Colorcube: This game teaches clean sheet visualization
Posted: September 7, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Game Leave a comment
Set-up your focus to think in blank spaces and color.
When we are hustling throughout the day, we may lose the focus we need in order to tackle the next task or breakthrough the next problem. On your next break, consider this iOS puzzler, Colorcube. It is a simply elegant, colorful, and relaxing game. This games takes the concept of the “clean sheet” and gives us a small purpose: use the shapes and colors to make the desired design.
Often, that is exactly what are jobs are asking us to do. The Clean Sheet task asks: “How would we do this starting from a blank pages, knowing what we have and what we can do?”
The rules of this Game make sense to your eyes
In Colorcube, two primary colors will combine for a secondary color, three primary colors create white space. It does not make scientific sense, but it makes a great visual style. Sometimes the trick is NOT to put something there, and sometimes the trick is, put a LOT of something there.
Work is much like that. We are in a constant battle to decide where and how much of our effort is needed.
- Do we need to avoid work in this area?
OR
- Do we need to actively keep work out of this area?
Avoiding extra work seems easy to do, and it requires a focus on the correct task.
Sometimes avoiding work is very difficult, and the real thing we must do is to put a lot of effort into an area (create a process or system) to keep ourselves from being distracted (see a previous post about the whirlwind).
Win by activating your unconscious visualization
The game is challenging and rather relaxing. Many times I don’t do anything. I look at the blank screen and I consider the design.
What IS there?- What IS NOT there?
- Where are my PRIMARY colors, where are my SECONDARY colors.
I use this game with the Breathe app on Apple Watch. Once, I solved 3 puzzles in 3 minutes with under 70 beats per minute heart rate.
Rule book
Free Mindfulness Apps Worthy of Your Attention, mindful
The Clean Sheet, Drucker Institute
TETRIS teaches Daily Accountability
Posted: September 5, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Book, Daily Accountability, Decisions, Game, Lean Leave a commentPlay Tetris to Set-up your mind for Daily Check-in Meetings
We cannot say which is more dreaded, anxiety caused by the relentless nature of the block-stacker Tetris or the anxiety felt when peppered with unanticipated questions at the daily huddle meeting. Consider using Tetris as a training ground “to think on your feet” and “to deal with what you can do.”
When Tetris debuted, rules were not yet written for this game.
Tetris presents a piece and you have to fit it into your tableau that is already succumbing to the forces of entropy. When you have a “left hand z” and you really need “right hand L”, those are the times that you decide: “find a spot for it and use the next piece to deal with it.”
This is a situation not unlike project management. For every evening when you go home with a clear desk and the hope that the project is finally “on track”, there is a morning where the project presents a new problem “we have never seen before.” Having a mind that quickly explores options can help.
- Put the Piece to the side: What can we do right away to contain this problem?
- Find a less problematic placement: What can we do to make things better?
- Identify a future piece: What can we do in the future?
When you don’t Win at Tetris, Tetris gets you into Winning shape.
Tetris is like the Terminator:
- It never gives up.
- It never gets tired.
- It will always win.
The relentless nature of the game purifies the mind as it is stressed to its limits.
I had always thought that the game was some sort of subversive reminder of the defeatist attitude from the old USSR. Three decades later, I understand the game to represent Hope.
Every time the game defeated me, I had hope that I could win the next round because:
- “I know more now.”
- “I will be smarter next time.”
- “I won’t let that happen again.”
Rule book
Read the Graphic Novel cum biography by Box Brown, Tetris.
Which is Better? Deciding between two options with slightly asymmetrical criteria.
Posted: August 12, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Decisions, Game Leave a comment
Set-up your choice box like Tic-Tac-Toe
Let’s say that you want to make a choice. The choice is not like “Tapioca or chocolate pudding?” which is a choice between two options that relies on one factor, taste. Let’s say that the choice is from among a variety of options, and you need to rate them on two criteria. How do you do that?
For decisions such as this, you can use a quick tic-tac-toe grid. Read the rest of this entry »
AI Collaborator
Posted: August 1, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Game, Lean Leave a comment
What’s link between The Twilight Zone and Garry Kasparov? Artificial Intelligence.
Image from Patrick McCabe Makes
Set-up
On early morning television, I watched the classic Twilight Zone episode The Brain Center at Mr. Whipple’s (Season 5, Episode 33). The short IMDB description is:
A heartless CEO completely automates his factory and lays off almost all of his workers over the objections of his employees.
The episode presents a depressing view where improvement means elimination of jobs. I am sometimes mistaken for this guy because help people improve their workplace.
Immediately after I listened to this podcast from Harvard Business Review, How AI Is Already Changing Business, (HBR IdeaCast: 586). This interview discusses all of the good things that are happening with AI, and helps us put the technology in perspective by highlighting what it cannot do — that is, create.
Interestingly, both sources come to the same conclusion, as Mr. Serling says:
The point is that, too often, Man becomes clever instead of becoming wise; he becomes inventive and not thoughtful; and sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Whipple, he can create himself right out of existence.
Game Rules
While Mr. Whipple was trying to integrate automation into his factory, what you really see is ersatz Artificial Intelligence over 50 years before the current conversation. We have been worrying about the machines taking over for a while now, yet we continue to persevere.
On the one hand, we wish that AI would take over some forms of information management, like SIRI or ALEXA. On the other hand, we do not want to become obsolete machines in the next industrial revolution. It seems that we are trying to strike a balance between freeing AI and properly subjugating it to our will.
Win Condition
A colleague of mine is working to create a knowledge base that helps machine operators make associations regarding what the machine is telling us, what I call the telemetry (he calls it by a corporate acronym). The system that we are working to implement is more like that described by Grandmaster Garry Kasparov in his TED Talk, Don’t Fear Intelligent Machines. Work with Them. Kasparov is probably known more for his losses to the machine Deep Blue than for his wins against Anatoly Karpov to become World Champion at the age of 22.
In his TED talk, Kasparov contends that the greatest innovations to come are from a collaboration between people and computers where the collaboration is more or less equal with humans providing the creativity and machines providing the raw processing power.
This is how I expect to win with computers:
I don’t try to automate anything that I cannot already do. I try to automate things that I can do and a computer can do better.
Communicating to Personality
Posted: July 22, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Game, Organizational Behaviors, Personality Leave a commentSet-Up relationships by knowing your communication style
There is a personality test available that allows you to understand the things that others see in your communication style. Knowing this about yourself and others is important to having effective communications. When people are really listening — because you are speaking in a way that they like to hear — your message more often translates to a stronger inter-personal relationship and immediate action.
I use the Color Wheel designations, but you can also use the DISC method. As you will see from the game below, you don’t need to know the model to start trying this out.
The Game is to build relationships by knowing your audience’s communication style.
When meeting someone new, have you ever really, “hit it off” from the start? Your communication style is very compatible, which makes for an enjoyable conversation. Alternately, are there those people that you must interact with that you find tedious and difficult? In this case, you may need to make some more effort in order to be understood.
This game is not to mirror or mimic your conversational partner, it is more to align with them, like two boats navigating to come along side each other.
See the behavior graphic below. When you observe a specific “tell” put a mental mark on that side of the color wheel. The quadrant with the most marks is the color you are dealing with.
For example: 
- I speak in technical terms (numbers, tasks, thinking). That is the LEFT side.
- I modulate my tone (slower, softer, pauses). That is the BOTTOM
- I have big arm movements (TOP), and I smile reactively (RIGHT), but I don’t make eye contact too much (LEFT).
As you can see from my marks, I tend to Conscientious or Blue (BOTTOM, LEFT).
How can I win friends with this?
I try to understand my audience. I watch them, and try to determine what personality they are in today — sometimes it is different. Then, I try to play to their behaviors.
- When talking to Dominance personalities, I stop before I finish explaining, giving them an opening to interrupt with questions they want to ask.
- When talking with Influence or Steadiness personalities, I try more social conventions. I may talk about the people involved or how I can help.
The best way for me to win is to work out what I am going to say and put it in the right order. See this e-mail example, but this also works if you are going to talk to a small group about an idea that you really want to do.
Rule Books
| Presentation (These Graphics) | Brian Suyat, Color Wheel / DISC Behaviors |
| Tool | Manager Tools, DISC Profile |
| Tool | Insights Discovery, Color Wheel |
What's the Game? 