The Song of Significance by Seth Godin part 2
Pathfinding
“If we walk far enough, we shall sometime come to someplace” - Dorothy Gale
How long did it take Sarah Kay to write B, her groundbreaking spoken-word poem?
Frederick Taylor, the father of modern management, carried a stopwatch everywhere he went, because the stopwatch was all that mattered. If you can study time and study motion, you can improve the productivity of every step of production
Significant work can be timed, and of course, the time matters
But the stopwatch isn’t the point. We’re here to make a change happen
On the assembly line, the choice is easy. The next item to arrive is the task the worker must take on. At the call center, the same is true. Your call is very important to us, and the next available operator will answer it.
But what happens at the restaurant? Is the only job of the server to bring the food from the kitchen to the table? Or are they present to create something more than robotic food delivery on two feet?
When this professional (it’s sad to call them waiters—is that all they do, wait on us?) approaches the table, who will they address first? What tension will be created or relieved? Are expectations or memories being created?
The difference between a good restaurant experience and a great one has very little to do with the food. Hospitality finds problems and turns them into opportunities—for connection, for joy, and for creating memories
Then let’s acknowledge that decisions are far more important than tasks
Show me your agenda for today, and I’ll show you what you value. If your team spends almost all of its time on chores with known solutions, then you’re probably in the stopwatch business. Find the cheapest, fastest, most reliable people (or computers) available, then put them on your assembly line
But if we’re seeking to make change happen, then our job is to get from here to there. To find a path. To identify the next best thing to work on, describe an opportunity, and then make it real
If you’re a pathfinder, call it that, organize for it, and measure it
Starbucks didn’t used to sell beverages, only beans. Nintendo made playing cards
But why call this a pivot? It’s the point.
All the great stories involve pivots. All the organizations we admire are doing something they didn’t plan to do when they began. They are pathfinders, not excuse-makers.
Meetings Are a Symptom
“Actions speak louder than meetings” - Lee Clow
By this point in our rant, many managers are saying, We’re doing pretty well at building a significant organization, under the circumstances.
It’s pretty easy to invoke managerial exceptionalism. That something about your organization, your product, your competitors, or your corporate structure requires you to run in an industrial way. That you’re doing your best to remember the human, but there are simply too many external forces at work
But you’re not under the circumstances. You are the circumstances
Which is why we need to consider your meetings
It’s straightforward and evolutionarily obvious. No tech involved. An in-person meeting was the only efficient way to deliver information, and even after the invention of writing, the only way to have an interaction in real time
In-person meetings are now like caviar, rare and precious. And yet we waste them.
Asynchronous communication often alternates with real-time conversation. Letters and telegrams are one-way missiles, but phone calls are conversations. Faxes and texts are faster versions of letters, and a Zoom call can be a higher-resolution version of a phone call. Conversations and connections are everywhere
And yet . .
Industrial management doesn’t particularly embrace conversations. Conversations are hard to control and plan for. And to work well, they need a level of parity and connection that undermines the hierarchy of bosses giving instructions
That’s why industrial organizations prefer meetings. They’re more efficient at what they set out to do. Because industrial meetings don’t involve much meeting. They’re actually group lectures with a few moments for Q&A.
Before the digital age, these sorts of meetings that were actually announcements were easy to justify. It was a fast and simple way to get people in sync. More to the point, they were culturally valuable role-playing exercises
The boss played the role of the king, telling people how it was, asserting authority, and establishing status
And the employees played their role as well, hiding, keeping their heads down, and doing what they were told. It’s first grade all over again
We no longer need to disrupt our schedule or our location to have a meeting. Zoom is a miraculous technology that allows us to ignore space if we choose. If you want to have a conversation with anyone on your team, if it’s worth syncing your calendars, here they are. While we’re at it, prerecorded video memos can effectively replace lectures
They can be rewatched, sped up, and transcribed as well. Free, fast, and easy. Meet with anyone, instantly, for three minutes or ten. Or send them your half of a video conversation, wherever they are
And yet . .
Instead of putting time and space to work to further our mutual goals, the traditional industrial management structure has taken the worst of both worlds. Ask your employees (I would say team but that ignores the real meaning of the word)
Zoom meetings are often only meetings in the worst sense. Attendance is taken, someone lectures, a few people ask questions. Exactly thirty or sixty minutes later, people are excused
In most surveys, employees rank endless meetings as the worst part of working from home, and they don’t like them much more when they’re in the office
The reason is simple: no one likes being lectured, and they like it less when it’s in real time and masquerading as a conversation
The social dynamics of your meetings tell us an enormous amount about how your organization works
The ten thousand bees in the hive have only been together for a few weeks . . . and now they have less than seventy-two hours to choose a new place to live. How can they possibly organize around a decision this important—with so many choices, hundreds of opinions, and no way to exert managerial authority?
They may call her a queen, but she’s not really in charge
Thomas Seeley describes how this process works. It’s not meetings, it’s culture. We can learn three lessons that apply to our human, non-bee organizations:
The bees have clear intent and standards. Seeley’s research has shown that individual bees are likely to have very similar reactions to possible hive sites—one bee doesn’t need to visit every one of the hundreds of options for a consistent point of view to evolve
One reason for discomfort and politics at work is that we often fail to be clear with one another about exactly what we’re seeking to accomplish because we’re afraid that our goals aren’t aligned
For obvious logistical reasons, the bees have evolved to rely on peer-to-peer communication. Instead of one bee sending a memo to all the other bees, the word spreads horizontally
The fallacy of the MBA is that a brilliant memo presented via a PowerPoint is enough to make change happen. But culture beats strategy every time. In resilient organizations, culture drives transformation. In rigid ones, it inhibits it
If we care about the work, we’ll need to focus on the culture
Why is the idea of a whole week without meetings even noteworthy?
Zapier is a successful web software company with a distributed team. As an experiment, they suspended all regular meetings for a week. Instead of real-time 1:1 weekly check-ins or group meetings, they shifted to asynchronous reports, updates, and questions, giving each employee the time and freedom to get actual work done
And actual work got done
More than 80 percent of the team’s established written goals for that week were achieved. Here’s a quick summary from one of their leaders:
Instead of my weekly 1:1, I consolidated questions for my manager and sent them to her in a direct message on Slack
Instead of a project check-in, all team members shared their updates in the relevant Asana task list
Instead of a one-off strategy call, stakeholders shared their thoughts (and comments) in a Coda doc
Instead of a project kickoff call, our project manager sent a Slack message that shared the project charter, timeline, and next steps
Beyond that, though, was the shift in culture. Instead of taking attendance (you need to be in front of your computer, at the appointed time, to be in a real-time meeting), they paid attention to contributions. Instead of rewarding a combination of obedience and sparkle, they amplified individuals who were able to pay attention to what needed to be done and then do it
If you were one of the many people who completed that week without meetings with a schedule you controlled and output you were proud of, would that be something you’d want to repeat? Would you want to be part of that culture of trust and connection?
The truth is simple: The meeting culture was designed to exert control and to simulate a shortcut on the difficult path to actual connection. But most meetings aren’t very good, because no one ever put in the emotional labor to construct real-time meetings that produced the outcome that was needed
There’s nothing wrong with meetings. There’s a lot wrong with meetings that are lazy, ineffective, or manipulative
When we instruct people to book a time in their calendar and come together in real time for a meeting, what are we seeking to do?
Perhaps meetings are a way to reinforce status roles. To remind people that the boss is the boss. That the boss’s time is precious, so you will all sit still and listen, in real time, as the boss outlines whatever the boss is thinking about
Meetings might be a way to clarify the pecking order as well. Who sits where, who gets to ask questions, who is silent. Who represents the dominant caste or the cultural favorite
And perhaps they’re a real-time performance, rewarding the bon mot and sharp retort, and leaving others with nothing but esprit d’escalier
It could be that meetings are a way to deny responsibility later. And that having a well-polished deck to leave behind might be a good way to be let off the hook
If we’re taking attendance to make sure that people at home are actually working, and we’re filling our days with face time (what an appropriate name) to confirm our fealty, then meetings might be doing exactly what we ask of them
It happens in real time because it can only work in real time
It’s a conversation in which everyone listens and speaks. Only the people who need to be there are there
It leads to a decision, not the delivery of information
It creates energy, it doesn’t destroy it
If you promise not to check your email while we’re talking, we promise to not waste your time
If you agree to look me in the eye and try to absorb the gist of what I’m saying, I agree to be crisp, cogent, and on point
If you are clear about which meetings are a waste of time for you to attend, we can be sure to have them without you
If you can egg me on and bring enthusiasm to the interaction, I can lean into the work and reflect back even more energy than you’re contributing.
The purpose of a meeting is not to fill the allocated slot on the Google Calendar invite. The purpose is to communicate an idea and the emotions that go with it, and to find out what’s missing via engaged conversation
If we can’t do that, let’s not meet
Multitasking (especially during meetings) isn’t productive, respectful, or healthy. Being present in real time is a waste unless we interact
Reaffirming your status and control isn’t worth an hour of my day
Long before the pandemic, my colleague and friend Al Pittampalli wrote a bestseller called Read This before Our Next Meeting. It was a short manual on how to turn meetings from lectures into productive conversations
While it sold quite a few copies, few people ended up adopting Al’s core techniques
The status quo is resilient
For a boss to have a productive conversation, they have to be willing to create strong enough conditions of safety, increase, and significance for employees to voluntarily enroll and contribute. That means giving up short-term status
And for the employees to participate, they have to be willing to be on the hook. They have to feel safe enough to leave a sinecure behind. They have to trust the process enough to speak up and take responsibility, even when they don’t have authority
A significant organization offers change, possibility, and responsibility. It creates the conditions for humans to engage without the traditional dominance roles of industrial management
And meetings culture is designed to undermine that
Creating a Significant Organization
“You don’t need more time. You simply need to decide”
There are some simple but transcendent foundational principles that enable us to create the sort of organization that attracts, amplifies, and challenges people who want to make a difference
Specifically
Important organizations make change happen
Humans are not a resource
Management is not the same as leadership
Enrollment is more powerful than coercion
Culture can amplify enrollment
Seek out useful impostors
Leaders create the conditions for culture
Page 19 opens the door
It’s the work, not the worker
Embrace uncertainty
Withhold definition
Seek out the benefit of the doubt
Avoid false proxies
Rigorous standards
Scale is not the point
Hiring is not dating
Find positive uses of tension
Change is the essence of the work. Industrialism fears change; significant organizations cause it
We change the external world, the state of our customers, and our internal processes as well. We change what we make and how we make it, and the impact of our work shifts as we do
We don’t apologize for change because the change is the point
Human resources was invented by the same folks who decided to invest in machines, in supply chain management, and in litigation strategies
Humans are not machines to be manipulated and maximized. They are not a resource to be cost-reduced or even managed
Humans are people
They are our colleagues. If we create the conditions for them to find a path to significance, those conditions will enable all of us to thrive
Management is the hard work of getting people who work for you to do what they did yesterday, but faster and cheaper. It requires authority—a hierarchy that gives the manager the power to insist
Leadership is voluntary. Voluntary to perform and voluntary to follow. It’s the work of imagining something that hasn’t happened before and inviting people to come along for the journey. Without voluntary enrollment, it’s not leadership, it’s only management
The most skilled and committed people are participating voluntarily. They have options. As a result, managing for compliance via coercion is never as effective as coordinating the work of passionate, enrolled individuals
Creating an intentional culture that focuses on finding, empowering, and amplifying enrolled individuals is the work of a skilled leader
Culture can be captured in a simple sentence: People like us do things like this. It’s the way things are around here
It’s easy and practical to build a culture of management and compliance. It’s far more difficult to build one based on connection and affiliation.
There are some jobs that simply won’t get done without managers. There are jobs that are done by people who believe they have few options, and those people need to be motivated to show up to do things that they’re not intrinsically motivated to do
But more and more value is being created in a different way. By people who know that they have options, who are dedicated to improving their skills, and who are enrolled in doing work that feels significant to them
We can create systems and pathways and a culture that attracts and amplifies that desire. Culture defeats strategy, but culture is more difficult than strategy. It requires clarity, commitment, and daily persistence
The moment you embrace a shortcut by sacrificing enrollment to satisfy short-term profit objectives, your culture of significance takes a substantial hit
Impostor syndrome is real. It’s the feeling we get when we’re doing something that we can’t prove is going to work, when there isn’t certainty or built-in assumptions of privilege and power
But useful impostors manage to get the job done
A significant organization makes change happen, change that isn’t guaranteed or obvious. Who else can possibly accomplish this but someone intent on being useful at the very same time that they’re okay with feeling like an impostor?
A culture of significance embraces the generous and honest impostor instead of pushing them away
That’s the job. Not to manage—management is easy and cheap, a shortcut when you are unable to earn enrollment
Your culture is more powerful than your strategy or your tactics. Combine what things are like around here with people like us do things like this, and quite suddenly your team has leverage beyond the industrialist’s imagination
When the culture embraces enrollment, possibility, and change, new opportunities quickly arise. Work gets done because it’s important and desired, not because a surveillance system insisted
Significant work is often done by teams of people, none of whom could produce something similar on their own
The mythology of the lone genius undermines our ability to show up and contribute enough to make things better
Three hundred people in forty countries showed up to build The Carbon Almanac. Early on, we coined the Page 19 Principle and used it every day
The truth is that no one knew how to write page 19 of the Almanac alone. No one on the team had the qualifications to completely write, edit, fact-check, and illustrate even a single page of the book. But it needed to be done, so a few people contributed to a page, and then the next one and the one after that. Each page was improved and polished by more than a dozen people, working around the clock, from time zone to time zone. The Page 19 metaphor is the antidote to paralysis, overwhelm, and perfectionism. It welcomes the generous impostor and the eager contributor. It’s not about getting it right the first time out. In fact, each person acknowledges that it’s impossible to get it right the first time.
Here, I made this, please make it better.
There’s a process and it can be trusted. It gave people permission to take action and advance the group’s goal
There were plenty of opportunities to improve the work, and we regularly resisted the temptation to criticize the worker. Page 19 is a posture of possibility, not blame. This page isn’t good enough?.?.?. YET.
Page 19 amplifies trust, because we can always make it better. Sure, go ahead and go first. Anyone can take the next step to advance the group’s goals. Do the reading. Show your work. Realize that someone else is going to take it from here. Layer by layer
Today, nearly everything is built this way, not just almanacs. No one built Nike or General Electric or Google from a singular plan. No one builds a great organization alone
Anne Marie Cruz, one of the Almanac’s volunteer leaders, highlighted four steps of Page 19 thinking: Simplify, Clarify, Triage and Decide
Start with a problem, and make it as simple as possible
Then clarify the goal. This work you’re doing, the change you seek to make—who is it for and what is it for? Most recalcitrant problems are caused by a lack of clarity about what change is being sought
Triage is the work of figuring out what to work on next. Sort the incoming and work on the important, difficult, influential parts first. As the essential gets done, the rest follows naturally
And finally, decide. Decide to move on. Decide to focus on the critical parts. Decide to ship the work
It ships when you’re out of time or out of money. You don’t need more time, and you don’t need more money. You simply need to decide
Page 19 thinking is about being of service, which makes it easier to listen to others. It’s about generosity, not territory. Taking responsibility is much more difficult than taking credit, but that’s the way forward
The past is over, and the posture of Page 19 thinking gives us a chance to improve the future that’s about to arrive
Back to the bees. The bees start their jobs a few moments after being born. Each is responsible for their own contribution, their own cell, their own impact. They do it poorly on the way to doing it well. But together, the work is polished and improved, decisions are made, and the hive continues
The song of increase is a vivid example of the incremental leap of this approach
That’s not true in school. And it’s not true in sports, or politics either
Criticism feels personal. The tall poppy syndrome is worldwide, and it pushes us to keep quiet. I don’t stick my neck out for nobody. After all, in the industrial management paradigm, bad performance sticks with the worker, making them bad as well. It’s tempting to mark someone as a failure, as opposed to doing the more nuanced work of differentiating the work from the person who made the work
In some cultures, bad performance is seen as preordained, the result of a moral defect
But none of this is useful or true
In fact, innovative performance is almost always related to random events (good or bad), and innovations can always be improved. Valuable contributors aren’t consistently right, they’re consistently contributing
Criticizing the work with useful, skilled feedback makes the work better. On the other hand, becoming emotionally attached to the work, considering it an authentic statement of personal performance, makes it difficult to respond and improve
If I’m no good, why bother contributing? could not be more different than We can make this better if we’re clear about what it needs
I don’t know.
You’re not supposed to say that in an industrial system. Not in a meeting, not in a forecast, not to the board
But saying it with clarity and intent is powerful. It creates space for others to pitch in. It establishes a need for resilience instead of a guarantee. And it allows us to move forward without pretending that we’re certain
The only honest statement we can make about the future is that we’re not certain. If we can use this as a tool, we’re more likely to create the change we seek
Demagogues play on our insecurity and assure us that they’re certain. It’s tempting to believe them, but it’s clear that they’re as wrong as anyone else
The resilient, professional solution is to avoid the false confidence of certainty and be open to the possibilities that uncertainty brings
Cory Doctorow has written eloquently about adversarial interoperability. It’s a system that is open enough that other organizations and individuals can use it without permission
You can put any dish in your dishwasher, plug any appliance into your wall socket. You don’t need approval from the company or the utility
I know I can depend on the screwdriver I bought to work for the foreseeable future, because I’ve used it on countless different sorts of screws. If the screwdriver doesn’t work in one setting, I’m more likely to try it in a few different ways before I decide that the screwdriver is defective.
On the other hand, a closed system that hoards information and power is possibly (probably) doing something behind the scenes, something we can’t test and thus can’t trust
This seems obvious, until we see how it falls apart when organizations insist on taking too much control. You can’t plug your own software into Facebook, or easily use your own toner with a laser printer. The phone system was paralyzed until the government required AT&T to let us use fax machines, modems, and other tools that they didn’t approve of
And the same thing is true with how the supply chain for herbal tea works at a big hotel chain. The servers know that they’re out but have no way to interact with the resupply system, so instead they have to deal with disappointed customers day after day. They’re not allowed to make things better, so they don’t
Beyond the moral implications of building systems that work with and for people, there’s also a profit incentive: when people trust you, they give you the benefit of the doubt. That means that when something is confusing or mysterious or simply new, people assume that it’s a good thing that they don’t understand (yet), not a threat that they should be wary of.
Culture that is based on goodwill and connection is more resilient, faster moving, and more productive than one that is based on mystery, selfishness, and power
Don’t hoard. Don’t hoard information, interoperability, access, or love
If you want to lead, you’ll need to be trusted. One way to do that is to make promises openly and consistently—and then keep them
In the liminal moments, when we seek to get from here to there, we will encounter the unknown. As we work to invent a desired future, it’s inevitable that everything will not go according to plan
The future, by its nature, is not a clean, well-lit place until we arrive
Alexander Technique teacher Tommy Thompson suggests that when we encounter the unexpected or the unknown, we embrace the tension and withhold putting the new situation into a familiar box
Once we name it, we know precisely how to handle it.
Naming something is useful when we’re right, but it’s a challenge when we’re wrong. Because the act of putting something into the wrong box will prevent us from understanding what it really is
And it also can numb us to the feeling of awe we experience in the presence of something we don’t understand
领英推荐
When the World Wide Web arrived in the early 1990s, I turned to my team and said, This is like AOL and Prodigy, except it’s slower and has no business model
My box led us to six months of ignoring the web and cost me a few billion dollars
I’m not sure what this is yet, let’s interact and see opens the door to forward motion and wonder, instead of pushing hard for things to get back to normal
Measuring the easy thing is the easy thing
We can measure the lap time for the new electric sports car or the number of defects on the production line. We can measure how many social media followers we have or how much profit we made last week
This is one reason it’s easier to coach someone for the Olympics than it is to train someone to be a nurse. If we can measure performance with a stopwatch, there’s not a lot of room for discussion
But these easy measurements can be a crutch, and we may end up failing to talk about the things that really matter
Looking at the past (what we did and how we measured it) is a good place to begin, but our work is to consider the future—messier, murkier, and far more magical—instead
Anything easy to measure is rarely important, because our competition is better at maximizing the easy measurements than we are
And yet the easy-to-measure is what gets measured. Personal charisma, hours worked, the chemistry with the boss, and of course high-profile mistakes versus chronic lack of extra effort.
High-stakes organizations are desperate to measure the productivity of their assets. And if humans are expensive assets, then measuring them becomes a priority.
At Bloomberg, I’m told, they measured keystrokes per minute, time sitting in front of the terminal, and even bathroom breaks
These are precise measurements, but not useful ones
If the work of the organization involves innovation, connection, or the creation of change, then only humans are going to do that work. Treating them like a measurable asset is a trap
The alternative is to measure the health and output of the culture itself. To hold the leaders accountable for enrollment, commitment, and the rigor of shipping work that makes an impact
A significant organization makes change happen. There is tension whenever change occurs. Comfort is neither the point nor the goal
It’s not comfortable to swim across a channel in Greenland, it’s not comfortable to care for a beehive, and it’s sure not comfortable to feed and clothe a toddler. But humans do these things all the time, without pay and without a boss, because they can. Because it’s significant
Enrollment in the journey includes voluntarily agreeing to the standards that matter. Not accepting bullying, disrespect, or the cavalier display of status. Instead, acknowledging the principles of a significant organization and embracing the structures that allow change to happen
Work doesn’t have to be authentic, vulnerable, or even personal
It simply needs to matter
In the industrial age, the math of scale is pretty compelling. More machines and more sales directly translate into more profits, which gives you the ability to buy more machines and generate more sales
But if a significant organization is built on community and innovation, adding more employees doesn’t make you more effective. In fact, it might do the opposite. When Facebook or Amazon lays off ten thousand people at a time, it’s clear that a CFO somewhere is treating people like a resource, not like humans
The internet opens the door to massive scale when an idea is built to spread. WhatsApp had only nineteen employees when it sold for more than a billion dollars
Bigger isn’t the goal, better is
We spend more time at work than we spend with our families. So it’s not surprising that when people have a chance to interview and hire coworkers, they look for people they like
That includes selecting for folks with similar backgrounds and even a similar appearance
This makes the hiring process inefficient, ineffective, time-consuming, and a barrier to possibility and mobility
We end up hiring people who are good at being interviewed, as opposed to those who would be useful additions to the team
Once again, the internet is an agent of change here. The internet makes it easy to see far more people, and to learn what they’ve contributed in the past. Suddenly, a body of work is a lot more interesting than a resume, and a sample of work is more effective than a short face-to-face conversation
Almost all the systems we rely on to hire and to be hired are wired around the old model of hiring as a dating process. We use false proxies in our resume keyword searches, mistaking an Ivy League education, for example, for a useful indicator of job performance
We then miss our chance to find commitment to the methods and the journey and simply use money or perks as a proxy
That’s how we end up with people who are only doing their job, managers who treat employees like a resource, and the industrial dynamics that lend themselves to compliance and surveillance
As tenures get shorter, domain training gets faster, and digital work diminishes the importance of personal attractiveness and charisma, we have a chance to rethink the entire process of selection and onboarding
Instead of hiring based on the performance of interview skills, perhaps we can pay people to do a project with us. The best way to see how someone works is to work with them
In short, we have a Moneyball problem. In Michael Lewis’s book about the miracle of the Oakland A’s baseball team, he describes the centuries-old scouting system used in Major League Baseball. The scouts sought out players who matched their expectation of how good players looked and acted. Since this profile was scarce, players like this were expensive
The manager of the A’s discovered that a single overlooked statistic was the only metric that actually predicted a certain kind of success. By forcing his scouts (who fought back) to focus on finding these players, Billy Beane built a world-class team on a budget. But even after his team’s success, scouts on other teams persisted in hiring the old way
If we’re going to hire compliant cogs with certain traditional attributes, we’re going to sacrifice diversity, passion, and teamwork. We’ll maintain caste roles, limit mobility, and harm our work as well
Bosses lie when they try to hire. Employees get their revenge by lying when they answer. Bosses pretend that they have a fascinating, humane environment that prizes individuality, while selecting people who have demonstrated that this isn’t their goal. And employees swallow their pride when they need a job, because that’s what they’ve been trained to do
The alternative is a set of mutual commitments, together with trial projects, to see what’s really on offer
A key step forward is to find a path to mutual trust. Let’s get real or let’s not play
As they are about to open the envelope, the auditorium grows silent. Everyone wants to know who the winner is
Tension focuses us, and we eagerly wait for resolution
If you’re lucky enough to visit the Climate Museum in New York, the final interaction you’ll have is a chance to send a postcard to your congressperson
Confronting the reality of our changing climate creates tension. A negative sort of awe about what’s happening, together with a feeling of dread
Nearly every honest discussion of the climate leads to this sort of helplessness
What should we do now?
That’s the question we ask whenever we come face-to-face with possibility, positive or negative
Please, relieve the tension so we can go back to what we were doing.
What we were doing was idling, coasting, passing the time. What we were doing was phoning it in, doing our jobs and wasting another day
The tension changes that. Significance creates change, and change is a dance with tension
Relieve the tension too soon, by offering someone a postcard to mail in, by telling them the punch line of the joke too soon, by resolving the mystery?.?.?. it’s a waste
The tension is good. The tension might be the point. You can’t walk on a rope unless it’s tight
The best part of a knock-knock joke is the pause after someone says Who’s there?
AND THEN WE BEGIN
“The bees don’t wait
They don’t wait to be told, they don’t wait for perfect, and they don’t wait until later
And we don’t have to wait either. Today must be considered unwastable, and the urgency of now presents us with the opportunity for better.
Significance is the generous incremental process of possibility. The smallest useful change produced for the smallest viable audience.
Again and again, with humanity”
The Broomstick
“I bring you the gift of these four words: I believe in you” Blaise Pascal
Managers seek to avoid defects. They work to improve productivity. They measure to standards, so they do their best work when they figure out how to remove subpar performers and eliminate roadblocks that slow down production
Average, at scale
Leaders, on the other hand, seek something better. Something previously undefined, unbuilt, or untapped. They are looking for Mozart, not Muzak
In any given day, the culture we live in might require both. But unless we notice the difference, it’s quite likely we’ll simply revert to the dominant, convenient narrative of management
There’s a weird attraction in the brutality of industrialism. It creates wealth and celebrates engineering, consistency, and the satisfaction of consumer needs and wants
Industrialism can meet its straightforward and easily measured goals, but it has trouble creating beauty. Beauty often lies in the mystery of connection and human creation, and beauty might just be the point
We can embrace industrialism for what it can give us, but not accept that it is the purpose of our days. When we use the resources it offers us to create the right conditions for growth and connection and humanity, it’s possible to make magic happen
The magic of humanity
Dorothy had the slippers all along. The Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion already possessed everything they needed to find happiness. And the wizard didn’t actually need a broomstick. So why bother going on this perilous journey?
The quest for the broomstick was a MacGuffin, of course, an illogical centerpiece that moved the story forward. Illogical, and yet The Wizard of Oz, eighty years later, remains one of the most remembered and beloved movies ever made.
Corporate profits aren’t at the center of Dorothy’s journey in The Wizard of Oz. Neither is selfish gain
The movie resonates with us because it’s about connection and possibility. It captures our desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves, to help others when, perhaps, there’s not much in it for us
One day, you might be in the right place at the right moment. In a field, late in the spring, surrounded by the song of increase. Jacqueline Freeman describes the magic of being entranced by the chaos of ten thousand bees moving from one home in search of another. Organized without an organizer, swarming in seemingly random directions, flying ever faster but never colliding, the bees are leaping with purpose and with focus
We’ll never fully understand what it’s like to be a bee, just a few weeks old, part of a colony that is following its destiny to possibility. But each of us understands the lesson that it offers to humans
Our role isn’t to simply fit in or to mimic or to comply. Our job is not to follow precise instructions. The coordinated hum and motion of the hive is a message for each of us, a vivid story about waking up from a culture-induced torpor to get back to what really matters. To not only reclaim the agency that is our humanity, but to open the door for others to find it as well
Thank you for creating opportunities to contribute, to grow, and to connect
Keep leading: it matters
Significance isn’t what we get.?.?.?. It’s what we do for others
Appendix
An Encyclopedia of Real Skills
The fact that there isn’t an accepted taxonomy of real skills demonstrates how little effort organizations, both large and small, have put into finding, improving, and developing real skills among their teams
In this first draft, I’ve chosen five large categories and then given examples of each. Not a definitive taxonomy, but a start, a way to move the conversation and the investment forward
The five categories might include
SELF-CONTROL—Once you’ve decided that something is important, are you able to persist in doing it, without letting distractions or bad habits get in the way? Doing things for the long run that you might not feel like doing in the short run
PRODUCTIVITY—Are you skilled with your instrument? Are you able to use your insights and your commitment to actually move things forward? Getting nonvocational tasks done
WISDOM—Have you learned things that are difficult to glean from a textbook or a manual? Experience is how we become adults
PERCEPTION—Do you have the experience and the practice to see the world clearly? Seeing things before others have to point them out
INFLUENCE—Have you developed the skills needed to persuade others to take action? Charisma is only one form of this skill
Adaptability to changing requirements
Agility in the face of unexpected obstacles
Alacrity and the ability to start and stop quickly
Authenticity and consistent behavior
Bouncing back from failure
Coach-ability and the desire to coach others
Collaborative mindset
Compassion for those in need
Competitiveness
Conscientiousness in keeping promises
Customer service passion
Eagerness to learn from criticism
Emotional intelligence
Endurance for the long haul
Enthusiasm for the work
Ethics even when not under scrutiny
Etiquette
Flexibility
Friendliness
Honesty
Living in balance
Managing difficult conversations
Motivated to take on new challenges
Passionate
Posture for forward motion
Purpose
Quick-wittedness
Resilience
Risk-taking
Self-awareness
Self-confidence
Sense of humor
Strategic thinking taking priority over short-term gamesmanship
Stress management
Tolerance of change and uncertainty
Attention to detail
Crisis management skills
Decision-making with effectiveness
Delegation for productivity
Diligence and attention to detail
Entrepreneurial thinking and guts
Facilitation of discussion
Goal-setting skills
Innovative problem-solving techniques
Lateral thinking
Lean techniques
Listening skills
Managing up
Meeting hygiene
Planning for projects
Problem-solving
Research skills
Technology savvy
Time management
Troubleshooting
Artistic sense and good taste
Conflict resolution instincts
Creativity in the face of challenges
Critical thinking instead of mere compliance
Dealing with difficult people
Diplomacy in difficult situations
Empathy for customers, coworkers, and vendors
Intercultural competence
Mentoring
Social skills
Supervising with confidence
Design thinking
Fashion instinct
Judging people and situations
Mapmaking
Strategic thinking
Ability to deliver clear and useful criticism
Assertiveness on behalf of ideas that matter
Body language (reading and delivering)
Charisma and the skill to influence others
Clarity in language and vision
Dispute-resolution skills
Giving feedback without ego
Influence
Inspiring to others
Interpersonal skills
Leadership
Negotiation skills
Networking
Persuasive
Presentation skills
Public speaking
Reframing
Selling skills
Storytelling
Talent management
Team building
Writing for impact
Is it possible to teach these real skills? Is it possible to focus on them, hire for them, and reward growth? Can we put in place programs and insights that will lead to progress in all these areas?
If we did, would it matter? Would an organization that excelled at these real skills be more productive, more profitable, and a better place to work?
What are we waiting for?
As the swarm heads to its new home, it moves quickly and directly. Tens of thousands of bees, flying in unison to a place they’ve never been
But looking closer, we can see what looks like chaos. No bee remains at the front—the faster bees fly back and forth, shepherding the others as they protect the colony and the queen at its center.
There are no collisions, no dead ends. The bees are consistent, direct, and effective in their work, organized without an organizer. Each bee contributes, singing the song they came to sing, the song that needs to be sung
Lead together