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Patterns of behaviour (from child to parent)
Something I noticed when I first started living together with my partner was that there was a clash of certain ways of doing things / approaches or principles, even though we had similar cultures and similar belief systems. It often baffled me how we could be so different on such things. Only now do I…
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The Distant B&W Past
Growing up, the past seemed so far away. There were black and white images of this period before, especially images from the Second World War. The past seemed so distant in my mind. Due to the lack of colour, it appeared awful. I was glad that I didn’t live during that period. But most of…
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Feeling the Timeless
I’m sitting next to a fireplace on Christmas Eve, a time to reflect. I notice that there must have been quite some effort to install the iron fireplace and its chimney into the wall. I’m reminded that Klaus did that. Klaus was one of Dad’s best friends and now I’m staying in the flat that…
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A Tough Lesson about Incentives
I found this line very interesting in a recent conversation with Dominic Cummings when he related his experience of working in Russia: “I also learned about incentives a lot. So everything I had to do with the airline was a total fiasco. And one of the things I figured I learned was — I, like…
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A Lasting Quality
“If you want to preserve a building, you will try to make it in materials which last and last forever. You will try to make sure that this creation can be preserved intact, in just its present state, forever. Canvas must be ruled out because it has to be replaced; tiles must be so hard…
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Types of Freedom
We’ve often talked about freedom – freedom is when you are able to do the things you want to do. Having options and having choices. I heard about another type of freedom. A female comedian interviewed in the radio recently was asked what freedom meant to her and she said it was being able to…
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Antifragile Metrics
For some time I’ve been thinking about metrics for antifragility. I first came across Troy Magennis’s framework: the ‘Six Dimensions of Team Performance” (perhaps worth reading first) and remember thinking at the time that his framework was fairly close to describing an antifragile system already. I thought I’d have a go at modifying it and…
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The Meaning of Risk
If you think about the word ‘risk’ – what comes to mind? Throughout history, ‘risk’ has had slightly different connotations. Tracing the etymology, Michele Wucker provides a few clues into its various meanings, which could be summarized as: When I think about commercial settings, and the context in which risks are usually discussed, I think…
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A Timeless Mindset
It blew my mind to think that the lead casing for this machine was mined by Roman miners 2,000 years ago. I couldn’t help but daydream about previous eras for a while after that, wishing I was mining that lead with friends on some misty Welsh moor with a reassured and half-drunk vision of this…
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Joyfully feeding
This morning just as I was unlocking my bike from the bike racks, a gentleman came up and apologetically wanted to move his bike (which was next to mine) out of the way. On both handlebars of his bike, he had two heavy plastic bags. As he was moving the bikes out the way, I…
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Seeking Greatness and the Myth of Objectives
Let’s start with a riddle You’re lost in a labyrinth and you need to get out quickly. It’s a matter of survival. You chance upon two robots in this labyrinth. One robot has the algorithm: “I find novel spaces.” The other robot has the algorithm: “I seek the exit.” Which robot gives you the best…
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More useful as a shipwreck!
Evidently a lot of shipwrecks are being salvaged in order to reuse the metal for high specification technology. The metal in these wrecks are uncontaminated by the atmospheric radiation since 1945 so they’re highly prized and necessary. It blows my mind to think that this lead was mined by Romans. Incidentally a few days ago,…
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Clear Language is the Basis of Strategy – Talk
I recently gave a talk about the connection between language and strategy – effectively, how language is the technology that enables humans to strategise, and here are the slides.
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The Razor’s Edge
One of my favourite books is ‘The Razor’s Edge’ by Somerset Maugham. The opening epigraph is: The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over;thus the wise say the path to salvation is hard. It never made complete sense to me when I first read it in my twenties, and it still doesn’t.…
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The Joy of Sharing
Recently a colleague and shared a post about a book, The Timeless Way of Building’ that I had recommended to him. I was delighted to see him with the same joy I felt. I was prompted to write the following: I cannot think of anything more joyful than stumbling across something new and wonderful, then…
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