Monday, 6.45pm
Sheffield, U.K.
If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing. – W. Edwards Deming
I have been thinking about transitions and how they take place.
I think we imagine that they will be big and impactful, we’ll know when they’re happening and there will be plenty of time to see what’s coming.
But what we see is the final spectacle, not the moments that lead up to it, such that the end, when it happens is always a surprise.
Think of those sheets of ice falling off Antarctic glaciers – the slow warming over time, the gradual weakening – and then the sudden, catastrophic failure.
We don’t want that to happen, not to us, and not to the businesses we build.
Instead, we want what Nassim Nicolas Taleb refers to as antifragility.
Disorder is something that happens periodically – life is just thing after another.
Disorder can be frightening. It can also be an opportunity.
And one way to go after the opportunities is to think of what needs to be done through a process view.
A process view is a popular way to look at the world because things happen one after another, history matters, and connections matter.
If we think about the process of doing anything – writing a book, starting a business, cooking a meal – the same principles apply.
We start with ideas – questions, things that might work.
We filter them for relevance – are they things we can do? Do we have the capabilities and skills to execute? Do we have the resources we need?
Then, is it worth doing. Is it interesting enough to stop someone who is busy looking at their phone to stop and pay attention?
When you’re not sure what to do next, step back and set out your process.
Then begin.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
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