There is an old story of a farmers cat and the mice. Farmers don’t like mice, they eat the ears of the corn so the Farmer bought himself a cat and instructed the cat to go chase the mice. Cats don’t respond well to instruction but so the cat would “play” with the mice as cats do (i.e. bite off their tails and appendages and watch them flail helplessly) then adjourn to the barn to sleep somewhere warmer and less taxing. On finding the cat asleep on a hay bale the Farmer shouted at the cat and kicked him back out into the field to perform his duty. So play became duty and the cat performed rather unwillingly before acknowledging his ingrained habits and retiring to the barn. The Farmer scolded the cat each time he caught him in the barn. Now, every time the cat sees a mouse he runs away in fear.
Where’s the salt?
So you open the kitchen cupboard door and look for the salt and get frustrated looking for it - it must be in here somewhere. I can’t understand, it was here yesterday. So you call out to your partner in the next room “Where’s the salt?” “In the cupboard on the 2nd shelf” she replies. “Where???” you say as your impatience builds. She slams down her magazine and storms into the kitchen with purpose - “There!” she says pulling the salt shaker from out under your nose. It was right there in front of you. Feeling half stupid, half puzzled you are lost for words you blurt out “Why did you put it there??” knowing full well that it’s always there (or thereabouts).
If we’re in anyway connected, it’s because we’re curious - we’re travellers. Not in the literal sense maybe but manifested in our desire to seek answers and discover the wonder that awaits us out there.
I’ve been seeking an answer to how I can integrate my studies, my key passions in life - business, travel, psychology and philosophy and it occurred to me that no matter how I tried, the jigsaw just didn’t accommodate. Needless to say, every attempt began with a sense of expectation that the means weren’t tangible but the end was a glorious “arrival” in my own story - the closure that eased the uncertainty.
And, needless to say, every attempt failed. These areas appeared irreconcilable.
One brick at a time
I often envied the artisan. When I started my first business back in 1998 money was short. I’d have to catch the bus to and from the office every morning - a long and arduous process that resurrected memories of school commutes. Maybe it was for a reason because I remember, distinctly, one hot Summer’s day with the Sun’s heat fully beating down on the passengers I caught a glance from the top deck window of a builder, obviously in the middle of putting up a brick wall, taking 5 minutes out to appreciate his work. There he stood, bare-chested in the August sunshine mug of tea in one hand and cigarette in the other. Leaning against the wall, his gaze was soft, trancelike, out of focus resting on the wall in front of him. What was he thinking? Maybe nothing. Hopefully nothing.
A friend of mine restores antique lamps for a living. Since we both graduated (over 15 years ago) he’s devoted his life to lovingly recasting and furnishing these lamps. Despite our very different life paths, our friendship has endured all these years. Perhaps it’s my fascination for his work; here is a man who wakes up thinking about antique lamps and dedicates himself to these lamps from morning to night. In my travels having experienced a vast array of different folk, I have met many who would say this existence - without strategy, planning or any sense of audacity in “life goals” to aspire towards is an existence without purpose. Yet, I disagree. There is an almost zen-like beauty in simplicity in dedication to one simple action.
Looking for answers
Having many interests, therefore, would mean a dilution of my energies. If I was to become the best antique lamp restorer I could be I needed only focus on one skill - the appreciation of the lamp - and complicating my mind with business, travel, psychology and philosophy would be a distraction.
So my quest; to reconcile these apparently disparate energies.
I’d like to say there was an epiphany moment where, faced with a life-threatening reality as carved out by so many self-help books, the answer simply arrived. It didn’t. And perhaps that was itself an important learning - that so many of our positive outcomes are the result not of innovative breakthroughs and “aha” moments but small increments that lead us (less impressively but equally importantly) along the path.
Lego Bricks
Perhaps if there was anything like an epiphany it came disguised in the clothes of parental education. Skimming through the countless volumes of self-help books on parenting at Borders and close to giving up on anything that didn’t involve “bringing up your child as a good Christian” or similar, I discovered the words “How you discipline your child is the message”. What exactly does that mean? It’s not what you tell them, it’s how you tell them that they learn. Allow me to indulge; if your child was to throw a tantrum and kick his Lego bricks over the floor you could “punish” them by taking away the bricks saying “if you behave that way, you don’t get to play with your bricks”. What does the child learn? He learns not that “behaving that way” equates to “no bricks” - he learns that when grown ups want to resolve a problem they resort to control.
Content vs Context
And in many ways, we get lost in the “content” not the “context” of what we’re experiencing. We are both the Farmer and his cat - trying to get something done and beating ourselves up when we don’t achieve it because we create an association in our mind at the level of the content rather than the context of our activity.
As for my “studies” - the process itself was the teacher; what had concerned me was not necessarily the content of the subjects that fascinated me but the way in which people dealt with the content - change. Many of us are fortunate to travel but what do we learn? Do we reaffirm to ourselves that our way of living/transport system/food/family values/weather/cars/clothes are superior? I’ve lived in Japan and experienced foreign co-workers spend their time in Japan complaining about the customs, food, language, people etc. I admit, I’ve freaked out too - once when I lost my cool trying to ask for a plastic bag in “Tokyu Hands” (a grocery store). I scurried back to the bosom of my fellow co-worker and we both complained about how the Japanese were poor listeners.
I hear it all the time, wherever I go in the world - stepping out of our comfort zone into the unknown exposes us. When we are no longer the “native” we are exposed to the insecurities which challenge us to react. While I’ll never overcome the knee-jerk reaction to these incidences, I’m more aware of them and able to let them go. “Ba-gu” is not Japanese for bag, as I have discovered and Japanese aren’t poor listeners.
Vagabonding
You don’t need to “travel” to experience its wonder; the ability to see the “context” rather than “content” of our reality is as much discoverable in a business meeting as in sitting in ancient Durbar Square in Kathmandu or throwing yourself out of a plane in the hope your instructor fully checked your chute. In many ways, terrifying and stimulating ourselves with experiences are less permanent than the ability to sit and observe in our daily life.
Travel is Change and Change is Travel. Our daily lives are full of experiences that challenge us but we pull back into our shell of security and discard the opportunity through our world view. Many times I’ve reminisced on my travel experiences - from sampling new foods from the street hawkers of Kuala Lumpur’s night markets to sauntering through downtown Soho in New York and thought, I wish I hadn’t retreated into this bubble. Next time I think “are the people more fashionable here?” or “can I buy this cheaper back home?” or “how much does this person earn?” I’ll let the thought go as an observer as opposed to an actor.
The last time our family traveled (a month in Australia through the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef down to tropical Brisbane) I made the explicit promise that we’d do it with one carry-on backpack each. Not easy with a 3 year old child. We (just about) made it and I have to confess it’s a liberating experience. The day I sold my S-Class Mercedes was perhaps a turning point that released a whole stream of thoughts and experiences that were far more real than in my more attached word. Don’t get me wrong, attachment never leaves you and I’m not living the mendicant life of an ascetic monk. I still find myself saying “I’d like to buy that Range Rover Sport” but now I’ll acknowledge its existence and let go of it rather than struggle with it. I’d like to buy it because it covers some insecurity not because it’ll make me any freer.
Full Circle
There’s an esoteric vibe going on here that perhaps doesn’t sit to well with our business acumen. Or at least that’s what I used to think and that’s why I was always struggling to reconcile these “studies”. What I’ve discovered is however, the esoteric stuff touches everything - it helps us understand what exactly is important in the business world and is applicable to determining which path to take as it is in formulating a marketing plan. That’s because if you strip away the “content”, you’ll find what’s important - change, and how we deal with it.
I’ve sat in presentations and watched marketing managers squirm at my suggestions that competitors are stalking their customers as they speak and rather than ask the question “what do we do about it?” they go for the salt-shaker response “…but we’re different”. It’s a response that comes in many forms: “we’re not in the soda business”, “we’re different here in Spain” or “we don’t give a s*** what Boost Mobile are doing down in the US”.
When you strip away the content of KPIs, marketing plans, quarterly earnings, HSDPA, Android or the rest of the content that fills our lives you get to the point - that there is change and you’re either going to react to it and retreat into your shell or you’re going to jump in feet first.
That’s as relevant in the business life of board room presentations as it is when you land at Narita airport or deal with a family crisis. Change is the underlying force in all of our daily motivations. In fact, you could consider that life is change, change is life.
Like the salt shaker, it’s there right in front of us but we obsess about the detail, the world view that prevents us from seeing it.
And that’s why this blog is about Change because it applies to all of us in so many aspects of our lives and lessons learned on the road can be applied in business, perhaps more so than your “5 Ps” or your “Porters Forces”. It’s a journey and I think because you’re here you’ve already put one foot in front of the other so I look forward to learning from you in the process when we bump into each other on the Path.
