Polished Concrete Floors

I recently had a discussion with an old friend in which they began to tell me how unhappy they were with life. They own their own home, have an amazing job, a large amount of money in their savings account, are completely healthy and have more close friends than I can count. Why they were not happy: At the age of 24, they were not yet engaged.

As a result of this, she felt that she was “behind” in life and was, at her current juncture, a failure. It seemed absolutely crazy to me that she could even see this as a major problem, especially at 24, and then it hit me: She is comparing herself to her friends, family and co-workers and I was comparing her to mine.  In her world, a smaller city in Saskatchewan, she was a deviant from the norm, whereas in my world of friends and acquaintances in Calgary, Alberta the amount of individuals her age with all she has plus an engagement ring is quite rare. She was “ahead of the game”.

We were both engaging (pardon the pun) in a set of relative comparisons in an attempt to determine a level of “success” in this persons life.  Just as you, the reader, will also judge her place in this world differently than the both of us had because of who you know and interact with.

This got me thinking, where am I at in life? How to I judge that? Is it based on a series of goals and ideals I set for myself in the past? Do I compare myself to friends of mine for some type of relative comparison? If it is through relative comparisons, who am I comparing myself to?   

Lastly, if perception is reality and this type of relative comparisons are what is used to determine how happy I am with my life, maybe it is time to get some “worse” friends and watch my level of fulfillment go through the roof!

A few minutes ago I read a tweet discussing how an organization I am loosely affiliated with had failed to respond to the inquiry of a journalist for over a week.

I don’t know this journalist, I don’t know the person within the organization who should be responding to her and it is also not even remotely close or related to my area of responsibility BUT I felt the absolute need to intervene, contact who I needed to contact and assure that this situation was resolved.

My question: Was I right to do so? Was I taking responsibility and involvement to the next level? OR Was I sticking my nose where it didn’t belong?

How do we draw the line between being pro-active and intrusive?

Where does responsibility begin and end? 

Imagine for a second you have completely forgotten your own name. Now let me ask you this: Who are you? Are you an “accountant with KPMG”, a “lifelong Calgarian”, a “fatherof two”, a “graduate of Queen’s University“… How to do you start to tell me who you are?

We usually identify ourselves to the world, whether in person or though some type of written bio, by providing our name then what we do and where we do it. In most cases, including the ones I provided above, all you are doing is describing your reality or present situation; you’re telling me nothing about who you actually are, want to be, or what you’re good at. If you tell me that your name is John, you work in marketing at Bell’s Toronto office and you’re a UBC graduate all I can determine about you is what I can extrapolate from known stereotypes about your profession, city and university. By describing yourself in this fashion you are, in the best case, allowing yourself to be viewed as a painfully unoriginal individual or, in the worst case, allowing yourself to be defined by the sum of all the other people out there who have the same reality as yourself. Aren’t you unique and interesting enough to warrant more than that?

It isn’t that I don’t understand why we have all fallen into this trap of complacency; it is just so easy! Firstly, we work hard to construct a great reality for ourselves (Harvard MBA, Senior VP, homeowner in expensive neighbourhood) and want to get as much mileage out of those achievements as possible. That is fine, but are you really content going through life identifying yourself by past achievements and resting on your laurels? Secondly, it is a lot more difficult and requires an exponentially greater amount of thought (maybe even combined with an impressive vocabulary) to truly describe who we are at the present time. You’re just saving time, right?

I am a fan of simplicity, but does communicating your value and place in this world not warrant more effort than it took to write your LinkedIn profile headline?

My personal view is that if organizations and people focused more on true identity versus current realities/situations, that employers would choose better candidates, employees would be more fulfilled in their roles, personal relationships would be healthier and most interactions that take place on a day-to-day basis would be, albiet more complicate, more effective and worthwhile.

Through effective advertising, political messaging, brand building and the fine work of many public affairs, government affairs, business development, investor relations, communications and public relations professionals we’ve all actually started to believe that many brands/organizations are, for lack of a better work, perfect.

Though I sincerely consider this situation a triumph for the aforementioned professions, we’ve now portrayed our organizations, the products/services we offer, and the professionals that make up our firms as so infallible that even the slightest fault is seen as unforgivable by our consumers and the public at large.

For example, over 1,095,000,000 cans of Coca-Cola are sold each year and should even 1 can contain a foreign object, it would be viewed as an epic failure by Coke. Their share price would plummet, it would be a leading news story in almost every nation on earth, a U.S Congressional Special Committee would be launched to examine the incident, and their would be widespread calls for the firing of the CEO even after he made a public apology. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola would spend millions examining their quality control systems, make sweeping changes in how they do things and launch an advertising/pr campaign to communicate these changes to consumers.

Why? 

Coca-Cola was 99.9999999% perfect that year. 1,094,999,999 cans of their product would have been the consistent, high-quality product they’ve promised their consumers and only 1 can would have had some sort of failing. Instead of being awed of Coke’s unnatural and amazing perfection, we’re outraged at what I can only describe as an “accident”.

My question to you: Is this expectation of unattainable perfection a company’s own doing in the way they’ve built their brand and painted themselves as immaculate or as the general public, do we demand “reasons” and “explanations” for why errors have occurred? Are we simply unable to handle ambiguity and the universal fact that “accidents happen” and errors are made? 

Personally, I believe that “we the people” don’t actually care and are willing to accept these accidents as a regular part of life. I believe these issues are exploited by news agencies to fill their time slots, politicians trying to appear tough on {insert issue here} and advocacy groups trying to push their pre-existing agendas. For an example of this game being played out in the real-world, look no farther than a situation currently taking place in the Gulf Coast..

Today I have been invited to three events and being Sunday, I have seen four “soft” news story that centre around some sort of campaign or advocacy group. In all but one event invitation or news interview the stated purpose was to “raise awareness”.

Being familiar with one of the events (I was part of the organizing committee last year) I can tell you that approximately three weeks of very involved planning, organizing and executing by a team of 16 individuals is required to make it happen. At the end of all of this, the hope is that a few people who attend will want to become involved themselves or stroke a cheque to help cover the cost of similar future roundtables. No progress will have been made, no actual action will have been taken and hundreds of man-hours of time and energy will have achieved nothing. A lack of purpose that is being masked as “raising awareness” has created an event with the soul purpose of perpetuating its own existence. 

Meanwhile, one person utilizing one hour of their time in a focused manner could have achieved a great deal. The lesson here is that in anything we do, we have to be results oriented! We have to have a clear vision of what we want to achieve and assure that all our efforts are focused on actually making it happen. We cannot just take the first steps or do “something” and consider it progress because time has been spent working on it. Without a clear, strong and visible link to the final result, blind action mean nothing.

Whether it is business, charity, politics, or our own personal lives there is one truth: Resources, especially time, are scarce and limited. If we assure that any time we expend is put towards achieving an end-goal and not just “doing”, we’d have a more efficient, effective and prosperous world, as well as, happier, better and more fulfilled lives.

My Question: Is “being involved” even if you’re achieving nothing still noble or admirable?

A combination of political messaging and human nature has led most of us to feel that changing our mind on any issue is a negative thing. Those who shift their thinking on any topic even slightly are labelled as “flip-floppers”, “opportunists”, “indecisive” or “lacking in principle & conviction”. Why is that?

I would argue that one’s ability to change their mind, shift their stance or at the very least tweak their thoughts on a particular subject is a trait that should be lauded and not viewed as some type character flaw instantly labelling an individual as incapable of leadership.

After all, we live in a relative world that morphs in immense ways on a minute-to-minute basis. We come to conclusions based on a combination of our own personal experiences, the information we have on hand at the current time and the influence of others. As a result of that process, conclusions have a very short shelf life because the general situations surrounding the topic, the data available and our own experiences change so rapidly. 

Think of your favourite neighbourhood restaurant at this exact moment. Now what if in the next few months a few new restaurants opened, your lifestyle/eating habits change, your current favourite restaurant changed its menu items and most of the people you had taken to your “favourite joint” had expressed that they didn’t enjoy it. Would the conclusion that you made three months ago still be valid today?  Even if it is, did it not require reevaluation? 

Any other conclusions we’ve come to also require this type of constant reevaluation and it is those who are engaged in this process who are moving themselves and our world forward so please join me in celebrating the “flip-floppers” everywhere!

My Question: Do we actually begin the process of decision making logically as I’ve described or do we emotionally and instinctively come to conclusions and use facts as some type of way to justify and reinforce our own initial position?