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It begins. This is the moment. The tension in the abdomen increases, there is a tightness in the head. The last touches are left, but the feeling is to start over, sit back and fix everything from scratch. Another thought breaks through: it’s already very well, it’s time to let go into the world. Many artists, actors, directors and creators feel this growing tension and conflict of thoughts just before the premiere. Some people get obstructed, others have a cramped intestine, can’t eat, others have sweating palms and shaky knees.
Why am I feeling tense? Two years of travel are coming to an end. The beginning of the end of writing a book begins. Two years with us, over 1,300 hours of my and Wojtek Maroszek’s work, writing, talking, writing, meetings, exchanging e-mails, writing, corrections, conversations, adding and conversations. A new stage of release and promotion is ahead of us. More than half a million characters, or more precisely five hundred and seventy six thousand eight hundred ( 576800) characters, that is over 300 pages written, edited, and proofread is ready for typesetting. It goes to print at the end of November. On the one hand, it is just a book, thousands of sentences, on the other hand, it is a piece of life story and a lot of thoughts written on paper.
This book is an objection to superficial communication that leads to frustration and poor results. Not being honest and undermining oneself instead of healthy cooperation. A situation when people with potential and great ideas bounce off the walls put in front of them by bosses, managers, employees, partners or loved ones. Stagnation in life and business, caused by the lack of the power to move things forward.
These are several dozen dialogues that I have with Wojtek, who, as a great journalist who plays the role of devil’s advocate, has stuck a pin and a stick in an anthill many times, asking uncomfortable questions, testing the consistency and credibility of what is in my head and what I share with others.
But to get where we are, we had to walk through a lot of walls. That’s why p below you will find the entire content of the fifth chapter of the book, the epilogue that sums up our journey with Wojtek. And at the same time it answers the title question.
This chapter consists of 3283 words that tell our experiences, which are close to many people, who create something, build something at work. It’s only 3% of the book’s content, but how important it is. What we experienced while writing the book was one great process of change, resistance, conflict, vision and creativity. Explosive mixture. It is a process of changing direction and concept several times. If we had not applied what we say in the book, it would not have come into existence. While writing it, we applied what we write about. A remarkable experience. The knowledge contained in it saved us. I believe that what the book tells about, what it teaches is decisive for every person, be it in a rank or high position in the company.
Everyone in their life comes across walls that bounce off, block them, hold them back, and overwhelm them. These walls are built by life, other people or ourselves. Few people know how to break through them, how to bypass them, pass them, overcome them, demolish them or just free them. This book teaches it, this book changes it.
If even though you know me a bit, value me, respect me, learn from me, follow me on the blog or social media, you should have this book. It’s a big part of me. Reading it will have a real impact on your life and career. There are a lot of conclusions and reflections on difficult topics that affect us every day. It is a piece of very practical knowledge that will help in difficult conversations, in dealing with overwhelming problems, in change and change management, and in situations where resistance in ourselves or in others brings us against the wall. How to tear down this wall, change it or get around – that’s what this book is about. It helps in today’s challenges and prepares for changes and the future. This book changes.
Watch this video where I share a simple but important method to deal with the wall we encounter:
CHAPTER 5: EPILOGUE
OUR OWN WALLS WHILE WRITING THIS BOOK
As we mentioned at the beginning of the book, writing it turned out to be quite an adventure and a challenge for us. The project, which was supposed to take six months, eventually extended to over two years. During this time, the book tested on us what we write about ourselves: the ability to manage change, effective communication, and to recognize mutual needs. It made us bend our own boundaries, develop CEMKs, face our shadows and finally punch through the walls we encountered.
When the work was finished, we met to talk about it all, look back and consider what the road really was and where the milestones lay, what we learned and what we learned from the experience. Today we are different people.
Of course, Adam is still Adam inside, and Wojtek is still Wojtek – nevertheless, when you spend two years putting your time and energy into a large and difficult project, in addition focused on the subject – there was, there was – internal transformation, the same you are undergoing transformation. Often in pain, often in spite of your own reluctance, with the feeling that it is too much and that you will not be able to do it.
But in the end you look at it all and say to yourself: it was worth it. It couldn’t be otherwise.
WALL 1: CONTRACT AND LACK OF TRUST
Maroszek: The first major crisis and conflict in our cooperation came when we signed the copyright agreement.
Dębowski: For me, the subject of this agreement was not such a flashpoint, but the fact that only some time after the beginning of cooperation did you confront me with the fact that without a signed paper we are not moving any further . Do you remember that Was it like you were waiting with the contract on purpose, or maybe someone said to you: “Wojtek, but when you are at this stage, better protect yourself”?
Maroszek: The thing is that at the beginning we didn’t have a specific form of cooperation. We did not know what to do with all this and whether I would actually be a ghostwriter, co-author or someone. Only after some time it became clear that we are publishing this book together, under two names, the profits are fifty-fifty, you provide materials, I sculpt them, plus we put our conversations and reflections inside. At that moment, however, part of the work was already done – because I wrote down the content of your trainings and slowly began to arrange everything. Then I figured we’d be formalizing the arrangements before I sent it to you. We will write a copyright and profit sharing agreement. And then I called my lawyer friend and he told me how to arrange it and what should be included in the contract. I didn’t think you’d take it that I suddenly didn’t trust you.
Dębowski: Yes. Suddenly I didn’t know what was going on. Since I sent you all these materials that also have some business value, why am I not getting what we agreed? There were thoughts: “Gee, why did he suddenly stop trusting me? What did I say or do that suddenly wants to protect himself? ” Eventually we got together and I said, “Listen, what’s the problem with you not sending me the written material? What’s stopping you? Is something blocking you from sending? ”. To which you replied: “You know, because we don’t have a signed contract related to copyright.” I don’t remember the exact words you used, but I do remember getting pissed off then – a bit to make you feel my attitude, and a bit of it came out of me automatically too. It affected me because I thought we trust each other and respect each other. But I had the impression that your attitude was saying: “I will not send Adam this text, because it is already a big part, because he will later take it, use it and leave me, and he will not pay.” It wasn’t a problem for me to sign the contract and I also think it’s worth having things in writing, but the fact that you didn’t send me this text, that you didn’t trust me was such a business and personal painful spike.
Maroszek: I approached the topic more simply, on the principle: no matter how much we trust each other, no matter how much we like each other, what we think about ourselves – business is business and we just sign a contract, a short ball . It is as if someone in a sales situation were to tell you: well, maybe you will give me this product and I will pay like …
Dębowski: … when I get home.
Maroszek: Yes, if I come home or if the other contractors fulfill their obligations towards me, then I will pay you. Oh, no no. The money is on the table and only then can we talk. For me it was just simple and obvious that sentiment was not involved. Simply put, if I’m going to hand you over my work, into which I put my time and energy, I need us to have it formalized, to be patted down, to be a receipt. It seemed like normal, standard business practice to me. A precaution too, because you never know. When you hand over your work to someone without any contract, you create some space for some combination. I did not want to create this space. I trust you wouldn’t use it, but it’s a rule of thumb: I create a deal instead of space. Probably if we had done it at the very beginning, it wouldn’t have been a problem. The bottom line is that we were able to quickly clear the atmosphere and sign the paper without these emotions.
Dębowski: The conclusion is this: protect yourself beforehand, if you have such a need. And it’s definitely worth doing, even if you’re working with a friend, because you never know. The worst-case scenario – a friend dies, his wife takes over the rights, and she does what she wants. There could be a scenario where you send everything to Dębowski, Dębowski dies, the rights are taken over by his wife Kamila, and after a mourning – let’s say for a week or a year, whatever (laughs) – she publishes it as her material. This is one of the unlikely but not impossible scenarios, so you actually need to protect yourself, even if you trust the human. It’s good that we resolved this conflict quickly, but we were able to see for ourselves how a lack of trust and understanding of needs can affect cooperation, which is also clear from the efficiency pyramid (chapter 3).
WALL 2: I’M GETTING OUT!
Maroszek: There was a moment when I really wanted to unsubscribe. It was after about a year, which is about halfway through the work on the book. At the beginning, we said that we would close the whole thing in six months. Then it turned out that we want to make something better, bigger out of it, and therefore six months is just a good start, and there is much more to do. We thought it was about twice as much. I agreed to it and decided that I would write, talk to you, polish and refine the text so that the effect was the best. A year instead of six months – all right, so be it. But then it turned out that this is not enough. There is still a lot of work to be done. We need to clarify many issues, there is still a lack of consistency and “that something”. I was faced with the fact that we still have a long way to go. And I didn’t want to, I wanted to finish, enjoy the fruits and not spend more time on the book, which I could spend either on my next project or just for entertainment. Thoughts started spinning in my head that maybe you need to leave it, give it to you – to do what you want to do with it. “I get off this train, because it is not known where it is going, what will come of it. The cash register is not available on a regular basis, it is not known when and how much it will appear, and I will burst these evenings and weekends as stupid. “
Dębowski: It was your wall.
Maroszek: Yes. I was one foot here and the other there: I didn’t want to quit this job and quit halfway, but on the other hand I didn’t want to continue either.
Dębowski: And you mentioned that a friend helped you break through this wall?
Maroszek: I talked to many people about the book, they asked, curious about how it was going, and at this crisis moment I called Cuba. As an experienced, down-to-earth business man and, on the other hand, a talented vocal artist, he told me, “Dude, you have that choice – you can unsubscribe, you can give it up, because the balance of profits and losses may actually work against you. You’ve already put in a year of work, you would have to put in another one, and you don’t know what will come of it. Perhaps you will not earn anything on it, and if you look at it from a business perspective, it might actually be better to do something else. Sometimes it just happens that we start a project and then unsubscribe from it. But! On the other hand, think about the fact that once you get done with it and look back, you will find that the time, energy, pain that comes with it – they won’t be so expressive anymore. They will be lost somewhere in your memory, and you will have a book written. You say to yourself: I did it, we did it. We made it, we made it through it. He put the matter in a broader perspective, he looked more downstairs, which I couldn’t allow myself to do because I was caught up in emotions. And the more we are involved, the more our gaze narrows and we lose the bigger picture. Kuba presented this bigger picture to me, and I replied: “Okay, thanks. Then you know what, I guess I’ll do it, but we’ll probably move on with it. ”
Dębowski: So what, you went ahead with it, because you stopped focusing so much on the effect – will the book sell or not, what will be its reception, and instead have you focused more on getting through this and having this experience in your life repertoire? As a result, what’s left in your head after talking to Kuba?
Maroszek: I guess it’s just that OK, I’m on some road and this road is going. And without complicating matters further, I thought: “there is a way, it is either to be passed over or to be abandoned, and I think I feel that it is more important to go through it.” And that’s it, period. There has been a conscious decision as to which direction I am going.
Dębowski: We are less tired of doing things than the way we think about them. This is one of the elements of the CVP philosophy that we mention more than once in the book. It happens very often that people for weeks, months or even years live in such an internal conflict: abandon – not abandon, and there is no need for someone to say: “hey, but make a decision: left or right.” Making a decision – whether I quit or not – can be liberating. And when we decide “okay, well, I’m going on,” we get no ecstasy or enlightenment as to whether this decision is one hundred percent correct. We don’t suddenly gain huge motivation, but we stop burning ourselves. This alone makes the head calmer and makes it possible to move forward with life. Breaking a wall doesn’t always mean moving forward – sometimes it just means making a consistent decision, left or right.
WALL 3: AN EXCITATION RELEASES ANGER
Maroszek: After almost two years, I had the feeling that we were finishing up and now the only thing left is to polish some things.
Dębowski: And we’re closing it.
Maroszek: I really wanted it.
Dębowski: And suddenly Dębowski reads the whole thing, reads this chapter, that chapter, and starts: “let’s add this, let’s add that new stuff, plus in these chapters also those these and these things should be found. And then, I remember, you felt a lot of resistance.
Maroszek: And anger in his eyes.
Dębowski: There was anger in his eyes. From my perspective, the first thing that pissed you off was that I hadn’t looked at these chapters before. “Why are you talking about it now, because you had material available much earlier.” On the one hand, I made such a mistake that I should actually look at it more regularly, but on the other – internally, I felt very much that I was waiting for a whole, after all our meetings, after your corrections, after adding all our conversations to the book. In my work I have always tried to move from the big general and the whole – to the detail. So I grind not on a regular basis, only when I have the whole thing in my hand. Of course, after this situation, I realized that it is worth learning to polish individual things on a regular basis and attach them to the rest. At that moment, I still had that “old” approach, so it was only when I got the job from you that I had a reflection: “Oh, I can feel this book, I can see what it is now, in what direction it is going. Now we can improve! ”. And on this basis the conflict arose. You already had the feeling of having done a huge job, you had gone through your own resistance to quitting months before, you had the feeling that we were finally closing, and then suddenly a Pandora’s box opens.
Maroszek: Yes, Dębowski’s awakening.
Dębowski: That’s right! (laughs) The awakening of Dębowski. And it was a bit like that. In my head, after many years of evolving and maturing, CVP was closed as a coherent system, and you sent the book and I felt, “This is it! Now I can feel it and know how to rearrange it, add here, add there and add another chapter ”. It was a big paradox that I was in such energizing and suddenly boom! I crash against the wall.
Maroszek: Because your joy and enthusiasm ignited my anger. I was thinking, “Dude, what have you been even doing for the last year? Suddenly, at the very end, you pop up with ideas and tell me with enthusiasm that we’ll do this again, that. Not! You were two, one and a half years old, or so long, to get hold of yourself, to jump out of ideas, to have that will to grind, to add some things, and not to leave it for the end. ” I felt it through my prism – that you blame me now to do so many things when I simply don’t feel like doing so much in the world, just like that, humanly speaking, I don’t feel like it anymore, it’s over.
Dębowski: And I had in mind: “How can he not feel like it, when these are such wonderful things!” And here we have a big conflict, because I took on the role of a creator, a visionary who is feverish – but the more he fires, the more he resists the other person. This is a very interesting phenomenon related to resistance management – be it in raising a child, in business cooperation or in writing a book. It turns out that it doesn’t work that the more enthusiastic you are, the more enthusiastic you are. Sometimes it is quite the opposite. My operational error was such that I could actually work more on an ongoing basis, but on the other hand I had a different need and in my head I assumed: okay, I’m waiting for the whole thing. Another conclusion I have from this situation is that you could – and in the future you can – watch more: “okay, are you sure the one with whom I create it looks at it on a regular basis? Because I don’t see any comments from him. So I could focus on it, and you could keep an eye on it.
Maroszek: This is a very interesting thing in general, that when I thought about it later, you didn’t really make any comments, there weren’t many things that came out of you. And quite honestly – it was more convenient for me to assume that…
Dębowski: … no comments.
Maroszek: That there are no comments! Not that he is not looking at it.
Dębowski: Phew, so I wasn’t the only one to blame here!
Maroszek: For the subconscious, it was probably more convenient to assume that you are looking at it and that you are completely satisfied with what is. Clever isn’t it?
Dębowski: Well, here we have a mechanism present in many projects: an escape from the truest truth. A lot of people fall into such a mechanism – both entrepreneurs and managers and rank and file employees. We don’t like to call reality, we don’t like to call the truest truth because we hope “it” will pass. That someone will not notice this number, that someone will not notice this error, that the client or the boss will play it on.
Maroszek: It’s a bit childish covering the eyes that supposedly…
Dębowski: That I’m not there! (laughs) Yes, sir. It’s a bit like how some managers or CEOs assume that when the problem is not discussed, the problem does not exist. It’s natural in part, because there is mental and physical fatigue at work, so the mind looks for a way to save energy. What is missing is a strategic perspective and asking yourself important questions: what can I close, tighten, polish? You would probably say, “aha, I’ll press Adam to verify and give feedback at this stage, and if he doesn’t want to, because he’s waiting for the whole thing, I’ll press him.” And I, in turn, was able to push myself back then and say: “okay, now I will see what stage we are at, I will not wait for the whole thing”.
Maroszek: This is one conclusion. Another one is, as we’ve already mentioned, the more positive you got, the more my resistance was. So your positive energy will not always be positive energy in others, sometimes even the opposite.
Dębowski: That’s why it’s not always about motivating people. Don’t motivate them, just help them cope with their resistance and the motivation will come naturally. The most obvious way to motivate people is to tell them about the vision, about the passion, about what we can do – and it will drive it, it will motivate it. As you can see, however, not always. In our case, the effect was opposite.
Maroszek: Your getting into all of this meant more work for me. The more you get turned on, the more work I have to do.
Dębowski: You don’t look at the value of it, you just look …
Maroszek: What do I associate this with.
Dębowski: An hour after an hour more work in the following weeks and a postponed closing time of the project. And here is a rasp. At one point, I noticed, “Oh shit, I’m facing a lot of resistance. This has to be remedied. You shouldn’t get pissed off or motivated at this point, but neither should you use persuasive / manipulative tricks and the like. You have to apply what we teach in the book, and these are also the most basic things: listen to the end, try to understand what exactly the resistance comes from, and not approach like: “OK, maybe you don’t want more work, but it’s hard, we do “. When there is a sense of greater understanding on the part of a coworker, the irritation may still exist, but resistance will not increase. Because when I am not ignored and I feel understood, the resistance decreases. “Okay, then how can we get my perspective and yours? How can we reduce the amount of work but still capture what I consider very important? “.
Maroszek: On the one hand, it was to meet my irritation, not to ignore it, and on the other – you tried to show me the sense of these changes. More or less effective.
Dębowski: Because the real answer was: “Listen, if we give it this way, it will be OK, but it will not be a firecracker. I will have a strong feeling that the book does not fully reflect what it is about. And of course, then, I remember, you made this argument: “But you had time for it. You could have done it six months earlier. ”
Maroszek: To which you replied that you could not, at that moment you simply could not do it earlier – and this is sometimes the creative process. I was still angry, but I also felt it was true that sometimes it just happens in the creative process, maybe because of mistakes, and maybe because “it was just meant to be.” In the end, I agreed that we should add these threads to expand the content a bit and change a lot again. So I agreed, and at the same time it was in my head: “Oh Jesus Mary, no, no, please, book, don’t torture me anymore”.
Dębowski: (laughs)
Maroszek: Then it turned into an approach based on the principle: “Okay, the book wants me to give more”. Not even that Adam wants – just a book. “The book wants to give more. Okay, okay, let it be. End, period. No need to talk. And again, such a broader perspective – I’ll just either give more or give less.
Dębowski: And that decision again.
Maroszek: Yes, admittedly a bit simpler this time, because I’ve been through it once before, although also painful and related to thoughts: “God, do it again, do it again! She again! She doesn’t want to leave! ”.
Dębowski: I don’t want to leave! (laughs)
Maroszek: She keeps coming back! Okay, then come here honey.
Dębowski: So there are three authors: Adam, Wojtek and the book.
Maroszek: Yes.
Dębowski: It was a tremendously important experience for me and I think for you as well. Most people, if they are actually involved in a project as an employee, manager, boss or freelancer, also experience these moments. It’s worth reading about it and knowing how to deal with it. The book is largely about: how to have difficult conversations, how to design changes and how to deal with such moments in everyday life that are sometimes predictable and sometimes completely surprising.
Warsaw, 10/12/2018
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