Where Does Authority Come From?

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Let’s start with a definition.

I define “authority” as “the ability to determine an outcome in the face of uncertainty or opposition.”

As in: we’re huddled around the table, with a set of views about what should be done. Who decides?

To start, let’s think about where organizational authority comes from. Its sources include:

  • Positional (permanent): determined by your role in the hierarchy / your job title
  • Positional (temporary): an official but temporary designation of a role and its boundaries
  • Reputational: (can be based on expertise or respect) when you speak on a given set of topics, your view is weighed so heavily that it carries the day.
  • Relational: when you speak, it’s understood that you represent both your voice and the voice of someone else with more authority, so what you say goes.
  • Action: by acting like a person who decides, and by making decisions, you influence others’ actions and determine / strongly influence outcomes

I’ve listed these in descending order of formality: positional authority is the most widely recognized and easiest to exert; authority that comes through action (also called “leadership”) is less common and harder to exert.

However, none of these sources of authority stands alone, as in:

  • Positional authority can be enhanced or weakened by one’s reputation.
  • It can similarly be strengthened or weakened by how / how often it is used — authority rarely but effectively used will lead to better results than barking orders for every tiny thing.
  • Exercising authority through action alone could communicate relational authority (“She’s deciding. Someone must have told her she’s allowed to do that, so we should listen to her.”)
  • Similarly, it could quickly translate into Positional (temporary) authority (“She’s been acting like she’s in charge of this project. Maybe we should put her in charge of this project.”)

One can quickly imagine drawing a complex systems map of how these five elements play together — submissions welcome.

The interesting question that lurks in the background is: who bestows authority? Over what?

The assumed answer is “someone with more authority than I have.”

This answer presumes a default position of “no authority” with a switch that’s flipped, topic by topic, over time, by those in authority.

Perhaps that’s normal, but we can choose a different default setting, one that starts at the level of culture.

For example, what if our culture says:

  • We want people to step up, to make decisions, and to lead.
  • If there’s uncertainty about whether you have authority, the answer is yes, every time.
  • It is up to the culture (those around you) to communicate if they think you should have consulted more or had someone else make the decision.
  • If the choice is between deferral — having someone else / no one speak up / decide — and action, we expect you to make a call.
  • In the context of this culture, when two or more people step up and make different calls on the same topic, we will invest in becoming skillful at respectfully resolving these differences and/or conferring official authority over this type of decision.

And, since seniority always also matters, you can add on:

  • When we give you this (kind of) title, it means that we have seen you in action enough to have extreme confidence in your decision-making and judgment.
  • For anyone with that (kind of) title, our expectation is that you will be decisive and put yourself on the line, even when (especially when) its risky

As I’ve said before, Culture Graphs teach us that culture is a living thing that evolves daily based on the accumulated actions of each person in an organization. If you want more authority, rather than waiting for it to be bestowed on you, you can instead:

  1. Ask for it
  2. Start exercising it and see if anyone stops you

This last point is where we put ourselves on the hook.

The easy and seemingly safe thing is to hang back.

The braver thing is to ask for authority when we feel it’s important.

The rarest thing is to care so much that you routinely act with authority, that you default to taking brave positions.

If we find ourselves wondering, “do I have the authority to do this important thing?” it’s good to ask ourselves, “have I been stopped before?”

If not, then the person who will give you the authority to take that next step is you.

 

Grand Canyon Rim 2 Rim – Look Only 20 Feet Ahead

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A few weeks ago, I had the chance to do the Grand Canyon Rim to Rim Hike.

It’s the second time I’ve done this hike, and both times it’s been a doozy.

It’s a 24 mile hike that we completed in one day, with a 6am start time and, for me, a ~3:30pm finish. It starts with a 5,000 ft vertical drop in the first 6 miles, followed by a 2,400 foot ascent for the next 9 miles (plus the optional two mile side route to an amazing waterfall), and then, with 19 miles in your legs, a 4,000 foot vertical ascent over the last 5 miles.

That might be why this is the sign you have to pass on your way down the canyon.

Knowing what I had signed up for, I spent the second half of this summer training for this hike, starting with 3-mile runs and ending with 10-milers by late August. And even so, it was really, really hard. As much as I wanted to appreciate the experience—which I did—the last 5 miles are a mental and physical test. It was hard to stay focused and keep the faith.

This route is particularly tricky because it is an upside-down hike: the hardest part coming at the end messes with both your mind and your body.

And it occurred to me that the upside-down hike isn’t so dissimilar from most projects or from building a company. The truth is that the really exciting fun part is often right at the beginning—the downhill where you can see the views, where everything seems possible, where the initial going is easy.

But, for nearly everyone, the hard part lays ahead. It might come in the first few months; it might come a few years down the road. We all have a dip that we need to get through, a hard part that comes long after the initial enthusiasm and excitement has passed.

What did I learn on this hike about pushing my way through the hard part and getting out of the Grand Canyon?

The one behavior that really tripped me up was picking my head up to look too far up the path ahead.

This might seem counterintuitive, but looking too far up the path set off a cycle of doubt. I was so tired, my legs were so shot, and I had so much further to go. Looking up a few hundred vertical feet or, worse, a few thousand—whether spotting a hiker looking to the next ridge—was discouraging. Whereas focusing on my feet, or looking 10-20 feet ahead, worked great.

“I can take this next step, and the next one, and a few after that.” My job was to keep going, without narrative or judgement around how long I thought I could keep it up.

If you find yourself in a hard patch, focus on the now, on that next step, on the work that’s in front of you that you know you can do.

Asking the question “how much longer can I keep this up?” leads to a whole bunch of answers that are inaccurate and that take the wind out of your sails.

Whereas one step at a time can take you a long, long way.

 

Interesting, Useful

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What do we want to be, interesting or useful?

And which are we drawn to?

Each of us is more inclined to discovery via one path or another.

The pragmatist looks for things to employ today, knowing that, if deployed correctly, these useful things will build up over time.

The “ideas person” needs to be engaged first. If the idea doesn’t have a hook it will never keep her attention.

Knowing how we’re wired, and knowing how the people we’re interacting with see the world, helps us see and be intentional about our own actions. It also helps us craft stories that will land with others.

“This will make these three things better” is not the right message for a big ideas person.

And

“Let me tell you a story” won’t work for an impatient pragmatist.

Which are you?

Healing

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Healing, of course always happens.

The muscles recover.

The scar tissue forms.

The heart mends.

Rarely, though, does healing happen on the schedule we expect. “Time heals all wounds,” as they say, but time also waits for no one. Our hopes and are plans are, sadly, irrelevant.

It’s far too easy to get stuck in that gap between expectation and reality.

To find yourself questioning progress and asking, “will this ever get better?”

Or, worst of all, to allow the stuck-ness to become a thing in and of itself, one that has its own story, its own reality, and its own energy.

This can happen in matters of the body, in matters of the heart, at the level of a company or even nationally.

“How well are we doing, really?” is rarely the question we ask ourselves.

Rather, it is, “where did I hope we’d be right now?”

One of the hardest jobs of a leader is to help our teams be clear-eyed about the challenges of the present without letting them lose sight of the daily wins, the accomplishments big and small, the things that used to be hard that today are easy.

Our plans are just that—hopes about what will come to pass.

“Longer than we’d hoped” is so much more common than “that was easier than I expected.”

It just makes for worse headlines.

 

P.S. Last week’s post on how product-market fit might be different for social entrepreneurs generated a great conversation on LinkedIn, in case you want to check that out.

The Social Entrepreneur Product-Market Fit Paradox

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OK, here’s one to think on.

Product-market fit is fundamentally about customer discovery.

You get excited about an idea, build an MVP, shop that MVP to potential customers.

You listen like crazy, inevitably discovering that your first idea wasn’t (quite) right, and that your potential customers have other important pain points that a different version of your product could address.

You tweak and adjust and maybe even pivot, until you find your way to an offering that meets a big enough need profitably. Away you go.

Except…

Social entrepreneurs have signed up for a slightly different gig.

In some cases, we are here to meet an as-yet-unmet acute need with a better something. But, just as often, our job is to meet needs that aren’t well-articulated, for which the demand is not well-formed.

It’s possible that our most important job is to shape that demand, to push markets, to find things that don’t quite work (for now) and bring together different actors until it is possible—often in some creative way—to make something that’s never worked before work today.

It’s possible we’re in the market creation business.

So, the question, boiled down to its essence, is: how is discovering product-market fit different for social entrepreneurs? And is the traditional, Silicon Valley version of product-market fit just the narrowest version of demand discovery?

 

Part of the answer, of course, is that we need to discover enough demand to build a viable product in a viable market. That much is clear.

What’s more subtle and tricker is: how do social entrepreneurs engage differently in listening to (potential) customers?

Because the customers surely know what they want today.

But we are in the business of meeting today’s demand while we nurture tomorrow’s demand.

Striking that balance is no easy feat.

Perfect at Recovery

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I loved this perspective on U.S. Open semifinalist Emma Navarro.

Navarro’s longtime coach Peter Ayers knew his charge was a perfectionist even before he became her primary coach when she was 14. Years ago, Ayers charged Navarro to apply that perfectionism in a ‘healthy sustainable way’ by striving for a very specific goal.

‘Here’s what I want you to strive to be perfect at,’ he recalled telling her… ‘I want you to strive at being perfect at bouncing back. Stuff’s going to happen. You’re competing in tennis; there’s going to be adversity every time you play. So instead of worrying about being perfect at a given shot or playing a perfect match in terms of never missing a ball or whatever…let’s strive at being perfect at bouncing back.

I find athletics and physical activity very helpful in pinpointing how improvement happens, and how our psychology helps or hurts us. But this article helped me see that most of my focus has been on versions of Navarro’s perfectionism: how sports can teach us to achieve our (accomplishment) goals.

2024 has been one curveball after another for me. It’s been pretty humbling to recognize where my control starts and ends, and what I can and cannot to be “perfect” at.

Life, like tennis, is full of curveballs. No amount of diligent effort will protect us from disappointment and from falling short—because “we” aren’t falling short, we just cannot always achieve what we want to achieve when we want to achieve it, no matter how hard we try.

If this image from @butlikemaybe reminds you of your 2024, maybe it’s time invest more in how you’re recovering.

And, for my fellow perfectionists, “recovering” doesn’t mean “fixing the thing” it means taking care of you.

Not only will this make for a healthier you, it means that, soon, you’ll be back to full (emotional) strength…and you at your best is unstoppable.

Genius…or Folly?

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I’ve been working hard all summer, and am going to take my foot a bit off the gas these next two weeks before Labor Day.

I don’t have any big trip planned. Instead, I’m going to be welcoming this pup to her new home and showing her the ropes.

Her big sister, Birdie, is excited for the company.

Welcome, Peanut.

Make it Twice as Easy

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If we’re trying to get others to take action, we have to start with the big things.

We need to understand their worldview, the story they tell themselves—about themselves and about status and power. We need to align our narrative to these elements and make them the hero of this story.

Hopefully, we’re getting most of these pieces right most of the time.

But our job is to do more than this.

Our job is to also smooth the path towards action in a million tiny ways. These small tweaks add up to big changes in behavior, and we can practice them all the time. Think of this as the things we do to file down the big pieces, so they snap together.

The purpose of these steps is to make it that much easier to get a person to do what we hope they will do.

And that starts with empathy.

What does it feel like to be them?

What is their day like?

How much of their attention have I earned?

How many steps am I asking them to take?

How easy is it to take these steps?

How obvious is what I’d like them to do?

How much trivial stuff am I asking them to ignore along the way?

So often, we are, unintentionally, us-focused. We give people information in the way we’d be happy to receive it—an orientation clouded by our hope that (of course!) they’re inclined to do what we’d like them to do, so they’ll be OK pushing through these small inconveniences. Things like:

Using language that makes sense to us (including jargon).

Assuming that they have the same context we have.

Thinking that they’ll correctly choose between multiple paths.

Or fill in the blanks.

Or wade through uncertainty and clutter.

Think of it this way: Amazon spent millions developing the patent for ‘Buy With 1-Click,’ and that patent led to billions in new revenues.

If it’s worth that much to them, it’s probably worth that much to you.

So, the next time you’re asking someone to do something—especially if you’re doing it electronically (Slack, email, etc)—take a moment to ask yourself:

“How could I make it twice as easy for them to do what I’ve asked them to do?”

Here are some more ideas on how to do just that (bonus: AI could help every time. The prompt is: “Please make this note simpler and clearer, with a more direct call to action.”)

 

Good Self-Talk, Bad Self-Talk

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Longtime readers know I’ve had an on-again, off-again relationship with swimming.

I was a terrible, terrified swimmer as a kid. About a decade ago, I decided to learn to swim properly. However, because I don’t love swimming, I haven’t prioritized it. Consequently, I’ve improved slowly.

This summer, due to tendinitis in my arm, I’ve been back in the pool a lot. It turns out that doing something 3-4 days a week leads to much greater improvement than doing it once every few weeks.

That’s not the interesting bit.

The interesting bit is the shadow path accompanying the change in my swimming abilities. This path is the narrative I carry about my abilities. It moves independently of my actual abilities. My chart looks something like this:

Two points of note on the graph:

  1. The point of Delusion: Me sitting comfortably at home watching “effortless swim” videos. I feel like I’m learning from all the talk of high elbows and not lifting my head, but I’m not spending actual time in the pool, so my swimming isn’t improving. To note, this point on the graph is the difference between online education and entertainment. (Hint: if you’ve been using a language-learning app for a year and you’re still unable to order lunch in that language, this spot is for you).
  2. Dragging me Down: The pernicious point on the graph. Since I’ve carried a fear of swimming my whole life, at any moment during a swim, I can start noticing I’m swimming. That noticing leads to negative self-talk (“this is hard,” “will it ever end?” “how is my breathing?”) which can ruin a perfectly good swim. It can even make the next swim worse (“I hope that doesn’t happen again.”).

As we work to increase our skillfulness in any area, we must remember that our story and our reality are always interacting. For areas where we have a positive self-narrative, that story sustains us, even through the dips. For areas that have always been challenging, it can be doubly difficult to improve—because we need to do three things: (1) Enhance our skill; (2) Bravely utilize the new skill; (3) Do all of this, over and over again, despite (sometimes) being dragged down by our own negative self-talk.

Examples:

  • [About to walk on stage] “I’m a terrible public speaker”
  • [About to have a difficult conversation] “I hate confrontation.”
  • [Facing down a blank page] “This is so hard. What if I have nothing to say?”
  • [About to close the sale] “What if they, like the last person, say no?”
  • [Working on listening better] “How do I show them that I’m smart enough to be here?”

Every time we let our old, negative story infect our new reality, we perform a little worse. That’s OK, it’s part of the process. It’s also why all writers’ advice on writing starts with a version of Anne Lamott’s reminder to just put our butt in the chair and keep it there.

If we relentlessly keep showing up to do the new thing, our persistent work will always win the day. Our doubting voice may appear from time to time, but its power diminishes and, eventually, evaporates in the face of overwhelming new evidence.

“I’ve done this so much, it’s clear that I’ve become good at it.”

Next stop, greatness.

Podcasts Not Panels

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

I have, in the past, argued that the only justifiable format for conference speakers is the TED-style talk.

I’m officially reforming that view. The reality is that many potential (great) speakers are going to shy away from that. The stakes are high, as are the requirements for preparation. And it is, honestly, intimidating.

However, I still find panels at conferences infuriating nearly all of the time. They are, by design, superficial, and time after time I feel like I miss the chance to really learn from each of the amazing people on the stage.

The much better option is staring us right in the face: podcasts.

Most podcasts have guests, and nearly all of these have exactly one guest. The format is well-established: a great interviewer has prepared well to interview that guest, and she spends, on average, 30 to 90 minutes having an engaging conversation with that person.

We know that this works because it’s been tested in millions of podcasts, and because all the most famous guest-oriented podcasts have just one person on at a time.

If you’re not convinced, imagine this:

In a stroke of innovation, your favorite podcast is switching things up! They’ve invited not one but three amazing guests onto the show. And they’ve capped the conversation at 30 minutes. So, after introductions and a word from our sponsors, each guest has, if everything goes well, about 9 minutes to share their story. AND (bonus!) it’s up to the guests and the interviewer to try to highlight the unique insights and stories of each of the three guests and to weave together what they are saying into a coherent whole.

I’m pretty sure you’re not tuning in to that, and that you’d think “darn, couldn’t we have gone deeper with just one of them?”  Couldn’t we have really dug into where that one amazing guest is coming from; to learn their perspective on an important topic; to hear their take on everything from current events to how they manage to stay inspired through decades of tough work and ups and downs? What are their quirks, what makes them tick, what do they uniquely have to share with us today?

Yes, that would be much better, on a podcast and on the stage of your next conference.

There are two main reasons this doesn’t happen.

First, because it’s easier to do things the same way. No one will get fired for lining up a bunch of 3-people-plus-a-moderator panels, and trying as best they can to make them good.

Second, and more problematic, because the incentives for conference organizers are all wrong. Their first job is to get people TO the conference, and they do that by securing lots of brand-name speakers.  Lots of smiling faces on your conference website / emails sell tickets. And, the experience at the conference is better for everyone if people at the top of the food chain are roaming the halls.

So, here’s how you split the difference.

  • The core of your conference is 1-on-1, podcast-type fireside chats.
  • Some of these are live, many more are pre-recorded. Market them all as part of your conference.
  • Open up the stage for classical keynote presentations: 18-minute TED talk style, or similar.
  • And, finally, create slots for 3-minute “what I’m passionate about” talks. Three minutes to say one thing you really care about, professional or otherwise. Here are eight of them that are memorable, and one more dollop of genius called If I Controlled the Internet by Rives.
  • Open these 3-minute slots up to your would-have-invited panelists and to your audience, asking for 60-second video auditions that are accepted up to 24 hours before stage time. Music is allowed.

Have at it. And, please, write me directly if anyone complains how much they missed the panels.