automotive assembly schedule. The conveyor belt acts as a buffer, and the suppliers hold the stocks of components they have produced right up to the time they are wanted on the main assembly line.
The key to this “just-in-time production” system is that the suppliers also use it to synchronize with final assembly production, thus eliminating work in process. And if anything happens to halt production on the main assembly line, the general manager is in a position to bring tremendous pressure on the supplier concerned to remedy the problem as swiftly as possible.
A commercial truck distributor noticed that his salespeople, like most others in the industry, were making most of their calls between 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. each day. He wondered whether orders peaked during that part of the afternoon, and he asked for a quick analysis. It showed that the period from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. was precisely when the salespeople’s success rate (the ratio of sales to calls) was at its lowest. Having established this point, management very sensibly relaxed its tight control on the salespeople’s time, encouraging them to go straight to their territories instead of reporting to the office in the morning, and to take their free time in the afternoon. The end result: a significant share improvement for the company. (The Mind of the Strategist, pp. 59 – 60)

혁신이란 바로 이런 것이라고 저자는 말합니다. 저자가 말하는 혁신이라는게 연구실에서 만들어지는 것이라기보다는, 어떤 의미에서는 전략가의 문제의식을 출발점으로 하여 “추구”되어지는 거라는 거죠. 이미 디지털 시대로 접어든 이때 카메라의 예는 좀 구닥다리로 보일 수 있지만, 그거야 뭐…

“돈이 되는” 혁신이라는 것은 “과학사를 새로 쓰는” 혁신과는 분명히 다를 것입니다. 스티브 잡스는 아마 죽었다 깨어나도 노벨상을 받지 못할 거라는 거죠. 회사에서의 혁신이라는 것은 따지고 보면 하나의 문제의식을 끈질기게, 고집스럽게 밀고 나가는 결과라는 거구요. 흥미로운 사례들이죠.

어제는 감기기운이 좀 있어서, 10시간 이상 그냥 잤습니다. 요즘같은 때는 그저 조심하는게 상책이죠.

The strategist’s method is very simply to challenge the prevailing assumptions with a single question: Why? and to put the same question relentlessly to those responsible for the current way of doing things until they are sick of it. This way bottlenecks to fundamental improvement are identified, and major breakthroughs in achieving the objectives of the business become possible. [...]
In a stalemated situation, it is very hard to bring about radical improvement through operational improvements, or doing more better. Such a stalemate usually comes about when both the cost and the effectiveness of striving of the key factors for success have reached the limit; the company’s efforts to enhance the KFS no longer produce any discernible movement in market share or profitability, and the company finds itself drifting slowly in one direction over the years, usually deteriorating in the process. When this stage has been reached, the search for strategic measures becomes imperative. As far as operational improvement is concerned, the necessary premise is, as we saw in Chapter 3, a steady approach to the KFS. But to break out of a stalemate, the strategist has to take drastic steps.
The first step is to postulate that the company may have been led to the present stagnation by adhering to what had earlier constituted the key to success in respect to a given product or market. The KFS of Toyota and of Kirin Beer have been economies of scale in production and distribution, respectively. But if a weaker competitor wanted to effect a meaningful alteration in the balance of power in regard to a particular automotive vehicle or beer market, imitating the KFS that brought success to the established giants would lead only to its being ousted from the ring in a simple trial of brute strength. Hence the question the strategist should ask is, Have the KFS, in fact, remained unchanged?
What is called for, in other words, is a thoroughgoing challenge to the accepted common sense of the industry. The commonsense notions to be challenged may be located in such areas as actual production (method or process), distribution (sales and service network), or product planning. The more directly one is involved in each of these operations, the easier it becomes to overlook the commonsense issues that are there to be raised. (The Mind of the Strategist, pp. 57 – 58)

저도 별로 몸이 좋지 않은데, 어제는 웹서버도 좀 불안정한지… 가끔씩 들어가봐도 별로 살아있는 것 같지 않더라구요… 몇 번 더 이런 일이 생기면 아마 다른 호스팅 서비스로 옮겨야 할 듯… 뭐, 그건 나중 문제고…

사업에서 대부분의 문제는 남들이 보지 못하는 문제나 해법을 보거나 찾아내는게 아니라, “될 때까지” 하는 끈기로 하는거죠. 저자는 발명이나 혁신도 마찬가지라고 말합니다.

The strategist’s method is very simply to challenge the prevailing assumptions with a single question: Why? and to put the same question relentlessly to those responsible for the current way of doing things until they are sick of it.

비밀은 만족스런 답이 나올 때까지 “왜”라는 질문을 계속하는 거라는 거죠. 경영뿐 아니라 인생의 많은 문제들이 그렇죠. 답이 안나올 때 답은 대부분은 끈기와 고집이죠.