Photo by slappytheseal . Click for original.

Or are you the Catfish?

“Vince Pierce: They used to tank cod from Alaska all the way to China. They’d keep them in vats in the ship. By the time the codfish reached China, the flesh was mush and tasteless. So this guy came up with the idea that if you put these cods in these big vats, put some catfish in with them and the catfish will keep the cod agile. And there are those people who are catfish in life. And they keep you on your toes. They keep you guessing, they keep you thinking, they keep you fresh. And I thank god for the catfish because we would be droll, boring and dull if we didn’t have somebody nipping at our fin.” – From “Catfish” (2010)

This is another presentation from Jeff McNeill (who brought you the Drucker and Goldratt Concept map).

This one is an introduction to Information Graphics, a topic I that has fascinated me ever since coming across Edward Tufte and recently stimulated by Dan Roam’s superb Back of the Napkin series of books on Visual Thinking.

Originally posted to LimbicNutrition.

This little book is getting rave reviews, most notably from “Back of the Napkin” author Dan Roam who writes:

“A truly wonderful book has just hit the stands: Ken Watanabe’s Problem Solving 101. If you like The Back of the Napkin’s approach to looking at the world, you owe it to yourself to get this book.”

Problem Solving 101 – Official site

“Problem Solving 101″ by Ken Watanabe – Amazon.com

“One of the most important group decisions made by a bee colony is where to locate the hive. Bees use a kind of “idea market” to guide their discovery: The colony sends out a small number of scouts to survey the environment. Returning scouts that have found promising sites signal their discoveries with a vigorous dance, thus recruiting more scouts to the better sites. The cycle of exploration and signalling continues until so many scouts are signaling in favor of the best site that a tipping point is reached.

The bees’ decision making highlights both information discovery and information integration, two processes that are crucial to every organization but that have different requirements. A centralized structure works well for discovery, because the individual’s role is to find information and report it back. In contrast, a richly connected network works best for integration and decision making, because it allows the individual to hear everyone else’s opinion about the expected return from each of the alternatives. The bees’ process suggests that organizations that alternate as needed between the centralized structure and the richly connected network can shape information fl ow to optimize both discovery and integration.”

From: The HBR List 2009 – How Social Networks Network Best

The Observer have a series of interviews with Malcolm Gladwell, best known for his superb book “The Tipping Point”, and and extracts from his new book “Outliers: The Story of Success“:

Stating the obvious, but oh so cleverly (Sun 23rd Nov 2008) – In investigating what sets geniuses apart, is Malcolm Gladwell also asking what makes him so special, wonders Jason Cowley

The man who can’t stop thinking (Sun Nov 16th 2008) – Malcolm Gladwell is a global phenomenon, one of the most brilliant and influential writers of his generation. His bestselling books, including The Tipping Point and Blink, explore and capture social trends and behaviour in ways that define the age. On the eve of his new book about the nature of success he discusses racial politics, obsessiveness, girlfriends – and his own fear of failure.

Why Asian children are better at maths (Sun Nov 16th 2008) – Extract from Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, ‘Outliers’

A gift or hard graft? – (sat Nov 15th 2008) – [Extract from Malcolm Gladwell's new book, 'Outliers' ] We look at outrageously talented and successful people – the Beatles, Mozart, Rockefeller, Bill Gates – and assume there is such a thing as pure genius. Not necessarily, argues Malcolm Gladwell…

Outliers: The Story of Success – Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com .

An introduction to the book and some of its ideas at Malcolm Gladwell’s website.

The faculty at Executive Rockstar have a great video introduction to Issue Decomposition, one of the most useful tools in the consultant’s toolkit.

Issue Decomposition is essentially a modified and structured Socratic interrogation (iterative interrogative loop)  that has its modern origins in Cold War strategic thinking and its resultant field of Game Theory.

It was developed to help with high stakes multilateral negotiations, like Nuclear Arms Reduction, by clarifying the core issues and elements of any problem or situation.

It has evolved into one of the best but least known about decision support systems.

It is both very simple and powerful tool that can liberate those bedevilled by a lack of clarity or confusion.

Check out Phil’s introduction over at the Executive Rockstar Secrets Blog:

Executive Rockstar Issue Decomposition Crystal Clear Thinking | Secrets Of Executive Rockstars

In a thoughtful post entitled “Thoughts on the Financial Crisis“, Tim O’Reilly quotes a Rilke poem:

I can tell by the way the trees beat, after
so many dull days, on my worried windowpanes
that a storm is coming…What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.

He explained the quote like this:

There are a lot of people bloviating about the financial crisis. It’s outside of our area of expertise, so there didn’t seem to be a lot of urgency to add to the hot air. Even professional economists and financial experts disagree on where this is going. I’ve been reading a lot, and sharing the best links via my twitter feed, but frankly, I’m feeling that we’re in the middle of a wave that no one completely understands.Meanwhile, I did in fact spend my NY Web Expo talk on the idea that “I sense a storm coming” (Rilke quote), and the idea that companies and individuals need robust strategies (ones that can work even in uncertain times), with one robust strategy being to “work on stuff that matters.”

In a letter to his own employees where he elaborates on this, he passes on some great advice that we can all heeded:

Many of you have no doubt been alarmed by the developments of the last couple of weeks in financial markets……robust strategies are ones you’d adopt in good times and in bad…we probably end up with more robust strategies if we assume the worst rather than the best.

We could be in for a long, rough time in the economy. I’m not going to say otherwise.

But I also want to point out that rough times are often the best times for creativity, opportunity and change.

…And if you look at history, you see that this has always and everywhere been true. It’s not an accident that economist Joseph Schumpeter talked about the “creative destruction” inherent in capitalism. Great problems are also great opportunities for those who know how to solve them. And looking ahead, I can see great opportunities.

The energy crisis (both global warming and the oil price shock) is helping people to focus on how technology can transform the energy sector. The financial crisis has demonstrated just how out-of-whack an unregulated, proprietary, black-box approach can get. This will lead to
an emphasis on regulation, but I hope, above all, on transparency. This is of course analogous to what happened with open source software. Meanwhile, the mobile revolution will continue, regardless of the state of the economy. If it can prosper in Africa, it can prosper even in an
American downturn. And all the stuff we’re exploring with Make: new materials, new approaches to manufacturing, and the “open source” approach applied to hardware, will take us in unexpected directions.  And all of these areas can benefit from what we do best: capturing and
spreading the knowledge of innovators.

We don’t know yet how problems in the overall economy will affect our business. But what we can do now are the things we ought to be doing anyway:

• Work on stuff that matters: Assuming that the world does go to hell in a handbasket, what would we still want to be working on? What will people need to know? (Chances are good that they need to know these things in a world where we all continue to muddle along as well.)
• Exert visionary leadership in our markets. In tough times, people look for inspiration and vision. The big ideas we care about will still matter, perhaps even more when people are looking for a way forward. (Remember how Web 2.0 gave hope and a story line to an
  industry struggling its way out of the dotcom bust.)
• Be prudent in what we spend money on. Get rid of the “nice to do” things, and focus on the “must do” things to accelerate them.
  These are all things we should be doing every day anyway. Sometimes, though, a crisis can provide an unexpected gift, a reminder that nobody promised us tomorrow, so we need to make what we do today count.

This goes well with his recent essay “Lessons from 4 independent years”

In 2003 I quit my management job at Microsoft to try to live by writing books, teaching and public speaking. It was the scariest decision I’d made in my life and here on the other side, about 4 years later, is what I’ve learned. If you believe life is to be explored, here are notes from a work adventure. There’s no amazing new theory – you may have heard all this before, but here it is, in first person. [More: Lessons from 4 independent years ]