This could not make me happier. To hell with capybaras, I now want some grass as a pet.
- All beliefs in whatever realm are theories at some level....
Google has discovered that its most innovative employees are those with a strong sense of mission and personal autonomy. Perhaps more important than that (as its been theorized by people like Dan Pink for years) is that after they determined this by crunching the data they changed their behavior: numbers and grades are no longer an important hiring criteria. How many organizations are willing to change such fundamental aspects of their culture?
It’s the ones you’ve never heard of that you ought to worry about
Source: brucesterling
From Paul Ehrlich’s speech at the University of Vermont in May 2013:
“I believe and all of my colleagues believe that we are on a straightforward course to a collapse of our civilization.”
“We’re a small-group animal, both genetically and culturally. We have evolved to relate to groups of somewhere between 50 and 150 people, and now suddenly we’re trying to live in a group not of 150 or 100 people, but of seven billion people, somewhat over seven billion people at the moment, and that is presenting us with a whole array of problems.”
Problems? Our “inability to recognize gradual, large-scale changes in our environment as dangerous” - climate change. Poor water management. Fast cultural evolution of technology but slow evolution of ethics.
Solutions? Feed everyone. Reduce the population. Reduce overconsumption. Give women equal rights.
“If there’s any reason for hope, it’s that we do have a history of showing that human beings, human societies, in relatively recent times can change extremely dramatically, extremely rapidly… For some reason — we don’t fully understand it — when the time is right, you can get dramatic, dramatic changes, which indicates to me that there’s a chance that when the time is right, we can change the way we behave towards each other and towards our environment and it can happen very very rapidly. I think … your main challenge is to find a way to ripen the time.”
Max Planck
(via stoweboyd)
Paul Higgins: But can we afford the time for that to happen in a modern world?
(via emergentfutures)
Source: stoweboyd
A recent study suggests that doctors are increasingly dissatisfied with EHRs. Another found that interns are spending a lot more time on their computer than they are with patients. These are examples of what doctors have feared about modernization: it’s not going to work well and it’ll hurt their patients. So they resisted. Federal funding has helped push them in the right direction but in many cases the kinds of systems being built to meet “meaningful use” are pretty awful. Healthcare is without a doubt an extremely complex problem to manage but in most cases it’s like the developers have paid no mind to dozens of years of research and experimentation into user experience and usability. They expect that doctors want to become expert users when most doctors want to become expert healthcare providers.
But then again, consider that most of the software used in regular businesses is pretty awful. Most consumer web sites are pretty awful too. Why should doctors have it any better? Perhaps because our lives are in their hands.
And then there is the whole patient side of healthcare IT. Which can you access more easily: your banking records or your health records?
Ultimately we should all have it better. Simple is proving that banking doesn’t have to suck. Who is going to prove that healthcare doesn’t have to suck?
“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”
http://www.barnetttalks.com/2012/10/competition-teaches-organizations.html
“The temptation of the digital age is to fix everything—from crime to corruption to pollution to obesity—by digitally quantifying, tracking, or gamifying behavior.”
Joi Ito’s nine principles for the 21st century, as discussed by Bruce Sterling and published by Boing Boing.
Source: tomguarriello
What’s the most important thing to make sure a group is effective?
“The critical factor wasn’t having stable team membership and the right number of people. It wasn’t having a vision that is clear, challenging, and meaningful. Nor was it well-defined roles and responsibilities; appropriate rewards, recognition, and resources; or strong leadership.”
The strongest predictor of group effectiveness was the amount of help that its members gave to each other.
A study found that women in the workplace don’t benefit from “going the extra mile” but get penalized if they don’t. Men benefit when they do but suffer nothing if they don’t.
I didn’t have to go far at all to find some examples of this in real life workplaces. Beware of gender stereotypes.
More support for Yahoo and Google’s methods of engineering serendipity, encouraging creativity and innovation. “Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings… doing your best work solo can’t compete with lingering around the coffee machine waiting for inspiration — in the form of a colleague — to strike.”
“Their relationship was like a piece of IKEA furniture— looked great in the catalog, but was maddening to assemble and when ready, wobbly.”
— Jonathan Carroll
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