Harold Jarche

insights over processes

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Process improvement, like Six Sigma, stifles innovation. Process improvement is a tool set, not an overarching or unifying concept for an organization. Process improvement is a means — for certain contexts like manufacturing — and not an end in itself. The fundamental problem with all process improvement methodologies is that you get myopic. The evidence is clear.

“Since Frederick Taylor’s time we’ve considered business – our businesses – vast machines to be improved. Define the perfect set of tasks and then fit the men to the task. Taylor timed workers, measuring their efforts to determine the optimal (in his opinion) amount of work he could expect from a worker in a single day. The idea is that by driving our workers to follow optimal business processes we can ensure that we minimise costs while improving quality. LEAN and Six Sigma are the most visible of Taylor’s grandchildren, representing generations of effort to incrementally chip away at the inefficiencies and problems we kept finding in our organisations.” —Peter Evans Greenwood

“But simply following the steps of a process is no longer a guarantee of success, if it ever was. Business is increasingly complex and interconnected, and it seems unlikely any single system can tame it. The smart enterprise of the future will need a constantly evolving rotation of systems and skills, employed by adaptable and flexible workers. They will be harder to teach in a course, but they may outlast all the fads and fashions that preceded them.” —Whatever Happened to Six Sigma?

“Fifty-eight of the top Fortune 200 companies bought into Six Sigma, attesting to the appeal of eliminating errors. The results of this ‘experiment’ were striking: 91 per cent of the Six Sigma companies failed to keep up with the S&P 500 because Six Sigma got in the way of innovation. It interfered with insights.” —Gary Klein

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top tools 2019

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Since 2007 Jane Hart has asked working professionals for their top tools for learning — TopTools4Learning — and creates three lists from thousands of responses.

  1. Top 100 Tools for Personal & Professional Learning
  2. Top 100 Tools for Workplace Learning
  3. Top 100 Tools for Education

Work is learning, and learning is the work, so here are my  top 10 tools for work & learning.

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free cities attract creative individuals

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Why have certain cities fostered creativity over time?

“First, the protection of personal and economic freedoms changed the local culture, making it more receptive to innovations and new ideas. Second, the new institutions also changed incentives, through a more meritocratic and inclusive social environment, but also by encouraging works of art and innovations that would enhance the prestige of the city. Third, free cities attracted talented and creative individuals who escaped censorship and persecution elsewhere, and this created role models and facilitated social learning, breeding new generations of innovators.” —VOX 2018-01-06

This study of European city development showed that first the space must be amenable to creative individuals and then people can flourish. This is similar to the conclusions of Eric Weiner in The Geography of Genius who identified diversity, disorder, and discernment as keys to creative genius.

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co-learning is better than marketing

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Work is learning, and learning is the work. Marketing, for the most part, is about learning. What’s interesting is that ” … the content developed by most marketing departments is used in less than 7 percent of all buying decisions”, according to McKinsey, as cited in The Hypersocial Organization. So it’s not about the content. It’s all about the human connections.

As the Cluetrain Manifesto (1999) began with its first of 95 theses, “Markets are conversations”. Cluetrain continued with thesis #11 — “People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.” We learn best from each other in trusted relationships.

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friday fuel

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.” —Karl Kraus

“They are playing a game.
They are playing at not playing a game.
If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.
—R.D. Laing via @flowchainsensei

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sensemaking in a liquid world

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The printing press changed the world. It introduced new forms of expression and enabled better and faster information sharing. Print enabled individual interpretation of the bible and resulted in the questioning of the established Christian church and later the Protestant Reformation. Written manuscripts became obsolete luxury items. A new public discourse was enabled by print and the ensuing literacy of more people. Of course the dark sides of printed works include propaganda, jingoism, and xenophobia.

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PKM in action. Part 3

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In his book, Never Stop Learning, Bradley Staats describes eight elements that make up ‘dynamic learning’. Here are the highlights from a Knowledge at Wharton interview.

1. “a willingness to try things, have them not work out, but learn from that and move on”
2. “if we don’t focus on the process, we’re never going to get to a good spot”
3. “we should be pulling ourselves back to ask questions”
4. “taking time to reflect and to think”
5. “Recognize this need to not be a poor imitation of others, but to be ourselves to learn”
6. “we need to play to our strengths”
7. specialization & variety — “we have a depth of knowledge in certain topics” but “we’re also willing to appreciate breadth”
8. “Others educate us and provide valuable knowledge”

As Staats describes WHAT we need to do, personal knowledge mastery is a framework that describes HOW to never stop learning. For example, here is how François Lavallée describes his personal process.

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hoary myths and mindfulness

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Every fortnight I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

“It is sobering to realize that words written long ago in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, based on opinion, intuition, and prejudice, can so overwhelmingly outweigh scientific observational evidence and the logic and language of mathematics.” —Geoffrey West

‘My father always told me, “Son, make sure you always align on what buzzwords the high level thought leaders are utilizing to operationalize excellence throughout the organization.”‘ —@MeetingBoy

‘My old man (84) is coming down from Scotland by train — he can get a deal in 1st class, cheaper than 2nd Class — but says “You never meet anyone interesting in First Class …” He has a point.‘ —@DonaldClark

Critical Thinking: “Misology is the fear or hatred of knowledge, rational thought and argumentation. Agnotology is the cultural production of ignorance. Both problems seem to be getting worse.” —via @telliowkuwp

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leadership beyond capitalism

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“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” —Ursula K. Le Guin (1929-2018)

Our families and local communities keep us connected, but they can make us myopic. Our outward view from here can be as binary as ‘Us and Them’. Millennia ago, with the new technology of the written word, we were able to form ways of organizing society on a larger scale with institutions like kingdoms, religions, and later nation states — reducing tribal rivalries but too often creating cross-national conflicts. Later, markets and trading were extended with the printed word, and trade helped to reduce conflict in order to increase profits.

Currently the market form dominates, to the detriment of society as a whole, as the profit motive in the long run will impoverish the earth. For example, Canada tried to use the market to handle its waste, which has recently backfired. We need new ways to deal with global issues, and neither an institutional nor a market approach can deal with them.

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more than re-skilling

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Here is the advice of the co-founder of Degreed on a ‘workplace self-training paradigm‘.

First, encourage them to think of reskilling as a game — one they now have more control over winning …

Next, help workers manage their skills with regular checkups to evaluate their current expertise against market conditions …

Finally, work with employees to pinpoint opportunities to put their new skills into action.

It reminded me of advice that Lilia Efimova gave fifteen years ago — on which I based I my own PKM framework — which is a broader approach to workplace learning than merely looking at work from a training or re-skilling perspective.

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