Dinner out. (Taken with Instagram)
“This is the state of our military-industrial-scientific complex in miniature: The military has so much money that it has two extra telescopes better than anything civilians have; meanwhile, NASA will need eight years to find enough change in the couches at Cape Canaveral to turn these gifts into something they can use.”
UI Consistency Fail
This has been bugging me for a while and I finally had a chance to record this strangely inconsistent behavior from our washer/dryer set. The preset modes for the washing machine can be adjusted as you see fit, but for no apparent reason, the same modes on the dryer can’t be modified. You have to select a “manual” mode before you can change the drying parameters.
<sarcasm>Makes perfect sense!</sarcasm>
Fixing the Game
As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time reading blog posts and news articles from technology analysts, I am already somewhat biased against analysts in the first place. At some point after reading for the nth time about how Company X is running their business into the ground, only to see Company X itself report significant profits, you realize that analysts don’t have any more information than you do. They’re using the exact same publicly reported press releases, blog posts, and financial results that everyone else has access to and presenting their opinion as fact. So what does this have to do with Fixing The Game?
It turns out that an enormous segment of our economy is directly influenced by the whimsy of analysts and how the CEOs of modern corporations meet or miss those analysts’ expectations. Roger Martin makes an extremely apt comparison with the NFL and explains how ridiculous it would be to let sports analysts determine the value of a team rather than letting the actual numbers stand for themselves. In corporate America, our value system has become so twisted that corporations’ successes are measured only in comparison to analysts’ expectations. And of course, with executive compensation being tied more and more closely to the performance of a company’s stock, executives have begun gaming the system. They produce short-term stock gains to boost the value of their compensation with a complete disregard for the long-term.
The book takes a refreshing look at how companies should deliver value to shareholders, arguing convincingly that the paradigm of shareholder value maximization is broken. And instead of just pointing out all of the problems with the system, the author makes clear and easy to understand recommendations that would make the system better. Definitely worth reading.
Micro machine. (Taken with instagram)
Cones. (Taken with instagram)
Resonate
What are the components of speeches, presentations, and lectures that transcend individuals, place and time to cause audiences to be, not just interested, but enthralled, inspired and motivated by the information being delivered to them? Nancy Duarte answers that big hairy question in Resonate. I won’t say that she completely nails it, but several of her points have really stuck with me. Foremost among them: the idea that the most successful presentations engage their audiences by contrasting what is and what could be. Apparently, we, as humans, are hard-wired to respond to contrast in all forms and every time a presenter compares the dilapidated present to the shiny bright future, something in our brain tells us, “Hey! Wake up! This could be really important!” and we pay attention. Nancy goes on to explain quite a few different methods for creating contrast (different types of media, facts and stories, songs and prose) and she also covers some of the more obvious aspects of presentation development. The section on structure, struck me as the weakest section of the book. Perhaps if you’ve never once tried to communicate a big idea you might find value here, but the author’s insights seemed to be lacking a bit in this section. Overall, the book is a short read and worth the small time investment for anyone looking to up their communication skills.