7 Minutes

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I got on a call with my company lawyer the other day. I had one very specific question.

The call lasted exactly 7 minutes.

As I hopped off the call, I wondered if he was going to bill me for his time. It was just 7 minutes, after all.

Except that he told me to do the opposite of what I’d planned.

Except that he can only solve this problem in 7 minutes because he’s been working at this for 30 years. Three decades of honing his expertise, knowing the topic, understanding the nuances, and developing pattern recognition across hundreds of clients

We never think of paying artists by the minute—it’s obvious that a virtuoso is so talented only because she’s been refining her craft for tens of thousands of hours.

And yet we let ourselves get anchored to undervaluing our time and effort, thinking about things like “cost-plus” as a starting point for what we should charge.

We, too, have spent thousands and thousands of hours becoming expert at what we do.

That’s why the value of our time isn’t measured in the number of minutes we devote to this task, it is measured in what our skills and insight allowed our client to do: costs avoided, paths (not) take, opportunities won.

Don’t sell yourself short.

And don’t think of your billing in terms of time, think of it in terms of value.

“This is what I’m creating for you. It hits this standard of quality. And I stand behind it.”

As they used to say on the Mastercard ads: Priceless.

The World’s Worst Boss

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It’s you.

You are the voice inside your head, saying all those negative things.

You are the one amplifying your greatest fears.

Dwelling on your mistakes.

Focusing on your flaws.

Doubting whether you have what it takes.

Repeating again and again that your shortcomings are all that really matter, that you shouldn’t even try to play big.

You would never stand for this with an actual boss.

If a friend told you they were being treated this way, you’d be outraged.

So, when are you going to fire you?

Because you deserve better.

You deserve a voice that emphasizes all the things that come easily to you.

The things that we know we get every time we interact with you.

Your strengths, your wow, your moxie, the things that make you shine.

“That was really great, amazing job, I’m proud of you,” is not the first half of the sentence, it is the whole sentence.

Take a moment, write them down, paste it somewhere.

Five great things about you.

Personal-ish

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A few days after completing an insurance claim for my dog, who had knee surgery three weeks ago, I got the nicest email.

Subject: Checking on Birdie

Hi Sasha,

We were wondering how Birdie is recovering from her major leg surgery? We’re sorry to hear she had to go through that and send wishes for a quick recovery!

Please send a quick email letting us know how she’s feeling and give her a great big hug from us!

This pretty much blew me away. Not only did they reimburse me for the surgery, they actually care!

So, I replied. It’s been a stressful time, and I was touched that any company would even bother to ask.

Hi Leslie, it’s a big surgery but she’s coming along all right, thank you. 10 days in and she is walking with a limp and annoyed at her confinement!

And in reply I got:

Hello,

Thank you for your email. We’ll review your claims submission and contact you shortly.

Please visit us online for Frequently Asked Questions and answers about the policy at…

Cue the record scratching and the music stopping.

Here’s the thing: there is no such thing as “personal-ish,” it just doesn’t exist. There are two and only two paths:

The path of efficiency: in a modern, email-driven world, what we care about is a scaled approach that will work enough to hit the bar on our ROI calculations.

The path that’s personal: your experience matters to us. There’s no math to be done because I can’t calculate the value of trust on my spreadsheet.

Now, there’s an interesting question that emerges in the world we’re just entering. Soon, AI will be able to create an experience that feels personal but isn’t. It will walk and talk like trust-building at scale.

I don’t know how we’re going to manage through all of that.

How soon until we cross the uncanny valley, when we can no longer tell the difference between something that was programmed to act like it cares and human caring? My guess is that we will manage to give more people the experience of feeling trusted, and, when we see the wizard behind the curtain, the sense of betrayal and disappointment will be even larger, unless we are very, very transparent.

Regardless of how AI plays into all of this, if the last 30 years have been any indication, there will always be a space for personal—not in spite of its inefficiency but because of it. Raising the ante on trust, doing something surprisingly wonderful…these are the things that make you stand out.

And if you’re like the person at my pet insurance company who had the idea to make something personal, but then couldn’t line up the ducks to deliver that experience, your job isn’t to accept that something’s better than nothing.

Your job is to say “there are only two paths here, we have to pick one of them.”

The Manager Self-Projection Trap

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Many years ago, in my early days as a manager, I remember taking pride when I read, in 360 reviews from my employees, “I can tell that Sasha really cares about me as an employee.”

To be sure, that was good news: I did (and do) care, and I want the people around me to experience that.

But I’ve also come to realize these comments could have reflected that I’d fallen into a trap—the manager self-projection trap.

This trap is fueled by our righteous commitment to fix the past wrongs we’ve experienced.

“Now that I’m finally managing other people,” we say, “I’m going to do this RIGHT. I’m going to manage people the way that I’ve always wanted to be managed!”

Yet another troubled path paved with my own good intentions…

Hopefully you see the pitfall: the way I wanted to be managed was not the way everyone wanted to be managed.

I wanted strategic alignment, clarity of success criteria, and lots of leeway. I wanted to figure things out for myself. I wanted space to be creative. I wanted tons of empowerment and not a lot of direction.

For the 20% of people I managed who also wanted this, I was an awesome boss. For everyone else, not so much.

What each employee needs is specific to them—both stylistically (e.g. directive vs supporting behaviors) and for the tasks they’re working on. I describe this in more detail in Can Can’t Will Won’t and 3-D Management.

Since a good 2×2 is the answer to…everything…here’s one to help you think about whether you’re giving your employees what you want or what they need.

It’s obvious that the bottom left corner is a terrible place to be: you’re basically giving the employee nothing (either of what you value or of what they need) and are doing a terrible job as a manager.

And the top right is nirvana: you’re showing you care, you’re consistently giving the employee what they need to succeed, and you’re being your genuine self as a manger by giving the special things that matter to you too.

The top left is a funny one: hyper-personalized support that doesn’t emphasize what the manager values. This works from an effectiveness standpoint, but I wonder if, over time, there’s less blending of styles and values between manager/managee here.

The bottom right is my “aha” moment, the place where I think I was when I was hearing  “I can tell Sasha really cares about me” but not “I feel like I’m getting the support I need from Sasha.”

What’s hardest about this quadrant is that the employee is not getting what they need, but they are experiencing you trying really hard to support them. And, the harder you (manager) try, the more complicated things become: you’re giving them more of what you would want if you were them, and, because they see that effort and will, they might be less willing to say “that’s great, that’s really kind of you, but it’s not what I need.”

For example, say you’re a supervisor who feels you never got enough praise for your good work. You start supervising a super-high performer, someone who is very ambitious and whose top goal is to get better, and who came from a culture that valued “radical candor.” When they finish a project, you might spend all of your energy highlighting, with highly specific examples, the things they did that were great, without giving them actionable ways they can improve.

You’re doubling down on giving them heaping portions of what you value. I’m sure they appreciate that, but they’re not getting what they’re seeking. Worse, because they can see how much you care, they may struggle to articulate why they feel something is missing. They might even be struggling to know exactly what they need…they just have a vague sense that this isn’t sufficient.

This loop is subtle and it’s problematic: a place where relationships are strong, where employees feel themselves getting lots of care and attention, but, ultimately, something is falling short.

If any of this resonates with you as a manager, some simple questions can shed a lot of light. The next time you are giving feedback to an employee, ask them:

  • Of the feedback I just gave you, can you tell me what of it you find most helpful and what is less helpful?
  • More broadly, are there areas you’d like me to focus more on, others you’d like me to focus less on?
  • My goal is to help you succeed more—are there examples when I’ve really gotten that right that we can build on?

While it’s likely that you and your employee won’t come up with perfect answers to these questions, they are the start of a different conversation. This conversation is essential, and it will be different for with each member of your team.

This exploration will set you down a different path, one in which you are grounded in increasing clarity about what each of your employees need, both in general and for different topics. With this in mind, your job is to start adjusting towards the kind of input they want…even if that feels difficult or counterintuitive for you at first.

Don’t worry about that reaction, and stay the course!

Remember, great management isn’t about being the manager we always wanted—it’s about being the manager the people around us need. More often than not, that’s not the same thing.

PTON Stock and the Forever Fallacy

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Peloton stock peaked on December 21, 2020. On that day, the New York Times reported discovery of a new COVID-19 variant (the Delta variant) and we were six months into the pandemic.

What’s going on at that moment, one when people whose JOB it is to value stocks decide that PTON is worth $162 / share?

While the stock market is highly complex, at its essence this chart encapsulates a basic flaw in human reasoning: the mistaken conclusion that what we’re experiencing today is going to last forever.

What else could explain a stock increasing its aggressive valuation 6-fold in just 6 months’ time? Or, in retrospect, a price that was nearly 50 times its present value?

It is human to confuse “now” with “forever.”  This applies to politics (“gas costs more today, I’m going to vote that guy out of office”), climate change (1 in 5 people globally consider it a minor threat), or how we feel on day 5 of a cold.

This tendency of ours strengthens when we encounter challenging conditions: in the midst of a crisis, a hard period at work, or even when we are just feeling stuck, it can be difficult to convince ourselves that this too shall pass.

Figuring out whether you are in a Dip or if it’s something permanent is a skill, to be sure.

But, most of the time, especially with our day to day, now is just now.

It might be great, it might be terrible.

But one thing it is not is “forever.”

You Can’t be Jealous of Just One Thing

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Over the weekend, I listened to the Naval Ravikant interview on The Knowledge Project.

It’s one of their most popular episodes ever, and for good reason. Naval has prodigious knowledge and is a voracious reader and successful entrepreneur. He has spent decades examining and reexamining everything about…everything in his life.

Naval talks a lot about quieting our ego, about reminding ourselves that we are, in the end, insignificant (“we will be totally forgotten in three generations”). Not a brand-new thought, but a helpful reminder.

Think of the countless hours we spend keeping score, the unconscious comparisons that are at the root of so much of our suffering.

To put a finer point on this, Naval has a great riff about jealousy.

If we’re going to be jealous, he argues, it’s meaningless to focus on one thing—a person’s beauty, their wealth, their ease in social situations, or whatever else stands out to us. Any of these attributes is inexorably connected to everything about that person.

So, we either must want to have someone’s entire life, or none of it. There’s nothing in between.

This feels a lot more actionable to me than “don’t be jealous of anyone, ever.”

There’s no life that’s the amalgamation of the “best” bits and pieces that we see around us.

Our strengths connect directly to our vulnerabilities. All of our greatest blessings are intimately connected to the things we love a little less about ourselves or about our lives.

While that other person is great at being themselves, we are the best in the world at being us.

If you’ve made a set of choices in pursuit of longer-term, outward-in goals, the markers of that success won’t be the traditional ones.

Don’t be distracted by the things that are easiest to see and measure in others. These are but one product of a different set of choices than the ones you’ve made.

Keeping on being you.

You’re the world’s best at that.

On Interviewing Well: Treat it Like a Sales Meeting

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A job interview isn’t fundamentally different from a sales meeting—and, in both cases, we need to avoid two traps:

  1. Reinforcing an unequal balance of power (by seeming desperate)
  2. Talking too much and listening too little

Equalize the Balance of Power

I’ve mentioned this before, so I won’t dwell on it: there’s a subtle shift between showing up as:

  • An interviewee—someone who just answers questions well
  • A potential business partner—a meeting in which two people are working to figure out if there’s a fit between the person (attitude/skills), the job, and the organization (culture/need).

The vibe is one of mutual, respectful exploration. The interview is about much more than clearing the basic hurdles—that puts you in the top 5 or 10 group, but it doesn’t get you a job.

Listen More

The trap of any sales meeting is spending too much time talking about yourself and your product, and too little time learning about what your prospect is looking for.

It’s even easier to make this mistake in an interview: to think that if you earnestly answer every question, you’ll have gotten it right.

Instead, hold a mindset of genuine curiosity, and be as thoughtful about asking great questions as you are about giving great answers.

Don’t do this at the expense of answering the questions that have been asked of you. You must convey that you are a compelling candidate, that you are interested, and that you have strong answers to the interviewer’s questions.

Use Preparation to Ask Great Questions

But you also want to engage in meaningful dialogue, and you can do this with great preparation that’s far beyond the superficial glance at the company website. Things like:

  • Using AI to learn about the company’s strategy.
  • Finding articles or talks given by your interviewer.
  • Spending meaningful time on LinkedIn to figure out who you know in common.
  • Developing your own hypothesis about the challenges they are grappling with, and coming with solutions to those challenges.

Everyone is flattered by someone expressing deep, genuine interest in them. Your thoughtful curiosity shines a light on them, and it might even get them to drop their guard and share what’s really going on at the company.

You can ask questions like:

Could you tell me more about the division I would be a part of? What’s going well, and what are the challenges?

What would you say this group is best at and what are areas you’re trying to shore up?

Could you describe the culture of this team? Does it differ meaningfully from the overall organizational culture? How?

If I’m really successful in this role, what impact will I have had?

The goal of these questions is to find a jumping off point for conversation, so you have the opportunity to say things like:

  • “It sounds like you’re eager to have this team take more risks. Is that right?” And then share some thoughts of how you’ve seen that happen / helped make that happen in other places.
  • “It sounds like getting a better understanding of customer needs is a real priority. Have you thought about _______.”

Uncover a Real Pain Point They’re Trying to Solve

When you get the interviewer to put a real pain point in front of you, the two of you are suddenly working together to address that issue. This is both a more interesting interaction than the traditional interview, and a dry run of you working together with this person.

Once they’ve gotten a taste of that, they’ll instinctively put you in a different category than all the other candidates: they’ve interviewed everyone else, but they’ve gotten a glimpse of what it’s like to work with you.

And you’ve also gotten to see what it really will feel like to work together, so you’re in a better place to see if this is going to be the right place for you.

Everybody wins.

 

Other posts in this Series:

On Interviewing Well: Introduction

On Interviewing Well: Convey Deep Self-Knowledge (3-3-2)

On Interviewing Well: Owning Your Agenda

On Interviewing Well: Intention

On Interviewing Well: Intention

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Why are you here?

In this interview, I mean, on this day, talking to these people?

If you have taken the time to apply for a job, to get invited for these interviews, to prepare, to spend your time in these conversations, then you must carry a singular purpose: to get this job.

That may seem obvious.

The reality is, it’s easy to lose track of your purpose in the artificial setting that an interview creates. The questions you’re being asked are all over the place. There’s a mutual dance going on of we-are-being-totally-genuine-with-each-other but also…not.

Nearly 30 years ago, in one of my early job interviews to be an Analyst at an investment bank, I was asked what would motivate me to stay past midnight night after night in the midst of a big deal. In a moment of regretful honesty, I replied, “I’m not sure, actually. Can you tell me what motivated you to do that?” Needless to say, I didn’t get the job.

While I don’t think you’ll make this kind of novice mistake, there are lots of smaller ways that you can express doubt and, inadvertently, undermine your candidacy.

Hence the importance of anchoring your intention.

For example, the best public talks I’ve given are the ones where I know who I’m speaking to. Not in a generalized way—I think of an actual person who I’m hoping to connect with or persuade.

Even if I’m extremely well-prepared and I’ve learned (most of) my talk by heart (aside: I never memorize the whole thing), my inflection, the bits that I improvise, my cadence, my presence…it is all impacted by who I’m imagining I’m speaking to.

The cumulative effect of each of these moments being tailored to the right person is a much more effective talk. Everything lands more, and the result is a more powerful, more persuasive story.

It’s the same when you sit down to interview: clarity of intention.

“I am here to get this job. To do that I will convey my strengths as a professional, my maturity, why I am a great colleague, and how I can fit into this team to help it play at a high level.”

Our job is to hold that intention strongly, while also being nimble enough to incorporate the new information that comes at us over the course of the day.

It’s a subtle shift, but it’s one that makes all the difference.

 

 

Other posts in this Series:

On Interviewing Well: Introduction

On Interviewing Well: Convey Deep Self-Knowledge (3-3-2)

On Interviewing Well: Owning Your Agenda

Why I Don’t Have a Five-Year Plan

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I’ve always been amazed, and a bit perplexed, by people who have five- or ten-year plans.

That’s not to say that I don’t have north star objectives: things centered around my values, hopes for my family and loved ones, and a broad set of professional aspirations.

But questions that get down to the next level of detail don’t work for me.

This is because I know what I don’t know about my future possibility set: the things that I can imagine today are a function of who and where I am today, and, if I keep making progress, my today view of what’s possible will be out of date in a year or two years’ time.

My mindset is fueled by the work of Stephen Johnson and the idea of “adjacent possible,” which is the core mental model for creating an innovative culture.  The idea is that the possibility set — for everything from evolution to new ideas — is a function of the frontier of current available biology / best thinking. The things that are adjacent to that frontier are the ideas that are possible today; and as that frontier moves, new ideas are possible tomorrow.

Take the work of 60 Decibels: we have a set of capabilities, positioning in a number of markets, and big plans for what the future holds. But the future paths, while all fitting under a clear strategic umbrella, are many. If I knew for sure which one would be the one we’ll be walking, then I’d be a soothsayer.

Imagine, then, the paths we could take, all representing big possibilities, and then roll the tape forward two years: one or two of those paths is going to be successful, success will breed investment into new capabilities, which will create more success and more opportunities.

Something that looks like this (and yes, more than one branch from today could survive until tomorrow, that’s just harder to draw):

As I imagine that extending out for two or three years, it’s not a useful exercise to imagine the perfect mix of products, or markets, or offerings that we “ideally” will have—exactly because we are faced with so much opportunity.

I can see the big, long term goals, and I can make the best strategic choices with the information I have today. I can integrate that new information quickly, adapt and adjust. But I cannot see further than the distance my headlights shine.

Strong ideas, loosely held.

What to Do When Your Commitment Wavers

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Henry Ford famously quipped that, if he had asked them, people would have said what they wanted was a faster horse.

It’s easy to see how this insight applies to new products.

It is more profound to note that it also applies to social change.

Social change is the act of building a car that nearly everyone cannot see.

Worse, they have a vested interest in a faster horse—after all, change involves loss.

For the instigator of that change, the person at the center of that storm, believing in that vision for years is no small feat.

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year…fighting for a vision that few can see, when change comes slowly, and feedback loops are imperfect.

(Because, unlike with a product, we don’t even have a traditional market sending back reliable signals).

It is human to doubt your own vision from time to time.

Indeed, when we are building things that might take a generation to come to pass, it’s a miracle we don’t doubt our vision every day.

Don’t be too hard on yourself if there are days when your confidence flags.

Days when you think, “the doubters may be right after all.”

Days when you wonder if people ever really will want that car that you’re so painstakingly building—aren’t they awfully happy with their horses?

I’ve found two things to help me on these sorts of days:

First, I turn to my own tribe of true believers: folks who remind me of what’s possible, why it matters so much, and how far we’ve come. Whether it’s the way they smile, their infectious enthusiasm, or the hard road they’ve walked, we all have people who can shine a light on us and help us remember the things we might have temporarily forgotten.

Second, I return to the clearest, simplest version of that change I’m trying to create, a story so powerful that has a logic of its own, is trivial to remember, and is easy for others to share.

Our story at 60 Decibels is that it’s crazy to think that you can create meaningful, lasting social change if you never listen to the people involved in that change.

What’s yours?