Future Here Now: Systempreneurship

Try It On

Future Here Now is shifting to a daily format - same content, but spread out over the week so that one email doesn’t look like you will need a year and a half to read it.

If you’re a free subscriber, you’re going to get the whole set of emails this week — but with that pesky paywall in it. Getting the whole thing for a whole month costs about the same as one non-fancy libation at happy hour. Happy hour sounds like a good idea.

If you’re a paid subscriber, check your email from last week for the new game plan. And thanks for coming along.

Try It On

Systems control much of our lives, but the hard part about innovating systems is that we often take them for granted. Here’s a way to start to see behind the curtain:

Pick a system that you encounter regularly. It might be your kid’s elementary school classroom, or how your company handles reimbursements, or preparing for a city council meeting. Be sure to pick a system, not a procedure. A procedure is linear - it has a certain number of steps that always go in the same order. A system can put the steps in different order, even if it usually happens the same way every time.

Identify five key parts of the system - not all the parts, just enough to give you the general outline. For the classroom, it might be the white board, the rules, the place where the teacher reads to the class, and the art supplies.

Pick one of those parts, and see if you can identify three assumptions