Technology, Truth, Integrity, and Honesty – Keys to success in the new order – Part 1

Last week I discussed counterfactual thinking as a technique used to create new answers or break-throughs to old problems.

Edward De Bono gives a great example of counterfactual thinking at Volkswagen. A design team was considering how they could improve the comfort and ride of their vehicles over rough or uneven surfaces. They had refined the “spring and leaf” single axle suspension to a degree where there was no obvious way forward and they were still unsatisfied with the results. At this point, one of the engineers suggested the team try and solve the problem from the point of view that the wheels on the vehicle were square rather than round. This change in perception led to a fundamental shift in key assumptions about the problem at hand and the group’s efforts were rewarded with the invention of the independent suspension, where each wheel was able to move vertically around a fixed point from the differential at the centre of the vehicle.

Counterfactual thinking is taking a key element of a problem and “inverting” its characteristics and behaviours. Changing the properties of the problem, challenges us to re-examine our assumptions related to the problem, leading to new assumptions, hypotheses and outcomes.

Let’s think counterfactually about the problems we face today.

Question: How do we deal with time compression?

Answer: Think time decompression!

We would all agree that life is likely to get faster rather than slowing down. Furthermore, our personal effectiveness will decrease if time compression continues. Therefore, we need to decompress time with the assistance of technology. At work we often waste time:

• Attending to routine processes.
• Reworking trivial mistakes and human errors.
• Searching for important information.
• Using systems improperly or ineffectively.

Time decompression is about developing information technologies that take the “process” load off us, to give us time to do what we do best – socialise and learn from each other.

Having a set of core information systems is imperative for effective work (process) at the technical level, and learning (innovation) at the higher human level. Technology is available that can assist us in these tasks and the rapidly developing open-source and Web 2.0 environments hold further promise.

However, success will be found by those individuals and organisations that can orchestrate these technologies to match their requirements.

Throughout  this week I will discuss some more common  problems that we face today and how we can think counterfactually to find success.