Linknote — — 136 words

Business — Economics — Technology

AI don’t kill people, people do

Reflections on whether technological advances will ‘take our jobs’.

> …[I]n Western societies, technical advancement has allowed many of us to extricate ourselves from physical, dangerous and demeaning forms of work, and to create careers that are fulfilling beyond renumeration: creatively, intellectually, socially… “job satisfaction”.

Historically, technological advances haven’t meant humans losing jobs. But it has meant we have taken on increasingly complex and interesting jobs. Perhaps the future will bring us further job satisfaction.

That’s not a bad place to be at all. A reminder that we should be grateful for the luxury we have in being able to pursue a good career in the first place, rather than slaving away to make ends meet.

See also: [Why you shouldn’t follow your passion](https://duncanstephen.net/why-you-shouldnt-follow-your-passion/)

Linknote — — 34 words

Business

[23 workplace horror stories that’ll make you say “WTAF?”](https://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelwmiller/best-ask-a-manager-columns?utm_term=.jaewOp7Qpj#.wyrXz96Y95)

Set aside an hour or two to read some of these jaw-dropping workplace issues.

Linknote — — 83 words

Business — Service design — User experience

[What product managers can learn from teachers about running great workshops](https://medium.com/@philippa.peasland_69295/what-product-managers-can-learn-from-teachers-about-running-great-workshops-73f235e61cd3)

As it happens, I was recently talking to a colleague about the links between teaching and running workshops. I have come to appreciate the similarities this year. A couple of my colleagues used to be teachers, and working with them has made the parallels become clear.

This article contains some great tips on how to improve your workshops with techniques used by teachers.

Linknote — — 86 words

Business

[The most popular strategies companies use to save money also kill innovation](https://work.qz.com/1134910/six-sigma-and-other-popular-management-strategies-kill-innovation/)

An interesting take on business process improvements such as Lean and Six Sigma. It suggests that while such process improvements improve reliability, they also make innovation plummet. Moreover, the effects are difficult to spot because they take so long to emerge.

> Innovation requires different ways of doing things, and this is exactly what this system ends. But they don’t tell you that in the ISO9000 handbook, do they?

Linknote — — 184 words

Business

[When alumni interviewers screw up, things get weird](https://www.chronicle.com/article/When-Alumni-Interviewers-Screw/241835)

The perils of using alumni to reach out to prospective students.

This article mainly pertains to examples found in the US. I am not sure how common this technique is in the UK.

There is a tricky balance to be struck between two of universities’ main sources of income. On the one hand there is the need to keep alumni engaged, which is thought to make them more likely to donate. But if it turns off students — particularly the *right kind* of students — the long-term risks could be greater.

> Although highly selective colleges have become racially and socioeconomically diverse, alumni interviewers tend to be white and affluent. That can lead to awkward moments, said Ari Worthman, director of college counseling at Lakeside School, in Seattle. He recalled a low-income student who sat down with the graduate of a big-name college a couple of years ago. I’m so glad you’re looking at our school, the applicant was told, because we don’t normally interview students like you.

Linknote — — 124 words

Business

[Making good decisions as a product manager](https://blackboxofpm.com/making-good-decisions-as-a-product-manager-c66ddacc9e2b)

While this article was originally aimed at product managers, the author concedes that it is relevant to any role.

Essentially, it argues that the key to good decision-making is not just understanding what the correct decision would be, but also how quickly you should make each decision. In other words, you need to know which decisions to agonise over, and which to make quickly.

> You can be right 99% of the time, but if you’re wrong the 1% of times when it *really matters*, you’re not an effective decision maker. The takeaway is that when the stakes are high, you should work a lot harder at making the right decision.

Linknote — — 158 words

Business

[Your strategy should be a hypothesis you constantly adjust](https://hbr.org/2017/11/your-strategy-should-be-a-hypothesis-you-constantly-adjust)

Why do strategies often “break down in the execution stage”? According to this study, it is often because big companies fail to learn from new information.

Staff on the ground will often fail to raise the alarm for fear of being blamed for failing to execute the strategy correctly. But often, the flaw was in the plan itself.

The Volkswagen diesel emissions case is one stark example:

> VW’s culture — specifically, its executives’ lack of tolerance for pushback from people lower in the organization — seems to have played a major role in its diesel-emissions fiasco… VW leaders lost out on the opportunity to revisit and update the strategy. Meanwhile, engineers had developed software to fool the regulators — postponing the inevitable.

This article suggests taking a ‘strategy-as-learning’ perspective instead. It’s an approach that reminds me a lot of [Lean UX methods](http://www.jeffgothelf.com/lean-ux-book/).