Worth doing Badly

“If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly”. 

This is true because you start by doing something badly until you know how to do it. If bad is measured compared to people who are already doing it. If learning is not recognised as a necessary part of the process. 

We are better at that when we are kids, because most kids don’t receive a salary. Our judging system is different. Marks are a communication tool, just like money... except they usually aren’t constrained by supply and demand. 

With a functional education system, there is capacity for lots of students to do well. If well is judged by knowledge. 

As soon as education is judged by money and jobs, then nice disappears. 

Not enough jobs that require the skills you have? Not enough jobs paying more than you spend? Not enough jobs in the type of work you want to be doing? Cold, hard, reality. 

As a child, someone (normally your parents) holds space for you to be bad. Gradually, we stop holding space for each other. As an adult with responsibility, you need to get the balance between focusing on things supply/demand tell you to do, and holding space for yourself to be bad. 

One of the things that sucks about being an adult is we stop doing a lot of things we love, because we filter what we do, not only by what we are good at, but what we are best (relatively) at. We cut off parallel sources of joy.

Little Rugby Players

Big Man Holding Space

Receiving Advice

When you get advice, you are asking what that person would do if they were in your situation. That person is not you, and only knows what you have told them, in the way they have understood it. Once you have heard the advice, you can filter it for the bits of information that make sense to you in your world. 

A danger in giving advice, arises with the expectation that it will be implemented. That is not advice. That is an instruction. It is true that if there is no evidence that the advice has any impact, the person giving the feedback is unlikely to continue giving it. If the recipient does not seem open to it. If they are feigning interest without genuine listening or learning. There is a dance going on. 

There needs to be real curiosity, but also an acceptance that advice is autobiographical and projects experiences onto someone else. Not everything is going to land. There still needs to be clarity about whose decision it is. Otherwise, you get into a situation where responsibility does not walk hand in hand with authority. 

Similarly, when advice is being given... it is not a debate. The person listening doesn’t have to defend themselves. There may be clarity needed, or additional context required, but you don’t have to convince the advice-giver to act in the way the decision-maker would.

Oculus hoc est (1619)

Golden Calf

The reason some industries struggle to transform is because they need to maintain the illusion of excellence through artificial barriers to entry. I, like everyone, obviously only have limited exposure to my own bubble. But, in my bubble, the reason I was surrounded by white men is because the bubble was built by white men. Investing is really not complicated. If you can’t take someone and teach them how to be a good investor, the fault lies with you, not them. If you can’t take someone and teach them to be a good investor, it is because you are protecting your privilege. You are protecting your club. You are worried you might train them and then they will leave. You are worried that your selection criteria will be shown up to be unnecessary. I do believe there are things not everyone can do. Like sprinting. Not everyone can run a sub 10 second 100 metres. Investing is not one of those things. There are no gods. Just false gods. If you are in a business that is not transformed, it is the people in charges fault. Fullstop.

False Idols

Building Bridges

Playing the Corporate Game involves not burning bridges. When it comes to interviews, reviews, and exit discussions, senior people will regularly bemoan the lack of honest, meaningful, feedback. Honest  feedback isn’t the same thing as true feedback. We are all projecting our stuff. So if your feedback is pointed, it is often a reflection on you. That is why people know to hold back. Otherwise they are exposing their bits. Honesty will get held against you in promotions, compensation, and the quality of references you are given. Many references simply confirm the work dates. Many “weaknesses” are “I am a bit of a perfectionist”. So I get why people don’t want to talk about their black lives matter experiences in white majority companies. They don’t want to be the idiot who takes the request at face value. Smart people know that when a boss says, “This is my view, but it’s your decision”. They mean, “Just do what you are told”, but want to lie to themselves that they can delegate. Corporates like delegating responsibility, but not authority. Few people will take responsibility for why we are having the black lives matter conversation. People will be honest when bosses stop playing games.

Hot Capital

I am an Anti-Apartheid Activist. I grew up in the regime that gave Separateness legal form. That makes defending and encouraging the four freedoms of movement (Capital, Goods, Services and Labour) close to my heart. But Spidey, with freedom comes responsibility too. A criticism of “Hot Capital” is that money just flows in and out without commitment. Real wealth creation takes time, so if you are making “investment decisions” based on less than a 5-10 year period, you aren’t investing, you are speculating or trading. The “Investment Behaviour Penalty” is the difference between what investment funds return, and the return achieved by underlying investors. Usually investors chase returns, switching between funds and in and out of cash as if they can guess short term market movements. Imagine if a real business owner did that? A stock is a slice of ownership in an underlying business. It isn’t an abstract idea. Imagine if every time something went wrong, an owner sold the business? Real creativity comes from the ability to endure through challenges, and respond with the resources available. It’s not a game. You don’t play the market. You commit to something and you build.

Responsibility

Post Work World

There are two big problems with the idea of a “Post Work” world I have discovered since I stopped being an employee five years ago. We build everything around work. The first question people often ask you is “what work do you do?”, and we ask children, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”. In a way that embeds the idea that you are defined by the label of work. A regular question artist or writer friends of mine get asked is, “do you make enough money out of that?”. The two problems are Conspicuous Leisure and Conspicuous Wealth. If you can’t visibly demonstrate what progress you are making, you look lazy or lost. If you aren’t working for money, you look greedy. Money is the most conspicuous demonstration of progress. You don’t have to understand what someone is doing if someone else is willing to pay them. The easiest way to free yourself from financial pressures is to control your expenses. But if you have an Engine, you have to explain why firing bits of it is so painful. You “have” money, but not really. It is working. I have discovered that it is very hard to create a “Post Work” life in a Work focused World.

But what are you doing? 

Pic Credit: Matt Hussey

Easily Rattled

Morality and ethics remain even when you have different religious beliefs. Even if you don’t have a higher power. They are the agreements we have with each other that allow us to cooperate and exist in the same physical space. None of us opted in. We were born without our consent. We were born with different lottery tickets. Our effort, skills and knowledge (merit?) determine much of our success, but most of that is determined by the lottery of geography, genetics, prejudice, and social networks. I am no longer religious, but I still have deeply held beliefs about right and wrong. I try hold them loosely where they don’t impact others. But fury still bubbles at injustice. I am easily rattled. Fury isn’t that helpful, but there are lots of big shared problems (Climate Change, War, Poverty, Pandemic, Financial Meltdown) where we have to have the horrible conversations we would rather not. We have to figure out how to have a shared conversation despite different world views.

Noise or Music