Category: Writing

Conversations with users are a quick and effective way of building a good conceptual understanding of a new (to me) area of business. The more I do them, the more comfortable I get in asking questions. I’ve been eliciting information I wouldn’t have thought about asking, and getting pointers and connections to other people and ideas.

I must figure out a way to better capture the insight from those conversations immediately after. It’s a skill, like asking questions, and being able to get the essence of the conversation without losing the nuance is a fun exercise in truly listening and paying attention.

It’s also interesting to see how people respond to these conversations. Adapting and mirroring styles is not an easy skill.  Years of learning how to do it, especially in my teens, is paying off. Genuine interest in the other person’s opinions, allowing them to speak, listening with the intent to understand, knowing when to ease off and when to press on intuitively, these are all skills I casually picked up in my youth.  The payoff was not  immediate (in most cases). Compounded over decades, they’ve become fairly natural to me – and evident only when pointed out by my peers, many of who struggle with conversations.

Frank Slootman, CEO of Snowflake, in a podcast conversation with Patrick O’Shaughnessy was my lunch hour listen.  The ‘narrow the focus, increase the quality’ comment was fascinating, primarily because I struggle with narrow focus. I have heaps of things on the boil at any given time, at work and in my personal life.

Nearly every successful human – and I don’t mean it in the narrow sense of financial or career terms – I know a great ability to focus on a handful of things. I’m envious of people who have that kind of focus. It’s a resolute strength to say no to many good things so they can say yes to the one or two great things they are after. I can’t, and won’t judge their choice of greatness. I can and will admire their ability to zone in on the thing that really matters and stay with it for a long time. It feels like they can hold on far longer than I can hold my breath.

 

Another week has gone by. A week of conversation, of challenges, of minor and major struggles. The incessant rain was the backdrop for all sorts of emotions. The sun has been a stranger, hiding no sooner than appearing for moments. A couple more days and then I hope the weather – both within and without – gets a little sunnier.

Learning how to ask good questions, and learning how to listen, are two skills I find myself struggling to practise. It’s easy to speak, to have an opinion, to fill up the time available with speech. There are heaps of distractions, making active listening almost impossible unless consciously done. And asking good questions is only possible if one is listening.

Pause. 7 seconds is a good chunk of ‘dead time’, according to Prof Patrick Winston, whose “How To Speak” is a fantastic investment of learning time. Aim to have pause have power over phrase this week.

The world’s an overwhelming place at the moment. Floods nearby. War further out. Spooked financial markets. Supplies harder to come by. People worried, battling their own demons and challenges. Online or offline, the sensory overwhelm is intense.

How to reconcile the micro with the macro? There’s so few things that I have influence over, let alone control.  War or floods don’t change whatever I do. Neither will people’s feelings and behaviors.  Marcus Aurelius and the Stoics had the right idea: we can’t control anything – except our own happiness. Choose your outlook, and everything follows from that.

It was interesting to be thinking about this while I’m texting with an unhappy (?) ex-volunteer.  I got a terse “please don’t contact me again” message from them.  I have never met the person nor do will I ever. Nevertheless, the rejection would have stung, not that long ago.  Knowing that the only thing I have control over is my attitude to this, I was able to put a pause between the message, and my response to that stimuli. It doesn’t matter; the implications are not worth losing my happiness over.

The media headlines have a blood red background – designed to make us see danger. I’ve never seen any media headlines in green. Wonder why that is?

I blew an opportunity to inspire a group to make a change, for lack of preparation.

I did prepare many things: the slides, the story, the imagery, the rehearsal with the others. What I didn’t prepare well was the close. More precisely, how I wanted people to feel. Choosing my words carefully. Delivered deliberately. Reaching into their hearts and minds and helping them want to make the change.

I felt, after I finished, that I had merely lifted a mirror to them.  They might have seen a reflection that they wanted to see, not what I wanted them to see.

A lesson to remember. Prepare, write the words out. Rehearse them too. I’m nowhere as good as I get told – or think – I am, when speaking off the cuff.

Be the change you want to see.

That’s a powerful call to action, and I’ve found myself surrounded by people who want the same change. Finding a tribe has been easier than I thought it would be. Whether it is at work or in the many projects I’m involved in, a number of wonderful people (with a wicked sense of humor) are starting tof build, willing to help, wanting the same change, knowing it is just beyond the bullshit of the gatekeepers’ irrational arguments. It needed me taking the first step of reaching out, speaking up, or crying out.

Whether these projects will achieve what we set out to do, I will probably not know. If it sets in motion a series of actions that create the change some point in the future, our efforts will have not have been in vain. Even if it doesn’t, we know already that we tried our damn-dest!

 

 

The best recommendation you can have is a happy customer.

It was sensational to see that in action today. I was invited to present on the innovation work that my team does to a new team. Rather than put a pack together, I asked a senior colleague who we’ve worked with extensively to give his colleagues (he’s new to this team) an overview. I could not have asked for a better introduction.  Thank you TS!

While words and language have power, having someone you trust extol a product’s – or person’s – characteristics is even more powerful. Do good work, then ask the people who’ve benefited to support you. That’s a lesson worth remembering.

The day ended with a Board meeting that involved a disciplinary proceeding. The person concerned stood by their actions because they believed that they were right, even though they contravened the agreement they signed up to. Integrity and honor upheld, even when the proceedings got hot. I was an observer, and it was hard to watch.

I distantly observe the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The emotions I’m feeling are alike to those I felt when I heard about Aaron Schwartz’s suicide. I can’t do anything about them, I don’t know them personally, and yet the humanity in each one of us pleads and tugs at our heartstrings, at the horror of the circumstances that lead people to kill others, or kill themselves.

 

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

I have to cogitate on that quote tonight. I’ve been watching people jostle to take credit for a few products my team & I have created from nothing, literally, from thin air.  Why is it that the hangers-on appear just after the hard work is done, and yet the creators have to fight for the crumbs of resources, people, money, and time?

There are moments when you feel the time is just.. perfect. Whatever it may be: telling someone how you feel about them, saying thank you, a pat on the back, a caress of the cheek, a text message, a phone call.

I had one such opportunity today to share the story of the women who work with me today. It didn’t feel right to do it myself, so I got a friend to do it for me. I’m grateful that I have friends who I can lean on, particularly when I feel that doing so would be a humble-brag or tooting my own trumpet.

I’m also hooked up to a machine today that will measure how well I sleep. My significant other, who’s never missed an opportunity to needle me about my snoring burst into laughter when she saw me with all these wires protruding from my head and chest. I’ll have had it on for 16 hours before I can tear it off me.

Hemingway readability: Grade 6

The last fortnight has felt like a blur. Writing the day’s memorable experience has been a good way to keep track.  Little things and big things, little frustrations and big joys.  8 weeks into the year, and I’m consistently tackling several meaningful projects.

• • Wordsmith subscription gave me a quote to write, and a human to connect with on the other side of the world.
  • Got frustrated with “the process” of corporate pole-climbing. I wrote a long letter to myself, exploring my feelings about work, and the options I have. Executed on a few of them.
  • My colleagues gave me a strong dose of inspiration to deal with the cynicism. Thanks JJ & KF
  • I practised listening, and what I heard gave me ideas to craft stories. Those stories affected the narrators, myself and eventually over 100 people.
  • A community formed around a work idea I helped to create. It’s taking on a life of its own, and gives me more material to craft more, other, better possibilities.
  • Strategizing in a volunteer capacity was draining, yet rewarding.
  • I began the exercise of writing the opposite party’s argument for them. Challenging.
  • I had loads of conversations that helped people. (I need to write more details!)
  • I saw the power of ‘owning your story’ before delivering it in front of an audience.
  • Someone recognised my combinatorial skills, and I received an invitation to speak to strategists about presentation skills – it surprised me.
  • One of the best Talks I’ve hosted was delivered by 3 women who would not ever be picked up to do a public speech. I was also devastated by my own speculation about how the “jobs for the boys” played out.
  • I wrote 250 days on a day I did not feel like writing. I simply wrote out how I was feeling, and the questions I was asking myself.
  • The volunteer job has become a non-trivial investment of time. I am  doing much of the writing for the grant application, and some of the coordination too. It feels disappointing to be let down by people not living up to their part, or perhaps procrastinating on it.
  • Got on top of tax and finance documentation, and ready to tackle the next phase of investments.
  • Created a set of drone imagery for our local community garden.
  • Kept up with daily writing and calligraphy. Wrote a bunch of wedding invites for a friend. Found a book “Finding your element” by Ken Robinson at a community event. Read “Draft No. 4” and got through a couple of chapters of “Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow”.
  • Read through my blogroll in a 6 hour block. Shared a number of interesting links with a couple of people I am going to create a “communal learning” group with.

I am never short of activities to do. The question to ask myself is: What are all activities these for? Why do I do what I do? And what am I not doing that I could be?