The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 239 - Explorement

Transcript:

Jen: Hi, Pete.

Pete: Hi, Jen.

Jen: Have you ever had a moment where you were thinking of two words at the same time, and then you like accidentally came up with a non-word because your brain was trying to pair the two words?

Pete: Yeah, all the time. I feel like we make up words all the time.

Jen: Okay, well, this happened to me while I was teaching. And then, I had to say, "Please hold. I have to go write this down. This is one of the greatest brain flubs of all time." So, here's the word that came out of my mouth...

Pete: Great.

Jen: Explorementing.

Pete: Explorementing. I think I can guess the two words that you confounded, but I also am obsessed already. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: Explorementing.

Jen: Isn't that so good? It was one of those happy accidents where I wanted to say, you know, "The purpose here is to explore," but I also wanted to say, "The purpose here is to experiment," and I said something like, "What we're doing here is explorementing."

Pete: It's so good. It's so good. Both can be true, I think...yeah. I mean, they're different but similar.

Jen: They're different, but similar. And that's what I wanted to talk about with you today, is, I want to look at these words separately, and then what happens when you combine them? Like, how does the action or the intention change when they're stacked on top of each other?

Pete: Love it. Okay. So, what does 'explore' mean to you?

Jen: Maybe I've said this before on this podcast, but I'm obsessed with explorers. Like, really obsessed. Like, creepy obsessed.

Pete: Like, Antarctica explorers...I feel like you've talked about that before, Shackleton and co.

Jen: Exactly. Like, anywhere you're going where it's cold and no man's gone before, I am into it. And I think that is part of the exploring is that we're going into places we haven't gone before. And there is some sort of hypothesis about what we're going to find, but no proof quite yet.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. It's like, there's so much possibility in the word and the idea of exploring. It's sort of titillating. It's like, "What are we going to find? What are we going to discover? What might we uncover?" That's kind of nerve wracking, but exciting. This is the word I was thinking of actually, ironically, is, I've heard a lot of people say, "I feel nervous and excited. I feel nervecited." You know? Like, there's like that combination of...it's the same kind of feeling but it's a different kind of feeling, and it's like, combine the two. So, yes, there's a nervousness, there's an excitement in my mind about seeking and exploring and discovering and all of the unknown possibilities. I agree. I love it.

Jen: And then, when I think about experimenting, to me, that's more of like the scientific method of, "I'm going to try something. I'm going to figure out what works, what doesn't work. I'm going to iterate on that, and I'm going to try the next experiment." They're similar, but they're different.

Pete: Yeah, I think experimenting is the antidote to perfectionism, in many ways. Like, there's no right answer inherent in the idea of me conducting an experiment. Either way, I'm going to discover something, I'm going to learn something. And that will, in its own right, be successful, regardless of what happens.

Jen: Yeah. It's occurring to me right now that there are different sort of like personality traits that one might associate immediately with one word but not the other, and vice versa. So like, when I think about someone who is an explorer, and maybe I unfairly attribute this, but I think like, "Oh, this is someone who likes adventure, who is not risk averse. Like, this is someone who has faith, some sort of faith in possibility." And then, I look at like an experimenter, I'm like, "Oh, this is a logical person. Like, this is a person who wants to have proof." I see myself in both of these people, by the way.

Pete: Oh, interesting.

Jen: Which is maybe why I'm so obsessed with this idea of explorementing.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, I see...and maybe this is where you were going...but I actually see a lot of similarity.

Jen: Yeah, tell me.

Pete: Because, to me, both of them are about possibility seeking.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: Like, I explore the unknown. And as a result, there is so much possibility within that. But I conducted a bunch of experiments and don't know what I'm going to discover, which means there's so much possibility in that idea of experimentation. So I feel like, if I was to have a Venn diagram where 'explorementing' is in the middle and 'explore' and 'experiment' is on either side. I feel like part of the overlap is possibility seeking.

Jen: Mmm-hmm. Yeah.

Pete: But I definitely agree with you that there are actually characteristics that are slightly different as well. Hmm. Interesting, interesting, interesting. I feel like I can make an argument where explorers are more comfortable with the unknown, whereas experimenters are seeking the known. That's why they're experimenting in the first place, because they want to understand.

Jen: And again, obsessed with it, because it's the two sides of the same coin.

Pete: Right.

Jen: It feels so right. You know, I teach this class at my studio called Studio Workshop. The very first day of class, I say, "Our purpose here is to explore, experiment, and push the boundaries of your own potential."

Pete: Nice.

Jen: Which, it kind of feels like maybe, "Push the boundaries of potential," is what explorementing is.

Pete: Oh, nice. I think you just came up with a definition.

Jen: Love it when we make up words, Pete.

Pete: We need to contact John Koenig, who is the author of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, who is a guy who invents words for things that he thinks should have words. He's the guy that created or defined 'sonder', that word that you and I are both obsessed with. I have the book in my hand, and yeah, I feel like we need to get his attention and get explorementing in that dictionary.

Jen: So, one of the things I'm excited to...wow, just the meta moments. My brain wanted to say, "One of the things I'm excited to experiment with, with this new word, is to use it to create whimsy in a workshop setting where experimenting or exploring feels a little fraught with tension. Like, I like the idea that it's the kind of word that, because it's not a real word, can add a levity to something that might otherwise feel kind of serious.

Pete: Oh my gosh, I'm so obsessed with this. So, I'm laughing at like myself already and I haven't even said anything. I am obsessed with adding levity to situations that don't usually have levity. I very much believe in the unlocking potential of having people not take themselves too seriously, of seeing lightness where there's not always lightness, of going into an executive room where there's a bunch of very senior, very serious executives and intentionally being whimsical and intentionally trying to break down these serious walls so that we can have a more creative, fun, collaborative conversation. And so, I agree. This idea of like, can I walk into a space like that and say, "Alright, team. Today, we're going to do some explorementing," and hopefully get a bunch of confused looks, hopefully get a bunch of chuckles, hopefully spend the first ten minutes talking about, "What does that even mean?" And I can already see how I could apply this. Have you got similar like situations where like things are a little serious or stale, and you're like, "Let me throw out this ridiculous word."

Jen: Yes. When I am prepping someone for a final callback, 100%. And they're like, "Oh my gosh. I don't want to go in there and do what I already did, but I also don't want to do something that's so different than what I already did that it's like off the mark. I know I want to be fresh. I know I want to feel impulsive. But now, I'm in my head." Like, I could see saying, "Well, let's just explorement and see what comes out. We don't have to keep any of it. Or, if we find something that we like, we could keep it. But let's just explorement. It doesn't have to be so serious.

Pete: Yes. Don't take yourself so seriously, I love it. I mean, it's actually part of the reason I often use the word and I'm obsessed with the word 'noodle'. And like, my blog is literally called Noodle Scratchers because it's like...it works on a few levels. One is like, a noodle is also a head, and like, can you write something that makes people scratch their head? But also, this idea of like noodling around with ideas, for me, is so less threatening than like thinking intellectually or coming up with really profound assertions or having to have the right answer. It's like, "Let's just noodle around, and like think about things out loud and see what we discover."

Jen: What I love is when that catches on, and then people use the word 'noodle' with me, I know people use the word noodle with you, and it's how they take the edge off of an idea that they're not sure is fully cooked yet. So, you know, "This is still a crunchy noodle."

Pete: Exactly. I mean, Seth Godin wrote about it in his blog. He actually, he mentioned me and the idea of like noodling around in his blog, and I have people often saying to me, "Here's an idea I've been noodling on." I'm like, "That's so wild that you're saying that, because that's what I say."

Jen: Yeah, yeah.

Pete: And you know what people mean by that, right? Like, it invokes like a playfulness, a levity, or like you said, like, "We're not taking this too seriously, but like, I think there might be something there." And I feel the same way about explorementing. I feel like it's got this beautiful levity where, I mean, even when you said it, I feel like I knew what you meant, even though you made this word up...which is ridiculous.

Jen: By accident. I felt like a Disney character, in that moment. You know? Like, someone like Princess Anna in Frozen. She says something, and then her face reacts because she heard herself say it after the fact. And I think that's what I looked like...this thing came out of my mouth, then I heard it, then my eyes went wide, and then I had to go do something about it.

Pete: Then, you ran away and wrote it down. Okay, so what are some ways our listeners can begin to explorement, do you think? Like, how can we...I know you just invented it, so it's all pretty fresh. But how can we make this practical and tactical for our listeners, do you think?

Jen: I would go to the big hairy audacious goal, the BHAG...

Pete: The ol' BHAG.

Jen: ...and ask, "How might I explorement with this?" Instead of like, "I'm setting the strategic plan for this thing, and it's hairy and it's audacious," we can...I mean, I guess BHAG just in and of itself is kind of whimsical. But when something is a big, hairy goal, it has the potential to have such an enormous impact on you that it can feel almost overwhelming to fully execute on it. So for something really big, I would apply an explorementing mindset. And similarly, on the flip side, for like the little annoying things that you know you have to do that you don't want to do, they're like the small...what's the opposite of big, hairy, audacious? Like, small, hairless, and fine?

Pete: Small, hairy, yeah, audacious...yeah, I don't know. SHF, or something.

Jen: But I could see how explorementing with the things that feel smaller could actually make them a lot more fun and pleasurable to execute.

Pete: Yeah, agreed. Agreed, agreed. The other thing I was thinking of is when I'm having conversations with an executive one on one, and they might be grappling with something that feels really high stakes, like, "I've got to have this conversation with this particular other executive or this particular business or this direct report of mine, and it's a really uncomfortable conversation and it feels high stakes, or I've got to propose something to another business and it feels really high stakes, because we really need this decision made, whatever. And often the story we tell ourselves about the thing makes it feel so much higher stakes than it actually is.

Jen: Mmm-hmm.

Pete: One of the questions I love to ask is like, "How might we reduce the stakes here? Like, how do we make this lower stakes for you?" And I actually think this idea of explorementing is how I might do that. Is, how do we explore it with this like, "Let's try and completely reduce the stakes here and just explorement with it." Explorement...it's so good...with different ways that we could approach it.

Jen: Mmm-hmm. It reminds me a little bit of...you came into the studio, this was the first visit to the States, I think, after you and I had met. And you ran a brainstorming session for us, which we actually did an episode about...I will find that episode and put it in the Box O' Goodies. And one part of the brainstorm was about sort of like blowing the lid off of what was possible and like really throwing out some crazy ideas. That part of the brainstorm session (which kind of, you warmed us into that), that feels like an explorementing session, where you're just sort of like, "If there were no limitations, what are some of the ideas we could come up with?"

Pete: Yeah, yeah. It makes me think of that book A Beautiful Constraint, and how some of the exercises from that book are all about like, "Imagine a world that is unconstrained. You know, you have no financial constraints, you have no time constraints, you have no resource constraints. What would be possible," and you have like people do that exercise. Interestingly, though, I was thinking about that same example, from a slightly different angle. Which is, for me, actually, I could replace the word 'whiteboarding' with 'explorementing'. Like for me, the act of whiteboarding is, in itself, explorementory. Because I kind of deliberately (and I feel like most people do this) am scribbling on whiteboards, rubbing things out, like none of it's meant to make sense. All of it is meant to be a mess. Maybe through that process, you'll find a little connective tissue that you can then use. It's almost like, for me, what is an active explorementation? It is getting in front of a whiteboard and just kind of starting to get things out there.

Jen: Love it. My brain just went to Dora the Explorer, and it really is craving a theme song for like some sort of explorementor cartoon character. This has nothing to do with unpacking anything of value for our listeners right now, other than sharing that that is where my brain just went.

Pete: I like it, which then makes my brain go to something that I'm going to put in the Box O' Goodies. I'm going to ask ChatGPT to create a theme song for this idea of explorementation, and I'll put it in the Box O' Goodies.

Jen: Oh my gosh. We haven't mentioned ChatGPT really yet on this podcast, but listeners, Pete and I are both obsessed with ChatGPT. And at some point, we will share with you how we are using it. Because we've been explorementing like crazy with ChatGPT.

Pete: 100%. I've been trying to work out how to turn the conversations we've been having about this large language model into something that is of use to our listeners, other than just like, "Look at this crazy probe that I sent into this crazy algorithm, and now it's come up with this crazy thing."

Jen: Oh, yeah. So once we have done a little more explorementing, we will share our findings with you. Pete, I feel like we've used the word 'explorement' enough in the last seventeen minutes that it actually now, to me, feels like a real word instead of a non-word.

Pete: I know, I can actually feel like our listeners at this point are like, "Yeah, I'm going to do some explorementing." And they're going to probably say to you, "Hey, Jen, I've been doing some explorementing and here's what I think." I feel like it's a word.

Jen: I can't wait. Yes! I love it.

Pete: You willed it into existence, to explorement. And that is The Long and The Short Of It.