Andy Lykens

Innovating and operating through growth

Send another email

by

It’s important to you, this message you’ve crafted. The attention you want.

You’ve thought about just the right thing to say – it isn’t too long, or too short.

The timing has to be right, because the data shows that the best time to send an email is at 4am on Tuesday. Of course only suckers do that because everyone is sending their email at that time – so you’ll do it Wednesday.

Sending this email is work. It’s productivity. It’s marketing. It means you’ll be busier, and busier means you’re doing your job well.

The email is saying “there, I tried – I thought a lot about it too. I did it at the time I was supposed to, at just the right length. Just like everyone does.”

So you click send. And then you wait.

You wait because you don’t know the person on the other side or what they care about. But I’ll give you a hint: it probably isn’t getting more email from strangers.

Overlooked

by

It’s easy to feel unappreciated and overlooked. For all the talk about teamwork and collaboration, most people, most of the time, are not thinking about you (to test this ask yourself: “am I thinking about them?”). This isn’t their fault.

They’re thinking about all the tasks they have to do to move a project forward, to take care of things at home, to improve themselves. So unless what you’re doing greatly improves or severely limits the chance of one of their things, your thing will probably go unnoticed.

But it doesn’t have to.

You’re allowed to ask for help when you need it. You can propose a different solution. You can make it clear that your needs aren’t being met and then suggest a way to change that.

If you decide to do that, have a plan and be ready to sell it. Make sure your thing becomes aligned with their thing, and definitely be ready to raise your hand, discuss it, and compromise.

In the end, the only person responsible for you being overlooked is you. What are you going to do about it?

Luck and shortcuts

by

Between the origin and the destination, shortcuts are an oasis in the desert. They’re a sleight of hand. A prestige.

Luck is a tailwind. It’s a cloud when the sun is hottest. A mist when the climate is driest.

When you take shortcuts, you wind up needing to start over again and retracing steps. Shortcuts require you alter your course. They’re a distraction from the end goal.

When luck shows up, it enhances what you’re already doing. It’s encouragement to keep moving boldly ahead. It’s unexpected and welcome.

Neither luck nor shortcuts are dependable.

When you set out to do something, it’s not so crazy to believe you might get lucky, but watch out for shortcuts.

Speed or mastery?

by

“Wow, that is fast,” people say, marveling at the effortless ability to solve a problem.

“That took me 20 years,” thinks the master, who has spent her whole career learning, growing, and caring enough to be good at this thing.

When you see someone who makes something difficult look easy, that’s mastery. When you see someone acting fast and then dealing with the consequences, that’s speed.

It’s easy to confuse the two, but it’s critical that you don’t.

Editing

by

As soon as we learn our first words we start telling stories. We tell stories to our families, our friends, and to strangers. We tell stories to ourselves.

The stories come in all shapes and sizes: short, long, fast, slow, tense, funny, sad, and on and on.

Stories can create connections and end relationships. They can build start-ups, get dogs adopted, or inspire a congregation. Stories can pass the time or pass on legacy.

Stories can be planted in peoples’ minds and they can grow there, for better or worse.

It’s worth considering what stories are planted in your mind and whether or not they’re helping you. You may not always be the original author of those stories, but you are certainly the editor and you decide what goes to print. So how a story got planted and what it says isn’t really the point, the point is that it’s relatively easy to make useful edits — a first step in giving yourself a happier ending.

The opportunity

by

The opportunity that you’re imagining has parameters that all fit your life at the right time, in the right place, for the exact right amount.

You expect it to be obvious; a no-brainer that allows you to keep being the same person tomorrow as you are today: a house in the right neighborhood that’s the right size, a job like the one we have now but with a bigger paycheck and a better boss, a business idea that’s so unique and so compelling, it’s a guaranteed success.

So when we look for opportunity we have this tunnel vision, and rather than recognizing that we are limiting our field of vision to a perfect situation (one that is unlikely to ever come along), we think there just aren’t any opportunities.

But the problem isn’t lack of opportunity, the problem is that the opportunities available to you don’t look exactly like what you expect.

The house is a little small or stretches our finances, that job means relocating and a long distance relationship, that business idea means just being the most customer-centric veterinarian.

That’s why it’s hard to buy low and sell high. That’s why it’s hard to time the housing market. That’s why your career change is stalled. Because in order to do those things, you have to do something that is different from your expectations.

Seeing opportunity requires us to be flexible, to pay attention to adjacent disciplines, to talk to someone different, to behave in new ways, to be a little uncomfortable, to shine the light of our unique perspective in different directions. If we can do that, we open our aperture and can see that opportunities are everywhere.

The best part is that my opportunity isn’t yours. You’re different than me. We know different people. We see different things and we are moving through life in different stages. We have different experiences seen through different lenses and are comfortable with different degrees of risk.

When we look for an opportunity to help, to build, or to grow, we use all of these differences to be able to identify an opportunity and understand what it means for us.

So when an opportunity presents itself, know that it won’t be exactly what you’re looking for at exactly the right time. But pay attention to the ones you notice, they might be trying to tell you something.