martin zeman's blog

If you don’t step out of your comfort zone and face your fears, the number of situations that make you uncomfortable will keep growing. (Theo Pistorius)

Recently, I have had several great opportunities to face my fears and get out of my comfort zone. Unlike in similar cases in the past, this time I have confronted the fears and accepted the challenges. If you want to know which challenges they were please read on.

The first one came in November after I had decided to participate in Movember and to raise some money for the fight against prostate cancer. While it was a challenge on its own to commit to grow a moustache the difficult part for me was to ask other people for a financial contribution. This was very very far from my comfort zone. But I identified a handful of people, mostly my former colleagues I knew well, and sent them an email asking for a donation. But even a bigger challenge came later. It was in my new job where I started a month before that. At one of the managers’ meeting discussion turned towards my mustache (we discuss work as well, sometimes, I swear). I explained that looking sexy is not the main reason for the ‘tache and that it has a deeper meaning. One of the managers told me after the meeting that I should have sent them a link. I wrote an email addressed to all the managers including my boss (my closest colleagues), but I really hesitated – should I really send it? We have only known each other for a month or so. Isn’t it totally inappropriate? What if … and then I made my decission, my heart beat speeded up, a heat wave run through me, I took a deep breath and … email sent.

The second challenge was presented to me by my friend Jakub. He was organising a movie screening and a dinner at his home. Fish. I don’t eat fish – since the incident at kindergarten, when school teachers forced me to sit over the carp for four hours, I avoid dead fish. A year ago, on our honeymoon, I allowed myself to be talked into eating supposedly the best salmon in the world – others were vomiting due to seasickness, so I said to myself that in the worst case I will just join to the club – which I didn’t. However since then I haven’t had even a tiny bit of fish meat. Normally I would have told Jakub that I will have something else but I wanted to test a guide on how to change your habits from the book Awaken the Giant Within by Anthony Robbins. It worked.

The third time I ventured into the world outside of my comfort zone yesterday. I enrolled as a volunteer for a PHP UK Conference. The day before the conference I was asked if I can take care of management of one of the side rooms (welcoming delegates and introducing speakers). The story of myself and public speaking is full of fear and fighting and it probably deserves a separate article but I said to myself – hey they need me and so I signed up for it. On the day of the conference I found out that there is fair number of other volunteers and I thought that I could easily convince someone else to do it instead of me – but then I told myself that it’s time to stop running away and that I will stand up to my fear and I will do it. The evening before the conference I was replaying in my head over and over a vision of how I am successfully doing it. I have managed to kill all the demorilising thoughts (like “You are awful at public speaking!” “Your English is not good enough!” or “You know nothing about PHP!”) at the very time I’ve spotted them not giving them enough time to grow. And when the time came, I stood up in front of those hundred and fifty people and I spoke.

Maybe you will not find my challenges so big but for me they were tremendously high walls I thought I could never overcome. By destroying the walls not only I got much more freedom, but also a lot of confidence to overcome any obstacles in the future. I believe we all have such walls built up inside our minds – let’s not let them imprison us – let’s break through because it is absolutely amazing behind them.

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
(Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, Dune – Frank Herbert)

If God had said he would make the World in a day or two then he would look pretty unsuccessfully having done it in six days. But as he set out to do it in a week he became a legend and even got a day left to rest.

The biggest lesson I have learned at Marks and Spencer is how to manage expectations of others. During the first six months of working there I tried my best to fulfil everyone’s wishes. When they said they needed something ASAP (As Soon As Possible) I honestly told them what is the earliest time I migt get the task finished and then I worked hard to deliver it on time.

Surprisingly enough the World (and my boss) hadn’t stopped to wait for me to get done with one task – they kept moving and bringing other, often more important and urgent, tasks. Result? Me, working very long hours, barely hitting deadlines and having little or no time to check my work for mistakes. And even if I managed to deliver things on time and without errors the acknowledgement I received for my efforts was usually far from the levels I thought I deserved.

The problem was in different expectations I had and those of my boss and colleagues. While I looked at a task and said for example: “This could be done in two weeks, but I will try to do it in one week instead.” – in my eyes finish it in a week was something exceptional but when I told my colleagues that I will do it in one week they saw it as a standard – that’s the deadline and hitting a deadline is nothing special.

Knowledge Snippet: People don’t compare against realistic expectations but against set expectations.

After half a year I felt like having a burnout coming soon. I told myself ‘ENOUGH!’ and completely changed my approach to work. I started to become much more active in setting realistic expectations and taking into consideration external influences such as potential top priority tasks.

What really worked for me and has been working ever since is the rule of two. When I get a new task I calculate the minimum time needed for finishing it under ideal circumstances (just as I used to do) and then multiply the time by two and declaring that as my deadline. It’s a win-win solution. I get more time to do things properly which results in better quality results. Also the probability that I will finish in time is much higher. While it is usually important to finish things without delays the benefits enabled by predictability, when clients can really count on agreed timelines and make arrangements around them, are much more important than the speed of delivery.

What is absolutely crucial for this to work is mutual trust between the parties. On one hand my clients trust me I set the deadlines honestly and on the other hand I don’t delay delivery due to a fear of tougher deadlines next time – as soon as a task is done, I hand it over.

However the aspect I like the most about the rule of two is the great opportunity to delight people, by exceeding their expectations, making them happy and through their feedback making myself happy.

Tell me what you read and I will tell you who you are. (Czech proverb)

Read what I read and we will understand each other better. (Martin Zeman)

Books have an amazing power to shape people’s opinions and change their points of view. Unlike TVs books give people time to think about ideas they carry. This is absolutely crucial for people to be able to appreciate all aspects of an idea. In TV there is not enough time for that as there is always something else coming up – next TV show, news at 12:30 or block of adverts. That’s why in mass media all things look black and white. But the real world is full of colours.

Another popular way of spreading ideas is sharing them in person. But if you’ve ever tried to convince someone to see the world through your eyes while their view had been different you know that it’s very difficult and often painful. Such a try usually ends up in a heated argument without winners. On the other hand, it’s extremely difficult to argue with a book, isn’t it? Plus the book won’t give you an affirmation that your opinion is right (which is what people really seek in arguments) – not unless your view is the same as the one in the book.

I am currently working on a new start-up with my friend David. We have agreed that we will be managing a reading list for each other – I will tell David what I would like him to read and he will tell me what I should read – it’s a powerful way how to align our thinking and speed up the process of our cooperation and it’s a lot of fun too. It’s not so simple to decide which book will bring the biggest benefit to our start-up at its current stage. The first book I’ve chosen for David is Built to Last by James Collins and Jerry Porras, David has picked Do it yourself – A handbook for changing our world edited by Trapese Collective.

The idea of reading same books is not unique – for example at Zappos, one of the most admired companies today they have a library of selected books and employees are encouraged to read them – some of the books are even mandatory for new starters (you can read more in Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh). Anyway the fact that the idea is not unique doesn’t make it any less brilliant. It is still a perfect way for aligning people’s way of thinking and their values.

We will probably share our ‘library-list’ in the future but if you know a great book for start-up entrepreneurs please let us know in comments.

If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you. (T. Alan Armstrong)

For the last two or three years I have been conciously searching for my passion. I have been reading various blogs and books and there was one advice that kept appearing over and over again. The advice says: “Find what you are passionate about the most, find a way how to spend enough time doing it and happiness, success and money will find you.”

It sounds great and it makes sense. But to actually make that happen you often need a lot of courage and always a lot of faith and determination. However the single most important thing is to know what you are truly passionate about.

During my search for my passion I kept thinking about what kind of job role I’d like to do. Do I want to be an executive manager or rather a business analyst or do I want to have my own company? I couldn’t decide. I thought I would like all of the roles and others as well – personal coach, marketer, business executive advisor, virtual CEO, movie producer or director and more – the problem was that I saw the downsides of every option as well – every role involves some parts that are not so appealing. For a long time I just kept singing to myself that I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

But last Wednesday I finally got it. I realised that my approach just wasn’t working – I kept asking what job I want to do and it led nowhere. So I changed my question and asked myself: “When am I most passionate, happy and excited?” and I realised it’s when I meet new people, when I am asking them about their lives and dreams, when I am helping them identifying their problems and then presenting solutions I have designed, when I am uncovering potential and helping them change their lives (in however small a way), when I am brainstorming with entrepreneurs about their new startups or enabling executive managers to stand still for a while and thing about what’s most important for their business.

Then it was dead simple to spot the shared theme of all these situations – it was all about people. I thought which people gave me most energy and I realised that I care most deeply about people who want to do things that matter, people who want to learn, people with a vision, people with a determination and desire. In a nutshell I realised that:

I AM PASSIONATE ABOUT PEOPLE WITH PASSION.