January 2011
75 posts
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When you think of it; Facebook is a mini-web.
You browse people and pages and click a “follow” button or a “like” button.
Much more dumbed down than clicking on an RSS icon.
And much more dumbed down again as you don’t have to know about having an RSS Reader eg. choosing one like Google Reader from the hundreds on the market.
Instead with Facebook, the place you...
The neuroscience of decision-making and learning
I’m fully convinced by Rock and Schwartz’s overall thesis—a better understanding of how our brains function will allow organizations to embrace change and tackle new initiatives much more effectively.
Be aware that change is difficult because it causes pain.
Recognize that people in different functions process in different ways.
Cultivate “moments of insight” to...
Stress in anticipation
In the wild, 99 percent of stress responses never exceed three minutes, after which Sapolsky said, “either it’s over with or you’re over with.” In humans, the response is often mounted in anticipation of an assault on homeostasis rather than an actual perturbation. “We’re having these anticipatory psychological stressors, [and] we turn on the exact same stress...
Safety, Trust and Intimacy for group effectiveness
It’s clear that some groups are more effective than others at helping the members learn, increase their awareness and change their behavior, and I believe that the group’s levels of safety, trust and intimacy are the key factors in determining its effectiveness in this regard.
1) Every group’s experience is rooted in a set of initial conditions: How and why were we assembled? ...
Experiential Learning Has a Neurological Basis
SharpBrains: How does learning happen?
Zull: There are 4 stages in the "Learning Cycle." Stage One: We have a concrete experience. Stage Two: We develop reflective observations and connections. Stage Three: We generate abstract hypotheses. Stage Four: Then we actively test these hypotheses.
In the fourth stage, we have a new concrete learning experience, and a new Learning Cycle ensues. In other words, we get information (activating the sensory cortex), make meaning of that information (in the back integrative cortex), create new ideas from these meanings (in the front integrative cortex), and act on those ideas (using the motor cortex.) From this, I propose that there are four pillars of learning: gathering, analyzing, creating and acting. This is how we learn.
LINK: http://www.edbatista.com/2009/11/sharpbrains.html
Settle for mediocrity or focus on strengths
One should waste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. And yet most people—especially most teachers and most organizations—concentrate on making incompetent performers into mediocre ones. Energy, resources, and...
tumblrbot asked: WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE INANIMATE OBJECT?
See the brain’s plasticity by practicing...
Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress. In a study that will appear in the January 30 issue of Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, a team led by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers report the results of their study, the first to document meditation-produced...
Connecting dots is a fool’s errand
After 9/11, the intelligence agencies were critiqued for failing to connect the dots. If there are only four dots, they can form 64 patterns. Twelve dots can form 4,700 quadrillion patterns. Connecting dots is a fool’s errand.
- Jay Cross on Dave Snowden
Related
Don’t connect the dots, watch the noise
WatchWhat organisational Communities of Practice can learn from the US Army!!
Great handbook by the US Army on the impact, use and implications of social media.
I’d like to see a similar report on the internal use of social computing and how they operate as a hierarchy blended with networks.
“Nine years of persistent conflict have shaped our shared experiences, which can be told through...
The layered organisation of processes and networks
Many managers these days face a social dilemma. They want to use social media to get input from many different customers and employees, because they know that an organization’s judgment is improved if its ideation and decision processes incorporate insights from multiple perspectives.
Well before personal computers enabled online chatter, they helped bring structure to work. Transaction...
Oxytocin breeds in-group over out-group trust
Oxytocin has been described as the hormone of love. This tiny chemical, released from the hypothalamus region of the brain, gives rat mothers the urge to nurse their pups, keeps male prairie voles monogamous and, even more remarkable, makes people trust each other more.
“When people get together with others who share their values, that drives up the level of oxytocin,” he said.
Yes, you knew...
Cells and people both love each other
Millions of cells die in your body every day, and they are constantly being replaced. The cells in your body are programmed to die, and die quickly if required. All the cells in your body are continually exchanging “don’t die” signals with each other, provided each cell is correctly performing it’s function. If a cell malfunctions or is somehow “out of position”...
Alcoholics Anonymous similarities to 2.0
Exhortation does not work – No alcoholic that I have ever met, and I know a lot, has ever responded to “Please stop dad this is killing you and us!” or to the doctor’s demand “If you don’t stop, you will die”. No matter how desperate the family beg or no matter how much information the doctor provides - Exhortation does not work. So it is no wonder that decades of pleading to stop eating junk food...
Emails lacks the human dimension
In the past, when you wanted to ask an engineer about a specification, you simply walked down the hall and asked. That type of direct access has been taken away from many employees today. And in this context, an email is so much more easily ignored, especially when you may not even know the person sending it…Email lacks a human dimension…Sure you can pick up the phone, but voice mails...
Managed as if we are volunteers
Altogether, an increasing number of people who are full-time employees have to be managed as if they were volunteers. They are paid, to be sure. But…[w]e have known for fifty years that money alone does not motivate to perform… What motivates—and especially what motivates knowledge workers—is what motivates volunteers. Volunteers, we know, have to get more satisfaction...
Knowledge workers are associates
…knowledge workers are not subordinates; they are “associates.” For, once beyond the apprentice stage, knowledge workers must know more about their job than their boss does—or else they are no good at all. In fact, that they know more about their job than anybody else in the organization is part of the definition of knowledge workers…
- Peter Drucker
Managers need to add coaching to their skill set...
The Industrial Revolution—arguably equivalent to the technology revolution that has now swept the world—mechanized work in a way that destroyed much of the old order. Previously, the people who created the most value were craftsmen. They spent many years as apprentices, deeply learning their craft and earning the respect of their peers, before becoming masters themselves to other apprentices. The...
You design the action process
My point is that for an ACM system, the person who determines the course of action is not the person who designs these application. BPM is exactly the opposite: the person who designs the processes needs to also design the data architecture. It is simply unjustified to attribute this BPM requirement to ACM.
- Keith Swenson
The complexity of influence, copying, and biases
EXCERPT from Forget the A-List after all - Guy Kawaski
….based on the work of Duncan Watts of Yahoo Research, is that the theory that a select few “key influencers” matter more than “the rest of us” when it comes to viral and word-of-mouth marketing campaigns is flawed. Said Watts:
“It [achieving marketing success through influentials] just doesn’t work. A rare bunch of cool people just...
Nudged into cooperation...hmmm
…what would make hordes of previously inactive citizens leap to their feet to volunteer to fish trolleys from canals or look after elderly neighbours?
…residents would get a loyalty card similar to those available in shops. Points would be added by organisers when cardholders had completed good works such as litter-picking or holding tea parties for isolated pensioners.
The council...
From information to make decisions to altering...
Once upon a time, the lifeblood of politics was the question of how to create the Good Society. Politics was a struggle over how the world should be shaped or reshaped, and how we might create the conditions in which individuals could realise their potential and pursue their aspirations. Now it’s about remoulding individuals themselves. It’s about finding ways to change how individuals think and...
Passive reactors to suggestion rather than active...
One of the arguments made in favour of nudges is that they are the antithesis of public approaches to behaviour change, like didactic communication, education and regulation.
Apparently, in the past we have ignored, misinterpreted or reacted against these measures. We seem to have an innate antipathy to being told what to do, but because we are not very good at making behavioural choices that are...
Nudge is really just a catchy term for Libertarian...
Nudge’ was the title of the book by Thaler and Sunstein that created the excitement around behaviour change, but as Richard Thaler indicated while speaking at the RSA, Nudge is really just a catchy term for the much more complex notion of ’Libertarian Paternalism‘ that is supposed to underpin nudge interventions.
The idea is that you don’t undermine people’s freedom by choosing for them, but...
Human behaviour as fundamentally social (not...
Behavioural Economics is a response - a step on - from the old rational agent model of human behaviour. It conceptualises humans not as rational agents who accurately perceive the world around them and act appropriately but as faulty agents, with lazy minds (as Kahnemann puts it) - with built-in quirks and biases in our perceptional machinery.
But - and here’s the big thing - it still views...
We are a 'we' species, labouring under the...
…being together and interacting with other human beings is—we argue—essentially human: more human than being a lone and isolated individual. It is what we are largely designed for. It is who we are—whatever our culture or we ourselves would like to think (and both of these point misleadingly in the opposite direction to the truth). We are a ‘we’ species,...
Mutuality
…rather than being a species of arch individualists, we are the social ape. We live in larger, more complex groups than our closest cousins, collaborating with friends and strangers thanks to our nuanced social brain. Indeed, we use other people’s brains to navigate the world: to acquire skills and practices, and to access knowledge systems of long-dead strangers. We call this...
“A Citizen’s responsibility in an area is directly proportional to his or...”
– Tom Crowl
Separation is not biologically normal
By the early 1980s, the mortality rate for premature infants in Bogota, Colombia was 70 percent. The babies were dying of infections and respiratory problems as well as lack of attention paid to them by a bonded parent. “Kangaroo care” for these infants evolved out of necessity. Mothers of premature infants were given their babies to hold twenty-four hours a day-they slept with them...
Behaviour Grid
- BJ Fogg
What Causes Behavior Change?
…three elements must converge at the same moment for a behavior to occur: Motivation, Ability, and Trigger. When a behavior does not occur, at least one of those three elements is missing
- Dr. BJ Fogg
Three Core Motivators
Sensation - pleasure/pain
Anticipation - hope/fear
Social Cohesion - acceptance/rejection
- Dr. BJ Fogg
Training or Simplicity
There are two paths to increasing ability. You can train people, giving them more skills, more ability to do the target behavior. That’s the hard path. Don’t take this route unless you really must. Training people is hard work, and most people resist learning new things. That’s just how we are as humans: lazy.
The better path is to make the target behavior easier to do. I call this Simplicity. In...
Watch3 Steps to New Habits
WatchTop 10 Mistakes in Behavior Change
The Triangle of Happiness
Basically, the less tests you have, the more reactive you are, and the more screwed you are. The more tests you have, the more proactive you are and the less screwed you are. This is what I shall now refer to as the Triangle of Happiness (the green one).
It’s also worth noting that the # of tests (this doesn’t necessarily mean # of tests, but could be code coverage, whatever) – is decidedly NOT...
Recognise silo bridge walkers in performance...
Recognize and reward broad input. Put the organization’s money where its mouth is by tying raises and promotions to gaining broad input. Include a module in performance evaluations to gauge whether managers are making decisions in a vacuum or in concert with people across functions and levels.
Recognize leaders who tap the knowledge of front-line people and reward leaders for including...
Involve front-line people in decisions
Command-and-control cultures segment their workforces into knowledge workers and everybody else. They pay knowledge workers to think and pay everybody else to carry out orders. In these cultures, collaboration is dead on arrival, because the organization effectively muzzles front-line workers who know how the business operates. In command-and-control companies, value creation suffers because...
Silos across organisational boundaries
Ultimately, the vital interests of different sectors may not be exactly the same. But that does not have to be a barrier to getting the job done. Like the business sector, the government and civil society sectors need to become more comfortable with the idea of merging capabilities. All three need to put aside their prejudices toward one another. As Massimo Sarmi says, “The biggest obstacle — the...
Games to bypass reflex to control
To set up the larger field where all could participate - we used “Play”.
I have found that if you think of complex problems that might involve you losing your current power in role, the job of protecting your status quo is paramount.
This is why when we ask the Usual Suspects to think of the future of their field, say health, they act to preserve the status quo. They cannot go beyond...
Grooming from a distance
Let’s take, as an example, going to the office and facetime – why is it so important? Intellectually we know that most of what happens at the office is a huge waste of time – all those meetings – all that posturing! Why can’t we mainly work remotely?
Perhaps it’s because we are in truth Primates and that what the office really presents is lots of opportunity for that central primate social...
Back-stage management
Viral Change™ is a way to create a fast and sustainable culture of safety which does not rely on the rational understanding of hundreds of people attending safety training workshops. In Viral Change™ we identify a relatively small set of ‘non negotiable behaviours’ which, when spread across the organisation, have the power to create a behavioural fabric, a DNA of safety. We also identify a...
The most powerful influence in the organisation is...
Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm. A culture of safety is not one of well trained (on safety) people but one where safety behaviours are the norm.
Safety communication and training usually follows a top-down approach where facts are presented, guidelines and procedures exposed, tasks explained and threats of non compliance declared. It is rational and emotional appeal cascaded...
Social connection is a fundamental part of the...
Looking more deeply at the invisible forces that link one human being to another helps us see something even more profound: our brains and bodies are designed to function in aggregates, not in isolation. That is the essence of an obligatory gregarious species. The attempt to function in denial of our need for others…violates our design specifications. The effects on health are warning signs,...
The limbic brain needs to be in active...
Why are we collectively so unhappy? Unhappy at home and at work? Have we put our rational brain too high on the pedestal? If we understand our Mammalian or Limbic Brain better might we have a better time? Why are relationships so important to us?…How important is having the right relationships to our happiness and to our health?
Their thesis is that we have 3 brains. The reptilian brain which...
Touch, Trust, Oxytocin, Cortisol
“We used to think that touch only served to intensify communicated emotions,” Dr. Hertenstein said. Now it turns out to be “a much more differentiated signaling system than we had imagined.”
Players who made contact with teammates most consistently and longest tended to rate highest on measures of performance, and the teams with those players seemed to get the most out of their talent.
…good...
The ideal human groupings
At our deepest level, we are primates. We are intensely social. We feel best in groups. We love to be touched. In fact, when given the choice primate babies will take touch over food.
One of the huge breakthroughs for humans is that by developing speech we learned to groom at a distance and hence could expand the size of the social group
The ideal human groupings are seen in all military...
Babies require face-to-face interaction to learn
“Babies require face-to-face interaction to learn,” says Dr. Vic Strasburger, professor of pediatrics at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics. “They don’t get that interaction from watching TV or videos. In fact, the watching probably interferes with the crucial wiring being laid down in their brains during...