Archives for July 2012

• Declare Your Radicalness – Umair Haque – Harvard Business Review

  Thought provoking, albeit a bit long: “In other words, we’re incrementalists. We may honor the radical — but we surround ourselves with the banal, trivial, humdrum, and tedious”

  “…but I believe that we, each and every one of us, is capable of more than incrementally, cautiously, timidly, option-3-in-slide-14-in-the-powerpoint-deck not so bad. I think we’re capable of radically, explosively, dangerously, laughably, hopelessly, impossibly better.”

  tags: incrementalism radicalness hbr

• Meet The League Of Extraordinary Women: 60 Influencers Who Are Changing The World | Fast Company

  Truly inspiring and very well done: “The previously untold story of how an unprecedented network of high-achieving women from the world’s largest companies, innovative startups, philanthropic organizations, government, and the arts combined forces to change the lives of girls and women everywhere.”

  tags: fastcompany theleague ellen-mcgirt

• Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? – YouTube

  “Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.” — TED Talk, 2006

  tags: creativity TED

• 1024 Words: The Devops Butterfly Effect

  Nice infographic and bite-sized post by the always excellent, Lori MacVittie of F5:

  “Chaos theory claims a butterfly flapping its wings in one area of the world can result in a hurricane elsewhere. The impact of devops – or the lack thereof – may not be as devastating, but it does have an impact in terms of time, money and risk.”

  tags: devops

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Let Your Ideas Go – Nilofer Merchant – Harvard Business Review

  “Now, I wasn’t always a believer in openness. I once ran right over other people, because I wanted to be “right” more than I wanted to build an idea that became real in the marketplace. And I personally liked being in charge and controlling and telling other people what to do. I came up through business with the old mentality. In my 20s, I ran a 200M unit at a Fortune 500 company. I remember one particular time when I was locked in a death match with a colleague over whose idea would win. I kept my idea in a closed fist, and fought tooth and nail to both prove it was best and I was the best. I won. The board adopted my plan.

  And yet ultimately I lost. I was fired a month later because the team didn’t trust me. I also lost my best friend with whom I had once run a marathon. It was a spectacular failure that helped me move past the industrial era thinking I was trained in.

  I started to understand, for any idea to win, I had to let them go, I had to let other people in. After now another 12 years of working through different approaches, I’ve come to a new understanding. It is this: the future is not created; the future is co-created. Whenever we want something bigger, and better, and faster, we need to be able to let go of a tight grip and open up.

  Openness is powerful, even catalytic…”

  tags: ideas openness

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.