Gather Resources like a Madman. Design like an Architect. Hit the Deck like the Carpenter. Reflect like the Judge.
A long day at work never seemed as long as today did as the excitement and thought of starting my first ever sprints at Stoa occupied a majority of headspace throughout the day. As I recollect the weekend that was at the Induction of Cohort 9, I only remember the folks from across different parts of the country coming together to Bengaluru, and taking back with them a bag full of memories and experience of feeling lively again from the very differently vibing world outside that space of no-judgment and growing.
I will someday talk about those three days of Induction, that made me want to begin writing and penning my thoughts down on this euphoric journey that lies ahead of me, but for now, I want to talk about how the Four Hats Exercise, my first ever sprint that made me question my note-making abilities (in a good way, no worries out there now).
As the guy who was always wearing the cap throughout the Induction Program at Cohort 9, I think it was no surprise to see an exercise on Structured Thinking named the Four Hats Exercise. Work at Office today had not one, but two instances where I was supposed to jot down notes from across meetings and send over the minutes of the meeting to various stakeholders. While I was able to make more or less average quality notes of the meeting, I am reflecting upon how the Four Hats Exercise would have played out in the process of the same.
Problems Identified
Through the exercise, I was able to understand where the problem in the quality of the notes was, which were -
Lack of Active Listening to the Conversation.
Failing to understand the priority/key information from a noise full of information. (Literally, noise)
Organizing the contents of the Notes in a Neat Manner. (I blame my poor handwriting in hurry for the same)
Four Hats - A Reflection
While I jot down the above problems, the thought to try the Four Hats Exercise out a little to see if I can solve the same and in retrospection, the following points seemed to be working out in the space that I am in most of my meetings when it comes to taking notes.
Gather Resources like a Madman
In my space of work, even the tiniest bit of information passed goes a long way in making its impact on decision-making and communications across multiple teams I interact with. Taking a good amount of the conversation as notes would work out in terms of giving me a window to see how much of the conversation points are in priority and what options of data captured are available to me. It gives me an opportunity to stay informed and leverage the information available on the table.
Design like an Architect
With the different flavors of information available to me on the table, the next step I feel would be to ideally split the information into segments based on priority, lesser priority, and larger timeline items. A slightly detailed plan based on the above constraints can provide me the direction to head towards and work towards based on what is to be done, what is the right time to do it, and how to do it.
Hit the Deck like a Carpenter
Once the plan has been laid out keeping in mind the larger picture that is out there about agendas, executing the plans in a timely, efficient and systematic manner is required to hit the gas on the pedal and push towards the finish line of what you seek to achieve through that moment of existence. Being in the present, focussing and heading towards ticking one thing after another in the plan to building a good framework of notes.
Reflect like a Judge
Once the House of Information seems to be organized in a systematic manner, judging the accuracy of the capture of information seems to be ideal in ensuring crisp and good note-making systems. Even the simplest thing as much as the readability of the notes to other readers (self-attack due to my poor handwriting) goes a long way in the reflection of what you have captured with your own thought and understanding of the situation.
As I think on this Hat of the Exercise, I am reminded of Aditya’s words to us in his last session speech of the Induction -
Consume. Do. Observe and Mimic.
And I think that’s what this Exercise was all about…
Consuming. Doing. Observing and Mimicking.
Stoa-ked to be here!🚀
Amazing how you managed to pen it down. Way to go buddy!!
Can't agree more to the part where it is a lil overwhelming to go back in memories of those 3 days!