Social Distancing Scenius
Whether you call it networking, business development, team building or something completely different, you’ve got to know where and how to find your people. Now is not the time for leaders to let that slide. On the contrary, this is exactly the time to make it a priority. That’s why I began this co-blogging thing with my colleagues—to better connect in meaningful dialogue with industry experts who inspire me and introduce them to you. This deliberate cultivation of relationships and ideas fuels both creativity and belonging. The result is scenius.
A concept coined by musician and producer Brian Eno, scenius is a ‘creative intelligence of the community’ generated by cooperation. Austin Kleon adds further notes on scenius here, writing, “Great ideas are often birthed by a group of creative individuals—artists, curators, thinkers, theorists, and other tastemakers—who make up an ‘ecology of talent.’ ” These are the folks who trigger your a-ha moments and connect you to your mastery in a new way, juxtaposed by their own.
Marty Nelson is one of those people for me. He has this dry sense of humor and sharp timing that show up unexpectedly and in the best ways. He’s really smart, but he never acts smarter than you. I don’t play an instrument or know much about jazz, but Marty is the guy who riffs on your ideas, who adds harmony to your melody. He can keep the beat while you go off on your saxophone or take one note and play the hell out of it. He borrows and rearranges, takes some simple thing and makes you see it in a whole new way. Marty’s the bass player who doesn’t always say a lot, but whatever he says carries weight and makes you stop and pause.
You need to find your Marty. In the meantime, I’ll introduce you to mine:
ALCHEMY IN
THE TIME OF COVID
MARTY NELSON,
FOUNDER ALCHEMY CODE LAB
[Lori Eberly]: Marty, say a bit about yourself and your business:
[Marty Nelson]: I am CEO of Alchemy Code Lab, and along with my wife, Megan, we run a coding school in Portland, OR, that transforms people into working software developers. I transitioned into software development from a non-traditional background in my late twenties, and reaped the benefits of intellectually challenging work, meaningful impact, and economic prosperity. Megan and I wanted to make those realities available to more people.
[LE]: You can’t get away with “non-traditional background” without me asking about it.
[MN]: I studied Art History in college. While I learned to write, analyze, and communicate ideas, it’s not the most “job-ready” degree. So I spent most of my twenties waiting tables, bartending, and working office temp jobs. I had a fun time working for the Portland Children’s Museum building exhibits and playing with clay with the kids. Then the dot.com boom and Y2K happened and I managed to self-teach and get into software development.
[LE]: Fascinating. I didn’t know that about you. We share professional connections in the startup/tech scene in town, but I’m learning more personal context about colleagues these days. Tell us a bit about the immediate needs Alchemy addressed when the Coronavirus hit Portland.
[MN]: We addressed the health and well-being of our community and student continuity. We had a new cohort starting on March 15th. Mixing two populations of students didn’t feel like a good idea. Things really snowballed from there, as things got real in Oregon over the next 4-5 days.
Our students invest time and money in our program. They quit jobs and put their lives on hold to begin a new career. Continuing their education was important for them. We needed solutions that satisfied community safety, student continuity, and keeping our business going.
“Doing the right thing” was the lighthouse we navigated towards. It was telling that student reactions progressed from grumbling to gratitude, even as we had options taken away from us.
[LE]: That “grumbling to gratitude” timeline resonates. Feels like the chaotic ride of grief, the bouncing back-and-forth between emotional states.
[MN]: We’ve all been grieving; the rug was pulled out from everyone. This crisis was imposed on us all at once, and it’s not like 9/11 or an earthquake that’s over in a matter of hours or days. It’s ongoing.
I think at this point, we’re deep enough in that “let’s get through this together” has become trite. Those words were important in the beginning, to serve as reassurance. Comfort calms us down in panic. Now I need nurturing, not comfort. It’s a disservice to not switch to nurturing, which is providing options, evaluating what’s working. I’m moving forward. It’s critical to deal with what might be holding me back.
[LE]: I’m with you on a disdain for platitudes. What does moving forward mean?
[MN]: I’m assessing the next right action, for me, personally and externally. I’m gaining skills that I’ll need on the other side of this threshold to grow the business, not limited to what I’m doing at Alchemy presently. It’s understanding that what I’m learning now is in service to the next thing.
I don't need to know exactly what the next thing is. I almost don’t want to know because then I would think about it, and I’d be limited by my need to conceive it. How do you make a game plan when you don’t know what game you’re playing?
I once had a great boss who asked me, in response to my agitation that a team wasn’t changing in line with my expectations, “Are they moving in the right direction?” Especially in times with a lot of uncertainty, we need to assess our velocity and direction. Am I different than yesterday and is that change in line with where I want to be?
[LE]: That’s a good question to sit with. I feel that shifting. You mention, the standing at the door of the unknown. It’s the recognizable pattern of the Hero’s Journey, but this darkness is not one we entered alone. Author Arundhati Roy speaks of this time as a portal, too, a gateway between one world and the next.
We’re all living a personal version of Coronavirus and leaders are called to hold collective space to emerge and evolve. How are you helping your team?
[MN]: Maintaining community and connection with staff and students. Zoom has been an amazing tool for us. In addition to using it to replicate our classroom success, we started holding social hours, right from the start, and maintained the same informal gatherings we had in person. Shannon Rasimas, our Career Services Director, is an incredible extrovert and really led the charge to keep us socially engaged. Hats off to her. She’s a master of building belonging.
We’ve also been playing with the language we use to talk about our programs. Preserving the in-person community feeling online is fundamental to us, so we’re no longer using “remote” to describe our classes. It’s not a word that’s good for people—it implies separation and distance. We’re replacing remote with live, interactive, and connected because that’s what anchors our program. That’s what we need.
After the first couple weeks, as things started to normalize, I added daily executive and staff check-ins. People want to see each other (me too), and we talk about what’s going on. Honestly, it’s mostly about the face time and connecting. My tendency to be serious and “down-to-business” was challenged, and I eventually let go and allowed those daily meetings to be more organic and more “water cooler” conversations. I found myself opening up more about stuff like what Netflix series I was enjoying (or not) and why. The truth is that being physically near people didn’t necessarily mean present. Working remotely made the teams’ need to connect obvious in a way I wasn’t noticing in-person. It has forced me to create more space to simply be with others. My time and attention is not dependent on work-worthy conversations.
[LE]: Yes! This! We need more organic water cooler conversations; we cannot focus solely on tasks and productivity without seeing employees, first, as human beings. That’s a tall order for a lot of leaders. As a small business owner and entrepreneur, how do you juggle those complex human needs with the financial/business needs ?
[MN]: When I experience binary solutions to a problem where I don’t like either one, I like to go back into the creative realm and find more options. I would never justify a decision by simply saying I had no other option. There are hard choices, but rarely forced options. Even if you have to layoff an employee you think it through: What kind of benefits can they receive? Can you make a recommendation elsewhere? Is there a harsh truth that can be revealed to them so they can stop making the same mistakes? The decision is often the easy part, it’s the implementation that matters.
When it comes to running a business, I do think that financial concerns are the root of our anxiety 99% of the time. It’s real and usually extends beyond the business to encompass our personal financial lives. Over these four years, we’ve gone through the ups and downs of startup life, and I long ago accepted that things could fail financially. Having that acceptance has fostered resiliency and allowed a broader view of “value”. Now I care more about the value of the exchange, not only that we are providing value to our customers, but that customers respect the value of what we bring to the table.
In the context of COVID, finances remain a constraint, and one with a good deal of uncertainty. I’ve tried to be honest with staff, both about what risks and uncertainty exists and what we are depending on to succeed. There’s a balance here because the risk is real, but people are looking for stability and hope. You need to be honest in a way that doesn’t feel too scary to those listening.
[LE]: Say more.
[MN] A lot of it is in the non-verbals, in the tone and how you tell the story. There are multiple ways to share the same plot. It’s thinking ahead about how your words will be perceived and avoiding hyperbole. You don’t have to go in there and say, “Oh, my God! We just lost all these sales! We’re really fucked now!”
[LE]: Yeah, I laugh but that happens. It’s a skill to be honest without inspiring fear. I call that Assertive Communication. Kim Scott calls it Radical Candor. This is why emotional intelligence matters.
I understand you’ve been immersing yourself in tools and techniques to effectively communicate with others. What are you learning?
[MN]: I’ve been reading Chris Voss, former FBI hostage negotiator, and his view that anytime a want or need is in play we are negotiating. Good negotiating rests on trust-based relationships. It’s made me realize that I have shortcomings in honestly telling others what I feel and want, and not expressing myself then leads to frustration and a lack of interest in the other side. This leads to passive-aggressive communication. How unsatisfying is that? It only leads to fuckery, which destroys leadership faster than this virus.
Voss talks about three key skills which make up what he calls tactical empathy. First, using mirroring to build trust and rapport. You literally repeat the last few words back to someone and then shut up and listen. It’s amazingly simple and works, it even works with my teenage kids to get them to share more. The second is labeling the behavior or emotion you see in others. “It seems like you’re angry about this change”. Research shows that strong feelings and fears keep us in our amygdala and that labeling, by ourselves and others, moves us into the frontal cortex and allows problem solving. The last technique involves asking open ended how and what questions. These are designed to let others know you are paying attention to what they are saying and inviting them to share more. It’s all a practice and I want to improve my ability to better understand and communicate emotions.
[LE]: You’re describing a clinical social work course. I know a lot about empathy, but I’ll have to investigate this tactical empathy thing. Reminds me of a conversation we once had about cognitive empathy, which you teach at Alchemy.
[MN]: There is visceral empathy and cognitive empathy. Visceral empathy means that Lori is sad, so I feel sad. I physically feel her sadness. Cognitive empathy is given what I know about Lori, what picture can I paint about her point of view? What can I anticipate or predict that she cares about? Am I able to imagine what she perceives and needs?
I need to practice cognitive empathy so I can understand where my students are at, what matters to them. It also relates to user experience—tell me again why you want this feature and what it will do for you. Sometimes the best solutions are the code you don’t write. People aren’t looking for you to fix their problem, they’re looking to be understood and heard, and then we can engage in collaboratively exploring options.
Cognitive empathy requires self-awareness because our own experiences are the basis for trying to understand others. It’s a critical skill for students to apply to themselves. It’s the labelling thing again, too. It’s the ability to say, “I’m feeling frustrated.” I know when I’m frustrated I get myopic. When that happens, it leads to wasted time, poor judgement, and more frustration—basically a vicious cycle. You have to be able to call it out to break out of that cycle.
[LE] Ah, Name It To Tame It—a self-regulation skill. I love that you’re teaching emotional intelligence to coders; we all need more instruction in listening, labeling our emotions, and knowing how we get in our own way.
Speaking of getting in our own way, I’ve been seeing my Impatience and Self-Righteous tendencies emerge the last few weeks. How do you see your personal fuckery emerge under stress?
[MN]: When I was growing up, I moved schools every couple of years and that’s led me to have the capacity to disassociate from people rapidly. I can drift into being stoic, all-business, and a communication style that is rapid fire information. When I get tired or overwhelmed, I get easily irritable and expect others to read my thoughts.
Slowing down, listening, and forced patience are key acts of self-regulation. I need to actively monitor how much work I commit to taking on, as well as my own expectations for what I should accomplish, be, or get done. Otherwise, I end up very anxious, having more than I can do and feeling a lack of control. I took on too much when this crisis first started and that led to an overactive brain and poor sleep.
[LE]: Thanks for keeping it real, Marty. Those habits have the potential to damage trust. I’m guilty of a lot of those trust-damaging habits, too. Any examples of corporate fuckery you've observed?
[MN]: I’ve heard horror stories of absent CEO employee layoffs. The pandemic is the biggest cover for having to lay people off, and yet still managers are Ghosting their employees. But I try not to judge too much at this point. Otherwise, I’d say Fear-Mongering and Denial are fairly rampant, and the Insincerity I mentioned above. How many times can we hear, “We’re all in this together”?
[LE]: Yeah, layoffs are inevitable, but we can deliver hard messages with kindness and compassion. We can be direct without being an asshole. Anything else you’d add?
[MN]: Don’t sell silver linings to people in fear and crisis. When this first started, we told students they would gain valuable remote work skills. That’s true, but when your world has been up-ended, it’s not what you want to hear. For example, during a relationship break-up, hearing that you now can meet someone even better is not what you want to hear. People need to grieve and experience the loss and we need to meet each person where they are at.
I also feel that while we adapted really well, we didn’t fully appreciate just how much the world has changed and the breadth of new opportunities that exist. We thought remote learning would require months of planning and work, yet under duress we pivoted in a matter of weeks. What seemed impossible became imperative. Keep challenging your own assumptions.
At the same time, claim what you find. Don’t allow others to tell you what you should feel or what your true desires are. There’s going to be a lot of mind games about “getting back to normal” which will make you doubt yourself. Hold onto this experience.
[LE]: Yep, additional fuckery will emerge as those in power determine the narrative. I’m wondering what keeps you grounded. What values are showing up at Alchemy?
[MN]: We are fortunate in that our business has translated well, or maybe we are fortunate that we translated our business well. Being inventive, making things new, doing it together, these are Alchemy principles that guide us.
Promoting personal connections and long-term friendships is a part of the Alchemy experience. Our cohorts remain connected long after graduation. This doesn’t just happen—it’s cultivated through Shannon, Megan, and all of our instructors. I’m really proud that moving to an online platform has not changed that.
Being present and bringing our hearts into the work remains a value. We have always pushed our students, because we are invested in and dedicated to their success. We could have gone easy on them, back-pedaled, or eased up, but we’ve maintained a rigorous curriculum to prepare them for the career they want.
With so many people being laid off in this pandemic, we created new funding opportunities, including living stipends, for women, BIPOC, and folks underrepresented in tech. While others say, “We don’t have time to think about DEI work now,” we’ve put access front and center. To that end, we’ve partnered on grants with PDXWIT and Social Finance.
[LE]: That is spot on with who I know you and Alchemy to be. You walk the talk.
Thinking in Questions
Working with Marty on this interview has been fun. Marty embodies my favorite trait in a leader—he thinks in questions. Here are a few questions that emerged from our work that you may want to spend some time contemplating:
There will be a huge push to return to the status quo on the other side of the coronavirus. How will we go forward instead of going back? And why?
How long is our long game? Are we surviving the quarter or planning to thrive over decades? What do we need to do now to make the next millennium better?
Why do we think that solutions require more of something? Adding more is often indicative of us not understanding the goal or purpose. Are we clear on our intent? And if so, what barriers need to be removed to surface the emergent solution?