The Hundreds — JVW#1

Read 100 pages, Write 100 Words, Make for 100 minutes

**This is the first write-up of ‘The Hundreds’ — we decided we should blast out a quick progress update every week on how we’ve done.

READING: I fired through the while of Unflattening by Nick Sousanis, an astounding philosophical treatise in graphic novel form, which unpacks a lot of new ideas and thoughts for me on the movement, layers and loops I’ve been thinking and talking about recently.

WRITING: I’m counting the original post on The Hundreds. Deal with it ;)

MAKING: I spent a lot of yesterday developing a more formal graphical process for interpreting the physical 9 Box exercise we do with teams using Artefact Cards, to lift it up into a more compelling, useful artefact of a team’s common understanding. Here are the three basic stages:

Step 1 — the physical version with Artefact Cards and Masking Tape

Step 2 — The mapping and coding of precise elements in Adobe Illustrator

Step 3 — Building a topography of areas of particular interest

The idea is that by creating this oblique version of the projects mapped by the team, you can then bring it back into the physical environment so they have something either on a table, or a wall or a movable whiteboard*.

Then you have a rough guide to the areas to head for, the things to think about, the processes to try, and alternative routes, as you steer projects through the organisation.

Mock-up of map in-situ (thanks to GDS for use of the picture I took on a visit there)

That’s me for this week.

*I might write something soon about the difference between working with groups on the horizontal and vertical planes. Basically, it’s ‘horizontal for play, vertical for display’. Maybe I’ve just written it…