Already 1/3 through this 100 posts malarkey and I haven’t run out of things to write about yet. I might soon, though, so if there’s something you think I should be writing/ranting about, please let me know. I’ll be offline for Easter break for the next few days, so no more posts til next Tuesday. This concludes your public service …
Square pegs, dodecahedral holes (part 2) [post 32/100]
Yesterday I wrote about the idea that we might be able to change the way we think about employment – building roles that suit people’s skills, rather than forcing them into boxes that might not be the right shape for them. That came out of a chat I had last week with David Nordfors, the mastermind behind i4j. We talked …
Square pegs, dodecahedral holes (part 1) [post 31/100]
How did you get the job you’ve got? What other kinds of jobs could you get? I’ve had cause to think about this again lately, since I’ve been invited to participate in the i4j think tank. This happened just as a totally arbitrary reminder came up that I was going to write something about T-shaped vs. Q-shaped vs. Square vs. …
Unauthorised Agents, continued [post 30/100]
Yesterday I posted about a pretty awful experience that I, and everyone in my address book, have just experienced at the hands of RareBridge. As I wrote at the end of that post, I emailed the CEO, Simon Gregory, to let him know what I thought of his activity. Later last night, I received a reply. He apologised “for any …
Unauthorised agents [post 29/100]
Toward the end of 2014, I received an email informing me that a friend and former colleague had joined a new professional networking site called RareBridge. When I clicked through, I found no information was available without sign-up. In a fit of uncharacteristic naiveté, I created an account. The next step was headlined, “Search for friends already on RareBridge” – …
Behold, the robot… invasion? [posts 27-28/100]
This week is MEX15, always a fun event but particularly so for me this time, as I was invited not only to speak but to facilitate some creative sessions with the goal of producing some design principles around my topic, which is robots. Since I’m pretty deeply engaged with what’s happening here, this post will have to stand for yesterday …
Good help is hard to find [post 26/100]
In 2009, Air France suffered the deadliest crash in its history. The short story is that due to a fairly common sensor failure, the autopilot disengaged. Pilots then made a series of questionable decisions that ultimately led to the crash. So, who’s at fault, was the question? Should it be blamed on the human pilots or the technology that failed? …
Waste not, want not (the mystery of the design-resistant startup) [post 25/100]
One of the students in the session I taught on Wednesday night – a super-bright 21 year old working for a startup – said he’s grown frustrated with the attitudes in the startup community, which always seem to demand a quite narrow “value proposition” defined more in business terms than in human terms. I’ve noticed this too of course, and …