Public evidence record
Published podcast speaker
Books, apps, and tools
book / likes
“Yeah, I love books on creativity and innovation, Lenny, and some of my classic favorites are Walt Disney's biography. And there's several out there, but I think the one that I like the most is the Triumph of the American Imagination.”
book / recommends
“Yeah, I love books on creativity and innovation, Lenny, and some of my classic favorites are Walt Disney's biography. And there's several out there, but I think the one that I like the most is the Triumph of the American Imagination. And what's interesting is it talks about how Walt Disney actually loved the theme parks more than the movies. And the reason for that was he could actually tinker with the theme parks. He could make changes to where the rides were, he could change rides in and out, and then he could observe real sort of changes to reactions of people flowing into the theme parks, which he couldn't do with the movies because once it was produced, it was done, it was out of his control. And it was interesting, he was basically A-B testing long before the term was coined. And it's just a fascinating look into how his brain worked, way ahead of its time. The other classic is Ed Catmull's Creativity Inc, and it talks about all the negative forces that eat away at creativity in an organization. How do you, as the leader, have to keep them at bay and make sure the team can innovate? And then there's this probably less popular book, but really good one from Tom Kelly of IDEO, which is The Ten Faces of Innovation. It talks about different archetypes that you need on the team that are essential for creating something special. And you actually need, I think there's the devil's advocate, you need the researcher, you need the ethnographer, you need the stage setter. There's all these interesting personalities that you need to actually make something successful. So I would say those are some of the ones that I usually recommend, yeah.”
book / recommends
“Yeah, I love books on creativity and innovation, Lenny, and some of my classic favorites are Walt Disney's biography. And there's several out there, but I think the one that I like the most is the Triumph of the American Imagination. And what's interesting is it talks about how Walt Disney actually loved the theme parks more than the movies. And the reason for that was he could actually tinker with the theme parks. He could make changes to where the rides were, he could change rides in and out, and then he could observe real sort of changes to reactions of people flowing into the theme parks, which he couldn't do with the movies because once it was produced, it was done, it was out of his control. And it was interesting, he was basically A-B testing long before the term was coined. And it's just a fascinating look into how his brain worked, way ahead of its time. The other classic is Ed Catmull's Creativity Inc, and it talks about all the negative forces that eat away at creativity in an organization. How do you, as the leader, have to keep them at bay and make sure the team can innovate? And then there's this probably less popular book, but really good one from Tom Kelly of IDEO, which is The Ten Faces of Innovation. It talks about different archetypes that you need on the team that are essential for creating something special. And you actually need, I think there's the devil's advocate, you need the researcher, you need the ethnographer, you need the stage setter. There's all these interesting personalities that you need to actually make something successful. So I would say those are some of the ones that I usually recommend, yeah.”
book / recommends
“Yeah, I love books on creativity and innovation, Lenny, and some of my classic favorites are Walt Disney's biography. And there's several out there, but I think the one that I like the most is the Triumph of the American Imagination. And what's interesting is it talks about how Walt Disney actually loved the theme parks more than the movies. And the reason for that was he could actually tinker with the theme parks. He could make changes to where the rides were, he could change rides in and out, and then he could observe real sort of changes to reactions of people flowing into the theme parks, which he couldn't do with the movies because once it was produced, it was done, it was out of his control. And it was interesting, he was basically A-B testing long before the term was coined. And it's just a fascinating look into how his brain worked, way ahead of its time. The other classic is Ed Catmull's Creativity Inc, and it talks about all the negative forces that eat away at creativity in an organization. How do you, as the leader, have to keep them at bay and make sure the team can innovate? And then there's this probably less popular book, but really good one from Tom Kelly of IDEO, which is The Ten Faces of Innovation. It talks about different archetypes that you need on the team that are essential for creating something special. And you actually need, I think there's the devil's advocate, you need the researcher, you need the ethnographer, you need the stage setter. There's all these interesting personalities that you need to actually make something successful. So I would say those are some of the ones that I usually recommend, yeah.”
Claim ledger
18 transcript-backed records
01 / recommendation
“Yeah, I love books on creativity and innovation, Lenny, and some of my classic favorites are Walt Disney's biography. And there's several out there, but I think the one that I like the most is the Triumph of the American Imagination. And what's interesting is it talks about how Walt Disney actually loved the theme parks more than the movies. And the reason for that was he could actually tinker with the theme parks. He could make changes to where the rides were, he could change rides in and out, and then he could observe real sort of changes to reactions of people flowing into the theme parks, which he couldn't do with the movies because once it was produced, it was done, it was out of his control. And it was interesting, he was basically A-B testing long before the term was coined. And it's just a fascinating look into how his brain worked, way ahead of its time. The other classic is Ed Catmull's Creativity Inc, and it talks about all the negative forces that eat away at creativity in an organization. How do you, as the leader, have to keep them at bay and make sure the team can innovate? And then there's this probably less popular book, but really good one from Tom Kelly of IDEO, which is The Ten Faces of Innovation. It talks about different archetypes that you need on the team that are essential for creating something special. And you actually need, I think there's the devil's advocate, you need the researcher, you need the ethnographer, you need the stage setter. There's all these interesting personalities that you need to actually make something successful. So I would say those are some of the ones that I usually recommend, yeah.”
02 / belief
“I think more medium term and probably not too distant future and likely sooner than we all think, there's probably going to be, sort of the model that resonates with me is sort of the multi-agent model, which is you probably have different components of the strategy workflow automated.”
03 / belief
“I think there's just three quick notes to close off this process and I'll share two examples, Lenny.”
04 / belief
“I think there is a crossover point where the human judgment will be inferior to something that's able to process multiple signals simultaneously.”
05 / belief
“I would say that the process works well at sort of a growth stage company or in a vertical within sort of a larger company.”
06 / observation
“The key is you're doing it together as a strategy working group, and you're debating the scores and you're reasoning why it should be higher versus lower.”
07 / belief
“I think, definitely, the manager becomes a person who you interview as part of the leadership interviews, so you know what the manager's looking for from the effort.”
08 / observation
“The reason is because Zynga had it figured out so well that I didn't actually have a need to exercise that muscle at Zynga, and we just had to come up with new games that applied that strategy.”
09 / belief
“There's just business pressure, like the CEO might still want a strategy in two weeks, how do you respond to that? And I think we can find some clever shortcuts there, but I think to the extent possible, the leader should push for [inaudible 00:18:39] to make something really great.”
10 / belief
“We got the nearly identical strategic pillars, but eventually completely different outcomes. And I think that that illustrates the most important point about strategy, which is intrinsically strategy has no business value.”
11 / belief
“I would minimize pulling them in, because they've all contributed so much to the process already. So, I would say that at the end of it, obviously, once you have a draft, it's good to share with them, but I wouldn't tap their cycles too much at this point, because they've given a lot already.”
12 / evaluation
“I think usually there's a desire from leaders to say, "Okay, what are we building next?" And it's important not to include a roadmap as part of a strategy doc, because a strategy doc is meant to be separate from the roadmap.”
13 / evaluation
“their own preconceived notions of what to build, what the strategy should be, and it humanizes the whole process. That I think is the purpose, but you still give them the homework of writing down what they learned because it's a little bit of a forcing function.”
14 / evaluation
“There is a smallest flavor of it which focuses on solving problems, they're called present forward, and it typically operates in a two-year horizon. We use a five-stage process to get there and it takes about eight to 12 weeks.”
15 / evaluation
“The design sprint is to generate a lot of illustrative concepts that bring the strategy to life because a picture is worth a thousand words.”
16 / prediction
“But the basic sort of strategic process I would say takes about eight to 12 weeks long. It's something that I think people often underestimate how long it takes and eventually end up taking a lot more time.”
17 / preference
“Yeah, I love books on creativity and innovation, Lenny, and some of my classic favorites are Walt Disney's biography. And there's several out there, but I think the one that I like the most is the Triumph of the American Imagination.”
18 / recommendation
“Then you're in a great spot because now all you have to do is you have to down select from those 10 to 15 opportunity areas into ideally three, maybe five, but I would recommend three because it creates more clarity and focus.”