Friday’s Finds

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

So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads. Dr. Seuss; via @nancyrubin

@GregoryLent : “We are shipping factories, jobs and wealth overseas so rapidly that it is hard to even comprehend what is going on.”

@Complexified : “Complexity demands new levels of relationship building skills. How we work together shares wisdom deeper than any one of us.” via @betseymerkel

“You can’t teach critical thinking without critical situations.” via @ethanbodnar

Higher education: “the mass production of people literally unfit for anything except to take part in an elaborate charade.” via @anya1anya

“Since the way we run universities now is such a train wreck, what’s a better way?” by @danpontefract

I believe the education teaching process at high school and higher education levels need to radically shift. In both environments, I recommend teaching the theory of various subjects for half the day, and the other half is spent working on the amalgamation of subject-matter through application. That’s right – half the time in theory and half the time applying said theory in real world, critical thinking, cross-collaborative, multi-discipline ways that allow the student to actually practice ‘learning by doing’ concepts whilst learning the theory.

“If nothing else, I hope my book gets rid of learning styles” – Ruth Clark about her book Evidence-Based Training Methods; via @hjames

Thanks to a growing body of research evidence, we’ve learned a great deal in the last 20 years about which methods really work when training people. Yet many trainers are still using time-honored methods and assuming that they work — despite recent evidence to the contrary.

Interesting mind map on how decisions are made. by @jackvinson

I was Wrong.  by @timkastelle

In other words, to be innovative, we have to be wrong a lot. Being wrong is the first step towards being right.

Don’t hide your mistakes, learn from them. If every idea that you try works, it’s a sure sign that you’re not trying enough ideas.

What’s the relationship between R&D spending and Innovation? by @MartijnLinssen – Return on R&D

We can only simply notice that Apple is a very innovative company, for example. SAP spending 4 or 5 times as much on R&D doesn’t make them 4-5 times as innovative (I’m fairly sure even that no one could handle a company being 5 times as innovative as Apple).
Most R&D is window dressing and aimed to please the shareholder – not the stakeholder, that much Larry Ellison did prove in his speech at Oracle Open World.

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

Benoit Mandelbrot died this week:

Why Mandelbrot matters “the market is not rational at all”:

“A few fund managers have experimented with these concepts [of price dependence, whatever that is, and volatility]. They often call it chaos theory – though strictly speaking that is marketing language riding on the coat-tails of a popular scientific trend. In reality, the mathematics is still young, the research barely begun, and reliable applications still distant.”

“Fractal joke! RT @Ihnatko: RIP Benoit Mandelbrot. Thank God he wasn’t murdered. It would’ve taken the cops forever to draw the chalk outline” via @stevenbjohnson

—

“The Internet is a serendipity creation machine.” @johnrobb

“Air sandwich = empty space between top of organization and the doers at the bottom.” @jaycross

“Old paradigm: analysis, strategy only. New: those PLUS storytellng, improvisation, movement/embodiment & visual thinking.” @CreatvEmergence

“I’ve had 7 managers in 5 years. None of them know what I do. The only thing they’ve ever done is try to get me to train someone else.” @NatashaChart

@hrheingold: “Great slideshow by @corinnew on building a personal learning network”

PLN’s are deliberately formed networks of people and resources capable of guiding our independent learning goals and professional development needs.

Bilingualism Good for the Brain : Discovery News via @jalam1001

Bialystock has shown that bilinguals do better at tests that require multitasking, including ones that simulated driving and talking on a phone.

“Make no mistake: Everybody is worse,” Bialystock said, “but the bilinguals were less worse.”

“My rant on the futility of Q and A, with a nod to @hjarche” by @johnniemoore

Here’s my beef. The presentation itself sets up a status game in which the speaker and chairperson start and usually stay high and the audience is low. Here are the various ways this gets manifested. For starters, the speakers are usually at the front of the room and often on a raised platform. Before a word is said, they’re already in high status. Then the chairperson offers a flattering introduction; if we’re lucky they merely flatter the speaker but a lot of them have found ways to flatter themselves by implication. The speaker gets a microphone and the licence to talk pretty much unconstrained. If there’s a time limit, it’s rarely enforced …

Latest Learnlet: Serendipitous revisiting by @Quinnovator

So the point is that you have to keep putting ideas out there, again and again, to find the right time for them to take hold.  Not like advertising, but like offerings.  It’s not planned, it’s just at the idea strikes, but I reckon that’s a better heuristic than a more calculated algorithm. At least, if you are trying to inspire positive change, and I confess that I am.

New Era of Workplace Learning – “social learning is something you do” by @C4LPT

The term “social learning” therefore has a much wider meaning than simply “social training” – where the focus is on the creation, delivery and management of formal learning. “Social workflow learning” (as we might call it) is about workers sharing information and knowledge with others in networks and communities as well as adopting a new collaborative approach to working – in order to DO their jobs effectively.

I’m not sure why this last week was so different than previous weeks, but few things on Twitter caught my attention. Maybe this brings to a close my regular weekly activity of Friday’s Finds, which I’ve produced every Friday since May 22nd 2009. Anyway, I’ll see what happens next week. I’ve put together a few items of interest though I usually have dozens of items to pick from. Perhaps I need to pay more attention.

Still worth checking out though:

A thought during #lrnchat last week: The status quo is maintained by formal learning; revolutionaries embrace the informal.

@jonhusband “Much consulting involves the application of models to a system, as opposed to getting involved in the system as a positive change agent.”

Scathing & quite funny rant about MBTI, Belbin, Honey & M, etc by Paul Kearns – well said, Paul Kearns; via @drmcewan [in case you missed the link on my blog post]

Having taught and trained many, many people over the last 30 years myself, and as an evaluation specialist, I have never ever regarded happy or smile sheets (known as level 1 questionnaires in the trade) as evidence of anything.  Happiness is not evidence of learning and unhappiness is not evidence of failure (learning is often initially painful and starts with resistance). Even if I make participants take a test (level 2) and they can tell me what Belbin’s 9 team roles are does not mean they know what to do with them. Even a level 3 visit (to see if they are applying it in the workplace) might reveal them putting labels on hapless managers but it does not offer evidence that having a defined role, in a particular team dynamic, at a particular time and place, produces better team results.

Taking Stock: “What other profession would go about its business in such an amateurish & unprofessional way as university teaching?” via @MTA_KT [yes, I know that’s me]

Some of the things I learned via Twitter this past week or so (just quotes this week):

“Silence is golden but duct tape is silver!” @JaneBozarth

“Walmart exec (I’m not making this up) told me email was so time-consuming cause she had to approve everyone’s email in advance.” @jaycross

“You can not have a superior democracy with an inferior system of education.” @ginab

“I think “human capital” is an oxymoron. “Social capital” too. Test question: would you consider your spouse, children or friends “capital?” @dsearls

“If I am an effective leader then I have set up a system that is not dependent on me.” @gcouros

“Uncertainty is the certainty that the parameters will change.” @downes

“The fact is that organisation and management sciences are not sciences at all but scientific emperors with no clothing.” Complexity & Management Centre

“No matter how many pairs of reading glasses I buy & strategically place around the house they are never nearby when I need them.” @skap5

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

QUOTES

Chance favours the connected mind. by @timkastelle

*****

If your overall strategy depends on speed to market … patents won’t help much. by @timkastelle

Critically, though, if your overall strategy depends on speed to market or quickness of response to changing environmental conditions, patents won’t help much. They’re too slow.

King Gillette: with patent protection he kept prices high; without protection he lowered prices & increased sales & profits: How conventional wisdom can be wrong by @rbgayle

The ‘sell the razor cheap and make money on the razors’ model is really not true at all but has become a standard narrative. Truth is not as important as the narrative, it seems. we do like our stories.

Observable work – more on knowledge work visibility. by @jimmcgee

• What can you do to make your own work more readily observable?
• How might making your work observable be immediately beneficial to you, even if no one else bothered to pay attention?
• Who else benefits if your work is more observable?
• How do you benefit from others making their work more observable?
• What risks and challenges do you need to manage as you make your work more observable?

Enterprise 2.0 is only the next iteration with a fancy new name for research into new ways of working. E2.0 research & the long tail by @drmcewan

The Long Tail does not only apply to books, films and music. There is a long tail in academic research … I also said in my comment that I get frustrated by much of the Enterprise 2.0 conversation, in that it seems as though there is too much focus on novelty and re-invention. That is unfair, though. So much academic research is not easily accessible and written in turgid language. No wonder it is so seldom referenced. It needs to be discovered, translated and made usable.

“The iPad can trap us in the idea that learning is about content delivery” by @CharlesJennings

What is learning about in your opinion?
John Seely Brown, who was the Head of the Xerox Park research center for many years, together with a colleague of his, John Hagel, recently published a book called “The Power of Pull”. It is based around the fact that we live in a world which is information-rich, but generally interaction-poor. In a learning context, it is a world where learning content is ‘pushed’ to people rather than learners ‘pulling’ just the content they need for their learning to take place.  Seeley Brown and Hagel map out changes that are taking place as this information economy of push is shifting to a more interactive, ubiquitous and on-demand two-way communication – a world of pull. My colleague in the Internet Time Alliance, Jon Husband, calls this new world “Wirearchy”.

Some qualities of a knowledge worker by @jackvinson

So, what is it that knowledge workers need in order to do their jobs?  Merlin talks about three key elements to be great as a knowledge worker in the last two minutes of the talk.

1. Tolerance to handle ambiguity, the unknown, and the incomplete;
2. know that you have enough information to do the work at hand;
3. Courage to work within the uncertainty and the lack of information and still do the job.

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

QUOTES:

@GeorgeKao “There’s no such thing as ‘keeping up.’ There’s only checking in at high leverage times.”

@JohnDCook “He who marries the spirit of the age will soon be a widow.”

*****

@JDeragon People are now the engine of change and the fuel is communications. Systemic Impact of Social Technology

System outcomes can be influenced by numerous factors such as:

1. Competitor innovation that attracts the market away from your business
2. Cost of goods increases and margins shrink. You cut expenses to survive.
3. Employee turnover which fuels inconsistency and waste.
4. Customer leave due to dis-satisfaction
5. Market shifts that you are unaware of and don’t understand

The #1 influence that is threaded through all five examples above is communications.

Knowledge Management = Story Management. Anecdote

How do you organise your stories?

I didn’t realise it at the time but when we started this blog back in 2004 we were creating a type of story bank where we could go back and retrieve great stories to tell.

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

“Education is a self-organizing system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon” Sugata Mitra’s TED Talk via @Willrich45

@openworld “When peer learning meets “results-only work environments” (#ROWE), a breakaway era will begin”

What Girl Scouts have to say about going ROWE. via @caliandjody

In the year and a half since my organization migrated to a Results-Only Work Environment (ROWE), I have talked about our experience extensively. My enthusiastic descriptions of ROWE excite most people, and although I believe that it is an inherently exciting concept, there are people who respond to it with a strong sense of indifference. I have connected this sense of indifference to three potential foundational thoughts: ROWE is too different (shifting to ROWE is so radical that fear supersedes excitement); ROWE is not different at all (been there, done that); or ROWE appears to be not applicable (hint: ROWE is applicable to everyone).

You can’t motivate students, but you can kill what motivation they have. via @bhsprincipal

Motivation – at least intrinsic motivation — is something to be supported, or if necessary revived.  It’s not something we can instill in students by acting on them in a certain way.  You can tap their motivation, in other words, but you can’t “motivate them.”  And if you think this distinction is merely semantic, then I’m afraid we disagree.

On the other hand, what teachers clearly have the ability to do with respect to students’ motivation is kill it. That’s not just a theoretical possibility; it’s taking place right this minute in too many classrooms to count.

@KevinDJones – Baby Boomers vs. Digital Natives – Let the Debate … End

This goes back to my study a few years ago when this notion of the generational divide was starting.  I did some ethnographic research on Enterprise 2.0 adoption for a class I was taking and I was surprised to find that adoption didn’t work by age (which is what I was told).  And now we are finding this more and more.

neuro-science provides new metaphor for organizational reform via @bduperrin

One easily sees benefits of being able to put the PFC [prefrontal cortex] to work: adapt to any situation without chains or barriers, benefit from our total intelligence in any circumstance. Human beings who can do this are very few – as mentioned above, our brains have not yet reached this development level. One can train and improve though, this is some of what we learn to facilitate in neuro-psychology.

JND: Taming complexity through design: modularization, mapping, conceptual models. via @captic

We are faced with an apparent paradox, but don’t worry: good design will see us through. People want the extra power that increased features bring to a product, but they intensely dislike the complexity that results. Is this a paradox? Not necessarily. Complexity can be managed.

Once we recognize that the real issue is to devise things that are understandable, we are halfway toward the solution. Good design can rescue us. How do we manage complexity? We use a number of simple design rules. For example, consider how three simple principles can transform an unruly cluster of confusing features into a structured, understandable experience: modularization, mapping, conceptual models. There are numerous other important design principles, but these will make the point.

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

QUOTES

@EskoKilpi “Control means being able to predict (if A then B); if we can’t predict, we can’t control.”

via @4KM Complexity is necessary … confusion & unnecessary complication should be eliminated. (Don Norman)

*****

via @lpgauthier The Management Myth: Most of management theory is inane  (The Atlantic 2006)

Between them, Taylor and Mayo carved up the world of management theory. According to my scientific sampling, you can save yourself from reading about 99 percent of all the management literature once you master this dialectic between rationalists and humanists. The Taylorite rationalist says: Be efficient! The Mayo-ist humanist replies: Hey, these are people we’re talking about! And the debate goes on. Ultimately, it’s just another installment in the ongoing saga of reason and passion, of the individual and the group.

via @sahana2802 Not So Fast: Scientific management started as a way to work. How did it become a way of life?  (The New Yorker)

Whether he was also a shameless fraud is a matter of some debate, but not, it must be said, much: it’s difficult to stage a debate when the preponderance of evidence falls to one side. In “The Management Myth: Why the Experts Keep Getting It Wrong” (Norton; $27.95), Matthew Stewart points out what Taylor’s enemies and even some of his colleagues pointed out, nearly a century ago: Taylor fudged his data, lied to his clients, and inflated the record of his success.

via @charlesjennings Why Our Jobs are Getting Worse’ — interesting article by Aditya Chakrabortty touching on ‘Digital Taylorism’

As I described last week, the last two decades have seen more British workers get higher levels of skills than ever before. And yet over that time they have come to exercise ever less control over their jobs. Official skills surveys show a plunging proportion of workers who report that they have much influence over how to do their daily tasks – from 57% in 1992 to 43% by 2006. If you’re an NHS worker or teacher you have targets or central curricula to meet; if you’re employed by an outsourcing company you’ll have two sets of bosses breathing down your neck – those in your office, and the client company too.

The labour-market academic Phil Brown has a phrase for this trend: Digital Taylorism [PDF].

via @C4LPT Job 2.0 – The End of Profession (TheNextWeb)

The Job 2.0 era gives us all an opportunity to have more than one profession at a time. Plumbers don’t just do plumbing anymore. They have to be in marketing and PR as well and offer more related services than just plumbing to satisfy market demand. Architects aren’t just designing buildings anymore. They also design cities, furniture, books and gadgets.

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

QUOTES

via @CharlesHGreen “When you dig yourself into a hole, first, stop digging.” up by your bootstraps

via @HealthCareerPro “I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.” ~ Winston Churchill.

@EskoKilpi “The everyday live interactions we experience do not exist in a meaningful way in any documents.”

*****

via @bduperrin Six Fundamental Shifts in the Way We Work – HBR

Despite long-term increases in labor productivity, the average return on assets (ROA) of US companies has steadily fallen to almost one quarter of what it was in 1965. We’re running faster, but still losing ground. There is no sign of this long-term erosion flattening out, much less turning around.

The conclusion is inescapable: our management practices and corporate institutions are fundamentally broken. The good news, if you can call it that, is that this isn’t sustainable for much longer: the trend line on ROA approaches zero in 2020.

The Power of Power Laws by @jhagel “We’re shifting from a Gaussian world to a Paretian world, with profound implications for business.” followed by a reply to Power Laws by @downes “The thing with this discussion is, the two types of worlds are being described as if they are natural phenomena, as though they are patterns that we just fall into.”

@SteveCase – Studies Show Why Students Study is as Important as What: Education Week

The research suggests two parallel motivations drive student achievement: “learning orientation,” the drive to improve your knowledge and competency; and “performance orientation,” the drive to prove that competency to others. Watkins found the highest-achieving students had a healthy dose of both types of motivation, but students who focused too heavily on performance ironically performed less well academically, thought less critically, and had a harder time overcoming failure.

Two guesses which orientation develops under a U.S.-style assessment accountability system, and the first doesn’t count.

The Working Smarter Fieldbook: A Glimpse & Some Thoughts by @sahana2802

The book is a synthesis of years of collective experience, know-how,  knowledge and deep passion for improving and enabling human performance. As an L&D professional, for me the book is a practical guide to the implementation of a more efficacious “workscape” and even tells me what my elevator pitch should be. However, as I read it, I realized it is also much more. It speaks to me at a personal level showing me how I can push myself to become a more effective professional, find my Element by investing in collaborating, learning, and sharing, by building a network and being part of a network of professionals.

@JudithELS Although I’m not a great fan of slide-only stuff, these speak for themselves > Internet Time Alliance View of Change