Trust the process. No, really.
The draft of Corporate Escapology is out for its second development edit (where a professional editor dispassionately tears it apart). It’s also out with some very dear friends who have agreed to be my Beta Readers. It’s no small ask for them to wade through 50,000 words.
And it’s a vulnerable time for me.
What if they hate it? What if it’s rubbish? What if they’re too polite to say?
“Trust the process” people say.
It’s one of those phrases that can tip me over the edge. Especially when something isn’t going well – or I care very deeply about the outcome. It’s facile and a bit too trusting for someone with control-freakish tendencies.
But many times I have seen how ‘trusting the process’ can work. And can save an awful lot of angst.
Writing a book requires you to trust several processes. Not least the dark art of the publishing process. But the big process is the writing itself – the idea, the research, the writing, the practical exercises, the book’s identity and the promise it seeks to make to a reader.
Sharing it with people you trust, in order to help you make the book better is a big step. A scary one. But like many things in life, it’s when we put ourselves in the most vulnerable position we learn the most.
Writing the book has made me think a lot about something Seth Godin wrote a few years ago:
"I" as in me, you, us, the person who's on the line. This is the work of a human. The audience can make a direct connection between you and the thing you're offering.
"Made" because it took effort, originality and skill.
"This" is not a wishy-washy concept. It's concrete and finite. It didn't used to exist, and now it does.
and, "Here," because the idea is a gift, a connection transferred from person to person.
These four words carry generosity, intent, risk and intimacy with them.”
Those four words have really stuck with me and I think about them often when I hand something over to a client. Sometimes just thinking about them makes me stop and redo something that isn’t good enough or has too much ego in it.
So now I’m handing over the book, saying “Here, I made this” to those poor sods. They will never get the time back that they spend wading through my 120 pages. The generosity is all yours, thank you. Please be tough on me, I want this book to be the best it can be.
You may not be planning to leave your job to write a book like me – or like Katie (if you missed her podcast and book) but, doubtless, whatever you do will involve you handing over something with much more vulnerability than when you hand over something in your corporate job.
You’ll probably have fewer people inputting to it, reviewing it, diluting it. But also fewer people reducing your ownership of it.
There were times at bp when my original ideas were so watered down by annoying changes, they were barely recognisable. And I lost interest in them. Now it’s your fault if it doesn’t work. An accountability shared is an accountability discharged.
In your new life, whatever you do - coach, consultant, business owner, artist, advisor, mentor, community-builder, chef etc - will be much more of you than ever before.
That might be another reason why you’re putting off making the jump out of corporate lives to something more fulfilling, with more purpose. Because it’s much more exposed.
Our human instinct, evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, has taught us to see safety in numbers: “For the strength of the Wolf is the Pack”.
It’s true of course. We need the Pack. But sometimes we need the brave Wolf to step out and do something different, something that can bring progress to the Pack.
Like all these brave cleantech founders I’m working with on the startup accelerator programme I run for Shell. Without them, and people like them, with their clever ideas and the drive to execute those ideas, the planet has less of a chance. And then where will the Pack be?
So be vulnerable, trust your process.
(Or mine. You can download it here yadayada).
But I’d much rather you trusted your own process, your own Escape Plan. Your own chance to be that Wolf, vulnerable, open to learning, inspired by your own mission, leveraging all the amazing things you know and can do.
Until one day you will stand tall and say to someone: “Here, I made this”.