We have been coming up with our own A+E dictionary of terminology around the most common ailments we have seen befall projects, especially in the social and public sectors. Here’s our first installment:

Anaemia: Deficiencies of essential nutrients can cause irreversible weakness, and at worst project death. Whilst the initial concept may be strong, many projects lack the right combination of robust planning, partnership building and smart resourcing, leading to health problems down the line. Ensuring a ‘multivitamin’ intake can give a project a much better chance of success, and teams need generalists who can spot the things that are lacking and bring the right resource into the mix.

Antiviral: No-one wants their great idea to be developed without understanding how to truly engage the intended user. Projects based on audience assumptions can kill an idea too early, leaving great concepts unknown or underused. If  positioning and communications are not built in to the planning stage, adoption rates are likely to stay low and no amount of money can make the message spread.

Pilot-itis: There have been too many pilots in this world. The pilot graveyard is overflowing. Healthy models are ones that plan for a long life expectancy. We’re seeing a move from short term campaigns and launches to a more long-term interaction with consumers and members of the public, now is the time to think about how to produce longevity in a cost-efficient way.

Recurring Bouts: These can be nasty! Just when you think you’re cured, another unforseen issue rears its ugly head. Prevention is in the planning. Agility and flexibility are key, enabling projects to adapt to changing internal and external circumstances.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these. Have you encountered the same or other project afflictions?

Much promotional flurry this week from The History Channel, who are screening The People Speak directed by Colin Firth.

Inspired by its US equivalent, The People Speak is going to feature some of our most familiar actors performing the accounts of citizens who experienced some of our most remarkable historic moments. The event was filmed at the Prince of Wales Theatre last month, and is going to be broadcast on 31st October. That’s quite an alternative to the usual Halloween TV.

Whilst its great that broadcasters are thinking how to bring history alive, it’s so frustrating that they’re missing such an obvious chance to engage and involve the public (History Channel, we apologise if you have secret plans).

There are so many successful oral history projects out there. The TUC for example have done loads of work collecting audio accounts of workers who rebuilt our cities after the Second World War, and a partnership with one of these organisations to bring alive digital content provided by the general public (as opposed to simply the thesps) would have been BRILLIANT. Many oral history projects contain compelling videos, but need a little help bringing this to life through some better-designed interfaces and some entertainment thinking.

Sadly, in this instance, The People can Speak, but only if they’ve got a BAFTA nomination.

Come on History Channel, if you’re spending loads of money on a TV ad campaign, invest a little in the great potential of your idea and generate more value for everyone.

A+E are embarking on a very special project and we need your help.

We are on the lookout for individuals (strictly over the age of 65) who have the kind of accumulated expertise you just can’t get from reading Wikipedia, and who you think would relate their passion in a compelling way, as a speaker.

They may have a highly unusual professional background, knowledge of a subject through a lifelong hobby, or insights from a wealth of life experiences. No topic is off limits at this stage, whether their thing is art dealing, astronomy, ancient mesopotamia, alligator hunting or arctic exploration, or indeed anything under and over the sun.

Does your grandparent, parent, friend, retired ex-colleague or neighbour fit the bill? Who do you know who’s older and simply must have their stories and insights heard?

Email any ideas to us amanda@a-and-e.co.uk / lizzie@a-and-e.co.uk or tweet @amandagore or @lizzieostrom.

Our criteria: that they’re based in the UK, that you could listen to them for hours and still want more, that they are in your opinion GREAT, and they’re old enough. No young ‘uns need apply.

We will of course share more anon on what this is all about…

As our public sector face the scissors at one end, and calls for radical restructuring at the other, the words lean and mean are a big part of the current mantra.

Bloated, inefficient or inertia-driven delivery of our public services amounts to waste.

But the fact is, we need waste. It’s an essential part of experimentation. Without trial and error, you won’t get anywhere. I’m worried that in the current zealous mood, we’re going to forget the important role that waste plays.

To be a bit more subtle: what’s good waste, and what’s bad?

Last night I went to the inaugural CockUp Cocktails, a peer meetup for those working in and around social enterprise, organised by Sidekick Studios. You talk about your cockups, over cocktails: a perfect combination. There’s clearly a desire for this kind of thing at the moment. Failcamp has been building around the globe as a chance for people to share their professional messes: ‘Forgive me father, for I accidentally sent my boss the email in which I dissed him.’ And in the UK, the RSA launched The Glory of Failure project last year so we can understand our mistakes better.

image jomcleay

I won’t go into detail on what was said by whom, as the speakers were to their credit incredibly open and candid on their own personal cock-ups. But. Some great general lessons and ideas I can talk about, which at A+E we’re really interested in.

We all know too well that in order to please funders, investors or clients it’s tempting to glide over the bits that went wrong, whether systemic problems, a misguided project in the first place, or simple human errors of the D’oh variety. Fear of recrimination, of wasting money and of career suicide get in the way. And when organisations conduct evaluation or monitoring, the benefits you’d get from an honest assessment go out the window and you end up with a bland ‘success story’ with none of the crucial learning that would actually be constructive. Counter-intuitively these benefits would also extend to organisational reputation and competitive advantage.

So, here are some of the interesting thoughts that came out of last night, in no particular order:

Cockups often happen when different teams or business functions have  inherently different agendas

For example, more conservative functions rub up against the risk-taking, creative areas. The real damage though, doesn’t come from the original cock-up, but from straight-jacketing of future programmes, in an attempt to prevent something similar re-occurring. This only results in additional tension between teams. Neutering creativity in order to manage risk is not a very wise strategy.

Lots of cock-ups come when you miss contextual or cultural awareness.

A famous example of this is Orange’s launch in Northern Ireland in 1994. Unsurprisingly, they had to pull their ads with the strapline, ‘The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Orange.’ Oh dear. But you know what? I think it’s really hard to prevent mistakes like these. No matter how much you check, check and check again, there will always be oversights. If you own up straight away and sort it out, you’ll do much better.

We need to pull back from trying to deliver ambitious projects all in one go.

Don’t conceive initiatives in the first place that, like the banks, are too big to fail. Classic example: pretty much any major government related computer system. Take your pick. In any project delivering social value, we need to take a cue from those developing our best digital and web related projects, who are increasingly using Agile Project Management systems: release budgets slowly, test your proposition to find out whether the direction was right in the first place, get nimble and talk and learn as you go.

Yeah yeah, Lizzie, it’s all very well saying this. But how do you make it happen, especially in organisations not used to this kind of behaviour. Some thoughts:

- Enable individuals to submit cockups anonymously into an ‘airlock’ where you can take action without the situation becoming personal.

- It never hurts to remember the difference between being culpable, being liable, and being complicit.

- Whether it’s your Monday morning meeting or after work drinks, build in time for every member of the team to be able to share their error of the week, and make sure that space is about constructive solutions and learning, not blame.

- Build in a compulsory, exploratory phase into projects to test the proposition and need. Otherwise people race to deliver and you get a ship slowly gliding into iceberg. Instead of promoting a huge vision at the start (which we’re scared to backtrack from). we need to think of difference ways through which we originally sell-in a project to funders/investors/clients.

Some say promote the process (eg. co-design practice), but actually it can be quite hard to sell on process alone, important as this is. Maybe we can look how to sell a range of divergent end-scenarios from the get-go, which is more reassuring than telling people anything is possible, especially when applying for project funding.

- Reconsider the value of free and volunteered services, and whether they actually help you save money. I don’t know about you, but I can remember loads of times where I had a tight budget, blagged a freebie and then experienced major cockups as a result, because our project was low priority. Paying people properly is an obvious way to prevent slipups.

- Think about the potential of turning cockups into a positive, especially for the purposes of marketing.  Those I’ve noticed turning their errors into assets include Alex Fleetwood who runs Hide&Seek, a pervasive games agency. He recently penned a blog that listed all the things he got wrong when designing his first game. I have a feeling that didn’t really hurt his business.

This is just a start, but I think it’s showing that it’s what you do with your waste that counts.

In the next blog, Amanda and I will be sharing our top professional cockups each. What are we getting ourselves into?

How do we want our workspace to be designed?

How will we value work in the future?

How do we improve working lives for everybody?

These were some of the things we were asking as we embarked on our first event as A+E, organised by the impressive Enabled by Design to bring practitioners together for a new look at the aging and disability debate. Whether it’s our homes, our workplaces, our products or our technologies, instead of designing special ‘stuff’ for those with access needs (and which often looks grim, let’s face it), Enabled by Design says: can’t we just make sure we’re designing great stuff for all? For more on Universal Design principles, head over here.

A+E were invited to facilitate the session on the Future of the Workplace, a subject very close to our hearts. As we work with organisations to keep them adapted and ahead of trends, it would be stupid for us NOT to care about this area given change is happening rapidly. We’re particularly interested in post-retirement earning, and what needs to happen to better enable those 60+ to earn money. On their own terms.

We know that the situation is still pretty dire when it comes to older and disabled people in the workplace. But before zooming in on the obstacles, we started by looking at some of the big questions we’re all facing in our relationship with work, before going into groups to talk about what everyone thinks. We were really lucky to be joined by Catriona Watt, an employment lawyer with Fox Laywers, and John Williams, who’s just written a book called Screw Work, Let’s Play: How to do what you love and make it pay.

Here’s where you can find out about John’s book including a free sample chapter giving the download on how our formats of working are changing.

Here are Catriona’s slides from event day [NB. This is a general account of the law as it currently stands. It is always best to seek legal advice for specific queries]:

2. Flexi-working, remote working and virtual teams are often setups we aspire to, particularly when thinking about engaging and retaining older and disabled workers who find 9-5 in a physical space more challenging, but what are the repercussions? Something really strong came out: people get lonely working alone, no matter how many Basecamp accounts you’re a part of. How do we create the watercooler when we’re all dispersed? John Williams pointed out #watercoolermoments, a virtual daily gathering on twitter for home-based entrepreneurs, started by Enterprise Nation.

3. We’re still stuck in time-based valuations of an employee’s contribution. Ok, so we don’t want to go to 100% commission deals, that’s overboard, but if an experienced 70 year old can achieve in two hours what a 30 year old needs two weeks to do, and can only work a few hours a week, surely that works out well both sides? Maybe we need more results-based reward, something that Seth Godin explores in his new book, Lynchpins. Maybe it’s about new contractual relationships that connect the best of freelancing with payroll.

All complex, but there are ways through here. If you know of any great projects that are improving the way work works, leave a comment or get in touch – we’re keen to keep the conversation going, and will share interesting ideas via the blog.

When Lizzie and I decided to set up A+E we got rather excited about the prospect of designing our own logo. We both know lots of very talented people who can make things look flashy and whizzy but decided that we could do pretty well with a stack of post-its and some scissors and so set about spending a Saturday morning at the kitchen table creating our masterpiece!

As soon as we had decided on the name the overall concept became obvious to us, and both being fans of neon brights in identity design we played with the medical cross inside a square format…

We also made a rather exciting discovery: the letters A and E fit into each other when cut out of the same piece of paper. (this nearly led to a complete redesign and a cup of tea was required to help in the decision-making process)

As you can see though, we stuck with the medicinal format, played around with dimensions and letter, and our A+E logo was born. We thought we’d share this anyway… and show that it’s true, sometimes the best ideas happen at the kitchen table! What do you think?