The snow melted into a thick soup of mud for the Blue Sky Velo Cup 2009. Saturday marked the kickoff of a 2-day UCI sanctioned cyclocross race weekend here in Colorado.
Sunday its my turn at the Boulder Cup 2009.
The snow melted into a thick soup of mud for the Blue Sky Velo Cup 2009. Saturday marked the kickoff of a 2-day UCI sanctioned cyclocross race weekend here in Colorado.
Sunday its my turn at the Boulder Cup 2009.
There are two market-facing types of smart. What I call “Conference” smart and what I call “Customer” smart.
Anyone that’s been in a business leadership position knows or should know the different types of “smart” that people around them bring to the table. Street smart. Book smart. Engineering smart. Keep your mouth shut smart. I don’t know what I don’t know smart. And so on.
I’ve been to more than a few industry conferences – and I’ve been on hundreds of customer calls. In turn, I get the opportunity to talk to lots and lots of people, asking questions, gauging each of their perspectives, problems, lenses on where they see their business and what opportunities that are important to them.
Conference smart shows up when people go to lots of conferences. Speak on panels, and generally hob-nob with other conference elite. They learn the buzz-words, trendy jargon, what people say is the future and can recite the Industry luminaries (and celebrities) by first name – even better by nickname. The close cousin to Conference smart is Book smart. They just don’t like to travel to or don’t have the budget freedom to hit the conference circuit.
Customer smart is more gritty. Not nearly as glamorous as the Conference smart, and definitely without the cocktail parties and trips to Vegas. Customer smart typically comes with good sales people, but can also come from product leaders, marketeers and other externally-driven people that are interested in who’s buying what, why, and how.
Customer smart trumps Conference smart. Both however are necessary if you want to be successful - and its important to combine the two when it comes to strategy and longer-range planning. As my old boss used to say: “when in doubt, make a sales call”.
2 races this past weekend, saturday and sunday. Weather was amazing in the Colorado high country (35 degrees and not a cloud in the sky). Racing at altitude is tough. Getting a flat at the bottom of the steep run up and running all the way to the pits to swap a front tire adds another dimension of hard.
I attended AdWeek last week in NY and spent time at the OMMA Global conference. The conference was explicitly about the rise and impact of social media on ad agencies, brand marketers, and media in general. I found it interesting that by and large the de-facto definition of social media was Facebook.
Facebook is sort of like the Internet with training wheels. I mean you can connect with people, chat with them, send them updates, share photos, etc. on the regular old Internet internet. Facebook just lets you do all that stuff easily and with bubble-wrap for safety. I’m a fan of Facebook for all the stuff I just said, but its companies like Twitter that really seem to be defining an agnostic Internet. If Twitter is an example of agnosticism and functionality yet to come, then the Facebook Michelin Man had better figure out a way to not succumb to its own success.
The movie “You’ve Got Mail” came out in 1998. At the time AOL was the Internet. Fast-forward. Today, Facebook is social media.
Good intentions. Sage advice. Clever insights. All good and worthy goals of a conversation with a smart person, a successful person, an influential person. The problem lies in the clarity of what you want out of it and your perspective on the situation or issue. Smart people want (desperately) to add value, show their intellect, solve a problem, and have you come away better for having spent time with them. Its human nature to want to be liked and smartness is a likeable asset.
1. Career advice
Who hasn’t asked someone for career advice? We’ve all done it, and given the field I’ve chosen to work in, likely I’ll be seeking it again at some point. The filter I learned early on was that most people give the advice to do what they did to get them where they are. Caveat: I typically don’t seek advice from people that haven’t been successful in one way shape or form.
The advice goes like this: If you want to be a fill in the blank. The advice you get is that the best way to get there is through sales, or marketing, or engineering, or being a ‘generalist’, or goofing off in Europe, or going to grad school, or whatever the background of the person giving the advice is/was that got them to their success. Its not an intentional ratfuck, but its all too common and is nearly useless to the individual getting the advice. Unless you too believe that dropping out of Harvard and starting a social networking site is the path to greatness.
In my mind great career advice starts with an understanding of what the advice getter’s background is, where they’ve had real success and real failure, and what their ultimate goal and desires are.
2. Board of Directors
I’ve been on both sides of this one a bunch. You get a group of (by definition) smart people around a table to “direct” and advise, and keep on the straight and narrow a bunch of (hopefully) smart executives. The board folks some to meetings and spend quality time with their peers (other investors, former executives, industry experts) once a month and, being human, they want to be seen as smart value-adding participants.
The potential to ratfuck you starts here with the well intentioned, but picks up speed with the their individual level of under-informededness, and achieves escape velocity if their ego is sensitive. Unless one is plugged in to the market, major business happenings, and other near day-to-day operations then the value you’re adding could be the wrong value to the directees. The trick on both sides is to gauge the level of direction needed and appropriate as weighed against the width of understanding the situation – of both the director as well as the directees. Not an easy thing to do!
Some of the best board members I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with don’t talk a lot, but when they do its usually a question that seems to split atoms with its simplicity and directness to the essences of a particular issue.
3. Advisor or Mentor
This is the toughest to spot and the one most likely to really ratfuck you if you’re not careful. Why? Because more often than not a close advisor or mentor develops a personal or emotional relationship with the advisee. The ratfucking is unintentional, but no less wrong. It comes from giving advice that has too much defense for the advisee and too little perspective of the bigger picture. I’ve experienced this one and the only thing I can reflect on in retrospect is that the advice was too much exactly what I wanted to hear. Bad decisions result, started in motion by the best intentions.
Punchline:
Great advice is really had to come by. Most smart people aren’t sage advice givers. If you find one that likes you, takes the time to really understand you, and tells you things that you don’t like or want to hear – but in retrospect were the right things you needed to hear – hold onto that advisor like gold.
