It’s Evolutionary Psychology Stupid

(Editorial Note : This paper was originally prepared for the 2005 Liverpool Conference on Robert Pirsig and his Metaphysics of Quality (MoQ). It is a personal non-technical view of the MoQ, and indeed the first part of paper is an entirely subjective and naive account of the author’s “thought journey” that led to reading Pirsig … Continue reading “It’s Evolutionary Psychology Stupid”

Thinking Matter

I’m a fan of Andy Martin – his books and his blog. Though he blogs infrequently, he has two posts in June that I only spotted accidentally today. One, a reminder that I’ve still not yet read Waiting for Bardot, whereas it is soon to be released as a film. Two, however, the piece that … Continue reading “Thinking Matter”

There’s a name for it @DavidGurteen

Remote working is all well and good, but as I’ve always said, unless the work is trivially straightforward, you need a pre-established good working relationship with the team; those you need to collaborate with remotely. And you need to top up that relationship, get re-aligned, back on the same page, etc with regular periodic face-to-face … Continue reading “There’s a name for it @DavidGurteen”

Motivation 3.0 – Pink Does Maslow

Dan Pink’s “Drive” caught on as a best seller in the last couple of years in promoting the concept of “Motivation 3.0”. Of course, the terminology catches the fashion of the internet generation, and good luck if the brief readable book, with its “Toolkit” of ideas does lead to more management catching on in more … Continue reading “Motivation 3.0 – Pink Does Maslow”

Dual People

I need to finish off my notes on Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” since I posted some criticisms before I’d read the concluding chapters. Strange to read the explicit dualisms: Two systems – Fast intuitive thinking and Slow considered thinking. Two species – Humans (reasonable) and Econs  (entirely rational). Two selves – Experiencing self … Continue reading “Dual People”

Project Management Memetics

Leon sent me a link to this paper a couple of years ago, to which I responded “interesting” – he knows I’m interested in memes. I didn’t actually read beyond the title until today. The essence of memes is that there is something “self-serving” about patterns of information (*1) which is independent of any rationally … Continue reading “Project Management Memetics”

It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World

OK, so enough Zizek for one day … clearly a student of Jacques Lacan is about as “foggy froggie” / PoMo as one can get, but cheeky with it. Hard work, but valuable on balance. Picked-up the Peter Sloterdijk link in my earlier reference to Zizek. Found this review of his “Critique of Cynical Reason” … Continue reading “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World”

Burrell & Morgan and Pirsig

Gibson Burrell & Gareth Morgan’s  “Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis” was one of the textbooks  during my masters degree back in 1988 / 91. It was one that I actually read and used significant parts of in my thesis but, as with Peters & Waterman’s “In Search of Excellence”, I didn’t pick-up the references to … Continue reading “Burrell & Morgan and Pirsig”