Idea Surplus Disorder #118

In this week's edition of Idea Surplus Disorder, we dive into practical strategies for leading up, slowing down, and navigating complexity more effectively. You'll receive a straightforward script for taking initiative with a new boss, along with a more effective approach to handling workplace conflict.

We'll also unpack the “temporal crisis” that makes November arrive too soon, contrast two strategy moves for turbulent times: building "Octopus Organizations" vs. going into strategic hibernation, and share some research on why fewer meetings = happier, more productive teams.

And as always, you’ll find a mix of fun finds, practical insights, and thought-provoking quotes to help you lead, live, and think more intentionally.

I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here.

Thinksgiving Request

We could really use just a few more Thinksgiving teams for 2025. If you're interested, drop me a line ASAP.

Ideas + Insights

Working with a new boss, but not sure how to take the initiative? Observe, Assert & Validate:

Observe: “I noticed X. This is important because…”

Assert: “Here’s what I think we should do… / Here’s what I can do…”

Validate: “What do you think? / How does that sound? / Am I missing anything?”

This is what it looks like in action:

Observe: “I noticed in our Monday morning meetings, we’ve needed to pull the X data and it’s a manual process. It requires about 2 hours of work each week, which adds up.”

Assert: “I can create an automated table that tracks our weekly performance, so we can see trends more easily.”

Validate: “This should take half a day to build and I'd like to take a stab at it. How does that sound?”

A better way to approach conflict at work is to signal curiosity:

The simplest way to signal curiosity is just to say you are curious. For example, as soon as you recognize that your counterpart disagrees with you, you could say: “Hey, it seems we are seeing this differently. I am curious how you think about XYZ.” Showing an interest in learning does not require you to abandon your own argument. For example, you could say: “I think there are different ways of thinking about this. I believe XYZ, but I’d love to better understand where you are coming from.”

Hard to believe it is almost November? You might be suffering from a temporal crisis:

Our modern lives suffer from a “temporal crisis,” a shared sense that time is accelerating out of control, “whizzing by without a direction.”

For most of us, this temporal crisis is something we feel more than we can easily describe. It is that fleeting disorientation after we wake up from hours flitting about on social media, doomscrolling, wondering where the day went. It is that strange amnesia of a few hours we can’t quite account for after falling down some YouTube rabbit hole, bouncing from video to video. It is our struggle to describe to friends and family the productive use of days spent jumping from Zoom to Zoom, or Slack thread to Slack thread.

Throughout much of modern life we have intentionally “atomized” time, breaking it down into smaller and smaller disjointed increments that have no overall narrative continuity. And it is this atomization that has led to our collective perception that everything is somehow speeding up.

In complex times, it might be time to become an Octopus Organization?

A complex world, however, is more like the ocean, the home of the octopus—where a small shift in the current can create unpredictable effects miles away. The shifts and unpredictability make it difficult to navigate; you can only sense, respond, and learn from the flow. This is the world the Octopus Org is designed for, an environment where success comes not from rigid control but from distributed intelligence, continuous learning, and adaptation.

On the other hand, perhaps a strategic hibernation is a better approach:

Strategic hibernation offers a fourth option: quietly preserving internal capacities while reducing external exposure. This approach is not simply about cutting back—which is often executives’ instinct during turbulence and uncertainty—or pivoting away from the challenging area. It’s about building flexibility and discreetly preserving the firm’s options—knowing when to turn down the volume without walking away

In our politicized environment, that might mean reworking DEI departments to focus on culture or talent, or continuing climate initiatives under the umbrella of resilience or future-proofing. The point is that the activities continue, at least in a minimally viable form. Such a strategy allows firms to retain what they need to reenter key areas with momentum once the environment becomes more favorable.

Related: things aren't always as urgent as others think they are:

When you’re working on something you care about, urgency can feel like it’s there to help you — and sometimes it is. More often, urgency is a useless invention, and it shows up in full bloom to deplete you and sap the meaning from projects you would have otherwise found enjoyable.

A person who really needs to meet with you right now, because they say that they do in an email, probably does not. The edgier their tone, the less they probably need to meet with you right now. What they really need to do is look at a pond. Unfortunately, it’s quite likely they’re not going to do that. But you can reply that you aren’t free right now. You are sorry. You will be free next week.

Here's some unsurprising data about meetings:

One survey of 76 companies found that productivity was 71 percent higher when meetings were reduced by 40 percent. Unnecessary meetings waste $37 billion in salary hours a year in the U.S. alone, according to an estimate by the software company Atlassian.

Excessive and unproductive meetings can lower job satisfaction for several reasons. First, they generally increase fatigue as well as our subjective sense of our workload. You have probably experienced a day of meetings after which you are exhausted and haven’t accomplished much—other than getting a bunch of new assignments. Second, people tend to engage in “surface acting” (faking emotions that are deemed appropriate) during work meetings, which is emotionally draining and correlated with the intention to quit. Finally, researchers have found that the strongest predictor of meeting effectiveness is active participant involvement. If you are asking yourself, “Why am I here?” you are not likely to think that the meeting is a good use of your time—which is obviously bad for your work satisfaction.

Taken together, the research on meetings shows that if you want to be happier at work (or want your employees to be happier), you should fight against the scourge of time-consuming, unproductive meetings at every opportunity.

Exercise you critical thinking skills:

Just as athletes train to execute skills under game stress, leaders must train their critical thinking muscles so that they hold up in a crisis. Techniques like pausing briefly, managing emotional triggers, relying on checklists/frameworks, seeking rapid input, and checking for biases all serve to keep one’s thinking clear and objective when it counts most. Not every urgent decision will be perfect, but using these strategies significantly improves the odds of a well-reasoned outcome rather than a purely reactive one.

Fun Finds

• Amazing Space Exploration Logo Archive
• The movies that defined GenX.
• It is fun to play with the Spiral Visual Search Engine.
• Inspiration Gallery for Web Interfaces
• The Last Barf Bag More fun that it sounds!
• The World's Coolest Neighborhoods
• Thirty Phone-Free Ways to End your Night

Words of Wisdom

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center. Big, undreamed‑of things—the people on the edge see them first. – Kurt Vonnegut

Much of the magic that people ascribe to sitting together in a room is really just this: being able to see and interact with the same stuff. – Jason Fried

I as yet know nothing. The truth does not come without a tax of effort.” – Hercule Poirot

An idea can't be bossed into existence. – John Hunt

Almost without exception, organizations are run by people who want to protect the old business, not develop the new one. – Seth Godin

Let’s keep in mind that there is not one of us whose reputation would not be grievously dimmed by a thorough cataloguing of our faults and errors. – Carl Braun

History shows that innovation is a delicate and vulnerable flower, easily crushed underfoot, but quick to regrow if conditions allow. – Matt Ridley

Autonomy is the desire to steer our own ship. Mastery is the desire to steer it well. And purpose is the need for the journey to mean something. – Peter Diamandis

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