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Showing posts from February, 2015

Why Visual Management Techniques are so Powerful

How does the brain process visual clues to the environment and synthesize meaning about an ever changing landscape?   Tom Wujec explains the creation of mental models and why AutoDesk invest in visual management techniques to plan their strategic roadmaps. Also in one of Tom Wujec's talks on How to Make Toast , he explains another important point of visual management - system's thinking and group work. Don't worry... the mind will do all the work.  It will fill in the missing details, and abstract the patterns into the concept.  Here's an exercise, Squiggle Birds by David Gray , to experience this. On a similar topic - Your view of Time Do you know where you perception of time comes from... it's not the same all over the earth.  It's a cultural construct.  If you are like me (English speaking/writing) you have a perception that time flows from left to right (the direction of reading written words).  Ponder that a moment... time flow is a constru

The Simplest Systems Thinking Exercise - How to Make Toast.

For many years one example of process thinking, resource gathering, requirements, implementation and acceptance criteria has been the exercise - make PB&J sandwiches .  I've done this with groups to discuss the simple task that we typically overlook as "experts" in sandwich making, that perhaps a 5 year old will find difficulty glossing over the - get bread - instruction. Here's a TED Talk by Tom Wujec who has analyzed a similar exercise and draws some powerful conclusions from many iterations.  Watch it and then rethink the simple acts in your life. So tell me again why group collaboration is important when you are solving wicked problems? I was out walking my dog, Malibu and we stopped at a tree with lights wrapped around it's trunk.  They didn't go too far up the trunk, and I wondered if the humans ran out of effort... then I imagined the lights wrapping themselves around the tree.  What kind of motions would a set of lights on a wire learn?