Tag: choices

How to give and get better advice

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

The problem with most advice is that it’s delivered as “here’s what I think you should do.”

Yet it typically reflects, “here’s what I did in a similar situation.”

That old situation and this new one are never the same: different time, different place, different people.

Plus, upon receiving that kind of advice, we end up stuck again: we’ve turned to someone we trust who has more experience with this type of thing than we have. Hearing their advice, we face a new dilemma: is their wisdom, experience and fresh perspective more valid than what we (closer to the texture and nuance of the situation) see and know?

There’s a better way to approach this conversation, both as advice-seeker and the advice-giver.

If we are asked to give advice, we start by advising less.

Instead, we take a position of inquiry. Our job is to tease out what is going on beneath the surface, the questions that are being balanced, the decision that’s lurking but afraid to show its face. As this picture starts to emerge, we can, gently, begin to engage with what’s been offered up. We can re-frame the options that have been presented and share some new ones. We can question the weight being given to this or that risk (or opportunity). We can inquire about some strongly-held assumptions to see if the could be held more loosely, revealing both their truths and their limitations.

Ultimately, through this engagement, the person who felt stuck doesn’t get a take-it-or-leave-it answer, instead she ends up armed with new criteria, a few better assumptions, and a bit more confidence in her own choice-making ability. So equipped, she’s ready to get herself unstuck and find the path she will choose to walk.

Similarly, as the person seeking advice, we can remind ourselves that a much better opening question than “what do you think I should do?” is “can I talk this through with you?  I’d love your input on whether I’m thinking about this in the right way.”

Raising the bar

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

10 years ago, if you wanted to get into the social impact/social enterprise sector, it was enough to say “I think I want to find ways to take a business approach to solving social problems. That makes so much sense!”

5 years ago, if you wanted to do this work you needed to show that you had some direct, relevant experience, a spike of some sort that allowed folks to connect the dots between things that you’ve done and the work you’re proposing to do now.

Today, the expectation is significant direct experience that matters.

If you want to work with social enterprises in the developing world, the expectation is that you’ve spent real time in the developing world doing related work – a couple of years, not a couple of months.

If you want to be a marketer for a great cause, the pool of applicants shooting for that job have been in the great cause marketing business for a while already.

If you want to invest overseas, the expectation is that you have both investing chops and a direct understanding of the markets and businesses you’d like to invest in.

The great news is, unlike 10 years ago, when you had to a make a giant leap, there are countless opportunities for smoother, more gradual transitions.

To start, it’s never been easier to form a group and take free online courses for social changemakers. Our +Acumen courses are designed for just this, and in the next month you can learn about Lean Data Approaches to Measure Social Impact, Storytelling for Change (available in English or Spanish), and Social Entrepreneurship 101.

Or maybe your path will take you to a mainstream firm that offers a rich set of pro-bono opportunities—like those offered by Bain, Ernst and Young, and PWC—or you’ll go to one of many progressive nonprofits that work with big companies—including Taproot Foundation, TechnoServe, Bankers without Borders and MovingWorlds.

Or you could work directly for a social enterprise: right now Burn, Esoko, and Seed Schools are all hiring.

And of course nearly all the top MBA programs now have social enterprise offerings, including Kellogg School of Management, Stanford Graduate School of Business, The Wharton School, Duke Fuqua School of Business, Yale School of Management and Harvard Business School.

This is what happens when a sector goes from “brand new” to “adolescent.”

Today, the bar is higher, but so are the opportunities to help you get over it.

 

(Big thanks to Duda and Ashley for helping me get this post over the line)

Don’t ask for career advice

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

Most of the time, most of the people you ask for career advice don’t know you well enough to usefully tell you what to do.

Most of the time, they will instead tell you what they did at that time and in that situation.

That’s useful to know too, but they are not you. While they will likely have more experience than you, and, possibly, more wisdom, there’s a bright line between “what have you learned?” and “what should I do?”

Ask them about what they have seen and understood. Ask them to share what the view looks like from where they sit. Ask them for perspective on what it takes to do the things you want to do.

But what you should do? That’s only up to you.

Six months later

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

When I was in business school, private equity was all the rage. I’d never been an investment banker, and I didn’t even really understand what private equity was, but I did throw my hat into the ring for a few private equity jobs.

The notion of actually getting any of these jobs filled me with dread. I had no passion for that work, and I only managed to land interviews with lesser-known firms where the people I met seemed to truly dislike their jobs and the lives they’d signed up for for the next 5-10 years. I vividly remember the pit I’d get in my stomach waiting for these firms’ final decisions – fearing I might actually get one of the jobs I’d applied for.

When I did get a couple of those job offers, I remember discussing them with classmates who said I had no choice but to take them. Objectively I was not qualified, yet I’d managed to get my foot in the door. I should take the job to learn the ropes, as a stepping stone to the next one and the next one and… My friends essentially rolled their eyes at me for even considering turning the jobs down.

One person, not a classmate, shared a different perspective. He said, “six months from now, all of these people who are telling you what to do, all of these people whose approval feels really important right now, they’ll all be gone. Six months from now it will just be you sitting at that desk at whatever hour of the day. Not them, you. Think of how you’ll feel six months from now when you’re the one doing the job. That will tell you what you should do.”

This isn’t a post about following our passions. Even the chance to follow a true passion only comes up once in a while – most of the time we don’t know what our passions are or we don’t have the skills, the perspective or the wisdom to really make the dent we dream of making in the universe.

But we do, each and every day, and especially when we are at real junctures in our lives, have the opportunity to understand the choices we make. They are our choices, and the minute we own them is the minute we understand who it is who is walking our path.

It is only us.

Constraints

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

My friend Tom Fisburne’s great cartoon about TV remote controls reminded me of this.

Imagine how much you could accomplish if you decided up front all the things you absolutely won’t do – the compromises you refuse to make, no matter what.

It’s the “no matter what” that’s the tricky part.

More or deeper?

~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

More is:

  • The hunt
  • Acquisition costs
  • Onsite blog traffic
  • Splashy PR
  • Small bets
  • Millions of followers
  • Friends and admirers

Deeper is:

  • Relationships
  • Low churn
  • RSS subscribers
  • Specialized media
  • Big bets
  • 1,000 true fans
  • Allies

Neither is better or worse, but  (there’s always a “but”)…  BUT one of these has to be your dominant strategy if in fact you have a strategy.

(And if your answer is “both” then it’s time to reread Kevin Kelly’s original post about 1,000 true fans, starting with,”To raise your sales out of the flatline of the long tail you need to connect with your True Fans directly.  Another way to state this is, you need to convert a thousand Lesser Fans into a thousand True Fans.”  I can think of few things more dissimilar than the actions you’d take to “run out and find new converts” versus “convert a thousand Lesser Fans into a thousand True Fans.”)

So which one is it for you?  And why?

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Judging

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

You can decide that this is work and that is play.

That every time you do a little extra, someone else is getting the best of you.

That you’re making tradeoffs each and every step of the way.

Just remember that it’s you who’s doing the judging.  Which means that some day (maybe today) you can choose to decide that you’re judging right – and do something about it – or decide that it’s time to start telling yourself a different story.

Don’t be afraid to thrive.

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