Discussing the Zombie Approach to Refining Idea for the Community & Individuals
Lucio, I would like to discuss your zombie approach to ideas.
I also wanted to open this discussion up to the community.
Note that I am speaking from both an "objective" perspective and personal preferences point of view.
I am also assuming ideas with a reasonable level of development.
We know plenty of poorly developed ideas that cloud the world and are value-negative.
I can see how the zombie approach or challenging idea approach is good for developing ideas as a whole.
The issue is that I feel the incentive can become imbalanced between the idea generator and challenger.
Not always but sometimes.
In my opinion, it takes much more effort to come up with a solid idea than to challenge an idea.
For ideas to have value, there's a threshold.
Maybe we can call this a minimum viable idea.
Below this threshold, the time for people to read the idea becomes not so important.
If the idea generator continues to develop the idea further and reap the final benefits, I feel that it becomes very fair, and the challenger is even providing a service by refining the idea.
If the idea generator is developing the idea for this website, I feel taking a pure challenger role would result in some social exchange imbalances:
- The challenger takes the judge role which grants more power
- The onus is on the idea generator to develop the idea further
- It sub-communicates that generating new ideas is not a priority
- Idea generation is a risky endeavour even starting from the initial thoughts. You're unsure of the payoffs.
Challenging is a safer endeavour. - It takes personal vulnerability to share ideas.
In a way, idea generation can be "entrepreneurial" level work.
Not always if it's a simple idea.
Apart from the social exchange point of view, I personally don't think it's the optimal approach for the ideation process.
Because there are other parts of the ideation process.
I mentioned this here:
Ideation Process for Meta-Discussion on Feedback
This may subconsciously cause people to hold off some parts of the idea (undelivered value) to maximise their social credit during the idea generation.
My personal preference is to share ideas very openly and freely.
That fosters a creative environment.
In terms of benefits for the community, idea generation is critical for the long term.
Without idea generation, we are making incremental improvements.
New case studies, refinements of current methods, etc.
In the short term, not so much because ideas take time to develop and have uncertain value.
The current things to work on appear higher priority.
As such, I think the following would promote an innovative culture that will pay dividends over the years:
- Encourage idea generation
- Explore and expand the ideas initially rather than challenge the idea.
Sometimes, the idea needs a small push over the threshold to have the "aha" moment. - Give resources for people to work on initial ideas themselves.
Not money (maybe even money).
I haven't exactly thought of what since our ideas here are knowledge work rather than mechanical labour.
Maybe access to psychology journals (this is more of my interest but for the sake for a concrete example)
Or a creative, community-driven blog-space like what Medium does. (haven't thought about it well)
What do you think?
Sounds like it's all valid points, Matthew.
I don't have a strong opinion at the moment on whether it's best to "postpone the zombie" approach or not in general.
But I do know that it helps to get a quick read on a situation.
If I cannot come up with any strong reasons against a great idea, it means I/TPM should probably go for it / prioritize it.
And if a few strong shots can kill an idea, it helps me reach the stage where I can think "great potentail, but not right now".
As a reminder, only the best ideas get the zombie treatment, so that's an (indirect) compliment to the idea.
---
(Book a call) for personalized & private feedback
Yeah Lucio, I am not against the zombie approach.
I'm advocating to supplement the zombie approach with other perspectives.
Like expanding the idea as well.
Something that I didn't explain properly as well.
Challenging and killing ideas involve comparison from a known benchmark or mental framework.
Challenging ideas is also a "greedy algorithm".
Meaning maximising ideas based on initial thoughts and short-term.
Sometimes I feel that giving space to grow away from these benchmarks or mental frameworks is useful.
Most ideas would be useless.
But, in the long run, there'll be a few ideas that will add a different dimension.
Once upon a time, the benchmark was that the Earth was in the centre of the universe.
So when someone says that the sun is in the centre of the solar system, everyone thought that it was ridiculous.
What if the society allocated 1% of scientific resources towards investigating disparate ideas like the sun being in the centre rather than the Earth.
Another example is that Google gives employees 20% of their salaried time to explore projects showing no promise of paying immediate dividends but that might reveal big opportunities down the road.
Google Says It Still Uses 20 Percent Rule
Maybe this website is still relatively small so it should not be 20%.
It could be 5%.
And my bet is that this 5% would pay dividends in the long run, outweighing any sort of short-term costs.
Technically, there's nothing holding people back on this forum to work on their own projects.
So I'm advocating for this culture rather than asking any single person to be responsible for this culture.
I agree with you, sounds like a great general approach.
You risk stifling creation by attacking things too early, plus you can discourage people from exploring further or coming up with new ideas.
It makes a lot of sense
I don't have any specific examples though where an idea was killed too quickly by the zombie approach -which is exactly why I may be over-using that approach-.
Do you have some specific examples in mind?
---
(Book a call) for personalized & private feedback
I will quote from this thread because I think it's relevant:
From Meta-Discussion on Feedback, Post #22
Quote from Matthew Whitewood on December 20, 2021, 9:01 amLucio seems to enjoy the evaluation phase.
And that's a great (unintended) feedback.
Current Thread, Previous Post
Lucio: You risk stifling creation by attacking things too early, plus you can discourage people from exploring further or coming up with new ideas.
Well, you use the word "attack" rather than "evaluate" so that's one reason.
I feel that the word "attack" connotes a certain element of destruction.
I think "attacking" would be more useful for well-built ideas, concepts, frameworks.
Like we should attack some fundamentals in Power University in my opinion.
In short, match strength with strength.
It took Einstein a lot of strength to challenge Newton for example.
[People couldn't accept that the speed of light is always the same in all inertial frames of reference (constant velocity, non-accelerating frames).
Typically, you see a ball in a moving train move at different speeds depending on whether you're observing the ball from the train or ground.
But for light, it doesn't matter. It's always the same.]
For early ideas, I think mixing divergent thinking (ideation/exploration) with convergent thinking (evaluation) is crucial.
You build the idea a bit, then you evaluate a bit, take away some, build again, and repeat.
Again, I want to emphasise the initial idea should be relatively well-thought-out.
Like what Kevin (Transitioned) mentioned about the art of posting, which I interpret as a minimum viable post.
I think ideas have this concept too of a minimum viable idea.
Except ideas need to be better formulated than posts.
The main one would be the thread
The Challenges of Marketing ThePowerMoves
I certainly could have been clearer myself with a snapshot of the idea.
I wanted to advocate that one can align product and marketing a lot.
You have done so via articles and search engine optimisation in my opinion.
Your first reply was to emphasise that you put the product as first priority than marketing.
And I wanted to say that marketing can be an extension and even enhancement of the product.
Ali and I forged ahead with this general idea, and now that thread is buzzing with activity and ideas.
Ali and Kevin did quite a lot of work starting on the second page onwards to further the discussions.
Now Ali is working on the TPM book.
OK, thank you very much for the feedback and example, Matthew.
I agree with you.
Next time an idea come up, I'll try to keep this in mind.
That being said, an upgraded behavior does not necessarily and immediately follow rational agreement and/or good intentions.
So how about this: next time that you feel I'm shutting down a door too quickly, you let me know.
---
(Book a call) for personalized & private feedback
And thanks for taking the time to talk through this with me Lucio.
Next time an idea come up, I'll try to keep this in mind.
That being said, an upgraded behavior does not necessarily and immediately follow rational agreement and/or good intentions.
So how about this: next time that you feel I'm shutting down a door too quickly, you let me know.
I think it could largely be due to the nature of the forum.
Let me open a new thread for that.