The tools I never chose

About this Video:

What do you reach for when your life comes apart?

I realized that my answer had a lot more to do with my father than I wanted to admit. When things got difficult, I worked harder, tried to control more, and told nobody what was really going on. Those were the tools I watched my father use, and somewhere along the way, they became mine.

In this video, I look at what happens when the tools that got us through one part of life stop working in the next. I share what I've learned from Susan Bradley and the Sudden Money Institute about the different stages of transition, from anticipation and liminal space to the messy middle and new beginnings.

I've also learned that transitions aren't walls you can simply push through. They're passages. Sometimes the right move is to pause. Sometimes it's to ask "what if?" Sometimes it's to run a small experiment and fail fast, fail cheap.

And maybe the biggest lesson I've learned is this: I don't have to know exactly where the next transition is taking me.

I just have to stay open enough to find out.


Transcript:

Let me ask you something. The last time your life came apart, what did you reach for? Not what you tell people, the real thing. The move your hand makes before your brain gets a vote.

I asked myself that not long ago, and I did not love my answer.

You know, there's a writer named Bruce Feiler. He says we hit 30 to 40 disruptors in our life. That's a big transition every 12 to 18 months for as long as we're here. And here's what stopped me cold. It wasn't the number. Our toolkit for these things never got upgraded. We grabbed the same old tools for a brand-new problem year after year. Then we wonder why it's so hard every time.

So I got honest.

What do I really reach for when things fall apart?

Three moves:

work harder,

control more,

tell nobody

And then it hit me. Every one of those tools was my father's first.

My dad ran a wholesale tobacco business. Cash was short almost always. When money got tight, he didn't try a new idea. He just went in earlier, and he stayed later, and our family paid the price.

A kid notices that long before he has the words for it. That was the whole toolkit.

Outwork the problem, grip everything you can control, and never let anyone see the strain.

And nobody hands you a toolkit like that. You absorb it the way a kid absorbs an accent. I never chose those three tools. I never questioned them.

I spent the biggest transitions of my seventies using my father's tools.

Then I looked at them honestly, and I'm not sure a single one still works.

So here's my first question for you:

Whose tools do you reach for when life shifts?

Did you choose them, or did somebody hand them to you before they knew any better?

Now, here's something that took me most of my life to say.

Working harder never once solved a transition for me. Not one time. I did it anyway for years.

Not because it worked so well, because I had no other ideas.

It was the only tool in the toolkit.

The first crack of light came at work. We got serious about total quality management, and for the first time, I saw something.

There might be other ways to get from point A to point B. Not more force, different moves, and smaller ones.

Here's what I believe now. A transition isn't a wall you push through. It's a passage you move through, and you don't muscle through a passage. You feel your way, one step at a time. That takes resilience.

Even though I know lots of you really hate that term. Not brute force. You make the change from the inside, not by grinding against it from the outside.

So let me give you the tools I use instead, and I'll be straight with you. I'm not all-knowing on this. I'm a student. I learn a lot of what I use from Susan Bradley. She's at the Sudden Money Institute.

The rest I'm still figuring out right alongside you.

The first tool is the simplest for a work harder guy, and it was the hardest.

When I know I'm in a transition, I pause. I let it sit. I let myself be right where I am.

The pause used to feel like weakness. Now I think it's the whole game.

After that, the right tool depends on the stage, and naming the stage is half the work.

Here's one warning, though. These stages aren't a tidy staircase. They stack. Most of the time, I'm not in one transition, I'm in three at once

Something's coming, and it's called anticipation, but it's not here yet. You feel the weather change. The storm's still offshore.

Here I use a tool I call what if.

What would happen if this happens? What would happen if that happens?

That's not worrying.

Worry just spins in place.

What if gives the anxious energy somewhere to go.

You're not predicting the future, you're drawing a few maps. So whichever road it is, you've walked a version of it.

The ending, stage two.

This is the loneliest one. It's when you had is gone. Who you were isn't true anymore.

Here I ask a question, "What would I like my future to look like?"

But notice, I'm not deciding anything, I'm just asking.

This is where a hard question shows up. If I'm not a business owner anymore, who am I?

You know, Susan Bradley calls this a liminal space. The old thing is gone, the new thing hasn't shown up yet.

Two years ago, I'd have run from it. Today, I can almost sit in it and be okay.

Then we get to the passage.

Now the messy middle, which, you know, everybody calls and is too much- used way too much.

Everything's confusing, but nothing feels solid.

This is a time For experiments.

I call it fail fast, fail cheap.

I learned this the hard way. Early in the nineteen-eighties, we had a salmonella outbreak in our company. That is deep in the passage. Nothing certain. Decisions flying at us last minute.

But something did save us.

We'd done some scenario planning ahead of time, so we weren't starting from zero. We already had ideas for experiments, and we ran lots of small ones, and we felt our way to the other side.

Not one heroic push, a string of small, cheap tries.

Here's what most people get wrong about fail fast. It doesn't mean swing for the fences, it means go small.

You know, we used to have snack machines with forty different items, and I had a hunch that that was way too many.

So we didn't cut it to ten overnight.

We went from forty to thirty-eight, small experiment.

Then thirty-five, another small experiment.

Then thirty, still another small experiment.

We kept shrinking it a little at a time.

In the end, we only needed fourteen items.

Small step, small step, small step.

Each one cheap enough to back out of.

My rule now, if an experiment can't run in about a week, it's probably too big.

So let me ask you, what would you try if you let yourself fail that cheap?

Then-- finally, we get to the new beginning.

Finally, the sun comes back out.

.The hard part's behind you.

And this stage asks for the tool I've been worst at my whole life.

Don't fight it.

I've got a long history here. I argue with the new beginning that shows up. I wish it were a different one lots of times. Anything but letting the good thing be good.

So here's where I am today, honest as I can be.

Right now, I'm not fighting, and this is from my seat as a student.

For the first time in a long while, I'm grateful for it.

And to turn it to this, the long, strange trip, the thing you're watching right now. Same stages, same tools. The only difference? This time I didn't put up my fists

Let me tell you where I got two words, whatever comes next.

Years ago, I went to hear Bill Walton speak. Afterward, I ran into him in the men's room. One shot at a brilliant question, and I asked something really, really dumb.

"Bill, what's the best Grateful Dead concert you ever saw?"

He looked at me like I had three heads. He said three words, "The next one."

And then he walked out, and I stood there with my face going red.

But his answer wasn't dumb. It was brilliant.

Why look back when you can look forward? Whatever comes next has lessons in it. It can be interesting, even when it's hard.

So now I meet each transition with three words, "The next one."

I don't expect a barrel of laughs. I know there'll be hard stretches, and I have no idea how it ends.

But the next one leads somewhere interesting, as long as I stay open to it.

That's the trade I finally made.

Out with work harder, control more, tell nobody.

In with pause, name it, ask a spare, accept.

Tools I actually choose this time, not the ones that came with the tobacco business.

So here's what I'll leave you with.

The same question I had to sit with.

The last time your life came apart, what did you reach for? And would you trade any of it in?

I'd honestly like to know. It is what it is, but none of us are on the committee that says we figured it out alone.

Thanks a lot. I hope to see you back here next week.