Group items tagged

1.ChatOps and activity streams are an important part of a connected company's infrastructure. 2. We need better AI and other tech to help deal with chat overload. 3. Tools like Slack could be very well-suited to supporting networks of small teams. 4. We are just getting started with chat and messaging in the workplace, so there is much still to learn. 5. Early adopters declare things 'over' before second wave adopters have even used them. Let's wait and see what happens at scale

Last year was huge for advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning. But 2017 may well deliver even more. Here are five key things to look forward to.

You may think you choose to read one story over another, or to watch a particular video rather than all the others clamouring for your attention. But in truth, you are probably manipulated into doing so by publishers using clever machine learning algorithms

As automation technologies such as machine learning and robotics play an increasingly great role in everyday life, their potential effect on the workplace has, unsurprisingly, become a major focus of research and public concern. The discussion tends toward a Manichean guessing game: which jobs will or won't be replaced by machines?

The use of machine learning, expert systems and analytics in combination with big data, is the natural evolution of what has been two different disciplines. They are converging.

What if, rather than asking the traditional question-What tasks currently performed by humans will soon be done more cheaply and rapidly by machines?-we ask a new one: What new feats might people achieve if they had better thinking machines to assist them?

Predictive analytics uses many techniques from data mining, statistics, machine learning and AI.

"Knowledge can only be volunteered it cannot be conscripted. You can't make someone share their knowledge, because you can never measure if they have. You can measure information transfer or process compliance, but you can't determine if a senior partner has truly passed on all their experience or knowledge of a case. We only know what we know when we need to know it. Human knowledge is deeply contextual and requires stimulus for recall. Unlike computers we do not have a list-all function. Small verbal or nonverbal clues can provide those ah-ha moments when a memory or series of memories are suddenly recalled, in context to enable us to act. When we sleep on things we are engaged in a complex organic form of knowledge recall and creation; in contrast a computer would need to be rebooted. In the context of real need few people will withhold their knowledge. A genuine request for help is not often refused unless there is literally no time or a previous history of distrust. On the other hand ask people to codify all that they know in advance of a contextual enquiry and it will be refused (in practice its impossible anyway). Linking and connecting people is more important than storing their artifacts. Everything is fragmented. We evolved to handle unstructured fragmented fine granularity information objects, not highly structured documents. People will spend hours on the internet, or in casual conversation without any incentive or pressure. However creating and using structured documents requires considerably more effort and time. Our brains evolved to handle fragmented patterns not information. Tolerated failure imprints learning better than success. When my young son burnt his finger on a match he learnt more about the dangers of fire than any amount of parental instruction cold provide. All human cultures have developed forms that allow stories of failure to spread without attribution of blame. Avoidance of failure has greater evolutionary advantage than imitatio

"The Army's After Action Review (AAR) is arguably one of the most successful organizational learning methods yet devised. Yet, most every corporate effort to graft this truly innovative practices into their culture has failed because, again and again, people reduce the living practice of AAR's to a sterile technique.

"By capturing the big data on user activity and using this data to create a more engaging experience, businesses can better engage and motivate employees. As many at Dreamforce 2013 learned, combining big data with gamification is a powerful tool for motivating better performance, driving business results, and generating a competitive advantage."

Many of these quotes from Henry Ford are relevant for organisational learning and leadership. They seem to have withstood the test of time very well. Like the best ideas they are simple and self-evident.

Learning from failure stories

KIN Winter workshop is on "Learning from Failure". Great FT.com article

"Visual displays are extremely powerful tools, which means manipulation of these tools can spread inaccurate information and influence public perception. The sheer volume of images making their way through the Internet requires viewers to have a higher level of visual literacy than in years before in order to prevent manipulation. In this article you'll learn The types of displays that can be misleading What can be done to make visual displays less misleading"

Misconceptions about the brain are embedded in corporate training programs and could be sabotaging their effectiveness. Companies should reevaluate them in light of the latest scientific insights.

Amazon Web Services announced that it was selling to the public the same kind of software it uses to figure out what products Amazon puts in front of a shopper, when to stage a sale or who to target with an email offer. The techniques, called machine learning, are applicable for technology development, finance, bioscience or pretty much anything else that is getting counted and stored online these days. In other words, almost everything.

"Thought provoking atricle in summary: "Sharing knowledge is not about giving people something, or getting something from them. That is only valid for information sharing. Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes.""

"Video of the national knowledge market held in in Liverpool late 2008 by Sellafield, on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. Also see the accompanying 'lessons learned' video."