Author Archives: cglambdin

Just thought I’d let you all know that The Lateral Lens is moving to Substack. You can subscribe to the new blog here. Reach out if you’d like to chat. Have a wonderful 2024!

In this article we examine why executive actions are often seemingly incomprehensible, suggesting this is only so when operating from the wrong set of assumptions. We examine the power of narrative as a technology that does special political work, using sociologist James C. Scott’s concept of the “hidden transcript”. As always, I welcome your emails,Continue reading “Confronting Mythology”

“MBO” never stood for “Management by Output” (crazy, right?). OKRs are supposedly even better. (Are they really?) In practice the KR part tends to become lists of planned output, and so management by output is the actual result. You can only pretend this is smart by ignoring the value left behind. The plain fact isContinue reading “Getting Serious About Results”

In his 2017 book, A Seat at the Table, Mark Schwartz predicted we will look back and find it odd that most organizations were not focused on outcomes, that everyone was just busy building stuff, incentivized to churn out the output come what may; let the gods sort the value from all that waste. Obviously,Continue reading “Starting With Value”

It can be difficult, if not impossible, to see trends and relationships in tables of raw data. Infovis, short for “information visualization”, is meant to remedy this. By visually encoding raw data as visual variables—such as distance from a common baseline or the slope of a line—a well-designed graph can easily show patterns that areContinue reading “Disinformation Design”

It’s time for a rant on the weirdness of “roadmaps”. “Time is money.” (And more time is more money.) “Most of what’s built is seldom or never used.” “Most requirements have negative actual value.” We hear stuff like this a lot. We nod in agreement and then get back to what we’re actually paid toContinue reading “Roadmaps and Twyman’s Law”

Hello dear readers! Today’s post is actually from two blogs and well over a decade ago. As I still see this nonsense in countless books, and as it provides a fascinating case study of how research gets popularized only to be misused, I thought it might be interesting to revisit. So…the “magic number 7”. ManyContinue reading “The Myth of the Magic Number 7”

Virginia Satir was the originator of family therapy. Her work was introduced to the world of product work through the efforts of software pioneer Gerald Weinberg. In today’s post we will look at what she called the “Self-Esteem Maintenance Kit”, shared in the book, Meditations of Virgina Satir. There are five items in her kit,Continue reading “Satir’s Self-Esteem Maintenance Kit”

Intro Corporate culture is not as mysterious as we often make it out to be. To see this, however, we must first admit certain things leadership often does not want to admit. Chief among these—surprise, surprise—is what actually determines culture. From Schein to Marx Executives tend to treat culture as a sort of branding exercise,Continue reading “Culture Isn’t Talk”

Intro Let’s talk a little philosophy. Many teams and organizations routinely operate with a default epistemology that could best be described as “naïve realism”. In plain English, this means they implicitly assume their current perceptions of and beliefs about reality are just “how things are”. This can be expensive thinking. It can result in whatContinue reading “Frame Play”

Intro: A Word on Decision Quality We talk a lot about decisions, but mostly about the need to get them made, the speed with which they’re made, and who has the authority to make them. When it comes to their quality, however, we tend to be strangely silent. The desire seems to be to keepContinue reading “Exploring Alternative Strategies”

Intro Dan Lovallo and Olivier Sibony are Professors of Strategy. They make an interesting observation. Behavioral economics, the application of cognitive psychology to economic decision making, seems to have gained universal acceptance…except among corporate strategists. And there might be a pretty straightforward reason why. In marketing or finance, for example, a focus on behavioral economicsContinue reading “Strategy and Behavioral Economics”

Intro We recently examined an approach to strategy that grew out of RAND and US military planning. Today’s article will go in a different direction and discuss lessons gleaned from…Marxism? That’s right. There are many concepts here that offer an extremely insightful lens through which to examine aspects of both organizational leadership and product strategy.Continue reading “Applying Marxist Thought to…Product Work?”

In their excellent (and fun!) book, Are Your Lights On, software pioneers Donald Gause and Gerald Weinberg offer the following scenario. There is an office building with a deluge of complaints about there being too few elevators. What are some possible ways to address this? They start listing some possible solutions. What might some otherContinue reading “Are Your Lights On?”

Assumption-Based Planning, or ABP, is an approach to strategic planning originally developed by RAND for the U.S. Army. It is a fascinating methodology that can help bake agility into planning to reduce overall risk. The concept was introduced by Dewar, Builder, Hix, and Levin in their 1993 book, Assumption-Based Planning. It was then further developedContinue reading “Assumption-Based Planning”

Intro Agile vs. Waterfall—it’s a discussion that never seems to progress as much as it continues to confuse. This hasn’t stopped countless organizations from spending staggering sums on “Agile transformations” which never seem to increase, well, agility. The stories of such transformations are now notorious, with Southwest Airlines being but the latest. In this postContinue reading “Agile vs. Waterfall (And Other Obfuscation)”

Intro Reading Peter Scholtes’ 1998 The Leader’s Handbook should today cause some reflection. His assessment of most modern org cultures is in no way positive and, one can say with confidence, no less accurate than it was a quarter century ago. Scholtes contrasts two general org cultures, similar to McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y,Continue reading “Industrial Revolution Org Cultures”

How many meetings are you in where the same few dominant personalities do most of the talking? Or that tout the importance of “inclusiveness” while still being punishingly brutal for introverts? Or where you’re not sure why you’re there, the agenda is only sporadically brought up, and the meeting unerringly runs over its scheduled time?Continue reading “Meetings Are Design Products”

Miernik believes that romantic composers prepared the ground for totalitarian politicians: both deal in illusions, knowing that the illusions people have about themselves as individuals and as nations are stronger than reality. —Charles McCarry, The Miernik Dossier It’s easy to be self-congratulatory when delivering something requested. Sometimes that is as it should be. This doesContinue reading “From Frames to Upholstery”

Agile is, fundamentally, an evolutionary mindset. Perhaps this is what makes it so controversial. Perhaps this is what makes it so hard to do right. To see why, we need to dig into what exactly it means for something to be “evolutionary.” Here let’s not turn to any work on Agile, product work, or orgContinue reading “Agile and Science (and Politics?)”

Intro Last time we discussed the Narrative Fallacy. Today we will look at five topics that might not seem all that related at first glance. Together, however, they all serve as important lenses showing us the many and profound ways that narratizing can lead us astray. In this post we will discuss sensemaking, projection, pluralisticContinue reading “Stories as Filters”

In this post we are going to take two fascinating topics, the Monty Hall Problem and the Narrative Fallacy, and see what they can teach us about product planning. Enjoy! 1. Let’s Make a Deal A lot has been written about the Monty Hall Problem, a famous version of Bertrand’s Box Paradox from 1889. IfContinue reading “Monty Hall, Storytelling, and Planning”

There’s no shortage of wonky assertions in the field of UX, specious claims based on bad methodology, spuriously supported by voodoo statistics. Jakob Nielsen, one of the biggest names in the field, isn’t immune. Perhaps most famously, the “five user-assumption,” which he originally proposed with Rolf Molich, has since been rather thoroughly debunked by Molich’sContinue reading “Just How Related Is Usability to User Satisfaction?”

I was recently chatting with Vicki Amon-Higa, who runs a Customer Experience consultancy. She was telling me about “the rock and the wrapper.” The “rock,” she said, is your technical product offering or service, whatever it is. The “wrapper” is everything else that goes into offering this to customers. She said she’s noticed that evenContinue reading “The Rock and the Wrapper”

This post concludes a three-part series on influence mapping, comparing it to a game of chess. In Part 1 we covered the opening, creating the map. In Part 2 we discussed the middlegame, which is how to work the map to evolve the influence landscape to your benefit. In this post we will look atContinue reading “Influence Mapping (Part 3)”

OKRs. Objectives and Key Results. I can’t believe I’m writing a post on this. But here we are. It’s but one of the latest viral concepts to be wildly misused. Like Agile, OKRs could be a good thing. Alas, once a large enterprise gets its hands on the latest buzzword, well, it’s bound to endContinue reading “OKRs and OKRA”

This is Part 2 in a three-part series on influence mapping. In Part 1 we went over how to create the map. In this post we will cover how to work the map to evolve the influence landscape. In Part 3 we will look at some more examples and summarize the principles covered in thisContinue reading “Influence Mapping (Part 2)”

In this three-part series we will go over my take on influence mapping. In this post, Part 1 of the series, we will look at some of the principles involved and explain how to create the influence map. In Part 2 we will cover how to work the influence map to evolve the decision landscape.Continue reading “Influence Mapping (Part 1)”

Today we’ll be looking at Between People, a little book that uses metaphor to generate insights concerning one-on-one communication. The author is John A. Sanford, who was an Episcopal priest, a Jungian analyst, and one hell of a writer. Throughout the post, specific active listening skills will appear bolded. Playing Catch A theme throughout theContinue reading “Listening Creatively: Killing Giants and Catching Shapeshifters”

In today’s post we’ll be discussing Dr. Edward Martin Baker’s amazing little book, Scoring a Whole in One. Credit is due to Sean Murphy, of SKMurphy, Inc., who reached out and asked if I’d like to collaborate on something based on Baker’s book. I said yes, and we each did a post on it. BelowContinue reading “Systems as Mental Interfaces”

Today we’ll cover an approach I’ve used for running strategy workshops. First, we must discuss what definition of “strategy” I have in view. Second, we’ll go through the 8 steps of the workshop itself. Intro: Strategy In his book, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, author Richard Rumelt argues that organizations tend to confuse strategy with goals. AsContinue reading “Strategy and Outcomes”

The Trojan War Consider that the story of the Trojan horse is a story about war; and, in certain respects, it offers an apt metaphor. In many organizations a battle of sorts is being fought, even if largely unstated. In this version of the story, the Greeks don’t offer the gift and pretend to sailContinue reading “Agile’s Ethical Dilemma, Decision Distribution, and the Trojan War”

It’s important to go back and read the old stuff sometimes. When ideas get popularized, often parts get left behind that are just as interesting and important as the parts that catch on. Today we’ll take a look at Sim Sitkin’s “Learning Through Failure,” from Organizational Learning (1996), which introduced the concept of “intelligent failure.”Continue reading “Revisiting “Intelligent Failure””

How about an irreverent respite? In today’s post we’ll look at the 1973 book, Malice in Blunderland, by Thomas L. Martin, Jr., once the Dean of Engineering at the University of Arizona and later the President of the Illinois Institute of Technology. We’re all familiar with “Parkinson’s Law” or the “Peter Principle,” but, Martin argues,Continue reading “Bureaucratic Blunderland”

Morton C. Blackwell was a delegate for Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. Following Goldwater’s dramatic defeat by Lyndon B. Johnson, Blackwell and other conservative strategists started to think hard about why they had lost so badly. He later wrote about these learnings as President of the Leadership Institute. One of the things toContinue reading “What Is Incentivized Is Policy—All Else Is Lip Service”

Sebastian Deterding thinks the field of User Experience (UX) has a lot to learn from a children’s book called Momo. In the book, and the movie based on it, Momo is a girl with an amazing gift. She can make people feel better just by listening to them. (But, you might ask, don’t we allContinue reading “The Men in Grey and Addictive Designs”

You want to influence someone. What should you focus on? Should you focus on making your case, on the data that support your position, on laying out an airtight argument? You do need to know your stuff, sure, but this isn’t enough. A good lens for answering this question is Michael Grinder’s House of Communication.Continue reading “House of Communication”

You can’t apply concepts you don’t have, and this is definitely one you should want in your toolbelt. The concept comes from Don Reinertsen, who argues, “If you only quantify one thing, quantify the cost of delay” (Reinertsen, 2009). If you’ve heard of if but don’t know what it is, or if you sort ofContinue reading “Estimating Cost of Delay”

Sorry political junkies, this is not a post about Democrats and Republicans. This is a post about egos and drama. It’s a post about meeting effectiveness. Consider, how do you tend to relate to others in meetings, while working, or even just in day-to-day life? Are there certain interactions that leave you feeling disappointed, notContinue reading “Donkeys and Elephants”

Agile is sort of an odd beast. It’s not a field, like UX. It’s not a framework, like SAFe. It’s more an umbrella term centered around a manifesto. The Agile Manifesto, though, is just that—a manifesto. It’s a set of values and principles. As such, it’s brief. What it doesn’t say is voluminous. What itContinue reading “Why Agile and UX Still Don’t Get Along”

An old saying proclaims that “cooler heads will prevail”. Zen Buddhist Takuan Sōhō wrote that when you feel insulted, you had already lost rightmindedness prior to the offense. Colloquially, we speak of someone “getting your goat”. In each case, the message is the same. In-the-moment emotion often sabotages decisions. When things get heated, when emotionsContinue reading “Increasing Options with Teeter Totters”

Today we’re going to take a look at Robert Keidel’s book, The Geometry of Strategy (2010). Keidel is a Professor of Management, a consultant, and former senior fellow at the Wharton School of Business. In his book, Keidel argues that we can improve the content of strategy by paying closer attention to its form. ByContinue reading “The Shape of Strategy”

People make sense of the world in the form of stories. We all have stories. You have a story. Your team has a story. Your customers have stories. Companies have stories, which they spend great sums of money crafting and managing and protecting. Customers have opinions about company stories, which is largely what brand perceptionContinue reading “Stories and Risk”

Two Types of Bias When we say someone is “biased,” often we mean that his stance is showing, that we know his view on some matter (and usually that we disagree with it). This sense of “bias” has to do with WHAT we think. Interpretations must be made from some point of view. Meaning doesContinue reading “Strategy and Ghost Stories”

Certain popular business terms cause an awful lot of confusion. We use them like they have a single clear meaning when they really don’t. “MVP” is a great example. Others are “value,” “Agile,” and “leadership,” each of which are confusing for different reasons. Unpacking Suitcases If I say “customer,” do I mean external purchasers? Users?Continue reading “A Word on Coaching”

It’s now common to hear org leaders stressing the importance of “soft skills.” This is good, of course, but also a little odd. How did this end up becoming something that ever needs stressing? Part of the problem might be the term itself, which comes from the U.S. Army; and, more to the point, probablyContinue reading “How Are Soft Skills Soft?”

Arguing about Agile is like trying to run in quicksand. You can’t. You’ll just get sucked down into the bog. There are two big issues at play here: clarity and scope. First let’s talk clarity. We all agree we need to be “Agile.” The problem is, what does that mean? The Devil is in theContinue reading “Avoid Arguing About Agile”

Don Reinertsen refers to Cost of Delay (CoD) as “the golden key.” CoD is the opportunity cost (in terms of profit and loss) per some unit of time (usually per week) of not achieving something. For example, if achieving a particular outcome will save $50k a week, then a six-week delay in achieving it hasContinue reading “Is CD3 the Golden Key?”

Design is not about creating things. It’s about making decisions to solve problems. Design research is about fitting the right learning tools to the right kinds of questions, doing the smart thing to “derisk” the decisions made. As designer Erika Hall puts it, the decisions we make and the constraints we set up front areContinue reading “Some Thoughts on Design Research, Agile, and Traps”

Comparisons have long been made between chess and business. Kasparov (2007) wrote a whole book about it. Here I’d like to apply an old chess concept specifically to product work. In doing so, this is not to suggest that product work is a “game,” no more than discussing product strategy should imply it’s “war.” I’llContinue reading “The Potential Cost of…Zugzwang?”