Room To Think

EDITION 008 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor LabsREAD TIME: 3 minutes 🗓️ Thoughts this week A few years ago my team at Intuit was tasked with fixing a slumping conversion rate. It wasn't a massive drop - less than a 1% decrease - but for a multi-million-dollar company the implications become expensive quickly. Where do you look for a 1% fix? Today we have access to reams of data. We even call our customer data warehouse a "data lake" probably because we're drowning in it. 1% is...

EDITION 009 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor LabsREAD TIME: 1 minute 🗓️ New this week Maybe it's the weather changing, maybe it's the democratic blue wave, maybe it's the fresh positivity in my week's calls with people. Three of my good friends have found fulfilling new roles this week despite the headwinds facing workers in this job market. There's a tone shift this week and I'm trying to stay in it, a little longer. Make a little room to think Now is a perfect moment to take a...

EDITION 007 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor LabsREAD TIME: 3 minutes 🗓️ New this week It was maybe 7:00am and a friend sent me a screenshot. "NO way." My daughter and I became the face of AFC Toronto Women's soccer ads on socials. Get your season tickets - we said. We had attended the final this season and I'd nearly forgotten we posed for a crowd photographer. My kid is missing two front teeth and grinning ear to ear. I'm going to print it out. It's going straight into the...

EDITION 006 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor LabsREAD TIME: 3 minutes Facilitating creative sessions to a result But first, 🗓️ New this week I'm really excited to be back facilitating the Digital Growth Marketing program again with Toronto Metropolitan University. Nothing fills my cup quite like waving my arms / talking too fast / demonstrating a new idea in front of a class. The students only have one thing in common and that is: in the beginning nobody wants to call themselves a...

EDITION 005 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor LabsREAD TIME: 3 minutes 🗓️ New this week I said "yes" this week to extending another engagement, but it took me longer this time... This week I've been reflecting on balance in my work. I've built a solo practice in order to fill my "buckets"; I need to earn a living. I love to teach. I give some of my time away for free. At the moment I'm filling each of those buckets across a number of activities with great organizations - and yet I...

EDITION 004 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor LabsREAD TIME: 6 minutes 🗓️ New this week The single most important research skill that anyone can master — is customer interviews. Interviews give us real customer evidence straight from the source. We prefer that over an aggregate AI answer any day, in any market. With the arrival of AI a lot has changed in the research space; Good -- using AI for admin tasks; so that humans spend more time with humans. AI has allowed us to complete...

EDITION 003 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor LabsREAD TIME: 6 minutes 🗓️ New this week Prototyping is the most in-demand AI skill right now. This all feels like it happened overnight, doesn't it? Vibe code platforms that can design, build and publish functional code from prompts are exploding. Vercel, Lovable, Cursor seem to be dominant but the classics are catching up. Figma Make and Adobe are launching features to take designs into code. Our ability to build something is suddenly...

EDITION 002 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor LabsREAD TIME: 5 minutes 🗓️ New this week I had no idea that this could be a superpower. I've had a few colleagues and ex-colleagues point this out to me: when I was working at Intuit, I never got a 'no' from leaders. I'd be asking the Head of Canada and sometimes the Head of U.S. consumer division for funds, for headcount -- or if you know my experimental work -- permission to break a rule or two or three. Like many orgs there was a...

EDITION 001 | More Room to Think (Archives) | Formentor LabsREAD TIME: 3 minutes 🗓️ New this week Sharing new ideas is hard. I'm writing a whole newsletter about it... Any number of moments could cause us to feel triggered, embarrassed, or judged over the course of developing an idea in public. Regulating our emotions helps us become grounded before the meetings, collaborations and presentations where our presence itself helps sell the idea. Can't sell without confidence. This idea is so...