Category: Agile
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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 should focus more on the ‘pioneers’ or ‘early adopters’ to forge a new…
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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 people that had acheived a consensus about something (in this case the name…
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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 by thinking about the 365 days in a year. Meaning that having around…
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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 their working environment and the challenge of creating space or dedicating blocks to…
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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 the problem of sailors dying on long voyages from unknown causes. Scurvy (or…
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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 resources to allocate to experimentation, should a business concentrate on testing a few…
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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 ‘flywheel’ approach has been popularised by Amazon’s famous example which articulates how exceptional customer…
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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 half gallon and a gallon but 750ml had been the default size for…
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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 difficult or complicated new ideas, instead of getting lost in the noise of…
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Groupthink, and management by leaving the room
I had no idea that the original research into the concept of ‘groupthink’ was inspired by what happened with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. Irving Janis, a Yale psychologist who studied group cohesion, became fascinated by how a group of highly intellectual politicians and government officials could make such a…