#8. Clearly wrong, disco family

also Get By, The Killing Moon, Grayson's Art Club, Hanoi chicken noodle soup

Hello!

The responses to last week’s newsletter about eyeroll fear were encouraging and supportive and - honestly - just lovely to receive. It’s hard to write about the things I’m scared of (!) so I appreciate your support when I do.

Cantlin joined us on digital identity this week and it’s been eye-opening watching him in action! I’ve already learned a ton of stuff and I’m so excited to see what comes out of working together with him and Emily and the rest of the team. Watch this space.

Clearly wrong

My colleague Ben has been writing down a clear vision for digital identity over the last few weeks. It’s great work in itself - public sharing soon - but it’s also been making me think a lot about the power of being clearly wrong at work.

On Thursday Ben reflected on what he’d learned in the process of writing down something simple in black and white. His initial concern was that he was just writing down what everyone already knew. But as he wrote a bit, shared a bit, and listened a bit, he soon realised that everyone was thinking slightly differently:

• When we were using abstract words, rather than specific phrases, everyone imagined that their own interpretation was the shared one. ‘Data-sharing’ is my favourite example - yeah, but what data, and who is sharing with who, and how do we know that is useful? Not many solid answers when you go there.

• When we were talking about things in meetings, rather than writing them down in documents, the slipperiness of speech allowed us to pretend we agreed when we were poles apart. I’ve written before about using thinking, talking and writing to develop and clarify ideas at different stages and this is the inverse of that.

It’s hard to make progress towards a shared goal when everyone has a different goal :(

It took a lot of courage for Ben to be clearly wrong and write down what he thought everyone was thinking. People piled in with corrections and clarifications and challenges. They commented in the document, live-edited in big meetings, unloaded opinions whenever they saw him. Me included. With patience and grace he listened a bit, changed a bit, shared a bit more, over and over again.

And now, two weeks later, we have a new level of clarity and shared understanding. Which is the precursor to making progress towards our shared goal.

This process of being clearly wrong is familiar for designers. We design an object that makes diverse ideas concrete. Other designers critique it (“what, exactly, is going on with this clunky bit here Will?”). Stakeholders get exasperated at how wrong it is (“no, Will, not like that you idiot, like this!)”. And best/hardest of all our users assassinate our careful work with previously-invisible misunderstandings (“ah, it’s a tool to do this [completely-unintended] thing! Yes some people might use that?”).

Learning to embrace being clearly wrong is the most useful thing design taught me.

And it’s transferable to other situations. Like Ben writing down what he thinks everyone already knows and inviting comment. Or me sharing what I think is going on on day four and being told I’m wrong. It takes inner strength to do this (it’s no accident that they teach critique in design school!) because our ridiculous macho culture prizes being visibly right at all times. We feel ashamed to be wrong.

But if you’re interested in making rapid progress toward a shared goal then being clearly wrong is nearly always a useful place to start.

Disco family

Grayson Perry is back with his Art Club. It’s one of those shows that I never think I’ll enjoy but then within thirty seconds I’m hooked every time.

(Esther pointed out that there’s nothing else on TV that captures the experiences and emotions of lockdown across such a wide range of people. I think she’s right. Although the extended human-focus features that often pop up with no warning in the middle of Channel 4 News and leave me shaking with emotion run it pretty close).

Anyway. Last night’s theme was family. The special guest was Boy George who opened with this stone-cold gem in response to Grayson asking him about family:

You’ve got your family family. And then you’ve got what I call your disco family. Sort of like your nightclub family.

Seven minutes in and already my worldview’s been turned upside down.

Because of course I’m got my family family. My mum, my brother, my sister, my dad and stepmum, my cousins. They’ve always been there for me. I love them deeply and care a huge amount about my relationships with them. I see them loads.

But, just like Boy George, I ran away from my family family. Even though they loved and supported me I needed space to form as my own person. My escape vehicle wasn’t late 70s/early 80s London but late 90s/early 00s Manchester. I lived for nights like Electric Chair, Eyes Down, Keep It Unreal and Friends and Family in dark basements like the Music Box, the Roadhouse, Night and Day, Band on the Wall, Dry Bar and Mint Lounge. I ran my own night called C’mon Feet and I’d go out into town alone because I knew that my people would be there in those basements.

And, just like Boy George, those times gave me my disco family. Jeff, Tania, Matt, Emily, John, Kate, Paul, Mitali, Matt, Polly, Peter, Lucie, Andy and so on. These are the people I’ve spent my life with and those relationships were built around nightclubs. I even got together with Esther at Planet K waiting for DJ Cash Money to show up…

I’d never thought of these people as family until Boy George told me that’s what they were last night. And this disco family is what I miss most in lockdown. They’re the ones that I can’t travel to see and - like a horror story - the nightclubs we come from have been turned from joyful uplifting places into death traps by this pandemic.

To cope I’ve somehow been pretending that not seeing my disco family wasn’t a big thing for me. That it was OK. But it’s not been OK. It’s been fucking brutal.

And that’s why I love Grayson’s Art Club. It makes me feel the real things.

Listening

When we’re all reunited this is what I want to hear at full blast. Non-negotiable. Nina Simone on the sample, young Kanye on the buttons, gospel voices on the hooks, and Talib Kweli spitting about coping with the shit that life throws at you…

This morning, I woke up
Feeling brand new and I jumped up
Feeling my highs, and my lows
In my soul, and my goals
Just to stop smokin', and stop drinkin'
And I've been thinkin' - I've got my reasons
Just to get (by), just to get (by)
Just to get (by), just to get (by)

Reading

It's taken me a while to get into The Killing Moon by N.K Jemisin but it’s gripped me in the last week and now I can’t put it down. I think I was expecting sci-fi but it’s more a kind of fertile-crescent-inspired fantasy novel.

Watching

Grayson’s Art Club. Obvs. I might even go back and rewatch all the old episodes tbh.

Cooking

Made Rick Stein’s version of Hanoi chicken noodle soup which is my favourite thing to cook and eat ever. A whole chicken poached with overwhelming amounts of garlic, ginger, star anise and cinnamon as the base. Wide rice noodles. And then loads of fresh greens and herbs plus fish sauce and lime and crazy amounts of chilli.

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Right. Done. Saturday morning seems to be write-the-newsletter time now that I’m back at work. Feels like it’s getting a bit easier and a bit quicker. Plus I need to get out into this bright blue crisp sunny day…

Stay safe,

Will