The following is a collection of somewhat related thoughts I found on my Blackberry:

Empathy requires active involvement and constant flow of information. So as to help us stay in character. Trying to stay in someone else’s shoes without this stream of input (the active and present engagement with someone) is hard!

Second-guessing is working from a position of minimal info. It is making assumptions about what someone is thinking and feeling. And the assumptions are often (necessarily so?) based on simplistic stereotypes.

Remember the age-old adage “assumptions is the mother of failures?” It applies here as well. It means less fulfilling relationships (business, social, and personal.)

We second guess because there is not enough information, and none is forthcoming. The person we are trying to engage with may be unwilling to open up, or the information may be erratic because they have a personality disorder.

Leaping into assumptions is also closely linked in with being judgemental. We make rapid “diagnoses” about someone, because we are so accustomed to trying to fix it.

Empathy is valuable when done right. but it goes against much of our default patterns. There is a lot to be said for hearing and accepting what others are telling us. They are voicing their truths – and that’s probably ok in most situations.

The problem with status quo systems is that there is a huge inertia against change – whether this is externally imposed (change in an environmental factor) or internally driven.

Any change (variation or disruption to the status quo) is quickly absorbed by this inertia, and the status quo is reinstated quick smart. The more disruptions and change a status quo system absorbs, the more resistant the system appears to become. The people in the system become more complacent, or even arrogant. “It won’t happen to us.”

Unless the change is super catastrophic.

I see the current global economic crisis as a disruption to conventional business beliefs and practice. But is this catastrophic enough? Will this disruption simply be quietly absorbed back into the status quo? Have we collectively learnt anything? Or are we still sticking to the same old systems that lead to the problem in the first place – because changing is too hard?

If the global economy has (or is very much entrenched in the process of) returning to the status quo state, as many analysts seem to believe, then we have simple postpone the coming catastrophe. It wasn’t catastrophic enough yet.

Only one room burnt down. The cardboard house is still standing. Let’s find some more cardboard…

When faced with change, there are three big-picture strategies an organisation (or indeed an individual) can adopt:

Of course, none of these three options are in and of themselves wrong. The appropriate direction for your business is affected by the intentions and expectations of you as the leader, and also your stakeholders (people, shareholders, board etc).

Much as I love the “if it ain’t broke, break it!” approach to continual breakthroughs, there are times when it is ok to just stop and let something that is running well run for a bit. Otherwise no one will get any sleep. But not to the extent of resting on one’s laurels.

Emulation can be an amazing source of innovation – when applied to a completely foreign context from the original. In the end days of chemical cameras, the practice of practically giving cameras away so as to make money on the consumable film is universal. When this practice is emulated by the manufacturers of desktop inkjet printers, it was innovative in a market place that was used to seeing the initial hardware purchase price as the stumbling block.

A friend recently asked me: “you can help others see patterns in situations, and find clear ways through difficulties. So how come you can’t do it for yourself?” (I am going through a what-do-I-want-to-do-with-my-life phase…)

Many designers find it hard to design for themselves. The removal of many of the constraints associated with clients, plus working with personal, emotionally-charged requirements, can be debilitating for a designer.

The same situation exists for therapists. One cannot really provide therapy for oneself. There are things we can only do effectively for other people precisely because they are other people.

Similarly, I think it can be incredibly difficult for web design companies to design their own websites, for graphic designers to design their own business cards and so on.

The recognition of this limitation is important. It enables us to seek external agencies for help. Are you struggling to fix yourself or something in your business? You may need someone else to give you a hand!

When it comes to choosing to work with big or small suppliers (say a global advertising agency versus a local web developer), businesses tend to swing in cycles.

Say a business is looking to set up their website. They may choose to go with a large global agency for the sake of “safety” and stability.

Over time they come to realise that the large agency has policies and practices which get in the way. Because of their size, they are not as responsive to requests for help. The account manager was keen to help but could not actually do the work himself.

The agency pitched Wow ideas, but fall short at the execution and operations end. The delivered website was beautiful but impractical. Request for changes took a long time to happen. Bugs remain unfixed for months and months. Maintenance costs skyrocket.

Worse still, the website did not integrate with internal processes, requiring lots of manual workarounds, labour intensive reformatting and re-entering of information. Even the critical, frequently changing information were impossibly difficult to change.

So the business start talking to a small web developer. They are much more responsive. The business could now directly access the very people doing the work. Things got done quickly. There was more palpable personal responsibility in the work.

As the business gained more confident with the web developer, they starter working improvements to the site. Keen for the work, the developer took time to understand the business’ needs, and delivered upgrades that better dovetailed the site with operations. Suddenly, the website became an integrated. useful and usable part of the business.

When time came to revamp the site, the local web developer was chosen over the large ad agency. It was only logical. And given the relationship built up over time, issues of safety and stability became less significant.

After a period of time, the cycle swings back again. A change in management personnel, or corporate strategy may trigger the seeking of new perspectives. Managers are suddenly being taken out to expensive lunches by a big ad agency. The agency started pitching Wow and fresh ideas – ideas which are quite different from what the incumbent small web developer’s been delivering. Suddenly, the big ad agency seemed cooler, more fun, more “creative”. The operational pains were forgotten. In any case the new managers were keen make a mark, a big splash.

So the account moves back to a big ad agency. And the cycle starts once more…

This cycle of switching between large and small suppliers probably applicable to other services too. Like graphic design, legal, and so on.

Is this a healthy way to inject new thinking to the business? Or a waste of time and effort? Is it possible

Have you experienced it in your industry?

(The above is just an anecdotal example made up from various real real-world scenarios. I am not saying all ad agencies are unable to deliver great looking websites that work well with business requirements, or that all small web developers are saints of customer service. )

I had the unfortunate cause to visit the Eye Centre and Surgery in the Gleneagles Medical Centre in Singapore several weeks ago.

I turned up on an extremely busy Friday afternoon. The small waiting area was packed. The small staff was clearly fully occupied. Patients were being moved between the different treatment rooms and diagnostic stations. Staff were calling out to each other. Patients were milling around. In addition to the usual appointments, there were more walk-ins than usual (as I found out later).

The interesting thing was, it was probably the best hospital/medical experience I had ever had.

The atmosphere was warm and friendly. Despite the busy-ness and overcrowding, the place felt GOOD. I cannot really put a finger on why. The décor was non-descript. The furniture was what you would find in any hospital or clinic (in the Western world). The lighting was the usual blur-green fluorescent glare.

The place really hummed with attentiveness and care. There was a real family atmosphere. The staff and doctors were calm and efficient. No one was in any fluster. Amidst all this activity, people were bringing in bunches of flowers for various staff members. Wow.

Despite the patient load, everyone got seen to. Everyone got due attention and care. The doctors on duty seem to explain things carefully and patiently to everyone. Somehow, they managed to give time to everyone even though time was obviously limited.

This was not a once-in-a-blue-moon magical alignment of the planets event either. In several subsequent visits, the atmosphere and feel are consistent with that first visit.

If they could bottle and sell this, they’d make a mint.

This example of the failure to think sufficiently and reasonably ahead is obvious to probably everyone. Ha ha funny etc.

Sadly, there’re more less obvious but as ridiculous examples everywhere in business practice today. Some are systemic. Others are unique to individual sectors or businesses.

Such silliness seem to stem from choosing to take a reactive and short term approach to meeting challenges. It is human nature I guess, not that this is an excuse not to do any better. After all, the success of your business could be at stake here.

I wonder to what extent this sort of short term fix-it approach played a part in contributing to the current economic situation?

Here are my takeaways from a recent McKinsey interview with Alberto Alessi, head of his family’s iconic design factory.

Two ways to get new ideas for new products:

1. Come up with a product/service idea internally then brief designers.
2. Create a culture that opens you to receive and engage with ideas from outside your organisation.

Craftsmanship/artisanship comes from within, not from market research:
“Imagine Picasso waking up in the 1920s on a nice, sunny morning in a village on the Côte d’Azur and feeling strongly the wish—the need—
to start painting. So he starts painting. But he’s not asking himself, “To what target customer will I address my new painting?” Picasso shows us a completely different approach: starting from yourself, as a creator, and using your sensibility and your intuition in order to touch other people’s hearts or sensibility or intuition. And by the way, he also built an interesting business.”

It requires a different, less sterile approach to thinking about your customers:
“I prefer discussing “customer dreams” instead of “the market,” because market is so rough.”

Four parameters to evaluate a product:

1. “Oh what a beautiful object” – ability to relate to the user via sensation, memory, and imagination.
2. Social meaning – ability to convey the user’s values, status and personality.
3. Function
4. Price

Note how the first two parameters (central to Alessi) are very humanist and user centric. Mass production and conventional business practice would probably value more the last two parameters (peripheral to Alessi).

Not relying on consumer testing/market research, but “drawing on our [own] experiences”.

Theory of the Borderline – which divides the … “possible” and “not possible”.

A celebration of small and personal care:
“My future is to continue to be a gardener. A gardener has to properly prepare the ground, then plant the seeds, then wait. Then, as the flower appears, a gardener has to take care of it—in a way that will permit it to express its nature, its best possibilities. If I could decide my fate, it would be to have a smaller company than the one I have today. I could take better care of it.”

Read the full article on McKinsey Quarterly. You need to sign up.

Thanks to Bettina for this heads up.

If you can stand up in a court of law and say confidently, that in your capacity as the director of your business, you have done everything reasonable that can be expected of you to protect your business, then you have done a good enough job at risk management.

What do you think?

Some people think of risk management as going to the nth degree to remove ALL risk. This is not possible, even if you spent all the money in the world.

Of course, there are those who deny the existence of any risk. “I have worked for 20 years in another company and nothing like this ever happened…”

“cos it’s about the classic problem of focussing on one “cost” and ignoring the other implications.” said Stilgherrian.

This is another example of compartmentalised or siloed thinking. Short term, local gain at the expense of long term, larger-than-local loss and larger scale negative impact.

A 20% savings in construction costs now could potentially lead to thousands of dollars of costs elsewhere wlsewhen – staff turnover, productivity losses, sick leave, reduced effectiveness etc. But these costs come later, and become problems for other departments to sort out; we don’t really need to give a damn about any of it right how. Big picture thinking is overrated when there are tight budgets and deadlines to stick to.

Of course, the way we work, the system itself, is designed to support this sort of behaviour. But we cannot change the system unless individuals decide to change. As we get increasingly busier, and shoulder more responsibilities, this can be endemic and intractable. “This is not my department, it does not come out of my budget, so go talk to someone who cares. I’m busy.”

Read the rest of the article: Open-plan offices making you sick

And as serendipity would have it, I found the following today:

“Despite rhetoric to the contrary the public sector continues to be driven by short term calculations of cost. The failure to compute the emotional, social and therefore economic benefits that accrue from good design has led to procurement processes which exclude the real experiences and needs of the people who will use the buildings, objects and experiences that are designed.

For example, we are happy to continue building cheap, sub-standard housing to warehouse a population in need, while failing to connect the huge personal and social costs that result. Those responsible for commissioning design in the public sector largely fail to appreciate its potential. Briefs are issued which ask the wrong questions and thereby fail to capitalise on the wealth of design talent within the UK.” Hilary Cottam, Design Strategist, Director of the (UK) Design Council’s experimental RED team.