harlekins spirit

This sounds much better in Russian…

War – aggression – attack – invasion – declaration of war – for sanctions – civilian victims – killing soldiers – dead children – You Putin, you‘re Putin‘ me about here, why don‘t you go Putin up those Putin-like children over there! War – aggression – attack – invasion – declaration of war – for sanctions – civilian victims – killing soldiers – dead children – You Putin, you‘re Putin‘ me about here, why don‘t you go Putin up those Putin-like children over there! War – aggression – attack – invasion – declaration of war – for sanctions – civilian victims – killing soldiers – dead children – You Putin, you‘re Putin‘ me about here, why don‘t you go Putin up those Putin-like children over there!

Jobs that no longer exist

Are project managers a dying breed too?

Why do occupations die out? There may be many reasons, but two are definitely drivers: technological and social changes.

From school we know Hauptmann’s drama ‘The Weavers’, in which changes in technology forced people to work for starvation wages. The job title itself may still exist in part, but the job description looks completely different. In this context, mention should be made of telling the time and the illuminating cities at night, which are no longer done by night watchmen.

Spurious correlations?

Time and again, the rather simple-minded saying falsely attributed to Winston Churchill pops up: “The only statistics you can trust are the ones you have falsified yourself.” By the way, probably Josef Goebbels is the originator (according to Werner Barke in: ‘I only believe statistics…. What Winston Churchill is supposed to have said about numbers and statistics – and what he really said’). But this only in passing.

First of all, statistics is nothing other than collecting data, presenting them in the form of tables and graphs, analysing them and, if necessary, interpreting them. It is useless to enumerate all the places we meet statistics, because there is no area in which statistics does not play a role.

Digital Punk

What comes to your mind on the subject of the largest_online_retailer_whose_name_must_not_be_mentioned? The NZZ (Neue Züricher Zeitung) says on 16.05.2021: ‘Largest_online_retailer_whose_name_must_not_be_mentioned makes it happen: Digitalisation is bringing a new working class to modern society’. This is predominantly about the people who are employed with shipping and on the hotline. In my opinion, they should be used to optimise processes, because, don’t we all know, often the software doesn’t even allow special cases to be handled by the employee.

We know the truth

We can’t explain why, but a whistleblower has granted our platform Harlekin.blog access to documents from whose content sounds so absurd that we thought it was a joke at first. But it is no joke. The documents are genuine, as insiders have confirmed to us; we must of course keep their identity secret for their protection.

Does it help or does it do harm?

I simply can’t hear it any more. I am repeatedly told that project managers need domain know-how, i.e. expertise beyond project management and leadership. This is also practically always a requirement in job advertisements.

When harlequins go on holiday…

… more little white balls get lost.

Rowling’s got it wrong!

I have already dealt with the topic of “decisions” once before, in September 2020. Two reasons motivate me to take up this topic again: Firstly, the new book by Daniel Kahnemann et al., which deals with this very topic and secondly, a quote from Joanne K. Rowling, who may be a good writer but apparently has not read anything by Kahnemann and – what is much worse – not even our blog.

It’s alive!

Is it because I’ve just had my first vaccination? It wasn’t AstraZeneca, but I swear our robot vacuum cleaner is alive. It’s a brand-name model. Great thing, especially if you have a dog and not many carpets. Works really well, it’s just a bit noisy. But it’s alive. I checked, the software is not from Microsoft – which eliminates the only alternative explanation. The dear thing drives around the whole flat and picks up dog hair, dog toys, dog food, dog biscuits and dog biscuits and nothing else really – except dog chews.

Godot on hold (Part 2)

Waiting and Projects

As already explained in the first part, the uncoupling of waiting from the stimulus entails higher uncertainty with regard to the probability of occurrence, which is increased by temporal extension.

An example: in the course of a project, people realise that its complexity is significantly higher than expected, which per se leads to the increased probability of failure. Researchers call this “dissociation”, i.e., the resources available to humans while waiting, include freedom of action, self-stimulation, temporal range and communicability.