Working at Warp Speed

I remembered Barry Flicker’s ‘Working at Warp speed’. Sadly only +after+ the deadline of the last stressful project. I have to stick his four core ideas on the wall again.
- “We’re in this together.” Stress in the team leads to adversarial positions. Before I slip into the uncreative defensive mode, I have to remind myself of this. Some ‘Aikido in everyday life’ can help me with this. It helps me to keep centered and creative even under repetitive verbal attacks from stressed out colleagues.
- “Slow down before you turn.” I have to make sure to be inclusive when taking the project trough a major curb into a different direction. Turning to fast leads to a lot of confusion. Also in review meetings I need to stay better focused, take time to take a step back. Otherwise things get sloppy. Would it help to change the music from hard rock to relaxing, to influence my state of mind? It is what Norman suggests in ‘Emotional Design’…
- “Am -I- the best one to do this?” I got pretty good at delegating the right stuff, but I have to coach the others.
- “Take time to plan.” I really appreciate those short daily kick-off meetings! Much better than diving right in. But again we didn’t plan in user and consumer feedback. This can be so powerful, but always gets crushed in the rush of tight deadlines.

Barry Flicker didn’t give any ideas on how to break away from old solutions and doing something really sexy when working at warp speed. I have to find a way get this in the process…

Large group interventions

Barbara Bunker & Billie Alban propose a method for organizational change involving at least half the organization in the analysis and planning process. The underlying idea is that this kind of change is more sustainable than the traditional vision, cascaded down trough the organization, because the vision will be created and endorsed by the whole. This usually is a 2 to 3 day event where the whole large group gets together and works in subteams on creating a new future. Since today organizations are very dependent on their environment, it is highly recommended to invite also core suppliers and clients to this kind of events. Work is done in small groups with rotating timekeepers, recorders, facilitator and reporters.

Typical parts of such conferences are:
- Scan/analysis of the environment
- Overview of the history. This creates a common basis.
- Analysis of the current process/situation (value stream mapping). A dump of most common tasks then ordered chronologically.
- Discuss prouds&sorries or glads, sads & mads.
- Defining a most desirable system/discovering common futures
- Action planning, where people can choose to work towards the goals/on issues that interest them most.


As formula for effective change Gleicher uses C = D x V x F > R. The will to change (C) is influenced by the dissatisfaction (D), a clear shared vision (V), and clear (F)irst steps to be taken. It should be larger than the (R)esitance to change.

Overall one should consider the fact that in large groups the speaking time per person is the length of the meeting divided by the number of participants. It’s usually not much so you need creative ways to work around this. Also the amount of structure to workshop is a careful balance. Too little structure creates anxiety and unfocused work, and too much structure can be limiting creativity and working on unexpected priorities.

In a way it reminds me a bit of Gladwell’s tipping point: these tools allow you to create a tipping point for organizational change.