Tag : new ways of working

Two weekends ago, Andrew and I went along to the third Good for Nothing hack weekend, appropriately titled Occupy Blue Monday. It was as inspirational and invigorating as ever. I've written before about what it's like to do a Good for Nothing. I love the way they take new, collaborative ways of working and hack culture to support the true innovators in social enterprise. As a participant, it's amazing to be able to use your skills to provide real value - a new kind of volunteering with tangible results.

In May of this year, Atul Gawande delivered the commencement address at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Gawande is a Rhodes Scholar, a surgeon, a New Yorker staff writer and an associate professor at both the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School. He's also on Twitter: @Atul_Gawande.

Dr. Gawande's commencement address, published in The New Yorker under the title Cowboys and Pit Crews, is about change. I read it Monday night and have been thinking about it ever since. One question in particular keeps running 'round my head: 

We humans are doing an amazing job of changing our world… but how are we doing at adapting to the changes we create?

Several weeks ago Nicki Sprinz aka @sprinzette– new to The Many and as yet sans avatar – posted her thoughts on Lean with a little intro from Justin. Now it's my turn to host!

.... and over to Nicki:

"Six weeks in and what have I learnt? A lot. And it's been fun too. Here's my take on how ideas are born at Made by Many:

A reaction of many forward-thinking organisations in times of big change is to create an R&D department, a ‘lab’ or some kind of Skunk Works.

That way, the risk is isolated away where it can’t harm the rest of the organisation.

It makes sense. All the awesome ideas created or discovered by the privileged bright minds can bring them back to the colleagues they’ve left behind like it’s some kind of precious life-preserving root vegetable from a new land.

This Agile has a capital A. It can also have a lower case a, in which case it is an adjective, to be lean/nimble but that’s not what I’m talking about. Agile with a capital A is a noun, a name used for the philosophy described in the the Manifesto for Agile Software Development and the suite of methodologies primarily used for software development such as SCRUM and Extreme Programming.

Tim’s post on Agile as a ‘Cargo Cult’ highlights a problem in the adoption of Agile, not only for software development but for creative and business processes. Everyone is trying to adapt to a rapid and disruptive world screwing with business models in every category. Organisations are looking to close the gap with nimble digital start-ups who are out-innovating them at a fraction of the cost-base. Agile seems to offer a well-packaged magic ability to compete in a new way.

This post has been brewing inside of me for some time. It’s has finally been burped-up precipitated by Ben Malbon’s provocative post at BBH Labs (yes, we are genetically related – he is my uncle).

Ben asks the question, “Why isn’t there more great work in the interactive space?”, and it sparked rabid debate at the BBH Labs blog – in no small way helped by his Twitter ‘outreach programme’.

I’m not taking the piss when I say that it’s gathered a posse of mainly advertising folk – strategic planners and digital creative brains – in one place. It’s a kind of ‘dirty’ several dozen. It’s like Mad Men two-dot-oh without the cigarettes. But it’s generated a fascinating open conversation about a big problem: what do advertising agencies need to do about digital, or interactive, or whatever it’s called? The really interesting thing is that this conversation is happening in the open. The problem is both bewildering and widespread enough to have convened an itinerant community of interested people from competing agencies in discussion. The power of networks, eh?