I just read this in Seth’s Godin’s new and free ebook – which I think is fantastic by the way – and my only complaint is that it is in a PDF and as such it is really hard to share ideas like the one below, which I cut, pasted and reformatted to get here.
“How many times have you paid your taxes? Ever get a receipt back telling you what you bought? You’re paying for something, right? Why is everybody arguing about taxes and deficits when they don’t know how their money is being spent?
What if you went to Lowe’s, and paid to improve your home, then Lowe’s did work but didn’t tell you what they did. Would you notice if they fixed faulty wiring?
It is time for us to rationalize the debate. Let’s parse the data and free the facts.
Imagine if we organized around meaningful data instead of vapid rhetoric. What if you could see how much you spent on your commute to work this year, or defending your country, or keeping your neighbor healthy?
What if there was as much data about John Barrow (D- GA) as there was about Manny Ramirez (LF-Dodgers). There are 750 players in Major League Baseball, and only 535 Members of Congress. Most of the data exists and what doesn’t we need to demand. The answer to healthy democracy lies not in rhetoric, but in our data.
Clay Johnson is the Director of Sunlight Labs for the Sunlight Foundation. He tweets at cjoh.”
So often we move to debate when we have no idea what the facts are and this example of the tax debacle is a perfect example. How easy would it be if we the purchasers of government could understand exactly what it is we are buying and what the costs are? Imagine if all parties could agree on the reality of the situation, devoid of emotional verbs and blame games, and consider how powerful it would be if we then discussed not what the problem of the situation is but rather the goal that we would like to achieve as it relates to the situation? In other words we all recognized and agreed upon what we want and we understood exactly what we have and from that position we could agree on the discrepancies and the actions that we would like to take to eliminate them.
Imagine if life worked like this in your home, at your work and in your government.
I think there are three types of teams and probably a million more in between, but for this purpose let’s look at the two extremes and one in the middle.
At the worst extreme is a team that is dysfunctional. They don’t like what their doing and who their doing it with. They don’t like where the team is going. They are along for the ride for as long as it takes them to get off. This situation sucks for everyone. The people involved, the funder, users, clients, everyone. No one wants to be in a team situation like this.
In the middle of the curve you have a team that works on the surface. People have signed up because they don’t mind the people their with, they don’t mind what the team is doing and they didn’t have anything better to do anyways. They show up on time, wait in line to be told what to do and generally like cruising along with everyone else, and oh yeah, every now and then they will look up and consider the overall objectives and throw their thoughts in on how to get there if anyone asks.
At the other end of the extreme we have the third type of team. They are an unruly lot. Barely manageable. Usually rude. The only thing they all have in common is they all love the outcome that everyone is after and they don’t give a damn about what it will take to get there. They are constantly giving advice, making decisions and asking for forgiveness later and no one who has half a brain cares cause these people get things done - they are goal focused. Notice I didn’t say that they question the goal. They are 100% on board with where this team wants to end up. They just question why it is taking so long to get there and why everyone else is holding them back. They have allot of opinions on how to get there faster.
If you belong to, fund or are counting on one of the first two team types, well let’s just say life is too short to hang out there for long, and if you managed to land yourself in the midst of the unruly lot, prepare to be amazed and hang on, what a ride it will be.
This has got be one of my favorite Seth posts to date. I’m sure it won’t be my last. Highly recommend the read!
Simplify the problem relentlessly, and be prepared to accept an elegant solution that satisfies the simplest problem you can describe.
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Demand thrashing early in the process. Force innovations and decisions to be made near the beginning of the project, not in a crazy charrette at the end.
via Seth’s Blog: How to be a great client.
What’s wrong with I don’t know?
We don’t like the vacuum it creates. The uncertainty it leaves us with. It makes us nervous. So we make stuff up. And then we make all sorts of assumptions and plans around the made up stuff.
What a waste of time and what a waste of energy to keep convincing yourself and others to believe in something you made up. “I don’t know” may be uncomfortable but it sure is easier and allot more reliable than pretending.
I just picked this up from Seth’s Blog and watched the video he linked to. Watch it. Seriously.
It is so important to know who you are and what you do and more importantly what you aren’t. You must know where you stand and have the discipline and the courage to say no to what you are not. I’ll say it again the discipline and courage to say no because there are going to be allot of bigger guys out there screaming at you to say yes.
I think this applies to everything in life. This just isn’t business 101. This is life 101. It just so happens it is a good formula for running a profitable business.
Do you know what you are? Are you flavor of the day? Or are you passionately committed to what you believe in and what you are doing?
It’s honest. It is something you truly want for yourself or that you can align with as part of a team. You believe in it. You can see it. It isn’t an easy milestone but you can see that if you get creative you could achieve it.
It isn’t “me too”. It is derived from the creativity of what you and, or, your organization wants.
It isn’t expressed out of fear; “I must lose 100lbs or I will die”, “we must ship that product or go bankrupt”. It is based upon creating something rather than avoiding the negative consequences of something else. It doesn’t solve problems, it creates solutions.
It’s based upon a long term viewpoint. It is at least 25 years in the making or it contributes to a goal that is 25 years in the making.
It’s quantifiable. It’s easy to describe the current situation as compared to the goal and achievement or progress is non-debatable because the results are non-subjective. Okay, not always possible, but let’s call non-subjective goals, our goal for goal creation. You get the idea. I hope.
It has an owner. Singular only please, not plural. Someone owns this goal. It is up to you or someone you depend upon to make it happen.
It has a timeline, a due date that generates creative tension and momentum to get the goal done.
That’s it. Pretty simple. How do your goals compare?
I just picked this up from Joel On Software:
“Recently I got inspired by Kathy Sierra, whose blog Creating Passionate Users and Head First series of books revolutionized developer education. She kept saying the same thing again and again: help your users be awesome.
Kathy taught me that if you can’t explain your mission in the form, “We help $TYPE_OF_PERSON be awesome at $THING,” you are not going to have passionate users. What’s your tagline? Can you fit it into that template?”
We help “type of person” be awesome at “thing”. So simple but so right.
Something to think about.
That’s why most of us make stuff up about the reality of our current situation. We are dishonest and manipulative about it to make ourselves feel better. And we will go to great pains to protect our made up version of the story – cause that is all it is – a story. It isn’t reality and it isn’t the truth.
However, what most people don’t realize is that if your on a journey and you have places to go, people to see and goals to accomplish, then fooling yourself and others about reality is a really bad idea. If I can’t describe and therefore don’t know where I am how can I possibly plot a course to where I want to go? And worse yet, if I am the leader of an organization and I convince others that my made up story is true, how can those who follow me truly plot their course?
Making up stories and defending those stories takes allot of energy. You have to first make them up, defend them, convince others, remember them and then keep promoting them. Whereas describing a situation in gory detail and dead honesty is really simple and once done you can then immediately talk about the discrepancy between your reality and goal and what actions you need to take to get rid of the discrepancies. No more to it then that. No stories. No drama. Just next steps in the right direction for the journey you want to take. Sink yourself in reality, you get used to it after awhile and it actually starts to feel really good. Honest.
Good leadership is really clear about where it is going, aligning goals and collating ideas, feedback and suggestions all while enforcing the rules of how everyone works together. It doesn’t careen wildly in knee jerk reactions to every complaint, criticism or failure. It has a firm and fair hand.
I think of it like a bus. Everyone knows the destination, knows it isn’t up for debate and realizes that the passengers have to adhere to the bus rules. And everyone knows they don’t have to take the bus if they don’t want to.
My bus rules or the way I like to work together include:
- We don’t “doubt” what can be done, we “wonder” what we can accomplish
- We have purpose, we don’t wander
- We respect each other, are polite but direct, honesty comes before diplomacy or conflict avoidance
- We are independent; we don’t need cheerleaders, hand holding or face time to make each other feel better
- We know time is of the essence and we never waste it
- We don’t quit and we never say “just tell me what to do” we instead say “I suggest we do this”
- We live for vibrant dialogue; we are passionate about our ideas but our egos are checked at the door
- We seek the truth and don’t make stuff up to make ourselves feel better when we just don’t know
- We can just as easily say we are wrong as we can we are right
- We’re never done – mediocrity isn’t in our vocabulary – we continually improve ourselves and our work
- We live to learn, learning inspires, doesn’t scare us
- We set the bar high to see if we can beat it, we don’t set it low to make it easy for ourselves
- We are mindful in everything we do, never mindless, if something becomes mindless we tear it up
- We work hard but never to the point of burn-out, we take our vacation and return recharged
Everyone should know where the bus is going, they should appreciate that the destination isn’t up for a vote – but ideas and suggestions are welcome, and they should take their decision seriously:
- Do they want to get on?
- Is it going where they want to go?
- Are they looking forward to the journey?
- Is there another bus they would rather take?
- Maybe it is time to take a breather and stay off the buses for awhile?
Or maybe all of these buses suck. It’s time to start your own bus! Where will it go? What will your rider rules be?
