David Sibbet

Inventing the Future of Management--Initial Insights

I have a little distance on the amazing gathering that I facilitated recently with Gary Hamel and his MLab team called “Invent the Future of Management.” McKinsey, the strategy consulting firm, co-sponsored the event along with the London Business School, and MLab, Gary’s new non-profit venture focused on catalyzing collaboration and contribution to the field which has been his life— leadership and management of organizations—businesses in particular.

He gathered 30 leaders in management development, education, consulting, and the CEOs of Whole Foods, Gore, Ideo, Google, and HCL (one of the fastest growing IT companies in India). His gathering question was “why can’t we bring as much innovation, adaptation, and engagement to our organizations as we do to our development of products and technologies?”

Visual Intelligence: Using the Deep Patterns of Visual Language to Build Cognitive Skills

I have a cogent argument for the power of interactive visualizing as a way to build cognitive capability in the recent issue of Theory into Practice, a journal for educators from Ohio State University. It's a special Issue – Volume 47, Issue 2, called Digital Literacies in the Age of Sight and Sound. It was guest edited by Susan Metros, University of Southern California, and Kristina Woolsey, my friend and colleague from the New Media Thinking Project (and former head of Apple's SF multimedia center and its Advance Technology Labs). My chapter outlines how, when one thinks about drawing and visualizing as a process rather than an artifact, that the underlying grammar and structure of the visualization archetypes become clear. We are arranging for distribution of the chapter, but in the meantime you can get it by ordering the Journal with this Theory into Practice flier .

Download TIPFlier.pdf (160.3K)

Could "Slow Deep" be the Next Counter Culture?

In a recent post in the Future Commons, a blog supported by The Institute for the Future with which The Grove is an affiliate, Eileen Clegg asked a wonderful question about the speed of our current culture related to on-line worlds. I responded and thought the exchange was worth posting here. Eileen wrote:

It seems like most really great work happens in collaboration over a long period of time, through many cycles, as people bump up against differences (of perspective, personal style) and come to understand each other so that diversity becomes productive.

It’s frustrating that we have amazing tools to support deep collaborative work -- but instead of “going deep,” most of us are “spreading thin” --  multiple communities, frequent team changes, hundreds of online connections. Maybe we are (or at least I am) not smart enough to figure out how to engage in a steady, meaningful way across a universe of people and possibilities.

So I’ve been reflecting on loyalty, long-term work partnerships, authenticity, sticking-it-out, patience (personal aspirations...).   I’ve been thinking maybe “deep slow work” is the new counter-culture.

TED BIG VIZ Book and Movie are LIVE!!

You can download the TED2008-BigViz Book and see an amazing Movie of the 700 plus illustrations Kevin Richards and I did for Big Viz (see stories below). It's a BIG file, but amazing to see. Enjoy.

TED2008-BIG VIZ Production

Here is a short video of the work I was doing at TED2008 with Tom Wujec, Kevin Richards, and  John  Schmeir of Autodesk and Phil Davidson of Perceptive Pixel. It was a tour-de-force of documentation, where we graphically illustrated all 50+ speakers on the topic of The Big Questions. The illustrations were created by Kevin and myself on Wacom tablets, and then accessed from our hard drives by the Perceptive Pixel-Multitouch wall shown in two posts ago. I made this video from photos and videos I took at the event. Tom Wujec is now making an on-line book of all our drawings that will be available at www.autodesk.com. If you want to start seeing some of the talks live, click here.

TED2008 Is Complete

650 images later Kevin Richards and I have finished our illustration of TED2008. Tom Wujec is now creating the book (and a video). All the TED talks will be posted on their web site soon. I'm exhausted,  very inspired  and wanting to share a couple photos of the Perceptive Pixel-MultiTouch Wall that we used, and some of the drawings. I plan to write a nice piece about the substance of the conference this week.

VizThink Was An Inspiring Experience for The Grove

I’m happy to report that the recent VizThink conference, an ambitious attempt to take the visualization field to a new level by inviting practitioners from across the visualization spectrum, succeeded wildly! Over 380 people traveled from all over the globe to the Westin in San Francisco, following the siren song of VizThink Tom Crawford’s web 2.0 marketing and XPlane’s sponsorship and promotion. We all showed up and had a complete blast. Here is The Grove’s little booth, organized and manned by Callie Bloom, our marketing assistant. She’s sitting in front of Tiffany Forner’s wonderful graphic showing how The Grove’s Graphic Guides® create a panoramic effect in a meeting room. We were surrounded by digital tool makers--Brain, Mindjet, Autodesk, Wacom and others and totally held our own. Of course having Second Life up on our display, and our cool new Visual Planning System Agenda Planning Cards didn’t hurt. The deep excitement for me was seeing how our Grove team pulled together in the two sessions we ran.

Srategizing with Visual Metaphors

As the rain and winds ripped trees down in our backyard and beside the Grove in our first serious winter storm, I ended up my VizThink web-conference exhilarated, and thinking a lot about visual analogies and metaphors. (To hear the entire program click “Visualizing Change: Creating the Future One Vision at a Time” here). My reflection was sparked by a question moderator Tom Crawford passed along from one of the 53 people participating. “What role does the third dimension play in your Storymaps?” I illustrated my answer with the tablet sketch below, but let me elaborate.

Vizualizing Change: Creating The Future One Image at a Time

If you want to catch my free VizThink webcast on January 4 at 8:00am PST, on the topic above, register by clicking here. Register. I'll be answering some of these questions. How did National Semiconductor get 95% vision recognition worldwide during its turnaround in the 1990s? Why did HP train its engineering consultants worldwide to use Graphic Guides? Why did Adobe and Macromedia commission a graphic history when they merged two years ago? Why did Alias (now Autodesk) bring David in to teach their visual planners how to work the boards? How did he get 50 NGO and 8 foundations to collaborate in cleaning up the energy system in the upper midwest? What in the world is The Grove doing in Second Life? I'll be working on the tablet and sharing some graphics-- so come join in the fun. it's free.

Leading Change: The Role of Serious Play

2007 is almost over, and a weaving of insights for the new year is already beginning, fueled by a good studio day of just letting things arise, and several visits with good friends and counselors. The twin themes of “prototyping” and “leadership” are starting to dance together in a wonderfully hopeful way.

Simulate to Innovate
Let me start with the prototyping theme. Casting over my library (the one I keep at my home studio focused on the projects I am developing) Michael Schrage’s book on Serious Play: How the World’s Best Companies Simulate to Innovate (Harvard Business School Press, 2000) popped into my hand. My colleague, Ed Claassen got it for The Grove library several years ago. I took it home, knowing that there was a connection between prototyping, play, and what we do at The Grove with interactive graphic communications and groups.