Latest Unthinking - October

Welcome to the Latest Unthinking newsletter, October edition!🤘🏼

Tell me something new

Clear your Friday afternoon folks. Cancel your plans.

Because Fridays with The DEI Doc are now here.

Welcome to Industry Office Hours.

Every Friday at 3pm BST, Professor Adrienne Milner is running a drop in Zoom hour for you to swing by and pick Adrienne’s brain on all things…

👩‍⚕DEI policy
👩‍⚕Inclusive leadership
👩‍⚕Data analysis
👩‍⚕US election & politics
👩‍⚕How to do the splits

Or in fact, anything else you would like her opinion on.

This is free and open to anyone.

So if you are all squared off on the above topics, is there anyone you know who might want to run any burning questions by The DEI Doc?

The zoom link you’ll need is here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84538346422?pwd=3FI6FimiFbsVRlgzFgdhmhx2fNlSHo.1

And yes, we’re still calling Adrienne the DEI Doc even though she is now a Professor… The DEI Prof doesn’t have the same ring to it. Get over it. 🙂

Dirt track mindset

Steven Johnson, the bestselling author believes brilliant ideas rarely come from one eureka moment.

They often come from teams iterating ideas. By talking through the challenges and potential solutions, you come to an agreement on one idea that covers all the potential obstacles.

And that’s what happened at Design that Matters, an organisation run by volunteers that exists to solve problems in third-world countries.

One of those is the infant mortality rate. A million babies die each year because there are very few, if any incubators. Of course, the $40,000 cost means they rely on the donations to receive them, but that isn’t the issue.

The issue is no one knows how to fix and maintain them. 98% of incubators that break down never get repaired.

So they defined the challenge as how to build an incubator that the locals could fix.

So they brainstormed what the locals could fix.

They noticed that in the local community, there were hardly any computers, DVD players, microwaves, washing machines or fridges, but there was something that each community always had.

Pick up-trucks.

And they knew how to look after these.

So the answer to the incubator challenge became obvious: we need to build an incubator made out of pick-up truck parts.

If they did this, they knew the locals could fix them. They looked after their pick-up trucks well. They were experts at pick-up truck maintenance.

So that is what they did. Sealed beam headlamps heated the mattress. The air is cleaned by a truck air-filtration system. The warning lights and alarms are made of car reversing alarms.

By spending time working the problem, Design that Matters was able to define a brief and build a solution that they wouldn’t have arrived at otherwise.

Thanks to their Unthinking, incubators made of car parts are now saving babies’ lives in third-world countries.

Highlights

⚡It’s been two weeks since sign-ups have opened for our 2025 Women’s Leadership Experience. Do you know anyone who’d like to be included? Here are a couple of summaries on the personal influence and feedback sessions to check out. Of course, if you want to hear more and book a space, reply to this email with “WLX sign-up” and we’ll send you more details.

⚡ If L&D providers were meal deals, what would Unthink be? I know, it’s a question you’ve often asked… Well, your answer is here, along with a few others too 😉 

⚡Unthink book clubbers came together last week to share their key takeaways from 1+1=3 by Dave Trott. Here’s some live footage of the group speed reading in the week before so they could contribute. Want to be involved in the next one? Reply with “book club” and we’ll get you involved.

🔄 ICYMI: Our last four Unthinking Thursdays 💡:

💡The age-old question…. How do you increase engagement? Next time you find yourself pondering over this one, it may be worth thinking about vigour, determination and absorption…

💡 TWO THIRDS of the way we feel about work is related to our relationship with our manager (!!). So, what can we do to help improve and strengthen these connections?

💡If you stand still on airport travellers, this article on High V Low agency comes with a trigger warning….

💡How to support your minoritised colleagues at work.