The tricks are fun, too. Hopefully you get some – and enjoy them!

Happy Halloween!

A deep, personal flaw of mine is that I historically held onto feelings and opinions longer than was warranted. “Held onto” is putting it nicely; I clutched them in my ragged claw like a drowning man clutches the piece of driftwood he’s battling another survivor for in the icy waves.

I was the all-time world champion grudge holder. The tiniest slight and you’d be my enemy for life. It was enough that I had a genuine reputation for it; people would avoid conversational topics with me because they included a person who had done some minor bad thing ten years ago, and everyone else moved on from 9.7 years ago, but they knew I hadn’t and would seethe at the mention of their name.

Interestingly, the reverse was true, too. If I admired someone, they became this vaulted, unshakable icon and nothing would move me from that position. In the best of times, that translated to extreme loyalty to my friends and family who deserved it, and I’m not ashamed of that aspect. But in the worst of times, it caused me to ignore red flags and follow bad courses of action many times myself.

Through a tremendous deal of difficult work, I have (I’m proud to say) moved on from the grudge thing. A lot of it was probably just me getting older, but much of it was very deliberate self-reprogramming. It was me realizing that the correct amount of time to be angry with someone for something they’ve done is zero seconds. If the act is reflective of who they are as a person and you’re worried about it happening again, you should take steps to separate from that person. If it isn’t, you should forgive swiftly. In neither case does anger serve you in the slightest.

The opposite is harder to contextualize. I’m still very much the type of person to have “soft spots” for people I’ve ever thought positively of. Is that a bad thing? Should I always instead be saying “Well, what have you done for me lately?” If I think (as I do) that it’s good to forgive quickly, then doesn’t that also apply to people I like – or should I be more critical of my impulse to forgive because I already like them?

Holding grudges is obviously bad, so it was in many ways easier to train myself out of holding them. But holding people in high esteem and showing loyalty to those who’ve done right by you seems obviously good! Except I know that in certain contexts, my vision on that front isn’t exactly clear.

Maybe it’s a flaw I have to accept. Maybe having too many soft spots isn’t the worst problem in the world to have. Holding a lot of grudges left me angry and lonely for a long time. If the problem with having a lot of soft spots is that sometimes I get bruised, maybe that’s a worthy price to pay to not be angry and lonely.

When I’m writing for myself, I’m writing for myself. Meaning when I’m the one deciding to do the writing, I’m primarily targeting an audience of one. I write to form my own thoughts, to record them, to learn from them. If, as a happy side effect, people who have similar struggles or experiences get something out of it, I’m thrilled. But the writing isn’t really for them; it’s for me.

Professionally, I often write for other people. Someone will pay me dollars and say “Please write this kind of thing for this kind of audience,” and I’m happy to do that. So then I’m writing for someone else, and the writing itself is for someone else.

A third type of writing, a type that I rarely do, is when I’m writing for myself, but I want the writing to be for others. I almost never sit down on my own accord, without someone else asking me to, and decide to write something whose intended audience isn’t me. I mostly don’t do that because I mostly don’t try to convince other people of anything, and I try to avoid giving unsolicited advice. I try to stay humble to the extent that I’m able, and that means not letting myself believe that whatever I have that passes for “wisdom” is worth dispensing.

But, you know… maybe it is. Maybe it’s fine to just ask people if they’d like to read something. No force, no coercion. Just leaving it out there. Maybe it’s time to try to write for others now and then. Who knows? I might learn more in the process, and then I was writing for me after all.

In a very important way, all feedback is true. Most people don’t realize this, because most people don’t realize what feedback is.

Imagine you deliver a big presentation at work, and your manager gives you this feedback: “I think you should change everything about how you present in the future.”

Well, that’s true! They do think that. And that’s what feedback really is – it isn’t a universal truth about you. It’s an actionable truth about them.

Most feedback is subjective; it’s opinion. How fast my car goes is a measurable fact; whether it looks cool is a subjective opinion. But it might be the subjective opinion of someone that I’m trying to interact with – say, a person I’m trying to sell the car to. If their feedback is that the paint color looks lame, then that’s an actionable truth about them. It’s instructions for me, and helpful ones at that! That feedback tells me nothing about how I should feel about the color of the car, but does tell me what I should do in terms of interacting with that person. I now know that I either have to repaint the car or try to sell it to someone else. That’s incredibly helpful.

So if a peer tells you that you should change everything about how you present, that’s very helpful. It means you should decide how much this person liking your presentations is important to you and act accordingly. It doesn’t mean that they’re objectively correct about your presentation style.

In fact, let’s look at what “objectively correct” even could mean in that context. Presumably, the presentation had a goal. Maybe it was to get a client to sign off on a project. Maybe it was to give instructions to a new team. Hopefully it wasn’t just to waste air, so there was some goal in mind. Whether or not you hit that goal is the only meaningful objectivity you can bring to that sort of evaluation. Did the client sign? Did the team follow the instructions? Then your presentation was great, for what it’s worth.

But now you have to consider yourself. Do you get your rewards in the workplace based on whether or not the client signs, or whether or not this peer “likes” your presentations? If the peer in question is your direct boss, it might be the latter! In which case, your choices are change the presentation, or find a different boss. Those are both perfectly viable options, but it’s good to know exactly what you’re evaluating.

That’s what feedback really is – it’s someone telling you the price of interacting with them positively. It’s not objective truths about you, because that person doesn’t have any deeper insight into “objective truth” than you do. Their advice might be good! You might decide to take it on its own merits, and that’s great if it happens. But don’t ever forget what’s really going on.

Feedback is someone setting the terms of the relationship between you. You then always have a choice: Agree to those terms, or change the relationship. You always have the choice. Make it with a clear mind.

Happiness comes from clearing out everything standing in the way of it and providing it a space to grow. You can’t actually seek happiness any more than you can reach into soil and pull up edible vegetables with sheer strength. You need to weed the garden and water the garden; then it will grow on its own.

Sometimes, people notice parts of the world that are great and terrible threshing machines, consuming and annihilating all that go near them. It could be a structure of power, a system, or even an individual – but the analogy holds. Some things in life are destructive.

And then these people try very hard to crawl around inside, hoping, perhaps, to disrupt the churning of the great machine with their bones. This does not work – these things just go right on threshing. They don’t even slow down.

When you see one of these things – one of the parts of life that is just a horrific destructive force – just… don’t go near it.

That’s it. That’s all you have to do. Don’t go near it, tell your loved ones not to go near it, and live your life. There is always a path you can take that doesn’t walk through the gaping maw of a terrible demon of consumption, and it’s on you to take that path.

The past matters. People just don’t know why it matters, and they’re bad at using that information.

The past matters when looking at large numbers. It’s awful when looking at one example. Here’s what I mean: Let’s say that out of every 100 graduates of School A, 80 are now talented contributors in their workplace. Out of every 100 graduates of School B, 40 are talented contributors. Someone shows up applying for a job at your company, and their diploma says “School B” on it. What do you know about them?

That’s right – nothing!

You know absolutely nothing about this person based on that one fact. But humans are bad at understanding that. We look at statistical effects and assume they apply universally and causally. So we not only assume that everyone that comes through our door from School B is a bad fit simply because we’ve evaluated it as “worse” than School A, but we also assume that attending School B versus School A is what made them that way. Neither of those things are true.

In fact, one of those beliefs being false is what proves that the other one is, too!

If School A made people into talented contributors, then 100% of graduates would be, not 80%. And if School B made someone rotten, then no one who graduated from there would be any good instead of 40%. The reality is that people are how they are for many, many reasons and nothing is universal.

So from a large, organizational standpoint, you might say “We know that more graduates of School A tend to contribute at a higher level, so let’s prioritize getting a higher number of interns from School A,” and that would be reasonable. But only if you also say: “But let’s not rely entirely on one statistic; let’s make sure we also have our own way of evaluating merit based on multiple factors so that we can confirm that what we’ve heard is true, perhaps even determine why, and not miss the good talent coming out of School B as well (or let the flashy credential of School A blind us to people that might be in that 20% minority).”

People aren’t exactly good at doing that. But hold yourself to a higher standard!

“Good habits lead to good results.” This is good advice, if somewhat generic and un-actionable. But too often it gets carved in stone to the point where the habits become more important than the results.

Here is when you should focus on method over outcomes: When you don’t have any outcomes yet. When you aren’t experienced and need to build a solid foundation. When previously good outcomes have slipped. When you’re trying to pass foundational knowledge onto others.

Here is when you should focus on outcomes over method: When the outcomes are solid. When the outcomes are actually improving as different methods are being tried. When changes in conditions are making existing methods outdated or untenable.

When I trained salespeople on a regular basis, we would always start with the basics. I wouldn’t start by putting a quota in front of them, I would start by training them in their daily activities – the habits and methods that led to closed deals. I did this because inexperienced salespeople needed structure to guide their activities and a foundation to learn from. The smart ones could have figured it out via trial and error, but why put them through the pain? Instead, I laid it out for them: make this many calls, do this much research, create this many proposals, etc. Quickly these habits would begin producing results, but skipping steps or cutting corners would have a big negative impact. So during training, I focused entirely on habits, regardless of outcomes. Someone with bad habits could luck into an early, easy sale and someone developing good habits might still have an unlucky week, so I didn’t let outcomes cloud the process when there were still too few of them to be reliable data.

Now, when I managed salespeople, experienced salespeople, I had an entirely different mindset. After all, I wasn’t paying them to make calls, I was paying them to close deals. That was important to remember. I knew that generally, “more calls = more deals,” but I also know that the world isn’t so perfectly arranged. One of my people might have been doing something different that week because of unexpected circumstances and closed a lot of revenue. Did I care if they only made half as many calls? Of course not. I cared about outcomes. I only even addressed method with my experienced people in two circumstances:

1. Their outcomes had started to slip. If they weren’t producing results, we explored why and went back to basics if they weren’t using the foundations. If they were, then it was something else, and I’m glad to know that.
2. If their outcomes were unusually good, and they weren’t using the traditional methods, then I wanted to know what they were doing! It might have been something unique to their style that couldn’t be duplicated, but it might have been a new method that could supplement or even replace our old one and improve outcomes for everyone.

Those two situations both tremendously benefited my entire team. They allowed me to essentially always have little experiments running, evolving my whole team’s process while each individual member still contributed to the group outcome and got to do their best work.

I saw far too many other sales managers in my organization be incredibly strict about things like number of calls, number of visits, and other metrics – even with their best reps who were producing like crazy. And those reps quickly got frustrated with the micromanagement and found other teams. Sometimes they found my team, but too often they found teams at other companies.

It’s a tricky balance to strike, I know. As a manager, trusting in outcomes can feel like you aren’t managing. But one of the most essential lessons of leadership is exactly that: Not everything needs to be “managed.” Some things need to be encouraged, trusted, and rewarded instead.

Whenever you’re involved with solving a problem with or for someone else, the most powerful and important question you can ask is: “What have you tried?”

I’ve made the mistake plenty of times of not asking this before I started working on a solution. Many, many times I would have saved myself a lot of time and numerous headaches if I’d simply asked this question first.

Why is it so great?

First, it solves two different kinds of “assumption problems,” both of which I’ve dealt with many times. One type of bad assumption is assuming that the other people have already tried the most obvious (to you) solution, so you don’t even suggest it. Oh, they locked themselves out of their house and called you to help? Well, surely they already tried the back door to see if it’s unlocked, so I won’t even suggest that. Guess what? More often than you might think, that “obvious” solution didn’t occur to them at all. If you’d asked, you’d have known.

The other type of assumption problem is the reverse – assuming they haven’t tried certain solutions. So you make a bunch of suggestions that are sound in theory but they’ve already tried and didn’t work for some reason you weren’t aware of. If you’d asked, you’d have gathered that info instead of losing credibility by suggesting things that have already failed. And hey, you might even discover that how they tried that particular solution might be why it failed – a few tweaks later and boom.

So first and foremost, you’re just solving efficiency and communication problems by asking this question early. As soon as you’re “brought in” to solve anything, it should be your first ask.

Even beyond this, the question has a deeper value. It lets you know the kinds of people you’re working with. Are they solution-oriented, having tried many things before calling you? Or did they buzz you the second they hit a speed bump? Were the things they tried sound ideas, or are they clearly still novices learning their way? Are they frustrated and defeatist, calling you in not because they expect a solution, but simply because they want to make it someone else’s problem?

A lot of my work is helping other people solve their problems. That last part is the most essential – the solutions I can bring to the table are heavily dependent on the mindsets of the people asking for my help. I know every problem is solvable, but not everyone feels the same way. Asking “What have you tried?” is a nice, non-accusatory way of discovering that.

The next time you’re asked to help solve a problem, make “What have you tried?” the first thing you try.

If you want to improve at something, you need more than practice. You need data.

You can shoot a thousand free throws and you will definitely get better at free throws. But if every hundred attempts you review footage, map your missed shots, compare successful throws to technique and stance, and all that other stuff – you’ll get much better.

The challenge, of course, is that collecting data isn’t free or effortless. It’s easier to just make free throws. At the same time though, for most people (and organizations), collecting data should be much easier than they make it!

What often happens is that the data collection process doesn’t get improved because the bad, inefficient process hurts the wrong people. If you touch a stove and your hand gets burnt, you’ll quickly learn not to touch the stove. But if you touch the stove and by some magic someone else’s hand gets burnt, then you’re never going to learn your lesson and your poor cursed friend is going to be in a lot of pain.

Consider an all-too-common example: In sales, most sales reps have to not only perform sales activities, they also have to report on those activities. They have to log calls or in-person visits, track results, maybe even fill out daily or weekly reports, etc. The value of that data is very high, of course. It enables sales managers and trainers to target inefficiencies in the sales techniques, it enables reps to learn and improve, etc.

The problem is that in many cases, the way this data gets collected is by onerous data entry tasks on the part of the reps, often to the point where it takes more time than the actual sales activity itself! Think about the revenue lost by asking your sales team to only sell half the time. Is the improvement from the data making up that gap? Probably not!

(Imagine that a baseball player is in spring training, practicing swings. After every single swing, the player himself is required to walk over to the camera that just filmed him, watch the tape, and fill out a report on things like angle of swing, stance, etc. Sure, reviewing your footage is good! But that’s such a horribly inefficient process that the player is barely getting any practice at all.)

So why doesn’t that sales data collection process improve? Because it’s not the managers who have to collect it – it’s the reps. The wrong people get hurt by it. In general, bad organizational processes often work this way: They’re implemented by people who aren’t the direct users, and so the process stays bad.

Not only is a slow and inefficient process for collecting data a resource loss, it also often degrades the quality of the data! Because guess what, people cheat. There’s this story from WWII where soldiers tasked with counting the dead from every battle were just making up random numbers instead of risking their lives by going back to the battlefield and possibly becoming one of them. (They were found out, incidentally, because none of their reported daily counts ended in 5 or 0; the soldiers were trying to pick random-sounding numbers to increase the credibility of their fake reports, so they never picked “round” numbers that they felt sounded like estimates. But statistically, 20% of the results should have ended with 5 or 0, and none of them did.)

If soldiers will lie about how many dead bodies there are on a battlefield, your sales reps will definitely just hastily scrawl in numbers to quicken an onerous report.

Do everything you can to make the process more efficient. Use automated tools. Hire separate enablement folks to just focus on the reporting side of whatever you’re doing. Reduce the data you collect to its absolute most minimal form that’s still useful. Whatever it takes, just remember that you can’t make the reporting harder than the task, or the task won’t get done.