Day 32: The sandwich remains the same

Sitting through the International Union of Architects' (UIA) COP 17 session on design for climate change, I was struck by the sandwich buffet. Why are these platters always the same, no matter where you go, you are greeted by the cheerless little triangles of tuna, cold cuts and the occasional vegetarian delight. Will there be a climate crisis for conferences, forcing innovation of the environment for intellectual exchange? The conference provided a lot of food for though but today I'll only write about the architects of change.

The group structured the panel discussion around David Holmgrem's Four Scenarios. By viewing peak oil and climate challenge as the key parameters defining the future, the architects were able to dive into specific scenarios. The panel discussion focussed on their role in responding to and shaping societal safety. The key word of the day was "capacity."

Is "sustainable living" the new "progress?" A concept forced upon an unsuspecting and somehow inferior populace who are just not smart enough to be considered as part of the solution? Just like Gropius and van der Rohe, today's architects seem intent on solving climate change in spite of the humans who inhabit and apply their structures. How do we make the human interaction the smartest part of a smart grid? How do we avoid the unintended decay of pristine utopian visions sprung from individual genius minds, and the social devastation they leave in their wake?

Even though there were some lovely examples of integrated design, using biomimicry and local engagement to build Richard Palmer's "Democratic Space" in Niarobi for instance, the general tenor was that of Mr. Fixit. Only one of the panelists challenged the architectural paradigm. He felt that no one is going back to ask the fundamental questions. Instead of asking "how do we reduce the impact of cars and commuting?" we should be asking "why do we need cars and commenting in the first place?" Solving problems at source.

The sandwich buffet played nicely to the example of Peter Menzel's hungry planet project that was shared. I wonder what the mental diet of change conferences would look like if you compare them over time. It seems that as far as big conventions go, the songs and sideshows may change but how we are being fed, both physically and mentally, remains the same. How do we develop an intellectual exchange that does not inadvertently, through its very nature become stale. Perhaps biomimicry can give us some hints on how to make better mind sandwiches.

Day 31: Three waves of resistance

The shores of the East Coast are ruggedly beautiful and I found myself staring at the breaking waves for a very long time today. The ageless battle between the ocean and the land with constantly shifting frontiers. When I was 12 years old there used to be a family of about 20 dolphins that would patrol up and down the coast every day. Watching them play in the waves before going to school made the whole day feel different. Three or four dolphins would challenge each other in surfing contests, testing each other to see who tumbled out of the breaking wave last. Today that family came by and now has about 250 members. Their playful patrol seems to have netted a following.

Watching the waves made me think about transformation in organizations. For the first three months of this year I worked with a group of nurses, physicians and support staff to transform the patient experience at a maternity unit. Transforming any organization can feel like the battle between the sea and the shifting sands of a shoreline. Organizational entropy can out wait even the most enthusiastic tsunami of consultants.

It seems though that one always faces the same three waves of resistance. At first the resistance is driven by the question: "Who are you?" Without trust and demonstrating a true empathetic connection with the people who make up an organization it is very hard to even get through the door. Gossip, rumors and general conversation on the corridors very quickly set the tone, determining if you will get to see inside the kimono. Without this trust you are just listening to PR.

The second wave is typified by the question: "Why this solution?" When theoretical principles and frameworks start turning into real action, the art of doing, the questions become more focussed on the content of change. I wonder if in this phase, it is not easier to introduce radical change, where there is little or no precedent anchoring commitment to old ways. As Eugene Marais noted, when ant colonies shift from one home to a new one, almost a third of the ants are engaged in carrying stuff back to their old home.

The way in which solutions are derived is more important than the actual solutions though. In this particular case we quickly shifted the mood in the unit by prototyping and introducing an idea from one of the cleaning staff. As a unionized worker who had been at the hospital for over 20 years she would officially be viewed as low in status. In reality her opinions and endorsement was key in shifting informal support for the solutions. The fact that the organization was willing to listen to even the lowest ranking staff meant that the staff were more willing to listen, and take risks for the organization. The "who" trumps the "what."

The third and most subtle wave of resistance usually comes after most transformation engagements end and I am convinced it is the reason most transformation fails. The wave is driven by the question: "Why don't other people understand?"

Once the emotions of the core team have shifted to a new place it is very hard to imagine a mind that does not understand and has not shifted. "This is obvious? Why are they so stupid?" I can't remember who said this but the mind is an infinitely flexible thing however once it has been stretched by an idea it cannot return to its original shape. Very few transformation projects prepare the change team for the resistance they will encounter from the rest of the business. In this particular engagement I don't think I would have realized just how hard this new task is if we hadn't committed to an 8 week stewardship role.

Most transformation projects focus on defining the organizational shape and expected behaviors. The skills people learn are in service of this functional shift, but how many people are building the specific skills needed to overcome internal resistance? The first and most probably most important skill is in my opinion to overcome the division in thought, there is no "us the enlightened" and "them the great unwashed." Sustaining unity of purpose through transition is a very special talent which is most probably why the shape of organizations hang so slowly in the face of transformation.

Turning the playful family of dolphins from 20 to 250 could be an instructive metaphor for dealing with the waves of change. Prototyping playful new behaviors early on establishes norms that make it easier for people to feel natural in their new organizational environment.

Day 30: Oral sex

The best thing about a long road trip is that you get to catch up on all the gossip and scandal. Like the story of a CEO and a business colleague who were in Los Angeles on a buying trip. Seeing a sign for “Oral Sex, $15” they could not resists a bargain. Two beautiful woman led them into little booths where they proceeded to talk them through a questionnaire about sex. 15 Minutes later, and highly embarrassed about their mistake the two men zipped up their ego’s and hot tailed it out of there.
A week later when he got home the CEO was in bed with his wife when she burst into a fit of laughter. Reading through the LA Times he had brought with him she came across an article about how two college girls were making a killing by selling their take on oral sex. “Can you believe it” she says to her husband, “men are so gullible!”

So on the topic of turning talk into dollars, Thomas has spent the last couple of years criss crossing the African continent, consulting to MTN. One of the global leaders in the mobile industry, they have transformed economies and small business industries with their mobile payment systems. Thomas explained to me that MTN regularly maintains up to a 30% margin in the markets where it competes. The key to their success is how they serve the market, outperforming others intent on a quick, cheap fix.

As a mobile network provider, the cost of infrastructure is a key shaping element in the business model and fundamentally affects strategy. Their competition usually looks at a map through the eyes of electricity and infrastructure supply. This makes it a lot cheaper to erect base stations, pumping the megawatts of power needed to drive phone reception and transmission straight off the grid. MTN looks at where people are most likely to talk, and erects masts there. In Africa this often means putting a generator with an armed guard next to the mobile phone mast. This has paid off and when South Africa suffered rolling black outs over the past years, MTN was able to turn this redundancy into a real competitive advantage when their masts kept transmitting.

It cannot have been an easy conversation with the CFO when they rolled out their coverage in this highly robust way. Would your CFO have approved such redundancy if your competition are using an established infrastructure at a fraction of the cost? Going it alone is risky and the financial markets would not look kindly upon companies that take long bets against infrastructure partners. But in Africa you have to go to where the market is, not the grid. Like the two ladies in Los Angeles, MTN has shown that risky business is not always what it seems when you turn talk into cash.

Day 29: Doughnut democracy

As always, seeing Hannelie was pure inspiration. Kindness and breadth of insight have rarely been combined more elegantly with that sharp refreshing lemon flavored wit. Thinking that she was prompting me to read Gary Larson I actually stumbled across the way in which Fromm's thinking on "the fear of freedom" has been ignored. And how well it summarizes some of the key challenges we as a society face right now.
Fromm's insistence that every "freedom from" needs to be synthesized with a "freedom to" is a real siren call. The spontaneity to share an authentic self is mostly absent today, not just in a work context but also in the way we view our lives in general. As Hannelie put it so elegantly: "you are not born a woman, you become one." The freedom from wrinkles, hairy legs and curly hair does not give you freedom to be anything but a preconceived identity, determined by advertising and social convention. The googled-wiki-wisdom that we have access to is nothing but a massive dose of "common sense", shaping pre defined ways of acting and thinking about reality.

She makes an interesting case that men and women will converge in the way they look, because there is more money to be made in manufactured manliness, modeled on the formula that industry knows so well with women. Already you see how gillette is promoting the manscape, and everything from facial creams to foot spas are peddling a new insecurity about being simply you.
Fromm, in analysing deeply the drivers of a mass acceptance of National Socialism, echoed Alex de Tocqueville: "It is vain to summon a people who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it may be, will not prevent them losing the faculties of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually falling below the level of humanity." Following their style icons slavishly it becomes an act of futility to ask consumers to make a real choice on style when they are confronted by something that has not been endorsed. In 2005 I commissioned a research project that saw consumers making statements about five identical garments labelled differently. Every single attribute, from quality, stylishness to price expectation was entirely driven by the label. You could show someone two identical products together and they would find a difference, because they have been told to expect one.

Now, next and known

How does one reduce the stress that thinking for yourself and being authentic generates. As I sit here I am thinking of all the workshops and creative get-aways I have led over the years. Thinking back at the burning eyes and expectations I wonder how much fear there was actually in the room. It is not simply a fear of stepping into the unknown, it is a fear of acknowledging the non-accepted "known." There is a need for synthesis, where the steps of "free from" and "free to" are blended into a new condition. How does one do this when the mechanisms for generating the "free to" state are fundamentally corrupted by pervasive precondition? The illusion of democracy is actually a hollow doughnut, where the core has been filled by a nagging emptiness. Can someone hand me the jelly and vanilla cream?

Day 28: The shark spotter of Chapman's Peak

Shark spotter's perspective

When you drive through Chapman's Peak, one of the most stunningly beautiful drives in the world (as recognized by the 60 Porsche enthusiasts screaming past us today), you may notice a white, blah or green flag on one of the corners. Here sits the shark spotter. Every day, rain or shine. He doesn't have an office or even a shelter from the elements. Sitting in the sun (or in winter amongst the bushes) he serves as the human early warning system to the surfers who congregate in the frothy left break below.

George the shark spotter talked us through all the challenges and tasks of a shark spotter. How the water visibility is measured and what differences occur in the habits of seals and whales alike when the storm winds come in. I asked if he gets bored and he told me, only with the questions he gets asked by tourists (to which he always gives the same random and unrelated answers). The job gives him lots of time to think, he says. Most interesting for me though was how he has shared this spot for the last six years with a cobra. Early on he established some rules in the relationship, saying to the snake: "I am working hard here to feed my children, and to protect the surfers. You cannot be distracting me too much."

Shorefront perspective

How often do you have a conversation with a shark spotter? What are the mechanisms for measuring risk visibility for your business and the markets you are in? Sitting high above the fray, the shark spotter sees deep into the water and can tell us a lot about the things that look normal on the surface. Who has that perspective on your business? The task takes dedication, you can't be a part time shark spotter even when the snakes are curling around your ankles.

Day 27: Artificial Intelligence

100% artist proof

Kenau is known as one of the best people in the world for manufacturing fake strawberries. It seems that if you are looking for that extra pop in your ice cream photo shoot, she can fake it better than most.
Why is it that we have gravitated towards selecting products and people based on an artificial projection of what they intended to be, rather than developing the skills to select something on what it actually is? I am as guilty as the next person. The beauty shoot Kristian did for us at speedo ultimately was a composite of six different photos and, as with all fashion photos, was stretched by 15% to make the model appear longer and slimmer.

Dove's campaign for real beauty was a valiant attempt (which ultimately failed) to deprogram our intelligence of the artificial; the heart felt belief that the best thing for us, is a thing that does not exist. The UK's stand on manipulated images in advertising is encouraging yet the tsunami of reality TV keeps pushing consumerism to new levels of artifice.

Is this what is needed to prepare mankind for life in an information age, the anthropocene mind? Perhaps the ability to navigate fake is the most important skill that our children and the next generation need to learn. As the cultural nuance necessary for 'fitness' becomes more and more refined, our abilities need to evolve along with capabilities to modulate reality. The challenge though is that most people are not seeing the difference and like the boiled frog become consumed by the desire to consume. One billion obese people meet one billion starving people in a world of manufactured intent.

Last week I asked the question if there is an alternative to the hockey curve growth model in business planning. This week I ask if there needs to be a go-to-market strategy that delivers truth? Do businesses who try and out-compete each other for the most desirable fake, ultimately hollow out their ability to innovate on core value? With all their efforts focussed on engineering "engagement" shifting attention and resources away from creating post transactional purpose. Can we bring intelligent integrity to this artificial EQ?

Day 26: Through the eye of a fly

Ubuntu is an essential African philosophy. A human is only a human through other humans. Identity and existence is a relative reality. Another African proverb says that a single finger cannot lift a grain of rice. This struck a particular cord earlier this week when I met with Mat. The Design Council has placed a lot of emphasis on having consortia pitch ideas for social good. We spoke at length about the checks and balances that such a project structure brings, built-in.

In a group where everyone thinks alike, not much thinking happens. Even though the pitfalls of groupthink are well known, most companies still rely heavily on their internal dialogue to define the truth of their future. How many boards do you know of actually conduct peer review on the 5 year plans? Sure, oversight committees and non-executive board members bring in some perspective but are generally too removed form the operations to share their insight with middle management, whose judgement ultimate decides how the plan is executed.

Operationally I also struggle with the concept of a brief and how it often leads to a very narrow solution to a particular project. At a point in every project you face the question: "do we proceed with the right solution to the challenge, or do we proceed with the right solution for this company?" This is a very real trade off. The company's limited resources or lack of skills in certain areas will often prevent them from implementing a more holistic, and ultimately robust solution. The budget owner wants to see a solution that is tightly constrained by their remit and resources. Faced with this choice you are often forced to suggest a scoped down solution that does not deliver either the differentiation or disruption expected. This limitation for me is inherently proscribed by the concept of a single company issuing a brief to a single agent or supplier.

By asking consortia, including the whole value chain and consumer groups to work together on 'challenges', the design council is lifting the debate. Yes it is more challenging and time consuming to coordinate disparate and often conflicting interests. Herding cats towards one solution is not easy but in an idea launched through this approach, they will reduce the impact of emergency unit violence. That is right, upset patients and disoriented caregivers freaking out in the A&E costs £69 million a year. The cost of this complex issue is about the same as the salaries of 4800 nurses. The multi-facetted design solution is a wonderful example of how smart, inclusive design can counter cost pressures of the failing health system.

How could this consortia thinking become more prevalent in the way companies define company strategy and go to market initiatives? NGO's and charities have the engagement but not the scale or commitment that business can deliver. A blended approach should deliver more integrity, thinking of a constituency of solution seekers rather than the limited "stakeholder management". This multi-facetted approach can then deliver the stunning sight of a fly's compound eye.

Day 25: Be Long

Cape Town is as confused about the weather as it always is. Walking on the beach with scarfs and jackets in November. Yesterday it was 40 degrees Celsius. After leaving South Africa 16 years ago the city greets me with questions of heritage, history and kinship. On this trip I have been consistently struck by the deep of happiness one senses when talking to people who are settled in their communities. Having lived their whole live in a village, the world makes sense and everything knows where it belongs.
This sense of certainty releases a deeper sense of calm. Things are predictable, they fit. When you goto the local nursery you have long conversations with the owner about the pros and conns of opening a coffee shop.

Action for Happiness place a lot of emphasis on the importance of community in providing happiness. Being part of a community though means spending time together. The rituals and sharing weave shared commitments and understandings. Your investment can’t be short if you want to belong.

In the 70’s anthropologists made the ‘shocking’ discovery that a lot of what they learnt from communities was distorted. When researchers went into communities the people most keen on speaking to them were the outcasts, the outliers. Not being aligned with the rest of the group they were keenest on the newcomers and provided their fringe perspectives freely. The core of the communities would observe the interaction with the ‘newcomers’ to get a sense of where they would end up inside the social structure. A kind of social early warning system.

Very few companies make the investment to go long and be long in communities. The snapshot trajectory of ‘insight’ built through focus groups serve as truth for their multi-million dollar investments. Social listening experiments are often run by interns or younger staff who “get twitter.” But taking dipstick measures and sounding out the market can’t serve to provide the real sense of where the deeper concerns lie. Like the outsider anthropologists of the 70’s companies need to understand that their perspective is eccentric. Being ‘in sync’ is a longitudinal sympathy that understands the beats and underlying rhythms driving the community’s sense of self. As the african proverb has it: “to go fast, go alone, to go far, go together.” Be long.

Day 23: 100 Heifers run dry

The last three days gave me the opportunity to experience the workings of a dairy farm. In the farmhouse they converted 2 rooms into a bed & breakfast. A very basic B&B as could be evidenced from this photo of their information booklet (compiled and last touched in 1992!).
Here we have two businesses running as one. The 100 heifers produce organic milk and cream to all the local tourist destinations (Chatsworth and Kedlestone hall visitors can enjoy extra thick scrumpy cream scones, thanks to my Foster family). The farm house B&B provides a warm bed and dry heat for weary travelers and explorers. It is clear that they feel very differently about the two businesses.
The £2000 needed to buy a new heifer focuses their attention on caring for the beasts in a way that guests in the bed & breakfast don't. The dairy has a new pasteurizer, capital investment plan and sustainability strategy. The bed and breakfast still uses the same beds and bedding it did 30 years ago. The guests, most probably driven by the low room rate, do not seem to get the same attention that the cash cows do.
I suppose this is a classic tale of excess capacity being used to harvest some value from capital investments (ironically, keeping this 'dog' from cash cow status). It does point to the different standards and measures that companies use to define success for business.

What is the real opportunity cost tied up in ideas that get killed or suffer because they are not supported with the same attention and standards as the core, supported strategies? Two years ago I had a client who were very keen to bring a massively disruptive model to workplace wellbeing. The new ideas would have a massive impact on general workplace engagement and the energy levels of employees (modulated through better diets). The problem was though that it would not deliver the margins needed to qualify against the internal investment hurdle to build it. The new idea was competing against a 150 year old business with entrenched efficiencies of scale and the established sales channels to drive it. The fact that this new idea was essential to differentiate this commodity business and protect it from new global entrants was besides the point. On a narrow measure, the cash the company has would deliver a higher return when invested in the established business model. The irony is that this way of measuring opportunity cost (against the existing profit margin) leads to investments only when the existing business crashes and the hurdle becomes low enough to pass. This has become pervasive in the pharma industry where a lot of life saving drugs don't see the life of day because they don't compete against the "blockbuster" model. As trendy as the idea of "disrupt yourself before others do" is, have you had that conversation with a CFO?
How could we level the playing field for new ideas to unlock their real value? How do we get businesses to migrate before their 100 heifers run dry?

Day 22: Intentionally empty

I don't want to revisit the great job 'Shopping' did in showing the ridiculous wasted expanse of retail space, but when a two block walk down the main street of a town delivers 7 empty shop fronts you have to take note.
Like Bruce Mau (and the #OWS peeps) I prefer to see "empty" as an opportunity. Perhaps even an opportunity to increase happiness as they recently did with "the-buro-of-doing-something-about-it."

Day 21: Gifts

I’ll use the occasion of Fabian’s birthday to say thank you for all the inspiration and gifts I have enjoyed on this trip. In chronological order, thank you to: Sven, Iaan, Claude, Johan, Colin, Sonja, Pontus, Ivo, Rene and the rest of the Spiegelberger stiftung, Aritake, Aritake’s dad, Ludwig Museum and Picasso, Sara, Martin, Karl-Heinz, Nicola, Peter, Matt, Tom, Uta, Georgia, Elke, Pernilla, Fredrik, Siri (not the apple kind), the Pope (in graffiti form), Kentridge, Turner, Twombly, Susanne, Leon, Veronica, Volker, Dana, Anton, Louisa, Alexandra, Suzanne, two nameless people in Dingolfing, Hannah, anonymous follower from Sri Lanka, Sven (again), Julianne, Lisz, David, Andreas, Simon, Desire B., Cato, Scott, Roelie, Peter, Thomas, Pam, the two Oxford students who spoke to me about tradition, Milan and Fabian. And to the cities of London, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Munich (as always Munich), Dingolfing, Arzberg, Falkenstein, Berlin, Middle Aston, Oxford and Duffield.

And while we are on the topic of gifts; I was really struck by the following statistic that underpinned the free lunch in London yesterday. Roughly a third of all produce is rejected from retail because of aesthetic reasons (wonky looking carrots and such). If we were able to channel only a quarter of this aesthetic waste, it would be enough to feed the 1 billion hungry people in the world! Currently the majority of these products end up in landfill.

To my American friends: Happy Thanksgiving.

Day 20: Trade-ition

Many years ago I watched 5 minutes of the TV that had a profound effect on me. It was a discussion between an anthropologist and a tribesman in New Guinea. The tribe had only recently been exposed to western civilization for the first time. The anthropologist was interested in understanding the universal habits that humans as a species had adopted to prosper. A smile and the ability to dance are really, deeply, hard wired into our human condition.
After a few minutes the tribesman made up his mind and asked: "do you want to trade?"
This wasn't a request for a specific thing. It wasn't about: "wow, I could really do with one of those flashy sharp gizmos you have that cuts through butter like a hot .... mmm palm leave." It was simply a request to trade. The interaction where two people give something of themselves. As an ancient tribe I suppose you had to quickly decide on which side of the fence a new person you came across was. Someone who shares food or sends sharp objects your way. Interaction between people lubricates a sense of safety and belonging. Once we have traded the chances we'll fight is a lot less. We have crossed a barrier a moved beyond the isolation of ownership. Between us now exists a bond, the beginnings of a shared culture with anticipated traditions.

Positive psychology also places emphasis on this act of sharing. More important than the thing of mine that lives with you after we have traded, is the sense of me that lingers on. Sharing is an essential part of feeling good, and raising "happiness." This is most probably why poorer communities feel happier, they share more and thus connect with people and things.

The word "company" has its roots in sharing. Theatre troupes who worked for food and lodging in the middle ages would sit down together and share the day's bread (pane in italian). Everyone who belongs in the sharing circle would be the "com-pane." You know the person you share bread with in a way you don't know the person at the end of a pink slip.
As money reduced trade to transactions this human need for connecting with the person beyond the product has somehow been ignored. The "thing of you" lives with me, but I don't have a sense of you... Social media has now brought the concept of the transparency back into vogue, but somehow the emptiness created by accepting products with invented legacies into our homes, leaves a nagging doubt about this non-symbiotic shuffle.
How can we break out of this cycle to once again build shared "trade-itions?"

Day 19: Shopper keeper

Retail is where, for most companies, the brand rubber hits the customer experience road. Today I had my first Chinese brand experience (if you don’t count all the proxy Li & Fung brands) at Globetrotter and was reminded of the different strategies retailers and brands have for understanding their cash voting constituencies.
Decathlon have for years lived their business intimately. All administrative, product design and development functions are based in, or on their shop premises. Every employee is constantly reminded of the till stubs that turn into their pay checks.  A couple of years ago I even got to experience first hand how, by building a store in Biarritz, the swimwear, surfing and diving team had both the sales and product usage moments in front of their noses (joking that the salt water ocean was in front of the store and the sweet water harbor behind it).
This approach has clearly paid off, with merchandisers and isle managers able to prototype new constellations and get feedback in real time. The space becomes an evolving organism, tuned to the real time tally of transactions that promotes growth in one direction, and kills off unprofitable lines in another. As a brand marketing director, I had never had such tough merchandising discussions.

Globetrotter uses a different strategy. The retail space is more about expectations than transactions. There is a giant pool in which to try out kayaks. An installation with tents and desert sand, reporting on travels to the Sahara. The shopper can sit and watch videos or vicariously follow along with a community of contemporary explorers. You don’t get the feeling that you are being channeled into a selling system and the sales isles are not the focussed tubes and tunnels that Decathelon’s model has so sharply refined. None of this is new. Ever since Paco Underhill reported that Homebase could reach new customers by selling stories and solutions, the battle in retail has been between function (volume) and fantasy (margin).

What inspired me about Globetrotter though is how this experience is drawn through into product development. They have invested heavily in testing and development facilities in Costa Rica. Replanting thousands of acres of rain forrest, which will not only serve as a testing ground for outdoor kit, it will also offset the carbon footprint of the supply chain. This feels like the beginnings of the “values proposition” I am looking to define. A holistic expression of business behavior, symbiotically evolving from an intimate dialogue between its stakeholders. Collect insights where they will be experienced, not just in the shop front. Build and sustain the communities, not just the myths, that makes the real world environment your R&D lab.

Capitalism grew by building the consumer base that fed it. For a long time the car and white goods industries were supplying the middle class that bought the products they themselves were producing. Understanding, caring for and sustaining the meaning (in other words the values, not just the value) of this relationship seems more important than ever before as Walmart, Trader Joes and others have discovered. They have moved beyond the cellophane wrapped carousel of consumption to become slightly more benevolent keepers of their shoppers.

Addendum: Sven tells me that the Globetrotter in Berlin also offers an immunization station. This means you can be completely prepared for your trip and get engaged in local health issues on the spot. With all of the charity and donations work they do it really adds another dimension to building the communities that are their real world R&D lab

Day 18: Presence pirates

According to Die Zeit, the average German owns 10000 things. This asks a very fundamental question which is simply, just how many things can one person own?
The basis of capitalism, and why it has aways done so well at lifting communities from poverty, is that assumption that growth is endless and can be found everywhere. Every business plan, and every funding model relies on growth. "If I can't earn more on my money next year than this, I won't lend it to you."
As basic needs were met, production could only keep growing by building redundancy. The 6th pair of shoes you don't wear, the 38 books you never read. According to Die Zeit, human nature kicked in. Perhaps somewhere between 7000 and 8000 things, who knows?

At some point in the past couple of years the rate of new consumption has started to steadily go down. Sure the passion for new smartphones and apps is unabated but something has met a saturation point and growth slowed. Not by much, but just enough to tear holes in the financial markets rapacious need for double digit growth. Like a super saturated solution, a little bump crystalized into rapid, rigid resistance. The Occupy movement, in my mind, is simply the diffuse expression of a saturated society. There is no one galvanizing point or hero. We are dis-eased by the saturated condition.

Is there a way to make capitalism survive on a non-growth model? Economists fear deflation more than the devil. Good luck getting funding for a new business if you don't include at least one or two hockey stick charts. But just like the singularity I wrote about yesterday, there is a theoretical point beyond which people simply cannot consume. Keyenes knew this and he predicted that our generation would meet that saturation point. Advertising and media has done a great job distracting us from realizing that we have actually satisfied basic needs. Production capacity is at a level that could feed the world. There is more than enough clothing, hot and cold running water to keep just about everyone safe and happy.

The fact is though that cash flows are best lubricated by dissatisfaction, not satisfaction. Just as heartbreak is the poet's most productive muse, unsatisfied needs are the marketing man's mantra. The distraction into a world of discontent and inadequacy circles us on Facebook, twitter, the TV, our bank statement. The potential joy of simply being, and being content, is a bounty that presence pirates cannot leave unmolested!

As a business though, there must be an annuity model that is simply content and doesn't demand the destabilization of desires. Consumers are turning redundancy into a tradable good, not requiring new production to satisfy a need. Sven's landlord has set up a social network for the tenants to share drills, ladders and any other things they have laying about. I love Engin's new business idea called "itemology" (Facebook meets amazon marketplace). As businesses figure out how to deal with satisfied, engaged people (rather than "consumers") new definitions and spaces for value will emerge.

Day 17: Listening to fish

Aquariums are a popular destination for new parents to take their kids. The rich confusion of life, expressed in exotic colors and crazy forms excites the conversation with the little ones. Parents and 2 year olds alike can stare in amazement as sea horses and jelly fish perform exotic dances. At some deep level we are reminded of how wonderful the world we live in really is. And isn't it fun to be reminded just how drab and boring we are compared to clown fish and corals?

When companies seek inspiration they often resort to the same strategy, seeking out exotic life forms and strange behaviors to inspire new ways of seeing their options. The glassed in research lens distorts and exaggerates little anomalies in the same way the fish tanks do. Managers and staff stare in wonder at apple (as they used to at GE, toyota, zara etc.) and how it has produced the latest sea change, as if by magic.

Quite often though I think they spend too much time looking at the fish and not enough time learning from the water or the tank. It's easy to forget how the laws of gravity are suspended, how depth and light change opportunities to hunt and harvest when you stand in front of a well lit slice of paradise. After all, products are only the archeological evidence of a corporate culture. What are the organizational patterns that would sustain your company in an exotic environment? and what are the patterns expressed by the exotic little pisceans that could actually be useful in the earth bound trudgery of your business?

Ray Kurzweil and his crew are actually thinking about the fish tank. In the work they have done around building the Singularity University, the focus is all about what kind of species we need to be when everything we think we know, changes. I wonder if it is just intellectual arrogance or survival fear that makes us hope that we can predict a post singularity future any better than we predicted the advent of the PC. The important thing though is that they are trying to sense the patterns of thought and new ideas that will become prevalent in our tech-symbiosis.

As I was walking through the aquarium I came across a boy with his ear tightly pressed against the glass, intensely listening to the water and the sound of the fish tank. I think he gets it.

Day 16: Acquired identities

In Frankfurt I had a conversation with a woman who once worked as a massage therapist in a brothel. She told me that there is a very subtle yet powerful competition amongst prostitutes expressed as ostentatious consumption. It seems that the more expensive the things you can buy, the more appealing you are as a product. And the more appealing you are as a product, the more expensive the things you can buy. This self perpetuating cycle will see women sleeping with upwards of ten men a day, securing that Gucci with that coochie.

Iaan, in his infinite wisdom once captured this succinctly: "the better you look, the more you'll see." (and the age old cliche: "don't dress for the job you have, dress for the job you want")
These purchased identities, that allow acceptance and access to desirable clubs, social groups and that promotion you so desperately need to pay your credit card debt, come at a very steep price. By modulating what we think others see as desirable, we often destroy what is authentic and unique; paradoxically killing the thing that makes us stand out and get attention. The catch is, by demonstrating that we are up to date with current trends we also show that we have social currency. Being 'in the know' denotes a social status that aligns a person with what is vital and dynamic. In the clubby world of CEO's, not being in on the latest fad is tantamount to social castration. But honestly, what is the price of the CEO d**k measuring contest (I have more twitter followers than you)?

In the large companies I worked for it was a bit of a game to see how quickly the new memes spread through the company (blue ocean, black swan and LOHA's none the less). A buzzword that the CEO stumbled upon in the latest HBR (or the golf course) could be seen in division head presentations within weeks... the country managers needed about a month or two to assimilate the new code. None of this of course has anything to do with the real behavior of the company or the resultant "real" strategy (action on the battlefield) that consumers experience as the "brand". The socialization of the memes simply demonstrates how well the structure and culture transmits information. What is the churn rate of jargon in your company?

The real question though is, like the prostitutes, what are these companies doing to themselves in the blind process of devouring the latest trends, fads and management 'wisdom'.  Authenticity actually carries far more value in the long run but as the oldest profession teaches, you just don't see as much action in play. Is there a way of re-expressing the value of integrity without it becoming a fad?

Day 15: A shark on the sofa

Hunting in the hinterland, the past two days have seen beautiful countryside and such exotic little villages as Dingolfing, Arzberg and Falkenberg. The hunt is inspired by my encounter with a shark earlier this week.

In evolutionary terms sharks, crocodiles and limpets are the supreme constants. As their ecological niche has remained unchanged, so has their form and habits. Need for innovation = 0. At Tegernsee I stayed in a family hotel that has been in business for about 120 years. They are still serving the same beer from the same brewery and offer the same view of the same mountains. Yes they do make some concessions in the name of offering home comforts away from home (as they always have), and they do change the sheets.
In stark contrast, a Pharma group were having an offsite at the hotel. The irony of innovation champions seeking a sense of their next step in a place that has not changed, was not lost on the hotel owner.
But this raises an interesting question, is there a fixed innovation rate for an industry or category? Do sharks get disrupted?
The constant debate about Moore’s law notwithstanding, the froth of media and telco industries seems to float on a constant sea where people’s other habits have not really changed that much.

Apps sell like hot cakes, yet we still prefer to spend time with other people (and the apps that help us do that, do better). Matt was kind enough to introduce me to the model that correlates information industry disruption to average bandwidth available at home. When the analogue “good” (newspaper, CD, DVD) becomes easily accessible as a “service” (streaming, on demand) the shark has bitten its tail. We meet the constant factor:

Do you know the average innovation rate for your category? What have you learnt from it? How are you spending against it? The old PEST control won’t save or threaten old crocodiles its seems.

Day 14: Shamans, charlatans and soothsayers

The daughter of a vietnamese soothsayer gave me an interesting insight about the dark arts. Karma is energy and as such cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be shifted or transmuted from one form into another. The energy always stays in balance. When her father realized this he stopped practicing the craft. The latent karma inherent in a pending death by car crash is simply shifted to another event or entity. In vietnam you can identify the really good soothsayers by missing limbs or physical disabilities brought about by the soothsayer absorbing the crises in others.

I wonder how many consultants are aware of a similar dynamic in their dark craft. Greg Clarke told me that there are in essence only three reasons a company hires a consultant: a. to get access to special knowledge, b. to reduce cost (outsource) and c. to shift risk. The last group are the most dangerous and you should charge more for them.

But there is something more sinister and destabilizing about this relationship between a client and their agent. In just about every conversation I had this week the same theme came up again and again; implementation support is the biggest market need right now. In so many cases the designers and innovators hired to help out are frustrated when great ideas are left in the boardroom and never see the light of day. The practical skills and ability to make actionable decisions along the way seem to be missing.

Looking at the soothsayer wisdom I would venture that the consulting model itself creates this need. By separating the client team of a company from the innovation process the employees lack the insight, interest and passion to drive the idea to fruition. All of the energy created by the discovery and creation process is left with the consultants, burnishing their polished plaques. The emotional bond between creator and its Pygmalion walks out the door as the engagement ends. Or as Susanne put it: "Sometimes you get lucky and one or two people actually 'get it.' They are the ones who put in the effort to drive the idea through."

I don't think anything important was ever invented 9 to 5. The subconscious gnawing that gets you up at 3am to noodle and shape a new concept is essential to taking a business to fresh terrain. This personal investment is essential to overcome corporate dissent and the conflict inherent in change. The stereotypical image of the entrepreneur who irrationally follows a dream to overcome all hurdles to success illustrates this. By outsourcing this effort and emotional commitment a company implicitly gives away their ability to access its energy. Perhaps consultants should pay their clients for the privilege of feeling like fresh parents all the time.

Day 13: Hitler was a call centre agent

Recently when Volker and Dina tried to explain the dynamics of second world war to their son he gave this wonderful insight. In his world, call centre agents are truly horrible people who keep bombarding you with unwanted propaganda. As a young child growing up in Germany today, never directly exposed to any form of violence, this must be the closest thing to horror.
My take on it is that he may well be onto something. A young Hitler growing up today as a struggling artist would most probably be working in a call centre to support himself. Every day the world is spared such horrors because modern living standards and the leveling of the world is making it harder for personality cults to ferment real political action. Somehow "Outliers" + "Black Swan" = "Hitler is a call centre agent."

If we look at the Occupy movement, or any general uprising over the last years for that matter, the striking attribute is the absence of galvanizing charismatic leaders. The diffuse, unclear general sense of discontent does not find a lightning rod in one handy man (or woman). If anything the togetherness and sense of unvoiced belonging is the real galvanizing force. A quality that is felt, and everyone finds a different way to express it in their words.

This reminds me of an experience I had at a rave many years ago in South Africa. The whole crowd was blissing out and dancing with joy. A few people tried to cause trouble and their anger was apparent. In some way the dancing crowd acted like a giant organism expunging the negative elements and maintaining the feeling at the core. No rules, no words, just a dynamic shift in collective energy. If your friends don't dance then they ain't no friends of mine, as they say. The collective sense of belonging is a quality that is felt, not a rules based system. And definitely not a leader dependent system. Steven Fry may have more than a million followers but won't be able to whip them into a rage.

Our twitter-web holon of awareness does not allow one point of view, or one way of seeing things to dominate. (Except if you are part of the american political machine in which case you still believe that one 'man' can fix the problem and one point of view explains the truth) The fragmented media landscape and excessive ability for competing messages to reach even the most isolated communities means the myopia needed to believe unconditionally that you are right, cannot be sustained. We have to accept a constant shift in the landscape, yet be true to ourselves in whatever comes up. The power vacuums in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt et al have not degenerated into chaos just because CNN couldn't find the fast talking king of the sound byte to elevate into popular focus.

Is this indicating a shift in the way we organize around work as well? It used to be "plan the work, then work the plan," where smart experts could foresee exactly was was needed. This assumes that the future is constant and knowable when the plan gets written. It reduces the power and influence of people acting in a dynamic reality where crashes happen and new insight brings the plan to naught. The misplaced trust, that CEO's and charismatic leaders can understand and guide the complexity of a large organism, is becoming really aparant as CEO tenure shrinks to all time lows. What is the new model of leadership? What can we learn about purpose based systems that self organize and deliver momentum without clarity? In a world where we can safely relegate dictators to call centre jobs, we can elevate the value of every job to a meaningful contribution.

Day 12: When the mountain comes to you

How many times do you have to walk a specific way for it to become a path? Through repetition our feet find the comfortable certainty that we won’t get lost, won’t stumble on unexpected stones and see exactly what everyone has seen before us.

It seems to be so deeply imbedded in our culture that we don’t even challenge the corporate planning grooves we are in. The repeated mantras and regurgitated sales figures that equate rear view mirror driving. These corporate social habits are aimed more at building approval and consensus than elaborating on the options in a landscape filled with black swans.

If the process of strategy creation is to be successful it needs to transcend documents and become a dance of socialization. The strategy gets repeated again and again through countless meetings at countless levels of the company. And why? Because through repetition we hope that it will become the truth. Even though we know that the future is unknowable, we still hold onto the idea that we can capture and project the future in our PowerPoints.

The magical tool that makes us believe it will be so, is the response and recognition we get from our peers and superiors in the firm. A nod, a smile, a wink. And so, like the mountain paths, our strategies become well worn synapse free flows towards destiny. How many companies have gone back to validate their planning process against results? Very few. How many use this insight to improve the merry little dance? Fewer still! The fact is that most people will hold onto the bias that if we all feel good about the numbers they are OK to proceed against. The same way we felt good about the numbers last year, and the year before.

So as the ground on which these paths are etched shifts over time, the same strategy that has become folklore in the firm can sign the death march of the lemmings. Can strategy really be reduced to the simplest way to get to point B from point OK? How do we avoid ossification of corporate curiosity to ensure that strategy becomes more spontaneous and fluid? More like surfing, less like military marches. Using the seismic shifts as waves of inspiration to cut a new course.

Day 11: The end of job descriptions

Seems you can't escape getting into a build mindset when you arrive in Germany. It feels like I am starting to drift from discovery to synthesis without getting really lost. Not that the day wasn't inspirational. The baggage carousel sofa in Arlanda was quite well done irony. I was particularly intrigued by the little cables that held the fake suitcases in place. Just a pity that everyone is too conditioned by the "don't sit on the moving belt" signs to actually take part in the art!

More interestingly though, Bjørn Borg is running a Bjørn <3 John campaign. Isn't it fantastic that such an old rivalry can still sell shorts? Real emotion and authentic struggle just connects and keeps us fascinated, long after a winner or looser is chosen. I wonder if in 20 years there will be an underwear campaign which has "Goldman Sachs <3 Occupy Wall street?" Unfiltered emotion is far too rare a commodity to waste on the fleeting moments of real conflict.  

As a child I joined the water rescue squad (for a weekend). It turns out they spend 99% of their time drinking beer and getting a suntan. When I asked them why they did it, the answer was: "the accidents." The exceptional moments, the instant that redefines, in high drama the way we view our life and the contribution we make. The business model for the 99%

This really got me thinking about how we should or could view work to make more sense of why we spend so much time at it. Barry Schwartz put it so well in his loss of wisdom talk. Wouldn't it be so much more effective we did away with job descriptions all together and ask every employee to do a "mini/individual business plan"? Having a clear and well understood plan of how your individual contribution connects with the overall organizational mission would do away with a lot of politics. As the entrepreneur in charge of your career, you will have the responsibility to identify the resources you need, the channels you could use and the key market segment for your services and offering. The job description is dead, long live the individual business plan!

Day 10: Sub-rosa and the footprint engineers

So Stockholm draws to a close and the jet engines are warming up for Munich! From one spired and gothic christmas card setting to another. I hope the gluehwein stands are up.
How lucky to run into Fredrik this afternoon. Over dinner we had a great chat and invented the word "impact engineers": the people who finely craft the entire footprint of an idea; the emotional extent of engagement (not to be confused with sapient nitro's idea engineers).
By shifting the focus from what goes into a value proposition, to what comes out of it (the footprint), you begin to appreciate all manner of avenues and emotional connections that can be made. Spinning out into the social and community imprints that are caused by products, services or simply connections around ideals, we begin to see the need for a more holistic understanding of how an idea becomes cultural currency.

This holistic view makes the concept of secrecy almost redundant. VC's and angel investors have long refused to sign NDA's when they discuss business plans with start-ups. Besides the cumulative value they get from seeing all the competitive ideas, the fact is that an idea really has no value until it is connected to people who actually do something with it. If your company is aligned around what you are trying to achieve, your team will succeed if they are more strongly bonded to making the idea happen. A competitor cannot copy the DNA of your crew's passion.

Further illustrating the point Fredrik told me about the famous Arwin poker parties in Stockholm. The burst of software successes coming out of the vodka belt owes at least part of its momentum to these events. Over smokey games of poker, competitors talk freely about their businesses ideas, challenges and needs with direct competitors. This is a truly advanced way of understanding dynamic competition (or the 90's buzzword co-optation). Historically the most successful case of competing this way, was the textile industry of Perugia (here is a really fat dissertation on the subject). In Italy, local families invest in technology that is shared with their direct competitors (who reciprocate with other high tech investments which is also shared). This reduces the overall need for investment as redundancy is eliminated through cooperative trade. The business success is not secured through some patent or secret business plan, it is secured by your ability to actually do something. And to consistently keep doing it. The ability to connect people with outcomes is the only sustainable competitive advantage.
The sub-rosa Stockholm industry shindigs fuel the debate and build a large idea imprint. If your competition begins to chase the same dream, your business value will increase. It is time for footprint engineers to come forward and build momentum through engagement, leaving isolation to the people who are overly confident that their ideas will save them.

Day 9: Turner, Kentridge, Stage

Best November day in Stockholm and we walked for hours. Having a real Siri to play with was also far more fun than the apple software version.
The top observation of the day is that hanging Monet next to Turner is not fair to Monet. Turner just seemed to transcend the canvas in a way that Monet's impressionism can only aspire to. The combination of Twombly and Turner though was magical. Anyone in Stockholm before mid-January should go.
Tucked away in the back corner of the Moderna Museet though was a small video screen showing a discussion between Kentridge and Marlene Dumas. By sheer coincidence Marlene Dumas mentioned an exhibition where Monet laid open his process, to prove that the "simple" art is not easy. Keeping the freshness of the experience or impression captured in the painting is truly challenging as we fight our impulse to carve and slice at it, until we end up with mincemeat. When a master really does strike their flow, it looks easy.
Kentridge spoke quite a bit about his process too and the need for an artist to stay open to exploring surprises. In the works where he started off with a clear idea of what he wanted, he invariably ends up with predictable, boring art. The confidence you get from experience does not make it any easier to break away from these pre-conceived ideas. In fact, the ego and reputation you have to uphold makes it doubly hard. Creativity does not follow a plan. In his words: "you have to get over your own predictability, your own stupidity." And in a way closing yourself down from new influences that you cannot predict or expect is stupidity.

But that is exactly what companies do. In order to shore up the stock price you have to, above all else, deliver predictability. This assumes that you know exactly what the outcome of a project or new venture is going to be, before it happens.
Amazing how we mock this assertion in tarot card readers, but quite happily fund this exact same mythology in the always climbing 5 year revenue predictions of start-ups and division managers alike. There is so much focus on designing the right plan and strategy, yet what really counts is how well the team will respond to changes in the plan. When is the last time you saw an explicit reference to "what we'll do if it doesn't go this way." Where are the early warning systems and the sensitive ears and eyes of the business plan?
Susanne reminded me of how different your connection with your job is if you believe in what you are designing. When you really care about what you do, you take your intuition to work. The difference shows in how you respond to change.

Day 8: Plays nice with others

Arrived in Stockholm and I still can't understand the torn jeans thing. The crisp autumn air is taking a slightly more serious turn as winter stirs but it feels calming to be in a country where the Rimowa wheels can roll gently on the sidewalk without getting stuck in the cracks.

The last night in Frankfurt was filled with talk about friendships and paths that we take from the random mix of people we meet on projects and in work settings. I asked Georgia why people feel the need to wear masks at work. Wouldn't it be so much simpler to just focus on the positive outcome everyone is chasing rather than hold back and focus on the image we are perceived to be projecting? Why can't we just feel satisfied in delivering exciting content? She made a good point though about workplace anxiety. Honesty is vulnerability, and most people fear that this honesty will be used against them. The more effort and focus we place on helping the fragile ego survive in our hostile world, the less we feel able to express untested ideas, new approaches or things that people cannot imagine. According to the  Forbes article, the most common workplace anxieties are:

•    fear of speaking in public
•    fear of interacting with authority figures
•    fear of taking on new challenges
•    fear of being noticeably nervous
•    perfectionism

I would add to that list, fear of interacting with real customers. Some companies take a radical approach to limiting the impact of such emotional bias in their decision making. The reality os though that the need for emotional security still jumps in to protect us before the rational mind can get involved.

How much more creative would a group be if we could simply accept vulnerability as a strength. A necessary condition to allow growth and protect the company against stagnation.