Binge Thinking

Hot Spots - Ros Palmer

I’m back from holiday, where along with a novel I read one of the many business books that sit on my coffee table at home willing me to find the time to read them.  This one was well worth the effort.  Hot Spots is by Professor Lynda Gratton who undertook the original research as part of an extensive academic study.  Consequently it is packed with more detail and rigorously researched case studies than most business books I read.

Gratton works with the London Business School and presented a Hot Spots seminar at the London Business Forum in April of this year.  I missed it but the book is pretty easy to understand.  Basically, Hot Spots are periods of brilliance within organisations when a number of factors combine to create explosions in ideas and growth.  Gratton is quick to point out that you can’t make them happen but that a number of factors need to be in place to create the environment to enable them to happen. 

There are three major factors: cooperative mindsets, boundary spanning (such as cross fertilization of different teams) and an igniting purpose.  What really struck me in the early chapters is how the principles and case-studies are underpinned by the fundamental principles of Go MAD Thinking.  Citing a case-study of how the Polish and Venezuela office of BP worked together to solve a problem, Gratton details the reason why the second office got involved and that  the question that started the collaborative process off was:  “Would Carlos (head of Venezuela office) and his team share their knowledge and insights about how to roll out the BP brand and cooperate with Polly (head of Poland office) and her team to help them turn around the business in Poland”. 

Earlier in the book, when outlining what an igniting purpose is, Gratton talks about igniting questions saying: ‘there are occasions when energy is released through the imagination of people being propelled to the future by an igniting question.  This is a question that is so exciting and stimulating that people immediately want to engage with it.  Some igniting questions are big and expansive, like the one BP CEO John Browne asked of his people: “How can we, an oil company, become a force for good?”   The question triggered ‘beyond petroleum’, the rebranding and repositioning of BP’s core business and innovations involving renewable energy sources. 

So it seems that questions are the answer!   I’m asking myself a good question today which is “How can I deal with all the backlog of work that has piled up whilst I was on holiday and still remain happy and sane?”   I will also make time today to sign up for www.hotspotsmovement.com as Gratton is creating a ‘Hot Spots Hot Spot’ – a community dedicated to promoting Hot Spots in businesses around the world.