We’re amidst an exciting period at Help2Grow. As we’re waiting for some legal formalities to be done to do our first field work, we are also in the midst of thinking about how to structure and build a 100+ year initiative. As pre-work for an upcoming call, I had sent a Bezos-esque narrative/4 page memo with my thoughts. The team has been sending their replies via memos detailing their thoughts. I expect to combine all of this into a final pre-read memo for us to read either before the call or in the first few minutes.
In one of the responses, a friend remarked – “Our narratives seem to closely follow what we read recently. Real leaders project’s about page contains strong references to ‘so good they can’t ignore you’. 200words project and Help2grow to Jeff Bezos. It will be interesting to collect these trends and look at the underlying basics someday”
He’s right. I’m amidst reading “The Everything Store” by Jeff Bezos and have been adopting his approach of writing memos/narratives as a way of preparing for meetings. He is also right that a lot of what we do often closely follows what we are reading. This flows from my belief in influences.
First, I think influences make or break us. Most of our thoughts are influenced by people we meet or books we read. We are very often the average of the 5 people we spend most of our time with. This is where books are critical – while it isn’t really easy to change our environment and company at the snap of a finger, it is easy to read a great book. We just need to be open to influence.
Second, great organizations and people are shameless about copying best practices. Sam Walton said that every great Wal-Mart idea had it’s origins elsewhere. The principle behind this is that there are always others who have solved the problem you are facing. For example, the problem I had faced was “how to make meetings more productive?” Thanks to Bezos, I have a solution that works at Amazon. Cue: Copy.
Third, In the process of copying, we inevitably tailor the process/approach to our style. We aren’t great copy cats. So, as we try something new a few times, we make more changes and reach a point where only the principles of the original approach remain. I am not wedded to the idea of narratives before meetings. I do think it’s a great thing to try, however. We’ll know a few months in if it is really adding value. If it is, great. If it is not, we’ll change.
Here, I am inspired by another Jeff-ism that people who are right a lot are wrong a lot. They are willing to change their mind and constantly improve their thesis.
So, we’ll keep experimenting as we build Help2Grow and, in the process, we’ll also make sure we are open to other influences. I said this before and I’ll say again – our influences make or break us.
P.S.: Being open to influence means you will likely experience a mix of both good and bad influence. The good stays and the bad becomes a training in improving your judgment a.k.a. life experience.
A Learning a Day 