The Brink of Chaos

“If you’re a 40-yr old mother who likes to run and also knows how to code well, please come talk to me after this discussion because I want to hire you.”

Cheryl Kellond, founder of Bia, made the above appeal during a panel session last night titled Geeks vs. Suits.  She explained that she highly doubted a 23-yr male coder was going to be able to relate with her company’s target market — 40-yr old mother triathletes.

The problem is empathy.  We need those who are writing the software to be able to understand who they are writing software for. Her appeal launched a panel conversation about empathy.  Though not explicitly mentioned, this is pretty much what the entire discussion was about.   Can geeks understand and appreciate what the BizDev guys are doing and can the suits understand and appreciate what the coders wrestle with?  The conversation turned to whether empathy can be learned.  Everyone agreed that it can be, but not many suggested how.

Empathy is one of the most critical skills to entrepreneurial success. We can empathize because we are the target market (like a 40-yr old mother athlete) or we can learn to empathize with our customers by talking to them.

Empathy is an experiential skill not a declarative one — we can’t just read a book to learn it, just like we can’t read a book to learn how to shoot a basketball and expect to win any free throwing contest.  It comes from practice and there are several exercises to help learn it. Steven Blanks’ Customer Development Process (described in the 4 Steps to the Epiphany) is an excellent and practical process for many startups to learn to empathize with the customers they are trying to serve. Outside of entrepreneurship, there are several activities that can help – for example, sympathizing (simulating) a day in the life of the person we are trying to understand, or actually living their life if it’s possible to truly walk in their shoes.

I don’t think you have to be a 40-yr old mother runner to be able to understand what is going on with Bia’s market, but I do think you need to have a lot of empathy to be able to make sure you design a product that will work well for them. Empathy is a critical skill for an entrepreneur to learn.

[There are also many good books on the subject that also give suggested exercises to learn how to use them.  Here are a few: Wired To Care, A Whole New Mind, and The Ten Faces of Innovation. ]

Everyday is like a hike – most of the time we stay on the trail, occasionally we forge new ones. The trails represent the how of living: paths that we have either created or were taught by those who came before us. But unlike the trails on the mountain, many of our own patterns of living are invisible to us.

Have you ever stopped to think about how you dry yourself after getting out of the shower? Probably using the same pattern for years, and one that is unique to you.  We all do this without thinking and this is but one of many trails that we follow in life without thought. There are many others: the way we eat, the way we communicate, the way we work.

We create trails as a way of simplifying the world around us.  It provides us with a way to navigate the various challenges and complexities of life so that we can not devote time thinking about things we’ve already figured out. But for the very reason that the patterns become hidden to us, they can also lull us into a false sense of security. Doing something differently feels uncomfortable, yet the only way we can grow is to question our patterns of behavior in the past.  Plus variety is the spice of life.

Even though it feels uncomfortable to go off-road, doing so allows us to experience vistas that we may never have seen if we continued following the same old trails.

The world is more complex than any of us can fully understand, so we simplify. Often times, our simplifications lead us toward dogmatic solutions; plans that will allow us to solve the worlds problems if only the world would dramatically change by adopting them.  It becomes easier to advocate full government payment for health care, or abolishing the welfare state, or moving back to a gold standard, or believing we need more stimulus to get the economy started than it does to recognize the insurmountable challenges between here and there.

Because of the complexity, many groups advocate a solution as dogma for how to solve the ills we are facing — an indisputable, clear, simple solution that should solve our problems. These simple solutions provide a basis for determining the direction we should move. But too often  the gap between the solution and the current state is so large that it turns otherwise productive conversations into whining and complaining. When we start thinking, “The world would be so much better if only …”, we must take care not to become unproductive cynics.

This comic summarized this problem perfectly:

Ideal solutions are not enough; a path that allows for implementation toward the ideal is what we need to find. We should improve the status quo, not just whine about it.  It means though that we need to think harder than simply grabbing onto a single dogma and whining that no one will listen to us.

Sometime ago when the startup I was working for went through a tough time, our VC gave me some sage advice: Stay focused on staying in the air and not on avoiding the trees. If a pilot is in distress and starts focusing on not crashing into the trees, the trees become the target. Our startup pulled out of  our circumstance, but this advice stuck with me.  But it doesn’t just apply to times of distress, it applies to all of our goals, particularly when we want to help one another.

In legal systems, there are two types of laws: positive laws which are prescriptive, requiring a specific action, and negative laws which prohibit a particular action. Goals can be categorized in the same way. A positive goal strives toward some better state. A negative goal strives to avoid falling into a worse one.

Negative law maximizes freedom because we can do everything except the prohibited action. To the contrary, negative goals by themselves lead us to only focus on what we are trying to avoid often leading to failure. We have a hard time not thinking about something  (e.g. st try not to think about a blue monkey). Fortunately, we can convert most negative goals into positive ones. Don’t eat dessert might instead become workout 30 minutes extra before eating dessert. A positive goal lets us focus on a critical behavior we need to carry out a longer term aspiration. This is true not only for our personal goals, but also for our work goals too. Moreover, it provides a much better platform for getting help from others.

This past week a good friend of mine and I wanted to do a better job managing our attention so we could get the right things done. Both of us generally get a lot done, but not always the most important thing. As a result we decided that we would work on trying two things:

1. Planning out our day everyday
2. Working on the #1 biggest priority as early in the day as we could.

Both of us had days where we got distracted and failed, but when we succeeded we both had great productive days.  Moreover,  it was encouraging and energizing to keep updated throughout the week with each others’ status.  Success bred success.

When we want others to keep us accountable, the nature of the goal makes a big difference. Accountability groups focused around negative goals often degrade into pity parties. Groups which instead focus on positive goals continue to encourage everyone on. Failure to reach perfection in a positive goal is simply a sign that we are still on the path.  Failing our negative goal, falling into that which we want to avoid, often causes us to simply feel like a failure.

How we shape our goals makes a big difference in our ability to accomplish them. How can you take some of your goals and make them positive and involve others to help you accomplish them?