SourceCast: Episode 124: Father’s Day
News You Can Use: 3/14/2018
- China using big data to detain people before crime is committed
Chinese police theorists have identified specific “extremist behaviours, which include if you store a large amount of food in your home, if your child suddenly quits school and so on,” she said. Train a computer to look for such conduct, and “then you have a big data program modelled upon pretty racist ideas about peaceful behaviours that are part of a Uyghur identity,” she said.
The report “adds some pieces to the puzzle” over what is happening in Xinjiang, where it became clear over the last year “that tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were disappearing without having done anything illegal,” said Rian Thum, a historian at Loyola University in New Orleans who has travelled extensively in Xinjiang.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/china-using-big-data-to-detain-people-in-re-education-before-crime-committed-report/article38126551/
The dark side of “big data” and “AI” need to be reported on and discussed. - This One Aspect of Your Office Design Is Wasting a Lot of Time and Money
Meetings are expensive — the rent of the office space combined with the wages of each attendee — but a lot of that investment is wasted. A UCLA and University of Minnesota study finds that executives spend up to half of their working hours in meetings and that as much as 50 percent of that time is unproductive. With 17 million business meetings in the United States every day, there are a lot of frustrated workers: 88 percent of people are annoyed by technology problems in meeting rooms, and 20 percent of meetings run late due to those issues, wasting 2.83 working days a year for the average employee.
Also:
Making meeting rooms more interactive and easier to navigate is part of a movement to upgrade our office spaces to better reflect how we work today. Real estate executives acknowledge updating is needed with 86 percent saying they are remaking or adapting offices and another 51 percent are planning to reinvent shared workspaces this year, according to the CBRE’s 2017 Americas Occupier Survey. Employing technology to more efficiently use meeting space is a vital part of those efforts and can make a big impact on a company’s bottom line.
- Can DIY Solar Panels Solve Puerto Rico’s Power Crisis?
- Everyone on LinkedIn is a “passionate, experienced, motivated” leader
While it’s awesome that we’re all so “experienced,” “passionate,” and “creative,” these labels won’t help any of us stand out. Slinging around the same generic language as everybody else is among the worst strategies for getting ahead.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40538110/everyone-on-linkedin-is-a-passionate-experienced-motivated-leader
4 Signs You’re Trying Too Hard On LinkedInThe number one sign Marco Montinari, a recruitment consultant at Mason Frank International, sees repeatedly is LinkedIn users trying to be philosophers or motivational speakers. “It usually involves reflecting on their own successes while also advising people to stay humble,” Montinari says. While there’s nothing inherently bad about trying to deconstruct common professional issues or trying to uplift people through motivational words, unless you actually are, you know, a philosopher, what you think is deep or uplifting often comes across as simply trite or self-congratulatory. As Montinari points out: “A lesson in self-awareness is often needed for people who spend time telling others how to live their lives.”
https://www.fastcompany.com/40523265/4-signs-youre-trying-too-hard-on-linkedin
- Science Says Money Does Buy Happiness If You Spend it the Right Way
The reason that money demonstratively increases happiness levels up until a point is that it takes a certain salary to feel financially secure.
Having enough money means no anxiety when shopping at the grocery store, going out to eat or paying your rent. This type of security is overlooked when you are used to it.
Remembering and being appreciative of the fact that you are free to purchase things, though, will make you happier even after it has settled in as normal amount of your finances. Fundamentally, having enough money to buy these basic necessities will no-doubt increase your happiness levels.
Photo: Brooke Winters
News You Can Use: 12/20/2017
- Jailed for a Text: China’s Censors Are Spying on Mobile Chat Groups
In China’s swiftly evolving new world of state surveillance, there are fewer and fewer private spaces. Authorities who once had to use informants to find out what people said in private now rely on a vast web of new technology. They can identify citizens as they walk down the street, monitor their online behavior and snoop on cellphone messaging apps to identify suspected malcontents.
Years ago, in the Mao Zedong era, people were sent to prison, labor camps and death for opinions expressed in private. In the decades since China launched economic reforms after Mao’s death, prosperity and social mobility created room for more personal freedom and expression. Now China appears to be reverting to old form, empowered by new digital surveillance tools.
- Billionaire CEO Michael Dell tells employees, forget hierarchy: ‘Be willing to break things, make stuff happen’
“At our company, if we want to get something done, we tell them: ‘Just get it done. If anybody gets in your way, just shoot them.’ Not actually shoot them, but like, we’re all from Texas, so we use colorful analogies like that,” says Dell. “Make sure everybody knows we’re not actually shooting” people, Dell says. (Dell is headquartered in Round Rock, Texas.)
“Don’t let anything stand in your way. Look, if you’re gonna do something new, you have to be willing to break things, and sort of make stuff happen,” says Dell. “If you have a big company, there are a lot of people running around that tell you you can’t do stuff.”
- How to Rebuild a Relationship After a Difference of Opinion
- Too Many Meetings Suffocate Productivity and Morale
So, my appeal to all you entrepreneurs, don’t suffocate the life out of your companies with too many meetings. Hire smart people, trust them to do their jobs, and get the heck out of their way, so they can do the jobs they were hired to do. You don’t have to micro manage every single decision. Empower your team to make their own decisions in a flat organizational structure. Even if they make mistakes, that is fine, they will learn from them. But, the team will be moving twice as fast at getting things done, than if they were burdened with a bunch of meetings. Speed matters with startups.
Challenge yourself and every employee in your company to cap their recurring weekly meetings at 20 percent of their time. That is one day a week, or eight hours in a normal working day. That is up to 16 thirty-minute meetings they can schedule, plenty of slots to working with.
- Drone curbs overtime in Japan by blasting workers with music
Japan has a culture that encourages overtime out of a sense of loyalty, and that’s a serious problem. It not only cuts into family and social life, it leads to entirely avoidable deaths. Taisei (the company behind the main Tokyo 2020 Olympic stadium) aims to fix that in an unusual way: having a drone nag you into going home. Its newly unveiled T-Frend is ostensibly a security drone that surveils the office with its camera, but its specialty is blasting workers with “Auld Lang Syne” (commonly used in Japan to indicate closing time) to force them out of the office. In theory, the music and the drone’s own buzzing make it impossible to concentrate.
https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/07/drone-curbs-overtime-in-japan-by-blasting-workers-with-music/
Photo: Samuel Zeller
News You Can Use: 10/18/2017
- I Was a Skeptic, Now I am Convinced Unlimited PTO is Good Business
Even if it’s just symbolic, unlimited paid time off (PTO) reinforces the fact that we hired you because you seem like the type of person who can handle a little freedom. If I say that I trust you, and then follow up that supposedly heartfelt declaration by shackling you to your desk, you can be certain of two things:
1. I don’t trust you.
2. You shouldn’t trust me, either.https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/298410
Unlimited PTO sounds lovely, but I can barely manage to take the time I have off. I think for many, by not having set days off employees will take even less days, and I think companies like Netflix knows that. - Podcast: Ariba: Talking Treasury with Jerry Bernard
From investment decisions to monitoring regulations and managing currency fluctuations, the treasurer’s life is never boring. Join us in this conversation with SAP Ariba’s own treasurer, Jerry Bernard, to hear about a day in the life of a corporate treasurer and to get an idea of which issues he feels are most important in the field.
- Want to Boost Your Career and Income? Develop a Side Project or Hobby
- Struggling With A Work Setback? Reflect On Your Childhood (Yes, Really)
Reflecting on my childhood and young adulthood isn’t just daydreaming–the point isn’t to avoid my present challenges by indulging in escapist nostalgia. Instead, it’s to try and remember the sequence of experiences that led me to where I am now. I try to reach beyond the fear and constraints of the moment so I can reconnect with something deeper and more permanent.
When I work with clients who are struggling with professional difficulties, I ask them to do the same–to remember what inspired them to move along the career path they chose, no matter how frustrating the circumstances that path has led them into right now: What was in their work that originally gave them the feelings of pleasure and fulfillment that they’ve built their career on? What was an early moment of discovery and delight that first got them excited?
- One Year After Its Fake-Accounts Scandal, Wells Fargo Isn’t ‘A Better Bank’
Indeed, the scandal has only gotten worse since it first came to light. Since Stumpf’s appearance before Congress, the estimated number of accounts affected has been revised up to 3.5 million. Additionally, a separate scandal, involving auto loans the bank issued, affected some 500,000 customers, who had insurance policies taken out in their names that sometimes resulted in defaults and vehicle repossessions.
While Sloan tried to focus on progress made in the past year—bringing up changes made to the bank’s organizational structure, review processes, plans for repaying customers, sales incentives, and corporate culture—the senators focused on how long it took Wells Fargo to open official inquiries into the claims of fake accounts, the predatory nature of the sales processes, and the compensation executives received. The committee members dwelled on the questions of how the bank’s practices could be improved and whether it should be allowed to continue operating in the first place.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/10/wells-fargo-fake-accounts-sloan/541875/
Photo: Patrick Hendry