Living by Design

In contrast to the frenetic activity that appears to dominate this season, for me, year-end is an important time of reflection and reconnecting. I like to review my journal, look at all the photos we took throughout the year and try to recapture a little of the wonder that recently fell from the treads of life. It's also a time when I am particularly aware of the need for inspiration to thrust forward into the adventure of the year ahead. Inspiration has blazed a trail of extraordinary accomplishment across the pages of history. It is the breath of the divine that fills the sails of human creativity and passion, driving us forward into a hopeful future. Remarkable works of art, innovation, and courage were fueled from this combination of purpose and energy, sometimes even in the most seemingly impossible situations. A few weeks ago, I was recharged by a rare visit from Eric Peterson, founder of Mitra Imaging, a medical imaging company that was acquired by Agfa in 2002 . Since that ...

Successfully competing for the future will require continuous disruptive innovation . In organizations where the people are the product , each resource must be encouraged to participate in making innovation a consistent reality. Often, in a traditional organizational model, this type of work is delegated to a small R&D group. In the world of software development and knowledge work, each person is a potential innovation source and an idea catalyst. With this mindset, it's easy to see how collaboration can readily become a powerful innovation accelerator. Here are some practical ideas for increasing innovation across the organization: Opportunity - Google is deliberate about encouraging each employee to spend 20% of their time improving the products or researching new ideas. Many innovations at Google result directly from this general approach. When managing development teams in the past, I have insisted (and measured) that each person spend 2-5% of their time on "breaki...

Once we recognize that people are the critical asset of a knowledge-based organization, it is easy to see how human interaction can become a powerful engine for success. In his book " Ten Steps to A Learning Organization ", Peter Kline writes: "The Transformation of Relationships is what, in business settings, we must increasingly deal with. It is now more widely recognized that an organization’s greatest asset is its people, provided they are able to work well together and proceed on a path of continuous improvement. It is also recognized that cooperative team work beats competitive territorialism every time." Organizations are combining these principles with emerging social computing tools to accelerate virtual teamwork and collaborative innovation. The opportunity leaps upward when this capability is extended outside of the organization, creating rich interactions with supply chain partners and particularly with the customers themselves. "It's no longe...

Long before the birth of the Internet, Peter Drucker foresaw the growing prominence of "knowledge work" and the changes required by management and leadership to harness this potential. Many of these principles apply directly to the software development industry. When it comes to "Software Engineering", Alastair Cockburn states: " People are Active Devices " People have lots of interesting characteristics, and we don't know what they are - which makes it all the more absurd that we try to define methodologies and processes that incorporate them. Software Development as a Cooperative Game - Alastair Cockburn In knowledge work, the people are the product. It is their potential that creates the possible future, and sustainable value. They are dynamic knowledge repositories and sustainable intellectual property creators. Although the products produced by these individuals and teams represent realizable value, they have a very limited half-life, depreci...

I love models... and I'm not referring to the icons representing our cultural preferences in human vanity. Rather, I'm in love with visuals that portray a rich coalescence of principles and depict in shocking clarity how things interrelate. One such model I revisited lately is the BMM, the Business Motivation Model. A simplified version is shown below: The BMM brings sanity to business by addressing two fundamental questions: What do we need to do? Why do we do what we do? Using a practical and comprehensive framework it allows business planning to adapt strategically in a cohesive and efficient manner. As the BMM Specification states: The Business Motivation Model provides a scheme or structure for developing, communicating, and managing business plans in an organized manner. Specifically, the Business Motivation Model does all of the following: It identifies factors that motivate the establishing of business plans. It identifies and defines the elements of business plans. I...

Protecting intellectual property has become a harmful preoccupation for many leading-edge software and knowledge-based companies. Security policies, fear of competitors, and growth through mergers and acquisitions have created isolated knowledge silos across the organizational landscape. Unfortunately, the very dynamics used to protect this most valuable asset ironically creates significant barriers for innovation. The end result is a growing stranglehold on the ability to generate sustainable future value. It shouldn't surprise us that the antidote to this problem is currently playing out on the world wide web in a high stakes challenge of social networking innovations. What does connecting people have to do with innovation? People are sustainable dynamic IP generators People provide expertise and informal access to needed knowledge, easily doing end-runs around poorly managed IP protection strategies. "Who you know" has always been a significant component in effecti...