One of the big struggles of thinking in public as I do through this newsletter and the podcast is staying locked-in on not just orienting to topics and discussions that are worth your time and attention, but—more challenging—is to ensure that what I am talking about here is 100% aligned with what I'm talking about in the real trenches.
So much of the world's "content engine" is a sanitized click snack of reality that plays better for algorithms and title hooks. Truth? I hate that stuff. One of the low points of my week is sitting here thinking about what I'm going to put in the title field of this post to help you decide to read it. And yet, I know what my inbox is like and how instinctually I have to make decisions about what of the 20 or more newsletters I subscribe to is going to get my best attention in the day.
The mind space of people you care about is a terrible thing to compete for. It's what turns innocent children in to Succession's Roy siblings.
It's what turns seemingly reasonable people into online sycophants who say things like "ring the bell in my profile to never miss my content!" Think about what that request is. If I, sitting down and having delicious cortados or Negronis with you said, "hey can you update your device settings so every time I say something you are interrupted with the impression that what I am saying is the most important thing for you to attend to?"
That would deserve a punch in the throat. (with an open fist) Or at least, a careful maneuver leaving me with the bill.
I want these words to do good work for you. I want you to want to find them and use them to clarify your own thinking and action. AND I want to do that in a way that is authentic to the "stable unknown" that defines the bulk of my real work. As an aside, it's one of the reasons I loved this most recent podcast episode I did with Brad Farris (BATMAN RETURNS!)... it's the real us. Talking dangerously about the real stuff we care about. Watch it just for Brad's infectious laughter.
In the spirit of the above, let me just say that almost every conversation I'm having right now is about fear. Not always overtly. Modern humans (maybe all humans, I've only met a couple pre-modern ones) hate talking about fear directly. I get it. But all signs point to the fact that the near permanent uncertainty of the economy, the Internet, how we build a western society, what's happening with real estate, basic human morality... it's starting to really get to people.
It's very very very very very very very very very very hard to know what to do.
It's almost as hard to even know what of what you've done you'd do again, given how fast the ground is moving underneath you. It's like you're in one of those moving floor episodes of a video game where at any given time it's moving right-to-left or left-to-right or front-to-back or back-to-front or some combination of the above. And yet you've got to go get that moving MacGuffin in front of you.
We've been talking about feeling like leading on a treadmill for a generous. Now leaders are on a 360 degree treadmill, losing sight of where north is, despite trying every program, hiring every mentor, striving with all the best practices every conference could give them.
You know how this feels.
What nearly all of that Sturm un Drang fails to address is that to move out of reactivity and into outsized impact, the only fertile ground is radical self-ownership. A clear and abiding sense that within you is the clarity, skills, resources, and motivation to not just survive the interregna I addressed in last week's post, but build expansive results within it.
To do so, you have to accept the unknown, the insecurity, of the middle 2020s world as permanent, as stable--at least from the view of your and my brief lifetimes. Then we can get to building what matters at a pace and with a clarity this chaos requires.
When I'm having these conversations about fear, we don't talk about how to feel less afraid. We talk about how insecurity is the primary economic product of an economy built on distrust and addiction (the algorithmic economy) that is daily feeding on human vulnerability (adapt or die.) The only way to be free of this is to reject its premises.
You are not alone. You are not facing daily existential risk. You have the mental and the physical capacity to go beyond survival to expansion. You can lead in a way that brings people together toward these common goals.
But you cannot do any of it by playing along.
Burying the lede, I suppose, today is my birthday. And what I want for my birthday is more time with you. Real time. Real roll-up-our-sleeves focus.
Three weeks ago I was on a Zoom call with a great client. We were trying to make some hard decisions together. The results of those decisions would impact everyone involved. The meeting progressed nicely, but I felt – unsettled.
"So what's next?" My client asked.
"Well, if there's no objections, what's next is I'm getting on a plane. I can' make these decisions with you when you're two inches tall. I need to see your face, your body language. Feel the vibe." I had plane tickets and a hotel room for the following week by the end of the day, on my own dime, carved out of a chaotic May schedule.
I took a risk that cost me a few thousand dollars in travel costs that being in the room together was worth weeks of the alternative. In fact, I believe, with the meeting in the rearview mirror, that what we accomplished in person couldn't have been accomplished without sharing a meal together. Having unstructured time. Feeling the energy that goes with the words. Living together in the vulnerability of the undecided space.
I want more of that. I think it's required to detox us all from where we've been and the poison we've ingested.
As one outgrowth of that, I am opening up the waitlist on a project I've been working on and dreaming about quietly behind the scenes for years. I'm taking the leadership component--what needs to happen inside the skin of a leader--of Trust-Made Growth®, the kind of stuff we cover in the quiet and intensive 1:1 conversations with our founders, and creating an in-person intensive around it. I'm limiting the seats, the qualifications, the scope, everything, so we can do the kind of work that has been impossible any other way.
The waitlist is open now. Take a look. See what you think. Add your name to the waitlist. If a more low impact analog experience is the right next move for you, instead, The Damn Rules: How Vulnerability, Inefficiency, and Love Liberate Leaders from the Trustbroken Economy is just a few months away. We've got some really intensive and good stuff planned for the early signups. And you can do that here.
Forward, forward...
Don't miss a single edition of the one newsletter focused on remaking trust.
