It has been a while since I posted a blog entry directly to blogger.com (though I hope that some people are enjoying my weekly roundup of interesting findings via diigo.com).
I finally have the beginnings of a plan for a bunch of entries that will hopefully say something interesting about the connections between systems thinking, design thinking, agile methods and business modeling.
I suspect that it is going to take quite a while for me to formulate this out (think years rather than months), but I just watched a talk by Tim Harford (known from the "undercover economist" books and newspaper columns) at TED Global 2011, that I think is a good way to kick things off, since it made a lot of sense to me and brings together the iterative and exploratory methods of both agile and design thinking for innovation with a degree of structure:
The basic premise is a simple one; the world is too complex for us to be able to find solutions to issues by thought and analysis alone, we need to accept that we do not understand everything and, more importantly, accept that trial and error is a valid way to find solutions. As Harford says, this is obvious, but not accepted (check out some of my earlier posts on common sense solutions not necessarily being applied).
Having accepted this premise, the key thing in my eyes is to work out how to become great (and efficient) at trial and error - that is, learning incrementally from what we do and the agile, design thinking worlds have a lot to offer on that front, be it sprints, retrospectives, exploratory design, customer centric learning. Add to this the rigour of systems thinking approaches to build better understanding of complexity to building or support decision-making frameworks and you have a winning combination.
More to follow.
Here is the video:
Showing posts with label strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label strategy. Show all posts
Saturday, 23 July 2011
Saturday, 20 November 2010
Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)
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TOGAF 9 introduces a very appealing concept of Capability-based planning for Business People
Not sure what is new about this, but it is at least a nice 1-pager on capabilities.
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The New York Times - Ebb and Flow at the Box Office
cool graphic
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Design Strategy at a Glance | Flickr
Great overview of the design process.
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YouTube - Do You Speak English? - Big Train - BBC comedy
OK - not a business architecture related link, but one of my favourites...
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BBC News - In graphics: Eurozone in crisis
A cracking simple infographic from the BBC - "makes one proud to be..." and all that... as long as you don't look at the figures, of course...
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, 16 October 2010
Twinstan's interesting links roundup on Diigo (weekly)
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E-Commerce News: Opinions: The Do Not Track List and the Law of Unintended Consequences
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borderline philosophy, but intriguing...if I could just understand it...
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Who’s Suing Whom In The Telecoms Trade?
nice visualisation, amusing message ;-)
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Harvard Business Review article by booz fellows arguing for core competence/focused approach for companies - damn right!
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Business analysis is a career ender…
Be proud of the job ;-)
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Tim Jackson's economic reality check | Video on TED.com
Quite a thought-provoker, this one!
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Hans Rosling: The good news of the decade? | Video on TED.com
Not as mindboggling as his earlier lectures at TED, but still thoroughly informative.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Saturday, 25 September 2010
"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.
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.
Monday, 20 September 2010
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!
Scary, but definitely effective!
Thursday, 17 June 2010
Communicating strategy - a book review
I've been having an unlucky streak with my reading recently (see here and here). So, I am pleased to say that the latest read, "Communicating Strategy", by Phil Jones, was pretty good, though not great.
As with my previous reviews, I am bound to state upfront that I had high expectations of this book. I really enjoyed parts of it; Phil Jones clearly has a huge amount of experience as a coach and performance consultant and the book contains many interesting examples of how to approach strategy development and communication. The style is easy and I liked the fact that he did not provide a simple checklist reminding us to think about the audience, build a compelling story, consider the mode of communication etc. (see here for a posting on my aversion to checklists!), but rather opted for a more rhetorical approach (putting out questions without direct answers at the end of each section to make you think).
I particularly liked the second chapter, which describes "Ten Heresies" in his own thinking towards communicating strategy. That "people are not stupid", that you can "trust people" and that "you can over communicate" are certainly positions that I entirely agree with.
But what I liked most about the book was the constant reminders it contained to think consciously about what and how you communicate to whom.
It is easy to get into a rut in communications - everyone has a style they are most comfortable with and tend to use it irrespective of audience and need (I personally find it very helpful simply to try different communications techniques/modes just to force myself to think consciously about what it is I want to communicate from as many different stakeholders' perspectives - even if you end up shifting back to your comfort zone - as I personally undoubtedly often do - the act of considering things from multiple angles typically gives you insights that improve your thinking).
This is a good book with a lot of simple advice. Beware though that it also contains considerable references to NLP techniques - certainly interesting but not everyone's cup of tea.
As with my previous reviews, I am bound to state upfront that I had high expectations of this book. I really enjoyed parts of it; Phil Jones clearly has a huge amount of experience as a coach and performance consultant and the book contains many interesting examples of how to approach strategy development and communication. The style is easy and I liked the fact that he did not provide a simple checklist reminding us to think about the audience, build a compelling story, consider the mode of communication etc. (see here for a posting on my aversion to checklists!), but rather opted for a more rhetorical approach (putting out questions without direct answers at the end of each section to make you think).
I particularly liked the second chapter, which describes "Ten Heresies" in his own thinking towards communicating strategy. That "people are not stupid", that you can "trust people" and that "you can over communicate" are certainly positions that I entirely agree with.
But what I liked most about the book was the constant reminders it contained to think consciously about what and how you communicate to whom.
It is easy to get into a rut in communications - everyone has a style they are most comfortable with and tend to use it irrespective of audience and need (I personally find it very helpful simply to try different communications techniques/modes just to force myself to think consciously about what it is I want to communicate from as many different stakeholders' perspectives - even if you end up shifting back to your comfort zone - as I personally undoubtedly often do - the act of considering things from multiple angles typically gives you insights that improve your thinking).
This is a good book with a lot of simple advice. Beware though that it also contains considerable references to NLP techniques - certainly interesting but not everyone's cup of tea.
Monday, 24 May 2010
Blue ocean strategy in 8 slides
Another short posting today.
When I first read "Blue Ocean Strategy" a few years back, I was not so impressed - it was a good synthesis of thinking that had preceded it, but I failed to see what is new...
Several years on, I haven't really changed my mind about the content - it isn't new - but I guess I have gained an appreciation for what a professor during my undergraduate days used to call "masterful synthesis" ("there are no new ideas, just new configurations of old ideas", paraphrasing Audre Lorde) and I suspect I am a good deal more open to the fact that even small changes and innovations in business can be truly difficult to achieve.
BlueOceanStrategy.com is a really nice website that covers the core tools and techniques from the book; the strategy canvas,the "four actions" framework and others. If you haven't read the book, go here first!
And even "better", there is an 8-page summary deck. Now all that I have to do is work out where the blue ocean is in the IT consulting space.. which turns out to actually be quite difficult even with the nice tools.
Darn!
When I first read "Blue Ocean Strategy" a few years back, I was not so impressed - it was a good synthesis of thinking that had preceded it, but I failed to see what is new...
Several years on, I haven't really changed my mind about the content - it isn't new - but I guess I have gained an appreciation for what a professor during my undergraduate days used to call "masterful synthesis" ("there are no new ideas, just new configurations of old ideas", paraphrasing Audre Lorde) and I suspect I am a good deal more open to the fact that even small changes and innovations in business can be truly difficult to achieve.
BlueOceanStrategy.com is a really nice website that covers the core tools and techniques from the book; the strategy canvas,the "four actions" framework and others. If you haven't read the book, go here first!
And even "better", there is an 8-page summary deck. Now all that I have to do is work out where the blue ocean is in the IT consulting space.. which turns out to actually be quite difficult even with the nice tools.
Darn!
Tuesday, 13 April 2010
Visualising the customer experience
OK, I admit that it is becoming a bit of a theme in my blog, but the value of visualisation tools to enable change in organisations, to clarify target-state goals and to motivate projects can hardly be over-emphasised.
I stumbled across a great blog, "Designing Change" that I would recommend - there are some great examples of customer experience visualisation (and I do not mean wireframes and visual design, but rather conceptual visualisation).
The challenge with such imagery (as I have found painfully, not being the most visual of people myself), is to find the right metaphor for the particular concern that you have. Of course tools and methods can help there a lot (and I have already posted several entries on this - see for example here, here and here). But the best way to get going is through "inspiration" (or copying, as I prefer to call it). Here is a great collection of conceptual visualisations to get you going (from a guy called Dave Armano who has impressed me a few times on his blog:
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Have fun.
I stumbled across a great blog, "Designing Change" that I would recommend - there are some great examples of customer experience visualisation (and I do not mean wireframes and visual design, but rather conceptual visualisation).
The challenge with such imagery (as I have found painfully, not being the most visual of people myself), is to find the right metaphor for the particular concern that you have. Of course tools and methods can help there a lot (and I have already posted several entries on this - see for example here, here and here). But the best way to get going is through "inspiration" (or copying, as I prefer to call it). Here is a great collection of conceptual visualisations to get you going (from a guy called Dave Armano who has impressed me a few times on his blog:
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Have fun.
Saturday, 20 March 2010
Design thinking & strategy - a book review
As threatened in an earlier post, this entry is another book review.
"Design thinking; integrating innovation, customer experience and brand value", edited by Thomas Lockwood (of course, available via amazon), brings together a bunch of big names in design management and provides a nicely balanced overview of current ideas about the role of design in innovation, service delivery, but in particular in developing brands.
I especially liked the contributions by Kevin Clark & Ron Smith from IBM Corporate Markting (on the value of leveraging design professionals and skills to provide insights in all aspects of the business), Erik Abbing & Christa van Gessel (who provide a 4-step method for brand-driven innovation) and Mark Jones & Fran Samalionis from IDEO (who have put together a nice framework to design new service innvoations).
Despite the many interesting essays, I was underwhelmed by the book as a whole. I guess it is my nature (or background, or both), but I was looking for a more complete answer, showing how design thinking can be applied / integrated into the business - beyond the straightforward application of ideation and visualisation techniques to the product and brand development process.
Using design thinking (and at the very least design techniques) combined with more analytical/structured methods in the business strategy space to bring the "outside-in approach" into an organisation and to give those ideas traction feels like an idea on the brink of maturity - in a couple of years this is going to be entirely mainstream.
Nevertheless, if this book was anything to go on, there is a lot of work to be done before then. The tools need to mature to be applied in the broader business strategy arena (ie. outside of the product development space where they are most at home). It feels like progress is being made quickly (with new blogs and companies popping up daily) - it is a fun time to dig into this space!
Given my own more analytical background, I personally find it rather frustrating trying to create rather than deduce, but also all the more rewarding when it pays off - I hope to be posting later this year on the topic of design thinking in the context of business architecture as my ideas mature.
As such any help that can be found in books like this on methods and approaches are thoroughly welcome!
"Design thinking; integrating innovation, customer experience and brand value", edited by Thomas Lockwood (of course, available via amazon), brings together a bunch of big names in design management and provides a nicely balanced overview of current ideas about the role of design in innovation, service delivery, but in particular in developing brands.
I especially liked the contributions by Kevin Clark & Ron Smith from IBM Corporate Markting (on the value of leveraging design professionals and skills to provide insights in all aspects of the business), Erik Abbing & Christa van Gessel (who provide a 4-step method for brand-driven innovation) and Mark Jones & Fran Samalionis from IDEO (who have put together a nice framework to design new service innvoations).
Despite the many interesting essays, I was underwhelmed by the book as a whole. I guess it is my nature (or background, or both), but I was looking for a more complete answer, showing how design thinking can be applied / integrated into the business - beyond the straightforward application of ideation and visualisation techniques to the product and brand development process.
Using design thinking (and at the very least design techniques) combined with more analytical/structured methods in the business strategy space to bring the "outside-in approach" into an organisation and to give those ideas traction feels like an idea on the brink of maturity - in a couple of years this is going to be entirely mainstream.
Nevertheless, if this book was anything to go on, there is a lot of work to be done before then. The tools need to mature to be applied in the broader business strategy arena (ie. outside of the product development space where they are most at home). It feels like progress is being made quickly (with new blogs and companies popping up daily) - it is a fun time to dig into this space!
Given my own more analytical background, I personally find it rather frustrating trying to create rather than deduce, but also all the more rewarding when it pays off - I hope to be posting later this year on the topic of design thinking in the context of business architecture as my ideas mature.
As such any help that can be found in books like this on methods and approaches are thoroughly welcome!
Wednesday, 17 March 2010
BA Body of Knowledge 2.0 available online for free
OK, I admit it; I am a little miffed that the IIBA has released the latest version of the BABOK (see also previous entry) for free at Google Books, but it is definitely a good reference.
Beyond the convenience of the whole online book experience, I like the fact that book comes with a neat little web-cloud that gives you an immediate overview of the book. Once this is expanded to work across all the books and into a snazzy visual navigation widget I will be more than happy ;-).
Beyond the convenience of the whole online book experience, I like the fact that book comes with a neat little web-cloud that gives you an immediate overview of the book. Once this is expanded to work across all the books and into a snazzy visual navigation widget I will be more than happy ;-).
Tuesday, 16 February 2010
Tribes, passion & getting ideas off the ground
Following on from the previous post on "Tribes" and the power of passionate leadership, I stumbled across a great site, the99percent.com that focuses on getting ideas off the ground. One videocast that jumped out was by Ji Lee (Director of Google Creative Lab) - he talks about the transformative power of personal projects (and the fact that the professional and personal world inevitably intersect if we are passionate about what we do, even if we like the idea of keeping them separate).
Posted using ShareThis
Posted using ShareThis
Tribes & leading vs managing
Over Christmas I finally got around to using up a couple of Amazon vouchers that I have had for a while... OK, it was well over €500, which means that I have got enough in the way of business reading material to keep me going for most of the year (I try to balance my reading by cycling through 1x professional book, 1x non-fiction, non-business, 1x fiction and back to 1x professional book etc., but now have far too many in the professional category to make this work this year!). As such, you should expect to see a few reviews, or at the very least references to books worth checking out.
The first two books on my backlog this year were "Tribes" (by Seth Godin) and "Building great customer experiences" (by Colin Shaw & John Ivens) and I have to admit I was slightly disappointed with both:
Having seen a few talks by Seth Godin, following his (unbelievably popular) blog and enjoyed "Permission Marketing" immensely, I was really looking forward to Tribes. The underlying premise (that in the "new world" organisations need leaders of "tribes" of interest to innovate, make changes happen and to create new value and that these leaders are not the managers of old, but rather thought leaders) is potent and attractive - especially for someone working in a professional services organisation that lives from subject matter expertise alongside management competence ;-), but the book failed to deliver any "meat" to back this up.
That said, the book is a quick and easy read. Its appeal to individuals to be passionate about things that they believe in - and to channel this passion into a community to effect change - resonates.
"Building great customer experiences" has the same informal journalistic style as "Tribes", and lays out a set of "philosophies" for delivering customer experiences across channels. To be fair, the book is several years old and may at the time have been innovative, but today it seems to reflect the received wisdom - the power and importance of emotions in customer experience, designing processes "outside in" (rather than "inside out") etc.
The authors are clearly very experienced (and the case-studies within the book are certainly interesting and varied), but the frameworks that they provide are rather generic.
Nevertheless, there were definitely a couple of points that they really hammered home -
The first two books on my backlog this year were "Tribes" (by Seth Godin) and "Building great customer experiences" (by Colin Shaw & John Ivens) and I have to admit I was slightly disappointed with both:
Having seen a few talks by Seth Godin, following his (unbelievably popular) blog and enjoyed "Permission Marketing" immensely, I was really looking forward to Tribes. The underlying premise (that in the "new world" organisations need leaders of "tribes" of interest to innovate, make changes happen and to create new value and that these leaders are not the managers of old, but rather thought leaders) is potent and attractive - especially for someone working in a professional services organisation that lives from subject matter expertise alongside management competence ;-), but the book failed to deliver any "meat" to back this up.
That said, the book is a quick and easy read. Its appeal to individuals to be passionate about things that they believe in - and to channel this passion into a community to effect change - resonates.
"Building great customer experiences" has the same informal journalistic style as "Tribes", and lays out a set of "philosophies" for delivering customer experiences across channels. To be fair, the book is several years old and may at the time have been innovative, but today it seems to reflect the received wisdom - the power and importance of emotions in customer experience, designing processes "outside in" (rather than "inside out") etc.
The authors are clearly very experienced (and the case-studies within the book are certainly interesting and varied), but the frameworks that they provide are rather generic.
Nevertheless, there were definitely a couple of points that they really hammered home -
- that brand and customer experience must be aligned to be effective and
- only by seeing customer experience as a central part of one's overall strategy (complete with a gimmicky, but helpful "customer experience statement" a pinnacle of a "customer experience pyramid" (TM), will it be possible to truly deliver a customer-centric service
Saturday, 8 November 2008
Business model design & another disrupted flight
Predictably enough, I had another problem with flights today (see previous posts for the saga of my experiences on a weekly basis on flights between Germany and the UK). Today's installment was the diversion of my flight from Duesseldorf to London Heathrow to Amsterdam. In fairness this was due to a medical emergency and I was really impressed with the way the staff on board handled it, but nevertheless I do begin to feel ever so slightly unlucky with my air travel!
I am now at Heathrow slowly getting into holiday mode and was just checking through the latest feeds on netvibes when Osterwalder's busines-model-design blog jumped out at me again. I already wrote a little bit about this blog a while back (see here) and I have been really impressed with the clarity of his approach of using a simple framework to inspire business model innovation. His latest blog entry is on google book search (which is in general a really cool and interesting thing!) - he does a really good job of simplifying down the motivation to this new product and what it could mean in a highly competitive industry. Take a look here.
My flight out has just been called, so wish me luck.
I am now at Heathrow slowly getting into holiday mode and was just checking through the latest feeds on netvibes when Osterwalder's busines-model-design blog jumped out at me again. I already wrote a little bit about this blog a while back (see here) and I have been really impressed with the clarity of his approach of using a simple framework to inspire business model innovation. His latest blog entry is on google book search (which is in general a really cool and interesting thing!) - he does a really good job of simplifying down the motivation to this new product and what it could mean in a highly competitive industry. Take a look here.
My flight out has just been called, so wish me luck.
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