Enlightened Trial And Error
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here: Home / Management / Enlightened Trial and Error Outperforms the Planning of Flawless IntellectsMar 25 2009 Enlightened Trial and Error Outperforms the Planning of Flawless Intellects That's the mantra at IDEO, which they apply not only to the design of their products, but also to enlightened trial and error succeeds over their organization itself. Now, before getting into that, a quick aside. This principle, that "enlightened
Ideo Enlightened Trial And Error
trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellects," is quite profound. It is based on the reality that we are finite, and enlightened trial and error quote is in fact one of the key lessons of human history. For example, it shows us why central planning doesn't work as an economic system. Or, better, the failure of central planning as an economic system manifests the truth enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius of this principle (which we can now use to discourage new attempts at increased central planning, BTW!). The mass collaboration of the internet is also powered, in part, by this principle of enlightened trial and error -- in this case, the enlightened trial and error of essentially millions of people collaborating (directly and indirectly) on a massive scale because of technology. For example, the team at OmniGroup created the task management application OmniFocus. But they encourage user
Peter Skillman
feedback and even gather data on how their program is used. They are continually building out and improving the program on the basis of how people actually use it and on the basis of what the users identify as potentially being most important to them. That is only one small example of how many things, even though ultimately developed by a company, are now developed "in collaboration with" large groups of real people. There are also many other forms of mass collaboration that are now happening (on this see the excellent book Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything). We are just on the cusp of some very powerful changes that will come about from this new way of working and thinking, made possibly by the web (and now, especially, web 2.0 functionality). So this principle is very, very significant and has very wide application. But back to IDEO. IDEO shows that of the many areas where this principle is relevant, an easily overlooked but quite fascinating application is to the arena of organizational strategy and design. Here is what we read about IDEO in What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management: IDEO's mantra is that "enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellects," a philosophy it applies not just to the design of its products but also to itself, its organization, and how it conducts busines
trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lonegenius "Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius" is a ideo quote from a great video demonstrating how teamwork and agile concepts at IDEO is used to successfully deliver innovation and solutions in a non-IT environment in just 5 days! Some highlights which I thought were pertinent to agile: The people are not experts at any given area. They innovate by using and applying the process. The person leading https://www.whatsbestnext.com/2009/03/enlightened-trial-and-error-outperforms-the-planning-of-flawless-intellects/ the team is the leader because he is good with groups, not because of seniority. There are no titles, no permanent (role) assignments - everyone is a generalist but brings specific skills. Everyone communicates and share what they learn. Iterative development with showcases/demonstrations of prototypes to get feedback for the next iteration of the product. Some of IDEO's mantra https://chrischan.com.au/2011/06/06/enlightened-trial-and-error-succeeds-over-the-planning-of-the-lone-genius/ for innovation: One conversation at a time Stay focused on topic Encourage wild ideas Defer judgment Build on the ideas of others No criticisms (this is self moderated) Time-boxing, to prevent the process from going on for ever (Parkinson's Law and Pareto Principle comes to mind). Self-organization. Team judges what are the best ideas (team votes). Fail often in order to succeed sooner (fail safe culture). Having an open mind - think outside the box. Belief that focused chaos can be constructive. High use of visualization tools, story boards, information radiators. Fresh ideas come faster in a fun place. High level of collaboration. Teamwork, teamwork, and more teamwork! Rate this:Share this:TweetMoreEmailLike this:Like Loading... Related Category: Agile Culture, Lean and Agile, Management Tags: agile, culture, innovation, self organization, teamwork, video ← Requirement Changes Are Put Into The ProductBacklog What about AgileDocumentation? → 3 Comments on “Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lonegenius” Elumar De Sa Jun 25, 2011 at 01:15 am Excellent! Fantastic video, thank you. Reply Chris C
ago we talked about sense-making as “the ability to make sense of what’s going on in a changing and complex environment.” Today I want to focus on a core pillar of sense-making— trial and error. “Our world is changing radically. The age http://steverudolphcoaching.com/enlightened-trial-and-error-for-busy-managers-and-their-teams/ of intuition, gut instinct, opinion, and natural creativity is on the wane. These are romantic http://tolivelifeby.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Enlightened-trial-and-error-succeeds-over-the-planning-of-the-lone-genius/76953-17381 notions and we love to believe in them, but when the data comes in they are being increasingly proven not just to be wrong, but horribly wrong.” —Gerry McGovern Trial and error in today’s workplace takes on a new level of importance because both management processes and their effect on the end-consumer are more measurable than ever. In order to navigate marketplaces that enlightened trial change at lightning-speed, testing results can sometimes be the only way to know what works. That’s right. All the training, all the consulting, and the best MBAs in the country won’t guarantee you can predict outcomes of your management decisions and product innovations. The quote above by Gerry McGovern comes from a now infamous blog post about how top website-building experts couldn’t predict the better choice between two simple landing page signup forms for the SIMS computer enlightened trial and game. Why couldn’t they come up with the right answer? Because even seasoned experts have to collect data before making an informed decision. The fact is that it doesn’t matter what you think the best option is when facing innovative decisions— it only matters what actually works. Data is truth. Luckily, we live in a world where every single workplace action and effect can be measured and analyzed. “Incremental success is better than grandiose failure.” —Winston Churchill COACHING TIP: How can you apply this to your team? When looking to innovate, you need to pilot new projects on the market— quickly. Implement an imperfect but well-formed idea, and then rapidly gauge results. Did the customers respond how you thought they would? If not, how did they respond? What worked? What failed? Make changes based on the data, and test it again. “Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the long genius.” -Peter Skillman, President, IDEO
Next Steps: Everything here is all good and well, but applying innovation practices can be tricky. Oftentimes teams are pressured to be entrepreneurial while still hitting performance metrics -the incentive to try new things dissipates. Here’s a fix: try to implement a new idea in a highly segmented situation. Take one small task for one client and try the change there, even communicate with the client about the decision. They might weEnlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius. Enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of the lone genius. - Peter Skillman, President, IDEO, Inc. Submitted by larry in Dec 2011 Tags peter skillman president ideo inc. Share this idea: Facebook Twitter Google+ Voting 0 votes I agree +1 Vote I disagree -1 Vote Active In Review In Progress Completed Active Idea No. 14 Idea Details Comments [0] Usage statistics [-] 537 ideas posted 0 comments 27 votes 9 users View the Leaderboard Campaigns All Ideas Quotes Food Fortune Cookie Lyrics Movies Myths Principles Proverbs Scripture Songs Truisms Leaderboard [-] larry 11775 points 1 dablakely 61 points 2 Joshua Blakely 56 points 3 barbara 24 points 4 Blakely_N 2 points 5 [ View All ] What we're discussing [-] anonymous contemplative albert einstein reinhold niebuhr ray kroc inc. aristotle edward everett hale harry truman william blake samuel goldwyn winter olympics 2002 theodore roosevelt f. p. jones jesus susan inches gilda radner unknown opera singer doug gwyn george elliot sentimental ideo 26th us president benjamin disraeli william jennings bryan donna reed lee raymond love cfo dell computer '98 george colony new york jean de la fontaine (1621 -... friedrich engels leroy brownlow peter skillman calvin coolidge gene hackman george herbert henry winkler methodism alice in wonderland's chesh... pericles partner general douglas macarthur u.s. army corps of engineers henry louis mencken john lennon happy department of marine resources Social Web [-] Facebook Twitter Google+ Subscribe [-] New Ideas RSS Feed Top Ideas RSS Feed New Comments RSS Feed Powered By Copyright © 2016 IdeaScale Change Management | Contact | Widget | IdeaScale Privacy Policy | IdeaScale Cookie Policy