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Rebellious Thoughts #55 - 🤘 Resources vs. Resourcefulness

Rebellious Thoughts #55 - 🤘 Resources vs. Resourcefulness

October 11, 2024

By Gus Balbontin
Edition #55

Hey Rebels!

As always, I promise to provoke you in less than 5 min once a week so that you can stay adaptable and on top of your game.

Hey!!! In literally 30 minutes (Friday 11/10 at 8am AEST) I’m hosting the FREE “Rebellious Thought Sessions #2”, the series of monthly talks where I free flow, provoke and share more of my ideas. JOIN NOW HERE!

YEW!

Let’s get into today’s newsletter:

Throwback to me at 18 backpacking in Latin America.

I reckon the most important lesson hitchhiking taught me was the important difference between resources and resourcefulness.

The older we get and the bigger our businesses are, the more attached to resources we become.

When we want to do something the first thing we think of is “I need money, people, time”.

The greatest innovation and achievements I have ever seen always start with resourcefulness. It’s the ingenuity of achieving without - or with very little - that creates the greatest results.

I hear you say, “but you need resources at some point in time, right?”

Yes… you do, and in some cases (eg: innovation in large scale manufacturing, space exploration and others) resourcefulness may mean very little money, but still means some money, as it is impossible to innovate a new rocket just with your effort alone.

But, more often than not, in business, we move from idea to business case to project way too fast and cry for resources way too early - like this:

The process should be more like this:

It pays to be resourceful at the start, to operate with a mentality of as “little as possible” to answer as many of the key assumptions as possible.

Ok, let me link this to the other concept most of you have seen.

Remember that in its simplest form, innovation is solving problems.

And at the start, when you are solving a problem, disorder reigns.

And in the end, when you manage to solve it, order reigns.

At the start of innovation, the world is inevitably out of order and you need resourcefulness to mitigate this.

At the end of innovation order has been found and resources play a role.

Of course, resourcefulness doesn’t mean zero resources as mentioned before. It means as little as possible. And resources don’t mean everything, it means “as much as you need”.

The disorder end is uncertain, chaotic, has no routine, no structure, it struggles to settle into something.

The order end is clear, processed driven, KPIs give you control, Gantt charts are accurate (and fairies die, careful with Gantt charts hahaha)

In the middle there is a transition. There’s a moment that must not be rushed (don’t waste time but don’t take shortcuts).

This is the bit that generally old business cases skip over and unintentionally end up in a project that is well organised with Six Sigma black belts crawling all over it, but the actual customer problem is far from being solved. A dangerous illusion, we think we are doing well because there are plenty of KPIs, reports and meetings about the project but the problem remains un-solved.

My disorder/order model fits the wonderful antifragility thinking Nassim Taleb has done previously. Order needs a little regular Disorder to stay antifragile… I’ll expand on this another time.

The model is also great to look at through a product lifecycle lens… like this:

You are probably pretty good at resources and the context in which we exist incentivises us to stay ordered.

We need to get better at resourcefulness.

Embrace it.

Don’t complain, see it as the inevitable challenge of early-stage problem-solving.

CHALLENGE OF THE WEEK:
What is that one thing you always wanted to do at work or in your life, or problem that has bothered you for ages, that you thought you needed resources to solve, but now with this provocation perhaps there’s a more resourceful way to tackle it?

Go do it!

Love

Gus

P.S. Hey!! BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:
Yesterday we finally LAUNCHED THE SHAKE UP! course… a program full of resources to help you become more resourceful!

It will help you re-evaluate your life and career and be a better version of yourself.
Do more of what you love without betting the house!

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