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Category Archives: a little self-knowledge
Meaningless words (for a bingo game) #innovation #assemblages #iterative #recombinant
Meaningless words which should be mocked into oblivion, but won’t be, because we all of us like those crutches, fnords and throat-clearers, don’t we… Innovation Partnership Resilience Holistic (I heard, on the radio the other day, a woman justifying smoking … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, framing
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Not every dissident is a Galileo
Sometimes people fail not because their ideas are too good, but because they are clearly – to coin a phrase – swivel-eyed loons. BUT the sorts of hierachical organisations that run things in the West, (and manage tolerably well between … Continue reading
Posted in bureaucracy, a little self-knowledge, activism
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A note to oneself re: emotional self-regulation
You can’t effectively go through your ooda loop at speed if you are constantly allowing yourself to go (or be pushed) into either child or parent mode. Ergo, stay on your feet!! Don’t dive in. Of course, your opponents will … Continue reading
Belief in magical transformations! Or the “X factor is for peasants.”
The obsession with fame is an interesting phenomenon. In a lazy kinda ill-thought-out speculative way I will say that now that the dream of salvation by God or Marx is gone (in Europe, if not everywhere else!), then the only … Continue reading
The Roy Batty Principle, or the “Empathectomy for fun and profit”
In this life, you are rewarded for not having integrity, compassion, empathy etc. If you defend your underlings (and the broader population they are supposed to serve – pupils, prisoners etc) against some stupid and damaging scheme that your boss … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, bureaucracy, fear
Tagged Dilbert Principle, empathectomy, Peter Principle
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I’d vote for this guy. #bulworth, much?
So, lots of posts brewing, on the nature of hierarchy, bureaucracy etc etc. In the meantime, via Jon Harris (who will always have a place in my heart for describing U2′s “Vertigo” as ‘pompous rock esperanto’), I came to Velvet … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism, politics
Tagged Jon Harris, Velvet Coalmine
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How on earth does ANYTHING get done?
No wonder your average entrepreneur so loathes meetings. What was it Dave Berry said – organisations have meetings because they can’t actually masturbate? Either they are poorly conceived (death by powerpoint, serial-sage-on-the-stage) or else they are adequately conceived and then … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism
Tagged ego-fodder, facilitation, facipulation, meetings
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“Blind spots”? Nah, that’s all arse-backwards… #cognitivehumility
I was sat at a lovely Indian restaurant with a good friend last week.* And we were riffing on how little anyone really knows about their own behaviours, their own motivations and drives. It occurred to me that the term … Continue reading
Tempting as it is… #Dilbert
I will not be leaving this cartoon anywhere that it could do me harm.
You, me, everybody needs a part-time… job
Woooooohooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!! OMFG, wooohooooooooooooooooooo Did I exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? Yeah, for a while. I am ch-ch-changing back…the mind*-forg’d manacles are falling way. Free(r), free(r) at last. Hallelujuah. * And mortgage-forg’d … Continue reading
