Category: Innovation

Stop Doing Dumb Stuff

When I need a quick kick in the pants, I reach for Tom Peters’ Brand You 50.

Each one of his 50 tips are tow trucks pulling me out of what ever rut I find myself in.

This is why I’m so excited about his new manifesto from Seth Godin’s ChangeThis project.

This I Believe! – Tom’s 60 TIBs

Yes, that’s 60 perspective changing points to reposition your work, and more importantly, your life.

  • 22. Screw-ups are the mark of excellence; I’ve seen many teams so afraid of making a mistake that the project falls victim of Analysis Paralysis. It’s not pretty. Often, the paralysis could have been avoided by the creation of a few prototypes and being comfortable with learning from failure.
  • 40. Stop doing dumb stuff; Systems become ingrained, systems that were created to solve one problem are repurposed to solve a different problem. They start to get in the way. They start being counter-productive.
  • 43. Take charge of your destiny. Or as Seth Godin says – The Time (to take action) is NOW. Things are constantly in flux, and ironically, that change you’re waiting for to make the big move won’t. That first step is up to you.

The remaining 57 are great and just as thought-provoking.

Thanks Tom.

Want Better Collaboration – Improvise

The earlier collaboration techniques post (Stop Asking Questions) was based a key to successful improvisation. This post digs further into the relationship between improv and collaboration.

Good improvisational comedy teams believe a group of individuals working together can start with nothing and quickly create something engaging, desireable, useful, and valuable. From this perspective, the keys for successful Improv apply to any collaborative effort.

As such, there are 7 keys to successful improvisational collaboration:

  1. Acceptance of a new idea from the standpoint of exploring its possibilities; An attitude of “Yes, and” rather than the destructive “but” .
  2. Attentive listening to all the partners on the team.
  3. Temporary suspension of critical judgment.
  4. An attitude of relaxed openness to new ideas. Exploring the far reaches of “What if ___?”
  5. Reframing situations to explore creative possibilities.
  6. A willingness to take chances, to risk appearing foolish, i.e. Stop Asking Questions.
  7. An understanding that no choice is absolutely right or wrong, though each may turn out to be more or less productive in a given situation.

Thanks to the Applied Improvisational Network.

Pushing the Envelope of Business Requires a Strong Identity

“Hardball involves playing the edges, probing that narrow strip of territory—so rich in possibilities—between the places where society clearly says you can play the game of business and those where society clearly says you can’t.”

An exerpt from the Harvard Business School’s The Hardball Manifesto.

The article’s examples of Hardball companies – Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines, Toyota – are examples of companies that have clearly defined their identity and by-proxy their reputation. Once a compelling and engaging identity is defined, it provides a framework for making decisions. Without that framework, you can’t stand firm in a decision and can’t play ‘hardball’.

Thanks to Rob at Business Pundit

Do As Little As Possible – Part 2

He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

This exerpt from The Case of the Empty Soap Box at Jon Strandes’ Storyblog is an excellent example of the Do As Little As Possible pattern I metioned earlier.

Some equally engaging stories of simple solutions can be found in the highly recommended Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is and Ideas are Free: How the Idea Revolution is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations.

Faster Big Macs Through Outsourcing

2 minutes 36 seconds is the industry average for a McDonald’s drive-thru transaction. How does Steven Bigari keep his 12 franchises under half that?

Outsourcing.

All the drive-thru orders at his Missouri resturants are taken by a call center in Colorado Springs – increasing his capacity 15%.

Brilliant.

Original Article: New York Times, 18 July 2004.

Thanks to Brand Autopsy.

Changing the Government

Government agencies are some of the most notorious change resistors. In 1999, the Mint started to change that reputation – receiving a customer satisfaction rating second only to Mercedes Benz.

“In the old days, we shipped fewer than 50% of our orders within eight weeks. Today, if it takes two weeks for customers to receive an order, they complain. When you change expectations, it’s very hard for an organization to relax and slip back into old patterns of behavior.”– Philip N. Diehl, Director of the United States Mint

If the Mint couldn’t survey its customers officially, Diehl himself would do so unofficially. A few weeks after joining the Mint, he embarked on his own personal fact-finding mission. He went to coin conventions, talked with the hobby press, found situations in which he could interact with collectors. He shunned the ceremonial role that the director of the Mint usually played at these functions (collectors would line up to ask for Diehl’s autograph), and did what any smart politician (and change agent) would do: He worked the room.

Continued in Mint Condition from Fast Company

Thanks to Frank Patrick for the tip.

Repeating the Same Action and Expecting a New Result?

Engagement at meetings and excitement about projects is down. A number of key people are leaving. The passion that sparked our initial conversations is waning. One of our clients is at a turning point with their organization.

A number of never-been-tried-by-us suggestions were thrown around in a recent strategy session. Most of them immediately dismissed with a quick “that may work for some organizations, but not us.”

We talked about a number of approaches that could provide more value to their customers and more energy to their organization – from repositioning their offering to bringing on some lower-level individuals to assist management to really fulfilling on their unique selling propsition.

The resistance to change – when survival is most in question – is not unique to organizations. BusinessPundit struggles with the issue of a resistance manager and Seth Godin discovers the same issue when offering suggestions on improving presentations .

We at Working Pathways offer 2 suggestions for approaching a new strategy:

  1. Have you and your team answer this question, “What’s the worst possible outcome?”Answer it for your current situation and any potential strategy. New directions are never as forboding as existing strategies.
  2. The most successful, maintainable strategy is doing as little as possible

Daily Productivity Tips

We’re working with a number of clients to make their days more effective. One of the smallest, yet most profound changes is making each meeting a working meeting. Though powerful and effective, this technique does go against more than 96 years of conventional wisdom

This technique works especially well for document review meetings – have an attendee, you?, make the changes discussed as they’re decided upon. At the end of the meeting, the document is updated – no longer hanging over anyone’s head.

Another tip – before scheduling an in-person meeting, ask yourself what the quickest, easiest way to accomplish the purpose of the meeting. Can the 1o-member project kick-off meeting be handled through email? Probably. Can a decision be reached by a couple of phone calls? Probably.

Over at Worthwhile Magazine, Anita Sharpe highlights a couple other tips for getting time back on your side.

Hotel Room as Showroom – Part 2

Starting this week and running through Sept. 20, guests can check out the cameras, take pictures and print them using an HP Photosmart 245 photo printer installed at the hotels

Following up on the original Hotel Room as Showroom article, Yahoo Reports that Fairmont Hotels and HP are partnering to offer guests digital camera rental and printing during their hotel stay.

Thanks to Perception Analyzer and Peter Davidson.

Do As Little As Possible

How little can I do to successfully reach this goal?

Continually asking youreself that questions is the best ways to minimize rework, reach goals quickly, guarantee sustainable solutions, and design for wear.

This approach creates a functional prototype quickly, keeps stress levels down, and keeps product teams lean.

Johanna Rothman has an excellent post highlighting other benefits of this approach from the product development perspective:

  • Understanding the requirements is a scarce resource, and we should focus our energies towards delivering something that shows we understand the specific requirement and the value it has to our customer.
  • Schedule is critical and we don’t have time to do it again, or build technical debt
  • Project cost is important, and we need to manage it

and another on how this approach specifically addresses rework

See how little you can do, and deliver that much as quickly as possible. The technique I use most often is to break the pieces into groups of requirements/features and then perform iterations within whatever lifecycle the people are used to.

Thanks to NerdHerding for Beginners.