Andy Cohen: “Design has the power to make people feel optimistic about the future and create lasting positive change in the world. That built environment is where we live, work, play, learn, and connect. It’s where all aspects of the human experience take place. It’s our belief that design can serve to enhance our experiences and to make our communities more welcoming, accessible, vibrant, healthy, resilient, and inspiring to everyone. That’s why we wrote about the hope multiplier. Much like the crisis multiplier that we discussed before is about these great challenges we’re taking on, the hope multiplier is all about the future of the world.”
Ben Thompson: “Here I am…celebrating a Windows event! That celebration, though, is not because Windows is differentiating the rest of Microsoft, but because the rest of Microsoft is now differentiating Windows. Nadella’s focus on AI and the company’s massive investments in compute are the real drivers of the business, and, going forward, are real potential drivers of Windows. This is where the Walmart analogy is useful: McMillon needed to let e-commerce stand on its own and drive the development of a consumer-centric approach to commerce that depended on centralized tech-based solutions; only then could Walmart integrate its stores and online services into an omnichannel solution that makes the company the only realistic long-term rival to Amazon. Nadella, similarly, needed to break up Windows and end Ballmer’s dreams of vertical domination so that the company could build a horizontal services business that, a few years later, could actually make Windows into a differentiated operating system that might, for the first time in years, actually drive new customer acquisition.”
Nicholas Bostrom: “We’ve built our conception of ourselves and our dignity to a large extent on the idea that we can make some sort of useful contribution to the world, whether it’s at a large scale or just in your family or in your community. And so, to the extent that that’s the foundation of your self-worth, if that foundation is removed, you might find a kind of vacuum underneath your feet that would be disconcerting. So, in a solved world where all the practical problems have already been solved, there are no more problems for us to solve, or to the extent that there remain any practical problems they would be better taken care of by advanced AIs and robots. And so, either way, there would be nothing of practical utility that human work would be needed for. So, that forces, then, a fairly radical reconsideration of what the foundation of a good human life could be. And, undoubtedly it would require jettisoning some treasured assumptions about what the life should contain. And, I think that’s part of where this sense of unease would come from.”
WSJ: “Tapping fewer [project management software] vendors, and using each more broadly, can help companies reduce cyberattack surfaces, negotiate better discounts, develop deeper expertise in the systems they use and avoid high integration costs of stitching disparate systems together, CIOs say. But unifying a company behind one project management tool is proving to be difficult, according to CIOs who cite Asana, Airtable, Monday.com and Atlassian’s Jira products among the more popular tools. Part of the challenge lies in the nature of how project management tools are used and acquired. They are unlike a customer relationship management tool, in which the enterprise typically coalesces around one main vendor. Project management tools, whose functionality cuts across all job functions, often are purchased piecemeal by individual teams or individual users.”
Elaine Lin Hering: “I saw the same pattern: people weren’t willing to negotiate. Despite incredible financial, time, and energy investment from companies and leaders, we still aren’t willing to have challenging discussions. There’s hesitation around both ends of feedback, no matter how much a manager or HR suggests we provide or receive it. Why is that? Leaders often encourage employees on their teams to “speak up.” That was the advice that I always heard. That advice often boils down to having more confidence and courage; we believe the problem is us. “If you could fix yourself, we could promote you, and you’ll be heard.” I found that advice to be unsatisfying and irresponsible. I wanted an accurate diagnosis of the situation. I began asking, “Why don’t people speak up? Why don’t they want to negotiate, and why don’t they want to have difficult conversations?” The answer is that we’ve learned silence. We’ve been rewarded for it in our careers. If we want to speak up and negotiate, we need to unlearn how we’ve internalized silence and how it has become habitual. We must make it visible. Additionally, well-intentioned leaders must recognize how they inadvertently silence the people they claim to support.”
