Most of the times when I run my mind is busy thinking about some little ache in my calf, scanning the ground to avoid tripping over stones and tree routes, thinking about hydrating, checking my pace, checking the distance, keeping my breathing regular because there is another 6k to go.
But every now and then, for a few moments, my stride becomes fluid, my feet hit the ground quietly, my breathing becomes effortless, my mind empties of all thoughts and it feels like I could keep running forever. These are my rare moments of glory, and it's for those moments that I run.
Back in September 2007, bang in the middle of my MBA, I completed my summer internship and decided to turn down the job offer that came out of it. The job was a good one and I liked the people I was working with, but my heart really said no to that type of career.
That decision also meant that I was back to square one in terms of looking for a job, and so as I approached a new season of job hunting and interviewing, I put down the following list to guide me:
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My ideal job (03 September 2007 list)
Must have:
1. The job allows me to be at home with my family most nights.
2. It offers a general management challenge.
3. The company encourages people to become their best.
4. The initial salary should be at least +50% over my last salary.
Nice to have:
1. I’d like to have the opportunity for future share of equity/ partnership
2. I’d like it to be a small-ish company (max 200 people)
3. I’d like it to be a creative business (advertising, marketing consultancy, internet, etc)
--
During the following 6 months I focused my job hunt on marketing and advertising. Did a ton of job interviews and eventually landed in my current job for a big American corporation (I wont’ say but it won’t take long to find out), focusing on marketing and internet, which was really good news.
¾ of a year into it, I am beginning to reflect on what this new professional experience (as well as other personal stuff that happened in my life) has thought me, by means of a revised list. Here it goes:
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My ideal job (22 April 09 list)
Must have:
1. Work with people whom I trust and respect and whose values I share.
2. The common goal is to do extraordinary work. Politics are a mean to this end.
3. It offers general management challenges (P&L, Strategy, People)
4. The job allows me to sleep in my bed at least 3 nights/week
Nice to have:
1. An entrepreneurial challenge: risk a bit of your own
2. A creative business (advertising, marketing, internet)
--
I guess it is reassuring to see how some core elements have stayed (the type of job, the type of industry, the work-life balance), meaning that some of what I thought was important to me back in 2007 still is.
However it is also interesting to see how some other stuff has radically changed. For instance, whist the financial element has almost completely disappeared, I am beginning to place an increasing importance to the human element. So much actually that the people you work with, their values and their relationships have become the top two must haves for me.
I guess the 'greedy MBA student' syndrome is disappearing and I might be growing up?
I can't believe I am giving investment advice. "Don't buy any more crap" I hear myself saying. But I am not alone I have strong backing on this one. So my friend Bob (not his real name) has invested in a few stocks and they have all tanked over the past year, so far no surprises. The issue is that he wants to buy more to decrease the average price he has paid over time. Binge drinking or repeatedly hitting your head against the wall are cheaper ways to delude yourself about the impending recovery of your investment.
First of all, let's get the trading strategy (and solid general advice) out of the way. Losers average losers. The first loser is the person, Bob, and the second loser is the tumbling stock. Some people, losers, buy more of a stock when it is going down. Just don't do it. I have strong backing on this. Meet Paul Tudor Jones on the left, trading legend, more on him below.
If you agree that only losers average losers please skip down to the section where I try to convince you that the photo is a modern work of art. If you are not convinced that losers average losers read on here. Sorry, my explanations sounded really condescending so I deleted them and will move on to the art section.
The portrait on the left is of Robert Jannys, painted by an unknown artist in the early 17th century (http://www.norwichchurches.co.uk/monuments/Robert%20Jannys/Robert_Jannys.html). He made a fortune as a grocer and was the richest man in Norwich. Note the steely gaze of the negotiator coupled with the benevolent air of the philanthropist. The clear presence of his own mortality. Objects like the skull and the hour glass were popular props alluding to mortality and fatalism.
And then there is the inscription:
"For all welth worship and properite Fierce death ys come and restyd me For Jannysprayse god, II pray you all Whose actes do remayne a memorial"
Now consider Paul Tudor Jones. He started in cotton trading, has traded commodities successfully for decades and has founded the Robin Hood Foundation and a separate investment fund to help disadvantaged children.The similarities with Jannys don't stop there. He has got the smug smile, you can barely see it, of someone who is continuously going up against traders around the world and winning. He is the entrepreneur, the grocer, of our age. Of course, our age of humility and our misguided belief in "objectivity" require that this work be executed as a photograph with its apparent spontaneity. Note the stuffed dog (can't remember his name); Paul knows not to take life too seriously, life is short and we are all mortal. In the background we also see unhungpictures and rewards; Paul looks to the future, not the mementos of the past. What he has hung instead is a plain piece of paper with black marker alluding to his own mortality and the mortality of all traders.
One of the things I always liked about the internet is the possibility for consumers to review product (Amazon being the pioneer of this). This article on the economist provides an interesting read on the subject. I would add two points to it, completely unrelated to each other.
1. I fundamentally believe that people don't write reviews with the goal of helping other consumers. At least that is not their main intent. I believe what really drives people to write a review is their natural desire to have a say and be listened to. It's a 2-seconds-of-fame kind of thing (at least for me). This explains for instance why someone would bother to write the 2000th review to Harry Potter (like the article mentions).
2. Some sites ask reviewers to rate the product based on certain predetermined parameters. I have a bit of a problem with that, particularly when the parameters don't feel genuine. For example, I don't believe that a customer who has recently bought a piece of clothing is in a position to judge its 'durability' (example)
I have worked for a large company (160 000 employees) and a small company (5 employees). So I often get asked what my preference is and what the differences are.
First of all, this question of preference reminds me of the ever popular question "Do you prefer Stockholm or London?" (my two home towns). It is a bad quesion that, if given too much thought, can make people unhappy. Stockholm is clean, manageable and the average quality of stuff is high. Wearing Stockholm glasses London becomes dirty, unmanageable and low average quality of stuff. So in London you have to throw away your Stockholm check list and enjoy the buzz and endless variety on offer. Beyond that no one ever seems to be able to specify the parameters I should compare or what the implication would be. Apples and pears. It's very much the same with companies. Any simple comparison misses the point.
I think it is a case of the similarities and your underlying attitude being more important than the differences. As an example, many people complain about how difficult it is to get things done in a large company. As Fran proposes in his post being productive in large company does take some learning. But the same is true in a small company, which typically has less resources, infrastructure and brand equity to leverage. So my conclusion is that with a positive attitude, resourcefulness and an understanding of the context you can always develop and deliver. The corollary is that some people will always complain and some people will always seem to pull rabbits out of hats.
There are of course differences between working in large and small companies, naturally. Most differences are just an inevitable consequence of delimitation. To get something into the market (externally), in a small company, most of the challenges are external. In a large company more of the hoops to be jumped through and problems to be solved will obviously be internal. On the flip side, once you have jumped through the hoops of Global Corp the machine is working for you.
I thought about going in to the actual differences between large and small comapnies (resources vs agility, ...) but it becomes very self-evident. The similiarities and the impact of personal attitude are more important and more empowering for the purposes of any comparison. The grass is pretty much as green everywhere and the resourceful person can be as happy in Stockholm as in London, as productive and fulfilled in Widget Partners as in Global Corp.
Back in London I once met a senior ad man, Patrick. One of those guys who, back in the 60s and 70s invented advertising the way we know it. He was giving a talk on how to present to senior management. To those who he called the 'big swinging dicks' (an obvious but effective metaphor).
Now, a few years after, the opportunity is finally there. On march 25th I am supposed to present to a bunch of seriously huge swinging dicks about my last 6 months as an MBA hire in this company. I will do this along with 4 other MBA hires.
Patrick's advice was basically to be very memorable. He said that the main thing when you present to somebody who probably gets 100 presentations a month is to get their attention. He even suggested standing on the board-room table and quacking, like a wild duck.
The other 4 MBAs will present an overview of their last project at work. The classic situation, solution, outcome case-study. Me ... I find that boring, and I am still looking for a way to interest my audience without necessarily having to resort to quacking.
For a long time my personal mantra has been 'to do extraordinary things' (meaning in the literal sense, to do things beyond what would be ordinary, easy, achievable, for me). However as I landed in this huge company I was thrown aback by the size and complexity of it and I didn't really know how to go about doing things extraordinarily. Six months after I feel for the first time that I am getting the hang of it, and so I would like my presentation to be the following:
Presentation: 'Doing extraordinary things: 8 lessons I learned at Company'
Here my first attempt at putting down a list: 1. It's all about attention to detail. (I was working on a creative marketing campaign and for the first time I understood how anal this company is about the detail of creative execution. What was good for me wasn't for my colleagues. And then I realized that it is this attention to detail that makes them as great as they are)
2. The bigger you are, the more you have to pick your battles (this learning comes from executing a campaign in 5 countries, and realizing the sheer complexity that comes from large scale. I always thought that working for a big company meant large budgets and easier choices, but that's not true. The bigger you are, the more choices you have to make as to what you want to do and what you don't.)
3. Have endurance(this learning I am still working out in my mind: I was coordinating a cross-departmental team on daily meetings over the holiday period. It required leading 120 meetings over a period of 60 days, including weekends and bank holidays. I hated every minute of this, but in the end the results came in fantastic).
4. Get people to talk to each other and they will do extraordinary things(also working on this learning still. It also comes from the 120-meetings assignment, in which I discovered that by bringing people together from different departments and just facilitating conversations they smashed every target that was set for them).
5. Trust the experts (this comes form a time when I persuaded myself that something with our business was going horribly wrong and that we needed to fix it urgently. Another person, more expert than me, wanted to take some more time to understand the issue before we called for help and I was convinced that he was wrong. I had data proving my point, he had expertise. In the end he was right, and I learned to trust expertise over data)
6. Start with balls, end with brains (this is a general consideration, that comes from seeing how many good ideas get shot down because people think too soon about the reasons why not. So as a result the only ideas that eventually make it to life are non-ambitious, non-exceptional, ordinary ones. But then how do you do new, extraordinary, innovative things? I think part of the answer is to start thinking about ideas with 'balls' (be ambitious, think about what could be, not what couldn't) and then only later bring in the 'brains' (i.e. be pragmatic, think about how to actually implement things, resources, capabilities, etc.)
Learnings 7-10 I haven't gotten to yet. And now it's time I end this long lunch break anyways.
Since joining a big corporation I have been wondering about meetings (here and here). Unlike in my previous work experience in much smaller companies, here we are all in meetings, all the time. Long meetings, with many people, leading to no decisions.
This meeting thing is causing two troubles. Firstly, time is used unproductively and it takes ages to get things done. Secondly, it is impossible to find a slot in people’s calendar to get together and make decisions, because they are always in other meetings.
Now I found two articles form people way cleverer than me, who are also reflecting on the topic:
Robert Sutton (Professor of Management Science and Engineering in the Stanford Engineering School) writes "I think the biggest danger is when meetings become a substitute for work, or there are so many it is impossible to get anything else done".
Seth Godin (whom I otherwise don’t particularly like) argues that here are only three kinds of meetings: information, discussion and permission. His conclusion: "PLEASE don't confuse them. Confused meeting types are the number one source of meeting ennui"(*).
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