Renewal

/1 Comment/in /by

Sometimes, new is the only way through

 

If you are reading this post anywhere near its publication date, you’re reading it on a new website that is the result of many professionals’ hours of toil.  Over the past months, I’ve taken the time to think through a new brand, a more articulated approach to WGP’s work, and a clearer expression of my vision for Wilson Growth Partners.

These are all signs of renewal.  Specifically, they are, I hope, the outcome of and a significant hat tip toward the clients who partner with WGP. And all of this has me thinking: There is a time for and a need for renewal of everything.

With apologies to the Byrds, King Solomon said it best when he said there is a time for everything. I thought it worth a few reflections on Ecclesiastes as this journey of client service I’m on has developed; I do this in the spirit of acknowledging that the trappings of the business I have—especially this blog and website—represent in and of themselves a renewal and redirection on my own journey, but not the depth of it.

I’m just going to pick a few of Solomon’s thoughts (from Ecclesiastes 3 for those looking for the richness of the actual text and not my meager writing here) and reflect for a minute on each.  Maybe you will gain from them as I have over the years.

For sure, the art of renewal is not knowing exactly when it needs to happen but knowing that it needs to happen in the first place. Without that knowledge, we all get bogged down by ourselves or by others.

So…

…A time to plant and a time to uproot 

I’ve been in a few organizations over the years.  During that time, I’ve counseled dozens of managers who, despite their own rationalizations, knew that it was time to uproot.  They endowed their current circumstances and (perceived in almost every case) stability with mystical powers over their own well-being.  I have also, I confess, remained in a role for at least a year longer than it took to gain clarity that uprooting was due. So I understand the inertia of endowment.  Maybe this is you?

On the other side, I’ve witnessed aimless professionals floating through a litany of roles and companies, trying to find “it” while never allowing roots to form. They fall into a trap of seeking meaning, but they move too quickly—they want it all, and now, and they allow those wants to create an aimlessness that is as sad as the rootedness of those who stay too long. Remember, inertia also means it’s hard to stop moving.  Maybe this is you?

…A time to tear down and a time to build

Tearing down old edifices is hard. An edifice in your life might be as simple as the way things have always been done, or it may be an entire institution that simply isn’t working (and, yes, I mean companies, but also relationships, contracts, and any other untenable situations).  Renewal depends on the ability to tear down; it requires strength, but also the ability to look at old things in new ways.  Leaving a job or a company or a leader, perhaps particularly when you feel sorry for them because you know your departure will hurt their effectiveness, is still a form of tearing down.

More to the point, tearing down old processes and ways of working can be hard. For some, finding efficiency in an organization for those within it can be extremely difficult. But for others, it’s quite easy, and they can tear down old institutions with ease.

The challenge, however, is finding renewal through building; building is also hard.  For those who specialize in tearing down, cutting costs, restructuring organizations and the like, building is the hardest thing, and they lose the knack. Finding the time and place to build in our own individual lives can be equally hard.

…A time to keep and a time to throw away

Clutter gets us all.  It can be the physical clutter of paper, documents, or other things, or it can be the mental clutter of divided loyalties, missions, loves, and joys—both can be toxic.  Finding renewal through deciding what to keep and what to throw away may very well be one of the simplest and best ways of starting.

For a professional services firm like mine, the keep/throw away dichotomy can be defined through the clients we choose to continue working with vs. those we choose not to, and it can also be the topics we choose to do more of vs. those we choose to defer.

In operational excellence initiatives, a massively valuable starting point tends to be the 5Ss. That is, the first visible and engaging step in finding operational improvement is to Sort, Straighten, Sanitize, Standardize, and Sustain: decide what to keep and to throw away.  Oh, and do it visibly, so that others get it—if it’s good for the shop floor, it’s good for the rest of us.

In other words, what am I keeping today and what am I throwing away are great starting points for renewal.

…A time to be silent and a time to speak

 

Many of my posts, now that I look at them, can be categorized as arising out of an ethic—a strategic outlook—that revolves around self-respect.  This final piece of guidance on renewal that I’ll pull from Solomon is another of those: We all need to know when it’s time to be silent and when it’s time to speak up.  We all need to be clear on when enough is enough when it comes to behaviors we can no longer tolerate or ethics that have gone off the rails.

Related to the above, renewal depends on breaking the silence. The silence may be internal to your own heart or it may be very external, but the first step of the immortal 12-step process is speaking up: You must “Admit it.”

All of which is to say, if we are seeking renewal, we have to admit it; at the least we have to admit it to ourselves, but we might have to admit it to others also:  Solomon was right.

So what…

Renewal…True renewal, in a professional, personal, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual sense, is two-sided, and Solomon laid this out so eloquently so long ago.  You and I can find renewal through moving, changing, uprooting, and, yes, being born again. We can also find renewal through stopping, reflecting, growing roots, and, yes, dying a little bit here and there.

This professional journey—the one we’re on for only part of our lives—is highly responsive to how we renew it; a promising career can wilt from too much movement, and it most certainly can wilt from being planted in the wrong ground.

Sometimes, new is the only way through.

So, go and reflect on renewal now. Oh, and enjoy the new website and blog. Please leave a comment if you care to.

5 Experiences You Need

/2 Comments/in /by

My career has been shaped by 5 core experience types. Perhaps those just starting out can get something out of these reflections.

I’m fortunate to have held many jobs over my lifetime (actually, growing up, I was “encouraged” to earn money). Fact is, things like shoes and gas cost money. I’ve held the following jobs in my short life (things that the Social Security Administration would know I’ve done…):

Farm worker (corn picker, potato grader, possibly not-so-legal farm truck driver)

Lawn mower

Roadside watermelon salesman

Retail sales associate

Ice delivery boy

Bouncer

Waiter

Dishwasher

Material handler

Loan processor

Investment analyst

Professional athlete

Production planner

Financial advisor

Cold caller

Tutor

Writer

Venture capital analyst

Management consultant

Corporate strategist

It’s a lot.

Now, before you say what a friend of mine said last weekend—”You sure have kicked around a lot in your career,” you must understand that necessity is the mother of work. I grew up with a healthy ambition to play sports coupled with limited sources of funds. The seasonal reality of the sports I played meant that I would cycle through work and sports in a periodic manner—finding a new job every few months through high school and during the summers in college to keep money in my pockets.

I’m blessed because of it; it gave me perspective. So I figured I’d share a reflection on what I think are the best experiences I’ve had from that long litany. I don’t mean the best in terms of my resume—I mean the best in terms of roles that taught me how to want to be a better professional.

I’d argue that these are 5 experiences that you need in order to grow as an effective but empathetic professional.  This is all, of course, one man’s perspective.  They are:

1. Sales. Any kind of sales

You haven’t really lived until you’ve cold called. As a relative introvert (when it comes to work style), I absolutely hated the notion of reaching out to people by phone or door to door, but  I also got a lot out of having had to do so. Once you have called on people and endured a healthy, consistent stream of rejection, you learn that being an A student really isn’t worth much in the real world. The real world is messy.

It’s also healthy to have had to sell things that are easy to sell. I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to sell watermelons roadside during part of one summer in my teen years. It was a product that sold itself (although it never hurt to break open a melon and give people a taste).

As you get older and/or as selling gets more intricate and complex, the experience you gain from selling early on—the experience of influencing and dealing—becomes valuable in every environment. I’ve never seen a truly effective CEO who had no sales in his DNA. Do it. Sell something.

2. Personal service of any kind

Waiting tables is an example of a formative experience that anyone should have. When you provide a service in real time that people will reflect on, assess, and compensate in real time, you become attuned to other people in ways that I’m not sure you can find elsewhere.

There are all kinds of personal service jobs that fit here, ranging from the elite (concierge) to the important but more menial (shining shoes). What they have in common is the need to live up to another person’s standard at least once in your life. The value of that empathy, even if it’s merely learned and not intrinsic, is exceptional.

3. Work with a deadline

Having to work until the wee hours or through significant pain to deliver on a deadline is a formative experience. Learning to manage around deadlines as a writer, analyst, consultant, or delivery boy means learning how to assess a situation in terms of resource needs, capacity, timing, and costs.

Deadline work also teaches you to manage pain. Nothing taught me that better than football games. When you play ball, the game kicks off not matter what state your body is in, so you get ready, and you deal with the pain.  I always appreciated what I recall famous football coach Bobby Bowden once said about an injured player of his:

“He’ll be in pain, but we have a ballgame, and pain don’t matter.”

Deadlines can be tough.  Learning to answer the call regardless of pain is valuable.

I’m learning as I age that there are generational differences with respect to deadlines. I’d go so far as to say that there are some age cohorts in the workforce (ahem…millennials) who have, as a stereotype, significantly less appreciation for the urgency and precision that deadlines can demand. When those people mix with others that are more delivery oriented…they lose. Understanding what deadlines are and how to commit to and manage around them comes from critical experience.

4. Work that requires you to write

I first became a published author when I wrote an article entitled “Venture Capital in the Not-So-New Economy” while moonlighting for a consulting firm in 2001. I was volunteered to write a series of blogs (under deadline, surprisingly enough) for BusinessWeek Online while in graduate school, and now I write for fun. I have always found the absolutely necessary habit of stopping, structuring, and thinking when writing to be instrumental to my later career. Clarity of thought is a rare thing—I always strive for it, and sometimes I achieve it. Writing as a job and as a hobby is a fantastic developmental pursuit.

5. Work where there is no safety net

I still have in my file cabinet (somewhere) a two-year contract with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers. There is likely no more pure meritocracy in the for-profit world than an NFL roster. You either produce, or you are cut. You tend to know where you stand right away, and  I certainly did—I lasted a few preseason games, and I was cut. I “failed.”

But that failure has made the rest of my career a cakewalk.

I spent more than 7 years as a client service staffer (that is, on the tip of the spear) at the world’s most renowned professional services firm. That firm is known as much for its brand and talent as for its “up or out” career development policy. There was, once again, a distinct feel that you either perform or you will be cut. While the environment was more humane than the NFL, this model was high pressure. It was a social contract understood by all. It made you sharp, and it created focus.

Once you’ve worked without a safety net woven out of bureaucracy, cronies, and obfuscation, you realize and recognize more and more of the bad behaviors that come from rent seekers and moochers. You also notice the really bad ones—the ones who tell everyone else that it’s a meritocracy while really just politically and financially feathering their nests. Their safety nets start to entangle their morals.

I’ve had the joy of diversity in the work that I’ve done. I’m so thankful that my life circumstances have afforded me the opportunity to work everywhere from a tractor to a delivery truck to a storeroom to a boardroom. I’m truly lucky.

I hope my perspective can be of help to you.