moscow rules

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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.

“In the past every village had an idiot, and we could all deal with that. Now the internet is allowing idiots to connect and it is normalising idiocy.” —@snowded

“Most victims of suicide are men, Most people in jail are men, Most victims of violent crimes are men, Most victims of murder are men, Most victims of police killings are men; Most shamed for mental health is men.” —@birgitta

“One of the biggest differences I discovered: poor folks in Germany realise they are poor and mostly vote for parties advocating for poverty relief measures. Poor folks in the US see themselves as ‘temporarily not rich’ and vote for policies benefiting mostly the rich.” —@LyssasLounge

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unity, not uniformity

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One hundred years ago, management pioneer Mary Parker Follett wrote that “Unity, not uniformity, must be our aim. We attain unity only through variety. Differences must be integrated, not annihilated, not absorbed.” Her words ring true today as we dance between complexity and order. How can we achieve unity through variety and the integration of our differences? We can start by better understanding alignment.

What is workplace alignment? The recently published MirrorMirror white paper states that alignment is “a shared understanding between people” and that alignment leads to engagement, collaboration, and effectiveness.

“Alignment is not people ‘thinking the same thing’, it is compatibility – making room for differences and challenge, new ideas and change.”

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put on your dance shoes

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(Let’s dance) for fear your grace should fall
(Let’s dance) for fear tonight is all
—David Bowie (1983) Let’s Dance

Creative work is a constant dance between complexity and order, or curiosity and resolve, as Jony Ive explained in his acceptance speech as the first recipient of the Stephen Hawking Fellowship in 2018.

“You see, in the mode of being unreasonable and resolute, you have to solve hard problems. But solving those problems requires new ideas. And so, we’re back to needing ideas and back to having to be open and curious. This is not a shift that occurs once or twice in a multi-year project. I find it happens to me once or twice a day and that frequency of shifting between two such different ways of seeing and thinking is fantastically demanding.” —Jony Ive

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permanent value

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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.

“No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written. He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.” —T.S. Eliot

“The first and final thing you have to do in this world is to last it and not be smashed by it.” —Ernest Hemingway

“To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.” —Pablo Picasso

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What is the Zollman effect?

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In a series of three posts, Jonathan Weisberg explains the Zollman effect. Here are some highlights.

What is the Zollman effect?

“More information generally means a better chance at discovering the truth, at least from an individual perspective. But not as a community, Zollman finds, at least not always. Sharing all our information with one another can make us less likely to reach the correct answer to a question we’re all investigating.”

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schooling unbound

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“I know not what answer to give you, but this, that Power always Sincerely, conscientiously, de très bon Foi, believes itself Right. Power always thinks it has a great Soul, and vast Views, beyond the Comprehension of the Weak; and that it is doing God Service, when it is violating all his Laws.” —John Adams to Thomas Jefferson

In a 2007 presentation — covered by ICTology — Graham Attwell discussed the future of schooling in view of online personal learning environments, concluding that, “The role for teachers will be mediating, engaging, monitoring, helping, motivating …” He further commented, “Not that assessment is a thing to avoid, but it should be taken outside the learning process. On the other hand, self-assessment is reflection and thus becomes part of the learning process”. Given that many students are learning online these days, these are good ideas to be reconsidered for education, and for training.

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blocking the trackers

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It’s hard to stay clean in a dirty world. I have been trying to keep my site clean and not help the surveillance capitalists (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) to extract data about visitors to this site. I started by getting rid of Google Analytics. It was actually liberating to no longer focus on vanity metrics. Recently I have made changes like adding plugins to my WordPress site, such as Disable Google Fonts & Disable User Gravatar. But I was still helping the silicon valley ad-tracking business.

So I used a real-time website privacy inspector, Blacklight, to show me what I was missing.

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the weights on human resources

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I will be speaking at the annual conference (online of course) of the CRHA [association of certified human resources professionals of Québec] on Wednesday 4 November this week. I will be explaining the personal knowledge mastery framework and how it can inform HR professionals for their own development as well as for their organizations.

My presentation will be in French. Jennifer Garvey Berger will be presenting in English. Non-members may attend the full day conference for $(CA)130 — CRHA 2020 program.

As usual, I have gone through many iterations of my presentations over the past several weeks. I removed a section with a perspective on the history that informs the HR profession and will share it here instead. I had originally presented a version of this at the HR Innovation Day for the Hochschule fuer Technik, Wirtschaft und Kultur in Leipzig, Germany last year.

What is the modern HR system today? It encompasses many areas, sometimes including training, usually pay and benefits, and often diversity and talent development. It’s a very large field, and the CRHA has about 10,000 members in a province with a population of about 8 million.

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a variety of 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.

Top Influencers in knowledge management by @cronycle [Long list to curate your own feed on KM]

@DougBoneparth — “Learning how to sell provides more job security than most college educations.”

I used to tell people at Wired, “Don’t come into Wired to work; work at home. Come into Wired to be interrupted and have chance meetings.” —Kevin Kelly. HT @StewartBrand

If yer keeping track of pending job reductions announced over the past month or so:

Royal Dutch Shell: 9,000
Chevron: 6,750
Exxon Mobil: 14,000
Cenovus/Husky: 2,000
Suncor: 2,000
Marathon Petroleum: 2,050
Boeing: 31,000
HSBC: 35,000
Daimler: 30,000
Disney: 28,000
Cisco: 7,100
—@DPontefract

@DrFrankLipman — “There are a number of commonalities of long lived elders around the world, and these few stand out — 1) they live with a sense of purpose; 2) they give to others; 3) they have strong social networks that enable them to engage frequently with their communities, families and friends.”

@JPCastlin — “The importance of ensuring diversity of thought is far, far, far too often underestimated in strategy. This goes for teams, but also individuals. Strategists who only have one angle with which they view the world will inevitably end up believing it is flat.”

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still standing and learning

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I spent the first 21 years of my working life with a regular pay cheque, lots of formal training, and a fairly regular schedule. Leaving the Army I worked at a university and a few years later for an e-learning startup. In 2003 I found myself without an office or a pay cheque and few prospects for local work. It was a similar situation to what many people faced this Spring with lock downs and job losses due to the pandemic.

After 17 years of distributed work, remote informal learning, and connecting with clients via video conferencing I think I have learned a bit about the ‘new normal’ many people are now facing. One early experience was running the Informal Learning Unworkshop online with Jay Cross, which cemented the idea of perpetual beta in my work.

Harold Jarche is a true pioneer. Nine years ago [2005], long before online activities were commonplace, we conducted a series of Unworkshops on the topic of web-based learning. We relied on free software. Our students came from Australia, Lebanon, Canada, Austria, the Azores, and points in between. Lessons were both synchronous and offline. To give people exposure, we used a different platform each week. I can’t imagine anyone (aside from Harold) crazy (and innovative) enough to sign up for something like this.” —Jay Cross (1944-2015), founder Internet Time Alliance

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