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'Creative-Class Consulting' - Weapons Grade Business Thinking

2012-01-29T05:00:00.001-08:00

Business is tired of the old tools for solving problems.

Things like changing course, creating a new vision or building successful strategy for the enterprise. It's an open secret that the tools and techniques being used are no longer fit for purpose.

So too business is tired of the consulting industry. Consulting is a good idea but it is just failing to cut it. We know it as the act of observing, analysing and advising others from a position of experience. But it has been abused by those wishing to use it as 'cover' for selling expensive software or an extensive boiling of the ocean for its own ends. Solving the wrong problems really well!

The 'idea' of consulting has to be revisited. It has to be elevated by many notches if it is regain it's prestige position. And especially if is to deliver the value required by today's leaders. This new order means a complete redefinition of consulting. Consulting needs to deepen its value in every direction if it is to cover the new dimensions required by clients in the turmoil of todays business context.

Enter what I call – 'Creative-Class Consulting' – weapons grade thinking and solutions for business.

Two alternative scenario's I read recently -

In 2010 an IBM survey of more than 1,500 global CEOs discovered that 79% of chief executives anticipate facing greater complexity in the future than they do today. Doh! We are surprised that that figure isn't higher – like 100%. The statistic suggested that the ideas, and experience of a single senior leader will not be sufficient for the successful sailing of the enterprise super–tanker through the tsunamis and tornados ahead. Greater creativity and collaborative endeavour will be required if game-changing ideas are to be generated.

And 2…

In 2007 –19 senior managers of GE Power Generation – one of the company's oldest businesses – convened at GE's management development center in Crotonville, N.Y. It was the first time that all of the senior executives of a GE business had been through leadership training together. The result? They created a framework for thinking, drafted a vision statement and developed plans for growth, including focusing on regulatory and other staff in emerging markets, which is now a key area in GE's overall strategy. In just four days, the team efficiently devised, agreed upon, and began implementing a unified strategy.

Why?

Creativity achieved in close collaboration by a passionate team. That was the key to GE's success - no matter how much employees might admire a single figurehead – ideas remain only ideas until a team of people makes them real, profitable, and scalable over the long-term.

How can anyone disagree with this reality? The question is why isn't this now the traditional way to do this – every time? Why do we still find silos of thinking, subjective and opinionated advise, partial thinking, self-serving and amateurish (inexperienced) managers. I could go on.

'Creative-Class Consulting' - Turning chaos theory into chaos practice.

Well as always, there's a lot of noise about a lot of stuff going down at the moment. The business world knows that it needs new tools and techniques to fix all the sticky problems it faces. But where to turn? Silver bullets are flying around - easy fixes and things to say (and do) – things like – collaboration/co–creation, disruptive creativity, social business and networking, innovative business models (eco–systems/value networks) and the inevitable leverage of the latest technology fad – the cloud.

As Tom Peters said - "Crazy times calls for crazy people."

Crazy because alongside these new ideas, the fads that business wants to embrace, remain the basics that still aren't fixed. In reality we would agree with the sentiment and requirement of some of this stuff but it isn't going to be enough.

Let's remember – the way the organisation has been designed to work in a world that no longer exists. Inappropriate behaviours and cultures that have been conditioned over generations by poor leadership, lack of inspiration or motivation. Indistinct visions, operating models, processes and systems. Add to this the lack of talent and the conditioned attitudes to risk and the picture is a complex one.

And add to all of this the political and global systems that are geared to persistent and unsustainable shareholder growth (City analysts expectations). Creative thinking is a business imperative.

Crazy People. Not so Crazy Idea.

Creative thinkers may often be called the crazy people but they are the salvation. They are required alongside (and directing) what we used to think of as the traditional consulting service. We need the people with the capability to master all this stuff – but they will have to have some experience – valid context and possibly even a few case studies to base intelligent judgement on.

Paradoxically if the problems are all so new then how can anyone have the experience or track record to deliver it?

This new 'creative-class' of consultant needs to be able to drive strong points of view out of an ability to think the crazy thoughts. They need to be able to compel vitally new emotions and carry the team with them as they do it. They need to know how to balance curiosity, contradiction and conflict. They need to know how to channel their personal obsession for creative thinking whilst exploiting both deep vertical and general knowledge. Their role is to 'create' some direction out of the complex patterns of the known and unknown contexts. They can combine insightful moments of intense immersion with high-intensity collaborative work in varied teams and dispersed working groups.

You would have to be crazy to want to do this.

The Not So New Context

Business is a soup, a chaotic context of sliced and diced bits - a cacophony of moving parts - entities and agents, degrees of understanding and maturity. Forces and dynamics that compound and confound even the most capable of leaders. Running the traditional business was hard enough – now add to that the 21st Century set of challenges - "Do it all at less cost and higher quality with better returns on every $ spent. Now."

This is not new anymore.

The rise of the social business (social network) has created 'virtually-real' communities. It's a matter of time before people will conduct the majority of their business transactions this way. They are becoming comfortable working through these platforms and as we all become more fluent in their use and their ability to mirror real–life transactions then another paradigm gets smashed to pieces.

Eco-systems and value networks mean that complex business ideas/models can now be delivered simultaneously by multiple people globally – that has changed everything. The ubiquitous idea of the 'cloud' means that businesses can support a diverse and mobile workforce without the need for traditional buildings and infrastructure.

Real-time working collaboration and co-creation of value is now no longer an idea. It is here. We are now used to the way these platforms work and the power that they can deliver. With the rise of the iPad and yet more sophisticated hand-held devices the way the business thinks and works has changed forever.

So…

Creative-Class Consulting heralds the next era of practical solutions for business.

The sort of consulting that can help business to navigate the immense complexity of the 21st Century. Fundamentally it is calling for an entirely new competence to emerge from within an existing paradigm. It needs the skills of qualified 'consultants' but now has to embrace the idea of creativity at the edge. It has to master the ability to hold and nourish all these things in the heads of a wide team of people from differing perspectives while allowing the emergence of value and sustained success for the business.

“I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the centre. We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” – Kurt Vonnegut

What others are saying

I really take a lot of encouragement from the vast amount written and debated about this topic. I drag fragments from all over the place about these ideas and here are a collection of just some of them.

On Innovation & Dynamics

"Is innovation the result of the prophetic reflections of lone creative geniuses, or instead the fruit of the collaboration of a group of talented contributors working together?"

"Bringing an innovative product or service to market involves a multitude of vectors. Imagine them individually stretched amidst the opposing constraints that often define their conceptual and practical boundaries (time to market, development cycles, user experience, technical feasibility, branding, business models, just to name a few). Now imagine all these vectors as taut guitar strings, one alongside the other. Imagine fine-tuning each string so that it’s in harmony with all the other ones when they are strummed together. Imagine this being not a one-off task, but a near-continuous activity that a talented musician needs to constantly perform as he or she is playing, not before.

"Does innovation come pushing out ideas that start as flashes of individual insight, or from taking the time to learn what users want?"

On Capability & Creativity

"Creative people can work while holding opposing thoughts in their heads. Their is a preconception that designers are industrial artists that purely rely on their intuition to give shape to their solutions. Not so. The truth is that designers often confidently leap off an unstable conceptual platform – and into an empty pool and a hard landing."

"There is no single specific behavioural trait, methodological approach, or carefully selected set of contextual factors that guarantees success in the ability to think differently and translate that thinking into success in the market."

"Change is continuous and unavoidable. the most productive way to become adaptable is to make flexibility part of your culture there are many ways this can be done: from sketching first and specking later leads to fast execution and exploitation of opportunities to developing a trusted network of suppliers and freelancers allows you to respond to specific needs as and when required to allocating an 'ad-hoc' budget that can be spent where and when needed for greatest impact, keeps you quick on your feet and ensures faster turnaround the competitive advantage of flexibility and adaptability is extreme, as it gives your competition a limited view of what your next move might be

On Ambiguity & Collaboration

"Successful creative thinkers see opposites and apparently contradicting goals not just as a potential for dissonance, but as an opportunity for dynamic harmony. To paraphrase one of Walt Whitman’s most famous verses “creative thinkers are vast, they contain multitudes.” And to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the mark of a truly intelligent person is the ability to still function while holding two, opposing ideas in their head. Creativity is inherently inclusive. And that applies whether the creative thinker is a designer, artist, technologist, or CEO."

"The truth does not lie in the extremes, and definitely also not in the middle. The truth lies in harnessing the positive tension between the extremes, and fine-tuning it until it resonates with what current technologies can enable and with what intended consumers and end-users are ready to adopt in a given sociocultural economic context."

"Collaborating adds extreme stability to an organisation by the combined power of support from others it ensures that other skills and capabilities can be collectively used to build more value…"

"It’s simply wrong to see brainstorming in opposition to solitary thinking, or user research as antithetical to disruptive innovation. These apparently opposing approaches are actually complementary, and effective innovators already use them as such, picking the right mind-frame and the accompanying tools and methodologies according to the specificities of the challenge at hand."

On Disruption & Semantics

"When it comes to talking about progress, disruption can be both a powerful and confusing word. It's emotionally charged, high risk and crucial for business success. Fortunately, the current vogue for disruption holds a different promise, one that creates tremendous opportunity, for brands or governments. Despite its fierce-sounding nomenclature, disruption is not ultimately a harbinger of revolution but rather the basis of a competitive reset founded on the fundamentals of good customer - or citizen - engagement."

"Historically, it seems we’ve arrived at a moment where disruption has succeeded revolution as a meme of historical change, providing us with better results and a fresher understanding of who our customers are and what they need."

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Plain Journeys 2. Love - Getting Good At Stopping

2012-01-15T08:40:00.003-08:00

If you read the start of Plain Journeys 1 - 'Viakal, The Universe & Everything' - then you will know what's going on here below. If you didn't then shame on you. Go and read it.

Whilst reflecting on our genetic legacy Alexander Von Humboldt journeyed through Venezuela in 1799 and remarked so profoundly –

"In the evening when the sky denotes rain, the air resounds with the monotonous howling of the alouate apes, which resemble the distant sound of wind when it shakes the forest. Yet amid these strange sounds, these wild forms of plants, and these prodigies of a new world, nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice familiar to him."

I got a shiver when I first came across that fragment of text. The shiver was as much because I didn't understand it the first time I read it and because, when the penny dropped, I realised just how much meaning passes me by every day - without any problem. How awful is that! It is a criminal act that I don't stop, reflect, cogitate and get the meaning from everything. And then I got another shiver realising that that isn't going to happen either. No way. Not a chance. Too much stuff!

"Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them." - Paul Gauguin

So there you have it - and I'm right with Paul the painter. He did everything he could to live life to the full and admittedly made some fairly bonkers choices along the way but at least he showed ambition and presumably did all his deeds with some conscious knowledge and forethought. Well he picked great places to go for his holidays right?

He managed to get some meaning into his life and he certainly used his imagination. What he put that imagination to also resulted in some amazing deliverables. I'm sure he would have said with hindsight that he had a plan. Ambition too - Gaugin would most probably have disagreed violently with Mr Wittgenstein - but then a lot of people did.

"Ambition is the death of thought." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

I've long puzzled with that statement. I get the blinded by ambition bit - and the frontal lobotomy that that the brain can inflict on itself when it is driven by blind intention and maybe I'm being semantic but I have ambition and it actually drives my thought and makes me become more imaginative. I get to be disruptive about my own vision and mission just to test that it is the best thing for me to want to be doing – ever.

I guess I would say I have designed my life that way – to re-imagine the world around me – to think everything through to help me achieve my ambition. I guess Ludwig would have me believe that I should just think without any ambition attached and see what best thing emerges and go with that. Keep exploring by new thinking. So if that is correct then given my relationship with the AA (Alouate Apes) then I would naturally side with the French Captain when he suggests that – "Imagination rules the world." - Napoleon I – is that Treason?

As it turns out yes. And anyway I now know what Wittgenstein meant. He was spot on!

They say that "Design is about causing a radical change in meaning." Re-building our world needs that more than ever. And this level of disruption is most likely to come from people who you are least familiar with and likely – initially anyway – to disagree with. Like Mr Wittgenstein for example. A gathering of rebels constantly forming themselves into groups of others who are also operating outside of your current comfort zone.

The problem with too much reliance on what we know and how comfortable we are with anything is that it tries to make us at ease - when what we often need is to be uncomfortable, uncertain, in doubt and to act differently. This is harder and harder to do in large societies and of course in large organisations. How do we get comfortable with what we don't know? Stuff we don't feel comfortable with?

We have to challenge everything – even that which we preach. Even that which we speak to and obstinately call our ambition. Our own personal goals and objectives. We can't just accept that they are right or what we need anymore. We just can't. Wittgenstein has made his point - the smart ass.

You will shiver when you read the following the second time. It will make you realise the meaning that you simply don't get. Simply.

"I will not talk about the importance of design, every company knows that. I will not talk about user centered innovation, every company knows that you need to look at users to understand how to do innovation. I will not talk about the importance of having ideas, we have seen right now that there are plenty of ideas around. It’s so easy to have ideas. It’s so difficult to have visions.

Designers have been much less the visionaries than they used to be. There’s been a movement against the designer who had a vision - everything was just transformed into processes. If you look at how designers have evolved in the past ten years - if you buy books on design, everything is about the processes. You know, creativity, brainstorming, ethnography, metals – the tools. And actually the effect is that designers are looking much more like businessmen and MBA students today than they used to be, and they risk losing the capability of vision.

Design is not about styling. It’s not about technology. It’s about radical change in meaning. These are the things that people were not asking for, but when they saw them, they fell in love.” - Roberto Verganti

To be continued…

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Plain Journeys 2. Love - Getting Good At Stopping

2012-01-15T08:40:00.001-08:00

If you read the start of Plain Journeys 1 - 'Viakal, The Universe & Everything' - then you will know what's going on here below. If you didn't then shame on you. Go and read it.

Whilst reflecting on our genetic legacy Alexander Von Humboldt journeyed through Venezuela in 1799 and remarked so profoundly –

"Ambition is the death of thought." - Ludwig Wittgenstein

As it turns out yes. And anyway I now know what Wittgenstein meant. He was spot on!

You will shiver when you read the following the second time. It will make you realise the meaning that you simply don't get. Simply.

To be continued…

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Plain Journeys 1. Viakal, The Universe & Everything

2012-01-14T14:56:00.001-08:00

I apologise in advance if what you are about to read seems familiar.

I realise that I can be quite monotonous about some things. For example I write often about - 'Systems That Are Utterly Useless' - (Politics, Banking, Airport Security). 'An Institutionalised Lack Of Creativity' (School, Business, Politics) - and 'My Own Curiosity About Random Things' (Systems, Creativity, Viakal).

So this little ramble finds me sitting on a plane killing old e-mails. I just came across a draft entitled - 'Things that should inspire me to riff on/off.' - basically very worthy odds and sods from things - blogs, articles, signs in streets - that I fall over and keep to inspire me. So I am. Let's see what happens?

"The allure of a great mind is the startling originality of the insights it produces." - Dean Simonton

Isn't it wonderful when you find a small fragment – a sentence like that one that just has enough unusual but right words in it to spark another thought or a visual idea in your head? - Allure and mind, originality and insight all crashed together to create a mighty fine phrase that fashions a new axiom.

Dean was on fine form - in whatever I was reading (and I don't know who Dean is by the way) - because he went on to espouse very profoundly -

"With rare exceptions, the lone genius is a myth. Creative genius is almost always embedded in a rich network of distinguished predecessors and contemporaries."

Corr-ect! And to me very interesting that it can happen at all just now. Especially given the permanently intense and increasingly bizarre – impossible to navigate - web of a world we've all gone and created. Part train wreck of competing societies – each sitting unhappily beside one another. Part humans trying to understand an ever more chaotic world - newly filled with mind-boggling technologies and gadgets themselves quickly becoming the next commodity. And finally part Frankenstein – demonically interconnected, constructed by hideous designers - wrought in a completely unfathomable way by generations of sinister conditioning – we often call that consumerism. Take it away Steve -

"A great mind has to make the connections - to bring together apparently unrelated bits of information into a coherent whole. It's an ability to make intellectual leaps between seemingly unconnected subjects." - Steve Jones

Bring 'em on! I seriously hope we find some new great minds and fast. I am optimistic that they are out there. In fact I would guarantee it. The concern I have is that they won't step forward in time to save us. More worrying is that they would rightly fear the intense media scrutiny over whether they once smoked a doll, bit some leather thong, or supported the use of the apostrophe in Waterstones - rendering them sub-human and the fair object of derision and water boarding.

"Ninety-nine percent of all the species that ever lived are now extinct." - E.O.Wilson

To be continued…

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

The Night Train Part 1 - The Language of Familiarity.

2012-01-03T10:39:00.000-08:00

Like flying, it's a very poor nights sleep - but with the night train you never leave the runway.

As you finally fall out the other end, dishevelled and fatigued you feel like an unpaid extra in Dr Chicago. Awful. They should change the livery from 'Sleeper' to something truthful. I had no idea that railway lines were designed to keep you awake and not lull you to sleep with that familiar repetition.

At some point during the night the train changed direction - as I peered out the scenery seemed to be propelling me south - back to London. It was endless. A nightmare loop of horror.

Totally confusing.

Am feeling like my eyes are still in London - but I'm very far north. It's not midday yet but it's already getting dark. Thankfully the hotelier makes reasonable coffee but the Muzak remains a toxic loop of those bloody awful life threatening seasonal songs that you love to loathe. Early darkness suggests warm and pleasant evenings in front of a fire. Meaningful conversation, good food and safety.

In these parts the locals only passion is being in the bar by 10am!

A thunderous disco kept me awake all night.

I left this bizarre base camp early the following morning, now 36 hours without sleep and head north by 4 Wheel Drive. Into the unknown. A forbidding and mountainous horizon.

“Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies, for instance.” - John Ruskin

The least populated part of our island, the last great wilderness, the Celtic Fringe. A place where blood once flowed into impossibly bleak moors. Incredible beauty. Driving through incredible storms, clouds below and all around - through the village with more rainfall than the Amazon rain-forest.

In spite of everything you have ever been told the local people are in fact rather unpleasant. Pissed off most likely with 14 months in every 12 being blasted by an incessant universal un-forgiveness. I felt I had left the last smile a long way behind.

Be careful who you sit next to - ever. Really.

"No the wi-fi doesn't work. Ha Ha. I do miss the typewriter anyway. I love the sound of the keys. They send me back to my night school. We keep cats, lots of them. I commute – do you? Have you seen the Otters? Are you from London?"

Now literally hundreds of miles from anywhere how come I have to sit next to other people - especially those that I don't want to. And why are they within ear-shot. Within touching distance. It's wrong. I'm agitated. And increasingly. I paid a lot of money to be on my own. It's dinner for goodness sake. I'm not being unfair but these are the type of people I would happily sign documents to be kept from. To ensure I never met them. Ever.

"We've been here six times before. We get on the night train 45 minutes before it leaves, just so that we can eat. We love it so much. We know the crew. They know us really well. They change."

I ignore them. Outside the bleak house it's all kicking off. The storm - a truly amazing experience - immense power and noise. Yet inside the bleak house I'm somehow forced to hear the deluded ramblings of plankton. I can't switch them off.

No I will not tell you what roads I came up here on. Fuck off!

Incredible beauty, wet as hell. The sea and the sky are one - each alive with white spray. They are at one but also seem to hate each other. Impossible to part them - each a persistent and wholly diabolical force. Both so immense and awe inspiring that it took away any sense of anything. Time, selfishness, breath, balance, football results. The noise in incredible. Comparable only to the awful din next to me – ridiculous conversation carried out with incessant glee by horrible people who live, and should have stayed, way south of here.

Nature is trying to speak to me but there are retards doing their best to break into my head. They are abusing me. They are now debating the best method of dispensing the ashes of their (most recent) cat. I could help there.

And so it goes.

There's a really important conversation going on all around me and I'm processing it in my head. Stuff I really want to listen to. Stuff I came here to understand. Me. It's a mashup - a confusion of new voices. I haven't been properly introduced to them.

Black clouds sit on top of blacker clouds. Everything is wet, even the horizontal rain is being poured on by more rain - and that is wetter yet. Incredible. Somehow, and miraculously, stupid sheep cling onto vertical rocks with their jaws. They are in search of bits of grass that are surely dissolving. Battered incessantly by raindrops the size of cricket balls shot out of medieval cannon.

The security of the City, I convince myself, means I have control over my existence there. I've left the City. The soundtrack here is just plain bleak. Bleak Is the word. Insanely, beautifully bleak. Bleak - First Class.

My body and my multiple minds tell me conflicting things. I'm not ready to leave the City. I want wild open spaces, I don't want wild open spaces. I want the solitude and creativity of the wilderness, I want very high-speed broadband and home delivery. Crap. I'm torn.

The Storm Of The Eye

The storm shouts out very loudly now, demanding the full attention from its audience. Earth, Wind & Fire is on stage and the show is in full flight. The guy on the lighting and effects mixer is sheer genius. The amplifiers are set to 11. Waves bigger than houses pound away at impossibly formed rocks - they are all stars.

The roof of the shack stays firmly put. 5 days now. 4 days of 60-80 mph storms and I'm still entirely captivated by it. It's all so beautifully chaotic. At times it's impossible to separate the sky, the sea, the river or the land. Separated from it all only by plate glass and a shared language. The days are never light - this far north it's a permanent dusk fading to pitch black. The sounds remain gale force, the visuals are comprehensive both in their range of colours and their unexplainableness. All so intensely beautiful. A feast for the eyes.

As with any live orchestra - no recording can do justice.

The natural force of the storm is quite literally breathtaking. If there were words to describe it then language would be the more powerful for it but we have insufficient tools in words alone. The storm speaks in a voice that I recognise but can't really engage with - certainly not as I would want. I watch spellbound but would rather be fully integrated into it. Consumed.

It takes a while to translate voices in your head. In my case decades. Intense storms and the power of nature has a way of highlighting the ridiculousness of ones own thought processes. I've been privileged to be embedded inside the wrath of nature for days here and yet oddly juxtaposed with the kind of excruciating humanity I would seek to avoid at all costs normally. In the remotest part of the island thrown together with sidelined x-factor contestants. Out of control and in the extremes of natural events.

I intensely dislike overhearing other peoples conversations. I know some people like it. I hate it. It takes me out of the spell of a reality I only just found.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

2012 - Consulting is Dead. (Jumping off the 'Snake Oil' Train)

2012-01-01T07:12:00.001-08:00

"No I'm not a bloody consultant!"

I never accept dinner party invitations anyway but I was unavoidably thrust next to people over dinner recently and luckily wasn't asked what I did. That was probably because I wasn't dressed in your typical hill-walking, shepherding, hunting, shooting or deep-sea fishing garb – so they daren't ask. I usually dress like a terrorist.

But I was ready.

"I'm helping to prove or disprove the Higgs-Boson." No?

"Well actually I've been asked to trial super fast broadband in the Outer Hebrides so that local people can stop making useless effigies of 'Hamish the Lighthouse God' from roadkill and driftwood."

In fact anything but say -

"I am a creative person on a mission to change the consulting industry."

People are interested in the 'creative' part but visibly shrink when I get to the word 'consultant.' Rather like the Grim Reaper arriving at a baptism or that unfortunate introduction to an Estate Agent/Insurance Broker with the damp handshake - it's effective.

What's wrong with consulting?

It doesn't work. Well that's extreme but I've lost count of the number of clients who have complained to me about consultants in the last year. They usually tell me something like that as they arrive to be shown how we work. They are quick to make remarks like these as they hear the words 'business issues', 'innovation' and 'valuable outcomes' in the same breath. They recoil in horror and shock as if some massive granite ball just blocked their exit from our offices - Raiders Of The Lost Ark style. As if they have been compromised in a way they vowed never to be again.

On a bad day clients will state that consultants are any one or more of the following - too expensive, don't deliver what they said they would, take too long, get viewed as the enemy by the enterprise (making their strategies hard to follow through to deployment), are far too often self-serving - oh, and they lack innovation or creativity. Other than that!

Progress or Die!

They will also say that they are in a pact with the devil because they don't have the skill or capability in house. They say they are trapped. I will say politely that I would like to disprove that.

Is it the fault of consultants that they get such bad press? Well yes. They all know it's getting to be a problem. Of course there are countless great consultants - brilliant ones. Just like there are countless great physicians and art directors and Higgs–Boson scientists. Trouble is when any sector becomes complacent - the whole sector gets blighted and they become easy targets. Dead ducks.

Back in the day the Advertising Industry got a bad reputation for champagne lunches that lasted three days. They also couldn't measure their impact and they couldn't compete with the niche 'boutique' creatives when it came to real talent. Same is now true of the consulting industry, massive overheads, you don't get the best talent and it's proving hard to see the ROI.

Consulting has failed to become creative.

Creativity is the name of the game. By any measurement the world has sped up. It's now not worth writing a business plan that lasts more than a year. The word on the lips of the progressive business leaders these days is the imperative for the entire senior leadership to become leaders in their own right. To become designers of their own destiny and therefore to embrace creativity in all it's forms.

Think about this time last year. Did you predict your business would be where it is now? Two years ago had you figured on the 'apps' revolution? - the iPad? That platform is barely two years old. Did you guess the idea of social media or the impact of the economic crisis on your business? The Cloud?

Think different. Embrace creativity.

Redefinition is the 2012 game.

1. The definition of success?

Every enterprise on Earth needs nimble, real time and distinctive strategies. Your customers want you to excite and surprise them or deliver service as if you mean it. You demand that the whole enterprise gets behind the mission. You need to do more with less and you need to engage with your people, tour markets and your systems like you never had to before. You will insist that every choice has been exhausted until the best answer with the smartest risk profile has been identified.

2. Being creative with consulting.

In defining creativity (and on any given day) I argue that it is in all of us but that it demands constant attention, nurturing, tools and techniques to help it surface. It needs to be sustainable and it requires ingenuity. It demands a culture of courage and leadership to let it flourish. It is about curiosity, persistence and a continuous pursuit of the edge. True creativity insists on being at the front of the edge. The creation of breathtaking ideas and being different. And it demands to be heard because it inspires each and every one of us on to greater things. (NB: This is not typically seen as a strategy consulting service.)

In defining consulting (and on a good day) I suppose most people would suggest something like this - 'Smart people analysing serious business issues, solving important problems by recognising all the vital dynamics and then deploying smarter answers to solve each one as required - within a clients firm.' They are most likely armed with expertise and capability (in various fields) or they are the best of the business schools. (NB: This is not typically known as a creative service.)

3. Redefining the Consulting Firm!

So, in what kind of business do these two important functions collide? The consulting firms are trying hard to redefine themselves right now because the problems their clients face got a whole lot harder and the old tools that used to work well enough were designed for a wholly different era. So do the consulting firms get the best people to solve the problem or should the best people actually be inside the firm that needs the solution? And where would this talent prefer to work? Well given that the issues are not going to get any easier what would you suggest?

We need an entirely new type of approach right?

The business world now needs consulting to be everyone's job – two axes.

'Smart people, being curious about their work and doing smarter stuff daily - inspired to resolve the continuous (and ever more) dynamic context that is part of being alive in the business world of this century.'

'Creativity applied to consulting means that everyone in the business has the chance to get engaged, pull their weight and contribute because they have been made aware of their own responsibility and their own capability - by being engaged in the strategy and deeply understanding the direction of the company.'

And finally…

Don't sit around making souvenirs for wandering tourists, get out there and make a difference to the world and your business. Creativity has crashed into every part of business but the jury is out as to whether consulting can stay valid, redefine itself and embrace creativity.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

A Cracker - My First Guest Post!!

2011-12-19T06:05:00.001-08:00

With great thanks to Eleanor O'Rourke for this guest blog on my favourite subject!

Why Christmas is for crack addicts

It happened every year. The first signs appeared on his commute to work. Shy reindeer and slightly embarrassed baubles edged their way into the shop windows. "Jesus Christ it's only the first of November" Joe Turner would rage as he stormed into the office of Fabulous Brands Inc.

Joe's staff were familiar with his contempt for 'the whole Christmas malarkey'. Some of them shared his disdain and watched with horror as the nation descended once again into a frenzy of present buying and binge drinking accompanied by the hypnotic mantra of dreadful Christmas music.

Joe's family teased him for being a Grinch. Then, without a trace of cynicism, he would argue the facts: Christmas was supposed to be a celebration for the Baby Jesus, not a ritual for the Retail Sector – who were only concerned by the announcement of their own year end Profit. It was over-hyped. It made no sense.

During the third week of December he usually cracked. It happened so quickly – a triple whammy of twinkling fairy lights, the smell of mulled wine and the the opening bars of "chestnuts roasting on an open fire." The assault on his senses, tugged on his heartstrings, rendering him senseless.

But what's really going on?!

We have inside us a blueprint for the next stage of evolution. Our future selves are calling us towards higher ground (remember time is just something we made up so this is not as wacky as it sounds). Some artists, mystics and visionaries have glimpses of this through a crack in the fabric of our current dimension. They can gain access to genius levels of consciousness - if only for brief moments.

Leonard Cohen famously wrote "There's a crack, a crack in everything, that's where the light gets in". Our senses lead us to this place – a fact that the Catholics used, to much effect. The smell of incense, the visual feast of stunning architecture, the haunting beauty of Gregorian chants. Guaranteed to produce a hyperlink to the edge… But instead of using these senses to scaffold to higher ground, many got seduced by the senses, becoming indulgent, manipulative and power crazy. (Have you seen the Vatican?)

Like many people of his generation, Joe Turner rejected religion in the sixties. He found other means to travel to the edge of consciousness – LSD, peyote, magic mushrooms. But when the music died, he ditched the patchouli oil, cut his hair and became a copywriter. That was all behind him now. Or was it just another indicator of his longing to glimpse through the veil?

Like curious children, we are drawn to the crack in the curtain – particularly at Christmas. But we get hijacked by our senses. The sight of gifts piled high, the taste of rich food, the smell of fir trees, the poignancy of carols, the anticipation of hugs on the exchange of presents (I'm so touched!). We become enchanted.

Then we wake in January with monumental hangovers, having maxed out our credit cards. Just like Joe we rail "it was that damned spell… it got me again!"

We can't really blame the Magic of Christmas. Something inside us longs for a transcendental experience, we just forgot how to get there. Our senses were supposed to signal the way. But in our crazy wisdom, we made an altar out of the signpost, pitched tents and stayed put, making sacrifices to the Gods of Consumerism who bring us such lovely things that delight our senses.

We gather, transfixed around the crack of light, because we lack the discipline to go beyond our five sensory world.

We need to come to our senses – all of them, including the sixth and possibly a seventh, eighth and ninth! This requires our spiritual expansion (not the literal expansion of our waistlines!). It requires the mental clarity that we are the saviour we've been waiting for. And it requires the stretching of our childish heart, to gain access to the mystical heart - one that isn't indulgent, sentimental or manipulative. In short, the heart that can love for no reason.

Because we are now going beyond the Age of Reason.

It's a tough gig, and it will require our courage.

But anything less is just crack addiction.

See a bunch more at http://geometryofbehaviour.posterous.com/

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Predictive Sex - Loft In Transition

2011-12-07T15:16:00.001-08:00

And that m'lord was when it all kicked off.

The Plot -

Only as the myriad microbiotic dust settled on the dystopian tea bag of time did we get to properly stir the sea of knowledge – and in so doing sleep deservedly on the bare floor of the outlawed saloon of majesty.

Not that I would write such a thing as a text message (or at all) but imagine the fun you could have tapping that into your smart slab of iMystery – just to see how it comes out! How many people would it confuse? Well almost everybody – apparently.

Losing The Plot -

Sorry people but something inside me loved it when Jeremy Clarkson pumped obvious and much needed humour into the otherwise ludicrous Public Workers strike. These folk voting to strike to retain their gilt-edged pensions while we pay them and the fucking bankers? It utterly appalled me.

JC (great initials by the way) said so profoundly - "The Public Workers should be taken out and shot in front of their families." - Irate media frenzy guaranteed. People! It was a joke. He didn't mean it literally!

(Here comes the serious bit)

Gross and cynically deliberate misinterpretation is becoming the biggest barrier to civilised humanity. It seems that people are becoming extremists – either totally literal - they only give a damn because it suits the facts they want to hear (and the fact that they don't get out much) - or - completely illiterate - because they don't give a shit anyway (and also don't get out much).

Anyway! It all reminded me of this -

There Is No Plot -

Mark Twain once wrote that Jane Austen’s books - “madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”

And no my loft isn't having any work done on it at the moment.

I love the fact that predictive text brightens up the day with the wrong words. I wonder how the great writers of the world would have fared with misinterpretation and fat fingers if they had had the smart/dumb phone. I will pause now and let the great writers vent about their interpretation of others.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac:

“That’s not writing, that’s typing.”

Oscar Wilde on Charles Dickens:

“One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing.”

Joseph Conrad on Herman Melville:

“He knows nothing of the sea. Fantastic — ridiculous.”

Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe:

“An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

H.G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw:

“An idiot child screaming in a hospital.”

Gustave Flaubert on George Sand:

“A great cow full of ink.”

Just off to plant a few vegetables down at The Plot -

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Premature Projection - The 21st Century Plague That Kills.

2011-12-07T15:14:00.001-08:00

I'm going to fall. Run!

Vertigo is one of the most powerful projections of the mind. Well it bloody well works. I am so bad that I get vertigo just by spelling the word – especially if the font is large. Projection can mean serious failure – vertigo proves it, but from great heights.

Unfortunately there are far worse projections of the mind than vertigo.

The world is dying because of it. Everywhere I go, every issue I hear on the news, I feel plagued by seemingly bright people suffering from premature projection. So embedded in their judgement, their inbuilt prejudice – they are incapable of actually listening. Projection has become so powerful that it has rendered its victim incapable of reason.

Global wars and disasters involving us all. Immense wastelands of energy, time, resource and space – all brought about through incalculable stupidity borne out of unhelpful projection of their perspective onto everything they survey. These walking sick are lurking everywhere, just waiting for a moment to argue on behalf of their bloody projection - their corner until death.

In my small corner of the world I try and avoid it because it is the kiss of death for creativity. I fail (all too often) to free myself completely from its grip but it has spread like the red weed in the War Of The Worlds. Creativity requires unconstrained freedom of thought. A place without fixed intention and demanding unconscious luck. I set out to deal with bastard child of creativity every day. I find myself flailing under the weight of concrete projections falling from great heights.

It is a mischievous thing projection. You can't stop it. It messes with the head all dressed up as an alien transvestite from another galaxy (c'mon you know what that looks like) and calls itself 'informed opinion'.

Premature Projection (PP) is officially an illness – ill formed, ill informed and ill judged – oh and it makes me ill.

It jumps around in front of the mind's eye to avoid detection – the infected will defend their projection until put to the sword. Any attack on PP whistles past it – it is ungraspable and therefore incurable because the mind inflicted with it doesn't realise it is infected. It spreads into all the cells and rattles around inside the body - you can smell it on the diseased skin.

It is always waiting to jump to new flesh. Thankfully you can avoid it if you can spot the symptoms. This is because you can see projection written in peoples faces – there's the tell-tale signs. A look of sprung steel - of indignant self–righteous judgement set deep into the eyes. Once alarmed into action the mouth and lips form into a translucent ghastly trap door already half closed to opportunity - set to strike before the free thought or fresh idea is out of your mouth.

Take a fucking day off!

I know it well because like vertigo I suffer from it myself. And like vertigo I don't know how to cure it. As with projection your idiot brain is convinced that something is certain (and most likely wrong) and you also know (from experiences - time after time) that it is likely to be busted by facts.

C'mon bacteria, get stuck into this one!!! Save us all from ourselves!

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Breakfast With Einstein.

2011-10-02T09:45:00.001-07:00

I asked him what the is the equation for avoiding stupidity in business. He grabbed a chalk and walked to the wall. "Ah the theory of everything! Damn it!" He seemed animated. "Vell we need to use logic and quantum physics. It is zimply complex. You von't understand eet. Even I don't quite get it yet."

He scribbled madly as I tried to decipher the mans obsession with calculus and his disdain for meusli. He didn't stop for 35 minutes. I had 6 coffees - he was a blur with all that chalk and mumbling. He said - "The trouble eez we cannot accurately factor for all zis change at present."

And then suddenly there was this 'think' of beauty on the wall. The great man was done. He left muttering something about a black whole. I was trying to photograph the man grappling with the elevator in my apartment.

Improving your chances in business probably means change right? Everyone is searching for the right answer. Getting this right is tough. Right? And everyone around has their view and those are all different so it makes your head hurt! What are you going to do?

Who are you going to trust? Three words of advice -

Neutrality. Co-Creation. Rigor.

Now I would expect people to say WTF! What does that mean? Bullshit and jargon? I have never been able to find the right words for this so if it is bullshit then 'whatever'. If you care about how that all adds up to a tin of beans then read on.

Neutrality. In my head 'neutrality' is all about having no dog in the fight. How can we discuss anything about anything complex like transformation or strategy with a fixed opinion or a preset agenda! Being rigorously impartial is a great place to be!

Co-Creation. And co-creation means working through stuff together. Emerging with fresh thoughts as a team. Surfacing insights as a collective. Sharing and then owning the outcomes. This is true alignment. And that adds up to Goal Congruency.

Rigor. Rigor means putting the work in. Risk is not a bad thing - in fact it's an essential ingredient. But being lazy about the smart choices open to you by just not thinking it all through is unacceptable. Getting to a rigorous decision is imperative – we call this Decision Quality. Doh!

Thanks Albert – I hope you enjoyed breakfast.

Avoiding Stupidity. The Equation Principles:

1. Rigorous Impartiality. Having no vested interest in the outcome is a powerful place from which to ask the right questions. It means being interested in the correct solution to the puzzle. +

2. Goal Congruency. Alignment on the vision, mission and strategy is essential. Shared and coherent definitions on everything is essential for a high performance strategy. Over.

3. Decision Quality. Making quality decisions means to reduce risk in the right outcome by knowing that all the data is as good as it can be and the correct choices are being made. =

4. The Right Answer. Every enterprise wants success. Whether its an overall strategy or vision, business plan or transformed business - having the correct, least risk strategy and plan is the challenge.

So, armed with a clear, agreed and compelling 'exam question' teams can 'work' this equation until the answers emerge logically through the right frameworks. http://www.grouppartnerswiki.net/index.php?title=4D

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

The Hand Obsessed.

2011-10-01T06:43:00.001-07:00

I can't read your writing - I must kill you.

Remarkable to think that the quality of one's handwriting has so much to do with strategic progress and business performance. And then again quite understandable. If someone stood in front of you for 3 days and took down your thoughts on a wall like your doctor wrote his prescriptions, or a mad professor who would assault your brain in a chalkboard scrawl - what would you think? Could you think? Would it aid your development of ideas - your ability to process and be more creative?

Would it speed your recovery if you couldn't refer back to the work done a couple of hours earlier? Well maybe. Less than ideal though. Indeed I have noticed that if the letters and spaces are not ideal - the idea is not as believable. Not honored. If I am slightly out with the spaces around the words and the boxes I put around them, again the point has less gravity, not so much meaning or purpose. I can feel the lack of power conveyed.

I've observed a strong correlation between quality thinking and precise handwriting.

I've known this for a while but it's really become a bit of a major study for me. I'm gonna do courses on it!

So here's an illustration of why good handwriting and clear thinking matters and are directly related.

Picture the scene -

15 or 20 executives trying to solve a complex problem in a collaborative way. At least starting that incredible journey - to land on a single page with a vision, a strategy and a plan to go execute. Oh and attempt to do that in the 2 or 3 days together.

I'm working with a team - 'writing' the ideas we are discussing into the framework as we go. I have countless options. Write verbatim - a sentence that comes close, shorten the idea more smartly into a similar yet crisp idea. Capture the rough essence of it with the intention of cleaning it up later.

None of the above comes close to what really needs to happen to avoid lazy generalisms, semantic bingo and certain death. (To me or the strategy).

In each day's creative thinking (for 15/20 executives) there are typically between 400 to 500 'expressions of note' - That is to say the number of correct answers distilled from the thousands of parts of the key conversations. Each valid one makes it to the framework. In each day there are 4/5 deep delves into aspects of the problem being worked. That adds up to 1500 'expressions of note' over 3 days. Each one deeply meaningful and needing clear definition.

So over the course of a program of work - leaving any doubt or disagreement of the word/phrase – then disaster is likely to strike. A desperate unravelling can occur. Answers need crafting within the context of the problem being solved.

I have to translate the idea perfectly into the correct and agreed phrase and write the words in a sharp, legible and highly engineered handwritten form if i'm to survive . The writing must be legible from 30 feet and be as enjoyable to read and as perfectly formed as is humanly possible. And then some.

Anyway food for thought – drawing conclusions!

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

The End Of Advertising As We Know It!

2011-09-03T07:46:00.001-07:00

A story is a thing that can get passed around. Everyone talks about story-telling as being what works and what's needed. The writer, the construction of a great story. That is what drives us to engage. We know when a great campaign gets to us. It morphs, it becomes a part of our lives. That is what a brand is. It remains with us even when the product isn't there. So why is it that the advertising industry is so slow at getting at it. Sure there are some remarkable exceptions and I am from the industry and I was once very proud of that. Once.

Lamentable was the word - the overriding opinion in the room. I was listening intently to a group (of various ages) talk about brands and advertising - what works (what doesn't) - but very interestingly talking about how stupid the marketers must think we are. Marketers still justify that their sales are directly because of their ads. Even in the face of strong arguments against that fact. A stupidly large proportion of the mush that I see passing off as marketing and communication has zero story, zero content, zero interest and zero value. Not bad huh?

The word lamentable struck me because it contains an acronym I've used a lot over the years – LMT - Lazy Media Thinking. That got me going and I scribbled away - Lazy And Mediocre Effort Nevertheless Translates As Bullshit Literally Everywhere. Sorry!

A bad idea is a bad idea. We've all experienced the derision. The rapid clicking past a pop-up - another dis-believable piece of marketing nonsense. It is still a bad idea. It succeeds in creating a groundswell of anti-attraction and eventually hate mail, even to the less sophisticated. Why are these blunt instruments getting bought by clients and who are the villains still peddling this crap!

Actually I don't care really. I believe the advertising industry will either die or change beyond all recognition and that that will be the best thing. More opportunity as a result.

It will mean a return to smaller teams in their own niche or boutique businesses doing quality work. Much more creative work done with care and precision. Much good stuff is being done already. The fact is to get traction and work well in the current media world is to be far more smart. More creativity. The art of it all now needs to get matched by the science and physics of it all and sadly the advertising industry is at best 5% creative and 95% administrative and financial and accounting. The second part of that equation is most definitely and rapidly redefining the word overhead.

Clients now know this too.

“We’re very good at organising and collecting data now – one thing we’re not good at yet is re-presenting and humanising data, turning it into narratives and stories” - Tom Uglow, Creative Director - Google and YouTube – Europe.

I have written a bunch on this recently but when I find someone who has written what I feel better than me then why not give the guy the credit. I like what Tom says. He observes what's going down a lot like I do. I don't know him. He doesn't know me. Therefore what follows is at least a micro-zeitgeist.

Tom is the European Creative director not just of Google but also You Tube. I find it very hard to watch You Tube actually. I'm not an avid or habitual watcher of video on-line. Photographs definitely. Video's have to come highly recommended or I can skip easily. I think it's a speed of processing thing and perception of quality thing. Tom sums it neatly -

"Online is such a fragmented way of watching anything - infinitely more distracted - and more flighty - actively consuming but entirely fickle, not attentive to arcs, or detail or narrative. On Demand - where I carve out time and stop and actively watch. I'm looking for story, script and immersion, but not production quality. I actively want to watch a programme and I am committed to it."

100%! It certainly isn't true for everyone - but increasingly it's becoming true for many more people every day. I think as I get older I'm becoming less set in more things. I rarely watch TV but want the times I do to be very high quality and more of a special thing. A big movie, a match, a seriously high-production documentary. Mainstream entertainment on TV leaves me nauseous.

And my new mentor Tom's viewpoint? -

"On TV - where I (rarely anymore) sit and let the TV wash over me. It's passive. Time passes really fast. I'm not engaged nor am I proactively changing the channel. I could comfortably consume QI til I die. On DVD - I am attentive to the narrative, atmosphere and nuance. But in my slippers and a hoodie. On the big screen - I am completely committed, I have physically visited a theatre and am attentive to intimate detail, I will follow complex story-lines, loops and twists and I will analyse and contrast."

Because he is a 'someone' from Google, Tom is all about the little ads that are like granular and seemingly disconnected parts. But they are so not disconnected. Again I agree with him that this is now the way all marketers should think. But many may be too lazy to put in the energy or creativity required to pull off what this means. This is why they will need to change or die.

This used to be hyped up (dressed up) as one-to-one marketing, back in the day. A perfect idea spoiled by hijackers and the usual and predictable bandwagon. Whatever. Nowadays we have a million channels and creative tools, platforms or ways to surround the 'one' and communicate with 'one'. Treat them like an idiot at your peril. Although that's how it will feel in the main and in the short-term. This new media is all about attention to detail.

Tom again -

"I don't come from an advertising background, and the other day a prospective copywriter was patiently, (and somewhat patronisingly) explaining to me how a creative team is made of two, not three, and certainly not one, and how a copywriter and a creative should go off into a room and come up with a range of ideas backed up by visuals and copy, and then the artwork would be created from these concepts across a range of media.

Once I came round I suggested that an advertisement is like a phone call. It's an interaction where you receive some information. A phone call is just little packets of data. So why can't an advertising campaign be broken into little packets of data.

In fact better yet why can't the information be broken down into little bits (like the internet) and then shared around by, well, the internet. Like an idea. And then the next part of that is that the bits should really be the information, not an association, or implication, or a complete abstraction (e.g. Coke = Happiness. Really? wtf? it's a brown fizzy drink.)"

Making an idea into something that is (and evokes) the brand when the product isn't there is the holy crucible! But think about that. This is not straightforward. It requires society, and all your peers, trusting and knowing the thing – your product - like we know what milk does.

Tom -

"To me a good advertising campaign is one that *is* the product, and the message. The famous Word-of-Mouth does this, but rarely does it involve your colleague standing on the table and insisting (every 15 minutes) just how much you have to go see True Grit, starring thingy, by those guys, the ones who did Fargo. It's fucking awesome. Advertising should involve small, reasonable, undemanding, unthreatening and often very brief moments in which a small amount of directly relevant information is shared, preferably in a way that is useful, timely, personal, fun and contextually relevant."

I left the Advertising Industry 15 years ago because I felt that all those around, in the sales-cycle and in our creative process - at the agency and at the client just didn't get this or if they did, they lacked the power of orchestration to be able to execute it. With some notable exceptions many still don't. It involves real energy, detail, planning and courage and that all done within earshot of the majority of people who won't agree with the approach in the first place.

Did I say tough? This stuff requires thinking. It requires skill and it requires creativity by the real definition of the word. Final word goes to Tom!

"I suggested that all campaigns should start by breaking what they want down to those pieces of information, understanding them, and then working out what they would look like in a map, or a wiki, or in a game, or sponsored links, or a fortune cookie. or on twitter. And in a bigger way how the information would behave if you got to make a video, or a banner campaign, or a poster, or had to explain it to your mum, or to the woman next door, the one with the dogs.

And then finally how would you let that information go, how would you open-source it so that the world could take the idea and make it their own and your campaign would live for the next five years despite no media spend or new creative because people actually used that idea to break up and share their own information, maybe about something completely different.

And I suggested that when you think like that digital feels innate and obvious and easy. And that's what I think copywriters should do. It's about ways of seeing, not physics.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Death, Me & Creativity - Hanging Out At The Border.

2011-08-20T07:29:00.001-07:00

A familiar and murderous paradox of agony and ecstasy hangs heavily in the air. The tumbleweed of thoughts fly by and get stuck – but only for a second - on the petrified tree of the task at hand.

Last week my specific creative challenge changed for a third time in 24 hours. The brief was the same but the space and time available to do the work altered. It became uncertain, unknown and unspecified. That may sound simple but imagine designing the Louvre but getting told halfway through that it needed to fit in your back yard.

How to solve? What to do? How will this work? Can I find that clever fix in my stupid head? Can I do the right thing? Something that nails the challenge facing me? An idea that will work with all this uncertainty? Well can I?

Trying to be a creative person involves balance alright. Living with that dull ache of potential failure and the thrill of firing that gun. Snipers forever sitting and waiting - watching me walking the tightrope of melancholy and orgasm. At the same time the evil twins - 'ho' and 'hum' - sitting on my shoulders twiddling their thumbs - argue a while and them sum it all up for me in two words. Useless Cretin.

If you have ever had a good idea have you tried to recall how it came about? Even writing about the process of creativity baffles me. I've tried but it's not really a topic that can be explained. Developing an idea is about making all the right choices. To get to the right thing – a brilliant idea. And I've realised I don't actually enjoy explaining what I am doing or how I got there. It just gets in the way and it's the wrong thing to discuss.

What are you doing?

As it is every day riding on the plains - no matter what gun-slinging town I'm in – people are always firing off irrelevant questions about the wrong thing. Why? What and How? demand answers. I am beginning to think I am not wired to answer questions like these sometimes. Questions about the wrong thing.

I do try hard to answer everybody politely but some things quickly tip me into a kind of defensive sarcasm and derision. It's unintentional but I can lose patience very quickly amid the need for explanations. It reminds me of my pet hates – the TSA, stupidity and neediness. They don't deserve the respect of an answer. They are all about the wrong thing.

My body language is probably deeply objectionable to many people when they talk about the wrong thing - but I'm simply not interested (capable) of explaining my reasons to people anymore. It just is what it is. Get over it.

Anyway back to the point…

I have decided to share my principles instead. If you want to ask questions about being a creative, ask me something about these. They are my principles of creativity.

Principle 1. French Kissing The Artful Dodger.

Figure out how to lie, cheat and burn the evidence. I have long held that when it comes to creativity you have to be completely happy with the idea that you may actually be a complete fraud. I'm utterly convinced that luck and practice (mixed with serious theft) are the raw materials of 'being' creative. Don't ask me how you get to learn luck.

Principle 2. Eating The Twilight Trash.

If you're not a voracious 'rat' sniffing out brain food then it's going to be hard for you. Without the primal hunger for edgy stuff that others would question then consider quitting now. The more people frown at your habit the more likely you are that you are onto something. You have to snuffle, harvest, grab, snap, graze and glimpse with equal measure. Use whatever capture tool you have to hand – but make sure you store the stuff for immediate recall.

Principle 3. Emptiness is Your Nature.

Your normal habitat is solitude on a Sunday. Your home terrain is sparce - a cold expanse of zero. An ice field in Winter. You wander around the streets early or late - but always on your own. Definitely on your own. As you crawl emotions are shooting through thick and fast through your veins. This is bad heroin but you are good with it. When your mind is that blank and running on empty it will work on its own. You will get that nudge. - "Psst. What about glass walls?"

Principle 4. '10 Easy Steps to Creativity!' - Get the Fuck Outa Here!

No. There are no steps and it's not easy! Creativity drives me crazy. It needs to drive YOU crazy too - or it isn't real. Creative things happen in the penumbra. You will never know where the idea really came from or why. You just have to try to get the majority of conditions right. For me that means (A) Quality of Input - Trusting the source and the context you are working in. (B) Splendid Isolation - Being left alone to 'be' but in good company. (C) Coordinated Chaos - Managing the time for distraction within messy dynamics. (D) Publicly Pressured - Knowing that I'm accountable - on point for a result. Pressure is the framework. Always.

Principle 5. Be annoyingly connected to everything.

Making connections between (and amongst) weird - ostensibly unrelated stuff seems to me to be at the root of it all. That grape, those cars, this axiom, the idea of Giraffes, that political movement. That would make a great opera. If you are not making these connections then you are probably not made for the high wire. The air is a bit thinner too so make sure you fully understand the idea of Giraffe.

And…

In order to maximise the 5 Principles - stop the existing soundtrack of your life. Stop being the same person you were last week. Change yourself and your dopey habits, be different. Learn a different accent - use different words. Download new music. Change your bugbears - they define you. Get a life. Get a better camera. Write a protest song. Eat an eel. Don't remain that boring, sad unhappy idiot. Get out. Look at yourself and remember you are one day closer to death. I try. It's hard.

What did creativity do to deserve me?

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

The Instant Message Is The Media.

2011-08-09T09:53:00.001-07:00

Scapegoat Alert!

No surprise that the media 'system' is feverishly reporting on how the leaderless Police Force (back in the UK) are failing to stay even one step ahead in the riots.

1000's of teenage rebels without a cause but with a 'smart-phone'.

"The mad are happy, the sane ignorant; those of us stuck on the sane side of madness or the mad fringe of sanity are in a purgatorial cage." - Anonymous

Telco's and Device manufacturers the world over are probably laughing all the way to the broken bank. They couldn't have paid for this amount of promotion. Priceless!

You can hear the sound of countless 'groups', 'lists' and Sid Vicious (Google+) 'circles' being clicked - then split seconds later angry hordes of tech savvy, smart-phone wielding 'hoodies' hell-bent on tearing up their own 'hoods are mobilised. At the same time PC plods around with out-dated technology – 'systems' built for far quieter times wondering WTF.

Designed to cope with more sedate times, the police operate a system that teeters comfortably on the precipice. Nervously observing a low bandwidth - mostly obedient public living within a simmering, variously sick and certainly cynical system - that doesn't really give a damn.

Now everyone is blaming this on their favourite issue.

That we are now shocked to find that the young people are up fo it! - looting the shops - pretty pissed off with their lot - no services, quality of life, parents who care or futures - the shock is that it's a shock! What do we expect in such a stupid self serving system.

IM - A system of Instant Messaging.

Yep. - 'Get down here - set fire to the Town Hall and bag some cool MP3 players - right now please.' I'm able to report that I have no idea how they would actually phrase the command.

150 people on your list multiplied by 1000's, then 1000's more - all eager and bored recipients. All that energy in pursuit of a quick hit. This is a system that works. It knows its function. It's designed perfectly to do what it has done.

Where is the surprise in all this - this unrest within the system of society? That it didn't happen sooner? This has been coming for quite some time. Well before 2008 but that was certainly the big catalyst.

As George Friedman suggests - "After 2008 a sense emerged that the financial elite was either stupid or dishonest or both. The idea was that the financial elite had violated all principles of fiduciary, social and moral responsibility in seeking its own personal gain at the expense of society as a whole."

I doubt whether the people on the streets of London are complaining about the recent demise of their Sunday paper, nor the sovereign debt crisis - they are simply having a laff at the expense of a now underfunded Police Force. But systems are always subject to insidious shock. Always.

No question either that we ain't seen nothing yet. It's all very much a foretaste of things to come. All the intertwined and self-serving systems, for the benefit of the 'elites' of business, politics and other big systems now find themselves on very rocky territory indeed.

Do they get it though? And what are 'we' doing?

Where is the vital dialog taking place? Is the truth being drowned out by talk of Blackberry's Instant Fucking Messenger System? Just another way of diverting us from talking about the bloodsucking systems that we have to live within to the benefit of these 'elites'? A few days ago the Murdoch's were an elite, as was Gaddafi, Bashar al Assad, Laurent GBagbo - days ago.

Profit From Gloom or Prophet Of Doom?

Is anyone surprised by the riots and weekly diet of doom and gloom in the systems? - Really? I'm not and an I doubt those of you who are bothering to read this. Given the intense and cynical conditioning we've been subjected to for years within a (any) Nations system I am continually surprised this hasn't all kicked off earlier.

Unless you are lucky and are borne into money you are -

In a crap shoot that requires either courage and determination and a huge slice of luck or -
Have great parents who know how to keep you safe, courage and determination and a huge slice of luck.

The system isn't on your side unless you are buying into the systems money machine.

It's an economic machine designed to keep the Nation going and you are a cog.

Unless you conform to playing nicely and living the lie. Unless you sign up to the tacky celebritized world machine. Unless you are prepared to turn a blind eye to the minority of scum bags laughing all the way to their own banks or the corrupt politicians and business people who are keeping it all in place anyway.

The issue has to be what takes the place of the system as we know it? We can see the alternatives in the extremists and terrorists. Not much fun going there right? So where is the caped crusader, the masked man - the new Robin(s) of the Hood.

This is probably the biggest question and fear for any thinking human. Because there is no WE - we are are not represented other than in our small communities - by ourselves. There is no grand system that represents a fair alternative the sewage and rat infested system we live amongst. The system we live within knows this and tries to defend itself but as we can see it is perilously close to tipping.

"The Police Are Outnumbered and are giving up." - Twitterer.

Just different rats prepared to become a new form of elite. Is that true? Well if it's worth putting all our collective brain power into one thing it would be hard to imagine anything more vital at this critical time.

A final Instant Message:

"The real problem is that, while the challenge to the elites goes on, the profound differences in the challengers make an alternative political elite difficult to imagine." - George Friedman

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Pretty Awful!

2011-08-09T00:31:00.001-07:00

Awarding a place the title of 'Nations Prettiest Village' is the kiss of death.

I'm sorry - here's a rant!

I recently drove through one of the most stunning villages on the planet. A lofty spectacle, a jewel in a beautiful land.

An impressive 14th Century castle breaks into view as I round yet another mountain hairpin. You begin to make out the scale of it and then marvel at how it could possibly hold onto its perch. Part miracle, part magnificent ostentation - all hard work.

There it is high above its very own village - built impossibly by hand straight from the rock. As we all like to say (and sadly most likely true) - 'We just couldn't make one of those these days!'

The indescribable impressiveness of it all stays - but thankfully us humans come and go.

And so it remains 700 years later looking down on its precious, ornate houses where servants and merchants once lived. In its glory days this place was the focal point of trade for miles around.

As if to underline its impeccable positioning there is a mighty teeming, steaming river bending around its base.

The massive rocky edifice with its impeccable testimony to bygone times is a powerful picture. Dark green trees and the baking hot sun filling in the rest.

Inglorious Basterds.

As I drew closer I began to recoil with horror. I can't recall being as sickened by a sight quite so much as this. The disparity of the place and the cynical stupid commercialisation of it. Just plain wrong.

The village and humanity have both paid a high price in my mind. Who is responsible for this?

I'm sure I had been here years before so maybe that's what bought on the nausea. I couldn't get away fast enough. Boiling oil, a storm of arrows and cannon shot would not have made my retreat any speedier.

Apart from there being no place to damn well park, without paying large sums, (that turned out to be a plus) there seemed to have congregated a type of humanity, so incongruous to the idea and tradition of the place, that I'm still shocked as I write about it days later.

Even the 700 year old castle seemed to be shrugging its ramparts at what was going on down here.

The expensive shops and tacky (and expensive) restaurants that lined the river all competed to sell the same junk. Plastic beach-balls, cheap postcards, every gaudy colored children's fishing net you could envision, over-priced pots and figurines of donkeys with breasts - made in China. Souvenir shop upon bloody souvenir shop! Queues outside every one. I cannot do justice to putting into language the disgraceful tack on display. I was able to observe this diabolical spectacle as I was forced to crawl through the village in what was now a 30 minute tailback.

This is so not progress.

This jam was caused by thousands of super-sized tattoo bearing '7 Children Families' presumably up for a wander from their despicable trailer park. A trailer park that had hijacked (officially it would appear) a sleepy farmers meadow by the side of the river. Redefining the word blight.

These lager bearing hordes were now making their way to a bizarre fun-fair! In the midst of all this medieval beauty a violently loud-musicked, neon-lighted series of horror 'attractions' was dragging them in. All of this vile pointlessness in what used to be a reasonably useful car park under shady trees.

The smell was all too memorable. A deeply unpleasant mixture of fake-tan, Chanel V0.5, turd-burgers and cheap cigarettes.

The river itself hasn't got away with it either. Hourly trips on fake pirate ships. The jostling of hundreds of canoes painted bright lemon yellow and angry red - everyone fighting to ram each other - to capsize and drown an unsuspecting enemy - each canoe kitted out with three or four screaming, oar-flailing obnoxious sun-burned fat kids with headphones - their ugly fat faces badly grease-painted.

It truly was a Lord Of The Flies moment!

I just can't imagine where 'civilisation' goes from here but I am either too old or still not ready for dealing with what we are becoming as a society.

Sorry Castle. Sorry Village.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Don't!

2011-08-05T08:25:00.001-07:00

Francisco Perez : Acido Lisergico

Don't you think we should be in better shape by now - with all our so called civilisation?

Don't we deserve more honesty from those in power? Honesty about the system that controls us? The dirty (no-longer) secrets of how the system works to the advantage of a few?
Don't you think the mountains of plastic in the ocean are big enough now?
Don't you think it's time we told the trash TV channels that we don't want to turn our kids minds to mush anymore?
Don't you think it's time we asked the really tough questions - encouraged the real debate? EG: Too many people on the planet? Who actually cares whether products are killing us - the food that causes obesity - the entertainment that causes school shootings? Don't we get it yet? - it's only about the economics? Why do we keep the sick - who should have died - from dying?
Don't you worry that all the things that individually frustrate you has literally no recourse - nobody's listening?
Don't you think the politicians would be braver now - and actually talk the truth - since they are mostly outed as liars?
Don't you think it's a shame we can't speak about the massive disasters that the last 2000 years following religion has caused and continues to cause?

Don't you think? Or Don't you care!

From the League of 'Democratization Of Next Thinking!' (Don't Ever Abbreviate Dialogue)

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

iCloudius - Entering an Arena near you very soon!

2011-08-05T02:27:00.001-07:00

Imagine The Power.

You get to kill millions of 'Subjects' with a single decision. You choose to 'Save' only those who serve your immediate need. 'Delete' or 'Trash' those that displease you at a whim. No Attachment. The joy of slashing burdensome systems at the downturn of your stubby thumb! No-one dare stop you, indeed you will be encouraged! It is blood-curdlingly good.

Like all distant nieces, cousins and nephews of Caligula you can now jive with equivalent power.

Emperor of all you curate! iClaudius we praise thee. You bring awesome freedom to each of our crusades.

It will be a great feeling (and one I thought impossible to repeat) some 2000 all bar 30 years on! Crazy revolutions on top of crazy revolutions further along and nothing short of Epoch making. Every bit as meaningful for the citizens of today as the sinew extracting excitement of the earlier Emperor!

As well as conquering much of England - with only 40,000 troops – the Big 'C' did his bit for the world by building Roads, Canals and Highways (taking a few souls with him as he went) as is Cupertino Steve. With the same number of people he has put Roads, Canals and Highways in the sky just so that we can move all our shizzle around.

So alright, I can't wait, my thumb is up. (Yes I know it used to be down! - you crazee history buffs.) Whatevs!!

Just imagine our new found 'Power' and domination!

The whole back catalog of The Beatles, Neil Young or The Stones just waiting on your prompt. Ready to enter the amphitheatre and perform whenever the mood takes you! AND on all your devices. John Mayer, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Mozart or Massive Attack's bootlegs - no problem - unrestricted playlists.

DJ Konka, Seasick Steve - mixed with Neko and all your Album Art - wherever! Check!

And that’s cool because typically these are not on your 'iThing' because you are too cool and currently packing Ed Sheerin, Mount Kimbie and the Fi-Tones - 'Cos you can right? - Well in 'Cloud Future Land' you can juggle all this like Anthony Gatto!

Just think! All those images you've got - that you know one day (yeah right) you would sort into 'Drunk', 'Not So Drunk', 'Odd', 'Whacky' and 'NSFW" - well now an App will automatically take the whole lot and give you them in beautiful arrangements that are designed - in various degrees of - 'breathtakingawayness'.

Making you feel ever so clever. It's all sorted out for you!

But wait! Surely the iCloud has more to offer! You bet.

Although not immediately - we can expect a whole new array of lighter-weight devices - devoid of defunct storage devices. Apps that bring complete archives of everything and anything from any source right into your Ray Bans.

But the really big thing has to be this - the seamless juxtaposition of 'ALL YOUR STUFF' and all your 'platforms' that manage 'ALL YOUR CONNECTIONS'.

If you like me are totally ridiculous when it comes to collections of things that 'will-come-in-handy-one-day' then that day is surely near. Don't expect it immediately but the perfect 'App' that arranges things you already own and know in a brilliant display. Alongside whoever you want to connect with. The world if you like. Things that are no longer strewn all over sprawling folders, devices, hard drives and 'other' computers! Arriving at an App Store near you very soon!

Fancy That Emperor? Persecution of the PC's anyone? Lugula. Lugula. Thumbs UP!!!

You can hear the roars of approval from the Clouds already!

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Drawn To Wild. Part THREE

2011-07-30T09:12:00.001-07:00

Graphic Riffing.

OK my final ode to Andrzej Klimowski. Promise!

A short riff with him via selected paragraphs from his book 'On Illustration'. http://oberonbooks.com/on-illustration.html I set out to find 47 pieces of brilliance from his writings. Not difficult but I've run out of time - you will understand why 47 pieces in a second.

AK - "Drawing is perhaps the most immediate medium through which an idea can be articulated. Illustration takes drawing into the narrative realm."

JC - Graffiti is societies release from social absurdity and a chance at personal expression. The numbing persecution of society and the corresponding frustration - perfectly orchestrated by the minds eye - leads to an unleashing of the natural forces of representation.

AK - "The time within which an illustrator is given to respond to a message or subject is short. It's dramatically referred to as a deadline. Yet the speedy response to interpreting a subject is part of the quality and value of a good illustration. It should look spontaneous, fresh and vital. This is where its vibrancy and intelligence lies. And this, perhaps, is what the audience does not see nor fully appreciate.

JC - One big buzz for the creative mind is time pressure. Like a sign saying 'Do Not Cross' - that you have to cross, time is a Ninja Warrior with one of those unbreakable swords that you know will break. It is an enemy as long as it stops you thinking and then it is your buddy that flies you through space to hero-dom. Only as long as the work is pure genius.

AK - "They may think that the illustrators dexterity is a pre-ordained talent. This is a misunderstanding. Spontaneity, dexterity and intelligence come with practice, just like the musician continually playing and practicing on his instrument. The musician also needs a good composer and an illustrator's art can only flourish when there is an intelligent and visionary client."

JC - Any audience is a part of the act. The two cannot function apart. Drawing for my own benefit has never been my thing. I've always done it because it's how I figure stuff but working with the audience puts it on fire. There is no feeling to match the creation of peoples inner thoughts - in front of them - within the gift of their own eyes.

My Very Own AK-47 in a safety case in my office.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Drawn To Be Wild. Part TWO

2011-07-30T09:07:00.001-07:00

Where do your ideas come from Andrzej?

AK - "Well I was walking down Queens Gate in Kensington when I noticed an unusually tall and slender young woman walking a few yards ahead of me. Her sprightly bobbing ponytails could be mistaken for antennae and I could imagine translucent wings unfolding from her rucksack. I quickened my step but before I could draw level to her, she turned and climbed a few steps entering a building. There was a sign on the door. It read: 'The London Institute of Entymology.' Sometimes life comes up with a ready made scenario; the imagination fills in the rest.'"

JC - Always looking around - and often feeling really clumsy by not seeing - I hate to admit to myself that I just missed the thing. I have always loved photography but know I miss the best shots by a few seconds. I don't see the shot until I have re-calculated a split second late - having just seen the shot when it has gone. Drawing can be like that. A big mark suggests a yet better mark but you would not have known it before.

AK - "Illustration lies somewhere between graphic design and painting. Its context is graphic design. An illustrators work will find its way onto a newspapers page, into a magazine, a book, a poster, on a webpage or a television screen. It will accompany text, illuminate it, comment on it, punctuate or counterpoint it. Its function can be reflective, provocative or decorative. It enlivens visual communication."

JC - I can't read long web pages. I just can't. I need the joy of a graphic to spice it up. To add piquancy to the mood or the idea. Maybe it's a Twitter generation thing (apparently everything is…) but most texts are so turgid and repeating (and repeating) that it's given birth to the need for images again. Everywhere. PowerPoint, Newspapers. Video. Anything but long texts without pictures. And now Infographics. And now I'm beginning to seriously loathe them too! (Well, bad ones)

AK - "What Illustration shares with painting is the desire for self-expression. It expands the imagination. Illustration is a pictorial lexicon, a new grammar. It has its own formal values, its own language, its own voice."

JC - So many people I meet say they think in pictures. They do but why do so many people feel they can't draw. This often means that they can't speak in pictures so conversations seem to lack the element of story. In fact people just need to be encouraged to draw more and that way they will construct better stories. Dinner Parties would start to be enjoyable. (Well maybe)

AK - "Learning from Tomaszewski - he looked to aphorisms for his subject matter. Imagine this - depict the idea of "In unity there is strength", or the idea of a "Big Nothing" or a "Small Nothing" in a poster form."

JC - Wow! My kinda teacher! Just off to draw a piece of mind.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Drawn To Be Wild. Part ONE

2011-07-30T09:00:00.001-07:00

Illustrating. My Point.
"It was nightfall. I had 300k's still to go. Stretched over the blazing hot fuel tank of time whilst grabbing the handlebar of thought by the scruff of its neck. I'm sucking oxygen through my eyes to complete the picture. The storm clouds roll along over to my right keeping me in a petulant company. I know i'm flirting with a certain death if I get caught sleeping on this highway of creativity. I could now see the enemy on the hill ahead."
Nope that's not going to work.
I like some of the images it conjurs and you are definitely still reading. It needs another picture though right?
Whether for business or pleasure most people scratch out a scribble or two to make a point. Usually it's quite an important point. A point so important that it could only be described by being drawn. Communicating what we think or want by clever words is capable of much applause. Verbal dexterity impresses me enormously but it's usually the visual that steals the show.
Drawing then is a serious responsibility.
It means making a mark. That's a choice. That carries serious risk. There are side effects - a health risk. But most of all it is a privilege - one of the most decisive acts in business. To 'draw a line' is to declare a decision. To bound a direction for a business by saying what's in and what's out of scope - it's a big step.
The skill of the person drawing becomes far more about thinking, judgement and expertise than art, flair or craft. To get both ends of that to work together though - is a real bonus because that adds to the overall idea. It is the real value of the whole calculation at a critical point in time.
I'm mad on Andrzej Klimowski at present. He is Professor of Illustration at the Royal College of Art. He's a dude. He's written much of what I think so I'm paraphrasing his stuff and then dancing with his rhythm. To jazz with the points.
AK - "Every work is a new beginning. It is a magical moment when a germ of an idea is formed. Often it is not a 'grand idea' - it can start with an anecdote, a small incident or feeling. A work can sometimes start without an idea, it can emerge when running through random images or words and making connections between them. Patterns emerge - the artist or designer gives the patterns form, creates structures that invite the spectator or reader to interpret them and give them meaning.
JC - I like to draw deliberate things. Things that evoke a reaction. I want a response. Agreement or derision - I can be happy with either. At least it makes people think. A great drawing is not about recreating a photograph. While that requires skill it can be very one dimensional and superficial. You will be depressed by the reaction it gets. Stretching peoples imagination and busting paradigms for a living is amazing.
The simple act of pen to paper is truly a mighty thing.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Illustrating Irony

2011-07-30T08:47:00.001-07:00

Brevity is such a wonderful idea. Irony - a close cousin.
I suffered 45 minutes of being presented at last week. Unable to break the damned flow of the presenters schtick. Although I'm supposed to be good at it I couldn't create a dialog with the 'presenter'. It nearly killed me. It was unpleasant. A relentless, rehearsed tirade and worse - done through a broad smile. Meanwhile I sat fuming - incapable of altering the persistent thrust of the attack. Ironic when the topic was an approach to creating powerful engagement with ones audience. Empathy. It was genuinely an assault on my senses. Maybe I was caught on a bad year. I thought I should draw how I felt.
The news is incredible right now. That’s how I felt.
The dirty little secrets of power and politics - the unravelling of media control on our lives. The diabolical (and extreme) statement in Norway. The death of the Euro. FIFA! The depravity and waste of Amy Winehouse. For me it is a visual cacophony. I have images of Lisbet Salander and dragon tattoos in my head. The work and writing of Andrzej Klimowski the only thing capable of lifting me out of my mood. My mind was on fire after reading him - making me want to shout out loud with inspired representations.
How can I put it? I want to be brief.

What should our response be? Well, on the media story "Don't write crap!". That would seem to sum it all up. Along with "Surprised about Murdoch? Really? Was it really news that our politicians are so corrupted?" On Norway. "Is there a more wicked problem than competing religious ideologies? On FIFA - "Smoking Gun?" On the collapse of Europe? - look at what actually goes on in Bruxelles in our name! And on Amy - well "RIP" Amy - we will all miss you.
Powerful engagement with one's audience or cynical exploitation of the senses? I guess I am overly sensitive to having my senses abused. There is no subtlety to that and it pains me because I draw for a living. I need empathy and brevity to get it done.

What would Andrzej draw to sum this all up?

AK - "Visualisation of intangible ideas or thoughts is a collage of notions. Clashed together from memories, suggestions and fragments of the mind. Found, archival material, springing a visual surprise on the viewer and encouraging him or her to intellectually or emotionally process the effect and arrive at a possible interpretation."

JC - I think he would find optimism and agony in some kind of embrace. The bittersweet affair of paradox. It may have a dash of eroticism - a doorway to oblivion but as the ultimate illustrator he could not fail to catch your breath with sadness woven into graphic truth.

AK - "The immediacy of drawing is what characterises good designs and illustrations. They give the impression that something is being acted out before your eyes - the energy of the drawing process still evident. I see the illustrator as a transmitter, one that receives messages and transforms them into images."

JC - As an illustrator I am reeling from the last few weeks. All my senses have been assaulted and i'm awash with adrenaline. I have long loathed the plain truth of societies sickness and tried to put thoughts down just in my own vain attempt at reasoning it all. I want to draw my own personal Guernica for the 21st Century but I know I won't have the time. Nor would they give me the facade of the Houses Of Parliament as my ideal canvas. Facade is a funny word.
"Drawing is perhaps the most immediate medium through which an idea can be articulated. Illustration takes drawing into the narrative realm."
JC – I found out that I cannot draw without telling some truth or other. Some story. It is not possible for me to put pen to paper without a journey or conclusion of some sort. This drawing below took me 8 months. It was not a creation of brevity. It is 4 feet by 3 feet and done in a 0.4mm Rotring pen. Remember them?

AK - "The time within which an illustrator is given to respond to a message or subject is short. It's dramatically referred to as a deadline. Yet the speedy response to interpreting a subject is part of the quality and value of a good illustration. It should look spontaneous, fresh and vital. This is where its vibrancy and intelligence lies. And this, perhaps, is what the audience does not see nor fully appreciate.
JC – It works when there is pressure. To be told I couldn't draw people was a day I will never forget. I actually don't go in for drawing 'people' that much. I prefer surreality. That didn't mean I could forget the day I put pen to paper to prove them wrong though either. That keeps me looking for things that I can't do.
AK - "They may think that the illustrators dexterity is a pre-ordained talent. This is a misunderstanding. Spontaneity, dexterity and intelligence come with practice, just like the musician continually playing and practicing on his instrument. The musician also needs a good composer and an illustrator's art can only flourish when there is an inbtelligent and visionary client."
JC – Now I do what I do. I like the tune it plays. I enjoy the sound of pen on paper. When the paper works. I create drawings a hundred times bigger than the one above in a day. That's a fresh kind of brevity. But only when the pens work! http://johncaswell.posterous.com/apple-please-make-pens I wouldn't be able to do it at all if people didn't listen and watch what was going on. That’s empathy.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Imagine Nation.

2011-07-13T01:45:00.001-07:00

Developing. A Photographic Memory.
Wherever I go there are people with smartphones - festoons of small high powered cameras snapping at my heels. Really. I've seen images of my heels. I studied a bit of photography at college. I've forgotten it all. I love my Leica's and also my iPhone though. They go with me almost everywhere. I never forget them.
Automatic cameras seemed to take all the craft away - they made it possible for anyone to snap a great shot. Well maybe. That's not such a bad thing but it made it less intriguing for me. It stopped me from being that bothered for a long while. Now the buzz is back.
The whole world has gone visual.
I've become hooked on photography again.
Perhaps as much because of what it teaches me about myself as much as it is a creative thing. To me the creative part is no longer the snapping bit – it's the observing bit. Coupled with the pressure bit. And now I'm a bit worried that there is an obsessive bit. It's all about the bits these days. A bit.
Link photography to sharing (Instagram/Extragram - building a bunch of folk who seem to appreciate it) - 'say cheese' - and you have a whole new way of communicating 'you'! If that's your thing of course.
Where this goes? - who knows. What's with the shares? - who cares.
All of this has reminded me about what I notice and what I don't. And what is intriguing and valuable in the litter of everything. In fact I can easily see art in the litter. Litterally.
I've always loved graffiti. I love what it represents. To me life and looking at everything is to observe the graffiti of life. That’s how I experience my life. The wabi-sabi, the mess, the chaos, the disarray of it all. That's what make it natural and vital. That's what drives me and makes me want to grab it.
Interesting thing - noticing. It's like a drug once it grabs hold. I've noticed.
Thing is it tricks you. Did I notice something that isn't there? Something that wasn't said? Well that's something else I think. That's projection of a kind. It's dangerous. Projection is wishful noticing. Projection is a big part of photography but only when you are proud of what you have and want to show it off.
Noticing is a special skill and brings responsibility.
To notice is in some way to judge something and if recorded faithfully then that's a good thing right? I store it in my brain in chemical pixels. What I'm noticing is that an image is a tiny record of an experience that was in my mind - I wanted to grab hold of it in case I lost that thought. Or I thought that I wanted to share my thought with people who might like it. Or I could get back to it again as if it might spur me on to something else. The literal nucleus of an idea. That one dot - a single but nuclear power. A carousel of chemi-pixels. Mercurial. Gone.
I need to be sure my photographic memory is in good shape before I'm ready to publish an idea – a shot. I need to be happy with it. I need to make really good decisions about it. It always needs more work before it meets that projector.
It's also increased what I notice in language. I think I have increased what I notice when listening or reading. The meaning of a word or phrase is also an image to me because I represent it in my mind with those crazy atoms. The pictures are in a mad orbit - and my mind always wants to pick something from them. I mix them all up.
Mixellation.
That's a whole lot of pixels! Each pixel a time-bomb of stimulation. All likely to send a surge through my visual cortex without warning.
Watch out Cloud my memory is on its way.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

News Corpse. Balance Or Compromise?

2011-07-11T06:29:00.001-07:00

What's that sound?
It's the thud, thud of grudges and scores being settled.
It's an unpleasant and highly predictable pounding noise. Pound. Pound. A flurry of punches. A slurry of lunches. It's the pounding of flesh. The smell of sackcloth. The crispy underfoot crackling of ashes. Rotten stinking flesh. The political parties scoring points, the competitive press scoring points over each other. Everyone jockeying for the best place to crow from after the apocalyptic meltdown of the free press.
The blogosphere/mediaverse is having a field day trying to make sense and predicting an outcome of it all.
Dual standards at dawn anyone?
Well what do I know?
Clearly a very very small amount. If anything. Most of what I believe has to be an illusion anyway. It's all all so bloody deja vu. My fixed bias and sceptical mindset defends what I know while my conscious mind tells me to chill the fuck out and learn something!
I'm in a very strange place on all this right now. Like everyone in the UK I hear the daily chatter of political parties feeding on the body of News Corp with a sickening righteousness and hideous lack of grace. But actually it's really quite refreshing. Like somebody has taken the cork out of something. And yet I also hear the chess pieces slithering in the grasping hands of the evil Murdoch Empire. May your source be with you. Until your grave.
I live near Wapping and I can hear the Pound. Pound, Pound of it all live. (Becoming less ker-ching, ker-ching, ker–ching.)
What is actually going on in my head – what do I really make of it all?
Well of course I loathe the dumbed down society that all of this industrial and political mediocrity has created. I see society continuously and insidiously fed and watered by a cynical media - one that grows fat from the lowest common denominator of celebrity trash talk - passing off as news. All in league with each other. Literally in each others pocket-phones.
I loathe the corrupted politics of our society which we all know is bloated and protected by the turkeys who hate Christmas. I am fatigued by even discussing the unfathomably complex systems/policies/traditions that keep us locked into this abominable condition.
My own take on all this sounds cynical - even to me. And I think we ain't seen nothing yet. Maybe we never will actually see it all - but surely we all know how this goes by now. Bribery, corruption, busted, scapegoats, nod, wink - situation normal again.
How will this all get resolved? Do we want that normal again? Will it ever be resolved in societies favor?
So. A Question Of Balance?
We will see some new dynamics to be sure. Outrage by society has been measured by the amount of noise on the wires. Twitter, Blogosphere, the Zeitgeist all up in arms. Murdoch has flown in to put sparkling water on troubled oil. The media is cowed and backing off at speed in expectation that somethings been rumbled.
All of this to be balanced against the oh so predictable back-cloth. The so called 'we' are deeply 'disgusted' and yet oh so implicated. So after we have fed on it until we have sated our appetite for blood - it will probably all die down for a time - and then the primal urges of commercial reality will rise up again under new branding – and all of it under the name of reason.
Will 'we' get the ultimate prize? A better society encouraged by a more intelligent press? A press less besotted by sleaze and trash and in turn driven less by 'marketers' seeking easy audiences who are (in turn(!)) attracted to read sleaze and trash alongside advertisements for their clients products (often also sleaze and trash)?
Or. A Question Of Compromise?
Will we get bored with it all and, as usual, shrug and forget - accept something somewhere in the middle. Will we just get fatigued by the feeding frenzy? Will we sigh and just let it all happen like we did with the Financial debacle of the economic crisis of 2008. (Our memory lasts 3 years?) I worry that we might. Will we get frustrated/confused by the clever language of the usual commentators? Will we be blinded by the bias and self-serving agendas of the players weaving deliberate confusion and fog back into all of this. Who will be the protector of truth in all this. Not the NOTW right?
Making a decision seems a final thing. Making a balanced decision of this nature seems a bit far away. Making a compromise would be a massive missed opportunity. A compromise just rambles on and on – like this post.
Better the devils we know? Agitate to make it better? Hope that society wakes up and votes by not buying into any of this? So is that a question of balance or compromise?

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

I've got myself into a real Metz!

2011-07-04T06:19:00.001-07:00

A good friend gave me an idea. Well it's her idea but I really want to steal it. I am stealing it! - 'Flash Mobs for learning.' Thanks Betty!
OK so I need a Flash Mob!

Learning is the operative word. It's an idea in its own right. We hear a lot about our individual learning styles and of course that's a big factor. We can only really ever speak personally - and for me I've never - ever considered what my learning style is. So I tried to figure it out.

Firstly I realised that I learn by trial and error, mostly error, but it's certain that unless I put my hands, eyes and attention onto the real thing, I find I haven't really learned it. I may have read the guidebook or seen the video but until I do the 'thing' - I don't think I ever really learn the thing.

So then I moved my thinking onto the difference between explicit and tacit knowledge.
Learning explicit knowledge (E.G: Reading text and diagrams in a book on how to tie your shoelaces.) is different to tacit knowledge (Actually knowing how to tie your shoelaces). The 'tool' of knowing how to tie my shoes has stood me in great stead. Now I know sheep shanks, bow-ties, windsor knots, reef knots, slip knots and nooses. Especially nooses!

Apply that idea of learning to how to use a fairly sophisticated flashgun!
A 150 page guide of explicit knowledge in 6 languages about a vast array of modes and settings, instruction and definition - not one element of which 'teaches' me what I want to know. Like really know. You know, like the key idea of how to balance the amount of light the gun produces with the available light in the room!
Learning for me is NOT to be done 'In Camera'!
Learning (for me) is the deep and meaningful application of what it is I can get to know - but in an applied and richly understood way. Practical, hands on and with someone who has been there before. Eyes and ears open. Able to interact freely with someone who doesn’t patronise me. In public if necessary.

So then I realised that I don't want a guidebook I want a coach/mentor or personal expert who can show me how it works but who I trust and probably respect too. That way I would learn. That's my learning style.

So how do we get to that level of support, teaching and learning so that I understand my new flashgun!!!

Flashmob! Now for chrissakes!!!

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Is it possible to learn how to have ideas?

2011-07-04T03:41:00.001-07:00

Initially let's just imagine that the idea is neither good nor bad - think about IDEA - the idea of that word even. The Idea of Idea.
Sit still and think about that for a minute. Think about what Albert said in one of the worlds best ever quotations!
“Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas. A human being is a part of the whole called by us “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” – Albert Einstein
How do the ideas you have even happen? Whether the idea was 'to go on holiday' or crack a complex business conundrum - the idea still has to emerge. Have you ever thought where and how that happened?
The mind is still mostly unknown to us humans - so we can only really use our current language and concepts to even have this discussion. But basically it 'drags' bits of 'data' into view - into the minds eye. Ergo the more input - the more stimulus - the better chance of successful ideas. Right? Hmm. Well I'm not so sure about that.
Other factors need to be considered I think.
The quality of that input is certainly important - but also crucial is the value and relevance we ascribe to each chunk of that data. In addition there is a curious constant - a mercurial 'dynamic-ranking' process going on. Let's call that the 'context' for our decision making.
Depending on this context there is a bias, a lens applied to the way we think. The mind then 'games' the data against its own paradigm (frame of reference). This happens in a heartbeat. Suddenly the idea is there. Half formed or less. Sometimes it can't be grasped. It's often like a dream that disappears the moment you wake. The mind will base the 'idea' on all this stuff going on. But more importantly on what it feels is missing.
So an idea being birthed has to make it quite a long way but what sparked that initial explosion, that spark to occur? To me it is the void, the gap and a given need - these factors force me to 'think' and that draws on my mind to (almost) immediately pull on the resources it has - and in so doing come up with yet more creative 'ideas'.
The question though is can this process be learned (or indeed improved) in some way? (We are all born with the ability to think)
This intrigues me so I list the principles which are important for me. I think they are vital to the seeker of better ideation. Those who want to learn. I want to see if we can add or improve the pool of idea wizards!
1. Obsessive curiosity for everything. Everything that's relevant to your field of study and everything that potentially could be. That's everything!
2. A palpable consciousness that everything you currently know is merely context for what you didn't know. And when you know something new you are prepared to re-assess everything.
3. Comfort with the antithesis. Get ready to embrace the unacceptable. Be cool with what you don't like or understand. Just because it's an alien concept to you doesn't mean there isn't a lesson in there somewhere.
4. Exercise your brain every day. Try to discipline your resident cynic, your sceptical demon, your default behaviours on certain things. Be prepared to widen your definitions on the words and phrases that you dish out every day.
5. Become conscious of your own ideation process. Try to sense when you are having an idea. The chances are it's not the right idea - yet - but if you follow it and let your mind free to explore where it went or came from then you might find a richer seam.
6. Learn to feel your brain 'thinking' - it comes from your whole body but the brain is the place all the adding up gets done.
7. Define the values that contribute to being an 'idea wizard'. Humility, Persistence, Curiosity, Humor, Eclecticism and so on... Figure out what drives your own version of these values and causes you to bring on better ideas.
8. Constant benchmarking. Ideas are a joyous thing. They are the raw material of life. They bring refreshment to conversation or solutions to the planet. Check in with them to see if you think they have value when compared to your benchmark of acceptability. Then raise it!
Any ideas?

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Jack in london

2011-06-25T10:14:00.001-07:00

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Mountain Unpleasant.

2011-06-18T06:11:00.001-07:00

What's going on? Are agency people just completely stupid? Or is it just greed for the cheque coming in?
Along with those pop-up ads that are long proven to not work, are in their death throes - but are still around - the lady running Royal Mail needs a yellow card. (Soccer term for warning - one more mistake and you are off)
I shouldn't really single her out but hey. It simply serves to make my point. Royal Mail delivered 18 Million fewer letters since last year - due to e-mail – they say. (Doh!) But actually doesn't that sound like a small reduction in this day and age? I haven't sent more than a dozen letters in 10 years.
Anyway incoming mail is a totally different story and it astonishes me. The waste and stupidity of it.
Well I added up my letters having been out of the country for 2 weeks and there were 29 items. 6 were statements/bills, 8 were imploring me to sell my flat. The rest were direct mail shots from insurance companies and garden furniture manufacturers. In addition to what Royal Mail delivered there was also half a dozen dodgy ethnic style home delivery food things.
The CEO earns over £600,000 a year for running a business that delivers at least 80% rubbish through my door each week. The fact that the 80% goes directly into the trash without even being opened means that the value of the business is already way below anything sane.
So if it sank by 18 Million last year it should really be forced to sink 80% more. That should be quite some incentive for us to lobby for Direct Mail in envelopes and Robotic Call-Center sales calls to be illegal. I have disconnected my phone and thrown it into the trash too.
The same figures occur on-line with one big difference. My auto-junk filter sends them straight to the bin so I don't have to see them. No trees or precious fuel consumed, no climate impacts to speak of, no precious time wasted.
One other thought I had was to redirect all of this junk back to the folk that encourage all this. FAO The CEO. Royal Mail Group Ltd, 100 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0HQ. D'ya reckon?
--------------------------------Losing Battle?-----------------------------
Facts:
• The Group made a £39 million (2009-10: £180 million) operating profit after modernisation costs. This was primarily due to a decline in revenues, offset by a reduction in operating costs.
• Total revenues declined to £9.2 billion mainly because of a 4% fall in core mail volumes, (2009-10: £9.3 billion). The profit margin, after modernisation costs, fell from 1.9% (2009-10) to 0.4%.
• The UK Letters & Parcels and International business lost £120 million in 2010-11, (2009-10: £20 million profit). Revenue decline was mainly driven by a fall in volumes. This is just over £2 million a week.
• Profits at the Post Office declined from £33 million to £21 million as a result of lower revenues from traditional business. The Post Office is embarking on a plan over the next four years based on the Government’s confirmed funding commitment of £1.34 billion.

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Fun & Work?

2011-06-05T09:42:00.001-07:00

And another thing.
So my idea of fun is clearly different to most people's it would seem. For me? Personal time shared with like minded folk. Plenty of sharp - then sharper comments on 'anything'. Well thought and well constructed observations on 'everything' - especially what can be improved about our world. Done with a high degree of humor and not a little sense of irony - acceptable of course. Quality conversations and events causing real laughter and release/relief.
A warm and friendly atmosphere with all round creativity, stimulus and freedom to have one's own place and space. Great surroundings. Well met expectation and great outcomes. If possible outperforming your idea of how good it could possibly be in every sense. All of this involving travel, toys, downtime, uptime, action and great food and whatever else!
I do this.
Fun right?
Well no apparently. We can't have fun - we are at work. Well that's what I do at work. But I can't ever call it fun - no-one would value that.
Shame really.

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Mission Impossible?

2011-05-30T10:40:00.001-07:00

My head hurts. I don't know what I do!
Ernest Hemingway famously wrote a valid short story (that he could easily defend) in 6 words. "For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn."
In the following post I think I've completely failed to improve on that. But got mine to 12 words. Oh and it's not really a short story. Hmm. What am I rambling on about? Well, we had one of those profound meetings the other day. One of those great meetings where we met a fellow crusader or two, and after 15 years the same question keeps on coming - "What do you really do?" - and it caused the same fumbling tail-spin of a reply.
Well I said the following - at the very least! And as I spoke I could feel the usual sense I get of missing on all cylinders.
"We use collaborative means, co-creative approaches to solving complex problems. We do this through logical and visual frameworks, changing the way business thinks and works. We are all about enabling the client to avoid solving the wrong problem really well. This delivers rapid innovation, creates visions, produces transformative roadmaps, develops better customer experiences! Blah, blah." - STOP!
At the same time we showed the results of our work with clients. Comprehensive rigorous visual 'calculations' that are developed in 'real-time' with senior folk. They are overpowering things to take in.
Then came words of sheer profundity. "Don't tell people everything it can do. They won't believe you and it is too much to absorb."
Right! 100% right!
So what do I do now?!
What is it? What is the message about it? How do we answer that question! What is enough to tell? What will people get? So I started to rethink the thing. We have imagined everything. We have written what we do in countless ways, confusing even ourselves. So back to telling 'it' shortly, here goes
It Makes You Think. It Shows The Way. It Keeps You True.
It Makes You Think.
We've witnessed major problems with a large majority of people within enterprises today - they've lost the art of 'thinking critically'. It isn't that they don't want to think - but that there is no real process that encourages it.
The enterprise  needs far better thinking around every aspect of what it does. From how to perform to how to succeed. We tease this creativity and innovation out by stimulating thought in a fun yet subtly structured way.

It Shows The Way.
Visualising the journey, the vision, the way things should operate alongside precise measures and maths of success is a highly valuable tool for the whole enterprise. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well it's also 12x faster to convey any amount of information - and most people think visually. By working this way we align everyone, create simplicity and clarity and engage everyone with their own plan for getting to the future.

It Keeps You True.
Most strategy, transformation and change fails (or subsides over time) unless it is kept healthy. And that is a serious waste of resource and energy. It's also potentially fatal in an increasingly competitive world.
Co-creating value within the right tools and equipment is proven to be the best way to sustain any program. Without ownership and palpable belief in a new 'shared system' of change then it is highly likely to fail!

Think about that!
If you can help me get this more succinct and still tell the story then I would be eternally grateful!

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Fly. First Class

2011-05-26T18:15:00.001-07:00

Marooned on the tarmac for the 4th time on as many flights. My companion, to my right, wasn't talkative at all. I thought to myself - "That's a dead fly trapped inside a triple glazed window on a plane that is."
My thoughts turned to how it got there.
If you know the little windows on an aircraft like I do then you will know every tedious inch of them intimately. There is no way in or out. They don't open and nobody gets to clean inside them. There is a tiny hole to level the pressures in the triple glazing and stop them from misting up but apart from that it is a walled vacuum separating wildly different worlds on either side. Freedom - Boredom.
The border of these two worlds now patrolled by a dead fly.
What to make of this? It was in many ways sad and in just as many ways intriguing. While it had lived it would have witnessed different (and often) very odd folk staring at its erratic activity - inside its cocoon. Many of them wondering how it had got there perhaps? Well maybe. All of them horrified at the proximity of a fly no doubt. And in Business Class too!
This stowaway would have seen much more of the planet, inner space, holding patterns, vast terrains and the insane external architecture of airport terminals and heard more lame excuses and announcements than most flys. And perhaps most people. It deserves the name 'fly'.
It would probably have been delayed more times than many flys. But probably not as many times as I. I'm no expert on flys and so I don't know how many flights it could have crammed in during its lifetime on board. But it made me think about that lifetime. It seems that it must have somehow got in via the little air hole. Far less than a millimetre in diameter. It would have been whatever they call a baby fly, maybe even an egg? It must have been a perfect roll in along that micro-vent. Clever.
It must then have found tiny fragments of food upon which to live. That must have come from outside as no quality food exists on the inner world.
So I Googled the life expectancy of a fly.
Let's say it's 3 weeks. The route upon which I met my fly happens 4 times a day and is approximately a 2 hour flight and each1278.73 miles. Knowing how they run these devilish 'fly-ing machines' they could use the thing through the entire night too for all I know but let's say that's at least 107,413.32 miles and 84 astonished people. 30+ delays. 168 hours of flying while also flying – as a fly.
What then did it die of? Old age? Highly likely given the increased/exponential rate of decay travelling by air these days? Disease? Unlikely as it is a vacuum in there - unless air from the cabin could get in and then highly likely as an airline cabin is worse than a hospital in the league of least safe environments within which to live. Broken heart? Possible. It would have been summarily dismissed many times by deliberate blind pulling. People with no time for malingerers - definitely no ticket or valid documents for travel. Unless it had eaten it of course.
Malicious attack? Hmm. Could be. The disgusting airport security system is so stupid that 'fly killers' and 'suicide moths' could get in easily. While they scan and pat down ordinary people and search us for land mines, AK 47's and lethal Kenny G albums it is highly encouraged that we get enough deadly substances on board to end it for a fly. All anyone need do is to put it in a little plastic bag and put it through the belt. Kaput! They even give us the bags. Genius
But no, my theory is they just lost its bags. It has no possibility of survival as its bags are in Albuquerque and me and the fly are now in Dallas. Oh it's gone again.

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When will we wake up to cause and effect?

2011-05-10T14:15:00.001-07:00

Riddle me this Batman. Firstly Kelvin MacKenzie said this morning that "The Max Mosley ruling was excellent (especially all the noise around it)" because "It makes the media world go round and thank goodness for that!"
As if to put the other side of the case someone, whose name was lost to me - then argued violently (in response) that "Our British morality has changed?" - and - "All the gossip we spread about others moralities is just what the British Public like to do."
Are we really OK with this? Why don't we care more about this?
At that moment I reminded myself of Brian Wilson's immortal lyrics that I really wasn't born for these times. I asked myself - do we actually want this media world to go round? Oh and what causes this culture of petty gossip – and who is surprised that we are therefore in this ridiculous spiral of mediocrity in the first place? This 'culture' is the outcome we can expect if we allow everyone to be comfortable with these standards. The very thing that the media promotes is based on dual standards and we are supposed to accept that just so long as it makes the media world go around.
Are we really this bloody stupid?
This all came at the same time as the super injunction/Twitter story. Whilst I don't agree with spreading untruths or salacious gossip (under any circumstances) this had better not be the thin end of a worrying wedge. Any restriction to free speech has to be resisted!
Is it any wonder that people feel it necessary to speak out? Intelligent people are sick of double standards that's what's at issue here. Whether what he says is true or not and whether we like it or not - the guy got 50,000 followers in a split second and this became news and the Government is spooked.
The sinister thing (and maybe I am alone in thinking this) is that the UK Government/Media (Command & Control System) seems shaken enough to tackle free speech on Twitter. There are now mutterings over the threat from Twitter and the Super Injunctions - and OUR ability to say what we want. How many standards is this? Way more than double right?
I sense our out of touch and institutionally cracked system is feeling threatened by the reality of society and the human state that it has encouraged. A 'society' - now deeply conditioned by a cult of celebrity and the dual/triple standards of our politicians and media - atop an education situation that's allowed to decay - increasing yet more generational issues. Our only hope being generations coming through so dismayed by such stench – hopefully about to kick some disgraceful butt!
Anyway ending on a more optimistic note. Imagine if WE could turn these insights into something really valuable and actually deal with the causes of this within our failing society.

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Love To Hate Information Graphics

2011-05-09T07:29:00.001-07:00

Firstly let me state up front that I absolutely love Information Graphics. Secondly I absolutely loathe Information Graphics.
I'm sorry but the idea was interesting at first and it wasn't just the novelty. It was that designers, with flair and style, could take complex topics and tell a real story with creative/smart intelligent design.
What on Earth happens? What was a great start, and caught a lot of everyone's attention then turns to turgid and deeply unhelpful mediocrity. Well we know. The bandwagon gets jumped by a few thousand wannabees and hey presto. Desktop Publishing all over again.
To whom it may concern.
Please don't fill a 4 x 30+ height page with 20 dumb Power Point Slides. Don't pour your kitchen sink of fonts and clip-art effects onto a badly thought through story. Please don't hijack a powerful new platform for genuine communication with lazy, not smart/unthoughtful stuff that can be communicated better by other means.
Please!

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Transformation - Boot Camp!

2011-05-08T06:43:00.001-07:00

One of my all time favorite thoughts of all time is as follows -
"The reason we don't find solutions to our problems is because the answers to our questions interfere with our concepts".
In my experience this maxim is at the core of why change (at any level) is so tough. We hear the lament that change is always hard because none of us like change. Well I don't like 'not to change'. When everything changes around me I find myself more rather than less frustrated by my lack of change.
My inability to change something seems rooted in a preference for what 'is/was' rather than what 'might be'. In my case, when I realise that, it makes me react strongly and I begin to work really hard at changing as much as I can! People don't like that.
Transformation requires a fresh and obsessive intention. Nothing will remain the same.
It will require a dogged determination and utter application. You will have to do different things and perform unusual activities. Some people around you will start to distance themselves from you. Everything you have done up until now has to be reviewed. The language you use will start to get questioned. Some of the moves you used to make will not work anymore - and the new ones you will need to make will be uncomfortable. Your ideas will be constantly challenged.
For transformation to work it requires a complete change to your intention. All the team and everyone around will undergo dramatic surgery.
Intention is a small word but a massively interesting idea.
If we intend to really change we have to commit to actually wanting transformation of our world. If we do then clearly we have to review and alter everything we do - our behaviour and attitude must be different.
I observe several dimensions, many of which don't get discussed, that need to be present for transformation to get done. Get your boots on because these are just some of them.

Different Language: A common language must be developed - together with agreement on the meaning of key terms. This language needs to be developed together as the transformation is planned. This language needs to be markedly (deliberately) different from that being used today.
Stop Using Slides: Removal of slides and lengthy written tomes from the process. Stop expecting the people you are trying to encourage to change with anonymous, meaningless Power Point decks and docs. Start engaging them within the conversations about the transformation. Treat them with respect and collaborate with purpose and passion. Face to face.
Complexity Is Real: Overcome the cliche's and easy claptrap around simplicity. It is not simple. Anyone in a transformation program has to understand that complexity is the daily diet. Get used to that. Simplicity may well be required (in the way it gets applied) but stop confusing complexity with the hard work required.
Beyond The List: Don't try to manage transformation with lists and best practices that are not 'felt'. If we attempt transformation with templates and panaceas it will fail. Passion for the hard work of transformation has to be close to the emotion felt by a sportsman (and team) approaching the big game!
Intimacy And Leadership: Deep respect and understanding for the team you build and work with. This means leadership of the real kind, transmitted with authenticity and integrity across everything. The tools and techniques that create the vision, the metrics, the roadmap and everything involved, will have to be built by these people. Living together for long periods of time will demand the ability to become intimate with everything and everybody to develop shared energy for the challenge.
Delight In Disappointment. When something didn't go to plan it now spurs you on to greater things. Mistakes become opportunities to re-double effort, creativity and ingenuity. Being knocked back means returning with greater effect because of the lesson. Adversity is the mother of new intention.
Embrace Terror: Ignore the terrorists by becoming closer to them. Your enemy is actually your best chance of success. By working more closely with detractors you get to your objectives quicker. By working with them you achieve many things. Everyone sees that you are more determined than ever to win. You will learn to tell your story better. They will be confused by your overtures. They will either change your mind because they are right and you missed it or they will become your biggest ambassador. Or they will leave the picture - in some way(!).
Unlearn At All Costs: Learn how to unlearn fast. In unlearning we see new things hitherto lost to us. This brings incredible riches. Walls break, new knowledge floods in, our new stories shock people into listening to us. We can support the transformation from many more perspectives. We can support it because we can see the possibility from fresh points of view.
Fine Tune Your Acuity: Developing an engineers eye for the vision. The ability to dismantle, reassemble and use the vision under water and blindfolded with both arms tied. Draw it, speak it and defend it from every single angle while listening intently for clues about how to improve it. Be able to do the same with the roadmap and all organizational models and implications.
Integrative Thinking: Cultivate both your brains. For every visionary leader there is the numeric luddite. Be ready to prove the math. For every well defended business case there is a disruptive upstart that doesn't give a damn about your numbers. Become a better visionary.
Learn From Celebrity: Love it or loathe it this era is epitomised by the power of celebrity. Someone has to be on stage. Transformation works when there is someone being the pied piper. This person is just as involved with all of the above as can be. To not be totally immersed is certain death. Everyone will smell it.
Just a figurehead, a token? Then you are doomed!

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Kill The Lists!!

2011-05-07T01:59:00.001-07:00

I'm a bit angry today. I am depressed about my own field.
I've been in a couple of sessions recently where I've seen the result of the dreaded check-list being used as a panacea for problem solving and all future thinking. I was forced to politely disagree.
I see clients stuck in situations where they can only fail because of the conditioning that advisors and articles have created around their damned lists. They can only continue to fail if we can't get them out of that. They have been sold simple templates to solve problems. A list!. They are told that everything needs to be made simple. A list. So they are fed easy to populate templates and scorecards. The devilish 4-square/quadrant models. Sure - and they can draw hundreds of them on flip–charts to great applause.
Well they don't work.
Sadly the industries desire to make things simple have led to a feeling that there is something bad about complexity and that everything can be reduced to simple lists. "The 7 things we need to know about this, that or the other." - "The 5 big ideas that will save your business." - "The 16 dimensions of becoming a great leader." - "The 8 principles for the perfect business model." Arghhh!! Stop!!!
To get my own back I have produced a list.
Re-think the meaning behind the check-list.
Never believe check-lists that guarantee results.
Lists that remove the investigation into the fields they describe must be banned.
Complexity in business is a fact – it cannot be simplified into a list
Lists are guns in the hands of three-year olds
Lists must be challenged if they end at the 6th bullet
I prefer 7 things in a list
I get that we need to get to simple ways of thinking about things.
I understand the idea of list and they have a place. But people need to understand that they only go so far. We need to analyse the exponential growth of things that need to get thought about these days but the list will not do it. The problem isn't with what is in the list – it is because it is a list. All too often it is just a check list. It suggest that all we need to do is to tick the box.
OK I am being extreme but I worry that the more we simply break things into lists the more they are superficially learned by rote and so the thinking stops. The calculation of what goes on between the items in the list is often missed. The opportunity for cleverness with what the lists don't yet show or might get surface is ignored. The meaning of the patterns that are involved within the descriptions get side-lined and we don't explore the unknowns or the finer aspects that were missed by the structure of lists. The important things that aren't on the list are just not on the list.
Dealing with complex enterprise and constantly moving situations is complex. That is what complexity is. Complex. It cannot be reduced to lists. Lists are OK to categorise areas of investigation but not at the expense of the investigation. Let's re-think the list.

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Drawing. I Think.

2011-05-01T01:21:00.001-07:00

I'm lucky I guess.
I've always been able to draw. It is a total luxury and I'm blessed to be able to do it. It's amazing, not because I feel I'm especially good at it, but because it is how I get to think about things. It is a kind of a media – a platform. For me it is an act of making things come true (making decisions) and how I process my inner ideas (thinking)
It also allows an inner calm.
That calm begins with total fear. Fear of the enormity of the empty page and the empty conclusion of the task. I hear people talk about creativity being the challenge of the blank canvas. I get that when the challenge is art. But for me the challenge is to divine/define/design an answer from empty space - where I know the 4 sides are soon the boundaries to my expression. The framework.
To be able to do this is pure adrenalin mixed with responsibility and privilege. That anyone would value the act is my motivation. Underneath all this a drive to develop better craft with every mark and each detail.
I worry that obsessive attention to seeming tiny dimensions or aspects of this is approaching obsession. It is. And I like that now, after all the years of doing it and explaining it and defending it, now I just do it and that is a kind of peace at last. I was delighted then to see this incredible program about John Kascht. He gives you a behind the scenes look at the creation of his portrait of Conan O' Brien, explaining his artistic process and approach to caricature.
The way he thinks, works, collects, curates and then builds IS the process of thinking. And being creative and…
A summary from the National Portrait Gallery.
No red-carpet stalker has observed celebrities more closely than caricature artist John Kascht. Conan O’Brien, Eminem, Whoopi Goldberg, Bill Murray, Jack Nicholson, Barbra Streisand, Mick Jagger, and Donald Trump are just a handful of the famous faces he has scrutinized, deconstructed, and reimagined for our delight. All appear in his video Funny Bones: Anatomy of a Celebrity Caricature(above), done recently for the National Portrait Gallery’s Gallery360 series.
Fifteen years ago, when I started collecting Kascht’s work for the National Portrait Gallery, we began a series of conversations about how to draw, “getting” a likeness, the nature of celebrity, and the art of caricature.
Inevitably, Kascht, with his unusual combination of wicked humor and thoughtful insight, made unique contributions to those challenging subjects, all of which interest the students, teachers, artists, and general public who make up the Portrait Gallery’s diverse audiences. So the idea of a sharing Kascht’s drawing process through a video has been a long-term dream.
Throughout
Funny Bones, we have the illusion of peering over the artist’s shoulder as he draws. The video starts with the seductive sound of charcoal scratching on paper. Using a broad vocabulary of graphic marks in various media, Kascht experiments with lines, squiggles, blotches, tracings, and washes, moving ever closer to his final concept.

“Getting” the likeness is a more particular skill. It is “all about noticing,” he tells us. You realize how little most of us see in our daily interactions with people. Kascht’s scrutiny is relentless. The taut mouth, fidgeting hands, tapping feet, wrinkled face, belly laugh—beautifully filmed here by A. Greg Raymond—all tell him something about a person.
No doubt Kascht is right that “you wear your life,” but it takes his keen eye to observe it. Since his subjects are famous, he also studies multiple photographs and available moving footage, adding to his information. By the time he is done, he knows the structure and facets of each face intimately, along with its characteristic expressions, as well as which single feature might force our recognition.
But there are challenges to focusing on the famous, with their agents, handlers, and stylists. With comedian Conan O’Brien as his case study, Kascht explains the difficulty of trying to catch a celebrity’s unguarded moment or figuring out the authentic look disguised by makeup and the public persona. He considers comportment, behavior, and body language; he loves finding pictures of his subjects when they were children.
It is a tricky balancing act. The preened and polished version of the star is, after all, what we recognize. Some of that familiar artifice might have to remain. All that digging and observing nonetheless helps capture the essence of the individual, any portraitist’s goal.
Finally, once Kascht understands how to create a likeness, he can move that portrayal into caricature. It isn’t mere exaggeration in his view but an intensification of characteristic attributes.
In one sequence, he morphs Abraham Lincoln, Luciano Pavarotti, Barbra Streisand, and Mick Jagger from photographic reality into caricatural magnification of their actual features. He has to really know that likeness before he can start to mess with it. Sometimes he finds that it helps to mimic his subject, compare someone’s hair to soft-serve ice cream, or make a likeness out of cheese doodles. It is all part of learning the face and pushing toward “the life at the center of it all.”
For those of us who have enjoyed long lunches learning about portraiture through Kascht’s enhanced eyes, it is a delight to share Funny Bones with our Portrait Gallery audience.
Wendy Wick Reaves, Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Portrait Gallery

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Said Detective Colombo to the CEO...!

2011-04-29T03:51:00.001-07:00

Ah, sorry to bother you Mr. CEO, Sir…
Excuse me Mr. CEO, Sir? Um . . I know you're busy, and important and stuff. I mean, running the business is very important and - ah - I hate to bother you, Sir. I will only take a minute. Ok, Sir? See, I have these missing pieces that are holding me up, and I was wondering, Sir, if you could take time out of your busy schedule and help me out.
You know, no big deal, just some loose ends and things. Hey, you have a nice place here! The wife sees houses like this on TV all the time and says, boy, she wishes she had digs like this, you know? Is that painting real? Really? Wow! I saw something like that in a museum once.
Oh, sorry Sir. I didn't mean to get off the track. So if you could just help me out a minute and give me some details, I will get right out of your way. I want to close this case and maybe take the wife Coney Island or something. Ever been to Coney Island Sir? No? I didn't think so...
Well, listen, anyway, I can't seem to get some information I need to wrap this up. These things seem to either be "Not known", "Not clear" or "Not understood" I'm sure it's just an oversight or glitch or something, so if you could you tell me where these things are I have them written down here somewhere - oh wait. I'll just read it to you.
Could you please help me find these things, Sir?
What are you are aiming to achieve? The outcome of it all? This business of yours? Sir…?
The measures that might tell you that you are getting there? Where are they?
And Sir? - what's the actual need you are trying to fulfil?
What is your vision exactly?
Does the world actually actually need what you are aiming to do?
The story. What's the story really Sir?
And your strategy? No-one seems to know what that is.
The people in the business don't seem to care Sir? Why should they?
The road map you say you have? Where is that?
The alignment. Where is that Sir?
And the things that differentiate the business from all the others? Can you tell me that Sir?
Oh and one more thing Mr CEO Sir, I can't seem to find the criteria you used for any of this. Can you explain that to me, Sir? but hey - listen! I know you're busy! If this is too much for you right now - I mean - tell you what. I'll come back tomorrow. Give you some time to get these things together, you know? I mean, I know you're busy. I'll just let myself out. I'll be back tomorrow. And the day after.
What's that Sir?
Who wants to know these things? Well the people in your business, the customers and partners who rely on you Sir. You know, the ones that keep you alive?

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Truffles

2011-04-27T13:49:00.001-07:00

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Innovation? - An Egyptian Pyramid Of A Definition.

2011-04-25T07:02:00.001-07:00

Innovating requires a fine kind alchemy - a mischievous blend of three things -1. Making countless mistakes. 2. An ironic sense of humour and 3. Obsessive creative endeavour. These three dimensions form a kind of diabolical tension. A triangle that becomes a circular and perpetual crusade in my brain. A vicious circle.
1. Mistakes need to be utterly soul destroying - becoming triggers for the next idea. Ideas come from our thoughts so having our minds challenged refreshes the spirit and forces us to fix the aching void of failure. Of course this takes a masochism of an unenviable type.
2. Irony seems to force the best kind of comedy from me. That comedy translates into a creativity which in turn comes from the deep depths of I know not where. I know irony is not to everyone's taste and which is why it suits me and probably confirms my endless joy from it. I like to leverage the heady mix of adrenalin and disruptive energy shocks and provokes so much.
3. Creativity is the result and forces the crusade to finish building the pyramids of idea in my head. Ideas so outrageous but that will fix the problem and answer the brief. The fix needs to be breathtaking and when it isn't it's just another another soul destroying mistake.
I laugh ironically.

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Structured Visual Thinking

2011-04-24T22:32:00.001-07:00

Taken at Starbucks
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Apple - Please Make Pens!

2011-04-23T03:50:00.001-07:00

Forget Afghanistan, Lybia and the Middle East. What in the world is going on in the pathetic dry-erase pen manufacturing world?
The 'dry-erase' marker market! A mouthful? Well cop this! Did they invent that term because of the fact that there is no ink in them - or were they being ironic about their supply of quality product? The Writing Is On The Wall - Badly!
If the pen is supposed to be mightier than the sword then I'm about to become history. Exploitation of artists was supposed to have been eradicated years ago. I should grow up and stop being so naïve.
Q: Why have the world's manufacturers of dry erase markers (whiteboard pens) gone stark raving mad and stopped making yellow? Indeed why have the same 'baboon-brained' manufacturers also stopped making decent pens - at all. I don't mean to insult baboons. They won't even speak to us about it. I can only assume they don't give a flying chisel-tip about any of this.

The perfect pen was this.
(Paper Mate or EXPO – now owned by Sanford – all owned now - by Newell Rubbermaid.)
I could hold them in my hands all day. They were rubberized, shaped correctly and grippable. Each one had an eraser on it. They were well built and initially had excellent ink coverage.
Now they have stopped making them. The supply chain dried up along with their remaining pens. They choose to leave us stuck with badly designed equipment, low quality ink, ugly and painful to hold pens -  cheaply made unhelpful and crass rubbish that is unfit for the task! We buy boxes of them that just don't work, they are already dry straight out of the box. We are suckered.
I know why.
This is the main tool of my trade so I would be pissed wouldn't I - but it's become an analog for so much tack out there in the world. To me this is the pursuit of profit at all cost. It is the standard cynical abuse by manufacturers in any market when they gain a monopoly.
I've written before about the typical lousy state of meeting room tackle - that’s why I take all my own. The countless badly abused flip charts that are wobbling their way to their graves, shocking and rubbish markers with no ink - products that everyone hates. Countless pens get thrown to the floor by irritated executives who can't get the lid off or on - and when they do they don't work. All of this bollox is contributing to low standards of execution and worse it is ultimately resulting in squalid thinking.
Well WTF!!!
Do something you lousy, lazy, cheapskate, userous dry-erase manufacturing bastards!
Can anyone point me to a quality chisel-tip dry-erase marker with a spectrum of colors (including yellow) that I can call a professional product and that I can actually buy during my lifetime?

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If Apple Made Cars?

2011-04-23T03:42:00.001-07:00

I will never rent a Citroen C5 again.
I can't imagine why a motor manufacturer would name a car after Sir Clive Sinclair's failed electric folly but there you have it. The centre of the steering wheel is large, ugly and square, the bit you hold is round. The bit in the middle stays put when you turn the wheel. So if, like me, you hold various parts of the wheel in different ways as you maneouver hairpin bends at 100mph you will break your wrist and fingers with guaranteed and crushing whelps of pain!

Utterly ridiculous design. Think about it.
If Apple built a car - oh my goodness. You would be able to see behind and in front of you at the same time. Sideways too. Everyone would marvel as it docked with a shoosh in your house or (with the mobile dock) anywhere the hell you damn well please.
The Sat Nav system is a full HD wind-screen with anti-glare lick my face super gloss device. Angry Birds would be swiped (or pinched) off with a very satisfying flick of your little finger as they hit your screen. There would be a delicious schloop sound. Stephen Fry tweets curious sites of historic or general interest at you - as you wish.
In an iCar you don't need to concentrate on the road, that's handled by the on board magic mouse. You are left free to download apps of your choice and arrive at your destination refreshed and ahead of the pack. You often don't need to travel though because - with Total Surround Screen Technology (TSST) and Telepresence (T) the inside of the iCar is a fully equipped conference venue fully integrated with social media and augmented reality.
There's an app for giving you the impression of driving to the office as fast as Lewis Hamilton - with all the effects but the iCar manages you within the sedate traffic outside via the Slow Leopard OS feature.

You can choose whatever weather you would like to be displayed through the sun-roof display. You are adding automatically to Google Earth as you go. Foursquare and Gowalla are in fact sponsoring your fuel - Apple Juice.
It's impossible to get a ticket because the body of iCar is so aerodynamic as to ensure they can't be stuck to it. Traffic wardens are PC anyway so they are completely incompatible anyway.
Traffic jams become enjoyable with the right music for the road conditions. Road movies are unlimited and free.
"We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it" - Blues Brothers
Auditorium quality sound is played through the seats and directly connected via your Apple 'BodyPad' driving suit. Designed in California - Black Cru Neck and Denim ensemble - BUT - here's the scoop - it's actually a total immersion, multi-media touch sensitive interface to iCar. This comes as standard on the iCar CoupeAir.
All current versions allow you to configure your own dashboards and select your own background colors.
All your devices - wife, husband and kids would fit and operate seamlessly without further configuration. A Ski rack comes as standard and you would get nearly 60 MP3. That's awesome.
The only queues you will meet from now on will be those other folk queuing get their hands on one. Although V.1.0 doesn't allow it, the plan is for future versions to neatly fold away into your shirt pocket and recharge from the heat of your body.
Yes the batteries only last 40 minutes at the moment.

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11 Years Thinking Change

2011-04-22T08:07:00.001-07:00

Really odd that I needed to leave the creative industry to become creative.

More odd that 11 years on, the more I work with seemingly 'non-creative' industries (Government, Mining, Financial Services, Pharmaceutical Industries for example) the more creative I become - and can be.

These 11 years have been interesting - and while the following 'Ages' are not as crisply segmented as they sound - they are fairly close to what I now know about what creativity really means, and how that emerged.
Year One: The Age of Context. Coming from the creative industry everything was about the idea and its cleverness or the sheer awe of its production. It wasn't essential that it met every dimension and it could be argued (and was) that it didn't need to. I didn't agree. It irked me that I was responsible for solving the wrong problem really well. I needed to think bigger.
Context became a big part of my life. The first year of the business was all about mapping the context and building what is now the Discovery Framework, which was all about the surrounding context within which to think. It often shocked people and me that so much from one industry could be so relevant to another. Many people remarked on how rethinking their own context generated fresh thinking. Creativity. I thought I was onto something.
Year Two: The Age of Facilitation. In the early days I had great friends and colleagues who would facilitate while I sat quietly and built the content into the context of the framework. This was all about 'active-listening' - translating the conversations forced by the contextual frame. It occurred to me that creativity was about knowing where to hunt for the truffles. Where a fresh idea might be lurking - and how to trap and then skin an insight. It meant asking a question and then a better question and then…
I freely admit that I was happier butting in and I couldn't stay quiet. I know I was frustrated and I was frustrating others, but I needed to keep the questions digging deeper and deeper. I needed to actually step it up. The age of facilitation meant I had to move from sitting at a drawing pad in the corner to getting into the art of facilitation. Could I do both? Ask the questions and complete the framework?
Year Three: The Age of Collaborative Endeavour. By now I had been completely seduced by the power of context and the sheer effect a visual interpretation of the conversations was having. We were now beginning to see the importance of having the right people in the program. Inclusion and ownership – engagement and understanding.
We were observing how behaviours were altering in some situations and not others, how groups reacted differently when their leaders were present and how we could leverage these dynamics. At this time we had started to become much more structured and the context was being informed by better thinking ahead of time. We were working within more collaborative systems and architectures. We were growing.
Year Four: The Age Of Structured Thinking. Now it was all starting to make sense. We had become very much more capable of being prepared for the work that was coming along. Bigger and bigger issues, larger and larger enterprises. We could understand the context, we could appreciate the bigger picture. We realised that we knew nothing. That helped.
We seemed able, because of the frameworks and the discussions, to better 'think' about a smarter idea, a new scenario, a more deft turn of phrase or something completely new and fresh. To start to think like this requires this emergence, this journey. We were better able to work together to cause this ideation through the structured and visual surfacing of seemingly curious ideas that then became less curious.
We could analyse these things more objectively and now we started to create decision architectures. We had grown to respect far more what a well considered framework could produce. It didn't restrict creativity it made it happen. Whether we built them ahead of the sessions or during - these 'tools' formed the basis of what we now know why frameworks work to solve issues. We were also starting to be able to describe what we did.
Year Five: The Age of Sustainability. Solving the wrong problems well is a fools errand. It's also what many businesses and Government agencies seem to do repeatedly. In truth we are impartial about all the outcomes of our work as long as they can be sustained. This means putting the ownership and capability of the outcomes into the hands of those who must deliver.
We began to engage on many more levels. The people involved in the thinking process were now far more able to 'own' the process for themselves. This meant that we were able to give them more and more accountability for the outcomes. This work was never about us but enabling real creativity on the part of the team considering the 'exam question' we were debating. Creative problem solving is not an event it must live and be watered often once born. If we don't think sustainably then we solve an event. If we think sustainably we can transform everything.
Year Six: The Age Of Partnering. The approach to solving problems this way kicked off with being impartial to a given outcome. A more creative way to think. I was a client myself and deserved every lame solution I bought. With this business I never wanted us to be a solution that conveniently re-engineered the problem so that it looked valid. Whatever we did - we didn't want the curse of the 'expert' getting in the way of being as creative as we could be.
Around this time we realised that we needed to excel at partnering. We had always had an Expert Network to call on once we had identified the real problem. We needed to be able to leverage skills and resources that did have expertise only once we knew what the actual problem was. In finding excellence in our partners we added to the creativity, to the context and to the power of the whole.
Year Seven: The Age of Visualisation. So yes it's always been a visually biased approach but visual doesn't mean just pictures. Words, phrases, data - they are all visual. We are not a graphic recording or big pictures company. We like information design but we are not an infographic maker. In the late half of the first decade of the 21st Century the world became capable of developing high power, multi-media and fast tools for creativity. We also were given unlimited ability for expression - unlimited white–wall space using 'micro–film' electrostatic paper. This allowed scale and that created immersion and enabled a dramatically more interactive experience.
This era ushered in new 'everything' - Data modelling technology, 3D software for film, social media platforms. They all started to become things we could all master and afford. This changed everything. Creative thinking was possible over long distances, by many more contributors and of course visually! And all of this at such high quality that ideas and contributions could multiply with almost no limit. We could extend the known power of visual decision making and creativity beyond the realms of anything we had known. We did.
Year Eight: The Age of Comparative Patterns. As we started to analyse, archive and codify what we really had achieved we saw yet more clues in our 'story so far'. Not only had we managed to solve the frustrations of developing strategy and transformation for teams - we saw the importance of this kind of creativity for more dimensions than business.
We saw a 21st Century that needed more awareness of the systemic stupidity that caused social unrest and inequity and also the critical issues of climate change, ecological disasters and so on. We coined the phrase - 'ethical/social continuum' - meaning we would work with organisations to help them do better things with more moral outcomes. We became keen to enable others to get greater access to what we had learned and we saw that we had many peers for whom what we did would be familiar/complementary. Systems Thinking, Design Thinking and Value Networks for example.
Year Nine: The Age of Transferring Capability. So we had come a long way and we had proven the approach in over 2500 assignments/interventions. We could see that we could share the value. By now we had had over a hundred companies and individuals ask if they could also use the approach. We hadn't really developed it that way but we always knew we could.
This is still a big work in progress, codifying everything, but we were determined even then. We started to finesse the tools. We started to explain what we do differently and translated it all into English. We had always written about what we did but now we started in earnest making it understandable and less technical. We started to structure the objects and build a scalable architecture. It was a huge undertaking but it is coming to fruition.
Year Ten: The Age of Social Platforms. Our work is purely co-creative. That means it includes all and any input from multiple sources. All stakeholders can and should play. It is facilitative and interactive. It is highly visual and transports those involved to new places and greater value.
The advent of truly accessible global tools like social networks with multi-media rich platforms have revolutionised our ability to deploy all of our dimensions at least to some degree. As they continue to become more powerful and integrated they bring with them their own stimulus and structure for added creativity and input. This is one hell of a ride!
Year Eleven: The Age of Consciousness and Empathy. Standing as we often do between many powerful egos and ambitions we see amazing opportunities for additional value in all this. We are now both more subtle in the discussions and more urgent with the structures - forcing greater tension between the outcomes and the realities of what the enterprise seeks to achieve.
Each of the previous 'Ages' have stayed the course. They are all continuing to define creativity in our assignments. They are all the mainstays of how we create value, increase opportunity and deliver innovation to our chosen markets.

Who knows where next?

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Problem Solving using Visualisation. The Menu!

2011-04-10T06:35:00.001-07:00

Well first let's agree what visualisation means. To me it means words, phrases and anything image-based - that we can use to capture, convey, stimulate and align people and their ideas.
And let's agree that 'ideas' are any clear thought, viewpoint or suggestion that moves the dialogue forward within the 'framework' we've chosen to manage this thinking within.
The definition of 'framework' is a simple device that bounds the discussions and forces the teams minds to reason and process (in or out) what is a good - or a not so good - choice.
If it's good we visualise it into the framework. If not then it's not. The team agrees this criteria.
Choices are everything and anything that we know (*) we can carry forward and that each pass the test. The test of being valuable or correct in answering the question we have posed.
The question posed can be anything deemed agreeable to the team to spend quality time discussing. Let's call that the 'exam question'
The questions can be at any altitude - How do we survive as a species? - to How can we create a strategy for the firm? How do we build better customer experiences? - to What is the Vision that will inspire our people and transform our market?
Then all you need is to get people in the room who who give a damn!
(*) Or what we need to know or go and find out through agreed cycles/iterations.

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Getting To Balance. Wabi-sabi!

2011-04-09T10:18:00.001-07:00

Often overused word - balance.
We know we need to be more balanced. Well I agree completely. The yin - the yang. The dark - the light, the masculine - the feminine. Good cop - bad cop. The east – the west. And. I want to explain a more subtle and personal version of it. One that has been in my life forever and I wonder whether it resonates with you!
Because my need to get an idea down is almost a neurosis - I have this frenzy - a thing going off in my head - (in fact my whole body) - I have to scribble - get it down. This rough thing is enough to make me want to rethink it. I will scribble it again. A chicken-scratch in the sand.
But when I look back it every iteration is still full of meaning to me. Right up to the final thing but not worse or better – just part of the arrangement of things.

A diamond in the rough.
Recently I've been contrasting this 'raw material' with fully thought through bits and all the intermediate bits to tell entire stories. This juxtaposition is many times more powerful than a consistent set of things at a consistent standard of finish. Hybrid is good. The roughness of it is somehow much more authentic. Much more approachable. Like a beaten and battered leather armchair is far more comfortable than a new one.
This intrigues me because that's how I feel about everything in my world. The deliberate placement of things that are seemingly careless but just feel right alongside the other thing. This is called 'wabi-sabi' in the Japanese culture and it's genesis is wrapped up with the incredible tea ceremony. Studied carelessness.
I apply this to my work.
If I could draw a completely accurate and straight line in a strategy session I wouldn't. The imperfections in it denotes a much more natural state. As we work with teams we see a much more human sympathy with the imperfections. I always hated using a ruler in my technical drawing classes. My art teacher told me the ruler was the work of the devil. (I loved my art teacher!) If I enter a place that is just too perfect it makes me uneasy. In fact anything that is aiming to be just perfect is just not. I strongly recommend Leonard Koren's book 'Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.' It is in many ways a doctrine for my entire world-view.
Just to make my point and to encourage you to find out more about it he describes the universe of wabi-sabi as follows.
Firstly the Metaphysical Basis – Things are either developing toward or evolving from nothingness.
The Spiritual Values. Truth comes from the observation of nature. Greatness exists in the inconspicuous and overlooked details. Beauty can be coxed out of ugliness.
The State of Mind. Acceptance of the inevitable. Appreciation of the cosmic order.
Moral Precepts. Get rid of all that is unnecessary. Focus on the intrinsic and ignore material hierarchy.
If you want to buy the book - http://amzn.to/dSaROE If you want to find out more about the dude - visit Leonard Koren's Blog http://www.leonardkoren.com/
In search of a global Wabi-Sabi.
Imagine if this set of characteristics, these values and these ideas, were how we all lived our lives - and how we treated and combatted this increasingly commercial world. What if instead of craving that latest fridge-freezer we didn't. What if these values were how we all felt and – what if the media and the politicians urged these thoughts and not patronising denial, deep crust pizza or train smash TV.
"A comprehensive aesthetic system, its worldview, or universe, is self-referential. It provides an integrated approach to the ultimate nature of existence (metaphysics), sacred knowledge (spirituality), emotional well-being (state of mind), behavior (morality), and the look and feel of things (materiality). The more systematic and clearly defined the components of an aesthetic system are - the more conceptual handles, the more ways it refers back to fundamentals - the more useful it is." - Leonard Koren
I couldn't put it better if I tried. So I won't.
"Wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent." - Tadao Ando
"One grasps the purest essence of a rule or concept by understanding its totality. Then if one desires, the derivative forms may be modified to meet current needs." - Sen no Rikyu

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Business & The Holy Grail

2011-04-09T08:11:00.001-07:00

Like many notions these days, the idea of 'NOW' is a fleetingly helpful frame of reference.
For the business 'now' mostly means our current context - a wide definition of now! And yet 'now' must always consider NEXT. The gap between now and next is the plan of how to get there and requires us to think about a few critical things. There is no short-cut to this.
We have to bend our collective minds around the following at least:
What outcome do we want?
How would we measure that?
What's stopping us getting to these outcomes?
What would NEXT look like?
What is vital/imperative to have in place to get there?
What are our strategies and tactics to get there?
How must we re-think our operation and approach to get there?
What does our roadmap need to look like to get there?
Within these major headings comes the more subtle questions around - everything we have to know about our markets, our customers. Conversations about communicating the value, our decision criteria, the distinguishing values, the processes, the systems and the culture we need. Add to this the myriad dimensions/flavours of everyone in the teams opinion and it is a rich discussion.
To make the crucial decisions about strategy in all of this we have to place some bets.
We also have to be as creative as we can be to think beyond how our competitors might think about the same topic. We may even be better off thinking about a better topic.
Just making a better version of the thing that we did before is far less valuable than re-imagining what the better outcome might be anyway. For a better outcome for the enterprise then we need to ask significantly better questions and that demands an open mind and the jettisoning of our prejudices on everything.
To plan a strategy on what we have today and what we know is foolish.
The stuff we do today is probably a commodity. The stuff we think we need to do is probably also fast becoming a commodity. The future strategy has to bend its mind around what really is next. Can we create a new category and vastly out think the competition. Innovation demands we think differently. We have to become alchemists. It's tough.
For example - we need to consider the stuff that gets missed between other stuff. We have to go beyond the stereotypical safety of what we know. Become evangelists for what we can dream that lives outside of our current boundaries. The edge.
So in today's world think long and hard about these three questions.
Your customers probably don't know the full extent of what you do so what do you think they think you do? Is that the most valuable – will that keep you ahead?
If you could imagine the 'bits' in-between your product and your competitors product - and describe the gap between that and what your customers would REALLY like - what would that be?
If we could create value in-between the spaces created by our products and our competitors products what would we call that category and can we own that/build that before everyone else?
More on this topic here: http://johncaswell.posterous.com/ask-a-silly-question-go-on
PS: I wanted to share this - most recent visual tour through what we are up to about all this. "Changing the way business thinks and works to maximise opportunity in the 21xt Century." Nothing small and yet a rapid, simple and logical approach that works.

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Mind's On Fire - Part 1 (Extracts from a Discussion With Myself)

2011-04-07T02:38:00.001-07:00

Although I'm very clear about a 'thing' - there is always the risk of not knowing where to start describing the thing. Anything. I'm talking to myself. Inside my head. Sometimes I'm not listening to myself. Am I making myself clear? No.
I will picture a 'thing' and it will be clear - and whole - and stunningly crafty. As I try to give it form though it will be stillborn, exceptionally dull and scare cats with its ugly and corrugated appearance.
I've realised that I'm very uncomfortable in that final half hour before the session days start. When I'm waiting for the team to turn up for the sessions. They arrive and are often nervous - and that transmits itself into the space. My space. It makes me uncomfortable. I can start to blather about rubbish at that point. A bit like at dinner parties. No agenda. Just small talk.
I try to make sure I am still working at something so I can avoid this aimless chatter and start the sessions clean. I would just fidget and ruin it otherwise.
I'm now depressed with the lack of memory I have to focus. Do I need an upgrade? Am I on the latest version? I'm good at saying yes to the latest automatically available upload. Have I missed one? Crap.
I got there by train.
I wonder what the person opposite me is thinking. They are sitting transfixed, almost entranced - with a free newspaper in their hand, iPod in their ear, doing their nails, eating a burger - and texting something. We reach the platform. I get out. I move to another platform. More people flashing by, all looking at their iPhones, burgers or the floor. I dodge. I'm good at it. I'm a bullfighter.
I know that I am pushing this point a little too much. The audience agrees with the words. The data supports the claim. They got it so why are you banging on? They are nodding! Yes but I can see someone frowning. I can't carry on unless I know what's going on in her head!
I'm now on the Tube.
The stimulus of this scene always makes me enquire to myself - what are these people really like. I would be certain to like a bunch of them - and yet I never will. It would take an unfortunate and cataclysmic issue, a horrendous event or some chance 'happening' like a heart attack to make us make contact.
If only we could create a platform, a structure that everyone might collaborate around that asked for all to contribute to a simpler story. If we want to get there (Z) and we are here (A) then let's think about these 6 or so big factors. Then a more intelligent journey would be the outcome right? Why doesn't that make sense?
Bizarre to consider.
Considerably increasing that slim chance to meet these people would be the internet and the social nature of that platform and media. I may even know the people I'm looking at now (on-line) for all I know. How about that! I would know them because they share an interest, passion or idea that caused us to connect. In a thread or comment or by clicking 'Like', 'Follow' or 'Friend'. A sixth platform in one day.
London is great when the sun is shining and it's warm. It is also fabulous when there are big thunderstorms and the sky is black and I am in my apartment looking at the river becoming wild. It's especially nice when I get back into London from the wilds of 'Not London'. I'm so familiar with this platform.
That gives me ideas.
And the trouble with ideas are that we cannot quite explain them. We have them, rather like dreams - then they're gone. Or in the describing of them they take on other forms. So when we think them through we have to visualize them in writing and drawings. Or they are diminished.
I have to get everything clear and in shape before I tackle this next bigger challenge. I know I would rather be doing something differently but I have to do that. I'm hungry.
I love social media but am I social?
I draw strategies. These are a bunch of ideas being mashed together through my idea of a rigorous logical structure. I'm always astonished at how hard it is for people to think this logically. If you want to go from A to Z then you have to consider B,C,D etc.
But for some reason people don't immediately default to much that is logical or sequenced.
I shake my head and I'm back.
What?

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Smashing. The Mental Model!

2011-03-27T16:11:00.001-07:00

Who's driving? And - where on Earth are we headed?
And who's got the frickin map? Yeah!
I seriously believe that the pointy–headed people in space – are the people who must be in charge of the worlds GPS – and I'm convinced that they have it rigged! They have somehow limited the number of destinations available to us humans. They've made darn sure we don't go to places that they don't get money from. All of it done, of course, in the name of a better life for us all – a three car kitchen, a slimmer tummy - a far better pizza. Yes I know there is more.
Importantly for me though - who is judging the benchmark for 'better'? Can any one person answer a question like that? Who is better than who, which is better than what and why. Everywhere you look everything is compared and ranked. From beauty pageants to performing dogs and talent competitions for 4 year olds. Everything. And to me it all just seems to get not better.
But who created the model for these comparison anyway? Who designed the diabolical framework? Is anyone thinking what is happening as a result? Is anyone awake on the bridge of this inter galactic death ship? Is there a bridge? Where did this race to the bottom get started? It's either those weird dudes up there, or us - or it just happened out of thin air right? Over a long time. A very very long time.
We hear it all around us.
The instructions. Like machine gun fire - "Reduce the time it takes to do anything and everything please - It's job 1 - It's vital. Life or death. Do it now." The cry comes from the boardrooms - "We need to be better! No, I don't know what that means precisely but just do it. What? - OK then - better means get us to increased turnover, increased performance, lower cost, more meaningful customer experiences – and while you are at it – add more differentiation to it all!"
WTF.
Oh and put an end to war, poverty and injustice. Make it all better.
And woven within it all - "Let's have more passion, emotion, love and equality – they sound good. I will get more votes – more ticks. Yes, and bring me a slice of that pizza. That's better."
While any one of these – without the possible exception of the pizza – is a very well worth while objective, the degree of real thought that gets put into any of them is often miserly. When you add all of these things up and try to solve them at once it is a very complex set of patterns and issues indeed.
For many companies - and sadly - these conversations have become the equivalent of small talk at dinner parties. Ignored, banal and pointless – something to be avoided at all cost. And anyway whatever the work that results, it gets compared to some arbitrary set of measures beamed in wirelessly from Beetlejuice – which at any minute could go supernova anyway! (According to Professor Brian Cox)
I know.
Some people are very good at small talk. Professional. I despise it and I am not. I loathe it. Why? Well it's not only meaningless it has become the single biggest barrier to making valuable progress to civilized life. Depending on your definition of civilized life. Small talk has become - in and of itself - the way the majority of the world now seems to talk to each other. Ignorant, banal and pointless. Small. XS.
It is has no connection to anything of importance and so the decisions that get made are made in a deep fog - a wool of meaninglessness – and they carry weightlessness. No weight. No wait!
Can we change these frames – these utterly mental models?
Well erm… yes.
As long as we are prepared to suffer a medium (even long-term) onslaught by those so called 'people in charge'. Those (usually) very grey people with the fixed paradigms bolted into their craniums – the occasional slab of cast iron sticking out of their necks. We have to be prepared get secretly angry and violent – not easy to perfect this. I'm still trying.
Every one of our principles will be exposed right down to the raw - they will be burning red – acid and vitriol will be poured into our ears while our eyes will be physically abused with a pointless diagram or two. It will be a highly emotional water boarding in a mental Guantanamo.
Our standards will be challenged by literally everything we disagree with and abhor. Inequality, self serving, profiteering, lying, shallow, deceitful and all of it in the name of official policy. We
need to remain smiling and civil - charm personified - while drinking from this fire–hose of abuse, ridicule and prejudice.
We will be forced to stand upright and personable while reeling from a whirlwind of differing and confused contexts delivered by people who have no real appreciation of themselves and the shame they are bringing onto the English language and our species as their forked tongues speak.
Reducing the Signal To Noise
Even writing about all this worries me. People will think I'm negative. I'm not – quite the opposite - I am trying to reverse it in small ways as an 'Army Of One'. I know there are millions of people who think the same way or similar and doing a lot more than me to turn the tide. I do worry though that unless we all get joined up more meaningfully that I’m just adding to all the blather. I'm going now.

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Etiquette Shmetiquette, David Attenborough and the birthing of a big idea!

2011-03-27T04:59:00.001-07:00

Can I have some English Mustard?
"Yes Sir."
It was a stupid request on my part. I should know better. I travel a lot. I eat in restaurants a lot. Stupid me. Was he lost? 8 minutes is a bloody long time when your meal is already in front of you. What was going on? What were they doing? I was on my own - the hotel restaurant was both cold and empty so there was really no excuse. I was cold and now - so was my meal.
The problem was not that the person serving was a dunce or a bad person - but the system dictated a silver spoon, thin white bloody china - the right 'branded' saucer. I don't know where the mustard was being kept – the Dordogne? Anyway I used the fleeting bits of clarity between the raging red mist to ponder.
The lightbulb moment? Or the moment of the lightbulb!
It's hard to say quite what happens - or when - but there is that incredible moment – that 'lightbulb' moment - as if a whole series of combinations of entirely random bits have tumbled into place in the metaphorical lock. A door to something amazing sucks itself open with a satisfying rush of air and relief! I love that moment! Crystal clear consciousness and the birth of a great idea.
What's the big idea?
All our clients always have great ambition. I hope that’s why they call us in. They want light speed progress towards brand spanking new territory. The sun-kissed uplands of opportunity. It might be new market value - at any cost. It might be superior quality in some specific regard. It will always be a transformation of sorts requiring bulbs to go flashing on all over the savannah.
So we ask them to describe the unique essence of what they do. Then how it might best be described! Often they have not been forced to think creatively like this before. It's a fascinating moment.
They will say - "The value of our stuff? - well it's huge." We will say - "Yes of course it is but why and how can you describe it in this world of super-superlative, over-use and crazy claim?" they will say "Right."
Anyway we start the conversation.
(Imagine that David Attenborough is doing this voice over - as if describing a pride of lionesses circling their prey… In fact you could read the whole piece in DA speak – it would make it all so much better.)
"The air is thick with anticipation. It is now the hottest part of the day. Rich and colourful marks are appearing on the white parched wall in the distance - the leader encourages everyone to focus. It is still now. Then slowly - but surely imagery starts to appear. It's as if it is imagining what the audience is saying - in pictures, phrases and ideas. In fact that is precisely what is happening."
"As the pace quickens the red earth is thrown up by the heels of many impatient minds. Only a couple of minutes has gone by. It seems much longer. We are witnessing a deeply inner debate - a stand-off between these powerful mammals – it seems to us onlookers to stir endlessly around the same topic – sometimes rather too long for some. It's an age old process – these mammals can be seen to do this almost every day.
"Some of those in the centre of the group are getting restless, impatient for a charge – towards a big idea. New words get thrown into what now looks like frenzy – it is frenzy. All of this remarkable spectacle has taken nearly five minutes. "
"Fresh meat gets offered up - a slogan, new phrases, a new slant, a famous quote - the temperature increases – mingled with speckles of dust catching and sparkling like firefly's dancing in the suns early evening rays. (may have gone too far there) There's even more anticipation, blood can be seen rushing through the necks of this now trapped circle of flesh. A redefinition of the key requirement is called out. A reminder of what we are trying to do. Around and around another couple of minutes."
"Then as if by some distant signal - at some magical, imperceptible point, as the image builds in peoples minds and on the wall, a noticeable change emerges. A finale. It happened in a split second. What a brilliant idea! - that’s it!"
So how come English Mustard takes 8 minutes?

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

If you ask a London cabbie!

2011-03-26T15:49:00.001-07:00

Go on, next time you are in London and you get one of those chatty ones, ask him something - anything, especially the best way to get somewhere of course. They know everything. I'm often blown away by their erudition! Some of them are far more schooled in stuff than me. Far more.
Bad luck though if you get one in a grump.
I wondered what it was about the construct of the mind of a cabbie that enables them to do this. I thought it might be the little yellow light bulb that is glowing constantly above their heads. Maybe. And then of course it struck me, right or wrong, (they would know) that they are wired to triangulate, to shove a framework of reference around everything – at speed. That is how they do it. They can bring images and words, features and random stuff together in a flash. Their mind just goes immediately into how to solve the riddle of how to get there from here. Wherever.
They structure, they visualise and that makes them think.
And in the process they can chat contentedly away at you for 20 minutes about everything that is wrong with the world, why we as a species will never learn, what ails us about the current government, the last Mayor, the stupid two-way system around Piccadilly and any 'what' or 'not' about the capitals football teams and their wives or girlfriends/boyfriends. (Soccer to some)
Speaking of light bulbs - there is a wonderful light-bulb joke on the familiar subject of just how many this or that does it take to screw in a lightbulb. For taxi drives the joke is posed thus - "How many taxi-drivers does it take to screw in a light bulb?" - the answer - "What, all the way up there!?" - told with a cockney accent and probably not at all funny unless you come from the big city.
Anyway - so if you ask them anything you can hear literally their heads (from the back of course) whirring brilliantly with all this data, all the structure they place around it, all the criteria slotting seamlessly into place. All the many decisions about the journey and why and why not and whether this time of day or pot holes or road works or new one-way streets, which café on the corner, what bridge, or what would Jim do, or when did they last eat and what's for dinner.
Then within 5 seconds tops - 'ping' - they come up with the best answer you could get about anything. OK it may cost a bit more than the underground but what an experience. They are a mobile education.
Maybe we should call it the Knowledge!

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Living Life Axiomatically!

2011-03-26T15:40:00.001-07:00

Isn't it incredible how the arrangements of a few well chosen words can make an almighty difference to things?
I'm always in awe, often speechless, when I come across a stonking new quotation or axiom. I can feel physically moved. For me it is the precision with which the meaning it wishes to convey is built. A set of 'mere' words - their juxtaposition and meaning so carefully studied, then distilled so as to be at their most potent. To make my point I could simply say – "Less is more."
Those of you who know me well will have seen me Facebook thousands of quotes and ideas in words that I gather from around the place. I always try to credit them if they are from others but I haven't here for simplicity and flow. They most certainly keep me going.
And so it began. Now it is possible to sum the important phases of my life up in a few short phrases.
Well the first one that stuck with me, and I don't know why it is so relevant, was - "Marry in haste, repent at leisure." I will work out one day why that one was so memorable.
Then I grew up and became more committed to actually doing something of value in the world. I started reading and practicing the art of creativity and real change. I merged these two forces together and realised that creativity and change comes down to us. It is our own energy and consciousness that will ever make anything happen.
The following quotation literally shocked me into action.
"In the future there are three kinds of people. Those who let it happen, those who make it happen and those who wonder what happened."
This wonderful epithet has been a friend to me for years. In the pantheon of incredibly powerful written ideas it sits at the very summit right along with one other told to me by a dear friend who reminded me at a pivotal point -
"Life is not a dress rehearsal!"
These six words moved me so much that they forced me to change literally everything in my life at the time. I sure pissed a lot of people off. My career, my family and my entire attitude to life. Changed forever. I will never forget him telling me that and I can picture the very place. I became rooted to the spot with the profundity of it. He asked me if I was alright as he smiled knowing the power he had sent in my direction.
Along with a thousand others I could pick to get us up to date – the following duo set my sails more firmly in the direction I am now in.
"If you don't know where you are going, every road will take you there." - inextricably coupled with a subtle but vital variation on the one above -  "It is the learners who will inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."
I'm sure you have your own and I would love to hear them!
I will leave you with one I created to live my current era on and one that sums up the huge optimism and frustration I have that drives me every day. "Let's avoid solving the wrong problem really well…" As I look around the world and at virtually every system and also sitting, as I am now 39,000 feet in the air, experiencing the crazy conditions we now live our lives within, this works for me at every level.

See the full gallery on Posterous

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Vision For Better Thinking!

2011-03-25T05:25:00.001-07:00

A lot of people have asked me recently to republish this piece. It was originally written 8 years ago and hasn't really changed much over that time. Of course I have tinkered with it but it stands some of the tests of time - thanks for asking and feel free to rip into it.
A 21st Century Vision. Group Partners Vision
Against a constant tsunami of warped opinion and diabolical dogma - way out ahead of the 'norm' - the quality of thinking is what marks out real leaders. They are wise and often profound - they are the strategists, the imagineers and so they are the ones out in front. They are designers, story-tellers, artists – they define leadership.
These new leaders actively encourage fresh input, new ideas. They say when they are wrong – even when they are not. They remain cool when challenging the status quo. They challenge it with good reason. It's because they are constantly figuring out how a newer/better world would work, and they do it with a curious mind. These new thinkers stand out from the rest.
They hold argument with grace. Ideas are everything, they are the raw material of everything humans can do and achieve. Thinking is the machinery that uncovers, inspires and encourages an 'idea' and turns it into valuable action. We call all of this creativity and it is what makes the difference. – Group Partners
The world needs a new kind of idea and a new breed of thinker. Interestingly all of us could contribute to that right now! The idea of 'idea' and the act of 'thinking' are the two stand-out heroes of the 21st Century. Why aren't we leveraging them more right now!
Everywhere you look lazy thinking causes untold catastrophes. Political inadequacy, countless wars, deep social unrest, dopey laws, media cynicism and exploitation. All of it leading to our individual stress and frustration. Much of it adds up to a wide range of issues. From anger over the Bankers salaries to the dumbing down of the younger generations. What are we missing in this? Why don’t we do something. Global tensions are rising and rising due to the long-term and unchecked fuelling of the systems of self preservation. It is a self balancing inertia. And this is an outrageous situation. Whether large corporation or a member of a local community you recognise the need for change.
These are now wicked problems. What is called for is equally wicked thinking. Ideas and thinking of a higher class than ever before
Tipping Point to Thinking Point.
We know deep inside (if not always consciously) that massive change is going to happen at some point - probably in the next decade. Momentum has now outstripped our ability to deal with it all. The complexity for humans (of situations like terrorism, aids, climate change) make the conditions ideal to want to campaign to cause the change we seek (political, business [financial institutions], media, social injustice) - if only we could/would choose to collaborate, align and strike.
We know that some dread the turbulence and the inevitability of this and simply ignore it, possibly because of the fear of losing what we already have. Others push for it, feeling they have nothing to lose. And some - like the fool on the hill - just sit and watch the world spinning round. The fact is there is a time - RIGHT NOW - to throw all we have at the chance of action, systems and above all exploit our 'ideas' and our 'thinking'.
“An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it.” - Don Marquis
The most radical change is not brought about by command and control government but by enlightened social change. This is as true in a small or large business as it is in society. This means we need to understand whether it is a business or our whole society that we are a part of a living system - a network. Enlightened social change is caused when the momentum is there – the right motivation and behavioral conditions are met. This means new ideas become catalysts. This argues that we need to replace current paradigms – and that requires collaboration by us all – we are the people who are most affected.
The business of thinking - the enterprise of idea.
Everywhere you look in business there are serious pressures to change. Change means risk, mitigating risk requires thought and calculation. Placing new and hopefully better bets. For thought to be of any value we need to foster clear ideas. Ideas that live inside the minds of a few people in a business are worthless. Often we've seen a brilliant strategy (idea) stay marooned in the board room because the enterprise couldn't share it. The enterprise wasn't engaged, the leadership couldn't think it through and then articulate it. The business, those that had to do the work, wasn't invited to play. No method of collaborative endeavour - whatsoever.
Group Partners focuses on large, complex and global clients. They typically have large and complex enterprises with large and complex issues. The enlightened ones know they want to change the way they think and work. We know they are seeking alternatives to the standard approaches that they tell us no longer work. We change this beyond all recognition.
These clients hire Group Partners and licence its approach, tools and software. And through partners they can sustain the work we have started. Accredited ‘Partners/Affiliates’ apply forms of Structured Visual Thinking™ and 4D™ under licence or in collaboration with us. Our ‘Clients’ are amongst the largest organisations on the planet. Our ‘Partners’ are varied in size, geography and market coverage. Our approach is well-known amongst those who need to think and do things differently.
Putting Method Into The Madness.
By collaborating, sharing and reasoning through logical conversations we've proven we can make the intangible real. We can resolve every business problem. We can tell better stories, we can engage widely into the enterprise. The power of a proven approach is a critical contribution to the world of thinking. It is a big idea in and of itself.
Group Partners has invented an approach to stimulate, capture, realise, calculate, communicate and sustain thinking. This is about processing ideas into practical reality. The 'way' of discovering and developing better ideas.
Structured Visual Thinking™ and 4D™ are already proven tools.
The Vision is simple. The 3 core elements 'Logical Structures', 'Visualization' and 'Improved Thinking' are pervasive. They are delivered through real-time interventions, via training methods and also by systems. In this way they become sustained and repeatable. Available to everyone.

"There is no substitute for quality thinking. None. There is a framework though - 4D™." - Group Partners.
Our Aim:
Becoming the alternative to traditional ways of thinking and working. Replacing inappropriate and outdated consulting methods. Working with partners globally. There is another way to thinking about how to solve complex enterprise issues and we are it. Visual, logical and intelligent frameworks that are capable of being deployed by the clients themselves, or with our partners - not by expensive and self serving consulting firms. (We have observed that these firms have an interest in long term or unnecessary assignments that the client is poorly connected with and are unsustainable.)
"Let's avoid solving the wrong problems really well."
These tools are supported by services, tools and systems that enable the delivery of our proven methods.
Focus & Alignment:
We were clients ourselves and observed the triple killers of inconsistent decision making - poorly defined strategy and little or loose controls by the senior team.  All of this arose through the absence of a common framework for steering the ship. Most critical change and transformation programs go astray because of gaps in definition, priority or importance. Communication and understanding cripple programs before they even start. On top of that you can add behavioral and cultural disengagement.
Objectivity Rules OK!:
Our belief is that the senior team usually know the answers, are well aware of the issues and are best placed develop the solutions. We are not consultants. When we were clients we lacked any impartial, agenda-neutral approach to assist our thinking. There was always someone with an opinion and that opinion could be right or wrong.  It was high-risk. There was no way of thinking through the issues properly or to do so in a creative and high energy way. We invented the tools for this. They are called Structured Visual Thinking™ and 4D™
In Great Company:
We have worked with over 2500 of the worlds biggest companies and Governments. This means we’ve learned the hard way what does and doesn't work in developing successful business strategy. Our clients want to leverage the best of the best practices. Our aim is to accelerate leaders towards a conclusion that they themselves have created, that they own and that they can share. In addition the approach provides clarity, focus and inspiration at the same time as avoiding gaps and duplication. It ensures that the business doesn't solve the wrong problem really well.
Rapid:
It’s fast. It doesn’t involve weeks and months of expensive time out or wasted senior resource. Given a clear ‘exam question’ a senior team sees results within days. Initial intervention sessions that develop alignment typically involves a senior team for just two days.

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

Seems we have a problem...

2011-03-21T13:52:00.001-07:00

Until it gets fixed - In the meantime - head here http://johncaswell.tumblr.com/

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Aiming Low.

2011-03-20T10:32:00.001-07:00

Our media has perfected a sewer rat/train smash mentality. And it's no coincidence that we are calling social media - 'Social' Media.
Playing to the lowest common denominator (it would appear) IS the strategy for guaranteed profit and cash. At the expense of our lives and our futures – but let's not get picky. Yeah, so are we all good with that? What could WE do anyway right?
Ensuring that our ethics - the low bar of morality sinks deeper into the swamp with every edition - IS the best way to keep them demon denominators falling. No question. The more they fall the more big business and society cashes in on the lazy product and services that go with. Easy! Cheap.
Reality TV doctrine states it like that and sees to it that each 'new' sad idea sucks yet more blood from the audiences along with their cash. Whilst frowned upon publicly (through the self same media) by both the political and business ‘systems’ it’s no secret that this very clear business model exists. It is the model. Simples.
Lowest common denominator means highest possible audiences. Numbers!
Speaking personally - as a westerner - I intensely dislike all the big three systems. I call them the unholy trinity. Politics. Business & Media. The political ‘system’ represents everything I dislike. It's corrupt, foolish, inept, untrustworthy, unhelpfully argumentative and not intelligent. It has a bad side too. Business, typified by the financial sector, needs no more 'outing' and the media, well that our diet and we get what we deserve if you agree with most commentators. And we do nothing about it because we don’t have a voice.
Sadly we seem to lack a credible alternative to these systems.
I don’t hear the triumphant throngs or massive hordes of fans for the fat cat salaries of the ‘system’ of Business or the 'Business of things' - Finance, Education, Health or whatever. I meet countless people who are very unhappy working for these businesses so the internal ‘systems’ are pretty messed up too.

This isn't rocket stuff.
But we don’t have a single ‘system’ of our own – under the control of the WE.
One that could change any of this. We lack a unified ‘system’ outside of the 'Unholy Trinity'. I will not go into the other major ‘systems’ like religion here. I do so to avoid getting stuck/sidetracked.with the point I want to make. It is the same point.

All of these systems were borne out of command and control thinking.

Understanding the western systems means to get at the heart of our stuckness.
It will be argued - I'm sure - but I think the following is true. Most of the problems and frustration in society can be laid at the door of our inability to influence these three institutionalised ‘systems’.
I believe that they are so well entrenched and so self serving as systems that - however unintended initially - they are the cause not the solution of the problem. They are deeply woven into the subconscious. We are not really challenging them as if we thought of them as ‘systems’. We are simply anaesthetized.
Worse still they defend themselves by purporting to be at our service and disposal.
These three systems are connected and self serving - Political, Business and Media. Each is in cahoots. Each has a wink and a nod to the other when we are not looking. Sadly they wink and nod even when we are.
WE vote in the governments, we buy from the businesses and we are influenced (or say are not) by the media. But we are the recipients of all these three interlocking systems. The media swings between each color of political party in order to keep this insidious and diabolical melting pot going, business goes where the money is and governments know that this keeps all the systems oiled (as long as it can keep it in balance).
WE are immensely critical of all three and we can and do complain. We complain all the time. We've complained for as long as I can remember. But the dirty little secret is there is no WE.

There is no We. We are not WE.

Apart from the internet there isn't a ‘system’ that I can see that is representative of WE. I don’t see a ‘system’ capable of being a valid alternative in a way that balances out or alters the unholy trinity. Why would they let us is? The internet though presents a compelling opportunity. However it is merely the platform.
WE have to use it as WE.
I remain optimistic but impatient. Slowly we see the 'unholy trinity' being challenged in critical ways.

Media is struggling with its sales, caught in the headlights of blogs, self publishing and citizen news self-reporting. Look what is happening in the Middle East and Africa with Facebook and the social media. It’s still very free and open source has had dramatic effects to enable a fluid world of opportunity for newer and greener shoots.
Political change is apparent via the 'voice' that is increasingly created on-line. Political blogs, surveys, manifestos, tribes and communities rising up and thankfully it is still democratized and free of too many controls. Countries are being overthrown by social media.
Business has had to get its act together to understand the phenomenon of online channels but its early days and proves that business simply follows the mantra of shareholder return above all else. When it comes to them being sustainable or more ethical, well they will go there but only if its profitable. Organic foods is profitable so yes they do that and if alternative energy investment by the big oil companies isn’t they will pull out. They did.
I can't speak about the Financial Services and Banking sector pay situation here. But my message would be to - enjoy it while you can you leeches as with luck a smarter generation is growing up and gonna deal with you - because my generation failed.

Well it's not surprising. It’s the system.
"The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between the way nature works and the way man thinks." - Gregory Bateson

I am suggesting that we need to be a more complete and connected 'WE' if we are to alter the thinking - and if WE wish to avoid the catastrophic implications – the pursuit of growth at the expense of all else. Well…
We humans aren’t deliberately stupid and a vast majority of us see that if WE continue this way then there is a highly predictable outcome. Destruction of the raw materials - end of the 'system'. It is finite. Our ‘system’ relies on constantly squeezing the contributors to the supply chain. The result frustrates all the mini-systems and suppliers that are implicated - constantly marginalizing them in the name of profit or efficiency and ignoring the natural systems that it raids to create the goods in the process.

Nothing stays the same.
Such a simple statement. Positions on this idea rage on every second of the day. It's such a natural and obvious truth and we seem utterly fascinated by the why, what and how of it all. At the same time we are so blinded by the significant opportunities presented by it.
Instead of leveraging the natural systems, evidence of which we see all around us, we fight or ignore them. Each time the natural cycles come back at us with interest. We fuss and interfere with the 'way' of things and wonder why they bite us so badly. Whether it's depleted natural resources or the differences of cultural systems leading to wars we just fail to understand what we are dealing with.
C'mon us – let's imagine WE!

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A Drive-By in Downtown Dystopia!

2011-03-20T06:22:00.001-07:00

Forever the optimist – but just checking in.
Are we already living in that futuristic society we've apparently been clamouring for?
By some definition if you look around you could argue that we've already degraded into the required repressive and controlled state. A dystopia - a negative utopia characterized by an authoritarian form of government. Dystopias are said to feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant states of warfare or violence.
Dystopias also explore the concept of humans abusing technology and how humans individually and collectively cope with technology that has evolved too quickly. A dystopian society is also often characterized by widespread poverty and brutal political controls such as a large military-like police. Hmm.
I'm encouraged though by the fact that my increasing number of younger friends are just as fucked off with the systems as I am - and prepared to do something about it. The big question is what, with what tools and where do we stick them?
"Men are even more susceptible to suggestion than horses, and each period is dominated by a mood, with the result that most men fail to see the tyrant who rules over them." - Albert Einstein
Looking around at the political, media and (certain) business systems that are in cahoots to keep us servile, I would suggest the following pillars of old society and systems that ensure our soporific dystopian state
The pillars of 'old enterprise' inertia.
A cornucopia of myopia and dystopia - our world seems represented by individual 'stuckness' and small thinking. Not smart – just dumb. We experience it all around and held in place by those who defend outdated tradition. Little evidence of dynamic thinking - cognition – patchy reasoning, little reflective analysing
In the shadow of tyrannical pyramids – the vast majority of humans still live and work in the age of the creativity sapping 'Org Chart' – beset with hierarchies of command & control cultures; seeding frustration, demoralization, low output, corruption, fear, uncertainty and doubt.
Gorillas In The Midst – 800 lbs of systemic permafrost - we seem happy to live with the official 'systems' unwritten code that we all know is ‘there’ and that we cannot do anything about it. Do not speak. Do not speak.
Bedevilled by 'experts' - hiding behind standards and so called 'best practices'. Outdated doctrine built on dubious data that was designed for another era. Dressed as an expert gets you past the scanners and ensures that we solve the wrong problems really well. Self-serving bollocks.
Hoovering With Idea Vacuums - No intuition please we don't get paid for that. Thus no spark, not even ignition – little inspiration, creativity or energy for change.
Leadership? What leadership? - breeding apathy, amnesia & anaesthesia – what 'burning platform' - I'm alright jack! People in positions of power, unproven, unqualified and with little humility, charm, grace or credibility to secure any follower ship.
Lies, Statistics and Damn Lies and Statistics – oh and software – making the data prove what you want it to prove – making it so layered that everyone gives up - or put language around it to confuse the crap out of everyone who dare get close to witness it's lack of integrity. The trail goes cold. So does our breath.

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Is it me, or what?

2011-03-20T04:18:00.001-07:00

Without question we humans are the biggest barrier to progress we have.
Our minds are conditioned, over our lifetimes, so as to ignore extremely plain clues that constantly hit us in the face and cause us pain. All of us. "This thing, product, system, relationship, idea, process, lifestyle, sandwich, drug doesn’t work for me but I still do it." Strangely masochistic as within these clues lie the solutions to our aims. I've spent my life asking questions about this phenomena and in the process boring myself senseless with the repetition of the answers.
Now though I have proven to myself that it is possible to alter the way people perceive, realise - and then think through the actual choices they have. We have evidence that a more reflective and structured approach to thinking delivers outcomes that are both natural, more valuable and carry less risk.
Some of this is just blindingly obvious, some is just simple and logical while other bits require time and effort. But it can all be inspirational. And so it works. We begin to change our frames.
Interestingly the tool that changes the way we think and work requires two discrete dimensions. Structure and Visualization.
The 'Structure' part comes in many forms but is basically a series of specific frameworks that are built around logical calculation and reason. Something to force our brains to re-imagine everything. The 'Visualisation' part is about utilising all our human senses and so leverage (rapidly) - more meaningful transmission and translation of all the relevant data. It is both powerful and creative.
Our human brains (along with models and other tools for calculation) then chips in a third dimension all of its own - we call this 'Thinking'. Enter - Structured Visual Thinking.
"There are only a few images that are not forced to provide meaning, or have to go through the filter of a specific idea." - Jean Baudrillard

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Truth Serums!

2011-03-19T04:43:00.001-07:00

Ripped skin and broken noses. Tortured by convenient memory.
As we humans talk to each other it's fascinating to notice how little real agreement exists.
Yes there is much nodding and smiling. And just a little later people will remark about how good this or that conversation was. Then the various parties will go to war over the suddenly glaring differences they have. Hand to hand combat. Differences they had in these earlier conversations (but hadn't realised) now cause severe pain and mortal blows.
I know this because when I take a pen and draw these group conversations on the wall I 'bust' open the hidden definitions and semantics. Naked - the fact is written for everyone to see and remark. No hiding place. I could write it badly - but I try not to. But I draw a picture as well, a manifestation of the 'idea' of the conversation to prove its legitimacy. The picture has a real magic in it. It's not the art it's the idea.
The combination of a sincere phrase and a well chosen symbol or representation has the effect of a truth serum, lie detector and judge and jury all in one.
Drawing Distinctions - for the avoidance of doubt!

Grasping Imagination and agreement through visualisation of the truth!

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