Here’s a situation I’ve seen many times. Generally in large rather than small organisations, but I don’t think a company has to be huge to suffer from some variant of this. Someone (let’s call them “Worker”) needs access to a resource to get their job done. They have to apply to a second person (”Gatekeeper”) to get this done. For some reason, there’s an organisational policy in place that determines that Worker is not allowed access to the resource. Somewhere in the organisation there’s a third person (who we’ll call “Deus ex Machina”, or “Deus” for short) who has the authority to override or change the policy.

Examples of a resource might be (say) a particular server, system or VPN, and the policy may hold that workers of a particular sort (say, contractors rather than permanent staff) are not permitted access to that resource for security reasons. It’s important to realise that the request is not an arbitrary one - our Worker really does need access to the resource to work effectively. Other than this, the details aren’t important - I’m sure you’ve seen this situation, and can fill in your own examples.
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Well, maybe not (or not yet) but this is the best response I’ve seen to the UK government’s interim report on Digital Britain. The report is low on vision, low on ambition (2mb for goodness sake!), shows little understanding of how digital network technology is being used today, and seems far too tied up with sustaining the existing business interests of content providers.

2009 could be the year that a number of big organisations make a success of Agile. This will be because - at the right level in those companies - there will be people who fundamentally understand the principles, have had experience applying them, and (here’s the nub) are effective, inspirational, persuasive leaders. Pushing agile out beyond development teams and single projects is organisational change, and this doesn’t succeed without clear need and great - visible - leadership.* The clear need is provided by the turmoil in the world of business and finance: companies that get this right will survive strengthened, those that don’t will perish or at best stagger through.
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A small (and belated) selection of what worked for me in 2008…
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Here’s an interesting project about staying mentally fit (I think “fit” is a better sense here than “healthy”, btw).

For the record, my five-a-day for keeping the engine running:

1: Read - blogs, books, fiction, non-fiction, work-related or not.
2: Play guitar - of course
3: Walk - open air, outside, whatever the weather. Clear the mind and get perspective
4: Solve something - a crossword, math or logic puzzle.
5: Write something

Thanks to Kevin McGuire who noted this talk from TED by Evelyn Glennie in a comment a few posts back - inspiring on so many levels, which is why I’m reposting it. Hard to pick out individual moments of greatness (her work on behalf of disabled children in music and education is remarkable), but one of the less prominent observations - that the harder you hold a drumstick, the more tired you’ll get and the less sound you’ll make - teaches a lot of lessons.

And here’s another one that I’ve been pointing people at recently - Tim Brown on creativity and play, reminding us - again - of what we once had as children, what we lose as adults, and giving us permission to be playful in the pursuit of innovation.

This survey as reported in the Guardian worries me. Even accepting the caveats noted by the writer, the fact that 29% of teachers disagree with this

Creationism and intelligent design are not part of the science national curriculum programmes of study and should not* be taught as science.

is grounds for real concern.

*oh, and the article misquotes this by omitting the “not” …

From a great blog on Britannica by Michael Vesch:

I marvel at what a remarkable achievement it is to bring hundreds of otherwise expressive, exuberant, and often rebellious youths into a single room and have them sit quietly in straight rows while they listen to the authority with the microphone. Such an achievement could not be won by an eager teacher armed with technology alone. It has taken years of acclimatizing our youth to stale artificial environments, piles of propaganda convincing them that what goes on inside these environments is of immense importance, and a steady hand of discipline should they ever start to question it. Alfred North Whitehead called it “soul murder.”

The other day, looking at some music theory workbooks (ah, the dear old ABRSM) destined for my wife’s piano pupils led me to thinking about how it is that every four-year-old is visually, verbally and sonically hyper-inventive, and yet by the time we’re adults we’re so out of touch with innovation that we need to attend courses and read books on it. The AB workbooks were a case in point - dull, neat, and so very adult, a shame to mess them up with anything as freeform as writing… and very intolerant of mistakes.

Taking a cue from some of the facilitation work we do in team training: so much education is on the basis of “yes, but…” - Yes, but you need to write neatly now. Yes, but that’s not the way to draw a face. Yes, but you’re only allowed to put these sounds together this way. At some point thinking about technique and mechanics is essential, of course, but how would it be if this were approached in the spirit of “yes, and…”. Yes, these words aren’t in the dictionary, but what might they mean? Yes, and if you take that bunch of notes and do this then you have all these new possibilities?

Lessons here for team and corporate innovation too … next post!

I was reminded by seeing this Rembrandt self-portrait in the flesh last weekend of the amazing and uplifting effect of outrageous virtuosity. Here’s the artist at around 22, painting one of his first self-portraits, in a way completely at odds with the more formal portraits he and others were producing at the time. Lit from behind, the hair details scratched into the paint, a gaze that’s felt rather than seen, and a wall as background whose texture takes on a life of its own.
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