In a recent conversation, someone mentioned that much of his work involves helping senior executives unpack their own humanity — the humanity they put in a box 10 or 15 years ago on their way up the ladder.
It’s left me wondering:
I’ve worked in large organizations and in small ones.
Though they’ve consistently been mission-driven regardless of scale, we tend to talk about it differently in different contexts.
In large organizations, everyone serves the organization and the mission: it’s assumed that keeping the organization going will serve the mission, which in turn serves the client.
In small organizations, we serve the client, on the logic that providing ever-better service is how we advance our mission.
Since I was reared in large organizations, I frequently find myself confronting the old instinct to play internal status games or to debate the mission rather than deliver the service.
Being clear about a meaningful mission is important. But a mission doesn’t mean much if it’s not actually serving anyone.
We all have a story about the nature and condition of life, the universe, and humanity.
Those stories matter — a lot — yet we pay so little attention to them.
If this sounds like an abstraction, consider this: what kind of laws, social networks, or autonomous vehicles would you build in a world and for people that are essentially good and getting better? And how would you fashion those things in an essentially imperfect world?
If everybody truly is in on the joke, “community guidelines” might be a reasonable way to lightly encourage enlightened people to interact well with each other.
But the world doesn’t run on community guidelines, and not everybody wants to play the game the way you want them to.
Think clearly about who you’re building for. And, if everybody else starts showing up, be ready to adjust.
In a conversation last week, a friend cited a practice of asking for help 100 times a day.
That got me thinking: what would that look and feel like?
What, for that matter, would asking for help 10 or even just two times a day look and feel like?
And if asking for help even twice a day feels like a big deal, what’s that about?
If you can’t see an opportunity, does that mean it doesn’t exist?
Logically, what exists exists — just as a falling tree makes a sound, regardless of whether it’s heard.
Yet that’s not how people experience life. It’s hard to care about the trees we can’t hear falling. And it’s easy to conclude that what we’ve never seen doesn’t — or can’t — exist.
Creating opportunities we can only see in our minds isn’t easy, but it’s essential.
It might be more possible than you think to make possible what you want. And, if you can do that for yourself, consider what you might be able to do for others.
It’s the best kind of hidden, isn’t it?
And the plainer the view, the more effectively things can be hidden.
Look twice: what’s really going on here?
How would you prepare a decision-maker to face new problems?
A firm grasp of history would be a good foundation: many “new” problems are old ones in unfamiliar clothing.
But reproducing the right answers can only get you so far.
Sooner or later, you’d have to learn how to learn and decide — and that’s a different, rare, and valuable field of knowledge.
“It worked for me, so it’ll work for you, too.”
“It didn’t work that one time, so it’s generally not valid.”
People love to generalize from the particular and hide from the general behind the particular.
At the risk of over-generalizing, there will always be an exception. And it doesn’t make sense to argue that the thing that worked once should now apply everywhere, nor that the thing that didn’t work once is therefore totally meaningless.
Seanchaí is an old Irish word for storycatcher — a person (legendary or living) who held the memory of a community by gathering and telling its stories.
Today, I want to sing and celebrate the greatest seanchaí I ever met.
I first encountered Brian Doyle’s work when I was a volunteer in Washington State. From the Northwestern authors section of the bookstore in the next valley over, the glittering eye of a crow on the cover of Brian’s first novel, Mink River, captured me and would not let go until I bought the book.
The wild wise worldview I found between the covers has not let go since — certainly not since I had the coincidental joy of meeting Brian when he headlined the North Words writers’ symposium in Skagway, Alaska.
A seanchaí’s role, Brian wrote, is to shout the thing that must be said. And the thing I must say about Brian is that he taught me to see. What he showed me, at exactly the time I needed to see it, is “the miracle and muddle of the everyday,” the way small things aren’t small at all, and that the wildest most precious un-small things in this life are children — and so how we treat children is an important measure of society.
Brian died two years ago today, at the too-young age of 60. It’s possible the brain tumor that would kill him had already begun its dark work when we shared an evening of stories at the Skagway Brewing Company.
But his stories live on — in his books, in memories, and especially in the way he taught us to see.
If you’re conning someone into something she doesn’t need, that’s the kind of selling that gives selling a bad name.
If, on the other hand, you’re providing something she needs that helps her make the change she’s seeking to make in the world, you’re serving rather than selling.
If you’re genuinely creating value and helping others get where they’re trying to go, and you’re not trying to swindle or gouge anyone, it’s probably fair to charge for your service.
Colin Steele 