transient assertions:

they are true today, but may not have been true yesterday or may not be true tomorrow

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My weakness, professionally, is the lack of any specific ‘hard’ skill. To be clear. I am fairly sure my ‘soft skills’ are not a strength. Regardless. That hard skill weakness makes my biggest professional vulnerability, well, stability. What I mean by that is a specific hard skill gains importance the more replicable or consistent a context is. What I also means by that is in order to facilitate my own professional survival I had to embrace progress or some version of consistent contextual change <facilitate organizational/brand/business continuous improvement>. It also meant not only embracing ‘transient assertions’, but figure out how to articulate the value of transient assertions.

Now. This does not mean everything changes. I have also said, and still do, that the best organizations typically run on parallel, but interconnected, paths – consistency/replicable and emergent/improvement.

But if you don’t have a specific skill to hang your hat on you need (blue to emphasize) to move upstream in a business. If you do, and you are really worth a shit, you’ll find your thinking, whether purposeful or not, has scraps of the larger company identity/strategy/vision underpinnings in it no matter how downstream you go once up that stream. This has a mutual benefit of imbuing the more tactical with the more strategic <or mission oriented> and imbuing the vision with some more pragmatic aspects. You become more able in linking scraps of skills with scraps of vision slowly but surely positioning yourself as a tapestry maker, or, a transient assertionist (I made that term up). The truly interesting aspect of this professional thought is that if you are any good you find you not only start sneaking into other conversations and other departments, but you are even welcomed or asked to. In addition, you will also find that “non asked for business building ideas” are more about company things then any brand things (but brands would benefit).

So, regardless of your actual ‘skill’ you just become comfortable wandering into the business of doing business.

That said.

I do think it matters what someone has done from a practical experience when doing a job. I struggle to think of an industry, department or function I have not interacted with professionally. I have worked with retail, CPG, services, franchises, multi-unit, global with local needs, technology startups and almost any business configuration imaginable. But, maybe more importantly, I have used all those experiences as Edward de Bono suggested, through lateral thinking to transfer appropriate learnings from one to another to create successful, distinct initiatives, ideas and improvements <value creation>.

I do think it matters what someone has done from a practical experience when doing a job. I have either worked in or directly managed Direct Marketing, Media, Ad agency Account Management, Creative process, brand planning, brand strategy, strategic planning (business consulting), social media, organizational behavior, digital planning, behavioral dynamics, etc. and as a result am quite familiar with how to guide thinking to practical output to results.  Heck. I have taught and implemented strategic planning, managed an advertising agency and, in general, have been able to elevate a variety of businesses to new points of distinction in competitive environments.

*** note: Points of distinction. Let me be specific.  It would be easy for someone to suggest a supermarket is a supermarket, an enzyme is an enzyme, a motor oil is a motor oil, a bank is a bank or whatever you would like to add. I used those because I have direct experience on those, as well as a variety of commodity-like industries, and I do not agree. A person has to understand how to identify the underlying components that create the distinctness of any business, often the subtle little things, and bring them to life in a way that will resonate with people and, ultimately, create some connection. I imagine I am suggesting connection and distinction have a looped relationship and one cannot exist without the other if you seek create value.

All of what you have just read may seem, uhm, restless. Well. It is.

But despite all the restlessness I have just highlighted there is a core consistency – principled thinking and principled application. While I believe if a business, and initiative, is not moving it will not survive, I also believe “continuous movement” demands embedding strategy in every tactic and tactical thinking within a strategy and embedding the organizational vision into every strategy. Maybe better said, mastering transient assertions to the benefit of the long-term business.

Anyway.

Here is the one thing I am consistent on. I believe every business, every product, every service, every initiative, has something worth telling a story about. If you are in business and do not believe that you should be in a different career. I also believe if you can stand up and tell a story with your knowledge, or what you know, all your restlessness can create value. What I mean by that is I could stand in front of accounting, ops, sales, customer service, a board … and tell a story (usually in a cascading dialogue – here is situation, here is what someone says first, the response, what some thinks, what some says, etc.) and thru the dialogue story cemented some credibility, offered some solutions/words thru the story dialogue and made the strategic point.

Stories even some things out which is helpful because restlessness tends to create some unevenness or asymmetry. That last point is important because growth just by its natural properties creates imbalances AND the business world <as well as the world writ large> encourages us to believe things should be tidy. Unfortunately, people are inherently untidy irrational things, improvement is rarely tidy and stories tend to tidy some things up.

Look.

Restless consistency is valuable because I believe business, in general, is a constant tug of war between freedom and focus.

It’s a little bit easier to have this tug of war if you have established business/brand heuristics because then in the debate you can lean in on them to gain some flexibility elsewhere.

But.

Large businesses worry so much about challengers (& are defensive rather than offensive) so they tend to conservatively hunker down on what they are afraid to lose rather than focus on what they could gain. It creates an inherent focus, but also stagnancy & lets others play in the “hey, I am interesting” zone.

Small businesses are scared about standing for nothing. They have had it pounded into their heads that the path to success is “stand for one thing.”  This creates a tightrope for any strategist in that they have to be able to articulate core focus as an incredibly solid lily pad while suggesting some freedom aspects and a “let’s follow what works” plan of action.

And new companies? Yikes. I just think new businesses have less margin for error and with business inherently attracted to ‘evenness’ & consistency (the list of reasons of why span from political to managing upwards to budgeting to articulation/looking smart) and, if you aren’t resilient and diligent, the arc of activity will always go to ‘one thing well’ not ‘restless consistency.’

Look.

Business itself is restless. Consistently restless.

Business itself is a transient assertion. Consistently transient.

I imagine my point is you have a couple of choices with regard to your career.

First. Hunker down and master a skill on the consistent part <and hope the transient part of business doesn’t kill that particular consistency>.

Second. Hunker down on restless learning and get good at applying that learning against the transient part.

I will not tell you which is better because, well, both offer value to a business and, yet, both do not offer any guarantee of business success. All I know is that in hunting and in business, a moving target is more difficult to hit so restless consistency may make your survival probabilities increase. Just think about it.

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cesiumadventures:

i just have this persistent feeling of “i’m not doing enough” combined with “i don’t have the energy to do anything” and it just really fucking sucks

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“Many people are busy trying to find better ways of doing things that should not have to be done at all. There is no progress in merely finding a better way to do a useless thing.”
Source: Ford News
11/15/1922

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Ever get the feeling you are doing a lot of ‘somethings’ and, yet, you look around and it sometimes looks like nothing? I tend to believe a lot of people feel some version of this. I have a stack of unanswered emails to people I really would like to respond to and, yet, I always have something to do. I rarely have an open minute, by my choice and I like it that way, but some of those minutes mean not doing something else. And therein lies ‘nothing.’ Nothing IS something. It resides in the choices left behind. I am doing nothing with all these emails and people who I genuinely like and conversations I genuinely would like to have and, yet, I have done nothing with them. They are something and what I have done is something and have created nothing in doing so. This may sound convoluted and slightly absurd, and it should.

It is indicative of the slightly warped pretzel logic we place to justify our productivity madness.

It is indicative of something generally happening in work.

Work never stops, we never stop, other people never stop, there are no stop signs, and yet with all this ‘not stopping’ productivity and productive performance has, well, stopped. Okay. Not stopped, but certainly hasn’t matched the amount of non-stoppedness it appears business is doing. I imagine I could say a bunch of things here but I would suggest the nonstop world costs us some creativity and absolutely costs us some critical thinking.

We are paddling so hard we can’t see where we are going or if we are even making any meaningful progress. It’s not like people aren’t trying to give is more advice on how to actually be productive because if you go to Amazon there are something like 100,000 books telling us how we can achieve more. If you don’t want to read, just pick one of the 1000’s of apps you can download onto your already nonstop 24/7 smartphone internet feed. The ‘hustle culture’ (and economy) is more a hamster wheel than hustle. While any ideal business progress trip should be one in which you reach some far-reaching destination, in today’s world it is just a circular treadmill encased in a cage.

This worship of productivity comes at the expense of everything else. It’s kind of like purposefully implementing mediocrity. Now. Within the productivity ideology they can’t see the mediocrity because their scale is biased – they don’t see the sacrifice; they see the achievements. They don’t see lost outcome possibilities; they see pragmatic outcome gains. This self-defeating behavior means a bunch of people are doing a lot of somethings all the while doing some nothings. There is no ebb and flow of imagination or creativity, it is all directed toward the God of Productivity. This God wields metrics of productivity to measure output and achievements, but also, we as human beings.

Look.

I don’t really need to share some research to be able to say, generally speaking, most workers are overworked <this can be time driven or task drive> which, generally speaking, lessens job performance, hence, productivity. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that technology adds on an additional burden to individual productivity stress – we also now compete against automation, AI and algorithms. We fight against the system and technology – in other words “the black box against us.”

Which leads me to the battle between more and zero sum.

More.

Growth, scale, expansion, higher, all are synonyms for “more.” Business is obsessed with more. If you did something yesterday, tomorrow can only be better if there is more than yesterday. It’s absurd and unhealthy. Let me use the business buzzword of the day, Transformation, to point out even that is never really about becoming better; it is always about producing “more faster” (better is a pleasant addition if it happens). ‘More’ simply begets an obsession with continuous output and THAT obsession arcs toward the worst of Taylorism in which Lillian Gilbreth-ism trumps Follett-ism.

The models of work are rewarded if they generate more regardless of whether it is true progress or not.

The models of work get rewarded if they generate more regardless of whether it is meaningful or not (because meaningful means ‘meet outcome objective.’

The models of work get rewarded if they generate more if they can simply be well oiled, or fine-tuned with more oil, thereby supporting the concept of human machinery.

But maybe even worse than treating people like machines is how business treats their work. I will talk about “achievement attitude” under zero sum, but suffice it to say that if achievements are all people truly get measured on <which feeds into what a person will identify as value and meaning> and More is always yelling in your mind, well, all you will focus on is more achievements – quantity not quality. “More” is a horrible corrosive productivity concept. “More” is actually a horrible corrosive concept for the world <invest some time reading Limits of Growth; Meadows/Meadows>.

Zero sum.

I am not sure, but it’s possible “more” could have worked okay in the models of work if we weren’t simultaneously stuck in a zero-sum mindset. In that mindset universe ‘more’ comes at the expense of someone else and, worse, if someone is getting “more” that means less for you.

It’s corrosive thinking and, paradoxically, reductive in nature. The pendulum in society has swung all the way over to achievement is all that matters. In fact, we are in a society where the Value of a person seems to be either driven solely by their outcomes/results or weighted so heavily by the outcomes/results that the ‘effort portion’ has minuscule value.

That’s … well … uhm … bad. Bad for individual meaning. Bad for society. Bad for Life lessons. Just bad.

It is bad because that means many people will ignore the price they will pay to achieve the outcome because the outcome, in and of itself, will contain all the value.

Yeah.

Think about that.

Taken to an extreme that would mean the attempt has zero value and trying and failing has zero, if not negative, value.

Ok.

That is bad.

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“But he did not understand the price.

Mortals never do.

They only see the prize, their heart’s desire, their dream … but the price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted.”

Neil Gaiman

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Which leads me to how zero-sum plays a role. That achievement attitude becomes even worse, for society, because it also suggests “what are we willing to do to get what we want” is a zero sum game.

What do I mean?

Well.

You are willing to do anything it takes to get what you want <the achievement>.

The hell with rules … they are for people who don’t value achievement enough.

The hell with guardrails and guidelines … they are for people who are scared to do what it takes.

This attitude cleverly steals away freedom of choice in that it suggests the only choice is the one that ensures achievement.

“Measures of productivity do not lead to improvement in productivity.”

W. Edwards Deming; Out of Crisis

This attitude strips choices of anything truly worthwhile like dignity and respect and humanity because all of those things are not criteria for what is the ultimate value – the result or outcome. Productivity is inextricably tied to achievement which also suggests productivity that does not attain some objective achievement has little or no value. It’s a horrible way of thinking that actually equates productivity with gamification theory. Horrible.

I say all this because zero sum belief sucks the oxygen out of meaningful ‘doing’, or productivity, by sucking out the true freedom to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances and to choose one’s own way in doing things. There is no freedom because only one type of productivity is deemed the winner and anyone not achieving that is a loser.

In the end.

Some people suggest we need to prioritize new ideas rather than productivity. I am not so sure. I think we should be prioritizing meaningful progress – for both individual and the business. While this version of progress is not attached to any direction or quantity of things, it does accommodate productivity <which I believe if it isn’t worshiped can be a valuable aspect of value creation and meaning>. I would suggest the future is actually not about more, nor less, nor any quantity. But. I am not suggesting a business doesn’t have to sell some ‘quantity’ in order to sustain itself, it’s just that any quantity becomes a result of a focus on progress where doing something means something. This thought also suggests the future isn’t going to be solved by working smarter, but rather a smarter way of working. I would also suggest the current way of working is not a logical result of centuries of logical reasoned thinking about how work should be done, but rather a battle between ideas on a way to work. That last thought becomes a semi-important thought because it suggests we don’t need a new way of doing business, or a new way of thinking, or even some magical transformation, but instead we should be seeking out the ideas that exist and maybe lost a key battle here or there. It is not about a fundamental shift, but rather a revisit to the fundamentals. In doing so we change the concept of productivity and progress in business and that begets a shift in systems, policies and practices. Ponder.

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“There is no happiness for people at the expense of other people.”

Anwar Sadat

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We talk a lot about winning these days. The most used is that horrible mis-quoted Vince Lombardi quote “Winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing” <he actually said “the will to win is everything”>.

I would suggest all the talk is simply a bastardized version of a focus on ‘outcomes’ which is the bane of the business world today.

I would suggest happiness is being tied so tightly to ‘winning’ that its cost, the expense as it were, is suffocating the larger perspective.

This expense can come in a variety of larger perspective forms — character, self-limitation and time.

While this seems like it should be simple, it is not. In fact it is a tricky balance for anyone.

This is actually a discussion on the balance, or proportional, between me <as in the individual> and we <the business, or, how we earn our living>.

Look. I talk a lot about balance in Life and in business.

To be clear. Not “work/life” balance but balance as in good & bad or pragmatic & hopeful or pessimism & optimism. These are the quandaries that seeking success creates from a moral, organizational culture/political and even spiritual perspective. Stuff like that.

Here is a truth not maybe people discuss.

Success should demand some sacrifice.

Uh oh.

If that is true, have you noticed how rare it is that when someone is focused on winning they rarely talk about ‘at what expense’ other than effort?

The fact it is not discussed is a reflection of some decision that ‘the win’ is the only thing that matters and the expense is always worth it <to win>.

This is an incredibly easy trap to fall into.

Why?

I believe it is because most of us really have no clue what we want to do in our lives and with our lives. Yeah. We may have some ‘short horizon priorities’, but anything that resembles a ‘more than minor Life’ is more often than not simply out of our mental framing. This means that it is pretty natural that in a world where pretty much everything seems in flux that we want to have some things that are tangible to measure progress and ‘what is.

And that means ‘winning’ all of a sudden assumes a fairly high priority in one’s Life and in business.

And that means ‘at what expense’ is more often than not relegated to the trashcan because ‘the win’ is all that matters.

It is a downward spiral, or doom loop, to ‘just win.’

Let me be clear.

While I just rationalized how and why this happens … this is fucked up.

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“People do things to survive, and then after they survive, they can’t live with what they’ve done.”

Adam Johnson

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It is fucked up because all of a sudden this ‘winning’ thing we are focused on begins to infringe upon our Life purpose or maybe instead of saying purpose – the soul of who and what we are.

You may look at winning as a means to survive, but afterwards – maybe not immediately but at some point – you realize you have to be accountable for what you have done under the guise of ‘surviving.’

I don’t really care how you define ‘life purpose’, but, simplistically, most of us want to reflect upon our lives not only looking at some version of success, but, more importantly, at the quality of the success.

*** note: ‘success’ can be ‘doing something meaningful’ or ‘doing something that meant something to someone else (impact)’

And by ‘quality’ I mean “at what expense did I achieve that success?”

Here’s the truth.

We exist for some finite period of time.

During that time we do things. Some of these things are important. Some of them are unimportant. The important things are supposed to give our lives meaning and happiness.

Which means, well, what if you get them wrong? what if you fuck up the big important things?

Shit.

What happens if you fuck up the unimportant things?

I say that to make the point this is why moments matter. Uhm. This is why all moments matter.

I say that to make the point this is why ‘how you win’ matters.

I say that to make the point this is why ‘at what expense’ becomes maybe the most important question someone can ask when pursuing winning.

Look. Almost everyone asks “what do we need to do to win?, but ‘expense?’ … not so much.

I imagine my real point is that with such a huge emphasis on winning we need to recognize that everything involves sacrifice.

Everything includes some expense.

So despite the fact the answer in today’s world almost always seems to be “win” <at any cost>, the question everyone should actually be asking is ‘at what expense is tolerable?”

And therein lies the issue.

When someone does actually ask that question money, energy & time are the three easiest expenses. Everyone focuses on these because, frankly, to avoid the bigger potential expenses. They are real, but, a lazy expense discussion.

Self-limitation is the next expense that steps up. This one is fraught with peril. Peril in that if you admit you are not capable of doing what must be done you become a, well, loser. We have set some absurd expectations with regard to ‘the sky is the limit’ and ‘if you want to win you need to do whatever it takes.’ The latter avoids a possible truth that ‘whatever it takes’ may actually be beyond your own self limitations/abilities. But nonetheless, in today’s world, limits are for losers. That is absurd.

The last expense is character. Throw in maybe integrity, compassion and possibly dignity <yours and others>.

This is the expense that ‘winners’ tend to avoid discussing because it dangerously nears “nice guys don’t win’ territory. And as we eye this ‘nice guy’ <or ‘play by the rules’> expense we suddenly step onto the slippery slope of moral relativism. We begin justifying our behavior based on other’s behavior. If someone is cheating, or stretching the rules, or … god forbid … simply being slimy soulless cutthroat competitors … well … then we begin to morph into their behavior because they have established the rules to win.

This is just a race to the bottom.

Anyway. This is the expense that almost everyone avoids discussing because it dangerously nears ‘ethics’ or “what is right versus what is wrong’ <which, when it comes to winning, becomes an incredibly uncomfortable discussion>.

And all of this last expense circles how we, each of us, would answer ‘what does it mean to live a good life?’

This is really all about living ethically and conducting business ethically. This is about what you do and how the objectives need to align with a certain moral code <this can get even trickier because not everyone’s moral code is the same>.

It is certainly ethical to pursue money, status and ‘the win.’ But do we have a moral obligation to pursue those things not at the expense of others or by ‘doing the right thing’?

You actions matter.

How you achieve a win matters.

Winning, or achieving outcomes, is desirable, but you should always seek to identify ‘at what expense?” If you do not do this, while you may be able to count a shitload of wins, they may end up looking a little hollower in the end – the expense may be too high.

For, in the end, the expense is that of character. And that is an expense that no win, no number of wins, can ever generate enough to pay the cost. Choose wisely.

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“If I’m sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?”

José Saramago

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“There is never a wrong time to do the right thing.”

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“It is not that a person makes meaning, as much as that the activity of being a person is the activity of meaning-making … the most fundamental thing we do with what happens to us is organize it. We literally make sense.”

Developmental psychologist Robert Kegan

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ideas that are the most difficult to validate can feel like the most important ones

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Complexity, in business, is in the midst of a weird time. In the attempt to translate complexity-in-theory to complexity-in-practice, a whole bunch of people are turning themselves into pretzels to simplify, uhm, complexity. The intent is to make it understandable and manageable (ability to navigate or as Donella Meadows suggests “dance with the system”), but in doing so there have been a variety of quadrants, some delightful descriptors (see: ‘wicked problems’) and, in general, a bunch of things which actually make complexity even more complex in the minds of people in business as well as in practice.

I continue to believe the rough-ish diagram Stacey placed in “Managing the Unknown” is one of the more practical views of complexity for business.

One of the things I like about it, and have liked, is that it has its own version of an OODA loop. This seems important to me because navigating complexity is less about the decision and more about observing decisions and decide what to do with the effect, or effects, which exist as a consequence of the initial stimulus <other past decisions>. In the past I have called this ‘situational awareness.’ That said. OODA loops WITHIN complex dynamics is how to iteratively navigate complexity without simply reacting. You do something and then manage against that decision because it is not a linear directional world in which a problem leads to an action that leads to a solution. Instead, we live in an infinite looped dynamic world. Each action is based on current conditions, such actions affect future conditions, and changed conditions become the basis for later action.  The system, and systems nested within, are reflections of ceaseless connections and feedback loops (even if they are nonlinear). This makes complexity tricky because you can do something with good intentions, say to resolve a problem, and actually alleviate that problem and, yet, be causing another unseen snowballing problem. By applying pressure <or a resolution> in one place tends to create some equal opposing pressure (or pressures) in another place.

Regardless. While that, generally, sounds complex – because it is – the simple truth is everything is connected and nothing is ever really stagnant. But the complexity folk just don’t seem satisfied with that. We need labels and words and definitions. To that I say we don’t need to be brilliant; we need to find ways of doing useful things.

“If you keep certain creative people in too tight a box, they blow up the box.”

Liz Phair

Anyway.

One of the most interesting books I have read about complexity was not actually about complexity. it was about people and society – The Listening Society by Hanzi Freinacht. Ok. Hanzi Freinacht is a complex guy, complex thinker, and talks about the future of society and humankind (kind of a complex topic).  The reason why I believe Listening Society is about complexity and business is because it is about people. And while we like to talk about systems, algorithms, digital infrastructure, culture, and, well, anything but people, inevitably if you want to navigate complexity you need to get people’s heads screwed on right and get everyone thinking about the right things.  I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out, pragmatically, business is a lot like living life in that for the most part you are just trying to get shit done the best you possibly can. It sounds like a grind and aspects of it really are – but can be a thinking grind. So, despite the fact we speak of the rise of the ‘knowledge worker’ the truth is if a business wants to have some agility it needs thinker/doers (or doer/thinkers) or at least have teams in which there is some equilibrium between needed thinking and needed doing and the grind it out mentality needed to navigate complexity and a complex world.

Which leads me back to Hanzi.

He suggests that each person is a cross section of the self – the depths & dimensions – and the conflict and potential inherent in the interactions with social, economic and cultural fabric – all amped up in a technological world. Freinacht calls this ‘a transpersonal perspective.’ Its not just that we are each a billiard ball that interacts with other people. We co-emerge or ‘intra-act.’  He suggests we have a lived experience as well as a creational experience. We experience and absorb from all experiences and in doing so we, systemically, change. What this means is that society is present within each individual as well as within the relationships one forges with what we call ‘self.’ Here is the uncomfortable suggestion — there is no true individual nor is there any true collective there is simply an evolving interlinked emergent set of ‘transviduals.’ This makes each of us inseparable, in a complete sense, rather than some simplistic unique separate life story. This means each person should be viewed as an open and social process, a “whirlwind of participation and cocreation of society.” Society, or social dynamics (which is relevant to the business world), as a whole is then viewed as a self organizing system which creates each of us (transviduals) who, in turn, recreate society. We are all social constructions. We are all, in fact, parts & pieces of one another and affect one another. We consist of many different influences (which makes the idea of individual a constraining idea), roles and perspectives WITHIN a multitude of contexts. In other words, we are complex.

Which leads me to what Ralph Stacy called “bounded instability.” People are inherently unstable <I call them uneven> and forcing consistency, rather than coherence, actually limits possibilities (stability comes at a cost). His thought is to relax the inhibitors and optimize (in a situational equilibrium, not balance) what he calls ‘fit & split’ and what I call coherence.

But lurking within what I just shared is that people systems inherently are driven by stable laws of behavior (boundaries) which actually CREATE specific kinds of instability, yet, this creates some aspect of patterns. It sounds crazy but stick with me here. The tighter the boundaries the broader the instability (fragility). But stable, not constrictive, boundaries create patterns.

“Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds, not believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks – those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.”

Zarathustra (Hanzi Freinacht)

Patterns? Reality is made up of inner landscapes rubbing up against each other. This means reality is emergent and we are not successful by slavishly following ‘laws of’ protocol, but rather our ability to sense make reality and navigate emergent patterns. What this means from a complexity standpoint is that Life, business, any environment, is best felt, not organized (or controlled).

That thought is kinda important because complexity, to the everyday worker, isn’t about chaos or stability or any management guru word, its about competing demands and the tension between meeting status quo demands and opportunistic demands WITHIN time demands.  Reconciling this is tough because most people make it a binary choice and the natural arc of business behavior is status quo because of a pressure to produce consistent and reliable outcomes. I believe it was Dewey who suggested people, in general, tend to formulate our beliefs in terms of “either–or”, between which alternatives we recognize no intermediate possibilities. Just like algorithms, which choose only in X or Y choicemaking, we tend to strive for clarity to such an extent we will make things simplistic, i.e., a highly probable assessment becomes a 100% choice and 100% invested <when probability and choice or not equal in truth>. Circling back to sensing or feeling patterns, this means we need to avoid either/or binary choicemaking so that we can ride patterns rather than control patterns.

 

structure influences behavior is a central principle underlying systems thinking

complex systems resist behavior change

the active energy in an organization is people

a process is only good, and efficient, as the market is built to serve. if the market changes, the process may still generate positive results, but it will no longer be efficient and will continue to decay in its effectiveness.

Anyway. I am not a big believer in social system design, more in trying to understand systems dynamics, but ignoring the fact that all systems, including social, HAVE a design and therefore can be ‘re-designed’ (in some form or fashion) would be naïve. Systems exist everywhere. Systems influence everything we do.  The idea of a social system implies that relationships between its parts strongly influence human behavior. To put the matter more bluntly, a social system implies that people act partially as cogs in a social and economic machine. In other words, people play roles demanded by pressures of the whole system. This idea is a bit uncomfortable because at its core it suggests people aren’t totally free to make their own decisions. That said. Suffice it to say all social systems have some ‘design’ features (or have actually been designed) which, tying back to Hanzi, means people, as social constructs, are designed by social systems.

Yup. The structure of the system will define behaviors. I say that because one cannot blame individuals for most failures, but rather the system itself. Yet. We tend to highlight the accountability of ‘the individual’ in some fairly unhealthy ways within business. Circling back to Freinacht, the entire idea of individual or collective is outdated in today’s world. Cluetrain Manifesto called it ‘the hyperlinked organization’ and the reality is “I am parts of you, you are parts of me, and the whole is a malleable mix of parts of all of us – even those we interact with outside the internal system within the business.” Business and our little personal circles of existence are simply a system within a system, or of the system, and people are systems in and of themselves. That’s today’s world. I imagine I make that point to suggest gamification (which I dislike anyway) of business tends to seek out ‘individual motivations’ when in reality all gamification does is create less than unifying aspects within an organization (when business, in general, while not seeking unity, should seek unifying systems). Gamification, or many of the silly leadership tactics, are attempts to untangle complexity into manageable units. That’s a less-than-useful approach. The intertwined nature of complexity means one shouldn’t be seeking untangle anything, but rather seek to get them to develop TOGETHER to create new evolutions of the system. It isn’t about shedding things, but rather creating things. My point, I imagine, is complexity does not exist to be solved, but rather developed. That thought, in particular, is counter to what society encourages us to do.

Lastly.

We need to deal with this. Remember earlier I suggested we are social constructs. If we do not deal with it, we, well, stop constructing <and that is bad>. This isn’t some theoretical mumbo jumbo issue I am sharing. We need to deal with it because people will be increasingly squeezed in a complex world. Squeezed? What I mean by that is the world is not going to become any less demanding with regard to ‘results’ or outcomes and the world is not going to become any less complex and overwhelming. In fact. They will both likely become more. Under the pressure of time and demand for ‘do something/decide something’ our behaviors will inevitably arc toward the simplistic on our bad, most overwhelmed, days (and simplicity on a good day). In our inability to navigate the multidimensional abstraction of each moment/situation/event/decision/etc., we will lean in on what we believe is our true ability – intuitive behavior. Uh oh. “Believe” as an ability is a misnomer. In a complex world 99% of us suck at intuitive behavior <heck, most of the time all of our intuition is dubious at best> and actually simply grasp the closest key we can find to unlock the door to get the hell out of the complex hallway we seem stuck in. The truth, the reality, is that even the most time-constrained decisions demand some mental grind. If we don’t, then even at our best, we will always remain a step or two behind not only the world but behind any semblance of a sane world. But here is where it gets, well, bad. As the world becomes increasingly complex and we become increasingly overwhelmed and under increasing pressure to ‘do something’, there will always be someone peddling ‘simplicity’ or some tool/tactic to ease us through that situation. Uhm. Easy does not equal what is best for us <see the endless apps claiming to streamline our interactions with the world only to divert our attention from some pretty important things>. Streamlining is more likely to strip away the important than to strip away the unimportant. We need to expand our abilities in order to expand the space we need to navigate as well as to simply expand space so we stop getting squeezed. And maybe that is the most important point. Look. Complexity has a nasty habit of making us feel like we are being squeezed – even when we are not. Gaining the ability to expand space is actually improving reality and, well, an improved reality is a reality more readily navigated. This can be done and we need to shed the defeatist attitude which arcs our mindsets into the space of being ‘overwhelmed’ versus ‘whelmed’. It is within that space in which we may not completely shed the constraints of complexity, but we can certainly push out on the boundaries to give us some space to breathe a bit. And, well, I imagine that’s the key to navigating complexity – space to breathe. No quadrant, no theory, no management guru, will give you any tool better than space to breathe. Complexity CAN be suffocating so the simple action of breathing is the path to navigation. Ponder.

—–

“Once the inner connection is grasped, all theoretical belief in the permanent necessity of existing conditions collapses before their collapse in practice”

Karl Marx

——

“It’s never the changes we want that change everything.”

Junot Díaz

—–

How often have we identified a strategy and then went about identifying the obstacles within the system to effectively bring it to life? I would suggest more often than not this is exactly what we do. So, then we go about fixing the system, or fine tuning it to match the strategy, only to find the obstacles we foresaw were not really the inhibitors we thought (or by fixing them we created some unintended consequence instead).

The alternative, I imagine, is maybe we design a strategy to most effectively match the system we have only to watch the system change as it implements the strategy.

Both are flawed albeit the latter less so than the former.

The only thing a dynamic system guarantees is the future you foresee, or envision, will not happen.

My point here is you do need some plans, but plans, in a dynamic market, shouldn’t be followed to the detriment of the objective.

My point here is you need some strategies, but strategies, in a dynamic market, should sometimes be pursued to the detriment of a planned objective.

My point here is you need to recognize that your system is in some cases is not worth the energy to change (use as it exists) and in others tweak to enable plans and strategies, i.e., your system is both an enabling and a restricting constraint.

My point here is that strategies should nest within a system, or system dynamics, rather than have systems support a strategy <note: this is a general rule which under circumstances can be broken>.

Ok. That nested thought.

Nested dynamic processes ARE the system process. Anyone who suggests “this is our process” and describes it as some discrete, mutually exclusive thing, is on drugs. Any one process is simply something you have chosen to put boundaries around just to analyze and describe <that is a bastardization of a Donella Meadows thought>. Processes are layered, distinctly paced and intersectional. There are slow variables to fast variables all of which create patterns with slow to faster moving parts. This means, not only those things happen in combinations of speeds, but that also change occurs, and is encouraged, to happen at different speeds. The only way to manage this is to reduce environment variables to attempt to manipulate the context to create positive dynamics for process/system to thrive. I’d be remiss if I didn’t state these are ‘limited time contexts’ and more often than not dissolve faster than any business person would like. I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out this also demands:

• Different configurations of strategy

• Emergent strategy implementation

• Predictive strategies only used for framing not execution

All these layers and connections can create what appear to seem like fluid patterns and interactions, but are actually a makeup of somewhat unexpected patterns (within the transactions, community and world) but typically within a range of anticipated behavior. This also means that while a pattern is occurring, simultaneously, new patterns are being created (new patterns also create new possibilities). This may seem simultaneously exciting and frightening (organizations like tidiness and predictability & replication), but what I can say it should be simultaneously opportunistic and dynamic.

It is key to remember that systems, left to their own devices <maybe with some constraints>, have the ability to expand the proper strategy beyond the imagination of any objective one can place on it.

That said. More strategies die within systems than they do in the marketplace. Think about that. Think about that for a long time because if you don’t recognize the doom loop between strategies and systems you are, well, doomed.

===

“The world went on the same after all. The same things happened every morning. So what if they did not like her? She would go on the same.”

Harriet the Spy

===

Let me get this out of the way upfront: likeability, in and of itself in an organization, is deadweight.

Yeah.

I just said that.

Now. I am not talking about people wanting to be liked. I believe Alicia Menendez wrote a book called “the likeability trap’ which deals with that.

I am speaking of how people desiring to ‘build a culture’ saying things like “its important we like each other.” No. It isn’t. It isn’t important you like everyone, its important to not actively dislike everyone <that is different than liking everyone> and it is important to respect everyone. It’s a business not a circle of friends.

Look.

I am not suggesting someone seek to be unlikeable nor am I suggesting actually recruiting based on finding unlikeable people. Shit. Liking people you work with actually increases some social cohesion. The tricky part about that is effective business culture is more about professional cohesion.

What I mean by that is say you have Joe, and everyone likes Joe. No one has anything bad to say about him and, in fact, almost every conversation begins with “I like Joe”. But then the inevitable shoe drops … “but.” He’s likeable but doesn’t contribute shit. He’s just the likeable guy in the office taking someone’s salary who may be a little less likeable, but you can count on to get good shit done when the business of doing business needs to be done. Yeah. Professional cohesion is grounded in contribution, productivity and respect.

Please.

Please no one suggest I am suggesting a binary. This isn’t an either/or discussion. This is a “what is most important discussion” and a ‘proportional” discussion. Let me address the latter. “Likeable’ takes on disproportionate importance in many businesses and how they view ‘culture’. What I mean by that is whenever a review comes up or senior folk are gathered around some mahogany conference room table the “everyone likes him” cloaks all the other business negatives surrounding good ole Joe. Yeah. Proportionally we seem to disproportionately weight the importance of likeability higher than just professional contribution. Its almost like we view the likeability/contribution organizational formula as a zero-sum analysis where a lot here, zeros out a little here. That’s slightly absurd and not really a good way of ‘constructing a healthy culture.’

Let me be clear.

Joe is deadweight.

Joe is also actually bad for the culture. Yeah. Deadweight and bad. Deadweight in that salary earned is supposed to be related to business value provided and in this case that translates into “we are paying him because he contributes to the likeability in our culture” (maybe suggesting he contributes in some way to social cohesion). Which leads me to bad. Bad in that everyone else in the company senses that if you don’t really have anything to contribute, but figure out how to be likeable you can pull down a sweet salary and get healthcare.

In the end. I dislike, no, hate when people discuss likeability when it is related to culture. “We want to be known as likeable” is a horrible objective. I am fine if someone states “lets make sure we are not unlikeable as we craft a distinct professional position in the marketplace”, but likeable? Please.

Complexity is good. Complications are bad, yet, some things that are complicated can be extremely useful – but inherently fragile.

If you say you think your business is complex, that’s good. It means your business has a shot of being successful in what is a complex, dynamic, marketplace.

If you say you think your brand is complex, that is good. It means your brand is a reflection of humans – who are complex.

If you think messaging or communicating what your business does is complex, that is good. Complex things are inherently interesting to people <the paradox is multiplicity is interesting but singularity is more easily embedded cognitively>.

Now. Complicated is defined by complexity theory people as linear in nature. Or, as the author of ‘It’s Not Complicated: The Art and Science of Complexity in Business’ Rick Nason suggests, “the components can be separated and dealt with in a systematic and logical way that relies on a set of static rules or algorithms. It may be hard to see, but there’s a fixed order in something that is merely complicated and that allows you to deal with it in a repeatable manner.”

There are a number of people who, theoretically and conceptually, can sit anyone down, even businesses, and parse out some really important distinctions between complexity and complicated. And while it is true complexity and complicated are two different things, in the business world, pragmatically speaking, most business people work with the complicated shit and attempt to reduce or eliminate complications so that potential, within a complex system, can be released. That doesn’t mean complexity shouldn’t be examined nor does it mean complexity shouldn’t be ‘managed’ <or as Donella Meadows suggested “danced with’> just that, in general, complexity is good, complications are bad, complicated is the way most businesses get shit done. For most business conversations, this is how to set the stage to get people to focus on the right things, in the right ways, to get the right things done.

Which leads me to simple or simplicity. We talk about those things all wrong. In fact, I would argue business should just get rid of those words. Toss them into the “misguided and less than useful business thoughts” trash bin.

Everyone should focus on ‘understandable.’

Why?

If you buy into complexity and the fact complexity is inherently good <on all aspects of a business>, then the natural achievement to be desired is how to make it understandable.

If you assume complexity is good <and necessary to be successful>, and assume if people understand it, they will:

<a> feel smarter,

<b> feel like they are in & of a world they believe exists,

<c> feel more relevant because it is in & of that world, and

<d> be empowered to take action however that action is defined – buy, decide, choose, think, sensemake, whatever.

Then ‘understandability’, not simplicity, becomes the path to not only thriving in a complex marketplace, but managing a complex business.

I would be remiss if I didn’t end by pointing out the objective of every business is meaningful value creation <the value created has value to whoever it is being offered to>. That means the more understandable you can make your complexity, for those doing & thinking as well as those doing the purchasing, the higher the value you offer and, of course, the higher the price you can charge.

Ponder.

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

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.

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

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

“The life so short, the craft so long to learn.”

Hippocrates

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

“Ninety percent of paid work is time-wasting crap. The world gets by on the other ten.”

John Derbyshire

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism

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

How many times have we sat back and said “I can do that job”?

Now. To be clear. I am going to talk about this from a business-to-business perspective and not the corner of the bar-to-‘some job’ perspective because from the corner of the bar, after a couple of beers, any of us can do any job better than the person who is currently doing it.

This is an “I have been in the workplace, I feel like I have had some success and … well … shit … I can do that job” perspective.

OK. I am chuckling a little, c’mon, let’s face it, I don’t care who you are and where you have worked, you have eyed what another person is doing and thought you could do it. At some point, if you have had some success, all jobs start having some commodity-like characteristics which tease you into believing shifting from one to another just isn’t that difficult.

Ok. To be fair. I have never lacked in business confidence. I do not believe there is a business problem that cannot be solved and I also believe <with some realistic pragmatic goggles on> that there is not a problem I cannot solve if I hunker down and get all the information I need. This can make me aggravating to work with on occasion because, well, I make no apologies for “how I may repair things”.

But that shouldn’t be confused with believing I can do any job.

Ok.

Yeah.

I admit.

I am certainly guilty at points in my career where I have certainly thought “I could do that job” over a wide array of responsibilities and unrelated industries.

** Note. I rarely thought I could do it better … just that I could do it.

……….. my MBA at Wake Forest experience ………..

I would say that my MBA experience, a great experience with great professors at Wake Forest, encouraged me to think this way. It was a case study program which inherently encouraged thinking skills over black & white discipline skills. I tend to believe a good MBA program insures you know enough about a specific discipline to be dangerous if you overestimate your own knowledge, but effective enough to be able to understand the discipline to apply it in a general management scope.

Now.

In general, I think this attitude, on the positive side, permits you to make the leaps you have to make to jump into new jobs, new responsibilities and new positions.

In general, I think this attitude, on the negative side, can make you overlook some skills other people have as well as … at its worst … can put you in positions in which you will fail in a spectacular fashion.

I imagine as someone gets promoted, as I did, every step up showed me that there was a shitload I didn’t know overall, as well as about the responsibilities of a specific job, but at the same time it also continuously reinforced that I could “do that job.”

Success in business is a double edged sword.

Conversely.

………. what you know versus what you do not know ………

As someone gets promoted they also can see that some people got their jobs not because they necessarily had the experience or skills for the job, but simply because they had the appearance they could do the job.

You watched as these people invested gobs of energy trying to “fake it until they actually make it” or, worse, they realized they were in over their heads and invested even more energy simply maintaining a facade of bullshit to hide their hollowness.

I would also note that given your experience on the last thing I just shared that also encourages someone to believe they could, well, “do that job.”

The higher I got and the broader my experiences, my sense of “I cannot really do that job” increased with regard toward the jobs I really shouldn’t do. It didn’t diminish my sense of ability to handle increased responsibility, it simply made me more reflective of other skill sets and the reality of certain jobs.

To be clear. There is a certain group of people who never reach this realization. They tend to be either sociopaths or oblivious narcissists, but they do exist.

Anyway. My real realization on this topic came when I reached a general management position <and did some consulting>.

It was there that I recognized jobs are like icebergs. 90% of a job you never see until you actually do the job. And to successfully do the part you don’t see needs a couple of things beyond the obvious ‘I need to be competent with regard to the specific skill itself’ aspect:

Attitude alignment

source: Tom Graves, Services and Disservices

This attitude goes way beyond the simplistic “I can do the job.” This attitude is more with regard to what you are actually good at.

As I have stated before I am more a renovator than a builder.  That is a mindset. My attitude is just put me in a room with all the puzzle pieces and I can rearrange them, maybe polish off a couple, maybe smooth out some edges that no longer fit well and put a different puzzle together that works better than the one that exists.

And then there are people who say ‘I envision a puzzle and build the pieces.”

Those are two different attitudes that, certainly, have some overlap but also, certainly, drive a different type of style and ability to succeed in one type of job versus another type of job. I believe many people are successful in their jobs, and new jobs, because they have the proper insight into themselves and position themselves well to take advantage of this insight.

I would also add that a leader who can see within a person’s ‘skill set’ to recognize this attitude will also be the type who can hire incredibly effectively. Not all leaders and hirers can. Some simply see the façade and surface abilities and believe they are easily transferable and hire them believing anyone can do the job if they have that appearance of a type of surface skill set.

The less-than-obvious skill set

… example of under the radar understanding (Juran Institute) …

Each skill, each specialty, has layers to its depth & breadth. Let’s say this is the “art” of the skill <I sometimes refer to it as “the shadow of your skill”>.

When you are a junior person you are demanded day in and day out to craft your pragmatic ‘non-artistic’ skills. You learn how to screw screws into holes efficiently and hammer nails into their proper places effectively.

As you gain seniority you are demanded to start incorporating the art aspects of your craft. I like to explain this as you have to learn to be more of an architect of your department, skill and specialty. By the way, not everyone can do his and not every department head is good at this and it tends to start filtering out those who move on to the next level … general management.

And if you move up even more into general management you are demanded to gain some skills in the “art” of combining all the skills into the overall progress of a company beyond the simplistic “are each department doing their fricking job.”

Ponder this.

In general the biggest difference between thinking you can do a job and actually being able to do the job is your less than obvious skill set. For example … I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in a conference room with a CFO who has displayed a skill set that made me think “shit, this company is lucky to have them” not because they knew all the accounting mumbo jumbo, but because they knew how to wield account skills in ways that  the company benefited beyond accounting.

Pick your C-level title and I would say the same thing.

At the corner of the bar you have no clue whether you have this ‘less than obvious skill set’ and if you actually have the experience you may only have a sense of whether this skill set exists. This is an intangible, however, 90% of the time this intangible arises from some relevant experience <maybe not within that specific discipline but a discipline nonetheless> … so your experience does matter.

So.

I decided to write about this today because, frankly, as a business guy I know you cannot do a job simply because you say “I can do that job” and that experience really does matter and that simply because you believe something … <sigh> … does not make it so.

I will say that I have learned this lesson the hard way and it permits me to be able to call a bullshitter a bullshitter and to be able to point out that some roles & responsibilities dictate at least some relevant experience in order to be effective & efficient. Just because you think you can “do that job” does not mean you can actually “do that job.” It takes some self-awareness to know that.

The lack of self-awareness has a ripple effect.

In a bar your lack of self-awareness can create a range of responses – some chuckles, out right laughter of disbelief and maybe even some aggravation if it inches into what some of the people actually do sitting at the table.

In a business your lack of self-awareness can create some real business repercussions. Not only may you be out of your depth, but you may actually start making some poor hires who are also out of their depth and that kind of shit gathers negative momentum <down the slippery slope of less-than-competent results>.

In business you get fired for that shit.

In business that kind of shit gets the entire business in trouble.

Anyway. Not everyone can do a job. That’s the message of the day.

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

“Anyway, I wanted to end this on a hopeful, positive note, but, seeing as how my sense of hope and positivity is still shrouded in a thick layer of feeling like hope and positivity are bullshit.

I’ll just say this: Nobody can guarantee that it’s going to be okay, but — and I don’t know if this will be comforting to anyone else — the possibility exists that there’s a piece of corn on a floor somewhere that will make you just as confused about why you are laughing as you have ever been about why you are depressed.

And even if everything still seems like hopeless bullshit, maybe it’s just pointless bullshit or weird bullshit or possibly not even bullshit.

I don’t know.

But when you’re concerned that the miserable, boring wasteland in front of you might stretch all the way into forever, not knowing feels strangely hope-like.”

—

Allie Brosh

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

“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.”

―

Markus Zusak

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

This is about the grind, why the grind <for most of us> is not a bad thing, yet, many people are trying to convince you that your grind is misery (despite it making you happy).

The grind. I imagine most of us look at day to day work as having a fundamental grindness to it. Not exactly mundane, but a sense of “working your way through what needs to be done.” Yes. If you like what you do, it isn’t a bad grind. Even if you aren’t sure you like what you do, you put up with the not-so-good grind aspects because there are glimpses of ‘not grind surprises’ and your grind provides a number of outcomes which give you a sense of satisfaction <at its most fundamental level> and a sense of meaning <at the highest level>.

All that said.

The grind is actually rhythm. It offers a basic cadence to life and our work. This cadence is very personal, although a business should pay attention to it, and often is incredibly foundational to a successful career.

We get a paycheck. We have responsibilities. We have to do lists. We get annual reviews. We have bills to pay. We have financial responsibilities (some accepted as part of Life and some reflection of poorer choices).

All of those things do not seem complex, but it is complexity cloaked in the simplicity of a grind. If I were a contrarian, I could suggest this is the ultimate elegance of simplicity. That said. I would note we take all this complexity, under the grander narrative of ‘the grind’, and we establish a rhythm which for the most part doesn’t keep us up at night because, well, it works. Call it a coping mechanism, call it “life efficacy”, call it what you want, but make sure you see ‘the grind’ for what it is.

To be clear. This is not a rut.

** Note: ornière, rodera, keréknyom,   kiima  <rut> or être en rut, in een sleur, essere in un solco, olla kiima <be in a rut>.  Rut as in ‘an elongated hole.’ Oh my. So being too consistent or predictable is living in a hole? Yup. And here is a reminder about holes, they typically

<a> have slippery slopes leading down to the bottom>,

<b> it is really really difficult to stop sliding down a slippery slope once on it and

<c> you need someone to pull you out of the hole once you are in it <or you stay in it>. Just ponder.

To be clear. “Grind” is simply the rhythm of everyday life managing the good aspects and the not-as-good and what we take in and what we give out.

This rhythm offers some consistency.

And, yes, most of us like some consistency in our lives. We like some consistency and some predictability to provide a solid backbone to our lives.

This is not consistency just for comfort sake (which is actually the hobgoblin of small minds).

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now. The grind is surprisingly difficult to explain because it often walks a razor thin balance of several things <please note … this is not research but rather Bruce quasi-vapid thinking>:

– Consistent/predicted behavior <a planned list of things to do>

– Planned spontaneity <think vacations or scheduled parties or outings>.

– Random spontaneity <shit that just happens>.

I would suggest <using my research brain knowledge> that this razor thin balancing act. I will also suggest this fragile combination is maybe an 80%-15%-5% <with a +/- 2.5% margin of error> Life mix.

Yup.

Me, a lover of not being too predictable, accepts the fact that having the majority of Life be familiar and consistent and predictable as good. Because with some people, using my margin of error, less than 2.5% of your entire Life can actually consist of any true spontaneity and you could be one of the happiest non-hobgoblins on the face of the earth.

Oh.

Please note that I believe “planned spontaneity’ is possibly the biggest oxymoron of this generation.

** note: We are so obsessed with time and ‘maximizing each available moment’ for fear of ‘wasting anything’ that we actually plan our free time. This kind of seems nuts to me.

I sometimes believe that in our objective driven world focused on predictability <and measuring success> makes the grind even more fragile because, if components of that grind predictability are removed, it is almost like playing a constant game of pick-up-sticks. In other words my grind immediately is no longer simply a grind, but chaos. But that is where predictability rears its ugly head. Predictability and consistency is often measured in today’s world as not only the process, the routine or rhythm, but also in the result.

And maybe that is where I do begin to edge into consistency being the hobgoblin of small minds.

I would be foolish to suggest we don’t all aim for more positive results than negative ones because we all want to be happy and positive results do beget positive feelings.

But if you live your life solely focused on ‘only doing what will make me happy <or has the highest probability of happiness> based on predictable behavior, well, that actually makes your grind, even with the best of intentions, even more fragile.

Regardless. Life has a habit of squeezing you and when it does it actually exposes the fragility of the grind.

―

“You know, sometimes in life you can get kinda stuck and you feel like you should have changed chapters by now, but you can’t.”

Wish I Was Here <Aidan>

——————-

I imagine what I am suggesting is ‘the grind’ gets a bad rap. I am suggesting that the grind, while it often seems a solid, indestructible, aspects of life is actually quite fragile. I am also suggesting that those two things, in combination, is a dangerous misunderstanding.

You know who knows this? The grinders. The ones who find the joy in making shit happen and the ones, in particular, who like to grind out good shit. The grind CAN produce continuous improvement and continuous progress. The grind does NOT have to be incrementalism or compromise or simply digging a bunch of semi-useless ditches. In fact. The grind is often the path leading from being who you are to who you want to be.

The grind is knowing there is a better version of you and refusing to get stuck being the current version of you. The grind may not look like the fastest way, or the flashiest way, to being better, but it FEELS like a solidly effective way of ensuring in the end you will have got closer to a better version. It is within this fact that the grind, despite its less than illustrious title, makes you happy.

And maybe this is where the fragility of the grind has its most important aspect. Grinds, and grinding, is progress and, yet, the system, the society, and a shitload of false prophets, suggest the grind will not lead to riches (money or meaning). All of these ‘influencers’ suggest disruption is the path to all the things you need.

** note: I could argue proponents of disruption, at least the lazy simplistic ones, are the greatest enemy of happy grinders. They see the grind as status quo, not structural value creation, and see disruption as the only way to optimize value creation.

What a load of dangerous shit to be shoveling.

I will not suggest shaking the etch a sketch a bit isn’t satisfying on occasion or that it can be a key to some successful paths, but I will also not suggest that the grind cannot be satisfying and a key to some successful paths if you view it correctly.

Look. When you are told you shouldn’t enjoy the grind, when you are told the grind is the choice of fools or ‘small minds’, then you will inevitably begin believing those things are true – and they are not.

In fact. Believing these things increases the fragility of the grind because  when you stop enjoying things in Life <which, by the way, suggests you used to enjoy things or something and are now easing into some wasteland of maybe not misery but … well … nothingness>, or ‘anything’ I imagine, then you start seeking enjoyment anywhere you can.

This sounds weird to me.

There are a shitload of people who enjoy the grind, there are a shitload of people who think they should enjoy the grind, but keep getting told the grind sucks.

There are a shitload of people who grind out a shitload of successes – often some really creative things (because the grind is not the absence of creativity and imagination).

I imagine my point is the grind is fragile. It is fragile because it gets attacked all the time and everything offered in its place really does look seductive. I think we should be pointing out that not all grinds are created equal and not all grinders’ achievements are bad. And maybe remind ourselves that the grind offers some benefits and a shitload of people are happy with those benefits.