Category: Mental Models

Tuesday, 6.45am

Sheffield, U.K.

I wrote my thesis on the benefits of war and very near got thrown out of college. But I can show you where the greatest advancement of mankind comes under stress and strain, not comfort. – Don Young

I need to get on and write the text of my thesis.

And, of course, rather than just getting on and doing the work, I’ve got to create a process that makes it easier first.

My thesis is going to be an extended version of a paper that I’ve worked on with colleagues for the last few years.

I jumped in and started writing – and quickly realised that I didn’t have enough material and hadn’t organised my thoughts – I needed to do some pre-work before I could get down to drafting.

One of the hardest things about doing research these days is just how much information is available.

It takes time to find and filter information and select the papers you think are relevant. Some are classics but the point is to be selective.

For example, I limited my search to papers published in the last three years on business. While there are probably great papers in history and psychology that might be relevant, that’s not the field I’m writing in.

Then there’s reading and note-taking.

Now, the topic of my thesis is actually about note-taking – something that is really quite under-researched given how foundational it is to learning.

I’ve been wrestling with the format in which to take notes.

I wanted three things from my notes.

Monday, 8.40am

Sheffield, U.K.

Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘Make me feel important.’ Never forget this message when working with people. – Mary Kay Ash

I’ve spent the last 20 years learning about business.

And there are two things I would advise myself to do ten years ago.

Sunday, 7.02am

Sheffield, U.K.

In real open source, you have the right to control your own destiny. – Linus Torvalds

If you start a business you need to be visible on social media – which is why I spent the last 140 days writing on LinkedIn.

Two things have happened.

First, I have been more visible. I’ve had people comment on how active I am. They’ve referred me to others. I’ve had a few good conversations start as a result.

Second, my engagement statistics are slowing down. I don’t know if that’s because readers aren’t interested in what I write or if the algorithm is throttling my output because it wants me to pay for reach.

The advice on LinkedIn is that if you want to get a following, focus on one topic.

My content fails this test.

I have a new business to promote, so I write about that.

But I’m also interested in AI, technology, politics, science, innovation, marketing, strategy.

What I see from people that are successful on LinkedIn is that they push out stuff in their niche that is one message repeated again and again in slightly different forms.

It’s advertising posing as communication, engagement, education or entertainment.

It’s just not very interesting after a while.

Another problem is that you are playing in someone else’s sandbox.

You can’t build a permanent home on shifting sands. Building a business that depends on the vagaries and algorithmic experiments run by big Tech seems risky.

You need solid foundations.

The bedrock on which you build your marketing strategy has to be under your control. Write first for your website, and have an outbound process – reach out to customers directly.

Email still has a place.

The problem with any technology is that either you control it or it controls you.

There isn’t an in-between – a good, win-win solution. Very smart people are trying to engineer situations where you work for them. And it’s increasingly hard in a world of SaaS and AI to even control your own computer – unless you’re familiar with Open Source and things like GNU/Linux.

If you take one thing away from this post it’s that you need to use systems other people own just enough so you can then move conversations into systems you own.

Cheers,

Karthik

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. – Francis Bacon

Friday, 9.44pm

Sheffield, U.K.

It’s a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

– Vivienne Westwood

I have been writing on LinkedIn every day for the last 140 days, thinking that it might help as I take a new business to market.

I’m not sure it’s working.

Here’s the problem – what do you put your effort into every single day to develop your practice?

There’s a choice – write for your own blog – which is what I was doing. Or write in a platform, which someone else owns.

The way that works for me is a routine – a consistent approach that I commit to every day.

That means writing 7 days a week. No excuses, no interruptions. If you stop, everything stops. And when you stop, it takes time to come back and start again.

But it’s hard to do that on a blog and on LinkedIn – writing once a day is hard enough. Writing twice is perhaps asking too much. Especially if there is more writing to do – such as working on a thesis or papers.

So I decided to prioritize LinkedIn for a while because it felt like the place I could connect with prospects and partners.

But, I think consistency is now a problematic thing.

It’s hard to tell the difference between someone that puts in the effort every day and a bot.

If people are using AI tools to write and publish then what they do looks very similar to someone who does it through discipline.

Or, to reverse it, consistent discipline now looks like you’re using a robot to do your work.

And that’s problematic. I’ve seen views go down massively on LinkedIn. I don’t want to jump and blame the algorithm but it’s one of three things:

1. It’s depressing reach so you reach for the boost button and pay more.
2. There’s more AI content but the same number of eyeballs, so mathematically everything gets lower views.
3. It thinks you’re a bot and so depresses your content.

There may be more options but I can’t think of any right now.

So, the logical thing to do is to change – stop being predictable to a machine that’s adjusting itself as it goes.

My primary writing space has to be this blog – it’s where I work out ideas and think through situations.

And I think LinkedIn has to be a more random thing. In fact, I’m thinking of having a random number generator, like between 1 and 7, and only posting on the days when it’s over 4 and over.

Will the algorithm reward such randomness as evidence of being human? I don’t know – but I do know that life is too short to try and work for an algorithm.

So if you’re subscribed, you will probably see more posts from me again.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Saturday, 13.33pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Anything that is worth teaching can be presented in many different ways. These multiple ways can make use of our multiple intelligences. – Howard Gardner

I’ve been thinking of the difference between the tip of the spear and the person behind it.

“Word Craft” by Alex Frankel got me thinking about sales.

He points to Jean-Marie Dru who, in his book “Disruption”, suggested that communication is not something separate from your product – instead it’s an integral component of it.

In other words, your product IS your message.

As a consultant or business owner you are also a product – which means your message is hugely important.

For example, I use this blog as a thinking space. It’s where I can collect ideas and work on understanding them.

And one of the things I’ve been struggling with is separating me from my work.

To start with, I’m building a business that provides data management services to clients that need to disclose information under various regulatory and voluntary frameworks.

At the same time, I’m interested in a range of topics such as strategy and marketing.

And I’m also carrying out research into improving approaches to understanding and improving problematic situations – a field known as problem structuring – through using Rich Notes – a technique I’ve created.

So, who am I? What am?

The business builder?

The strategy consultant?

The academic?

I think what’s going on is that we are more than one thing.

But – if we’re trying to connect with other people we have to pick one personality and stick with it.

For example, I had someone mention that they had talked to a prospect about my strategy work but when the prospect checked me out on LinkedIn I came across as too energy focused.

So, I either lost a potential prospect because of my message or I filtered out a prospect that wasn’t the right fit for what I was offering.

It feels like you should put across everything about who you are – the richness that you have.

But you have to decide what you want people to think.

The kind of research I do is Action Research.

This is where you have a situation – like figuring out what to do about marketing yourself – and you try something.

Maybe rewrite your profile. Tweak your outgoing messages. Try and make it easier for prospects to work out if they need you or not.

The research comes from doing something and then reflecting on what you’ve done, looking for lessons to learn, principles to extract, steps to reuse.

That’s a messy, unpolished process that requires engagement in a situation followed by reflection and writing.

But this is necessary to work through your experience of taking action so that you can come up with theory – a way to explain what happens.

For example, here’s a five part theory

1. Your message is your product

How you describe yourself is what you are. Think about this carefully because it will determine how people respond to you.

2. If you have multiple personalities, let one out at a time

I don’t like simple frameworks. Yet they are essential – because what you’re trying to do is remove ambiguity – make it easier for people to understand what you’re trying to say.

The reason I use LinkedIn is to reach and connect with potential clients. So everything on there needs to be related to that objective.

I’m not doing a very good job of making it clear whether I’m a founder, an academic or a consultant at the moment, so that’s an improvement action I need to take.

Think of it like having more than one personality – having two operating at the same time is very confusing.

3. Cut and refine each message

Cut, cut cut. This post is too long. But that’s ok, because it’s a thinking post.

But your LinkedIn posts have to be tight. Your books, articles, promotional materials, training programmes – they’ve got to be trimmed until they fit exactly what a prospect needs.

4. Design for filtering

You are not aiming to sell to everyone. There is a subset of the market that is perfect for you. You need to find them.

If that market doesn’t exist you need to do something else.

Make sure your system is designed to filter out people who are not right for you and what you offer.

5. Test and learn

There is no right answer.

But there is the work.

Have an idea.

Try it out.

Reflect.

Learn lessons.

Try again.

And now it’s time for me to work on what the next personality has to do.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Friday, 7.15pm

Sheffield, U.K.

You can’t run a marathon without running a marathon. – Chris Sale

I’ve been writing on this blog for 8 years. I have a process. Bash out a draft, spell check, and hit publish. It’s good enough so get it out there.

I think that’s been the right strategy so far. When you’re starting it’s important to focus on producing work – to build the habits that help you create. Quantity over quality.

Over the years I’ve tried different approaches. Short sentences. Long sentences. Academic paragraphs. Lightweight paragraphs. Experimenting with writing styles and structures. I’ve tried projects – book projects, book summary projects, social media projects.

In the process it’s helped me find my voice and develop a writing style that works for me.

But now it’s time to get better. To improve my writing – and that comes from editing and rewriting. This time I’m not writing for myself, but for a reader who is giving me their time. I have to deliver value in return.

So that’s the plan as I head into the final stretch of my million-word writing goal. There are less than 20,000 words to go. I’m going to try and make them good ones.

Cheers,

Karthik

Saturday, 9.40pm

Sheffield, U.K.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become. – Jim Rohn

I think we are living through a change in the global system, one that could have profound consequences.

Or it could fizzle out.

But while we’re waiting to see what happens let’s conduct a little thought experiment.

Let’s think about a world where there are fewer jobs to do because of these new technologies that make people with jobs so productive that companies don’t need to hire as many people as before.

New entrants to the labour market find there are fewer jobs to go after.

The well paid ones, the few that lead to money and status, are hoovered up by the rich and connected.

The rest struggle to get anything.

That’s one view.

Or, the technologies allow us to do more than ever before.

Every single person has the tools to create something great – they don’t need the resources of a corporation to create a new product, find a market, delight customers.

So yes, there are no jobs. But instead there is an explosion in businesses – where people create value.

I started this post by suggesting that a world could exist where nothing has value.

Perhaps I should examine my assumptions there.

If a machine can do something in seconds that would take an artist days or weeks, and do so for free – what happens to value?

The value of the machine generated product is nothing.

The value of the artists work is something – to a person that values the artist – and nothing if not.

The art in itself becomes less important than the way in which its produced.

There is a market for free. And there is a market for handcrafted. And each of us needs to decide how we go after the market that works for us.

The drawings I make for this blog are stuck at a 4th or 5th grade level.

Look at the picture above. It’s not art. It’s just someone doodling with a pen. It’s not worth anything.

Except to me.

Because it helps me in my process – in the writing that I do next.

And the writing isn’t brilliant either – it’s rambling, informal, grammatically questionable, unedited.

Nothing that would make it into the New Yorker.

Except, I’m not writing for the New Yorker,

I’m writing to get my thoughts in line, because it helps me in how I live my life.

Culturally, I was brought up in a tradition that values work, not the results of work.

I don’t know how well that translates to you reading this, but it comes down to saying do what you must do, do the thing that you’re working on with no thought of reward, no need for gratification.

Do it because it must be done.

But why, you might ask? What’s the point of that. You may point to Samuel Johnson who said “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money”.

But if you live in a world where you cannot sell your writing, you cannot sell your art – because the machines do it instead – should you stop making art, stop writing?

Or are you now free – to do it because you want to not because you have to.

Because you value doing what you do.

And when that happens it doesn’t matter what happens in the rest of the world.

You just do you.

And figure out some other way to create value for others that brings in money.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Saturday, 9.43pm

Sheffield, UK.

First, apologies if you have received multiple posts today.

That’s because I figured that some of the lighter, more business focused stuff that I’ve been putting on LinkedIn might as well be here as well.

It’s a bit of a break from the heavier stuff on systems thinking, like in this post.

I really wouldn’t blame you if you stopped reading here. In fact I’d advise it…

But, if you’re still here.

Going forward, you might get a mix of the two types depending on what I write and when I post.

With this post I want to close off Holwell (2000) that I’ve been working on the last three or so posts.

And I think I might have bitten off too much with taking on this talk.

The reason is that it’s very hard to explain something to someone that they don’t already know.

This is because most people know something.

When they hear something new they try and fit it into the existing structure of what they know.

This is a bit like fitting a watermelon into a large bucket.

That’s easy you might think – but here’s the problem. The bucket is sealed with a lid fitted with a small straw.

That’s the cognitive opening – the hole in the straw that you’ve got to fit the watermelon through.

And that sort of activity usually ends up making a mess, with most of the watermelon dripping everywhere.

This is a terrible analogy.

The takeaway message is that there is lots of confusion and misunderstanding about soft systems methodology (SSM) and what it is.

So much so, that I’m not sure I can tell you what it is and I’m supposed to be the sort of expert around here.

So, let me just sum up some of the key points that make discussion problematic – the issues, if you will.

First, there’s the history of SSM and how it developed from being an application of systems engineering to a learning system that could be used to engage with and improve problem situations.

Then there is the explanation of what it actually is – from paraphrasing or parroting what the pioneers said, and the philosophy behind it all.

Although, I do remember reading a catty letter that suggested the pioneers disagreed too.

Again – the old thing. Why are academic arguments so vicious? Because the stakes are so small.

Explanation is complicated by what’s said, what’s said later, and what one says about what’s been said.

I don’t want to go into it but it feels a bit zen like – you can only get it with experience not with talk.

But talk is the business of academia so you end up with lots of usage and lots of talk.

This is stuff like the aspects of SSM, definitions, justifications, how it could be used with other approaches, whether it’s grafted on or whether other approaches are embedded in it.

And throughout all this, you’ll note that I haven’t yet said what the thing is – SSM, that is.

Anyway, I’m now in this trough, where it all seems far too hard to explain but I think I know what it is and it works.

Just trust me, will you?

Okay, I wouldn’t either.

So, I think we’ll move on and I’ll climb out of this sometime.

Starting with figuring out how one should approach a history paper in the first place.

Maybe we’ll examine one or two by Kirby, who’s written a few histories of the operational research (OR) society and see if they can give us some guidance.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh