drawing symmetrical pentagrams is really hard. props to the metalhead kids in detention.
Via ONLY THE YOUNG DIE YOUNG
Happy 48th birthday Trent Reznor!
I cry just a little inside …
To Creed, the partnership between Taco Bell and Frito-Lay is more than a one-off collaboration. Like Android is to Google or iOS is to Apple, Doritos-based flavors represent a whole new framework for Taco Bell to build on. “It’s not just a product; it’s now a platform—Nacho Cheese, Cool Ranch, Flamas,” Creed beams. “We’re going to blow everyone away in the next few years in terms of how big this idea and platform will become.
– Deep Inside Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos Taco | Fast Company (via thisistheverge) Via The Verge
Almost every day I meet people who wonders why their organizations doesn’t work as well as they should when it comes to productivity, quality performance or innovation. Not seldom the lack of creative people is perceived to be the problem. Sometimes it is the lack of knowledge or not having the enough intelligent or talented employees.
But is that analysis really correct?
Maybe it is the other way round? If we think about it, employees have never been as informed and educated as they are today. Neither are they more stupid, at least if we believe in the Flynn effect, which states that IQ is gradually and substantially rising over time.
Furthermore we seems to believe that just because the employees are more X, where X can be e g educated, skilled, knowledgeable talented, creative or maybe intelligent, the organization will also be more X. Or at least a raised X will have some positive effect on the organization.
But what if it was exactly the opposite and the organizational capabilities would benefit from people who where less X?
Mats Alvesson and André Spicer suggests that we at least should have a more nuanced view of how we think knowledge and smartness relates to organizational performance in their recently published a paper by the name “A Stupidity-Based Theory of Organizations” in Journal of Management Studies.
Functional stupidity is organizationally-supported lack of reflexivity, substantive reasoning, and justification. It entails a refusal to use intellectual resources outside a narrow and ‘safe’ terrain. It can provide a sense of certainty that allows organizations to function smoothly. This can save the organization and its members from the frictions provoked by doubt and reflection. Functional stupidity contributes to maintaining and strengthening organizational order. It can also motivate people, help them to cultivate their careers, and subordinate them to socially acceptable forms of management and leadership. Such positive outcomes can further reinforce functional stupidity. However, functional stupidity can also have negative consequences such as trapping individuals and organizations into problematic patterns of thinking, which engender the conditions for individual and organizational dissonance. These negative outcomes may prompt individual and collective reflexivity in a way that can undermine functional stupidity.
For a more easy overview and comment on the issue read article in Financial Times.
:-|
Manifesto
Have you ever been to a county fair? I know I have.
One of the things at a country fair is a large diverse, set of people brought together for a wide variety of reasons. I mean there are lower-class, upper-class, white trash, trash of all hues, hot dogs (who some refer to as "weiners" or *links*), animals, funny cars, and Def Leppard. And rides, lot's of fun, fun, rides. And depending upon whether it's Def Leppard that day, or say, the Oak Ridge Boys. The trash and class of humanity will vary. But only slightly. The slightness of this variance is no great mystery, but it is a rich tapestry of activities and humans crammed into one place at one time. With their accompanying smells and sounds.
The factors and tolerances on this variance is the key to what Klownhole is all about. Def Leppard, the Oak Ridge Boys, weiners, rides, funny cars, fancy cheeses, Dungeons and Dragons. All these things have some properties that are appreciated, or even outright enjoyed by certain types of people. And for our purposes, Klownhole's purposes, the specific *thing* is not important. But the *specifics* of the thing is.
So what is Klownhole? On one level Klownhole is a bunch of guys. And these guys generate output in various forms. Conversations, music, written word, perhaps even *art*. They all have opinions. And those specific opinions, views, likes, dislikes...aren't what makes Klownhole. The specifics of how they express these things, the forms in which the output takes, how it is created. That, is Klownhole.
On another level it's like Dogme95, but much, much less stupid and gay. And often drunker. And you have to worship Christopher Walken.
-- Jason, c. 2001