Proceed Until Apprehended

At my high school graduation, they held a play-money casino night as our social event. One of the venues at our casino was a horse-racing game. You’d bet on your horse, they would play the video of the race and you’d see how your horse placed. Now, I don’t know if the game was flawed or someone just hadn’t read the directions, but we had odds for all future races for the evening. Same horses, same names, just a “different day” at the track. After one race, it became apparent to me that the odds for each horse in the next race were adjusted based on their earlier performance. Essentially, the future odds told you what was going to happen in the current race.

Like any good bettor, I used the available information to place my bets. It looked like a tremendous winning streak, until there were too many wins to just be luck. Then others suggested that I had the game at home, or somehow I was cheating. I wouldn’t call it cheating. I was taking the loosely formed (and mostly just implied) rules of the game and using them as best I could. By (math) skill and insight, I was cleaning up.

Rationalization aside, I don’t think I can adequately describe the anxious feeling I had as I exploited my loophole. I was so far ahead, I was sure I must be doing something wrong. It couldn’t be this easy. I felt huge pressure to stop playing the game. Eventually, I did stop.

It’s a goofy little story, but I was reminded of it today as I read Moneyball by Michael Lewis. It’s an artfully crafted story about one team’s application of objective, rational assessments to the selection of baseball players when seemingly every other team in the league uses judgments steeped in baseball culture. They’re using beliefs that are irrational. The only thing that keeps the beliefs alive is that it’s what everyone else is doing, too. General Manager of the Oakland A’s, Billy Beane, is at a completely different level as he selects ball players because they’ll perform and win games, even if they’re not the traditional prototype. It’s a massive success. As an outsider looking in, it’s sort of a “well, duh” thing, but I know it wasn’t easy. There’s a breaking of convention. Unfulfilled social expectation. People that look for how you’re cheating. The possibility that you’re wrong, that you’ll fail. It would be so much easier to just follow the same implied rules as everyone else.

The lesson, of course, is that it’s the person with the willingness to stare down those pressures and stick to a new, rational belief that finds the way to be much more effective and, perhaps, eventually change the game.

If I had figured that out in high school, I could have purchased a bigger plastic novelty item with my play money.

I wouldn’t say it’s happened a lot, but a few times when I’m being an effective volunteer and I’m addressing an issue, I’ve been asked to take an “executive” role, like chair or board member. It’s flattering, and given the old rules of power and hierarchy, I have an immediate gut reaction to say yes.

Thankfully, I’ve trained myself enough that I’m able not to blurt out the first thing that comes into my head. You see, I don’t want to run the movement, I want to help lead it.

Organizations come with responsibilities and obligations. Being the change-junky I am, I’m usually not too keen on helping out with all those old expectations and deliverables. There’s a bright, exciting future to be had, and the old stuff seems to be a distraction to the story. Now, I know that there are some old things that still need to be done… let’s call those the fundamentals. Things like budgeting, stakeholder communication or volunteer development, but there seems to be a steady supply of people to take on those roles. I’m really thankful those people exist. I want to play where there are no rules, no expectations. It’s people taking adequate care of the fundamentals that allow for others to explore innovations and growth.

So, back to the opportunity. What to  do? The roles have offered influence, but only if you’re not too busy being distracted.

I’ve found it works well to be uflinchingly honest in what I’m capable of doing. I’ve found myself saying, “I really care about the outcomes and am passionate about the work this organization can do. I like the idea of a bigger platform, the access to resources, the ability to influence the thinking of others, but I’m not really interested in many of the conventional things being done. In fact, I’ll probably be frustrating to you as I don’t ‘pull my weight’ on some of this stuff. You can have me, but I’m not going to be very helpful for maintaining business as usual.”

Kinda sounds like my job interviews, huh?

What I’ve found is that there’s a HUGE appetite for this kind of truth telling. The response has been a ready acceptance for this kind of approach. The big hurdle here isn’t the people inviting me to join. The hurdle is in my head, and whether I’m going to embrace the discomfort of being something different than expected.

For organizations on the brink of being irrelevant, finding a way for ideas to surface and take hold is essential.

Stagnant organizations have a culture of “hanging on,” of trying to keep things as they are. With change everywhere, it’s a doomed strategy. It may feel safe to protect proven strategies, but those strategies were proven for a different environment. Reality changed beneath their feet. The world has changed the way you communicate with customers, the way you recruit employees, the outputs others value, your competitive differentiation, how you’re scrutinized by the public.. the list goes on. The rules are very, very different.

If that’s not enough to stimulate an examination of your approach, think about this: Whether you go down this route or not, some staff are going to feel uncomfortable. You get to choose who. Keep your organization as it is and the people that are most uncomfortable and feel like they’re getting forced out of your organization will continue to be the ones who best see the future. The ones that want change. The ones with the ideas.

Here’s some steps to evoke the new approaches and responsive ideas that exist right within the organization:

1) State a desire for ideas and change

OK, pretty simple, but not to be overlooked. You have to announce a desire for new ideas. You have to document it in a plan. You have to write it on a wall. You have to formalize the want. The majority of your staff won’t even start down this path if it’s not even officially sanctioned.

2) Model the habit

Take some risks. Push an idea that’s right but isn’t popular. Speak truth to power. Proudly play the heretic role. It will be noticed.

3) Create a receptive environment

There’s currently a system that grinds down aberrations. It starts with managers that don’t like surprises. It also includes policies and procedures that round the corners off of everything. This is a good place for you to be a heretic.

4) Accept some unconventional ideas

By no means do I suggest that you accept loony stuff. You’re running a business; you’re pragmatic. But if there are effective solutions that will create some healthy tension and perhaps some resistance, please don’t make compromises before you roll it out. For the sake of your organization, it’s time to make a different group feel unsettled.

5) Build the idea championing capacity of your staff

If you fail on steps 1 to 4, there will still be individuals that try to instigate change. It will cost them dearly in the short term, but some are going to do it anyway. You could have more of those. The best I can suggest to start them on this journey is to give them leadership training. Help them to examine their beliefs and challenge them to change the ones that need to be changed. If they can do it for themselves, they might start doing it for you.

By the way, I don’t see this as an a la carte menu. They all need to be done. If you want change, it’s full scale or it’s just something to prove you tried.

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The older I get, the more I see meaning, purpose and fulfillment in not-for-profit, community service activities. I’m ashamed to say that for a good long period, they just didn’t seem relevant to me. Most organizations in this category are really passive and reactive. Rarely do they reach out, market or do something remarkable. If you’re not looking, they’re not selling.

It seems to me many don’t even know (or question) if they’re relevant. They laid out their charter in about 1967 and they’re sticking to it.

In the past ten years, I’ve woken up to these organizations and how much they mean to me. Now, I sign up, I get plugged in, I participate, I wonder why it’s done that way, I shrug it off and just provide my time, I get frustrated, I decide to pull back for my sanity. Later, I try again. I come up with a good idea, it’s met with resistance… it’s sort of a circular, love/hate relationship. I’ll feel foolish if this is only my story, but I don’t think it is. I think many of us struggle with finding organizations that are willing to receive new ideas and challenges to the old model.

I tend to try and volunteer at the governance level. That may be the problem, but it’s also where I feel like I can make a difference. I’m struck by how un-strategic and short-sighted these boards can be. I guess much like our for-profit organizations, many of the “leaders” around the table are those who proved their mettle in the rank and file, doing the blood, sweat and tears-work. Unfortunately, there are different issues at a board table, but old habits die hard. Being an excellent fundraiser isn’t a strength in that discussion. Constantly pulling the discussion back to a side issue or a particular project is downright detrimental.

That table needs questions like, “why do we exist?” and “are we relevant?” Those are the earth-shattering questions that could bring these organizations back from the brink of extinction.

Personally, I don’t think it’s in the cards. More non-profits are going to dwindle away than build an evergreen culture. I haven’t lost my passion for community service, but creating alternate methods of delivery looks more appealing, even if it’s a lot of effort to start them.

I can point to two definitive instances when I had a revelation about my personal responsibility.

The first happened when I was about seven or eight years old. It was a realization that someone had been taking care of me. Before that point, I had the care-free existence that most children get to have, where everything just was. The neighbourhood was my entire world. There was no responsibility, no future to concern me and no basic needs to fulfill. Someone else, namely my parents, took complete responsibility for my welfare.

That was a long time ago and I was a little kid, but I still remember the loss I felt. I knew then that one day I was going to have to take responsibility. I was soon resigned to this new future, but I remember wishing I just hadn’t figured it out for a few more years.

What followed was a few decades of slow, incremental growth of responsibility. I went from being a child to being a kid with desires to grow. I went from being a straight-A student to being a young adult that wanted to be successful in the world. I got into management roles and areas of responsibility with work that I thought were impressive. I kept a mental note of who were at the same “level” as me. I should always be the youngest, I thought. I thought that was a good measure of my ability and my success. It was this pattern that also started to create dissonance for me. I saw that this was a path that would keep going for my entire career. Then, as the saying goes, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.”

I found myself at a leadership training course in 2005 with a man that would become my personal coach. He said leadership was “down and in before up and out.” This idea, as well as many of the practical concepts he shared that day, created the second significant revelation for me. I saw that not only was I responsible to care for myself (my epiphany as an eight-year-old), but I was also personally responsible for the way I responded to events and the way I acted. I wasn’t just there to know the answer and implement it. As an intelligent and responsible person, I could… should… decide what was the right and effective thing to do. A subtle distinction, perhaps, but it shifted me from my basic responsibility to be a proficient and market-valuable person to a responsibility to be a thoughtful and participating member of humanity.

I see now there is an entire industry of people trying to help others make this leap. The personal responsibility revelation market. If I could bottle my experience and put it on a shelf, I could be a millionaire. Alas, it appears that the revelation is destined to remain in the domain of psyches and souls of individuals. It’s a personal journey. No-one else takes you there. Having people talk about it and share their experience helps though, so I’ll keep talking about it.

I was re-reading Seth Godin’s Tribes and came across this:

It’s easy to underestimate how difficult it is for someone to become curious. For seven, ten, or even fifiteen years of school, you are required to not be curious. Over and over and over again, the curious are punished.

I don’t think it’s a matter of saying a magic word; boom and then suddenly something happens and you’re curious. It’s more about a five- or ten- or fifteen year process where you start finding your voice, and finally you bigin to realize that the safest thing you can do feels risk and the riskies thing you can do is play it safe.

A while ago, I read a Chief Happiness Officer post by Alex Kjerulf called “My job is…”

He points out that if you start a Google search with “my job is” it will auto-fill your search with the ways that search phrase is typically finished in Google. The results are fascinating, though perhaps not surprising. Here’s the screenshot of the list Alex found:

When I decided to toy around with Google Adwords, Alex’s post was in my mind. I could think of no better way than to use some “long tail” search terms that are in this same style. I’m presenting ads in the obscure, rare moment that you’re staring at your computer, at the end of your rope, unable to fathom what to do next at work. At that moment, the best my target recipient can do is type their frustration into the Google search field… viola, there I am. With my little text ad, I say:

Here’s a fun little game. See if you can find my keywords. Try a “frustration search.” If you find it, you can click on it and take up to ten cents off my net worth.