CHAPTER 13
DO IT YOUR WAY

When it comes to living in Stand Out, find a way to ‘do it your way'. (Kinda sounds like a line from a Dolly Parton ballad … or is that Frank Sinatra? Whatever.) You need to battle conformity through your ideas. Turn up in a way you never have before and create a new way of operating. While we can learn patterns and lessons from others, this is your time to set the trend. Know what the non-negotiables are and then play with the rest. Give yourself permission to fly your freak flag and do it your way.

FROM TREND-GETTER TO TRENDSETTER

In March 2015, Tom Goodwin published an article on techcrunch.com with an opening paragraph that caught the attention of many:

Uber, the world's largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world's most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world's largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening.

These words have been shared, liked and — the ultimate compliment — turned into memes in various ways online and offline since Goodwin shared them. We live in interesting times, where our view of the way things ‘should' be is being shaken up and challenged on a daily basis. And this is opening up the opportunity for us to examine our own thoughts of It'll never work — to challenge the default around the way we live, work and play.

Now, more than ever before, you, your team, and your organisation have not only the opportunity but also the platform to be a trendsetter in what you choose to pursue.

DISRUPTION BREEDS INNOVATION

Remember the last time you moved house? If you also needed to sell the house so you could move, you probably spent hours cleaning corners, scrubbing walls and making the place look its best to attract the highest bidder. You'd probably heard the research that having freshly brewed coffee in the kitchen and baked bread in the oven switches on the emotional centres in the potential buyer's brain and encourages a sale. So you spent Saturday mornings before inspections baking and brewing.

Furniture gets moved to places it's never sat before, shelves get decorated in new ways, and gardens get lovingly tended. After the hours of effort and sweat, you take a step back to inspect your handiwork and wonder why the hell you would ever sell a place that looks this amazing.

Disruption breeds innovation. When we disrupt the norm, the status quo, we start to see new ways of operating in our world that we previously hadn't paid attention to. Change gives us the opportunity to look through different glasses at everyday patterns. Through the growth of ‘hackathons' (times when individuals come together to collaborate intensely to generate new products or processes) in our workplaces, organisations are going out of their way to disrupt things even when they are working well — because they understand that innovation and advantage are born out of uncertainty and change. Shifting into Stand Out is an internal and external disruption you are going through, so it's time to ‘hack' your own habits, shake things up and try on new ways of interacting with your world.

Disruption breeds innovation. When we disrupt the norm, the status quo, we start to see new ways of operating in our world that we previously hadn't paid attention to.

Disrupt the natural patterns that we slip into, even for the small things. For me, disrupting how my day starts has been revolutionary. Instead of being sucked away from dreamy sleep by the pitter-patter of little feet and fingers prying my eyelids open each morning well before they're ready — and so being on the back foot for the rest of the day — I realised capturing the sacred solitude of time before the household wakes is integral to my sanity and my ability to tap into calm. Now I'm up at 5 am and my non-negotiable is ten minutes of solitude. This completely changes how I turn up to my day. Sometimes I'm out running at this time, sometimes I'm reading, sometimes I'm stretching, and occasionally I even have a bath (seriously, the pre-breakfast bath has changed my world).

So, instead of having dinner at the same time and the same place every night, mix up your routine by packing a picnic and heading to the river. Instead of booking back-to-back individual meetings with your team, look at catching up with people in duos so the conversations are still intimate while halving your time. Disrupting your pattern on the small things has the power to shift your world.

YOU HOLD THE RULE BOOK

The majority of our work at Pragmatic Thinking involves delivering presentations and training programs. Very early in our business, we decided to stop handing out the traditional training evaluation forms for the sessions we delivered. You know the ones because you've filled them in — asking you to rate the food, the venue, the presenter, and whether Tom's outfit matched the company logo or not. Ditching these forms was a conscious choice and one we haven't regretted, but it wasn't a natural shift to make.

We used the evaluation forms when we started our business, and when we sifted through them we started to notice a trend. What would happen is that we'd get 24 forms back with exceptional feedback, from people who loved and raved about the session. But then one person would make a note about the chairs being too hard to sit on for the day. And that would be the one that we'd obsess over and stress about. In that instant, all the other evidence faded and we would fall into the vortex of ‘Should we have even gone into business? We should have known better, maybe we should start sewing chair cushions to hand out to people at every training session we ever run from here on in. In fact, I'll source some material this weekend and clear the decks for a Saturday crafternoon spree. Yep, that's the answer'.

This vortex was exhausting and unproductive.

Then one day we had a colleague run a workshop with our clients and we asked if he wanted us to print off his evaluation forms for him. He shook his head and said offhandedly, ‘Oh, I don't use evaluation forms'. To say that our jaws hit the floor would be an understatement. So we politely asked, ‘What do you mean you don't use evaluation forms?' His response changed how we ran training programs from that day forward. ‘Whenever I get evaluation forms, I find myself consumed by the person who rated it only as "good" not "exceptional", and ignore the other responses that all raved about the session. I've realised that feedback in this context often says much more about the other person and what they're going through than it does about me and my session, so I stopped doing them.'

Whoa … what? You're allowed to do that?

So we took it for a spin. At our next training program we didn't hand out evaluation forms at the end of the session, and guess what happened? Absolutely nothing. The floor didn't start caving in, the Earth didn't stop spinning on its axis. When it comes to rating how well a session went, we are by far our own biggest critics. We know when a concept or session has landed well and when it hasn't. And as far as getting feedback from our clients, well, we started asking them face to face what was of value for them. And we listened to what behaviours they changed, because their behaviours speak louder than any Likert scale can. Their re-engagement or referrals are the greatest feedback mechanisms we could get.

Just because it's ‘what is done around here', doesn't mean that you have to keep doing it, particularly if it's not serving you or the people around you. We didn't stop getting feedback completely, but we stopped the method by which we received that feedback and stopped obsessing about the things that we had little control over. Instead, we focused our efforts on increasing our expertise in what we had complete control over.

You hold the rule book of how you operate. Fight a battle against the whispers of ‘Oh, I can't do that because …'. Remember Uber, Facebook and Airbnb, and consider what else might be possible in your world. Each of these concepts started with an experiment — they started with someone saying, ‘Well, maybe we can. Let's give it go'.

EXPERIMENTATION MINDSET

Have you ever been given really great advice and not taken it? We all know we should floss every day; in fact, research has found that if you had to choose between brushing and flossing your teeth, it's better for your dental hygiene to floss. But we're conditioned to associate clean with the minty fresh feeling and flossing isn't part of our normal routine, so we don't floss. We are surrounded by good advice and great ideas, but we don't put many of them into action.

One of the reasons is because of previous experience — where we tried something new but it didn't land for us. But these new ideas likely didn't work because we believed all we needed was the good idea — that is, if we simply put this idea into practice, it will automatically become our new ritual. And this works for a while. Our motivation is high for a couple of weeks. We're consistent about going to running group every Monday and Friday morning, and we have a week of eating chicken and salad for lunch every day. And then life happens. We've got to invest extra time in a project and so we skip a Friday morning running session. We have visitors stay for a week and the chicken and salad turns into chicken parmigiana. A month in and we've slipped back into old ways of operating. So we throw the idea out as one that just doesn't work for us.

To me, two more steps are needed in the process to shift a good idea to something embedded as a new ritual. My red-bearded friend Dr Jason Fox talks about the importance of running experiments. This forms the first step in shifting something from an idea to a ritual in our life. The second step involves committing to practise what we've learned. Let's step through each of these.

SET THE EXPERIMENT

The first step is to move the idea into an experiment. When we approach a new way of operating — when we start to embed our values into our life and take on board strategies to map out and see progress — we need to come to these ideas with an experimentation mindset (see figure 13.1).

Bringing a scientific approach to new ideas means that we start with a hypothesis (for example, ‘I think going to running group twice a week would be great for me') and then we test the parameters of this hypothesis. Does it work every week? What happens when visitors are staying? What time of day works best for me and those around me? An experimentation mindset removes ‘failure' from the equation and suggests that something not quite working the way we thought it would simply provides us with new data and an opportunity to tweak the conditions.

Last year I took on my own experiment. I'd just finished reading Thrive by Arianna Huffington (editor of the global platform The Huffington Post). Arianna calls out the importance of prioritising sleep in our busy world, recognising that putting off sleep is a flawed strategy if we want to be more productive, more successful and more healthy. Arianna talked about her own non-negotiable to get eight hours sleep every single night, which means turning down evening events and being conscious of not working late. At the time, I was deep into our business and had two small children. I hadn't had eight hours sleep for what felt like years. But if it was good enough for Arianna Huffington, it was good enough for me to try. I was intrigued about whether I could even do it.

So rather than just draw a line in the sand and say, ‘That's it, I'm going to get eight hours of sleep every night from here on in', I decided to set myself an experiment. The experiment was #8in8. For eight days I would try to get eight hours of sleep each night and see how it went. Could I do it? What would I notice? And what would help and what stumbling blocks would crop up? These were questions that stewed in the back of my mind. I also decided to invite others to join me and put this experiment on Facebook and Instagram, completely surprised at the number of people who also struggle with regularly getting a good night's sleep.

I decided to start this #8in8 experiment on a Tuesday. Now, I've run fatigue hygiene programs, I've studied what you need to do to optimise sleep, and I did it all on that night. I'd figured out what time I would get up and what time I needed to be in bed to maximise the chance of a solid eight hours. I'd had a warm shower an hour before bedtime to kick in the cool-down trigger than precedes sleep, and unplugged from all screens and technology over an hour earlier. I'd had a sleepy-time tea, and done five minutes of deep-breathing. I was going to nail this.

At 9.30 pm I gave Darren a good night kiss, shut the bedroom door and jumped into bed to read for a bit before turning out the light (this was before I'd set the habit of getting up at 5 am). And then I tossed and turned for two hours as I struggled to switch my brain off. My faith was waning. But it's just an experiment, so stick with it, Ali. Eventually I got off to sleep, but at about 3 am I heard the sound of small feet come over to my side of the bed. My daughter tapped me on my shoulder and said, ‘Mummy, I feel sick' and then promptly threw up in my hands — and I spent the next hour cleaning up. Needless to say, I didn't get my eight hours of sleep that night. But because it was an experiment and I'd committed to it for eight days, I stuck with it.

Over the next seven nights I stuck with the experiment with varying degrees of success. Certainly, on some nights I managed to get a full eight hours of sleep. While I didn't every night, this experiment had some side bonuses that I didn't expect. I certainly felt more rested and more energised, even if I didn't quite get the full eight hours. I finished reading two books, which usually take me months to churn through, and my quality of restorative sleep was greater.

As you look at new ideas and new ways of operating, bring along your experiment mindset and reframe what could be seen as potential ‘failure' into a fascinating detour. To get the most out of your experiment, commit to these three rules:

1. Set your experiment question: what specifically do you want to explore? Make it clear from the outset, knowing that this experiment might change.
2. Adjust the conditions: things you can play with even during the experiment include:
   • When: mix up the times and days.
   • Who (and who else can do this): consider inviting others or recruiting the help of others.
   • What: change what you actually do; swap the sleep-tea for a peppermint tea, for example.
   • How: experiment with your mindset, your motive and your method.
3. Commit to a time frame: set a finite time frame to run the experiment, choosing something manageable that doesn't feel like forever. Consider eight days if it's something you'll do every day, or maybe three to four weeks if it's less consistent. Commit to the full duration regardless of how it goes, remembering you can tweak the question and the conditions, just not the commitment.

PUT IT INTO PRACTICE

Now that you've got feedback on what works for you and what fits into your world, it's time to put the idea into practice. This is a commitment to a longer length of time and the springboard to habit formation. Start with 90 days as a way to commit to the practice.

Do these two steps of experimentation and practise and shift that great idea into a ritual that specifically serves you and your needs and survives beyond Friday arvo drinks. Do this and these are the trademark behaviours that you can become known for.

TRADEMARK BEHAVIOURS

What do you want to be famous for? For who we are and the work we do to rise above the noise of our world, we can engineer our identity and our personal brand around trademark behaviours — things that people implicitly link back to us. Having Stand Out thoughts that are cutting edge are great, but they are nothing until we shift them into Stand Out behaviours. In chapter 7 we explored the importance of designing our behaviours around our values.

Embedding these behaviours even further can happen through creating a few key trademark behaviours that we become known for. What will yours be? It might be walking into work and giving people a high five each morning. Jonathan Thurston is a well-known rugby league player for the North Queensland Cowboys, but he has also become known for his trademark behaviours of always handing the kicking tee back to the ball boy after he kicks a goal, and giving his headgear away at the end of the match. These behaviours speak volumes on his value of respecting others.

In terms of organisational culture, American online shoe store Zappos is known for its unique recruitment offering. At the end of their induction process, they offer new recruits a $3000 cheque to leave the organisation, no questions asked. This has been a successful driver of culture and certainly one of their organisational trademarks. Explore what you want to be known for, and what your trademark behaviours are. The way to shift them from naff to genuine is ensuring they ring true to you — they need to be authentic.

AMPLIFY YOUR HIDDEN TRENDSETTER GENIUS

Chances are you downplay things that you know because you assume ‘everyone knows this'. An architect might instinctively know where to place a new bookshelf in their house, for example, while a designer instinctively knows what colours clash and what colours complement the outfit they put together for Friday night drinks. A wellness expert instinctively knows to grab for the water more than the wine on those same Friday night drinks. The thing is, though, these choices aren't instinct. These choices are informed by information — by the experience of having done these things time and time again, and by the reading and the research that sit behind these everyday, seemingly small choices.

Things that you've studied, observed, read about and absorbed in a way that no-one else has because of your experiences and who you are, these things are your genius. Scrutinise your hidden genius. Breathe life into those things that you know and assume ‘everyone knows'. Amplify them, and your uniqueness will become embedded into everything you do. Bringing to life what you know others find valuable is the ultimate key to becoming a trendsetter.

Scrutinise your hidden genius. Breathe life into those things that you know and assume ‘everyone knows'.

This is the perfect way to combat the trend-destroying question that lurks in the back of your mind: ‘Who do you think you are?' You're a genius. When you bring what you know to the world in a way that invests in and serves others — that's when you Stand Out.

FLY YOUR FREAK FLAG

When we live in a world where anyone can rent out their home to strangers across the globe, and it can all happen in 30 minutes without a single call centre or administration person, we really have the opportunity to change the game and how it's played. Let go of ‘I can't because …' As you embrace your uniqueness, remember to innovate with wild abandon. Consider this your permission slip to play, experiment and do things your way. Make no apologies for what you bring to the table.