random links for 2007-10-18
- Design is Arrogance. Design is Humility. Indeed, I feel that I fight this battle inside myself all the time. When do you assert? When do you listen? When do you draw out what people are feeling when you think they are hiding how they really feel? How do you see beyond what someone is telling you?
- Gary Hamel’s The Future of Management. [ Part 2 ] [Part 3]. In particular I loved this line: A turnaround is a transformation tragically delayed. Sounds similar to a lot of questions that I had to ask myself when I first started managing people: How do you get the best from people? How do you effectively push ownership of execution and decision making as far down into an organization as possible? (Funny, considering I was managing individual contributors and not other managers – over-optimizing, possibly?) How do you make sure that ideas flow up instead of down? How do you make sure that organization-wide goals are properly transmitted, understood and made relevant to everyone? (Organization-wide goals are rarely directionally actionable, it seems.) How do you make sure that the best ideas get attention? How do you make your best people even better? Heavily related to the design questions, I think. There’s a common theme here but I can’t quite put my finger on it yet… In any case I will have to buy this book. I am always looking for more thoughts on transformation.
- And just so that everyone out there doesn’t think I’m a total over-thinking loser: A cereal bowl that keeps your cereal crunchy while you eat your breakfast. It took me years to find the proper rice krispies / milk balance, along with the rush to eat it before everything turned to mush. I was looking at it the wrong way. Years I have been waiting for this product – Years.
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ah, but is it dishwasher safe?
Good question! I have no idea. I sure hope so.
“It took me years to find the proper rice krispies / milk balance, along with the rush to eat it before everything turned to mush.”
i’m assuming you’ve read the bit from Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon on the perfect method for eating Captain Crunch, right? if not, you might find it very useful – bowl or no bowl ;)
Oh god yes. That bit from Cryptonomicon hit me right over the head. “I _am_ that guy.”