steelcase blog

Finding What Works,…

… I’m almost finished reading an inspiring book by Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers called A Simpler Way.  It was recommended by an associate as a ‘must read’; a book that was first published in 1996 (any book that has 103 pages of text, and 90 references in its bibliography just has to be good).  The authors describe the central question the book is trying to answer as “How could we organize human endeavor if we developed different understandings of how life organizes itself…?”  A fascinating provocation.

As one moves through the chapters, one discovers the depth to which the authors explore the essence of organization,… as individual cognition, as group interaction, as life itself.  They say “life’s natural tendency is to organize, into greater levels of complexity to support more diversity and greater sustainability.”  The book represents that business processes often are at odds with nature’s intent to organize.  As one example, take how many companies solve problems.  They try their best to discover the one ‘right’ answer by over analyzing everything; spreadsheets, numbers, charts.  When in fact it is the ability to ‘keep finding solutions’, finding what works not what’s right, which is most important,… as there is no permanently right answer; any one solution is merely temporary.

The inside cover of the book has a quote I absolutely love.  It reads – Thus, the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen,… but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees – by Schopenhauer.  Not knowing much about Schopenhauer, I looked him up.  He is a German philosopher (1788-1860) known for his clarity and aphoristic style,… oh no, another word I’m not familiar with.  An aphorism is a concise statement containing a subjective truth or observation cleverly written.  Whatever,… for me it was the best definition I’ve ever seen for what a research ‘insight’ is  – think what nobody yet has thought about which everybody sees…!  Understanding how the world is organizing before others do.  Have any insights…? 

Games For Change,…

… I just returned from a workshop called Gamestorming, and have to say it opened my eyes to various ways to get a group of knowledge workers comfortable in contributing in a creative team setting.  While not as violent as the name ‘storming’ might imply, the techniques explored for generating breakthrough innovation certainly create a coalescing of alternative perspectives,… as with weather-related elements when a storm is forming.

So what is it in a ‘game’ that allows creative teams to do great work…?  I would say there are three key components.  First, there is an understanding of success, a goal.  And since the objective is often to create a new-to-the-world idea,… the goal is not as specific as the finish line in a running event.  As the book Gamestorming by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo states,… the goal of a creative team is ‘fuzzy’; giving a team the sense of direction/purpose while leaving room for intuition and further exploration.  I see this as a social contract upon which trust can emerge between team players.

A second key component of a game is what the authors label as meaningful space (a game board in other words).  For a team working on a creative exercise this would be the environment within which the team is operating,… the spatial component.  Is there sufficient room to move around, to gather and re-group as needed for discussions; is there usable wall space and table space to express ideas; does the space inspire new thinking either in its location or its design…?

Third, and the last key component, are artifacts,… the carriers of meaning; making knowledge work outputs explicit and persistent.  I’ve talked in previous blogs about the importance of these informational assets (digital and analog) for achieving a ‘shared mind’ around a new idea.  Using the label ‘game’ may not make it sound serious,… but it is, it is our future, and it demands social trust, spatial affordances, and informational artifacts.  What’s your game…?

Meetings Are Toxic,…

… not exactly the headline one who launched a meetings venture (that’s me with Workspring) wants to hear,… but it’s one of the chapter titles in a book I really love – Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson.  First, why I think this is a must-read book.  It’s got 90 chapters!, BUT each one is no more than a couple pages and includes a punchy graphic.  No wasting my time repeating words and phrases, or giving endless examples,… just netting it out and making it real.  I can always look back on a book and tell how much I like it by the amount of highlighting, and type of highlighting I do (e.g., a big, colored exclamation point signals a line I’m likely to use again).  One line that earned this distinction from the book was a statement in a chapter on focus that read, “you’re better off with a kick-ass half than a half-assed whole.”  That’s brilliant…!

Anyway, back to this idea of toxic meetings.  Fried and Hansson’s point is that most meetings are a waste of time.  Agree, completely.  You’ve been there,… no agenda, they go longer than needed, and most include at least one moron who inevitably gets his/her turn to waste everyone’s time.  And I would add, meetings are typically held in a room/space which appears to have been designed to accomplish nothing more than the toxic results these authors speak of.

How do you work together as a team on solving a problem or creating a solution if there’s no way to adequately express what everyone is thinking…?  Most meeting rooms don’t even have a white board or a flip chart or even a pad of paper on the table to sketch or doodle a thought.  The way your idea gets better is to have others add or blend their thoughts to your idea,… but if no one can see your idea, how can they reflect, react or respond…?!?  Is the answer to have everything digital…?  Maybe it is, but again only if everyone has equal access to a VGA connection to plug into their laptop/tablet computer.  Without these simple affordances with which to visualize meaningful content, a meeting, unfortunately, does tend to expose all attendees to a toxic waste of time.  Facing the fallout…?

And Simon Says,…

… touch your knees,… and Simon Says, raise your hands,… I never was too good at this follow-the-leader game.  I don’t know if it was a quiet way of declaring my individuality, or more just a matter of my brain and my body not being in sync…!  Anyway, I was thinking about this the other day, and how so many web applications (and the billion dollar companies behind them) are based on matching people to others.  And I’m not talking dating services, though there is a new twist on this that is launched every week.  I’m talking about on-line consumer sites which profile your past purchases,… and then using sophisticated algorithms and mega databases, present you with a list labeled "others like you have also bought –".

People eat this stuff up.  It saves them a bunch of time, and it is amazingly accurate.  Some sites have abstracted a person’s preferences/patterns to the point of predicting what they might like/prefer in completely different categories.  For example, they might claim their data suggests a person of my age, my income, my demographics, should buy a Cadillac.  But what their models don’t know is that even though I can’t afford it and live in an area of the country where I can only drive a sports car 4 months a year,… I want a Porsche – a black one…!

So it comes down to choosing,… between times when I want to follow the crowd, of unseen but similar profiles to mine,… and when I choose to ignore what others like me would or should do, and just be different.  A book I just added to my shelf, that I have not yet read, shares that title, Different by Youngme Moon (don’t you love the name; of the author and the book).  She writes how businesses which focus too much on what others like them are doing,… as in their direct competitors,... over time, enter a spiral of sameness.  Youngme has subtitled the book, ‘succeeding in a world where conformity reigns but exceptions rule.’  A profound insight; very cleverly phrased.  Simon Says is a copy-cat game you can win,… it’s just not a winning business philosophy.  Are you different…? 

People Powered Processing,…

… try and say that five-times in a row.  Last night I watched the conclusion of IBM’s Grand Challenge on Jeopardy,… which pitted IBM’s ‘question answering supercomputer’ called Watson against the best-of-the-best past contestants Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.  Watson seemed to be playing with the humans at times, but in the end beat them bad.  Beyond the fact all winnings went to charity (nice),… what can we conclude from this battle of man vs. machine…? 

I came away with several conclusions.  First, the amazing benefit we have today as a result of access, instantaneous access to the world’s facts.  Watson used 15 trillion bytes of memory (15X the capacity of the human memory system),… just imagine what would be possible when this doubles, and doubles again in the near future.  Second, that ‘context’ and ‘consideration’ tip the advantage to humans.  For example, how one responds to a question may depend more on who is asking the question vs. the question itself.  We’ve all done it,… answered a question in a way we know the person asking the question will react positively to,… where the computer just states the facts, and nothing more. 

And third,… the contest clearly demonstrated the impact of collaboration in solving problems.  Watson was not just one computer, but 2,800 processors stitched together (can you imagine how fast it would crank a multi-player video game…!).  While each human brain has somewhat similar processing power,… one person’s interests can vary dramatically from another’s, and thus ‘together’ would represent a broader spectrum of potential input  and problem solving ability.  What if Ken and Brad worked together on their answers…?  They still would have lost, though staging a more competitive response.  This is why co-working is such a phenomena these days, and growing rapidly.  Professionals from completely different disciplines physically located in the same space, a space designed to support social exchange and collaborative interaction,… makes all participants much smarter (just like Watson).  Do you Co-work…?