Crazy Idea List

September 12, 2017September 11, 2017 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

It’s so tempting to strive for that empty To Do list, to dream of those moments when you’ll have only a few items left on the list and then tick them off.

But those moments only come if you’ve got a certain kind of To Do list, one with concrete, discrete, easily quantifiable and achievable tasks, all of which you’re sure you will start and finish.

That kind of list is fine, but what do you do with the thoughts that have a different character altogether: the thoughts that grab you in a quiet moment, on a walk or in the shower or groggily in the middle of the night; the thoughts that arrive funky and murky and blurry, the ones that need time to gestate and evolve before you can even see them clearly enough to know if they’re worth time and energy?

These thoughts need a home too, because if you don’t capture them somewhere – while they’re still just a glimpse of what could be – then you won’t get to hold onto them while they develop.

And then you’ll be sitting there, looking around and wondering, “where does everyone else get those great, breakthrough ideas” without remembering that you have them too, you’ve just never gotten into the habit of capturing and cultivating them.

The Sunscreen Effect

July 31, 2017July 30, 2017 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

As an adult, I’ve finally learned to put on sunscreen regularly. I lather some on every morning before heading to work, I apply it liberally before heading out to the pool, heck, I even wear sun shirts.

But reapplying after a few hours, or after a run or a swim? I’m not so good at that. Once I’m all wet, or sandy, or both, it just feels like a chore, and I tell myself that the first coat was good enough and waterproof enough.

So it goes with ideas as well.

We have an initial exposure to a new idea, so we diligently engage with it. It helps us in some way, changes our perspective or gives us some new tactics, and we feel good.

The initial impact is important, but where deep, more fundamental change comes from is re-exposure and re-application. Even rereading that same idea at a different moment will allow you to interact with it from a new perspective and have it affect you in a new way.

This has implications for how we interact with ideas that feel new and important, and it also impacts our approach to spreading ideas: it’s not necessary, or helpful, to say something new each and every time, because your audience needs to hear something lots of times and lots of ways for a new and important idea to really seep in.

Like, say, this gem from Seth Godin, which I’ve heard a hundred times in a hundred ways, and I still need to be reminded of it a hundred more times:

I don’t blog every day because I have a good idea.

I have a good idea because I blog every day.

Or the wisdom I heard from Thulsiraj Ravilla yesterday while speaking to him about the importance of values to the Aravind Eye Care System, which has given sight to millions, and that I got to visit for the first time last week in Madurai, India:

Values mean nothing if individuals do not put them into practice through their actions.

There are truths we have all been exposed to, things that we know to be real and important, that we let ourselves dabble with and then dropped before they could really impact us.

It’s time to reapply.

Where blog posts really come from

January 16, 2014January 16, 2014 ~ Sasha ~ 4 Comments

One of the reasons I blog is so that I have a regular, disciplined practice of turning loosely-formed ideas into concrete, cogent, shareable posts. Over and over again. Until I get better at it.

Part of the power of repetition is getting to observe a process unfold repeatedly. So, over the last 5-plus years of blogging (and of life), I’ve learned that most of the time my best ideas come through conversations. When someone asks me a great, thorny, interesting question, and we engage in real dialogue about how to answer that question, I learn things. This is a powerful piece of self-knowledge that I otherwise wouldn’t possess. It informs how I structure my time and how I think about the conversations I need to have, and the people I need to interact with, to learn, to push my own thinking and my own understanding of the world and of my work.

Rare, though, is to have a photograph of that moment.

The most popular post I wrote in November was How do I get a job in impact investing?, and after I wrote the post I saw this tweet from Josh McCann. It’s a photo taken the moment I was asked by the Warton Social Venture club how to get a job in impact investing. I was stumped, but I winged it, and we talked, and together we figured it out.

Where do your best ideas come from? Alone, or in conversation? After a lot of reading and study or on the spur of the moment? With a pad of paper and a pencil, a whiteboard, with a cup of tea or cranking at your desk at work, constantly jumping back to your Facebook feed (probably not)?

We all struggle with managing our time the right way. Knowing where we get our best ideas can help. This is one of the big ideas in Peter Drucker’s Managing Oneself, an article that’s worth rereading at least once a year.

You’re repeating yourself

September 17, 2013September 16, 2013 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

Why yes, that’s on purpose.

Did you know that children often need to be exposed to new foods 10-15 times before they’re happy to eat them?

Same thing with ideas and action, it turns out.

Insight as a spectator sport

June 18, 2012June 18, 2012 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

I recently reread Daniel Goleman’s 1998 Harvard Business Review article on emotional intelligence . Goleman’s research showed that as individuals get more senior in organizations, differentials in performance are a function not of intellect and technical skills but of emotional intelligence.

When I compared star performers with average ones in senior leadership positions, nearly 90% of the difference in profiles was attributable to emotional intelligence factors rather than cognitive abilities.

Emotion intelligence, in Goleman’s definition, is comprised of:

Self-Awareness: the ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions, and drives, as well as their effect on others

Self-Regulation: the ability to control, or redirect, disruptive impulses and moods; the propensity to suspend judgment – to think before acting

Motivation: a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status; a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence

Empathy: the ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people; skill in treating people according to their emotional reactions

Social Skill: proficiency in managing relationships and building networks; an ability to find common ground and build rapport.

So what do I do when you come across something like this – a potentially powerful insight that turns your current thinking on its head? Do I totally revamp my hiring process? Do I do nothing? Or do I tinker around the edges?

As someone who’s constantly on the lookout for these sorts of insights, I know I don’t adopt every great new idea I come across. Sometimes that’s because I don’t fully believe in an idea, but often it’s because I don’t have the guts (or the willingness to take the social risk) to try it (e.g. conduct all meetings standing up).

There are four possible orientations to great ideas.

Never find them in the first place (don’t read the books, the blogs, watch the TED talks, etc.)
Consume them and ignore them
Consume them and incorporate them a bit around the edges
Embrace them, test them out, and be willing to incorporate them if they work for you

While option 1 (living heads down, actively hiding from all the amazing ideas that are spreading) is the most obvious thing to avoid, it’s options 2 and 3 that are more subtle and just as troublesome. You come across something great, but you don’t actually do anything to make it yours.

As in, “That sounds great, but we can’t really do it that way because….” or, worse, “Well sure that might work for her but that would never work for us because…”

The moment we have a bias towards action, we read/act differently. We’re no longer couch potatoes, waiting to be entertained, we’re active learners leaning forward, taking notes in the margins, sharing the bits we like the best, starting discussion groups, having five other people read the same book so all of us can test out new ideas together.

We come across too many great ideas to allow insight to be a spectator sport.

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p.s. Viewed through this lens, we understand a TED talk (or a TED book), a Domino book, a great manifesto or a focused, passionate blog differently. They are optimized for idea transmission and action. A 250 page book may be what it takes to wring every last drop out of an idea, but the 80 page version probably gives the reader enough to act on.

What you do, how you got here, what you think

December 13, 2011December 12, 2011 ~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

I’m constantly amazed, when hearing people formally present their ideas, by the balance of where they spend their time.

It’s immeasurably safer to catalogue your credentials, your track record, and the path that brought us to today. Unfortunately, we can look nearly all of that up that pretty easily nowadays.

What we’re hoping you’ll do is to lay it bare by sharing your thoughts about the road ahead. We don’t expect them to be right, we just expect them to be honest so that we can start a real conversation.

The Buy Read Paradox

September 21, 2011September 20, 2011 ~ Sasha ~ 5 Comments

I’m intrigued by the disconnect between the prestige and legitimacy afforded by being a “published author” and all the friction inherent in trying to spread your ideas by writing a book.

Think about the dropoff from:

The number of people who hear about a book → The number that buy the book → The number that read the book they’ve bought → The number that spread the word about that book

If you aren’t a known name or you don’t have an existing tribe whose permission you’ve earned (often over a number of years), simply getting the word out about your book is a herculean task. And so, most books sell only a few thousand copies.

Nevertheless, being a “published author” still carries a real caché. Especially if you write nonfiction, “published author” is a chalice of purported legitimacy and expertise (e.g. it’s a lot easier for a journalist or a TV producer to justify interviewing a published author). What that means in reality is that the book gives you permission to talk about the ideas in the book, not the other way around. It’s a pretty roundabout, lumpy way to spread an idea.

Which gets me thinking:

25 years from now, will the notion of being a “published author” be anachronistic, and, if that happens, what will replace it?
Or, will the notion live on, because as a society we will always need a way to separate out “legitimate” idea merchants from the chaff.

If anything, it seems like we are going to see a proliferation of pathways to legitimacy, which gives people who want to spread ideas (but who don’t have access to the gatekeepers) more options. That seems like a good thing, as the volume of ideas that will spread will likely go up.

The open question is whether, overall, more of the best ideas will get out. My bet is: Yes.

What do you think?

Why the web is a curious place

August 1, 2011July 31, 2011 ~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Because when you first see something you’ve written posted somewhere else, with the words big and your name small, the first reaction is to say, “HEY, WAIT A MINUTE….!”

And then you remind yourself…that’s the whole point. To spread ideas.

In that spirit, here’s a blog post of mine from March, as re-envisioned by Marta Vilkancaite of Green Orange Advertising Creative. Thanks, Marta!

(p.s. the next time someone emails me asking me to write a post about something they’re doing, I’ll send them this post. So much better to offer up value first, rather than start by asking for a favor.)

Ideas or action?

April 23, 2009April 22, 2009 ~ Sasha ~ 2 Comments

The NYC Police and the Metropolitan Transit Association have run a catchy public service campaign for the last few years whose tagline is, “If you see something, say something.”

The ad on the train I’m on has these words is big letters, with a picture of an abandoned bag. The message is to keep an eye out for suspect or abandoned packages.

I’ve probably seen this ad two or three times a week for the past few years, and only this morning I paid enough attention to notice the words underneath the tagline: “Tell us, a cop, or call 1-888-NYC-SAFE.”

I bet if you asked 50 people who had seen this ad what phone number to call, 49 of them wouldn’t remember.

It’s easy to make an example of this ad because it so clearly separates out the IDEA (“if you see something…”) from the ACTION (call this number). It could be that they figure “say something” is self-explanatory, but couldn’t they have traded catchy for memorable and said, “See something? Tell a cop or call 888-NYC-SAFE.”

The point is, most of the time we write or speak with the goal of convincing people of an idea rather than convincing them to take an action.

It’s actually much harder to get people to act. You only need to convince them of an idea while you’re talking. But to get them to act, they have to remember what you said long after you’re done . You’ll probably have to come at the idea from a number of different angles, getting people to work through their barriers and their internal conversation about why they should do nothing. You’ll have to be a lot less elegant and a lot more explicit. You’ll have to give examples and be motivational and inspirational and pound the table some.

You’ll have to sell.

And you absolutely, positively, definitely wouldn’t get stuck at a conceptual level if what you cared the most about was action.

If you see something, say something that will get me to act.

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