Friday Reflections # 4

Technically it has been 3 weeks but I deleted one week because i had fever and didn't move from bed ?? The fever was ok and it was a blessing in a disguise for me as I don't give enough rest to my mind and body otherwise. This time the fear of Covid-19 and it affecting all the elderly people at home was eating me alive. Gosh! When you experience the pain it is amplified but on a generic note you don't care so much. Thanks to the ostrich bias in us.

Block-wise

I borrowed the idea of block wise learning from Waldorf schools and implemented in our Maker Diplomas (product design and product management) a few months back and it is working wonderfully well. We just completed a block on Imperatives (aka direction). The questions we answered in this block are

• How to think about setting a direction for a product?
• What is strategy? Then what is design strategy and product strategy?
• What is roadmapping?
• What is a release plan?
• What is ops and hence what is design ops and product ops?
• How to move from abstract thinking to concrete thinking in the product world?

The student presentations at the end of the block about what we have learnt so far is surreal and mind-blowing. While the students learned Imperatives, as a teacher I learned a lot more. Nothing like opening up a case from real life and sharing what is working and what is not. We sliced and diced Xperian as all data was available in my control. I could not do that with any other case.

I still remember me asking a professor who is also an investor and entrepreneur. Sir, would it be possible to see how it is working for you in reality in your company? He mentioned, over my dead body ??

I told myself, I will never be that person. That day I decided I will keep all learnings and projects transparent. I opened up all numbers, segmentation, thinking and flaws in front of my students so that we can learn together. What is the fun in teaching product management and not showing how you manage products? The conviction was validated by a student (who is a senior executive). He called me and said, I am learning more from how you do things than what you teach in class. That made my day as a doer and a teacher ??

#VEVI30D Challenge

For the fun of learning behavioural economics we started a product based on Loss Aversion bias. The idea is to pay INR 300 upfront as a bet on you and you keep up your promise everyday else you will lose INR 10 a day. The idea is to VEVI (Verbal and Visual) everyday in the form of posts or articles or tweets or whatever. At least 100 words and one Visual. As a team we rocked it. 9 people participated and we have created 210 VEVIs in one month and I am going to list them all as one long post. Some of the learnings are heart warming.

Now based on the learnings of #VEVI30D and the fun we had in learning, our no-code team at Xperian started a #NOCO30D challenge. I am also taking part in it and cracking something everyday. I am writing my notes in my website here and I continue to write everyday for DesignU here. So VEVI and NoCode is happening for me.

These simple challenges opened me up in ways i didn't imagine. I started my LinkedIn writings as well better like this. A little visual along with verbals goes a long way and it removes ambiguity to a large extent in communication. You should try it too :)

Maker's Guild

We launched (beta) our Guild just for our students to see if the community can be built as a product that offers immense value. In just two weeks we got our answers. We must have a guild for all the hungry makers for sure.

In just 4 weeks, we had our first master mind (monthly), we went through 3 office hours (weekly), we started using our CONDUCE system, now we are starting a book club and of-course a special place for Women Maker's (private) within the community. This is most needed right now. Soon we will open it up to the world when we are ready (we need a little more time to manage the current priorities).

What you see below is just one week roundup and I am sure this week will be more ??

Xperian Brand Architecture

People say start small with one thing and grow bigger on the go. I always had a problem with that approach. Probably I am biased by Neuroscience. Your brain works the best when it knows point A and point B together. The big picture first and small picture next. Whole and then the parts. Doing is deceptive. It can make you feel super busy but utterly unproductive. On the other hand, thinking is super hard but is the most productive way to save time and energy. So I stuck to my conviction on human brain and said we need to know where are we and where we want to go this life time (not just another year or 3 years).

We spent a considerable amount of time to figure out what next for this lifetime and then we trickled it down to a decade, next 3 years, next year, this year, this month, this week and this day. I can say this much that the vision is worth dedicating my life for. It is exciting and thrilling. I have lots to learn and I guess this is a worthy way of spending my life. Will share what we landed up soon as it deserves a much bigger bang than just a part of an article.

Design U

What started as a passion project is slowly transforming lives. For the first time, I spoke about Design U to a bunch of young minds and I wasn't sure how it will go but the students sent me a number of messages on how effective the talk has been on their thinking. You can find the talk here.

I have been asked if this can be run as a bootcamp as transformation is not a 3 hours or a 3 day affair. I am still thinking about it, given the other priorities but the signal has been strong. I got at-least 20 messages on this note. Getting a resonance from young minds is the hardest job out there.

Last month personal finance series was an amazing learning. I got a number of messages thanking for the time and effort put into articulation.

This month I am writing about Weight Loss in Design U. A never before take on human body by me to the external world.

CONDUCE

There are many productivity systems in the world. There are enough to-do lists, apps, systems available but none worked for me because no systems handles the human life holistically and yet we live as whole humans with ever changing days and weeks. So I developed a system for myself which I extended to my team based on the scientific insights on how human system works (cog science, behavioural psych, neuroscience, fallacies etc) and what is creative productivity (your factory productivity is different from knowledge productivity).

I have been using this system for the past 12 months. It works like a charm for me and I keep tweaking and adapting it as my life flows. Keeps me sane and grounded. Requests have come to share the system with the world as we all are struggling with productivity as our lives are getting more and more cramped with tasks, lists, tweets, courses and more. Once it gets launch ready, i shall keep you posted. I am excited that a home grown system is helping 100s of makers today. I am sure it can help millions.

Oh! that is a long reflection notes. So much happens in just two weeks. The reflection notes is a documentation of evolution as a maker. If not for anything just a pat on our backs when we read later. We will know that we lived well and we did our best for that context. It is even better to share with with the world so someone can learn from the projects, mistakes, thinking styles, stupidity and more.

Thank you for reading. Attention is the ?? Have a safe fortnight!