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“The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.”

Thomas Merton

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“At any given point you have the power to say, this is not how the story is going to end.”

Anonymous

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Well. I sometimes believe one of the toughest games we play in life is the tug of war between reaching and settling.

Ponder. We do it in business all the time.

“What is our reach goal? … okay … let’s make it a little more realistic.”

Uhm. Is that a reach goal … or a settling goal?

Every day and in almost every situation not only are you mentally, as an individual, assessing ‘reach’ versus ‘more certain attainment’ <which is an evil version of settling>, but everyone around you is sending conflicting signals – “we want to reach a little farther than we think we are capable of … oh … but not too far“.

WTF. This is enough to confuse anyone.

You either reach far or you don’t.

You either set a settling goal or you don’t.

But, for fuck’s sake, don’t make my head hurt more than it has to on some decisions and choices because you want to feel like ‘we have pushed the limits’ in some false way.

Look. I’m not suggesting this is easy. Our natural temptation is to settle for a little less than a true reach because then we are more likely to meet expectations and less likely to be disappointed. I would guess <no research to back this up> we settle in some form or fashion 90% of the time. I really cannot argue with doing shit this way.

It is simply a tactic to maintain our sanity as we attempt, in reaching our desires & dreams, to limit the roll of the dice between chance & choice. We do so because we know disappointment lurks around every corner of every choice we ever make. And, let’s be honest, the disappointment can show up in so many frickin’ ways it almost seems like meeting a reach expectation comes only in black & white … while disappointments can show up in a myriad of colors <a reverse of how it should and actually is>.

I would like to note here that it really doesn’t help that we constantly get crap advice like this: ‘I encourage people to create something that ONLY you understand. That ONLY you get, because that can make you feel like you have some sort of purpose.’ Look. I absolutely buy the fact a reach goal should be personal or at least contain some aspect of personal so that it just isn’t some bland milestone objective someone else has pointed you at.

But. Well. If you are gonna reach for something, truly reach, part of the prize at the end of the reaching isn’t holding something that only you ‘get’, but rather something you gain that others also see value in. In poetic terms, you want something that covers you in colors that others can see. 

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“And now I’m covered in the colors”

Halsey

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And maybe that is where settling really screws us.

We don’t reach far enough to access the true colors to cover our achievements in to make it worth looking at over and over again.

Regardless. We live in a black & white achievement and outcomes world, not a color world.

While we talk a good game with regard to good character and humanity and ‘purpose driven’ passions almost within the first 5 minutes of any discussion you are gonna get “what do you do” and “what have you done.” If all you can do is talk about “reaching shit” then … well … you are useless as a non-achieving dreamer.

But.

If you can point out a string of specific outcomes and achievements most people don’t ask or wonder if they were easily attainable or the fact you attained them was because you had ‘settled for something less than a reach’, all they do is think of you as a useful achieving productive person.

And therein lies the horrible fate of ‘reaching.’ While we hate the fact that meeting the expectations of others means something, well, it means something. We can try to live a Life not worrying about other people and their expectations but unless our ‘doing compass’ miraculously always points us in the right direction and unless our ‘reach’ is impeccably judged correctly every time and unless the cat’s cradle web of choice & chance happens to fall into perfect symmetry we are doomed to have to face someone’s expectations at some point.

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“It’s time for you to live your own life without worrying about the expectations of others.”

Unknown

============

Every day we get tugged side to side … reach or settle.

Every.

Frickin.

Day.

Here is what I know. If you settle for everything, your story will be illustrated in the blacks & whites of certainties, achievements and outcomes. You will try and color the black & whites in some odd colors to spruce them up, but (sigh), they are black & white.

If you never reach for anything, you will end you story with chapters of regrets and ‘’what ifs.’ You will have touched only grays and your access to ‘colors’ will be limited. If you reach for something and fall short, your story will have two key chapters:

the first is one filled with the failure to reach & the disappointments

the second is written by how you react to the reach disappointment – avoid future disappointment or seek to try & do better.

If you reach for something, and get it, you will never be the same again. You will have touched colors and seen that life is much more than black and white.

Please. Don’t anyone read anything too much into the ‘what I know’ portion because while the last one I wrote sounds exactly like what everyone wants, there are no guarantees in Life.

Reaching comes with a cost.

Settling comes with a cost.

And sometimes the cost is not dictated by you but rather by some choice & chance metric <which you have little control over>. And sometimes the prize, the benefit, can only be seen by you <a different version of cost>.

I imagine all I really know for sure is that, in general, we settle for far too little far too often. Ponder.

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“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”

Jean de La Fontaine

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“But I live elsewhere; it is only that the attraction of the human world is so immense, in an instant it can make one forget everything. Yet the attraction of my world too is strong.”

Franz Kafka

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So. We talk a lot about the fact you cannot run away from things and far less about avoiding.

Yeah.

We talk about procrastination, which is a version of avoiding, but avoiding, in this piece’s case, is more along the lines of ‘ignoring’. Ignoring meant by that you see the world that you want to live in and conduct yourself in and go about ignoring the rest of the world doing your own thing. That is simply a different version of ignoring the real world. Simplistically you are assuming that the world & Life, in general, is indifferent to you therefore you will go unnoticed and just be able to do what you want to do <in  a less unfettered way than if you actually remained engaged in the ‘other world’>.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

I will say that avoiding some of the more undesirable aspects of Life and the world is pretty appealing. I would also suggest that avoiding some of the more undesirable aspects of Life and the world is pretty unrealistic.

There are a number of reasons I say that, but suffice it to say the overwhelming amount of information, even within the narrower walls of a business, is stunning. In the good old days even the worst of things worth avoiding <lies, conspiracies & implications> needed a little time to grow to some size that they became unavoidable. In today’s world those same things need seconds to gain some traction and minutes to grow to some size that they are unavoidable.

Today Google processes 61,000+ search queries a second. That’s something like over 5 billion+ queries a day. This means information is everywhere — regardless whether it is good information or bad information.

Today 99% of all employees in business are online and nearly 50% of the entire world is online and with 5.27 billion people have a mobile device <which, depressingly, means more people have a mobile device than have running water>.

My point here is not about the challenges of being interconnected with so much information driven by technology, but rather avoiding the world is just not a viable option <no matter how attractive it may seem>.

But please do not focus on technology. Technology is simply a means. Without people technology is simply an unused ancient aqueduct. It is people which make avoiding impossible <technology just enables their ability to not be avoided more>.

My version of this is office politics. I hate office politics. Ok. Not just hate … I believe it is people wasting energy and all I want to do is to focus on getting the good shit done.

In a perfect world you can decide to avoid the real world of the office intrigue and just do what you believe is the right thing to do for the business and ‘do.’

It isn’t avoiding by ignoring it is more like avoiding by deciding to ride the parallel rail on a train track.

Unfortunately the business world, and the world in general, doesn’t work that way. No matter how much I may have wished to run on a parallel track it actually works more like an atom in which we all circle the business at some maddening speed in which you crisscross with even the shit you want to avoid.

This gets compounded in several ways … two of which would be:

• Someone will always make what you are doing political even if it is not.

Office politics always contain people who play politics to meet their own ends. That is their means to do so. I believe these people can only see the world through the eyes of palace intrigue and political maneuvering therefore they filter everything done by everyone through a filter of “what do they have to gain by doing that.” That is their first filter level. Yeah. Eventually they may get to the more important “what does the business have to gain by doing that”, but they almost always judge everything being done on a ‘who is a winner and loser’ scale.

• Someone will always find something nefarious in what you are doing.

I will not call this conspiracy thinking but, in general, a business culture more often than not breeds a sense that <a> everyone is out for themselves and <b> there is no such thing as a truly altruistic business motivation.

And while it would be naïve of me to suggest that avoiding those two thoughts as ‘stupid & untrue’ it is a little sad that those beliefs pretty much are somewhere in every organization.

Please note, once again, the people aspect in everything I have noted. You may want to avoid things, but you will find your destiny along the path you have chosen strewn with a shitload of people crossing your path — many uninvited and many unwelcome.

I would suggest that Life is best lived by not ignoring shit and avoiding shit, but rather stepping into the world and deal with it. Sometimes that may mean side stepping some of the shit you don’t want to deal with and sometimes that may mean bludgeoning your way over and through some of the shit you don’t want to deal with, but if you do this you actually have some control over your own destiny. I say that because the problem with trying to maintain your Life on a parallel track, and knowing that inevitably it will be crossed by people & shit you had been purposefully avoiding, is that you will always be reacting to the bullshit rather than proactively facing it.

Look.

While you may not care about business or business politics my point is my point — you cannot avoid the world to conduct yourself in the ways & means you want to conduct yourself. You are stuck with the world, and in the world, whether you like it or not.

Oh.

The other thing you are stuck with is the fact whether you stay on the road engaged with the world or take another road to try and avoid it, well, you will meet your destiny no matter which way you go. Ponder that.

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obfuscate

This is the word to use when evasion is achieved by clouding the issue.

Creating a smoke-screen.

prevaricate, evade, dodge

==================

“When shrouded meanings and grim intentions are nicely polished up and pokerfaced personae are generously palming off their fantasy constructs, caution is the watchword, since rimpling water on the well of truth swiftly obscures our vision and perception.

(“Trompe le pied/wrong foot.”)”

Erik Pevernagie

===============

So. There is possibly nothing more aggravating in business than someone not answering “the” question. To be clear on what I am speaking about. The person answers a question just not the one you asked.

I am not going to argue that some questions are not easy to answer. I won’t even argue that we get asked questions we don’t know the answers to, but the situation dictates we make something up <yes … that happens in business>. But abandoning the question completely is complete bullshit.

But you know what?

I think the main reason it is so aggravating is because it is truly a reflection of intentions. There is even a book called The Anthropology of Intentions by a professor, Alessandro Duranti, who kind of tackles this whole discussion of intentions and words. He offers us the thought of ‘intentional discourse’ wherein an individual filters words through their beliefs & desires and their plans & goals to guide the discourse <regardless of whether the rest of the people want it guided that way>. In other words, using another phrase he offers us, by engaging in an intentional continuum people ponder their use of words through self-interest motivations <some good & some bad>.

By the way I am fairly sure I mangled his academic masterpiece, but you get the point.

Ah. “You get the point.” I share that again because while we sit there aggravated at someone who completely avoided answering the question asked we almost always also sit there wanting to invest a little of our own energy trying to assess why they did it. Because, in our aggravated minds, in its most simplistic viewing, avoiding the question is solely about shifting attention – away from something and toward something else.

…………… question deflection …………

Sure. It could be something as simple as steering you away from their lack of knowledge and steering you toward something they may actually know. But, in most cases, a full abandonment of a specific question is complete & utter deflection.

In the intelligence community they call this effort to shift attention as deflection or misdirection. Magicians do something similar getting people to focus on one thing and away from the trick itself. Completely avoiding the question is the business version of a distract-the-audience approach. It is this weird moment in which someone pretends to answer the question by actually answering some other question that magically appeared to replace the question really asked. It’s almost like entering an alternative universe for a while.

Sadly, aggravated or not, the more practiced the deception <the more practiced the business magician is> the more likely you hesitate to step in <and the more you get aggravated as you hesitate> and correspondingly … the more many of these people actually believe deception works.

It is maddening.

Worse? If they are good at it, when someone responds to a question by not addressing the points of the question, thereby avoiding the issue itself, it doesn’t create unrelated discussion to the issue … it simply avoids the issue in totality.

Well. I am fairly sure we have all sat there in a meeting and watched something like this unfolding right before our eyes. The visceral response, the aggravation, we have to this ‘answer evasion’ situation is most likely found in the revelation it is occurring (watching it unfold before our eyes). Philosophically, we can see that through some internal conviction to retain something they feel like they should own <their reputation, their title, their perceived intelligence, their whatever> they justify evading the question.

Conviction. Yeah. I just used ‘internal conviction.’ This means their intentions reflect they are more important than not only the question itself … but you. You are not even dignified with an answer.

It is irksome <at its least worst>.

It is loathsome <at its most worst>.

Look. I give a partial pass to the asshats you can see who have some answer they want to give everyone, regardless of what question is asked, and blurt it out when given the opportunity. They haven’t deflected the question they just ignored it as unimportant to what they want to say and have been planning to say no matter what has been said up to that point. It’s the ones you know heard the question and just ignored it. Or avoided it. Or just didn’t answer it despite the fact they heard every word, every syllable and every intention from the question giver. In other words, they intentionally do not answer the question.

<envision a deep sigh here>

I want people to face questions head on. And what makes this even more aggravating is that you know these people are quite capable of taking things head on.

How do I know that? These are the same people who will attack, or ‘aggressively question’, the intentions of the question giver themselves. It is a common tactic for the answer avoiders. The natural instinct is to ‘defend’; to answer the attack. Fuck that. I want to say “just answer the fucking question asked.”

How else do I know these people are quite capable of taking questions head on? These are the same people who will attack, or ‘aggressively question’, the question itself. This is not a deflection tactic. This is a ‘turn the question back on itself’ tactic. And, once again, your natural instinct is to defend or, well, answer the question you are asked.  Aggravating. I want to say “just answer the fucking question asked, you shithead.”

And maybe what makes this ‘not answering the question asked’ so maddening is that we, most sane pragmatic business people, tend to sit back <after saying “WTF”> and try and unravel why it happened and what the hell just happened. Unless you are in an interview scenario <in which you always have an opportunity, one-to-one, to hunker down and hammer out a clear answer> you are most likely in a room with other people and the non-answer has sent at least some of the people careening down a completely different road.

That makes it even MORE aggravating.

One intentional non answer to a question can completely derail a meeting or a discussion. That is intentional discourse. Or how about the other phrase from that academic’s book: engaging in an intentional continuum.

Oh. One last way you know these asshats are intentionally not answering the question is when they cleverly decline to answer the question with the infamous head fake answer: “I don’t know the answer to that question. I’ll work on finding the information for you and then get back to you with an answer” <and they have no intention of ever getting back to you>.

Yeah. You know … sure as shit … they have no plans to work on it and will never ‘get back to you’ unless you call them on it. They are intentionally refusing to answer the question assuming the conversation will move on and, in a laundry list of other shit to do, that this one will either never make the list or be so low on the list they can stiff arm you on answering based on “working on things more important.”

Its bullshit. You know its bullshit. They know its bullshit.

Well.

Fuck you.

Fuck you and the non-answering horse you rode in on.

In my mind a good well-articulated question demands some accountability. The one given the question is now accountable for the answer. They may try and deflect and they may just answer a completely different question, but a question asked exists, it does not disappear. You cannot get away from it.

Let me share a graphic example of why accountability remains whether the question dodger likes it or not.

You open your front door in the morning and there is a nice pile of dog shit squarely in the middle of your front door opening. You either clean it up or you avoid it. The question dodger never acknowledges the pile and steps over it moving on to something else. The shit stays at the front door and over time the smell increases and the flies crowd around. A good question unanswered is just like that. And a question dodger cannot avoid the smell in the end.

All that said. My message to the asshats who completely do not answer the question asked:  You will be accountable to the question and to cleaning up the mess … now … or later <and quit aggravating me by not answering the question, you shithead>.

====

Author note:

When I reread this, which took me less than a ½ hour to write, I was a little surprised by how … well … aggravated the tone was.

Some ‘fucks’ and ‘asshats’.

I left it as is because as a 50something business guy who has always attempted to take on what needs to be taken on regardless of how painful it may have been <and career wise possibly less than prudent> I get a little angry about how the business world has become incredibly unkind to the risk takers & truth tellers and seems to reward the less-than-competent and ‘political maneuverers’ more often than it should. That’s my excuse for why I let this one stand as it does.

=======================

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“There’s always a strange feeling you get when you come across one particular line by chance.

It feels somehow significant.

That’s irrational of course, but humans are irrational creatures.

Even the sturdiest, most down-to-earth chap will turn pale if he opens a book at random and sees the words PREPARE TO MEET THY DEATH. “

Mark Forsyth

======

Survival is a great motivator.

Suffice it to say there is pretty much nothing like feeling like ‘prepare to meet thy death’ is imminent to create a sense of urgency in your actions. I believe this is true in your personal life as well as in your business life.

But.

Let’s be clear.

Up until that “death scenario” point most of us swing back & forth between a general sense of lack of urgency and just getting all the shit done you need to get done <no urgency nor laziness just doing and checking shit off your list>.

It is a fairly practical approach to approaching Life <and business life>.

Looking at Life objectively, Life is almost always a balance of pacing yourself so that you don’t burn out <and have the energy when you actually do need it> and a sense of urgency to ‘do’ when the situation dictates.

And, yet … we almost seem irrational when it comes to this balance. We run, and run, and run and then all of a sudden schedule some forced ‘stop’ under the guise of ‘re-energizing’ or recharging our batteries.

This is kind of nuts.

This actually implies we can control what we face and when we face it.

Let me explain what I really mean.

Well.

Even the sturdiest, most down-to-earth chap will turn pale if he opens a book at random and sees the words PREPARE TO MEET THY DEATH.

So let’s say your idea of balance is a simple “go” or “stop” — either 100% of one or 100% of the other.

So let’s say you have been running and running and running with your planned “stop” imminent.

Uh oh.

Life stands in front of you with some situation and places the words is ‘prepare to meet thy death’ squarely in front of you.

You pale.

Shit.

We all pale in  moment like that.

It is ‘survival time.’ What many crappy bosses flippantly call “an all hands on deck” moment.

Well.

You are fucked.

Just when you need the energy the most you are most likely at your most depleted.

Suffice it to say the ‘100% stop or go’ Life strategy is not the most practical or efficient living Life model. And, yet, that is exactly the model most of us use.

Our reason <excuse>?

This is what Life demands of us.

Well.

I could argue that Life may certainly pressure us to live life this way, but it certainly doesn’t demand us to live it this way.

We get lots of choices in Life and one of them is how we live it.

Even with all the “survive must do’s” we get a lot of room on how we conduct our lives.

Death or survival moments reminds us of this. It is in these moments in which our survival mode kicks in, i.e., “I am not prepared to meet my death … if at all possible”.

Most of us figure we may as well go out fighting … hence the urgency.

“Better it is to die as a soldier since die we must.

And though the man who dies hath pain – to all his house accrues praise and pride. “

Euripedes

Now.

I will admit.

I hated the false ‘prepare to meet thy death’ moments a shitload of managers create in business.

Well. I really believe most of them do not create them, but rather they simply cannot discern between a true “meet thy death” scenario versus a “a calculated action is called for here.”

In addition.

I admit.

I found it incredibly frustrating to have a “prepare to meet thy death” scenario rear its monstrous head and any and all resources became available. Not because I begrudged the resources needed to meet the situation, but because months before you had asked for the same resources <maybe even a lesser degree> and, if invested then <as asked>, this particular ‘prepare to meet thy death’ scenario most likely would have never occurred.

But that is why I said what I said upfront — most of us grind our way through life, business & personal, with a general lack of urgency. The uncomfortable truth is that creating urgency without a ‘prepare to meet thy death’ situation is difficult. And because it is difficult and because there is a mostly lack of urgency general attitude, managers almost get trained to inspire urgency with ‘death-like scenarios. This is the truly evil business version of “false sense of urgency.”

It is a mind numbingly stupid situation we have created for ourselves.

I, personally as a manager, do not know if I was particularly good at heading off ‘prepare for thy death’ situations and I don’t know if I was particularly good at recognizing real ‘prepare to meet thy death’ scenarios <because sometimes they actually can be slightly sneaky>, but I do tend to believe I erred on the side of treating almost all scenarios initially as ‘non urgent’ believing more often than not if we didn’t run around like chickens with our heads cut off and didn’t invest a shitload of extra resources we could most likely handle it fairly efficiently.

My only proof to back up what I just wrote?

I am not dead.

Regardless.

I do wish more of us, in Life and in business, could cut back on the “go 100%” and “stop 100%” interval living. I don’t think it is particularly healthy nor particularly effective in the long run.

Death comes to all of us soon enough … no reason to seek it out.

============

“The unexpected, always the unexpected.

If they expect you to move right, move left. The first law of survival in this jungle that you’ll inhabit.

The unexpected move. “

—-

The Avengers

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“She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you.”

—

Terry Pratchett

============

Well. Far too often in business we talk about making an “unexpected move” to gain an advantage as “zig when they zag.”

So lets’ take a minute and talking about the whole “zigging when they zag” bullshit. To be clear. On a football field zigging when they zag can be effective, but in business it is bullshit.

Look. I am all for running with a temporary advantage when given the opportunity <and, yes, about 97.385% of advantages are temporary — I made up the 97.385% number>. But that is not ‘zigging’.

I am all for hunkering down on a specific distinctness when it appears the rest of the category is bumbling around in an array of meaningless claims. But that is not zigging.

I am all for leaping through a window of opportunity when the window cracks open. But that is not zigging.

Suffice it to say … zigging, in general, is a stupid strategy.

Let me explain why.

Most industries, once they have a fair number of competitors, is more like a 7 lane superhighway where everyone is driving in the same direction within the same guard rails.

Not everyone will like thinking that, but the truth is that most businesses have smart people who see the same information and do all the necessary research with people who are likely, and not likely, to buy whatever it is they are selling and therefore strategies are in the same realm and everyone is pretty much competing in the same arena.

This means a couple of things.

• • Everyone is speeding toward the same approximate destination.

  • If something is obvious to you, it is most likely obvious to them.

What all of this means is you have to move, but most moves have to be done artfully.

So maybe despite the fact I balk at the whole ‘zig when they zig’ and ‘unexpected’ anything in business gives me heartburn it is possible I could discuss the art of the unexpected move.

I call it “art” because unpredictability as normal behavior is bad. No one likes someone who is unpredictable 100% of the time and organizations <alignment, operations and ‘day to day doing’> tend to respond poorly to unpredictability (so do customers).

In my highway metaphor unpredictability most likely means either <a> a crash or <b> slowing down and you get passed or <c> you are now on a completely different road than all the other competitors speeding toward sales, & customers.

As for predictable? Yikes. Boring. Lack of creativity. Bad <in a different way>. Let’s just call predictable “lack of any art.” In my highway metaphor this most likely means you are cruising in one of the right lanes, the slower lanes, and people are passing you all the frickin’ time.

This suggests making a move in your industry take more art and artfulness to navigate the path you desire or take advantage of the opportunity that may open.

This suggests, in the business world, you sit up and pay attention just with a little more focus when someone pulls out the “maybe we should zig when they zag” tritism. You do so mostly because anyone who says that who is not on a football field most likely has their head up their ass <but want to say something catchy in a meeting to be noticed>.

I say that, again, because most time in a business industry companies are going in a direction for a reason … that is where the sales are. So ‘zigging’ when everyone else ‘zags’ more than likely means they are heading toward sales and you are not.

Ok. Now. If you want to tie ‘unexpected move’ to survival … well … that is a different story. Survival does have a nasty habit of forcing some unexpected maneuvering. Ok. Maybe out of desperation the predictable in us decides that maybe being ‘unexpected’ may actually be called for.

I would suggest that if you find yourself in desperate times rarely is anything artful in that moment. But I would suggest that in a desperate survival mode I can offer two lists you should write up on some big board in some big conference room and make sure you discuss. There are basically 4 basic responses to a threat <or opportunity I imagine>:

• • • Fight

    • Flee

    • Deceive

    • Submit

Any move you choose to make will be derived from one of these four spaces.

Choose wisely.

Once you have chosen <wisely> effectiveness in a survival fight basically comes down to 4 things <in the order of importance>:

• • • aggression and willingness to hurt your competition

    • willingness to get hurt yourself

    • skill and knowledge

    • strength and power

Some may haggle with my order, but the top two will dictate your success regardless of how you stack the last two. And of the last two I would suggest most of the time knowing what to do is more important than brute strength.

Choose wisely <but always choose the first two or you will get crushed>. I offer these two lists because when anyone suggests zigging when someone zags I bring these out.

Shit. I bring these two lists out almost any time a business wants to talk about effectively competing in an industry.

Why?

Because nothing really matters if you do not figure out these two lists.

Why?

Going back to what I said earlier … advantages are temporary   and the other guys/gals you are competing against are as smart as you are. You don’t zig just for the sake of zigging <that is wasted organizational energy> and if you do have to take an unexpected move it is most typically a response to something in the situation <opportunity or threat>.

While we like to talk about zigging and zagging the reality comes back to the highway. You have to move forward and keep moving forward <or get run over>. The only zigging anyone should ever talk about is either moving into another lane to pass someone or another lane to let someone pass you or change lanes to avoid a crash.

================

“Desperation is the raw material of drastic change.

Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

William S. Burroughs

==============

Unexpected moves just to do something unexpected is stupid.

It is in the same category as change for change sake.

It is in the same category as zigging when they zag.

Now.

Unexpected moves made in the search for something incredible waiting to be known <some desired destination>? Well. That isn’t stupid.

===========

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

Carl Sagan

===========

Unexpected moves made to survive on the competition highway? That isn’t stupid.

Unexpected moves made to veer through a window of opportunity that arises? That isn’t stupid.

But zig when they zag? C’mon. That’s just stupid.

It is stupid because more likely than not it just means you will have not left the competition behind, but rather just left the competition.

====

====

“I am not afraid of my truth anymore and I will not omit pieces of me to make you comfortable.”

—

Alex Elle

===

So. Being yourself is a tricky topic. In business, Life & deciding what you want to do.

I know <I know>.

Seems like “being yourself” should be simple. Like ‘breathing’ type simple.

But it’s not. It’s not because there is a constant struggle between an internal part <’who am I’ type shit> and external <figuring out how ‘who am I’ should actually act in public>.

For example, one of my favorite young writers, Jamie, describes herself this way:

================

I’m a writer, pretty much by process of elimination. I am also a professional aspirationalist.

That’s not a word, but I’ve made it into one, since there was nothing that could quite describe me because I didn’t want to say I’m a “professional dreamer” because that sounds like some hippie shit.

I have aspirations, like, lots of them. If you’d like me to create a TV show, get in touch with me. How about publishing my memoir? Get in touch. If you are from The Ellen Show, I will, of course, accept your interview and would be delighted to dance it out with my girl, so long as she doesn’t prank me by making me eat cilantro. In fact, I want no cilantro in anything.

<Jamie Varon>

================

Professional aspirationalist. Not ‘professional dreamer’ nor ‘professional pragmatist.’

Ok.

Professional aspirationalist is just awesome.

If I could ever vote for a new term, that would be it. It’s fucking awesome. It captures the essence of restlessness & hope & striving & unlearning &, well, all the things I believe are good and healthy with a person seeking to be better tomorrow than they are today.

What I truly love about it is that she came up with a term to capture her “self.” I love it because being yourself, and even recognizing who ‘yourself’ is, is hard. And when I say hard think even harder than maybe becoming a Navy Seal type hard.

……….. self …….. an entanglement of nuances ………….

It is incredibly hard because the truth is that ‘my truth’ , more often than not, is most likely an evolving tangled web of characteristics which, as it evolves, simply becomes more tangled <rather than untangled>.

Yourself is constantly adapting to new learning, new learning about things and new learning, and unlearning <changed beliefs, opinions, attitudes, perspectives>, about oneself.

That’s why I love professional aspirationalist.

True north on Jamie’s compass is defined. And its not a destination, but rather it is a direction.

Aspirationalist is a moving target. It is restless and unmoving at exactly the same time. It is an adventurer with some pragmatism. It’s not being on Ellen <although she would be delighted to do so> because once that happens there will always be something else.

Being an aspirationalist means not only having dreams, but dreaming … oh … and doing.

Yeah.

Doing. As in doing lots of different shit.

Uh oh.

That also means … well … increasingly more and different dreams <and aspirations>. And increasingly doing more and different shit. Dreaming and doing. Lots of different dreaming and doing.

In the end <to me> being a professional aspirationalist means being a restless soul. Restlessly seeking, traveling, doing, thinking. Professionally constantly in motion <mentally or physically>.

I love it because it captures my personal belief that becoming ‘better’ as a person is experiential rather than tangible <although tangible ‘doing stuff’ is certainly a component>.

I love it because it isn’t for the faint of heart.

And isn’t what truly being yourself is all about? Having some courage to even suggest ‘I will not omit things just to make you comfortable.’

Professional aspirationalist reminded me of this other quote:

 ==

“I am a world that cannot be explored in one day. I am not a place for cowards.”

Caitlyn Siehl

==

Yes.

Being a professional aspirationalist means you are not a place for cowards.

Anyway.

I wish I had come up with this word, but I am not as talented a writer as Jamie.

I like it for its sense of Life’s paradox. Paradox in that it is independent and dependent at the same time.

I like it for it’s sense of Business’s paradox. Paradox in that success in business is a combination of stillness, at the right times, and movement/restlessness at all times.

I like it because at its core it doesn’t mean shunning the world and simply being a dreamer. It has rich & royal hues of reality threading its way through its fabric.

I would like to believe I am also a professional aspirationalist.

Now.

To be clear <because Jamie is correct the word selection was thoughtful to avoid the ‘hippie shit’>. Pragmatically, we aspirationalists do seek <some> approval and acceptance <ohhhhhhhhhhhh shit>.

Accept what I just wrote <that last sentence>. Don’t fight it <even if you are one of those who say ‘I don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks”>.

Because you do care.

Whether you like it or not, whether you think it is right or wrong, whether you think it is a good thing or bad in that it makes you ‘weak’ in some way, just get it set in your head – in some form or fashion – we care.

Don’t worry … we all care <not just aspirationalists>. We all care what the people around us think about us. And by ‘people’ I mean everyone from those closest to you <who would most likely accept you in any shape and form you ended up in … but you don’t want to disappoint them> to society overall <there is some value in gaining credit for who you are and what you do>.

Some acceptance from others feeds our self-esteem & self-worth <and all that Maslow stuff>.

Ah.

Please note I used the word “feeds.” Approval and acceptance is not the only nutrition necessary for a healthy esteem and worth.

It is simply one part of the diet.

Even we aspirationalists need a balanced ‘self diet’. We do not seek sole value from proving ourselves to others. And we don’t accept sole value in and of ourselves.

Being an aspirationalist is … well … the paradox. Independent dreamer with some dependence on external cues as to the value of our aspirations.

We want to fit into the world on our own terms.

Regardless.

What a description:

                       Professional aspirationalist:      I am not afraid of my truth anymore and I will not omit pieces of me to make you comfortable. I am a world that cannot be explored in one day. I am not a place for cowards.

We need more of these people in our world — in Life & in business.

Me? I will continue living life, trying to do good shit in Life & business, as a Professional Aspirationalist.

“The best is the enemy of good.”

—-

Voltaire

==============

“My body is a parlor trick called survival.”

—

Jayy Dodd

==========

This is about comfort zones and being your best.

I think we discuss comfort zones, incorrectly, in 2 ways:

• It’s not stepping out, its pushing out
• It’s not fear of new, its fear of losing

Pushing out.

“Step out of your comfort zone” is the common wisdom. It’s not wise. It’s stupid. Comfort zones, for the most part, are a reflection of what we are good at. Maybe not great but the stuff that enables us to insure we aren’t village idiots. The size of your comfort zone is mostly a reflection of your risk taking attitude. That said. If you ‘step out’, you’ve (a) lost any possible advantage you may have to actually be successful outside and (b) even if successful and happy it is, well, outside your comfort zone and 90% of people are most successful day in and day out IN their comfort zone.

We should seek to ‘push out’ our comfort zone. It’s kind of like boundaries of learning and how that works except this is about what you are comfortable with not how you learn something new. Just accept that trying new things isn’t well rounded or neat & tidy, its uneven attempts in which you selectively attach yourself to something and try it. You push out in one area of your zone to stretch.

Fear of losing.

In a zero sum game attitude world your comfort zone is driven by a specific type of fear – “if I give up too much I will regress, not just lose or get no reward.’

Let’s address the elephant in the room … we all, all of us, believe we deserve some things. Yeah. Deserve. Part of that ‘deserve’ is keeping what we have.as we accumulate things, salary, wealth, ownership, pride, experience, etc., we start believing it is ours – we have earned it therefore it is our to keep. This gets even trickier for most of us because we tend to not let go of anything that has given us pleasure in the past <even if it is no longer pleasurable to us now>. Anyway. We tend to build our comfort zone around those accumulated things.

There are 2 slightly insidious aspects to this.

First is a belief you will always accumulate more simply because you have something. It’s a different version of hedonistic adaptation in that it’s not that because you have something you inevitably want more but rather because you have earned something you will inevitably get more.

Second is, in this particular discussion, your comfort zone doesn’t guarantee mediocrity or sameness it simply suggests you never attain the best version of who you could be. In fact. I would argue in this version of comfort zone you are more likely to touch upon your worst version than your best.

That’s what zero sum does. Instinctually in the daily grind of Life you will act in ways to insure what is in your comfort zone at the beginning will be in the comfort zone in the end. You may not view this is ‘worst version of self’ but it is clearly not going to arc your behavior toward the best version of yourself.

I won’t suggest changing your attitude (although you should) but rather suggest seeking your best version doesn’t mean stepping out of your comfort zone but rather pushing it out … making it bigger.

Zones have a tendency to dull us. Dull us from possible magic. I purposefully called it magic because it does have a sense of good as well as intangible trickery. Once senses are sharpened they cannot be dulled and in a world which has a nasty tendency to dull our senses … well … that may be the best argument for embracing the idea that magic does exist in the world and that is worth the effort to try and find it.

Lastly.

The least discussed aspect in all of our trite comfort-‘zonism’ is survival. Let me point out that not all uncomfortable is created equal and not all exploration is meaningful and regardless of comfort & exploration, situations are often situations of survival. And if that sounds dramatic I meant it to. Comfort zones are the places in which we believe we are most likely to survive the onslaught of Life. It’s our place to crouch and react when shit hits the fan. A comfort zone more often than not, isn’t about living life to its fullest it’s about not dying.

And that permits me to go back to platitudes. I am sure everyone has either heard of or read “Good to Great.” Well. Voltaire only beat that book by about 200 years and he thought up that shit all while trying not to die in a duel or get his head chopped off.

Two points with his quote.

First is my personal soapbox. Just because something is old doesn’t mean it isn’t smart. I didn’t need an entire book to tell me about good to great. Voltaire said it in one line.

Second is the truth behind the thought. You can settle for good or you can do something better. I don’t need a book for that either. But what the books don’t tell you is everything you do is grounded in survival. Do, or don’t do, based on an assessment f whether I survive or what I have survives or what is important to me survives. If that sounds defensive, it should. If that sounds lie it is grounded in what someone could call your ‘comfort zone’, it is.

Comfort zones, in general, are your body’s parlor trick. Your parlor trick for survival. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t seek to do some uncomfortable things but it does mean you probably shouldn’t be stepping out of you zone but rather pushing it out selectively.

Stepping out increases odds of dying. Pushing out increases odds of surviving. Simple as that.

……. slow down … do not pause ………

====

“… they should try slowing down instead.  In our study of businesses (conducted with the Economist Intelligence Unit), the companies that embraced initiatives and chose to go, go, go to try to gain an edge ended up with lower sales and operating profits than those that paused at key moments to make sure they were on the right track.

What’s more, the firms that “slowed down to speed up” improved their top and bottom lines, averaging 40% higher sales and 52% higher operating profits over a three-year period.”

–

Harvard Business Review

====

This is about something called ‘critical slowing down.’ To be clear. This is not “make haste slowly” which I have written about before.

In business, and Life I imagine, some people are masters in appropriately reading a situation and assessing timely ‘slowing down’ which enables speeding up.

This is a business management skill, an invaluable skill, and it is incredibly difficult skill to master.

Slowing down to speed up fights against all the natural business instincts. It is a phrase often tossed around in business, one often discussed, one often not done.

It is not done because most people suck at this balancing act (appropriate slowing down and appropriate speeding up). This balancing actually demands one recognize the environmental contextual aspects. Yes. There is a natural oscillation between the two <speeding up & slowing down>. For example, science has shown that climate actually slows down preceding abrupt climatic shifts.

Regardless. Let’s just say that in business slowing down very often becomes high impact high probability events and that the fluctuation between slow to speed increases impact. This fluctuation creates angst and decisionmaking stress because most people tend to see disaster in the swing <which is, in reality, a pace driven transition> because we are leaving one natural state and arriving at another – liminal space.

Let’s face it.

Not many business people are good at undergoing any critical transition let alone a ‘slow down/speed up’ transition.

Why?

Because each aspect in and of itself is a natural state and each begets inertia <at its worst> or chaotic activity <which is close to as bad as inertia>.

Inertia weakens internal stabilizing forces which compounds inevitable change forces.

Chaotic activity sometimes appears good <it is the semi-appealing ‘we are being busy at being busy’>, but that behavior begets multiple variables which evolve unpredictably and ultimately inhibits critical transitions.

Both states inevitably create what most people see as the unintended consequences in which something can get knocked off balance and become ‘extinct.’ And sometimes the consequences can occur without ever showing signs of critical slowing down.

Here is a truth: consequences occur whether they are intended or unintended.

This business truth happens because business systems, more often than not, are a bit more complex, and contain some complications, in their underlying dynamics than simplistic theory or simplistic diagrams attempting to create structure to an organization and its dynamics with the market & consumers/buyers.

I would suggest that you cannot draw a picture for what is <because it is obsolete as soon as it is drawn> and you cannot draw a picture for what will be <because predicting multi-dimensional dynamics is outside the purview of reality>.

All that said. That is why you cannot pay enough to a business person who has the ability to know when to slow down to enable effective speeding up because, whether they are labeled as such or not, they know how to navigate complexity.

It is here I would be remiss if I did not note, more often than not, the ones who claim to be good at this, are not. It is the ones who do not make the claim, the ones who recognize that more often than not it is something you just kind of sense, that you treasure.

All I know for sure is that I have been fortunate enough on occasion to have slowed down in business and had everything speed up afterwards. It feels amazing and the organization & employees, many who balked at the slowing down, absolutely love the freedom that came after the slowing down.

Here is the truly difficult thing about this whole ‘slow down/speed up’ thing.

You know when you get it right.

But you don’t know when you get it wrong or even when you may have missed the opportunity to ‘slow down to speed up.’

And that makes it exponentially more difficult to convince people it is the time to slow down <and the benefit will be speed later> and exponentially more difficult to figure out when to do it <and makes it impossible to train anyone for>.

I hesitate to say it is a ‘gut/instinct’ driven skill because then many people automatically suggest “judgement over experience.”

In addition I also hesitate to say this is solely a knowledge-driven/experience-driven skill because that ignore the ‘art’ aspect of this.

I would say that this particular business skill is one of those things:

<1> you either have the instinct or you do not and

<2> the instinctual judgement is more often than not driven by at least some experience, and

<3> experience increases the likelihood, but doesn’t guarantee, of future good use of your instinctual judgement.

Many business people screw the pooch on the entire slow down/speed up idea and also falsely implement it.

The most often abused slow down/speed up tactic is, well, there are a couple.

1. The project meeting in which all projects are discussed by everyone.

This is close to slow down/speed up, but not the best kind. This is actually “stop, share, get critique, and go.” More often than not this is simple ‘scrape some barnacles off the bottom of the ship’ type management. Sure. It can help speeding up but incrementally … not exponentially.

2. The ‘kick off meeting.’

This is the infamous “let’s take a moment and make sure we are all aligned before we getting going.” What a bunch of baloney. Yes. it makes sense to insure everyone is on the same page when getting started <although I would point out that more often than not everyone doesn’t give a shit about the overall objective just their own components objective and timeline>. But this is not true slow/down speed up … this is more about alignment.

Look. Real slow down/speed up management is midstream management where you have some critical learnings and maybe even some momentum. And you purposefully do not have everyone stop … just slow down … assess … kind of like having a fighter squadron get fuel in flight … and then shoot off on the mission.

Real slow down/speed up business management creates exponential dramatic speed increases and, at its best, velocity. Reality shows that these dramatic shifts don’t really happen as part of a business status quo. They are situational, contextual and often do not happen because a business doesn’t have a business person who sees it, senses it or can steer it.
Bad slowing down never creates good, or effective, speeding up. It just slows people down and most often frustrates employees as wasted time.

Good slowing down creates dramatic shifts – in speed, velocity and in direction.

More often than not they are driven by one person who senses a contextual shift in the dynamics within a situation. One person who doesn’t have a picture drawn to adapt against but can draw a picture of what they see & sense from which others can leverage from to generate speed.

Truth: not everyone can do this.

In fact, while most people, in general, suck at make choices the business people who are really good at making the faster better choices and recognizing when to slow down to speed up are few & far between.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t seek it just understand that more often than not you will just slow down <and not speed up>. All that said. Remember. Critical slowing down is never about slowing down it is about speeding up your business.

============================

“Incrementalism is how we slide into participation by imperceptible degrees so that there is never the sense of a frontier being crossed.” 

—-

Jonathan Glover 

============

“Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.”

—-

Kahlil Gibran 

====================

Well. Incrementalism is a virus. And once you catch it is a sonuvabitch to cure.

I, personally, believe the entire business world, including new business incubators, has this virus. Incrementalism has seeped its way not only into mainstream business but also mainstream ‘innovation’ pipelines.

Yeah. Innovations too.

I dare any of you to walk the halls of your local business incubation center and find a real, “break the etch-a-sketch” idea in there. If you are lucky, you will find one. The majority of innovation ideas these days, incubators as well as established companies, is all about incrementally leveraging from something existing.

Sure. They may claim its “unique” and “a whole new way of doing things”, but the majority of the time, lets say 98% of the time, it is a derivative of something that exists. That is how far the incrementalism virus has reached into the business world.

But this post today isn’t about innovation. This is about how incrementalism just makes us sad. It makes us sad because if you embrace incrementalism that means you have given up on, well, something that is not incremental. You have given up on being able to do something big and risky and game changing. And, worst, you’ve given up on making any substantial decisions <because incrementalism is simply an excuse for not making a clear cut decision>.

Now.

You may not believe you have given it up because we, in the business world, actually cleverly use incrementalism to convince ourselves we are actually achieving big changes.

….. incrementalism dance ………

We do the dance of ‘small steps to achieve big change’ which is kind of some odd waltz in which we make the same moves over and over again and point to change as “we improved how we dance” <but we are still in the same place dancing with the same person dancing to the same music>.

To be clear.

Even I, someone who loves change and “shaking the etch-a-sketch” in business, have been sucked into the black hole of incrementalism.

We do an incredibly good job of convincing ourselves that big change is hard, shit, that any change is hard and almost impossible to do because ‘it is difficult to do’ (note: which is mostly a bullshit thought). Given that, we do an incredibly good job of convincing ourselves that the only way to effectively successfully implement change is through smaller thoughtful steps. All leading to … we do an incredibly good job of convincing ourselves of all that, in fact, so much so that’s all we do.

Look.

Big change is possible. You just need to be smart, thoughtful and choose the ‘big’ wisely and with open eyes. But nowadays we view ‘big’ as some place we need to work our way towards and not just something we do. Unfortunately, as soon as we step onto the incrementalism slippery slope it, more often than not, causes everyone to slide, unintentionally, into unchanging behavior <or microscopic change increments>. This means everyone does small thing after small thing which make everyone feel like they are changing and that shit is changing … uhm … all the while the world itself is changing faster.

This means in our incrementalism we are moving forward and, yet, falling behind. It’s like walking on a moving sidewalk in the wrong direction.

Maybe the worst part?

We do not even see the backwards effect of our supposed forward movement. This happens mostly because most of us suck at not only changing, but perceiving change. We easily lose sight of any change as we focus on the incremental activity we have wholly embraced as ‘progress’ <because we say in our minds: “big change is impossible and this is the way to do it!”>.

The other very real danger of incrementalism is that while you have your head down focused on the incremental task at hand not only may the rest of the world be moving faster than you – it may even turn. So you will keep plugging away plodding down your incrementalism path and all the while the rest of the world is now trundling away in a completely different direction.

By the way. In business this is bad.

Anyway.

I will absolutely admit that most of the business world absolutely recognizes the importance of seeking to continuously reinvent and innovation, yet, sadly mostly we are actually just going through the motions. The motions may look incredibly sensible but they really aren’t achieving any change of any significance.

===============

the term Incrementalism is also used as a synonym for Gradualism. Incrementalism is a method of working by adding to a project using many small incremental changes instead of a few (extensively planned) large jumps.

Logical incrementalism implies that the steps in the process are sensible.

============

I fully admit that convincing people that change is not hard <and overcoming ‘it pays to be sensible’> is hard. And I fully admit that the “big version” of this is even harder AND I admit that any non-incremental change is even more risky <which makes overcoming “it pays to be sensible” even harder>.

But that isn’t my point.

My point is that it seems like we have convinced ourselves in the business world that change is ALWAYS best achieved gradually and incrementally. We should always find the easy small steps and do them.

So what <you may be asking>?

This means we begin measuring the success of the business not by any real change, but rather defining our usefulness and worthiness by measuring it in increments versus the past. Incrementalism more often than not doesn’t get measured by how much closer to the ‘big change’ you are but rather by how far you have gone from what you were.

Uhm.

That is nuts. And while it is nuts that is almost exactly how over 90% of business conduct business <and their change>. Worse? This incremental behavior decision making actually bleeds into incremental decision making in general. Everyone starts believing that a bold decision just isnt worth it when you know everyone feels comfortable with an incremental decision.

Look.

While I always advocate timely good big change, I certainly would advocate embracing incrementalism on occasion. Business change is, and as always been, about choice. You look around and choose where incrementalism may be most effective and where ‘big change’ is actually needed. In other words, for doing smart change you do both within your business.

** note: this is exactly the same for strategy – deterministic & emergent. Emergent is simply another word for ‘unplanned for opportunity’ or opportunistic and typically is an opportunity for a non-incremental result.

Yeah.

I can do both at the same time. This has two benefits:

• Organization: all businesses need to be reinvented in some way. I cannot remember one business I have seen or been involved in that hadn’t established some routine that didn’t need to be changed significantly. Incrementalism steadies the organization by not destroying something, but rather fine tuning it. Conversely when you can tie big change to the organization situationally it energizes the organization that it is being smart <to not change everything>, but bold <in that it is willing to make selective smart big changes>. Showing both is the best of both worlds.
• The employee/individual: incrementalism is a virus almost like mononucleosis. It encourages employees to almost sleepwalk through the day. When you inject big change and encourage everyone to believe it can be done and develop a plan to show it can be done and activate people to start getting it done, individual employees are reminded that there IS something more than either the status quo or ‘incremental and gradual change’ <which they were struggling to discern from the everyday grind anyway>.

In the end. My concern.

My concern is that our love of incrementalism is killing meaningful change. Its killing meaningful decisions. Its killing believing meaningful (bigger) things can actually happen.

I don’t want to kill incrementalism, but I certainly want to breathe new life into “big” and meaningful.

Just know this about incrementalism: the problem is that incrementalism is seductively sleepy. It’s the Prozac of business strategy. All I can really suggest is that every business should stop taking Prozac on occasion and watch how the pulse of the company picks up. They may find that Life off of Prozac just isn’t that bad. More importantly, they may find they can shrug off the sadness of incrementalism and have a happier organization. And that is a good thing in business.

——

———————————–

“I feel like I’ve swallowed a cloudy sky.”

=

Haruki Murakami

—-

Ok. I am a principles person. By that I mean I believe, and have found, that most business principles have a timeless quality to them. The majority of the best of the best principles offer solid fundamentals.

That said. I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in a business meeting, often with very smart business people, and someone pulls out <verbally> some marketing, or any business process/idea/way-to-think from over a decade ago as if it represents a principle rather than a process <which is implementation OF a principle>.

As I sit there and listen, well, I feel like I have swallowed a cloudy sky.

<note: it feels a little uncomfortable>

It’s not that the old principle is wrong it has just been improved upon from an implementation aspect.

My whole issue in this situation is a version of unlearning.

Anyway. By a ‘version’ I imagine I am thinking it is maybe more unbundling and shedding some of the outdated features and learning some of the newer features rather than simply unlearning something.

I fully understand that most business people are under constant pressure to learn more and to learn quickly and to mostly focus on the shit that is most important to them. Therefore, they will also tend to absorb one of their ‘non expertise competencies’ in the most simple sensible fashion possible.

But here is the issue in today’s business world.

The future belongs to the people who can unlearn stuff faster than the rest WHILE leaning into the timeless principles.

In other words. The ability to apply principles in new contexts.

I know I didn’t say ‘adapt’ or anything except ‘unlearn shit.’ I did that because it is almost impossible to learn something new until you have created some mental space by letting go of something else.

** note: it is a skill to know what to let go and what to hold on to.

So I am suggesting you cannot do that <adapt> unless you learn how to do this <unlearn>. You either learn to unlearn quicker, on everything that reflects context, not just your core competency or … well … you will either be too slow <because that one part is like dragging algae on the bottom of a sailboat> or you will fail <because even that one part can blow up the entire engine>.

I know.

I know.

What I am suggesting is hard.

REALLY hard.

Because, as I noted earlier, discerning between principles and implementation of principles is often difficult to discern let alone explain in combination with the fact this will sometimes means letting go of something that has worked really well for you for a long time.

Now. To be clear.

I do not think that just because something is an ‘older idea’ that it is not usable. In fact I believe we have shed more good thinking under the guise of some bullshit ‘pop business culture’ soundbite type thinking than is good for us. But there are aspects of old thinking & ideas that can be updated.

I don’t suggest this simply or flippantly. I do so because I see the value of new thinking, but from a more practical aspect – the business world has changed in some dynamics that should make us not simply reapply a slightly tired business thinking ideas.

Once again. This is all hard. Really hard. It gets harder because the business world is demanding us to ‘think new faster.’ Most simply this has created the perception business life has become even more fragile than ever before which increases the stress upon us to do things faster (which encourages is to reapply past ideas & thinking that may have worked).

The perception is buttressed up by some contectual facts. A Yale professor noted the average lifespan of a company listed in the S&P 500 index of leading US companies has decreased by more than 50 years in the last century. <67 years in 1920s to 15 years today>. I’d also not in 2020 around ¾ of the S&P 500 are companies that either did not exist in 2010 or were below the awareness radar.

So how do principles stand the test of time. Well. Relevance is the name of the game. Which means context matters and adaptability addresses the most basic business truth that much of what used to work will not work now and what works today will most likely not work in the near future.

Old business models and old business thinking has been shaken to the core which has two obvisous consequences:

fundamental principles are mistakenly tossed away as outdoated (a mistake)

new (loudly spoken) ideas are confused with real principled thinking (a mistake)

This is not just because of ‘old people.’ This is thinking survival. You store away thoughts in your head and prioritize what you just use, and reuse, and what you unlearn and what you learn anew.

Look. I know I still hear people quote ‘good to great’ tripe <when I wish more people would pull out Covey’s ‘Habits of’ instead> so I know we get confused on what to hold on to and what to let go of.

I know I was just in a meeting where an incredibly smart person discussed the traditional purchase funnel <see image to left> and he was kind enough to chuckle when I pointed out that model type thinking had solid aspects, but there were significantly newer models which reflect the dynamics of today’s word better.

I guess I need to remind myself a couple things:

1. 1. I live, eat & breathe new thinking and new ways of doing things.
   2. Most people do not.

This doesn’t mean I am better than anyone, it is just that I am always seeking the ‘right way to think in a particular situation’ rather than ‘best practice for all.’ And I am involved with such a wide variety of industries and business and business people that ‘one way does not fit all’ and context, or contextually applying principled thinking, can often make a principle look not like a principle, but rather look like a new idea.

Today’s business world is all about living in a non-stagnant world. Business has always been restless … it just seems more restless.

Stay still and get run over.

Something you learned in the past, which is logical & makes sense, seems counterintuitive to ‘unlearn’

Or as John Maynard Keynes said:

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping the old ones”

We are all creatures of habit and custom ingrained by decades of repetition.

In addition. Smart people have a tendency to hold on to sensible smart ideas.

Escaping old ideas is hard.

REALLY hard <especially if they were good>. And sometimes seems counterintuitive to let go because “I found something that works and I want to maintain it as long as I can.’

Sounds smart.

Sounds sensible.

Uhm. Now hear the sound of your business getting crushed.

All that said.

What made me start writing this post?

An old friend of mine wrote the following words on his linkedin site and I liked them <albeit I did find a typo … to his chagrin>. It is about branding and advertising … but the concept behind the words ring true thru any business category:

===

I want to encourage our industry to evolve beyond the tired branding principles that haven’t changed since Oglivy made his bones over 30-years ago.

If you find yourself baffled by double-speak and special language that only brand experts seem to understand, trust your instincts and find a firm who is fast and whose counsel makes rational sense.

A client told me about his experience with one of the agencies in his stable:

“… it’s like talking to the Mandarins that keep all commoners from the Forbidden Palace … I don’t speak their language … the process takes too long … and I have other things to do ….”

Getting to the Forbidden Palace of Brand shouldn’t take three months and war chest of fees that would be better off in working media.

This, I know, will upset an industry cobbled together on pre-recession consulting contracts just to come up with a snappy line, color palette, and logo.

If you find yourself sitting in yet another meeting where somebody poses the question: “But who are we really, and who do we want to be when we grow up?”

Run.

You can shape your brand in less than four weeks. You and your company knows who they are and your consumers know who you are. The faster you come to leverage points and missed opportunities, the faster your retail or sales organization can get back to doing what they do best — SELLING.

You need to unleash a burlap sack of caffeinated ferrets into your marketing world to get things done, excite your organization, and make sales happen.

That’s where I come in … head caffeinated ferret at your service.

Mandarins need not apply.

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Look. I know it is difficult to stay in touch with the newest best thinking. I also know it is difficult to stay in touch with the principles. I even know it is difficult to discern what is good new thinking and what is shitty useless new thinking.

But.

Tired business thinking is tired business thinking.

Sorry.

But it is what it is.

Thinking with fresh legs will pass tired thinking any day.

All I know is that, personally, every time I hear someone speak tired business thinking I feel like I have swallowed a cloudy sky – its pretty but useless. I do believe the business world does need to reenege with some of the timeless principles but at the same time i believe the business world need to reinvigorate those principles within a contextually dynamic world.

Maybe I am also suggesting we need to begin teaching some classes on the differences between principles and ideas. Ponder.