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Dear Fellow Improver…
…this book is for you. It takes you on a voyage from technology to design to human agency.
Technology is, literally, the way we improve things and software is simply the latest in a very long list of technologies that recedes in time to the wheel and fire. Design is what we need to demonstrate when we improve things for others – it is, again literally, the marking out of value for others to adopt. As Oscar Wilde might say were he still with us, there is no such thing as good or bad technology – there is only well-designed and ill-designed technology. Design is the ability to deconstruct value to its smallest unit and reconstruct it to its grandest dimension. Beneath design lies human agency – not the skills and talents we possess but the awareness of whatever qualities we command.
Improvement itself is not a simple equation – progress is not automatic for humans. It is not evolutionary in that sense. It is, rather, a complex challenge involving four conditions – Backfire, Inertia, Accidental Improvement and, finally, Step-Change. When you apply the BIAS quadrant to history or industry, you can see it everywhere. True Design is the discipline that moves us from the backfires, the inertia and the accidents to genuine step-change – the kind that led to the eradication of smallpox.
This book appears at a timely moment, a world where Artificial Intelligence is automating much of our mundane labour and encroaching on our core agency. It is up to us humans to retain our awareness and revive the naturally intelligent art of design. Whatever value we can preserve and create for future generations depends on our ability to perpetuate good ideas and improve them into great ones. As jobs and whole careers erode and vanish, what’s left are the vocations we should have had all along.
A unique exploration of human improvement over history, software development since the beginning, and current social challenges we all must solve.
BIAS
Human history is not a record of continuous improvement as our Victorian ancestors may have wished. Organisational development is no different. In reality, accidental improvements are followed by backfires and periods of inertia. The Roman Empire did not rise and fall - its dramatic trajectory was a whole series of rises and falls. Improvement is always a good idea but opens out fourfold into human bias. Our natural leaning or slant in any one direction, bias is inescapable. But awareness of this becomes a powerful lever, enabling us to move beyond one’s own reward to greater public good.
Backfires result when the intent is correct but the design is flawed. The classic human expression of improvement is inertia – not only because we literally lack the art to improve but because resistance to change comes naturally (and can even sometimes be good). Most successful inventions are accidental improvements - we set out to eradicate tuberculosis and end up curing leprosy (like unsung Dr. Vincent Barry). Only step change is real improvement – a shift which is intended, resourced and followed through inspired by the Japanese concept of kaizen.
The Book
Improve, A Good Idea is a unique combination of memoir, history and vision which reimagines the relationship between business and technology - by returning this dilemma to its first principles and grounding it in true design and step-change improvement. Read more
The Author
Founder and leader of specialist consultancy Capventis, John Glennane has studied the connection between business and technology more consistently than most. He has written Improve, a Good Idea to share his learnings from helping hundreds of public- and private-sector clients in Ireland, the United Kingdom, Europe and globally. A hydraulic engineer by origin, he has always been fascinated by the essential physics underlying complex problems. Improvement is never a foregone conclusion and all four outcomes - from backfiring and inertia to accidental progress and step change - must be acknowledged and factored in. The key lies in our ability to deconstruct to the smallest element, and from there reconstruct to the most elaborate system.
In order to reimagine the relationship between business and technology we need to rethink what we mean by data – and revisit the space between data. It is time to expand our understanding of design to include the business as well as the technology meant to serve it. And beyond that, we must also design for the coming generation and the working landscape they deserve.
