Photo by Johnathan Nightingale.
Listen, we’re not gonna tell you it’s not bleak out there. We can’t tell you to stop doomscrolling. We can’t force you to turn off the news. Or tell you to stop feeling helpless and hopeless about all the places things are wildly terrible and entirely out of your control.
But we can tell you a good story with a happy ending. Not because we’re trying to paper over the awful stuff that’s happening in the actual real world. But because the good story happened in the actual real world, too. And we thought you might need a reminder that there are things that can go right, even as so much is going horrifically wrong.
Right place, right time
This story starts a year ago. Longer actually. After moving into our new HQ, we’re walking through the neighbourhood and less than half a block away, there’s a chalkboard that lists mole tamales. Mole tamales! This is not an easy dish to find in Toronto. Particularly in Little Ethiopia. Phenomenal news. Let’s go!
We pull the door and it’s stuck. We try again. The sign on the door says the restaurant is open. But the locked door indicates that it is very much not open. We check the website. The hours don’t line up to what’s on the Google card.
Much spying ensues. Walking by on tiptoes to see if they are open. Walking by a few hours later to see if they are setting up for dinner service. Nothing. Finally, finally, we find an evening when the door is unlocked and the lights are on. We go in for dinner and the mole is outstanding. And also, the entire restaurant is covered in art. Not general art, specific art. Like art from one artist.
Some of the pieces are self-portraits. And after a bit of squinting, we are confident enough to ask. Is our server the artist? Yes. And does her family own the restaurant where her art is prominently displayed on every wall? Also, yes.
We follow her on insta. Shortly after, our artist posts to see if anyone has a wall that might be good for a mural. While she hasn’t done a mural before, she’s been wanting to try. And just needs a space to do it and for someone to give her a shot.
As it happens, we have a wall at HQ that keeps getting tagged. Like super-ugly, throw-up tags done by high schoolers. Every time we cover over the tags, more show up. We are locked in a ridiculous game of graffiti whack-a-mole. But Toronto has a program for exactly this situation. And the city will literally buy cans of paint so you can put something nicer on the wall.
We just need to find an artist.
You already know that this story has a happy ending. We told you that at the top. Izzy Paez finished her first mural this week and it’s fucking amazing. And it’s on our HQ because we had a wall and signing authority and knew about a cool city program that offered paint.
Your shoulders are not earrings
We joke that you’ve never met a more disempowered group of people than bosses. They point to span of control. They talk about things being above their pay grade. Outside their sphere of influence.
We’re quick to point out how absurd that is. We note that managers have outsized impact on organizational culture and that their fingerprints are on everything. From day-to-day work to the entire multi-year strategy for their companies. Just because they don’t have sole authority over everything doesn’t mean they can’t change things.
It is not that things are never outside your control. It’s just that spending all your time focused on the things outside your control causes you to shrink. Instead of act. And that defensive crouch not only shrinks your own impact, it also shrinks the positive impact of those around you. And right now we need all the positive impact we can muster.
But like, here we are, right? A lot of people right now are going through it. Maybe you are one of them. And so you show up to work, sit in your meetings, send your emails, and try to avoid catching any more. If someone put “make the world better” on your OKRs you’d slot it in somewhere. But they haven’t. And it’s sort of hard to be creative, and expansive, and luminous from a crouched position.
If you could just wait for the polycrisis to lift, or somehow opt out of it, the crouch would lift as well. Wouldn’t that be swell? You hear stories about people who do this. They quit their jobs, move to an island, raise goats, start a tiktok account, and generally project a peaceful, non-crouched, shoulders-down vibe. You could raise goats. If you do, send us photos.
But we suspect that most of you don’t have the ability to drop everything and opt out of the world as it is. Most of you probably have to keep living in it. And the world shows no signs of resolving itself peacefully in the short term. But the crouch isn’t helping. It makes you smaller and less flexible and adaptable than you really are. It throws out the good to protect you from the bad. And, if you’re a boss, that’s not a great way to run a team.
Finding change in the crouch-cushions
There’s this enduring, 40-year-old line from Warren Buffet that goes, “Our goal is … to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.” We sort of wish he’d framed it differently. The idea of being nakedly, ostentatiously greedy is so perfectly 1986 investment banker. We don’t need you to follow his advice there, per se.
But setting aside the greed, there’s still something important in it. The idea that sometimes everyone is in a crouch at the exact same time. And that, when that happens, there’s an outsized opportunity for impact. Because no one else is on the field, no one else is answering calls, or thinking creatively, or competing for those opportunities. In a hot market, everyone is in demand and every boss is trying to tell a story about how life-changing their org could be. In a scary, chilly, turbulent market like this, you can change someone’s life by picking up the phone.
Let’s say the obvious things first — if you are hiring right now, be kind to people. We know that the world is full of slop and that it’s hard to tell who you’re talking to and that some people are ruining it for everyone. We know. But you don’t have to spend long on r/jobs to see how brutal the world is out there for people interviewing. Every job offer is an opportunity to change someone’s life, but right now even some basic kindness in the interview or rejection process will put you out in front.
And we know that you might not have any open roles. Fair enough. But if you have a job — particularly if you’re in management — you have a huge amount of power to be helpful. You can authorize things, you can shift priorities, you can vouch for people. Your words carry weight, and now’s a good time to use them.
Write honest, meaningful references for your former coworkers rocking their #OpenToWork flare on LinkedIn. That’s always good but matters more right now when it’s so. fucking. lonely. out there.
Kick people work. Agencies, contractors, freelancers — a lot of the small business folks we know are getting crunched by an economy full of wait-and-see. If you know your team will need design assets next quarter, if your office needs a new boardroom, if you’ve been meaning to update your employee handbook. There are amazing people idle right now that could be doing great work for you even without a full-time role to hire for.
Be someone’s first invoice. It’s the best feeling, to see someone trying to start a thing, and to be able to give them a shot. They sometimes require more expectation guidance and communication, but someone starting a new thing wants it to succeed. Our experience is that every first invoice over-delivers.
You might feel like this all requires more creativity than you have right now. And yeah, it requires a bit. But all we’re suggesting is that you try to look around for the stuff that’s just sitting there. The opportunities that anyone could take, but no one is taking. It will matter for them, and it will matter for you, too. You might even know a wall somewhere nearby that needs a mural.
— Melissa & Johnathan
