Ways to think and work in public

I’m excited to share Part and Sum's Operating System. Our ambition is to make the vast majority of our thinking, documents, and processes completely accessible to the public. Here is a bit about how we got here:

I love the idea of thinking and making things in public as ways of improving work. I also love blogging and social media for this, but I’ve always struggled with its formality. Writing even the shortest blog post requires us to structure our thoughts differently than the work we deliver every day. Our work is more often a collection of links, raw thinking, and scribbles in various states of lumping and splitting that culminates into a strategy. 

Spurred by Tom Critchlow, we’ve been inspired to close this gap between our thinking, our work, and what we share. This is inherent in how Part and Sum works. Our “bolt-on” model is about combining our expertise with our clients’ and delivering strategy in native formats. Think less decks and more strategies that live within tools and platforms.

Enter the concept of “digital garden.” What if we turned our thinking and ways of working into a Massively Multiplayer experience?

We chose Notion for our CMS. It’s flexible and easy for the team to use, has robust features (bidirectional links!) and capabilities, and blurs the lines between public and private (it does have its limitations - looking at you SEO and site speed). 

Coincidentally, Josh Green shared “Everything is Miscellaneous” with me as we set out on this journey. This book has many interesting pushes and conceptual builds that are relevant to our garden/OS:

1. Learn to not fear messiness, but embrace it. In a digital space, the more edits, lumps, and splits that happen, the more data and contextual relationships are created. Like any strategy, the real value exists in the minds of the teams executing it. 
2. Starting with an “ideal” information organization system is inherently wrong (and historically fraught). Rather, a lean startup approach should be taken when organizing information. Get in, start, and create you as you go.
3. To quote David Weinberger: “The real problem with [the Dewey Decimal System] is that any map of knowledge assumes that knowledge has a geography, that it has a top-down view, that it has a shape.”
4. Dewy Decimal System, animal taxonomic ranks, etc… these structures apply biased mental models onto information systems. In a phenomenological-driven world, we need to create the ability to have our own views expressed through systems we make.
5. Information is more useful to more people when it has multiple framings and entry points, rather than a single structure. With our Operating System, operators and users will be able to edit and organize their own versions of their own information systems.
6. Another example of biased systems omitting valuable entry points: “When Rand McNally makes a map for truckers, it notes highway weight stations but leaves out national landmarks. Automobile road maps often show hospitals but not bowling alleys.” 

Outside of the book (which is a must-read, IMO), Wikipedia’s polices are also an inspiration. Guiding by policies and erring on the side of inclusion and boldness inspires action, which learning in-public demands. Also, I never thought I would be so inspired by classic principles of library science.

Rules and principles define both a community and a digital space. It’s what's different about the space we’re building and the open or social web. The mechanics are the message. That’s why creating a system of principles for how users participate in a wiki or digital garden is so important. Ours are still very rough, but they’re a starting point.

Ideally, our Operating System becomes, stores, and pushes our IP and is our marketing–all in one.

I hope this experiment gives all of Part and Sum something bigger to work on. Something to build for ourselves, our clients, and the public. I’ve already learned a ton and am excited for more. A special thanks to Amelia, Jess, and Samantha who have lead the editorial direction of this effort and helped onboard all of us onto Notion.

I’m eager to hear your thoughts and pushes. So let me know! Also, sign up for our newsletter for updates on our weekly progress.