My milkshake brings all the orgs to the yard

Photo by Telly Mina.

Depending on where you live, you may be in one of many phases of the bubble tea trend. From "what's bubble tea?" all the way through to "how are there four bubble tea spots on the same corner and all managing to stay in business?"

Here in Toronto, we're about three years into peak boba. A few years ago, the city tweens were all at Starbucks. Then they traded their Frappuccinos for tapioca.

As parents of an almost 13-year-old, we are acutely aware of just how many bubble tea joints have opened in the city. Because any time our tween has sight-lines on one, we begin a multi-way negotiation about whether we can go. Parents are usually on one side and kids are on the other.

The thing is, the 7-year-old doesn't even like boba. But she does like her older sister. So she ends up advocating for bubble tea, cheering when we acquiesce. And then having precisely one sip of the $8 beverage before declaring, "I think I ordered wrong."

This weekend, we were running errands with the 7-year-old. About a half hour into errands, kiddo says, "I'm thirsty. I'm very thirsty." OK, we can find water. Kiddo doesn't want water. Kiddo is curious about the bubble tea shop she knows is nearby. She knows it is nearby because the last time we were in the area, she helped her sister successfully steer us all there. But her sister isn't around. And, did we mention the kid has never in her entire life enjoyed one? We try reason. We try offering some other beverage when we get home. How about a nice hot cocoa? Kid is not budging.

We make our way to the bubble tea shop, and after several rounds of "are you sure?" and "will you actually drink it?" the kid orders a strawberry milk tea and hands two weeks of allowance to the cashier. We get in the car, she has two sips and says, "I don't think boba is my thing."

Now at this point, the silent scream is at full blast. But modern parenting means you can't say those things out loud. So instead we say, "It's OK for it to be your big sister's thing without it being your thing, too."

If all your friends were drinking tea

This is the siren song of younger siblings. Where you're staring at someone else's overly complicated milkshake and it looks appealing. But then you finally get it and it disappoints.

This same select all/copy/paste approach is also appealing for orgs. And the annoying part is that sometimes it works. Sometimes we need to solve a thorny, but well-understood problem. We look around and find other companies or teams who have solved something similar. And we make a few minor adjustments and implement our own version and it just goes.

Other times, we're hammering out core things. Like values, or strategy, or goals, or whether we need to conduct a layoff. And for those things it doesn't work to look around and copy what everyone else is doing. But that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of orgs out there trying.

There's a whole content industry devoted to this approach. Pages and pages of pre-populated OKRs. Corporate values documents you can search-and-replace. And we guarantee that there are already managers out there using ChatGPT to write their annual goals.

That's not so surprising. It's a complex economy coming on the tail end of a complicated couple of years. Hard to fault the humans and organizations that are rushing toward clarity anywhere they can find it. Even if it's in someone else's playbook. That rush can often get us to beautifully articulated values or goals or strategies. That, fundamentally, we don't give a shit about.

A hell of a sentence

There are a lot of ways to be a great leader, but the best we've worked with all have some version of the same superpower. It's an awareness and behaviour that they intentionally cultivate. And while it doesn't single-handedly make you a great leader, we've never met a great leader without it. They use different words to describe it, different processes for maintaining it, but the idea is the same: they know what matters to them, and they align their actions around it.

This is surprisingly rare. We've worked with leaders who have been at it for decades and are no closer to mastery on this point. Honestly, work doesn't even directly reward you for it, at least in the near term. You can build an apparently successful career keeping your head down and making your own boss happy and doing work you don't care about at all.

Doing the other thing is much harder. You might feel like you already know what matters to you, but ask any therapist how many people get it right on their first try. Bosses are people, and most people come with baggage, and assumptions, and limiting beliefs that need some untangling before we can get to the good stuff. We don't always know what matters and, even when we do, our actions are rarely aligned out the gate.

Even in a purely work context, there is just so. much. noise. Noise that seems designed to mess up your sense of what matters. Noise from customers or would-be customers if you would just change one thing. Distraction caused by organizational political nonsense. Conflicting messages from your own boss or board members. Sometimes those things matter a lot. Sometimes they absolutely do not. Figuring out which is which isn't easy or obvious.

"I know what matters, and align my actions around that," is a hell of a sentence. Both for individual bosses, and for organizations as a whole. But it's very hard to get to that place, and it takes continuous work to stay there. So if you can just copy someone else's content that sounds good, why not coast?

What if bubble tea is not your thing?

We can't convince you to do the hard work if you don't want to. We wouldn't try. But we can point you to what you already know. Which is that working on things you don't care about doesn't feel great. Obviously people need to eat and take care of their loved ones and from that place sometimes you don't get to choose how you make money. But also Maslow's Hierarchy is bullshit, and self-actualization and integrity are valid things to care about, regardless of your food budget.

Someone else's goals might be eloquently written, but that doesn't mean they matter to you. Someone else's values statement might seem so clear-eyed and attractive, but that doesn't make it yours. ChatGPT can write you some values, or OKRs, or a new Nick Cave song, but it will all probably also be bullshit.

We know. We're getting pretty metaphysical about the whole bubble tea thing. But one of the most powerful signals in our own work has been when we felt out of integrity with ourselves. When we made choices that pushed us off of what mattered. Those things don't go away. They gnaw. And changing your goals-tracking framework never ever fixes them.

So here's our attempt to pull it back out of the metaphysical and into the Practical Tips. Notice. Notice the work you actively resent being on your plate. Or the elements of your culture that don't feel good. Notice the misalignment, the parts you have to compartmentalize or explain away. If you're someone who journals, see what finishes the sentence, "It might work for other orgs, but it doesn't feel right that we..."

Whatever comes next is what Nick Cave calls the authentic creative struggle. And it's a hell of a lot more interesting than copying someone else's boba order.

- Melissa and Johnathan