Gurteen Knowledge Letter
Issue 255 – September 2021
World Values Day is an annual campaign to increase the awareness and practice of values around the world. It provides an opportunity to think about our most deeply held values and explore and act on them with others.
For the last five years, in partnership with Charles Fowler, I have held a free Knowledge Café as part of the event, so this year’s Café will be the sixth since our first one in 2016. It is being held online on Zoom on 21st October 2021, 17:00 – 19:00 London time.
This year the theme is Reconnecting. We are all living through a time of enormous uncertainty and disruption. This means we need to deepen our understanding of values and how they connect us with our sense of self, others, and the wider world.
You will find more information and can register here.
Contents
- Please stop saying you researched it
You probably didn’t research anything - Why did I decide to write a blook rather than a book?
A blook - across between a blog and a book - Tweet of the month August 2021
August 2021 - I am a catalyst
Influencing the world's direction - Should we speak with authority and conviction?
May be not - Gurteen Knowledge Café Workshop September 2021
Conversation is King. Content is just something to talk about - Help Keep My Work Alive
- Unsubscribe
- Gurteen Knowledge Letter
Please stop saying you researched it
You probably didn’t research anything
Please stop saying you researched it.
You didn’t research anything and it is highly probable you don’t know how to do so.
Did you compile a literature review and write abstracts on each article? Or better yet, did you collect a random sample of sources and perform independent probability statistics on the reported results? No?
Did you at least take each article one by one and look into the source (that would be the author, publisher and funder), then critique the writing for logical fallacies, cognitive distortions and plain inaccuracies?
Did you ask yourself why this source might publish these particular results? Did you follow the trail of references and apply the same source of scrutiny to them?
No? Then you didn’t … research anything. You read or watched a video, most likely with little or no objectivity. You came across something in your algorithm manipulated feed, something that jived with your implicit biases and served your confirmation bias, and subconsciously applied your emotional filters and called it proof.
Credit: Linda Gamble Spadaro
This is a bit of a rant but given all of the misinformation and disinformation online it is an important message.
Why did I decide to write a blook rather than a book?
A blook - across between a blog and a book
Friends have often suggested that I write a book, but I decided to write a blook instead. What is a blook and what are the multitude of reasons I prefer it to a conventional book?
Tweet of the month August 2021
August 2021
My top tweet for August with over 58,000 impressions was a quote from Rory Stewart (@RoryStewartUK) — the former Member of the UK Parliament for Penrith and The Border from 2010 to 2019 and now a senior fellow at Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs where he teaches politics and international relations.
I felt that politics at its best is a practical activity, not an ideology — a continual exercise of compassion, and grip, and competence, trying as best as you can to do a dozen small things for each problem in turn.
I am a catalyst
Influencing the world's direction
I have long had difficulty describing who I am or what I do in a word or two. But I have come to realize that I am not best described as a facilitator, writer, speaker, or consultant but as a catalyst, in the sense that Theodore Zeldin describes the word in his little book Conversation.
To be a catalyst is the ambition most appropriate for those who see the world as being in constant change, and who, without thinking that they can control it, wish to influence its direction.
As a catalyst, I connect ideas with ideas, people with people, and people with ideas.
Should we speak with authority and conviction?
May be not
Prevailing wisdom says that we should speak with authority and conviction if we wish to convince or persuade someone. What if this way of talking inhibits learning?
Gurteen Knowledge Café Workshop September 2021
Conversation is King. Content is just something to talk about
My next Knowledge Café workshop is coming up fast on 21st September 2021. It should work well for EMEA/Americas time zones. You can find more information and register here.
Help Keep My Work Alive
For almost 25 years, I’ve been sharing the Gurteen Knowledge Letter each month, and many of you have been reading it for five years or more. My Knowledge Café also reached a milestone, celebrating its 20th anniversary in September 2022.
If my work has made a difference to you, I’d be grateful if you could consider supporting it. A small monthly donation or any one-off contribution would greatly help cover some of my website hosting costs.
Thank you to the 50+ patrons who already support me – your generosity means a lot.
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Gurteen Knowledge Letter
The Gurteen Knowledge Letter is a free monthly email newsletter designed to inspire thinking around Conversational Leadership and Knowledge Management. You can explore the archive of past issues here.
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David Gurteen
Gurteen Knowledge
Fleet, United Kingdom
