On taking advice from friends and frames of reference

A few posts back I wrote about a friend of mine who gives me a good reality check when I need it. It also got me thinking about the kind of advice that we take from friends and what it is based on.

Everyone sees through their own frame of reference. If you want good advice, it's really important to understand just what frame of reference your adviser is speaking through.

At any executive level advisors are deep experts in their field, when companies hire consultants, they also hire deep experts in the area they seek to improve - even when it seems like it's a general area like "competitive advantage" or "process consultant". In general you won't find a CEO going to a risk consultant for the next audacious business idea and you wont go to the guy responsible for your last crazy business venture (successful or otherwise) for a detailed risk assessment, because their frames of reference are just way off for the particular areas where help is needed.

When I spoke to my friend about a few changes happening at work, i was a little stunned at just exactly what I got back - I got every reason that I shouldn't do it, everything that could go wrong and every reason I should stay where I was. I was stunned at first - but eventually had a good laugh at myself when I realized that I'd just asked my friend the senior risk consultant from a major financial firm about a new job - of course she was going to give me the risks, her entire frame of reference is risks. Later on when I spoke to another friend of mine - a senior sales consultant with a major IT company, I got entirely the opposite - what a great opportunity I had to do something great, she wasn't better or worse, her frame of reference was entirely different - and based on the views of two experts, I came out somewhere in the middle - leaning to the optimistic side because I'm a terminal optimist.

Too infrequently we do not consider the frame of reference of the person from whom we are seeking advice or discussing a problem.

We also don't understand our own frame of reference.

A frame of reference is something that developed over years, it isn't really controllable on a day by day basis, the best you can really do is steer it in a particular direction and be aware of the gaps that you have - it's the gaps that are really important because they represent your blind side,

Filling gaps is where advisors become really valuable - and there are many ways to identify your gaps. The best place to start is probably personality tests - myers briggs or disc or any one of a hundred others. Look for the areas in which you score badly so you can find people who are strong in the areas you aren't.

A second place to try is your own job function. In almost any organization of a reasonable size you'll be able to find the jobs that are naturally at odds with yours - marketing and finance, sales and operations, find someone who represents the opposite philosophy to yours and ask them lots of questions - seek advice on particular situations, ask them what they'd do, you might be surprised at the insight they have based on a different frame of reference.

Understanding your own frame of reference isnt an easy task - and it's actually harder in areas that you know something about. We have a the tendency to automatically underestimate the size of the things that we don't know we don't know. Developing an understanding of your blind spots really starts with deciding that there are people who know more about all kinds of things than you do - not always an easy task.

A couple of key things to remember every time you seek advice:

• Consider your sample size - one person doesn't generally make a total picture unless it's the Dalail Lama or they're a deep expert in exactly what you're talking about.
• Consider the sample size of the person you're talking to - if they've experienced something related to what you're talking about once they're better than nothing, but maybe not much.
• It's the unknown unknown that will get you most times - in these cases ego will get you every time and a mentor or a deep expert will save you most times.

Lifelong learning, the law of averages and when always doing what you've always done gets less

The saying goes "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got".

It's not really true though.

What the saying forgets is that while you're out there doing what you've always done, other people are doing things just a little differently - which advances the status-quo, ups the average.

What the saying should be is "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get slightly less than you've always got".

In reality, you need to do just a little more every day if you even want to keep up with the world around you.

Large companies in general do this pretty well, the ones that have managed to stay around and stay profitable for any length of time all have programs in place to make sure that they're just a little bit better every day. They call it continuous improvement, TQM, Six Sigma, Lean...whatever, it's the same thing - being better every day.

It's a pretty simple concept, do something better each day - you can do this in a thousand ways that aren't difficult, they just have to be thought about in a systematic way and turned into repeatable habits and processes that you can live by. Where it gets tricky is when you're trying to get ahead - then you have to be a lot better every day, you cant just increment, you have to innovate.

Innovation is something that you have to be open to and motivated for, it requires that you lose the ego that says “the way I’m doing this now is the best way it can be done” - there is ALWAYS a better way, in some cases it’s just not worth the cost, but it’s still there and one day, it will probably be worth the extra cost.

Really good innovation generally requires deep, specific knowledge or insight brought from another place where you have deep knowledge. The deep knowledge for a lot of people it comes from university or some form of tertiary study, but if you didn't do those things, that’s OK - the law of averages and compound interest seems to apply just as well to study and knowledge acquisition as it does to everything else.

The application of the law of averages here is simple - if you learn a little every day, but you do it EVERY day, and you stack it up, consistently over time, you’ll develop some seriously deep knowledge - or a lot of simple knowledge about a lot of different things - and depending who you believe, that’s just as good for solving complex problems.

The important thing is that you’re thinking and learning, not only does the mental exercise do you good, after a while you begin to see problems in terms of other problems you’ve seen - and that’s when your average really starts to compound - and it’s the compounding that makes the difference, if you read one page more per day than someone else, that’s about 2 books per year and over your lifetime, it’s 140 books - and that’s just a page, imagine how far you can go if you read 10 more pages per day than someone else.

If you’re looking to get ahead of the people around you, you don’t necessarily have to have a better degree or higher level qualification - you just have to out average them (and then work hard applying what you’ve learned).

Key takeaways:

1. Getting what you’ve always got is fine - but in reality, you’re going to get less if you do the same things to get it and if you only do a little bit more, you’re probably only going to break even.
2. Getting more comes from being better every day - working at it, systematically, out averaging the competition in the learning stakes.
3. Knowledge has a time value - keep your average up and keep what you’ve learned compounding for the best results.

Try it out - chances are that if you’re still reading at this point you feel like you’re getting something and you’re already on your way. Take some of the thinking from this post and use it, find a book, join a discussion group, read a magazine related to your job or something you want to be good at - whatever, just put the time in every day as part of the routine and see where it gets you - it might not go where you think it’s going to, but at least you wont always be where you’ve always been getting what you’ve always got.

The positive power of feeling inadequate.

I have a great friend.

She's a chronic over achiever - the kind of person who hasn't really ever failed anything - and this isn't an accident, she's smart, well educated and is quite capable of working anyone else I know into the ground. Most of my life I've been measuring myself against her. It's not flattering.

I've got a bit of an ego, I get excited by new ideas, I leap without looking. She keeps me grounded.

Every time we talk about a new thing I'm doing she gives me her take, generally I feel like a bit of an idiot, get a little depressed and then.... and this is the crucial part....

I make a better decision.

Who in your life makes you feel inadequate?

Have you thanked them lately?

Is your office layout keeping you from being effective?

I work in an open plan office..

Noise carries.

I like to listen to podcasts while i work, I also occasionally like to listen to music. The colleagues that I share the space with hate any kind of noise - to the point where any time they're around I'm forced into headphones, which doesn't work - the sound is too intense, too "right there", it forces me to concentrate on the sound instead of the work. Counter intuitively, background music actually makes me more effective by giving me something to block out.

The point is, I'm sitting with two other people who's working style is completely incompatible with mine. Downstairs there are at least 3 other people who work in a similar way to me - but they're from our engineering team (I'm in the sales team).

15 years ago it would have made sense that our office was organized by function - most things relied on paper, communications infrastructure was pretty average and everyone had an assistant of some kind (because admin work inevitably involved something cumbersome and inefficient).

These are the days of hot desks, remote working, video conferencing, collaboration tools and speed of thought communication. Concern for work life balance has lead us to build gyms and enforce responsible working hours and productivity concerns have us painting our walls green and running classes on emotional intelligence. After the walls have been painted and classes run, we send the same people back to their desks to work with the same person who's working habits have been distracting them and annoying them for years and wonder why their effectiveness doesn't increase greatly.

Next time you get a chance to move desks, try it. Sit with someone in an unrelated function who likes to work in the same environment you do, might surprise you just how much more you get done.

How to know you're doing the right things

I had a couple of good friends of mine have some outstanding results in their respective sports over the weekend, for both of them it was the result of well executed long term training program and was a continuation of a long term top 5 trend for both of them. They both have larger goals and it put me in mind of some advice that my old rowing coach used to give out on a regular basis that relates pretty well to my sales career.

"You don' have to be winning to know you're on track, you just have to make the final every week, eventually your number will come up"

Every week we would train and every weekend we would race, for him the truth wasn't in the winning of the finals - generally if we won he worked us harder because the only race he wanted us to win was the last one of the season - the national championships. Not making that final also provided an important feedback mechanism - either he had worked us too hard or something was just flat out wrong - and needed to change.

I think about it regularly when I'm selling now.

Am i consistently making the top 3? In the situations where I am, I know I'm on track - once you're in that top couple the outcome is generally fixed and will be decided based on things that you cant really control.

In situations where I didn't make the top 3, why? Sometimes it's a lack of time spent - (not enough training), or too much spent on other things (too much training), these things are fairly easy to tweak, what is more worrying is when I miss the mark completely - generally this is an indication of unfitness for competition, either because of things I didn't know or because I just missed the mark. If I'm consistently not in the top 3, that's a serious problem.

The top 3 test is a good litmus test, if you're regularly making the top 3 there's probably not a lot you need to change - a tweak here and there and some luck and your number will come up, if you're not regularly making the top 3, you've got a serious problem and need to seriously change something you're doing to get the results that you want.

Unfortunately sales rewards the winner and no one else, but not winning this time doesn't make you a loser. If you're in that top 3 every time and you're putting yourself out there on a regular basis, your number will come up eventually.

The limiting power of jargon and the importance of understanding why

Next time you use a piece of jargon, have a think about what you’re actually saying, do you know why the jargon describes what you think you’re saying?

Jargon is a great tool, it can provide a quick, simple way of describing a complex concept when among people of compatible technical knowledge - concepts like Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), describes in 2 seconds what could take hours to explain.

The problem with jargon is that we generally understand what we’re describing but often forget why it is described or done that way. We can end up either make changes to what the jargon describes without understanding their impact or limit ourselves within the confines of the jargon, preventing us from reaching our objectives.

This week I heard a piece of jargon used to describe a particular sporting team training time and method. The crux of the problem was the inability of a team member to make the time, what was lacking was an understanding of why the training time was as it was, a detailed understanding could have lead to an adjustment of the schedule to produce the same result, instead the term became a road block and the desired result wasn't achieved because the Jargon limited the capacity of the team members to think differently.

Next time you use a piece of Jargon to describe a way of doing things, make sure you understand why, and if you dont, use plain english - sometimes it can take longer to use less time.

Training, pain and failing forward.

How much of your working life causes you pain?

I ran the city to surf this year, more accurately, I made the city to surf my annual jog - and paid for it in the same way most things get paid for when you're unfit - in pain.

I was out of my depth. I didn't train. I turned up on the day and did the best I could with what i had and got what I deserved - 90 minutes of pain that are sure to be followed by a week of reminders.

It made me think back to my first couple of IT sales engagements. I walked off a building site literally weeks before them and was clearly out of my depth in every way. Clients regularly poked holes in my knowledge and sent me packing. It left me feeling pretty worthless and raised all kinds of questions. Mostly it made me wonder just what the hell I was thinking when I agreed to this job.

Two and a half years on, it's a different story. I'm well read, well studied and I know enough that when I admit I don't know something it's a small thing.

A large number of the things that have caused me pain in my working life came down to things that I didn't know, hadn't done before or misinterpreted when I got there. These were almost all avoidable - and I cant see myself making the same mistakes again because I've experienced the pain that goes with the failure.

Avoiding the second failure is mostly a matter of experience. The reason most senior executives are 40+ years of age is simply because at that age they've failed often enough that they will read most situations correctly because they've either had the failure themselves and made it through, or seen someone else make the same mistake.

Seeing someone else make the mistake can also be a matter of education. It's no coincidence that case studies are a major focus for some of the best business schools. If you've read many good management you've probably noticed that they generally follow a simple formula - they back every principle with a case demonstrating a situation in which it was effective.

The case study is a form of failure - it's helping you fail forward so that when you reach a point where the principles involved become relevant, you will recognize it and act accordingly. It's not as effective as having the failure yourself, but it's the next best thing - and far less soul destroying.

Next year I'm going to train for the run, I'm going to spend at least 3 months training specifically for the event - failing forward with the specific aim of enjoying the event. I'm not waiting around for it though, training is a habit that you build on every day. It's the same in every part of life and there's a chance that if it's not going well, you haven't trained.

Next time you fail, face a painful situation or get forced to really put in a super hero level of effort, ask yourself a few questions - Did you train? Are you failing forward effectively? Or are you just turning up on race day, hoping you can tough it out?

Business relevant IT - a performance metric supported approach

A simple management tenet from the late great Peter Drucker is (slightly paraphrased) "if it isn't measured, it cant be managed", yet in IT, measurement and benchmarking seem to be a long way from the conversation that is being had at most organizations.

How much time are you taking to measure the effects of your strategy?

Who are you benchmarking against and on what metrics? Are they internal IT or business relevant metrics?

According to George Westerman and Richard Hunter in their great book "The Real Business of IT", the companies who value their IT division as a strategic partner have one principal thing in common - the performance of IT is benchmarked regularly and communicated to the rest of the organization in terms relevant to them.

I'm about 50% of the way through their book and I've arrived at the conclusion that I need to modify my framework for IT projects, I've come up with the following as a framework to make sure that I always deliver value and to allow me to begin screening out those projects that either have a low probability of success or are going to be seen as the typical IT black hole that doesn't deliver value.

1 - Benchmark the current performance using relevant metrics.

2 - Understand the metrics that you are trying to influence.

3 - Formulate a technology strategy that will influence those metrics.

4 - Execute.

5 - Benchmark and compare your outcome with your target outcome.

Tell me what you think - I'll be testing it out over the coming months and will do a follow up post once I understand where the gaps are.