The String Theory

Give away everything you know and more will come back to you

One of the ideas I've been thinking about recently is getting each other in companies to openly share skills. Not only with close colleagues but colleagues far and wide to Fuel a better future for all those associated with the same business. As isn’t that what ‘work’ should all be about.

“Obviously everyone wants to be successful, but I want to be looked back on as being very innovative, very trusted and ethical and ultimately making a big difference in the world” - Sergey Brin

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Recent work blog post

I’m busy, you’re busy, we’re all really busy. The reality is this isn’t going to change.

Wherever we go it’s going to be the same story. So it’s always pretty tough to work and think about things outside of our ‘jobs’.

I know that when I retire I’m not going to remember the evaluations, dashboards, campaign reports or briefs. I want to obviously do my upmost to produce the best work I possibly can, to the absolute best of my ability.

What I will remember though is the people I’ve worked with and what I’ve learnt from them along the way and the success this has yielded.

I believe Engine has something very special. We are growing. We are multi-skilled individuals in the same building working across a spectrum of projects. Yet if we’re honest we don’t really know WTF is going on with all the businesses and the growth exacerbates this.

It’s not confined to us of course; it’s the same story across all big business.

We love change and stand for this; if we can achieve definitive change we will change the game.

We now have an intranet; I’m sure at lot of us have seen how these things can play out from working at other companies.

This won’t work unless as very busy people we find the time to strive towards what others can’t. That’s what will be remembered.

I’ve had a think of how to best use the Intranet; my thought can be viewed on the intranet: www.enginebeta.com/ideas/1020. It would be excellent to get your thoughts.

It’s basically resulted in a Burning Man style mentor skill shared Screencast-o-matic You Tube stored cohesive client and employee inspiring platform. 

You learn a lot more when things go wrong than when they go right

The strategy here is firstly knowing when things are going wrong (away from your vision and goal) and secondly finding the solution to making it right again

Life is awesome; if this changes then we have to eliminate the negative and strive for excellence

The strategy for success is having a strategy for success

 

Datadumbration - E2E.LT

Following on from the previous post, let’s look into end to end life tracking (E2E.LT):

• Clear feedback

You remember when we all went to school and university. It was pretty good having that instant feedback from everything you did comparatively to all your peers. You knew exactly where you stood in terms of achievement and progress. E2E.LT brings back this clarity and transparency.

• A sense of progress

Throughout all the years of school and university when you’re continuously being graded and tracked you can clearly see how you’re doing over time. This is another important aspect E2E.LT makes possible throughout life. Not only that but when generations before you have complete LT you are able to compare yourself to them and clearly set benchmarks.

• The possibility of success

With the above two points personal success becomes more tangible. Life aspirations now become more visually defined.

• Satisfy your curiosity

How you have managed to achieve in the past can be clarified, how you got there and how you can keep consistent.

• Chance to solve a problem

If you want to inflict more pleasure or deflect pain this is where you can, from looking at the previous points and solving any issues that the data has highlighted.

When E2E.LT is operating this information will clearly be very powerful, regulations will therefore need to be constructed to protect it, away from the way it’s managed today.

Getting a little bit more philosophical with E2E.LT there’s a great book entitled Finite and Infinite Games that states there’re two ways to approach everything, firstly as a finite game that can be won or lost, or as an infinite game, entering into things with a sense of curiosity and playfulness. I found this to be very thought provoking and following a run-through of E2E.LT I’ll leave you with a passage from the book.

Infinite players cannot say how much they have completed in their work or love or quarrelling, but only that much remains incomplete in it. They are not concerned to determine when it is over, but only what comes of it.

For the finite player in us freedom is a function of time. We must have the time to be free. For the infinite player in us time is a function of freedom. We are free to have time. A finite player puts play into time. An infinite player puts time into play.

Here’s a widespread list of some steps towards E2E.LT to explore: 

Fitness - Nike +

Adding scores, challenges, trophies, and competitions to what would otherwise be just a running self-tracker.

Health - Health Month

Let‘s you set up rules for your own health behaviour for one month, and then win loose points and badges (and cheer and be cheered by others) based on those rules.

Finance - Mint.com

Allows you to set yourself financial goals and track your progress towards them.

Sustainability - My Leaf

Allows you to compete with other drivers regionally as well as globally on how energy efficient you are driving your car.

Entertainment - Club Psych

In the media industry, companies try to make their online properties more sticky and engaging by adding minigames, challenges,(redeemable) points and leaderboards to them, as in the case of the USA Network show Psych.

Shopping - Barcodehero

In retail shopping, companies like BarcodeHero bring the concept of ‘checking in’ from Foursquare or Gowalla to stores or products in stores, again complete with points, leaderboards and other game elements.

Productivity - Play Nice.ly

And even in the productivity space, several companies have set up services to add game elements to work tasks, as in the case of Play Nice.ly, which gameifies software debugging with points and badges earned for the number and quality of bugs you report.

Service vendors and agencies - Bunchball, BigDoor, Badgeville and GetGlue

Finally, a couple of service vendors and agencies have sprung up that offer game elements (points, badges, …) as a service layer to integrate into your site, as well as gamification design.

 

GAME ON.

Pain is the best choice (losing your virginity)

If you think about anything you have achieved in your life, the chances are it was painful in someway, physically or mentally testing.

Whenever something becomes too comfortable for me I believe that it’s then time for change, as Aristotle put it “we cannot learn without pain” and I’ve learnt I’m a sucker for punishment.

I wanted to highlight this by running a marathon with minimal prep as part of my quest to learn more about myself.

I took a camera along for the ride to take pictures along the way and put the presentation together below:

Losing your marathon virginity.

What did I learn?.......... I can’t wait to do another marathon (perhaps with a bit more training though).

Change (for the better)

I’ve always seen the necessity for change, but there’s never any point in changing for the sake of it. I remember my strategy lecturer always used to labour the point of competitive advantage, it is classic Porter that everyone knows but rarely achieves and there’s no point in doing what you’re doing if it doesn’t maximise this.

There are two aspects of business I think about a fair bit: Firstly making the less profitable operations of a company worth more, ahead of the competition that oversees their potential. Secondly how hierarchies restrict progress within business, even when organisations state that they have flat structures i.e. HP and Tesco it doesn’t create an untapped competitive advantage.

Here’s a strategy I recently presented where I work tapping these points:

 It’s great to perceive and think about things differently, just make sure it always creates a competitive advantage and ensure you become an idea tourist.

Mindset of tomorrow

Following my most recent work blog post, I thought I’d add in a ‘StringTheory’ strategy.

First of all here’re some books that will be of interest if you liked the Engine blog post:

The Innovators dilemma – Looks into how disruptive innovation can damage great firms by changing the game in a way they failed to foresee

The Singularity is near – A film based on this book is now out, if the only reading you enjoy is this blog. It’s about intelligence becoming enhanced by the union of humans and machines  

The Physics of Star Trek – Basically put is Star Trek physically possible...... most technologies/technologists appear to have been inspired by the show as it is

Below is a screenshot from Blade Runner that’s set in the year 2019. Could LA look like this in 8 years?

I’ve shown this image as I wanted to make the point of how important SCI-FI is. From SCI-FI’s inspiration for the books above and its huge ambition for progress. LA is unlikely to look like the above in 8 years but it’s something that Philip Dick could imagine in the book the movie was based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? That other SCFI ‘imagineers’ could then design visually (Ridley Scott, Hampton Fancher and David Peoples).  

Although SCI-FI still has a bit of a stigma attached to it:

As of late though SCI-FI and what was once considered geeky has become more socially acceptable, as Hollywood has promoted it into the mainstream. Making millions from Marvel and DC comic books I read as a kid (something I didn’t promote around school). 

The strategy here is simple. Embrace SCI-FI, embrace your inner geek. This doesn’t mean move into your parent’s basement and watch back to back Star Trek episodes, it just means embrace imagination and the fantasy of what could be, so you can “invent the future”.

An example of the difference in mindsets is highlighted in Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel. 

 See you in the future. Where I hope you have a SCI-FI head on your shoulders.   

Grow THINKsmall

How do you seed change  

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- THINK 24/02/11 - 

THINKsmall

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- THINK 24/02/11 -

What did the 0 say to the 8?

Numbers are a funny thing and are often misunderstood. When misunderstood more damaging consequences to not laughing at a bad joke can occur.

Coke decided to launch ‘New Coke’ in the 80’s. The reason for this strategic move was due to Pepsi implementing blind taste testing (Coke Vs Pepsi). Pepsi came out on top of these ‘tests’ giving their product an edge and putting Coke’s management into a flurry.

After 99years with essentially the same taste Coke decided to launch ‘New Coke’ adopting a flanker strategy. This resulted in a sweeter taste to be more like Pepsi, preceded by a top secret $4million survey of 190,000 people where Coke’s management ending up seeing this:

When looking at these numbers leading to the launch of ‘New Coke’ their paranoid management made two massive errors. Firstly they failed to understand the loyalty of their customers (overcome via market segmentation), as the 45% of the 190k sample that preferred the taste of the current Coke taste did so passionately.

Secondly they misunderstood the context in which the results were conceived and the taste tests that resulted in Coke’s CEO stating “I have never been as sure of a decision in my life as I am that New Coke will beat Old Coke”. Would you have been this sure after $4million of research with these results?

The results turned out to be false as the taste test had flaws. When taking a ‘sip’ of a drink in these tests you will almost always prefer the sweeter drink opposed to when you are drinking a whole can, as the sweeter drink Pepsi understood this so took advantage of it and derailed Coke.

Coke’s management were pressurised after 75 days to bring back the original formula. The lesson here is always looking at numbers in context; ensure you come out with a much stronger strategy as Coke did in 1985 to use numbers advantageously from number related jokes to business strategy.

Keep’n it real

Following on from last weeks comments, a trend is occurring in the fabric of the modern economy.

In the beginning there were commodities as the basis of the agrarian economy, the industrial revolution changed this as commodities became a raw material to manufacture goods. Goods have now become commoditised, with no care of who the goods were manufactured by. This has been reflected to the service sector with the sole care being price.

The shift that is now occurring away from this is towards an ‘Experience Economy’. The buying criteria for consumers are now being rendered by ‘Authenticity’.

 As we begin to work smarter to create free time for ourselves to fill with experiences, the cost of this ‘free’ time will thus grow in value as we are driven to work longer and harder.

In 1972 Geoffrey Hoyle's book predicted what life would be like in 2010, it has now been reprinted with the title amended to 2011.

Among predictions of “vision phones” and “doing grocery shopping online”, one of the drastic wrong predictions in the 19^th century from the industrial revolution was that as we became more mechanised it would go a bit further to earning us a life of leisure.

Hoyle's three day week for 2010 has failed to materialise. "People are going to have to work very hard. It's gone the other way. People are working seven days a week. I'm very pessimistic now," he says.

We have been unable to use mechanisation and technology to truly make our lives easier. If anything they have made our lives more complex creating more demands upon ourselves acting as the catalyst to escape this and create authentic life experiences.

When attempting to create more free time in this experience economy remember the value of free and how you can best appreciate it.