“Countless times, I remember watching him toss ideas — pretty far-out ideas — into the air, just to see how they played. And if they didn't play well, he would move on. This is, in effect, a form of storytelling — searching for the best way to frame and communicate an idea. If people didn't understand Steve, they would misinterpret his floating of ideas as advocacy. And they would wrongly perceive his enthusiasm or insistence as intransigence or bullheadedness. Instead, he was gauging reactions to his ideas to see whether or not he should become their advocate.” (from Creativity Inc’s afterward, Ed Catmull’s delightful reflection on what it was like to work with Steve Jobs as an investor and friend over the course of 25 years)

Putting an “idea out” there for consideration is an excellent way to determine whether it’s worth pursuing. This story about Steve Jobs reminded me of a tactic that was known as “Tom Sawyering” around the Xerox PARC offices. This informal process of socializing ideas was the way many of the early projects at the legendary innovation shop gained momentum:

“An atmosphere professional and personal fellowship was a powerful factor behind some of the center’s earliest projects. They called the process of informal collaboration by the name of ‘Tom Sawyering.’ Like Tom with his paintbrush and whitewash, someone would set forth his idea or project — whether it was in a formal meeting or a hallway bull session was an important — to mobilize a few intrigued colleagues in an attempt to make it happen. If you saw a glimmer of how to implement a new operation of microcode, you would gather a few expert coders in a room and have at the problem until every whiteboard in the place was filled with boxes and arrows and symbols as arcane as Nordic runes. If you had a big project with a lot of soldering to be done, everyone who knew how to wield a soldering gun strapped on his holster.

“If an idea worked, the team stuck together for the next 3 to 6 months to complete the job; if not, everyone simply disbursed like free electrons in search of a new creative valance. Thacker (a critical employee) viewed this system as ‘a continuous form of peer review. Projects that were exciting and challenging received something much More important than financial and administrative support. They received help and participation… As a result, quality work flourished, less interesting work tended to wither.’” (from “Dealers of Lightning”)

I find this to be a delightfully simple way to determine whether to explore an idea any further: can I enlist someone to explore this a bit? Can I get any of the folks I enjoy working with excited about the possibilities here? If not, perhaps best to move on…

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