Hey Reader!
This week brought the first major external adversity of the year here in Portland (and in much of the country). We had a day of snow last Saturday. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday we had freezing rain that coated everything in .4” of ice.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that all of our fall plantings in the garden survive. But I’m also tracking the fact that it took just three weeks into the year to have a major curveball thrown our way. With the weather came school cancelations, work rhythm changes, and a break in my hard-won morning routine.
In recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. day here in the US this past week, I’ll share a quote from him that reminds me to stay centered in times of challenge (and to remember that setbacks like ice are a small challenge as compared to the societal challenges King was fighting to improve upon):
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
– Martin Luther King Jr. in Strength to Love, a book of sermons first published in 1963.
And so this coming week represents an opportunity to remember that adversity is a constant in our lives. Getting knocked off track for a day is going to happen. What’s most important ss my friend James Clear says, “never miss twice.”
I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.
A quote to make you think from a book worth reading
“[…] spending so much of our formative years in close proximity to the beauty of nature allowed an appreciation for it to enter our bones. Appreciate something for long enough and you learn to love it. And anytime you love something, you also want to care for it and safeguard it.”
- Yvon Chouinard, Some Stories: Lessons from the Edge of Business and Sport
…
If you:
- Love the outdoors
- Love being an entrepreneur
- Believe business should be used as a force for good
Then this book is about one of the best living examples of a person combining those qualities. Yvon Chouinard is the founder and former CEO of Patagonia. One of the original “dirtbags” who climbed, skied, kayaked, fished, and camped his way around the world. He is a rare person who can both claim extreme competence in outdoor sports that regularly claim the lives of athletes AND applying the principles he learned from his time in nature to leading in business.
Patagonia is the most respected brand in the world for a reason. These are the collected stories that shaped the man who created the company, in including his flaws and shortcomings.
Three links to encourage deep thought and breakthrough growth
1 What Is Strategy? by Michael Porter | Read time: 60min
“But the leader’s role is broader and far more important. […] Its core is strategy: defining and communicating the company’s unique position, making trade-offs, and forging fit among activities. The leader must provide the discipline to decide which industry changes and customer needs the company will respond to, while avoiding organizational distractions and maintaining the company’s distinctiveness.”
In one of the all-time most referenced articles on strategy (from 1996!), Michael Porter gives us a masterclass in what it means to create a position that separates you and your business from every other competitor. Whether you view competitors as threats or friends, your customers still make choices between spending their time, money, or energy with you or another company offering an alternative.
Thinking through your strategy, whether you’re a solo creator or a startup founder, is critical to building a business that can sustainably solve a hard problem.
2 Status Limbo by Anu Atluru | Read time: 10min
“To get status, you have to give up status. You often have to sacrifice some of your existing status to make it back and more. This is particularly true in creative fields and high-upside opportunities. Writers, musicians, actors, directors, entrepreneurs and the like must all do their time in status limbo. And you don’t know how long that time will be.”
This essay resonated deeply with me, having recently spent two years in status limbo before reclaiming an established direction and identity for my career. Even now I know I have lost status with a large swath of loose and close ties who could understand what “COO of growing tech startup” meant much more so than “Executive coach and writer.”
This essay reflects one reason why founders and leaders often avoid the endings I talked about in last week’s newsletter. Complement with my essay, “I am nothing: On loss of identity in times of transition.”
3 Why Nature’s Future Underpins the Future of Business by Sarah Murray for Financial Times | Read time: 25min
“If losses in nature (the natural world) and biodiversity (the variation in that world) pose a dire threat to humanity, they also present risks to business and finance, both through companies’ impact on natural resources and their direct or indirect dependency on them.”
If we start from first principles, all business value ever created was created through the use of natural resources. Even this newsletter is powered by nature — whether it’s the materials used to make data centers or the materials used to create the energy that powers data centers or the materials in my midnight-colored MacBook Air.
And yet, we behave as if nature is expendable. It’s a thing we can worry about another time. It’s not a business problem, it’s a… well, someone else’s problem. And it’s certainly not MY business problem… other businesses are the ones destroying nature.
In reality it’s all of our problem and it’s only a matter of time before it catches up to us. As leaders, we have a responsibility to do something about it. This article is a good (albeit more corporate than I’d like) primer to help you start thinking about what we can do about it.
An idea sparked by my client work to help you lead better
It’s the time of year when performance reviews and conversations about promotions and raises are commonplace. As a founder, over time you’ll have enough of these conversations that you begin to see patterns in what people expect.
One pattern is that your people will ask for a raise or promotion. Perhaps surprisingly, whether someone asks often has no correlation to whether they’ve done the work to earn it.
Here are the situations you might find yourself in. One of your people:
- Asks for a raise or promotion, but hasn’t earned it
- Asks for a raise or promotion, has earned it, but you can’t give it to them
- Asks for a raise or promotion, has earned it and you give it to them
- Gets a raise or promotion because you saw they were ready before they had to ask
The last one is the ideal way to operate. And in the absence of that, the next best way to operate is to proactively make sure your people know where they stand before they have to ask. Still, eventually you’ll need to respond to a request.
If they haven’t earned it, then you have a responsibility to give kind, clear, and direct feedback until they understand the gap between what they hope for and their current reality.
If they have earned it but you can’t give it to them (due to budget, timing, lack of business growth), then it’s your job as a leader to make the situation clear. Then they can actively choose whether it’s best for their career to embrace the growth in their current role or find a new opportunity that accelerates their trajectory.
Allowing people to move on to get the growth they’re ready for is something mature leaders embrace. It creates a healthy environment and lets everyone on the team know that you’ll help them reach their goals, even when it makes your job harder.
That’s the leader we’d all hope to work for if the situation were reversed. So be that leader for others.
Hope you have a great weekend. As always, hit reply and share your own thoughts on anything we covered this week (or anything else on your mind).
Much love and respect,
If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to a founder friend. You can also recommend me to a founder or creator as a coach.