The (old) Alpha Mind

Kathy Sierra documents the first day in the lives of two foals. Lovely video. Almost had to get on the edge of my seat and root: “Go boy! Do it! Yeah!”

…and, alas, I’m left with much of the same frustration I had after reading Birth of the Chaordic Age. The actual working principles for creating a chaordic organization are few and far between. Not that there aren’t any, but there aren’t enough to sink one’s teeth into.

I the six+ years since the book was published, I’d hoped there’d be more solid definitions, principles, and guidance for getting a choard built. The Wikipedia page is faulted for being flully and philosophical. Well, “fluffy” is my extension of what’s actually said there, but I add it because I’m not sure there’s been enough practical knowledge generated to write a much more solid entry.

Crooked Timber on a law which, one hopes, won’t fly.

Just quoted Dee Hock in my last post and then I went and read Lee Hopkins on the “futility” of employee communications efforts. And I have to quote Dee again: “It is far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism.”

With regard to the world that seems intent on self-destruction, it means that our only hope for turning things around is to have enough hope to take action.

With regard to employee communications, Clarence’s comment to Lee’s post, pessimistic as it is, tells precisely why companies will have to wake up—soon—and smell the coffee, and realize the importance of trust and communication in the workplace.

Just finished reading The Birth of the Chaordic Age by Dee Hock, founder of Visa International and of The Chaordic Commons. I’ll make other comments later, but for now I just want to quote my favorite sentence from the book, which is also my quotation of the month:

It is far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism.

I love it. Needs to be the motto for the rest of my life.

Simple, short and fine little piece by Kim Klaver on pushing a product to people who don’t want it.

The post being short and simple, she stops short of mentioning that finding the two tennis players in a group may well be the route to making tennis converts within that group. A pair of people rejoining the group glowing and jazzed from a game of tennis is the best way to sell others.

In a longish, ramblyish post (he calls it the director’s cut), Paul Graham talks about the accents of Boston speakers. Reminds me of something I experienced in my time there.

Before I left Boston, the T (MBTA=transit system) got new-fangled, designer electronic voices to announce the stops. When I arrived in 1993, though, these were unheard-of, and the actual train operators did the work, over scarcely adequate PA systems.

I remember distinctly being on the T during orientation week at MIT, travelling home to Arlington, which took us past Harvard Square station. Late August, early September, the train is full of people from other parts of the country, new students lured to greater Boston’s 52 institutions of higher learning. And when a fresh batch of them first hears the train operator say “Hahvahd Squayah,” they can’t help themselves. They must mimic, two dozens or more voices at once trying out the sound of Boston’s working class, and then they must chortle, titter, guffaw.

It was an annual ritual that required no culture-bearers to maintain it. It arose spontaneously. The newcomers simply couldn’t help themselves. Their amused and supercilious reaction to the proletarian accent seemed as instinctive as the gag reflex, and not unrelated.