A few years ago, I had a friend who was having all kinds of financial difficulties. She kept delaying her loan payments so that she could pay the gas. Then she had some medical problems, so she had to delay other things to pay for that. One day, she wrote a lamentation about all of this in a blog post, and then said, “Well, at least I am leaving for my great vacation in a couple of days, so I have that to look forward to.” My head just about exploded.
As it turns out, it seems a lot of people prioritize the way my friend did. Now, I wanted to go on the same trip, which was going to be hugley expensive, but money was a tad tight for me at the time, so I opted not to. Not many people, as it turns out, seem to find that kind of thinking fashionable.
I sort of expected that priorities would shift as I got older (along with the people around me). However, it seems like in the world of Social Media, you are almost viewed as lackluster if you aren’t willing to risk it all.
This is what is on my mind having just completed Poke the Box.
Start and Ship
The main point of Godin’s book is not bad. You should be an initiator. Everything is scary. Everything has risk. Walking out of your door is risky if you think about it. But you do it anyway. So, send your ideas out there. Speak your mind. I think that’s a fine message. Too many of us are handicapped by anxiety or fear or worry or other things we make walls out of. So fine. What is my problem?
I guess I ended the book feeling like I was not cool enough for the cool crowd because I am not willing to throw everything to the wind to get my big idea out there, even if it fails. I am much more tortoise than hare. But to read Seth Godin and a lot of other people in the online space, the tortoise is not the hip thing to be. Slow and methodical is retro and boring. You’ve gotta be like the hare. Otherwise, people seem to say, you’re a scaredy cat (yes, I could work in more animal references if you like).
Obligation, responsibility, and not-about-you-ism
Here is what I would like to see more of in the world of Social Media. Here is what I would have liked to see in the manifesto on going, starting, and shipping that Godin wrote.
• Acknowledgment that sometimes it’s not fear that holds you back from risking it all. Sometimes it’s:
• Responsibility for other peoples’ welfare
• An obligation to the people you work for and with
• A larger, over-arching goal to which you are aspiring
• Acknowledgment that sometimes the ability to initiate is inhibited by your conditions. This is not a fault of yours. It’s just the way it is.
• Acknowledgment that sometimes working with a group or a team can have benefits. Godin notes that in schools, kids aren’t allowed to do solos or improvise – they have to play off sheet music. What about the fact that this helps create a cohesive song? That’s not so bad, right?
Who is speaking to and for me?
Here is a line from Poke the Box.
“There will be other jobs, better jobs, bosses more willing to create growth. The only way you will find those jobs and those bosses, though, is to have a personal standard that demands failure, not one that guarantees success.”
I’ve been finding thoughts like these all across the blogosphere, all across Twitter and Facebook.
“If you don’t like your job, just quit already.”
“If you’re having money problems, get a job that pays more. With some belief in yourself, you can do it!”
Now, I happen to be really really lucky. I have a job I love, an awesome family, and I am content with my life. Even from that perspective, I just find this kind of philosophy dangerous and separated from the world so many of us actually populate. I’m not sure where this disconnect comes from, but it seems omnipresent.
What really concerns me is that someone will read the words of a Seth Godin or another very well-respected person. They will throw their anxieties to the wind and will push for something with all of their might. They’ll fail. But then there will not be a clear way to bounce back. Will that person view him or herself as a failure because clearly they were not able to live out the words they had seen so many people write?
There’s nothing wrong with going, but it doesn’t have to be double or nothing
If you are feeling stuck in your life, I think Poke the Box could be a positive read for you. But I’d throw this out there for your consideration.
You can initiate thoughts in one arena of your life without starting from scratch every single time. You can make sure you have a solid footing before you start building your house. You can make sure there’s water in the pool before you jump. I don’t think that this makes you too anxious or too scared or too weak or too whatever else. To me, that just seems more real.
What do you think?
Thank you, Margie!
The things that work for Seth Godin and others won’t work for everyone. They have a huge following of obsessive fans. I’m very grateful that my son isn’t one. Because if he was, he would be thinking about how to qualify for Peter Thiel’s $100,000 grant and dropping out of school instead of his strategy for getting into an Ivy League school. When we glamorize dropping out of school, job jumping, and all of the other descriptive words for QUITTING, we imply that it is not only acceptable, it is expected.
There’s a lot to be said for the perseverance of the tortoise. A friend was recently promoted over several people in his organization. The company had been through several rough transitional years. He was grossly underutilized. Instead of being a bad sport, he consistently delivered above and beyond. When the dust settled, he leapfrogged over others. If he had followed the “change companies when it’s not fun” philosophy, he would still be waiting for his step up the ladder.
It’s one thing to follow your dream. It’s another to throw caution to the wind and bounce like a rubber ball.
Great comment, Debra. So glad you shared that. I think that there is a lack of realism that permeates the online world, maybe because it’s all so, well, online. In so many ways it’s easy to forget that we’re talking to and about real people who have to deal with things like braces, the electric bill, and stuff like that. The theory of initiating and starting and going is fine, but ideas on how to implement those concepts seemed a bit off to me.
I personally have gone all out several times, with new ideas, new companies you name it. I have a pretty good handle on my own abilities, so have been able to deal with the fail (when it was a fail) and start over again.
However, I frequently get entrepreneurs with new ideas, new companies, new inventions come to me passionate and hard working and ready to give all to commit and make their dreams into a reality. I know through experience there are not many who can adapt to the roller-coaster feast or famine lifestyle some of us do! So in mentoring these enthusiastic entrepreneurs I am quite emphatic about the safety net which needs to be in place, especially when family and children are in the mix. I don’t believe that high risk and the pressure of being out on a limb is really helpful in making the new business or company grow, and in fact deflects valuable attention from the purpose and goal at hand. Just imagine, second and third mortgages on the home, credit cards maxed out and that first sale does not come through and the Angel investors decide on another company instead…… what then?
Exactly right.
I’m not saying that living life to the hilt is bad, but you need to understand the ramifications. That’s what I liked so much about Carol Roth’s book. She says stuff like, “Um, what if you put your house up as collateral and then the business doesn’t work?”
That kind of realism doesn’t seem to be very common in the online world, and that is what I find fairly disturbing. Sure, take that leap, but be ready for any and all consequences. Yes, even the bad ones.
Margie,
I guess the question is:
What if you are wrong?
What if Seth Godin is advocating that you are smart and creative enough to challenge so-called reality. Listen, I’m an ultra-realist. I have 3 children and my wife stays at home to take care of them. I am the sole bread winner. That doesn’t mean that I can’t take risks. I just need to make sure they are calculated risks and not foolish gambles. My family’s future depends on my ability to think outside the box. For this mission, I find Seth’s book much more useful than placating my inner doubting Thomas.
I’m wondering. What if I refuse to stay quiet in a meeting and push for the out-of-the-box solution? What if I decide to start a blog after failing three times. What if I decided to leave a large agency to work for a small boutique that gives me the time to pursue my passions. What if I use my responsibilities as incentives to dream and dare rather than reason’s to doubt? Am I really all the bad off?
In the end I wonder if our country is STILL the home of dreamers because we aren’t so realistic. We habitually strain against the bit advocated by the sane and sober thinkers. Something tells me that we have nothing to worry about. Seth won’t turn us into a nation of naive quitters; but he is making it uncomfortable for the rational quitters..
I guess what I have a problem with is the idea that doing what you are comfortable with is quitting. There are levels of initiation. I’m in the same job, but I’ve brought a lot of change to that job and have really made it something useful to the company and fun for me. Is that quitting? Should I have just said, “Eh, screw this” as soon as I realized I’d have a learning curve?
I guess I just feel like things need to be a bit more carefully defined. You don’t need to go and find a new job every time you disagree with your boss. You don’t need to go against safety regulations to prove that you’re living on the edge. Those kinds of qualifiers aren’t present in a lot of these works I’m reading, and that’s what I find worrisome.
Nobody sails across the ocean without building a boat first.
It’s nice to say start and ship – I think where the disconnect for most people is, lies in recognizing when “start sailing” really means “step one; invent boat”.
If we can get our boats built, the sailing will happen.
I like that, Ian. Well said!
Margie I haven’t finished Poke yet but I already know I’ll end up right there with you. I’m a huge fan of his but I’m not one of those who parrots his gospel without examining it. I usually agree with 80-90 percent–which is a lot, actually. But you know it’s the 10-20 percent I disagree with that keeps me coming back. It’s often the people we disagree with from whom we learn the most. (Seth knows this too, it’s one of his mantras. You have to challenge yourself.)
What I like about poke is the challenge to initiate and get out of your ruts. It came at a time when I needed to hear that myself. So that was good. But I’ll never swallow all this failure glorification as an end goal. As a means, it has some relevance in some situations, but as an end it’s an asshat of an idea. When I think of today’s riverboat gamblers, I see Wall Street derivatives brokers, hedge fund operators, junk bond dealers, Enron. Lehman. Not a lot of winners there.
One of the maddening things about so much sharing of generic business advice is so few people try to reconcile conflicting ideas. For example, who disagrees with the importance of persistence and perseverance? Almost no one. Yet how do you do that if you “move on”? Same with Seth’s idea of making yourself a “linchpin,” essential to the organization. You can’t do that if you up and leave.
You might be interested in my somewhat related post last year on the “the risk inversion dud.” http://bit.ly/cxbBQ6
I’m a tortoise at heart. I have taken some big risks in my life and in my career, but never without making a serious effort to understand an analyze them. No one should have to apologize for that. If you remember how the fable ends, it’s we in the tortoise tribe who win. Do I care if the fire-breathing risk-it-all swagger types believe that? Not really. I just sit back and enjoy the fun as they try to sew their parachutes on the way down–right before they splat.
That’s a great comment!!
And a great point.
Sending out general life advice is okay, but it isn’t going to resonate with everyone. I’m sure there are a lot of people who will read Poke and they’ll be at a place in their lives where it’s just what they need to hear. They need to be kind of slapped around a bit and encouraged to get off the couch. That part of the book I have no problem with.
You hit the nail on the head though when you said glorification of failure. I’m doing all of this stuff in Social Media right now. By Godin’s logic, I should throw myself entirely into it because that would be poking the box fully However, I’m experimenting in Social Media while I am working my sturdy, steady job. Does that make me a quitter? I don’t think so.
I’ll check out your post later today!
Margie,
Great review and you pointed out some major problems with Seth’s most recent work. It started with “Linchpin” and everything since then. If our soul mission in life was to do what you loved, there would be a whole bunch of people sitting on couches, watching TV, and eating their lives away. 🙂 I am kidding, but hopefully my point is clear.
I love Seth’s work and I have had to start reading and interpreting it in a different context – radical innovation. Do I want team members that poke the box? Yes! I want them to run wild, test new ideas, pitch the radical proposal or campaign that can help them move their careers to new heights. Do I want them bringing their passion for “The Hobbit” into the mix? Not really. Poking the box should be contextual and relevant to the job at hand.
You and many of your commenters fully get that if you push Seth’s writing to the extreme, we’d all be out of jobs. I have a wife and a baby on the way. I can’t afford to run off hog wild and follow every whim I have. We have to be smart and strategic with moves like these.
@jwsokol
Good point, Jason. I’m sure that people can take Seth’s logic to a small level and really make important changes in their lives. But saying that you can fail the way Vince McMahon failed with the XFL – that’s not really a fair comparison. I don’t have (so far as I know) a multi-million dollar empire to fall back on. If I try to start something huge, put everything into it, and it doesn’t work, well, that’s it for me. Now there are gamblers out there who would still be okay with that scenario, but that ain’t me 🙂
Someone finally said it!
Whenever I read things like the advice that gets flung around the twitter and such I think of an old commercial that had two consultants sitting in front of a CEO, beaming because they just solved the company’s problem. The CEO said, “Ok, when can you start this plan?” The consultants looked confused and replied, “We don’t actually DO anything. We just consult.” (I can’t remember the company name… I think it might have been Royal Bank of Scotland)
It’s easy to fling advice around when you don’t have to live with the consequences. If you take the advice and things go well, everyone is your friend. If you take the advice and fail, nobody wants to be your friend. For every person who succeed in the tech space, there are thousands hanging around LinkedIn begging their friends for jobs.
That doesn’t mean you should abandon your dreams. It took me four companies and 17 years before I had enough traction to “quit my day job.” I never abandoned mine (and I hope rising medical costs don’t push me back into the employment world, but you never know…)
Failure for me at my point in life would not be devastating, maybe just irritating. Failure 20 years ago would have been devastating! And in America, there is little to no safety net.
Yeah! Well said 🙂
That commercial seems like a perfect illustration of what rubbed me the wrong way, although Godin has done plenty to prove he is worth of his success. I think that when you get to a certain of success though, it’s easy to forget what things were like when it wasn’t so easy. That can cause a major disconnect.
Thanks, as always, for your great comment 🙂
Hi Margie,
Thanks for this thought provoking post.
I wonder if the problem is not with the message in Poke The Box but rather the interpretation of it? What’s important is that we each own our individual definition of success. Not Seth’s, nor our teacher’s or our mother’s.
Alain de Botton’s TED talk on the subject is worth watching. http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success.html
I’m not sure that the secure ‘job’ of today or an Ivy League education should be regarded as the safety nets of tomorrow.
Hi Bernadette, I’ll be sure to check out that TED talk. Sounds very interesting!
I agree with you, owning our own success is very important, but I fear that people may start defining their success based on what other people tell them success looks like. If enough people tell you that they’ll really respect you once you start wearing your underwear on your head, will you be tempted to at least try that out?
I think right now, because of the rocky economy, a lot of people are thrashing about looking for any way to provide for their families, and they might feel encouraged to take wild leaps before truly analyzing the whole scenario. That can lead to dangerous ramifications – I’ve seen this happen in real life.
That’s my primary concern.
Hi again Margie,
I think you will enjoy Alain’s talk.
People are already “defining their success based on what other people tell them success looks like”. That’s why bright kids end up in medical school or law school, even if they’d be happier painting, making movies or writing novels. I’ve seen this happen in real life. I see it every day.
The ramifications of this are forty years of materially comfortable misery.
Hi Margie,
I’m afraid that you missed the point of my book, perhaps distracted by some of my usual hyperbole.
This blog post was a risk. It could easily have exposed you to scorn, or been ignored. Hey, having a blog at all is not part of fitting in, not part of doing what you’re told, is it?
My book is about little failures, not big ones. I’m not encouraging people to quit their job, far from it. I’m encouraging (demanding) that they not use “my boss won’t let me” as an excuse. Most bosses, it turns out, are delighted when people take responsibility as opposed to demand authority.
My guess (we’ve never met) is that in fact you’re one of the people who in fact does poke the box, and regularly–the way you did with this post. The person who’s always lurching from project to project, who’s always starting and then quitting–I specifically call out that person as doing a form of hiding. After all, if your foundation is shaky, you can hardly be blamed for not making an impact, sort of like your friend and her vacation.
I’m hoping you’ll give the ideas another chance, seen through this lens. If you were living in 1925, there’s be no time to do anything but exactly what your boss says (if you were fortunate enough to be a woman with a job). Today, the rules are really different, and all of us have far more influence over the arc of our career than ever before.
Hi Seth,
I really appreciate you taking time out of your very busy schedule to comment on this post. It is VERY appreciated.
I did absorb that main core of your idea, and I agree with it 100%. And like I said, I think that your book could do wonders for a person who is just waiting for life or someone else to tell them what to do next. I think I was just thrown off in some places by your specific examples or your tonality, because as you say, I don’t know you, and it’s hard to read tonality right when you don’t know someone.
However, this post was waiting to happen whether I had read your book or not because I think this problem does permeate many levels of the online world. You were just unfortunately the spark that got me to write the post, which may be more proof that your book works 100% well 🙂
Thanks again!
Margie, I liked your post because you did “poke the box” and I admired that about you when others dare not to question Seth Godin or at least not out loud. But, I loved his book and was going to tell you that I did’t think he was advocating not taking responsibility, but in fact was advocating taking more. I was reading all of the comments and to my delight and surprise there he was himself !
I have a step son who works for a large corporation for a boss who has five children and according to my stepson, “really” needs this job. So his boss is always making decisions that are safe and squelches any innovation on the part of his team . When I hear Randall talking about him, I get worried for this man because that type of blending in and following the letter of the law does not actually make for a ” keeper” in times of layoffs and promotions. It’s the people that look at the company as if they were in charge, who make suggestions and question why do we do it this way when this other way can have x positive effects on the bottom line or on customer service. Those are the true keepers. You do not have to chug jobs to do that, in fact it will help youbkeep the one who have.
But, you are that person. And kudos for pointing out how many people hear Seth and others and think it gives them permission to engage in their narcissism, rather than doing the hard and courageous thing by staying and makingbthings better.
Thanks so much, Judi.
I agree, on that level it can be dangerous. On the other hand, maybe that boss has stresses that we are not aware of. Maybe there are reasons “he needs that job” that put the whole thing into a new context. You just never know what the whole story is, right? So maybe his modus operandi doesn’t seem admirable from our vantage point, but from his it’s utterly necessary. Do we have the right then to go up to him and say, “Hey, you’re doing this all wrong?” Maybe we could poke him a little into a different direction, but I’d be cautious about it.
Thanks for the comment and the kind words 🙂
Hi Margie,
Having read “Poke the Box” earlier this week I have been sharing a number of the great insights and directives that Seth spoke to with passion and conviction. I am a believer in the word of Godin and have been doing what I can to live with the spirit of a change agent and word spreading box poker.
A colleague of mine, (actually a great “on line friend” that I have yet to meet face-to-face), and an admirer of your perspective, shared your blog with me this afternoon. I read the entire blog stream from start to finish, at first quite convinced that you simply don’t get it. Or perhaps you do get it, but are afraid to of the risk that comes with moving forward. And then I came to Seth’s own entry into the stream.
That’s when I concluded that you do get it and the two of you are in violent agreement. You may not fully realize it, Margie, but you are already poking, poking, poking the box. We don’t have to jump off bridges or quit jobs to prove ourselves.It’s enough to have initiative and a voice for the things we believe in, can start, and hopefully finish. If not… We fail forward a step at a time.
Thanks for offering your perspective and for hosting the conversation. That’s what makes the social engagement that comes with new social media tools so rewarding and important.
Best regards… with a gentle poke,
Rod
PS I welcome you to join the conversations that I host at http:www.rodbrooks.com It’s a blog that is focused primarily on “seeing the edge” – What’s yours?
Thanks for a great comment, Rod.
It was funny – writing this post was a definite poke for me. I was fully ready for the wrath of adoring fans to rain down on me, but I had wanted to talk about these issues for quite some time, and I figured the time was right. I am truly delighted at the conversation it started, and I am thankful you gave me a chance 🙂
Thanks for popping by!
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