Recognise the brands?
Which ones?
Nike and….?
And….?
Yup, Speedo.
What are the emblems for your organisation that capture what you do – and declare your promise?
Recognise the brands?
Which ones?
Nike and….?
And….?
Yup, Speedo.
What are the emblems for your organisation that capture what you do – and declare your promise?
We like the quote from Pascal, paraphrased as: “I have written you a long letter as I didn’t have time to write you a short one.”
We like these headlines too – showing the power of simplicity and playfulness in The Sun.
All of which takes time (and effort and skill).
Tags: communication, thinking, time
Consultants are much in the news at the moment – and it’s not a good press they are receiving.
We define a consultant as someone who provides guidance and advice, often at a strategic level – in contrast to trainers, researchers, lawyers, facilitators, accountants.
A few have mentioned this early article of ours from 2006. In it, we share some lessons for a DIY approach to consulting.
Enjoy!
Tags: assumptions, facilitation, innovation, management
Creativity is wanted. Actually, we are told it is essential. The changes needed in the British economy need fresh thinking.
Broadly, there are two sorts of creative people.
You have the ‘Deep Creatives’: the artists, the ideas people, the inspirers. Often brilliant and counter-intuitive, these thinkers are helpful in reframing an issue or imagining a totally new product. They write, they talk.
On the other hand, the ‘Process Creatives’ are those that help individuals and groups think more widely, clearly and imaginatively, drawing on methods such as the lateral thinking tools of Edward De Bono or techniques for facilitated meetings.
Comparing the two, there is a critical insight: one’s own ideas are ‘owned ideas’. Without that ownership, you can’t overcome the subsequent challenge of putting innovation into practice, of getting from inspiration to implementation.
Advice from the outside has its place. But the aim of this should be to involve all – and not just the few – in creative thinking that routinely and regularly makes a difference to what gets done.
Tags: creative, innovation, thinking
David Byrne of Talking Heads has become an unlikely advocate of PowerPoint as a creative tool for getting your ideas across.
Now established beyond the popular music world into writing, theatre and film, he also produces art with a .PPT file extension!
Having thought it a limited and ‘corporate’ tool to start with, experimentation has enabled him to create rich and interactive images.
So maybe it’s time to take a stand against the backlash on PowerPoint slideware (or Keynote or whatever) which has been going on for a couple of years at least.
Why do so many people rush to join the condemnation of an efficient tool for conveying complex ideas? Why not also have a backlash against the novel in book form? After all, that’s another highly formulaic medium where information is carried in a fundamentally limited way – using only the power of narrative – and it has many drawbacks.
There are rubbish novelists as well as great ones (try comparing Charles Dickens, Jackie Collins, Leo Tolstoy, Jody Picoult, Alasdair Gray, Tomas Hardy and Honore de Balzac).
As well as those who regularly bore or beffudle us with endless dreadful slides there are those who influence and inspire with pace and passion. TED.com and Pecha Kucha have plenty of examples and we all know people who are good (or even great) exponents of the medium.
Having the potential to use software (as with a pen or a paint brush) should be seen as a help not a hindrance. Like David Byrne, we should want to make the most of our chance to communicate with others and take the effort to produce great work.
Tags: art, communication, innovation
It’s that gardening time of year. Depending on your level of expertise, it can be hard to distinguish a plant you want to keep from a weed you want to get rid of.
And depending on the garden design, cultural norms and personal preferences, it is possible to categorise a plant one way or the other. The Rhododendron or Russian Vine can be loved or loathed in different parts of the world and different gardens.
Is this a prickly weed where it shouldn’t be? Or a prized species that will flower to delight all who see it?
Before cutting something down or pulling it out, being clear on what is of value is important.
What creative ideas could you hold onto before casting them aside? It took a while for the ineffectual glue that became essential for the Post-It Note to be appreciated.
PS it’s Berkheya purpurea, native of southern africa and growing happily in Cambridgeshire.
Tags: assumptions, choice, Decision-making, thinking
If you are a fan of either whisky or the rock band Status Quo, you might have seen that Francis Rossi, the lead guitarist, has bought a stake in the Glen Rossie distillery and taken over as Chairman.
This 200-year old Scottish whisky company now has a new shape bottle and a label shaped like a guitar pick.
In a world where whisky increasingly competes with premium vodka and other top end spirits, profits might be boosted by sales alongside other merchandising at Quo concerts.
Or traditional Glen Rossie drinkers may be put off by the association with the King of Three Chords.
Is it the passion to bring a favourite drink to a new audience that motivates this? To share the personal delight in a much-loved product? Or is it vanity, replacing mental images of rocky glens with those of a ‘geri’ rocker?
How much are branding decisions really about making a connection between the customer and what they are buying? And how much are they personal motivations?
Tags: band, brand, innovation
Toyota’s brand took a hit earlier this year. However, in developing nations the company reigns supreme (see this photo from a couple of weeks ago in Sabah, Malaysia).
In Asia and Africa the car maker is dominant everywhere. In these places, you get a sense of why the US manufacturers are so scared of the now largest car company in the world and their most profitable competitor.
The reason Toyota does so well? Reliability. Less need for repairs – less to spend on spare parts.
How reliable do your customers find what you give them?
Tags: brand, confidence, photo
What do you think of targets? Do you have some that you’ve been set or have given to others?
There is a broad school of thought which has grown up recently to criticise the use of targets.
The line of argument goes something like this: Any sort of arbitrary measure like a target results in people focusing only on ‘meeting the target’. This then limits the methods they’ll use to improve the organisation (as they’ll only try ones that seem to contribute to the target) and they’ll ignore signals from other places (eg feedback from customers) which may actually be more important than achieving the target.
Based on this, the anti-target school claims that ALL targets will make the system you work in worse as they direct attention and effort to the wrong things and result in unintended bad consequences.
On the other hand, it’s hard to know what you’re trying to achieve (and especially hard to have a team share this view) without some sort of articulation of the goal, objective, etc and a way of measuring progress towards it. What will success look like?
Moreover, clearly athletes benefit from having a target to aim for – “I want to knock 10 seconds off my personal best”.
And the anti-target school seems happy with actions being steered by what customers define as success: things along the line of “customers want their products to work first time or their appointments to be kept”. Is that some sort of target?
Maybe, as Wittgenstein explored, it’s a matter of language. Perhaps targets have a role but only if we understand what they mean and what the intention behind them is?
Having just come back from working in Borneo, I now see another side to the easy-to-knock palm oil industry. There, people are concerned about development. A palm oil plantation is regarded much like a cultivated valley in the west. The impact on the orangutans is regretted and in some ways ameliorated with local support for sanctuaries. But it is not the primary concern when human material issues are at stake.
EU policies on bio-fuel from palm oil and for the oils used in cooking impact not just on the profits of trans-national corporations but also the livelihoods of peasant farmers (see article).
Complex stuff. Not just about Nestle and Kit Kats.
In Kenya a couple of years ago, the local press also helped me see there are other points of view on:
1) using corn in the US for bio-fuel. Surely a good thing – but less grain available as food aid in areas where people are starving as a result of drought.
2) the pros as well as the cons of poor farmers flying green beans and flowers to Europe, including the low energy and pesticides required in their forms of agriculture.
All our points of view are local – so it’s worth travelling to find a different way of looking at things.
Tags: choices, culture, sustainability, travel
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