#81 | Writing at work?
Thinking deeply is undervalued when it comes to starting a business.
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” — Isaac Asimov
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” — Sylvia Plath
At Yokeru, we were on the wrong track for ages. None of our revenue was recurring. We were so far from product/market fit that we couldn't even smell it. We got new customers and stayed alive through sheer charisma, but the service was neither useful nor used. It's impossible to sustain a business on charm alone. Product/market fit was like finding the moon on a cloudy night—we knew it was beyond the haze, but we were incapable of pointing to her.
Since then, we've improved. It’s working: now we’re supporting 27% of care connections in the UK. We've discovered things about what we are doing and what vulnerable people need that we could undoubtedly have uncovered sooner. If only we'd thought deeper and been more intentional with what we have worked on.
Thinking deeply is undervalued when it comes to starting a business. When writing a book, it's essential, or when philosophising. But for some reason, thinking and doing are rarely seen as crucial to do simultaneously. Having a ‘bias for action’ is allegedly more important than a ‘bias for thinking a bit more’. I think tech-bro-Twitter is responsible for this by entertaining the lean startup mentality and the idea of moving fast and breaking things. Neither of these suggests being intentional. They suggest fucking things up and recovering.
A good decision can avoid years of work. It can mean you pivot on day two, not on day five hundred and two. Over time, making even marginally better decisions (like, say, 10% better) compounds and promises exponential improvements.
If thinking deeply is essential, we must think deeply about how we think! Reading is critical. We learn by reading and can visit other worlds, mindsets and perspectives. I read a lot and love it. My friend Tom White has eloquently written about the need to read. He's probably reading right now. Yet, even once I've read, I'm not smart enough to distil all those crisp insights into a clear strategy.
Moreover, if I were to synthesise alone, I'd miss out on the clarity offered by the exclusively Imperial College alum., and therefore very smart, Yokeru team. My mind, which, not unfairly, has been likened to a sweet potato, would bear an unnecessary cap on the IQ of our venture. Sharing ideas among one another is important. Reading and synthesising alone is dangerous.
Writing offers a neat solution. Not only, by writing, do we discover what we think, but it's shareable. This letter is a case in point. Therefore others can participate in the discussion, and the complex meaning of words can seep out, line by line, and get formed, reforged, and edited to make a coherent argument. Not only that, but because sentences need to move from one point to the next logically, gaps in coherency show like a tracer bullet. And all of the participants can point at glaring errors in the narrative. Mistakes scream for investigation and remedy.
Writing is effective because, in our heads, we can hardly hold two thoughts simultaneously. I'm in a relatively quiet cafe typing, but I am buffeted by the winds of distraction in every moment, even here. My phone is off, my laptop is disconnected from the wifi, I have closed all my tabs and minimised everything aside from this one blank page, yet still, my phone pulls me to turn her on; reconnect, check in with people, scroll Twitter. It's exhausting.
Even in deep conversation on one topic, it's inevitable that we are victims of the same distractive (destructive!) gales. The only thing that isn't distracted is the document I'm writing on. When I stop working, it stops too. But it doesn't wander off and order another coffee or check its emails. It waits patiently, with a hundred thoughts scattered throughout it, held as if in midair, to be turned around, looked at, and captured.
At Yokeru, we're a fully remote team. Today, most teams are half remote at a minimum (unless you're a dentist, baker or restauranteur). Remote teams work strange hours and increasingly asynchronously. Face-to-face interactions can draw out insights that are hard to trap, but doing this over continents and time zones is a nightmare. Even harder still if the cafe you're working in is loud, the baby is crying, or ‘the internet's being a bit funny today’.
Building an effective and asynchronous way of working is critical, so how can this best be done?
Building a writing culture at work is one way to achieve good async results. I can't think of a better one. The video call has (I think we can all agree) lost its charm. Amazon and Stripe are both famous for their writing cultures. For those who want to learn in detail how each culture operates, an ex-Stripe employee wrote 'Writing In Public, Inside Your Company', which is excellent. Similarly, the book Working Backwards about how Amazon works is tremendous.
I don't think it's coincidental that both companies are successful, and both write a lot (although the causation could be the other way around).
Writing works. Writing cultures are democratic because everyone has the opportunity to participate in the discussion without the heat of a meeting, in the silence of their deep thought. It also inspires trust because documents prepared by the leadership team are shared and critiqued by everyone else. The logic behind decisions is exposed early; teams are not only subject to the consequences of decisions.
As more minds participate in more written discussions, new (and better) ideas bubble to the surface, and better plans get made, products built, and visions realised. The wider team only needs to log in and browse the heaps of internal documents to understand why the company is doing what it's doing. There is a record of truth for everyone.
I like to write. This is obvious: You get a letter from me weekly about something I'm seeing, thinking or cultivating. At Yokeru, I'm thinking about building a writing culture. We're only a small team (of five), but we span two (sometimes three) continents. Some work happens in the evenings and weekends since some of us have other commitments. It’s important we work async. and remote. Will a writing culture work?
As we've seen at Amazon and Stripe, writing can work, but it does take discipline. It's hard to capture every direction and decision, but people (and, equally importantly, ideas) get bypassed if we don't.
This post is the starting gun for a writing culture. I'll let you know how it goes in the coming year as we establish writing alongside establishing ourselves as a remote and asynchronous (and harmonious) team. I'd love your feedback and ideas about how we do this! Let me know.
My week in books
Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard by Cynthia Haven. Girard comes up a lot in conversation, and his life is a life of an academic (which Haven admits), so it's intellectual and not externally all that interesting. Nevertheless, Girard's discovery and how Haven distils his insights on mimetic desire, violence, and the scapegoat mechanism are epic and broadly relevant today. A recommended entry point to his way of thinking.
Zero to One by Peter Thiel. This is widely considered one of the best business books ever written. It was a re-read for me. Since Girard heavily influences Thiel, it was great to read the books together. His core tenet is never to compete; Girard tells us that all violence happens because of mimetic competition. I highly recommend it.
Live well,
Hector