Month: January 2016
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The Five Whys
Thanks to Mike for reminding me about the 5 whys process. A simple, yet very effective way of getting to the root cause of a problem by iteratively asking why five times, each question forming the basis of the next question. It was originally used by Toyota as a technique for problem solving in their manufacturing…
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Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast
Lots to take out from this a16z podcast with Eric Ries (of the Lean Startup fame of-course) including the title of this post (which it seems comes from an old customer-service oriented strategy from McDonalds). Believe it or not the book is five years old now (and the fundamental ideas even older), setting out a more…
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On Finding Your Purpose
Careers advice should be far more focused on teaching kids how to learn to find what they love doing. More experimentation, less limitation — neilperkin (@neilperkin) January 22, 2016 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js I rather like what Karl Pillemer had to say about why we should all ask our elders about how best to live. So much wisdom…
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Organisational Flow, Speed and Momentum
The case for organisations to become far more agile in how they operate in response to the impact of digital technologies has been well made. But it’s worth exploring what agility really means in this context. One of my favourite ways of describing this from a cultural perspective comes from Pinterest: Agility = velocity x…
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Constraints, Creativity and the Koln Concert
Lovely story in this new TED talk by (Firestarters speaker) Tim Harford focusing on how constraints contribute to creativity, and concerning Keith Jarrett's 1975 performance at the opera house in Cologne – one of the most famous piano recordings of all time. Worth listening to Tim tell the story in his usual compelling way, but here's…
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How Amazon’s Algorithm Works
There was a fascinating, well shared Quartz piece the other week that described how Spotify's algorithms curate their brilliant Discover Weekly playlists which have become uncannily good at recommending great music that we haven't yet heard. Spotify uses a combination of the composition of millions of user's playlists alongside a categorisation of tracks into nuanced genres…
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Post of the Month – December 2016 – The Vote
Plenty of votes this month but the winner in the end was Roberto Estreitinho with his call to avoid formats becoming ideas. So well done Roberto – you are entered into the hall of fame. My thanks to everyone who took part.
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Post of the Month – December 2015 – The Vote
Thanks to those who nominated. So our vote this month is between: From Persuasion to Usability – Design Meets the Internet by Ben Terrett Strategy in 2015 by Thomas Waegemans Organisational Strategies for Coping With Complexity by Adrian Ho Navigating Complexity – Hold Onto Your Core! from Jennifer Sertl The Day Formats Became Ideas by Roberto…
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Frequency as a Lever for Change
Every business works to its own rhythms or time-related cycles which over time can become embedded and create established norms that influence and often dictate not only ways of working and processes, but strategies and thinking. Sometimes these cycles remain consistent over the long-term (like seasonally driven peaks) but one of the under-acknowledged impacts of digital…
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Post of the Month – December 2015 – Nominations
It's time for Post of the Month so nominations are now open – if you've read something great over the past month that you'd like to put forward please nominate direct or in the comments below. I'll put the final selection up for a vote but as usual I have a starting short-list of three:…