Since 2007, Ricardo Vargas has been publishing the 5 Minutes Podcast, where he addresses in a quick and practical way the main topics on project management, business agility, risk and crisis management, among other topics.
This week on the podcast, Ricardo discusses Little's Law. The formula created by MIT Professor John Little for productive processes involving Lean and Six Sigma has applicability in project management, particularly in agile projects that use Kanban and Scrum boards.
Ricardo talks about the predictions we make for our projects and initiatives in this week's episode. He explains that we frequently have an illusion of control and that the perception of future reality is significantly more complicated than reality itself. Professor Philip Tetlock found that only 45 percent of almost 30,000 predictions made by various professionals were accurate.
In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about moral hazards. He exemplifies the recent collapse of the North American financial system when the Silicon Valley Bank closed its doors. From then on, a debate arose about the extent to which the government should interfere, with the emergence of moral hazard, because if the government helps, other banks will also have this right.
In this episode, Ricardo focuses on the Big Five Personality traits and their application in project management. The Big Five outlines five personality dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Each of these traits could influence individual performance on different types of projects.
In this week's podcast, Ricardo discusses some common mistakes that can be made when making decisions in various contexts, such as a project. Our decision may have positive and negative consequences depending on the circumstances because we may have to sacrifice to achieve our objectives. To avoid errors, we must first understand the relationship between the decision and its outcomes (a good result does not always mean a good decision).
This week, Ricardo discusses the importance of careful communication in the workplace and throughout projects. Each of us brings unique beliefs, skills, experiences, and perspectives to the table. Noise and wear and tear are detrimental to the project and our work when communication is unclear or the means used to transmit information is inadequate. The data we thought to be useful ended up being harmful.
This week, Ricardo talks about the difficulties inherent in presenting a new product to the consumer. As an example, he mentions the recent launch of the artificial intelligence tool Google Bard, which is a competitor to ChatGPT. Incorrect information was provided in response to a child's question to the James Webb Telescope.
To help us cope with anxiety, Ricardo discusses a technique he learned from Nick Trenton's book "Stop Overthinking": the 5,4,3,2,1 method. Every day brings new challenges, and it's easy to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of panic and worry about the potential dangers to our work and projects. The method is based on counting down from five to one; at each stage, we focus on a different sense in order to locate ourselves in the here and now.
In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about ChatGPT again and comments on people's lack of knowledge and ability to assess how these artificial intelligence mechanisms work. Many people believe that ChatGPT is a magic tool that can answer any question.
In this week's episode, Ricardo discusses the Gray Rhino concept described in Michele Wucker's book. Ricardo comments that this idea is the opposite of the Black Swan concept. Events and risks, according to the Black Swan concept, have a very low probability of happening but can have catastrophic consequences if they do occur.
Read Ricardo's reviews of some of the best technical books published.
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