It’s the work that matters, right? Slightly. Maybe just barely.
It’s the people you meet, the relationships you build, and the impact you have on each other.
About once a year, I have a good old-fashioned existential crisis. Anything can kick it off, a random thought that pops into your brain as benign as, ‘Is this marketing emergency really an emergency?’ Which leads to, ‘No, it’s not like I’m saving lives here,’ which snowballs into, ‘What am I even doing with my life?’ And ‘hey, speaking of which, what even is the meaning of life??’
I’d like to say I’ve figured out the meaning of life, but alas, as a mere mortal, I’m no closer. But I have learned to embrace these existential crises a bit more. And like one green friend I have (I’ll get to the significance of green, I promise), proposed that perhaps these crises of faith are a good thing to have? Like a planned forest fire, a controlled burn to make you really examine what’s important. And what have I learned in my quest for understanding the meaning of the universe? Well, one fundamental truth: people matter.
Prime example: I recently had a mentor leave. Not my life, but the company we worked at together. When we were all reflecting on him, do you know what everyone talked about? Not the work. He was exceptional at the work. People talked about how he made them feel, what they learned from him, and what they’ll take forward because he made an impact on them.
Sitting down to write this blog got me thinking about a framework (you know how I love a good framework) that my former CMO at ConnectWise taught me. Maybe that’s fitting, because he had an exceptional program that he left with us, and I need to do a better job of carrying it forward. Once a month, he would sit us down and teach us a lesson he’d learned through his career.
I’ll butcher the name of this one, and probably botch most of the details, so I will rename it “In the Green.” And this model is all about relationships, because relationships matter. It gives you a way to think about the health of your relationships. Essentially, is this person a red, yellow, or green circle? Foreshadowing: is this person ride-or-die?
Red is probably pretty clear. This is the finger-pointing relationship where there’s no trust. Yes, you probably can work together, but you’re not a team. At the first sign of an iceberg, you’re pushing them back to get the first lifeboat.
Yellow is where things work well… right up until they don’t. You can be perfectly friendly with this person, and even admire them. You can do good work together, but when the catastrophe happens, you’re still fighting over that lifeboat seat. I most commonly see this with sales and marketing. You can dance together in the ballroom and drink champagne together, but you’re not going back into the ice-cold water to save them.
Green, you’ve probably guessed it. It’s the one you pull onto the door with you to keep you out of the freezing water. When things are good, they’re good. When things are really, really bad, this person has your back, 100% of the time.
How do you get in the green? Usually, you’ve been in battle together. Could have been a really difficult project, the David and Goliath type of project. It could have been an unconquerable quota or a monster of a difficult leader (nothing unites more than a common enemy). Maybe you worked through difficult personalities together and made it out the other side. It’s the shared mutual trust built over hundreds or thousands of micro-moments that shows you who this person really is. You trust them to have your back when you’re not there. That relationship is forged in mutual trust and admiration.
Two weeks ago, I met some of my greenies for lunch at our usual spot: Mission BBQ. Why there? Shared history and tradition. We haven’t worked together in about five years, but it doesn’t matter when you’re green.
Greens are the people you would work with again in a heartbeat. You probably have this carefully guarded circle, even if you haven’t declared it: your own Avengers you’d call to assemble. They are experts in their fields. They have your back, and you have theirs. They’re a bet I would take any day. My money is on them.
And yes, there is a self-serving angle to this. You build a peer network of people who will recommend and support you. Amazing! But it’s also a group of people you would happily go into battle with again. That trust goes both ways. You have their back, and you trust that they have yours.
So with professional legacy, the projects matter. We all want that metrics bank we can pull from, the one that shows how much we affected pipeline and revenue and gives us the #s, %s, and $s to put on our resume. But I would argue the people matter more. The greens you keep in your life. The people you would choose to work with again. The people you share a memory bank full of good times and tough times with.
And plot twist: if you’ve made it this far, I’m betting you and I are in a green relationship status.
PS: If you followed my Titanic reference, I know perfectly well Rose didn’t pull Jack onto the door. Perhaps if they’d had more than three days of shared history, she would have. We all know there was plenty of room.