When the unexpected happens in surfing, that's why you went.
When it happens in a coal mine, it's a matter of life and death.
Perspective changes based on how you define your work. That unplanned outcome or sudden emergency—are you looking at with the optimism and possibility of a surfer, or the dread of a miner?
An interesting question, perhaps, but irrelevant to a job interview.
The campus you spent four years on thirty years ago makes very little contribution to the job you're going to do. Here's what matters: The way you approach your work.
What have you built? What have you led? How do you make decisions? What's your reserve of emotional labor like? How do you act when no one is looking?
You are not your resume. You are the trail you've left behind, the people you've influenced, the work you've done.
Merely beginning.
With inadequate preparation, because you will never be fully prepared.
With imperfect odds of success, because the odds are never perfect.
Begin. With the humility of someone who’s not sure, and the excitement of someone who knows that it’s possible.
Once our needs are met, our instinct is to invent new ones, to find a fuel to continually move things forward, to bring that propulsive energy back.
Social media makes it easy to be both dissatisfied and to have a mission at the same time: Make everyone happy.
Every single critic silenced. Every customer delighted. Every prospect interested.
Sort of like your footprint in social media. It's imperfectible. There is someone, right now, who's miffed at you. Someone who misunderstands you. Someone who used to work with you who doesn't any more, or someone who has the wrong impression of you and won't even give you a chance. Not to mention the trolls, the ones who merely seek oppositional positions.
It's imperfectible.
For every person who wants you to have bigger portions, there is someone who says the portions are too big. For every person who says your writing is too personal, there's someone who wants it to be more personal…
Seeking a perfect sphere might be a hobby, but if it's not giving you joy, it's a lousy way to live. It's an addiction, not a useful tool.
People have been talking about you behind your back ever since fifth grade. Now, of course, you can eavesdrop whenever you choose. Don't.
Turn it off. Walk away. Accept the lack of perfect.
Better to make something important instead.
Most of us want to look good online, need a website, maybe even a logo. More and more individuals and organizations are discovering that they need to hire a professional.
It comes down to doing your homework. Be clear with yourself before you spend a nickel or a minute with a designer. This difficult internal conversation will save you endless frustration and heartache later.
Here are four postures to consider in working with a good (or great) designer:
Sometimes, we don't sell what we've got, we sell what could be.
Book publishers, for example, buy non-fiction book proposals ($10 million for Bruce Springsteen's autobiography) not the finished book. The finished book almost never matches what they were hoping for, but the hoping is fun.
Venture capitalists, at least in the early stages of a company, buy hope as well. The numbers that might be, that could be, not the numbers you have now.
Understanding this, it's possible to draw a curve of hope and reality, over time. You need to be on a course toward the reality you seek, but bringing on partners is most effective when hope is ascending, not after reality sets in.
There's a gap between where you are and where you want to be.
Many gaps, in fact, but imagine just one of them.
That gap–is it fuel? Are you using it like a vacuum, to pull you along, to inspire you to find new methods, to dance with the fear?
Or is it more like a moat, a forbidding space between you and the future?
It's entirely possible that people aren't listening closely to you any more.
There's so much noise, so much clutter… hoping that customers, prospects, vendors and co-workers will stop what they're doing and listen closely and carefully enough to figure out what you mean is a recipe for frustration.
Perhaps there's an alternative. Maybe, instead of insisting that people listen more closely, you could speak more clearly.
That's what great design and great copy do. They speak clearly so that people don't have to listen so hard.
Would you rather be the smartest person in the room or the least informed?
If you're the smartest, you can generously teach others. On the other hand, if you're the least informed and hungry to level up, you couldn't ask for a better place to be.
When you walk into a room, do you look around to see if you're the best dressed, the tallest, the most powerful, the richest, the prettiest, the best connected? Or are you hoping that people with some of those attributes are there, ready to share what they know with you?
Some people walk three steps behind the group, no matter how fast the group is walking. Others will tire themselves out, throwing elbows if necessary, to be first in line. Some people interrupt a lot, others are begging to be interrupted.
This changes over time, day by day even, depending on what we're looking for. And it happens in just about all the social settings in our lives. The challenge is finding a place that creates the change you seek. Too often, we go to conferences or parties or professional events where everyone is looking for someone other than us. Someone they can dominate or brush up against, someone they know or want to pitch…
It's easy to decide to level up. It takes guts to put yourself into a mix where it's actually going to happen.
Today's the last day for early applications for the April session of the altMBA. More than 1,800 people have enrolled in sessions of our small-group workshop so far, and it might be worth considering. After Monday, applicants pay a higher tuition.
Surrounding yourself with people in a hurry to get where you're going is a great way to get there.
Freedom doesn't mean no responsibility. In fact, it requires extra responsibility. Freedom is the ability to make a choice, and responsibility is required once you make that choice.
Fairness isn't a handout. Fairness is the willingness to offer dignity to others. The dignity of being seen and heard, and having a chance to make a contribution.
And equality doesn't mean equal. Equality doesn't guarantee me a starting position on the Knicks. Equality means equality of access, the opportunity to do my best without being disqualified for irrelevant reasons.
