Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Actually Strategies Quote: "A real strategy involves a clear set of choices that define what the firm is going to do and what it’s not going to do. Many strategies fail to get implemented, despite the ample efforts of hard-working people, because they do not represent a set of clear choices." (categories: businessstrategydecision-making )
The problem with metrics is a big problem for AI · fast.ai Quote: "A recent Harvard Business Review article looked at Wells Fargo as a case study of how letting metrics replace strategy can harm a business. After identifying cross-selling as a measure of long-term customer relationships, Wells Fargo went overboard emphasizing the cross-selling metric: intense pressure on employees combined with an unethical sales culture led to 3.5 million fraudulent deposit and credit card accounts being opened without customers’ consent. " (categories: aialgorithmsanalyticsmetrics )
MIT-STS-AI-snakeoil.pdf Quote: "AI is already at or beyond human accuracy in all the tasks on this slide and is continuing to get better rapidly. The fundamental reason for progress is that there is no uncertainty or ambiguity in these tasks — given two images of faces, there’s ground truth about whether or not they represent the same person. So, given enough data and compute, AI will learn the patterns that distinguish one face from another." (categories: aialgorithmalgorithmsmachinelearning )
Thank you, Guido | Dropbox Blog Lots of great stuff in this blog post, but quote: “When asked, I would give people my opinion that maintainable code is more important than clever code,” he said. “If I encountered clever code that was particularly cryptic, and I had to do some maintenance on it, I would probably rewrite it. So I led by example, and also by talking to other people.” (categories: engineeringsoftwareculturetestingdiversitypython )
Thought Leadership vs. Cult of Personality – Feld Thoughts Quote: "I remembered the thought again this morning which prompted this post. I now have a simple way to separate between cult of personality and thought leadership. CP: Obsessed about me, me, me TL: Obsessed about the product, mission, idea When the entrepreneur or CEO becomes the center of the narrative – or more specifically makes themself the center of the narrative – that’s a big red flag from my perspective." Been there. (categories: leadershipentrepreneurshipobsessionpassion )
Setting the Scene: How Technology Created a Richer Playset in ‘Toy Story 4’ – The Walt Disney Company Quote: "Toy Story 4 also features cobwebs—a lot of cobwebs. Jordan describes how one animator wrote a program simulating an A.I. spider building cobwebs: “He guided the spiders to where he wanted them to build cobwebs, and they’d do the job for us. And when you see those cobwebs overlaid on the rest of the scene, it gives the audience the sense that this place has been here for a while.” Without that program, animators would have had to make the webs one strand at a time, which would have taken several months. “You have to tell the spider where the connection points of the cobweb should go,” Jordan says, “but then it does the rest.”" (categories: aimachine-learningpixarprogramming )
Dysfunctions of output-oriented software teams :: Adam Kalsey Quote: "Take small steps and look to continually improve. Start by defining success through outcomes and deciding up from what measurements will indicate you have reached those outcomes. Accept that it’s OK if you aren’t always busy. Slack in the schedule is healthy and helps give time to explore and experiment. If you’re not focused on being busy all the time, you’ll be able to think more about creating a flow of value to the customer. Above all, empower people. Trust that the smart, capable people you’ve hired will do the right thing. Try managing through Commander’s Intent: define what success looks like, and then let them figure out how to get there." (categories: okrkpioutcomecustomerfocusvalue )
Reclaim unreasonable software. Quote: "The abstract deity known only as business value doesn’t care whether your software is easy to reason about, but it does care quite a bit about your ability to release new features and to operate your software well enough to retain users. At some point, the slowing velocity will become the discussion you have at planning and strategy meetings, with one resounding refrain: the status quo isn’t working." (categories: softwarerewritereclaimvalue )