Pagan Tuna

The Power of Diverse Teams

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:00:00 PDT

I came across a fascinating piece of diversity research recently. In an article at Forbes.com Katherine Phillips talks about a study comparing the performance of both homogenous and diverse groups.

The diverse groups reported that they didn’t work together very effectively, and they were less confident about their decisions than the homogeneous groups, yet they consistently outperformed those homogeneous groups.

And why did the diverse groups enjoy this performance benefit?

When anyone in a group has perspectives, opinions or information that vary from the consensus… the mere presence of social diversity will make them express, and others consider, those perspectives in a way that benefits the group.

Some of this sounds counterintuitive… and yet it doesn’t surprise me greatly. For one, it’s consistent with my experience in fostering the growth of powerful teams. But also it’s consistent with my appreciation and study of modern music and musical groups.

Successful Business Strategies (As Recently Demonstrated by Apple)

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 00:00:00 PDT

I had dinner with a group of friends a few nights ago, and we enjoyed a couple of conversations that started me thinking about the business strategies that have made Apple so successful in the last few years.

I point these out because I think all of them are worthy of emulation, and few of them are actually put into practice by many other companies.

So here they are: the seven business strategies that have arguably led Apple to the top of the global corporate heap.

The Nature of God

Sat, 10 Mar 2012 00:00:00 PST

Human records indicate that some sort of belief in a God or collection of gods is a feature of almost all human culture. No matter what the continent or age, a belief in powerful, supernatural beings that somehow influence human existence is a near-constant.

At the same time, though, many skeptics have persistently questioned the existence of such a being, and beliefs about the attributes of God have exhibited wide variation, with such variations often being so deeply held that wars have been fought to advance one sort of belief over another.

Rather than approach the question of God's existence directly, it seems wiser to ask ourselves how we can best explain the facts above -- the combination of a nearly universal human belief in God, combined with so far irreconcilable differences in what sort of God we believe in.

There seem to be, most fundamentally, only two possibilities.

Reasons for Belief

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST

We often seem to assume that people say things, and come to believe them, because they are true.

It seems to me, though, that people take up beliefs for a whole host of reasons, and the likely truth or falsehood of these statements is often the least of the motivating factors at work.

Here then, are the multifarious reasons why people may choose to believe something.

Taming the E-mail Monster

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:00:00 PST

I can still remember a time when the IT Director where I worked issued an edict stating that no further external memoranda would leave our department without his approval.

A statement like this sounds terribly ancient to us today, at least partially because e-mail and other forms of electronic communication have become so common that it is hard to imagine a time when the current overwhelming flow of written text could have been staunched by such a simple, peremptory command.

Almost everyone I talk to today is suffering from e-mail overload to one degree or another: I know it’s gotten bad when people tell me that they are pleasantly surprised to see that I actually respond to their e-mails within a few hours!

It doesn’t have to be that way. The genie can be put back in the bottle, and e-mail can once again become a willing helpmeet, rather than a rampaging monster. All it takes is the discipline to follow the steps below.

Note that these tips involve all the various pieces of the e-mail process. My experience has been that it is only through this sort of systems thinking that the problem can be addressed. Local solutions (deleting everything in your inbox at the end of the week, for example) may bring temporary relief to one user in the short run, but only adds to the overall problem in the larger view.

So here they are — 15 steps to stopping the e-mail madness!

Thinking Differently about Perfectionism

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 PST

Perfectionism (noun) — a disposition to regard anything short of perfection as unacceptable.

I find it peculiar that so many of the articles about Steve Jobs following his death have used the term “perfectionism” to describe one of his key traits, as if this were a bad thing. For example, “Perfectionism is the disease that plagued Jobs,” from a piece in The Atlantic Wire.

Really? I wonder what the more desirable “healthy” state might be? And what sort of slogans might these anti-perfectionists choose for their endeavors?

Keeping Your Project Sold

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 00:00:00 PDT

Most software development lifecycles start with an initial phase called a feasibility study, an opportunity evaluation, or an investment analysis. Whatever it’s called, the stated purpose of this first step is to determine whether a project is worthy of pursuit by the enterprise. To this end, a cost/benefit analysis is often performed, risks are identified and weighed, alignment with strategy is evaluated, and then some final determination is made: here is the money you requested, proceed with the next phase of the project; or, conversely, your project didn’t make the grade, go back to the drawing board and try again.

Whatever the process followed, many projects assume that, once they have been given the green light, along with their requested funding, they are free to go forth and spend, and need no longer concern themselves with the job of selling their project: the deal has been struck, the bargain made, and the inexorable wheels of system development have been set in motion.

Alas, in my experience, reality is often more complicated than this.

The Systemic Era

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 00:00:00 PDT

We tend to divide up human history into relatively neat periods, and give them names like “The Agrarian Era,” “The Age of Industrialization” and “The Information Age.”

When I look at what’s going on around me today and try to make sense of it, I am forced to draw the conclusion that we are deep into an as yet unnamed age that I would call “The Systemic Era.” What I mean by this is that we are now at a point where the human condition is much more influenced by vast social and economic systems of our own collective making than by any natural forces or conditions, or any individual actions we might take, or even any individual intentions we might have.

Anatomy of a Web Site

Mon, 30 May 2011 00:00:00 PDT

Many small businesses, non-profits and organizational users have a fairly simple mental model of what a Web site consists of. If they were to visualize it, such a model might look something like this....

While this model is sufficient for read-only users, it is probably overly simplistic for those interested in having a site built for them. In this case, we should at least consider the following....

Cell Phones and Sheet Metal

Wed, 04 May 2011 00:00:00 PDT

When I was growing up in the sixties, gas and steel were plentiful and cheap, and the major US automakers were unchallenged by foreign competitors. There was little real innovation in autos at the time — every car had its engine in the front, and drive wheels in the back, for example — yet the big three manufacturers seemed to produce an almost endless variation in makes and models, with a fresh batch appearing each year. In fact, it was common practice for both Ford and GM to take the same car and make it available as part of two different lines, with different model names and slightly different sheet metal. There was little real differentiation, but seemingly unlimited variation, all driven by market demand. All of these automobiles satisfied the basic requirements for transportation, but buyers craved variety, even if the differences were only superficial. Some owners even bought a new car every year or two, not because of any significant advances in the newer models, but simply because they were tired of their old models and ready for something new, something different.

I mention all of this now because the mobile phone market today reminds me of nothing so much as the automobile market of the sixties. Barriers to entry limit limit the number of major carriers in the market to less than a handful. There is little fundamental differentiation between the major providers, in that all of them satisfy a buyer’s basic requirements reasonably well. The purchase of a new device is not viewed as a major financial investment, nor as a commitment for more than a year or two. The devices in question reflect, to a significant degree, the public personas of their owners.