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The Self-Reinforcing Stigmatization of Public Spaces (Like Libraries)
Transcript:
Speaker 1
One of the problems we have now is most cities, suburbs, towns in America have public libraries there. There's neighborhood libraries. The building is there. The buildings are generally not updated. They need to have new HVACs. They need new bathrooms. They need new furniture, but a lot of new books. Stomachs still not accessible to people in wheelchairs. There's all kinds of problems with libraries, just physically because we've under-invested in them. Libraries, unfortunately, have become the place of last resort for everyone who falls through the safety net. If you wake up in the morning in the American city and you don't have a home, you're told to go to a library. If you wake up in the morning and you're suffering from an addiction problem, you need a warm place. They'll send you to a library. If you need to use a bathroom, you'll go to a library. If you don't have child care for your kid, you might send your kid to a library. If you're old and you're alone, you might go to the library. We've used the library to try to solve all these problems that deserve actual treatment. How many times have you talked to someone who said it's basically a homeless shelter? What's happened is we've stigmatized our public spaces because we've done so little to address core problems that we've turned them into spaces of last resort for people who need a Hand. As we do that, we send another message to affluent middle-class Americans, and that is if you want a gathering place, build your own in the private sector.
The Infrastructure of Community
How to Know What's Real
DEEP Framework: Documenting Decisions, Events, Explanations, and Proposals in Your Org
Summary:
The DEEP framework emphasizes the documentation of decisions, urging the recording of the rationale behind business and general decisions.
It also stresses the importance of documenting events such as meetings and town halls, highlighting the need for summarization. Furthermore, the framework encourages documenting explanations, especially in the context of onboarding, as they often involve repeated material.
Lastly, it emphasizes documenting proposals or ideas, allowing individuals to present their rationale to others and providing time for considered reactions.
The acronym 'DEEP' serves as a reminder for teams to consider the documentation created within their workflow.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
So I came up with an acronym as well, and I call that acronym deep. I think you'll identify with some of these. So deep for decisions, if there's ever a decision, then you should record the rationale for it. And we've talked about it endlessly on our tech radar's decision record systems. But I extend that to business decisions as well and general decisions as well. So similar format. Then there's events. So you have a town hall, you have a meeting, all of those are events, right? And you better document them for the benefit of other people. And when I say document, I mean, summarize, sure, you can have a recording or snippets of recordings if they are useful for people, but the summary is the more important thing. Then there's explanations, and I found these very useful in the context of onboarding, because there's a lot of explainer material that gets repeated in onboarding. And those are definitely great candidates for documentation. And the last one is proposals. And I called that proposals, but really I'm trying to talk about things like ideas. So let's take an example. I want to use this new library on my project. I have a certain rationale for it. Let me write down the thought process. What value is it going to bring? Let me present it to everyone. Everyone has the time to consume it. Oftentimes we go into decision making with a lot of cognitive load, where, you know, Ken explains in rapid fire things that he's been thinking about for the last 15 days. And now I have to consume it in the next 30 minutes and give Ken a year or nay. It's really difficult because Ken's done all the deep thinking, I need the time to process it and writing gives me the time to process it, right? And I can also not give knee jerk reactions, but considered reactions. So proposals, and that starts to include design documentation, idea papers, any kinds of proposals that you make on the team. So that acronym deep is a good trigger for teams to kind of hold on to and think about what is the documentation we're creating in the flow of work.
Asynchronous Collaboration — Getting It Right
Thoughtworks Technology Podcast
Bad Norms and Policies Produce "Legislatice Mediocrity" in Organizations
Summary:
Encouraging a culture of being teachable and open to listening to others is crucial for innovation and improvement in organizations.
While standard operating procedures (SOPs) and efficient systems are appreciated, they should not create taboos or hinder learning, leading to what the speaker refers to as 'legislative mediocrity.' The speaker advocates for a focus on innovation and continuous improvement, rather than being stifled by rigid norms and policies.
Transcript:
Speaker 1
You want to be teachable and you want to have a culture of being teachable and listening to others. Yeah. That's that's really important. And so I love SOPs. I love I love it when you get a system working well and efficient. But I don't like it when it creates taboos and when it stops people learning. Legislative mediocrity. It drives me nuts. I'm very much let's do innovation. Let's improve.
Organizational Structures That Enable Knowledge Flow With Stuart French
Because You Need to Know Podcast ™
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