Green IT Workshop Results

Posted on April 7, 2008 by John Reaves
Filed Under Energy | Leave a Comment

We just did a great breakthrough session last week on Green IT. Thanks to everyone who participated. We’re working on a longer report, but below is a quick overview.

In general, the approach we came up with might be called “Grassroots Green IT”. It’s based on low-cost short-cycle options, change management to affect user behavior, and local or community action to encourage implementing Green IT opportunities across a broad range of organizations, large and small.

We categorized these opportunities, very roughly, into three buckets:

  1. PC management (turning off PCs as much as possible, either manually or automatically);
  2. Server virtualization (creating “virtual servers” that can run existing applications with fewer physical servers);
  3. Technological options, including thin clients, optical or quantum computing and low-power displays, that require hardware investments or future development.

We explored the kinds of organizational barriers that get in the way of adopting these practices, and brainstormed some possible ways to encourage adoption. The emphasis was on “tactical” actions and ways to generate momentum for change on a local and/or community basis. Some of the ideas include:

TimeSquid

Posted on April 7, 2008 by John Reaves
Filed Under Energy, Product | 1 Comment

A “squid” is a power strip in the form of a male electrical plug connected to multiple female plugs at the end of short cords. The advantage is that you can plug in power bricks that won’t fit onto a strip.

A “TimeSquid” is a squid with a timer attached. What’s the purpose of the timer? People are becoming conscious of the power drain from devices (monitors, etc.) that are supposed to be turned off, but have a “trickle charge” to make them quicker to warm up.

Also, the old wisdom about PCs, that it’s safer to keep them on all the time, is no longer true … it saves energy to turn them off at night. But people sometimes don’t want to wait for them to boot up all the way, or sometimes IT managers want to access the PCs in the middle of the night. So a timer allows you to set two times in a 24-hour day, one to turn all the devices attached off, and one to turn them on.

The TimeSquid should be a relatively inexpensive way to reduce energy costs without replacing all your hardware.

Thinking about caring for our children and our parents

Posted on April 7, 2008 by Liz Dreyer
Filed Under Experience, Process, World-Saving | 3 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to navigate the trifecta of career, children and aging parents at the same time. My folks, knock on wood, are doing great and are thriving well — living independently, traveling and having a good time. But I know lots (and lots and lots) of people who are in the position of raising their kids and taking care of their elder relatives at the same time.

I’ve begun doing some research about this and found out that there are 44 million (!) Americans engaged in some form of care of elderly relatives. About half of those are what is termed “the sandwich generation” — those taking care of children and parents simultaneously.

I conducted a very informal town hall with a group of friends and with that very small group began to see the enormous complexity of this phenomena. Age, location, disability, finances. It’s a very customized and specific set of parameters to negotiate.

There are a lot of resources out there, but the common cry I hear in my informal surveying about this is the loneliness. People who are overwhelmed with working, parenting, parenting their parents, navigating medicare and insurance companies and lawyers are just not available to go to a seminar.

The most poignant statement I heard was one of my friends volunteering to mentor another friend in the beginnings of her journey with her mother. “Why would you do that,” asked the recipient of the offer. “To give my experience meaning” was the reply.

We’ll be continuing to think about this. Even in our group here at Learning Worlds there are many of us at various stages of this life journey. Any input and suggestion would definitely help us along!

Breakthrough Methodology

Posted on March 22, 2008 by John Reaves
Filed Under Process | Leave a Comment

We’ve started using the word “breakthrough” to characterize some of what we’ve been trying to do in the ideation process. Our experience (no big surprise!) has been that the best new ideas are never value-free … that is, there will always be some inherent resistance to an idea that is really different than the status quo, even if the goal or target of the idea meets all pre-defined objectives. This fairly obvious characteristic of newness is often overlooked in much discussion of ideation and innovation. People want new ideas, but are unprepared to question their existing assumptions about reality, in order to recognize the potential of those ideas. They want to catch a really big fish without rocking the boat.

Some of the best ideation sessions we’ve done recently become “breakthrough” sessions in that, somewhere about 2/3 of the way into the session, we end up staring at a great big assumption, a barrier in our path, and start asking some fundamental questions about it. If we can break through that barrier, a whole new set of possibilities arise, and everyone feels a breath of fresh air, the exhilaration of real potential. Although we haven’t figured out how to produce this effect consistently, it’s something to work towards … a “breakthrough methodology” that consistently surfaces the fundamental assumptions preventing change, and finds a way to leap the barrier.

We started using “breakthrough” before we ran across the Breakthrough Institute. The institute is the embodiment of a “post-environmental” philosophy developed by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus. Although the Institute is primarily focused on energy and economic issues, it seems they picked the word “breakthrough” for the same reason we are using it … to suggest that it’s possible to transcend conventional oppositions and assumptions, and find new and more optimistic possibilities on the other side.

Avant-Ideation

Posted on March 22, 2008 by John Reaves
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Liz Dreyer at Learning Worlds has been developing a process we call Avant-Ideation. It’s based on the avant-garde impulse, as exemplified by some of the more famous avant-garde, modern and post-modern works of art. But the goal is very business-like … to practice the ability to radically transform existing concepts and conventional solutions. The art-world examples are used as models to illustrate different types of transformations.

There are almost as many ideation processes being taught today as there are ideas (well, almost!) and they all have their place. Avant-Ideation is specifically designed to maximize differentiation … to uncover hidden assumptions in the target concept or problem, and to systematically flip those assumptions to come up with something startlingly new, at a considerable distance in idea space from the original starting point.

The process can be applied to a wide variety of business problems, from new product development to change management. Liz led a prototype session last Wednesday, and we’ll continue to refine its application through further sessions.

The Patient Coop

Posted on March 20, 2008 by John Reaves
Filed Under Process, World-Saving | Leave a Comment

What if the patients (you and me) hired their own doctor? What if a Primary Care Physician worked for a group of parents directly?

One of the big problems with the U.S. medical system today is that it is, in many cases, a giant free-agent system which is increasingly populated by increasingly specialized care givers and organizations, with no real bridge or central coordination between specialists, except what the patients themselves, or their friends and family, manage to provide. Although the PCP is supposed to be that bridge, the HMO payment schedules seem to motivate many PCPs to take on more patients (more visits, more visit fees!) with the result that they can spend less and less time actually thinking about a patient’s specific problem, or coordinating and consulting with the relevant specialists. Every year more and more complex tests, therapies and procedures become available. As the PCPs (generalists) feel more and more out of touch with this specialized knowledge, the specialists get more and more autonomy and have little incentive to consult with the PCPs or with other specialists, or to be open with the patient.

This interface between PCP and specialists seems one of the places (in the U.S.) where the chickens are coming home to roost, in the inevitable conflict between rising expectations, our increasing collective medical knowledge and number of alternative tests and therapies, and limited resources. In a government-run system that conflict would remain within the central bureaucracy and become politicized; in the current U.S. system the conflict is being fought out day-to-day, patient-by-patient, with the patients themselves on the front line.

The rise of the web has meant that net-connected patients with a little time on their hands can often catch up with the PCP’s general knowledge of one specific medical issue. But they are still at a huge disadvantage in reporting, advocating, or negotiating regarding their own care. They don’t have the medical degree (major credibility, secret handshake); they don’t have the basic medical language, procedural knowledge, and style of discourse; and they are (more often than not) understandably emotional about the issues themselves. The result is that specialists often discount their testimony, and don’t think it worthwhile to spend much time explaining their thinking, particularly since for them it means translating into another language.

Patients need a real advocate in any important medical situation, whether it’s a consultation with a specialist, a hospital stay, or critical medical procedure. The HMO oversight and control procedures have given many of these situations a quasi-legal character; if the patient does not negotiate the specialist network well, or advocate convincingly for their condition, they are likely to be denied the care they need (or sometimes get care they don’t need, without understanding the tradeoffs.)

So … if 50 people got together and put $400 a month into a pot, they might be able to hire themselves a doctor for about $250,000 a year. Since many PCPs handle several hundred patients, the coop doctor should have enough time to do some background research on specific problems and visit specialists with their patients. Hopefully this coop doctor can become the official PCP of the patient group under the HMO or other total care system, offsetting the cost and giving the coop patients access to more advanced care, of course subject to the rules of the HMO.

In the end, the idea is not necessarily to leverage the coop doctor to get more money out of the system, but to take a more rational, patient-centric, long-term approach to the patients’ wellness, and hopefully even reduce unnecessary tests and procedures. (Almost) nobody likes going to the doctor, but many of us are spending more and more time in doctor’s offices, and on the phone negotiating about medical care, just trying to navigate the system.

The UnContract

Posted on March 20, 2008 by John Reaves
Filed Under Process, World-Saving | Leave a Comment

How can we collaborate (in complex and flexible arrangements) without requiring costly contracts and legal wrangling? How about an “uncontract” … an explicit agreement that is also explicitly NOT legally binding?

The idea of the uncontract is that it contains only a single chunk of legal language … a clause that says that any other language in the document is only understood to be a clarification of the informal relationship between the two parties, and cannot be litigated or construed to be a legal contract in any way.

The rest of the uncontract, presumably created in collaboration between each group or individual, explores possibilities, contingencies, expectations, quid pro quos, etc. at any length necessary, and in any language that is mutually understood. It the equivalent of an “unwritten contract”; it is a “written uncontract”. Anthropologists sometimes label modern US society as a “low-contact” culture … we don’t have nearly as many shared values across all individuals as in traditional “high-context” societies. So explicit agreements are very useful. But assuming that the written agreement is legally binding makes the negotiation extraordinarily tense, complex, and high-risk. And in most cases, the legal remedies are not what makes the relationship work … they usually fall apart for other reasons, and even if contract provisions were breached, it’s seldom worth litigating, or if it happens, it costs both sides more than it is worth. Just negotiating a contract often takes months and thousands of dollars, even for small companies and low-dollar-value. It’s a big drag on collabaoration and innovation.

There may be a lot of situations where a legally binding contract is necessary; for example, in the relationship between a small organization or individual, and a large organization, the level of mutuality is so low that the protection of legal remedies may be important. Or if there is some big pot at the end of the rainbow, which might change the relationships dramatically. But between two individuals, or two relatively equal organizations, collaborating in the average course of business (or non-profit activities) the uncontract might streamline collaboration enormously.

Breakthrough Sessions

Posted on March 6, 2008 by John Reaves
Filed Under Process | Leave a Comment

We’ve been practicing a process recently that you might call brainstorming, ideation, or VERY informal focus-group-type-groups recently, and we’ve come to the conclusion that there is a kind of group interaction which is very useful, exciting, and productive which unfortunately doesn’t really fit any of the categories or nomenclature that we’ve been using. So we’re looking for a new name for it. One suggestion is “breakthrough session”; another is “town hall”.

The characteristics and results are not always exactly the same, but here is a general taxonomy:

The real goal is to uncover the barriers to action, which are usually hidden assumptions, and break through the barriers by flipping the assumptions and coming to a new perspective on the problem. The energy of the sessions is generated by shifting paradigms, the exhilaration of stepping outside of boundaries, and the sense of hope offered by the new perspective. Brainstorming by itself, or discussing problems by itself, does not generate the same energy. Doing a session with similar people, however knowledgeable, or with the usual suspects on a team or staff, does not offer the same breakthrough potential.

So what do we call this process?

Asynchronous Mind Mapping

Posted on March 4, 2008 by John Reaves
Filed Under Process | Leave a Comment

So here’s a question about an idea. Does it work to build mind maps asynchronously? Mind Meister in theory would allow you to share the building of a mind map either synchronously or asynchronously. It’s relatively easy to imagine doing it online but synchronously, in a shared session.

But asynchronously? How does that work socially? Do people respect everybody else’s branches and links, and just add leaves, or do they delete and move things around too much?

Is it a useful tool in this context, or is it too specific to a particular individual or organization’s style of working?

Brainstorming Asynchronously

Posted on March 2, 2008 by John Reaves
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Is it possible (and how often is it done) to superimpose a “brainstorming” protocol on an asynchronous communications medium like a forum or blog? Although the rules of traditional brainstorming were evolved for face-to-face ideation, it’s certainly conceivable that they can be invoked in asynchronous, open forums to create a focused but non-critical accumulation of ideas.

In what we’re calling “facetime” ideation, effective brainstorming requires very active facilitation, with ground rules established in the beginning and reinforced if necessary along the way. The discussion is shaped and reflected back to the group as it is recorded, maintaining a high level of energy and interaction, and constantly being re-focused on the session challenge. An asynchronous brainstorm would require equally high levels of facilitation, as well as a clear challenge and ground rules.

Using a brainstorming tool like mind mapping in online mode might also help to impose the discipline of ideation on asynchronous conversations.

About

Ideas are at the core of life at Learning Worlds. We generate them, explore them, communicate them. We have ideas about ideas and ideas about how to be better at creating ideas. Sometimes the ideas we generate escape the boundaries of the work we do, or simply appear in the air while we’re on the subway, follow us to the office and never go away.

"Sketchbook" is simply a place to park some of our favorite ideas while we figure out what to do with them. Some are potential products, some are solutions to the problems of the world, some avoid all categories.

If you're interested in exploring any of the ideas you read about here, or adding your own, please drop us a line.

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