Category: Everything else

A simple step to increase the impact of your annual review – synthesize your development discussion into three goals for the year and share them with everyone who works closely with you.

Of course, sharing your goals alone isn’t going to help you work through them. You’ll need to follow up with frequent checkpoints with yourself and a couple with the folks you shared them with over the course of the year.

But, it is a first step that helps nevertheless. It is much easier to make progress on goals when everyone around you is aware and helping you make progress.

There doesn’t need to be mystery around development goals. Every one of us has a list. And, we can help each other ensure that next year’s list looks different from this year’s list.

In his book on Pixar, CEO Ed Catmull explains that drawing well requires us to learn how to see. The difficulty with drawing is that we let our mental models of objects get ahead of us and get us to jump to conclusions. For example, if we’re drawing a portrait as an amateur, we let our mental models of the size of the various elements of a face take over. This is why an amateur’s portraits don’t look like the real thing.

Art teachers teach students to conquer this by getting them to draw an object upside down or, more interestingly, by asking them to draw the negative/white space around the object. We don’t have mental models for what white space looks like. So, our mental models don’t get in the way.

The fascinating lesson here is that this “examine the white space” approach is applicable to problem solving. Don’t just look at the problem – look at the context/situation around it. For example, at Pixar, a scene could sometimes only be fixed by looking at the entire story or changing the preceding scenes.

This technique gets to the challenge of dealing with causality. We often make the implicit assumption that solving the symptom (what we see) will help solve the problem. That is generally not the case. And, taking a step back to examine the white space is a great way to remind ourselves to solve for the cause.

We generally recognize the importance of health when it goes away.

Organizations rush to value their best employees when they show up with alternative job offers and announce that they’re leaving.

We often pay more attention to win over people who spurn us than to people who choose to show us that they care. Until, of course, they decide to walk away and they become the ones who spurn us.

Our default setting is to appreciate the value of things only when they are gone.

It doesn’t have to be that way and we don’t have to wait until it is too late. We can start with two minutes spent tomorrow morning or at the end of the day feeling grateful for five things that are going well in our life. If we keep that up, over time, we’ll learn to appreciate what is good while it is still around.

And, that makes all the difference in the world.

When a performer first starts out in a new system or level of play, they have to take apart their game and learn a new set of skills. If the performer is expected to perform brilliantly in her first few games in a new system, she will definitely disappoint. Josh Waitzkin (in his book, “The Art of Learning”) calls this principle “investing in loss.”

The gifted boxer with a fabulous right and no left will get beat up while he tries the jab. And, the excellent soccer player with no left foot will be significant less effective while she invests in it. And, yet, investing in loss is the only way forward.

But, how do you do it in competitive arenas like our working lives where there are seldom weeks when performance doesn’t matter?

Josh’s response is to have an incremental approach that allows for times when you are not in peak performance state. We must take responsibility for our own learning and not expect the rest of the world to understand what it takes to be the best we can become. Michael Jordan made more last minute shots to win the game for his team. But, he also missed more last-minute shots to lose the game than any other player.

We have to be willing to look bad to get good.

PS: I love this framing. I think of this as part of the “What got you here won’t get you there” principle. We have to commit to reinventing ourselves from time to time. This framing makes it clear that the reinvention doesn’t come easy.

Seth had a post on his blog today on his blog’s sixteen year anniversary. In it, he shared a profound observation –

It’s easy to come to the conclusion that someone’s generous or inspired and so they do the work. But it’s more likely that doing the work makes you generous or inspired.

First, we commit to showing up every day and doing our best work. Then, energy, inspiration, and ideas follow.

Congratulations, Seth. Thank you for inspiring us for 16 years. Looking forward to many more.

When we disagree with folks we work with, disagreements generally occur at the level of a point of view. For example, Jill might want to remove a piece of the process and Joe might want to keep it because he believes it works. Soon, emotions and egos enter the discussion and it devolves into an discussion that isn’t constructive.

The best way to make progress on such disagreements is to stop talking about the subject of the disagreement and go straight to the principle.

For instance, in the process example, they may dig one level deeper and realize that Joe operates with the assumption that – “A certain number of processes help the team function better.” And, Jill, in turn, might believe that “no processes are objectively better.”

While it looks like a stalemate, we haven’t yet reached the principle. The principle, in this case, might be – “We will have as many or as few processes as required for the team to be happy and productive.”

Two things happen when we reach the principle –

1. More often than not, we find common ground on principles. In this case (and often), Jack and Jill likely align on the principle. This means they just differ in their assumed approach to the goal. And, that can be reconciled by testing – ask the team or experiment with a few approaches and find out.
2. If you find yourself working opposing principles, that’s very good to know as well. Principles are fundamental truths – so, if you are working with diametrically opposite assumptions on what is a fundamental truth, then, it is likely one of you is wrong. While this is harder to resolve as it requires openness to having difficult conversations, you will at least be dealing with the real problem instead of getting emotional about points of view.

PS: For the Lean/Six Sigma fans, this is exactly what the Five Why’s technique is built to do. I’ve just found that, in practice, asking five consecutive why’s can come across as intimidating.

Airline pilots often taxi for a few minutes waiting for headwinds before they take off. That is thanks to the Newton’s third law of motion. The headwind generates an equal and opposing force in the plane’s wings that enables the planes to lift off easily.

Life works similarly. It is tempting to wish or hope for regular tailwinds and feel you’re fighting against the current when you feel those headwinds. But, as wonderful as tailwinds are, there’s something to be said to welcoming headwinds just like airline pilots do.

It is headwinds that enable us to rise above the situation and grow. They are how we get made.

In his book, “The Art of Learning,” Josh Waitzkin shares his mom’s thought on the two ways of taming a stallion.

The first is the “shock and awe” method. Tie it up and freak it out by shaking paper bags, rattling cans, and driving it crazy till it submits to any noise. Make it endure humiliation and then get on top, spur it and show it who’s boss.

The second is the way of horse whisperers. Handle the horse gently, pet him, feed him, groom him and let him get used to you and like you. You, then, get on him and there is no fight because there is nothing to fight. When trained, the horse will bring his/her unique character to the table. The gorgeous, vibrant spirit is still flowing in an animal that used to run the plains.

There are some powerful parallels for when we work with people. It is tempting to let our agenda and our conception of what needs to be done to dictate the process. But, when we become too rigid and stop seeking to understand, we stifle others and effectively pull rank.

But, when we find a way to build off the strengths, creative spirit and natural style of everyone we work with, we create an output with verve and spirit.

The difference lies simply in our desire to seek to know, understand and trust.

The stimulus is the event or what happens to us.

The learning is what we can choose to take away from the stimulus if we choose to reflect about our role in the stimulus.

The response is what we decide to do.

The science of bouncing back from unexpected or unfortunate events, to me, involves spending time on the stimulus, learning and response – in that order. We need to spend a bit time on the event so we can understand and accept it. That will then open our minds to learning from our role in it.

There isn’t a guaranteed learning every time. There are unfortunate events that are random – that’s important to understand too. Spending time understanding, accepting and reflecting is important in that order. That’s because acceptance can only come after understanding and change can only come after acceptance.

We are then ready to spend the rest of the time figuring out a response. Of course, the less time we spend on the event (or in denial), the more time we get to craft that response.

That, then, is the art of bouncing back – working quickly through acceptance and understanding, committing to the learning and then figuring out a creative, constructive, and corrective response.

A simple test of the culture in your team/organization – is there more truth spoken in the hallways than meetings?

H/T: Ed Catmull, Pixar.