A well-designed bicycle is efficient, inexpensive and delightful.
If you use your bike on the right paths, with appropriate goals, it can deliver exactly what you need, while also allowing you to go at your own pace, see what’s going on around you and feel grounded.
Until, of course, you get jealous.
If you start trying to ride your bike on the freeway, or insist on adding extra seats, electric drivetrains and bright lights, sooner or later, you’re going to end up with a vehicle that’s not good at being a bike or a car.
Better, of course, to simply get rid of the bike and get the kind of car you need.
Until, of course, you get jealous.
A car is not a rocket. It can’t do rocket things. It can’t even do bus things or tractor things. It’s simply good at being a car.
Read any business news, and you’ll find stories of unicorns, venture funding and IPOs. Stories of powerful CEOs who are out to change the world.
They rarely got there on a bicycle.
That’s okay.
The challenge arises when we take our eyes off of what we set out to build in the first place.
They’re everywhere we look. Here are a few thoughts on the ones that won’t go away:
First, is it a problem or a situation? Problems, by definition, have solutions. You might not like the cost of the solution, the trade-offs it leads to, or the time and effort it takes, but problems have solutions.
On the other hand, situations don’t. Situations are simply things we need to live with.
Once we realize that a problem we have isn’t a problem at all, but actually a situation, it’s easier to do our best to move on and thrive. Focusing on a situation is usually a source of stress, not a way forward.
Second, has anyone else ever solved a problem like this one in a useful way? If not, it might be a situation. See question one.
Third, if the problem has been around for a while, it might not be an easy problem. Those tend to get solved right away. It’s probably a problem that involves more effort or trade-offs than you were hoping for. Resetting our expectations for what it might take to solve gives us the chance to recalibrate it as a situation we’re willing to live with, simply because the cost of the solution is too high.
And finally, some problems get better if we’re willing to talk about them. Some situations, on the other hand, simply get worse when we focus our energy and community on them.
For years, I’ve been using this picture of Neil Armstrong when I tell the story of meeting him and hearing his talk at one of his last public appearances:
I wasn’t there when this photo was taken, so I relied on a Google image search to find it:
I compounded Google’s error. Sorry, Buzz.
Neil had the camera. The photos of him on the moon were taken by a long selfie stick on the LEM. All the iconic shots show a very very tiny image of Neil reflecting in Buzz Aldrin’s visor (so technically, I guess he is in those photos).
We need people to hold the metaphorical camera. But when they do, they’re often not in the shot. That doesn’t mean they’re not doing important work.
Apple didn’t succeed because of the way Steve Jobs dressed.
Just like SBF’s hair didn’t put him in jail.
We can look at the outré behavior of various Silicon Valley overlords and come to the conclusion that it’s not only a necessary part of the job but actually the cause of their project’s success.
That’s like saying that all the rigamarole some baseball players do before stepping up to the plate leads to home runs, or that an author’s special pencil is the secret to their writing style. You don’t have to scream and yell to run a great restaurant.
The rapid rise of tech and the power of the network effect is mysterious to many. Add to that the proven but non-obvious foundations of successful marketing, and it seems like the easiest way forward is to simply copy some antics we see in the media. It’s tempting to look for clues as to the magic. But co-incident events aren’t always causes.
No need to be part of the circus. If you can find a problem and solve it, you can skip the clown car.
My new short LinkedIn class on project management just launched, and I’ll be discussing it live today with Amanda Ruud … we’ll be there if you want to bring your questions.
Sooner or later, all important work becomes project work.
After the extraordinary feedback from her last session, Avaleen Morris is leading another session of the Song of Significance interactive workshop in a few weeks. It’s about Work Worth Doing. You save 15% with that link. This is two hours that will change the way you interact with your peers and your work.
Purple.space continues to inspire and evolve and create possibility for the people who are part of it. It includes peer-to-peer support, communities of practice, active workshops, daily check-ins and more. It also includes access to the Marketing seminar, the Creative’s workshop, and this week, the Freelancer’s workshop as well.
My first Page-A-Day calendar is a surprise bestseller, and it starts doing its job on your desk in just a few weeks.
Here’s the link to the free Thanksgiving Reader. It might be just what we need. Gratitude usually is.
And, if you’re in NY before the end of the year, Asi Wind is one of the finest magicians in the world. It’s fair to say he will blow your mind.
“I don’t want to send this pitch to a list of every single podcaster in the world, but we have to get the word out.”
“I don’t want to send an email to every one of our previous donors every three days until they unsubscribe, but our work is so important, it has to be done.”
“I don’t want to robocall every person in the district, but if I don’t, our campaign has no chance… the other guy is even more aggressive than we are.”
Except there’s an “except.”
Except that all the organizations before you that have reluctantly raced to the bottom aren’t happy that they did. They’re not thriving and they might not even be around any more.
The reason that our attention has been strip-mined is that the system that evolved seems to reward short-term players that take the direct, easy, and lazy way out. While it seems like we have no choice, in fact, we have a very obvious one.
It turns out that finding, connecting and respecting a small group of supporters and customers always outperforms the hustle for more. And that if you can create a remarkable story that’s worth spreading, it’ll spread. Not because you need it to, but because your customers do.
Reluctant or not, spam is still spam. If you can’t imagine wanting to receive it, don’t send it.
Many moths are attracted to light. That works fine when it’s a bright moon and an open field, but not so well for the moths if the light was set up as a bug trap.
Processionary caterpillars follow the one in front until their destination, even if they’re arranged in a circle, leading them to march until exhaustion.
It might be that you have built a system for your success that works much of the time, but there’s a glitch in it that lets you down. Or it might be that we live in a culture that creates wealth and possibility, but glitches when it fails to provide opportunity to others or leaves a mess in our front yards.
The thrill-seeking behavior that allows someone to become a rock star might not be the method they need to keep their career going and to live a resilient and generative life…
Humans can do something moths can’t: when we find the glitch, we can work to do something about it.
November 12, 2023
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