Valve and a Personal Manifesto

Seth Godin is a brilliant man whose blog I've been following for about 4 years. Every day around 3am a lovely little insightful email populates my inbox with ways to better myself, to change my outlook on life, to push the boundaries of what I think is possible, to take steps towards the job, career, life that I truly want.

From all of these hundreds of emails, a couple stand out...

The post that directed me to Anything You Want by Derek Sivers, an amazing and quick read about the creation and eventual sale of CD Baby and all of the lessons Derek learned along the way.

A great post about the difference between stupid and lazy.

A brief outline of how to demonstrate strength.

And the email I received today with a direct link to a PDF of the Valve Handbook for New Employees.

Valve is the software company that gave Half Life to the world. Now, I'm not even that big of a gamer, and I know about Half Life. In fact, I have a feeling almost any male between the ages of 14 and 50 would at least partially recognize this picture:

I don't know what the game is about. All I know is it's a first person shooter and is supposedly one of the greatest video games ever made in the history of ever.

Anyways, the Valve Handbook for New Employees is one of the most amazing things I have ever read in my life. As Seth Godin describes it, it is "about the post-industrial method of management." It describes the company as having a "flat structure" where everyone and anyone can work with anyone else, where there are no managers and no "boss", where desks are on wheels so they can be moved and organized into various cabals created to complete employee projects, where the customer truly is the boss.

It's inspiring. It's simple. It's honest. It's supremely complicated. It acknowledges the company's strengths and recognizes their weaknesses. It's totally serious. It is the butt of its own joke.

It is dependent on a singular belief that better people make a better company... that "hiring is more important than oxygen".

Please read it because anything I have written here has not done it justice.

It gives me hope for the future... because if one company can do it this way... why not more?

Why not... EVERY company...?

I'm certainly set in a lot of my own ways, ways that have been borne out of 30 some odd years of repetition, ways that are deficient and that are begging to be changed.

The Valve Handbook is now part of my personal manifesto to initiate and perpetuate change within myself. Change for the better. Not just for me, but for my wife, for my son, for my family, for my friends.

Remember this feeling, Glynn. It is not sappy (it's totally sappy). It is (hopefully) not fleeting. It is important enough to hold on to... Read: "so important that you should never let it go."

A Personal Manifesto:

Every day I will strive to go to sleep a better person than when I woke up in the morning.

And...

GO

Email to Bob Lefsetz

Sent today after I read this post:

Great advice in the Shannon Labrie email. Thanks for getting back to music. Although I don't really mind the digressions. This newsletter/ blog is your world, and we're just living in it. People forget sometimes that if you don't like something, you can CHANGE THE CHANNEL.

Not sure if you listen to sports radio at all, but Colin Cowherd had some interesting thoughts on his ESPN radio show this morning (AM710 from 7-10am if you're curious). He said there might be a direct connection between socially vicious personalities like Steve Jobs, Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant and achieving success. That the reason people perceive them as so brutal is because they are. Brutally honest. Brutally motivated. Brutally SUCCESSFUL. There's a reason Kobe has 5 rings and Lebron doesn't have any. A reason Tiger Woods was number 1 in the world for 9 out of 11 years and Phil Mickelson is often relegated to an afterthought. A reason Steve Jobs will be remembered as one of the most pioneering minds in history and Bill Gates will be remembered as... well... he's really rich, right? All three men have a refusal to compromise and brutal natures when it comes to delivering.

What he was saying reminded me of stuff you've said about rockstars. They live their lives beholden to nothing and no one. They live for their music to the point of alienating everyone and everything. It's not a popularity contest. It's about delivering what they hear in their heads no matter the cost. Go big or go home. If you want a balanced life, you shoulda gone into customer service (interestingly enough, where I am right now), but you wouldn't be playing to those sold out houses if you'd gone that route, now would you?

So many parallels between sports and music. I guess that's why I love both so much.

A lot of parallels between you and Seth Godin, too. And Derek Sivers. And Austin Kleon. Guess that's why I follow all of you on Twitter.

Damn... is there anything more pathetic than a newsletter subscriber name dropping people he only knows through their newsletters...?

And... scene...

Tribes

Village. Community. In crowd. Movement. Tribe.

If you get it, you get it. The unspoken rules, niche references, common language, dos and don’ts…

You need to earn your place amongst the tribe. It takes effort and time and shared experiences to truly belong. And even though each person’s experiences are singularly their own, as a part of a tribe, each personal experience is framed within a common experience…

I enjoy (most of the time) membership in the following tribes:

-          Parent
-          Husband
-          Musician
-          Golfer
-          Theater Kid   
-          Runner
-          iPhone User
-          Youngest Kid in the Family
-          Laid Off at the End of 2008

Each and every one of these tribes has their own customs and language and rules. Some you can join later in life, some you join due to circumstance, some you can actually choose to leave.

Seth Godin has written a book about tribes. I haven't read it. Womp womp womp...


But inherently we all know about the importance of tribes and their subconscious effects on our behavior.


Doesn't mean I shouldn't read the book, though...

An Artist Ships

Oh, Seth Godin.  Your book Linchpin is ruling my life right now.

"An artist ships."

This idea seems simple enough.  It could be a DUH statement.  Not a difficult concept to wrap your head around.

But then you analyze it a little bit more.  "An artist ships."  Okay, so what does that mean, exactly?  Are you not an artist if you don't ship?  Is shipping the most important part of being an artist?  Do the shipments need to be successful or does the mere act of shipping denote success?  Does the fact that I use multi-syllabic words and the Socratic Method expose me as an intellectual who enjoys the sight of his own typing...?

"An artist ships."  You devise a project, set a deadline, initiate, tweak, analyze, tweak, retool, finish, and ship.  Regardless of whether it's a success or a failure (and in reality, doesn't everything that we do contain varying degrees of success and failure?), you are an artist.  Once you finish the project, you are no longer on the sidelines.  You are a part of the game.  People read your business book and decide whether or not the ideas and arguments are valid.  Web-surfers peruse your blog and subscribe or hit the back button, relegating it to internet anonymity.  Forward thinkers mentally ingest your manifesto and spread it like a virus throughout their tribes or leave it to die a slow and forgettable death.  Audiophiles listen to your song and rush to download the mp3 or flame you on twitter.

"An artist ships."  And learns.  What works, what doesn't work, how to do it more efficiently, where her weaknesses are, what strengths she can depend on, what ultimately leaves her fulfilled and proud and chomping at the bit to ship again.

"An artist ships."  Duuuhhhhhhh...

I'll be shipping with Oh Girl next Monday night.  And I can't wait to be an artist again...

Uncomfortable is probably a good thing

"I have lots of comfortable songs.  It's time to write some uncomfortable ones." -glynngm

If you're an artist, comfort zones suck.  Comfort zones mean you're relying on that which has already been done which means it's not as difficult to digest which means it's easier to ignore.  And if you're creating art that's easily ignored you might as well be making pancakes or baking cookies or writing a blog.

Seth Godin's latest book, Linchpin, has been challenging my thinking lately.  It contends that we all have the capability to be artists during our everyday lives and that being an artist means doing emotional labor as opposed to the busy work and manual labor that most of us fill our lives with.  The book covers way too many topics to try and even begin to summarize here, but I will say that one of the overall themes of the book relates to comfort zones and becoming complacent. Many of us have become complacent.  We have a job that we're not in love with, but it pays the bills and is easy enough to show up for so why worry about it?  Why challenge the status quo and take it upon ourselves to figure out a different path?  Why not just show up everyday, do what you're told, make a serviceable effort, be a cog in the machine, regurgitate a ready-made message, and collect a day's pay for a day's work?

I've been complacent for most of my life.  But Seth Godin's Linchpin is urging me to make moves and take advantage of opportunities and push boundaries and step outside of my comfort zones.  Because I don't want to just be a lemming anymore.  I have so much more to give and the desire to create art and share art and tell stories and perform emotional labor and go down a different path and work and fight tooth and nail for the life that I know I deserve.  We all have these desires and we all have the abilities to do it.  We just need to step outside of our comfort zones...

Now I need to go get to work on those uncomfortable songs...