Most days, we don’t perceive change as it happens. And then there are days where change is the whole story. My day that ended in a midnight search and rescue helicopter? Neatly in the second bucket. 

People hate change, we’re told. And, yet, have you noticed how much people love new shoes, new jobs, and new romance? It’s not “change” that we humans hate; it’s the uncertainty that change brings. 

Uncertainty is why so many companies insist it’s time to “come back” to work; they think it’ll return us to “normal.” Uncertainty is why some stay in sucky situations; They’d rather live with the known awful thing than risk the hurt of trying and not finding something awesome. Uncertainty is also why leaders struggle to create the needed culture change; they can’t figure out how to do the dance of co-creation, so they either lead too little or too much. 

I do a lot of work with leaders to help them navigate change. Strategy, after all, is building the plan to get from “here” to “there.” So in coaching teams or leaders, I help them shift away from “this” and towards “that” to build what’s next.

Then, I had this experience of literally getting lost in the wilderness. It shook me. But as I described the experience to a friend/coach, she said, THIS is what you do, who you are. And she encouraged me to share the experience with you, given how many of us are navigating uncertainty these days. 

SO, SO YOU MADE A LOT OF MISTAKES

I started from camp on the cloud-covered morning around 10 am, expecting to do a six-mile round trip hike to Mitchell Peak. I followed an upward trail to the rocky scramble at the peak to admire the 360-degree vista. I wore shorts and a t-shirt and felt chilly on the mountain despite the noon sun. At 12:30, I started my return. The trail I was following, it turns out, was not a trail but water runoff. (It had rained the two nights prior.) 

Around 1 pm, I knew I was lost. (Not only lost but off trail, in the wilderness.) 

At 2 pm, I realized I was f**ked. 

I had run out of water. I had no compass, no map. I had no food. I had no warmth nor shelter. My inner dialogue about this was loud. I berated myself for walking out of camp without essentials. I judged myself for not fitting into my pre-pandemic hiking clothes, which is why I didn’t have the right gear with me. I thought of why I was alone in the backcountry in the first place, that I was—yet again—divorcing.  

YOU’RE THE NORTH STAR AND THE COMPASS

To find my way out, I had to get fully present. 

The weird part about uncertainty is how much we humans want to control, analyze, or feel wrong about what’s passed, as if that could change any part of the present. When one is ashamed, one is frozen in time. Shame not only freezes us, but it also leaves us unable or reluctant, unwilling to be in the moment. So I spoke aloud to ground myself. To the shame I felt at that moment, I said, I have to let you go. I took breaths to calm my nervous system. If you listen to the noise of the past (or invalidating people), you’re not centered. Just as a physical compass lets you know where you are relative to the Earth’s magnetic poles, grounding oneself —Onlyness— is a compass to orient in life.

Then, I decided which way to head based on what I “knew.”

I figured that my biggest problem was water. I had already run out of the 30 ounces of water I had brought with me hours before. People can live for long periods in exposure, cold, and without food. But dehydration causes a fast set of problems. 

If I went back up the mountain, I would guarantee there would be no water. I studied where the sun was in the sky and the topology to get a sense of where I was. I figured out that, while I ascended the western slope, I was likely now on the eastern side. I thought back to the topo map I had looked at three days prior. I recalled that the ridge I was following would descend—if memory served, which was a big-ass if— towards a lake. I imagined that if I could follow the eastern ridge cross-country, I might find that lake and get to the established trail, which I could then follow to a meadow, where I recalled a cut-through to Marvin Pass and, from there, navigate back to camp.

That became my “strategy.” 

PULL YOU DOWN FASTER THAN A SUNSET

I was relieved when I found the lake and the maintained trail I had “planned” to seek. Well, relieved doesn’t quite capture it. There are no words. 

Yet, I was still miles from where I needed to be.

I hadn’t had water for six hours, which I was feeling. So I searched for a stream, found one, and drank just 20 ounces, hurrying. The coming sunset meant a new danger. 

By the time I reached the meadow I was aiming for—Rowell Meadows—I had gone another four to five miles uphill (the descent on the mountain’s eastern slope meant an unrelenting rise). I was hustling and soaked from the effort. 

I was shivering even before the sun moved into the shadows. 

My Apple watch stopped tracking around 12 miles, but by the time I reached Rowell Meadows, I had probably hiked 17 miles with 4,000 feet of altitude gain. With just 70 ounces of water. I was wearing the wrong (wet) clothes and certainly not enough clothes. I was shaking hard, a possible early sign of hypothermia. 

And yet, I was just 2.3 miles from camp. And I wanted—needed—to get there.

AND YOU CAN’T SEE YOUR WAY OUT OF IT

While I “knew” there was a trail junction in Rowell Meadows to Marvin Pass, I couldn’t find it. I searched one direction of the meadow and then the other. 

Frustrated, I considered going off-trail—cross-country between the two mountain peaks where I expected the pass—even though I had spent the better part of the day navigating toward established trails. 

I was just so used to going as the strategy.

People do this in times of uncertainty: barrelling through by doing what they’ve always done instead of reevaluating if the strategy that got them here is the same strategy that will get them where they need to go. 

But it explains why I started to follow a new trail going away from the meadow I had spent the entire day trying to reach. Soon, that trail turned into a narrow path with a steep drop on one side. And that part of me that understands danger turned me around and got me to pause.

I returned to the meadow. And hunkered down for the night.

I shivered, waiting. Waited for what? I have no idea. 

In the same way that our bodies need food and water (knowing that without them, we die), we look for signs of certainty when ambiguity threatens our emotional psyche. But uncertainty is not a threat, as much as it is a discomfort. And discomfort is neither bad nor wrong. It’s not always a sign or a signal to stop. Discomfort is not just a necessary step in change; getting uncomfortable is at the root of all growth. 

Change and comfort don’t coexist, but development and discomfort do. 

IT’S A HELPING HAND WHEN YOU NEED IT MOST

When I first heard the helicopter in the air, I was inclined to ignore it. By this point, I had figured out a plan for what I would do in the morning (circle the full meadow) to find the trail junction towards camp.

But then I thought, wait, what. And I unburied myself from the bed of pine needles I had made and ran into Rowell Meadows on that moonlit night. Thinking, wow, this is a pretty good landing spot. And the helicopter came right to the meadow, right over my head, only to keep flying. (It turns out they weren’t using visual sighting but heat sensors, and my body temperature didn’t register.)

Oh well, I thought. That’s fine. I’ll be fine. I even thought of going back to my bed of pine needles. But then I thought, hey, it’s not like I have anything else to do out here. And so I watched the helicopter while doing jumping jacks to stay warm. It circled Mitchell Peak. Then, broader. And then back to Mitchell Peak. The search pattern was predictable. But, every now and again, it would stop its pattern to hover. At one point, it did so at the edge of the meadow. Right, where I was. Well, not that close; the field was immense. 

But observing it got me thinking. They must be hovering for a reason.

This is how I found some backpackers. It’s what I’ve always loved about backcountry backpacking. The people you meet. They’ll share tips to discover an unmapped lake or, in this case, a puffer, a quilt, a wool hat, food, and their campfire to warm me up. Using their satellite phone, I sent word to a bestie. I had no idea she knew I was lost; that search and rescue had already reached out to her. But we got back a “yes” to my ask that she tell the police team that I was okay.

So it was a surprise that a few hours later, the helicopter returned and gently landed in the meadow. It turns out that when you are “missing,” the team doesn’t stop, not even if they put their eyes on you or when you tell them your plan to get back to camp at dawn. I tried to convince them, but Officers Ty and Mike kindly said, “Hey, we don’t want to force you, but we need you to come with us.” 

Hence, the midnight helicopter ride to Fresno. 

IT’LL COME AND MAKE YOU WHOLE AGAIN

Not long after I returned from the backcountry, a new client hired me via my website to help him spot his Onlyness as his birthday present for himself. He asked me a few times how my coaching process worked. I’ve always felt bad that I don’t have a “standard routine approach.” But I realize now this was not a happenstance. How I found my way is how I navigate change work; I coach someone so they have the skills to orient and navigate the world. 

There are obvious lessons from what I’ve shared so far.

• Get present. Notice what is. Not what we want to be or “should be” but reality. 
• Figure out where “there” is for any specific situation. 
• Design a plan to get from here to there.
• Start, but stop as soon as that strategy has played out. Reevaluate.
• When uncertain, face the discomfort. 

But the less obvious one is what I think most matters.

• How do you act (relentlessly) to advocate for your own life? Most of us can’t create the life we want, changing whatever needs to be changed because we don’t know how to center on that one thing we’re responsible for.

The key to handling change isn’t to defy uncertainty but to locate and lean on what helps navigate that change and remain steady in ourselves.

LOVE IS UNSTOPPABLE

When I returned to camp, a fellow camper Kathy said, “You didn’t need to be rescued; you rescued yourself.”  Another person turned out to have called in a favor to get the choppers in the air and not wait the standard 24 hours to launch a search and rescue. She and I had talked the day before. She wanted me to know it wasn’t because she didn’t have faith in my abilities, but she knew that if I saw the helicopters in the air, I’d know that they knew I was missing. She said she got the chopper in the air “so I wouldn’t feel alone.”

And this is the thing that is so mysterious about how we navigate new terrain.  I started the day thinking I was all alone because of the soon-to-be divorce and ended that 24-hour day surrounded by people who cared. 

Five years ago this month, the Power of Onlyness was published. I wrote in it that when “we pull on that thread that only one sees, we find ourselves connected to the fabric of the world.” I live by it. Literally. 

Q: Lately, I’ve been feeling guilty about my workload. I took on a big charter within a tech firm and spent the first six months or so working about 12-14 hour days. And slowly but surely, I’ve built a team that can not only do what needs to be done but owns the way the work needs to be done. As we deliver results, we have become the glue that makes all the teams we touch stronger and more connected. I know I should be feeling good about all this leadership, but I feel like I should be doing more or working harder or … something. I’m questioning my level of engagement and commitment to my work. And I worry about what happens if they find out? I’m not the only leader who feels like this, am I? 

Dear Guilty, 

So, if you don’t work all out, you’re not doing enough?

<Girl.>

Like Years Later, you’re listening to ideas that don’t serve you. 

As you describe what you’ve done, I can see your creativity in envisioning the team design. I can see your charisma to enroll people and set the organization up for success by hiring well. And I know it takes something special to align people to work, so they become more than the sum of their parts. You’ve done what every great leader aims: enabling a high-performance culture. 

Yet, you ask if you should do more and work harder. As if what you’ve done already is not enough, and ease isn’t permissible. 

That voice you’re listening to? It’s asking, are you giving it your absolute all? 

I GO OUT OF MY HEAD

” Giving your all,” some would say, is not just a good thing; it is the only thing — it’s the only way to live a full life. It’s you showing up in the arena of your life. On the other hand, how many of us “give it all” to people and places as we deny (or are denied) our own needs?

The difference? It lies in how we define all. Are you giving all of yourself, what only you have to give? Or do we define “all” as nearly 24×7?

ALL THE THINGS YOU DO TO ME

You might already know that my husband and I started a trial separation in January? And it might be too soon, and I might be too raw to write about it. But because it’s relevant to this topic, I’ll share that last week, and we made it official. We’re no longer working on reconciliation; we’re working on parting-in-grace.  

Like you, I feel guilty that I did not do more, despite ten years of therapy and resourcing. To this day, I still picture us having a recommitment service on our 20th wedding anniversary this fall. This, even though he has told me repeatedly that what I’m asking for is “too much,” that I am “too needy,” and that what I want is asking for a “personality transplant.” But since I was the person who had grown and healed and therefore changed what I wanted from us, I felt like I should do more or try harder or … something. 

However wrong an idea it is, I felt I should “fix it” since my growth had “broken it.” 

Like you, I questioned myself a lot. A lot, lot.

Maybe I should accept that my life partner’s face doesn’t light up when he sees me and just get that need met elsewhere? Maybe I should stop caring that his first response to everything I say is to negate or refute my perspective; if I believe in something, I should be willing to argue for it, right? Maybe it’s okay to keep getting hurt since I was getting stronger every time I had to get back off the ground?

So, I kept trying to “give it my all”? 

But do you know what I didn’t ask?

If, in this relationship, my Onlyness was valued.

I had grown so proficient at coping and centering the tree of “us” that I wasn’t paying attention to my fruition. Or lack of fruition in this case. Even though I “know” that for any relationship to work, it has to honor one’s Onlyness, I struggled to center it correctly. 

And that’s why I share this tender news with you.

I get what you’re asking.

Though you didn’t say it that way, you’re asking….Is it okay to choose yourself?

And so let me answer emphatically that yes, you must. You don’t want to be doing the most work you can; you want to be being you the most. Giving it your all is good when it is for your purpose when it taps Onlyness. Leadership involves caring for others, but it can never mean abdicating oneself. Yes, we show up to do our best. But that doesn’t—cannot—mean we drain or deplete the very source of that best work. 

Do what only you are here to do, and enable others to do the same.

AND I JUST CAN’T GET ENOUGH

This is counter to what we’re taught. We’re taught to hustle, to prove, and all that.

Business “leaders” talk about giving as a universal good. Certain people talk about “give and take” without addressing the fact that there are some who are expected to give until it hurts, while some are allowed to take without question. 

How many of us have worked in institutions, loyally, only to find ourselves “outsourced,” “reorg’d,” or “streamlined.”? Where we learned that, despite giving it “our all,” we were as easily replaceable as a cog. Or working harder than anyone only to see the boss’s boss get the meatiest part of the reward while we got the chance to “prove ourselves.” As the ever-brilliant sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom says, the institution cannot love you. The same can be said about marriage. It’s not the institution that guarantees love or being loved; marriages work when it is a vehicle for each person to keep becoming the person they are meant to be. 

And the spin, the spin around this, can take us down.

About valuing hard work, which translates to being over-worked. Maybe even you are thinking of counter-examples. How some places totally take care of their people, and those places deserve our all. You might point to benefits like free dinners. I’ll just remind you that the work cultures that serve hot dinners at 6 pm don’t do it out of the goodness of their heart, lovebugs. They do it because it benefits them. Ten bucks for dinner in exchange for one to two more hours of labor meant they got that last whatever energy you had in your tank before you left the building. In turn, family or friends got the limpest and wilted version of you. Withered (albeit fed) people happen by neglecting oneself, the hobbies, sunshine, and rest one needs. 

JUST LIKE A RAINBOW

Now, I want to plant an idea to displace yours, Guilty. 

Instead of thinking, should I be working harder or doing more or something… 

I want you to ask: Are you creating the spaciousness for your Onlyness to shine? 

I ask because you need at least 5% reserve capacity to have enough room for that next big idea. Andre Delbecq, my former Management Sciences professor at Santa Clara University, taught me that. (I highlight “at least” because it can also mean you reserve—I know it’ll sound crazy to you, but still—40% of your capacity to create, it’s okay!)

I think of this often because research will be published every few years about how leaders spend their time. And it’ll be something like senior managers spend less than 3% of their time on the long-term view of the future. And we’ll do the math and see how that amounts to about two hours of a 60-hour week. And if we look around, we’ll see that’s being generous because that time is counted as a meeting. It’s not the time that allows for ideas to come from a good run or after a restful weekend.

As we’re all “giving it our all,” we’re becoming myopic.

One obvious result: we don’t understand our market needs or what’s blocking progress. We don’t give ourselves the space to be creative. Or energized. Or alive at work. But if we can create spaciousness, we’ll be more present, listen to what is needed, and see what the situation calls for—not going from thing to thing, exhausted, limping as you try to run faster—but calmly centered in Onlyness. 

Consider that new question, will you?

YOU KNOW YOU SET ME FREE

A friend was recently submitting input for his annual performance review. And one question the review process asked was, “How have you gone above and beyond?” This friend thought, “Listen, I’m paid this combination of wages, salaries, bonuses, benefits, and perks, in exchange for how I do my job and do it well.” The question assumed that he should be doing more and working harder.

“Why are you asking this question?” he asked.

Why exactly? 

Q: Several years ago, a line manager told me, “you realize I am letting you play at learning and development.” Now, in a crass comment, an unnecessary comment, and poorly communicated. What was said without being said? 

I control you.
I decide if you get to step outside of your narrowly defined job role.
L&D adds little value to me, but if it keeps you happy, go ahead and play.
Know I can f@@k your worldview up at will.

This is just one example of messages I’ve had shape me, and it’s only years later that I see how much it caused me to move in one direction, to accommodate his point of view over my own. It shows the tremendous power of words. 

Dear Years Later, 

Not everyone’s words deserve to be valued. Not if they don’t value you. 

And as easy as that sounds, or how easily one can write it, it’s hard to process at the moment. 

I learned this lesson when I was talking to a famous author who had offered to help me title what would be my second book, the one Harvard published. 

In response to my question about the best book title, this is what he said (and notice how it has nothing at all to do with the question). He answered, “As a brown woman, your chances of being seen and heard in the world are next to NOTHING. For your ideas to be seen, they need to be edgier.” He paused as if to resolve this tension as he stared over and perhaps through stained glass windows in the church where we were sitting. Instead, he affirmed why it was futile. “But if you are edgy, you will be too scary to be heard.” 

It was a sleight of hand far too many people experience. 

He flattened the many reasons that I had a distinct point of view into a two-dimensional rationale for why I was predestined to fail. My point of view, formed by working my way up from the bottom vs. getting an Ivy League education, for example, was eliminated, and I was reduced to my skin color and gender. 

By uttering a few words, he performed a disappearing trick—poof, my value vanished while his value remained high because he was the “good guy” who offered help. 

He had the nicest of tones. And I let that tone fool me. But those kind words and tone were for him, not for me. He used polished and polite language, even as he was limiting me so he could have the moral identity of “I’m a good person, damnit” regardless of his harmful words. 

As you said, it’s words that have power.

TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW A GOOD THING GOES BAD

When someone’s words tell you that your voice and new ideas don’t belong, they should automatically lose the right to be heard. Because when people do this, they advocate for the status quo and not you. They are blocking the door to newness. 

So the question is how to decide what words we listen to.

NOW I’M WONDERING

Years Later, you were able to unpack the messages to understand how they devalued you, but it took time. 

Why is that? 

When I got advice that my ideas would never be heard? I walked straight from Mr. Author-Guru-Dude into a group of friends. They all said nothing to question or challenge his ideas. My husband, equally, couldn’t or wouldn’t counter the argument when I talked to him. A week later, I shared it with a friend that Guru-Dude and I had in common. She spent time telling me why he said what he said, justifying him while advising me to “move past it.” 

But as you said, words have power. 

I shared the story with the Harvard book team. And the editor there latched onto the “you’ll never be seen if you’re too edgy” words. Even though I had come up with a sizzling title by then, it got dismissed. Why? Because the Editor dude agreed with the Guru Dude. So Harvard-Editor-Guy insisted that I needed a book title that was an “easy-to-understand” one. This logic was keeping me relatively unknown by packaging my future-forward ideas badly. 

It took another year (!) before someone overheard me tell Guru Dude’s story that my “ideas would never be heard.” I was sharing how I should stop trying on my behalf and focus on the next generation. And this person interrupted me mid-sentence to say, um, NOOOOOO. 

“What he told you? That is BULLSHIT,” she thundered so that everyone around us suddenly stopped talking. 

I was alone until I had her advocacy. 

I wonder if that’s the same for you. Did it take years because you did it alone? I say that even if you talked it through with someone. Because when you’re talking with someone who can’t or won’t advocate for you and with you, you might as well be alone. 

And that’s the lesson for all of us being told bullshit: FIND YOUR PEOPLE. 

SOMETHING TO GET YOU THROUGH?

Find those who can help you see your value. 

Without a social construct of belonging, your voice is so tiny or isolated that it can never enable your full value, Onlyness. 

It’s taken me many years to know who those people are for me and what to look for. 

And so, let me share my five criteria in case it helps you? 

• The ones who can see and center someone in their own story. 

If I called them today with a story of what just happened, these people would hear Old Guru Guy or Your Old Boss and call bullshit on whatever they said.  I found them by sharing stories over time and seeing who stood up for me and with me. I excluded the people who would take the “devil’s advocate” role to justify or explore why the asshat said what he said. (The devil, by the by, doesn’t need an advocate, you do). 

• The ones that celebrate everything, not just the perfect parts. 

These are the people who hear the stories of what has shaped my life and love me not despite those stories but because of those stories. I found them by sharing my wounds and vulnerabilities and seeing who treated those tenderly. I excluded the people who, when they hear about my injuries, pity me or want me to be “fixed”. My people are proud of me; they can see who I am and what has formed me. 

• The ones who inspire. 

Because those who surround us affect us. Many people are inspirational, but the ones who can inspire me are those who are willing to share how they are thinking, even when it isn’t going well. I exclude people who tell me a different story the next time we talked about it as if spinning tales, facade mean they’re not letting me see them. Which is the opposte of inspiring, which in the original latin is to ‘impart a truth or idea to someone’. Having them in my inner circle illuminates more possibilities for my own life and work. 

• The ones that hold you accountable. 

I found those who critique constructively. The ones who don’t tell me “the” answer but can help me see where I’m stuck so I can find “my” answer. I exclude people who want to be right or “know”; People who have a strong desire to be correct aren’t creating accountability; they’re creating inequality or shame. Now I have people who ask me hard questions but always believe in my ability to ultimately figure out the answers, and by helping me see my own question more clearly. 

• Those who can co-build the relationship.

I choose parties who are emotionally mature and willing to address things when they come up. This lets us be close. I have three rules for if someone is a good at co-building our relationship: 1) can they name it (x is a problem), 2) can they claim it (here’s why it bothers me), and 3) can they connect you to the solution (here’s what I need from you). I reject the people who can’t hold these conversations because either it means problems don’t get addressed or it means any problems that arise become all mine to solve, which isn’t a way to relate as equals, it’s a dependency.

IS IT A LOVE SONG?

Yes, Words have power. The key is how do you decide what words have value? Just because someone should have your interests at heart doesn’t mean they do. (Or ever will.) We should value those who value us. 

It’s James Baldwin’s quote, “Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” So we can be free.

This matters deeply. We do a BIG thing by building our inner circle. It’s how we dismantle the structures and people who only value certain voices and ideas. It lets us deny their space in our heads. It stops giving them the power to tell us who we are. And it provides us with the strength to not shape-shift, to not accommodate their point of view over our own. Which is how we reclaim ourselves, our Onlyness.

And only as we do that can we shape and build what comes next. 

After Clarity Seeker wrote his question and we explored “the land of confusion,” I reached out to Tim Kastelle to ask him to teach us how to get thru confusion.

The reason I asked him? It’s what he’s recently taught me.

(For those of you that don’t already know of Tim, he’s an innovation professor at the University of Queensland. Not just any professor, mind you. He’s their poster child. And in 2021, he won the award that his peers gave for singling out excellence in teaching. We started as research colleagues and are now, luckily, friends.)

And here’s what he wrote:

The most common source of confusion around strategy is an unwillingness to make trade-offs, which is its heart – making choices and being clear about things you won’t do. If you can’t identify and resolve the conflicts inherent to your choice, you don’t have a strategy; you have hope.

One tool I’ve used to help reduce confusion is called “even/over” statements. This is a great way to frame trade-offs between two desirable objectives. An even/over structure looks like this:

*one good thing* even/over *another good thing*

(not as some like to do *my good idea* even/over *their shitty idea*)

Here’s an example from my work at the University of Queensland Business School. Much of higher education is experiencing confusion around what to do with micro-credentials, particularly online ones. Many people take online courses that include a micro-credential once they’ve completed it (this is one I made: https://www.edx.org/course/design-thinking-and-creativity-for-innovation ).

A university can have a few different goals when making a short course that includes a micro-credential. One common one is: that we want to use micro-credentials to give students an easy path to our complete degree programs. This takes advantage of our key value propositions: we offer credentials that employers and others recognize. If you build a micro-credential that articulates into a degree program, it needs to meet several criteria. There needs to be rigorous assessment so that the learner’s work in the micro-credential can be credited into the bigger program, and the pricing often needs to be consistent with the price of the whole program. We measure success here by how many students take the micro-credential to go on to enroll in a degree program.

But this strategy isn’t the only way you can succeed with a micro-credential program.

While UQ is an elite university, we don’t have much brand recognition outside of the Asia-Pacific region. So, another way we can use micro-credentials is to make trendy ones so that many people who haven’t heard of us before learn about what we’re doing. The criteria for this kind of micro-credential are different: they need to be accessible, they need to be pretty inexpensive, and the assessment can’t be so challenging that it becomes an obstacle. We can measure success here by how many people enroll, how many put their completion certificate in their LinkedIn profile, etc.

These objectives, leading to degrees or increased brand recognition, are highly desirable. But you can’t build one micro-credential that does both. You have to choose between:

Articulation (high quality) even/over brand recognition (high volume) or

Brand recognition even/over articulation.

Once you make this choice, cascading design and operational decisions follow to meet one objective over the other.

This is how confusion, or working at cross-purposes, etc., gets reduced.

The problem for many universities right now (including my own) is not seeing this issue – one bunch of people building micro-credentials thinks their target is brand recognition. In contrast, another thinks they’re recruiting articulation students. Because they’re not naming the invisible thing, they can’t solve or resolve the conflict between the two. As a result, they fight, often building something “in the middle.”

And the problem with this is probably obvious. But it’s worth spelling out. It creates something that no one wants.  The educational institution neither builds a brand nor attracts new students.

Even though many good people tried to do “the right thing,” they effectively worked at cross-purposes because they couldn’t name the issue at hand.

Nilofer and I have run into another example on a project we’re working on that you’ll hear a lot about very soon. Many people in the business world advocate creating organizational cultures where “people matter.” This is a very admirable goal. Of course, people matter.

You can say “people matter,” while the only leadership style you value is a combative one.

You can say “people matter” while only listening to those with a certain profile.

You can say “people matter” while asking people to speak up, and not fixing why they’re not heard.

You get the point.

You can believe “people matter,” and your organization can still perpetuate harm against the vast majority of your people. It can still lack psychological safety, so people can’t bring their whole selves to work. It can still value the comfort and success of particular groups of people over that of others.

What if, instead, we build organizations where each of us is valued? That’s different. We must develop equality, psychological safety, and equity when we value each person. You design for Onlyness.

So: “Value Each Person” even/over “people matter.”

That’s the case for even/over statements. They’re a great way to increase your strategy’s clarity and reduce confusion. If you have a clear set of them, it can guide in-the-moment decisions for your front-line people. If you want more detail on this idea, all of the organizations that spun out from Undercurrent do this well:

NOBL: https://academy.nobl.io/how-to-write-a-strategy-your-team-will-remember/

TheReady: https://medium.com/the-ready/even-overs-the-prioritization-tool-that-brings-your-strategy-to-life-e4f28f2949ac

Parabol: https://www.parabol.co/blog/strategic-prioritization-even-over-statements/

Q: I’m three months into a challenging leadership role with a start-up company. The company and its business are very promising, and everything I’ve learned in the past three months just continues to prove that true. 

But the environment is confusing and chaotic. 

Execution doesn’t match the vision; the executive ranks have shifted more than six times in three months. The different teams are working in different directions. This is not conflict – we are not working at cross-purposes. This is either a lack of leadership or a lack of communication of leadership, or—most likely—a lack of clarity. 

My biggest challenge is sorting out how to bring my unique set of insights and abilities— my Onlyness—to this team to help create clarity and direction and keep the proverbial ship on course. How can I learn to bring my Onlyness to the efforts to influence decisions and practices as they are getting clarified?

Dear Clarity Seeker, 

While there are many ways to create value, there are just a few ways to destroy it. 

Confusion surely tops the shortlist of destructive ways.  

I once joined a promising team, and the Head of Finance Howard, was my co-conspirator. From day one of working together, we respected each other and got each other. Laughed, even. 

But within weeks, we weren’t connecting. 

Was it me? Was I not communicating well, or did I do something wrong, like overstepping my scope? Was it him? He kept taking longer and longer to respond to my requests, even though his office was next door. 

This ickiness spread, infecting the extended team. People started checking with him and with me, but separately. Most wrote emails to document critical decisions for fear something would bite them in the butt. And many looped the bosses into CYA conversations, creating more and often unnecessary work for everyone. 

The confusion seems interpersonal, inconsequential at first. But it takes down teams.   

CAN’T YOU SEE THIS IS A LAND OF CONFUSION?

It’s a lack of understanding, yes. Uncertainty, surely. But confusion cuts deeper than that. Confusion blunts one’s sense of purpose and spins one around enough that they don’t know what they should do next. 

This is why the confusion in the firm is not unrelated to the firm’s prospects. It’s a sign and signal that the needed conversations and debates—the things that create a shared understanding among people to create an executable strategy—are missing. I’ve previously described this as an organizational “Air Sandwich,” like a PB&J sandwich without any of the PB&J. 

Blech. 

One does not have a great strategy if one also has confusion. One cannot execute well when there is confusion. One does not have great teamwork if there is confusion. If you have this disorder, you have a dysfunction.

MAKING TOO MANY PROBLEMS

So, I’m sorry to break this news to you since you asked the question the way you did. But there is a conflict. It’s just invisible right now. 

The dynamic between Howard and me? It turned out that we were being told slightly different stories about priorities. And each of us wanted to do our best, so we adjusted our approaches accordingly. We didn’t check with each other because we assumed our bosses were aligned. But they weren’t. The CFO had been cynical about a recent company acquisition, and because he didn’t feel heard or valued in that process, he was now asking hard questions about whether the right things were in place. He was adding pressure to “prove his point.” The Head of Product was now in charge of the new big thing, so he felt frustrated that not enough was being done to make that work successful. His career was on the line, too. 

But our team couldn’t see all that. 

It looked like so-and-so wasn’t being supportive. Or that we were not doing enough. 

None of us asked, “what is that’s dividing us, and how do we solve it?” 

And I readily admit that I would have been uncomfortable asking this question way back. 

Like nearly every one of you who writes to me, I had an internalized sense that leaders should know where they’re going and be mature enough to talk with each other. I also questioned if I knew “enough” to ask a valid question. I wasn’t raised to believe in my voice.  Combine these beliefs—and we know what kept me from asking relevant questions. 

These beliefs are more common than we’d like to admit. The preponderance of these beliefs means that the “call is coming from inside the house.” The same beliefs that keep us from upsetting the apple cart are the same beliefs that keep us from adding value that only one can. 

If no one asks, what is putting us at cross purposes? Nothing has a chance to be solved. 

You see this everywhere. 

The person who reports to one person, but has a dotted-line relationship with another, is often told they need to be a “better communicator.” But the issue is rarely words. When executives aren’t aligned on priorities, a junior person is put in the middle.

Or how we ask middle managers to “just navigate the ambiguity” vs. fixing the darn ambiguity. 

Or when we are asked to do work against two competing goals when there’s only enough energy and resources to do one thing well. Instead of deciding which one, teams are asked to “figure it out.”

These “solutions” make people the Band-Aids instead of stitching the open wound of an organizational conflict. It’s how we fail: depleting energy and slowing the business.

THESE ARE THE NAMES WE’RE GIVEN 

Innovative, alive work is about how a group gathers together to turn nascent ideas into new realities. The keyword in the last sentence is how. 

But most of us are operating in a different how. One so well known I’d bet that if I write just one word of the three, you’ll be able to fill in the entire phrase. 

Ready. ___. ____. 

This beloved sequence of operations is often used to lead a team towards hitting an objective. 

The logic of the adage is linear. That one thing follows the other. First, you prepare, then decide, and finally, execute what has been resolved. The “ready-aim-fire” logic is a tried-and-true operational maxim that many people still value. It gives people a (false) sense of predictability.  

But I’d like for you to reevaluate it for two reasons:

First, if you accept this premise, it’s easy to think of your job as one of the three. We’re either the planners and resource folks (readiness), the strategizers (aim), or execution folks (fire). So let’s say you show up at a firm where the strategy is already “decided”; you can think your job is to execute what others have determined, even if you think it’s off by some measure. Which, by definition, denies Onlyness where each has a perspective to offer, regardless of role.  

The second reason is more abstract but relevant. Just ask yourself: Is anything this linear? How exactly does one prepare for something before you decide what it is? What if one finds new information while executing? Wouldn’t you need to reevaluate the decision? It sounds so appealing to think of work as predictable, but nothing I’ve ever experienced works this way in real life. Have you? 

In the Social Era, we create (or rather, co-create) value via relationships. Modern work is interrelated, instead of isolated handoffs that the “ready-aim-fire” construct suggests. How we ask what the issues are, how we stay curious, and how we learn together. Business results, including revenue, are not tied to isolated or individual efforts but to how connected we are. 

Not naming the conflict for what it is ….denies you all a way to connect and solve it.

THE SOUND OF YOUR LAUGHTER AS I HELD YOU TIGHT

If the company keeps overturning its leadership team, it’s a sign that they think new players will fix a broken strategy. So, as the newbie, you can be the one to ask that. “Sometimes, people hire new teams because they think the issue has been execution. Before we become the (next) team that must be replaced, let’s take the ten days to ensure we’re aligned on the strategy.”

Or, if the execution doesn’t match the vision, someone is signaling that it’s okay to change the playbook. So you’ve gotta learn to ask questions that get at that. Ask, “Hey, this is hard for me to ask because it seems like I’m challenging someone. But I see that execution doesn’t match the vision, and I worry that we’ll never get on the same page if I don’t ask.”

And even more specifically, to get the team to address what they want MORE THAN other things. This is the conflict that Howard and I faced but never named. And based on my 20 years of experience since then, it’s nearly always the issue. We want different things simultaneously but don’t want to name the inherent conflicts. We don’t want to disagree, which leaves us in a check-mate situation. Unable to move forward, unable to win. Confused.

To be clear, you’re not raising conflict to create discomfort—yours or theirs. 

The reality is if we don’t ask and author those meaningful questions, the company won’t have a chance. You’re raising the issues because you want the very thing it wants for itself: success. 

As Phillip Roth once put it, “Life is, and.” He meant that we don’t live in a linear world. We live with many things at once. Everything is connected to everything. And that’s your work, too. Connect your voice to the thing causing everyone to suffer. Connect with your peers to name what drives a wedge between all of you and winning. Connect them to the work you all need to do, together.  

I am rooting for you as much as this drummer is pounding away. 

Q: Isn’t there always some need greater than your own? How do you change that or break that cycle? 

A: What’s the pithy phrase? We teach best what we most need to learn? 

Your question, Greater Than, comes when I am actively working to change this very cycle. 

But before I share that story, let me acknowledge the challenge. 

Most of us have been told and taught that our needs are not valid. 

It’s how our parents told us that what we wanted to do didn’t matter enough and that we should get a “safe” degree. Parental desires trumped our own. The teachers who couldn’t or wouldn’t teach us what we were curious about but instead taught what was needed to pass a particular standardized test. The test is prioritized vs. personal development. It’s the way our bosses will say, “there is no budget” when we ask for a  well-deserved raise; We might have done everything the business asked of us, but other things mattered more than our needs being met.

There is always someone saying their needs matter > our own, in stereo. 

DON’T GO FOR SECOND BEST

When we accept the idea of someone’s needs as “greater” than someone else’s, we have bought into and reinforced the illusion of human hierarchy. Because if we buy the idea that someone’s needs are higher than, better than, greater than, we’ve also accepted that someone else is worse than, lesser than, or lower than. 

Yet,  any construct that makes someone “small” and others “on top” limits Onlyness.

When you stand in the spot where only one stands, you realize that you can’t live into your fullness, your Onlyness, and disregard your own needs at the same time. 

PUT YOUR LOVE TO THE TEST

Today, I can see how my research and study of Onlyness since I first coined the term in 2012 has led me to where I am today. 

Just as the calendar year flipped into 2022, my hubster and I said to one another words that had been years in the making: “let’s start a trial separation.” 

And ever since, I’ve been asking how something that started so good changed.

And I think it comes down to this: It didn’t change, I did. 

I used to think that love was about me taking care of someone, and they, in turn, would take care of me. That was how I understood mutuality back when. 

And that’s why, during a recent joint counseling session, we learned how I know his entire life story minus one detail he had never shared before. I know, too, his related coping tools and how they affect our relationship dynamic. After we were done with our session, he remarked on my degree of observation. He said it was amazing to see how much his interior life I knew, yet he barely knew mine. 

I had, by my actions, taught him that his interior life was more important than mine. 

We both cared about his interior life. So, two votes. 

But who was advocating for my life to be understood? Not me, not him. No votes. 

And gosh darn it if now, many years later, I find myself in second place and wondering how I got here. I had not picked myself. I was hoping to be picked. 

My earlier understanding of mutuality was flawed: it doesn’t come through what I do for you or you for me, but what we can do with one another.  

With one another. I can see now how we could have voted for ourselves and each other—growing what we can do because we’re doing it together.

Four votes. 

(And if this is too personal and not enough about work stuff, that last hyperlink is to a previous column where we cover this exact topic. In it, we pierce the veil of servant leadership to see how it fails us.)

YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW YOU’VE GOT TO

So how do you change that, you ask? 

You simply do. 

Change is not actually simple. But it is about the doing. 

That which animates each of us, our Onlyness, is to be honored. That is your job, a job that can never be delegated and never outsourced. Therefore, it’s your job to advocate for your needs, see yourself, and name what you want in the world. Because this is how you manifest your Onlyness into the world. Again, you cannot ask someone else to do that. Well, you can, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t happen. It’s not their job. It’s yours. (which is not to say you do it alone).

And the old me trying to get him to take care of me by caring for him? That’s not right, it’s co-dependency or well, something, but it’s not honoring my Onlyness. Nor was it honoring his Onlyness, so he chooses if he cares about my interior life. 

TO LIFT YOU TO YOUR HIGHER GROUND

There’s a great book title that captures how hard this is:

The Truth Will Set You Free, But First It Will Piss You Off!

And that’s kinda how I feel about the Onlyness journey some days. When I see how I have been complicit in believing in anything other than the fullness, wholeness of Onlyness. Our value is not earned; it just is. It is never in comparison to another, it is always true. But it does require us to occupy our own space.

Today, I wouldn’t ask someone to love me by taking care of me. I’d want emotional support as I care for myself. As Liz Plank and her crew call it, that would get me off the patriarchal ladder and grounded. 

How about you? Ready for that? 

***

And our Editor is sharing You & I by Local Natives. This pensive-sounding song is about a relationship ending because one person has grown, and the other has not. “In all this light, all I feel is dark.” (Onlyness is accepting both your light darkness.)