2023-10-16 Links

No reading today, other than a podcast I listened to on a walk in shockingly changing weather. There’s change in the air, and I’m looking forward to going through this storm and out into the sunshine.

Daily Reads:

Seth Godin’s Akimbo: Publish Yourself

QOTD:

“Silence is one of the most intimate things that two people can share with each other, because it’s having a trust that you’re on the same page.”

– Lex Fridman

Music:

Hauser: Air on the G String (J S Bach)

2023-10-15 Links

I began the practice a few weeks ago of writing a thousand words or so before I begin consuming content. I’ve been mostly successful at doing that – quality of that writing is entirely questionable – but the feeling of being able to put something out on paper that lives in my thoughts has been liberating.

Daily Reads:

Gaping Void: How to create an unstoppable movement

Andrew Curry kindly shared some of his facilitation resources with me. His co-authored paper (with Anthony Hodgson) is an adaptation of the Three Horizons paper from the Alchemy of Growth. Seeing in multiple horizons: Connecting Futures to Vision and Strategy His notes on workshops are here while the visual facilitation guide from h3Uni is another helpful resource. All bookmarked for use.

Jason Fried: Scatter

Lawrence Yeo: Being Poor Vs Feeling Poor What seems like a money question is actually a story question.

Ben Werdmuller articulates much of what I feel in "The Virality of Human Suffering"

Richard Merrick: Dancing With Disorder in his reflections today.

QOTD:

“Silence is one of the most intimate things that two people can share with each other, because it’s having a trust that you’re on the same page.”

– Lex Fridman

Music:

Jesse Cook: Bogota by bus

2023-10-14 Links

A veritable feast today – school term has begun, and along with that music lessons on Saturday mornings which gives me (mostly) unadulterated time to read.

Daily Reads:

Doc Searls – Stories vs Facts He refers to Scott Adams’ X from a while ago: " Facts don’t matter. What matters is how much we hate the person talking".

Kent Beck is the latest addition to my feedreader, after two stunning posts. The first one is about ChatGPT and the recalibration of the way he thinks about his skills. The second one, co-authored with Gergely Orosz, is a superb takedown of the consulting bs from McKinsey on how to measure software developer productivity.

Matt Webb’s Interconnected had this new website he’s put together that is a watering hole in Namibia, where antelopes come and go. It’s… beautiful!

OMG! The Whole Earth Catalog is available online. The backstory is here

I diss on McKinsey’s solutions, and yet appreciate their research pieces, like this one on telco talent in transition

Another HR related issue, on org design from Joshua Burgin

Erik Larson on "Five Things You Should Know about ChatGPT"

Sara Campbell: "The Fire Inside"

Seth Godin: "It could have easily gone the other way"

Ben Horowitz: The Story is the Strategy

Ness Labs: Nothing Soft About Soft Skills

QOTD:

“The real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures; and have courage when things go wrong.”
– Laura Ingels Wilder

Music:

Vladimir Horowitz – Traumerei

2023-10-13 Links

Daily Reads:

Clair L Evans: Against scale. Evans takes inspiration from Nature’s way of growing without leaving a trail of destruction, while contrasting growth from scalability. HT Jeremy Keith.

Lol’d at some of these Jessica Hagy venn diagrams, When epitaphs are euphemisms

The Cult of Done is the second video from No Boilerplate that I have watched with awe.

Jeremy Connell-Waite turned Ted Sorensen’s speechwriting ideas into a splendid 5 minute video Ted Sorensen talks about inaugural addresses at Brandeis University

QOTD:

Life is just a short walk from the cradle to the grave and it sure behooves us to be kind to one another along the way.
-Alice Childress

Music:

Leonard Cohen speaks timeless words in the Anthem: There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. One of my favourite songs.

2023-10-12 Links

Daily Reads:

Gurwinder: Overchoice & how to avoid it Some heuristics that I apply sub- or unconsciously and worth writing down in a conspicuous place.

SK Ventures: Embracing the Ourbouros as a new mental model of the technology stack infused with AI.

Giving myself permission to write even if no one ever reads it. https://werd.io/2023/spinning-a-tech-career-into-writing

QOTD:

“There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred pages are there. Only you don’t see them.”
– Elie Wiesel

Music:

George Clements covers Kathy’s Song

2023-10-11 Links

Daily Reads:

  • Victor Frankl’s Method to Overcome Fear – Paradoxical Intention – sweating, public speaking. Fighting fear doesn’t work – simply adds pressure to the existing pressure. So how do we break this cycle?

    • "Hyper-intention" – excessive focus on achieving or preventing a particular outcome.
    • Paradox: statement seemingly contradictory, opposed to common sense.
    • Wish for the fear, rather than fight it, and you will conquer it. I want to get rid of fear vs I want to feel fear ironically gives you what you need to ignore the fear!
    • At the core is detachment, and using humor to laugh at ourselves.
  • Identify one thing in your life that you take for granted, and ask how it got that way. We take for granted the physical world, especially the built world, but everything has a backstory! Rob Walker’s excellent newsletter asks "What’s the Question"

  • Anne Kadet’s report from the Department of Personal Experimentation: One Thing at a Time, has this quote: It just makes sense that if I reduce my information intake by an hour or two everyday, my mind will quiet down faster. It’s got a lot less data to process!

  • Museum employees exhibition of their own work – this is a fascinating idea!

  • Roger Martin: Heuristics, Management, & Strategy You will often be told that you should use an algorithmic approach: crunch this data, this way, and it will tell you the answer. Be wary. Much of the business world is using algorithmic approaches that aren’t backed by the work necessary to push knowledge from heuristic to algorithm. You will be told that it will give you the ‘right answer,’ or ‘the truth.’ Audit them carefully to see whether that is hype or a valid promise.

QOTD:

The Daily Stoic quote from Marcus Aurelius, on the value of goodness and truth, made me giggle:

In short, the straightforward and good person should be like a smelly goat – you know when they are in the room with you

Music:

Isto covers Irving Berlin’s It’s a Lovely Day Today

2023-10-10 Links

Daily Reads:

Continuing re-reading the Art of Possibility.

Steve Blank’s been writing a riveting ‘secret’ history of Silicon Valley – here is Part V

Bob Ewing: The Stories we tell has some simple ideas on how to tell stories that propel us forward, rather than hold us back.

Listened to Seth Godin’s podcast Akimbo on psephology (the science of voting). I like his compelling call to action at the end of the episode – don’t leave a comment, tell someone about this!

  • 7 Japanese techniques to overcome laziness on Instagram
    • Ikigai: having a purpose in life, the reason you wake up each morning. Do what you love. Do what you’re good at. Do what the world needs. Do what you can be paid for.
    • Kaizen: Focus on small improvements every day
    • Shoshin: Approach things with a beginner’s mindset. If your mind is empty, it is open to everything. In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind, there are few. – Shunryu Suzuki.
    • Hara Hachi Bu: Stop eating after you’re 80% full.
    • Shinrin-yoku: Forest bath, spend more time in nature. Reminds me of Oji’s comment in his podcast yetserday.
    • Wabi-sabi – Find beauty in imperfection.
    • Ganbaru: Be patient and do the best possible.

QOTD:

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
-Lin Yutang

Music:

Simon & Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair Canticle

2023-10-09 Links

Daily Reads:

How Coda runs effective multi-threaded meetings with a meeting template included.

Listened to Lenny’s podcast with Oji Udezue. The single biggest idea to take away for me from this 75min podcast is on finding the sharpest problem and solving it effectively. Customers love when it saves them time (3x is when they open up wallets says OU), and are a lot more forgiving of mistakes.

Ash Maurya: How to deliver an effective elevator pitch. The short version of this article is "When {customer} encounters a {job trigger}, they need to do {job} to achieve {desired outcome}. They would typically use {existing alternatives}, but because of {macro switching trigger}, these {existing alternatives} no longer work because of {these problems}. Left unaddressed, then {this is what is at stake.} So we built a solution that helps {customers} achieve {desired outcomes} by helping them {unique value proposition.}"

QOTD:

Hallux: A device for finding furniture in the dark.
More anatomically correct, the name for the the big toe.
– From Anu Garg’s AWAD newsletter today.

Music:

Kent Nishimura does a wonderful acoustic solo on guitar. Sara Smile Darryl Hall and John Oates

2023-10-08 Links

Daily Reads:

Arnold Kling: the trouble with booksis that they are too long. They have low information density. Instead of writing a book, write a Substack instead. That’s the premise of this Substack.

This HBR article makes a rather bold claim – You can radically change your organisation in one week. That’s less time than it gets to find time in an exec’s calendar in some of the organisations I’ve worked in!

Roger Martin: Who Should Do Strategy I’m beginning to see why Roger Martin ranks so high in my networks’ reading. Any line executive who abdicates responsibility for creating strategy to an external strategy consultant deserves to be removed. That person isn’t really an executive officer.

Seth Godin counters the advice on getting it right the first time with "Get it wrong the first time". Yep, that’s right – because NEVER does a masterpiece happen on the first try.

QOTD:

Ouch.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.
– Stephen King, novelist

Music:

Caravania full album of their Gypsy Jazz Session, recorded in one take. Sensational!

2023-10-07 Links

Daily Reads:

Ben Evans Unbundling AI: You could ask Alexa anything, but it could only answer ten things. ChatGPT will answer anything, but can you use the answer? It depends on the question. Nearly a year on, the hysteria has died down a bit. What can it actually be used for? It’s a question with few answers beyond code, brainstorming ideas, and first drafts.

A thoughtful piece by Om Malik on Steve Jobs. What would SJ have thought of our Industry Now

I’m now learning Indifference on the guitar. I have learnt, at a much slower tempo of course, both Tico Tico & Montagne Saint Genevieve. Gypsy jazz, particularly as performed by Django Reinhardt is fascinating. Although he had fewer fingers, Django found a way to improvise using arpeggios, different time signatures and rests. His playing speed, the stretch of his finger muscles… so much amazement!

QOTD:

The writer Umberto Eco belongs to that small class of scholars who are encyclopedic, insightful, and nondull. He is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with “Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?” and the others — a very small minority — who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allows you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books. Let us call this collection of unread books an antilibrary.
– Nasseem Nicholas Taleb

Music:

Toni Lindgren covers John Prine/ Blaze Foley’s classic Clay Pigeons