The Canvas Strategy

? Great men have almost always shown themselves as ready to obey as they afterwards proved able to command ? Lord Mahon

If you want great mentors, you have to become a great mentee. If you want to lead, you have to first learn to follow. 

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In the Roman system of art and science, there existed a concept for which we have only a partial analog. Successful businessman, politicians, or rich playboys would subsidize a number of writers, thinkers, artists, and performers. Moree then just being paid to produce works of art, these artists performed a number of tasks in exchange for protection, food, and gifts. One of the roles was that of an anteambulo - literally meaning "one who clears the path". An anteambulo proceeded in front of his patron anywhere they traveled in Rome, making way, communicating messages, and generally making the patron’s life easier. 

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It’s worth taking a look at the supposed indignities of "serving" someone else. Because in reality, not only is the apprentice model responsible for some of the greatest art in the history of the world - everyone from Michelangelo to Leonardo da Vinci to Benjamin Franklin has been forced to navigate such a system - but if you're going to be the big deal you think you are going to be, isn't this a rather trivial, temporary imposition? 

When someone gets his first job or joins a new organization, he's often given this advice: make other people look good and you will do well. Keep your head down, they say, and serve your boss. Naturally, this is not what the kid who was chosen over all the other kids for the position wants to hear. It's not what a Harvard grad expects - after all, they got that degree precisely to avoid this supposed indignity. 

Let's flip it around so it doesn't seem so demeaning: it's not about kissing ass. It's not about making someone look good. It's about providing the support so that others can be good. The better wording for the advice is this: find canvases for other people to paint on. Be an anteambulo. Clear the path for the people above you and you will eventually create a path for yourself. 

When you are just starting out, we can be sure of a few fundamental realities: 

1/ you're not nearly as good or as important as you think you are

2/ you have an attitude that needs to be readjusted

3/ most of what you think you know or most of what you learned books or in school is out of date or wrong. 

There's one fabulous way to work all of that out of your system: attach yourself to people and organizations who are already successful, subsume your identity into theirs, and move both Ford simultaneously. It's certainly more glamorous to pursue your own glory - though hardly as effective. Obeisance is the way forward. 

That's the other effect of this attitude: it reduces your ego at a critical time in your career, letting you absorb everything you can without the obstructions that block other's vision and progress. 

No one is endorsing sycophancy. Instead, it's about seeing what goes on from the inside, and looking for opportunities for someone other than yourself. Remember that anteambulo means clearing the path - finding the direction someone already intended to head and helping them pack, freeing them up to focus on their strengths. In fact, making things better rather than simply looking as if you are.    

Many people know of Benjamin Franklin's famous pseudonymous letters written under names like Silence Dogwood. "What a clever young prodigy", they think, and miss the most impressive part entirely: Franklin wrote those letters, submitted them by sliding them under the print-shop door, and received absolutely no credit for them until much later in his life. In fact, it was his brother, the print-ship owner, who profited from their immense popularity , regularly running them on the front page of his newspaper. Franklin was playing the long game, though - learning how public opinion worked, generating awareness of what he believed in, crafting his style and tone and wit. It was a Strategy he used time and again over his career - once even publishing in his competitor's paper in order to undermine a third competitor - for Franklin saw the constant benefit in making other people look good and letting them take credit for your ideas. 

Bill Belichick, the four-time super bowl-winning head coach of the New England Patriots, made his way up the ranks of the NFL by loving and mastering the one part of the job that coaches dislike at the time: analyzing film. His first job in professional football, for the Baltimore colts, was one he volunteered to take without pay - and his insights, which provided ammunition and critical strategies for the game, were attributed exclusively to the more senior coaches. He thrived on what was considered grunt work, asked for it, and strove to become the best at precisely what others thought they were too good for. "He was like a sponge, taking it all in, listening to everything" one coach say. "You gave him an assignment and he disappeared into a roman you didn't see him again until it was done, and then he wanted to do more," said another. As you can guess, Belichick started getting paid very soon.   

Before that, as a high school player, he was so knowledgable about the game that he functioned as a sort of assistant coach even while playing the game. Belichick's father, himself an assistant football coach for Navy, taught him a critical lesson in football politics: if he wanted to give his coach feedback or question a decision, he needed to do it in private and self-effacingly so as not to offend his superior. He learned how to be a rising star without threatening or alienating anyone. In other words, he had mastered the canvas strategy. 

you can see how easily entitlement and sense of superiority (the trapping of ego) would have made the accomplishment of either of these men impossible. Franklin would never have been published if he'd prioritized credit over creative expression - indeed, when his brother found out, he literally beat him out of jealousy and anger. Belichick would have pissed off his coach and then probably been benched if he had one-upped him in public. He certainly wouldn't have taken his first job for free, and he wouldn't have sat through thousands of hours of film if he cared about status. Greatest comes from humble beginnings; it comes from from grunt work. It means you're the least important person in the room - until you change that with results. 

there is an old saying, "say little, do much". What we really ought to do is update and apply a version of that to our early approach. Be lesser, do more. Imagine it for every person you met, you thought of some way to help them, something you could do for them? And you looked at it in a way that entirely benefited them and not you? The cumulative effect this would have over time would be profound: you'd learn a great deal by solving diverse problems. You'd develop a reputation for being indispensable. You'd have countless new relationships. You'd have an enormous bank of favors to call upon down the road. 

that's what the canvas strategy is about - helping yourself by helping others. Making a concerted effort to trade your short-term gratification for a long-term payoff. Whereas everyone else wants to get credit and be "respected", you can forget credit. You can forget it so hard that you're glad when others get it instead of you - that was your aim, after all. Let te other take their credit on credit, while you defer and earn interest on the principal. 

The strategy part of it is the hardest. It's easy to be bitter … to hate even the thought of subservience. To despite those who have more means, more experience, or more status than you. To tell yourself that every second not spent doing your work, or working on yourself, is a waste of your gift. To insist, I will not be demeaned like this. 

Once we fight this emotional and egotistical impulse, the canvas strategy is easy. The iterations are endless. 

• Maybe it's coming up with ideas to hand over to your boss.
• Find people, thinkers, up-and-comers to introduce to each other. Cross wires to create new sparks.
• Find what nobody else wants to do and do it.
• Find inefficiencies and waste and redundancies. Identify leaks and patches to free up ressources for new areas.
• Produce more than everyone else and give ideas away.    

in other words, discover opportunities to promote their creativity, find outlets and people for collaboration, and eliminate distractions that hinder their progress and focus. It is a rewarding and infinitely scalable power strategy. Consider each one an investment in relationships and in your own development. 

The canvas strategy is there for you at any time. There is no expiration date on it either. It's one of the few that age does not limit - on either side, young or old. You can start at any time - before you have a job, before you're hired and while you're doing something else, or if you're starting something new or find yourself inside an organization without strong allies or support. You may even find that there's no reason to ever stop doing it, even once you've graduated to heading your own projects. Let it become naturel and permanent; let others apply it to you while you're too busy applying it to those above you. 

because if you pick up this mantle once, you'll see what most people's egos prevent them from appreciating: the person who clears the path ultimately controls its direction, just as the canvas shapes the painting. 

Extraits from "Tools of Titans", the tactics, routines and habits of billionaires, icons and world-class performers. Tim Ferriss.