Russell Davies

Nice

This is an excellent idea, from Alex Mitchell of #feministfriday

"Here's something I'm profoundly glad I do at work. Any time someone says (in writing) something good about something that my team or I have done, I save it to a notepad file called nice.txt. Then when I'm in need of a boost I will open nice.txt and read what people have said in descending date order until I feel happy again. If you think there is a possibility that this would work for you, I really encourage you to try it, it's been a tonic for me more than once and is so easy to do."

Questions, questions

A correspondent writes to tell me that a good advisor asks good questions (as well as offers encouragement).

Which is an excuse for this blog post - a small bundle of questions I've collected.

This is probably the thing I've said to most people over coffee. And the thing that's made the most difference to what I do at work. I really try and do this. And these are great questions.

"So, each and every week these leaders have a brief check-in with each team member, during which they ask two simple questions: What are your priorities this week? How can I help?"

From Nine Lies About Work

And then there's the question which I seem to have misremembered and stolen credit for in this interview. I think of it as "What are you really good at, which is also really hard?" But I think I got it from Scott Galloway.

It's a great strategy question, a good interview question. And can fill a lull in conversation.

And speaking of lulls in conversation...Leil Lowndes has a lovely suggestion for upgrading your small talk gently. Don't ask new people 'what do you do?' ask them 'how do you spend your time?'. This gives them much more freedom to answer interestingly, revealingly or playfully.

Caroline Webb has a bunch of similarly useful alternative suggestions in How to Have a Good Day: 

Not “Have you thought of XYZ?” but “How are you thinking about this?”

Not “Is the reason you’re struggling because this is all new to you?” but “What’s making it feel hard?”

Not “Could you make things better by delegating more?” but “What would the ideal situation look like for you?”

And if you want to ask about people’s personal lives, you could get beyond the normal “How was your weekend?” with a question like “What do you do outside work? How did you develop an interest in that?”

She also says this:

"When I’m in a group that’s discussing an important issue, I actually like to go one step further. Whether or not I’m chairing the meeting, I suggest that everyone—even those who’ve already spoken—answer a thought-provoking question, such as: “If there were something we were missing here, what would it be?” “If there were a completely different way to see this, what would it be?” “If there were one thing that worried you about this, what would it be?”

And, if we're discussing questions we shouldn't forget Arthur Aron and Elaine Spauling's 36 questions designed to create intimacy amongst strangers. I've never asked anyone these myself, but it feels like it'd be good food for thought if you were trying to create strong relationships in all sorts of contexts. As they say: ‘one key pattern associated with the development of close relationships among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure’.

And Laurie Anderson's questions always make we want to think of more interesting things to ask. Like Oblique Strategies without the Big Tarot Energy.

And then, of course, there's the importance of not asking questions. Like this bit from Agency:

"Netherton said nothing, something he’d only recently been learning to deliberately do."

Or, indeed.

 

 

Do you actually want advice?

Dan Cullum's distinction between coaching and tactics is very useful.

"Do you want some coaching—where I ask you questions and you figure out the answers—or do you want tactics?"

As is this from Designing Your Life "We make a clear distinction between counsel and advice. “Counsel” is when someone is trying to help you figure out what you think. “Advice” is when someone is telling you what he or she thinks.

You need a terrible gardener

A lesson I've learned slowly and hard is that advice is a terrible thing to give.

I, personally, find it very hard not to just anecdote and assume that'll do. Ignoring all privilege, survivor bias etc. But most advice is a variety of this pointed tweet from Peter Yang:

"Just had a call with someone on Forbes 30 under 30 list and came away really impressed.

He shared with me how he made VP at a top tech company before age 30:

4:30 AM wakeup
2. Cold showers
3. Gratitude journal
4. Meditate
5. Dad owns tech company"

That's probably why I normally end up saying some variant of 'I read this interesting thing once, it might be relevant in your circumstances'. That's really what this whole project is. And that's valid, right? Books can be mentors:

"Who was or still is your mentor?

Multiple mentors in the form of books. I never had any personal contact with Raymond Williams but Culture and Society meant the world to me. At the same time that I was reading Williams in my early twenties, I was lucky enough to share a slum with a friend, Chris Mitchell, who was interested in many of the same things as me. Friends are always preferable to mentors."

Geoff Dyer interview

So here's some advice about advice: beware advice from successful people. Summed up by Tamar Haspel talking about gardening.

"A lot of first-timers are making the same mistake: They’re listening to experts. Experts can make things grow that you can’t, because they are experts. What you need is a terrible gardener to tell you what anybody can grow." 

I used to be obsessed with all those articles about the habits of successful people. How they got up at 5am to read Sun Tzu on their rowing machine. It took me a while to realise that the habits were normally enabled by success, not producers of it. You can do all that if someone is also looking after your kids, your laundry and your inbox.

Rachel Syme puts it better in a lovely piece in the New Yorker about deadlines.

"Mason Currey's "Daily Rituals" books (which have been translated into more than half a dozen languages) impart the quotidian habits of creative types from Albert Einstein to Twyla Tharp. Benjamin Franklin started his day with "air baths"-reading and writing in the nude until he had something else to do-and Edith Wharton wrote longhand in bed, "on sheets of paper that she dropped onto the floor for her secretary to retrieve and type up." All these glimpses into the lives of Highly Effective People can seem like recipes for success, but read enough of them and you may conclude that the secret ingredients are not much sleep and a lot of professional help."

And Viv Groskop makes a similar point in How to Own the Room:

"Lots of women say, ‘If I was going to be a speaker, I’d want to speak like Michelle Obama.’ But if you had Michelle Obama’s support system, you probably would be able to speak like Michelle Obama very easily."

Cory writes along the same lines in this piece about 'breaking in' as a writer

He ends with the real point of all this:

"Established writers know nothing useful about breaking into the field today. But we do have a powerful tool for helping out new writers: encouragement. The specifics of breaking in change enormously from year to year, but one thing remains eternal: breaking in is hard, and it’s easy to get discouraged. The kindnesses we show to would-be writers are worth far more than any list of markets or tips on writing cover letters."

That's probably mostly what I'm trying to offer over coffee with people. Encouragement. So let me know if you need some.

better than it needs to be

I know I mention In Business quite a lot, but the programme this week is one you really have to listen to - it's about craft. Not in the potter's wheel sense (not that there's anything wrong with that) but in the sense of 'doing things well, for the sake of doing them well'. And it seems very relevant to what a lot of people who read this do. It starts with an interview with Professor Richard Sennett and it's great stuff. He talks about the way we think through touching and holding things and doing stuff with them, how 'we don't proceed from principles to particulars', how long-term profits come from quality and how to many businesses separate people with power from people with knowledge. Great stuff. And the programme backs it up with good examples.

But it was rammed home to me because just after I listened to it I watched a programme with Stephen Fry talking about Abba. And how good they were. (You can see him for yourself above) He talks about how they were good because 'they were better than they needed to be'. Their dedicated pursuit of pop craft led to their being some undefinable elevated quality to what they did. Something that made it better than the typical pop culture. And I think it's that craft focus and dedication that makes for a great ad too. It's when something's been done that makes it better than it needed to be just to achieve the short-term goals of awareness, or whatever. It's what transforms it into something that contributes to the broader culture rather than just sucking life from it. Which, in the long-term tends to make it more effective anyway.

handy tip - rubber bands

The 1955 Gadgets Annual

handy tip - collars

The 1955 Gadgets Annual

handy tip - magazine pages

The 1955 Gadgets Annual

brainstorming

I got this question in via email - anyone got any suggestions?

"I'm a young planner in NYC and I was wondering if you could guide me to some resources on the web on any new brainstorming techniques.  I'm sure the basic tenets of brainstorming still hold true, I was just curious if anyone out there was doing something innovative."

p-school?

I got this question by email the other day. I don't know what to answer, but I thought you lot might have some pros and cons. Anyone?

"I was just wondering if you could take a moment from your busy schedule to toss some advice my way. I have had about 2 years of experience in the Account Management side of Advertising and I am highly considering a move to Account Planning.  I am currently getting "Apprenticed" by two amazing Account Planners, helping out with research and some creative briefs BUT I was wondering what your opinion on more formal forms of Account Planning training was.

An example of more formal training would be VCU's Adcenter, Miami Ad Schools Account Planning Bootcamp, Etc. My university education and experience was based on strategy and research and I would really like to push my career that way.

Any advice or input you could give would be greatly appreciated."