people – Page 36 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Grendel’s mother

When the short summary doesn’t do justice to the core of the problem… Where the core is both a misreading of the depth and a misreading of its intentions.
As this here few little paragraphs have. There’s no light way of putting this: Go read the … thing in its entirety and then, do understand it in all of its cultural superiority to today’s news accounts.

Yes, for the simplest of minds it may read like just a story. Hero, this, that, done. But to the slightest of more careful reader, it is overwhelmingly clear: The book contains so much profundity on the core of politics, societies, and clashes of war. Then you see that it’s not about slaying Grendel and some afterthought. It is about slaying the symptom, the fed, and only then can you get to fighting the real cause that (literally) both birthed and feeds the symptoms, the Mother of Evil. Pointing, too, at the continuity through generations of that concept.

Oh and did it mention anything about brothers or (maybe even worse ..?) sisters ..? Opening up all sorts of options for prolongation through the ages of this tension between what one (sic) could regard as Good and another (sic) as Evil? Mother doesn’t see Evil, she sees her pride, her son displaying the most beautiful (s)he can imagine. Yo don’t even know which side you’re on! Etc.

Yes indeed. It is simply not simple. It is The World As We Know It, and Man cannot change much about it…

For the latter, see how Western ‘powers’ led by the one, try to meekly and halfheartedly subdue Grendel in the Middle East; just enough to safeguard their own interests. Where they don’t see the full depth of mother’s lair, nor her issues. For those less ‘sues’, read this and see the eternity of the problem.

For now, this:

[Ah, bull fighting (at Sevilla no less): Another such eternal struggle between Good and Evil, order and reason against pure force of nature – so often completely mistaken for simple ‘sports’. Cruel, to the Weak (sic) but not to those that value its depiction of life itself; that have experienced and/or seen much worse in human life, in person.]

Ah, some comms overview

Still looking for a definitive (if there’s such a thing) categorisation of ‘social’ media, some tweet flew across my screen (as is its type) that, well, at least has some pointers. To this TechCrunch article.
But, as I indicated already in this here my own earlier post, I asked for a classification that would not only cover some of today’s (social, actual or not, or not) media but also the past ones. To be able to see whether and if not when how, changes occurred over, e.g., the past four decades and back through times immemorial. Where the TC article only has some latter-day media, not even categorised with all dimensions I foresaw. But then, it’s something … maybe memyselfI will pick up the subject later, and expand.

For now, I’ll leave you with:

[Unsure how open for discussion; Toronto]

Your Things’ Id, Ego, Super-Ego

Just putting it out there; my pres at the very successful IDentity.Next conference last week in Noordwijkerhout. Though it is without any actual speaker notes, you may still get the points – or we may have a discussion about certain uncertainties therein.
I’ll stop now; too much in the unwind mode still, due to the great discussions on the spot.

So, here it is. And this:

[Things creeping up on you; Zuid-As]

Model code

In the race to get everyone and your grandmother (but in particular, ‘youth’) to code as that would be the new literacy, this here piece arrived quite in time.
In which Chris Granger explains that modelling the world around us (and taking it in), is the new literacy. [Read the article; it’s a full stretch more intricate than that actually.]

Right. With a number of sideline qualifications. But I don’t have the time right now to elucidate… They’re in the order of “But then, calculus and basic reading skills are required to understand the world and be able to deal with it. So it’s not that the old forms of literacy will go away (on the contrary; dismal education globally (sic) should be repaired, in particular numeracy) but they will be augmented. This will require a massive, huge! upgrade of about all teachers at all levels – which will not happen anytime soon. And programming skills are only the basics one needs to be able to analyse, model, and design the world around us, much like + and – are required to understand one’s income – assuming one has or needs money to live – or even money, or society’s functioning.
Let alone understand culture. Isn’t culture what is being transferred in Education ..?”

And so on. But as said, time limits… See this, too. Hence:
DSCN7557
[Baltimore is old. ?]

Th Ei(ght hours overtime) Team

When one has the luck to be selected and present [see below…] for the 8-i.org challenge, Dutch division, one learns.

It started when my wife, volunteer for the Stichting Babyspullen, happened to get a slot at the March 28th Utrecht session. And couldn’t find a fellow volunteer to be present all 18:00-04:00h so I chipped in (also for the ride home as public transport would be a night-mare).
It continued with all sorts of small lessons learned throughout the evening, regarding (event) management and content.

But the one thing that stood out was: How, per charity, the volunteer creatives that lend their time, were hand-selected to form as (age-)diverse teams as possible, and with a definite eye for some but optimised not maximised team competence diversity as well.

You probably get it already: Why don’t all businesses work that way ..!? Why would any buiness that wants to think of itself as Creative or Innovative or Open to Change or just We Don’t Want To Acknowledge We’re Boring As Heck, follow this model, too? Usually, almost always, the safe route, the Our Kind Of People incestuous groupthink wins out. Yes, even in creative circles, anyone not fitting the wannabe-hipster mold would be outcast, not allowed in.

So, @8_iOrg won the day, and saved it (for me, for this already), by deliberately changing common ways and demonstrating that when results are wanted (i.e., the specific objective(s) for the charities helped for free) where any level of creativity is required, one best goes for team diversity.

Now you all go out there and spread this word in your organisations. Not by babble but by actual action. For now:

[Where would be the reason to build something standard?
Why need a reason to be creative?
Hopefully, all will move to standard-only-where-actually-needed…;
Cala at Hoofddorp]

Stuck in the 80s (wrong end)

Some recruiting experience a friend had recently… (in no particular order, just what I recall from his analysis; yes I did take notes after a short while and seeing friend’s energy drained even in the recall):

When walking into the shared space / reception, an all-M team were starting on pizzas.
Setting: One candidate (my type, i.e., aiming to think fresh), one manager-possibly-to-be (M; styled like a civil servant), one HR (F; typical? she got the coffee).
Mptb repeatedly brought up a vacancy not applied for. Mptb may have wanted to fill that slot more urgently, but was not the one that triggered friend to send the open (sic) application for a first meeting just to learn more about the co.
Mptb couldn’t but return over and over again to the capacity for sales. Friend had already mentioned explicitely in the motivational letter that sales (of the cold call type) was the main weak point, well-known. Why keep hammering on that? Not on marketing (friend has great, very frequently demonstrated capabilities for that), hardly anything on content, not much on knowledge or fields of interest. But then, what can one expect from an Mptb that had the first half of ‘career’ in selling bananas (literally; I checked for friend)? Also, Mptb did not show any interest when friend mentioned his very, very extensive, professional thoughts-filled blog; possibly b/c Mptb didn’t know the concept of ‘blog’..?
Apparently, only the one-pager resume had been gleaned over. Of which friend had remarked in the motivational letter that it might read as being skewed to the (IS) audit side but that work content had hardly been that at all for the part decade+ and had been almost completely with advisory and consultancy services. Mptb could not see that, or may not understand enough of business outside the own (narrow? I’ll leave that to friend and you) scope of one’s own daily drudge. Mptb kept hammering that out. Friend has a two-pager resume in English (may be too difficult for the all too Duts Mptb?) that has job content descriptions but that didn’t even come to pass. LinkedIn? Nothing. Friend has a very extensive and diverse profile there and had checked; Mptb hadn’t had a single cursory look. SocMed seemed not to exist.
Mptb indicated anyway to operate at ‘tactical’ level with clients. Highly doubtful. At least, taken from some details of the conversation, friend operates a level and a half higher, and examples given and some details of the discussion indicate, Mptb hardly rises above operational control level and didn’t demonstrate to understand much about dealings at various management let alone governance levels. Which may have explained some of the misunderstandings. But Mptb would have had to be the one to have noticed, if Mptb – or would be a very mediocre, 70s-to-80s type of manager?
Same indication from the salary range indication. Quite something lower than current. Pay the bananas, get the monkeys.
But then, Mptb did keep on spelling out that selling services project-wise to clients, bore down to just proposing a handful of CVs with all track records spelled out. Actual project definition, ToR, deliverables, whatev’ (?). Ah. If friend were to spell out all projects, that would lead to a. a 25-30 page resume, as friend had a resume like that already 16 yrs ago that counted 15 pages (I still have that on back-up somewhere) through executed project summaries (sic), b. clients being dismayed their details would be presented to just about anyone else – if you see the project details of others, yours will be displayed to competitors as well in our business that deals with/in confidentiality.
But then, the main point is that friend doesn’t want to be bodyshopped, stuffed in client job slots just for the pay by the hour. How 80s can you get ..? Didn’t Mptb notice the world has changed, and such retro business is to be ridiculed …?
This, with a focus on billable hours and not sitting on the bench. Yeah, friend and I understand that. To be an operational hygiene factor. Not the focus of daily work life.
On the other hand, Mptb also kept on hammering on with questions how friend would deal with project hiccups, as if they’d be simple bugs or so. To be fixed with a simple fist bang..? As if that goes in today’s business, at the level one wants to be concerned. Friend’s answers to resolve them in, at the same time, businesslike and diplomatic ways, apparently was too difficult to grasp.
And oh yes, a handful of half-cocked STAR attempts were thrown in. The sample I heard, are far from and would have missed the point (the method’s information gathering actually intended) quite comprehensively.
Overall, Mptb seemed like a bad listener to me, not interested in what friend brought to bare let alone what work friend wants to do, what directions he wants to go, etc. Oh yes, there was the question about own ideas for personal development, but the answers again didn’t seem to land; friend got reaction, not response.
And though non-verbal comms was clearly mentioned, Mptb didn’t recognise that as a signal that his own posture only conveyed confusion and resignation. Verbal comms didn’t result in replies by Mptb that might indicate understanding and exchange of ideas, just what friend told be to understand “Hm, didn’t get the fully templated answer I wanted to hear b/c that’s the only kind I understand”. But Mptb found fault with friend over the latter’s non-verbal.
Overall II, I’m unsure whether, or rather am sure that, friend nor I would want to work with/for such a Mptb. Probably, ‘management’ would consist of bullying over unbilled hours only; no sight of understanding today’s knowledge workers need to be freed of chores such as sales, and need coaching and all other facilitating stuff (and risk management, etc.) offloaded to … the manager as that’s his job, to be free to deploy one’s excellence without being bothered by not-understandelings. We agreed we wish Mptb luck with client relationship management as he’d need tons of it, and would advise him to stay away from actual project execution or staff management. If we’d get into a relevant position we certainly wouldn’t invite him.
The (quite unattentively) somewhat brushed aside HR lady slipped in some questions about friend’s private life and goals in the end. I know friend as someone who wants to very much have a seamless blend of (hardcore to softcore) business, semi-professional hobbies, and other stuff. Mptb didn’t seem to care.
Conclusion: A waste of my friend‘s time.
Friend was contacted afterwards; they sought a full-on build-a-team-through-all-sales person indeed. That was not in the function profile friend showed me… And, as said, friend wrote in his motivation that if anything, that is was/his weak point. The waste of time could have been prevented.

Had to discuss this over a couple of days, to get it out of friend’s system…

Only to realise that I haven’t had a good job conversation myself recently, either. Though most of the (not so many) times, only a couple of above’s issues were at play, I was disappointed all too often. I also didn’t really like the other sort of ‘interview’ where one is asked snarky gnarly brain teasers. Of even had to do an assessment with a day’s full of questions with quite certainly the wrong answers. Or just in the interview. Why do recruiters still think they’re the conversation boss or something? Haven’t they learned how to beg for the right talent ..!? I might not completely be in that category [worded like that not to appear presumptuous at considering myself perfect, or would that add to the adoption of the hypothesis? ;-] but still to have a grown-up conversation about it all, would be welcome. So, … your comments.

But hey, then, to not get depressed:
DSCN6875
[Pleasant life; not only the Expo at sunny Sevilla]

Morozov’s no joke

Just a vey few:

“The fear of appearing inauthentic, of being a fake, has propelled nearly as much technological innovation as pornography.”

“But Adorno does have a point: authentic things are not necessarily morally good, and morally good things are not necessarily authentic.”

“In this, the authenticity rhetoric of Facebook is strikingly similar to the public debates in 1950s America over whether uniformity (everyone living in mass society is essentially the same) was a greater sin than conformity (some people adopt ideas, habits, and beliefs only to get along). The latter, the conformists,were seen as phonies who chose to be someone else; the former, those who were uniform by design, were seen as the real phonies – as people who thought they were making choices and being their unique selves, when in fact they were anything but.”

Worrying about usability – the chief concern of many designers today – is like counting calories on the sinking Titanic.”

The goal of privacy is not to protect some stable self from erosion but to create boundaries where this self can emerge, mutate, and stabilize.”
“Digital technology has greatly expanded the windows and doors of our own little rooms for self-experimentation – but we are now at a point where those rooms are on the verge of turning into glass houses.”

“Given the complexity of the self, trying to reduce the privacy concept to a purely utilitarian framework is like steamrolling a statue to capture its essence in the simpler space of the two-dimensional plane.”

Oh how many more such insights are there, to Learn. And weep. For that:

[Yes, Gettysburg battlefield. Ominously.]

Span (out) of Control

How is it that for a long time we were used to managerial spans of control being in the 5‑to‑10, optimal (sic) 8 range, whereas what we had in the past couple of decades so often was spans of control in the 2‑3 range ..? [Duh, exceptions and successful organizations aside…]
Because I came across some post on Forbes where there’s an early simple statement that a span of control of 10 would not only be normal, but outdated as well, as the span could be at 30. Well, I doubt the latter, as this would conflict with a lower ‘Dunbar’ number which indeed is about 8, with ramifications for informal control as outlined in Bruce Schneier’s Liars and Outliers.

Oh yes now it springs to mind the 8 figure was developed by the military, the ultimate built‑for‑survival organization, through the ages to be the optimal span of control, aligning with the apparently natural Dunbar number. It was then taken over to business for its apparent effectiveness, and its apparently attractive all‑business‑is‑war metaphor – where the attraction is there only for those not really exposed to the gore of war, I guess. From which the fearful, the accidentally pushed into management roles clueless managers, tried to do what they thought was the gist of managerial literature: fight all uncertainty that might threaten your career. Through micromanagement, through requiring all data to be reported. Not to use it wisely, but to just pretend to be in control. And, if you don’t understand, just do with less direct reports to shrink what’s coming at you.

[Intermission:

That man on the pole was quite a good leader it seems.]

But whether it’s 8, 10 or 30, the optimal span of control clearly is larger than the common today’s practice. Which has implications:

Too low a number will inevitably lead managers to seek to have something to do. Busywork, in their role leading to excessive micromanagement (yes pleonasm but on purpose) and/or excessive meeting behavior, in particular with their underlings and/or likewise trapped colleagues. A bit like an AA group. Which burdens the underlings by taking time away from actual content work and creating the need for action item lists and reporting blub. Thus losing time off colleagues with all sorts of, what actually is, whining.
Too low a number and the micromanagement leads to extreme (far overextended) controls burdens on the ones who’d actually produce anything of value. Instead of producing (net) negative value with all their externalities that managers may commonly do. This burdening then leads to ‘process’, ‘procedures’ etc., to ‘standardize’ (otherwise, understanding of actual content would be required; the horror for petty middle managers!). Thus hollowing out even further the value of any work done. As in the abovementioned Forbes article; the Peter Principle will reign.
Too low a number and the standardization will drive out the creativity (required in customer service and in product/service design, production and delivery). Where that is ever more essential than before to counter the ever more changing environment. As I typed this, this article arrived…
Colleagues (or rather, underling staff) will be demotivated due to having less and less time to do the work they’re assessed and valued for by the organization, and having to produce ever more TPS reports for overhead purposes. This will bring down performance, both directly and indirectly. And by the way, all the controls will also suffer by staff demotivation leading to less effectiveness or even full evasion. With equally rising risks for performance.

An extension to ten, or even twenty or thirty would be very well possible as well, in these times of massively improved information and reporting options. The latter aligns quite well with the increased need to at least have a little oversight left.

Though that would require much more empowerment (again) of your employees. That are the knowledge workers par excellence, right? If you don’t have those yet, you may have an entirely different but even more pressing problem… Have the real knowledge workers left, don’t they want to join anymore, or have you unconsciously but actively numbed them into sully drones? Whatever the cause, the real knowledge workers know better than their manager how to do their work – that’s why they do it and not the manager. If it were the other way around, it would be beneficial for the organization to have the manager do the grunt work. And no, micro management is something else.

The empowerment should go hand in hand with different styles of leadership, direction and oversight. Not based on ‘objectives’, made ‘smart’(not) for Pete’s sake, but based on truly smart KPI’s that leave employees room to do their business in ways they see best fit. Not rails, but guiding rails, and no yard-by-yard route directions but some A and B and a road (?) map. Or, well, a good navi system – or would you the manager want to pull the steering wheel for every correction? Reporting can similarly be made smarter anyway, or is that wishful thinking. In times of smart analysis with big data or not, this should be feasible.

And keeping just a little oversight is enough already for a good manager, and quite different from total(itarian) ‘control’. The former is needed to lead and direct, the latter is paralysis through total suppression and denial of a capricious reality.

And oh, for the record, some form of hierarchy will always be needed, even in fully horizontal network organizations with 360° feedback and what have we. Just re-read Flat Army by Dan Pontefract; without collapsing to a free‑for‑all hippie group, there are quite many ways to manage more humanlike. There just are so many ways to flex- and telework from home or anywhere, and a mature manager and her/his organization will pay for performance not mere attendance over performance.

So yes, we all need to focus on upping the number. To counter stalemates. To counter bureaucracy heavens. To regain flexibility. Still, still, this could only work IF, very very big if, ‘managers’ (not to address actual managers, that I value enormously!) can loosen their frantic, fear‑of‑death‑like Totalitarian Control and compliance attitude. Which I doubt. Maybe we should start to let such managers pursue other careers elsewhere, those that are specialists in sticking to their own chair by sacrificing all capacity and performance in times of cost savings. Then, the ones that are not good at that because they really try to achieve something for their organization wouldn’t have to be let go by the numbers and restore some positive balance of managerial capabilities.

But then, organizations relying on the control freak managers (whether already or after they will have crowded out the actual managers via the Peter Principle and acolyte behavior) will lose out to the upstarts that do keep the mold out. There’s hope.

You(‘)r(e) right(s)

Well, whatever percentages in this; Voltaire was right. Even if there would be just one citizen who’d think otherwise, all others should (also) defend his (her?) right to be wrong, to the death.

As it’s already five o’clock (here), have a nice weekend, with:

[Not quite St.Pat’s Day material, still quite equivalent of the Green … Frankenmuth, MI]

Your ASI-MBTIFuture

With all the discussion on the future of work, and how finally! we would be able to do ‘only’ creative, (physically/mentally!) non-repetitive work and/or where and how jobs for that could be craeted or would we all be doomed to be some (un/underpaid) Leisure Class, I suddenly realised:
The future of work depends very much on your myopia of what all ‘workers’ would want.

As about 60%+ of ‘workers’ at all levels of intelligence at/of work including pure mental, knowledge workers, would prefer simple 9-to-5 type jobs, with the predictability and security it brings (requirement…). Established per hard science. Only 40% or less actually wants the wild, the change, the uncertainty-is-beautiful.
So, will 60%+ not be able to make the transition or only not want to and maybe be able to after sufficient pressure is applied ..?

Which brings me to the find I did. Myers-Briggs.
Yes, yes, it indeed is discredited by some, to some extent. But it’s still the most recognised, most recognisable and easily applicable method to establish one’s own interests [with inclusion of the caveats and recognition of its time dependency and outcome variability]. I mean,
MyersBriggsTypes
Is easily assessed (though I’d recommend the more extended questionnaire versions, e.g., from some books). And personally attempted-falsified.

Some take it to the limit. Resulting in:
myersphilo
but really I’d say that’s pushing it, and why?

To which above type ‘scores’ there’s also career advice, also in books and on-line. Like:
MBTIjobChartSmall
Note the remarks at the bottom. Variants apply, like this one which is skewed to sales/marketing business, I think..

But nevertheless, the overall trend is clear: When you’re an I, and/or S type in particular, and maybe too much of the T and J into the mix, you may find it harder and harder to adapt to the on-going exponential (?) fuzzification of work. If you’re in any of the ‘typical’ trades, you may either become the Expert of Experts, retreating into an ever smaller corner until retirement, if you can hold out that long, or bring your characteristics to other trades (remember, yin and yang both have an element of the other within them – this applies here as well), or retrain yourself psychologically to better fit the trades that may be left until ASI overtakes us. [As in this post]

If you can …

I’ll leave you with:
DSCN6848
[For no reason – or, how many trades have come and gone in this environ… Sevilla]