Gave myself a challenge—look at 50 books through the lens of Critical Systems Thinking and post daily on BlueSky. Because of the character limit on BlueSky, I’m split the insights in 2 days per book. On day 1 I’ll look at what ideas between the book and CST are aligned, and on day 2 I’ll look at misalignments. Good thing I kept my notes in order and highlighted the hell out of every book that went through my hands or this would be impossible. Hopefully I can make it to 100 days, but my main focus is to try an apply critical examination and pluralism that Mike talks about in CST. More to come soon…
Thank you Devtech for giving me this award for outstanding impact during 2024. I didn’t expect it, but it’s a great feeling. Four other phenomenal individuals were honored, whose dedication and excellence have made a mark on Devtech’s growth and success during 2024. Not much I can add to this one.
I’m on BlueSky, looks pretty deserted so far, and I don’t have time to post regularly at the moment, but maybe soon I’ll some up with a plan. I wouldn’t like to post just for the sake of posting. On the other hand, back when Twitter was alive, Harold Jarche had a really good approach to leveraging it for learning and knowledge management. I do recommend his Personal Knowledge Mastery online workshop. So if BlueSky grows, maybe it can fulfill that role of a catalyst for learning.
I’ve published a new GPT called Product Mentor with the goal to support those in product management roles or anyone starting up their business. This GPT can offer expert, but at the same time digestible advice on a broad range of topics, including complexity science, Agile methodologies, stakeholder management, market research, business strategy, human factors, success metrics, and prioritization of backlog items. It’s grounded in my philosophy that a product manager’s key responsibilities are making sense of the world and narrating that story of the world to the team, stakeholders and the rest of the organization. I’ve also instructed Product Mentor to ask meaningful questions without overdoing it. Looking forward to see what the feedback will look like, and if a tool such as this can be helpful in the context of product management.
After a long hiatus from music, I finally got into it again. I couldn’t escape it. I’ll be posting fresh beats to Instagram and YouTube twice a week, we’ll see how it goes. The goal is to get to a certain number of followers and maybe one song with an established artist within the next six months.
And here’s the thing about creating music—it’s not easy. I had a direwolf and I tried training it to be a music producer. That was a challenge. If you didn’t know, direwolves lack the ability to play musical instruments or operate studio equipment due to their non-opposable thumbs. And this creature was always hungry, always chewing through cables and microphones, always peeing everywhere. But I was focused, and when I set my mind onto something I don’t quit easily. My efforts began yielding positive results, and then the thing happened. My luck… The oversized dogo attacked a local folk singer, almost bit through the guy’s leg. Ironically, the poor fellow had been courting disaster for a while—I cautioned him against wearing a certain tabby-themed t-shirt. What was the aftermath? I completed 400 hours of court-ordered community service and made an eight-figure settlement for endangering public safety. More importantly, I had to admit that teaching anything to a direwolf was beyond my capabilities.
Anyways, hear some of my own music.
Thanks to a very kind invite extended from Paul Barnett, I was able to briefly share my experiences with CST during an event organized by Balkan Business Forum. Also, it’s always a great pleasure to listen to Mike C. Jackson talk about real world application of CST. His work had a great influence on the way I do things. Great insight talk by Balkan Business Forum.
As part of the jury for the Western Balkan Summer Demo Day 2023 at Impact Hub Belgrade I heard 5 great pitches and had an opportunity to learn more about 5 exceptional startups from this region. After the pitches, there was a podcast where together with Gaia Montelatici as a facilitator and Esra Talu we talked about sustainable business opportunities during. The conversation shed light on crucial aspects around sustainability, as well as opportunities in the US market, and the importance of addressing various sustainability aspects in business and product development practices.
Participated in a panel on how to tap into the mentorship resources to attract investments, at Impact Hub Belgrade. It was an interesting experience. I was focused on talking about product management and finding better ways to work together as a team, but I noticed others were more interested in different topics around investments. One very positive things I’d like to underline is that all of the founders were very much aware that they need to sell the story, and different people will react to different stories.
Had an opportunity to read Systems Innovation position paper on the evolution of organizations in an age of complexity. Although it was an interesting read, there were 2 things that might be improved. First one is the framing, where a situation is presented as a dichotomy. This in itself can cause a bias, as we always tend to prefer one option over another, yet there are situations when the other option might have valuable qualities (e.g. anyone who worked on bringing innovation to a huge company might be aware that you’d have implement changes in such a company gradually, starting with a silo, then expanding outwards…). The second thing I noticed is maybe a lack of focus on finding better ways to communicate, as without communication there is no organization.
Completed the RedQuadrant’s Leading Transformation Academy with Benjamin P. Taylor and a cohort of amazing people from UK and US. Meeting Benjamin is really one of the highlights of this year, and having the opportunity during the last 12 months to participate in conversations with him and other people who are all experts in their fields was really a privilege.
After about 2 years, I finished writing the first draft of a character-driven novel about the journey to self-awareness, that blends a complex narrative reminiscent of Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea, an unreliable first-person narrator akin to Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House, and a touch of magical realism in the vein of Yangsze Choo’s The Night Tiger. It starts with a simple question — what if there was a giant, dark wolf within you, an ever-present flame of defiance, sometimes taking control of your actions? Everyone says finding a literary agent will be a hell on earth, but I really hope I’ll have an opportunity to share this manuscript with a wider audience.
Working with J Tech Group on a vertical farming and Agriculture 5.0 project is turning out to be very interesting and educational. Even though the industry is very advanced, I still see space for improvement. As in many other industries, there is a serious lack of standards in IoT and Agriculture 5.0, so good luck connecting two or more devices or trying to control them with one app. Definitely a good challenge.
Article Organizations and Subjectivism Pt. 2 with a hint of a framework is published on Hackernoon, Medium, and Linkedin. There is a bigger discussion to be had around this topic, but I just don’t have time and energy to do it at this time. I hope over the next months I’ll be able to write a paper on subjectivism. This is one of those slightly controversial topics that I’ve seen as true in practice, but it’s not easy to explain to someone, as it’s very much counterintuitive. I can only add for now that Gettier problem is automatically resolved under subjectivism.
After my article got featured on Hackernoon I did a short interview with them, and it was published today. Thanks Hackernoon.
Hackernoon really liked my article Subjectivism and Organizations: Part 1, it’s a top story and currently on the front page. I was originally planning to release this as a paper backed by a bit of data from the last 2 companies I worked with, but ultimately I became a restless and just decided to share it immediately. I had to divide the article into several parts as the draft version has more than 6K words. So far, I received positive feedback, which is great, as there are important conversations to be had around this topic.
Great session with Benjamin P. Taylor about his Five Worlds framework, I’m really grateful for it. It’s always interesting to hear someone else’s perspective on how to approach complexity, or for that matter, what does complexity even mean. For anyone who missed the chat, the video is on up YouTube.
Great meetup with Digital Leadership. Big thanks to Phillippe Guenet for facilitating it. There were about 30 people online, and I think everyone reacted really well to the ideas presented in the keynote, even though I got a bit philosophical at some point. Plenty of great questions also, and the interactive parts with Miro board were really engaging. If I make another online meetup soon, this will definitely be a blueprint to follow.
After Introduction to Complexity Theory, today we talked about organizational design, Agile, and a practice that emerged from chaos several years ago. I talked about how logic, instincts, support from a few great people and a bit of luck, helped me in forming the mythical self-motivated, self-organized team. This was again an in-person meetup and it was completely in Serbian language.
I’ve been planning on organizing a community around Complexity Theory in this part of Europe for quite some time, however the world has been a strange place for the past year and a half. Today, I finally kicked it off with the first on-site meetup titled Introduction to Complexity Theory. It was a bit underwhelming, and I was very nervous, but overall I’m glad I did it. I’m already planning the next one.