The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
B-TOWN – How Burien came into its own. (Trailer)
A sample of a documentary that shows the creative heart that sustains a community regardless of what happens. Grass roots democracy in action. Updated version.
Tip of the Hat to Anne M. Stadler in Lake Forest Park, WA.
Sugata Mitra: The child-driven education
Education scientist Sugata Mitra tackles one of the greatest problems of education — the best teachers and schools don't exist where they're needed most. In a series of real-life experiments from New Delhi to South Africa to Italy, he gave kids self-supervised access to the web and saw results that could revolutionize how we think about teaching.
Sugata Mitra's “Hole in the Wall” experiments have shown that, in the absence of supervision or formal teaching, children can teach themselves and each other, if they're motivated by curiosity… Full bio and more links
Phi Beta Iota: Harrison Owen recommended this. He has spent his life nurturing self-organizing systems. This is one of the most moving, impactful ideas and presentations we have seen in our lifetime. This is one of the keys.
Worth a Look: Open Space Re-Invention
Review: Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self-Organizing World
Reference: Peggy Holman Free Video on Emergence
Review: The World Is Open–How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education
2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability
I’m normally an optimistic kind of guy. Each month when I receive Harvard Business Review, I open it up thinking that maybe, just maybe, there’s been a change of heart. Maybe they have moved on from 1965. Not much to ask, after all. I become even more optimistic when I read the headline like this month, “Get the Best From Your People”. This, I think, is certainly timely, given the studies that show that only one in five people are fully engaged in their work.
But then I go to the article to which the headline refers. As I read it, I have a growing feeling of horror. There has been no change of heart. There is no heart at all. We are right back in the world of manipulating people with numbers. In fact, we are no longer in 1965. We have regressed back to 1911. We are now in the world of Frederick Winslow Taylor. Read More…
Phi Beta Iota: The dehumanization of the enterprise will be recognized by history to have been one of the most costly failures of leadership and errors of management in all time. We strongly recommend the author's new book, which can be bought now on Kindle or advance ordered in hard-copy at Amazon.
Continue reading “Journal: The Time-Warped World of Harvard…”
Cost reduction for high-end markets
If you sell at the top of the market (luxury travel, services to Fortune 500 companies, financial services for the wealthy…) you might be tempted to figure out ways to cut costs and become more efficient.
After all, if you save a dollar, you make a dollar, without even getting a new customer.
Resist.
The goal shouldn't be to reduce costs. It should be to increase them.
That voice mail service that saves you $30,000 a year in receptionist costs–it also makes you much more similar to a competitor that is more efficiently serving the middle of the market.
Go through all the ways you serve your customers and make them more expensive to execute, not less. Your loyalty and your market share will both grow. People who can afford to pay for service often choose to pay for service.
Phi Beta Iota: What Master Seth is not making explicit is that HUMANS costs more than devices, and the REASON humans cost most is because at the high end, HUMANS offer creative adaptability, instant understanding of nuances, emotional calibration, and a deeply HUMAN connection to the client. Call centers are the high end of the low end. Capitalism took a wrong turn in commoditizing humans and treating labor costs as something to be reduced. It is the human web of knowledge that undergirds the advance of civilization, NOT the “things” that we buy and trash.
Review: Philosophy and the Social Problem–The Annotated Edition
Kyrgyzstan- Shanghai Cooperation Organization: Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states will help Kyrgyzstan stabilize the situation in the country's southern region, a source in the Russian Federal Security Service said 23 September after a regional SCO anti-terrorism council meeting, Interfax reported.
The council decided that law-enforcement agencies of member states will assist Kyrgyzstan maintain security by organizing information exchanges regarding regional militant activities, the source said. The source also said the council elected Chinese Deputy Minister for Public Security Meng Hongwei to chair the anti-terrorism council for one year. The council is set to meet next in Usbekistan in March 2011. Representatives from Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan attended the meeting.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: The Moscow-centered Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) declined to undertake a more intrusive intervention mission. The Beijing-led SCO mission is primarily an intelligence exchange, but potentially affords China unprecedented access to information about central Asian security issues. The SCO will accrue positive publicity for its limited mission, upstaging the CSTO.
The Chinese-led organization looks cooperative. The Russian-led organization looks timid. This in fact confuses different missions and burdens, but the public perception is likely to favor the Chinese-led initiative in the Russian sphere of influence.
Kyrgyzstan-Russia: Issues between Russia and Kyrgyzstan over Russia's military bases in Kyrgyzstan have been addressed and an agreement will be signed, probably on the 24
NIGHTWATCH Comment: The Russians have four military facilities or bases in Kyrgyzstan, including Kant air base. Under the new agreement they will be consolidated in a single command structure and all will be governed by the new agreement, instead of four separate agreements. Russia's lease will probably be good for the next four or five decades.
Phi Beta Iota: Reference: Global Governance 2025 completely missed both the Hybrid and the Open models of governance that are displacing institutionalized ineptitude now characteristic of most governments, all unable to micro-manage complexity or achieve resilience. The above report suggests that Kyryzstan could be an early node where multinational information-sharing and sense-making is more influential, more effective, and more profitable, than standing military bases, but the two can co-exist. See also Worth a Look: Future of Business is Information Sharing. To appreciate such nuances one needs a strategic analytic modeland the inclination to actually understand the eight tribes of intelligence, “true costs,” and all other aspect of holistic reality.
Enhancing Access to Modern Technology
Clean Technology and Smart Energy: Deploying the Green Economy
Democracy and Voice: Technology For Citizen Empowerment and Human Rights
Mobile Revolution: Transforming Access, Markets, and Development
Media reports regarding the lawsuits prompted a third party named Howard Boardman Lowry to contact Relators‟ Counsel. Mr. Lowry's sworn testimony is attached in its entirety as Exhibit B. Mr. Lowry testified he purchased steroids, human growth hormones, and testosterone for Blackwater employees and his observation of rampant drug use among Blackwater employees. Initially, Blackwater paid for the steroids from company funds. Later, Blackwater management steered Blackwater personnel to Mr. Lowry. He also testified that Blackwater employees would often shoot at Iraqi pedestrians for no reason and would regularly shoot into adjacent buildings housing Iraqi civilians among other acts of unwarranted violence. In short, Mr. Lowry provides critical and corroborating evidence. See Exhibit B.
Phi Beta Iota: The entire piece in the Huffington Post is worth a careful reading.
