our world view

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

Last night at the theater opening of ‘We Are As Gods’, I had occasion to declare:
“Science is the only news. The rest is gossip.”
Science is the only news. When you scan a news portal or magazine, all the human interest stuff is the same old he-said-she-said, the politics and economics the same cyclical dramas, the fashions a pathetic illusion of newness; even the technology is predictable if you know the science behind it. Human nature doesn’t change much; science does, and the change accrues, altering the world irreversibly. —@StewartBrand

“From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable.” —Salman Rushdie (1988) The Satanic Verses

“People usually only figure out that things are turning bad when they turn bad for them, and by then it’s too late. The time to act is when you still have privilege and power, not when you’ve had it stripped from you.” —Attack Surface (2022)

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media drive organization

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It was almost 300 years from Gutenberg’s invention of the European printing press (1450) until the Age of Enlightenment beginning in 1715. If we see digital media — first invented as telegraph transmissions in 1855 — to be the dawn of the electric/network age, then we may have a similarly long period of change and turmoil still ahead of us.

Marshall McLuhan famously said that, “The medium is the message”. Thousands of years ago, the medium of the written word enable rulers to extend their command and control over larger empires and kingdoms. Institutions, like the three religions of Abrahamic tradition, were able to use the written word to get their messages spread across vast regions. As discussed above, the printed word enabled the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment. Printed works enabled mass literacy and market economies emerged in kingdoms and later dominated nation states. In summary:

  • Writing enabled institutions larger than tribal societies could build.
  • Print enabled markets that could cross oceans and continents.

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top tools 2022

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Every year, Jane Hart asks, “What are the most popular digital tools for learning and why?”. This is the sixteenth year Jane asked this question — and compiled the results into a valuable resource — and this is my eleventh year responding.

My responses have not changed too much from the past few years.

WordPress remains on top as it powers this blog, my online workshops. Also Slack has moved up as it will be the platform for our PBCC community.

I continue to use Feedly and Pinboard as ways to organize my online resources.

Zoom remains important because I have not travelled for business for the past three years and doubt I will again soon, so video conferencing is critical for my learning and work. Zoom still beats the competition in terms of usability.

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set an example or leave the building

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Leadership by example has been a continuous theme here.

2008 — Wrong Medium, No Message — You have to understand what it’s like to be a node in a social network and that there is almost nothing like it in the industrial workplace or school system to prepare you for this. The basic premise is that you have to walk the talk before you can criticize.

2009 — Communities and Work — The role of online community manager is fast becoming a hot job opportunity for people who not only understand the technologies but how to exert influence in a network. It’s like pushing a rope. Leadership by example (or modelling instead of shaping) is a good starting point.

2013 — leadership by example — Perhaps the problem is the nature of leadership. Is it a skill that can be fairly quickly developed, or rather a craft that takes time to develop? When it comes to crafts, that require much time and practice, modelling may be a better method than shaping.

2014 — leadership for the network era — In our networked world, modelling behaviours may be a better strategy than shaping on any pre-defined curriculum. With modelling, the learner is progressively supported. In connected leadership, people can be both teachers and learners. Therefore neither training programs, nor coaching, are enough. Leadership by example becomes the key.

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navigating complexity

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The Cynefin framework can help us connect work and learning, especially for emergent and novel practices, for which we do not have good or best practices known in advance. When we want to create a conducive learning environment for knowledge workers, the Cynefin framework helps us see the inherent weakness of instructional systems design (ISD) — designed for formal learning — which works from the premise of predetermined learning objectives and activities, usually based on good and best practices observed in the workplace.

I discussed learning in the complex domain last year and used the following visual to describe some ways that teams, communities, and networks can organize to improve knowledge sharing and sense-making.

The image below takes the basic PKM model — with teams in blue, communities in red, and networks in green — along two axes: high & low structure, and low & high abstraction. These are split in half — one for the Complex domain, and the other for the ordered domains (Complicated & Clear). The Chaotic domain has unique conditions and requires a different approach, beyond this post.

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airborne finds

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On the last Friday of each month I curate some of the observations and insights that were shared on social media. I call these Friday’s Finds.

@DRTomlinsonEP: “I know I go on about this AN AWFUL lot, but if you have no idea how a pathogen is transmitted, you have no idea how to PREVENT transmission.
[UK Chief Medical Officer, Professor] Chris Whitty knew SARS2 was airborne, 5 Mar 2020” —YouTube Video

@JimRosenthal4: “Boeing study shows that on an airplane with HEPA filtration, particles transferred between a cougher and breather are about the same as separation of 2 meters in a conference room. Wear a mask!” —Boeing Cabin Airflow Video

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Dee Hock 1929-2022

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Dee Hock, founder and CEO of VISA, died last week at the age of 93. VISA’s success was based on its chaordic structure.

chaordic [kay-ordʹ-ic], adj., fr. E. chaos and order. 1. The behavior of any self-organizing, self-governing, organ, organization, or system that harmoniously exhibits characteristics of both order and chaos. 2. Patterned by chaos and order in a way not dominated by either. 3. Blending of diversity, chaos, complexity and order characteristic of the fundamental organizing principles of evolution and nature. —Dee Hock

In the early 1990s, Hock looked into how to create more democratic companies, a mission he never achieved.

Not so long ago, says [Peter] Senge, Hock was addressing an audience full of CEOs. And he really had them pumping: “Great! This is how to create a learning organization that can grow at 20% per year! He’s found the keys to the kingdom!” That is, until the end, when he told them about the one little problem: “You’ll never be able to justify paying a CEO $1 million a year to run this kind of corporation.” —FastCompany 1996-10-31

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stupid management practices continue

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Ten years ago, I wrote that the performance appraisal treadmill is keeping organizations from testing out and adopting better management models for the networked economy. Performance appraisals are like academic grades and keep the focus on the individual. In a collaborative, social enterprise this is counter-productive. In today’s enterprise, work is learning and learning is the work, and it has to be done cooperatively.

“Evaluation of performance, merit rating, or annual review … The idea of a merit rating is alluring. The sound of the words captivates the imagination: pay for what you get; get what you pay for; motivate people to do their best, for their own good. The effect is exactly the opposite of what the words promise.” —W. Edwards Deming (1982)

Even technology companies are governed by outdated management models.

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analyzing automation

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Several years ago I recommended one small change that could have a major impact would be to look at everyone’s work from the perspective of standardized versus customized (non-standardized) work. Every person in the company, with the help of some data and peer feedback, should be able to determine what percentage of their time is spent on standardized work.

If the percentage is over a certain threshold —perhaps 50% — then it becomes a management task to change that person’s job and add more customized work. The company can be constantly looking at ways to automate any standardized work in order to stay ahead of technology, the market, and the competition. While automation is pretty well inevitable, it does not have to decimate a workforce.

Looking at the overall company balance between standardized and customized work should be an indicator of its potential to succeed. By visualizing the Labour/Talent split, people in the company can take action and make plans before the inevitable shift. This also means that jobs and roles have to become more flexible and open to change.

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intentionality

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We recently finished a PKM workshop and in one of our discussions we talked about intentionality — “The fact of being deliberate or purposive, or the quality of mental states (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes) which consists in their being directed towards some object or state of affairs.” This is the core of personal knowledge mastery. It is a discipline built on many small practices, such as:

  • narrating our work
  • adding value before sharing information
  • helping make our networks smarter and more resilient
  • network weaving and closing triangles
  • seeking diverse perspectives
  • sharing half-baked ideas

Together, these practices can develop into an intentional sense-making discipline.

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