Monthly Archives: January 2009
A changing context: disruption and adaption
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Artist: Mark Ryden www.markryden.com
I was pointed by Harold Jarche to Dave Snowden talking about the coming age and the characteristics of what it will take. He documents a shift from mechanistic to systematic, and posits that the coming age is chaotic, requiring a new approach. Dave terms this ‘praxis‘, a continual cycle of experimenting on the basis of theory and reflecting, rather than pre-determined approaches.
Harold wondered whether this counted as meta-learning, and I’d have to say yes. You not only are looking at the outcomes of your intervention, but you’ve got to be paying attention to your process, and revising the theory and the practice as well as the problem-solving. It may seem like an awful lot of overhead, but these skills become practiced, and the outcomes are far better in the long run.
Things aren’t slowing down. I was reflecting earlier today on how quickly the ‘iClones‘ came after the announcement of the iPhone. Things are moving faster, we’re being showered with more and more information, and asked to do more and more with less. Most importantly, the fundamental game changes, where a whole industry is upended by a disruptive innovation, are getting so frequent that there is no longer a period in which to adapt to a steady state: change is the steady state.
Everything of any value at work will be adapting to change and solving problems. The processes you’d execute against will be out of date by the time they’re codified. You’ll instead be applying frameworks, and monitoring the results while you refine the models and your approach.
At a personal level, this means meta-learning: learning on an ongoing basis, developing your learning skills and continually problem solving. It’ll also mean collaborating, as it’s no longer sufficient to assume you can do it yourself; there’s power in numbers, when managed right. So you’ll also have to develop and evolve not only personal learning, but learning to learn with others. (That’s one of things Harold, Jay, Jane and I are working on via TogetherLearn.)
This naturally implies the skills of larger groups of people, and at the organizational level it means continuing to experiment as well, and providing the tools and the space to learn. It also means being systematic and continuous about review. (Doug Engelbart, ahead of the curve as always, has even suggested another level, where nodes of meta-learning collaborate to review the meta-learning!)
It’s attitudinal, too, as you’ve got to keep it from being scary, and let yourself remember that learning is fun. As Raph Koster tells us, learning is fun (at least until we kill that thought with schooling). So, let’s start having fun!
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Artist: Mark Ryden www.markryden.com
Life in Russia: creating context
Artist: Petrosian at www.englishrussia.com
I remember Lara, a young Russian girl. Working in Germany in some kind of office in 2005/2006.
Artist: Petrosian at www.englishrussia.com
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Look at English Russia for the work of Petrosian.
And realize that it is the eye of the beholder that creates the impression!
I’m curious & I will change
An early study of companies with strong cultures and poor performance identified an important characteristic they shared.
They had lost an interest in change
A not invented mentality had been allowed to flourish.
James Heskett describes Texaco as being a company, where executives where discouraged from belonging to industry associations where ideas might be exchanged. If someone at Texaco wanted to visit another company to discuss the best practice, the standard response was: “Okay, but do not bring any of that back here”
Artist unknown: interested in change
Ways of seeing: an influential book
Artist:Nikola Tamindzic www.homeofthevain.com
In my cloud you may notice the lemma Ways of seeing.
I remember reading John Berger’s influential book Ways of seeing somewhere in the seventies. And of course the BBC-serie with that name.
What are the hidden ideologies in images that we use. Images in managing your organization. But also when reading a glossy or this blog.
Berger’s Ways of Seeing
Something to think about!!
Ways of seeing
I always liked the work of these British artists.
The way they construct a reality is something one should thing about!
Artists: Gilbert & George
Thinking about hope
Artist: Rikka Surmonen
We have proof that with President Obama ‘s abililty to inspire hope in a future.
As a result, the NY Times reports that 79% of the country are optimistic about the next four years under Obama and yet, 2/3 think that it will take more than a year to solve the problems – but they’ll give them a chance because he is a visionary with brilliant oratorial skills who can inspire hope.
Job items that can be done at home and items not
Focus on results
Focus on results
I posted this article here because Steve make’s some good point with regard to quality of your work and the effectiveness of your work routine. And in a changing business and technological enviroment, the quality and effectiveness of your work (and associated results) do really matter
This article was originally written
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by Steve Tobak on December 2nd, 2008 @ 9:12 am
I’ve got a question for you: how the hell do you manage to get any real work done at work? Between meetings, phone calls, emails and interruptions, there’s simply no time to get anything done, let alone quality quiet time where you can actually think.
When I was an executive in the corporate world, I did all my quality work at home, usually after dinner. I’d kick back with a glass of wine and work on that presentation, business plan, or whatever was on my plate that actually required time to think.
Guess it helps that I don’t have kids.
Air travel was even better, no interruptions at all. It’s amazing how much work you can get done in three or four hours on a plane.
Sure, there are plenty of books and coaches with methods for being more efficient, but I’m not a fan.
Meetings, communications, and even interruptions are important for senior executives. They’re how you know what’s really going on and stay on top of things – pretty damn important when it comes to decision making. They’re also good for relationship and team building.
Perhaps most importantly, segmenting tasks between work and home helped to reduce my stress level.
Here are five executive tasks better suited for work, likewise for home:
Tasks to do at work
- Customer and other external meetings. Top priority, of course. And mostly on the road, anyway.
- Internal meetings. Some are a waste of time, but you’ve got to do staff meetings, business planning, periodic reviews, board meetings, and the like.
- Hallway meetings. For better or worse, sometimes where the real meeting happens, especially in small or dysfunctional companies.
- Editing non-critical documents and content. If they don’t require too much concentration.
- Budget planning. You can only get so much of this done on your own without input from managers and help from finance folks.
Tasks to do at home
- Presentations. You need peace and quiet, time to concentrate, and a clear head for new ideas.
- Business planning, strategizing. Ditto.
- Writing / editing critical documents. Like SEC docs; too tedious to do in interrupt mode.
- Employee reviews. Same goes for any annual or relatively rare and unusual task.
- Preparation for trips. When you travel a lot, as most executives do, you need prep time, usually the night before a big trip.
Bottom Line:
Is it just me, a function of the fast-paced technology industry where I worked, or is this a foregone conclusion when you reach a certain level of management? If it’s the latter, it would seem that all executives need really independent and understanding spouses for this to work, right?
Or maybe I just should have read one of those time-management or effectiveness books 20 years ago. Too late now. Now I do all my work at home.
(image by chiacomo via Flickr, CC 2.0), from Can ROWE Improve Your Workplace Productivity? by CC Holland
