Bill Jensen's Blog, page 19

Wake Up to Life!

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

Join the Disruptive Movement!

  




Rory Freedman

Author, Beg

RoryFreedman.com







MY CURRENT DISRUPTIVE CHALLENGE 

Social media. “I hate it, I hate it! I love my friends, I love my life. But I find it frustrating that I have to constantly be on Facebook and Twitter for work. I feel like I did it wrong and now I can’t go back and fix it and have just real friends [not just people I’ve friended]. The Internet… It’s the devil!”


MY FAVORITE DISRUPTIVE HERO

Dr. Wayne Dyer. “Until I read his book, Real Magic, I didn’t know that I could choose any life that I wanted. I thought that I had to have a 9-5 job, work for the Man, work for the daily grind, and that’s what was available to me. After reading that book, it occurred to me I could do and be and have anything I wanted.





“He talked about the moment of satori, this moment of awakening that you can experience. I was at an animal rights conference and that moment happened to me. Within minutes of that conference starting I just knew: I’m supposed to be an animal rights activist! I turned to my friends and said, ‘I’m going back to my job on Monday, and I’m giving my notice.’”


FOR MORE: See her video below




Let's Disrupt This!

Every day the universe sends us messages: “Wake up! Anything is possible. Be who you were meant to be.” And every day, most of us ignore those messages. Disrupt that now! A satori moment is about to bop you over the head.



What do you think? Please post...

• On Twitter: #DareToDisrupt

• Or on DisruptMovement.com

Let Go of What Should Be

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

Join the Disruptive Movement!

  




Christine Koh

Co-author, Minimalist Parenting

BostonMamas Blog







MY FAVORITE DISRUPTIVE CHANGE

“I started to forge my first career by combining music and psych. But at the end of my post-doc, I had many things going on in my life — I was a new mom and my father had just died — I realized that if I was going to spend workdays away from my family, I really had to really love what I was doing. And I just didn’t have the real fire about academics that I had had earlier in my career. So I decided to make a big jump. Back then it was very stressful and difficult, but when I think about it now, that has become my favorite disruptive moment in my professional and personal life.”


MY CURRENT DISRUPTIVE CHALLENGE

“Sifting my perspective about what I, or others, should be doing. I’ve come to realize that there are many ways to get from A to B. And I’ve realized that feeling righteous indignation about how things should be just eats up a ton of bandwidth. It’s much more positive to disrupt that thinking — letting go of how things should be — and instead accept the situation for what it is and just move forward from that.”

FOR MORE: See her video below




Let's Disrupt This!

C’mon, admit it. You (like all of us) can be guilty of feeling righteous indignation about how things should be. Like, Christine Koh, we all need to disrupt that thinking. Now.



What do you think? Please post...

• On Twitter: #DareToDisrupt

• Or on DisruptMovement.com

Biz Tools: More Play, Less Stupidity

INSIGHTS FROM TOP DISRUPTIVE EXPERTS

Join the Disruptive Movement!

  




Alexander Osterwalder

Author of Business Model Generation

Co-Founder, Strategyzer.com







MY FAVORITE DISRUPTIVE CHANGE

"Today you have lots of entrepreneurs who are building great businesses but who are also trying to change the world at the same time. Having an impact on poverty elimination, having an impact on global health. It's very disruptive because today its not either impact or profit, you can do both at the same time. We can change the world if we have the right business model."



MY CURRENT DISRUPTIVE CHALLENGE

"Bringing tools into business and the way we use those tools. For example, a surgeon has a series of tools and he learns about these tools over a long period of time before he can use them. First is snipping around on dead bodies before doing that on a living human being. For business people, how do we learn and use conceptual-change and business model tools? We read a book and say 'Let me use that business model.' I think we need to be more disruptive on that and train people to use conceptual business tools. The struggle is that people are not used to conceptual tools in business."






FOR MORE: See his video below










Let's Disrupt This!


Strategyzer is doing what we all need to do: Bring gamification and user-centered simulations into hard-core business planning. We wouldn't let a pilot fly a plane without hundreds of hours on a simulator. Why not require that of our business leaders?




What do you think? Please post...

• On Twitter: #DareToDisrupt

• Or on DisruptMovement.com

Create Better Stories

Are you creating the stories today that you will tell decades from now? The best ones almost always include conquering some adversity.


It was the summer of 1976, our country's bicentennial. I bicycled almost 1200 miles, mostly by zig-zagging north and south through New York State. No helmet, riding on roads like the New York State Thruway, where it was illegal to do so. Sleeping in state parks and friends houses. Quite an adventure!





Then came July 4, 1976: the country's big birthday bash. I wanted to do something special. A friend challenged me to hike New York's two tallest peaks in the same day. Sure, why not?! He was an experienced hiker and climber, so I knew he'd help me through it.



In the morning we climbed Mount Marcy. Spectacular! By the late afternoon, I was huffing and puffing up the steep trail of Algonquin Peak. As we reached the summit — thoroughly exhausted — I pulled myself up, super proud of what we had accomplished on this special day... 





Only to be face-to-face with a toddler joyously waving a flag in my face! What the what...?!?!




What my friend had failed to tell me was that, while our trail felt almost vertical to me, there was a gentle-sloping trail on the other side of mountain that families could easily take. Arrrrrrrrgh! I was ready to kill him!!


And yet, most every year about this time, I'll retell this story for anyone who hasn't heard it for the umpteenth time.




The point: While most of us shy away from adversity most of the time...
Our adversities are what shape us into who we are today.


Annnnnd, they make the best stories for decades to come!

  

Who Was Your First Disruptive Hero?

Disruptive heroes are the people in our lives who either completely changed the rules or taught us that the status quo needed pushed, challenged or broken. They radically changed what you believe or what you do, and altered how you became who you are.


Who was your first? Way back when, someone came into your life and changed everything that followed. Who was that for you?


Mine: It was the summer of '69. I was 13 and a half, and at Boy Scout camp. Not only did I get to watch Neil Armstrong walk on the moon from Camp Wauwepex, but I also sat at the feet of a master disruptor.





My scout master, let's call him Jack, was a life-long rule-breaker. We were about a mile from the nearest town. He sent me and a few other scouts (all under 15 years old), into town to buy a huge stash of soda, candy and beer, so he could sell it in camp, undercutting the camp's store.



When he learned that I knew how to scale up artwork — (draw a grid on the original, then draw one box at a time on the scaled up version) — he had me create a mural from a Playboy centerfold.



When I got a letter from Lisa, my first girlfriend, quoting that summer's big hit from the Doors, Touch Me, and insisting we get together in between camp sessions — I went to him for advice. You can guess what his counsel was. (Ahhh, the summer of '69!)


Your Disruptive Heroes are part of who you became: Yeah, Jack definitely contributed to my lifelong mantra of "Rules, we don't need no stinkin' rules!"



But why was he my disruptive (and not just degenerate) hero? Because he was also an ex-Marine. And, through him, I first experienced the amazing high of a team acting as one integrated whole, achieving something that none of us could have done alone.



He killed us in prep for the camp's marching competition — pulling us out of other, more fun, activities to create more practice time. He insisted that we learn a Marine precision march called "Four Winds," where each of four columns marched in North/South/East/West directions, did an about-face, and then ended up in the exact same spot they started from.



After we celebrated our glorious win, he sat us around a campfire and made sure we never forgot that teamwork is everything, and the highs we experience in life will always be higher when accomplished as a team working together as one.



From my first disruptive hero, I learned to work around stupid bureaucracy and the power and total joy of teamwork.

Who did you become because of your disruptive heroes?

Daily Disruption: Deal With It

We have entered an age of daily personal disruption. 

Deal with it or go the way of the dinosaurs!




Disruptions are anything that changes the course of your life or daily routine. They can be wonderfully good (a new baby, a technology that unleashes your creativity), or horribly bad (personal, family or global crises), or anywhere in between.



For Better or Worse, We Are Affected By the Disruptions Other People Cause

Within a recent two-week period...

• Two terrorists in Boston caused an entire city and outlying areas to go on lockdown for a day. People affected: estimated at 1 to 4 million.

• Hackers took over the Associated Press's Twitter account, (falsely) tweeting that the White House was attacked and President Obama was injured. Because stock market computers are set to search out and act upon major events, that one tweet momentarily wiped out $136.5 billion of the S&P 500 Index's value.

• A couple thousand benevolent hackers and techies attended TechCrunch's Disrupt NYC event which showcased the technologies that will soon completely obliterate how we work, play, create and learn.

• Movie theater owners were banding together to figure out how they could ban Google's Glass, even before product is available to consumers.



Even though we fear and try to protect ourselves from horrible disruptions like the Boston and AP events, the ones that are guaranteed to hit us every day for the rest of our lives are similar to those from TechCrunch and Google.



Every day you will encounter more and more disruptions. The new normal is no normal. There is no choice, we all need to learn how to deal with constant changes to our daily routines and to the course of our lives.



The Big So What

The people who will succeed in this era are those who figure out how to benefit from, or take advantage of, continuous disarray, disorder and disruption.



So what will you do?

• Hide your head in the sand and pretend that it will all go away?

• Or start learning how to succeed in this era?



Lots more at DisruptMovement.com

Business Sucks at Wicked Problems

Still sucks. Even after decades of trying.


Overstatement? Not at all. Think about the following: Compare the current state of work and leadership at your company (...if your work-life is peachy, broaden your view to include ten of your closest friends...) to the definition of and criteria for wicked problems .



A wicked problem is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The term ‘wicked’ is used not in the sense of evil but rather its resistance to resolution.



Sound familiar? Aren't many of the goals you are handed incomplete or contradictory? Isn't a given that most every project you are handed consists of changing requirements? Isn't it often difficult to recognize what's really causing the problems you need to solve?




Wicked problems meet these criteria:

1. The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution

Sound familiar? 

2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule

While projects and financial quarters do have a stopping rule (when success or failure is determined), the problems they are addressing rarely do

3. Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong

Sure, some measures of your work — e.g., costs or quality — may be absolute and right or wrong...but many (most?) measures of your work fall into gray areas

4. Every wicked problem is essentially novel and unique

Doesn't it seem that way to you more and more in your work?




Additionally... Super wicked problems meet these criteria:


1. Time is running out

Sound familiar? 

2. No central authority

OK, we'll concede this one. The one criteria on this page that surely does not match your situation!

3. Those seeking to solve the problem are also causing it

Sound familiar? 

4. Policies discount future irrationality

Sound familiar? 




We need to start accepting that more and more of our workplace problems are wicked problems, requiring disruptive, epic and novel solutions!

People or Planning: Which Matters Most?

You've been hired to improve performance.

Where do you start?


That's the great topic from a current HBR discussion group. Several hundred replies fell into two distinct camps...



1. Ground Truths: People Issues

• Analyze what is worth building upon and what has to be changed

• Raise the sense of urgency and change fast

• The will for action is more important than perfection

• Figure out what taboos are hindering growth

• Visit the front lines

• Ask all of them…

— Whom do we serve?

— How do we do that?

• Visit customers

• Listen to what works and what doesn't

— Call on your top ten customers

• Experience your company from the customer's perspective

— Order a product

— Listen in on help desk calls

— Talk to front line service reps



2. Strategic Planning, Analytics

• Perform a SWOT analysis

• Get all leaders to agree on objectives and a timeline

• Add incentive measures to ensure that people meet the targets

• Uncover the company's core business

• Examine the balance sheet

• After careful analysis of the situation,

• Study the organization's systems as to how they align with the objectives

• Do a cultural analysis. Most problems stem from within the culture

• Understand the gaps between corporate strategy and performance measurements



Both camps are right. Both camps are wrong.

Ground truths get to most of the people issues.

Analytics get to most of the strategic issues. 

Great leaders understand you can't be in just one camp or the other. You need to have one foot in one camp, one in the other. All the time.



Takeaway 1: Odds are, your natural tendency is to believe more strongly in one of these two camps than the other. Balance that belief. Learn more about the power of the other one. Incorporate it into who you are.


Takeaway 2: Why take on something that's broken? If you could fix it, why not start your own company?

3 Reasons You Must Change How You Change

During all the research for my latest book, Disrupt!, I spent a lot of time studying change and the people and circumstances that cause it.



My biggest conclusions: 

We need to change how we think about change. 

We need to be better at adapting change. We need to be more comfortable embracing all kinds of changes. We need to be more comfortable creating and driving change.





(With many more posts on this topic to come), here are the top three things I've learned about change in the past two years.





1. Disruptive change is here to stay, and it's only going to get more intense every day. Change has become so intense that it's almost always disruptive — where it constantly alters the course of your life, and where your To Do list is being ripped up before you've finished writing it. Welcome to the age of continuous personal disruption. 



2. The people who will succeed in this era are those who figure out how to benefit from, or take advantage of continuous disarray, disorder and disruption. This is a radical departure from the past few decades of trying to catch up with change or get ahead of it. Now the only way to succeed is to embrace it as an opportunity. Ride it like a wave and seize whatever comes with the wave. Or get crushed by it.



3. If you stay an employee, you'll get crushed. Not always, but more and more: pledging allegiance to the corporate flag sets you up to be crushed in a big way. No employees can be just employees anymore. Everyone who draws a paycheck must ALSO be an entrepreneur or have something else on the side. And that something else can't be just for more money. You need to be building your own disruptive change, some product or service that increases in value the more that disruptive change increases.



What have you recently learned about change?

Contrangst: The Angst of Micro-Managing

Corporate communication analysis based on more than two decades of change consulting. Name for the common cultural problem courtesy of The Emotionary: Words that don't exist for feelings that do.



Contrangst. What mico-managers feel all the time.



The originator's angst is not the biggest problem. If the micro-manager wants to give himself an ulcer or heart-attack...Well, one less micro-PITA to worry about.



What makes this angst so wretched is all the stupidity it creates throughout the organization. Lack of empowerment. Constant check-ins as if fantastic employees were two year-olds. Lack of trust. Time constraints ramped up so the Contrangulator can feel like he's on top of things. Lots of wasted meetings to report micro-incremental changes in status. Demoralization. Decay of the positive culture that the leaders above the Contrangulator are trying to create.



What to Do: Fire the Contrangulator. If that is not possible, avoid him at all costs.