Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,
This Category Design Tip is about thinking about thinking.
Our job as Pirates is to help smart people like you understand the context of what it is youâre looking at and thinking about. Because in order to change the world, and unlock exponential breakthroughs, you have to reject the premise.
Today, weâll remind you why.
To chart your own category course (our mini-books are the best maps), hop aboard The Pirate Ship and subscribe below:
Category Design Is A Game Of Thinking
Thinking about thinking is the most important kind of thinking for Category Designers.
You are responsible for changing the way a reader, customer, consumer, or user âthinks.â And you are successful when youâve moved their thinking from the old way to the new and different way you are educating them about.
But what is âthinking?â
According to Roger Martin, arguably the worldâs #1 management thinker, âthinkingâ is when you look at the world through an existing model. Itâs how you use learnings from the past to make sense of the present. So when another driver cuts you off on the highway, you instantly apply your past experiences to the present and swerve to avoid an accident.
Your reflex saves your life.
But almost all thinking is âreflexiveâ rather than âreflective.â
Consider the difference we laid out in our mini-book The Art Of Fresh Thinking:
âReflexiveâ thinking: Having an unconscious âreflexâ in response to ideas or opinions.
âReflectiveâ thinking: Taking a moment to consciously reflect on how the past may have created a preexisting mental model keeping you from considering a new and different future.
Reflexive thinking causes a scarcity of fresh thinking in the world because it relies on mental scaffolding built in the past.
Some of the smartest people stopped reflective thinking a long time ago. We would even go so far as to say that being declared a smart person is almost certain to make you stupid. Because when you get called âsmart,â you become entrenched in your comfortable past. When youâre smart, you know things. And most people who know things are called âexperts.â Which means they already know. And when you already know, by definition you are using old mental scaffolding to consider new and different futures.
Which makes you stupid.
So, donât strive to become an expert (ever!)âitâs the enemy of fresh thinking.
Hereâs How Category Designers Think
You are presented with information.
You become conscious of which model you are using to evaluate the information (which âlensâ you are looking through).
And then before you react, respond, or give in to your reflexive nature, you pause and first consider which mental model youâre using to examine the information being presented. You train yourself to be curious, to ask why, to suspend your past opinions, beliefs, and mental models, and to open the aperture of your mind and consider something different.
Thatâs âthinking.â
Our friend, Mike Maples Jr., calls this âBackcasting.â
âLegendary builders must stand in the future and pull the present from the current reality to the future of their design. So an important additional job of the builder is to persuade early like-minded people to join a new movement.â
But how do you give people context that excites them enough to meet you in the future and join a new movement?
You give them a new Point Of View they can grab ontoâand repeat to their friends, who will tell their friends, and so on, and so on.
Here are a few powerful examples:
âReproductive justiceâ
âEqual pay for equal workâ
âUndocumented citizensâ
As we explained in our mini-book The Power Of A Point Of View, the most effective POVs aim conventional thinking and conversation in a wildly different direction. Oftentimes, itâs hard for the masses to understand (or accept) what this new POV might mean for the world.
Hereâs an easy exercise to start thinking reflectively.
You have to understand which direction you are facing:
Forecasting = Standing in the past, looking forward, thinking about the future.
Backcasting = Standing in a different future, and living âas ifâ that different future already exists today.
This might seem like an inconsequential nuance, BUT, it is the starting point that defines the entire trajectory of your company and/or creative act. If you start with the way the world âis,â and then try to make the way it âis,â different, you are making an unconscious decision to improve within the context of a game someone else invented.
You are competing.
But if you start with the way it âcould be,â if you assume the possible and stand in the future, you give yourself the opportunity to write new rules for the new game you are inventing.
You are unencumbered by the past and present.
You are creating.
To create fresh ideas, you have to know the difference between Obvious & Non-Obvious Content.
And hereâs why:
Obvious Content: The art of speaking to what people already think and believe (catering to the readerâs reflexive nature).
Non-Obvious Content: The art of educating people on what they havenât thought about or decided they believe yet (requesting their reflective nature).
Itâs crucial to understand which of these two consumption states you are creating for, and where you are âmeeting the readerââlong before you write even a single word.
Because if you try feeding Non-Obvious content (that requires reflection and challenging oneâs own mental models) to someone in an Obvious (reflexive) state, you will fail to get their attention and/or theyâll likely become frustrated at your inability to cater to their preconceived notions. And conversely, if you try feeding Obvious content to someone starving for Non-Obvious insights, you will burden them with boredom and/or theyâll likely become frustrated with your wasting their time, even insulting them (âThis is so Obvious! Make me think!â).
Reflexive thinkers want Obvious content.
Reflective thinkers want Non-Obvious content.
Becoming a reflective thinker who knows who you are creating for, and what their expectations are (and why), is half the battle to becoming a legendary Category Designer.
From there, you must prosecute The Magic Triangle in order to successfully create your new category.
Become A Category Designer
Want to unlock 50+ mini-books on Category Creation and Category Design, and receive new mini-books straight to your inbox?
Hop aboard!
Arrrrrrr,
Category Pirates
You guys kill it every time. I always want the non-obvious.
Useful, thanks for this