The Recipe For The Right Kind Of Change

Yes the business world is getting more complex!

And the recipe for surviving it is elusive. The following is the secret sauce and yet so rarely applied it makes me wonder why.

1. Gathering – Firstly get as much insight and information together as you can. This is often called context.
2. Recognising – Then come to terms with the fact that there are a lot of fluid moving parts. This requires the ability to think beyond your usual perspective.
3. Understanding – Now make sense of all these dynamics ahead of getting properly stuck into analysing the patterns and clues inside it. This takes skilled, impartial and analytical experience.
4. Developing – Next create a framework that everyone can own and that is designed to enable the business to thrive in this ongoing and dynamic reality. Impartial facilitation ensuring the right dialogue and exploring the right stuff as you go.
5. Choosing -  As all this evolves create a set of rules that help you sort a good from a bad choice. These criteria will be at the core of making high quality decisions.
6. Engaging - Make sure your work contains an inspiring vision, a relevant way of operating, based on shared meaning and executable clarity
7. Aligning – Now get everyone on–board and allocate the tasks by engaging them properly – and easier now now that there is focus. 
8. Persisting – Don't forget to keep it going, refreshing it regularly and maintaining the courage and discipline to implement it properly.
9. Evolving – And to finish it all off become more and more comfortable with emerging 'dynamics' and never stop considering the possibilities that they open up every day.

Simples.

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The UI - I'm Getting Tired of Neon Flickery Signs. (Part 3)

In tight corners everyone needs a plan right? – a blueprint that gives at least some direction? Even if sometimes the plan is to have no plan then that's OK too – that's progress. For creatives that is a brief. Creatives need good briefs.

Looking at all one's heroes in life they seem to have an effortless way about them. They must have something drawn out to guide them – even if it's only in their heads. A doodle even. They seem to have an in-built navigation system that allows them to access a kind of quality and that enables them to know where they are going at all times. 

These people glide 'all-knowingly' through each innovation that they introduce, every piece of work they perform or public statement they may make. They have a quality that suggests an inner belief. One that most of us find so difficult to pull off.

Getting to the perfect design brief?

Life's a tough journey alright and one that we know has no signposts whatsoever other than that big neon sign in your head that occasionally flickers like Bates Motel - 'Progress? No Progress!' 

Structure or open to interpretation?

The story goes that Herbert Hoover drew the doodle below while being interviewed. When he tossed it in a White House wastebasket, a guest retrieved it and asked him to sign it. The guest then sold it to a collector called Thomas Madigan – who resold it for a substantial sum. I doubt that anyone knows what Herbert was thinking. 

The doodle was soon published in newspapers across the country, often with expert interpretations. 

“Generally this man is highly efficient, a man who figures things out and who is at his best tackling difficult tasks,” opined one for the Chicago Tribune. Another objected: “It is the normal thing for a man to do – to occupy himself scribbling with a pencil when talking over the telephone or listening to someone. It would be significant if the president did not do this.” Whatever.

Before it was all over, the doodle had been converted into a fabric pattern for children’s rompers, which even Hoover’s granddaughter was said to have worn. If the president had an opinion about all this, he kept it to himself. It was by no means a brief but we could interpret it.

What was he thinking?

Was he thinking? Was he accessing deep parts of his brain? Was he contemplating a wholly different idea while doodling this? Was he sketching out some way to get access to parts of his mind that only sketching this way could unlock? Was he figuring out how to progress or process his ideas? Was he aimlessly distracted and simply calming his mind to allow better thoughts to come through?

Well we will never know but it's been interpreted anyway.

The Philosophy Behind The Perfect Design Brief! 

Take just a minute to understand what Charles Eames achieved in this sketch below. Very little interpretation required. Anyone would know what their task was. The notes below explain the handwriting included in it. Perfect!

The essence of design as interpreted by Charles Eames in 1969

The Key To The Diagram:

1. If this area represents the interest and concern of the design office.

2. And this the area of genuine interest to the client.

3. And this the concerns of society as a whole.

4. Then it is in this area of overlapping interest and concern that the designer can work with conviction and enthusiasm.

NOTE: These areas are not static – they grow and develop as each one influences the others.

NOTE: Putting more than one client in the model builds the relationship - in a positive and constructive way.

Navigate this.

Getting to the heart of the matter with a doodle coupled with precise and logical thinking can be extremely valuable. To me it is at the heart of all valuable thinking process. It is what unlocks the perfect brief. The Colombo Question. Colombo has to be the best at understand how to get to the facts. How to take a brief. Charles Eames was most definitely one of my hero's too. And he definitely doodled AND he had a vision and a purpose to it. There was humour too.

Everything he did was structured. Eames could use his skill at doodling to suggest a framework for thinking and a blueprint for a future that others would buy into. His doodling caused fresh questions. His mind effectively understood the user and the requirement and it became the framework and springboard to something. It set the course. It was the initial navigation device. It was the brief.

I would love to have seen what he would have done with the UI for the apps we all need these days.

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The UI - Neon Flickery Signs (Part 2)

Talking of Neon Flickery Signs

There's a lot of heat and noise right now about how different an experience an iPad is from a book. How social media and networking on-line is nothing like a dinner party and how social and political change is being completely affected by 140 character messages. (Doh!) 

There's a lot of excitement over the experience on the web and the new found connectivity we all have. But probably 80-90% of the entire 300,000 Applications in the marketplace (and we can happily download them right now) are designed by people who don't understand the first thing about them. Mostly they get downloaded and immediately consigned to the trash.

What does that say about your brand? Your Neon Is Flickering!

Well yes but it's worth remembering that we are right at the beginning of understanding how these interfaces work. The user interface (UI) is rapidly becoming the our experience of everything. And because this is the case we had better get far better at understanding how to design the things. For us to create powerful new ways to access something in a valuable and exciting way then we need proper design intelligence to get it done properly.

So what insights would drive the perfect UI?

1. Meaning & Purpose. It would have to leave me feeling lonely when I wasn't attached to it. 
2. Anticipatory. It would have to have third guessed each move I was about to make. 
3. Learning. It would have to know me intimately and more and more each time I used it …
4. …and it would have to be so useful and relevant to what I want to spend my life doing that I would want to find a way to smuggle it into every part of my waking life. 
5. Indispensable. When I died it came with me to Varsic 8.
6. Designed To Work. It would be so well designed that the shape and form of it was referred to as the gold standard for a UI. People would have its design printed as t-shirts and songs and poems would be written about its symmetry. 
7. Loved. It would be a brand. 
8. Loved Yet More. Brands would float naturally within it and be at peace in its existence.
9. Connectedness. As required it would know when and how to connect with everything it needed to connect to. 
10. Intuitive. Above all though it would be simple elegant and intuitive to use - needing zero instruction. 
11. Utility. It would be so amazingly useful my behaviour and life would change.

There are a few examples of this level of UI emerging now. I have a few that are beginning to fall into this category. iTunes, my Tumblr blog, my kitchen, my Starbucks app, Yammer, Podio and Pinterest. But they are all personally relevant and for different reasons. And still there are a massive number that fail to understand the idea of the UI at all. So 'No Progress. Just a Flickery Neon sign.

Well to be fair of course there is huge progress even though we can all see millions of fails along the road and yes they do spoil the view. Far too many companies have let so called designers loose to create dreadful expressions of half baked ideas in the name of not being left out of the race for a

 UI.

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The UI - Neon Signs (Part 1)

Navigating Towards the Great User Interface In The Sky

Really helpful people will tell you that If you want go 'there' then you shouldn't have started from 'here'. Yes thank you for that. In your mind the destination will be marked with a big welcoming neon sign – but flashy signs are rarely what they seem.

I am reaching saturation point with the quantity/quality ratio of Applications these days. All promising the Earth in lurid neon lights but delivering about as much quality as the average TV talent show on a bad night. You know what it says about the destination when the neon flickers.

It's The Journey AND the Destination

Regular readers will know how much really I like the way most travel systems work. Airports and public transport are amongst my favourite things to experience. I love them. At each step there is new data to consume and at every turn a new challenge. Plenty of neon signs all over the place but at least Bates Motel had a shower that worked. 

It's the same for Apps and UI's right?

Out of around 1000 Applications (bought or downloaded for free) I probably use 20 fairly often. I wouldn't say I am entirely happy even with them but I give them the benefit of the doubt given the adolescent era we are currently in. The occasional one takes my breath away and reminds me that there are seriously talented people out there who deserve all the credit they get.

What makes a great App? – A great user interface!

A great user experience is the aim but very few actually get there. The design approach needs critical  thinking. The main ingredients: An initial 'end-to-end' design, no matter how sketchy – experienced creativity - market awareness and a clear end point in mind. 'Design thinking' in this way means iterating, making lots of prototypes to test – allowing everyone to make good decisions along the way. 

A lot of this comes down to asking the right questions – 

• Why do we need an App?
• What will people actually do with it?
• Are other people doing something similar?
• Are we capable of knowing what a good app looks like?
• Is the UI going to deliver a good experience for my customers? (More than once? At all?' )
• Are we prepared to invest the right time and effort in designing it and keeping it fresh?

In addition do we have the real insight into what our customers really want?

I react very positively when I think I have found a true insight. These insights need to be the kinds of things that take your breath away with their profound nature. Without an insight to go on I am prone to send myself through an airport for no reason at all –  just to remind myself what lack of inspiration looks and feels like

With a true insight I can hop one-legged across a wobbly rope tied across the Grand Canyon. I can.

But seriously if you are alive and in business today then you will want the best for your own UI and fast. 

You will need the right approach – a plan that understands that the game has totally changed. You will need people who have been somewhere near this stuff before to help you with clues. You will want someone or something who can be a companion for the journey and you will want to know that you can stop with comfort at various places on the way to check progress. 

If you aren't alive today then none of this will be any help whatsoever. 

Unless of course this writing has lasted so long that you are now borne and reading it and I will probably (thankfully) have passed on to some other multiverse and be talking Varsic 8 code. With a big neon sign saying 'Slight Progress' (written in Varsic of course). 

Time to clean up the act. Time for the humble UI to put its name in lights.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” - Mark Twain

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IMPORTANT - The Multiverse Theory Is Proven

"Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box. They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe."

I often feel like I am in a parallel universe. You may also feel like this? I've reached an event horizon and it's a big one!

Science suggests that is unlikely that anyone living in these parallel worlds will have much in common with us. It is hugely exciting to me to find that parallel universes are plausible places in science. A bit like me though they have remained unproven. Until now. I have fresh evidence!

I have indisputable evidence that the multiverse theory is bang on – indeed a done deal innit.

I observe people in these other worlds doing incredible, awesome-striking things. These are real events. There is no horizon here though - just events. Event's suggesting things that I can't even imagine doing in a million light years. Strange creatures smoking outside their large concrete buildings in the snow, wheezing with an oddly translucent glow. Earnestly reading (in reverse page order) so called newspapers as if they are based on fact. Repeatedly eating tasteless processed food while also professing to want to live a long life. Watching what they brand as Reality TV in the place of living Reality – many bizarre events – strange things like that.

"Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup – they slither wildly as they slip away across the universe."

What are these incredible beings doing and what are they thinking? Are they thinking? What is life actually like for them in that universe. Are they breathing what we breathe? Will they be OK?

Actually I don't give a damn about them because it's not real in this universe. They are in a different place, time and space continuum and as a result they don't impact on my quality of life.

That's because I have chosen to live in this particular universe.

I have managed to create my own reality, however distorted it might be and however stupid and distant that makes me really. It's my decision and it's based on a constant recalculation of what I think about what I think about. My own events and my own horizons.

"Sounds of laughter, shades of life are ringing through my opened ears – inciting and inviting me."

I suppose thankfully people from the other universes don't actually manage to make their language heard in this universe. We only share the fleetingest portally thing at certain times. Their plasma is only visible by the use of specialist tools and equipment. One of those tools, the car, I stopped using years back because it brought me too close too often. Occasionally the rail system seems to make them manifest though and I avoid that whenever I can - as does computing technology – although here I find I can create/project any representation or overlay onto them that I like – imagining for a few seconds that they come from here. You know.

This phenomena doesn't last long though as the power of my own world's systems (and energy fields) soon exposes their actual make up – they rapidly dissolve into vapid mist as I ask them anything of any real meaning or earthly value.

Increasingly though I am wondering whether the fault lies at my end of things. I'm questioning my own frames of reference (my calculations) because I seem increasingly in the minority. I'm becoming confused. The multiverses and the multiversals that inhabit them just grow and grow. 

Maybe this is just a Black Hole?

The defining feature of a black hole is the appearance of an event horizon – you know a boundary in spacetime through which matter and light can only pass inward towards the mass of the black hole. Events and Horizons. Nothing, not even light, can escape from inside the event horizon. The event horizon is referred to as such because if an event occurs within the boundary, information from that event cannot reach an outside observer, making it impossible to determine if such an event occurred.

As predicted by general relativity, the presence of a mass deforms spacetime in such a way that the paths taken by particles bend towards the mass. At the event horizon of a black hole, this deformation becomes so strong that there are no paths that lead away from the black hole.

I'm sure that's what it is. Or am I?

"Images of broken light, which dance before me like a million eyes, they call me on and on across the universe."

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Shooting Trouble (before it shoots you)

Thank you for purchasing the ultimate drug of the 21st century!

If your life doesn't light up immediately then check your connections. And if this trouble persists refer to the section on 'trouble shooting'. In your pack today you will find 6,930,055,154 people, a smart device (iPad/Smart Phone/Computer), fresh coffee, a vast array of assorted social networks and related tools – together with the infinite opportunity to either waste or improve your entire life. 

Glad to have you as my 'friend'!

Oh and don't forget if you have any issues, breakdowns or personal problems with any of this then refer to the section on 'trouble shooting'. Oh crap, there's no section on that. In fact there's no instruction on starting up, figuring it out, how to avoid making a complete ass of yourself or even getting to any valuable use! 

Can I start over?

Nope.

Everyone is using the web and social networking for different ends. (Doh!) Personally I'm using it to rehearse my own thinking on lots of things. I'm using it for finding new people and stimulus for my thinking and widening my influence in some way to achieve my ambition for positive change. Trouble is how do I get to choose my friends on this journey?

Like all journeys there are thieves, charlatans and poets, wizards, jugglers, gurus – those with great lessons and stories along the rugged path. So in all of this is it possible to spot the great connections from the vampires and the leeches (before they screw us) and in so doing do we know how to behave properly?

(I'm having trouble shooting the vampires and leeches when I find them).

Turn to the section on Sinister 

Manipulation…

We have the attention span of a gnat's 'App' – and moreover a very small percentage of that is getting used with any quality or finesse. Just as we only use 4% of our brain (some plainly far less) – we only use a fraction of the dazzling menu of tools and capabilities we now have

What is that all about? Nowadays we edit everything we do down to text speak. IMOK (with that). However we don't read user guides anymore, and we expect everything to be intuitive and easy - or even already done for us. Where does this end up I wonder?

In all of this are we losing the elegance and quality of everything or is it just an inevitable evolution, a stepping-stone to something else – and we should just get over it? Probably. Our word processing technology completes our sentences for us - (I just got evil pluton instead of evolution).

Turn to the section on Vile Revulsion… 

In getting rid of the instruction and guidance, that came with our earlier complex equipment, are we losing the plot? Are we losing any chance we had of understanding what constitutes positive standards of use and decency – or are we so darned civilised that we don't need it and our peers will guide is from some massive cyber-help community in the cloud? Well who has the role of setting the standards in that scenario? I want to meet him/her/it/thing. (Please)

Do we really not need something to fill this gap these days? Well it isn't going to happen. It's self-regulating right?

Where does the self-regulating quality control come from as we all migrate to virtual relationships, and as the general context of politeness and grace in behavioural standards decline? Am I old fashioned to still expect truth and honour, respect and privacy when I want it? I used to be able to take the phone off the hook. Now I even have robot call centres calling me every day to re lay the lawns that I don't have. In social communities the deceit is even more sinister and creeping.

Courtesy is so double edged. 

Do we want conflict in our on-line life? Not really. Can we live with aggression any less in our virtual relationships. Personally I have this big issue with the lack of respect in on-line debates, the lack of quality of comments and posts but do I go and rant and rage? No I tend to just let it drift by and avoid confrontation but I am getting close to changing tack.

Turn to the section on Impolite Sycophancy...

Do I actually want (or need) everyone to be friends with me? Err… no actually but in reality and by not raising the game (and being more aggressive/selective) are we all unintentionally lowering that invisible peer group framework standard? Should I be more aggressive with banality and superficiality? 

Totes!*

And in being superficial and selective on line (and in not replying or 'liking') we are now signalling something else it seems. Insincerity and lack of integrity – and the new buzz is apparent. Becoming so rife it's not even funny. 

Enough of all that then – it's the air-cover people now try to fly under that intrigues me. It is far too easy these days for people to appear like they genuinely want to be friends in the online space when its blindingly obvious that they actually want to simply drink my blood and urinate all over my children in the pursuit of promoting their fucking cure-all premium rate nose-bag amaze balls self-help weekend.

Can someone please pass the user guide as we need to do some trouble shooting. I want to rediscover the grace, charm, art and craft of what real friendship means! 

Hanging up gently!

 

(*Totes – shorthand for 'totally' for those of you who are wondering. It's not an umbrella.)

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The Wonder Wall

Do you ever wonder where you (or your business) is headed? 

If you could x-ray your business and find out what is required to fix it up for success – would you do it? Have you ever wondered what's stopping you being more successful? Have you ever wondered what the future really holds?

Would you recognise yourself in this vision when you started to get there? 

Have you thought would signify that degree of progress – could you actually measure it? Have you ever wondered what is REALLY stopping you, and those around you, from achieving that vision? Have you really thought hard about what is valuable about what you do – and what isn't? And have you wondered about who really thinks it's valuable anyway?

Have you wondered why it is that you have this burning ambition but those around you have a different version, definition or plan? And even if you can talk about it why is it so difficult to get everyone (literally) on the same page and owning their own contribution to it.

Do you wonder about how much better things would be if only you had the means to rethink the way it all works? If you could adopt new ways of thinking and working that resonated with the new world?

Is it any wonder that this just gets harder and harder. It's just more complex. The world is now very different to the one you tried to be successful in a year ago?

Do you wonder about the possibilities for you or your business if only you could inject more creativity, innovation and ingenuity? If you could only focus your best resources on the right stuff at the right time ad make smarter decisions?

What a wonderful thought if you could create and collaborate in a way that ensures that your thinking Is not driven by a particular agenda or a bias to a specific outcome and you just did the right thing no matter what?

I wonder!

Creating A Wonder Wall…

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Positive Dynamite - Game Changing Thinking & Capability

Imagine a brick being thrown through your window by a snarling Ninja with a stiletto between his teeth – would you intervene? Or a country being terrorised by a 3 foot 6 inch dictator – would you start an uprising? What about being ravaged by an advisor in a cheap suit telling your business what to do (that helps him more than your business) – would you grab his earlobe and flick him out of your 50th storey window? 

Getting involved is a tough call these days. If we see someone in difficulty or something dodgy going down do we worry about out own safety or do we dive in? 

To intervene in events is to change the event – and there are consequences. 

These are complex scenarios right? Lots of different dynamics at play, lots of different decisions that could be made – many of them with life or death consequences. There are real people involved, real forces at work and the slightest move could cause unholy catastrophe. To change anything is hard. 

To change it for the better every time is an unlikely outcome but a worthy aim. 

So for me the smouldering question becomes one of how to intervene without being killed, how to interpret the facts correctly so that the right decision is made (which floor to throw the foul consultant off) and how to benefit wider society sustainably as a result of the whole exercise.

Firstly I think we need to understand that we are all part of the way it works. 

Yes it's all made up of individuals, including Ninjas, working to survive through their families, tribes, teams, neighbourhoods, divisions, departments, businesses and corporations, institutions and so on. Many different ways to organise. But organisations, like societies are not machines. They are living systems. 

For far too long we haven't thought about them like that. We have wanted to control them, fix them with iron bars and heavy chains and force them to work continuously for us without fail – for ever. It's time we started to get to grips with today's dynamic realities. 

Let's take business

Most businesses today were designed in and for a different era. That means at least a year ago. They were definitely not designed with today's dynamics or chaotic context in mind. Their people, processes and systems were deliberately baked that way – fixed into place with concrete (and now highly resistant to change) because their ambition (and idea) of success was driven by a desire for efficiency rather than flexibility.

Now imagine what's going to be needed to do to change this. What will need to be thought about? Everything right? We need dynamite.

Dynamite is an intervention. The effect of it is transformative, needs little interpretation and yet it scatters large amounts of bits and pieces all over the place. The effect of the explosion then needs to be understood again to create the new or the transformed world it has helped create. Sometimes this can be a positive disruption and sometimes a negative one. Dependent on its aim.

Most people wouldn't use dynamite to change a business. 

But increasingly it is becoming a strong contender without invitation. Technological change is akin to dynamite. It has changed the way business is done, products and services get sold, value gets exchanged. It has scattered bits of some businesses all over the place and people (and the business itself) are still picking up the pieces. We had better get used to dealing with things like this.

Whether we like it or not, and within society at large, there is a maelstrom of complex and unstructured information and forces being thrown up. (Yawn) You know - social media, so called Big Data – all the old and now the new digital platforms are generating tons of stuff. So yes, there is a mind-boggling amount of data. Data is not in short supply – the intelligence upon which to act is. 

As a direct result of these explosions we are talking about needing some pretty heavy (weapons-grade) capability to stand any chance of figuring it all out. So we definitely need new thinking but we also need new doing and that involves three very connected things – at the very least.

Choreography, Extensibility & Capability – Thinking That Covers Everything

Capability. 

Having the capability to do things 'well' in the 21st Century certainly makes a real difference to a business – it's true in every walk of life. To make positive dynamite in the business the new leader needs to have new capabilities in the mix. These capabilities should include:

1. Large dollops of critical thinking (with impartiality and objectivity as standard). 
2. The capability to identify marketable insights (through the patterns that are now observable). 
3. Some properly applied creativity and decision quality right across the enterprise.
4. A business intelligence system that alerts and then continuously monitors that the best course is being taken.
5. A values system and cultural sensitivity beyond the standard tick box culture of yesterday
6. Customer experience and ethical product and service capability
7. A crystal ball (With batteries)

OK these are just some examples. Nowadays though the REAL capabilities are much harder to define. 

Things like being comfortable with chaos and ambiguity, quality design skills, the art of story-telling, curiosity of and a mastery in positive disruptive (and systemic) thinking. Add to this craft skills in data modelling, visual thinking and user interface design – these are all very rapidly becoming the new imperatives of capability.

But it is doing all these things 'best' that distinguishes the leader from the commodity, enabling him to be in the game – not just a bystander. Yet having the capability to understand and then master the new dynamics (and ultimately opportunities) of the current business world is still very rare. So creating, transferring and maintaining these newer capabilities within an enterprise is now the new battleground. This field and its practice marks out the opportunity we believe is central to the progress and performance of every business.

Choreography: Most situations businesses find themselves in are paradoxically highly the same and highly unique.

For example they demand the distinction and differentiation of their position and brand – yet they are dealing with the same marketplaces, multiplicity of channels and critical systems/resources as most of the competition. They want to solve their specific problem – but these problems are very similar in nature to those of every other business – cultural, behavioural, leadership, decision making quality and so on. 

Choreography, unlike concretised best practice is therefore a far more powerful way of thinking - orchestrating all these moving parts into unique combinations of other collections (sets) of moving parts or solutions – in rapid time.

“Even in the same organization, if one were to try to re-apply an intervention that worked once at at a different time, it would produce different results because the component parts and the relationships which constitute it have changed. Furthermore, the relationship between the organization and its environment will have changed as well. So the imposition of the intervention is not only likely to fail, but likely to produce entirely unpredictable and surprising results.”

Extensibility: Extensibility on the other hand is a way to deal with the future now. But central and woven within both capability and choreography. By thinking differently and imaginatively about what patterns we see (or have experienced and can calculate) we can 'engineer' smarter pieces into the way the business should think, build and work that will enable far less risk and cost than if we added them at a later date.

The thing is though – who is actually going to do this work – causing the intervention in the first place then having the right capability to do anything creative with it? Looking for the elusive needle of an insight against which to change the course of things. Building the right frame within which to think and develop it. 

This level of impartial capability is scarce. Intervention done for a specific outcome is easier to spot – it quickly gets exposed and the agenda gets busted. That’s good. Interpretation is also of course just that – someone's lens is pressed against the data and 'hey-presto' a not entirely impartial answer emerges. Is that the best interpretation? 

The big questions now are around who is skilled at this stuff – who has the capability - how do we get to be confident about the dynamics, the stuff, the data, how to constantly improve the quality of it and how to federate the discoveries that are made. I want to give a big credit to Michael Yanakiev whose great writing I am riffing with below.

“One reason why so many change efforts fail in large organization? Many “change efforts” are lead by the big consulting firms, who take “best practice” examples from a few textbook cases or from other clients and then re-purpose them from one company to another, ad infinitum, at a healthy profit. This would work fine if organizations were like machines – machines for which we had the blueprints – and if changing one lever would produce the same effect every time you pulled it.” - Michael Yanakiev

So who can we trust and who has the required capability? 

Well there is no doubt that there are great consultants out there – we know many of them. The problem with the intervention and then translation is that the 'frames' through which the answer emerges is not entirely neutral. The core of this is the fact that when anyone takes a brief about a problem the definition of that problem is biased by that expertise and therefore also partial. 

When I ran a part of a large business I found it very hard to step back far enough and see the whole picture within which the system actually lived and the other problem is that people view the system as a very fixed enterprise that everything revolves around rather than the other way around.

“Our governments, companies and organizations really aren’t like big machines, and that the theory required to interact with them effectively requires a fundamental re-assessment of the very notion of concepts such as “best practice”. The only responsible thing that one can do when operating in this domain is to test, sense, interpret, theorize, test, sense, interpret, theorize, etc., all the while producing highly specific and temporally contingent local results (hat tip to Dave Snowden and the sense-making guys for this terminology).”- Michael Yanakiev

In summary…

Whatever you decide, your capability in intervening to make change happen had better be good, or it will do more harm than good. The frame you use to think had better be the right one. You will be dealing with real human beings. Emotion filled – high energy – high maintenance assets. Their resistance to any change; to do things differently is readily observable and happily so are the remedies.

• Individuals need motivation and conscious engagement – giving them real meaning. 
• Do it with an integrity of intention. Superficiality no longer cuts it. Get real and include the truth.
• Ensure sustained evidence/proof of the logic. This is going to have to play out in the real world. Make it so or change it. People get that.
• The continued inspiration of the leadership. Inspire, motivate and have the courage to be humble.
• A recognition of the achievability of the purpose. If it's a long way off tell folk - don't try to fool people. You will be busted.
• Simplicity of all of the interactions required – but not simplistic. Plain English and keep it simple. Just engage and inform people if you can't include them directly in the strategy or change thinking.

Not simple though right?

Posted via email from Just Thinking!

'Creative-Class Consulting' - Weapons Grade Business Thinking

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."

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Plain Journeys 2. Love - Getting Good At Stopping

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!