Welcome to another edition of Idea Surplus Disorder.
This week: my Arch City Report podcast appearance, why nonstop thinking may be our era's hidden addiction, a better phrase for business disputes, reasons your strategy keeps changing, responding to devil's advocates, and the ideal team size for managers.
Plus, a mix of fun finds, inspiring quotes, and a question about all the things you measure that maybe you shouldn't.
As always, I'm Matt Homann, and I'm glad you're here!
Podcast Appearance
I was featured on the St. Louis Business Journal's Arch City Report Podcast last week to talk about Filament's work, innovation, and Thinksgiving.
Listen here, on Apple, or Spotify.
My Favorite Find
I read hundreds of blogs and dozens of newsletters every week, and I always find more ideas than I can share. My favorite this week is Alex Olshonsky's essay You're probably addicted to thinking:
We may be the first generation in history rewarded for maintaining a nonstop internal commentary—curating who we are for an imaginary audience, staying informed, and responding in real-time online.
Now we’re building machines that can out-think us at literally everything, and the reaction has mostly been to double down… think faster, stay sharper, keep up. Few are asking whether we should instead be strengthening the capacities that machines will never have, the ones that dwell entirely below thought.
But when mental activity has become synonymous with intelligence, even maturity, it’s nearly impossible to see that thinking itself might be operating as a dependency.
This Week's Question
This week's question is centered on business disputes. When you're at How might we resolve this?
This is a key phrase. You’re not accusing them of doing something wrong, you’re asking them to collaborate with you on a solution. By asking them to work together, you’re relieving them of the emotional burden I did something wrong. Shame: not a great motivator! Psychological safety: much better motivator!
I would like to get a resolution that’s fair and win/win. And I would love to hear your thoughts how we can get there.
A Few More Things Worth Your Time
Why does our strategy keep changing? The article has a dozen, but here are the ones I see most:
- The strategy is too vague and lacks an actual diagnosis. It isn't actionable. There's nothing wrong with a team tackling a nebulous strategic problem. Still, it doesn't constitute a strategy that can be rolled out across the organization (unless you are a smaller startup). You can think of strategy as a portfolio of strategies—some more stable than others.
- Watered down strategy. Instead of feedback cycles sharpening the strategy, you end up with a strategy that either a) reinforces the status quo or b) is too vague to mean anything, or c) contains everyone’s pet projects (“oh that, I guess it relates to New Strategy!”) This dynamic is pervasive when there are insufficient opportunities to workshop and respectfully pressure test and critique the strategy. Teams also gravitate to more general strategies when they’re concerned about optics. No one wants to tell their team that the market is smaller than expected or that the people hired to focus on X may no longer be a priority.
- Premature convergence. The team hastily pulls something together in a rush to have something ready for annual and bi-annual cycles. The new strategy inevitably suffers from recency bias, rushed research, and a lack of real buy-in. You know you're suffering from premature convergence when people want to challenge the strategy, but there is a sense that "the ship has sailed."
- Recency bias. Recent events (lost deals, won deals, feedback, etc.) overly bias strategic decisions. This phenomenon is especially true for companies that close most of their business at quarter or year's end.
Partially related: which of these games is your organization playing?
We've built tools that eliminate the gap between want and satisfaction:
When an AI answers before you finish your question, it saves time. It also interrupts the process of figuring out what you actually wanted to ask. When it completes your sentence, it's efficient. It also prevents you from discovering what you were trying to say.
Tired of people who continually play Devil's Advocate? David Cleevely has a question for them:
Create [idea] evaluation frameworks where the cost of inaction is just as significant as the cost of taking a bold decision, that ask not only “What happens if this goes wrong?” but also “What happens if we fail to act?”
How many people should managers manage?
Gallup data show that 37% of managers or leaders oversee fewer than five people, while roughly two-thirds (66%) manage fewer than 10. About one in five managers (22%) have 10 to 24 direct reports, and only 13% oversee 25 or more employees.
Random Things for Smart People
- Positive News: what went right this week.
- What a good website does.
- You're weirder than you think.
- Anthropeum: Drawing on half a million pieces from the Met’s open collection, this daily game shows you ten objects and asks you to pin down where and roughly when each was made.
- List animals until failure: Name as many animals as you can before time runs out, earning extra seconds for each new one.
- Reading Maps plots the journeys of fictional characters.
Words of Wisdom
We should never forget that the product of work isn’t only the work — it’s also the worker. – Robin Sloan
Most creators think of themselves as the conductor of the orchestra. If we zoom out of our small view of reality, we function more as an instrumentalist in a much larger symphony the universe is orchestrating. – Rick Rubin
There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time. – Philip Dormer Stanhope
You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish. I have no responsibility to be like they expect me to be. It's their mistake, not my failing. – Richard P. Feynman
It’s easier to act your way to a new way of thinking than to think your way to a new way of acting. – Rob Biner