Are you making it easy to scale your impact?

Last night, I attended the "Co-Create Your Product Journey" event as part of my work with Workit. The format was similar to an open space, with small groups of people gathering to share their resources - knowledge, experiences, links, and contacts around topics such as "learning from customers" and "experimenting in market". I like this format where everyone is a student and everyone is a teacher asking for what they need and sharing what they have to offer. It feels like an excellent example of emergent learning where current need is met just in time with learning. But how does that happen in reality?

I view events like these not as "every second will be useful" but rather I'm looking for "a few really valuable ah-has!". These ah-has! can be a new idea, a new option, or something clicking for me where I can see a path forward. The act of talking these things out with other people is often what makes them "click" and solidify into ah-has! Often its hearing other people explain them in their own experience and vocabulary that make them fuller, deeper, and more actionable. Thinking about it, I think it's seeing a path forward or a next step that really differentiates an ah-ha! for me. And while I love sharing in real time conversations, I also wonder how I can scale my contribution and impact?

There are so many places where we're already in conversations with other people. Meetings, chatting in tools, one-on-ones, coffees, lunches, etc. And while all of those conversations probably already have a primary purpose, they're also opportunities for you to share your resources. For example, perhaps you hear someone in a one-on-one who's really saying "I don't feel comfortable having conversations with customers" or "I don't know what questions to ask". And perhaps you have an ah-ha! moment thinking "there's a great chapter in The Mom Test with examples of how to ask helpful questions when talking with customers". Or perhaps you think "I remember a session from the Advancing Research Conference talking about how to have customer conversations on sensitive topics such as finances".

And so as I did during last night's event, I shared some of my own resources - my highlights from The Mom Test and my notes from the Diversity and Inclusion track from Advancing Research 2020. Sharing these lets me share what I have to offer without necessarily having to explain it each time. And today, I'm sharing these resources in this post to share them with even more people. So that more people can find them. So that people can share them with others. So that next time I see an opportunity, I can more easily pass them on sharing my knowledge, experience, links, and contacts. So that I can scale my contribution and impact. And hopefully so that other people see this example and have their own ah-ha moment about making their resources more sharable and scalable.

What are your resources? How could you make it easier for more people to haves access to those resources?

-Adam Zolyak