March 24, 2013

Good ideas are not the secret sauce

Compelling presentations, great books, inspiring videos, great podcasts, insightful articles – you are literally surrounded by good ideas.

But that’s not the secret to making things happen.

There is no shortage of good ideas, there’s a shortage of action. Of course, the irony is that in order to apply the glitzy idea or create the compelling story or accomplish the larger visible goal, a lot of boring, tedious, and very un-glamorous work needs to be done. That’s the secret sauce.

You have the knowledge and experience to relate the good ideas to your circumstance. These ideas provide you with insight and motivation for moving forward. And you can share them and leverage them as a jumping off point for conversations and work with groups of people in order to make the larger changes happen.

But it’s all predicated on some quiet time, alone, working through the tedium. Uncovering the details that matter, struggling with the analysis, discovering lots and lots of roadblocks, wrestling with discouragement, finding hope, and mustering sheer determination to finish the thing.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. Big results only come from working through the details.

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November 8, 2012

Matching the level of your opponent

When you play tennis against someone who’s really, really good, it’s hard. But it also causes you to play better. You really bring your “A” game to the match. You focus your attention more sharply. You move a little more quickly. Your determination ramps up a notch. You stretch yourself.

If you keep playing opponents like this, you will definitely get better.

On the other hand, when you play against someone who’s easy to beat, you relax a bit more. Your don’t have to focus so sharply, so your mind wanders a bit. You don’t have to move as quickly or work as hard. So, you don’t stretch yourself at all. In fact, you retract a little.

If you keep playing opponents like this, you’ll get soft.

Select your opponents wisely – the stronger ones will keep you on your toes, and help you to improve. You’ll get more out of working on the tough project, working with the really smart/motivated/energetic teammate, and servicing the really difficult and demanding client.

Photo credit: o0bsessed

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June 27, 2012

Make Good Art

Here’s a commencement speech, made by an artist to a group of graduating artists just a few weeks ago. It lays out six lessons for the trained but inexperienced artist about to enter the world in search of work and a fulfilling professional life.

The talk is clever, entertaining, and profound. It’s also relevant to a whole bunch more people than graduating artists. If you consider your work art, and you should, then there are many lessons to be distilled here. More than six. And they’re applicable to a lot of professionals, no matter how experienced.

If you can’t see the embedded video, click here.

Some Lessons

 

Instead of making a plan, make a list

A lot of time is spent thinking linearly about careers and about life. But things don’t always happen sequentially (often they don’t), self-imposed prerequisites are often unnecessary, and it’s impossible to plan a path going forward in too much detail. A simple list highlights goals that can be aspired to and accomplished in a variety of ways – and it’s easier to create!

Find the boundaries on your own

Don’t worry so much about learning all the rules and limits. Ignorance about how things are (or should be) done may allow you may stumble into the most creative solutions.

Action trumps everything

If you want to do something, then go and do it. You’ll learn more by doing stuff than by any other means. And sooner or later you’ll become good at it.

Set big, distant goals and try to move toward them

Embrace vagueness. The detailed plan isn’t the way to go, but you need some way to give yourself direction. Use big goals and accept that the path will be unclear and may be quite meandering at times. If the goal is big enough, you’ll be able to keep an eye on whether you are moving toward or away from it at the different decision points along the way.

Seek adventure

When your work feels adventurous, that means you’re learning, and that makes it feel more fun and less like work.

Accept that success is in the minority

A reasonable ratio for success is 1 in 100. So, just do work that you’re proud of, and do a lot of it. Eventually some if it will pay off. Don’t worry so much about the work that doesn’t seem like it’s paying off – if you’re being adventurous and you’re doing work that you’re proud of, you’ll at least enjoy the process and the results.

Doing things just for the money is almost always a mistake

The path to unlocking your true genius is likely not through the checkbook. People create better stuff when intrinsically motivated, when the work is a labor of love, when it’s fun. That process is rarely (if ever) sparked by a strict focus on financial gain.

When you do achieve success, know that you deserve it

Impostor syndrome can creep in at any point along the way. Often that’s what stops you from trying many things. But it can also pop up when you’ve already proven successful. Recognize this and expect it. Then, set it aside when it appears. You’ve earned success.

Being successful means saying no to some things

Once your near, or at, that big mountain goal, the world will conspire to move you away from it. At that point, you need to say no to things that will take you off the mountain (in the same way you said yes to things that moved you toward it).

Mistakes mean you’re doing something

Mistakes are the result of actions, so making mistakes means you’re doing something. You’re moving toward your goals, you’re experimenting, you’re learning – those are all good things!

Do good work, always

Making good art, or doing good work, regardless of the circumstances. Do it simply because you enjoy it and it puts a little bit of you out into the world, and that’s always the right thing to do. Don’t let distractions and excuses from the rest of your life deter you. Your art, your work, is the thing you own exclusively and what you create is yours alone in the end. Don’t let others take you off track.

Develop your own style

When you embark on something new, it’s ok to lean on precedents, guides, and mentors. But ultimately, you need to seek your own voice, your own style, in order to put forth something truly unique, something that is fully yours. And doing that is going to create the most value for others, and the most satisfaction for you.

Embrace uncertainty

As you work on your craft, you’ll never know in advance what’s going to resonate with others. And you may find it difficult or impossible to deduce the formula even after you’ve created things that resonate strongly with others.

Play well with others

You’re going to work with other people and they are going to have an impact on your success. Getting along with others is important. The secrets here are really quite simple – strive to do good work, deliver on time, and be easy to get along with. Recognize that you must do at least two of these things, but try to do all three.

Don’t worry so much

Anxiety isn’t productive, particularly when we need to embrace uncertainty on our nonlinear journey toward an unpredictable pattern of successes. Be present as much as possible, and enjoy success when it happens.

The harder you work, the luckier you’ll be

Luck is important, and it can happen with little involvement from you. But you can encourage luck by being active constantly, and by being prepared for it when it arrives.

The rules are changing

We are living in changing times. Many rules, business models, and ways of doing things are in flux. That means a good deal of uncertainty, but also a good deal of opportunity to help shape the new way of doing things. Embrace change, help shape the future.

Fake it till you make it

If you think you can’t do something, pretend that you are someone who can do that thing and then just do what they would do. Remember, action trumps everything and learning from experience is the best way to learn.

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October 12, 2011

Do Interesting Work

Interesting work satisfies a curiosity. It’s the type of work that generates new questions and uncovers new possibilities. Interesting work is where all the learning happens. And learning leads to growth.

Interesting is engaging

The concentration of energy around solving an interesting problem brings attention into focus. Distractions are eliminated and deeper thinking happens.

Ideas emerge and collaboration occurs. Problems are solved and things are accomplished. Things that you will remember. Mostly, the lessons that you learned.

Don’t allow for boring

Boring is uninspired, tedious, and lifeless. Sometimes it’s necessary (pretty often, actually). Better to find aspects of it that are interesting. Or to simply make some aspects interesting. Interesting is better.

Photo credit: K Sandberg

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October 11, 2011

Do Important Work

There are two types of important work. Work that is important to someone else, and work that is important to you. Sometimes they overlap. Often, they don’t.

Who are you working for?

The closer you are to employee, the more you do work that is important to someone else. The closer to entrepreneur you are, the more you can focus on work that is important to you (and your customers).

But it’s not strictly either / or.

When you’re working for someone else, you need to get done what they deem is important. Doing it well, doing it uniquely, and adding value will get you noticed and move you ahead. But there’s always room in there to include things you feel are important too. Maybe it’s the way certain things are done. Maybe it’s electing to emphasize certain details. Maybe it’s adding (or subtracting) something that makes the final outcome better.

Moving the slider

Adding a focus on things you deem important puts your name on the work. It gives the work and the end result a distinct feel, at least if you allow enough of yourself to shine through.

And that’s the trick, to keep moving the slider down so that a little more of what you feel is important is included. The more you do this, the more the feel of the work, and the uniqueness of the result, matches you. The work gets your fingerprint, your signature, on it.

Ownership

Ultimately, the work is yours. People start delegating less to you and asking you to lead more. They start to speak to you about the outcomes that are desired, and they begin to leave more of the strategy up to you. You determine how things get done. You become trusted at higher and higher levels. You own the work.

Photo credit: Forest History Society

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October 3, 2011

The Happiness Advantage

Shawn Achor provides a clear and crisp introduction into the field of positive psychology in The Happiness Advantage. Positioned as a business book to help you (and others) succeed at work, the book asks you to consider flipping an age-old mindset on its head. Rather than seeking status, wealth, and success in order to become happy (the “I’ll be happy when…” scenario), Achor makes a compelling case for focusing on getting straight to happiness. If you can do that, good things will come – the status, wealth, success, and more.

To convince us that we should reverse the traditional view, Achor tells engaging stories of his experience as a student and professor of psychology at Harvard University, both of his personal experiences and his work. He also includes highlights from some of the best works in the field, quoting the work of Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi, Gilbert, and many others. In this way, the book provides a variety of reference points to deeper discussions should the reader be interested to pursue them.

Achor packages many ideas into neat, easily digestible packages – what he refers to as the seven principles of the Happiness Advantage. The principles bring focus and clarity to the ideas, and also provide a roadmap for application. It’s an easy, compelling read that will prompt deeper thought about work and happiness, and the ideas are great. I highly recommend it.

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August 31, 2011

Work and flow

Continuing this short series on flow, let’s look at flow on the job.

Certain types of work are conducive to creating a flow experience – those times when you are fully consumed by the task at hand and you don’t notice the time passing.

By their nature, activities or tasks that help you to get into the flow generally have three attributes: thave clear goals, provide you with immediate feedback, and challenge you in a way that is commensurate with your skills, but also pushes you a bit further. Work designed this way tends to be enjoyable, and it seems like a good strategy to design as many jobs as possible this way in your organization.

But, while work can be structured to provide the elements crucial to obtaining a flow experience, that’s not enough. You can lead a horse to water, the saying goes, but you can’t make him drink. Same deal here. So, one more strategy is necessary – coaching.

The experience of work is dependent on a subjective evaluation. In addition to designing jobs to resemble flow activities, it is necessary to help people recognize opportunities for action, to hone their skills, and to set reachable goals. This is one reason why you can find two similarly situated individuals in an organization and one is miserable and the other quite content.

Structuring work properly is important, but so is helping people to structure it for themselves. To help them interpret goals, feedback, and their own performance in a way that is meaningful to them.

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July 7, 2011

Knowing where to look, how to find

The good news is that whatever information you’re looking for is probably out there somewhere. The challenge is finding it in the constantly growing mass of data being accumulated. As a result, we spend a lot of time searching for information – the right data point, the certain perspective on a topic, a specific report, or some collection of ideas.

Google and other search engines help tremendously, as does the ability to engage our various social networks for help. Still, with a growing volume of information, and an increasing need for particular nuance in what we need to find, the process can be daunting. It can feel like we waste a lot of time on the search. It’s frustrating. After all, we can’t even begin our work until we have the information to apply, analyze, or distribute.

Or, is the search part of the work?

Maybe the skills needed today also include the ability to find relevant information quickly – to have good sources and the skills to leverage them effectively. Maybe, then, it would be a good idea to learn the nuances of leveraging search engines and other public tools most effectively. Maybe time spent curating and cultivating social networks around your area of expertise is critical to producing good work. Maybe the work is actually mostly done when you’ve found the information that was needed – maybe the digestion, analysis, and distribution of that information is actually the easy part.

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July 1, 2011

Doing your best work

There are things that you’re good at, and things that you like doing. Your best work lies where those two overlap.

When you’re good at something and you like doing it, there’s a good chance you are going to get into the flow of the work – lose a sense of time and place and become immersed in the task at hand. Like when you suddenly notice it’s 4PM and you haven’t stopped for lunch. Or it’s 3AM and you haven’t gone to bed yet.

The results of this type of work are often recognized by others. Not only because you put in the extra effort, but because it’s the sort of thing you’ve slowly become better at over time. You’ve always been honing your craft. You’re always looking for new challenges in this area. You’re always working toward the next level.

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April 27, 2011

IT automation and work

If what needs to be done is already decided, if the work is already well-defined, if the procedures are documented and all that’s left to do is roll it out, then there’s nothing much interesting to learn from simply doing it. Better to create new problems to solve by experimenting with how the work gets done.

Maybe it can get done faster, cheaper or more accurately. Or maybe it can’t. But we will certainly learn something if we try. And that knowledge can be applied to future problems. As we create tools, test theories, and make mistakes, we are adding to our arsenal of technology and experience for the future.

Photo credit: Thomas Hawk

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