I learned about bike-shedding at GDS. I've told a few organisations about it since, I think it's been useful.
I wrote about it for the Marketing Society:
"I was once in a meeting about a software project. It was like meetings I’d been in my whole life - aimless, drifting, pointless. Then suddenly one of the developers said “Hang on we’re bike-shedding”. “Ah yes” said another “we are”. The meeting immediately shifted gear. Decisions were quickly taken or dismissed and we all got back to work. I was a little shellshocked so I went back to my desk and googled “bike-shedding”. Reading that wikipedia entry was one of the things that convinced me that the practises of agile, user-centric software and web development will eventually displace those of most creative industries. “Bike-shedding” comes from a story by C. Northcote Parkinson (he of Parkinson’s Law). He tells the tale of a committee that has to approve the plans for a nuclear power station. Since they know very little about nuclear power stations they talk about it briefly and then just approve the recommendation put in front of them. Next they have to approve the plans for a bike shed. They all know about bike sheds. They’ve all seen one and used one. So they talk about the bike shed for hours, arguing about construction methods and paint choice and everything. This is why bike-shedding is also known as The Law of Triviality: “ members of an organisation give disproportionate weight to trivial issues”. I’m sure this observation is familiar to you. Most branding conversations seem, to me, to be one long bike-shedding session. It’s not so terrible, it’s human nature. The difference is that software people have identified and named the pattern. That naming is an organisational hack that allows them to break out of it and get on with something more useful. (See also: Fredkin’s Paradox)"
As I say above, it seems to me that most conversations about 'branding' drift into bike-shedding pretty quickly.
Then, the other week, I was preparing for a panel I'm going to be on and I thought I remind myself of some history, so I dug out John Murphy's book about Interbrand and the weekend when he invented brand valuation. It's a great read.
And I was reminded of a story from the beginning of the book, a naming project he did while at Dunlop. He recommended the name Denovo and then recounts the story of his boss telling him about the meeting:
"...He then expanded on how the decision had been taken. He told me that the Dunlop Pirelli Union, which was still nominally in existence, was proving so disastrous that Dunlop was having to write down its huge investment in Pirelli to zero. The extraordinary board meeting had been called to write-off hundreds of millions of pounds, possibly £5 billion or so at current values. He told me that the special board meeting had lasted for two hours and that the board had taken five minutes to write off the hundreds of millions and one hour and fifty-five minutes to approve the choice of the name Denovo.
My business idea was born."
Interbrand, the company that coined the word 'branding' (in a non-cattle context) and invented brand valuation, sprang from a textbook 'brand-shedding' session. Nice.