Drîm Processing

Appropriate Response

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Appropriate Response

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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

1. Task Completion.
2. Task Batching.
3. FocusTimes.
4. Interruption Windows.
5. Scheduled Catch-Ups.
   1. Define the ideal state: Motivated, enthusiastic, energetic, confident, focused, resourceful, masterful.
   2. Use the techniques for engineering that state.
   3. Diagnose the current state: pathology; physical, physiology, cogntiive, emotional, relational, philosophical.

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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.

Board Member Drîm Solutions

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Board Member Drîm Solutions

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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

1. Cross-Functional Flow-Optimsation
2. Commonstream initiatives to use and grow momentum and alignment.
3. Develop, report on and engage on end-to-end drîm-dimension-specific KPI's to guide and direct end-to-end focus.
4. Develop an Intervention Funnel and promotion criteria to serialise/parallelise interventions.
5. Engage people by creating a Pull-System for Ongoing Improvement.

Business Owner Drîm Solutions

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Business Owner Drîm Solutions

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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:

1. Current Reality in contrast with Ultimate Goal
2. The Performance-Limiting Problem.
3. The Natural Response to it and how that response exacerbates the Problem and has Unavoidable Consequences that bring the Current Reality About - and
4. 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.

Deliberate Confidence

Simple techniques for improving personal confidence dramatically.

Deliberate Confidence

1. Perspective.
2. Progress not perfection.
3. Recalibrate
4. 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 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.

EMP

(Enhanced|Minimalistic|Proposed)

Small-batch / fast-cycle improvement iterations by distinguishing clearly between comprehensive and minimalistic feature sets.

EMP

(Enhanced|Minimalistic|Proposed)

1. Listing the ultimate ideal features of any solution, process, product service or project.
2. Develop a bare-bones, Minimalistic feature set, ruthlessly removing the non-essential.
3. 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:

1. Real or perceived organisational, leadership and/or initiative misalignment with people's interests and
2. 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

1. Draw the flow.
2. Identify the end-to-end bottleneck.
3. Optimise the bottleneck for performance.
4. Introduce QC immediately before the bottleneck.
5. Choke the inflow to match the bottleneck's.
6. Buffer the bottleneck to protect it.
7. Introduce pre- and post-processing.
8. 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:

1. Rework time.
2. Wait-time.
3. Setup-time.
4. Processing time.
5. Curing time.
6. 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)

1. The Goal Pattern: The single situation-wide goal pattern,
2. The Problem Pattern: The single situation-wide core/root problem pattern.
3. 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.

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.

What is Drîm?

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What is Drîm?

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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.

1. Internal Solutions: Policies and frameworks for improving the individual and collective lot of internal stakeholders, populations, sectors and interest groups.
2. External Solutions: Policies and frameworks for dramatically improving interactions with other regions and nations.

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.

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.

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.

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:

1. Reverse-Engineered (from the nirvana state)
2. Multi-Option (for quick, reliable selection)
3. Frameworks (to provide both control/predictability and freedom) with
4. 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:

1. The Goal: what we're seeking to achieve?
2. The Problem: what's holding us back?
3. The Solution we're adopting for the Problem?
4. The Plan: how we'll implement the solution?
5. 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.

1. It enables us to ensure that we haven't missed any essential elements out.
2. It enables to exclude the superfluous.
3. It enables us to figure out demanding and complex challenges.

We don't need to abandon Forward Engineering - merely supplement it with RET.

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:

1. A long - comprehensive - list of all of the tasks that need to do completed and
2. 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

1. Define the current ideal outcome, product, service or state.
2. Define the current state.
3. Develop a very rough 3- or 4-stage migration from the current to the ideal state.
4. Deliver the first stage - only introducing new ideas that reduce risk and accelerate this stage; add other new ideas to an Ideas List.
5. 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.

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:

1. Frees up working memory (our brains don't need to store the task list.
2. Frees up prefrontal cortex processing power otherwise required to maintain the list.
3. Makes it a lot easier to optimise the list order.
4. 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.

1. Defragmenting Time and Focus - especially batching similar task-types together.
2. Switching from a Complete ASAP to Complete AWAPITA mindset.
3. Time Allocation Planning and Scheduling.
4. Using standard templates and approaches for the various batch-types.

TEASE

1. Target things more accurately or tightly.
2. Enhance: Make things better.
3. Accelerate: Make things faster.
4. Streamline: Make things quicker, cheaper or easier.
5. 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.

1. Chose which dimensions will have the biggest impact - independently and in concert.
2. Focus the Ingenuity Solutions at each dimension to generate ways of improving it.
3. 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.