Don’t Worry About Good Enough

Todays post comes from Ise Lyfe. Ise is Chief Executive Officer at Lyfe Productives, a California bases social marketing and product development firm. He’s currently a Teaching Fellow and Instructor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. You can follow him here.

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Bianca is project manager at a major publicly traded outfit with a global reach. She’s also one of the sweetest and most decent people I know.  As a young and new hire she came in to the company making $80k a year, and after two promotion in less than 3 years she’s advanced to an important managing position and shared with me that she had just accepted the a position with a salary at $120k. Not bad… 

A week later I get the “Hey… can we talk? I need your input on something…” text. I was glad and honored oblige. 

When our call started her tone and vibe was more of someone who’s cat had just died, not of someone with a new job, respect from her peers, and a six-figure salary to boot. 

“Ise, I worry that I may not be good enough for this job I just took…” she sighed. 

I said, “You probably aren’t…” 

With great indignation all of her performing of not feeling confident evaporated as she yelled at me playfully, “Excuse me?! What!?” 

I didn’t budge… “You probably are not good enough…” 

Seeing my demeanor didn’t change and that I was not teasing her when I said she probably wasn’t good enough, an apparent mild anxiety came over her.

“Wait…” She whispered as if someone was listening in on our conversation… “You think I shouldn’t have taken the position..?

“Of course you should’ve,” I said. 

I realized I was being confusing so I tried to clear it up. 

Me: Have you ever done this job before? 

Bianca: “No.” 

Me: How many hours of training or in the field work experience have you had on these data sets they’re giving you…?

Bianca (More deflated): Zero hours.

Me: “So, you probably aren’t good enough. Just past sucking at it more than likely…” (I was teasing then). The question isn’t if you are good enough. The question is, are you great enough? Are you limber and agile enough? More than any of that—are you willing enough. Willing and great enough to learn, build, inquire, and show up until you are good enough at the gig and in the role.” 

Bianca: (Quite confidently (rightfully so)) “Well, yeah, of course…”

I told her that the best thing she could do is never act like or set the expectation for herself that she is good enough for a new thing out the gate.

That was it. That was it because she was it. 

People who interview at my company that come in touting how confident they are that if they are hired they’ll do this and rock at that are full of it- whether they know it or not. They approach job interviews as an audition, thus start the job as an actor. The better of us, people like Bianca, are uncomfortable with that level of fraudulence. Due to humility rather than question the process they question themselves. More specifically and more devastating- they question their worth or value. 

No one is good enough at a new thing right away. And a rushed proficiency cannot compare to the potency of a person who nurtures a skillset through sincere devotion to learning and building, rather than an egoic or fear-based scramble to seem ready. 

I believe companies and ventures thrive when executives mind this perspective and do not overly pressure new hires prematurely, or value capability without an equal measured value on will and instinct. 

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