Tapestry
I’m going to try and weave a few threads together that came up in conversations this week. I did say that some of these would be me ‘thinking out loud’, so don’t say I didn’t warn you!
I would have said they were to do with mindset but I read a post that said we should stop using that words because it inferred that the issue was all within our minds, whereas our state of being is an interaction between what we think and all sorts of external factors (That’s a bit of a mangling of the post but I can’t find the original, so it’ll have to do, I’m afraid!). So I am going to talk about states of mind.
In particular, the states of mind you have to be in for creating and doing. In our work, we have to be able to do both those things but they are quite different states of mind and you can’t be in both at the same time. In fact, it takes some time (and effort) to switch between the two.
A good illustration of this is Steve Blank’s model of Customer Creation, which is his take on what a start-up goes through from initial idea to a viable business. (I’ve written about this at more length in this earlier missive).
Blank’s four steps sit in two separate stages. The first stage is the search for product-market fit. This is a period of experimentation and iteration until you come up with something that some people will buy. It’s the creative part, it’s uncertain, messy, ambiguous (and can be very exciting and fun). There are highs and lows and no guarantee of success, or a known end-point.
The second stage is the doing part, building the company. Here you can start to set some goals, build some project plans and get on and execute (we love doing this, it’s what we’ve all been trained to do in Corporate Land). You can hit your goals, get reward and recognition. It’s the steady, consistent graft of getting shit done and building something.
Lots of startups get into trouble because they try to move out of the Search stage to the Execution stage before they are ready, because they are running away from the discomfort of experimentation towards the certainty of executing plans. Or, alternately, get the exact same people that did the Search stage to do the Execution stage.
Or, for major screw-ups, they do both at the same time.
It really important to know what state of mind you need to be in for what you are doing. They are so very different, so much so that many people simply can’t do both. Most of us have a preference for one or the other but some creators just can’t execute, and some doers just can’t do experimentation or creative thinking.
This issue is certainly one I struggled with in my career, one that perplexed me greatly. I did Product Development and Product Management. The first was all about the Search, the second about the Execution (product roll-out, mostly). I got into a few tangles (and a world of pain and frustration) until I realised they were completely different states and I had to separate them.
I also found out that I wasn’t supposed to be able to do both of them. (Ditto This also the Product Management and the Product Marketing). This was a reflection of the fact that a lot of people only wanted to do one because they couldn’t do the other or found the effort of switching too great. Or maybe they just found it all too confusing and wanted to keep life simple. Which, on reflection, would have been a smart choice!
Another way of describing this is that the creative (Search) state of mind is divergent thinking. It is unpredictable, requires a state of ‘not knowing’ and sitting in uncertainty, is not time-bounded and has uncertain outcomes.
The doing (Execution) state of mind is convergent thinking. It is predictable, requires knowing the answers and acting in certainty, is time-bound and is focused on defined outcomes.
Chalk and cheese, one could say. Get them mixed up and you get very disappointing sandwiches and a rather greasy, but blank, blackboard.
Master Blaster
This, in turn, reminded me of some research (done by Professor Saras Sarasvathy) into how serial entrepreneurs go about repeatedly creating successful businesses.
“Sarasvathy concluded that master entrepreneurs rely on what she calls effectual reasoning. Brilliant improvisers, the entrepreneurs don't start out with concrete goals. Instead, they constantly assess how to use their personal strengths and whatever resources they have at hand to develop goals on the fly, while creatively reacting to contingencies. By contrast, corporate executives—those in the study group were also enormously successful in their chosen field—use causal reasoning. They set a goal and diligently seek the best ways to achieve it.”
(From this article in inc.com)
That sounds a bit like different states of mind, doesn’t it?
It also points to why attempts by corporates to bring ‘entrepreneuralism’ into their business, to inject some of that ‘start-up juice’, invariably fails. It’s a mismatch, you are asking executives to get into a different state of mind than the one they are in habitually, and which has propelled them to their success. It’s not just unfamiliar, it is quite possibly beyond them. Even if they can do it, it will feel unnatural, even dangerous, and they won’t be any good at it.
I started my career creating new services and looking for product-market fit, in a bit of BT that today we’d call 'a start-up’. Then we got absorbed into a bigger division which was very much about setting goals and executing plans to achieve them. Trying to use effectual reasoning in an organisation that worshipped causal reasoning is, I can tell you, a painful experience.
I eventually got pretty adept at causal reasoning but at the expense of my creativity and innovation abilities. I got habituated to that and it’s taken me a long time to get back to being able to access my effectual reasoning abilities.
I hope you can relate to this, occasions when you have felt torn or oddly conflicted, when you’ve been bringing the wrong reasoning to the thing you are trying to achieve, or when you’ve been trying to sit in both states at the same time.
Those times when you were looking at the greasy black board, eating your disappointing sandwiches and wondering what the hell was going on.
Do It Again
The spark for this train of thoughts the Drinking Dialogues session by Dr Jemma Jiang in ‘Strategic Doing’. Jemma’s something of a whizz on complexity theory but this was someone else’s approach she was telling us about.
She suggested it as a way of leading change in Complex Adaptive Systems (which organisations are), in contrast to Strategic Planning. The problem with Strategic Planning is that it is presented as linear (which you will know if you’ve been subjected to the process and had to come up with your 5-year projections) but reality isn’t.
(This is evidently true but mostly treated as a problem with reality rather than the planning process. All part of the Corporate Wonderland that many have to live in.)
We can’t see into the future of a Complex Adaptive System, it’s just too, well, complex. We can set out a desired future state but the path we take to get there is emergent, so we can’t plan it, we have to run experiments and course correct. (Interestingly, this is very similar to how we coach individuals around performance and transition).
Gemma led us through the process (well, as much as we could cram into two hours). There are 4 questions and 10 Rules and what struck me was that the process took us through divergent thinking to generate and select an opportunity to work on, and then through convergent thinking to create and run an experiment for that opportunity.
It seems to me there are a couple of benefits in this approach. Firstly, there’s a clear separation of divergent and convergent thinking and they are addressed in the correct order. Secondly, it leads people who are primarily convergent thinkers (who use causal reasoning all the time) into the state of mind they would normally skip, avoid or ignore.
And, I guess, thirdly, it stops them trying to be in both states at the same time.
Whereas Strategic Planning stays firmly in the world of convergent thinking/causal reasoning. It’s about doing not creating, it’s about execution not search.
It was a fascinating couple of hours that flew by.
(You can find out more about this at the Strategic Doing Institute)
Torn
This idea of having separate states of mind and the pain and confusion of trying to be in both states at the same time then led me William Bridges’ Model of Transition (a favourite tool of mine).
Bridges says that when we are in transition, we go from the Ending, through The Neutral Zone of uncertainty and ambiguity, and then into the New Beginning. We hate being in The Neutral Zone because we are filled with doubt and confusion and so we often rush through it or jump it all together and try to get to our New Beginning.
This seems to me to be like Steve Blank’s two stages, the Neutral Zone is about search for the right fit and the New Beginning is about moving forward and executing our plans. So naturally we all want to be in the New Beginning because we feel comfortable there. But like a failing start-up, all to often we exit the search phase too early and end up pursuing a New Beginning that won’t work, a product that we don’t even want to buy ourselves.
It’s in the Neutral Zone that we really need some of that Effectual Thinking that master entrepreneurs use. You see, they look at the resources, strengths and relationships they have and come up with some ideas. Then they run some experiments to test them out, making sure that they can always afford for them to fail by only putting in limited resources - they never bet the farm on any one idea.
Only we’re not always good at that stuff. We don’t want to be reflective and consider the resources we have available to us, or be creative and generate possibilities. We want to be doing, to be getting on with our life. We apply the wrong state of mind, the wrong type of thinking, to the situation.
The tension between what we need to do and what we want to do builds until it becomes unbearable, so we grab at the first idea we have AND we bet the farm on it. And that only ensures we fail and end up in the Neutral Zone again, older, wiser and with less resources for the next go around. Seen it, done it, got the t-shirt.
Just to tie this all up, we are so conditioned in convergent thinking, about achieving goals and milestones, that when we are in The Neutral Zone and need some divergent thinking, we really struggle to come up with it (to be fair, if we haven’t chosen the Ending, we are often in a state of some distress and anxiety, which is not conducive to the state of mind we need to be in).
I hope my exploration here has helped you see the parallels that I see but, in case it hasn’t and you’re thinking “that’s 20 minutes of my life I’ll never get back”, I offer a couple of take aways.
Firstly, be aware that creating and doing are separate states of mind and you need to be in the right one for the situation you are in. Don’t try do both at the same time, it will only end in tears.
And secondly, we all need to become more comfortable being in a state of uncertainty, in a state of not-knowing, and allowing the path to emerge. That’s often the opposite of what we have been taught but it’s a critical skill for the future because uncertainty is only going to increase.
If you’re wondering how good you are with uncertainty, you can find out by doing the test at The Uncertainty Experts (the latest project of Sam Conniff, he of ‘Be More Pirate’ fame).