7 Business Lessons I Learned from Writer Neil Gaiman
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
A couple of months ago, I received an email from my cellular carrier saying they could “save me money”. I must admit that I’m usually a bit skeptical when these emails arrive but one day we were near our cellular store and decided to pop in to see if it was true. And much to my surprise, they did save us about 30% on our bill without a decrease in services. Lesson learned: sometimes it pays (literally) to investigate.
One of the other things we received in our new cellular plan was a free trial membership to MasterClass. I’m enjoying the sessions and look forward to sharing some of them with you. Like today’s with Neil Gaiman. Mr. Bartender and I are fans of the Amazon Prime show Good Omens, which is based on a book of the same name written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Because I’ve been enjoying the show, I wanted to listen to Gaiman’s MasterClass on Storytelling though I wasn’t specifically looking for business lessons.
While I enjoyed hearing about Gaiman’s writing and storytelling in the context of his work in the science fiction and fantasy genre, there were several things he said that are very applicable to the business world.
- Stories help us tell the truth. Gaiman started the class talking about storytelling and the importance of storytelling. In the business world, we tell stories all the time – about customer successes, employees going the extra mile, and how a process should work. But how often as businesspeople do we think about the way we communicate as storytelling? Maybe it would help our business communications to think about it that way and spend time developing our skills as storytellers.
- Look at old things a new way. Sometimes the answer to a problem isn’t to completely disrupt the system. Sometimes the answer is simply reexamining an old process in a new way. For example, maybe taking a manual process online. The process itself doesn’t change. Where it takes place changes (online versus on paper).
- Have faith in the process. Regular readers of HR Bartender know I’m definitely a process person. There are so many proven processes that can help us achieve our goals. If the process works, have confidence in it. If it doesn’t work, check out business lesson #2 above and look at it in a new way.
- Know what you want. It’s perfectly okay to be in the middle of figuring out what you want. But keep in mind that one reason problems don’t get resolved is because people and/or organizations don’t know what they want. For instance, a person might say that they have several different options for a career path. That’s great. But instead of saying “any of them will do”, there’s probably one that’s preferred. Don’t be afraid to communicate what you would prefer.
- Anticipate the conflict and deal with it. In business, we have to sell our ideas. In putting our thoughts together, it helps to anticipate the objections and know how to respond. Organizations do this too. For example, when the company knows they’re making a decision that will be unpopular with customers or employees, they have to think about the objections and be prepared to deal with them.
- Help your audience. Gaiman mentioned that sometimes in writing books, the author must remind readers about something that happened fifty pages earlier. And it’s the author’s job to figure out how to help the audience remember these things so they still enjoy the book. I must admit, I’m not sure we do this enough in business. Are there ways we could help our stakeholders remember things without doing the “don’t you remember six months ago…” line (which might come across as condescending)?
- Learn from your failures. And let me add your successes. Whether you do it individually or as part of a team activity, conduct a quick debrief. Ask two questions: What did I do well? And what could I do differently next time? You will learn a lot and be able to apply those learnings in the future. It might even focus you on having a better sense of what you want (see #4).
There’s one more business lesson that I took from Neil Gaiman’s MasterClass. He mentioned that he learns a lot from genres different from his own. He talked about learning from music and art. That’s one of the other reasons I wanted to share my takeaways with you. Just because we’re businesspeople doesn’t mean we have to exclusively read business books or listen to business podcasts. In fact, maybe it would make us better if we didn’t.
Image captured by Sharlyn Lauby
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