When Harry and I first discussed the possibility of starting a podcast, I started an outline of traction-generating ideas I wanted to discuss with him. Episode 32 covers one of my favorites: the MacGuffin.
What is a MacGuffin? I quoted a couple of passages from Dan Hill’s book Dark Matter and Trojan Horses, where I first learned about MacGuffins:
The MacGuffin comes with a particular provenance. The phrase is attributed to Alfred Hitchcock, and has become associated with him ever since. The dictionary defines it as “an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance.”
And in Hitchcock’s words:
“A MacGuffin you see in most films about spies. It’s the thing that the spies are after. In the days of Rudyard Kipling, it would be the plans of the fort on the Khyber Pass. It would be the plans of an airplane engine, and the plans of an atom bomb, anything you like. It’s always called the thing that the characters on the screen worry about but the audience don’t care… It is the mechanical element that usually crops up in any story.”
I’ve written about MacGuffins before, and won’t restate that here. The TL;DR: in business, they are projects or artifacts that further both strategic and tactical goals simultaneously. While they have tactical value, their real worth comes from the interactions that produce the MacGuffin.
For example, I cited a project where different teams — some of which were in tension with each other — collaborated to produce a user experience journey map. While the final artifact (the map) had value per se (i.e., it informed product design,) the gold came from alignment and better relations between the teams.
Both Harry and I admitted that we’ve participated in more MacGuffin projects unwittingly than by design. But as Hill describes in his book, they can be used as a strategic “play” to precipitate change. As such, a MacGuffin can be a valuable means to gaining traction.