@jandeman

The Flip Manifesto by Dan Pink

I've just read Dan Pink's inspiring e-book on leadership, motivation and innovation.

You can get a hold of a copy by subscribing to his newsletter on danpink.com.

Recommended.

Hope to update this post later with a few thoughts in connection with my read.

 

 

Troubling stuff

Read this.

"The study, called "State of Create," found that eight in 10 people believe that creativity is critical to economic growth. But it also found that only one in four people feel like they are living up to their own creative potential. And 75% of respondents said they feel like their employers put more pressure on them to be productive than to be creative."

Sigh.

 

Holy moly

This post in Management Issues just baffled me. Consider this:

"In fact, four out of 10 of the 500 employees surveyed said that innovation is either a long shot for their company or a mere "buzz word" the company would like to embrace."

"According to research carried out in 2010 by the Nielsen Company, organizations with less senior management involvement in the new product development process generate 80 per cent more new product revenue than those with heavy senior management involvement."

"A culture of innovation will support ideas coming from any individual, any level and sometimes from unusual places in the organization."

I rest my case. Do you now get why organizations need to be more human friendly?

Hacking Management

A couple of years ago I went to London and participated in the launch of Julian Berkinshaw's book Reinventing Management. That put me on track for his and Gary Hamel's joint work into Management Innovation. As with all new strands of work you see some very interesting stuff and you see some not so impressive stuff. But they have stayed on track and their work has among other things evolved into The Management Exchange or The MiX.

I can recommend that you spend some time at The Mix. Check out what they are doing. See some interesting clips. Read about the different 'hacks' of management that are being tested.

It is work life this that we need to be doing on a wider scale, in each organization. I agree with the basic premise they make. Management as a technology is mature and needs to be innovated, or rather reinvented. 20 years from now we'll be amazed over the progress we've made. For now we're stuck in confusion and frustration over an organizational model that is losing it's ability to deliver what we need. And is step by step draining us of our most precious resource - our dignity and humanity.

Jan

Peter Senge on collective smartness and more

Peter Senge shares his thoughts on systems, learning and collaboration vs individuality. See the whole clip. Take a while and reflect. Then think hard about you organization. I hope you see some potential for new perspectives and initiatives ;) If we want our organizations to suck less, this is the kind of thinking we need to put to work.

Jan

On self-reliance

I'm finding that a lot of folks these days are singing the praise of self-reliance and independence, be it countries, companies or individuals. The logic as far as I understand it is that one can stand stronger when crisis hits and one also can avoid the disappointment of others failing to deliver when it is most needed. Or avoid going through the emotional hassle of trusting someone. Better to do everything by oneself and control one's own destiny.

I believe this reasoning is flawed. Not that the striving for self-reliance and independence is inherently bad. On the contrary this can be very good as long as it reflects a genuine interest in accepting responsibility and accountability for one's actions and non-actions.

But when self-reliance and independence become a strategy to avoid vulnerability and possible failure it is pushing the whole idea too far and making it counter-productive. As far as I am concerned being overly self-reliant is a recipe for lonliness and becoming irrelevant. And chronic blaming of other people's incompetence over one's own brilliance.

Humans and our enterprises are defined by relationships. If you don't trust others, if you can't stand things going wrong, if you can't show your uncertainty or weakness then much of what it is to be human is lost.

In general we humans develop together through our interactions, not in isolation. You can chose your attitude towards this. It either sucks big time and keeps all your talent and brilliance boggled down. Or you can decide to join the adventure of human messiness. You risk making an ass of yourself. You risk being let down by people you trusted. You risk things turning out different than you imagined, and some times even better than you imagined! You risk that your shining ego not be seen as brightly as you dream of.

But you also win the joy of genuinely helping other people. You win the joy of achieving things with others. And sharing accomplishment. And tapping into so much love and energy that you never would have gotten access to otherwise.

I know what I am talking about. I have switched sides. And it has made all the difference.

Jan

 

World's shortest business book?

We all agree that business books have a tradition of being way too long. This night I googled the term and came up with - nothing. Could this be real? Has there been no claim of this title? This cannot stand!

So, please join me in an exploration to find/create the shortest business book in the world. I'll pitch in my contribution here below. Slightly idealistic, but hey that's me... Please ammend/change it as you fit by writing comments. Or submit your own version. Or point to the ones already written. 

Hopefully we can collectively claim the title in the near future. Or just have fun trying ;)

But remember. Keep it short! :)

 

Title: How to build a sustainable business

Chapter 1. Over time revenues should be higher than costs. Preferably much higher.

Chapter 2. Only sell what customers actually want to buy. 

Chapter 3. Be kind and helpful. To customers. To employees. To society. And to the environment. 

 

/jan

Great thought...

We haven't really paid much attention to thought as a process. We have engaged in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process.

David Bohm

Innovating education

Everything I've read so far on renewal and innovation of our floundering education systems seem to be based one or more of these unchallenged and potentially faulty assumptions:

• Business knows what we need. Hell, they can hardly predict a quarterly earnings report so why would they know anything about what kind of competences would be needed in 50 years time?
• Politicians know what we need. Hello, get real.
• The current system can be fixed. Remember Einstein's wise words?
• A knowledge society will resemble an industrial society. That is obviously what our industrial minded institutions need to say and believe. They aren't just going to dismantle themselves peacefully.
• A knowledge society is what we are headed for. Hello once again. How can we be so sure? Could is be that this knowledge society is just a transition phase into whatever comes next? Or will there be several parallel societies? Just sayin'...
• With rational thinking we can deduct what the future education system needs to look like. Duh, that is the industrial model. Remember Einstein..?
• No bold choices and decisions need to be made. Once again the voice of the industrial and bureaucratic mind.
• Human needs (our kids' needs) are not given weight in the innovation process. This makes me the most frustrated. Our kids are seen as empty containers to be filled. Furthermore, established institutions, largely clueless about our future, are allowed to more or less without opposition dictate what education should look like.
• We can't start changing the system if we don't know beforehand what the end result should be. If the need was an incremental change, fair enough. But we are approaching a system change that aims to create a body of methods, knowledge and competences our kids will be using 30-50 years from now. So how could we know the end result? Even hinting that borders on arrogance.

I'll leave it at that. I think my point is fairly clear. We need to have a much more broad and open view of the process of innovating education. Yes, and also remember that it needs to be an emerging process. Trial and error, experiments, prototypes, etc.

Right now it is more fruitful to discuss and build agreement on a process for the innovation of our education systems rather than get locked into arguments about content, curricula, learning goals and you name it. Sure, we need a desired outcome to give us direction and in my view that outcome should be formulated in terms of human needs. Nothing less.

And I'll say one thing that I believe must be in that desired outcome. Ecologically sustainable human life.

Peace.

Jan

Is it really worth daring to be great?

Wonderful and inspiring talk by Keith Yamashita. Had the pleasure of meeting him in San Francisco a couple of years ago. Remarkable man.

//jan