Bitcoin is underpinned by unbreakable codes, but the secret keys that protect personal fortunes are easily lost or stolen. The crypto-currency is unlikely to become widely used unless it is as easy to manage and safeguard as conventional stores of value.
-Philippe. [Thank You MIT Technology Review | By Tom Simonite on 12.11.13] A man showed up at a trash heap in Wales last month with an unusual request: he needed help finding a hard drive he had thrown out weeks earlier that held the cryptographic key to 7,500 bitcoins, currently worth over $6 million. James Howells is unlikely to ever be reunited with that digital cash, and he’s far from alone in having lost a fortune in the math-backed currency. Pioneers of Bitcoin are in high spirits due to the currency’s rising value and the friendly reception it has received from U.S. regulators (see “Regulators See Value in Bitcoin”). But the ease with which bitcoins can be lost or stolen remains a barrier to mainstream adoption. And no obvious remedy is in sight. The problem is caused by the design of the software that underpins Bitcoin. It uses cryptography to allow people to exchange funds securely without trusting each other or needing a third party to oversee the trade. But individual collections of bitcoins are secured using an alphanumeric private key that is impossible to recover or reset if lost or stolen, and is near impossible to memorize.
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Hilarious photos of Santa Claus invading classic paintings. Week-End Reading: http://philippemora.us Also, find more on my pinterest boards. Have a great week-end, -Philippe. See more about Hilarious photos of Santa Claus invading classic painting: http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/ed-wheeler-santa-classics
What kinds of personality and skills are you missing? Working out which types of leaders you have on your team can work wonders for your effectiveness as a group. It helps you to recognize how you and your colleagues can individually make their best contributions.
-Philippe [Thank You HBR | by Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries 12.18.13] Although the ghost of the Great Man still haunts leadership studies, most of us have recognized by now that successful organizations are the product of distributive, collective, and complementary leadership. The first step in putting together such a team is to identify each member of the team’s personality makeup and leadership style, so that strengths and competences can be matched to particular roles and challenges. Getting this match wrong can bring misery to all concerned and cause considerable damage. I was once asked to facilitate in a group coaching intervention for the leadership team at the subsidiary of a large chemical company. A year before Kate (not her real name, the head of the subsidiary) had been moved from head office to take charge. At head office she had always been viewed as a person extremely insightful about personnel decisions. Given her talents in HR, she was seen a good candidate to sort out the mess in that particular subsidiary. It was a big leap in terms of promotion but Kate was given a chance. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that her tenure had been a disaster. She may have been a good coach but didn’t have what it takes to create greater strategic focus and execute a turnaround. A great amount of money had been spent on consultants and on training a workforce that had no clearer idea at the end of 12 months what they were doing or why. What had dazzled the people at head office had been Kate’s coaching and communication skills. She was at sea, however, in a more operational role. What can be done to prevent a situation like the one with Kate? There are a number of serious leadership questionnaires that are worlds away from the enneagrams and compatibility tests that litter the coaching circuit. Some of these try to identify certain recurring behavior patterns considered more or less effective in a leadership context. We have also tests to discover whether executives are people or task oriented, autocratic or democratic, transactional or transformational, and variations on all of these. These sorts of questionnaire may be a bit simplistic, but they can help point someone in the right direction on a career or organizational path. |
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