Envisioning a new approach has two inputs: your understanding of the current reality of the work process or activity, and your newly developed understanding of what’s possible. Developing an understanding of both inputs with some degree of separation enables greater clarity of understanding due to single-tasking: you only […]
With futurists the world is awash. Who proclaim the new and to the past say tosh. The future of work is so very posh. What you’re doing today is only bosh. The world is awash with futurists. Those who claim to see the future. As in the future […]
From Nicholas Bate in April 2014 on seeing things differently: 1. With the lights low. 2. Early, at dawn. 3. Through dark glasses. 4. Wearing a brown paper bag and just listening. 5. Through the tube of a rolled-up newspaper. 6. Late, at dusk. 7. Through binoculars. 8. […]
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. [Arthur Schopenhauer] People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it. [Puck Magazine, 1903] The first version of anything is […]
Both a magnifying glass and binoculars enhance vision, with one providing the micro and the other the macro in details not available to the naked eye. Scientists in different fields embrace one or the other, developing the ability to use their selected tool to see with incredible detail […]
What could you learn from an operations manager at Schipol Airport, or an analyst at HSBC, or the man who schedules the trains for Network Rail or the process guy at the Department for Education? I bet their problems are not that different from yours, but they will […]
Learning what others have done with the new tools and resources available to them provides inspiration and challenge on what could be possible in your work, team and organisation. I call this shopping for inspiration. The intent doesn’t spring from a slavish desire to merely duplicate the exact […]
On a day that I’m giving a workshop, I like to arrive at the location a couple of hours before everyone else. Sometimes the room has already been set out in a particular fashion, but other times the room is a blank canvas. When the room and furniture […]
Knowledge and information workers don’t produce physical product. They are paid to use their brains – leveraging a domain of knowledge, ways of thinking, ways of approaching a problem, ways of creating solutions to problems, and so on. There’s a mental process at the core of how such […]
Creativity. Playing with possibilities. A playfulness with constraints. A pushing of the known to create the different.
Michael Sampson 
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