The new normal

© Jaromír Chalabala 123RF.com

I got in touch with Rich Mulholland for coffee and a chat, of all the people speaking right now, he seemed to be the only person doing it with as little ego as possible. If you’ve witnessed Rich talk, you’d understand what I meant, even though he himself would tell you that he was once driven by ego, it really feels like his messages are not contrived and are sincerely without self-absorption.

Exploring the ego in advertising

Dale Ferreira  28 Jun 2017

I don’t need to tell you how smart he is. He has shown this through his countless talks and posts. We spoke a lot about the ego, and I took one thing away from that meeting with him.

We can market ourselves, as long as we’re teaching people something new and worthwhile, because then you’re offering a service. Just for that, I owe him way more than the coffee he bought me.

Everyone is an expert

As usual, in a mix of procrastination and a lot of running, I started to think about what kinds of things I could teach people that I've learnt from my business that they didn’t know already. It’s not a hell of a lot because millions of people have started a business, if you just go by Twitter logic and the bios, everyone’s an entrepreneur, everyone’s a runner and everyone’s a writer.

Everyone is an expert.

I wondered if my deep dive into ego would provide some answers. Luckily, it did.

I began to explore the concept of the new normal. In a world where everyone is celebrating mediocrity, I wanted to teach something that would hopefully help my team to keep learning and harness the idea of constant improvement.

I’m not a runner. My frame and lack of finishing skills had me bowing out of Comrades this year at 60km. There were complications, these complications were that I was too slow and heavier than I should be but ultra-marathons had become normal, I was searching for my new normal.

When I started running, I was sickly slow. I remember running for 7km at 7 minutes a km. A long way off the normal 5km that I thought was normal. Ultimately, I plugged away running 7km as much as I could until that became my new normal.

I then moved on to 10km, and then 21km and then the Two Oceans Marathon. I have now completed two. I continued to create new normals for myself and because running doesn’t allow for ego - I know that there is a new normal waiting for me. It scares and excites me at the same time.

Maybe it’s a sub 50-minute 10km? Perhaps it could be actually finishing the Comrades Marathon. I would have to make some changes, but new normals feed on sacrifice. You can’t be comfortable and grow.

When a new normal becomes normal

New normals can also be out of your control. I’ll touch on these another time.

In the workplace, I’m reaching out to my team to understand what their current normal is and when a new normal becomes normal. If we celebrate a new normal for too long, it becomes a noun in a Twitter bio and the improvement stops.

We are in the business of making the people that pay us look better. That alone has no space for ego.

How do you know when your new normal becomes the normal and then find your new normal? I’m going to go for a run and let you know.