Monthly Archives: June 2007

Interview: Where Does the LEGO Lady Go to Unwind?

A fair question and although this interview explains all about one of my favourite places on Earth; little Pietra Santa in Tuscany, Italy read the Interview – although it is not where I’m headed this weekend. A holiday is certainly something I need right now, it’s been a wildly busy year and I’m getting to that stage right now that although I love my job and have a blast doing it, people could be handing me the greatest gift on the planet and I would struggle to summon my trademark enthusiasm for it.

I simply need a rest. And to stop thinking about all the things I have to think about as part of my job just for long enough so that thinking about them will feel like ‘I’m thinking about them after having had some time to think about something else’ rather than ‘I’m thinking about this again and by the way I haven’t had time to think about anything else in the meantime’. You know what I mean. Fortunately a break is looming on the horizon and I’m truly madly deeply looking forward to it, much like someone crossing the desert must be feeling when they finally come across an oasis. So on that note – over and out and back again next week!

It takes a (global, connected) village to raise a child

No I’m not referring to Hillary Clinton’s book, nor her speech on the topic of children – but I am borrowing the same (origin unknown) African proverb that claims it takes a village to raise a child. In fact, I’m building on it to refer to the Internet, the global connected village it has made the world, we are all connected, not necessarily by six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon but in fact by 3rd degree via LinkedIn (or Myspace, Bebo, Facebook or whatever takes your fancy).

For me it has been a revelation that by humbly starting to publish this blog here in my corner of London, UK, there are people as far as Kiribati who magically stumble on this site and moreover, can be bothered to read what I have to say. Truly humbling. Big up to Kiribati I say! This global village of ours has also taught me some very valuable lessons, some of which I agonise over in a previous post about the pain of trying to come up with consistently good quality material. Not sure I succeed consistently, but mainly due to the kindness and patience of my readers, I still have an audience..

I recently came across a brilliant study from Forrester research by a guy called Jaap Favier, Dutch perhaps I endeavour to guess? Anyway he has managed to pull together some great insights about how group dynamics are driving social media on the net and how this connectivity means companies need to change in order to stay relevant for their consumers. Sounds complicated, but on a larger scale I feel companies need to learn what the village has raised me to believe over the years:

Content is king -> CONTACT is king
It’s not about the stuff, it’s about whether you care to listen what people have to say, whether you can help put them in touch with each other and provide them with ways they can not only help each other, but create things together with you. Are you a good citizen and do people even want to know you? If you are evil, chances are they don’t. Often only when you go look for friends do you discover what people really think about you. Don’t let it get that far.

The Medium is the Message -> The RESPONSE is the message
Can you get people to care enough to get involved, can they respond to you, to others, do things change based on their response? You get what you give, if you are rude and deceitful, chances are you also foster that behaviour in people around you.

We call the shots -> THEY call the shots
Don’t think you know it all. Don’t even attempt. There are people out there who know your company, product, service you name it better than you do. They do call the shots whether you like it or not. A smart thing would be to learn from what they have to say and be humble.

KEEP IT REAL
Only if you are honest, true to what you promise and deliver it as good as you say it is, people trust you. To be trusted you have to keep it real, always. No lies, no cheating, no screwing people over – they find out soon enough and others even sooner, so be good and the world is good to you back. Most of the time anyway!

It’s funny – yesterday we had the last episode of the Apprentice, (for now) where our pet magnate Sir Alan Sugar got himself a fresh faced new apprentice, Simon, willing to work ‘his cotton socks off’ as he bluntly put it when asked why he should be hired. Sugar, true to his name, subsequently presented Simon with some unsightly pairs of cotton socks that he could ‘work off’ in due course. Although not the most experienced of contestants, Simon’s happy-go-lucky attitude and kindness got him quite far and moreover made him a master at dealing with some of the more prickly contestants in the show.

The complete opposite was Katie, fired from the show last week. It seems that in her case, common decency took a left-turn and avoided her altogether. Certainly, courtesy of having a blog you learn first-hand how quickly the Internet bites back and let’s you know faster, sooner, and more sharply how much you suck, even when your best-friends stay silent. It felt almost sadistic and certainly voyeuristic to sit there watching Katie spouting her horrific comments about her fellow contestants to the camera and then select comments being revealed to the fellow contestants by programme directors.. pausing to focus on the furious candidate, squirming in their seat, rolling their eyes. It just amazes me that no one from the real or virtual village has played their part, taking Katie to one side, giving her a really good hiding and reminding her just what it means to be a citizen in the global village. Sir Alan Sugar did it sort of, a little yesterday – but all she did was smile. Knowingly. Thinking she still calls the shots. Think again.

Why the Desire to Simplify Can Inhibit Innovation

A friend recently postulated that having budget constraints can
encourage better innovation than those with lots of money to burn as this provides a framework where automatically
many things are out of bounds, because you can’t afford them. He proceeded to point to many start-ups often don’t have a lot of money, but make up for it in energy and determination and thus often end up coming up with solutions better, smarter and more relevant than their heavy-weight rivals. Stops you
re-inventing the wheel I suppose.

Coming from a product design background I must agree that an essential
component to innovation is first figuring out your constraints, the framework
within which you intend to innovate. Before you know that, it is virtually
impossible to determine, which of your million ideas is the best solution to a
given problem.

Having smaller budgets certainly creates some immediate
restraints on what the solution should be – i.e it can’t cost more than X. That
has a remarkable ability to focus a team. The trouble with this approach is
often the desire to simplify too soon, which means that many important factors,
which will in the end determine the success of the solution, are discarded too
early from the process, and thus the solution ends up being more of the same,
rather than truly groundbreaking.

One of my favourite quotes ever is that of F. Scott Fitzgerald, that for him
‘the sign of a truly intelligent individual is one who has the ability to
hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to
function’. Innovation is often just that, how to balance the constraints
one has from an organisational, technical and financial point of view against
the desires and demands of one’s consumers. Often it is not a matter of
either-or, but both, and the innovation is the process of coming up with just
how that will be done.

Here the key is to be able to seek less obvious, but potentially relevant
factors (that will give differentiation in the long run, although to start with
will seem like they are adding more complexity to the topic), secondly it is the
ability to consider multi-directional, non-linear relationships between these variables and seeing
problems as a whole, examining how the parts fit together and how decisions
affect one another, and then lastly: creatively resolve those conflicts between
seemingly opposing ideas to generate innovative outcomes.

That sounds very complicated and at times, it is – and it is pivotal not to
fear the complexity to start with and simplify too soon, thus ending up creating
a solution which will only partially address the problem (and potentially give
birth to an entirely new problem!), but to persist and strive to integrate, not
divide. So constraints are good – but do you know all your constraints or
have you simply settled for the most obvious ones?