Month: January 2019

Thursday, 9.11pm

Sheffield, U.K.

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. – Annie Dillard

It’s wintry out there tonight.

Some of us have colds and headaches and don’t quite feel up to doing any work.

So what should you do when you feel like that?

Should you rest and recover or should you keep plodding on?

There are a few reasons for asking this – and they have little to do with the temperature.

The first reason has to do with sweatpants.

Writers like to talk about one of the perks of their jobs as being able to work in sweatpants.

No suits or jeans for them – instead it’s a comfy pair of stained sweatpants and they’re off to work.

And the reason they can do that – the reason why no one cares – is that they are judged entirely on what they produce.

Their output is what matters.

If you have a job where output is not the key measure – instead it’s stuff like work ethic or punctuality – then you need to be in the office well-dressed and groomed.

The key, however, is not about output or not.

It’s about power.

When you’re judged on what you make the buyer has the power to like or dislike and buy or not buy.

When you’re not, the person buying your services has to have control in some other way and the best way is to be able to watch you.

We digress…

Back to plodding.

The second reason has to do with practice versus passion.

What results in output?

What drives it?

If you’re in a job, a partnership, a business – what drives you to do something every day rather than slacking off?

It’s different for different people. Some like the competition. Some do it for the buzz.

What it really comes down to, however, is motivation – both intrinsic and extrinsic.

When you’re motivated to do something you’ll keep going.

Where does that motivation come from?

Some say it comes from passion for your work.

Because it’s the thing that you feel like doing the most.

So, you’ve got to manage that passion – manage that creativity and manage your energy.

If you’re tired and unwell, take some time to recover and recharge.

Rest.

Others say it’s about practice.

About showing up and doing what you set out to do.

Every day.

What should you do?

I don’t know.

Sometimes it seems like taking a rest is a good idea.

Sometimes not.

If you have been reading the odd post on this blog you’ll know that I try and write every day.

Yesterday I didn’t. I used an excuse.

Today, I could have used the same excuse.

I chose not to.

What was the right choice? Was one better than the other?

In a world where there are an infinite number of steps in front of you, stopping on one for a day or so is not the end of the world.

But you’ve got to start moving again to feel alive.

The days don’t wait for you to get your head around how you feel.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Tuesday, 9.24pm

Sheffield, U.K.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine. – Bruce Lee

I’m trying to understand several conflicting ideas about doing good work.

A friend of mine, a fount of aphorisms, said if you want to go fast go alone and if you want to go far go with company.

The difficulty lies in selecting the company you keep.

In an ideal world everyone would be equal and we’d all pitch in and work for the common good.

But the world isn’t ideal for one very simple reason – transaction costs.

If you’re sitting around a table with four or five others and you raise a toast, you can all clink your glasses together.

If you’re at a large gathering, like a wedding, you can only do it with those close to you.

It takes too much time to do it with everyone.

So, there is a natural need to organise into small groups – and those groups need managing – and the form they take is that of an organisation.

So the traditional way of working always creates hierarchies – of founders, employees, managers, investors…

And the traditional way of keeping these groups working is through contracts and salaries and stakes and incentives.

But, what causes one organisation to succeed and another to fail?

The key is not in the written contract but in the unwritten one in your head – the psychological contract.

There’s a whole bunch of fuzzy factors that go into this – the relationships between you and colleagues, between you and someone in a suit – a boss or an investor – and between teams of people.

It’s a cauldron, a bubbling mass of what you believe, what you expect to get, what you think is happening, what you think you should do and how each other person in the organisation thinks of all those things.

There is also the issue of power – who has it and how they use it.

The test to find out if the stuff in the cauldron is good enough to eat or bitter and putrid is that of fairness.

Do you think you are being fairly treated.

If there is fairness then that leads to trust.

A feeling that you are being treated unfairly leads to a breach.

And the breach shows up in the way you respond.

You can leave the company, hope things will sort themselves out, stop doing your job properly, go in fighting to try and get your way or try to compromise.

But… the breach has still happened. Life isn’t going to be the same again.

One strategy is to never expect anything from anybody – that way you’ll never be disappointed.

Another is to create a market.

Just post what needs doing and let people bid for work and let things sort themselves out.

The problem is that won’t work if the transaction costs are too high – which means if it’s too hard to figure out who to select and use and why.

A better way is to work out what fair looks like and try to work that into your working life.

This is increasingly important in a networked world – one where you come together in swarms to get stuff done.

How do you agree who does what and gets what with each other?

One approach is the idea of Sociocracy.

In this you work in small groups because small groups work well.

These are called circles.

The roles in the circle are created as needed and the people decide who should get which role.

How do they decide?

They use the principle of consent – which means that it’s decided when no one objects.

You don’t need to agree – you just need to agree not to object to the decision.

Addressing objections, it’s argued, makes for better decisions.

If you need more people then you create more circles and coordination happens with circles made up of nominated people from other circles.

But I want to go back to objections.

Maybe the place to start if you want to do something and want to work with someone else is to start by asking for 100% of the company.

What is everyone else’s objection to that?

Or, if you want more flexible working, ask to work from home 5 days a week.

What objections will your boss raise to that?

Maybe doing that – trying to be open and collaborative will help shine a light on what the deal really means for people.

And whether they think it’s fair.

Because in the end that’s all that matters.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Saturday, 10.29pm

Sheffield, U.K.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. – Mark Twain

I discovered PechaKucha yesterday – a presentation format where you have 20 slides that advance every twenty seconds and you have to talk along to the images.

I selected one randomly and listened as Kal Barteski described her career as a polar bear artist.

In case you’re not sure what a polar bear artist is – she’s an artist who draws polar bears.

Over 500 of them so far, I think.

Yes. Really.

Anyway, however you look at this, it’s creative.

And distinctive. And focused. But, above all, creative.

Then, I watched Sir Ken Robinson on TED ask whether schools were places where the creativity was drained from people.

The arts, he said, were at the bottom of any hierarchy of subjects.

You were steered to everything else first because those subjects got you jobs.

I had this experience – I liked reading and writing but studied maths and physics and chemistry.

One could argue that what you study at school really doesn’t matter.

What matters is experience and you need that experience to make good art.

But, we digress.

The point is that at the centre of it all – a vocation, a business – is an act of creation.

You’re doing something different, bringing in something new.

And from then on it’s all downhill and gloom and despair.

Which is captured in the Greiner Curve – five or maybe six stages that companies go through as they grow.

You’ll find examples of the curve everywhere so the picture above is an adaptation that tries to bring out the desperation under the quiet, academic tone of the model.

So, you start with a good idea. Maybe it’s just you or a few others.

You all work on the idea, long hours maybe, trying to get customers and build capability.

The team is small, talking is easy and you all get on.

Then you start getting some customers and suddenly there’s more to do.

You’re not sure who’s doing what and you ask Who’s leading this?

You give yourself roles or hire some staff and get on with the job.

But then it isn’t clear how to do things, training is patchy and customers aren’t happy. You’re asking Why aren’t things working?

The answer is that you need better systems and processes. Document everything, use forms and requests and plans.

Pretty soon, you’re drowning in paperwork and getting frustrated and asking Why does nothing ever get done?

So then it’s time to reorganise, maybe set up groups that do their own thing – lean teams that head off to conquer the world.

Except they don’t. Some things work, some things don’t.

So now it’s clear that you can’t fix it internally so you look around and ask Can anyone out there help us?

Sure… for a price.

But we can’t guarantee any results.

Is this too cynical?

I don’t think so – because it’s what happens a lot of the time.

Things generally degenerate – it’s the law of entropy.

Things, when left alone, will gradually decline into disorder.

It takes effort to stop that happening – effort and energy.

What’s clear to me from the Greiner Curve is that the only happy place is at the centre.

That centre where creative stuff happens.

After that, it’s all hassle and headaches.

When you’re working on something creative – that you’re passionate about and enjoy doing – the days go by quickly and you’re having fun.

You’ve got some fight in you.

Kal Barteski says polar bears have no natural predators – they’ve no reason to be scared of anything.

Some companies are so big that maybe that applies to them.

But for many the changes are they’re afraid a lot of the time.

If I were making that choice now about what to do in school I’d pick doing maths and writing and art. And random stuff.

Because the more skills and experience you have the more creative you can be.

Cheers.

Karthik Suresh

Friday, 9.48pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason why so few engage in it. – Henry Ford

Many of us will face a situation where we have to come up with a one-sentence version of what we’re trying to say.

Our USP, mission statement or core value.

Something like that.

If you’ve tried doing this you know it’s not easy to do.

And that’s because we’re not always sure when we’ve reached where we should be.

For example, let’s say you want to strike out on your own as a consultant.

You’ve spent a number of years in different jobs and roles, you’ve managed people and are technically savvy and creative.

So, you’re in a position where you have some skills and some hunger and want to make your own way in life.

So, what do you say when people ask you “What do you do?”

If your answer is too broad they’ll look at you and ask more questions.

If your answer is too narrow they’ll squint at you and edge away nervously.

For example, if you say “I’m a management consultant”, they’ll ask what type of consultant you are.

Do you do process changes, analysis, restructuring?

They’ll try and come up with what they’ve seen consultants do and try to see if you do any of those things.

In other words, you’ve not answered the question so they’re trying to figure out the answer for themselves.

In a different situation you may say you’re an expert in Scandinavian lumber markets – perhaps something of vital consequence for everyone’s living room – but no one really gets why.

The thing is that you’re often going to be in situations where you need to try and explain something.

And the words you grasp for first rarely do the job.

What you realise is that you haven’t dug deeply enough yet.

So, you’re a management consultant.

Why do you do that?

Well, you solve business problems.

Why do you solve business problems?

Ideally, a business would have everything running perfectly – its operations would seamlessly work together – but that doesn’t happen in practice and so problems happen.

Why don’t business operations work seamlessly?

Operations are built over time, people come and go, knowledge is not evenly distributed. So often, someone creates something that works, and over time it is added to and modified and changed and stops working as well.

Why do things stop working over time?

Ways of doing things are just like material things – they get old and tired. Sometimes you can keep them going with maintenance and changes and sometimes you need to bring in a piece of kit.

Why do things change?

They just do – that’s one of the unchanging things about life.

So… if you stop digging at this point then you find that you’ve gone through several layers of rock.

You started by asking why you’re a management consultant and ended by knocking on the door of one of the ancient questions of life.

But perhaps you’re no closer to answering your question.

So, maybe you need to start again, go back up the chain of questions and try a different route.

No one said that the first place you dug would have all the answers.

All they said was you need to dig.

And maybe one day, if you’re lucky, you will.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh