Sponge and Funnel

It's quite common that people will start off a new year by encouraging you to think about your goals or resolutions and the impact that you want to have over the next month, quarter, or year. You may have already started doing this, but in this article I'm going to challenge you to pause and take one step back before finalising your trajectory.

During goal-setting there should be an intentional time for reflection. Reflection can take many forms so in this exercise, I'm going to ask you to consider specifically your subconscious approach to how you acquire and prioritise knowledge.

What do I mean?

I love a challenge, I love complex problems and I'm going to start with the assumption that you do too. This means that you are regularly throwing yourself into situations where you aren't familiar with topic, or a process, or the technical implications that your idea may need in order to come to life. If you read my Research 101: Tips to starting research processes article and taken my previous advice, your first step into product development will be to acquire new knowledge or to refine your knowledge through research. Research 102: Using data for decision-making then explained how to take your research and translate it into action.

Underlying this advice, I’ve sneakily given you a peek into my preferred method of knowledge acquisition and prioritisation. Now, it’s time for you to reflect on identifying your own approach. While there’s a whole spectrum of approaches, I’m going to present this to you as a visual metaphor in the two (productive) ways I most often see guided by this question:

❓ Do you sponge and then funnel or funnel and then sponge?

Let’s break the metaphor down.

Sponging is how I define the process of soaking up knowledge. At this stage, you’re trying to learn and absorb as much as possible. You try to understand definitions or nuanced use of terminology and the relationship between ideas. In this stage, all knowledge is sloshing around together and maybe it isn’t always clearly defined or complete. You may find yourself in several disparate conversations or contexts and wondering if you’re stretching your capacity too thin.

Funneling is how I define the prioritisation process. In this stage, you’re sifting through ideas in large or small chunks, deciding what gets attention, resources, priority, or follow-through. At this stage, you’re saying ‘no’ and trying to refine your focus into an increasingly small number or specific aspects.

Now, I said I primarily see two productive approaches. The unproductive side to sponging and funneling is when you only sponge OR funnel. ⚠️ Beware!

If you remain a human-sponge, you’ll be drowning in unproductive knowledge. This is sometimes the criticism of ‘experts’ or academics whose sole purpose in knowledge acquisition seems to be rumination or philosophical quandary rather than putting knowledge into action. Alternatively, those that siphon off all knowledge, absorbing nothing of the broader context or tangential links and narrowing their funnel, either manage to dodge all work or end up with knowledge so narrow that it’s blind to all the risks and bias ignored along the way.

Unsure which approach you might trend towards or how to reflect on your tendencies to fuel your new goals? Let’s dig deeper.

Funnel then sponge-ers (I’m not sure the name will stick and there’s no hope here for community branding but stick with me!)

People that funnel first and then sponge are people who would probably describe themselves as specialists more than generalists. People who begin their approach with the funneling stage tend to understand their capacity limits and their highest point of contribution (shameless plug to also check out my article Finding Your Highest Point of Contribution). These people start by saying ‘no’ to all the things that are not clearly aligned to their goals or direction. If you’re in this category, you’ve got laser focus. You’ll do critical prioritisation quickly and then spend your time and efforts ‘sponging’ all the nuanced expert knowledge of those limited domains. You tackle one subject or one task/project at a time.

The benefits of this tendency is that you tend to move quickly, your attention isn’t divided and over time you become increasingly fast and effective because you’ve honed your expertise. By getting ‘into the weeds’, you learn things about your specialist area that others might never know and can find difficult solutions to problems outside of most people’s understanding. These individuals tend to be led by purpose and can often speak passionately about their area of expertise. I’m a proponent of the MVP or minimum viable product approach and these individuals are geared for thinking of how to streamline and reduce fluff. You seldom get overwhelmed because you’ve started with critical prioritisation.

The negatives of this tendency is that you might be so laser-focused that you only see areas of complexity in the bigger picture once it has made it through your funnel. You might have to ‘re-work’ solutions as you progress and areas outside of your initial funnel become critical. For some people, this leads to a reactive, fire-fighting approach rather than setting them up for being able to proactively address multiple complexities in one solution. You can become so structured or focused that you solve the wrong problem or your goals are focused more on completing work than determining if the impact meets your broader goals. You like defined boundaries and where there are none, you create them which might create unnecessary silos or hurdles and you may have aversion to pivoting, even if that may be the better course of action.

🤔Questions to ask yourself:

• What have been the negative implications in past if I’m too narrowly focused and how do I manage that risk more effectively in future?

• How can I be more aware of the impact of my actions on broader goals?

• Is there one area I can focus on that will keep me aware of the bigger picture?

• How can I embrace my strengths but be more open?

• What routines have helped me build this expertise and what area might I want to apply them to next?

• Once I’ve reached mastery, how can I turn my attention to innovation?

• How do I respond to situations where my depth of expertise is challenged or there is need for a wider focus?

Sponge and then funnel-ers

People that sponge first seek as much knowledge as possible. These people are creating a mental topography map that helps them see far and wide, rearranging their view of the landscape as they learn about new areas, importance, and depth. These people are equally good and bad with ambiguity because they thrive by facing it head on and reducing ambiguity through exploration rather than continuing to live in a state of ambiguity. As you learn, you may adapt your approach, refine your perspectives, and even change your goals and priorities. You might have initial reactions or assumptions but your try to start in a state of neutrality. Only after absorbing large amounts of context, positioning, and nuance do you now start to funnel. These individuals are more likely to class themselves as interdisciplinary or a generalist and are all about connecting the dots between seemingly disparate ideas, data, or topics.

The benefits of this tendency is that you move slowly at first in order to speed up. Where people who funnel first might have messy rework once they move into new fields, your initial groundwork means that once you do begin to funnel, you do so with wider knowledge and are prepared to make impact that lasts. The breadth of your research and pursuits often means that you’re able to creatively leverage skills into new contexts or connect people from seemingly disparate circles into alignment. You thrive in complex or changing environments after you’ve gotten through the sponging stage though you may initially be prone to feeling overwhelmed. Your ideas and approaches are often resilient and proactively prepare for new information or priorities to emerge over time in understanding of the wider landscape and dependencies of various moving parts.

The negatives of this tendency is that you can become a single-point-of failure. You can take on too much and start too many disparate conversations as you initiate a process. You must be careful to set boundaries and make clear to others that sponging is a temporary status. If you don’t, people will continue to expect you to juggle all the balls and be involved in all the tasks, perpetually. This ability to get ‘into the weeds’ means that you have to be intentional about getting out of them. While knowledge can be power, it can also be paralysing so you’ll need to be cautious of ending up in analysis paralysis and you may feel imposter syndrome as you surround yourself with specialist experts while you are instead more focused on the big picture.

🤔 Questions to ask yourself:

• What’s holding me back from committing sooner? Am I being too slow to prioritise which has a knock-on effect to my productivity or mental health?

• How can I create opportunities to micro-prioritise to keep me and my projects moving?

• Are there any quick wins I can complete early or delegate while I explore other areas?

• How do I embrace the value of broad knowledge and apply this more strategically?

• How can I make sure that my explorations end up being useful and impactful?

• Were there initial areas I have explored in past and not followed up on that may now be important to revisit?

• What is my spectific area of expertise?

To avoid these categories seeming like a horoscope, remember that I have defined these as two potential personas within a spectrum. This means you may have tendencies more towards one end or the other or your tendencies might be more situationally based. Identify your natural approach, the approach you gravitate towards when left unchecked rather than the approach you can have when forced by constraints. In identifying your highest point of contribution this will help you inform your ideal ways of working from a knowledge acquisition standpoint.

Once you’ve had the opportunity to reflect, now is the time to return to those goals you’ve begun to draft. Hold this perspective over those goals like a lens. Does this help you see potential pitfalls? Many people are known for making ‘New Year’s Resolutions’ and failing after hours, days, or weeks. I think one large factor in this is when we form goals that work in contradiction to our ways of thinking and working. Hopeully, this new perspective can help you keep on track and work with your brain, rather than against it!

Share with us if you have a specific approach and how this informs your ways of working.