Possibility Thinking: Pre-requisite to Shaping What Could Be
And why it can be helpful for people in product
My dad was a civil engineer and he would sometimes take me to the sites of the projects he oversaw. I always remember feeling amazed when seeing the end result — buildings buzzing with people that housed their many stories, where just a little while ago there stood nothing. This process of creation and the ability of us humans to affect our future reality fascinated me, and I imagined with anticipation being able to do so when I was grown up. Even better, what if I could not just build but also design the future? In fact, for the longest time I thought I would go on to become an architect, designing and creating artful and yet practical buildings, bringing beauty and comfort to the people who would end up occupying these structures. Somewhere in the process though, I realized that becoming an architect would take too long for me to become financially independent — which didn’t really jive with my vision of the future and so I continued searching for the right career path.
But this experience of growing up with a dad who built buildings was my very first introduction to the power that we humans have to create and change what our future looks like. And to create, you first have to be able to see the possibilities of what could be. While I didn’t become an architect, I did end up in the field of conceiving and building products, and I find that possibility thinking, the mindset that allows you to see possible better versions of future reality, very much applies to what I do today. Further, it enables me to visualize what the future could be and thus satisfy my itch to shape and create it.
So what is possibility thinking and how it could be helpful for people in product? Here is my personal perspective.
What is possibility thinking?
We all have had an experience where we considered the possible outcomes of an event or a decision or other type of action. Have you ever reflected on how this process typically works in your brain?
Earlier in my career, I noticed that people often used very different language when discussing possible outcomes and I was curious to understand what was behind these differences. Through some research and extensive conversations with friends and colleagues, and especially through conversations with my coach and dear friend Katia, I became convinced that what drives us to ‘see’ completely difficult versions of the future is the way we consider possible outcomes.
Personally, I see the world through a lens of “what could be”. This is true of my personal life but also of how I tend to think when creating product experiences. Typically born out of research, data or market insight, or my personal experience or an experience of others around me, I start with a tree of possibilities and, as I think in pictures, I visualize what products there could be. And although this visualization will be updated a thousand times with new information and insights on its way to becoming reality, these updates are all made intentionally toward creating the most compelling version of what could be.
This general practice of possibility thinking is discussed by the famous preacher Robert H. Schuller in his book Move Ahead with Possibility Thinking in which he asked readers to pose a simple, and yet groundbreaking for many, question “What would you do if you knew you wouldn’t fail?” So in a nutshell, possibility thinking is about seeing possibilities instead of limitations and comes with the conviction that you can make a difference in which possibility will become a reality.
Although it is often the case, possibility thinking is not to be confused with positive thinking. Positive thinking relies on unconditional optimism and with it you run the risk of not paying enough attention to facts and new information. Positive thinking lacks neutrality whereas considering “what it was” and “what it is” today with a neutral mindset is a pre-requisite to seeing a viable path to “what could be”.
Other ways to consider possible outcomes is through probabilities. What is the most likely outcome given the past, the current state, and the projected trajectory? Probability thinkers tend to reconcile themselves to the most likely outcome and proactively optimize for it. Probability thinking simply comes down to mathematical probabilities, which is very different from the freewill and action that underly possibility thinking.
And of course, on the opposite end of the spectrum we have pessimistic and negative thinking which considers the world, current and future, through the lens of limitations. Negative thinking reliably protects us from the downside but fails to help us see and realize the upside.
How could possibility thinking be helpful for people in product?
My experience in product has taught me that amazing products are, more often than not, innovations that solve people problems in new and unexpected ways. That means that to see what could be, as well as to see the new and unchartered path to get there, one has to have the foresight and comfort to dream up compelling possibilities.
In my view, other types of thinking tend to be either insufficient or sometimes detrimental to the process of developing innovative products. For example, thinking about your product and its trajectory in a blindly positive way will cause you to miss out on important new inputs and so you will be unable to iterate your way to the desired reality. And while it is important to understand probabilities to know the level of effort you will need to bend the curve toward “what could be”, only looking at probabilities will be massively insufficient to see possibilities that don’t neatly fit the projected line. Lastly, negative thinking will not only be unhelpful to see “what could be”, moreover it may sabotage the trajectory of your product toward the safest and most unexciting outcome.
Of course, possibility thinking is not the only thing that you need to realize “what could be”. Once you can see and dream of “what could be”, you will still have to make it happen. And for that, you will need perseverance so as not to give up too early, humility and empathy to listen to and understand your customers and experts, and the ability to find the right talent and inspire them to make things happen. But without the mindset to explore possibilities and see compelling versions of future reality, there is really no starting point to creating innovative products.
