0006 | Article notes on hiring

It occurs to me that the discipline of writing about that which I am exploring is largely lost when I don't write anything. It suggests I am an not exploring anything. Sometimes that's true. I spent a good deal of yesterday watching Netflix and eating snacks. After Ben returned from his first trip to Dallas last week, I spent most of the weekend giddy that he was home and we could have conversations about everything. Why write when I can chatter ceaselessly? Yesterday we woke up at 3:30am to have breakfast together before his flight back to Dallas. I didn't sleep much the night before. I do this to myself. I was remarkably useless the rest of the day, functioning only well enough to get through a typical day in a typical office.



I keep thinking about office working again and wondering if it is something I can do at the level at which I operate best, which is fully engaged, searching, and not doing ridiculous tasks that make little sense to the greater vision while ignoring underlying issues. I won't go somewhere and simply appear to be busy for the majority of my waking hours. Ben is encouraging me to look at Neiman Marcus. We will be in downtown Dallas and I already have all this retail experience, so why not go play in a familiar sandbox? It has its appeal. Our discussion has mainly focused on dynamic and the idea that entering a context where I have a fair amount of experience will put me at an advantage in positioning myself to do the work I actually want to do, rather than going into a dynamic where I appear inexperienced and am thus devalued. That's a sucky feeling.

I started taking notes on my K2 experience and their interview process. Not the process logistics, but the high level approach--specifically the general lack of vision and focus. Their headhunt is very much like that of most companies. There is no leader -- the top banana of the organization is spiritually absent. There is a group of exceptional people who execute their jobs with greater competence than most. They are responsible for either transforming the organization, or at least keeping it from swirling down the toilet. The group possess a semi-coherent vision for how to improve on the existing not-so-stellar program that is not getting the results they want. They have an idea about what could make it better, and so they start their search. Their requirements are not crystal clear. In the execution of their indistinct vision, they look for a good fit. Everyone wants a good fit, right?

I started writing this post before a series of in-person interview in Seattle. This is what I found. The K2 services org desires, in their own words, customer success. They don't know what that means yet. They understand that if the customer is happy at the end of the engagement and comes back for more, they have achieved customer success. The head of the org is building a program to ensure that their projects stop going sideways and that the new success model is scalable. Here is what Jase understands that I don't think the rest of the team (leadership included) has not quite grasped. The customer isn't simply a consumer of a clever product which, once implemented to their specifications and with their most important criteria in mind, will improve their business and make them clamor for more K2 solutions. Likewise, the real magic of K2 isn't in the clever and spectacularly logical and easy to use product (which I believe it is). The real offering is not the product. The product is a manifestation of the offering. The K2 services team will succeed or fail--as Susan Scott writes--one conversation at a time, each of those conversations revealing to the customer the degree to which K2 understands its own offering. The K2 offering, as I understand it is this: we will help you become a better version of yourself. That better version could look like a smarter research org, a more efficient oil rig, more streamlined application and approval, faster response time to customers... any number of possible process improvements. But the improvements themselves aren't the endgame; they are the start of the relationship. The thing that will keep customers coming back for more is the shared mission, which I define as the work that will never be done and we will never want to stop doing because it is worth our lives. Simon Sinek would call it our why. At the heart of it, the hook is this: we share your quest for an elevated human experience, to be better versions of ourselves. That's all well and good, but what does an elevated experience look like? In a successful implementation, the better version is on time, on budget, delivering the greatest business value, of course and et cetera. K2 is looking at hiring BAs to help understand greatest business value and to keep work efforts aligned with the business vision. If we are looking at ongoing customer relationships, it is also the willingness to examine our own values and analyze our own processes the way that we would examine and analyze those of our customers. We can only offer to elevate our customer inasmuch as we are capable of elevating ourselves.

I got tired of writing this and walked away to make a giant barrel of kale, apple, and garlic juice. You either just drooled or cringed. There is no middle ground, I'm afraid. Anyway, all this evaluation has me tired as hell. I got a massage yesterday from the most excellent sports massage/deep tissue therapist, Pamela. Holy shit. There is a lady who knows what the fuck she is about. Today, my spine rippled in glee and my right hip is several years younger than when I went in. Thank you, Pamela.

Ben says that I should start writing blurbs and posting them on LinkedIn. I suppose that means I should reactivate my account. This re-engagement process is a little rickety. Here goes.