Ask-Listen-Talk of On-the-Job Learning

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Learning and development was the focus is my last job.  But while many in the corporate milieu see it mainly as training courses, I worked at encouraging leaders and staff alike to broaden their horizons.  Certainly there were conferences, too, along with books and videos.  We even offered e-learning courses for everyone.  But let me talk about an under-rated, under-appreciated way of learning, that arguably is the best of all, and that's on-the-job learning.

But OTJ doesn't quite capture the concept that began to percolate in my mind in that last job.  It's about weaving the learning effort into the day-to-day of fulfilling job responsibilities. Note the following case study:

L&D was situated within Group HR, and I made it a specific point to get acquainted with my HR colleagues, build relationships, and ask them questions. For example, I learned that the terminal business (storage for crude oil and products) was fast growing in the company. Many of them accompanied me to their meetings with executives and managers, so I learned even more about their various business and leadership issues.

Because I created a process for assessing leadership potential (ALP), I had reason to meet with business unit and department heads. I asked the General Manager of our terminal business how things were going, and he graciously took the time to let me know that it was going very well, even in the midst of the recession. Because I was clearly intrigued, he explained that traders bought petroleum on the cheap. They then stored it, until the price climbed, then sold it for a profit. It made perfect sense.

On another occasion, I presented results of the ALP to the CEO and his executive team. But before I did, I had the privilege of sitting in on their discussion. It was at the end of November 2008, and the recession was on. The outlook for 2009 was grim, and he challenged his executive to review the very budgets they had just set.  Instead of just running through my slides, when my time came, I jumped right to a table of results, and said to the CEO and his team that the leaders at the top were the drivers for results. They were among the most talented in the company.

The secret sauce, if you will, of this woven learning effort and process is an abiding curiosity, an open attention, and a readiness to ask, listen and talk.  There are all kinds of methods, tools and forums for learning, but this curiosity, attention and readiness are the heart of The Core Algorithm.  It's not complicated in the least, but it has far-reaching ramifications for learning easily and freely.

Invite a new colleague for coffee or take an old workplace friend for lunch, then ask, listen and talk, and see how much you learn.

ESPN Makes for Superb Sports Learning

I am a sports fanatic, and in particular a longtime fan of the Chicago Bears, Blackhawks and Bulls.  I don't watch TV, but ESPN programs and live or recorded sports are the exception.  Football is so popular in the US that it's on CBS, NBC and Fox, along with ESPN.  Depending on when they play, the Bears may be on any of these channels.  Hockey is on NBCSN, plus CSN for the Blackhawks.  Finally, basketball is on TNT and ESPN, and CSN and WGN for the Bulls.

But TV is old style media, isn't it.

ESPN SportsCenter

All of those TV channels I mentioned have websites, but ESPN online stands head-and-shoulders among them. While SI online sometimes has better written articles, ESPN has a wider collection plus a farther reach.  Moreover, ESPN has videos galore of actual games (highlights), interviews with athletes and coaches, and commentary from reporters and analysts.  By and large, SI lacks video, and its new website format makes it look like one of those annoying sponsored sites.  So while it was a strong secondary source of learning and enjoyment, it's now more of a lesser secondary source.   

What is another godsend?

It was on ESPN that I learned about the ruse that Lou Gehrig's wife and doctor played for months, while the baseball icon suffered and eventually died from ALS.

ESPN did a gripping expose on the domestic violence case on Ray Rice, the cover ups by his team, and the fiasco engineered by the NFL.

I'm not much into soccer, but I love watching the World Cup. I was in Dhahran for 2006, in Dubai for 2010, and finally at home in 2014, and, yes, you guessed it: ESPN had terrific coverage, commentary and analysis through the month-long soccer fest.

Speaking of that wider collection and farther reach, ESPN is active on social media.  I don't mean the channel or site itself, but rather its reporters and analysts.  In fact, they're seamlessly woven into the flow (Timeline) of my two main social media (i.e., Google+ and Twitter) among other channels, sites, reporters and analysts and of course among my friends and fellow fans.  As I mentioned in the preceding article on Wikipedia, no single learning source ought to be it.  So besides ESPN and SI, I also visit Grantland and Forbes sports money.  Other sites come my radar mainly via posts on my Timeline or in communities I am member of.

Wikipedia Makes Learning Easy and Direct

In my younger days, we had a full collection of the Encyclopædia Britannica right on the wide shelving above our fireplace.  I think a door-to-door salesman had come, and my parents bought it for us.  They must've had signed up for a subscription, because we had yearly additions, such as science and the future, and we had three massive dictionaries.  It was a joy to have all of these at our disposal.  I was the nerd who not only read the dictionary, but also took notes on words.  

Then came Wikipedia.

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In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson cited a comparison between Britannica and Wikipedia, partly to put context on the claim that the latter was inaccurate.  On average, across comparable articles, there were about three errors per article on Britannica versus four errors per article on Wikipedia.  In this respect the former was better, but it wasn't exceedingly so, literally just a notch better.  He added that it took Britannica quite a lot of time and ordeal to correct its mistakes, while Wikipedia had a host of people making corrections easily and regularly.  Anderson's book was published in 2004, and I imagine things have evolved for both encyclopedias.  As of 2010, Britannica stopped printing its editions.  Like it or not, it is hard for even the most scholarly, respected work to compete, if it doesn't evolve, and in particular if it doesn't appreciate the reach and breadth of any work produced by people around the world and distributed online in one site or another.

Truth be told, I stopped reading Britannica, once I entered the university.  I had so many more references, sources and forums for learning, of course, that I easily set aside that venerable collection.  Fast-forward to recent years, and Wikipedia has become a godsend for me, like YouTube.  I love films, for example, and here I can learn about the actors, storyline, and production.  I rarely go directly to the Wikipedia site.  I simply search for a film or actor on Google, and the Wikipedia entry is among the top results.  Moreover, I have the added convenience of searching on my Samsung Galaxy Note, so I can stay ensconced on the couch and learn in real time, watching a DVD. 

The issue of accuracy is a crucial one:  Whether any material comes online or in-person, it bears checking out.  If I see anything that seems too good to be true, something that doesn't quite hang together, or things that are more complicated, then I check multiple sources.  I'm writing a book on Donald Sterling, for example, and there were some discrepancies about when that fateful (racist) conversation with his "gal pal" was recorded.  There were some confusion about his age, too.  So I had to search high and low to find the answers.  Wikipedia also includes the references (links) for its entries, so it's an added advantage to be able to check its sources easily and directly.

YouTube Makes Learning Dynamic and Convenient

I finished college in the typical four years, and the six and a half years it took to finish graduate school may have been average as well for doctoral programs.  I love school, and learning in general, and if I had stopped learning altogether, I'd be over 20 years behind in grasping things.  After all, it was 1993 when I graduated with my PhD.  I've attended several professional conferences and training programs over that time span, but otherwise I haven't been back to school since.

I am grateful for my keen mind and abiding curiosity, however.  So in fact I've continued to learn about things, and with the advent of Theory of Algorithms and The Core Algorithm, I've even accelerated the pace and sharpened the process by which I learn, 99% of which is low or no cost and certainly convenient.  This week I look at online forums, and next week it's in-person activities I talk about, as far as learning goes.

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YouTube is a godsend.  A few decades ago, cable TV expanded the number of channels we watched into the hundreds, and for a fee, we had the privilege of watching programs without commercial interruption.  For films, that fee was well worth it.  But cable TV is no match at all the breadth and depth of YouTube.  YouTube brought not only TV consumption, but also TV production and distribution to you and me.  We can create and promote our own stuff, along with watching that of others.

I'm writing a book on innovation, for example, and this requires quite a lot of research.  My thesis hinge on our need to innovate on innovation, as every consultant, or would-be consultant it seems, has such ready advice to dispense that innovation slid into conventionality and mediocrity.  When anything becomes a buzzword, it rapidly loses its meaning and import.  My aim is to advance our understanding and to improve our efforts to innovate.

Enter: YouTube

We begin of course with the end in mind.  If you have a specific subject in mind, type that into the search box.  If you simply want to explore and enjoy, browse YouTube recommendations right on its home page.  A section of my book is on the history of innovation, and after a handful of search queries, I stumbled on the documentary Inventions that Shook the World.  You can buy the DVD set on Amazon for as little as $30.51 or you can watch it all for free on this playlist.

Mind you, I don't find everything I want, and sometimes I run into poor quality programs.  As part of that search on the history of innovation, for instance, I found Inventions that Changed the World.  But after watching the first episode, I was turned off.  I may decide to watch the other episodes, and may be they are of better quality.  So while I've set this program aside, I have every liberty to come back to it.

The second step is walk backwards to map the pathways, that is, from where you want to be to where you are now.  In essence, though, this step is about creating the right road map to truly accomplish or reach your end.  Once you're in the process, though, you're not just navigating (walking) the roads you've mapped, but you're also altering and adjusting the road map accordingly.  In this respect, I actually slid out YouTube, after being turned off by Inventions that Changed the World, and searched, and found, a terrific paper on the history of innovation from Google Scholar.  Sliding in and out of YouTube, and other learning forums, is a very dynamic, fluid process for me.

Within YouTube, it is so easy to subscribe to channels of interest that it makes TV quite a fossilized relic.  Forbes, Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal are publications for finding business and leadership in general, and innovation in particular, while consultancies like McKinsey and Booz and universities like Harvard and Stanford have all sorts of positively intriguing, relevant videos.  When you search via subject, you may find channels of interest to you, or you can certainly search for specific channels directly, such as "CNN channel."

Finally, The Core Algorithm puts walk the pathways squarely in its easy-as-pie, ABC-123 process.  The nuts-and-bolts of learning for me on YouTube is to watch actively and to reflect continuously.  I often stop the video to replay a section, or even just a set of remarks, to grasp it better.  I also pause the video to take notes in my journal, as it's supremely easy to toggle off from one tab to another on my laptop.

Back in my university days, I took to audio-recording some lectures.  But I soon found out that listening to lectures again was too time-consuming, so it prompted me to listen more actively and take notes more carefully.  But with YouTube I have the luxury to stop and replay, reflect and wonder, and write things down.  If a figure, book or event is mentioned in the video, I can even do a quick search on it and explore a particular reference.

As you see, it's a dynamic, convenient process for learning.  But as they say, you can bring a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.  So at the end of the day, The Core Algorithm is about actually drinking the water, replenishing yourself, and relishing the cool drink.

Powerful Image, Crucial Conversation on Poverty

This is an extremely powerful photo...

My comment, and the following comment, garnered a fair number of pluses:

There is probably more truth in this image than we can imagine. Some developed countries found ways to exploit developing countries, and made policy of such exploitation. Poverty is centuries in the making.

Exactly what the government does to the poor masses. 

Here are others' comments in this bit of discussion:

wow....some humans r just heartless...now

really powerful image....dug a deep hole in my heart!!!!!

Man's inhumanity to man!

its a saddnes true ....the world belongs to rich

Not rich just assholes, many" rich" people are nice and give tons to charity.....

Is very sad not all white people are like that n get blamed for the ones who are like this

What does this have to do with skin color? It's in black and white. Their skin looks the same to me.

The man = government..The child = everyone else.. could also say racial slavery too. But mainly a case of those who have money have power, maybe the case in society, but means nothing in nature!!

In even the smallest of ways, I believe this sort of conversation is crucial.  This sort of conversation may be replicated with another image or with moving quotes, and we keep replicating it, until there is a buzz, a rumble, a tectonic on dealing with poverty.

Ideal-Think-Reality of US Wealth Distribution

Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.

I ran into this video infographic last year, as I researched poverty and wrote lengthy articles: Letting Poverty Speak and Eradicating Poverty.  I posted it on social media, and noted:

I'd say, There is something fundamentally wrong with economic law, which makes [MIT Professor Erik] Brynjolfsson's point such a gross understatement. As the wealth has risen geometrically, the divide between the have and the have-not seems to have widened as well.

It's a very good video. Very impactful. 

Definitely, the animation and graphics hammer home a disturbing message about inequality.

Let's have a look at the following screen shots from the video:

What we think the wealth distribution is, and what we believe it ought to be, are one thing

But the reality is so much further from what we think and what we believe

In fact just 1% own a greater portion of wealth than what we believe the top 20% ought to have

This sort of socialist (equal) wealth distribution is not what we are asking for

But here is our ideal presented in another way

Here is our take of what it is

Here is what it actually is: The poorest barely register, and the richest stretch off the infographic

In fact that ungodly fortunate 1% has to have his own column to stack his stockpile

If a picture paints a thousand words...

Dealing with poverty, and perhaps eradicating it altogether, are extraordinarily difficult efforts.  The issues that gave rise to it and, more importantly, the factors that perpetuate it, are comparatively complex.  But when the narrator encourages us to wake up, it echoes a central tenet of Theory of Algorithms: take reality as it is (rf. Part 1 - A Beautiful Matter).

Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, they of that top 1%, have pledged a great portion of their wealth for philanthropic purpose.  Kudos to them.  But they can only keep encouraging other members of that über elite club to do the same, and we can hope that they will.  The wealthiest country in the world is not wealthy, in the least, as long as it holds segments of its citizens in poverty.  

Bono Moves the Needle on Poverty

Human beings have been campaigning against inequality and poverty for 3,000 years. But this journey is accelerating. Bono "embraces his inner nerd" and shares inspiring data that shows the end of poverty is in sight ... if we can harness the momentum.

Bono offers a spirited, nerdy take on the state of poverty and its possible trajectory over the coming years.  Families living on $1.25 is back-breaking indeed and heart-breaking, too.  But there is reason to be hopeful and optimistic:

Bono has a way of injecting humor and hope into something grave and entrenched.  So when he says that the zero zone of poverty is, for him, the erogenous zone, we laugh and take note and find ourselves engaged.  It won't be a person like me who will move the needle on eradicating poverty.  It'll be someone like Bono, whom people, by and large, really listen to and are moved by.  I can theorize and advise behind the scenes, and he can keep speaking to audiences the world over.

The power of the people is so much stronger than the people in power.

One is the organization that Bono co-founded to fight extreme poverty.

Small Environment-Saving Actions are Sustainable

The New School in New York City is among a handful of forums I focus on for ideas, and I love their little video journal on saving the environment.  What they're doing resonates with the algorithm I am formulating, with the things I am doing personally, and broadly with The Core Algorithm.

Years ago, for example, I biked to my office in Chicago.  To and from home, it was a 100+ mile trek:  Not only did I save loads of money and spare the environment, but also I put myself through fabulous exercise.  Since returning home at the end of 2011, I've worked at my home office, so there is no commute for moi.  But for my meetings downtown, I walked to and from the Metra station, instead of taking the taxi.  Again it was about save money, spare environment, and get exercise.

My wife and daughter, like millions of people in the US and elsewhere, live off bottled water.  In the US, our tap is duly filtered for safe drinking.  Interestingly, the bottled water they buy is so-called purified, which probably means filtered.  I've put a Britta filter on our tap, and encouraged them to refill from it, but to no avail.  I keep thinking that the bottled water industry is such a successful racket.  But so be it:  This is simply the way it is for them.  As for myself, I use the water fountain from our refrigerator, which is basically tap.

I definitely work at reduce | reuse | recycle.  To my family's credit, we are good at recycling plastic, paper and cans, and we use paper plates instead of styrofoam plates.  Also, we use bath and kitchen towels more than once, before we throw them in the laundry basket.

This resonates perfectly with my think big, act small motto. 

As an exercise in one training session I did, in which I related this motto, I had two pairs of students go from one point to another in the room.  One pair I instructed to leap as far forward as they could together, and the other pair I simply asked to walk comfortably.  After just two back-and-forth, the first pair was already spent.  The second pair could've walked indefinitely.

Small actions, when directed toward our purpose and destination, are more effective than leaping steps or strenuous effort precisely because they are sustainable.  And isn't that what The New School is after.

Dynamic Equilibrium between Life and Earth

After watching Home, I found myself in weighty conversation with a friend via Facebook messaging (November 2010).  We talked about a range of things, but here I want to capture those having to do with the environment.  I think about things, and care about working ideas and insights through with others.

Equilibrium Philosophy (2005)

I'm studying Einstein right now, and it's remarkable that earlier on, physics was just a hobby for him. While he came to be a 'giant' in this field, I guess he became more philosophical later on in life.

Also, that last quote ... The earth was first uninhabitable, but somehow the first signs of life began to radically change its atmosphere so it could actually support more life. That beginning of life was about 4 billion years ago, and humankind has been around a mere 200,000 years. Yet, we humans have done so much more to damage the earth :,(

Part of what keeps me busy, even on holidays, is coming up with better algorithms for solving big problems like our assault on the environment (whew) ...

you are a genius Ron and I am so glad that we have people like you who go out of their way trying to save our planet and make a difference. You are a gem and I wish you all the best of luck in coming up with solutions to this ever increasing problem before we all disintegrate!

It's going to take time, and a lot of pouring over my algorithms ... as I'm also trying to solve poverty, disease and conflict (whew [squared]) ... truly!

Oh, about your point regarding our disintegrating vis-a-vis the environment ...

Oh God YES PLEASE DO SHARE! I would love to know what is really going on from a scientific point of view. THANKS!

well, it can be boring and off-putting for some people ... but since you're interested ...

The fear is, the earth will not be able to support a still-rapidly growing population overall. And, by many people's account, experts included, the earth is already quite damaged and depleted. So it's a rather dire picture, isn't it.

My take, it is a dire situation, but not to the extent that many people would have us believe. You see, the earth knows perfectly well how to take care of itself and the life which depends on it. From my view, the very fact that the population keeps growing is a indication that the earth can still support it with its resources. This, by itself, is a good sign.

Now, there is a thing called 'climate migration.' I believe it's in Nigeria that farmlands have been so depleted that people are flocking to Lagos by the masses to make a living or more specifically to find sustenance. So I don't believe we'll disintegrate. Rather, we'll disperse, crowd, and continue to multiply if there is indeed enough resources to live on.

Unless we humans change our habits toward the environment, however, the earth will literally assert its 'wisdom' and exercise its power more and more (e.g., by not regenerating its resources so readily). (This is a bit more of a complicated argument, and I don't know enough about how the earth functions, yet.)

The result, I believe, will be the population stops growing or, worse, goes on the decline. This is not a good sign, but I don't think it's necessarily not a bad thing, either ... because a decline in population gives the earth time to recoup and still provide for us (remaining) humans.

Finally, I don't think we humans will ever disappear from the face of the earth, despite catastrophic predictions or doomsday films. We're an integral part of the overall ecosystem of the earth. But ... but ... again depending what we do vis-a-vis the environment, the equilibrium we have with the earth will look very different 100 years, or 1000 years, from now.

Reference, my article in February 2013: Weighing Worldwide Heartbreaks.
 

`Home Documentary more than Breathtaking

Home (2009)

It was at the very end of September 2010, when a friend invited me and other friends to see this documentary at a theater in Dubai.  To say that it was breathtaking doesn't quite capture how superb this was:  It was resonating, it was moving, it was provocative.

That September 2010 was just six months into my work on Theory of Algorithms and The Core Algorithm, and many of my ideas and insights were budding at best and vague at worst.  Still this documentary was pivotal in my crucial preliminary thoughts on the environment, which I took stock of in February 2013. 

How well we keep (or regain) equilibrium for proper sustenance and growth depends on a host of weighty actions, such as:  (a) We halt our adverse impact on the environment.  (b) We reduce our consumption or alter our consumption pattern.  (c) We somehow assist Mother Earth in replenishing herself.

From Weighing Worldwide Heartbreaks.

Home is a mere 93 minutes in length (click on the image caption, above, to view it), but its coverage and reach and impact span millennia in the history of life on earth.   

Algorithm for Environment is forthcoming, but my articles this week are small but notable steps in that long, effortful formulation.