Week 47’22 Insight Pills – and one more thing...

What’s called my attention and might be insightful for you too…

A quick recap in case this is the first time you read this…

My plan for the weekly insight pills is rather simple: to make a weekly consolidation of stuff that called my attention, relates to the overarching theme of this blog/newsletter, and share it across over here. With a few comments of my own on top.

I hope you enjoy it!

Job tiles and their (un)suitability to current days

Bob Marshall has made a thought-provoking remark on job titles and how misguiding they can be in a world that is much more dynamic and interconnected.

I do like the implication here that we should think of much broadened definitions of titles, if they serve any purpose. There is also a line of thought for the future of work whereas each of us should think of ourselves as an individual service node in a complex network. And our capabilities are our offering of services– extrapolating that idea we can think of a game of matching capabilities needs to what one can offer, and just like the traditional Lego blocks, could be mounted in innumerous ways.

The other implication, perhaps a trend, is to value more generalists as a counterbalance to the world of specialists which dominated most of recent times. At the end of the day, there is quite some truth to that maxim that there are two job titles only – owner and everyone else is an employee.

Data is context-free; but information is not and that matters

We hear a lot about the importance of data and get evidence-based ways of working. All good with that. Just be careful how you treat things up, as well-reminded us Matt Turner in his post below.

Information is more powerful but requires discretion and deliberation, so that it can be acted upon – which is ultimately why we need data in the first place.

How not to get into a rabbit hole with your (product) strategy

Leadership is Language by L. David Marquet is a very insightful book which I would recommend to anyone interested on the theme. I couldn’t help to connect that idea once I read this article by Jeff Gothelf (found via Teresa Torres). In the sense that the way your articulate an outcome determines the way it is going to be treated.

If you do so by sounding deterministic, the sign you send is to move into execution mode and go for it. But what if you were wrong in your assumptions? What if that outcome is not going to drive the actual goal you thought it would?

All that calls up to a much more nuanced way of articulating outcomes or objectives. In a way that sounds rather probabilistic, then it can be treated fundamentally as a hypothesis. If you add on that means to measure which are closer to the actual goal, then you have means to monitor progress and de-risk going full-blown execution mode and figuring out too late you were wrong.

In the example given in the article, I would also highlight what can be connected to the idea of not having only a set destination but rather a sense of direction, which is enabling to deal with complexity.  The overarching topic of set destination vs sense of direction will likely be worth an entire issue in this blog/newsletter at a later stage.

One more thing – do you mind helping me to get better at this?

It has been a bit more than a month since I started this initiative of The Conceptual Leader blog/newsletter. Trying to keep it true to my overarching continuous improvement mindset as well as my customer-orientation, I would like to kindly ask some structured feedback.

If you are up for it, please fill up this survey and help me to turn this more fit-for-(your-)purpose! It shouldn’t take you long.

So… it’s a wrap for this week…

And I hope you found this insightful. I would love to ‘hear’ if you have any feedback or even some suggestion on what I am doing here.

by Rodrigo Sperb, feel free to connect (I only refuse invites from people clearly with an agenda to ‘coldly’ sell something to me), happy to engage and interact