You Can't Always Get What You Want

I was 21 years old, standing about 100m from the stage at the old Wembley Stadium with goosebumps on my arms, thoroughly enjoying the moment.

It was a warm July evening and Mick Jagger was singing to me. Yes, singing to me, directly at me. It wasn't that he was looking at me or anything so obvious. It was his words. "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll get what you need". They hit me.

Now I'm not sure how I'd managed to be a Stones fan for all of my teenage years without having heard that song.  But that's how it was. It was at Wembley that I first heard the song and the timing was perfect.

I'd just graduated from Manchester Uni. It wasn't exactly a celebration. I was in fact quite seriously pissed off. I'd ended up with a grade lower than I had expected. To make matters worse I had missed it by one mark. One mark out of six hundred. You couldn't miss the grade any closer. Despite my appeal to the examiners I could not leave with the grade that I had consistently scored in coursework all through my final year.

So, I was deep down pissed off, knowing I could have done better. It's a horrible feeling, that you let yourself down, but Mick picked me right up and in the course of four minutes turned me inside out and made me feel good again.

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll get what you need".  The message was clear. You make your own success and it doesn't come free. You've got to work for it. It may not always go your way, but try hard, and you'll get your reward.

6 months later and I was listening to the same song on my Walkman sitting on a chairlift in the sun. I had my skis on and I was trying to see if it was possible to ski every high point and every low point in the Espace Killy ski area (Val D'Isere and Tignes, France). I had decided that I wanted to do a ski season and despite being flat broke with my credit cards maxed out, here I was, soaking up the sun and living the dream. Mick's words sounded better than ever because it was my own bloody mindedness that had made it possible for me to be working in a ski resort.  (Oh yes, I skied the entire area that day: non-stop in 6h15).

So, here I am working in an internet start up in 2011.  A little older, a little wiser. One thing remains true. Nothing in life comes for free. Success requires effort, persistence and belief. It also requires laser sharp focus and a view on the horizon that we're headed for. Mick was right, it's the trying, the striving, the effort that gets us what we need. No-one does it for you, you've got to make it happen yourself. You've got to try sometimes.

Wanted, Dead or Alive

There's a reality that exists where you are alive.  That's the reality that you currently inhabit, I hope.

There are also realities that exist when you do not exist.  That reality was in the past, but it will also come to be again in the future. The one where you are unborn or deceased.

Both realities are equally valid.  They just occur at different times.

Time is a dimension of the universe.  Beyond height, width and depth it's the most obvious 4th dimension.  (Physicists by the way talk about 10 dimensions in our observable universe. I can't get my head around that, but apparently it makes sense mathematically).

A 4 dimensional cube

Everything is relative.  For example, distance is relative to the person observing it.  I just moved 2cm to my right in my train seat. To the person standing on the train platform I just moved 10 metres in the same time.

Just as distance is relative to the person observing it, so is time. You are alive because you are the one observing yourself.  You cannot observe yourself dead.  But the reality of your non-being already exists, it's just that your position in time relative to it does not allow you to observe it.

If that's the case - I am already dead. I am alive and dead at the same time, just in different realities.  Fortunately I experience the reality where I am alive, not dead - and I appreciate that.

This is a strange realisation.  But strangely liberating.

Once you see life in pure relative terms with no absolutes, it starts to make more sense. You really appreciate the moment.  You wake up each day with a zest to live and enjoy the moment.  In the history of the universe, it is almost nothing.  But we know it's not nothing, it's everything.

Live life knowing you're already dead.  Try it.

If You Knew You Couldn't Fail, What Would You Do?

Have you ever seen a baby learning to walk?  Of course you have.  Now, tell me how they do it.

I'm lucky to have four kids.  I didn't teach them to walk.  They didn't teach each other.  They just got up and had a go.  First of all they started to figure out how to pull themselves up to stand against the furniture.  Then they made one or two steps.  A few weeks later and they were walking.


We all first learnt by trial and error.  


Later in childhood, we start to learn from others.  We are taught.  We go to school.  It's quite amazing to have my eldest daughter read a book to me.  She's six.  6 months ago she couldn't read.


We are taught.


There's a third phase.  Once we know how things work, we can go figure things out for ourselves.  Some kids spend hours playing tennis, some spend hours programming, others spend hours and hours making things.  Some of these kids will become the best in the world at what they do.  Literally the best in the world.  In this phase we practice.  We seek guidance, we practice some more.  We put hours and hours in.  We make mistakes and learn from them.  We practice some more.


We are self-taught and we practice.


But then - we become adults.  Some people continue with trial and error (It's called 'learning on the job' in the business world.  Some are taught (it's called 'training' in the business world).  Some practice, work long hard hours, push themselves and become the best in the world at what they do.  I'm not sure what we call these people, but I admire them.


I am more thirsty for knowledge now than I have ever been in my life.  The more I learn the more I realise there is to learn.  And I want to be the best in the world at what I do.  Why?  It's simple.  There's very little in life that beats the feeling that you get when you say 'today I did what I do best!'


Today I will do what I do best.  Will you?


Imagine a team where every person can say that.  Can you imagine what that team would be able to achieve?  It would be extraordinary.  World beating.  In fact just writing this makes my hairs stand on end - it really is something special.  It's like watching the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race and seeing the winners win.  It's awesome.  


The thing about great teams is, 1 plus 1 equals 3.  The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.  Only it's not guaranteed.  Sometimes two egotistical geniuses equal less than two because they haven't figured how to collaborate well.


So - on a practical note then, how do we build great teams where every person does what they do best and on top of that build a winning team?  


How do we make that team possible?


Here, I think are the 5 main ingredients;


1. Allow people to make mistakes.  


If we make more mistakes, we learn more.  I'm not saying that we should aim to fail.  Rather we should always be 'doing'.  Doing something means you have the opportunity to learn.  If you don't do anything you won't make any mistakes, but then again you won't learn anything.  This is the thinking behind the phrase 'fail faster'.  It's not that you should aim to fail - instead, you should 'do more faster' - because that's how you'll learn.


Fear holds us back though.  We are afraid to make mistakes in case it's not seen as successful by our peers and egos.


My wife and I were talking the other day about why she is successful at what she does.  She does business development for a recruitment firm and she needs to figure out how to book meetings with HR Managers and then persuade them to use her firm's services.  She said that you can't book meetings without making phone calls, so she has to be very persistent to keep calling until she gets the meeting.  She will keep calling way long after other people have given up.  Most people fear the rejection, whereas she doesn't.  


Her motto is "if you knew you wouldn't fail, what would you do?"  Great advice indeed.


So - as a manager, I will always say to my team, 'make decisions and do stuff.  Better to do lots and be right 95% of the time than to do a little and be right 100% of the time'.  You'll learn faster and so will I.




2. Trust your colleagues and help them to learn from their mistakes


You can only truly build a successful team if there is true openness.   I need to be open with my intentions, emotions and reasoning.  By doing so, my colleagues can help me identify what I'm doing well and what I can do better and I will learn faster.  If I do this though I am opening myself up.  I am doing exactly the opposite of what most people do in business.  It needs mutual trust, respect and willing - and it needs to start at the top.




3. Design learning structures


A great example of this is how we used to run our software development cycles in one of my previous companies.  We planned our work in two week cycles.  This was pretty effective in terms of getting things done.  The important ingredient I think that actually made it successful was that after every cycle ('sprint') we set up a 'retrospective meeting'.  This was a simple meeting where we simply asked, 'what went well, what didn't go so well and how will we in future do more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff?'  Doing this systematically requires a regular meeting slot in the diary, an agenda and a habit.  It requires structure.


Good teams consciously create these structures to become learning teams.




4. Hire people that can handle this culture


This is critical.  If you believe that you want to build world class winning teams you need to hire accordingly.  Sure you need talent and experience.  I say they're over-rated.


Just because someone has knowledge and ingredients to make a great cake it doesn't mean that they will.  And just because someone was motivated to bake great cakes in the past doesn't mean that they will do so again in a different kitchen.


What really matters is
- does this person know how to apply themselves to a challenge?
- is this person willing to open themselves up and be fully transparent with their emotions, reasoning and intentions?
- are they able to give feedback to others in a helpful way?
- are they thirsty to be the best in the world at something?  




5. Go with the flow


You cannot tell people what motivates them.  In my experience, people do best what they are interested in, not necessarily what they are good at.  I might be quite good at filing and organising paperwork, it doesn't mean I'm interested in it.  Give me a reason to be interested in it or find me something to do that I am interested in and I will do it well.  Really well.


So - as people develop in your team, find opportunities for them and help them where possible to grow in your organisation to do what they do best.   Build the team around the capabilities you have and seek out new team members to fill the gaps if they exist (and make sure you follow the points in point 4).


To conclude


Great parent allow their children to make mistakes, they teach them all they can, and they give them wings to fly and pursue their own dreams.  


In a team, we must think of ourselves as parents of each other.


And every day, if we strive to be the best we can be in what we do we'll need to push ourselves to the limit and make a few mistakes. It's the mistakes that lead us to truth.


Benjamin Franklin once wrote, 


'Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries.  Truth is uniform and narrow; it does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified'


Fail faster. Act like a child and a parent at the same time. Be the best in the world at something every day.

Thermodynamics, evolution, wealth and happiness

If I was to say to you that there's a fundamental foundation that links life, physics, wealth, happiness and effort, would you;
a) yawn?
b) laugh?
c) sit up and listen?

If c, read on. Recent reading and thinking has led me to the following conclusion;

Firstly, that the first and second law of thermodynamics hold the keys to the meaning of life. And secondly, progress and wealth are underpinned by an evolutionary mechanism that is universal.

Come again?

I guess I'll need to explain in more detail. I'm not sure I can do it in a single blog post, so bear with me as I  fire up a few synapses.

The first law of thermodynamics expresses that energy can be transformed, i.e. changed from one form to another, but cannot be created nor destroyed.

The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system.

i.e. - the universe has a finite amount of energy, the universe is an isolated physical system and energy will level out in this system.

The levelling out process is called entropy.  In it's most general sense one can regard entropy as the general decay that surrounds us.  A new car will eventually rust, a building will need new paint, food will rot, people grow old and stuff just generally falls apart.  New life however is sustained by the sun which provides energy for living creatures.

Life requires continued energy to be sustained otherwise it fades and dies. To stay alive, we need to eat and sleep.  (Doing nothing is not an option).  There's a certain amount of energy required to stay where we are; we have to keep walking forward to stand still.  Every day we need our 2 or 3 thousand calories of energy, we need to rejuvenate with our sleep.

If we do more than just stand still it requires effort.  If you want to be wealthy, it requires effort.  If you want to have a family and prolong your gene-pool, it requires effort.  There's effort required to stand still and yet more effort to more forward.

The effect of all of this extra effort is a temporary suspension of entropy.

We strive against a tide of entropy that surrounds us and the efforts we all make on a daily basis help drive humanity forward.  We have an inner drive and purpose to temporarily suspend entropy.  This drive, this striving, is the essence of life.  It gives us satisfaction, it gives us meaning and it gives us value.  I would even go so far as to suggest that it is the source of our happiness.

When considering the business landscape, you could see it in this way: businesses competing to create business models that temporarily deliver additional value.  Over time, new business models become the norm, become commoditised and so companies need to innovate (strive) to do more than stand still.  Those that succeed create wealth, those that don't decay and die.

Behind both humanity and business is a common evolutionary algorithm.  This evolutionary algorithm is a method to uncover (not by pre-determined means, but by trial and error), organism designs and business plan designs that are optimal for the environment in which they find themselves.

To make sense of life and to make sense of business, you could like me take the following view;

1. We are part of the fabric of life itself, iterations of the human species that are being continuously tweaked to be optimised for the environment we find ourselves in by an evolutionary method

2. We derive satisfaction (value) by striving to do more than to stand still and to suspend entropy as best we can

3. Businesses work by the same means, combining previous business knowledge into new business designs that can temporarily beat the competition (suspend entropy) and create value.  To win they must continuously innovate and embrace evolutionary methods in their architecture.

The laws of thermodynamics, together with an evolutionary mechanic are foundational in understanding the human need to strive and the business need to innovate.  One delivers satisfaction and happiness, the other value and wealth.  Businesses are but collections of humans so this should be no surprise.

If you are still reading this and wonder what I'm on to deliver such a stream of consciousness, there's two things you should know.  I once studied Theology and Religious Studies at University (but am currently an atheist) and that I've recently read "The Origin of Wealth" by Eric Beinhocker.  If you get a chance do read Beinhocker, it will help develop the thinking that I've scraped the surface of here.