Process
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Balance control with collaboration – First Draft
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3 min read
To solve tough problems, we need the active participation of a diverse group of people. Instead of control residing only with managers, each person on a team should have the authority and responsibility to contribute fully. Rather than command them from above, the team leader should facilitate the team’s efforts. Since the industrial revolution we’ve…
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Agile publishing
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1 min read
37 Signals’ new book Getting Real is out, and looks like a great read about applying agile techniques and spirit to web app development. It’s agile both in the content and in having small chapters, something we’ve seen in books like Godin’s Purple Cow and what I’m working on by re-interpreting agile principles for general…
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Use simple tools
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2 min read
The tools we use to create and communicate should be so easy to use we rarely ever think about them. With simple tools we naturally focus on what the tool allows us to do. The famous typography designer Matthew Carter has said that when you read you should not see the letters on the page,…
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Agile everywhere
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1 min read
I’m finding examples of agile work practices in more and more places, and see them as perfectly aligned with the application of design practice in innovation services. Here’s a running list… Agile programming has the most robust expression, including a philosophy, an alliance of various approaches, tools, software, and measured results. Agile project management Get…
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Dancing elephants: Lockheed
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1 min read
I love seeing big companies move in agile ways (because it’s so unusual), even if it only arises from panic of losing their old revenue streams. Here’s an example from Lockheed, whose old culture (despite their Skunk Works-style innovation) included bitter internal fights over whether to pursue unmanned aircraft… …It also designed and delivered the…
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Swallowing stones
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1 min read
“Some thoughts are like the digestive stones that birds swallow.” — Owen, in a conversation on change.
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Is Angie a design thinker?
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1 min read
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is making waves at Davos. I like her attitude: “She acknowledged the political necessity to move ‘in small steps.’ She added, ‘In Germany, sometimes things never get going because one doesn’t know how it will work out, and maybe it’s better to do nothing. That’s not my maxim.’“
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Periodic process renewal
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3 min read
There’s a funny (or cruel, depending) dilemma to improving your work over time. If you don’t do it, your organization becomes less and less valuable over time, gradually failing, and dying an unfortunate death. If you do all the time, you never get to benefit from each change very long and probably suffer from change…
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Tell the Truth, part II
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2 min read
So how do we tell the truth? Here are a few ways I found work: Inform the uniformed: Challenging the accepted situation by citing reality may get you sent to Siberia. But it depends on whom you’re talking to. Over time executives become ill informed – ironically – because timid employees avoid giving them bad…
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Tell the Truth
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2 min read
Over time a company’s official history becomes ideology and people need the truth of reality to help them grow. On my first trip to Berlin I toured the former Deutsche Demokratische Republik including a number of museums and memorials describing the former communist state, the Berlin Wall, and life within its boundaries. We’re now well…
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Work with a partner
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3 min read
There are times when working with a single other person – pair management – is better than working alone or with a team. Some professions such as police have a long tradition of working in pairs. Recently software programmers have started to practice pair programming where two people sit together and alternate roles of writing…
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Work as a team
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2 min read
A group of people working as a team is often the best way to complete a project because teams can generate more work of higher quality than individuals or large groups. Do it now Form a team of people for a project requiring new ideas and more work than one or two people can do.…
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Work alone
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1 min read
There are times when working alone is more productive than working with a partner or a team. Working alone is useful when you need to expand on an existing idea, to carefully synthesize information, or do imaginative thinking. Working alone can also be useful to finish a familiar task quickly without interference. Working alone isn’t…
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Create by designing together
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2 min read
Working directly with other people to design or build something – co-creation – can produce significantly more productive results when creating a product than talking only. Do it now At the next meeting of your team, set a single goal for everyone to accomplish together. Post big sheets of paper on the wall and give…
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A bakeoff of product innovation methods
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2 min read
Malcolm Gladwell’s The Bakeoff is now online, in which the food R&D firm Mattson tries to create the perfect cookie. Project Delta created three teams: one traditional in-house team, an “XP” (extreme programming) team of two people, and an “open source” dream team of the industry’s best working remotely. For anyone thinking about how to…