connecting – Sasha Dichter's Blog

The James Caird is the 23 foot-(8m-)long whaler in which Sir Ernest Shackleton and five companions made the epic open boat voyage of 800m (l,300 km) from Elephant Island, 500 miles (800 km) south of Cape Horn, to South Georgia during the Antarctic winter of l9l6. Source: http://www.jamescairdsociety.com/

What do your job postings look like? Do they look anything like this one placed in a British newspaper by Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, looking to hire crew for his Nimrod expedition to reach the South Pole (he never succeeded):

MEN WANTED FOR HAZARDOUS JOURNEY. LOW WAGES, BITTER COLD, LONG HOURS OF COMPLETE DARKNESS. SAFE RETURN DOUBTFUL. HONOUR AND RECOGNITION IN EVENT OF SUCCESS.

Pretty clear what you’re signing up for, huh?

Everything we do is a function of who is on the bus, the hands we have pulling together towards our common goal. We may not be attempting to reach the South Pole, but we’re going somewhere important, and we need the right people to get us there. People who share our values. People who share our commitment. People who are there because they are meant to be one of us – we just haven’t found them yet, nor they us.

Yet we punt on the opportunity to state who we are from the get-go. We write bland, generic job postings, copying and pasting from the one we used last time and the time before that and the time before that. We say things like “we are looking for self-starters who work well in teams, with strong attention to detail and a collaborative mindset.”

Huh? It’s the hiring equivalent of mission statement blah-blah-blah: “we deliver excellence to our customers through uncompromising pursuit of top quality and belief in our stated values of trust, performance, and team.”

Please, please, please, stand for something in everything you do – especially in how you hire. Instead of being afraid of writing something that some people won’t like, make SURE you write something that some people won’t like – because that way you’ll communicate something about who you are and what you stand for to the people who love that edgy, provocative thing you’re communicating.

Say things that only you would say, as a first step towards attracting only the right people to work alongside you for the next five or ten years. What could be more important?

* * * * *

p.s. for those who noticed/didn’t like the two grammatical mistakes in the title of this blog post, I was being ironical.

A guy’s on the subway car with a guitar, ready to sing. New guy for today, but really he’s just another guy with a guitar…the same old story.

But then a passenger yells out, “YOU KNOW ‘MONEY MONEY MONEY BY THE O’JAYS? I WILL GIVE YOU TEN DOLLARS…TEN DOLLARS…IF YOU CAN GET THREE PASSENGERS TO SING ALONG TO THE CHORUS WHILE YOU SING!”

The guitarist says he’s game.

The passenger stands up, starts goading the guitarist, starts goading the other passengers – “C’MON NOW, THE BRAVE ONES ARE SINGING. HOW ABOUT THE REST OF YOU?”

And then, ten seconds later, the trouble-making passenger starts bee-bopping. He’s part of the band, he’s the front man, in fact.

“IT’S TRUE,” he says, “NO ONE ON THE TRAIN WOULD EVER BE THIS NICE TO A STREET PERFORMER!”

And the riffs continue. “WE’RE NOT HOMELESS, WE’RE NOT HUNGRY. IN FACT, WE SMELL BETTER THAN YOU….Just kidding…WE’RE JUST DOING WHAT WE LOVE, SHARING WHAT WE DO. BUY A CD, GIVE A DONATION, WE TAKE CREDIT CARDS…JUST GIVE US YOUR PIN NUMBER…AND GO TO ISAWYOUGUYS.COM…THAT’S ISAWYOUGUYS.COM….ISAWYOUGUYS.COM. HAVE A NICE DAY.”

These guys call themselves Akil and Sciryl (“lyrics” spelled backwards). And you can indeed find them at isawyouguys.com.

Here’s the deal: you’re facing the same choices as these guys. Your can choose to be a regular old street performer by showing up in the way you’re supposed to show up – you look appropriate, you act appropriate, you pitch in an appropriate way – in which case the only way you win is by being the single best street performer they’re looking for that day (and happening to sing the song they love).

Or, you can put on a show, a show they’ve never seen before, a show a lot of people won’t like but a few will stand up and say, “Finally, I’m sick of all these crappy performers, what I was dying for was a little entertainment!! Let’s talk.”

It’s safe to be a street performer, and you won’t make any enemies. But artists put on shows. That’s what makes them artists.

The O’Jays certainly knew that. Look at those outfits, look at those moves. A SHOW.