Books

Book reviews

working in perpetual beta

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working-perpetual-betaWorking in Perpetual Beta is the latest volume in the perpetual beta series. It began with Seeking Perpetual Beta, a synthesis of 10 years of blogging. The next volume, Finding Perpetual Beta, specifically focused on personal knowledge mastery. Adapting to Perpetual Beta, published one year later, was an examination of leadership in the network era.

My intention with this fourth volume of the perpetual beta series is to provide a common framework from which others can test new organizational models and better ways of coordinating human work. This is not a recipe book. It is not based on best practices. I am setting forth what I believe may lead to some emergent workplace practices for the near future. Given the rise of automation, continuing income inequality, increasing human migration, and accelerating climate change, we have to think differently. This is my contribution to a new perspective on how people can work and learn together.

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the neo-generalist

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A neo-generalist is somewhere between a polymath and a hyperspecialist. One metaphor used by the authors of The Neo-Generalist is ‘frequency hopping’, “wandering, accumulating, sampling, mixing, putting into practice what they learn.” Kenneth Mikkelsen and Richard Martin have written a book that defies the formula of most business and management books. Instead of one or two easily understood ideas, they offer a cornucopia of ideas, perspectives, and opinions. If you just read all the books they mention, you would be much the wiser.

“The jack [of all trades] is a lifelong learner, a trickster who will acquire the skills to navigate multiple domains … It is why this book is called The Neo-Generalist rather than The Neo-Specialist. It is about people who can specialise as the context requires it but whose personal preferences lie in the area of polymathic generalism, where they are able to exercise their curiosity and pursue diverse interests by choice, through the confluence of both preference and context.”

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sense-making tools

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johnny-automatic-tool-box-800pxDaniel Dennett’s Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking begins by presenting a number of tested approaches to sense-making. Here are a few that I would consider practical tools for personal knowledge mastery. He starts by discussing the value of trying to make mistakes.

“I am amazed at how many really smart people don’t understand that you can make big mistakes in public and emerge none the worse for it. I know distinguished researchers who will go to preposterous lengths to avoid having to acknowledge that they were wrong about something … Actually, people love it when somebody admits to making a mistake … Of course, in general, people do enjoy correcting the stupid mistakes of others. You have to have something worth correcting, something original to be right or wrong about … if you are one of the big risk-takers, people will get a kick out of correcting your occasional stupid mistakes, which shows you’re a regular bungler like the rest of us. I know extremely careful philosophers who have — apparently — never made a mistake in their work. Their specialty is pointing out the mistakes of others … but nobody excuses their mistakes with a friendly chuckle. It is fair to say, unfortunately, that their best work often gets overshadowed and neglected …”

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the hustle economy – review

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More of us are working in a gig economy, where creativity is valued but job stability is rare. In The Hustle Economy, 25 creative people provide advice on how to survive and succeed. They come from various walks of life, though it is definitely a US-centric perspective. I did not agree with all the writers, but there is definitely something to learn for anyone. Overall, the essays get you to think and add perspectives you may not have considered. I would recommend this book for anyone considering going out on their own as a writer, artist, creator, or entrepreneur. The sub-title is “transforming your creativity into a career”, which aptly describes the book.

For me, the best part of the book are Jessica Hagy’s illustrations, based on her well known index card style from ThisIsIndexed. I would suggest that Jessica take some of her drawings from this book and create a business card series for all those hustlers of the new economy, as Hugh MacLeod has done at Moo.com with inspiration by gapingvoid.

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Black Box Thinking Review

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When things go wrong, people have a tendency to want to blame someone, often as soon as possible. It makes us feel better to find the culprit or get the ‘bad apple’. We have the opposite tendency when it comes to ourselves. The cognitive dissonance of not meeting our self-image or expectations can be so powerful that we make up stories to cover our failures. And we actually believe them. This happens to judges, lawyers, doctors, nurses, and many other professionals. But it happens less frequently with pilots. Why? It’s all about the systems they work in.

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70:20:10 – towards 100% performance

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Many books provide a good read and then go on the shelf, where they stay. The latest publication from the 70:20:10 Institute, entitled 702010 towards 100% performance, is not that type of book. It should stay on the desk of any learning & development professional and be used as a constant resource. The book is big, in number of pages, size, and content. I was amazed at how much practical information the authors were able to put into it, and how accessible it is.

The book consists of 100 practitioner-focused  articles, many of which provide checklists and examples. It is focused on helping people to implement the reference model. Five roles are identified (not all for traditional L&D professionals) with sections focused on each:

  • Performance Detective
  • Performance Architect
  • Performance Master Builder
  • Performance Game Changer
  • Performance Tracker

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leadership archetypes

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Ubiquitous digital networks are extending our capacity to listen and speak with others. In a hyperlinked world, we can tap multiple global perspectives and easily push our own views through various free and inexpensive media options. This is making many traditional centres of expertise, like news sites, obsolete. At the same time, access to important contextual knowledge is limited to the few, such as attendees at the yearly World Economic Forum in Davos.

With all of this access to information and knowledge, we are seeing a retrieval of storytelling. The TED talks are one example of finely crafted stories, though their impact and the agenda of sponsors may over time reverse into a single or even false narrative, controlled by a few powerful interests. This is how McLuhan’s laws of media can be useful in seeing what kinds of changes digital networks will bring about in how we communicate as a society in the network era. Every new technology enhances some aspect of humanity, obsolesces some previous technology, retrieves something from our past, and can reverse into the opposite of its initial intention.

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adapting to perpetual beta e-book

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New! Purchase the latest in the perpetual beta series.

The third volume in the perpetual beta series is now ready. Adapting to Perpetual Beta continues to explore the network era and its effects on society, business, and education. It follows seeking perpetual beta and finding perpetual beta published in 2014. This volume is focused on leadership and adapting to perpetual beta: dealing with constant change while still getting things done.

All of the ideas discussed here have been explored initially on my blog, established in 2004. I describe my blog as a place to post ‘half-baked ideas’, and often build upon one post after another. Discussing these ideas in public lets me test them before committing them to my professional practice. I have written over 2,700 posts on my blog, so this book series provides a concise synthesis of the various themes posted here.

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Anarchists in the Boardroom

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“I remember regularly reiterating the question, while out at the pub with fellow disillusioned colleagues, or after conferences with newfound allies from other dysfunctional NGOs, How have we ended up creating organisations that are meant to create good in the world, but make so many of those involved in them so miserable in the process?” – Liam Barrington-Bush

Anarchists in the Boardroom, by Liam Barrington-Bush, is a comprehensive read showing how organizations can apply the 3 principles of ‘more like people’ organizations:

  1. Humanity: What can we learn from ourselves?
  2. Autonomy: Trusting ourselves and others to be brilliant
  3. Complexity: Moving from cogs to consciousness

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Everything Connects

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A valuable practice advocated by the authors of Everything Connects is the art and craft of blueprinting, centred on the practice of decision mapping.

As you map decision after decision – and perhaps finding yourself making mistake after mistake – you’ll begin to recognize the elements of your identity, your various strategies, and the assets you’re drawing upon for a given decision.

Being mindful of our actions, like any discipline, takes time to master. This personal discipline can then become the foundation for organizational asset mapping, building something beyond ourselves, to include:

  • people;
  • insights;
  • capital;
  • infrastructure; and
  • ecosystem.

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