Once life gets busy, it’s sort of inevitable that we begin to sort the work to be done.
And the most natural sort is to focus on the urgent. After all, if that plate is about to break, it’s hard to watch it fall when you’ve decided to work on something less urgent instead.
Which leads to days spent dealing with only the last-minute emergencies.
The problem is that by the time the two-minute warning arrives, it’s too late to win the game.
You’re so far behind (because the other team focused early and persistently) that it’s a lost cause.
The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.
Of course you’re going to get wet, that’s part of the sport.
And yet, only the hard core surfers show up in the rain.
If your project is about making things better, organizing the disorganized, connecting the disconnected and building community, you shouldn’t wait until the conditions are ideal.
Broken systems need your help precisely because they’re broken.
It’s just a week until Valentine’s Day, a multi-billion dollar spending jamboree.
As often happens, the people we depend on for much of it get the short end of the deal, but a little mindful planning can make a difference.
The heart shape we associate with love came from leaves. The ivy and fig leaves in ancient paintings, and perhaps the silphium leaf of the giant fennel plant, associated with aphrodisiacs.
180 years ago, Richard Cadbury combined two innovations–he added sugar to bitter drinking chocolate, and he put the chocolates in a red, heart-shaped box.
About a hundred years ago, Joyce Hall brought valentine’s cards to the USA.
The race was on. Best not to show up empty-handed.
If you care, avoid cheap chocolate. Cheap chocolate comes from cacao grown by some of the poorest people on Earth, many of them children, under conditions that are the direct result of oligopoly commodity power.
Acumen has invested in several chocolate companies that are committed to systemic change in the chocolate business that also happen to make extraordinary chocolate.
When we give a gift, we like to think that it’s the thought that counts. But our actions are votes, signals to the market, and a message to manufacturers.
Cheap chocolate might be convenient, but we can care enough to change the system.
This takes guts, and hustlers are afraid to do so.
Thirty years ago, when the avalanche of email spam was on the horizon, I proposed that any commercial email should have a $ in the subject line. A simple way for email programs to filter it out if you’re not looking for it. Obviously, that didn’t catch on, but not because the recipients were opposed.
I regularly get texts from people pretending to know me, or selling me something. They’ve decided that knowing someone’s contact info is the same as having the right to steal their attention. If they were honest, we could make our own choices. When our first interaction reveals that you’re a liar, it’s hard to imagine that it goes well from there.
Bruce Schneier has an insightful proposal: AI generated voices should sound like robots (I’m not sure his method is the one to choose, but the idea is really smart). The uncanny valley is real–and when a computer sounds like a friendly person, we create frustration and confusion when it turns out that it’s not. A pleasant robot is still a robot, and we can respond accordingly.
[Trivia: all the AI computers in Star Trek were played by one person–Majel Barrett–over the course of many decades. The quality got better, but we could always tell it was the computer…]
If you need to pretend that your product is handmade, or that you’re a friend, or that it’s a person on the other end of the line, you’re skulking around.
Magicians should conceal. Marketers and technologists should serve. Turn on the lights and make it clear.
(And community action is the only way that this is going to happen–the short-term game theory rewards people who cheat, so we need to make it too expensive to do so.)
Work on climate problems is actually about efficiency.
It’s easier and cheaper to avoid sloppiness and side effects than it is to clean the mess up later. And energy sources that don’t burn become cheaper over time. The investment in getting started pays off in cost, health and organizational efficiency.
Organizing for empathy can be about market share and effectiveness.
When we acknowledge that the people we’re teaching, leading or selling to see the world differently than we do, we can improve the user experience and deliver better results. Successful leaders serve the people they lead.
Finding resilience and diversity can be about productivity.
There are no all-tuba orchestras, because the mixture of skills and tones in an orchestra is what creates the music. Instead of wasting talent and resources, we can engage with communities and viewpoints ready to produce value. Fairness and opportunity reduce friction, build trust and enhance innovation.
It’s tempting to focus on how much we need to improve, but it’s helpful to show others how the improvements will help them.
Better is possible, and it helps to agree about what better looks like.
[Two pictures, one from NASA 60 years ago, and one from Google Earth just now… names help us see, and seeing helps us create.]
When there’s an overwhelming amount of incoming, it’s possible to bear down and simply get through it.
200 emails because of a product launch.
A project goes viral and there are a lot of fires to put out.
A deadline is imminent and it’s going to be a long night…
But when the incoming becomes chronic, it’s simply not possible. The problem isn’t a lack of effort. The problem is the system.
Forty years ago, anyone working in an office had to work their way through the pink while-you-were-out slips and the inbox. That’s it.
Now, there’s exponentially more, particularly if you are engaging with anyone outside of your organization.
The only solution is to change the system.
Simply shut down some channels of communication. Hand off entire swaths of engagement to someone else. Not next week, but now. Not for awhile, but forever.
Attention doesn’t scale, no matter how hard we try.
On the other hand, eating half a pear is much better than not having one. You might get 85% of the value from only part of the pear.
Some projects only benefit us when they’re finished all the way. Knowing this in advance is a useful strategy. For example, an ad campaign with a budget half of what it should have been, or an almost complete social media promotion does nothing much at all except help the media companies.
It’s possible to be productive and create value with halfway projects. The trap is treating an all-the-way project (like a canoe) as if halfway is enough.
Every system, every bureaucracy and every organization creates boundaries.
Sooner or later, we say, “I’d love to fix this, but I’m not in charge of that.”
Perhaps, though, we’ve been conditioned to say this even when it’s not true. Because being in charge means being responsible, and we may have learned that being on the hook is uncomfortable.
And so, sooner or later, no one is in charge.
ADP does payroll for millions of people. Pretty much all they do is create forms and have people fill them out. The forms they use are from 1991. They’re digitally unfriendly and poorly designed. Someone, somewhere at ADP is probably in charge of this. But they’re still the way they are. Because it’s challenging to call enough meetings and take enough apparent risk to actually fix them.
My bank uses a lot of security theatre in the way they engage with people online. Needless hoops, or obvious holes in their systems. Again, my guess is that someone is probably in charge here, but they’re not acting as if they are.
But it’s not just giant organizations. It’s the little pocket park down the street from you that no one takes the time to clean, or the missing stop sign that no one agitated to have replaced…
The good news is that we have the option to be responsible for far more than we imagine.
Complaining is a cultural phenomenon, but it’s particularly prevalent in societies with a consumer culture (the customer is always right) and those where comfort is coming to be expected.
Given all the complaining we do (about the weather, leadership, products, service and various ailments), it’s worth taking a moment to think about why we complain.
The obvious one might not be the main one.
The obvious reason to complain is to make a change happen.
If that’s the goal, though, we ought to focus those complaints where they’ll do the most good, and be prepared to do the work to have an impact. Organize the others, take consistent and persistent action, and market the complaint in a format and with a focus that will lead to action.
Most of the time, though, I’m not sure that’s what we’re really after.
Here are some others:
to let off steam
to signal group affiliation
to create hope that things might get better
to increase one’s status by selfishly demanding more
to gain affiliation by complaining on behalf of someone else
to gain status by demanding more for others who can’t speak up
to validate our feelings by seeking acknowledgment from others that their grievance is legitimate
to preemptively lower expectations or manage blame
to conceal our fear or embarrassment
to avoid responsibility by pointing to someone else
to establish dominance or control in a situation
to bond with others through shared experiences of dissatisfaction
Not on the list, because it belies almost all of these: “Whining in the face of imperfection often ruins what you’ve already got.”
Whining is the evil cousin of complaining. Whining purports to exist to make things better, but it never does.
James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem said, “The best way to complain is to make things.”
And perhaps we can extend that to: “The best way to complain is to make things better.”
February 1, 2025
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