OUR SYSTEM

It's difficult to find something brief on how to run Kanban efficiently and effectively, so here it is: (I Googled around optimising Kanban sites, collated it and made it more concise): The goal: efficiency transparency continuous improvement shared leadership The process: As a team, set up a Kanban board with To Do, Doing, and Done, and add the tasks for each project on Post-its. Each task should have an estimated time requirement (less than 2 days or break it up) and a team member doing it. Following the initial longer meeting, schedule shorter regular Kanban meetings with the team. Meet daily or every other day in front of the board. Keep the meetings brief (15 minutes should be enough). A moderator, often the project manager or a product manager, facilitates the meeting. The moderator guides the team through the tasks on the board getting a status update for each from the relevant team member. The moderator clarifies what prevents moving a specific task to Done. If ...

Wellbeing is a difficult thing to define, let alone to measure. And the definition is critical to the measurement. If you look to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, wellbeing isn't even the top criteria, it's just one of many. Whereas, if you look at OECD Regional Wellbeing, it is of course, right at the top. For the Legatum Prosperity Index, prosperity is of course the over-arching goal (but is properity just another measure for wellbeing?). For OUR SYSTEM, and The Common Purpose (TCP) , it is fulfilment (or living) without harm. That's because fulfilling our potential, which is growing, which is living, is what life is all about. Life is really all about living, right? And the only way we can all do that, is if we do it without harming other life or being harmed by other life, i.e. by being free. That's what our system should enable for us. And that's what these OUR SYSTEM Indicators, following, are all about. I'm putting these up here to garner thought and...

It's been a long-time, but inspired by a workshop I attended today on the Living Standards Framework (given by the New Zealand Treasury), I created this framework, which I think more accurately and deliberately targets the greater goal (greater than just living standards) of all people to lead fulfilling lives, ones that increases their general well-being and life satisfaction. I haven't given any specific, numerical measurement indicators for the five components of the framework - Legal, Economic, Organisational, Social, and Change. However, I think the sub-components of each of these point pretty clearly to what some obvious indicators may be. I also haven't written here any further explanation of what the sub-components actually entail in terms of a fulfilment framework or system. However, I have already written on these fairly extensively on this website and on others ( www.thecommonpurpose.com ) and in print. I will also be developing this framework further. Anyway, be...

I think the concepts behind the diagram below are largely self-evident, but the primary message is that by adopting a confident, relaxed and comfortable posture and attitude you enhance your ability to deal with pressure. On the other hand, passively holding an unconfident, tense and awkward posture can lead to less than optimal results. These postures or attitudes are affected by external stimuli such as praise or criticism of performance, and so performance management in organisations is highly relevant. However, self-awareness of your own posture/attitude can help you adopt a posture that is more positive and resilient regardless of external input. Testosterone and cortisone are the chemical-biological intermediaries which are generated in response to pressure, converting pressure into either increased performance via the confident-relaxed-comfortable posture or into increased stress via the unconfident-tense-awkward posture. These concepts and the diagram are informed and ins...

This is the third presentation in a series of five on the common purpose and elements of it. This one gives a brief summary of the common purpose organisation. The Common Purpose Organisation from Ben Wallace Ben Wallace Author The Common Purpose Manifesto LinkedIn - http://nz.linkedin.com/in/benwallace13 Twitter - http://twitter.com/BenDWallace

Decentralised, distributed responsibility (decision-making) and open information systems, lower the cost of conceiving, implementing and distributing ideas, and liberate individual fulfilment. Recording individual decisions in open information systems distributes knowledge, informs future decision-making and ensures accountability. Ideas (better ways of doing things or human potential) and implementing them (realising potential) are most effective and inexpensive when they are conceived and implemented by those whom they effect. At this level ideas are only adopted if they make a real improvement to our work, making it more efficient or more effective, that is, reducing the amount of work required or improving the result from the same amount of work. At the level where an idea is applicable we often do not ask (or receive) extra money for the development and implementation of our ideas, but we still develop and implement them because they make our job easier and because contributing re...

Common purpose organisations are collectives of individuals, come together to achieve a particular purpose that accords with the common purpose of fulfilment without harm. Financial success is not the purpose, but a by-product of the organisation’s success in realising human potential and achieving its particular purpose. Every organisation has a particular purpose that accords with the common purpose of fulfilment and the principle of no harm. It is essential to trust, distribution, fairness, and productivity through realising human potential, that all organisations distribute responsibility, open up information systems, and democratise collective decision-making. The common purpose organisation lowers the risk of trying new things, of new ideas, of realising human potential, and assists in the coordination of human endeavour to a particular purpose that accords with and furthers the common purpose. These organisations distribute the costs of failure and the profits of success. At all...

"Human nature is such that no central body can meet or even determine the needs of all people, because all people are different, doing different things at different times and in different ways. A universal income ensures that people can provide for their own needs according to what they need, how they need (in what quantity and form) and when they need. A universal base income, paid without means testing to all, ensures some base of financial security, with which all of us can meet our base needs for food, shelter and education, which as others have said, are human rights. These 'rights' are also the requirements for people to live fulfilling lives without (any need to) harm others. I don't believe others should determine how we spend the base income we need to live. When others control or determine what we do, when we do it, how we do it, then we do not have the freedom to live as we believe best suits ourselves or to make our best contribution that reflects who we ar...

Quite possibly. Perhaps not the best for existing, large, command and control organisations, although they could learn a lot from it (but probably won't want to), but certainly the best for small organisations and anyone wanting to start one. I won't go into why, because there's just too much good material and not enough room here to do that (you'll have to buy the book). But I will give some minor content suggestions (because there's so few they'll fit). The "Good Enough Is Fine" advice should over-ride "Build Half A Product, Not A Half-Assed Product", in other words, "good enough" and incremental improvement is enough to start with, don't hang back from starting just because you haven't trimmed your product down to perfect size: let it be a little "half-assed" and podgy, and get it out. Second minor suggestion is in regard to "Don't Scar On The First Cut": yes, don't create a policy for somethin...

Something of what system change looks like, this one in organisation: NPR: The End Of 9-To-5: When Work Time Is Anytime (You Want). [Thanks to Charity Focus for alerting me to the above article.] Loosening controls helps us work better, not worse. Doing it in the right way for us, means we live more integrated and productive lives. We're all different (as well as all human), so we need our systems to be flexible enough to reflect that diversity. Best wishes to Hinnepin County and the state of Minnesota for having the courage.

That's what our organisations and our regulations need to be able to do. If they can't do this then they aren't dealing with us as the diverse humans we are and they will harm us. This calls for a relinquishing of control to the general membership of the organisation so that they can make the decisions on how clients are catered for. These decisions are recorded and accountable, but they are also individual, with the over-riding purpose being to assist the client, not fit them into a regulation or method that doesn't suit them. John Seddon's ' Systems Thinking ' is the closest thing I've seen to making this happen in reality.

Managers aren’t responsible for what staff do. Staff are responsible for what staff do. If people aren’t responsible for what they do, then they don’t do what they do responsibly. The idea that managers are responsible for staff actions is an attribute of organisations where staff are controlled, where there is a system of control. When staff know their job and do it their way they are also responsible for their job. It is when managers that are controllers intervene to control the way staff do their job that the responsibility of staff for their job, and the ability of staff to do their job, is compromised. Manager-controllers have full responsibility for that mistake.

It is not people who should serve businesses, but businesses that serve people. Business, companies and organisations are our means of organising ourselves to contribute and increase the ability of our system to enable fulfilment without harm for everyone. Businesses are not more important than people. There is no reason why businesses should pay less tax on their profits than people do on their incomes.