Building an Intelligence Engine

The Conversation Factory

I’m excited to share this rambling and wide-ranging conversation with Srinivas Rao. Srini is the host of The Unmistakable Creative Podcast, and has recorded over a thousand episodes with such luminaries as Danielle Laporte, Tim Ferriss, Seth Godin, and me! Srini describes his podcast as “If TEDTalks met Oprah”. Srini has interviewed so many different types of folks, from bank robbers to billionaires. He also has a business degree from UC-Berkeley and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

We talk about podcast interviewing (meta, I know!) and we unpack a topic that’s close to both of our hearts: creative output.

One of my early podcast episodes was with Sara Holoubek, CEO of Innovation Systems consulting firm Luminary Labs. Sara introduced me to the idea of having what she called an “Intelligence Engine'' - a process by which organizations turn insights into action and action into opportunities, not just every so often, but consistently and regularly. It’s not a dissimilar idea from Jim Collins’ “Flywheel effect” in that, ideally, you tune up your engine often, and even upgrade it when you need to.

One of my core beliefs is that conversations exist at different scales, and that they act in similar ways at these different scales. I also might take the idea of a conversation too far…in that I feel that any iterative, adaptive cycle is, in essence, a conversation.

So, Sara’s Intelligence Engine is essential for a healthy, growing company’s conversation with the world - after all, intelligence at the product and/or organizational innovation level requires a consistent cycle of making or creating new things, testing or trying those things out and reflecting on how it went, ie, harvesting insights. That’s an innovation conversation, at scale.

That cycle is pretty much the same at the level of the individual. We all need to seek new input, make and try new things, and then reflect and inspect the results.

Serendipity Engine vs Intelligence Engines vs Curiosity Engines

As with organizational intelligence, individual intelligence engines need to have a balance of intention and wandering. We need to be actively seeking new insights and ideas that matter to us, while also being open and curious about the unexpected. So, having a curiosity engine, like my guest Glenn Fajardo suggested in our episode on connecting remote teams, is a powerful way to rev up your intelligence engine, for yourself, your team and your organization.

Managing the flow of input, insight, and output

If there is one key takeaway from this episode, it’s that the open/explore/close // diverge/emerge/converge ARC of our own intelligence conversation is input-insight-output.

Srinivas’ top tips for building your own personal intelligence engine:

• Limit your Input
• Diversify your input
• Read books, not articles (they’ve digested complexity already!)
• Use a networked tool to capture your smart notes (srivas recommends Mem.ai which I also use!)
• Reflect and Connect dots regularly

Monotask to reduce the cognitive costs of task switching (check out my friends at Caveday and use the code 1STMONTHONE to get month of community-based monotasking support for $1 or use TRYACAVE21 to get your first cave free)

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes, and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

The Unmistakable Creative podcasthttps://podcast.unmistakablecreative.com/

Sara Holoubek on Human Companies and Solving Problems that Matter

Three Systems Every Creator Needs to Build by Srinivas Rao

You're Not Listening by Kate Murphy

The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bullshit

Effortless Output in Roam course by Nat Eliason

How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens

Maximize Your Output course by Srinivas Rao