Steal This Brand

Interesting meeting this pm with Alex McGillivray of Accountability, bouncing around innovation priorities for global resource management.

FWIW, here's a conceptual brain-dump of some of the GRP issues that will face us in such an endeavor. These 6 were co-created in a similar free-flow session with Dr Anne-Marie Warris of LRQA, and heavily influenced by the thinking of Freddie McMahon:

Six thought-starters:

1. Move Beyond Knowledgeflow. Move beyond workflow. Manage Decision-Flow.

Just as lean manufacturing aspires to observe understand the flow of work within an organisation, taking into account variation and understanding work as a system, so tomorrow's knowledge-centric and stakeholder decentric management systems will need to understand decision-flow...the interface of human behaviour, governance constraints (of all forms) and procedures.

Just as lean manufacturing was the natural outcome of quality optimisation and workflow management, so LEAN MANAGEMENT is the aspiration of optimised decision-flow - providing 'just in time' knowledge and human resources and systemically embedded regulation to make better decisions ALL the time.

Another way to copnceptualise this is as 'nano-accountability' - crystallising wisdom into snap decisions...

2. Disperse Responsibility

Management systems do not only act to internalise externalities. They can actually externalise internalities - being a system of influence on the outside world...

The mechanisms for this redistribution: collaboration, crystallised individual responsibility, engagement protocols and process-design templates will increasing need to be detached from the management systems they enable, and sprinkled across value-chains...

Existing, emerging principles of multi-stakeholder governance must give way to the mechanisms of MUTUAL governance which are dynamic. Systems must be both compatible and contestable their assumptions and intentions must be transparent and built in, but alterable upon demand...

3. Humanise the System in Use

What matters is not the system, but the system in use. i.e the reality of human behaviour as knowledge, process and human purpose/motivation combine. How do we optimise environmental (or indeed any other) systems around users? Can we more closely involve users in systems-design and adjustment?

Notwithstanding empathy and brain-sensing technologies, we need to used RFID and other technologies to interpret human behaviour, and serve insights back to the individual...


4. Automate Assurance

We need new mechanisms of risk-based and remote assurance of shared systems.

Need 'routines' to interrogate systems

Both systems change and behaviour change should leave a trail within organisations...to allow instant accountability

5. Build a New Open Systems Architecture

We need to design in assurability from the outset.
We need a common modular structure which designs human-centric processes
We need a set of meta processes which codify, or explain soft systems: e.g. stakeholder dialogue, internal communication etc.
We need to be able to carry tacit and explicit information through the system.
But how?

6. Seek out and invest in new accountability 'technologies'

We need a raft of new technologies to design systems, manage systems, interrogate systems and adapt systems...

These technologies will include new knowledge vessels, easy to use system design tools/components, new accountability mechanisms and new collaborative methods.

Er...that's it.

The question for those who manage today's global decision architectures, is - what is your role in tomorrow's GRP?

I don't often read the Spectator (its politics and mine don't exactly see eye to eye), but with a plane journey to kill this morning I bought a copy to understand how the enemy is thinking.

Not only did I discover two great Christmas present ideas (don't tell the missus)

Secret present 1
Secret present 2

But I also found a magical review of Thomas Pynchon's new doorstopper "Against the Day" penned by Sam Leith...

Sam quotes a typical passage:

" He was gazing at her as if having just glimpsed the simple longtitude of what he was about to do, as if desiring to come into some shelter (though maybe only her idea of it...so, like terms on each side cancelling, they only stood there, curtains of venetian mist between them, among the steam sirens and clamoring boatmen, and both young people understood a profound opening of distinction between those who would be here, exactly here, day after tomorrow to witness the next gathering before passage, and those stepping off the night precipice of this journey, who would never be here, never exactly here, again."

Just stunning writing. I have ordered it for myself as an early Christmas present...

...but it has taken virtually as long to build our new web-site at Glasshouse Partnership.

No fault lies with the lovely Julie Hall of Spring Media who has tolerated our indecision, dithering, vagueness and a dozen other synonyms for endless fannying about.

Thanks JULIE!

I am delighted to announce that we are finally flash-free! (except the little moviola, which still needs rescripting. A 2-3 year project I suspect.) Thank god we're not this indecisive with client projects.

The new Alfa...a roadster version of the 8C is all over the from cover of car magazine - albeit only a prototype. Delicious.

But I can't actually find a picture of it...so here's the plain 8C Competizione...

So farewell then little car...

Having just installed a lovely new radio, complete with front-docking ipod slot, I managed take my eye off the road to change tracks and span my little baby in a torrential downpour, aquaplaning across a deep puddle, and pretty much denting every single panel against a malicious piece of hedge. Arse.

Fragile, these old cars.

Here, for the record, is how beautful it was looking before it died.
I'm now driving Sue's Bright Yellow Ka. Easy to spot in a carpark at least...

I've written about the fiasco of battery disposal before. But for anyone who wants to combine eco-consciousness with 'cool', just check out these babies...



Imagine how much energy they take to make!!!

Glasshouse seems to be doing less and less media these days, and more and more web-based work.

Our latest venture, with the good folk at Headshift has been to create a heavyweight community site for the global management systems community.

Sounds geeky, but actually management systems may be our best hope to improve corporate behaviour...

It'll be interesting to see how the quality and environmental managers of the world take to these social software tools. Check out the confluence-based site at BusinessAssurance.com