Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Everything is Time

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” [J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring] Our time is limited, but our timing doesn't have to be. We can learn to see the hidden patterns of life, to appreciate the power of breaks, the importance of beginnings and endings, starting together, understanding the power of midpoints and the... Read more →

The Influence of Networks on Business Impact

During World War II, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) erected a temporary building on on its central campus to house the Radiation Lab. The plywood structure's purpose was to house the primary radar-development institute of the Allied forces. Without a formal name, it became MIT Building 20#. When the war was over, the building and its collection of narrow hallways and spaces found new uses. The Laboratory for Nuclear Science, the linguistics department, the machine shop, a particle accelerator, the ROTC, a cell culture lab, and a computer free zone piano repair shop were housed in the building int... Read more →

Go Where Everyone Else Isn't

“Without owning something, over an extended period of time —like, a few years— where one has a chance to take responsibility for one's recommendations, where one has to see one's recommendations through all action stages and accumulate scar tissue for the mistakes and pick oneself up off the ground and dust oneself off, one learns a fraction of what one can.” [Steve Jobs] A trip down memory lane with Steve Jobs in 1992. In one of the most candid conversations I've heard about business in a long, long time at MIT# he talked about what they were doing at NeXT,... Read more →

Facebook's Brand

When we're hungry, we want to know where there are good places to eat. Whomever gives us that information reliably becomes a go-to. We care about missing appointments, so we use the tool that makes it easy for us. We don't buy smartphones, we buy great pictures and videos of our kids. We're loyal only to results. A brand is what people come to expect of a business or organization. In this sense, it's much better to have a good product that is consistent from an organization that doesn't just want to sell us, but is happy to educate us... Read more →

The Highest Rung on the Ladder of Individual Achievement

Legacy is a question all humans approach in some way or another in their journey. They think about it a individuals, and they talk about it as organizations. Whether we want to change the world, or make it a better place to live in — and everything in between — at some point, we realize there's more at stake than just us. Steve Jobs' consistent focus throughout his life was on the problem itself vs. the people. But over time, he learned to become more articulate and observant of people's feelings... learning to read the room. It wasn't so much... Read more →

Finding the Right Fit Becomes Easier When...

The gap between promises made and promises kept needs attention, and positive action. Reality is complex as it is, we don't need to complicate things further. Because our complexity may come back to bite us. It does in ways small and big. Small impressions create a fuzzy picture, big ones overwhelm. This is the story of content for content sake, rather than to communicate, educate, inspire, and (yes) instigate. Storytelling is important, but not more than living and breathing the story. Somewhere in the process, many organizations are getting lost in the forest they don't see for looking too closely... Read more →

Specialist or Strategist?

“Specialization is for insects. Humans need the mystifying ability to cope with the unpredictable and ambiguous challenges posed by thinking adversaries in the real world.” [Robert Heinlein] It's an interesting question that may not have as binary an answer as we would like. We need specialists, and we need strategists. Can someone be a little bit of both? Since the early '90s recruitment included the concept of T-shaped skills — a metaphor used to describe the abilities of individuals. Depth of expertise and related skills in a single field represented by the vertical bar on the T, and the horizontal... Read more →

Irony is Our Friend

I started off several articles this week, but left them unfinished. Because I thought there are plenty of people out there teaching expertise one way or another — 3,219 articles in the archives here alone — and then I worried about having a call to action and a marketable something to offer at the end. How many minutes should a good article take to read? Should it be long or short? All questions I still receive from new bloggers. And my answer remains the same at 12 years of writing online — I think it should be human, and tell... Read more →

Possibilist

What if we carried only the opinions for which we have strong facts? This is a nutshell is the legacy of statistician Hans Rosling. Many opinions, assumptions, hypotheses, and conjectures remain such until we can find evidence to back them up. For example, everything is not getting worse, despite the gloom and doom headlines, more people are in the middle than at the extremes — think bell curve. These are among the few rules of thumb Hans and Ola Rosling have introduced with their work. A side benefit of adopting the stress-reducing habit Rosling recommends is the ability to see... Read more →