Drive book website Amazon link I really liked Pink’s TED talk on the “surprising science of motivation” where he says “There’s a mismatch between what science knows and what business does”. In particular, the compensation and motivation strategies currently used by businesses have been shown to undermine motivation rather than enhance it. So I’ve been […]
The Design of Business, by Roger Martin
Amazon link I’m not sure where I heard about this book, but the subtitle, “Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage”, pretty much sold me on at least checking it out, since I’m interested in both design and management. So I got it from the library and read it. Martin frames business as operating […]
Measuring team skills
Along the lines of yesterday’s post where I mashed up two different interests of mine (cognitive science and organizational theory), today’s post is about an intersection between basketball and management. I don’t know a lot about basketball. I watch the game recreationally, but I’ve never played, and don’t have a feel for the sport. I […]
Cognitive Theories of Corporations
One of the topics I want to think more about is organizational cognition aka how organizations think, and how to design an intelligent organization. For some reason, I was thinking about this today, and made a connection to standard theories of cognition that I hadn’t made before. Let’s start with Descartes’s view of the world: […]
Learning from jerks
As usual, it’s been a couple months since I posted, so I’m lowering the standards again, and posting a ramble through some topics that are on my mind this morning. I want to get back into the habit of posting, although that will depend on me actually taking a stand on work-life balance, which I […]
AYE Conference Notes
While it’s still fresh in my mind, I wanted to jot down some passing observations about my experience at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference. From the warm-up tutorial, it was interesting seeing how some of the personality preferences were demonstrated by Don Gray and Steve Smith. I particularly liked the I vs. E demonstration – […]
Jerry Weinberg
As many of you know, I’m off at the AYE conference, and one of the major attractors for me personally was Jerry Weinberg. I’ve read books of his like Becoming a Technical Leader and The Secrets of Consulting, and his systems thinking approach is an inspiration to me (his second “law of consulting” is “No […]
Planning for surprise
I had lunch today with the always inspirational Grant McCracken, who leaves my mind fizzing with new ideas and thoughts, so I’m riding that energy wave and updating my blog. As an aside, Grant is in the Bay Area talking about his soon-to-be-released book, Chief Culture Officer, about how companies need to incorporate an understanding […]
The world is small. Except when it isn’t.
Golly. Three months without posting. But things have calmed down at work, I took a few days off for Burning Man two weekends ago, and I slept most of this past weekend, and, hey, look, I have things to say again. Well, actually, I’ve had things to say for months, but not the energy to […]
Thinking about easy
I’ve noticed a fundamental distortion in how I view the world: If I know the answer or how to do something, it’s easy. If I don’t, it’s hard. This is a distortion because this worldview devalues my accumulated experience and knowledge. It’s funny because I know how long it took me to learn what I’ve […]
