Dyson on problem solving

time + freedom

Today I met with two guys from a company in Mexico where the developers have a hack day after every sprint. People can work on whatever they want that will be relevant for the company during this time. It's one day, eight hours more or less, of dedicated freedom.

What a great initiative. Dedicated freedom within a time frame is as close to serious play as it gets.

It's important to point out that this is not a huge company with tons of resources. They're small and they have a lot to accomplish. But they've started this practice from the beginning, as a way to foster an innovative culture.

Why doesn't everyone do this?

take a stand

Last week I was in Paris, and I was on the lookout for a certain kind of business: one in which the owner is visibly taking a stand. Businesses that exist because of love, passion, curiosity, the need to make the world better or to right a wrong.

The potentially wonderful thing about starting a bar or a bookshop is just that, you get to take a stand. These are not undertakings for people who just want to make money. If you just want to make money, working for someone else seems to make a lot more sense. (Which is not to say you can't take a stand in someone else's employ.)

Selling books or serving drinks is a platform for making a reality that you believe in very deeply. Everyone doesn't have to like it. You just need enough people, the ones Stendhal referred to as "the happy few."

How many people would be enough? I guess that's different for every business, but a rough number would be the number that allows you to keep taking your stand.

storytelling and collaboration

This is a compelling TED talk about the power of storytelling and engagement with visitors to museums and to the future installation at the former World Trade Center.

Between the horse designed by a committee and the monster of reason

I'm very happy to have a post by architect and guest blogger Iñigo Amézola:

Between the horse designed by a committee

and the monster of reason

                                             or

How to give power to the people without losing powder

Let’s start with a statement: Buildings are made for people, that is, for their users and the community that accepts them.

It seems easy to agree on that, but getting the job done is proving to be a slippery matter.

Architects begin their reflection by working with three sources of information:

·A client

·Land, a plot, or another building

·A brief

To which is important to add:

·The socio-economic and political context

·The technical means available

Not forgetting, and this is one of the main differences between construction and architecture:

·The cultural response that goes along with the act of building

In other words, the responsibility that the new “constructo” will take over in relation to its context (whether urban, industrial or rural), to Time (past, present and future) and to the codes of Architecture.

The fact that some of these variables are difficult to measure (Anything that can be measured can be improved, Peter Drucker, dixit) places Architecture closer to Art than to Science. But this condition shouldn’t be enough to forget the consideration of Architecture as service and the obligation of accountability.

Two extremes

A few decades ago, at the end of the 60’s, the man with the blue eyes was Christopher Alexander, the Austrian mathematician and architect who, from his post at Berkeley University, defended the idea of a “pattern language”, synthesis of architectural invariants, defined and purified by humans for centuries, and with which anyone could design anything, from a door handle to a city, giving back to people their decision making capacity and pushing aside professional architects, now turned into mere site supervisors.

It was a time, full of energy, when everything seemed to be possible for a little while and anyone could be a poet, a musician, an artist and, why not, an architect as well.

Unfortunately but not surprisingly, this approach to Architecture was not able to produce interesting buildings, those which raise matter to its espiritual condition.

And little by little, the public debate in democratic societies, a job market with an increasing tendency towards specialization and a political class reluctant to lose their reason for being, were leading to the consensus that it was neither practical nor efficient to oblige people to face problems of a certain technical complexity, even when they were directly concerned. (1)

At the other extreme, as a result of the less naive years passed between 1985 and 2005, we have the architect as the sorcerer of the tribe, the only one in contact with the will of the gods, the only one able to transmit their desires. The architect as a self-absorbed figure with a complete (and sometimes tyrannical) control of the project that has led, more than once, to a raising of a “monster of reason”, to use Goya’s words: “The dream of reason creates monsters”. (2)

It is very true that the lack of social controls during these two decades of excessive growth has brought wasteful spending, empty buildings, and  increase of carbon emissions. But it is also true that this period of time leaves a legacy of important achievements and findings and some pieces of excellent architecture.

What will the future bring?

The pendulum of cycles follows its path impassively and now is moving to the center again. But History never repeats itself in the same way, and it will be vital to understand that architecture appears as interaction among many different players. In this new scenario, architects will hardly be playing the leading role. We have to learn from our mistakes and humbly accept that any approach to the project will be limited, temporary and perfectible; well defined characteristics of the human condition.

It will be a safe guide to keep in mind that, at the end of the day, it is for people we are working. We are not the only ones with the skills to face complex problems in an uncertain world (everybody does it today on a daily basis, let alone experts on the subject, like physicists or financial analysts), and we shouldn’t be afraid to feel, if not passion, at least affection for the virtues of the camel: highly efficient machines for their function and not merely misshapen horses.

Notes

1.- In a very recent revival, it is useful to mention the fiasco (for the political establishment) of the popular consultation about the renovation of Diagonal (Barcelona main avenue) in 2010, when people voted massively against the official proposals.

2.- The “City of Culture” in Santiago de Compostela and “The City of Arts and Science”, in Valencia, are two good examples.

I forgot what was important for you

Hosting a design thinking crash course this morning,  I witnessed a nice moment. A participant was showing his partner a prototype and getting her feedback. Listening to her, he quickly realized that he had forgotten a really key element of her needs, and he said it out loud.

To me it was a great instance of making a relationship with (in this case) a user: acknowledging that something important for her had simply been left out. She agreed that the prototype would only be really interesting for her if the important element were added.

Why was it it left out in the first place? According to the prototyper, it was because he got caught up in making the the prototype, and part of the essence got lost. But this element was quickly restored to the conversation when she gave her feedback.

Unfortunately, this kind of forgetting happens all the time in relationships, and not just where product development is concerned. But as sometimes happens in relationships, the initial omission provides a potential aperture for even deeper understanding, and for realizing that the essence can't get lost in our excitement to create something really cool.

the feeling of making something really new

A lot of things get called "innovation" these days. This is problematic, because it blurs the meaning of making something really new. If you're doing something that's been done before, even if it's new for you, you have some examples. For better or worse, you have a kind of familiar landscape to work within.

When you really step out into the unknown, the feeling is different. Whether that feeling is one of danger, fear, excitement, calm, or even joy will depend on each person. For me personally, it's often a combination of things, but one that stands out is engagement, the feeling of being deeply focused.

Maybe if none of these feelings are present, you're not really doing something new...

passion and non-attachment in a scientific method

Passion and non-attachment both have their place in the pursuit of solutions to valuable problems. Passion drives the quest, but non-attachment is necessary to running real experiments. Without it, you run the risk of skewing your experiment or your interpretation of results to support your hypothesis.

Non-attachment is a term frequently used in zen. It's a useful term, in the sense that it tries to describe an attitude of openness and flow. Adopting this approach, you can conduct true experiments, in which you are open to the real results.

Passion comes up again in the form of persistence, not to prove your hypothesis, but to find a solution for your problem, or to find the real problem worth solving.

what's surprising about problem interviews

A problem interview is one in which you try to validate that people have the problem you're trying to solve. It's also an opportunity to discover new problems, or to find out that people's priorities are different from what you expected.

I'm currently in the problem discovery phase for an innovation event in Barcelona. My interviews are revealing that people's real problems are fairly different from what I expected. This is great, because if I hadn't done this exploration, I would have planned a program which would have been inappropriate for many of the attendees.

As I'm quite new in my role, I suspect that many of my more senior colleagues are able to plan their sessions without this kind of problem validation. They probably know the needs of the attendees very well. But I don't, and more importantly, I know I don't. In the words of poet Charles Wright, "you don't know what you don't know."

The wonderful thing is that every time I interview someone, they have ideas, needs and insights that I couldn't or wouldn't have thought of. In this way, we're co-creating the event, building on the ideas and needs of many. I don't know what the result will be, but my sense is that we've already come further, and along different paths, than I would have if I'd set out on my own.