Hi,
I hope you are all doing safe and well. It’s starting to brighten up a little here in the UK and the temperature is creeping up. Bring on spring. Today’s newsletter is a little later than usual - I’ve had a raging cold!
In today’s newsletter
The new “A Cultivated Life” newsletter - a space for creative souls in corporate roles
Was it worth doing? A powerful question we can ask.
Interesting links
A Cultivated Life
Over the last year, I've spread the content of this newsletter wider than its original remit of helping to cultivate effective workplaces. As such, I've created myself a sort of split-personality challenge.
On the one hand I want to create a body of work that encapsulates my ideas, creativity, and varying interests, and share the process behind this – something I feel I need to do to feed my creative soul.
On the other hand, I know many of you are here for workplace ideas that you can implement. And I have plenty of these to share too!
As such, I have a plan to avoid the confusion I feel when I sit down to write – and no doubt the confusion you may face with a varied newsletter. And please correct me if my assumptions about why you subscribe are wrong 😄.
I have therefore created a new sub-newsletter called “A Cultivated Life”. All subscribers to Cultivated Management will get this new newsletter, but you can alter which newsletters you get by hitting “unsubscribe” in any email from me, or by managing your subscription in the substack app.
There are a total of three newsletters:
The original Cultivated Management - moving to Tue
A Cultivated Life - likely every Friday
Here’s an idea worth playing with - audio show - still on Sunday
It may be too much to get all three, so please unsubscribe to the ones that are of no interest to you by hitting unsubscribe. You can then turn on/off the various newsletter to suit your needs.
Don’t worry, I don’t check the unsubscribe data so you won’t hurt my feelings.
The last thing I want to do is overload you, hence this move to create two emails (plus Here’s an idea worth playing with).
A Cultivated Life is for anyone who feels like a creative soul in a corporate role.
I will be sharing ideas, creative stuff, photo essays and a new series called #meetingnotes (artwork poking fun at work) through the Cultivated Life newsletter.
Consider it a kind of behind the scenes of the creative process, with advice and ideas on how to remain creative and feed your soul, whilst working in a full time corporate role. The work I share will be work-related, but delivered in creative mediums.
The main cultivated management newsletter will remain about releasing agility, developing communication skills and cultivating amazing workplaces. Same as it has been for 5 years now!
When I describe myself as a creative soul in a corporate role (as silly as that sounds) I get SO many people associating with that.
I will share ways to weave creativity into our work, and when to explore nourishing our soul with creative work outside of work. I will also share the things I create - and all of them are related to work, communication, learning etc. Expect photo essays, posters, books, mini-books, meeting notes (doodles and collages), interviews with other creative souls etc.
If you feel like you’re a creative soul in a corporate role then it may be worth checking out.
I have also finished the text for Take A Day Off, my latest book, and am now creating the poster artwork to accompany each chapter. These will be shared through the Cultivated Life newsletter.
If you follow my YouTube channel you’ll see that I often share videos about learning, growing as a person and managing the tension between the pillars in our life. The Cultivated Life newsletter and the YouTube channel are partners in crime.
This clear delineation will now enable me to split the topics out - and you can now choose which sort of content best resonates with what you’re after.
I’ve always found it hard to divide between my creative side, and my management consultancy work. I’m hoping this separation will be helpful for you.
Work advice and insights are in the Cultivated Management newsletter. Creative work and advice will be in the Cultivated Life newsletter.
For those who choose to remain subscribed to A Cultivated Life, I hope it will become an inspirational place if you too are struggling to remain true to your creative side, whilst balancing the world of work.
And I hope to build a community of like-minded creative souls trapped in corporate roles. I am good at my corporate work, but my brain wants to create stuff and I know many people feel this way too. And maybe this is a way to explore that intersect.
And please take the time to review your subscription so you don’t get overwhelmed :) I won’t be offended.
Was it worth it?
Having spent decades as a leader and a leadership consultant, I am often struck with how many initiatives, ideas, work, and action is discarded, abandoned, left to fester, or simply ignored. It happens everywhere (well, I see it as a consultant but I never let it happen as a leader!).
Change programs that are abandoned half-way through. Initiatives that drive energy and attention in the organisation and then the output is left to fester. Workshops, meetings, and events put together at significant cost, only to drive the wrong outcomes or the outputs are ignored when everyone is back in the office.
PowerPoints created and then immediately shelved. Duplicate planning effort then no decision about which path to follow. Busy work induced by an ill-conceived idea from a leader, then abandoned after people have invested energy and attention in it.
And of course, maybe we've all worked on a project that is canned mid-way through.
It seems to be a factor in business and one I’m not too comfortable with.
But we must learn from these events and improve our approach to avoid repeating the mistakes and of course, wasting money. It's not just a financial cost I am talking about here, it is actually a human cost.
People like to see the fruits of their labour.
We want to see the work we do connected to the wider business success. We want to know that the effort we put in leads to something useful. We want to see our creations being used.
In a sense, we want to find meaning in what we do.
The writer Henry James asked three questions about art - and I think they are worth applying to business too.
"What was the artist trying to achieve?"
"Did he/she succeed?"
"Was it worth doing?"
If we look at projects, initiatives, and the output by hard working people we can ask these three questions. Questions 1 and 2 seem standard, although I often work with leaders that don’t ask these. The third question asks us to reflect and learn.
Let's say there is an initiative to move to a new work management tool. Plans are created, tools are purchased, training is conducted, and people are mobilised. And remember, when they are doing this work, they are not doing something else.
So, after months of moving to a new tool, and not doing other work, we may find the tool is good, useful, or not being used, or somewhere in between.
At which point we should ask "Was it worth doing?".
By asking this question we're focusing on what we learned, what we could replicate, what we should never do again and whether we made the right decision.
We are intentionally inquiring into the work itself before moving on to other work. And even if we conclude it was a royal waste of time, at least we have data to tell us not to do it again.
And of course, when we do this exercise, we should include the very people who did the work. We should communicate the findings and outcomes, and the lessons learned. As such, even though people may feel like they have wasted time, there is an acknowledgement that lessons have been learned.
Sadly, it's not uncommon, possibly to save face and inquiry from above, that leaders and manager merely move on. And I've seen leaders and managers repeat the same thing again the next time. And then wonder why their teams don't feel engaged in their work.
People in the business will see the patterns of repeated mistakes, they will hunker down until this new initiative passes, they will avoid challenging or making the work better - after all, why would they, when they may feel it's just another repeat of the last wasted project?
Whatever team or project I join I like to reset expectations and essentially ask Henry James’ question before or during the project.
Here are those same questions rephrased so we can ask them before the work commences, or during it:
What problem are we trying to solve? (What was the artist trying to achieve?)
How will we know when we've solved it? (Did he/she succeed?)
Is this a problem worth solving? (Was it worth it?)
If we can head off wasted work at the start (or during) we should – and then lean into the challenge this presents.
If we can't, then it certainly pays to ask whether it was worth doing.
We will learn something when we ask if it's worth doing. We should also be honest - sometimes it really was not worth doing - and that is a lesson in itself.
The trick then is to not repeat the same mistakes twice.
Until next week
Rob..
Interesting Links
What can we learn from small businesses? I love this article because I love small businesses.
In a time where everyone is looking for an exit, sale and growth, it’s warming to be a small business and proudly stay as one.
Small businesses are ace and there is much we can learn.
Can you believe this classic letter from a student rejecting a rejection letter from Harvard is so old now?
The video of Himesh Patel reading the rejection letter is good. Rejecting a rejection letter is gold. We need more of this.
“I am aware of the keen disappointment my decision may bring. Throughout my deliberations, I have kept in mind the time and effort it may have taken for you to reach your decision to reject me.”
No matter your role in the business, you have a responsibility to communicate effectively - and there are some good ideas here on how to measure this.
Create your body double to get work life balance at home. You know my view on this - I’m not sure there is a balance, more a tension that needs managing but good ideas in this article.
With the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, it’s interesting to read how maybe the system of start up investing is broken.
“If SVB was vulnerable to a rapid run-up in interest rates, it’s because it catered to an industry where showering unproven companies with cash is the norm, with venture capitalists competing among themselves to see who can make it rain the hardest. It’s an inherently haphazard system, one that breeds recklessness right into its foundation. It’s a little surprising, in fact, that it took this long for it to break down under the weight of all that hard-to-deploy capital.”