Posts

Observations which add complexity to strategic planning, frameworks and scenarios

Image
Innovation.  The shift from “access to innovation” to “delivery of innovation” has still not crossed the chasm and happened at scale inside corporates. The former is easy and requires cash, the latter is hard as it needs resolutions of conflicts. The education cycle is rotating again. There is a movement to learning by doing and less by teaching (rope);  this means the infrastructure (schools. Teachers, books, processes, exams) is not aligned to the outcome Management tools for certainty are dead , the ability to deal with uncertainty is critical but we lack the new tools, frameworks and teaching.  Those in leadership can have the wrong mindset (closed), old tools and experience that is not relevant.  Artificial Intelligence resurfacers some 2,000-year-old thinking about morals and ethic. However this time it is less theoretical and more problematic . What is your purpose?   Do we need to add “slave to a machine”  Rate of change vs rate of adoption is a continuum, as adoption creates

What is the word for “The Fear of loss of community?” or “The fear of losing togetherness”

Image
This commentary is following a call with Charlotte Valeur , we were chatting about the status of the economy, the future of governance and current issues with oversight.  We focussed on burnout and breakdown as we are seeing friends and staff suffering.  She mentioned a new fear, “The fear of losing togetherness.”  We explored this for some time as zoom/ hangouts/ Teams and all the other video chats, along with email and everything digital does not create togetherness.  Digital gives a different perspective on community, communication and exchanges.   What is the word that captures a new 2020 fear; “The Fear of Loss of Community/ Connectedness?” or “The Fear of Losing Togetherness” What is the word that captures a new 2020 fear; “The Fear of Loss of Community/ connectedness?” or “The Fear of Losing Togetherness” (FOLT)  Here are two lists ( One , Two ) of fears and below are a few that are relevant, but we don’t appear to have a word for what a video call does in creating the loss o

99% of the public and 95% of venture and investment capital have got it wrong!

Image
You own shares and you think that means you own part of a company, right. No. It is time to expand on and explore company ownership, shares and investment rights.  You probably believe that shareholders own a company?  Shareholders quite simple don’t own a company. Why do we make this assumption about ownership and how do we unpack and explore why it is important to challenge this thinking, acknowledging a deep-rooted human bias that we like to think that we can own something.  Ownership: from Wikipedia   Ownership is the state or fact of exclusive rights and control over property , which may be any asset , including an object, land or real estate , or intellectual property . Ownership involves multiple rights, collectively referred to as title, which may be separated and held by different parties. After reading this post, you may want to take a bash at editing the entry.  Indeed the origin and use of the word OWN has a checkered history from German.  The use in English

Book Review: Rebel Ideas @matthewsyed

Image
Syed wrote “Black Box Thinking” and “Rebel Ideas” is a sequel or the second part in a three-part series. There is more to come.  He builds on many of the original ideas and adds great new content and concepts.  Fabulous book and worth spending 15 hours with. The core concept is that other than a very few humans, Einstein, Scroties, Lovelace, are we able to create either a new idea or an entire idea.  Diverse thinking is actually required.  Diversity of thought is that you bring in different experiences, perspectives, values and skills - and in doing so you will expand the possible and probable.  The link to this for me is that good governance requires a diversity of thinking.  He thankfully deals with strong leadership and overpowering processes to be clear that this means that you get a diverse possibility but a single person outcome. Strong, as in domineering leadership does not support diverse outcomes.  Strong, as in servant leadership does create fertile grounds for reb

When Complex multi-dimensional data creates users that cannot exist

Image
It is all about averages.  If you have a single dimension data set, say height, with a large data set, it is probable that one user will be the average of the entire set. In a two-dimensional data set, height and weight, it is probable that one user may have these two characters as the average of the entire set. In a three-dimensional data set, inside leg measurement, height and weight, it is tending toward impossible that one user may have the three average characters of the entire set. More data makes it more probable, but also more characteristics make average persons more improbable, as mean, mode or medium. Facial recognition uses about 80 nodal points, it is (im)possible that a single data subject in large data set will be average on all points.    The point is that we think more data will create a better understanding of our users. This is unlikely to be the case. What we need to determine are the boundary conditions where the data we have access to enables better decisions.  

Why don’t we recognise new threats?

Image
Have you ever sat there listening to the fire alarm ringing out saying to yourself that is it just a test, a practice run or it must be faulty? Have you been sitting down watching TV and the home smoke alarm goes off and you assume that someone has burned the toast (again) Why is our first instant to ignore (based on experience) and not gather more information? Why is our confidence so high that we know that we are right?  Why, given your life may be a stake, does apathy overrun our response? Wider, why can we not see a new threat, why do we ignore the signs? The second round of COVID19 Why when we know there is at least equal danger to previous time, do we want to assume it is now all OK? Going back or ignoring the protection Why do we prefer to search for evidence of the V-bounce back and ignore the L recession as doom-mongering?  Why, probably because we are choosing how we want things to appear based on our own inner-thinkings and that is driven by bias.  We know we are biased an

Entering the 3rd phase of the business response to COVID19 - BURNOUT

Image
After a few days of the lockdown starting, we believed that we needed a survive, revive, and thrive strategy that would provide a framework and structure to move forward with.  We put in place teams to be able to execute a survival plan.  However, looking back we realise we got it wrong.  It was based on the economic model of thinking: faster, cheaper, quicker and how we become more efficient and productive.  COVID19 provided opportunity and threat in equal measure to our market and model, but we kind of looked at the speck in your eye, missing the log in our own eye. Phase 1 of the response was not about surviving, it was in fact about exhaustion. The insights looking back were that phase 1 was all about tiredness, confusion, and being generally overwhelmed. It is clear that this was due to loss of rules, heuristics, and routines which made life possible or at least tolerable. We had been behaving like frogs in water with an ever increasing temperature.  Whilst the acti