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Ep149: It's All Becoming a Blur Apr 28, 2020

Show notes

Technology allows us to do so much from the comfort of our homes. But just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Once everything is jammed into the same tech, it loses its texture and everything – personal and business – just becomes one blur.

Why is that important for business?

When we have the option of bringing everyone into a meeting now – because it can be done by the click of a button – we can make the mistake of prioritizing means instead of best outcome. There is no wrong or right, but we need to consider things like: Does this need to be a video chat, or just a call? Is there any requirement for a shared visual? Do I need to see everyone’s faces?

Now that so many things could be done in a Zoom meeting, everything requires sitting in chair staring at computer. Experiences begin to lose their texture. When everything feels the same, everything feels like everything else you have done that day. We are missing out on the sensory experience of life and are constricted to what is front of you on screen; there is a dimming of the senses that we need to be aware of. If we don’t actively work to add texture, everything starts blurring together, and even fun things don’t feel that different from work.

It’s also interesting to notice the impact of having markedly fewer unplanned interactions, or how a thing feels different when you don’t have a kinetic experience of it. Places have a different texture. As The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows so aptly describes it, there is a sense of kenopsia, or the eeriness of a place left behind.

In order to see people, we have to be more intentional about it; everything is more contrived by necessity, and we have to consider what connections we actively want to strengthen. A lot of the whimsical things of life have been lost; the nuance of experience, the surprise, is missing.

As mentioned in the Power of Moments, we mark time by moments, and our days have no distinct moments in them anymore, so everything blurs. Even things that could feel like moments are jammed into same conduit as everything else and begin to lose their distinction. Everything gets shoved into the same-shaped container. Observing the moments is the antidotes to the personal and mental fatigue. We need to find ways to add texture into our experiences again.

Resources Mentioned

The Power of Moments, by Chip and Dan Heath. https://heathbrothers.com/the-power-of-moments/

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Ep148: Missing Your Commute Apr 21, 2020

Show notes

For a lot of people, the morning commute to work has been reduced to about 10 feet. Theoretically, that is extra time we now have to do other things. But maybe that commute was exactly the break you needed in the day. So what now?

Why is that important for business?

Commutes can be a wonderful transition time to change between a work mindset and a home mindset. It’s time to think without an agenda, to decompress. It’s the lemon sorbet, helping you cleanse your palate between courses. Although a commute is inconvenient from an efficiency standpoint, it can be incredibly valuable for your mental state. Otherwise your day lacks white space and becomes one big run-on sentence that passes in a blur.

Instead of consciously using that time in a similar way, we just pack it with other activities that don’t provide the same benefit. It isn’t about having time; it’s about consciously using the time. Though not technically challenging, we can find ourselves not doing it.

“I wish for you that you live on a cul de sac because a cul de sac is that structure that surprises the city’s motion with a pause.”

(Quote from some city planner article Eliot read a long time ago that I can’t find).

You have to build these pauses into the day. That time, and what you did in the commute, might still need to be built into your routine in a new way. Our brains are built to sprint, not marathon. Even just a 2-minute pause is important. And you have to build these pauses in with intentionality.

Your routine doesn’t need to look the same as it did pre-isolation, but there is value in seeing what you used to do and considering building that into your life. You might need to weave spaces into the pattern, but the pattern doesn’t have to look the same.

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Ep147: Are You Down with PPP? Apr 14, 2020

Show notes

Are you and your business applying for support from your government during COVID-19? Your answer might say more about your style of entrepreneurship than you think!

Why is that important for business?

The very characteristics that make someone prepare for these kinds of circumstances in business are the same characteristics that make people apply for this help, regardless of urgency of need. The very thing that makes someone a billionaire, for another example, is the same thing that leads them to cash a cheque for $1.11 (or even $0.64, in Donald Trump’s case - https://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/billionaire-cash-13-cent-check-someone-actually-conducted-experiment/).

It’s interesting contemplating what would make a difference between someone who would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it, and those who just choose not to ask for help until they absolutely need it. This might have something to do with the distance in time some people can think. Some people only think a day or so ahead, while others can clearly see things a year out. If you’ve seen this kind of planning ahead modeled, it might not be natural.

It’s also possible that some businesses are thinking more about their employees and are planning ahead because they understand the wide net that is cast with their business. And those that don’t plan so far ahead might not have employees to even consider.

And for others, taking aid, like buying paper towels, can feel like a moral decision. If you don’t really need it, should you take it?

Lastly, it has a lot to do with an individual’s or business’ comfort with uncertainty. The successful businesses of the future are probably going to be those who start to grow their comfort with uncertainty and adaptability now.

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Ep146: Pandemic Emotions & Business Apr 07, 2020

Show notes

Emotions are running high right now, and while business leaders shouldn’t feel the need to become counselors, we are being called on right now for heightened awareness and a well-timed, “are you okay?”

Why is that important for business?

Right now, even in business, emotions are constantly creeping around the edges. And even our intrepid podcast favourites, Eliot and Jodi, can fall prey to the charms of frustration and emotional exhaustion. Luckily, their first “fight” (not to be mistaken with fist fight) has a lot to teach us about heightened emotions in business.

People might be coming to conversations already primed with anxiety, fear, stress and little sleep. Like a toddler who throws a fit ostensibly over a blue cup, but truly because they need a nap, we’ll need to get better at noticing when things are off. In the current state we are in, not being aware of heightened emotions is no longer a luxury we can afford.

We’ll need to get better at balancing personal needs against business needs.

Unfortunately, it can appear as though there is a fundamental glitch in our inability to grasp other people’s experiences if we haven’t had similar experiences. We need an expanded empathy and awareness for the times when we just aren’t ourselves, even without a specific reason. We need a heightened antenna as to when someone needs more space, but a business leader shouldn’t feel an obligation to necessarily fill it.

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Ep145: So, Here's My Puppy... Mar 31, 2020

Show notes

We’re not here to Pollyanna the coronavirus, but one of the things we hope we can learn from this is that business is a human experience. There is a return to humanity in business, and we are here for it.

Why is that important for business?

Like most business stories right now, this story starts with, “so I was on a zoom call the other day”, includes feral children, and ends with this lesson: we are weirdly grateful for the return to humanity in business that this is providing us. There is a process of clearing away of how you are supposed to be and to act, and the whole world is getting on board with caring less about a façade of professionality.

We can’t help but be curious to see how much of this we will retain, or will we pretend none of this happened and go back to hiding our humanity? Will we go back to limiting this sense of intimacy we are forced into now?

This crisis is stretching the bounds of what we thought was possible. For instance, we may have thought we were being creative, but it was only creative within the constructs of what we have to be creative about. Creativity never shows up at the level it does when you don’t have other choices. When you are truly hemmed in, creativity reaches a new level.

And the coolest thing is that the CEO in the room is just as likely to be the person whose pet or spouse comes crashing through the call as the intern. Whether we like it or not, we are all just humans. We have perpetuated this myth that in business, you are always supposed to have it together. But we can’t even pretend that everything is together now.

Don’t forget that you are talking to a human. Don’t underestimate the value of simply asking: “how are you?” That question used to be just an entry into the conversation you really wanted to have. But now the conversation you want to have truly is “how are you?” This crisis took it from the appetizer and made it the entrée, and we should remember how that intimacy feels moving forward.

If on the other side of this, we end up where some degree of authentic humanity remains in the soup of whatever business looks like, that will be a good thing. Business is a human experience.

What story do you want to tell?

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Ep144: The New Normal Mar 24, 2020

Show notes

“Progress looks like a new set of problems”. As you evolve towards a goal, you have new problems to deal with that you’ve never had to deal with before. Apparently, it’s also true of the opposite of progress – this time of massive uncertainty.

Why is that important for business?

Right now, as businesses process this pandemic, the definition of what it means to be a leader is changing. Leaders might want to come int and try to maintain business as usual, to set an example that it can be business as usual. But in our current times, leadership is the opposite: recognizing and adjusting to the fact that it is not business as usual.

We indeed still need to set a good example, but this is a different type of good example we have to set than we have ever had to before; we have to set the example of reacting to the circumstances vs overcoming them.

We cannot forget to pause and find ways to connect with the people that work with us and remind ourselves that these are humans going through a scary thing. They are humans, not just fires we are putting out. They are still part of an organizational family.

All the math we have used to figure out things in the world feels different now. In times of this much uncertainty, it’s not just the math on the side that is causing problems that is changing; the consequences/outcomes side of the math formula is also going to be changing and adapting. People are working on solutions and they are changing all of the time. Just as every solution leads to new problems, every new problem has space for new solutions.

Messy “good enough” is going to have to be the new excellence for a while.

We all have skills and gifts and thoughts and creativity and if we pull together, we can’t fix this, but we can make it less bad.

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Ep143: Decision Making & COVID-19 Mar 17, 2020

Show notes

There’s so much to talk about with Covid-19, you can hardly blame us for having a second episode on it. Let’s talk about the behind-the-scenes decision making happening in businesses right now as they navigate these wildly uncharted waters.

Why is that important for business?

As businesses navigate the difficult decisions that come with this unprecedented time in our world, we want to remind you that there are often no clean solutions to problems in business (see our episode Stop Ignoring the Solution https://soheresmystory.com/ep132-stop-ignoring-the-solution/). We can’t dismiss solutions simply because they come with new barriers – we don’t have the luxury right now of waiting for the perfect solution. It might not even be possible to let your values guide your decision. This requires a new way of dealing with a problem and it can be paralyzing. We aren’t used to thinking 9 steps out from our own thing. We live in a world that makes assumptions about other people’s availability that are no longer true.

On top of that, we are faced with the question: what if we’re wrong?

These are difficult decisions, and we don’t have the luxury of navigating by avoiding known regrets.

Look to other companies not for advice, but for the scaffolding that will help you make your own decision. And after we have made the decision, we have to be ready not to judge it by what others think.

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Ep142: Leadership, Courage and the Coronavirus Mar 10, 2020

Show notes

Are you prepared to deal with large scale problems, like the Coronavirus, in your workplace? Although we don’t have a ready answer for how to deal with issues like this, we do have some ideas in this episode.

Why is that important for business?

Adopting a plan for how to work through something like the Coronavirus is something to work through now. Do you have a culture of “being a hero through attendance”, where taking a sick day is a sign of weakness and powering through a sign of strength? Do you have everyone’s phone numbers available? Do you have a plan to work virtually? These are all questions it’s better to ask now, instead of in the middle of a crisis. What is your plan if you can’t go about business as usual?

It can be hard to tell when you are over- or under-reacting to a situation. Like our episode on deciding when to take your kid to the doctor (https://soheresmystory.com/ep119-the-fear-of-reaction/), making decisions on when to call it a crisis can be really challenging. There is no tidy answer.

But that’s the thing about being a leader: many of the decisions that come in front of you are between two or more things that are varying degrees of bad. You often have to chose with limited information and lots of unknowns, and it’s easy to start white knuckling your hold on “not wanting to be wrong”. “Right” is just the best you can do in the moment; often, we’re aiming for the least regrets possible.

What story do you want to tell?

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Ep141: Metaphor and The Danger of Words Mar 03, 2020

Show notes

Feeling misunderstood? Maybe you need a little metaphor in your life!

Why is that important for business?

“Metaphor is how we nail the jelly of reality to the wall”.

Joe Moran, from First You Write a Sentence. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38470061-first-you-write-a-sentence

So often, we feel like we have good communication - we think everyone knows what is meant by a word, but everyone has their own perspective of how they imagine that word.

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

George Bernard Shaw

If someone says “stability” and one person thinks they mean financial independence and one thinks they mean flexibility, we are now living on separate islands, trying to have a conversation and make decisions. If you use metaphor, however, it takes people out to the fuzzy focus of a thing, where you don’t get stuck on wordsmithing and things become somehow more clear.

This isn’t necessarily about stories – stories are where we draw metaphors from, but metaphor is a stage above. Stories can have same risk as words do – they are often too precise and seem to reflect just one situation. Metaphor allows you to create a widely applicable construct that you can use to navigate and define numerous situations. It gets at the intent behind the words.

Against all odds, clarity can actually come from the abstract.

While metaphor can’t claim to be exact, it’s better than the alternatives because it gives you your best shot at alignment. It creates a dotted line around the sensations and meanings of things, and the intent of the space. If we can draw line about the intent behind a thing, we don’t have to be as precise about the pieces or words.

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Ep140: Remember This One Thing Feb 25, 2020

Show notes

College is a really big buying decision, and it can teach us a lot about buying decisions in our business, and why it’s important to not just give information, but connect to wants, desires and fears. And potentially, to help people discover wants they didn’t even know they have (like bespoke librarians!)

Why is that important for business?

When making a sales or onboarding presentation, it can be interesting to notice what businesses (or colleges) decide to highlight. With colleges, you are speaking to prospective freshman and, often, their parents about one of the biggest decisions they will make, and you have the opportunity to speak to all of their wants and desires and fears. But if you focus instead purely on information – like tuition and financial aid – you miss an opportunity to connect on an emotional level. And ultimately, these are emotional decisions.

These conversations are an opportunity to reflect your values. Too often, in a misguided perception of what people actually care about, we miss an opportunity to demonstrate these values and help people connect to them. You want to always make clear: “if you walk away from this meeting remembering nothing else, remember this.”

There’s a difference between knowledge – which is useful and important – and giving someone the feeling of being part of something. You need both. Stories are a great way to demonstrate your values for people – they confirm parts of your culture that information might not be able to.

It’s important not to forget that you are talking to humans who have wants, desires and fears, and sometimes those wants, desires and fears often sound like things 5-year olds say. If you can speak to those first, these conversations will be more successful.

What story do you want to tell?

So, that's our story... now, we want to hear yours!

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