Google has a program called Self-Powered Commuting, where they let employees track the days on which they get to work via self-powered methods (primarily biking or walking). At the end of the year, they tote up the number of days, and donate a proportionate amount to charity. What’s amazing to me is how effective this […]
Category: thoughts
What is the story?
Finding the story has been a recurring theme for me recently. It’s come up in a variety of settings, so I thought I’d explore the topic some more. Let’s start with the anecdotes. A friend was looking for advice on sprucing up her resume. I started with the normal advice of stating accomplishments rather than […]
Mapping out Organizational Space
I really liked Tim O’Reilly’s post today about how companies like Google and WalMart are incorporating IT into their organizational DNA. O’Reilly’s post describes how those example companies are mapping out a new way of organizing people built around integrating IT into how the organization functions: Sensing, processing, and responding (based on pre-built models of […]
Personization
I flew up to my parents’ house yesterday, and our plane came in late due to storms. Over the intercom, the flight attendant said that there was “a newlywed couple in row 14 trying to make a tight connection to their flight to Amsterdam, so if rows 1-13 can please let them through before getting […]
The Future of Organizations
Paul Graham’s latest essay claims that small organizations are the future: “But in the late twentieth century something changed. It turned out that economies of scale were not the only force at work. Particularly in technology, the increase in speed one could get from smaller groups started to trump the advantages of size. …For the […]
Situational vs. Dispositional Management
In my post about Philip Zimbardo’s work, I mentioned the concepts of situational vs. dispositional tendencies. One might see these as being obscure cognitive constructs. However, a recent situation made me realize that beliefs about these tendencies have direct consequences on management styles. So let’s dig into this some more by starting with a description […]
Spreading Ideas and Framing
Noah Brier wrote an interesting post yesterday about how certain ideas spread virally even when people disagree with them. His examples include Sarah Palin or Wired’s “Blogging is dead” article, where the blogosphere is buzzing about how bad an idea something is, but are still spreading the original idea far beyond its original audience because […]
Convergence08
Over the weekend, I attended the Convergence08 unconference, which focused on future technologies like biotech, nanotech, artificial intelligence, etc. I had to miss the Saturday morning sessions, as I had a chorus rehearsal for this week’s Mahler concerts, but I was there on Saturday afternoon and most of the day Sunday. The first session I […]
Time Perspectives of Philip Zimbardo
One of the great advantages of working at Google is that famous people want to come visit. That’s how I got to see Ferran Adria a few weeks ago. Yesterday, it was John Hodgman and Jonathan Coulton. Later this week is Chip Kidd. You get the point. But what’s even nicer is that they record […]
Organizational Cognition
Over the past seven weeks (good golly, where does the time go?) at Google, I’ve noticed a funny habit of mine. Whenever I overhear a conversation involving something that is related to my team’s work, I drop whatever I’m working on and wander over to listen in. Now, one might guess this is due to […]
