Photo by Felix Mittermeier.
A lot of people want to talk about goals. Goal-setting for yourself. For your team. For your business. There are consultants who will sit with you to coach and critique your goals documents. There are motivational posters. There are apps. And when you get tired of whichever goals system you’re using, there are a hundred others lying in wait. Every airport bookstore functions like a giant fungal colony – waiting to loose the spores of OKRs or OPSPs or V2MOMs into the air once disturbed.
In our work, we see companies adopt and abandon goals frameworks constantly. Because they don’t do what they promise. They don’t magically get your team focused. They don’t magically resolve conflicts or clarify strategy or set priorities. Often their main output seems to be a bunch of paperwork and meetings. As magic mushrooms go, this is a disappointment.
And that makes a lot of people feel like they’re a waste of time and that is such a sad thing to conclude.
Fuck the frameworks for a second. We are here to tell you that goals – clear, well-articulated goals – are indeed magical. They can do all the things you were promised. But you need to know what your goals are first, and that’s the very, very hard part.
See, goals frameworks spend a lot of effort on how to write them down. There’s value in that. OKRs look one way. OPSPs look pretty different. And maybe one of those is going to feel better for you. SMART goals help clarify murky goals (though our letters are better than Drucker’s) and that’s valuable, too. But before any of that stuff can help you, there’s a question you need to answer for yourself:
What do you actually want?
What do you want to change? What do you want to build? What do you want to get rid of? When you’re answering this question – this is crucial, don’t skim this part – the frameworks will get in the way. Wordsmithing gets in the way. Trying to sound smart and strategic gets in the way. Cut out that noise. In plain, honest language:
What do you actually want?
It’s clear that Kanye was thinking about OKRs when he wrote, “I just needed time alone with my own thoughts. Got treasures in my mind but couldn’t open up my own vault.” It’s in there. Your intuitive sense. Your gut. The gold isn’t just sitting there on the ground, you have to dig for it.
Once you find that thing, the frameworks are a great way to clarify and systematize the thing. They can help you hold yourself and the team accountable. We’re down for a good goals framework. But only once you’ve found the treasure to feed in. Until then it’s just paperwork and meetings and noise.
Don’t give up on finding that truth. Knowing what you want draws people in to help you. And a group of people working together to achieve a goal that matters? That’s magic.
— Melissa & Johnathan
What Melissa’s reading
It’s not actually one article. It’s four, well, it’s three and one stuck behind a paywall.
I read the first one a few weeks ago. It was about a company called Mined Minds that went into Appalachia with a plan to teach people to code so they could get better-paying jobs. The program was not only a failure, the people running it are now being sued for fraud. I grew up in a state that used to run on steel jobs and then didn’t have steel jobs. I’m an easy audience for articles about reinvigorating rust belt economies. But it didn’t make a trend, per se. And it wasn’t about management so much as gross mismanagement. And even that isn’t necessarily enough to get you a newsletter mention.
But then two weeks later, I’m reading another article about who does and does not benefit from tech jobs. And the piece is about an organization called Year Up, out of Boston. It’s about how tech jobs can help pull people out of poverty. But not fast enough to close the void left by North American manufacturing jobs.
And then there was this twitter thread about AOC. She was waiting tables to help raise the US federal minimum wage for tipped workers. It’s currently $2.13. Ocasio-Cortez says, “We need to make sure that people are paid enough to live, period. That’s what we’re pushing for.” The piece went viral. Many of the replies suggested that tipped workers should just get another job if they were unhappy with their pay.
The last piece was in The Economist: The rich world is enjoying an unprecedented jobs boom, Capitalism’s critics are yet to notice (paywall). It cuts across three main points: unemployment is low, capitalism is great, people need to stop kvetching. They talk about the impact of rising minimum wage and high demand for workers. That high demand means employers hire from ignored or underemployed groups (like ex-convicts). And has them invest training and skills development. Tucked three paragraphs from the close was this: However, the lot of workers is improving and entry-level jobs are a much better launch pad to something better than joblessness is.
This is the thread that binds the four pieces together. This idea about employment getting better, for whom, and how fast. The trend line of more people who want to work finding work is a good one. The trend line of more of those people being paid a fair wage is also a good one.
It’s true if you have a job, you’re in a better spot than if you don’t have a job. But the privilege baked into that sentence is galling. It doesn’t say the words “You should be grateful” but it sure has that undertone.
When our lowest wage and least protected workers tell us that work isn’t working for them, we need to listen. We needn’t correct them about their lived experience. We needn’t offer unsolicited career advice that job-shames people in service work. We need to take a hard look at where the impact of those positive workforce trends are being felt. And where they are not.
What Johnathan’s reading
A very bad thread by one Williams and then a very good one by another Williams (who have, I presume, no relation):
👎🏻Ev Williams is sad about things, but helpless
I have people in my inner circles who think this thread isn’t so bad. He’s better than the other twitter co-founders, right? He acknowledges error and diversity gaps, doesn’t he? I mean, sure. He does those things. He sounds sad that there is bad in the world. And even makes sounds like he acknowledges his part in it. Sort of?
If this is how you feel after reading Ev’s thread, you’ve gotta go read Audra’s. It was not written about Ev at all, and yet somehow is totally about Ev. (And if you don’t follow her on the tweets yet, doooo iiit – moderate volume, high quality!):
👍🏻Audra Williams is done with sad but helpless
Do you see it? Do you see how Ev is letting himself off the hook just like Audra’s friend? When Ev says, “If I come up with a brilliant idea, I’ll let the company know,” do you see how that’s a complete punt to helplessness? From a cofounder and former CEO of the company? Audra’s post makes Ev’s dodges so clear:
“Stop asking me! :)”
” I think we did more in the early days than we often get credit for”
“I probably won’t read the replies”
We often say that the reason HFUIYM sounds angry at times is because we wrote it to past versions of ourselves. And I think that’s part of why I’m angry at Ev, too. Because the truth is that I have shrugged before at things I should have fought about. I have uttered some smart-and-sensitive-sounding “Yeah. That’s a real problem. Someone should do something about it.” I am mad Ev for his own nonsense, but I am also mad at myself for mine. Because that’s not what leadership looks like.
The irony to all this, if we’re still allowed to use that word in 2019, is that a big part of my own waking up happened on twitter. As toxic as it definitely, definitely is, it connected me to so many incredible humans out there giving knowledge away for free. And not just knowledge. Ideas, and activism, and ways to help, and ways to stop harming. It’s a powerful thing and it can change your perspective if you let it.
But you have to read the fucking replies.
