I have never been so exhausted in my life…
The last time I remember sleeping was three days prior, just before Tash’s contractions started and we moved into the roller-coaster of labour.
In the wee hours of the morning 3 days after it all began we had our baby girl in our arms. For a couple of hours we simply sat there with little Olia in our arms – checking her out as she made her introduction to the world.
It wasn’t long before my mind started flipping back to business.
Coming off a challenging 4 month product leadership & launch initiative which required several consecutive 50-60 hour work weeks – I was eager to let my boss know I would be in that week to ensure the team continues driving forward.
In the hospital room I flipped open my laptop and fired a quick email notifying the team I’d be in and out of the office all week and available 24/7 for support – as usual.
Clicking send, I immediately realized a huge sense of conflict in offering my time and energy up to the team only hours after my daughter had been born and my wife completing the gruelling marathon of delivery… I sucked it up and told myself I could manage both – full commitment to Olia and Tash, full commitment to my team – they both deserved as much.
What happened next is one of the most incredibly gracious moments I have experienced in my life.
Within 10 minutes of clicking send I see an email from my VP. A beautiful congratulatory note, heartfelt and sincere, reflective and kind. And then a warning – “…don’t even think about coming into the office, I don’t want you to worry even for a minute about work this week – take the time to enjoy the first hours and days as a new family. I may be smaller than you but if I see you in the office I will do whatever I can to kindly escort you back home (smiley face).”
I wouldn’t have ever admitted it to you, but receiving that email was exactly what I needed and likely the only way I would have ever let down my guard and paused to fully accept and appreciate this rare moment of new life.
I let out a massive sigh and sunk back into the rocking chair – it felt like 1,000 pounds had just been lifted off of my back.
I told Tash, nearly in tears with gratitude and appreciation for the company I worked for and the culture we have strived so hard to build and uphold.
Proudly UnAmazonian
At BuildDirect we have this Big Hairy Audacious Goal to disrupt and completely transform an industry. Striving to build a world class marketplace and technology platform we share many similarities with Amazon and there is no denying it as a source many of us look to for market leadership and innovation insights.
After the continued ‘coming out’ on the destructive culture being revealed under the tech giant’s kimono, I can’t proudly enough state how un-amazonian I feel today.
Filling in the gaps.
When we’re talking about a company with well over 100,000 employees, it’s obvious we’re only getting a small slice of the story with regards to the net cultural impact and experience within the walls.
That being said, after reading several dozen accounts, and specifically Julia Cheiffetz’s I Had a Baby and Cancer When I Worked at Amazon. This Is My Story – there is a cultural theme I continue to pick up on.
In Julia’s brief maternity leave from the company (5 months) after delivering a child and being diagnosed with and fighting cancer she returned to find out her role had essentially been dissolved/transitioned and for lack of a better term she was essentially thrown into what sounds like a meaningless corner of the company.
One word changes everything.
I can understand in a fast moving company a lot can change in 5 months. I can also understand the shifting and adapting of new roles when returning from a leave like this. But what I find scarily shocking is the seemingly utter lack of communication and transparency throughout an experience like this. It may seem a like a trivial detail but it uncovers the deeper cultural fabric that has mutated out of the Amazon cultural DNA.
Someone, and likely several people – leaders and managers – made conscious (worse yet if it was subconscious) decisions to ‘not’ communicate the changes, transitions, and decisions being made that critically impacted Julia’s role (and life) within the organization. Scarier yet, these leaders were convinced to the point of action (or non-action) that this was the right decision within the Amazon culture.
A Cardinal Sin.
This to me represents the cardinal sin I continue to see woven through the now hundreds of stories leaking from the Amazonian vault. The consistent lack of empathy for colleagues and employees is shocking and highlights the power of an organization’s ability to create a brainwash culture where regard for role, title, status, and success trumps our basic human needs.
Despite the similarities of our Big Hairy Audacious Goal, and my zealous passion and commitment to the company – my experience with BuildDirect could not be more different.
Like many at Amazon, I possess the type A driver personality incredibly hungry to push the boundaries and limits of my own capacity and leverage this effort to make the biggest dent possible in the work I do and ultimately the world. I have excitedly taken on projects that have pushed me to work several consecutive 60 hour weeks. I have experienced stints of frustration, exhaustion and complete emotional and mental burnout – I have questioned whether it’s really worth it, or if it’s time for me to move on.
But that is about where the similarities end.
The differences are many, but a majority of them can all be bubbled up into one overarching word.
Empathy.
To date, that is what BuildDirect has been built upon, from the founders and early leaders of the organization this strand has been intentionally woven into our DNA and acts as the dominant gene. Even today, when we are out in the market looking for world class people, a mandatory prerequisite is a passion and innate desire to lead with empathy and compassion for others.
This changes Everything.
It means when I ask to take on a project and team I know will require 60 hour work weeks – the whole organization rallies behind me. The sentiment I begin receiving is never “You better get this done – your ass is on the line” but overwhelmingly “how can we support you to drive this initiative forward as successfully as possible.” Take a minute to think about this, regardless of the approach taken above, the work and outputs are ultimately no different…
The long term cultural impacts on the other hand… Well, we’re no Amazonians.
It means anytime a team member is struggling, is ill, is grieving a family tragedy – we intentionally take the time to pause what we’re doing and offer our thoughts, warmth and support.
It means we constantly focus on celebrating the successes and achievements of each other, both in and outside of the walls of work.
It means when our leadership team tells us something needs to be done that is critical to the business – we drop what we’re doing, band together, and do whatever it takes to make that happen. This has meant working weekends, through the night, changing roles, having difficult conversations, and making numerous sacrifices.
Red Pill or Blue Pill?
We have a madness and a hunger to stay the course of this exciting journey we’re on. There is an intrinsic fire that is burning at the heart of our company. Those who don’t share this fire and passion, eventually opt themselves out – I have seen it happen over and over again.
Those who have chosen the red pill have banded together, a tight knit family living the #BDLife. Good, bad, and ugly – we’re in it together.
The number of times I have seen examples above play out are too numerous to count. I am humbled on a daily basis to work with such incredible colleagues – no, that’s not right – I work with some of the most kick-ass passionate, humble, and empathetic human beings on the planet.
We are no Amazon. We will have hundreds if not thousands of hurdles as we climb the rungs from 300 employees to 1,000, 10,000, and beyond. A lot will change. Culture will become more and more difficult to guide. But I am confident if each of us continues to own the sense of empowerment we feel today and lead with empathy over all else – we’ll find a way to ultimately get 10x more out of the sum of our parts while creating exponential velocity as a consequence of a sustained tight knit tribe mentality.
What I do know is that I am grateful now more than ever to be a part of an organization, a tribe of people, who are dreaming big, willing to do whatever it takes to get there but will never put this above the value of walking a mile in another’s shoes.
I have no doubt we will make it to the top of this mountain, it’s going to be one of the most challenging adventures of all our respective lives.
But we’ll be in it together.
When we set foot on that theoretical summit – we’ll look around, smile, crack a beer, and cheers to doing world changing work alongside 100s of people we call friends.
Thank you for taking the time to read – if you’ve gotten this far I’d love to hear what you thought below. If the story resonates – you’re welcome to like or share with your Community.
Note – all views and opinions expressed are my own.
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Living Life by a Simple Hypothesis
Sometimes I think we overcomplicate things in life. I find that when I live in tune with the hypothesis below, I am happy, fulfilled and feeling as if I’m doing my best work in the world.
I am at my best when striving towards a pursuit that intrinsically motivates me, is aligned with my values in life and challenges me beyond my comfort zone.
I refer to this state as “The Deep End” of life and I aspire to access this environment for as long and frequently as possible. Why? Because the opportunity it provides me for deep, paradigm shifting learning and growth is unrivalled.
I believe that over the long game of life — years and decades — this learning and growth compounds to create exponential value and results.
So far so good? Hopefully you can think of an experience in your own life where you have experienced the rich learnings from a dive way out of your comfort zone in the Deep End.
There’s one problem I have encountered with the Deep End, it is not actually where we capture our greatest learning and growth.
Let me explain further.
How We Learn: The Present and the Future
I believe our most significant learnings don’t actually arise when we are immersed in the present experience — but instead come long after, when we are intentionally reflecting back on our adventure in the Deep End. In my experience, 90% of my most valuable learning and growth comes through the act of pausing to reflect after the experience itself is over.
Had I not spent the time to intentionally sit down and think, reflect, journal, meditate and mentally deconstruct my experience – that learning and growth would remain trapped in my subconscious and eventually lost.
In a world that increasingly is too distracted, addicted to devices, ego driven, and without foundational framework or guide for living – we are losing sight of the art of learning.
Now let’s take a look at what we’ve learnt from the science.
Learning and The Conscious Brain
Our brain’s are incredible.
They are the reason we are here, standing upright, talking with others, and the dominant species on this planet. The brain has adapted and evolved over millions of years to help us thrive in this world.
Kevin Simlar and Robert Hanson, authors of “The Elephant in the Brain” make an argument that it is in fact this very ability to learn “post-experience” that has differentiated us from all other species on this planet. As we developed this capability hundreds of thousands of years ago to store and analyze past experiences we could update our set of actions to better optimize for survival. More on this shortly.
The facilitator of this capability for conscious thought and decision making is called our pre-frontal cortex (PFC). Whenever you are engaged in active thought — focusing on a new task, considering a set of decisions — this is your PFC at work. Unbeknownst to us, our brains have already done a lot of work in the milliseconds leading up to us forming a conscious thought. The main task is the parsing and prioritizing of millions of raw data points being collected by our brain via the brain stem at any given point in time. Before that conscious thought takes place our brain has already culled and stored 90% of the data it received and formatted the remaining 10% for our conscious processing in the PFC.
Here lies the gap.
When immersed in the present moment, we only have access to the information our brain deems most important to navigate the immediate decisions at hand.
This results in the “surface level” learnings and insights seen in the iceberg visual.
So, what happens to the 90% of information we don’t consciously get access to?
Accessing the Iceberg of our Subconscious
One of the most simple heuristics that has helped me understand how to access the iceberg of wisdom and knowledge hidden within our own subconscious mind is this:
As long as we are mentally preoccupied with an activity in the present, we cannot access our the iceberg of subconscious knowledge.
In other words, whether we are pursuing a goal in the Deep End of life, drowning in thoughts of stress and anxiety, or immediately jumping from one task to the next without pause — we are forgoing the opportunity to learn and grow from the depths of our subconscious.
Sidenote: Dr.Matthew Walker, author of “Why We Sleep” suggests that this also has a significant negative impact on our ability to fall asleep quickly and get deep restful sleep. By foregoing opportunities to pause and reflect throughout the day, our brain’s are forced to begin this activity just as we are laying our head down on the pillow.
Reflection & Inquiry
While we are only just beginning to understand the neuroscience of our brain’s processing of subconscious information, we have intuitively known the art of reflection tens of thousands of years how to access this information. The answer is simple and as a result is often overlooked.
Pause. Be still.
Quiet the mind.
Find Flow.
Rest. Recover.
Reflect. Inquire.
Slowing down, stillness, a quiet mind
A prerequisite to accessing the wisdom of our subconscious is the quieting of our conscious Pre Frontal Cortex powerhouse. This is one of the incredible benefits to breath-work, mindfulness meditation, and frankly any other activity that causes us to detach from our conscious thought — eg, going for a walk where you are simply focused on the awe of Mother Nature that surrounds you.
Non-Performance Flow States
Finding ‘Flow States’, or more specifically the act of being fully immersed and focused on a task that is intrinsically motivating, engaging, challenging and rewarding is another way to stimulate our subconscious processing. Inherently, Flow States are partially subconscious by nature (to access a Flow State you must have practiced the activity enough for our brain to have laid some “unconsciously competent” neural wiring) and don’t need to be performing a sport at an Olympic level. For example the walk described above (walking and general navigation being two of the activities with “unconsciously competent” wiring — can provide the right person with a Flow state). When it comes to using Flow States as a vehicle for subconscious processing I think it’s important to make the distinction between Performance Flow (intentionally using Flow to access a Peak Performance state) and Non-Performance Flow (fully immersed and engaged in an activity without the intention or requirement of Peak Performance).
Sleep
It turns out that REM sleep, occurring in the latter half of a full 7+ hour of sleep night (not to be confused with 7 hours in bed), is where our brains begin making ‘new’ connections between different streams of raw data that have been captured in the previous day. Compromise on sleep and you automatically lose this super hero power.
Reflection & Inquiry
Iceberg metaphor as it relates to conscious and unconscious learnings
There’s something about the iceberg metaphor that is staying on my mind. The most recent thought is the idea that every experience, adventure and journey we go on in life has the potential to represent significant learning and growth. Whether the outcome is good bad or ugly it actually doesn’t matter. As we walk through the experience we have access to the top half of the iceberg, the 10% of conscious learning that comes from the immediacy and present experience of whatever we’re going through. The problem, however is that it takes longer for our subconscious, which is capturing 90 to 95% of the information that we don’t consciously process to make sense of what we’re going through. This bottom half of the iceberg, the 90%, can only be accessed through intentional reflection, inquiry, And self reflection over time. When we choose to raise from one thing to the other, or to avoid the challenging self reflection that may come with failure, negative stories or deep scary vulnerabilities we lose and forfeit the opportunity to capture the 90% of growth and learning that we could otherwise apply to the long-term trajectory of our lives.
Where to from here?
If you want some help establishing your foundation, upon which you are able to jump into the Deep End, I would recommend taking some time completing this free Human Performance Assessment I have developed as part of the Human Performance Project.
Once your direction is set and you are up the High Dive or off into the Deep End, it’s important to build in intentional reflection time at different periods.
I founded The Human Performance Project to equip humans, teams, and groups with the roadmap and tools required to pursue audacious goals, dreams and aspirations in the Deep End of life.
You can learn more about this work here.
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