my story needed a bit more drama

There is no doubt that failure adds drama and as such, creates value. Just how often do chase films resort to the the old cliche of the driver choosing the wrong road, failing to acknowledge the sign reading "DANGER, works in progress", and ultimately flying off the side of a cliff. Just imagine how lifeless that scene would be if the road had just lead to a perfectly usable road. BORING! Of course the Hollywood version, airborn vehicles land on their feet and carry on, leaving those in pursuit scratching their heads, but in reality, I can imagine a far less opportune ending. So whereas the Feedback Toolkit I was gunning for might be extremely useful for a wide range of companies, I picked the wrong company, like choosing the wrong fork at an intersection. For the purposes of this study, it set off a panic because I was not so certain that I could land my a new concept in the small window allotted. Admitedly, thats my fault for not approaching my case study until the end of the project. With more time, feedback processes IKEA uses could have been more closel examined to uncover the undeliing issues, and why it is staff feels like they have feedback coming out of the yazzoo. But Covid is also partly to blame, as this rookie mistake is not one I would have made if I had been researching failure from from within IKEA as the IRP originally called for, and not simply connecting via text messages. As far as Im concerned, its a major fuck up, but inasmuch as this is a paper about fuckups, I am at least able to get some mileage off it.

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on constipation

probably too gross a topic to entertain on a blog, let alone include in a thesis, but this observation came to me today while on the crapper. I keep hoping the writing will soon becme more natural, and simply floooooooooooow. I picture the day where i look out the window and unbeknownst to me it has gone dark. Ive barely noticed the time pass as ive written 10 solid pages. Its not been like tht yet, but rather, like trying despreately to shit out a tiny peanut.

running a startup

brian sent me a text mesage saying i could interview him on his way to work. in a nour. sure, right, whatever. the only guy i know that runs a startup, this was pretty exciting. oh shit, no questions written, so i put some down quicjk so i wouldnt be fumbling when we spoke. good thing, his walk to work is just 15 min, and while he let me go over by around 8 min, by the end, i could tell he was in the office and had to attend to far more important stuff. so this is what i got. this is his first vc backed startup, the business he grew and sold in austin was bootstrapped. hes doing a kind of bio engineering biz to grow meat from cells. theyre on the 3rd round of funding, and i think i recall that it was some millions of dollars. so thats pre-seed and seed and then whatever comes after. they have just moved from dontown SF to berlkley, as they needed a bigger space. the team has grown to 16, and hes very confident speaking about all the stages of development like hes a pro. i just kind of ...

star struck

after several weeks wait, i got to speak to ashley good, the reason why i pursued this toic for my thesis. i had seen a ted talk on failure, where the NGO she had worked at decided to do the unheard of and publish their record of failures. instead of an annual report, their failure report pointed out all their failures, and this then launched her career as a consultant. based in vancouver, she runs fail forward which helps companies see the value of learning from mistakes. during the conversation, i lost my train of thought, like completely, and also could not think of some pretty basic words, like i had to ask her "whats that called when you act without a script" improvisation? she quickly replied. i conceeded that i might be a bit star struck, talking with the person who made this concept seem tangiable. yes, ther was Savoia (Author of the right it) before her, who turned me on to failosophy, and naturally theres Sitkin who wrote the paper that everytone sites back in 92,...

on failing

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