Archives for November 2021

I was completely blown away by this video today.

It’s a 2-min clip of Paul McCartney writing ‘Get Back’ as part of the recent Beatles documentary directed and produced by Peter Jackson.

What I love is that the first 30 seconds is objectively bad. It’s messy, lacking conviction, and basically sounds like the guy at the party who is poorly holding a tune on the acoustic guitar.

But this is part of the process.

Slowly, McCartney allows the song to emerge.

By 1:15, the verse melody arrives: the chugging guitar and rhythmic lyrics. And by 1:40 we hear the iconic chorus that is now famous around the world.

I highly recommend watching the whole clip.

Would we have ‘Get Back’ if McCartney was embarrassed to messily explore? And what could this mean for our own standards and expectations for creative exploration?

I’m really proud of my friends, Dan and Chris, for their work at Amber. Amber is a renewable energy retailer in Australia disrupting the incumbent business model.

For a $15 AUD membership fee, Amber customers get access to the wholesale price of energy and the Amber app, where they’re incentivised to shift their energy consumption to greener periods of the day.

Recently, one of their fellow renewable energy retailers, Powershop, sold to Shell. An ironic move considering the values Powershop were founded upon.

Dan and Chris pounced at the opportunity to buy a full page ad in The Age, writing an obituary of sorts to Powershop selling out. They’re also committing to donate $100 AUD to environmental charities for every Powershop customer that switches to Amber before Nov 30.

If you’re one of my Aussie readers, you should check Amber out! They’re awesome!

In high school I competed in Dragon Boat Racing. A team of 20 students paddle a long, wooden canoe over a distance of about 500 metres. Schools from around New Zealand come together each year to have their teams compete against one another.

One thing our coach taught us early on was that the size and strength of each individual is unimportant—no one person can carry a team to victory. But what is most important is paddling in unison. Complete synchronisation is a force multiplier.

One person sits at the front of the boat and beats a drum. The first two paddlers—who each sit at the front of a 10 person paddling line—time their strokes with the beat. Every subsequent paddler looks at the person diagonally in front of them and matches their stroke. If this is done perfectly, and all paddles hit the water at the exact same time, and each paddler has the exact same stroke length, the dragon boat flies.

Dragon Boating taught me a lesson: I’d much rather be in a great team, than in a team of greats.

I was doing a some WordPress spring cleaning this past week and realised my 9 September 2021 post was still sitting in the Drafts folder.

I wondered: is that the 2.5 year daily writing streak broken?

I quickly brushed off those thoughts.

Even if a WordPress glitch or human error meant the post wasn’t published, what matters is I know I turned up, took notice, and put pen to paper on that day.

It’s the good habits that matter; and they’re usually enough to outshine the odd technical slip.

P.S. I remember being quite proud of this post when I wrote it, so I’m sharing it here: ‘Musical Metamorphosis’.

Another goodie from ‘The Agile Comms Handbook’.

“We can be brief.
And clear.
And unambiguous.
And interesting.”

It’s a helpful reminder that great communication isn’t either/or.

My bet is too much work gets sent out in first draft format, and then stays in first draft format. And that the above is achievable when we send out the first draft, and then continue to refine, and refine, and refine.

I’m reading Dune for the first time, and I’m looking forward to watching the film once I finish the book.

One of the characters, Lady Jessica, makes a statement that got me thinking: “Growth is limited by that necessity which is found in the least amount. And, naturally, the least favourable condition controls the growth rate.”

For example, let’s take a plant: it needs sunlight, water, and soil to grow. If it has a lot of sunlight and soil, but no water, the absence of water limits its growth.

Or say we’re trying to build muscle. We need to train, eat sufficient protein, and get a lot of sleep. Although we train consistently and eat cleanly, without adequate sleep we won’t grow.

These examples are simple. The inputs and outputs are clear and causal. But the concept gets murky when we start to apply it to teams of people working together.

The ingredients for success for one team, project, or company, may be completely different from another.

Some teams thrive on sprints followed by rest, others prefer a consistent, steady pace. Some teams need blue-sky opportunity to get them motivated, others need a burning platform. Some teams want clear direction given to them, others want to forge their own path.

Although we aren’t able to define universal ingredients for success for teams, that’s not the point. The point is to, as quickly as possible, identify the limiting factor.

What’s the thing that’s stopping our teams from growing?

And we start there.

When nature has laid its roots, sometimes it’s better to build around it, rather than try mold it to our view of the world.

Works for trees and boardwalks, and may also work for teams that bring ideas to life.

I turned thirty today!

I’m feeling much less reflective than I thought I’d be at this milestone, but I don’t see that as a bad thing.

Most of all, I feel grateful.

I know how lucky I am to be happy, healthy, and have a home full of love.

I couldn’t ask for more.

The photo of the payphone below brings back a very sweet memory.

In 2011, Maru and I were doing long distance. She was living in Connecticut, and I in New Zealand. We hadn’t seen each other in 4-5 months, I was on a lengthy layover in Miami, and was wanting to call her to say I had arrived safely.

I found a group of payphones, and calls were 25 cents per minute, so I figured we could at least chat for a short while.

I had issues with the first payphone, it took the quarter, but didn’t connect. So I moved to another, and that’s when I found the glitch.

After I inserted the quarter and called Maru, it didn’t prompt me to insert additional coins, nor did it disconnect me. We simply carried on talking for over an hour.

Maru and I were used to Skyping when we had wifi, but there was something special about this moment. Payphones aren’t meant to work like that, but this one did, on that day, for us.

And so whenever I pass through Miami and see them, they always make me smile.

Maru and I are heading to Mexico tomorrow, and I’m really excited. I haven’t been before, and it’s a place I’ve wanted to visit for some time!

I can’t wait to see some sun, eat great food, and spend some time at the beach.

We made a conscious decision to spend all of our time on the Yucatan peninsula, and save traversing the country for a later trip.

I could eat chillis, limes, and Mexican cuisine all day, so if you have any must try foods, send them my way!

I got off a call today, and someone messaged me saying, “You really should change your input mic, those headphones make you sound like a robot.”

The thing is I had been using these headphones all week; and no one said a thing.

I felt like I had broccoli stuck between my teeth.

Curious, I asked around, and most people said something like, “Oh yeah, the sound quality wasn’t great, but I could still understand you.”

Sure, it may have passed the minimum bar, but most of my job is speaking to other people, so I want communication to be as clear as possible.

I learnt two things today: never hesitate to tell someone their audio sucks, and take the same attitude with broccoli between the teeth.

What goes around comes around.

We plan in the calm.

But there’s usually either a headwind or a tailwind.

And if we’re lucky to get some calm, it’s usually in the early hours of the day—or when the work hasn’t really kicked off yet.

Instead of planning for calm, why don’t we expect to tack and jibe. To get where we want to go, we’ll at least need one or the other—or a combination of both.

I’ve been making my way through The Agile Comms Handbook from Giles Turnbull.

And I dig it.

A theme that’s stuck with me has been: communicate as fast as the work moves.

It’s less about speed than it is about building habits within our teams around the what and when we communicate.

Without deliberate practice, I think teams default to secrecy; only sharing when the work is ready.

It takes organisational guts to communicate the work in progress, the first guess, and the best-answer-we-have-right-now version.

It requires deliberate effort to be open with the ideas that have chirp in them, but may not be ready to leave the nest yet.

But when we do, when we post, when we share, when we’re open, when we realise it’s not that bad, magic can happen.

The work always expands to fit the time available — Parkinson’s law

Although I know this rule, I’ve been learning it’s lessons the hard way this week.

The work always expands.

I’ve also learnt it’s OK to set artificial deadlines so you don’t end up burning the candle at both ends.

Maru and I are currently in Miami spending time with her family. We visited some close friends that have a young family—three kids all under the age of six.

The kids were kicking around a football in the backyard. The eldest—a boy of 6 years—launched one that hit his younger sister square in the face.

I’ll be honest, I grimaced.

I saw her eyes started to squint, and she was beginning to tear up, when her father quickly said in a really positive, uplifting, and supportive tone, “No worries! You’re great! You’re OK!”

And immediately, she responded with raised shoulders, and a defiant look on her face that quickly turned to pride. Yes, she was fine!

Her dad’s reaction, one that was quick to praise her for being bold and strong (even if it was a hefty whack), helped her feel better.

The reaction matters.