How come so many organizations full of mostly good people with good intentions end up doing not-so-good things? The notion of power is significant to all of us not only because it permeates everything and everywhere in organizations, but also because of another familiar topic: corruption. Contrary to what many believe, in organizations, it’s often…
Tag: organization
Why Your Org Can’t Succeed at Digital Transformation
Digital transformation urges a transfer of power that powerful people never intend to do. If digital transformation is really as awesome and game-changing as some claim or agree with, then we’d expect it to be so much more than adopting digital technologies without deep impact on the purpose, culture, structure, process, and function of an…
The Road to Transformable Enterprise: Reflective Conversations on Writing and More
NOTE: The following post is a conversation between Andrey Milchman and Noah Fang, long-time collaborators and authors, on their new book, The Transformable Enterprise: Enterprise Architecture in a New Key, which “challenges current enterprise architecture practices, which are mostly inspired by engineers seeking freedom from constraints of science, art, and architecture in both structure and…
You Know the Next Item on My Bucket List
The Previous Item I had always wanted to write a book that helps everyone understand design. It was on my bucket list for a very long time. When I was an editor in a publishing house, I wondered why there are no such books (which is not true, of course). By the time I was…
A Cultural Model of Taking Risks at Work
A Cultural Model of Taking Risks at Work There are at least three types of risks in work environment: social risks, operational risks, and outcome risks. The first concerns trust, credibility, and social role in groups; the second, the difficulty of approach/process; the third, doing tasks and its impact on outcome. We manage those three…
The Challenge of Accountability in Orgs
I’m reading this interesting book, CEO Society: The Corporate Takeover of Everyday Life, that I came by through a friend’s repost. The post has a very interesting point of view, and I love this bit: “…we just wanted to pretend that someone was in control, even if all the facts and evidence were telling us that…
Why Agile Projects Fail and Other Misconceptions
More Than Cliche Thanks to this post, I recalled several thoughts I once told some people quite a while ago about the nature of the agile practice. At the core of that post is this: “Agile cannot help you if managers continue to run the project and use teams as tools to build it up…
Priorities in a Flummoxing World
“You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it, is that clear?! You think you have merely stopped a business deal-that is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow,…
Designerly Thought of the Day #20180816
There’s no need to be disappointed by our failure or the frustrating inertia that dampens progress. While we should be ashamed of our reluctance to learn or indifference to learning.
What’s Driving Design in Your Org?
Design is driven by data, insight, and creativity. Each of the three could drive the design practice alone, while it’s often a dynamic synthesis of the three that leads to real change based on business success. The relative strength of each in that synthesis reflects the design culture, and to a broader sense, work culture,…
Design in Business and Business in Design
What’s the relationship between business and design? How shall we think of the two in one big picture? Do designers need to understand business more? Should businesspeople understand design more? Those are tricky questions. And then Alan Cooper started a thread (in his characteristic fashion not so different from that of “And that’s when the…
Ethics of The Wow Factor in Design
There’s another side of the matter, and that side only comes to trouble us when we ask the fundamental questions. Good Design Is Like Good Sex, Wow Is Like Porn Good design is like good sex. A lot more things than physicality or emotion contribute to a pleasurable or rewarding experience. The wants, needs, as…
