Off Course-On Target

Redesigning Rather Than Crying Over Spilled Milk?

On a recent trip back to the USA for a few weeks, I noticed something new in the dairy section of the grocery store—a new milk container. The milk was the same, but the container was completely new—square in shape and made from recyclable plastic. A quick search online produced all the details, such as this NY Times article “Solution, or Mess? A Milk Jug for a Green Earth” and revealed what I thought was another great example of the rising role and increasing importance of design for a bright future. 

As I looked into this story of these new milk containers, I was struck by:

• The simply staggering improvements that were realized by a relatively simple redesign of the everyday milk container
• The role that consumers need to play in both the design process and the successful implementation of these changes into mass usage.

For those who have not seen these new containers, here is a quick overview:

• More efficient storage; new jugs store 50% more milk by volume and are stackable.  More milk can be shipped per truck and requires less refrigerated storage.  One retailer now stores 224 gallons of milk in the same space that used to hold 80.   Combined these reduce fuel and energy use dramatically.
• Does not require crates or racks for shipping and storage due to its stackable, flat-top design.
• With no crates to wash or transport, labor is cut by half (loading, returning, washing) and water usage is reduced by 60 to 70 percent. One dairy mentioned in the NYT article was using 100,000 gals of water per day just for washing crates!
• More milk per truck and with no crates to haul back, the number of truck trips to the store has been reduced from 5 per week to just 2, which is a major fuel saving, and it lowers the overall cost of milk 10 to 20 cents per gallon.
• Overall efficiency is increased; milk from the cow in the morning is on the store shelves by afternoon. When I was young I spent many summers on my uncle’s dairy farm and always long for the taste of truly fresh milk.

To summarize, these new milk jugs result in cheaper, fresher milk that requires much less energy, water and labor and is better for the environment.

Creating a better world through a different design approach

This example also gives me even more confidence and optimism that we can create a better world through a balanced approach that benefits all those involved in the entire cycle—from initial idea to design to production, consumption and recycling.

Has to be an instant success, right?  Not quite. The real challenge may well be our ability as milk consumers to adapt to these new containers, to UNlearn some of our ingrained habits, such as how we  do something as basic as pouring milk from a container. It turns out that many people spill some milk when they first try to pour from these new containers. Why? Because they try to pour milk the way they are used to doing it. Many people end up rejecting these new containers and go back to purchasing the older style of containers. To address this problem, some stores are even offering in store lessons on how to pour with no spills—by tilting the jug forward rather than lifting it up, a technique described as "rock-and-pour instead of a lift-and-tip."

Spilled milk is clearly frustrating and wasteful, but rather than crying over it (sorry , couldn’t resist), the solution would appear to be twofold:  short term this appears to be a good example of one of my favorite themes of unlearning and relearning how to pour milk from these new containers without spilling and longer term, I suspect that there are additional design improvements that will make these containers even more spill proof and easy to use.

I think there is also a larger lesson to be learned from this example. I have to imagine that if a more holistic approach had been taken by involving consumers in the design process, the new containers would have been easier or more intuitive to use without spilling.

Maybe I’m just being my hyperbolic self and I’m seeing more than there really is, but I don’t think so. Look at some of these numbers and start multiplying them by the amount of milk consumed every day around the world. Seems like an amazing improvement to me, and all from a relatively straightforward rethinking and redesign of an everyday item.

Tapping into the "Prosumer" model

There is a lot of talk these days about the environment, being green, sustainability and so on, most of which is well intentioned and much needed.  However, it seems to me that these changes are often implemented along the lines of the historical roles for consumers and producers where the producers come up with the ideas, make the changes, and the role of consumers is to buy and use these new and improved products.  Not a bad model necessarily and one capable of producing good results as the new milk jug attests. However I’m advocating the need for a more “prosumer” and  collaborative approach to design where we are simultaneously producers and consumers. 

The term prosumer  was first coined by Alvin and Heidi Toffler in their 1980 book “The Third Wave” where they predicted what I think we are now seeing—a society where the previously separate roles and responsibilities are increasingly being combined or “mashed up”  to create a very new and different role for all of us.

I see a distinct trend towards a prosumer society where all of us will play an increasing role in the design process of everything around us. Keeping in mind that pretty much everything in our world that isn’t living matter has to be designed and built by us, this has very major implications for all of us and the world we inhabit.This is a theme I’ll be expanding on more in upcoming articles and podcasts here on OCOT.

More than anything else though, this new milk jug example has me pondering what other everyday items besides the lowly milk container could produce similarly staggering results. What if we were to look at them more closely and rethink the design and unlearn some of our habits for using them?  Packaging alone is an enormous area ripe for major improvement, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg of benefits to be had from redesigning and rethinking our current products and practices. 

How about you?  Look around your home, office, car, or other places you frequently inhabit and try seeing using a newly critical eye to see what opportunities you can find. You don’t need to have a degree in design nor have it appear on your business card or job description to be a designer. All it takes is adopting a more critical and new look at everyday things, thinking differently and thinking about seeing anew those things we take for granted. Who would have thought that something as basic and “unimportant” as a milk container could produce such staggering improvements?  Let’s hear some ideas from the rest of us about what should be next in line for such redesign.

Obviating the Org Chart

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Many of my audiences have asked me to comment  on my observation that we are seeing the obviation of the org chart in most organizations. Org charts and organizations are typically organized by grouping people by their common functional roles—accounting, engineering, marketing, sales, etc. but while I see continued relevance and value in these functions I don't see much value in grouping people this way. In fact, most of the time is seems that individuals and groups succeed in spite of the way they are organized, not because of it. Perhaps this is because in reality, almost all work is project-based and project teams are very multifunctional and made up of people with a very broad range of functional roles, skills, and expertise.   

How many times have you been shocked or surprised when you see the job titles and locations on the org chart where your fellow team members come from? How often have you found the most valuable members of a very successful project are the ones who were "accidentally" on the team or discovered by pure serendipity at the water cooler? Or how often have you been such a "surprising success" on a team? 

Over the past 10 years, as I travel to more and more locations around the world and have the privilege to be with more and more diverse groups, I've found this to be an increasing trend and pattern of success.  Similarly, when project teams are staffed according to the more "formal" type of classifications or "by the org chart", they are much less successful or at least rarely peak performers. 

But we still need some help in finding the right people, in being discovered ourselves and put on project teams where we can make significant contributions and truly realize our potential.  So if the org chart and other traditional methods are not working, what is? The social networking analysis that I noted, as well tapping into the "informal organization", are two areas that will help significantly. However, there is a way to apply these larger meta-trends to how we can be more effective in putting ourselves together for success as organizations, teams, or any other "assembly" of individuals.   

For example I've suggested that such collections of individuals are yet another form and a great application of the "mashup" models that are emerging (search "mashups" on OCOT for more details on this topic)  Successful teams and groups are also following some of the "un" trends such as unconferences and unlearning which are becoming more and more common and successful as they too focus on the informal aspects of these activities.   

I also see great promise in following the meta-trends of metadata and "getting small" as these apply to people. No, no, not smaller people <g> but smaller characterizations or categorizations of people—all of us. Recognizing each of us us as the unique "snowflakes" that we are. 

How?  By shrinking the organization from a set of boxes on an org chart to a collection of individuals, and "shrinking" individuals down into a long list of rich "metadata" that details all their skills, knowledge, experience, attitudes, aptitudes, abilities, etc. Each of these pieces needs to be as small (detailed) as possible.   

Yes, the length of this list would be huge—millions or more "lines" for each snowflake (person), multiplied by how many individuals are in the organization, and multiplied again by the relationships, past and present, and the "network paths" between them.

But so what if the size of this "database" is daunting? Storage availability is increasing exponentially, cost is on the asymptote to zero and computers love large, so let's take more advantage of all this.  Imagine if you could put together a detailed list of exactly the characteristics or skills or experience you were looking for, and launch this as a rich query into that equally rich database!  Imagine  pattern recognition and recommender tools could help you put together these queries based on the peak performance of individuals and teams that are similar to the one you are putting together. Now compare this to how things have been done to date with blunt instruments like org charts. No contest right?   

And yes, I also see this as another example of how pervasive the simple Lego block model is, not by treating people as blocks, but by enabling each of us to discover "just the right" people... or be discovered ourselves. This discovery model could not only be for full project teams, but for almost any combination of individuals for any purpose—finding the right person to ask a question, to add to an IM conversation, or to meet at a conference.   

This model also helps to show why I'm always advocating that we look way beyond our individual fields of interest and expertise when we are looking for tools, technology, techniques etc. We need to see through the specific context of those being used ,so we can see the underlying and even greater value, if it is there. For example, in the case of this topic of finding "just the right people", I'm hoping that we will start to see how something like the newly advanced forms of "dating technology" can be even more powerful just by changing the context from love to learning, or from romantic relationships to peak performers. 

Yes, dating technology and org charts seem a long way apart as do Lego blocks, snowflakes, and social networks, but hopefully you are finding your time here at Off Course - On Target to be worthwhile and that it is living up to the description of "Where unexpected paths lead to great discoveries".  Here's to more unexpected paths and more discoveries for all of us!

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UNLearning one memory at a time? Mice can!

Since you may have caught my recent podcast UNLearning: the New Skill of the Future, I thought you’d get a kick out of this recent article in News@Nature.com reporting that scientists have successfully used a drug on mice that "...can clear away one fearful memory while leaving another intact. A single, specific memory has been wiped from the brains of rats, leaving other recollections intact." 

One possible (and positive) use for humans would be to eliminate particularly disruptive and fearful memories, such as those that cause post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This research is also helping us to understand how various parts of the brain work, along with their association to specific memory, thinking, actions, and capabilities. This research can also help in our quest to improve our overall learning capabilities.

And for a more irreverent approach to this news item, you might want check out Episode 55 of “Cranky Geeks” with John Dvorak. If you can make it through the first minute or so, you’ll see that they make some good points and references to movies and stories about the dangerous side of memory erasing.

As is often the case with science fiction and other fictional stories, the recent movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind may not be too far off from reality. As is usually the case, new capabilities can be used for wonderfully positive purposes as well as equally frightening and scary ends. However, let’s remind ourselves that WE make the decisions, not the technology or the ideas. We can be both the problem and the solution.  Not sure I’d want it any other way.

For now though, I prefer to stick to more unaided means of obtaining the critical skill of UNLearning now and  in the future. On the other hand, I am also convinced that some, perhaps the majority, of the most significant improvements we are going to see in our abilities to learn, unlearn, and relearn over the next 25+ years, will be from neuroscience and other scientific approaches to cognition, learning, and performance.

Can we really be that far from instantly acquiring skills such as those shown in the movie The Matrix where capabilities, such as martial arts or flying a helicopter, can be downloaded into your brain and body? (speaking of which, if anyone has a link or file of the scene where Trinity learns to fly the helicopter on the roof, can you send it to me? It would be handy to have for such topics).

I’m fond of the line, “Careful what you wish for; you just might get it”, because I think we are getting what we wished for more and more every day! So the key question for us to answer remains, “What will we do with these enablers (be they technical, chemical or cognitive) when they arrive?” and how will we apply them in ways that produce very positive effects and outcomes for our learning and performance?  Life is for learning. Let’s live and learn to the max!

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UNLearning in Langkawi

Is it just I or did someone hit the fast forward button on the world clock?  There is NO WAY it can be March 2007 already!  It’s been a busy start to the new year for me, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. My experience is just more proof that the adage “time flies when you are having fun” is true. I’ve certainly been having lots of serious fun with my latest travels and engagements, but I have not found much time to get this all captured and posted, but here’s to learning and improving!

This week I had the privilege of giving two keynote presentations at the National Higher Education conference sponsored by Autodesk in lovely Langkawi in Northern Malaysia. Langkawi is a collection of islands (99 during high tides, and 104 during low tides) situated just off the northwestern coast of Peninsular Malaysia, about midway north/south between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. This area is one of the fortunate places that the recent tsunami missed.

Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, I was involved with many education initiatives in Malaysia and Singapore, so it was particularly rewarding to be asked back by the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education and to see their tremendous progress and continued commitment to higher education and education at all levels. In addition to the Minister of Education and several directors from the ministry, the majority of the attendees were deans and directors from schools of mechanical engineering, civil engineering, and architecture. They asked me to provide some new perspectives on the future of learning and education, and I put a particular emphasis on design, one of the top themes and skills of the future as I see it.

In my short keynote on Wednesday I provided a broad overview of some of the key trends I’m seeing for learning, education, training, and design including:

• Every * One * Learning” – Adaptive personalized learning for every person every day
• Exponential change – How our inability to see today’s rapid change as exponential rather than linear keeps us from adjusting to the challenges presented by technology and other factors (listen to my podcast “Living in a World of Exponential Change”) 
• The Three “C’s” – The convergence of Content, Competencies and Context

I framed my comments on the future of learning and performance in the context of higher education in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia. Although my slides from that presentation don't provide the context of my remarks, you can view them below:

My second keynote on Thursday "UN Learning: The New Skill of the Future?" covered new skills for the future within the context of design:
·    Learning + UN learning + RE learning (see my podcast and transcript)

• Design (redefined)
• Storytelling
• Synthesis
• Smart decision-making
• Finding (vs. searching)
• Semantics (adding meaning)
• Abstracting
• Collaboration
• Heuristics

Within the context of UNLearning, I also covered trends towards:

• A right brain economy
• An economy of abundance (see David Hornik’s article and Chris Anderson’s blog entry),
• The Long Tail effect
• Mash-ups (see my blog entry "The Future is a Monstrous and Marvelous Mashup")

All of these can or are having a VERY positive effect on learning, education and design. They most certainly are positive steps toward the grand vision of personalized learning experiences for every person on the planet, which I laid out in the previous keynote and which I continue to pursue with great passion and commitment. Stay tuned for more postings and podcasts on this and other related topics. You can see my slides from the UNLearning keynote below:

You can also listen to my podcast on "UNLearning, the New Skill of the Future".
Here’s to all of us improving our skills in learning, unlearning, relearning, living, and loving.

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Virtualization and UNLearning

One of our biggest challenges going forward is the need for all of us to “UNLearn” our lifelong habit of putting things in the right “categories” or places. We were often told while growing up, "A place for everything and everything in its place." We’ve consciously or unconsciously transferred this metaphor and model to our digital life in the form of files with well-thought-out names that are filed in well-named directories (folders) and subfolders. We have done this for everything from e-mails to documents to photos.

This works well enough for a while, but at some point, the volume exceeds the model. Do you have problems finding the e-mail, document, or photo you need? Do you have problems remembering what you called the file or directory that made SO much sense six months ago? Most of us do, and the solution is to STOP trying to solve the problem through well-named files and directories and take a metadata or “tag”-based approach instead.

With this in mind, I thought you would enjoy checking out a recent video that ZDNet (Ziff Davis Network) posted as part of its At the Whiteboard series (see my next post for more on these whiteboard sessions). This session by Jack Norris, EMC's director of virtualization marketing, explained how file virtualization allows storage administrators to do more with less. However, even if you don’t have “storage administrator” in your job description, aren’t we ALL desperately trying to manage our storage more efficiently? In the few minutes it takes to view this worthwhile video, you’ll learn more about the suggestions I outlined in the podcast on how to change your thinking about files and how to store them.

Jack actually has two sessions and I’d recommend that you watch the one on File Virtualization first  and then if you like that, learn a bit more about Global File Virtualization. Jack does a very good job of outlining why we are all facing the challenge of how to scale our solutions as we start to have stores of millions (and soon billions) of files.

Our challenge though is not so much about how to manage the information, since this will increasingly be done automatically. Rather, it is about how to UNLearn what we have spent lifetime learning about how to put everything it the “right place” and instead adopt a model of assigning all the characteristics and attributes about everything. Remember the point is NOT searching, its FINDING!! Moreover, to do that we all need to do a LOT of UNLearning and relearning.

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