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“Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward.”

Abraham Verghese

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“It’s the one thing we never quite get over: that we contain our own future.”

Barbara Kingsolver

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Thinking about what legacy you want to leave behind can make you start thinking a little bit about what you may want to stubbornly stand for and demand of Life and what you may decide to compromise with Life to insure you have something, i.e., some progress to show at the end. A significant part of this grand bargain we negotiate with Life is how we decide to compromise with those around us and those who affect the arc of our lives.

Ah.

That word “compromise.”

Therein lies maybe one of the most difficult topics of the current generation.

The topic is that the concept of compromise, meeting someone half way, giving something up and getting something back, is now a nebulous concept.

Why? Because I am not sure I know where the hell half way is.

And I tend to believe a shitload of people are standing with me, on one side or the other, not really sure where the hell half way is.

And if you cannot even see the middle ground how the hell can you figure out how to make a stand on it?

This gets compounded by a massive online communal world in which we all live side by side where even the marginalized people <real or perceived>, nutjobs & experts, now have a place to gather into likeminded groups and share as much a space as mainstream views. For good, or for bad, online any group of people can organize & mobilize & challenge the status quo … or pick & choose which status quo fits their view. The internet amplifies discourses critical of, well, any status quo you can think of.  And, as anyone could expect, all the critical discourse triggers a corresponding equal backlash from those who fear an uprooting of their beliefs <and the self identities that are inevitably attached to these beliefs>. Needless to say much of that backlash is a bit unhealthy and a lot unmoored to accepted reality.

It just becomes one huge mosh pit of criticism and cocooning of likeminded people.

Likeminded people – all who are angry.

Within all of this situation & anger civil discourse tends to be tossed in the trashheap. And maybe worse is the fact there is this ‘digging in’ aspect where we refuse to see any merit in other people’s opinions. Sadly, I can only conclude that we have lost the ability to converse, discuss, debate and have a dialogue with one another.

It seems obvious <at least to me>, but if we could figure out how to come together and compromise, that we could go a long way toward not only creating a better version of society in general, but it may give me, and all of us, at least a fighting chance with regard to where we make our own personal stand and where we compromise and how we attain the future that we contain.

As long as people cling to unbending attitudes & beliefs, the divides between us will not deepen, but will remain an unbridgeable divide.

I tend to believe most of us want better that that.

I tend to believe most of us would be willing to work to make this a better and more civil world to live in.

And if you do not embrace this thinking?

I would remind everyone that America is representative of a great compromise. The U.S. Constitution is possibly the greatest Compromise ever negotiated <it created a nation>.

But as a first step to bettering this entire situation we need to figure out how to better define Compromise.

Far too many loudmouthed people have ripped the meaning out of the word, twisted the value of the word making it seem valueless, and ultimately created an environment in which  we demonize the entire process of trying to reach compromise.

Compromise no longer means understanding your differences and working together toward a common goal, but now it seems to represent weakness, losing and not being strong enough to get what you want. This attitude and unwillingness to work together creates a dysfinctional society where the unwavering stance seems to be “don’t compromise, stick to your guns, don’t give in to the other side”.

Sigh.

Look.

I find it hard to believe that the majority of America is really that selfish and that stubborn. Sure. I know the people most passionate about any issue tend to be the ones less willing to compromise on them. And, yeah, I would guess most of us are fairly passionate about ourselves – what we decide to stand for … as well as what we will decide to sacrifice within compromise to attain some progress. But within this wacky world where no one seems to want to compromise anything on anything … well … shit … some of us are trying to think a little bit about what you may want to stubbornly stand for and demand of Life, and what you may decide to compromise with Life, to insure you have something – some progress to show at the end.

It seems like the situation we are in has arisen because we have permitted the stubborn voices of the radical marginalized <real and perceived> to drown out the pragmatic voices, the majority, of realistic positive compromise. If we want society to start working again we need to embrace compromise — and let it retain the positive definition which has served it well through time.

To end this I will go back to the beginning.

The “I” aspect.

I tend to believe all of us, with the intent of finding the best version of ourselves from which our ultimate legacy will be defined, will seek to find the balance of being stubborn and demand that Life bend to us and our principles and compromise where we make a grand bargain with Life in order to continue progressing.

Uhm.

If we believe this, then why wouldn’t we want this in Life and in business and in politics and in … well … everything.

There was a book that discussed this. In The Spirit of Compromise <Amy Gutsman and Dennis Thomson> they note that Americans support general compromise as an idea and like the idea of ‘other people’ working together to get stuff done <statistics support this in a variety of studies & polls>.

However. The authors then note that support for compromise breaks down when it addresses specific issues <Americans are much less likely to support a compromise on a specific issue>. What this means is that, as with most things in Life, we enthusiastically embrace the conceptual behavior and balk at the actual behavior.

I shared that to say compromise is complex and simple.

What I do know is that we contain our own future and building that future demands that we will have to make some compromises.  That is simple.

Making the specific choices is complex.

And while I am mostly interested in my own future and making my own compromise choices, I tend to believe we would all find the better version of ourself contained within if the society as a whole were more willing to refind the value in compromise. Yeah. I just suggested our best version is not an “I” thing but rather when we are part of the weave of societal fabric, i.e., “We” thing. Ponder.

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“It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.”

Sue Monk Kidd

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“Ambiguity of language is philosophy’s main source of problems.

That is why it is of the utmost importance to examine attentively the very words we use.”  

Giuseppe Peano

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Fear of being misunderstood. If you type that into google you get about 159,000,000 results in 0.42 seconds and only one, yes, one result is about the version I am talking about. The version today is not being misunderstood as a person, but, literally, not being understood when speaking or communicating something. That said. I did find the term ambiguphobia which is applied to the pathological fear of being misunderstood. It has the same word root as “ambiguous.”

Ambiguity.

If you elect to believe the world is often ambiguous, complex not simple, that cause & effect (98% of the time) is nonexistent, and truth is more often conditional not absolute, you are doomed to have a fear of being misunderstood. This fear may be constant or intermittent or maybe even like a flux capacitor, but it exists in some form or fashion.

I thought about this after listening to a Jason Fox podcast where he kind of flippantly mentioned he had a fear of being misunderstood and read a piece he linked to at Ribbon Farm “The Tragicomic Exasperations of Expertise.”

Here is what I believe.

If you elect to believe the world is complex and simplicity is elusive, you spend a lot of time in the wretched hollow between:

Certainty versus uncertainty

Absolute truths versus contingent truths

Pragmatism versus dreams

Short term versus long term

Safety versus risk

Old beliefs versus new understandings

Fixed versus unfixed

Fluid versus solid

If you reside in the complex universe, you will find your cozy cottage resides in this windswept, stormy grassy hollow. And I would suggest you also spend a lot of time in the kitchen of the cottage mixing ingredients seeking the perfect potion to make the complex understood. I would also suggest this is the wretched hollow – continual experimentation of ingredients.

“<things> get better when exposed to external stressors and change.”

Dr. Jason Fox

That said. If you elect to believe the world is complex, let me suggest two thoughts for you to ponder about this wretched hollow in terms of ‘fear of being misunderstood’:

Wretched hollow version 1: where ideas go to die

If you have decided to reside in the complex universe, suffice it to say you have decided to be in the thinking & ideas business. While your skillset may have some aspects of ‘doing’ and results, you have put a stake in the ground that progress is dependent upon people thinking about shit and in that thinking will better navigate a way toward success.

In other words you have inextricably linked thinking to progress. This is important because in this version of the wretched hollow this is where ideas go to die if you are misunderstood.

In other words. You are in the thinking and ideas business (a version of the ‘Progress Business’) and if you are not understood your thinking and ideas die. Uhm. No more business and certainly no progress (or at least your version of it).

This is a pragmatic fear of being misunderstood. The product you want to sell, not being understood, is not bought.

I will note here this is where I believe business people, experience, has an advantage over academics & thought leaders. In business if you cannot make uncertainty certain enough or the invisible esoteric thinking visible enough, you die. You become a superfluous thinker who doesn’t know how to get things done or, in general, no one knows what to do with what you say & think. You are simply mental masturbation.

Wretched hollow version 2: where ‘self’ goes to die

Doubt, Imposter Syndrome, confidence, even arrogance wander in this wretched hollow. Fear of being misunderstood haunts not just your ideas and thinking, but you. This is the world you have elected to be in. Others have chosen detail, you have chosen definitions.

By choosing the path of definitions, versus details, you have, psychologically, purposefully placed yourself in a constant tug of war between all of the things I just stated. Your only real contribution to the tug of war is to continuously eat up more and more knowledge in the attempt to put more weight on the positive side of the tug of war. Unfortunately, knowledge weighs less, proportionately, than doubt/uncertainty, or even ignorance, so even as you become more smart, wiser, & better at articulating the Sumo wrestler sized doubts (the actual fear of being misunderstood) never lose any weight and keep tugging.

My point here is that electing to reside in the complex universe and making your business the business of thinking & ideas is a non-stop, never-ending tug of war. So. You are in the game or you are not. And if you are worth half a shit you will find that you never lose the tug of war, the other side just tugs a little harder on occasion. But. And this is a big but. The moment you stop pulling the fear of being misunderstood changes to death of the universe you have elected to live in and even the business you have elected to be in. I know that sounds harsh, but ‘self’ has some pretty dark places and if you give up the rope it is really really hard to not only climb back out of the darkness, but also get a new strong grip on the rope in the tug of war. Just ponder because even if you do not agree with me in totality on this point even at a lesser degree it has repercussions to fear of being misunderstood.

Let me end this version of wretched hollow by pointing out that if you have elected to make thinking & ideas your business, and you struggle to make people understand your thinking & ideas, you will inevitably start questioning the value & meaning you provide. Period. Full stop.

“Aiming at brevity, I become obscure.”

Horace

Lastly.

Mixing the formula.

That’s the deal, isn’t it? Finding the right amount of certainty, tangible understanding, to freedom (uncertainty) ratio? It’s the proportionate amount of traction points (I call them lily pads of certainty) to provide structure to hold up the uncertain, freedom and adaptability of thinking, in people’s minds (leading to them actually doing something). I say that because that’s where the fear of being misunderstood centers itself – will I mix the right formula this time?

This is where Life gets tricky.

All people inherently need some successes or, well, you go into some pretty dark places. So your natural instincts arc toward ‘being understood.’ That means offering up simplicity, maybe some tasty soundbites and, often, some fairly vapid generalizations attempting to tap into some common perceptions. That means you incrementally shave away at complexity which, inherently, shaves away truths and impact/effectiveness <you have slipped down the slippery slope of the bastardization of occam>. That means, while you have elected to reside in the universe of complexity, you are selling out the value of that universe (I would argue that diminishes self but that’s not my point today).

I will say (part 1) the people in this space with the most success not only constantly gain knowledge, but use it in a ‘play, pause, rewind, fast forward’ way. What I mean by that is the formula cannot be rushed and neither can complexity understanding be completed in a formulaic way. In other words it not only takes an ability to assemble the right fragments, but do so with pacing to engage cognitively.

“Be still amidst the chaos and active in repose.”

Indira Ghandi

I will say (part 2) that the tricksters, and ignorant, who casually ease round simplistic pegs into uneven hexagon complex holes exponentially outnumber the experts. And you know what? People, in general, like round pegs.  Smooth, simple and easy to grasp. This does not mean people are stupid just that tricksters are masters of the illusion, and delusion, of progress and the doyens of detail. In general, they thrive on detail cloaked in fortune cookie wisdom. It’s simplistic, not simple, and its horrible for us, society and business.

And maybe that is where I should end. The fear of being misunderstood is really about knowing, in your heart of hearts, you have chosen the rockier path as two roads diverge and, well:

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about fear of choices – have I made the right one, or ones, and in doing so have I made myself clear of why the roads are what the roads are and why as they diverge we should walk on this one today.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about making the choice to making the complex understood.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about the choice that progress is actually made through the complex rather than simplicity.

Fear of being misunderstood is all about fear people do not understand the choice you made.

Regardless. There is a positive side.

Progress is not a linear process. Mastering complexity or at least wrangling complexity insures not only progress, but antifragile progress and progress with value. I will never suggest fear is a good thing, but I will say that when you get it right, when you share the thinking and ideas and it is understood, and your fear of being misunderstood is absolved for at least that moment – it is a great feeling. And it’s a great feeling not because you have been understood, but rather because by being understood energy has been created, or traction provided, for progress to occur. Ponder.

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“If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything. You’re a leaf that doesn’t know it’s part of a tree.” – Michael Crichton

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“History is not, of course, a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It teaches by analogy, not by maxims.” – Henry Kissinger

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So. Studying history, and using what you have learned, is a tricky challenge. Often we study history, and the past, so that we can “not make the same mistakes.” Well. The attempt is one of valor <and good intentions>, but most actions using historical learning are misused <as they are misguided>.

Henry Kissinger actually said it the best:

“The study of history offers no manual of instructions that can be applied automatically: history teaches by analogy, shedding light on likely consequences of comparable situations. But each generation must determine for itself which circumstances are in fact comparable.”

Let me be clear. Studying history is always good <that is a Bruce postulate>. It is how you use what you learned studying history that is the issue.

Too often people want to use historical “learning” as a literal guide for what to do now or in the future.

You cannot.

Sorry.

But you can’t.

I do not care if we are talking about business, life or economics.

You cannot <I apologize for repeating myself>.

Hank Kissinger, discussing Foreign Policy, actually walks us through a nice way to think about this.

Intellectuals analyze systems & situations while statesmen build them.

And therein lays a vast difference between the analyst and the statesman. The analyst can choose what problem he wishes to study whereas the statesman’s problems are imposed upon him. The analyst can allot whatever time is necessary to come to a clear conclusion while the overwhelming challenge of a statesman is time. The analysts runs no, or little, risk. If the conclusions prove wrong he can rewrite and reanalyze. The statesman is permitted only one guess and his mistakes are irretrievable.

Sure. Typically the future is simply a version of the past. But what makes it challenging is that what appear to be superficial changes, that sometimes make it easily recognizable, are the things that transform situations into unrecognizable changed situations. Yeah. Not all variations are created equal. In addition, we tend to ignore the ‘collection of people’ variable <I will explain later>.

In the end? We use the past, we implement something, and invariably wonder what the hell happened <and why we didn’t learn from history> when it didn’t turn out as planned.

Well. Reminder. History teaches by analogy, not identity.

Unfortunately this means that the lessons of history are never automatically replicable.

This is mostly because the lessons are apprehended only by a standard which admits the significance of a range of experience, that the answers we obtain will never be better than the questions we pose.

Now. I do believe no significant decisions are possible without at least an awareness of the historical context.

For everything exists in time more than they do in a moment in time. What I mean by that is an explanation of ‘context.’ You may not be able to completely replicate the exact time, place, situation and experiences of any & all affecting what you are studying <or even replicate a majority of those variables/variations> however you can gain a sense of choices that were available and choices made. This is contextual learning or what some people call ‘sensemaking.’

Because people forget that what they are studying is a given moment which is simply a situation where it is not only a reflection of a collection of individuals <and their experiences>, but that situation also achieves a unique identity through the consciousness of a common history <those individuals are studying that particular moment colored by,or driven, by perceptions of beliefs of that time. or, the universe shapes us as much as we shape the universe>.

It is not often that we actually learn something ‘to use’ from the past and it is even rarer that we draw the correct conclusions from it.

Why?

The lessons of history <and Life experiences also> are contingent.

That means they teach the consequences of certain actions, but they cannot force a recognition of comparable situations.

Well. That is a BIG thought right there. One that many of us should think about more often.

Let me translate <for my own pea like brain>.

History is contingent upon a series of factors and to make it exponentially more difficult it is contingent upon a continuum <horizontally> as well as simultaneously <vertically>. In other words, patterns move across various layers as well as within a layer.

Yikes.

That means exactly replicating the situation in which you are ‘learning from’ is, well, dubious. The variations and variables almost seem limitless <try pointing that out in your next business meeting when someone says “what did we learn from past experience”>. Oh. Gosh. Doesn’t that kind of make you rethink every business book you have ever read?

Regardless.

History is just that — history. A series of factors & variables all aligned for one moment in time <vertically & horizontally>. Therefore change is not only the constant, but it also possibly represents the only legitimate path to progress. I say that to suggest that change may actually freedom from the past.

And to suggest that history, when one decides to live it and not learn from it, can cage you.

I know.

Learning to break free from the history that holds no value <or decreases value> is difficult. It is easier to simply use it as a handbook of ‘what to do.’ But if we truly seek to learn <and teach> we cannot be subjugated to history. If we truly seek to be better than what we already are, we cannot do simply as history ‘dictates.’

This makes ‘better’ a but tough because most people feel most comfortable mostly remaking things in the image of historical learning.

The corollary to that thought is in order to remake things better we have to be uncomfortable.

I believe what I just wrote will make a boatload of people very uncomfortable. Why? Well. This kind of thinking can drive you crazy particularly if you want to simply study and create conclusions <rather than hypotheses>.

So. The how do most people, and businesses, get around this type of thinking?

They suggest that they have isolated the most important variables and can draw a correlation to the current situation, draw some conclusive conclusions, and isolate the best plan of action <and offer predictive results>.

Well. They are nuts <if not crackpots or liars>. I do not doubt 99% of the intent of these people, but they are still wrong. History provides context not analogy. Now people <in general> do not like that. It makes them feel uncomfortable. They want to know unequivocally that they will not be ‘making the mistakes of the past.’ Sorry. Can’t happen. You may be able to reduce the odds, but cannot unequivocally guarantee it. Oops. Big trouble in the working world if you say shit like that.

But it is Truth. Truth in a business world. Truth in Life.

Another truth? <and something that most people will also feel uncomfortable with>

Studying history will make the in-the-moment decision better. I did not say “using history to make the decision”, but rather “people who have studied history will better be able to CREATE a unique decision in the moment.” Yup. I used the dreaded ‘unique’ word. Most decisions are discreet <unique to the moment>. That makes people feel very very <very> uncomfortable.

** note: “unique” does not have to be in totality but rather the decision will have some unique aspects/features to make it more malleable to the context within which it must exist and thrive.

Regardless. It is a Life truth.

In the end?

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.”

Basho

Well.

That is a nice uncomfortable thought to end on. Ponder.

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originally posted March 2013

………. if your efforts suck … the universe will configure around your suckedness …

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“Happiness makes time move too fast.

Unhappiness makes time move too slow.

Yet, time, is indifferent to what you want and moves the same pace all the time.”

Me

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‘How long do projects take’ and ‘is that enough time to get something done’ are possibly the most discussed topics in business conference rooms around the world. “More time” is possibly the most used phrase in those meeting rooms. Which gets me to “100” and what was known as Napoleon’s Hundred Days campaign to point out how much shit can be done in 100 days as well as how precarious effective doing can be.

Oh. First. History. After kicking the crap out of almost every country and general for over a decade or so Napoleon abdicates his throne and on May 4, 1814 Napoleon is exiled to an island no sane person had ever heard of <Elba>. After kicking around on this miserable little island for a while Napoleon realizes that retirement ain’t as cracked up as people made it out to be and in February 1815 he says “the heck with retirement … I miss the whole leadership thing <that I was pretty darn good at>” and scrams off the island.

March 1, 1815: Escapes Elba, Napoleon returns in South France

March 7, 1815: Napoleon rallies the French army

March 20, 1815: King of France, Louis XVIII flees, Napoleon takes control, begins “Hundred Days” campaign.

What happened in the 100 days <the cliff notes version>:

Napoleon did what he always did when he was in trouble and what he was <frankly> great at, he went on the offensive. With his newly raised army of around 75000 troops, he attacked Belgium, where the British and Prussian armies were camped. His hope was that he could separately destroy these armies before the Russians and Austrians arrived. The British army was commanded by the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian army was commanded by Marshal Gebhard Blucher. The French army engaged the Prussians first at Ligny, on June 16, 1815. The battle was either a slight win for Napoleon or just relatively indecisive <although imminently winnable by Napoleon should a domino or two fallen his way> and both sides regrouped.

Napoleon decided next to attack the English, then at Waterloo, a village near Brussels.

On June 18 1815, the British and the Prussians defeated Napoleon. The British/Prussian victory signaled the end of a more-than-ten- year period filled with war <and a boatload of Napoleon victories>. At Waterloo, Napoleon had 72,000 troops, Wellington commanded 68,000 troops, and Blucher 45,000 <this becomes relevant later when I point out that “they” had more resources than “he”>. Suffice it to say there were a boatload of good and iffy decisions made by both sides, but maybe the biggest was because the ground was muddy on the day of the battle Napoleon made the critical decision of waiting for the ground to dry before attacking Wellington’s forces in the afternoon. This delay allowed Blucher’s forces to reach Waterloo in time to make a difference in the outcome of the battle. While the French made assault after assault on the British, they were slow to make progress, and Blucher’s Prussians advanced against the French army’s eastern flank.

Marshal Ney, one of Napoleon’s best commanders <called ‘the bravest of the brave’ although, in general, he wasn’t the most thoughtful general>, orchestrated a combined attack of soldiers and artillery, and came very close to breaking Wellington’s line. However, Napoleon could not reinforce Ney’s attack, since he was forced to divert a large number of troops from fighting the British, including his crack Imperial Guard, in order to face the Prussians.

Now. Second. Let me try and make several points relevant to business and projects.

100 days.

A shitload can happen in 100 days if you know what you are doing, are a good leader and have a great support <management> team. In fact you can gather almost 100,000 personnel and the materials needed to sustain them and move them hundreds of miles and get them to perform at the highest level if you really have your shit together.

My first point. 100 days is a lifetime if you use it well. Businesses can dither around and make excuses, but if you cannot get something done in 100 days you should probably be looking for some other business to conduct. If someone <Napoleon> can swing almost 100,000 men into action and in a span of three or four days of battle at the end of 100 days almost win a victory when outnumbered and outresourced, it seems pretty logical that we in business can certainly make a widget in 100 days.

My second point. 100 days doesn’t have a huge margin for error when doing something big and important.

Everything has to happen fairly efficiently and everyone has to be aligned. It helps when you have a tried & true team in place. The right people at the right place at the right time. Not just the workers,  but the management too.

In today’s business this is the trickiest.

100 days is a lifetime if you have the right team.

100 days and you can still have victory <not just show up or ‘get it done’> if you have the right team.

100 days never seems like enough if you lose … ponder that … because I see too many times when it doesn’t end well that a business will sit around and say “if we only had more time!” and suggest 100 days was not enough.

Bullshit. It wasn’t the time. It was the team <or the system or a combination thereof>.

Which leads me to maybe my most important point.

The importance of the <management> team:

It seems rarely mentioned but Napoleon not only glimpsed victory at Waterloo … it was his to be had. I will let all the military experts tear apart the minutiae in the decisions made that day. From a business perspective the key to the loss <to me> was simple. Napoleon didn’t have his tried & true chief of staff, Marshal Berthier, on this campaign. Napoleon sorely missed the legendary Marshal Berthier as chief of staff, and Marshal Soult <his replacement> was a good, but not as good, substitute.

Oh. And there was a domino effect on the entire management team as people shifted to assume slightly new roles.

Napoleon was the master at making on field decisions and yet permitting independent decisionmaking — empowering his best to do their best. And, let’s be clear, Napoleon possibly built the greatest team outside of the 1927 New York Yankees <murderers Row>. By Waterloo several stood on the sidelines, were dead or were managing from a different role than they were accustomed to. But. Napoleon’s management team, his marshals and generals below the marshals, were the best of the best.

Now. It is possible Napoleon should have shifted his management style to accommodate the shift in the personnel, but that is speculative thinking <because if he shifted his style who knows how that would have affected everything else>.

100 days would have been nothing if the team was in place.

Whoa. So I am suggesting one person … and not even ‘the leader’ can make that big a difference?

You bet. In business this chief of staff person is:

<a> reviled by the young employees as old, conservative and an order taker for the leader,

<b> loved & hated by middle management as they love the fact this person deciphers the vague, but inspirational thinking of the leader and gives them the specifics on what to do, but hates that this person is not the most creative thinker in the room and is always bitching about why you cannot have the resources you claim you need to do the job you are being given, and

<c> appreciated by the leader because this person can decipher what you are really thinking, get people to do it and while maddeningly conservative <versus the leader> they have a tendency to stop the leader from doing something too incredibly stupid <or risky>.

This person is key to the success of a great leader and an organization. Napoleon saw things on a battlefield that no one else could ever see. He could see things before they happened. But that kind of person <as a general or in business> needs someone to coordinate and corral the incredibly talented independent thinkers & managers who will actually implement the vision. And it takes a while to learn how to decipher a truly visionary leader.

Soult was a good general, but probably a novice decipherer. In addition by shifting Soult into chief of staff all the other marshals began assuming different roles & responsibilities.

You get it. You need someone to decipher as well as you need someone to implement and in a 100 days it helps if the people who know what to do are in familiar roles.

How a leader is judged:

Yes. This matters in getting things done because, well, if you lose you are a loser and are inevitably second guessed.

Napoleon was arguably the greatest general in history <if you want to be nitpicky you could say the greatest offensive general in history>. I am probably wrong, but I struggle to think of one battle in his history that Napoleon had more resources <men & artillery> than his enemy and yet he constantly drove on the offensive … and won.

No leader has ever done more with less than Napoleon.

At Waterloo he had just won a phenomenal battle at Ligny two days before, after one of the greatest blitzkriegs ever mounted. During his lightning advance, he had managed to separate two major armies who knew he was coming, and inflict simultaneous defeats on both of them. At Waterloo two of the greatest commanders in all of history faced each other. Wellington, master of defense, was in an entrenched position that he had chosen, and counted on the arrival of Blucher. Napoleon considered the Prussians under control by Grouchy, and had von Bulow not arrived in Napoleon’s flank and rear, the French would undoubtedly have won, and we’d be reading about Napoleon’s finest victory, Ney’s brilliant attacks etc.

Oh. But he lost.

Winning and losing is often defined by the slimmest of margins. Sometimes even by chance. But most likely it is defined somewhere within the organization and how the organization, and its people, take action.

That is somewhere within the dependence upon solid visionary direction and independence to react to the situation.

101 days wouldn’t have given Napoleon a victory. It wasn’t time <or the lack of it>. It was more likely the management team <or possibly his lack of effectiveness in communicating what he wanted to a new management team>.

Napoleon is typically judged by his two historical losses … Russia and Waterloo. Geez. Can’t a great general <leader> get a break?

Answer: Nope.

Leaders typically get defined by how they end and not all the good <or not so good> done inbetween. If you want to get things done, this is the burden in doing so.

Anyway.

100 days is a good reminder of what a great leader can do in 100 days as well as how slim a margin moving quickly gives you between victory and loss. But, please, please don’t tell me something can’t get done in a 100 days.

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

Hippocrates

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“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

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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.

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“Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.”
―

Umberto Eco

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“You are not going nowhere just because you haven’t gotten where you want to go yet.”

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Taylor Swift

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So. Direction is one of the most stressful discussion in Life & in business. Where are you going? How are you planning on getting there? And, of course, are you sure that is the right direction?

Well.

I never thought I would ever use a Taylor Swift quote let alone use it to make a point. Her quote made me think that “not getting to where you want to be” and “nowhere” can look awfully similar.

But it is not.

Not even close.

The idea of “getting somewhere”, whether in your career, in Life, in personal change, in a relationship, in anything, sometimes seems to dominate our Life. This destination, this ‘thing’ we have envisioned in our mind, becomes sort of a measurement with regard to how we are effectively, or ineffectively, living our life. And in doing so if we are somewhere other than ‘there’ <which may mean we simply just haven’t got there yet>, a lot of people will suggest that means you are nowhere.

That is wrong. Very very <very> wrong.

We spends gobs of time and money trying to answer these questions. If you think about it while it may not sound completely absurd (defining direction insures you are at least not going somewhere completely useless) it can actually look like an incredibly poor investment with a dubious ROI <or what I often call “ROC”: return on choice>.

It can be a stress on your everyday life.

It can be a burden.

It can create an absurdly long list of plans and things to do.

It can also translate into a lot of wasted time (because often where you decide to go isn’t exactly where you end up simply because Life’s terrain dictated a slightly better destination).

I sometimes think this is a reflection of what is wrong in today’s society – this belief if you haven’t achieved something you have achieved nothing.

Most of Life is a reflection of a shitload of journeys and paths and, well, a lot of walking, running, tripping and crawling. Because of that a shitload of people would suggest that most of your life you have been running in place <which sounds silly as I type it> or ‘wandering aimlessly <which also sounds silly as I type it because most times most people are wanting to get to where they want to be> and basically they are suggesting that, uhm, you have expended energy — and got nowhere.

99% of the time those people are just assholes.

Assholes who focus on destinations and not journeys. They only take satisfaction in highlighting specific milestones, objectives and outcomes achieved. They struggle to see the satisfaction in exploration, wandering and the journeys taken to the outcomes.

Look. I am not going to suggest achieving something, specifically, getting to where you want to be is not an admirable and useful objective. Because it is. Getting to where you want to be is aspirational and it implies you want to be better than what you are today. Being better and becoming better is something all of us should embrace.

But I will suggest that simply because you have not got there yet that you have gone nowhere.

In fact, I could argue that simply deciding where you want to be is somewhere.

Yeah. Sometimes just knowing what you want has value in & of itself.

Yeah. In fact, doing something, even something small, is better than nothing and is something other than nowhere.

Anyway. You know what? it’s all exploration even if you don’t care about where you want to go. Why?  You end up somewhere.

Here is the bottom line.

I would guess 90% of us are somewhere other than where we want to be. We may see glimpses of it and we may actually have touched it briefly, but most of us are still in the midst of getting there.

<to complete that equation I envision 5% don’t even try having given up and 5% believe they are there>

90% of us are certainly not ‘nowhere.’ We are simply works in progress trying to get somewhere better than who and what we are today. That means suggesting just because you haven’t got to where you wanted to be is ‘nowhere’ would mean that 90% of us are milling about in some wretched space of nothingness … and that is silly. Most of us are pretty happy and fairly content and typically thinking about being better.

There is a lesson here.

While I imagine Ms. Swift doesn’t philosophize on this thought like Umberto Eco, she has certainly embraced her responsibility & empowerment to communicate the right things to hordes of young people. And for that I applaud her. I do so not only because she is impacting young people’s minds in a good smart way, but because there are a boatload of older people who have been gobsmacked into believing if you haven’t got to where you want to be that you are nowhere <and they do not hesitate to tell a shitload of people that>.

Embracing an ‘outcome is the most important’ Life philosophy is a slippery slope.

I would much rather we embrace a “just because you have not got to where you want to be does not necessarily mean you are nowhere” Life philosophy. You can embrace both but if you begin with the latter you are more likely to not only encourage the right behavior in people you will most likely encourage a more positive view of your own Life.

Lastly.

Okay. All this may sound rudderless. But 99% of the time while this discussion sounds, well, directionless, void of objective & absent of any ‘milestones’, it is none of those things. 99% of the time we have a sense of some destination, we just can’t really articulate it. Now. In a world that has an unhealthy relationship with measurement, achievement & “if it is intangible, can you make it tangible”, that ‘not able to articulate’ is a sonuvabitch to try and embrace.

I sometimes think at end of the end of this type of ‘going somewhere, just not sure where’ journey the people who didn’t try to cram all the plans into the time and simply kept walking knowing they would get somewhere will absolutely find themselves some place better than where they started from and most likely end up somewhere good.

I will say Life can truly be a ‘wonderland’ if you don’t over think it. Sometimes the journey is an exploration and as long as you keep exploring the “somewhere” you get to is richer and, in the case of a business or an individual, maybe a stronger place. Maybe Life, and even business to some extent, is a time to wander.

To explore. To just see what you will see. And see what you will find.

Maybe this is time to remember Calvin & Hobbes: “Any road followed precisely to its end leads precisely nowhere.”

Maybe Alice in Wonderland, Umberto Eco & Taylor Swift and Calvin & Hobbes have the right idea. Nowhere may be a good destination objective.

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“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”

Goethe

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What is the most important thing?

What is the one thing I should know about you?

What is the one idea (or word) that captures your brand?

If you could tell me one thing about your business/company, what would it be?

<fill in your own here>

I reject all of those questions.

Yes.

This is my rejection of the one thing.

Nothing truly interesting is made up of one thing, but worse, once things get reduced to one aspect it becomes not ruthless simplicity, but rather a terrifying simplicity.

One thing degrades life by its very simplicity by making all activity subservient solely on the motives of the one thing.

One thing encourages a fanaticism about the means employed to reach a simplistic objective of uncertain wisdom to attaining a larger objective whether it be profitability or some greater good.

One thing devolves thinking rather than evolving it. Thinking, in the absence of freedom, will inevitably arc toward whatever fulfills the one thing at the expense of many of other things that could not only add value, but be OF value.

It is intellectual weakness.

Institutionalizing ‘one thing’ means institutionalizing lack of thought or non-responsibility. The one thing becomes the default for any, and every, decision. Creativity and freedom of thought is suffocated by the majority of non-risk taker, CYA people lurking in every hallway. People have no responsibility to anything but things in service of the one thing.

This institutionalizing reduces reality to one thing and one thing only. Everyone knows what to do – whatever produces that one thing; and you know what to avoid – whatever reduces the one thing. There is no confusion on the issue in any discussion of whether a particular action maybe conducive to a greater well being or moral aesthetic or cultural enrichment.

Having said that, one thing certainly fits perfectly within a ‘quantification world’, But it does so at the expense of appreciation of qualitative differences (and value). Measurable but of limiting, reductive, value.

This is a primitive world this ‘one thing.’ It is a reduction of reality under the guise of ‘quality’ while it is actually a tool of ‘consistent quantity.’ One thing is the industrialization of thought.

Yes. Sure. A number of people will stamp their feet indignantly and say “oh no, we do a lot more than that one thing (to a grander benefit than that one thing).” Familiar claims I know. Some justified, some not. Ok. Mostly not. Those ‘things’ (outside of the one thing) can be seen, if you look closely, to be bolted on to the ‘one-thing’ organization as exceptions, not the rule.

** note: while I may be a little harsh on well-intended activity I would note that bolts rust and the first things jettisoned are not the one thing but the things used to soften the one thing.

Regardless.

At its best, it is inefficient precision.

At its ‘not-worst, but bad’’ it creates a fragility to the business.

At its absolute worst it harms society in its pursuit of the one thing at the expense of other meaningful objectives (note: profit is the easiest business example of this).

The strength of one thing is its terrifying simplicity.

It suggests the totality of a brand, a business, a life, can be reduced to one aspect. And while the brand, business, life may be interested in other aspects – perhaps goodness, integrity, greater good, or even truth – as business people you concern yourself only with the one thing. You have no choice but to do so. Not being concerned with the one thing makes you, and your work/thinking/energy have a dubious ROI in the eyes of, well, the people in power and the “one-thingers.”

I reject one thing. We are an abundance of things and the highest value is achieved when not only embracing that multitude but articulating it well.

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author’s note:

Of course there are exceptions, but, they are exceptions. Choosing one thing as a filter, not a destination, can have value if you seek coherence instead of consistency. I would point to Dr. Jason Fox’s “Choose One Word/Ritual of Becoming” programme or John Grant’s view on brand molecules/New marketing Manifesto as examples.

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“There is no problem so bad that you cannot make it worse.”

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Chris Hadfield

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Far too often businesses overemphasize speed. They confuse speed with quality, value and, most importantly, agility. This confusion typically leads one to making the most obvious or most popular or the most expedient <speediest> decision rather than the best decision <the one which creates velocity>.

We should always remember that at its core agility is not speed, but rather making haste patiently or festina lente <make haste slowly or patiently>.

Decision making is all about the combination of recognizing the resources at hand, patience and timely haste. Unfortunately, today’s business world is infamous for the efficiently hasty ‘close’ <most expedient choice> and not the patient hunt <for the right choice>.

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“Strategy is turning the resources you have into the power you need, to win the change you want.”

Marshall Ganz

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This infatuation with speed far too often forces us to make decisions based on limited or ambiguous information. The truth is, when done well, decision making and consequences is actually a patient methodical process where at the beginning of the process, when the finer details have yet to be clarified, there is a need to be bolder in our decision-making – particularly because these early decisions have the most far-reaching consequences. With more resources, and knowledge, and have fewer doubts about what to do, there are less fundamental things to decide. This is called the Consequences Model created by the Danish organization theorists Kristian Kreiner and Søren Christensen.

Philosophically, this means the most important question is how we can bridge the chasm between doubt and decision.  This shouldn’t be done just by ‘feel’ or ‘gut’ but rather incorporating in some patient assessment. Here is the paradoxical quandary business is in.

Faster good choices are better, i.e., fast AND good.

The problem is there are very few good “choicers” <people who can do the first thought well> available. Yes. Many within an organization believe they are good ‘choicers’ despite more often implementing less than optima choices <and permitting them to make choices has a paradox effect of building additional personal self-esteem as ‘good choicers’ thereby encouraging poor choice making>.

Organizations, to be more efficient & effective, should drive choices <all> to the select few good ‘choicers’ AND incorporate some selective patience amid its haste.

Look. All I am suggesting is that some people are really good at making ‘hastier choices.’ They have that mental clarity that actually improves in hasty moments and the maturity to slow down the moment and say ‘let’s not be so quick to make haste’ <and actually be right about it>. But not everyone is like this.

And, in fact, they are a minority. I imagine the optimal world would be to funnel all choices through this minority. Imagine being the key word because that is an imaginary world. We couldn’t do it.

** note: organizations also need to cultivate people with ‘good choicer’ characteristics because experience actually improves their effectiveness (effectiveness being breadth of experience as well as #’s of trails & errors).

If your life, or your business, has one or two of these people use them, preserve them, foster them and trust them <you will go farther faster than you ever imagined>.

If you do not have the luxury of having one of them around <which by the way you have to learn to manage speed & patience, i.e., master festina lente>.

Look. I don’t like hasty decisions. And decision making has no formula with regard to hasty patience decision making because errors can result from deciding too quickly or by delaying too long.

Too quickly and … well … a decision can be killed in so many ways your head can spin.

Too slowly <too patient> … well … at least by delaying you can watch everything unfold as you watch the decision’s life slowly unravel in the form of lost opportunities or lost <or reduced> benefit from a quicker decision.

Making decisions is difficult, okay, making good decisions is difficult <because anyone can make a decision>. And it does take some experience to become more adept at making decisions especially in a time constrained situation.

Experience is important, and necessary in my view, because effective hasty patience is all about sifting through all the choices available.

Too fast and you die.

Too slow and you die.

That said. Here is what we do know. No one will get this right all the time, therefore, having a distinct brand with a bold, vivid stance in the marketplace creates bridges. Bridges which can keep you from falling into a crevasse on a bad decision and speed you across a crevasse with a good decision. It guarantees velocity as well as increases the odds of survival to have velocity another day.

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“Impatience kills quickly.”

–

Katerina Stoykova Klemer

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Velocity, at its core, is about decision utility, i.e., which decision will create the greatest return. I call it Return on Choice (ROC).  In business you face a relentless onslaught of decisions to be made. Jackson & Jackson (How to Speak Human) suggest its over 30,000 decisions each day. Given the sheer quantity, success is often dictated by how well you choose what is important versus what is not as important versus what is not important at all.

Well. Let’s face it. No matter how good you are you will not always get this right.

Well. Let’s face it. We could all become more adept at making choices because, let’s face it, if anything, we seem to have become worse at making thoughtful choices.

There is a direct relationship between ROC and impatience: too impatient poorer ROC & just enough patience higher ROC.

Now. I am all for, and a huge proponent of not dicking around <the technical term for ‘wasting time overthinking’> when a choice needs to be made. But there is a difference between making speedy decisions and making a decision because speed is the main criteria. The latter encourages impatient decision making which lessens decision utility.

This happens for two reasons:

• Impatience exacerbates our typically poor prioritization skills
• Impatience emphasizes Personal bias

Prioritization skills

Since we live in a world of infinite possibilities, it’s incredibly hard to figure out what to do, when, and where.

If you start thinking this way, well, you begin living in a world strewn with hypotheticals.

If I do A, then this will happen.  But what if I do B?  Will it be better?  Will I get back more? Will everyone around me be more satisfied? Or what about C? That looks good. Oh. But someone suggested D.

You get it. There are 26 letters in the alphabet and while most of us stop way before Z even getting to D can be maddening. It seems like the world is your oyster … everything is possible … but you don’t take advantage of any opportunities because you’re not sure of what’s best.

This is where I remind everyone what US President Dwight D. Eisenhower supposedly said: ‘The most urgent decisions are rarely the most important ones’.

Misreading the urgent from the non-urgent and the important from the unimportant may create impatience at the wrong time and waste energy & focus. Smart Business patience at its most simplest is grounded in the The Eisenhower Matrix. While Stephen Covey is often credited with the decision making matrix it was actually Dwight Eisenhower, considered a master of time management, who developed the matrix.

Decision utility is often driven by effective prioritization what to do do and what not to do.

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“Mental clarity ain’t for the faint of heart.”–

Katerina Stoykova Klemer

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Personal bias.

Decision utility has to navigate the ‘personal bias’ maze.

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“Being aware of our own biases doesn’t mean we aren’t still susceptible to them.”

Faris Yakob

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It is natural we depend on defaults or ‘decision heuristics.’ They are times savers and actually assist ius in more efficiently navigating the 30,000+ decisions we have to make and getting shit done. But. When impatient we get, well, a little lazier. We lean in on our bias which is unfortunate because thinking takes hard work and every choice has opportunity costs. Unfortunately, most of us are not good at assessing ROC <return on choice> when viewing things thru a bias.

Especially when impatient people need to invest in working to eliminate bias.

Invest in developing the choices <and however many we need to feel like we have enough to assess assuming that is a finite number>.

Invest in actually assessing the choices <better, betterest & best assuming a best can be actually identified>.

Invest in the actual choice.

I imagine we are talking about the proper investment in time because organizational impatience leads to the permitting of poor choices <and a quicker death of a thousand cuts>. Maybe even more important is impatience without good investment equals ‘lost velocity.’ Or maybe even worse? Missed velocity.

Dealing with impatience and balancing impatience & patience ain’t for the faint of heart.

Managing decisions is all about a thorough understanding of the decision’s hierarchy of needs, navigating bias & understanding the attributes in a span of time that generates the most rewarding outcome. Being impatient doesn’t mean you ignore this thinking, but rather you incorporate it into your impatience <and it can dictate how patient you are in your impatience>.

I will suggest successful impatient decision making is about having, well, a rigid policy of flexibility.

Ok. Translation. Effective impatient patience is all about mental clarity – creating mental space to see things, feel things, absorb things and make those things into a decision or choice.

When you are facing a choice, making that decision <yes or no, do it or don’t do it>, you go through a cost-benefit check that may last anywhere from a split second to days, weeks, or even months <and yes even months can be an impatient patient choice>.

Such choices come up many times a day and time is a factor in virtually all of them.

It is a constant stream of choices. And each choice can mean the difference between speed & velocity.

It is easy to see how impatience can be abused if we regard life in today’s world as an almost unbroken fast moving river of choices/decisions of which they only represent different paths versus crossroads.

It is easy to see how with everything moving so fast all the time you can actually feel like you are speeding along even without making any good ROC choices. But 99 times out of a 100 there is little velocity, just movement.

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Note:

Velocity is 2 dimensional in what you leverage from and then the choices you make to create a higher decision utility (ROC: Return on Choice). We believe having a distinct vivid brand, and bold brand message, insures your highest ROC .

………….. finite projects each focused on Velocity spur meaningful Progress ……..

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“Don’t confuse a flurry of activity for progress. That’s a magician’s trick.”

One of my past Bosses

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How often do we see a company doing lots and lots of shit yet we don’t really see any progress?

That’s a business in love with speed, not velocity.

That’s a business which justifies return off of ‘doing’, not progress.

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Velocity and speed are different things.

Speed is the distance traveled over time. I can run around in circles with a lot of speed and cover several miles that way, but I’m not getting anywhere. Velocity measures displacement. It’s direction-aware.

Farnam Street

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My obessesion with velocity means i embrace something called “The Velocity Zone.” The velocity zone has a direct relationship to ‘doing shit’ (progress type projects, not speed/stagnant projects) and “shit with distinction’ (distinct brand messaging & positioning, no ‘bla’/boring/meaninglessness). It is this combination which not embraces generating value but also the velocity necessary to consistently elevate value above competition and the sales associated with doing so.

Velocity

The enemy of velocity are the ‘to do’ lists are endless with lots checked-off, but never get shorter and the people who are working long hours but what is done never seems to create any meaningful progress.

This is speed while being stagnant. It’s like a hamster in a wheel. It’s not only unsatisfying for the people in the wheel, but the business itself doesn’t gain any satisfying results (although managers are usually quite creative in result presentations to make it seem like shit is moving everyone forward).

Velocity is always about decisions. What I mean by that is there is never any lacks of things to do in a business but some just aren’t worth doing.

Velocity projects fall into 2 slots:

• value creation initiatives which increase velocity of value offered
• velocity initiatives which increase the velocity of the organization itself & indirectly enhances value.

Choose your projects wisely. Velocity is all that matters.

Distinctiveness

Inherent to any velocity based progress is distinctiveness. All things being equal, being distinct insures multiplicative effect rather than simply an additive element to everything else happening. This doesn’t men you should seek to be bold or vivid in your positioning & messaging & branding just for the sake of doing so. What it means is that you walk as close to the edge of what your brand character/personality is and bring it to life in as vivid a way as possible. This means you are walking as far away from being ‘bla’ (meaningless gray) as possible.

Now.

Oddly a current business trend, collaboration, gets in the way of gaining desired distinction. Why? 2 reasons:

• leadership espouses collaboration but implements autocratic decision-making. This typically translates into ‘safe’ which typically translates into ‘bla.’
• the issue collaboration faces is many people think it equates to committee, consensus & incrementalism. Distinction SHOULD be a collaborative effort because the closer you get to the edge the more important it is that everyone believes the edge is a good place to be. But this is not a committee or consensus decision unless you seek to edge closer to ‘bla.’

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“In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees.”

David Ogilvy

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Choose your distinction wisely. Not all distinction is distinct, but being distinct matters.

The Velocity Zone

The Velocity Zone is easy to identify but, surprisingly, many businesses find it difficult to get to. they constantly select incremental progress projects inching up above stagnancy but never really getting any meaningful progress. They constantly dream of being distinct and, yet, pragmatically justify some minor attribute as being ‘bold’ trading the opportunity for distinct for ‘bla.’

There’s only one thing I can guarantee in business. The relationship between business success and the Velocity Zone. If you get in this zone, and stay in this zone you will progress. I will not guarantee you will succeed, but I can guarantee you will not fail.