Photo by Felix Mittermeier.
Adam Grant (the org psych guy at Wharton) started this thread:
What’s the worst career advice you’ve ever received?
Mine:
(1) Don’t waste your time helping others
(2) Drop 90% of your projects, because you can only do one at a time
(3) Don’t write a book— Adam Grant (@AdamMGrant) July 13, 2019
Have a read. It’s got some gems. And as people who are often asked for career advice — who even ran a whole career planning event back in February (we’re thinking of doing that again next year, you in?) — we think about this a lot.
We even teach bosses how to give better advice. And the thing we always lean on is the one-question post-mortem. The question you need to ask any time you give advice. For some advice you can ask later the same day. For some you need a week, or a month, or a year. But if you don’t want to show up in Adam Grant’s twitter thread, this is a question you are required to ask.
How’d it go?
Good advice is situational. It’s a mix of what’s worked elsewhere and what makes this context unique. Rules of thumb aren’t. Conventional wisdom isn’t. The only thing that makes us better as advice-givers is the one question. How did it go?
We’ve met with a woman who was told she shouldn’t ask about salary because it was unprofessional. How did that go? We’ve met people told to stay in toxic workplaces because it wouldn’t look good on a resume to leave within 3 months? How did that go? Even the less transparently awful advice like “stop taking coffees with people” or “keep your head down and you’ll get recognized” would still benefit from some reflection after the fact.
Sometimes it’s not that the advice is bad, it’s just impossible to follow. We hear people tell managers “never talk about daily work in a 1:1.” Really? Never? I guess we’re just not very good at management, then. Because sometimes we do. And sometimes it’s the right call. This is bad advice, because trying to follow it means feeling shitty about yourself for doing the right thing.
All of us, when we give advice, should ask this question. But you can ask it when you receive advice, too. How is this going? Taking that well-meaning human’s advice. Are you happy with the change you’re seeing? Is it solving the problem? If not, drop it on the floor. Managers give bad advice. CEOs give bad advice. Sometimes even newsletters give bad advice.
But if you ask that question and you get a happy answer? If you ask “how’d it go” and the answer is, “really really well!” Tell them. TELL THEM. It is the greatest thing in the world to try to help someone and then to know how it went.
— Melissa & Johnathan
What Melissa’s reading
Ghosting. We off that. 👻
Late last year, we were interviewed for a Washington Post piece about employees ghosting on their jobs. As in leaving work and not coming back. And the piece went mega viral. It had it’s own twitter moment. There were even bunch of articles about the original article which isn’t so much journalism as link chasing but hey, it’s 2019.
OK, so that was last year. And mostly we talked about the reasons people ghost on employers. That they weren’t very engaged to begin with, that they had a shithead boss or a crappy job. Lots of reasons people can just decide not to come back. I once worked at a place in San Francisco where someone went to lunch on THEIR FIRST DAY and never came back. That’s next level.
I think the original WaPo piece comes off as pretty empathetic. But in the 8 months since it came out, people have started ghosting on basically all hard or uncomfortable conversations at work. This week, DigidayUK wrote about companies ghosting on their own RFP process for creative agencies.
And if you didn’t just rage chuck your phone across the room, you’ve never worked agency.
For my non-agency peeps, here’s how it typically goes down. A company puts out a bid for companies to pitch their business. Usually it’s a short list of a few agencies they already have in mind. The big brands often include a smaller agency in their pitch. True or not, people assume boutique firms do more creative, heart-forward work. But if you work at one of those smaller agencies, pitching new business happens in addition to servicing the business you already have. You can’t staff up ahead of an RFP. If you win the bid, then you can add head count. It means so much of that pitch work is happening between or after other paying client work.
To let these folks get all the way to an in-person pitch and just…ghost? Are you effing kidding me???
Here it is folks. Mark it down. It’s July 2019 and we’re officially off that.
You have feedback for someone about their work? Tell them. The same junior sales rep keeps following up with you? Tell them thanks but no thanks. You ran a poorly constructed RFP process and now you don’t want to pick any of the agencies you short-listed? OMG for the love of all this is holy, tell them, let them lick their wounds and move on.
What Johnathan’s listening to
On to the next one. On repeat.
I know it’s hard, because The Blueprint 3 is not on Spotify. But if you run a business, or a meaningful part of a business, or a household, or a twitter account, this song is so good. The whole album, really.
I am being careful, here. I know that Ben Horowitz has made an entire writing career out of being a white guy in tech quoting black rappers*. But listen to me: this song has everything. Get out a note pad. Some of what I hear in this one song (lyrics):
- “On to the next one.” It’s important not to get comfortable, to push yourself. Did we mention we’re trying a whole new format for our programs? Who do you think told us to do that? It wasn’t Ben Horowitz. That “loiterers should be arrested” line? How good is that?👌🏻
- “I got a million ways to get it. Choose one.” Pre-revenue founders always feel like there’s a lot of ways to turn on the money tap when it’s time. They have a million ways to get it. Choose one. I think about this line all the time.
- “Want my old shit? Buy my old albums.” Even when you don’t want to be complacent, it can be hard to say no to customers/prospects/fans who want you to sell what you used to sell. Or write what you used to write. When RSG started people kept trying to hire me as a product consultant, and Melissa to do marketing. If we’d done those things, there would be no RSG.
- Verse 1 also hits on: set up a uniform and own your presence in the room. Prefer authenticity over polish (“no I’m not a Jonas Brother I’m a grownup.”)
- Verse 2 is packed, too. We get: live your values, don’t do business with vendors whose values don’t align with your own. Initiative matters in partnerships and especially in breaking partnerships. Know the difference between having a vision and executing on it. It’s possible to stay in the same place for a long time just dreaming about what-ifs.
Verse 3 is, I will acknowledge, mostly swagger. But he’s also chillin’ in the projects with Oprah, so, you know. It sounds like his one question post mortem has come out okay.
[*We talked to Ben when we were writing our own book. We asked him what his biggest mistake/regret was in writing his. He said it was not getting releases from the artists for the quotes. More specifically, that he went through the front door asking their representation/agents, instead of asking them directly. I bet there’s a learning in there, too.]
