🖋️ LongForm
Want to reduce the noice and just focus on things with a little more meat - the this category is for you. Like so much on this site we have a ‘WIP’ as i take some out - and put some in - but safe for at least starting in 2026.
Intuit FAIL - And All Because Of A Failure To Communicate!
‘Storm in a teacup ‘or fallout not yet settled?
At the very least the story reflects poorly on Intuit’s head of communications who clearly doesn’t understand how communication works in 2024.
And yes I have listened to the whole podcast. The guy clearly doesn’t even understand journalism!
🔗📼 What we’ve got here is failure to communicate
🔗 Intuit’s PR Team Has Seemingly Never Heard of the Streisand Effect
Good post from John @Gruber today - and not wrong. But I think there’s more.
🔗 This is Rick Heineman’s LinkedIN Profile
- 1.144 followers on LinkedIN
- He seems to have NEVER posted - despite being at Intuit for 7 1/2 years
If you are ‘THE’ dude for communications at a place like Intuit - you should understand how social works. The data on his profile suggests he doesn’t. For all I know he might be a Rock Star over on TikTok - haven’t bothered to look - but for Intuit - surely this is a place to have a presence?
He wouldn’t even need to do it himself. He has ‘people’ for goodness sake.
All I know is that IF you are in corporate communications for any enterprise - you need to be at least socially aware. ideally ‘active’ - whatever that means. . If that company is B2C (and I think Intuit is) - then double down on this.
He got promoted just 6 months ago. Maybe he was trying to make a name for himself.
He clearly has.
📚 A Story
Not mine, but it was so lovely I wanted to drop it in here, so that as ‘link rot’ continues - I will at least have it here. Who knows, you might already know it, it seems to have been circulating the socials - so of course - I did a little bit of triangulation. It looks legit.
The Story
At 40, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who never married and had no children, was walking through a park one day in Berlin when he met a girl who was crying because she had lost her favourite doll. She and Kafka searched for the doll unsuccessfully.
Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would come back to look for her.
The next day, when they had not yet found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll saying
“please don’t cry. I took a trip to see the world. I will write to you about my adventures.”
Thus began a story which continued until the end of Kafka’s life.
During their meetings, Kafka read the letters of the doll carefully written with adventures and conversations that the girl found adorable.
Finally, Kafka brought back the doll (he bought one) that had returned to Berlin.
“It doesn’t look like my doll at all,” said the girl.
Kafka handed her another letter in which the doll wrote:
“my travels have changed me.”
The little girl hugged the new doll and brought the doll with her to her happy home.
A year later Kafka died.
Many years later, the now-adult girl found a letter inside the doll. In the tiny letter signed by Kafka it was written:
“Everything you love will probably be lost, but in the end, love will return in another way.”
Embrace change. It’s inevitable for growth. Together we can shift pain into wonder and love, but it is up to us to consciously and intentionally create that connection.
The First Mile is Owed, the Second is Bestowed
Not my words - but I do like them (one of my business connections down here in Aotearoa dropped them on LinkedIN this morning.)
The first mile is owed, the second is bestowed. The first is mandatory, the second is voluntary.
The first mile belongs to others. The extra mile belongs to you and you alone.
It is therefore always in the second mile where character, nobility and greatness lie.
I tried to source them - but nothing specific came up, though a version of them seems to be part of ‘Chick-fil-A’s’ service program. And - no attribution - other names that emerged in the research included Ayn Rand and Jordan Peterson.
Alrighty Then.
Disruption is not Destruction
🔗 Nice to see ‘Disrupt’ ‘growing’
… not by size - it has been a big show for a long time - but in terms of thinking.
To my mind the revolution that drives tech startups is disruption - yet too often the result is destruction. Sometimes directly, sometimes an unintended consequence. (I Need to Write That Post.)
Beyond that, the historical challenge is that disruption and destruction seem to get conflated - even at times used interchangeably. They are not the same thing.
In short ..
Disruption can be positive or negative, acting as a catalyst for change depending on how we view it.
Destruction is the act of causing irreparable damage or making something cease to exist.
But there’s more … that other word … ‘innovation’.
Innovation is too often associated with ‘disruption’ - but that is not actually the case, though ‘disruptive innovation’ does tend to grab the headlines for radically altering industries or ways of thinking, but not all progress has to come from upheaval.
In many cases, steady, incremental improvements can lead to significant advancements without the need to completely overhaul existing systems. Building on what already works, refining processes, or enhancing current technologies can be just as powerful.
Both disruption and gradual innovation play important roles in driving progress—it’s about choosing the right approach for the context and the goals at hand.
Nobody explains this better than Geoff Moore (of Crossing The Chasm fame), who wrote Zone To Win … His framework speaks volumes.
.. and worthy of another ‘reminder’ post sometime, (A Second Post I Need to Write.) but not the point of this post, which is that this all came to mind as I was looking at the headline speakers for Disrupt this year.
Delighted to see Mary Bara headlining. To be clear, I am no gear head / auto follower - but it seems to this casual observer that she has done a much better job at navigating the shark invested waters of the global automobile industry than her major competitors. The nay sayers will argue ‘lack of innovation’. They are wrong. It’s just that her focus has been on the right side of Geoff’s matrix. Not to say that she hasn’t also been pushing on the bottom left, just not always with great success and that is where all the noise is.
/ #TwoCents
🎥 Gunpowder Milkshake, 2021 - ★★
I dunno - I thought it might be fun - it was for a short while - another failure to communicate. Sorry - and no idea how it ended.
Gunpowder Milkshake, 2021 - ★★
I dunno - I thought it might be fun - it was for a short while - another failure to communicate. Sorry - and no idea how it ended.
🎥 The Marksman, 2021 - ★★
Liam doing what Liam does. I couldn’t be bothered to get to the end, so two stars is generous.
The Marksman, 2021 - ★★
Liam doing what Liam does. I couldn’t be bothered to get to the end, so two stars is generous.
Spatial Computing Has Another Contender - AND - They Are Not Called Meta.
Stumbled across this a week or so ago and it got me to thinking - remember the 🖇️ Vision Pro?
Still don’t have one - no plan to - no personal use case (desire is apparently not a use case … who knew?)
That said, there are bundles and bundles of Business Use cases.
Anyway, turns out that 🔗 Sightful are coming out with a solution to a specific use case early 2025.
Their glasses predates Zuck’s and I would argue stand to be adopted more because they are going to be focussed on what looks like a single use case … virtual screens in confined spaces.
Yes folks - Spatial Computing for the rest of us (though to be fair - no pricing that I can see - so may still be only for the wealthy.)
Revenge Of The Nerds - Real Revenge
Back a few years ago - I raised the idea that 🖇️ ATS systems should just be banned.. Nothing changed.
Then I found this clip from The Monkees TV show that aired in the late 60s … 🖇️ The Monkees Predicting ATS software THIRTY YEARS before it appeared. Yes - 30 years is right - that’s when these things started to appear.
Of course in the intermediate time - they have just got better worse.
Even to the point of AI🖇️ Avatars Doing Job Interviews
You cannot make this stuff up!
A lot of my objections about so much of this tech is that it;
- ends up in corporate hands
- is misused
- is badly misused
- is extremely and badly abused
… and all the time never does anyone build a similar system for people. AND corporates don’t end up recruiting the best people for reasons like;
- the best people ‘don’t have time for that’
- the best people want to work with the best people - not bots
- the best people don’t tune their resumes to be Keyword and SEO compliant - necessary if you stand any chance of an ATS letting you through its gates
Until now. Brilliant …. The new story is from 404 Media. I haven’t checked but - does this tickle your fancy? It does mine …
The solution is sitting in Github - 🔗The solution is sitting in github so I am not qualified to comment on how well this works - but I have friends.
Of course corporate HR is going to declare ‘no fair’ because their systems are going to be swamped … too bad.
I presume that someone is going to fork the code and use it to apply for contracts .. and it wont be long before their AIs contact someone on Amazon Turk and convince them to register and sign on (on their behalf) for Job Boards and Recruiter sites - so we can do the same thing there. (Of course it won’t be long before the AIs can also do that.)
We know that the retaliation is going to happen - example case - someone inside the company uses their brains and writes code to get their 5 day job done in 2 to 4 hours - and then take a second job - repeat - and a third job - repeat … what do you think the corporate does when they find out? Promote them?
My prediction - they will work out how to block this access.
Let the battle begin.
🎥 Chief of Station, 2024 - ★★★
Not bad to begin with.. but kind of fell off into cliches .. and isn’t Aaron a bit old to be brawling and fighting in the field?
Chief of Station, 2024 - ★★★
Not bad to begin with.. but kind of fell off into cliches .. and isn’t Aaron a bit old to be brawling and fighting in the field?
🎥 The Union, 2024 - ★★★
I dunno .. Marky, Halle AND J.K. .. great cast .. so you expect a bit more than average? Don’t you? That said the choreography of chasing the case down the side of a building was well done. But if that’s the peak .. you wonder why I gave it 3 stars. Don’t you?
The Union, 2024 - ★★★
I dunno .. Marky, Halle AND J.K. .. great cast .. so you expect a bit more than average? Don’t you? That said the choreography of chasing the case down the side of a building was well done. But if that’s the peak .. you wonder why I gave it 3 stars. Don’t you?
🎥 Rebel Ridge, 2024 - ★★★★
Three and a half stars … rounding up to 4 .. just for the audacity to remake Rambo and not give Sky any credit. Seriously .. not bad at all.
Rebel Ridge, 2024 - ★★★★
Three and a half stars … rounding up to 4 .. just for the audacity to remake Rambo and not give Sky any credit. Seriously .. not bad at all.
