Twinstan's weekly interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• The Pyramid to Enlightenment is Upside-Down | Blog | design mind

• A Meditation on Root Cause Analysis (and Contest!) | Marcos Ferrer

  Nice roundup on root cause and getting to the real root of a problem

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twinstan's weekly interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• The_Future_of_Telecom_Operators.pdf

  Another report on the necessary business model innovation in the telco-sector (a la Telco 2.0).

• Becoming a great BA: consulting lessons from Ellen Gottesdiener

  Business analysis and architecture and business consulting overlap in man skill sets - some thoughtful remarks on this by Ellen Gottesdiener

• Anforderungen wachsen: Freiberufler sollen als Berater auftreten - computerwoche.de

  A timely reminder that the expectations towards "external" support (freelance or consultant) are increasing all the time - good!

• The Dangers of "Checklist" Architecture | ZapThink

  Another "fan" of checklists - lot of good sense here.

• Benchmarking can be destructive

  Having earned big money running benchmarking studies, it looks like the big consultancies are beginning to reconsider...

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Twinstan's weekly interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)

• The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500 | Management Innovation eXchange

  Gary Hamel on the impact that Generation F(acebook) is having on strategy and policy creation within enterprises.

• The psychology of change management - McKinsey Quarterly - Organization - Change Management

  Interesting article on McKinsey's thinking on why business transformation fails

• Decide & Deliver - Bain organisational effectiveness model

• Customer Centric Market Model | Tyner Blain

  Interesting model putting the customer at the centre of the a marketing model

• YouTube - How Multiplayer Games Will Change the Future of Work

• YouTube - Designing a Unified Experience

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

"Thinking in Systems" - my favourite book this year

As some of you may have noticed, my reading this year has largely been around systems thinking (see here and here for earlier book reviews and thoughts on the topic).

This is largely a result of my ignorance regarding this approach to analysis and modeling, combined with a gut feeling that it is a "must-have" capability for a really good business architect or consultant.

Having been disappointed thus far by the competition, Donella H. Meadows' (sadly deceased) introductory book, "Thinking in Systems - a primer" has really impressed me.

Her book starts as a relatively dry introduction into some of the key concepts in systems thinking (she calls it the "systems zoo" - stock and flows, stabilising vs reinforcing feedback loops, response delays), but then moves on to describe some typical system archetypes in the real world (from business to government to the environment and back again) that really show how the thinking can and should be applied.

Even more interestingly, she then moves on to describe typical system traps and then defines her personal list of "leverage points" to address them.

As a consultant, this initially feels like it could be the holy grail of business architecture; it provides a lexicon to think about problems in complex environments, recurring patterns to look for and a process for identifying a solution. But, before you all run out and buy the book, let me bring you back from your euphoria; Meadows is smart enough to drag expectations back down - understanding is just the start, enacting the change necessary to move forward is the next challenge.. and enacting the change without building in more counterproductive issues to boot. On this topic, Meadows has little to say.

This notwithstanding, let me be very clear - this is the best book I have read on systems thinking (please note, there are still a load of books on my list, including the seminal work, "The Fifth Discipline", so this could change ;-). It is short, well structured and keeps you interested throughout.

So impressed was I that I actually ended up reading it twice. Indeed, this is the first book in a long time that I have added to my Amazon must-read list for business analysis and architecture.

As I have already talked about in a previous posting, I am convinced that the combination of systems thinking and visual thinking is a winning recipe for the consulting industry and this book has already gotten me thinking about how that might look in practice (hopefully more to follow on this soon, time permitting!).

Now go and buy it.

Driving User Behavior with Game Dynamics

It seems that this behaviour-changing gaming movement really is building momentum - here is another interesting lecture from Stanford's HCI programme:



Scary, but definitely effective!

"The game layer on top of the world" - another TED talk

Following on the heels of Jane McGonigal (see previous entries here and here for a little more on her frightening take on our current experiences; "the user experience of reality is broken" and the possible positive role that gaming combined with social media can have on this), TED.com just released a talk by Seth Priebatsch, "The game layer on top of the world".

As with Ms McGonigal, once you get beyond the initial shock of the key statements, the talk makes a disturbing amount of sense; the first decade of the century should be considered the time when the social media infrastructure was put in place that will enable the coming decade to be about influencing behaviours on a mass-scale through games and gaming concepts. Moreover his premise that this will based upon the Facebook online graph (see also here for an interesting blog entry from Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook) seems possible to me.

He sites several examples of this already happening (influencing when people go online and what they do via event-driven games a la Farmville, or any cocktail happy-hour for that matter, is just one trivial example, but there are many more).

What I like about his presentation is that it is doggedly optimistic. Given the obvious "big brother" concerns about any corporate or governmental attempt to influence behaviours through the social media, his appeal for us all to take part to make sure that the massive potential for manipulation is harnessed in a "positive" way feels long overdue (though this might simply be because I am getting older and am no longer on the pulse of what is "in".. actually thinking about it, I suspect I never was).

Of course, the biggest question is, what is "positive"? How do we ensure that it is the petrol efficiency competitions (see here) and not the "buy this to out-do your friends" competitions that win out?

Most certainly worth sacrificing 12 minutes for, his presentation is not very polished, but the simple messages and in particular the clear structure of his "game dynamics" - basically behaviour archetypes that many games are based upon (1. appointment dynamic, 2. influence and status dynamic, 3. progression dynamic, 4. communal discovery dynamic) - are spot on.

This stuff is happening today and is going to massively increase in the future - time to come to terms with it, I fear.

Nothing to post, but love the iPad

I really don't have anything to post, but want an excuse to try out the iPad blogging app.

I almost resent Apple for the fact that I have been hankering after an iPad since they came out, even though the functionality is severely lacking compared to the standard net book with Windows.

But only almost..


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad