Just Say Thank You

Coming to terms with something not being the best it can possibly be

My hand, in a bar somewhere in the Netherlands

Hi – sorry for the extended break since I last wrote anything here. I’d like to say I had a grand excuse or an exciting announcement to make about all the hard work I’ve been doing since we last spoke, but the reality is somewhat more prosaic – I simply haven’t had anything to write about.

I have four or five half written posts that I’ve started and given up on because I don’t like them, they’ve bored me, or simply because I haven’t been able to bring them to a satisfying conclusion. I get really irritated with ‘content’ – the stuff that people churn out just because they have to be seen or heard saying something. I didn’t even bother to do a ‘Recommended Reading’ post in February because I only had two articles that I thought were worth sharing, and it didn’t seem worth cluttering people’s inboxes for two website links.

Another reason for not writing anything is that I’ve been spending time concentrating on making progress on my book. Considering I had intended to have it finished by the end of 2023 I’ve been somewhat grudgingly forced to reset my deadlines George RR Martin style (WHERE’S THE WINDS OF WINTER GEORGE? WHERE IS IT??), but I’ve been experiencing a similar problem to the one that’s dogging the other creative project in my professional life. About this time last year I decided I was going to write a training course on how to be an effective Community Leader, and I’ve got 90% of the way there. I’ve pulled together a list of everything I thought was important, run it past a group of other Community Leader’s who’s opinions I respect and value, and even written out all of the content.

And then the fettling began.

Tweaking the content, taking bits out, rewriting bits so that I can add something new in without the flow jumping all over the place. Deleting stuff that has been replaced by something new that I’ve learned and think is better. On and on it goes.

The same is happening with my book. I’m constantly learning and each time I learn something new, I look at what I’ve already written and it all feels a little bit out of date and in need of rewriting. Then I learn something else new and realise I can’t finish my book without writing about it (for example this time last year I hadn’t read Owen Eastwood’s Belonging, and its changed the way I do so many things since that I can’t not include it).

Although I don’t think of myself as a perfectionist, if I work on something, like a book, like a Substack post, a training course, a presentation or even just running a community session, I want it to be the best it can possibly be. People have given me their time and attention (and in some cases money) and I can’t bear the thought of not giving them the best I’m capable of. I can’t stand the thought that what I’m working on isn’t improving, and the fear that I’ve hit the ceiling of my skills and capability that lurks in the dark corners behind me is never far from my mind. I notice this same behaviour and anxiety creeping into the work I do with communities of practice; looking at the coaching and guidance I give as becoming the same old one hit wonder that’s turning gray and stale around the edges, regardless of whether its still accurate valid and useful.

When this happens I remind myself of one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever been given, and I thought I would take this opportunity to share it with you in case any of you need to hear it too.

It’s 2019 and I’m one day away from achieving a professional dream I’ve been working towards for the past five years. I’ve written before about how the first place I discovered a true sense of community was through the Ministry of Testing at their annual conference in the north of England - TestBash Manchester. I’ve been to several TestBashes since, but right from the very first time that I went to one I knew what I wanted to do was speak on stage at TestBash. I taught myself to do public speaking. I ingested software test theory from every book website and YouTube video I could find. I formed opinions before evolving them, and all of this fuelled my professional career alongside it.

Over the next few years I submitted abstracts to speak at several of the different TestBash conferences being hosted around the world, and with each rejection I pushed myself to do a little bit better. Then, finally, I got the thing I’d craved for so long – I’d been accepted to speak at the 2019 TestBash Netherlands in Utrecht, and I was over the moon. My abstract was based around a psychology theory called The Illusion of Control, based on a series of experiments conducted by Professor of Psychology at Harvard Ellen Langer. I found it interesting, clearly I was able to make it sound interesting, all I had to do was write it.

Months and months of tinkering and fiddling with my content went by, and I just couldn’t get it right. At no point could I ever get what I wanted to say into a position where I was fully happy with it. Every time I read through it I would think ‘this could be better – I can make this better’ or ‘I can’t do this without adding this part, but what do I take out?’.  And so I kept tweaking and changing things, endlessly trying to turn it into the best thing that I’d ever produced. Something that was worthy of what I considered to be my greatest achievement so far.

The night before the big day I was in a bar having pre-conference drinks, and I was very nervous. Not because of the size of the audience, not because of finally achieving what I’d been working towards for so long – I was nervous because even then I wasn’t happy with my slides. My talk wasn’t good enough. It HAD to be better. I could do better, and the fact that I hadn’t was killing me.

That evening over pre-conference drinks I was introduced by a mutual contact to someone named Vera, who was and is a regular speaker at conferences all over the world and extremely talented quality leader. I talked to her about how uncomfortable I felt with my talk. That I couldn’t love it as I knew deep down I could have done better with it. That I should be and could be capable of delivering something much better than this.

Vera told me that when I’d finished doing my talk, the audience will clap. Some of the audience will have been bored, some will disagree with what you’ve said, but they’ll clap anyway. Then there will be some people in the audience who absolutely needed to hear whatever it is you had to say, and whatever you think of it they will go away with their whole outlook changed. And as you wont know who those people are, whoever comes up to you afterwards and says well done or that they enjoyed your talk, just say thank you to them.

So that’s what I did . I’ve hated that talk ever since, and I shy away from telling people about it in case they go and look it up. But Vera was right - at the end the audience clapped, people came up to me and said well done and they enjoyed it, and I said thank you. And that’s what I’ve been doing since.

I’ve come to accept that if a community session I run is a bit basic or poorly attended or is a lean coffee because I couldn’t find a speaker, then that’s ok – someone who attended it is going to get something really valuable out of the session and that’s what really matters. If I write a training course that doesn’t cover every single thing that I think is important or isn’t the most cutting edge thing I’ve ever produced, then that’s ok too – it will all be new and exciting to someone who attends, and it’ll help them do things they didn’t know how to do before. Over time I’ve come to realise that not everything needs to be brand new and at the absolute limits of research and possibility – sometimes doing something tried and tested will make a difference to someone who’s never heard it before, and it'll change their outlook completely.

And when they tell you that they enjoyed your session and found it really interesting, don’t be put off by the fact that you could have done more or done something better – just say thank you.

Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve enjoyed this post I’d really appreciate it if you could share it - alternatively you could always buy me a coffee :)