The Drîm Solution Library
A significant subset of solution summaries.
The Drîm Solution Library
An increasingly comprehensive set of drîm solutions that will, in due course, include:
- Increasingly comprehensive detail pages on each solution.
- [[Drîm Portal]]-specific links & resources.
We'll add a Drîm Reference Library and Drîm Fiction Library in due course.
AGI
Alternative Generation & Integration
A way of deliberately and systematically developing lateral, outside-the box solutions.
AGI
Alternative Generation & Integration
Generate and integrate significant alternatives to a starting provisional solution.
The starting provisional solution defines and is defined by the box one is currently thinking in.
Generating alternatives to it forces one to come up with something outside that box: a solution that defines its own - different - box. Integrating the solution ideas defines a new - more powerful and valid - box.
Appropriate Response
Teaser.
Appropriate Response
Detail
Attituning
Teaser.
Attituning
There are two primary sub-dimensions to flow-state engineering: Defragmenting Time & Focus & Attittuning:
Here is a starting set of simple techniques for reducing the seemingly unavoidable costs multitasking:
Here's a starting set of solutions for engienering the ideal mental state
- Task Completion.
- Task Batching.
- FocusTimes.
- Interruption Windows.
- Scheduled Catch-Ups.
- Define the ideal state: Motivated, enthusiastic, energetic, confident, focused, resourceful, masterful.
- Use the techniques for engineering that state.
- Diagnose the current state: pathology; physical, physiology, cogntiive, emotional, relational, philosophical.
Get details from the mystro app
AWAPITA
As Well As Possible In The Time
Available/Allocated/Assigned
A powerful and effective alternative to ASAP.
AWAPITA
As Well As Possible In The Time
Available/Allocated/Assigned
Completing something AWAPITA rather than ASAP switches the focus from perfection-as-long-as-it-takes to getting-it-done-in-a-timely-way-even-if-it's-not-perfect). It enables us to overcome perfectionism, procrastination and multitasking and accelerate innovation and productivity.
It combines well with Provisionals, AGI and fast-cycle, multi-pass innovation.
BRAT Classification
A simple technique to Assess, Test and Classify Beliefs.
BRAT can also be used to correct and enhance beliefs.
BRAT Classification
- Articulate the Belief.
- Provide the Reason for the Belief.
- Assess the Reason against Cognitive Biases and Logical Fallacies.
- Test the Belief against actual and virtual Future, Past and Present Reality.
- Classify the Belief as Fact, Likely, Uncertain, Unlikely or Fiction.
BRAT helps us replace fallacious beliefs so that we believe as any truths and as few falsehoods as possible.
Board Member Drîm Solutions
Intriguing text.
Board Member Drîm Solutions
Text.
Don't forget to set the ID and the Action Buttons.
Burning Platform
A way to inject urgency and enhance engagement in challenging situations.
Burning Platform
Create - or help people see - the urgency of a looming survival deadline that requires immediate action.
We are often more motivated by the need to avoid loss, pain, danger and extinction than by opportunity to advance ourselves.
The immediacy of the threat adds deadline pressure to the fear and galvanises us into action that an uncertain, future threat or opportunity can't. It's not sustainable in the long term but does serve to overcome inertia in the short term.
Business Improvement Solution Patterns
How to improve cross-functional performance and satisfaction.
Business Improvement Solution Patterns
- Cross-Functional Flow-Optimsation
- Commonstream initiatives to use and grow momentum and alignment.
- Develop, report on and engage on end-to-end drîm-dimension-specific KPI's to guide and direct end-to-end focus.
- Develop an Intervention Funnel and promotion criteria to serialise/parallelise interventions.
- Engage people by creating a Pull-System for Ongoing Improvement.
Business Owner Drîm Solutions
Intriguing text.
Business Owner Drîm Solutions
Text.
Don't forget to set the ID and the Action Buttons.
Capability Assessment & Acceleration Framework
(Capability Assessment & Acceleration Framework - Excel Template
A simple framework and spreadsheet tool for assessing and accelerating capability.
Capability Assessment & Acceleration Framework
(Capability Assessment & Acceleration Framework - Excel Template
- Determine the prerequisite capabilities for exceptional performance.
- Conduct and compare competency assessments against each capability.
- Select from, adapt and add to a universal set of dramatic improvement frameworks for accelerating capability in the lagging capabilities.
Drîm Career Solutions
Drîm Solutions Pictogram Link" src="/images/content/prodsol-career-drim-solutions-pictogram.png" style="width: auto;" title="Career Drim Solutions Pictogram" />Change Drîm Solutions
Create a compellingly attractive pull-system for change that people embrace with a passion and compete to be a part of.
Change Drîm Solutions
Diagnose and intervene, surgically at the lagging prerequisite(s) for change.
Resistance to change is very seldom illogical - never mind willful. There is nearly always a perfectly understandable reason for it - even if not a totally valid one.
Identifying, ahead of time, the full set of potentially valid and understandable concerns that people might have - and providing ways of addressing them to everyone's satisfaction, smoothes the way for & enhances change.
CMF
The Change Management Framework
A simple diagnostic and intervention framework to help people to target their change efforts.
CMF
The Change Management Framework
Diagnose and intervene, surgically at the lagging prerequisite(s) for change.
Resistance to change is very seldom illogical - never mind willful. It's nearly always perfectly understandable - even if it's not totally valid.
Identifying, ahead of time, the full set of potentially concerns that people might have - and providing ways of addressing them to everyone's satisfaction, smoothes the way for and enhances change.
Change Solutions
A simple diagnostic and intervention framework to help people to target their change efforts.
Change Solutions
Diagnose and intervene, surgically at the lagging prerequisite(s) for change.
Resistance to change is very seldom illogical - never mind willful. There is nearly always a perfectly understandable reason for it - even if not a totally valid one.
Identifying, ahead of time, the full set of potentially valid and understandable concerns that people might have - and providing ways of addressing them to everyone's satisfaction, smoothes the way for and enhances change.
The ChangeGenius Pattern
A simple framework to accelerate the change from old unhelpful habits to new helpful ones.
The ChangeGenius Pattern
It's not enough to have a new and demonstrably better solution to a challenging situation or thing - we also need to be able to implement the new solution - in the face of highly developed competence in the old way and virtually no competence in the new way.
It's a whole lot easier if we make the transition early - ideally pre-emptively - before we are already on the well-worn and comfortable path to where we no longer want to go.
ChangeGenius Pattern
A simple framework to accelerate the change from old unhelpful habits to new helpful ones.
ChangeGenius Pattern
It's not enough to have a new and demonstrably better solution to a challenging situation or thing - we also need to be able to implement the new solution - in the face of highly developed competence in the old way and virtually no competence in the new way.
It's a whole lot easier if we make the transition early - ideally pre-emptively - before we are already on the well-worn and comfortable path to where we no longer want to go.
Articulate the five elements and practice!
Civilisation Drîm Solutions
Teaser
Civilisation Drîm Solutions
- Disseminate standard drîm solutions, civilisation-wide, in the appropriate languages, dialects, idioms & humour forms.
- Distil national & global expertise & convert it into MCAYO format to enable people to improve their thinking, decision-making, appraoches, processes & systems - indidually & collectively.
- Provide the platform that will allow people to distil & capture their - or others' - drîm expertise & make it available.
- Introduce Drîm thinking into the education system, so that school- & university-leavers are highly competent when they enter the work-force.
CommonStreaming
Instead of coercing people to abandon their existing interests and passions for new ones, key into aligned existing interests and passions.
CommonStreaming
Ensure that change is closely aligned with people's interests and passions - even if not as closely aligned with the change sought.
Start by introducing change in areas most aligned with the change that people are already interested and passionate about - to capitalise on existing energy and momentum.
It's sometimes even worthwhile to head in the opposite direction to the change sought, temporarily, to gain momentum, relieve pain and stress and foster alignment and synergy.
Completion Sequence Scheduling
Schedule work to meet delivery rather than order/request dates.
Completion Sequence Scheduling
Process work in completion order sequence (plus lead-time and buffer) rather than in a FIFO way.
We have a tendency to prioritise earliest placed, rather than earliest due requests and orders.
The result is unnecessary multitasking, escalations, late deliveries and stress - all contributing to reduced capacity and fulfilment.
Scheduling by completion date and time resolves this significantly and enables us to set expectations that we know we can beat.
Comprehensive Strategy Fractal
Define strategy in the light of prerequisites for success and the problem we face and in contrast with the current approach and its consequences.
Comprehensive Strategy Fractal
The Comprehensive Strategy Fractal extends the GPS and Enhanced-GPS model to include:
- Current Reality in contrast with Ultimate Goal
- The Performance-Limiting Problem.
- The Natural Response to it and how that response exacerbates the Problem and has Unavoidable Consequences that bring the Current Reality About - and
- The Prerequisites for the Goal and the Counter-Intuitive Solution to the Problem.
Confidence Drîm Solutions
Simple techniques for improving personal and collective confidence dramatically.
Confidence Drîm Solutions
Conflict Resolver
Resolve dilemmas, conflicts and contradictions through breakthrough rather than compromise in a deliberate, systematic and reliable way.
Conflict Resolver
There are extremely few conflicts that can't be resolved beneficially to both drivers.
Instead of seeking the best Compromise between Conflicting options, identify and validate the drivers behind those Options and break (rather than find the best Compromise to) the Conflict, by looking for ways in which each driver can be advantaged rather than disadvantaged by the satisfaction of the other.
It's even easier if you have a set of standard breakthrough resolution options to choose from.
Constraint Reliever
A simple framework of counter-intuitive steps for deliberately and systematically relieving performance constraints.
Constraint Reliever
The performance of any complex system or challenging situation is limited by a single constraint (Theory Of Constraints), so:
- Work out what you're seeking to accelerate.
- Establish where the Constraint is.
- Determine what the current Investment is
- Understand how Current Solution increases Investment and compounds the Constraint.
- Develop a new Solution that (a) Relieves the Constraint and (b) Reduces Investment.
Culture Drîm Solutions
How to create a vibrant and dynamic culture.Culture Drîm Solutions
- Collaborate to determine the attitudes and behaviours to avoid and adopt, from a comprehensive list of options. E.g. Collaborative; Respectful; Committed; Customer Centric; Outcome Oriented; End-to-End Focused; Proactive; Innovative; Relentless; Open-minded; Resourceful; Fair.
- Define Excellence and contrast it with good and bad, using (e.g.) GBE
- Collaborate to develop triggers and scripts for reminding, prompting and encouraging others.
- Schedule progress reviews and discuss results and going-forward options.
Deep Practice
Deliberately and systematically accelerate capability by stimulating myelination - the wrapping of myelin around axons in the brain.
It peaks after 12-16 minutes and drops off after 40-60 minutes. It's triggered by deep, repetitive concentration at the limits of current capability.
Deep Practice
- Break the desired performance into its key steps or elements.
- Repeatedly and uninterruptedly learn then practice each of the elements independently
- Slowly at first and with
- Increasing speed and pressure
- Combine the various elements together.
Myelin reduces electrical signal degradation and increases the flow of current which strengthens thinking patterns and performance.
Defrag
Free up time and energy lost (easily a day a week) in seemingly unavoidable multitasking.
Gain not only time and throughput, but also increased customer satisfaction and accelerated capability and collaboration, in the process.
Defrag
- Task Completion: Complete tasks before switching.
- Task Batching: Batch similar tasks together.
- FocusTimes: Schedule times to work uninterrupted.
- Interruption Windows: Publish ideal interruption times.
- Scheduled Catch-Ups: For co-workers.
- Interruption Processing Slots: Times for working on non-urgent stuff that comes up.
- Mental Bookmarking: Record next steps before switching.
- Interruption Processing Slots: Times for working on non-urgent stuff that comes up.
- Scheduled Catch-Ups: For co-workers.
- Interruption Windows: Publish ideal interruption times.
- FocusTimes: Schedule times to work uninterrupted.
- Task Batching: Batch similar tasks together.
Deliberate Confidence
Simple techniques for improving personal confidence dramatically.
Deliberate Confidence
- Perspective.
- Progress not perfection.
- Recalibrate
- Evidence
Deliberate Empathy
Deliberately and systematically create empathy in yourself for others and in others - for you and third parties.
Deliberate Empathy
A collection of techniques for deliberately and systematically securing, instilling and disseminating empathy and become empathic.
One of the biggest failures in the human condition is the Fundamental Attribution Error: attributing malicious intent to others and extenuating circumstances to ourselves.
It's only when we truly walk in another's shoes - as them, not us - that we realise that they're more like us than we realised and begin to truly empathise with and respect them.
Deliberate Evolution
How to deliberately and systematically advance or improve a challenging situation or thing.
Deliberate Evolution
Deliberately, systematically and iteratively improve a situation or thing focusing on improvement dimensions, failure modes and opportunity modes.
Deliberately Evolution comprises a simple method of checking for enhancement opportunities against a set of simple frameworks that identify the most valuable improvement dimensions and most common failure and opportunity modes.
Deliberate Genius
Using these levers - independently or in concert - guarantees next-level outside-the-box genuius insights and solutions in a fraction of the normal time.
Deliberate Genius
- Provisionals: Tangible artefacts are way easier to improve than intangible ones.
- AGI: Integrating alternatives is way more effective than ranking and selecting them.
- Pattern Thinking: Finding and using the underlying patterns is the secret of genius.
- GPS: Distinguishing between goal, problem and solution unlocks and stimulates focused genius.
- AWAPITA: Working to deadline, without pressure shifts the focus from perfection to progress.
Deliberate Respect
How to deliberately engender respect in oneself and others - for oneself and others.
Deliberate Respect
A set of simple techniques for deliberately and systematically respecting others and engendering respect in them for you and others.
Like Deliberate Empathy and Deliberate Trust, there seems to be no quick and reliable way to transform someone's contempt - or lack of respect - into respect, but it's eminently achievable, with a clear understanding of the common failure and opportunity modes and a commitment to making the reality proceed the recognition.
Deliberate Simplicity
How to deliberately and systematically simplify a situation, solution or thing.
Deliberate Simplicity
Simplicity is a lot harder to achieve than complexity and complicatedness - and the benefits virtues of simplicity are more valuable and far-reaching than they may at first seem.
Deliberate Simplicity is a set of common simplification patterns to the most common complexity and complicatedness challenges we face, especially in introducing better ways of thinking about, approaching and doing things. It helps overcome the inevitability of sophistication and its role in simplicity.
Deliberate Synergy
How to deliberately and systematically forge synergy from dysergy and antergy.
Deliberate Synergy
A simple set of dramatic improvement patterns and techniques for forging synergy (2 + 2 =5 ) from dysergy (2 + 2 = 4) and antergy (2 + 2 = 3).
The opportunities for synergy - even in personal task-management, never mind in our interaction with other people and between product and service features - are immense: but we seldom see them.
There's a good reason for this and a simple way to overcome it.
Deliberate Trust
How to deliberately and systematically replace distrust and contempt with trust and respect.
Deliberate Trust
A collection of techniques for deliberately and systematically securing, instilling and disseminating trust and becoming trusting and truly trustworthy.
Trust is the natural consequence of - and can only be secured by - an unbroken series of trust-rewarding experiences.
This set of techniques enables one to secure this, even without a starting opportunity or in the face of a trust destroying history with the person concerned.
Deliberate Weight-loss
A different approach to weight-loss / the missing component in all weight-loss solutions
Deliberate Weight-loss
We gain and retain weight by absorbing more calories than we burn. To lose weight we need to ingest fewer calories and burn more calories.
This requires energy and will power, which is the real challenge. Deliberate Weight-loss treats energy and will power as twin constraints and provides techniques for increasing them both.
Instead of using will power to give up fattening food for ever, use it to delay eating - and exercise and eat healthily in the interim to increase energy-levels and reduce hunger and thirst.
DemandGen for Sales
How to improve market demand and demand quality dramatically.DemandGen for Sales
The market opportunity always exceeds the demand we're seeing. Here's why:
- Ideal clients don't even know about us.
- They're unable to diagnose their need reliably.
- They aren't clear on our offering's superiority.
Solution: Disseminate - through the networks that influence ideal client decision-makers the most - a highly-targeted, client-perspective-focused need-diagnostic, mapped directly into our product/service portfolio.
Distribution Drîm Solution Patterns
How to increase availability, while reducing total inventory and synchronise with marketing.
Distribution Drîm Solution Patterns
Key solution patterns include:
- Increase availability, reduce total network inventory and increase SKU by centralising stock-holding and replenish more skus more frequently.
- Synchronise with Marketing and Sales to ensure that we sell more of what we have and less of what we don't.
- Run marginal-cost market-penetration campaigns.
- Use Deliberate Mastery to ensure effective in-market sales and support
Drîm Relationship Patterns
How to improve personal relationships and synergy dramatically.
Drîm Relationship Patterns
- Relationship is about the mutual satisfaction of respective and shared needs and aspirations.
- The type, nature and depth of the relationship is determined by:
- The nature of the respective and shared needs and abilities
- The nature and level of respective skills, abilities and gifting and
- The levels of mutual respect, commitment and communication and
- The respective abilities to resolve mistakes, miscommunication amd misunderstandings that are sure to arise.
- We need to be relatable, good at creating synergy and good at dealing with difficult people.
A simple set of dramatic improvement patterns and techniques for forging synergy (2 + 2 =5 ) from dysergy (2 + 2 = 4) and antergy (2 + 2 = 3).
The opportunities for synergy - even in personal task-management, never mind in our interaction with other people and between product and service features - are immense: but we seldom see them.
There's a good reason for this and a simple way to overcome it.
EMP
(Enhanced|Minimalistic|Proposed)
Small-batch / fast-cycle improvement iterations by distinguishing clearly between comprehensive and minimalistic feature sets.
EMP
(Enhanced|Minimalistic|Proposed)
- Listing the ultimate ideal features of any solution, process, product service or project.
- Develop a bare-bones, Minimalistic feature set, ruthlessly removing the non-essential.
- Develop a Proposed feature-list - closer to the minimalistic one than the ideal one, to ensure a Minimum-Viable-Product | Small-Batch approach, leaving enhanced features for future iterations.
Engage-As-If
Shape people's perception and treatment of you or position yourself for a new role - by engaging as if you already had the respect/role you seek.
Engage-As-If
Engage, respond and interact with people as if each of you were the person you would want to be in the situation - even if neither of you is quite there (yet).
It shapes both people's behaviour, evoking your better selves and the other person's response & perception!
When you're being bullied or abused by someone, work out how you'd like them to interact. Then practise responding to them as you would if they'd interacted in this ideal way (although they haven't). The cognitive dissonance nearly always brings them to meekly follow your lead!
Engagement Framework
A framework of simple frameworks to equip and bring people to become more engaged at work and in a dramatic improvement programme.
Engagement Framework
The primary reasons for disengagement are:
- Real or perceived organisational, leadership and/or initiative misalignment with people's interests and
- Lack of skills and experience in leading or dealing with change.
The Engagement Framework comprises Design, Communication, Response, Contribution and Reinforcement Frameworks to overcome these challenges.
Exceeding Expectations Technique
A way of always exceeding expectations - no matter how challenging the situation
Exceeding Expectations Technique
It is not always possible to deliver what people want but , in most situations, it's better to set and manage people's expectations so that they can guide themselves accordingly.
EET involves setting and expectation that we know we can exceed, identifying the potential failure modes and committing to updating people as things unfold, then repeating the cycle at appropriate periods of time and as reality does unfold. This exceeds people's expectations - even if reality conspires against us/them.
Failure Mode Determination
Proactively identify and overcome the ways in which a solution or product could fail, in advance.
Failure Mode Determination
We have a tendency, once we have a solution idea in a challenging situation, to become so focused on building the steps in implementing the solution that we neglect to rigorously check for potential solution failure modes.
Deliberately checking failure modes, by asking, "Under what condition could this solution fail?" enables us to surface the hidden assumptions about the reality we face and escape the tunnel vision that arises from developing intricate solutions to extremely challenging situations.
Flow-Rate Acceleration
Set of counter-intuitive steps to improve the flow-rate of any system, process, programme or situation.
Flow-Rate Acceleration
- Draw the flow.
- Identify the end-to-end bottleneck.
- Optimise the bottleneck for performance.
- Introduce QC immediately before the bottleneck.
- Choke the inflow to match the bottleneck's.
- Buffer the bottleneck to protect it.
- Introduce pre- and post-processing.
- Add bottleneck capacity.
Flow-Time Reduction
Set of counter-intuitive steps to reduce the cycle-time of any system, process, programme or situation.
Flow-Time Reduction
Flow-time is related to, but distinct from flow-rate. Flow-rate affects flow-time, but there are other things that contribute to flow-time, including:
- Rework time.
- Wait-time.
- Setup-time.
- Processing time.
- Curing time.
- Travel-time.
FocusTime Scheduling
Schedule uninterruptible times to work uninterrupted of any but the most pressing of interruptions.
FocusTime Scheduling
Set time slots aside for working uninterrupted by internal parties.
Choose times that you are least likely to be interrupted and let people who often interrupt you know ahead of time so that they can guide themselves accordingly.
Publish both your FocusTimes and Interruption Windows (another Defrag solution) so that people are familiar with when the most and least ideal times to interrupt you are.
Future Retrospective
Use the gift of hindsight - to reverse-engineer failure, opportunity and success modes.
Future Retrospective
Future Retrospective is a more comprehensive version of the subsequently developed Pre- Mortem, in that it investigates not only the reasons for failure, but also the keys to success, opportunities encountered and the learnings achieved.
The objective is to enhance the project plan and project team preparedness by deliberately catalysing foresight by engaging hindsight in each of the key contributory modes.
GBE (Good|Bad|Exceptional)
Simple framework and method for helping people escape the box of mediocrity.
GBE (Good|Bad|Exceptional)
GBE gets people to list current and potential good and bad features and experiences of products and services in a brainstorming way.
Then collaborate to develop good features and experiences against each bad one - with a view to replacing the bad ones with good ones.
The real impact comes from the third step, which is to create a third, Exceptional column/category to bring people to extrapolate and use other techniques to significantly exceed their best previous ideas.
Golden Assumption
A way of overcoming Fundamental Attribution Error.
Golden Assumption
Recognise that most interpersonal conflict and disagreement arises from misalignment, miscommunication, misconstruing, misinterpreting and mistakes and instead of assuming mal-intent, assume that the other person wants what you want and that they only seem unreasonable, because you don't understand where they're coming from or going to.
Golden Window of Opportunity
A way to inject urgency and enhance engagement in challenging situations.
Golden Window of Opportunity
Help people see the limited time opportunity for significant gains to catalyse engagement and action.
We tend to be blind to opportunity until it's too late - but are often motivated to exploit limited time opportunities through fear of loss.
Identifying and communicating the advantages the opportunity provides and the limited size of the time window we have to capitalise on it is an effective way to bring people to take action.
The GPS (Goal|Problem|Solution)
Simple, powerful, universal strategy model.
The GPS (Goal|Problem|Solution)
- The Goal Pattern: The single situation-wide goal pattern,
- The Problem Pattern: The single situation-wide core/root problem pattern.
- The Solution Pattern: The single simple situation-wide breakthrough solution pattern.
There is a single, situation-wide GPS (Goal|Problem|Solution) Pattern for each & every challenging situation or thing. It can be found using Pattern Thinking or AGI, below.
How to Escape Dogmatism
We are all trapped in dogmatism - a form of fundamentalism that's essential to our ability to reason and communicate, but a constraint on progress.
How to Escape Dogmatism
The key to escaping dogmatism is to deliberately test our worldview against reality - and enhance it until it more accurately explains & predicts reality accurately.
Past: Does it adequately explain past reality?
Future: Does it adequately predict future reality?
The past provides a huge opportunity for conducting this testing, because we don't have to wait for things to unfold before we can test the hypothesis. We can quickly see whether people behave and events turn as our model predicts - & correct the model if they don't.
How To Get On With Easy People
How to establish rapport and synergy.
How To Get On With Easy People
- Rapport
- Synergy
- Meeing people where they're at
- Conflict Resolution
- FAE: LUR
- Deliberate Synergy
- Reciprocity
- Family Cultures
How to Give Drîm Advice
How to give advice that people take and that actually works.
How to Give Drîm Advice
In an increasingly and dynamically rich, diverse and complex world in which specialised information and expert advice is seconds away at the end of a google search - for free - we can't get away with telling people what we would do if we were in what we imagine their situation to be as ourselves with our skillsets and aspirations.
Instead, we need to help them work out, for themselves, what will give them, with their skillsets and aspirations the greatest impact and fulfilment according to their shifting value-systems.
The trick is to have a discussion, in which you find out - interactively:
- What outcomes they're trying to secure.
- What challenges they face.
- How far they've got in overcoming the challenges they face and achieving the outcomes the seek.
- What they're currently considering and not considering.
- Which of the ideas you have to offer and the two of you come up with together they find most appealing.
Then you can help them work out how to integrate the various ideas and come up with a viable solution and implementation plan.
Even if the advice we would have given, unprepped by lengthy, interactive discussion with them, turns out to be identical to what they arrive at themselves (it never will), they would not have been able to grasp, reember or take it effectively, if we'd handed it to them in findished form, because - if it's significantly different from what they're currently doing - it ouwld have been counter-intuitive and unembedded into their thinking.
If they don't come back for more advice, don't assume that they're stupid and not open to your brilliant advice - consider the possibility that the quality and accessibility of your advice or their experience of getting it from you, could be the problem.
How to Identify Understanding Flaws
It's one thing to know that something isn't working - another to find and diagnose the flaw.
How to Identify Understanding Flaws
Having a full list of potential success failure modes makes diagnosis quicker, faster, easier and more reliable. The most common failure modes are:
- Wrong | Incomplete | Contaminated Data.
- Misinterpreted Data | Flawed Assumptions| Flawed Logic or Reasoning.
- Wrong Goal | Wrong Problem | Wrong Solution | Flawed Application | Flawed Implementation
- One or More Flawed Parts | One or more Flawed Aspects | One or more Flawed Combinations.
How to Improve Personal Flow Dramatically
Every challenging situation or thing is a flow-system. This section covers counter-intuitive ways of deliberately and systematically improving personal flow.
How to Improve Personal Flow Dramatically
The problem with flow is that we all think we understand it and how to improve it - but there's a lot more to it than we realise.
The primary dimensions of flow are: flow-rate, flow-time, flow-quality, flow-cost and mental flow-state. They're closely related, which doesn't make it any easier to work out how to!
Even the simple insight that end-to-end flow-rate is determined by a single bottleneck - which is obvious to everyone - is seldom capitalised on (people seldom know, agree, prioritise or focus on the bottleneck).
Idea-Logging Trick
A simple way to free up working memory for higher cognitive performance.
Idea-Logging Trick
The prefrontal-cortex - the most recently evolved part of the human brain and responsible for executive function is still very primitive and doesn't much capacity and isn't very efficient.
Freeing it up from having to remember ideas that it doesn't need to work on right now has a significant impact on both capacity and efficiency, so recording your ideas - physically or electronically - as you have them enables you to think of new and better ideas far faster and with greater fidelity.
Impact Revolution
A way of starting a personal, organisational or societal revolution of human impact.
Impact Revolution
The Impact Revolution is a way to orchestrate ongoing dramatic improvement, individually and collectively.
It involves using a set of simple, brain-friendly diagnostic and intervention frameworks daily, weekly and monthly to focus our dramatic improvement efforts and energies at the current constraint in our individual and/or collective impact constraint.
It's designed to appeal to those whose impact aspirations exceed their actual impact.
Innovation Hothouse
A way of deliberately and systematically catalysing, accelerating and synergising individual and collective ingenuity and innovation.
Innovation Hothouse
Run a succession of 90-second idea generation and recognition sessions to generate increasingly outside the box ideas and integrate and evolve them into simple counter-intuitive dramatic improvement breakthrough solution.
Innovation Hothouse has a number of advantages over conventional Brainstorming techniques, because it allows people to generate ideas in parallel and enables everyone's (not just the dominate personalities') ideas to be captured and built upon, collaborate lively.
Interruption Processing Slots
A way of dealing with important but not urgent customer interruptions that would otherwise disrupt existing focus and momentum.
Interruption Processing Slots
Schedule time slots, ahead of time, for processing non-urgent interruptions that occur when we're in the middle of something else.
When interrupted by an external party, discern how urgent and important an immediate response is. If the matter is important rather than truly urgent, say something like: "I have a slot at 3pm this afternoon that I can do this in - would that work for you, or do you need it more urgently than that?
Interruption Prompting Method
A way of reducing interruptions from people who leave things to the last minute.
Interruption Prompting Method
(Interruption Scheduling or Emergency Interruption Scheduling or Emergency Pre-emption?)
Very few of the interruptions we get are truly important and urgent enough to interrupt what we're currently doing. The exceptions are interruptions by people who leave things to the last minute, as the result of procrastination or a lack of planning and foresight.
Interruption Prompting is checking in with these people at an appropriate time and frequency to prompt them to think about what they will need in the future, thereby reducing the incidence of emergency interruptions.
Just-In-Time Scheduling
A way to reduce the impact and rescheduling cost of unpredictable demands and workload.
Just-In-Time Scheduling
A huge percentage of human and machine production capacity is wasted as the result of constant rescheduling of workload.
Just-In-Time Scheduling reduces this wasted activity by combining precise-scheduling for a shorter period more frequently with rough sequence-scheduling for the remainder.
It's crucial to define and observe scheduling rules that deal with different lead-times, batch-sizes and urgencies - including provisional scheduling for work-items that have not entered the workflow yet.
LOAD (Less Of A Dick/Douche)
A simple self-improvement framework for removing anti-social and selfish behaviour.
LOAD (Less Of A Dick/Douche)
The LOAD Solution is a simple diagnostic and intervention framework for bad behaviour.
It comprises a list of common forms, symptoms and triggers of dickish behaviour and provides different techniques and mechanisms for replacing them with more kind, respectful and attractive behaviours.
Like the Impact Revolution, it encourages daily, weekly and monthly review sessions and accompanying approaches in addition to situational tools and techniques.
Management Drîm Solution Patterns
How to make management more impactful, inspiring and fulfilling.
Management Drîm Solution Patterns
Use - and require your people to use:
- Flow-Optimisation, to work out where to focus.
- Defrag, to reduce time wasted by unnecessary context-switching.
- TAPTAS allocate time & energy approrpriately.
- Provisionals to escape the Peter Principle.
- A Drîm IT to create and maintain focus.
- Drîm Levers: ready-references for challenging situations.
- Pull-System For Change
Marketing Drîm Solution Patterns
How to improve market demand and demand quality dramatically.Marketing Drîm Solution Patterns
The market opportunity always exceeds the demand we're seeing. Here's why:
- Ideal clients don't even know about us.
- They're unable to diagnose their need reliably.
- They aren't clear on our offering's superiority.
Solution: Disseminate - through the networks that influence ideal client decision-makers the most - a highly-targeted, client-perspective-focused need-diagnostic, mapped directly into our product/service portfolio.
What is Drîm?
Teaser
What is Drîm?
Details
The Top 6 Meaning Models and Solutions
Intriguing text.
The Top 6 Meaning Models and Solutions
- The Motivation Model: Motivation is a key driver of behaviour and Meaning of Motivation.
- The Worldview|Beliefs Model: Our beliefs drive our worldview and worldview drives meaning.
- Meaning:Worldview Alignment: Keep checking that worldview is aligned to meaning.
- The Worldview Model: Our worldview is the product of our Values and our Model
- Key into Meaning by connecting the dots.
- How to Escape Dogmatism: Test our worldview against reality: past, present and future.
Mindsets to Adopt & Avoid
A way to help people diagnose and shape their mindsets when faced with change.
Mindsets to Adopt & Avoid
Because change is only required occasionally, we aren't as good at adapting to it as we think we are.
It's difficult to work out whether we're resisting change because the new approach is flawed or because we're adopting the wrong mindset.
This solution identifies the primary mindsets to adopt and avoid and provides simple frameworks to help you and others adopt and avoid them.
It’s a very powerful way to secure synergy in the face of change.
MODIF
Multi-Option Diagnostic & Intervention Frameworks for escaping unconscious incognizance.
MODIF
(Multi-Option Diagnostic & Intervention Frameworks)
MODIFs help us escape the fundamental human condition problem of unconscious incognizance (not knowing what we don't know we don't know - but need to know).
MODIFs give us virtual capability and insight to deal with situations beyond our current innate reach until we can develop the innate capability and insight required.
National Drîm Solutions
Dramatic improvement solution for regions and nations.
National Drîm Solutions
The opportunity for improvement at larger scale is even more dramatic than at smaller scale - and local and central government are even less productive, efficient and rewarding than organisations are.
- Internal Solutions: Policies and frameworks for improving the individual and collective lot of internal stakeholders, populations, sectors and interest groups.
- External Solutions: Policies and frameworks for dramatically improving interactions with other regions and nations.
NextGen Solution
A way of stimulating and accelerating individual and collective ingenuity and innovation
NextGen Solution
Bring the future forward by imagining what the next version of a solution, process, product, or service would look like.
Prompting oneself to look beyond the current hill-top not only prepares us for what's to come, but brings us to introduce key elements of the next generation solution into the current one - especially if those elements end up being simpler and quicker and easier to develop than the currently envisaged ones.
Operations Drîm Solution Patterns
How to accelerate and streamline OperationsOperations Drîm Solution Patterns
- Minimise multitasking by batching similar tasks and providing people with interruption-free focus-times.
- Optimise practices AND processes, by identifying and optimising bottlenecks in each flow.
- Float process decision-points to the top/start and use procedure guides and diagrams, rather than process guides and diagrams.
- Codify and disseminate expertise using reverse-engineered, asymmetrical decision-treees.
Opportunity Mode Identification
Proactively identify, assess and capitalise on otherwise invisible opportunities
Opportunity Mode Identification
Every challenge in a challenging situation presents many opportunities that are often invisible to us, because we're seeing the challenging element as a negative thing to be overcome rather than a positive thing to be capitalised upon.
Deliberately looking for not just the silver lining but the huge windfall the challenge has to offer delivers huge benefits in being able to turn a sows ear into a silky purse.
Organisational Drîm Solutions
Applying drîm departmentally & organisation-wide.
Organisational Drîm Solutions
- Defrag: Enable & support batching & scheduling to reduce interruptions.
- Flow-Optimisation & Reporting: Identify & prioritise departmental & end-to-end bottlenecks
- Innovation Hothouse: Replace brainstorming with collaborative idea generation & integration.
- Pull-System for Change: Build momentum using Restricted Access & Ripples in the Pond.
- Drîm Templates: Provide & encourage the use of standard problem-solving & performance improvement templates.
- Soaring Above: Avoid the brlame game & dark triad behaviours to foster collaboration, respect & synergy.
- Drîm Funnel: Agree on & promote the criteria for assessing ideas & recommendations, to secure alignment & collaboration.
- Departmental Solutions: Marketing; Sales; Operations; Production; R&D; Projects; Leadership; Tech Support; IT Support; Software Development.
Parallel Innovation
A way to reduce risk and enhance innovation quality
Parallel Innovation
Pursue multiple innovation paths in parallel, to reduce risk, enrich innovation quality and resolve apparently disparate innovation directions.
Parallel Innovation is more than just a Plan B - it's actively working on a carefully selected set of solution paths at the same time (without falling into the multitasking trap) especially when the solution space is small and the relative value of diverging paths is difficult to assess.
Deliberately looking for ways to integrate the two paths adds even more value to the approach.
Pattern Thinking
Generate genius-level insights and solutions, on demand.
Pattern Thinking
Pattern Thinking is a simple technique for finding the otherwise invisible repeating patterns that drive and constrain the behaviour and performance of complex adaptive systems that make challenging situations seem so intractable.
The basic idea is to list the elements of the situation - like issues and challenges, opportunities and solutions and then, instead of comparing them for and raking them on difference, look for similarities and repeating patterns - they won’t be immediately obvious but very quickly leap into focus.
Performance:Practice Ratios
How much time do you spend practising?
Performance:Practice Ratios
Professionals in sport and the arts practise many times for the occasional match or performance, but as vocational and career professionals we perform in match settings every day - and never practise.
Imagine if we had to set time aside, every week, to practise - individually and collectively - just as professional artists and sportspeople do! What would that do individual and organisational performance?
Personal Drîm Solutions
Dramatic improvement solutions for oneself and interaction with others.
Personal Drîm Solutions
- Foundations: Physiology|Pathology|Cognition|Psychology|Philosophy
- Dimensions: Flow|Ingenuity|Change|Mastery| Synergy|Understanding
- Arenas: Myself|Partner|Family|Friends|School|Work|Sport| Community|Leisure
Personal Drîm Solutions Shortlist
Dramatic improvement solutions for oneself and interaction with others.
Personal Drîm Solutions Shortlist
- Confidence
- Relationships
- Career
- Productivity
- Ingenuity
- Sport
- Weightloss
- Mastery
- Wealth
The Basic Change Framework
A simple drîm framework for change.
The Basic Change Framework
- Ultimate State
- Deliberate Cognitive Impartiality
- Logical Falacies Deliberate Logical Integrity.
- Unconscious Incognizance Deliberate Cognizance.
- Ideological Fundamentalism: The Fundamentalism Antidote.
Pooling Contingency
Stuff
Pooling Contingency
Pooling Contingency shifts time, resource, equipment and material contingency from tasks to schedule.
The problem with conventional time, resource, equipment and material scheduling (in which contingency is added to each step), is that we seldom benefit when we come in under budget - and always suffer when we come in over budget: so when we lose we lose and when we win, we don't win. Pooling contingency enables us - at the cost of higher frequency communications - to net unders and overs off and reduce costly multitasking.
Power Delegation
Highly effective delegation framework
Power Delegation
Power Delegation is a set of simple frameworks for delegating effectively.
It enables one to calibrate for the situation and delegate skillset and provides a way of delegating both authority and responsibility while maximising the growth in delegate capability and resolving the conflict between freedom and control for both parties.
Prerequisites Technique
A way of guaranteeing outcomes efficiently and effectively.
Prerequisites Technique
Our natural tendency is to think and engineer forwards, getting started as soon as possible to ensure the earliest possible completion. The problem with this is that we risk focusing on things that turn out to be superfluous and missing things that turn out to be crucial.
Surfacing comprehensive sets of successive prerequisites to the ultimate objective enables us to ensure sufficiency while minimising superfluity.
It will do us well to adapt the plan for natural progression forwards as well!
Provisionals Technique
Use the power of provisional solutions to overcome the Peter Principle and Perfectionism.
Provisionals Technique
Provisionals Technique is deliberately adopting very rough and of necessity inadequate solutions ahead of any thought or research.
The power of provisionals lies in their creation of a tangible working solution - that is a lot easier to enhance than an ethereal solution that doesn't yet exist.
Provisionals can take the form of a few descriptive words or a rough diagram or barely-working prototype: anything to trigger of the enhancement phase of the innovation cycle.
Process & Practice Optimisation
Throughput, lead-time, quality and engagement.
Process & Practice Optimisation
In the drîm world, processes are the steps work items go through, while practices are the steps people go through in getting multiple work-items through the process. The distinction, though small, is a highly signiicant one for optimising throughput, lead-time, quality and engagement.
Start with practice: Defrag, followed by Flow-Rate Optimisation and then Deliberate Genius, in design environments or a DARTin expert enironments.
Process & Practice Streamlining
Set of techniques for streamlining process and practice.
Process & Practice Streamlining
- Use Defrag & Flow-Optimsation.
- Separate Process and Practice.
- Reverse-engineer from ultimate states.
- Float decision-points to the top.
- Separate Decision/Assessment from Solutions and Actions.
- Take advantage of asymmetry.
- Run Deep Practice sessions on the most challenging processes/practices.
Dramatic Improvement Solutions
A growing library of simple universal solutions for improving any situation or thing dramatically.
Dramatic Improvement Solutions
This section comprises a growing library of universal dramatic improvement solutions in the following primary domains.
- Individual Drîm Solutions
- Organisational Drîm Solutions
- Civilisation Drîm Solutions
The solutions apply the Drîm Dimension Solutions to the primary arenas within the above primary domains.
Start here to find solutions for the situation or thing you want to improve dramatically.
Production Drîm Solution Pattterns
How to improve Production throughput, quality and responsivemness drmatically.
Production Drîm Solution Pattterns
This solution is a slightly adpated version of TOC's DBR/Production solution
- Minimise waste at and get more through the bottleneck.
- Synchronise all previous steps to the bottleneck-.
- Synchronise the bottleneck and sales and marketing: adjust the batch-size appropriately.
- Only widen the bottleneck (add more capacity) if even the above is not enough to match demand.
Project Streamlining
How to streamline projects and make them more predictable.
Project Streamlining
- Pool time-, risk-, people-, equipment- and materials-contingency to improve predictability, due date performance and value created.
- Use reverse-engineering and prerequisite planning, to ensure that everything essential and nothing superfluous is included.
- Minimise multitasking on the current critical path.
- Check that the critical path isn't delayed by missing previous steps, info, equipment, materials & people
- Use Agile & Scrum to small-batch iterations & reduce time & energy wasted on unnecessarily.
Projects Drîm Solution Patterns
How to streamline projects and make them more predictable.
Projects Drîm Solution Patterns
- Pool time-, risk-, people-, equipment- and materials-contingency to improve predictability, due date performance and value created.
- Use RET and PPT, to ensure that everything essential and nothing superfluous is included.
- Minimise multitasking on current critical path tasks.
- Ensure that the critical path isn't delayed by other steps, info, equipment, materials or people.
- Small-batch iterations to minimise time and energy wasted on things that end up being not required.
RAP Sessions
A small-footprint, agile way of commencing and sustaining ongoing improvement.
RAP Sessions
Frequent Review and Planning sessions to generate and sustain momentum and ongoing improvement.
Professional and even amateur sports people practice nearly every day for far fewer competitive performances - while business people have competitive performances every day and never - or hardly ever - practice.
RAPP Sessions combine assessing progress and planning the next things to focus on and practice.
REMODIFAGI
A way of overcoming the fundamental Human Condition Problem of Unconscious Incognizance
REMODIFAGI
A more comprehensive version of MODIF for overcoming the seemingly intractable human condition problem of unconscious incognizance:
- Reverse-Engineered (from the nirvana state)
- Multi-Option (for quick, reliable selection)
- Frameworks (to provide both control/predictability and freedom) with
- Alternative Generation and Integration (to ensure ongoing improvement).
Response Framework
Simple framework to deal with the cognitive dissonance that arises from being faced with new ideas that you aren’t that familiar with.
Response Framework
A series of simple questions to diagnose the origin of cognitive dissonance and respond accordingly.
Do you have reservations about:
- The Goal: what we're seeking to achieve?
- The Problem: what's holding us back?
- The Solution we're adopting for the Problem?
- The Plan: how we'll implement the solution?
- Your role in the plan?
If so, raise your concerns and present alternatives.
RET
(Reverse-Engineering Technique
Use the power of reverse-engineering to streamline and guarantee outcomes.
RET
(Reverse-Engineering Technique
Reverse-Engineering (working backwards from instead of forwards to) the ultimate state sought) offers a number unique of advantages.
- It enables us to ensure that we haven't missed any essential elements out.
- It enables to exclude the superfluous.
- It enables us to figure out demanding and complex challenges.
We don't need to abandon Forward Engineering - merely supplement it with RET.
Ripples in a Pond
Start small, tight and concentrated and expand outwards only as the value become obvious.
Ripples in a Pond
- Start with a series of small pilots where the appetite, aptitude and influence is greatest.
- Allow the roll-out to happen slowly at first - under the influence of pull, rather than push.
- Allow - and bring - momentum to gather over time - setting a cadence that people are comfortable with.
- Ensure the learnings are captured, recognised and disseminated in a way that makes the transition attractive and appealing to people.
SAD > GlAD
Teaser
SAD > GlAD
Details
Schedule Buffering
A counter-intuitive way of compressing schedules without sacrificing quality.
Schedule Buffering
Schedule Buffering applies the Pooling Contingency solution to job-scheduling.
The idea is to provisionally schedule jobs/tasks on a minimum duration estimate (instead of padding the estimates) - and pool the padding in strategically placed Schedule Buffers throughout the day, week or month.
A key element of Schedule Buffering is to to ensure that people are aware that the schedule is dynamic and are kept informed on things as they change!
Scheduled Catch-Ups
A way to reduce unnecessarily wasted time and energy from collaborative interruptions.
Scheduled Catch-Ups
Schedule regular catch-ups with frequent interrupters, to reduce the multitasking cost of frequent interruptions.
Scheduled Catch-Ups also enables people to batch queries, self-resolve, increase and accelerate capability transfer and plan their work better.
The idea isn't to ban ad hoc interruptions but to reduce them. Stress that important and urgent interruptions should be addressed immediately.
Scheduled Interruption Windows
A way of minimising the impact of non-urgent internal interruptions
Scheduled Interruption Windows
Schedule ideal times for receiving interruptions - ideally at a time most convenient for both you and your interrupters and publish those times as the best times to receive interruptions, stressing that urgent and important interruptions can be made at any time: this is merely for interruptions that aren't quite as urgent.
Schedule these Interruption Windows before and after FocusTimes to enable you and your interrupters to batch interruptions for added performance and capacity gains.
SDC (Solution Design Criteria)
Overcome one the biggest causes of misalignment and inadequate solutions in complex/demanding situations.
SDC (Solution Design Criteria)
It's very difficult to maintain focus on a large set of solution requirements in complex situations - and even harder if there are many functions or specialisations involved. It's only too easy to forget the specifics of other functions' requirements in the heat of trying to ensure that one's own requirements are met adequately.
The SDC Solution brings us to define and agree on the full set of solution design criteria upfront, so that we can collaborate in testing each idea against the set - and combining and enhancing solutions collaboratively to meet them.
Short-Listing Technique
Work off a short-list to free up working memory.
Short-Listing Technique
Short-Listing Technique combines the benefits of Idea Logging and Just-In-Time Scheduling. The idea is to maintain two To Do Lists:
- A long - comprehensive - list of all of the tasks that need to do completed and
- A short-list of the tasks that need to be completed in the next few hours or days.
This enables us to keep on track without being distracted or overwhelmed, freeing up prefrontal cortex capacity and improving completion satisfaction.
Staged Evolution
An agile-esque way of migrating to ideality in stages, over time - and establishing a market leadership position in the process.
Staged Evolution
- Define the current ideal outcome, product, service or state.
- Define the current state.
- Develop a very rough 3- or 4-stage migration from the current to the ideal state.
- Deliver the first stage - only introducing new ideas that reduce risk and accelerate this stage; add other new ideas to an Ideas List.
- Return to step 1, using the ideas list to enhance the ideal outcome.
Success Mode Discovery
Proactively identify, provoke and make use of successful ways of going about things.
Success Mode Discovery
Proactively identifying established or new ways of preventing, overcoming or recovering from foreseeable risks, challenges and failure modes equips us, in advance for early identification and response when things go wrong.
The simple discipline of identifying common tips, tricks, short-cuts, breakthrough solutions and quick recovery techniques not only equips us to respond quickly and effectively when thing go wrong, but it also enables us to design and implement the solution in a way that sets us up to use those techniques.
Systemic SWOT
A simpler and more powerful approach to conventional SWOT analysis
Systemic SWOT
Instead of targeting specific strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats - or summarising each quadrant, find the repeating pattern across the items in each quadrant.
Next, generate lists ways of capitalising on strengths and opportunities to overcome or negate weaknesses and threats.
Finally find the repeating patterns across the various ways to develop a simple but powerful strategy pattern for the situation.
Taking Mastery to the Next Level
Some next step ideas.
Taking Mastery to the Next Level
- Develop simple DARTs (diagnostic and resolution trees and templates) to corporatise the expertise and make it easier for people to get started.
- Get novices to develop provisional solutions, decisions, assessments and plans for intermediates to vet and get intermediates to do the same for experts to vet.
- Provide "stripes", "tickets" or "badges" to certify people to move up to the next expertise level.
- Hold regular internal competitions to equip people to lift their games.
TAP (Time Allocation Planning)
Allocate time and energy in proportions that make the most sense and deliver the best end-to-end outcomes.
TAP (Time Allocation Planning)
We have a tendency to allocate our time, focus and energy to what we can make the most difference to, rather than what will make the most end-to-end difference and to what will relieve the most pain, rather than what will make the most gain.
TAP compares current and ideal time allocation and provides simple techniques for migrating from the current to the ideal. Even small changes to time allocation deliver huge gains in end-to-end performance and fulfilment.
TAS (Time Allocation Scheduling)
Schedule time slots - and buffers - in advance to ensure that time , focus and energy is allocated appropriately across the various priorities.
TAS (Time Allocation Scheduling)
In dynamically complex and challenging environments, it's difficult to optimise workflows, because demand is so unpredictable.
TAS determines the amount of time required for the various work-types and creates processing rules for optimising flow for performance and fulfilment.
This enables us add new work times to the relevant work queues asynchronously from actually doing the work, which can then be batched and processed in an optimal way.
Task Batching Technique
Reduce multitasking by batching similar tasks together
Task Batching Technique
Batching similar tasks together enables us to reduce the number of mental and physical setups, by having a setup per batch and only tiny setups between items in each batch.
The trick is to work out what items to batch together: same type of activity (e.g. phone-call or email) or same project, product or customer?
Beware the trap of focusing on efficiency to the detriment of throughput - i.e. don’t make the batches too big and end up with a lot of WIP and not enough throughput.
Task Completion Approach
Complete each task before moving onto the next
Task Completion Approach
With a little planning and discipline, we can ensure that we complete tasks in a single pass, thereby reducing the number of setups per task.
If we switch between tasks unnecessarily, we suffer a setup hit on each switch, wasting capacity and delaying most tasks.
But, if we rigorously complete tasks in one pass we incur only one setup per task, free up extra capacity and finish most tasks earlier.
Task Segmentation Technique
Segment tasks to accelerate throughput
Task Segmentation Technique
For tasks that are difficult to complete in one pass (because specific challenges or information requirements emerge only during the task or because they require other parties' contribution), it is worth segmenting those tasks and batch-processing the segments (like determining the necessary information required to complete the tasks).
The trick is to identify, both ahead of time and situationally, that the task is really a mini-project and so could benefit from task segmentation.
Task-Listing Technique
List tasks - in written form - to optimise workflow and free up working memory
Task-Listing Technique
Writing down or typing up the list of tasks for the day or week:
- Frees up working memory (our brains don't need to store the task list.
- Frees up prefrontal cortex processing power otherwise required to maintain the list.
- Makes it a lot easier to optimise the list order.
- Makes it easier to record progress and stimulate a sense of satisfaction.
TaskStream
Simple framework for accelerating flow and enhancing quality in dynamically complex environments.
TaskStream
TaskStream is for office workers in overload situations, where there are many different tasks, priorities and customers contending for the same limited capacity.
- Defragmenting Time and Focus - especially batching similar task-types together.
- Switching from a Complete ASAP to Complete AWAPITA mindset.
- Time Allocation Planning and Scheduling.
- Using standard templates and approaches for the various batch-types.
TEASE
- Target things more accurately or tightly.
- Enhance: Make things better.
- Accelerate: Make things faster.
- Streamline: Make things quicker, cheaper or easier.
- Energise: Make things more appealing to people.
TEASE
TEASE is one of many Improvement Mode Frameworks that identify the improvement dimensions to consider.
Knowing what dimensions of a challenging situation or thing we can improve, enables us to both identify and focus on those dimensions more easily and precisely.
- Chose which dimensions will have the biggest impact - independently and in concert.
- Focus the Ingenuity Solutions at each dimension to generate ways of improving it.
- Find a combination that works.
Throughput Accounting
An adapted version of TOC's financial performance improvement measurement system.
Throughput Accounting
Throughput Accounting separates truly fixed from truly variable costs. This enables us to determine what the monthly Fixed Costs are and makes it easy to derive true monthly Contribution (Sales minus truly Variable Costs).
Graphing true monthly Contribution (Sales less truly Variable Costs) against monthly Fixed Costs gives managers and execs - and most staff members - the most crucial insight and status they need to know to make informed performance-impacting decisions.
TurboMeetings
High impact, low footprint meetings.
TurboMeetings
We tend to structure, lead, prepare for and participate in meetings in a very similar way. There are different types of meetings and each type needs to be structured and approached differently - and can be better optimised for performance, duration and fulfilment if this is recognised.
TurboMeetings identifies a common set of meeting types and optimised ways of running them - including achieving outcomes without holding an actual meeting and extending meeting duration for the sake of better outcomes.
Vicious Cycle Reverser
A simple technique for reversing vicious cycles in challenging (dynamically complex) situations.
Vicious Cycle Reverser
Some of the most significant contributors to our current reality and the challenges it presents us with are vicious cycles: short-term actions that we have taken in the past that compound rather than overcome the problem and make it increasingly difficult to escape.
IMAGE
The Vicious Cycle reverser is a simple model for deconstructing and consequently reversing the Vicious Cycle, converting it into a Virtuous Cycle.
VLUARA
Model and technique for converting vicious cycles into virtuous ones
VLUARA
VLUARA is an acronym for Vicarious Learning Using Animated Representative Avatars.
The basic idea is to create avatars - characters - that represent the different factions within the organisation and situation - and then tell stories and create animations in which the avatars articulate both valid and invalid concerns of their respective factions, so that they can be acknowledged and responded to in a respectful and considered way, to enhance the solution quality and help people get perspective on their stances on critical things.
What 'n By When?
A simple technique for determining and setting expectations in overload situations.
What 'n By When?
Establish, upfront, what the required
customer business outcome is – and
by when it's required.
It's only when you really think about it that you realise that our natural tendency - especially in overload situations - is to focus on getting started with what we think the customer wants us to do as soon as possible - instead of making sure that we understand and can negotiate the outcome and due date first - thereby reducing misplaced efforts and unnecessary stress.
WWMMDT
A way of overcoming the Fundamental Attribution Error
WWMMDT
The Fundamental Attribution Error - attributing motive, intent and inferiority to other people's bad behaviour, but circumstances to our own - is one of the biggest and most damaging cognitive biases we face.
WWMMDT ("Wimditty") is an acronym to remind us to ask, "What would make me do that?" - if I was being reasonable and decent.
It's astounding how often we find that those same extreme conditions that would bring us to behave sub-optimally, exist in their situation.
Xplor
A way of securing alignment - especially in adversarial situations.
Xplor
Instead of using open or closed questions, Xplor uses multiple-choice questions, with the option for the interviewee to add their own option or indicate that it's none of the proffered options.
Asking multiple choice plus add-your-own option questions - and then playing back their own words and repeating the cycle until they agree with the wording - before translating into my own words, brings me to understand their position to both of our satisfaction - before repeating the process for my position.
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