Strategic "Flow State"

Several of our team members have a background in engineering, design, UX, product, and some ML & AI. One thing that anyone working in these creative roles knows is that "flow state" is important to getting work done.

When writing code, you can find yourself in this "flow state", and this is where you'll get your best work done. If you experience this (and your experience is anything like mine), you'll get some of your most high-quality work finished while "in flow."

I lose track of time entirely and am immersed in the problem & solution until I hit an interruption, and my concentration breaks.

Building Vistaly, I spend much more time thinking and talking about product strategy, discovery, and development, rather than writing code. However, I keep going back to this idea:

What would it look like for an organization to enter a state of "strategic flow"?

• Focused iteration – Less "Move on to the next thing now" and more "Did we achieve what we set out to do with the first thing?"

• Higher awareness – Fewer questions (or more aligned questions) about what's important and why.

• Deeper cross-functional understanding of the problem/solution space

• Collective working memory – What are we learning, and how can that be applied at an individual or team level?

• Collective recall – What did we try, and what improvement we're we expecting to see?

• Less "distraction" work.

These are not easy problems to solve, but we see teams trying a lot:

• Massive wiki knowledge bases or "company drives"

• Several disconnected & freeform digital whiteboards

• Meetings to "keep everyone in sync"

• PPT presentations and recorded video calls – sent out at regular intervals

If only there were something to help make everything more continuous and connected – like a second brain for your product organization. 😉