Clarity of Purpose

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Going into the altMBA a few months ago, I had two very similar goals. To develop better:

  • Clarity of thought
  • Clarity of purpose

Clarity of thought is a big reason why I’m writing every day. Each post comes from a small idea, which could just go out as a Tweet or something, but instead I spend more time to unpack it figure how where I really stand.

Clarity of purpose is a lot trickier. This mostly revolves around my role at GreenMellen, as I’ve spent the last decade slowly moving from a developer into more of a leadership role.

As I discussed with my groups in the altMBA, a big part of this is getting out of the weeds of the company. The problem is that I consider myself to be a pretty good “weed-eater”; I focus a lot on productivity and getting things done, but that’s less where my role is needed these days.

Clarity Breaks

I’ve mentioned them before, but as the name would suggest, regular “clarity breaks” might be a routine I need to get back into to help with my two “clarity” goals.

Between altMBA and poor weather (I generally prefer taking clarity breaks outside), I’ve been pretty bad about regularly taking them lately. If those clarity goals matter, then it’s time for me to get back into a good habit of taking clarity breaks.

Thoughts on taking the altMBA

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I recently finished taking the altMBA, described as “an intensive, 4-week online workshop designed by Seth Godin for high-performing individuals who want to level up and lead.“

Intensive is a great word to use. Throughout the four weeks, you work through 13 separate writing prompts. They ask us not to reveal the nature of the prompts, but they are around things such as goal setting, decision making, sales, and much more. They’re quite thought-provoking.

I estimate I spent about 35 hours a week working through this, so adding 140 hours of work to my month made for quite an intense experience.

Groups are gold

Throughout the process, you work with a variety of groups. At least in our case, things broke into three levels:

  1. Everyone in altMBA class 46, which was around 120 people.
  2. Everyone in my cohort, which was around 20 people.
  3. My “Learning Group” for the week, which was 3-5 people out of those 20, changing each week (with some duplicates in later weeks).
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You get to know your 20 people very well, and you also get to know many of the others when interacting in various settings.

During each week you’d go through three of the writing prompts with your team, in three phases:

  • Write the prompt. Simply reading what they want you to write about can take a few hours per prompt. I loved it! Most prompts included a few blog posts to read, some videos, and various other material, ending with “and now you should write about…”. When you finish writing, you publish your entry for the group at large.
  • Leave comments. The next day, you go through and leave comments on other posts, and people do the same for yours. “Leaving comments” is putting it lightly, though. The process of how to leave comments is something you spend many hours on, as learning to give (and receive) insightful comments is key to the process. (Note: “That was great!” is not a helpful comment.)
  • Write a revision. The following day, you go back and write a post-script on your original posts, with new insights you have based on the comments left by others.

Then you repeat — 12 more times.

To help out, each prompt comes with a significant block of time for your Learning Group on a Zoom call. These are the key. The great (but challenging) thing with altMBA is that it’s not inexpensive, and not everyone gets in. You have to work hard just to get into the program, meaning the people in your group tend to be amazing individuals. I felt out-classed the entire time, which made me work that much harder.

Set aside time

I’m sure they’re constantly revising the flow of things, and I won’t get into details for the sake of your experience, but blocking huge chunks of time on your calendar is essential. In my case, having the full support of my family and work team were required to make it happen, and they were all amazing during the process.

When I first received the course agenda, I knew to block out the time for the Zoom calls but I wasn’t sure what else. I thought it might be wise to block out 3-4 hours before each item was due to make sure I had time to work on it, which was ideal.

For me, though, the best part was blocking out my entire day on Monday. It kind of happened on accident the first week, but I made it happen on purpose for each of the following weeks.

Each Monday, at least in this season of altMBA, is when you receive your three prompts for the week. Having the day available to dive deep into them, watch all of the videos, read the posts, take notes, etc, was incredible. I used Roam Research to help with my note-taking, which worked out very well. When each prompt then came up for our group during the week, I could skim back over things and dive in.

Is the altMBA for me?

I really can’t begin to answer that for you, but reach out if you have questions and I’ll try to steer you in the right direction. Everyone I met through altMBA came into the program with a different goal, but most were people that wanted to become better thinkers and leaders.

The time spent just thinking and talking and dissecting ideas with amazing people made everything worthwhile. I came out of the experience with more clarity of thought and a lot of business tips and ideas, but also with much greater empathy for those around me.

If I could go back in time and take it again, I 100% would. I encourage you to check it out for yourself at altMBA.com.

“Good job” isn’t all that good

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I’m trying to work on how I give thanks to those around me. I feel like I’m pretty good about giving frequent thanks when it’s appropriate, but I’ve realized (in part from books like Thanks for the Feedback, and in part from other conversations) that my “thanks” isn’t all that good.

It’s not that giving a sincere “thank you” is a problem, but just that appreciation could be much more effective with just a bit of extra work.

“Thank you for making my favorite dinner”.

“Great job with the charts you pulled together for that report.”

“Excellent work staying focused with your delivery in that presentation.”

Not only will your message be appreciated at a higher level, the person you give it to will have more actual feedback to work with for next time, making things even better for everyone involved.

A quick agenda beats no agenda

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It’s been true for decades, and with everyone forced to switch to Zoom for the past year it hasn’t changed much — meetings without a clear agenda are often a complete waste of time.

While we have solid agendas for many of our meetings, there are times when we don’t have a chance to put together a solid plan before we start. A quick solution for that can be the “POP Model”. Just agree on three things before you start:

Purpose

Why are you having this meeting? If you can’t come up with a good answer to this, you should probably just log out of Zoom and go on with your day.

Outcome

What do you want to accomplish with this meeting? You know why you’re having the meeting, but what do you hope to walk away with? It could be a decision on a color for a logo, or agreement on the name of a product, but there should be some clear outcome that you’re aiming for.

Process

How will you make that outcome happen? This generally means assigning specific tasks at the end of the meeting so that everyone knows what needs to happen next.

If you can create a clear, detailed agenda before your meeting, that’s often preferred. If not, a quick “POP” might be a good way to help people stay on track.

Calling someone “talented” is kind of an insult

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While I’ve certainly called people “talented” over the years, and meant it as the highest kind of compliment, it might be taken differently than that.

As Seth Godin says in The Practice, “talent is not the same as skill.” He goes on to define each word:

Talent is something we’re both with: it’s in our DNA, magical alignment of gifts.

Skill is earned. It’s learned and practiced and hard-won.

It’s insulting to call a professional talented.

If someone has spent thousands of hours becoming an expert at what they do, calling them “talented” is taking away the effort and attributing it to the luck of how they were born.

Rudy sacks O’Hara in practice

A great example of this is from the film “Rudy”. If you’ve somehow not seen it, it’s the mostly-true story of Dan “Rudy” Ruettiger walking on to the Notre Dame football team and eventually getting to play in one game. When it comes to talent, he had none, but fought hard to make the team.

The running back on the team, Jamie O’Hara, is the opposite. Loads of talent, no earned skills. On the last day of practice, Rudy is pushing hard while O’Hara is coasting, and the coach laments O’Hara’s lack of effort throughout his career:

Rudy is sort of the type of guy you kinda want to hate in that scene, acting rather cocky, but the lesson holds true. Rudy had no talent, but worked to improve his skills, while O’Hara had tons of talent but was a slacker.

The best of both

Ideally, you can find something that you have some natural talent in, and then develop the skills to go with it. As famous NBA player Larry Bird has said:

A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals.

Being Pedantic

All of that said, I’ll likely still call some people “talented” as a compliment, as it’s unlikely to be taken as an insult, but knowing the difference is important.

You can’t change your talent level, but you have your whole life to improve your skills. Go level up.

Be selfishly selfless

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The idea of being selfless is great. Constantly putting others ahead of you seems like an admirable way to live. It is, perhaps, but it won’t work. In order to serve others, you need to take care of yourself first.

If you’ve been on a plane, you know the safety drill, and a big thing they point out is if oxygen masks drop down you need to secure yours before you help others. You might want to rush to help others first, but when you pass out on the floor you’re of no value to anyone else.

In his book “Life’s Amazing Secrets“, Gaur Gopal Das calls this being “selfishly selfless”. As he has said on Twitter:

Take care of others around you, for sure, but don’t forget to take care of yourself too.

We did it ourselves

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There are some professions that tend to be underappreciated until something goes wrong. Take the I.T. department at a large company, where many people will think one of two things:

  • “Things are running smoothly, so why do we need I.T.?”
  • “Things are a mess, what is I.T. doing wrong?”

You could say the same about production staff at a concert. There are dozens of people working to make sure all goes smoothly, and if they do their job correctly you don’t even think about them. Leadership can be the same way.

In his book “Create Space“, Derek Draper pulls in a famous quote from Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu:

A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: “we did it ourselves”

You see this at all levels of leadership. If you have a great boss at your job, you should feel empowered to be the person to make things happen (even if they quietly help).

On the flip side, you have people like Donald Trump that insist on taking full credit at every opportunity. I’m sure you’ve had bosses like that in the past.

Allowing people to “do it themselves” can be a tough at times, but works out beautifully for everyone in the long run.

Praise and criticism are both vapor

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In listening to a recent meditation track from Headspace as part of a recent clarity break, the focus of the clip was on this:

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Praise and criticism are two sides of the same coin. If we believe in one, we believe in the other. Better not to get attached to either.

A similar thought was written by Jack Canfield, in his excellent book The Success Principles:

What others think about you is none of your business.

That’s easier said than done, for sure. We all care what others think, and I’m no exception. As part of writing daily, though, I’m almost certain to come to a poor conclusion or take the wrong side of an argument.

Seth Godin, who I’ve mentioned on this blog many times, has said repeatedly that he’d continue to blog every day even if no one read it. He’s writing primarily for himself, not for us. That’s what I’m trying to do as well.

Hopefully the the process of thinking through my thoughts via this writing will lead to mostly good conclusions. When I get praise for my thoughts, I’ll enjoy that and move on. When criticized, I’ll try to just learn from that and move on as well.

Goals are a commitment to the process

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Setting a goal is easy enough: “Lose 20 pounds by March 1” sounds great. If you follow something like the SMART framework, that simple goal essentially checks all of the boxes.

While losing 20 pounds might be the goal, setting that goal really means that you’re committing to a process. This likely means eating less and moving more, consistently, for a period of time.

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As Imogen Roy would say:

Effective goals aren’t based on the end result; they are commitments to the process.

Wanting to lose 20 pounds is a fine goal to have, but it’s worthless if it doesn’t cause you to kick off a process to help achieve it.

Or maybe your goal is to “Read at least one book per month for the next year“. Again, that’s a great goal, but the process is key. Among other things, you now need to find appropriate books that interest you and set aside dedicated time to read on a regular basis.

In both cases, the goal is a nice thing to reach for, but the process is the magic. That’s where you learn to be healthy, develop better learning habits, or improve your life in some other way.

The process is the goal.

Don’t create followers; create leaders

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Robert Glazer said in his book Elevate:

Remember, great leaders don’t create followers. They create more leaders.

A great example of this is Nick Saban, head football coach at the University of Alabama. In his time at Alabama, 33 of his players have gone to the NFL in the first round. That’s incredible! Many of these players are now leaders on their respective teams, and much of it comes from Saban.

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That’s the normal part, though. If you’re a good coach, your players will go to the NFL; there’s not really another avenue for success like that. In Saban’s case, though, you can look at the assistant coaches he’s had that he’s trained up and have now taken head coaching positions at other schools.

As far as I can tell, nine of his assistant coaches have gone to have head coaching positions at other schools. This includes big names like Kirby Smart (Georgia), Jeremy Pruitt (Tennessee), Lane Kiffin (Ole Miss) and Jimbo Fisher (Texas A&M).

Followers come with it

Having followers isn’t a bad thing, and Saban certainly has his share of followers in terms of students and fans. It’s more about what your goals are and how you treat the people around you, especially those on lower ladders at your job.

I hear people worry that if they invest too much training into their employees, those employees might leave for other jobs and that training would be “wasted”. That may be true, but the opposite would be to not train your employees and then they don’t leave — that would be even worse.

Work to build leaders from those around you, and everyone will benefit from the results.