My aspirational anchor -- what's yours?

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I wrote and rewrote and re-rewrote this post about a thousand times. How the heck do you summarize why you do what you do to people who, in most cases, have never met you? And what do you say to people that they’ll appreciate in the moment, while also feeling invested enough in the cause to stick around and explore more of your work over time?

I tried writing a story or two about creativity in the workplace. (You'll find I do that often.)

I tried using a big metaphor to describe the work. (I do that often too.)

I even tried recording a quick video before my beagle pup interrupted by dog-screaming at a squirrel outside my office window. (One more time for the people in the back: OFTEN.)

Then, as always, I came back to the core reason I started to do this work, to critique and teach and push and prod. See, I’m happiest when I’m creating things born of anger, of feeling like the status quo or best practice is drowning out what SHOULD be the point of our work. This core reason that I do this work is something I call an aspirational anchor.

The aspirational anchor is a concept from my first book, Break the Wheel: Question Best Practices, Hone Your Intuition, and Do Your Best Work. Whereas a goal describes the future WHAT and WHEN -- a mile marker for your work (or kilometer marker, for my non-American friends) — an aspirational anchor forces us to think hard about the HOW and the WHY. What's the change we want to see in ourselves, in our organizations, in the world? How does that vision for a world that doesn’t exist affect our behavior in the world that does? What unique things do we as individuals have to offer to reach towards that aspiration?

An aspirational anchor combines two powerful things that are unique to your situation and therefore can only come from self-awareness (i.e. testing and reflection), not someone else’s “best practice.” Those two unique things are your intent (your desire for the future) and your hunger (some kind of dissatisfaction with the status quo). Combining the two helps you arrive one step closer to your aspirational anchor.

My intent for the future is for more people to reach first principles about conventional thinking, to realize that the world was built by others no smarter or more capable than them. I want people to see “best practices” for what they really are: average approaches, things that work in general … but we do not operate in a generality. The variables of our own situations — not least of which is US — provide the clues we most need to do exceptional work. In fact, exceptional work is only achieved when we find and follow what makes us an exception.

That’s my intent for the future: For more people to start with their own self- and situational-awareness (i.e. their context) than the “best practice.” I’m at war with conventional thinking.

As for my hunger? It stems from this era we’re living through. If this is the Information Age, then we’re now experiencing the dark side of the Information Age: advice overload. The working world is flooding with answers, ideas, and people who believe their approach is correct for you. I’m frustrated by how many exist, but I’m even more frustrated by our willingness to trust them. The thing is, it makes sense. In Break the Wheel, I explored the science and the cultural forces that cause us to push aside our own self- and situational-awareness and to instead look for our answers “out there.” We’re taught there’s a right and a wrong answer in school, and now we approach every situation in our work — no matter how complex the task or ever-changing the context. And with infinite “right answers” available, we can retreat to the average.

My dissatisfaction arose from a decade working in marketing, where every marketer tried to push their own agenda as the right way to do marketing … and too many people lapsed into seeking a shortcut, hack, cheat, or listified set of steps to follow. The result is conformity instead of uniqueness, compliant teams over innovative teams, commodity projects over resonant ones, and average work over exceptional.

My intent for the future: Start from within.

My dissatisfaction with today: There’s just so much average work, and I believe the culprit is an over-reliance on “best practices.”

My aspirational anchor: I want to create a world where every human being feels intrinsically motivated by the work they do.

When we are intrinsically motivated, we become moment-oriented, seeking enjoyment in the here and now. We focus on the process, not the results. We look for answers within ourselves and our own situations, instead of blindly following the apparent “best practice.” In this focus on the process, instead of results, as a byproduct, we then see better results.

The opposite is something called "telic" work. Telic means ending-oriented, or "done to a definite end." Telic work feels like a chore. We'd rather blink our eyes and just be done with it already, so we skip it, delay it, and address it only once it feels too stressful to ignore any longer. We look to outsource it. We focus on the bottom-dollar solution, the lowest-common denominator idea, and of course, we fall victim to the hacks and cheats and get-results-quick schemes pouring onto the internet by the second. And why?

Because we just want the result already.

The problem is, doing the work isn't about reaching future destinations. Our careers aren't vehicles to achieve an outcome. They're just constant motion forward, constantly building our body of work. That's all this stuff really is when you stop to think about it. It's all just the means. We never really reach the ends. The only finish line is the big one, and who knows when that will hit us? But make no mistake, we all reach that one. So we may as well get back to focusing on what feels intrinsically motivating to us. Not only does that feel somewhat more noble, that's all our work really is.

For us, the process of doing the work is its own reward. That's why we do this stuff -- you, me, others on this list. We want to find intrinsic motivation, because when we do, we know we'll naturally become more creative. We'll naturally get better. We'll become service-minded to those around us. We'll regain a sense of wonder at the world, and yes, we'll get better results. See, when something is intrinsically motivating, unlike a chore, we seek it out more, and we seek to improve it. Constantly.

This is my aspirational anchor, to create a world where every human being feels intrinsically motivated by the work they do. How does this change my behavior? I tell stories about work, bringing the full spectrum of emotions to those tales, because we should experience every emotion in our work. I want to bring what Anthony Bourdain did in his stories about food, travel, and culture into the B2B world. (Business and career content tends to be too transactional, dry, and predictable.) So I give keynotes. I write books. I host and produce docuseries about creativity at work, and I teach marketers to make better original series, to provide better experiences to the world, in order to serve their audiences better.

I know I'll never actually see a world where every single person finds intrinsic motivation in the work, but that's the point. There is no reaching the mountain peak, ever. There is only the constant swinging of my machete, hacking away at the jungle between here and there.

Each email I share with my subscribers and each thing I create are more swings I'm taking, sometimes small, sometimes big, but always in service to the same aspirational anchor.

By the way, everything I've just said so far means I won't ever try to give you a path you can take to skip the work of hacking through the jungle yourself. That's the "one simple solution" mindset, the telic approach, that I simply don't believe in nor embrace. However, I would like to help you identify your own mountain peak. I do want to inspire you to pick up your own machete and start swinging. I am focused on sharpening your tools for the journey and on helping you find joy in your process.

Success for me means that, in the middle of both of us swinging away, I look over to see you smiling wide, dirt and leaves and sweat flying all around your face. You don't care. You just love swinging away.

THAT is a world worth creating with the work I do.

Okay, I better get back to it. Don't misunderstand though: It's not because writing this is delaying my progress. It's just that, if I'm being honest, I just love swinging away.

PS: You can also learn more about aspirational anchors right here. It’s also something I explored in my book through science and story. You can buy it on Amazon.

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