Skating to where the puck will be

"I skate to where the puck will be, not to where it is right now" is the quotation attributed to Wayne Gretzky, the world-class Canadian ice hockey legend.

There are three main aspects to my role at present:
1. Securing new business, including a couple of $30k+ contracts in the last month or so.

2. Working with colleagues to improve structures and processes to take cost out of the business, while maintaining or improving quality.

3. But it's the third aspect of helping to position the business to where it needs to be in the future that's most exciting, and most inspired by the genius of sports professionals like Gretzky.

Information's a distraction

President Obama claims that "information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation" in a commencement address to Hampton University.

He's right to draw attention to the flood that hits us 24-7 with the concern that we let our attention settle only briefly; and just on stuff that entertains. Many of us avoid engaging with the difficult and the challenging news.

It's the kind of analysis that Neil Postman made in "Amusing Ourselves to Death" where Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, than by Orwell's 1984, where they were oppressed by state control.

Progress?

Maybe we are moving from AI through BI to CI and beyond?

AI = Artificial Intelligence

BI = Business Intelligence

CI = Collaborative Intelligence

Beyond some detective rank in the British police, I don't know what 'DI' will be. But we can Discover that on the way to Everywhere Intelligence, before being Fatigued with intelligence!