Idea Surplus Disorder #74

Good morning, and happy Monday! Welcome to Idea Surplus Disorder.

In this week's edition: dirty words, meeting hacks, problem frameworks, murderboards, misconceptions, heirloom tomatoes, Spielberg faces, independent bookstores, and more.

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

September SuperCollider

Join us next month at SuperCollider, where we'll share a dozen ways to "hack" your culture and make work better. Sign up for Friday, September 6th!

Ideas + Insights

I love this question from the Founders Podcast's episode on In-n-Out:

What is a dirty word inside your company?

Patrick Lencioni (author of Death by Meeting) suggests some simple ways to tame the zombies and get meetings back on track:

The important thing is to recognize that if one of the meetings has another meeting's topics come up, you redirect them to the appropriate meeting. That could sound like any of the following:

"Thanks for raising that concern. To keep us on track in our Daily Check-in, please bring up this issue in our Weekly Tactical meeting on Friday."

"I think that's a bit too in the weeds for what we're trying to do here. Assuming we decide to move forward after this discussion, let's talk about that in Friday's Tactical meeting."

"That's a great point. And now that we know we're going to respond to our competitor's move this way, let's make this a topic for our next Monthly Strategic meeting."

Speaking of meetings, the truth shrinks as the crowd grows:

In a large meeting at work, people hold back their honest opinions. The resulting conversation offends the fewest people but is often not the truth. Smaller groups are more likely to find truth than larger ones.

The 4U Framework offers a simple and fast way to evaluate problems:

1. Unworkable: How bad is this problem? Are existing solutions a dead end, impractical, or super expensive? Unsolvable problems can lead to big losses, like unhappy customers or lost sales.
2. Unavoidable: Is this something everyone faces eventually? Maybe it's caused by things outside our control, like new laws or everyday situations.
3. Urgent: Does this need to be fixed right away? Does it align with what's important to the company and its customers?
4. Underserved: Are there already solutions out there, but they just don't cut it? Is there a clear gap in the market for a better answer?

Ask yourself each morning, “What would it mean to be done for the day?”

[T]he moment you ask “what would it mean to be done for the day?”, is that the answer can’t possibly involve doing all the things that need doing – even though that’s the subconscious goal with which many of us approach life, driving ourselves crazy in the process.

If there are a thousand things that need doing, you’re going to need to arrive at some definition of “finished” that doesn’t encompass them all. Maybe it’s two hours on your main current project, and three detailed emails you’ve been meaning to write, plus a couple of quicker tasks? Your definition of “done” may be very different, of course, depending on your work, energy levels, and existing commitments.

But merely by asking the question you’ll be leaving behind the daily quest to do more than you can – which systematically prevents you taking satisfaction in whatever you do manage to accomplish.

Though it sounds like the title of one of his movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger suggests building a murderboard:

Do a “murder board” before your big decisions. I do this for any big interview, press tour, or appearance. You can do it before job interviews or presentations. Get together a couple of people you trust. Tell them to ask you every single question they can possibly imagine. Hard questions, crazy questions. Answer them. When you have trouble with one, talk through it with them, and then try it again. This way, when it’s time for the real thing, nothing can take you by surprise.

LLMs (like ChatGPT) might help humans think better about the future precisely because they're don't think like us:

However, by not being human and therefore not being constrained by judgment, emotion, or political will; LLMs might help to navigate the issues that workshop participants usually encounter (e.g. idea blocks, linear thinking, biased vision, team politics), and enable practitioners, scholars, and clients to more quickly identify unexpected knowledge gaps, or increasing the ratio of known unknowns versus known knowns.

Everything must be paid for twice:

There’s the first price, usually paid in dollars, just to gain possession of the desired thing, whatever it is: a book, a budgeting app, a unicycle, a bundle of kale.

But then, in order to make use of the thing, you must also pay a second price. This is the effort and initiative required to gain its benefits, and it can be much higher than the first price.

A new novel, for example, might require twenty dollars for its first price—and ten hours of dedicated reading time for its second. Only once the second price is being paid do you see any return on the first one. Paying only the first price is about the same as throwing money in the garbage.

Want your organization to work better? Build your org chart like an heirloom tomato:

Startups, he argues, can be engineered in the same way. “Startups excel when they put all their energy into one main thing,” he says. “If you want to hit escape velocity, your startup should be designed to focus on that. In other words, it better taste good. But if your startup is designed to have several teams all equal in size, where’s your focus? Where’s your center of gravity?”

If we think of the org chart as a tomato, weirdly irregular yet delicious heirloom tomatoes are the better product, not perfectly symmetrical — but ultimately bland — spheres.

Fun Finds

• Independent Bookstore Map
• A really good web image upscaler
• A long list of common misconceptions like this one:
  • Seeds are not the spiciest part of chili peppers. In fact, seeds contain a low amount of capsaicin, one of several compounds which induce the hot sensation (pungency) in mammals. The highest concentration of capsaicin is located in the placental tissue (the pith) to which the seeds are attached.
• Beautiful search engine for public works.
• The Spielberg Face.

Words of Wisdom

When people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past." – Austin Kleon

"Search the parks in all your cities; you’ll find no statues of committees” – David Ogilvy

"If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have are opinions, let’s go with mine.” — Jim Barksdale

“You don’t want to surround yourself with candle blower outers.” — Brené Brown

“Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” – John Wooden

“So much can be accomplished in one focused hour, especially when that hour is part of a routine, a sacred rhythm that becomes part of your daily life.” — Dani Shapiro

“Perhaps imagination is its own kind of computer, where we’re modelling something to ourselves as a way to experiment with it.” – Claire L. Evans

“The fastest way to commodify your thinking is to sell it in units of doing.” – Blair Enns

"Listen carefully to first criticisms of your work. Note carefully just what it is about your work that the critics don’t like—then cultivate it. That’s the part of your work that’s individual and worth keeping." – David Shields

“Hope clouds observation.” — Frank Herbert

“Humor is a way to show you’re smart without bragging.” – Mark Twain