This is a great metaphor. I happen to currently be in a company in the process of switching games for the products which got us here. The context switches are easy for some who have been through it before in other companies. Not so much for those seeing the new rules for the first time.
I love and use your 3X metaphors and they have worked great for me at a large company. Now that I am working with smaller companies, I am finding that stages can’t be separated as cleanly for small companies, because there are a lot fewer people. Maybe another way to put it is that there are Explore projects or stages of projects, but there are no Explore teams or years of Explore focus. This feels like a lot more like a complex balancing act, because the same engineer over 6 months may have to work on projects in very different stages. Ideally, they would take different approaches to such projects. However, I am finding that people tend to approach all projects/stages in the same way, which does not lead to good results (part of the point of your post, as I understand it). Also, this is not only due to lack of work style flexibility, but also due to the lack of clarity about which project is in what stage.
I like this - having just completed what I suppose you'd call the "Explore" phase of a project, the transition to "Expand" is always a "fun" time 😅
This is a great metaphor. I happen to currently be in a company in the process of switching games for the products which got us here. The context switches are easy for some who have been through it before in other companies. Not so much for those seeing the new rules for the first time.
That's why I love having vocabulary to discuss the transitions. "That made sense while we were exploring. We're not exploring this at the moment."
I love and use your 3X metaphors and they have worked great for me at a large company. Now that I am working with smaller companies, I am finding that stages can’t be separated as cleanly for small companies, because there are a lot fewer people. Maybe another way to put it is that there are Explore projects or stages of projects, but there are no Explore teams or years of Explore focus. This feels like a lot more like a complex balancing act, because the same engineer over 6 months may have to work on projects in very different stages. Ideally, they would take different approaches to such projects. However, I am finding that people tend to approach all projects/stages in the same way, which does not lead to good results (part of the point of your post, as I understand it). Also, this is not only due to lack of work style flexibility, but also due to the lack of clarity about which project is in what stage.
> However, I am finding that people tend to approach all projects/stages in the same way
I agree! This is an important observation.
Loved this one! Trying to imagine how that presentation looked on stage :)
(Still think the triathlon is the absolute best on though).