Tag: Linchpin

Gifts – The Icarus Deception

~ Sasha ~ 10 Comments

The other day I received a massive, 40 pound box full of goodies from Seth Godin.

I was one of the 4,242 people who happily jumped in to support Seth’s Kickstarter project to fund his next book, The Icarus Deception.

Of course, for $111 I didn’t just get the book.  And I didn’t just get 8 copies of the hardcover book (to give away), which itself would have been a steal.  Those 8 books took up a tiny corner of this massive box, which also contained two copies of V is for Vulnerable, a alphabet book for grown-ups, with wild, wacky, beautiful illustrations by Hugh MacLeod, about leaning in, creating art, and having the courage to ship; a delicate, hand-made mug by Lori Koop, with a hand-written note from Lori that reads “Seth asked me to make this for you….this is my art. –Lori;”  an LP (yes, as in a record) whose contents I have yet to discover….I just need to get my hands on a record player; and a totally massive, 11 x 16 inch 800+ page full-color book that, impishly, has a bunch of rubber ducklings on the front cover.  It is a collection of Seth’s best online writing from 2006 to 2012, and it’s literally the heaviest book I’ve ever laid my hands on.

Icarus Kickstarter goodies

My experience of this whole thing is joy.  I can see Seth smiling as I smile; I’m wowed by the beauty and the irreverence of each and every piece, as well as the chance that each of them gives someone else – not just Seth – to shine.   And the whole undertaking is, literally, delightful – my high expectations are blown out of the water; even with inklings of what might have been in the box I was surprised time and again.

It really is possible to delight our customers, to thank our greatest fans, to make them feel special not out of a sense of obligation but because you want to and you can.

And going back to the massive, 800+ page book, I also think back to my many experiences of sharing Seth’s advice with others – whether on publishing or on courage or on pushing through the resistance.  Yes, tons of people get it and live it.  And then there are the folks who  say something like, “Well yeah, that’s interesting and that probably works for Seth because he’s Seth.”

When I take this book, which physically holds just a small portion of what Seth has produced in the last six years, the only thing I can think is: he’s Seth because he produced all of this.  He’s Seth because any bit of advice he’s giving is something he’s already been doing for years; he’s Seth because he ships; he’s Seth because he’s not afraid to take risk, to show up, to fail, to shine, or even to look a little silly.

Finally, as homage to all of this (especially the silly part) here’s a little video that gives you a sense of the mega-tome.  Of course it’s not just heavy, it’s also beautiful and it will transform the conversations you have around your coffee table.  And it will remind you not of what Seth can do, but of what you can do if you show up fully every day.

When I grow up

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

It wasn’t until three or four years ago that I figured out what I wanted to be when I grow up. Not what specific job, not each twist and turn of my career. The characteristics of a job that is right for me: my strengths, where I shine, where and how I can deliver value to an organization.

While I’d feigned clarity and direction in countless prior job interviews and graduate school applications, I felt like I didn’t know in any real way where I was headed. I knew I’d been good at school, and since graduating college I’d managed to figure out a lot of things I didn’t like. But I still had a pretty limited affirmative understanding of what I was put on this earth to do.

No doubt our educational institutions are a huge part of the problem. Even in graduate schools, which are meant to prepare students for the next stage in their careers and to help them get there, I spent 99% of my time “learning stuff” and 1% of my time trying to figure out who I was and what made me tick. That can’t possibly be the right balance, yet that’s how nearly all of these programs are structured. (Sure, part of this is on me. I made the mistake of thinking Business School was school when it didn’t need to be.)

I can’t overstate how many incredible people I meet who have no idea what they’re supposed to do with their lives.

So, first and foremost: it’s OK that you don’t know. It takes time.

Second, this notion of figuring out exactly what you want to be when you grow up is an anachronism. It’s time to dispense with the preschoolers’ notion of careers (doctor, lawyer, footballer, firefighter) which is pretty much the only mental model we all have. Instead, the work begins with exploring questions like: what am I best at? What things seem really easy for me that are difficult for others? When do I shine? What kinds of problems do I like solving? How much uncertainty makes me comfortable/uncomfortable? How much recognition do I need? From whom? Why? How much do I like risk? Am I more conceptual or concrete? Do I love ideas or execution? How am I at building relationships? Am I creative? Do I like to teach others?

I think we knew all this stuff once, and we forgot it.

A short story: weekends in my house are a juggling act bouncing between three kids. Yet last weekend I managed to get a few uninterrupted hours with my 8-year-old son, and I’d told him we could do anything he wanted. While all the kids in his class would likely use that time to play soccer or baseball (and yes if I’d let him we’d have played video games), his idea of a perfect afternoon was to go to a craft store, buy a box of popsicle sticks, a package of pipe-cleaners, a piece of green foam, a piece of Styrofoam, some Elmer’s gel glue, and, as a bonus, a packet of fake moss, and then spend a few house building a model playground from scratch in our basement. Voila:

I have no idea what my son is going to be when he grows up, and I don’t suspect that he’ll know that for a while. But I know that he gets joy out of creating things and out of using his imagination. It engages him fully. In some way and in some form, he’s going to have to make stuff if he’s going to be really happy.

That’s the only level at which I’ve been able to figure out what I’m meant to do in the world. It’s not a shingle I can hang on the door or a defined career in any traditional sense of the word. What it is is a first-time understanding of who I am, of what the organizations I’m part of seem to need from me, of roles I continually find myself playing whether I choose to or not.

Slowly, the outline started to form, and once I saw that initial outline, my job was to keep trying to get the picture into sharper focus. Still lots of work to do – a lifetime of work – but it feels a lot easier than groping around pretending that I’m supposed to fit myself and my career into some little box I first heard about when I was a little kid.

There are fewer and fewer boxes out there, and you probably don’t want to fit into any of them anyhow.

And suddenly it’s up to you

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

I distinctly remember the first time I had this feeling in a professional setting.  I was three years out of college, three years into my stint in management consulting, working for a client who wanted us to do a bunch of regression analysis on piles of data to see how they could respond to the rise of mobile phone service.

[answer: stop running and hiding and burying your head in the sand. Mobile wasn’t going away.  Kinda obvious in retrospect.]

The terrifying bit was discovering that, on that client team and in the small office where I worked, I was the person who knew the most about what kind of analysis we should run – terrifying because I knew I didn’t know enough, and I definitely knew less than the client expected.

In retrospect, since most of the gap in what I knew was technical I should have found a way to find SOMEONE who could help me bridge the gap.  But how to better navigate the regression wasn’t the important bit.  The important bit, the part that sticks out is the “this can’t possibly be up to me” moment I experienced.  I felt like if it was all in my hands then something was massively broken, it was a temporary glitch in the Matrix and we’d soon get back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Because what did I know?

These moments are hitting people earlier and earlier in their careers, because we’re no longer asking people to walk a path or climb a ladder.  We’re starting to recognize that whole industries (music, books, finance, technology, energy, infrastructure, philanthropy, healthcare) are either already unrecognizable or will be within 20 years, so we don’t need young people to master the old tricks of the trade, we need them to reconceive everything.

I can shout that from the rooftops but I probably won’t get you to believe that it all should be up to you, today.

But I bet I can get you to notice the next “this is up to me” moment and have you pause for a second and say, “Wait a minute.  Maybe that’s exactly the way this is supposed to be.  Maybe I’m the perfect person for the job.”

Because you are.

If only that job were…

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

…bigger here and smaller there, just a bit more senior, with more (less?) supervisory responsibility, had a bit more of this and a smidge less of that, and it paid a bit more…well then it would be the perfect job.

The perfect job is one where you make an imprint, first on the job and then on the world.

Not the other way around.

What do you know?

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

“Who are you to be spouting all of these ideas?”

“What do you really know about this?”

“You’re not an expert.”

“There’s nothing new here.”

“Who cares what you think, really?”

And on and on.

No, that’s not what your critics are saying.  It’s what the little voice inside your head is saying, the one that’s holding you back.  The one that is petrified that you might discover how much you actually have to offer.

Your chance to shape a sector

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

Kevin Starr, who among other things runs the Mulago Foundation, penned a provocative, must-read series of posts on Stanford Social Innovation Review titled “The Problem with Impact investing (Pt. 1, Pt. 2, and Pt. 3).

He leads off his last post in the series with the sub-header “Real impact investing is not for the timid” and focuses most of his screed on the fact that our sector is horrendous at articulating and measuring impact.

This is hard stuff, these are long and rocky roads, and it is certainly not for the faint of heart.

At a minimum impact investors diverge radically in articulating what we mean by impact.  At our most timid, we claim that nearly any enterprise operating in the developing world by definition is creating impact (really?).  At the other end of the spectrum, even the most impact-focused investors are likely to screen heavily for impact but then have limited capacity (financial resources, time and attention) post-investment to really understand or accelerate impact.  At the recent ANDE metrics conference there was deep appreciation for the strong foundation we’ve created in our sector – the Pulse platform, IRIS standards and GIIRS ratings – as well as a generalized acknowledgment that these tools alone are not enough to bring the clarity and insights we need to create large-scale, lasting change.

As Kevin states, both clearly and provocatively:

While the philanthropy world is still pretty bad about measuring impact, the impacting investing world is worse. Real impact measurement is a drag on the financial bottom line and investors are usually willing to assume it’s there, so few feel compelled to do it. What’s weird to me is that while all impact investors know that you could never maximize profit without measuring it, they often fail to recognize that the same is true of impact.

If impact investing itself isn’t for the faint of heart, forging the way forward on the next chapter of understanding and accelerating impact in our space is for the bravest of the brave.  Yet we know that better answers are out there; we know that there is increased appetite to dig deeper and to find real lessons about what is and isn’t working and why; we know that both funders and entrepreneurs are looking for better measures so they can deliver real change.

I’m hiring someone who wants to lead this charge.  Full details here for new Acumen’s Head of Impact role.

The application process is unorthodox because we need someone unorthodox.  As you’ll see in the job description, the ideal candidate has lived and breathed the reality of building an operating company / social business in the developing world; she has the analytical background and curiosity to translate these experiences into broader conclusions; she is a natural at building relationships within and outside of Acumen; and she’s excited by a lot of travel because she knows to do this right she’ll need to get her hands dirty.

I truly believe this is one of the most exciting opportunities out there for the right person.  Can’t wait to see who applies.

Deadline is August 5th.

(Happy to answer questions in the comments if you have them)

One great moment in a 24 hour delay

~ Sasha ~ 5 Comments

I’d love to chalk it up to bad luck – I continually have things go wildly wrong most of the times that I fly Delta.

Here’s what happened this time: for an 8:30pm flight to Accra, Ghana, we dutifully boarded the plane around 7:30pm, taxied out on time and began waiting.  And waiting.  And waiting.  Rains came, and then lightning.

Around 11pm the pilot told us that the storm was moving quickly, that “most of the other planes have returned to their gates but we are keeping our spot.”

Sometime closer to midnight he said that “there are 66 other planes looking to take off” but he still felt we could get out.

A bit after midnight I finally dozed off, and was in and out of consciousness until 2:30am when the pilot threw in the towel, took us back to the gate, and told us to wait by the gate for an early morning departure.  It was to be at 6am, then 7am, then 8:30am.  After waiting in a plane on the tarmac for six hours, and then sleeping in the terminal for another six hours, Delta cancelled the flight and rebooked us all on a new flight at 8:30pm that evening, 24 hours after our original flight.

Who knows what really happened, whether we actually had a chance to get out and the pilot made the right call.  Who knows if it’s true that the Accra airport has a curfew – though all of my Ghanaian colleagues adamantly say that’s not the case.

What was striking through it all was that it was no one’s job to handle the whole situation.  The pilot’s job was to get us to take off, which didn’t work out.  After that we were handed to a series of gate agents and other representatives, none with any sense of ownership or real responsibility.  It was one massive game of pass the buck: at no point did someone stand up and say “I’m the person who is taking care of this situation, here is what’s going on, we’ll have more answers for you by 6:00am.”  Divide and conquer can work when things are going smoothly, but it falls apart completely when things go off the rails.  This is probably why at one point the NY Police Department had to be brought to the gate to quell a brewing uprising amongst the passengers – complete with threats of barricading security (“if we can’t fly out, then no one can!”).

The one bright spot?  Upon lining up (again) the following evening to board the flight, the amazing level of openness and camaraderie amongst all the passengers.  We were all in this together.  Conversations amongst strangers started effortlessly.  We were all smiling and laughing about our shared predicament and the absurdity of it all.  One Liberian woman, beaming at counter when I checked in, struck up a conversation with me about how she’d decided to just be happy and upbeat and stop worrying and complaining – she knew it would all work out OK and that was the energy she wanted to put out from that moment forward.  I smiled, laughed, and agreed with her, and the next moment I found myself getting a joyful hug from this woman I’d never met.

So there you have it: the moments of genuine human connection brought joy and laughter in the midst of this mess.

And it makes me wonder if it’s when the world around us breaks just a little that we pull together and come together, and if in our hyper-efficient, hyper-virtually-connected world where everything works smoothly, the chances of the impromptu smile, laugh, or hug simply disappear.

What sets you apart

~ Sasha ~ Leave a comment

Not smarts or capacity or competence.

Not pedigree.

Not even accomplishments if they didn’t require putting yourself on the line.

Relentless passion? Courage? Going out on a limb? Refusal to give up? Yeah, now we’re getting somewhere.

It’s virtually impossible to lead if you’re not fully invested. It’s impossible to lead if the (potential) failure wouldn’t be personal. It’s impossible to lead without having something at stake.

What sets you apart is showing that you’ve done something that looks like that.

P.S. This all translates directly into questions to ask – and questions to skip – in interviews.

Spreading ideas and vanity metrics

~ Sasha ~ 3 Comments

Last week a guy I’ve never heard of on a blog I’ve never seen posted my Generosity Experiment video on his blog, generating a nice flurry of tweets from a bunch of folks.

My first reaction should have been: “Great!”

My first reaction actually was: “Great, but I wish he’d written the post with a link to my blog / Twitter handle, or a link to the video on TED.com to make it easier for people to find me.”

And so the question I must ask myself, again, is, “What business am I in here?” knowing full well that of course I’m in the spreading ideas business, which means that having additional blog subscribers and Twitter followers is gratifying but it’s just a means to an end.

One of my favorite concepts from the Eric Ries’ Lean Startup is the notion of vanity metrics.  These are numbers that startups parade around to impress their customers, their  venture investors, or (worst) themselves.  They are numbers that tell you almost nothing about whether the business is actually succeeding.  User growth or topline revenue numbers are great candidates for vanity metrics – as opposed to metrics like utilization rate of your fixed assets; total sales generated by your median salesperson versus a breakeven number; or number of months to cashflow positive for each new site that you open.

If you’re in the spreading ideas business then what you want to measure is how far, well, quickly, and to whom your ideas are spreading.  Seems tautological until you start thinking about, say, whether and why one might want to publish a book.  Being “published” used to be a clear divider between those could / could not spread ideas, but that dividing line is becoming a lot more permeable.  Yes, it still matters a lot today, but that’s fading fast.

If you take this notion seriously you can’t help but wonder what other vanity metrics are going to be outdated 10 years from now.  Serious candidates could include: your job title, the school you went to, working for a “blue chip” company, the average SAT score at your kid’s high school.

And core metrics that I bet are going to matter more and more: speed of integrating new information; engagement in self-directed learning; willingness to go to bat for things that matter; ability to be remarkable in situations that seem unremarkable; connecting with and delighting customers; putting your whole self into everything you create; working through and with uncertainty; adaptability; and self-knowledge.

Your idea

~ Sasha ~ 1 Comment

At the start it’s just smoke, a wisp. It has no substance or form.

You can take it around to people for help shaping it, so you can better understand what it could be.

But the thing is, at the start it has no mass, and until it does it’s impossible for people to really do much of anything about it.  They can talk and you can talk, and that’s about it.

Mass gives it the ability to go places.  Mass means that with a push it can break through things.

Talk is fine, but the real work is giving your idea some mass.