It’s easy to see a complaint as simple whining, the narcissistic impatience of someone who has enough insulation from the real world that they can share their dissatisfaction over just about anything.
But a complaint unheard gives us no way to improve.
In our current medical system, doctors can seek to minimize complaints, to explain them away with a negative test or a shrug of the shoulders. But the purpose of medicine isn’t to pass a test, it’s to improve the well-being of the patient.
We’re under no obligation to embrace or even listen to a complaint. We can always help the complainant by sending them to another vendor or professional who is eager to try to help.
But if we choose to engage, then the complaint is a gift. It’s a clue about what might be at the root of the problem.
A few hundred years ago, small towns in New England embraced the idea of the town hall. Citizens (at the time, just the white men) came together and worked through the town’s agenda. Each person could speak, each person could vote, it was direct and sometimes effective.
Part of the innovation was the idea that each vote was equal, regardless of how much land you owned or wealth or status you had acquired. (Conveniently ignoring all the souls left out of the meeting.)
When there’s no representative to blame, the responsibility feels different. When everyone in the room can speak, there’s also an expectation that people will listen as they wait their turn. The entire endeavor only works if people are willing to engage and seek mutual success.
We agree to speak with care, to listen to others, to change our minds when useful and to abide by the will of the majority. That’s a lot.
It’s not unusual for companies to have an event, as often as weekly, that they call a town hall. But this is different. It’s largely a performance, not a conversation among peers. Everyone very much doesn’t get a vote. This is a feature of the corporation, not a bug. We label the roles with power, and clearly put them on a chart.
Traditional Town Halls require each participant to understand their responsibility as well as the power of their vote. They use cultural cohesion and the permanence of real estate in a small town to create civility and mutual respect. It’s not surprising that they don’t scale very well.
When a company actually wants the opinions of those who work there, there are far more effective ways to have a productive conversation around the insights and desires that we each bring to the organization. Asynchronous and structured, these interactions are vital sources of connection and wisdom.
I’m all in favor of a well-run company meeting. When bosses have the guts and energy to describe their vision for the future, it can make a difference. But it’s not a town hall.
When we do something nice for someone, a ‘thank you’ and a smile is nice to receive. And, in many parts of human culture, it’s a bit expected.
But when something goes wrong, if we drop a plate or miss a turn or make someone late, it’s particularly delightful and memorable if we are greeted warmly instead of stomped on.
The moments when it’s the most difficult to be kind are the moments where it matters the most.
We can agree that Isaac Newton didn’t invent gravity. It was here all along, but he gets some credit for naming it and describing it.
And Columbus definitely didn’t discover North America. There had been people living here for tens of thousands of years before he arrived.
After Niels Bohr began describing quantum mechanics, the atomic bomb became inevitable. The laws of physics combined with the game theory of competitive sovereign nations meant that sooner or later, it would be discovered.
On the other hand, pizza, rap music and bean-to-bar chocolate are all inventions. The novelty, cultural insight and persistence it took to craft and share these ideas weren’t inevitable at all.
Scientists mostly discover, engineers and artists invent.
Peeves make lousy pets. They undermine us and put us on edge.
But quirks?
Little eccentricities we see in the world that offer a cost-free smile. Habits or interactions that always make us a little lighter on our feet and open the door to better…
They’re easy to find, not hard to adopt and don’t take much maintenance.
For the last few months, I’ve been feverishly writing a book about strategy. Strategy for individuals, small organizations and large ones as well. Strategy for someone seeking to make a difference, and strategy for people who do projects.
Starting this week, I’ll be leading a series of discussions and talks inside of purple.space.
Purple.space is a cohort of about one thousand leaders, makers and connectors. People enroll by weekly subscription, and it’s a peer-to-peer community where mutual support and forward motion happen daily.
We’re creating a special cohort for these sessions, a chance to connect and discuss the concepts involved in strategy.
If you’d like to join in, we’d love to have you. For the next month, I’ll be doing a series of video talks and Q&A around strategy. The real benefits are in the peer support and connection, 24/7, around the world. Use the code TOGETHER to get the first week free as a trial.
Creativity is about hope and possibility. It gives us a chance to make things better.
Plenty has been written about the sad iPad ad that Apple just apologized for. It wasn’t just out of character for the story Apple tells, it was a cheap hack, taking the nihilism and helplessness that some are spreading and trying to turn it into a well-crafted commercial.
But when we watch it in reverse, everything changes.
We’re either using tools or we are tools.
Organizations are either doing things to us, or for us and with us.
We are not lemmings. We can make something. And do it together.
In any creative endeavor, it’s possible to define success as the big win, the moment when your dreams match reality. Success is the end of imposter syndrome, stability and finally making it to the other side.
By this definition, it’s clear that success isn’t going to happen. It’s incompatible with the reason you do this work in the first place.
Sure, some projects are going to work. It’s quite likely your reputation will grow and more people will give you the benefit of the doubt.
But a success? Once and for all, through and through?
You can’t have that at the same time you’re the creative person you set out to be.
Ever since there has been high school, there has been the instinct to read the Cliffs Notes. The internet took this idea, added a gratuitous semicolon and perfected Too Long; Didn’t Read. This is the mistakenly proud assertion that we are far too busy and too important to read the whole thing, we skimmed a summary instead.
At first glance, it seems as though AI is good at this.
Why read four pages when you can read a few bullet points instead?
Or why bother sitting through Waiting for Godot, when the summary gives away the plot: “Two men, Vladimir and Estragon, wait for the enigmatic Godot. They engage in meandering conversations and encounter other characters, but Godot never arrives, underscoring the absurdity and futility of existence.”
TL;DR is defensive. Not simply because it defends our time, but because it defends us from change and from lived experience. A joke isn’t funny because it has a punchline. It’s funny because something happens to us as the joke unfolds, and the punch line is simply a punctuation of that experience.
“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana,” isn’t funny by itself.
Ask someone who finished running a marathon–for many, the moment they crossed the finish line is not the most memorable part of the experience, and for those that find that it is, it only matters because of the tens of thousands of steps that came before.
When we lean into exploration, we’re far more likely to find something that matters. Because we worked for it.
[Ted Gioia has coined a great term: Dopamine Culture. Here’s the chart that goes with it]:
It’s easy to miss the point.
The graph and the data underlying it seem to indicate that if you’re a creator or consumer of any of the above, the righthand column is the place to be.
Cavitation happens here. We’re at a rolling boil, and there’s a lot of pressure to turn our work and the work we consume to steam.
The steam analogy is worthwhile: a thirsty person can’t subsist on steam. And while there’s a lot of it, you’re unlikely to collect enough as a creator to produce much value.
Back in the old days of ‘slow traditional culture’ there were plenty of conversations, music in the parlor and even daydreams about dating. But we didn’t count those. The real stuff was the solid stuff, the informal didn’t truly matter.
And now we live in a time where the previously informal is easy to measure.
But just because it’s measured doesn’t mean it matters.
The creators and consumers that have the guts to ignore the steam still have a chance to make an impact.
May 8, 2024
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
