Tag: framework

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Boundaries and systems and jigsaws

I love a jigsaw puzzle. I find it stimulating and relaxing in equal measure, similar to reading. There’s a high level of satisfaction in completing one, too.

Yesterday evening I started doing a puzzle. It’s an image of the London Underground map, or rather it’s an image of the wider Transport for London (TfL) map, so includes the Overground lines and Croydon Tramlink. The entire border of the puzzle is a collection of all the different roundels that TfL uses, or has used.

I was thinking about it today as I was out for a walk with the dog.
I started to think about it as I wanted to get today’s writing and work done so I could sit down and start working on finishing it. The outer edge pieces are all in place, so it’s just the middle ‘map’ that I need to get done.

However, I had two thoughts that I want to come back to – two of many thoughts about many things that I need to get around to writing – but they feel relevant to me:

  1. Boundaries are set in jigsaw puzzles, but I’ve learned to question any boundary judgement and so I got to wondering whether jigsaws that have no percieved edge was possible; if so, what would it look like?
  2. The TfL map is something I know well; however, when I break it up into 1000 tiny pieces, I start to look at it in new ways. This is similar to how I might think about a problem, how it comes together and in which order (process) or how things relate to one another and what that means for the situation in front of me (systems thinking). I might also consider shuffling things around to see how they might fit together, or look for meaningful patterns to see if that can help me (in this instance, I noticed very quickly that it was easier to build out the roundels and then the straight edge rather than what might be considered the ‘traditional’ way of approaching a jigsaw puzzle).

Ultimately, puzzles are not just good for my mental health, they’re good for thinking about how I work, why I work the way I do, and what I can learn from not doign things the way that seems the best from the outset – or be prepared to shift my methods intentionally.

Jigsaw are frameworks, then? Or they’re like maps? Which likely means they’re both.

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Feedback

I’ve been reading about System Dynamics and feedback loops – reinforcing ones and balancing ones – and I’ve been drawing a lot of diagrams to show how that might play out in a work context.

It’s been pretty good fun, I have to say.
Which isn’t something I thought I’d write.
It’s fun because drawing a diagram is a good way to think about a problem and how to go about solving it, or to consider a situation and how that might be improved.

While that resolves some of the mechanics of a situation or problem, it removes a lot of the emotion involved.
This is especially true of creative feedback.

I’ve never looked closely at Julian Cole’s Planning Dirty decks as they appear to be solely for those who work in advertising.
Yet, this morning as I was grazing LinkedIn posts desperate for something nutritional, I saw Julian’s notes about how to do creative feedback.
He splits it into three areas: head, heart, and body.
This deals with the problem and the brief, the idea that is trying to solve that problem or answer that brief, and finally the execution of the idea.

Simple, really.
But so elegantly put.
And something that can be tweaked for almost any situation, even if it’s not a creative problem/brief/answer/execution.

I could steal all of Julian’s ideas and present them here, but not only is that bad, I’m also too lazy.
When the original concept is so good, why bother to repurpose it.
Go read it.

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Compass

When I think about how I work as a strategist, I start with the image a compass.
While I may begin working before this, in terms of reading information and going for a walk, by the time my client gets to hear and see my thoughts it’s the compass that they are interested in.

Why a compass?
From where we are now, and where we think we need to get to, what bearing do I need to take?
It’s what a compass is good for.
Orienting within a given terrain at a specific moment.

The thing about a compass is, whenever you need to make sure you’re still heading on the same bearing – or if you need to divert, or even change direction – you can use to work out how to get somewhere from the point you’re at.
Every time.

Orienting yourself around the challenge is really important. It’s not a step that can be skipped, or guessed at.
And the more I read and write around systems thinking, the deeper I believe this.

For clients, I am the compass.
I am the person who helps them understand where they are and where they want to go.
Together work out the possible routes.

More on that later.

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Constraints

Today has been a hard day.
I’ve been writing my end of module assignment.
It’s not so much the subject matter that is causing a problem, it’s a constraint imposed upon me: a word count.

Constraints exist everywhere, some are imposed by others, some by ourselves.
Some are implicit and others explicit.

This one is causing me some mental frustration.
How to condense 6 month’s of learning across 52 concepts into 2,200 words, including a conclusion.
There is a lot of redrafting happening.

And that’s what we do with any constraint.
We push to the limit and then change things to better fit what we have.
Whether that’s rewriting an assignment, redecorating our homes and rearranging the furniture, how we work with others, or how we arrive at a decision.

Constraints are a necessary evil.
I could write 10,000 words on systems thinking concepts, but it would likely be mostly waffle.
The constraint is there is make me behave reflexively and to select my words carefully.

When I worked in advertising, constraints were provided by planners and strategists. They still are. Some people believe it’s the pithy statement that we call the ‘reason to believe’ or the ‘unique selling point’ or ‘positioning statement’ that serves as a creative stepping stone; others say it’s the actual brief itself.
And it’s all those things.
Constraints that make you love and hate them simultaneously!

But, I think, it’s also the process that someone goes through to arrive at this destination.
It’s the framing and reframing, the taking out and putting in and taking out again.
The decisions made.
Perhaps that’s the art of the constraint?
Or in a systems thinking world it’s what we do when we do what we do, as strategists.

Yes, that will do.

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Putting Myself Out Of Business

I’ve always tried to not work with people longer than necessary.
I often find myself saying that I want to make myself redundant.
Cue nervous laughter.
However, in the end, all my business relationships end for the same reason: I’ve taught them what they need along the way.

I learn if they learn. So, we learn together.
I’ve since discovered that this is called Social Learning. Some of you may know it as a Community of Practice, others as a Critical Social Learning System; some may just know that working things out together brings the best results for everyone.
Each of us grow more.
Everyone of us is richer.

It’s my job to make my clients a success, not to be seen as successful.
The credit goes to them, the money comes to me.
Although, I don’t like to consider it a cost.
If people learn along the way then I am adding value, bucketloads of it.
Things that stick, get passed on and up; things that become visible pieces of the organisation.

It can be a three-word phrase (or two) as happened with a technical company I worked with.

It can be a reframing of a problem so that it becomes multiple opportunities, as I did for a management accountant membership organisation.

It can be helping them see how to find the best path forward, and to move as one in the right direction. That’s what I did for one of the world’s best built environment organisations.

It can be developing a simple structure for meeting new people, or bringing in outsiders to help you understand your next steps. It can simply be helping people see their own value.
I’ve done all of those.
Many times.

What all of these examples have in common is they are shifts.
Real changes that you can measure.
They all give the organisations and individuals the momentum they need.
They are all about looking forward towards a destination (even if that changes as the journey progresses) rather than looking back on what worked before and repeating it.

They are about the formation of new ideas, new ways of working, new beliefs that are not limiting.

Most importantly, they put a smile on people’s faces.
Including mine.

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Daily Shifts

A while back, I had an idea. Actually, the idea came off the back of attending The Do Lectures and a little reframing I was doing with my note-taking at the time. I realised that I could distil a talk down to one takeaway, sort of like an Oblique Strategy, that could then be used for shifting how I was thinking.

Originally, because I do like a pun, I called them DOblique Strategies and was only going to use The Do Lecture talks as the basis for each ‘card’. That didn’t quite work out as I had planned so instead I invested some money and had a small site designed and built.

Shift Strategies doesn’t get as much attention from me as maybe it should; however, it’s a useful tool that I return to now and again when my thinking gets stuck. I was even interviewed for the WB-40 podcast from Matt Ballantine and Chris Weston, in which Matt used the strategies as the basis for interview questions. You can listen to episode 85 of the WB-40 podcast to hear me talk about the project and use the cards to open that discussion into other areas. Proof, if you needed it, that they can work.

To keep things fresh on these lockdown days, so I’ve returned to the site each day to pull a card from the virtual deck. Today’s was a good one.

Let your heart pull you - a shift strategy taken from Michael Townsend Williams's Do Lecture talk.

Have a play yourself and see what inspiration comes up for you. Clicking on the presenter’s name will lead you to a video of their talk, if it’s available, or at the very least more information on the conference from which the talk was experienced.