A couple of interesting posts... Rob has a couple of interesting posts up. He challenges how conversations about diversity reinforce stereotypes, in particular of the white male. And he describes an approach to cancer screening that relies on herd principles for success....

Acting into thinking Nice post from Viv leading to this thought:We act our way into a new way of thinking, we don’t think our way into a new way of acting....

HR speak My friend Julian Burton tweeted a link to this animation, which appears to be an unintentionally ironic commentary on the cliches of human resources....

Complexity and the credit crunch Chris Mowles summarises Ralph Stacey's latest, very interesting, work. It resonates strongly for me.Organisations are not things but patterns of interactions between people. In these interactions, and among other things, people develop imaginative constructs of ‘wholes’ such as ‘the market’...

Leadership and bureaucracy Umair Haque is always good value if you want provocative thinking about the state of the world. He's got some interesting things to say about the myth of leadership, for instance:Leaders don't lead. How did this particular skillset emerge? Influence...

Cognitive load = eating more cake Jonah Lehrer spotted an interesting report in the Wall St Journal. It suggests that our impulse control is reduced when our brains are overloaded - and they get overloaded easily. Being given a 7 digit number to remember (as opposed...

Moving into a barrel Annette Clancy spotted Mark Vernon's How to Live Well in 2010. Not your typical list of new year resolutions, but some thought provoking ideas inspired by ancient philosophers. This one particularly caught my eye:Do something that will surprise your friends,...

The virtues of small potatoes Doug Rushkoff makes this point:..if everyone wants to do the “meta” job of creating a brand or utility through which activism happens, then there will be no one left to do the actual organizing... No, the opportunity is not to...

Circle of life I found this BBC wildlife video stunning. It's a time lapse film showing how creatures like starfish very slowly consume the body a dead seal on the ocean floor. You may find it slightly creepy but for me, at least...

Ending bonuses Henry Mintzberg, one of my favourite business thinkers, lets rip in the WSJ: No More Executive Bonuses! Conventional wisdom seems to take it for granted that finanical incentives are the only way to ensure high performance. It's based on assumptions...

Learning now vs success/failure This resonated with me this morning:Roethlisberger argues that people who are preoccupied with success ask the wrong question. They ask, “what is the secret of success” when they should be asking, “what prevents me from learning here and now?” To...

Bottle bank arcade game I'm enjoying Jonah Lehrer's How we Decide. I'm currently on the chapter looking at the role of dopamine on our thinking. Getting a hit from dopamine is what gets people addicted to intermittent positive rewards - think fruit machines or...

Luck... Richard Wiseman researches luck and says:Personality tests revealed that unlucky people are generally much more tense than lucky people, and research has shown that anxiety disrupts people's ability to notice the unexpected.Interesting and feels connected to my own little mantra...

Questions that keep physicists up at night New Scientist describes seven questions that keep physicists up at night. I liked this one:How does complexity happen? From the unpredictable behaviour of financial markets to the rise of life from inert matter, Leo Kadananoff, physicist and applied mathematician at...

Are we doomed? Dave Pollard is one of the unique voices I'd never have heard but for the internet. He writes with tremendous passion, intensity and bluntness. I remember him saying he was a happy pessimist, which is a great paradoxical truth about...