Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman

This book was delightful -- delightfully scary and entertaining.  From the onset, Gaiman expertlly wraps you in intrigue, mystery and other worldly magic.  Luckily, I was able to read most of it in two consecutive sittings (one included a Thanksgiving out of town visit), so I was able to immerse myself in it.  I plan to read it again. 

 

 Here is the summary of the work:
A moving story of memory, magic, and survival in Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy. Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettiee"magical, comforting, wise beyond her yearse"promised to protect him, no matter what. A groundbreaking work from a master, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out. It is a stirring, terrifying, and elegiac fable as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark.

Six Factors of Influence

I'm a fan of Cheryl Stenstrom, professor at San Jose.  She gave a discussion today through FOPL regarding Advocacy and her research.  I particularly enjoyed her overview of Cialdini's Six Tactics of Influence.  The key is consistent and committed message, but one of the most influential factors is "liking" and at the very least being familiar to key stakeholders.  It brings to mind the adage that it's important to be seen.

The six factors are

1. Authority -- hierarchy or by expertise
2. Consistency (and commitment) -- alignment with personal or organizational values
3. Liking -- popularity, familiarity
4. Reciprocity -- prior exchanges, including favours, advice
5. Scarcity -- the possible lack of availability
6. Social Proof -- what would others do

And here is a link to Mind Tool's post on the Six Principles of Influence

It also brings to mind the theory I studied at Western for my Diploma in Public Admin.  The Multiple Stream (MS) framework explains the policy process that takes place under stressful situations -- conditions of ambiguity.  It proposes a theory of political manipulation. The MS identifies "three conceptually separate and usually parallel streams (problems, policies, and politics) flowing through the system as having their own dynamics and rules. At critical points in time, during open “policy windows,” the streams are merged, typically through the efforts of policy entrepreneurs, and combined into a package that enhances dramatically an issue's chances to receive serious attention, especially when all the three streams are coupled through strategic manipulation by skillful, resourceful, and well-positioned policy entrepreneurs."

It was a wonderful way to spend one's lunch!