Massimo Curatella

Category: Posts

  • Abstract and Specific Speculations

    When you have no precise details about your goal, storytelling can help. You can have at least two approaches: broad, high-level epics with fuzzy information and specific scenarios where you describe exactly what will happen.

    The high-level speculation helps to set the broad context. It’s helpful to have the buy-in of all internal stakeholders and to give a chance to the less-informed or the more-distracted to have a sense of where the story is happening.

    The down-to-the-detail speculative story, instead, requires courage. You take all assumptions as validated, and you chain them in a sequence of potentially connected concepts. It’s essential to stretch your imagination in this way. Otherwise, it becomes challenging to have practical tasks to act upon.

    Everything could be wrong, but time and resources are not wasted because you better grasp the subject and its context. You exercised your imagination, and that primed your brain to be more creative. You tested the group on a collaborative effort that is only preparing you all better for the next move

  • Storytelling to face uncertainty and complexity

    Storytelling can be your only solution to tell complexity. Sometimes you have to deal with a problem so complex in such a little time that it is impossible to know everything about it. You should map it out, identify all components, and delineate all relationships between them. Knowing boundaries, constraints, forces, and influences is fundamental to make sense out of something complex. But sometimes you have no time to do it. So, putting together a story, in its simplest form, a context: somebody needs to do something because they want it or because somebody else wants it, they learn something about the possible roads to take, they take into consideration possible scenarios and, finally they make a decision with all of the implications and consequences that it entails.

    You won’t create a perfect and durable solution. Sometimes, maybe most of the time, you will be wrong or very wrong. But telling a story using the elements you have at your disposal and adding a bit of imagination allows you to get unstuck and get out of the paralysis from analysis. Most of all, a story is the most immediate means you have to communicate your lacks, your missing pieces, your speculations. It’s a way to work, productively and provocatively, without knowing exactly what the work is that you have to do.

  • Day by Day

    If character shows when nobody is watching us, I need to recognize it. I’ve been making a public show of my habit-building challenge. I wanted everybody to see the struggle to write every day with mixed results: some free-flowing brainwriting, some well-researched pieces, some wanderings in the random realm of the moment. After so many days, I’ll need to check my list to see today’s number. I still come back here to share my thoughts. Still, I am failing at planning, researching, reasoning, and preparing a well-crafted article. I can only perceive, distinctly, the improved fluency when I write. I got enough of spelling-checker, preparing the draft to be revised, bolding words to break the dullness of a wall of text, the concern about readability. I just write.

    I am unsatisfied. I still am. I was more accurate and used to write more deeply when my schedule was erratic or once per week. The pain was more brutal, the research, the infinite draft, the hell of the revision. But I was publishing articles deserving the name. Now I have disconnected thoughts, spitting from my fingers in that moment of the day when I remember, OH, I need to write. So I am not hiding behind a finger. I am just living this daily challenge as it comes.

    Day by day.

  • I did it.

    Yes.

  • What Can We Learn About The Future?

    “History Repeating” is a song written by Alex Gifford and originally performed by Propellerheads
    featuring Shirley Bassey in 1997

    The word is about, there’s something evolving,
    Whatever may come, the world keeps revolving…
    They say the next big thing is here,
    That the revolution’s near,
    But to me it seems quite clear
    That’s it’s all just a little bit of history repeating.

    The newspapers shout a new style is growing,
    But it don’t know if it’s coming or going,
    There is fashion, there is fad
    Some is good, some is bad
    And the joke rather sad,
    That it’s all just a little bit of History repeating.

    And I’ve seen it before
    And I’ll see it again
    Yes I’ve seen it before
    Just little bits of history repeating

    Some people don’t dance, if they don’t know who’s singing,
    Why ask your head, it’s your hips that are swinging
    Life’s for us to enjoy
    Woman, man, girl and boy,
    Feel the pain, feel the joy
    Aside set the little bits of history repeating

    Just little bits of history repeating
    And I’ve seen it before
    And I’l see it again
    Yes I’ve seen it before
    Just little bits of history repeating

  • Futuring: Scoping

    Future Scope’s Influencing factors:

    1. The stakeholders
    2. The context set by the motives
    3. Funding

    Scoping starts with a question, from an individual, a team, or an organization,  framing and setting boundaries. It can spark an exploration or an exercise or a need to learn and mitigate potential risks, both internal and external to the initiator. The context could also be about the development of a new product or service.

    According to the motives behind starting a futuring exploration, you can define the source, approaches and methods, ways to work, and final deliverables.

    When framing the exploration you might have the need of restricting it to a certain time horizon or avoid certain topics according to the context. In some cases, a pilot project is the best approach to have a final outcome providing lasting value, even after the end of the project.

    Notes from “How To Future” (2021) by Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby.

  • What’s Futuring?

    Thinking about the future is different for each of us because every person has a different view of the future.

    “Futuring” is the process of exploring possible futures. It’s a way to gather information and get directions. It is also an act affecting politics, society, culture, and psychology.

    There is no fixed futuring process. Although there are methods and approaches you should always think critically about their application and adjust it to your context and your needs.

    Futuring vs Design

    While the design process has tangible deliverables and artifacts, the futuring’s outcomes are not usually immediate and require attention when structuring its process. An effective framing of the futuring process is essential for its success.

    Future Framing: What are the objectives and the boundaries of futuring?

    In the futuring process, you should define the purpose and the impact, the stakeholders, the boundaries, and the practices. You should “future-proof your future-proofing”.

    Notes from “How To Future” (2021) by Scott Smith and Madeline Ashby.

  • Immune

    Becoming immune doesn’t mean avoiding or rejecting alien things. It’s the opposite, it means being completely immersed in them and developing an immune response.

    For those things we cannot avoid, reject or prevent to be immersed with, we need to develop our immune system.

  • Careful, Accurate and Useless Archives.

    While trying to not get asleep I am writing whatever comes to my mind. Outside is hot, inside is fresh and nice. The bed is comfortable. I just need to remain focused. If I enjoy too much this position I might not get to the end. I’d like to set in my mind the lessons of the day. Waking up early gives more time to do things. I’ve accomplished a lot today. Not only at work, great day, but browsing through my 30-years old archive made me think. What was I thinking when I stored so much books, files, images, videos, photographs? I can easily throw away more than 99% of what I kept. It says a lot about who I was and how I changed. On the one hand I feel different and distant from that version of me, on the other hand I feel I’ve wasted so much energies and resources in carefully gathering, organizing and classifying such enormous amount of information. All of it for nothing. So, I am thinking, what have I learned? What shall I think today when I am doing the usual backup? Backup of what? What? What will I do with today’s archive in 30 years from now?

  • Cheap Comfort

    I am writing this document on my mobile phone using an external keyboard. It’s quite comfortable, I am on my couch, the phone is inclined on a holder and I am well seated on my sofa. This configuration is unusual. I feel I am in keyboard-typing-mode, typing fast, almost at the speed of my thoughts, but I am looking at the the small screen of my phone. It’s a different mood for me. I am among my people, the TV screams loudly and I can write down my thoughts.  All of that thanks to a 100 Euro smartphone a a 25 Euros bluetooth keyboard.

    Sometimes it doesn’t take a lot to create variety in your writing routines.