Category: Methodology

Strategy, Architecture & Problem-Solving

Idea Post-its

Business Architect for Free*

I’ve got some time in between clients where I’d like to contribute back or pay-it-forward. I’d like to donate my time for free and raise a bit for charity while I’m doing it. What’s the offer? You get a Business Architect for free* *What does free mean? You don’t pay for my time. Instead, you pay…
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Car Park

Lack of Design Thinking in Supermarket Car Parks

I’m convinced that there’s no thought to place of people in the design of most supermarket car parks. Poor Design I’ve just been to a great example of poor design. When driving in, you turn off the main road to a roundabout. At this roundabout, you turn right, away from the store, to the main…
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Post-it Notes

Confirmation bias in design thinking

Every few years another fad comes around. Look back long enough and you’ll see lean, systems thinking, TQM, CRM, structured systems and many, many more methodologies and/or approaches. The problem is in the delivery of the projects when the terms become more widespread. Background What we’re seeing is the climb of two methodologies: Service Design and Design…
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3 Reasons for Running Sales Campaigns

Context A friend the other day suggested that he drop his prices for a few weeks and I questioned what the rationale was behind the intended price drop. I wanted to check that there was a valid reason and it wasn’t just a knee-jerk reaction that led to the idea of creating sales campaigns. I…
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Efficiency Through Motivation

Efficiency Through Motivation I started an Instagram channel a while ago. I wanted to start generating an audience for my forthcoming course on Efficiency Through Motivation. I didn’t want to just post inspirational quotes; there are plenty of those channels already. What I wanted to do was to help people explore business architecture and strategy…
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Enterprise Architecture in Startups: Is it relevant?

Practitioners of Customer Development, Lean Startup and Enterprise Architecture can all learn from each other. But they shouldn’t enforce their views on each other as there are some incompatibilities. Let’s see how enterprise architecture in startups can exist. Background The Startup culture and methods have largely been defined by Steve Blank who wrote The Startup Owners…
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Designing for Everyone

Whatever system, process, technology we’re implementing, shouldn’t we be designing for everyone? Or at least everyone in the target customer segment? Background In the last couple of weeks, I’ve read a number of articles that have consolidated and made me reflect on my thinking about designing for disabilities and what counts as normal. Having spent a…
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Stakeholder Analysis

This is just a brief introduction to a classic method for performing stakeholder analysis. It’s a simple concept and I’m including it since it’s another good example of a 4-box model. To misquote Helmuth von Moltke the Elder: No project survives contact with the customer Background Every change activity has to deal with people. Whatever you’re planning,…
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When is it Innovation?

The terms innovation and invention are thrown around with abandon. This is rife in the startup domain where the innovation is often relating to a business model and in ageing corporations where innovation is being used to revitalise the organisation. But when is it innovation? Or could we actually be thinking of invention, improvement or creation instead?

An Example of Bad Facilitation

The story listed below is one that happened to me late last year. I still remember it with a smile, partly because it shows just how unaware the people were in the room and partly because it’s a great example of how a meeting can waste time. So for me, it’s a good example of why…
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