Author: Jeremie Averous

How essential it is to check information sources on internet

Mid-February, the web went viral with a study that showed that there were not more than 19 links between any page of the internet (examples here, here and here (in French)). This epidemics followed a paper published on 18 February 2013 by the Royal Society.

world wide web graphics
The worldwide web galaxy is smaller than you think – only 19 links to get anywhere!

The thing is, when you read the paper (link to the original paper of the Royal Society here), you realize that this discovery was made in… 1999. Is it still valid? Nobody knows, actually. It is quite possible actually that today there are even less links needed thanks to the Googles and other search engines, plus all the social tools.

Some publications did correct their initial post (like the Smithsonian here), but most did not, in particular the news outlets from where most of the public gets its information.

There are two interesting lessons to take from this event:

  • On the negative side, what you read on the internet, in particular what is viral, might have been severely distorted by transmittal, editing, search for sensationalism, etc
  • On the positive side, thanks to the internet, one can access the original source easily – I was able to find it in a very few minutes thanks to the links embedded in the published pages and Google! (and actually it took only 2 or 3 clicks, not 19) (think what would have happened if you had read such a news in a newspaper 50 years ago: would you have ever been able to go back to the original sources within less than a few weeks?).

It is easier now than ever to post and disseminate trash or inaccuracies, but it is also easier than ever to check – or at least get various opinions on a subject. Do we teach ourselves and our children enough to enhance their critical skills and how to search by themselves for diverse opinions?

Note – for those who are interested, reading the original short article (by Barabási in the Royal Society publication) is quite instructive on the topology of the internet.

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Thrive Through Complexity by Leveraging Collaboration of an Effective Team

Not only is Collaboration the key to deal with Uncertainty; the extreme collaborative setup, the Effective, Performing Team, is the key to tackle Complexity. That’s in effect the meaning of the conclusion of Jim Collins we quoted in the blog post “How to Take Decisions in a Complex Environment“.

team table
Are you presently mobilizing an effective, performing team?

It is tough to reach the point of achieving a high performing, effective team. In effect, this is the ultimate model of collaboration, where connection between individuals reaches such an emotional depth that it allows to mobilize all of the participant’s resources for the sake of the team’s purpose.

Depending on the level of performance of the team, different levels of complexity can be tackled; but the most uncertain, most complex situations can only be dealt with a totally committed, effective team.

In my consulting work I often observe how getting the leadership team of organizations to work as a performing team is the first condition for any effective transformation. It should be the first focus, instead of launching initiatives all over the place (as most organizations stuck in a rut tend to do).

Do you have an effective, performing team to help you through complexity? If not, what are you going to do to get it working as it should? That should be your first priority, now!

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How Well Are You Using Your Own Safety Net?

Following on the Safety Net Conundrum, now at the individual level, how well are you really using the safety net you actually have? This safety net includes family and friends, social security and all other social protection institutions, your professional network, etc.

In my coaching assignments I often find that people:

  • underestimate the extent of their current safety nets and of the protection is gives them;
  • underestimate the extent of (measured) risk they could take based on this actual protection;
  • effectively often focus on trying to keep or increase the protection level they benefit from rather than using that protection to try new things.
Why are so few trying to fly above their safety net?
Why are so few trying to fly above their safety net?

Yes, most of us could try something really outside of our comfort zone and in the worst case still land safely in our extended safety net, with little or no consequences. So why are so few trying it?

With or without safety net, jumping in the unknown triggers all sorts of fear reactions. It takes a conscious effort to use the safety net as a reason to try it. The question: “What is the worst that can happen?” is extremely powerful in that sense.

Inventory the extent of your safety net. You will be surprised by its extent. You will realize that you can try new things outside your comfort zone. At the moment where your “lizard brain” will kick-in with all sorts of excuses, ask yourself: “What is the worst that can happen?“. Then, go and do it!

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How Can we Overcome the Social Safety Net Conundrum?

In the last decades of the Industrial Age, in most developed countries, comprehensive safety nets have been implemented on top of the traditional family secure base. Social security, unemployment benefits… All sorts of safety devices against unfortunate life events.

Does a Safety Net really entice people to take more risks?
Does a Safety Net really entice people to take more risks?

Then, something strange happened: instead of enticing people to take more risks, releasing creativity and entrepreneurship, these safety nets have entrapped them in a conservative mindset where anything that might put in question their privileges is fought back violently.

In an era where the people that will be successful through the Fourth Revolution will be agile and adaptable, able to take measured risks, this behavior increasingly looks suicidal. And most developed countries today struggle to find the energy and the will to reform their institutions and adapt them to the new global situation.

The most amazing contradiction is that a safety net should, on the contrary, increase the possibilities to take risks: it provides a secure base, hence a higher possibility to go and investigate what is happening in the world. It should provide a last resort protection if one falls during a particularly challenging balancing act, and hence enable these balancing acts to be attempted.

How can we redesign the social safety net institutions we inherited from the Industrial Age to make them a source of risk-taking and entrepreneurship? One suggestion is to make them really a last-resort safety net that intervenes only to prevent a deadly fall; but not a system on which people rely even for minor events; thus, it would avoid having too many people dependent on the protection provided at any moment.

In any case, a deep reform of this Industrial Age institution is required to make it the risk-releasing tool it should always have been.

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Why you Should Live with a Large Amount of Uncertainty in your Life

According to Tony Robbins, “The quality of your life is in direct proportion to the amount of uncertainty you can comfortably live with“.

dice illusion
How comfortable are you with uncertainty and illusions?

This quote can be taken in two ways. A first, protective way is to suppose that the more you can bear uncertainty, the least disturbed you will be by what is happening around you and the happier you will be. This is quite a limited view which will not lead to transforming your life.

I certainly prefer to think of uncertainty rather as a source of opportunity –  a second way to understand this quote. Uncertainty is the key for unexpected success in today’s increasingly complex world. The unexpected encounters, unforeseeable events or the unexpected viral effect of an artistic production actually shape much of today’s world. Just before these uncertain things happen, uncertainty was at its maximum. Just after, our world and existence took a turn. The world branched out. If you can’t bear the high level of uncertainty linked with releasing something to the world, then you can’t shape it. You can’t shape your life.

Living with uncertainty is at the same time uncomfortable and exciting. It is not a character trait, it is a choice. So, are you ready to choose to live with a high level of uncertainty in your life? Are you ready to grab those opportunities that will come close to you?

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Why You Should Leave Your Ideas Grow Before Exposing Them

“After you plant a seed in the ground you don’t dig it up every week to see how it is doing” – William Coyne, former 3M executive, quoted in “Weird Ideas that Work” by Robert Sutton.

planting seedThis sentence was used in the context of creativity: when you’re planting a seed for a new product or a new idea, leave it undisturbed for a while to grow! It is the seedling that is the most fragile phase and needs to be protected.

For example, make sure creative teams operate outside the rush of the corporate world; or on a personal note, make sure that you give time for an idea to grow a bit before exposing it to the harshness of the world.

Because any new idea is just a fragile air draft that can disappear instantly. Because new ideas are precious and need time to grow and develop.

How well are you protecting your new ideas to let them grow enough to face the world?

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(Good) Decision-making Depends on Conflict

“Decision making is not about consensus. It depends on conflict, and that is the key. What we found in companies that made good decisions is that the debate is real.” This is a quote from Jim Collins in the foreword of the book “Fortune: the Greatest Business Decisions of All Times“.

(Reasoned) conflict is key to decision-making
(Reasoned) conflict is key to decision-making

“It is real, violent debate in search of understanding“.

And this good conflict does not even have to end with an agreement: “Then, in the end, the leader makes the call. It’s conflict and debates leading to an executive decision. No major decision we’ve studied was ever taken at a point of unanimous agreement. There was always some disagreement in the air“.

Point taken: the next time you take a significant decision and everybody agrees, something is wrong. Either there has not been enough debate, or it is not the right decision.

How was you latest decision like?

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How to Take Decisions in a Complex Environment

How can you take the (right) (best) decision in a complex environment? Rely on your team. Decide on the ‘who’ and not on the ‘what’.

That’s all. That’s so much.

complex world
How can you take the right decisions in a real, complex world?

Jim Collins reminds us in his foreword to the book “Fortune: the Greatest Business Decisions of All Times“: “The greatest decisions were not “what” but “who?”, they were people decisions.”

“Fundamentally, the world is uncertain. Decisions are about the future and your place in the future when that future is uncertain. So what is the key thing you can do to prepare for that uncertainty? You can have the right people with you“.

The next time, instead of spending too much time developing spreadsheet projections over the next decades (which mean absolutely nothing), focus your energy on getting the right people in. Not just people like you, but a diverse and complementary team. Then through conflict and discussions, you’ll make your way through this complex world.

Where is your team right now? When do you start building it to thrive in this complex world?

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Use Collaboration More to Deal with Uncertainty!

Now that we recognize that we should live with a large amount of uncertainty in our lives, and not believe like in the Industrial Age that the world can be made to be certain, how can we find a way to increase the uncertainty we can bear and turn this uncertainty into opportunity?

Hands collaborationCollaboration is the key here. Because through collaboration and creating tribes that can vet our creation, we have a group that can give us feedback before we expose ourselves too much to the world, with which we can discuss any weird idea that come to our mind. We have a group that can funnel to us the information we need to understand the present situation. We can then increase the level of uncertainty we expose ourselves while minimizing risk.

Actually, collaboration is really a fundamental key to success in the real, complex world. It allows to draw ideas from multiple brains that have been expose to multiple situations and dramatically increase our own capabilities.

Maintaining our social network as a ‘secure base’ with which we can test our latest weird idea is a fundamental capability to explore new possibilities.

Certainty in our world and our lives was an illusion. We now know it can’t work. We now have the tools and the capability to routinely collaborate across continents with hundreds, thousands of people (yes, you also: how many people are you linked with on all your social network tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc?). We still don’t take enough advantage of this new capability because we don’t really understand it.

Take advantage of your social network more. Harness this collaborative energy to increase the amount of uncertainty you can cope with – and enjoy a better life while increasing your contribution.

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Stop Propagating the Industrial Age’s Illusion of Certainty!

In the Industrial Age, for the first time in our long human history, we were conditioned into believing that our life, our environment could be made certain: regular salary increment and a sure retirement; regular working times; lower and lower variance of manufactured items and processes, etc.

The normal of the Industrial Age
How enjoyable is the “normal” of the Industrial Age?

The entire system was geared to make us believe that certain was normal. We tried hard to fit every event into normality; to diminish as much as possible the impact of unavoidable variation (like weather, for instance) on our lives. Any hindrance to our existence was to be considered a problem that needed to be addressed to bring it back to normality.

We need to recognize now how much of an illusion that was. In addition, that turned out to be quite boring. Freak events will continue to happen forever.  We need to live with a large amount of uncertainty in our lives to be successful and invent the world we want.

Many people still live in the dream of the Industrial Age certainty (although, luckily, much less since the 2008 economic ‘crisis’ which shook many ‘certain’ existences). This myth continues to be propagated by large sections of our current institutions like social security, public schools… It is important to recognize it is a myth, and resolutely move into the Collaborative Age mindset of thriving on uncertainty.

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How you Should Subtract Things Every Day from Your Life

A very famous quote by Lao Tze talks about wisdom:

“To attain knowledge, add things every day.

To attain wisdom, subtract things every day.”

Unlearning by Master Yoda
Even Master Yoda’s wisdom is that one needs to unlearn!

We are not used to consider subtracting things from our daily life, unlearning what we know, do be part of what we should do. Still a lot of very respected wise people do insist on this key skill to progress in life.

We tend to add-on, increase the clutter on our desks and lives, but not so often do be subtract. Or when we do it, it is a real crisis and it becomes counterproductive. I am personally very guilty of adding up and seldom subtracting – up to the point where it becomes too much as I tend to clean up my life (sometimes a bit too harshly).

Being able to subtract progressively and maintain an acceptable level of clutter is a key skill for happiness and success, in particular in the world of the Fourth Revolution. A few minutes per day removing things from our desks and minds is the right solution. It’s tough but it needs to be done! Would you have any other suggestion?

Hat tip to Valeria Maltoni (Conversation Agent) for the quote and more insights

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Why you should Fully Segregate Manufacturing and Creative Activities

Manufacturing (Industrial Age) and Creative (Collaborative Age) organizations require different approaches and skills. They are two different business models. As such, organizations should not try to run them in the same business unit.

Manufacturing organizations require:

  • compliance to the rules;
  • minimum variation;
  • carefully evaluated changes thus, continuous improvement;
  • production of large quantities and high physical capital intensity to achieve the necessary economy of scale.

Creative organizations require:

  • non compliance to rules, misfits and weirdos
  • discontinuous and radical change
  • small scale production and low capital intensity (outside human capital)
Apple Designed in California, Manufactured in China
Apple is a key example where creative and manufacturing activities are separated. You are not obliged to treat manufacturing as subcontractors; but you need to make it at least, a separate business unit

How can you even imaging having these two kinds of activities under the same roof, under the same budget, under the same responsible person?

Following a very general recommendation in the field of entrepreneurship and even of management, two different business models should be separated. If not run in different legal entities, they should be run in different business units. Creation of the product needs to be separated from manufacturing production. The necessary interface needs to be managed through a carefully arranged agreement.

Separate fully your creative, project creation side from your traditional manufacturing side or you’ll never manage to take advantage of the Fourth Revolution!

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