Wanderlust and Words

Local Food   Lee Helman, formerly of Truffles Restaurant in Saskatoon, is now operating the Vanilla Pastry Company and offers desserts made from quality ingredients. They look gorgeous and my sister in law raves about the dacquoise with its decadent combination of crispy meringue, creamy icing, and crunchy nuts.  Inclusivity  Le Corbusier’s design system had a major impact on the post-war world, dictating the size and shape of everything from door knobs to city blocks. Unfortunately, he used a 6-foot male as his model citizen, completely overlooking the needs of women, children, and people with disabilities. In the 1980s, the Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative stepped in with a different approach. “They weren’t promoting a feminist aesthetic, but a way of looking, listening and designing that takes account of people’s very different needs and desires , one that embodies 'the richness of our multiple ways of being in the world'.”  Leaving on a Jet Plane  If you...

cultivate hunches, make mistakes, write everything down, have multiple hobbies, visit coffee shops, share, recycle, re-invent In Where Good Ideas Come From , Steven Johnson says that collaboration rather than isolated competition is at the heart of innovation. Providing examples from different centuries and different sectors, the book outlines seven key elements of innovation and provides readers with plenty of practical suggestions that they can implement in their own lives. The Adjacent Possible Johnson says that innovation does not involve giant leaps into the unknown. Instead, we explore the adjacent possible, the circle of possibility that surrounds our current reality. “The strange and beautiful truth about the adjacent possible is that its boundaries grow as you explore those boundaries. . . . Think of it as a house that magically expands with each door you open. You begin in a room with four doors, each leading to a new room that you haven’t visited yet. Those four rooms are...

Two of my favourite topics – storytelling and Roger Martin. Moving from Strategic Planning to Story Telling Strategic planning can be a painful process – SWOT analysis, financial spreadsheets, the fear of putting forward and defending your ideas. There is so much focus on what is practical and so much competition amongst units, that the resulting plan is often mundane and uninspiring. Roger Martin recommends a different approach: “ My solution? Think about a strategic option as being just a happy story about the future. It doesn't have to be right and it doesn't even have to be sensible. It just has to result in your organization being in a happy place in the future. In fact, if it were absolutely right and utterly sensible, your company would probably already be doing it. It doesn't have to be constructed analytically. It is a holistic story — here is where we would find ourselves playing and how we would see ourselves winning. The only real requirement is that i...

This is the final section of a three-part summary ( Part One and Part Two ) of the key ideas in Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Good luck with your change efforts! Shape the Path We have a tendency to blame problems on the people, not the situation. If we are annoyed with our spouse or a co-worker, we blame it on their personality, whereas the problem may actually be caused by the situation. “A good change leader never thinks, ‘Why are these people acting so badly? They must be bad people.’ A change leader thinks, ‘How can I set up a situation that brings out the good in these people?’” Tweak the Environment It’s often easier to change the environment than human behaviour. For example, one individual was determined not to use his cell phone while driving so he locked it in the trunk of his car. Lawn mowers and many other pieces of machinery have an automatic off to make sure that people don’t cut their toes or fingers off. “Tweaking...

This is the second part of a three-part summary of the key ideas in Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. It draws heavily on the book and is not intended to be read as original content. (See also: Part One ) Motivate the Elephant Find the Feeling The Heath brothers state that, “In highly successful change efforts, people find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought. . . . in almost all successful change efforts, the sequence of change is not ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE, but rather SEE-FEEL-CHANGE.” Jon Stegner believed that the large manufacturer he was working for could drive down purchasing costs by $1 billion, but it would require a significant change in the company’s ways of work. So he looked for a compelling example of poor purchasing habits. His research showed that the factories were purchasing 424 different kinds of gloves costing from $5 to $17 dollars a pair. He collected an...

I thought Switch by Chip Heath and Dan Heath was an amazing book - both insightful and practical. I applied some of their ideas immediately at a volunteer meeting. Over the next three days, I will be posting a summary of the book's key concepts. The summary draws heavily on the ideas, examples, and language of Switch and in no way pretends to be original content. The Heath brothers outline three key ingredients for change. First of all, there is the human component. The Rider is the rational, reflective, deliberative side of human behaviour. His counterpart is the Elephant , the emotional, instinctive side of human behaviour. Finally, there is the Path , the environment or situation surrounding the human players. You can bring about change by Directing the Rider , Motivating the Elephant , or Shaping the Path . Direct the Rider Find the Bright Spots. Riders tend to focus their attention on what isn’t working rather than identifying what is. In addition, they spend a...

Ask the right question, and it’s the start of a great discussion. Ask the wrong question, and you bring the conversation to an abrupt end. In an interesting article on How to Ask Better Questions , Judith Ross says that questions can empower the other person by conveying respect and encouraging the development of their problem-solving skills. Or they can disempower the other person and undercut their self confidence by focusing on failure or on promoting the questioner’s personal agenda. Ross states that, "the most effective and empowering questions create value in one or more of the following ways: 1. They create clarity: "Can you explain more about this situation?" 2. They construct better working relations: Instead of "Did you make your sales goal?" ask, "How have sales been going?" 3. They help people think analytically and critically: "What are the consequences of going this route?" 4. They inspire people to reflect and s...

Here are some examples of health care innovation that I have read about in the last few days. Hello Health helps you find and stay in touch with a doctor in person or by email, instant messaging or video chat. For example, you cut your finger preparing Sunday brunch. You text your doctor and describe the problem. She asks you a few questions to better assess the damage and then tells you to make an appointment. So you take a look at the calendar in her online profile and see there’s an appointment available first thing in the morning. When you get to the office, your doctor has a look at your thumb and decides that you do need a tetanus shot, but not stitches. Cure Together helps you link up with people with similar problems to compare symptoms and treatments. Guidesmith is a website that helps you make decisions during a family health crisis. The Mayo Clinic has established a Centre for Innovation. They observe patient/provider experiences and can quickly adapt ideas as th...

I had a very useful lesson in problem solving this week. When I came home from Regina, there was a beeping noise in my apartment. I immediately suspected that it was the smoke detector. The building manager agreed with my analysis and dropped by the next day to replace it. Well, that didn’t solve the problem. I continued to have 5-minute episodes of beeping on and off, mostly at night. Over the next two days, the building manager replaced the smoke detector three times. With no success. At that point, he got frustrated. He said the smoke detectors were not faulty and, as I was the only tenant who had this problem, and because I was the only tenant with birds, the answer was obvious: my budgies had learned to imitate the sound of the smoke detector beeping, and it was them that I was hearing. Well, then I got mad because I knew it wasn’t my birds. Fortunately, at this stage I called on my brother for assistance, and he helped me to review the situation objectively. I conducted a men...

“For the designer (or artist), focus, calm, gentleness, and vision are more important qualities than raw enthusiasm. Slow down your busy mind.” Ikebana, Japanese flower arrangement, “sees space not as something to fill in or use, but rather as an element to be created, preserved, and respected.” It is “the void or pause that gives shape to the whole. . . . An ikebana artist learns to leave room between the branches to allow a figurative breeze to pass through and rustle the branches, just as would occur in the natural world.” In Presentation Zen Design , Garr Reynolds outlines a number of different ways to avoid visual clutter and to use empty space to shape our presentations: • Asymmetry provides movement and balance; • Full-screen images and images or text on an angle are dynamic; • Create implied space by bleeding images off the edge of the slide (our imagination will fill in what is happening just off stage); and • Add depth through layering and shadows. Reynolds a...

“Experience-based thinking isn’t the absence of analysis. It’s the application of all that we have encountered and learned.” “In complex and ambiguous situations, there is no substitute for experience. We put too much emphasis on reducing errors and not enough on building expertise.” Quotes are from: Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making by Gary Klein With thanks to Stephen Few’s blog, Visual Business Intelligence

“Do only what is necessary to convey what is essential.” In Presentation Zen Design (see also Type Zen ), Garr Reynolds continues to apply Zen aesthetic principles to business presentations. One chapter focuses on preparing effective charts and graphs. Reynolds urges readers to avoid clutter and overly-complicated charts and graphs that will distract viewers from the relevant data. He outlines three key principles: restraint, reduce, emphasize. • Restrain yourself from including unnecessary information (logos, decorative items, overly-detailed data). • Reduce the non-essential elements by being very clear about the purpose of the graph and what it is intended to illustrate. • Then emphasize the most important information: colour to highlight the most important bar in the graph, a heading to direct attention to the data’s significance. It is so easy to want to draw a pretty picture – to include lots of colour and graphics – or to drown your viewers in information to show how kno...

I am fascinated by design thinking at the moment, perhaps because it provides pointers for being both more creative and more successful. The Design of Business by Roger Martin* focuses on helping businesses to use design thinking, but his ideas apply to individuals and institutions as well. Balancing Predictability and New Knowledge Martin recognizes that companies need structure and established routines in order to exploit their past successes. As a result, they analyse the figures to determine what works and what doesn’t work. They value reliability and demand proof before trying something new. But the results don’t live up to expectations. Martin explains, “What organizations fail to realize is that while they reduce the risk of small variations in their business, they increase the risk of cataclysmic events that occur when the future no longer resembles the past and the algorithm is no longer relevant or useful.” Martin says that “Few large companies have managed – or even ...

“Our personal design sense and acuity is on display every day in our presentations, our documents, our meetings, our e-mails, and in the way we think and express our ideas,” says Garr Reynolds , author of Presentation Zen and Presentation Zen Design . Design matters. Well-designed objects not only look good, but they work better, and people have a positive emotional response. “People make instant judgments about whether something is attractive, trustworthy, professional, too slick, and so on. This is a visceral reaction – and it matters.” The first chapter of Presentation Zen Design talks about type or font, something we often take for granted. Reynolds repeats two of his key messages: Avoid Clutter and Create Harmony . Those messages really hit home for me when I was reading an online publication. The unusual use of capitals and the combination of three or four different fonts was annoying. Rather than enhancing the content, it distracted my attention and interrupted the flow. I...

One of the challenges I’ve had with several of my contracts is obtaining feedback on a draft document. The client wants to approve an early version of the final product, while I’m looking for discussion and collaboration. Design thinking provides some solutions. Design thinkers approach a project (i.e. designing a chair) as “thousands of interlocking decisions. Collectively, all of these questions together are too big to digest, so the designer leaps headlong into the process and begins creating. First, she looks for inspiration, collecting ideas and expressions that help her think. Designers use art, metaphors, analogies and other elements to provoke inspiration around form, function, feel, and experience. Through this process they are breaking the decision down while simultaneously giving themselves new options. Very soon, the designer will begin to create prototypes to understand how certain parts of the chair will work, what it will feel like, and how it will look. Through e...

In the past, designers focused their attention on designing objects. They came up with clever new designs for cars or furniture or handbags, but they rarely addressed every day problems and needs. The situation is changing as organizations are starting to apply design principles to business and social problems. The Innovation Gap One of the principle goals of design thinking is to bridge the gap between our knowledge of how to make things and our knowledge of what people want. Design thinking is people-centered as it studies how people live and use objects. OXO Good Grips spent years watching people working in the kitchen in order to design a vegetable peeler that would be easy for people with arthritis to use. They now produce a whole range of tools and utensils. Design Like You Give a Damn Designers are also turning their attention to social problems. Architecture for Humanity's goal is to build a more sustainable future through the power of professional design . They wo...