The Hindu Business Line : Decentralised democracy bookmark

The game has changed, says Matt Mason in The Pirate’s Dilemma (www.landmarkonthenet. com) “Youth movements that might have seemed like fads planted some radical ideas into the heads of those who grew up under their inf luence, and nothing has been quite the same since,” he observes in the ‘outro,’ the opposite of the ‘intro’.

Mason finds that radical ideas, which had started with individual mavericks conducting crazy social experiments, are entering everything, influencing business, politics, and many other areas. “Right under our noses, the ripple effects of youth culture have been changing the way we live and work.” He foresees that in the future, loose-knit networks and open-source communities may sit side by side as equal powers with both governments and the free market.

Punk capitalism isn’t about big government or big markets but about a new breed of incredibly efficient networks, the author clarifies. “This is not digital communism, this isn’t central planning. It is in fact quite the opposite: a new kind of decentralised democracy made possible by changes in technology.”

Urgent messages to help you navigate the troubled waters.

Boss work

Jacked Up
Bill Lane

Bill Lane, who was Jack Welch’s speechwriter for 20 years, advises that in any presentation, to any audience, you must ‘season’ a success story – even a triumphant success story – with some commentary on ‘where wecame up short’ or ‘where we could have done better’ or ‘if we had to do it over, we might have taken a slightly different approach.’ These are enormous credibility-enhancers, he says in Jacked Up ( www.tatamcgrawhill.com).

Another instruction from Lane is that you should not let staff write your presentations or your annual report for you, if you are big shot. He insists that you need to sit and mine your soul and pour bile and passion all over a piece of paper on what people need to know about you and your company before you bring in your deputies to back up what you say with rock solid data, and ‘better phrasing,’ if you are not that good with words. “If you are any good at what you do – and you must be if you have reached this position – you must have a feel for changing the minds of others and bringing them into the fold of your thinking.”

Insights of great value.

Uniquely human

Theories of Performance
Elizabeth Bell

The vibration of the cell phone in your pocket is an invitation, describes Elizabeth Bell in Theories of Performance ( www.sagepublications.com). “You’ll most likely dig the phone out of your pocket, glance at the screen, read the text message ‘UR L8,’ and choose among a variety of ways to act. Do you then curse? Laugh? Roll your eyes?” she asks. For many people today, such moments with cell phone, says Bell, involve ‘symbol use that is situated, mediated, learned, and enacted.’ “While many ethologists argue that animals communicate in complex ways, only humans communicate in symbols – representations that are intricately various, generative, and infinite in their combinations.” Interesting research.

D. Murali

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com