Check out this website for the International Network for Social Network Analysis
Archive for the 'Diversity' Category
With a few exceptions, rules and regulations only serve to:
1. Divert attention from a company’s objectives,
2. Provide a false sense of securty for executives,
3. Create work for bean counters, and
4. Teach men to stone dinosaurs and start fires with sticks.
Courtesy Ricardo Semler, Maverick.
I wrote yesterday about some of my random musings about the chaos in New Orleans. One of my points was that this shows how the media might be treating African-American (I am from South Africa, where “black” is an acceptable term) victims of the hurricane. Well, if you need proof that this is happening, and the blatant and inherent racism of the media, check out the photographs and the captions provided:
Continue reading ‘Is it cos I’s black?’
I have played the trumpet since I was 11, and even spent two years doing it professionally, including a year as lead trumpeter of the National Serviceman’s Orchestra of the South African Air Force (whilst conscripted in the late 1980s). I love the instrument, and still play to this day. When I was just out of the Air Force (at the “height” of my trumpet playing ability), I attended a concert by Phil Driscoll, one of the greatest trumpeters in the world. In fact, he is a genius musician, with a gravelly voice like Miles Davis, legendary trumpet and picolo trumpet ability, plays piano, bass and a few other instruments as well. Just oozes music. When he played the trumpet, it looked and felt like it was just an extension of his body. He was one with the instrument, and I was left dazed and in awe.
At that point, I had two choices. Part of me wanted to go home, sell my trumpet and never play again. The other part wanted to go home and practice for 10 hours straight. And do the same the next day, and the days after that. Being in the presence of a master is always humbling and inspiring like that.
To a lesser extent, I continue to try and learn from the masters - even those masters that infuriate me. For this reason, I often flick the satellite TV across to channel 77, which in South Africa is the “God channel” (TBN - trinity broadcasting network), which carries the televangelists, 700 Club, and many other similar evangelical Christian preachers doing what they do. Most often, these preachers infuriate me. Their shallow interpretations of the Christian message and their clear right wing politics and ethics often incense me. Yet, these are some of the world’s greatest communicators. Man, can these guys work a crowd!! I stand in awe of their abilities.
Continue reading ‘Watching a Master’
Wikipedia is an open source, free-to-use online encyclopedia built by people like us for people like us. In order to cater for cultures across the globe, Wikipedia offers it’s content in hundreds of different languages. Problem is, content is not simply translated from language to language, but instead each language enters its own interpretations as encyclopedia entries. It gets interesting when cultures differ on certain historical “facts”…
I know I am referring a lot to Inc magazine today, but its good stuff…
The last page had a short piece on conflict in the workplace, and a consultant that goes beyond conflict “management” and “resolution” to conflict transformation. Read the full article here.
“In the workplace, our primary impulse is to turn down the tension thermostat. We paper over real and meaningful disputes in an anxious rush to create consensus—even if that consensus is largely artificial. Simply put, we are uncomfortable with conflict… It’s nice to pretend that we work in a no-conflict zone. But that’s a myth—an unhealthy, even disastrous, one. Unresolved conflict stirs up anxiety, fear, and frustration. Elaborate defense mechanisms arise, which hamper an organization’s ability to operate effectively.”
A lot of conflict is suppressed because we don’t feel confident enough in our relationships to actually test them with a good fight. I don’t think any team can be called a team until they’ve recovered from a good fight. Working through conflict to the excellence on the other side is always helpful. I like the idea of “conflict transformation”, and I think that TomorrowToday.biz could play well in this space.
For yet another fascinating example of how the blogging medium is manifesting itself, check out PostSecret. To quote the site, PostSecret is an ongoing community project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a homemade postcard.
It’s almost an online confessional. Just artier. And it seems that the originator of the blog simply can’t keep up with the demand. He has become, perhaps unwittingly, a true blog god.
It’s not for everyone, but I think it’s great.
I read a book review this morning in Wired (click here for Wired Web site) on “Flight of the Creative Class” by Richard Florida (buy it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net). It got a so-so review, and I haven’t read the book (has anyone else?). But I did like the 3 concepts/engines he seems to have built his book around.
The book is about the creative capital that the US is losing at an alarming rate, and the risk to it’s ‘Global Edge’. Florida suggests that the engines of economic growth are technology, talent and tolerance.
These 3 drivers got my attention. Mostly because one of them is the bell we’re ringing within TomorrowToday.biz, the other I am completely committed to, and the third because we’re wrestling in a country struggling to work out how to do it.
I may just go out and get the book.
Nuf Sed
More blasts today in London. I was on a plane while it was happening. I was reading a Newsweek article on the 4 bombers from last week. As I read I wondered about their families and how life for them would be here on out? Not only being the parents of these 4, but being different in England. The article I was reading addressed difference in London praising it for how diverse it had become. Even possibly suggesting there was no more diverse city on the planet.
And as I drove home and heard of todays bombings, I wondered how long diversity could hold out against this? One of the problems with difference is that we seem to be programmed to be suspicious of people who are different from us. We’re un-easy, not-comfortable, on-edge. The British national culture seems to be one of not being scared off by these bombings. Get up and get out there to show them that they can’t disrupt what is British.
And as I drove I continued to wonder how long before the the great diverse London became disrupted? How long before people stopped looking beyond difference and began to use difference as an excuse to marginalise, hate, separate, judge, etc.
My hopes and prayers are with those in London as they continue to live for difference.
Here is an interesting article from BusinessWeek that puts a new sense of urgency on The Connection Economy principle:
Arming Britain’s Muslim Youth With A Future
By Stanley Reed in London
The news that the deadly bombings of three subway trains and a bus in London on July 7 were likely the work of four British Muslims is a nightmare for the Muslim community. They’re putting British Muslims under examination as never before, as Britons of all kinds try to figure out how anyone could commit such acts.
Continue reading ‘A Positive Approach in the midst of UK Racial Tension’
I’m working on one of our teams to put together a programme that comes from a concept we’ve been working on. It started in the innovation space, and then gradually drifted accross to the diversity space because of our interest in that area. We then decided to work on it to see if we could develop the thought. We’ve come some distance, and have become stuck-ish.
Essentially it’s the following:
*Dominant business paradigm loves efficiency.
*Efficiency loves homogeneity.
*Dominant business paradigm loves homogeneity.
ENTER DIVERSITY (all over the planet)
*Diversity hampers efficiency.
*Diversity challenges dominant business paradigm.
*Dominant business paradigm develops and runs programmes to turn diversity into homogeneity.
And guess what it doesn’t work. So here’s what we say….
Continue reading ‘Diversity as Enemy of Efficiency’
Recent Comments