willie jackson

Blog

  • Developing a personal value system

    After spending a month on the road, I’m thrilled to be back in New York. Riding the subway is now second nature, but it never fails to inject a bit of excitement into the day’s travels.

    When utilizing public transportation in NYC, you are face to face with humanity. Tall, short, black, white, rich, poor, skinny, and fat are all crammed into seats together.

    A man stepped onto the subway the other night and explained that he wasn’t hungry, but that he was homeless. He needed a little money, and had a very warm disposition.

    He then shared that he was HIV positive and had full-blown AIDS.

    Was he lying? I have no idea. Was it at best uncomfortable and at most terrifying? Absolutely.

    So what do you do? Give him money? Ignore him and try to act like he doesn’t exist?

    Convince yourself that it’s not your job to sponsor his Subway Healthcare Plan™ and that he’d get what he needs by the end of the night?

    Why does it take someone breaking the proverbial ice and contributing for others to feel empowered to do so?

    Why doesn’t anyone talk about how to handle situations like this, or the method by which the right decisions in times like this are made?

    I wish I had an answer, but I struggle with these things.

  • Life and death

    Most people will not reach their full potential in life.

    I don’t mean to be dramatic, this is just a fact. What’s more depressing is that many secretly live in despair, putting on a smile for others because there doesn’t appear to be a sounding board or support system for people like them.

    People with great jobs and loving families and money and security…but a complete lack of fulfillment. When this described my life, I called going to work every day dying a thousand deaths. Well, that’s what I call it in retrospect.

    If you haven’t experienced it, it’s hard to describe the sadness and hopelessness one feels when “stuck” in unfulfilling situations. There may be additional factors such as debt and prestige and trying to please others, but there’s no immediate danger such as, say, the risk of starving to death, being homeless, or becoming a saber-toothed tiger’s breakfast.

    And so people feel foolish complaining. People come to work on Monday, log onto Twitter and talk about how fast the weekend went by and how much they’re looking forward to Friday. They feel ungrateful because “so many people would kill for their job.”

    Bah.

    You have one chance to get it right, and no one is going to fight for you if you don’t demand the happiness you deserve. Get angry, take action, and make the changes necessary to ensure your happiness (or as in my case, preserve your health and sanity).

    It’s not too late, but it’s getting there.

  • The mirror of frustration

    When no one else really understands how things should be done…

    When you’re constantly being critical of friends and family…

    When you look around and all you see is failure…

    When nothing anyone does is good enough…

    …it’s often you seeing your own shortcomings in others.

  • The gift of a chance

    Both my career and personal development (are these actually separate things?) have been immeasurably enriched by opportunities that came as a result of people taking a chance on me.

    From the time when I was a clueless intern at an Convergys in 2005, to when I was a miserable consultant at Accenture in 2007, to when I was a wide-eyed student of the publishing industry at The Domino Project in 2011, the only way I got the chance to grow and learn and fail was by someone making a conscious decision to take a chance on me.

    Advice for those who need opportunities: make the decision easy for others by mitigating their risk. Do the hard work of taking on challenges and responsibility and risk and certain death while you toil away in obscurity so that when the right opportunity comes knocking, you’ll be poised for primetime. That is, you’ll have failed enough when it didn’t matter to the point where you’re ready to fail (gracefully and catastrophically) on a much larger stage when actual budgets and reputations are on the line.

    Advice for those in a position to grant an opportunity: don’t forget when the last paragraph applied to you.

    *   *   *

    To Mary, Charelle, Michael, Lynn, William, Fran, Morris, Sabrina, AJ, Tommie, Craig, Alexis, Naajia, Pam, Ishita, Seth, Fred, hundreds of clients, and everyone who advocates on my behalf without my knowledge, thanks for giving me a chance.

    I fall short often, but I’m trying (very hard) not to let you down.

  • Preparing for the final seconds of a game

    There are a couple ways to prepare for the last few seconds of a basketball game.

    One way is to practice shooting the game-winning shot from various positions on the court, over and over, under the most challenging circumstances you can simulate. Off-balance, fatigued, one-handed, falling out of bounds, with your non-dominant hand, etc.

    You could practice catching alley-oop passes, rehearse special plays with your team, try to improve your vertical leap every month, work on your explosiveness, and study the ball-handling greats for ideas on how to move the ball towards the basket using various tricks to baffle your opponents (and delight the crowd).

    Or you could focus on playing a strong four quarters so none of those things are needed.

  • Irrespective of others

    One lesson I learned about leadership last year is that your goals should not be derailed by the inaction of others. In the context of a team setting, your leadership and the example you set must take place regardless of the goals others set and fall short on.

    This means that the completion of your goals should be enhanced by the contributions of others, but not predicated on them. Behave as if your goals are mission-critical (because they are), and as if the consistent completion of your goals is the only way you’ll get ahead (because it is).

  • Maybe you should get angry

    Everyone wants to be liked and accepted. Standing out in a crowd is terrifying, and the desire to fit in drives us to make many of the decisions we make with the way we dress and talk and live.

    “Be nice,” we’re told. But no one volunteers instructions for the corresponding disposition in business and competition. I think a different set of expectations might be appropriate here.

    Something I’ve noticed in business is that many CEOs and startup founders are not always “nice people.” Many are ruthless, temperamental, and downright angry. I don’t think it’s necessary to embody the extremes, but I do think a healthy dose of passion (even if it boils over at times) is alright.

  • Can you endorse me?

    Yesterday, I wrote a recommendation for a friend on LinkedIn. It was my pleasure to do it, I meant everything I said, and I hope it leads to her securing some solid business in the new year. She in turn wrote one for me, so my profile was enhanced a bit in the exchange.

    Recommendations are powerful, and not enough of us are proactive about procuring them from clients. Trading recommendations only took a few minutes, which got me to thinking…

    Why don’t we incorporate recommendation-writing into our normal routines? I realize that not everyone has a LinkedIn account, but an email works just as well. So we could start by spending some time every week writing brief recommendations for individuals we’ve worked with recently, moving on down the line to those we’ve worked with in the past.

    And once we’re all caught up, we can simply make this a part of the process following collaborations, contractor engagements, and the like. It requires little effort to accomplish, and can be used by the recipient for years to come.

    Why not?

  • Hi. Did you add me to your list?

    Following networking events, conferences, and meetups, there are usually well-intentioned followups that take place electronically as a result of business card exchanges.

    Sometimes, however, people will add you to their mailing list without your consent. In addition to being slimy and ensuring that your spam newsletter does not get read, it dehumanizes the previous interaction.

    If I get a newsletter from someone whose mailing list I didn’t sign up for, I opt for one of the following approaches, depending on how I feel:

    1. Reporting the email as spam
    2. Unsubscribing from the newsletter, indicating in the process (if it allows for feedback) that I didn’t sign up for it in the first place
    3. Replying to the sender and asking if they added me to their list without my consent

    The last one might be a little surprising, but I think it’s a teachable moment, and a little discomfort never hurt anyone (much). I once inquired of a spammer sender (who fit the profile of someone who I might have crossed paths with) if he and I had met. His reply? “No, but I would like to.”

    ಠ_ಠ

    Sometimes people will be offended if you request removal from their list, and I think that’s fine. Spam is a problem, and I have no problem aggressively guarding my inbox against unsolicited mail from dishonest marketers. It’s tactics like those that give people a general distaste of marketing in the first place.

    And if someone I don’t know adds me to a mailing list I didn’t sign up for and provides no mechanism for unsubscribing (which is illegal, of course), I just report the message as spam, occasionally letting the sender know this by replying to the message.

    /rant

    Anyway…

    I have a small mailing list for this blog, and I currently publish content every day. If someone wants to subscribe, it’s not very difficult. Could I push my list more aggressively, litter my site with calls to action, and proactively add friends to the list manually (with their consent)? Of course.

    But that doesn’t match the tone I’m going for here. I’m trying to build a sustainable home for valuable ideas as they’re published. I’d like for the people coming along for the ride to be delighted to join, and I’d like to work for each and every signup.

    So if you’re reading this post via email because you found my site or heard about me and opted into my daily musings, I’d like to thank you. You’re why I’m doing this.

  • Can I shadow you?

    This is one really effective way to jumpstart your learning on something. For work that requires client interaction or customer development, there are a staggering number of things that can be gleaned from seeing a pro do what they do.

    An example of this that we all have seen is in the food service industry, where a new, precocious server will hover alongside the experienced server to learn the ins and outs of taking chicken parmesan orders effectively.

    So if you have access to a mentor or friend who has deep experience in a particular area that interests you, consider asking if you can tail them on an engagement to better understand the art of their work.