Mariannes Notbook
While reading the book Hooked!, you may notice small moments that make you pause. A sentence, a question, something that feels familiar, but not yet clear. This page holds my notes behind the story.
When something catches my attention, I look it up. I read, I connect ideas, I write things down, not as final answers, but as thoughts that help me understand what I am seeing and doing.
Some notes lead to a short video. Some to an exercise or a model. Others to research or ideas I want to come back to later.
These notes grow over time. Use this notebook as I do: to explore, to reflect, and to find words for what you already sense in your own work, team, or daily practice. Take what helps. Pick what sparks your interest, and leave the rest for another moment.
Culture Scan
When I first worked with the Culture Scan, I mainly followed the process and watched what happened. What caught my attention came later.
When teams do the scan together, almost everyone wants to move in the same direction. To the right, more trust, more collaboration, more shared responsibility. That part is easy.
What is harder, I have learned, is actually making that move. Looking up the background I came across the work of Bob Marshall and his Rightshifting model. It gave me words for something I already felt in practice.
You cannot move to the right by simply letting go of the left. Some structure is still needed. Some clarity. Some forms of control. Not to restrict people, but to create stability.
The scan makes this visible. By limiting the number of statements teams can choose, the conversation shifts. Less about what sounds good, more about what we really recognise and what we are willing to work toward together.
Later, I learned that this was also connected to Lean thinking. Especially the balance between People, Process and Purpose. Whenever one of these dominates, teams seem to lose their footing. When all three are present, movement feels calmer and more sustainable.
My note to self:
Wanting to move right is easy. Moving right takes balance.
Learned Helplessness
While reading more about learned helplessness, I realised how easily I recognise it.
Not only in teams, but also in myself.
I started with the early work of Martin Seligman. His experiments describe how repeated experiences of having no influence can lead to passivity. Not because people do not care, but because they stop expecting that their actions will matter.
What stayed with me most, though, was not the problem, but where Seligman went next. He did not stop at learned helplessness. He moved on to ideas like learned optimism and later learned happiness. The shift is subtle but important: from explaining why people give up, to exploring how they regain agency.
That resonates with what I see in practice. Passivity is rarely a lack of motivation. More often it is the result of too little room to try, fail, and learn. Too much solving for others. Too little experienced influence.
I found many articles and perspectives. Some focus on the brain, others on depression or organisations. I did not try to hold them all. For now, I chose the ones that help me see this more clearly: helplessness is learned — and so is hope.
My note to self:
If helplessness can be learned, then so can confidence, agency, and trust.
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