#31 IN AN OCCASIONAL SERIES OF ASTONISHING MANAGEMENT BOLX…

This particular management bolx  is so far out there that we may be witnessing the development of an entirely new language, a language so highly evolved that not only do its listeners not understand a word of it, neither do its speakers.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you Tim Cook, CEO of Apple:

…Cook also acknowledged it’s possible that popularity around the phablet iPhone 6 Plus is cannibalizing iPad sales.
image

“When I back up I believe that over the long arc of time that the iPad is a great business,” he said in January.

THIS IS THE BEST BIT…

“I also have visibility obviously to what’s in the pipeline and feel very, very good about that.”

Apple’s current iPad Air 2 has a 9.7-inch display, with the smaller iPad mini 3 featuring a 7.9-inch screen, just in case anyone gives a toss.

You can’t play 20 questions with nature and win « Mind Hacks

“That the same human subject can adopt many (radically different) methods for the same basic task, depending on goal, background knowledge, and minor details of payoff structure and task texture implies that the “normal” means of science may not suffice.”

Another perspective on the failure of normal science.

(Sorry, climate change deniers, antivaxxers, intelligent designers [now there’s an aurochsy-moron] and your ilk, that doesn’t mean I agree with you that science is wrong; all that’s being said here is that the current approach to some huge problems isn’t working.)

“…In Allen Newell‘s 1973 paper, a classic in cognitive science … he confesses that although he sees many excellent psychology experiments, all making undeniable scientific contributions, he can’t imagine them cohering into progress for the field as a whole”, writes Tom Stafford.

My immediate thought was to jump to a comparison with management theory and its interventions: improve performance, improve engagement, better customer service, data gathering: the twenty questions of management consultancy.

http://mindhacks.com/2015/02/10/you-cant-play-20-questions-with-nature-and-win/

Variance or deviance?

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/02/variance-or-deviance.html

“Packaged goods, leadership or governance–when you expect (or demand) that people don’t deviate, you’re robbing them of their dignity and setting yourself up to be disappointed.”

And if you are a local council, or any sort of community imitative, we can go further and celebrate and learn from “positive deviance”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_deviance

“The concept first appeared in nutrition research in the 1970s. Researchers observed that despite the poverty in a community, some poor families had well nourished children. Some suggested using information gathered from these outliers to plan nutrition programs.”