Author: Daniel

The experiencing self is what we report during an experience which can be quite different from how we remember something. Consider that last time you heard, “It ruined the whole experience.” The experience, as Kahneman points out, was still good but the memory of the experience has been ruined. Kahneman presents his findings on the interactions between our actual experiences and our memory of those experiences.

Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory

What happens when you collect the most productive chickens together generation after generation? They kill each other. Heffernan opens with this sobering anecdote. She then follows her story with studies that show that the key to improving productivity is social connectedness, even above individual intelligence.

Margaret Heffernan: Why it’s time to forget the pecking order at work

“How do you setup for wisdom?” This is a poignant question that Semler’s company asked in order to help ensure they were managing the company as effectively as possible. He advocates a highly decentralized management structure, one in which employees have access to all needed information, not just to perform their just but also to improve the business as a whole.

Some of his core principles are:

• Taking advantage of life now, instead of waiting until later
• Businesses should remove silly rules that do not matter (like clock in and out times, dress codes and such)
• Seek wisdom and welcome challenges to the status quo
• Give power to everyone, they can make the rules theirs

Ricardo Semler: How to run a company with (almost) no rules

Morieux proposes six rules that will simplify even the most complex work places:

1. Understand what work people do (to better predict impact)
2. Reinforce integrators (managers who can force others to cooperate) 
3. Increase quantity of power (empowers individuals) 
4. Extend the shadow of the future (decisions made now should be felt by those decision makers later)
5. Increase reciprocity (remove dysfunctional crutches by making individuals accountable to each other) 
6. Reward those who cooperate and blame those who fail to do so  (“Blame is not for failure, it is for failing to help or ask for help.” Jorgen Vig Knudstrop, CEO of Lego)

Yves Morieux: As work gets more complex, 6 rules to simplify

In a seeming counter-intuitive twist of business logic, Morieux talks about how the business ‘trinity’ (clarity, measurements and accountability) should be replaced by fuzziness and a focus on the ‘how’, not the ‘what’. He suggests that the trinity just provides a space to know whom to blame when things fail where fuzziness encourages cooperation which is key to reducing resources and improves idea generation.

Yves Morieux: How too many rules at work keep you from getting things done