This is the Engineering Culture Podcast, from the people behind InfoQ.com and the QCon conferences.
In this podcast recorded in London Shane Hastie, InfoQ Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Colart Miles about leading towards innovative cultures and running startup weekends.
Key Takeaways
- It’s not about rank or status – it’s about the value you bring to the team environment
- Identifying a process for bringing an idea from inception to market and sharing that with others through Startup Weekends
- Startup Weekend events in 160 countries, over 500000 people have participated around the world
- The need to build resilience into the problem-solving community to tackle the big issues facing humanity
- The value of “flearnings” – small experiments where the cost of failure is low and learning happens rapidly
- The cost of failure goes up if you try to avoid it, it goes down if you lean in to it
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- 0:30 Introductions
- 1:00 The unique culture in the submarine service compared to other parts of the military
- 1:55 It’s not about rank – it’s about the value you bring to the team environment
- 2:35 Building excellence into the culture
- 3:00 Experiences in a wide range of different organisational cultures and curiosity about the drivers of difference
- 3:35 Guiding innovation in organisations
- 5:05 Experience with startups – tried, failed, iterated
- 5:30 Startup Weekend background
- 6:20 Identifying a process for bringing an idea from inception to market and sharing that with others
- 6:40 Startup Weekend events in 160 countries, over 500000 people have participated around the world
- 7:10 Volunteer run events for sharing ideas and experiences
- 7:25 Tackling the big issues facing humanity through innovation
- 7:55 Building resilience in the problem-solving community
- 8:15 The structure and flow of a startup weekend
- 9:25 Passionate practitioners providing guidance and advice to potential entrepreneurs
- 9:55 The value of having a wide range of skills and mentors in the room during the Startup Weekend event
- 11:20 Learn by doing in a high-pressure environment
- 11:50 Using the Lean Canvas to explore an idea
- 12:20 Kanban Boards
- 12:35 Simple judging criteria
- 12:50 Bringing innovation thinking into large organisations
- 13:20 The importance of recognising a pressing need for change
- 14:00 For innovation to take hold organisations need to have the capacity to learn – slack in the system
- 14:10 Being able to distinguish between the Exploit and Explore activities in an organisation
- 15:10 Learn by doing – see the models in action
- 15:20 The need to see the organisation from outside rather than viewing the world from inside
- 15:45 The value of empowering and protecting a small coalition of misfits who want to see change
- 16:15 Giving permission and encouraging learning moves culture
- 16:30 Quoting John Hagel: The shift from scaled efficiency to scaled learning
- 16:40 Everyone in an organisation should be constantly sensing and learning
- 17:05 Removing the stigma around failure – celebrate learning rather than avoiding failure
- 17:25 The value of “flearnings” – small experiments where the cost of failure is low and learning happens rapidly
- 18:20 Advice for technologists, 3 ideas:
- 18:40 1) Use the Lean Canvas to frame up big changes or decisions
- 19:30 2) Adopt an experiment mindset
- 20:05 Solve problems in chunks, not steps
- 20:35 3) Change how you frame and view failure
- 21:25 The cost of failure goes up if you try to avoid it, it goes down if you lean in to it
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