Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Incentives do Work: Some Lessons from Crowdfunding

How people make decisions is a topic of constant study and reflection. Alone and together. For example, I've wondered when do individuals make better decisions than teams? Do people do what they in their process? Or is the process rigged to back the decision with data post-hoc?

I wrote an entire series of articles to zoom in and out of when and how people use information in marketing. Behavior is often automatic, and also cultural. Words have the power to persuade and close a sale, before anyone has reasoned on the details.

When researchers analyzed 45,000 Kickstarter projects, they found that positive words and expressions that communicate confidence, experience, and achieve emotional resonance work. Success follows a pattern.

Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler says that the success of their platform is based on people appreciating how a person, not a corporation or a VC-backed entity, is working to make something. There is a real appreciation for the spirit of wanting to make something.

Still, projects get funded based on several variables.

 

First a look at projects that rocked it

Exploding Kittens killed it in games. Raised $8,782,571 with a modest $10,000 goal. Three friends, one idea. Boom. The game's simplicity is likely part of its success. Five people play until they draw all the exploding kitten cards and only one remains the winner.  

Elan Lee, former game designer for Xbox, and friends Matthew Inman (cartoonist), Shane Small (Marvel and Xbox) decided to make a simple card game for weekend fun together. Then they took it to Kickstarter to see if it could be something other people enjoyed. They did. Hollywood came calling, too.

Other games like Fidget Cube and Kingdom Death Monster 1.5 did well by multiples of their respective funding goals of $15,000 and $100,000. The Cube raised $6,465,690, the Monster raised $12,393,139.

Design is another category that does well. Snapmaker's 3D printer 2.0 raised $7,850,866 from a goal of $100,000. WobbleWorks raised $3.9 million for their in two campaigns for the 3Doodler  with a posted goal of $60,000. Peak Design raised $32 million in 9 projects, each with a goal of around $500,000. The travel tripod was its most successful.

Fun and enjoyment are good allies in funding games. Established communities help a lot in design and technology. But what about categories that impact social good?

 

Using the right incentives

As I was researching successful campaigns, I came across a University of Bath study of more than 8,000 crowdfunding projects. Researchers found that what drive people to fund is self-interest. First tell me how the product works (and how easy it is to use), then I can consider how it saves the planet.

Talking too much about social or environmental benefits detracts from talking about the project’s goals. “A moderate emphasis on pro-social framing is beneficial but too much emphasis can backfire.” Here's another study on technology and design projects that confirms the finding.

Self-interest, properly understood, can help you make headway.

You can sweeten the pot. For example, increasing the affiliate percentage to influencers. Here's a team that raised as much money in the last two hours as they did in the previous 6. A lot more work went into broadening the audience and reaching out to people. This team was a few dollars from the goal and the danger was non funding.

But what if you can't have all hands on deck and put creative caps on last minute? Could incentives work in funding public goods?

Alex Tabarrok is testing an interesting theory: refund bonuses. Introduce them to pay out only if the project doesn't reach the threshold. He says:

The Kickstarter contract is useful but it’s still easy for a good project to fail because there are many equilibria with non-funding. For example, if I think that you won’t contribute then I may decide not to contribute and if I don’t contribute then you may decide not to contribute. Neither of us can do better by contributing, given the other person is not-contributing, and so non-contributing is a Nash equilibrium (see my talk at the Foresight Institute for more details).

Hence self-interest kicks in. Say I think you won't contribute, I will to grab the refund bonus. Likely, you and others do the same. The mechanism at play: reverse social pressure. Here's what the early experiment found:

1. No bonus = only ~30% of socially valuable projects succeed vs. about 50% to 50- 60% success with bonus (regardless of the amount).
2. More people contribute early, pushing the number up. To the point where additional contributions make sense to individual self-interest for the public good, pushing funding over the threshold.
3. Some refund bonuses do get paid out. But raising the overall success rate makes the incremental cost worth it.

As someone pointed out in the comments, Kickstarter does have a similar mechanism to create incentive for early funders.

 

Applying incentives in your work

Commissions and referral fees are not a new thing. In some companies, employees receive a referral fee when making a successful recommendation. Terms do apply. Recruitment firms have percentage-based fees for retainer, contingency, and contract placements. Percentages vary. 

In the marketing world, agencies typically pay between 5 and 10 percent of the revenue they receive. With the higher end more common than the lower. Some pay nothing. Also, there's usually a 12-month cap. Some agencies have a stepped approach: higher the first year, then decreasing. The costs in many cases compare to those of outbound leads.

Referral fees can also create good mutual incentives. Instead of percentages, you could offer a fixed per project amount. Or issue a credit, if the referral came from someone with whom you do business.

What you need to think about is tradeoffs:

• Compare sales commissions and referrals, consider the service component of each. What's your profit margin post-sale?
• Consider length of the sales process from referral date. Did the project come after one or six months?
• Decide when the fee gets paid. Wait until after you get paid? Is this a recurring service? Should you use a payment schedule? How do you handle money-back guarantees?

You could also decide to increase the amount you pay based on the number of referrals. There's lots of room to experiment. Also with payment form. For example, some consider “in kind” useful and appropriate to their situation. You can get creative.

I got paid referrals by colleagues, even with no formal or written agreement in place. Virginie Glaenzer and I are splitting in half the proceeds of the workshops we're running on Emerging Co-Creation. Its fitting with the purpose of co-creation. We're colleagues within this (and perhaps future) project(s).

Internet-native organizations can include a way to apportion payment based on contribution. David Hoffman on Digital Organizations (DO):

are collections of like-minded people with like-minded goals, that work together to make progress towards those goals. Unlike typical employment, DO’s don’t make you sign employment contracts and become exclusively committed to them.

DO members are free to fluidly move between DOs, contributing their skills wherever they fit. Rather than rigid, vertical corporate structures, DO work could resemble a flat mesh network of organizations. Interestingly, it’s likely that many DOs will share a significant amount of the same members.

These organizations allow people to contribute to several projects. If you work at a progressive company, you could be holding a traditional job and do specialized work at some stages of a project. The creator economy is experimenting on different formats.

Tina He writes about Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs):

DAOs can become a meta-layer on top of the idea exchanges of the world — a second home for those eager to make strides towards their goals, and know that the way to get there is not by oneself, but in a collective.  

The Internet challenged the idea of a “place.”

 

Lifting all boats

There's a lot more to explore than just remote work.

As I've been consulting in the last few years, I continued to talk to companies about roles I found intriguing. Not a single company proposed or agreed to a paid project to get to know each other. Instead, they went through protracted and expensive processes.  Time, attention, energy, and often lack of work (and results) badly needed. These are costs nobody measures. But they could kill momentum.

Not even companies that brand progressive and digital native take initiative on test projects. Why not? You get a completed project that was due yesterday, because that's typically when the requisition for the job comes. And someone earns a fair fee for their involvement.

It sure beats requiring free strategy work that helps nobody. Except it demonstrates lack of empathy on the person who thinks this is a good idea. Execution is critical. So, again, a bit of a waste isn't it?

A note on side projects. Working on side projects makes you more valuable to a company, not less. It's fascinating to me how companies view volunteer work differently than work compensated by someone else. Especially in a non-competitive activity. For example, authoring a book or a blog that earns some funds.

Much opportunity remains untapped. Most of the time the capitals and engines to turn them into money are wrong. But there's no excuse for being more creative with what we have right now. How we think about value is limiting. This is the new energy crisis.

 

The Connection Between Narrative and Culture

“Economics has re-discovered the power of folklore: the themes in world folktales are linked to current culture.” Professor Ethan Mollick shared a recent study that exemplified this core concept.

Cultures with stories where tricksters are punished are trusting; stories where men dominate have more gender bias; stories of risk rewarded have more entrepreneurship.

These are the findings of a working paper by Stelios Michalopoulos and Melanie Meng Xue. They found that those patterns hold across groups, countries, and second-generation immigrants. The myths at the origin of the collective imagination are at the root cause of success or failure.

It makes sense as narratives are the central building blocks of societies. Stories have power. They help people remember what matters. Hence why if you want to change the outcome, you change the story.

 

Using conversation as a tool

What's fascinating about the study is that the authors use oral tradition to shed light on a group's cultural heritage. The analysis relies on a rich catalogue of thousands of motifs across 958 world societies: the lifetime work of eminent anthropologist and folklorist Yuri Berezkin.

This they link to the Ethnographic Atlas (EA) created by George Peter Murdock (1967), taking into account the uneven coverage of groups. Using the degree of political complexity and the presence of high gods, the researchers identify gaps in the ethnographic record.

As they explain, one can use folklore to quantify the extent of the pre-industrial market economy. The motifs above are the key themes used in the study. Tricksters are a common archetype in oral tradition and their stories exemplify trust. 

How societies portray challenges and competition is a clue to their risk-taking appetite. Stereotypes address questions of gender and power.

These folklore-based measures of historical attitudes are robust predictors of contemporary values and economic choices. Folks that grew up listening to stories where tricksters often fail to deceive their victims are more trusting and prosperous today.

Groups with oral traditions rich with heroes who successfully tackle challenging situations tend to display more appetite for risk and appear more entrepreneurial. Societies whose folklore portrays females as less dominant, more submissive, and more likely to engage in domestic affairs than males tend to relegate their women to inferior roles in their communities, both historically and today.

These patterns hold across countries, second-generation immigrants, and ethnic groups, suggesting that folklore may be one of the vehicles via which norms are intergenerationally transmitted.

A society's culture informs a company's culture. What people say in the hallways and between meetings is often telling. Beliefs and attitudes have a bearing on energy and results. Conversation is a great tool to uncover what's going on.

 

How does change happen in culture?

Culture develops over larger time horizons. It's a reflection of a society's or group orientation. Like the market, collective attention determines what people carry forward. Hence the prevailing narratives. 

Some see change as the result of influence by a group of outsiders. Moneyball, Liar's Poker, and Flash Boys and The Big Short all tackle the common theme of “outsiders with innovative ideas who find astonishing success.” Michael Lewis on Fresh Air:

“Everybody [on Wall Street] was working with the same set of facts about subprime mortgage lending — about how subprime mortgage loans were turned into bonds and repackaged and turned into CDOs and so on and so forth.

[And] the vast majority of the people in the markets took those facts and painted one kind of picture with it; it was a very pleasant picture. And a very small handful of people took the same facts and painted a completely different kind of picture with it. [I wanted to find out] 'What is it that enables [the people who bet against the market] to paint that picture?' and 'Why do these people look at the world differently?' ”

They “were able to see the failures of the market before the rest of the world did because they viewed the world differently.” Diversity of thinking is part of it. This is leverage. And likely inspiration for copycats. The harbinger of future change? Change that will stick?

I have another theory of change. There's no change without work. And there is no work without energy. You have to constantly replace money and products just to stay in the game. Because they lose value quickly. And each time there's a little less energy in the system.

Culture doesn't lose value through use. It's more stable. You can draw from it. Step into real culture and you feel it. The environment supports you. You can produce ideas. There's accountability for facts and lies. People invest in things that have more value.

It does start with a story. But the story has to reflect the reality to draw from it. Not just be utopia.

Culture is dynamic and ever changing. It contains multitudes. As so it should. Because so do individuals and thus groups. Simple constructs like the idea that we can manage change seduce us.  The truth is that more often than not, we're called to understand and explain it.

 

Why we Need More of the Right Kind of Books

I love books. The ones I've read, and the ones I'd love to read.

Reading is a form of freedom. Libraries and bookstores are some of my favorite places in the world. Growing up, we had a library of 5,000 books in the house—so much possibility. Right at a point in my life when I also had the time. Though there's always time for good books.

Lately, I started reaching out to people who I think should write one. Because we seem to miss the books we could really use. Whenever I come across a substantive body of thought—usually in a blog or a podcast—I reach out to the author to inquire about books on the topic.

And often the books I find on the subject fall short. They don't cover the theory well. Or they precipitate too quickly into tactical application. Before the thesis was fully formed. I tend to stir clear of self-help material and “how to” stuff. There's the web for that. There are videos.

Books are for entering new worlds. My sweet spot are good conversation books. That is books that make me think, and that could hold a conversation with me.

I start with who's writing. How they see the world, their voice. Who, and then what. Why comes later. Even with fiction, I'm a serial reader. Tana French, Ann Cleeves, Elly Griffiths are some favorites. At some point I realized that mystery books by women are much more difficult to figure out. Good for thinking.

I read select non fiction. I've loved Maria Konnikova's The Biggest Bluff. From the motivation for writing the book, to the quest of learning to manage herself, to the stories. She put a ton of value in the book. Because she did the work. I enjoyed Matt Ridely's books. Hence I also look at who and what he's reading.

As for the people I'm chasing to write books...

I'm hoping at some point my dear friend and colleague Peter Tunjic publishes a book on his theory of capitals. We've been talking about his ideas and work for the better part of twenty years. His theory has had a great influence in my work. And I'd love to have it all in one place.

Recently I came across Jonathan Cook's work on ritual design. I listened to and read two years of his podcast, cover to cover. Then I went on to all of his articles. When I was done, I reached out to him to ask when he's planning to publish. His work and Peter's are what I call foundational.

Foundational work opens the door to a new paradigm.

Big ideas. New stories. They require deeper thinking—for the author and the reader. They did the work. You do the work reading. Hence the transfer of value. These are the books that stay with you. That you go back to and re-read. The theory holds. The energy flows.

Publishing is a business. And many contemporary books read a bit formulaic. Speaking is similar. A keynote who's able to transmit energy and inspiration is worth gold. But event organizers obsess over tactical advice.

Have you noticed that once money takes center stage it sucks the energy out of the space? This is why humanity takes centuries to discover the value it has right under its nose. Starting with the person.

So this is me making the case for discovering and publishing more of the right kind of books. Someone has to take a chance on people with no huge social media following, no controversy, or gimmick. These are people busy doing the work, not getting likes and raising hell.

 

Telling the books by their focus

Having said all that, I've spotted a couple of books that look promising. I don't judge books by their cover. But I do by their focus. These are in the near future. And I haven't read them. But I've heard a conversation with the author for one, and the second came highly recommended by someone whose work I respect.

The premise of Ron Carucci's To Be Honest: Lead with the Power of Truth, Justice and Purpose is that value is in being who you say you are. He's done a ton of research to find the elements of culture that help companies close the gap between intention and behavior. He says honesty is a capability. You can develop it.

In a recent podcast, he talks about four key elements in culture that encourage the development of this capability in culture:

1. Clear identity—in my work I've also found that often companies that do not recognize who they are cannot tell a good story. Words promise, actions follow through. 
2. Accountability—yes, please. Taking responsibility seems to have gone out of fashion. Yet, it's crucial to demonstrating competence, one of the pillars of trustworthiness.
3. Governance—it supports infrastructure and commerce. Because it's slower to change, it has more power.
4. Cross-functional relationships—companies need to support bridging the seams between groups. the intersection of functions is where value goes to die. When you fragment the company, you fragment the truth. Fragmentation is a reality in society, but also in our self. Hence our process for understanding problems is broken.

Thought also tricks us. “Any real change in presentation is a change of being,” says physicist David Bohm. It produces an internal change as response. When it's not genuine, it's mis-representation and we should approach the people who are under its spell as victims. 

Canucci's book releases in the U.S. May 25.

As I wait for Jonathan Cook's book on ritual design, Gillian Tett has written a book on Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business and Life. Anthropology is the study of human culture. Anthropologists train to understand humans in past and present societies. Firms like IDEO have long employed people trained in the discipline to focus on innovation. 

Tett's book is out on June 8.

 

Can we Make Transformation Natural?

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a translator. From parent to sisters talk was my first interpreting work. Then it was from teenager to mother. Not just language. Turning ideas into things was a favorite. But also creating experiences.

I've had several careers. After the jobs above. Simultaneous interpreter and translator for neurological development. That's where I picked up the strong foundation of what makes humans work... and what doesn't. Marketing, communications, strategy, creative, product in five industries all followed. With considerable overlap. Coaching and advising evolved from there.

Transitions were much easier early on. Almost natural. My work evolved from the compound effects of hands-on learning on the job. I want to keep going. Yet, I somehow sense that the protracted pandemic has created a situation where people must fit into boxes.

I don't. Never did. Even as a small baby. I found ways to get out of the playpen. So, I've been wondering about this. It's a dilemma. Because I think right now we need people who can truly connect disparate domains for strategic development.

And to fix what we've broken. Growth via exploitation got us where we are. With control issues, and diminishing energy. Where value is only one kind. Exploration can put us back into balance. As humans, we need a bit of both.

Hence my question.

 

Can we make transformation natural?

I'm taking the temperature here. In a recent interview with (I'm told the last issue, pity) Departure print magazine, Stanley Tucci says, “In the food of every country is the story of that country.” And its culture of transformation. It all depends on your appetite.

Movie critics found The Devil Wears Prada and Julie & Julia shallow. That's too bad. Plus who cares? They are not the ones in the arena. I found out so much about human nature from both. With the added bonus of the winning duo Meryl Streep / Stanley Tucci. She makes everyone better. He makes everyone interesting.

Food. Yes, I'm in favor. We can learn a lot about natural transformation from food. Michael Polian wrote an excellent book turned into a Netflix docuseries. Cooked: a Natural History of Transformation is not just how humans evolved. It's also necessary to reclaim our health.

The book talks about how cooking involves us in a web of social and ecological relationships. Cooking, above all, connects us. Cue in images of grandmothers making cappelletti from scratch (mine), husbands making their favorite meal (looking at your, Rand), kids helping bake cookies, that scene in Eat, Pray, Love where they're eating outside and talking in Rome.

I love baking. It's more of an exact discipline. Once you get a system down, you're golden. By the way, a baker took exception to some of the science behind bread-making in the book. The lacto bacteria is already is the wheat. The only objection anyone raised, that I know.

Cooking is creative, it reconnects us as a whole person, and gives us the opportunity to support the people we love.

“Our society assigns us a tiny number of roles: We're producers of one thing at work, consumers of a great many things all the rest of the time, and then, once a year or so, we take on the temporary role of citizen and cast a vote. Virtually all our needs and desires we delegate to specialists of one kind or another - our meals to the food industry, our health to the medical profession, entertainment to Hollywood and the media, mental health to the therapist or the drug company, caring for nature to the environmentalist, political action to the politician, and on and on it goes. Before long it becomes hard to imagine doing much of anything for ourselves - anything, that is, except the work we do "to make a living." For everything else, we feel like we've lost the skills, or that there's someone who can do it better... it seems as though we can no longer imagine anyone but a professional or an institution or a product supplying our daily needs or solving our problems.”

And of course:

“When chopping onions, just chop onions.”

Who could forget that eye-watering scene in Julie & Julia where Tucci finds Streep elbow-deep in onion-chopping. The greatest part of cooking is the ability to soak in the history of food in a country and pass it on. With some constraints, like the ingredients, temperature, time, etc.

Constraints are useful for creativity. But also when dealing with complexity. Dave Snowden has long been an observer of natural science. He applies what he's learned to people and systems. Constraints allow us to create sustainable practices.

Language is a useful constraint. The words we use to define things should be the language by which we change things. From description to intervention. Describe the present, see what you can change. A more natural way to transformation.

 

The end is never easy

Of a project, as a career. A relationship, but also of a habit.

Can you imagine alternating your story with that of other people naturally? We all strive do make an impression, leave a mark, make things better. I like the third expression over the other two. They imply some act of vandalism.

Death is the ultimate transformation. We don't talk about it much. People die somewhere else. In hospitals, mostly. And away from the family and loved ones. In this past year, we've managed to make even death data-driven. To the point that it's hard to imagine actual persons.

Rachel Clark's loving account of her patients' stories and her own highlights the importance of human connection. Dear Life is a reminder that death is part of life. And we can have the same degree of care, compassion, and love for that phase as we have for others.

It's a reading to approach with emotional fortitude. I could not have read it after my father died. A day after he was put in a sterile hospital room with a stranger. It would have been useful before. But the experience of being there with him changed me. How I talk about death and prepare for it has changed. There's pain involved. Letting go. We're so attached to life.

This passage in the book is especially touching:

“If there is a difference between people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it is simply this: that the terminally ill know their time is running out, while we live as though we have all the time in the world. Their urgency propels them to do the things they want to do, reach out to those they love, and savor the moments of life still left to them. In a hospice, therefore, there is more of what matters – more love, more strength, more kindness, more smiles, more dignity, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion – than you could ever imagine. I work in a world that thrums with life. My patients teach me all I need to know about living.”

If only, right? So much of our behavior makes no sense when you look at this kind of transformation. Because “there is nothing more important than another human presence, old fashioned, instinctive, love and tenderness towards one of our own.”

The end is never easy. Even for companies.

 

But all is not lost

The “cult of efficiency” predates World War II. Technology just added the existing culture. Yet, we can't be more productive by treating persons like machines. I've hated the 'lean in' philosophy from the moment it went mainstream.

Celeste Headlee says, Do Nothing, instead. Well, not literally. Given how we've just recently confirmed that our idea of change always involves adding something, doing nothing is design thinking for the obsessive-productive person.

“The truth is, productivity is a by-product of a functional system, not a goal in and of itself. The question is not whether you are productive but what you are producing.”

Research find that subtraction often beats addition.

“We work best when we allow for flexibility in our habits. Instead of gritting your teeth and forcing your body and mind to work punishing hours and “lean in” until you reach your goals, the counterintuitive solution might be to walk away. Pushing harder isn’t helping us anymore.”

The blog is my one online writing tool. For note-taking and thinking, I still use mechanical pencil and paper notebooks. Fabriano. Because they're the perfect size, paper, and binding for me. Mastering different tools can get in the way of mastering rigorous thinking, lead to cognitive overload.

The book pulls together threads from history, neuroscience, social science, and even paleontology. I especially enjoyed the history of work part. England is often a reference. Most people owned some land in the Middle Ages.

My family was quite poor for generations. Though I do have some uncles and cousins who own land. It's a beautiful thing. Vineyards, open space. I've come to appreciate the attachment to a patch, a space to put your roots down.

Yes, we can wake up and smell the garlic. But what we need is a cultural shift. Our desire to belong is driving the choices of many. Even when they're not good for us. We really do much better when we're rested, invest in quality idle time, and are honest about what we can accomplish, when.

Recently, I came across the short blog entry where my mother wrote about bringing home her new puppy thirteen years ago. What joy she describes! Quality of life comes from our creativity, social connections, our ability for reflection, and the capacity for joy.

They're not on the spreadsheet, but they're transformational.

 

Vendoring in Culture

I read a lot of other people's writing. I recommend it, especially in the form of good books. One of the unspoken rules of many writers is that you don't blackbox something if you don't need to. Writers quote authors—a dependency—for efficiency, not ignorance.

In my case, you can assume I've read at least one of their works for context on their thought process.

But in writing, as in thinking, you can also copy someone else's idea and modify it for a different purpose. The work you do to reframe a concept allows you to get a deeper understanding of how it works. Or to see its limits. Just like in a conversation.

For this thought, my dependency is Tom MacWright's excellent piece on vendor by default. If you're looking for a way into how engineers and programmers think, it's a good short article to read.

The concept of vendoring can apply to culture. It involves responsibility, and the willingness to incorporate the new idea as a seed into your thinking. Alan Jacobs suggests this is a way to do “moral repair through vendoring code.” His light bulb went off after reading a short article about what is possible by Robin Sloan.

You can only correct something by making it your own. I'd like to extend and expand on this concept.

 

Making “it” your own

Reading a lot and thinking about what you read creates capacity. Capacity is how you're able to absorb things in your mind. But then repair in the form of rethinking, asking better questions, and/or upgrading code has to be there.

Jacobs says:

When the original is healthier, and stronger, the relation can be more equal and more constructively reciprocal. But even when the original code is destructive, even when it’s a kind of cultural malware, it can seed the act of repair — the act of repair that goes far beyond repair.

A seed is helpful.

As a child raised on the Montessori principles in a family of very modest means, I didn't want toys. I loved listening to people talk and explain things from a very early age. It was convenient, as I spent most of my time exploring environments physically. Climbing on furniture when trees where not available. And giving my mother a fright!

My preference was for making things. On the rare occasion when I did receive toys, I would immediately break them down to see how they worked. This is a good method to see things to their limits. It's a good path to making things your own. Soon, I was building things from parts.

Other people made the parts, but the new thing was my own.

 

Capacity vs. capability

At some point in my career, I worked with an ex-McKinsey CEO. He talked often about capacity and capabilities. Capacity is what you have right now. Capability is the highest level you can achieve. Think capacity as something you hold, capability as potential.

A person, company, or society can have the capacity to change, but may lack key capabilities to do it. Existing capacity has time, energy, and money constraints. You could figure out how to do something new easily, or be confident in acquiring new capabilities.

Many companies hold on to existing capacity. Reducing it when the market contracts. Building capabilities has become the responsibility of individuals. When the market expands, some rebuild capacity.

Capacity is what gets you in the door. Some companies have the capacity to see what makes you better at your job—skills and traits you have. Few consider mindset—how you adapt and learn new things. Even fewer look at your resilience and understanding of purpose. You'd figure these out through behavior, not personality tests.

Passion, purpose, values, and curiosity are the inputs that make up culture.

 

Vendoring in culture

Existing company culture has stabilized. It doesn't change that often, and when it does, it's minor. But the value it got from it's commercial cycles last year or even a few months ago, doesn't apply as well.

You also have patterns in the processes and rules that are probably impossible to remove. And they hold you back. Also, if your company is using a lot of third-party dependencies—as in what others are doing—you're probably inhering their bugs, too.

On the other hand, vendoring means you take responsibility for fixing what's wrong. Analysis of existing culture precedes the production of new things. Because you can only correct something after you've made it your own.

Vendoring is a concept that implies a certain opening. When you apply it to culture, it's an opening of the mind. Perhaps, like me, you're thinking that open equals good. It does wonders for creativity. Comedian John Cleese says:

the open mode, is relaxed… expansive… less purposeful mode… in which we're probably more contemplative, more inclined to humor (which always accompanies a wider perspective) and, consequently, more playful.

It's a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play, and that is what allows our natural creativity to surface.

An open mind is more receptive to new things. It's a pathway to adapting, and pursuing potential. This is how you build capabilities. But we also need a closed mode to get things done. So it's not either/or.

When the rate of change is too high in mainstream culture, the safer bet becomes dependency. It's too expensive in energy terms to think independently. I'm wondering how much in culture right now is dependency, rather than vendoring.

 

* Alan Jacobs is the author of How to Think.

Want to Make an Impact? Prepare and Do.

“You are what you do, not what you say you'll do.”

— Carl Jung

 

Want to make an impact? Connect with your mind and examine your consciousness.

Every other option becomes an act of vandalism or hubris rather quickly in the modern sense of the word.# For many involved in knowledge work, professional services, or even technology, an actual exchange of value is hard to measure beyond the immediate. But there's a way to prepare for and build over time.

Put into this context, it's not obvious you could translate impact into positive effect, influence, or change quickly. But that's what most of us think we intend for “impact,” and want. This kind of impact comes down to good decision-making.

 

Explaining what's going on

Of course, not all decisions are created equal. What flavors in my gelato doesn't have the same weight as which ingredients. This is something people with food allergies know well. So the question needs precision: what flavors in sorbetto?

All decisions are like this, they have different layers to them. But it's easier to see them as either/or rather than “it depends.” If you don't practice seeing beyond the surface—for example, by putting yourself in someone else's shoes, even hypothetically—you miss the layers.

You can make good decisions by going after the relevant information. That's why it helps to try and explain what's going on. Even better if from the outside looking in. Know too little, and you won't be able to; know too much and you'll get bogged down in the details and might miss the point... or the timing of it.

Also, watch out for what you measure: number of flavors is tactical, enjoyment without indigestion or worse is strategic. So by all means track the small things (metrics), but keep an eye on the big ones, like direction toward your goal (KPIs).

Thinking in layers is useful to expand options and keep people at the center of decisions.

 

Expanding options

Catalent's late-stage and commercial product launch site in Anagni is preparing to distribute the Covid-19 vaccine in Europe on behalf of AstraZeneca. This is a plant that had an uncertain future two short years ago. Bristol Myers Squibb had decided to sell.

General Manager Barbara Sambuco and a small number of her staff had been informed of the future sale.# Sambuco and her small team had a short window of opportunity to involve a sociologist and work together to take stock and enhance the skills of the plant and the people.

The idea was not only to build capacity—equipment and resources—but also capabilities—so they would know how to apply the resources in times of crisis. That time was the upcoming sale. Imagine if they had envisioned a pandemic! They called the project “vocation.”

For about a year of their two-year sale notice they involved a group of middle managers—key people within the company. With them, they talked, constructed the values ​​uniting the company, and drew up goals to guide everyone.

Then the plant organized two big events for the entire staff. The first was a game. Seven hundred people put themselves to the test while having fun. Thanks to the playful expedient they were able to share and convey the values ​​developed with the managers.

The second event was an internal hackathon: about three hundred people from the plant participated, including workers, analysts, engineers, etc. It was designed to highlight the things people wanted to bring into the new reality and those they wanted to leave behind.

You can't just announce an acquisition and wing it. That's where vandalism and hubris come in dressed as impact. Instead, they put a lot of thought and work in training the people at the Anagni plant. When executives announced the sale, the staff were ready to face the challenge. It was a shock, but they were ready to go to work.

This decision to communicate and construct together was fundamental. It helped leaders understand the preparation people needed and the role they could play in the transition. People are not goods, you don't just move them here and there in a spreadsheet sort. In Anagni they felt part of the transition.

“Without this work it was unthinkable to be able to sell a plant with the support of the trade unions, with no strike days, and with absenteeism that remained below 3%,” says Sambuco. “This is work I am proud of.” And so she should be. I've seen enough mergers and acquisitions that did not reach a fraction of their potential in my career to know the power of layers in decision-making.

Catalent is a company that supplies more than 70 billion pharma, biopharma, and consumer health products to market to 80+ countries in 5 continents. And now, the Anagni plant has a key role to play in the European vaccine rollout.

Management decisions involved many layers and time. But they got the plant were it needed to be to execute.

 

Embodying execution

Whenever we see a gap between what we intended and what happened, it's easy enough to explain mistakes away. But we're often blind to them when we let the presentation of our claims paper over those gaps in execution.

Not enough executives feel embarrassed when they overstate impact.# That's a shame, because execution is all about embodying the work. And embodiment is all about being prepared to see, feel, and experience.

Five years ago, I noted how 80,000 Hours put together a list of simple steps on how to choose. A career is their context, but you could adapt these points to many kinds of decisions. We don't do enough of number 1 and 3, and often overlook number 5 and 6:

1. Focus mainly on taking a good next step, not figuring out a precise long-term plan.
2. Write out your most important priorities for the decision.
3. Brainstorm extra options. Most people consider too few.
4. Rank your options.
5. Write out your key uncertainties.
6. Go and investigate your key uncertainties. Many people try to figure out their career from the armchair, when often it would be better to go and speak to people or try things.
7. Do your final ranking. Assess your options based on your priorities, and ask yourself why you might be wrong. Don’t just go with your gut.
8. Make your best guess.

Trying things could include becoming an apprentice. I'm a huge fan of gaining some practice by doing things yourself. In much knowledge work, you cannot opine your way into knowing. It takes doing the work to understand how seemingly simple things are complex, or not easy to do.

Hands-on experience is invaluable. But not in the ways we intend.

We underestimate the contribution of manual work to learning, and the value of embodiment to getting things done. Knowledge work and professional services / technology experienced less of an interruption this past year. Yet, the way we work has changed.

People have had the opportunity to expand their decision-making by seeing the layers. With overlapping work and life, everyone had more opportunity to experiment with circadian rhythms and productivity, integrating life as we embody our work.

It's been almost a situation like the top managers at the Anagni plant. We talked, constructed what worked to unite us in different contexts, and drew up goals for the upcoming year. I've not seen so much enthusiasm in business cycles as I've seen at the start of this year.

And with good reason. The strong became stronger. The smart figured out a way to embody and own execution in a changed environment. This is a tremendous opportunity to be part of the transition to the work we want, modeling on what we found worked in the crisis.

What do you want to bring into the new reality, what should stay behind? If you're waiting to go back to normal... well, that world doesn't exist anymore. It didn't for a while. But it was the forced context that pushed the awareness out in the open.

Value is the ability to make positive change. We all want impact in this sense of the word. If you've prepared for it, you have a shot at being part of the transition.

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We did something similar to the “vocation” project at a company where I helped grow sales for a divestiture. It involved understanding our capabilities and the gap between work in normal circumstances and work under stress. I've talked about some aspects of the work in an article about opportunity in the gap between what you know and what you don't.

Every company is going to face some form of transition in the coming year(s). Why does everyone insist on hiring people who align with the way things were? Fear? Doubt? If this is you, start by writing down your uncertainties and become a detective: investigate them! 

Also, see the distinction between uncertainty and risk.

Words for the Year

The most important things are often the hardest.

Each month this year had its challenges. It also had its gifts: that was the focus all along. A recap of the words that carried the day—and will take us into the future.

January—impact

February—culture

March—belief

April—habits / behaviors

May—perspective

June—change

July—perception / behavior

August—productivity

September—attention / power

October—role of corporation

November—clarity

December—lasting

Lasting turns into impact through decision-making, and the cycle continues. Creators use words to expand their thinking, anchor action in meaning.

Words are human footprints on the world.

How lasting? What impact?

 

A Reading List for the Culturally Curious

“Looking at life from a different perspective makes you realize that it's not the deer that is crossing the road, rather it's the road that is crossing the forest.” Born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr., Muhammad Ali was an activist and philanthropist who became known in America and the world as one of the greatest professional boxers of all time.

His convictions cost him at least four years of peak performance. Sports Illustrated declared the heavyweight “Sportsman of the Century” in 1999. Ali won numerous awards throughout his career. But it was his appeal that won him a large following. As Rolling Stone put it, Ali spoke with his body, mind, and soul:

“The only things quicker than his fists and feet were his mind and mouth: Speaking truth to power, the loquacious Ali said things in a confrontational, even 'arrogant' manner that mainstream America was not yet prepared to hear, especially coming out of the mouth of a young black man.”

In 1999, David Bowie talked about how the Internet would become an instrument of conversation, changing the relationship between artists and audiences. That same year, Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen talked about the artist's struggle in a Commencement Speech at Mount Holyoke:

“every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel.

Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had. And that is herself, her own personality, her own voice. If she is doing Faulkner imitations, she can stay home.

If she is giving readers what she thinks they want instead of what she is, she should stop typing. But if her books reflect her character, who she really is, than she is giving them a new and wonderful gift. Giving it to herself, too. And that is true of music and art and teaching and medicine.”

You probably forgot many of the remarkable things that happened in 1999. We were all focused on Y2K: the round number that promised to bring havoc, if not properly managed. Hindsight being 2020, from this vantage point we're thinking little of all the things that happened in 2019.

 

The power of culture

But here's where culture has power. You, we, still did many things in the years that we have a hard time remembering and may consider trivial. Culture is messy that way. It's a rich store of rituals and tradition that keeps building in communities, countries, and companies.

Unlike money or product, things you constantly have to replace because they lose value quickly, culture doesn't lose value through use. You can turn your time into something that can live forever with culture. Muhammad Ali, David Bowie, Anna Quindlen were and are culture makers: spiritual fathers and mothers of nascent phenomena by recognizing and putting them on record.

What strikes me when I listen to conversations with people like them is that

they can use reason to account for facts and lies.

Ali writes poems to describe experience. The way he talks is itself poetic, “very often, a wise doctor can cure you through word of mouth alone because they realize the power of man is needed.” When Ali talks, he has rhythm: listen for yourself in this conversation with Irish broadcaster Cathal O'Sannon. “Very few boxers can come on a show and match a wise man like yourself,” you need personality to do that, to know how to talk to people. Plus Ali can energize the causes and groups he stands for and all of a sudden, “you have a very large crowd.”

Bowie observes the development of a new cultural phenomenon. His quiet and steady cadence asserts without contradicting, “I embrace the idea that there's a new demystification process between the artist and the audience.” To a skeptical Jeremy Paxman of the BBC, he notes how the Internet has taken over as the conveyor of rebellion, how there isn't “one truth, but always 2, 3, 4, 5 sides to each question.” His insight is that Internet shows us how “we're living in total fragmentation.” And foresaw what it was going to do to society, both good and bad.

Anna Quindlen talks about how fashion shifts reference points in culture. “Trying to be perfect may be sort of inevitable for people like us, who are smart and ambitious and interested in the world and in its good opinion. But at one level it's too hard, and at another, it's too cheap and easy.” 

Because it really requires you mainly to read the zeitgeist of wherever and whenever you happen to be, and to assume the masks necessary to be the best of whatever the zeitgeist dictates, or requires. Those requirements shape shift, sure, but when you're clever you can read them, and do the imitation required. But nothing important, or meaningful, or beautiful, or interesting, or great ever came out of imitations.

Imitation doesn't produce ideas.

 

What energizes creates value

The process of producing an idea and creating from it energizes you. When an experience has value—something you listen to like music or read like the conversations I shared here—you know it because it fills you with energy. The same happens when you receive great service: your heart rate goes up.

That feeling is there to tell you, to acknowledge the creation of value. This is how you can put money into things that have more value, like culture, to encourage good decisions.

A sense of disgust for an experience or situation is literally the feeling of energy exploding in you. Energy that could have gone back to the company or a person, instead dissipates. When something lets your down, it collapses. It takes the energy that was available and shatters it.

There's a cultural undertone in the conversations of Ali, Bowie, and Quindlen that hints at working on the idea, doing the work as yourself, rather than trying to please an audience.

Trying to please an audience takes the power away from the idea, it dilutes it.

When you seek acknowledgement, it may not come, especially if your idea is new. Stay with the idea. It is the power of the idea that will energize the people ready for it.

 

Readings for the culturally curious

Fast gets all the attention, slow has all the power. Slow is continuous over time, it remembers, and disposes. Curiosity helps dig further and seek depth. It's the act of talking with customers to learn about how they see the world. That is slow. Michael Dariano says deep curiosity is good digging.

Reading books, rather than quick takes is how you build the muscle for extracting ideas, seeing things in new ways, and spotting places that might be interesting to dig.

Ease and convenience hamper curiosity. Enthusiasm ignites your desire to be curious. Our culture is filled with opportunities to care for the body. Books are an opportunity to nourish the mind. Here are a few books where I found new ideas:

1.

Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality by Anthony de Mello

Thesis: You can handle the truth. Most people don't want to know.

de Mello was a Jesuit priest and psychotherapist who became widely known for his books on spirituality. A few quotes that made an impression from this loose collection of thoughts:

“We were brought up to need people. For what? For acceptance, approval, appreciation, applause - for what they call success. Those are words that do not correspond to reality. They are conventions, things that are invented, but we don't realize that they don't correspond to reality. What is success? It is what one group decided is a good thing. Another group will decide the same thing is bad.”

“What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you. You are always a slave to what you’re not aware of. When you’re aware of it, you’re free from it. It’s there, but you’re not affected by it. You’re not controlled by it; you’re not enslaved by it. That’s the difference.”

“Because agreement and disagreement have to do with words and concepts and theories. They don’t have anything to do with truth. Truth is never expressed in words. Truth is sighted suddenly, as a result of a certain attitude.”

You cure loneliness by contact with reality. I appreciate how he talks about not identifying with a feeling (or a belief?), instead watching and observing it with curiosity.

2.

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall

Thesis: How the physical characteristics of countries affect their strengths and vulnerabilities and the decisions made by their leaders.

Marshall was Diplomatic Editor and foreign correspondent for Sky News. Originally from Leeds, he arrived at broadcasting after a wholly unsuccessful career as a painter and decorator. Choice quotes:

“Why do you think your values would work in a culture you don’t understand?”

“Analysts often write about the need for certain cultures not to lose face, or ever be seen to back down, but this is not just a problem in the Arab or East Asian cultures—it is a human problem expressed in different ways.”

“Technology may seem to overcome the distances between us in both mental and physical space, but it is easy to forget that the land where we live, work and raise our children is hugely important, and that the choices of those who lead the seven billion inhabitants of this planet will to some degree always be shaped by the rivers, mountains, deserts, lakes and seas that constrain us all – as they always have.”

Geography was a seemingly easy course in University. But it's a complex topic, especially if you bring in politics, as this book does. It's imperfect, missing Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia, speaking little and incompletely about Europe and Africa. Also, get yourself better maps than what included. The idea is quite interesting. Imagination and curiosity can help you fill the void with additional research.

3.

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture by Ben Horowitz

Thesis: Culture is how a company makes decisions.

Horowitz is the co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs building the next generation of leading technology companies. A few bits to give you a taste:

“Because your culture is how your company makes decisions when you’re not there. It’s the set of assumptions your employees use to resolve the problems they face every day. It’s how they behave when no one is looking. If you don’t methodically set your culture, then two-thirds of it will end up being accidental, and the rest will be a mistake.”

“Culture can feel abstract and secondary when you pit it against a concrete result that’s right in front of you. Culture is a strategic investment in the company doing things the right way when you are not looking.”

“That’s the nature of culture. It’s not a single decision—it’s a code that manifests itself as a vast set of actions taken over time. No one person makes or takes all these actions. Cultural design is a way to program the actions of an organization, but, like computer programs, every culture has bugs. And cultures are significantly more difficult to debug than programs.”

Strategy and context always play a role in determining why make some decisions rather than others. But we often just look at the official leaders, rather than looking at how tribal epochs and communities make unwritten rules work. That's because in our desire to bring order and provide formulas, we notice superficial elements.

 

DNA of culture

We connect on similarities—like language and body of knowledge. Yet benefit from differences—such as cultural context and specific experience.

With remarkable sense of humor, Ali is as light with his words as he was on his feet in the ring when he describes society in 1972.# There are several layers of culture in his stories and examples. Ali is a generous and articulate conversation partner. He talks about how he's entertaining for the Irish audience, because he's from somewhere else.

For David Bowie in 1999, “the gray space in the middle is what the 21st century is going to be about.” In 1979#, a suave Bowie talked about isolation, how he loved rather quickly from afar, his art, and putting himself in situations he detested to see what it did to his writing.

For example, as a Brit in Los Angeles, Bowie felt people were putting on a show in real life. As a producer, writer, and performer, Bowie experimented with separating his stage characters from his backstage self. He could tell the difference. After he left America, he sought another kind of friction in Berlin.

There was a sense of impending collapse in Berlin, that the wall was closing you in, he says. From German expressionism, Bowie then went to explore Kabuki theater as a way to bring pantomime in his work. He noted how in Japan they balance heritage and the modern world. More friction.

“Each of you are as different as your fingerprints. Why in the world should you march to any lock step? The lockstep is easier, but here is why you cannot march to it. Because nothing great or even good ever came of it,” says Anna Quindlen. Before she was a successful novelist, Quindlen wrote a New York Times column, Public and Private, that won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1992. 15 years after her first column.

These are just three examples I grabbed from the year 1999. Then I looked at what happened before that led there. What were the ideas, life situations, and encounters that led there? I could keep going. Lives are not linear, but there are themes. Early discoveries become tools for the next project.

In companies and communities, when you step into real culture, the environment is supporting you. There's accountability in reason for facts as for lies. No BS. There's acknowledgement of your work. On the other hand, you know a low energy environment right away: you have to fight for everything. Often this translates to looking out for number one.

Where are you drawing the lines?

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If you're still curious, here are ten books to gain perspective.

The 3-5 Books That Sit on My Office Shelf

This came as a question to me via Jose. It's very appropriate because companies pay me to write. That's also (but not only) why I read a lot. The other reasons include broadening cultural horizons, which often includes disagreeing with other authors. Rarely with the classics, though. Because the classics don't try to sell me a framework, mostly (more further down.)

3-5 books I reference often enough to keep on my office shelf. They've changed little over the last ten to twelve years. You'll see many references to the thinking, research and practice of the authors in my writing as their work impacts mine.

1.

Metaphors We Live By, authored by Berkeley linguist George Lakoff and the philosopher Mark Johnson at the University of Oregon was published in 1980. I have the edition with a new afterword (2003.) I've made plenty of notes in the margins and reasoned about some of the ideas in my notebooks.

EcoQua : Fabriano is my notebook of choice in many colors, in case you were wondering. You can get them with grid or blank paper.

2.

Finite and Infinite Games: : A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility by James P. Carse was published in 1986. Carse says there are at least two kinds of games—he calls one finite, the other infinite. The difference between the two is that we play a finite game for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing to play.

It's important because play or game symbolizes how we show up in life. Many books attempt to prove or disprove a thesis and exhaust you by asking you to expend energy in going through the reasons why / why not. Carse shares his vision of how to reinterpret the world and lets the reader free to draw personal insights.

This is a book about patterns.

3.

Words That Change Minds: Mastering the Language of Influence by Shelle Rose Charvet was published in 1995. Charvet describes the mental filters or meta programs we employ in communication in practical contexts. For example, what questions to use to elicit a person's position, how to identify what meta program positions are best suited to a given job, how to frame a job or product ad so that it speaks to the audience for whom it is intended, and so on.

I don't reference it as much in my writing as I do in my work. Most pages are lined with notes and I have index cards inserted here and there where I expand on certain chapters with my own examples.

4.

On Dialogue, which collects physicist David Bohm's thoughts on the inclination of modern society to “break things up which are not really separate” and thus fragment the world into “selves” that are at odds with each other.

We hardly experience good conversations anymore, and when we do, we leave unaware of the process that led us to feel satisfied we had a true meeting of the minds. That's because we view conversation as the mere exchange of information where everyone is sending and some people may be receiving.

Taken this way, conversation and communication in general becomes a utility but is not very useful in creating something new. I take this small book published in 2004 from original material by David Bohm to heart. Lee Nichol selected and edited it.

5.

The Clock of the Long Now is the Stewart Brand book I referenced in my article as one of the 3-5 books that sits on my office shelf. This is a curated collection of essays. In addition to The Order of Civilization, which is my most revisited essay, I enjoy reading about Kairos and Chronos, and The Long Now.

The title essay talks about a 1979 conversation with Brian Eno, which instigated Brand's thinking. The collection was published in 1999. Hence the themes and topics were buzzing around Brand's work for two decades. It's fitting as the idea is to expand the now to a period you can experience personally.

Rather that expiring things as they hatch, hatching things through work over the course of three generations.

Reference material

This is my evergreen setup to orient my work. Any time I get stuck, I use one or more of these references to expand my thinking and practice. I also make extensive use of dictionaries—synonyms and antonyms, etymology, translation (technical lingo as legal, medical / scientific especially), and slang (culture.)

As for the notebooks, I tend to jot down notes when I'm listening to podcasts and online lectures. My notes are both in English and Italian as I listen to and read most often in both languages. I read a ton of classics in both languages as well. I never tire of timeless ideas... what makes us human, and the stories of the people whose work endured through the centuries.

I'm curious. Which 3-5 books sit on your office shelf?

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Fast Gets all our Attention. Slow Has all the Power

If you're a futurist of strategist you're in the business of widening your perspective. This is useful for seeing better into potential futures, but it's also a powerful thinking tool for understanding what got you (or your client/company) here.

This is important and often overlooked: what got you here, won't work (as well) or be sustainable in the future. It's valid when you go from individual contributor to manager as it does to go from today's success to tomorrow's.

There's a reason why this is hard to imagine and even harder to do: Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power. Stewart Brand explained how it works in The Clock of the Long Now, one of the 3-5 books that sits on my office shelf for constant reference. His/their work is a consistent source of value.

Life and work go hand in hand in the order of civilization:

Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and by occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. 

Understanding how what works, works can make a big difference on the likelihood you'll be able to leave a legacy. If your work is important enough, it won't be completed during your lifetime. But you can create so much value through your work that it transfers to people centuries after you're gone.

 

How small tests innovate

I officially posted a test here in September 2006. You can still see “test” in the URL. I forgot to change it when I published. I doubt anyone has been reading for 14 years. You may have noticed an article at some point that got your attention, dipped in and moved on.

The initial fashion of blogging has since turned into new fashions of various social media channels. But because I'd been blogging every day for months and years before many of the social fashions came about, I never confused the infrastructure parts of what I was building—parts in a body of work—with the fashion of testing concepts and ideas.

3,375 articles later, I have a consistent track record, literally, of what I've been thinking about and experimenting on. Versions of what worked made it into my day job as commercial programs and campaigns. I iterated on what didn't work. Sometimes you're ready, and the market is not... and vice versa.

I kept the governance part transparent—see the link sharing / contributed articles policy and the comment policy and social guidelines on the sidebar, and the commitment to share useful resources dating back to the very first post.

Writing and publishing consistently helped me become more self-aware, connect ideas in retrospect, and work on my craft—writing and thinking. There's a tremendous amount of craftsmanship that goes into making a truly new product.

I've enriched many jobs and clients in the last 14 years. And this has remained a reliable lab for testing throughout. It's helped me think and do fast and slow. Continuity is critical to creating good mindset and habits, which form and inform culture.

 

Operating at different time scales

Mathematician and physicist Freeman Dyson made an observation about human society that can help you grasp what working at different time scales involves:#

The destiny of our species is shaped by the imperatives of survival on six distinct time scales.  To survive means to compete successfully on all six time scales.  But the unit of survival is different at each of the six time scales.  On a time scale of years, the unit is the individual.  On a time scale of decades, the unit is the family.  On a time scale of centuries, the unit is the tribe or nation.  On a time scale of millennia, the unit is the culture.  On a time scale of tens of millennia, the unit is the species.  On a time scale of eons, the unit is the whole web of life on our planet.  Every human being is the product of adaptation to the demands of all six time scales.  That is why conflicting loyalties are deep in our nature.  In order to survive, we have needed to be loyal to ourselves, to our families, to our tribes, to our cultures, to our species, to our planet.  If our psychological impulses are complicated, it is because they were shaped by complicated and conflicting demands.

He reduces the problem of complexity to its essence. Imagine each time horizon and stakeholders represented by a crystal ball, if you like. You have six of them to keep going at all times. Drop one, and it breaks. “Don't drop the ball” takes a whole new meaning.

That's why it's so hard to operate at different time scales. Difficult, but not impossible. Making reasonable trade-offs is a skill you acquire by doing the work. Operationally, you need to think in terms of pace levels and working structure size.

In a healthy society, says Brand, each level can operate at its own pace. I'd say this is also true in a healthy company culture. Ideally, each level is sustained safely by the one below it, which moves at a slower pace. In turn, each lower level can innovate thanks to the level above it.

Conversation is a great tool to test and iterate ideas because it helps you affect change. Dissent is a useful tool in a legal context. Change needs to happen at different paces for fashion, commerce, infrastructure, governance, and culture to avoid dysfunction.

Another way of saying this is, it's critical to understand how change works, so you can put more energy in the things that have more power.

 

A time for every purpose

Not confusing the layers means working tirelessly in the craft of creating a commercial product or service that helps people do what they want to do well. While also working timelessly at the structure that creates the kind of culture that delivers a superior product or service that does the job.

In marketing speak, we say jobs to be done (JTBD). JTBD is why we “hire” a product or service. The focus is the thing we want to do, rather than the feature of the product or service that does it.

If you need a tablet or a computer, you could buy one based on price. But Steve Jobs understood that it wasn't just about monetary cost. A computer that was easier and more pleasurable to use was worth more to people. Because it didn't get in the way and frustrated you a lot less. Apple led with design and experience. The rest of the industry eventually followed, in their own ways.

If you need a pair of glasses to read, you could start by buying the cheap kind. But when you're wearing them on your face all day long, you're thinking more in terms of identity and comfort. Designer glasses are fashionable, so you could go that route. Or, you could go get a run of the mill design and still spend a lot to add prescription lenses. Warby Parker solved that problem by brokering the difference between cost and style.

This last example is also a good illustration of how not to be at cross-purposes with layers. When you build a company, you're working at the structure, governance, and culture layers at the same time as you're working on commercial and fashion layers. 

Company's purpose and vision transfer value at the structural and culture layers. Mission and values are useful at helping employees decide how to behave as they do the work. In that sense, they transfer value onto customer experience, but indirectly. As Warby Parker learned:#

After style and fit come value and customer experience. Customers want the highest-quality product for their price point, and at Warby Parker, this means selling $95 glasses made with premium materials that are traditionally sold for hundreds of dollars, all while providing amazing customer experiences.

Third comes our Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program. While customers certainly love the fact that we give back, at the end of the day, it's not a critical factor in deciding whether to buy a pair of glasses.

Customers care about certain things. As a strategist, you keep this in mind when you help people make new choices. But as a leader, you need to keep in mind different time horizons. Warby Parker CEO, Neil Blumenthal says:

But, frankly, the social mission is what drives us. It's what gets us up in the morning. It's what prevents us from hitting the snooze button and spending another 15 minutes sleeping. And for our 1,800 current employees and for people that we're recruiting, we lead with social mission. That's the No. 1 reason people want to come work for Warby Parker.

Hence it's part of the mechanism for the transfer of value of intellectual, social, human, and manufacturing capitals into the product. You're buying a pair of glasses produced by a culture that believes in having and fulfilling a greater social mission.

 

Working on what has power

Writing here is my social mission. It's what gets me up in the morning and builds my intellectual, social, and human capitals. But it's not as important to clients and companies that hire my skills for their jobs to be done.

I've learned to work simultaneously at different pace layers, because they're all important. While fast—as in fashion, likes, follows, campaigns—gets all the attention, slow—as in craftsmanship, competence, sustainability, legacy—has all the power.

Taking Stewart Brand's perspective leads to designing solutions that maximize the resilience of the systems you design. That is to be as good for as many futures as possible, rather than optimizing them for a single future, which seems likely in the short run but is in effect incredibly unlikely to materialize over a period longer than a couple of years.

Here's an example from Philip and Turntoo: light as a service.# 

Architect Thomas Rau worked with Philips to purchase light as a service. The end result was a bespoke 'pay-per-lux' intelligent lighting system to fit the requirements of the space, at a manageable price. Philips retain control over the items they produce, enabling better maintenance, reconditioning and recovery.

It's a way of being in a space that has more power than just putting lamps and shades around an office, doesn't it? Paying for performance draws out how everyone is responsible for the consequences of what they produce.#

I was curious, so I took a glance at Turntoo and I found an example of vision as operating system for the work:

Looking at earth from a distance, it becomes clear that man is a temporary guest in a closed system: earth. In this system, everything is equally important to ensure a stable balance with a future. Within earth’s boundaries our only possible growth is a mental one.

The highest aim is to facilitate the continuity of life. In this respect, economy is the organized alliance between man and nature. We facilitate this relationship with a new system architecture. This results in, among others, innovative concepts, products, and services. Our basic principle remains to facilitate our temporary presence.

It explains well how the firm operates at different pace layers. Architects are trained to become system thinkers. The Turntoo website is a good example of system work: product as a service, service as a product, ideas as material, material as ideas.

Rather than a play on words, it's a smart use of words to orient you along dimensions of their work.

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