How to think about thinking

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:00:00] Welcome to High Agency, where we ignite conversations that drive change and spark momentum towards transformative action and professional mastery.  I'm Moe Dollywell, a software engineer turned marketer.  I consider myself an entrepreneur, cultural curator, and technologist.  And in my role as founder and CEO of Skyrocket Digital,  I help clients with business and brand strategy  and navigate technology to launch new ideas,  grow their businesses, or undergo total transformation.  In this episode, we're going to talk about thinking.  How to think about things when faced with challenges or opportunities,  and some of the tools at our disposal to distill clarity,  generate creativity, and explore divergent and breakthrough thinking.  Most situations we encounter in our personal and professional lives,  we find ourselves somewhere between two modes.  We might be exploring ideas and approaches, which is divergent thinking,  or we might be needing to curate and distill our ideas and approaches  into a singular path forward,  which is convergent thinking.  Both these modes were first articulated by a Hungarian-American linguist in 1966.  And since then, they've been adapted to something called the Double Diamond Design Process Model,  which was published by the British Design Council almost 20 years ago.  But in between convergence and divergence are massive spaces that need to be traveled  by the designers, the thinkers, the strategists that are trying to solve problems.  So what are some tools and models  that we can employ to solve these problems?  I feel like this particular episode could probably be just the first in a whole series about frameworks and models.  There's so many to discuss, and it's one of my favorite topics.  But we're going to get the conversation started today with Chris Cziczek,  the Lifecycle Marketing Manager at Thinkific,  which is a leading platform for creators of educational content.  Welcome, Chris.  Thanks for having me, Mo.  So to start off, thanks for joining us on the podcast.  What is how to think about things?  What does high agency mean to you?

Kris Chichak

[00:02:17] Well, I had to look it up and just refresh my memory of what agency even means.  And obviously, there's a few different definitions, but there's a sense of agency,  which I kind of resonated with a little bit, and that actually made me think of you as well.  And, you know, the sense of agency is just like a feeling of being in control and being able to sort  of, you know, shape your world and not be sort of determined by it.  So that's kind of what I think about agency.  I think about when you had said it to me.  I think if it kind of depends on who says high agency to you, because if somebody just said,  like, what does high agency mean to you?  It's just a random person.  I'd be like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:02:56] Like a cannabis marketing company?  Yeah, exactly.

Kris Chichak

[00:02:59] Yeah, yeah.  That sounds more accurate.  But from you, that's kind of what I picked up on is this feeling of control and being able to,  you know, shape things and not be sort of subject to the world and the environment that you're in.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:03:15] Yeah. I mean, that's that's exactly it.  That's what we meant by it.  The idea that we can shape our destinies and we can affect the world around us and not just be at the effect of the world around us.  Right.  And that's kind of why you're here today as well, because in our time working together and I think even since then, you continue to shape the world around you.  I don't think you take on a title like lifecycle marketing manager unless that means you intend to influence change in some meaningful way.  So we worked together for a number of years at Skyrocket.  What are some of the things that, you know, you learned in, if anything, in the process of us working together and, you know, where do you think, you know, you apply some of that thinking today in your in your role?

Kris Chichak

[00:03:58] Oh, that's a tough one.  There's there's a lot.  When I first think of it, I think of sitting on this couch with you and, you know, being on some client calls.  And this is a small detail, but there would be a lot of times where a client would, you know, come on to the call and they wouldn't have their video.  Turned on and we'd be kind of sitting there with our video on feeling like, oh, this is kind of awkward.  And I think, you know, my tendency previously was to just leave it that way, maybe turn my own video off or something.  But you would kind of stop, you know, address it, say like, hey, you know, we'd love to have eye contact, have eye contact, establish some level of a connection here.  So do you mind, please, turning on your video?  And then they would do so.  And then obviously, you know, the connection is better there.  So that's like a small example.  But I think that kind of comes back to this concept of high agency is like not just kind of, you know, allowing things to flow in any random direction, but sort of shaping it into a particular direction.  And then some other things, you know, that I learned from you particularly was sort of this idea of divergent thinking and that one of the ways we would talk about it and we have talked about in the past is this idea of like a beach ball.  And in an organization, you know, there's different colors on a beach ball and everybody sort of occupies a different color within, you know, that beach ball.  So they have a different perspective within the organization.  And I think something you taught me was to be able to find ways to switch perspectives.  Like, you know, you're making a particular decision.  And are you just doing that based off of, you know, your intuition that you've earned from your sort of narrow perspective?  Or are you considering?  You know, a greater perspective, like more different lenses and things like that.  So I know that's vague and a bit of a non-answer, but yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:05:55] Well, no, I mean, it actually kind of leads into a conversation you and I have had previously, which still continues to blow my mind a little bit, which is and maybe it is a difference in perspective.  But it still strikes me that people don't realize that ideas are cheap.  And.  It's the execution that matters, of course.  But in the absence of that, like you're free to think about things, you know, in any which way that you want.  And I sometimes get confused by why there's a natural tendency for, you know, everyone, I think even myself sometimes to want to limit those perspectives early on.  Right.  You can have ideas.  It doesn't mean you need to act on them.  You can explore.  You can imagine different ways of being and working and different outcomes.  And that is probably the most productive and cheapest thing you can do.  Right.  I mean, because, you know, our brains come with a package.  It's free.  Yeah.  Right.  So we might as well use it to do some interesting things.  And just because we imagine a way of working or imagine a way of being or an outcome, it doesn't mean we need to act on it.  But there is a tendency.  Perhaps it's a cultural thing.  Perhaps it's a, I don't know, a capitalism thing where everything, you know, there's such a focus on something being tied to an outcome.  And maybe it's an evolutionary thing, like maybe we were only rewarded if we had an idea that had like a beneficial outcome, right?  But I do find that there's some limitation and work environment, especially where people close down early on, where early on, that's that divergent thinking piece again of that's the cheapest and easiest thing you can do, right?  To get the most value out of any sort of process is to imagine, right?  Yeah.  So what do you think, you know, the limitations are to opening up imagination early on?  And what do you do?  What do you do to, to break through that?

Kris Chichak

[00:07:44] I think it's like, well, one could be comfort.  Like it's uncomfortable sometimes to, you know, push yourself in your way of thinking beyond your normal sort of automated processes.  When you think about just waking up in the morning, you have a cascade of thoughts coming in.  And I think a lot of people just sort of identify that as that is me, that is myself.  When really those are just thoughts and you can change your thoughts and, you know, play with them and, and all.  Those things.  And so I think it's like a kind of a, a comfort piece and then be probably some, as I already sort of alluded to an identity.  Um, I think if somebody thinks that, you know, who am I to change my way of thinking, like, that's not me, that's not how I would think.  Um, and I just, I think again, that's something I I've learned from you.  That's something I've learned from a lot of other thinkers and some, some also, you know, experiences.  And things like that, which, you know, we could get into that if we need to, but, um, there's, there's the, everybody has this ability.  Like a brain is, is so interesting and I'm obviously not a neuroscientist or anything like that, but brains are very, very malleable.  And I think people don't often give themselves enough credit into how malleable their brains actually are, uh, in terms of being able to switch perspectives.  And, you know, this is a, we're going big and deep here.  But if you're just.  Just thinking of, you know, a particular business decision, like one thing again, that you taught me is what are we, what are we missing here?  Like, what are we not thinking of and trying to think of what you're not thinking of, um, you know, is a kind of difficult exercise because you would obviously be thinking of it, you know?  Um, so yeah, I mean, I, I think I've gone away from your question, but, uh, yeah, I, I think that it's, you know, comfort and, um, comfort and this, this.  Feeling of, um, identity.  That, that people tend to sort of contain themselves in.  Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:09:47] So I think you're, um, I know you're like a fan of stoicism, but I think your inner stoic is coming out a little bit when you're, cause you're talking about being the observer of your own thoughts.  Right.  Right.  Whereas most times we are just reacting to our thoughts, taking them as, um, gospel, so to speak and just moving with them in some, in some way, right.  Whether that's a reaction, whether that's to, you know, limit ourselves.  Um, but I think there is a separation required.  Especially when you're in creative spaces to be the observer of your own thoughts.  And when you create that distance, then you can kind of see what might be motivating you and perhaps where some of the gaps are.  Yeah, totally.  Um, are there any tools that you remember any like frameworks, any models in particular that you remember in, in the work that we did together that were, that were helpful?

Kris Chichak

[00:10:31] Oh, of course.  Um, to me, I think like a business model canvas is, so, you know, we took on a variety of clients.  Um,  um, I had clients in cannabis, VR, cryptocurrency, blockchain, all at the same time.  And so bouncing from these different industries and these different clients, I am, I don't think of myself as an extremely intelligent person by any means.  So I needed frameworks to help, you know, ground myself and like ground my thinking.  Um, because I just don't have, you know, this super computer in my head, like people like you.  I, I, well, yeah.  You do.  Um, and so a business model canvas was one way of capturing a business and all the different components of it, you know, onto paper and being able to, you know, understand it in that way and break it down.  Um, we could go into business model canvas.  We could go into, um, you know, value proposition canvas was a big one too, when we're working on, when we were working on brands and like, especially verbal identities, a verbal identity is essentially like how.  Yeah.  You talk about a brand and that can be extremely difficult for, you know, an outside agency to come into a, an organization that has, you know, so much complexity to it and say, this is how you should talk about yourself.  And so something like a value proposition canvas was super helpful in breaking down, you know, what is the customer and what is the product and how do those two things like meet in the middle, uh, via, you know, words basically.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:12:09] So, I mean, yeah.  It's interesting because, um, I sometimes get opposition when I, um, try to talk about frameworks, right.  Um, cause I think to some, it seems like, oh, it's just paint by numbers or something.  Yeah.  And, you know, sometimes it looks like perhaps it's, um, you know, the antithesis of what creative work is supposed to be of like, oh, this is supposed to be a creative problem solving thing.  Why would you use frameworks?  That's paint by numbers and the, you know, objection that I've had some.  Difficulties.  In the past overcoming is showing people that the frameworks help you get through the best practices and lay some solid foundations so that you can move beyond the mundane and then apply your creativity to the places that need creative problem solving.  Yeah.  Right.  Like understanding the inputs and outputs of a business, uh, what, you know, the key customer segments are, how you create value.  Those are all the basics in a business, uh, model canvas, and I would liken it to music in some ways in that.  You know, in creative space, especially sometimes, uh, you have people that come in and try to just play jazz from day one and it can just kind of sound random.  And what you actually want is you want mastery of the instrument first.  You want to master the music.  You want to master the scales and know how to play well.  So that once you've mastered the fundamentals and the basics of how do I hit certain notes, how do I do them in sequence?  How do I play from sheet music?  That once you've got that mastery, then you can improvise, right?  Then you can actually play jazz.  Then you can actually walk into different situations and scenarios, know what to use, where, know where, you know, there might be a scenario that a business model canvas is critical and other places where actually it's just a box we need to tick.  Let's just get it done so that we've got the foundation and then we can move on from it.  But too often, I think, especially when we're trying to do creative problem solving, we just move past some of these fundamentals where actually they're super helpful, right?  They lay the foundation and then you can build on top of it and then improvise and play jazz.  Yeah.

Kris Chichak

[00:14:09] Yeah.  I like that.  I also, I think of a map is a framework.  It's a type of framework.  And so you could ask those same people who are resistant to it, do you use Google Maps?  And it's like, why do you do that?  And it's because Shane Parrish says that, you know, a map is not the territory.  So a map is not meant to be an exact representation of the world.  Otherwise, you know, it wouldn't actually be useful.  We're trying to condense the world into a framework that helps you move from A to B.  More easily, but it's not meant to replace the world, right?  So it doesn't have to be perfectly clear, but it just has to help assist our navigation of, you know, the world basically.  And so, you know, for me, the number one framework that I use these days that I've used for the past four years as a customer journey map, and that is, you know, figuring out, you know, what do customers need to accomplish with our product?  And then what?  What sort of customer jobs are they really struggling with?  And if I tried to do that without a map, A, it would be really hard because, you know, not all customer jobs are created equal.  And then B, there would be a huge lack of alignment within our team, right?  And so that's, I think, what frameworks help a lot with, too, is they help to create, you know, common language and a common understanding and a shared understanding.  Within an organization of what we're actually talking about here, because I think there's a lot of times within business where everybody is in a meeting thinking that they're talking about the same thing, but they're using the same words to talk about completely different things.  And that's what frameworks can really help to, you know, investigate and dig into.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:16:01] Yeah, it's all the blind people holding on to a different part of the elephant.  Exactly.  Yeah.

Kris Chichak

[00:16:05] Yeah.  Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:16:08] So there's an interesting anecdote, actually, you have.  Around customer journey maps and how profound they can be, because it sounds kind of mundane sometimes, but I'm like, oh, it's a journey map.  You know, we're just tracking a customer moving through a process, but I'm going to botch the names because I can't remember them.  But there was an agency in Europe somewhere.  I'm going to say the Netherlands.  I think it was the Netherlands.  And they were charged with finding the opportunity space for a new insurance brokerage.  And so when they did their research, they actually looked and found.  That an insurance brokerage for cars that appeals to women was a totally underserved space, in fact, non-existent.  Nobody was thinking about that in those terms.  And so when they did their customer journey map, they actually realized that there's certain points where people perceive an emotional dip in their interaction with an insurance company.  And like nobody has fun with insurance companies.  The only time we think about them, we're going to experience an emotional dip because we're paying a premium.  Right.  Or something has happened and now we've got to go through the rigmarole.  And they identified those points in that journey and they threw everything they had at turning those points around.  So the first one was when somebody is paying their insurance premiums was to ensure that a gift went out with a repayment.  Right. So somebody pays their insurance bill, which is pretty mundane.  And we think, you know, insurance companies are unfeeling, faceless sort of corporations that don't care.  And for the most part, they don't.  But, you know, a meaningful.  Gift went out and people would receive those.  It was the try to turn the bill into a delightful moment.  And the other one that was actually even more profound was in their research.  They found that the major emotional dip that people have in car insurance is actually when you get into an accident or something happens and you now need to use your car insurance.  And it isn't because of the insurance itself.  It's that I was in my vehicle.  I was traveling somewhere.  Something has interrupted my journey.  Right. So it's not about the finances.  It's not about the vehicle because insurance is going to take care of all that.  Right. But I still have the emotional dip.  You can't rationalize it away by saying, oh, insurance is covering this.  I should feel fine.  But it was the simple thing of I was intending to do X and Y happened.  Right. So what they did there was actually amazing, which is that they had a insurance adjuster service to such an extent.  And it was all built into your policy that if you got into an accident, you immediately called your insurance company and a driver would show up in a Mercedes and hand you the key.  And you just drive away.  Well, and they would stay behind and deal with whatever had to be dealt with, take care of your car, have it towed away, whatever needed to be done.  But even the point of getting into an accident was not kind of delightful because it was like, oh, in 15 minutes I get to drive away in a Mercedes.  So it's great. Right.  But they actually picked those points and decided that they were going to turn all of these low points into a moment of of delight.  That's incredible. And that was why a customer turned a pain into a gain completely.  Right. And we we try to do that.  But I don't think.  There's always a sincere approach to these things because it's seen as a as an opportunistic thing, right, of customers moving through a process.  What can we get out of them? Right.  Of, you know, there's this human that's interacting with us, these places, you know, what can we convince them to do as opposed to what are they feeling and how do we turn potential low points into moments of of delight?  This is this is my favorite stuff.  This is.  Well, I mean, you don't get the title of first of all, what the fuck is a lifecycle marketing manager?

Kris Chichak

[00:19:39] That's.  You know.  My.  Mom asked me that exact same question all the time.  So I'll start with that briefly.  So a lifecycle marketing manager, it's it's sort of like retention marketing in a way or, you know, another word for it is customer marketing.  And it's basically understanding, you know, how our customers move through the journey and then creating marketing programs and content to help facilitate that journey, basically.  So, you know, somebody with insurance, for instance.  Maybe there's an automated email program as soon as they submit the claim, then there's an automated email that goes out that, you know, speaks to that person right in that moment and, you know, says exactly what's going to happen, maybe has a couple of resources or something like that.  So it's it's really found like the foundation of it is understanding what the customer journey is.  And in my work, it can also include before the person even becomes a customer.  When you think of, you know, somebody.  Purchasing, for instance, for us at Thinkific, when somebody is considering, you know, creating an online course, the customer jobs start right then.  It's like, OK, well, I need to research this.  I need to, you know, look at competitors and see if I really want to create an online course or actually want to create a podcast.  And there's a cascade of customer jobs happening before they ever get to Thinkific.  So my work starts right then is like we can help them at that moment.  And then especially when.  Once they create an account, it's like, what are the emails?  What's the, you know, video content?  What is happening in the product?  You know, it's the pains and the gains like find these ways that we can try and flip pains into gains.  And so just to go back to that, though, like the the found the even deeper foundation of that is is jobs to be done.  And this is this theory that it's a it's about sort of defining, capturing and organizing.  Customer needs and then aligning organizations around them, basically.  And so, you know, a job to be done that I that we were just talking about is, you know, somebody gets in an accident and now their job to be done is, you know, get out of there.  And that, I think, is something that that was an unserved job to be done that's actually happening within the customer journey.  And the idea with jobs to be done.  Is like people want a quarter inch hole, not a quarter inch drill.  Right. And a lot of companies just focus on the drill, the feature, the product instead of what's actually happening with this customer.  And where are their needs either underserved or like completely unmet?  And so I was just I was recently in Japan for my honeymoon.  And Japan uses jobs to be done theory incredibly.  The user experience of Japan.  Is just unbelievable.  Every moment is just, wow, they've really thought about this.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:22:44] So Tokyo has great UX.

Kris Chichak

[00:22:46] Yeah, exactly.  Yeah, everything does.  So I'll give you one example is, you know, I had a hot dog.  I don't know why I was eating a hot dog in Japan.  There I was.  It's a long way to go.  Yeah, exactly.  And I got a from the from Lawson's, a convenience store.  I got a packet of it was ketchup and mustard combined, like two little packs connected.  And you think of, you know, the job to be done for somebody, you know, at Costco here right around the corner and they get the hot dog and they have two hands on it.  They have to put it down to be able to open the ketchup pack.  And for whatever reason, the ketchup pack always like tears more and you get ketchup on yourself and all this stuff.  And then you finally get it on and, you know, eat the hot dog in Japan.  It was a single hand where you could grab the two sides of this pack and then you sort of start to squeeze it.  And it cracks in half.  And then there's like a sort of soft plastic inside the sort of reservoirs of the mustard and the ketchup and then a hard plastic outside.  And as you squeeze these two little perfect lines come out of it and you just perfectly apply, you know, ketchup and mustard.  And it's just this.  Only a customer journey person would appreciate this.  Yeah, I know.  I mean, I think, you know, they're UX designers and, you know.  I'm sure plenty of North Americans would be like, what a weird ketchup packet.  Yeah, exactly.  Yeah.  But it is you feel the difference, like especially if you were to do, you know, one and then the other.  And so, you know, you can apply that type of thinking to any business and any product.  And to me, that's like very exciting because you can find, you know, unique ways of of serving a customer through just, you know, analyzing, like, what are they actually trying to get done here?  How is the experience?  What what are they feeling?  Customer or like a job to be done is a functional thing.  And then it has, as you were saying, like emotional and social consequences.  And so, you know, it's just a really cool framework to be able to dig into what's going on with this customer.  How can we help them?  And ultimately, you know, what we've seen at Thinkific is if you can better help your customers succeed with your product and succeed with the job that they're actually trying to get done with your product, there will be, you know.  Bottom line, you know, implications into.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:25:09] Yeah.  Very positive.  Yeah.  I mean, to some extent, I'm not surprised that Thinkific would have such a great focus on that of both what are the needs and then how do we take care of the sort of emotional lifecycle of ensuring that we create a valuable and delightful experience for our end user?  Because it's a platform for creators of educational content.  Yeah. Right.  It's inherently about, you know, creating value for people and allowing them to generate value for others.  So to some extent, yeah, I'm not too surprised that Thinkific would be focused on these things.  It seems pretty sincere to the values of such an organization.

Kris Chichak

[00:25:48] Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:25:50] Did you know Thinkific was actually a client of ours?  I did. Yeah.  Yeah.  This is like a decade ago.  Like they've obviously exploded since then.  But shortly after the company launched on the online platform, we actually went through a very obviously, you know, limited back then version of.  Of their onboarding process and built out some of the templating and the original course templates to actually allow creators to come in and create content and get online.  So that was definitely probably one of our startup clients that I'm most proud of because you work with many startup companies, some of them make it, some of them don't.  And especially somebody in the educational space.  It's just nice to see that they were quite sincere with their product offering from the get go and continue to be very values focused and have blown up since then.  In the decades since we worked together.  So aside from journey maps, jobs to be done.  Because even within that, sometimes it can feel like there's a lot of interpolation happening because there's boundaries.  Right.  It's like the greatest push to the boundary is saying, well, we want to take care of them before they're a customer, before they signed up or done anything.  So, OK, that's a little bit beyond that boundary.  But it's still a bit of an interpolation job.  Because what you're saying.  Yeah.  The thing is, you know, within this journey, we want to look at points and see what's happening.  But does that leave a lot of room for experimentation?  Right.  Because what if there's a need or a want that is undeclared?  Sure, it's unrecognized.  But the customer doesn't even know that it's a need or want yet.  Right.  Rory Sutherland is a legendary career director and chairman at Ogilvy.  He talks about this a lot.  That you don't always know what the customer wants.  And in fact, they don't know what they want either.  They'll tell you something, but they want something else.  And sometimes they don't know until they see it.  So where does experimentation or even that imagination fit into your work if you're looking and interpolating inside of a customer journey map all the time?

Kris Chichak

[00:27:53] Yeah, that's a good question.  I think like it comes again down to what is the primary job that they are trying to get done?  And not to continue to harp on jobs to be done.  But I think oftentimes if you're seeing that this is sort of limiting in some way, then you're just not thinking about the true job to be done that they're actually trying to accomplish.  And so I think sometimes it can be just about reframing like, hey, what is the actual thing that they're trying to accomplish here?  Just as a mock example, I got a cup of coffee this morning.  The job to be done ultimately for me and why I'm doing that is I want to feel more alert.  It's not that I want to get a coffee.  So if that coffee shop was trying to find new ways of adding revenue or experimenting or adding more offerings, understanding that this is not necessarily the job to be done is not purchase and drink a coffee.  The job to be done is feel more alert.  Or become more awake.  Then you can start to experiment with adding additional products or things like that.  And so for us at Thinkific, if the job to be done is create an online course, then that's relatively limiting.  We can do a lot of things to help them create their online course.  But ultimately, what these people want is to create their own business or monetize their expertise.  They have this expertise in their heads.  It's similar to you.  And a lot of the times, this expertise is just not being leveraged in the full capacity.  Not enough people are getting value from this person's expertise.  And so when we think about it that way and recognize that that's the actual job to be done, that this isn't an online course company.  This is a learning product company.  We can create learning products.  And so then as an example, we've recently launched.  Digital downloads.  We're about to be launching live events.  We have memberships.  There's a lot more coming.  And this gives us the space to be able to really experiment and try new things.  When we truly understand the core job to be done.  And don't limit ourselves into thinking that it has something to do with our product.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:30:23] Is there anything happening with product experimentation at Thinkific?  And again, I'm trying to push beyond the life cycle of assuming that somebody is there to consume what you guys are offering today.  But let me give you an example.  So in my day job at Skyrocket, working with clients, sometimes in helping them push beyond their thinking, we try to do an exercise called Maya.  Most advanced yet acceptable.  The idea of pushing not into the future, but thinking about what is the most advanced.  Evolved version of yourself, your business, your offering.  And creating some, you know, in some senses, unrealistic, let's say, picture of what that looks like.  And then moving backwards from that to what is the yet acceptable.  Right.  So the most advanced might be unrealistic, unattainable, perhaps impossible.  But then working from that point backwards and saying, okay, now let's get to the acceptable part.  Because quite often, especially in product development or even in certification.  In services development, the idea will be that we have a starting point and we're just going to iterate from here.  And that works absolutely.  Like that is the core of Agile methodology.  That is continuous improvement in Kaizen.  Absolutely.  You can continue to iterate and evolve from where you are.  But even within that, there are some limitations.  And sometimes you lack the imagination to be able to break out of that and say, actually, there's an entirely different way of getting the quarter-inch hole in the wall.  That isn't a drill.  Right.  Yeah.  And meanwhile, we've been creating better and better drills this whole time.  So how do you go about bringing more of the most advanced yet acceptable thinking into product development and even suggestions you're making in your role for how to improve the lifecycle?

Kris Chichak

[00:32:18] Yeah, that's a good question.  One of the ways we're currently doing it is because, you know, we've changed this sort of brand position from we create online courses to we create online courses.  We create learning products.  We started to, you know, just ideate within the team.  It's like, what does this look like?  Because, you know, the process of creating learning products is hard and relatively painful because there's just so many steps to go through.  And so what we've kind of asked ourselves is like, what does it look like if there's no steps?  You know, like how do you go from creating a Thinkific account and then the next moment you have, you know, a suite of learning products?  That are basically ready to go.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:33:00] That's a great question to ask.  Like, if you could have the thing without needing to do the stuff, would you be happy to have the thing?  Yes.  And the answer is yes.  What's the straight line?  Yeah.

Kris Chichak

[00:33:08] Yeah, exactly.  And so for us and every tech company in the world right now, some of the answers come with AI.  And, you know, how can we leverage OpenAI APIs to help them?  Right now, it has helped them complete the customer jobs that we still recognize.  But I think eventually.  Yeah.  It would be like, how does this thing just sort of do it for them in a way that doesn't that, you know, does truly take their authentic knowledge and, you know, spit out learning products that are actually them and not just some hollow robotic version of them.  So that's one thing.  And then the other side is very human, is that a lot of people that come into the platform are doing this alone.  They're like what we call solopreneurs.  And so we want to be able to, like, give them people to do it with.  And that doesn't necessarily mean, you know, support or like from internal at Thinkific.  But if there are all these people that are, you know, creating learning products, what ways can we help them connect with others who are doing the same thing so that they can feel supported and feel like they're part of a community and a movement while they're, you know, doing this and undertaking this difficult task?  So it kind of comes down to a balance between, like, you know, brand positioning and some, like, visioning and then coming back to, okay, but, you know, where are they struggling right now?  And let's see if we can help them create a course outline, which we have in our platform now.  You can go on and then immediately just, you know, fill out the three prompt flow and then it spits out a course outline for you based off of the course that you described and things like that.  So it's, we'll have to find a way to combine all of those things over time.  But, yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:34:59] Well, I mean, this is kind of getting back to where I started in the intro was this double diamond design process.  You don't even need to know the details of it, frankly, you know, to kind of get the value from it.  But it's knowing that we can move through cycles of divergence and convergence.  Right.  Right.  When you're converging, you want to hold yourself to the discipline of saying no.  The solution has to be singular.  And we're going to force ourselves to be one thing and, you know, come to a single point.  And that discipline is helpful because, you know, you can validate what that answer is and then go divergent again and go wide.  So the idea of creating peer groups of humans and, you know, the exponential learning that can happen for every new node that you attach to that network.  Right.  That's pretty huge.  And so does your role, like, inform the product side?  Or how close do you guys work to the product development side?  Or is your role mostly on thinking about the experience of the end user and just approving that side?

Kris Chichak

[00:36:02] It started with the latter.  And now I'm working a lot more closely with product.  And so, like, I am in no way, you know, dictating or, you know, providing directions.  But they do, you know, come to me with what does this look like from a customer lens?  What does this look like from a lifecycle perspective?  What are you seeing in the data in terms of?  You know, engagement with webinars or content or emails can be a really great signal for the product team to say, like, oh, like, people are interested in this topic.  And, you know, this suggestion of a job to be done that you, you know, have in the first email in the, you know, onboarding workflow.  So let's double down on that and see if we can run an experiment in the product that validates that or disproves that or something like that.  So, yeah.  We're working a lot more closely now.  And I think it's just going to have to continue in that direction.  Because sometimes, you know, internally, if you have a team working on a particular feature, that team is just so laser focused on a feature that they forget that this is, you know, a holistic customer experience.  That there's, you know, a lot of different things going on for this customer and this feature is just one of them.  And so that's where I come in.  And then start to, you know, poke and prod and help them understand that, you know, from a customer lens, you know, this is just a blip.  And ultimately what we're trying to get them to do is have a quarter inch hole.  Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:37:37] Get to the outcome.

Kris Chichak

[00:37:38] Not obsess about, you know, putting the battery pack in the drill and, like, all these other things.  Yeah.  Do we need a battery pack?

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:37:44] Yeah.  Yeah.  What if you eliminated those things and got the outcome anyways?  Exactly.  Yeah.  So, I'm going to provide some unsolicited consulting.  Please.  For you.  Yeah.  Therefore, thank you, Fik.  So, you know, through Skyrocket, one of the models that we actually take some clients through is, did we ever do Three Horizons?  It sounds familiar, but I don't remember it.  Okay.  Here's the refresher.  So, it's a model from McKinsey from decades ago.  And sad to say, but all the good models are from McKinsey from decades ago.  But the idea is to basically look at a company's time and attention and resources and carve them up into these three horizons.  Right.  So, the first horizon is always your day-to-day activities.  It's the, you know, it's where your bread gets buttered.  It's the operations.  Right.  And that is the core of the business.  And that is where most of the time attention resources need to go because it's the heart of the business.  Right.  And you figure out, okay, you know, there's a percentage.  There's a percentage of our time attention resources that need to be on horizon one.  That's a given.  Then you kind of skip past horizon two and you talk about horizon three.  And horizon three is the experiments.  And it's saying, okay, there's a percentage that we want to carve out for our time attention resources that are just wild ideas.  Right.  And we're okay to do it because the percentage of risk that we've allocated there, it's something that we've decided we're safe and comfortable with.  But because we've done the allocation.  We can guarantee that this much time and attention and money is always going to be quote unquote wasted on experiments.  Right.  However, once in a while, one of those experiments is going to hit.  And when it does, we move it to horizon two.  And when it's a horizon two, that is a big bet that is showing signs of life that we're actually starting to make some significant investments into now.  Right.  And over time, as that big bet becomes more normalized and it actually grows and gets validated.  It gets moved to horizon one and it is now a day to day activity.  And so we've got some direct to consumer clients as an example that we're working with that are testing out new channels, new ways of connecting with your end users.  And we're working them through some of these models right now as well.  Right.  Because they've got a day to day business and they've got revenue and P&Ls and all the rest of it.  They've got, you know, private equity partners to answer to.  And so what we get them to do is actually look at the allocations of time and energy.  And say, who on the leadership team can we talk to?  What sort of marketing budget can we can we have?  And, you know, frankly, how much of your time can we have to put into horizon three and run some of these experiments?  And when some of them hit, you know, we're going to move it to horizon two and say, OK, we need to double down on this because it's showing signs of life.  And as we get more and more used to it, it's eventually going to be part of our core business.  Right.  But it's a way of, again, bringing a bit of a discipline to that process.  Because otherwise experiments are, I think, sometimes approached as like happy accidents.  Right.  Like, you know, we're going to do an experiment once and if it doesn't work, we're going to shut it down and forget about it.  And then maybe one day we'll do an experiment again.  Right.  But I mean, frankly, especially in like SaaS platforms.  Right.  Because that is core Thinkific as a SaaS platform.  Yeah.  You know, things are evolving so quickly.  Right.  Change is constant.  It's only been accelerated by AI.  So noise is accelerating.  You know, the noise signal ratio is changing entirely.  And so in many ways that experimentation becomes even more important.  Right.  And so without divulging any, you know, proprietary IP or, you know, company strategy, is there a discipline around that level of experimentation that you've seen?  Or is there a way to implement that at Thinkific?

Kris Chichak

[00:41:36] There is and there isn't.  I would say how I think about it is we have experiments running in horizon two.  That then sort of eventually either, you know, maybe become horizon one even.  So it's more, you know, there's not a lot of these huge, you know, visionary break the mold, break your thinking kind of ideas going on or experiments running in horizon three.  I think we're, you know, starting to get there.  We do have like a lot of experimentation that runs.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:42:11] There are iterations on what exists.  Yes, exactly.  Yeah.  So, you know, I think one thing to kind of take back might be to actually just talking to your leadership team and saying, what sort of ratios are we comfortable with?  Right.  Because a company that is entirely billing itself on innovation.  Right.  They might decide that it's going to be 30, 30, 30.  Right.  That our day to day, like who gives a shit?  Yeah.  Right.  And we're going to be spending so much time and money into just random, you know, experiments and then making some big bets.  But I think for a lot of traditional businesses.  It's more going to be like 70 percent is horizon one, maybe 10 percent is horizon three.  And some of that stuff is going to move to that 20 percent range, which is which is horizon two.  Right.  And, you know, more conservative companies might be even less than that.  It might be 3 percent if they've even got an appreciation for, you know, divergent thinking and experimentation on that level.  Yeah.  But it might be interesting to actually talk to Thinkific leadership and say, you know, what if we actually brought some discipline to this?  And put 3 to 5 percent of our time and attention into this horizon three territory and see what happens.

Kris Chichak

[00:43:21] Yeah.  I like that a lot.  How do you how do you sort of define horizon three in your mind?

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:43:29] It's so, you know, this is going to sound like a non-answer, but the idea is that it's literally like non-definition.  Right.  Because it's not an experiment if it's just an iteration of what you've already got going on.  Right.  Right.  Because that's just optimization, actually.  That's not truly an experiment.  Yeah.  Right.  So I'm going to actually quote Rory Sutherland again on an experiment.  And this is an example from like a long time ago in the era of direct mail.  Right.  And direct mail in the 80s and 90s was, you know, I think continues to be in some areas of the world like a multi gajillion dollar business.  Right.  And the level of optimization they did on every direct mail campaign was pretty incredible.  Right.  So it was right down to, you know, what is the offer that somebody is getting?  What's the price?  What's the creative?  You know, they have a room full of PhDs that'd be like writing these long form letters to try to engage that user and to do something like, you know, everything from buy a gift card to, you know, Columbia House, you know, CD memberships to, you know, renew their visas or something.  And so these are massive, you know, direct mail campaigns that would go out and like the size of the letter, the color of things.  Like every single detail was like scientifically optimized.  Right.  With like the best mind you could think of.  So there was a particular direct mail publisher that was going to send out a campaign.  And I think it was for like, you know, some sort of subscription renewal.  Right.  And they had their metrics and they knew that, OK, you know, basically we get like, you know, a 50 to 60 percent renewal rate year over year.  And it was a high churn business.  And they were OK with that.  It was like, OK, if we get 60 percent renewal.  Right.  That is gold standard for us.  It's amazing.  And that's what they optimize for.  So they go through this whole process.  They write the letter.  They create the creative and all the best minds are doing all of that.  And at the late stage of the process, there's a complete screw up.  Right.  So for some reason, this letter went out in this envelope that was meant for a different campaign.  And it's got all these like cute bunny rabbits on it.  Entirely irrelevant.  Has nothing to do with the business.  Nothing to do with the campaign.  There was no scientific minds that like decided to like take that letter.  And stick it inside an envelope with a bunch of bunny rabbits on it.

Kris Chichak

[00:45:42] And the bunny rabbits crushed.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:45:43] But it killed every metric that they had.  Right.  Whereas, you know, if anybody had ever in that company shown up to a board meeting and said the next campaign has to go out in envelopes with bunny rabbits on them.  Right.  They would've been fired on the spot.  Right.  But, you know, he gives that example of true experimentation where it's something entirely outside the core of the business.  Because it's not just about optimization.  So what can you do that is at not even at arm's length.  At arm's distance.  It is like in a wild other world.  Right.  Totally different territory.  That if it lives or dies, you know, we don't care.  Right.  And so that's actually the definition of Horizon 3 is that it's a safe enough bet in a distant enough space with, you know, some comfortable amount of resources that if it lives or dies, we don't care.  Yeah.  Right.  That's a true experiment.  Everything else is really just optimization.  I like that a lot.

Kris Chichak

[00:46:34] I think there's a lot you can learn from those things.  You know.  Success or failure.  I think that's, yeah, that's awesome.  I like that.  Yeah.  Thank you for the consulting.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:46:45] How much?  I'll send you the voice.  Yeah.  Yeah.  Well, look, you know, I'm realizing actually as we're talking, I kind of miss our workshop days.  Yeah.  We should do whiteboarding for fun.

Kris Chichak

[00:46:55] Yeah.  I see the whiteboard's gone now, tragically.  Yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal

[00:46:58] Oh, no.  We got a couple of them around here.  There's plenty of whiteboards still.  But, no, thanks for coming on today.  And I think in the future, this idea, and I said that at the outset, you know, we're going  to be talking about a lot of things that we're going to be talking about today.  But one of the things that I wanted to address today was that, you know, thinking about thinking  doesn't really go away in our line of work.  There's frameworks, there's mental models, there's a lot of things to dig into.  So I think I want to turn this particular topic into more of a series where we actually  have subsequent episodes digging into other models, other frameworks that we can use,  and maybe even bring some like real life examples into those.  I love that.  Hopefully you'll join us for those as well.

Kris Chichak

[00:47:31] Yeah.  I think in, you know, the age of AI and all of this efficiency that we're starting to  unlock.  With technology, you know, the thinking piece and the humans that interact with the technology  becomes just more and more important.  Way more important.  Yeah.  Awesome.  Thanks for having me, Mo.  Thanks for coming, Chris.

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