Right problems
I believe Einstein had a spark of Design Thinking.
It starts with a problem, followed by discover and define, exercising divergent thinking.
Convergent thinking is the last step which ends with a solution.
Design the right thing, then design things right.
Still, why do we solutionize so much?
It’s all about incentives.
The world of corporations values ideas and the incentive is to contribute with more, even when you’re not the right person trying to solve the wrong problem.
From my experience, more incentive is given to action and output instead of outcome.
More energy is spent on symptoms, the tip of the iceberg, than real problems.
“The delivery mindset” that corrupts product-led organizations.
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Remove the branches of a thorn bush today and you'll avoid a scrape this year. But next year, you'll face the same problem again.
Remove the root of the bush today, and the entire plant will die.
Are you solving problems at the branch level or the root level?"
— James Clear
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I realize that root causes correlate to “People, Process, Tech.”
From my experience, two out of three lie with People.
It’s all about People.
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So what?
Every time I encounter a business problem I ask myself:
Am I making my life difficult with an uphill battle?
Am I the right person to think about solutions?
Who sees this as a problem worth solving?
Is this the real problem or a symptom?
Is it under my sphere of influence?
Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Q: How do you experience incentives given to people “full of ideas”?
Better writing
As Ryan suggests, Imagine the emperor of Rome, with his captive audience and unlimited power, telling himself not to be a person of “too many words and too many deeds.”
There are many angles to this passage from Marcus Aurelius and I want to focus on avoiding fine language.
I am not a native speaker and I fell into the fancy language trap many times.
In 2022, I decided to 10x my writing as a means to an end.
I believe confidence has a lot to do with how we speak and how we write. There are other dimensions but this is for another post.
This is the 20th publication from Positive Experiments.
I feel like learning by doing it.
Business writing is about clarity and persuasion. The main technique is keeping things simple. Simple writing is persuasive. A good argument in five sentences will sway more people than a brilliant argument in a hundred sentences. Don’t fight it.
Simple means getting rid of extra words. Don’t write, “He was very happy” when you can write “He was happy.” You think the word “very” adds something. It doesn’t. Prune your sentences.
— Scott Adams, The day you became a better writer.
I revisit this post every six months, and I’m sharing it with you.