surviving the post-modern transition

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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.

@DavidBoxenhorn — “The most important thing is the ability to survive until you get lucky.”

@ProfCharlesHaas — “I am glad to be in a field that is enriched by assimilating knowledge from other fields, rather than one that tries to maintain a monopoly of wisdom on the basis of credentials.”

Right now, it’s hard to imagine that any global pandemic could ever fade into a routine fact of history.

But Esyllt Jones says that is what occurred with a previous worldwide disaster, the Great Influenza of 1918.

That pandemic faded despite a death toll in the tens of millions, and the loss of entire families and communities.

The public health historian notes that: “There are decades of almost complete neglect of (the 1918 influenza) as a historical subject, during which many of the survivors died.” —CBC Ideas

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PKM at seventeen

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Seventeen years ago I was introduced to PKM by Lilia Efimova.

To a great extent PKM is about shifting responsibility for learning and knowledge sharing from a company to individuals and this is the greatest challenge for both sides. Companies should recognise that their employees are not “human resources”, but investors who bring their expertise into a company. As any investors they want to participate in decision-making and can easily withdraw if their “return on investment” is not compelling. Creativity, learning or desire to help others cannot be controlled, so knowledge workers need to be intrinsically motivated to deliver quality results. In this case “command and control” management methods are not likely to work.

Taking responsibility for own work and learning is a challenge for knowledge workers as well. Taking these responsibilities requires attitude shift and initiative, as well as developing personal KM knowledge and skills. In a sense personal KM is very entrepreneurial, there are more rewards and more risks in taking responsibility for developing own expertise.

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What skills shortage?

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Has an enormous skills gap developed since 2016?

Researchers Dave Swenson and Liesl Eathington identified several factors contributing to hiring challenges, but a widespread lack of skilled workers was not one them … The Iowa researchers’ conclusion? “When employers say there’s a skills gap, what they’re often really saying is they can’t find workers willing to work for the pay they’re willing to pay,” —Marina Gorbis, GE Reports

Five years later and Irving Wladawsky-Berger reviews sources such as MIT and the WEF which conclude that upskilling is now a global necessity.

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focus on the system

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I recently wrote that with increasing complexity and interconnectedness, we all need to be better detectives in order to make sense and understand our world. The field of human performance improvement is a systemic method of doing detective work to find out how people perform in an organization. W. Edwards Deming stated that, “I should estimate that in my experience most troubles and most possibilities for improvement add up to the proportions something like this: 94% belongs to the system (responsibility of management)”.

Yet most organizations put the responsibility for workplace performance solely on individual competence, focusing on training as the solution to all performance issues. For example, compliance training is a standard response by industry regulators when dealing with human performance issues. This fails to examine the entire system, which is bad detective work, because — it’s the system, stupid.

“Over the long haul, even strong people can’t compensate for a weak process. Sure, some occasional success may come from team or individual heroics. But if you pit a good performer against a bad system, the system will win almost every time.” —Rummler & Brache

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stop doing dumb shit

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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.

“Stop doing dumb shit and I’ll stop being negative.” —@Fisman

“Even if you’re fully vaccinated, the CDC still recommends not using Reply All to thank or congratulate one person.“ —@Aisha_Dickerson

I am the very model of a modern …

I’ve information anecdotal, chemical, and clinical
I know the COVID experts, and I quote-tweet fights on aerosols

List BioNTech to Zeneca, in order categorical
I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters virological

I understand most models but I’m baffled by the cubical
About t-cell immunity I am teeming with a lot o’ news … lot o’ news…
with many cheerful facts about the antibodies I’ll produce!

I know the vaccine history from Jenner and the old cowpox
I answer diagnostics, I thank all the nurses and the docs

I quote in elegiacs all the CDC analysis
And hope we’ll usher in an annus slightly more mirabilis

I can tell adenoviruses from mRNA and spike proteins
I have a working map of every single drug store close to me
Then I can hit refresh until finally a slot I score … slot I score …

I’ll whistle all the way home ’cause I’m happy that my skin is sore!
I’m looking at the r-naught and I hope the trend is fabulous

I know the pseudoscience claims of beings antivaxxulous
In short, in matters anecdotal, chemical, and clinical
I am the very model of Moderna-made injectables

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yes, all models are wrong

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“Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.” —George Box

So how do we know when a model — particularly one of our preferred mental models — is wrong? It is difficult to change our mind but that is what any good professional has to be able to do. Consider one of the prevailing battles in our understanding of the coronavirus.

The World Health Organization, which many governments follow in making policy, has admitted that airborne spread is possible, but stops short of saying it’s the dominant mode of spread.

Dr. David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and one of the co-authors of the Lancet paper, says this distinction matters in order for people to take the necessary precautions to keep themselves safe.

He said contrary to what he told Quirks & Quarks host, Bob McDonald in February 2020, he now believes the virus is primarily spread via tiny aerosol particles, and the Lancet article lays out the evidence that changed his mind. —CBC Q&Q 2021-04-23

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detective work

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For the past few months I have been engaged in a couple of programs that focus on organizational performance improvement. In the Performance-based Learning program we ask — What is the performance gap and what are the influencing factors? This is part of the Performance Detective role. In the Emerging Stronger Masterclass, one of the key questions is — What is your hypothesis? — and then you have to confirm it based on data, observations, and especially experiments.

But how does one ‘think like a detective‘? Let’s observe what makes a good detective.

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distributed work

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I have been working remotely and doing distributed work since 2003. It’s remote work because I live ‘far from the madding crowd’, in a town of 5,000 people, with lots of cows within town limits, many pheasants, and a few coyotes. The closest metropolitan areas are Boston (850 km) and Montreal (1,030 km) and both are closed to travel at this time. Remote work means far from everyone else.

Distributed work is people working from anywhere. There is no centre. This is what we have seen explode during this pandemic. Some people think we will go back to the ‘old normal’ of clustered work as soon as — or if — this pandemic is over. I don’t.

In Post-Pandemic Silicon Valley Isn’t A Place the startup founders at Initialized found a recent significant shift in the choices for startup location. In 2020 41.6% of their portfolio chose the San Francisco Bay Area, while only 6% opted for remote/distributed workplaces. One year later and 42.1% were opting for remote/distributed work. The shift has begun.

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leadership has a price

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I served for 23 years in the Canadian Army. As a young infantry officer, the concept of leadership by example was drilled into us. One event remains in my memory from almost 40 years ago.  A fellow junior officer had just joined the regiment. He had graduated from university then joined the Army and did one year of infantry officer training. At that time it was normal to send new officers to our Battle School, where recruits were trained. On graduation they would all come back to our unit. At the School, new officers had experienced, permanent-staff non-commissioned officers (NCO) for support, usually with 10 or more years of experience.

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four hundred finds

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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. This is #400.

“We can succeed only by concert. It is not ‘can any of us imagine better?’ but, ‘can we all do better?’ The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise — with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” —Abraham Lincoln

@trishgreenhalgh — “the 2-metre physical distancing rule is based on a flawed droplet model of transmission. Just like cigarette smoke, if you’re in an enclosed space for 30 minutes, aerosols spread across the whole room. Think 3Cs: closed spaces, crowded places, close contact.”

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