You've probably felt this yourself. Maybe you've even spotted it directly.
There's an ongoing puzzle that everyone faces at work: the never-ending tussle between stories about the internal strategic mess and stories about the external market mess.
Always, you'll find multiple stories at play for both contexts. Not all of the stories are coherent, and none of them can offer the whole (or the holistic) truth. No wonder so many people retreat to the faux-clarity of technical requirements and job descriptions.
This is the theme of three quotes we've picked out to share with you today, and it also underpins our five latest podcast episodes linked below.
By the way! If you're one of our beautiful podcast listeners, we'd love it if you could share an episode you've enjoyed with a friend or colleague.
"In many job and organizational contexts, not to mention the broader span of human history, people learn complex ideas and skills by listening to stories. Orr (1996) found that 'when troubleshooting complex systems, technicians tell stories because the hardest part of diagnosis is making sense out of a fundamentally ambiguous set of facts, and this is done through a narrative process to produce a coherent account'."
Accelerated Expertise, Robert R. Hoffman
"The idea that a person or organization has one or two primary driving goals is simply not true. It is a fantasy invented by economists and certain management thinkers.
The reality is that most people and organizations have 'a bundle of ambitions'. That is, they have multiple intentions, visions of the future, and things they would like to see or achieve. Some things in this 'bundle' conflict with one another – not all can be achieved together."
The Crux, Richard Rumelt
"Lowenstein breaks down four ways of involuntarily inducing curiosity in humans:
(1) the 'posing of a question or presentation of a puzzle';
(2) 'exposure to a sequence of events with an anticipated but unknown resolution';
(3) 'the violation of expectations that triggers a search for an
explanation;
(4) knowledge of 'possession of information by someone else'."
The Science of Storytelling, Will Storr
The latest episodes from Tentacles podcast
Also available wherever you normally get your podcasts. To sniff us out, just search "Tentacles".
149: Someone else's thinking running through your own brain
Your new product or service is nearly working. But it's not quite there, and you need to know WHY. So you do the responsible thing: user research. And everyone tells you the same two things: "it's not differentiated enough" and "have you considered adding more colours?"
Everyone's right that something's wrong, but everyone's wrong about why. So now what?
150: Dogfooding part 1 – or coordinating people to stare into the void
We've tried to run our method on ourselves before and it was hard. So this time we roped in a dear friend to run the process on us. Properly this time.
We recorded the debrief while walking along with our two-month-old strapped to Tom's chest. This is all about workshop number one out of two: this is the "introspection" part, before any of the awkward conversations with strangers have happened.
151: It's never lupus
What can a fictional, addicted, borderline-unbearable doctor show us about stalled strategy projects?
With a small baby on the scene, our TV diet needs to be relatively unchallenging, and we recently rediscovered House. And got talking about how their "differential diagnosis" — that whiteboard full of things the disease might be — is basically our Signals > Stories > Options stuff but with apparent misanthropy and a gammy leg.
In this one we feel our way through what happens when you stop trying to be right and start trying to be interestingly wrong. Featuring split-brain patients, a red herring tomato sauce, and tfw a video camera destroys all your assumptions about how you're dancing.
152: Dogfooding part 2 – wrongness-based enlightenment
We ran our own method on ourselves, and it told us the word we were betting on was the wrong one. Four research calls in, the transcripts showed us that "positioning" probably isn't our positioning.
That's exactly what our method is for, and exactly what nobody loves experiencing when it works.
This one is part two of our series where we're dogfooding Pitch Provocations. Another walk, in the rain, with our three-month-old strapped on, plenty of detours and a little bit of chunder.
We talk through what the first four sessions are doing to our assumptions, what we're tearing up before the next round, and why the process works.
153: Tom's worst ever DJ set
Tom's worst ever DJ set was one where he followed the "rules" most carefully. His best ever DJ set was the one where he stopped trying. This is eerily similar to how lots of teams can do all the right exploratory work and still discover nothing useful.
In this one we wander through DJing for swing dancers as a sort of live complexity practice, and then we crowbar lessons from rooms full of dancers into the world of work, where people dance around strategic bets instead.
We also talk about "finding the pocket", why rules didn't used to be as cut-and-dried as they are today, and why you largely can't rationalise your way into anything interesting, even though you probably have to pretend that's what you did.
Any of the above tickle your fancy? Things you particularly agree or disagree with? We'd love to know.
Tom & Corissa x
P.S. Every other Friday, join us at Coffee & Complexity Club 9–10am UK time (via STEPS Collective).
