Be Economical with your Design Re-Thinking

Design was put firmly at centre stage in the strategic direction of business at the Economist Big Rethink - Redesigning Business Summit. The Summit Conference which was closed by Sir George Cox and Robin Bew saw contributions from leading thinkers and practitioners such as Jonathan Sands of Elmwood - who explained how Elmwood had embraced and understood the opportunities in the BRICs, about how design and branding had turned 'Muck into Brass' at Serious* and left us laughing at his alpacas, Joe Ferry of Virgin - who drew a strong link between design and financial return and concluded with a picture of a goose and golden egg. Joe forgot to mention that Virgin provide the most comfortable and effectvie earplugs of any long haul carrier! Paul Bennett of IDEO made the audience rethink the 'purpose' of their businesses. And there were many others. There was an Innovation Masterclass by Professor Eddie Obeng and Friends from the Design Council , and what brilliant friends they were. Richard Seymour of Seymour Powell explained the true essence of design, David Kester CEO of the Design Council used the iconic Design Bugs Out! project to explain how design could transform the public sector and Bonnie Dean used her vast experience of commercialising design and examples of new market opportunities which arose from Designing Out Crime in the mobile telephony sector to show how design could create and drive new markets.




The audience and Economist Bloggers warmed to the key models, Old World vs New World, The SparqTM map of innovation, the Double Diamond which resolves the New World issue of problem defintition and the Design council Safe Space as a way of bringing together many different interests skills and ideas quickly to deliver surprisingly good, amplified results.

The Leader is a Black Horse called Resilience

The National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham was the venue for a fast paced journey into exploring Leading with Personal resilience.

Professor Eddie Obeng led five hundred managers from Lloyds Banking Group Retail through a fast paced gallop which took in all the key aspects of how to maintain Personal Resilience in the face of complex and significant changes.

Moving from Opportunities to Possibilites...

Late in 2008, at Pentacle, we realised that around the globe the industrial/ post , industrial 'nomadic, hunter-gatherer' phase was officially over. Senior executives were starting to recognise that they couldn't identify opportunities for growth. In fact they were finding it hard to identify any opportunities at all. We launched the World After Midnight podcast to try to help them to realise that this was to be expected and in fact they had prolonged the hunter-gather illusion through two decades of M&A and Financial Black Magic which had now largely unravelled. For 2010 we are planning to help our clients move onto to the modern 'next phase' of thinking and acting. We have celebrated the start of the decade with two messages.

The first is a computer created composite from Christophe Gillet which we turned into a new year card which explains simply the two mindsets when applied to markets. You can download a copy to send to your boss or colleagues here. Then we had Susan Obeng's painting, in the style of Matisse, titled IMAGINE A FISH which encourages exploration and innovation. You can download this here. The additional lines to the traditional proverb which explain why, before you can teach a man to fish, you must first IMAGINE A FISH can be found here.

Pentacle Succeeding Through Change Eddie Obeng

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Pentacle Succeeding Through Change Eddie Obeng

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Seeing the Wood and the Trees

Pentacle's own Design-Led Innovation 'Big brain' Colin Burns led this month's Evening Inspiration global mini conference. He took us on a fantastic journey from funky cassette recorders through tiling retailing to closely observing other people eating yoghurt. Along the way we learnt how not to use focus groups, we were taught how to use all five of our FiveEyesTM to observe and discovered that many people were 'secret yoghurt lid lickers.' He made sure that we could access valuable insights by seeing the P.O.I.N.T.TM

If you want to share similar inspiration you should take a look at next year's Third Thursday of the month Inspiration Evenings and perhaps come and join in a couple. You can find out more at http://PentacleTheVBS.com/FootPrint.htm and then perhaps you too can see the wood and the trees!

Where's David Dimbleby?

With the usual Question Time project manger, David Dimbleby otherwise engaged, Professor Darren Dachler had the job of keeping the five panelists in check during the Project Management Question Time at the Association of Project Managers annual conference in London last week. The conference was followed by the APM Awards ceremony featuring the new International Relief and Development prize sponsored by Project Management Today.

The eclectic panel of Nigel Smith CEO of OGC, Mike Nichols & Richard Pharro APM, Mike Rolls Royce and Professor Eddie Obeng who demonstrated the a key project management principle by turning up just-in-time for the first question. The questions ranged from the non-controversial to the controversial. Eddie Obeng did his best to stir-up the panelists and energise the audience with statements such as "I'm not sure it's just about being a profession - when I think of other professions, lawyers, accountants, they leave me cold and everyone hates them. It's all about delivery and building a reputation for taking people with us.  So fare we are content to let 75% of projectsmiss their goals. We should hit 100% then we can be real professionals and give the other professions a run for their money" He was also critical of the standard view and materials on sponsorship which allow most sponsors to see themselves as equivalents of the Queen launching a ship saying "I name this project, Daunting, God bless her and all who read Gantt charts upon her." and then disappearing for nine months only to return to kick the project leader. Perhaps that's why the usual project manager David Dimbleby was missing.

Taking root in the Netherlands

NOW WHAT? was the provocative question posed
last week by Robert Hewins to a select group of business leaders and opinion formers from across the Netherlands. Robert led an Inspiration Event at the world famous De Hortus botanical gardens in Amsterdam. The full title of the event, "Congratulations! You've survived the Meltdown. Now What?", was a theme which led to an interactive set of presentations, discussions and group work on key Pentacle concepts and principles.

David Lomas engaged the audience by demystifying innovation and explaining how to focus and make it happen using the R.A.B.B.I.T model and the participants' perceived challenges over the coming year.

Dave was followed by an energetic and inspiring contribution by Michael Anaman highlighting how to avoid and overcome resistance to change, and Toby Scott polished the session off by explaining how to think through business cases fast, using GapLeap.

The ideas planted have already taken root from the feedback and responses of the participants after the event...

The evening was capped by a guided tour through the botanical gardens, which were founded in 1638 -- the year after the collapse of the infamous Tulip bubble. Combined with 2009 being the year of Darwin and the recognition of Evolution, the Inspiration Event and its venue could not have been more timely in echoing the NewWorld strategic mantra of Evolve, Dominate or Die.

NOW WHAT? EVOLVE!

The Sparq of Design lights the UK Civil Service

David Kester, Richard Seymour, Susan Osbourne C.B.E. and Professor Eddie Obeng led a higly challenging and dynamic session for leading Civil Servants. The session sponsored and organised by Phil Rycroft of BIS (Department for Business Innovation and Skills) showcased Design-led Innovation using the "Design Bugs Out!" demonstration project which significantly impacted the infection rates of MRSA and C. Difficile in a target hospital. Eddie used the R.A.B.B.I.T. model to set the context and explained how the four types of innovation Sparq - (Push vs Pull, Human vs Technology - are best executed). David established the role of the Design Council in enabling the process and providing safe spaces for Open Innovation, Richard explained how design could help in process innovation and Susan provided a 20:20 vision from the user's perspective.

The country's top 200 civil servants participated actively making the session releveant, practical and useful. David Lomas made it memorable by creating a 'Book' of concepts as a follow-up memory jogger.

Ascending to the Start

Exactly a year ago Eddie Obeng had the chance to work with the participants of the innovative ASCEND programme On that occasion he was speaking of the NewWorld as the financial system shuddered and ground to a halt. Now one year on, the Programme aimed at Talented Women in Johnson and Johnson, and co-directed by Liz de Wet, moves on strongly. As always, the build up is a team effort. Christophe Gillet runs the first leg of the NewWorld aspects of the programme spending a module working with the participants in detail on how the new world creates opportunities and possibilities for their businesses. Eddie then rounds this of with the session involving the participants line managers...

Autumn Leaves Fall

The start of Autumn in Beaconsfield means one thing. The Pentacle Tutor Network bi-annual get

together to learn by sharing. This time the agenda was packed with old favourites and new ideas. Christophe Gillet led the journey for learning whilst Eddie Obeng explained in detail how Pentacle plans to revolutionise Change, Project and Programme management through its new E-S-P offer. And there were some very large Rabbits...

Your Country Needs You.... To Innovate

The Chairman of the Design Council Sir Michael Bichard and the entire council spent a couple of days of creative and challenging thought at the newly opened Institute for Government. The venue, with its blue plaque to Lord Kitchener, is a superb location for engaging top executives and leaders in pushing at the edges of their thought processes.

The council were provoked and facilitated by Professor Eddie Obeng, himself a councillor. The next few years will show the impact of the retreat on design and innovation in the UK. The slogan should probably be " Your Country Needs You... To Innovate."

Hair Yesterday Gone Today

Overlooking Dublin, Toby Scott and Eddie Obeng of Pentacle recover from a tough session working in collaboration with Enterprise Ireland and Duke Corporate Education on the Leadership4Growth programme. The Programme conceived by Enterprise Ireland is for Executives from the Irish Construction Industry to respond to the 60 - 80% decline in the market. About 100 members of executive teams from across the industry gathered for a practical module on identifying Possibilities and transforming them into Opportunities to exploit. Like these two who are standing 'beyond the pale' (outside the city limits) it seems as if to reach growth the leaders of the industry have to venture outside conventional areas.

Mailing Your Colours to the Mast

Royal Mail L&D are reinventing themselves and Pentacle, Know Innovation and other partner organisations are helping. Based on an ingenious colour coded plan created by Karen Lord the L&D diaspora are exploring the key capabilites needed to support Royal Mail. The process kicked off with a one day event in Rugby for 150 key L&D managers and executives.

A Standard above and beyond

Standard Bank is driving towards a distinctive strategy for growth. As part of this strategy it has invested in one of the leading learning centres in the world. Eddie Obeng had the chance to work with a large group of cross-course/ cross functional managers from Standard bank to explore "How to deliver more with less resource?" A copy of the presentation can be found here

Yammer it out!

Pentacle has been experimenting with what has been billed 'the twitter for business.' Yammer is an attempt to bring facebook-style networking to organisations. Unfortunately at this stage the model yammer uses for an 'organisation' is a 17th century hierarchy! It is impossible to represent your business relationships as a project or process based organisation let alone a virtual organisation. That said, the product is simple and addictive enough to use. To learn more about the 21st OrganoWeb and how you can increase (quadruple) your productivity or (knock 75% off your costs) by organising as if the world around you was changing and getting more complex rather than as if you employ obedient, non-creative, clones click here... To read a global case study of successful implementation click here... More cases here...