Disruptive Innovation

I gave a talk at PBIRG on the topic of disruptive innovation. It's a bit of a long one, but here it is if you're interested.

Career Changes

I recently reconnected with a friend I lost touch with roughly ten years ago when he moved to a different state. We had a brief email exchange providing each other updates on our family and professional circumstances. When I mentioned that I was still with the same company, he replied "I would have lost that bet. I had you pegged as someone on the move." Implicit to this statement was an undercurrent of disappointment. Dan Pink writes about how we live in a "free agent nation." If you work for the same firm for too long, the inescapable conclusion is you must be on a stifling, dead-end path.

It got me thinking a bit about my personal career and experience at ZS. I've certainly had my ups and downs and on two different occasions thought of leaving. On both occasions, I asked myself what needed to change to reinvigorate my passion. Both times, I sought to redefine my career within ZS and found that the organization promptly bended to accommodate my aspirations. In fact, I feel that I was ultimately able to exert a firmwide impact on our culture and practices as a result of my new personal ambitions.

I agree with the sentiment that corporations are abstractions that can no longer command our loyalty. But hasty departures and transient commitments are also problematic. It is a lot harder to influence large scale change than it is to simply bail ship for smoother sailing. Circumstances will often warrant a move, but when done out of simple convenience may also reflect a lack of personal accountability and courage. While I have no idea what my future holds, for the time being I'm pretty energized by the excitement of influence.

Reading

A number of folks have asked me about recent books I've read which have influenced my thinking. Below is a quick summary. I've tried to limit the list to books from the last year or so to keep it fresh, but I couldn't resist slipping in a few oldies.

Communication and Vision

Presentation Zen

How to create and deliver effective visuals that support the presenter (versus compete with or substitute for.)

Slide:ology

Duarte Design's bible for creating and delivering effective presentations

The Non-Designer's Design Book

Fundamentals of design for written material. A must read for design illiterates like myself. Elementary for others.

The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Pictures are far more effective than words in communicating complex or new ideas.

Made to Stick

An amazing book on how to create and communicate ideas that stick.

A Whole New Mind

The corporate world greatly favors left hemisphere orientation. This book opened my eyes to the importance of the other half.

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

You probably know all about these two already. I love Malcolm Gladwell. Outliers is coming up on my list soon.

Self-Improvement and Productivity

The Art of Possibility

Gave me a whole new perspective on life and work. There are dozens of similar cheesy, inspirational books like this. Different ones strike a cord with different folks.

Winning

I highly recommend listening to this on audio. Jack Welch narrating with his thick Boston accent brings entertainment to a commute.

Tao Te Ching

You've all heard of it. It's amazing and timeless. I only recently made the time for it and glad I did.

The Paradox of Choice

An eye-opening book for those of us with OCD. I think the diagnoses are sound, but the prescriptions now are a bit dated for digital media consumption given ongoing filtering improvements.

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

I'm sure most of you are familiar with this one too. A bit overengineered, but an awesome productivity book. Written for the pen and paper era, but plenty of online resources have sprung from it.

Bit Literacy

A bit didactic and dogmatic, but nevertheless great advice for information consumption.

Four Hour Workeek

Tim Ferris strikes me as arrogant, egocentric, and hedonistic and I found myself really disliking the book yet reading it anyway. It is written as a "how to" guide to get rich fast. Don't read it that way. If you read with a learning lens and try to ignore the the obnoxiousness, it makes some great points and serves as a reminder to accept no personal limits.

Creativity and Innovation

Lateral Thinking

This is one of those short, simple books that took me a very long time to read as I constantly paused and reflected on the profound insight. This book changed the way I think about problems. It's old, but timeless.

A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative

Another oldie. A quick read for ideas on how to get the creative juices flowing.

Welcome to the Creative Age

I don't agree with everything in this book, but it is extremely thought provoking. A must read for anyone who works in marketing. I bought his follow-up book Herd but haven't made time for it yet.

The Innovator's Dilemma

A bit ivory tower at times, but I think Clay Christensen really nails drivers of disruptive innovation and why incumbents are virtually destined to fall. I'm halfway through his latest - The Innovator's Prescription - which I highly recommend for anyone who works in health care. My personal point of view is that his health care prophecies are not "ifs" but "whens" and "hows".

The Ten Faces of Innovation, The Art of Innovation

I'm enamored with everything IDEO. Great principles for innovation.

The Myths of Innovation

Very insightful work on innovation.

Offices at Work

I'm obsessed with the abundance of industrial vestiges in our companies. This book sheds light on the notion from a physical space perspective.

Management and Business

Scenarios, The Art of the Long View

Two great books with the same theme - enhancing organizational perception and learning through the creation of future memories.

The Experience Economy: Work Is Theater & Every Business a Stage
Authenticity: What Comsumers Want

Pine and Gilmore have groundbreaking insights on the new world order. Required reading for aspiring entrepreneurs.

Business Process Change

A book related to ZS consulting practice. A strong underpinning to our expansion into capability building and outsourcing. Very dry and cumbersome, but valuable for those of us who are weak on operations.

Rethinking the Sales Force

Another book which has influenced ZS thinking on sales force consulting. Elementary reading for those in the trade.

Leading the Revolution

If you can get past Gary Hamel's blowhard tendencies, this book sheds light on how the world is changing and implications for business.

The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization

This is an oldie, but new to me. I gained a greater appreciation for systems thinking and organizational learning. Has shaped my perspective on the financial crisis.

Managing The Professional Service Firm

This book has had a strong influence on the management of my firm. Valuable for those who work in professional services.

Technology

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

The Design of Everyday Things

Our head of software development, Jes Sherborne turned me on to these books. Great books for appreciating good design and experience.

Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages

A fun book that provides good historical context for information management.

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations

A phenomenal book on how and why the web / interactive media is changing the world.

Meatball Sundae

Some light reading on new marketing. Did I mention the world is changing? I recommend this book to our clients a lot, despite the title.

The Long Tail

You all know about this one. Some of his predictions were wrong, but still extremely insightful.

Inspiration

Every month or so I get the itch to get out and participate in something interesting that in no way is related to what I feel I am "supposed" to be doing. Something random and interesting, but with no clear relationship to any critical path in my life. In short, something I most certainly don't have time for. Given my line of work, I always pay a subsequent penalty of sleep deprivation working all night to catch up, but it's almost always worth it. I took one of these small excursions on Tuesday afternoon.

I went to Ideo's offices in Palo Alto to watch Jacqueline Novogratz speak. More than anything, it was an excuse to see Ideo, a company which has become a minor obsession of mine. The speaker was secondary. Ideo didn't disappoint - the physical space screamed out creativity and the passion and energy of its people felt authentic. I even crossed paths with Tom Kelley which was quite the treat, but little did I know what was in store. The surprise for me was Jacqueline Novogratz, a person I knew nothing about. What an amazing woman. It was one of those rare moments when I was struck by being in the presence of greatness. Her talk focused on the work she is doing with the Acumen fund. She talked about having the audacity to change the world and the humility to do so effectively. As I read this last sentence it looks trite and cliché, but to hear it from someone who is living it was inspirational. I aspire to leadership, but in her presence found myself wanting to follow. She exuded compassion, but also demonstrated a keen sense of realism and discipline. She had the bleeding heart of a liberal, but the grounded accountability and tough love of the far right.

Jolted me out of a short spell of boredom. Thanks, Jacqueline.

Industrial Artifacts - Physical Space

As many of you know, I'm obsessed with organizational learning and innovation. I've been ranting for a while now on how artifacts of the Industrial Revolution serve as barriers to these ends. I thought it might be worth jotting a few down. For this post, I'll focus on physical space. In particular, my contention is that modern office design has numerous vestiges of the factories that came to symbolize the industrial era. I came across a great quote recently that nicely captures a belief I've held for some time now:

"Workspace design can convey, more clearly than we might desire, just what we value. The physical cues of the office send environmental messages ... We pay attention to physical cues precisely because they seem less consciously controlled than verbal expressions such as a mission statement or corporate values statement."

In other words, actions speak louder than words and how we manage physical office space is an action more telling than any spoken pronouncement. Here are a two dated notions that I think are implicitly embraced in how we design and manage our offices (and by association reflect how we think about "work"):

* Hierarchy and status. With tenure comes rank. With rank comes privilege. Real estate is a privilege. Is it really the case that senior people have a greater need for space and privacy? Perhaps to some extent, but certainly not to the degree we accord. Hierarchy was critical to managing industrial processes where human "resources" truly could be thought of as cogs in a machine. We all recognize the importance of being flat to thrive in the knowledge era, but we don't manage our space accordingly.

* Personal productivity. We tend to think of work as putting our heads down and focusing. This certainly is one aspect, but increasingly diminishing in relative importance. We will always need time for thoughtful reflection and focused individual effort, but thriving learning organizations are highly interactive. Innovation flourishes in team-oriented, collaborative environments. Instead of building team-focused space, we build up walls on cubicles and define personal territory. Knowledge work is all about learning and learning is an inherently social process. While personal productivity remains important, the pre-eminence it commanded on the assembly line has diminished. I'm fascinated by innovations at companies like IDEO where space is designed around activities, not individual real estate.

More on other artifacts and innovation barriers to come...

Hotel Safe

A quick example of design simplicity. Hotel room safes got it right. There is only one thing you can ever do – enter your password and turn the knob. When the safe is open, you specify a password, turn the knob counterclockwise and your stuff is safely stored. When the safe is closed, you enter the same password, turn the knob clockwise and retrieve your stuff. This is so simple it seems obvious. It's not. Whoever developed the first one understood the elegance of simplicity. Someone on the design team repeatedly said "no" and didn't budge. It is very easy to imagine a safe that requires investment of time to figure out how to use. For such a safe, one might lack confidence that it has worked right or that it will properly reopen. Perhaps a mode button that toggles between "set password" and "store valuables." And a knob? Can't you envision engineers around a table saying that's old fashioned and replacing it with buttons and red/green indicator lights that are solid red when locked and flash green in "set password" mode? A clear button. A reset button. An enter button. Maybe even A and B buttons. Think about the digital alarm clock. I don't know about you, but I long ago stopped taking the time to figure that out in my hotel room. It's too much trouble and I don't sleep soundly worrying about whether it will wake me up on time. The safe designers heeded the advice of Antoine de Saint-Exuper: "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

India

Before you can walk through the front doors of the Delhi airport to check in, a security guard asks for a hardcopy of your itinerary. A paperless traveler, I pulled out my BlackBerry and showed him the calendar entry where I had typed in the flight information. Not surprisingly, this was insufficient proof. How does he know this is my BlackBerry? So we took it to the next level - an email with 'Paul Maloney' in the 'to:' field. A dead match with my passport and I was through. Feeling amused at this seemingly purposeless security measure, I proceeded to the check-in counter.

After passing through the next round of security, I felt a lot less smug. In the US, we take our shoes off, liquids out, and TSA swabs our laptops for computerized chemical analysis. If you're special, you get to pass through the puff chamber. I don't know about you, but the whole smoke and mirrors routine doesn't make me feel any safer. Here's what they do in India. No need to take off your shoes or pull out the plastic baggie with your hand lotion and saline solution. You do need to take your laptop out. After walking through the metal detector, a polite gentleman pats you down, a little more thoroughly than you might like. Here's the best - no less than four people make eye contact with you, give a careful look, and ask how you're doing. Old school pat down and human analysis. I'd bet a week's wages this is more effective than TSA.

Bank of America

I tend to keep a high balance in my checking account and have never bothered opening a savings account. Today I walked into my local Bank of America branch to explore my options. The friendly account executive walked me through the choices and I made a decision. She then asked how I would be making a deposit and I indicated I would be transferring from my checking account. She indicated that this would be easily done, but that the interest rates would be 0.25% lower than she had quoted me because I was an existing customer. I observed that it was odd that they would penalize their customers and she corrected me that I was thinking of it all wrong -- it wasn't a penalty for existing customers, but a perk for new customers. When I asked about using a cashier's check drawn from another bank, she confirmed that indeed I could get the more attractive rate. Being stubbornly principled, this is what I decided I would do. As I walked out of the bank and reflected on it, I decided that if I went to the trouble of a transaction at another bank it would be a lot simpler to simply open a savings account at that bank. Removes a step from the process. I wonder how many other customers have gone through this process and walked out on Bank of America?

Conference

Mark Hurst's GEL is the first conference I've been to that didn't suck. He's officially been outdone. Zap Your PRAM was a refreshing blast of fresh air in this depressing environment of economic gloom. Great discourse, exquisite cuisine, and delightful company. I won't attempt to compete with the great summaries provided by others who attended:
Summary by Stephen DesRoches (one of organizers from silverorange)
Rob Campbell
Rob Paterson
Deane Barker
Ian Williams

Context

While the front pages of our papers continue to underscore the magnitude of this economic collapse, the rest of the news and our everyday conversations really seem to be in a state of denial. Put bluntly - our country has been living on borrowed time for decades now and we're starting to experience the hangover.

I'm worried that we'll see the reversal of some great business developments we've started to experience in the last decade. For example, the "war for talent" has driven companies to become more employee-centric shifting the emphasis from the latter to former word in "Human Resources." Similarly, globalization and technology advances have stimulated customer empowerment in many sectors effectively dismantling our concept of marketing. As companies become cost constrained moving forward, the bottom line focus could reverse these wonderful advancements.

I've always loved the maxim "adversity is a true test of character." The importance of context in setting a mood and ultimately driving behavior is enormous. In the upcoming years, the context of a recovering financial system will be a test for our personal and national character. No question we're in for tough times as we recover from the consequences of our recklessness. Let's seize the opportunity to return to core values and resist the urge to recede from recent progress.

Financial Crisis

Like all of you, I find the unprecedented nature of the recent financial crisis troubling to say the least. While the periphery of my attention has gathered this pending disaster (pulled our money out of the market earlier this year), I haven't invested the time to truly learn what has been going on. I recently started and thought I'd share a Fresh Air segment that I found particularly informative.

Hugh McLeod

Been off the blog grid for a while - will get back to capturing some thoughts over the next week or so. In the meantime, I thought it worth restating how much I enjoy reading Hugh MacLeod (still working my way through his archives). From today's post reflecting on the post 9-11 world:

"Chaos can be a positive thing. Chaos is inherently part of the creative act. To embrace creativity means you must also embrace chaos. Things don't happen when everything is neat and 'just so'. Creativity is all about disruption. The people who tell you that creativity is pain-free are liars. The people who tell you they've got a plan are liars. There is no plan. There's just you, God and the need to invent. And this uncertain world is what most of us now find ourselves entering, willingly or otherwise.

Creativity equals chaos. Chaos equals creativity. Embrace it or die. I've already done so. I know all about it. It almost cost me my liver but like I said, education is expensive.

The Creative Age is upon us. The Chaotic Age is upon us. We are scared. Damn right, we should be scared. But out of the terror comes the amazing opportunities for us to expand both on the material and spiritual level. The fewer safety nets there are to save us, the less choice we have to be anything other than ourselves, the less choice we have besides doing what is meaningful to us. And finding ourselves, doing what matters, becoming the person we were born to be, this is what God put on this earth to do.

We live in amazing and interesting times."

Possibility

I've changed my thinking about professional development quite a bit after reading Marcus Buckingham's book Now Discover Your Strengths. While I don't necessarily recommend the book as a self-improvement guide , I found the premise compelling. Namely, we have a tendency to focus on "areas to improve" instead of "strengths to leverage". My personal career took a turn for the better when I stopped trying to excel on dimensions that are not natural talents and started allowing myself to be guided by passion.

My company recently conducted its bi-annual review process. The performance discussions of our people were compliant with the script of success celebration followed by areas for improvement. Particularly for rising stars, it almost seemed like we were searching for problems to fix. Marrying Marcus Buckingham's message with Rose and Ben Zander's insights on possibility, I realized that an additional emphasis is in order: achieving greatness. Instead of struggling to find constructive feedback when little is evident, we should be asking questions like "how can we inspire this person?" and "how can we enable this person to broaden his/her impact?" and "what are the ways we can ensure this person becomes a role model for others?" Sounds obvious and corny, but nonetheless easily overlooked.

Online

I had a great conversation last night with one of my college buddies about reading online. He commented that there is so much garbage it becomes too difficult to find good stuff. In other words, the signal to noise ratio is too low to be worth the trouble. I shared with him my personal experience exploring some of the different filters and tools. I also shared how I've changed my reading habits. Lastly, I commented on the power of word-of-mouth links. The people I am most moved by tend to point me to other great thinkers. In the spirit of referral, I thought I'd share a couple of blog posts that I've really enjoyed.

This post is from Kevin Kelly and discusses what he describes as "generatives". In a world where old scarcities are becoming abundances, new scarcities necessarily emerge. I think he really nails what some of these are.

This post is from Hugh MacLeod. It's four years old, but I only recently came across it. While he calls it "How to Be Creative", I think his points are germane for anyone seeking meaning in their career.

Simplicity

I am a new student in the school of design. To call myself new is an understatement. To provide some perspective on how little clue I have, upon seeing my living room for the first time my sister-in-law commented "Paul - when you bought that couch, did you remember the rug?" As with any new learning endeavor, my awareness of design now is heightened. I recently came across a great example of a product that lives up to the foundational product design principle of "keep it simple."

I haven't been on my bicycle for a while and recently decided to dust it off and take it for a spin. Among other things, my bike repair shop replaced my broken cycle computer (spedometer/odometer). When picking a new computer, I didn't give it any thought. I said "I'll take whichever one is most popular and easiest to use." Turns out these criteria were overlapping and I wound up with a great product.

They call it a cycle "computer" because you can cram it full of features. I've gone through several and all were chock full of distractions I didn't care about (and suspect I'm not alone). Downloading data to your personal computer. Storing different trip information. Laps. Various measures of central tendency. I don't know about you, but I have enough analysis in my life without needing to apply it to a recreational hobby. My new cycle computer does exactly what I want it to and little else. It tells me (in order of importance):

* how far I've gone
* how long I've been riding
* the current time
* how fast I'm going

It tells me a few things I care less about like average/max speeds and distance across all rides, but I guess they didn't design it just for me... As for simplicity, the display has large numbers on top that reveal current speed and a smaller numbers below that toggle between the features listed above. To change the small display, you simply press down on raised Braille-type dots below the screen. When riding, this is far easier than pressing buttons on the sides. A single top button also is far superior to the four small side buttons that have characterized every cycle computer I've owned in the past. There are only two things you can do when clicking the single button: short click to toggle the display and 'click and hold' to reset your trip time/distance. If you're in the market, I highly recommend the Cateye Strada.

Personal Accountability

I'm a big believer in personal accountability. I haven't always been, but about five years ago a light switched in my pea brain. I realized two things that apply to almost every challenge or setback: 1. Looking backward - I can almost always assume blame and looking forward I can almost always do something. 2. to the extent that external circumstances are to blame, the context almost always is my choice (both present and future).

Let me illustrate with a simple fabricated example (this has no basis in reality). My CEO promises to provide support for an important initiative I am leading and fails to do so. With an internal locus of control, I say things like "did I help keep this on his radar - clearly he has a few competing priorities?", "did I underscore the importance?", "was I expecting too much from him?", and so forth. Say I did all of these things and my CEO simply is dismissive or otherwise unwilling to make my initiative a priority.* I have the option of finding someone else who might be able to make more time. Worst case scenario, having exhausted all options I can always leave the company. Sticking around is a choice. If I'm going to make this choice, darned if I'm not going to try helping to improve the things I know can be better.

Not only have I not left my company, but I've been inspired by the kinetic energy that builds when I invest in improvement. I connect with folks who are equally motivated and a virtuous cycle ensues.

* for the record, not only is this completely made up, but my CEO is nothing like this. He is amazing about making time for things that folks are passionate about and always supportive. While he may not always share a common perspective, I have been repeatedly struck by his nonjudgmental listening and open mind.

YouTube

I'm finally free of a vicious domain host that held me captive for many years. If you're in the market, steer clear of webcountry.net. "Abominable" doesn't even begin to capture how much this company sucks. Anyway, I thought I'd write a quick post to share this cool YouTube mashup - far superior interface.

Linguistics

I heard a fun Chomsky quote today: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." His point was that the sentence is grammatically correct (syntax) while being nonsensical with respect to meaning (semantics). In reflecting on Chomsky's point, it occurred to me that linguistics can serve as a framing metaphor for how we go through life. Grammar and other linguistic rules provide guidelines for forming words from letters, sentences from words, paragraphs from sentences. Or lines from words, stanzas from lines, poems from stanzas, and so forth. Rules (syntax) are the building blocks for poetry, literature, plays, and so forth. But simply following rules and convention does not necessarily create something worth reading. You can call a poem a haiku by creating three non-rhyming lines of 5-7-5 syllables respectively, but that does not mean that it's any good or necessarily makes sense. In life we show up to meetings on time and focus our attention. Sometimes it isn't valuable for us to attend that meeting. Or the meeting might be pointless. Or the meeting might be supporting an initiative that is silly. (Yes, I recognize that the structure of the last two sentences is grammatically flawed.) In going through life we almost always abide by syntax, but how often do we contemplate semantics? Do you live your life or does life happen to you?

Visualization

Lately I've been reading and thinking about the whole trend toward "whole brain" effectiveness. Dan Pink's book A Whole New Mind is a great place to get started if you're interested. I work in an environment that is exceedingly biased toward left brain talent. As such, I've been exploring ways to vitalize my creative energy. The neurological consensus is that visual thinking is a hallmark of the right brain. While my self image is not creative, I believe the authorities when they say it's a function of practice (to an extent, I'm sure.) David Gray is endeavoring to codify and disseminate a simple visual vocabulary and language. In the same way we have building blocks for speaking/writing (letters, words, grammar) and mathematics (numbers, symbols, operations), we can develop the same for visualization (forms, shapes, fields). His website has some short videos introducing the idea -- I'm definitely attending the next workshop he holds in San Francisco.

A logical application for visual thinking in a business environment is presentation. We live with an intentionally sub-optimal QWERTY keyboard as an artifact of a technological era where typewriter arms would jam when pressed in too quick sequence. In the same vein, we live with text-focused PowerPoint which was initially developed when computing audiovisual capabilities were nascent at best. With advances in digital photography and multimedia production tools, the barrier to developing compelling visual presentation materials no longer exists yet Death by PowerPoint endures. Moving forward, I pledge to personally start developing more visual presentations and advancing my firm's audiovisual capabilities. Not just better graphics, videos, and use of stock photography in presentations, but more utilization of the right brain.

I am a big believer in making a choice when developing presentation materials: they either support a presentation or substitute for it, but not both. As such, your slides should not stand on their own without you presenting them. Or they can serve quite well as a leave-behind that don't require you to deliver them. When you present slides that are designed to do both, you will come up short on both. What about the people who don't show up and want to catch up on what they missed? Create a separate deck. Or better yet, create a document - a word processor is a far more appropriate publishing tool than a slide creator for the readers. Even better, create a recording of the presentation and deliver/distribute electronically.

I'm most of the way through Garr Reynolds' book Presentation Zen which is an excellent roadmap for improving presentations. I also recommend his blog.

Self Restraint

Hopefully this soapbox rant has sufficient constructive spin... Recently I've been reflecting on why I don't enjoy meetings, particularly larger ones:

- Some meetings don't have a clear or compelling point
- For the meetings that do, the discussion frequently strays off-topic
- As a result, meetings take a lot longer than they should and/or not enough is accomplished

These observations probably aren't very insightful, but I'll challenge you to ask yourself the degree to which you are part of the problem. I asked myself this question and painfully discovered that I'm frequently a culprit. I suppose others probably look at me and think "he sure likes to hear himself talk." Here are the questions that I pledge to ask myself before opening my mouth in future meetings:

- Will this meaningfully add to the main point of the meeting?
- Is there a risk this will subtract from the main point? (Disrupt, distract, derail. Specifically from the perspective of the person organizing the meeting)

If the answer to both questions is "yes", I'll make a note to follow-up outside of the meeting and keep my mouth shut. Many forms follow-up can take: one-on-one discussion, topic of future meeting, email to broader audience. In the unusual event that it is critical to bring up immediately, I'll think carefully about how to frame the comment in a way that won't trigger further diversion.

Practicing what I preach and self-awareness are very important to me, so if you see me violating this pledge, please call me out. And yes, I recognize the irony inherent to blogging about this...

p.s. immediately after organizing my thoughts on this post, I serendipitously came across this quote from poet James Russell which nicely encapsulates the above: "Such power there is in clear-eyed self-restraint"

Clay Shirky

I really enjoyed Clay Shirky's paper on situated software. I'll be seeing him talk on Friday, so watched this video as a preview. It's good stuff. My favorite quote: "They didn't care that it worked in practice, because they already knew it didn't work in theory"

Frameworks

Indulge me one more analytical rant, then I'll be done for a bit. Consultants routinely leverage "frameworks" to help our clients tackle issues and make decisions. The intent of a framework is to put structure around a problem, develop a common vocabulary, and build alignment. Identifying and framing the right problems in the right way is half the battle. I believe in frameworks and use them all the time. Here is my peeve - many companies design their planning process around a series of frameworks. They build templates around them and a form-filling mindset ensues. Simply populate the frameworks in sequence and your strategy will emerge. If only it were that simple...

Forecasting

For part of my professional career, I have invested energy in helping clients with forecasting. The approach is fairly well established and fraught with impressive nomenclature. "We execute synthesis through triangulation of disparate data sources." "We model uncertainty through Monte Carlo simulation to predict demand taking care to communicate through ranges and distributions that highlight sensitivities." I recently read a couple of great books that have altered my mental model on the purpose of forecasting, namely The Art of the Long View by Peter Schwartz and Scenarios by Kees van der Heijden. Historically I've perceived the intent of forecasting to be prediction. For short-term purposes, this still makes great sense. But for longer term planning, predictive accuracy is often unachievable given the number of variables and high levels of uncertainty. My new perspective is that a more meaningful purpose for long range forecasting should be to create what Peter Schwartz describes as "future memory". The goal of forecasting should shift from demand estimation (prediction) to organizational perception and strategic dialog (future memory). In other words, what are we assuming about the world and what are the implications? What are the big events that would dramatically alter the landscape? To what extent can we influence these? If we can't, how can we be on the lookout and alter course. Related to my previous post on "bounded awareness," one goal of forecasting should be organizational self awareness.

Suspending Disbelief

Anticipating challenges and asking your audience to suspend disbelief can be a powerful method for fostering open-mindedness. I've tried to employ this when presenting a controversial topic. Kevin Kelly turned me on to the Long Now foundation and I recently listened to a recording called Power to Save the World on the topic of nuclear energy. Gwyneth Cravens commences the talk with a plea for the audience to suspend disbelief. She describes her staunch leftist beliefs and history of protest, including the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant. She then proceeds to describe her personal transformation to nuclear advocate. She describes her extensive firsthand research and investigation and makes a very compelling case for nuclear energy. She effectively disarms dissent by starting each topic with "I'm sure you're thinking 'yeah, but'..." and systematically dismantles counterpoints. She is a very dry and boring presenter, but the talk was moving nonetheless.

Anyway, I'm trying to make two points: 1. anticipating challenges and acknowledging them up front is a great way to encourage a hostile audience to keep an open mind and 2. for baseload power, it almost seems that nuclear is inevitable.

Language

Continuing on the theme of my last two posts, I've recently started paying closer attention to language. In my last entry, I observed how simple expressions reveal others' personal philosophies. In a similar vein, inspection of word choice can reveal biases, inadvertent posturing, negative mindsets, etc. For example, I recently commented on a work colleague's expression "keep in check" when describing a partnership -- a bit of a contradiction in terms. Another colleague recently observed that we were "competing with the internal client team" for a project -- do we really want to compete with our clients? A very common phrase I frequently used in the past was "buy-in", an expression which betrayed my "us versus them" thinking. If we are truly collaborating with our clients, shouldn't ownership be a natural outcome? I'm not suggesting that we try to change our words. Just challenge the beliefs they expose and improved expression should naturally follow.

Personal Philosophies

In a prior life while doing the MBA thing, a fellow student and I engaged in a debate that quickly became adversarial. I was being defensive about some decisions that I had made and feeling sorry for myself over the outcome. My classmate was not one to let people off the hook and continued to challenge my reasoning. Our conversation ended when she said "Paul, do you think that things happen for a reason?" In irritated defiance, I instinctively said "no" to which she quickly replied "maybe you just haven't thought about it." After settling down, I reflected on her comment and damned if I didn't actually think about it. I used to interpret the expression "things happen for a reason" as deterministic and sermonic. It always struck me as judgmental and parochial - a "had it coming" of sorts. Upon further reflection, it occurred to me that it's also a personal philosophy. For my classmate, "things happen for a reason" was something that she lived by and it guided everything she did. She always looked for meaning and treated all setbacks as instructive. I developed a new perspective on my classmate after realizing how much this simple expression told me about her.

Since then, I've always looked for cues that reveal personal philosophies and shape how people see the world. A work colleague once commented "my body is a temple." For him this is both physical and spiritual -- he takes great care of himself. Another work colleague is fond of saying "keep it real." His life is a constant quest for authenticity. Nothing turns him off more than phoniness or pretension. A close friend once commented "everything has a place," an expression that encapsulates everything he does and reveals his inner thought process. He is meticulously organized, logical, and guided by unwavering common sense. I've mentioned in previous posts that I am a "student for life." What is your personal philosophy?

Collaboration

In providing professional services to clients, I've recently faced an increasing number of situations where our teams are asked to collaborate with other providers. This can create a number of challenges. Culturally, it may be difficult to reconcile different beliefs, values, and/or perspectives. Operationally, the working model can be very different. The physical separation constrains visibility and transparency. Despite these barriers, our clients ask us to work together for a reason. They see an opportunity to combine different strengths to build a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Despite the challenges, I believe we have an obligation to make it work.

In a recent presentation, a colleague described a collaboration between our management consultancy and a creative ad agency. In one sentence he described how we were working in "partnership". In the next sentence, he described how a source of value that we brought was "keeping them in check." This struck me as conflicting. At the risk of being sanctimonious, I privately expressed concern over the sentiment that this language revealed. I'm certainly not above this -- I've had my fair share of conflict and tension in these efforts. That said, if we agree to collaborate with other professional service agencies as partners, we need to think and behave in this spirit.

Feedback

As a fairly strong-willed, opinionated person, assuming a position of leadership in my company has been quite rewarding. I have autonomy, influence, and ultimate accountability to steer fate (both personal and organizational). With position comes price. For me the price is in the form of feedback. One of my most prized guiding principles is self-awareness. I tell anyone who will listen that I cherish feedback, especially constructive. There is a natural reluctance for teams to be critical of colleagues who have formal authority over them. This has been a source of frustration for me.

The other day in a meeting, I was emphatically expressing a point of view on a relatively controversial topic. A colleague interrupted me mid-sentence and said "Paul, we don't disagree with you." It never occurred to me that I was coming across as argumentative. I simply felt very passionate about the issue and was trying to convey this. I reflected on this simple comment and realized that I frequently come across as disagreeable when I really mean to express excitement. This feedback was pointed and delivered unintentionally and indirectly. It occurred to me -- my thirst for feedback is easily quenched by simply paying better attention. It's all over the place. I just need to look for it.

Bounded Awareness

Seth Godin's blog had a great video this week. Check this out before reading on:

This is a recreation of a video used in a 1978 study where participants missed a woman with an umbrella slowly walking across the screen (Neisser & Dube). We all have blind spots. Bounded awareness is a term that refers to organization level blind spots. Companies and teams become so focused on keeping their eyes on the ball, that they fail to see what's right in front of them. A while back I read a great article called Decisions Without Blinders which describes how companies:
- fail to seek out important information
- fail to use information they have because they may not see the relevance
- fail to share relevant information with those who need it

It takes a lot of deliberate effort to make stimuli and information more readily available. Bounded awareness was a troubling problem during the industrial era. In the global digital world where disruptive discontinuities are a few clicks away from tossing your business upside down, it is downright insidious.

Empathy and Sincerity

Last week I was in a meeting about a topic on which I am relatively inexpert. As a student for life, this was an exciting opportunity for me to get smart in an area that was very intriguing. As a naïve observer, I also had the unique opportunity to bring a fresh perspective. We all tend to see things a very specific way when immersed in a subject matter and it's never a bad idea to have an outsider challenge orthodoxy. Very early on in the meeting, my emotions got the better of me when I caught two experts exchanging glances and rolling their eyes. From a personal perspective, it irritated me. On behalf of my team (also naïve to the topic), I felt protective. It later struck me that I was experiencing the unique opportunity of sitting in my clients' shoes. As consultants, it's implicit in our mandate to exude expertise and wisdom. It's very easy to fall down the slippery slope of pedagogy, arrogance, and dismissal of customers as "ill-informed". I've done it more times than I care to admit.

On a half dozen occasions, I've had the professional development conversation related to pointed client feedback. Typically, it revolves around clients perceiving us as arrogant, condescending, or argumentative. The feedback often elicits questions related to expression. "How can I change my wording?" "How can I soften my tone." I think these are the wrong questions. The right question is "How can I change how I feel?" If you feel arrogant and condescending, no amount of effort spent on altering expression (verbal, tonality, body language) is going to prevent your client from realizing this. I think the best questions are "why do I feel superior?", "what can we learn from our client?", and "how can we take advantage of our client's fresh perspective." The intent is not to make your client feel better or differently, but to truly appreciate and prize his/her perspective.

Humility

I am a student for life. A few years back, one of my mentors used this expression and it really resonated. Of course, I had heard the expression dozens of times but this was the first time that it really struck me as a profound guiding principle. Embracing a passion for learning is quite liberating. Self-pity over mistakes and failures transforms to reflective contentment for wisdom gained. Setbacks and adversity become tests of character. Challenges become opportunities. Insecurities become curiosities. And so on.

Student for life also means that if I'm not being routinely humbled, I am not truly growing. The other night, I had the opportunity to experience such humility. At my firm, we are rebuilding our internal technology platform to improve knowledge sharing. We are working with silverorange, a group of 20-something web designers and developers. You may have heard of some of their clients -- Feist, Digg, GigaOm, Bebo. Yeah, silverorange designed these sites - before they were big. Anyway, they are a very unassuming cast of characters that stay out of the limelight. Supreme self-confidence, but no hint of ego. They are on the bleeding edge of a revolution in technology which creates overnight millionaires, yet this isn't their agenda. In a new school space, they're steadily building a business on old school principles. One of their partners commented to me "we're working on a 'get rich slow' scheme." Their talent is unquestioned, but in some ways easy to miss. Sure, they have the best programming talent and are intimately familiar with the latest buzz, techniques, tools, tricks, and gadgets. They have their finger on the pulse. Chris Anderson would say they are 'aligned with the grain of the web.' But this isn't what impressed me. I was most taken by their perspective, in thought and in expression. Working with them we are able to see our priorities with a newfound sense of clarity. It's very easy to complicate problems, but at the end of the day most things really are quite simple. Thanks, guys.

Authenticity

On a recent flight from Chicago to San Francisco, I had occasion to strike up a conversation with a fellow passenger that proved to be one of the most inspiring of my life. For most of the flight, I had my head down in my laptop. For some reason, I made a passing comment and before I knew it was hanging on the every word of my fellow passenger. Turns out the guy next to me (in a middle seat in coach) is the CEO of a company called Method Home, a consumer package goods company that sells cleaning products - Target is their biggest customer. This guy is the real deal. He was describing his business with passion and vibrant energy and used words like "self-actualizing" to describe its personal reward. He pulled out his internal strategy folder and walked me through the three pillars of his business model: eco-friendly products (no footprint), personal health (no poison), and emotional connection to customers. It turns out my wife buys their products for exactly these three reasons. I asked him how he derives his customer insight and he looked at me quizzically and said "I shop at Target." In other words, "I experience it first hand, what else?" I peppered the poor guy (actually, he was so giddy about his work that I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it) with as many questions as I could.

Some highlights (paraphrasing):
Me: "What books have most influenced you professionally?"
Alastair: "Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking The Way We Make Things"
Me: "Why are you showing a stranger on a plane your most important, confidential strategic planning document?"
Alastair: "Why not? I'll show it to my competitors. It's best for our customers and best for the world. We're not a huge company, but I feel like a tugboat pulling the Walmarts and Targets of the world in a positive direction."

Turns out Method outsources all of its manufacturing, yet holds all of its partners to the strictest environmental standards. He was flying back from an environmental audit of one such manufacturer. He was explaining to me the operational requirements he holds his partners to. This results in higher costs for everyone with nothing to gain from a marketing perspective. If he doesn't throw it on his product labels, why do it? To keep it real. I asked him how he was able to achieve such leverage as a relatively small customer to large manufacturers. His answer? "I've been able to convince them that true commitment to the environment will result in long term strategic advantage for them." Green products are in vogue, but this guy truly lives it.

I work in consulting, so was curious to learn about who he hires for professional services. The answer? "No one. Actually, that's not entirely true - we work a bit with Creative Artists Agency for earned advertising." In short, they don't hire consultants. They don't hire ad agencies. All of their promotion is earned (Oprah, feature magazine stories, etc.)

Method Home now has a loyal customer in me. In fact, they have a new evangelist - please go out and buy their soaps and cleaners. You won't regret it.

On Being Creative

I've never considered myself a creative person, but have recently been inspired by Ken Robinson's TED talk on education and creativity. One of the points he makes is that creativity isn't something people grow into, but are educated out of. In his entertaining book Orbiting the Giant Hairball, Gordon MacKenzie talks about his annual visits to elementary schools to lead a creativity workshop. When he asks kindergarteners how many people consider themselves artists, all hands shoot up with many kids leaving their chairs. By third grade, he's lucky to get one or two bashful, embarassed, aspiring artists. Anyway, I'm endeavoring to reclaim my creative child. I came across Hugh Macleod's Gaping Void blog on How to Be Creative - a great set of principals and comics.

Welcome

OK, so here is my first blog. The combination of my obnoxious personality and the fact that I've only just started reading blogs will ensure egregious violations of protocol and etiquette, so please bear with me. In classic Paul form I've struck the lazy balance between not allowing myself to accept a generic blog.com/paulmaloney site (I registered my name in '95 - finally making use of it) and properly getting up to speed on coding it up myself (blogger.com had me up and running in 10 minutes; sorry I can't be bothered when it's that easy). Anyway, as a very private bastard with a lot to say we'll see what kinds of themes emerge. Thanks for reading.
Cheers, Paul