Thread by @mbushong

Early in my leadership career, I used to mentor a lot of people, primarily on specific skills. Everyone wanted to know tips of the trade, so to speak. How to get ahead, that kind of thing.

The conversations would gravitate towards things like market analysis and random product-managementy strategic lessons that approximated a mini-MBA. For the most part, these seemed impactful.

But when people ask me about the formative moments in my career, I actually rarely look back on some lesson I learned from a mentor-turned-professor. These tools are helpful. They might even be difference-making on the job, but rarely are they transformative in life.

And I am struck these days not by the skills that people I try to help have (or don’t have). Rather, I notice how little they understand the things that drive them.

I don’t mean “drive” in the basic sense. People understand the concepts of autonomy, mastery, purpose, etc. But when I ask people to articulate what really drives them, the answers are pretty uniform.

More often than not, people wind up at some variation of “more”. They can’t quite explain what they want, but they know they want more. More title, more money, more responsibility, more impact, more power…just more.

I suspect this is not that uncommon for highly competitive people. It’s why gamification is everywhere. This dynamic is particularly horrendous in Silicon Valley. I can’t defend why but my hunch is that this is at least a contributing factor to the dysfunctional culture in tech.

The problem with more is that there is no end. When you get more, you still want more. It’s like going on a long run that never quite ends. You never get a moment to celebrate. There is no satisfaction. And you are always in a hurry to whatever is next.

As a side, this is why we moved away from the Bay Area. Left to my own devices, I am among the worst offenders in getting sucked in. For me, it wasn’t enough to change jobs. I had to change locations. Else I’d have competed in a game I didn’t care about with ppl I didn’t know...

…playing by rules I didn’t set, going after rewards I didn’t actually care about…all at the expense of the one thing I do want but would never prioritize if I didn’t force myself to. I am ridiculously unhealthy in my OCD-like pursuit of completion...

...(a particularly toxic trait when completion is impossible).

Anyway, when I talk to ppl these days, the best I can do to help them navigate their careers is to encourage ppl to find ways to understand what truly drives them. As simple as this sounds, I have met very few ppl who really know and can articulate it with specificity.

For me, in case people care, the answer is disproportionate impact. I will work on crappy projects through painful processes in brutal cultures despite lower pay and no respect if only to have more than my fair share of impact. I can elaborate more but yawn. Who cares?

So I tell ppl these days to do one thing. Talk to a close family member or friend, and ask one question: In my career, what makes me happy?

Don’t lead the witness. You’re only allowed to say “tell me more” from there.

The only thing the person do is reflect what they hear from you basically. Close partners are reflective surfaces. After even a short while of doing this, you will get a pretty decent readout.

And if you can learn what actually motivates you, I’d bet you a dollar it will have a greater impact on your career trajectory than any pseudo-MBA mentoring or book list. It’s harder to get to, and certainly harder to coach, than a list of good reads.

But when I talk to people at a company, the biggest red flag for me is “more”. It derails careers. It muddies thought processes. And it poisons teams. Not because more shouldn’t happen but because more isn’t a sufficient reason for doing most things (cookie dough notwithstanding)

And getting this right is super hard. I am very introspective and probably at least slightly above average in terms of being self aware. It took me almost a year of off-and-on dedicated thinking to really get it to the point that I could articulate it to someone else.

But if you don’t want to wait a year, just read some good books I guess. Switch (Heath bros), Drive (Pink) and Strategy Paradox (Raynor) are pretty good.

They might help you get promoted. They just won’t help make you whole :)

I started this thread because I just watched the end of Narcos. The culture in the cartels doesn’t look that different to Silicon Valley. Lives of excess ruined by the constant pursuit of “more” without any real reason.

And the moral ambiguity that accompanies such a pursuit, while manifesting in different ways, seems like something to avoid. So stop chasing “more”.

As it relates to this thread, somewhat intentionally, there is no “more” to chase. Fin.