How To Turn Facts Into Factographics
Edition #143
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
What's So Special About The Human Brain?
This article in Nature is a brilliant immersive experience about the various detailed aspects of the human brain and how it differs from other animals. The article is written by Kerri Smith, and the infographics are done by Nik Spencer.
One vital aspect that this article can teach you is how to present information interestingly and engagingly, which can aid learning and retention. It’s often said that you must know how to present your data very well. This article will reveal how to present research insights, complex ideas about science, and discoveries in a structured and imaginative manner that can excite the reader.
For example, here’s how you present such facts in an engaging manner:
Fact #1: Did you know the human brain is up to three times larger in volume than the brains of chimpanzees, gorillas and many extinct human relatives?
Fact #2: Did you know brain size is tightly correlated with body size in most animals? But humans break the mould.
Fact #3: Did you know that the Encephalization Quotient(EQ)[an interesting measure of the size of the brain or the neocortex and relative body size] of humans is 7.3-7.4, while that of mice is 0.5 and elephants is 1.3?
Fact #4: Did you know that the cortex area that carries out planning, reasoning, language, and many other behaviours that humans excel at is relatively enlarged than the chimpanzees?
Fact #5: Did you know the human brain takes much longer to grow, mature and refine its connections — about 30 years?
There are many more interesting facts; just click and ‘experience’ the entire article here.
Elena Aniere On The Slow Food Revolution
Elena Aniere, a 20-year veteran at Slow Food, shares profound insights into how the movement is revolutionizing food systems worldwide, from their successful transformation of 1,000 gardens into 10,000 across Africa to preserving 6,000+ endangered food products through their Ark of Taste initiative.
Slow Food is globally championing “good, clean, and fair” food practices. Aniere explains how the movement connects local farmers with consumers, chefs, and communities, building sustainable alternatives to industrial food systems while preserving cultural food heritage and biodiversity.
Here are some of the thoughts that she had shared in her conversation:
People need to start thinking about where the food comes from.
People are moving away from farming to other jobs, which means that fewer people are actually producing food.
We need to take an ecological approach to agriculture and food rather than a monocultural industrial approach, which involves adding chemicals and fertilizers, destroying soil, and mass-producing.
Small-scale farmers produce 45% of the world’s food yet face increasing pressure from industrial agriculture. The solution isn’t “get big or get out” but rather “stay small and get stronger.”
Traditional food varieties and farming methods aren’t just about agriculture but about preserving cultural heritage.
If we're talking about all the food-related diseases at this moment in time, you can take all of them back to what we eat...diabetes and some cancers. So it's all interrelated.
You can listen to the podcast on:
Apple Podcast | Amazon Music | YouTube
Product Management Is Dead, So What Are We Doing Instead?
This was a recent presentation at the Lenny & Friends Summit by Claire Vo, Chief Product Officer of LauchDarkly. What’s intriguing about this presentation is the direction that product management is taking with the advent of AI.
Here are some key insights Claire shares on how product management is transforming and how PMs should prepare for it.
Start to use AI, which can help you get a product strategy doc about 80% ready, and it can take about 45 minutes for you to sharpen it.
PMs must learn to automate their tasks with AI to spend more time with users.
PMs will be more ‘Generalist Specialists’, making it necessary for them to participate in the entire product-building process rather than being handed off from one to another, like design to engineering, etc.
AI will drive the transformation from big teams to small teams to individuals - as individuals can move faster than small teams.
AI will drive PMs to be more commercially oriented rather than just staying within the boundary of requirement gathering, designing and building products only.
While these takeaways are generally for building software products, there are some common learnings for any team-building products beyond software, too. You can ask yourself, ‘How are we using AI in our product development thinking?’
You can click the above video to watch this talk.
How To Turn Facts Into Factographics
Facts are mere pieces of information or data. Facts are indisputable observations of a natural or social phenomenon. Some examples of facts are:
Humans are mammals
1 litre of water weighs 1 kilogram on Earth
The pH levels in acids are lower than the pH levels in alkalines.
The challenge with facts is that we are confronted with too many facts daily that we must remember as humans. We just cannot remember facts in isolation. Think back for a minute:
In school or college, we are forced to remember too many facts from many subjects. These facts are just siloed information required to be reproduced for a test or to earn a grade. Independently, these facts don’t make any sense and are incredibly hard to remember. Unfortunately, that is not how facts are taught at school or college.
Again, at work, we are presented with many facts about business, market, customers, systems, research data, etc. These facts, too independently, don’t make much sense. Most of us struggle to piece all these facts or information together to make some meaning out of them.
If you want people to make meaning out of facts, use facts to kindle their thoughts and imagination, and apply facts to decipher or learn about anything better, you must be able to convert facts into factographics.
What are factographics?
Factographics are visual, shareable ways to communicate facts. This is also called infographics, but factographics look more apt and fit. Factographics help us connect to facts that we may already know or remember or have been firmly imprinted in our memory for a long time. This helps us connect new facts to an already-known fact by comparing and contrasting the new fact with an old fact. Hence, we can quickly remember, connect new facts and appreciate the value of new facts.
Learn the art of converting facts to factographics
Therefore, if you are trying to teach somebody a new concept or working with teams who are being exposed to new facts about the business or market or people are sometimes not able to cannot connect to some of the facts you are mentioning, it is best you convert them into factographics.
First, figure out what facts they already know or believe in.
Then, see how the new set of facts can be explained in context to the old facts.
Explain the similarities, and compare and contrast the new fact with what facts they already know or get surprised with.
Keep explaining the new theory or concept or, strategy, or idea by ‘stacking and connecting facts’. Don’t share any facts in isolation.
If you want a fact to trigger imagination and curiosity, add the power of factographics to facts. Facts will be seen in a new light.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
The human brain continues to be a mystery - its shape, structure, and chemical compounds it is made of, and it continues to intrigue scientists. It throws up new discoveries and reasons for why humans have cognitive and reasoning skills, unlike other animals.
There is a need to adopt small-scale farming to produce and consume food locally, And this is the need of the hour to preserve the earth's ecological balance.
AI is transforming product management processes and thinking. Product management professionals who don’t embrace this change are bound to be left behind.