- Raneta Salecl started her TED talk off by introducing 3 quotes. I took interest to the first one by Samuel Johnson which was, “When making your choice in life, do not forget to live.” I believe this was a great tactic to immediately pull the audience in, because right from the start I found myself engaged with the speaker. Raneta then proceeded to link these 3 quotes which she shared to the “sweet anxiety of choice,” so this transition was very well done in my opinion. In terms of rhetoric, Raneta also used real life examples including her friend Manya and the woman she encountered at the wedding reception so by explaining these stories to the audience, we are provided with the knowledge that she actually lived through seeing others making choices and has great knowledge on this topic. In order to explain her ideas, Raneta additionally mentions other sources such as philosophers and professors from several universities to build off of her points. Several statements that Raneta made throughout her talk such as how self critique may often lead to self destruction, how many people have a passion for ignorance rather than knowledge, and that choice leads to individual and social changes are extremely raw and natural subject topics that I’ve never been confronted with. So for this reason, I believe Raneta presented her arguments in such a passionate way that really appealed to me.
- Building off of Raneta’s TED Talk, I believe she used evidence in various ways. Raneta uses outside sources to her advantage as a way of providing the reader with credibility that she’s well educated on what she speaks about. For example, the evidence of her personal encounters (such as Manya) gave Raneta leeway right into discussing how humans rarely make rational choices. Another specific example of this is when she told the story of the young woman at the wedding reception. This story wasn’t told for any specific reason; it was to emphasize her point that choice is linked to risks and unpredictability. An argumentation tactic that I found very effective was Raneta asking the audience questions. Rather than just providing the listeners with facts on top of facts, this way of presenting her subject matter forced the audience to take short moments of silence and actually think deeply about the questions. For example, a time when this happened to me was when Raneta asked, “We’re often choosing by guessing, what would other people think about our choice?” I thought that the strategy behind this question and connecting it to always having our decisions needing to be socially acceptable was very clever.
Discussion Post
1. Focusing on Renata Salecl’s TED Talk, I thought her initial introduction into her presentation about “Our Unhealthy Obsession with Choice” was captivating. By engaging the audience into her struggle with choosing a quote to introduce her presentation, already introduced her topic of conversation in such a relatable and understanding way. Elaborating on her own struggle with making a choice, she was then able to flow straight into her perspective on how choices bring about feelings of anxiety, guilt, and inadequacy if the “wrong choice” is made. I think it was interesting for Renata to lead with her own struggle with choice, as she exemplifies the negatives of human’s ideology of choice throughout her TED Talk. Providing scenarios, such as Manya and her car business, provide a real life scenario that any business owner or customer could place themselves into. The way she spoke about choice is linked to risk, and how taking a chance can be anxiety-provoking, had me, an audience member, consider some of the risks and choices or chances I have taken and I further asked myself why I took them. But I eventually went even further to then ask myself how I really felt when making those decisions and hr descriptions of fear and anxiety resonated with me, because I could clearly remember bearing those feelings.
2. Focusing on Margaret Heffernan’s TED Talk about “The Human Skills We Need in an Unpredictable World”, I found that the evidence she used to be rather interesting. Her argument, about the world dealing with the unpredictable, was a conversation that I was initially drawn to, as this was something I had never really thought about when considering the efficiency of businesses and what they aim to predict. In her argument, I think that the evidence she used was rather compelling. Using CEPI, she exclaims how there is a prediction for future epidemics, but how does one prepare for the right one? Looking at reality as seeing the pandemic we are currently still trying to manage, I don’t think any human could have accurately predicted how detrimental this would be, as coronavirus has effected the entire globe. Turning her topic towards climate change, she then examines how certainly there are countries who are trying to combat this change within their territories but how can one predict that their change will in turn be enough to aid in the halting of climate change. Using other examples of country’s initiatives such as the Netherlands and England show that there is some means to actually experiment and test a hypothesis instead of computer analyzing what could possibly occur. This growing use of technology may have his benefits, but Margaret questions the ability for technology to always have the answer.
Week of 6/8 – Discussion
1. The most engaging approach I found this week came from Jason Freid. Throughout his presentation he gave a very logistical and linear narration on why work doesn’t (always) happen at work. He begins with a line of credibility addressing an ongoing and relatable question he’s been asking everyday people for ten years. Prompting those in the audience to speculate where they go to ‘get work done,’ Fried draws out that they seldom say the office. He gives support to why this is never the case listing reasons whilst drawing comparisons and adding a bit of comical charm to his argument. The examples he gives, such as comparing sleep with work, helps explain how the two processes are interrelated and that in order to achieve its fullest potential, they require uninterrupted. Managers and meetings, or “M&M’s” as he jokingly calls it, are directly apart of the issue. These anecdotal scenarios go further serving as statistical tradeoffs when he makes the point that a manager’s meeting with ten employers doesn’t consume an hour of time, but rather ten hours of productivity. What I found interesting was his ability to reason or look at things in an alternative way. Explicit about being manager himself, Fried furthers his connection with the audience making them feel as if he is on ‘their’ side. He offers a point of reason appealing to listeners who may not have looked at it that way in the past. Finally, he rounds out his argument debunking beliefs of those opposed to alternatives at the office by adding recommendations from whats worked based on his own and many other company experiences
3. For this discussion I wanted to continue elaborating on Jason Fried’s argument. For starters its necessary to understand Fried’s perspective which is based around developing and reframing the nature of work with practical tools and collaborative platforms. As an entrepreneur he continuously looks for growth thus requiring him to be relatable across broad audiences. He has co-authored publications and found companies that focused on productivity. Knowing this we’re able to relate his background with the larger body of knowledge around organizational culture. From our class readings we’ve begun to understand how diversity and inclusion policies can influence the perception of its employees especially with minority groups. Similar discussions included embracing those less well known such as neurodiverse and disabled populations. Rethinking the levels of systems Kaplan and Donovan describe coincides with the theme Fried is trying to address in his TedTalk. Where I see Fried’s message fit is in between the category of an organizational and individual level. His approach to reworking the systematic organizations we have today, such as those in greater leadership positions (i.e. managers), is key to fostering an environment that has better lines of communication and productivity amongst its employees. By reducing distractions taken from trivial matters (i.e. meetings), Fried is empowering individuals to have more time to focus on themselves which in turn can have positive effects on the overall pool of sustaining diversity. The point I want to make is that his talk reinforces the idea that ones actions have running impacts and feedback loops to many issues at large.
Week Four Discussion
I loved all three TED talks, but my fast favorite was Jason Fried discussing “Why work doesn’t happen at work”. Fried argues there are too many distractions at the office for anyone to get any work done. This could be considered a “controversial” stance to take, but one that immediately resonates with the audience. Just about everyone watching and listening can relate to the idea of having too much work to do, and too little time during the workday in which to get it done.
Fried may identify managers as a contributing factor to that lack of time, but immediately puts any managers in the audience at ease by self-identifying as a manager himself. This creates a sense of simpatico, as if the entire audience are now working with Fried on this problem and are open to hearing his thoughts on potential solutions.
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Sticking with Fried, I think his proposals on how organizations can give back time to their workers have merit. However, as he stresses, it’s up to managers to make that happen. By dedicating meeting-free blocks of time, management can communicate to the entire organization that it recognizes the value of interrupted time. This in turn could lead to those meetings which do remain on the calendar to be more productive than they might have been previously.
Thinking about how this connects with other things we’ve been reading and discussing with regards to organizational culture, I came up with the below Venn diagram:
6/8-Discussion Questions (Mikayla)
- While watching Heffernan’s talk, one thing that is noticed is how she speaks on the future and the unlearned traits of the world. In her rhetoric argument she talks about how we should use our minds and imaginations to explore the problems of the world and how technology is setting us back in time. I find it interesting how she depicts modern day problems and shows the audience how they were solved by using ingenuity and imaginative solutions. She leaves the audience something to ponder on and every time she asks them a question she answers it. She indicates the talent and potential that could be implemented if we simply use our skills. However, if we hone our abilities we have the power to turn the future into whatever we wish. She notes how many problems the world has today but shows us that we have the potential to accomplish anything. Not only was this an inspirational speech but she tapped into the audiences capacity for improvement and tells them that not only has she seen change happen before but she knows that they are capable of it.
- In Jason Fried’s speech makes an argument on how although offices are created in order for people to come and do work it isn’t the space in which the most productive work is done. He presents his findings on how the best work productivity is never done in the office because there is never enough time to create new ideas or complete tasks well. He provides evidence on this and explains how he asked a group of people where they get the most work done and they all either said at home, in an airplane or even at a coffeeshop but none of them said at work. He compares trying to complete a full day of work to being interrupted in the middle of sleep, you cannot fully complete the task if you are always being stopped halfway. I find it very interesting that he presents this question and then he provides 3 tactics on how to avoid these interruptions and increase productivity within each office.
Responses for Week of 6/8
- For this weeks assignment, I am choosing to focus on Salecl’s talk about choice, and how paralyzing it can be. In terms of her rhetorical approach, she engages the audience by starting with a few quotes. These quotes are relevant to the rest of her speech as she incorporates them throughout her talk by ending by talking about one. She ended with restating that she had then choice to include the quote by Samuel Johnson, and she is choosing to end with the same quote. She also engages the audience by retelling a series of stories that while humorous at times, drove home her overarching message of how we as individuals have the choice to change things not only for ourselves, but our environment. Each story played a different role in her topics, as she touches upon how we are often paralyzed by the looming choices and we tend to overthink. As humans, we often take choices too seriously which may induce anxiety and think that what we do now will affect the future, or the choice we make now may contradict what we choose later on in life. I thought her argument was eloquently put together as she related experiences of others and herself to many feelings that the audience may have. She incorporated relevant examples, of taxing the rich or wanting a healthier lifestyle, that the listener can relate to themselves in order to completely understand her points. Her ability to generalize then personalize her message I believe was the most significant part of her delivery, and even made me reevaluate how seriously I take choices and how I too become paralyzed.
3. I choose to do Jason Fried’s Ted Talk on why work does not happen at work to add to the body of knowledge we already have from organizational culture. Jason Fried is a writer and entrepreneur who created the software company basecamp who offers three possible to solutions to why work does not get done at the workplace. He offers the view of how working in an office can allow for short bursts of time to do work, instead of focused uninterrupted time to truly let the creative brain take over. He also touches upon how working from home allows for voluntary distractions, when someone needs a break, compared to the involuntary distractions of working in the office, where someone may approach you and ask you to do something other than what you are already doing. He poses the idea that managers and meetings are the true issue as they are place holders and distractions that add to the inability to work in an office. In order to counteract this, he gives three suggestions to remedying this deficit. I saw a connection between what we have been learning about organizational culture and his solutions for a better work environment. Below, I have detailed them in a Venn diagram to physically show the connections that can be drawn while also highlighting the differences that I have noticed.
6/8 discussion
- The presentation Margaret Heffernan gave felt very passionate, her use of strong phrasing and deliberate personal connections helped solidify her point of view and she was able to deliver quite a powerful TEDtalk about a topic I had yet to fully address. Humans worldwide are racing toward the future, although no one can really predict what we are racing to. Heffernan uses experiments conducted in nursing homes, supermarkets, and professional sports teams that provide solid evidence for the ideology that efficiency has become more dangerous than prosperous as we keep pushing ourselves toward the future. Many of the statements made by Heffernan resonated with me, including “What all of these technologies attempt to do is to force-fit a standardized model of a predictable reality onto a world that is infinitely surprising. What gets left out? Anything that can’t be measured — which is just about everything that counts.” Humans can use technology to make many advancements for our race, although when we start to place our own future into the hands of technology to lead us we are giving up the idea that humans and our lives are naturally unpredictable. I believe the statement resonated with the whole audience since it received an applause; it addresses human lives as being the center of attention as they should be, and something our capitalist world isn’t good at doing at all. With all the emotion flowing through the 8 billion people on this planet we must focus on creating a welcoming future, rather than creating the first future we can get to.
- Jason Fried’s approach to the idea of reforming the standard business office system is fueled with the idea that while we are working with efficiency in mind many businesses could be unknowingly slowing down productivity because of interruptions that only occur in the office. He speaks to the audience with a tone of someone who has been in the unproductive office setting that many know, and by listing examples of everyday occurrences he changes the perspective on what is actually helping people work and what only looks like it is helping people work. Fried talks about the question he has asked many people, “where do you go when you really need to get something done?” The answers vary, but all stray from the office; typically, individuals work the most efficiently when they are alone. This idea is completely offensive to the way offices work, they’re designed to be an open environment that is meant to make an organization operate together without physical boundaries separating the workforce, Fried makes this very evident in his statements. Using words like “toxic” and “poisonous” to describe a meeting, but when he breaks his opinion down into the fact that a one-hour meeting with 10 individuals is actually a 10-hour meeting, you can see how his perspective has solid points. When standards are put in place and enforced by a manager, you take away the control someone has on their specific task, forcing a team to stop what they are doing and turn their attention to a meeting only one person has on their mind can completely wipe away the deep workflow people find themselves in when they are left alone.
Dan discussion week of 6/8
- The Presentation “Why work doesn’t happen at work” by Jason Fried incorporates many good argument techniques. The main purpose of his talk was to speak about how companies are hindering employee productivity by involuntarily creating a distracting workplace. He starts off by discussing a question that he has posed to many people over the years. The Question is “Where do you go when you need to get something done?” This is a powerful question as it forces the audience to think about their own answer. He then makes his point that almost nobody’s answer to the question is “the office”. Jason uses light humor to get the audience laughing through choosing examples that they can relate to. An example of this is his statement that true distractions are the M&M’s (Meetings and Managers) and not often social media. During one part of the presentation, he made the connection that work is like sleep as it happens in phases. He states that just like sleep, people need long hours of uninterrupted time to get meaningful work done. He then engages the audience directly by asking them to raise their hands if they have had 8 hours of uninterrupted time at the office (which of course they have not). The very last thing that Jason did in this 15 minute presentation was make three suggestions to remedy these productivity problems. He placed what he says in the final three minutes of the video. This is the last thing that his audience will remember, and his suggestions will be strong as the audience was very engaged in the discussion at this point.
- I noticed the presenter in the TED Talk “The human skills we need in an unpredictable world” used a few very strong techniques in persuading her audience. Margaret Hefferman initiates her speech by telling a story of a company that attempted to increase efficiency by automatically allocating tasks down to the minute. The point of her story was that this resulted in an inefficient process as the technology could not account for needy customers and other unexpected occurrences. Starting off with an example made it clear for her audience to understand the problem she is addressing. She then made some examples of important “inefficient” company processes such as a vaccine company who is developing many vaccines that could possibly be useful in case of a global pandemic. (Apparently there is not enough of these companies). Another example she provided was how banks are now holding more capital than they have in the past in case of market crashes. Though it is inefficient to hold too much cash, she explains that it is robust and a good safety net in case of economic emergencies. She then leads her audience by posing a question of how do we change our company models of efficiency? She uses examples of how this has been done such as in hospitals in Netherlands where nurses have more responsibility to tend to the needs of the individual patients. After a few more examples she adds in her point that we need to become less dependent on technology that is focusing on efficiency and become more interdependent with each-other. She also makes the powerful point that if we continue to let machines think for us, we will lose our ability to think for ourselves at all.
Discussion Prompts Week of 6/8
- The first TED Talk I watched was Jason Fried’s talk entitled “Why work doesn’t happen at work.” His rhetoric approach was very effective in proving his point that people daily do work anywhere else besides the office due to numerous reasons. One being that there are many interruptions at the office and many distractions that prohibits you from doing your work. He then states that while there are distractions at home as well, those are all voluntary, the ones at the office are involuntary ands he then goes on to give examples of those distractions which he calls the M and M (managers and meetings). In addition to persuading the audience just using this information, he grabs the audiences attention by asking them questions. This is really effective because it gets the audience involved early and he gets a sense of where the crowd is at. Overall, this is a really interesting Ted Talk because its something that is very relevant today people who work for these managers who are in reality distracting them from doing work. He also gives suggestions on what to do to and this is really effective way of presenting his argument that people don’t often do work in the office.
- The other Ted Talk I watched was Renata Seleci: Our unhealthy obsession with choice. She begins this talk by telling a story about one of her friends who worked at a car dealership and gave a customer a tough decision. She would give the customer a offer for a car that would be perfect for their lifestyle at this moment, but then she goes on to give the customer another offer for another car and goes on to explain how this is going to be the perfect car for you in the future. She gives this example because she stated earlier how the ideology of choice is very successful in opening for a space to think about the future. This is a very effective way at giving evidence because its an anecdote from someone who she knows well to get the audience involved and prove her point about choice. In addition, the speaker uses quotes from famous philosophers to further prove her points. She uses Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who points out that anxiety is linked to the possibility of possibility. This helps prove her point about anxiety that she started earlier. Overall, the evidence that the speaker uses is effective and informative and keeps the audience intrigued.
Week of 6/8 Discussion
- In the Ted Talk “Why work doesn’t happen at work” by Jason Fried, the overlying message is that the structure of office work in our society is flawed because of mandatory distractions in the workplace. Fried is a technology entrepreneur who in this presentation it is easy to tell that he is passionate about this topic. It seems that the audience he is aiming towards would be people who currently work in an office environment (or who have in the past).
His message of why the office environment is actually counterproductive is because while asking the question “Where do you go when you want to get things done?” (which is something he’s asked many people for quite a while) hardly ever comes back with the answer of “the office”. He came up with the phrase “M&M” being the cause of the biggest distractions in the office- it stands for managers and meetings.
His style is very conversational, almost like he is talking to a group of his peers and not in an academic sense, and he uses a bit of humor to make his points come across more comfortable for the listeners.
2. In the Margaret Heffernan speech “The human skills we need in an unpredictable world” we hear a very powerful message. She is a former CEO of multiple companies, and the audience of her speech is/can be a very broad one: it can be geared towards a group of students or it can be more of a social/political speech such as a state of the union address. She begins with using an example of a grocery store chain switching to a digital format to capitalize on efficiency, and uses this to delve further into some anecdotal messages of how this actually makes people and companies less efficient because it doesn’t account for the human element, or that the world is just naturally unpredictable.
Further on however, she uses more concrete examples of this point: CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness has to prepare for upcoming epidemics. They do not know when, what, or where they will be, but they have to prepare anyways. This might not be efficient but it’s robust (which is one of the central themes of her speech.) Another is the English rugby club who goes on expensive, unorthodox team building trips and adventures which strengthens their bonds together. Banks holding more capital than they need, which is different from the past. Then she gets a bit more into the political economical realm about countries building trade relationships, putting in the time and effort into befriending many nations because it is better for their economy.
She smoothly translates this into the theme of automation in our industries and personal lives, saying that the more we allow technology to take over, the less we become involved in things, and it doesn’t suit us well to do this.