{"id":7,"date":"2015-05-21T15:00:54","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/?p=7"},"modified":"2015-05-22T19:22:19","modified_gmt":"2015-05-22T19:22:19","slug":"jonathon-colman-wicked-ambiguity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/jonathon-colman-wicked-ambiguity\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathon Colman: Wicked Ambiguity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Notes from Jonathon&#8217;s keynote at #CONFABMN 2015<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Live Long and Prosper<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Content strategists, well, everyone: &#8220;We&#8217;re all just nerds looking for answers&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The Shape Under the Sheet<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Stephen King and the &#8220;shape under the sheet&#8221;\n<ul>\n<li>Our fear creates ambiguity re:\u00a0what\u2019s real and what&#8217;s not real<\/li>\n<li>Fear of the unknown makes us want to &#8220;drop everything and run away as fast as we can&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Ambiguity and Us<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Content strategist vs. writer vs. marketer vs. engineer: our differences don&#8217;t matter\n<ul>\n<li>We&#8217;re bound together by a greater force.<\/li>\n<li>We dare. We&#8217;re united against ambiguity.<\/li>\n<li>We make the unclear clear. (h\/t to Abby Covert)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Wicked Problems<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Special problems that have no final solutions. Very complex. Trying to\u00a0solve them can reveal (or even cause) more problems.\n<ul>\n<li>Examples: gentrification, war on drugs, climate change<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Wicked problems sap our will to dare<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Wicked Problems in Content Strategy<\/h2>\n<h3>Communicating with Alien Life<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Drake equation\n<ul>\n<li>Sometimes processes aren&#8217;t to ultimately solve problems but inspire creativity<\/li>\n<li>Drake equation failed at being a viable equation but succeeded in sparking conversations<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Empathy<\/li>\n<li>Messages: do they have meaning?\n<ul>\n<li>Can &#8220;aliens&#8221; decode and understand what we&#8217;re trying to communicate?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Communicating about Nuclear Waste<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Languages, symbols evolve over time\n<ul>\n<li>May not have the same meaning (or even exist!)\u00a0in the future<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Must communicate\n<ul>\n<li>This is a message<\/li>\n<li>This place you&#8217;re in is\u00a0dangerous<\/li>\n<li>WHY\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;We can\u2019t fuck this up because we have no right to be wrong. But it\u2019s so hard to get this right because we can\u2019t test it\u2014the people creating this message have no way of knowing if it will reach their audience or be understood.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Long-term communications are hard, far more complex than they seem at first<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The Nature of Ambiguity<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Our problems aren&#8217;t meaningful because they last forever, they&#8217;re meaningful because they don&#8217;t last<\/li>\n<li>As we chip away at daily ambiguities, it helps us break down the bigger ones<\/li>\n<li>Solutions need not last for ages to be significant.<\/li>\n<li>Our differences don&#8217;t matter. We solve our problems all together. Or not at all.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Wicked Problems Are Catalysts<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>They inspire creative responses from people who dare to work outside their fields of expertise.<\/li>\n<li>Jonathon: &#8220;I don&#8217;t care who gets the credit.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>We shouldn&#8217;t live in a world without wicked problems.\n<ul>\n<li>Inspire collective creativity<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Tackling wicked problems doesn&#8217;t require fearlessness. Instead, have to be ready to encounter and overcome the fear.<\/li>\n<li>We can&#8217;t solve wicked problems. 5 ways to respond:\n<ol>\n<li>Acknowledge them.\n<ul>\n<li>Start by being open and direct.<\/li>\n<li>Agree on the problem you&#8217;re trying to solve.<\/li>\n<li>Dare yourself to take on the biggest problems you can solve.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t let people dismiss your work or contributions or value.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Take risks\n<ul>\n<li>Accountability in our orgs to be flexible.<\/li>\n<li>Accountability is not a weapon. It should be a warm blanket that helps people feel safe and secure enough to try new things and take bigger risks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Stop being perfect\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;There is no such thing as perfect!!!!!&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Chasing perfection is a distraction. Prevents us from solving problems right now.<\/li>\n<li>Perfection is a barrier to our progress, our collaboration, our creativity.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Reward learning\n<ul>\n<li>Stop punishing failure.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t &#8220;succeed at any cost.&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>Build leadership through failure, through humility&#8211;&gt;this is the\u00a0path\u00a0to building meaningful, empathetic leadership that lasts.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Try\n<ul>\n<li>We may not be able to solve all the hard, scary, most important problems. But we can always try.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Jonathon&#8217;s slides and (ridiculously awesome)\u00a0transcript are here:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jonathoncolman.org\/2015\/05\/21\/wicked-ambiguity\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.jonathoncolman.org\/2015\/05\/21\/wicked-ambiguity\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Notes from Jonathon&#8217;s keynote at #CONFABMN 2015<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-confabmn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7\/revisions\/107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shannon-leahy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}