Greatest Hits Blog

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This is another in a long line of books about leadership, which looks at why some people lead, why others follow, and why it matters.
• It takes a new slant by exploring how leadership has evolved over tens of thousands of years. We operate at home and work as if we are still on the savannah, leading to a ‘mismatch hypothesis’, in which there is a crucial difference between modern ideas of leadership and the kind our Stone Age brains are wired for.
• There are many different theories about why people become good leaders. They include:
• Great Man theory – true leaders are born, not made
• Trait theory – analysis of common traits in leaders reveals the formula
• Psychoanalytic – the boss takes the role of a father figure to a ‘primitive clan’
• Situational – leaders emerge in specific circumstances that make them shine
• Distributed – leadership works best when it is spread around
• Leaders often possess the Dark Triad of personality attributes: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy – they tend to be selfish and economical with the truth. It’s a strategy that works because they get the money and the women.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• It is more interesting than most leadership books, because of its historical and anthropological take, along with a reasonably light writing style
• It looks in detail at followership, and suggests that this can be a great survival strategy. Backing the right person to follow has reaped great benefits over the millennia. Kellerman’s taxonomy of followership shows 5 types:
• Where leaders become too powerful, or even corrupt, followers develop strategies to overcome them (gossip, public discussions, satire, disobedience).
• It’s amusing to think that we still vote for tall politicians, and bosses who look athletically stronger than others, but it appears to be true.

1. Isolates – they are apathetic, but can be dangerous to the leader if ignored
2. Bystanders – little or no commitment to anyone
3. Middling – reasonably satisfied participants
4. Activists – highly engaged and consistently work hard
5. Diehards – they’ll do anything for the boss

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• There are ten recommendations which pretty much amount to common sense – no bad thing, but not that new either.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This is an extremely clever book about mapping social behaviour, co-authored by Mark Earls of Herd fame, and two anthropologists.
• It argues that humans are first and foremost social creatures who deploy (often unwittingly) a range of copying strategies to get on in life.
• We are certainly not blindly driven by hard-wired instincts – we know perfectly well how to use the brains of others as storage space for knowledge.
• Cascade models help to explain many decisions, and can be likened to rivers (tributaries), trees (branches), and forest fires (ignition and spread).
• Our social brain thinking can be tree-like, as in recursive language, which allows us to embed seemingly endless sub-bits into the main thought.
• There are many parallels with Darwinian evolution: variation, transmission and selection apply to the spread of ideas as well as genes.
• There are three categories for the evolution of cooperation: group mentality (kin and groups mutually benefit), reciprocity (“I’ll do it if you will”), and reputation (status gain).
• Copying strategies really work, and include: copy the majority, successful individuals, good social learners, kin, friends, and older individuals, and ‘copy if better’.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• Successful elements of social learning can be classified. It works best if people’s direct experience is changed by interaction; if many sparks are lit in the hope of lighting a fire; if the community is small and cohesive; the behaviour has a rationale; and the results are permanently visible and sustainable.
• Their collective behaviour map is really useful:

1. Few people + few similar options = rational choice

2. Few people + many similar options = random guess

3. Many people + few similar options = directed copying (copy if better)

4. Many people + many similar options = undirected copying (what everyone else is doing)

• It is notoriously difficult to change behaviour, but anyone trying to do so should read consider three approaches: 1. Identify what stands out against the background. 2. Focus on the interaction among agents in your population. 3. Learn to predict and cope with turnover.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• This is an extremely intelligent book and, although short and well expressed, you need to be on top of your game to follow it. Concentration is crucial.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• It is subtitled How the digital age is changing our minds, why this matters and what we can do about it.
• Children as young as five are spending up to eight hours a day in front of screens; the average teen sends 2,000 texts a month; machines are competing with minds for employment and soon they will compete for our affection.
• We are losing the ability to think in a deep, creative way because we are too distracted.
• We are raising a new generation that has plenty of answers (usually nicked from the internet), but few good questions: the Screenager.
• The author looks at how screen culture is shaping the way we think – many of us are addicted to data and urgently need a digital diet.
• Connectivity addiction is hard to deal with, multitasking mayhem prevails, and education has taken on a cut-and-paste quality where proper, deep investigation of subjects and ideas is rare.
• Good ideas usually occur outside the workplace, and often when we are daydreaming or half asleep. Where we are has a deep bearing on our ability to think well – so-called ‘third spaces’ (not work, and not home).

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• It is an interesting idea that the right brain (better at abstract connections) may be under threat – the left side is getting more use the more time people spend in front of a screen.
• Corporations can’t handle people who think differently because it ruins conformity. Institutions tend to specialise, so they tend to know more and more about less and less.
• Sport and war are lousy metaphors for business because they have an end. Gardening is better because it doesn’t.
• Research shows the average office worker receives 200 emails a day, and looks at them 42 times a day. That equals four hours a day.
• We have three zones: comfort, stretch, and stress. We spend most of our time in the first, and out learning is practically zero.
• In China 66% of people believe it is possible to have real relationships purely online.
• “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” Einstein.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• Not much. The author clearly thinks we need to get a better balance in our lives, and it’s full of interesting information and smart suggestions about how to go on a digital diet.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This is a handbook for winning in a world transformed by social technologies.
• The groundswell is defined as a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.
• It works through how they work, how people use them (participation), how they enable relationships, how they threaten institutional power, how you can use them, and what to do about them.
• There is a groundswell technology test (everything in the book is branded like this), which asks:

Does it enable people to connect with each other in new ways?

Is it effortless to sign up for?

Does it shift power from institutions to people?

Does the community generate enough content to sustain itself?

Is it an open platform that invites partnerships?

• It explains a Social Technographics Ladder on which groups of consumers become more involved in the groundswell: from inactives > spectators > joiners > collectors > critics > conversationalists > creators

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• There is a four-step planning process called POST for establishing a groundswell strategy:

People: What are your customers ready for?

Objectives: What are your goals?

Strategy: How do you want your customer relationships to change?

Technology: What applications should you build? Note this comes last.

• Companies should pursue 5 objectives:

1.     Listening: research and understand.

2.    Talking: spread messages, and help them be self-spreading.

3.    Energising: find your most enthusiastic customers and supercharge their word of mouth.

4.    Supporting: set up tools to help customer s support each other.

5.     Embracing: integrate customers into how you work.

• Companies need to start small but plan for larger; reach out their most active customers; plan to drive traffic to their community; build in a reputation system; and let customers lead them.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The method is sound but unremarkable, and there’s a lot to wade through to get there, mainly because of the vast number of examples and case histories.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This book explains where to draw the line at being online.
• The author is a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and former executive at Intel, and claims that the consequences of an overconnected world cannot be ignored, because they have unexpected distorting effects on economics, politics, international relations and individual lives.
• He identifies four distinct levels of connection:

1. Underconnected: isolated ancient civilizations, primitive cultures and a few undeveloped countries. Change is slow or non-existent, and any interaction with an outside environment leads to a big shock, or sometimes even complete destruction, followed by a dangerous cultural lag.

2. Interconnected: where the system changes gradually, businesses, governments, and economic systems can keep pace. There is little or no cultural lag, and each element catches up fast enough with the others.

3. Highly connected: a critical level of connectivity that appears to make everything go right. This is the optimum state, so long as adjustments to change come fast enough to keep up. If not…

4. Overconnected: institutions change so fast that the environment can’t cope, or vice versa. This is where it all goes wrong (cf. Iceland, or any financial crash)

• He says that although we cannot turn the clock back and undo ubiquitous connectivity, we can be more cautious and exercise greater forethought with regard to the systems we build in the future.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• Wigner’s equation shows that under certain conditions particular types of large, interconnected physical systems will always be unstable. To the layman, this essentially occurs when everything is connected to everything else.
• Examples include small power cuts: (if isolated, these cause little problem, but have been known to trip massive blackouts); or the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor disaster which was started by a tiny amount of water leakage and then compounded by scores on tiny (wrong) decisions.
• In engineering terms, a positive feedback loop means that change reinforces or adds to change, and that can often be bad, leading to a vulnerability sequence.
• Society is filled with interconnections that can have the same effect even if they are not internet based.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• It is more of a history of world interconnections than a handbook for solving overconnectovity. He merely suggests acknowledging overconnectivity. reducing levels of positive feedback, and designing more robust systems.