Suitcase handles

In life and work, we learn things. We fill suitcases with our learnings. Technical learnings, business and leadership learnings, and heuristics for making decisions. All of these go into our suitcases. Sometimes we make good decisions, and sometimes we screw up. These outcomes go into our suitcases, too.

When we share this hard-earned wisdom, instead of unpacking the suitcase and telling the stories, we just blurt out things like this:

You have to start multi-product right away.

Users first, revenue later.

Revenue from day one, or you have no business.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

The best leadership teams are always at war with each other.

Great products don’t need marketing.

People on X. You know the type.

The problem is not that these are wrong., it’s that they’re missing all context. They all sound vaguely right on the surface. They even sound smart. But they’re just suitcase handles. There’s no story of how the lesson was learned, and without that context, there is no way for anyone to figure out if they’re right for them in their situation. A handle without a suitcase is worthless.

So, before you take advice from X, ask for a peek inside the suitcase. Why did it work for them in their situation? Why might it work, or not, for you?

I learned this metaphor from Ed Catmull’s book Creativity, Inc.

The handle is “Trust the Process” or “Story Is King”—a pithy statement that seems, on the face of it, to stand for so much more. The suitcase represents all that has gone into the formation of the phrase: the experience, the deep wisdom, the truths that emerge from struggle. Too often, we grab the handle and—without realizing it—walk off without the suitcase. What’s more, we don’t even think about what we’ve left behind. After all, the handle is so much easier to carry around than the suitcase.

Ed Catmull, Creativity Inc.