Every manager wants to boost productivity. We invest billions in new machinery and software every year, not to mention a vast array of consultants, management books and other tools designed to increase the efficiency of our efforts.
Yet I’ve found that the most effective way to get results is not to dream up the unimaginably brilliant, but to put a stop to doing the unbelievably stupid and what most companies do horribly is meetings.
A recent Wall Street Journal article points out that CEO’s spend over 30% of their time in ineffective meetings. A wider survey, covering decades of research, came to even more disturbing conclusions (including that 40% of managers fall asleep in meetings). Clearly, making meetings more effective is one of the best ways to increase overall productivity.
In 1982, Steve Jobs first made the cover of Time magazine, where he was celebrated as the 26 year-old college-dropout-wunderkind who created the personal computer industry and made a fortune in the process. It seemed like a new age had dawned.
Unfortunately, tangible results were frustratingly hard to find. By 1987, the economist Robert Solow complained that “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics,” a phenomenon which came to be known as the productivity paradox.
Today, nobody questions that computers have fundamentally changed the way we create, deliver and capture value. Erik Brynjolfsson, who coined the term “productivity paradox,” even has a new book out touting technology’s impressive contributions. What’s changed? I would argue that a big part of it is our ability to enjoy success while simulating failure.
I’ve long given up the habit of making New Years resolutions. What’s the point? The seeds of the next year are sown in the previous one. So rather than empty vows of change, all that effort can be put to better use by planning for what is to come.
To do so, we need to go beyond simple linear extrapolation. Principles like accelerating returns and hype cycles help point the way and we also need to keep in touch with the technologists and entrepreneurs that drive events.
As I’ve noted before, blindly following trends is for suckers, but putting serious thought into where things are headed is an essential exercise. Mapping out what we can expect helps us prepare for the unexpected, be robust and stay on our toes. With that in mind, here are 6 things we can expect to shape the digital world over the next year and beyond
The industrial world was built by practical men, those hearty souls who rolled up their sleeves and got things done. They were men of action, unhindered by the softheaded notions of ivory towers.
Today, however, we no longer live in an industrial world of railroads, furnaces and factories, but one of the visceral abstract, where the common devices that dominate our everyday lives are based on principles that the proverbial “man on the street” would find totally impractical, absolutely nutty.
Every time you use a computer or smartphone, drive a car, use a navigation system or shop at Wal-mart, you are in a very real sense, believing in ideas that defy common sense. These notions were often ridiculed because they defied common experience. In that sense, they were revolutions no less heroic than the physical kind. Here are four:
Well, we’ve almost made it through 2012 without blowing up the economy (hopefully) or a good sized country. Along the way, we found the Higgs boson and landed a rover on Mars that continues to send us back amazing pictures and other souvenirs.
I have a feeling that when we look back, 2012 will be seen as a pivotal year. Partly because Microsoft has entered the three-way race for mobile domination, but mostly because it was this year when artificial intelligence finally came into its own and looks set to drive technology for the next decade or so.
Most of all it was a great year for Digital Tonto. The community grew by leaps and bounds this year, to almost 150,000. Thank you all for your support, encouragement and advice. Once again, here are the posts you liked best over the past 12 months. I wish you a safe, happy and prosperous New Year. All the best!
Jorge Luis Borges once wrote, “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” Blissfully devoid of management fads, new age theories and other guru talk, 2012 was that kind of year: Great books and powerful ideas.
When Daniel Kahneman, Ray Kurzweil and Benoit Mandelbrot (from the grave no less!), plus others too numerous to note here, all publish in the same year, we have a lot be thankful for.
As in past years, I am providing a reading list of books I enjoyed and used in posts, so If you saw an idea you found interesting in Digital Tonto over the past year, chances are you can learn a whole lot more about it in the books below. Links are provided that will allow you to purchase them from Amazon. Enjoy! read more…
I find writing difficult. Words don’t always come easy, I’m an absolutely horrendous typist and I often don’t have the first clue what I should be writing about.
Nevertheless, many seem to think that I write well, in spite of my deficiencies. I publish a successful blog and have managed to consistently push out two posts per week for over three years (which is much harder than you’d think). So I guess, in the final analysis, I’m not completely bereft of talent.
The more salient point, however, is that most people write extremely poorly. For all the talk I hear about the power of social media and the rise of amateurs, most of the writing I see on the Web is completely incoherent. It doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve found that through following a few simple rules and some practice, your writing can vastly improve.
Albert Camus once said that “true art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.” Henry Ward Beecher similarly wrote that “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.”
You don’t have to look far to find quotes like these, because art is something we consider intensely human. Art and the artist are so thoroughly intertwined that we can’t bear to think of one without the other.
For better or worse, we’re going to have to rethink this comfortable little notion. Machine intelligence is advancing to the point where algorithms have begun to invade the world of culture and the aesthetic. From recommendations to evaluation to the production of art itself, computers are becoming a force to be reckoned with in the creative realm. read more…
When we look back, 2012 will be seen as a pivotal year for Microsoft. They have launched Windows 8, possibly their most ambitious product ever, as well as the Surface tablet, their biggest ever foray into hardware.
So how’s it all going? Reviews have been lukewarm, sales for Windows 8 are lagging compared to the Windows 7 launch and even Steve Ballmer has described Surface tablet sales as modest. Over the past year, I’ve been sanguine about Microsoft’s future. How do I feel now? Well, I’m doubling down.
Henry Blodget at Business Insider calls people like me delusional, but I don’t think so. What I think is really going on is that while the pundits are chiding Microsoft missing out on the last trend toward social, local and mobile computing (SoLoMo), they are probably the company best position to take the lead in the next phase of technology. read more…
If you had to put a date on it, the digital age began in 1948, when two discoveries came out of Bell Labs: the transistor and information theory. The world would be forever changed, but at the time, few noticed.
Having just come out of the most devastating war in history, the planet was a very uncertain place. The Iron Curtain was descending upon Europe, war would come to Asia in just a few short years and few cared what the eggheads were doing.
It took decades for the impact to become clear, but eventually people noticed that something important was going on. Computers were not only getting better, they were getting cheaper and in the ’90’s, the term “new economy” entered the lexicon. Now, that similar trends are taking hold in energy and medicine the impact will be even greater.
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out touting technology’s impressive contributions. What’s changed? I would argue that a big part of it is our ability to enjoy success while simulating failure.
