Intelleto

A couple of collegues and I were discussing the process of doing competitive/comparitive analyses, and Alexa asked “if you pretty much know something is true, what’s the role of a competitive analysis to prove it?” Which is an excellent question.

 

Walt Disney coined this wonderful word, and Peter introduced me to it. The art of plussing is pushing a solution a little bit more, a little bit further, to get it to really sing…to truly shine.

The edge is a fragile thing, and one to play with, get to know and use as an inspiration. The risk is that you end up with jazz hands when you don’t need them.

 

 
There are times in a project or in a relationship when things seem to go awry. I’ve learned that going dark isn’t the answer, although sometimes that’s really what I want to do…retreat! Rest! Make it stop!  

If, however, you do find yourself going dark, be careful…things go feral quickly. I was once sick for a week and moping around home and a friend visited, took a look at my ratsnest hair, my slumpy sweats, the Advil and tissues laying about and the mess of unwashed dishes and asked “what the hell is going on? Have you gone feral?!” 

So when Rachel advised us to watch guard against projects doing this, it had particular resonance.

  

When Nathan Moody did his brown bag for us, he mentioned delivering a magpie piece…the shineyshiney stuff that catches the eye. I’m a total crow/magpie/squirrel…something shiney generally rules my life. So go ahead. Find the shiney.

  

I was setting up a time to meet with Trisha, and noticed that every day at 5pm, she had a meeting. Adaptive Path is rigorous about promoting work+life balance, and everyone is encouraged to leave the office at a reasonable time and go out and spend time with family, friends, life, what have you. So I was bummed she had something booked every day at 5pm.

Then I noticed what it was…it said simply “go home.” Perfect.

   

Adaptive Path holds frequent brown bag lunches where we invite folks to talk about interesting ideas. Andrew Blau joined us from Global Business Network to talk about scenario planning (read Peter’s blog post and Roland’s post for details.) One of Andrew’s comments was about creative misreading. Creative misreading was an approach forwarded by literary theorist Harold Bloom.

I’m not a literary theorist, but the idea of looking in the nooks and crannies of ideas via intentional misreading is compelling…