Plato imagined prisoners in a cave, watching shadows on a wall and mistaking them for the world. Twenty-four centuries later, the cave has conference chairs.
Most of the arguing in organizations happens facing the wall. The dashboard, the deck, the status report, the accepted explanation — projections of the work, not the work. I build dashboards for a living, so I say this with some love: a projection always distorts. A small risk throws a huge silhouette. A hard question flattens into a tidy one. I have watched rooms full of smart people argue about the shapes for months.
In 2013, a designer named Jon Bell wrote down a trick for a smaller version of the same problem. When nobody can decide where to eat, suggest the worst option you can think of — McDonald’s — and watch everyone suddenly discover opinions they didn’t know they had. Then he generalized it: open the blank document and write the worst version down.
The second step is easier than the first. Always.Jon Bell, McDonald’s Theory
Here is why the trick works. A crude first version — a strawman plan, a rough prototype, a first-pass model on imperfect data — isn’t really a proposal. It’s a light source. The moment something concrete lands on the table, the shadows shrink to the size of the things casting them. People who can’t describe what they want can correct what they see. Reality finally gets to argue back.
It’s why experiments beat position papers. The first version of an analysis isn’t for the record — it’s for the room. It doesn’t need to be right. It needs to be present.
Two things keep this honest. The first version is offered for correction, not defended — a V0 you fall in love with is just a new wall. And crude first doesn’t mean crude forever. It’s a sequencing move: spend the room’s energy arguing with something real.
The next time a room is arguing about shadows, don’t sharpen the argument. Put something on the table.