Understimulated
I was a kid in the 1970s, a time when parents loudly bemoaned the lure of television on us youngsters. The cliche “You’ll get square eyes” was an ineffective threat for those of us glued to delectable fare like Gilligan’s Island, Get Smart or The Flintstones.
Watching TV as a habit could only exist in a world where people had spare time (which they didn’t, mostly, before WW2) and could afford to spend 2+ hours every day in front of it. Those 2 hours a day equated to 1 billion hours — each month.
The problem with the ‘idiot box’ is that it was (and is) entirely passive and unproductive, creating vast ‘cognitive surplus’. This surplus from purely consumptive activity could, theoretically, be applied to productive activity. For instance, if you think that creating the whole of Wikipedia has taken about 100+ million person-hours, you can do the maths that that’s only a couple of days of TV watching - by Australians alone!
But it gets more troubling than that. Fast forward from the 70s to today.
Fifty years later, we’ve added another string to our cognitive surplus bow. Each of us now consumes 2 hours per person per day of social media in addition to TV watching (which is down from its 2010 peak, but not much).
Because social media is more adrenalising than TV we just can’t stop scrolling. So, we’re having to invent all sorts of workarounds for this: from Apple’s own attempts to limit ‘screen time’ on its own phones, to this bedside alarm clock (my wife just bought one) that counteracts a tendency to keep swiping long after one’s bedtime.
Question: What ‘cognitive surplus’ exists in your organisation that you could put to better use?
A hierarchy of problems
I’ve come to believe that organisations have a natural hierarchy of four concerns: (1) Purpose (“Why do we exist?”), (2) Power (“Do we have sufficient energy, agency and influence?”), (3) Processes (“What structures and systems do we need?”) and (4) Resources (“Do we have the right people, money, information, facilities?”).
What I find amongst my clients is that, often, when they are stuck on an issue, the real issue is one level above the one they’re discussing.
So, if people are complaining about lack of resources, the problem in many cases is inefficient processes, the level one above it. If they are talking about process deficiencies, probably there is a lack of energy, or a power conflict. If a power conflict is the apparent problem, the real problem in many cases is a lack of commitment to mission. So the ‘presenting problems’ are often most rapidly addressed not at the level they are described at, but by dealing with the next "higher" level.
Question: What are the ‘expressed problems’ in your organisation that are helped by raising the thinking to the level above?
Digital twins
Unless you’re a surveyor or a city planner, you probably don’t know that cartographers have created ‘digital twins’ of many cities, including my own, Melbourne. These are amazing real-time digital counterparts to physical places that show an exact 3D representation of building heights, textures, materials and ownership. We can use today’s vast computing power, big data plus rapidly developing artificial intelligence to map water systems, energy grids, animal movements and much more.
Why do this, though? To do more with less, essentially. But also to rapidly arrive at insights that would take years (if ever) to calculate physically.
Digital twins enable anyone to get fast answers to relatively simple questions (e.g., developers asking “How many square metres of flat rooftop are there in central Melbourne?”), but also the more complex (e.g., insurers asking “Which areas will flood if we have an abnormal amount of rainfall?”) and the mind-bogglingly multi-dimensional (e.g., emergency services asking “How do bushfire areas overlap with wind models?”.
Anyone involved in disaster relief, healthcare planning, architecture and construction, autonomous vehicles or smart cities is using these tools already to rapidly model their own functions onto the digital twin and see how it interacts.
Here in Victoria, our digital twin is government-created, recognising the immense public value of this platform. However, one of the global leaders in this space is a games company: Blackshark.ai originally built the geographic underlay for the latest version of Microsoft’s Flight Simulator (believe it or not, it’s one of the world’s oldest video games, turning 40 this year - and the latest version is a marvel).
Question: What ‘big data’ can you use to rapidly map patterns and make predictions in your business?
I always say this, but it means a lot if you click the ‘heart’ and let me know you’ve enjoyed reading this week.
Enjoy the weekend and I’ll be back here next Friday morning when you awaken.
Andrew
Strange that I’m scrolling through this during what could be more productive time. Although if your questions stimulate my thinking, which they often do then I guess it was productive time. Until next week
Love your reflections Andrew. The four level hierarchy really resonates, gives great insight to where the real issues are.