“Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow.” Shaker saying.
If I have a thousand years to live, I’m going to see the long-term consequences of my work. I won’t be able to hide behind ‘I won’t be here, it doesn’t matter to me’. I’d better be making sure my work is solid and my impact positive.
If I’m going to die tomorrow, I can’t hide behind ‘I’ll get round to that later’. I’d better be getting on with it.
Now is the only time we have to make a difference.
Luckily, making a difference is the most satisfying work there is.
For as long as there have been humans, we have wanted to have the world remember, somehow, that ‘I was here’.
It won’t.
But if we embrace our transience and instead of using our energy to hoard – stuff, money, power, love – we use it to create systems that enrich people and planet, other human beings will.
No surprise there. I do that often, which is partly why we’re having an extension built.
As usual, the book came in several different electronic formats, and for a modest additional fee, you could add a print copy. So I did.
The link duly came through to the download page.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that ‘all formats’ includes audio.
But imagine my amazement when I saw that ‘all formats’ also includes EPUB, HTML and Kindle editions in Spanish, German, Italian, French, Russian, Portuguese, Danish, Dutch, Chinese, Swedish, Japanese, Indonesian, Punjabi, Turkish, Hebrew, Croatian, Catalan, Hungarian, Korean, Malay, Polish, Swahili, Tamil, Tagalog, Ukranian, Hindi, Thai and Afrikaans.
It’s hot. Too hot for me. My office is on the south side of the house, so it gets plenty of sun. And of course I’m at home, where I don’t have air conditioning.
It’s difficult to think, difficult to get down to anything, difficult to come up with ideas.
I can’t do anything to make the room cooler.
Luckily, I have at least 4 other options:
I could work on something that requires less mental energy, such as completing my expenses, or getting together my accounts information for tomorrow.
I could move myself north, into the cool side of the house.
I could sit my feet in iced water (I’m at home after all, nobody will see).
I could stop early.
Sometimes, acknowledging what you can’t change, makes you see what you can.
It’s a really great read, about instilling responsible autonomy into your team, clarifying the ‘compass’ that will guide individuals, and setting a few big rules for ‘How we do things round here’ ( based around “Act In the Best Interests of the Company”)
But.
Where’s the customer?
And where’s the continuity? What happens when these particular individuals move on? How do new people learn quickly?
It’s brilliant and essential to empower your people and your teams. But it’s more sustainable to include some infrastructure too.
Some actual wiring. Built around the people you serve.
Do you ever feel like you’re going round and round in circles?
I’ve been feeling that lately. And as usual, ended up not far from where I started.
It hasn’t been a complete waste of time though. Going back over everything has made me think it all through again, so this time round, I’m approaching with more confidence.
At one time, my office was in a business centre on a farm, on the outskirts of London. There was quite a community of small businesses there, so we kept the post office busy.
One day, I saw our regular postie had someone with him. I got chatting (as I inevitably do), and asked to be introduced.
“This is John, your new postman”, he said, “I’m retiring soon, so I’m showing him my route.”
“That’s interesting, why do you need to show him it?“
“Because otherwise he would never know that the entrance to Suite 19 is round the back and up the stairs.”
John meanwhile, is sketching a plan of the buildings on what appears to be the back of an envelope.
“Is this how every new postman learns their route?”
“Of course! How else?”
I get the point of walking the route. There’s no better way to be confident that you in the right place on your first day. And of course it’s a great way to familiarise yourself with the buildings and people you serve.
I also get that occupants change, buildings are pulled down and new ones put up, or changed in other ways that mean re-numbering.
But what I didn’t get then, and still don’t, is why each new postie has to create a new personal map from scratch. Or why that information goes nowhere beyond the postie’s head.
After all, since 1660, the post office has had literally daily opportunities to create a map that reflects what’s actually on the ground. Almost effortlessly, as a side-effect of providing their service.
According to one definition, “diagrams are simplified figures, caricatures in a way, intended to convey essential meaning”*.
That seems about right to me.
Some diagrams are so good at this, that once seen, you can’t help but assimilate the essential meaning. In an instant, it’s there, in your head forever, changing how you think from that point onwards.
This is one of my favourites:
My interpretation of a diagram from Alan Begg and Graham Williams
The explanation goes something like this. We all operate best in ‘Can Do’ mode, creative, autonomous, responsible, positive, active. But when knocked back for whatever reason, we have a tendency to slip down into one or other of the legs of the diagram.
If we go down ‘Can’t Do’, we become helpless, we freeze up, we become inactive and cautious. If we go down the ‘Won’t Do’ leg, we blame others, we feel resentful, angry, we become unco-operative, even disruptive.
The interesting thing is that all three behaviours have upsides. There are advantages to being in ‘Can’t Do’ or ‘Won’t Do’ that we may learn to exploit, and so keep ourselves there, instead of learning how to get ourselves back to ‘Can Do’, where we operate at our best.
But the key point is that these behaviours are learned. Which means we can unlearn the restricting ones, and learn to get back into ‘Can Do’ mode more quickly and easily, to the benefit of ourselves and the people around us.
I know where I go – I’m straight off down the ‘Can’t Do’ leg – but I also know how to get myself back up again quickly – and all I need to remind me how to do that is a glance at this simple diagram.
*Bert S. Hall (1996). “The Didactic and the Elegant: Some Thoughts on Scientific and Technological Illustrations in the Middle Ages and Renaissance”. in: B. Braigie (ed.) Picturing knowledge: historical and philosophical problems concerning the use of art in science. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. p.9
