Playing to win

“The devil’s in the details. The angel is in the policy.” – Mitt Romney

"Knowing what it looks like, and knowing how to do it, are two different things." — Chris Connor

“I was determined and eager and that’s all this is. I find that a lot off the people that come into the business now do not have the same level of commitment. They don’t come in like little hungry beavers; they don’t have that look in their eyes. They are all a little too cool about it and I think it’s a life thing. You’ve got to do in looking like you want to be great at this.” – Alistair King

One of the concepts that came up at the Loeries was this idea of the difference between playing to win and playing not to lose. The former takes some serious guts. The latter is a recipe for mediocrity.

But here’s the other thing: there is a hell of a big difference between talking a good game and actually following through. There’s a difference between knowing what something should look like, knowing how to do it, and actually doing it. This is why the execution part is the hardest bit of anything, and why the people who can actually deliver wind up really changing the world. You are more likely to think you can if you’ve done it before, then you just go and do it.

Although shame, I was reading about Marissa Meyer (Yahoo’s new CEO) who, two months into her job, has ‘so far failed to provide a clear strategy going forward.’  Oh, snap. Here’s another case of relativity. Two months is a long time. It’s also a short time. You don’t want to go mucking with things and making big announcements until you’re sure it’s the right thing. And by sure, I don’t mean sure, I mean as sure as you can be before you actually have to make the call.

My life is hectic. This last week was a short one due to the public holiday on Monday. My meetings I had on Tuesday seem like they were about three weeks ago and by the end of the week I had, yet again, changed my mind/refined my thinking on one of the key things I’m working on.

It was a great week, and a terrible week. I had a two-day trip to Joburg and Pretoria on Wednesday & Thursday. Flying and staying up there is not cheap, so I wanted to squeeze literally every second of productivity out of the trip. This meant I waking up at 4am on Wednesday to catch a 5:45am flight, and then arriving at home about 1am early Friday morning. Managed four meetings Wednesday and three on Thursday, which ranged from pretty good to pretty damn awesome, so we got our money’s worth out of the trip. But on the flip side, I think my average sleep was about 6 hours, with the shortest being 4.5 hours and the longest 7. This was not sustainable and by lunch on Friday I could feel that my brain was not right. This is not a good feeling when every single meeting you have requires you to be operating at 100%.

My rock stars I work with continue to be rock stars. We found new offices this week (move is at the end of November), and I had a very interesting series of meetings. Literally across the spectrum from customers to prospects to ex-employees to resellers to potential resellers to one of our key partners to another company that could become a very key partner. And I discovered that we’re on Forbes 2012 list of top 20 startups in Africa.

Unfortunately I can’t speak publicly about any of the details of what I’m doing other than to say that it’s awesome. About 5% of the time I get a bit overwhelmed and think ‘Oh good Lord WHAT have I gotten myself into, this is 10x bigger and harder than I thought it was going to be.’ But the other 95% of the time I am excited and thinking ‘Oh good Lord WHAT an awesome situation to be in. This is 10x bigger than I thought it was going to be.’

Oh I guess I can say that I’m spending a good portion of my time in sales, and that not only am I apparently naturally good at it but I’m actually loving it. I’ve always believed I can sell anything I believe in, and one of the things about this job that specifically attracted me was the need to be out there actually actively selling which is something I haven’t done, can in theory do, and I looked forward to the opportunity to challenge myself. I sure didn’t anticipate that I would enjoy it so much but I am not complaining. I think it’s a mix of the meeting new people (and I love people), and the finding their actual problems and how we can best meet their needs (that I did at a macro level as a product manager), and the whole competitive aspect of the game.

Because from where I sit, the best way to beat the competition is to be better, smarter, faster, more aggressive. Gotta play to win rather than play not to lose. This is why I loved the Mitt Romney quote: my game right now is to get the best plan and then actually execute it. Both are important, and both are fun.

It’s spectacularly glamorous and spectacularly non-glamorous at the same time. But I’m loving every minute. It’s like I told Sam: it’s just like I’m in love. Actually, it’s not like I am in love. I am in love.

So this was a rest week (haha), but I’ve made some significant progress on rehabbing my injury which is awesome. I haven’t felt this healthy in months and I still have another week to go, and in this week I can actually control my sleep, diet, and make the time for the actual rehab.

Friday night through now has been pure pleasure. 27dinner on Friday night; I was like a kid in a candy store as a lot of people that I really like showed up. Some were people I see often, some were people I hadn’t seen in months. Even the talk was the best I’d possibly ever heard at a 27dinner and this was through the haze of exhaustion and two glasses of wine.

Slept in Saturday then went to a bodywork session, then acupuncture, picked up Sam and went to the Biscuit Mill then out for coffee, made another pot of coffee at home (I need more sleep), then drove to Kommetjie for my friend Amy’s braai. Quite fun. Talking to Amy about some serious topics got me thinking. Since I’ve started working for the man again I’ve become much more resentful of the robot beggars, and I think it’s because I feel guilty.

Related: on Thursday I had been trying to decide between dropping the rental car off at the airport or in Sandton and taking the Gautrain to the airport (Gautrain is a high speed rail link). Finally decided on the latter. Turns out to have been a good choice because the striking mine workers had hijacked the highway and were smashing car windows, throwing petrol bombs, burning tyres, etc. I do sometimes forget that I live in a dangerous country. Every time I drive on the N2 past the Cape Town airport and I see the police cars facing the townships I remember this fact but what strikes me most is that it would just never work. You couldn’t hold back that many angry people if they all really did decide to start looting and rioting. Let’s hope they don’t.

But hope is not a strategy now is it? Well, that’s actually not my problem to solve, happily. I’m not a politician. My job is so much simpler.

Sunday I had breakfast in Hout Bay with Rika, who I hadn’t seen in far too long. It was fun to tell her about my new job, and by the end of the conversation I’d told her exactly where I am as it relates to CrossFit, and what I’m thinking about the future. I had never been that open with anyone about it, and that she, an ex-Olympic athlete, thinks about it exactly the same way I do is a nice validation. These validations are less about ego than they are making sure you’re on the right path.  

Also, because it’s been on my mind: Cape Town is so beautiful. Joburg is vast and somewhat charmless and the drivers are an unholy combination of Cape Town crazy, Boston aggressive, and Miami aggro, and roads are not labelled at all until you are right on top of them. Hectic. Pretoria is slightly nicer and has the added benefit of a seemingly excessive ratio of stunningly attractive people to normal people. And it has jacarandas (which were not quite out yet). So I’m looking down the barrel of potentially spending a lot of time in this part of SA over the coming months and one wonders, in these situations, could I actually live here? Would I like it?

Of course I could, and I might even love it. But then I arrive back in Cape Town and it is so stunningly beautiful here it’s actually literally like another country. It’s actually breathtaking, especially now in the spring when you look at the mountains and the fynbos is in bloom, and there is so much if it that you can see the explosions of yellow and purple from kilometres away. Should you be lucky enough to go hiking, you can see even the small bulbs with their stunning displays of colour. Beautiful and unique. That’s my little city, at least for now.

And in just over a week, I leave. Autumn in New England, San Francisco, a road trip across parts of the country I’ve never seen, Denver, and New York City. Family, friends, business, and then some. Gonna be epic. Then I get back, which is going to be even more epic.

Overwhelming. But only in the best possible way. Playing to win.

• “I don’t know him. But I know who he is.” – Lauren
• “I see you’ve upgraded your phone.” – Misha
• “He emails you? Oooh, you’re special!” – Helen
• “You do present with a certain pathology.” – Byron
• “Well, it is Jeremy.” – Craig
• “So. There are small businesses and there are big businesses.” – Craig (and our target market is …. ALL OF THEM)
• “Maybe it wasn’t a matter of losing out but it was there waiting for you.” – Craig
• “It’s called a vodka Red Bull.” – Doug
• “The public transport system in this country is good for our business.” – Roelof
• “There’s no value in free Wi-Fi if it’s awful.” – Dave
• “In ur honor, i went to sleep at 4.40am this morning, waking up at 7am,  to simulate your new working conditions :-)” – Michael
• “You’re tired so your defences are less.” – Debbie
• “That’s a Pico.” “It looks like a candle!” – Tim & Monica
• “If they’ve gone with another provider they’re probably unhappy now.” – Henk
• “It's a strange paradise.” – Henk
• “Unless you’re a carrier you’re in a no mans land.” – a potential partner
• “It’s hard enough for us to tell the customer to plug the cable into the wall. How he’s got three cables.” – Laurie
• “Dating a rock star is exhausting!” – Sam
• “This is a 27dinner, not a counselling session.” – Jess
• “He’s such a porn star when he’s drinking!” – Jess
• “Schools are the worst designed games in existence.” – Danny
• “Here is where we step firmly out of the realm of the scientific.” – Byron
• “You have outgrown it.” – Rika 

Jumping in

On Saturday morning a crew from my gym caravanned down to the Simons Town naval base where there is an open water obstacle course that is used by the navy divers for training. It involved obviously ocean swimming, a rope climb (for those who dared), climbing up the netting, swinging and walking across a rope suspended several maybe 20 feet from the water below.

The water around Cape Town, if you are not familiar, is COLD. As we got there a number of people were whining and complaining about the cold. I guess I joined in a little bit, but really – we were all there out of choice, so just shut up and do it.

Sounds easy enough but there is really no way to prepare for such a thing. You don’t know until you get in just how cold the water is going to be, whether you can climb that rope, whether you can swing across it (turns out that was the part I couldn’t do as the water was so cold that my muscles tensed up and I had no grip strength). The first leg of the swim out to the obstacle was very cold but after that I just got into it and started to enjoy the experience. I mean – the swim was beautiful. I was on a navy base.

More importantly – I can look at something like this and not have any doubt in my mind about my ability to do it. I’ll admit after the experience with failed grip due to cold I was very careful because I didn’t want to hurt or kill myself. My mother would never forgive me, and probably neither would Doug (aka my local mother), at least not until there is sufficient life insurance in place in the event of my accidental death in a CrossFit activity!

Sometimes if you think too much about something you won’t do it. Just jump in and get it done. You don’t even feel the cold after a while. You get comfortable being uncomfortable. Sound familiar?

Well, the fun was not without casualty. I sliced open the bottom of one of my feet, and I am pretty sure I got a mild form of hypothermia. Whatever, no permanent damage done.

I think a lot of the others who participated were in the same proverbial boat. There was some whining and gnashing of teeth but I am not sure anyone was actually complaining. If they were, they were being pretty silly if you ask me, because we’d brought this on ourselves. Yeah it’s cold. Suck it up. We’re CrossFitters. Fran also sucks.

I am as guilty of the next person of whining just to make conversation. I generally don’t whine and mean it. I was absolutely and utterly unprepared for the degree to which my new job was going to take over my life. My friends are all unsurprised but I guess I just didn’t get it. I imagine it’s a bit like how parents tell you that your life completely changes when you have a child, and you can understand that intellectually but you don’t really understand. Well, this is how I feel.

So if I whine about lack of sleep, or impact on training, or friendships or whatnot … I’m not whining, I’m just making conversation. I brought this on myself. And I’m actually not complaining because it’s awesome. Even the parts I don’t really want to do I’m enjoying doing, for now. I’ve been getting good feedback from all around: my management, staff, customers, partners. That’s encouraging enough too, as far as it goes. But compliments are a nice way to remind yourself that you’re on the right path. I’m certainly not lacking in intrinsic motivation any more than I’m lacking intrinsic motivation at the gym. Just being able to lift more than I could six months ago is motivation enough, and that’s only the beginning.

Friday was a crazy day in and out of the office. For a variety of reasons my schedule was completely jumbled around at the last minute and the day was typical in its mix of varied but important activities: everything from a check-in with Doug to digging into our margins to viewing potential new offices to a meeting with a key business partner to attending part of a conference. And then I went to the gym to do a workout called Jackie where I could most definitely feel the lack of sleep affecting me.

This was a holiday weekend (Monday was Heritage Day aka National Braai Day), which I celebrated in particular by having dinner with my lovely friend Amy, who got me laughing out loud at her impression of a cow, and I got her laughing out loud at my description of the menu at the Roundhouse (well just the deer on the menu).

This also happened to be the weekend of the Loeries, which is the South African version of the CLIO Awards (thanks to Kerry for Googling that for me and while I’m doing shout outs a shout out to Kim for his wins over the weekend). This series of festivities is an awards ceremony and set of associated parties for the advertising and creative industry. It was interesting for me to go and watch all this, find out what firms seem to specialise in what, and I did meet a couple of very interesting people so it was definitely worth the time invested.

I loved the South Africanisms on display; everything from the Sanlam/Nandos TV ads (Nandos did a parody of a Sanlam ad, then Sanlam did a parody of a Nandos ad, then Nandos did yet another response) to the renaming of the town of Darling into Carling for last year’s Rocking the Daisies festival (Carling is the brand name of a popular kind of beer). Some of it was way over my head, some of it was quite silly, and some of it bored me almost to tears, I’m not going to lie. I had not missed my smart phone so much in a long time.

My favourite campaign that won an award was this one. It’s kind of genius for putting everything in perspective. But also …. DAMN. Makes me want to cry and beat someone up at the same time, and I’m an American which means it takes something very good to get me to sit up and pay attention. We are bombarded with sophisticated advertising from a very young age in America. It’s not like it is here. So, hats off to Ogilvy Cape Town.

So this coming week is going to be absolutely and utterly crazy. I am tired just thinking about it. But I’m not complaining. My decision to take a rest/rehab period just now was very well timed if I do say so myself. I’m not at all sure when I would find time for training this week anyway, but this way I’m not in any way resentful because it’s a planned rest week. Viva alignment of interests.

The last two weeks feel like two months. I vaguely recall a few weeks back when I was super excited to go to the U.S. I still am; I’m excited to see family and a couple of friends in particular. There is so much awesomeness coming. All I need to be able to enjoy it?

  

A little sleep.

• “SO average!” – Richie
• “Anyone want to take bets on who is going to be the first to drown?” – Richie
• “That was fun? F*ck you!” – Chris
• “You’re going to be sick as a dog after the Loeries.” – Mandy
• “No, dude, that’s MC Hammer!” – Ellie
• “This country is not rational.” – Tobie
• “Farnsworth?? That’s even better than Allister!” – Amy 

Radiators and drains

One of my favourite parts of my trip last weekend was talking with Jo about hiring, and firing, and working with people. Unfortunately now the best way to get me to be really boring is to ask me about my job because I will go on, and on, and on. I wake up in the morning and I think about it, and I go to bed thinking about it. My mind even wanders onto it at times when it really shouldn’t. But it’s ok because I’m having fun.

On Wednesday night I had the pleasure of dinner at The Roundhouse with two charming gentlemen, Doug and Allister. I recently described Doug as someone who I don’t know very well but with whom I have a very intimate relationship. Actually, I love him, no two ways about it. You don’t need to have worked with someone that long to know, and I know: he’s one of the rock star calibre people. He’s like a South African Chris Hanaoka (ex-coworker from Ask Jeeves days who was a VP at Yahoo! and is now a GM at Microsoft). Just one of those people that no one can say anything bad about because there is nothing bad to say. He’s even a super nice guy. Allister I just met on that occasion but I immediately took to him because he is the walking talking South African version of the archetype of a St Paul’s boy. You can’t make this stuff up. Plus, he understands the difference between plurals and possessives.

Oh yeah, the food was pretty damn good. So was the wine. So not paleo, but so worth it. Seriously one of the best dinners, and most fun I’ve had at a dinner, for quite a while. I really must start getting more sleep on Wednesday nights though. Starting maybe the week after next.

On our trip Jo was talking about how all people are essentially either radiators or drains. She didn’t invent this concept, nor did the guy she heard it from (just Google it, it’s been around for a while). It’s the same concept as sunrise people and sunset people. Some people just inject life into things, and some people suck the life out of things. Some people are drains disguised as radiators, and they are dangerous and poisonous.

Now Doug just makes me smile and he’s now worked with me closely enough to start to get a sense of who I am, what I’m good at, and what I’m not. I am not kidding when I say that he knows me better than people who have worked with me for years, and this is probably his greatest gift. I don’t think a drain disguised as a radiator would ever fool Doug. He’s hard core and calls it like he sees it. So when Doug tells me something, about myself, or someone else, or a business model, or whatever, I tend to listen. OK when he started going off about Reebok and CrossFit I shut him down but that’s another matter.

He told me that my greatest strength isn’t what I thought it was. I would have said either my ability to see the big picture, distill data to meaning, and make order out of chaos (in other words, strategy), OR that I’m good with people. I can as easily talk to an engineer as a salesman. I was meeting customers this week and the back story about myself that I told was completely different based on the person, because I naturally sense what’s going to resonate with them. Sure, I sometimes talk too much. But I can be charming when I want to be, and that makes up for a lot. I think we all tend to tune ourselves to who we’re speaking with … I just perhaps enjoy the process more than the next person.

What Doug told me? My greatest strength is my enthusiasm. In other words, I’m the ultimate radiator. Which might actually mean that I am a natural salesman. Which might actually mean that I’m going to rock at this new job.

I am loving what I’m doing though. Well except for this one meeting where I really wanted to impale myself through the head with a stick, and there is sometimes more babysitting and handholding than I’d prefer, but on balance it’s 99% awesome. More importantly, I am getting exactly what I wanted out of this experience which is rapid learning. By necessity, I’m learning how to think and make fast decisions on my feet, with incomplete information, and have just-in-time research and data. Getting comfortable being uncomfortable. Just like CrossFit. Welcome to the jungle.

OK there are a couple of things that aren’t great but overall I’m pretty happy with my ability to prioritise, keep stress under control, and do what I do so well. I met a lot of our Cape Town-based customers this week which was great, got a chance to eat at Starlings Café again with a great guy who is very knowledgeable about sales in this industry and gave me some good tips. It’s a funny thing, you always forget that one great form of market research is to talk to industry experts. I’ve saved myself a bunch of time already by not having time and just asking people who would know ‘here’s what I’m guessing or assuming – am I right or wrong?’ If enough of them say the same thing, that’s enough certainty for me when there are 100 other things to be thinking about. Check that, 200 other things to be thinking about.

The great thing is how well my past work experience suits me for this. The telecom exposure. The enterprise sales. The hospitality industry. The techie speak. My techie is like my Afrikaans. I can understand most of it but I can’t speak it. OK it’s a little better than my Afrikaans. It’s good enough that the technical guys I speak to can understand that I’m not just a complete business/marketing/sales bozo (of which plenty exist).

Well it’s not all been fun and games this week. My cat Tiger was hit by a car and killed, outside of Rob’s apartment in Somerville, MA. I adopted Tiger right after I moved to Boston. He was a sweet thing; he’d been abused as a kitten I think because if ever you raised any object near him he would run away in fear, and it always took him a while to warm up to new people or to remember who you were if he hadn’t seen you for a while. But once he warmed up he soaked up the love, I think he is one of the sweetest creatures I’ve ever known in my life. I decided to adopt him on a bit of a whim; when I was petting him at the shelter he was in a cage at the time and he got so excited at the attention that he started kneading the piece of rug he was sitting on, and wound up kneading it right out from underneath himself and he fell over. It was one of those moments of endearing cuteness. The whole too perfect thing doesn’t really work for me. What does work for me is that genuine love that you can’t hide through all the layers of defense.

But I loved my Tiger; until Hector came along he was my favourite. So I’m sad, but less so because I hadn’t seen him in a long time and he had lived a long and happy life.

Had a bit of a come to Jesus moment with myself and I’ve decided to focus now on healing rather than training and see if I can’t get this nagging injury just to be gone. I hate that I can’t do certain movements, and those are some of the movements I most need to practice. I need and want to be fully healthy; the gimp squad is no longer enough for me. It’s great that I’m hitting 90+kg back squats for multiple reps with ease, but that doesn’t mask the fact that I’m still hurting.

I was explaining to Bryony who tortures me every other week that there are a couple of things you need to do to be good at CrossFit. Firstly, you need to be able to ignore physical pain when it comes up in a workout. There is a certain mental laziness or weakness in ‘oh this hurts, let me just slow down a tad.’ But you must know the difference between not wanting to do one more rep, and not being able to do one more rep, and if you are not able to do one more rep, the appropriate rest time. Wait too short and you fail the next rep anyway. Wait too long and you’ve wasted time. I’m not sure if I can credit the fascial release with this but it has completely changed my perception of pain. I can now paint New Skin on an open wound and barely feel it, and I can be completely focused in a CrossFit workout when it’s “just” a matter of pushing through the pain.

I was telling Doug last week the story of the dumbbell snatch and everything I’d learned from it. That I should not be a drama queen. That I love being part of a team, and I’ll do anything for my team. That I prefer team players to prima donnas. That I should not set my goals too low. That teams only work well when everyone on the team is an equal level of committed. I really want us to have a strong team for next year. Even though I don’t know how that’s going to work right now. Personally I’m handling increased volume great; days that I only train once feel like rest days, and rest days feel like recovery days. But my schedule is getting more and more crazy. Something has to give. I can train hard but not on someone else’s timetable.

Well this is a problem that doesn’t have to be solved now. For now, I have bigger fish to fry.

• “Pay attention when you’re here. That’s what you’re here for, anyway.” – Chris
• “Oh, you know my brother? Did he behave himself?” – Peter (I love that this was his first reaction)
• “It’s not the technique that’s awkward. It’s you that’s awkward.” – Shirfu (not talking to me but I love the concept!)
• “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” – Gaspard
• “By now you know what I mean when I say easy.” – Ellie
• “I think you two are going to get on like a house on fire.” “That doesn’t sound good!” “I know. But it is.” – Doug & Ellie
• “Cool, see you then, boss!” – Jeremy
• “I think people forget that Australia and New Zealand exist.” – Tim
• “Are you from South Africa?” – Malvin (he wasn’t talking to me)
• “A container is not exactly something I can hide in my top drawer.” – Carlo
• “You can’t exactly make a thruster easy.” – JP
• “My customers don’t care about my web site, but my competitors do.” – for me to know and potential competitors to wonder
• “You know you’re the most hardcore VC in Cape Town?” – Allister
• “It’s your enthusiasm.” – Doug
• “I’ve never seen a man so excited by a dessert!” – Ellie (or by punctuation, but that one is a definite positive)
• “I’m sorry, you’re WHAT?” – Ellie
• “We are going to be having tea and cake!” – Karin
• "It's almost our responsibility, in order to balance the scales a little." – Ingi

Wildflowers and everything but

"Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something." - Thomas A. Edison

"You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else." - Albert Einstein

Many years ago in a country far, far away, Skip Battle, the CEO of Ask Jeeves, asked me to be a member of an advisory committee. One of the things that we discussed in this advisory committee was what sort of a culture we wanted to create for the company, and I remember arguing very strongly for two things: 1. That the company be a meritocracy and 2. That you could not impose a culture on an organisation.

Culture comes from the top, it is learnt, and it can be changed. But you can’t change it by dictating it, any more than you can tell someone to respect you and have them obey you.

You think your team is lazy and unmotivated? Well, maybe they’re feeling disempowered. You think they’re whining? Maybe you’re not listening to their needs.

Now, I used to read The Economist regularly. I no longer have as much travel time in which to do so but it has shaped the way that I think, no doubt, as have my parents, my education at St Paul’s, my time at Berkeley, my friends, my jobs, a bunch of things. I am in favour of free flows of labour. I understand that economic behaviour is not rational, and I have a series of books that explain some of the reasons why. I think the markets have uses, but that they are imperfect.

I believe information wants to be free, that you have to be careful about incentives, that most people are fundamentally good. But there are some things, structures, and ways of thinking that are just an anathema to me.

This weekend I was up on wildflower country with my friend Jo. On Saturday we did a bunch of things ranging from checking flowers in a field to listening to the Cape Town Philharmonic in a church in Mamre to visiting a museum that contained a bunch of apartheid-era items. Jo was wondering at one point as we were wandering around how it was that such a thing could even exist. I get that. I also totally get how it did exist, and still does in some ways. I’m glad I wasn’t born in Burma or Sudan or Ethiopia or Saudia Arabia. Saudia Arabia could be ok, I guess, unless you were unlucky enough to be born female. Then again, in China or India, if you were female you might not have been born.

Yeah yeah yeah the world is unfair, right? Sure it is. But some of us have it better than others, and I am constantly grateful for my general health, for whatever gifts I have in the common sense, intellect, and human relations departments, for my education, and for the family support both emotional and financial that enabled me to move out of the house as a semi-capable young adult who could then have some wild successes (mostly work-related) and some wild failures (mostly not work-related).

Why am I going on about this? Because I’ve been thinking about BEE (Black Economic Empowerment, a topic I know a thing or two about from my time at Heart). BEE is a national act designed to move wealth into the hands of the groups that were disadvantaged under apartheid. As with any such tool, it’s laudable in its aim, blunt in its implementation, and has had some mixed successes.

It causes public outrage as when Woolies posts job ads that blatantly exclude whites from applying then bungles the response on social media.

It causes wasted capital by requiring all companies over a certain size to donate money to investment in the community which is so outside of most of their core competencies that the due diligence done is often lacking.

It could be a lot worse; it could be a full-on quota system like the caste-based one that India had (or has, not sure, I haven’t been paying attention). Affirmative action was a huge debate when I was at Cal. My experience, from teaching in the writing center, is that a good number of the kids from poorer school districts (usually African American or some type of Hispanic) struggled to construct English sentences properly. Crafting a well-researched essay with a thesis statement was far beyond them. NOT beyond their intelligence; beyond their training.

A huge topic of national discussion at the moment is the situation with the Lonmin mine workers’ strike. There has been violence, some deaths, Julius Malema is getting involved, Zuma’s opponents are criticising his response, calling it his Waterloo. The usual political stuff. Someone was saying the other day that she was sorry the workers weren’t paid a very high wage but guess what, unemployment is high and there are plenty of people willing to take those jobs if they are not.

My friend Craig, who used to run a McDonalds before he taught me most of what I know about the thinking of minimum wage staff, once espoused a similar view. Minimum wage should be low so as to incentivise people to upskill themselves and get better jobs. Can be hard if you have to work two jobs to be able to buy groceries for your family, but plenty of immigrants to America work their damn tails off doing just that without complaint. Behind one of my dearest friends’ success is her working class parents’ sacrifices.

I’ve talked before about a sense of entitlement being an issue. It’s something I struggle with myself; probably we all do. What’s my point? It’s that when we focus on the symptom and ignore the cause, we’re unlikely to accomplish what we want. There’s a lot that I like about BEE. There are some things that I would change.

But BEE is a red herring. South Africa is more a meritocracy than not. Sure there’s corruption. That happens everywhere, maybe a little worse here than some places, but better than many others. Bottom line though, the formal economy functions pretty well. But in a meritocracy you need people with the desire, the mindset, and the educational background to work their way up. You also need to be willing to play by the cultural norms that rule …. For better or worse. It’s like a job. You must adhere to the boss’ whims. That’s part of the culture bit.

The education system needs to be better. I don’t know enough to comment about whether it’s getting better, worse, or staying the same. But perhaps more important than that, mindsets need to shift. My friend Sne is case in point. This kid grew up in the Eastern Cape where they have to share schoolbooks among children. That’s bad, sure, but what’s worse? His family, other adults, his teachers all told him that he would never amount to anything so he should not bother trying. He’s soon graduating from Stellenbosch and is publishing a book. HOW he managed to do this, I don’t know, but hats off to him.

We humans are strange. We see that small actions won’t really solve the problem. But we are realistic enough also to know that the kind of large changes that would do so are far too difficult or long-term to accomplish, so we just throw our hands up in despair and do nothing. Or, we drink. Been there, done that, got the t shirt. I hate to lose or fail as much as the next person but if I’m going to spend my time I’d rather take responsibility and do it in a way that I think has a good chance of succeeding than throw my lot in with something that is ultimately going to waste my time, energy, goodwill, reputation, etc.

I know it’s foolish to make other people’s problems my own, and there is truth in the ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ aphorism. The older I get the more I recognise the wisdom in ‘God helps those who help themselves’ as either a universal truth or a good form of crowd management. Pick your poison. But the tragedy of the commons also exists. I guess as I become fully and I mean FULLY enmeshed in my new job which is so different from the old one I’m experiencing a bit of … I’m not sure how to describe it. It’s not guilt. It’s not apathy or frustration. Maybe longing?

Maybe the country air gets me thinking big thoughts. On the way back from dinner on Saturday (I had a chocolate milkshake! Shhhh!) I stopped the car in the middle of the road to the farm where we were staying. The stars were amazing. Makes you feel really, really, really small and unimportant.

Was thinking of that Bill Belichick quote again. We do all have defences. I wonder if it’s the case that where we spend all of our time trying to make people think a certain thing about us is where we actually feel most vulnerable. It’s easy to impose a quota system on the University of California, when the fundamental weakness is bad schools in poor areas. Take that metaphor and apply it as you will.

And speaking of Bill Belichick: oh my word that Arizona Cardinals game. First the Cardinals have it wrapped up and are running the clock down. Then they fumble it. Then the Patriots have a lock on the win … and they run the clock down, fourth down field goal attempt and Gostkowski misses a 42-yarder after making two previous attempts at 52 and 53 yards, respectively. I’m happy I can stream the Patriots. Just not happy when they don’t execute properly.

The best plan in the world can fail on execution. Always keep that eye on the ball, and do your best to win.

• “You look tired.” – Kim (and that one observation accomplishes more than all the nagging in the world ever could)
• “A bed. That’s a bed. That’s not a bed. Is that a bed?” – Ellie
• “It’s a bit of a lottery, this life.” – Jo

Idiot Savant

Broadly speaking, there are visionaries and there are doers. There are techies and salesmen. There are athletes and fans.

Now, of course you can be both and there is a spectrum. I’m certainly not trying to put anyone in a box, but I do believe that we tend to rise or fall to the levels of others’ expectations of us.

However, at all times we are making choices. We might go back and forth over what kind of strawberry jam to buy (not me; that’s not paleo!), or where to go to dinner, what the headline on the marketing copy should be, whatever. But in a way this focus on detail, which is where most of the work happens, is forgetting the forest for the trees. It’s worrying about your Vitamin K when you’re eating too much starch and not enough protein. It’s looking at micro and not macro.

Every choice we make has an opportunity cost. Do you sleep an extra hour or get up and train? Do you have dinner with this person or that person? Do you go to the conference call that falls smack dab in the middle of when the Advanced classes at your gym fall?

I was discussing this with a couple people in the last few days: ultimately you always must have a first priority. It can’t be family AND work. You can do both, sure, but if you have to choose to stay late or go to the Little League game, you have to make that call. The same goes for me: what comes first, the job or the sport? Of course anyone who knows me well won’t be at all surprised by the answer.

Similarly, I am in a position where I have way more to do than there is time to do it. I’ve been ordered not to work too hard or stress myself out (cute, because I’m probably not controllable!!), but happily being a competitive CrossFitter is a self-regulating system. The other night I got 5 ½ hours of sleep because I was busy talking to the smartest guy in the room until they kicked us out of the bar. The next evening I was physically ill and nearly fainted while doing standing qigong. Lesson learned.

So, what do you do? Delegate, and manage, sure. But even still, more work that I really wish could have been done yesterday. The answer? Ruthless thinking in terms of allocation of time. ONLY focus on what’s really important. Opportunity cost, opportunity cost, opportunity cost.

Part of what kept the smartest guy in the room interested in talking to ME was this way of thinking. I don’t think he’d met someone before who waxed on and on about taking the time to find the right partners, not getting caught up in ‘not invented here,’ and just generally considering the context we operate from.

Again as a competitive CrossFitter if I’m going into a competition I know who my competition is. I know who’s good at what, their strengths & weaknesses, even some of their mental strengths & weaknesses. How much time do we generally spend focused internally at our companies? In my experience, almost all of it. That is how you get blindsided.

Related, but unrelated: efficient allocation of time is similar to efficient allocation of capital. Having come from the social enterprise/non-profit-NGO space (sadly it is all kind of one space, still), it continues to frustrate me to an immense degree to which multiple organisations are all using money from different donors to try to solve the same problems, at small scale, by themselves. I swear, if I were a government official capable of making big donations I would convene practical industry working groups to force these guys to talk to each other and incentivise them to partner rather than compete. I would also have an office full of staff whose job it was was to know who was doing what and to be connectors. Kind of like good venture capitalists who don’t just give money but give advice and make connections.

I was teasing Rich a bit that he was an idiot savant, I forget why. There was wine involved. But I think I might be the actual idiot savant or Don Quixote. One of my gifts is to be really good at seeing how the puzzle can fit together, and what spanners might get thrown in the works, and how to get from Point A to Point Z. In other words, I’m a strategist. Now I can implement the strategy just fine but I can only implement one thing at a time, and even that not at the speed that I would like because I’d always like to be faster/better/more productive than I am. Relatively good isn’t good enough.

But that’s a mindset thing. Watch me in a year, and watch me in ten. Rich was joking that when I’m chairman of AT&T in five years I should remember him. I told him I had no interest in that job, were someone every crazy enough to offer it to me. Then again, I remember another job about which I may have made a series of similar statements. What did I say about never saying never? I should watch what I’m saying never to now …

I can’t fix the NGO sector by wishing it so. So maybe my windmills are the potential I see but that I can never implement. Maybe I can just learn to replicate my mind. Oh, wait, Babson thought of that first.

Speaking of the mind: I had a great experience the other day at the Virgin Active when I was about to do a set of relatively heavy squats and my previous set hadn’t been the best. I was tired, and a bit unfocused. I walked up to the bar and thought to myself: ‘Ellie, why isn’t your head in the game? Oh yeah, you didn’t get enough sleep last night.’ Then I re-racked the bar, took a step back, put a positive thought into my head (the last set wasn’t feeling heavy it just felt ugly), then went and lifted.

Pretty cool, huh? In other news, I’ve been sleeping more.

This blog has been missing the part where I talk about what I actually do. This week … hmm.

• Monday: meeting with a key supplier in the morning, one-on-ones with the technical team in the afternoon, CrossFit in the evening. Somehow my back was hurting and I had problems with the heavy back squats & high box jumps. Skype call with San Diego. Roasted a chicken!
• Tuesday: worked at Heart on Greenpop materials, had a conference call with a partner, and left work early to have a few meetings at the new job. Rest day, stopped by Kelsey’s place for a glass of wine, then to qigong. We are now busy learning a standing form which is in some ways easier and in some ways harder than the seated form.
• Wednesday: back squats, front squats, pullups, dips, and dumbbell bench press, a whole bunch of forwarding text messages to Henk, nearly drove over Justin (God I hate Century City to be known hereafter as Dante’s Fifth Circle of Hell), and attended the iWeek conference. This was the WAPA (Wireless Access Providers Association) day. In unrelated news, the WiFi at the conference was shocking. I saw some old friends who I didn’t realise were in the industry, met some interesting new people, saw some Linux penguins, and the food was amazing. Sushi for dessert. Yeah and listened to some interesting things … some of which I understood. Then CrossFit: more front squats, jumping, burpees and the prowler. Good stuff. Then to the WAPA dinner. Oh my word. Words almost cannot describe the industry of which I am now a part. Well, the best thing about the dinner was the bar afterwards. Somehow that always manages to be the case at these techie events, if I make it that far, which I often don’t.
• Thursday: felt like death warmed over, and not from alcohol. How I ever survived on less than 8 hours of sleep a night I will never know. Saw Debbie in Hout Bay then coffee that turned into 3 coffees and breakfast with Doug at Starlings. I am happy to report that he is not actually perfect after all. But he’s pretty bloody close. I have SUCH an amazing team around me, and I can’t wait to start showing what I can do to help make the team better. I think I also might be completely and totally in love with that place. Then, to Heart for my last day in the office. It was … bittersweet. But what I said which is true, is that I’ve watched a lot of people go over the years, mostly interns, and I’ve always felt sad like for me to leave would be painful like leaving a family. This wasn’t goodbye, as I’ll still be involved, and that made it loads easier. Drove to Bellville for a technique session at the track which is honestly all my body could handle that day anyway (active rest), and then on to the aforementioned qigong where I nearly passed out. I would never have lived that one down, I can tell you that right now!
• Friday: slept in, went to the office, Skype with Sydney, meeting, meeting, meeting, some emails, lunch meeting, company meeting, some more emails. Ha! CrossFit, which contained some squat snatches and then team variation on Elisabeth, which I did with Ralf & Wayne. Awesome team: very good teammates to have! Out to dinner, then back to catch up on emails.

Oh, and I should also say that my conversion to Twitter is nearly complete. I now spend probably twice as much time there as on Facebook. The quality of content is just better. I used to get so annoyed at our CEO at Exit41 who was always banging on about Twitter. It’s fun when irony kicks you in the face huh? You just have to laugh.

Another thing that helps my mood is sleeping enough. I’ll admit I was a bit worried about myself a week and a half ago but I knew that I’d get myself sorted out. I’m still taking my personal time to train, to blog (aka self-introspection). One of these days I’ll get to my pleasure reading.

No, not Don Quixote.

• “More people say they want it than actually do.” – Andrew
• “I just know that GNU is not UNIX. Whatever that means.” – Ingi
• “I’ve managed to get a picture of a warthog into a written submission to the Department of Communications.” – Dominic
• “This is the industry of which you’re now a part.” – Edge
• “This has gotta be the most misunderstood industry in the world.” – Edge
• “Richard is the one who told me about the Hello Kitty tazer.” – Ingi
• “If you bite too hard you’re not going to be a good team player.” – Rich (He was talking about hyenas…)
• “Isn’t it a terrible feeling when you wake up in the morning and realise you’re going to be tired all day?” – Gareth Cliff
• “The problem with perfect competition is laziness.” – Doug
• “Oh come ON, it was a WAPA dinner!” “I know what happens at those dinners!” – Ellie & Doug
• “Either that or I'm just a really good salesman.” – Ellie 

What you see is not what you get

This one has been coming at me from two sides lately. The first is that, like a tree where half is hidden beneath the ground, often the critical things are hidden from view. Out of sight, out of mind = bad.

Missing the iceberg = also bad.

The second perspective has been a bit more personal and that is, as Doug so nicely put it, a little naïveté can be a good thing. If I knew when I started CrossFit what it would do to me, would I still have started? Probably yes, because I love a good challenge. Over the last 2+ years I’ve become physically stronger, mentally stronger, emotionally stronger, I understand my body much better, and I now understand some of the basics of nutrition (and not just all the myths peddled to us by so-called experts). I hit PRs regularly, and they feel even more exciting now than they did in the beginning. More importantly, I know how to think about training, where to go for more, and how to test my own limits within and outside of CrossFit.

At the same time, the dedication of time, emotion, the constant injuries, the money spent on various forms of physical therapy: that’s part of it. The days when nothing comes together: the double-unders aren’t working, the wall ball flies straight up in the air, I get beat by Laa-Laa on aburpee workout, when I feel like my Olympic lifting is just never going to get any better …. Those are part of it too. You take the bad with the good.

But sometimes it’s best not to know what’s coming. You have to roll with the punches. You just have to. Fall down, skin your knee, get up, suture your wound and move on. If lynotherapy is good for anything other than the obvious flexibility benefits it’s given me, it is that it has completely readjusted my sense of what is painful. Still doesn’t help me do box jumps any faster if my legs won’t move.

Speaking of speed, one of the things that drives me completely batty is not thinking things through fully. In other words, sacrificing accuracy for speed (Roland – I’ll quote you on your response to this one). Yeah I sometimes do this, and there is the occasional typo or Freudian slip. But when it’s important, I get the details right. I also get the big picture right, or at least I try to, but that’s way harder because every angle gives a different perspective and looking at something from all angles takes too long and is too expensive.

Another big thing that drives me batty is not trying hard. I am probably more guilty than the next person of over-committing myself and setting too aggressive of date targets. But at least I’m not sandbagging, and at least I know that I’m working hard.

Oh, that and making things more complicated than they have to be. Not saying I’m not a drama queen because I sometimes am but with me it’s usually at least half tongue-in-cheek because I think my entire adult life I have hated the thought of relying completely on anyone or anything other than myself, which leads me to believe I can do almost anything. The naïveté of overconfidence. Bygones.

But the ones who moan on and on about the same old issues all the time or are stuck in old habits and old fears. I wonder if it’s worse to be in a rut and not know it (like I was for so many years) or to be in a rut, kind of have a sense of that, but be too scared to break out? The answer is unimportant: ignorant or afraid, either way you’re in a rut. Hopefully you sometime break out. But hope is not a strategy.

And then there’s the people who refuse to notice when something has changed. At least Shirfu has noticed that I don’t ignore his instructions to rest any more, and jokes with my management aside, I’m not the lush I used to be. Doesn’t mix too well with the lifestyle I now prefer. It’s like at Exit41 I had two amazing co-workers who, in my opinion, never got the respect they deserved from most people because they used to be McDonalds restaurant managers. That’s an ad hominem stuck in the past: not one but TWO very bad things.

A Skype conversation the other day had me thinking about my little brother, whose IQ is probably several standard deviations from the mean. When he first started working, he got into trouble with his co-workers not because he was brash or unfriendly or any of those things, but because when he was at work, he worked. And he was stupidly productive, and did like three times the work of anyone else and so made them look bad by comparison.

Don’t be that guy, either. TRY to pay attention to how you’re affecting the people around you. My brother is much better than this nowadays, but the way. I was listening to the Patriots pre-game the other day before heading out to hear some knock-your-socks-off jazz. Someone loosely quoted Bill Belichick as saying that when you cover up a weakness, you leave yourself exposed somewhere else. I’d always rather a team be more than the sum of its parts, and I do believe that the best way to get the best out of people is to build their intrinsic motivation, give them room, etc. But at the end of the day you also can’t always just give people what they want. Someone has to do the scut work, and your team will have its weaknesses.

Bill Belichick …. Now that’s a man I’d like to meet. Interesting thought as you evaluate your own team and that of any teams you compete with. What are your weaknesses and what does covering them expose? What about your competition? What do they most seem like they are trying to hide?

So I am feeling more and more confident every day in the new job that I actually understand what needs to be done, and how I can best apply myself. I also really like the team, and grow more fascinated by the possibilities daily. That’s the good news. The bad news is I have a lot of work! But that’s not actually bad, as anyone who knows me will know.

I am much more comfortable now that I know a lot of what has to be done. I was originally interested in this new job because I thought it was a way to learn and get experience rapidly. Everyone has a price, and mine is experience. But knowing what’s ahead after having jumped off the cliff has come along with a massive reduction in my stress levels. I am also adapting to the different sort of workload, and rediscovering my love of the IT field. Adaptation is good, if it’s of a positive nature.

It used to be when I trained I got sore. Now I just get stronger without the soreness, unless I do something REALLY extreme, like two hours of bench press on Sunday which was SUPER fun even if I was a bit distracted … yes, this is what I do for fun. My fun reading is about anatomy and training … it’s not Better Homes and Gardens but at least it’s not beamforming and SSIDs. Although I did just download a paper called “The Economic Significance of License-Exempt Spectrum to the Future of the Internet.”

I did have a point. I was that you can get better without pulling your hair out. I knew, in theory, that this new position would be a lot of work but more importantly, a lot of responsibility, which confers a mental and emotional load that carries over to the rest of my life. I’d be lying if I said my training wasn’t affected, especially as my evenings are quickly becoming company time what with dinner meetings and time zone differences. Not sure what I’m going to do about that one yet.

What I am feeling better about is that adaptation to the workload, because it has come along with an accompanying reduction of stress. This is good because stress isn’t actually helpful. It may feel good, for a while, but it’s not only not helpful but is actively harmful to you physically and in terms of decision-making.

Shirfu would be proud. And I only had to skin one of my knees to figure that out.

• “NOW we’re done.” – Howard
• “300% margin is better than a kick in the teeth.” – Laurie
• “That was the second thing. Hey happy Monday! The third thing ….” – Michael
• “I hate a fair fight.” – Michael
• “I don’t think there’s enough alcohol in the world for that.” – Stefan
• “No, you have THAT face.” – Michelle
• “That is not something for beginners.” – Kim
• “The pace of running a company is crazy--and awesome.” – Mike