Category: Innovation

Latest Read: Quiet

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date May 1, 2021

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. Susan’s efforts in revealing insights addressing introverts are remarkable. In the age of COVID, Quiet offers all readers a refreshing though process to strengthen ourselves and all of our relationships by better understanding introverts. At the same time, it may be indeed revealing that readers are rediscovering their own quiet demeanor while working at home.

Susan’s stories of Rosa Parks, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak, and Eleanor Roosevelt are certainly well researched and serve as insightful lessons to their daily behaviors.

As a result, one of the strong and revealing topics across the opening three chapters address how leadership is impacted by extroverts. However, this is sometimes not for the better.

Traditionally extroverts certainly carry a group’s ideas. Susan is proving this to be a wrong approach.

Any unchallenging loud voice in the room seemingly is ‘defining’ a project or sales ‘success’ for the gorup, can certainly be where the train goes off the tracks. When this is a CEO or senior Vice President there can be uphill challenges to organizational success. An introvert attending a Tony Robbins event was interesting to say the least as Susan attests.

Tags behavioral economics, introvert, leadership, Quiet, Susan Cane

Education Innovation Reading

Noise Preview

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date April 30, 2021

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by noted authors Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein. This upcoming release certainly reminds me that I first read Daniel’s Thinking, Fast and Slow six years ago. This Noise preview is certainly a book everyone should read. I have found many references to Daniel’s work across a series of books that I have been reading over the last couple of years. I attribute the same embrace of Cass’ deeply insightful book Nudge, which I re-read just last year. Above all, they make a powerful 1-2 punch in Behavioral Science.

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein

Noise looks to be just as compelling as the following premise: Consider two doctors in the same city giving the same patients different diagnoses. Additionally, consider two judges working in the same courthouse giving different sentences to people for the same crime. In addition, consider the impact of different food inspectors providing different ratings to indistinguishable restaurants.
In contrast, consider that the same doctor, the same judge, the same inspector, makes different decisions in the morning versus the late afternoon, or decisions made on Mondays versus Wednesdays. Following these examples of ‘noise’ the authors will reveal, a variability in judgments that should be identical.

I am very much looking forward to learning how noise makes impactful contributions to errors in literally all fields. Obviously ‘noise’ is located wherever people make decisions. Yet it appears most if not all of us are somewhat oblivious to the role of chance in our decisions. I certainly cannot wait to read this book!

2021 DLD Conference | Book Talk: Noise – A Flaw in Human Judgment

Tags Cass Sunstein, Daniel Kahneman, Noise, nudge, Olivier Sibony, Thinking Fast and Slow

Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date February 22, 2021

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz. Even though leading a startup is the focus of this book, lessons are for leaders regardless of organization type. Ben is the cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm.

Ben certainly provides insightful stories with his experience joining Marc Andreessen at Netscape, then leading Loudcloud, and Opsware as CEO.

There are certainly rich experiences regarding Ben’s roles at Netscape, CEO at both Loudcloud and Opsware. Hence there are more than casual boasting of accomplishments. Nevertheless, Ben delivers insights to all the ups and downs experienced by struggling startups.

Ordinarily, many startups have only one client driving almost 90% of the company’s revenue. Therefore many lessons apply to all moving into any startup’s culture. Ben’s efforts at Loudcloud are driving those lessons and the single client model.

There is also a good section for managers relating to 1-on-1 management meetings with their direct reports. Otherwise, Mark Horseman’s Manager Tools series provides much deeper insights for managers and leaders to capitalize their 1-on-1 time.

Tags Ben Horowitz, change, leadership, startup, The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Education Innovation Reading

Latest Read: The Elephant in the Brain

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date January 19, 2021

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life by Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler. It is very intriguing when any author indicates their book is about being selfish. Yet, The Elephant in the Brain explores deep insights to self-deception and hidden motives in human behavior.

Indeed readers may reflect and find themselves acknowledging their own motives. Certainly we do not want others to know about them. Therefore we avoid talking or even thinking about our own selfishness. This is Robin’s theme within The Elephant in the Brain.

Yet, Robin’s discovery of stroke victims and split brain patients is completely fascinating. For example, some stroke victims suffer from a disability denial. This is a rare disorder. While it is common for a victim to have lost muscle control of an arm. Yet some patients actually deny anything is wrong with their arm, even though they cannot control any movement.

In addition, a type of hidden behavior demonstrated by patients of corpus callosotomy, patients who for medical reasons undergo the surgical severing of the nerves that connect the left and right hemispheres of their brain. The research of these patients points directly to our collective unconscious behavior.

Part 1: Why we hide our motives

Robin suggests rather accurately that human beings are primates and there is a link to primates being political animals. Fun example of chimps that share social grooming: direct and to the point. Subsequently, as the title then is suggesting, our brains do move beyond ‘hunter/gather’ and is driving us to succeed socially by using deception, knowingly or unknowingly.

Tags Kevin Simler, primates, Robin Hanson, self-deception, The Elephant in the Brain

Education Innovation Reading Technology Vietnam War

Latest Read: The Imagineers of War

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date January 17, 2021

The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World by Sharon Weinberger. Sharon has written for Wired, Slate, the Financial Times and the Washington Post Magazine. Furthermore, Sharon is the former editor-in-chief of Defense Technology International. Today Sharon is an executive editor at Foreign Policy.

Obviously the simply amazing stories within The Pentagon’s Brain (my review) inspired me to read Sharon’s book. The Imagineers of War is a very worthy reading experience all by itself.

Unquestionably both books combine for an amazing one-two punch of DARPA history. The most astounding impact of DARPA technology? Many weapons developed for Vietnam are today a cornerstone of US troop technology in Afghanistan: precision weapons, drones, robots, and networked computing.

The first half of The Imagineers of War reveals the very large, looming role of William Godel. He certainly casts a long shadow across DARPA’s early history. However only Sharon can address Godel’s departure and later accusations that may have crippled DARPA.

For the most part, Sharon provides a deep dive into the lives of key players at DARPA. Godel is certainly no exception. Severely injured fighting as a Marine in World War II, he began working as a spy in 1949. Besides Godel’s assignment, he was recruiting former German scientists held in Soviet-controlled East Berlin. Godel is unquestionably acknowledged by American military leaders as an emerging key resource along with Edward Lansdale and William Colby.

Part One:

The opening chapters address the bombing of Nagasaki to post World War II goals. One focus was securing Germany’s key physicists including Wernher von Braun from the Soviets. The role of von Braun’s departure is quite amazing. His team was working at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency in Huntsville Alabama. This team would design Jupiter-C missiles. Then Sputnik changed everything.

Tags DARPA, pentagon, Sharon Weinberger, Technology, The Imagineers of War, Vietnam War, William Godel