Category: Innovation, economics, society at large

Cycle comments and questions

A certain commercial advisory club still releases its hype cycle. Which is good news; to have some authority with some authority (your mileage may vary) providing us with some comprehension and comprehensiveness [OK I’ll stop now] about the What’s Buzzworthy.
Still, being … in the field / Dutch / obnoxious, pick any; I’d like to comment…:
(Here’s the August version from … somewhere; ™ and © or what is it, acknowledged)
7330eb56-2177-11e4-89b4-12313d239d6c-large

  • Virtual Personal Assistants – 5 to 10 years out (of the plateau of productivity) ..? That’s optimistic ..!
  • Brain-computer interface: If one would consider this to be about ‘intelligence’ connection, then maybe. But there’s also connections like hearing, et al., where a 5 to 10 year span may be on the ‘long’ side.
  • Human augmentation: See the previous. Or aren’t definitions sufficiently orthogonal?
  • Affective computing: Hm, optimists.
  • Neurobusiness: Same.
  • IoT: Yes, at a hype peak. Maybe (much) sooner, to be at the plateau.
  • Cryptocurrencies: Hoping for a swifter spread and adoption…
  • Big Data may be further down the slope already. Or is that from where I / we are ..?
  • Gamification, augmented reality: Hopefully and quite possibly, already reality somewhat earlier.
  • The rest of the bunch … will they not come sooner ..? Of shift shape (‘pivot’) to be unrecognizable from their today’s hype labels soon?
     
  • And a final one: Would anyone have a similar overview of … one year, five and ten years back? Just to see what happen in the meantime; to establish a ballpark reliability figure. Would be fun, too.

I’ll leave you with this’all. Your comments are welcome(d). If you like to dream.

Diversified Reporting Assurance

Yes, let’s call it DRA. The new wave of “accountants’ statements” in the wings.
[Warning: for those not interested in accountancy, the rest will be boring. Or, let me restate that: very boring. Or even deadly boring.]
Continue reading “Diversified Reporting Assurance”

Pops off the Top

To get you in the mood, and involved, please check out the longlist of songs eligible for my [emphasis by author] Top 2000 Of All Times (link to clean Excel here).
Yes,

  • I’ll have to prune a bit, there’s more than 2000 now;
  • They’re sorted alphabetically on Artist so far, yes, yes. But my next thing to do is to recursively bin the lot into shrinking bin sizes, you know, like a good algorithmically sound sorter would;
  • If there might be songs you miss on the list, please comment with your suggestions. Which are totally non-binding as the list is mine (make your own, feel free to copy the Excel and adapt / deteriorate) so don’t be put off if your wacky addition(s) don’t make it to the final list;
  • Most importantly, if there’s things (songs) on the list you’d deem ridiculous, you may be right. But They’re my choice…

And the usual pic:
??????????[Way back from the 60s, would still be Good if built today like this]
To get you in the mood, check out this random sample…

Titles Artist
Donna 10CC
Dreadlock Holiday 10CC
I’m Not In Love 10CC
The Things We Do For Love 10CC
The Wall Street Shuffle 10CC
Me So Horny 2 Live Crew
I’m On Fire 5000 Volts
Aquarius / Let The Sunshine In 5th Dimension
Chiquitita ABBA
Dancing Queen ABBA
Eagle ABBA
Gimme Gimme Gimme ABBA
Knowing Me Knowing You ABBA
Mamma Mia ABBA
Money, Money, Money ABBA
S.O.S. ABBA
Summer Night City ABBA
Super Trouper ABBA
Take A Chance On Me ABBA
The Winner Takes It All ABBA
Voulez-Vous ABBA
Waterloo ABBA
All Of My Heart ABC
Back in Black AC/DC
Hells Bells AC/DC
Highway To Hell AC/DC
Let There be Rock AC/DC
Shoot to Thrill AC/DC
Thunderstruck AC/DC
Who Made Who AC/DC
Whole Lotta Rosie AC/DC
How Long ACE
Killer Adamski ft. Seal
Amazing Aerosmith
Crazy Aerosmith
Dream On Aerosmith
Dude Looks Like a Lady Aerosmith
… …
Good Vibrations Beach Boys
I Can Hear Music Beach Boys
Sloop John B Beach Boys
Tears in the morning Beach Boys
Wouldn’t It Be Nice Beach Boys
Brass Monkey Beastie Boys
Hey Ladies Beastie Boys
Intergalactic Beastie Boys
No Sleep Till Brooklyn Beastie Boys
You Got To Fight For Your Right to Party Beastie Boys
Hey Jude Beatles
While My Guitar Gently Weeps Beatles
Loser Beck
Don’t Forget To Remember Bee Gees
How Can You Mend A Broken Heart Bee Gees
How Deep Is Your Love Bee Gees
I Started A Joke Bee Gees
Jive Talkin’ Bee Gees
… …
Play That Funky Music Wild Cherry
Lion In The Morning Sun Will And The People
Het Dorp Wim Sonneveld
Live And Let Die Wings
CREAM Wu Tang Clan
Gravel Pit Wu Tang Clan
Protect Ya Neck Wu Tang Clan
Making Plans For Nigel XTC
Close To The Edge Yes
I’ve Seen All The Good People Yes
Owner Of A Lonely Heart Yes
Roundabout Yes
Yours Is No Disgrace Yes
7 Seconds Youssou N’Dour & Neneh Cherry
If I Can’t Have You Yvonne Elliman
In The Year 2525 Zager & Evans
Hair Zen
Gimme All Your Lovin’ ZZ Top
La Grange ZZ Top
Legs ZZ Top
Sharp Dressed Man ZZ Top

Sorry wasn’t able to find any good Zzz and the Zzzzzs songs… Now get going and come forward with your extension suggestions …!

Black / White

Just in case you thought that men (the typical kind; you like generalisations, apparently) know only black and white, or if pushed, also red, blue, yellow, green and brown, and women (see how overgeneralized this argument is?) know so many more as in this – then there’s also this…
Wouldn’t it be stupid to ask for some easier (to remember!) classification / labeling?

And the pic; what colour this house …?
004_22 (2)[Old analog->digital… Utrecht]

Detachment

First, this:
DSCN9250
[Fantasy, sorcery, in the end Harry wins. Porto]

Just to start your day with a bit of freshness.

Then this: Hardly any surprise that Big Corp advertises like a headless monster
7e55ec92-20ab-11e4-8ead-22000ab926d3-large
Where the ‘joke’ is that this is from a company (note: it’s just an example, others are similar (..?)) where staff is pushed to the edge to deliver on hardly-quality-related shortest-term-possible KPIs, have had to hand in holiday days to keep up the profit shares of the partners (‘voluntarily’ as otherwise it might be illegal), etc. etc. Stepping one millimeter out of line is punished with all but physical beheading. So, the ad is just false advertising of the worst, culpable, kind, or displays the utter ignorance of those involved.

Or both. Which again are signs of dinosaur behavior. Detachment of where actual work is done. Same as outsourcing production abroad and claiming ignorance about work conditions – ignorance on purpose is still very, very culpable; do we need a SOx for what should be normal, human, humane treatment of employees ..? Hopefully not, as this would open the floodgates of totalitarian bureaucrat advisors and consultants once again (…), yes those that Holier Than Thou folks (see above) who display to don’t know a thing about practical management. As proven (!) by Mintzberg.
Detachment. Isolation, islands of bounty at the ‘top’. That will be swept into oblivion by a mere floodwave. Where a tsunami’s approaching.

Oh, for the unattentive reader: There’s a great many posts on this site (just do a search) that I am not against leadership, by actual leaders… This just being a rant against the falsehood of advertising and against bad ‘leadership’ …

Be quick at Making or be like dead

When I noted an article (is it?) on Baidu Eye (all of you will certainly know by now what I mean…!?), it finally dawned on me: ‘we’ in the West (let’s say for purposes here, the 300M of Europe plus the 300M of North America) just don’t do enough rapid prototyping yet.
Because that’s the trade we have left to e.g., the Chinese when ‘we’ shipped our (rapid) product(ion) development to them.

Now, the sweatshop structure that sprang up to the side of that, is one huge landscape of rapid prototyping facilities. Which, if not ‘stealing’ (don’t start the legaleeze that’s way too dependent on cultural notions) product ideas before launch, or just slapping a different brand tag after (over)production, allows copycatting of products (commonly, of less quality or functionality) or of sparks of innovation (not taking a product as ideal model but as inspiration).

This somewhat fits the model of the Maker movement that springs up in the West. Is still springing up a bit, here and there. Was mentioned here and there, sparsely, and may have whittled into almost-oblivion already again ..?
Whatever; the Maker movement has a different focus, not on extremely-rapid prototyping to mass produce, but to keep it as close to one-offs as is feasible. Quite an opposite horizon!
And also leaving a vast playing field open for … others.

How can we change business / production culture to get, beside a Traditional and a Maker movement, a Happy Go Lucky Production movement where improvement-on-the-production-fly-cycles are much more rapidly learned from? (Much faster even than e.g., Samsung’s (and others’ like Apple!) fast-introduction-perfect-in-next-versions approach. But also taking this into account, for this reason!) No, just shouting around about tearing down bureaucratic rules won’t work; those rules are there to regulate the current rogues (big business, oligopolising everywhere) – I mean a real cultural shift. Is that what’s happening (or should happen) in some backwater country now that the 0.001% with help from the 1% has killed the previous mainstay power the Middle 80% ..?

Seriously, how can we rig, ground, lay the foundations, for such a Third Way ..? To get, e.g., this sort of initiatives far more widespread.

[Huh, since I wrote the above (couple of weeks ago), this came to light…]
[And this, the caveat you wanted …]

You (somewhere in the #=0 to #=3 range) have been such kind readers to even visit… hence I’ll leave you with:
DSCN7516[Freedom to consume; the mediocre! – Good, more authentic stuff, close by but elsewhere]

Managing Fortuna’s Risks

On how Risk Management is self-defeating… or just something one has to do while Life has other plans with you(r organization).

First, the übliche picture:
20140813_154840
[Shadow (play) of Dudok, Hilversum again of course]

First, the Defeating part. This, we hardly discuss at length, full enough, but when we do, it’s so obvious you understand why: Because RM is about cost avoidance, even if opportunity cost avoidance. Which makes you the Cassandra, the Boy Cried Wolf of the courtiers (sic). It’s just not interesting, not entrepreneurial enough. [Even if that would be pearls before swines…]

Second, this is why it’s so hard to sell (no quotes, just outright sell for consultancy or budget bucks) the idea of RM to executives – they only see the cost you are. They don’t see themselves as delivering something if, if, if only, they had integrated RM into their daily ‘governance’ (liar! that’s just management!) / management. They don’t want to do anything. They just don’t understand to do something that doesn’t show to be effective even if others for once see no harm (though the others will not even care to flag the kindergarten-level window dressing that’s going on with the RM subject; too silly that, to call out).

Third, this happens not only with ‘boardroom’ RM (~consultancy/advisory), it has been well-established at lower ranks; all the way from the mundane IT security, Information Security, Information Risk Management, Operational Risk Management (where the vast majority of organisations don’t make anything tangible anymore), including the wing positions of, e.g., Credit and Market Risk (which are in fact, with the visors to mention, the same as the previous!), to Enterprise Risk Management altogether.

Fourth, we tie in Queuillism. The Do nothing part almost as in Keynesianism where in the latter, future-mishap prevention should be arranged during the years where government intervention wasn’t required as such. As in Joseph’s seven fat years contra the seven years of famine (Genesis 41). How does this reflect on RM? Would it not be just BCM in its widest, enterprise-wide sense? Isn’t that what ‘management’ is about, again..? Just sanding off the rough edges and for the rest, give room to the actual stars, the employees at all levels, to let them bring out their best – so exponentially much more than you can achieve by mere, petty, command & control. You raise KPIs, I rest my case of your incompetence. And this goes for governments even more. Just enormously expensive busywork.

Fifth, finally, the fourth trope points into the direction of Machiavelli’s Fortuna. Which was also covered by Montaigne, of course. It doesn’t matter what you do, in the end, Life has other plans with you. Sobering, eh? Oh but again, you can shave off the rough edges for yourself, too. Just don’t think in the end, that will matter much beyond some comfort to you. Katharsis, and move on.

OK, since you held out so long:
20140813_154800
[The same, from another angle]

Stop bLeading, start PLeading

There seems to be a wave of ‘management’/ ‘executive’ (quoting for the laughability of those words, as in this) advice on how to Lead. Mostly, on how to push underlings into following better i.e., more, towards your goals.
Which is wrong in many ways:

  • Your goals are ulterior, or very inferior. If you lead in such a pushing way, your team members don’t give a r.ts a.. about your goals, objectives, strategy, or whatever, and even less, much less, about you. They’ll be in it not to get punished by being fired too early ’cause they know to be fired anyway. And by matter of speech (if you’d take it as a pointer, you’d miss my point) they’ll phone the WBC on the details of your funeral.
  • If you whip, you will get whipped. More, harder, longer than an eye for an eye [Interesting side note: That iconic reference was originally only about business transactions, nothing physical, to get even but no more than even].
  • You don’t push, at most pull a bit into the right direction. At best, plead for the ulterior motives, the lofty goals out there. That have nothing to do with you. You are redundant, replaceable, and guess what – you will be replaced more often than not on the verge of achieving your own slave’s targets because someone else will reap your benefits. But then again, if your goal is really ulterior and you honestly mean it, you don’t care! Don’t care about all the effort, and the gains being spread so wide around you. You do care about that ulterior goal being reached, not any other reward let alone with the mammon from hell.
  • If you push, the grader (like in this) will only dig itself in.
  • If you push, all words will be called out for their emptiness before they’re out of your mouth. ‘Supporting creativity / out-of-the-box thinking’..? People will know on what side their bread is buttered.
  • And more.

Which all will make you a deliriously stressed-out fool.
One that will have done irreparable damage to many around you. That you should pay everyday for the rest of your life. You make them bleed, you will bleed.

Why not go out in the effective direction, by Leading …? Leading towards ulterioir goals because they’re worth it. Not by whipping, bleeding, but by pleading (mostly with empty hands..!) others into rightly-oriented action.

[Edited to add: OK, right today, as this pre-scheduled post appears, this, to the same effect…]

OK, I’ll leave you now with an upbeat picture:
??????????
[Clearly, a bridge. Cala near Hoofddorp]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord