The Missing Middle: Lessons From The Underpants Gnomes
In one of our favorite South Park episodes, a group of underpants gnomes reveal their business strategy to the boys:
While this is absurd and hilarious, it's also familiar. If you’re trying to build a meaningful, future-ready business right now, chances are you’ve got your own version of Phase 2.
This middle ground is the uncomfortable space between what you know and what you hope for. It’s not failure and it’s not confusion. It’s where design, leadership, and real future-making happens.
It’s also where your biggest asset isn’t a new platform or productivity hack, but tools that help you consider better questions to think differently across time, systems, beliefs, and assumptions.
We’ve rounded up a few of our favorite tools that pair with the middle ground questions you may be asking yourself right now.
❓If you find yourself wondering:
Something big is shifting in the world, how do I explore the impacts it could have on my work, clients, or offerings?
There are multiple strategies we could take, what are the different outcomes, impacts and follow-on effects of each?
I have an idea I’m excited about, but how can examine what I’m not seeing?
❓Or maybe you have questions like:
The market is pushing in one direction, but my intuition is pulling me somewhere else. What forces exist that impact today’s reality and my future aspiration?
We have legacy systems, beliefs, or business models, what aspects of these could block or slow progress toward our envisioned future?
What current trends could I amplify or redirect to support my preferred future?
❓Or perhaps it's questions like this that are running through your mind:
How do I keep the business running now and also start planting the seeds for what’s next?
I have an idea for the future, but I’m overwhelmed by how far away it feels.
What future are we building and for when? I need a way to make the timeframes visible.
