Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past week or two.

Christian Wiman: “At some point you have to believe that the inadequacies of words you use will be transcended by the faith with which you use them.” – via @JohnnieMoore

The Icarus Deception: “if you blame your lack of job prospects on the tepid demand for hardworking, competent, but replaceable workers, you haven’t told us anything we didn’t already know.” via @RichardMerrick

Stupid Management Tools, by Niels Pflaeging @BetaLeaders

#787 - Standardized job titles and salary ranges – produce pseudo-objectivity & transfer power to HR bureaucrats

#788 - Competence and Development Planning – unavoidably lead to behavioral control, another HR folly

#789 – Development Programs – If personal growth isn’t fostered, your organizational model is broken. HR plans don’t fix that

#790 – Employee Ranking and Classifying, e.g. ABC-style: it’s reductionist, context-free, unfair, self-fulfilling

Given tablets but no teachers, Ethiopian children teach themselves – #hacking – via @zecool

Elaborating later on Negroponte’s hacking comment, Ed McNierney, OLPC’s chief technology officer, said that the kids had gotten around OLPC’s effort to freeze desktop settings. “The kids had completely customized the desktop—so every kids’ tablet looked different.  We had installed software to prevent them from doing that,” McNierney said. “And the fact they worked around it was clearly the kind of creativity, the kind of inquiry, the kind of discovery that we think is essential to learning.”

Design Is Hacking How We Learn - learning in action in a very different way – via @C4LPT & @CharlesJennings

Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past week.

Leadership: To survive a shock to the system, become an unplanned organization - by @rbgayle

We see this again and again throughout history, as well as in our most entrepreneurial companies: the person who is best suited for dealing with one sort of shock (war, raising capital) is seldom the best for dealing with another shock (peace, shareholders, etc.) Since we cannot know what shocks are in store, nor what is really fragile in an organization, a robust solution to a world of shocks is to create a group of diverse and somewhat redundant talents with leadership dispersed in a way to allow the right talent to rise up when a particular shock hits the system.

Compounding Intelligence: learning social skills leads to better decision making – by @quinnovator

The point being that learning social skills, using good meeting processes, and emphasizing diversity, all actions similar to those needed for effective learning organizations, lead to better decision making. If you want good decisions, you need to break down hierarchies, open up the conversation channels, and listen.  We have good science about practices that lead to effective outcomes for organizations.

“microblogging is the closest we have to human conversation” – by @RossDawson

One of my most consistent messages is that high-performance organizations are increasingly driven by the quality of their networks. Microblogs, through their ease of participation and the breadth of their visibility, are excellent facilitators of organizational networks. Staff can easily get a better sense of activities, capabilities, and personalities across the firm. After 15 years of ‘expertise location’ being on the agenda, microblogs are proving to be one of the simplest and best ways to find the relevant expertise in the organization to address a problem or opportunity.

BBC News – Nokia decline sparks Finnish start-up boom – via @tar1na

Miki Kuusi of Start-Up Sauna – a non-profit programme that coaches entrepreneurs before connecting them with investors – likens Nokia to a big tree in a very small forest.

“Now that Nokia is doing worse the ecosystem around it is developing,” he says.

“Some people even say that the current downfall of Nokia is the best thing that’s happened to this country because it’s challenged us to come up with new ways to have a foundation for our welfare.”

Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past week.

During a client workshop in the Netherlands this week, I explained how I use Twitter favourites to collect items of interest during the week and then review these before posting my regular Friday’s Finds post on this blog. I will often tweet an article and then add it to favourites so that I pick it up during my weekly review. The key to PKM is to find a routine that works for you. KM has to be personal to work in the long run.

For example, earlier this week @MHHoekstra had written a blog post that was pertinent to the workshop. I quickly looked at Maarten’s post, a conscious learning process, when it was tweeted by @C4LPT and then added it to my favourites to review later. Two days later, I have read the post and refer to one of the graphics below:

Also, via @nilofer I came across an article in The Atlantic that has me confirming many of my thoughts on work being automated and outsourced. Higher-value manufacturing work, requiring greater task variety and hence more tacit knowledge and informal learning, is actually coming back. But standardized work, with high task standardization, is not. The piece is entitled: The Insourcing Boom.

What’s happening in factories across the U.S. is not simply a reversal of decades of outsourcing. If there was once a rush to push factories of nearly every kind offshore, their return is more careful; many things are never coming back. Levi Strauss used to have more than 60 domestic blue-jeans plants; today it contracts out work to 16 and owns none, and it’s hard to imagine mass-market clothing factories ever coming back in significant numbers—the work is too basic.
Appliance Park once used its thousands of workers to make almost every part of every appliance; today, every component GE decides to make in Louisville returns home only after a careful calculation that balances quality, cost, skills, and speed. Appliance Park wants to make its own dishwasher racks, because it can, and because the rack is an important part of the dishwasher experience for customers. But Appliance Park will likely never again make its own compressors or motors, nor is it going to build a microchip-etching facility.

Finally, here is a photo from my last day in Amsterdam. For more information on the Latin inscription, see this short description from File Magazine.

Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past week.

J. Paul Getty: ”In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.” via @kanta_sharma

@BetaLeadership – “Most CEOs of the world at some point long ago delegated disciplined practice and learning – and thus became relatively dumb.”

@BetaLeadership – “In the long run, every company has EXACTLY the people it deserves. Period.”

Ivan Illich: “Most learning is not the result of instruction. It is rather the result of unhampered participation in a meaningful setting.” via @IvanIllich2

Paulo Freire: ”To teach is not to transfer knowledge but to create the possibilities for the production or construction of knowledge.” via @timbuckteeth

Buckminster Fuller: ”Wealth is the ability to regenerate life. How many people can you take care of for how many days?” via @finnern

William James: ”The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated.” via@dscofield

Joachim Stroh on Google Plus:

The chessboard picture points to another side effect of transparency: things are becoming more visible to anyone in the organization, and consequently, the level of understanding throughout the organization needs to rise as well. It’s one thing to see the individual pieces on the chessboard, and it’s another thing to understand the moves on the board.

Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past week.

@skap5 – “Be afraid institutions, be very afraid. Self organized networks are getting better at the purposeful part.”

FastCoExist: Watch Alex Bogusky Talk About The Future Of Responsible Companies

Now Bogsuky is working on models for companies to be better citizens, and part of that involves a different take on advertising so that the new information you get about a company isn’t a gimmick, but hard facts about its performance. “Brand is going to change radically from what’s been a fictional story that’s stood between you and the company to real-time, up-to-the-minute truth about your company,” he says. “Can you–through that–convince me to buy?”

As Bogusky says: “Transparency isn’t a choice. The only choice is does it happen to you or do you participate in it.”

Banks are being Disrupted by the Process of the Innovator’s Dilemma – Part 1 – by @robpatrob

What this implies is, that at some point, Money itself will be questioned. For today money is created by bank lending. With a Fractional reserve system, each dollar that a bank lends to you only requires a reserve of 10 cents. The other 90 cents is magic.

What Killed Michael Porter’s Monitor Group? The One Force That Really Matters – by @stevedenning

Monitor wasn’t killed by any of the five forces of competitive rivalry. Ultimately what killed Monitor was the fact that its customers were no longer willing to buy what Monitor was selling. Monitor was crushed by the single dominant force in today’s marketplace: the customer.

@KJatMARS – “My 16 yr old daughter just told me she was the next version of my operating system that comes with all the bugs fixed!”

“Great example of the power of self-directed, experiential learning and innovation.” via @CharlesJennings

Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past week [as I prepare for a long flight home, with too many stops on the way].

@RalphMercer – “pilot projects are designed to delay good ideas until they are out of date”

Manuel Castells on the rise of alternative economic cultures – via @jonhusband

“We live in a culture of not virtual reality, but real virtuality because our virtuality – meaning the internet networks – are a fundamental part of our reality.

“All the studies on the internet show that people who are more social on the internet are also more social face-to-face.”

@HansdeZwart – Brewster Kahle on “Universal Access to All Knowledge”

They are convinced that it is feasible to store all the world’s knowledge. Texts are being digitized (i.e. scanned) for representation on the screen (see Open Library for examples) and are openly available. The Internet Archive have made their own scanners pushing the costs per scanned page (mostly labour) down to about 10 cents per page. Their scanning centers now have 3,000,000 free ebooks available online (incl. 500,000 for the blind/dyslexic and 250,000 modern books available for lending) and they have about 8 million more to go. They have made a book mobile that can download and print a book for about one dollar.

@Ignatia – European Environment Agency Keynote [my presentation summarized by Inge de Waard]

Moving from local to global
We live in a less barriered world: self-publication, group forming across the world, unlimited information. In the past we linked up with people with similar interests locally, due to simply physical realities… now we can link up with people from around the world. So from a learning perspective our learning group grows (personal addition: this also means that the group that lives inside the personal zone of proximal development grows, as more people can potentially be in this). Groupforming is now becoming networks. This has an effect on mentorship: per mentor you can only have so many learners, but with the growing group more mentors can stand up and the learners themselves can become mentors.

I saw more bicycles in Copenhagen in 2 days than I see at home in 2 months. They are everywhere. Here are some in front of the central department store, Magasin du Nord.

Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past week.

@MichaelYardney – “If you don’t build your dream, someone will hire you to build theirs.”

@Bulldozer0 – “The best way to overcome cynicism and skepticism is with openness and transparency.”

The Myth of Hiring Passionate Employees via @OscarBerg

What really facilitates the benefits of having a passionate employee is rolling out the red CARPET:

Challenges — an employee can use his/her skills to the fullest, such that (s)he must do her best every day
Autonomy — an employee has the freedom to act in accordance with his/her passion
Resources — an employee has the wherewithal to go the extra mile
Professional development — an employee has opportunities to learn and grow in/with the company
Enthusiasm — an employee can share his/her enthusiasm with others and have it reciprocated
Tangible impact — an employee can tell that what (s)he is doing is meaningful and valuable

A suggested plan to confront Death by Administration via @AdrianCheok

One, no meeting is ever convened other than to take decisions.

Two, nobody is required to go to a meeting unless its decisions affect them.

Three, university managers must begin meetings with discussion of a recent scholarly article or book on any topic — apart from management.

The last one should really reduce meeting time.

Toby Miller is professor of cultural industries at City University London.

Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past week.

@MeriWalker – “Higher education is like a corpse propped up in the corner of a building that’s rotting out from under it.”

@flowchainsensei – “How long will you tolerate domination, coercion and manipulation in the workplace? For as long as they pay you?”

You don’t need a banker – by @robpatrob

This idea was truly “disruptive”. The actual tools were inferior to the opposition. Their context was superior.

THIS is what my new book is all about.

It is a contextual guide that will, I hope, help you see the context and so the mindset issues that can either trap you or empower you.

Exhibit A: Toronto Star: We’re the source material for news

We do 90 per cent of the legwork. For all the budget-slashing, the Star still delivers an enviable package of local, national and international news coverage, plus award-winning investigative reporting, expert analysis and diverse commentary.

Exhibit B: GigaOm: blogs & Twitter picked up journalistic slack

But as Carr points out, it was exactly those Twitter accounts and bloggers who kept the heat on Armstrong and the doping allegations while the mainstream sports press were celebrating his achievements: Twitter users like @TheRaceRadio and @UCI_Overlord, and a relatively little-known blog called NYVelocity — a site run by a commercial photographer and amateur cycle-racer. Since founder Andy Shen didn’t have any connection to cycle-racing, he was free to pursue whatever stories he wanted, and others picked up and redistributed his links and commentary.

Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past week.

@asplake – “Toyota’s change-management secret: make no distinction between day-to-day management and change management”

“The Dynamic Duo: Collaboration and Chance” by @BenZiegler via @bentrem

We live in two worlds – order and chaos.  In the world of order we plan, reflect, and think about what to do next.  In the world of chaos things happen, we get things done, yet unpredictability persists.  In one world we like to think we are in control. In the other we mingle with increasing complexity, conflict, and uncertainty.

With increased collaboration we are better positioned, through our collective strength and diversity, to respond to whatever chaos throws our way.  Sometimes we should court serendipity, says Ben Casnocha. And anyways, success is random Kare Anderson reminds us.

“little attention is placed on preparing people to deal with the trials and dilemmas associated with success” by @shauncoffey

The benefits of success to the leader and the organisation are obvious.  Less readily apparent is the personal “dark side” of success which revolves largely around three psychological issues outlined by Ludwig and Longenecker (1993:270-271).  These are:
Climbing the success ladder exposes leaders to negative attitudes and behaviours.  There may not be apparent, but nonetheless come with the territory of successful leadership.  Negatives that could be reinforced include unbalanced personal lives, a loss of touch with reality and an inflated sense of personal ability.
Leaders may become emotionally expansive – “their appetite for success, thrills, gratification, and control becomes insatiable”.  They can lose the ability to be satisfied.  They can become personally isolated and lack intimacy with family and friends, losing a valuable source of personal balance.  They “literally lose touch with reality”.
Other factors include stress, fear of failure and the “emptiness syndrome” (“Is this all there is to success?”)  An inflated sense of ego can lead to abrasiveness, close-mindedness and disrespect.

Smiling Buddha Cabaret: The usefulness of draining

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”

Here are some of the observations and insights that were shared via social media during the past two weeks.

@jonerp – “Email idea: end “out of office” auto-replies. Instead, the “in-office auto-reply”-”I’m in the office for once- I just might see your email!””

@mattedgar – “An unexpected benefit of long-term blogging is being able to google for my opinions when I forget what they are” +1!

@swardley – “The reason why we need to add and then remove chief [something] officers is because our organisations are not designed around change”