“…. cultural leadership is distinct from political and administrative leadership. While political leaders primarily make rules and administrative leaders primarily enforce rules, cultural leaders like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mother Theresa find principled and imaginative ways to transgress those rules that inhibit the emergence of cultural sovereignty and creativity.
Organisation
Back end or Heart of House?
Writer William Gibson once famously said that the ‘The future is already here—it’s just not very evenly distributed.’ I worry more that the past is here—it’s just so evenly distributed that we can’t get to the future.
— Paul Kedrosky
A few years ago, we facilitated an event with a group of luxury car dealers in a Four Seasons hotel. They were all the owners or General Managers of the dealerships: wealthy, shrewd businesspeople with a track record of success going back a decade or more. They had come to the event to learn from other luxury and service businesses. They were exposed to world-class stimuli over the two days: leading-edge technology retailing, high-end customer service, the latest and greatest in travel and hospitality. And yet one of the most illuminating conversations came after a visit to the laundry.
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Changing the nature of conversation : “ We can if ” rather than “ We can’t because ”
Kelly couldn’t change the nature of the organization, but he could change the nature of the conversation, particularly the beginning of each sentence in the problem- solving process. He didn’t let people start with “We can’t because.” He forced them to start with “We can if.” So, for example, instead of saying “We can’t use that type of new packaging because it will slow the line down,” the person would be forced to say “We can use that kind of new packaging if we run it on someone else’s line.” The flow is maintained, and the group moves on to the next question in the chain (in this case, how to find the right line).
As Kelly notes, “can’t because” is an understandable reaction to a difficult challenge. People are used to putting up their hands to solve a problem they know how to solve; what is much harder, and more unusual, is putting up their hands to solve a problem they don’t know how to solve. And yet that is precisely what is required in constraint-driven problem solving. Without a positive construct to guide the team, the inability to have a ready answer to a difficult question kills the momentum and the flow of exploration. Continue reading
Innovation is born from the interaction between constraint and vision
Constraints can actually speed development. For instance, we often can get a sense of just how good a new concept is if we only prototype for a single day or week. Or we’ll keep team size to three people or fewer. By limiting how long we work on something or how many people work on it, we limit our investment. In the case of the Toolbar beta, several key features (custom buttons, shared bookmarks) were tried out in under a week. In fact, during the brainstorming phase, we came up with about five times as many “key features.” Most were discarded after a week of prototyping. Since only 1 in every 5 to 10 ideas works out, the strategy of limiting the time we have to prove that an idea works allows us to try out more ideas, increasing our odds of success. Continue reading
Lets Curate….
You don’t make a great museum by putting all the art in the world into a single room.
That’s a warehouse. Continue reading
Book Recommendation – Dancing at the Edge
culture is to a group what personality or character is to an individual
No credit can be given for predicting rain—only for building arks
Imagine that you met a remarkable person who could look at the sun or the stars and, amazingly, state the exact time and date. Wouldn’t it be even more amazing still if, instead of telling the time, that person built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she were dead and gone?
Humility
Humility does not come easily for people brought up on bullet points and clear answers. For Americans in particular, who have raised pride and self-esteem to a high art, even the word ‘humility’ raises hackles. It is more acceptable – even expected – for Americans to sing their own praises. When Mohammad Ali was taken to task, chided for arrogance when he claimed he was “the greatest,” he said “It ain’t arrogant if you can do it!” Fifty years later, young Americans are still told this story by their sports coaches as they are encouraged to succeed. Maybe for winning at sports it’s not bad advice, but as a preparation for life in the messy uncertainties of the 21st century it has all the hallmarks of a neurotic response…..
Trustworthiness is encouraged by a number of actions that are within your power to take
There are two sides to trust: the first is outward-looking and grows from a person’s past experiences with that particular person or group; the second is inward-looking and comes from the person’s own history, particularly from childhood experiences.The level of trust that anyone feels is fed by both of these sources. You have control over the outward-facing source, so start there.
ONE TUSK 