Man, who are these people? Eff them! If you want this information in my brain, you need to pay me some cashola! Otherwise, you’re locked out. Sorry, but I don’t care if you’re my dear old Dad or a former boss who has stuck his neck out for me, either.

Except, that attitude is completely and utterly wrong.

The Knowledge/Idea Trap

Here’s the deal: your expertise is valuable but if you have a problem with brain picking, you’re valuing the wrong thing and managing the wrong problem.

I think it is safe to say that most of us think we have unique and interesting ideas about a few things in our area of subject matter expertise. I know I feel that way.

The trap is that we feel invested in our ideas and expertise (because, we likely have invested in it) so we feel that if we are giving some of that away, then we should be compensated for our investment.

There’s a problem with that line of thinking. Unless you plan on patenting an idea you have (good luck and let me know how your bank account looks at the end of that), your idea’s market worth on its own is next to nil. And to keep whatever low value market worth an idea does have, you have to stay ahead of almost everyone else in your field perpetually because nobody pays for ideas that are older than a few years (or months, or weeks, or days, depending on your industry).

Pruning Roses Via The Internet

Doesn’t education count for something? Doesn’t expertise mean anything? Of course it does. And not in some sarcastic way either. Education, both formal and informal, help prepare you and keep you at the forefront of your industry. It helps you develop in a way no other function can. When it comes to deep expertise, there is no better option.

Here’s the interesting part: a certain aspect of education and expertise has become so commoditized that it makes the idea in and of itself have low value.

Last year, I inherited some sad looking rose bushes at my rental house. My mom has cared for roses for a long time so I thought to ask her first but instead, I checked to see if YouTube had anything on there about how to care for roses (I’ve used YouTube before for this purpose). They did. I learned more by sitting through three or four five minute videos and then doing it than I remembered from my mom. I knew exactly where and how to cut, when to do it and what it should look like.

Shouldn’t master gardeners be terrified of this?

Following The Blue Collar Example

I come from a blue collar family so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that a new class and generation of workers is suddenly freaking out about this. I’ve heard hours of expert advice handed out for free with all of these people, too. Oh, the humanity! They are giving away their ideas for free!

Only, their ideas are rarely free. There is always some sort of cost involved in executing an idea. Whether it be the cost of time, actual material or the cost of expertise to help you execute it the way you need, the idea of a free idea is categorically insane. If I ask a web expert what I need to do to improve my website, they could probably list off a couple of things. The cheapest part about that whole process will definitely be identifying the problems with my website. The more expensive part, whether I do it myself or hire someone to do it will be the actual fixing of it.

In short, most blue collar experts don’t care about giving out advice or having people pick their brain. They make money on delivering and executing on them better than, cheaper than and/or faster than you can do yourself. And they’ve figured out they can charge a helluva lot more for that.

So Then, What’s The Problem With The “Pick Your Brain” Question?

If you’re the best plumber, the best recruiter, the best lawyer or the best whatever in your field, you will be judged on delivery, not of ideas, but of work and results. Any plumber can give you an idea as to why your sink might be leaking, a great one will fix the leak right the first time, quickly and easily. Any lawyer can tell you what your problem is, a great one will help you take care of whatever problems you had while minimizing your risk. People and companies routinely pay for the latter of those, gladly.

So if we reduce the value of ideas (which, by themselves, are worth very little to begin with and slope quickly towards nothing), then what’s to stop us from just wasting our time with brain picking questions all day?

I mentioned earlier that the vocal opposition to brain picking was valuing the wrong thing (that is, valuing ideas over doing the real, valuable work, that you don’t have to constantly defend and pitch as being valuable). But instead of managing who you’re giving your ideas out to in order to protect them (by charging for them, like they are valuable), you should instead focus on managing your time better or finding a better way to spread your ideas.

Managing Your Brain Being Picked (Without Being Insulting)

To give you an example, I’ll meet almost anyone for lunch. I have to eat anyway (time lost) and I don’t particularly like eating alone (personal benefit, even if it kinda makes me a loser). And if it is a brain picker who wants to buy me lunch, I make sure it is close to my home and is food I like to eat.

So I take the approach that my conversation over lunch is worth very little. It usually is as I invest zero time in it outside of the time I would have spent eating anyway. If it is someone who has an HR product, we talk about it. I talk about what I’ve seen (that I can remember). If it is someone with a WordPress issue, we can talk about what I’ve done and what they feel comfortable doing on their own. And usually, we talk about more than just shop which is good.

Sometimes they are happy with just that and I never hear from them again but that’s literally the worst thing that can ever happen. I get lunch with someone new, that I didn’t pay for and I didn’t lose anything for it. The ideas I gave them or the instructions I told them to Google are going to cost them way more in time, money and effort than whatever silly charge I could have constructed for our meeting.

Most of the time, I hear from them again. Sometimes it is for something more in-depth, which they are happy to pay for because I started our relationship in good faith and they know what I know (and what I don’t know). Sometimes, I get to refer one of my friends or perhaps even one of my company’s events or publications to the people I talked to which is good. It’s a low risk gamble that I’ll make a connection that helps me out in the long run, with the longer term goal in mind.

Selling Expertise Alone Has A Short Shelf Life

There will always be people and companies that want to abuse boundaries. Like the company that wanted me to draft them a social media policy based on a discussion. Or the person that wants me to re-do their blog for them for a credit link at the bottom (gee, thanks). But that isn’t brain picking, that’s work. And I don’t know about anybody else but it is super easy to say no to gratis work.

If you are in a position to sell your services, you should know that people don’t pay for expertise alone most of the time unless you have an extremely long relationship with them, you have something spellbindingly unique to offer (1% of you) or you’ve found a person or company who will pay you until you’ve run out of ideas (or their ideas catch up with you).

All of the consultants I know work their ass off on deliverables, on creating processes that help them do their job better and on mastering the art of communicating with people effectively. Dozens of painstakingly written documents, Excel spreadsheets that can’t be sent over e-mail because they are too big and reading hundreds of pages of BS and summarizing it so that a company can make a decision point and you can get to work on implementing it with the internal team. Because when Johnny CFO comes knocking on the managing director’s door asking why you just dropped 100g’s on a consulting firm last year, they’re gonna have something to show for it, not a bunch of ideas.

Whatever silly idea you have about selling brain picking sessions, creating a rate card for lunches and coffees, or keeping strangers from wasting your time because you haven’t figured this one out yet, it’s time to reconsider what exactly you’re trying to protect (your time, your sanity) and what you’re not trying to protect (your ideas alone).

If you truly have unique information, you probably shouldn’t be selling it in a one off way, anyway. You should be looking at scaling it beyond coffee shop and lunch conversations if you really think they have that much value. There are some pretty traditional ways to get your idea out there (write a book, get published) and some non-traditional ways (do a paid newsletter, offer paid videos).

Where Do You Stand?

In short, it is about three things:

1. Realizing what is important when it comes to expertise - The ability to out-execute, or be the best in either cost, speed or quality (or some combination of the three) will always be more sustainable than dolling out piece meal ideas or excessively worrying about brain picking.
2. You deserve to be paid for adding value - Ideas on their own don’t add significant value but if someone is asking you to work, you deserve to be paid. Knowing (and selling) things that are valuable and acknowledging (and not selling) things that are not will help you get paid.
3. Real brain picking boundaries are about time management, not idea management - If someone can talk to you on the phone for fifteen minutes and it isn’t a bother, then what’s the problem? If you normally eat lunch but can eat lunch with someone who may be a good connection down the road and it isn’t an inconvenience, share what you know.

Me personally? I’m always happy to have my brain picked, especially by people I’ve made past connections with and as long as it isn’t inconvenient for either one of us. And I’m always happy to tell you exactly when brain picking turns into work (and, it never happens at lunch). As long as you’re cool with that, you can come over and we can go grab lunch when the schedule permits.

Where do you stand on this?

I don't care how you hold the hammer, just make sure the nail is down

Now some of my colleagues who specialize in organizational development will tell me that bad organizational design will ultimately lead to performance deficiency. I won’t completely dismiss that point but ride with me for a second because it is more than that.

Where I hear the excuse more than anywhere is when someone is going after HR or recruiting for not doing something they are supposed to be doing.

So I’ll ask why they aren’t following up with candidates in a timely matter, they point to an ATS and pine for a place under marketing where they can get respect and budget to implement a better one.

Or I’ll ask why employee relations is completely reactionary rather than proactive and they’ll mention that managers don’t respect them because they report into finance or operations so their hands are tied.

These aren’t organizational criticisms, these are excuses. If getting back to candidates is a priority, you get back to them. If employee relations is important, you make the call to be more aggressive. If you are absolutely getting no traction, you better be the squeaky wheel at every opportunity until the problem gets fixed. And until it gets fixed, you better be doing the best damn job you can do (even if it means working a little longer to compensate for it). And if it doesn’t get fixed and it is literally keeping you from doing your job, it is time to move on.

That other option is complaining about organizational dynamics while the work you should be doing is left undone. It shouldn’t be any option at all.

I’ve advocated increasing your influence in an organization. You should always be looking to do that if you want to change things up and be a disturbance (the good kind). But that doesn’t always entail changing organizational structure or moving up to that seat at the table. Building influence is often more than just the title (though, in some organizations, the title is important). And no matter if your organization loves or hates titles, you’ve got to do your job before you gain respect in your company.

Period. End of story.

We all struggle with politics and roadblocks at work. The good ones find ways around them and get their job done. Sometimes those good ones can push hard enough to make their job a little easier. Others leave, only to find roadblocks awaiting them at their new home. The rest complain and find a way to make them not getting their job done someone else’s problem.

Let’s see how well that works out for you in the long term.

Rooting for Duke is like rooting for Microsoft to crush a software startup. Rooting for Duke is like rooting for Starbucks to put the local coffee joint out of business. It’s like rooting for Goliath over David if I can go Biblical on you.

Rooting for Duke is like rooting for Walmart. Yeah, I said it.

There are better operating systems, coffee shops, fighters and general merchandise stores out there. Like Diddy says though, it’s all about the Benjamins. It is about might over right.

Some of you free market purists will say there is never a question about might versus right because they aren’t mutually exclusive. Might equals right in our free market society.

If might equals right, how is the United States not a British colony anymore? If might equals right, why couldn’t we win in Vietnam? If might equals right, how come Americans all own shares of GM as we pay our taxes this April?

Now some will say I am simply jealous of Duke’s success.

Of course I am.

Much of their success comes with privilege though. Their coach is likely the highest paid in the country (private schools don’t have to release salaries). They’ve got beautiful facilities, generous donors and a sweet TV deal. They play a system of basketball where they can punch it in for three quarters of the season and still get a great seed in the tournament. Coach K can take off months at a time to coach USA basketball and not sweat anything.

Their brand of basketball is uninventive, systematic and simply takes advantage of the depth of college level talent they can attract because of the above mentioned privilege. It is the epitome of might over right.

If I can loosely relate this back to business, I think that’s why the appeal of the American small business is so strong. No one in a small business can afford to be uninventive, rest on their laurels and strength of position in the market. There are always major threats and challenges that keeps them thinking about new product lines, improving existing products or digging just a bit more market share to get another employee on board.

I love the stories about scrappy teams that succeed. I think the same goes for businesses too. That’s why it will always be more fun to root for the underdog.

While the “I have a dream” speech is iconic, “Letter from a Birmingham jail” is more powerful to me personally. It is a passionate display and defense of his way of thinking and operating.  I was re-reading it today and thought I’d share an excerpt from it (full text available from the University of Pennsylvania):

Then, last September, came the opportunity to talk with leaders of Birmingham’s economic community. In the course of the negotiations, certain promises were made by the merchants–for example, to remove the stores’ humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us. We had no alternative except to prepare for direct action, whereby we would present our very bodies as a means of laying our case before the conscience of the local and the national community.

…

You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue.

Despite the obvious political and cultural ramifications of these actions, isn’t there an important business lesson in there somewhere? Tension is necessary for growth and crisis can prompt negotiation. I think that we get caught up in the idea that we can talk away all of the issues and problems we face. Direct action is sometimes the only thing that can prompt negotiations. When you don’t have the luxury of time or you’ve been waiting on a pile of broken promises, direct action is it.

Later on in the letter, King says “Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’”. There is never an easy time to take action that will create tension and precipitate a crisis.

Obviously much of Dr. King’s work was outside the realm of business (as was needed) but make no mistake, there are gems of decisive leadership throughout much of his writing and speeches. I hope you can take a moment to sit down and read some of it on the holiday that honors his work.

Change is the only universal constant. You can be on one of two positions in respect to change:

• You can drive change.
• Or be driven BY change.

Those who are the victims of change find that changes are usually for the worse.

Those who drive change, find that the changes are usually to their advantage

• Do not be passive in the face of change.
• Be active in the face of change.

In order for you to effectively manage a changing environment, you need to first:

Take the initiative: Be the instigator of change.

In order to take the initiative and become the driver of circumstances, follow this five step process.

The process can be reduced to six words

1. Purpose
2. Plan
3. Action
4. Feedback
5. Adapt
6. Repeat

Let us analyse the meaning of these six words:

Step One: Purpose

Your purpose is your aim, or ultimate goal. Develop a clear set of progressive goals for the next three, six or twelve months. Set your mind onto the achievement of specific goals, in order to inform your decisions on a day to day basis.

• Goals allow you to develop a psychology that is “goal focused”

“Goal- focused individuals” perform better than those who are not goal focused. Non-goal focused individuals can be described as drifters. Drifting in a stormy sea is a dangerous activity. Sit down tonight and work out a series of progressive goals.

Step Two: Plan

Then, write detailed “Plans-of-action” relating to the achievement of the goals that you wrote out in step one. A goal without a detailed set of written instructions (plans) is no more than a fantasy. A goal together with a detailed set of written instructions is the beginning of creative and adaptive change. When you have finished setting your goals (what it is that you want), then gather the team together and build the very best, intelligently written plans that you are capable of. Spend all day on it if you have to. Failure to write a detailed plan proves that you are not serious enough. You do not merit a top prize.

Step Three: Action

Then, take action on the plan. Take immediate, persistent, dedicated and consistent action on the plan. This is where many fail. How many people do you know who:

• Have exercise plans they do not follow
• Diet plans they don’t keep to
• Business Plans that they never actually start.
• Big promises backed up with NO action

Failure to take action on a plan is the most common fault. This fault is due to:

• Fear of failure
• The natural inertia of the human spirit that causes people to “put things off till tomorrow”.

Overcome this error. Once you have your written plan, use your personal initiative to drive yourself into ACTION. – Even in the face of difficulties. Failure to act will make your plans meaningless. Without the ability to make yourself work, you risk  becoming a victim of change.

Step Four: Feedback

Then, gather the feedback. When you act on your plan you will find two things will happen:

• Some parts of your plan work well.
• Some parts of your plan do NOT work well.

This is because your original plan was not perfect, because YOU are not perfect. Do not worry. This is normal for all human beings. Instead of worrying, take the elements of the plan that are not working well, and analyse them. Bring the team back together and apply your creative intelligence to this question:

How can we correct the errors that must have been present in our original plan?

Derive your best answer to the above question. Apply all your powers of logic and creativity. When you have your answer, take step five

Step Five: Adapt

Adapt your plan using the information and ideas that you gained in step four. Sit down and write “PLAN NUMBER TWO”.

1. Failure to analyse your mistakes will cause you to fail.
2. Failure to re write your plans will cause you to fail.
3. Repeating what did not work last time will cause you to fail.

Instead, reverse these trends:

1. Analyse your mistakes and correct them.
2. Re- write your plans and improve them.
3. Come back stronger with a better plan.

Then go to step six.

Step Six: Repeat

When you have your new plan, repeat the process. Go back with your improved plan to step three. Take immediate, persistent, dedicated and consistent action on the second third, fourth plan.

Repeat, repeat, repeat – until final victory is yours!

Summary

Change is the only universal constant.

• Do not be passive in the face of change.
• Be active in the face of change.

In order for you to effectively manage a changing business environment, you need to first

• Take the initiative:

In order to take the initiative, follow this six step process.

1. Purpose – Develop a clear set of progressive goals for the next three, six, or twelve month.

2. Plan – Write detailed plans of action relating to the achievement of the goals stated in step one.

3. Actions – Take immediate, persistent, dedicated and consistent action on the plan.

4. Feedback – Gather the feedback.

5. Adapt – Adapt your plan using the information and ideas that you gained in step four.

6. Repeat – Repeat, repeat, repeat – And final victory will be yours!

Chris Farmer is the leader of The Corporate Coach Group, who provide UK management training courses, and a published author in Business Coaching.

In the past, I used to frequently have these conversations and then go back to regressive HR systems that took all the will in the world to just fight through on a daily basis. I imagine many of the readers that still possess that optimism are in the same boat too. Maybe they have them in places other than online (at meetings, in conversations during or after work). At the end of the day though, it becomes a stream of conversation or a pipe dream instead of reality.

I have the power to act now. I have an extremely supportive company that wants me to push the envelope when it comes to uncomfortable conversations about the future of HR and the future of the employee. It means I get to not only talk about great ideas but I get to help implement them in the real world. That’s so exciting to me.

Here’s what I realized though: I had the power to act all along. The problem was that those conversations were uncomfortable and sometimes seemingly impossible to fight. They were mine to fight though. Nobody else was going to do it for me. Only after failing spectacularly on several occasions did I finally realize that.

Now I realize this is my fight and that I have the power to act no matter the circumstances. I am happy to have a career opportunity that makes it easier but I know that won’t always be the case.

Are you ready to use your power? Do you know the name of your cause?