Stretching the envelope is a term that test pilots use when they fly an aircraft beyond the limits of its performance envelope – which specifies the maximum speed at which it’s designed to fly, how hard you can wrench it around corners and so on – to see if any bits fall off.

It’s also the name I give to one of the idea generation techniques I introduce on a technique card in my Mindworks Approach (now available entirely online, incidentally: click the Products and Services tab).

The way it works is simply to take an idea and to attempt to push it to its limits to see what happens.  An example of this is something that occurred to me in connection with Explore China (use the search box to find references below).  I’m not going to say what the idea was, because I’d like to research it first, but it would involve some rather impressive technology.

However, a point that’s worth noting is that some new ideas need to be introduced gently.  I mentioned the thought that had occurred to me to someone who may well be reading this, and he looked at me with a nervous smail.  ‘Andrew’ he may or may not have been thinking ‘has finally lost it’.

But the idea is technically perfectly feasible, if a bit audacious and is would certainly need lots of cooperation from various organisations.  It grabbed my imagination, though: I could picture it happening, exactly how it would look and sound and how I would feel if it was happenning.  If we could do it, it would be quite something.

However, in mentioning the idea I’d indulged in something that’s sometimes called called ‘premature revelation’.  It’s not entirely unrelated to ‘premature evaluation’ (the term I coined for evaluating ideas too soon which is on one of my Meeting Cards).  It would have been much better to find out whether it’s at all possible to set it all up first and only then drop it casually into the conversation.

The chances are approximately 98.5% against it being possible, but at least I now have both a ‘vision’ and a target (0% against) More on that story, one way or the other, later.

In the meantime,  In about three hours from now, I’m going to jump on a train with our son, Sam, and our bikes and head for the glorious city of Bath.  We’ll then cycle back to Newbury along the Kennet and Avon canal which I videoed for this post.

Thanks to Google Maps, you can see the start of our cycle ride here – the point at which the man-made Kennet and Avon meets the River Avon is in the lower right, on the opposite bank to the railway station at which we’ll arrive – assuming the railway system is working – at 10.30.  If you feel so inclined, you can drag the map in ‘satellite’ view (they use aerial photos, not satellite images) all the way along the canal to the point at which I made the earlier video which is here.

I’m planning to video some of the hightlights of our trip and will post a short You Tube of some of the innovations we encounter on our way after we get back.  It will be 28C out there for much of the trip, but the route – apart from one rather astonishing hill which I’ll video – is, of course, pretty much flat.  It’s tough work, this management consultancy, but someone has to do it.

The title of this post is taken from a section of Clay Sharkey’s ‘Here Comes Everybody – the power of organizing without organizations’ which I mentioned that I was reading when the creative binge (see this from wikipedia) that resulted in ‘Explore China‘ (and some other exciting things) started just over a month ago.

In the section in question, Sharkey makes a point which is very relevant to my last post.  He argues that the reason that the Battle of France turned out the way it did was not because the Germans had better tanks than the French.  According to Sharkey, the French tanks were actually superior to the Panzers.  But the German tanks were equipped with radios, unlike those of the opposition.  This meant that the minds of the German tank commanders were networked together and they could adapt to changing circumstances much more effectively than the French, who had to stick to a pre-arranged plan.

An interesting point in the wikipedia article on the Battle of France is the claim that one of the German commanders, Guedarian, later said that he’d pretty much invented the idea of Blitzkreig during the battle.  Another well known military commander, Dwight D Eisenhower, was once asked how important plans were in the successful execution of battles.  He replied ‘plans are nothing, planning is everything’.  He meant, of course, that if you think hard about all aspects of a situation you’re much better equipped to exploit opportunities that arise and deal with unforseen problems.  The ‘plan’ becomes irrelevant.  This suggests that Sharkey’s heading should be ‘Replacing Plans with Coordination’, not planning.

I do hope, therefore, that none of the management consultants who are being paid £3bn a year (or were, in 05/06) to do work for the public sector, are writing plans for their clients.  As Eisenhower could have told them, plans developed like this would be pretty much worthless.

Incidentally, my late father once told me a story about a meeting he’d been at when he worked at SHAPE, near Mons in Belgium.  The team of engineers finished their meeting discussing a trip one of them was due to take to Paris.  A German member of the team said it had once taken him four days to drive from Belgium to Paris.  He had made the journey by tank.