Tag: change

No single way

FabrizioLeave a comment

No matter what you read online, in books, in magazines. No matter what you learn at school, at workshops, at conferences. No matter what your boss tells you, what your teachers tell you, what influencers tell you.

There is not one single way to be successful.

The world is full of companies that made it by being ruthless, and of companies that made it by sharing. Of people who have climbed the ranks by badmouthing all the competition, and of people who have been promoted because they are good at helping others. Of teams that deliver unprecedented results by focusing on control and performance, and of teams that have changed their industry by embracing uncertainty and freedom.

The only thing that matter is your way.

You have to know who you are, why you are doing what you are doing, how you prefer to be treated and motivated, what matters to you, how you define success and what you are willing to do to achieve it. And then, surround yourself with people with which you feel alignment.

Problem is most people skip the self-awareness part and go straight to the quest of finding a job, a partner, a team, a purpose. There is not one single way to be successful, and this is certainly one to not be.

Finding new stories

FabrizioLeave a comment

We often misjudge the relationship between cause and effect.

I have been fine being lazy all my life, but since I started exercising, it’s one injury after the other.

I have always had a job, but since immigrants started pouring into our country, I cannot find anything that’s worth my time.

I have never felt remorse from trying to be better than others, but since I began listening to people, now I am stuck and cannot progress in my career.

That’s what I have always done, so why should I change now?

The reasons we find to justify our behaviour, or the lenses we use to look into the past, are never neutral. We want to feel what we are doing or did is ok, and we do our best to find reasons not to have to change.

The world around us, though, does not matter about cause and effect. Time passes, societies evolve, technology progresses, relationships degrade, people leave, and we might very easily find ourselves in a world that we struggle to comprehend.

And at this very moment, we have a choice. We can find fake comfort in the stories we have told ourselves so far or we can go out with an open heart to find new stories.

I’ll go back to being lazy to make sure I continue staying healthy or I’ll continue exercising, taking into account the fact my body is not used to it, and I might have to take it easier in the beginning.

I’ll fight against immigration to make sure there’s a job for me or I’ll check if I can update my skills to better match the needs of the modern world.

I’ll stop listening and caring about people so to make sure I can get an edge or I’ll make an attempt to help people be better at what they are doing, and who knows what opportunities might open up for me.

If you are brave enough to choose what’s new, that does not mean you have to repudiate the old at the same time. It is part of you, of the person you have become, and there’s no reason to reject of forget it.

Just don’t build around yourself a prison made of what’s been. Use it as a stepping stone to leap into what will be.

Breadcrumbs

FabrizioLeave a comment

Last week, Facebook announced its cryptocurrency Libra. The next day, The Verge’s Casey Newton released the second part of his report on Facebook moderators, those who are supposed to solve Facebook’s problem with toxic content.

This is a company that for a long time has been misaligned. While preaching connection and innovation, the platform is generating far more problems for society and communities than it is solving. The leadership is failing to address such disasters, dodging bullets and any sort of responsibilities, while focusing on metrics that very little have to do with “bringing the world closer together”.

There’s an important lesson here.

You can be successful, rich, important even by creating a product that gives a sounding board to 3,000,000 pieces of toxic content every day. That manipulates democracy and facilitates genocide. That steps on basic human rights and gives away users’ data for illegal purposes.

But at the end of the day, what do you want to leave behind?

Concerted efforts

FabrizioLeave a comment

Management has gotten a bad reputation, while leadership is on the mouth of every person inside modern organisations (often with a mistaken sense).

And yet, both management and leadership are needed. In different moments, though.

Leadership is what happens in between the moments we are managing. Managing is helping people what they did yesterday, but faster and cheaper. Management is staying the course. Leadership is taking the leap, doing something that might not work. Pointing to a problem, a challenge, an opportunity, and saying “I am going over here, who wants to come?”.

Seth Godin, Akimbo s4e14

A good question for a leader is “where do we go next?“.

A good question for a manager is “how do we serve more people?“.

Managers and leaders can work together. In fact, an organisation is better off when equipped with managers and leaders that interact, work together, respect each other. And appreciate when it’s time for the other to take the stage.

In both cases, though, it’s important to remember that one of the key resources a manager and a leader have to allocate, motivate, deploy is people. Indeed, the main problem today is that we have managers and leaders who barely understand their role, and certainly do not grasp people. Both “where do we go next?” and “how do we serve more people?” are concerted efforts not formulaic spreadsheets.

Informing change

FabrizioLeave a comment

When a decision is made to leverage emotions, the stage is set for heated and emotional discussions.

A tragedy happens, and it is the duty of those who inform the public to report it. Yet there are at least two level of discretion.

The first one regards the elements that complete the information. Would a written report be enough? Should it include a picture? Should it include graphic imagery? As a thumbnail, perhaps? An audio file capturing the very tragic moments? A video? A dispairing interview?

The second one regards the context we provide for the information. Was that a tragic isolated event? Was that part of broader topic? Are there policies in place that led to this? Are the ties clear? Is there people to blame? Are there other events that are related? Did this ever happen before?

There’s a race to the bottom in news organisations, one that is driven by the fear of being left behind. And so, if my competitors are doing something that drives traffic, so should I. The problem with this is that it makes the (almost) totality of the public discourse trivial, instinctual, emotional. It does so news after news, in a continuous cycle of resentment, repulsion and frustration. For the most part, it leaves all of us at a superficial level.

That’s not how change is informed.