So "systematic doubt" is declining from a small base, while "systematic confidence" is growing from an already big base. The market is both cyclic and asymmetric. The market for systematic doubt grows/strengthens during high confidence zeitgeist periods, but is never big.
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It's been down about 10% YOY over the last 3 years in the US since Trump's rise began basically. I was lucky I got my start in a very confident era (2011-15, zeitgeist coming out mostly strong and confident from the recession)
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Adding canonical book references for the 4 quadrants in response to a question. If you can't afford to hire people, read these books.
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Outer doubt: Hitchhiker's Guide to Galaxy, Discworld, Discordianism
Outer confidence: Getting Things Done, Inner Game of Tennis
Inner doubt: Finite and infinite games
Inner confidence: Impro, War of Art
(these are generic; there are domain specific-ones in each too) twitter.com/rrherr/status/…
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Lol, one reason my market is so small is that people who rely on hitchhiker's guide type material for help with life/career/management/leadership problems are unlikely to make it to high levels in orgs or be entrepreneurs. Fortunately enough make it through to provide me a living
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Hmm... I think the US has generally lost confidence in itself, so long-term I may need to think about moving to a country that has more confidence in itself if this recession in the systematic doubt market continues much longer 🤔
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Another addendum: note that this is all agnostic to functional domain (marketing, org behavior, product dev, leadership, risk mgmt etc etc) and industry. Having competence a reasonable coverage zone along those 2 dimensions is table stakes.
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Obv. some (function, industry) pairs produce more problems in some quadrants than in others, so you should pick industry+functional areas to build knowledge and experience in that match your fundamental offering strength.
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Okay, this comment from made me realize there's a very good test of whether you're naturally better at boosting systematic confidence or boosting systematic doubt. The diagnostic question is: are you a connector or separator?
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Replying to @vgr
this 2x2 is the foundation of Integral theory (and DISC theory) and also I've seen it expressed as serotonin/dopamine, also forest/trees or global/analytical. Also rumsfeldian (unknown unknowns).
Which means there's prior art for how you can profile and segment a good lead.
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Connectors see similarities/rhymes among mental models and use the basic reasoning pattern "A is pretty much the same as B therefore just choose the frame convenient for you". You build confidence by hedgehoggy unification. If you can unify 2 things but use only 1, 2x confidence
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Separators try to separate similar things by poking at what makes them different. This increases doubt, through disunification. What you are confident of understanding/doing gets put in a smaller box, and the net unknown in your world goes up.
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I have a strong separator bias, to the point of pedantry when I get really interested, and often go nuts making up elaborate 2x2 separation schemes to distinguish things. Long-time clients kinda indulge me a bit even when it isn't useful to them because they know I enjoy it.
Another dimension is people who actually want a benefit/change from consulting and people who want to pretend there is a change from consulting business really just let us keeping going as we were.
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You should start devils-advocate-as-a-service and do Skype dressed up and all.
Good thread btw!
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Great thread and this is really a super insight that resonates deeply with me.
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Hey, the thread is ready and compiled. You can read the whole version here:
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Incredibly valuable to me especially since I'm trying to build an independent consulting practice.
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When I reason I like to reason via negativa. When I build (can be abstract like a framework or concrete like a product) i like to unify.
I wonder where does this place me on your quadrants
this is brilliant, you really get to the crux of it, definitely one of the most insightful threads ive seen on twitter in a long time
so many things can now be clearly places under this framework of systematic doubt/seperator vs systematic confidence/connector









