Scaling the Awesome

When we start working with you, a new client, I really hope I can help you do way more of that great thing you do. I've worked on plenty of projects where we've had an impact at the core product level, but my job is never as exciting as when that core is already tight. Then I just get to help them do more of it.

In New Zealand, our unsung hero is the owner-manager and his SME. One of the major roadblocks to growth that these organisations face is that their best salesperson is often the owner, or an equally singular senior partner. They usually can't explain why, but when they're in the room, the deals tend to close. Why? Because they're awesome.

I love to help scale the awesome.

Bottling the goodness that is the thing you already do, and helping get it into more people's hands is really where it's at for me. To try and figure out all the little bits of genius that have got you closing deals already, that super intimate understanding of all the different boxes your customers fit in to, that perfect simplification of why your product is great... the exact thing that particular customer needs to hear in that moment.

Why do I love helping you do more of that?

Because you're awesome.

Ego, the right answers and project management

What do you care about more when you're giving advice on a project; that they do what you want them to, or that they give you the credit for this decision?

People aren't that great at taking advice, particularly on something that they've worked hard on. I'm not just talking about the hard advice that you need to take to avoid failing - but the mundane stuff in particular, the little details that your hired experts are meant to really get. People want to be responsible for every little bit of what they create, it's normal.

But I'm brought in to give advice, that's why I'm here.

Maybe, they may have even told you that. But there are other reasons people hire experts as well. Sometimes it's rubber stamping for a superior or sometimes they just want part of your offer - people often want to work with designers so they can sit around and talk about pictures and feel cool. Most of the time though they really want you to come in and help them get their own thinking straight. Note: This is not your thinking.

The clinch is that your clients getting good outcomes is core to your reputation and your ability to get future business more than anything else. This makes your client doing smart things really important to you - more important than you giving them advice.

As much as I'd like them to say: "Man, you're right, Angus. I was being dumb, and your idea is way better, lucky I asked you" - that doesn't happen very much in the real world.

Alright, how do you do it in the room?

Pro tip: Get your best and most important ideas on the table really early in the meeting. Say it like you're non commital and mix it with some less specific alternatives.

After that you can drop the idea and proceed with the meeting as usual. Working through the various angles to the challenge, understanding the multiple stakeholders, establishing a decision making process - however you usually work. What we tend to find is that they come to the same idea you mentioned casually in the opening. Usually in the exact same words but with the preface "what I think we should do..."

But I like the part where I'm right

We all do. We also need to demonstrate our value consistently. That can seem hard when you're constantly not taking credit for your own ideas - but the outcomes will speak for themselves.

Also, your client feels smarter when he's around you so he will like you more. This means he's not only more likely to recommend you but also to bring you in on more and more projects.

This all seems manipulative

Yeah, a little bit. But even if you don't want to seed ideas early on in conversation the approach is still the same - you need to get your clients there without telling them the answers for them to truly own it. That means they get to be right, its part of what they get for hiring you.

Pattern Spotting

In my last post I talked about patterned living, and how it speeds up our experience of time and life. Here's a thought experiment I've picked up from Improv Guru Wade Jackson that shows how hard it is to shake patterns from our conscious. Try this:

1. Get up and walk around. Point at things and name what they are called out loud - don't cheat - you have to point and you have to say it. Do this for 10-20 things. Go now, I'll wait

   ...

   Yes, you sounded like an idiot, but you'll find out why soon enough. Now for step two:

2. Do the same exercise, but this time call them anything that the object is not. If you've got someone around, get them to listen to you do it. Try to use naming words. No pointing at your boyfriend and saying 'anger'. Do it now - and don't forget to actually point.

   ...

   Now you're really pulling off the crazy thing. But good on you for doing it. Ask your friend for help, what can you notice about your responses? I bet there was something connecting them all, a pattern in the madness? A few possibilities:

   • You named everything after something else you could see but weren't pointing at. Floor becomes ceiling, chair becomes table, human becomes dog etc.
   • You named everything after something that relates to that object or another object nearby. Computers become stereos, trees become soil etc.
   • You chose a familiar family of nouns and proceeded to name everything after that family. Desk becomes apple, chair becomes orange, person becomes pear etc.

   There are lots of possibilities for how you might have done it, but most people have something. Okay, last one:

3. Do the same exercise but this time actually try and name another random thing while pointing at different objects in your environment. Go on, I'll wait.

   ...

Did you pull it off this time? It usually ends up with you pointing at a bean bag thinking "not bean bag, not bean bag, not beans bag..." head explode. That's how it goes for me anyway. Ask your friend if he's still around how you did. No secret patterns hiding?

Most people I know suck at this. I certainly do. The exceptions I've found are often people who didn't spend a lot of time in formal education or have been out of formal education for a long time and working in the creative sector. Musicians, writers, artists etc.

My main point is that, besides losing our ability to actually think randomly and, in a sense, creatively, we're also tightly bound up in a need to seek, apply and use patterns. Even when when we're told not to, patterned thinking is pervasive. Lots of what we learn at university and what we subsequently do in the workplace is seek patterns and fit our environment and observations to them.

This fails when the patterns we use are broken and we need new ones. And, as I wrote in my previous post, in fails us if we want to live longer as well.

You probably didn't do the exercise, too much pattern breaking to actually step away from the computer, but maybe next time your in a park you can get your friend to do it and comment on how constrained their creativity must be. Don't be a dick about it though.

On Patterns and Dying too soon

Thoughts experiment; what's the most patterned part of your week? This is mine. Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning all look like this:

6:00 Wake up, kick dog out of bed, drive to park and go for a walk.
6:30 Get home, get dressed, eat breakfast with Dora and grab my things.
6:45 Leave house, walk to bus station and ride into the city.
7:15 Get to the gym, get changed, go do my workout and stretch.
8:30 Have a shower, grab a protein shake, walk through Albert park and across town to work.
9:00 Get to work and start my day.

This is exactly how it goes, every time. I also eat the same things for breakfast, wear the same shitty clothes when I walk the dog, drink the same protein shake and do pretty much the same simple workout most days (it's awesome by the way).

The most significant thing about these three hours is that everyday, it passes in an instant. One second my alarm goes off, the next I'm greeting my colleagues. There's probably part of your life that passes like that as well - worst case scenario the majority of your life looks like this and you hardly remember any time passing.

Now think about the most random way you could experience that time period. 3 hours is a long time after all:

6:00 Wake up, drive down to Mission Bay even though it's raining.
6:30 Run along the beach in barefoot, intentionally scaring nonchalant seagulls.
7:00 Jump in the ocean with all your clothes on because you haven't been for a swim in a while
7:30 Go to a cafe that hasn't opened yet and befriend the staff as they arrive - tell an extravagant lie about how you got so wet.
... use your imagination
9:00 Get to work and start my day.

I'm sure there have been days in your lives that have looked as unusual as this. Moments when you realise that the night before feels like a week ago because so many different things have happened.

They say time flies when you're having fun, but I really don't think that's the case. I think the shortest year of your life is the one we're you in the same house with the same job doing the same things week in week out. It sounds like a bore but it really does go quickly. Then think about a year where you move town every three months, settle into a new role, meet new people, navigate a new city, find new clubs - that's a year that feels like it lasts a lifetime.

If you want to live forever I think you've got break the patterns that you live by. Do the little things and walk a different way to work, but try and do some big things as well. That fountain you walk by every day looks alluring. Next time, jump in.

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P.S In a few days I'll post a fun exercise on seeing patterns in your on own thinking and a way to practice breaking them

P.P.S You should follow me on twitter

Sucking at (Business) School

They say university is really about learning how to learn. Everyone says it but nobody means it, or at least only with hindsight. No one currently studying is doing so to learn how to learn. So what is your intention?

To get a job that you love, so let's talk about that instead.

If you want to get employed in any industry, the most important thing you can do is be remarkable - someone worth remembering and someone worth talking about. You might get an interview or two based on grades, extra-curricular achievements, looks or personality - but to get hired you need to be special compared to the other candidates. Most people these days want to stand out by looking and sounding smart - this isn't a bad start. Smarts tend to lead you into doing remarkable things.

The only way to be smarter than people is to be really interested in what you do. Those smart people that you knew in primary school - they were just smart because by some fluke, they happened to be interested in what was being taught. There's some genetics and lots of parents who were good at getting kids excited about the right things as well, but mostly, they were interested. So that nerd who could answer everything in class? He used to read "The great book of knowledge" before going to bed... and I liked it.

Ultimately, people look smart because they're so interested in something that they just got good at it.

You may have been cruising because you never found school that interesting - you might even be an 'A' student who didn't give a shit. Maybe it doesn't have to be like that. The law degree that your parents told you to get so you could always get a job, 'have a skill to fall back on' and other lies isn't going to work out that well if you're not interested enough to be in that top quarter of students that actually get a decent job out of it. Even then, surprise! You have to work in an industry that you're not interested in - this sucks.

Now of course this doesn't apply to you, but think for a second how many people you know who are doing something because their parents think it's a good idea... A safe move... A sure thing? When we invest in something by spending lots of time and energy in it, we find ways to rationalise the decisions. You know that guy who's always defending that Android phone he got? These friends of yours might be doing the same thing with their education. Probably with the same reasons their parents gave them.

Any chance this could be you as well? Did you love any of your papers this past semester? Do you remember why you signed up for this programme? What if I told you we'd hire a kickass philosophy student over a BCom Llb kid any day? What if I told you some of the top firms in the world do this all the time as well?¹

What matters is how much you can kick ass - all the professional talents you ever need in most jobs is the 101 stuff. I can teach you all the marketing knowledge you need to do my job in about 2 days - it is just hard to use it. You don't solve that challenge by getting a marketing degree though. You solve that by caring passionately and authentically about what you do - whatever that is. You need to relish the complexity of a new problem, get excited by a new idea and be rewarded by understanding something new. If you spend 4 years studying something that bores you - you just forget how to do that.

I sucked at this too. Commerce really seemed like a great idea at the time (management and marketing... how original). But it's funny how when you're in high school you don't really do much to find out what it will be like. Go talk to some some actual students - if I'd done that I might have realized that the majority of people in the field were bored underachievers getting by on smarts (or greed) rather than passion or any sense of enjoyment in working on hard stuff. By some fluke I did actually like a lot of the stuff I was taught, particularly in postgrad. My peers all thought I was weird though... To actually care about the content we were studying.

Like that should be so strange.

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¹ E.g. Bio-infomatics students who become investment bankers, Philosophy students who work at McKinsey, firms that only hire poets as managers, increasing number of pure engineers in management consulting.