Beaufortes

How the nominalization of change found its home...in the White House

2009-07-23T12:07:26+01:00

I find myself playing with the word 'change' again. The problem with the word "change" is that, through the evolutionary process of language, it has recently been nominalized (changed from a verb to a noun), and it in the process it has taken on a whole raft of generalization. Some examples of where 'change' used in business:

Change as in behavioural change - somehow influencing the folks in the organisation to alter what they do.
Change as in organisational change - re-organising the reporting lines of the organisation to try to alter the way it performs.
Change as in project change - modifying the scope of a project to alter what it delivers.
Change as in asset change - modifying the assets being used in controlled fashion.

I'm sure there are many more...but my point is that outside of politics, it's generally a good idea to use an adjective when you use the word 'change'.

But inside of politics 'Change' has found a home...in the White House! Barack Obama found a beautiful influencing tool in this word by appealing to our general dissatisfaction with the status quo. It's so generalized, that includes the word 'Improvement' somehow! It's interesting to me how the most vague words carry the most power: Freedom, Justice, Equality, Right, Value, Quality, Prosperity, Prudence (dear Mr. Brown)...all must be spelled henceforth with a capital letter to signify that they are being used to manipulate.

-- Philip Greenwood

Strategic Creative Problem Solving - The N-Gage Process

2009-04-19T11:38:34+01:00

What's been happening at Beaufortes? Big changes! We've been working through our backlog, and come up with something pretty special: The N-Gage process - and we're looking for test problems to validate it. It's a tool for strategic creative problem solving. Did I say it was special? This is what it is:

A step-by-step process for innovating to solve problems that are resilient - problems that have been around for a while, and have resisted attempts to solve them.

Each step in the process is straightforward - the power of the process comes from their diligent, progressive application.

It can be applied by individuals, and it is particularly brilliant for use by teams, because it builds alignment and engagement.

It is based on insights gained from the field of cognitive psychology - it help tackle the problems created by 'cognitive biases' - the intellectual short-cuts we all take because of the way our brains are structured.

It stems from the insight that there are four things that make problems 'hard':

Opacity - you can't see into the problem to understand it
Polytely - the solution to the problem must address multiple goals.
Complexity - there are many components to the problem that interact, possibly creating a system with 'emergent behaviours' - unexpected, unpredicatable outcomes.
Inertia - many people must change to implement the solution.

We've been testing the N-gage process on a diverse set of problems, and it is ready for wider exposure.

Right now, we're looking for real client problems to use as case studies. The criteria for application are as follows:

The problem must be persistent...that is, it's been around a while.
The problem must have resisted attempts to solve it.
The solution must be valuable enough to support the application of at least 3 days of work for the team to solve it.

If you have a suitable problem, or might like to introduce this approach to a client who has a problem, then please contact me - by phone or email - and I will be happy to share a video presentation with you about the process (it's about 1 hour long, so be prepared).

- Philip Greenwood

Are you in control?

2008-08-03T11:13:24+01:00

It's been a little quiet at the Beaufortes blog recently, so first, our apologies. We've been working on a large internal project that will have far reaching changes...we'll announce it in the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned! But during my research for that project I came across a very amusing set of TV programs from ABC Australia, called The Gruen Transfer.

It turns out that in shopping mall design, the Gruen Transfer is the moment when the shopper starts responding the "scripted disorientation" - that is unconsious stimulii, such gently sloping floors, environmental sound, iconic images (say, the Eifel Tower), associations from previous advertising etc. Further research led me to this rather interesting article by Brain Walsh, called Media Literacy for the Unconcious Mind. It turns out that a massive amount of our behaviour is due to unconsious scripts, determined by other people, being played out!

So what script(s) are you following?

-- Philip Greenwood

Project Leadership Perspective

2008-05-29T15:17:58+01:00

I came across this article at Times Online. Amen!

It's interesting to me how quickly the much loved and much taught project management skills associated with methdologies, estimating and planning become almost irrelevant as projects scale-up - and as they start to contain human behaviour /organisational outcomes. I'm not sure this article recognises that insight, but it's certainly on the right course.

-- Philip Greenwood

Project Dogma?

2008-05-08T15:57:40+01:00

I saw on a blog somewhere a couple of interesting definitions that have been cropping up in my thoughts recently.

Methodology + Mindlessness = Dogma

Methodology + Mindfulness = Excellence

How many project methodology graduates have been taught to use a hammer, and then see nails everywhere? In fact they lose the ability to see anything else!

Do you see your project through the filters of the methodology you are most familiar with? Can you see your project outside of these filters? What fresh insight might this give you?

- Jason Bates (I'm back)

Tags:
methodology, Project+Management, Perception, Dogma

Tales of the Unexpected: "Stop Spending"

2008-04-29T22:53:25+01:00

The brainstorming session was going full tilt; the CEO was participating on one of the teams, and they were considering the question “What should we stop doing”? It’s a sneaky, consultant-style question, and to give credit where it’s due, he was participating in the spirit of the affair. So when the CEO suggested: “stop spending”, nobody batted an eyelid, and the facilitator wrote the suggestion down; the brainstorming rule of ‘list first, edit later’ was in play.

The teams finished listing and edited their lists; who knows why ‘stop spending’ made it through to their short list? Maybe it was because the CEO suggested it, perhaps each team member found their own way to rationalise it - maybe both. Clearly ‘stop spending’, taken at face value, has the near-term consequence: ‘go out of business’. If you’ve ever seen a business mess up their procure-to-pay process, you’ll get some idea what ‘stop spending’ means – within months, the business will grind to a halt. ‘Stop spending’ means ‘no supplies’, ‘no marketing’, ‘no travel’, ‘no expenses’ and ‘no salaries’, and it would have the same effect – but dramatically quicker!

We gathered the teams for the feedback session, and when the CEO’s team proposed this suggestion, the workshop descended into confusion. The consultants tried to qualify the statement: “Stop unnecessary spending”, they tried…“Stop discretional spending”, they suggested…“Stop non-direct spending”, they proposed. The roar from the CEO came from the back of the room: “You see, everybody puts words into my mouth! I said ‘stop spending’, and that’s what I mean!”

Let’s be charitable and assume the CEO was making his points intentionally:

One principle of brainstorming is that you should list first and edit later; this helps to include creative, off-the-wall, ideas into the mix, and to stimulate further ideas – in this context ‘stop spending’ was perfectly acceptable. Of course it should never have survived the editing process, and perhaps it exposes another problem of group work – the absence of cogitative, reflective thought that can occur, where all members of the group rely on each other. (Perhaps it also reveals how politics exists in all organisations.)

This anecdote also shows how hard accurate communication is: People often discount, or re-interpret things that don’t fit into their own expectations; the primary function of our neural networks, the structures in our brains, is pattern matching. The difference between language’s ‘surface meaning’ and ‘deep meaning’ allows this confusion: deletions, distortions and generalisations being the primary culprits; assumptions created by the need to fill-in deletions and generalisations being the other major culprit. In our time-constrained world, everyone uses these three linguistic tools in order to be efficient, or in meetings, to gain a share of the voice, but often the results are the opposite! They lead to loose communication, and loose communications allow easy pattern matching to fill-in the blanks…and our pattern matching is correct frequently enough to easily fool us into believing that it’s correct all the time.

The solution, we’re told, is to communicate at the level of the audience – which implies, to some extent, that mind-reading is possible. But of course we read minds all the time: When people speak, they also observe their audience to understand whether their messages are received and understood, and responded-to - some more than others; this is the key skill of the excellent communicator: Know your audience, and seek active feedback.

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Spending, Procure+to+Pay

LiquidPlanner: Move over Microsoft Project?

2008-04-02T20:16:46+01:00

I’ve been holding off writing a review of LiquidPlanner, a project management tool that is destined for greatness. The reason is that, although they had already implemented a paradigm shifting solution, it had a flaw that I just couldn’t get past: No dependencies between tasks.

I’ve been saying for years that project planning and management tools needed a top-down rethink, and the LiquidPlanner team has done just that. The rest of their solution addresses my wish list very well, but, when I came to creating a plan, I couldn’t do it with just priorities; no matter how hard I tried, dependencies between different people’s tasks seemed necessary. So I had a teleconference with them a month ago (mostly to find out where I was wrong – they seemed to be so innovative), and discovered that they were ‘coming soon’. In fairness, their tool is still in ‘beta’.

So I’m delighted that, today, I received a notification that they have been implemented, and I now think that it’s probably the best tool out there! Now that dependencies are implemented, I’m going to use the tool ‘in anger’ and see how it performs – I’ll post a review when I can make an authoritative comment.

Let me know what you think!

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Project+management+tool, LiquidPlanner

Shift Happens - revisited, with sources

2008-03-18T11:07:52+00:00

My last blog post was a video titled “Shift Happens”, and I asked for feedback about the sources – many thanks to everybody for their responses. It turns out that the video was updated in June 07 (see below), and comes from a group of US based educators, Kark Fisch and Scott McLeod. I’ve attached their list of sources below. There’s also a wiki where you can join the debate at Shift Happens.

Slide	Source
In the next 8 seconds 34 babies . . .	Web search on population, then did the math.
Name this country . . .	Angus King Presentation - http://web.mac.com/northeastleadership/iWeb/Angus_King/Podcast/A19C541A-7E2C-4BB3-A581-63EA068369CE.html
2006 College Graduates, college graduates in India that speak English.	Geoffrey Calvin, Fortune Magazine, July 25,2005 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/07/25/8266603/index.htm
China #1 English Speaking Country	Somebody at the Milken Conference – reported at http://weblogg-ed.com/2006/more-musings-from-milken/
U.S. Department of Labor Statistics	Originally from Ian Jukes - http://web.mac.com/iajukes/iWeb/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/fgtgtg.pdf Also: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/nlsoy.pdf and ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/news.release/History/tenure.09212004.news
College Majors	New College Majors: U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration. http://www.doleta.gov/BRG/Indprof/biotech_profile.cfm (New media: washingtonpost.com, February 23, 2005)
10,000 hours of video games	Interactive Videogames, Mediascope, June 1996.
10,000 hours on phones, 20,000 hours of TV, 250,000 emails/IMs	Mark Prensky, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, 2001.
U.S. 4-year-olds	Kaiser Family Foundation Report, 2003, http://www.kaisernetwork.org/health_cast/uploaded_files/102803_kff_kids_press.pdf
Years to Market Audience	http://www.un.org/cyberschoolbus/briefing/technology/tech.pdf
Number of Internet Devices	http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/
Text Messages	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_service
1 of 8 Couples Met Online	Fortune Magazine 8-7-2006 - http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/08/07/8382578/index.htm Quotes Diana Farrell, head of the McKinsey Global Institute
eBay Revenue	http://finance.google.com/finance?q=EBAY&client=news
Google Searches	Web search (of course!) - http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2156461
MySpace	http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=myspace.com
YouTube	http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=youtube.com
Words in English Language	Originally from Ian Jukes - http://web.mac.com/iajukes/iWeb/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/fgtgtg.pdf Lots on the web, many indicating more than 540,000 – including Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language
3,000 Books	Originally from Ian Jukes - http://web.mac.com/iajukes/iWeb/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/fgtgtg.pdf Lots on the web including http://www.princetoninfo.com/200405/40512c03.html
Technical Info Doubling	Ian Jukes - http://web.mac.com/iajukes/iWeb/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/fgtgtg.pdf Cites George Gilder - http://www.amazon.com/Telecosm-World-After-Bandwidth-Abundance/dp/0743205472/sr=1-2/qid=1172692403/ref=sr_1_2/002-0116902-0249611?ie=UTF8&s=bookshttp://www.amazon.com/Telecosm-World-After-Bandwidth-Abundance/dp/0743205472/sr=1-2/qid=1172692403/ref=sr_1_2/002-0116902-0249611?ie=UTF8&s=books
Fiber Optics	Ian Jukes - http://web.mac.com/iajukes/iWeb/thecommittedsardine/Handouts_files/fgtgtg.pdf Some from George Gilder, some from Ray Kurzweil, some from ?
Children in Developing Countries	http://www.laptop.org/
OLPC	http://www.laptop.org/
Computers and Humans	Ray Kurzweil book - The Singularity is Near - http://singularity.com/ Also http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
Students Collaborating	Specifically references the Horizon 2007 Project - http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com/ but of course there are many examples of this.
Over 5 Millions Conversations	See this post - http://thefischbowl.blogspot.com/2007/03/over-two-million-served.html - for an earlier count, then revisited some of those sites for updated counts.

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Strategic+Information

Shift Happens

2008-03-10T11:32:32+00:00

I don’t know the source of this information, but it’s plausible and thought provoking…if you know where it came from, please leave a comment!

— Philip Greenwood

Tags: Strategic+Information

Are you looking for an inspiring project?

2008-02-23T17:02:20+00:00

Let’s say you’re a great Project Leader…you know how to do it! You grok it! And you’re asking yourself the question: “What shall I do next?”

You know it’s going to be big and you know it’s going to be important because it’s GOT to be inspiring. It’s got to be something that is worth you and your team spending your most precious and irreplaceable resource on (time)…

Well here a couple of sources of inspiration for you:

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

http://www.geni.org/

The Catherine Jones Foundation – A small project with huge Implications.

Do something meaningful to you, today!

— Philip Greenwood

P.S. This IS my meaningful project.

Tags: Projects