Eddie Obeng's blog

Form follows fun, feedback, framework, and freedom

2011-11-25T04:39:00.001-08:00

Last week I was given a conversation starter, on Radical Openness. I was teaching and virtulaly meeting and only managed to give it thought this week. I splurged out a stream of consciousness which I thought in the spriti of radical openness I woudl share... :-)
Can I start with a strange story and dilemma? One of the principles I started Pentacle ( my network ) on was that of "no boundaries" - everything is open. I've had new members comment on the fact that they could actually see the financial numbers in invoices and that it was a great shock and surprise! Not something which would have happened in any organisation they'd participated in before. We even have a shared email box with absolutely everything that everybody can see. The fascinating dilemma is that the bigger the network gets the more useful the volume of freely accessible information but at the same time new joiners respond increasingly negatively against the openness -. I don't fully understand it but i have some hints and hypotheses. I would be really interested to hear your views on why this should happen. At the same time the ‘old hands’ who do understand the value, slowly seem to begin to resent the contributions that they are making. It's really fascinating. My dilemma is whether to respond and recreate the old world of secrecy or to be even more open about the challenge this new set of attitudes is creating –

with the possibility of making it even more amplified?

I am always more attracted to the bigger patterns than the individual events so for me any glimpse at the pattern is

I guess we learnt from Radical Honesty that to achieve sustainability and a happier, healthier life, that there needs to be a “life force” and emotion to selecting when to be free not to stick to being a fanatic about any single idea. And we know that the more open the system the more we can provide use and value to people. I think it was June Cohen who explained how, with Ted’s open translation project, quality was assured by incorporating the very simple principle of interdependence so that the pair of translators and reviewers were interdependent. What I am intrigued by is if other self organising catalysts such as ensuing feedback and feedforward could possibly enable faster penetration of better quality ideas

On a different scale if ideas are to propagate and continue to propagate there needs to be an energy source – fuelled by the passion of the inventors or by a resource or financial loop. Without this ability to ‘loop it up’ the source becomes a ‘flash in the pan’ and . One of my colleagues uses a model which involves being radically open with all the teaching materials he generates, a bit like the MIT open courseware program but instead of relying on donations or waiting for some of his students to die and leave him money, he protects fiercely the software which can be used to accelerate or deliver the projects that the learning supports and uses paid for courses to fund his activities and family.

Open software development in IT has demonstrated the power of radical openness – and created a new set of dilemmas and issues – mostly on the political front about involvement application ownership use value and direction. The Free software FOSS movement’s debates and the unspoken question “Shouldn’t a programmer deserve or ask for rewards of their creativity? And on what is meant by ‘free’ continues to haunt the concept. The real value of Radical Openness I suspect will emerge once we systematically apply it to the real ‘no go’ areas like national security, state secrets, or even areas like the pay checks people take home. We will need to be aware of the emergent effect openness can create. Here in the UK we decided to make public top executive salaries about two decades ago . Like many decisions we did not attempt to glimpse the future. I wish we had because there were a number of unforeseen and unexpected consequences. Once the numbers were known, a salary arms race began at the top of the organisations. The Shareholders wanted to know why their CEO was so badly paid compared to other CEO’s - Was S/he not good enough ? Was their investment at risk? Could they not recruit that bette paid CEO from the competition which had been doing a bit better than their company recently?

The other side of the coin was also exposed enabling the CEO’s to target better remuneration by switching sides and loyalties and the rest is history. Today we discover that over the past couple of decades the pace of pay rise at the top is over 30 times the average (of course I over simplify the story but the question I wish to ask is, When we decide to firmly eject the genie from the bottle how can we tip the balance towards happiness and fun and health? Or is it possible that with out radical openness being firmly established we cannot see the implications of being open?

New Units for a NEU World after midnight...

2011-09-11T11:03:00.000-07:00

Just before Christmas last year- a friend sent me the video clip below. It makes sense until you take the time to think about it....

You know how tall you are - we measure this in metres or feet and inches

You know how fit and fat you are we measure this in kilos or stones

You know how long it takes to get to the office we measure this in hours and minutes.

You know how much wine you've drunk 3 glasses 2 units or 5 litres...

It is impossible to get confused between the units and think that your office is six kilos away and you are three hours tall and weigh six litres and are about to drink six inches of wine with your meal...

And then we come to the units used in economics.

In spite of all the jokes economists make about disagreeing they all use just the one unit of measure £ or dollars or Euros...

This explains the crash - how people could believe that they were getting richer whilst actually getting poorer (because they confused value - how much someone else willpay for what you have with wealth - what you have)

The video reminded me how hard it is for people to undersatnd the difference between wealth, value and money (different types even of this) since they are all measured in the same unit...

We definitely need New Units for a NEU world after midnight....

When Being Right is Worse than Being Wrong...

2011-09-11T10:40:00.000-07:00

In my book All Change! the lead character Franck at one stage, when he is starting to lose faith in his project management capabilities, says over and over to himself " I am right. I am right. I am right!" He seems to get confidence and energy in the certainty of correctness. This need to be right is something that connects, engineers, accountants and perfectionists of all sorts - connects them in a locked in spiral of doom.

The reasons for the spiral of doom are several but I shall only cover three of them. The first is most aptly explained by Prof Kathryn Shulz .

The second is the fact that in our new world of change. We have been brought up from an ealry age to believe that there are right answers and they are right forever. But in our New World things which were once wright have a habit of becoming wrong. Long term planning doesn't. Investments aren't, If you've watched World after midnight (below) the message would have hit home.

Strauss and Howe also warn us that the next generation on the rise (in America) are likely to be comprised of pragmatists. Pragmatists are far less inclined to be obsessed with whether they have the 'right' solution - and far more inclined to ask "Will it work?"

If you are going to be competing in business against pragmatists in our new fast changing complex world where your conviction and speed of decision making is damped down by worry that you could be wrong then beware, being right could be worse than being wrong...

Shopping for Delicious Opportunities

2011-08-18T21:51:00.000-07:00

I’m amused. On the radio there was a joke about the fact that ‘the French riot to save their pensions, the Greeks against the ‘cuts’ and the British riot because they want new trainers.’ I’m confused – it doesn’t take much. In London and parts of the United Kingdom a large number of our citizens decided through their social networking connections to go shopping together, out of hours, without paying for anything. It took the police and authorities several days to get as coordinated as the instant message savvy citizens.

That’s not why I’m confused. I’m confused because, still listening to the radio, all the analysts and commentators continue to repeat the same sides of the same old arguments they had before the event, after the event as if there was nothing to be learnt from the event itself. One commentator concluded “As I’ve always said, the kids don’t have enough opportunities.’

Once a thinking pattern takes hold it’s almost impossible to shift. It’s largely because for our hunter/gatherer ancestors, the energy spent on coming up with an idea (remember the brain burns energy at nine times the rate of muscle) was so precious, that you had to stick to the idea and see it through. In those days seeing it through meant that your idea to break the coconut with a rock had to be developed and applied and and hopefully was delicious and replenished the energy originally invested in the idea.

If a group of people adopt the same thinking pattern over a period of time it’s harder to disprove the idea because the ones who haven’t tested it still buy-in and are waiting their turn. It makes it hard to persuade them that the idea doesn’t work. It’s common for shared thinking patterns to pass their sell-by date.

In the innovation space one of the strongest thinking patterns is to concentrate on the initial creative process. Divergence, convergence, open, social, insight led, design led, invention led vissualised. But just consider, “What fraction of the ideas you have do you actually write down? 1 in10? And of those, what fraction do you share with others in order to improve them? 1 in 20? And of those, what fraction do you actually line up the resources to explore? 1 in14? Execute? Successfully? And the final customers love it and think it is suitably ‘delicious’ to replenish the time money and resource which you have invested in the idea? Strange to consider that if you follow ideas from the ‘sparq’ to making money or delivering societal benefit the ratio easily reaches 1:100,000! This pattern of thinking came from the advertising industry in the 1960’s where it was discovered that the more ideas you had the more you were likely to have a great one. And just one idea was enough. Unfortunately we live in the 2010’s. It’s different.

After almost four years of missed forecasts and worse unexpected surprises, the economists and analysts are getting shy. They are beginning to suspect that their thinking patterns are past their sell-by date. No sense stimulating motor car manufacture when your country doesn’t make motor cars or spending Keynesian dollars on construction which is all carried out by migrant workers. Having overtaken Nokia by surprise, Apple is now attempting to patent a “black glass square with rounded edges” in order to stave off their competition. The competition now know that there is a market for glass fronted devices. In our new 21st century world the pace is relentless, the events come at a blinding pace, and an opportunity once spotted is fallen upon by millions like a rugby scrum.

So, in short there are no longer opportunities. Sorry, the kids won’t have opportunities. Opportunities are recognisable and once they are recognised they have a short shelf-life. As innovators we’ve realised that instead we must create or discover possibilities, and then our real challenge is to transform those rapidly into our opportunities and then into a ‘delicious’ reality which is well worth the effort.

What do you do when the Old World just won't let go?

2011-07-30T07:57:00.000-07:00

It's a setback - the rebels are fighting each other and Qaddafi is delighted.

Fortunately I don't have many new world rebels to fight but fighting the Old World is tough enough.

In the UK in the 21st century we are planning to spend billions building a railway! - Would be much cheaper to install better broadband to rural areas. And I suspect gerearate substantially less CO2 and be more sustainable but no, we reach back to Victorian ideas of "moving the poepl instead of the information". I guess that they are imagining that in some Keynesian way it will stimulate the economy. But in a global world I suspect that all the work will be done by migrant workers who will repatriate their wages and all the contracts will be won by non domiciled large corporations. The model of the 1920's no longer works but that's no reason not to give it another try.

The UK Chancellor (Finance minister) is being blamed for slow growth - Those mad economists, they really believe that we are all like rats in a cage - it is by setting conditions that countries and economies thrive - What a load of nonsense - it is by you, me, small businesses owners (after all they make up the bulk of the activity in most countries) waking up early, being brave, trying something different and new, travelling abroad to sell our ideas and wares. That's what makes an economy and country work. And I have to tell you If you don't think an idea will ever turn a profit no amount of tax incentives is going to make you start.

All the dazzle noise and often investment goes into start-ups. And yet we know that almost all start ups fail within three years - Why? Because in Old World speak - "That's how it's done!" But wouldn't it make much more sense to help the businesses already running? Give them a way to develop new ideas (like SlizedBredTM) , new tools, for instant business cases (like GapLeapTM) and the skills to execute (delivering Quest Projects)

But you can only influence policy, radio programme planning schedules and the like 18 months in advance of the event so I guess tat there is not really that much can be achieved immediately when the Old World just won't let go.

Project managment is dead.... long live...

2011-07-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

In the early 1990’s the internet existed. It was the name of the association and magazine for the INTERnational NETwork of project managers. Now we know the internet to be something completely different.

Then, a project was defined as something with a beginning a middle and an end. Analogously the approach was akin to painting-by-numbers once you knew what was to be done and how it was to be done then simply hand out the pots of paint each colour to a different role and voila! I famously split the audience and began a ‘bun-fight’ amongst the audience, half agreeing with me and the other half opposed, when, at a conference in Trondhiem, I announced that my research suggested that not all projects had a beginning, middle and end. And then I introduced them to new types such as going on a Quest (where the goal was clear but there was little clarity on methods) but it could still be executed, making a Movie which was the converse of that and being lost in the Fog, my favourite, where the goal and method (and sometimes event eh reason) couldn’t be clarified and yet something had to be done!

And the world has moved on. By the turn of the century in most industries and sectors (even the public sector) the pace and scale (usually global) of change were overtaking the ability of organisations to learn and change. There was a flourishing of my more open project types and yet the response was more painting-by-numbers Prince certification and the growth of the ‘risk industry’ as a way to square the circle of ambiguity. By the end of the noughties these approaches were being supplanted by lean, extreme and agile approaches with exciting brand names which promised to respond to the actual challenges of our real new world. But remember never to let a slogan, catchy title or phrase replace your critical thinking. The new breed still rely on the ‘Archimedean ‘Give me a place to stand I shall move the world’ and Cartesian, linear approach where the process and planning is more important the n the human emotion, engagment and leadership. But there is no place to stand! As the twentyteens take hold, clients morph into multiple stakeholders, projects into change programmes, the global challenges of; sustainability, financial stability and peace will only delivered through effective project and change management and yet still three quarters of projects don’t work or don’t work properly. The world cannot afford this level of waste. And we must ask why if our managers are so professional and our approaches correct there is this level of carnage – this would be intolerable for a surgeon or even the manufacture of a car.

I believe that the reason is that again the world has moved on. Project Management. You can only manage what is there to manage, people resources, plans. When people are affected by change the real story becomes more about the people and less about the things or software being created. In a new world which is complex fast changing and uncertain management has no significant role. Foresight wins. Leadership trumps. This means that the habits and intuition our professional project manager shave honed over the decades will be wrong. The language used in the community will be like talking about cars as horseless carriages a nod to a horse which is no longer relevant or required.

Four years ago a client of mine charged me to see if I could ensure 100% perfect projects. I laughed at the idea. My response was instinctive. Even for me, a well practiced ‘agent provocateur’ and slayer of sacred cows, the idea of “perfect projects” in today’s world seemed preposterous!. But he was right and nine months later I’d developed a set of behaviours, thinking, cultural changes which brought the goal much closer. Much more closely aligned to harnessing extra sensory perception or premonition, projecting into the future, but none of the concepts frame works behaviour or tools m had anything to do with management.

So project management is dead! Long live...

Reflections on a Noughty Decade

2011-06-21T07:44:00.000-07:00

There’s a joke which goes “I almost won the lottery last week” “What really!” “Yes. Absolutely. The chap next door won it…” 2000 to 2011 was that sort of decade. We’d almost all become internet billionaires and then it dot bombed, then boomed again then bust spectacularly, but whilst some were PIGS, tigers were still growing and in a global world, uniformity isn’t. The first recession in living memory where prices continued to rise as demand fell – so much for classical economics of supply and demand. Society continued to become more complex, splintered and interconnected as now the average child has five grandparents! The complexity and interdependence of the world's activities have grown but there has not been the same growth in our ability to understand complex issues or move away from linear, Cartesian thinking and Government-by-policy. Lofty goals and intentions such as concern for the environment and sustainability led to plans to massacre millions of wild camels in Australia to offset carbon! Subsidies designed to discourage logging, which are based on agreeing to reductions in targets for logging, led to the countries simply setting higher targets which resulted in more of the Amazon forest being chopped down whilst at the same time the logging countries receive subsidies! As this new world has taken hold, the ‘Black Swan’ surprises seem to increase- from Lehman Brothers to the Arab Spring. Our ‘old world’, outdated thinking models continue to leave us blind to reality. The knowledge we must manage, is not the knowledge tacit or otherwise, of what is and how it is. But instead the new knowledge of what could be and how it could be. That and a clarity of the patterns which now persist as events come and go or evaporate.

After decades of promise, finally, companies like Apple and single application websites like twitter, enable us to use and manage knowledge without the constant struggle and by designing dummy solutions which mean that to use and operate them we do not need to acquire new knowledge ourselves or in anyway change our habits and behaviour, these solutions bypass the human resistance to change. (They call it ‘intuitive’ but actually it means ‘using your current knowledge and skills.’ Would an ipad be intuitive to a 12th century peasant?). Companies and organisations have been slow to understand and adapt. This has resulted in a form of time travel where, you go to work and use information and knowledge equipment and software set in the late 1990’s and then come home in the evening and connect the 21st century equipment to with youtube and face book and digg whilst skyping your grandchildren.

To me it has been the first decade where the recognition that the pace of change, complexity and scale outstrip our traditional rate of learning has been so obvious.

I was intitially tempted to typify the decade with a book and to select one of my own – “The Complete Leader” – the first book on leadership with a section on mis-leadership. Mis-leadership is not about being a poor leader but instead about being a fantastic leader who leads followers and the world to misery, bankruptcy, catastrophe and poverty or worse. But instead I have opted for a film, ”Avatar”. The biggest grossing film ever. Avatar was completely congruent, using new digital 3D technology with a highly creative script which only worked as a concept if it could be represented in three dimensions – the floating islands seen from below in 3D make sense of the need to fly around on the ikran. It works because it is congruent, new world technology, a new world idea, and new world execution and so on. Imitators have applied the old world thinking and have created non-congruent efforts, just with 3D effects and then been disappointed with the results. Avatar is evocative of what the decade could have been, if the lottery had not been won by the chap next door.

The best innovation of the decade I think has been the discovery by pharmaceutical companies that it costs them nothing and at the same time helps mankind to sell crucial drugs to the poorer parts of the world at cost or below. The discovery that they to date have only made drugs for a small proportion of the world, the rich world, and their apparent determination to do something about it has to be very high on the list of the best innovations of the decade.

Mis-Reads

2011-01-19T00:39:00.000-08:00

For Christmas I was given a "Mini Manual of Humourous Quotations"

I opened it at random and discovered, "Why does life keep teaching me lessons I have no desire to learn?" by Ashliegh Brilliant.

But my second I found neither funny or agreed with.

Dorothy Parker is supposed to have said "The two most beautiful words in the English Language are 'check' enclosed'" Unfortunately, I see no beauty in verifying the contents of a package.... I suspect they meant 'Cheque enclosed'.

Public Sector Innovation by Pentacle

2010-12-20T09:09:00.000-08:00

Public Sector Innovation

Things change...

2010-12-20T08:55:00.000-08:00

That 'Change' happens,

I must agree

But why, oh why

Must ti happen to me!

Eddie Obeng

Big Cuts, Big Society, Excellent Execution and Happy Citizens. Why Project management is better than being lucky…

2010-12-16T05:32:00.000-08:00

The plane is almost full. The luggage racks overhead have been badly packed with bags wheels sideways instead of front to back, neat leather briefcases and coats mis-arranged to make them neither brief nor tidy. My wheelie bag would only fit if I spent half an hour rearranging the mess and perhaps asking a passenger or two to put their jackets back on. Someone should have been periodically reviewing as the racks were filled, shuffling moving, checking and changing. Now it looks to difficult to try so I add to the problem. I ask the person in seated in the aisle if he minds me stowing my hand baggage under the seat using between us for my luggage. He doesn’t object but observes that there might yet be someone to sit between us. Bringing even more luggage and requiring that I move mine. I reply brightly, “We’ll be lucky – I prefer to ‘do lucky.’”

Now I watch anxiously as the last passengers join the flight. I am so intent on this that I forget the challenge of my day. I’m going to Ireland to work with 120 executives from the construction and building industry. My job is to help them to flesh out and plan the execution of new and challenging strategies. But the real challenge is that their strategies – developed over the previous months are probably already obsolete. As if planning to make life more difficult, the government had spent the previous week announcing that all was well, only to follow it by accepting a massive IMF bail out package along with the additional austerity and uncertainty that it would bring. Excellent Execution in this situation will require flexible, responsive and amazing programme and project management.

I open my newspaper to discover that the UK government, as part of its “Big Society” vision, intends to measure the nations “Happiness” – well not really happiness more sort of ‘quality of life.’ The opposition, commentators and journalists are having a field day, condemning it as a waste of public money, hare-brained and impossible to measure.

In the end I am lucky. The hostess alerts us to safety and the flight departs without me having to retrieve my bag from under the chair. And now I can reflect. Not only on how lucky I have just been but how unlucky the two countries have been.

Unlucky because for decades they could have been run by project managers but instead were run by economists, lawyers, intellectuals and civil servants.

I began to imagine if UK PLC or let’s call it ‘The UK Project’ had been run by a project or programme manager over the past few decades.

__________________________________

What happens at the moment…

Purpose:: Based on constantly changing Hard measures (growth, % employment, number of crimes. Significant effort goes into deciding on policies. Many focused on inputs (we will provide an extra 2000 rail carriages) and outputs (we will have 20,000 more graduates) or processes (all hospitals will be stem cleaned) rather than on establishing the outcomes and benefits

Type of Change: All change is shoehorned into a Painting by Numbers template. If it cannot be delivered as such the risk is transferred and multiplied by outsourcing it someone else who doesn’t know how to execute it

Stakeholder management: Citizen needs are guessed at and written up well in advance (in a manifesto) and then largely ignored later. Stakeholders are treated as recipients of the project and are not encouraged to participate or partner in the activities. It appears crazy to check if your stakeholders are happy.

Learning & review: 5 yearly review process of the overall programme carried out without any objective tools. After the completion or non completion of the projects, long reviews leading to thousand page documents of recommendations led by a member of the ‘great and good’ who may or may not be impartial. Because the programme is organized in the same way as the luggage racks were packed on my flight, big cuts every 20 – 30 years
Planning coordination and Risk Elimination: All budgetary processes on a three year comprehensive spending review cycle. Micromanagement during execution to try to resolve issues and keep things on track

Leadership: Line management rather than leadership. Periodic reshuffling of the line managers responsible

Team development: Team is the Government and the civil service/ Public sector

__________________________________

How it could have been if run by a good programme / project manager…

Purpose: Success is in both Hard (Fast – Good - Cheap) and Soft (Relationships, learning, personal involvement, security, ease of use etc) arenas (Big Society?)

The business case containing hard and soft outcomes is developed early. Like every good programme a FutureMapping exercise is carried out to ensure that the ere are no unexpected negative consequences of the programme

Type of Change: Recognition that a successful programme will include all type of projects from ‘Quests’ to ‘Making Movies’ to painting by numbers.

Stakeholder management: Stakeholder needs are re-checked at the start of each project and managed through the review process. The stakeholder is an integral part of success. Stakeholders re encouraged to try, review and even lead and execute parts of the projects in the programme. Stakeholder ownership of both the process and the result is important. It’s essential and normal to check if your stakeholders are ‘Happy’.

Learning & review: Reviews on different parts of the programme at different times depending on the project type. Foggier projects are subject to a frequent drumbeat (progress vs. learning and current need0, Painting by Numbers is checked at the milestones (progress vs. plan) Open, rapid and immediate ActionReplays during the project to capture the learning and build a plan for the future

Planning coordination and Risk Elimination: All budgets are as business cases created with a GapLeap.
Metrics are Onba-l-ance , clear hard and soft, internal/external. absolute/relative and are established at the start. Risks reviewed and eliminated early to keep activities on track

Leadership: Different leaders and leadership styles to be applied to the different projects

Team development: The team for each activity is selected for their relevance to the project and their ability to deliver. E.g. painting the local playground shed – local parents, building aircraft carriers – not local parents

__________________________________

As the plane lands in Dublin I conclude that if only countries were run by good programme and project mangers, we wouldn’t need to be lucky, instead we would avoid Big Cuts, not need to even talk about a Big Society, Execute Excellently and have Happy Citizens.

__________________________________

FutureMappingTM - A process through which the implications of a strategic change are mapped, unexpected consequences removed or modified

Quest ChangeTM – Change where the goals I swell understood and agreed upon but the method or process to reach it are not

Making Movies ChangeTM is the typical solution looking for a problem. The process and method are determined before the outcome

Foggy ChangeTM – is change where there is real uncertainty of what to do or how to do it but urgency that something must be done.

DrumBeatTM – fixed time period review cycle

ActionReplayTM - Dynamic review process comparing what was planned/ not planned with what has worked/ not worked

GapLeapTM – A rapid hard and soft business case development method looking at outcomes with/ without the intervention and the barriers to Excellent Execution

Onba-l-anceTM – is a way of checking that the metrics actually measure success full outcomes and benefits

Never Late Just Early for the Next Opportunity

2010-11-28T05:31:00.000-08:00

Last Friday was a long day. I had a breakfast meeting in London planned. An early breakfast in London. That meant an even earlier start from home. Subzero temperatures meant the duvet had to be surgically removed in order for me to be extracted from a lovely warm bed. The time was tight - I had to make the 06:23. Normally I ease the tension and calm myself by humming to myself the Tom Lehrer song based on Alice in Wonderland. I alter the words, which always makes me smile inwardly - "I'm late I'm late for a very Un-important date. No time to say 'Hello.' 'Goodbye.' I'm late... I add the (Un) prefix to amuse myself.

This time however it was important. The person I am meeting has some very crucial organisational and personal news and I don't want to be late under any circumstances. In know that if I miss the 0623 I can catch the 0634 which will make me slightly late. I think to myself "Never Late just Early for the Next Opportunity" - this makes me smile.

I make the breakfast meeting and I'm onto my next deadline - I have to finish my monthly article for Project Manager Today .

I spend the rest of the morning working furiously on it. It is late because I have lacked inspiration for a topic. But at my breakfast our conversation had turned to Ireland and the IMF, The UK and the Big Cuts and ‘Happiness’ and I had a topic and inspiration.

After three hours of furious work I hit the send button on the email and off it goes - only to receive a message by return saying that I've missed the deadline by a couple of minutes and that it will now have to appear next month.

I am gutted. The article is on target, topical, useful and funny. If you don't believe me you can read it here. [Big Cuts, Cig Society, Excellent Execution and Happy Citizens]

Will it keep for a month or will it go stale?" I worry and then I think to myself "Never Late just Early for the Next Opportunity" - this makes me smile.

Dancing Guy is cooler than Dominoes

2010-05-22T07:07:00.000-07:00

I had the combined joy, delight and dismay of watching Derek Sivers deliver his "Dancing Guy" at Ted. For years I have struggled to explain that the focus on leadership was overblown. That "Followership" was the key and that if you want to lead you have to understand how to connect to followers. I also explained how in real life many people wouldn't follow you but might follow someone else who was was following you and so on. In a large organisation you can have a magnified effect if you plan the circles of followership. This domino Effect I even wrote about in The Complete Leader.

I have even carried boxes of dominoes to workshops to demonstrate the effect for real as a teaching aide. And then I saw the Dancing Guy video. In five minutes lesson taught and laughter too..

Watch and enjoy ...

Experiencing, Remembering or Dreaming

2010-04-26T07:18:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed this talk by Daniel Kahneman a lot but I suspect that I have a third Dreaming self. This is probably my bigger correlation of happiness....

Now I no longer need to IMAGINE

2010-01-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

I'm grinning from ear to ear. Susan has produced a real treat for me. As part of my personal quest to get people to see the New-World and get business management and life into the 'reality zone', I'm always looking for analogies, images and stories. Susan's phenomenal re-working of Matisse's goldfish to create IMAGINE A FISH helps me continue to provoke, inspire and enlighten.

I'm sure you know the tired old proverb about 'Teaching a Man to fish...' It's a really brilliant but now obsolete piece of Old-World thinking. It assumes that you already know about the existence of fish and that somebody (you) already has the skill to catch them.

I'm not so sure that that is true today. In our fast-changing, complex world, the chances are that other people who also have the knowledge and skills (probably learnt through google and wikipedia) have already taken all the Opportunities available. There are no Opportunities that you recognise left. Instead you have to seek out and create Possibilities. To achieve that you must first IMAGINE A FISH. You can reach the dedicated page here

... and a Happy New Decade!

2010-01-04T14:13:00.000-08:00

Before the last millennium ended, decades ran from one to ten. And then a bug came along and threatened us. We couldn't wait to take action and so a decade started at zero. Of course you can also have a decade which starts from 7 and runs to 16 but for most humans with ten fingers and thumbs they only like to celebrate once every ten years.

To end the last decade, someone unfamiliar with the complexities of a decision making process, decided that 190 countries could come to a decision within a two week period. Perhaps a bit mad? When I workshop 200 people into engagement and decisions I build up to the final decision not unilaterally or with all parties participating but through a planned fractal from two to four to eight and with a number of frameworks for summarising 'out in the open' and hidden agenda issues. And that's when they're all on the same side...

Worst still are the statements "I believe the scientists." or "I don't believe the scientists." You shouldn't have to believe scientists, that's the point of science, it's 'science' not religion.

So I wish you health, mirth and wealth (but not so much it distorts your reality and makes you depressed.)

Quotes and Slogans

2009-11-20T06:37:00.000-08:00

Over the past couple of weeks I've been noticing quotes and slogans.

I enjoyed "The ability to access your ability to influence your mental attitude" which I picked up from the value Partnership.

Laughed at the enigmatic ,"To catch up with yourself you've got to slow down" from Colin Burns.

Chris Hurst's "When you try to move an organisation you get a stretch at one end and a pinch at the other"

Nicolas Chagrin, a Romanian-Brit who lives in Dorset, amused me with "... and that's how I got my surname" And when he was asked how his surname was spelt replied "Chagrin or you would probably say Chargin."

"Drinking alcohol is so medieval". from Susan Ross. Her explanation, "It dates back to the days before we had clean drinking water" . From Garrison Keeler, from his story about deciding one morning to go wherever the stone he kicked went - which then tells how he missed school, got accused of smoking, and all in all had a real adventure, "You've got to kick that stone. I was lucky I kicked it when I was young so I know real freedom."

I've used my own "Events Evaporate but Patterns Persist." to great effect. I was intriguted by the impact my "Leaders get the Followers they deserve" had on a group od senior leaders from Allianz the worlds biggest insurer

Marianne Guldbrandsen the Chief Design Officer at the Design council hit me with "Innovation isn't just the journey but the change you are personally going to go through" Neal Stone the magical man who brought us nights of real sleep on airlines through his design of the BA club class yin-yang beds told me that "Design is a verb not a noun." Matt Hunter the Iconic IDEO thought-leader taught me that "No CEO can argue with the smiling face of a customer." And from David Lomas the ex-Innovation Lab Supremo, commenting on the stability of computers and PCs "Sheeesh! Think I'll go back to laying concrete..."

Pre-Printed Surprise

2009-11-04T07:19:00.000-08:00

Last time I said "Never again" but obviously not loud enough for Brett our travel agent based in London 30 miles away to hear. So once again I'm on a United Airlines flight to Chicago.

I'd planned to work - eight glorious hours of uninterrupted creative work. But the reading lights in the cabin weren't working. In no time the staff had handed out to us pre-printed "Please accept our apology" cards. There seemed to be plenty to go round and plenty left over, The weight perhaps half of the airline's payload? Amazing that they had so many when this maintenance failure must surely have been a big surprise.
I did complain politely and as has alway happened in my experience with United, I was invited by the crew, to email the mangers to complain. I haven't because I'm waiting for a reply to my last email which is over three months overdue. Worse was to come. If you know the seat layout o united you'll know that there's no where to put your stuff - your phone wallet etc. The poor chap behind me manages to lose his mobile in the seat. I watched fascinated and horrified as other passengers were turfed out of their seats, the stewardess tried to remove the cover, poked around with a coat hanger among all the electric motors... I've attached a photo of his empty seat.

If I had time I'd tell you more about the return flight where the engineer had to come down the cabin to search for the source of a very loud rattle, but that will have to keep for next time...

How do you have lunch during a marathon?

2009-10-20T08:43:00.000-07:00

First you travel to Budapest. Then you enter the relay! As the third of three I had time to cheer on the starting leg, time for lunch and then time for a sprint to the end...

Discovering that the Chain bridge was the same design as the one in Marlow UK was evidence that some people have been thinking NewWorld for decades. Do nothing of NO use! and modularise (Chunk it or Junk it!)

Living in my own time

2009-10-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

One of my oldest friends, Jacob Hodgson said to me. You know what you should do is dig out all the ideas you had 15 to 20 years ago and try them again. The world has probably reached that point by now. His comment was prophetic. This morning Christophe Gillet, Andy Burnett and I were discussing how we could should approach Serious games. Serious games is a movement intending to use computer gaming as an educational vehicle.

In 1996 working with Keith Still the mathematician I created Columbus for a company called Nuclear Electric. Columbus was the first ever Virtual Reality Business Game on the planet. We had been asked to find a way to teach (nuclear) scientists business acumen and skills and a simulation seemed like a great idea.) We used an indigo for the programming (really cool technology for the time) and created a 6 module/ level game of the basics of business acumen and market segmentation and dynamics) Columbus was a context-free simulation, built on the now redundant Superscape PC platform.

We would work a full day and then at 21:00 I would drive at break-neck speed from Beaconsfield to Stokenchurch. to work with Keith. We would design develop and programme until 1 a.m. and then I would drive home to sleep.

I learnt that there was a massive difference between a game and a learning tool, no correlation between enjoyment and challenge, that the graphics could often be more distracting than helpful... and a host of other things

Long time coming....

2009-03-23T14:38:00.000-07:00

For the past eight years I've had requests from various friends colleagues and clients about starting to blog. I've refused stubbornly. My excuse i have enough on my plate with Pentacle, writing books and articles and teaching and I won't be able to keep it up. Let's see if I was right.
I don't want this blog to be a "signpost" (look at the cool stuff I've found on the web) but instead a "bithplace" and "cocoon" (this is an idea I've had and given legs could you please give it wings?)