Provoke

CONCLUSION: MINIMALLY VIABLE THOUGHTS

In the spirit of any two data points connecting to create a trend line, we thought we'd end Provoke in the same way we ended Detonate: with some “minimally viable thoughts.” These are ideas that might have been on the cutting-room floor, or notions we've been pondering that were not sufficiently formed to merit inclusion elsewhere. Our aspiration in sharing these ideas is to provoke conversation among our readers in the hopes they can be improved or alternatively discarded as “ifs” that will never become “whens.”

ON THE IMPORTANCE OF FUN

While we were writing this book, our editor, Tim Sullivan, observed that “it's clear that you both (and many of the people in the stories) have fun.” When we asked him why that was noteworthy, he responded: “Intellectual play is important. I would think that writing scenarios to play with is in fact fun, in addition to being hard work. In a group exercise, envisioning possible futures has got to be a blast. But I would guess that in many settings there's an awful lot of self-seriousness.”

He is 100% right. There is an awful lot of self-seriousness out there and, in our opinion, not enough levity. Almost all organizations – especially scaled, successful ones that have a reputation to uphold – take themselves at least a little too seriously. Of course, many are doing (very) important work. But there is no law that says that doing important work has to be done by people who aren't having fun doing it or that ...