Missioning your visioning

Just a repost; hardly anything but the footnotes had to change from that post from over two years ago..:

I was triggered recently[1] about some very common mix-up, and suddenly saw a spark of insight. Since the seeing concerned me, it was at a distance of course (not), so I’ll share it with you to see whether you recognise the somewhat local phenomenon and its ramifications and cures.

This all being about the top-level structure for any organisation, i.e., vision, mission, strategy.

So often mixed up qua priorities and order.
Where a great many do think one starts with the mission, thinking endlessly wrongly that one determines the mission first, then … oh vision how can we define that, then, to cover the actual second step, and strategy oh we will not be able to define that.
Because of the mix-up you can’t. Because vision comes first. First define what and how you think the world will look like in somesomewhat more distant future. ONLY THEN [skipping the boldface] one defines whether and where one’s (organisation’s) place is thought to be within that; mission. Only then does one define how to get from the paltry Today’s position, to where the bright future is, and which path to follow; strategy.
When you begin with the mission, you utterly falsely assume there’s a place for you in the first place which, when you think that way, there is ever more certainly not.
When you start with the vision (which can be grand, being without you in the picture will help to that end…), you would also need to think about what your raison d’être in that world view would be. You have no right to existence [note that we’re discussing organisational rights, not natural persons’ rights for which the opposite does hold; ed.] other than making the future better – than any of your competitors can. If there’s competitors that can, in principle given their today’s capabilities, in fact do better than you, you’ll have to find something else to do as the world, by Pareto’s comparative advantage reasoning [which is one of the few economists’ reasonings of any value at all when without the ‘ceteris paribus’ totalitarian destructive lies; ed.], is better off when you leave it to others – the world better off being your purpose or you have no place on this planet. Anything related to profitability has no, zero, rien du tout, nul, nada, place in a mission statement since it’s a derivative requirement (sic) only, towards some specific but not therefore important, stakeholders known as shareholders or investors that, if your mission is true and virtuous, should be utterly grateful for the opportunity to be allowed to invest in your strategy and would even have to pay rent, not receive it. For organisations, it is only a requirement in as far as reserves are built, for hard times and even there one could insert some evolutionary theory that sometimes extremely improving mutations are wiped out by some unfortunate accident (act of nature) before becoming a species-wide improvement — same, for organisations that are set to become most beneficial to the world already on the road towards fulfilling their mission but fail halfway due to adverse but insufficiently bendable market conditions. Bad luck. Move over. Machiavelli’s Fortuna again. Read his Original to see how sobering he meant that and that you can be (Aristotelian-)virtuous all the way through.

So, first vision, then mission. And only then, strategy of course. Being the course. You need to take; roughly. Bending and shaping as you go along; sailing to an up-wind buoy. Setting the boundary conditions – including the boundaries of means you’ll allow as not all means are allowed for just any ends, no end may be enough for some means, most ends are not worth pursuing in the first place. You get the drift; if the means are not ethical, virtuous, the ends will never be. Excepting only a handful of situations like war/genocide, large-scale natural disaster, et al. where one may have to shoot the bad guys to prevent them shooting the good guys.[2]

But hey, this was just the spark. About the wrong-order its cause(s). The rest … good for PowerPoint presentations on the subject I’d say.
[Edited to add: Next try to understand the utter ridiculousness of the Dutch ‘beleid’ as translation of ‘policy’. Meaning (in both languages, creepingly) not what it has meant over the past decades, centuries, but more like ‘petty micromanagement ruleset’. No more general picket post placement in the distance but rails, shackles…]
Leaving you with:

[The lands you defends, into the fuzziness; (from) Salzburg Castle]

[1] Yes, in a conversation to establish whether I’d want to work somewhere, and they’d have me. Both ways, the result was Unsure But Let’s Keep On Talking. They had a Mission on their glass door, and a Vision, and Values – you understand that Mission and Vision were a jumble of Calimero-aspirational buzz, and Values were a big fat Mehhh. If you have to post them on your door in the hall to remind any employee coming to work day in, day out, you’re .. well, not quite living them, are you ..?
[2] Tell-tale, this [1] club had Values there, not Strategy. The latter, didn’t even surface in a second conversation at all. As if one bumped into a fluffy ceiling when trying to raise the level, before being pulled back to mundane hire-warm-body work descriptions. Some sparks of want to move forward and some slight claim of record there but hardly any self-volunteered methodology hints or so…

This year’s fedora is ..?

Which trendwatcher would be able to actually tell trend / predict what this year’s fedora would be ..?
Because it’s a long time coming since the ridiculousness (^2) of this and this and this. Or this, this and this. Yes, all links to that era long past when ‘hipsters’ ruled – the joke market.
As we stand, the last of the beards are slowly vanishing. As they’re almost indistuinguishable from the Real beardmen. Almost – picture anyone without his (errmmm, her ..??) beard and when you see the babyface (often clear enough), you know it is like like forever before, the angst for being found out to have not achieved anything in life for which one would be able to claim (for and within oneself) authenticity and standing. The Real, are just badass. That’s an XOR.
Plus, we’re sure everyone gets the bygone’ness of the Green Egg / serious (NOT) BBQing in lumberjack shirt and brown leather apron?

Now the thing is: There happens to have been a generation shift (or two?) already in the mean time.
But what are the marks? Are there any, or is the post-(half-!)post tat generation undercover, camouflaged in dullness?
And, why hasn’t any trendwatcher picked this up?

Therefore, the challenge. When Dec 31 arrives, I’ll designate a winner, who will receive:
[ if (lives_in_NL) then something_from_here else nothing_just_the_honour_Too_bad ]
Cheers.

[Oh it’s big alright. But when one looks for some particular theme overview, one’s in for an unwelcome Italian ‘tour’; V&A yes]

Exit 2018 1163

Asad day for all you aficinados of this blog. After some five years and about 1163 posts (you’ll see…; own, mostly with own pics), this is the last of the (work)daily update. Yes, I’ve managed. But will turn to more serious, somewhat-more long-form content so will stop the drivel. I will not post daily, but when I do … And I’ll intersperse with some margin notes posts. Per 1/1 these will have no picture, the long for ones will – just check the link-post’lets and you’ll see. In line with the season: Enjoy less frequent but more professional, beautiful fireworks.
Or be safe with your own fireworks. Else, stand candidate for the Darwin Awards, which is also OK with me especially if you’ve not appreciated my blog; excepting the few I care for ;-|

Now then …
[Some room available. Live and die to be worth it, or take a hike; Arlington]

Secrut law

Hey, does @iusmentis or anyone else out there in NL have a clue what this [dunno if there’s a Dunglish translation around somewhere] is about, what relevance this has to e.g., infosec, and/or the probable impact in the Information/IT side or organisations, or are we all just too busy with GDPR ..?
Just wanted to know. Saw it fly by and wondered why there weren’t any serious comment flurries.

Or is it because it all isn’t relevant ..? Or is just article 4 relevant ..? Is there no clue about due ‘protection’ (security) being required by the secret info holder or else ..? Is it just to protect whistleblowers under 4.2 ? Is 4.1 strengthening (or the reverse!) of the WOB ?

One thing’s for sure: The scare of fines, is … gone. Because they only have to be paid after any challenge in court, would have been settled in disfavour. Which of course may dragged on for literally decades (incl inflation, change of formal and practical policy), and also the Authority (to which a great many would add: quod non) will (hence) have to make very, very sure it has a case for fines in the first place; the far less potent other measures are, well, spoke-in-the-wheel’able.

Yes I still wonder, vis-à-vis the fly by night character of the fly by. And:
[How far does copyright on a beautiful design go? Asking for a friend this being my pic anyway; Valencia]

‘corn down, times 10

After the many lists of wat went well this year, with AI, bitcoin, etc.etc., we wonder: How much of that is plugged fake news or ditto overblown ..?
When still, we have the likes of this: A list of some 10 unicorns that went down (or -soon) despite funding to dream of. When you look into it, we seem to be back in, 2001, and somewhat later, when the idea of drafting a two-pager business plan seemed to be enough to get VC / angel / whathavewe funding. OK, maybe this time around (and for the co’s mentioned) it’s more like a ten-pager requirement but hey, why wait to throw money into a wormhole, right ..?
To remind us that maybe, not all went so well in ’17.

And maybe despite all the hopes we have for 17++, we should again, still, reckon with downside risks a little bit more, please?
But you’re not gonna listen to me, are you?

Mewwy Cwistmas & happy new year anyway! Plus:
[Heck, this has nothing to do with festive fireworks or so but is pretty still; Valencia]

Some notes on notes on Chollet

After you read this, you’ll get the following:

  • [After two empty lines] ‘seed AI’ may not be necessary. Think of how the Classics built their arches: The support may be removed. Same here; some ‘upbringing’ by humans, even opening the possibility of ethics education / steering;
  • Proponents of this theory also regard intelligence as a kind of superpower, conferring its holders with almost supernatural capabilities to shape their environment / A good description of a human from the perspective of a chimpanzee. – correct. As such, slightly ad hominem and we know what that is about (here);
  • If the gears of your brain were the defining factor of your problem-solving ability, then those rare humans with IQs far outside the normal range of human intelligence would live lives far outside the scope of normal lives, would solve problems previously thought unsolvable, and would take over the world — just as some people fear smarter-than-human AI will do. – an interesting argument, as I had the idea of drafting a post about a new kind of ‘intelligence’, apart from the human/animal one.
  • Etc.

An interesting and profound read… Plus of course:
[“Intelligence”… Winter Wonderland London]

There we have it; botcracy

As we turn the leaf towards a new year, let’s not forget what values – in operation, operationalised – protect our Human Rights, in the form of de-mock-racy, and how they are ever so quickly being repelled by, e.g., AI and fake news but in particular, the deployment of bots as here.
Yes I know, that’s three layers of tools but still, the focus is on the first two but the latter plays almost the foulest role.
Yes I know, the ‘operationalised’ part may need elucidation on the side of ‘transparency’, ‘access and inclusion’ etc., but when you read after the link, you’ll understand that the issue is society-wide, not just FCC / net-neutrality.

Well, that was a quicky… hence:
[München, for zero (as in: 0.0) reason]

Unsider threats

How is it that we tend to hear over and over again about ‘insider’ threats ..?
Even when it’s not the Board that is meant here, as the pinnacle of … the ability to drive a company into the ground, those pesky ‘insiders’ really are a pain in the place where you like that or the sun doesn’t shine.
Better get rid of any and all of those ‘insiders’ then, eh ..? AI here you come. But if AI system(s) would be a replacement for humans, wouldn’t they commit the same temporary, small, innocious and unconscious lapses of judgement..?
And what about off-boarding the biggest threats first ..? [Where I do men the above committee]

Maybe better to recall that we’re about to celebrate the fifteenth birthday [was there ..!] of deperimetrisation – with an s once you recognise its country of birth, and disclaim an all-out stupid Jabba the Hutt style claim of origin so no z’s anywhere – who’s an -sider when there’s no way to tell ..?

Also, it villifies the underlings that make your salaries and bonuses so if you punish them (by giving them less reward than yourself), they don’t get mad. They get even. Simple. You gave them the tools You made them build their own tools superficially to keep you afloat but you wouldn’t recognise a buoy from an anchor so guess what you get… And when you’ve lost them, they aren’t much of the insider you’d want, right; morally they’d be on the outside again already.
Case in point: This miss by the venerable @HarvardBiz … Though the solutions offered, are valid – as very-starting points…

So Part I – Ω is to treat your underlings like you care. If, big if, you actually mean it (hence will not in an instant be found out to be a fraud at this), you’re saved for now. Otherwise, no fight against <whatever>sider threats, will be futile. Remember this ..? You get treated like you treat, it starts with you – your intentions towards the other, will be perceived. Positive/negative, the choice is yours.

Oh well. Plus:
[Some light’s also good for the inside; Utrecht (1924 ..!)]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord