LET’S BE FWENDS ISSUE #69:

LET’S CALL IT A COMEBACK!

“Comeback is a good word, man”

~ Mickey Rourke

It’s been seven months since I last wrote a newsletter. Can you imagine?

After shamelessly plugging the possibility of a comeback of Let’s be Fwends on Twitter, the reaction was overwhelming.

So, thanks to the two people who think I should start writing that thing again.

Anyway. Here we are.

The Business Agility Report 2020 is out.

Admirals doing admiral things: Solely scanning the horizon, and meeting in groups to talk. Their top 3 challenges when it comes to Agile adoption are

Leadership Style, Agile Mindset, and Silos.

I don’t think this will come as a surprise to anyone working in the field of Agile transformation or OrgDev. Interestingly, silos are the most rigid and distinctively structural problem we often encounter. They seem to form naturally, similar to a very basic sorting algorithm: Hey, all those marketing people doing marketing things, couldn’t we just put them in a marketing team? It’s very hard to counter this category-building tendency of the human mind, and you need to deliberately work against it. Which gets tremendously easier if you have an Agile Mindset firmly established in the company. Which requires a radically different Leadership style than what was needed 40 years ago, when much of today’s management theory was created.

Silos are be the visible artefacts, and Leadership and Mindset are the patterns creating them.

Short History of Human-Computer interaction

There’s this interesting idea that cats actually domesticated humans, not the other way round. Sometimes it seems the same holds true for computers. I think we long surpassed the point where we no longer understand what computers are actually doing, and how they are doing it. And the computers know that, too, so they give us little tasks to do and goals to reach to keep us occupied while they are doing their thing.

A map of Pangea with all modern states added

Here’s a cool map of the super-continent Pangea with all modern states’ borders added. I did not know that Italy pivoted around France before coming to its distinct form.

This is a Gömböc. And its name is the least weird thing about it.

First, a tiny bit of physics: What is an equilibrium? An equilibrium is a state of a system which does not change. An equilibrium is considered stable, if the system will return to it after disturbances. It is considered unstable, if it will move away from the equilibrium as a consequence of a disturbance (e.g. a pencil standing on its tip). Here are more details.

So, the Gömböc is special, because it has only one stable and one unstable equilibrium point. Which means that it will always righten itself into exactly one position once disturbed. Always. And it is the only artificial object that can do that. And some species of turtles can do that, too.

When something that feels laid back and relaxing is exhausting to create

Speaking of turtles: Tortoise.

Tortoise is one of my all-time favourite bands, and Swung from the Gutter is my absolute favourite song by them. Naturally I was delighted to find a YouTube video of them performing the song (while doing a little casual research on double-drumming). Watch one of the drummers- The music you hear is so smooth and relaxing. But he’s really working hard to create it. It’s an interesting observation that there is a tension between the state of the listener and the state of the musician. I never thought about that.

The art of the sports commentator

The cancellation of most sports events due to Covid-19 led us to the not quite unexpected insight that you can sports-comment on anything.

Which reminds me of this dutch parody of english sports.

That’s a wrap, thank you for reading the first Let’s be Fwends edition after seven months. You. Are. A. Rockstar. And didn’t need me to tell you that. Because Rockstars know that. 🎸