It's great to just casually collect information, bookmark something here and there, add a few tags. Highlight things in your Google Reader, add a note on Netvibes, store it on Secondbrain, read a few lines, open some more links and just continue.
That brings a lot of information, it really helps to create a big picture and it is a lot of work.
It actually meets many requirements we have in daily work (flexibility, global orientation, speed, always being ready for an alternative) and it fits to your working style if you are collecting requirements, shaping products, evaluating solution scenarios or doing other rather creative work.
Once you're used to that style of working it gets really hard to forget the always growing always open network attitude and to focus on one idea on one piece of paper.
- First of all it is hard, because you have to exclude so many things. You can not touch on this perspective or that point of view - focus on one thread and try to make it understandable.
- The second reason why it is hard is because we also have to focus on one targetgroup. To whom are you talking, which of your many ideas and what part of that one idea is it that might be really interesting for them? You have to decide, you have to exclude the rest and you can not just start somewhere and wait for comments.
- A third source of trouble is: We have to get it done. We actually really have to finalize it. We can not start it, leave it open for discussion, add a few links and hope for people to use it as a starting point for their own thoughts. We are expected to tell a fully flavoured story, and we are expected to sell something. Most audience want to have a clear proposition and the end: what am I supposed to do now, what can I get.
A clear, compelling and competitive vision, neatly designed and written on one piece of paper - that's what is expected in most senior management meetings.
If you can not deliver your idea in that shape - then it's either you or your idea who is probably not worth listening to.
But are our products like that? Do we have a onedimensional linear backbone in our ideas that can be easily followed and tells everything?
Should we have that?
Is actually our reality still like that, is there anything we can describe in a distinct, not misunderstandable way?
And (here comes my alltime favourite question): Does it matter?
Does the grade of reality of what we describe as reality matter? Does it matter if everything is covered by what we say? And how do we want to know if the reallity we want to describe is also the reality that our counterpart is able and willing to understand?
We don't know and we can't control it; we probably only talk of the same thing when we say nothing at all. - Ok, that's pretty philosophical.
I'm convinced that open, unclean, unfinished mashups describe way better what we are up to and what happens out there. But I'm also positive that it are the very simple stories that sell - they are the only thing you can buy; everything ellse is so undefined that you can not even attach a price tag to it.
So again: It does not matter. Don't try to reduce complexity in your thoughts or in the way you look at things.
But find a single and simple storyline that tells a good story. That can be reused in many different ways. Tha can be understood by several audiences.
If it's a really great story, it seems to address only a very limited part of your idea. But you can reuse it in every way you need and as often as you need it.
That's economic, far more economic then one sheet of paper.
And it leaves enough space, spirit and energy for what you really want to care about.
kbex Blog deals with communication, collaboration and the philosophy of media: ideas around intranets, internet, e commerce, social media, and online media in general. it serves as a best practise repository and sometimes reports from conferences.