Category: Collaborative Age value production system

How Long Term Work Motivation is Related to Alignment with Purpose

Following up from the previous post ‘How Sexy Startups Can Also Sometimes Be Toxic Workplaces‘, one important aspect is that poor alignment with purpose generally don’t make it a sustainable venture. Toxic workplace cultures can’t be sustainable. Because if we want to remain individually motivated, our work needs to align with some purpose – and not just external motivators like compensation. This is developed quite well in Steve Pavlina’s post ‘Numbers vs Alignment‘

I find the point well written “If the numbers in your work (like sales and profits) matter more than the alignment of your work (like fulfillment, purpose, and appreciation), then even if you succeed on those terms, you may end up with bigger numbers but with lower alignment, which can strangle your motivation.”

And the corollary “People so often underestimate how much motivation matters – and especially how sensitive it is to alignment. It’s so easy to make misaligned decisions that eventually drag down motivation and lead to a place of stagnation, where it’s possible to be stuck for years.”

How aligned is your work with your purpose and what fulfills you? Is your motivation thus sustainable and not just temporary?

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How Peak Income Comes Always At a Younger Age for Each Generation

One of the graphs presented in Lord David Willetts ‘Have the Boomers Pinched Their Children’s Futures?‘ (refer to previous post ‘How Demographics Can Only Explain Part of the Millennials’ Economic Situation‘) has struck a particular chord with me. In this graph we can see the revenue profile by generation according to age in the UK.

In the speech David Willetts uses the graph to show that for the first time younger generation’s income is lower than previous generation. However I find that the most interesting part of the graph is how it shows that peak income for each generation arrives at a younger age. For people born in the late 1940s just after WW2, it happened in their late 50s; for people born in the late 1960s, when they reach about 40. This all points to a ‘peak income’ sometimes in the decade 2000-2010 with income decreasing later for all.

This observation explains why those that arrive now on the employment market won’t find the same level of opportunities. It is also a question mark about current income levels – across all generations.

Therefore the interpretation of the graph is rather that there is a general loss of income in the last decade. It impacts the start of millennials’ careers as well as all other active generations. This is the key issue that needs to be tackled, rather than inter-generational transfer issues.

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How Navigation Apps Are Changing Municipal Traffic Policies

This post ‘Navigation Apps Changed the Politics of Traffic‘ explains how municipalities and local governments are adapting to the rise of navigation apps.

The issue is that those apps cater for the needs of the drivers, and not for the needs of the wider community. “Driver-first traffic “fixes,” even with the best of intentions, have deleterious effects on transportation networks overall.” There is a collective price of having each driver optimise its own route. “One widely cited 2001 paper by computer scientists at Cornell found that a network of “user-optimized” drivers can experience travel times equivalent to what a network of “system-optimized” drivers would experience with twice as many cars. Transport engineers call the difference between selfish and social equilibria the “price of anarchy.””

There seem to be some debate on the actual effect of those apps, and whether the algorithms also include some more collective constraints (one can remark for example that on two different phone, they may not give the same itinerary, showing that they try to spread congestion).

In any case as apps encourage the usage of smaller roads not normally used for transit, local governments act in restricting speed and transit possibilities in those smaller roads normally not planned for transit traffic. This has given a different priority to municipal policies. Other possible solutions is to install tolls for transit traffic or otherwise price mobility differently, or to change the overall traffic patterns.

It is just the start of the change of our urban landscape and mobility brought by real-time navigation apps. Expect physical changes and changes of usage.

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How I Actually Am a Modern Artisan

As a consultant I realized I work as an artisan. An artisan in intellectual work, of course, but nevertheless an artisan. And I am perfectly happy doing this without trying to grow into an industrial approach.

old-fashioned artisan

In my daily consulting work, I spend my time adapting my knowledge and material to my clients’ situations, polishing it with a view on excellence, never twice producing the same although every time it is similar; learning from master and from practice to deliver ever better solutions and insights.

Thus we should see today artisans in a much wider sense than the usual touristy ‘artisan craft’ of old-fashioned love for manual work. And there are actually many artisans all over the modern world putting their love of things well done in their creations for needing clients. There are many more artisans that what you’d believe. And everyday I discover new small niche companies providing artisan-ware and services to many different parts of our societies.

Artisans are not disappearing, they are rather thriving in the new collaborative work as it allows them to have a wider audience and thus sustain their work. It co-exists with industries that are also needed to deliver the benefits of scale. Still we need dedicated artisans, and I am one of them.

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How Being Benevolent Is Not Being Naive

I tend to be rather the benevolent type in business, for example linking often people together without seeking any kind of compensation when I believe this could create value, or providing free advice based on my experience. Recently someone make the reflection that I was being naive. I thus pondered: does being benevolent make me naive in this supposedly shark-infested life?

My conclusion is that no, being benevolent is not being naive, at least up to a certain point. While it is important to protect your core and make sure there is no trespassing of certain limits, I deeply believe that being benevolent is rather positive. Of course this is all based on the consideration that we don’t live in a scarce world but rather in an abundant one. Therefore, creating value for others or supporting them in periods of difficulties is not necessary detrimental to me; and rather creates additional possibilities in the future. They may or not materialize, but at least in the short term I’ll feel good to have supported others.

Of course some limits need to be put there, and there are definitely some people that would be keen to take advantage, but I find that they are relatively easy to identify (not so easy to get rid of sometimes though!).

So, benevolent is definitely not being naive. It is even sometime being courageous; in any case, it is what we should do to create new opportunities for others – and possibly for us in the long term too.

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How Demographics Can Only Explain Part of the Millennials’ Economic Situation

I found this speech by Lord David Willetts ‘Have the Boomers Pinched Their Children’s Futures?‘ quite instructive, although I do not completely concur with the conclusions.

The main message of this speech and the associated book is that due to demographics in developed countries, baby boomers (born between 1945 and 1965) would have developed substantial benefits to the detriment of the younger generations (the millennial). While it is quite obvious that the economic situation of the younger generations is not quite as good as young people some decades ago, I believe there is a mixture in the analysis between a general trend of economics and inequality increase, and a demographic effect. Everything can’t just be put on the demographics.

I still believe that the dominating economic effect today is globalization and digitization, making it harder for people with low qualifications to get adequate compensation and putting a premium to those that are globally competitive.

Still the weight of the retirees of the baby boom in western countries will be an issue to deal with, albeit a relatively temporary one. And yes, younger generations will possibly have a less easy time in retirement and there will need to be put some limits on economic transfer towards retirees. But that may not be the biggest driver of today’s economical transformation.

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How Having the Right Type of Competition is Great

I like Simon Sinek’s argument ‘How having the right kind of rival can help you thrive in a changing world‘.

“By identifying a Worthy Rival and looking at their strengths and abilities, we can keep improving and innovating“.

According to Simon Sinek, to really understand this we also need to understand we live in an infinite game and not just in a finite game. In a finite game, competition for limited resources means the loser gets less. In an infinite game, there can be mutual benefits based on an expanding playground, with everyone winning.

Having a worthy rival is essential for improvement and progress. If that happens in a fair and almost cooperative manner it is the recipe for great mutual success. However I observe that too many people and corporations still view the world as finite and competition as a war where competitors should get destroyed.

I am myself trying often to get into a positive relationship with competitors, but I must admit that I’ve been often told that it was too naive.

Well I’ll continue until I find a worthy rival with an open infinite mindset which will help me – and me help him – get to greater heights.

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How Low Interest Rates is Not a New Situation and May be the Future too

As you may have noticed I love to put things in historical perspective. This excellent Daily Reckoning post ‘5,000 Years of Interest Rates‘ just shows how the current situation is not new. It even quotes statements from the late 19th century that expressed despair at the low real interest rates of the time.

There is even more: it would appear that the historical trend would be towards lower real interest rates: “Despite temporary stabilizations such as the period between 1550–1640, 1820–1850 or in fact 1950–1980 — global real rates have shown a persistent downward trend over the past five centuries… This downward trend has persisted throughout the historical gold, silver, mixed bullion and fiat monetary regimes… and long preceded the emergence of modern central banks.”

There is a view thus that interest rates should continue to fall down unless another period of exceptional economic expansion kicks-in again (which could be still be possible with the reach of the Collaborative Age).

Historical perspectives are always inspiring. Of course the future is never quite the extrapolation of the past, but one can only observe this ongoing trend towards lower interest rates, that may also be the consequence of more available capital globally.

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Why We Need to Work on Unfashionable Problems

I am getting fed up by the hype around fashionable ‘Artificial Intelligence’. Everything should be Artificially Intelligent nowadays (ref my previous post ‘How Automation Should Not Be Marketed as Intelligent‘). Thus I very much like this post of Paul Graham on ‘Fashionable Problems‘. His point is that too many people work on the latest fashionable technology or problem, and too little on other important aspects.

“Even though lots of people have worked hard in the field, only a small fraction of the space of possibilities has been explored, because they’ve all worked on similar things. Even the smartest, most imaginative people are surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on. People who would never dream of being fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable problems.”

On this other hand this consideration also shows that there are great opportunities in working on other things than the latest fashion (although of course it may be much more difficult to get funded). And this is what I like to consider: non-conventional people that follow their interest irrespective of the latest fashion. Paul Graham reminds us actually that “The best protection against getting drawn into working on the same things as everyone else may be to genuinely love what you’re doing. Then you’ll continue to work on it even if you make the same mistake as other people and think that it’s too marginal to matter.”

Thus, do not worry too much about the latest fashion on tech. There are so many other areas where progress would be profitable for humankind. Don’t let yourself be deterred. Find what you’re passionate about and go for it!

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How Automation Should Not Be Marketed as Intelligent

There is a lot being written these days about putting some limits to the hype of ‘Artificial Intelligence’. In this interesting post on Forbes ‘Automation Is Not Intelligence‘, the point is made that while calling stuff ‘AI-enabled’ is trendy, it does nothing to create more intelligence!

In particular, the article makes the point that automation is not intelligence. Increased automation fosters productivity, but it is only to make repeatable dumb tasks quicker and more efficiently. However there seem to be a trend to mix both aspects in current marketing.

“Vendors that push automation solutions as intelligent are potentially hurting the industry. If customers are lead to believe that various automation solutions are what they can expect out of AI systems and humans are required to add intelligent components on their own to call their systems intelligent, then the industry is heading for a rapid correction.”

The issue is of course that there is excessive hype around everything artificially intelligent (supposedly). “While there is a lot of great, new innovation that’s pushing the industry forward towards more intelligent systems capable of many of the challenging areas that have previously not been able to be solved due to extreme complexity or the need for human labor, there are just as many companies who are using the term AI as more of a marketing ploy or a way to raise money.”

There will be a correction in the industry when people realize what are really the limits of ‘Artificial Intelligence’ technology (read this other interesting post ‘It’s not Artificial Intelligence, it’s a new level of automation‘). Let’s not call everything intelligent, for the moment not a lot is really except humans.

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How Our Phones Are Listening to Everything

Following up on our previous post ‘How We Get Tracked by Our Phones and by People We Don’t Imagine‘, it’s even worse: our phones are constantly listening too! This USA Today column ‘You’re not paranoid: Your phone really is listening in‘ covers some interesting details.

It appears there is a strong suspicion that new marketing approaches is to serve adds based on some key words that are listened by the phone.

“In mid-2018, a reporter for Vice experimented to see just how closely smartphones listen to our conversations. To test his phone, the journalist spoke preselected phrases twice a day for five days in a row. Meanwhile, he monitored his Facebook feed to see if any changes occurred. Sure enough, the changes seemed to arrive overnight.”

Of course there is some convenience in being able to instruct your phone or device by voice (although I still find it odd and prefer to type), but it obviously comes with some drawbacks.

So if you want to have a really important discrete conversation, have your phone somewhere else. Even when it’s off, someone may still listen to you!

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How We Get Tracked by Our Phones and by People We Don’t Imagine

We get permanently tracked by our phones… and they don’t even try to hide it! Like me you probably receive on a regular basis a Google Maps recap of the previous month. At the start I found those emails quite creepy, now I guess I got used to them.

My location data for January 2020

Nevertheless this excellent New York Time visualization ‘ONE NATION, TRACKED: an investigation into the smartphone tracking industry‘ shows the extend it takes when applied to the entire population.

The most interesting part is that although the dataset of the location of 12 million phones provided for research is supposed to be anonymous, it proves quite easy to associate a phone with an individual based on his location pattern. Actually it is not quite possible to anonymise a data set of locations.

And the scariest bit – the data did not originate from a phone network provider or a GAFA. It “originated from a location data company, one of dozens quietly collecting precise movements using software slipped onto mobile phone apps. You’ve probably never heard of most of the companies — and yet to anyone who has access to this data, your life is an open book.“

I encourage you to read and watch the infographics of this paper to really understand what we have all accepted to get into. It would be quite easy for non scrupulous users of the database – or some surveillance state – to know exactly what we are up to.

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