COCOONERS - Making It Happen - No 0, February 2016

COCOONERS
N°0 - FEBRUARY 2016 MAKING IT HAPPEN
HELLO WORLD
OUR STORY, YOUR STORY
Making sense of change
This story is about a leading Italian publishing
house, founded in 1931 and focused on economic
and legal books, products and services. The goal
of our first intervention, delivered on February
2015, was starting an evolutionary path through
a sensitive corporate phase after an important
acquisition. This path is oriented to achieving
mastery over tools and techniques that allow a
better management of complexity and variability.
Read at page 6
FROM THE FAMILY: E-XTRATEGY
Our open governance:
considerations, facts
and results.
It’s been almost two years now, since we decided
to apply an open governance in e-xtrategy,
thanks to Cocoon Projects help and LiquidO
contaminations. What were the results in the
last 12 months?
Read at page 4
COOKING IN OUR LABS
• Labs, what?
• Ok, got it. And what do they do?
Read at page 8
A word about Cocoon Projects
Read at page 10
Meet LiquidO TM
Read at page 12

Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
WHAT’S UP
This is the first edition of the brand new Cocoon Projects
house organ and I feel I have a great responsibility in
choosing the argument of my opening article!
What is important for me, for Cocoon and may be of
interest for others? Personal (and work) satisfaction.
There is no single formula that defines the path to reach personal
satisfaction.
The important question that we should first ask ourselves is “What
is my potential? What could I be?”. And it is not easy to answer with
honesty and openness. We are not used to find out the answers
inside ourselves. Have you really chosen your direction or were all
your steps already established?
To tell you the truth I haven’t thought too much about that for many
years and these questions have been increasingly growing.
CLAUDIA
PELLICORI
If we spend our time and efforts trying to follow somebody else’s
idea of success, and if we keep on ignoring any message coming
from inside us, then we will finally be exhausted and discouraged.
But I tested on myself that you can achieve very good results if
you are working in a supportive environment, if you are in the
right place, if you listen to yourself, if you are fully aware of your
strengths.
Your work and your life are exactly the same thing, it is no longer
possible to split these elements. No sense being “someone” at home
and with friends and “someone else” at work.
CLAUDIA
PELLICORI
As John Hagel wrote in his The Power of Pull:
small moves, smartly made, can set big things
in motion. We need to marry our passions
with our professions in order to reach our
potential. And be happy.
Inclusiveness: why participation makes a difference.
Dealing with companies, whatever big or small, I’m increasingly
convinced that managers and entrepreneurs (or business
owners) fail to see the true value in people and their incredible
hidden opportunities.
Everybody knows that human resources are important. Everyone
is saying “put people first” in the company. Everybody thinks that
corporate values should be the core driver in the growth path of companies.
And off they go with coaches and trainers making people jump
on their chairs once a year. And off they go with consultants trying
to improve resource efficiency, You’ll see experts spending hours to
write pages and pages full of valuable principles and guidelines to be
read by employees in the front hall or along the corridors …
The truth is that very few companies are willing to spend their time,
money and energy investing in people and for people. They already
spend a lot of time and money, they just have to change methods
and destination.
Stop with occasional team building events (as if we were talking of
building palaces!): let’s start new processes instead, let’s get people
work together with measured profit and give them the chance to
change the rules of the game, if necessary.
Stop with meetings where someone speaks and hopefully the
others listen.Let’s turn them into open meetings where anyone can
suggest, discuss and act.
Stop with long-term business plans written by few and forgotten by
most people after a few weeks.
MICHELE
LUCONI
It’s so much better to work on short- and medium-term
visions and give everyone the opportunity
to make a valuable contribution.
If you think your employees are not able to
do this or even worse, they can’t
usefully
contribute to, I suggest you to review your
recruiting methods.
It’s definitely true: a company starts growing
when people in that company start growing.
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Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
Crowd funding campaigns: what’s the matter? Connecting
opportunities to the world wide potential consumers is
now very easy thanks to crowd funding platforms like
Kick Starter or Indiegogo.
From social networks to the disruption of business models, digital
revolution is having a deep impact on our society, bringing to light
the best but also the very worst of it.
Are you promoting your idea as a real innovative product?
Be ready and luckily you will probably find more than 10 similar
ideas. That’s digital effect.
But on the other side It’s a good thing that If you want to launch
an innovative product, you can simply try and enter your project
in Kickstarter and in a few minutes you will find out if there are
other start-ups already working on that idea and which feedback
they received from bakers all around the world.
Innovation, as one of the major foundations in Cocoon’s manifest,
does not only concern business models, but it’s also about
professional training now.
In recent years, for example lawyer as a profession has radically
changed. Most lawyers used Latin and Greek and law firm organization
was still anchored to outdated models, based on paper files
and on-site meetings.
To be competitive today means you must speak very good English,
you must perfectly know how to perform Internet and you absolutely
have to invest in tools, in order to achieve economically efficient
training methods. However according to recent studies at Polytechnic
University of Milan, Italian professionals still largely show a
conservative attitude regarding Information Technology (IT), which
is perceived more as a cost than as a real tool of improvement.
Basically the result is a passive approach to changing.
If bakers welcome your idea, this could be a turning point for your
company as it happened in 2012 at Pebble when they received
pre-orders for 10M$ from approximately 66 thousands bakers
against a modest target of 0.1M$. A major milestone!
That is a real “customer validation” process!
A new question arises: is it so easy to launch a pre-order campaign?
No, not at all.
Your communication must be successful, you have to prepare
impressive digital contents to show your great idea.
GIUSY
TOMARCHIO
You have to take care and be sure you’re
respecting pre-orders’ commitments and
avoiding the risk to run out of cash in your
campaign, once successful.
Especially on your first approach, all this does
require great expertise and lean execution. Well,
Cocoon Projects can be your perfect partner..
The use of IT tools is limited to email, internet navigation and to
create documents. But a new vision of law firm organization and an
active role of lawyers in the innovation process are highly icreasing
and definitely needed.
To stay competitive on the market, lawyers will necessarily have to
rely more on IT tools in the very near future.
For example by using software to catalogue and exchange information,
such as files, events and services, all meetings, emails, documents
and legal expiry dates will be instantly and automatically
FABIO
CALABRÒ
shared by all associates.
The informed use of innovation will help them
to save time and focus on purely legal matters
in their professional activity. More efficiency
and increased quality of services provided as a
result!
COCREATION INITIATIVES
4 WORKSHOP
3 CITIES
250+ PARTICIPANTS
FROM THE WHOLE WORLD
TALKING ABOUT US
MAKING SENSE OF CHANGE
WITH LEGO ® SERIOUS PLAY
SOME OF OUR 2015 HIGHLIGHTS
INNOVATION EVENTS ORGANISED
2 EVENTS
200+ PARTICIPANTS
20 COUNTRIES
CHANGE INNOVATION AND LIQUID
ORGANIZATIONS WITH STELIO VERZERA
PARTNERS COLLABORATIONS
20+ PARTNERS
5 COUNTRIES
LIQUEFYING AN ORGANIZATION
TO INCREASE AGILITY
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Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
FROM
THE
FAMILY
For this first number of “Cocooners” we love to feature a rewarding piece
by E-xtrategy, about the work, path and passion that we’ve shared so far,
and that we keep sharing.
OUR
OPEN GOVERNANCE:
CONSIDERATIONS, FACTS AND RESULTS.
e-xtrategy.net
It’s been almost two years now, since we decided
to apply an open governance in e-xtrategy,
thanks to Cocoon Projects help and LiquidO
contaminations. What were the results in the last
12 months?
Participation and Co-creation
True participation is developed through exchange
of views, meetings, ideas, talks, all members with
one and only goal: aiming at convergence!
Strategic decisions mean to us how to review
business models, how to choose the right partners
to work with, how to identify stimulus plans and
how to draw up a budget. Participation means all
together to us . Everyone involved!
The most significant step in our process of change
was on biannual meeting in October, 2015.
It was our fourth meeting to define the company
vision and we had 2 days together trying to
identify where exactly we were and designing
where we wanted to go within 6 months.
Better than designing, I should properly say
building, because we actually used Lego Serious
Play (LSP) in our latest 3 sessions.
See here below one of the artifacts produced
during those 2 days, and you will find e-xtrategy
vision. That’s where exactly we want(ed) to be
within 6 months.
100/100 meetings
Introduced by using LSP they’ve become essential
and indispensable now.
100/100 meetings means meetings where 100% of
the participants produce 100% of the results
When all participants are open members, make
their personal contribution and they are all
perfectly aligned with the final result.
Believe me: you’re experiencing an incredible and
priceless opportunity!
I think this is due to 2 main aspects:
Corporate culture: You get it by working over
years and acting with people for years.
Values: Values are essential.
No need to carve them in stones. Question your
values and recognize them.
Keep on experiencing true values in our own life.
Ritual dance
Since flexible methods have been introduced
in our business practices, we have used a dozen
rituals. Daily, weekly and monthly but never fixed
and definitely regular routines.
This attitude highly contributed to our company’s
improvement and helped us to develop a new
approach (in order to adapt) to ever-changing
needs and circumstances. So here are 2 rituals we
can’t almost do without now and which give us
the best
and immediately realizable results.
1- The biannual open-governance meeting
2- Retrospectives
Real time alignment
Four new full-time employees joined E-xtrategy
this year. A few months have passed and there’s
absolutely no difference between them and the
staff who have been (working) with us for 15 years.
We are spending so much time in developing
those activities that encourage everyone in the
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Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
COCOON PROJECTS
WEBSITE
HIGHLIGHTS
“From networks to
partners”: Lego Serious
Play workshop
The power of networking to succeed: from here the idea to organize a workshop
on active networks with the Lego Serious Play methodology.
company to confront each other and to take
decisions. There’s no way to escape. When you’re
at the cross road, you just have to align.
And actually there is no other chance: the
company is in fact one system made up of people
that uniquely decide where to go.
Dare to take decisions
We faced many challenges this year, that raised
again the issue: “how to take decision”.
This is every company’s greatest fear: and what if
I’m wrong? What if I’m not up to it? What if I don’t
have all information I need to make a decision?
Thanks to our coaches’ help, the result we are all
aiming for is that “we can all decide on anything”,
We’ve been forced to take sometimes very difficult
decisions and on difficult questions, which were
once reserved to only a few people in the company.
This is why we are all growing up very fast and so
the company is.
For the third straight year, 2015 has been the best
year in our company’s history.
And yes, also in terms of euros.
This is how we enjoy doing business.
#EODF15: Re-imagining
organisation,
Re-imagining design.
The European Organisation Design Forum has been organised by us,
as Cocoon Projects, for the first time in the Mediterranean area.
Abstract from the full article from
the e-xtrategy blog.
Read the full (and Italian) version HERE
#EODF15: For the first time,
the masterclasses.
There is less than a month and we, as Cocoon Projects,
are ready to bring the annual conference for the first time
in the Mediterranean area.
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Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
OUR STORY IS YOUR STORY
MAKING SENSE OF
CHANGE
This story is about a leading Italian publishing house, founded in 1931 and focused on economic
and legal books, products and services. The goal of our first intervention, delivered on February
2015, was starting an evolutionary path through a sensitive corporate phase after an important
acquisition. This path is oriented to achieving mastery over tools and techniques that allow a
better management of complexity and variability.
In order to better
describe this case,
we need to introduce
It is in that framework
that we designed this
workshop to start a
Even though it
may seem a very
abstract concept,
we definitely are not.
Examining our “core
identity” we can see
Through the Lego TM
Serious Play TM
(LSP) methodology we
methodology deepens
the reflection process
and supports an
an important concept:
path for all participants
identity is intimately
where the value of our
encouraged them to
effective dialogue –
the Innovation Space.
to define and evolve
connected to our
company comes from.
dive into the identity of
for everyone in the
It can be described as
their group identity,
actions. It’s important
In order to achieve this,
the company, moving
organization. People
an evolutionary terri-
the priority action
to be clear and under-
Cocoon Projects has
from the core identity
of all levels explicitly
tory for organisations,
areas, the change goals
stand “who we are”
chosen to start with a
to what is called the
admitted to have been
driven by three main
and an operational
today. What unequiv-
serious game to help
aspirational identity. In
talking about issues
ideas: leanness, open-
framework to start
ocally represents us,
the participants in
this phase a lot of value
never raised before.
ness and inclusiveness.
working on solutions.
what motivates us and
describing and under-
was created. Based
The LSP technique
They refer respectively
what encourages us to
standing their shared
on research which
helped them to explore
to how people collab-
strive for the better.
group identity: Lego TM
shows that this kind
their mind, even their
orate,cocreate and
It can be characterized
Serious Play TM .
of handson, mindson
unconscious side, and
converse.
by values, for example,
learning produces a
to leverage also their
by technologies that
deeper, more mean-
unexpressed opinions
deeply define us, or
ingful understanding
and feelings.
INNOVATION SPACE
even by something that
IDENTITY
of the world and its
possibilities, the LSP
LEGO TM
SERIOUS PLAY TM
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Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
SOME DATA ABOUT ITERATION 0
2 3 15
DAYS
FACILITATORS PARTICPANTS
We then
continued to
feed the change by
The selected change
areas were three, and
for each of them a
The Change
Canvases and the
LSP method are “just”
The main result is
to have activated
this approach,
FINAL THOUGHTS
helping them extrap-
dedicated operating
techniques that can
enabling alignment,
olating some new
Change Canvas was
facilitate innovation
leveraging and
It is not just a matter of effectiveness
goals and we finally
built.
processes and improve
understanding diver-
of the most relevant methodologies, it
set up a strategic
The canvas encour-
business performance.
sity of perspectives
is a question of understanding a better
Change Canvas with a
ages change agents
What is fundamental,
and competences,
way to let value flow within a specific
consequently complete
to distil the change
though, is the ability
establishing a change
company, through learning and a new
change structure.
goal into a form that is
to start generating a
framework focused
level of people interactions. We need to
Initiatives for the
easy to communicate
new culture that we
on initial priorities
practice and develop the arts of collabo-
resolution of the
and, yet more impor-
could call an adaptive-
and adopting new
ration, cocreation and conversation.
problems identified
tant, easy to evolve or
ness culture.
evolutionary tools.
by each participant
even to throw away.
were grouped
collaboratively for
macro intervention
themes and evaluated
by utility/impact and
difficulties.
A NEW CULTURE
CHANGE
CANVAS
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Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
COOKING
IN OUR
LABS
For this first number, before bringing you news about what our Labs are doing, we’d just like to tell you what to expect from them.
And of course we’d start with what they are and what they do.
In the meanwhile, we are preparing a brand new part of our website dedicated to them, where you’ll be able to follow their work and
check out how we craft the value we bring to our customers to support and energize their evolution. Stay tuned!
Labs, what?
In short, the Cocoon Projects Labs are our own
innovation engine. New knowledge, mastery and
even new value proposition elements are developed
here.
They are open and voluntary structures, working
by specific processes designed for proactively
generating market-driven and high-quality value
proposition.
It’s in the CP Labs that entrepreneurs and professional
game-changers can express their best
contribution in the co-creation of the next Cocoon
Projects.
There are three different kinds of Labs for three
different kinds of value production:
Know-how Labs for the development of highlevel
professional know-how on specific topics
and practices;
Tools Labs for the generation of mastery in the
usage of official tools for customer projects;
X Labs for the introduction and testing of new
sustainable value proposition parts or complements
of the Cocoon Projects business model.
Ok, got it.
And what do they do?
The three kinds of Lab have some specific differences
in the way they work. Nevertheless all of
them share some traits, like the following ones:
Anybody who takes part to the Cocoon Projects
open governance, can launch a Lab.
Each Lab will be expression both of Cocoon
Project’s core values and of market-pulled needs
and opportunities, specifically incorporating
external requests, innovation trends and themes
and opportunities detected in the work with
customers.
Each Lab will produce different value exchange
activities more than once per year, such as insight
studies, hangouts, specific initiatives, participations
to external events, and more.
Stay tuned for the
publication of all the
active Labs and their work
at labs.cocoonprojects.com
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Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
JAM NEWS
A Cocoon Projects Jam happens twice per year, at the beginning of each half. It is the most important CP governance event,
open to all members and contributors and lasting two or three days. During the CP Jam we cocreate our direction for the next 6
months. Here below you can have a peek at our last Jam.
#CPJAM
@cosedapatsy
Are you prepared to be surprised? #cpjam weekend #2016h1
@PaulTolchinsky
@xSheRocksOn @CocoonPro @cosedapatsy cocoon on the
move, change in the wind!!!
@xSheRocksOn
Let’s make it happen! #CPJAM #2016H1 @CocoonPro
@rogerbrufau
@CocoonPro i wish stay here greetings from Barcelona see you
in next cpjam
@ShiverTweet
#CPjam on the go @CocoonPro. The brains party just got started!
#ohana #jaiho
@Eustressland
A real open space let’s start #Jam16 #2016H1 @CocoonPro
@emagorse
It could be the perfect wave! #cpjam #2016h1 @UpSiderTweet
@jacoporomei
Deep questions during @CocoonPro’s #CPJam
@ShiverTweet
Deep thanks to all those who showed they understand what
#ohana means @CocoonPro #CPjam
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Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
A WORD
ABOUT US
Cocoon Projects is a last generation company,
devoted to supporting innovation and fostering
real value creation in the world entrepreneurial
ecosystem. It’s been designed to be effective,
agile, open, fast and adaptive. Its Customers
are people and organisations in the need for
significant evolution within the scopes of
work methodologies, tools and techniques and/
or stakeholders end-to-end relationships.
Cocoon Projects’ governance system itself is
based on the Lean managements and Open
Collaboration principles. It constitutes a last
generation adaptive organisational model
called LiquidO TM that has already collected
high interest and direct interaction by some of
the most relevant international experts in the
enterprise and management innovation fields.
Cocoon Projects is thus involved first-hand in
the edge international efforts for the development
of methodologies and tools enabling the
systemic improvement of organisations.
And it is directly engaged on a regular base
by global networks of professionals in the
field, such as the European Organisation
Design Forum, the Stoos Network, the OuiShare
network, the Management Innovation
Exchange (MIX).
OPENNESS
Imagine the space of evolution
in these three dimensions.
A value of zero on all of
the three axes would fit
for a company from
the Fifties of the last
century.
Where is your organisation
today?
Where should it
be tomorrow?
LEANNESS
INCLUSIVENESS
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Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
These ongoing activities within the scopes of
Innovation, together with intense and continuous
field operations at the side of national
and international Customers highlight Cocoon
Projects as the ideal partner for those organisations
in search of sound experience within the
most core and relevant scopes of Innovation.
We believe this is the time for establishing
a whole new culture in the management of
today’s challenges for any organisation. And
we’re able to design and co-execute ad-hoc
evolutionary paths on all the vertical aspects
of this scenario.
The goal is to make this change
really happen.
ADAPTIVE
ORGANISATION
DESIGN
AGILE PROJECT
MANAGEMENT
ADAPTIVE
ORGANISATION
LEANNESS
SERVICE MODEL
DEVELOPMENT
CONTINUOS
IMPROVEMENT
WORKPLACE
EVOLUTION
In the evolution of work across
the three dimensions
of leanness, inclusiveness
and openness, we can
provide services
in these 9 different areas.
REAL TIME
STRATEGY
MAKING
INCLUSIVENESS
IT’S ALL ABOUT
PEOPLE
OPENNESS
REPUTATION
DEVELOPMENT
EXPERIENCE
DESIGN
IN
OPEN
NOVATION
CROWD-PLATFORMS
IMPLEMENTATION
IDENTITY
AND HERITAGE
EMPOWERING
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Cocooners - n° 0 - February 2016
MEET LIQUIDO
What is LiquidO
You might have heard of a new breed of organisational models, responding
to the fast growing adaptability, engagement and collaboration needs
within modern company structures. Or you might have simply experienced
the sound problems of slowness, rigidity, bureaucracy, disengagement
along with various kinds of waste and bottlenecks that “traditional”
organisational models generate and suffer nowadays.
This is what LiquidO TM is all about: the original “liquid organisation”
model for governance, born from direct experience within Cocoon
Projects and in use in a growing number of for profit and not-for-profit
organisations willing to get liquid.
Liquefying an organization means disrupting the industrial-age driven
assumptions on which rigid structures are designed and move on to make
it adaptive, dynamic and anti-fragile. Based on lean management and
open collaboration principles, the LiquidO TM model is fluid,
meritocratic and value-driven, enabling stigmergic
behaviour and “organic” effectiveness.
Why you would
want it in your
organisation
Rigidly structured organizations
cannot cope with the
current pace of innovation
and its complexity, let
alone exploit it. We need a
completely different mindset
and consequently new models.
And we need them to be simple
and people-centric.
This is exactly why LiquidO
was born.
1. Real-time adaptability.
The industrial age organisational approach, where
each area is defined as a restricted group of activities coherent
to one another, has its biggest limitations in the risk to fall in fragmented,
sealed administration and culture. As the company grows, so grows the
complex ramification, branching and costs of these models. Lack of
communication, heavy bureaucracy, disastrous efficiency.
COLLABORATIVE
WORKING BOARD
REPUTATION
TRACKING
The completely different perspective realized by LiquidO, in fact relying
on people and competences without fixed roles, provides an integrated
and adaptive business management scenario shifted to a systemic
approach, pragmatically meritocratic and inherently capable of real time
adaptability to any context. It’s just like water, some would say.
2. Better and faster information processing.
Hierarchies are a sound bottleneck both for decision making and competences
evolution. Too many info to process in order to succeed. Moreover,
on the other hand, the distance between where and how in the organization
strategies are created, and where and how they have to be executed
too often creates waste, lack of effectiveness or even complete failure.
Non-peer evaluation, silos and recruiting inefficiency are additional
heavy side-defects of an organizational design philosophy based on the
two illusions of control and predictability, and therefore actualized with
structural divisions between thinking and doing.
LiquidO is a viable and operational way to let all the brilliant people in
the company effectively emerge. Anybody can join each wave, surf it and
enrich it, so to say. And leveraging different viewpoints, backgrounds and
competences today is definitely critical to succeed in taking better and
faster decisions.
CONTRIBUTION
ACCOUNTING
COLLABORATIVE
DECISIONMAKING
3. Engagement and spontaneous leadership.
People are key in this picture. In fact, within
LiquidO everyone can decide whether to
join a process or not, try, and consequently
determine her level by fast
feedback loops from frequent and
specific peer-reviews driven by
the actual delivered value.
Besides a natural engagement
due to continuous feedback
and consequently improving
results, within this scenario
it’s really difficult to deny
emerging problems. Within
the old way of thinking the
organizations very often
conflicts, work overload, sense
of impotence, lack of decision
power, absence of endorsement,
unfair treatment and misalignments
are among the real causes of failures.
There is much more that can be done today, if
only we let go of control, predictability and rigidity.
LiquidO moves structures, processes and the organization
itself away from the center, where it is assumed that people have to adapt
to them, instead shifting the focus on people and truly empowering
them to dynamically find their maximum value creation spot within
the organization, expressing leadership effectively and without fear,
naturally growing and being rewarded for this.
Read the whole LiquidO whitepaper. It is available in
Creative Commons at liquidorganisation.info
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