Five for Friday – 6/30/2023

June 30, 2023
Five for Friday

Last weekend I was excited to attend the Quad City Air Show in Davenport…until I had to sit in traffic for 90+ minutes just waiting to find a place to park. The demonstration pilot for the F-22 Raptor Demo Team is a native son of Davenport, so they were hyped up to have him perform. I watched him fly over from my windshield and didn't capture a single photo. That's disappointing, but I still took 700+ pictures. It's a lot to review. This weekend is free, however. If you're looking for something to do this weekend, check out this week's Five for Friday list.

Even if you haven't read the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell, you've probably heard of the “10,000 Hour Rule”. I've read his first three books (including Outliers), and the more I read, the more he comes off as a snake oil salesman. But what does he care–he already has my money. What's wrong with his theory you ask? Read this critique about The false promise of the 10,000 hour rule by Anne-Laure Le Cunff.
“We don't want a meeting!” How often have you said that while stuck in another meeting deciding to have yet another one? So what's the alternative? Why not try doing some work together? After all, We want a doing, not a meeting.
When I kicked off my own “Five for Friday” series, I linked to an article about why Kindness Matters in Our Leaders. Kindness is key for leaders and for those interested in becoming a leader. If you want to avoid failure as a leader, the authors of the new book “Real-Time Leadership” outline the traits of effective leaders (and what will ensure a leader’s failure) in How to Fail as a Leader.
“All Models Are Wrong, Some Are Useful.” This quote is from a British statistician named George Box. It's a reminder that no model of the world is 100% accurate all of the time. Using a variety of mental models to help us think about the world allows us to focus on their utility to find something useful rather than search out every case in which our models might be wrong. Our knowledge is incomplete. We can use our existing models to accomplish something practical while striving to learn and improve upon what we know.
This story is a great counter to the idea that a software defect you've uncovered will never happen. The risk is never zero, meaning “One in a million is next Tuesday“.