Its all Chaos and Complexity

I talked to Ant about the post and how it related to what we did at 21apps and he made the link to a book he was reading at the time (“Simple Complexity by Neil Johnson“). You may ask why is Ant reading a book about complexity theory, well I told you we like to bring some of the outside world into the SharePoint bubble – that and he’s spent a while talking to  Paul Culmsee and running the SPGovIA course.

Ant recalled that the book discussed how in complex systems it was possible, with little knowledge of past behaviour, to produce corridors into the future along which the system is then very likely to move. It then goes on to explain that it has been shown that we can simple add some objects to the collection in order to induce the effect of steering the system. (Hang on “to steer”, where have I heard that used before…. Governance again ).

Tummeler inspiring people to change the way they work

Jamies School Dinners

Another example where a tummeler has had an impact is Jamies School Dinners. If you are not familier it is the passion of a chef, Jamie Oliver, to change the way school dinners are made in schools in the UK and followed up in the US. Without Jamie having the vision, being passionate about where he wanted to get to it would never have happened.  Jamie went through a similar process from initial resistance to change, reluctant adoption a new way of working whilst Jamie was at the school talking and doing things differently.  The drift back to the old way of doing things when Jamie left them to their own devices (much like Neils experience with new workplaces) and the eventual, with help and encouragement an embedded change and a new way of doing school dinners.

Jamie in this regards was the tummeler.

One challenge I have is we are looking for a culture change, not just to work in a new way but more importantly to change people in such a way that they continue to innovate and improve the way they work. They grow their own Tummelers and the team continuously develops and evolves.

Summary

Neil’s post was as enlightening to me as I think Lloyd Davies was to Neil. It has helped me to frame what it is we do and why it works, our vision is to Inspire people to change the way they work.  To do this we have to be tummelers, we have to be the people doing things differently and talking about doing things differently.

It’s what we are doing in the SharePoint Centre of Excellence today and is what we can do for you.

If you have a SharePoint project, have invested significantly in the technology and training and want to make sure you don’t end up saying something is missing after the delivery team has gone, give us a call let us be your tummeler.