Studio Non Troppo

Photo: L.Brumm Photography

We all know that advice is overrated (except our advice to others, which is unheeded). It’s just hard to acquire wisdom through advice-giving.

We also all know the “other person’s shoes” idea, how experiencing something from another point of view can bring insight.

I’m not going to give advice in this post; I’ll just tell a (short) story.

My day job for years has been as an educator. Educators are fond of talking about how a good teacher is always learning. I’ve heard myself say this many times, I believe it, and I thought I was practicing it, too. It’s funny, though, that it was only recently that I signed up to take a course, the first college-level course I’ve enrolled in since 1997.

It’s an art studio course, and wow is it hard work!

Only now do I remember what it feels like to be a student.

The instructor explains something, and I think I understand, but I can’t put it in to practice.

Or: I’m thinking about what she just said, and I realize I’ve just missed the next four things she said.

Or: My classmates easily pick up some techniques I find nearly impossible, and I find other techniques straightforward and see my classmates struggle.

Or: I know I’m there to learn and not for a grade, but I feel the pressure of the imminent grade.

Or: I go through frustration, despair, impatience, perseverance, more despair, and then relief over the course of a single homework assignment.

The class is an extended interaction, more than a survey form or a role-play or an experiment that I set up, control, and evaluate.

Now we’re cooking with gas!

Photo: titanium22

We received a cherry tree via UPS last night. Sue had ordered the tree sometime in the fall for delivery in the spring. It’s a bare root tree and is a self-pollenating dwarf variety. We’re excited to have the tree and are looking forward to seeing it grow and blossom and fruit.

The thing is, we don’t know where we’re going to plant it.

It’s a busy day today, and we’re looking to plant the tree tomorrow (the instructions say we can keep it indoors that long). We don’t really have a “perfect” place to plant it, but there are many places on the property we obviously won’t put it, so at least we’ve narrowed down the possibilities some.

Once we plant it, we won’t want to move it. It’s not as if we could try one spot for a week and then move it to another one; it’s not a houseplant. So picking a spot is a commitment.

We don’t know how big it will actually grow, what shape it will be, or how it will affect the other plants nearby or the ecology of our little plot. We’ll be able to prune it, adjust the watering, and move some of the things around it, but there’s only so much we will be able to adjust or control about the tree’s life.

The most important thing is that we do have to plant it. We can’t wait to find or make a “perfect spot” for it.

So, unlike what I advocated in my post about setting things up to be easily modified, we’ll just be putting it into the ground and seeing what happens. I think nurturing and building, though having creating in common, feel very different.

Photo: Kanko*

Musashi, the samurai, artist, and author of The Book of the Five Rings, wrote down a list of what he expected of a master swordsman.

I don’t have the book in front of me (probably having lent it out one more time than I got it back), but I remember one of the items on his list: know the ways of all professions. “Know the ways of all professions” is not the same as “be proficient in all areas.”

The latter is not only impossible; it is pointless to attempt. The former is a more subtle instruction.

Although it may also, in the end, be impossible to know the ways of all professions, setting this as a goal puts one on a path of observation, learning, and most fundamentally, compassion.

In the very specific context of running a business, you may wonder how far you need to immerse yourself in the interflowing currents of marketing, analytics, copywriting, and design. My answer is this: it depends.

How much expertise it is appropriate for you to develop or attach yourself to will depend on all the contexts of your business, not least on what kinds of things you enjoy learning and doing. To learn more about the particular contexts in which you find yourself, and to know what steps you should take, your first choice should be to determine to “know the ways of all professions.”

You can practice anywhere.

Consider all the people involved in creating and installing the following sign:

Photo: * Photography by Chris *
It can be challenging and perplexing, but also fun and rewarding, to think about how and why people do the things they do.

What do web analysts get thrilled about? How do marketers spin utter failure? What is the bane of the copywriter’s existence? What does that odd laugh coming from the designer mean?

To the extent you know the play of wills, frustrations, and breakthroughs for the professionals who could someday work with you, as teachers, partners, or contractors, you will know what is best to ask or ask for.

Photo: woodleywonderworks

It’s important to have a good relationship with failing.

Since failing is not an objective, external fact, but rather an interpretation we make, it turns out there is an art to failing. And like any art, doing it well takes practice.

Let’s say you’ve got a great idea. It’s a really great idea, and you fully expect it to be your personal jackpot.

Your idea is this: you’re going to reveal to the world your comprehensive list of songs that plants like.

You’ve discovered that your Meyer lemon tree likes a particular Puccini aria, but only on weekdays. On weekends, the lemon prefers certain jazz standards, like “Stormy Weather.”

You can get your tulips to do yoga by whistling Sousa marches to them.

And so on.

Now imagine spending years compiling your trade secret knowledge into an encyclopedia of plant song.

You hire web designers and marketing folks. At last, after five years of development and tweaking, the big day arrives, and you launch your product. Unfortunately, no one wants it. One person buys it, but he uses it as a doorstop.

The objective event of no one buying your product is not, in itself, a terrible thing. What is bad is the feeling of disappointment you have. After putting in so much effort, this experience of failure is bound to be hard to shake off. You might even feel like taking it out on your plants.

Now compare that scenario to this one. Same idea, different approach to realizing it:

Instead of spending years (and lots of money) putting a plant song book together, you make a list of “The Top Seven Songs Adored by Jade Plants” (informed by your copious research, of course), and within a few days, you put it online for anyone to see. You don’t charge a cent for it, but you do have a friend who knows a little bit about web design put up a form so visitors can post their comments. Then you tell all your friends about your new site.

Imagine all the things that could happen.

If your friends visit the site, but none of them even comment (or if they only leave comments such as “just stop. please.”) then you have learned something.

If  one of the commenters asks whether you need to have formal voice training to sing to your plants, and the next comment is “Yeah, I was wondering that, too. Will I hurt my voice if I sing to my plants too loud?” then you have learned something else. It might be time to find a voice teacher you can partner up with.

In fancy engineering contexts, it’s called rapid prototyping.

I like calling it “fail as quickly as possible.” Get something out there, learn from what works and what doesn’t, try the next thing. Note that this “proactive failing” really only makes sense if you are doing something. The various ways of not acting, such as procrastinating, don’t provide the same benefits.

Try writing a comment to this post, even if you’ve never commented on a blog before. Share your insights about failing in productive ways. I look forward to reading them!

Photo: Ryan Wick

One of the things I teach in my “other life” is a very weird and wonderful problem solving methodology called TRIZ. The letters T-R-I-Z are a Russian acronym for what in English is called the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving.

In TRIZ, we talk about a system’s primary function. What’s the system designed to do? Or: what’s the point?

This is part of the WHY I talked about in the last post. When things get complicated, when people feel under time pressure, or when we stop acting mindfully, it’s easy to lose sight of the WHY.

So here’s the question you must ask yourself: what is the primary function of my (new) business?

If you answered with some version of “to make money,” it’s because you are falling into the auxiliary function trap. An auxiliary function is some function internal to the system, something that is done besides the primary function.

It’s time for an example.

Let’s say the primary function of a jellybean-making machine is to make jellybeans. Beautiful, delicious, marginally-nutritious jellybeans.

Photo: Angie Torres

Pouring the sugar from a container into a mold is an auxiliary function. In this case, it might be something you need to do, but let’s not mistake moving sugar around with actually producing finished jellybeans.

Measuring the jellybeans for appropriate size and shape is also an auxiliary function. If you could measure the jellybeans perfectly but still only produced ugly, terrible-tasting jellybeans, I think you’d have to agree your machine was failing at its job. On the other hand, if your system was designed so as to produce glorious, awesome jellybeans, and if you didn’t need to do any measurements at all, the machine would be succeeding. That’s because measuring the beans isn’t the point; making beans in the point.

“So why,” you might ask, “is the bean-counting approach to my business so wrong? It worked for your jellybean example, didn’t it?”

Selecting “the production of money” might work on some level as a primary function for your business, but there are real limitations and pitfalls that result from this way of looking at things.

Money (think a fistful of dollar bills) doesn’t actually do anything for you. You can’t eat it. You can’t construct a house with it. You can’t nourish your soul with it. And that’s the big clue… Money is only useful for what you do with it. In other words, money is an enabler, not a goal in itself. The production of money is an auxiliary function.

So here’s what you can do.

Remind yourself that money, though quite possibly necessary, performs only an enabling, auxiliary function. Take the time, now and repeatedly, to ask yourself, “what is the primary function for my business?”

Here are some examples of primary functions for a business:

• “Creates free time for me to spend with my family.”
• “Makes me feel productive, energized, and creative.”
• “Creates inner peace.”
• “Makes beautiful things in the world.”
• “Spreads fun contagiously”

Sometimes, you will find that the money-making, or measurement, or marketing, or [insert another auxiliary function here] function may be contributing positively to some piece of the system but is harming the system’s ability to perform its primary function.

You can correct this, or figure out a way for the disruption of the primary function to only be temporary and a positive change in the long run….but only if you’re paying attention.