Notes from PPP 2017 Chicago

I spoke this morning at Prototypes, Process and Play, in Chicago about The Dance of The possible (slides). Here are my notes from the sessions so far.

2. Making Moonshots, Mathew Milan

Leadership is the reduction of uncertainty n an organization – Paul Pangaro

Reference: The Little Grey Book on Leadership, Paul Pangero

Question: how do you help reduce uncertainty? Perspective, principles and practices. Creating confidence by reducing uncertainty. The challenge is that then average Fortune 500 company lasts 15 years. A company needs to find a way to replace an entire better business while it’s still running.

He used to think CEOs were stupid. They say the same simple stuff over and over again. Now he realizes repetition is everything. “By end of the decade, we are going to put a man on the moon” – Executives have to deal with huge amounts of risk, and repetition and clarity is one way to provide it.

Designers (Engineers) ask: What is possible? How might we do it?
C-level asks: Can we do this, should we do this?

Tesla’s Secret Plan – Great example of a CEO managing risk right.

Build a sports car
Use that to build an affordale car
Use that to build an even more affordable car
While doing above, provide zerio emission power
Don’t tell anyone

General Principles:

Don’t start from scratch
Set high level goals, not detailed path
Break into small steps
Address big risks as early as possible
Prototype your way into production

The risk of deferring risk

You don’t know what you don’t know
You push the unknown into the future
Your exposure to unknown compounds

Test your biggest risks first – often it’s not design risk, it’s technological risk.

RAT: Riskiest assumption test – It’s more important to vet risks first than to explore what’s possibly viable.

Innovation is s search problem – The pivot approach works fine when you are small and fast, in a small startup. But for large organizations you need a portfolio.

3. Carmen Medina, Lead Above Mediocre Thinking