Tag: craft

Sharpening Your Tools to Improve Your Craft (8-11-21)

Happy Wednesday,

This is the last in the series about mastering your craft.  This week is about sharpening your tools and your skills.

One of the most important tools a chef can have is a great set of knives.  The sharp blades lead to better slicing and dicing, and the sharper the blade the more precise a chef can cut with them.  This precision leads to making a better meal.  Over time, knives will eventually become dull as they are used over and over and over again.  When this happens, a chef will take the time to sharpen them.  Doing so restores the blade and its edge, helping the tool become a better asset to the chef using it. 

What does this have to do with anything?  In our crafts we don’t necessarily use knives, but we do leverage various skills, frameworks, and tools.  How do you go about sharpening them?  I primarily rely on feedback and reflection.  First, I rely on feedback about my performance on a given task that helps me understand where I wasn’t as crisp as I wanted to be.  This helps identify those areas I need to go back and work on.  Second, I spend a lot of time reflecting.  I reflect on books I’m reading, podcasts I’ve listened to, major projects I’m working on, and the small day to day stuff that sticks out to me.  I reflect to initially capture lessons, and then I go back and revisit those lessons to continue to glean new insights.  I especially do this whenever I’m doing a task I’ve done before.  For example, when I do customer planning I’ll go back and look at my previous reflections on customer planning over the year to identify learnings to carry forward and watchouts to avoid.  Doing this keeps me sharp, and helps me slice through things like a hot knife through butter (oh snap!)

The challenge: How will you sharpen your skills, frameworks, and tools?

I stand in solidarity against injustice and in support of humanity.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Your Craft and Having the Right Tools (8-4-21)

Last week was about focusing on one thing to improve your craft.  This week we will build on that by reflecting on the tools we use in our craft.

Have you ever been over to someone’s house who really enjoys the craft of cooking?  I’m not one of those people.  I’m an okay cook, but I don’t have a desire to be great at it.  One thing I’ve always noticed about people who enjoy the craft of cooking is that they have better tools than I do.  Tools could mean pots, pans, and utensils.  Tools could mean a better grill or smoker with better fuel.  Tools could even mean higher quality of ingredients than I would normally think of purchasing.  If I would ever hope to get to their level, not only would I have to practice more, but I would need to invest in better tools.

You might be wondering where this is going.  Last week we reflected on being intentional about focusing on the right thing to improve.  One of the aspects of getting better is making sure we are investing in the right tools, because having the right tools can make a big difference.  For example, about a year ago I was doing some marketing planning for a brand and trying to figure out how to adjust approaches due to COVID and everything else going in the world.  I had no idea how to go about thinking about this until a colleague introduced me to a framework.  She has a background in futurist thinking, and since we were thinking about the future she introduced me to some tools that she learned in her training.  Now that I had better tools, I was better equipped to attack the problem.  This futurist thinking is now something I have in my toolbelt to help me with my craft of moving people.  The challenge: What tools and frameworks are you picking up to help you master your craft?

Bonus- Below is a collection of frameworks/tools/questions I’ve picked up over the years that has taken my game to the next level.

  • Playing to Win– Book about key questions to leverage to think strategically
  • Radical Candor– Book about giving feedback.
  • Six Thinking Hats– A book about how to execute PRODUCTIVE team brainstorming.
  • Atomic Habits– One of the few things about habits that have helped things stick.
  • Secret Structure of Great Talks– A TED talk about the structure of communication. Helps me shape stories.
  • Flipboard- It’s an app that curates articles based on your personal preferences.  I like to spend a few minutes on this each day seeing if I can find anything cool.
  • Karen Wurster’s Prioritization Grid- I initially used this to prioritize market research work, but have expanded and adapted it to prioritize any project. Check out this link.

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Cornhole and Making 1 Change to Improve Your Craft (7-28-21)

Last week was about being focused on continually improving your craft.  This week is about playing cornhole and making 1 change to improve your craft.

Every year I go on a fishing trip with my dad, brother, uncle, and cousins, and we play a lot of cornhole aka bags.  In case you’ve never played, the goal is to throw the bags and get them into the hole (for 3 points) or onto the board (for 1 point).  The first team to score 21 without going over wins.  Historically, I’ve not been great at cornhole, because I was wildly inconsistent.  Most of the time I struggled to consistently make it onto the board.  This finally changed this year.  I started out being really off, which was obviously pretty frustrating.  I tried to solve this problem by changing a lot of things at the same time.  I tried different combinations of steps/no steps, throwing motions, changing how hard I was throwing, etc.

Making all those changes didn’t help.  Finally, I realized my issue.  I was holding the bags with my thumb on top of them and for some reason this often caused me to twist my wrist when throwing.  The wrist twisting motion made my throw unpredictable.  After diagnosing this, I realized I didn’t need to change a lot of things at the same time.  I needed to make ONE meaningful adjustment, so I changed my grip.  I started holding the bags in my palm without my thumb ever touching them.  This motion stopped me from turning my wrist over so often.  The result is I got to the point where I could at least consistently get the bags on the board.  I’m still not great at cornhole, but that one small change made me SUBSTANTIALLY better. 

What does this have to do with mastering a craft?  Often when trying to master something, I look at all the ways I am deficient and try to work on them all at once.  Do you ever do that?  This tends to lead to more and more frustration, because things often don’t get better.  Over time I’ve realized that usually if I could focus all of my effort on the right thing, then making 1 key change would have a tremendous impact.  Similar to cornhole, once I focused on fixing my grip, everything else got better.  Now that I’m consistent with my grip, I can work on doing other things.

The challenge: Take a moment to reflect on your craft.  What is one change you could make that would have a meaningful impact on improving your craft?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

Putting in Work to Master Your Craft (7-21-21)

Last week was about identifying what your craft is.  This week is about putting in the work to master your craft.  It’s inspired by my niece, Shelby.

Shelby has always loved hair.  She had done it for herself and friends, and about a year ago she decided to pursue it as a career.  This was her craft, her calling.  I’m not sure how she would describe doing hair as a craft, but I’d say it’s all about harnessing the power of transformation.  While Shelby already had some talent and skill, she had a desire to master her craft.  About a year ago, she started cosmetology school where she  learned new haircut techniques, color combinations, and other tips and tricks.  Every single day she was working to get better.  The picture above is work my niece did for my wife.  I know I’m biased, but I think it looks AMAZING.  My niece wouldn’t have been able to do that on Day 1, but through the constant striving to be better she’s improved and is at a higher level now than when she started.  Now she’s graduated and getting ready to start in a salon, but she’s not done growing.  She’s still learning.  Still trying to get better.  She’s constantly working to master her craft.  (#soproudofher)

What does this have to do with anything?  Shelby identified her craft and then went somewhere to work on her craft to get better.  I don’t know about you, but I allow myself to get stagnant sometimes.  I get so caught up in the day to day of life that I stop trying to learn.  I also get caught up in, “Well, I’ve done this before, so I’m already great at this.”  As a result of all of this, sometimes  I stop striving to get better.  Do you ever fall into that trap?  Last week we explored how our craft is so much deeper and more powerful than our job.  I believe that in our hearts, all of our crafts somehow connect to making the world better.  If this is the case, we can’t afford to stop growing and learning.

The challenge: Are you putting in the work to master your craft?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry

What is your craft? (7-14-21)

This week we will kick off a series about identifying and honing our crafts.  This first entry is about understanding your craft is more than just your job.

Recently I ordered a flight of beer from the brewpub.  When the bartender brought the flight over he explained how some of the beers were new, and then he asked if he could share some additional insight.  He went on to explain more about the new beers, and he offered perspective about the order in which I should try them.  He shared more about how the beers were made and some of the unique properties they had.  I took his suggestions, and noticed things I would have never picked up on my own.  It was delicious!

So what does this have to do with understanding what your craft it?  You could say that the bartender’s craft is making drinks.  However, this bartender understands that his craft goes beyond the physical act of making and serving beverages.  His craft is about creating experiences.  His insight and perspective changed the way I experienced the flight of beer, and I’m thankful for it.  His craft isn’t just the physical thing he does.  There’s a deeper meaning and power to what he does. 

What’s your craft?  I work in marketing, so you might say marketing is my craft.  That would be true to an extent, but I believe it’s more than that.  I believe my craft is moving people.  My unique genius and collection of skills, art, and science are all focused on connecting with people and moving them to feel something and/or take action.  This craft shows up in so many things I do whether it’s writing this blog, performing poetry, creating marketing strategies, uncovering market research insights, and the way I interact with folks on a daily basis.

The challenge: What is your craft?  How is it the same and/or different from your job?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry