All in Strategy
There’s a quote I close all of my personal podcasts with that’s always appealed to me. I wrote about it in one of my earliest blog posts and it’s guided almost all of my decisions in life:
“You’re better off scared than bored.”
It isn’t my quote - I first heard it from Harvey Mackay in his book, Beware The Naked Man Who Offers You His Shirt. (And, for the record, the exact quote is, “You’re a lot better off being scared than bored”.)
Today’s podcast is about what we do when we’re trying to get ourselves back on our feet, when we’re going through hard times and we need to re-center - as an individual or as a business.
It’s about the value of First Principles and the kinds of things we need to consider, understand and adopt when we're navigating a crisis.
We can’t assume each step forward is permanent. And that’s just a fact.
I know there’s a tendency to view any positive progress with hope, with the earnest desire to see that momentum continue unabated. That’s natural and, frankly, we should maintain that positivity, particularly in difficult times such as these.
But it’s important to also recognize that plans and paths forward aren’t always (ever) straight-line. There will be twists and turns, back and forth on the road to getting to where we want to go.
In today's podcast, I continue this month's riff on uncertainty and risk, and talk about change. It's a topic that we all have to deal with, whether we like it or not.
Change is a critical part of our growth and how we deal with it is make or break. This episode discusses the two key steps that I believe we need to take to tackle the change we see in our lives, head on.
The world has changed! The old order is out! Things will never go back to the way they were!
There’s no shortage of pronouncements about how the coronavirus has fundamentally changed the way we live, work and play. No more cruises, no more constant flying, no more of the large scale social gatherings that we’ve become so accustomed to. It’s (apparently) a whole new world out there.
And so it goes with Working From Home (WFH).
When we went through the Great Recession of 2008/2009, I remember thinking to myself (perhaps consoling myself) that I would never see an economic downturn as bad as that ever again in my lifetime. I mean, the scale of the trouble at the time was such that multiple markets around the world, multiple sectors, multiple categories, all got hit at once, and the resultant economic malaise took years to overcome. Surely, something at that scale could never happen again?
Well, never say never, I guess.
Episode 29 of the podcast is now available. Today’s episode is about the concept of "productive struggle", this idea that our success in life is based on our ability to work through difficult issues and problems without knowing or having the path handed to us.
Episode 28 of the podcast is now available and this week, I tackle a topic that we all grapple with, something we all need to deal with and manage at one point or another - worry and how to get beyond it.
In times of uncertainty, we want to look for comparisons. Situations that are analogous to what we’re going through so that we can identify trends or find indicators - some sort of sign(s) - that allow us to better predict what’s going to happen. It’s a natural thing to do. We want comfort. We want certainty. We want to see a way out.
But, of course, that’s not how things work.
For every comparison to previous pandemics, there are several others that can point to how this one is different.
If there’s one thing that social distancing has re-emphasized, it’s the power and value of social connection. That community matters - and not only does it matter but it’s, frankly, more important than it ever has been. We’re all experiencing that, regardless of whether or not we’d conceptually bought into the idea before.
In fact, I’ve been heartened by the virtual outreach that I’ve seen everywhere - from family to friends to celebrities, in real life and across social media.
There’s that old saying that it’s easy to have principles until you have to practice them. Well, it’s the same thing with partnerships, especially when it comes to buyers and suppliers.
We like to throw that word around, especially during the early days of a relationship, during a QBR or during renewal times (by both sides). And that’s easy to do. It’s no sweat off anyone’s back to do it then. And we probably believe it, too.
If there is any consistent counsel, it is that we need to make decisions on the basis of facts. Hard, objective, scientifically-based information that provides us with a solid understanding of the situation at hand, the magnitude of the issue(s), the possible actions we can take and the relative weightage or prioritization of each.
This type of information ensures that we minimize the impact of emotion - subjective ideas based on our fears, our histories, our prior baggage and “what others are saying”.
Cas Hardware - a small hardware retail business in my neighborhood - closed its doors recently after 41 years. It had become a fixture of the Andersonville community and was a place where “the management” was folks you could get to know, who would be on hand to answer your questions, give advice if you needed it and take care of any purchases you needed to make.
Back when I was in Business School, the undisputed heavyweight champion of the Michigan/Ross Business School universe was a gentleman by the name of C.K. Prahalad. In fact, forget the Ross world, Professor Prahalad was, alongside Michael Porter of Harvard Business School, arguably the best thinker in the world on the subject of Corporate Strategy.
I mean, this was the guy who gave us the term, Core Competence of the corporation, and got us thinking about what it was that a business really did.
Those Marketing folks - what do they do?
Why do we need to hire another marketing person?
Is it really necessary to spend that on Marketing?
You see it time and time again - organizations have this funny relationship and view of Marketing.
We love the mystique that Apple has built around its business and think it’s entirely down to its products.
“I remember perfectly well what life was like before (having my own kids). Well enough to miss some things a lot, like the ability to take off for some other country at a moment's notice. That was so great. Why did I never do that?
See what I did there? The fact is, most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used. I paid for it in loneliness, but I never used it.” - Paul Graham
As it’s the start of a new year (and for some, a new decade, which it isn’t but let’s just go with it), there’s no shortage of articles, online or otherwise, about making a fresh start, doing the things you always wanted to do and becoming who you want to actually be. I’m 100% onboard with all of those goals and if that’s what your plan is for 2020, then more power to you.
That said, there is a foundational requirement on this path to self-actualization that I think gets missed, and that is, that in all the positive, rah-rah emphasis of doing what we want, we miss the basic stock-taking that …
I rent cars pretty frequently when I travel, whether for work or for pleasure. When I do, the rental agency has me sign off on the various terms of the agreement.
Will there be any additional drivers? Did I want their insurance coverage or did I have my own? Did I want to take advantage of their fuel option or would I prefer to fill the tank myself prior to return? All pretty standard stuff.
But sometimes, that last question takes a little twist.
“If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters." — Epictetus
I’ve been turning this quote over in my head for a long while now, and there’s something about it that resonates incredibly strongly with me.
The trouble is, I can’t quite figure out what.
Is it suggesting that if we are focused on becoming expert in a particular area, we mustn’t be afraid of appearing stupid or unknowledgeable i.e. that we’ve figured everything out already…
