In the US, Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Despite what you might see around you, it’s not a holiday that exists to mark the beginning of shopping season. It celebrates the harvest, and in the original glossed-over telling, celebrates the connections between people from different backgrounds and cultures.
And each year, we get another chance to make that version true. Every day, in fact.
Two thoughts as you begin to plan your celebration (wherever you are, and whatever day you have it.)
First, I hope you’ll consider the free Thanksgiving Reader. It’s a PDF you can print and share at the event. For years, people have been using it to go around the table and give friends and family a chance to speak and connect. I’m thrilled that it’s already touched more than a million people.
Second, perhaps today would be a good day to share some of those unused Frequent Flyer miles. This organization is well on the way to collecting a billion miles to enable families to have a fresh start before the end of the year. It’s surprisingly easy to donate miles that the airlines are hoping will expire, and see them used for a good cause. I’m giving away two copies of the out-of-print 18-pound titan to people who enter my little sweepstakes celebrating this project.
Readers of this blog are well on the way to donating more than a million miles. [Update: More than 2.5 million miles from this blog so far, thank you.]
Thanks for leading, caring and connecting.
November 12, 2021
No one is going to steal it. Not if it’s actually a big idea.
One thing that big ideas have in common is that they’re almost impossible to give away.
You could have bought Amazon stock for lunch money, been an early backer of Acumen, financed part of Spike Lee’s first movie, had front row seats to Hamilton, bought BTC for $2… you get the idea. Even insiders usually take cash instead of stock options. And early customers almost never race out to build a competitor.
When big ideas show up, almost no one sees what’s possible. All they notice is that change is risky and new stuff might not work.
Don’t worry so much about someone stealing your ideas. In fact, it’s probably worth working harder to get people imagining that they might.
November 11, 2021
“Will this be on the test?” is a question invented by industrialists. It’s the cornerstone of traditional schooling at scale, because it is such an effective way to indoctrinate kids to become cogs in the system.
And it’s almost an accident that we manage to make progress, because we’ve spent so much time encouraging citizens to maintain the status quo:
Follow vs. lead
Copy vs. innovate
Authority vs. responsibility
Compete vs. cooperate
Comply vs. invent
Answer vs. ask
Correct vs. possible
Fast-growing organizations and bold leaders want to hire people who have the second skill in the table above. And yet we’re working overtime to encourage the first.
What’s on your transcript?
November 10, 2021
It feels odd to hear the flight attendants remind us to put on our own mask before helping others. That’s backward, isn’t it?
The theory is that if you can’t breathe, it’s probable that you’re going to have a hard time lending a hand.
In our daily lives, the oxygen mask might be metaphorical, and the insecurity/threat might be invented, but it still feels real.
It’s worth remembering that the next time someone doesn’t act in a way you expect. It might be that they’re having a little trouble on their own, trouble you might not even be aware of.
November 9, 2021
We generally adopt a posture of optimism or pessimism as a response (or reaction) to external events. We see how things are unfolding and make a decision about what to expect. We feel like we need to justify our response based on the facts on the ground.
But that doesn’t actually explain why different people, similarly informed, might adopt an optimistic mood or a pessimistic one.
In fact, that mood is a choice. And it’s one that determines how we’ll behave.
Optimism is a tool that permits us to solve problems more effectively. If used wisely, it brings enthusiasm, inspiration and hope to projects that benefit from them.
[And pessimism is a tool as well–it can help you with budgeting, scheduling and other projects. If it works for you, that’s great. Choose your tools wisely.]
As a universal default, either mood will certainly lead to misguided energy and poor decisions. But if we can be thoughtful about optimism as a tactic, the focus and energy it brings can solve problems that others might simply walk away from.
Our pessimism might not be an accurate diagnosis of the past. It might simply be a tool we’re using to produce a future we’re not happy with.
November 8, 2021
At first, we sold our labor. That was 10,000 years of history. You traded sweat for food.
Eventually, people figured out that they could build an organization. And an organization made things, which someone could buy. Add some technology and machines and productivity would go up, the things would get better, and profits would result. Industrial capitalism. This is the sort of project that most people think about when someone says “I’m going to start a business.”
But there are other options.
Linux and Wikipedia and the local farmer’s market are all projects. They may or may not lead to a profit for every person who engages with them, but they’re distinct entities that organize various talents and inputs and create value for the people they serve.
Stemming climate change, stopping the spread of disease and fighting homelessness are also projects. They may not have coordinating bodies or a single entity, but they represent a combination of ideas, people and initiatives that are coordinated through culture.
Bitcoin is a multi-trillion dollar project with no one in charge.
As our world gets more connected, the projects that change us are more and more likely to have a form that would be hard to recognize just a generation ago. But inventing and choosing and supporting these projects is now on us, and it begins by recognizing that they even exist.
November 7, 2021
If you don’t ask the question, you probably won’t get the answer.
The microwave in my office has a button that says, “add a minute.” That’s not helpful, as there are plenty of items that need thirty seconds or ninety seconds, neither of which is possible if all you can do is add a minute. On the other hand, “add five seconds” would be a waste, because no one wants to press a button 18 times. The appropriate resolution for a microwave is either fifteen or thirty seconds.
On the other hand, it doesn’t pay for the readout on a radar gun to be a tenth of a mile an hour. Given its accuracy and the need for proof, five miles an hour is probably fine, and one is just the right amount of apparent authority.
Should you be measuring your call center team’s performance on a given interaction on a scale of one to a hundred, or is one to five more reasonable?
Often, we don’t even bother to ask.
November 6, 2021
There is almost certainly life on other planets in the universe.
And, by definition, there are flying things that are difficult to identify.
But it doesn’t follow that unidentified flying things are spaceships with aliens in them.
There are definitely conspiracies all around us.
And, by definition, organizations often do things that are difficult to explain.
But that doesn’t mean that all of those actions are the result of a conspiracy.
The modern era of UFO-ology began in 1947. UFOs as in aliens in ships, not in the obvious statement that some objects we encounter aren’t identified yet. In the seventy years since the aliens came on the scene, our ability to take photographs has become significantly more widespread and the quality of those photos and videos is incomparable to what we used to have.
And yet the pictures of UFOs haven’t improved.
People who used to see things in broad daylight in their backyards suddenly stopped seeing them as soon as they got an iPhone.
One way to tell that you’re dealing with a story instead of falsifiable science is that the story changes when evidence is brought to the table. (Falsifiable means that it can be proven false. “I’m thinking of a unicorn” is not falsifiable, because I can change my story if I need to.)
That’s because we’re humans, and humans embrace stories. There are countless good reasons to believe in the possibility of UFOs and other conspiracies. But evidence that holds up to scrutiny and Occam’s razor isn’t one of them.
If we’re not prepared to change our minds in the face of a test that demonstrates the opposite, then we’re embracing a story.
Crop circles and Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster are useful stories. But they’re also busy evading our ability to find them. If someone gives a new excuse every time there’s better data about medicine or other useful technology, it’s a clue that we’re hearing a story, not a scientific debate.
Truth is hard to find. Truth is difficult to understand when it arrives. But truth doesn’t work to evade us. It usually stays still until we find it.
November 5, 2021
I hope you have dreams. Dreams are precious, and they open the door for what happens next.
Some dreams are tactical. They’re very specific executions of a possible future, designed to create a certain kind of happiness.
And some dreams are strategic. They might be short on specifics, but they help us understand exactly the change we seek to make in the world and the way it might make us feel.
If your dream is to be a vaudeville star working nightly at the Rialto on Broadway, that’s specific and tactical.
If, on the other hand, your dream is to pursue your craft in front of an audience that appreciates you and makes it possible for you to do it again, that’s strategic.
The more we talk about them, the more tactical they become, as if a dream doesn’t count if it isn’t imminent.
But getting the strategic part right is far more important. The feeling and contribution you’re going for, not what it looks like on your resume.
The problem is that people are often terrible at helping with your dreams.
Perhaps you might get lucky and find someone who cares enough about you that they’ll happily give useful feedback and advice about your tactical dreams. What a precious gift. They’re celebrating your journey at the same time they’re helping you see how you can improve the tactics you’ve chosen.
Tactical dreams are almost certain to never work out the way we hope. We need all the help we can get to understand what we’re actually hoping to accomplish and why. We need to learn to see the strategy behind the tactics we’ve chosen. Because once we can settle on a strategy that works for us and the audience we care about, our tactics can change over time.
Too often, we believe that the first set of tactics we’ve settled on is our true calling, the only way to accomplish our dream. And then we get trapped, and turn away from those that might help us figure out what we really need to be focusing on.
On the other hand, folks who criticize your strategic dreams might mean well, but they’re probably keeping you from making a real impact. To protect you, they pull you down instead. They’re hoping to prevent you from failing at anything. That’s not helpful.
It’s easy to get confused and to simply hope that people will cheer us on, regardless of how realistic our tactics are.
But if the people around you are afraid to criticize any of your dreams, you’re likely to find yourself in a tactical bind one day soon.
November 4, 2021
There are two confusions. The first is that the next big idea must be fully original. The second is that it have no competition.
This is almost never the case.
Henry Ford didn’t invent the car, and there were plenty of social networks before the dominance of Facebook. Madam CJ Walker didn’t invent haircare, and Ray Kroc definitely didn’t invent the hamburger or the french fry.
The same is even more true for thriving, important local businesses of manageable size.
The future of all of these types of organizations isn’t based on a lack of customer choice. It’s based on customer traction.
When there’s a compelling reason, often due to execution, care and people (combined with a network effect), then a new organization can thrive. Because people want what it offers.
Once you realize that you’re not looking for something original and alone, you have countless options. Because the opportunity is to simply solve a problem, to show up in the world with leadership and generosity and make things that people choose.
The hard part is showing up to lead.
We’ve been indoctrinated to join a ‘safe’ venture instead of seeking out something worth leading.
And that’s the reason that innovations often stall. Because it’s easier to be skeptical than it is to say, “I’m leading.”
And the reason that projects often fail in the early stages is because leaders can get scared of competition and choice, when it’s actually competition and choice that are the symptoms that you’re on to something.
In the middle of all the trauma and change in our lives, we are all on the cusp of a huge multiplication of new business models, new funding models and new ways of being in our communities. If you’ve been waiting for a moment to start a project bigger than your own hourly contribution, this is truly the best moment I can recall.
November 3, 2021
