Living by Design

What does successful collaboration look like? Understanding how communities and people interact online is essential for setting the right expectations. Often people misinterpret metrics or focus their energy in the wrong direction because they do not have a reasonable benchmark to assess how well their on-line communities are functioning. All Things Are Not Equal In any team or community you can expect to find a variety of expertise and strengths. We usually don't expect everyone to do the exact same thing, or to have the same skill sets and strengths. In fact, the complementary nature of individual strengths is essential to creating strong teams and vibrant communities. Knowing this, it is surprising that the default expectation for online interaction is identical contribution, with performance metrics that reinforce this unhealthy view. Not only is this unrealistic, it's a sure recipe for failure! Setting Expectations Most everyone is familiar with the Pareto principle ...

Learning Cycle: University of Tasmania Buried deep in the psyche of quality management systems is the discipline of training. It goes something like this: Define what needs to be done Train people how to do the work Test to ensure compliance Repeat activity in a predictable manner Optimize as needed The Danger Zone Much of this emphasis finds its roots in Taylorism. Also known as Scientific Management, this discipline focussed on studying current work processes and optimizing quality and performance in mass production environments. Unfortunately, the context has shifted dramatically to what is needed in today's knowledge-based organizations. "In political and sociological terms, Taylorism can be seen as the division of labour pushed to its logical extreme, with a consequent de-skilling of the worker and dehumanisation of the workplace." from Wikipedia: Scientific Management Learning in the Brave New World The truth is that in our current information-age work contexts, ...

We've become experts at managing what we know. To achieve our goals, we break down the work and carefully measure our progress. We squeeze out efficient business practices and powerful system architecture through rigorous planning, testing and execution. But it's not good enough. Are we not often blindsided by the unforeseen? And isn't it true that most of the really valuable discoveries seem to be things we inadvertently trip over, almost by happenstance? Managing Complexity Rather than relegating these circumstances to luck or fate, complexity science offers us some insights into how to manage the unknown. This is the premise of the recent HBR article published by Dave Snowden and Mary Boone, entitled " A Leader's Framework for Decision Making ". The authors suggest that by identifying the context of a business situation, leaders can consciously choose an appropriate management approach: Simple , in which the relationship between cause and effect is obv...

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...

Chaotic Behaviour When faced with complexity, many organizations and individuals resort to primal behavior. The queasiness of being out of control often generates these symptoms: Baby Throwing (along with the bath water). Wholesale abandonment of what was not working along with what was starting to work. The greater the sense of panic, the more frenetic the thrashing between various strategic initiatives. Each of these cycles is often accompanied with a fresh crop of executive managers. Paralysis. Lack of confidence in decision-making. A despair-ridden death march as profit margins slowly vaporize and innovative opportunities flit by ungrasped. Fascism. Charismatic leaders riding the waves of popular paranoia for personal benefit for questionable agendas. The shifting sands of complexity provide poor footholds for accountability and objective measurement. Cynicism . Change fatigue and the inability to connect with meaningful purpose often rapidly diffuses a creative workfo...

I have had the great privilege of participating in the rediscovery of key design principles through the recent renaissance led by the likes of Alan Cooper ( The Inmates Are Running the Asylum) and the folks at IDEO . Using a fresh emphasis on observation and the capture of customer behavior and goals, they have successfully realigned our methodologies of how to sustain success in this overengineered culture. The questions, "Why are we building this?" and, "How can we make this more compelling?" have gone far towards improving our existing offerings. More importantly, they have helped us connect with the core purpose of our products and services, a critical conduit to the value opportunities in an increasingly complex world. In addition to rejuvenating our production value, the same principles can also be applied to the organization as a whole. When business leaders help their teams effectively connect with their shared core purpose, it creates a significant synergy...