Ja, ja… de laatste post was al weer eeuwen geleden – maar dat is het voordeel van een eigen persoonlijk blog: “it’s my party and blog when I want to…”. En aangezien de voertaal op het onderwerp van deze post (de Lean Kanban Central Europe conference) voornamelijk in het engels was – the rest of this post will also be in english.
I felt the need to quickly write down some of this stuff cause I (sort-off) know how my mind works – or at least enough of it to predict the gap that will be here if I wait to long. So I started with transcribing my notes from the first keynote session from monday. And just to warn you – there’s this TLDR risc… now consider yourself warned.
Noreena Hertz – “how to make decisions in a complex world”
Excellent opening keynote, interesting stuff about our own potential thinking and decision-making traps as well as some concrete steps on how to avoid these. We need 3 qualities to out-survive our competitors, we need to be 1) more agile, 2) more innovative and 3) smarter then our competitors. Her talk focussed on getting there by asking yourself 6 questions:
- Is your organisation singing from the same hymn sheet? It shouldn’t be 🙂 Concensus is a dangerous base to work from (think Nokia). When building a culture – embrace dissent. Who is your challenger in chief? Embrace difference in gender, age, skills… We need both the people who see rabbits as well as people that see ducks on board… – i saw rabbits btw… (not sure what that says about me- as I havent seen the relevant “how I met your mother”-episode
- Are you ready for the next generation of consumers? The 13 – 19 yr olds, or generation K as Noreena likes to call them (K from Katniss). Only 6% of them trusts big coorperations, they do care for privacy, they do not just consume but want to create (cool example Hatsune Miku) and opposed to what you might expect they feel lonely alot and do value human contact… last but not least: they see themselves as unique (which made me think of this). What does all of this mean? well Starbucks seem to have understood very well for example.
- Are you thinking about form as well as content? “simple” stuff – colors matter… on the dating-site the same women seemed more attractive to a red background then on another color. Documents on red background seem more riskier then same text on green background. There’s a lot of stuff and research on this… also – experiment! try! find out! At this point in time I was wondering how much thought Noreena had put into her green dress and black leather boots outfit and to what desired result 😉
- Are you in the best decision-making shape? emotions are affecting our decision-making – not a bad thing by definition but at least be aware of it. Also physical – lack of sleep increases the chance of making bad decisions in a very big way. And finally; guys – make sure to carry of picture of a (neutral) rock around to look at right before you make a financial decision… research has shown you make way better decisions then instead of (for instance) after looking at a picture of a victoria secrets model.
- Are you reaping the data dividend? Recurring theme throughout the conference – there’s amazing loads of data available these days – use it! Also be carefull – a major increase in google searches for jobs doesn’t always mean unemployment suddenly went up… (just think about that one).
- Are you taking the time to think? Simple and short – most amazing people seem to have found a way to spend time on thinking, reading, reflection… it’s important! it’s when the good stuff happens in your brain (in the conference room only about 10 of 300 figured out how, so appearantly it’s not easy..)
Check her website for more of this stuff… and I think I will be asking Santa for her “Eyes wide open” book this year.
Which brings me to the end of this blog – I need some thinking time myself and more importantly: my Weissbier is getting warm. I won’t summarize all the sessions I attended but will try to do some more during the next few days… good stuff on this conference and very well organised – if you’re into kanban, lean, making sense or helping and improving organisations I suggest you attend next year!
Damn I wish they would just post video’s off all the sessions somewhere…