Category: Everything else

How we let ourselves off the hook

We let ourselves off the hook by blaming people and organizations for not having prepared ourselves well enough. For example, here are two examples you’ve probably seen play out.

Employees blame companies for not doing enough to enable growth into future roles.

Students blame universities for not preparing them well for the needs for the market.

It is important employees push their companies to get better. And, it is critical students continue to work with their schools to do a better job preparing them.

But, blaming them is a really poor use of time.

Instead, we’re better off deconstructing the skills we need for whatever we want to do next and then working toward them. Now more than ever, we have a previously unimaginable range of learning options available to all of us. We all have access to an incredible set of tools to work on real projects that can make an impact. Finally, we can choose to easily connect with people with similar aspirations all over the world to learn and ship.

We have everything in place for us to own our own path.

Waiting for someone to prepare us is a poor excuse. It is just us letting ourselves off the hook a touch too easily.

We can do better.

Standards

Standards denote a level of quality. Our behaviors and actions are typically evaluated by others on the basis of these levels. In the long run, they are a leading indicator of our reputation.

So, that brings two questions. First, do we have standards for ourselves?  And, second, do we hold ourselves to them consistently?

The enemy of high quality levels is an exceptions process. Too often, we let ourselves off the hook by making excuses. I make excuses all the time and am fresh off making them yesterday – too hungry, too tired, too something else.

Of course, the solution isn’t to beat ourselves up. That doesn’t help either. No, the improvement process involves silent observation, a clear understanding of the triggers of unhelpful behavior and, in time, a proactive approach to guarding against it.

We judge great goalkeepers by how they do on their worst day. Similarly, the beauty of functioning standards is that they help us on our worst days. They will us to do better by calling on our character.

When standards work, they work because we realize that the standards that matter aren’t the ones “they hold us to.” Instead, they work because we realize that the ones that matter are the ones we hold ourselves to.

What has meaning

So, what has meaning and what doesn’t?

Whenever I share a book/article/recommendation with people, I always ask them to share what they learnt with me. It rarely happens. But, it gives me great joy when it does. This morning, a friend shared a profound portion of David Foster Wallace’s awesome “This is Water” speech.

 if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down. Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.

This was a great reminder. A large portion of our lives is spent responding to everything that happens around us. So, for the most part, it is just us learning to roll with punches.

The beauty about this is that we get to consciously decide what has meaning. That freedom comes with responsibility. And, it is on us to wear it well.

Day Traders or Venture Capitalists

We have a unique opportunity in front of us today – to choose between being day traders or venture capitalists. However, the opportunity comes with a twist (doesn’t every opportunity?). Few realize that the opportunity exists and fewer know that the default option is day trading.

Day trading requires us to engage with all the goings on in the day. The nature of the day dictates our mood. We like good weather and good news and generally struggle to find motivation otherwise. We invest in the now and avoid crazy swings. It is the default option and works just fine.

However, a few realize that there’s an alternative. When we play venture capitalist, we look at things differently. Yes, we’re engaged with today but, really, we’re focused on building for a few years from now. We’re on the lookout for opportunities to invest in ideas and people who might building something of value. They key word is might, of course. There are no guarantees. Unlike in day trading, there’s more risk and more volatility. But, there’s also tremendous excitement about possibilities.

So, today, we get to choose if we want to live this day and week as a day trader or venture capitalist. One feels safe and the other feels full of tension, discomfort and risk.

Then again, sometimes avoiding risk is the greatest risk of them all.

Shredded sheets and acknowledgment

People were asked to match pairs of letters on a piece of paper. They were paid 55 cents for the first sheet. Then, they had an option to continue for 5 cents lesser each time. So, 55c, then 50c, then 45c and so on. There were 3 groups – “acknowledged,” “shredded,” and “ignored.”

Group 1 (acknowledged): Once they finished, the experimenter looked at their paper carefully and said “Aha.”
Group 2 (shredded): The paper was immediately shredded. They were then asked if they want to continue.
Group 3 (ignored): The experimenter simply put the paper to the side and asked if they’d like to continue.

When people were asked what difference they’d expect between the groups, they all expected some difference between the number of matched sheets per group. But, not much.

In reality, the “acknowledged” group matched 2x the number of sheets.

Similar experiments involving engineers building Lego toys for a small payment showed the same result. And, a simple thank you text from the boss to chip factory workers at Intel performed much better than gifting a pizza coupon or giving a cash bonus.

“In some ways, we never grow up. We seek to be connected with our workspace, to be acknowledged and to know how our work impacts someone down the road. Companies and managers are pseudo-parents – they can choose to be quashing or nourishing.” – Dan Ariely (paraphrased)

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Source and thanks to: Payoff by Dan Ariely

PS: Of course, none of this is an excuse for not paying people enough. However, once money is off the table, goodwill counts for a lot.

Trees of green

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They’re really saying I love you e

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They’ll learn much more than I’ll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world

We have before us an opportunity to connect with everything Louis Armstrong sang about today. Trees of green, flowers, clouds, skies, friends – these aren’t hard to find.

Or, we can spend our time today fretting about things we don’t control, poring over news feeds and email and waiting for a miracle to give us happiness.

Our choice.

Search for talent

Companies all over are locked in a search for talent. And, every one of them will tell you how hard it is to find talented people – especially within the constraints of their internal diversity targets.

There’s one reason this “search for talent” is hard – companies only search for talent when they need to fill a position. So, it isn’t really a search for talent. It really is a search for whoever is available now who can do the job.

There is only one time to build your pipeline for great hiring – well before you need to do it.

This exact dynamic plays out in business. Everyone is rushing to please investors in the next quarter. But, every once a while, there will come a Jeff Bezos who decides to stick around and play a very different game. The best time to make a great investment is well before you need it.

But, this isn’t about them, it is about us too. After all, careers are no different. Nearly everybody you know is focused on a horizon between today and 6 months from now. Need to finish that project, get promoted and we’ll see what happens after that. There are very few who are consciously focused on what might be needed five years or even ten years from now.

We all have a choice. Yes, we need to engage with the present. But, we also can choose to build consciously for the future.

We need to plant trees well before we need their fruits.

Principles of Focus

Focus is the continuous, iterative process of keeping the main thing the main thing.

The verb and noun forms of “Focus” mean different things. For simplicity, I’m going to call the the noun form “intensity.” So, intensity is the ability to be 100% engaged in what you are doing at any given time.

Focus and intensity are analogous to effectiveness and efficiency or leadership and management. The former is about doing the right things and the latter is about doing things right.

As a result, the whole point of focus is to ensure that we’re optimizing for the entire-ity of the main thing or goal or how we will measure our life. It is easier to understand this with a manufacturing analogy. It is useless for a car manufacturer to produce more doors than a chassis requires. Similarly, it is pointless to optimize on one part of our goal (say, our career) if all else is suffering. Making progress on the main thing in its entire-ity is productivity. Everything else is activity.

So, focus is how we stay productive. That’s exactly why the process of doing so is continuous and iterative – it is hard to stay productive as life happens.

Finally, it is helpful to think of focus as we think of balance in our lives. We are always in the act of balancing, never completely balanced. Focus is no different.

Dealing with the unresolved

I wish there was a class on learning to deal with the unresolved. But, since there isn’t a good one that I know of, here’s what I’ve learned from the school of hard knocks.

The first step to dealing with the unresolved is accepting that there will always be something unresolved in our lives. We will always have to deal with the unknown, experience the fear of launching something new and walk into a game with trepidation knowing we are at a seemingly obvious disadvantage.

Sure, we can choose to worry. But, worry does nothing to solve the problem except make it seem worse.

Scott Peck beautifully pointed to the wisdom in accepting that life is difficult. As he eloquently put it, “once we truly know that life is difficult – once we truly understand and accept it – then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.”

It works the same with dealing with the unresolved. We need to take the first step and accept that we will always have to deal with it.

There is no second step.