Dear treasure readers,
at the moment I’m on the road a lot. So I consume one podcast episode after another. Nevertheless, I also put some textual and visual stuff into the treasure to keep it balanced. Good news for my English readers, because this time there are two nuggets in English.
Nugget #1 is a comic that was created by Zühlke Engineering. Seven principles of virtual collaboration are written down in this comic. A comic shows what can go wrong within a worldwide distributed development. A superhero saves the situation and then there is an explanatory text. There are hints about infrastructure but also netiquette in meetings. Worth to mention is asking questions. I guess there are five times as many unsolicited questions in a meeting as there are inquired questions. I find principle #7 the most important. Virtual collaboration doesn’t rule out a physical meeting. Especially when a new team comes together, you shouldn’t cut costs. This still offers the maximum communication density and forms the basis for later cooperation. Thanks to Lisette Sutherland for finding this nugget.
Distributed Development Comic (10 min, text/comic, English)
Nugget #2 is the latest episode of MoTcast in which Ingo Stoll interviews Masters of Transformation. The MoTcast is one of the podcasts I listen to regularly and has been featured in previous treasures. This time the interview was with Roger Cericius. He runs Futur X, a subsidiary of an insurance company. Many would probably describe Futur X as an innovation lab. But for me it goes beyond a classic innovation lab. Because they have recognized that networking and cooperation are needed. It probably was a good move to enable someone from Corporate Communications to manage this independent unit. At various event formats, representatives from different sectors meet with people from the insurance industry. This generates new impulses and ideas. This means, for example, that classic car insurance is rethought and tested as an experiment. For me, Futur X shows that innovation can also happen in very traditional companies and industries. The way innovation is organized here gives me a lot of inspiration for my own experiments. In the near future I will certainly follow what happens at Futur X.
The Model FUTUR X – Transformation as an Expedition (067) (75 min, Audio, German)
Nugget #3 slipped into this treasure chest last minute. I stumbled across a video on LinkedIn yesterday. Nicholas Austin of Building Robotics interviews Franziska Dolak of Siemens Building Technologies who recently bought Building Robotics. In this video, Franziska describes four dimensions of innovative organizations:
- Physical comfort – Do we feel comfortable in our working environment? Anyone like me who works in an open-plan office can confirm that this is not always the case. And the typical conference room doesn’t normally stimulate creativity either. Maybe I’ll write an extra post for that.
- Work-Life-Balance – Although I now like the term “Life-Balance” better.
- Community and Collaboration – My personal favorite! I could write half a novel on the subject. Actually I do that with The Art of Collaboration. 😉
- Effectiveness – This aspect comes a little short. But I think everyone understands what Franziska Dolak means by that.
Here, too, everything is actually common sense. Nevertheless these hygiene factors are often not present and we wonder why it somehow doesn’t work. How is it for you? Are these hygiene factors fulfilled? What do you do for it? I look forward to your feedback.
Interview Nicholas Austin with Franziska Dolak (10 min, video, English)
I wish you a nice weekend. I spend it at the Smart City Freising Hackathon, which I helped to organize. On Twitter you can follow the one or other moment.