How to Sap Energy & Steal Creativity: “Just Execute”
Don’t think. Just do.
A talented strategic friend chatted with the vp of marketing at a medtech startup. What was the company looking for in their posted marketing hire? They just wanted someone to execute. Just execute? My friend was floored. You want to hire someone and not use their entire brain? You want to disengage the emotion that arises from thinking through a problem? You have such knowledge of the market, you’ve considered every angle, you know all there is about your target audience, you are so confident you don’t need anyone else thinking this through? Or—was the pressure so great to show results that they could not waste time on strategy. Either way, the entire conversation pointed out this was a company to avoid.
“Just execute” is corporate bully language for “Do it because I said so.” Nearly every human benefits from knowing the “what” and “why” behind an order. And even God entertained modifications to His plan while Moses verbally worked through the mission as they chatted around the burning bush.
Don’t misunderstand: there is absolutely a place for “just execute.” Stuff gotta get done. Yes. But long term, stuff gets done much more effectively when we enlist whole people to work with us. And that means bringing people along with us as we process our mission. Just say “No” to the smoky backroom where highly paid C-suiters work out the details and then send a courier with decrees out to the rank and file.
This authoritarian tendency looks even worse in a volunteer organization like a church. Because money is not a factor there—it’s all about feeding motivation. Avoiding rich conversations about “why” short circuits the process and makes whole people flee.
Whatever your position, do yourself and your organization a favor by helping people see the big picture. Helping them form and reform and personalize the big picture. Whether you are a manager, a volunteer coordinator, a pastor or lead worker on an assembly line. This is what leaders do.
And know this: Those who won’t share or budge on the big picture will not attract or retain talent. But they will find themselves starting from scratch again and again.
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Image Credit: C-front
Start Anywhere Not Over
Starting over, would you do it different?
Today’s project? This job? That relationship? This marriage?
Looking back, we all see some things that would benefit from a shift in approach.
I was recently talking with a new college grad in a job with significant responsibility. He wants to do great work, but the immense pile of work before him and the fast pace environment seem to conspire against ever feeling caught up, letting alone doing the exceptional stuff he did in college. I recognize lots of friends and clients in this same spot. Most of us have been there or perhaps that is our permanent home.
But if you started over, you’d do things differently.
Really?
Some things. Perhaps. But those old patterns are woven deep into the fabric of our approach to any given day. Starting over may not have the cleansing effect we hope for. There are no easy answers to managing your time to do great work. Saying “No” to some work and “Yes” to other work is part of the solution. Learning to focus and keep distractions at bay is another piece. Lots of people have lots of advice for how to deal with this and much of it is quite good. Seth Godin distributes advice like this every day. Free. His “The Dip” is all about when to quit and when not to.
Training Day
Maybe the pressures we face today or this year have everything to do with the direction we need to grow. Maybe the pressures we face are part of how we are to be shaped right now. I’m fond of an old dead poet/king/dancing machine. In this particular ancient text of his, he offered that the troubles we find ourselves in have a disruptive quality designed to help us look again for balance. And balance is found in a deepening alignment with, well, God. Whether in today’s project, this job, that relationship and especially this marriage. This poet had strategies for his pursuit. Those strategies make sense any time we’re wondering whether we should just start over. And his strategies make even more sense if we’re trying to figure out how to pick up just one piece right now. Right in the middle of the pressure—which piece can I start that will unravel this tangled mess?
Before you start over, start anywhere.
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Image Credit: via thisisnthappiness
Never Say This To Your Boss On A Monday
“Easy, Peterson. We’re in mixed company.”
Unless your employee figures “Why” for themselves
Certain words and phrases race from useful to cliché within an hour-long meeting. Just check out this list of 89 clichés, many of which you’ll likely hear today. Other words carry so much heavy baggage that when your VP says them, the air in the room suddenly seems carbon monoxide-heavy and people start to drift.
This word is among those problematic words.
It’s a common word. So common, in fact, that when uttered aloud it brings to mind exactly…nothing. This word is invisible.
“Strategy.”
Three of us have been talking about why it is so many clients see strategy as something hammered out by a few bosses in the back room—or simply as a complete waste of time. These organizations reward a “bias toward action,” which looks like lots of activity, lots of people staying late, lots of emails on Saturday and Sunday, without lots of results. Too often all that activity is at cross-purposes across an entire organization eager to prove their bias toward action.
The three of us would like to rehab the concept, but not the word itself. Our rehab efforts consist of breaking the concept into component parts that become as sticky as a five-year-old’s wonderment: What? Why? How? Simple stuff. But when approached directly, these words become profoundly effective tools for guiding teams and organizations and, especially brands. Incredibly useful words not just for giving instructions, but for engaging someone’s emotion and intellect. The first order of rehab is to include all three components. The second order of rehab is tell the straight story about each—without cliché, with clear endpoints. And that means end points that others can see if they get done (or not).
We’re starting to believe that managers who major on the “What” or “How” without telling “Why” are getting employees to feel OK running about on impulse drive without ever taking their work to warp speed. Of course, it is possible the manager still feels knowledge is power and to withhold the “Why” is a way to maintain that power. Impulse drive is all they’ll ever get.
Unless.
Unless their employee figures out the “Why” for themselves. Unless the employee finds a way to put meaning into their work on their own. Unless the employee learns to engage in the kind of dialogue that helps a group move forward.
I hope to write more about this. The topic includes lots of working parts: leading from anywhere in an organization, learning to help a boss ask the bigger questions without disappearing down the rabbit hole of industrial strength strategy/BS sessions, helping each other grow into people who care and do our best. And many more.
Oh—and the third, most important order of rehab: courage. The whole thing needs to be stirred up by people willing to share their dumb ideas. Because sometimes dumb ideas produce solid, cogent, meaningful results, despite the awkward moments along the way.
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Image Credit: 4CP via thisisnthappiness
I Wish More Churches Observed This Convenient Fiction: Outsiders Are Among Us
Outsiders seeking truth won’t settle for bland spirituality
Our church is at its best when we say to ourselves there are people here kicking the tires of Christianity. I think it can be true, but in the church I attend, I rarely meet anyone who has not already bought the car. Still—don’t we all keep kicking the tires?
Saying there are outsiders lets us drop the clichés and insider language. It lets us jettison the assumptions about being good or put together. It makes us all a bit less stodgy and a bit more honest. Even the most deeply devoted person keeps thinking through the issues of her or his life where they are still kicking the tires: can I trust God in an economy that keeps swirling in the toilet? Or to guide my grown-up kid to make good choices? Can I still trust God when (perhaps) more years lie behind me than before me? Life constantly changes, of course. There is always more living than there is faith to meet the next challenge. But then we watch together for how God intervenes even with faith to move forward.
I like boiling down clichés and disposing of the club mentality that insider language inevitably fosters. But this is not the same as the traditional understanding of seeker-sensitive, where actual content is tossed aside in favor of a bland spirituality. No, Christianity has some barbs that are difficult to understand and hard to come to peace with. The key is to present the barbs honestly and admit we struggle with them too. All while hearing regularly from the ancient texts that have always informed the church. That is a text that speaks to any outsider willing to listen–and is the time-honored antidote to bland spirituality.
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Image Credit: Max Streicher via 2headedsnake
11 Things to Remember when Walking Your Daughter Down this Long Aisle to Marry the Tall Gentleman at the Other End
Tomorrow Tess and Nick Get Married.
Kris and I could not be happier. Still, it is a bit of a queasy threshold, not something I’ve crossed before. So—a few reminders to help me get through the ceremonies, rituals and (self-inflicted) awkward moments:
- Check your fly. It’s up. Right?
- Breathe.
- The world changed dramatically the week Tess was born. Maybe it was because the Berlin Wall came down. Maybe because Tess showed up. I think the latter. But let’s just stay in the moment, shall we?
- Step forward.
- And again.
- Forget the four pages of detailed notes about life. These two are jotting their own notes now.
- Did I check my fly?
- Don’t stop mid-stride—Tevye-like—to sing out all the options. Others have a hard time holding their pose while I do that.
- Remember that something much larger is at work here, right before my eyes.
- Breathe.
- Wait—what’s that breeze?
Congratulations Tess and Nick!
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Image Credit: Tradition Fiddler On The Roof
Joseph, Seth Godin’s Dip and Knowing When to Quit
Practice Your Craft In the Dip Or On The Rise
wait, where is that basket tethered?
It’s funny what ideas collide on any given day. I’ve been re-reading Seth Godin’s The Dip while also re-reading the ancient text Genesis. In Genesis I’m at the point in the story where the Creator needs to clear out his favorite people—the ones He’ll use to help all subsequent generations and peoples—to a foreign land so they’ll survive a famine. The front man is Joseph, sold into economic slavery by his not-so-well-meaning brothers. Joseph winds up as #2 man in Egypt. You know the story. Maybe you are already singing the tune from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
It turns out not just any dream will do, as Mr. Osmond so famously sang, because there were a lot of very big falls and rises in Joseph’s life. And a lot of waiting, which served to focus the dream. Quitting would have been an excellent option for any of the many dips he experienced. Because there were no guarantees the dip would ever end. There were no guarantees he would ever rise out of the slavery/prison. Interestingly, the author of Genesis points out that Joseph continued to work out the processes behind his dream: his gift for organizing people and stuff. His gift of leadership. So that wherever he was, as household slave or in jail, he organized and led using the same skills that would help him manage a nation’s food supply through thick years and thin.
The dream seemed to be about fame at the beginning—that’s what Joseph’s brother’s thought. Maybe Joseph thought that too. But the dream became a byproduct of practicing the gifts given him, even at the lowest points of the dip. To quit would have been to stop practicing the thing he was made for, which would be to give up hope. I think Webber did a good job capturing the optimism that must have been warp and woof of Joseph’s life.
Where does that optimism come from? Maybe from practicing one’s craft when up or when down. Maybe that optimism comes from understanding a much larger plan is in the works and you are in it, whether you on the rise or languishing in the dip.
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Image credit: Scribner’s Monthly Via OBI Scrapbook Blog
How To Pitch a Medical Device Company #4: Deliver Different (Not as Easy as It Sounds)
Dumb idea. Wait. That might work.
“Of course,” you might say. “Naturally that’s the point of asking an agency to pitch.” But wait—this is not so easily accomplished. Words and ideas in MedTech become entrenched over time. There are reasons for this, not the least of which is the organization’s internal gating system, organized entirely around the claims they’ve decided they can legally make and can support with the scientific literature and clinical trial conclusions. The gating system also includes those words that fall within the risk tolerance introduced by the legal department. That risk tolerance gets tighter and tighter over time. The internal politics of retaining control over messaging is another reason for entrenchment.
What to do? On the one hand you’ve got seasoned creative minds ready to work out the benefits in a fresh way. On the other hand, it looks like you have a limited set of pathways to follow.
Being an outsider is a huge plus. Your track record outside of MedTech is a huge advantage in the pitch. It creates a platform for you to speak from. A reason for your audience to listen. They’ll be listening for something new, but their antennae will also be up for familiar words that indicate basic levels of understanding of their problems (of which I advocate not pretending).
Brief your team on how to work within and around the framework presented. To stay entirely inside the framework is the curse of living within an organization and heeding the internal rules. But that is not your arena. Knowing all you can about the target audience may help you turn a perceptual problem into an opportunity. One assignment I gave an agency was to turn a therapy largely perceived by spine surgeons as a joke and unproven into a viable option. We had the science behind us and knew how far we could go with the claims. The agency’s resulting concept was a hard sell internally but eventually made it through. The concept shocked the journals so much they initially refused to run it. Know the framework, but as a springboard not a straightjacket.
Don’t forget to play dumb. Being an outsider helps because you can do stuff an insider would know not to do. In fact, this is exactly where you do your best work. And isn’t that how the creative process works—eventually you stumble onto the right thing.
Courage! In the end, doesn’t it always come down to belief in the thing you are presenting? Help them see why it is such a great idea—but you know that. That is where you excel.
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Image Credit: Bertrall O. via OBI Scrapbook Blog
Church Scattered Looks Different From Church Gathered
But it is still the Church
what of the church scattered?
I’m starting to wonder about the church gathered and the church scattered. When gathered, the church is governed by the authoritative voices elected/appointed that would seem to speak to/for the entire body. Pastors, associate pastors, sub pastors. Women pastors purposefully not called pastors (in the great Evangelical tradition of shell game authority).
But the church scattered…what of that? Are the pastors/elders still in control? Not hardly—the church has reconvened out in their work places where the docile congregation morphs to serfs, middle-managers and captains of industry. With varying levels of ability, authority, autonomy and knowledge. The church is dispersed like clockwork every Monday and there is no stopping that. What is the goal of the church when not gathered? The same: to display the manifold wisdom of God, as the Apostle Paul said. And perhaps the social chirps from the pocket (the Tweets received, the prayers sent by text, the blogged thoughts and updated Facebook statuses that indicated relationship) enhance the scattered church’s connections and saltiness out in the world.
The mission when gathered is to whoop it up over the God of the universe and the truth about Him letting us know Him. And to help each other grow in knowing God. The mission when scattered? Like oil in gears, or salt on food, or light scattering cockroaches on a dark floor: individuals act out the presence of God in direct contact with the corrupted and corrupting stuff of everyday life (which is to say, the human condition).
The church industry spends a lot of time working on and directing the gathered piece. But the scattered piece gets less attention, though there is a kind of osmosis assumed to be at work, where the context of church gathered gets translated to church scattered. But it’s always been up to individuals to sort that translation out.
What do you think? How is the church scattered different from the church gathered?
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Image credit: Michael Jantzen via 2headesnake
How to Pitch a Medical Device Company #3: Don’t Pretend
Language is telling.
In Quebec City not so long ago I tried my lame bits of French when ordering or to strike up a conversation. Naturally, there was no hiding that I am an American. And this: if some Francophile took pity on me and answered in French, I was immediately on a slippery slope of wordlessness. Maybe one word in French? Oui. Two words? No.
Language says a lot about what we know the moment we open our mouths. And the game played by medtech firms involves a very firm grip on the language used to explain how their therapy works and the medical problems it solves. These language skills are honed through long discussions with physicians, clinicians and researchers. One doesn’t just pick up such a vocabulary. In some ways, it’s a kind of birthright of people who’ve grown up in the industry.
But just like the Canadian French speakers, they melted (well, a little) to hear my butchering of their language. It meant I was trying. In the same way, medtech firms want to know you are ready to learn. But mostly they don’t expect you to be ready. You’ve come with something else: a track record of ideas and executions that someone imagines refreshing their brand.
So don’t pretend to know the details of their business. Better to be a learner with a solid track record.
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Image Credit: via www.telegraph.co.uk: Frank Perry
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