Find some red tape and eliminate it

Working with a government agency recently, we spent time on a ‘Red Tape Reduction’ session.

Red tape: those needless, time consuming activities.

Ask your customers and they'll have likely been frustrated or annoyed with something about your systems or how they interact with your product, business or people.

'Red tape'? It's thought to be based on the old practice of binding government documents with... red tape.

Frustration with red tape also comes from within the organisation too, from complicated or broken systems, time wasting forms, clunky websites.

Agreeing to go through a Red Tape Reduction session is a great thing to do! For many organisations this isn’t easy:

1. To agree to do it

2. To commit to being there in the session, identifying red tape, and then

3. To actually change things to remove the problem points.

That's because it’s way more exciting (and more rewarded via KPIs & targets) to work on new things, make new stuff and create new services.

What if at your next team meeting you just identified something that’s riddled with red tape and decided to eliminate the messy complications? You’d make things better for your customers, your colleagues ... and you.

Dissing the new

In the area of 'new ways of working' there are opportunities to, you know, try new things. New ways of doing things are happening the world over, across diverse sectors and deep into different domains and areas of expertise.

So there is new. There are opportunities to look, learn and try out the new.

How wonderful!

It’s perplexing when of course some people - no, not you - but some people, dismiss the new.

They dis the new. They bag it, disrespect it, criticize it and claim it’s not for them. But it’s new! How can you dis it if you haven’t even tried it?

Ok, then if you have tried it or have done it, you have incredible experience and insight to offer. And it’s a shame and a waste when that experience isn’t invited, acknowledged, listened to or leveraged in organisations. Our experience gets dissed.

Looking ahead, will you dive in and try the new or will you stand back and dis the new?

How can we adapt to newer ways of thinking and working if we're too busy dissing?

Willing to start

So many ideas, so little time. It’s a feeling we can have that can make us not even bother with the work of putting any of our ideas out there. But they’re not really ideas until they are ‘out there’. Until then they are just thoughts.

So on the theme of 'willing' : ready, keen and eager ... are you willing to - start? Perfectionists among us hold off on pressing ‘go’ or registering the domain, writing the blog or making the call. Yet we’re willing to think and imagine for hours, potentially days. And not act. Waiting, wondering, rehearsing, imagining. All that mental and creative effort that never gets a return on our investment of time.

How about we be willing? Yes, we don’t know the outcome; and yes, we can’t control it. But the products we buy, the services we use and the people we admire have all required someone who was willing to start.

Will you? Won’t you?

Having a Design Mindset

The skills we’ll need for 2020 and beyond are shaping up as a slick looking list!
 
The skill of having a design mindset is right up there. 

This doesn’t mean you need to know your way around design software, or know which colours go with what or even what an industrial designer does.

Rather it’s the frame of mind, the mindset that you adopt to think, solve and respond to what’s going on in your team, business, industry … the world. 

Beyond ho-hum
A same/same response to strategy, performance, capability, culture and our teams is too ho-hum now. We can’t do the same as we always have.

Businesses who need to adapt and thrive (that includes the solo operator right through to mega-global big name players) need to increasingly take a design approach to many parts of their business. 

A Design Mindset
I think a design mindset looks like this: 


 

• Involve: it starts with people, finding out what’s going on, what’s working, what’s not, what’s needed. This is about connecting to your customers, colleagues, users, stakeholders.  

• Ideate: you come up with ideas, possibilities; it's ingenuity at work. Here you use your creativity and problem solving smarts to think of possible solutions.   

• Implement: start something, do something. Don’t wait until it’s complete, test out a minimum viable product, process or service. Put stuff to work, try it out, experiment and take note of what happens. 'Have a crack,’ as we say in Australia. 

• Iterate: You improve and evolve and keep working on it. Release another version, go again, ‘Have another crack’. The refining, adapting and responding is what keeps you agile, current and relevant. 

Having a design mindset is vital for change leaders, strategic planners, product owners, business owners, team leaders and executives.

And when you adopt and apply a design mindset to the situations, projects and pieces of work that you're working on, you're better equipped to remain competitive and respond to uncertainty.   

Strategy is changing; leadership is changing; organisations are changing. 

We need to also change how we think about what we do if we want to get closer, go further and deliver better.

How to deal with creative sads, dips and roller coasters

Creators and makers the world over (and history past) know there are times when the muse shows up and times when it’s in hiding.

In between times, you get the opportunity to beat yourself up about:

• how you’re not creative;
• are only creative after alcohol or cupcakes;
• sometimes think you might be creative but other people have already thought/done/published/shipped made a gazillion dollars doing what you thought might have been original;
• can’t keep the creative thing going every day; and
• feel like giving up; who would notice anyway.

These thoughts are all part of the creative dip; that roller coaster of thinking about your wonderfully human capability of ingenuity, of making sh*t up, of being brilliant and insightful and clever.

Even if you think your creativity comes as often as a leap year, look out because even if it's a leap year or not, creativity IS there. 

When the dip hits, reach for this list of action-based solutions to wind you up-up-up and back on the rails to the heights of the brilliance you know is yours.

Know it - know that it WILL come; it’s not a case of if, but when. The creative dip will come. When you know that, you’ll notice it when it does. It won’t shock you into taking a day under the covers … alone; with ice cream or choc-coated marshmallows. 

Name it - when it comes, name it. Call out to it. “Hey you, you dippity dip of creative process. I know you, you’re not gonna get me! Ha! You’re just here to make me… no way, I’m not even gonna say it. Screw you! I’ve got stuff to do!”

Shift focus - when it aches on the downward slope, go to another thing you’ve got bubbling on the back burner. You know that ‘thing’, that other project, idea or wonderment you’ve had before? Get that out for a moment and spend a little time with that. This stage of being in the dip will pass. 

Distraction with another action – There is no sense falling into the pit of wallow and staying there; start immediately on another piece of this project. Persist despite the dip. 

Not-negotiable - Do not debate or argue or negotiate with the dip. As Richard Carlson says in his brilliant book ‘Stop thinking start living’. If you think, debate, negotiate or ruminate, you’re going to be done-for down there in the depths. Carry on. Simply carry on. (PS: By the way, thinking about why you’re in the pit is not carrying on.)

Thank it and keep moving - Acknowledge the pit and that it’s simply your ego looking out for you, trying to protect you from the scary stuff of shipping and publishing and creating. Seth Godin knows it; Steven Pressfield knows it; Austin Kleon knows it; Elizabeth Gilbert knows it; Nancy Duarte knows it. You too are currently knowing it. Doing creative thinking and work is tricky, challenging and hard but you’ve got this. You have. 

See the light of dawn – Not suggesting you do an all-nighter, rather as you’re on the up slope, you’ll think ‘Hey, hang on a minute, this could be… maybe it’s a bit good after all.’ This is the light of awesome firing and flaring up again. Acknowledge that. Say ‘I’m coming up for sunlight again here people’. 

Step on the gas – With some light coming your way, speed up, go safely but at breakneck speed. You’re up and out of the pit, pick up some momentum and carry on. Double time. With a renewed view from another peak, you have a wonderful capability to go further, faster and fairer than before. So go go go and do do do.

We don’t need to deny or delete the roller coaster dip of the creative process; we need to acknowledge it. The creative sads and the dip of doubt hits us all at some time through the course of a project or piece of work. Yes, sometimes it feels more frequent or that rollercoaster is a nauseating ride we paid for…but it does pass.

When you get to the top of the next roller coaster hill, enjoy that expansive view. You’re just one scream away from the next pit. But by then you’ll be an expert hand at this creative dip thing. You’ll get your rhythm, flow and creative mojo on and you’ll go, onward and upward, screaming with the wind in your hair: ‘Aaaarrrggghhhh! I’m aliiiiivvvveeeee!’