I have a confession to make - I am a big fan of "Your work is shit" approach by Steven Jobs. It is so unpopular these days that I already feel guilty, passe and removed from your social media. Still here I am, making the confession to show my vulnerability in a hope to be understood better.
To understand where I am coming from you need to know that I am very demanding from myself. I have always been. As a result I am also very demanding from people I work with and live with. I reflected on this many times, asked myself questions how it influences my relations with others, how it influences my ability to co-create, etc. I explained to myself that I have the Achiever profile - I am fuelled by achieving. But I felt this explanation is not the whole story - that's only how it looks at the surface. Achievement is actually just a side effect of the real driver - the urge to become wholly embedded in solving a piece of puzzle. When I am solving a puzzle nothing else exists, aka the flow. This is how I engage in work. Till it's done. Then I can go out and socialise, eat pizza and drink beer. Until the next wave of urge to Solve comes. So more than an Achiever I am an Obsessive Solver, a Craftsman. Coming back to "Your work is shit" - this helps me produce better solutions - by challenging what I have done and my current approach. This helps me cross the boundaries and limitations and breakthrough to wider landscape of options.
There is on more thing wrt "Your work is shit" - this frame is, in my honest opinion, very close to my favourite quote "The ABC of Business Decay" by Warren Buffet - Arrogance, Bureaucracy and Complacency. Especially the Complacency resonates between these two famous quotes. If I am complacent with my work it means for me that Complacency has reached me. And, as always, there are others working harder than myself while I am contemplating Complacency.
I recommend starting every decision making, every option generating workshop by posing the "Your work is shit" frame - to open up discussion about how we can do it better. It is similar to another brainstorming technique by the Heath brothers - the Vanishing Options test. It goes like this: Imagine your favourite option is not an option given the situation. What are other options? It is also related to BHAG goal setting. BHAGs are goals that are not achievable by the current means and the current levels of thinking.
How all the above influence my desired identity of a Transformation Leader? Some will say, such confession crosses me out as a transformation leader. Honestly? I think there is a great match between being the Solver and being a Transformation Leader. A Transformation is a huge effort and it is supposed to take companies across a big river full of crocodiles to another bank. Such effort usually needs a BHAG goal to even risk it. And a realisation coming from the first attempts to solve it - that the BHAG is not achievable by the current habits, thinking and ways of working.
So here I am: suspected of being Achiever while actually being a Solver. Suspected to be a Toxic Leader while I feel a Radical Candor leader: I always care personally and yes I always challenge directly.
Credits: Photo by Tamara Gak on Unsplash