Planning and Reflection: Two Sides of the Same Coin

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Last week, I wrote about my end-of-year Journey Mapping ritual on the Faster Than 20 blog. Yesterday, I saw this kind tweet from David Daly about my post:

I don’t know David, but his tweet made me want to know more about his yearly reflection process. Fortunately, he documented it on his blog. It’s smart and well worth reading. A few things jumped out at me:

  • His reflection starts with a review of his previous year’s goals
  • In addition to his yearly review, he does daily, weekly, and monthly reviews, and he takes notes for all of them
  • His planning naturally follows from his reflection

Even though he’s allocating a significant amount of time for end-of-year reflection and planning, his whole process is both integrated and iterative. As he explains:

There are a few interesting side-effects of the review process. First, they let me see the big picture across timespan we don’t normally have the time to think about. Big change takes time and we are often focused on very small time spans. The second side-effect is it let’s me see my accomplishments more clearly. I had a very good 2019, accomplishing a lot of my goals and pushing many things forward. It’s nice to pause to see the forest for the trees periodically. It also makes it easier to keep pressing forward on the hard things when I can see that I’ve made progress on them or similar hard things in the past.

His process nicely reiterates some things that I constantly find myself harping on.

First, planning and review / reflection are two sides of the same coin. Trying to do one without the other doesn’t work.

Second, long-term complements short-term reflection and planning, and vice-versa. There’s a school of thought that wants to claim that you shouldn’t plan long-term because the world is too dynamic and uncertain, as if everyday learning somehow conflicts with long-term goals, which is a fallacy. As David writes, when you do both, it helps you see both the forest and the trees.

Norms, Strategy, and Thanksgiving Duck Revisited

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

It’s been nine years since I and my family started eating duck for Thanksgiving. I have also happily introduced several friends to the concept, although surprisingly, I know of no permanent converts. Some (many?) of my friends actually like turkey. But I think the biggest factor is that culture, norms, and traditions are remarkably powerful.

I get it. My family ate turkey for over thirty years before converting. When I consider how much more I enjoy Thanksgiving now, and how much less stressful it is to prepare the meal, I marvel at how long it took us to make the switch.

I see individuals and groups struggle with this all the time. Goal-setting and strategy are more often an exercise in documenting what you’re already doing rather than a deep examination of where you’re trying to go and why. The latter requires that you make a choice, and making choices is hard.

That’s not to say that doing things because that’s why you’ve always done them is a bad thing. The most important thing is that you’re being intentional, and that you know why you’re being intentional. Chesterton’s Fence definitely applies.

My Target Audience for my Work

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

I have a new online workshop offering at Faster Than 20 (Good Goal-Setting Peer Coaching — register today!), and I’ve been in the process of getting the word out. My friend, Danny Spitzberg, asked whom my target audience was. I figured I’d share my response here, as others might be interested in my answer.

Here’s a rough approximation of my target audiences:

In general, I’m targeting “collaboration practitioners” — anyone who:

  • Thinks effective collaboration is productive and fulfilling
  • Is motivated to improve their group’s collaboration, regardless of their role

The vast majority of collaboration practitioners do not self-identify as such. It’s sometimes in their job descriptions — any leadership and management position, for example — but often is not. It often ends up being invisible work by people who do not necessarily have positional power and that others may or may not value or even see (and hence is often uncompensated), but is nevertheless critical. Much of my strategy is about helping people recognize that being a collaboration practitioner is indeed a thing, that a lot of others think and care about doing this well, and that a community for this exists if people want it.

Good collaboration practitioners care about performance. Great practitioners care about the intersection between performance and aliveness. Truly high-performance groups both perform and feel alive.

My sweet spot audience is the intersection of collaboration practitioners and changemakers — people who care about making change in their respective groups. Not all changemakers have a broader or explicit social mission (which is where my heart is, personally), but I suspect that most changemakers have this implicitly.

“Unemployables” is a cheeky category (coined by Gwen Gordon) that came up at a dinner party the other night to describe independents who probably will never (and perhaps can’t) work for another person’s organization. There could be many reasons for why one might be an “unemployable,” some not necessarily good, especially in the context of collaboration. But when I use it in this context, there’s an implied (admirable) quality of being very values- and systems-driven.

I included this category mainly as an observation, not as a particular focus area, although I definitely care about these folks and count myself among them. They tend to be radically motivated, the folks who are most likely to take my public domain material and use it to learn and practice on their own.

What do you think? Are the categories clear? Do they resonate?

This Is How to Advertise Your Impact

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

I had the pleasure of exchanging emails with Autumn Hays at Partnership for Working Families today. I was particularly struck by her email signature, which opens with:

The Partnership improved the lives of 1.5 million people last year!

This is so smart on so many levels. First, it shows that the Partnership has a clear impact goal and are tracking it in a compelling way. It’s just good storytelling. I’d love to see more transparency in how they’re coming up with their numbers, but I’m a geek, and I’m nitpicking. The fact that they’re doing this at all is great.

Second, they are intentionally drawing people’s attention to their impact in a simple, innovative way. I’m sure Autumn sends lots of emails, and every one of the recipient now has some sense of the Partnership’s impact. It’s the nonprofit version of the McDonald’s “billions served” sign.

I would love to see others do stuff like this. I’m totally planning on stealing this.

Jeff Bezos on Process as Proxy

Posted on Published by Eugene Eric Kim

Jeff Bezos’s 2017 letter to shareholders should be required reading for all entrepreneurs. Seriously, go read it now. It’s short and well worth your time.

One point that seemed particularly relevant to my work is to resist process as a proxy:

Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp. It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” A more experienced leader will use it as an opportunity to investigate and improve the process. The process is not the thing. It’s always worth asking, do we own the process or does the process own us?

One of my core principles is to be intentional, but hold it lightly. Over half of my work is helping people get clear and aligned around their intentions. People often fall back on process as proxy, because they’ve lost sight of what they’re actually trying to do.