Auditing your true priorities under pressure, how to stop avoiding uncomfortable conversations, and match behaviour to ambition.
August is traditionally a bit quieter. Northern Europeans disappear, deal flow becomes a trickle, and odds and ends get tidied.
One such tidy-up job has been a long overdue update to the Ethics Insight website For readers of this newsletter, the insights page and specifically the writing page where we host old newsletters and blogs, will probably be most useful. There’s a bunch of articles, podcasts, resources, and a searchable archive.
But that’s not the sole thrust of this newsletter. It’s about one of the other tidy-up jobs in August - what didn’t work in the past year.
New year, for us at least
We moved back to the UK in late July 2022. One of the first things I did was incorporate the UK version of Ethics Insight, so our financial year now ends on 31 July. As it turns out, that’s quite a helpful break for the nature of our work. It means August becomes a month of research, tidying up loose ends, and proper planning.
In the last financial year, I’d met countless founders, start-ups, and growth-stage companies. I’d spoken to many people looking to change or leave jobs. Sometimes in a formal (mentoring) capacity, often more as a sounding board. Over the years, I’ve got better at taking follow-up notes, and in August I did a sort of pattern analysis. Which founders found funding? Had that person who hated their job made the change?
Yeah, but no
Often, sadly, people didn’t get what they said they wanted.
Sometimes the reasons had a contextual or structural overlay - slow market, jobseeker woes, barriers (visas, age, experience, etc.). But in many cases there was something else bigger than those factors (how else do we explain how many major innovations emerge during dark days). A dissonance and incongruence. What they said they wanted wasn’t matched by the actions they took.
I spoke to a good friend who has a background in physics. The sort of physics that borders on hippy woo-woo, but has served her wonderfully, in an epic journey from South African poverty, via homelessness, to Los Angeles abundance, and all that comes with it (including the obligatory “spiritual coach”). As we discussed why sometimes phenomenally talented people and great businesses don’t fulfil their potential, she said, “Well, of course not, there’s the gap between who someone is BEING and how they perceive themselves.”
That was it. The people who hadn’t followed through or realised goals often (not always) had demonstrable gaps between how they showed up and how they thought of themselves. That’s the bad news (for them), but the good news is it’s addressable (in many cases).
The being-perception gap
On Saturday evening, as my brother and daughter started one of their epic deep-and-meaningful chats, I closed my eyes (wine may have helped) and thought about those questions: to close the gap between how we show up versus how we perceive ourselves.
It’s not a new concept. In ethics, one of the best questions to ask people is to rate how ethical they are, and then how ethical others are. That gap (example from participants in an MBA below) is explained thus: we judge ourselves based on our intentions, and others judge us based on perception of our actions.
ETHICS IMAGES
Rough notes - a theory begins
Taking that theory as the seed, here’s what I came up with on Saturday night (notes copied from my phone verbatim):
- What do people who know you well say you’re good at?
- What’s something you’re proud of that most people wouldn’t know?
When they respond, listen for whether their behaviour matches the identity they just claimed. You may need some nudges like: “Sounds like you care a lot about X? Then watch for owning it or defensiveness.”
Calibration questions:
Ask to what extent the following themes matter to them:
- Confidence/mastery
- Discipline/goals/achievement
- Independence/leadership/autonomy
- Community/gratitude/group cohesion
- Fun/play/exploration
This helps, rather than vague “how do you see yourself?” questions. Something like: “Where would you say you’re strongest: discipline, or bringing people with you?”
Then check that against what you’ve watched them do under pressure. A gap is more useful than a vague overall impression.
Decision-making
To understand decision-making, ask questions around what factors impact choices: e.g. novelty, social (pressure, group identity, preferences, people pleasing, etc.), financial, deviance (contrarian, petty, “I’ll show them”, etc.), conformity (“way things are done”), necessity.
*If someone frames a decision as not a choice (necessity), look for other data points (we often convince ourselves the wrong things are ‘necessary’). In such settings, ask: “What made this necessary, versus the other options?”
Sticking to the script
The note above is just v1, and it’s not possible to stick to a didactic script in real life. But, in this financial year, I’ll try to ask those talented people I meet a bit more about what really matters to them, how they make decisions, and the gap between assertion and perception.
But what good would this be if I didn’t take my own medicine? So, what needs improvement? Plenty. But after a summer of grafting, and realising that in the past four years I’ve taken a total of 3-4 weeks of ‘holiday’, I’m done waking at dawn and working into the night in order to ‘be there’ for the kids during summer holidays. It’s a balance, and the bit I’ve probably got wrong: not saying “no” or “not now” to certain things (scarcity mindset), and not charging enough (raising prices always feels ‘icky’ even when they’ve been static for years). In other words, I’ve been avoiding two difficult conversations. There’s a great quote from Tim Ferriss here:
“A person’s success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have.”
Nudge me next August to see how the difficult conversations with self and others went!