Track and trace trash tech enables instant fines

Fast Food retailers are leading the way with a new track and trace initiative which will enable local authorities to identify - and fine - those who dump their trash where they shouldn't.

Each item of packaging will carry a unique code. The code gets associated with a customer at point of purchase when an electronic payment is made. When you tap your card or phone, your bank details act as your unique identifier. If that packaging is subsequently found as litter by local authority collectors - on pavements, in hedges or otherwise carelessly discarded in the environment - the item can be scanned and the 'owner' identified.

Initially offenders will be contacted with advice on taking better care of their planet. But repeat offenders face a fixed penalty of £80 with fines rising to £2500 if they fail to pay on time or fail to learn their lesson.

If only, huh?

Is this really just my weekend daydream - an example of imagination leaping ahead of technology?

You tell me. What stands in the way of making this happen? How could you make it simpler?

Please share this with someone I don't know who may not like it

Every connection is valuable. But some connections are more valuable than others.

Network theorists have long known the way we connect is rarely random. We cluster. At its worst that means echo-chamber and group think. We follow, read, work with only the people we agree with. And our world becomes smaller as a result.

When you want to tackle the hard problems you need more variance in approaches, ways of thinking, life experience, cultural norms, belief systems, neural diversity as much as gender, age and ethnicity.

Network Theory tells us one extra node on our network has the potential to double the number of connections. But not if it simply reinforces your cluster. To repeat what you are doing, repeat the kind of connections you have. To change - and grow - what you are doing, seek difference.

Problems don't get much harder than the ones facing us today - economically, socially, environmentally, politically. Now is not a time to seek people like you.

Each new connection with someone outside your clusters opens your door to a new cluster.

This is true of problem solving, business development, team and organisational design.

So please share this with someone I don't know who may not like it.

Thanks.

Photo by Matthieu Joannon on Unsplash

5G offers a very human competitive advantage in the future of work

How can we put the human back into our digital connections? As we settle into patterns of work-from-home and work-from-anywhere, the challenge becomes ever more acute.

While we have seen and achieved obvious benefits for productivity, carbon footprint, work-life etc we have yet to understand the negative impact on ideation, inspiration and social communication.

The office still holds the whip hand for all these. But many companies were already working around that - and intend to do so in the future. Some have always worked virtually - and have long experience in ideation sessions - from chats to workshops - online.

So while the ideal scenario may be one in which we 'get things done' at home, and we 'get creative' in the office (see: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/now-we-realise-offices-creativity-home-delivery-david-cushman/) the reality for many already precludes that separation.

Hence the need to put more humanity into our digital connections.

There is some simple stuff you can do now: Have a chat, go off topic, have agenda-free open discussions, schedule time for those and schedule time for when you aren't available (and you are getting things done).

Perhaps less obvious is replicating some of the benefits of being together and away from your desk.

For example - walking meetings. In a walking meeting you share an environment and an experience - you share the same stimuli as you move through a space - and can use these a s reference points and jump-offs.

Neuroscientist Dominique Ashby (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominiqueashby/) tells me the same effect can be virtualised by (for example) taking a shared virtual tour of a museum or tourist site. You could also try taking your meeting on a walking tour with you - sharing your view as you walk through park / city etc.

What are you trying and what results are you getting?

The arrival of 5G could be transformative. 5G solves the latency problem - the one which means that much of our non-verbal communication is lost in a video call because we don't get an up-to-the-micro-second, real time, view of every micro muscle movement in the person on the screen.

5G's extremely low latency rate, the delay between the sending and receiving of information is just one millisecond. 4G, for example, offers 200 milliseconds. That's faster than humans can react to. 

In theory not only is this the key to not only truly immersive VR on a mass scale (and imagine the impact on 'office' life of that in itself) but could also feel, genuinely, as if the person is in the room with you - restoring much of what we currently lose in our digitally delayed dialogues.

First movers in 5G will have the potential to gain a competitive advantage in the future of work.

Stay close to that - it could be as significant a value creator and differentiator as the getting your internet play right was just a few short years ago.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Innovators think differently - deal with it

To innovate is to be creative. Innovators are natural open thinkers. The kind of people who make connections - exploring the consequences of the consequences.

We revel in the navigation of the ambiguous. We are comfortable - almost certain - that the shortest route is rarely the fastest. We think organically, not in straight lines.

We reframe, looking at problems from new angles, we synthesise adjacent scenarios, we turn things on their head and shake them. We go off on tangents, journeys of discovery. Sometimes we have to retrace our steps. Sometimes we make huge leaps. 

Sometimes you will wonder where we are going. Sometimes you will struggle to keep up.

We thrive in complex and chaotic times - where cause and effect is often unclear. 

We have the mindsets and approaches to discover and support emergent and novel practice. This is essential now that the 'best' and 'good practice' of what we thought we knew, no longer helps.

The industrial mindset struggles with this. It wants clarity and certainty. It wants expertise - where there can be none (how can you be expert in the new?).

Design Thinking provides something of an interface between the innovator and the industrialist. It offers the tools to open up the more convergent thinkers, while providing the frameworks to constrain the most butterfly of brains toward the task at hand. 

Lean Start-up brings an even harder focus on value and on following the insight - with its introduction of Pivot. 

And Agile (at least in its approach to small pieces of work in small teams in rapid sprints of work) offers a way of working beyond the prototype that maintains the focus on insight and end-user value.

I have applied all of the above in varying combinations to product and service design. I have applied them to strategy, too. For years.

The problem for some organisations needing to make their leap right now is that there are still gatekeepers who retain the industrial mindset. It's the mindset that seeks efficiency first. They want the one-pager, the certainty of the business plan, the easy of A follows B. It is how they are used to consuming information. Documents not conversations. Boxes to tick.

And that's a problem - because that's not how the world works and it makes them less able to recognise or trust in the value of the organic, systems thinking, lateral excursions of just the people they need. 

The obvious and easy world is gone. It's hard to acknowledge and deal with that change. Humans like easy. Change, learning new things, doing different things - all take much more brain energy and effort. It's much harder to explore than to travel the same route you have a thousand times before.

But Covid19 gave us a Context Shock revealing this trend away from the obvious and easy towards complexity and challenge.This trend - and its inherent demand for the innovation mindset - has been accelerating since the dawn of digital.

It's time to encourage and welcome the explorers. 

Start with yourself.

Photo by Jiroe on Unsplash