Turning Ships Around, Basic Income and The Calm Company.
I’ve been working on…
- Trying to drag myself out of bed. Those 6am starts in January are tough!
- Rolled out the digital app for the board to two more people. Feedback on the prototype has been minimal as it seems not much has been added documentation wise of late — so people have found it tricky to use it in a representative fashion. Should know more in February when the next load of board papers are submitted.
- We’ve been talking about Turn The Ship Around this week. Stimulated an interesting debate on how empowered staff are and whether there are subtle differences between operational empowerment and strategic empowerment. I’ve not read the book yet, but it had me wondering if this approach reinforces hierarchy + silos or helps loosen them up.
I’ve been reading…
- Finland get their basic income experiment underway, paying each unemployed citizen 560 euros per month.
https://apnews.com/441e12c324b04d549c13366c891fe8d0/Finland-to-pay-unemployed-basic-income-of-$587-per-month - Politically, the left and right have never seemed further apart. How can we connect people and bridge the divide? Perhaps it’s penpals!
https://www.fastcoexist.com/3065907/bringing-conservatives-and-liberals-together-to-talk-it-out-after-the-election - Could technology remove politicians from politics? (I question the wisdom of the crowd in this article) http://motherboard.vice.com/en_au/read/democracy-by-app
- Swedish experiment with a six hour work days runs into trouble! It’s too expensive to sustain.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/swedish-six-hour-workday-trial-runs-into-trouble-too-expensive - Making land registry data open could remove some friction from house building.
https://capx.co/the-housing-reform-no-one-is-talking-about-the-case-for-transparency-in-the-land-market/ - 95% of consumer products fail each year. We have no comparable measure for the public and social sector. Paul Taylor ponders the implications of that and what we can do about it.
https://medium.com/@PaulBromford/most-services-launched-this-year-will-fail-heres-why-5b3ad6abd618#.umzn36f9l - Digital Thinking & Staff Trust : Super interesting unmentoring observations from Dyfrig Williams.
https://medium.com/@DyfrigWilliams/unmentoring-digital-thinking-and-staff-trust-6785163ca43e#.fkmaa7p02 - Starting a business or venture is inherently risky, increasingly so for many as austerity continues to bite. Could basic income make people more able to take risks and do stuff? (I think so!)
https://medium.com/basic-income/universal-basic-income-will-accelerate-innovation-by-reducing-our-fear-of-failure-b81ee65a254#.hzc88qmj4 - The calm company. Jason Fried sets out a vision of work that doesn’t involve long grinding hours and endless meetings. As he puts it, these are all perversions of work. Side effects of broken models and worst practices.
https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-calm-company-our-next-book-d0ed917cc457#.8aprlfsuu - Those Swedes again, this time ditching office desks to work from strangers homes.
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161230-the-swedes-ditching-desks-to-work-from-strangers-homes - Automated book culling system drives librarians to create fake patrons to check out endangered titles. Perhaps our augmented robot future isn’t quite so straight forward!
http://boingboing.net/2017/01/02/automated-book-culling-softwar.html
I’ve been watching / listening to…
- Simon Sinek on Millennials in the workplace.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hER0Qp6QJNU&feature=youtu.be - The unexpected benefit of celebrating failure. (Astro Teller TED Talk)
https://www.ted.com/talks/astro_teller_the_unexpected_benefit_of_celebrating_failure#t-921041