Lousy Work for Lousy Clients

(This builds on a previous missive about Transcendence.) The quality of your work and the quality of your clients have a ratcheting effect. When we’re new, we typically start at the other polarity—doing lousy work for lousy clients. It’s not that they’re bad or you’re bad—it’s just that you’re new. You don’t yet know what […]

Claim Your Superpowers

A superpower starts out as a characteristic. It’s something we notice about ourselves, a talent, something we like about ourselves, or something we do well. For example . . . Connecting with others Creativity Communication skills Speed Persistence Separate signal from noise Concentration Humor Adaptive Hand-eye coordination Storytelling Intuition We turn these talents or attributes […]

Four Encouragements

Sometimes it helps to remind ourselves to . . . Show Up You can’t win if you’re not on the field.  You can’t play if you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.  There’s no point in being there if you’re not really going to be there. Simply showing up consistently in a high-quality […]

The Epistemology of Selling

A great sales conversation is an exercise in epistemology. What? That two-dollar word means the search for shared truth . . . the intersection of knowledge and belief. Buyer and seller come to a conversation with a set of beliefs and things they “know.” As that conversation begins, there is no shared truth. Why? I don’t […]

The Three Phases of Work

Anything worth doing is worth doing well. If you believe that, then you know you need to put in the work. This is true of any category of human activity. Mastery comes through repetition and stacking one focused moment on another, one skill on another. When you start, progress seems to come quickly. The effort […]

Beware “Total Work”

Do any of these sound familiar? I’m taking a week off (from work) I’m leaving work early (from work) I’m shutting down for the weekend (from work) I’ll be back in ten days (to work) If any of that sounds like you, it sounds like your definition of life is a function of your work. […]