WHAT HAPPENED IN THE HIATUS
Reflections on TikTok, Chinese innovation & Sensory Processing Sensitivity at Speed.
This week I'll talk a bit about some writing I’ve done since The Deployment Age went on hiatus in December 2020. And why it went on hiatus. And why that hiatus is over.
TLDR: I joined TikTok. I was very, very busy. I left TikTok. I’m less very, very busy.
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In case you missed it, I launched a new newsletter focusing on design fictions, Design Fiction: Biophilia Futures. These are narratives and prototypes from possible futures. Mostly, they slant towards Biophilia:
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I wrote very little while at TikTok. Because working at TikTok was all-consuming.
I expected this going in.
It was part of the appeal. I wanted to get back into the startup game. To test myself again at that hyper-pace. Rather than the side-line, almost advisory role that longer-term innovation teams take, I wanted to get stuck in and take a more central role that immediately influenced company direction.
TikTok was an especially attractive offer. It sits at the convergence of four macro-trends I had been monitoring with the Digital Futures team at Mastercard.
From a Product perspective, TikTok is immersive, AI-first and truly designed for mobile in way that other platforms are not.
The challenge of ad integrity is an extension of trust in digital commerce. A problem-worth-solving. Ensuring that hundreds of millions of users are safe is both important and incredibly difficult.
And then there was China.
I've been intrigued by the rise of China tech since at least 2011. Back in 2017, as part of Sabbatical 1, myself and my wife crossed over to Shenzhen from Hong Kong. Spent a full week exploring the industrial estates, downtown and the design district. In particular, I wanted to get a feel for what the dynamism felt like. And where it was going.
My interest in China got more specific in 2018 when I did some deep-dives on the Chinese super-apps as we looked to map out possible futures for Mastercard. Would the super-apps come to the West? What would that look like?
I was especially intrigued about the Chinese innovation model. How is it different than what we're used to in Western Tech companies. And what lessons could I personally learn from that?
Fast forward to September 2022 and Sabbatical 2 and I have an intuitive grasp of that innovation model.
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Above All, Speed
Tik Tok is a bad fit for most people working in Tech.
It is an unusual company, doing unusual things in unusual ways. And doing them unusually fast.
Speed is the defining characteristic of work at Tik Tok. Speed is the meta-value that informs everything else.
In doing 100s of interviews for TikTok, I found myself answering an unusually broad range of interviewees’ questions about the company with that one-word answer. What's it like to work at TikTok? What are you most surprised about working at TikTok? What's best and what's worst? How is the culture?
Ultimately, it all boils down to speed. Working at TikTok is faster than anywhere else that I or my peers had worked. Speed is the Principal Component that explains almost everything else about working at TikTok.
That dedication to moving at extreme pace has both predictable and surprising downstream effects.
On the human side, rather predictably, it raises tensions and pressure between individuals and teams. It removes the finer points of change management.
Surprisingly, it provides some inoculation against politiking. Organisational borders ebb and flow. Things are moving too quickly to deliberately be a prick. We just need to get things done.
As a philosophy, everything boils down to a commitment to Ready-Fire-Aim. Do it, ship it. With enough extra cycles from removing planning and inertia, we will tweak and fix mistakes. And learn more in the process.
This is par for the course for startups. At TikTok-scale it is remarkable.
Philosophically, there is good reason to suggest that emphasis on speed (and hence quantity) leads to better outcomes. We know this about pottery-making. We know this about creative writing. And we know that, fittingly, in machine learning, quantity has a quality all of its own.
Speed has a quality all of its own.
This obviously takes getting used to. For deeper thinkers, and for HSPs in particular, this can be especially jarring on preferred ways-of-working and directly on the nervous system.
But it's exciting. And it’s addictive.
And an opportunity to interrogate assumptions about ways-of-working. To get comfortable working with a torrent of ideas and updates from the hive mind. To 'Yes And' more than not.
To 'Yes And' quickly.
It’s an early glimpse of where the world of tech is going. More than anything, I believe that TikTok is a mirror of what the tech world is racing towards. Looking ahead to AI and Web3 in particular - will the average pace of development stay the same, slow down or speed up?
The defining characteristic of the future then? Above all, speed.
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VUCA by design
The world of 02022 is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. It is VUCA.
TikTok is VUCA by design.
The theory? Mirroring these 21st century realities, a company can better adapt to its defining characteristics. Encouraging this VUCA-ness to grow within the organisation and indeed nurturing VUCA has benefits.
VUCA environments can spark creativity and innovation. Team members are forced to rethink old patterns and adapt to emerging complex problems. Out-dated ways-of-working are never solidified or cemented.
A VUCA organisation is designed to be flexible and adaptable. No space is moving so quickly at scale as consumer internet. With the newer platforms having profitable but short shelf-lives. TikTok understands this. It does not want to be a flash in the pan, but a lingering presence and ready for the 2020s, 2030s and beyond.
A VUCA organisation is designed to be a learning organisation, where team members must continually develop their skills and knowledge. At TikTok this learning is mostly done on the job. It is learning that must match the pace of the company in out-pacing the market.
Adapting to the pace and VUCA environment of TikTok is the biggest challenge for new hires. It is also the most exciting part of being part of that environment.
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The Downside of Speed
Some animals are more sensitive than others.
In any higher animal population, 15-20% are very sensitive to stimulation. Evolutionarily, it benefited the group to have a subset more alert to danger, comparatively better at sourcing new foodstuff or understanding deeply the habits of other animals.
For humans, same.
15-20% of humans have sensory processing sensitivity - an increased sensitivity of the central nervous system and a deeper cognitive processing of physical, social and emotional stimuli.
For me, same.
Summarised by Tom Falkenstein:
"Highly sensitive people (HSPs) observe things in great detail exhaustively, think longer and more deeply before they take action, and generally react more emotionally to positive as well as negative occurrences in their surroundings."
Clearly then pluses and minuses.
So how do fast-paced environments impact those whose natural tendency is to 'pause to check' in novel situations? How does this greater sensitivity to subtle stimuli fare in an environment with intense, and varied stimuli, arriving quickly?
Not obviously fantastically.
But there are ways and means of coping - and indeed advantages to be had if the worst impacts of this natural mismatch can be contained.
Pace brings tiredness and tiredness brings tension. Both bring pressure and physiological symptoms like breathing more shallowly. Together, these manifest as fast feedback loops of overwhelm.
This and other reasons means that the highly sensitive person needs to become extremely competent at calming themselves down when they notice that they feel overstimulated, tense, or emotional.
In fast-paced environments, calming rituals need to become a core part of any daily routine. It is not a nice-to-have. It is not salve to be applied in acutely stressful situations. It must become a hyper-frequent preventative measure; an uncompromising, committed ritual.
Beyond this, prioritising rest, sleep, and recovery above all is essential. Rest is a HSPs responsibility and should be treated with the same deliberateness and importance as elite athletes treat their recovery.
Inevitably, this will mean saying no to other things. HSPs working in fast-paced environments do so at the neglect of other areas of their lives.
If fast-pace environments are the equivalent of 5 years in slower organisations, consider then that the raw stimulation to HSPs will be multiples of this. That is an opportunity of extreme learning. But should be undertaken with care.
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Personally, I felt I did well managing the pace and managing the complexity. I was promoted and ended up growing and managing an organisation of 350 brilliant colleagues.
But everything has an opportunity cost.
And growing an org so quickly inevitably focuses the mind on that and that alone.
By September of last year, my mind sought more variety, much more rest, and some deeper time with family.
But that’s another story.
As always, I’d be truly grateful for any feedback on this newsletter and on Design Fiction: Biophilia Futures. What, if anything, would you like to hear more about.
I would genuinely like to hear how and what you are doing.
Take care,
Simon