Category Archives: Learning

What are you good at? What do you enjoy? What needs doing?

In 2007, I engaged Andy Fleming, a business coach/therapist/guru/sage/seeker/learner to help me carry my game to the next level. I learned a great deal working with Andy, and I reflect on one of his lessons almost daily.

Andy can’t talk without reinforcing his points by sketching in his note pad, and I clearly remember the first time he shared with me a Venn diagram similar to the one above: three circles, each containing a question.

What are you good at?

What do you enjoy?

What needs doing?

I try to spend a healthy amount of time where those three circles overlap. Clearly, 100% of my time doesn’t make it into the sweet spot. Today, as an example, I paid taxes. I also invest a lot of time in getting better at things that need doing, which I find to be an enjoyable exercise.

Things get great when anyone can quit at any time

Peter Gray, The Play Deficit

For the last few years, I’ve been telling myself that I’d like every single person in our company to have the abilities, freedom, and opportunity to leave our company at any time, but have our company culture be so strong that no one wants to.

Lenore Skenazy and Abby Schacter recently led me to a wonderful article by Peter Gray that articulated that aspiration in a way far better than I ever could.

Some backstory: since becoming a parent, I’ve followed (and been inspired by) Gray’s articles. As my wee ones have grown to become fully-formed little people, and the wonder of the wide wide world becomes as important and influential to them as the comfort of our cozy home, my appreciation for his writings grows.

Cultivating a strong company culture is similar to cultivating a strong culture at home, but there are some notable differences. One of the biggest is that adults can generally leave a company, and children can’t really leave a home. But in children’s play anyone can withdraw at anytime.

Schacter quotes Gray:

The reason why play is such a powerful way to impart social skills is that it is voluntary. Players are always free to quit, and if they are unhappy they will quit. Every player knows that, and so the goal, for every player who wants to keep the game going, is to satisfy his or her own needs and desires while also satisfying those of the other players, so they don’t quit….

That’s exactly what we’re working toward with our company culture.

As grownups, we have the added challenges of creating value for our customers and making some money along the way so that we all get to keep coming back to play another day.

What have you learned in your career?

During a recent interview, a prospective hire asked me a great question:

What have you learned in your career?

Here are the first lessons that came to mind:

  1. Avoid complexity. Now that I have a business, a family, and two dogs, I try to steer clear of initiatives or commitments that will overly complicate my life, my family, or the lives of our team members.
  2. Customers are better than investors. I have found it easier and more profitable to sell a small product to a customer than to sell the idea of a large product to an investor.
  3. Surround yourself with kind people. Working with jerks, prima donnas, passive aggressives, bullies, or misanthropes is painful for everyone, even if they have fantastic skills, pedigrees, connections, or resources. For me, it always ends badly. Some folks say you should only hire talented people or people who have the capacity to develop talent. To me, that’s a given. Everyone appreciates talent; too few appreciate kindness. I have found it impossible to maintain a constructive working relationship with talented but unkind people. Unkind people, regardless of their great talents, alienate kind people, and that makes a lack of kindness an insidious and destructive force that prevents a healthy company culture from flourishing (this is only my experience; it clearly works just fine for some people).

I was shooting from the hip with those answers. What are the first life lessons that you think of when you reflect on your career?