Author: Admin

Everyone hired into organisations is there to do, to produce, deliver, create outputs. No one is hired just to think. Thinking that happens has to lead to action.

What if more businesses hired people to think?

It’s easy to misunderstand the mechanics of the internet. Easy to apply an out-of-date understanding of how things work. Easy to think that the internet works in the same way as

Sometimes, when we talk about ‘vanity metrics’, we aren’t really being vane in what we measure, measuring things that make us look like we’re successful but don’t achieve an outcome, we’re just applying old thinking to new mechanics. We’re just misunderstanding what mechanics drive what behaviour and so what is the right thing to measure.

The long tail, for example, describes a power law distribution which explains how a few things are really popular and lots of things less popular. It’s an important model for understanding how some things behave on the internet.

Network effects is another model for understanding behaviour on the internet. It tells us how the more people using a product the more useful that product becomes.

In the pre-internet world, these models didn’t apply. But now they do. Which means we need to update our understanding.

Things always seem easier at the start, before you’ve realised how difficult they can be. This is the time to move quickly. Make progress, even if it’s in the wrong direction. Learn quickly by doing quickly. Momentum matters.

As you realise the complexities in what you are trying to do, slow down. As you discover problems, give yourself time to understand them. Learn slowly to understand deeply.

Adjust the pace of the work to the complexities.

In The New New Product Development Game, Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka talk about teams starting with “zero information”- where prior knowledge does not apply. The team is given a “broad goal or a general strategic direction” and allowed to exist in a state of ambiguity.

One of the benefits of working as a cross-functional team is that as each member shares knowledge, all the other teams members learn. And the team begins to work as a unit in developing the knowledge it needs to create the right product.

This also creates challenge for the team. Getting to zero information, to beginner’s mind, a state where the team doesn’t hold onto assumptions that cloud their judgement, is a difficult thing to achieve. Separating the knowledge that gives the team a solid grounding from the knowledge that takes the team in the wrong direction is difficult. Difficult, but important to do.