Working Out Loud

What is it and why am I doing it?

This is the title slide for the latest Matereality assessment on global meat company JBS. The deck is a work in progress and I’m working out loud. In this article I explain what that means and why I am taking this approach.

I talk a big game about my vision, which is an economy that works in service of life. And I spend most of my time — according to me anyway — cultivating the kind of industrial healing we need to transition to that economy.

But the fact is, I don’t know how to do this and I need help.* Heck, I don’t even know what kind of help I need most days. So I’ve adopted a habit of working out loud, leaving my virtual office door open so anyone can have a look, offer feedback, and maybe even take what’s useful.

In this piece I’ll use the JBS Matereality assessment as an example to explain what I mean by working out loud, and why I am using this approach. I welcome your thoughts.

If you’re new to Matereality, the origin story is here, guiding principles are here, and a whole host of other (expensive but free!) goodies are here. If you already have a sense of what I’m up to here, and/or you simply want to dive into the notion of working out loud in general, read on to see an example in action.

What am I working on out loud?

I am creating a google slide deck that will be the collected findings of the JBS Matereality assessment. It sounds so basic: a few slides! But there is a lot jammed in there, which I am inventing as I go…