Showing posts with label LeanThinking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LeanThinking. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Two Conferences Seen Through One Digital Hole

The world is a continuum, circling around itself, and around the sun and we as individuals have often the feeling being stuck in one single place.

Certainly that has been the case for centuries when we in our small villages seldom got notice about what happened such outside our hunting area. Inventions like the wheel, telegraph, telephone and lately the World Wide Web have changed that world view immensely. Not that we as a species have adapted to it yet fully. Of course place still matters, and small communities where we feel a kind of safety, and common understanding.


However what would you do if you'd year in two "global villages" there would something happening some thousand kilometers away, 9 time zones apart and where you perhaps don't even know a single person, and you even can't visit the one merely a 120 km away due to other restrictions?

Would you go?

Just imagine for a minute you'd be in the year 2020.  Technology would be so advanced that on your room wall there would be an oversized OLED flat-foil-screen that would instantly connect with the conversations happening in both locations. You could follow what is being talked about, learn to know new people by sheer serendipity (as something catches your eye, and an instant later connects with some thoughts on your mind, or another occasion you'd talked about this topic months before).

Utopia?

Not quite. The world we live in seems to be in a lot of turmoil, and yet something is slowly emerging. The first time this caught probably everybody was in late 2008 when the global economy was hit by the financial crisis. The disconnect between real value creation, and what the banking sector (at large, including hedge fonds) was setting the bets on in order to grow the global economy in ways that seemed outrageous at this time. This is now almost to the date six years ago. Still it seems it is all about making more money, more profit for the sake of it.

No, two conferences at quite diverse locations - one in Silicon Valley right in San Francisco, and the other one not far from so-called "Silicon Saxony" in Leipzig - deal with on how to invest, and do good at the same time building up a sustainable social capital (SOCAP14), and the other tackling the questions in order to change the economic growth to rather a degrowth (Degrowth14).

The most precious resources we as humans own is the time of life, and so there is a trade-off every time we have to decide to go to one or the other conference (in general between several activities that give value back to us).

So perhaps the best of our times in terms to engage with two conferences at the same time are the boundary objects that social networks enable us to create in order to facilitate, and ease the conversation across disciplines, in time & space, and accelerate the knowledge flow allowing us to create the serendipity bumps that often are the most memorable moments in life, where we have learned more than we could have imagined before they had happened.

To give an idea what it could be like see for #SOCAP14 and #Degrowth14 just now on your screen.

Monday, August 19, 2013

The Improvement Kata Handbook - by Mike Rother EtAl

Taken from: The Kata Improvement Handbook

Currently, I am attending a design thinking course #DTActionLab (current assignment challenge due today), the International Conference on Engineering Design in Seoul #ICED13 just having been started today, it came to mind there is a more that Toyota has brought to the "world table".

"Lean" may be the buzzword, lots of consultants, and marketeers build their business on, selling standard solutions to clients who are urgently in need to solve their present pressing problems.

However, the wisdom is right inside our organizations we often see struggling, especially when we are the customer.

Can we as individuals, and groups harness this gold around us? Certainly, we only have to learn to see and take the choices wisely.

Mike Rother, Professor at the University of Ann Arbor, has recently shared - in creative commons terms - his book called:

The Improvement Kata Handbook


PS.: Thanks a lot, Mike & TEAM!!!

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Going home at 2pm and getting job done

Utopia?

Copyright: http://mitworld.mit.edu
Perhaps if we continue to do business as is normal at the present.
Prof. Rebecca Henderson about what can be done to make the
utopia a reality we'd like to enjoy.

It is done by moving ahead  with small steps of change (done by
the individual - without the big asking and getting support process).

Who is joining to make it happen - one step by the time?

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

Changing to the Better - Would You Dare?

In tough times, challenges ahead, just take the detour to the bookstore closest to you. Stroll around (in the real Presencing mode) and let surprises catch you. Mine was definitely MikeRother's newest book which I found in German version (quite uncommon for lean or state of the art international business literature).

My key points taking away:

1. Change can't be imposed to running processes (which are mainly influenced and lived by people) through workshops, specialists/experts, teaching outside the workplace
2. MBM - Management by Means (to go the next level managing what you have most elegantly)
3. Start small - even though you can't really foresee what the future brings
4. Do that - quick, transparent, and learn immediately on feedback
5. Mike mentioned a holistic view, where everything is connected, which goes right into system dynamics
6. ... ask yourself where you are today (with the company), where you want to be (in the future), and what is currently hindering you. Then decide on small action that go into that future direction (immediately (!)) and let your folks on the shopfloor and office have their way (they mostly know best)

Reading through the following books is also highly recommended in doing the follow up and putting the read into practice. They are not mentioned in the book, however it became clear to me that the fields are highly interconnected. A small investment for a person, a huge for personal learning, and an immense for the people and the organization!

1. Business Dynamics, John Sterman
2. Theory U - To Lead from the Future as it Emerges, Otto Scharmer
3. Process Consultation, Edgar Schein