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Topic: Culture
The NEXOS wave
Earlier this week, we introduced our thinking around digital culture. Using the invented word NEXOS, we briefly described our concerns over how digital information and digital technology proliferation are affecting people’s lives. As people in our mid 30s to 40s we remember life before the technology was so deeply embedded in social and working lives. We don’t want to turn back the clock, but we do want to understand how behaviours and attitudes are changing, and what choices we might make as individuals to stay sane in this new age of constant information. Continue reading
Our thinking has been shaped by things we read, and much of that has been online. When we think about a Next Operating System - or NEXOS - it's something that relates to five broad themes:
I. Lost art of conversation and increasing trend ...MORE >
Announcing NEXOS
We’re really pleased to be working with Dan Simmons at Beyond Eureka on a response to the onslaught of digital information, messages, conversations. We’re all of an age where we remember life before mobile phones, email, RSS feeds, FaceBook. We wouldn’t dream of turning back the clock. But we do feel people need better tools and protocols, not simply more devices, more content, more conversations. > Continue reading
NEXOS stands for Next Operating System. I was talking to a TEDx organiser about NEXOS in these terms:
Albert Einstein once famously said: “It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity. I hope that someday, our humanity might yet surpass our ...MORE >
A 3-min movie on Rachel Botsman’s Collaborative Consumption
I produced this short movie in January 2012 as part of the RSA/Nominet Trust Film Competition. The film was immediately featured by Rachel Botsman’s website and went on to attract over 1000 plays in the first four weeks. Continue reading
Although our movie was not selected by the judges, it was chosen for a TEDx in Leeds on the Future of Money in February that was picked up in the Guardian online, and continues to circulate in the Peer-to-Peer global community of which ...MORE >
Stories: how and why
A tweet last week from Dave Snowden alerted me to Anecdote’s Story-Spotting Test. The thing that bothered me about Anecdote’s definition of a story is what it left out. The markers they’ve identified cover the who, where, when and what. They don’t mention the how or the why. Hmmm…. Continue reading
I mulled this over. And began realising that Throughline's practice is deeply interested in the "how" and "why". Maybe it's because our bread-and-butter is finding and crafting stories on B2B topics where "how" and "why" are quite genuinely the most interesting questions to ...MORE >
A Disappearing Number: fine image-making
Top evenings at the theatre in 2010 included the return to London of Complicite’s 2005 production A Disappearing Number, which we saw in September. Continue reading
...because it rendered complex ideas accessible, by mashing up a real story of friendship and collaboration from the 1910s with a fictional story of contemporary love across distance
...because the love stories moved me, as did the moments of loss, so much so that ...MORE >
Collaborating to create value: who is the client?
Now in our fourth year, we’re thinking a lot about how we collaborate to create value for our clients. One of things we’ve discovered is that: network-delivery models create hidden “clients” who can crowd out the needs of the actual, ultimate client. Here’s a story about hidden clients in a networked business situation:
Continue reading
Robert just told me about his work with Jane. Jane is internal communications manager for a company involved in a merger. Her annual budget trebled for the merger period. She had a choice: enlarge her circle of advisors or ask an incumbent agency ...MORE >
The Elements of Culture: Grant McCracken and Hofstede’s Onion
Following on from my post about why tracking the evolution of culture is important, I make an attempt at a synthesis between Grant McCracken’s “Fast and Slow Culture” concept and Geert Hofstede’s Onion Diagram of the elements of culture, searching for some clues on how culture evolves. Continue reading
In my previous post, I outlined why it's important to track emergent changes in culture. Ever since I heard Grant McCracken speak in London at the end of May 2010, I've been thinking about how his definition of "fast" and "slow" culture fit with ...MORE >
Singing from the same hymn sheet?
How does organisational culture actually work? Do value statements actually describe behaviour and day-to-day practices? Or is there a gap? A story about singing, and a song…. Continue reading
Here's comic Tim Minchin on the dilemma he faces because he can't walk the talk.
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In his book Unmanaging: Opening up the organisation to its own unspoken knowledge, McKinsey veteran Theodore Taptikilis tells an entertaining story that prefigures the organisational culture movement in the ...MORE >
Why do we need to track emergent culture change?
“Emergent” culture change is becoming a pressing issue at both corporate and national levels. It’s time to start tracking it, so the changes don’t catch you off guard. Continue reading
"Emergent" culture change - or how cultures quietly evolve - is an issue that has received relatively little attention. In part this is because the main bodies of measurements of culture are those of the values of national cultures begun by Hofstede and ...MORE >
Athletic != Fitness
Grant McCracken writes a post about how Skechers stole a march on Nike in the new “Toning Shoe” segment. I built on this with a note about the history of Nike and how their cultural blindspot to the women’s fitness market has bitten them before. Continue reading
Grant McCracken interprets culture for commercial folk. His blog, he writes, "sits at the intersection of anthropology and economics." Recently Grant picked up on an MSNBC piece detailing the rise of so-called Toning Shoes which sees Nike's market lead eroded by Skechers. Grant's ...MORE >
Why have the Dutch produced so many interculturalists?
Why are so many of the leaders in the cross-cultural field from the Netherlands? – I discuss 4 factors: (1) Path Dependency; (2) Industry and Economics; (3) History; (4) Culture Continue reading
I'm in the process of writing a book drawing on my experiences working with culture and communication. As Dan Gray scanned the first draft of the "recommended reading list" he asked "Why are so many of the leaders in the cross-cultural field from ...MORE >
If you think like hammer, does everything start to look like a nail?
Tool bound thinking is the topic for a group discussion about internal communications that I’ve been part of over at the Commscrum blog. Continue reading
Commscrum is a group blog founded to bring interdisciplinary thinking to business communications. Founders Dan Gray, Kevin Keohane, Mike Klein and Lindsay Uittenbogaard kindly invited me to join the second wave of posters - so here is my first post in collaboration with ...MORE >
Managing the future workplace? Start here.
We distil the essence of Wall Street Journal online editor Alan Murray’s advice to managers… Continue reading
Stay flexible. (Essential for agility in the face of uncertainty.)
Devour data. (Not just bits and bytes - keep an "ear to the ground" and actually get out into the field and talk to the ordinary folk using your products.
Be (somewhat) humble. (Recognise ...MORE >
Acquisitions: a health warning
Acquiring companies is a common way to drive growth into new markets, buttress market share and generally achieve a strategic vision. But does it actually work? And if not, why not? Continue reading
In 1987, Harvard professor Michael Porter observed that between 50 and 60% of acquisitions were failures. There have been several other studies since then, and the results have continued to support his conclusions.
In 1995, for example, Mercer Management Consulting noted that between 1984 ...MORE >
Grabbing the imagination
To have impact in workplaces, stories must strike the right balance between the exemplary and the familiar. Continue reading
Good stories motivate staff is the key idea behind Rhymer Rigby’s piece in yesterday's FT.
Rigby quotes Allianz Insurance corporate events manager Stephen Flynn: “The [stories] that work the best are those that are unusual enough to grab the imagination but generic enough that you ...MORE >