Protection for companies that keep trying new ideas.

A chock is a small device you wedge into a crack in the rock while climbing. It doesn't get you up the wall, but it stops you dying if you fall. For most of us, a useful tool.

Chock exists to put that kind of protection into companies, so they can keep trying new ideas without betting the company on each one. The method is called ENDURE, and it is a training plan rather than a strategy: three fast-twitch muscles for the moves, three slow-twitch muscles for the protection, all of it built around your constraints, which, any climber will tell you, are where the route is.

Sprintsbouldering

Short, low to the ground, with a mat underneath. A workshop or a two-week sprint where a team tries a hard move with nothing at stake but pride: the Narcissus Curse session, a constraint inventory, a first ENDURE assessment. You leave with a habit started, not a deck.

Programstop-roping

The anchor is set above by someone who has been up before. Over a few months Chock holds the rope while your team climbs the route itself: a training plan across the six muscles, run inside your real work, with the protection placed so that the experiments cannot hurt the company. Most engagements are this.

Partnershiplead climbing

You place your own protection as you go, and want someone on the other end of the rope anyway. A board or advisory role, or a standing relationship with a company that has learned to endure and would rather not do it alone.

Which one depends less on the size of the company than on how much of the rope you want to hold.

Six muscles, trained together. The fast-twitch three make the moves. The slow-twitch three place the protection. Your constraints sit in the middle, because that is where the route is.

Fast-twitch
Environmental scanning
Disruptive experimentation
Resilience
Slow-twitch
Network orchestration
Unmet needs insight
Evolution enablement

Erik Kiær runs Chock. If you already know him, the fastest way is the one you have. If not, either of these works.