“But I had good intentions” only counts for the first misstep.
If our good intentions don’t translate to good outcomes the second time, it is time to ignore said intentions and, instead, focus on the outcomes we want to drive.
Then, work backwards to the learning, actions, and intentions that will make those outcomes possible.
Effective responses to good product feedback from stakeholders that matter (key customers/power users/executives) tend to have two ingredients –
1. An acknowledgment of the pain they’re feeling. This indicates both an awareness of the problem and the willingness to take responsibility for it.
2. An ETA for a fix or an ETA for that ETA. When we add a date, we transform our words into a commitment for follow up again. In the absence of that date, all we’re left with are words.
And, as the Westerosi might say, “words are wind.” :-)
“I took a few writing courses in college. The extraordinary poet Marie Ponsot would talk about the crow sitting on your shoulder saying things like: “That sucks,” ”How could you write that?” and “Are you kidding me?”
Diminutive, chain-smoking Marie would jut her tobacco-stained finger into the air, punctuating every word: Shoot. The. Damn. Crow.” | Jerry Colonna
While that analogy may be a touch too violent for some, Marie Ponsot’s advice is poignant, powerful, and on point.
There are occasions when our inner critic helps us ship better work.
But, when we find those criticisms move from the realm of constructive feedback to the kind that results in inaction, the inner critic needs to be fired.
HT: Reboot by Jerry Colonna
A practice that helps with writing better memos/documents – get started as soon as you know you need to write one with a dump of ideas or questions you have in mind. Even a line or two counts.
This act turns out to be far more effective than waiting for the doc to appear fully formed in our heads because it triggers our ability to subconsciously process ideas.
Without realizing it, we work through these questions and ideas as we sleep, relax, commute, and stare into nothingness. Each time we get back to work on the doc with a few additions, the more subconscious processing we inspire.
This, in turn, enables us to get the cycles required to transform the doc from one that tells ourselves the story (our first version) to one that communicates the story in a way our intended audience understands it.
Subconscious processing is a powerful practice in our writing toolbox.
Busy parking lots tend to be a surprisingly powerful window into someone’s character.
The means they use to find a spot and the choices they make when no one they know is watching – e.g. sneaking in ahead of someone who has clearly been waiting – are telling.
I came across a link to a well reviewed parenting book recently about not raising spoiled children.
From the reviews, it looked like the author had done a good job sharing a path (well off) parents might take to ensure their kids grew up grounded and fiscally responsible.
It made me wonder – is there a possibility that kids in a household will grow up to be grounded and fiscally responsible if their parents are not?
My guess is no.
And, if there isn’t any such path, perhaps that ought to be the simple premise of such a book – culture, after all, flows from leadership. And, it doesn’t matter what we say – our kids will take cues from what we do.
In groups with reasonable folk working with aligned incentives, the biggest source of disagreement tends to be a lack of context.
Investing a bit of time upfront to share context – personal context early in the relationship and context about the situation and the problems being solved otherwise – saves hours and hours in time spent in disagreement otherwise.
Even with the best of intentions, it is hard for folks to meaningfully contribute without understanding the full picture.
And, we’re best served when we remind ourselves that we must go slow… to go fast.
For the most part, dreams we had as kids were simple.
It is unlikely our dreams involved anything along the lines of “being in the C-suite,” “having a high net worth,” or similar.
Instead, they were more likely about being a teacher or firefighter or doctor or being the kind of person that helped people. It may also have been about having a family, a dog, or a nice home.
And, even if we thought about wealth, it wasn’t as much about a number as much as it was about being able to do something with it – to travel or to spend on something we thought was a luxury.
Most of all, it was likely to be about the simple things that enabled us to be happy.
But, as we grow up, we often layer in all these specifics, keep taking in new bits of data based on what others around us have, and raise our expectations with each win along the way.
And, in doing so, we lose the plot.
We make it hard for reality to ever meet expectations. And, even when it does, we make sure we shift those expectation so those moments are fleeting. After all, there is no end to wanting the next thing. Or the next next thing for that matter.
From time to time, it is worth reminding ourselves of the simple dreams we had as children.
More often than not, it may surprise us as to how well we’ve done with respect to those dreams and just how much there is to be grateful for.
A commitment that can work wonders for our career happiness – refuse to measure progress in years and, instead, do so in decades.
This isn’t just about the Bill Gates idea that we overestimate how much we’ll get done in a year and underestimate how much we’ll get done in a decade.
It also forces us to move away from well defined goal focused thinking to more ambiguous direction focused thinking.
While the former simply invites impatience and short term thinking, the latter forces us to embrace long term patience while using our energy to hustle in the short term.
One way to think about how much we let our insecurities define our responses – When we get feedback of any kind from people we care about and trust, how long does it take us to move from defensiveness to reflection?
A Learning a Day 