Chances. Changes. Choices.
In many ways a life or a career is the aggregation and summation of choices made, chances given and taken, and changes navigated.
Chances.
Chance drives much of life, beginning at birth.
Who we are born to, and the country we are born in, drives so many of the contours of our life and what we can become.
Being born to loving parents who are financially secure in a developed or rapidly developing country is a stroke of great luck which we often do not appreciate since the opportunities are greater and obstacles far fewer than someone born to struggling parents in an impoverished or war-torn nation.
Chances then adorn all of life in the chance meeting, the people who take chances on us and the chances given.
But as importantly the chances taken whether it be moving to a new place, betting on a new job, and taking risks.
And if we are fortunate life also is about chances we give.
The helping hand, the forgiveness provided, the small investment, the life changing advice and the risky hire.
Changes.
Change is life.
Everything changes and nothing stays the same.
Economies bloom and burst. New leaders come and go. Health fluctuates. Relationships thrive and wither. Technology enables and disrupts. Great misfortune and loss are interwoven with unexpected windfalls and victories.
Navigating change is often both facing its reality and learning that how we adapt and respond to change and changing times determines its impact on our lives and the future more than the change itself.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote, “there is nothing good or bad but thinking makes is so”
Choices.
“The difficulty in life is the choice” George Moore.
The choices we make are often determined by chance and change but unlike chance and change tend to be more under our control.
Because chance and change constantly offer us the option or sometime force us to make choices.
And choosing is not easy particularly since the future is unknowable and only as time unfurls will it be clear which choice among many was the ideal.
While every choice impacts us the three biggest choices tend to be a) what we do for a living, b) who we decide to spend our lives with and c) where we decide to live.
Career. Home. Partner.
These are not necessarily one-time choices which since we can change careers, where we live and who are partners are, but these seem to be the most important ones and its probably the ones we should spend the most times mulling.
And we humans even if we make the right choices we wonder if we did.
The job not taken, the person not pursued, the place not moved to. We often think life might have been even better if we had made other choices often forgetting it might have been much worse.
A good exercise in self-reflection is to think about the biggest changes, chances and choices we have had to deal with or had to make and what we have learned from those.
Since as long as we live, we will have to deal with chances, changes and choices.
Exit.
Exits are as important as entrances.
We are told first impressions are important.
They are, but so are are endings.
Here is a perspective on three types of exits.
Exiting Careers. Exit Economics. Exiting Existence.
1. Exiting Careers.
“Every career has a midnight hour. The smart people exit at five to twelve” Sanjay Khosla ( Executive Coach and Advisor. Former President of Kraft Developing Markets.)
Elegant exits particularly at senior levels are unfortunately too rare, leaving both the Individual and the Company diminished.
The individual loses since a career transition not handled well can stain a reputation and leave a residue of ill will towards an institution where many years of one’s life has been dedicated.
The company loses because instead of having advocates among an influential diaspora of senior talent one may end up with hecklers and detractors. Also, senior colleagues and direct reports of the departed employee can feel less loyal to the company.
It behooves both the individual and the firm to anticipate, plan and manage for the midnight hour whenever possible.
Done correctly it can provide significant advantages to both sides. The company can often retain access to the wisdom and knowledge and good will of the departing employee and the individual benefits from a positive departure, continued access to their friends and network and often Career 2.0 opportunities and support.
Every company should develop a plan to ensure that Exits are done right particularly given both aging demographics and the increasing flexibility that companies need to to connect and leverage a diaspora of talent without carrying heavy fixed costs.
2. Exit Economics.
Every year you should call your cable company and telecommunications provider and ask if they can give you a better deal. You do not need to threaten to leave but just ask politely. Chances are you will get a combination of higher speeds, removal of data caps, free channels, upgraded modems and cable boxes and other goodies usually at the same or lower cost.
You rarely have to use the three magic phrases:
a) “Considering cutting the cord”
b) “Read about a T-Mobile offer…”
c) “Why am I paying so much to rent this old equipment?”
Then call your financial institutions and you will enjoy eradication of some fees, lower rates of interest, higher multiples on loyalty rewards and other garnishments.
And for anybody you do business with if you need to find yourself not needing to find the right support or service person (automated and hidden contact numbers anyone?) just press the option that says you want to exit. And presto you have a Manager on the line!
Why do so many companies that wax poetic about customer lifetime value and the importance of retention rarely reach out to reward their most loyal customers?
Why do so many service businesses not surprise and reward their best clients with ideas, insights and imagination every six months but only do this when clients threaten an exit or in attracting new clients?
As more and more companies are trying to move from a transaction to membership model focusing on recurring revenue it will grow more important to focus on the happy bird in the hand than the one in the bush or the one wishing to fly away.
We should take a little time off from cross-selling, up-selling and treating each customer as a cow whose udder we squeeze to maximize a bottom line while whispering rote love and loyalty messages into their ears.
How about feeding them some hay instead once in a while?
Every six months (in some cases more often and in some cases less often but at least once a year) surprise your best customers with gifts, offers, insights and rewards without them asking.
This is the economics that prevent their exit rather than spending millions getting them to change their minds once they have determined to exit!
3. Exiting Existence.
Franz Kafka wrote “The meaning of life is that it stops”
And most of us can calculate the robust and healthy days left if we are lucky by subtracting our age from 80 (around which much begins to go wrong physically and sometimes also one may see a diminishment in mental faculties leading to a much more constrained life) and multiplying it by 365 days.
If you are 60 you have less than 7500 days. If you are 40 you have 15,000 days.
So, when someone asks you to do things without some form of fair compensation (it does not have to be money but could be learning, experience or the joy of helping) or does not respect your time, do remember you are the one paying for their dis-respect and their cheap valuation of your life!
Once you incorporate the reality of your and everybody else’s finiteness into your thinking, you are much less likely to take crap from those who dole it out and much more likely to appreciate those who are kind and respectful.
And notice the wonder of everyday life around you.
As the Philosophers and Songwriters remind us:
It is essential to know what is important before it is too late.
The Garden Inside.
Art by Uta Barth
The World Is Too Much With Us.
The opening lines of “The World is Too Much With Us” by William Wordsworth:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
Today we are buffeted by a tsunami of external drama which keeps us unmoored.
This in addition to an algorithmically optimized drip drip drug flow of attention hungry engagement orifices seek to bend us to look here, look there, feel this and feel that.
The outside world is often too much with us.
But it is in internal changes where the meaning lies.
Looking is not the same as seeing.
A few years ago an exhibit at The Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago featured the work of a Los Angles artist named Uta Barth.
Ms Barth leverages photography in a novel way to get you to both see what you may not have seen but as importantly to make you forget what you are looking at but be aware of the resultant feeling.
Her work which can be simple as conveying the feeling of light on a curtain or a shadow on a kitchen wall is inspired by a line from Robert Irwin which goes…“Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees”.
We often look but do we see?
The Garden Inside
Have always enjoyed parks and gardens and am lucky to live by the lakefront in Chicago which is adorned with parks. These are great spaces to reflect, refresh and repair, particularly in these drama filled times.
One of the parks in Chicago—Lurie Garden in Millenium Park— has been designed by Pier Oudolf who is considered among the greatest Landscape Designers in the World (he also landscape designed the High Line in New York). His books are filled with breathtaking foliage that integrate and blend into nature likes works of art.
But there is one garden that may stand above them all
In the Charlevoix region of Quebec there lies a private garden which covers more than 20 acres and is called Les Quatre Vents ( The Four Winds). It is considered amongst the finest private gardens in the world ( it is opened a few times a year to the public).
The garden was created by one person, Francis Cabot, as his life work that blends creativity and passion and it is simply the most breathtaking places one can imagine.
Francis Cabot believed that Gardens are like art and have the power to change you. And unlike other art, which may affect you differently over time, because you have changed over time, a garden is itself always changing. Francis designed his Garden to lift the soul of people who walked through it.
He wanted you to come out different after the experience.
Cabot has sculpted, designed and tended a variety of different types of structures and styles —a total of 24 different experiences—including a Japanese garden, a French Pigeonnier – pigeonnier is French for both pigeon coop and pigeonhole – and integrated water ways and a variety of bridges all using natural materials from place of origin. The Japanese tea house was built by Japanese artists using wood from Japan that was aged for years.
Here is a peek at Les Quatre Vents…
There is an amazing book called “The Greater Perfection” filled with pictures and Francis Cabot explaining his life’s work, which I would recommend to everyone if it were affordable and easily available.
Doctors would prescribe it would for the soul.
However, there is a wonderful movie on Francis Cabot called “The Gardener” which is available for free on Amazon if you are a prime member. Take a look at this two minute trailer and it alone should lift you and calm you down.
One prescription for the pressures and challenges we face is to take a walk in a garden.
Regardless, it is key to remind ourselves of Francis Cabot’s belief that every individual is creative and we have a garden within ourselves that we need to tend to so that we can bloom…
4 Keys to Leading Today.
Companies with a disproportionate share of talent passionately aligned against a common goal usually are the ones that grows faster, create great economic value and attract and retain customers and clients for the long run.
This alchemy of wealth, value and alignment is often created by the wizardry of leaders.
Leadership has never been as important today in a world in midst of great transformation.
In the end great leadership come down these four components:
Leaders acknowledge, face and communicate reality.
People admire and respect people and not titles since titles are bestowed while leadership is earned.
The five characteristics of great leaders are capability, integrity, empathy, vulnerability and inspiration.
Great leaders scale their talents by creating a fabric of great culture.
1. Reality.
A key to leadership is to solve challenges and address problems. This requires confronting issues versus looking away or hoping some form of magical thinking will make them go away.
One cannot hope to get people to follow us if they suspect we are not addressing real issues and challenges however difficult they may be.
Great leaders ensure they never set themselves for self-defeat.
They do this by constantly taking temperature of the marketplace, anticipating opposing points of view and paying close attention to underdogs and outliers who might change the rules of the game.
They focus on future competitive advantage and not yesterday’s game.
2. Respectful Admiration.
Without the hearts and minds of one’s team one is not a leader but a ruler.
Rulers leverage fear, project power and exploit insecurity.
Employees genuflect, fall in line, salute and pander to the hollow and bloated boss, while they silently seethe, plot insurrection or practice defection.
All rulers fall and increasingly they are failing and falling faster as they flail and rail with great cacophony.
But facts are stubborn things.
Reality has a habit of breaking in.
Gravity does not care if you tweet that it is fake.
It kills those who step off cliffs and tall buildings.
Leaders on the other hand are respected and admired both for their operating and strategic skills but they earn the most important currency of the time that allows them to buy time and alignment in changing times.
The currency of trust.
3. Five Characteristic of Leaders.
a) Capability: To be a leader you have to be capable in your field of work or craft. You have to know your shit. You have to keep improving your skill. Doctors will not listen doctors who are not great at medicine. A creative will not respect someone whose body of work they do not admire.
b) Integrity: Can one be trusted? Are we transparent about the ingredients of our decision making. Does one look for opposing evidence and use real facts ?
c) Empathy: Leaders can see from other points of view and they understand that employees are people and work is but a sliver of their being. They understand and they listen. They care. They do this both for employees and for customers.
d) Vulnerability: Great leaders acknowledge mistakes. They know they do not have all the answers. This means they are open to criticism and correction and they surround themselves with skill sets that offset and balance their areas of weakness.
e) Inspiration: How do leaders face and acknowledge reality and hard truth but still get people to unite, align and take the challenges head on? They do so by recognizing that people choose with their hearts and not their minds. They inspire through a combination of personal example and storytelling.
4. Culture.
It has been said that “culture eats strategy” and often when companies decay (Boeing) or resurrect ( Microsoft) or have distinctly different outcomes in the same industry ( Delta vs most other airlines) a key determinant is the culture. What it is like, how it is improving or how it is getting worse.
The culture of an organization is revealed in how people behave when no one is looking or monitoring their behavior.
Culture is about the relationships, mindsets and goals of people and not a place, a program or an operating manual. It is something leaders set, correct and support, but culture is how leaders treat people and how people feel about themselves, their company and their colleagues.
Companies with great cultures tend to have employees who feel most of the following about their jobs and companies:
Fair/ Good Compensation: If people are not paid adequately or fairly it really hard to have a good culture.
Recognition: Great cultures recognize contributors and leaders do not step into their teams video stealing credit.
Autonomy: People are trusted to deliver with limited monitoring and can access resources to do so.
Purpose: They believe in the purpose and values of the company and see the role of their company beyond that of just profit but doing good for society or community.
Growth: The company is growing, has a plan for growth or even if static, the individual is growing and teams are growing by being given opportunities to learn and build new skills. The focus is on multiplying versus dividing.
Connectedness: People feel connected to each other and to their leadership. They feel free to speak up and share and even joke.
While some leaders today may disappoint there are many many amazing leaders across all aspects of business, education and government who we can all learn from by paying as much attention to those who lift us up versus those who bring us down.
Think like an Immigrant.
On March 19, during a closing keynote of the Adtech Economic Forum at the Times Center in New York, I was asked to summarize and build on the thoughts of all of the other speakers from the Angel Investing, Venture Capital, Private Equity, Corporate Strategics and Hedge Fund businesses who invest in Advertising and Marketing Technologies.
Every speaker mentioned the dramatic changes taking place in the marketing and investing eco-system driven by marketplace, financial, political and technological disruptions and the challenges and opportunities of operating in such an environment.
It seems to be a revolutionary time and many existing business models and past assumptions are at risk and the speed of change seems to be accelerating.
Summarizing their thinking, I suggested that in order to thrive we all learn to…
Think like an Immigrant.
World class leaders and companies rarely get defeated.
They decide to defeat themselves by a) not taking emerging competitors with new models seriously, b) paying scant attention to underdogs with fewer resource and different approaches, and/or c) by refusing to align with the forces of the future.
We can all learn from immigrants.
a) Immigrants often think like outsiders.
Individuals and companies that thrive over the long run view their business from external perspectives and not just internal perspectives.
They understand the viewpoints of future competitors, changing consumer and customer needs and they realize the biggest threats and opportunities come from outside their categories ( eg. Tesla and Uber came from outside the traditional Auto Industry, Google and Meta changed the content industry more than any newspaper, magazine or television conglomerate).
But many leaders and businesses benchmark against existing competitors, go to the same conferences, and stay in the lane of well trodden paths of thinking.
Maybe its time to think like an outsider.
b) Immigrants often think like underdogs.
Underdogs use technology, drive, and ingenuity to find ways to leverage what they have or what others have to change the rules of the game.
They do not view the moat surrounding the castle as a something to navigate but a source of material to flood the castle with by changing the rules of the game!
Even Meta was surprised that what they thought was a moat which was their social graph was used against them. TikTok practiced asymmetric warfare by eschewing the social graph and replacing it with an interest graph. Its algorithm and learning loops allowed individuals to be exposed to a spectrum of great content without having to bring any friends or create any content!
c) Immigrants think with an emphasis on the future
Short or mid term sacrifices and pain is endured to build a future for themselves and families just like great companies think beyond the quarter and the year but in long time periods.
These firms and leaders focus on compound improvement, constant iteration and experimentation and an enduring long term vision whether it be Amazon or Microsoft or Netflix or recently Delta who by taking the long view became the most valuable and biggest airline.
We are all immigrants in a way.
While 27 percent of the United States population is first or second generation immigrant are we not all immigrants in a way that we are all immigrating to a new land called the future?
Margaret Mead wrote “After all, we are all immigrants to the future; none of us is a native in that land.”
And Mohsin Hamid wrote “We are all migrants through time”
Think like an Immigrant.
Rob Beeler and Tom Triscari who co-founded the Adtech Forum had so much interest and resonance from their audience about the “Think like an Immigrant” idea that they have designed and produced men and women’s t-shirts in a range of colors and sizes which are available here. ( I have no economic interest in the sale of the t-shirts)