HowardWright.com

Blog Changes

My other Blogs

My latest blog is a blog on Science and Cooking which outlines my journey using the Thermomix, Sous Vide and a host of Molecular Gastronomy techniques.

Travel blog (www.travelwrightblog.com) - including hotel reviews, travel and photography tips as well as trip notes on our recent visit to Yellowstone Wildlife watching for Christmas 2008.

Motorbike Blog (www.R1200RTBlog.com) - BMW R1200RT tips and tours including reviews and installation notes etc.

Caterham 7 build blog and TIG welding experiences.

Publishing thoughts

Since starting publishing a couple of my own books I seem to have found a new 'opportunity' as a publisher with currently 4 authors on the books - 2 books already published and two more due next month.

One of the things I decided I needed to do if I was going tomake this into some sort of business was to do a bit of publicity. The last book I published was for the Chair person of the Hertfordshire Womens Institute and she suggested becoming a speaker for them - so I went along to the audition and am now official.

As I have my first speaking event next week I have been pulling together some material for the talk and did a few data visualisations which I thought might be of interest to a wider audience. One of the qustions I usually get asked is what shoujld I write about - so a quick search through Amazon UK come out with the data for the following visualisation which looks at the different categories of books by volume:

Books by category - Amazon UK April 2012

The second question is - "aren't physical books dead? A quick search on the Internet brought up the following information about how many physical books are published per year. For this I only took the top 20 countries to make the output uncluttered. In the UK and the US there were over 400,000 new titles published last year!

Books published by country

To support this arguument from a different angle I did a search on how many book titles are available on Amazon and iBooks.

Books by 'binding'

Think like a consultant

This is probably the hardest post in this series as I am sure I will get quite a few comments from people telling me I am wrong - but hey let's see if I can draw some insights out of my experience of working as a consultant since 2005.

Maybe this post isn't so much about thinking like a consultant but more about understanding how consultants think to help the next time you are working with them or engaging them.

Lets start with the key drivers of those working in consultancy business:

(Health Warning - This is only meant as a way of providing an insight into thought process - a generalism and should not be taken as fact)

• Get the most out of the client relationship - in terms of knowledge that can be reused elsewhere as well as financial reward 
• Always look to the next job - whether that is continuing with the current client or the next job. A good consultant always has the next job on the starting blocks - just in case.
• Protect your sources - whether these be, your experience, information sources or contacts. These are the things things tat te client isn't have and I paying you for.
• Try and build a relationship with the most senior person in the 'food chain' of the client organisation. These will be the people making decisions. - particularly on expensive consultants so having a relationship with these people can only be positive.
• If things start to go wrong make sure that the client takes responsibility - ok this may sound cynical but the last thing you need is damage to your reputation. 

OK so this is a cynical view of the consultancy business and there are a lot of great things about employing consultants - otherwise I wouldn't be in business!

When I was in the corporate world the joke was "how do you tell a consultant?" and the answer was "look for those who are taking more than they are giving".

Certainly when I worked with consultants from one of the 'big 5' they were always keen to get their hands on as much data and information as possible - wherever it came from and whether it was relevant to the work they were involved in. And they didn't seem to have any compunction in using it to their advantage. I remember one conference I was speaking at where I saw some very commercially sensitive data being shared by a consultant from the company I had been working with 6 months earlier - when challenged their response was that the confidentiality agreement we had signed didn't cover this information - true, but I had assumed that it was a generic agreement - clearly I was wrong.

These experiences changed my approach to consultants and when I set up on my own in 2006 I decided to adopt an 'ethical' approach to consultancy - to 'give more than I take' - I figured this was better for the client - interestingly what the clients wanted was information and insights about other companies. Although my approach was a good sales pitch - it ended up being difficult to adhere to as the demands from clients steered me back to the more traditional consultancy model.

So my view of consultancy might be jaded but I guess the question is "is the current consultancy model sustainable in a post recession world?"

Your thoughts?

Think like and artist

This series of posts on the different ways people think seems to have




sparked some interest so I intend to continue but I must admit to having difficulties in finding professions who I can use, so any suggestions would be welcome.
Today my focus is on the artist - again I am using this as a general grouping and I am sure that all artists don't think alike but for the sake of this post I am grouping them together. I am sure this will upset some people but as I am using it as a model to draw insights into different ways of thinking I hope you can allow me some artistic license!
When considering a scene to paint or a portrait what and artist tries to do is first simplify the scene - find the key elements, the important 'lines' that will form the infrastructure of the picture. This phase is often the most important as it defines the structure of the picture - whether this is a landscape or a portrait.
Once the basic 'framework' has been defined the next phase is to add the broad brush colours - again part of the infrastructure but these colours form the 'background' of he image. Once these elements have been completed then the artist will start to add detail - the things that define the essence of the picture. Some artists will focus on the minutia others will work in a more 'macro' mode, a more impressionistic approach. All the time he artist is working they will alternate between standing back to get an overall view of the picture and then move back to a closer position to work on the detail.
One of the key challenges for any artist is to understand when something is actually finished - the temptation is to keep 'improving' the work - keep fiddling with the detail o get it just right. So how does this translate into business?
The first thing when presented with a problem, a project or a situation is to consider the key elements, the root causes, the infrastructure of the situation. What is the desired outcome - forget about the output for the time bing and focus on the outcome.
Next take time to sketch out all of the key drivers, assumptions and elements of the situation. This is akin to the 'broad brush strokes' of the artist. These are some of the underlying conditions/characteristics which need to be identified before derail can be added.
Next is getting down to the detail. Only after doing the first two steps should you get int the detail. Only too often we jump straight to the detail and miss out, what I consider to be the most important bits, understanding the background and drivers etc.
Take time to stand back on a regular basis to get an overview of whatever it is you are trying to do - don't get bogged down in the detail - remember to get IMO your helicopter and get an overview, otherwise you won't be able to see the wood for the trees!
I would be interested in your views.
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Think like a retailer....

His morning I thought I would tackle the fascinating topic of how retailers think and how this can translate into general business. In this series of posts I am trying to cover as many professions as I can and provide some insight into how people with different skills, education, training, culture and personality think.

One thing I learned quite early on in my career in Innovation was that everyone thinks differently - ok so this may sound obvious but for many we assume that everyone thinks like us - comes to the same conclusion and has the same insights. This I found out the hard way is not true - our whole life from babyhood shapes our thought processes. In innovation this ability to think differently is what makes a great innovator - someone who sees things differently.

So back to my retailer example. I am going to generalise here as the scope could be extremely broad from market trader to superstore manager - but I will take an overview of the drivers and thinking in the industry.

Retailing is all around shifting stock at a price that is acceptable to the customer and turns a reasonable mark-up/profit for the retailer. This can take many guises from the stack them high, sell them cheap of the current proliferation of Pound shops - to the boutique approach of clothes shops, Apple, Tumi etc. where the margins are very high and people are buying in to the brand.

At the end of the day it's all about getting customers through the door and extracting money out of them!

So how do retailers think. Well the first thing, again, is to understand your customers - who are hey, what do they want, what do they need and how much will they pay? (the who, what, why, where, when keeps coming back to haunt me).

Once you understand your customer - which can take a long period of trial and error - the next thing is to think about what they need/want. This can be as simple as filling a niche in the market - skateboard shops - or latching on to the latest craze. The new phenomenon of pop-up shops is a example of targeting the latest craze.

The next thing is to attract people into your domain - whether this is a shop, a market stall or a web site. This is a whole science in its self and I don't intend to dwell on it in this post. But it's about making it easy for people to buy whatever it is you have - the easier it is the more likely you are to sell.

This leads us into the whole area of product placement - if you notice in the supermarkets the big brands and the most expensive things are at eye level and the cheapest, maybe own-brand are on the bottom shelf. There is lots of clever psychology here particularly in what products people buy with what - a famous example from the was beer and nappies - men would be sent in on a Friday to buy nappies/diapers and ifs beer was close by they hold pick this up at the same time. So product placement can be very important.

Lastly it's all about maximising your retail space - whether it's small, large, inside, outside or anywhere - make every inch count!

So what can we learn from this in general business terms. Well first as I have mentioned before understanding the customer and their needs is paramount. This is just as relevant if you are in a company and your customers are all internal - they are still customers and they still have needs.

I talked above about attracting people to your domain and again this is relevant for business if we replace domain with project, initiative or service. If you can get people interested in what you are doing it will change the way you do things, enthuse the team and usually improve your outcomes.

How ca product placement be translated - well this is about promoting the 'essence' of what you do and the benefits it brings. I was talking to my son, Ben, a few weeks ago. He was trying to put together am end of project report - my advice was to generate a one page summary of all end great things they had achieved and include the 3 things that you wanted people to most know about the project. He took my advice, for once, and had a great response to this 'product placement'

How about today thinking like a retailer - try and view your 'world' brought someone else's eyes.




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The Tribe of innovation

I was listening to Radio 4 this morning and they had a package on the subject of tribes and their relevance to society today. This reminded me of some work I did a few years ago on the innovation tribe.

As an innovator you can feel very alone in large organisations as although you have to be part of the company tribe - complying and conforming with the company culture and norma, you, as an innovator are there to challenge the very roots of the tribal 'brotherhood'. This can mean that you end up being in conflict with the main tribe - you can become a tribe of one!

One solution to this is to find other tribal members outside of your organisation and this is where the many associations and networks can help. The important this is that you recognise your need to find other members of your innovation tribe.

Think like an entrepreneur....

Yesterday I was challenged on the blog to do a 'Think like a woman..." post but in the interests of my marriage I decided against it!

Today I am going to try and get inside the head of an entrepreneur - how do they think?

Firstly a trip to Wikipedia to find out what the definition of an entrepreneur is:

Wikipedia = “An entrepreneur is an owner or manager of a business enterprise who makes money through risk and initiative.”

I think this is a little narrow as many entrepreneurs are not owners or managers when they start - they may become them when they finish but this is the destination rather than the starting point.

Entrepreneurs focus on opportunity - and when I say focus I really mean focus! An entrepreneur is someone who can spot an opportunity and unlike most of us who find all the reasons why it can't be done, will focus on making it happen. As an employee of a company we focus on resources such as money, people and time and thinks "I can't do it, because I don't have the money." A person who thinks like an entrepreneur will say "Let's just get on with it and find the money later."

So lets break this style of thinking down into its component parts:

• Discovery - the first thing to do is to spot the opportunity. Now most entrepreneurs don't spend their lives looking for them but when they turn up they have the mind set to capitalise on the gap in the market or the new idea. 
• Development - The next thing they do is to develop the idea. It might be that  they dont have all the knowledge to undertake this themselves but they are probably well connected through services such as Linkedin and Facebook to find someone who is.
• Design - To maximise the impact of their idea, and to get the required funding, a good entrepreneur will design a good story - something that will engage people in his/her idea. This will be coupled with a marketing and communications strategy.
• Dig-Deep - Yes the dreaded funding question. Many entrepreneurs have such a strong feeling about their idea that they self-fund - or ask friends and family to help. An entrepreneur will get the money and overcome any barriers no matter what. This can lead into all sorts of trouble, however!
• Deploy - The final stage of the idea is getting the idea out into the market - whether that be a pilot first or just a full blown launch. For the entrepreneur this can be the most or least exciting bit of the whole journey - depending on what has been the driving factor.

Throughout all of this activity the one guiding principle has been focus - focus on the end point, focus on getting things done, focus on solving every problem that emerges, focus on success!

Hopefully you can see that this way of thinking translates into business quite easily - the only real difference is the attitude and single mindedness the entrepreneur brings to the party.

Where do you sit on the scale of 1 - 10 of being an entrepreneur (10 being the most like)?

 

 

Think like a builder...

A slightly off the wall idea after yesterday's post on thinking licke a chef. I thought I would try a slightly different tack and try something different.

So how do builders think? I guess this might be a holy grail for some people who are wrestling with

their ilk at the moment. But after a stormy relationship with this profession last year I gained a glimpse into their thought processes.

Lets start with the assumptions they make as this colours their thinking:

• How much money can I extract from the customer?
• How can I source materials and labour at the cheapest possible price?
• Lastly, where is the next job coming from?

So based on these assumptions how does a typical builder approach a job proposition. Well like a doctor the first thing he/she will do is assess the customer - how demanding will they be, how much do they know, are they likely to sign a contract and are they likely to change their mind a lot during the build (this is important as it is a way of extracting additional funds for each and every change from the contract).

Assuming that they get the contract the next thought process is to look to schedule the work and try and find available resources - I use the word available because the best sub-contractors are usually the busiest. If suitable reources are available then the thought process moves to sourcing materials - this is where additional 'savings' can be made - particularly if the builder has more than one contract running at a time - which is the norm.

Once the work has started the role of the builder moves on to managing the customer and the sub-contractors. This for most builders is the most difficult phase as it is when the most uncertainties unfold - deadlines missed, sub-contractors missing and materials not available. Hopefully the contract has been written to minimise any consequesnces from these issues in the builders favour.

So what can we take from this for general business.

• Firstly again its understanding/assessing the customer - but in this example its to see how far they can be pushed.
• The next is to find suitable resource - this may not always be the best but it is available. Having someone on site - even if they are incapable of doing the job can be useful to keep the customer happy.
• Next - try and keep everyone happy. Make sure everyone thinks they are getting what they want.
• Lastly get as much out of the contract as you can - anything that is not written down should be charged extra.

Having read this back I can see this model working in a number of industries already - mobile phones and car dealers are two that spring to mind.

This is not a very positive veiw of the industry but talking to a builder in the coffee shop this morning unfortunately confirmed much of what I have written!

Do you have experiences which differ?

 

Think like a Chef...

This series of posts about how people think has got me excited as it is fascinating trying to get into other peoples heads and work out their thought processes. I am sure there are more learned studies but in this series I am trying to draw out what we can learn, from a business persective from finding out how people think.

This morning, after a great curry last night, I thought I would focus on the Chef - the creater of great food, and consider how they think.

The first thing the chef needs to do is to understand his/her customer. What will people want to eat - think abouut demographics, what sort of customer would be eating what food? Once this has been established the next step, I guess would be to design a menu - something that will attract and satisfy the sort of customers who will be eating the food.

Once the menu has been formulated the necxt step will be to test it - is this the right type of food, does it tase good, will it sell (if its a commercial kitchen). Assuming it works the next step would be to source the right ingredients. Chef's are very partcular about the quality, and provenance of their ingredients.

Next comes the actual cooking itself - this is a balance between formula and feeling - there will be some rules to abide by but a lot of it goes on the taste itself with the chef adding seasoning to just get the right balance of the four tastes - salt, sour, sweet, bitter. There is supposidly a fifth taste called Umami which is a 'meaty' or savouriness but the experts are still arguing as to whether this is a real taste or not.

Lastly the presentation of the food is vital to the person consuming the food - if it looks good it tends to taste better.

So what can we learn from this?

1. Understand your customer - what do they want what are their demographics?
2. Create a product, service, proposition, solution to meet their needs
3. Check your idea out with the customer - is this what they really want?
4. Make sure you have the right ingredients - people, information, resources etc.
5. Follow the formula - whether this is a a project plan, a management framework or your own thoughts.
6. Seasnon the solution - make sure you have the right balance - can you add something to make it 'taste' better.
7. Lastly think about the presentation - does it look good

I think this covers most of the key steps. I could have included things such as portion control, the different roles in the kitchen, the preparation of the foods and I am sure there are many more steps that might be in there but I thought these were the ones that were most relevant.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

Think like a doctor...

After yesterdays post from the frozen, and snowy, heights of Dunstable Downs in which I talked about how to think like an innovator it made me think about how other people might think - so I intend to embark on a jourey of trying to find out how people think.

 

Mmmm this could be difficult but maybe I could devise a few questions that would give me some clues as to their thinking and problem solving processes. As I mentioned yesterday an Innovator thinks laterally - constantly looking for linkages between the problems/issues he sees and the things he/she sees around him on a daily basis. I would argue that true innovators dont go looking for solutions - they just find them!

So today I thought I would have a first go at Doctors.  OK so I am no expert but there is quite a lot of clues out there on the Internet as to how doctors seem to approach situations and problems. The first thing they seem to do is watch - they watch the patient as they enter their consulting rooms, or as they approach the patients bed. What is the general demeanour of the patient - how are they walking - what body language are they exhibiting?

The second factor seems to be listening - OK so the first usual question is "how are you today?" and my first thought is always well if I was OK I would'nt be here! But once you get over that the patient will usually outline what they see as the problem - highlighting the syptoms as they go.

At this point there seems to be a bit of disagreement about where to go from here. One train of thought seems to be to treat the symptoms - this I suggest was a very prevalent approach in the 1980's and 1990's and probably resulted in over prescription of drugs such as sleeping tablets and antibiotics.

The second approach and one which is gaining ground is a more holistic approach - one where the doctor almost dismisses the symptoms and looks for root causes. In his book How Doctors Think, Jerome Groopman provides a number of examples of where patients have been visiting doctors fo years with a wide array of symptoms - only to be finally diagnosed with a root cause that at first wasnt obvious, but once addressed celared up all the problems the patient had. 

So going back to the thinking process -

1. watch,
2. listen,
3. appriase,
4. diagnose,
5. listen,
6. dispense

- seems to be the logical route being taken. 

How can this approach be applied in business? Well if you have worked in business for any period of time this approach to problem solving shouldnt be unfamiliar - although maybe not written in this way. I think the problem many managers and leaders have is they forget to watch and listen. We often tend to jump to comclusions - fixing the symptom rather than finding the route cause - opting for fire fighting rather than prevention.

OK so this is my quick and dirty analysis - what are your thoughts - are there other examples from other professions that we should consider - feel free to post your own ideas/analysis.

 

 

 

Think like an innovator

One of the things that has fascinated me over the last few years is the difference in the way people approach problems - how they think. There seems to be a number of factors that can have an influence - some nature and some nurture. Your eduction, training, experiences, culture and upbringing all go to form the approach people take on thinking.

Consider for example a doctor. The way he/she will think is very different to a foreman or even a dentist. The way each if these professionals approach a problem or opportunity will be very different - the doctor tries to assess the situation as soon as they meet the patient, the dentist only concentrates on the mouth and the teeth in particular, the fireman thinks about safety and risks. If you translate each of these approaches to the business environment then you can see how each of these may address things differently.

So how does an innovator think? A true innovator will constantly look for linkages between disparate situations and elements. Constantly looking for how one situation could be translated into another and radically shift things forward. Many of the innovations we see today are examples of where someone has seen something in one place and then seen a use for it somewhere else. One of the most famous examples is James Dyson who saw a cyclone dust extractor in a woodworking factory and wondered if something similar could be used in the home - 15 years and much angst later the product came on to the market and revolutionised the domestic vacuum market.


As an innovator Dyson is constantly looking not only to improve things but to find inspiration from the non- obvious places. A similar story is told of Ivers, the designer of the original iPod who was supposedly inspired by a bar of soap - although I am not sure how true this story is.

The third example, which I used in my first book, was the CEO of fig leaves.com who was having difficulty selling bra's online as women weren't happy that they couldn't try them on. He saw some avocado's in plastic blister packs in a supermarket and had the idea of making similar things in the shape of the different bra shapes and sizes. Customers ordered a set of 'packs' in their size so they could 'try them on' at home. Sales went up 1000% and he revolutionised online lingerie selling.

All these example highlight the importance of building links - so to think like an innovator you need to remain curious, stay observant and keep looking for things that you could use.

How do you think?






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