Weeknotes 306
Did this week:
Digital transmutation
I’ve been working on a few things that in my head at least, are organisational digital transformation activities. Data – collecting it, analysing it, using it, understanding it – is an important focus for me. Talking to people about how I can help them think more about data in their work has been really interesting. The other thing is in helping people make the most of digital tools to work effectively.
Stop solving problems
This week’s Irregular Ideas explored the idea of problems, whether we need to define them to solve them and whether the best solutions are building better systems that dissolving problems. I realised, while writing this, that I waste a lot of the research I do, so I might try more tweeting as I find interesting stuff.
Charity in the 21st century
Did a bit more research on my Ambivalent MBA. I’m enjoying figuring out the curriculum and once I has one subject defined I intended to get on with the studying and writing for that before I figure out the subjects for any of the other modules so that I can apply agile education to it more and change the subjects, modules and how I work with them as I go. Assuming an average of five subjects across ten modules I could easily end up with fifty short essays that might make a nice ebook.
Retro and delivery plan
I wrote my retro for May, which was pretty easy as I didn’t do very much. My delivery plan for June is pretty empty too but I’m hoping to be back in full swing in July.
Bots love me
My website has been getting hit by bots over the past few days. Other than massively inflating the number of views in my analytics they don’t seem to have done any damage but I’m going to get Cloudflare set-up and maybe get around to looking for a new hosting provider.
Read/listened/watched:
McKeown on strategy
I’ve been reading and listening to Max McKeown’s ideas about strategy.
Systems thinking for civil servants
Introducing a small sample of systems thinking concepts and tools, chosen due to their accessibility and alignment to civil service policy development, it’s great to systems thinking being used in this context.
10x Not 10% Product management by orders of magnitude by Ken Norton
Thought about:
Bayesian goals
Bayes’ work on probability looks like it might provide the conceptual background for my ideas on achieving uncertain things by refining the goal as you take steps towards it.
Is it better to be consistently inconsistent or inconsistently consistent?
The answer seems to be, it depends what you value. If you want certainty then it’s better to be consistently inconsistent as you know you are always going to come up with random things. If you value creativity and innovation then being inconsistently consistent is probably your best bet.
Platform disruption in the charity sector
It’s coming. Sooner or later the charity sector will see the same kind of technology powered disruption that other industries have experienced. If those industries have been anything to go by, it won’t be any of the charities we recognise now that will be causing the disruption. And, I think, how soon it happens will depend on known factors such as how much data there is to help understand what and where the needs are, where the funding and incentives come from, and just as important, who the people are and what skills they have.