Overview: Digital Transformation

In this week’s edition, two new social media products in one week; a few good longreads for the weekend; and more stuff for your online toolbox.

an ongoing conflict between artificial intelligence and the linked but divergent project of intelligence augmentation... the difference between a future in which human capabilities are enhanced by technology and one in which humans are made effectively obsolete, versioned out by the consequences of our own ingenuity... we might be “in for an in…

In many fields of research right now, scientists collect data until they see a pattern that appears statistically significant, and then they use that tightly selected data to publish a paper ... this p-hacking ... uses a quiver of little methodological tricks that can inflate the statistical significance of a finding ... a significant problem …

Huge longform exposé - don't know whether to be impressed, amused or horrified: "... what did it mean for an online retailer with annual sales of more than $1 billion, that fills 280,000 orders per week, to be “self-organized”?... Holacracy is ... just one example of a growing movement... that seeks to apply insights derived from evolutionar…

People don’t leave companies. They leave managers — it’s their number one reason to leave... Modern business structures are built on a fundamental system of mistrust, division, and antagonism I call LCD management — managing to the lowest common denominator... companies of all sizes, in every industry, have operated without managers for decades…

the skills gap is an education problem .. we’re not preparing our future workforce ... although millennials collectively hold more college degrees than any preceding generation, they face record unemployment rates - The (Free) Crash Course in Social Media You Need to Land Your Next Job | Ryan Holmes | LinkedIn

each and every one of Google robot cars has experienced the totality of everything all its siblings have experienced. Google’s cars have driven a total of 1.2 million miles on the roads.... effectively every single car has driven that distance, has experienced it. [plus] ... 3 million miles every day running scenarios This is a machine that lea…

In trying to access the federal programs which will allow her to afford college, Joanne must navigate the websites of multiple agencies. She finds dozens of government websites which all seem relevant to what she’s looking for. Joanne is confused. Are these programs related to each other? Are they even all a part of the federal government? Are any…

There is a growing consensus among top executives that gender diversity is both an ethical and a business imperative. Yet progress is painfully slow... we have committed publicly, through the United Nations’ HeForShe initiative and the 30% Club,3 to some ambitious gender goals for our firm over the next five years—ones that won’t be trivial to …

what many of these movements’ followers share is the desire not just to disagree with their opponents, but to delegitimize, dehumanize, and ostracize those with whom they disagree... It is not their policies that these new populists share, but their emphasis on a new kind of identity politics... What would previously have been isolated cases o…

A great manager is someone that pushes you to fulfill your own potential. What you if you could do that for yourself? ... ... develop a strong understanding of your areas for growth and regularly invite ... feedback on your work? Would your team mates be willing to hold you accountable ... What if you invited coworkers to surface tensions direc…

You have nothing to fear but fear itself. Fear, and algorithms... It has never been easier for designers and non-designers to create great websites that even five years ago would have cost a fortune to build... design is dead. There is more to design than the pixel-pushing of visual design... The real designers, problem solvers... able to co…

The four phases of self-driving car development suggest we’re 5-10 years out. - Self-Driving Cars Disrupt the Crowd | Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Digital Business

Richard Edelman "... arguing my own case, for a vertical (PR) that grows into related areas in a horizontal manner" No mention (yet) of how communications impacts other internal programmes, like innovation, ideation, training, employee engagement ... - The Big Squeeze - Edelman

second-generation gender biases are ‘work cultures and practices that appear neutral and natural on their face,’ yet they reflect masculine values and life situations of men... Does your organization exhibit second-generation bias? The following three factors signal that this may be the case. - Here’s Why You Can’t Attract, Develop and Retai…

The visuals team ... the product of merging two groups: the news applications team, who served as NPR’s graphics and data desks, and the multimedia team, who made and edited pictures and video... The multimedia crew wanted to make pictures and video that were truly web-native, which required web makers. And our news apps lacked empathy... Pictu…

we built an Interactive News team from scratch... a tight-knit group of editors and newsroom developers ... creates tools and processes ... to disrupt a print-first workflow. Here’s a look at how we got there and what we learned along the way.... A newsroom developer is only a Slack message away...we have three content editors embedded in diffe…

Storytelling at its finest... should evoke a visceral reaction in its audience. There's something to be said about inviting that audience to participate in a story ...the options for how to do so are infinite... Here, we explore some great examples of interactive and crowd-sourced storytelling at its finest. - Crowd-sourced storytelling: How…

the most effective transformation initiatives draw upon four key actions to change mind-sets and behaviors... role modeling, fostering understanding and conviction, reinforcing changes through formal mechanisms, and developing talent and skills.... successful transformations are nearly eight times more likely to use all four actions than to us…

The absence of hierarchy does not necessarily mean no structure. - Holacracy vs. Hierarchy vs. Flat Orgs — Holacracy — Medium

First, some useful definitions: "Imagination is envisioning things that don’t exist... Creativity is applying imagination to address a challenge. Innovation is applying creativity to generate unique solutions. And entrepreneurship is applying innovations, scaling the ideas, by inspiring others’ imagination... the way to innovate is to look a…

Technology First starts by selecting a very specific medium for communication, then creatively exploits its full potential.... the opposite of blank slate.... Enable creative thinking by embracing arbitrary constraints. ... Put emotional adjectives in front of specific technologies... Pick an everyday interaction and internet-enable it. - Ne…

Thinking of pursuing your next idea? Read this definitive guide first... a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is all about verifying the fact that there is a market where your potential company can call home and bring in paying customers. It’s about finding your early adopters and seeing exactly they are willing to pay for.... [but] an entreprene…

Companies where leaders don't empower their teams are like merry-go-rounds: plenty of movement, but stuck in place. One of my biggest failures as a leader came just as I thought I was excelling. I judged my worth based on how many decisions I was involved in, how many meetings I sat in on, and how people checked with me first for approval. On t…

nothing about Federman’s job responsibilities at Fortune are traditional for a Time Inc. employee. He works closely with colleagues in editorial, public relations and marketing. He mines analytics for data about the best times to post stories and what’s connecting with readers. He identifies trending stories and occasionally writes one ... helps d…

In our busy modern world, I’ve found one very surprising key to bringing more quiet to the mind and in turn practicing more mindfulness, and that is using a good task management system, such as the productivity methodology GTD... knowing that I have everything captured in a trusted GTD system gives my mind space to rest and focus on whatever is…

- OpenElections: Using Tabula for Extracting Data from PDFs - YouTube

The Old Work organises labour as a factory model of work... focused on fixing the bad stuff and continuous improvement (of the old stuff)... the New Work looks to bring everyone together in a living Community to discover, reconfigure and make new combinations of strengths to innovate. They look to discover through stories the deepest level of e…

The framework probably needs some explanation, and I intend to both refine and provide more detailed explanations of the framework in the near future. In the meantime, here is our Beta v1 of The Future of Work framework. - Launching new framework: The Future of Work - Trends in the Living NetworksTrends in the Living Networks

I'm launching a enewsletter to ensure I absorb something from the social media firehose.