A ‘Method-of-the-Month’ Club to help Product Teams Work Through Difficult Situations.
Subscribe to The Mighty Minds Club newsletter to find out when we open up enrollment again (later in the Fall).
Many of us struggle to find passion and purpose in our what we do. The problems we face seem more complex than anything we’ve trained for. Working with others is often difficult. And the way organizations are run seems ill-suited for 21st challenges.
More than ever, we need to develop:
We need things that let us learn on our terms.
We need less training, more things we can use, things that help us structure our thinking, reflection, and conversations.
We need more ‘things to think with’.
By joining The Mighty Minds Club, you'll discover new and surprising ways to work through difficult situations. You'll receive…
As a member, you benefit from expert curation and explanation, supported by a community eager to share and learn more about different methods. Let's unpack these benefits:
Methods to generate ideas. Tools to shift perspectives. Exercises for self-reflection. Discover a world of ‘facilitating structures’ that are light enough to empower individual and group expertise, while providing just enough guidance to navigate all kinds of complexities. Just enough structure, and no more.
And, these are tools that anyone can use, with minimal preparation. No trainer required.
I (Stephen P. Anderson) spend my time searching for, curating, and testing these tools, to make them more accessible to everyone who is searching for that 'just right' activity.
The summaries you get fall into a nice “Goldilocks Zone”, somewhere in between the blog post and the the book we don’t have time to read (if it exists). The breezy tutorials are comprehensive enough to answer all your questions, while light enough to read over a cup of coffee (or tea).
(Sample Visual Screenshots — Coming Soon!)
Plus, with plenty of personal anecdotes and interviews, a casual no-nonsense tone, learning will feel like a conversation with someone who is sitting across from you. It’s like a great conference presentation, with speaker notes woven into the slides.
New tools are great, but learning from each other is better. Joining the Mighty Minds Club also gets you access to a community of like-minded individuals. Ask the hard questions. Share what worked — and what didn’t. Improve upon and remix ideas. Challenge each other. Members also get to shape what topics get covered next, and put in their requests.
Every month, you get a digital report (PDF+) introducing you to one new facilitation activity, clearly explained and ready to use for yourself, at work, or with your organization.
While every topic will be different, here's what makes this report unique:
Clear, concise visual explanations showing how and when to use each tool.
Keeping it real with case studies and suggested usage scenarios
Personal, first-hand accounts of how each tool has been used, and what to watch out for.
Printable templates, and print and play files, ready for personal or team use
AMAs & interviews with the tool creators (when possible), so you can ask your toughest questions
Exclusive access to community discussions organized around each tool or topic
A Model to align organizations around a shared, multi-stakeholder experience
A Card Deck to help teams to recognize bad problem statements
Activities to help individuals reflect on purpose and career goals
Powerful Phrases to help us all manage difficult conversations
Cases to help us assess needs, drives, and motivations
A Visual System to make sense of challenging concepts
A Toolkit to help plan a successful gathering of people
Mental Exercises to stay positive during bad situations
A Structure to visualize a system and how it changes
A Method to help anyone anticipate possible futures
A Map to help groups resolve tense disagreements
A Framework to help teams make ethical decisions
A Playbook to nurture psychological safety
A Canvas to help cultivate self-awareness
See the pattern?
Some tool or activity to structure our thinking around a complex topic.
There will also be months where I research a special topic, such as "fantasy as a facilitation technique," "the need for and dangers of categorical thinking," or "digital privacy," but the emphasis will always be on practical application—providing some tool we can use to help with a pressing challenge.
Tools come from many domains, including:
Every month, I go deep with a highly relevant tool or topic
As a group, we share questions we have, challenges we're facing, the things we've tried…
You get this research distilled into something that is concise and ready to use.
Join a conversation or watch from the sidelines. Either way, you benefit from expert curation and explanation, supported by a community eager to share and learn more about different methods.
There are some great resources on the internet that have extensive collections of the kinds of tools and activities we’ll be sharing. In fact, here’s a list of those sites (and some good books, also). If all you're looking for is a directory listing new methods. Enjoy!
What's offered here is a bit different.
Mighty Minds offers in-depth instruction and commentary on these methods, plus access to a community organized around discussing these methods.
By assembling a community of practice around ‘things to think with’, we amplify our own collective discovery and sharing abilities.
Some things shared here won’t be found elsewhere. Some tools are original creations shared and discussed here, first. Other tools come from training organizations who’ve never before—until now—shared their IP with the world. Some of these tools are simply obscure or have been forgotten and need a spotlight.
Certainly! Dialogue and learning together are core values of Mighty Minds. As part of the club, you get to preview and influence what gets covered in future months.
This is for anyone who would like better tools for thinking through complex issues.
However, as I have the most experience working with product teams (which includes designers, engineers, product managers, and researchers), my examples and application ideas will likely be biased to these experiences.
That said, if you identify as a strategic thinker, lifelong learner, leader, coach, mentor, or curious intellectual, then you'll probably find something of value! At the end of the day, The Mighty Minds Club is for anyone looking for thoughtful and reasoned ways to work through difficult situations.
The Mighty Minds Club is currently closed to new enrollments, until later in the Fall.
However, you can stay up-to-date with happenings—including when doors open again—by signing up for the (mostly) weekly Mighty Minds Club newsletter:
Hi.
My name is Stephen P. Anderson and I am on a mission:
To make learning the hard stuff fun
by creating ‘things to think with’
and ‘spaces’ for generative play
In one form or another, I've been teaching others for more than 25 years, through workshops, keynotes, writing, consulting, and facilitation. I recently finished my second book, all about how to work with information as a resource to understand difficult topics. Now, I want to take the things I’ve learned—and continue to learn—and share them more broadly with the world.
I believe the challenges we face, from the interpersonal to the systemic, require more than corporate policy changes and afternoon training sessions. Learning how to learn—and learn together—is vital if we are to respond and adapt to change. I also know first-hand how powerful tools such as canvases and card decks (and other things designed to create dialogue) can be at facilitating this change.
I hope you can join me in The Mighty Minds Club, as we share the interesting, useful tools that people are using to work through difficult challenges.
Cheers!
(Yeah, I know. These are about me. Until things are out of beta and people have had a chance to say kind things about the club, these will have to do!)
Stephen's love of learning and models of practice shines through.”
He's an inspiring figure, always pushing others to think critically and objectively, and helping others be their best.”
Thanks to Stephen Anderson I once again feel the urge to expand my expertise.”
Stephen is constantly finding ways to engage and make learning easy and fun. I’d wholeheartedly recommend him as a coach, instructor, facilitator, thought partner, etc.”
Stephen has been a leader in creating large group workshops and actionable frameworks to build empathy and more productive relationships …It’s awesome to see how he brings the whole room along in a story arc that ultimately makes them all the hero.”
Stephen's superpower is taking complex and/or ambiguous situations, simplifying and making sense of them, and figuring out how we might tackle them..”