Rapid Idea Improvement

Rapid Idea Improvement

By Bart VanderhaegenBusiness
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Rapid Idea Improvement episodes

  • Episode 116 - Some thoughts on Change Management

    Change is unpredictable

    • What you think the change will be
    • What I think the change will be
    • What the change really is going to be

      • Change can be overstated

      • Because it is unpredictable, we tend to overstate it
      • Cynical approach is taking over
      • People change all the time however.

        • Change is content related

        • People’s acceptance of change is linked to the way they perform their new work
        • It is not linked to or less dependent on how well you communicate the change

          • You need a minimum of autonomy to figure out how to accommodate for the change

          • Even if hard decisions have been made at the level of process or software, their consequences at the level of the work of everyone are not fully determined yet
            • 15 min
          • Episode 114 - The difference between fallibility and failing

            You have failed versus you are fallible

            • You have failed = subjective judgment, because the standard against which you have failed can be anything to anybody
              • The same objective series of events can still be labeled as failures or success depending on the subjective standard you want to measure them against
              • You are fallible: objective, there is objective truth and you can be objectively wrong about it

                • Why is fallibility important, regardless of failure of success?

                • It is the only way to allow to detect where you are wrong and try to correct it (improve it)
                • It has 2 opposites
                  • Relativism: I am already correct as what is true is what I consider to be true, other people may consider other things to be true. I cannot improve upon my claims because I assigned them already as true for me
                  • Dogmatism: I know I am right because I have infallible knowledge that cannot be improved. I have absolutely true knowledge in my hand already

                    • Fallibility and failure are independent of each other, have nothing to do with each other

                    • You can have failed and still learnt something about your plan/ goal
                    • You can have failed and also NOT learn something about your plan/ goal
                    • You can have succeed and have learnt something new
                    • You can have succeed and not have learnt something new (your plan was sufficient for the problem at hand, or you have been lucky, or the subjective standard for success was so general …)

                      • All 4 combinations of fallibility and failure are therefore perfectly possible

                      One danger is to equate fallibility to failing: admitting that you are objectively wrong is often equated to failing. And that is wrong, it is admitting that you are looking for improvement of your ideas and that you are not falling in the trap of relativism or dogmatism. So fallibility is something that should be encouraged in organisations ! Failure of course should not be encouraged, but it will not when you encourage fallibility. One because they are completely different things and Two because fallibility is the key condition of knowledge growth, and when problem become more complex, knowledge growth IS the key thing you need in order not to fail !

                      7 min
                    • Episode 110 - The key question a CEO should lie awake about at night

                      The question for all CEO's: "How am I making it easy to correct errors in my organisation?"

                      People are solving problems. They do that with idea’s. Some ideas are suggested, but many need to be developed. All initial ideas contain errors.

                      Now there is a simple 2 way outcome: 1) either people correct their errors or 2) people don’t

                      An organisation should be judged in how easy it is for people to correct their errors

                      Hard: no transparency, blaming and shaming, authoritarianism, superficial opinions without good explanations (why?)

                      Easy: comfortable with criticisms, allow to make errors (before they do harm), seeking good explanations

                      15 min

                    About Rapid Idea Improvement

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                    A podcast about the theory of knowledge applied to all fields that interest me (management, economics, physics, ...). My attempt at understanding & applying the ideas of Karl Popper (and his…