Eric Fixler Responds to 'Pull a Fixler'
Pulling A Fixler hasn’t [yet] entered the mainstream vocabulary in the way that pulling pork has, but it’s clearly resonating among the lot of us who find too much of our time, creative energy, and productive output neutralized by ill-conceived and poorly run meetings. I get that.
Taking control of your time is a powerful act, particularly in tandem with an expression of integrity and competence, both of which are wrapped in the core of Pulling A Fixler. It’s also a loosening of the grips of both FOMO and careerism, and declaring that you know that you’re not actually missing anything, career consequences be damned.
Many of us find ourselves voiceless inside organizations that are needlessly and illogically off the rails. Etsy in 2011 had gone through 3 CEOs in 3 years, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thought it was in a healthy organizational state, or anyone who believed that the level of success that the company has seen under Chad Dickerson was inevitable or assured.
This guest post by Eric Fixler is in response to my blog post, which has managed to go pretty viral over the past six weeks. -Jesse
“Pulling A Fixler is a well-intentioned and maybe even effective antidote to a suboptimal situation, but it’s not the best way.”
Pulling A Fixler hasn’t [yet] entered the mainstream vocabulary in the way that pulling pork has, but the concept is clearly resonating among the lot of us who find too much of our time, creative energy, and productive output neutralized by ill-conceived and poorly run meetings. I get that.
Taking control of your time is a powerful act, particularly in tandem with an expression of integrity and competence, both of which are wrapped in the core of Pulling A Fixler. It’s also a loosening of the grips of both FOMO and careerism, and declaring that you know that you’re not actually missing anything, career consequences be damned.
Many of us find ourselves voiceless inside organizations that are needlessly and illogically off the rails. Etsy in 2011 had gone through 3 CEOs in 3 years, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who thought it was in a healthy organizational state, or anyone who believed that the level of success that the company has seen under Chad Dickerson was inevitable or assured.
“Saying no at work is a million times more complicated than ducking out of a meeting, because it cuts to issues of hierarchy, integrity, intent, communications, and tribal competition.”
In that context, Pulling A Fixler becomes what one insightful colleague of mine calls a Larry David Moment. I didn't at first believe that the apparently well-adjusted types with whom Pulling A Fixler struck a chord could have an internal Larry David struggling to show itself. The umpteen reposts, high-fivey emails, slides devoted to Pulling A Fixler in management-practice decks, and the Pulling A Fixler cutout cards that have come my way over the past few weeks have proven me wrong in this regard.
I’m here to tell you that Pulling A Fixler is a well-intentioned and maybe even effective antidote to a suboptimal situation, but it is not the best way. It’s also something I haven’t done in years, in part because I’ve evolved as an individual, and in part because my role in the professional universe is different now than it was then.
Walking out of a meeting in-progress should be an approach of last resort. At best it’s awkward, at worst it’s rude. The truth is, you may need to walk out of a meeting sometimes, and it may be the right thing to do, but if you’re already there, your victory in leaving will be at best partial, and at worst pyrrhic.
“As a manager, you should be enhancing workplace rhythm, not disrupting it.”
In reality, the outcomes of “The Fixler” are mixed. You might feel empowered, but that’s mostly ego. You might get a little bit more done, but you already interrupted your flow to get to the $#*%^ meeting. You might send a message, but its effectiveness will be diminished by the friction generated by the act itself. You haven't created any dialogue. The witnesses to your act may empathize with you, but they won’t all be as perceptive and reflective as Jesse Hertzberg.
As an invitee, the right thing to do — and at its root this whole topic is really about doing what’s right — is to bow out of the meeting ahead of time, and make sure that you really know the meeting context and that the meeting organizer understands that you won’t be there and why.
If the right time to decline is ahead of time, and the invitee can accept some responsibility for communicating, we’re really not talking about meetings at all anymore. We’re talking about saying ‘no’. And saying no at work is a million times more complicated than ducking out of a meeting, because it cuts to issues of hierarchy, integrity, intent, communications, and tribal competition that 'The Fixler' doesn’t even begin to touch.
Saying ‘no' — in particular when saying no is authentically believed to be the right thing to do for the collective effort — deserves its own conversation. For now, let me just assert what I think most of us know intuitively: A ‘No’ that means, “No, I don’t want to do that because it’ll detract from a more important effort,” is really a very high form of ‘yes’; and a ‘Yes’ that really means, “I’ll go along to get along,” is actually a very low form of ‘no’. It’s complicated.
Pulling A Fixler makes some sense because it takes place inside a particular circumstance where the intent and the integrity behind the ‘no’ are hard to misinterpret. It is a rare case of late binding in the space of office work. It feels powerful, and disrupts the lack of agency we feel when we get unwanted meeting invites from people above us on the organizational totem pole.
Not long after the events depicted in Jesse’s post, I switched to a different position on the organizational totem pole. I wouldn’t necessarily describe the move in vertical terms — our totem poles at Etsy were sort of 3-dimensional — but I was a manager (again). More to the point, I was now a scheduler, not just an invitee.
There’s a time and a place for meetings. Work is made of people, and getting together is necessary sometimes. It can also be collaborative and challenging and interesting and productive and zesty.
As a scheduler I’ve tried to incorporate self-awareness about what made me walk out of those meetings into scheduling (dare I say organizing) my own meetings, including:
Make sure that the intent and goals of the meeting are clear ahead of time. You’d be amazed at how little I often knew ahead of time about the meetings I ‘Fixlered’.
Keep the invitee lists smallish, and make people optional. Too small is always better than too big.
The onus is on the organizer to justify people's presence. Make everyone optional if you can, or at least let people know that you are generally OK with them using their own judgment about whether they need to attend.
Keep a rhythm. If you’re frequently creating meetings at random times, with little or no lead time and inviting a lot of the same participants, you’re doing it wrong. For engineers, designers, writers, and others, getting into a zone is critical to happiness and performance. Having a regular-ish schedule, and knowing your schedule when you get to work in the morning are both components of a kick-ass day. As a manager, you should be enhancing workplace rhythm, not disrupting it, so use regular time slots as much as possible. Don't schedule less than a day in advance, unless it's truly urgent.
Get off the screens. Computers and phones help perpetuate lousy meetings by letting people be there when they're really not.
Keep setting an example by saying no, ahead of time, to meetings that aren't the best use of your time, and aren't in the best interest of your company. My best self is honest and respectful about the best use of time and about communicating that to others in the way that I would want it communicated to me. I do say no to meetings. It does raise people's hackles, but it also provides an opportunity to set an example and express real values about work and collaboration.
I’m not going to say that Pulling A Fixler isn’t sometimes justified or even necessary. I’m also not going to say that skipping meetings definitely isn’t going to hurt your career. It is reasonably obvious that Pulling A Fixler is not the best way to elevate yourself and those around you. It reflects, in part, being stuck in a shitty game. But if you know that, and it bothers you, there’s probably a different approach that you can come up with to set a better example and to raise the discourse of everyone around you.
If you’re organizing meetings thoughtfully you can almost certainly prevent the preconditions for an attendee Pulling A Fixler from ever transpiring. It is actually your responsibility to do precisely that, even if no one ever tells you as much.
You can’t make every meeting perfect, and you probably can’t fully erase FOMO and the career anxieties that come with it, but you can put them on the table and be honest about them. And being as honest as you can be is what’s going to enhance the collaboration and camaraderie that meetings are really meant to advance.
I'm sorry, but I have to go now.
Pull a Fixler
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was part of the team at Etsy. The customers were amazing. The Kool-Aid was delicious.
We were smallish then, but growing fast, and meeting creep was kicking in. Anyone who has experienced a startup transitioning from 50 people to 150 people knows exactly what I'm talking about.
Five or ten minutes into many meetings at Etsy, Eric Fixler, a senior software engineer at the time, would pick up his stuff and just walk out the door, mumbling something about not being useful here. If he had nothing to contribute, he went and found a better use of his, and our, time... teaching me a valuable lesson along the way.
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I was part of the team at Etsy. The customers were amazing. The Kool-Aid was delicious.
We were smallish then, but growing fast, and meeting creep was kicking in. Anyone who has experienced a startup transitioning from 50 people to 150 people knows exactly what I'm talking about.
“[Meeting creep] is a medically diagnosable condition with the primary symptom being the inexplicable expansion of meetings into every crevice and corner of your schedule.”
Five or ten minutes into many meetings at Etsy, Eric Fixler, a senior software engineer at the time, would pick up his stuff and just walk out the door, mumbling something about not being useful here. If he had nothing to contribute, he went and found a better use of his, and our, time... teaching me a valuable lesson along the way.
There is no reason to sit in a meeting to which you add no value. Everyone invited should be there for a reason, and if you are there for a reason, you should be actively contributing, regardless of role or seniority. We hired you for your experience and insight, not to be a wallflower. If you can't actively contribute to this particular discussion, there should be nothing wrong with leaving. We certainly don't want to be wasting anyone's time. Everyone at a startup has a million things to do.
Thus was born The Fixler, a simple and powerful rule: If you are sitting around a conference table and your presence isn't necessary nor adds value to the others in the room, you may get up, say 'Fixler', and walk out without explanation or penalty.
Go ahead, pull a Fixler, and feel the liberation.
Everything You Create Is A Product
I’m obsessed with office reception.
I've come to realize that I’m a product manager. The org is my product. The employee is my customer. If I facilitate the creation of the right DNA and structure. the team is freed to be their creative best in service of their customer, knowing that the resources, infrastructure, and long-term personal and professional development they need to be their best selves are the very foundation upon which they sit. I find this work utterly delightful.
I believe every employee should consider themselves a product manager. I don't quite agree when Marc Pincus says every employee should be CEO of something or when Ben Horowitz says every product manager is a CEO. CEOs have absolute authority. Product managers, on the other hand, are part of a larger collective, and when plugged together allow one plus one to equal three. Product managers, like CEOs, must champion a big vision, but they must also focus on executing short-term strategy and getting the details right while obsessing over what their customer will do.
Reception, for example, is one of the most important products your company produces. Every morning it sets the tone for your employees' day. Every day it sets first impressions for every prospective employee that visits. Since talent is the key asset that feeds your company’s growth (not to mention your biggest expense), how can you not obsess over reception?
I’m obsessed with office reception.
I've come to realize that I’m a product manager. The org is my product. The employee is my customer. If I facilitate the creation of the right DNA and structure. the team is freed to be their creative best in service of their customer, knowing that the resources, infrastructure, and long-term personal and professional development they need to be their best selves are the very foundation upon which they sit. I find this work utterly delightful.
I believe every employee should consider themselves a product manager. I don't quite agree when Marc Pincus says every employee should be CEO of something or when Ben Horowitz says every product manager is a CEO. CEOs have absolute authority. Product managers, on the other hand, are part of a larger collective, and when plugged together allow one plus one to equal three. Product managers, like CEOs, must champion a big vision, but they must also focus on executing short-term strategy and getting the details right while obsessing over what their customer will do.
“What am I obsessing over that will embody the company’s values and continuously lead to new customer delight? ”
Reception, for example, is one of the most important products your company produces. Every morning it sets the tone for your employees' day. Every day it sets first impressions for every prospective employee that visits. Since talent is the key asset that feeds your company’s growth (not to mention your biggest expense), how can you not obsess over reception?
My former colleague Blanche is a brilliant product manager. She understands that reception reflects the brand in countless ways. She groks the big picture and sweats the details. Everyone is greeted warmly and their needs attended to. The desk is picture perfect uncluttered, chairs aligned, curtains drawn, light bulbs working, books straight, drinks stocked, packages out of sight. Reception’s personality and aesthetic matches the brand and the company's customer service orientation, and thus sets the right tone for everyone who comes through those doors.
Take a moment and ask yourself these questions: What is my product? Who is my customer? What am I obsessing over that will embody the company's values and continuously lead to new customer delight? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you won't achieve peak performance, for without the answers to these questions, how can you think big, think small, communicate effectively, prioritize, forecast, execute, and measure?
Everything you create is a product and every product has a customer for whom you must deliver value – regardless if you work in devops or marketing, sales or SRE, customer service or design, human resources or engineering. Therefore, everyone is a product manager. They just haven’t all realized it yet.
(I really am obsessed with office reception. I had all our entryways repainted at least once a year. Perhaps no one noticed besides me, but I doubt that. Details matter, which is why customers delight in them.)
Humility and Fierce Resolve
I pulled out my notes on Good to Great to find a quote or two for yesterday's blog post on self-awareness. Inevitably I found other quotes meaningful to me. They speak for themselves and since my drafts queue is full of half-finished ideas, allow me to simply share them with you below. You'll find my brief comments in italics. The title of this post refers to the two key qualities found in all of Collins' Level 5 leaders.
Management and leadership is not about those doing the managing and leading, but rather about those being managed and led.
... Level 5 leaders have ambition not for themselves but for their companies ... Level 5 leaders want to see their companies become even more successful in the next generation and are comfortable with the idea that most people won’t even know that the roots of that success trace back to them. As one Level 5 CEO said, “I want to look from my porch, see the company as one of the great companies in the world someday, and be able to say, ‘I used to work there.’ ”
I pulled out my notes on Good to Great to find a quote or two for yesterday's blog post on self-awareness. Inevitably I found other quotes meaningful to me. They speak for themselves and since my drafts queue is full of half-finished ideas, allow me to simply share them with you below. You'll find my brief comments in italics. The title of this post refers to the two key qualities found in all of Collins' Level 5 leaders.
Management and leadership is not about those doing the managing and leading, but rather about those being managed and led.
... Level 5 leaders have ambition not for themselves but for their companies ... Level 5 leaders want to see their companies become even more successful in the next generation and are comfortable with the idea that most people won’t even know that the roots of that success trace back to them. As one Level 5 CEO said, “I want to look from my porch, see the company as one of the great companies in the world someday, and be able to say, ‘I used to work there.’ ”
The hardest thing a manager has to do is let someone go. It is always gut-wrenching for both parties. To be great you must relentlessly focus on the long-term ambitions of the company. As a result tough decisions become necessary and obvious.
Letting the wrong people hang around is unfair to all the right people, as they inevitably find themselves compensating for the inadequacies of the wrong people. Worse, it can drive away the best people. Strong performers are intrinsically motivated by performance, and when they see their efforts impeded by carrying extra weight, they eventually become frustrated.
When it comes to product, Squarespace's Anthony Casalena embodies this lesson more than any founder I know.
Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great. We don't have great schools, principally because we have good schools. We don't have great government, principally because we have good government. Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.
Only rocket science is rocket science and only saving lives is saving lives. The rest of us should remember that work is just work. Don't overthink it. Focus on your family and choose work that is deeply meaningful to you. The rest will follow. For me that means choosing to help grow teams creating innovative software that has tangible and meaningful impact on the lives of the individuals who use it.
When [what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be best in the world at and what drives your economic engine] come together, not only does your work move toward greatness, but so does your life. For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. Perhaps, then, you might gain that rare tranquility that comes from knowing that you’ve had a hand in creating something of intrinsic excellence that makes a contribution. Indeed, you might even gain that deepest of all satisfactions: knowing that your short time here on this earth has been well spent, and that it mattered.