Edgewise Thinkingthree days beforeI stumbled into this framing when talking about product/platform thinking with my…How to think and what to think

The third option2024I facilitated a workshop on systems thinking recently (or “lensical thinking” as…Build a thing to build the thing2023When building new products, there’s always a weird tension between making something…Thinking to write2024I’ve had this realization about myself recently, and it’s been rather useful…There’s this gap that I’ve been struggling with for a long time, and I often feel like I am no closer to finding a way to bridge it. It’s a gap between nuance and action. I’ve talked about many variants of problems that this gap causes, but at their core, they all share the same dynamic.

Very loosely, the dynamic is that understanding nuance requires so much work in addition to the important, urgent work that already needs to be done, that folks who need to understand this nuance rarely have energy/time to do so.

The developer funnel2021If I ever chatted with you about developer experience in person, I’ve…Doers, Thinkers, and Magicians2023I’ve been reflecting on my experiences of working with developers and developer…Growing dandelions2022A couple of weeks ago, I talked about r/K-selection and mentioned two…Suppose you have invested a bunch of time into studying a problem space – like growing developer ecosystems, for example. You have acquired admirable depth of nuance in this problem space. You understand how APIs evolve. You understand the layering fundamentals of opinion. All that good stuff. Now, you would like to convey this depth to others. These others are typically your team, but could be just random people on the Internet.

Separating cargo from the train2023I’ve been puzzling over a problem that many engineering teams face and…Jankless2021As we Orient, examining our prediction error and updating our model of…Settled and “not settled yet” framings2021I was working on decision-making frameworks this week and had a pretty…You choose the option of carefully writing words and drawing diagrams to describe the nuance in the problem space as concisely and clearly as you can. Then you share the resulting artifact with your team. And… nothing happens. At best, people diligently flip through your artifact and go: “This is really nice. But why so abstract? How does this translate to action?”

Ecosystems from product and user perspective2021In a couple of conversations this week, the word “ecosystem” came up,…This question has become somewhat triggering for me and my fellow ecosystem adventurers. Nuance often feels too abstract, even to a most receptive audience.

I wonder if it’s because nuance points at how to think, rather than what to think. This might be an important distinction.

We act on what we think, so “what to think” is close to the ground, and an artifact that outlines what to think will tend to feel more concrete. Do this. Don’t do that. Go here. Stay there.

Being Strategic2022It all begins with intention. There’s something in our environment – the…OODA and Intention2021The ability to make predictions is an astounding quality of retained-mode systems.…Framing2022When encountering an infinity-problem, we may have enough wherewithal to resist the…All the while, the “what we think” is situated inside of how we think. Put differently, how we think defines all possibilities for action. When we change “what we think”, we just pick another of those possibilities. When we change “how we think”, we start seeing another set of new possibilities. Until then, our field of view is limited to the initial set.

Mental models2022I use the term “mental models” a lot, and so I figured…Because nuance affects how we think, it will nearly always feel detached from action. Modifying “how we think” means introducing different mental models, a whole new space from which new actions could be drawn. And there’s a lot of effort that needs to go into accommodating these new mental models, integrating them into one’s understanding.

Nudging Embodied Strategy2022The whole concept of the cone of embodied strategy is a bit…Only after that happens, new actions will emerge – but there will be an inevitable delay between conveying the nuance and the actions appearing. I bet there was a puzzled look on the face of the proverbial man who was expecting the fish, and instead got a fishing rod thrust into his hands and an invitation to walk to the lake.

Slow down2021I wrote this one primarily for myself, though I believe it’s good…When everyone is busy to the point of delirium, stopping to learn how to fish feels both impossible and foolish. So what do we do?

The Perspective Ladder2022I hope this illustration has been helpful. I have been using a…Degrees of Open Sourcefive days afterI realized that I never captured what I learned about the nature…I don’t know. But I will keep trying to find different ways of sharing nuance with others – and of course, keep sharing what I learned with you.