ADC 2020 Lightning Talk : No man is an island. Except the Isle of Man.

When Sartre resolved that ‘Hell is other people’ he was probably trying to get Remo to connect to his microphone. This year’s running theme is definitely ‘imperfect replacements for human contact’. On the other hand, 2020 has highlighted our reliance on other people like nothing else could.

So this year, I’ve set my tone to consolation. Even while certain governments in Europe turn up the despotism, and we in the UK stupidly try to saw the Channel Tunnel in half, I’m not sufficiently angry to do narcissism for a third time.

My mission this year was to launch a hardware product, and my very own very flaky company. I won’t advertise it now: I’ve got a talk on Thursday evening and you’ll be there if you’re interested. Talk about it twice, and I’ll just jinx it.

Last year, I found myself explaining to a man in his eighties that I’d decided to start my own business. He fixed me with a glare. ‘You’ve just had your fortieth birthday, haven’t you?’ 

That he read me so transparently is worrying because I’d hate this talk to bore an octogenarian. On the other hand, this industry needs constant competition and experimentation, without which nothing can evolve. If the output of a thousand midlife crises bumping against a handful of spoilt rich kids can keep us all together, bring it on.

Designing, producing and selling electronics for a profit in a creative industry is deliciously hard. It’s in the category of things that are only just possible to do on your own, like circumnavigating the globe or reaching a human being at YouTube.

So I’m going to talk today about going it alone … Or not.

Many years ago, a commercial director at Focusrite explained that any business needs to optimise three different functions: sales, operations, and management. The message was if you looked after only two of those, you didn’t figuratively have a company, and would soon literally not have one. Managing the tension between sales, operations, and management, whilst looking after business as usual, is what keeps a decent company in a perpetual state of productive conflict. You have to argue to establish what’s most important, preferably with other people.

The thing is — and I’m about to blame the world for my own problems here — the way we are conditioned in early life impedes our ability to put a team together. As soon as you reach an unspecified age of adulthood, your future depends on unlearning most of your childhood conditioning as quickly as you can.

Don’t talk to strangers! becomes, ‘Work the room, build connections, maximise your luck.’

Copying is cheating! becomes … and I’d like to thank Maurice Ravel for the best advice I’ve read about making art … ‘Copy. And if, in copying, you remain yourself, it is because you have something to say.’ (Ravel died in 1937; Uli Behringer was born in 1961.)

Don’t talk back! becomes, ‘Consider, dear colleague, that your argument may benefit from reconciliation with the latest facts.’

Most of us emerge blinking from the same forest of infant conditioning so at least it’s somewhat fair. And adolescence, as long as you do it right, offers a gradual escape.

But as one-person companies, we have two problems with living in our own heads. The first is that our own expertise is lumpy. My Engineering Director is great, but I’d fire my Marketing Director if I could plug in a better one. So I have to ask an appropriate friend to second-guess.

Another former colleague of mine, with his own new company, is a natural at that stuff. His opening gambit was to mock up a make-believe product, collect pre-orders from Facebook, and wade waist-deep into a morass of emotion that would cause my jaw to clench. Which is smart: he is using the fact that he can’t build the physical product himself to his advantage.

But I built a prototype first, because that’s how I articulate myself, and from there my conversation with the market has been very different. No book would ever tell you to work that way, but books are usually written by marketers, not engineers.

So, your company will start as a shadow of your own prejudices and talents. Your engagement with the world must show you at your best, but it will also constrain what your business values.

When you’re an employee, your skills compensate for your weaknesses. Unfortunately, at the top of a business, your weaknesses drag down your skills. This is why you eventually have to hire people because they are not like you and, sometimes, because they do not like you.

I’ve watched a perfectionist kill a business because the product that would have saved it was never deemed ready. I’ve worked for disorganised people running disorganisations, wearing out their social capital by failing to maintain their products and stunting their later growth. A company run by a narcissist is just another limb of that individual: banal, reactionary, unempathetic.

And you have only one brain. (‘One brain’, incidentally, is an anagram of Brian Eno.) Self-discipline is a resource that some people possess in greater quantities than others, but it’s always expendable. Sometimes you need to close your eyes or watch a crappy video, and the entire operation has to shut down with you.

There is nobody else to pick over your internal caffeine-comedown monologue for logical fallacies. All your imaginary personnel get flooded by the same hormones, so are all angry or despondent at the same time.

That email to a supplier, for example, who has just cost you two months and £5000 has to wait until after the weekend, when your business’s endocrine system has settled down. (That was last week. Still a bit raw.)

But this is why we need other people. The most notorious casualty of a solo round-the-world yacht race, Donald Crowhurst, went mad and jumped overboard in 1969 and was never seen again. He left his log book behind, though, from which we learn that his biggest mistake was to turn his back on his family, switch off his two-way radio, and start getting seduced by his own dark thoughts.

Rarely in the adult world are there prizes for going it alone. And even if you want to, at least one opponent is somewhat like a restless, deep, and uncaring ocean.

If you’re having the same embryonic thoughts I was having back in 2018, please prepare yourself, be lucky, and take a risk that I promise you won’t regret. Even if you fail in the process, you will gain so much.

Finally, this is advice to myself, but it applies to any introvert: when in doubt, pick up the phone, and use the person at the other end with consideration. It will only strengthen a friendship.

My Other ADC 2019 Talk : Immerse Yourself and Be Saved!

While I work out how to respond to the wonderful feedback I received about the ‘narcissistic boss’ piece, here’s my talk on immersive audio from ADC 2019. In this, I tried to pour a one-hour talk into a half-hour slot. Which is a little hard on the speaker and audience, but much better than a too-superficial treatment.

I’m not selling anything in the talk, although I’ll soon make a foray into this market. (Did you know I’m making a head tracker? I’m making a head tracker!)

Feeling particularly pleased about the Generation-X-era joke at 22:05, and the gentle dig at Dolby’s foray into consumer goods at 29 minutes. (Less proud of saying ‘fourth-order’ when I meant ‘fifth-order’ at 11:43. But nobody will notice if I don’t point it out.)

ADC 2019 Lightning Talk : Narcissistic Bosses in the Technology Sector, and How To Survive Them

ADC Lightning Talk 2019

There’s more going on in the recording, but this is the script I actually read from.

Hello London.

Tonight’s talk is pretty condensed. Which is this year’s excuse for needing a script.

I’m expanding a subject I handled in 2017: narcissistic bosses in the technology sector, and how to survive them. Having seen more of the world since then, I want to underline the fact that this talk is not about an individual. It’s about an epidemic.

As I said back then, a little self-regard is healthy. You should care about how you come across. I am talking about a personality disorder. This is characterised by particular attitudes and traits that render a person incapable of forming healthy relationships.

Human beings make social transactions. Most of us understand the greater game. If you perform a good deed, the people you help benefit directly. Indirectly, the whole community may do a little better, and your own standing will probably improve. The system is based on trust.

Narcissists don’t play this game. No matter how much you invest in them, their sense of entitlement prevents much love from spreading. And the day you have to call back a favour, they will casually deny your value.

As we need to be somewhat careful, I’ll describe four signs that you’re truly working for one. And I’ll finish with five things you can do about it.

Sign 1 : Work is life.

You are expected to make your workplace your home and also your hobby. Days are arbitrarily lengthened into evenings and weekends. You are reprimanded for turning off your phone on holiday.

Although many companies have ‘crunch time’, when people endure this for a few weeks a year, a symptom of a narcissistic boss is that this is business as usual.

Sign 2 : Bathos.

The world is awash with magazines, awards, and exclusive clubs and events for tech founders. This glamour attracts people who routinely enjoy a good time on someone else’s tab, whilst polishing their fantasy about their special genius and singular destiny.

Back in the office, the carefully-constructed Messianic coachwork slides effortlessly back to reveal the clown car underneath. Driven with an inconsistent sense of direction, its driver will neither consult the map, nor acknowledge any obstacles in the road until after they’ve been hit. In short, they will not distinguish between control and leadership.

Sign 3 : No institutional memory.

Healthy places have enquiry and debate. But there is no healthy argument with a narcissist. They’d rather gamble than learn, and this affects your company’s capacity to grow and adapt.

Every project thus becomes a copy of the last, but with more at stake and less time to complete it.

Sign 4 : It’s all a pantomime.

Regardless of whatever they achieved elsewhere, the principal function of your company’s middle management is decorative. They’ll arrive, listen, and take initiative. But following a few weeks of destabilisation, they will be rendered terrified to fart without a sign-off.

With few exceptions, their right to play depends on accepting a role in a darker pantomime: as hostages, enforcers, patsies, or fellow narcissists.

Those were some signs. Before I move on to the remedies, I must state Rule Zero, which is a fundamental don’t.

You cannot. Change. A narcissist.

But here are five things that you can do. And unlike some of the answers in Monday’s quiz, these are supported by literature.

Remedy 1 : Create resilience.

Your team is in for a long and rough ride. Form a united front that can weather the storm.

Carefully work out who in the company can or can’t be trusted. Hold meetings off-site and keep parts of them off-record so people can speak freely. Foster a social life that involves non-employees.

Remedy 2 : Negotiate.

Narcissists like short-term deals. Approach them on that level, and give them nothing extra for free. If they put pressure on your boundaries, demand something of value in return. They will probably concede, but still feel like they’ve won.

Remedy 3 : Agree and add.

… which is a term borrowed from improvised comedy. ‘Agreeing’ means supporting, in conversation, the world your partner is trying to build. ‘Adding’ means that you fill in details whenever you can.

It’s the gentlest way to work with someone new. It’s also the safest way to engage a narcissist. ‘Agree’: support their view of the world; don’t undermine it. ‘Add’: contribute your expertise whilst allowing them room to backtrack.

Never challenge. You are there to provide status and muscle, not questions. If you start wielding reason like a weapon, you’ll find you’ve brought a voltmeter to a gunfight.

Remedy 4 : Be a grey rock.

It takes energy to maintain a fantasy. If you are seen as a reliable source of nourishment, every lever you have will be pulled to get it out of you.

To be a grey rock is to deny the supply. Respond to every question positively, blandly, and in a monotone. Your answers must serve to impart no joy [not even joy in the making], and invite no conflict.

It may go against every instinct to make yourself boring, but it works a treat if you prefer being ignored to being molested.

Remedy 5 : Outgrow them.

Narcissists are kryptonite to creative people. They will surround you with lies. They will abuse your passion and trust. And, if you let them, they will bleed you dry.

Know that you will be faced with a choice between your career and your integrity, and choose wisely. Develop your skills in every way you can, and value the lessons you learn from other people’s mistakes. In the hours you command, surround yourself with sanity and civilisation.

And on that subject, enjoy the pub!