Launching the scholarship bondbreaking advising service
Months ago, I wrote about wanting to set up a simple service to advise anyone considering breaking their scholarship bond. I have thought a lot about it. I thought through many ideas for how to position it. Should I buy a new domain? Should I write a collection of articles first? Should I have testimonials from happy clients?
Basically, I ran into the problem that many of us face with projects: I failed to ship.
Last week, a total stranger emailed me for advice on her bond. This hasn’t happened in awhile. (Been getting a lot more startup related requests lately.) But I was reminded of what I had set out to do in the first place. Pay forward my good fortune at being able to break my own bond years ago. Put myself out there. Help people live more fulfilled lives. Help people as only I can.
She didn’t need me to build a fancy website. She didn’t need me to establish my credentials in some bio. She didn’t even need a form. All she did was find my posts on bondbreaking - hooray for the power of search - and email me. Hopefully she got something useful from my exchange with her. I am immensely grateful for her trust and for the chance to help her. (If you could spend 90 minutes of your time and have a stranger tell you that you are one of the most inspiring people she has come across in her life, you, too, would do the same.)
So I have decided to just ship. Here I am hanging out the shingle.
It’s here! Check it out:
The highest craft
Over the weekend, I saw Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a very lovely film especially if you love sushi. It follows the story of an 85-year-old legendary sushi chef who runs a 10-seater restaurant near a Tokyo subway. Meals start at $300 (USD not yen). He has been awarded 3 Michelin stars. He has been making sushi for 75 years.
I was struck by Jiro’s commitment to this single specific craft. He has dedicated his entire life to perfecting this craft every single day. There is no room for being a generalist here. I think of how in schools, in career advising, we’re told we should acquire transferable skills, skills that are broadly applicable. So many of us are obsessed with keeping our options open.
Jiro’s story preaches the opposite. Be a specialist. It matter less what you choose and matters more that you chose it and continue to choose it day after day. Put in enough cycles of 10,000 hours and you get to reach the rarefied air that is the top of your craft. (By my rough estimates, Jiro has put in more than 20 times of 10,000 hours.)
Choose a craft you love and be an expert. Except that this is not about mere expertise. This is about artistry. Be an artist. Elevate your craft. Invent a new aesthetic.
And that’s where we get to this notion of the highest craft.
In Frank Chimero’s The Shape of Design, there is a story he tells where his favorite professor was reviewing his portfolio and pauses to say, “Needs more love.” Frank goes on to say:
At the time, I took it to mean that I should improve my craft, but I’ve come to realize that he was speaking of something more fundamental and vital. My work was flat, because it was missing the spark that comes from creating something you believe in for someone you care about. This is the source of the highest craft, because an affection for the audience produces the care necessary to make the work well.
Is it about caring for the audience really? Did Jiro do any of it because he wanted to please an audience? I disagree. I adore Frank’s phrasing - the highest craft - but I disagree.
I think the caring, the spark comes wanting to do the work right. Regardless of an audience. Above everything else.
Seth Godin writes of the wonderful Caine’s Arcade, the 9-year-old boy who made a cardboard arcade:
The first thing that made me smile was how willing Caine was to do his art regardless of how the world responded (it didn’t). Caine didn’t care. The goal wasn’t to be accepted, the goal was to do it right.
That kind of commitment, I believe, is the heart of the highest craft.
I think about what I do at work. I think about what I do outside of work. I have to accept that I am not wired to be a specialist the way Jiro is. (I know very few people who are.) I will always be more generalist than specialist. But whichever I am, my work, whatever I choose it to be at that moment, could use more love.
So I ask myself, when was the last time you were performing the highest craft? When will you do it again? Why don’t you do it every day?
Finding the guts to work in public
Working in public. I first came across the idea in Tony Chu’s blog. He talks about opening up the learning process, the creation process by writing publicly about the journey as you go through it. Write vulnerably, gather feedback, expose yourself to interesting ideas.
He linked to a post over at Snarkmarket - the art of working in public. The post is about other (famous) people’s working in public. On BERG’s Matt Webb and The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal:
They both conjure a sense that the piece is almost being written as you read it. It feels like they’re just a [paragraph] or two ahead, and if you picked up the pace, you could catch them—overtake their blinking cursors. It feels slightly chaotic and totally thrilling. They both let you inside their heads.
You see, I’ve been trying to find the guts to work in public. I want to write about product management on this blog. But I am terrified.
I don’t know where to draw the boundaries. I feel like I cannot say too much about what goes into building our product because I don’t want to reveal trade secrets. I feel I shouldn’t write about my coworkers, even though I think extremely highly of them, because it doesn’t seem fair or polite to expose their learning experiences here. (I am also still getting used to the idea that some of you, dear coworkers, read this thing. Hello! I am flattered that you bother to read.)
I feel that I cannot write about when things go wrong. I feel I cannot write about when I’ve screwed up or have fallen below the mark. I cannot write about all the times I am totally making up my job as I go along. I cannot write about the moments when I face severe decision fatigue and struggle to stay objective and positive and helpful. Or the days when I do all that and I am still asked why I didn’t do better, and then I just want to hide under a rock. Except I can’t. Because someone else is pinging me with an issue.
But that is where it is all fascinating. Where I most need to take a magnifying glass to the problem and study and learn.
I want to reveal things to you and to myself, because I want to think more critically, more clearly, more originally. I want to ramble about things I still don’t understand, about the gaps in my knowledge, about the things I’m only vaguely aware that I should pay more attention to. So I can figure it out. I want a record of when I didn’t know.
I want to work in public because a lot of this work is utterly and endlessly interesting to me.
There you have it, the struggle. I’ve been trying to blog more to find the guts to work in public, but all you get are posts about everything else. Some of it is better than I expected, even as I go after volume over quality. But I am still trying to crack the heart of it.
I want to talk about product management.
The Snarkmarket post describes the sensation of reading weeknotes by CEO Matt Webb of the design firm BERG:
For the span of a few thousand words, you are riding shotgun as co-CEO of BERG.
There is often an extra office chair stationed right by my desk. I have taken to calling it “my office hours chair”. There is almost always someone - a PEM, an engineer - sitting in that chair asking me a question, a problem, a thing I need to make a decision on, a thing I need to commandeer resources for so I can say yes to, a thing I need to find a reasonable way to say no to.
If I could figure out how to work in public, this blog would put you, dear reader, in that chair. Imagine that blog.
How to work in public and reveal nothing. That is the question. That is the art.
Meanwhile, I’m going to cross industry boundaries and go read some weeknotes over at BERG.
Ducklings vs. rainfall on water
A friend explained to me that at her school, the students were described as “ducklings” - calm above water but paddling hard beneath the surface to keep up. The same can probably be said of people who work in startups in the Bay Area. People appear chill, and they sort of actually are, except when you discover how hard core they are about their work.
I prefer the opposite analogy.
(What is the opposite of a duck? I have no idea. But bear with me.)
There is this print I bought from 20x200 by Chikara Umihara titled Rainfall, Upstate New York. There is nothing eye catching about it. Heavy rainfall on a lake. What caught my imagination was Umihara’s interpretation of the image.
Here, in this work, a downpour violently hit the water; there weren’t ripples and nothing is reflected on the surface. But after I printed this image, I realized that this is my first image that perfectly reflected my subconscious mental state—disturbed, but calm.
I think of what it’s like on my craziest days. The ones where people keep asking for 5 minutes of your time, and your attention is pulled in a hundred directions. The ones where someone is agitated, occasionally blaming you or someone on your team for something you had limited control over. A confrontation. Or the ones where you know you’ve fallen below the mark because you couldn’t quite get your act together and it’s all too much.
Disturbed, but calm.
There are many things that I cannot change about my environment. The “violent downpour” is an intrinsic part of the role, and indeed often the source of the intensity, the fun.
But what I would like to be more of is the “calm”. To be like that body of water. Agitation absorbing. Unshakeable beneath the surface.
I have a long road to get there.
Ari Wallach’s synthesized problem solving
“All Synthesis is, is myself and my partner running the back end. It’s like cloud innovation; we’re really trying to build a next-generation consultancy, drawing on a different kind of expert network…
“We’ll hire a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t want to return to a position at McKinsey, but will give us 15 brilliant hours a week in between everything else she’s doing in her life. We can bring in an urban-graffiti practitioner or someone who builds amazing shelters at Burning Man and used to build DARPA-contract structures and get them to reframe what they do so it’s relevant to a client’s issues. We don’t have a one-size-fits-all process like other consulting firms have.”
- Ari Wallach, Founder of Synthesis, as interviewed by Fast Company as a Real Life Problem Solver
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I love this. I have minimal interest in politics, but I am totally inspired by what Ari Wallach has done with his career. Here is someone who has figured out how to do what he is.
He started out with a degree in political philosophy, and since then has done everything from working for the Democratic National Committee, to doing new-media projects, to consulting for nonprofits, to leading the “Great Schlep” campaign for Obama. It’s random, it’s all over the map, and together, synthesized, it makes perfect sense. Now he gets to be his own boss and work with clients ranging from the US State Department to the Ford Foundation to CNN.
Above all that, in that quote, we see that he is contributing both original solutions in his work for clients, as well an original business model that solves the modern day work/life/talent balance dilemma. I am drawn to people who cannot figure out take time to figure out how to do what no one else can do. And this, this is awesome.
Not urgent but important moments
If you work in a startup, you will understand that it is very, very hard to get out of operating in the urgent bucket and into the not urgent but important bucket. The bigger important things are easier to identify (you should build X). The smaller important things, those are hard to catch and sometimes seem frivolous, but they add up. They matter.
From the not urgent but important bucket this week:
Spent 45 minutes shopping online on behalf of the company for a gift for a well-loved coworker who is a brand new dad. Smack in the middle of a day when I should have hurried up and finished work so I could leave for an event which I missed. What can I say, I really like picking out nice gifts when I care enormously about the recipient’s happiness.
Two long chats with someone I rarely have long conversations with about recent company culture. It is a privilege to work with people who care so much about building a company that’s a great place to work.
Invested many hours this week trying to find new contractors to outsource some work. Who knew trying to get other people to do work would be so much work! I want to get better at this. I’d like to outsource more of my life.
Blogging. I have been trying to hit publish more often without worrying so much. I’m intrigued by this 750words thing. I would sign up except that 750 words per day (3 pages!) is too daunting. But really, I am under all kinds of fascinating, if sometimes crushing, pressure lately. It makes me think a lot about how I could do just a little bit better in every single moment.
What actually matters in goal setting
The engineers on my product team asked why I didn’t defend their interests in our quarterly goal setting meeting. This is presumably part of my job as Product Manager. (This is funny to me, since it’s the only time they have ever accused me of not defending them. Whether they like it or not, I have far more frequently erred on the other side.)
The senior leadership exec was doing his job of raising our goals. All the numbers were being adjusted upward. By “adjusted” I mean ratcheted way up. We have been here long enough to know he does this every time. This time, as with all previous times, a couple of the engineers tried to convince him that these goals were impossible.
I would agree, except for this:
Two quarters ago, the leadership set a revenue goal that I thought was a major stretch. To give you a sense of magnitude, I think most people would agree that any goal that requires more than a 100% increase is intimidating. But we blew through that target. In fact, we blew through it with a month left to go in the quarter.
Last quarter, encouraged by our success, we set what we all believed was a genuinely bold goal ourselves, only to see the leadership raise it far beyond (what I considered) reasonable reach. The number was so ridiculous that it made me nervous to think about it seriously, so I turned it into a bit of a joke. When we made major decisions or shifts in the way we operated, I would say, “Oh yeah, we need to hit that $X revenue goal.” In the end, we missed the ridiculous goal but came surprisingly close to it. We are likely to pass it fairly soon, if we haven’t done so already. The joke, oddly enough, became inspiring because it was a Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
With this track record, we’ve pretty much lost all credibility for our claims that certain goals are impossible. We have done “the impossible”. A slightly bizarre, mostly good problem to have.
So this time I didn’t step in to argue down the numbers.
First, we have consistently lost this argument over numbers with the leadership. We can persuade but cannot control what number they want. Similarly, they have limited control over whether we reach that goal. They cannot force us to reach it, if it really is beyond reach. Ultimately, we build what we build.
Second, the number doesn’t really matter. I mean, it does matter in terms of training our motivations. A very high goal trains us to raise our ambitions. On the flip side, if we set a more humble goal, it’s not like we’re going to reach it mid-quarter and go take a vacation for the rest of that quarter. We don’t operate that way.
Third, we were in broad agreement with the direction of the goals. These were priorities we had selected. We believed they were the most important goals for our product at this stage. So regardless of what the numbers were, the work wasn’t going to change very much. Our team was going to put its best foot forward in the direction of the goals.
I have no idea if we’ll reach these goals this time. I never know. But I’ve learned that that’s part of the point. If you can see a clear path to your goal, you’ve set the goal too low.
Stories that are too big too tell
Do you ever have this problem where something means too much to you, and when you try to communicate it to others it always falls short? Usually, it’s not because they don’t get it. Usually, it’s because it is too intensely personal and you are scared of sharing it. You would feel too vulnerable.
There is this story that I have been telling over and over in the past few months to any good friend patient enough to listen. The story isn’t even mine. It’s about someone else’s life, a collection of anecdotes, that made a deep impression on me.
The stories carry some kind of transformative power. When I tell the story, I can feel my tone change. I’m telling a story that is someone else’s act of greatness, but it is a story that is thundering through me.
The stories are not personal. The stories aren’t mine. They are something I aspire to. And I want so much to share them. But the retelling feels intensely personal because I am profoundly moved by these stories and they have made me live differently.
The problem with tactics
When I am under greater stress or feel like I’m floundering, I resort to looking at those around me and trying to learn tactics. Why does X get ahead, despite X’s [insert some undesirable trait]. I try to copy. I try to emulate the tactics. The whole problem is that these moves are just that - tactics. They work in the short term, they work in surface relationships, but they don’t add up to trust. They don’t add up to character.
For instance, learning how to manage difficult clients. I have observed how some people do it and the things they get away with. The things they say, the kind of posturing that works. I think, wow, they got what they wanted! And I make a note to employ their tactics next time.
But then I think of how the same tactic has been used on me. In those cases, it temporarily diffused the situation, but I felt… managed. To put it more bluntly, I felt manipulated. It didn’t increase my respect for the person.
If these tactics don’t work on me, why should I use them on other people. These tactics twist you into agreeing with words, but in your heart, you feel anything but agreeable. This is not going to work.
What is needed is an emotional shift. Of greater empathy, I would argue. If we could listen better, if we could get closer to what really motivates people to act the way they do, if we weren’t afraid of facing people’s feelings as they are, we wouldn’t need tactics. We would be more direct and kinder. We’d get closer to saying what we actually mean. We would both feel understood.
All that takes a lot of courage.
Do what you are
“He believes in a theory. He believes in a position. And then he tries to manifest it…”
- Jerry Colonna on Mixergy, on Seth Godin starting Yoyodyne and Squidoo, two companies that reflect who Seth is
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My negotiations professor at Wharton, Adam Grant, is writing a book called “Give and Take”. The book is about:
- Givers - people who prefer to contribute more than they receive
- Takers - people who want to get more than they give
- Matchers - people who try keep the giving and receiving in balance
From the synopsis:
Giving is professionally dangerous, but it can also be professionally powerful. Over the past decade, my research has uncovered a paradox. Givers are not only over-represented at the bottom of the success spectrum. They also dominate the top of the success spectrum.
If you have ever met Adam Grant, you will know that he sits firmly in the givers camp. Giving, selflessly giving, is intrinsic to Adam Grant’s personality. The fact that he is doing research on a topic that is so wholly him is wonderful.
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We spend a lot of time thinking about where we want to go. What’s next, what’s next. Too often, that is dictated by what other people tell us we should want. Sometimes there is an actual person telling us what we should want. Sometimes it’s just a sense that this is what people are supposed to want. Or we want the emotional outcome (social approval, financial security, etc.) so we end up choosing a path that other people tell us will lead to the outcome. Career decisions end up being a matter of picking from a menu of options.
But sometimes, some people forge their own paths. They look at what is available on the menu and combine things, or choose something in between, or create entirely new flavors. They pour themselves, their being into their work.
They do what they are. It is a rare gift - to themselves and to the world.
I don’t know what the process is for this exactly, but I want to do more of what I am.
