You need to be around people that believe in you on many different levels. This is the place. Everyone does believe that you can create change, you can make a big impact, and that you can do it in a short amount of time. And that it’s going to be profitable and they’ll invest in you and make it happen. And it is just so inspirational.

~ Virginia Klausmeier (CEO, Sylvatex) in NPR’s story on America’s Magnet For Innovation, And Investments, Silicon Valley.

We spent a few days in Silicon Valley on our recent trip, visiting some of Jason’s clients/connections at the Stanford d.school and sitting in on part of a 500 Startups UX bootcamp session. One of the things that  we both really noticed was the confident attitude of everyone we met. Confidence in themselves and in us. Not an arrogance or competitiveness (somewhat surprisingly), just an amazing amount of self-belief that they could build companies, create products and form connections. So when I heard this quote, I found myself nodding. Although my personal experience in the Valley was brief, this sums up the vibe precisely.

Photo Credit: Interact Egypt - Play Innovation

A couple of weeks ago, my friend and fellow TEDxCanberra organiser, Gavin, asked me to suggest some icebreaker activities for an upcoming planning day he was helping to organise. This was my off-the-top-of-my-head response…

• One of the easy ones I like is to go around the room and ask everyone to share something interesting about their name. It’s easy and surprising how much you learn about others.
• For something more interactive, the marshmallow challenge is fun but takes time and some equipment.
• As a creativity warmup you could do the circles challenge (Tim Brown talks about it in his talk from the Serious Play conference on TED.com). You can read about the exercise and download the sheets with the printed cirlces here.
• DIY name-tags? Where they have to make a name tag that not only says their name but has an icon/picture on it that represents something (their role in the team, branch, organisation for example).
• Or a rock-paper-scissors tournament… this gets loud, but is lots of fun…. Everyone pairs up and plays a game of rock-paper-scissors (can be a single game or best of three). The winner progresses to the next round and plays another winner, while the loser becomes the biggest fan of whoever defeated them. They have to cheer and clap and rev up their winner. And so it continues on and on, until you have two people playing off against each other backed by two big teams of supporters.
• Everyone has to line up in order of birthday (1 Jan at one end to 31 Dec at the other) without talking. You could also do variants of this…. middle name by alpha order, length of service in the organisation….
• Another question that is kind of cool to ask is ‘If you were going to make a documentary, what would it be about?’. I’ve done planning days where I get people to write their documentary topic on another nametag and wear it for the day. That way it can continue to be used as an icebreaker throughout the day, during breaks etc.

What are your favourite icebreakers?

I think that this session provides a fantastic, fun taster of what design thinking is all about and why building empathy, prototyping, seeking feedback and iterating are critical to reaching good design outcomes. But perhaps more importantly what I love about this course is that it helps people to uncover (or discover?) their own creative potential. People walk into the course thinking ‘I’m not a designer’, ‘I can’t draw’, ‘I’m not creative’, but through the course they do design, draw and generate creative solutions.

The d.school make it super easy for facilitators by providing them with pretty much all of the materials you need for the course – facilitator guide, participant worksheets, and post-course handouts (which you can download and use for free under the CC BY-NC-SA licence here) . Note – the recently released virtual crash course makes it even easier as they effectively provide the facilitator too!

1. 

   Prototyping materials

   Prototyping materials. Along with the printouts of the facilitator guide & participant handout, the only other materials that the facilitator needs to organise are the prototyping materials. I did this fairly simply, cheaply and easily – I raided the stationary cupboard and my own drawers at home to find things like: scraps of wrapping paper, foil, rubber bands, coloured paper, old coloured manila folders, plus plenty of recycled packaging materials (toilet rolls, cardboard boxes, egg cartons etc). I also took plenty of coloured textas, glue sticks, blue-tak, plasticine and paperclips. Basically – whatever I could easily find. If I’d had more time, I would have been keen to add things like pipe-cleaners and other craft type supplies (I tried Officeworks, but they didn’t seem to stock these materials. A colleague later suggested Lincraft or Hot Dollar type stores which I’ll try next time).

2. Printing the participant handouts. Make sure you select the ‘collate’ option on the photocopier  when printing out the participant guides! I ended up spending quite a bit of time manually collating the print outs ’cause I failed to do this (why collate isn’t the default option on all printers/photocopiers baffles me).
   

   Manually collating the participant handouts

3. Music/timer. While the course recommends that you display a timer and play music, we didn’t have access to a projector/speakers (plus there was a large formal meeting happening in the room next door so we tried to keep the noise levels down). I just kept time using the stopwatch on my iPhone and it worked fine for our small group.
4. Group size. There were 9 people in the group, which was a really good size for running through the course for the first time. I’d definitely recommend that first time facilitators try out the course with a group of 8-12. The odd number of participants wasn’t ideal – in the end we had a group of three (which didn’t work perfectly but still gave everyone a taste of the design experience) and I juggled timeframes and instructions slightly to try to make it work. This is why a co-facilitator (or some floating ‘helpers’) could be really helpful – if there was an odd number of participants, one of the co-facilitators could participate rather than facilitate.
5. Timing. Overall, I think the timing worked okay – we were finished (including wrap-up/debrief) in 90 minutes as planned. It definitely felt rushed at times (and the participants clearly felt uncomfortable about this), so I think it’s worth emphasising this up front and letting participants know in advance that the course is going to feel like this.
6. Warm up. It took a while for participants to warm up and really get into the experience. I observed that the initial ‘interviews’ were quite formal, quiet, and there were a few uncertain faces. But as people moved further and deeper into the conversations and begun to get some clarity about possible ideas/solutions, the conversations became much more animated and enthusiastic. If I was running a session again with a group of participants that didn’t know each other that well I’d try to run a quick warm up activity once the pairs were established – something fun and quick to get participants thinking creatively and build some initial connection/trust/rapport.
7. Instruction. Although the aim of the exercise is to redesign the experience of giving a gift, some of the participants still gravitated toward designing a better gift for their partner to give. This is probably in part because it feels easier to design and physically prototype a product rather than a service. Also, in the initial interview step participants are prompted to ask each other about the last time they gave a gift – so some of my participants focused on creating a better gift for that particular scenario. Next time, I’ll provide a more generic instruction to participants and perhaps encourage them to share a couple of experiences (the most recent gift giving experience, the most positive experience, a time when giving a gift was difficult or frustrating) rather than focusing only on the most recent experience. It’s also something to watch out for as a facilitator and keep reminding participants that they’re designing an experience rather than a gift.

So, they were my key learnings as facilitator…. But what about the key learnings/thoughts of the participants…

Six things I like about the new Pocket…

1. Seamless update from Read it Later. I simply updated my existing app (Read it Later Pro) and the new Pocket (with all of my existing content) was installed. The existing bookmarklets and settings in my third-party apps continue to work without update/changes.
2. New Chrome extension. There was a third-party extension available for Chrome (which I’ve recently switched to from Firefox), but it’s nice to see that Pocket has now released an official extension for Chrome. Clean, simple, easy-to-use, and so far, it works.
3. Automatically filtering saved content into articles, video and images. In my view, this is probably the biggest enhancement. I do my reading and video watching at different times and in different places. Previously with Read it Later it was hard to distinguish between video content and text-based articles in my reading list which meant that often I’d click on a video link when I was in reading mode.
4. New design. The Read it Later design was functional, but not all that attractive. Pocket’s design is simpler, cleaner, and makes greater use of images (a thumbnail of the content you’ve saved is included to make it easier to see what you’ve saved).
5. Bulk edit / improved search. I don’t use these features much (as I save all the content I want to retain on my Pinboard), but for those users who want to use Pocket not only as an app to save content to read/watch later but also as a way of easily recalling the content that they’ve previously read/watched, then these improvements could be useful.
6. Save to Pocket directly from email. I don’t know if this is a new feature (or perhaps I just didn’t notice it in Read it Later) but you can simply send a link via email to save it in your Pocket. I think this will be particularly useful for me when I find something I want to read later while using the computers at work (which don’t have the Pocket extension installed). Previously I would email links to my personal email account to read later. The ability to send them to Pocket instead keeps everything in one place.

And a couple of further suggestions for improvement…

1. As I save a lot of content to Pocket from Twitter on my phone, one of the things that I really like about the app is that it saves the source tweet as well as the link. When I share content that I’ve found, I like to attribute the source from which I found it. When viewing saved content in a web browser this info isn’t included. I think it’d be great if it could also appear at the top of the page as it does in the iPhone app.
   

   Articles viewed in the Pocket iPhone app show the source tweet at the top of the screen.

   

   Articles viewed in a web browser don't contain any information about where the article was saved from.

2. Ability to save content directly from Facebook. Increasingly the content that I’m saving to read later is sourced from Facebook so a way to save to Pocket with a single click would be great (just like the functionality that exists for many of the Twitter apps). At the moment I have to click on the link to view the content, then select ‘Open in Safari’ and then save to Pocket using the mobile Safari bookmarklet. I know that adding this functionality probably rests with Facebook rather than Pocket, but it’s definitely something that would increase Pocket’s utility for me.

There’s no competitive advantage today in knowing more than the person next to you. The world doesn’t care. The world cares about what you can do with what you know – do you have the skill, do you have the will.

~ Tony Wagner (via Explore)

This month’s ‘links for light reading’ is a little late, but better late than never, right?

Three great articles on leadership caught my eye this month….

• Self knowledge has long been established as one of the hallmarks of great leaders. This piece from The Guardian, titled You are a leader – but how well do you know yourself?, outlines seven ideas that leaders can use to learn more about their performance. The list includes a suggestion to take a personality test – my personal favourite (and the one that I find most useful) is the VIA Survey of Character Strengths (the questionnaire and results can be accessed from Dr. Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness site (test is free, but registration is required)).
• In a recent blog post ‘Good Boss, Bad Boss’ author and Stanford University professor, Bob Sutton, shares a useful method for determining if you or your boss is self-aware (and listens well).
• And finally, this short post, Mo Cheeks and a fundamental question of leadership, (featuring a video of former Portland Trail Blazers coach, Mo Cheeks) highlights why acting as a leader demands that we embrace our own mediocrity…. “‘Am I willing to risk my personal reputation and status for the good of others?’ becomes a fundamental question any potential leader must answer.  We must balance the inferior nature of our solution and abilities against what the state of the world would be if we did not act.”

And another couple of worthwhile reads to add to your Easter holiday reading list….

• Innovation Is About Arguing, Not Brainstorming. Here’s How To Argue Productively. This article presents five key rules of engagement that have been found to yield fruitful group innovation sessions and ultimately lead to meaningful ideas.
• I’m fascinated about how the way we work is changing and how it’s going to continue to change into the future, including changes to the physical environment in which we work. This piece, The future of work spaces: hot desks or cold comfort?, looks at the ways that some companies are beginning to change how they use their office space.

Life is too short to waste it with people who don’t get it, whatever “it” may be for you, so make sure you surround yourself with people who do.

~ Xenios Thrasyvoulou (quoted in Bob Sutton’s post on The Power of the People Around You)

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first heard one of the stories from this book when listening to Tom Kelley’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders lecture on how to be an innovator for life. I didn’t really know what to expect from the book, but I loved it! The author uses a series of often humorous, short, personal stories to reflect on and illustrate the problems with most organisational cultures and how to avoid losing one’s sanity and individuality when working in one.

My notes from Orbiting the Giant Hairball

[Disclaimer: The notes below are rough, and may be a mixture of direct quotes, paraphrasing, and my own thoughts/ideas/reminders. They're written here primarily for me (so they may not make much sense out of context, especially for those who haven't read the book)].

(17) Disruption with purpose.

(33) Orbiting is responsible creativity. Vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mind set, beyond “accepted models, patterns or standards” – all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission.

To find Orbit around a corporate Hairball is to find a place of balance where you benefit from the resources of the organisation without becoming entombed in the bureaucracy of the institution.

(46) …catch the attention of the sleep walking geniuses and lure them to wakefulness, help them find the courage to be who they truly were instead of who the company expected them to be and entice them into meeting life with an exuberance that benefits humanity.

(51-53) Chicken mesmerised by chalk line.

(53) It is a delicate balance, resisting the hypnotic spell of an organisation’s culture and, at the same time, remaining committed from the heart to the personally relevant goals of the organisation.

(59) Pool player – Sometimes, when you see a colleague whose job seems easy, you may in fact be witnessing a champion at play.

(64) Measurable evidence of creativity vs invisible creative activity. Cow making milk.

‘A management obsessed with productivity usually has little patience for the quiet time essential to profound creativity.’

(174) Pyramid vs plum tree organisation

Pyramid – organises into ‘Divisions’ (the state of being divided) and ‘Departments’

Plum tree – organises into ‘Groups’ (a number of persons who act as a unit) and ‘Forces’ (groups having the power of effective action)

(211) Allow those you lead… To lead… when they feel the need. All will benefit.

(224) If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can paint it. Only you.

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

~ From Bruce Mau’s brilliant Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

Apart from feeling a little uneasy about the fact that companies are collecting and using this kind of personal information in what seems to be quite a manipulative marketing approach, what made me more frustrated was that this was another example of clearly seriously smart people (in this case the Target mathematicians and statisticians analysing this consumer behaviour) spending their time (and their intellect and talents) trying to figure out how to get people to buy more stuff (that they probably don’t need or even want).

This has got me pondering and reflecting on a number of recent articles/podcasts that have raised similar issues. Like the Panel at last year’s SXSW Interactive on the topic ‘Techies Can Save the World, Why Aren’t They?‘ in which panelist Jack Hidary commented…

There is a lot of talent being attracted to all the great game companies and the great app companies and it’s fantastic but the fact is that we have major challenges to solve. Renewable energy, mobility, transportation, all these big areas are really left unsolved.

And the article, ‘This Tech Bubble is Different‘, about maths genius and former Facebook employee Jeff Hammerbacher:

“The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads,” he says. “That sucks.”

And another focusing on the important role that designers can play in solving problems that matter, ‘If We’re All Smart, Why Aren’t We Solving Problems?‘:

How do we help move our discipline out of the realm of software, websites, furniture, and aesthetic based work to the realm of the type of thought, synthesis, and observation we can provide. We’re not designers of aesthetic, we’re not designers of marketing tools, we not designers of landfill materials, we are designers; period. We are critical thinkers who can help provide less disease, better education, better housing, and better solutions. In the end, we can help.

And finally, a piece in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, about the challenges of attracting talented people into leadership roles in the NFP sector – ‘Searching for Jane Goodall‘:

A child was asked what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said she wanted to work for the Red Cross. In shock, her teacher responded, “Oh no, dear. You are far too smart to work for a nonprofit!” True story. Ask college students who their social heroes are. “Martin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi . . .” Wait. How about someone who is alive? Silence.

So, why aren’t the smart people solving problems that matter? How can we encourage bright, talented, young people to want to work on social and environmental problems and not just consumer problems?