How I realised I needed Agile Management to cancel out my creative bias

I do therefore I am

As a developer, maker and doer I favour doing stuff rather than nattering about it. I subscribe to the mentality that activity follows identity or as Descate kind of said

“I do therefore I am”.

But management types don't “do” they direct and that's not contributing is it?

Well as it happens it is.

If you have read my blog before you will realise that I don’t identify myself with being a “management type” but inevitably as the years have marched on I have had to admit to myself and others that I am now more manager than maker. At first this was a difficult transition. You see creative types (like me) reject management intervention of any kind no matter how cool they make out.

My antidote to being a “management type” was to adopted a laissez faire approach to directing my colleagues. I worked at the rock face; I was as transparent as I could (without shouting fire of course) and directed with the lightest of touch. On the whole this worked.

But light touch is not the solution to everything.

There is a bias that clever folk have. They assume is that everyone around them is as clever as they are. Underneath this bias is an unspoken assumption that whatever they are doing is “obvious” to everyone. Anyone to whom “obvious” is not obvious is deemed a freak unworthy of the salary associated with them being present in the any meeting.

But you know what? It turns out that I had this bias too. In my nievity to not rock the boat with my creative team it was my assumption that each of the team members also knew what they are doing too.

As I have gained my management maturity I have collected stories from the mates I have worked so closely with in the past and have been amazed to discover how little they knew about their team’s or even my work.

Devs are an insular bunch of people and they prefer to slap keyboards making digital stuff than talking about it. And as the owner manager this was music to my ears, but I mistook this activity.

As Hemingway once said

“never confuse movement with action”

Often we would work belligerently down dead ends when team members too fearful to say something knew better.

As an Agile Fu Master these days I work with a more targeted form of management based on a little more than being laissez faire.

Agile is a methodology that is designed for projects with a deal on unknown in them. It wrangles the assumptions of co workers knowledge and shines the flash-light of transparency explaining the project's progress to everyone in the team. It does this by forcing laser focused agenda for a few very simple meetings.

While it is management, it is management with a soul that understands developers issues as well as those paying for it.

If you liked this

I hope that you have found this article of interest.. If you did then I have written more about developing products using the Agile Methodology. I have tried to make the book as short on fluff and full on content as I can so it can be read in approximately an hour.

You can download my book by clicking here: AGILE FU

Anyone purchasing the book will receive not one, but TWO FREE mini e-books that are supplied directly as PDF files to your inbox. These can be distributed to you team when starting a new project or used simply to sanity check your existing processes.

Until next time 

Paul

Image Copyright : Georgios Kollidas (Follow)

How my daughter’s desire to have a new “old” bike gave me insight into an alternative form of innovation

How my daughter’s desire to have a new “old” bike gave me insight into an alternative form of innovation

Vintage is the thing

Vintage is THE thing at the moment in my house. I have a teenage daughter who seems to be intent on making our house a shrine to all things old. Of course old means anything pre 1990’s which makes me feel pretty vintage too.

Recently she has been desperate to get her hands on a “new” bike. The “old” one with twin suspension, 18 gears, disc brakes and aluminium wheels has now been replaced with a new one that to my eye appears to have been designed in the 1920’s.

It turns out it was.

The Pashley Bicycle Factory

The Pashley bicycle factory is located not far from where I live in the heart of William Shakespeare's Stratford Upon Avon. It is a fair statement to say that they are the purveyors of high quality hand made push bikes whose design is pretty RETRO.

The company was founded in 1926 by William ‘Rath’ Pashley who was a World War One dispatch rider. The business originally built its reputation making carrier bikes for companies like Wall’s ice cream and the post office. They are hand made and robust. A version was so tough it was licensed by Landrover another local and iconic tough bit of machinery.

My daughter's interest of course comes from the current hipster fashion for Edwardian style memorabilia. Celebrities such as Ewan McGregor, Helena Bonham Carter and Keeley Hawes have been seen regularly riding their Pashley’s around the hipper parts of London.

As well as the celebrity patronage, there are high profile customers such as a Savile Row tailor, high class London estate agents and Pret A Manger use these classic bicycles to further augment the sense of quality.

It seems that people with a Pashley love them with a passion.

Communities of interest surround their use such as the official My Pashley element of their website or the Guvnors Assembly

I find that at times my thinking can be confined to thinking that innovation needs to be shiny and new to be considered modern. My daughter's interest shows me that that the folks at Pashley have shown, innovation need not just be.

Pashley’s innovation has been to make a bicycle a style statement.

They have realised that a core feature of their product is a quintessentially British quality. Innovations around rationalising production would so easily have jeopardised the image so carefully crafted.

Their innovation has been to capitalise and build upon their community and customer service.

If you liked this

I hope that you have found this article of interest.. If you did then I have written more ideas with techniques to make your innovations punch above their weight. I call my book Innovation Muscle. Its a short sharp read as to how you and your team can innovate fresh powerful ideas. Using these processes you will be able to create ideas that punch above their weight.

You can download my book by clicking here: INNOVATION MUSCLE

Anyone purchasing the book will receive not one, but TWO FREE mini e-books that are supplied directly as PDF files to your inbox. These can be distributed to you team when starting a new project or used simply to sanity check your existing processes.

Until next time 

Paul

The 4 idea principles that Bruce Lee gave me to gain inspiration for new ideas

The 4 idea principles that Bruce Lee gave me to gain inspiration for new ideas

Bruce Lee, on-set of the Film "Enter the Dragon", 1973

Bruce Lee was not just a martial artist

Now I thought Bruce Lee was “just” a cool guy.

As an icon of the 1960’s and 70’s he was as cool as Elvis, good looking as a C2 Covette and what’s more he was buddies with Steve McQueen! What I was unaware of until very recently was that while he was brilliant physical athlete, acrobat and martial artist he was also a pretty clever bloke.

He studied philosophy at college and read avidly from cultures around the world: western, eastern; ancient and modern.

Recently I have read the book “Striking Thoughts: Wisdom for everyday living". I have him to thank for the title of my first book Agile Fu and also for nuggets of wisdom in Innovation Muscle, my second title.

You can deep dive into the book and read it from cover to cover as I initially did or alternatively use it for reference from time to time.

Each time I do I am treated to another clever bit of well cleverness that leaves me thinking “how clever”.

The 4 Ideal Principles of Bruce Lee

In the Four Idea Principles Lee Describes how everyone should create ideas

1. Find a human need, an unsolved problem
2. Master all of the essentials of the problem
3. Give a new “twist” to an old principles
4. Believe in your idea and ACT

To develop this creative attitude Bruce suggests the following actions.

1. Analyze focus on the wanted SOLUTION
2. Seek out and fill your mind with FACTS
3. Write down the IDEAS both sensible and seemingly wild
4. Let the facts and ideas SIMMER in your mind
5. Evaluate, recheck, settle on the CREATIVE IDEAS

Bruce’s book is available in physical form only from Amazon

If you are interested in the process of thinking or philosophy I urge you to dismiss any preconceptions that certainly I had over Bruce and check it out.

If for some reason you have never seen Bruce in action, here is some rare footage of Bruce in action in a Hollywood screen test.

If you liked this

I hope that you have found this article of interest.. If you did then I have written more ideas with techniques to make your innovations punch above their weight. I call my book Innovation Muscle. Its a short sharp read as to how you and your team can innovate fresh powerful ideas. Using these processes you will be able to create ideas that punch above their weight.

You can download my book by clicking here: INNOVATION MUSCLE

Anyone purchasing the book will receive not one, but TWO FREE mini e-books that are supplied directly as PDF files to your inbox. These can be distributed to you team when starting a new project or used simply to sanity check your existing processes.

Until next time 

Paul

Copyright : © Glasshouse Images / Alamy

How these ladies generated an amazingly innovative idea by focusing on a problem not a solution

How these ladies used Innovative thinking to solve a health problem

An article by the BBC this morning brought my attention to the organization behind Buggie Boot Camp 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-33715251

It explained how the UK has seen people interacting with sport and their general activity levels decline since the 2012 Olympics. 

The team at Buggy Boot camp have realised that rather than proceed with a standard marketing fitness awareness campaign they would work out the problems that women had attending a fitness class first and then set about these problems.

They discovered a reoccurring theme of problems that the ladies had when thinking about attending an activity class.

• They lacked the confidence to go to a gym
• They felt exercise was not fun
• They had issues organizing child care.

Buggie Boot Camp solves all the problems

In essence the women bring their children to class and exercise is designed around mutually fun goals for mothers and their children alike. By being mutually fun for parent and child, the women gained confidence and also did not have to worry about child care.

Look at these ladies bench pressing their toddlers!

Look at the problems first rather than thinking of solutions

By looking at the reasons why people were not exercising, the team have created a solution to a real problem.

I too have found myself in situations in my career where I’d thought of a really good idea first only to find that the problem I thought of didn't really need a solution.

In Bruce Lee’s Striking Thoughts there is a great quote “Do not start from a conclusion”.

I have found that by holding "painstorm" meetings where the focus is on the acquisition of problems is a much more efficient way of acquiring problems that need innovative solutions. These problems are then solved in a separate meeting using people adept at solutions.

Painstorming instead of Brainstorming

When attempting to think of a new idea, people generally consider a brainstorming as a technique to come up with ideas. The idea behind a brainstorm is

• To generate as many ideas as possible
• Not criticise people’s ideas
• Welcome unusual and daft ideas
• Combine and improve ideas in a collaborative environment.

The problem is that brainstorming favours quantity over quality. The ideas generated still fall into the trap that they may present a solution to a problem that may not need solving. I think that Brainstorming is an inefficient way to come up with valuable ideas.

• The ideas generated can be too fanciful for actual development 
• The ideas generated are simply not inventive enough. 

This is because it is unfair to assume people can come up with an idea from a standing start.

A far better use of a crowd of people's time is to use a technique I call Painstorming.

Painstorming

A painstorm is where you get a divergent set of people for whom you wish to solve a problem and get them to define areas where your innovative team could solve a problem ie issues that cause them pain.

By framing the meeting into one where problem issues occur you are using your "customers" or "users" experience to full advantage rather than having them come up with a solution.

Run well you will find it chimes far easier with their desires to improve and will help define the issues to which an innovation could be brought about by a team with another set of skills to actually solve the problem.

In agile development we call these pains user stories. I will write a post about this another time.

If you liked this

I hope that you have found this article of interest.. If you did then I have written more ideas with techniques to make your innovations punch above their weight. I call my book Innovation Muscle. Its a short sharp read as to how you and your team can innovate fresh powerful ideas. Using these processes you will be able to create ideas that punch above their weight.

You can download my book by clicking here: INNOVATION MUSCLE

Anyone purchasing the book will receive not one, but TWO FREE mini e-books that are supplied directly as PDF files to your inbox. These can be distributed to you team when starting a new project or used simply to sanity check your existing processes.

Until next time 

Paul