Everyone knows Steve Job’s reputation for meticulous attention to detail, but I had no idea Walt Disney was so similar.
David Senra’s podcast, Founders, has been a cool supplement to my own reading because it focuses solely on biographies. I’ve been listening to the host describe Walt Disney and have been fascinated.
Walt’s father was abusive. One day, when Walt was about 14, his dad was going to punish a mistake Walt made by hitting Walt with a hammer (a hammer!!!). As the dad raised his hand, Walt grabbed it. As the dad raised the other hand, Walt grabbed it, too.
And held.
Until his dad started sobbing.
It was the last time Walt’s dad tried to hit him.
Walt grew up on a farm and was no stranger to hard labor. He credits the time on the farm with fostering his love of animals and storytelling. The time on the farm also helped him get strong enough to finally stop his father’s abuse in his early teens.
If you’ve missed the stories of Walt Disney the man, his biographies and David Senra’s episodes are great.
Kevin
A Quote
“
An old native-American story begins with an elder talking to his tribe’s youngsters. He tells them that they each have two wolves hiding inside—a vicious and competitive wolf and a kind and loving wolf. “The wolves inside you are constantly battling,” the elder warns. One young man turns to the elder and asks, “But which one will win?” The elder answers, “Whichever one you feed.” The moral of this story is that your future is within your control. If you want any part of yourself to thrive, you must nourish and support it.
— Cara Hale Alter in "The Credibility Code"
Three Things
1 - 📘 Loonshots - This book by Safi Bahcall shares insights on how to nurture “loonshots,” or the crazy ideas needed to move business and life forward. He advises that you separate your loonshot group from your business as usual group, but ensure projects and feedback travel easily between them. He also has an interesting theory on how incentives and human nature drive large companies to eventually prefer politics and the status quo over innovation - and systemic ways to mitigate it.
2 - 〰️ Invisible Barrier Between Two Islands - The “Wallace Line” is a biogeographic boundary between islands in Indonesia; where the wildlife is drastically different on the eastern and western sides. Even the birds and insects are different! Some interesting factors, like plate tectonics and water currents, contribute to the striking difference.
3 - ✍️ Sam Corcos Podcast on Business Writing - I love Sam Corcos’ perspective in many things, especially his focus on creating a company culture oriented around deep thinking and writing. The link takes you to the section of a writing podcast where Sam emphasizes much time you should spend on framing problems, and how important writing is in a remote culture. “The median tech worker cannot go more than six minutes without checking [email or Slack].”
Deeper Dive on Time Traveling for Better Decision Making
I normally advocate staying present in this moment. Don’t linger in the past. Don’t fret about the future.
But sometimes the best thing you can do is travel forward in time.
I use this technique all the time to assess the strength and quality of decisions. I use it to analyze strategic choices. I use it to practice potential conversations.
I sometimes do it during meetings, and I definitely do it while drawing systems and crafting strategies on my whiteboard.
No, I haven’t really invented a time machine. I just leverage a different perspective - mentally moving forward in time - with a dash of creativity and imagination.
Today I’ll share a model for thinking about time travel, how to use it for your benefit, and some challenges to watch out for.
The Model
Time traveling is a mental simulation of the future. You’re building a model of what the future might hold after a sequence of decisions, actions, and interventions.
I say “might” because the future is uncertain. Every decision and every interaction has multiple potential outcomes, each with it’s own likelihood of happening. You don’t know in advance which options will unfold.
In this model, think of the future as unfolding step by step. Each decision you make has multiple potential outcomes. Each of those outcomes has multiple potential outcomes. And so on.
Let’s call the potential outcomes of the first decision the first order effects. The next set of outcomes are the second order effects. The next set of outcomes after that are the third order effects.
The model would look like the following.
Model showing multiple levels of decisions and resultant paths.
Think of each line in the model as a potential path you can walk down. At each node you can look around at this potential outcome. You can make observations and ask questions. You can think of the next step from there. You can do this for every node and every path.
Where do people already time travel today?
Time traveling is already employed in many different disciplines.
For example, in psychiatry a therapist may ask a patient to imagine a future state where the patient’s behavior is different. Not only does this lock in an optimistic mental image for the patient, but then patient and therapist can work backward from that future point to figure out what decisions or adjustments need to be made today.
You may also do this for your own retirement planning! You might imagine a future where you’re retired. How old are you? What do you want to do? How much money do you have? You can then work backward from the imagined future state and think through the decisions you’ll need to make to get there. You set your savings rate and investment allocations and let time work its magic.
Can this technique be used to improve strategy?
In a recent newsletter I defined strategy as “solving problems within a domain across a time horizon.” Think of each decision as a choice of how to solve a problem. Time radiates outward from each decision point toward the next decision.
This time traveling model is just another way to visualize strategy! It’s about making choices and taking action to create the desired future state.
Time travel allows you to go down any potential path to see what happens in that future. You’re able to mentally simulate a lot of different options to get a sense for how the future will unfold.
Amazon uses this technique in their PRFAQ process. A PRFAQ is a “Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions” document. They write this document before building a product. They imagine what they might tell customers (PR), what customers might ask about the product, and Amazon’s answers to it (FAQ).
This exercise allows Amazon employees to test future scenarios and select the one most likely to resonate with customers. They then build a strategy that makes this future state more likely than others.
Practice time travel by painting a wall in your house
Practice time travel with painting a wall in your house. Imagine you’re deciding on a new color. There are four options to choose from; do nothing, gray, red, and glow in the dark green.
Walk down each path and imagine your wall with that color. How does it fit in to your overall style? Does it contrast well, or poorly, with the floor? This is testing out your first order effect; what happens when you paint the wall.
Your second order is decor. What are all the different related changes you might make once your wall is newly painted. You can walk down different paths with rugs, paintings, and furniture to see what those options are like. What do you like, or don’t like?
Your third order might be testing your friend’s and family’s reaction to your changes. Who comes over? What do they think? Do they love it? Do they hate it? Do they think you’re crazy for painting one wall glow in the dark green?
Radiating out into multiple levels from a single decision about a wall color allows you to come back into the present moment and make a better decision about what to do. Select the paint option that gives you the best future outcome, having considered it from multiple angles.
Glow in the dark green might be cool?
What else can you do in the future?
Thankfully, time traveling can be done for more than just paint. 😀
Let’s come back into the world of business and strategy. You can test all sorts of critical things when time traveling; decisions, scope, design, metrics, change management, conversations - you name it, you can imagine it.
In the future, imagine that you’re presenting on the success of your initiative. What metrics are you showing? What questions will you be asked about those metrics? What don’t people trust about what you’re showing? What other metrics will you need to convince others of the overall success?
In the future, test your system architecture. Imagine the business is changing and you need to absorb those changes. Is your architecture robust to that change? If it needs to be modified, will it be expensive to do, or can you handle it gracefully?
In the future, imagine you’re presenting a change to the business. What questions do your users ask? What concerns do they have? Do they have everything they need to be successful and adopt your new tool or process?
The only limits you have is your creativity and imagination. Really try to put yourself in that future state. Imagine you’re presenting. Imagine you’re using what you’ve built. Imagine you’re watching it on the news. Try out different perspectives so you can see things from different angles.
When you’re done, come back to the present moment so you can act on whatever you’ve discovered.
Second, take action! This exercise in time travel, or mentally simulating the future, is to help you make better bets in the present. Take your insights and drive action.
Where might you need to adjust scope?
Where do you need to test risks?
Where do you need to kick off parallel streams of work to ensure that all the pieces will be ready together?
Where do you need to pivot any path you were on?
Do you need to re-sequence your bets (the order in which you were going to work on things)?
Time travel helps develop the skill of extending the number of moves you can see into the future. Use that to your advantage and add details to your sequence of moves. You can always adjust as needed, but it’s helpful to get a longer-term sets of steps in place; it helps maintain momentum.
Make decisions, take action, and move forward.
Challenges to watch out for.
Time travel is not without its challenges! The two big ones are complexity and time.
Complexity - If you look at the model again, every set of steps you try to look into adds exponentially to the paths and options you’re considering. It gets very complicated very quickly!
The good news is that this is a skill that can be developed with intentional practice. The more you time travel, the more skilled you’ll get at holding complexity, and the further ahead in time, or the greater number of options you’ll be able to consider.
One technique to mitigate this is to look at one path at a time. You don’t need to review every decision point and every path across all possibilities. You can be more targeted with your approach. Pick a single set of circumstances you want to look at and go there.
Time - Since this is not real time travel and just a mental simulation, time becomes a challenge. Any time you spend contemplating future scenarios is time not spent in the present taking action. Time is a constraint, and speed matters in business. Be cognizant of how long it takes you to simulate the future and be sure to balance it with taking action in the present.
Bringing it all together
Time travel - or mentally simulating an imagined future state - is a valuable technique to improve decision quality and strategic thinking.
Go down any potential path to imagine what happens. Mentally simulate a lot of different options to get a sense for how the future will unfold.
Test all sorts of critical things when time traveling; decisions, scope, design, metrics, change management, conversations - you name it, you can imagine it.
Use your knowledge of the future to work backward towards a strategy that will help you get there. Make adjustments in scope, sequence, decisions, or whatever you need to change based on your learnings.
Where do you have options you’re considering? Transport yourself into one of your potential futures and take a look around.
Then come back to the present and take action based on what you discovered.
Your only limit is your creativity and imagination. Have fun with this!
As always, please tell me about your experience. Is this easy or hard? What did you learn? How did it work for you? Email me at heykev@kevinnoble.xyz and let me know!
Kevin
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