I’m sure there’s a scientific name for it but I’m too tired to look it up right now…sorry.

How many of you are stuck in a rut in your life and/or business and just doing the same thing over and over and over.  Ever thought about why?

Maybe it’s because you haven’t been keeping your eyes open to see things changing.

Take this little story as an example…

A few weeks ago I’m driving to the local target.  I decided to go a back way through neighborhoods rather than the main road.   I get up to one of the main roads that I have to cross to get to the target and hit a red light.

This particular intersection is fairly new.  In the past, you could only turn left or right at this intersection, but about three months ago a new road was opened that allowed you to go straight through this intersection.

I planned to go straight as it was a shorter route to get into the Target parking lot.

Now…this particular light is extremely long.  It felt as if I sat there forever waiting for the light to turn.  I also noticed that the car behind had their right turn blinker on. And the car behind them did too.  Oh well…that’s the way life is right?  Always stuck behind the guy going straight when you want to turn right.

While waiting I heard a horn honk. Sounded like it came from behind me.

So I rolled my window down…and heard the horn again as well as someone screaming and looked in my mirror and noticed it was the driver behind me.

He was yelling at me and honking his horn.

Can you believe that?

He was screaming at me.

Then…he opened his car door and started getting out.  Wow.

OK then. I’m not going to be caught sitting in my car while some crazy dude is standing outside my window.

So I got out of my car. Probably not the safest thing to do but I did it.

He was walking toward my car screaming to me.  He was saying “turn man turn”.

What?  I’m going straight across I tell him.  I also pointed at my blinker and politely said ‘do you see a blinker?’.

And…I may have yelled it. And…I may have said a few other choice words that can’t be repeated here.   And I may have called him something that wasn’t polite.  I may have also told him to get back in his car or he’d be getting into an ambulance in 3 minutes.  Might have been bad of me to say…but, he started it

His response was “oh…you can go straight?  I didn’t know that”.

While he was walking back to his car, he was apologizing and trying to ‘make nice’ with me while also saying “I’ve driven this road a couple times a day for two years and didn’t realize you could go straight.”

Lessons from this story?

Its an easy one.

That man, who almost got himself in some trouble, was so sure that he was right that he was willing to risk his health (and his life?) to get out of his car and scream at an unknown person in a car in front of him.

According to him, he’d been through that intersection multiple times over two years. He’d gotten so used to only being able to turn left or right that he’d failed to realize that a third option was now available to him and to all other drivers.

He’d gotten into a mindset and wasn’t able to see the changes taking place around him over the years.

Sound familiar?

How many businesses do you know today that are in this same mindset?  What about your manager or leader? Have they allowed themselves to get so comfortable with their surroundings that they fail to notice the changes?

What about you?  Are you keeping your eyes open for changes?

BTW – link below for anger management techniques for those of you (and perhaps me too) who get a little too angry

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Are you keeping your eyes open? is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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I love to read a good story and I love to create stories…although they may not always be “good.:)

In fact, I love a good story so much that I’m researching the topic of stories and storytelling as a mechanism for knowledge capture & transfer within project teams.  See a presentation I did on that subject here -> Stories, Projects & Knowledge Management. Oh..here’s another article of mine on Using Stories to Share Knowledge.

Stories have a ton of good qualities. They help set context.  They help share values and beliefs.   There are lots of good things about stories.

But the most important is one that we often overlook.  It’s the importance of YOUR story to your life.

Chris Brogan pointed me toward Donald Miller’s A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (affiliate link) a few months ago.

Chris recently said the following about Miller’s book: “It’s about the importance of living your life as if you’re the main character in an important story.”

He hit it spot on.  This is a wonderful book.  Not only did it make me laugh, it made me think long and hard about MY story.  And about YOUR story too.

What’s my story?

I used to think that my story was one of small town farmboy who makes a name for himself in the big city.  I was going to work hard and climb the corporate ladder and become the CEO of a large organization one day.

But…as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that my story is changing.

I no longer want anything to do with being employed by a large organization. I’d rather be a part of  small group of people doing something fun and important.

My story has evolved and I’m evolving with it.  I’m longer interested in the office politics that some people play. I’m more interested in finding that smart group of people who want to do something fun and challenging.  Those folks that see that things CAN be different.

My story has evolved from one of perpetuating the ‘sameness’ that is corporate America to one that of wanting to be a part of (and perhaps starting) a small business.

My story includes me working hard and playing hard.   It includes my wife and I spending more quality time together traveling and actually engaging in our passion of photography rather than wishing we could.

My story isn’t the classic American Story, but I think its one that will become the neo-classical American Story.

I think people are getting fed-up with the large, bureaucratic environment found in most large busiensses. Those businesses that look at the numbers before they look at the people.

That said, my story is my story and I’m living it as though I’m the lead character.  My story is one of hundreds of millions in this country, but its an important one to me.

What’s your story?

I look out at the people I interact with on a regular basis and realize that, for the most part, I don’t really know their story.

I have almost 1400 followers on twitter but i really only know less than 20 of them. On Facebook, I’ve kept my friends to those that I know fairly well but there are still folks who I don’t really know what well.

This blog receives about 6000 visitors a month and has ~1800 RSS subscribers but I don’t know the story of every one of these visitors or subscribers.

Of course, there’s no way for me to know everyone, but I do get curious about what drives people to my site and why they decide to come back (or subscribe).

I’m always interested in hearing your story so drop a line and let me know what you are working on and/or where I can learn more about you.

The Importance of Story

As I’ve said, story is important.   Not only does your story help define who you are, it helps define were you’ll go.

Based on this post and the little bit of background I’ve provided, can you tell where I’m headed in life?  Do you know the next chapter in my story?

Do you know they next chapter in your own story?  Are you writing your own story or letting someone else?

Me – I prefer to write my own…and hope to continue doing for the rest of my life.

BTW – if you DO know the next chapter of my story, don’t tell me

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The importance of story is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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1. CIO’s – what’s your team’s story?
2. Using Stories to share knowledge
3. Where do your values come from?
4. Jack’s Notebook
5. The Leadership Test – A Book Review

I received the book as a review copy from the author…but don’t let that get in the way of believing me when i say that this business fable is an excellent one.

SWAT is an acronym for “Systems Working All Together”…but it also helps set the stage for the story in the book.

The storyline of this book is a good one and keeps the concepts moving forward quickly. In the story, a team lead has a difficult task to work through and turns to his best friend and cousin…who happens to be a SWAT commander.

The main character, Toby, spends time with his SWAT commander cousin and learns the systems thinking concepts that make SWAT teams successful.

The concepts are described perfectly and in a manner that makes it easy to comprehend and easy to understand how you might apply them to the problems your currently facing.

I’ve read quite a few systems thinking books but nothing as entertaining as this.   While this isn’t nearly as comprehensive as Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, Timothy Johnson‘s put together a great little book that can help to introduce the systems thinking concepts quickly and easily.

Grab this book from your favorite bookseller today..Amazon has it for $14.95.

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SWAT – Seize the Accomplishment Review is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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2. Book Review: Change by Design by Tim Brown
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Now…this is an article I wrote in January 2007…way back when I was a novice blogger. I still like it and still think that linear thinking is a huge trap of organizations to fall into.  It’s also a huge trap for CIO’s to fall into.

So…I ran a quick search for “Linear Thinking” and  “Linear Thinking CIO” and what did I find?  Me.   The couple of posts I’ve done on the topic are at the top of the list.  When I did the Search for “Linear Thinking CIO” my “Beware the Linear Thinking Trap” post is ranked #1.

Now…while I’m excited to be ranked #1 on Google for something, the question has to be asked – how many people are searching for those terms?  Not many based on the traffic I get from them…but enough to make a difference.

So..why another post on Linear Thinking?

Because I still see the topic as one that’s causing  a lot of problems withing organizations. I also see a lot of CIO’s and IT groups stuck in the linear thinking trap and unaware of their predicament.

Quick example:

The CIO commissions the IT group to create and implement a governance model & document to manage all IT projects.   This governance document is developed as a closed system with little input from the rest of the organization.  The model is put into practice and is now ‘law’ within the organization.

Based on the governance model, all new projects over $25,000 must go through the governance process.   Why $25K?   Very few projects can be completed for less than that…and those that fall under $25K aren’t really that important right?

So…the HR team is ready to implement a new system.  They come to IT and ask for some assistance and are told that the project will undoubtedly be over $25K and must go into the governance process and be subject to ‘proper’ project and portfolio management practices.

The HR team are good corporate citizens and begin the governance process.  They fill out the paperwork.  Determine an estimated cost for the project (and it is over $25K) and wait for the governance process to kick in.  And they wait.

A month after submitting the paperwork, a meeting is held to prioritize the projects within the organization. The HR team doesn’t get to attend this meeting…they have to rely on the IT team and submitted paperwork to make their case.

The project is deemed a lower priority than others and not authorized.  The HR team is furious.  The implementation of this system is a part of all of their performance goals for the year and it has to get done.

So….what happens?

You know what happens! The HR Team moves forward anyway.  They reach out to vendors and solicit bids for a ‘phased approach’ to the project. Perhaps they look for a SaaS model for the system to save implementation and initial upfront investment.

Jump forward six months.

The HR Team has fully implement a SaaS platform to do what they need to do.  The system does not integrate with any other platform within the organization (perhaps it can, it just hasn’t been integrated).  The HR Team is happy as they’ve met the need of their team and reached their goals.

The IT team is not happy.  They’ve now got another system in the mix and have to decide whether they support it or not.  The CIO isn’t happy because the governance model has proven ineffective.  The CIO takes the issue to the CEO and is told to support the platform…the HR team is ‘getting things done’ and the IT team better get on the ball or ‘heads will roll’.

More than a governance issue

There are a ton of problems with the above scenario.  There are governance issues, portfolio management issues, client management issues and potential security and IT integration issues.

But…they all stem from the fact that the governance model implemented within the example organization has been built with with ‘old’ thinking.  IT projects  no longer have to be expensive projects.  Organizations can go the SaaS route to get any number of platforms implemented much cheaper than in the past.  Sure, there are still the ‘big’ projects, but not every IT platform is a ‘big’ project these days.

Organizations can no longer work with an inflexible governance model that provides no relief for those projects that aren’t considered a ‘priority’.  Governance and portfolio management must be performed but we’ve got to find ways to be agile at the same time.

There’s a ton of work for CIO’s to do to create more flexible governance models, better project and portfolio management processes and generally provide better service to the organization.  But in order to create these new models, CIO’s and IT groups need to move out of the lienar thinking rut that we’ve been operating in for so long.  We’ve got to find ways to be more agile and responsive to the organization.

The ability to be agile and think differently is key to the success (and survival?) of the CIO and IT group in the future.

Linear Thinking and the CIO

In my “Beware the Linear Thinking Trap” post, I ask:

Are you doing the same thing the same way you were last year?

Many organizations still answer ‘yes’ because that’s all they can do. That’s all they know how to do.  They’ve fallen into the linear thinking trap and don’t realize it.

The New CIO must find a way to stay out of the trap that linear thinking can create.  In the example above the CIO used a governance model to manage the project portfolio.  This, in itself, isn’t a bad thing.  Governance is needed.  Portfolios are needed.

What’s bad about this situation is that the approach to governance must change in the Enterprise 2.0 world.  No longer can you control all applications within the organization. Shadow IT is rampant.   Rather than fight Shadow IT, use it to your advantage.  Work with those departments that have created their own shadow infrastructure to ensure they are governed and managed correctly.

Linear thinking is taking many CIO’s and IT organizations further and further into irrelevancy.  It’s no longer enough to use the same governance models you used five years ago or even last year.  The New CIO has to step in with innovative approaches to IT governance and project/portfolio management (and in all other aspects of IT) to provide the organization with the best opportunity to be successful.

Stop doing what you did last year. Stop doing what you did yesterday.  It won’t work tomorrow…heck…it didn’t work yesterday.

Climb out of that depression caused by the linear thinking trap and do something better.   Thinking creatively. If you want to be the CIO, you’ve got to think differently.

Linear Thinking and the CIO is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

Related posts:

1. Beware of the Linear Thinking Trap
2. The Problem(s) with Linear Thinking
3. Creative Thinking or Lateral Thinking?
4. Do it or Don't….just stop talking about it
5. Innovation and The New CIO

Rather than use ‘resolutions’ to tell others what I plan to do, I began to use the “three words” method that I read about over on Chris Brogan’s blog. See Chris’s Three Words for 2010.

Before I give you my three words for 2010, let me take a second to look back at 2009.

My three words and their definitions for 2009 were:

• Create – Whether I’m writing for this blog, working on my doctorate, working on entrepreneurial activities, working with clients or spending time with family, I want to be creating 2009.
• Think – I want to think better. I want to think more creatively.   I also want to make other people think….this is what I’ll be working on for the coming year.
• Lead – My goal for the coming year is to lead in everything I do.  This doesn’t mean I want/need to be the ‘best’ at everything I do (although it would be nice)…I want to be seen as a leader in the various aspects of my life.  My writing, my research, my work…I’m going to push to be someone that people look to for information and direction.

I wrote a mid-year review post to reflect upon what had happened in the first 6 months of 2009.

I think I hit my three words head on in 2009.  I created. I thought. And I led. Here’s a few highlights:

• I became a better photographer and started a new photo blog called Photography Minute where I share tips, photos and reviews of gear that I’ve tried.  I’ve enjoyed that blog and look forward to doing much more over on the photo blog.
• I’ve written a lot in 2009.  I have an article coming out this month in Cutter IT Journal and have two other articles submitted to academic journals.
• I’ve reconnected with someone I shouldn’t have lost touch with.  After reconnecting, we wrote the aforementioned Cutter article and are talking about a few other projects going forward.
• I helped the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) roll-out a new website which has received pretty good feedback. Like everything, there are problems that need fixed but when you compare the new with the old, the new is better.
• I hope I’ve written some good stuff on this blog that made people think. My “New CIO” Series is something I’m very proud of and hope to continue the series into 2010.
• Another series that I’m extremely proud of is my “Sunday Links” posts.  In those posts I try to point you to some excellent content around the web. I’ve gotten great feedback on this feature and will continue providing this service as long as you keep reading it.

Overall, 2009 was a pretty good year. I did leave the independent consulting practice that I’d been building in Feb 2009 and have enjoyed the work at the BSA but I do miss the excitement and changes that come with having different consulting clients and gigs.

What I didn’t do well in 2009 was “Create”.  Most of my accomplishments from this past year were based around “thinking” and “leading”.

So…onto 2010.  What will it bring? I don’t know…but the three words that I’m using to drive me in this new year are:

• Create – While this was one of my words for 2009, it is something I want to continue to focus on for 2010. I want to write more original stuff. I want to create something that I can build on for the future…perfect segue into the next ‘word’.
• Build – I want to build something memorable, lasting and worth the effort.  What does this mean? I really don’t know just yet…but I want to find out.  I want to build my own future rather than let someone else build it or dictate it to me.
  
• Engage – One of the things that I’ve always wanted to do better is engage more.  Engaged with my readers. Engage with other bloggers. Engage on twitter and facebook.  In general, engage with people more online and in real life.

Those are my three words and the driving forces behind my 2010.

What’s yours?

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Three words for 2010 is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

Related posts:

1. Don't let the big (or small) words win – The New CIO Series
2. Time for a Mid Year Review
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5. Will 2010 be revolutionary or evolutionary for CIO’s and IT?

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself this question? What are you focused on in your life or your job?  What’s your focus for the future?

It’s a simple question but a difficult one to answer for most people.  Ask this question of 10 of your coworkers and you’ll probably get most people staring back at you with a blank reaction with very few answers. In fact,  I’d bet there would very few responses that truly answer the question.

In fact, I asked myself this question today and couldn’t answer it to my own satisfaction.

Let’s look at what I’m doing these days:

1. Working for the Boy Scouts of America National Council on the web team.  In this role, I work within the marketing group and try to help the BSA use digital tools to reach out and engage with our audiences.
2. Blogging here about Technology, Strategy, People & Projects – although most of my recent writing has been focused on “The New CIO”.
3. Writing a few articles with co-writers (Gene De Libero for example – we are writing an article for an upcoming Cutter IT Journal).
4. Working on my Doctorate in Information Systems.  This is a TON of work but enjoyable.  I’m on track to finish up in 2012 and am will be starting my dissertation work in Spring 2010. I’ve been blogging about my “Road to the Doctorate“  on another blog.
5. Working on a few new entrepreneurial activities (some which I hope to be able to announce soon).
6. Trying to find some time to really dive into my passion for learning about photography and actually taking some photographs.  This is getting harder and harder for me these days.
7. Last but definitely not least, I’d like to spend more time with my wife traveling and just generally enjoying life.

Lots of things here…but I’m sure there are some of you who have much more going on so please don’t tell me that I’m a slacker if you do!

I’ve got quite a bit going on and I’m extremely lucky to be in a position to be able to do all of these things and the things that I’ve been able to do in the past.  That said, when I asked myself “what’s your focus?” I wasn’t really able to answer the question.

Am I an academic or a practitioner? Am I a technologist or a marketer?  Should i focus on the role of the CIO in the future or am I better positioned to look at how the role of COO or CMO might change over the coming years to integrate technology, marketing and the business?  I love the world of technology and marketing… can I bring this duality together as a focus?  Or…do I focus on the topic that really pulls at my heart strings…building a business of my own?

Think about yourself and your daily activities.  What are you focused on?  Are you getting up, driving to work and doing what has to be done to make it through the day?   Or are you focused on your passion and doing what it takes to keep that focus?  Are you focused on making your life better or just making your life easier?

What’s your focus these days?

What’s your focus? is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

Related posts:

1. CIO’s – what’s your focus?
2. Time for a Mid Year Review
3. Photography is tough
4. Links for August 8 2010
5. Musings on Passion, Life & Organizations

The New CIO is a weekly article about the challenges facing today’s CIO as well as what can be done to prepare for future challenges.

I just completed reading The Upside of Turbulence: Seizing Opportunity in an Uncertain World. Great book.  Go buy it…the link above is an affiliate link or just go grab one from your favorite bookseller.

The book does an excellent job of discussing the world of business and the role that turbulence has played in shaping it.  Donald Sull does a great job describing how to embrace turbulence and seize the opportunities that turbulence can bring.

How do you embrace turbulence?   By being agile.

Before we continue, don’t confuse ‘being agile’ with the agile development methodology….while they may be similar, for the purposes of this article, I’ll be talking about a different ‘agile’.

That said, let me clear up what I mean when I saw agile (and what Donald Sull means when he uses it): Agile isn’t about speed. Agile has to do with the ability to change course when needed. Being agile means taking a look at your organizational landscape (strategy, operations, etc) and breaking up the long-term view into smaller samples of time to make it easier to see and respond to opportunities.

Dr Sull defines agility as:

“the capacity to identify and capture opportunities more quickly than rivals” (p. 138).

In addition, he uses the concept of air warfare to help tell the story of how agility can provide tremendous benefits.  Out of these stories of air warfare, Dr Sull introduces John Boyd, a military strategist who helped with a lot of the science behind the F-16 and F-18 fighter jets, and Boyd’s OODA Loop.

John Boyd's OODA Loop (Courtesy of Jeff McNeill's Flickr stream)

What is the OODA loop?  It stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

What does it have to do with IT? Everything.

In order to be an effective IT group and CIO in the world today, you’ve got to have some flexibility (i.e., be agile) so you can move quickly when opportunities arise.

As we all know, we are being asked to do more with less.  The only way to do that, is to remain flexible (as well as have a good team and not overwork them).  In addition to being agile, you’ve got to have a strategic plan and know how to execute that plan.

By using the OODA model, you might be able to be agile, plan and react as necessary.  Let’s look at how you might incorporate the OODA model into your business life.

Observe

To use the OODA model, the first (and perhaps most important) step is to continuously observe.

Observe your situation.  Look at your organization, team and the competitive landscape.  What can you and your IT team do to help move the company forward?

In addition, observe how your team operates. Do you have enough people?  Do you have the right people?

Is your strategic plan still valid based on these observations? What are the politics of your organization?

Orient

While observing, you’ll need to orient yourself to your landscape.  Orientation (in the OODA model) is all about positioning yourself.

Is your organization changing direction?  Are your competitors doing something differently that previously?  Is your team becoming overloaded?  Do you have the right people on board to make your plans successful?

Decide

You are observing your situation and have oriented yourself to the climate….now all you have to do is decide to do something.  Can you make a decision?  You better be able to.

In a turbulent world, you don’t have time to wait or over-analyze…you’ve got to decide quickly and move on.  In the world of air warfare, if you wait you die and in today’s world your fate and your organization’s fate might just hang on your ability to decide.

Act

You’ve decided on a plan of action.  Now you need to execute it.  If you’ve observed, oriented and made the right decision, you can act with ease…but do you have the right people in place?

Many organizations plan well but very few ACT well.  The ability to act and react after observing & orienting is a major reason that some organizations succeed and others don’t.

The New CIO & The Loop

The OODA model is built with feedback loops.  Each action is fed back to the observation stage to review for tweaks.  I’ve found that most organizations are missing this feedback mechanism…strategic plans are made and ‘rolled out’ without any feedback nor any way to change course quickly.

Dr Sull introduces his own version of the OODA loop…he calls it the ‘agility loop’.  The agility loop has four stages:

• Make sense of situation
• Make choices
• Make it happen
• Make revisions

I like what Dr Sull has to say about the agility loop…whether you use the OODA loop or Sull’s Agility loop, you’ll be in a position to improve your agility.

To succeed in the future, The New CIO has to remain agile.  Using the OODA loop (or Dr Sull’s agility loop) helps you keep your mindset right.  Remember to observe, orient, decide & act. Then repeat.

Turbulence, IT and The New CIO is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

Related posts:

1. Decision Speed, Performance and the CIO
2. Values and The New CIO
3. Agility and The New CIO
4. Linear Thinking and the CIO
5. Goals, Priorities and The New CIO

If you take a look at some of the Pre-release copy reviews of this book on Amazon you’ll see a few folks bashing the book because it doesn’t tell the reader much Design or Design Thinking and spends much of its time promoting IDEO.

I disagree wholeheartedly with those comments.

While this book does promote IDEO’s rich history and successes, the book does a great deal to introduce the concept of Design Thinking to the reader. If you’re a long-time practitioner of design thinking, this book may not be for you…if you aren’t, this book is perfect.

What is Design Thinking?

Comparing Design to Design Thinking, Brown provides the following definition:

The evolution from Design to Design Thinking is the story of eveolution from the creation of products to the analysis of the relationship between people and products, and from there to the relationship between people and people.

Great stuff.  I love Design Thinking…I think I’ve been a design thinker my whole life.

Another passage that helps to describe/define Design Thinking is:

The mission of design thinking is to translate observations into insights and insights into products and services that will improve lives.

Design thinking is the interplay of people and product/process.   When you use a design thinking approach you take the entire environment into consideration when designing a process or product.  Rather than take a look at a few possibilities for a design of a bike (in the case of the Shimano bike story in the book) and build a bike, the design thinker looks at the broader picture and environment to few new choices and possibilities.

If you have an interest in Design Thinking or just want to know more about the topic, get this book now.  If you’re an academic who wants to see case studies of design thinking in action that show success and failure, perhaps this isn’t the book for you.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Design Thinking for startups (slideshare.net)
• IDEO’s guide to designing for social impact (ted.com)
• Six Sigma and Design Thinking (designthinking.ideo.com)

Book Review: Change by Design by Tim Brown is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
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What if you stopped:

• Blogging
• Tweeting
• Facebooking (is that a word?)
• Linking
• Commenting
• Interacting

What would happen?  Would anyone miss you? Would your clients?  Your Community?

If the answer is ‘yes’…do you know that for sure? If the answer is ‘no’, what can you do differently to bring more value to your clients/community/readers/friends?

I asked myself this very question this morning and couldn’t answer a definitive ‘yes’.

Am I delivering value to you?

Would you be missed? Would I? is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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What’s transpired this year?

• In February, I put my consulting practice on hold to join the Boy Scouts of America full time after working with them for 1.5 years as a consultant.  Previous to starting full-time, I’d been leading the Sitecore Content Management System implementation and since going full-time have been involved in some major technology and marketing initiatives.  It’s been fun and an education in how non-profits are run.

• I’ve just finished year #2 in the Doctoral program.  Only X number of years left (i have no idea what X actually is…probably 3 to 4 more years).

• I’ve held up my resolutions for the year fairly nicely. I used the ‘three words’ approach (I learned this from Chris Brogan).  My words were: Create, Think & Lead. I’ve written more important stuff (at least to me) on this blog than I used to and I kicked off another blog focused on my photography.

• My wife’s photography business is starting to see a bit more life.  The economy has taken its toll but we are starting to see a bit more traffic and interest from potential clients.

• I’ve disconnected from a lot of things that were taking up way too much of my time.  While this has been hard to do, it’s been necessary to allow me to focus on those things that will bring the most benefit & value to me in the future.

What does the rest of 2009 hold? I’m not sure…but I’m positive it will be a good 6 months.

• I’m anxious to kick off a few projects that I’ve been thinking about and can’t wait to see the results.

• I’ve got a couple interesting side projects that have been brewing for a while…they are looking like they might show some signs of life later this year.

• I’ve submitted a few articles & papers to academic journals & trade publications…hopefully I’ll hear back on whether they are accepted for publishing.

How has the first half of 2009 been for you?

Time for a Mid Year Review is a post from: Eric D. Brown.
About Eric Eric D. Brown is a Dallas based Technology Consultant, and Entrepreneur focused on helping businesses and non-profits merge business, marketing and technology. He writes extensively about technology, strategy, people and projects at ericbrown.com. Eric is also an amateur Photographer and shares his photography work at Photography Minute and on his flickr photostream.
Read more about Eric...

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