Available on Coursera
Links
[Link] Writing Simply
Paul Graham on why to Write Simply:
Of course, fancy writing doesn’t just conceal ideas. It can also conceal the lack of them. That’s why some people write that way, to conceal the fact that they have nothing to say. Whereas writing simply keeps you honest. If you say nothing simply, it will be obvious to everyone, including you.
[Link] Visionary Leadership
From the HBR’s archives, with the title “You Don’t Have to Be CEO to Be a Visionary Leader”
the relentless need for continual innovation in today’s operating climate may just give you the opportunity to promote new ideas from your own local experiences that can demonstrate potential for broader growth and even reinvention in your company
[Link] Crazy New Ideas
Paul Graham on why he asks questions – rather than voice his opinions – when someone who’s a domain expert comes up with crazy new ideas
Few understand how feeble new ideas look when they first appear. So if you want to have new ideas yourself, one of the most valuable things you can do is to learn what they look like when they’re born. Read about how new ideas happened, and try to get yourself into the heads of people at the time. How did things look to them, when the new idea was only half-finished, and even the person who had it was only half-convinced it was right?
But you don’t have to stop at history. You can observe big new ideas being born all around you right now. Just look for a reasonable domain expert proposing something that sounds wrong.
[Link] Diversity & Inclusion has a Polarisation Problem
A thoughtful essay from Lily Zheng on a thorny, polarising topic.
In this essay, I’m going to make the case that D&I workshops as we know it are designed to be unwelcome for people who haven’t bought in to their premise. I’ll start by diving into the most common assumptions embedded into today’s D&I programming. I’ll show how these assumptions can influence D&I programming in ways that can unwittingly can widen the gap in knowledge among employees, create polarization and resentment, and paradoxically, undermine future efforts at inclusion. Finally, I’ll present an alternative framework for D&I programming and explore the implications of adopting it.
HT to my AltMBA tribe member Aray M. Till
[Link] Why is the World So Beautiful
This is a fascinating conversation with Prof. Robin Wall Kimmerer, a plant ecologist, writer, and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY and a member of the Potawatomi First Nation.
“Mosses have this ability, rather than demanding a lot from the world, they’re very creative in using what they have, rather than reaching for what they don’t have,” Kimmerer told Tapestry.
“When there are limits, the mosses say, ‘Let’s be quiet for a while. Abundance, openness, water, will return. We’ll wait this out.'”
Listen to this conversation
HT John Hagel
[Link] Thesaurus Navigator
I love Dave Winer’s latest project:
It’s a word navigator. Enter a word in the text box, click the button and you get a list of synonyms. You can then double-click on any of them to see its synonyms, on and on as long as you like.
Check it out here
[Link] Big Break
Little breaks are easy to ignore and thus are wasted.
[Link] McKinsey on Stress
Even the big consulting firms are posting more about stress, with fancy graphs & charts!
At the core of this challenge for many people is a misguided view of stress itself, which contributes to our inability to recognize and manage it. Many executives view stress as an unalloyed negative, something to fight through or minimize.2 As a result, they may manage it ineffectively.
[Link]: Fight to Be Who Philosophy Wants You to Be
Ryan Halliday on the reality of life:
..we will fall short. We all will. The important thing is that we pick ourselves back up when we do. As one Japanese proverb says: fall down seven times, get up eight. Marcus (Aurelius) said it too. “When jarred, unavoidably, by circumstances,” he wrote, “revert at once to yourself, and don’t lose the rhythm more than you can help. You’ll have a better grasp of the harmony if you keep on going back to it.” You’re going to have an impulse to give in. Your temper is going to get the best of you. Fear will get the best of you. Ambition might lead you astray. But you always have the ability to realize that that is not who you want to be, that is not what you were put here to do, that is not who your philosophy wants you to be.