Small changes
(Small changes lead towards the larger changes that we need)
May 1st, 2021.
It’s May Day - the day of change. The day of transformations - digital or otherwise. The day of revolutions, perhaps - though we would probably prefer those to not just go round in circles, as most revolutions seem to do.
And also Mayday!, ‘m’aidez’ - the global call for help, for urgent change. Because right now we’re facing an all-too-literal Mayday!-call for the world itself, from almost every direction…
All kinds of change going on.
Yet in each case, it always starts small. And when small changes link together, that’s what leads towards the larger changes that we need.
What’s the focus for this newsletter?
It’s about change. Small changes that we see in the world around us.
What kinds of change should we focus on? I don’t know. In some ways I don’t care. Personally, of course, I’d prefer those that look like they’d support better sustainability for life on this planet of ours - but I’ve been around long enough to know that we can’t predict, from a single small change, which way the larger scale of things will go.
What content in the change? I don’t know. In some ways I don’t care. It may be a change in ideas, a change in technology, a change in relations between people, between people and place - just about anything, probably.
What scope and scale of change? Again, I don’t know. In some ways I don’t care. It could be very small, just one person’s idea, one person’s experience; it could be at the level of a family, a community, a business, a government.
Or it might just be a different way of seeing things:
So it doesn’t matter what the change is, or where it is, or who starts it. What does matter is that it’s a small-seeming change that might be useful elsewhere.
That’s why it’d be useful to capture the insights that arise from that change, and share it with others through this newsletter.
That’s it, really.
Oh, and it needs to be fun, too. Making things more fun is a change that we definitely need in this world of ours. Let’s make that happen, right here, for all of us.
Who am I to talk?
Me? I’m Tom Graves, also known as ‘tetradian’ on Twitter, LinkedIn and elsewhere.
In some ways I’m just another boring old white guy, really. Right now just a few months short of seventy years old, originally from England, now back in eastern Australia.
Boring, right? B-o-r-i-n-g…
But maybe not. Y’see, I’ve been around for a while now:
And been around a bit, too. Lived and/or worked in at least a dozen countries:
…and visited a fair few more:
Some useful stories there, for sure, about small things, small changes, leading to greater changes over time…
Professionally, I’m a generalist. I’ve done in-depth work in at least a dozen different disciplines, at every kind of level, and in maybe a couple of dozen distinct domains, from medical-illustration to aircraft-research, from design of typesetting-systems to design for social-change, teaching typographers and water-finders and business-architects and all manner of others as well. And led major transformations of the entire discipline for at least four of those contexts too. A lot of value, in almost every sense, for almost everyone involved.
(Of course, there are always a few people who just don’t understand what generalists do, or the value we bring. Like that interview for an enterprise-architecture role a few years back, with that CEO’s sneering putdown of “You’ve worked in so many different industries, that means you’re no good at anything, right?” He obviously saw it as a weakness; I see it as a strength. Especially for something like this.)
So yes, I’ve been around a bit. Written a fair bit about it, too, including a fair few books along the way - at least two dozen of them so far, along with their various editions, translations and more, sitting on the bookshelf beside my desk:
And other books beyond just those above: a bunch of more-technical ebooks, for example; a handful of screenplays; and various forms of fiction, for business, for more a political bent, or for just plain fun.
There’s also the Tetradian weblog, with more than 1300 posts so far - at least another twenty books’-worth of writing there, over the past fifteen years or so. Over there you’ll find more on what I do and why I do it, and on the kind of big-picture change that’s perhaps my main focus now. Amongst many other topics, of course - particularly enterprise-architecture and related themes.
If you want even more, well, there are nigh on 200 videos now on the YouTube channel, more than fifty slidedecks on Slideshare, various peer-reviewed articles in anthologies on enterprise-architecture, futures and more.
It’s a lot.
Too much, perhaps?
Oh well.
But don’t worry, it ain’t all just the boring business-stuff. After all, I’m the guy who gets business-execs to explore business-processes by building little stories on a toy-theatre:
Business as impro-comedy? A juggling-act? A song-and-dance routine? Maybe music too? (mainly bass-flute, in my case, though other wind-instruments as well). I’ve seen them all, and work well too, in real business contexts. And why not? All of those are small-changes that can, and do, make business-work feel more worthwhile, for everyone - and a lot more fun for everyone, too.
So yeah, I’ve been around a bit. With a fair bit to show for it. Always curious about the workings of the world, and with a usefully-different way of looking at things. Might well be useful to you too, perhaps? - I’d hope so, anyway.
How does this fit with the other Tetradian stuff?
This newsletter has a different focus, a different niche.
The Tetradian weblog is more abstract, more about theory, for whole-enterprise architecture and the like. By contrast, this newsletter is much more about the practical, the human side of change.
The Tetradian videos are, well, videos - that’s the whole point. By contrast, this is text (mostly). Of the three playlists on that channel (Tetradian on architectures, Tetradian on tools for change, and Tetradian on change), this newsletter probably connects most with the last of those - but again, this is text, not video.
It’s also not a book. Some of the newsletter posts might perhaps end up in ebook format someday, to provide a more permanent record - but that isn’t the point here. It’s a newsletter - it’s about the now, and about what might be useful now, not just in the past, as a book would tend to be.
And whilst, yes, I do hope it’ll bring in some form of income (more on that in a moment), it’s not a substitute for the current Patreon. The focus there is much narrower and more specific, and more commercial too, on development of practical tools and training-methods to guide change in business and elsewhere. By contrast, the focus here is as much about entertainment as anything else. Let’s make change enlightening, fun, worthwhile in every sense - that’s the real aim here.
So yes, it complements the existing Tetradian stuff, but it doesn’t replace any of it: all of that work has its own value too.
What’s the plan here?
There'll be three types of content:
Newsletter-posts that explore some theme or incident that illustrates a core idea, a key practice to adopt and develop. These posts will always be free to everyone. The plan is to publish one of these every Tuesday, at around 6pm eastern-Australia time. (There may occasionally be other newsletter-posts elsewhen in the week, if there's some incident that's immediately relevant and urgent - but the regular scheduled posts will be as above.)
Podcast-posts should start to come on-stream somewhen in the next few weeks. These will usually be either a voice-version of a newsletter-post, or an in-person interview, though this may change a bit over time, depending on what you say you’d want. These posts will also be free, and will be published on Thursdays at the same 6pm slot. I should also be able to publish them automatically on iTunes and other podcast sources: if you have any preferred podcast-platforms, please let me know.
Business-practice threads should also start to become available soon, once there's enough subscribers here to make it worthwhile. These posts will not be free: you’ll need a paid-subscription on Substack (probably USD$10/month) to view and interact with them. In effect, this will be real business-mentoring at a very low cost: and since you’d be gaining commercial value from those posts, it's definitely fair to charge for them. These posts will be published on Saturdays, at the same 6pm Australia-time slot - breakfast-time in western Europe and the UK, for example.
If you subscribe at the free level, you get sent an email each time there’s a new post. You don’t have to subscribe, though: you can always come direct to the newsletter’s Substack website, and check for yourself to see what’s new.
So that’s the plan, for now: see you next on Tuesday, with the first newsletter-post!
Fabulous initiative Tom, may it go from strength to strength.