What is Skeumorphism? Derived from the Greek words Skeuos, meaning vessel or tool, and morph, meaning shape, a skeuomorph is, according to the Oxford Dictionary, a “derivative object that retains ornamental design cues to a structure that was necessary in the original.” The term can apply to either a physical or digital creation.

Nicholas Gessler writes in “Skeuomorphs and Cultural Algorithms”, that it means to replicate the form and material qualities of something that are no longer inherently necessary, all with the objective of making new designs “look comfortably old and familiar”

When applied to User Interface (UI), the logic here is that it will make the interface more intuitive and usable, as the user will understand how it functions based on their knowledge of the analog object it is replicating. In cloud-centric connected future, we not only care about the “human interface” and the “industrial design” but that all of those pieces have to work seamlessly with the guts and nerves of digital devices — chips and the networking technologies. Looking ahead, as interactions move beyond the screen into thin air, and both input and output will increasingly use voice, there is an opportunity to design interactions for what comes next in computing. Mashed Services and Business Models enabled by Next Generation Operating Systems and Software (NGOSS) will mean new “control point” services like search or commerce. Wearables category will need great design to go mainstream.

The question is – Do we really need to drop Skeumorphism to get breakthroughs? Or will skeumorphism morph into something else?

I read the first positive review by Aaron C. Brown that came up on Amazon for Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s  new book Anti-fragile: Things That Gain from Disorder, and captured few points not just about the new book but how this book builds on Taleb’s popular book The Black Swan. Just as others probably do when browsing on the net, you go from one review to other or one blog post to another, until you believe you have quality and quantity of information that is consumable now, or bookmark them for possible use for tomorrow. My son shared this with me earlier today that he likes to connect his life events to something happening in the world – connect the dots and make it more story like – his blog posts are here. And I like to connect too to stitch a good story – but it is little more effort than it for him I think. But the outcome is the same – connect the dots to weave a story – that helps us move along the journey to future – everybody’s appetite to consume & relate stories is different.

Most people don’t really think much about how they learn. Generally you assume learning comes naturally. You listen to someone speak either in conversation or in a lecture and you simply absorb what they are saying, right? Not really. In fact, I find as I get older that real learning takes more work. It takes time for me to stitch because I belabor the implications of putting my thoughts in public forum. The more I fill my brain with facts, figures, and experience, the less room I have for new ideas and new thoughts. Plus, now I have all sorts of opinions that may refute the ideas being pushed at me. Like many people I consider myself a lifelong learner, but more and more I have to work hard to stay open minded. Black swan, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, Anti-fragile are the kind of books I have to read to get new ideas, test my assumptions in the changing world where new ideas pop up every day; and incorporating them into life & business keeps me engaged and relevant. 

Reading to Learn is the method I use to stay open and impressionable. Now coming back to Black Swan & Anti-Fragile.. As I started reviewing the blogs & review of Black Swan & Anti-Fragile – I noted the following -

“Black swan advice is about avoiding predictable disaster caused by unpredictable events, and keeping yourself open to positive outcomes from improbable events.

Anti-fragile complements The Black Swan by celebrating systems that gain from disorder, trading away short-term predictability and micro-rationality for long-term success exploiting macro-unpredictability. It’s a bold attitude, amply supported by argument and example from many fields. ….. On one level, the universe (at least as perceived by humans) is ruled by disorder, but on another level, the crucial elements are those that gain from disorder as eventually these are fitter for survival than any element, however strong, that requires order.”

David Aldous review of The Black Swan is here. Taleb’s summary (also captured in David’s review) of themes related to Black Swans:

• We focus on preselected segments of the seen and generalize from it to the unseen: the error of confirmation.
• We fool ourselves with stories that cater to our Platonic thirst for distinct patterns: the narrative fallacy.
• We behave as if the Black Swan does not exist; human nature is not programmed for Black Swans.
• What we see is not necessarily all that is there. History hides Black Swans from us [if they didn't happen] and gives a mistaken idea about the odds of these events: this is the distortion of silent evidence.
• We "tunnel": that is, we focus on a few well-defined sources of uncertainty, on too specific a list of Black Swans (at the expense of others that do not come so readily to mind).

How do you learn to stay open, engaged & relevant? Do you get drawn to the error of confirmation, and the narrative fallacy? How do you mine and use the silent evidence?

I found interesting list of ten things on Milton Glaser’s web site. I got there accidentally as I was reading about Simplicity of Innovations, Skeumorphism, and Modern Design. Less is not more is one of the ten things that Milton has learnt over his life time. You can read the rest here.

“Being a child of modernism i have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening i realized that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. if you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realize that every part of that rug, every change of color, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. however, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.’ “

Depending on the context, I agree that there is a paradox, and whether it is usability design, process design, or software architecture – ‘Just enough is more’ is more appropriate proposition. I shared this in the past that doing less gives an impression that we are simplifying. In fact, making something “simpler” or “just enough” is often a case of relocating complexity, rather than eliminating it.

Robert F. Kennedy said on the presidential campaign trail in 1968, “Our gross national product…counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl….Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play”.

Per the latest article in HBR, GDP can’t distinguish between economic activities that create increase a nation’s wealth and ones that eat into its natural endowments (cutting redwoods), result in sickness and future cleanup costs (pollution), or merely ameliorate disasters whose costs are never accounted for (ambulances). Measuring the sustainability (environmental or otherwise) of economic growth requires making estimates, of course.

This brings me to measurement that has been around since 1990’s – Human Development Index (HDI), which according to economist, Amartya Sen, better represents capabilities versus commodities (GDP). The HDI is a combination of three indicators – Life expectancy, educational attainment, and income. United States’ HDI is 0.910, which is a rank of 4 out of 187 countries with comparable data. The HDI of OECD as a region increased from 0.749 in 1980 to 0.873 today, placing United States above the regional average.

• US is #10 on Legatum Institute’s Prosperity Index

• US is 7.1 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index

• US is #10 on Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom

If US is 0.910 on Human Development Index (HDI), #10 on Legatum Institute’s Prosperity Index, #10 on Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, and 7.1 (very clean is between 9.0-10.0) on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index; why is it #31 on Poverty Index? Housing, Income, Jobs, Community, Education, Environment, Governance, Health, Life Satisfaction, Safety, and Work-Life Balance are 11 topics that OECD has identified as essential, in the areas of material living condition and quality of life.

The HDI trends tell an important story both at the national and regional level and highlight the very large gaps in well-being and life chances that continue to divide our interconnected world.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) publishes statistics from Agriculture to Youth Unemployment for many countries in the world. One indicator that got my attention today while watching Fareed Zakarias’ Global Public Square show on CNN is Poverty, Infant Mortality rate, and implications of Child Poverty on long-term Income distribution. Evan Esar, American Humorist (1899-1995), wrote that Statistics is the only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions. In the case of poverty, the context in which Fareed used the figures is important i.e. whether we can do anything about the Poverty in the United States, and whether a smart kid who is poor can succeed and excel in this world? I know there are lots of stories of poor working hard to succeed but I know those are far and few in between when you look at Poverty objectively.

For me personally, it led me to ask questions like, since resources are never unlimited, where would I make the first $1 investment – Food or education? Why is US #31 on the chart below? And why is US at the bottom 4 along with Chile, Israel, and Mexico? What is the trend, and is it getting better? I think framing right questions within the context helps draw on facts and real-life experience. There is lot of useful data out on the internet to help give businesses and individuals a great start to develop a problem statement, develop a story behind a story, present options, and make a judgment call. And no recommendation (judgment call) is useful until it is acted on through long-term focus on execution of Programs, and keeping the story alive through active campaigns. Statistics are reversible. 

It has been a year since I blogged on this site. The essence of this site which is about “Getting off the drawing board” is still relevant though I moved into a new role professionally. The organization of ideas, execution with bias for action, crowd sourcing, building organization capabilities & strong network are important to building Operating Models, and that they are as important as they were a year ago. As I evaluated how to get started with blogging again, I wanted to scale out my concepts & ideas through a blogging/re-blogging platform that provided ease of  use, and quick access to other like-minded bloggers. Towards that end, I am going to slowly move my old content to Tumblr, and keep the same domain name. Thank you for all those who have been following me.

Today’s post is at – http://getoffthedrawingboard.tumblr.com/post/7264364632/making-ideas-happen-to-get-off-the-drawing-board

Over the last 2 months, I have been having conversations about playbooks, and best practices for many subject areas that are important for day-to-day running of the business. This was the result of running a small crowd sourcing project to generate outside the box thinking for the whitespace opportunities. In my view, the ideas that float to the top based on voting, ranking, and quality of comments is great for problem solving exercise but not the best to gather best practices for running of business. The reason is customer best practices have context and relevancy based on the size of the customer, industry, culture of an organization, and multiple other factors including the person managing the relationship. These cannot be codified. The unpredictability requires informal mechanisms, most of which can be clearly identified and consciously influenced, and that link very closely with other cultural elements.

A good definition of culture per Merriam-Webster’s collegiate dictionary is – “the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, practices that characterizes (human behaviors in) a company or corporation”. This definition puts human behaviors at the center of culture, and human behaviors always involve both rational and emotional dimensions, as well as formal and information components.

According to authors, Jon R. Katzenback & Zia Khan of the book, Leading outside the lines, “the formal is best used for predictable and repeatable work that needs to be done efficiently and with little variance. The predictability and repeatability of the work warrants the effort to develop the infrastructure of the formal organization, which can be documented and constantly improved upon to improve efficiency and remove variation. Conversely, the informal is best applied for issues that arise outside the scope of the formal organization, the surprises that need to be sensed and solved. Increasingly, people who need to do the solving need to be motivated outside the reward system, collaborate across organizational boundaries, and make decisions with little guidance from formal strategies”.

This is my area of passion which is balancing the formal via Management by Objectives (MBO) to drive business forward, with influencing the cultural elements through people engagement and participation. Again, per Jon & Zia – “the ‘best practice’ is a means of improving performance in various functions, departments, and levels of management. To go beyond best practice requires a level of insight, risk taking, and trial-and-error responsiveness that demands understanding and harnessing of the informal. This separates ‘best performance’ from ‘best practice’”.

This is the time of the year, every year, that I spend understanding the formal and informal. I would like to hear from the readers of this blog how you have able to drive change and better results – formal and/or informal.

One of the things that I have been thinking about is whether I am adding any value to the blog for others. Yes, most of my content is around Operating Models, occasional leadership stuff, and links to quality videos on TED.com. My goal has always been about Getting off the Drawing board and start doing something even if it is not fully planned. There is a cliché that “Failure to Plan is a Plan for Failure” but the length of a plan, and thorough analysis of every data point also does not lead to success. The more I link to others content on Operating & Business Models; I have begun to understand that the context in which decisions are being made is as important. The end result i.e. Operating Model the company has chosen, or the business model that the organization has decided to run with, is based on many hours if not thousands of hours of effort. So what was on the drawing board? Did parameters, factors and variables include Cost, Profits, Capabilities of the organization, risks of execution, and politics?

Is the easy access to data on the internet making our brains shallow? Do we have any new insights to assist the organizations to move them to next level of performance? This is the struggle. We make investments make on Green Field. We look at White Space Opportunities, Long Tails, and Blue Oceans. It is fascinating to see so many colors – Blue, White and Green, but what about GREY? Is there a perfect color that is so obvious, that we all knew would lead us to success?

I am ranting here. Leadership, developing a culture of curiosity, asking tough questions, quick gut & pulse check, making mistakes and quickly learning from them are as important as factual data based analysis. What is individual’s mental capacity (EQ) in making that final GO-NO GO decision? How do you balance and Formal business drivers with informal cultural aspects that motivates the teams to push the business into new frontiers? I am curious to understand how you are getting stuff off our drawing boards. I have read lots of books that share authors’ perspectives and in most cases the books are darn good read. But does it help you get off the inertia and actually do something….

I consider John Wooden and Warren Buffett as two great teachers. Their main attribute is that they are great teachers of fundamentals whether it is finance or coaching. John Wooden is no more. He passed away on June 4^th, 2010 at the age of 99, but his wisdom lives on.

Leadership

• Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are
• Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming
• Talent is God given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful
• Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there
• The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team
• It is what we learn after we know it all that really counts
• Things turn out best for people who make the best out of the way things turn out

Execution

• If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes
• Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do
• It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen
• If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?
• Never mistake activity for achievement
• It isn’t what you do, but how you do it