The Wall 2

A wall is a vastly underestimated device. It has scale. It can be viewed from many angles. It is impressive. We tend to walk blindly past them. Not me. I love them. I use them in my work. I get to notice a great wall. Even when I am not in China.  In my opinion the wall is a 21st Century tool.  A massive canvas for the integration and interrogation of thought. A place to paint wisdom and knowledge. A tapestry. It’s time to rethink the wall. If the wall were taken less literally it could have a thousand metaphors/symbols for the 21st Century.

The power to display the strength of humanity in the face of increasing threat. This is what the great walls always represented. Why do we forget as a species?

Think of them as massive statements – billboards for quality expression. The unity of mankind could use the wall to turn back its mistakes.  Walls could become a symbol of hope in the midst of turmoil, standing firm against the swirling elements. A manifesto of optimism, telling the story of change for the future. The proud balustrades of a new pioneering peoples against the inequities of our past. The structure of change and creativity. The reflection of all thought. The mechanism for capture and synthesis that enables scale, context and perspective.

If you've ever seen a Son Et Lumiere in France (This one was at Le Mans) you will understand. You will get what I am saying about scale, storytelling and the power of the array on the walls.  At 50 -100 feet the impact is uplifting. Looking at the sheer magnitude of the whole thing is breathtaking for humans. This says to us that we should change scale more often and see what we can see in a bigger context. A feast for more of our senses - at more meaningful size and juxtaposition.

Technology will soon enable whole walls, vast spaces to be covered in High Definition display. The Advertising world has long used these tricks to amaze and capture attention and imagination. Soon all of us will have the power to command attention. What would we say?

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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The Wall

Walls are just stuck there. Immobile, one dimensional, passive.

Rubbish.

They are alive and all around us. They are outside and inside.
They form the inside - they define the outside.
 They can be at once forbidding and tantalising. They hold secrets.
They invite and engage enemies and allies alike.
They defend - they beckon.
They are my canvas.

Walls are athletes. They are agile and dynamic.

We often don't think about them like that because we don't often think about them like that.
Performing vital tasks - buildings to live and work in - demarcating land.
Secure and partitioned spaces. A major part of our lives. We make them.

They're a lot more present than we may think.

They exist in software, technology, engineering and every known physics and science.
In biology they are capiliaries - the ducts that enable life itself.
They point out the foundations of every structure known to man.
They are the canvas of our human endeavour.

They represent the assets of establishment and success. They are our castles.
The laminin to all our efforts. They defines the shapes and sizes of our imaginations.
The wall has exceptional characteristics. It's written and crafted on. It is canvas for unlimited creativity.

A wall is never a barrier but always a summons to creativity.

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John Caswell. The Movie

<div>More visualization

I'm always upgrading my Bio. I was prompted to do this again and so here is the latest re-write of history. I hope you find it interesting and of course slightly challenging. I'm always rewriting it to try to make it hang together better but hey if you have any suggestions let me know.

 

 

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Group Partners - The Movie

<div><div style="width:420px;text-align:left;">Open publication - Free publishing - More strategy</div></div>

 

A rapid run through what we do at Group Partners.  There is a companion one about what i actually do and that will appear above this one. I've chosen the stories I always tell and often get asked to explain. As always these are things that just keep us fresh while telling the story.

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Compulsory Viewing for the 21st Century!

 

Charles Leadbetter has done it again in my opinion and I cannot imagine anyone having any truck with the sentiments expressed in this short animation.

Beautifully crafted and articulated. The thesis here is one we practice fully so no surprise to regular readers to this blog. Some neatly phrased bits though and I will blog on the book when I get a minute. Go Charles! 

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This Changes Everything. Good!

Ray Kurzweil famously stated in his law of accelerating returns in The Singularity Is Near -

“In the next 100 years, and at the current rate, we will witness 20,000 years of progress. Or about one thousand times greater than that of the 20th Century.”

The 21st Century is driving a truck through every business plan and every government policy. There’s a tidal wave of change drowning the traditional business and operating models - that’s true of every category and each sector.  While change has always been with us, the exponential rate at which it is now gathering pace is having increasingly massive impact. The killer questions of How? Where? and What? can we do about it are preoccupying senior leaders and their executives like never before.

Can you feel the urgency? No?

I can’t think of a single recent case where the unknown’s of developing a strategy have not far exceeded the known's. There is no certainty in all this. The terrain is far more treacherous - more fatal to the unwary than ever before. The fascinating bit of all this is that there has never been more opportunity either.

Think about it.

As any market reaches maturity and fashion becomes tired and ordinary the new and the extraordinary is in immediate demand. The innovators can win, the entrepreneurs can sense the moment, the dreamers can achieve their dreams. In the blink of an eye a new product or service can catch fire. Sparked by the death of an old solution the new one is immediately king of the hill.

Time is compressed, distribution is almost a given – it’s a commodity – if its good it’s out there. The world is available to the brightest of ideas and the only game in town is capability and imagination. Creativity.

So how much of this do we not get? None right? So how much of this do we see people thinking differently about? Not many right?

The Killer Questions

To survive, Businesses and Governments do not need more of the same thinking about change, strategy or transformation. They do not want or have time for yet another boring consultant with this or that methodology. It just won’t work. It ain’t gonna cut it. They need different thinking. That seems so obvious a statement and yet we witness every day how stuck or caught in the headlamps of the truck they are. New ways of tackling this tornado, this tsunami and this careering inevitability are required.

How can we act differently? So what must we do differently? Now what will be different? Why is this the right kind of difference?  Then they are on into When? Where? Who? Business wants to have answers to these big questions. The right answers if at all possible. Providing the right answers though is now as much an art as it is a science. It's subtle and therefore deceptively simple. Why are these questions so hard for so many to get their heads around?

The Killer Application

Well we could be a lot better at doing the basics. We have found that the simple ways to solve complex issues can appear very hard to grasp and actually not that simple. This is a paradox around which we have to get to survive the 21st Century. Try these - Dialog amongst teams, visualization and telling an actual story that interests people. Make reasoned arguments and share meaning within a logical framework that everyone can see and engage in. This involves talking, listening, being creative and actually putting the outcomes into practice. Doesn’t this sound like common sense?

It is. Where did it go?

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Surfing An Apocalypse - Tribute To The Crazy Ones

That's It!

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Surfing An Apocalypse 3 - Diving Into Creativity

Is the world ready for real creativity?

Sadly a misunderstood and very overused term - one that evokes a war of words waged by the winged devils of definition. But remember I don’t actually care what people think. To me – what I mean by creativity has become the critical tool for the 21st Century. The opposite of creativity is atrophy.

Without the human spark of a simply crazy idea, that incredible burst of energy that we get from the new and the challenging - we die.  Without creativity there is no challenge to the current order of anything. Creativity is challenge. It says fuck you. It says try this. It makes you think. It creates a new path. Creativity is a rebellion. It is difference making.

Without creativity and challenge we become dull. Without knowing why we get to feel useless, then depressed – always under performing, blandness abounds, the ordinary becomes acceptable. From a societal point of view it’s ground us all down, the sameness and lack of vitality drives many to distraction - eventually crawling back under a rock. Humanity regressed.

What’s up with that?

War and poverty aren't caused by creativity they are borne out of the lack of it. Poor education, bad health and social inequity aren't brought about by creativity - these things are enabled by the absence of it.  Revolutions in technology, business and social change are caused by innovation, by the crusades of a very few. The audacious, the courageous, the stubborn, the discerning.  That's where the power of idea gets born and our futures secured.

Imagine if we could all get together behind a single cry for the creative change to the systems that cause us to be like this in the first place. The fact is that these systems don’t want us all to join forces for a challenge to their strongholds. As I have written before - currently there is no WE.

Applying creativity to cause change. Change the system! Will we allow it?

The kind of ideas I'm speaking about are always around us. They are not new.

Unfortunately our system of stupidity has become resilient to intelligence and creativity.  The power of community to make change is not new either but now more than ever possible if only we apply creativity and determination to it.

We are increasingly enabled to make change through technology. New transports for ideas are now available. Look at the difference caused and enabled by the Internet. Allowing communication and the education of peoples all over the world in ways we never could even 5 years ago.

Innovation in biology and science are causing the rise of robots/nano-bots to be grown with the intelligence to reverse cancers in the body - eventually to re-grow limbs. If we let it.  Access to better decision making based can transform the way we think about the bigger issues of the planet. If we let it. We can utilize this better information ensuring we create even better outcomes for everyone – that’s everyone. If we let it. We will be at liberty to secure yet more efficiencies, saving precious raw materials and removing the reliance on commodities that countries go to war for. If we let it.

Real creativity needs to be applied to letting these ideas pierce and alter forever the fabric of our systemic stupidity. Change our minds or die. That is the kind of creativity we now need. Will we let ourselves?

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Surfing An Apocalypse 2- My Sense Of It

Sometimes there's a kind of grace, a weird peace inside me, that anyone might easily mistake for apathy. At that singular moment I feel both totally on it and wholly incapable of doing anything. I feel both buzzed and yet also sense that I may never cause the enlightenment of the kind I want to see in the world. It's mind numbingly plain how little everyone of us would have to change for such wholesale change to happen. Yet the question hangs - how might anyone of us make it happen?

Each and every day I feel I can safely ignore the world.

That works for me. I avoid the influence and addiction of the insane stupidity around me merely by taking a different path. Zoning out. Not playing the game. Ignoring it all. This is opting out of what most people call ordinary society. I wouldn’t put it like that and I don’t particularly care how it gets put - but what's the alternative? I certainly don’t want to engage in much of what people call society today. I feel badly let down by big media, politics and most of what we call western civilization. To me what I hear in the name of that is not civilization.

So who doesn't feel totally screwed by our ‘system’ of blatant incomprehensible fraud and stupidness? In the name of civilization. But what are we doing about it other than complaining over dinner. Like our team has just done badly at some sport.

My optimism for the human race keeps me going though.

It stops me from convening a new gunpowder plot. Old fashioned anarchy is the wrong road anyway nowadays. It would be treated as fashionable, it would last 3 years, make the big fat media moguls more rich and fat and not change a darned thing. Most people wouldn't get it anyway. It's all too niche. Been there before. Fatigued. We need a different way to tackle these big systems issues. We need to smash through the stupidity of the system with a velvet atomic bomb.

That will require a very sophisticated approach. That will require real creativity.

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Surfing An Apocalypse - The Thesis

I'm struck by Ray Kurzweil's thesis on the exponential rate of progress. I really like and agree with the conclusions he draws on how we will become indistinguishable from our technologies. Many will find it a horrendous idea. Not me. He says broadly that in the next 100 years, at the current rate of progress we will advance 20,000 years. Think about that!

"First we build the tools, then they build us." - Marshall McLuhan

The Life Cycle of a technology. The 7 life stages

The precursor stage. Where dreamers, creatives and innovators contemplate elements coming together.

Invention. A brief stage where the inventor blends curiosity, scientific skills, determination, and a measure of showmanship. Bringing a new technology to life.

The Development part. Where the invention is protected and supported by doting guardians. Often more crucial than invention. May involve greater and additional creation. Tinkerers.

The Maturity part. The technology has a life of its own. It is getting woven into community. Into the fabric of life. People say it will live forever. In an inevitable way creating a potential drama when the next stage arrives - the false pretenders start to amass.

The upstarts threaten to eclipse the older technology. Enthusiasts for it prematurely predict victory. It emerges that the older technology has some features that people still prefer and the upstarts start to falter meaning the old one gains yet more credibility.

This last phase is usually a short lived victory for the older technology. Soon arrives the really really new technology. In this part of the life-cycle, the technology lives out its senior years in gradual decline, its original purpose and functionality now subsumed by a more spry competitor.

It Yields. This final stage is possibly only 5-10 percent of a technologies life cycle, it finally yields to antiquity.

I so like the rhythm of that. To me It's like the life of all living things. It is a manifesto for business and for us as human beings as much as it is for technology.  Understand it and go with it. Maximize what it actually means. If we don't pay attention to ourselves and our businesses we just get to level 5 and superseded that little earlier.

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Drawn to be wild.

Cracking open the stuff I do naturally exposed just how unnaturally I had thought about the stuff.

We all get the point that most of the time we live with some element of paradox. The more you want something the less chance you have of getting it. The more you try to define something the harder it becomes to understand.

I love what I do because I do what I love.

I'm lucky too because I planned it like that. It’s kinda working out. To say I knew what was going to happen every step of the way would be wildy untrue though. In truth, the surprises and unknowns created the the best parts of the journey. They may have seemed huge frustrations or even catastrophes at the time but they all added to the performance.

I've recently been forced to break down all the components of what I do and at the literal level they are quite simple: question, write, draw and think.

In putting it like that I'm forced to boil down what I actually do to fundamentals. Each of these four words are staggeringly deceptive. They are widely open to interpretation and levels of competence or quality. That's what's so brilliantly mischievous about the whole exercise.

It always amazes and surprises me not that people are so bound by a word. They make it a term. I prefer the verb in most cases. Even then it’s a challenge to convey what is really going on.  As a very visual kind of person I think I am less literal. I don't need to agonize each word when I can add a visual to give it rich meaning.  In my mind up pops a bunch of possibilities and pictures anyway. Yet still some folk need to dialog a while to get each word grounded in their own mind. We are all a lot like that.

Writing down the value of thoughts defines and refines my passion. Drawing them for the benefit of others ignites it. I'm careful when advising others though. I try hard to create a line between advice and somewhat experienced yet well removed objectivity. To advise sometimes is to attract unwelcome engagement and a lifelong dependency. Be careful what you wish for.

I've become ensnared by wanting to help people through their stuff and found out the hard way that one becomes the cornerstone of others inability to stand for themselves.

Standing up and showing up are two really big requirements for survival. One’s own confidence in any one of these serves the other. I really like to give and to give value generously. It inspires me to do it more. It enables me to stand up. It allows me to show up. In showing up I draw on what I have written. I've written about what I've drawn. It just all adds up. It adds to how I think and work.

To give an indication of how what I do is the challenge I love - I've written some laws and principles about my world. These are the key themes that emerge from years of drawing conclusions for others.

1. The Doh Rule - “The fact that organizations don't build real team spirit, belief and passion for the outcome cannot be underestimated. So why is it?”
2. The Law of Dumb Calculations. "I don't have the time to go through all this thinking again" - When we all know the price of avoiding reasoning, rigor and critical decision making is a rounding error compared to the accumulative cost of the graveyard of failed businesses. What's up with that?
3. A Clear Confusion. “Meaning defies clarity. In other words it might not.”
4. The Context Rule - “Solving the wrong problem well is simple and requires us only to ignore context. Try it. Then Hide.”
5. Tough & Tougher - “A Trilemma better describes hard choices in the 21st Century. It's never either - or. It's always either - or - and - and.”
6. The Principle of Avoiding Complexity - “People who regard the act of thinking hard as complex and time consuming should try not doing so. See how complex and time consuming that is. Excellent.”
7. The Law of Definition - “In defining anything - ever - be careful to listen to the lack of understanding on the face of the recipient. Then redefine it with them.”

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Decisions. Decisions.

How to test your decision-making instincts

Executives should trust their gut instincts - but only when four tests are met. By Andrew Campbell and Jo Whitehead

One of the most important questions facing leaders is when they should trust their gut instincts.

Our work on flawed decisions suggests that leaders cannot prevent gut instinct from influencing their judgments. What they can do is identify situations where it is likely to be biased and then strengthen the decision process to reduce the resulting risk.

Our gut intuition accesses our accumulated experiences in a synthesized way, so that we can form judgments and take action without any logical, conscious consideration. Think about how we react when we inadvertently drive across the center line in a road or see a car start to pull out of a side turn unexpectedly. Our bodies are jolted alert, and we turn the steering wheel well before we have had time to think about what the appropriate reaction should be.

The brain appears to work in a similar way when we make more leisurely decisions. In fact, the latest findings in decision neuroscience suggest that our judgments are initiated by the unconscious weighing of emotional tags associated with our memories rather than by the conscious weighing of rational pros and cons: we start to feel something - often even before we are conscious of having thought anything. As a highly cerebral academic colleague recently commented, “I can’t see a logical flaw in what you are saying, but it gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach.”

Given the powerful influence of positive and negative emotions on our unconscious, it is tempting to argue that leaders should never trust their gut: they should make decisions based solely on objective, logical analysis. But this advice overlooks the fact that we can’t get away from the influence of our gut instincts. They influence the way we frame a situation. They influence the options we choose to analyze. They cause us to consult some people and pay less attention to others. They encourage us to collect more data in one area but not in another. They influence the amount of time and effort we put into decisions. In other words, they infiltrate our decision making even when we are trying to be analytical and rational.

This means that to protect decisions against bias, we first need to know when we can trust our gut feelings, confident that they are drawing on appropriate experiences and emotions. There follows the four tests...