All in Careers
As I write this post, I’m 30,000 feet in the air, on an American Airlines flight headed to New Jersey. The last time I was on a plane was, funnily enough, exactly a year and a half ago, to the day.
If you’d told me back then that it would be 18 months before I’d fly again, I’d have told you that you were nuts.
Today's podcast takes on the idea of having allies versus accomplices. That is, when we're growing something of consequence, social or economic, real progress is made when we have people willing to give - at some cost or risk to themselves - to further our collective goals. How they become accomplices is the real challenge.
Many times, we tend to think our problems emerge out of nowhere.
Suddenly, the growth stops as those sales meetings cease to convert. Or our quality issues become overwhelming as the returns pile up.
The last time Arsenal (the English football team I support) won the Premiership trophy was in 2004. It was the greatest title triumph in the history of British Football as that Arsenal team went the entire season undefeated - a feat no other team in modern football has achieved before or since.
It was the icing on the cake of years of continuous success and the expectation of us fans was that it was only a matter of time before we would win the trophy again.
Do you expect a musician to be good at financial analysis? Do you expect a financial analyst to be good to creative work? Of course not. Then why do we define "good" in our teams in specific, narrow ways?
Today's episode speaks to focus on our colleague's strengths and not class people as good or otherwise based on preconceived notions.
The founder of LevelUp, a mobile payments and loyalty app that was bought by GrubHub in 2018, never wore shoes, slept in the office more than at home and used to wear the same orange shirt to work every day.
We’ve all heard stories like these. They’re chalked up as “wacky entrepreneur traits”, and become the stuff of legend when the outfit is successful.
OK, I’ll admit it. I have this problem.
Let me explain.
Some of you know that music, in particular playing guitar and songwriting, are passions of mine. I love the technical aspects as well as the pure musical, creative aspects of it.
As the podcast hits 100 episodes, I close out this month's focus on lessons from popular culture.
In particular, today's episode talks to the idea of putting our past in context. That we need to not only prize our prior experiences but also focus on moving forward. That our past doesn't define us - we continue to define ourselves.
We have these conversations with kids every now and then.
When they decide they want something, they’ll determine all the different benefits of having it. Solid benefits that are passionately communicated.
But what isn’t so well reasoned out is whether they need the thing in the first place. They just know they want it because their best friend has one, or all the kids at school are talking about it.
This week’s blog and podcast have been about this idea of leaving a legacy, and I’d like to tack on one last thought on the topic.
And that is that leaving a legacy suggests - at least to me - that we must become “enlightened” in some way. I’m using the term ‘enlightened’ not only in the spiritual sense, but in any context, including in our craft. There are those, for example, who understand their industry so well, who have ‘mastered’ their technical work, who are so well versed in their disciplines, that we might consider them to be enlightened in their specific domains.
This month's podcasts draw lessons from popular culture.
Today's episode is about legacy. I've always been intrigued by the fact that, when we leave, our world tends to go with us. So how do we leave something behind? How do we ensure that some part of our world, our experiences, remains well after we are gone?
I don’t think any of us want just to be visitors.
We don’t want to pass through our lives having simply gone through the routine, without having felt like we’ve contributed in some meaningful way.
Of course, ‘meaningful’ is different for each of us. Our scales will vary as will the nature of it, from the psychic to the economic.
There’s something to be said for persistence as being the single, overriding factor that leads to success.
That sounds like the right thing to say but that’s not always how we talk in practice.
We tend to think about the brilliant idea as being the most important thing, or perhaps the creation of a detailed plan of action, or (as is more usually mentioned) copious amounts of money (aka funding).
This month's podcasts draw lessons from popular culture.
Today's episode speaks to the importance of self-talk and our choice of words. But not simply in the most overt sense that we need to recite affirmations, but even in our most casual conversations with ourselves. Our self-talk matters.
Is comfort the enemy of innovation and growth?
It’s a constant pursuit, this pursuit of comfort, at so many levels. We long to be free of our problems and our issues, to achieve some sense of calmness in our lives.
It’s important to take the time to get good at something.
A spike in a specific area is important and helpful on multiple levels. You’re able to contribute via that particular skill, to a level that’s considered “expert”, which means you become sought after, and develop something of a reputation. That’s always a positive, both personally and professionally.
This month's podcasts draw lessons from popular culture.
In today's episode, I discuss a quote from Thom Yorke of Radiohead about this idea of exposure and vulnerability and the role it plays not only in art (which we tend to accept) but also in business (which we often don't).
At what point do we stop asking questions?
It comes very naturally to us when we’re young, but at some point, so many of us, simply stop.
There are many reasons for this. It could be that it wasn’t encouraged at home. Or it could be that our schools and our teachers didn’t want to hear them. Or it could be peer related, not wanting to seem ‘out of place’ with our friends. (I can’t quite decide which of those is the worst.)
I really don’t like the idea of standardized tests.
Ostensibly, they’re designed to be a pure measure of talent and intellect - a way to measure our depth of understanding of the specific subject matter in question.
But the fact is, they’re not - well, not in the way we’d like to think anyway.
This month's podcasts deal with matters of culture.
In today's episode, I speak to how the most important subject in business is also the least valued at business schools: soft skills and specifically, working with people. It's a tension that isn't likely to abate anytime soon, but it's still one we need to maintain a laser focus on.
