Category: Volume 7

Hello Amazing!

Even before Covid-19 closed down most of the world, our work and lives in general are increasingly mediated through technology. I spend as much time looking at my friends’ lives on Instagram or sending text messages or talking over FaceTime as I spend in company of my friends physically, it’s just chopped up into many little moments of scrolling and liking and replying. The same was also close to true for my work: even while working in an office, many client meetings were held virtually as well as meetings between offices on different costs. The Covid-19 pandemic has further accelerated this trend.

I’m finding that one of the most important things for me is to really double down on the deeply human qualities:

1/ I have enjoyed going for extended walks outside with a new friend and coworker in my ears, having what we at Implement call REAL conversations.
2/ I also enjoy not doing screen sharing and instead opting for fewer and simpler slides that I draw by hand and hold up to the camera. It makes it feel so much more intuitive for me to present virtually and I can feel the audience much better.
3/ And lastly I enjoy facilitating reflection, especially when I manage to get a group of people together like I did recently with Janus Boye. There is something so beautiful and simple about a group of strangers coming together to process and share their experiences in life.

As always, if there is any way I can help you get started (or go further) with REAL conversations, drawing slides by hand or facilitating reflection, I would be honored help you. Just get in touch via WhatsApp on +4522212355 (my e-mail is a mess). It’s my humble attempt to share what has helped me the most.

With much love

— Mathias

Hello amazing!

The Corona-pandemic has upended lives everywhere. At first I felt a great loss and sense of disappointment. We just moved to Copenhagen to be closer to family, not to be isolated at home. Then adjusting to work from home with kids running around. 

It’s still a major challenge, and I’m not here to peddle a quick-fix or “seven magic tricks.” However, there’s one thing I’ve kept returning to and that’s the shift I’ve tried to illustrate below in the Cynefin framework.

Before the crisis a large part of our world seemed to behave in ways that were complicated. This meant that with the right expertise, analysis and planning we could reasonably predict the relationship between cause and effect.

But now we are in a completely new territory: it’s complex. There are feedback loops which behave in unpredictable ways. And what the Cynefin framework teaches us is that to succeed in the complex domain we need to probe the system with intent and observe the reaction before we probe again. 

For me, the single most helpful thing I’ve done throughout the past decade, especially when navigating new territory, is reflection with pen and paper. It helps me process my experiences and emotions and surface insights that I can use. It’s not a magic quick-fix and it requires effort. But it helps in small and important ways. 

If you would like to get started with reflection and begin building a habit, I would be honored help you. Just get in touch via WhatsApp on +4522212355 (my e-mail is a mess). It’s my humble attempt to share freely what has helped me the most. I also plan to record a few guided reflections (like a guided meditation) and share as a podcast. 

I hope you’ll mostly keep up the good spirits (and be kind and gently with yourself when you can’t) 

With much love  

— Mathias

Hello amazing!
It’s been a while since I last wrote a new Think Clearly newsletter. One month ago we moved from Brooklyn to Copenhagen and I’ve started a new job with Implement Consulting Group which is very exciting. Yesterday I was in my first delivery, in a workshop with a leadership team and we talked about the matrix above. In a changing world, incumbent companies are at great risk of drifting gradually from the top left towards the top right: you keep on doing what you do well, even if it’s less relevant. It’s also easy for incumbent firms to dismiss a startup, since many successful startups initially obsess over being in the left column, even if they are in the bottom left. Chances are that they will learn and move upward. Lastly, I thought about it on an individual level, as I am new in this job. I’m trying to remind myself that if I want to do the right things well, I need to first be open to what the right things are, instead of sticking with my experience and just doing what I do well. 

What insights does this 2×2 give you in your current situation? Where are you? Which direction are you trying to move? 

Also, if you are in or near Copenhagen and would like to grab coffee, please let me know. 

With much love  

— Mathias

Hello amazing!
I love reminding other people how real learning can be quite hard while I tend to believe that this somehow doesn’t apply to me, only to be shocked when it’s suddenly my turn. Alas, the past months have been challenging. This is what I’ve learned about myself: for most of the past decade I have shown up in life as an artist, meaning: regardless of the situation or moment I’ve generally done whatever I wanted to do. It’s a bit like going to class, pretending that all classes are art classes, but lately I’ve found myself in situations where the expectations of me are different. Now I gotta figure out what each moment is actually about ahead of time, and make sure I do the right homework for it. 

How do you know what your ‘homework’ is in each moment? 

With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
Two weeks ago I wrote about ‘being dangerous’—a topic that is still swirling around my head. One reader pointed out that it might actually not be about intent, but also if someone perceives your interest to be aligned or unaligned to their own. For example, if you have good intent, for example when creating change in the world, but your interests go against someone else’s (the people who want to preserve what is) then they will still view you as dangerous. Thanks for pushing my thinking.
—
For today I’ve been further exploring what dangerous actually looks like under different circumstances. For example, in a lawful society most physical violence and threats of violence are forbidden, and it’s hard to get away with, at least in the long run. For most of us it’s an effective deterrence. But lawful society doesn’t cover all aspects. What about the small slights? Someone taking credit for your work or trying to plant harmful rumors about you in the workplace? The little things that are hard to catch, and that someone might be able to get away with?
—
I struggle to write about this because it goes against my desire to believe deeply in the goodness and generosity of every person. Is this belief deeply naive? If you have built a strong and trusted network through generosity, and these people watch your back, I wonder if that is actually as good a deterrence as one can get. Or maybe I’m just suffering from pronoia—the delusion that other people are plotting my wellbeing being my back.
—
Please, share your thoughts on the above with me. It might take me a moment to get back to you, but I will.
—
With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
She said “You are dangerous! This man is dangerous!” I could see the terror in her eyes. She was afraid of me. She wasn’t kidding. She was a participant in one of the Digital Acceleration Master Classes I used to facilitate when I worked at Hyper Island, and something I had said had frightened her. I didn’t know exactly what it was that I had said that had upset her so much. My guess is that it was in the way I was advocating for more openness and transparency. Never before had I experienced someone reacting this way. In her eyes I saw myself reflected as a dangerous monster—not a pleasant sight for someone who is used to seeing a friendly, warm and gentle man in the mirror. Someone with his heart in the right place. It had not occurred to me that anyone could perceive me as being dangerous. And it has taken me nearly four years to come around to this idea and I’m still only beginning to see how it fits with my worldview and sense of self. that’s why this issue is a bit longer and more open ended than usual.
—
The way I see it currently is that there are two fundamental choices. The first choice is if you intend to do good or evil. The second choice is how much power you seek to have. Becoming powerful, however, is not an instant choice. You have to keep at it consistently over time. Every day you can choose to try to become more powerful or less powerful. Once you become powerful it seems to stick. Once you learn to shoot a gun, to yield a sword, to speak persuasively or to hack into a secret database, your skills won’t just go away. The trouble is that your first choice is less stable. Today you might intend to be good. But what happens if someone harms you or your family? Can you be sure that you won’t suddenly decide to use your accumulated power to seek revenge? You can’t be competent without also being dangerous. But with such capacity for evil, might it be better to avoid power and remain harmless? I don’t think so, yet I wonder if there is an upper limit on how powerful one should become.
—
What do you think? Are you willing to be dangerous?
—
With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
In the past few years I’ve felt my social influence to be waning. I get less likes on Instagram than ever before. On LinkedIn and Facebook it’s near zero, so I’ve just stopped using these. My newsletter audience has been stagnant for years. I don’t like to admit it, but this stuff bothers me.
However, a few weeks ago the danish-american author Lars AP, known for his creation of the ‘Fucking Friendly’ movement came to visit. And as we talked it occurred to me that I find it so much more satisfying to have a single mutually inspiring conversation, than any number of likes or clicks. It also made me re-think how I consider my actual ‘reach’—if I can be a source of inspiration for people who reach millions, perhaps that’s enough. How do you think about reach and influence? And what’s most important to you?
With much love

— Mathias

p.s. if you are in Europe, I’ll be speaking at the Digital Leadership Conference in Aarhus, Denmark (my hometown)—and let me know if you’re interested in attending

Hello Amazing!
I’ve been fascinated with feedback for a long time. Why most people (incl. myself) do it so rarely, how it works, how it feels, and how it might be better. Most recently it occurred to me that as I listen to someone giving me valuable feedback, I’m constantly worried about what they might say next, while secretly hoping to hear something super positive. In preparation for a feedback session I tried to write these things down in advance: 

1) What I was hoping to hear (I was in a tough moment, unsure of myself and my contribution and was really hoping to hear some positive validation)
2) What I realistically could expect to hear (I know I haven’t been very proactive lately, so I could easily expect to hear that, which made it less scary) 
3) What I was trying to understand. 

How do you prepare yourself to give and get feedback? 

With much love  — Mathias

Hello Amazing!
I’m not against smartphones or technology in general, but I find the habit-making trigger—action—reward feedback loop to be much too powerful to control. My willpower just isn’t strong enough to resist the constant temptation of quickly checking my phone, and thus I found myself looking at it for hours every day. Until I had enough. I added a 35-digit password to unlock my phone. This is a huge obstacle! Whenever I’m triggered to look at my phone and see the prompt I usually just give up and put it away again. It’s annoying. And that’s the point. The effect is that I’ve broken habit that I found undesirable. What habits do you have, that are undesirable to you, and how might you interject an obstacle to help break it? 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
I used to worry about finding the right idea, so that I wouldn’t waste effort on executing the wrong thing. Then I learned that I could minimize the risk of going with the wrong idea by executing really fast (many of my projects were birthed this way). But in my work at SYPartners I’m learning a third path: we pick the best idea that we have (even it it might not be perfect) and then we execute it really really really well. When we show it to our client, new ideas inevitably come up, but it turns out the execution isn’t wasted. A surprisingly large amount of it can be re-used, because it was executed well. I’m trying to apply the same method to my book writing as I’m working with my editor Helen. The book we have agreed to write together right now might not be right. But writing it well will (hopefully) help in the same way.  
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
I am a huge believer in personal projects (this newsletter is my favorite example of one of my own). I’ve gotten a lot of constructive feedback on my work, which has helped me improve the quality. Feedback is seen mostly as a universal good. However, when it comes to personal projects I have also found that feedback can have a significant cost in terms of depressing my motivation, which is the only energy that drives the project forward. For example I recently asked for constructive feedback on my podcast from someone and while their points were all valid, the most immediate effect was that I stopped recording altogether. My motivation was already fragile and I think asking for feedback in that moment was a mistake because it took out the last bit of motivation. I beleive this is a general point when it comes to asking for feedback on your personal projects: no matter how valuable the feedback is it won’t matter if it it kills the energy that moved your project forward. So when someone suggests that you should ask for more feedback, first take stock at your motivation and ask yourself: can I afford the associated loss of motivation or will it kill the project entirely? 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
The world I live in is always trying to sell me something that promises to make my life more convenient. However, I think there’s wisdom in inconvenience. I’ve noticed that all the things that are really meaningful and important in my life involve lots of inconvenience. From the deliberate act of ironing my own shirts and baking bread (which dictates most of my schedule in my free time) to the raising three kids (with all their eye infections, broken bones and bad dreams) to name just a few of the things I’ve willingly chosen to bring into my life. What are your favorite inconveniences and what have they taught you? 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
Throughout my life I have had many mentors who have believed in me, supported me, challenged me and inspired me.* From an uncle who was willing to attempt an explanation of molecular structures when I was a very young child, to leaders who have guided me through major life transitions. I am eternally grateful. However, I recently realized that I have also been holding on emotionally to some of the relationships of the past, with a negative attachment. A mix of mourning and guilt related to the way the mentoringrelationship seemed to just gradually fade out. I think this is unnecessary. In Robert Greene’s book Mastery he writes about how it’s inevitable that you will grow apart. Perhaps it’s a good thing.  
With much love  

— Mathias

(*) My mentors, both past and present: Thomas V., Mike J., Klaus M., Jakob L., Annemette U., Carsten W., Rasmus V., Michael K., Susan K., Fabian P., Nico L., Kane S., Nilofer M., Dave G., Tom K., Dev A., Lisa M., Marcus G., Thomas P., Sarah G.

Hello Amazing!
While writing about facilitation and teaching I’ve been interviewing people I admire for their teaching skills. One of them is Mattan Griffel, who currently teaches programming at Columbia Business School. One of his brilliant insights was to give his students challenges that required knowledge that he hadn’t taught yet. Some groups figured it out anyway because they began searching for an answer on their own. And those who didn’t, had at least experienced the problem, so when he introduced the solution later, they understood how it would help them. And either way it builds their stamina for being in the frustration. I think this can be applied far beyond programming. 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
As an airplane nerd I have been following the recent 737 Max 8 crashes, trying to figure out my own point of view on the tragedies. As details emerged I sketched out this diagram of two interlocking and reinforcing feedback loops, one showing how investing in ever more sophisticated technology makes it more useful, and another showing how more useful technology allows us to delegate more authority to technology. However, as technology gradually gains more authority, and become harder to understand, the invisible risk of fatal failure also gradually increases. 
My point here is not that technology is bad. But I do think it’s useful to be aware of feedback loops that consistently push a system in one direction. ROI is always visible. Risk is not as visible until after it goes wrong. You can apply the same thinking to self-driving cars and the Nasdaq flash crash. 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
I’m constantly checking myself, maintaining awareness of how I feel in each moment. I find that this is useful in many situations, but not always. When, on a rare occasion, I am having a not-so-great day, this constant attention to myself isn’t helpful, so I’ve been trying instead to think of someone else, and focus on showing up to be helpful to them. I explained all this to a colleague. “Ah!” she said, “You are adulting!” 
I guess that sums it up 🙂 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
A lot of people have asked my about my teaching practice both at Parsons and in my own workshops. One of my principles, is to avoid relying too much on 1:1 feedback with each student, and instead focus on first building a very safe but also ambitious space amongst the students, where they learn from each other. This can build a self-reinforcing mechanism. That way, once I do give some more direct insight to one person, there’s a chance that these ideas will spread amongst them and be amplified. This idea, and many more of my ideas and principles around facilitation and learning, I’m trying to put together into a coherent whole (aka. a book). If you want to help me by giving feedback on super early book drafts, please share your contact info here. 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
In the work I do every day at SYPartners and beyond, I am frequently asked to help with such things as “company values” or “strategic vision” or “purpose statement”. It’s always interesting, especially when we discuss not just the content but also how it works in practice: why will any employee think or act in any different way because there is a new purpose statement? Some people seem to prefer much more clear directives, describing behaviors that employees should do, or a checklists and process maps. I don’t think any way is the right way, but I like to think of them on a spectrum of leadership modes: from the abstract and inspiring to the concrete and directive. The best is when we recognize what each end of the spectrum is good for and use it for that. 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
I’m working on a draft of a book about my teaching philosophy. One of the core tenants is about helping people build confidence in exploring and learning on their own. But how do you practically do that, and how can you use your expertise in a meaningful way? The way I have been thinking about it, is to think of all my expert knowledge as a large field of data. It’s tempting to take people on a guided tour around this field and show them everything. However, instead I try to use my expertise to design really good challenges for people. I give them a clear starting point, a direction to explore and a goal of where they should try to get to. Ideally, having people work in teams, allow them to explore different pathways toward the destination. In the end the teams have discovered many of the elements of the field and can teach each other their different discoveries. For example, I have used this when teaching people software. Without telling them much, I used my expertise to give them a really good starting point, and just enough knowledge that they could build something functional on their own, in very little time. 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
I’m fascinated with airplanes, especially how they are built to be safe, by designing for the critical things that can go wrong. For example, what do you do if an engine fails during take-off? As the plane accelerates down the runway it will reach a speed where it is not yet fast enough to fly, but going so fast that it can’t stop safely either. This speed is called V1, and it varies depending on aircraft and weather conditions. At this speed the pilot will no longer abort the take-off. Even if an engine explodes, the other engine will keep accelerating the plane until it can lift off. I love that there is this in-between area, where you have to do something counter-intuitive in the event of a failture. It made me think of my own (less dangerous) work, where there are also times where a project can be in trouble, team members get sick, and yet you have to make it work anyway. In your work, what’s the V1 point? How do you know if you’ve reached it? Is there a similarly counter-intuitive move that helps? 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
This week I worked a lot with someone who seemed very worried about the work we were doing. I wasn’t worried at all. At least I wasn’t in the beginning. But after two days I found myself not able to sleep at night, getting increasingly stressed out. Finally I realized that I had simply adopted someone else’s worry. It wasn’t really mine. I just felt their worry. This didn’t fully resolve the stress, but once I could recognize it as someone else’s, I could more easily let it go, and at least reduce the stress, think more clearly and make some actual progress. 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
About a month ago I started working full time at SYPartners, a consulting firm in NYC where I have freelanced in the past, and that I truly love. These first five weeks have been nothing less than amazing.
Shifting from freelance to full time employment, however, affects how much time and energy I spend on short, medium and long term work. I think of it like an investment portfolio, with a mix of assets to achieve the right balance of risk and stability. As an independent I spent roughly half my time delivering client work, 35% on relationships and selling new work, and the rest on more long term ideas like this newsletter and my podcast. With a job, almost all my time is spent on short term work, which is how it should be, but I’m intentionally using a bit of what’s left on ‘very long term’ work, in this case a book. I have hired a freelance editor that I have worked with in the past, to help me gather my ideas and create some order. 
How are you balancing your work portfolio? and are you getting the desired outcomes? 
With much love  

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
While I was on summer vacation with my wife and our kids, I would often take the kids in the morning and let my wife sleep in. We called this “the gift of sleep” and it’s a gift she really enjoys. However, there were days were I was so exhausted myself that I couldn’t really afford to give this gift. I needed sleep too. But I tried to give it anyway, and failing to be honest with myself, I didn’t realize that I would expect her to reciprocate. Suddenly the “gift” of sleep had become a debt. She owed me. Obviously this didn’t work well. Now, I try to remember that generosity is great, but that I shouldn’t give something if I can’t afford to really give it. Nobody wants a debt. Have you ever done this? Or been the recipient?
With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing!
In some ways it’s almost so obvious that it’s not worth saying: if you want high quality output you need a combination of creative output and a good editor who can filter the shit from the diamonds. Yet, because it feels so obvious I also tend to forget and I need to remind myself again and again. Today I realized that I hadn’t written a newsletter for more than two months. In my desire to improve the quality of my work I had stepped up my inner editor to a point where I couldn’t produce any output at all, and while I’m still interested in increasing quality and becoming a better editor, I’m not willing to do so at the cost of all output. So today I am sharing a first draft. Maybe it’s a diamond. Maybe it’s just shit. Either way: I wanted to do something.
Perhaps you need a reminder too?
With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing! I think that we humans are always trying to understand. We look around us and we try to figure out how the world works. Because if we understand it correctly, we might begin to predict (at least with some probability) what might happen in the future. Unfortunately, some of us are sometimes too quick to jump to conclusions which are only partially true. For example, I find that a linear understanding is particularly seductive. We think that learning happens in linear, additive manner (Economics 101, 201, 301 etc.), that they build their endurance for long-distance running linearly, that the path to enlightenment is a series of sequential steps. The risk is that we miss cyclical, seasonal and other non-linear patterns.
The image is further distorted if we also begin to conflate our ability to predict with an ability to control. If we set higher ‘targets’ (for sales, people growth, test scores, GDP..) we think that the flowers will grow faster. But that will be for another day.

With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing! How good do you feel you are in doing your job? Do you feel that you know what you are doing and how it all works or is it more messy? When it comes to automating work using Machine Learning it’s the tasks that have the most clearly defined (or definable) inputs and outputs that will be automated first. So if your job feels really really really messy, it’s probably because it’s harder to automate.

With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing! In order to achieve anything, we have to set high standards for ourselves. However, for many of us this leads to a sense of inadequacy, because we are not able to meet those high standards. It’s tempting to lower our standards and in some situations, it might be the best thing, especially if it’s something that’s just not very important for us. But for the stuff that matters most, the real trick is to add time. To be patient and persistent. Sometimes radically so. For the most daunting quests I recommend thinking across multiple lifetimes.

With much love

— Mathias

Hello Amazing! If you are in a relationship, a job, a marriage, a city or something else, and it doesn’t feel right, how do you know if it’s best to stay and try to fix it or to leave and go elsewhere? I think it’s easy to be seduced by the idea that something look good on paper (“the job pays well”, “the city is full of opportunity”). It’s also easy to look at something and only see what’s missing. What might be best is to look for the roots. The deep essentials. What do you think? Have you mistakenly left something that actually had roots? Or are you stuck in something that sounds great, but doesn’t have roots?

With much love

— Mathias