Episode 4 : Delivery
Finally adding value
We will look into a practical approach to consistently deliver on our processes. So stick with me while I outline a method to take a long hard look at who we are delivering to so we can best serve THEM.
If you’ve followed the episodes up to this point, in “Observation” we took advantage of our impulses to make small descriptions of the world with the tools at hand. We harvested our impressions by watching them accumulate in repositories letting patterns emerge.
In “Research” we hunted for connections between our patterns and the work of others by making conscious connections and made them more visible and organized in hopes of knowing more about the world and ourselves.
In “Process” we gave ourselves completely to acting within ritualized practice. As if in a form of meditation, we defined creative constraints for having focused work sessions that are self contained and letting the results pile. We enjoyed exploring.
That’s all great, but… what was it all good for if it doesn’t add value? If it doesn’t solve someones problem? If it doesn’t make something new possible for everybody else. Something that wasn’t possible before you created it?
Delivery in the “Agency sense” is a type of work in itself. It’s where we exercise a considerable amount of analysis. The aim is to provide context to what we consider “quality” for what’s going out into the world. It’s all about When, for Whom, Where and Why.
Here is where we accept that we’re not done when we finish — We’re done when we publish. And publishing is not just putting it out somewhere where it can be accessed. We need a deployment strategy! And the success of the work is likely to hinge more on how well this is done than on any of the specifics of the work itself.
Not only we will have to face our fear of judgement (because the work IS going to be judged). We will have to make some very critical decisions. And if we do them right our lives can truly change overnight. The good news is: It’s usually ok to try many (many many many) times, at each cycle learning and growing through the feedback of the world, watching our deliveries pile up.
Those who deliver consistently and integrate this focus of offering something of use to the world to their practice tend to get what they want. Even without brilliancy or special talent. Reliability can go a long way — equally for employers and fan bases. In a shifting world being a consistent promise of “X” and delivering “X” has a value of its own. There’s only upsides to having your work being found, used and enjoyed by people. It’s where money, influence and friends will come from. It’s also ok to be ignored for as long as it takes while you build up your practice. If you manage to avoid getting too self important and losing faith in your self you can just imagine this “yet unseen” work as a seed that might blossom any time in the future. One of the most widely respected pieces of work I’ve ever done for the blockchain space — The DAOcanvas — went completely ignored for 18 months. An eternity for the standards of the industry.
Every step taken till the day you “make it” is useful — even if only as a supporting statement. These deliveries clarify your journey and support whatever you create in your next orbits around the issue that moves you to produce. As long as you also enjoy the actual work, this should not give you too long a pause. All work that is published, used, visible and adding value to someone is a possible future fountain of opportunities. As long as it’s adequately delivered, it’s already a win.
Everyone has examples of processes in which they’ve dumped bucket loads of hours only to stop at the crucial moment of sharing it with other people. So why do so many people fail at doing the only step of the work that actually has any chance to make them successful and help them grow into powerful, successful versions of themselves?
Honestly, I don’t care. The list of possible reasons might be too long to be worth listing and they truly don’t matter to us here. This is time to be though on ourselves — I don’t care how many reasons you can come up with to sabotage yourself — Deliver. Finish. Publish. Launch. Put the thing out there for others to use, see, listen — take part in the fractal turbulent debate of culture, now.
Are you a little late? Fine — sooner is better than later. A little short? Fine — deliver in instalments.
The key here is: Having a practice should also mean having one or more delivery methods for it. To periodically put work in front of a relevant peer group. These moments are the only ones that have true potential of generating concrete real world results that are not related just to the learning process.
You will surely be surprised by the reactions and outcomes. People who are exposed to your creation are not seeing it under a microscope like you are. They only see what you delivered and not necessarily will be focused on all that is missing — and if they do, they might hold the key becoming collaborators in getting you and the work where it needs to go. Even if this is by attacking it.
So what are useful assessments when considering how to package work for delivery? How to methodically build a strategy that will carry you through the inevitable self doubt all the way to generously offering your stuff to the world?
At this point, subjective notions of Good or Bad won’t serve us well.
Good enough for what? What is the desired outcome of the act of delivery? This is not a yes or no question.
To help define this desired effect I suggest using a mnemonic strategy called “The five W’s”
What are you delivering, Where is it going to meet the public, Who constitutes this public, When does this encounter happens and Why are you making it happen?
Cycling through these questions several times taking a long hard look will help us define our success parameters and governing assumptions.
I suggest attacking the questions one at a time, very fast, over and over again. Find first the most obvious version of the answers without second guessing yourself and then repeat the process again and again until a certain degree of elegance is reached. Allowing yourself to start by streaming consciousness down, capturing impulses and getting progressively more strict with ourselves as we revisit the first attempts.
What is the delivery form itself — what will be put in front of people? — a presentation, a dinner, a paper, an article, an invitation — a song or token sale campaign? Here we define the concrete parameters of the delivery. How big, how long, what color, how many. How it smells, Adjectivise until you can feel like you’re there.
A delivery of an Agency Episode is usually 5 to 6 pages long delivered in both text and audio — the audio file is a voice-over podcast format lasting from 16 to 20 minutes, posted to anchor and added to a medium post with the text added for ease of following along.
This is considered the cheap version of the delivery — a Prototype mode. The focus is content that people can use to manifest their dream as reality. After this is validate, I have many ideas of where I can take it — but — for now, this is what I can afford doing on my own.
So what are you planning on delivering right now? Write that!
As you answer the next prompts this answer might feel like it needs some tweaking. That is the whole point of this process. You’ll get back to it after assessing the other “W’s” — hopefully again and again — until the thing is so airtight that it would feel dumb not to do it.
That’s our goal.
Here we try to define the delivery setting — online or off, fancy or common, in which type of room or web-service. Each delivery setting will come with its owns embedded limitations and resources. Its paramount to research, define, ask questions to yourself and whoever is involved. Inquiring here will make sure what aspects of your work need highlighting, omition or adaptation to better suite venue constraints be it brick and mortar, virtual reality or zoom call. Theathers and Publications have editorial directions — it would be foolish to target a supporting organization or space without understanding why they would want you there or what they hope to get out of it. Be generous with your curiosity.
Once we know “where” the delivery happens its time to think of the inhabitants of that space! Who are we delivering to? Even deliveries happening in what seems to be open forums like social media, a gallery or on a street wall will have an implied group of stakeholders that YOU care about. Those people reactions to the work matter more than others.
There is also a set of stakeholders that care about you, the deliverer. There’s also a set that cares about the topic the work is about. The media it’s developed in. Take a moment to appreciate all the different attention streams of living humans that will intersect because of your work.
I find this so exciting that just by imagining the delivery as a connection space for many people with different life strategies to intersect, I get all hyped up.
These people form your audience and some of them might become core followers. They will come into the delivery space, in some sense, because of you. But also the topic, theme, media you are addressing / using. And of course the chosen delivery space itself.
We need to define: Who are the stakeholders that are inherent to me delivering work at this point — who’s my audience — what are their expectations and how much do I want to let these expectations inform the work? Who are the indirect stakeholders due to where I am delivering at, the topic, etc? Of these, which are the ones that I care about? Why?
Or to put it another way: Who are the stakeholders from the delivery space? How will they interact with the internal stakeholders of my work? What do I want these groups to experience and share through this delivery?
These reflections, done consciously can help you avoid being a bummer or even worse, irrelevant. They will also certainly matter if you want to awe and surprise. Delivery by delivery, step by step — your work will matter to more people and help improve their lives.
Just as important as the delivered object, the context and the people receiving the delivery is when it happens.
You might control When the delivery is gonna happen but you don’t have full control over what’s happening around it. And if the delivery is in the future there might be events that will affect how relevant it is and its overall perception. Although predicting what will happen in the future is always debatable — Trends can be felt, analyzed and studied to place the work just a little ahead of the curve, or to future proof it, or to avoid (or not) outrage.
Are there external factors I wanna take into account like market movements, a season, an art fair? Conference? Is the delivery happening early morning or after lunch? Are people drinking when it happens? Are they joyous or on a state of fear? Maybe there is a global pandemic happening? Etc.
Seeking to understand what other events and contexts surround the delivery is important — and often failing to consider them can be very damaging. Events both big and small, from politics to how hungry an audience might be — or what market movements succeeded your job interview change how your delivery is received — they can and should be seen as integral parts to the delivery themselves and few things are as satisfying as experiencing a delivery that feels “just in time” — you know what they say — “Nothing is as powerful than an idea whose time has come”. Electric cars, fart jokes and suggesting orgies all have their time in this life and the most successful of us have, more often than not, developed a keen sense of opportunity. You should too.
Allow your mind to meld with the Zeitgeist! Do you see arrows, vectors, directions coming out of it? Get all Donnie Darko on this one.
Why the heck are we doing this in the first place? A lot of gurus, motivational speakers and barstool philosophers get excited over this question — after all it opens itself in a flower of subjective complexity that makes people feel all smart when they think about.
If you want to enjoy the complexity of your why’s I’m not gonna stop you, but at first I wanna boil the why down to one simple question:
What is the theory of change to this delivery. If successful what is gonna change for the world, for you, for the topic, for the media? Once you nail this down — why is this something that should happen? At least one why but maybe 3.
What becomes possible for me, my audience and the world if I make a successful delivery and why this is something desirable is the lifeline of the delivery, if you nudge it to one side or the other it might change your strategyf significantly.
We should strive to find: Whats the revolution hidden inside our work? It doesn’t have to be big, but it should be there. If its not, why are we doing this and not something else?
Honing in on a very concrete Theory of Change not only makes the mission easier and help us better define all the other W’s — it will also inform your next cycle of observation, research, process and delivery again and again.
Work in a way that you can see all of your answers at once. Check if things fit together — as a sense of wholeness emerges, some of the W’s might need adjustments, change completely or grow in relevance. This map will help you work smart instead of hard and in case the delivery parameters change it will allow for timely adjustments of our assumptions.
Bringing it all together means focusing on actually getting to a delivery. There’s no possible up-side to going into paralysis by analisis here. The challenge is positioning the delivery of the work in the right contexts with only the necessary effort.
In a highly dynamic game of interacting contexts where the path is filled with gatekeepers we want to jump through the hoops of our own choosing.
Success is moving target and the beauty is always in the eye of the beholder. There will alsways be plenty of places to deliver to, many a fringes to explore and niches to thrive in.
I hope this a good frame to guide your considerations.
Think back to all the steps taken until now. Your observations, researches and processes. With what you’ve done so far:
Brainstorm a list of possible deliverables that advance Agency or one of your personal projects. If you want you can be more abstract and think of personal goals in your own life as well.
Now display your power of analysis by brainstorming on each the 5 W’s (What, Where, When, Who and Why). Go as deep as you need to. You don’t need to share the inner parts of your process.
Once airtight, organise this in a presentable form. Could be one paragraph of text for each. A slide presentation. A video. Imagine that you are pitching yourself (and the world) on your Theory of Change and how to get it done.
Looking forward to seeing it in the community board or the DAO.
Let’s get delivering! And with this we wrap the first season of the Agency Methodology.
Thank you for playing and see you again soon.
If you need any help to become a dreamer give us a shout in any of the community channels.
