processofinnovation.com

Surely, the point about process is that it should free human beings from work of low added value to allow them to do the high value stuff which machines cannot do? If we are able to structure activities to become almost mechanical and mostly invariant, why would we bind people in teams to be governed by such processes? Wouldn’t we extract people from such processes as much as possible? Our view is that people should not be components in a process, but designers who live outside the machine. Let the process do its thing, and the people theirs: a separation of concerns, rather than a confusion of them. There are many objections to this thinking, which largely revolve around issues of the control and measurement of people - which we’ll talk more about in the future on POI.

Recently Mike and I spent time developing the vision for POI, exploring ideas about what we want this innovation community to be. Here is some of what we covered.

Previously, the draft vision was:

A community valued for guiding people towards innovation

Tom Cotton posted some insightful thoughts about human beings’ innate ingenuity and creativeness. From our childhood we explore and then change our environment, create tools, solve problems and negotiate change. Being innovative is deeply human. Tom rightly reminded us that we needed to capture some element of this in our vision for POI. (Tom’s blog is worth a visit).

This seems to link back to the Industrialisation Of Things, a set of ideas appearing in the 19th century, when there was a desire to impose order on the unruly natural world. Certainty and control must be induced at all costs and education and work must be standardised and measured. In the 21st century, continuing to follow this Victorian heritage leaves little latitude for new thinking to thrive. This Victorian industrial rationalism desired the hierarchical structure of all things, whether people or facts. Taylor in the early 20th century realised he could commoditise the tasks of industrial workers to increase output; a number of legal cases detail people’s dislike of his structures but he remained convinced that his scientific management could be applied to all areas of life, from the factory to the social club and our homes. Today, we’d rather buy a robot.

Do these structures apply to knowledge work and communities in the 21st century? Are they relevant? We talked about this process-bound view of the world actually controlling how people think, the rigour of school and work pressing or drumming the innate creativity out of humans. POI could be a community that helps rekindle that for people in teams. We’d like to set that in reverse … something like:

rekindling the flame of innate human ingenuity

Along similar lines, here are some other phrases that came up in discussion:

Inborn
Unlearned creativity
Recultivating intuitive thinking

We think the Process of Innovation community should be about finding ways to reveal that brilliance by clearing away the burdens of uncreative process. We hold the view that artistry has a place in business enterprise and that the results arising from the application of human soft skills are pre-eminent over the certainty of fixed processes. We talked about the idea that people need help today to create environments safe enough to fail in - safe enough for ideas to germinate.

(Mike thought this was rather drole: Process is rigour. Rigour - and mortis.)

Certainly we’re touching on something human and we want the POI vision to express that. If we look at people just as componentry, we don’t value what they can do or how surprising the outcome might be. Drucker wrote a paper in which he said, “They’re not employees, they’re people.” Jim McCarthy, pitying the users of poorly designed software said, “They’re human beings - not drones.” (Jim is very good at describing the importance of shared vision for teams - capturing something the team shares as a feeling. For recommended listening, see his podcasts called Twenty-Three Rules of Thumb.)

After all this, we arrived at a next cut of the POI vision:

Designing a community valued for rekindling people’s innate creativity by unlearning the impress of industrialised education and work

We’re not done yet: more iteration to follow. Comments welcome as always.

Andy Delin.

This entry was posted Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007 at 4:14 am and is filed under jim mccarthy, msf, vision. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.