JTBD Interview #9 – Alex Adds Colour to the Conversation

Alex is a Lean Management Coach - for the past 12 years he's been teaching people the method and implementation of lean methods. As part of this, visualisation is important in meetings - especially conflict resolution - and he's seen others that can capture different competing ideas on a whiteboard in real time, and use this to help people see one another's perspective. He aspires toward being able to do this himself.

In 2022 he is finishing an MBA, and starts more actively posting on Linkedin about the concepts he found interesting or is learning. This is partly so he can learn by doing, and partly to try and get ideas to resonate with others by simplifying them into a post. This helps him:

- see which concepts resonate with others

- see what other people like

- refine and improve these ideas based on the feedback

- build a library of ideas that he can reuse in workshops

After he finished his MBA he continues to post on LinkedIn, in order to grow his following and potentially put himself in a position to "do his own thing" and not work for a corporation in future. At some point he realises "My content is too boring" because he's not getting the traction he wants:

- he stumbles across Roberto's posts, and likes the visuals but also sees that there's more interaction

- he tries imitating the post style, which helps him to see the value of a strong visual hook in creating resonance with the audience

- he also realises that it's not easy - and that if he got better at this skill he could communicate more clearly and get a broader reach - being heard by potential clients in the future

He took about a month to research courses:

- Roberto's was the first he looked at, but he felt it was more general coaching than teaching him how to explain ideas visually

- PJ Milani's course was seen as a good option, but it was $3-500 USD which felt "too much to spend to get into it" - he's only just learning not trying to master it, so it felt too expensive.

- PJs is a cohort based course, too - this was held in US timezones at 2am so he couldn't join live - and whilst he thinks you learn better in a live setting, the value is lost unless he can join at that time

Eventually he selects Janis' course:

- this was the best offer of the 3

- he likes the simplicity of Janis' designs, both because he thinks a simpler visual is a more sophisticated communication tool and because he's got no design skills and thinks his flipcharts look like a child drew them

- the draw of the simplicity is one of speed and time to learn - he ONLY needs to learn how to distill an idea and draw a basic shape, vs learning to draw something first and then learning how to turn the idea into a design

- He was also drawn by the Figma templates - he'd tried using PowerPoint and Canva but felt they didn't work - so it was about learning how to do this as well as how to execute this with a tool cheaply, easily and in his own style

Eventually he decides to commit - $150 is not a lot of money, and the worst case is that he'll not use it, but this is a low risk decision. He was hoping to learn a new skill, so he could create and distil his own original ideas