Business Insight Zone

*sniffs*

*clears throat*

Well, I FEEL okay on this sunny Monday in Austin, but the head cold I’ve been fighting through the weekend seems determined to prevent me from thinking any Deep Thoughts today.* Therefore, we’re going to go even more tapas-style than usual with some one-bite tidbits.

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Writing about how people use Twitter, my colleague Russ Somers hits the Qwitter nail on the head with this post:

Baby Won’t You Unfollow Me Down

. . . I’ve never seen a Qwitter attributed to politeness or pragmatism. Instead, it’s personal. ‘@personx can’t handle my politics/religion/sense of humor.’ Anything can be twisted to fit this.

He’s nice enough to cite my own earlier post on this subject, which boils down to my saying “but correlation does not imply causation — much less animosity” over and over.

Bigger point to ponder: feedback data can be explicit (”You’ve tested positive for Hepatitis C”) or directional (”I seem to lose Twitter followers whenever I start ranting about politics”)

How often do we misunderstand one for the other?

And how many of our tools (like Qwitter) encourage that misunderstanding?

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A quote worth pondering — maybe more than ever, given the current confusion in many parts of the commercial world:

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.
–John Gall

Does this apply to your own work?

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This post by Seth Godin . . .

“Just doing my job”

. . . If you take a job, you’ve bought into what the company does. You’re responsible.

. . . got me thinking about on observation from Geoff Colvin’s book Talent is Overrated, which I read over the weekend and which I’ll review here when my brain is working better. Here’s Colvin, with my emphasis added:

Average performers believe their errors were caused by factors outside their control: My opponent got lucky; the task was too hard; I just don’t have any natural ability for this. Top performers, by contrast, believe they are responsible for their errors. Note that this is not just a difference of personality or attitude. Recall that the best performers have set highly specific, technique-based goals and strategies for themselves; they have thought through exactly how they intend to achieve what they want. So when something doesn’t work, they can relate the failure to specific elements of their performance that may have misfired.

Just so.

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Stay tuned — more notes from inside the tissue box to come.

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* How often I manage Deep Thoughts under normal circumstances — or indeed whether I ever do — is left as an exercise for the reader.

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Photo by nishidaryuichi.

Category: Social media, The working life