Category: culture

Alone

FabrizioLeave a comment

The problem with attacking those who don’t see the world as you do, with fostering an environment where outrage is rewarded, with speaking against those on your side who attempt to be moderate, with listening to others in wait for misstep, with glorifying factions and vilifying commonalities.

The problem with all of this is that soon enough you’ll end up being alone. Because when you are there, it is much easier to extend the behaviour to all those that, sooner or later, will disappoint your perspective rather than revert it to welcome different views down the line.

Even though today it might feel different, even if it might feel there are thousands who are on your side. Are you prepared to be alone tomorrow?

Comfort and necessity

FabrizioLeave a comment

If you treat comfort as if it were necessity, you’ll soon run out of steam in the pursue of it.

Comfort is unlimited, constantly temporary, almost always divisive. It is easy to forget and very difficult to reverse. Not impossible, but if you’ve ever moved from a 100 square metres apartment to a 60 square metres one, you know what I mean.

Necessity, on the other hand, is limited, pretty much stable over time, and unifying. We tend to forget about it, but when we do, necessity stings and we are brought back to reality.

When deciding where to invest your resources, material and not, make sure you understand the difference. Comfort is a mirage, necessity is concrete. Comfort disappoints, necessity empowers. Comfort blinds, necessity grounds.

Nobody likes

FabrizioLeave a comment

There’s quite a lot of time wasted in organizations doing repetitive stuff that a computer would do best. The technology is already available, yet this change is strongly resisted. For two very human reasons.

First, when you cut on repetitive tasks consistently and over time you get to a point at which you have to start letting people go. Nobody likes to do that. Of course, an alternative would be to retrain the people freed of the burden of manual tasks, but that would be two additional problems: finding a good retraining programme that is useful for the organisation, and convincing the employee who has been in the same field for thirty years that’s the right thing to do. Nobody likes to tackle more problems. And so the problems (all three of them) stay.

Then, implementing automation to cut on unprofitable tasks means taking a step back, possibly slowing down for a certain period, until the benefits of having more time starts to kick in. Nobody likes to slow down. With the illusion of continuos growth, we just have to keep going, no matter what. And growth also gives us the illusion that we can throw money at inefficiency, for example by hiring more, therefore further feeding the moster that is wasted time.

The problem is that sooner or later this kind of slack built around the delivery of value is going to take over, and your organisation will become obsolete and replaceable.

It’s an important conversation to have, and you can’t start having it soon enough.

Vertical and horizontal

Fabrizio2 Comments

How do you think at your career?

If you think at it vertically, it means you see it as a (more or less) straight line. It’s a progression, you look at where you were yesterday and make expectations about where you will be tomorrow. Of course, there might be hiccups, that we perceive as overwhelmingly negative and that we do our best to avoid. But in general what you care about is advancing, going forward.

Traditionally, careers are built vertically. Since school, we are used to approach things in terms of levels (first grade, second grade, …; primary school, secondary school, high school, …), and at certain points we are given particularly difficult tasks (exams) that might get us promoted.

This system is partially based on the assumption that what you do will stay with you, and actually accumulate throughout the years. It’s the reason why people who stay with a company for ten years are more likely to get promoted or to have a higher salary, or people that have 20-30 years of experience are more valuable on the job market than new graduates.

The alternative is to think at career horizontally. In this case, rather than looking at where you were yesterday, you think about what you have learned, achieved, experienced. Where do your skills fit best in this particular time? What type of company could use your experience with this or that? What role would really allow to put the best you at the service of the community?

There is no straight line in this sense, rather a wide variety of opportunities. You might find yourself in a position you would have not considered, just because that’s what make sense right now. You might have to accept a lower salary, just because you understand that you are needed, here and now. You might have to make a long detour, just because you want to refine a certain skill or learn a new art. I’d go as far as say that if you approach your career horizontally, all these things would not even matter in the first place.

All this becomes particularly relevant when you are looking for a new job.

If you approach the search for a job with a vertical mindset, you are narrowing down the options quite a lot. Say you have been some sort of Marketing Manager in the past four years: you’ll most likely look for some a senior marketing leadership positions, possibly at larger companies, probably in the field you already have experience with (B2B, Saas, B2C, etc.).

If instead you look at the situation from a horizontal perspective, the Marketing Manager role loses its importance, and you could for example focus on the fact you have learned how to lead people to solve difficult problems, how to present in front of a wide audience, and how to work across departments to align vision and strategy. These are all skills that are applicable to many more positions, fields, companies, industries than a simple job title is.

I am not implying that one way is easier than the other. Certainly, most of the current job market is designed with verticality in mind, both on the demand and on the offer side. And for this very reason, people often struggle to find a different way: they hit their head on the wall, they get rejected, over and over again, they feel drained and demotivated, and eventually they give up.

The way you approach things changes the way you see things. And sometimes, all you need is some more opportunities.

Your own authenticity

FabrizioLeave a comment

Consistency and authenticity are about doing what you expect of yourself, not what others expect of you.

Even when something is useless, even when nobody is paying attention, even when 99.9% of people would act differently, even when you will not get any reward. Doing that is what builds your persona, your character, your set of values, your story. And by doing it repeatedly, you are authentic.

Others are unfathomable, they falter, they change, they do not know you and what you are around to do. They know themselves, and they can choose, each one of them, for their own consistency.

Take ownership of your own.