On gaining distance from events
And interesting links to click on
Hi,
I hope you are doing safe and well.
In this edition:
Giving events distance
A wellbeing learning retreat? You up for that?
Here’s an idea worth playing with
Avoid being a tool-head
Twitter…oh dear
Interesting links
Distance
I look back fondly to my childhood and teenage years, and often tell my boys stories from this time.
I’m not a brilliant role model through these stories though (I was a bit of a handful as a kid - some may argue I still am), but these stories make the boys laugh, and I always try to weave in a remarkable lesson learned.
With distance between the event and now, I don’t find them as embarassing or stupid as they were at the time. Distance and time give us a new perspective. We’re different people as we pass through seasons of life. We look back fondly but use our changing wisdom to make more sense of these events.
Events that, at the time, were heartbreaking, soul destroying, euphoric or embarassing become less emotionally charged as I gain more distance from them.
And the same goes for learning. When I look back on my actions and career it’s entertaining to see how naive I was, or how emotional I got about an event, or how I now view my actions and outcomes in a different light; with more wisdom, with more insight, with more tangible ways to explain why something worked (or didn’t).
But it’s possible to gain distance from events that happen to us now. I try to do this often.
When things are getting me down, or stressing me out, or vexing me, or depleting me, I use an ancient stoic technique (that is now used in CBT presently).
I zoom out.
I get distance (virtually in my mind).
I zoom out to look at myself and my current reality, and see what I can make sense of.
I zoom out to a birds-eye view. It’s just little old me sat in my studio doing some work that is hard, or on a call with someone pushing all of my button, or feeling sad.
I zoom further out to see just little old me in the village we live in. Other people in the village experiencing a whole range of emotions and challenges, just like me.
Then again - out to the City of Winchester. Again, just me in a city of around 127,000 people. Surely someone else must be struggling too?
Then out again to England, to Europe, to the world.
You get the idea.
Suddenly my problems don’t seem so unsurmountable. My emotions don’t seem so unique. My situation doesn’t seem so different to many other people.
It’s a way of gaining perspective and putting distance between what’s happening and my view of it. And it works. It works remarkably well. It’s not about supressing emotions, but more about feeling them, then putting them into perspective.
Consider this next time something embarassing, disappointing or emotionally challenging happens. Zoom out - it helps. It doesn’t get rid of the emotions though - you feel those, but it helps to put them into perspective.
A learning retreat
I was pondering doing a retreat again, but this time with a difference - this time with other people.
A two day retreat to a healthy, calming location, coupled with some daily hikes, meditation, yoga, and then a couple of evening meals where the collective discuss an interesting topic.
A well structured, facilitated discussion on one or two topics ensuring everyone gets to contribute. A retreat with far reaching and thoughtful questions.
Health, wellness, deep thinking, hiking/walking, good company and maybe some long lasting friendships.
What are your thoughts?
Here’s an idea worth playing with
This week, likely tomorrow, I am starting a new ‘season’ on Instagram. Instagram has been a perennially vexing platform for me. I love it. I like photography and the community seems genuinely welcoming. It’s the only social media I am on. But I also get vexed with the vacuous nature of what I often see on there.
I also don’t want to straight-out promote my work on there, but I feel I have a message to share.
So, starting tomorrow (maybe) I have a new series called “Here’s an idea worth playing with”.
It’s going to be a collection of some of my best photos (finally got around to processing many of them) and a set of text containing ideas to play with; some inspirational, some straight out advice about work, some musings on life, some on careers, some on growing a business.
For those that like reading IG captions, there’s potentially something to learn. For those who like photography, there’s some (I believe) great photos to noodle over.
And more importantly, from a selfish personal perspective, it contributes to my wider body of work and is another idea I’ve played with and shipped. I’ll learn. I may abandon it. It may go nowhere. But at least I can say I tried.
Tool Heads - Containers and Rules
I tend to work mostly for tech companies. Not always, but most of my HR and Agile transformation work is in the tech industry. As such, I’m surrounded with people who love tech. They like tools. They like gadgets.
And so, when faced with people, communication, organisational and change related problems, it’s often tech that people go straight to. Use this tool. Use that. I prefer this tool. That tool is so old. There’s a better tool here. This tool will solve your problems.
But tools rarely solve problems. People do.
Selecting tools rather than fixing problems is a big mistake. It’s better to start with the problem you’re facing first. And then deeply understand the problem so you know how to possibly solve it.
And then try and solve the problem using human effort, brain power, relationships, process change and communication. Only after you change it, improve it and solve a problem, then consider tech.
By choosing tools and tech to solve problem that you don’t yet fully understand, you are making that problem harder to solve in the future. You are moving, pushing and accelerating the problem further and wider. You are creating more problems. I see this often.
Tooling, gadgets and tech are awesome - but they should be used as a tool to accelerate, automate and enhance human skills, thinking and problem solving. Not as a solution to, what is likely, a human and communication related problem.
And if you find yourself in a flame war about tooling - go back to the problem you’re trying to solve and conduct a rational review of the problem, the potential solutions and run a few proof of concepts. People can become weirdly obsessed about “their” favourite tool - even if a more suitable one exists.
We all have our favourite tools but don’t let that crowd out your rational judgment about whether tooling is really going to help you solve a problem. Tools will help YOU solve a problem, but they likely won’t solve it for you.
Twitter…..oh dear
It’s not been a great few weeks at Twitter. I did say a few editions ago, that I would watch from the sidelines as there were lessons to learn.
The blue tick fiasco was hilarious to watch, especially when blue tick verified accounts starting posing at legit people - including Elon Musk himself. This rushed-out paid feature was soon backed out. Lesson - consult your clever people and listen to them. I have no doubt someone explained the carnage that would happen and they were ignored. Slow down and think things through.
With Twitter operating on a fraction of the staff it once had (and with many court cases pending around the layoffs - lesson there on how to do the right thing legally and morally), Twitter as a platform is creaking.
It’s stopped working in many countries, it’s slow (and this response to Elon Musk’s technical explanation of why it’s slow is entertaining).
DMs aren’t loading, the two-factor authentication is failing apparently - and a whole host of other technical challenges are sprouting up. Lesson - what problems are people solving? And if you remove that person, what problem will manifest, how can you mitigate and what is the knock-on-effect?
The series of random changes, technical challenges, legal cases, advertising withdrawal and people leaving the business is causing users to leave Twitter. People are flocking to Mastadon, Tumblr (of all places) and of course, substack. It seems many changes are happening without a great deal of thought.
My dad always told me, in the industry he was in, that new managers would come in and make changes to processes, people and products without studying the lay of the land - “a new broom sweeps the floor” - only it rarely worked and made the business worse. I can’t help but wonder whether that’s the same thing at Twitter right now. Lesson - don’t join a company or team and make sweeping changes until you understand the people, the domain, the work and why things may be the way they are. Sometimes things appear dysfunctional but they mask a deeper problem or a quirk that needs nothing done about it.
There are lessons everyday watching the drama at Twitter unfold. Well, at least until Twitter crumbles or becomes so unusable nobody is on it. I’m still watching and learning from the side lines.
Interesting Links
This is a job advert done right from Semafor. Outlining the expectations and business results in a timeline. I like this a lot. Clear, articulate, easy to understand and a good set of talking points for the right candidate.
There are three things we all struggle with more than anything else, according to The Daily Stoic email:
Returning love for hate.
Including the excluded.
Admitting you are wrong.
Nail the interview. Some good advice in here but lacking the core fundamental question - “what problem will hiring me solve? And how can I play to that through the interview?”.
We only get so many tickets to cash in. Short and sweet from Seth Godin.
HR tools requirements list - let’s hope they aren’t used to solve HR problems but instead accellerate processes and solutions that work.
Who doesn’t like to look at other people’s work stations and home office setups?
stop using capital letters. fruity language in this post - but remarkable series of ideas about what happens when you don’t use capitals in your writing. good luck though if you plan on sending emails or reports at work, especially to execs, with no capitalisation.
Until next week
Rob..