Nowhere to hide

That first picture? What I did capture of the fairy tale/computer game colours the other morning.

Oh and because there have been quite a couple questions about this I want to clarify: 1) the new job is in Cape Town and 2) we just need to get the work permit transferred to the new employer. Not an ‘issue’ so much as a ‘to-do.’

I don’t really believe in superstition; and that’s a good thing. I’ll admit to some annoyance at circumstances from time to time. My gym bag got stolen out of my car a few days ago, which is such a hassle and sadly, the stuff in there is surely worth way more to me than any resale value, but more than that: I get annoyed with myself when I get annoyed at other things. It’s a vicious cycle. But every cloud does have a silver lining: I’m going back to the States soon so I get to pick between new Nike and Adidas lifting shoes. Life could be worse.  

I just need to slow the hell down sometimes. Haste makes waste. Moving too fast leads to sloppy thinking and/or sloppy execution.

Monday’s lunch at Loading Bay hammered this one home: you don’t make big mistakes twice (hopefully). And the value of some good lessons is sometimes only learned in retrospect. Joe Gagnon kept yammering on at Exit41 about finding a “niche in an ecosystem.” At Babson, they described this as figuring out where you fit in the value chain. Figure out you’re core business, outsource & partner for the rest. Yup.

I feel like I’m standing in the corner of a dark room and I know I need to assemble a 3D puzzle but I can’t see all the pieces, or even how big the room is. But, I’m starting to be able to feel the light switch. It’s an odd feeling whenever you switch jobs; where you are so consciously incompetent that it’s frustrating. You want to make a difference NOW, but you know that you don’t know enough to.

The outpouring of love and support from all my various friends & acquaintances has been amazing, and you can tell it’s genuine by the looks on people’s faces when I tell them what I’m up to next. I think quite a few of them go through the same mental gymnastics I did. My first response was something along the lines of: “You want me to WHAT? Huh. Ok, yeah, sure. Sounds like fun.” We all know that I have a twisted idea of fun though. It’s fun that it came just in time for my birthday, too. Flowers, chocolates, and a heck of a lot of responsibility. Well, oh well, I signed up for this and I’m already having a blast!

Saturday was a lesson in contrasts as in the space of one day I had two extremes of experience, at two places I had never been. The first was the taxi rank above Cape Town train station. I was walking through, which was a first in my over two years in Cape Town. I mean … I have money, and a car, so why on earth would I go there?

I got one of those electric shocks like ‘this is totally something out of a dystopian movie.’ Except that I am, of course, the protagonist in my own life and I live on the right side of the tracks. But for one split second I had a glimpse of what my life would be like had I been born on the wrong side: this is where you queue to crowd in with a zillion other people to return home to the shacks where you all live. The smell of poverty? Urine, mixed with pheromones, and not of the romantic variety.

The second was that night at Orphanage Cocktail Emporium, a place I’d driven by a ton of times when coming home from the martial arts studio (not the time you really want to stop into a bar for a quick one!!). It was Justin Stanford’s birthday, and a black & white 1920s themed party at that. So I got to play dress-up. The best part was trying to do classic flapper-style makeup. But, I did get a compliment from the birthday boy on my outfit. Love love LOVE Justin … I mean, he was drinking champagne from the bottle with a straw.

Met some interesting people too, from a buyer at Pick’n’Pay to the infamous metabolic testing startup that I keep hearing about with great interest. I will say this; Justin could have picked better weather for his party. Damn; even at the Biscuit Mill people were running for cover! It went from pouring cats & dogs to sunny back to pouring.

Again, one of those odd ‘Is this really my life? How did I get to Cape Town, with all these people with strange accents, and I’m now doing WHAT?’ The best was when someone was relaying a funny story and the story was English but the dialog was probably 50% English, 20% Xhosa, and 30% Afrikaans, and I was able to catch almost all of it. I have been here a while and as much as I do feel like a foreigner sometimes, I suppose I’m becoming a bit of a local in a way. I don’t like to go out in winter any more, and I am starting to think of Stellenbosch as being ‘far.’

I suppose I was, and am still, having a bit of what-have-I-done-it is, mixed with just a sense of digging in, maybe. It’s all fun & games until it’s not and with this new job I’m no longer kidding when I joke that I’m not going anywhere. It has also shifted my priorities in that all of a sudden, my complete ineptitude at kipping handstand pushups suddenly seems much less important in the grand scheme of things.

I was good though; didn’t stay out too late. I had broken my training fast earlier in the day which felt nice, and more of the same on Sunday. It is SO cool to be able to lift without noticing my back at all. I was even doing some moderately heavy deadlifts [carefully]. Monday morning I took a friend to CrossFit and I was happy that firstly I hit a new front squat max (2kgs only) but it wasn’t even a max because I was afraid to go heavier than a heavy safe lift lest I strain my back. Good news? I didn’t strain my back in the slightest. Bad news? I obviously should have gone heavier.

An anecdote that will amuse my CrossFit friends: I had been training on the weekend but only strength stuff; so when I got to the gym Monday morning that was my first proper CrossFit-style workout for about two weeks. It was ¼ Angie: 25 pullups 25 pushups 25 situps 25 air squats. When Coach Andrew turned on the clock for the 10 second countdown I literally let out a squeal of excitement. Apparently I like training THAT much.

Not sure I felt the same on the second workout of my birthday when somehow I was missing wall ball reps and wanted to quit the workout in round #2 (out of 5). Seriously, that issue I was having a few months back of not pushing myself at least very close to the limit each workout? Not having that problem any more.

Monday: a kind of wild morning, catch up lunch that turned into a potential for business development (cuz that’s Cape Town, baby), and then another awesome meeting with Greenpop in the afternoon. I love those guys, and I’m super happy with the discussions that we’re having and work that we’re doing. I’m happy to be helping catalyse the discussions but also help with deliverables.

My birthday was my unofficial first day on the new job but I didn’t go into the office yet, and instead did some admin, remote offsite work, and had a meeting with one of the people I’ll be working with. It was good to see that my plans of where I wanted to spend my time (and where I do not) aligned with her thinking. That evening after the dreadful workout that made me want to curl up and die I went to &Union to watch the solo debut of Motheo Moleko.

What a great birthday gift for me, to see someone perform really well at something he clearly loves? And to have a bunch of my best friends come and join me that evening for some gluten-free chocolate cake? Usually I don’t like birthdays but this one I felt overwhelming love and it’s a good feeling right about now. I also met some interesting new people, as is pretty much always the case at &Union. It’s like the Cheers of Cape Town in that it’s impossible to go there without seeing someone you know, but the chances of meeting some new interesting people are also quite high. In this case, it involved a guy who was trying to persuade me that I was a semi-pro CrossFitter sponsored by Reebok (we got onto the subject by talking about deadlifts), and it’s not every day that you can talk circles around me. But he was cheating a little bit as an ex-Springbok sevens player. Not fair. But, these things make me smile.

Finally booked my tickets back to the U.S.; I leave on 29 September (arrive in New York laaaate on 30 September), and return 22 October (again depart NYC late on the 20^th). The exact schedule in between I am not yet sure.  

In other news, it’s still DAMNED cold, but you can see that spring is coming. The light is changing, and the trees are starting to bud out. Which is cool and all …. But I’m almost more mentally preparing for my U.S. trip and autumn. I am not sure the next time I’ll go back; it’s going to be a bit harder to up and leave Cape Town for extended stretches after this. But I’m also really looking forward to what I have planned for this trip.

The problem with expectations? The same as with attachment. Sometimes you get disappointed. But I was thinking about it recently; if you don’t form attachments you don’t regret loss. But if you don’t form attachments, what do you really have to hold onto?

And, related: is it a good thing or a bad thing to have strong attachments to people who are far away from you? In some ways it’s hard, but it beats the alternative. Right? Longing, nostalgia …. Those are autumn emotions. What are autumn emotions? Football emotions. What are football emotions? Love, excitement in the pit of your stomach, air that stings your nose with cold when you breathe in.

Ok, if you haven’t figured it out by now: I’m ready for some football.  

• “Welcome to the family.” – Justin
• “80% of them fail that test.” – Keet
• “When I feel like I’m about to pass out is probably a good time to stop training.” – Dale
• “When you take a really big bite, and you don’t think you might choke, you’re probably not paying attention.” – Amy
• “There’s nowhere to hide.” – Amy
• “Oh, so you like to figure out how things are going to work.” – Jess
• “The biggest hindrance I think is hierarchy of needs.” – Jeremy
• “I don’t know how some people talk so much!” – woman in Virgin Active
• “I think I’m going to throw up.” “Happy birthday, Ellie!” – Ellie & Coach Chris

Moving on from Heart

Wow, this was a tough one. Hard one to write; harder one to do. Heart was where I landed when I first came to South Africa, and if I’m honest it’s been more than a job: it’s been a family, and a mission.

But I have decided to move on. We now need to transfer my work permit to my new employer and until this is done there will be no official announcements. All I will say is that we’re meeting both the letter and the spirit of the laws, and I hope to have this concluded sooner than later so I can begin employment in my new position.

And that this is going to involve a trip back to the States, to be scheduled shortly. Among other things, my SAQA certificate is on file in New York so unless we get alternate advice in short order I’ll be flying back to get that done. We’re trying to figure out how to expedite this whole thing and possibly also combine with some business travel (when in Rome, right?).

But for now, this means I get to see family again, San Francisco, possibly some New England in the autumn, possibly a powerlifting seminar, possibly a visit to Denver. But definitely family, the Golden Gate Bridge, and some Tailgate32.

I do have a nice deliverable I am going to finish before I leave, namely the enterprise diagnostic which will enable Heart to deliver a systematic business acceleration service once I’m gone. As I was recently reminded, if a proprietary system relies on individuals and institutional knowledge, it’s not very valuable. They always say an organisation’s most valuable assets walk out the doors every night, and while this is true, good systems design can mitigate this and reduce the cost of new employee acquisition.

I’m also going to continue with some consulting work I am doing with Greenpop and Sibanye, because it’s the right thing to do and I made commitments to those people while I knew I was leaving and I may be a lot of things but I’m no Steve Mariucci (Cal football coach that I savaged when I was a late teenager for the inappropriateness of impassioned talks of the future with his team then immediately leaving to go coach the 49ers). Those are businesses where the people involved are both intrinsically driven, have good business sense, and have good business models already/more in development. In other words, based on all the research I’ve been doing the last week, the kind of bets you should be making whether you are investing money, time, or emotional attachment.

This is in no ways the end of my relationship with Heart; we’re still working out the exact extent and nature of my ongoing involvement but it will certainly be a lot less time and amount of emotional energy invested. I will be getting some valuable experience and contacts in my new role that will only help me in the future. Would that it were quite that easy; ha!

The details of what happened and why may come later, but the short version is that I was recruited for a position and opportunity that were just too good to pass up. This is not the sort of opportunity that comes along very often in one’s life, and quite frankly I would have been an idiot to turn it down. So I can be stupid sometimes, certainly, but there are limits.

It’s been an interesting experience, to say the least, but I wouldn’t have made the move if I didn’t think I stood to gain a lot. It’s a bit of a risky move, but I’m confident it will be a good one and I really respect the team of people I’ll be working with. It’s early days still, but I also really like them as people and that counts for a lot too. They make me smile, and laugh, and think. Even if we scream and fight (which we will!), as long as there’s a fundamental respect there, and caring about the outcome and doing things the right way, we’ll be fine.

I alluded a while back to the decisions that I’ve made in my life that I’ve been the happiest with were the ones that I made in a second that just ‘felt’ right. I decided I was going to do this in a split second at some point over coffee at the Bromwell back in June. It was just the sort of challenge and stretch that I thought would be interesting enough to make it worthwhile. I know it’s not going to be easy, and I also know it’s quite literally going to change my life. But a change for the better.

This is going to be fun. Scary as hell, but fun.

Competition, cheating, and ethics

No, not mine. Well, partly mine. I’ve been walking a thin line in recent weeks as will become clear soon enough; I’m in a weird head space at the moment as a result.

But you know, this has been an amazing week. At least except for dropping my Samsung one too many times (broke the liquid crystals, but damned if the touch screen doesn’t still work perfectly!!), and the starter motor on my car dying.

On the plus side, I’m getting a free Blackberry next week so I can learn the horrible UI I’ve always avoided until I can fix my Samsung or upgrade …. Sorry but I’m an Android snob at this point. Nothing so positive about the car to say except that I was lucky that it died 50m from the car repair place (figures, since the car repair place is right by the gym). I had a laugh at the temporary rental car I had; maybe it’s the CrossFit but the non-power steering was actually kind of fun!

Unrelated: car repair places, or at least mine, really need to learn a lesson in under-promise and over-deliver. I actually don’t give a damn if it’s going to take four days … but for the love of God just set my expectations properly so I can make alternate arrangements.

Illness always stinks, but it coincided with a rest week and on THAT subject I am absolutely over the moon that this is the healthiest I have felt in months; specifically since before that hang clean gone bad before Regionals. Taking these complete rest weeks every 4-6 weeks is great, and I am so ready to get back to training that I’m actually almost going stir crazy!

Felt like a very unusual week though without training: spontaneous dinner with Amy Wednesday, lunch & dress shopping with Kerry Thursday (I’m having a sense of humour failure about Saturday’s party already!), physio followed by acupuncture followed by qigong, Friday lunch with Chris @Knead (we didn’t eat any bread), and then no car so didn’t motivate to go out in the evening.

I also got a huge weight off my chest this week, which I’ll talk about in the next post.

So this week some big news has revolved around our friend Lance Armstrong … drug use, no drug use … I don’t actually care to get involved in debating whether or not he’s guilty of anything but one of my Facebook friends posed an interesting question:

“Loaded moral question of the day: Let's say if, through cheating in a sport, you made the world a substantially better place in the most important ways. Are you a bad person? Did you do a bad thing? Should you not have cheated? I'd like to hear your opinions...”

My first response, of course, was that this is not a question for Facebook but a question for a discussion over a bottle of wine.

Good one though; I had just been saying that morning that I suspected that most people aren’t unethical but just have different levels of what we can personally justify. I mean our capacity for rationalising our own behaviour is legendary. The whole Paul Ryan pro-life thing is certainly making me think of that. I don’t even want to go into that one in more detail other than to say that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

I try always to be as honest and forthright and upright and moral as I can. Sometimes I completely fail, and my perception of what’s right is just completely different to someone else’s. And sometimes I do take the easy way out.

Interesting question posed by a magazine I happened to see: find the thing that scares you the most, and then get after it. I’ve been pondering what scares me the most. Don’t have an answer yet; but I think it falls into the realm doing something where I know I am completely incompetent. I recently asked a recent acquaintance but one whose got scary levels of insight into people, including me, if he thought I had a big ego. He said no: that I was curious, and driven, and motivated by challenges, but realistic enough to understand my limits. I was extremely relieved, because this is how I view myself, and because I know this guy well enough to know that he was giving me an honest answer.

Back to the Lance Armstrong moral dilemma…. in response to that specific question I can say that for me, as a competitive athlete, I would never knowingly cheat. Doesn’t mean I haven’t used stimulants and I won’t do everything legal that I can get my hands on be it fish oil or acupuncture or stimulants or snake oil or visualisation. Ha! But I am not sure how much any of it really matters: on game day, for me, my physical preparation and my mental preparation and confidence are what matters, not the coffee I drank or didn’t drink beforehand.

That’s my moral code when it comes to how I want to compete. I would never want to win and know in the back of my head it was because of some drug. I know the thrill of victory and the pain of defeat. Winning is great; losing is …. A hell of a lot worse than winning is good. But I would rather lose 100 times over than cheat someone else out of a fair victory, and I would never want to have lost to someone who cheated. I would want to rip their throat out with my nails; because that competition, that moment in time only ever happens once. You don’t cheat. You just don’t. Or … you shouldn’t.

But I also get that this is my morality. If you’re an athlete in Iraq under Hussain and you’re going to get tortured if you lose, or your son is going to have his nose cut off or something, then damn I’d take the steroids. It’s all relative, it’s all flipping relative.

None of that is what my friend was asking though. He wanted to know is it ok to cheat if by cheating you make the world a better place? OK yes it’s a poorly-constructed logical argument. What if by cheating you take away not only the win from someone else but the opportunity to be that role model and catalyse those people to live healthier? …. Then again, there are plenty of top athletes in plenty of sports that haven’t had the positive knock-on effect of Lance Armstrong.

Ethics and loyalty is a strange one, too. You can sometimes wonder to what are you loyal? I mean take me… I’m loyal to Cape CrossFit. But break that down … I’m loyal to CrossFit, although I am open to criticise it, and I recognise that it has pros and cons. I’m loyal to Cape CrossFit, because that’s the gym where I started out, and under whose flag I compete. I’m loyal to my coaches, because they’ve taught me a lot of what I know and have been there for me to help me through the mental battles, the physical struggles, the injuries. Yeah, I have my criticisms of the gym and the coaches too, sure, because nothing’s perfect.

So you work in social enterprise: is your loyalty to the field? To your specific company? To the people you work with? All of the above?

You run a company: is your loyalty to your board? To your shareholders? To your staff? To your customers?

The answer, by the way, to all of these, is “Yes” and “It depends on the question.” In most cases you don’t have to choose. Sometimes you do. I think there is, in most cases, a hierarchy, and it depends on the relationship. When it comes to CrossFit, my first loyalty is to myself, so if you ever forced me to choose I could choose whatever seemed most important to me. If CrossFit HQ ever got crazy aggro with rules and Cape CrossFit decided to de-affiliate, then I’d choose at that time whether I wanted to stay with my people, my gym, my coaches, etc., or go train at another gym and compete in the CrossFit competitions. Or compete as an individual. My point being: if it’s just a personal decision you can make a personal choice.

Running a company is similarly straightforward. It’s like that old adage: ‘time, cost, quality: pick two.’ False choice in a way, but also partly true because you push one thing and something else moves. It’s just not good business sense to screw over your customers or your employees. That shit will come back to bite you! At the end of the day, though, if you run a company, your loyalty is clear. Yep, there are externalities with capitalism. But that’s just the thing: morally and ethically, a CEO’s responsibility is to the shareholders, not to some broader grander vision of a happy healthy planet …. Unless those shareholders explicitly have that aspect in their mandate, which is almost never the case.

I’ve said before that not a day goes by here when I don’t have at least one moment where I think: “God, I LOVE it here!” Every once in a while I have that in spades, and this week actually had two such.

The first was Wednesday evening when I was heading from Rondebosch to a coffee shop on Main Road to dish with Amy. I think you can tell the people you care about the most when in a time of stress, or change, or need, they are the ones you want to talk to.

Anyway, the sunset was peeking through that gap between Devils Peak and Table Mountain, and it lit up the cloud in the most breath-taking manner. Of course there was no way to take a photo, but it was postcard epic.

Then Friday morning I was driving into Woodstock on De Waal Drive to see Byron, who as a therapist is probably the best I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. What he’s done to fix my body … it’s breath-taking. Anyway Cape Town is always gorgeous from De Waal but this morning the colours were perfect, and the valley over towards Stellenbosch was sparkling. Literally sparkling. There was a little bit of fog or mist and with the shades of blue and grey it looked like something out of a video game, or a computer game. Reminded me of some of the themes in Lemmings, I think.

It was that beautiful.

I know I can wax lyrical from time to time. I suspect I might be a bit hypo-manic. But good stuff is happening right now, for me and for a good number of people that I care a lot about.

That makes me happy.  

• “As self-professed #1 fan I'm pretty ignorant.” – Ellie
• “That’s not private. Everybody knows how many eggs you eat.” – Jeremy
• “Just because we’re paying them more doesn’t mean they’re better at their job.” – Misha
• “It’s kind of like you’re having an affair.” “Oh, I’m totally having an affair!”  – Doug & Ellie
• “Now we know your weakness.” – Doug
• “How’s that going to be for you? You’re working for the man now. I mean … you *are* the man. But you’re still working for the man.” – Doug
• “Actuaries are not known for their sense of humour.” – Michael (could’ve fooled me!)
• “Well if you have to, you have to.” – Ismail
• “Welcome to the freezer.” – Anton
• “Of course I remember!” – Mike
• “You don’t do things in half measures, do you?” – Jo
• “Beats flowers & chocolates.” – Michael

Everything affects everything

Warren Buffett:

• “When a management team with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact.”
• “Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”

How do you fix a broken company? Or if the company is fundamentally sound but you want to blow it up into a huge runaway success as fast as possible, without leaving any potential avenue of growth aside, how do you do that?

I was explaining both to my co-workers and then to someone at a major international corporation who just happened to reach out to me, why this sort of business optimisation analysis is just so bloody tricky. No company is the same, no situation is the same. So how do you systematize it so that you get a similar recommended plan of attack regardless of which team or consultant(s) look at the issue?

My assessment is that the first level of difficulty (or ease), is to assess, fix, optimise, etc. your own company.

The second level of difficulty is, as a bright and experienced consultant, go into someone else’s business and poke around. This works … but it would provide inconsistent results. The example I gave is that if I were to evaluate a certain business I might say ‘your product is broken, go figure out what your customer wants and then we’ll talk,’ whereas another consultant might say ‘your product is broken, let’s fix it this way’ and yet another might not even see that the product is broken.

I mean, how do you even tell a product is broken? If no one is buying that’s a big clue … but what if some people are? How do you differentiate a product or service that might be under-performing due to a sales and/or marketing challenge from a product or service that just doesn’t have a strong enough value in the minds of customers for the customers to pay the price you need to charge to cover overheads and grow your business?

Well this is why a Babson MBA costs $50,000, and this is what makes those skills so much in demand.

But I haven’t even gotten to the third level of difficulty which is to systematize the process, so that you can have different people look at the same data and come up with similar recommendations. I had a bit of a breakthrough on Monday when I finally figured out a way to frame things. To make something complex simple, you need to be able to separate the parts and put them back together in a logical way. So now I know where I’m going with it but there’s still a chunk of work involved to get this all down into a diagnostic tool that I can teach to someone else.

In the meantime I’ve been reviewing various bits of management and strategy and valuation academic literature. Which is to say, playing around. Theory gets me off, but not quite so much as application of theory. I found an awesome slide deck from the University of Chicago. Some of it blew my mind because it challenged my existing perceptions but since it logically made sense, I’m now changing my tune. Here’s the cliff notes version (this is almost word for word quotes …. I’ve rephrased a bit for brevity):

1. A bad management team doesn’t necessarily kill a good idea (although it can!!) but even a good management team can’t overcome a terrible idea. Radical pivots are rare. This was news to me: I’d always maintained that one should bet on the jockey, not the horse.
2. The business plan / market potential matters. Spend marginal due diligence time evaluating the business. Word. Sounds familiar.
3. What do VCs say is their biggest mistake? They did not fire management fast enough. Do not say that they picked the wrong business. Must be nice to be able to fire management, huh? How do I get into THAT business? But in all seriousness …. Of course. Good ideas are way easier to evaluate than good people.
4. The maxim “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” ought perhaps to be revised for VCs into “If at first you don’t succeed: quit, quit at once.” Oooh but there’s that sunk cost cognitive bias to deal with …. Not to mention the loss aversion bias and consistency bias….interesting one though, what this implies to me is that VC firms should have strong, independent, fiercely external non-exec advisory boards who can tell them when they are flipping crazy and throwing good money after bad.

If there is one thing I know to be true from what is now nearly 15 years in business: everything affects everything. The strategy (direction and plan to get there) matters. Who comes up with that? People. The execution matters. Who does that? People.

At COMMON Pitch, Henk was giving some lessons he’d learned from his time starting Skyrove. What do I remember from that? Just one piece of advice: don’t give people too many chances. When the entrepreneurs channel the academic literature, there’s a good chance they are correct.

My management philosophy: find good people, empower them to make their own decisions. Trust but verify, and be clear on the boundaries where they need to ask permission. No one who’s good wants to be micromanaged, and you can’t scale with micromanagement anyway. If people can’t be trusted to make their own decisions within their realms of expertise, replace the people. If people can’t be trusted to do what’s best for the organisation rather than for their little fiefdom, replace the people.

This is actually coming full circle in a way because when Skip Battle took over Ask Jeeves, this was his loudly announced management theory from his many years at Accenture. I remember pooh-poohing it, but the reason for that was, to put it kindly, a difference of opinion about the capabilities of the people he was empowering. I guess we were both wrong. And we were both right. Another classic MBA response: the answer is always ‘it depends.’

But here’s the tricky bit …. How do you find good people? Where are all the A players? The best predictor of future performance is past performance, but how can you tell when someone who’s never done something before is going to be able to do it?

I probably told this story before but one time when I was a kid my mother had brought in a bunch of zucchinis from the garden. I volunteered to grate them and about halfway through the first one I got bored and said I was stopping. My mother, of course, wasn’t having any of this. This was the first lesson I can recall in DWYSYWD (do what you said you would do). But part of the way through I realised I was actually enjoying myself again. I can enjoy whatever I’m doing as long as I can feel that it has a purpose and I’m making a difference. I can be designing a business plan or painting a wall or lifting some heavy weights.

Our French marketing virtuoso intern this week had a throwaway comment that marketing is just about being smarter than the competition (and by marketing we mean the lifecycle from product design through to delivery not just ‘advertising’ or ‘social media’). To the degree that this is true, that is why I consider myself a product person (as opposed to a sales person or operations person). You solve a customer’s problem and you can do it well, you have a business. You can’t, you don’t.

I’m competitive. I like to win because I can. To the degree that business success is about outsmarting, out thinking, out manoeuvring, always being one step of the competition … that excites me. The flip side is also true: even more than I like to win do I hate to lose when I think I should have won. You will NEVER see me struggling harder than to pull victory from the jaws of defeat. When things are too easy or when loss is assured, I coast or sulk (or both), but when it counts, I’m there.

I’m impatient. But this can be a good thing. Apparently eBay was coded in a weekend. I’ve said this a zillion times but have failed to practice it to its full potential but set high goals and fall a bit short. It’s a hell of a lot better than sandbagging. As a manager if someone always hits all their targets, something is VERY wrong. It’s too good to be true, but not in the way you think.

I’m crazy. Apparently this is either a good thing or not excessively bad when combined with everything else.

OK an unusual post. Guess you can tell where my focus has been recently. What can I say? Unscheduled rest week combined with coming down with disease on Sunday has left me working pretty much non-stop. It turns out when you are not training 2x a day half the days of the week you have a lot more time in your day!

I did have some dinner with Tammy & Matt Friday night in Camps Bay, combined with some very non-paleo wine & chocolate.  

Saturday … market then to the martial arts studio (nothing strenuous), then to watch the Springbok test match vs Argentina at Fireman’s Arms with Justin, one of the CrossFit boys, who is moving to Joburg to take up a better job. Sounds like a cool opportunity; I’m happy for him!! I was feeling sufficiently not great that I went home and to bed in pretty good order.

I thought the hangover was a bit extreme given what I drank; turns out I was probably just getting sick. How awesome for this to happen on my rest week I must say! So I mostly stayed in bed planning, reading, researching, formulating questions. I guess learning is a bit like training: it’s stimulating. Then I roasted a chicken. Yep, that’s about as interesting as it got on Sunday.

Monday … work; very flattering Skype call with the UK, and a chance to eat my own dogfood. Can’t complain. Tried to take a Skype call from home but the internet didn’t cooperate so I had a 90 minute call sitting on the floor of one of the changing rooms at CCF. I’m sure the cold was good for my cold. Then I did mobility; it felt GREAT to be moving and actually the various aches and strains are doing well by the rest. Then I did a pullup and remembered I’m not bulletproof.

Tuesday … left work early, went to the doctor, who said I have a virus but I do have a minor eye infection. I LOVE how you can just call the doctor, go in two hours later, and when the pharmacy doesn’t have something you need they will deliver it to your door that day, for free. I know in real terms the private medical care in this country is quite expensive but by U.S. standards it’s laughably awesome. Then I ran some errands, one of which took me into the building I had up to this point avoided; the Cape Town police building. I haven’t been creeped out like that since Tuol Sleng. Makes sense I suppose. Then I ran into Adin, Nathan, and Lushwill at TRUTH. But I prefer the coffee at Deluxe. Unfortunately, when I’m running a slight fever no amount of caffeine can get me back to zero. Meant to go to the gym for more mobility but didn’t have time before qigong. By didn’t have time, I guess I mean I decided rather to send Mike a selection of South African music rather than motivate. Oops.

Now … time for bed.

• “Marketing is just about being smarter than your competition.” – Michaël
• “Normal is a terrible thing.” – Jeff
• “I don’t know if the tunnel’s begun yet.” – Jeff
• “Yeah, well, I’m not like most people.” – Ellie 
• “I don’t actually read minds. Just so you know.” – Ellie
• “I’m sorry …. WHAT is paleo about what we’re eating right now?” – Ellie
• “Everything affects everything.” – Amanda
• “A broken product is worse than broken sales, because you might not be able to fix your broken product. ” – Ellie 
• “Nothing wrong with a bit of craziness.” – Michael
• “You don’t want mediocre success, you want great success. Mediocre success isn’t going to suit anyone.” – Michael
• “It’s a pure execution play. It’s all about leadership.” – Michael
• “You are not impatient. You are a realist.” – Michael
• “You mean, you must first have three drinks?” – Mike
• “I can’t stand it any more!” – Kim (I swear, I’ve never heard a boy complain this much about something he can’t control)

The best laid plans

I feel like such a newb; I got totally played last night and didn’t even realise it. The conversation went something like this:

• “How is it?”
• “It’s not very good. Have you been doing anything out of the ordinary? Lifting heavier weights?”
• “No. What should I do? Should I rest? I have a rest week coming up in two weeks. Should I move it up?”
• “If you can ….”
• “I can do whatever I want! I just have to listen to my body.”
• “Well, if you can …. It would be good.”

Someone figured out the best way to manipulate me, and the irony is it wasn’t even necessary because I’ve reached the point of implicit trust. Of course I also made the mistake of telling him I wasn’t sleeping well, which resulted in another 15 needles getting stuck into me. I think my record is 39 and this was 35, so suffice to say I was in a bad shape.

Well, I have spent most of this week thinking into how to evaluate and diagnose the most critical problems in a generic business. It’s complicated. I’m thinking of it in a couple of different lights, everything from who-what-when-where-why-how to where is it going/how is it getting there. It’s like a rabbit hole in a way.

Take marketing for example. You could look at it simply and evaluate the marketing plan (if there is one). But doing so ignores the broader context: How’s the messaging? Is the product right for the target market? Is there a clear customer value proposition? Does this all reflect the brand promise?

To a certain degree this would be implicit in ‘evaluate the marketing plan’ but if you’re trying to systematise the thing, you have to be able to break it apart. Similarly, you have to be able to diagnose severe problems. If there is no clear brand messaging that’s a problem, but less of one than, say, not having a clear customer value proposition. So the sequence of events in terms of making changes also matters.

It reminds me  a bit of learning how to do the air squat properly: we’re taught all the various ‘points of performance’ but when someone first starts there are a lot of things wrong so you have to focus on the most important in terms of safety & functionality. It happens that I’ve been showing a few people how to row properly this week, so I have a bit of a sense of it. Being a coach must be hard. I’m glad it’s not my job.

Outside of that, just more of the same. Here’s a quick rundown of the week outside of work:

• Tuesday pm sprint practice in the rain. Three comments: 1. I need spikes, 2. I can’t believe I sprinted for years in high school and no one saw fit to tell me that I’m doing it wrong, and 3. “Don’t go all out” is an instruction that doesn’t really work for me because I apparently promptly forget it. I’ll have to warn the coach in future to tell me rather to go 80% or 85% or whatever he wants.
• Driving home after was very dangerous. I was a bit ‘WOD drunk’ so I just stayed in my lane and drove slowly. I guess this sort of challenge is good for me.
• Meant to go to CCF for mobility but instead had a long phone conversation.
• Qigong … good session, I was very well able to control my brain.
• Very frustrating experience trying to chat with Mike … internet fail. At least we got to the important parts.
• It is cold.
• Slept very poorly. I was up between about 2 and 3:30am. This is highly unusual.
• Wednesday lunch at what is now called Gusto. Not very paleo but I survived.
• Coach told us that evening that we need to be sure to be eating more so we’re not accidentally leaving strength gains on the table. Works for me …. Oh, wait, rest week. Damn.
• Overhead squats felt good; wish I had more time to practice snatching. Haven’t done it for a month and it shows, and every time I plan to go practice at open gym my body has other plans.
• Dinner at Saigon with Kerry who gave me about a gazillion things to think about. I guess the most important takeaway is that I need to start with the end in mind. I know what I’m doing this weekend. Also, the beef salad is really, REALLY good.
• Slept poorly again. This is starting to get old.
• Pain has now shifted from my back to my side/stomach. Byron seemed to think this was a good thing.
• Christoph & Michael made crepes for Nca! Thursday. They were even sweet enough to make a non-gluten one for me, so I ignored the fact that it was not paleo. It had been a looong time since I’d had a crepe, and probably will be a long time before I have another.
• Felt like a human voodoo doll, and the thing about acupuncture is that it seriously can mess up your brain as well. I even forgot an early part of the qigong sequence and could not quiet my brain which meant …. The sh*t knocked me out so that I slept right through the night, and almost 9 hours.
• Found the new Deluxe location, which is the very definition of hidden Cape Town. It’s in an alley off an alley, kind of.

It’s annoying me that I’m taking so long to put together this framework. It’s also annoying me that I’m not 100% healthy.

But you can’t get everything you want in life. As it stands, I have little cause for complaint. Things could always be better, or different, but that’s coming.

Six months from now, I’m probably going to be in a very different space than I am now. As long as it’s forward progress, which I’m sure it will be, that’s only a good thing.

• “Don’t blame the cold, blame yourself.” – Jaco
• “I haven’t got him doing CrossFit yet.” – Ellie
• “I didn’t know you looked forward to your rest days.” – Jeff
• “You start to treat people a bit like variables.” – Nate
• “You’re not in good enough shape yet.” – Marcel (oh, snap!)
• “No, I definitely don’t want you to be deported.” – Doug
• “All’s fair in training and war.” – Amanda
• “Haha, I like it even more!” – Mike
• “How much time are you spending on all this?” “Too much.” – Ellie & Jeff
• “Don’t finance people like to make things complicated!”– Andrew
• “That is a compliment coming from you!” – Doug
• “Can’t it just be simple once?” – Jeff
• “Stereotypes exist for a reason. Ooooh, Nutella!” – Ellie (yes, I really said this. Sometimes I can’t believe the things that leave my mouth!)
• “Master the technique, and speed will come.” – Shirfu (now where have I heard THAT before???)

Nothing much

The calm before the storm.

Over the weekend I mainly kept to myself. I was feeling annoyed, or maybe vulnerable is a better word, on Saturday that my back injury had reared its ugly head (I think the issue actually was the sumo deadlift high pulls!), but by Sunday had recovered enough to go play with some weights. I also enjoyed a sleep in Sunday morning …. It had been a loooong time since I literally slept as long as I wanted to. Obviously I have a bit of sleep debt to work through.

On the way home I was noting the continued police presence along the N2. There are cars every 200m or so, facing the townships, after the protest on Friday that tied up the highway for hours. One of the things I learned at the emotions of the brain talk is that the best way to generate the rage emotion is to put something someone wants within their sight, taunt them with it, and refuse to let them have it. Sisyphus, anyone? Well, this has very interesting implications for a country like South Africa. It just made me think, two days after watching Batman, what on earth would happen if the masses decided to rise up in a violent manner. Which is why I got into social enterprise to begin with, to provide hope. But that’s a subject for another blog post.

Saturday night I went out to a VERY dead Long Street for a few drinks with my pal Jaco, who is moving soon to Amsterdam. Another person I am really going to miss, and the conversation was interesting because it made me vocalise something I’d never quite admitted to myself before, which was the set of conditions (other than aging out or career-ending injury) that would cause me to stop competing at CrossFit. Well, knowledge is power, right? I’d say that starts with self-knowledge.

Speaking of CrossFit, Monday night’s workout very nearly killed me. It’s been a while since I had a workout that trashed me so much that I couldn’t walk after. By the fifth round my legs would literally NOT move, it was crazy. But on the positive side, I’d say I didn’t leave much on the table in that workout. Always a good thing.

I think I should start a “funniest thing to happen at Virgin Active” account, along the lines of the hilarious Daily Driving Disaster blog. It does have its own charm, and enables me to socialise outside of the CrossFit circles, and some days schedule conflicts disallow me from attending the advanced class, but sometimes I just have to throw up my hands in despair.

Like this morning. Firstly, there is some guy monopolising one of the squat racks for his 40kg reverse bicep curl (which he probably thinks is a clean), and press. Oh, and something he was doing with dumbbells. I think there should be a rule: if you can easily clean the weight, don’t hog the squat rack if someone else actually wants to squat.

Then, I wanted to go do my alternating chest-to-bar pullups and handstand pushups but there was some guy on the one pullup bar, so I asked if I could work in with him for some quick sets. He said sure, as long as I did 50. When I came back for my second set he apologised for being a bit snarky, saying that he’d never seen ‘a lady’ do one pullup before, let alone multiple in a set. Then he asked me if I was a gymnast. And see, here this whole time I thought the strict handstand pushups were more impressive.

Yesterday I finished up some deliverables at work, and wrote a letter of recommendation for Olivia. The best letters of recommendation are the ones where you are sincere and mean every word. Man, I have had some fantastic interns in my time here, I’m not going to lie. Here’s a girl who took a very difficult challenge with both hands, and not only found a market gap in the disadvantaged communities, but did all the cost modelling around how to actual fill that need. That’s applied business skills right there, folks. Thomas, who was here at the same time, did work at a similar level of quality, albeit a higher level of confidentiality. Awesome sauce. There’s nothing on this earth like talent combined with enthusiasm and hard work.

And also too (Tina Fey reference to Sarah Palin, in honour of Paul Ryan, Romney’s VP candidate and even more of a complete non-sequitor than Palin might attempt), the Olympics ended. I didn’t watch too much because I was busy living my life, but a couple of comments of Olympic-related thoughts I’ve had above and beyond watching Jean and witnessing the sheer countrywide joy at each and every medal won by South Africa. Honestly, a huge proportion of people can tell you the at least the events that SA medalled in, if not the athletes themselves (tough for lightweight men’s four rowing ya know…). Anyway here goes:

• Oscar Pistorius … it’s one thing to see him run a race, it’s another thing to see him accept a relay baton. They may have finished eighth, but damn that was sweet.
• The U.S. women’s 4x100 relay. I’ve run this relay before, so I know perfection when I see it.
• Speaking of which, sprint athletes (400m and below) look like CrossFit athletes. Enough said.
• I missed all of the gymnastics. All of it. Hope to see some on video, because I love and respect the hell out of that stuff.
• It’s a shame that no one pays much attention to Athletics the other three years.

Over these last few days I also read my friend J’s summary of his first Ironman experience over the weekend. Well, by summary I mean 17 pages of narrative. I actually felt like I was slogging out that marathon alongside him. It was interesting for me to read this because he and I are so similar personality-wise, so it was interesting to hear where he had made mistakes, and what he’d learned as a result. He ended with a great commentary which is: ‘Undesired outcomes lead to lessons of what not to do. Life is about learning. Through this process, one must cultivate a pattern of doing the right thing and weed out doing the wrong thing.’

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

• “Rationality always wins.” – Jaco
• “If something’s going to happen, it’s going to f*cking happen.” – Ellie (my deterministic leanings come out while drinking, apparently!)
• “I should maybe exercise some discretion.” – Dominic
• “Most people know not to sleep while driving.” – Dominic
• “You’re too talented to be stuck here.” – Jaco
• “There’s not as much whiplash with chains.” – Howard
• “Leaving marrows in cars! What a strange society!” – Anton
• “It’s like you're my brain, but you just verbalise it better than I do.” – Anton
• “Pretty sure he’s going to ask you to show him that walk on water thing.” – Steve  
• “No, definitely not what I want at this stage!” – Doug
• “You do get around, don’t you?” – Matt 

Type I and Type II errors

Someone asked me a few weeks back if I’m a numbers person. I’m not, but I do like numbers and statistics. Couldn’t look at them all day, but my favourite MBA classes? Strategy, Marketing, Statistics, and Macroeconomics.  

Type I and Type II errors are very specific things in statistics but as with so many other things when they enter the common vernacular we go and broaden them almost to the point of unrecognizability.

A Type I error in statistics is where the null hypothesis is true, but we reject it. False positives are errors of this sort. Put more simply, when we believe something that isn’t true: here be dragons. A Type II error is where the null hypothesis is false but is incorrectly believed to be true. Like the sun revolving around the earth.

How and why we make mistakes is interesting to me. I guess when we see what we want to see is a Type I error, and when we don’t see what we don’t want to see is a Type II error. Ignorance is bliss, right? Unconscious incompetence? That would also be Type II.

I suppose if you broaden even further, over-optimism or hearing the same old story again and again and continuing to believe it (fool me twice, shame on me type mistakes) are all Type II. These seem the more dangerous mistakes to me. If you listen to the people around you and don’t dismiss information out of hand because it doesn’t fit with your existing world view, you’ll avoid most Type I errors.  

Type IIs are the ones where we really hurt ourselves, because we allow ourselves to fool ourselves. He didn’t really mean to hurt me, he loves me. If I just stay here long enough, they’ll give me the raise I deserve. I can never win the Olympics; I’m not good enough.

Thursday was a public holiday, National Women’s Day. In a strange example of procrastination getting you everywhere, I got myself a free ticket to a breakfast and lecture at Solms-Delta wine farm, by one of the owners of the farm who happens to be a famous professor of psychology. He gave what turned out to be a 90-minute lecture on emotions of the brain. I had no idea but they are now able to measure the results of certain stimuli on the brain and so what he described to us was all the more interesting because it is based not in theory but in fact.

So there are eight recognised emotions at the moment (apparently the eighth is a bit controversial but in my uninformed opinion it shouldn’t be): Wanting, liking, fear, rage, attachment, care, play, and dominance. Things like surprise and disgust are not emotions per se but are sensory reflexes.

I’d heard some of this before from books that I’d read but one thing he said really stuck with me – there are some things we are just wired to fear: snakes, spiders, lions, sabre-toothed tigers. Other things we must learn to fear, and that happens from a SINGLE bad experience. Fear is an imprinting system. Touch a hot stove … don’t touch a hot stove again. Ask a girl out and she laughs in your face …. Maybe you only go for ‘safe yesses’ after that. Lose control of a car in a snowstorm … respect that snow for ever after!

For myself I can think of a couple fear imprintings, because the event in question was so traumatic. Some are positive from a standpoint of learning a lesson; some are less so. If you’re afraid of certain things you can fight through that fear, and sometimes our other emotions force us to do so.

But have you ever been in a situation where you had to react quickly; instinctually? How did you move, what did you do, and were you happy with that? My tendency, for better or worse, is if you ask me a direct question I’ll answer it. Where I get into trouble is where you put me on the spot, where if I don’t have a ready answer I delay. But I guess that’s ok. I don’t like having a fuss made over me, unless I think I deserve it. Even then … I’m happy to win the event but I HATE the podium after. In any event, my mother always told me I thought quickly on my feet, and I think I do: the one time I can think of that I’ve been physically threatened I didn’t freeze, I didn’t pause, I just reacted, and reacted perfectly. But that was once. What I do fear? Failure in the face of the unknown.

I won’t lie and said I did much the back half of the week. But I did manage some admin like extracting my Wild Card from the post office and started an oxtail stew. It’s still technically winter, and I loooove oxtail stew. Like good chilli though it takes days to make.

Other than that, just kind of caught up on my social life: dinner with Amy, Batman with John, lunch with Julius and hearing about his new business idea, and dinner with Hes & Ryan. Batman was awesome, by the way. I enjoyed it more than I recall enjoying the first two movies although I did laugh halfway through when he was not getting full range of motion on his pushups. It did cause me not to get sufficient sleep Thursday night, which I felt in my Friday workouts. The morning I felt weak even if I [apparently] didn’t look it. I must say, I make fun of it all the damn time and the equipment sucks but I actually love my globo gym. I left my jump stretch band there by accident and no fewer than three personal trainers made sure to let me know where they’d put it for me. And it’s great to be in a gym setting that’s not CrossFit, from time to time, and train with people who aren’t CrossFitters. I mean … where else can I accidentally insult the kung fu prodigy? Certainly not in his house.

Friday was definitely not a show off day as I failed a relatively heavy back squat (got to the bottom and when I started to strain on the way back up ditched rather than strain my back). Then my de-conditioning showed in the metcon where I just couldn’t maintain pace after the first 5 minutes or so. I still beat Norman though. Even though I know the conditioning comes back quickly, it’s hard to feel this out of shape. But I used it as good mental training to push hard and keep good form even while tired, so from that standpoint it was certainly fun!

Hopefully it was the sitting on the couch rather than the back squat that caused me to wake up Saturday feeing some strain in the back … shame, as I was really looking forward to snatching at open gym. Oh well. Discretion is the better part of valour. And I felt like a real dumb-ass when I then nearly burned my hand really badly right where you use the hook grip by grabbing the baking dish with my bare hand. Luckily I remembered to use hot water rather than ice and the burn is …. What burn?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about work-life balance and the weight of responsibility. Mental and emotional strain will take its toll on you physically. We watched The Devil Wears Prada which I thought would be a fun escape from reality but instead just made me re-think priorities. There are a couple of times in the movie where our heroine has to choose between her career and hurting someone else’s feelings. I was actually laughing at the movie a bit because honestly … I didn’t think the moral dilemmas were that rough. I would always choose the career.

• “Well that’s the thing. Skyrove really is.” – Helen
• “You can’t be afraid of a challenge.” – Helen
• “You’re an angel?” “No, I’m a friend.” – guy downstairs & Ellie
• “When you’re in your authentic self, these things happen to you.” – Amy
• “How you feel about something is your business.” – Mark
• “Labradors know the meaning of life. And they love it. Us? We think a lot.” – Mark
• “You’re just a couple of years ahead of what I thought would be the schedule.” – Steve
• “You can’t have any chinks in your armour.” – Ellie
• “I’m sure you didn’t!” – Kim
• “Everyone wants to be them.” – Bryony
• “We were just gossiping about you.” – Doug
• “He does have an interesting sense of humour.” – Ryan
• “I think you did so well with this opportunity because you were not attached to the outcome.” – Kerry 
• “Always pay attention to energy connections like that.” – Kerry