Published in October 25, 2015 here.
A couple weeks ago, I attended the first edition of Productized Conference in Lisbon. I was invited to run a workshop on understanding experiences and to give a short lecture on what's happening now.
It was a very nice crowd. It’s always great to meet people who are also trying to create change and bring "the NEW"* to our lives. That also means that we are all struggling along the process.
I enjoyed all the presos and convos I could attend and get involved. In particular, I was happy to find that Lars Rosengren and I focused on similar topics: finding purpose and creating meaning.
As a summary of the conversations I frequently have, I think most of the teams have little time to think WHY we do things and to search for deeper answers. We need to find more time to rethink what we are doing and why we are doing what we do. We tend focus too much on the WHAT.
We tend to fall in Maslow’s golden hammer idea of "if the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything as if it were a nail” and we forget the WHY and the problems we are trying to solve. For instance, I found out today that there’s an iPhone app that can help us relax. I wonder if we are focusing too much on the symptoms and not the root causes. A smartphone app to relax might be just a sort of ibuprofen that attacks a symptom, not a real problem. Maybe the real problem is that we are too tied to our smartphones.
Maybe this is the right time to think of other options to solve problems. Maybe it’s the time to find out what those problems are first. And together, we might really create the NEW.
I’d love to start a conversation, let’s get connected.
@luiseduardodejo
PS. If you have time, a link to my talk is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rchhcsij--c where I share what we see is happening, our team's current explorations and the challenges we might face in the future.. All based in my conversations with some amazing people: Aaron, Aitor, Agustin, Antonio, Antonio, Carlos, Golden, Javier, Karolina, Paco, Pamela, Paula, Quino, Rafaeland Sandra.
* "The NEW" is a term I took from Kim Erwin's book "Communicating The New"