What’s the correct response when someone says to you, “The sky is purple?”
You might think the correct response is to say, “No, the sky is blue.” But that’s not the correct answer, even if you’re 100% sure. Even if you look outside – even if you are outside – and the sky is absolutely blue.
The correct response is “Sure is!”
Protect your peace, folks. Some things, and some people, just aren’t worth debating.
There’s a line in a song that I love so much it almost chokes me up every time I hear it: “Some of us gotta run a little faster, ’cause we got a later start.” (The song is C U When U Get There, by the late, great Coolio.)
I love it because of the acknowledgement of an unfair world, but not only does it keep the responsibility for the outcome still squarely on the self, but it retains hope. Yes, the world can be unfair. No, there is no one to blame for that in a way that will change that fact. Yes, you can still get to the finish line. You may have to run a little faster. But you can run a little faster.
That is nobility. Just getting off the line is life, and you should live it.
Don’t underestimate the knowledge transfer inherent in living with someone for an extended period of time who has a specific area of expertise. I once hired someone for a role that required a fair amount of knowledge of a particular topic who had zero. I hired them because they told me their spouse worked in that field for 20 years, and when I asked them a few basic knowledge-check questions, they answered every one of them with deep insight immediately.
You can’t live with a rocket scientist for twenty years and not learn something. If your parents were rocket scientists then, all else being equal, you will know more about that topic than someone whose parents weren’t. That doesn’t mean you’ll know more than someone who studied it directly themselves, but you’ll definitely know more than another person who hasn’t studied it at all, even if you haven’t either.
People don’t often realize this – in fact, often people get offended at the suggestion, or at least deny the size of the impact. But that’s taking for granted all the things you know that you learned this way. My mother spent her entire career in “Corporate America.” Before I ever had my first office job, I knew a ton about the way those cultures operated, the specific mores and nuances inherent in that world. I was able to navigate those strange waters more effectively than other people my age with their first office jobs because many of those people were “first-generation corporate” and didn’t know what they didn’t know.
I don’t want to take it for granted. It’s easy to scoff and say “I can’t believe that person would think it was okay to do XYZ in an office job,” but that’s forgetting that there’s no such thing as common knowledge. They didn’t make that mistake because they weren’t intelligent, they just didn’t know yet. I had a head start.
All that is to say, look for areas you already have that kind of “second-generation” knowledge and see what you can do with it that you might not have realized was in your wheelhouse. And whenever you can, share that knowledge with others. You never know what head start you might be giving to someone.
They say God never closes a door without opening a window. But one thing to remember is that the window will close at some point, too.
A lot of life is timing. Being ready for an opportunity when it comes. And a lot of “being ready for an opportunity” is just acknowledging that you’re never really ready, but jump through the window anyway.
There is a historic cemetery near me; Walt Whitman is buried there. In its office there is a large vault, with paper records going back to the 1800s. It’s a treasure trove for archivists and historians. It also has some weird stuff.
Glued to the inside of the vault door is an ancient piece of paper with some type on it. Here it is:
I don’t really have anything to add here, except that humans are so gloriously weird that you would never reach the bottom.
It’s a mistake to view rules as something friends don’t need to have with one another.
People will say, “You don’t need to make up rules, if you can’t agree on where to go for your weekly girls’ night out, just discuss it with your friends!” And… what do you think rules are, exactly? It’s “discussing it with your friends” one time instead of every week. It’s setting reasonable expectations people can plan around. It’s respecting everyone’s contribution, not just whoever has the most energy for a discussion in a given week.
In other words, rules are friendship.
A colleague of mine said something off the cuff that I thought was incredibly insightful, and I scrambled to write it down: “Anyone can come in and just talk about what’s wrong. Those are the cheap seats.”
Her point was clear: It takes very little intelligence and almost zero investment to just list the problems. Actually coming up with solutions and doing the hard work to implement those solutions both require a lot more.
People without skin in the game, or who are unwilling to get in the game, are very rarely a good source of helpful wisdom when solving a problem. In other words: don’t take your advice from the peanut gallery.
People frequently misdiagnose their own troubles. One of the most common flavors is this: “The reason I can’t do [whatever] is because [something everyone else does].” For example: “I can’t get promoted at my job because nobody can handle how real I am,” or “My podcast won’t take off because everyone’s too dumb to appreciate my takes.”
And here’s the thing: this can be a misdiagnosis even if it’s factually accurate, because it puts the onus to change on exactly the people who have nothing to gain by doing so.
You want to get promoted? Then you have to reframe “nobody can handle how real I am” into something that puts the responsibility on you. You don’t even have to change your opinion – yet. You just have to look at things with your own agency as the primary lens. “I can’t get promoted because I don’t censor myself around the suits,” is still a belligerent take. But at least it presents its own solution! It becomes an active trade-off you’re choosing to make, instead of an immutable fact of the universe. And once it’s framed that way, it might become a little harder to defend.
You can’t change other people. You can only change how you interact with them. Some trade-offs are worth making and others aren’t, but the choice is always yours.
People don’t like to be accused of bias. We want to think of ourselves as fair and rational, making decisions only with our higher brains. And if you genuinely believe you can do that, then it feels very natural to bristle at rules meant to correct bias by favoring a particular outcome over another. Such rules, when they’re well-intentioned, are trying to figure out which outcome is already being (unfairly) favored because of bias, and adjust in the other direction.
I’m also against those rules, generally. But for different reasons.
You see, I know enough about how the brain works to know that bias is absurdly unavoidable. You can’t avoid being biased, and most of the biases that affect your thinking are happening without you ever realizing it. Since I also value being correct as often as I can, I also think it’s a marvelous idea for you to personally create rules for your decisions that help you correct for your own biases.
To be clear: “Just don’t be biased” doesn’t work. You couldn’t if you wanted to. That’s not me accusing you of being irredeemably racist or sexist or anything. Often it’s much more subtle than that.
And that’s why I’m generally against the broad rules. See, everyone is biased, but everyone is biased differently. About different things, in different amounts, and even in different directions. Broad rules, by their nature, have to be aimed at a limited number of these biases, adjusting them in the same direction and in a specific amount. And that would be fine if everyone was biased in exactly the opposite direction, in exactly the same amount, on that subject.
Not only is that not true, but it also doesn’t allow for change. One of the best ways to decrease the impact of your bias on your decisions is to be aware of it. Just the awareness lets you calibrate at least a little, and continue to do so as you make that category of decision again and again. But if the rule adjusts you toward a given outcome 20% every time, then soon the rule is no longer lining up to the problem it tries to correct. Sometimes people will even start biasing back the other way to correct for the inaccuracy of the rule!
Individually, we all have a responsibility to use tools in our decision-making that diminish the impact of bias. Consulting with others, adding time to our decisions, writing explanations, etc. There are plenty to try! But blanket, “one size fits all” rules are crude tools. Don’t outsource your brain’s improvement.
Of course, that might just be my bias – which is why I’m writing my explanation and sharing it with you.
I’ve talked before about how the SMART goal system (making sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound) is great for leadership when assigning goals to others.
But it’s also fantastic when others are assigning goals to you, though you’re going to use it a little differently in that case.
Have you ever had a manager give you frustratingly abstract or unclear goals, only to discover later that their expectations were very different from what you understood? It happens all the time. Unless you can convince your manager to take a course in using SMART goals effectively (or start reading this blog), you may just have to “manage up” a little. Here’s how to do it.
Whenever you get a task tossed your way, send a response asking a series of clarifying questions. As a strategic consideration, you should do your best to always ask these questions in a consistent way; the same format, the same tone, even use the same questions as long as they’re applicable. This will help train your manager to expect these questions as standard procedure, not to interpret them as you being argumentative.
Let me give you an example of how this might look in practice:
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From: The Boss
To: Awesome Employee
I need to put you in charge of client updates for the project. Thanks.
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From: Awesome Employee
To: The Boss
Okay, let me check a few details with you and then I can see where this fits in with my current workload. Just a few questions for clarity, as usual:
Thanks!
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From: The Boss
To: Awesome Employee
CC: Project Lead
The client has called me multiple times to ask about weekly spend and build progress versus the original timeline. They didn’t request regular updates specifically, but the calls aren’t painting the best picture and I think they’ll be more confident with weekly snapshots. Mary is the project lead, I cc’ed her so she can add you to the dashboard access; dashboard has all info. Use your best judgement on the rest, get the first update out ASAP.
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From: Awesome Employee
To: The Boss, Project Lead
BCC: Myself
Thanks for that info! Just to summarize everything: I’m going to create a weekly client update with a template similar to the dashboard (thanks for the access, Mary!) to summarize the weekly spend, progress percentage, and time to completion. I’ll briefly add supporting details, making sure to give them enough information that they don’t think they’re in the dark and feel the need to call in with too many questions. If they do, you’ll let me know what they asked so I can incorporate it into the deck, and I’ll add my own contact info so they can reach out to me directly and we can take that off your plate. We’ll call it a success if the client stops calling you for updates, and I’ll have the first one go out this Monday. I’ll bcc Mary so she can stay appraised of what data the client is seeing directly and offer any insights or adjustments to future updates.
Have a nice day!
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By asking those SMART questions, the employee turned “send the client updates” into an actual assignment with all the supporting details necessary to do a great job. Note that in the response from the boss, several of the SMART questions didn’t actually get answered fully, but rather than ask again, the employee filled in the missing details themselves. This is something I rarely see people do, but it’s important; if the manager didn’t answer a question, then they most likely don’t have a specific answer, and filling in the details yourself is the best way to go. They informed the boss of what their plan was with confidence, but still made sure to send that summary. Absent any objections or changes from the boss, that’s the assignment. Importantly, they defined success when the boss didn’t: As long as the client gets accurate information and stops bothering the boss for random updates, then the Awesome Employee is doing an awesome job. Even though this is a relatively simple assignment, it’s always important to have both a definition of what “good performance” looks like, and an objective way to show that you’re giving it.
Try this out the next time you get a nebulous task thrown your way, and watch yourself become the rock star on your team.
The Opportunity Machine 