There is definitely someone out there who knows better.
Someone with more expertise.
More experience.
More know-how.
More perspective and wisdom.
Sadly, she’s not available right now, and won’t be for some time.
We don’t need her, we need you, today.
Your best judgement.
Your informed opinion.
Your willingness to take a position.
Your stance that invites input, conversation, maybe even disagreement.
Your bravery that takes us forward.
In teams, in organizations, in families, there are certain roles that are played.
“Are played,” which is different from “roles that we play,” because the roles exist independently of their players. They exist to be filled, whether by the person filling them today or by somebody else.
Roles like:
The one played by the person who makes sure we keep moving forward fast enough.
The one played by the person who keeps us safe.
The one played by the person who expressed doubt, asks questions, makes sure we look at things from all angles.
The one played by the person who speaks up.
The one played by the person who lurks on the sidelines.
And the one played by the person who acts as a backstop.
The backstop role is essential: it’s the role of making sure everything is good enough to ship. This isn’t just about dotting i’s and crossing t’s. It’s things like making sure the story hangs together, that it connects to the big picture, that it’s on brand and that whole is more than the sum of the parts.
Sometimes, the person playing the backstop role really does have more experience, context and knowledge than the person who handed her the “almost finished” product. She’s been here before and can see and do things that others cannot.
But, just as often, the backstop person is just playing that role, because somebody’s got to do it and we’ve gotten used to being able to count on her.
While it’s a great relief to be able to rely on that kind of person, it also presents a risk. The risk is getting used to that role being played by someone else. The risk is teaching ourselves that someone else is going to put themselves on the line, to sit in the client’s shoes and always ask “is this good enough to represent us?”
And then, by definition, we’re not on the line, we’re not the arbiter of good enough, we’re not making the tough calls.
Behaving as if it’s OK to fall, because we have a net, is one way to teach ourselves that falling is OK. And then, day by day, almost imperceptibly, we start to become a person who falls.
The solution, of course, is to act as if there’s no backstop, to practice as if there’s no net.
Nets are essential if you’re on a literal high wire. But since, for most of us, our day-to-day work is rarely life or death, we’re much better off acting as if we didn’t have one, so we practice to putting ourselves on the line.
The more I listen to interviews with great creators, the more they echo the same themes. It goes something like this:
The act of creation is exceptionally hard and painful.
Writing, in particular, is torture.
It’s great to have talent, but without a disciplined process for creation, talent means nothing.
We human beings do everything we can to avoid the hard work of creating our art. To counteract this, we must create rituals and structures that make it impossible for us to hide: time every day in which the only thing we can do is produce. (For example, per Neil Gaiman, “I would go down to my lovely little gazebo at the bottom of the garden, sit down, and I’m absolutely allowed not to do anything. I’m allowed to sit at my desk, I’m allowed to stare out at the world, I’m allowed to do anything I like, as long as it isn’t anything. Not allowed to do a crossword, not allowed to read a book, not allowed to phone a friend, not allowed to make a clay model of something. All I’m allowed to do is absolutely nothing, or write.”)
We must be forgiving with ourselves when we are creating, and brutally tough on ourselves when we are editing and refining.
This isn’t going to be fun. But if we are to do our best work, if we are to give our gifts to the world, we have to be willing to grind out the effort each and every day, no matter how hard it feels and how little we feel like doing it on that particular day.
Now, I believe that these insights apply to everyone, not just to “creative” types. No one said that doing excellent, meaningful work was going to be easy, and I expect that writers and artists are just living the fully-distilled version of creating work that matters.
If these insights are to apply to all of us—and I believe they do—then we have four questions we need to answer honestly:
This framing feels fundamentally different from conversations about “work-life balance” and the perennial elevator small talk of “just three days until the weekend.”
In one view, work is something to be endured and minimized so we can refresh in our free time, and work being hard is an indication of something being wrong.
In another view, work being hard is the necessary precondition for it being meaningful, because there is nothing worth producing that doesn’t require risk and struggle.
While this doesn’t mean that all work we find hard is rewarding, it means that we cannot use “hard” as a barometer for something being wrong at work.
Somewhere, somehow, each of us has to find our own version of discipline.
For example, I don’t have access to Neil Gaiman’s gazebo, nor do I write fantastical fiction or comics. But both Neil and I need time alone, time to think, time with the proverbial blank page; time when we’re looking straight at a problem we don’t know the answer to; time when our job is to sit there until we produce one thing that is one small step in the right direction.
Discipline is often not fun. It is, at a minimum, the act of sitting with discomfort and delaying gratification because we know that this is what it feels like when we do real work.
Of course, most of us have not figured out what our art is, we don’t know what we are uniquely suited to do in the world.
That’s OK. We don’t need the full answer today. We need, instead, to decide to start doing meaningful, personal work as soon as possible.
And how do we start? Not with musing, reflection or pretending that if we wait long enough inspiration will touch us. That’s a great way of hiding.
Instead, we start with building a practice of creative discipline into our days, weeks and lives: we put ourselves in situations every day where we ask ourselves to make one small thing that we are proud of, one small thing that is over and above the exact thing we were asked to do.
With this mindset, our work becomes something we can take personally, and each thing we ship can be different and better for what we’ve put into it.
From the moment we decide to take our work personally, we start to show up like professionals, and, bit by bit, we watch the yield that comes from refusing to be swayed too quickly by the thoughts that all of us have: this is too hard; this might not be good enough; if I care a little less, then I won’t be hurt if I come up short.
Caring less and risking less are great ways to stay safe in the short term, and even better ways to ensure that we stay where we are in the long term.
Whereas if we shift our attitude towards our work and learn how to build discipline into our days, we set ourselves down the harder but much more rewarding path of sharing what only we have to offer through our work.
There will come a day, maybe even today, that you produce something truly outstanding.
It’s you at your best, a commingling of great ideas, inspiration and a heavy dose of grit that got it over the line.
Most people who see it will be moved, maybe even inspired. They will let you know that you’ve done something truly important. You will be reminded that you at your best is really something special.
And some people, people who you truly and deeply respect…they will not like it at all.
Not because it’s not good.
Not because your best isn’t remarkable (it is.)
Simply because it is not for them.
Just like we can’t fool all the people all the time, we also cannot please all of them—and this includes people we like and respect.
The sooner we learn this lesson, the sooner we can get on with doing the work that only we can do. Because what they like or don’t like isn’t us, it’s the work.
We’re not here to please everyone.
We’re here to create concrete, meaningful, positive change for a small group of people.
Figuring out that those people are “not everyone” is incredibly freeing.
I’m sitting outside on a beautiful, sunny, early summer day eating my lunch on a bench in New York City.
Across from me, a guy is frantically scratching off Lotto cards: he buys four, tears the perforation, stacks the cards, and, one by one, scratches them off.
He loses.
He gets up, walks back to the newsstand, buys and scratches off another four.
He loses.
He gets up a third time, buys and scratches off another four. He gets up, walks back to the stand with one of the cards, and trades it for a new one—he won a new card.
He scratches that one off.
He loses.
To watch his intensity in scratching off these cards is to see the story he’s telling himself: each time, there’s a chance (however small) that he’ll hit it big.
That is true.
What’s also true is what happens in practice: he spends money, he scratches, he loses. He spends money, he scratches, he loses.
This behavior leads to that result.
Scratching off Lotto cards is yet another form of hoping that lightning strikes us.
It also comes in the many ways we play small, keep our heads down, and hope that someone will notice us or pick us:
When we don’t invest in relationships because we’d prefer to “just do our work” and hope to be seen.
When we define our role in terms of the tasks we’ve mastered, without expanding our own orbit.
When we’re unwilling to make any tough decisions that put us on the hook.
When we give ourselves lots of emotional outs, so that we never care enough to say “I made this, I’m proud of it, I hope you are too.”
Yes, it is mathematically possible that continuing to do the old things will lead to a spectacular, positive, different outcome.
But if this behavior has, so far, led to that (disappointing) outcome over and over and over again, it might be time to take a step back and consider: how much of how I’m showing up is a form of wishing that lighting will strike one day?
Each time you decide that you can and will do something better, there’s a tax.
A tax on the initiative of the person you took the job from.
A tax on their sense of agency.
A tax on confidence.
A tax on learning.
Taxes are important. They are part of how things work. They allow other good things to happen. They are necessary.
But they’re still taxes. They have a cost.
So use them wisely.
Compared to everyone around me, I’m not the best thinker, writer, speaker, leader, organizer, coach, or blogger.
I’m not the best risk-taker, strategist, fundraiser, relationship manager, pipeline-generator, or closer.
Nor am I the best author, researcher, public speaker, project manager, course designer, facilitator, data analyzer, financial planner, business modeler, lean startup doer, creator, thinker, researcher or innovator.
The good news is, it is not my job to be the best.
My job, first and foremost, is to care the most.
Then I have to turn that caring into a willingness to put myself on the line.
Then I need to translate that into fierce dedication to follow-through, relentless commitment to outcomes, ongoing openness to learning, and strong orientation to partnership. I must be able to see where I know enough already, where I can learn things I need to learn, and where others will be better placed than I am to take parts of the work forward.
Someone else is always going to be better than I am, smarter, more experienced, or more capable in some way.
But my decisions about what I will do, what role I choose to play, what steps I will take next, where I choose to take the reins – these will never get out of the gate if they go through a “best at” filter.
We all know by now that there was really no wizard, even if he did keep Oz in thrall for quite a while. He was just a man behind a curtain with a bunch of gadgets, some flame-throwers, and a microphone.
Yet, in the last scene of The Wizard of Oz, he does, indeed, perform some magic.
The scene begins with Scarecrow demanding, “But what about the heart that you promised Tin Man, and the courage you promised Cowardly Lion?!” The Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion then chime in, in unison, “and Scarecrow’s brain!”
Without missing a beat, the Wizard proceeds to produce three totems: a diploma conferring an honorary degree of ThD (Doctor of Thinkology) for the Scarecrow from the ‘Universitatus Commitiatum E Pluribus Unum;” a Triple Cross medal from the “Legion of Courage” for the Cowardly Lion; and a heart-shaped clock for the Tin Man.
Upon receiving his piece of paper, the Scarecrow recites the Pythagorean Theorem from memory. Upon being pinned with his medal, the Lion, miraculously, feels brave. The Tin Man’s ticking heart makes him believe in his capacity to love.
What happened in that moment of official conferral in which an object and a story from a “wizard” made them each believe in something that was within them all along?
More confusing still, what do we make of the Wizard who gave them trinkets that transformed the stories they told themselves about themselves, and which, therefore, transformed how they showed up in the world? Is he a pure charlatan or, as he claims, “a very good man, just a very bad wizard.”
And, before we get too far down the path of asking whether placeboes really work, let’s remind ourselves that every degree or fellowship or job title is nothing more or less than conferring of an official title and set of expectations, and these things are no more or less real than Scarecrow’s fake degree.
Sure, some of these things – degrees from prestigious schools, time spent working at blue chip firms – do communicate that we’ve gone through rigorous selection criteria, been exposed to certain curricula or training, been socialized in a particular way, and jumped through other sorts of hoops. But it is far too easy to get lulled into the belief that each rung up the ladder of life requires us to be picked by someone else. While it’s true that each prestigious marker that we collect opens certain doors, it’s a siren’s song to be tricked into believing that it is someone else’s job to decide when you are worth praise, recognition, and the right to lead.
I’ve known too many amazing people in the social sector who need “just one more” degree, fellowship, or job in a fancy mainstream firm, after which they’ll finally have everything they need to make the difference they hope to make in the world.
The truth is that the opportunities for you to lead are too many and too urgent, the gatekeepers often don’t know what to look for, and what makes the most difference is that terrifying moment when you realize that the important stuff doesn’t come after you get your next medal, piece of paper or ticking heart: it’s already there inside of you.
The first time it happened, I was 25 years old and working in Spain on a consulting project for a big Portuguese telecom company.
I was on a small project team responsible for a pile of data analysis that would drive the main project recommendations, and we were nearing a final deadline. The analysis, it turned out, was way over my head. And yet, as I looked around the team and our small office for someone to tell me how to go about it, I had this sinking feeling that the person who knew best what to do was me.
It was terrifying.
Partially the fear came from objectively not knowing enough. I had neither the analytical chops to know how to proceed nor the network of relationships to quickly find someone who could help in time. And I was sure that our firm was getting paid far too much to make recommendations based on what I knew.
So while that moment, stemming from poor planning and preparation, is something to avoid, getting to have that feeling was priceless.
I still remember the quiet, mortifying stillness of, “It’s up to me.”
What an important feeling to be able to identify, because once you’ve felt it you can’t unfeel it, and then you can notice that feeling and notice how much easier it is to kick a decision somewhere – up, down, sideways – to gather more information or maybe to put off deciding entirely.
We kick this habit like any other, with both discipline and nuance.
If you want to learn to swim better, or hit a ball better, or do a yoga pose better, you start with the big muscle groups and body angles and work your way towards subtler adjustments. Just so in the workplace: you begin by making calls in the big, obvious moments where you’ve got no choice but to decide; and you work your way through to smaller moments of stalling, hesitation, and the magical sleight of hand we all engage in to open up “outs” in case things turn out wrong.
It is so much easier to avoid responsibility and future blame. And it is so much more important to practice putting ourselves on the hook, to practice being the kind of person who makes calls, to practice stepping in to uncertainty.
Step up. Decide. Then make it great.
The person we’re waiting for? That’s you.
So often we toil away for months or even years to hit the markers for success we’ve laid out for ourselves.
Often when we arrive we end up disappointed. We had focused so much on the toiling and the achieving without ever having figured out, in the first place, the “why” behind it all.
What would have happened if, at the outset, we had imagined what exactly we’d do – who we’d be and what steps we’d take next – when we hit those markers. What would have napped if we’d pre-imagined our success, been sure that we could pull it off, and planned from there?
Better yet, what would have happened if we hadn’t been so quick to accept anyone else’s markers?
