&mdash; Think Different

We’re NOT Hiring!

At The Quintessential Group we’re NOT hiring. We have little interest in paying people for their labour or their personal services (fnarr).

We ARE inviting inquiries and applications to join our community of fellows, and participate in our software delivery teams.

Sure, we pay. And we pay top dollar (well British Pounds, mostly). But we pay our people so they can live (and fellows get to choose their own salaries and rates, amongst other things). We subscribe to Phil Crosby’s statement about the purpose of organisations:

The purpose of organizations is to help people have lives.
~ Phil Crosby

Fellowship

We’re breaking the transactional nature of the individual <-> organisation relationship in favour of something much more like fellowship.

So, we’re NOT hiring. But we ARE inviting applications to join our community of fellows. First off for our Quintessential Teams service. And then for our other services, which will be coming on stream soon.

Invitation

We cordially invite you to apply to join our community of fellows. In the first instance, we’re looking for folks with software delivery skills, who will be forming delivery teams rented by our clients (a variety of medium to large UK organisations) to deliver software at their behest. Early on, you’ll be playing and learning directly with myself and / or Ian.

Just drop Ian or myself a message expressing your curiosity or interest, and we’ll get back to you.

You may already have some questions, so please include them if you’re after some clarification or further information. There’s much already available on my Think Different blog. And a brief but growing collection of more focussed introductory and informational posts on the Quintessential Blog, too.

Benefits

What you may not have yet read is some of the other benefits of becoming a fellow of The Quintessential Group:

Having Your Needs Met

Central to our business and community is the idea of attending to folks’ needs. Each of our fellows will have his or her own needs, and The Quintessential Group will do its utmost to see those needs met.

These may include career development, learning, autonomy to capitalise on your abilities, mastery of skills, sharing in a common purpose, playing with technology, work-life balance, choosing your own package, and so on. We’d love to hear just what your needs are. And we as a business have needs too. This mutuality offers a crucible for productive dialogue.

The Opportunity To Do Great Things

We focus on excellence, and carefully select clients with and for whom our fellows can achieve truly great things. Humdrum things bore us, and we’d not ask any of our fellows to suffer that either.

The Opportunity To Participate in Self-Managing Teams

Our Teams manage themselves, with the active support of the rest of the company. Learn and experience what participating in truly self-managing teams feels like. The true meaning of esprit de corps. The experience of excellence and real fellowship.

Other Key Benefits

Unlimited World-class Personal Mentoring

Bob and Ian each have more than twenty years’ experience in coaching and mentoring developers and delivery teams. We happily share this experience with all Quintessential Fellows, on a one to one basis (mentoring, individual coaching) and one-to-many basis (i.e. teams).

Unlimited Expert Coaching

We define mentoring as providing sage advice when asked. Coaching to us implies a more structure relationship. See e.g. “Coaching for Performance” by Sir Jon Whitmore and his G.R.O.W. model. Mentoring also implies, to us, a shared agenda. Coaching, an agenda entirely driven by the coachees.

Unlimited Awesome Career Development, Including Job Search Help & Career Advice

We try to attend to the needs of all our fellows, on a continual basis. If being a part of the Quintessential community is not meeting your needs, we’re delighted when we can help folks get their needs met, even when that means leaving us for pastures new. We’re delighted to actively support folks in this.

Free Books And Subscriptions

Continuous learning is at the core of the Quintessential Group and its community of fellows. We support these needs in any and all ways possible, including paying for all books and subscriptions of our fellows. If you have other learning needs, we’re happy to support those, too.

Paid Time Off For Conferencing (Plus Entry Fees, Expenses Paid)

We don’t believe our fellows should suffer a financial disincentive to pursue their learning and socialising needs, so we pay for time taken to attend conferences, as well as for the entry fees and associated expenses (travel, hotels, etc.).

Paid Time Off For Learning, Studying

Many folks learn for the joy of it, but we don’t see why learning has to be on the learner’s dime So we invite our fellows to invoice us or otherwise claim financial recompense for time spent learning. Effective learning benefits everyone, not least the company.

Development Hardware, Tools

Many new fellows will already have their own equipment, software tools, etc. But when they need other stuff to be quintessentially effective, we have no issue with providing such things, as the fellow(s) see fit.

Note: A Quintessential fellow is anyone (irrespective of gender) who has complete the one-week orientation and chosen to join the Quintessential community.

Note: When we say “paid for” we mean The Quintessential Group will reimburse fellows in the course of invoicing in respect of client gigs. In other words, and using the one week’s paid-for orientation as an example, we will pay fellows for attending the orientation week, over the course of several weeks’ payments for participating in services to a client.

Accepting Inquiries and Applications

We are now accepting inquiries and applications for the first “orientation” cohort of Quintessential Teams

Orientation

Simply put, we pay our candidate fellows to join together for a week (five days) of orientation. This week prepares fellows for Quintessential Team client engagements, in particular is afford the opportunity to get to know each other, build relationships, and thrash out a shared way of playing together.

Would you like to know more?

– Bob

First Step Towards Quintessence

May 8, 2022

Alien tech, Article, Business, Culture change, Dialogue, Improvement, Listening, Memeology, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence

First Step Towards Quintessence

Taking a look at the idea of Quintessence can seem overwhelmingly daunting. Changing the culture of a whole organisation? Shifting assumptions and beliefs of an entire workforce, managers and executives included? Wow. Some herculean task?

Formidable Challenge

The challenge can seem truly formidable. Yet the benefits look appealing.

How to take that first step? What is the most useful and reassuring first step?

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
~ Lao Tzu

Surfacing And Reflecting

The clue is on the cover of my second book, “Memeology“. The subtitle reads

Surfacing and reflecting on the organisation’s collective assumptions and beliefs.

I find a useful first step is talking with peers. And listening to what they have to say. Discovering if there’s an appetite for such surfacing and reflecting. Uncovering their challenges of the moment, and sounding out potential allies. Persuasion comes later, if at all.

The status quo has a powerful grip on busy people. It’s easy to dismiss calls for change in the midst of daily stressors such as fire-fighting and chasing targets.

Timbre

What’s the timbre of dialogue in your organisation? Progressive or regressive? Inviting or dismissive? What timbre might best suit the kinds of dialogue implied by Quintessence? How might y’all affect that timbre? And could you use some help with that?

Chatting Is The First Step

To recap – simple chatting with friends, neighbours, peers and colleagues can be the vital first step. And “Alien Tech” can sometimes serve as an icebreaker, if you feel you need one.

– Bob

Alien Tech: What Is It?

May 8, 2022

Alien tech, Article, Business, Buzz, Memeology, Quintessence

Alien Tech: What Is It?

Alien tech power at one’s fingertips

At The Quintessential Group, our motto is “Alien Tech for Human Beings”.

What do we mean by “Alien Tech”?

Dictionary Definitions

Let’s take a look at the dictionary:

Technology noun
\ tech·nol·o·gy | \ tek-ˈnä-lə-jē \

Definition of technology

a: The practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area
// medical technology
b: A capability given by the practical application of knowledge
// a car’s fuel-saving technology
A manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge
// new technologies for information storage
The specialised aspects of a particular field of endeavour
// educational technology

Alien adjective
\ ˈā-lē-ən, ˈāl-yən \

Definition of alien

a: Belonging or relating to another person, place, or thing: Strange
// an alien environment
b:Relating, belonging, or owing allegiance to another country or government: Foreign
// alien residents
c: [Exotic sense]
// alien plants
d: Coming from another world: Extraterrestrial
// alien beings
// an alien spaceship
// When it comes to knowing what alien life forms might be like, we don’t have any idea
~ Kate Shuster
Differing in nature or character typically to the point of incompatibility
// ideas alien to democracy

Our Definitions

So, by the above dictionary definitions, we can define “Alien Tech” (Alien Technology) as:

A capability given by the practical application of knowledge, where that knowledge is strange, or seeming as if coming from another world.

Put another way, and closer to our quintessential usage:

An approach to running collaborative knowledge work businesses that differs in nature or character from the norm, typically to the point of incompatibility.

When it comes to relating to alien ideas, most folks just don’t know where to start.
~ FlowChainSensei

In Practice

What does “Alien Tech” mean in practice?

It means running a business, in our caseThe Quintessential Group, based on assumptions and beliefs incompatible with typical businesses. Assumptions and beliefs which lead to levels of software delivery excellence unobtainable by other means. We attend to folks’s needs in ways totally alien to those immersed in traditonal management mythos. For those clients that judge by results, this is little more than a curiousity, until the question of “how do they do that?” comes up.

– Bob

The Author

May 7, 2022

Article, Caring, Needs, Purpose

The Author

I write about what I see, and have seen. I don’t write to entertain (excepting very occasionally) or to curry favour.

I write about ways I’ve seen people approaching things, and ways to maybe approach them differently. Ways in which they might see their needs better met.

Purpose

I write to invite people to think differently. To reflect on what they see and maybe reframe their interpretations and responses differently from their defaults. Why do I do this? Because I have a need to see people having a better time at work. A better experience from the countless hours we fritter away doing other folks’ bidding.

I am your author. And I appreciate you reading my stuff.

I’d like to write about stuff that’s relevant for you, topics that matter to you, to make that kind of connection. But I’m mostly going to continue writing about stuff that matters to me. Long may you continue to find insights and inspiration in it.

– Bob

The Way The Play Plays

May 6, 2022

Alien tech, Article, Culture change, Language, Play, Quintessence

The Way The Play Plays

Play is for adults, too

John Seddon regularly uses the phrase “the way the work works” in referring to the “system” or “processes” that actually get followed within organisations. In contrast to the way “processes” or “the system” describe how the work should work (but rarely bears any relation).

For organisations such as The Quintessential Group, where play’s the thing, “work” has become a term, and an idea, that no longer has much relevance. The phrase “the way the work works” serves as one more reinforcement of that outmoded idea.

So we’ve chosen to replace the phrase “the way the work works” with the phrase “the way the play plays”. Which, although poorer grammar, helps us train ourselves to expunge the word – and idea – of “work” from our consciousness.

Quickie: Social Sabotage

May 6, 2022

Capability development, Collaboration, Culture change, Fellowship, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Quickies, Quintessence

There are many people who, whilst being highly competent and able as individuals, will undermine and negate all attempts to build an effective team / unit / capability.

But you don’t have to hire them. And if you inherit one, you can fire or redeploy him or her – always assuming the higher-ups choose to value the relative importance of community, esprit de corps and the social dynamic over individual skills.

What do you and your culture value more – going far together or going fast alone?

Quickie: Isn’t It Amazing?

Quickies

Isn’t is amazing how, in most ocmpaies, everyone’s doing their jobs to the best of their abilities, yet the results are universally alem?

Why is that, do you suppose?

How To Navigate A Think Different Blog Post

Article, General

How To Navigate A Think Different Blog Post

Having been blogging here at Think Different for over a decade now, I feel very familiar and thus comfortable with the format of my blog post pages. I guess though that other folks may face some challenges in navigating around the site, and around a typical post. Here’s some hints and tips on how to find your way around.

The Think Different Home Page

The Think Different home page is an endlessly scrolling sequence of individual blog posts, in date order, with the most recent post appearing first. Navigate to a particular post by clicking on the post’s title in the left-most column (on the home page, each post’s metadata includes the title of the post).

Anatomy Of A Typical Think Different Post

Blog title
Blog strap line
Main menu
Search box
Post title
Post metadata
Post title (repeated)
Subscribe
Recent posts
Categories
Author
Blogroll
Goodreads selection
Social media share buttons
Like button
Related posts
Previous/next post navigation
Posts through the months
Top posts and pages
Map
Comments section

If you’d like me to elaborate on any or all of the above elements, I’d be more than happy to do so.

Other Pages

There’s also a bunch of non-post pages accessible via the main (top) menu, including:

About
About me, mainly.
Rightshifting
Stuff to do with Rightshifting, including the Community and my Giants (heroes)
Therapy
Introduction to Organisational Psychotherapy
NoCV
Stuff about the NoCV campaign
Research
Various ideas and research I have ongoing
Archive
A comprehensive list of ALL posts (including links) on the Think Different blog, in date order, most recent first.

– Bob

Quickie: Can You Imagine?

Alien tech, Quickies, Quintessence

2 Comments

Can you imagine what lies over the horizon, what comes after Agile? I can. #Quintessence #AlienTech

Quickie: What Shapes Folks’ Attitudes To Work?

Community, Culture change, Play, Quickies, Quintessence

It’s not that different folks have inherently different attitudes to work. It’s that different folks work in different environments* – environments that shape their attitudes to “work”.

*Including, but broader than physical environment (offices, cubes, studios, etc.); social environments a.k.a. culture, community, needsscape; and systems environments (both belief systems and the way the work works).

Quickie: Competitive Advantage

May 4, 2022

Alien tech, Competition, Culture change, Innovation, Memeology, Quickies, Quintessence

The only competitve advantage in business is the ability to think differently.
~ FlowChainSensei

The Limits Of Quintessence

May 4, 2022

Alien tech, Article, Collaboration, Culture change, Memeology, Organisational Therapy, Quintessence

2 Comments

The Limits Of Quintessence

My dear friend Alessandro Di Gioia recently invited me to write a post on the limits of Quintessence. So here it is.

Introduction

Maybe “limits” is not the most helpful frame. Perhaps “constraints” might better suit. As far as I’m concerned, Quintessence has no limits in terms of what can be achieved (hence the name), but it sure is subject to a host of constraints holding it back from delivering on it’s potential.

There are no speed limits on the road to excellence [nor on the road to Quintessence – Ed.].
~ David W. Johnson

Elaboration

Alex subsequently elaborated on his question at my invitation:

When does Quintessence not apply?
What are the most common misinterpretations of Quintessence?
Quintessence is not a silver bullet because…?

When Does Quintessence Not Apply?

I propose it always applies, at least in collaborative knowledge (grey muscle) work (CKW). Generally, it applies when results are contingent on the relationships between people, and on effective cognitive function. Quintessence describes an environment, and the beliefs necessary to creating such and environment, for improved interpersonal relationships and cognitive function.

So if those things are not relevant in your context, I guess we can say that Quintessence may not apply there.

What Are The Most Common Misinterpretations?

I hesitate to answer this question, as my answer will only be a guess. Yet I guess some folks may misinterpret Quintessence in the following ways:

It’s a method, or framework – like Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, etc.
It’s neither. It’s most like a blueprint or map of the landscape of beliefs (a.k.a. memeplex) within highly effective CKW organisations.
It’s about software development
It’s not. It’s about folks working together, collaboratively with their brains. i.e. All CKW environments.
It can be handed down as an objective for the minions to implement
It can’t. Shifting the collective assumptions and beliefs of a whole organisation (the basic premise) requires everyone to be involved, everyone to engage with surfacing and reflecting on the collective assumptions and beliefs of the organisation. In particular, those folks to whom the workforce look for cues.
It comes in a box
It doesn’t. It comes in a book (two books, actually – Memeology and Quintessence). But there are no ceremonies defined, no practices required, no rules stipulated, no dogma. Just an invitation to ongoing dialogue.

Silver Bullet?

Quintessence is not a silver bullet because, although both magical (alien tech) and a solution to a long-standing problem, it’s in no way an instant solution. Becoming a Quintessential organisation is a long journey of self-discovery. Both for individuals, especially managers, and for the organisation as a whole.

The long-standing problem it addresses is the myopia of organisations in respect of their real issues and challenges.

Closing

I hope this post has addressed the questions posed, and invites some further curiosity from y’all dear readers. AQA (All questions answered).

– Bob

Quickie: Understanding

May 3, 2022

Alien tech, Business, Culture change, Memeology, Quickies, Quintessence

I’d be delighted to help you understand, but that requires you wanting to understand, and you really don’t.

So until you do, I’ll just go with empathising.

Quickie: Aww Do We Have To?

Alien tech, Collaboration, Quickies, Quintessence

Sustained success in e.g. collaborative knowledge work requires intrinsic discipline.Some call that “grit“.

And no, you don’t have to, if you’re not bothered about (social) loafing.

#TheLessonOfSynergism

Why Value Streams?

Alien tech, Article, Business, Culture change, Improvement, Organisational effectiveness, Prod•gnosis, Quintessence, Systems thinking, Value streams

Why Value Streams?

Just Another Way of Dividing A Whole Into Parts?

Are value streams just one more way of dividing a whole organisation into parts? Isn’t “division into parts” a hallmark and defining characteristic of the Analytic mindset? And something we’re trying to avoid in pursuit of the Synergistic ideals presented in Quintessence?

As the inimitable Russell L. Ackoff says:

A system is more than the sum of its parts; it is an indivisible whole. It loses its essential properties when it is taken apart. The elements of a system may themselves be systems, and every system may be part of a larger system.
~ Russell L. Ackoff

The Structure Of The Moment

At The Quintessential Group, we’ve chosen value streams as the structure of the moment. Not as a mean to subdivide the Group into parts, but as an experiment, as a way to encourage synergies within the whole. Our hypothesis is that by divorcing hierarchy from structure, we create an environment better suited to serving the needs of the Folks That Matter™.

We are concerned with total systems performance, and the relationships between the parts (value streams) much more than managing each part, each value stream, separately. In fact, the “management” of each part is pretty much irrelevant and not something we’ll be spending time on.

Even The Quintessential Group as a whole is part of larger, or containing, systems. We may choose to see the Group, and its value streams, as holons, as holarchies. As stable intermediate forms. See: The Parable of the Two Watchmakers.

Borrowing from the language of Arthur Koestler, a value stream serves as a subsystem within the larger system: We can regard it as an evolving, self-organizing structure while simultaneously a part of a greater system composed of other value streams i.e The Quintessential Group.

Enough With The Philosophy Already

So, what practical benefits do we foresee from the value stream approach?

More coherent (less fragmented) experience for clients.
Improved flow of value.
Increased synergies resulting in a more effective organisation and thus affording an improved customer experience.
Reduction in delays, wastes, and non-value-adding activities.
Improvements in takt time and smoothness of value flow.

How do you feel about value streams as e.g. a structuring approach for organisations?

– Bob

The Monopoly of Management

Alien tech, Antimatter principle, Article, Community, Culture change, Management, Memeology, Organisational effectiveness, Quintessence

3 Comments

The Monopoly Of Management

Managers and other senior stakeholders and elites within organisations have a monopoly on the priority of their own well-being. (See: Your REAL Job).

Wouldn’t it be great if other folks’ well-being received equal attention? If the set of all the Folks That Matter™. included staff, customers, their families and loved ones, and even society as whole? Some may baulk at the implied cost of spreading the well-being net wider. I see this as a fallacy and one which only serves to entrench the ruling clique’s monopoly further.

We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery…. He must justify his right to exist.
~ R. Buckminster Fuller

One aspect of the Quintessential organisation is just this – it makes both moral and business sense to prioritise the well-being of all – to Attend To The Needs of all the Folks That Matter™. Is this the kind of organisation in which you might best like to participate?

– Bob

ICYMI: The Agile Enterprise Is A Thing But Not THE Thing

Business, ICYMI

In case you missed it: The Agile Enterprise Is A Thing But Not THE Thing

The Agile Enterprise Is A Thing But Not THE Thing

Quickie: Agile As Piano Top

May 1, 2022

Agile, Debacles, Quickies, Quintessence

I am enthusiastic over humanity’s extraordinary and sometimes very timely ingenuity. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat that comes along makes a fortuitous life preserver. But this is not to say that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. I think that we are clinging to a great many piano tops in accepting yesterday’s fortuitous contrivings as constituting the only means for solving a given problem.
~ R. Buckminster Fuller

Quickie: Hobgoblins

May 1, 2022

Quickies

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.
With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.
Speak what you think now in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.
— ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.
To be great is to be misunderstood.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Implementing Prod•gnosis

May 1, 2022

Article, Business, Capability development, Culture change, Prod•gnosis, Quintessence, Value streams