🖋️ 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.
What Drives Us
StoweBoyd
Interesting read, questioning the relevance of Maslow in this new century. I think he is onto something.
Trust
CX in the age of privacy and trust, part 3: Can we rebuild trust?
Tim Walters
Fits nicely into something I read recently from Union Square Ventures .... Trust is offence (trust gaps create opportunities for startups) as well as defence (trust is a moat).
Skills
Soft skills ... wooly, fluffy, comfortable ... not like ' real, hard, proper skills are they?
Soft skills, bendy, malleable, unmeasurable ... nothing like ' real, hard, proper skills ...
.. and yet
I often talk about vocabulary and language .... here's another one ... because if you list all the skills that people are highlighting as important in the future - it's close identical to the soft skill list.
My advice ... get into that cuddly warm blanket and embrace those soft skills -- you can always learn the other skills as and when you need them ... despite the name ... they're not that hard.
Character
I was really taken by these words that came in an email from one of my newsletter readers. Capturing it for posterity ... because it is important.
Character may be something you are born with and largely in place by age 5 but surely it is something that is developed and refined in many ways through a thousand experiences in both good and bad directions. Right?
Since a zillion years ago I have ALWAYS subscribed to "hire character, teach skills". It has never let me down and the boneheaded moves I have made here and there were when I deviated from this.
The Future of Work
First, there are many possible futures - it is not yet clear what the future is, so we should be asking what is ...
A Future of Work?
Second, what the hell is ‘work’ - why do we care about it?
If you ask most people if all their creature comforts were taken care of - would they continue to do what they are doing? More than likely they will answer ’no’ - the question then is what is ...
The/A Future of Income?
Third, the future is already here, so let's call it
The Present of Work
…. and by the 'Present of Work' - your life, labour, time to do your work is not a gift, not a present. You should be paid fairly and equitably for your contribution.
Thinking Allowed
This is a People First post that was originally on the People First domain. It has been moved here as part of my domain consolidation program. It’s a steady and slow WIP as I check each entry, so do please bear with me.- More about People First
- Other People First Posts
(not just from the ‘other domain’ … all of them.)
Technology
Technology is one of the eight pillars of People First ... with a single, solitary 'stone’, a mighty 'Sarsen' reaching to the sky that is that pillar.
Technology ... OMG ... Technology
- Owned
- Managed
- Governed
... not by you - by others.
'A' Future - Not 'The' Future
Is it really a dimension if you can't travel in the opposite direction?
The Things We Say
The Persistence of Memory - 1931
Sometimes we get so caught up in working out how to communicate across national boundaries, we forget that we can barely communicate within them. That’s why language is one of the eight tenets of People First.
Our language slowly became invested with mechanical metaphors: We needed to grease the wheels, crank up the business, dig deeper, or turn a company into a well-oiled machine. Even everyday phrases, such as “fueling up” for eating lunch or “he has a screw loose” for thinking illogically, conveyed the acceptance of humans as mechanical devices.
Douglas Rushkoff
How The Future Works - The Arrogance!
In fairness, the full title was
How The Future Works:
Why your ultimate job is to be HUMAN.
Well yes. Couldn't agree more ... but that opening line - that suggests that it is all pre destined. This ... is how .... it is ... going to work ... Surely the Future hasn't yet been decided?
Always Stay In Your Own Movie
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion
A High Tech Dystopia - coming to a city near you!
[Under Cover of Mass Death, Andrew Cuomo Calls in the Billionaires to Build a High-Tech Dystopia](https theintercept.com 2020 05 08 andrew-cuomo-eric-schmidt-coronavirus-tech-shock-doctrine) … including Eric from Google (who has now left)
Google owns Sidewalk who were doing something similar in Toronto … but, well that was cancelled just two days ago
So, now what? Oh this;
“The tech companies to which Schmidt has deep ties, and which populate the influential advisory boards he chairs, have all repositioned themselves as benevolent protectors of public health and munificent champions of “everyday hero” essential workers (many of whom, like delivery drivers, would lose their jobs if these companies get their way). Less than two weeks into New York state’s lockdown, Schmidt wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that both set the new tone and made clear that Silicon Valley had every intention of leveraging the crisis for a permanent transformation.
Wall Street. Main Street.
It used to be Wall Street and Main Street.
Now it's Wall Street versus Main Street.
When you read all the analysis, what can I add, other than connecting the articles to a story that highlights the challenges society faces through this pandemic. The stories are new, the underlying themes are not. I have been talking about them for a couple of years. What is new is that they are getting broader attention. Amplification.
Now we need to do something about it. Before we fall back into the ‘normal’. Or worse - accept a ‘new’ normal, because that is ‘just the way it is’.
California is seen as a leading light in the fight against COVID - but do some underlying figures suggest a deeper truth?
As always the numbers won’t be exactly right.
Total cases in CA : 53,611
Fully 46% of those are in LA County.
In fact 66% of all CA cases are in the top 4 counties in CA - SOCAL specifically and have 72% of all CA deaths.
In NORCAL; San Francisco, Santa Clara, San Mateo, Marin, Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Cruz account for just 14% of all CA cases.
Those are the six counties in the Bay Area that were the first counties in AMERICA to go into lock down. Everyone laughed at the time.
Meet the Bay Area doctor who ordered America’s first coronavirus lockdown
Not Scientific - But Interesting
You could be forgiven for thinking that all of the world's problems that were top of our collective mind as we celebrated the closing of 2019 are now solved.
