☻ CΛT ☻

Do not place your faith in playbooks Take this from a lover and writer of playbooks: they can never teach you how to do something hard. There are 4 reasons you should be suspicious of the teachings of any playbook or framework: Reason #1: It’s much easier to write a playbook than it is to do a hard thing. Thus, many playbooks are aspirational rather than experiential — "I wish it worked this way", rather than "this is what I know about how to make it work". To truly discern the difference, you’d need to know if the author of the playbook is indeed a master of their domain. Which means you’d need to know either the author extremely well, or the domain extremely well. Reason #2 (even if #1 is true): The ability to know something and the ability to explain it well are two different skills. To know how to do something difficult is rare; to know AND to be able to explain it well is even rarer. I have met numerous masters of their domains that are frequently right, but cannot explain why, because it is an intuition felt in the gut rather than a logical train of thought. Even those that do write a playbook may not write it in a way can be easily understood by non-experts — this is why so many books feel intimidatingly complex! Reason #3 (even if #2 and #3 are true): True knowledge of how to do something hard is too rich in depth and nuance to transfer to another person. The reality of how to do something hard is so complex as to be impossible to fully explain in a tweet, a diagram, a podcast, a class, or even a book. Human language is a lossy communication medium. So whatever you do read or see is generally a simplification of what the master knows—like a 6-D object transposed into 2-D. Reason #4 (even if all the above is true): Your exact context will be different and something the framework author probably does not have firsthand experience of. The world’s best instructions on how to get from the train station to Town Hall in London would simply not apply in Barcelona. -- That said, playbooks and frameworks are not entirely useless! They are incredibly powerful tools, for 3 reasons (and not necessarily the ones you think.) 1) A playbook / framework is an effective way of distilling complex knowledge for the author and their collaborators. The process of creating a framework forces reflection. The process of following a framework forces evaluation and iteration. 2) A playbook / framework is valuable as a handy reminder for others who have similar knowledge. Those folks have the depth of knowledge, and can rely on an elegant encapsulation in a simple 2x2 for easy recall. 3) A playbook / framework is useful is as persuasive evidence for action. If you need to convince others of something you already know but can’t explain well, you can use the framework as social proof. Alas, there are no shortcuts; the way to cross the chasm of expertise is not by applying someone else's formula, but by doing the the hard work of doing.