Thursday, May 10, 2018

Mindfulness as a Management Technique

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.
-Zig Ziglar



“Military glory,—that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood.” Abraham Lincoln, speech in the House of Representatives (January 12, 1848) ... read more


Asia Power Index 2018 Lowy Institute

Eleanor Roosevelt famously stated that “people can only put you down if you agree with them”. The trick to getting over being bullied is to stop agreeing with the negative characterisations they have made of us, and to put the blame where it belongs: back with them. We also need to stop expecting that we should have been able to beat them or to not be affected by it.  
The Answer to Overcoming Workplace Bullying

Latitude of Ideals are failing: "freedom without consequence, freedom without criticism, freedom to be proud and ignorant ..."

A Day in the life inside a city of Martin -  Redeployment: Why you need to explore all your options - HRM online
Redeployment options must pass the "reasonable" test - HR Daily

When Is Redeployment Reasonable? | Employment Law Practical Handbook | Fair Work Act | Workplace Relations

Redundancy and redeployment: common and costly mistakes - iHR Australia

Redeployment and redundancy: what are the issues? | Workplace Info
‘I’m no seat warmer’, says likely Gallagher replacement
"A real issue for me is the pretty significant attacks on the Public Service not just in Canberra, because 50 per cent of the Public Service isn’t in Canberra ...”" (RiotACT!)



The sun breaks through a low level fog in Centennial Park in Sydney. Picture: John Grainger

Rethinking The "Retirement Crisis" AMY ALKON:
There’s this quote — and people always nod solemnly in (unthinking) agreement when somebody tosses it out: “No one on his deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had spent more time on my business.'”
(There are various versions of this, yes, attributed to various people.)
Now, maybe this is the reality for some people, but it isn’t the reality for me — or for some of the driven professors and writers I know.
I try to spend as much time every day on digging up science and writing (and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting) as possible.
There’s long been this notion — probably since Social Security came to be — that people would cut out of the work force; retire.
Well, if I’m working on an oil rig, yeah, at some point, I age out of the profession. (Not that I’d ever be in that area of work, but just as a wild example.)
But writing? As long as I keep those Alzheimer’s cobwebs out of my brain — or as long as I don’t get some horrible, writing-stopping disease — why should I stop? Presumably, I’ll get wiser with age. At least, that’s what I’ve found so far. So, presumably, my writing and thinking will have more value, as long as I can stay current.


How to handle the person you hate in the office

Much of the work we do has no social value, and we hate doing it. Then there’s higher education, where the problem is acute. David Graeber on the bullshitization of academic life... Alternative Lives 

The new HR department ... no human remains or people

 

 How to handle the person you hate in the office


My Turn: I hate Trump, but I love my country


High Court's 'hardline' citizenship decision a headache for parties


If you’ve been the object of bad workplace behavior, knowing your options can be the first step to getting justice. Let this guide be your road map for navigating some all-too-common scenarios


DON’T CALL IT STYLE: "The writer’s voice may be more audible when it is shrieking or shouting or cursing. But the voice of the strategically neutral writer is still a voice, one that we need when we try to get at the truth without fear or favor," writes Poynter’s Roy Peter Clark





HELPING SOLDIERS: Multitasking and tech-induced information overload could be hurting American troops. That’s why the U.S. Army is looking for people to hack this problem. By David Axe for Motherboard.

Flaws of self-regulation: trust some of the people, some of the time

 


It's official: power creates a narcissist
For certain people, holding a position of power can unleash their inner narcissist.




Can experts freeze public deliberation?
POLICY LAB: When existing science can support more than one answer to public problems, experts can act to steer public deliberation. 
  


"To get to the next level of greatness depends on the quality of the culture, which depends on the quality of relationships, which depends on the quality of conversations. Everything happens through conversation" Conversational Intelligence: How Great Leaders Build & Trust and Get Extraordinary Results














Art As Leadership Tool



Without ever intending it, experienced leaders often allow what they know to limit what they can imagine going forward; their knowledge can actually get in the way of innovation. Which is why, to summon the spirit of Proust, it’s so important for leaders to see their company and industry with fresh eyes — which means looking at their work in new ways. Art, it turns out, can be an important tool to change how leaders see their work.


France Begins Multi-Billion-Euro Program To Revive Downtowns Of Smaller Cities


"France's city centers are about to get one of the biggest makeovers in their history. Following an announcement last month, the country is launching a vast €5 billion ($6.1 billion) plan called Action Coeur de Ville (Action: Heart of the City) intended to revamp 222 city cores ... in what the French call Villes Moyennes, 'average cities' with populations between 15,000 and 100,000 ... over the next five years with new stores, offices, co-working spaces, and renovated housing." … 















You Can’t Do Philosophy Properly Without Considering Human Nature (This Should Be Obvious, But …)



“A strange thing is happening in modern philosophy: many philosophers don’t seem to believe that there is such a thing as human nature. What makes this strange is that, not only does the new attitude run counter to much of the history of philosophy, but – despite loud claims to the contrary – it also goes against the findings of modern science. This has serious consequences, ranging from the way in which we see ourselves and our place in the cosmos to what sort of philosophy of life we might adopt.”














We’ve Become Obsessed With Measuring Performance With Numbers. Uh Oh.



I’ve termed it ‘metric fixation’. The key components of metric fixation are the belief that it is possible – and desirable – to replace professional judgment (acquired through personal experience and talent) with numerical indicators of comparative performance based upon standardised data (metrics); and that the best way to motivate people within these organisations is by attaching rewards and penalties to their measured performance.













We Know Very Little, Actually, About The Meaning Of Life


What is the meaning of ‘meaning’ in ‘the meaning of life’? We talk about the meaning of words, or linguistic meaning, the meaning of an utterance or of writing in a book. When we ask if human life has meaning, are we asking whether it has meaning in this semantic sense? Could human history be a sentence in some cosmic language? The answer is that it could, in principle, but that this isn’t what we want when we search for the meaning of life.














Philosophers Don’t Talk – Or Think – Enough About The Meaning Of Life























Is Information Our New God?



Information technology and its effect on the way we think and feel is a crucial issue in our time. In his 1979 book The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Lyotard wrote, “It is conceivable that the nation-states will one day fight for control of information, just as they battled in the past for control over territory, and afterwards for control of access to and exploitation of raw materials and cheap labor.” This has come true. The information technology at a certain historical moment must determine, to some extent, the way that we communicate with each other.
Physically stronger Norwegian men are more likely to be married

Mindfulness as a Management Technique Goes Back to at Least the 1970s - Jim Butcher – Harvard Business Review: “Mindfulness is now seen as a crucial skill in business. Meditation practices have the capacity to calm the mind, relax the body, boost resilience, and even increase situational awareness. The study of mindfulness — often defined as paying attention, nonjudgmentally and on purpose — is a regular part of the creativity and wellness culture at firms around the world. But although mindfulness may seem to be a fairly new phenomenon, it’s not. It first influenced business decades ago, through the development of an unmistakably hard skill that senior managers must master: strategic planning. Leaders today would be wise to learn from the past and to view strategic planning and mindfulness together. Before explaining why, though, a bit of history. Pierre Wack, who was head of Group Planning at Royal Dutch/Shell in the 1970s, studied meditation extensively with teachers in Asia and, later, with the famous 20th-century mystic G.I. Gurdjieff in Paris.
Wack perceived the world differently than his colleagues in the energy business. Through his unique lens, he came to create what we know as scenario planning — a widely used strategic planning practice that now spans all sectors. An HBR contributor, he wrote two seminal articles about Shell and scenario planning in 1985. As Art Kleiner described in the The Age of Heretics, Wack had “a lifelong preoccupation with the art of what he called ‘seeing.’” To see, in Wack’s understanding, meant not merely being aware of an element of the environment, but seeing “through it,” with full consciousness. Planning well, in his estimation, required “training the mind.” As a longtime practitioner of scenario planning who met Wack and studied his approach, I consistently find that stories about his early days at Shell captivate executives’ attention as instructive lessons on how to look ahead. One scenario, in which it was presented that governments in Middle Eastern countries would effectively act as a cartel, largely came to pass with the rise of OPEC. Shell changed strategies and actions based on the findings of the scenario planning work, eventually allowing the firm to become an industry leader…”



Talking to the chiefs: Greg Moriarty
"The hard part of running the Defence organisation is the trade-offs ‒ lining up capability, strategy and resources to work out what can and can’t be done." (The Strategist)

 

CRS report via FAS – Artificial Intelligence and National Security  – Daniel S. Hoadley, US Air Force Fellow; Nathan J. Lucas, Section Research Manager, April 26, 2018.
“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly growing field of technological development with potentially significant implications for national security











Australian government on citizens' data
It is time now to go further—to transform the data system in Australia and the way data is made available and used.
Ministers Foreword

Facebook model for citizens data


Contractors cost double compared to public servants: ABS 

A Bitcoin podcaster brilliantly trolled his own hacker



LGBTI leaders in the public sector
From the first openly gay departmental secretary in the APS, to leaders in states and territories, local government, statutory authorities, state police and the ADF, LGBTI people really are everywhere.