Control is an illusion
Left to their own devices, most people will live up (or down) to expectations.
Daily links and insights on boosting collaborative brainpower in organizations
Left to their own devices, most people will live up (or down) to expectations.
Not so funny where it happens to you
Executives at a large training company in Madrid described scenes like this playing out with their customers.
(Like my repertory cast members?)
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The New Organization Model: Learning at Scale - The Big Shift - HarvardBusiness.org
In recent posts we've described a massive institutional transformation that will occur as part of the big shift: the move from institutions designed for scalable efficiency to institutions designed for scalable learning. The core questions we all need to address are: who will drive this transformation? Who will be the agents of change? Will it be institutional leaders from above or individuals from below and from the outside of our current institutions?
Used to be institutional leaders were the only ones who could change institutions. Why? Because, in an era of scalable efficiency, both work and consumption had to be standardized. It was impossible to get the necessary scale effects otherwise. Standardizing them required a top-down approach. Strong institutional leaders were necessary to mold individuals into two primary roles: customers that consumed products pushed to them on fixed schedules and employees who performed repetitive tasks from nine to five.
Now we have a new infrastructure, a digital infrastructure creating near-constant disruption. By freeing people to interact and collaborate with others outside of traditional hierarchical organizations, by reducing information asymmetries between producers of goods and services and those who buy them, by democratizing control over communications and media--in these and other ways our digital infrastructure is granting new autonomy and freedom to individuals, both as consumers and as employees. (For more about this see The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler.) As a result, individuals wield new influence with and power over the institutions with which they interrelate.
John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison on what I call Learnscapes.
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How to Bring the Core to the Edge - The Big Shift - HarvardBusiness.org
As the deep forces underlying the big shift accelerate the world around us, many people feel a certain helplessness. Are markets, industries, and even whole economies descending into chaos? Recent financial market turmoil only heightens the fear. Are sudden and nonlinear shifts outrunning our ability to make sense of a chaotic world?
Chaos is always frightening. It becomes less so, however, when we begin finding discernable patterns in the turmoil. Patterns provide context--the ability to make sense of things in relation to other things. Patterns can also lead to profit since they help executives to focus and anticipate outcomes.
We believe there is a sense-making pattern that can help us understand how change takes place in the economy. This pattern is "edge transforms the core."
One of a continuing series. These guys resonate with my view of the world.
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The learning stone
I bought this piece of orange calcite at Avebury, a prehistoric circle of stones in Wiltshire (U.K.) built more than 4,500 years ago.
It's a learning stone, said to aid study, memory and increase energy.
Bunk? Maybe.
But my learning stone probably improves learning about as much as most online page-turning exercises. If a peer asks about it, I imagine I'll learn more than were I left to my own devices.
How did they lift these 40 ton stones without the aid of tools?
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The Steve Rubel Lifestream - Why Lifestream? To Model Leonardo Da Vinci
via steverubel.com
I'm following Steve Rubel's tracks on this because blogging is no longer sufficient.
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Weight, weight, don't tell me
I just stepped off the bathroom scale for the fourth time since arriving home last night.
How could I have gained twelve, count 'em, 12, pounds in less than three weeks? The food on my Euro tour was great, but I thought I was exercising restraint.
Hello, diet time.
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To fork or not to fork?
Filed under //
informl
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Madrid Snapshots
This evening I walked along the streets of Madrid until after midnight. The town is totally alive at that hour. Young people were laughing, smoking, smooching, and strutting by the fountain at the Plaza de Espana.
The Miro sculpture resides in an open-air sculpture museum under an overpass a few blocks up the street from my hotel.
Enrique Flores sketches as we sit in a cafe in the Plaza Major.
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