How We Need to Know How to Enforce Replenishment Periods

As Leo Babuta reminds us in his post ‘Antidotes to Overwork‘, we need to learnt to “Do Less By Enforcing Replenishment Time“.

“Enforcing time for rest and replenishment doesn’t come naturally to most of us, especially in our society. In our world, it’s always a matter of doing more and more. It’s always connected, always cram in more, always respond. All the time.”

“How often do you take an hour or two just to go for a walk and not read or listen to anything useful? To find silence and time to contemplate? To find space for yourself, to find room to breathe? We don’t value that, but it’s so important. You can’t function at your best without it.”

Leo Babuta continues by suggesting some approaches and techniques to really find the time to replenish. What I find interesting is the recognition for the need to have some balance between very active moments and replenishment moments. Replenishment is not just relaxation it is also being open to new ideas, people, locations and thus taking the time to grow.

When are you taking the time to grow?

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How to Account for the Cobra Effect

In complex systems, actions or decisions tend to have unintended consequences. That appears to be called the ‘Cobra effect’ after a 2001 book. This is explained with many funny examples on Wikipedia (Cobra effect article) and Quartz (Cobra effect post).

The name itself stems from an attempt by the british colonial power to eradiate cobras in New Delhi. The reward policy for each snake led people to breed them and increase their number to get the rewards. And when the reward system got cancelled, all those cobras were released, which had finally the opposite effect than the one expected.

This reminds us that in complex systems with people possibly taking decisions to game the system, decisions that look straightforward can have a different or even opposite effect. Therefore we need to systematically test the effect of a decision on a smaller scale before spreading it. And sometimes the solution to a problem is not an obvious one, but rather doing something that only looks remotely connected with the problem at hand!

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How a Rich Vocabulary Is Essential to Creativity

In this interesting post ‘The Mind of a Creator‘ Valeria Maltoni explores what make the creative mind and focuses on the importance of a diverse and precise vocabulary. Unfortunately we observe that the average vocabulary in our society becomes quickly much poorer on average.

“Language becomes poorer progressively. With technology it becomes poorest, almost zero. Linguist Tullio de Mauro did some research and found that the average person had a vocabulary of 1,500 words in 1976. Twenty years later, in 1996, that vocabulary dropped down to 640 words. In 2016, the average person has 200 words, says Galimberti.”

The problem is that “You cannot think beyond the words you know. You can think within the words you know.” Creativity is nourished by the ability to express subtle, precise concepts and ideas. With a poor vocabulary, creativity dwindles.

If you want to be become more creative, seek to expand your vocabulary!

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How To Avoid Losing Our Identity While Collaborating With AI

Following on our previous post ‘How We Need to Learn to Work with AI‘, there are also interesting points of view of how AI may lead to losing our identity, such as this article ‘Would You Survive a Merger with AI?‘

This article is focused on actual hybridation between humans and machine (a physical merger of sorts) but takes it at the philosophical level. It then shows that we can’t at the same time merge with AI, or replicate ourselves, without losing our identity.

There are thus some limits (luckily, quite remote and still very much science-fiction) beyond which our joint working with AI may lead to losing our identity, or being unclear about it.

In the short term, in order to benefit from AI without losing our identity, it may be a good idea to make sure we keep some of our identity to ourselves and do not share everything with AI, however enticing this may look!

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How We Need to Learn to Work with AI

This article ‘Humans and AI will work better when they start learning from each other‘ is part of a growing realization that AI will enhance human capabilities rather than compete or replace them.

“Trust plays a significant role in decreasing the cognitive complexity users face in interacting with sophisticated technology. Consequently, its absence leads to an AI model’s underutilization or abandonment“. “Technology will be just as good if all groups understand the evidence behind it and prepare themselves to use it effectively“.

While there are ways to improve the interaction with AI and still substantial progress is required in this area (interface design, etc), end-users must also learn to deal with, and understand the limits of AI. This is new skill-set that will need to be learnt and taught in the future.

We can expect a few years of soul-searching, finding ways to leverage better those AI engines that are pervading our lives, while those AI persona and their interface will also quickly improve.

We need to learn how to leverage the AI capabilities now available. This will take time to become a clear skill-set and I am quite excited to see how this will get formalized in terms of behaviors and adaptation of AI interfaces.

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How Our Brains Filter Perception More and at a Lower Level Than We Thought

In this excellent article ‘To Pay Attention, the Brain Uses Filters, Not a Spotlight‘ we are reminded that filtering is a major activity of our brain with a particular emphasis on attention management. However it obviously has some drawbacks.

“Somehow, even with massive amounts of information flooding our senses, we’re able to focus on what’s important and act on it.” By researching about this effect of focalisation researchers have actually found out that our brain uses deeply ingrained filtering mechanisms, beyond our cortex regions. “The attentional searchlight metaphor was backward: The brain wasn’t brightening the light on stimuli of interest; it was lowering the lights on everything else.”

Moreover, “[the] findings indicate that the brain casts extraneous perceptions aside earlier than expected. And filtering is starting at that very first step, before the information even reaches the visual cortex.” This shows that there is a substantial amount of information that gets filtered without even reaching any level of consciousness. This shows that we unconsciously filter much more than what we would believe!

Interesting new research paths are described, in particular how perception and movement get interlinked at a very low brain level.

In any case it becomes obvious that our filtering mechanisms are useful and dangerous at the same time, and they are so deeply ingrained in our brains that we can’t even hope to become conscious of it. Food for thought!

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How To Avoid that Increasing Complexity of Business Leads to Collapse

In this Gapingvoid post about business complexity, that refers to a Clay Shirky 2010 post ‘The Collapse of Complex Business Models‘, we are reminded that excessive increase in complexity often leads to collapse of organisations or societies (and not to improved adaptability).

Organisations and societies would sometime collapse because of their sophistication. According to some studies, increase in complexity is first positive, before reaching a point of diminishing returns and even becoming detrimental. And “When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.”

The issue here is not that complexity inevitably increases in organizations and societies. It does. The issue is how to ensure that this additional complexity makes the organization or society more flexible and adaptable to substantial changes and shifts in its environment – and not too rigid, leading to collapse.

In the business world I know only of one solution: allowing new activities to develop in relatively independent subsidiaries. They may one day replace the mother company as values shift, but then the accretion of new activities won’t create excessive additional complexity and the various activities remain relatively flexible and nimble. The case for the diversified group of companies as a way to be more resilient is open!

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How the Economy Increasingly Becomes a Project Economy

In this post ‘Welcome to the Project Economy‘, an interesting perspective if given on the transformation of economic activity towards a project-based activity (to be taken with a pinch of salt though, the author being part of PMI and thus promoting project-specific training and certification).

Still, the historical perspective provided in the post is interesting and quite aligned with my views. “A century [after the Industrial Revolution], the future of work has once again become a central topic. Technological advancements and automation are provoking a business transformation every bit as radical as the one set in motion a hundred years ago.” “Amidst all this chaos, one thing is clear: the 4th Industrial Revolution has unleashed The Project Economy. The fusion of physical and digital in a desire to blend speed and precision as organizations integrate strategy design and delivery, is taking hold in broader and more sophisticated ways“. The post goes on to give interesting examples in a number of companies and industries.

I certainly concur about this transformation and this explains why I am passionate about project management. At the same time, there are many different types of projects and ways to approach them, and it may be a bit excessive to broaden the concept too much or to try to put all projects under the same approaches and methods.

What’s exciting is that each project remains a single human adventure involving a limited team to create new stuff that may change the world. How many projects are you in at the moment?

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How the Number of Publicly Listed Companies Decreases

In this otherwise illuminating post ‘Fixing Capitalism’s Oligopoly: A Response To Ray Dalio And John Mauldin‘ I noticed a particular aspect, which is the strong decrease of the number of publicly listed companies in favor of private capital.

This trend is very noticeable since the end of the 1990’s. “The phenomenon is under-researched, but the papers that have been done look at issues like 1) impact of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), 2) growth of private equity capital, 3) the growth of M&A activity on Wall St and its need to keep the pipeline growing, and 4) a number of structural issues (like SOX) hurting small company formation“. The author believes that it is mostly the growth of private capital that explains this trend, which in turns tends to explain the much higher share of income captured by the wealthy (company owners). Another aspect is the increasing industry concentration with very large players that attain quasi monopolistic status.

This trend is at the same time interesting and problematic. It shows that probably a greater share of value creation is not directly accessible by the public through public shares. This, in turn, generates a number of interesting questions about the structure of our economy. Its agility is in question, and thus its future adaptability. Not quite the trend that would be expected in an increasingly unpredictable world.

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How Complexity can Emerge Even from Simple Systems

In this interesting article ‘Physicists discover surprisingly complex states emerging out of simple synchronized networks‘ we discover that complexity can emerge even from simple systems.

In fact, we know that complexity can already emerge from the ‘three body problem’, which is unpredictable beyond a certain time. Those are passive elements, however, and now scientists show how complexity can also emerge from active machines or beings. “Caltech researchers have shown experimentally how a simple network of identical synchronized nanomachines can give rise to out-of-sync, complex states“

“The findings experimentally demonstrate that even simple networks can lead to complexity, and this knowledge, in turn, may ultimately lead to new tools for controlling those networks. For example, by better understanding how heart cells or power grids display complexity in seemingly uniform networks, researchers may be able to develop new tools for pushing those networks back into rhythm.”

Complexity is more widespread than we think and how to welcome it is a major issue in the modern world. Let’s work towards this!

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How Important It Is to Distinguish Between Finite and Infinite Games

In this excellent speech ‘What game theory teaches us about war’ (Youtube), Simon Sinek reminds us that there isa great difference between playing finite or infinite games. This brings back to the book ‘Finite and Infinite Games‘ by James Carse.

“There are two types of games: there are finite games and there are infinite games. A finite game is defined as known players fixed rules and agreed-upon objective (such as baseball for example). An infinite game is defined as known and unknown players the rules are changeable and the objective is to perpetuate the game.“

He reminds us then that business or strategy is an infinite game, and those finite players won’t last long. “The game of business is an infinite game. The concept of business has existed longer than every single company that exists right now and it’ll exist long after all the companies that exist right now go away. The funny thing about business is the number of companies that are playing finite they’re playing to win they’re playing to be the best they’re playing to beat the quarter or the year and they’re always frustrated by that company that has an amazing vision, a long-term vision that seems to drive them crazy and over the long term that player will always win and the other player will run out of resources or the will and they’ll go out of business“.

There can be some differing views about how to play infinite games (see this post about whether the current unpredictability of US external policy could be a way to play the infinite game: ‘Why Simon Sinek is wrong about Game Theory.’

Still this distinction is important and it reminds us that when we play infinite games, rules are not so essential as they are constantly reinvented; and strategies such as unpredictability can be valid to have other players on their toes. Are you playing a finite or infinite game?

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How Night Lights Illustrate Economic Development

This excellent YouTube Video shows how night light illustrates the level of economic development.

The illustration around how lights went off in Syria during the civil war, or the contrast between North and South Korea, or the evolution of India’s lighting levels over a short decade are great illustrations of how to witness economic development in a qualitative manner.

At the same time it reminds us that even the billion humans we are are but a few spots on the entire earth surface, and how quickly that little flicker of light can get extinguished should keep us quite humble!

Hat tip to Alex Tabarrok in the Marginal Revolution blog.

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