1. Looking back on my "career" after turning 30 last week
Last week, I celebrated my 30th birthday. It was quite the event, thanks for asking.
As usual with such milestones (end of year, end of decade, etc.), I like to review my past in order to distinguish the behaviors I should double-down on vs. the ones I should get rid of. So, I thought I might share with you my professional way to this point and share three deep learnings while listening to Metallica (Spotify Playlist Link) for the first time in years.
I believe one of the most important facts about me is that the only "boss" in my life has been my father. And believe me, I could not have had a more critical one. Except for the years in the restaurant, I have always been self-employed which probably gives me quite a different perspective on conventional systems in the world of work. My work stations have been very diverse:
- < 20 yo: I organized events with a focus on parties with a few friends in my hometown starting when I still went to school while working as a waiter in my father's restaurant
- 20-21 yo: I worked on construction sites, farms and agriculture (especially vineyards) in New Zealand
- 22-24 yo: I started an Amazon reselling business during my Bachelor in Business Studies
- 24-26 yo: Sold it and started a sales consulting business with guys I met in my years as board member in the BDSU while finishing my Bachelor degree
- 26-27 yo: Moved as a freelance consultant to a major corporate chemical producer
- 27-28 yo: Helped business partners to found an IoT & data analytics company with the VP I worked for at the chemical producer
- Since 28 yo: Moved to my current client as a freelancer which has been the longest station until now
I believe that it is of vital importance to start working at an early age - despite not wanting at all! - as Simon Sarris wrote in his essay "The most precious resource is Agency" with famous examples like Leonardo da Vinci, Walt Disney, Warren Buffet or Andrew Carnegie. To quote him:
"Readers (and often biographers) tend to fixate around the celebrity itself, when people became famous or fortunate. But the early lives, long before success, contain something revealing. Before you grasp, you have to reach. How did they learn to reach?"
It was so important for my self-confidence to understand that value is created by effort and that I was being rewarded for the combination of focus & effort. It meant that part of my self-worth was independent of abstract applications of forced learning of seemingly irrelevant information (= school) which created basically the equivalent of agency in myself. By the way: My mother is a teacher herself so I should have had a positive attitude towards formal education. But I absolutely did not.
Overall, I have to admit that I cannot believe I was able to make these experiences. I mean, I still wonder if it was dumb luck? Could I really do it again? Meanwhile, being insecure at times, especially within the last 5 years, I was pulled into a new world where I got to see how “business people” think. Through dinners, meetings, and hallway conversations, I became familiar with the thought processes while recognizing certain patterns in the logic, language and power they (tried to) displayed. This is the basis of my obsession with deconstructing work culture: Differentiating between the real and the wannabes.
2. Acquiring & acknowledging Skills/Expertise - Two Learnings from the "Business World"
Except for the realization mentioned above, I think the biggest learnings I gained from around the stations and the very different industries I worked in are twofold.
First: The formal educational system is very overrated for non-STEM areas (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).
I have met many people who are formally much more educated than me in the area of Business but still have no clue how to proactively approach problems because their experience is very biased by having clear tasks that need to be fulfilled in a preset framework. Why the system is designed like this will be the basis for another episode. But I think it is safe to say that the system has been on a blast to release the most educated but learned-helpless people in human history.
Sorry but your education means nothing if you are not deploying it and achieving something with it. Respect is not gained by working in a function or at a prestigious company. This might hold up to display status or prestige but real respect is earned by - as mentioned in the beginning - committing an effort to a challenge.
Second: Based on the first learning, I have gained a completely different understanding of the word "expert" and their self-promotion in our society.
Generally-speaking, my experience of people working in a specific industry or area is following the Dunning-Kruger-Effect: Put simply, the Dunning-Kruger Effect is the tendency for people to misjudge their abilities. People with less than average abilities tend to overestimate their true abilities, while those with higher than average abilities tend to not realize how much better they are. Hence, some people are too stupid to know how stupid they are, while smart people assume most can do what they can.
So, basically the "real" experts I got to know, like my dear architects, are incredibly humble with everybody looking up to them although - in my opinion - still not getting the credit which they deserve. It is ironic: When you are really technically competent, you seem to automatically get more humble because you start understanding how big your technical field is and therefore, how different and deep other expert's knowledge/skills might be.
And I see this across the board: People who are really contributing in a big way are far too humble, reserved and cautious which is why I often try to emphasize their great work (they conduct in the background). It is so sad that organizational cultures are still like schools: the loudest gets the most attention. Thank goodness, I am one of the loudest.
On the other hand, people working in intermediary functions tend to vastly overrate their expertise (I include myself in that category) as well as their worth to the department or even the company they work in. I like how Eric Weinstein (theoretical physicist) has explained it in an interview:
"Every single subject that can be systematized, there is a systematization that allows you to get 80% of power with probably 5-10% of the effort. And so the key question is, you have to prove that you have the power to rearrange the subject to disintermediate the people who get paid teaching it, which will always push you to mastery, which is a question of getting the last 2-3% out of a system. And so, the good news is you can rearrange any subject to learn most of it very very quickly. The bad news is that it will feel terrible because you will be told you are doing it the wrong way and dooming yourself to a life of mediocrity as a jack of many trades - master of none, but in fact, the problem is that jack of one trade is the connector of none."
Although following this attitude towards areas of expertise as well as industries, I still retain my respect for areas I have no knowledge about and people who might know a lot more than me to not fall into the trap of the Dunning-Kruger-Effect. Hence, my rule of thumb is when somebody is trying to put themselves on airs: I double-check their Skin in the Game because this is what differentiates the people who move organizations forward vs. the ones who blow out steam.
3. So, what is the Strategy for my Writing?
One of the intentions, I have mentioned already in Fork 2: Show Skin in the Game and leave my comfort zone by putting myself out there. My other motive is a bit daring. I read an essay in "The Atlantic" by Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen calling for a new movement of progress. They argue that in order to solve humanity’s greatest challenges,
“one of our highest priorities should be figuring out interventions that increase the efficacy, productivity, and innovative capacity of human organizations.”
Unfortunately, most of the time, the authors of such essays are only theoretically invested but are not themselves in the position to push for their ideals within the organizations they write about. I want to be the opposite: While pushing the ideals I have in mind in the organizations I work in, trying to improve my theoretical framework on how to accelerate progress in my areas of control and give practical advice, respectively sharing my learnings with the top 10% (performance-related), who really move their organizations forward.
To put it in more simple terms: As Nathan Baschez writes in his introduction to Divinations: "Every strategy is really just a theory:
“We bet if we do x, then y will happen.”
while
"X is everything in your direct control—the activities you do. It’s the research, planning, building, selling, recruiting, pitching, etc.Y is everything outside your direct control—the activities other people may (or may not!) do. It’s the noticing, considering, buying, using, joining, investing, etc."
My bet is that if I publish valuable writing, it will be rewarded by the (influential) people who read it and will function as an appendix to my CV.
I hope I never will need the help of any of you but if I might, you will have a good perspective on my Skin in the Game as well as my approach to complex topics. And if I might never ask for anything, it just might spark an idea, a change of behavior or anything else that contributes to the progress of your life, your organization or human progress in general.
If it adds to my credibility in future endeavors I might partake in, even better.