What, Why & How do we Know ?
Never been a fan of management metrics – it’s all too easy for lazy managers to measure what is easy to count, and not deal with what really matters. Even Einstein said “not all that counts can be counted”. However this Forbes piece by James Slavet nails five valuable “metrics” worth assessing subjectively – starting … Continue reading “Contacting the Sweet Spot”
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”
This kind of quote reminds me why I’m a big fan of Mary Parker-Follett. [Specifically this.] ‘The most important thing to remember about unity is — that there is no such thing. There is only unifying. You cannot get unity and expect it to last a day–or five minutes.’ Quoted by Rosa Zubizarreta quoting Albie … Continue reading “Unity is a Process”
An incomplete review, notes only from this excellent article. Hat tip to Sam Norton in his comment below. And some good links in the piece, eg to Stanley Fish. Explanation … avoiding reductionism. Terry Lectures on video – nb Terry Eagleton joke ? “It was I felt, characteristic of the delightfully informal nature of American society … Continue reading “Barbara Herrnstein Smith”
Just a quickie. I’m reading Hitchens “God is not Great”. I admitted earlier, when I heard him talking, that I had understimated Hitchens in all the God vs Science hysteria. Will the intelligent world ever live down guilt by association with Dawkins !? Thank god for Dennett, Harris and Hitchens (and the Archbishop). Only a couple … Continue reading “The Real Culprit is not GINGer”
Interesting post from Sam Norton. A thoughtful Christian positioning on recent “blasphemy furies”. Amongst other things I was taken by this quote from Rene Girard. “The invention of science is not the reason that there are no longer witch-hunts, but the fact that there are no longer witch-hunts is the reason that science has been … Continue reading “Would Science Consider This Blasphemous ?”
Just a holding post for a thought that struck me yesterday …. At a meeting yesterday discussing XML Languages best suited to modelling semantics, there was given some description of different flavours of OWL (Web Ontology Language ). In general with OWL(Full) and OWL(DL) it is possible to make ontologically impossible assertions – the infamously … Continue reading “OWL(FA) Breaks Russell’s Paradox ?”
Thanks to David Morey over at MoQ-Discuss for picking up these links to papers mentioning Pirsig’s work. (I’m guessing partly prompted by the observations from Sam and Ant about the Ram-Prasad “Great Divide” article decrying the dearth of links between Eastern and Western philosophy – lets’ not overlook Pirsig and Northrop.) A Hubert Dreyfus paper … Continue reading “Wow, it’s full of holes.”
Strange set of connections materialised whilst I was reading Barbara Tuchman’s “The March of Folly”, hope you’re following this … I’m reading Tuchman’s March of Folly, because I recalled (incorrectly) Charles Handy recommending it as the best management text book ever written, making all the others redundant. (In fact it was Warren Bennis’ recommendation, Handy’s … Continue reading “Campbell Connections”
Peter Drucker Foundation. Some interesting stuff about management of non-profit organisations setting future trends of business management including this interview with Charles Handy. Some good recommended reading lists too, including …. The March of Folly by Barbara Tuchman (Ballantine, 1992), ….. the follies of humankind in bringing about …. disasters that could have been avoided … Continue reading “Peter Drucker Foundation”