==

“Fairytales don’t tell children that dragons exist, they know they exist. Fairytales tell them that dragons can be slayed.”

Criminal Minds

==

Slaying dragons.

Ah. Sounds like a kid’s thing.

Well. Not so much.

It may not be bad for us adults to have the imagination to believe in dragons. Or the belief that dragons can be slayed. Or even just to think about dragons.

Look.

I don’t believe life is a fairytale (nor do I believe living a life like it is one is smart).

And I don’t believe you can solely be a dreamer and be successful in the world.

Yet.

I do believe having one foot squarely set in practicality and the other foot set squarely in dreaming is a solid foundation for a happy and healthy life.

And we can learn a lot from children (who are frankly trying to learn as many things as they possibly can to figure out what the hell a ‘solid foundation’ is).

For example: Isn’t it interesting how children dream such big dreams? And the possibilities of some seemingly impossible things (like dragons and even slaying the sonuvabitches). Maybe if we dared look at a child’s life and took a second to think about it and consider some things as possibilities and not impossibilities, we could learn a lot about doing the impossible (or maybe better said … what is possible).

Yes. What I am talking about is bigger than just dragons and slaying them.

Every child dreams of slaying dragons, hitting the game winning shot, rescuing someone, maybe being the first woman president or beating whatever villain is the villain of the day.

It’s as if dreams are supposed to be part of our every day lives.  Forever. Not just in childhood.

Yet … as we get older (or some people would say ‘become more mature’) the dreams and dreamers seem to tone down into something tamer.

(yeah. I avoided the word practical here)

Somewhere along the way many of us decided that conquering evil wasn’t within our reach and so we decided to simply make some type of impact in our professional lives. Or maybe we decided ‘evil’ is simply the chore of day to day life and conquering that becomes the dragon you slay.

Unfortunately.

Dragons weren’t meant to be that practical.

So.

I guess the questions are:

When do we stop believing in dragons and dragon slaying?

When do we stop believing that dragons may not be around today, but may have been around sometime in the past so some hero could actually slay them?

When did our dragons become just trying to figure out how to get everything done in a day rather than the big stuff?

I would guess in a really obtuse way I am talking about how life can grind you down to a point where instead of looking at the horizon and wonder about what it could be when you get there you end up looking at each day as a new finish line.

The danger becomes once dragon slaying has been eliminated, uhm, what is left?

Does it mean making a difference with our career becomes simply being dependable and showing up at the job each day? I guess the danger is you keep trading your dreams one by one for other, more realistic and less noble, goals.

And when the list of dreams has been emptied?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … I would argue your passion for life has been emptied. For with that list empty all that is left is “doing.”

Ok. Ok.

Sure dreaming dreams is dangerous business. It is costly in that it takes time and energy.

But, anything worth having is costly.

You have to be careful that if you give up on all the things that cost too much, you end up settling for worthless things. If you are not very very careful, step by step the dreamer became a pragmatist and loses hope for the dreams. And then those lost dreams can quickly become disillusionment and cynicism (or maybe worse you simply forget them).

The trouble is always we (myself included) get so caught up in life that we somehow seemingly constantly settle for the mundane (with the occasional not-mundane thrown in to fool ourselves that we aren’t simply going through the motions).

Oh.

And dreaming (this slaying dragon thing) really is like using a muscle. If you don’t use it you lose the confidence and the belief to do that kind of thinking. And it’s no longer just being okay with the mundane or focusing on some set of to-do’s to check off but rather you just don’t know how to do anything else but that.

Whew.

Just typing that is a tough thing. Thinking it may actually be true? Whew. Yikes.

Look. One would hope there is some higher purpose attainable for us beyond simply the mundane “getting the to do list done.”

Yeah.

Dreaming is truly a dance between a dream and reality.

And while it may seem like a slow dance it is actually a tango and reality has the lead.

Sure.

‘Slaying dragons’ is hard work, i.e., you hear descriptions about how much people have had to give up in the beginning and of hard work and sacrifice. Yet, I’ve never heard anyone speak of having fulfilled their dreams and having regretted paying the price it exacted.

The only time you hear true regret comes from those who gave up their dreams.

Oh. Also.

In today’s world it is easy to get confused on this ‘dream’ thing.

What do I mean?

‘Dream house.’ There you go. How can a house be a dream?

Dreams aren’t necessarily a tangible material thing. Or I guess in my eyes they shouldn’t always be.

It shouldn’t be getting a bigger house and nicer car. And certainly not at the expense of living a full life or being gone so often you miss out on being the ‘hero’ (dragon slayer) in the eyes of their children.

I could also add the suggestion that this is the same for the guy who transfers his dreams onto his favorite sports star watching religiously seeking fulfillment he occasionally finds in their triumphs.

Yup. This dream and slaying dragon thing is tricky.

Ok.

I would like to suggest it’s never too late to pick up dreams again.

To recapture the fact you can not only find dragons, but slay dragons.

But (and this is a big ‘but’).

The problem is, the older you get, the more verbal opponents (naysayers) become.

First. In the practical world lots of advisers suggest ‘always do the practical’ or ‘play it safe’ because now is not the time for dreaming or taking chances (but, if not now, when?).

Second. Those who fear you following your dreams. Many fear to see you fulfill your dreams later in life because it means that theirs lie somewhere dormant or lost … or worse … still attainable if they make the effort. The thought of you reaching your dream breeds fear because it means that they must confront their old fears of failure and success in achieving their dreams all over again.

Yeah. I know. That sounds kind of depressing.

But I just say all that to make a point that we adults make it awful hard to do this whole ‘slaying dragon’ thing.

Bottom line?

The only person capable of stopping you is the same one that greets you each time you step in front of the mirror.

Slaying dragons isn’t just for kids.

So. Go out, find a dragon and slay it.

Ponder.

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“Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.”

Austin O’Malley

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

“You remember too much,”

my mother said to me recently. Why hold onto all that?

And I said,

“Where can I put it down?”

Anne Carson

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

I am not sure what it is about people and the past, but … whew … the past should come up with a new name because it seems to reside in the present more than it does in the past.

Maybe we should stop referring to past regrets, memories, decisions, moments, whatevers, and simply refer to them as eternal things.

Maybe then we could just accept when they happen, in the moment, that they will be our constant companion from that day on.

Maybe then we could stop with the incredibly silly advice of “you need to let that go” or “what’s in the past is done” <as if these trite-isms will magically make the past disappear>.

I say all that because no matter how much anyone tries to convince us and coach us, and no matter how much we, personally, try to convince ourselves and coach ourselves, we cannot leave a memory, in particular, our memory behind.

Sorry. Harsh truth. We cannot really ‘put it down’ and then keep walking.

And, you know what?

That’s okay if you just frickin’ accept it rather than fight it every step of the way <investing energy every step of the way>. In fact. I could argue that if you take on this mindset, you never really leave anything behind, BUT, you actually learn how to set it aside in the appropriate moments. And, in my pea like brain, that is what matters. I honestly like my memories; even the bad ones. They make up who I am today and represent some aspects of who I was yesterday. I attain more each day and rather than discard some I have found that human memory space, unlike a thumb drive, does not have limited space. It all fits in there.

Good, bad, boring and exciting. They all fit in there.

And I like the fact that when I want to, and when it may be good and helpful to do so, I can trawl through my memory banks and think about a memory or two.

But they don’t overwhelm me nor are they constantly whispering in my ear.

I think by me accepting they are eternal they know I am not trying to kill them off so they are comfortable taking naps and long sleeps in the comfort I am not going to grab a pillow and suffocate them in their sleep.

Sure.

Sometimes they wake up and say “pay attention to me” or “well, I am awake, what are you are doing and what have you been doing while I have been sleeping?” and sometimes, just sometimes, I am glad they wake up when they do and make me pay attention to something that maybe I had stored away and forgotten. And, yeah, sometimes they wake up at inopportune moments & times and demand I pay attention to them when I would much rather prefer they would just shut up.

==========

“The past is never where you think you left it.”

Katherine Anne Porter

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

I am fairly sure you really cannot leave a memory, or the past behind. I do know for sure that if you do try and leave it, uhm, it will never stay exactly where you put it.

Huh?

Think “context.”

I may place a memory in some drawer labeled ”sad regret” only to go back at some point and find that drawer empty and open the drawer that says “empowering self-enlightenment” only to find that memory tucked in there now. Yeah. Time, context & experiences can actually move the past into different slots than where you may have left them.  I imagine in some way you are actually reinterpreting the past because of all the experiences since then.

Anyway. Here is the weird thing about ‘the past’ that maybe should make you sit & ponder a bit. The past is not some stone placed somewhere on your Life path. It actually exhibits characteristics more like a loyal pet. It will follow along sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, sometimes behind, and sometimes beside.

Look. I am not a psychologist nor am I some Life coach just an everyday schmuck who has had a shitload of experiences in Life and figured out trying to ‘leave behind’ some past memory & experience truly has a snowball’s chance in hell of working. So I figured I would try just bringing the along for the ride as I accumulate them to see how that went.

And it has worked out pretty well.

Regardless. What I do know is that your past is never where you think you have left it so you may as well bring it along. ponder.

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

“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.”

Rumi

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When I started on this piece I wasn’t sure if it was about self, life, dreams or maybe even starting a business. Then I realized, in some weird way, it was kind of about all. How? Think “connection.” Or maybe connecting with something in a multi-dimensional way <emotionally, physically, experientially> which not only grounds us to us <our self>, but has a commonality to ground us to other “us’es” as well as to, well, everything <hopes, dreams, aspirations>. To me this has two aspects: stars & nothingness.

I like the thought that maybe each of us is really a star <shining brightly for something good or hopeful within ourselves as well as possibly for someone else>.

I like the thought we spin out of nothingness as people, as careers, as thinkers and as doers, scattering to find our place in the expansiveness ahead.

I like the thought that maybe, because we really are stars, we seek them to find whatever secrets they could share about us.

I like the thought that stars can be seen by anyone, anywhere if you only look up on occasion.

I like the thought that stars connect people and thoughts and dreams and wishes and … well … anything hopeful.

I like the thought that while stars are about space they are actually more about managing space by circumventing distance to activate that which can exist between stars and people.

I like the thought that stars actually embrace the strongest business building concept thru actively engaging people in a physical way … an emotional way … and an experiential way. Stars engage us, connect with us, in a way that businesses and brands should attempt to emulate any authentic way they can <because I am not sure I can find any one person who dislikes stars>.

Regardless.

Whether we truly are stars spinning out nothingness or stars simply represent our sense of ‘nothingness-to-what-could be’ mindset, it is pretty amazing to think that anything spinning out of nothingness can inevitably create one of the greatest connections a person can ever have. Stars represent life moments stitching together all that we are and all that we want to be to form thoughts & attitudes which fuel behavior.

Stars are part of everyday lives and occupy critical space in a person’s grander Life story. They never dictate behavior, but instead inspire behavior. They do so by nudging us toward both emotional and transactional personal investments into ourselves inevitably shaping life patterns, creating behavior, and ultimately encouraging us to make personal identity statements about who we are.

Stars are the beginning, middle and end of Life. They represent life and how we live it.

They are the small cornerstones to our Life stories. Somehow they transcend the transactions we make with ourselves by resonating with something inside as well as outside the moment of ‘transaction’ with the star. And maybe most importantly? This multi-dimensional transaction we make with a star perpetuates a bond which unites, influences, inspires and scatters us out of nothingness toward, well, somethingness.

I imagine that means stars ultimately represent a connection with ‘what could, or can, be.” Stars help us answer the ultimate life question: “how do people fulfill their potential and figure out who they are and what they’re capable of?”  They seem to give people a nice simple focus point which doesn’t sit there and lecture or even offer any advice, simply a feeling of possibilities.

Shit. Maybe that is all ‘Bruce-babble.’ Maybe I am giving stars too much power and too much definition.

Here is what I know for sure. We should all look at stars every once in a while:

Some of us may find hope.

Some of us may find clarity.

Some of us may find ourselves shrinking before the immensity of Life.

Some of us may see possibilities.

And some of us may find that they take the moment and make a Life transaction.

But all of us WILL find something. If we look up at all that nothingness, we will see something. Ponder.

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

“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

—— 

“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

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

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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A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

Stephen Crane

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

“Nature uses as little as possible of anything.”

Johannes Kepler

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

The universe has no real obligation to us. Period.

Yup. That actually means we are on our own. We have no rights, no privileges, no nothing to support or comfort our existence except what we choose to provide each other.

That said.

Let me make sure we are all on the same page with regard to ”rights” which means you need to ponder rights, freedom, liberty, prerogative and privilege. All of these are words which refer to the fundamental claims a person can properly make or his unfettered ability to choose <Use The Right Word: S.I. Hayakawa>.

• Right suggests a concrete claim established by legal, ethical or religious sanctions <e.g., right to equality before the law>. Although … someone claiming a right tends to argue it is inherent, a person’s rights are differently spelled out in different cultures & countries.
• Liberty is a more abstract and general notion suggesting the opportunity to choose among alternatives. A document such as the Bill of Rights spells out these conditions a citizen may construe as his rights. However … these liberties may sometimes in fact refer to an unwarranted breach of someone else’s right to consideration <we do not enjoy unbridled liberty without regard for the rights of others>.
• Civil liberty is understood to refer to all the rights enumerated in the US Constitution and its amendments.
• Freedom is close to liberty in its abstract generality but stresses a total lack of constraint more than the opportunity for choice.
• Prerogative and privilege are much more specific in their meanings than the other words here. Prerogative refers to a right that one has by virtue of age, sex or position. Privilege suggests advantages given as favors or added luxuries rather than necessary rights.

I share all that to point out that while we may complicate our lives by confusing all these dynamics we also complicate our lives unnecessarily.

Anyway. We tend to complicate our lives in a number of ways.

Sometimes it is we feel like Life, or the universe, should be a little more helpful.

Sometimes we confuse privileges and rights.

Sometimes we seek an easier path because the way we are going seems a little too hard.

Sometimes we abuse rights in the pursuit of bad things.

Sometimes we assume privileges with regard to desire of good things.

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“People tend to complicate their lives, as if living weren’t already complicated enough.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.”

Søren Kierkegaard

===========

Far too often we view freedoms as freedom to be stupid, idiotic or thoughtless.

Specifically, far too often we view freedom of speech as a way to shared well-articulated insightful thoughts to better the world around them simply because, well, we were fortunate enough to be nearby when speech, freely given, was shared.

Well. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom to say only smart things. It also means freedom to be stupid, idiotic and thoughtless.

Yeah.

Freedom is a sticky wicket. It permits freedom to say stupid things, factual things and nonfactual things.

And, yet, as John Stuart Mill argued in “On Liberty,” freedom of expression is the freedom on which all other civic rights are based.

Now. Two things.

First. I do believe those who speak have a responsibility to be responsible. Freedom of speech, and expression, is a privilege not to be abused. But that is my opinion.

Just mine.

However, stupidity aside, I would rather someone speak, regardless of what is said opinion wise, than for there to be silence. In a world in which we complicate our lives and confuse liberties and freedoms and privileges … we shouldn’t shut up. And we shouldn’t simply shut off someone because they confuse all these things. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t shut down lies <because we should> but, generally speaking, if someone wants to say something stupid, we should let them because of this universal truth:

“Idiocy thrives in the dark, not in dialogue.”

Jen Floyd Engel columnist

I have had this debate, sometimes argument, with several people.

I want neo-Nazis speaking on campuses.

I want feminists raging through megaphones on stand at street corners.

I want pro Life & pro Choice advocates debating on stages throughout America.

I want the most extreme of all sides and dimensions and directions to publicly have the opportunity to speak out.

First of all.

We should all want that.

We, here in the USA, actually live in a country where unless you shout “fire” in some movie theater or seriously offer harmful threats you actually have the privilege & right to speak your mind. This is a gift that USA gives its citizens — a gift many of the 192 countries around the world are not so quick to give their citizens.

Second.

We should abhor silence.

It seems to me that we are quickly  heading down a path where the only opinions safe to say out loud  are the benign most milquetoast ‘safe havens’ of speech — Hitler was bad,  genocide is bad, beets are bad <oops, that last one was just a personal benign opinion>.

We say we want honesty.

We say we want to hear the truth.

We say we want free speech.

And yet we are relentless in chastising those who choose to speak and the words they choose to speak are wrong, maybe even stupid and possibly ignorant.

Uhm. This makes me say …

“I have met the enemy and the enemy is us.”

I do believe we are in the midst of a crisis of truth, ignorance and enlightenment … and freedoms, rights & privileges.

And it is an odd crisis in that we may actually speak up and out, but constantly get trapped in some simplistic dualisms/binaries — liberalism versus authoritarianism, Islam versus … well … Christianity/America/constitution/etc., white versus non white,  intellectual versus nonintellectual, urban versus rural and any other dualism thing you want to add.

But our issues seem to be more complex than ‘if this or maybe that.’

Our issues get compounded by the natural ebb & flow of “rights” <speech, religion, press, etc.> and what we believe is ‘right’ all combined with the unfortunate situation that the everyday person struggles to discerns fact from fiction <I would be remiss if i didn’t point out that 5+ years of Trump where he created his own fictional alternative universe in which his ‘facts’ exist and he wanted to manage the narrative as ‘his universe depicting reality’ didn’t help any of this>.

We complicate our lives needlessly.

And while Alexis de Tocqueville suggested in the 1830s that the American promise of meritocracy, its uniformity of culture and manners, and “equality of conditions” would make for immoderate ambition, corrosive envy and chronic dissatisfaction and could swell “to the height of fury” and lead many to acquiesce in a curtailment of their liberties all leading to a longing for the rule of a strongman … I do not agree.

No matter how divisive we may get and no matter how much we complicate our own lives and how much we may confuse what we deserve and what we earn, what is a privilege and what is a right, all of our freedoms & rights are grounded in the one unchangeable thing we have … the constitution.

That said. I am reminded of some words written by William Martin in his fabulous book “The Lost Constitution”:

=======

“A real American will tell you that our Constitution is not a tool for politicians hoping to make points, whether it is a cynical Republican pushing flag burning amendments because their poll numbers are down or a do-gooding Democrat who decides to protect ourselves by banning guns. The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing when they made the Constitution difficult to amend, so let’s think hard before we mess with it. 

What it says is what t said two hundred years ago. I think the men who set their thoughts down here were men who cared about America. Some of them believed in a strong central government, some believed that government governs best which governs least, but all of them believed in the ability of thinking Americans to get up in the morning and resolve their differences and solve their problems. And we have lost that in this country.

The framers created a means of changing this document because they understood that the world would change. But they didn’t want to make it easy. So it up to you, the people, pick up your newspaper and read them, and think about what you read, and don’t always believe what you hear just because it is what you want to hear,. And don’t listen to what you want to hear because you hear it from somebody who shouts it loud or makes you laugh. The constitution demands more. Don’t believe the people who vote straight democrat any more than you believe the people who befoul the airwaves with rightist rhetoric every day. The theme, on every night, is that we are all American. “

==========

All that said, I circle back to where i began by saying I wanted to say two things. The first had to do with individual rights and choices, the second has to do with amplification <the megaphones of the world – tv networks, podcasts, social media>.

While I believe any individual has the right to be an idiot I think we would all be idiots if we didn’t acknowledge we are in a universe in which the amplification universe is not indifferent. In addition the amplification universe has the ability to exponentially share idiocy – not additively or even multiplicatively. Therein lies the accountability and responsivbility issue. While it sounds nice to say every platform can say whatever it wants to say <kind of a misplaced freedom of speech play> the reality is it isn’t about saying iodiotic things or lies or disinformation, its about teh amplification. So without any rules on how things get amplified <usually this comes down to algorithms> we inevitably have to talk about the source of the things that are getting shared. I, personally, think twitter, Facebook, instragram, whoever, should clamp down on disinformation and lies. Will they always get it right? Nope. Will in most cases , even in their errors, benefit society? Yup. Anything at this point which slows down amplification, or mutes what may take some time to be proven, is good. we do not need to “know everything” immediately. Give some time to vet everything. Let idiots speak but maybe limit how far and wide their idiocy spreads <at least initially>. That actually seems to protect the privileges and freedoms of citizenry more than it limits it.

Which leads me to end with the thought that it is an odd place we are in today.

It seems like never have so many free individuals felt so helpless and in their helpless feeling many people seem almost desperate to wrest control from anyone, and institutions in particular, they can blame for their feeling ‘lostness’ <however you would like to define lost>.

As I finish up this piece today it seems important to remind everyone that freedom of speech is just that … freedom of speech – and that freedom of speech is the foundation upon which all civil liberties reside.

I would rather idiocy, our confusion about what we deserve and do not deserve, be discussed rather than have to thrive in the darkness of silent strength.

Because all speech does is to start a dialogue.

It forces people to talk.

Personally, I don’t want to read, or watch, only whatever validates my beliefs.

I want to challenge my assumptions.

Personally, I know I get confused about what is a right, what is a freedom and, sometimes, what is a privilege.

The only thing I am 100% clear on is that I am privileged to exist in a country in which I can be confused on all those things and still be able to speak out.

And, lastly, I am absolutely clear that the universe has no real obligation to me … or us.

We have no rights, no privileges, no nothing to support or comfort our existence except what we choose to provide each other.

What this means is that only we can complicate our lives and/or uncomplicate it.

Let’s be a little bit easier on each other.

Let’s listen a little bit better with each other.

Let’s become the universe in which we become obligated to each other rather than worrying about where my freedom begins and yours ends. Ponder.

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“No enterprise can exist for itself alone.

It ministers to some great need, it performs some great service, not for itself, but for others…or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.”

Calvin Coolidge

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“Let’s be honest. There’s not a business anywhere that is without problems. Business is complicated and imperfect. Every business everywhere is staffed with imperfect human beings and exists by providing a product or service to other imperfect human beings.”

Bob Parsons

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Originally posted in 2017

Let me take a minute and discuss “fraternite” in business.

Just a reminder but “fraternite” is one of the  French values of Liberté, Fraternité and Egalité (“liberty, equality, fraternity/brotherhood” the national motto of France).

Anyway. Business. Inevitably a great organization exhibits both efficient AND effective progress. What typically creates that combination is part discipline, part structure (systems), part leadership, all glued together by “fraternité”. That ‘glue’ is most often discussed in the American business world as ‘a vision’ or maybe ‘a purpose’ or even ‘culture.’ We do so because we Americans hate any kind of lack of specificity. But the truth is that the most common bond of a great organization is a more nebulous concept, i.e., one of “fraternité”.

Or.

“Any man aspires to liberty, to equality, but he cannot achieve it without the assistance of other men, without fraternity.”

Napoleon

Oddly enough, while this sounds like relatively common sense, I kind of feel like business itself needs a revolution to overturn the current thinking to accommodate what should be common sense.

What do I mean? Current business is kind of in a wacky spot. It talks a lot about vision and purpose and culture as if they are “things” — like maybe a lighthouse anyone can see as they bob around the chaotic sea of business life to find a way home. By the way, I would argue that is a very individualistic thought — “I can find my way home” type thought – and not really a team thought <but that could quite easily be debated>.

Regardless. Fraternity is more like “everyone not only knowing what they need to do to keep the ship afloat but actually pitching in whether needed or not because they love the ship itself.” That may sound like some wacky nuance, but I have to warn people that revolutions can kind of gain some momentum off of some fairly wacky things on occasion. By the way, this thought is a more nebulous “I feel this way” aspect of organizational culture and, as noted many times, if it cannot be measured or indexed or scored.

** note: most older leaders into today’s business just don’t like that kind of shit – things they cannot measure or score.

Anyway. Not to beat this metaphor to death, but I do believe we need a semi-revolution in the way business organizations are created and run and managed. I think we may need that revolution because “fraternité” as a core principle just ain’t the way business is run today. And, yes, it should be viewed as a “core” principle because … uhm … when discipline falls apart, when structure falls apart, when leadership falls apart what keeps you on the battlefield and fighting is … yeah … “fraternité.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of people talk about a “community” or “company team” or some other nice sounding platitude which sounds a lot like “fraternité”, but its mostly lip service. Its lip service because fraternité is a ‘collective’ thought and most businesses reward and incentivize individuals.

Anyway. On a bigger organizational level I worry about how an idea like this is getting suffocated by generational issues <younger people desire something and older people think they know the best> and maybe an outcome-is-the-only-thing-that-matters worldview versus a belief business should incorporate altruistic aspects. Both of those conflicts are HUGE issues. I have written about in 1200+ word thought pieces on both of these but, on the former, the best piece I can share is from Corporate Rebels “Cut The Crap: The Made-Up Nonsense About Generations At Work” which states all people want meaning at work (regardless of age or generational label).

I actually believe we need some revolutionary thinking on the latter. To me we have a bunch of people who look at business and turn away to non-profit because … well … I fear that they only believe they can change the world through more altruistic pursuits and not traditional business. And, yes, they are important and good pursuits but, from a larger perspective, business drives the world. Business makes shit that makes lives easier and healthier and impacts the home and life in ways that it is difficult to imagine let alone outline in a few words <and the business office/working groups creates behavioral cues which ripple out into culture>.

Somehow … someway … we need to insert the ‘believers of principles and principled behavior’ into the business world with all of their ambition and hope and remind them, empower them and enable them that they can change the world.

That they can make the world a better place. They can make society and people and lives better. And they can do it in and through business, not just altruistic career opportunities. If we do that, and do that well, I tend to believe we will build more organizations driven at its core by a sense of “fraternité” rather than a bunch of documents setting out some guiding or shared values, vision and purpose which everyone says “okay … let’s do that.”

What I do know is that … well … read the following quote:

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“I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.”

Alan Greenspan

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I do believe we need to be drawing some lines in business. And I don’t mean company handbook type lines or even some well-crafted ‘lines’ in “how we conduct our business” or “who we are” but maybe they are more lines with regard to some unwritten principles.

I say that because when you can gather a group of people together who share a strong set of principles they will walk straight into a hail of bullets to not only survive, but to get good shit done.

==========

“Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace.

Oscar Wilde

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Now. Business absolutely makes dealing with your principles a constant struggle. It can kind of suffocate your principles in between the pragmatic aspects of getting shit done <discipline & structure> and how that shit is designed to meet specific objectives/results and the faux burden of some vision or grander purpose which “you know is important to us therefore it should be important to you”, i.e., extrinsic importance not intrinsic importance. Frankly, when suffocated by these bookends you don’t have a lot of elbow room for any type of true, intangible, unsolicited camaraderie.

The fraternité is more forced than natural. Obviously, when it is not natural it is not as strong.

In the end.

Fraternité in business. I believe we have forgotten this. And while I do believe many of us have forgotten how to draw lines with regard to our principles I tend to believe business, in general, has simply decided to just draw lines <in a box in fact> and say “there you go”, i.e., there are your principles and rules for camaraderie.

That is kind of whack.

Look. I can honestly tell you that being a senior leader in a business and organization you like <you do not have to love> may be one of the greatest experiences anyone can ever have. What makes that experience truly great is when you are fortunate enough to foster something intangible, something that really cannot be measured, and something which doesn’t earn you some performance bonus at the end of the year … it is when you stumble upon the sense of fraternité.

I am sure some organizational guru will send me a link to “steps to build a fraternité organization” and … well … good for them. I tend to believe this is one of those intangible things that is created less by some “how to” guide or some formula and more by simple good intentions combined with some good discipline, construct and leadership. To steal another word from the motto, by creating a fraternité organization you inevitably create liberté for the organization to be the best version of what it can be.

This is what I thought about today and “liberty, equality, fraternity <brotherhood>”. With that I imagine I should end with where I began … no enterprise can exist for itself alone. That is the foundation for a fraternité organization. Ponder.

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“A wrong turn lead me to a field of flowers and suddenly I’m second guessing every wrong turn in my life.”

a thousand words tumblr

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Well. I have never analyzed nor have I seen any research with regard to how much time we use to plan out the ‘right moves’ to make in our careers and lives. I imagine, if a study were done, between consciously planning and the ‘in the moment analysis’ planning, those two ‘life plannings’ would represent some inordinately absurd amount of our time.

When I saw the opening quote I began thinking about how often most of us attach ‘bad’ to wrong turns and how less often we attach ‘good’ to wrong turns.

Simplistically, we attach wrong to bad.

Wrong turn = Bad choice/decision

Sure.

Sometimes that is true.

But I think I could argue that a wrong turn simply puts you in some place you hadn’t planned on <and you assume the plan was a good plan because … well … you had planned it>. Therefore, in our minds, the unplanned place is a bad place because it … well … was an unplanned place <some circular logic which seems kind of doomed to conclude bad even if it may actually be good>.

Setting aside the whole planning thing, turns are part of life.

Life is not one huge straight boulevard you place your car on and start driving.

Life is more often like seemingly random patchwork of inner city streets with dead ends, one ways and no left hand turns which seemingly are only placed at only the intersections which you had planned to make a left hand turn.

In other words, whether you plan the shit out of your life or not we all make a shitload of turns in Life.

Some are planned.

Some are unplanned.

Some you have the time to invest a lot of time thinking about.

Some you cannot invest a lot of time thinking about.

Some end up in a good place.

Some end up in a bad place.

I imagine my only point is that sometimes, maybe more often than you think, a wrong turn puts you in a different, better, more interesting, place. A wrong turn exposes you to something you maybe never imagined you would ever see, ever face or ever think about. And that is the ultimate value of a wrong turn.

It exposes you to something beyond the plan you ever envisioned.

To be clear. I don’t propose building a Life around a disproportionate amount of purposeful wrong turning.

That kind of seems a little chaotic and absolutely suggests a shitload of wasted time & energy.

However.

Maybe we think about Life more as a shitload of turns, i.e., just a blanket ‘shitload’, instead of categorizing them simply as right turns and wrong turns.

Life is not binary and turns are not binary.

Turns are turns and more often than not they don’t lead you some place you can never leave they simply lead you to some place.

Ponder.

………. 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

======

‘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.

  ===

“Choose your corner, pick away at it carefully, intensely and to the best of your ability and that way you might change the world.”

Charles Eames

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So. This is most likely a bookend post to my “where are you going?” thought piece which was directed to younger people. This is directed to the 50somethings who actually figured out, as well as anyone can, where they wanted to go … and went there.

To be clear. This is not about “was this not what I wanted”  — that is about questioning direction. This is actually about, well, assessing value for the direction you chose and the direction you have no, or few, regrets over.

That said.

What happens if you believe you have something of value to offer the world, and you actually did it and earned a consistent living and … uhm … you find yourself in a place and time where, well, you aren’t sure you have anything to show for it?

It’s not that you weren’t good at what you did <you may have actually been pretty good>.

It’s not that you didn’t earn some good salaries <you may have actually earned higher than the norm>.

It’s not that when viewing your professional resume you sucked <because others can view it and think ‘huh, that’s good stuff’>.

It’s not that your personal life is strewn with divorces or negative broken relationships <because you can actually look around and see some good friends, look at past relationships as generally good and your current personal life relatively healthy>.

It’s not that you don’t look out at the whole world and think “I have no value moving forward” <because you most likely feel like you have something to offer given the right situation>.

It’s not even that you are unhappy <because, in general, you view most days in a relatively optimistic way>.

In fact, taking all of that into consideration you can look at your life and say “I knew where I wanted to go and, in general, I did a pretty good job getting there.”

But.

Let’s say that the average American worker/person most likely has worked about 60,000 hours or so by the time they are 50 <a lower income worker/person who scrambles to earn enough most likely has worked about 70,000 hours – and earned less – and someone like me who likes their work and is a quasi-workaholic will have worked closer to 90,000 hours> and your current steady current annual income is enough to get by, but certainly not more than enough to pay bills and the random expenses that come up.

And you have some debt, no savings and, well, financially there is no room for much more than basics because, while professionally successful, you find yourself in a position where you can now relate to people in poverty <in some ways> in that you are constantly preparing for the next inevitable expense.

Life isn’t bad.

But.

You wonder what you have to show for it all.

You don’t dwell on it but it’s a niggling feeling especially if you did work hard, you did it the right way and you actually did some good shit on occasion.

I imagine this is nothing like fantasizing about being rich.

And I imagine it has little to do with regrets.

It simply revolves around effort expended and gains to show for that effort.

The truth is life, in general, almost always equates to some type of value equation – did I receive acceptable value for the cost incurred.

Most of us are fairly content with a nine-to-five job and people like me who love what they do are actually happy with an 8 to 6+ job and most of us realize we will never buy some island or even have some extraordinarily luxurious vacation when it is all said and done.

But.

I imagine everyone, excepting the wealthy, stop at some point and think “what do I have to show for it all?”

I imagine everyone, excepting the wealthy, stop at some point and realize that rest is a luxury only for the rich and retirement doesn’t mean doing nothing — just maybe something different.

Look.

Life naturally causes you to question yourself and feel like there is some grand design out there to frustrate and defeat you.

And you know what?

Most of us recognize it isn’t easy, and that it sucks to have to brush off the inevitable natural disappointments which occur even if you have worked hard and tried to do the right thing and conduct yourself with integrity, but we, more often than not, just get up and get going again. And we do that without really questioning ourselves. It is just what you do and what Life demands.

So.

That said.

But.

But you wonder about your worth professionally or personally when you don’t really have a lot to show for it.

It is basically a value question.

This is about that someone, sitting at home some nights, saying to themselves … “What the fuck do I have to show for what I did?”

Its just the pragmatic basic formula to assess value.

Someone asks themselves “what I did”:

Over 60,000 hours worked.

Some good titles on your resume.

Some great memories.

Add in some other positives.

And then they sit back and look around at today.

Materially, tangibly, you may have diddleyshit.

Professionally, you may be in a diddleyshit position.

Financially, you may have diddleyshit.

And in that time, in that place, in that mental space it can be fairly easy to view “what do I have to show for it all” as … well … diddleyshit.

And I imagine viewing it that way … well … sucks.

I imagine at this point I could sagely lean back in my chair <assuming the chair was a recliner> and wisely place my hand under my chin and sigh … and say:

“you have made a difference in other people’s lives through your integrity driven actions … you personally have memories, experiences and successes to show for it all … reflect upon that … oh … and you are a good person.”

But I won’t say that.

Because while that may be true, it is bullshit in this time place and situation for someone in this position.

Its bullshit because more often than not people will view this “what I put into Life and what did I get out of that effort” in a fairly selfish way. In other words:

“what does it matter if I was a good person if I don’t have diddleyshit to show for it?”

To be clear. This is actually an okay version of selfishness.

It’s okay because you put in the effort, you worked hard, you did things the right way, you didn’t cut corners, you didn’t demand much, therefore, you want to take a moment and reflect on what YOU “have to show for it all.”

And, selfishly, it looks like you have diddleysquat to show for it.

And, selfishly, scanning your Life … well … it kind of looks like if you don’t want to be in this diddleysquat spot you gotta get back up and start all over again.

Ok.

I don’t have answers for this one.

But I do know what I am discussing happens. And maybe more often than everyone thinks. And the answer will be driven by what matters most to a particular individual.

Those who valued family above all will reflect on the value equation with that as a foundation.

Those who valued professional success will reflect on the value equation with that as a foundation.

Those who valued … well … pick your passion & focus which got you to where you are now and you will assess “what do I have to show for it all?” based on that foundation.

To be clear. If you are not careful they are simply nice condiment sbeing placed on a nothingburger.

To be clear. This doesn’t have shit to do with whether you had a shit life or not <because most would say they didn’t have a shit life> nor does it have to do with being ‘filled or unfulfilled’ or even having been ‘inspired’ in Life, this is clearly “I didn’t have, or live, a shit life … but I’m not sure I have shit to show for it.”

And, yeah, maybe my thinking is driven more by a world that is driven by outcomes and materialistic assessment, but I would also be unenlightened <if not stupid> if I ignored that.

For all I write about the grind of life and the consistency <not exactly drudgery> of most of Life, most people really don’t drift through life, most people are aware of Life <at least when it truly matters> and most people find moments of inspiration that lift Life above … well … nothingness.

But.

At some point most people sit down, pull out the Life balance sheet, put all the shit they have done in Life as well as all the shit they have accumulated and lost <money, jobs, things>, put the amount of energy & work they invested in Life that has been invested up to that point and sit back and see what they have to show for it all.

Does the work, the fun & the hard, equal the output?

Does the work, the fun & the hard, equal what I have to show for it as I look around what I have?

And, yes, this implies I believe this assessment has accumulation of shit over time as well as what has been accumulated and is currently in hand.

I imagine the comparable discussion is if you have put in 10,000 hours of practice playing the piano you want to be able to show everyone you can play something other than chopsticks.

Anyway.

I have been part of several of these discussions and … well … they are difficult. Shit. I have had these discussion with myself.

The harsh truth is that platitudes & ‘feel good’ assessments seem not enough. Good, maybe even great from a feeling perspective, but, well, not good enough for all the hours invested and energy expended.

Yeah.

Money does matter <financial security>

Yeah.

Material shit does matter <Life environment rewards>.

Certainly not the only things that matters, but in a Life value equation, they matter when you decide to sit down and say “what do I have to show for it all?”