samng.me

The world is not fair

My sons,

On every playground in every school, in every city, in every country in the world, one of the most common phrases heard on a daily basis is this:

“That’s not fair!”

From an early age, we develop this sense of fairness, this belief that the world is supposed to be fair. We believe it so deeply that when we perceive something to be unfair, we throw on our biggest frown, stamp our feet, and in as loud a voice as we can muster let it be known that we have been wronged.

Problem is, the world isn’t fair.

Everywhere we look, things are not fair. There is no equalizing force that blankets the world in fairness, that spreads wealth precisely fairly to every human being, that gives the same number of opportunities to each candidate, or gives every 5 year old the same number of cupcakes for every birthday party. There is no cosmic force that gives every person the same number of years on this earth, that protects everyone in equal measure from the illnesses of life, or bestows the same gifts and talents to each individual person.

That’s just the personal stuff. The work stuff is even worse. If life itself isn’t fair, work definitely isn’t. Some people are given more opportunities than others. Some people are (to us) unfairly and undeservingly promoted. Some people seem luckier than those around them. The sooner we accept and embrace the fact that the world isn’t fair, the sooner we can take the next step; learning how to capitalize on that unfairness.

Power

These days, the word power tends to carry a number of negative connotations. Power is associated with folks who abuse their station, with bad actors taking advantage of those over whom they have power, and with depictions of power hungry and ruthless characters. While those are accurate depictions of the nefarious, they do not define power, and are not an inevitable conclusion.

Strictly speaking, power is the capacity to influence outcomes. That’s it. Nothing sinister, nothing negative implied. It is simply the capacity that a person has to have influence over the outcomes surrounding their situation.

With that definition, don’t we all want power? Doesn’t every person want the capacity and ability to influence their situation, their environment, and their outcomes? Especially when it comes to our professional endeavors, don’t we all want to be able to positively shape our outcomes?

In his book ~7 rules of power~, Jeffrey Pfeffer posits that power is not only one of the most misunderstood concepts in our modern world, but is the one that has the greatest influence on our lives and our livelihoods. Power dynamics happen in all relationships - professional ones, social ones, friendships, and even familial relationships. As such, it behooves us to better understand what it is, how to build it, and how to learn to use it for our own purposes.

Ways to attain power

In general, there are two methods that one can use one’s efforts to attain power.

1. Working hard, being helpful, working for the greater good of the community
2. Spending time on political advancement, self promotion, and building helpful social relationships

Studies have shown that there is a social class difference in each method. People from lower class backgrounds typically gravitate towards the former as a baseline. Power tends to flow to those that bring the most to the community, and even those that hold the political power of the community maintain that power by ensuring they continue to provide the most benefit to it. People from upper class backgrounds have a stronger propensity towards politics and often place a higher emphasis not on what you can do but rather on who you know. Power tends to flow to those who are the most connected, and much emphasis is given to currying favor with those more powerful than yourself.

Interestingly enough, people in lower classes are reluctant to use political power because they feel like it advances the self and not the community. However, when posed with a situation where using political advancement would help others, the class differentiation disappears and people in lower classes were willing to tap into that political power as well.

Harnessing your power

Independent of how you attain power is the question of how you harness and utilize it. We need to assume from this point out that each of us has to decided we are not going to “play fair” and no longer want to be a bystander in this game, playing the game as it is. If we want unfair results (ie rising to ranks higher than we might have otherwise, or faster than our peers, or faster than “the market norms” would otherwise dictate), then we have to learn to play unfairly.

As a Chinese Canadian, I grew up immersed in the ethos of keeping one’s head down, working hard, being loyal and reliable, and playing by the rules. There was an enormous amount of social pressure to stick to the plan, to color within the lines, and to do the respectable thing. Advancement meant working harder, longer hours, and being more dedicated than the next hardworking person.

The problem is that rising through the ranks, keeping your head down, and simply doing the work is not the optimal way for most people in this day and age to achieve the success that we’re all looking to have. The rules were made by those with power, almost certainly to ensure that they stay in power and no one disrupts that. How do we add to our hard work an understanding of power so that we can move from getting fair (or often, negatively unfair) results to getting positively unfair ones? How do we harness our power and utilize it for our benefit?

1. Understand and leverage your unique talents

I’ll never forget the first truth bomb my legendary Econ 101 professor Larry Smith uttered on the first day of class. “Look to your left. Now look to your right. By the end of the year, one or both of those people will no longer be here.” The reason? They were there because they thought they ought to be instead of being there because they loved it.

In the age of AI, finding our unique talents becomes increasingly difficult. AI has drastically lowered the barrier to entry for many things such that it behooves us to really dig deep to find our moat. This moat will certainly not be something we’ve picked up in the last year. It will not be a piece of knowledge or a single experience we’ve had, it won’t even be a cool new skill we’ve learned. It’ll be something much more complex and deeply engrained than that, and will definitely combine the set of our experiences and motivations.

This quest of self discovery isn’t easy. There are pitfalls, there are obstacles, there are even possible mid point conclusions that there is nothing unique about us. But if we want to harness the power that is uniquely ours, we’ve got to have the perseverance to push past those, to push past the life framing that others have for us, and to get at the heart of who we really are.

2. Move around

We are no longer in the age of the “Company Man” - you know, the circa 1940 way of life that had people join a company right out of college and retire on a pension there. Nowadays, 5 years is considered a pretty long time to stay at a single company, let alone a single team, and for good reason.

First and foremost, our world has gotten infinitely more complex, and as a result there is great need for folks with range. There is much research around the concept (if you’re interested, read Range by David Epstein) that shows how our brains subconsciously connect the seemingly disparate set of experiences we’ve had to produce more rounded and holistic decisions. Turns out the best leaders are the ones that can pull from a wide range of experiences and bring them to bear on their current work.

Next, moving around provides infusions to the growth of our network. As we discussed above, our world is increasingly impacted by those with strong networks, and moving around gives us an unnatural boost.

Lastly, with each move we take on an enormous amount of learning. The phrase “drinking from the firehose” is a common vernacular used in the tech industry to signify that someone is in the middle of a deep time of learning. That repeated firehose learning has an outsized impact on the power we have and on the value we bring to any organization.

3. Network

This one deserves some exploration. When I was younger, I used to hear this all the time. “Sam, you’ve got to network, you’ve got to go to these networking events and meet more people”. I hated them. From alumni events to tech meetups to conferences, I went to them all and dreaded them. I’ve since learned that not only was I doing it wrong, I was also missing the skills to get any benefit for it.

Networking doesn’t mean just meeting people. It means making a meaningful connection with someone such that there is follow up and follow through. It means maintaining that connection and nurturing it over time. This not only takes time and intention, but also takes skill.

Remember that networking is a two way street. The other person’s got to want to maintain a relationship with you as well, so you’d best have something to offer before you bother meeting them. This again, requires work. Intentional work. Their time, like yours, is valuable, and they’re not going to want to waste that time on a dead end relationship.

—

Each of these is itself a topic that we’ll go into more detail in the future, but for now, suffice it to say that the world is not fair, but by intentionally learning and developing a few new skills we can skew that unfairness in our favor.