{"id":1060,"date":"2011-10-08T09:47:20","date_gmt":"2011-10-08T09:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=1060"},"modified":"2011-10-08T09:47:20","modified_gmt":"2011-10-08T09:47:20","slug":"flap-flop-flip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=1060","title":{"rendered":"Flap-Flop-Flip"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The world\u00a0seems to is getting itself into a real flap<\/strong> at the moment.<\/p>\n

The global economy is showing signs of faltering \u2013 the perfect dream of eternal financial growth seems to be showing cracks and is increasingly looking tarnished.<\/p>\n

\n

The doom mongers are surprisingly quiet – perhaps because they do not\u00a0have any new\u00a0ideas either.<\/p>\n

\n

It feels like the system is heading for a big flop <\/strong>and that\u00a0<\/strong>is not a\u00a0great feeling.<\/p>\n

Last week I\u00a0posed the\u00a0Argument-Free-Problem-Solving challenge \u2013 and some\u00a0were curious enough to have a go.\u00a0It seems that the challenge needs more\u00a0explanation\u00a0of how it works to create enough engagement to climb\u00a0the\u00a0skepticism barrier.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the AFPS method is The 4N Chart\u00ae \u2013 a simple,\u00a0effective and efficient way to get a balanced perspective of the emotional contours of the change terrain. \u00a0The improvement process boils down to\u00a0recognising, celebrating, and maintaining the Nuggets, flipping the Niggles into NoNos and reinvesting\u00a0the currencies that are released\u00a0into converting NiceIfs into more\u00a0Nuggets.<\/p>\n

The trick is\u00a0the\u00a0flip<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n

To perform a\u00a0flip<\/strong> we have\u00a0to make our assumptions explicit \u2013 which means we have to use\u00a0external reality to challenge our internal rhetoric.\u00a0 We need\u00a0real data\u00a0\u2013 presented in an easily digestible format \u2013 as a picture \u2013 and\u00a0in\u00a0context which converts the data into\u00a0information that we can then ingest and use to grow our\u00a0knowledge and broaden our understanding.<\/p>\n

To convert knowledge into understanding we must ask a\u00a0question:\u00a0\u201cIs our assumption a generalisation from a specific experience?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

For example \u2013 it is generally\u00a0assumed that high utilisation\u00a0is associated with\u00a0high productivity \u2013 and we want high productivity so we push for high utilisation. \u00a0And if we look at reality we can easily\u00a0find evidence to\u00a0support our assumption. \u00a0If I have under-utilised fixed-cost resources and I push more work into the process, I see an increase the flow in the stream, and an increase in utilisation, and an increase in revenue,\u00a0and no increase in cost \u2013 higher outcome: higher productivity.<\/p>\n

But if we look more carefully we can also find examples that seem to disprove\u00a0our\u00a0assumption. I have under-utilised resources and I push more work into the process, and the flow increases initially then falls dramatically, the revenue falls, productivity falls\u00a0and\u00a0when I look at all my resources they are still fully utilised. \u00a0The system has become gridlocked – and when I investigate is discover\u00a0that the resource I need to unlock the flow is tied up somewhere else in the process with more urgent work. My system does not have an anti-deadlock design.<\/p>\n

Our\u00a0rhetoric of generalisation\u00a0has been challenged by the reality of specifics – and it only takes one example. \u00a0One black swan will disprove the generalisation that “all swans are white”.<\/p>\n

We now know we need to flip<\/strong> the \u201cgeneral assumption” into \u201cspecific evidence” – changing the words “all”, “always”, “none”\u00a0and “never” into “some” and “sometimes”.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0our example\u00a0we flip<\/strong> our assumption into “sometimes utilisation and productivity go up together, and sometimes they do not”. This flip<\/strong>\u00a0reveals a new hidden door in the invisible wall that limits the breadth of our understanding and that unconsciously\u00a0hinders our progress.<\/p>\n

To open that door we must learn how to tell one specific from another and opening that\u00a0door will lead to\u00a0a path of discovery, more knowledge,\u00a0broader\u00a0understanding,\u00a0deeper wisdom, better decisions, more\u00a0effective actions\u00a0and sustained improvement.<\/p>\n

Flap-Flop-Flip.<\/p>\n

\n

This week has seen the loss\u00a0of one of the greatest Improvement Scientists – Steve Jobs – creator of Apple\u00a0– who put the essence of Improvement Science into words more eloquently than anyone in his 2005 address\u00a0at Stanford University.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour time is limited, so don\u2019t waste it living someone else\u2019s life. Don\u2019t be trapped by dogma \u2013 which is living with the results of other people\u2019s thinking. Don\u2019t let the noise of other\u2019s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.\u201d Steve Jobs (1955-2011).<\/em><\/p>\n

And with a lifetime of experience of leading an organisation that epitomises quality by design\u00a0Steve Jobs had the most credibility of any person on the planet when it comes to management of improvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The world\u00a0seems to is getting itself into a real flap at the moment. The global economy is showing signs of faltering \u2013 the perfect dream of eternal financial growth seems to be showing cracks and is increasingly looking tarnished. The doom mongers are surprisingly quiet – perhaps because they do not\u00a0have any new\u00a0ideas either. It … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Flap-Flop-Flip”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,32,35,42,45,46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4n-chart","category-productivity","category-reflections","category-how","category-what","category-teach"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}