Co:LabX

Co:LabX - i iteration 1.5

[colabx]

A year in review - 2016

In Q1, a number of people participated in a quick survey we did around transformation work looking back on 2016. Thank you for that! Not only based on the 4 questions, but equally much our experiences and learnings, here are some observations.

So some basics first. 73% of all of you who participated are in management/leadership roles. 26% hold roles as specifically responsible for transformational work, digital and/or business transformation depending on what definition is used within that org (which distinction worth thinking about, but that’s for another time). Talking percentage, let us be clear up front that we had 58 responses so have that in mind. We’ve looked at this through clustering words and responses (text analysis) qualitatively, hence this is based on our subjective interpretations,  opinions and suggestions (and would love to hear more of yours).

What have you been doing?

A lot of interesting answers to the question around what behaviors that were more prevalent in your organization throughout 2016. This says nothing about whether it’s a change from before. Here are 7 categories (no prioritized order) we found when clustering similar/associated words and phrases:

Exploring and experimenting, for example learning by doing, failing faster, experimenting. Structure and collaboration for example cross functional collaboration, building strong structures by being responsive. Discussing and getting on board for example confusion, meetings, urgently speaking of opportunities/effects of changes. Data and analytics for example analyzing behaviors, use of data, use of insights. End customer for example asking what a customer would say, product development starting with end customer, customer obsession. Goal orientation for example business controlling, improved goal orientation/progress, quality focus. Product/service development for example software development, focusing on the right things when developing, new products for other platforms.

Leadership and management is categorized under Structure and collaboration. When it comes to prevalent behaviors, leadership and how it is practiced - what’s visible and concrete - is one of the most important things if you ask us and one that we almost without exception must include in any program. It is, however, very seldom highlighted in any requests or kick-offs. This is something we believe will evolve and mature by way of the increase in "culture" focus. Can leadership be anything but a culture thing? And can the culture thing ever not have a strong focus on the leadership issue? Another one we’d like to highlight is exploring and experimenting in relation to employee training/education that we touch on a few paragraphs down.

So, if making a distinction, where did you invest your efforts?

34.5% in Organizational development, 25.9% in Business development, 13.8% in Technology, 12.1% in Innovation capacity and 8.6% of you put down Employee training/education. You can see the open answers in the legend, and they all represent one answer each.

You can also see to what extent management/leadership was considered focusing on digital/business transformation during 2016 (1-6).

So, what’s behind the different categories where you put your focus? Well, looking at some of the keywords or phrases that stood out for those respective responses paint a more vivid picture of what dialogues take place and what’s on the agenda and priority lists. Organizational development includes for example frustration, collaboration, equality, digitalization, fundamental values, future strategy, category disruption, coordination, smart, simple & open, customer focus, leadership development and more. How was management focused on digital/business transformation (1-6)? 3.6 on average.

Within Technology we find disruption, agile, customer orientation, holistic design, norm criticism, digital strategy, imagery, digitalisation, evolve or die! How was management focused on digital/business transformation (1-6)? 4.75 on average.

Innovation capacity relates to simplified, proptech, customer obsession, user experience, automation, agile development, inbound maketing, digital transformation, polarization and more. How was management focused on digital/business transformation (1-6)? 4,71 on average.

With Employee training/education we read strategy in a digital world, filter bubbles, lifelong learning, Adobe marketing cloud, growth mindset, adjustments. How was management focused on digital/business transformation (1-6)? 5.2 on average.

What do we see?

These keywords and phrases are pretty relevant under the respective categories. A few might seem a bit misplaced for the categorical, semantically inclined reader, and one pop up everywhere. Unsurprisingly the ”digital” word, which says everything and nothing.

It's complex. It tends to grow complex. There’s an overwhelming feeling of everything coming at you from all directions and departments. Everybody is running their own transformation or digitalization efforts (it might even be that role specific incentives drives you to, but few have incentives to drive simplification...). It becomes massive. Fragmented. Not necessarily wrong, just not really right. A lack of a common picture of how it all relates to one another. It’s not uncommon to have been engaged in what can be described as therapeutic digitalization discussions, for lack of a better term, for years. It’s like the 5 blind men and the elephant story:

"The parable of the blind men and an elephant originated in ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has widely diffused. It is a story of a group of blind men, who have never come across an elephant before, learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their partial experience and their descriptions are in complete disagreement on what an elephant is"

- Wikipedia

If you map all of these five categories in a simplified way, it could look like this. Technology is an external force demanding that we develop (with and by it) and hence equally much a tool. It’s the fire under our asses, the means to better solutions and a force often utilized better by new entrants in many categories. But the thing can never be about technology.

Business development is, of course, a discipline and activity that (should) continually (stand still and you die) figure out new solutions and offers to user problems that can be financially viable. Simply put. There’s nothing slowing down here, and there’s nothing getting simpler. You might argue that, really, this is what it’s about for most organizations. Business development is where all efforts are canalized.

If we want to ramp up our business development, one way is to create another effort such as innovation or R&D or maybe a digitalization group. That can be be the right thing to do, but can also be a knee jerk decision that adds something without deleting something else. Putting together and testing more diverse teams and tending to the innovation capacity aspect is another way of doing it. Adding new perspectives, methods and types of focus questions to the existing business development activities.

Employee training/education clearly relates to development. But perhaps we are blinded by the fact that it’s always been about courses and training classes though? If you were to look differently on education, it could actually be where you find your budget for innovation capacity and increased focus on business development. If a 2 month facilitated innovation sprint, digital development program or whatever term you might use is actually equally much a training program and educational opportunity...well, you’re killing 2 flies with one stone and making it a day to day activities, which we know is one of the characteristics of change/development initiatives that succeed.

Organizational development is the holistic and overarching framework for all of the above. It’s needed in order to design a coherent, longer term, program or process. As we all know, very little sustainable change (development) will come out of short term efforts. 18 months or more is simply something we have to accept.

OK, we’ve simplified it quite drastically. And that’s the point.

Our 2 cents

Regardless if we use the term digital transformation or business transformation, for the vast majority of companies business development is what it’s about. This is a not so insignificant thing to highlight, because a lot of frustration is introduced into an organization when digital, innovation and change are positioned as the most important kids on the block. It might serve us better to flip it and down-play them.

We're in a situation where - and this is very clear based on our experience - we’ve long under performed and had too little focus on both innovation capacity and organizational development. Now, they're positioned in a way that often creates insecurity, frustration and even fear. Add to that, they play roles that can appear disconnected from what we all know and accept: business development. That’s a great foundation for finding excuses for not doing, and the root of never ending discussions.

When things move fast, complexity increases and insecurity builds up, simplicity and familiarity is more important than ever. That’s a learning we’d like to share: What is the thing in simple terms? What does the future scenario look like? What does incremental progress look like, and not just final success, as success is often explained in grand visions far too abstract and future? It's everyday that we have to take small strides of progress. Can we design for small steps? How small can we make them while still being real progress? How easy can we make them feel?

Your 2 cents?

You’re all very busy people, but we would love to hear from you, what you consider a good learning you’ve made with regards to driving transformation projects/processes?

[colabx]

The word planning is tightly associated with less uncertainty, structure and stability. But in this day and age, that’s not really typical and characteristic for the most wonderful things in business and society (and life?). And by most wonderful things we mean progress, a fast changing world of opportunities.

Perhaps testing is the new planning? The only way to have some kind of stability, if you will, is to keep testing things so that less remain untouched and untested. Not exactly a key strength in most companies.

We work a lot with scenarios, pilots and prototypes. Good tools for testing in uncertain times. We’d love to hear your point of view on the matter.

[colabx]

Picking an education or picking a future

We spent 2 days together with educations.com helping massage questions relating to what searching for, finding and selecting educational programs, courses and personal development can be about.

On one level it’s very obvious, especially from the view of the present business, but it was very interesting to dig deeper and look at alternative perspectives of it, and new possible models and services around it.

How the business works can often dictate how we think about what it is we do. And as we all know, what we do might have to change. So not only is it important to use methods that allow us to break free from how we view our business and what we do, but in doing so also look for the building blocks, if you will, that will help us do something with what we find.

Because again, we might have to change, and successful change has little to do with the realization of what we might have to do differently, and a whole lot to do with the behaviors, circumstances, activities and practices that best help us change. Designed or not.

Together, we focused on ideation and quantity, we collectively remembered and defined existing strengths for action and change. We built prototypes of how these could be accelerated and made more tangible (because values and attitudes don’s suffice) and we moved closer to roadmaps.

Great work all! And super impressive to see such an actively participating group. Full throttle into everything. 

[colabx]

We couldn’t have said it better. Of course. The core thing is to move from pride in knowing to pride in figuring out. Moving from protective planning in solitude, to embracing radical collaboration, sharing and exploring.

[colabx]

Almedalen och tillbaka

Då välkomnar vi oss själva tillbaka efter en välbehövlig semester. Otroligt inspirerande och intressanta projekt och möjligheter väntar och vi märker direkt att nyfikna företag och organisationer råder det ingen brist på.

Just nyfikenhet kring förändring och nya sätt att tänka var något vi också fick en stor dos av innan sommarsemestern. Co:LabX spenderade en vecka i Almedalen både för att lyssna in och delta.

I år anordnade vi Almedalens första "empati-picknick" tillsammans med Ashoka Scandinavia och Camps for Compassion i syfte att både tillföra ett annat perspektiv och ett annat format till området innovation och förändring. Gemensamt tror vi på att empati är helt avgörande för innovation och hållbar utveckling.

Vi får ofta frågan hur man som organisation och företag bör göra för att väcka nyfikenhet, engagemang och lusten att utvecklas och innovera hos medarbetarna. Tittar vi bakom begreppen och drivkrafterna så landar det till syvende och sist i förmågan att känna empati för andra och sig själv.

Det finns såklart flera definitioner av empati. Den mest demokratiska, tagen från wikipedia, lyder: ”Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another being is experiencing from within the other being’s frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.”

Det går att öva på empati och bli mer uppmärksam och lyhörd för vad som händer i din omgivning. Du kan påminna dig själv att försöka förstå känslor och perspektiv, och blir medveten om både dig själv och andra. Utifrån detta kan du börja tillgodose behov. Låt oss påpeka att innovation är att skapa svar på någons behov. Empati är följaktligen i mångt och mycket en motor, eller kanske snarare bränslet, för innovation, innovationsförmåga och innovationsledarskap.

Något mer som talar för att det är mer emptati vi behöver? Enligt Andreas Schleicher, ansvarig för OECD:s Pisa-tester, måste skolan fokusera mer på värden såsom tolerans, empati, långsiktighet, ledarskap och nyfikenhet. För att kunna leva ett bra liv handlar det inte längre om att ”bara” vara bra på att räkna, skriva och läsa. I den globaliserade värld vi lever i idag, med ständiga förändringar inom teknik och fler och fler utbyten mellan människor, samhällen och produkter, gemensamma och globala utmaningar, influenser från olika kulturer och så vidare är det viktigare än någonsin att tänka ett extra varv kring vilka egenskaper som är viktiga att träna upp för att kunna trivas, må bra och lämna ett positivt avtryck i världen.

För att veta att man är på rätt väg är det dags att vi hittar fler KPI:er än enbart lönsamhet. Ett gott exempel är Lumen Behavior som i våras lanserade Human Centered Business Index som mäter och uppmärksammar svenska företag som tar steget längre i sitt hållbarhetsarbete och leder med meningsfullhet, empati, systemanalys och resiliens.

I år testas ramverket för första gången och rapporten (http://humancentered.se) belyser 10 svenska företag som visar prov på att omsätta den nya kompetens som krävs för att navigera företagsutveckling i en föränderlig samtid.

Både Lumen Behavior och Polarbröd, som är ett av de 10 företag på listan med ett högt index, var närvarande på vår picknick och bidrog med sina exempel på hur man som ledare kan främja en mer empatisk organisation.

Vad det hela handlar om, utryckt på ett mycket konkret sätt, är: Be somebody that makes somebody feel like a somebody.

Med hjälp av deltagande företag och deras ledare, alla förebilder när det gäller empatins närvaro, skapade vi en bruttolista med konkreta handlingar och förhållningssätt som präglas av empati. Givevis fri att inspireras av och bygga vidare på. Det tänker vi själva göra.

För mer information eller om du är nyfiken på att diskutera vidare hur vi kan bygga in empati, nyfikenhet och engagemang i er organisation, kontakta [email protected]

[colabx]

It’s not hard to agree with this quote by John Maynard Keynes about how the future is not only hard to grasp but highly unlikely to generate any inspiration for action.

A great method to use is scenario games. Keyword games. When we work with the future without pressure to acting on it, our experience is that people are more likely to play with it. To envision very different things.

A great deal of methods and tools that we use are meant to help people and organizations actually do things. But there are situations and phases where taking away the focus on doing things is actually quite helpful.

We’d love to hear your own thoughts on the matter of doing things differently in the future.

[colabx]

The power of prototyping

If we look at the services we provide to our clients, and going through the projects and processes we deliver, prototyping is an activity we practice quite a lot and in many shapes and forms. We’d argue it's the most important and valuable tool (and approach) organizations can learn to use. Although many predominantly hear it in software development contexts, it's by no means limited to that. It is used in many fields. We’d go as far as saying that Co:LabX, the company, is still a prototype as we are actively testing our set-up and our practices and the key tools we use. It’s not a by-product or adhoc realization. We do it actively and purposefully with set intervals. At the bottom of the page you can see we’re in iteration 1.5. That’s really a thing.

  The primary reason we stress its importance for organizations in general, today, is based on this snipplet from Wikipedia:

A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from. (Wikipedia)

Never mind ”release of a product”. It can be other things such as meeting formats or other practices. The key thing here is ”to be replicated or learned from”. All our projects revolve around questions, challenges and opportunities with a fair amount of unclarity around it. It’s never an open-and-shut case where we know what to do. It seldom is these days. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

What it demands of us, and this is very positive, is to be more explorative and less dead certain. Being explorative is the road to better questions and more learnings. And it’s clear that during the last 10 years we’ve been working with digitalization, transformation and the ability for organizations to develop, the common denominator has been the lack of clarity and hence the need to learn more. An important question: How can learning be more tightly interwoven with the core day-to-day operations, and not just an insight department?

Prototypes come in many shapes and forms

- Services and products, like the rough prototype you see at the top of this page. - A customer experience, like the above prototype will be when it’s included in a place specific user journey, mounted to a stand, exploring the likeliness of donating small sums of money when it’s as simple as tap, tap, touch, done. - Practices like meeting formats between a group of people in, say, a department. A concrete example is short stand-up meetings with a purposefully constructed agenda and clear participant roles. If this would prove lower time consumption, higher effectiveness without loss of information sharing while keeping the level of social bonds amongst the group, that would be running a prototype. If those variables where important to test (and they are, in many organizations…). Etc.

As long as you are testing something, and you know why you are testing it (a goal), know how the validation will happen, have a sense of how you can act on the results (not being able to act on results is one of the key frustrations we see), you’re prototyping! The thing is: it’s still so uncommon. We take so much pride in being right, knowing the answer. And still we know that lack of clarity and the need to learn is what companies are battling. A very important question: how can you incentivize testing? How can you, as a leader or otherwise, shift focus and pride from being right, to testing and learning?

Prototype to think

So some prototypes become tangible things or digital products. Some, like our meeting format, don’t. But there’s another strength in making something physical with prototypes. We think differently when we use different types of tools. A meeting around a table and chairs is one thing. Creating a "Kiwi in the room” is another. Many avid prototypers would argue that they ”think with their hands”, and that’s probably right. When we involve more/other senses, we think in new ways. There’s absolutely nothing to be afraid of. It might look like playing, and in a sense it is, but there’s no lack of professionalism.

Prototype to share

A Kiwi In The Room was not just thought up and named by a group of people in a 3-day workshop, but also expressed in a way that it could become something more than a memo or an email. With this physical manifestation of the need for more cross-collaboration and multi-disciplined business development, it is visible and intriguing for others. It is better remembered because it is now ”a thing” and not just an idea. Like the one below, that could just as easily have been an email about more positive and constructive climate at the office. But in this case, it’s one in 6 prototypes that can take up space and demand attention in a shared space in the office, combating the so frequent lack of repetition, reminding and revisiting the change process.

The most important part

What these examples underline is that working with prototypes is a mind-set. This mind-set is one very characteristic start-ups and more agile or nimble ones, to use the buzz words. But let us remind you of the two questions above: if you’re not focusing on getting learning into day-to-day operations, and not trying to make testing things as valued as being right, it will be an uphill battle. We’d go as far as saying that this mind-set, the “un-technical” part of prototyping, is at the very hart of digital transformation, as that, of course, is actually about organizational development in order to better support business transformation. That is the simple truth.

[colabx]

A better how leads to much better what

At Co:LabX we put more focus on the how which creates much better conditions for accomplishing a really great what.

As a partner for innovation and transformation processes, we work with companies in two different ways: as an external innovation agency with clear briefs and tasks; or as internal innovation and transformation catalyst with an ongoing engagement and goals set on both task level (what) and group development and leadership level (how). The former way of working often lead to the latter.

Most companies know exactly what they do, offer and sell. Luckily. But two increasingly important components are missing. A purposeful focus on how we approach challenges and how the group or team can develop and constantly perform better together.

Why is an increased focus on the how more important than ever? Because we’re faced with more and more complex challenges due to the digitalization and transformation of society and all its parts. This is the most obvious reason.

Things move faster and faster. Under control? Departments, borders and disciplines aren’t as clear anymore. Ring a bell? So. Team participants, group dynamics and collaboration, methods, tools and properly defined focus questions. These are all key variables for dealing with challenges in this context. We know that this is characteristic for high performing, creative and innovative groups and companies.

 Co:LabX knows how to make teams better

Our mission is to help implement a force for innovation within companies. Consequently, this is how we most distinctively differ from most other innovation agencies: we work equally much with how teams develop and improve its collaboration capabilities and creativity, as with what the team produces.

This dual focus result in very task and team goal oriented processes and methods, continuous follow-up on both team and task level (and, when relevant, measuring group effectiveness) as well as leadership. We don’t sell pre-packaged workshops. We design methods, activities and processes as the team makes progress.

The importance of X

The starting point for our work is a well defined, stress tested, clarification of what the problem is. We call it question X. A question defined in such a way that it opens up for really interesting sub questions as well as other, deeper probing, view points on the matter at hand.

Take an example. A company realizes it has to focus on and invest more into innovation within digital service development. Not a bad idea given how business models and strategies in general often benefit greatly from shifting more towards services and an augmented product. But before you dig into service design and innovation processes, perhaps you should pause and ask yourself the question: ”how innovative are we, and how innovative would we benefit from being?”.

The original question/statement becomes a sub question and the over-arching question is, perhaps, the long-term game changer. It involves inspiration, organizational development, internal innovation capabilities and a being better positioned for a future of unknown challenges that need innovative solutions.

Read more about figuring out what works through prototyping

[colabx]

Kommunal innovationskraft!

En klok kommun kom och sa: ”Vi måste klara av att agera och navigera i förändringens tidevarv som innebär att vi inte vet svaren, knappt frågorna.

Vi behöver vara mer innovativa än någonsin när det kommer till tjänster, produkter, processer och oss själva. Av en enda anledning - det som är innovativt idag kommer inte att vara innovativt om tio år, kanske inte ens om 6 månader.”

Oavsett sektor, ingen kan stå stilla längre.

Frågan de ställde oss hade kommunen i det här fallet bra koll på då det ligger i deras uppdrag: ”Hur skapar vi maximalt värde för medborgarnas skattepengar?” Vårt korta svar löd ”Genom att odla innovationskraften hos medarbetarna.” Uppdraget i sig innebar att stötta i följdfrågan ”Hur då?”:

Scenariot känner säkert många igen. Det är minst sagt högaktuellt och ligger på var och varannan ledares bord. För somliga har frågan ”Hur?” redan hunnit ingjuta ett brännmärke i bordsskivan.

Det finns inget enkelt recept på hur som fungerar för alla organisationer. Däremot finns nyckelfaktorer som är gemensamma, så även för kommunen. Till exempel:

Nyckelfaktorer för innovationskraft

1) För båda parter är det en strategisk och långsiktig process, men där offentlig sektor har en fördel i att inte ha samma vinstdrivande krav på sig. Offentlig sektor går inte i konkurs, vilket stöttar långsiktigheten och kunskapskapitalet.

2) I båda fallen handlar det om att skapa en kultur i organisationen som gör att medarbetarna tror på sin egen förmåga att bli innovativa och underlätta för dem att också bli det. Det är inte ett projekt med en början och ett slut. Det är en konstant rörelse där stegen i sig är målet och destinationen.

3) Det svåra är inte att komma på idéer. Utmaningen är att gå från idé till handling. Att börja testa och i sin tur förverkliga idéerna. För att få det att hända krävs att det finns processer och strukturer som hjälper till att fånga upp och utveckla dem.

4) För att ge näring åt en innovationskultur krävs insiktsfulla ledare som hyllar misslyckanden och lärandet av dem. Tänk 6-3-1. Av tio idéer är det en som kommer att bli något. Sex kommer att misslyckas. Tre kommer att komma en bit på väg. Men det är de där nio andra som ska till för att komma fram till den mest lyckosamma idén. Så ut och hylla misslyckandena och fånga lärdomarna längs vägen.

5) Innovationer uppstår när vi vågar stå kvar i det olösta och fråga oss många varför? Gärna att man ser på det tillsammans med andra från olika kunskapsfält, perspektiv och erfarenheter.

Dessa fem punkter var fokus i uppdraget med kommunen. Ett medel på vägen för att uppnå det var att under första året utbilda 400 anställda, både chefer och medarbetare till innovationsambassadörer. Samtidigt fick de innovationsstöd i sina egna innovationsprocesser.

Den kraft som föds genom ett ambassadörstänk är starkare än vad någon annan konsult kan åstadkomma. Ett annat kvitto är att kommunen idag har inrättat en “Förnyelseenhet” för att fortsätta driva innovationskraften genom sina medarbetare.

Blir du nyfiken hur ni skulle kunna bygga er egen innovationskraft? Kontakta oss så berättar vi gärna mer.

[colabx]

Detta alltså... Ja, hela internet kommer att skriva om detta så inlägget är säkerligen inte unikt. Det är fantastiskt hur teknik idag suddar ut gränser vi förut tyckte var helt inmutade. Här rör det sig alltså om en interaktion med en knapp som inte är där. Men interaktionen med knappen, ja den är riktig.

Ursäkta, tog du just på mig, eller såg det bara ut så? Njae, du kände rätt.

[colabx]

Digital Marketing Lab Singapore

Över 4 dagar bedrevs workshops med inslag av labverksamhet för att utforska begreppet digital marknadsföring genom tankeväckande resonemang, exempel och fokusfrågor.

På uppdrag av Hyper Island (Lab är ett återkommande format inom Hyper Island) bestod vårt primära uppdrag i att skapa den innehållsmässigt röda tråden, huvudsakligt innehåll med tillhörande fokusfrågor för gruppen att förkovra sig i.

Labformatet är intressant rent generellt, och när det kommer till ett så övergripande och brett begrepp som digital marknadsföring, också ganska utmanande. För oss i gruppen bestod den första utmaningen i att kollektivt definiera just labelementet: hur skulle vi bedriva arbetet i gruppen, för att utnyttja kraften i en labverksamhet?

En serie talare specialiserade inom typiska discipliner inom digital marknadsföring (sociala medier, community management etc) samt en intressant brief, från ett globalt företag verksamt inom en mängd marknader och branscher, att konkret börja arbeta med gjorde under. Allt från välinformerade rekommendationer på strategi kring sociala medier till innovativ och affärstransformerande (på riktigt!) tjänsteutveckling blev resultatet.

Gruppens förståelse för digital marknadsföring och sätt att ta sig an detta i framtiden hade enligt egen utsago förändrats. Hur lång tid det kan ta för en arbetsgrupp, inom ett företag, att åstadkomma den utvecklingen en blandad grupp som denna lyckades med under 4 dagar kan vi bara gissa kring. Men vad man återkommande påminns om är den ibland magiska kvalitén på utforskningen (mängd perspektiv), idéer (orädd gruppkultur) och energi (det fokuserade samarbetet) som uppstår.

Vill du veta mer om hur vi kan hjälpa dig att designa workshops och arbetsgrupper för att bättre utforska ämnen som digital transformation och strategi - kontakta oss.

Ett tack till Hyper Island för väldigt intressanta dagar och härligt samarbete.