Our series continues with a question about one of my shortest books, a manifesto about starting (and art): Poke the Box.
Ben Nesvig asks, "I find myself getting uninterested/unmotivated on projects that I start. The emotion of deciding to start has faded and the results are slow to keep me motivated. Is this the resistance/lizard brain that is keeping me from pushing forward? Or is this a signal that I am not passionate about what I am doing and I should look somewhere else for what I am truly passionate about because there I will find endless motivation?"
Variations of this question, some more honest and self-aware than others, come up more than just about anything else. Now that the world has handed us a microphone, a media platform and a productive way to create a ruckus, why do we hesitate? And why does it get more difficult as we get closer to the reality of shipping the work out the door?
The question is as important as the answer. Starting is fun, of course, because it's fresh, it might work, it breaks the rhythm, it is filled with possibility. The starting overcomes what Steve Pressfield calls the Resistance, the heckler, the lizard brain, the primeval desire to hide and find safety. Neophilia and our desire for shiny objects is enough to at least temporarily get us going. Alas, there's another word for this desire to start but not finish: daydreaming.
The real work comes after the novelty wears off. This work creates value, because given control over our actions, most of us stall, float sideways or sabotage the work. Because it's unsafe. How could it be any other way? Change is always risky, because change moves us from what we know to what we don't.
So we say, "meh." We talk ourselves out of shipping, because, hey, it's easier to just stay here, where at least it is safe and warm. There's no building on fire, no layoffs today. At least for now. So we don't jump, we wait until we're pushed, when, of course, it's too late.
Yes, the answer is yes. Yes we're stuck, and yes we're stuck because we're afraid of a different path than the one we signed up for.
And no, no you must not go try to find "motivation," because if you can't be motivated by this opportunity, this one, right now, the odds are that you're unlikely to find a better sort of Oz, where there is no fear. Our desire to shop around for a place to jump is driven by the lizard brain, not by the actual knowledge that there's a better opportunity around the corner.
September 23, 2013
What tastes better, a $30 bottle of wine that's the cheapest the restaurant offers…
or the very same bottle at the restaurant next door, where it's the most expensive?
When asked about our experience, the essential question is always, compared to what?
What offers a better education: four years at your first choice selective college like Purdue or Williams?
or four years at the same place, but it's your last resort safe school, after you've been rejected by more famous (and thus selective) schools like Yale and Harvard?
What represents a better performance: a three hour marathon when you come in first in the small-town meet, or a three hour marathon when you come in last at the elite one?
We often need a frame before we're comfortable evaluating value. Marketers regularly exploit this glitch by creating the illusion of value (or non-value) by highlighting comparisons, when in fact, those comparisons really don't have to matter.
Without a doubt, there are competitive items and experiences where extrinsic status matters, and where understanding the context of what is created is part of the point. Winning may in fact be the goal. For most of what we experience, though, it's our own interpretation of the experience itself that matters, not what a marketer tells us about how this ranks against that.
Good enough, is.
(Bonus: jazz).
Computer wonks like to talk about garbage in/garbage out. A simple example: if there's a mistake in the way a blog post is encoded, many XML/RSS readers will choke on it, preventing all future posts from showing up.
The IT guys put up their hands and say, "well, if you hadn't had a lousy character, it wouldn't have broken… GIGO."
That's not resilient.
The work of the middleman is to inspect and recover. If your restaurant gets lousy fish from the boat, you don't get to serve it and proclaim garbage in garbage out. No, your job is to inspect what you get, and if necessary, change it.
If the school board gives the teacher lousy instructions, the teacher can easily put up his hands and say, "I'm just doing my job." The great teacher doesn't do that, of course. He provides a buffer between the administrators and the his real customers, the students.
There will always be garbage in. It's up to you as to whether or not there will be garbage out.
September 22, 2013
(or your business development team, your fundraising team or your pr folks)…
Who are you trying to reach?
If you say you are trying to reach everyone, I'll know you're likely to reach no one. How specifically can you identify the psychographics, worldview and needs of the people we seek to change?
Why do they decide to support us?
In order to earn the donation, make the sale, generate the buzz, we need to change people somehow. When we change them, what happens? What story do they tell themselves?
What do you need in order to make this happen more often?
What resources, tools or facts need to be present for this to work for you? What do we have to change about our products, our services or our people? How do you know?
September 21, 2013
Who gets your best work?
If you reserve your best effort for the irritable boss, the never-pleased client and the bully of a customer, then you've bought into a system that rewards the very people who are driving you nuts. It's no wonder you have clients like that–they get your best work.
On the other hand, when you make it clear (and then deliver) on the promise that your best work goes to those that are clear, respectful and patient, you become a specialist in having customers just like that.
One of the largest turning points of my career was firing the client who accounted for a third of my company's work. We were becoming really good at tolerating the stress that came from this engagement, and it became clear to me that we were about to sign up for a lifetime of clients like that.
Set free to work for those that we believed deserved our best work, we replaced the lost business in less than six months.
Years ago, I heard the story of a large retail financial services company that did the math and discovered that fewer than 5% of their customers were accounting for more than 80% of their customer service calls–and less than 1% of their profit. They sent these customers a nice note, let them know that they wouldn't be able to service them properly going forward, and offered to help them transfer their accounts to a competitor. With the time freed up, they could then have their customer service people double down on the customers that actually mattered to them… grease, but without the squeaky wheel part.
No, you can't always fire those that are imperious or bullies. But yes, you can figure out how to dig even deeper for those that aren't. That means you won't take advantage of their good nature, or settle for giving them merely what they will accept. Instead, you treat the good guys with even more effort and care and grace than you ever would have exerted for the tyrants.
The word will spread.
[The other alternative is a fine one, if you're up for it… specialize in the worst possible clients and bosses, the least gratifying assignments. You'll stand out in an uncrowded field! The mistake is thinking you're doing one and actually doing neither by doing both.]
September 20, 2013
Asking the first time might be brave. Asking again (more forcefully) after you get a no is selfish and dumb.
I think it's the artlessness of it that so offends me.
Someone pitches an idea, tries to make a sale, invites a prospect to participate… and the prospect takes the time to politely decline.
The response of the pushy amateur? Either to deny that the objection is true (or important) or to merely repeat the offer, this time with more volume or urgency.
"I can't afford it."
"Yes you can!"
"It's too far for me to travel."
"Vietnam isn't that far away!"
"No, I won't be able to."
"But it's really important!"
The thing is, gainsaying an objection never works. Perhaps someone will make a new decision based on new information. But the only new information you're presenting with your pushiness is information about how selfish you are.
Alternative: "Sometimes, people feel that way. I totally understand. But when they learn . . . they make a different decision."
September 19, 2013
It's more of a skirmish, actually.
Plenty of recruiters and those in HR like to talk about engaging in a war for talent, but to be truthful, most of it is about finding good enough people at an acceptable rate of pay. Filling slots.
More relevant and urgent, though, is that it's not really a search for talent. It's a search for attitude.
There are a few jobs where straight up skills are all we ask for. Perhaps in the first violinist in a string quartet. But in fact, even there, what actually separates winners from losers isn't talent, it's attitude.
And yes, we ought to be having a war for attitude.
An organization filled with honest, motivated, connected, eager, learning, experimenting, ethical and driven people will always defeat the one that merely has talent. Every time.
The best news is that attitude is a choice, and it's available to all. You can probably win the war for attitude with the people you've already got. And if you're looking for a gig, you'll discover that honing and sharing your attitude goes a lot farther than practicing the violin all day.
September 18, 2013
October 1st is about two weeks away, and all the elements are in place for you to organize your first class meeting.
Shane put up a Meetup Everywhere in case you're seeking someone in your town to collaborate with.
The forum has dozens of posts as well.
Most of all, though, this is best done with friends, not strangers. Or friends of friends. Most people will see your invitation as a compliment…
Also! We have a narwhal. Congratulations and thanks to Tania and Marius for such a cool image. Here is is, feel free to commission your own t-shirts. And here's a Zazzle store if you want to buy a one off… I just got one in green. All my proceeds go to Acumen Fund.
Go Narwhals. We may not have a football team, but we have more than 12,000 campuses.
September 17, 2013
Everyone has a set point, a need/tolerance for a certain amount of drama in a life. I'm not talking about important work, I'm highlighting the excitment and tension that surrounds the things that happen to us (or might happen).
The newspaper is always just about the same length, regardless of what's happening in the world.
Politicians seem to have the capacity to deal with a given amount of tough stuff. When the urgent wanes, they make up something new. When there's too much, they decrease their perception of its urgency.
Last example: a restaurant kitchen has a very narrow range indeed. The amount of terror or urgency in a particular kitchen doesn't actually vary that much between a reasonably slow night and one where there are two or three VIPs out front or if its a banquet for a thousand people. We adapt and adjust and most of all, we shift our perception of precisely how important that particular emergency actually is.
It's easy to persuade yourself that this time it's different, that this time the drama is real, and that, in fact, it's all (truly) going to fall apart. In fact, though, it's all imagined. Drama isn't the work, it's our take on the work. Drama doesn't have to exist, certainly not in the way we're living it, not right now. A few days or weeks or years from now, this work will be so commonplace to you, you won't blink.
If drama was an actual external force, how could emergency room doctors, dictators and short order cooks ever survive? They're dealing with so much incoming, they'd melt.
If the drama is helping you and your organization do your work and enjoy it, then by all means, have fun. But understand that drama is a choice.
Our series this week revolves around the book that has resonated more than any book I have ever published… Linchpin.
My innate optimism is amplified every time I hear of someone who received this book from a friend or colleague and trusted the process enough to actually read it. We're at a fork in the road as a culture and an economy, and the choice to race to the bottom frightens me.
Do we want to work with people that are better, or merely cheaper?
The question for this week's riff is, for the first time, rhetorical. Will they miss you?
That's what the book is about. In a post-industrial age, when jobs get commoditized as fast as possible, the only good ones left are the ones that must be done by a person, not a machine, must be done by someone figuring things out, must be done by an individual willing to put herself on the line.
In the most recent issue of Harvard Business Review, a neo-Taylorist academic waxes rhapsodic about new wearable monitors being used at Tesco warehouses:
At a distribution center in Ireland, Tesco workers move among 87 aisles of three-story shelves. Many wear armbands that track the goods they’re gathering, freeing up time they would otherwise spend marking clipboards. A band also allots tasks to the wearer, forecasts his completion time, and quantifies his precise movements among the facility’s 9.6 miles of shelving and 111 loading bays. A 2.8-inch display provides analytical feedback, verifying the correct fulfillment of an order, for instance, or nudging a worker whose order is short.
… The efficiency gains it hoped for have been realized: From 2007 to 2012, the number of full-time employees needed to run a 40,000-square-foot store dropped by 18%. That pleases managers and shareholders—but not all workers, some of whom have complained about the surveillance and charged that the system measures only speed, not quality of work.
In this case, of course, the speed of work is the quality of the work. And another no-win job is created, because if someone leaves, another person fills that slot, instantly, and the departed worker is only missed if he often brought in pie for his co-workers at lunch.
In order to create real value going forward, we're going to have to ask harder questions, challenge the status quo and do work that can't possibly be measured or dictated by an armband.
We have to become the linchpin in the system, not a cog.
September 16, 2013
