How to Define Ourselves Responding Adequately to Our Mistakes

I very much like this post by Valeria Maltoni which reminds us a great truth! ‘Mistakes Happen. It’s What we do With them that Makes a Difference‘ In my mind it is a bit similar to the old saying that the worth of a sea captain is only to be seen in a storm.

We all make mistakes, some more important than others. The issue is how we respond when we realize it. Do we pretend not to notice? Do we try to hide it? Do we spend too much time bashing ourselves on the fact we have made a mistake? Do we own the mistake, apologize, and sort it out?

In this area like in many others, I believe of course that owning it and responding to it properly (not reacting to it) is the right way. And also, as Valeria reminds us, people will remember us more about how we respond to our mistakes than in the normal course of life.

Thus, in terms or trust and reputation, the situation where we have to respond to mistakes is a defining moment. How do you define yourself?

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How Renewable Energy Becomes Competitive With Existing Fossil Power Facilities

In this interesting post ‘The Third Phase of Clean Energy Will Be the Most Disruptive Yet‘, Ramez Naam exposes that clean power has now reached the stage of being competitive with existing fossil fuel facilities, which is a major milestone.

According to him this is phase 3 after two initial phases

  1. Initial developments dependent on subsidies
  2. Clean Power is competitive for new developments only

The post provides some statistics and trends to support the analysis. Still the most important is that in certain circumstances clean energy may challenge existing facilities. This leads thus to a substantial loss of asset value and upcoming major financial headaches for power companies, which often are very much in debt and still reimbursing the investment.

Be ready for substantial transformation of the energy market in the next few years, with potentially substantial value redistribution between players!

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How the Transformation of the Press Business Model Makes Access to Quality Information More Difficult

Following-up on the previous post ‘How Newspapers’ Financing Got Upended‘, the question of access of low income citizens to serious information is a major issue in our societies.

First it is important to note that it is not because information is collected and curated by a serious press company, or by state media for the sake of argument that it is not biased. However there is more confidence in the source of information and definitely some regulation mechanism to avoid fake news.

The issue remains of course that having access to serious information increasingly becomes a luxury or at least one has to commit to a minimum subscription expense, which is a disadvantage for the less wealthy. Gone are the days of the newspapers posted so that everyone could read them in passing (such as in the picture) – a sight still very much present in lower income countries. The existence of minimum access to serious journalism needs to remain warranted for all, and this is probably the next challenge.

Independent and high quality public media is a response in democratic country (financed by tax), and at the same time it is important to leave minimum access to citizens across the paywalls for all important events that need proper press coverage.

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How Online Sales just Overtook Brick-and-Mortar General Retail Sales in the US

In February in the USA, for the first time ever, online sales overtook a brick-and-mortar general retail shops sales. See for example this CNBC snippet ‘Online shopping overtakes a major part of retail for the first time ever‘. And when one looks at the curve it is deemed to continue!

This transformation of retailing was in the works for the last 15 years and it has taken all this time to reach that amazing stage. Still it is also interesting to watch that stores sales have remained quite stable over time (in percentage of overall retail, but increasing in absolute value) and that online sales only represent 11% of total retail sales.

In reality when one looks in detail at US retail sales from the US Census (latest), food & beverage stores, and most importantly, motor dealers, still sell more in value than online non-store sales.

Still, this statistics explain why large department stores are struggling in the US. And the amazing number of almost 60 billion $ per month of online sales is quite incredible when translated in a sheer number of packages sent for delivery!

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How Newspapers’ Financing Got Upended

For a long time the traditional business model of newspapers was financing through advertisement. Circulation and subscription only covered 15-25% of the overall budget. This is how they survived through the 20th century. In this interesting post ‘Winners and losers of the subscription frenzy‘ Frederic Filloux shares how this is changing dramatically with a substantial rise in the share of subscription revenue, in particular through internet.

In this article we can see in the specific example of the Seattle Times how both the current political landscape (requiring access to serious journalism) and the progressive trimming of the number of free articles visible through the paywall has dramatically increased the number and value of subscriptions. Up to the point where circulation revenue now makes more than 50% of the total revenue, and this transformation happened in about 10 years.

Of course the local advertisement market once fully benefiting newspapers has been taken over by the main online players that can provide a much more precise advertisement coverage.

With any revolution some newspapers have made it and some others haven’t; some countries are more advanced than others; and in general the support of industry moguls is also a great support to the finances of press companies (such as Jeff Bezos for the Washington Post). Still the new business model seems to be quite well defined now, and the new business model for the press established.

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How People Jeopardize their Freedom With Too Little Savings

In the last weeks I have been struck by several conversations with people that wanted to implement some change in their lives but had only limited action capability due to the fact that they had to keep an income roughly equivalent, could not afford even a month without salary or were desperate to maintain a high level of living. All this because they did not have any savings.

More and more, I consider that one condition for freedom is to have savings available. I have always been careful to save, and strive to have at least a year’s income readily available.

What kind of freedom does this bring me? Without jeopardizing my family’s quality of life, I can say no to an offer or a client, decide to start something new that would not provide me with the needed revenue level, invest in time or education, explore new ventures.

With just a little more savings I can invest in interesting start-ups, be part of some collective adventures bringing my competencies and knowledge at the service of entrepreneurs.

To be free, start by saving a substantial part of your income. Your mindset will change when you will have this mattress to protect you and when you’ll be able to consider more significant change in your lives.

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How Low Expectations Is The Secret to Happiness

In the excellent TED talk by Barry Schwartz about the Paradox of Choice, he reminds us that modern society and the large choice in everything is increasing substantially our expectations, creating unhappiness (and depression) as a result. And there he reminds us that “the secret to happiness is: low expectations“.

As he exposes from the historical perspective, “The reason that everything was better back when everything was worse is that when everything was worse, it was actually possible for people to have experiences that were a pleasant surprise. Nowadays, the world we live in — we affluent, industrialized citizens, with perfection the expectation — the best you can ever hope for is that stuff is as good as you expect it to be. You will never be pleasantly surprised, because your expectations, my expectations, have gone through the roof.“

This wise thought about expectations is worse remembering from time to time. As I meet sometimes people who always want more, I wonder whether I should remind them that having little expectation is the key to wonder, amazement and finally happiness.

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How Mark Zuckerberg Needs and Requests Increased Regulation

In an amazing turn of events Mark Zuckerberg published simultaneously in several languages on mainstream newspaper an opinion end March that calls for increased regulation of social network activities (see the Washington post version here: ‘Mark Zuckerberg: The Internet needs new rules. Let’s start in these four areas.’)

First let’s note that this move is probably due to the underlying observation that lack of regulation may spell doom on his empire. What are the four areas he is calling for increased regulation?

  • managing better harmful content and getting external input on removal rules, as well as standardizing rules
  • better rules around political advertisement
  • a globally recognized framework around privacy and data protection aligned with the EU rules
  • guaranteeing data portability from one service to the next

Mark Zuckerberg concludes: “The rules governing the Internet allowed a generation of entrepreneurs to build services that changed the world and created a lot of value in people’s lives. It’s time to update these rules to define clear responsibilities for people, companies and governments going forward.”

I observe that the topics raised are mostly about making sure all competitors will be subject to the same scrutiny as Facebook and avoid competitors that would avoid the complication of those basic requirements. The request for regulation could go beyond this minimum.

Still it is a start, and with major social network players now asking for more regulation, the door is opened for a serious regulatory review of what has become a major tool in the world’s hands.

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How Social Networks and Modern Media Isolate Large Parts of the Population

Specific groups of people, based on their condition and beliefs, have always preferred different means of information: politically-orientated newspapers have existed for a long time. Still the extent of isolation of certain groups of people has reached an unprecedented level. In the USA it would seem that “one third of the American electorate has been isolated in an information loop of its own. For this group, which mistrusts the mainstream press on principle, and as a matter of political identity, Trump has become the major source of information about Trump, along with Fox News, which has slowly been merging with the Trump government.” The detail is given in the Pressthink post ‘Hating on journalists the way Trump and his core supporters do is not an act of press criticism. It’s a way of doing politics.’

We have long noted that social networks tend to close one’s source of information to what is getting broadcast by his or her immediate connections. The extent of the situation in the US is however broader as some mainstream media, in particular the Fox News network, seem to have turned frankly one-sided; and because fake news are being disseminated from the highest governmental levels, with strong hate terminology being used as well. “These are people beyond the reach of journalism, immune to its discoveries. Trump is their primary source of information about Trump. The existence of a group this size shows that de-legitimizing the news media works. The fact that it works means we will probably see more of it.”

That this happens in a country where free speech and free press laws are among the strongest in the world show the extent of the transformation of news broadcasting our societies undergo. I do not believe the change is as dramatic as mentioned, but we need to be wary about it and track fake news and fake statements with more urgency.

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How Not To Believe in Your Thoughts

I like this quote of Byron Katie: “I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer, and that this is true for every human being. Freedom is as simple as that.”

Now the issue is of course, how not to believe in one’s thoughts. Leo Babauta in this post ‘A Simple Mindful Method to Deal with Tiredness, Loneliness & Stress‘ provides a step-by-step method.

The thing is that we need to “notice that the thoughts are causing our difficulty. Not the situation — the thoughts.” And then work to be in the moment, observe our thoughts and consider how different we would be without those thoughts. Sometimes it may require a good night’s sleep to overcome those thoughts, or maybe some entertainment to think about entirely different things for a while.

I understand it takes practice, but when one has gone through the exercise, it is very rewarding. Observe your thoughts, they have something to tell you. But don’t believe them!

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How Innovation Cycles Became More Frequent Than Generation Cycles

I recently read an analysis of the current issue facing our societies which I found interesting: the fact that in recent times, the innovation cycles have become shorter than the typical 25-30 years generation renewal cycle.

Accelerating innovation cycles since 2 centuries

We know that it can be difficult for a generation to accept new ideas and concepts and that it often takes a generational renewal to transform beliefs and usage (by the way this effect is particularly important in scientific, academical and research circles).

With innovation cycles now becoming shorter than a typical generational cycle, we raise the challenge of people having to transform their worldview, way of working and usage of technology within their own generation. And it is clear that our society is not particularly well prepared for that challenge: for example, the lack of adult education and the fact that studies are generally uniquely undergone in younger years.

I like the idea to consider this observation as a potential root cause of many tensions and issues we observe in our current society. It is powerful enough to create a lot of good questions about the need to support current generations through a workplace and social transformation that will create 2 or 3 major transitions through their adult life.

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How Deadly Powerpoint Can Be in Reality

In a previous post ‘How Memos Are More Powerful Than Powerpoints to Structure Thoughts‘ I argued against Powerpoint as a way to develop adequate content. In this excellent post ‘Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people‘, an actual example of a deadly powerpoint slide is exposed: an engineers’ slide during the analysis of the incident on the Columbia space shuttle launch that eventually lead to the loss of the spaceship upon re-entry.

In this example, the content of the slide is accurate, but the way it is presented, highlighting the wrong part of the content, may have led to take the wrong decision. The actual technical argument (the event that happened was way beyond any test or simulation and thus, available data points could not be used) was hidden in small font at the back of the slide. Again, a well argued technical note would possibly have led to structure it differently and more time could have been taken to review evidence (read the full post, it is extremely enlightening).

Another take away from this post if of course, that the way information is presented on the slide is also essential in the meaning that is conveyed, and that may people probably don’t read beyond the title!

I recently had another argument about the usage of powerpoints, this time for preparation of consulting commercial proposals. Again, I find that in that case where it is all about building a compelling story, powerpoint is not the most adequate mean. At best a shortcut.

As any tool, Powerpoint takes skill to use it properly and in the right situations. And we have not learnt enough that other tools can be used more effectively in many instances. I think I may start a crusade against the usage of Powerpoint as a cognitive shortcut in any situation!

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