Here are my Summer Reading picks for those who go for both engaging narrative and penetrating insight. I’m recommending two distinctly different books by writers who don’t want to merely inform their readers; they want to shape the conversation. Both authors accomplished what they set out to do.

Tim Harford | Adapt – Why Success Always Starts with Failure

“Today’s challenges simply cannot be tackled with ready-made solutions and expert opinions; the world has become far too unpredictable and profoundly complex. Instead, we must adapt—improvise rather than plan, work from the bottom up rather than the top down, and take baby steps rather than great leaps forward.” ~Tim Harford

In his new book, Adapt – Why Success Always Starts with Failure, British economist Tim Harford of the Financial Times (The “Undercover Economist”) tackles a subject that’s close to my heart, the necessity of experimenting, failing and responding constructively to failure.

It’s become fashionable in recent years for American business writers to trumpet the virtues of failure. This is a radical departure from our culture’s traditional mythology where heroes walked with a swagger of infallibility. Today, we’re acknowledging that both trial and error play a key role in problem solving. Our new mantra is the old Japanese proverb: fall down seven times, stand up eight.

In Adapt, Harford argues that failure has always been useful in various ways, but in this age of complex challenges and pervasive fragility it’s vitally important. In our interconnected world where failure occurs frequently and its impact is more threatening, it’s imperative to recognize and adapt to errors.

“We face a difficult challenge,” he says. “The more complex and elusive our problems are, the more effective trial and error becomes, relative to the alternatives. Yet it is an approach that runs counter to our instincts.”

Harford, a trenchant storyteller, recounts several illustrative cases about how failure led to success. He tells how the U.S. military learned from its early tactical mistakes in Iraq to mount a more adaptive, successful counterinsurgency campaign.

In this instance, the takeaway for practitioners, both in and outside the military, is to do a better job transferring the “local knowledge” acquired in the field (or shop floor) to the command levels at their organizations.

Harford contends that there are three critical steps to failing and adapting successfully: Try new things knowing that some will invariably fail, make failures “survivable,” and be sure you know when you’ve failed. These steps apply to solving a wide range of problems.

Like Steven Johnson (Where Good Ideas Come From) who advances an elegant argument for innovating through experimentation, Harford builds a compelling case for intelligent tinkering. The trick isn’t to avoid mistakes at all cost but to learn and apply their lessons.

That our society is becoming comfortable with failure is a sign of maturity. It’s hard to fathom that until recently, admitting failure was rare, and encouraging it was anathema.

Sherry Turkle | Alone Together

In Alone Together — Why We Expect More from Technology And Less From Each Other, Sherry Turkle takes a critical look at how we interact with technology. Turkle is an author, clinical psychologist and an MIT scholar who leads MIT’s Initiative on Technology and Self.

After interviewing hundreds of adults and children, Turkle concludes that technology encourages people’s tendency to form superficial, less demanding on-line relationships in lieu of complicated, real bonds that are riskier and which require a greater investment of time and emotional energy. The implications, she concludes, merit our attention.

“Once we remove ourselves  from the flow of physical, messy, untidy life — and both robotics and networked life do that — we become less willing to get out there and take a chance,” she observes.

Teenagers are texting obsessively and many of us are shifting attention toward social networking and away from more substantial relationships. The consequences are troublesome for Turkle. She laments, “Networked, we are together, but so lessened are our expectations of each other that we can feel utterly alone.”

Turkle’s concerns echo those of Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, who contends that the Internet fosters a culture of surfing the Net rather than deep reading, and superficial thinking rather than focus and reflection. Like Carr, she asks us to consider the effects of how we use technology so that we can make choices that better serve our interests.

Despite the trends that she notices, Turkle is unaffected by the prospects. She’s not afraid that we’ll disengage entirely from real world relationships in a dystopian future, but she does think we ought to pay attention to how technology is mediating social ties.

Turkle encourages looking at behavior with a longer lens and drawing our own conclusions. The images are sometimes disquieting but her analysis is measured: “We’ve gone through tremendously rapid change, and some of these things just need a little sorting out.”

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Want more info on this subject?

Sherry Turkle on The Colbert Report; and an audio clip of Tim Harford interviewed by economist Russ Roberts of George Mason University.

A recent post (5/4/11) on how the U.S. military learned from failure, excerpt: The planners [of the SEAL mission in Abbottabad, Pakistan] had, in fact, learned from the disastrous rescue attempt of U.S. hostages in Tehran in 1980 that was undermined by a helicopter accident. Learning from prior mistakes is essential in effective contingency planning.

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The uprisings in the Arab world are capturing worldwide attention not only because we’re witnessing history in the making, but because the changes are bound to affect us all. We live in a world that’s interconnected in ways that were hard to fathom only a few years ago. Interconnectedness is creating new challenges with social implications that traditional institutions and leaders aren’t equipped to handle.

The clashes across the Middle East and North Africa are only the latest example of unforeseen events that reverberate across regional boundaries. Before that, the sub-prime mortgage crisis in the U.S. sparked a deep global recession that affected more sectors than anything economists had seen before. As some economies began recovering during the following year, Europe’s mounting debt crisis triggered  a cascade of new problems in distant economies.

Today’s challenges, geopolitical or otherwise, are more difficult to predict, understand and handle than the kinds of problems we’ve seen until recently. As the world grows more interconnected, we become more exposed to what design theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber called “wicked problems” which are substantially harder to define and solve than so-called “tame” problems.

Force Majeure

Wicked problems are a major force in today’s world. Many of us working on a global stage recognize that the kinds of challenges we face now are wicked by nature. Tackling them requires greater creativity and cooperation with our peers. Solving wicked problems is the defining challenge of our age.

Wicked problems are vexing because they have multiple, interrelated causes that can’t be solved by traditional tools and methods.  They are, by definition, unique and novel.  Wicked problems occur in a social context where stakeholders tend to disagree about the underlying causes thus hampering efforts to reach an effective solution.

Wicked problems affect nearly every organization and leader today, yet many leaders honed their problem-solving skills when most issues could be readily circumscribed and methodically solved.

Roger Martin observes, “There was a time when leaders shared a sense that the problems they faced could be managed through the application of well-known rules and linear logic.  Those days are gone.  Most of today’s important problems have a significant wicked component, making progress impossible if we persist in applying inappropriate methods and tools to them.”

Lean-software developer Mary Poppendieck puts it another way:  “The easy problems have been solved.  Designing systems is difficult because there is no consensus on what the problems are, let alone how to solve them.”

Wicked problems demand new ways of collaborating. Wicked problem-solvers must first seek to gain a common understanding with their counterparts. The new skills required include self-reflection, consensus-building and mobilizing others. My hunch is that relational competencies will be more critical measures of future leaders.

“Wicked problems call for us to harness all the creativity and knowledge at our disposal,” says Martin.  “Whether we choose to fight one another or work together to confront threats and opportunities, our fate and common wealth are in our hands.”

***

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Want more?

Check out the University of Toronto Rotman School’s Rotman Magazine, WINTER 2009, “Wicked Problems” including a feature by John Camillus (“Strategy as a Wicked Problem”) and an interview with Jeff Conklin of CogNexus.  Conklin identifies six characteristics of wicked problems:

1. The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution
2. Wicked problems have no “stopping rule”
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong
4. Every wicked problem is essentially novel and unique
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one shot operation”
6. Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions

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In tracking the activities and relative successes of his subjects, Dunbar found that the greatest number of breakthroughs occurred not when scientists were peering into their microscopes, as one might suspect, but when they were talking with one another at meetings.

Why? When chatting with their colleagues who worked on other projects, the researchers tended to re-conceptualize their own work to be understood. In doing so, new ideas emerged and, occasionally, some were fruitful.

Johnson concludes that social networks, like those of Dunbar’s researchers, engender new ideas, or to put it another way, “chance favors the connected mind”.

Similarly, Matt Ridley (“When ideas have sex”) observes that the free exchange of ideas on the shop floor leads to breakthroughs. Idea exchange propagates recombinant ideas. (As technology brings us together, he argues, more of our ideas are likely to “meet and mate” creating greater innovation.)

Most of us can think of examples when discussing our work with colleagues from other practice areas forced us to translate our thinking so that it made sense to them. Perhaps they followed-up with questions that prompted us to step back and re-imagine what we do, if only briefly. In the process, a subtle but important shift may have occurred.

The mingling of people and their ideas is a crucible for new ways of thinking. It’s possible that bouncing ideas with colleagues over a morning coffee before we scurry back to our offices may be the most productive part of our workday.

It’s both counter-intuitive and reassuring to learn that conversation, one of the most basic human activities, and one that’s easy to stage, offers the most potential for engendering new ideas. With that in mind, let’s enjoy our morning coffee together, shall we?

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Want More?

Here’s Steven Johnson’s TED Talk and Kevin Dunbar’s paper (PDF), “What Scientific Thinking Reveals About Cognition”.

Have a look at Matt Ridley’s intriguing new book is The Rational Optimist.

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It’s been a week since the Port-au-Prince earthquake and images streaming in are helping us to grasp the region’s boundless misery and desperation. Hundreds of thousands have perished, and despite our best efforts, more will die and suffer for myriad reasons including the inability to deliver relief where it’s needed.

Despite the gut-wrenching news, it’s heartening to learn that determined, inventive people are finding ways to alleviate the suffering and, in some cases, save lives.

One of the more interesting stories is about an open-source project called Ushahidi which takes its name from the Swahili word for “testimony”.  The software, developed during the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008, enables text messages to be mapped by time and location.  Anyone with an internet connection, regardless of the device they use to access it, can send a text message, an image or an email. Ushahidi can also store data offline for later synchronization.

During its initial deployment in Kenya, Ushahidi was used to record hundreds of incidents of violence that might have otherwise gone undetected. It’s since been used to document incidents in the War in Gaza,the Vote Report India and Pak Voices (violence in Pakistan).  Ushahidi has also been used to track crime using its Atlanta Crime Maps.

But the application met its most demanding test after the earthquake in Haiti when the country’s mobile networks were down. Even after coverage was restored, the Ushahidi team realized that they needed a local SMS short code for the system to be widely accessible.

With a little help from our friends

Fortunately, Ushahidi has friends in high places. The team turned to Josh Nesbit, Co-Founder of FrontlineSMS:Medic, who used Twitter to reach a contact on the ground who was on his way to local mobile carrier DigiCel’s command center. With the help of the U.S. State Department, Ushahidi secured short code 4636 from DigiCel which is now being used to record the times, locations, and accounts of incidents.

Ushahidi updates its Haiti incident map with reports of medical emergencies, security threats, relief efforts and logistical bottlenecks.  It provides a filter for mapping earthquake survivors and deaths. Ushahidi also aggregates Tweets and streams from YouTube and Flickr, all of which can serve to orient first responders and relief workers while giving the rest of us a granular picture of what’s going on in the region.

Ushahidi teams in Kenya and Uganda are working around the clock to verify data from Haiti, and a university in Geneva, Switzerland is establishing a situation room there. Meanwhile, Ushahidi’s Boston team has approached Harvard, MIT and other institutions seeking volunteers to handle the massive volume of data pouring in.

As someone interested in how “home grown” technology is used in developing regions, this story is especially gratifying.  Ushahidi is about how inventive people in one developing country have created a simple but powerful “crowd-sourcing” tool to provide assistance in another hemisphere.

I’m concerned that “crisis fatigue” will set in, dampening world interest in supporting Haiti’s relief efforts.  By raising awareness about the on-going challenges in the region, we stand a chance of preventing the potential “disaster after the disaster”.

As this crisis evolves, new unforeseen challenges will arise. Let’s recognize that this is a long-haul operation. Perhaps stories like Ushahidi can serve to focus our attention on the enormous level of humanitarian assistance that’s needed in Haiti, and what we can do about it.

***

Note: Ushahidi is currently seeking volunteers to process incoming SMS reports. Here are instructions to find out how you can help.

> Update (4/6/10):  Here’s an interview with Ushahidi’s Patrick Meier on a range of issues around crisis mapping and validation.

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Want more info about Ushahidi? Here is more on the 4636 SMS emergency code being used in Haiti.

And this is a Forbes piece (11-08), Citizen Voices:  “A Kenyan blogger found a way to get information from the crowd. Now she wants to take the idea to other parts of the world in trouble.”

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Several years ago, I discovered Laurence Gonzalez’s (’03) book, Deep Survival – Who Lives, Who Dies and Why about individuals  surviving “do or die” situations.  Recently, I glanced through it again thinking it might be helpful for business people grappling with the challenges of this economy.  I couldn’t put it down.  Now, I’m  convinced of its value for anyone going through any kind of crisis.

Gonzalez studied hundreds of survival stories and presents many of them in his book. He shares tales of people surviving harrowing crashes and others lost in the wilderness.  Fascinated by their travails, he ponders why some people make it, while others perish? What general lessons can we learn from how the survivors behaved?

Gonzalez finds that one of the key features “deep survivors” possess is the capacity to focus on “doing the next right thing”.  Instead of becoming overwrought, survivors accept what’s happening earlier in the process and focus on extricating themselves.  They reason, “Okay, I’m here. This is really happening. Now I’m going to do the next right thing…”

That principle seems straightforward, but grappling with reality during a crisis was harder for the non-survivors. Victims, overcome by fear, were less adept at accepting their situation.

Many victims are prone to hysteria, while others are immobilized. What differentiates “deep survivors” is their ability to convert their emotions to drive reasonable, helpful action.

Surprisingly, the unlikeliest people sometimes prevail while others who are better trained and equipped don’t. Gonzalez tells the story of a teenage girl, Juliane Koepcke, who was with 91 other passengers aboard a plane that went down in the Peruvian jungle.

Most of the others stayed by the plane thinking it was the right course of action. Isn’t that what we’re told to do in a situation like that? But many of the “rule followers” died waiting to be rescued.  Juliane made a plan to escape through the jungle and she stuck to her plan, eventually meeting up with three hunters who rescued her. Her salvation, according to Gonzalez, was an inner resource, her mindset.

Fear is universal among people in peril. But “deep survivors” like Juliane channel their apprehension into helpful steps.  Gonzalez cites this as one of his “12 rules of survival“.

Deep Survival is gripping despite its being peppered with lots of narrative “switchbacks”.  But, Gonzalez successfully conveys his thesis that it’s not what’s in our backpack that makes the difference, or even what’s in our minds.  It’s something even deeper that counts the most.

Managing a crisis successfully is mostly an inside game. This applies to enduring any kind of peril — being lost in the wilderness, facing a serious illness, or a managing a daunting business crisis. Sooner or later, many of us will likely face a catastrophe of some kind.  If we understand what it takes to produce a better outcome, we stand a better chance of improving our odds.

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While it seems like everything has changed, the axioms of business remain constant. Customers still want exceptional “value” – in fact they’re demanding it. They’re more motivated than ever to look for it. If they can’t get it from you, they’ll go to your rivals. They’ll find value in new, atypical ways to get their needs met.  Help them solve their problems and the market will beat a path to your door.

Delivering exceptional value in lean times requires smarter tools and an atmosphere that encourages collaboration and continuous innovation—always thinking: how can we make this better, cutting out what’s unnecessary.

Winning in this environment isn’t complicated, but it’s not easy either.  There’s no silver bullet— don’t let any consultant or supplier convince you that there is a sophisticated methodology or a killer app that will do the trick. 

Succeeding, more than ever, boils down to empathizing with your customers and figuring out what they want as conditions around them change.  Then deliver it as efficiently as possible while treating them to an experience that’s as pleasing as possible. Of course, that’s easier said than done, but it’s do-able. 

These are certainly interesting times for service providers across industries and regions around the world.  For those with the agility and resources to keep improving their offerings and their customer experiences, new opportunities lie ahead.

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Martin defines integrative thinking as the ability to deal with the tensions of competing solutions to a problem. Instead of choosing one solution at the expense of the other, the practioner generates a solution integrates both solutions.

In his ’07 book, The Opposable Mind, Martin argues that integrative thinking is superior to conventional thinking which consists of “accpeting unattractive and unpleasant tradeoffs”.

This concept is relevant to how government and business leaders ought to approach the financial crisis.  Instead of deciding between implementing tax cuts or a stimulus package – seemingly contradictory models – why not try both?  Instead of businesses merely cutting operating costs, why not implement initatives that preserve high margin business increase customer retention and profit per customer.

Martin considers these issues in an October 8  interview. He applies integrative thinking to the vexing challenges associated with the economic crisis affecting today’s leaders.

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I prefer those big artists’ sketch pads with sharpened, soft lead pencils to illustrate elements in the form of geometric shapes and arrows.

I draw big expansive boxes and arrows pointing to the various elements of complicated problems.  By drawing those shapes and then inspecting them, new relationships emerge. These “emergent properties” seem stifled when typing ideas on a keypad.

I’ve yet to discover digital tools that can be substituted for sketching. Illustrator or InDesign are too cumbersome.  I’ve had success with hosted white-boarding tools when which work fine for collaborating.  But when it comes to  developing fresh ideas, nothing beats the speed and freedom of free-hand sketching.

Once a concept is clarified on paper, it’s translatable to a digital format for sharing with others.  One graphic is worth pages of text.

Why sketching works seems self-evident. For one thing, it’s liberating to be away from the screen while still working.  I enjoy sitting on the front porch in the early morning with a dense cup of French Roast while sketching my what’s next issues.  What a great way to greet the day!  Sketching on airplanes works well, too.

Another thing is that “mistakes,” which would be erased in a digital medium are in tact and they’re often crucial to  creative discovery. And what a useful way to observe one’s pattern of thinking by inspecting the progression of “problem models”.

I was going to add something about tapping the creative tension between design thinking and systems thinking but, in retrospect, I’m noteven sure what that means.  But sketching’s guiding principle is: if you can’t explain something with a simple drawing, it’s probably not ready for prime time.

Sketching feels effortless. Maybe because I’ve had so much time to perfect it.  Afterall, I learned the technique in kindergarten.

Still, it does bring to mind Czikzentmihalyi’s concept of “flow” and that exhilerating sense of timelessness, concentration and engagement we enjoy when we’re playing. Where work and play come together, you’ll find me there…

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VA’s success stems from their attitude that the customer is at the center of their universe.  They relied on service design – the art and science of devising an environment that enables the customer to enjoy a rich, satisfying experience.  Unfortunately, it’s an approach that has been largely ignored by the industry.

Design-minded managers relentlessly ask: Who is the person we’re serving, and how can we make their service experience better?  That thinking encourages listening intently to what the customer says along with what isn’t said, but is felt.

Design-mindedness is uncommon in a traditional, operations-centric industry where running an efficient operation is prized above all other endeavors.  That mindset inhibits innovativeness, and too often, the customer is left out of the equation.

As a result, commercial air travel, with some notable exceptions, is perceived as a commodity, i.e. competitors’ services are virtually indistinguishable from each other, and customers tend to buy on price or schedule-convenience alone.

Historically, the major airlines have viewed their central challenge as getting passengers from point A to B as safely and efficiently as possible.  Their organizing principles arise from a linear manufacturing model which hasn’t changed much over time.

The University of Toronto’s Roger Martin observes, “The dominant attitude in traditional firms is to see constraints as the enemy and budgets as the driver of decisions… The traditionalist belief is, “We can only do what we have the budget to do.”

By contrast, design thinkers view their central challenge as solving ”unsolvable” problems. Design-thinkers venerate the customer, and relentlessly seek novel novel ways of overcoming constraints.

VA’s corporate culture – clearly influenced by Richard Branson’s intense creativity and drive – is customer-driven, encouraging design-inspired choices.  Branson’s mission for the Virgin group is to make flying fun again.

Recognizing that they’d have to look outside the industry – to Silicon Valley – VA hired software engineers rather than airline vendors. The mix of engineers and process owners led to some interesting choices.

For one thing, they came up with the novel idea of using an open-source (Linux) platform, named Red, to power a range of nifty features, like touch-screen food and beverage ordering, on-demand media on a high-resultion monitor, and even in-seat chat. Internet connectivity will be available soon. Moreover, Red affords VA the flexibility to support future low, cost innovation.

There are bugs to be worked out. Customers have reported re-boots and other glitches. But, I think VA is well ahead of the innovation curve, and their service platform gives them a clear competitive edge.

How will the industry respond?  Carriers are taking a beating from record fuel prices and reduced demand, and in this cycle, the carriers will be treading water for some time. Under the circumstances, will the U.S. airlines open the door to design-minded, customer-centric thinking? What’s next is anybody’s guess.

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Here’s an excerpt:

“Q: Every company claims to be customer-focused. Why do you think so few are able to pull it off?

A: Companies get skills-focused, instead of customer-needs focused. When [companies] think about extending their business into some new area, the first question is “why should we do that—we don’t have any skills in that area.” That approach puts a finite lifetime on a company, because the world changes, and what used to be cutting-edge skills have turned into something your customers may not need anymore. A much more stable strategy is to start with “what do my customers need?” Then do an inventory of the gaps in your skills.

Kindle is a great example. If we set our strategy by what our skills happen to be rather than by what our customers need, we never would have done it. We had to go out and hire people who know how to build hardware devices and create a whole new competency for the company.”

Intrigued?  Be sure to catch Charlie Rose’s interview (11/07) with Bezos about the Kindle, and Amazon’s “recipe” for innovation.

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Martin, who is the Dean at the University of Toronto’s innovative Rotman Business School, debunks conventional, linear thinking conducted by many business practitioners.  Instead, he advocates an unconventional, seemingly paradoxical approach to solving problems known as integrative thinking.  He maintains that successful leaders excel at integrative thinking.

According to Martin, integrative thinkers view problems “holistically”while embracing the tension between competing ideas. Integrative thinkers actually “hold two conflict ideas in constructive, almost dialectic tension.” He argues that many people find such tension uncomfortable, but not integrative thinkers.  In fact, their capacity to work in this space leads to creative solutions to complex problems.

Martin cites numerous examples of integrative thinkers and their successes including Meg Whitman of eBay, Victoria Hale of the Institute for One World Health, and Nanden Nilekani of Infosys.

Martin admits that shifting to integrative thinking isn’t easy.  But, he’s convinced that practioners can vastly improve their capacity for integrative thinking and, by doing so, can increase their effectiveness as problem-solvers.

His prescriptions include:

• Look at problems holistically, with consideration to how various parts fit together, rather than analyzing the parts in isolation.
• Consider multiple causes, as well as possible nonlinear relationships between cause and effect, rather than thinking of terms of simple linear relationships between a single cause and effect.
• Embrace the tension between opposing ideas and use that conflict to generate creative new alternatives rather than making simple either-or decisions.

Martin walks us through his argument with great clarity and elegance.  This was an informative and highly pleasurable read…

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We concluded that we’re most successful in discovering fresh insights about an intractable problem, when we step way back to see the problem from a different perspective.  We strive to intentionally shift our point-of-view in order to see the problem in a new light. We turn the problem on its side, and upside down, and inside out, etc., and we don’t stop, until an epiphany occurs—a moment of clarity in which we discover a whole new way of seeing it.  In short, we assume a different relationship to the problem.

By shifting our cognitive framework, a creative solution almost invariably emerges.  In fact, it’s been there all along — as Aldous Huxley observed –it’s just been indiscernable.  Hidden in the weeds because our cognitive biases keep us from from seeing it.

When figuring out how to solve a customer’s problem, the tendency is to come up with a concrete, linear solution that eliminates or “works around” the root cause of the problem.   Ironically, some of the best solutions arise from a non-linear approach.  For instance, a major breakthrough in computer printing technology was made possible by creating a new language (called “Postscript”) for communicating from a computer to a printer. We came up with several illustrative examples of break-through solutions like this.

The key to creative problem-solving is to get outside of our conventional “framing,” and see it in a different context.  Change the composition of the problem, or the lighting. Walk away from it.

Seeing the problem differently requires first checking one’s judging mind at the door to the extent possible.  Don’t worry. You can always re-assert your cognitive framework and linear, analytical mindset when you get done or, better yet, revise it.

Last week’s conversation about applying creativity to problem solving was very insightful.  We left convinced that we can improve our capacity for creative problem-solving by tackling many different kinds of problems – gardening, oil painting, learning a language, teaching a child, eradicating malaria — in addition to solving the kinds of problems we get paid to solve…

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