Your MVP is all Bull

By Anton Rossouw.

When I need some inspiration, I often start on the journey searching for it by looking at some of the works of my favourite artists, one being Marc Chagall, another Helen Norton and of course Pablo Picasso (I also love his quotes as they resonate so well with me!).

One of these explorations brought me to think about artistic merit in product design and how we need to think about and approach what we are designing in agile terms known as the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in collaboration with the product owner.

 I believe at minimum the key characteristics is that the MVP must at least be:

1.    Valuable to the product owner and the end-clients with a real business purpose and utility and not just be another “nice thing”.

2.    Do-able practicable with realistic delivery in line with the team capability in a short timeframe (weeks not months).

3.    Affordably satisfy a tangible ROI in a no frills way and be able to evolve from an initial base  delivery to create more and more incremental value else it should be "extincted" quickly.

With that in mind my teams and product owners often ask how they  should approach the definition of the MVP and in particular "what it should look like".   Well, that's not an easy answer at all because the product concept may only exist initially as an "idea" that needs stimulation for manifestation. 

Before starting the  stimulation process we need to agree that we need to satisfy the above MVP key characteristics, and then enter into activities that will lead to the products exhibiting "artistic merit" by stimulating team creativity and innovation so that we can craft the MVP from virtually nothing into what it is to become.

For this not to just be a "woolly generic statement",  we need to refer to some examples to make it easy for the team to generate inspirational emergent ideas that will lead to "what this would look like" in real life. 

So for this I like to use Pablo Picassos "Bulls"  as  inspiration and illustration, by talking  the image through with the team and the product owners. This particular artwork is a very powerful creative instrument that often amazes with how quickly the teams "gets it" to start talking about what the MVP should look like.  

This image quickly lands the team to distil the product design framework to its most minimal and simple essence, exactly as Picasso does with his bull!  

Although Picasso has followed the process to "de-construct" the bull from the most complex to its mere essence, one can approach it from both sites as either de-compositional or/and re-constitutional points of view.   

Its for me the perfect illustration of how to achieve the ultimate MVP of the Bull. 

To sum up; To land on a great MVP the team needs to process some iterative hard tack inspiration interspersed with interaction and collaboration on de-and re-construction of the product as a Bull!

And now in the spirit of artistic inspiration some whimsical imagery from Helen Norton with "The Bull of Heaven Descending" 

(Note. The bull sculpture in the header is available for the serious collector - buy from here)

Wet Scrum

Guest post

Many thanks to Gurpreet Singh for allowing us to re-post this article about what he calls "Wet Scrum". He will be in Australia in mid-September as a session leader at LAST Conference.

Wet Scrum

By Gurpreet Singh

Many companies tag themselves "Agile." Agile is the latest Methodology to execute software development projects. Agile has a variety: like Scrum, eXtreme Programming (XP), Rational Unified Process (RUP), etc. Scrum is the most commonly followed these days. Generally, organizations use a blended version to suit their needs, which are confined within their environmental constraints (EEF/OPA, or enterprise environmental factors/organizational process assets).

So, why are companies moving to Agile?

Let's recap the Agile Manifesto to answer this question:

• Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
• Working software over comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
• Responding to change over following a plan

Agile empowers the client with the flexibility to change, as the entire process is iterative and the client is kept in the loop with each sprint's progress. Also, the team plans and commits for work for each sprint and works together to complete the commitment.

This way, it is a win-win scenario for each side:

• The client is updated in real time about the status of the project/product, and the client has the freedom to change the requirements.
• The team is like a small military Alpha unit (five to nine members) working in short progressions (sprints).

The hard truth

Hmm . . . this was the theory. Life, though, is not about black and white; there are grey areas everywhere.

It is easier to "do Agile" than to "be Agile." Agile demands a certain discipline to get the right results.

• Do you timebox your meetings?
• Are you a silent listener during the meetings?
• Is the product owner or ScrumMaster the only person who talks?
• Is the PO/SM "pushing" the work to you?
• Does your PO commit during the sprint planning without seeking team input?
• Are you forced to give XYZ points to ABC story?
• Are you not "open" in the retrospectives for fear that what you say will backfire?
• Are you forced to take on new stories during the sprint that will negatively affect the already committed deliverables?
• Do you never discuss blockers in the daily Scrum meeting, despite the fact they exist?
• Do you expect/wish that the PO/SM would micromanage so you only have to "work"?
• Do you believe the carrot-and-stick method of management is essential?

These scenarios are just few highlights; the possible list is endless. They show that you are "doing Agile" (for the sake of doing it), but you are not "being Agile," as you don't know the real importance of Agile practices and deliverables.

You may be an Agile puppet run by someone else following Waterfall. This kind of Scrum is notoriously known as "Water-Scrum-Fall."

I would like to coin a new term for this method: "Wet Scrum."

Scrum gets "wet" by following the practices of Waterfall. People use Scrum selectively, depending upon context and ease. However, it is very difficult (nearly impossible) to achieve the spirit of Agile by doing this.

How Wet Scrum Works!

Clients need the following:

• More human touch
• Manageable work organized in short sprints rather than trying to manage the entire project/product as one entity
• Real-time updates about work completed
• The power to change the requirements
• High-quality results

These deliverables are produced by Scrum, in theory. However, no way of working can ensure the success of a project or product unless the team is disciplined and focused on making it a success. (We will discuss this point further at a later stage.)

Clients are fascinated about using Scrum to address the needs listed above. This creates pressure on the senior management of XYZ Company to shift to Scrum. And this creates a cascading pressure on middle management, junior management, and finally on our teams to be Agile. The team doesn't necessarily have an awareness of the Agile values, but they need to be Agile, as this is a clear mandate of senior management and the voice of the client. They start holding daily Scrum, sprint planning, and retrospective meetings without a clear vision of the end goals or their purpose. The burn-downs literally burn down these Wet Scrum teams. Sizing seems alien to them. They aren't sure about the roles of the product owner and the ScrumMaster. They believe they are self-organized, but they need some manager to manage their work.

In a nutshell, they are "Agile" as being demanded by the client (or management); however, they are miles away from being Agile. This is a sad state and is cruel for the team. Gradually, the team will feel that the meetings are senseless. For example, if they are regularly taking on more stories during the sprints, the sprint planning meetings lose their purpose and become a waste of time. Similarly, if the daily stand-ups last for 30 minutes, this is a clear waste of the time for the entire team (30 minutes times X number of team members daily).

In the long run, the team will start burning out. They will lose focus and motivation, and the product will fall from creative mode to survival mode.

And . . . everybody will blame Agile (read: Scrum) for this failure. However, if the people involved do not want to make the product/project a successful one, it will be a sure failure no matter which method you use.

Closing note

Competition is high, so companies try everything to make new customers and to sustain the old ones as long as possible. This includes shifting to newer formats such as Scrum, Kanban, etc. However, this kills the creativity, innovation, vision, human spirit, and motivation of the people who actually create the product or execute the project.

Agile was born to empower people and their communication, and this is lost in Wet Scrum.

Wake up now! - See more at: https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2013/december/wet-scrum

Agile? Ask "why" first!

By Anton Rossouw.

I like the word “Agile”. It positively amplifies implied action, energy, and change. It also gets the change sceptics talking (we have always done it, it will not work, we have done it before, its not we us) !

I also believe Agile is a “strange attractor” ( Chaos Theory) that can be applied in social complex systems as a meme that attracts organisational behaviours towards the point in a basin where “newness” emerges. Emergent newness is uncertain and can be hugely disruptive or greatly beneficial. 

Dangerous roller coaster ride !

Caution is in order because Agile transformation can be a roller coaster ride where you must hang on for dear life!

Before getting on to the roller coaster ask “Why”. Don't get on until solid answers are articulated and a clear destination is envisaged.

Reasons why not to get on the roller coaster are:

1. It's a new and interesting fad not be missed.
2. Lots of cool people seem to be doing it and having fun.

One thing about Agile is that it will change your organisation, so we need to do it for the right reasons and for the better!

I found many of those right reasons in Stephen Wageners book Adventures in the Sea of Complexity. It explains in a humorous and engaging way what the new Agile world order looks like.

The story reminds me of one of my all time favourite poems - Lewis Carols The Hunting of the Snark.

Royal Family of the Kingdom of Mismanagement

In the book one meets the rulers and inhabitants of the Kingdom of Mismanagement, a sovereign island nation. They live in denial of the surrounding Sea of Complexity that rages to create chaos in the island. King Schedule and Queen Urgency govern with an iron fist.  Their son the fierce Dark Prince of Finance enforces control. A myriad of other characters prop up the Kingdom. You will meet the Crown Prince of Engineering, The Countess of Change, the band of Process Monkeys, Mr Continuous Degradation and the Grumpy Old Men of Influencers .

The story amplifies the undertones of modern corporate life on to Dave Snowdens Cynefin model, bringing it to life in a way that leads to unexpected emergent praxis. It also amplifies the important element of fun in the workplace as an alternative to simplistic debilitating seriousness.

You will also meet the elephant in the room. They are more common than one may realise!

Elephant in the room !

This book has offered me many poignant answers to “Why Agile?” as it illustrates what needs to change and how it needs to change.

Get a few copies for your company today and distribute it around. Prep the network for change.  Be brave enough for the roller coaster ride but make sure you Inform - Select - Confirm at first.

Embark on a fun journey for all ! 

Mediocre Managers Manifesto

By Anton Rossouw.

I have had the privilege over the past 30 years or so to work with many humane, inspiring and energising managers and leaders.

Since studying Industrial and Organisational Psychology and Computer Science in the early 80's back at university it has always been my hope that management science (with some technology) will foster the development of better managers. However of late I have not seen much evidence of that.

So in homage to the great leaders that inspired me I decided to create an “anti-” view that can be used to tacitly amplify what “good” leadership looks like as the mirror image i.e. “bad”. As a pattern I used the Manifesto for Agile Software Development (representing those on the good side).

Reflecting on my past career I must also confess that at times I caught (like a bad cold) some traits from the not-so-great managers I worked with because it seemed a good idea at the time and the accepted “way we do things here”. I now recognise that one should never take on bad behaviours but stand firm and be brave enough to change it, even though it means you may lose your job (yep its not as easy as that especially when its about money).

After all is said and done to get the “job done”, I always hope that I leave my workspace as happier places where I helped my teams in some way develop and grow to their potential.

Now for the Mediocre Managers Manifesto for creating Mayhem and leading the organisation up Schitt Creek without a paddle:

We are uncovering strident ways to work by doing it and forcing others to do it. Through these ways we have come to value:

Command-and-control over agility and self-organisation.

Passive aggressive conflict over collaboration.

Arguing the details over working the big picture.

Being promoted over delivering value.

Blunt answers over thinking what’s best.

Information secrecy over transparency.

Talking incessantly over listening intently.

That is, while there is most value in the items on the left, there is little value on the right but we will say we do it even though we don’t.

We follow these principles:

• Me, myself and I as the supreme manager always know best.
• Always blindly follow the bosses’ orders because they know best.
• People are annoying but considered as resources to be consumed and discarded.
• Get the job done at any cost but remain true to yourself by using manipulation, throwing tantrums, and whinging.
• Playing people off against each other is an important and fun game.
• Bantering in a critically logical way will be used to belittle, confuse and disorientate the team, and when that fails because they have better answers, then emotional blackmail must be applied.
• When I don't understand something then it is their fault.
• Vendors and suppliers are important because they are someone to blame when my team stuffs up and I don't want to lose many of my team members in one go.
• With power comes responsibility to weed out clever, considerate and open people. They have no place in this world and must be taught a lesson.
• Apathy must be applied to protect us from commitment.
• We believe in our own rhetoric as enforceable doctrine for everyone else to obey.
• Knowingly withholding acknowledgment and approval motivates people to try harder next time.
• Managers are not paid to foster happiness at work, rather spend their time growing empires and attacking others empires.
• My smartphone is at any one time more interesting than what anyone is trying to say in any meeting, except if it is a bosses meeting.
• In particular don't trust individual workers but specifically not teams because they may over time wield more influence than the manager. Facilitate infighting within teams to reduce their effectiveness.  

The Mediocre Managers Manifesto can be used as an assessment checklist tool for managers “where the shoe fits”. If only a couple items apply then there is hope and behaviours can easily be ameliorated, but if most items apply then major therapy and years of coaching would be required to become a “normal” manager again.

To further explore the "bad" side of management one of the best books about it is by Barbara Kellerman. Believe that good management is possible. Inside every bad manager maybe there is a great leader trying to get out!

Happy Remote Workers

By Anton Rossouw.

We are of the firm belief that the happiness quotient of remote workers can be improved dramatically. We know that the people in development centres and outsourced offices in places like Bangalore, Ho Chi Minh City and Manila will grasp at any opportunity to contribute more to projects and teams at "head-office" in Melbourne or Sydney.

A little help and support to engage them into the fold will go a long way. We think we have a good innovative part of the answer that can help overcome the tyranny of distance!

Our Double Robotics remote worker avatar has now been alive for three weeks. Her name is Melly, and her purpose is to help remote workers work in happier ways by being their representative and avatar where they are needed.

It was easy to bring her into life with the help of an iPad or two and a WiFi and 4G internet connection.

She is a delight! Very friendly and agile, always available when you need her in meetings or just for a quick chat. She gets around the office quite nimbly and can manoeuvre herself almost everywhere, but she is a bit wary of power cables and stairs.

She has really good hearing and a commanding voice that can effectively be used to make her presence known. Meet Melly in action.

She is a key ambassador of our Happy Melly Australasia remote worker happiness product, and we will be pleased to introduce her to your office and your remote workers, be it at a school, remote mine site, head-office or satellite office. Contact us today for a chat with Melly!

The Network is the System

By Anton Rossouw.

Our tribal business model is based on the anthropology and sociology of  tribes as networks.

Therefore we hold Network Theory as well as Complex Systems Theory dear to our hearts in our consulting practice, and often offer the combination as a great explanation of how leaders could understand  the true holistic nature of organisational structure, innovation incubation, opportunity discovery and directional flux influence for strategic direction setting. It also works well to model the complexity of business groups such as programs and projects. 

One of our most valuable primary paradigms towards understanding enterprise dynamics is to view organisations as a Complex Adaptive Systems that comprise a range of connected and linked nodes (agents) represented as a Network, as opposed to use the traditional simplistic hierarchical representation.

However, hierarchy remains a valid representation because the effect of hierarchy on our thinking can be used as a visualisation and sense-making cue to overlay on to the organisation as a network. When that is done, very different perspectives emerge from the visualisation particularly uncovering the nodes where true leadership and influence reside. This leadership and influence to best stimulate adaptation and innovation in organisations is most often not located in the traditional executive management structures as most people expect, but within the organisation in unexpected nodes.

Therefore an understanding of networks and how they operate in the real world is a very important contributor toward facilitating effective future strategies and innovative change. It is often better to harness the power of the network than to utilise the hierarchy.

A great way to start understanding the power of network visualisation, is to start with one’s own LinkedIn profile “network” which can be graphically visualised by a tool developed by the LinkedIn Labs. Our brains are great at pattern recognition and networks are great at offering patters for our brain to play with. As an example the clusters in my network are related to the various professions, technologies, industries and organisations that I have been involved in during my career, including a recently connected small network going back thirty years to the friends that I left school with and went to University with. I can with this visualisation explore complex connectivity that I was previously unaware of.

A great lecture on the importance of networks and what it can tell us (it explains the world!) can be found on the Santa Fe Institutes' (The best source for Complexity Science) YouTube channel - presented by Prof. Mark Newman - one of my favourites clips that I often re-visit. 

Scrum is Anti-Fragile

By Anton Rossouw.

Some months back I read Nicholas Nassim Taleb’s latest epic tome “Anti-Fragile - Things that gain from disorder” .

I bought the book because I loved his previous two books “Fooled By Randomness” and “The Black Swan”. And his mini poetic diversion “The Bed of Procrustes” is a great diversional romp into the philosophical space.

Image - Amazon

I have no doubt that he is a brilliant thinker and should be placed close to the top of the Pioneers list of the worlds most influential people (he is not listed yet).

The other person I see as a peer is Dave Snowden. I would love to see a serious philosophical debate between the two of them but suspect it will start in the sphere of  massive disagreement and end where they eventually agree on everything !

Diversions aside, I found the book and the concept of Anti-Fragile interesting but challenging.

Perhaps my brain is fragile when it comes to new hard-hitting conceptual arguments like this. I could at first not warm my mind to what Anti-Fragile could mean, and the closest I got was perhaps the words “toughness”, "agility", “resilience", “robustness”, "adaptation" and "evolution" which I was well acquainted with.

I discarded most of those words except Resilience because the other words did not carry enough multi layered meaning to approach Anti-Fragility with.

Resilience also made most sense because I read Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy's book "Resilience - Why Things Bounce Back" directly before I read Anti-Fragile.

Image - Amazon

I then toyed with trying to understand the antithesis of Anti-Fragile and came with “Anti-Agile” and also for some reason thought of the word “Government”.

As I plowed through the pages it became clear that there was no readily available synonym or close-fit word to describe what Anti-Fragile means. So here follows my summary in the terms of Complex Systems (the living type):

• It is a particular property of a Complex System as well as a transitionary condition of becoming.
• It is the ability of a Complex System to increase its fitness and become stronger the more it is challenged, exercised  and too some extent damaged.
• The Complex System can survive a lot of damage and abuse due to impacts from conflicts emerging from the environment it is in, from within, and encountered by other Complex Systems in the competive space.
• It is a learning COmplex System that is emotionally charged and energises, and best flourishes when pressure is applied to it.

Reflecting on our Agility, Innovation and Sustainability practice points of view I could not quite  understand how Anti-Fragile concepts can be integrated and what we could learn from it, and left it at that in a puzzled state.

Then one night when watching TV, some nature program documentary again, it struck me !

Waterfall projects are Fragile and Scrum projects are Anti-Fragile.

I think the seeds of the emergent thoughts were sown when I spoke to a colleague about Takeuchi and Nonakas' 1986 HBR paper "The New New Product Development Game" (worth a read for some deep insights into Agility) where they explained the difference between an Agile approach and Fragile approach (not their words) as the difference between a rugby team moving forward and gaining ground over a large field as a unit even while being attacked by the opposition, and a relay race where one runner at a time passes the baton on a set track to the next runner, and if one runner drops the baton or stumbles then the race is lost.

A relay team is thus a more fragile system than a scrum team.

So Scrum from an Agile sense as well a rugby team is Anti-Fragile because:

• Its a living system compring human agends who move as a team and not as any single individual.
• It is adaptive, self organising and self re-organising.
• It learns and reforms through iterative engagement.
• The more you exercise it the better its performance becomes.

This mindset could also be applied on our organisational systems I suspect. I will find out when I hopefully attend the Nassim Taleb and Yaneer Bar-Yam NECSI executive education session later this year.  

Braveheart

By Anton Rossouw.

I enjoyed the 1995’s semi historic and mostly fictional Epic movie Braveheart starring one of our favourite Autralian actors namely Mel Gibson originally from the Mad Max post apocalyptic smash hit.

Playing William Wallace he epitomises the inspirational, energetic, passionate and “brave-at-heart” leader who with passionate resolve and action starts a deep movement of change.

In William Wallace’s case he paves the way for the liberation of Scotland against the tyranny of King Edward “Longshanks” of England. At the end of the movie he is offered to submit to the English King but he remains stalwart with a last cry of “Freedom” that rallies emotions and energy that leads to liberation.

Movie poster : www.imdb.com

The movie also brought notions of what Agile leadership may look like  as a response to changing oppressive traditional culture, with focused alignment, surgical change, stealthy guerrilla thinking, quick delivery, rapid learning and finding new ways to attack the problems of the past. So I wondered if I can think of examples of corporate leaders that bravely face systemic and cultural challenges and remain focused to push through to enact an almost impossible transformation to an Agile culture.

I think one such leader is Partrick Eltridge, the Chief Information Officer of Telstra who embarked a couple of years ago to turn their ICT services towards Agility.

Telstra is Australia's largest telecommunications services provider as well as a huge consumer of ICT technology and labour. Many Agilists including myself have been watching Telstra's journey to Agility with frankly, a bit of skepticism.  After all, how do you get an elephant to pirhouette?

As CIO he took on the task to transform the IT services divisions to embrace an Agile mindset and practice it at the core of its culture. This was a big challenge because Telstra was commonly considered as a slow moving command-and-control driven dinosaurian like bureaucracy that told their customers what was good for them. The old IT adage ”Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM” did not apply to the Telstra of yesteryear. How wrong I was!

Telstra has been on an Agile transformation journey initiated in 2010 by the then CIO John McInnerley (now at NBNCO) and implemented by his successor Patrick Eltridge, formerly the CIO of SEEK.

The change is stark because the Telstra of today is vastly different to the one of the past. It is now infused by Agility that puts customers first. However as with any enterprise change of this nature and complexity, it will take more time to perfect, but it is well on the way to achieving Agility.

How do I know this ? Because much of the intricacies and learning’s from this journey was presented at the last few Agile Australia conferences where Patrick featured as a prominent thought leader.

The 2013 Agile Australia conference offered us updates on the latest Telstra insights where Patrick contributed in an on stage interview. His leadership team (Lalitha Biddulph, Em Campbell-Pretty, and Jenny Wood) also presented inspirational stories about their journey and achievements at Telstra. 

During his interview he articulated his total focus on aligning the IT organisation with the business and their customers, changing to a culture where teams are less fearful of risk taking, and comfortably adapt to changing conditions, and feel empowered to develop their own skills and expertise. This changed the management culture to an  embracing style of leadership characterised by collaboration, openness, inclusion, and a diversity of thinking. Management is now less about control and more about leadership that foster collaboration, and trusts their teams to innovate and deliver. The approach is now all about being curious, receptive, a generalist, and ask first what the customer may want, then deliver it.

The IT press also offered articles on how focuseds Telstra approached the cultural transformation, particularly making way for a no-blame culture that encourages experimentation and learning. 

What I gained from following Patricks and Telstras journey is that if you are really passionate about Agile transformation because you know and trust deep down that it works best, and you are passionate and brave about it and put yourself forward as a leader, then you will change practices, minds and hearts at deep cultural levels which will delight your  stakeholders and customers.

And as a bonus you get the elephant to pirouette!

The Chief Innovation Officer

By Anton Rossouw.

Many organisations today banter the word “Innovation” around somewhere in their vision or mission statements or in their marketing jargon, but rarely is Innovation given any justice in the corporate world. 

In reality and in practice Innovation is a throw away word that’s used frequently in corporate speak to sound cool, but not taken seriously. Other similar lip-service wasted words which should be taken seriously is "Strategy", "Empowerment", "Agility", and phrases like “Customer Focus” and “Our People are our Most Valuable Asset”. This stems from executive teams that manage as a closed shop with a siege mentality.

I also love the way that one of my favourite cartoon artists, Tom Fishburne, puts it:

But Innovation MUST be taken seriously, and people are our most valuable asset, and we must focus on our customers because together they are our primary sources of Innovation. 

We have examples of highly Innovative companies such as Apple, Ideo and Samsung that take Innovation seriously. How do they do it?

Innovation is the one “thing” that could generate that one little spark that can be amplified to save a troubled organisation and transform it to flourish in response to the chaos and complexity of modern business dynamics. And Innovation is also a confusing thing because;

• What is Innovation really?
• Who are the Innovators?
• What does an Innovator look like? 
• What do we Innovate with?
• How do we make Innovation happen?

Why not do an innovation perception check and ask 5 managers in your company to talk about Innovation in their workplaces... I have done that and most often than not had 5 different and fairly confused stories. However, as always Wikipedia provides us with a good plausible starting point towards understanding what Innovation can be from a rational, theoretical and practical point of view. Its a good base top start really getting to grips with Innovation, but that in itself is the fun part of the journey. Yes we have alluded to it – we believe Innovation is not a thing but a journey.

We have based our Innovation transformation model on Complexity Science because we believe that Innovation is an emergent phenomena of a Complex Adaptive System, and should be approached as such using techniques that are aligned to complexity theory.

We bundled a group of aligned complexity aligned and derived concepts together that explains to innovation as a Constellation of Creativity. The concepts bundled into the model are Infusion, Messyness, Ecosystems, Networks, Evolution and Exaptation, Creation, Discovery, Technology, Processes, People, Communication and Stories, Deductive and Abductive Reasoning, Design Thinking, and Cognitive Psychology.

Another core concept in our model is that Innovation should have a leader. After all Apple had Steve Jobs who opened them up to be known as one of the worlds leading Innovators. But was Steve Jobs the only or the sole Innovator, or was he only part of an Innovation network?

I suspect the real Innovators were the people in the organisation that could bring Innovation to bear. So in answer to the question who the Innovators are, we believe it it is all of us. Every one of us has the capability to Innovate. Its in our DNA as creative inventive survival driven organisms.

But an innovation leader is still required to help unlock the potential in each of us. The task of this leader is to infuse Innovation into the fabrik of the organisation, and to be Innovative in itself towards creating the conditions for Innovation to emerge from the organisation. We must not allow one small Innovation to be missed because it could have been the "one" to change it all for the better.

If this person was to be given a standard organisation title, they would be called the CIO - Chief Innovation Officer. The job of the CIO is to declare the company as "Open for Innovation".

Lets make Melly Shum Happy!

By Anton Rossouw.

I met Melly Shum some years back, around 1991 as far I can remember, on a cold, damp and windy morning in the industrial city of Rotterdam.

I came around the corner of Witte de Withstraat into Boomgaardstraat, and almost walked into her. When I glanced at her she responded with a faint smile a bit like a modern day Mona Lisa, and a friendly one at that. She was sitting seemingly comfortable and confident at where she works, one hand familiarly rested on an accountants calculator.

A neat and organised workplace, lack of clutter, with professionalism and poise.

• Who was she?
• And what kind of job does she do?
• What inspires her?
• What does she aspire to?
• What is her future?
• What does she want to achieve? 

Then a feeling of dread flowed over me-because I glanced to the right of her and noticed that She Hates Her Job ! What a shame, what a waste! She probably spends at least 8 hours of her work day, week by week and year in year out hating every hour. My only hope for her is that the hours she spends away from work at least she loves.

I met Melly Schum in an artwork by Ken Lum. It looks like your typical advertising poster – just more striking because there is no glitz or glamour.

Sculpture International Rotterdam - photography: Toni Burgering

Maybe Ken Lum as artist, which I believe has astute observation powers and compassion for humankind, was commenting on the industrialisation and de-humanisation of our institutions and organisations, and used this striking advertising imagery to tell us the story of the modern workplace.

That is the story of dominant power creating cultural deserts of machine-like workplaces with soft organic living beings substituting oil, steel, heat and steam. Machines can be built, tuned, manipulated, and broken and discarded when they have served their purpose. What resonates is that the many metaphors of business today reminds of optimised machine like efficiency from the Industrial age and the world wars where machines were used to affect massive destructive power.

Well humans aren’t machine parts, they are complex organisms with emotions, consciousness, self awareness and longing for better futures. I went away with a sense of frustration, thinking about how the "system" can be changed, and if we realistically can have energised, enthusiastic, inspired and happy people in workplaces. People that love their jobs. People that work in places where Profits are not put before People.

Jurgen Appelo, a leading thinker in complexity and business dynamics also met Melly Schum, and decided to do something about it. He created a movement for change, a network of energetic, like-minded but diverse business people across the world that together work towards changing the world of work for the better.

Jurgen called this the Happy Melly Network.

We are proud to be part of the Happy Melly network. We believe that it is good business to have happy people work in our companies. We believe that the workplace of the future will not be described as machines, but as living organisms where value is constantly created by people that like what they do.

We will work hard to create healthy sustainable business ecosystems that will bring about the necessary change. We will help, and in turn be helped by inspired executives and managers in forward thinking organisations to ensure that all those Malcomes and Mellys everywhere love their jobs. We love this job, and its good business!