Human Nature

5 years, 9 months ago

Systems Thinking Complicates Things

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  I’ve had the honor and pleasure of appearing as a regular on Tom Cagley‘s SPaMCast podcast for almost three years now. Before I write one of my “Form Follows Function on SPaMCast x” posts, I always listen to the podcast to make sure that the summary is right (the implication being, relying purely on […]

5 years, 10 months ago

Organizations as Systems – Kurosawa, Clausewitz, and Chess

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In order to respond appropriately to the context we find ourselves in, it’s helpful that we be able to correctly define that context. It’s something humans aren’t always good at. Not too long ago, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War was all the rage as among executives. While the book contains some excellent lessons that […]

6 years, 1 month ago

Innovation in Inner Space

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  Long-time readers know that I have a rather varied set of interests and that I’ve got a “thing” for history, particularly military history. Knowing that, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I was recently reading an article titled “Cyber is the fourth dimension of war” (ground, sea and air being the first three […]

7 years, 1 month ago

Abstract Dangers – When ‘And’ Meets ‘Or’

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There’s an old saying that if you put one foot in a bucket of ice and the other in a bucket of boiling water, on average you’re comfortable. Sometimes analyzing information in the aggregate obscures rather than enlightens. A statistician named Francis Anscombe pointed out this same principle in a more visual (though less colorful) […]

7 years, 4 months ago

Form Follows Function on SPaMCast 377

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This week’s episode of Tom Cagley’s Software Process and Measurement (SPaMCast) podcast, number 377, features Tom’s essay on empathy, Kim Pries talking about the application of David Allen’s concepts for Getting Things Done, and the first Form Follows Function installment for 2016 on organizations and innovation. Tom and I discuss my post “Changing Organizations Without […]

7 years, 6 months ago

Changing Organizations Without Changing People

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Prof Bo Molander once pointed out to me and the other students in the class that when you try to change people, you go up against billions of years of evolution, “good luck with that” and when you try to change groups, you go up against millions of years of evolutions, “good luck with that […]