The Cult of the Product

If you are involved with government IT you really should read this...

The Cult of the Product

I have just re-read it having enthused about it a few months ago. Herewith a taster...

The Cult of the Product underlies some of the most pernicious problems in this industry. We spend far more on capital expenses than we should, because we’re buying products we don’t need and never use. We’ve built acquisition systems that take 48 months to produce a requirements document because it’s optimized to find products, not solve problems. An “IT strategy” today, or what passes for it, is not much more than a tedious (and futile) process of aligning vendor roadmaps in the vain hope that a new requirement will be satisfied on time and on budget. We spend nearly all our time making product choices, and very little time thinking about how we’d like our IT shops to actually operate.

It's very good. Here's the link again. No shirking now.

A very good thing...

I was asked recently what I thought about the new Inside Government section of the almost new gov.uk website.  I wrote this:

Ah! Well...

I love the way it looks. I love that the content is written in plain English that I can read quickly and understand readily. I love that the pages look smart and that huge care has been taken about the layout and small things like the choice of typefaces. I think it is great that the content displays as well on mobile devices as it does on screen. I think it's brilliant that the look and feel will be consistent whichever department provides the content. I love the style. It beams confidence. It makes me think about Government differently.

I love the way that the Government Digital Service (GDS) have gone about the job. Their design principles are marvellous. It's great that they have started with a small amount of content, that they will be adding more soon, and that they are geared up to improve what they have done based on the feedback they get. It's inspiringly bold to put an indicator of how they are doing at the top of the pages (even though it only shows 2 out of 24 at the moment). It's wonderful that they have used open source software and any additional code they have written themselves has been shared for anyone to use. I love that they have already written twelve public blog posts about what they are doing and that these were authored by eight different members of the team; it's heartening that these people so obviously take a real pride in what they are doing.

And I love the reaction. It's wonderful that people like Tim O'Reilly (whom I respect hugely and who has no reason on earth to say things he doesn't mean) have been so positive about this and the other things that GDS are doing.

GDS have (genuinely) thought big, started small and moved fast. It's a completely classy job. They are showing the way.

We should follow.

'nuff said.

How to change the future

This is worth a serious listening to... How to change the future

...it is a recording of a talk about resolving important, complex social problems given at the RSA last Tuesday (2 Oct 12) by Adam Kahane.  The introduction to the talk says...

People who are attempting to tackle these huge global problems often find themselves frustratingly stuck. They can’t solve their problems in their current context, which is too unstable or unfair or unsustainable. They can’t transform this context on their own — it’s too complex to be grasped or shifted by any one person or organization or sector. And the people whose cooperation they need don’t understand or agree with or trust them or each other.

Kahane explains his approach - called Transformative Scenario Planning - which is a way of tackling Complex (or Wicked problems).  I am probably going to butcher things horribly here but the essence is... get a bunch of folks together who represent the entire problem in question (for a long time - days); and then, with sensitive facilitation, help them to work collaboratively and thoughtfully to develop stories of possible futures (the scenarios) and go on to describe ways these might be brought about. With the right people, at the right time, working in the right way, building the right relationships, some magic happens and stuff begins to change. This makes a lot of sense to me and I am impressed by Kahane's track record; he was, for example, involved with the transition to the end of apartheid.

I thought about how these ideas might be applied in the context of the big problems of Government IT (with which my work is mostly concerned). My sense is that, at heart, these are essentially social issues and not at all dissimilar to those Kahane talks about. I wonder if anything like his approach has been tried?  I am suspecting not: there has been a wind of change in Government  IT lately but, on the face of it, the approach has been rather more analytic than collaborative.  Perhaps it is time to give ideas like these a shot?

What do you think?

Mark Foden is speaking at the Defence Academy 'Agile' symposium

This post was originally an announcement on fodengrealy.com - Changes in Foden Grealy explains why it is here. ---

I will be speaking at a symposium - An Agile Approach: The key to success? - at the Defence Academy at Shrivenham on 12 September 2012.

After some head-scratching I decided to call my talk "Complexity and the incremental change revolution"; the conference blurb says...

This talk is about complexity in organisations and the need for a revolution in how we think about and manage change. It will explain why it is critically important for government to develop a capacity for incremental change and the deep shifts in mindset that will be needed to enable it. Drawing on real examples, it will describe the profound cultural barriers to adopting incremental approaches and practical things that can be done to get over them. It will look at ‘Agile’ and the challenges for IT people in particular.

There are more details on LinkedIn. It's £50 (or £15 if you are a Cranfield/Shrivenham alumnus). Nice day in the country. Bang up lunch. Come along to cheer/heckle.

Blog all

On hols this week: idling in Hay on Wye, following a rain-frustrated attempt to walk Offa's Dyke. Had a very good chat last night about blogging with the family we are staying with. I was arguing that everyone should blog. Here (hugely boiled down and a bit mangled for the sake of brevity) are some of the questions we talked about... Why (on earth) should I bother blogging? Writing things down, in words that other people can understand, straightens out crooked thinking and helps you learn; it develops your expression muscles so you can get your point across faster and better in the future; and it enables others to find out about what you are interested in, which starts conversations and brings opportunity you would never otherwise have had. Really.

I don't have anything interesting to write about absolutely everyone is interested in something; and capable of being interesting about it. Not necessarily because you are an expert, but because your experience is unique.

No one will be interested in what I write Maybe no one you know will be interested but, if you publish your blog publicly, it will help you come across people who are (and perhaps bring opportunity).

I don't have time to write You don't have to write very much: just a paragraph will do. A single paragraph conveys infinitely more meaning than no paragraph at all.

I can't write Yes you can. You might be a bit rusty/uncomfortable/self-conscious when you start but you absolutely can. And if you write, you will get better.

I don't believe what I write will have any effect Read about Martha Payne (for example) a 9-year-old who seriously beat up some beefy Scottish council bruisers by writing her Never Seconds blog.

For more on this, read Seth Goldin on Talkers' Block or Euan Semple on Changing the world one word at a time (written yesterday so it's nice and fresh).

You have more opportunity than ever before to shape the world around you. Euan Semple

Whether you are a corporate bod, a mum, a student, an artist or whatever else; you will get something from blogging about stuff you are interested in.

Blog all.

"Business Change": Dirty words in Government IT

I have heard mention a number of times lately that the term 'Business Change' is out of favour in Government IT circles. And quite right too. Here's why I agree... The (now defunkt) Office of Government Commerce used to be pretty hot on Business Change. After all, it was the thing so often perceived to be the problem: a lack of engagement between technology folk and 'the Business'; poor 'Benefits Realisation' and so on. But it's more complex than that: there was something more fundamental wrong and it's exemplified in the idea of Business Change itself.  I believe that the term Business Change is used, broadly speaking, with an underpinning model of thinking (pl forgive geeky equation) that looks like this...

And this is unhealthy: it encourages the fatal notion that - if the bits on the left-hand side are defined clearly enough at the beginning of a project - all will be well and the desired bit on the right will materialise at the end. It has been conclusively shown that it mostly doesn't.

I have experienced a number of attempts in government organisations to turn the management of change - which is, at heart, a subtle human skill - into a mechanistic process. (I have even seen a Business Change mouse-mat with a 20-box diagram on it.) This doesn't work and I am concerned that the processey mindset in which it is rooted still breathes.

The term Business Change is bankrupt and perpetuating old thinking. I've stopped using it.

162 slides of unmissable condensed wisdom on tackling the intractable

If you are struggling with (what feels like) a messy and intractable problem, it may help to take 10 minutes to read this absolutely excellent summary of the thinking around Complexity by Jurgen Appelo. For those involved with fixing the problems in Government IT, I'd say it is unmissably important. So ...er ...don't miss it... Complexity Thinking

There's more of Jurgen's non-Death by PowerPoint erudition on SlideShare. With thanks to information uber-Maven John McCubbin (and Richard House before him) for spotting this.

In praise of the Post-it

This very nearly caused a serious tea-spill this morning...

Analyst: Government’s digital leaders’ network shouldn’t be using post-it notes

It's a story about an analyst who, having read a post on the Government Digital Service blog - First Digital Leaders’ meeting, said this...

“Why did they have a physical meeting? This could have been done far more effectively using digital tools – communication and collaboration tools that would have taken ideas and automatically captured them, rather than the joys of Post It notes and pens,”

Earlier in the day, having read the same post, I had tweeted this...

  So how was it that we came to such different views?

Here's what I think happens when we get involved with a Post-it exercise at a meeting...

  • We get engaged, immediately, in the task.
  • We get to focus on the things we personally care about, which lets us get things off our chest and makes us feel involved.
  • We get to stand up to stick the Post-its on the wall (or wherever), which is always better than sitting motionless on our bottoms.
  • We bump into other people, randomly, which starts conversations that will perhaps develop into useful relationships.
  • We experience hugely valuable, non-verbal communication.
  • We get to connect, first hand in a very personal way, with people and their ideas.
  • We can move Post-its around readily, which means themes can be identified quickly.
  • We take away with us a colourful, unique and memorable image that represents the contribution of everyone.
  • We become part of a shared experience.
  • And probably a load of other stuff too.

Some of this is possible using digital tools, but not all and certainly not in the 20 minutes or so that Post-it exercises take. Doing this kind of thing, particularly in the early stages of forming a new group, is enormously valuable. Of course the conversation will continue online afterwards but it will be a very different one because of the experience of the physical meeting.

I am a HUGE FAN of digital tools but the suggestion of using them in lieu of the useful meeting these folks clearly had is, to me, unutterably daft.

Never underestimate the power of the Post-it.

Sitting people on chairs in rows at meetings is a criminal waste

Bee trapped in bonnet. Write... Quite often I go to big meetings to do with changing things. Almost invariably these meetings have lots of people sitting on chairs in rows - sometimes for hours. The people at the front talk; and the people in the rows (mostly) listen.

I struggle to think of a worse way of promoting change.

Change in organisations is about encouraging people to work with other people to do things differently. If we sit them down - doing little but (if we are lucky) listening and pretty much isolated (because rows are like that) - we just can't expect them, immediately afterwards, to leap up and start dancing a new dance.

Of course change programmes are made of more than just big meetings; but it really doesn't help if the set pieces send exactly the wrong message.

We only change our behaviour when we feel something - inspiration, commitment, connection, fear. We don't change just because we know something new or even because someone else is excited. Big meetings can be big opportunities to share understanding, to initiate connection and... to stir feeling.

We should use them differently. We should make them the change we want to see.

(Here are some ideas.)