Saturday, June 17, 2006

Making Change

While working I took a class in change management during spring. Haven't had time to dedicate on the blog, but starting from the end: Aspects that we considered to be utterly important in an organisational change are communication, having a vision, setting well defined goals aligned with this vision, goals that can be achieved also in short term in order to keep motivation and pace in the change work. In a modern, knowledge-based organisation it is vital to establish a learning organisation. Change is dynamic, it's not about deciding on a 5-yearplan and send it to empolyees to fulfil it. Therefore, I drew a model that serves as a map during change, something to gather around in the organisation and also should be used for follow-ups and a double loup learning.




The green squares are supposed to be filled in with whatever the co-workers decide on. After some time, at the end of the year, the grey area is filled in with achievements. A gap-analysis provides input for the next year's green squares - after other relevant business intelligence has been considered.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

Oops


Oh, what happened during the month of May? I lead workshops - for process analysis and for inventory of competences, and future needs. I held a seminar on customer focus. And I finished a university course in change management to get an up date. Then I took a week off, in Corfu, Greece, just lovely.

Saturday, April 22, 2006

...and the lack of it

I usually say that there is a need to grasp all the ways of communication in a channel strategy. But I also think that you should be flexible enough to deal with different channels in various manners. At work I use a calender in Outlook. I have a cell phone that I syncronize with the computer and it syncronizes entirely. So if I happen to want an alert before a meeting, I will get it both in my computer and in the phone. It is impossible to close the alert function in the phone alone.

More channel strategies....

I arranged a seminar on multi channel strategies the other day and the more I prepared it, the more I wanted to include...it such a vast area. We could easily have used a full day and have work shops with more specific dicussions. Sture Hägglund, professor of Computer Science, gave broad introduction. After a break we got some more specific examples from Maria Inghamn, the Swedish Road Administration. Their sms-services have been more widely used, and differently, than anyone had expected.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Excellent!

I just got the message from my Professor that the memo I wrote on the Swedish Novel after WW2 was excellent and got the highest grade... it feels really good to hear that...especially as I did excellent on the thesis as well and now it will all ad up :-) I enjoyed the reading and writing and it always feels great to accomplish something!

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Process analysis

Ok, when I don't read or write on Swedish literature I work with business development and the past weeks we have conducted work shops of process analysis. The method is based on RUP and we look at "who is doing what with what" today and tomorrow. It is a simple way to get a pretty good picture of how work is done currently and what improvements could be made. At a 3rd occasion we count on the financial effects. Coming week I wil be leading one of these workshops on the "tomorrow"-situation and I am really looking forward to it. We have already had a first work shop and got a lot of information. The organisation has been doing their home work already last year but it's different when someone comes from the outside looking in.

Over and done with

Last week I handed in my paper on the Swedish prose since 1945 - feels good to accomplish a task on my list :-)

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

1990's short stories

In the 90's I was on the Editorial Board of the literary student's journal Ordkonst. We focused on young authors and when I moved on I remember having had enough of stories about young, unemployed men in an urban environment. But the maybe foremost characteristic of the literary 90's in Sweden was the short story. Cecilia Davidsson and Ninni Holmqvist are top of mind. Typic for the late (ie from the 1990's) short stories is that although in full light, there is something that is hard to get. The reality is well described but hard to understand. It's a world that is not consistent.

Sunday, March 05, 2006

The Christmas Oratorio (Juloratoriet, 1983)

The novel turns around a family marked by the accident that killed the mother on her way to practise the Christmas Oratorio in choir. The husband, the son and the future grand son and the different shapes of grief are interpreted in variations on the theme of mourning. The Christmas Oratorio was adapted as a movie in 1996 and became widely known to the (Swedish) public.



As most works of Tunström, this novel takes place in the village of Sunne. The fantastic elements alludes to Marquez but also to the myth. He places the myth in the everyday life and gives an epic form to fundamental human experiences. This is Göran Tunström’s master piece. The key matter is: Can the individual when suffering a loss that seems to be devastating find a healing force that brings maturity and growth?

1980s - Postmodernism

The Swedish literature in the 80s is about postmodernism and poststructuralism.
The optimism of development turned into fanatic unfaithfulness. Critics were critized for being stuck in critisism of ideologies and not literature. Young authors were critised for not being conscient of the language and the relations between texts, intertextuality. Thematics of life then turned into thematics of language and the written text.
As an example can be mentioned Stig Larsson who (in Autisterna, the Autists) used a character with no name, a mere epic function, that moves freely in time and space. He is a screen on which events, environments and emotions can be projected. The text is a text. The novel describes unconcentered individuals in a scattered world.

Other prominent Swedish authors of the 1980s are Peter Kihlgård, Björn Ranelid, Inger Edelfeldt and Mare Kandre.

Väderkvarnarna (the Windmills, 1962)

Arne Sand was almost always out of time. Back then, it seemed as he was always lagging behind, but much later we can think of him as someone before his time. He appears to be an paradigmatic author of the 1950s with his interest of the character and means of fiction.

The main character of the Windmills is an art critic, Donald Johansson, that comes to the family Martstad to study their Jugend mansion and falls in love with the daughter and then her mother. The novel consists of conversations that are hard to follow because however brilliant they do not make sense, which creates a distance. It has been mentioned as the first Swedish non-figurative novel and the most daring experimental novel of the 1960s. The novel alludes to Cervantes, Shakespeare and Kafka but most of all it reminded me of the surrealistic L’écume des jours of Boris Vian from 1947.

The Days of his Grace (Hans Nådes tid, 1960)

Eyvind Johnson mainly wrote historical and autobiographical pieces, sometimes entirely documentary. He renewed the novel and was a precursor in documentarism and got followers later on in the 60s. In 1974 he shared the Nobel Prize in literature “for a narrative art, far-seeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom”.

Johnson problematized the matter of time and memory and he was inspired by Henri Bergson. Other influences came from Marcel Proust, James Joyce and Thomas Mann.
The Days of his Grace takes place during the years of Karl the Great, approximately 775-825, and gives a depressing image of the world under his reign. In focus is the individual that is ground into nothing in the mill of powers. Like Vilhelm Moberg, Eyvind Johnson worked closely with authentic material. The story has three narrative levels – a trick to introduce more of the original material. This also makes it harder to distinguish different characters – the individual is complex and ever changing and the line between personalities is not distinct.

1960s - Take a stand

The early 60s, Swedish literature was still under the influence of relativism and unfaithfulness but during the second part of the 1960s, the political and economical debate is introduced in the arts. New, more genuine forms are sought and the “aristocracy-modernism” is dismissed when turning the back towards academia and media. Socialrealistic reporterprose and ideological criticism becomes in fashion. Literature is no longer art but serves to deliver emotions, in a functional way. Arts should serve people, as an act of solidarity.

The notion of culture broadens. The literary critic is now a contemporary intellectual as opposed to yesterday’s esthetical judge. The French structuralism is introduced in Sweden and along comes the “nouveau roman”. Important genres in the Swedish literature of the 60s are journey accounts (Sven Lindqvist, Jan Myrdal), reports and documentaries (PC Jersild, Sara Lidman) where interviews are common and also experimental prose (Torsten Ekbom).

Monday, February 27, 2006

Barabbas


Barabbas, written by Pär Lagerkvist, was published in 1950 and turns around the man who was released from execution in the place of Jesus and spends his time trying to comprehend the stranger's life and beliefs. Seeking but without finding his true beliefs, in lack of the capability to love and left to loneliness and anguish, Barabbas is the portait of the modern man.
During his career Pär Lagerkvist kept asking the big philosophical questions ("Why do we live?", "How should the world be understood?") over and over, but somehow without repeating himself. In 1951 he was rewarded with the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the artistic vigour and true independence of mind with which he endeavours in his poetry to find answers to the eternal questions confronting mankind".

Barnabok

Barnabok (Childs' book) was published in 1952 and may be considered as the first masterpiece of Lars Gyllensten. Gyllensten is a truly academic writer who has elaborated different values and perceptions of life in his different pieces. Above all, he estimate the priciple of "unfaithfulness", ie he is assuming different attitudes in his various books, he is a constructor and explorer of ideas. Initially, he was applauded but later his unfaithfulness was less associated to openness and more to a lack of principles (and in the 60s ideology became more important again). This relativism of Gyllensten was inspired by logical empirism of Vienna and Cambridgephilosophy. He also share basic ideas with Kierkegaard and existentialism. Barnabok is started in an artificial children's language and explores naivety. In the final scene the main character kills his girlfriends baby - he fails the attitude he was trying out.

Usually I enjoy clever constructions but so far it has been more fun/interesting to read about the talanted author (who has a chair of his own in the Swedish Academy, but didn't take part the last 15 years or so) than to read the results of his work. Although I am tempted to go on with the thesis and the anti-thesis in this trilogy where Barnabok corresponds to the synthesis.

Saturday, February 25, 2006

1950s - Come out and play

During the 1950s the serenity in Swedish literature turns into a play with esthetics. The 50s is a time of freedom and contradictions. It’s pluralism, ironic romance and playfulness. Different strategies and voices are tried out. A new foundation for society after 2nd world war is sought. The young author is usually an academic who is practising the craftsmanship of creating literature. However, there is no “generation” of the 50s that steps forward. Authors to be mentioned are: Pär Rådström, Birgitta Trotzig, Willy Kyrklund, Sara Lidman and Lars Gyllensten.

The American New criticism is introduced in Sweden by the leading critic Bengt Holmqvist. Ezra Pound grows popular, Roland Barthes less read.

The Emigrants


Vilhem Moberg's the Emigrants (1949) is the first volume of four telling the story about a family (Karl Oskar & Kristina Nilsson with children) and some other persons from their native village in the South of Sweden that leave their home to live the American dream in the 19th century. They arrive in Minnesota and settles there. Robert, the brother of Karl Oskar, is the dreamer and visionary man that cannot settle but keep going, for gold in Klondyke. Moberg has kept closely to documents of the time, concious to create a realistic description. This is a true master piece of Swedish literature after 1945 and a classic that is a pleasure to read.

"When I chose a party of 16 people, who for different reasons emigrated to America, I did not know what would would happen to them or, of course, how they would change. It was to find out that I wanted to write the novel." /Vilhelm Moberg

Island of the Doomed

Stig Dagerman's Island of the Doomed (L'île des condamnés / De dömdas ö) from 1946 is filled with constant fear described in a language saturated with symbols. It is a defense of individualism and an attack against the use of ideas as a tool of terror.
Seven people arrive to an island after their ship was wrecked and here they meet their ruin in different ways. The people are in bad shape, impersonal outer casing hardly covers a core of fear. Nasty animals (birds, snakes, lizards) prevail over the island. The interplay between symbols, animals and dread is intricate and a theme a long the novel. The animal causes fear but is also the symbol of the fear and these aspects are mixed into one in the perception of the individuals. The seven people symbolize the man after WWII in a hopeless situation of guilt and repressed experiences.

1940s - Anguish

Anguish is the key word of the Swedish literature in the 1940s. Stig Dagerman (1923-54) is the Master. The serenity of human existence is a main theme. Relativism of values lead to a renewed focus on moral issues. What the 40-talists share in common is the fear of illusions and false notions. This drives through a reduction of the image of the human being and the harder scrutinized, the larger the chance to find the real, but this also increases the anxiety.

The literary 1940s end in 1954 when Stig Dagerman commit suicide and the last volume of lyrics from Erik Lindegren is published. Lars Ahlin finishes off the classic modernism by claiming that literature is language, not a medium. He is experimenting with the prose in a way that will be picked up by the constructivists later on in the 1960s.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

70s literature in Sweden

During this weekend I have been busy with Swedish prose from the 1970s. The 70s hardly exist at all in Swedish literature as the 60s is considered to have ended in 1976 and the 1980s was a higher profiled period. In early 70s the publishing industry suffered from low/non-profits. Critics during the preceding years had claimed that fiction was all lie and crap. But eventually, this decade came with a renaissance for fiction and story-telling. Young authors left the political problems for existential ones. Prominent Swedish authors from the 1970s are such as: Jacques Werup, Ernst Brunner, Niklas Rådström, Klas Östergren.

I chose to read Lars Gustafsson, who is a highly academic author and a central figure especially in the 1960s . With Herr Gustafsson själv (1971) his authorship took a new path as he is more open about his own experiences and try to give form to the relations between the individual and society. At the same time it is an Inferno-journey as the one in Dante's Divina Commedia.



The second novel I chose from this decade was Ann-Charlotte Alverfors' Sparvöga. It is the first part of a trilogy about a little girl called Gertrud, nicknamed Sparvöga by her grandfather, who grows up in a big house in the countryside of Småland (the origin of Astrid Lindgren, Vilhelm Moberg, IKEA, my father and so much more....) together with parents and grand parents. The novel is a good example of a literary provinsialism that turns up during this period of time. It was filmed and shown in Swedish television late 80s but I have not found any English version. Marie Fredriksson (from Roxette) sang the lead theme.

Swedish novel after WWII

I decided to take the course of Swedish novel after 1945 at my old university in Lund. It's an awful lot of pages that gives few academic credits but a good knowledge of the Swedish literature. I have read some of the novels during the past years already but now I finally got my act together and got all the required literature from the libraries. Once started I was quite excited about it. It's so neat to sort decade by decade, look for the patterns etc.

Monday, February 06, 2006

Back in business

Oh, I haven't posted anything for a long time now. Travels, re-organisation at work and literature has kept be busy elsewhere than on the blog. However, last Saturday I was invited to a friend celebrating her successful blog and got some inspiration for a revival.