Category: Agile
-
Questions for leaders
Over the last year I’ve been doing a lot of work with leaders in the NHS helping them to navigate change and understand to get the most out of technology in support of improvement. One of the resources that I found really […]
-
Missionaries, not Mercenaries
In the comments to my post on tipping points in social convention and change Mark Earls made a couple of great points. He built on the central theme of the post about how (rather than treating transformation as a marketing exercise) leaders […]
-
Tipping points in social convention and change
This was an interesting study (HT @Emollick) looking at tipping points in social convention. Researchers conducted an experiment to test what proportion of people were needed to successfully challenge a norm that was held within the group. They looked at groups of […]
-
The Birthday Paradox
Answer this: How many people do you think need to be in the same room before two of them have the same birthday? We have a tendency to think of this question in a linear way and so most people approach this […]
-
Context Switching
I wrote about the downsides of constant context switching (or the tendency we have to move from one task to another unrelated one) in my last book but it’s a subject that I keep thinking about when I talk to anyone about […]
-
Scurvy, Scott, and understanding why something works
There’s a fantastic example of how the value of breakthrough innovation can so easily be lost in this Cautionary Tales podcast by Tim Harford. Tim tells the tale of how in the 18th Century James Lind (pictured above) became passionate about solving […]
-
On organisational experimentation
This was an interesting paper shared by Ethan Mollick on innovation experimentation. Larger scale A/B tests are often done (notably in tech businesses but in many other sectors as well, particularly given the proliferation of services) to screen ideas. But with limited […]
-
In defence of flywheels
My friend Mike Baxter had a good post on strategy flywheels (which I also talk about in my books on Agile Transformation and Agile Marketing), talking about two key concepts that underpin the whole idea of strategy flywheels: synergy and compounding. The […]
-
On unquestioned legacy
I loved this example of the kind of legacy thinking that goes unquestioned for years (originally via). The standard size of wine bottles was formalised around the world for the 1973 vintage at 750ml. US sizes until that point had been a […]
-
Einstein, simplicity, and focusing on what really matters
‘Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.’ Albert Einstein A not insignificant part of Einstein’s brilliance came from his ability to focus on the essential principles and information that sat at the heart of complex scenarios. When considering […]