Yesterday I wrote about a hack I am running at work next week.

My interest in hacks come from my keener interest in the future of work, and its unremitting demand on the common worker to adapt, learn continually, and upskill. The future worker needs to test themselves, to build resilience, to become antifragile.

Fundamentally, we can do this through experimentation, a willingness to try things and (hopefully) safe-fail.

In my own experimentation and practice, I have learned from – and continue to do so – from the best in the world, because, by a wonderful law of the internet, online learners and leaders do not hoard their learning. They share it, widely and kindly.

None more so than, and this is a long intro to, Simon Terry. [This is a better intro to him…] I follow Simon’s leadership closely in many channels. Yesterday I chanced upon a video chat he had with Kevin Jones, both fellow CAWWers.

Simon was on fire, as per normal. Around 24 minutes he nailed something about the future of work. Whilst this embrace of speed and testing and chasing hunches and making small bets is new and exciting, it is also against the existing (generic) organizational norm.

Simon corrects the notion, though, that such practice is edge work. For him, this is strategy. I agree. He says: “Hope is not a strategy, but experimentation is.”

Indeed,

“Realizing people’s potential – through short cycles, learning together, experimenting on new things – that’s an out-performing strategy in the modern, digital world.”

So, back to the hackathon, about which I know nothing, with a topic about which the participants may or may not know anything substantive, the outcomes of which I have no gauge on. It is a potential recipe for disaster, true. However, it might, just might, be an out-perform strategy in the modern, digital world. Fingers crossed.

←This Much We Know.→