The Surprising Places The Best Ideas Come From
Mind-shifts, and a new episode of The Art Of The Zag
When I grow up, I want to be Terri Long and Jeremy Eden. Or “Teremy” as the head of PNC Bank has called them.
Companies like PNC bring their company Harvest Earnings in to help tackle hard problems and make workers lives better. Like the research in Smartcuts chapter 2 shows, the most effective mentors are in it for your journey, not just to help you through a discrete circumstance, and I’ve seen firsthand how Terri and Jeremy embody this at both the personal and professional level.
That’s why I’m not exaggerating when I say that my and Joe Lazer’s interview with Teremy on this week’s The Art Of The Zag is one of my favorite conversations on any podcast.
Listen on Apple or Spotify (or watch on Youtube here). Warning: the episode starts with a couple of bonkers stories about going against the grain in business. Then around minute 11 we get into Terri and Jeremy’s core work and philosophy, which you’ve got to hear if you work in any kind of management or leadership job.
For those not in the listening mood, I want to share one big reminder from these two that anyone with an ambition should pay attention to:
Your best ideas come from places you least expect—which means it pays to explore the perspectives of people who are least like you.
The core idea behind Terri & Jeremy’s work at their “anti-consulting” firm Harvest Earnings is that the people who can articulate the biggest hidden opportunities in your company (and I think this is true also of your life) are not the people with the most power, not the people with the biggest office, and not the people who you are personally closest to.
In Dream Teams chapter 5, I followed around some folks who run “extreme focus groups” that remind me a lot of Harvest Earnings’ philosophy. If you’re trying to design a better band-aid for blisters, don’t interview regular people at the mall; go talk to special forces soldiers who run and swim in stiff boots and can articulate every kind of blister imaginable. Go talk to dominatrices who wear awful heels and know their clients are inspecting their feet.
Similarly, if you’re an executive at a company who wants to understand how to make the business better, don’t poll your managers or put out a suggestion box. Hire Terri and Jeremy to run their science-based process that’s designed to get the unexpected people closest to the problems to articulate things you’d never think of because of your perspective on high.
And, if you’re looking for your next big idea or change on a personal level, don’t just ask your close friends what they think. Pick the brains of acquaintances who have nothing in common with you. Email your biggest critic for their critique. Spend time exploring areas outside of your field for some sideways inspiration.
The perspective that leads to your next breakthrough will not come from where you think it will.
Make a great day!
–Shane
P.S. Here’s what else you’ll hear about in Terri & Jeremy’s interview on The Art Of The Zag: How desperation and FOMO is fueling the AI craze (and how this is not as novel as people are making it sound); why benchmarking is b.s., and why consulting is more about politics than problem-solving. Here’s the link again on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Youtube. Enjoy!