Welcome…
Welcome to the inaugural edition of Outside the Lines - The Business Edition.
To celebrate, this is a bumper edition with two articles:
==> How to build infrastructure for Great Work
==> What have you signed up for?
I’m hungry for feedback… on content, form, whatever. Let me know what you think in the Comments section below.
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How to build infrastructure for Great Work
They’ve figured it out in India
Stuck in Mumbai traffic last week, you couldn’t help but notice it: billboards across the city boldly proclaiming, “Infrastructure will change India”. And not just billboards. In conversations with some clients there, many of them were talking excitedly about their own commitment to creating infrastructure as a critical component to their ambitions.
You need infrastructure too
It’s not just cities and countries that need infrastructure. You do too.
Even if you’re deeply committed to doing Great Work, you can only get so far on sheer grit and determination. Without structures to support you, Great Work is not sustainable and will leave you not only exhausted, but also less successful than you want to be.
Here’s why. Infrastructure gives you two things:
==> Increased efficiency
Infrastructure allows you to do the necessary Good Work faster and more efficiently. That’s important, because Good Work can fill every waking moment unless you have the discipline to manage it. Infrastructure frees up time and space for you to focus on your Great Work.
==> Increased capacity
Great Work is always a stretch, will always take you to the edge of what’s possible. Infrastructure expands and increases your capacity, so that your definition of success can be more ambitious.
Action: Three ways to build infrastructure
Here are three different approaches to infrastructure.
To make them real for you, think about one of the projects you’re working on, a project that is (or has the capacity to be) Great Work.
0. What does success look like?
==> Before you start building, you need to know where you’re going.
==> Think not just “completed”. But bold, ambitious success.
1. Who else matters in this?
==> You can’t do Great Work alone. Infrastructure = having the right people to provide support (logistical, emotional, intellectual).
==> What new connections do you need to make?
==> Where have you been “over investing” in the relationship?
2. What’s too personal?
==> We can default to a position of “I need to do this personally” - sometimes just from habit or for the sake of being busy.
==> If you had to automate (or partially automate) this process, what would you do?
==> What can be delegated to someone else?
3. What process is way too slow?
==> Einstein said “things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
==> Typically, we have a gift for over-complicating things - and slowing them down.
==> Where’s the friction? Put your focus on the two or three places that are creating jams.
==> If you had to cut the timing for this process in half, what would you do?
Don’t take my word for it
Smart folks thinking out loud about building infrastructure.
“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”
-Henry David Thoreau, philosopher
“When one puts up a building one makes an elaborate scaffold to get everything into its proper place. But when one takes the scaffold down, the building must stand by itself with no trace of the means by which it was erected. That is how a musician should work.”
-Andres Segovia, musician
“The most solid stone in the structure is the lowest one in the foundation.”
- Kahlil Gibran, author
If I could recommend just one other resource …
David Macaulay, Underground. The BIG picture of the complex infrastructure beneath our feet in a big city. Although written for children, his brilliant illustrations reminds us all about the size of the unseen world necessary to support our daily lives.
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What have you signed up for?
This week, I became a Canadian. In a room with 80 people from 33 different countries around the world, I had to stand up and swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen of Canada.
You may not remember, but you’ve sworn an oath too.
Wherever you’re working now, you started this part of your career by (implicitly or explicitly) making a commitment.
==> This is what I want. This is what I can give.
And my own experience of working is that, almost immediately, I’d totally forget it.
Raise your right hand and repeat after me…
So, take a moment now to step back and pause.
If you had to write yourself a commitment oath now for this work, what would you commit to?
==> What do you want from your current work?
==> What are you willing to give your current work?
Action: Spit on your hand and shake
Regular readers will know one of my favourite quotes belongs to Lou Holtz: “When all is said and done, a lot more is said than done.”
So now, it’s perhaps a good time to ask: How are you doing with that commitment? What do you need to change in what you’re doing?
What do you need to stop doing?
What do you need to start doing?
What should you continue doing?
Don’t take my word for it
Smart folks thinking out loud about commitment.
“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes … but no plans.”
- Peter Drucker, author
“Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.”
- Vince Lombardi, coach
“If you deny yourself commitment, what can you do with your life?”
-Harvey Fierstein, actor
If I could recommend just one other resource…
Seth Godin, The Dip. Pithy. And with a point. Typical Godin.
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Before you go…
If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read, please forward it on to colleagues and peers. When they sign up here, they can get their own copy of the report *5 Strategies for Great Work.*
