Baked Idea

Your org as an api #openwork

Sat, 11 May 2013 21:48:30 +0100

What if your organisation’s internal business processes had a publicly accessible api?

What if information about the internals of your products and services where available to mine, interact with and influence?

How would that change your customer’s perception of your organisation?

Would your customer’s self organise?

Would they help you improve your organisation?

Would your customer’s uncover insight you didn’t know you even wanted?

How would transparency of your organisations strengths and weakness change how you and your competitors operate

What would prevent such a leap? the thought of airing your dirty laundry? losing competitive advantage?

Wouldn’t it be great to not have dirty laundry?

Would radical openness and the necessary re-orientation of the organisation towards its customers bring a whole new competitive advantage?

Lots of questions, I don’t have the answers at the moment. If this post sparks any thoughts i’d love to continue the conversation either on twitter or in the comments on this post.

The value of lenses

Sun, 05 May 2013 22:10:57 +0100

TOGAF

Zachman

Agile

Scrum

Kanban

User centred design

Lean

Lean startup

Service design

Design thinking

Behavioural economics

What do these things have in common? These are all things I’m either interested in, read a lot about, studied/got certified in, or use/have used in my work.

The other thing that they have in common? None of these things are The answer.

I like to think of each of the list above as lenses that help you view problems in a different way, using them individually or in combination can help inform your view of the problem space and give you greater options when looking for solutions.

It is very tempting for us to find a methodology or framework that resonates with us at a point in time (for me back in 2006, it was Scrum) and start to see everything through that particular lense.

There is a danger in relying on one lense too much and that in focusing on the use of one lense we become myopic, concentrating on using our chosen methodology/framework/process without understanding its application in the context of the wider problem space.

Example:

A few months ago I attended the excellent @SyncNorwich monthly conference. One speaker gave a talk about using Kanban on a software development project. It was a really informative talk about using Kanban on a project, the team seemed to work really well, the ‘product owner’ seemed happy and they shipped early and often. It all sounded great until the speaker put up a slide showing the tiny amount of usage/sales of the product.

I was left with the conclusion that using the lense of Kanban had enabled the team to deliver the wrong thing really really well. The weak link in the chain was whatever design process the Product Owner (and his team) used to feed into the development process.

I raised this conclusion with the speaker, he didn’t seem to think it was his problem (or Kanban’s). The fact that the organisation he worked for had ploughed (i’d estimate) several hundred thousand pounds into developing products that customers didn’t use, didn’t seem to register as a problem. His team had delivered what his customer (the Product Owner) required using Kanban, worrying about what the real customer actually wanted wasn’t even on his radar. The net result was the customer’s needs weren’t met. Whatever lense we decide to use the needs of the customer should always be in plain sight.

The psychology of measurement #openwork

Fri, 03 May 2013 21:16:49 +0100

I recently had the opportunity to work with a team who were trying to take a fresh look at the performance measured used by the team. My view on such a situation is that there are really only 2 questions you need to ask yourself:

1. What is the vision?

2. What measurements can I put in place to help me achieve the vision?

In reality, as our discussion progressed it became clear that these two questions were not at the forefront of the teams minds, instead the questions were:

1. What do we measure now that other people expect us to continue measuring?

2. Can we measure something if no one else in the org is measuring the same thing?

3. What if we measure something that gives someone else leverage over us?

4. What if we measure something that makes us look bad?

5. How can I use measurement to push my own agenda?

These are all useless and distracting questions but I think breaking down 4 and 5 provides some interesting insight.

Regarding 4. So what? Isn’t that a good thing? demonstrating poor performance in an era where you want to perform is the first step in improving that performance.

Regarding 5, I think this is an inherently selfish perspective about ‘how can I use measurement to support my individual goals’. Is it naive to think that if an org has a clear and coherent vision then there should be no need for personal agendas because personal agendas are overridden by buy-in to and pull towards the organisations vision?

The fact that both of these questions exist in the minds of the team hints at a more fundamental set of problems.

What if we returned to the to initial questions I posed and did so from a perspective of openness? Measurement has context, and therefore a commentary, the context is your vision. Does it matter if a measure shows a lack of progress toward achieving the vision? If your vision is valid and aligns with the organisations goals then surely it’s a good thing for others to be aware of something that isn’t contributing as it should so remedial action can be taken?

A problem within a team that constrains the wider organisations ability to achieve its vision is a problem for the whole org, Not just within the team in which it was identified.

Concern over highlighting bad performance against a measurement is a symptom of problems within the culture of the organisation. Blame, lack of responsibility, accountability and ownership, manifest themselves in desire to reduce transparency and question the rationality of openness.

I believe there is a better way based on radical openness and transparency that permeates organisations, silos and agendas. I’ll write more about this soon. If reading this has sparked some thoughts then i’d welcome any comments either on this blog or @ me on twitter or use the #openwork hashtag

Beautiful things happen when we work together #openwork

Wed, 01 May 2013 20:12:40 +0100

So why do we allow our the organisations we create to stifle collaboration, communication and openness with silos, politics and poor communication?

A few weeks ago i blogged the seeds of some thinking around the concept i’m referring to as #openwork In a series of upcoming blog posts i’ll be breaking these thoughts down into something more concrete, a manifesto for openness at work.

If this is an area that resonates with you i’d love to comment on my tumblr or @bakedidea

Bye for now

DSC_0475 on Flickr.Piglets in hay

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:02:44 +0100

DSC_0475 on Flickr.

Piglets in hay

Open Work unedited notes on my current thinking

Thu, 28 Feb 2013 12:40:00 +0000

Below is a copy and paste of the document where i note down all my thoughts on what i’m calling ‘Open work’

I thought i’d share the raw shizzle in the interests of practising what I preach and trying to be as open as possible as I work these thoughts through (hopefully) into something coherent, useful and publishable. Enjoy! all comments welcome

Open Work

What is openness?

Openness is the freedom that is felt at a personal level and experienced in an organisational context to share thoughts feelings, opinions and information
Openness is also the receptiveness to receive what is shared
Openness is the culture that pervades social interactions that are based on freedom

Later on I need to talk about freedom and how to enable that freedom.
Leverage social proof
Don’t judge the sharer, judge the hoarder
Hoarding

The construct that i describe as Openness has both an organisational and personal element

because the Silos can be both be structural and interpersonal
show an organisation, function, team, interpersonal siloes

siloes that can be vertical within hierarchy or horizontol across functions.
graphic of horizontal and vertical partitions.

Ask yourself how many edges do I have, how many edges does my team have? My department? Directorate? How removed am I from these?

What pattern can you apply to break these down? link to fast iterations of virtual structures,
that revolve around hubs. what are the hubs?
Who are the hubs?

WHY?

Symptoms

Where does your orgs ideas come from?
E.g.g corporate goals
Who sponsors your change activity?

are two people/temas working on the same thing in isolation?
Are two intiatives unknowingly working to undermine each other?
are two changes competing for the same resource?
Is there conflict between business units, functions, teams people caused by competing goals?
Do you get different answers if you ask different employees what the organisations top 3 priorities are?

top down
bottom up

top up
bottom down

top bottom
up down

What is wrong with these words where is the width? (Flanking)
These words are part of a language of hierarchy that is anachronistic.

-Reject closed language
Recognise the language you use that is not open.

Compare contrast open/closed phrases, investigate the etymology of these words
E.g.
Buy-in
Post
Role
Function
Directorate
Structure
Organisation
Group
Alignment
Influence
Direct report
Subordinate
Meeting
Conference
Desk
Office
Work
Strategy
Outcome
Lead
Manager
Senior
1:1 (like its something special)
Presentation
Promotion
Hot desk
Go for a coffee
Deadline
Cascade
All hands
Rush hour
Deliverable
Stakeholder is there someone who isn’t a stakeholder?
Influence
Performance review
Transparency: of many things e.g. committments
Lunch and learn is a broken concept, why not learn the rest of the time, and why not in work time

Staff survey, do you share the results and raw data?
concepts/principles
Should I split these into, attitude, enablers, constraints, principles?

Leadership = openness
Be brave

‘Open Argument’, argument is not negative!!!
Conflict too strong word, but the debates are open and lead to a better position, rather than seething resentment

Task over structure

Negatives/things to look out for
Openness needs accountavility or you create cracks. May be counter uintuitive

Also decision making

Signal/Noise and noise reduction.

What are the mechanisms for noise reduction?
Timeliness
Context, tagging or do I need to go there
Cones of interest, sharing those up front. What do I need to know

-Context

Bring the contextual baggage to a conversation.

Move conversation through different mediums for maximum value e.g. Start conversation on desktop, continue on mobile

Relate data and meta data to conversations, e.g. Here is the conversation that led me to talk to you.

Design for collision

-radical/extreme/progressive sharing/shariarchy
-channels of discovery
-foster emergence
-Social architecture: (thinking stack/zachman etc)
-connectedness (connectivity and psychological sense by what? shared vision?
-finding
-serendipity design for
-ego-less
-embrace criticism but by embracing criticism how to avoid paralysis (too many arguments)
-Clear threshold for decision making - stops paralysis
-radical un-secrecy
-Virtual Structures
- finite structures, rapid iteration of create, grow, destroy
- task/problem networks (mayfly)
-Now-ness - relate to the when/tenses of sharing future, past, present
-Presence
- hire for compatibility, culture is context context is people, understand organisational context.
- Energy
- feel time
-ownership
-positively reinforce sharing
- Your goals -> our goals
reward/incentivise colab and sharing, how? measure engagement.
- Shared goals are your compass goals are your culture, the thing direction of travel

Embrace emerging structures

- space is not a barrier, space is not as big as it used to be
there are tools to enable skype, vc units, desktop vc mobile vc

Current State:

-No opportunity for serendepity
-Closed networks
-Entropy

Trends:

-Privacy as commodity/desensitisation
-Hyper sharing
-High bandwidth communication/consumption
-Open source, social networks,
- task/problem networks

Thoughts:

There is no reason not to share
There is no impediment to sharing

appendix
valve handbook
open business cushman 90/10?

References:

http://fasterfuture.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-10-principles-of-open-business.html

http://blog.ted.com/2013/01/24/why-radical-openness-is-unnerving-reshaping-and-necessary-a-qa-with-ted-ebook-authors-don-tapscott-and-anthony-d-williams/

http://www.ted.com/pages/tedbooks_library#TapscottWilliams

http://www.ted.com/talks/don_tapscott_four_principles_for_the_open_world_1.html

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1671797/from-zappos-4-simple-hacks-to-foster-office-collaboration

gore tex
http://www.gore.com/en_xx/aboutus/culture/index.html

http://www.managementexchange.com/story/innovation-democracy-wl-gores-original-management-model

http://metro.co.uk/2013/02/25/facebook-twitter-or-email-what-do-we-share-online-and-why-3508887/

http://www.noop.nl/2012/11/taking-care-of-horses.html

Please excuse thinking aloud:- Re: no.5, you cd do some quick research / consultation w users in advance. Rather than crowdsource challenges identified by orgs, ask service users...? This cd be done in lots of different ways. Also, why stick to one challenge per team over duration of jam? Re: no.8, have you considered inviting service users too? Or running concurrent jam using same starting points?

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 21:27:19 +0000

Thanks for the feedback and thoughts, much appreciated. Re point 8 that is what i meant, just managed to not type it :)

Service design jams and social housing

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 19:42:28 +0000

I had the pleasure of attending a service design ‘learning by doing’ workshop last week. It was a really enjoyable half day, whilst i didn’t learn anything particularly groundbreaking it was fun to put some of the techniques i’d read about into practice. I think there is a lot that could be gained by applying service design thinking to enterprise architecture (which is my primary interest). This isn’t a post about that (sorry) that will be a post for another day.

Several of the attendees were part of the wider design community, of those attendees some were planning to attend (or involved in organising) the global service jam. I’d heard about it before and really liked the idea, unfortunately I can’t attend, but will be catching up on the blog and vids after the event.

I currently work for a company involved in social housing (amongst other things) and during the workshop I started putting two and two together and coming up with a question:

What would a service design jam look like for social housing?

Social housing organisations (and their customers) are going through some interesting times at the moment, factors such as increasing competition or government benefits changes threatening revenue streams and significantly impacting customer’s lives. Some organisations are reacting to these new pressures but my view is for the most part the sector is still delivering the same services to customers using the same processes. Everyone does tenancy sustainment, everyone does financial inclusion, everyone does tenant engagement. What I don’t see is much design more design by default, the design that fulfils the business expectations of the service to be delivered rather than the customer’s need. I’m not putting down the work that is done to engage customers in decision making and the delivery of services, I just wonder whether the ‘How’ could be improved and maybe service design is an additional ‘how’ that can be used in conjunction with the traditional techniques to make much better experiences for our customers.

So, to answer my own question this is what I think of when i think of a service design jam for social housing

Participants from different organisations within the sector coming together for a day/weekend
Participants coming from different departments/functions within social housing organisations
Participants from the same organisation being split between teams
Teams facilitated by ‘expert’ service design people
Design challenges crowdsourced before the event (I know this breaks one of the SDJ principles, but figure being able to contribute to the challenges will help people feel like they will get something tangible from the jam
Each team focuses on a challenge for the duration of the jam.
I wonder if one of the participating organisations has a space large enough to facilitate the jam?
I wonder how we could introduce ‘the voice of the customer’ into the jam? integrate them into teams? invite some along for design teams to access?

So this is what is buzzing around my head at the moment. I’d love it if anyone has any thoughts on this. Is it practical? would there be any demand for this sort of thing? Please leave a comment or @bakedidea on Twitter

Open Work: first notes

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:40:00 +0000

Open Work

An initial sketch of ideas around the concept of ‘Open work’, a developing idea for a manifesto for a new way of working that leverages concepts around openness and technology that enables openness to enable us all to work better, together.

Other than this preamble this is a straight dump of notes i’ve been jotting down, just thought i’d get it out there on the blog as a vehicle for making myself think more deeply about what i want to achieve. My plan is to start fleshing these notes out, into principles (hey i’m an architect!) and trace these concepts to some reality. When I first started thinking about these ideas I happened upon david cushman’s great writing (http://fasterfuture.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/the-10-principles-of-open-business.html) on the area of ‘open business’, so i’m mindful not to re-hash or at worst plagiarise David’s thoughts (you’ll notice some of my headings map to some of david’s principles.

So my plans consist of trying to frame some interesting and hopefully original thinking, whether this ends up as a post on my blog an ebook, or whatever, i’m not really sure, I’ve just got fed up of thinking things through, so thought its about time I should start, er, writing them through.

concepts/principles

-Context
-radical sharing/shariarchy
-discovery
-foster emergence
-Social architecture: (thinking stack/zachman etc)
-connectedness (connectivity and psychological sense by what? shared vision?
-finding
-serendipity
-ego-less
-embrace criticism but by embracing criticism how to avoid paralysis (too many arguments)
-Clear threshold for decision making - stops paralysis
-radical un-secrecy
-Virtual Structures
-Now-ness - relate to the when/tenses of sharing future, past, present
-Presence
- Energy

Current State:

-No opportunity for serendepity
-Closed networks
-Entropy

Trends:

-Privacy as commodity
-Hyper sharing
-High bandwidth communication/consumption

Thoughts:

There is no reason not to share
There is no impediment to sharing

What have I done this year?

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 23:37:39 +0000

At the start of this year of 2012 I decided that I was going to get off my arse and do things, work on the ideas that are always flying around my head and actually, not just work on them, but finish them as well!

(These are all non-day job related things, ill save all that stuff for another post)

I started off the year with the first version of ‘songs as a service’:
http://songsasaservice.wordpress.com

I then took my first stab at ebook publishing by writing a parody ‘business book’ called ‘How to be a dick’:

http://leanpub.com/howtobeadick

Then I wrote a 30 day diary recording me using Brian Eno’s ‘Oblique Strategies’:

http://leanpub.com/30daysonobliquestrategies

I then rounded off the year with a 2nd version of ‘songs as a service’:
http://www.songsasaservice.com

Some of these things were successful, some were not, but most importantly they were all fun experiences that I learnt a lot from. My hope for 2013 is to build on the confidence that working on these things have given me and do something even more challenging in the coming year.

30 Days on Oblique Strategies, the ebook

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 20:46:02 +0100

As of tonight the ebook detailing my journey through 30 days of using Oblique Strategies in a bog standard work context is now available to buy on leanpub

30 days on oblique strategies

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 20:54:32 +0100

It has been a while since i last posted, but i have a good reason! its because i’m currently blogging my way through my latest little challenge to use Oblique Strategies for the next 30 days well 23 I’ve already done 6).

The blog is here

Had to communicate a high level roadmap to some stakeholders....

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 15:43:20 +0100

Had to communicate a high level roadmap to some stakeholders. I’m quite please how i managed to simplify the complexity of the situation in this diagram, so thought i’d share an anonymised version of it.

I don’t know what it is about simple geometric shapes but...

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 20:03:01 +0100

I don’t know what it is about simple geometric shapes but i keep using them to try to simply explain situations, opportunities and concepts to stakeholders (and more importantly, to myself). Here is a new one

I seem to be drawing a lot of pyramids lately. This one was...

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 16:04:11 +0100

I seem to be drawing a lot of pyramids lately. This one was drawn to help give some focus to a discussion about introducing a brand new function into an organisational unit. There was a lot of discussion around requirements at different levels of capability maturity. I drew a basic pyramid on the board as a way of focusing our minds as to what are the fundamentals and how they relate to the high levels of maturity (essentially repurposing a hierarchy of needs). I then sat down and my colleagues used the pyramid as a framework to guide and document their discussions.

I like using the pyramid as its simple, easy to understand and also lends itself to breaking out (see the badly drawn left hand side of the photo) into a roadmap.

My daughter brought this picture home of a beach. There was...

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 13:29:02 +0100

My daughter brought this picture home of a beach. There was something about the simplicity that really struck me. Sand, sea, sky and sun. The essence of a beach experience in 4 abstract components. Interesting how complex interactions and environments cn be rendered simply thru abstraction.

I had a conversation with a colleague the other day about change...

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:31:00 +0100

I had a conversation with a colleague the other day about change design vs delivery phases. Leaving aside the (hopefully) iterative nature of these things in practise the interesting point was around the various change ‘actors’ (in a togaf sense) in an organisation would have very different views of what the scope of the responsibility is and what other functions responsibilities are. This sort of continuum came to mind (its not an original continuum, i’m just re-jigging it). I imagined different actors placing themselves and other functions at different points across this continuum, almost like an enterprise ‘pin the tail on the donkey’.

If there isn’t clarity on the interplay and collaboration between change agents within an organisation then there will be a) more Politics, more innefficiency, more latency. Maybe using this sort of technique is a way of ‘simply’ getting to some form of consensus or, highlight the lack of consensus.

Freakonomics, short review

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 21:12:04 +0100

I know i’m a bit late but freakonomics has been on my to-read list for ages (its a long queue) and i finally got round to reading it last week.

In summary i’m a bit dissapointed for a number of reasons:

It is really really short. Without the ‘bonus’ materials and articles it would be half the thickness
The structure is really poor, there are duplicate sections throughout the book. There are sections that appear to be leading somewhere and then stop….and are then picked up 30 pages later.

Some of the content is interesting, some of it is thought provoking but at the end of the day the experience of reading the book just isn’t satisfactory.

2 Step Diet

Tue, 05 Jun 2012 20:47:30 +0100

Last night i published an ebook on leanpub. It isn’t so much an ebook as a bit of conceptual art (*cough* wanker). I thought I’d elucidate on what its about.

I have always been mildly fascinated by the fad diet industry. Not only the contradictory information contained within the books that are peddled (and the amount of money that is made), but also the need that these books aim to satisfy in the minds of the readers. The need as I see it is to wrap up the dieting endeavour in a story that talks about a fictional shortcut.

The ebook has 2 steps, 2 pages and 4 words and yet the simplicity uncovers a hidden contention. The fundamental difficulty of the endeavour, the difficulty that is glossed over by the stories told by fad diet books with their promises of a solution.

The ebook as Art is a reaction and comment on the Con, the self-deception and resentment that is involved in this relationship between author, book and the books owner. I guess at its heart its a piece of work about Authenticity

How To be a Dick - Published!

Thu, 31 May 2012 21:27:07 +0100

Today is a good day for me. I have just published the first version of my ‘How To Be A Dick’ ebook. Its been a really fun experience pulling the ebook together. It is very short (only 34) pages, but is meant to be more like a succinct manual (hence the bullet point format).

I am charging $3.99 for the ebook, but making money isn’t the primary motivation. As with my recent Songs As A Service challenge, my motivation was to

a) Learn about how to write and publish an ebook, in case i have ideas in the future

and

b) Just create something for the fun and challenge of creating something

(Plus maybe there was an element of catharsis in turning experiences of ‘dick-ness’ into instructions in this manual :) ).

I’m really looking forward to (hopefully) getting feedback on this first version, i’m hoping to make regular updates, should there be interest. If anyone reading this post fancies sharing their experiences of working with a dick then please use #howtobeadick on twitter. I may well work your example into the next version of the ebook (with an acknowledgement of course!)