Met w/broadcasters today RE a idea I’m working on: how to develop a “culture of complaint” in UK to enable robust service innovation economy
New on the Caneelian FT.com / Stefan Stern – The simple (but not easy) task of focusing: http://bit.ly/9WHwiF
The Measurement of Design (and Other Squishy Concepts), or, Why Designers Need Scholars
What do academics do that designers don’t? And why should designers care?
These were some of the challenging questions asked at the Design & the Creative Industries: Working Together with Universities conference last Friday in Brighton. As a scholar and teacher, I was feeling rather unappreciated (and frankly over-valued by society, relative to all of Those Who Can Do so Don’t Teach I was surrounded by in the audience).
I was forced to grapple with the value of my own line of work. This is what I came up with: Scholars are good at certain things that designers and artists need, and vice versa. Continue reading “The Measurement of Design (and Other Squishy Concepts), or, Why Designers Need Scholars”
Open Notebook Science & Sharing the Messy Process of Creating
In searching for motivations / reasons / justifications for writing and sharing more freely, I’ve stumbled upon the idea of Open Notebook Science, a practice of the Open Research community and inspired by open-source programming and open innovation. The Wikipedia entry explains,
The term Open Notebook Science was first used in a blog post by Jean-Claude Bradley, an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Drexel University. Bradley described Open Notebook Science as follows
… there is a URL to a laboratory notebook that is freely available and indexed on common search engines. It does not necessarily have to look like a paper notebook but it is essential that all of the information available to the researchers to make their conclusions is equally available to the rest of the world—Jean-Claude Bradley
From a creativity standpoint, I like the idea that ideas get better by making the process transparent. So many research projects and creative works don’t ever make it to print (or screen, or stage, or gallery…) but it’s ridiculous to think that nothing could be learned from seeing them. So why don’t we share all of our projects – done, undone, and wish I’d never done?
The problem is that the dirty laundry of one’s
failed or unfinished work is so much less fun to share than their neat and tidy Perfect Pieces. More painful, more tedious, more revealing.
Good news is that we don’t know what projects are going to fail while we’re working on them. They are still exciting and new – until they start going sour. So to encourage the sharing of failures (important, because how can we learn if we don’t see failures?) we should encourage the sharing of PROGRESS and PROCESS.
The mess of the in-between is still beautifully optimistic and glittery with fresh enthusiasm.
To inspire you to share here are some photos of my messy work from before I really could call my dissertation a dissertation.
The messy notebooks of artists, writers, and scientists have always been my favorite part of the world of academia. It’s fair to say that I would never have joined the academic world if it weren’t such a perfect setting for scribbling quickly in my Moleskine(s). (And it’s Awesome how when I trace back through old notebooks, I see that on those late and confused nights I was actually onto something that eventually became real.)
Getting Set Up to Dive into Dissertation Mode: Organizing, Inboxes, and Software
I’m currently spending some time getting myself organized and ‘set up’ to write my dissertation – the process, my time, my stuff, my articles, etc etc etc…
I must confess that I felt guilty about compulsively doing this and little else, until a generally prudent friend assured me that I’m not OCD and that this is an important step in the dissertation process and a valid use of my time.
So I’m giving myself three days to get organized and all set up. What does that involve?
Making decisions about where stuff goes and where stuff happens.
By “stuff” I mean scraps of paper, tasks, project flowcharts, random ideas, daily freewrites, lists of my decisions and finalized plans, etc.
By “where” I mean programs on the computer and physical collection points, which I want to minimize unless it’s useful to have it in physical format.
Inboxes
I’m playing with a lot of collection points right now (a calendar, post-it lists of tasks, my email inbox, my voicemail inbox, my SMS inbox, a voice recorder, a paper notebook, and random odds and ends like mail, physical reminders of tasks such as parking tickets, etc.) but I want to reduce the size of that list, or at least take a mental inventory of it so that I don’t forget to process all of these inboxes.
Software for Capture of Notes
For capture I’m considering Evernote (great for in-context tasks, ubiquitous capture including voicenotes and photos via iphone, but you can’t really export your stuff and you have to pay!), Devonthink (amazing and time-tested, but it misses Evernote’s ubiquitous capture and doesn’t have a task feature that I can see… not sure if it should however), and Scrivener (which is too project-specific to be my inbox), and Circus Ponies Notebook (which I love because of the in-context notes, auto indexing, handwriting recognition, ability to draw with a tablet and pen, ability put notes anywhere next to each other, etc…. but which is not as seamlessly integrated into the rest of my workflow as the others could be – might just be too much software for me).
Decisions
My goal is to limit the number of contact points. Here’s my planned workflow, after testing each: I think i’ll use evernote as my inbox and capture things on the run, but I will not use it as a storage system. Just like email, whatever goes into the inbox must come out and go to the appropriate place. Devonthink is where I’ll put my text tidbits from writing. Scrivener is where I’ll compile all the good stuff and turn it into a manuscript, and Word is where I’ll do the final draft. I’ll keep my articles in Papers (and maybe also in Devonthink?) and export the bibliographic info from Papers to Word to do the bibliography.
Needs
I still need a long-term project planning process (though I’m reading The Clockwork Muse which may help), nor do I have a good tickler system (a simple email sent to myself in the future would probably be best). Any ideas on that would be great!
How do you measure organizational success?
A student recently asked me this question, so I thought I’d share my answer with you.
Her question: “I have a quick question. Does Organizational Behavior theory address how you measure success? For instance, when HR implements new strategies to align its people with culture and business strategy; what are some ways they measure the success of these initiatives?”
My answer: Oh boy, big question. And great question. Answering it requires more background information, so I’ll let you know what you should find out about before deciding how to measure success.
There are two questions you’d always want to ask before you measure something as vague as “success”:
1. what kind of success is important to the organization or the work unit?
2. what were the aims of the new strategies?
Constructing the definition of success itself could actually take months; then deciding on how to measure that kind of success can take another few months. Begin by finding out which metrics are
(1) readily available
(2) reliably measured (without bias; measuring what they say they measure)
(3) valid (the observables measured do in fact predict the thing you really would love to measure but can’t because it’s invisible)
(4) relevant (commonly used in the industry, the company, and the relevant departments & other stakeholders)
Finally, you want to make sure that you’re measuring the thing that will actually show the effects the strategy is supposed to produce. Usually these are specified before the strategy is even implemented – if the HR group didn’t know they wanted something to change then presumably they shouldn’t have / wouldn’t have done something new anyway!
A relevant article (Sutton & Hargadon, 1996, Brainstorming Groups in Context, ASQ) says:
“…These writings conclude that if effectiveness can be defined and measured at all, it is a multidimensional construct, because social systems produce many consequences and have multiple participants with inconsistent preferences. Researchers must ask “effectiveness at what?” and “effectiveness for whom?” to assess effectiveness in social systems.”