Archive for the ‘making mistakes’ Category
It’s Better to Have the Conversation Than Not
Assumptions are a cul-de-sac. Admissions, an autobahn.
A fast-moving project I’m on pits the changing need of the client with the frantic response of the agency. I’m writing copy and providing strategic direction for a moving target, which has (literally) kept me up nights.
One truth that has proven itself to me several times over the past few weeks is that it is simply better to have a conversation than to not. That may seem obvious to you. But it’s taken me years to come to understand this. I’m too easily put off by the gruff manner or the fly-off-the-handle personality. It’s too tempting to put my head down and just do the work. But the way forward—especially when the task and deliverables are murky—is to talk together about what we understand. Naturally it is embarrassing to admit I know only this much (thumb and forefinger stretched) when I imagine those who wrote the scope of work know this much (from here to the wall, say).
But admit I must.
It is the only way forward. And sometimes it is the only way to get to the place where you can put your head down and do the work. Admitting what I know is also the best way forward: anything I can do to get the team on the same page, whether that means showing my rough draft copy or my quick dumb sketch of what I think the interactive designer just said. And by admitting what I know, others can feel free to admit what they know. That’s usually when I come to find out someone heading up the whole thing is just as baffled. But when we talk openly about what we know and especially what we don’t, a measured response can emerge and we assemble our next steps. At least until the next client meeting.
There is something of an art to getting people on the same page. Some personalities fall into this easier than others. Getting open discussion is aided by vulnerability: the admission. The confession. I suppose the question is: how badly do you want to move forward?
See also Seth Godin’s commentary about fearing the fear vs. feeling the fear. It may give you courage for your task.
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Image Credit: Mark Brooks via 2headedsnake
Get a Job. Or Don’t.
Rethinking My Standard Line on Employment
What to say to folks starting in this job market?
I’m gearing up to teach a couple professional writing classes at the University of Northwestern—St. Paul. I’ll be updating my syllabi, looking at a new text or two. I’ve got some new ideas about how the courses should unfold and about how I can get more discussion and less of that nasty blathery/lecture stuff from me. I’ll be thinking about writing projects that move closer to what copywriters and content strategists do day in and day out.
Yeah: don’t bind your legs when you really need to take action.
One thing I’m also doing is reconsidering the standard advice for people on the cusp of a working life. I usually tell the brightest students—the ones who want to write for a living and show every indication of being capable of carrying that out—to start with a company. Starting with a company helps pay down debt, provides health insurance (often) and best of all, you learn the ropes and cycles of the business and industry. I’ve often thought of those first jobs out of college as a sort of finishing school or mini-graduate school where you get paid to learn the details of an industry (or industries). Those first jobs can set a course the later jobs. And those first friendships bloom in all sorts of unlikely ways as peers also make their way through work and life. You connect and reconnect for years and years.
But I’m no longer so certain of that advice. While it’s true that companies and agencies and marketing firms provide terrific entry ramps to the work world, they also open the door to some work habits that are not so great. Every business has its own culture, of course. Sometimes that culture looks like back-biting and demeaning and discouraging. Sometimes the work culture can be optimistic and recognize accomplishment and encouraging and fun. Mostly it’s a mix of both.
But one thing I don’t want these bright students to learn at some corporate finishing school is the habit of just doing their job. By that I mean the habit of waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Every year I watch talented friends get laid off from high-powered jobs in stable industries where they worked hard at exactly what they were asked to do. And most everyone at some point says something like:
Wait—I should have been thinking all along about what I want to do. [or]
How can I be more entrepreneurial with my skill set? [or]
What exactly is my vision for my work life?
Some of these bright writing students are meant to be entrepreneurial from the very beginning. Though a rocky and difficult path in getting established with clients and earning consistently, it may be a more stable way to live down the road. Maybe “stable” is not quite the right word for the entrepreneurial bent—“sustainable” might be more appropriate. The quintessential habit to learn is to depend on yourself (while also asking God for help, you understand) rather than waiting for someone to come tell you what to do.
I’m eager for these bright, accomplished people to think beyond the narrow vision of just getting a job. The vision they develop will power all sorts of industries over time.
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Image credit: arcaneimages, via rrrick/2headedsnake
When you lose your job you step into the space between
Movement toward “What next?”
A batch of colleagues lost their jobs in a fit of corporate downsizing. Smart, talented, loyal people who invested years are now asking “What next?”
Same old story for my generation. Happens all the time. Rarely pleasant.
I believe standing on the corner scratching your head and saying “Now what?” is a great place to be. Granted: few of us ever choose to go there. Most of us prefer what we’ve been doing. Even if we hate what we had been doing, it beats not knowing what’s next.
Over at Coracle Journeys, Judith Hougen has a lovely, timeless essay on liminal space—that place we move through when we leave the concrete and known and venture forward. Her entire essay is exceptional, short and worth the read:
Catholic priest and author Richard Rohr explains liminal space: “It is when you have left the tried and true, but have not yet been able to replace it with anything else. It is when you are finally out of the way. It is when you are between your old comfort zone and any possible new answer….These thresholds of waiting and not knowing our ‘next’ are everywhere in life and they are inevitable. If you are not trained in how to hold anxiety, how to live with ambiguity, how to entrust and wait, you will run…anything to flee this terrible cloud of unknowing.”
Job loss is one step toward liminal space. It turns out there are many, many routes to the corner and “What now?” Graduating, moving to a new city, loss of relationship, aging. It’s a long list that parallels anyone’s list of top ten most stressful life events.
This “terrible cloud of unknowing” is only a distant, rumored threat when you are 19 and invincible. But each decade is a corner that provides more and closer glimpses of the cloud. It’s all part of the package deal that is the human condition.
Read the full essay at Coracle Journeys.
It will encourage you.
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Image credit: Alex Prager via 2headedsnake
It Turns Out Time Is Not So Flexible
My Wife Demonstrates Use of a “Clock”
I’ve always joked that I live in a time warp. Time actually moves backwards as I drive to my next meeting (which is not a confession of speeding, please understand).
I am of the tribe who refuses to leave what I’m doing to get to the next thing. In my mind—as I remain at my keyboard—myriad mental time and distance calculations convince me that of course I have plenty of time to get to that meeting. My watch is set ten minutes ahead so I am only five minutes late to things. (That’s a reasonable margin, right?) Of course there will be green lights. Certainly there will be no traffic—I count on it. Naturally I can shower/shave in five minutes and be ready. Absolutely.
As it turns out, my wife is able to use a clock. And she timed my five-minute shower. And then she asked me if I could take a shower and eat breakfast in five minutes.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
“Twenty minutes,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Yes.”
So, here’s my new deal with the universe: I’ll give myself thirty minutes to shower and eat breakfast. And not just because my wife has had something to say about this for 27+ years. Perhaps peace with Mrs. Kirkistan—in this area—would be useful.
Yes.
I’ll get started right away.
Just let me finish this thought.
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Image Credit: Ryan Todd via thisisnthappiness
Chris Guillebeau & World Domination
The Art of Non-Conformity
I’m halfway through Chris Guillebeau’s “The Art of Non-Conformity” and enjoying it greatly. It’s a very easy read. Even so, Mr. Guillebeau manages to challenge all sorts of commonly accepted ways we wander through life, from corporate culture to the rhetorical jujutsu of the bosses and authorities in our lives to how we decide what is most important. In every case, he invites me to ask my own questions rather than blindly accept whatever is laid before me. But it doesn’t read like a philosophical tract or evangelist’s preachment—it is simply stories from the lives of different non-conformists, which he then applies to the mundane stuff of ordinary, daily life. To surprising ends.
Mr. Guillebeau’s honesty pulls you in and keeps you hooked. He shows successes and failure, which makes the entire project feel more doable.
His book (and blog) place travel high in his own list of life’s important stuff and you cannot help but get the bug yourself. But I also like his ongoing conversation about what success looks like. Maybe success looks like a Porsche. Or maybe it looks like a month in Kuala Lumpur. Or maybe it looks like time to write every day. Or maybe it looks like helping orphans in Africa. Or like time to care for aging parents. But it whatever success looks like, Mr. Guillebeau is certain it is your decision—not anyone else’s.
Which brings me to one his central pivots: the notion of world domination. It’s really a sly way of rejecting the values we receive by osmosis and asking what it is we are really trying to accomplish in life. You dominate the world when you replace and live by your own definitions rather than hefting someone else’s.
Give it a read.
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The Office: Neither Crib Nor Playpen. Not Preschool. Not Kindergarten.
The Role of the Declarative in Every Day Life
This has the power to change you: say what you stand for rather than saying over and over what you are against. To declare what you stand for is to say a positive about yourself and your situation in life. Declaring takes courage because others will disagree, they may say “That’s not true!” Others may despise you for saying what you think, they may not believe and many will simply find your declaration irrelevant.
But you must say it anyway.
Declarational speech expresses us at work as agents of truth. –Robert Sokolowski, Phenomenology of the Human Person (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
Corporations and organizations are at their best when their people take ownership of processes. Taking ownership means making that process one’s own. Remember in school when the teacher said “use your own words” versus cribbing from the encyclopedia? (An encyclopedia was a set of “books” made of “paper” that sat on a “shelf” gathering dust until a “report” was due) That process of using your own words is the very reason for the staying power for your odd assortment of facts from childhood.
Taking ownership and using your own words is the same process that makes you a grown-up human today. A necessary condition of taking ownership is that the result will look different from what someone else might have done. If you are a boss and chide your employee for doing things differently than you, stop and rethink your relationship with the work and the client and your employee.
No organization can grow—no people in an organization can grow—if they are not using their own words to say what is happening.
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Image credit: Gregory Norman Bossert via Wofford College/thisisnthappiness
Low-Life Exiled Son of a Hooker
A Leadership Story You Never Heard in Sunday School
Jeff, son of Gil, was a fighter. Jeff’s mom was a prostitute—which deeply embarrassed Jeff’s brothers. Jeff’s brothers—born of Gil’s wife—told Jeff in no uncertain terms he was different, not up to par, had no share in the family business and had to go. So he did: Jeff moved off to a different country. In that different country he attracted all sorts of has-beens, slackers and ne’er do wells. Jeff’s low-life friends went out and did their low-life stuff together.
Years passed. Jeff’s brothers took power and a neighboring nation declared war on them. So they called Jeff to lead the attack. Jeff said, “Why? I thought you hated me.”
[under their breath: we still do you son of a…and maybe we hate you even more now but] “Come be our leader.”
So he did. He proved to be a hot-head and prone to rash vows, but Jeff first tried to reason with the opposing army. When that didn’t work, he went and busted them, which did work. But in the process he vowed something very precious to win the battle. It was a promise he would deeply regret and remains entirely barbaric today (hint: don’t wager treasures from your own home).
I read this story a few days back and it reminded me that all sorts of people get enlisted to lead us forward. My favorite ancient text points to a leadership tree composed of a family of deceivers, a tongue-tied retiree, a prostitute, and this son of a prostitute—just for starters. One thing these losers had in common, even beyond a sense of calling, was trust in some One larger than themselves as they faced a need way out of proportion to their tool box.
So…just because you don’t have what it takes to move your team or family or people forward, doesn’t mean you should not consider the task. Look for a way to trust, which seems a good way to proceed, given the frailty of our human condition.
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Image credit: Thom Ang via Frank T. Zumbachs Mysterious World
Don’t Bother Me, I’m Busy Talking to Myself
Just because you have a budget doesn’t mean you know what you’re talking about
I just finished with a client who refused to take direction.
What’s that? You think a consultant should not give direction to a client? You could not be more wrong. That’s exactly what a good consultant does. It’s just that a consultant’s direction doesn’t look like orders or demands. A consultant’s direction looks like alternatives to the usual and invisible way of doing things.
Sometimes we need help seeing what is right before us. We are soaked in teams that are steeped in detail that is loaded with the talk that just circulates between people in the know. This adds up to a set of increasingly narrow word choices that are interesting only to the team. Those words sound like gibberish to anyone on the outside.
My client continued to talk in the insider terms only they understood. And they would not be dissuaded. In the end, they approved copy that ensured no one outside their little circle would understand.
Which feels like failure to me.
This doesn’t happen often, but it’s a bummer when it does. And it makes me think again about how complicated communication is, and why it is so important to start talking earlier rather than later. And why it is critically important that we pull our head out of the huddle from time to time.
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Image credit: killythirsk via 2headedsnake
Peace for the Promiscuous Reader
Coming to grips with one’s naughty habits
By my favorite, well-lit chair are stacks of books. Actually five stacks. Why stacks of books? It’s a quirk of borrowing—one library allows me three weeks (six when I renew, which I usually do). Another library allows me three months or so (an amazing primary joy of teaching at a college, for which I am daily thankful).
In the past I’ve felt guilty for all these books lying around partially read. But yesterday I realized, “No, this might be what my reading life looks like. Maybe reform is not possible.” (Maybe reform is not needed?)
I currently adhere to the discipline of reading one book (at a time) straight through, from cover to cover. Right now I’m reading “The Dignity of Difference” by Jonathan Sacks which is an amazing, readable argument for why anyone should care about the outsider. I am completely intrigued by how Sacks pits Moses against Plato in a knock-down, drag out fight on purity vs. practicality. OK, yes, I’m also reading Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow on the fiction side of the equation.
“Adhere to the discipline” because it is easy to fool myself into thinking I’m reading them all from cover to cover. I’m not. Many are there for research on this notion of the Other (Levinas) and various philosophical/theological tangents arising from an easily distracted mind. Some are there because of something I want to learn about or to try to backfill one of the many holes in my education. But with the cover-to-cover book, I also try to finish at least a chapter at each sitting.
So I read one fiction/non-fiction book from cover to cover as I sample from many. And then I pick the next cover-to-cover book from those I am sampling.
And I’m OK with that.
I’m OK with that because of a tweet from John Wilson (@jwilson1812) about his reading habits. As editor of Books & Culture, I imagine his office and home (Garage? Car? Boat? Scooter?) awash in tidal waves of book stacks. And that makes me feel not so bad.
But, well, judge me if you must.
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Rob Bell and Our Costly Questions
Conversations to engage a generation of questioners
There’s a telling line in the recent story of Rob Bell in The New Yorker (“The Hell-Raiser”), where the author Kelefa Sanneh conjectured that in writing “Love Wins,” Bell was “dreaming of a world a world without arguments—as if the right book, written the right way, would persuade Christians to stop firing Bible verses at each other and start working to build Heaven on earth.” (60) Conjecture about what others are dreaming is often problematic. But Sanneh, like the rest of us, take our cues from what others say and write, which is standard operating procedure for human communication events. Conjecture is always fair game for conversation.
There’s a lot the author gets right in the article and there are a few places with loaded language and mashed-up history. For instance, the notion that the “church matured” (60) out of the notion of Hell as a physical place is too loose a summary to really work. Debates about interpretation rage today, from all quarters.
Sanneh’s focus on how a preacher became a questioner among a people who do not respond generously to larger questions makes for interesting reading. These are my people and I confess that I too have responded without generosity too many times. And yet these larger questions are exactly the conversational fuel that can help move forward this often awkward project called the church. Especially because the generations behind me are increasingly wed to questions rather than dogmatic answers.
Much of what Bell wrote resonates with me. In particular, I’m smitten by this notion that people can talk—even about very deeply held things—without demonizing or judging each other. The notion reminds me of those noble people who early in the history of the church were in conversation with the inveterate letter writer. They eagerly heard what he had to say then examined it on their own to decide whether it was true or not. I imagine them discussing with authoritative texts and possibly disagreeing, but maintaining their relationships.
Bell has done us a great service by voicing these questions, even though the penalties for him have been high.
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Image Credit: The New Yorker
conversation is an engine 