Friday’s Finds

Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week.

QUOTES:

Indian PM “Knowledge combined with creativity and productivity has the potential to impact the social economic nature of a nation” – via @stevedineen

“Getting out of the way is a much underrated organizational skill.” – Craig Newmark – via @Mickipedia

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Claiming Ephemeral Media – why it’s important to own your data – by @downes

If people want to converse in an environment that basically owns all their data, I can’t stop them, but I’ve been through this before – remember HotWired Threads, anyone? – and don’t feel like going through the grief again.

I think that’s the most difficult part of reclaiming ephemeral media. The silos [Facebook; Twitter; etc.] have made people feel as though they have to be there, and the people there are complicit in making those who don’t play in the sandbox feel like outcasts. Are you ready to have people act as though you’ve dropped off the grid?

Excellent PKM & networked learning reference list by @hreingold – An Introduction to Mind Amplifiers

a five week course using asynchronous forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, social bookmarks, synchronous audio, video, chat, and Twitter

Here are some of the things I found via Twitter this past week.

QUOTES

@RalphMercer – “would (LMS) learning management systems exist if we weren’t trying to make someone pay?”

@PembaTrees – “Was asked for an easy way to start a NGO …. Spend 5 years writing proposals, give talks, start a social enterprise & get a line of credit.”

@B4HOttawa – “Wisdom is like a baobab tree; no one individual can embrace it – African Proverb”

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“Some psychologists have a theory that many of the world’s ills can be blamed on psychopaths in high places.” via @SebPaquet [reminds me of The Gervais Principle]

“Robert Hare, the eminent Canadian psychologist who invented the psychopath checklist, … recently announced that you’re four times more likely to find a psychopath at the top of the corporate ladder than you are walking around in the janitor’s office,” journalist Jon Ronson tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered.

Without Workflow, Social Business Is Doomed – via @bduperrin

The only way to avoid the social death spiral is to make sure that any social/enterprise 2.0/collaboration initiatives you implement tie directly to everyday work, and sit squarely in the middle of key workflows.  This can take many forms, ranging from project management to targeted Q&A for specific critical topics.  What matters is that the work is important, and that the collaboration tool delivers a substantial reduction in the amount of effort required to complete that work.  Improved quality alone is not enough–the only non-monetary payoff most of us pay attention to is extra time.

Most interesting comment of the week: Storytelling Sucks by @DonaldClark to @jhagel on The Pull of Narrative

[Donald] It’s received wisdom in learning that storytelling and narrative are unquestionably good. But is it? Plato warned against filling young minds with fixed narratives and I’m coming round to a similar view, but with a twist. I’ve always been a big fan of sports and more recently of reality TV. Add to this computer games, virtual worlds, blogging, wikis, social networks, email, messenger and skype, and I find that most (not all) of what I really love is relatively unscripted, open, fluid, and often with more than a touch of ‘play’.

The top-down, command and control, baby-boomer culture is really starting to annoy me. The more I watch prescribed movies and TV, with their fixed plot structure, and abandon the publishing hyped ‘modern’ novel, the more I enjoy life. There’s an obsession with ‘stories’ that borders on the manic in learning, the arts and media. They really do want us to open our mouths and swallow.

Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week.

QUOTES:

@sandymaxey – “Hierarchical networks appear incestuous, perpetuate mindless incrementalism, reinforce stagnant thinking. Need inclusivity for disruption.”

Carl Sagan: “It is suicidal to create a society dependent on science and technology in which hardly anybody knows anything about science and technology.” via @MarionChapsal

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The new China? BMW, Daimler, VW, Siemens & IKEA go to Southern US because labour’s cheap & workers have no rights – via @CWNH

But slumming in America is fast becoming a business model for some of Europe’s leading companies, and they often do things here they would never think of doing at home. These companies – not banks, primarily, but such gold-plated European manufacturers as BMW, Daimler, Volkswagen and Siemens, and retailers such as IKEA – increasingly come to America (the South particularly) because labor is cheap and workers have no rights. In their eyes, we’re becoming the new China. Our labor costs may be a little higher, but we offer stronger intellectual property protections and far fewer strikes than our unruly Chinese comrades.

@SteveDenning: “The real jobs crisis is that most jobs suck” via @SebPaquet

This is not just a matter of keeping the workers happy. In today’s knowledge economy, the motivation of workers is a key determinant of productivity. The lack of passion in today’s workforce is a fundamental cause of the continuing sharp decline in the performance of the Fortune 500.

@nineshift: “We say teleworkers are 25% more productive than office workers”

Industry Canada reports productivity gains of up to 50% by Teleworkers. (Trade-Marks Branch)

IBM Canada had Teleworker productivity improvements of up to 50% per teleworker. (IBM, Canada)

Boeing finds that Telework helps to increase their employee’s productivity an average of 15-30% and, “The quality of the work done has improved even more!” (Boeing Case Study provided by Telecommute Connecticut)

@lemire: conventional peer review system (filter-then-publish) has disastrous consequences:

In the conventional peer review system, you seek to please the reviewers who in turn try to please the editor who in turn is trying to guess what the readers want. It should not be a surprise that the papers are optimized for peer review, not for the reader. While you will eventually get your work published, you may have to drastically alter it to make it pass peer review. A common theme is that you will need to make it look more complicated.

@etiennewenger: New paper on assessing value creation for communities and networks: A Conceptual Framework (PDF) – via @NancyWhite

We will use the term “community” as a shortcut for community of practice, which we define as a learning partnership among people who find it useful to learn from and with each other about a particular domain. They use each other’s experience of practice as a learning resource. And they join forces in making sense of and addressing challenges they face individually or collectively.

We use the term network as a shortcut for social network. The term refers to a set of connections among people, whether or not these connections are mediated by technological networks. They use their connections and relationships as a resource in order to quickly solve problems, share knowledge, and make further connections.

We see communities and networks as two aspects of the social fabric of learning rather than separate structures.

Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week:

QUOTE: @JeffElder: “I’d just love to pick your brain.” Saying that to a consultant is really saying: “I’d just love to pick your pocket.” – via @techherding

Mimi & Eunice: Precious Sacred Idea

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Kelly Craft (@acLuser) reflects my own feelings about Follow Fridays on Twitter, and why I decided two years ago to start Friday’s Finds instead:

I’ll also bust the ‘secret’ vault wide-open and admit I’m not a fan of #followfriday in many respects.

• Truth be told, I really don’t want a bunch of random new followers who I might not share any common interest with.

Internal culture shows you to everyone. – What happens on the inside gets seen by the outside – via @igotan

We live in a world where it’s very difficult to keep secrets anymore.  We communicate very freely, and this causes the walls to turn into veils, and the veils to be more and more translucent.  Imagine the shower in the photo above — it’s symbolic of a new reality, so go to the gym.

Melissa Pierce (@melissapierce) creator of the film Life in perpetual Beta, discussing social media on Chicago Live

“Leaderless groups” are a myth if taken literally” ~ Rosabeth Kanter – via @minutrition

“Leaderless groups,” a phrase I heard stated with pride at Cisco in the early days of councils and boards, are a myth if taken literally. No group is actually leaderless, although it might be highly collaborative. The group might distribute and rotate leadership roles and responsibilities. There might be open discussion of decisions, even if there is a person who declares when it’s time to decided and breaks ties — in short, has the authority. But when everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.

It’s been a long week and not much of it has been on Twitter. I considered not writing a Friday’s Finds post, having recently hit the 100 week mark. However, as I sit in our kitchen (with four computers), my son tells me that he writes in his journal every night before going to bed. So, after a 1,100 KM drive today, here are some of the things I’ve learned via Twitter this past week.

“Every company has an underground reward program of bad behaviors not punished. Tolerated values are often stronger than stated values” – by @Globoforce

NATO general says more training will be on unclassified web:

[Lieutenant General Karlheinz Viereck] is convinced of the need for radical change in training to enable NATO to meet the challenge of a new security environment. He recognises that NATO must “think, organise and plan totally differently to the past.” His belief in the urgent need for change and the adoption of new methods of training is based partly on a recognition that the old methods are no longer always appropriate in the new circumstances of today’s security environment and partly on a shrewd understanding of the immense possibilities that developments in information and communications technology offer for achieving significant improvements in learning and training.

“Deference” by @euan [I’ll take creative, empathetic, self-directed & innovative any day]

So what’s been bugging me. I think it centres around a couple of words used by the BBC anchor man for the day. I was out of the room at the time but overheard him commenting on the size and enthusiasm of the crowd and contrasting this with our “cynical society” and “lack of deference”. At this point I yelled “Oh fuck off” from the kitchen much to my wife’s annoyance!

If knowledge is power – then knowledge sharing is empowerment.

Search is now officially DEAD. Google dissolves Search Group Internally, Now Called “Knowledge” – via @4KM

Google has seven major product groups. Advertising, Commerce & Local, Mobile (Android), Social, Chrome, YouTube and Search. Search is, of course, Google’s first and most important product. But that group actually no longer exists internally. As of April, when Larry Pagetook over as CEO of the company, the search group was renamed the “knowledge group” internally.

The Hidden Power of Renegade Knowledge – by @tdebaillon

Most of the tasks we are trying to achieve in our daily job are either complex or complicated. They involve multiple steps, human-to-human or human-to-machine interactions, use of different tools, all of which require following procedures, navigating through -and sometime despite- hierarchical requirements and validations, mobilizing resources whose availability isn’t aligned to your needs, producing some outcome for clients, either internal or external, whose logic isn’t yours, all of that in a reduced time frame. Whether we run a home-based business, are a public sector clerk or a Fortune 100 executive doesn’t make much difference here.

Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this week.

@jayshep -“Timesheets are an admission that your clients don’t trust you, and that you don’t trust your clients.” – via @jeffrey_brandt

Friends To Count On: Prof Robin Dunbar on why “Bill” Gore kept his factories small & why group & brain size are linked – via @CharlesJennings

The psychological demands of living in large groups mean that, in primates, species-typical group size correlates rather closely with the species’ brain size. On the primate model, our oversized brain would predict a group size of around 150, the number now known as Dunbar’s Number. We find it in the typical community size of hunter-gatherer societies, in the average village size in county after county in the Domesday book, as well as in 18th-century England; it is the average parish size among the Hutterites and the Amish (fundamentalist Christians who live a communal life in the Dakotas and Pennsylvania, respectively). It is also the average personal network size – the number of people with whom you have a personalised relationship, one that is reciprocal (I’d be willing to help you out, and I know that you’d help me) as well as having a history (we both know how we came to know each other).

Tear down the firewalls: article on freedom of information and expression by @birgittaj at artsforum Canada

I have seen new stories and new myths emerge out of the language of the internet, where people speak together through Google and translate new languages; and I have seen the library of Alexandria materialize with free knowledge and torrents of information wash upon shores otherwise impossible to reach.  I have seen the alchemy of stories take on real shape in a collective online effort; and the truth seeped into the real world.  As the untouchables try to hide their secrets for the chosen few, those secrets keep spilling out in a whirlwind of letters in every digital corner of the world.  They sweep through the streets of Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Greece, Iceland, Hungary, Libya, and the United States — confirming that the rumors are true: “corpocracy” is the new global empire, and it thrives in local corruption.

Email 21Years Into the Game. Who uses it, how, time wasted, techniques. Cool stats, even cooler how-tos, how-not-tos. – via CharlesHGreen

In fact, shockingly, 63% of respondents said they spend more than 30% of their available work time writing, reading, and responding to email, while the majority (71%) of respondents said that it only “somewhat enhances,” “is neutral to,” or even “hinders,” their effectiveness. 40% of respondents said it decreases their balance between work and life outside of work.

I started Friday’s Finds almost two years ago, “In an attempt to make my finds on Twitter more explicit, this may be the start of regular posts on some of the things I learned this past week (weekly seems better than monthly).”

This weekly activity forces me to review and reflect, good things to practice in my opinion.

@funnymonkey – “Every time I read content on Linked In I get another look at the evolving face of spam. I feel dirty afterwards.”

Why high performance organizations will thrive on uncertainty & lack of control – by @RossDawson

When you look at what has really changed in the best performing organizations of today compared to say those of a couple of decades ago, this is at the heart of the matter. Executives used to be in control, know what was happening, and to direct the company’s activities in detail to achieve success. That doesn’t work any more.

As I told the audience, we all know CEOs who like being fully in control of the situation. Unless they can quickly change who they are, they are not well suited to the world of today and tomorrow, and will almost inevitably fail. Their successors will be completely comfortable with uncertainty, lack of control, and guiding a path to success from that base.

Embracing Chaos with a Little Help from My Friends – by @raesmaa

1. Firstly, business development people at that time were stuck at the process automation hype, in the name of cost and time savings. Both good targets, however people and innovation (other than process innovation) were neglected. The same applies to organizational learning. These were not in the core focus for most organizations.
2. Secondly (ok, this is obvious); the speed by which the level complexity has grown is huge. Change and complexity are becoming a norm. As Harold Jarche says: “Any work where complexity is not the norm will be of diminishing value.” In my model, I see it all too simplified.
3. Thirdly, I was on the right track but missing some adjectives – especially the social. And I was stuck to the processes too much; the physical process (distribution of goods) and the related information processes.

Graphic: The Cost of Fragmented Communication in the Enterprise – by @socialcast

Kathryn Schulz: On being wrong [reminds me of Life in perpetual Beta]

Here are some of the things I found via Twitter this past week.

QUOTES

@barrydahl “Forget about giving the guy a fish, or teaching him how to fish, either. Teach him how to teach himself.”

@euan “People can’t have authentic conversations with customers if work requires them to leave their real selves at the door”

“When someone is searching,” said Siddhartha, “then it might easily happen that the only thing his eyes see is that what he searches for…”  – via @WDYWFT

@skap5 “Project selection is key. Accepting non-strategic projects or jobs for the cash will haunt you in more ways than you can predict.”

@Ambercadabera “Social Media is now a job, but one day it will be a skill. You dont have a “Director of Phone”” – via Soclogical

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Antony Mayfield: “We don’t grasp how magnificently, terrifyingly complex networks are ...” – via @JohnnieMoore

We don’t grasp how magnificently, terrifyingly complex networks are. We like to draw pictures of them and then think we’ve captured their meaning, when they are more like the weather – always changing, hyper-complex. Predictable if you are smart and have a huge amount of data and training, but only to a point and only some of the time. (There’s mileage in that weather forecasting analogy – I’d like to come up with it.

WSJ: How to get a real education by Scott Adams

Fail Forward. If you’re taking risks, and you probably should, you can find yourself failing 90% of the time. The trick is to get paid while you’re doing the failing and to use the experience to gain skills that will be useful later. I failed at my first career in banking. I failed at my second career with the phone company. But you’d be surprised at how many of the skills I learned in those careers can be applied to almost any field, including cartooning. Students should be taught that failure is a process, not an obstacle.

Maker’s schedule, Manager’s schedule by Paul Graham

Most powerful people are on the manager’s schedule. It’s the schedule of command. But there’s another way of using time that’s common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.

When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That’s no problem for someone on the manager’s schedule. There’s always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker’s schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.

@tdebaillon Emotional Surplus – via @TimKastelle

Interactions are a human-to-human matter, they involve people, not brands. Whether it be a customer service rep, a sales person, a community manager, another customer, a relative, conversations and engagement are always about exchanging knowledge between different human beings. Period. Nobody, unless irremediably harebrained, has ever conversed with a brand. In that context, talking about brand engagement or online presence is pure nonsense.

Here are some of the things I found via Twitter this past week.

QUOTES:

“We could have saved the earth but we were too damn cheap.” – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. – via @RobertaHill

Remember … the technology that gives You the power to organize, also gives Them the power to watch – by @ValdisKrebs

“It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.” ~ Virginia Woolf – via @MarionChapsal

CFO: What happens if we invest in developing our people & then they leave us? CEO: What happens if we don’t and they stay? via @Be_Why @eranium

“A famously successful entrepreneur once told me, ‘Avoid working with people you don’t like or trust; it’s not worth it.'” – @MurrayBuchanan

Comic Sans walks into a bar & the barman says: “We don’t serve your type here.” via @techherding @TedInJest @CuteGecko @those2girls

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Outside of the realm of science, objectivity is discredited these days as anything but an aspiration, and even that aspiration is looking pretty sketchy. The problem with objectivity is that it tries to show what the world looks like from no particular point of view, which is like wondering what something looks like in the dark. Nevertheless, objectivity — even as an unattainable goal — served an important role in how we came to trust information, and in the economics of newspapers in the modern age.

“In a very deep sense, applied science is an oxymoron” – via @rlanzara

It is interesting that the nations and states that could afford to delve into basic research, philosophy and the humanities, that is, into the supposedly least practical of all areas, are the same ones that were especially developed during their eras, even if the causal context is not entirely clear. Perhaps because potentially more is unknown than is known and applied, perhaps because despite this, there is an added value to the deep inquiry that demands people invest many years and resources into the endeavor of research, even today.

A University of Alberta professor and surgeon, Dr. Jonathan White, decided to make 10 to 30 minute iTunes podcasts of his lecture material in order to reach his students at a different level.  His medical students feel the free Podcasts are more captivating, and enable them to consume a greater amount of content when they are short on time.

Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week.

QUOTES

“Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity.” ~Thor-Heyerdahl – via @tedcoine
@rebelbrown

@marciamarcia – “Just overheard at #closym, ‘there is nothing human or resourceful about HR.‘”

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The connected company – by @driessen

What is the social business? What does it look like? Dave Gray shares his view in napkin sketches.

Life expectancy of a S&P 500 company is getting shorter. It’s 15 years now.

Companies are complex systems (shown by complex hierarchies). There are companies that make sense of other companies because they are so complex. Think Microsoft and government.

For every extra employee your profit goes down. For every 3 employees your profit per employee goes down. It is increasing, but by less and less. Or: diminishing returns.

However productivity goes up in city when the population grows. Why?

Content is not King – by @ewanmcintosh

One of the key points I’ve been driving in the past year has been the importance of schools providing places for conversations and exploration to take place, perhaps through a design thinking-based pedagogy and process. Such a process takes the onus off the teacher to be the one preparing resources for children, effectively doing the learning for the youngster. Instead, it forces interaction around content, rather than content to be consumed or ‘learnt’, to take centre stage.

Customers Say Half of all Salespeople Are Unprepared for the Call by @davidabrock [isn’t this an opportunity for social, informal, peer2peer learning?]