#131: Do As You Must

This week’s letter has been hard to write. I have so much to share with you. As a start, I visited an exhibition of young artists at 99 Loop Gallery. Nazeer Jappie, Paul Wallington, Marolize Southwood and Jenna Wessels all caught my attention.  Unfortunately, photographs flatten and dilute the complexity of Southwood’s and Wessels’ work. You need to see them in person. Jappie and Wallington are my kinds of discombobulating. There’s so much more one could say about all of their work.

Then, my current reading includes Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story; Marcus Buckingham’s Love + Work; Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick; Keith Richard’s Life and Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind.

And, in the last two months I have read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between The World and Me; Carolann Davids’ How To Be A Revolutionary; Liz McGregor’s Unforgiven; Nadia Davids’ An Imperfect Blessing; Mark Epstein’s The Zen of Therapy and William Dicey’s Mongrel. Oh, and then, Namwali Serpell interviewed Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o for the summer issue of The Paris Review – which is African excellence heaven. I’ve shared some of these with you, but not nearly enough – or so it feels.

So, when I sat down today, I wanted to write and write. I had an image of ribbons of words unfurling across space to you, an infinite ticker tape from me to you. There is so much beauty to share, that it felt wrong to stop.

That image melted as I started. I remembered that sentences are hard, that the images slip and slide between the words, and as I slowed, I remembered our pact. I write. You read. Write too much, you might stop. And so, the temptation to break with our normal format slipped away, and the week’s letter settled into its shape.

I am still not entirely sure what it’s about. There’s some strategy, some self, and some soul. I don’t know that there’s a theme, but perhaps there didn’t need to be. Please let me know what you think.

/strategy

At no time is there a greater desire to go fast than when you start a new job. You want to make a good impression. In the back of your mind is a ticking timeline, or more probably, bomb.

And yet, as a former CEO, Max DePree reminds us, when you start a new role, you’re in a ‘temporary state of incompetence’.

Jonathan Miller, former Head of Digital Media at News Corp, commented that “You may have previous experience and you may be smart, and you may have insight into how things work, but you know the least about the actual company you’re engaged in at the same time that you have to set things in motion”.

How funny is that? You’re hired because you’re competent, the best that they can get, but it is a new role, so you are necessarily, absolutely in a temporary state of incompetence.

And, of course, when we feel incompetent, we often default to our least useful behaviours. Be mindful of what yours are. We all have our oddities. Make sure that you catch yours.

You might think that you’ve held a similar role before in a similar company or you’re taking up a new role in a company that you’ve been in for years. Surely, it doesn’t apply then?

Jeff Immelt, the former CEO of General Electric commented “I worked at this place for twenty-one years before I got the CEO job and there were still things that shocked me when I took over”.

In other words, yes, you’ve got to get stuff done and remember, you are almost guaranteed not to know enough to act appropriately immediately.

The above quotations come from Thomas Neff and James Citrin’s “You’re in Charge – Now What?” They’re respectively the chairman and a senior executive of Spencer Stuart, one of the world’s leading executive placement firms, and so are well placed to advise those of us starting new roles (thank you Guy Lundy for the recommendation).

They caution new leaders to avoid some common pitfalls:

• Don’t set unrealistic or unsustainable objectives.
• Avoid being trapped in analysis but also don’t be a know-it-all.
• Don’t stifle dissent. In fact, encourage it, people will be anxious around a new leader, it’s your job to make it safe for them to speak up.
• Don’t succumb to the “Saviour Syndrome”; and
• “Be respectful and sensitive regarding your predecessor’s position and tenure, regardless of how you feel.”

I will share more before the end of the year, but for now remember to invest as much time as possible in absorbing, listening, learning, and building new relationships. It will stand you in good stead. As I had to do today, slow it down and remember the basics.

/self

I am also reading acclaimed novelist Haruki Murakami’s memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

He tells us that he has the type of body that easily puts on weight. So, when he started working full-time as a novelist, a sedentary life, the inevitable happened. He put on weight.

He reflects that it is easy and natural to view that as unfair. He did.

And yet, he says that over time, he came to consider himself lucky that the ‘red light’ was so clearly visible.  The fact that he needed to exercise opened up all sorts of other benefits – added stamina, slowed ageing, increased strength, escape from writing.

He writes “let’s face it. Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it is possible to seek out a kind of fairness. Of course, that might take time and effort. And maybe it won’t be worth all that. It’s up to each individual to decide whether it’s worth it or not”.

In a sense, he echoes Neff and Citrin. It is unfair that you’re expected to have the greatest impact when you know the least. But you can use the opportunity to develop deep relationships, to learn, to understand, to explore possibilities – that’s not always possible later on.

What are the red lights in your life? How might you use them as a catalyst for new types of behaviours? Behaviours that, yes may feel uncomfortable initially, but may give you all sorts of new opportunities.

My red light was that if I rambled on and on, you’d stop reading.

/soul

On Thursday we saw Madala Kunene perform at Kalk Bay’s Olympia Bakery. The last time he performed in Cape Town, he did so with Neo Muyanga, whose A Mass of Cyborgs, opens in New York next Saturday. For those of you who live in the city, Muyanga’s work is always a blessing to experience. It is his first solo exhibition in the US.

The Olympia Bakery is a special venue. Its high ceilings remind you that a century ago, it was home to the Olympia Picture Palace. The balcony that once held 120 movie-watchers is no longer, presumably it collapsed in the 1960s fire that gutted the building. The result is that, with nothing to break the space, the walls tower above you. A mini canyon of sorts.

On jazz nights, the patrons are watched by cool silent ovens. Their stainless-steel glint and the thick electric cabling remind you that the name is not whimsy. This is indeed a bakery.

To see Kunene perform is to be reminded of Toumani Diabaté and Cesária Évora. They are unequivocally of their place, of their culture and, rooted in that depth, they transcend space and time. They each remind us that we move in a world in which we understand much and little, that we are surrounded by the unseen, the inexplicable and the unknowable, that there is much beyond us.

To listen to Kunene is to know that his is the spirit that swims alongside the humpbacks’ songs as they traverse the Pacific. You know that when he places his hand on the forest floor, he hears the whispers of underground networks, the cascades of distant streams and he speaks to the Mother Tree in hidden glades. His guitars’ wood tells him of their forests and the creatures who once called them home. To be in his presence is to slide into another realm.

Kunene sat down at 20h30. He played without break, without much comment, one song weaving into the next. At 22h45 we snuck sadly out of the venue. I am sure he kept going.

He didn’t go fast. He didn’t go slow. He went. I wish you the same.

All the best

Karl

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