Coffee Seekers: A Survival Guide.
Based on a comment to an earlier Medium post, and back by popular demand.
How many times a week are you asked “Do you have time for a coffee?” Its job-changing season in banking so my LinkedIn, email and Twitter DM are filling up fast with coffee seekers.
Since I started an innovation lab mid-2014 I had literally 500 “can we grab a coffee” email/LinkedIns and even with a 99% decline rate it just keeps accelerating. You can let that sideways traffic kill your time and energy. While I respect the attention / respect and success any Coffee Request implies, it took a while to decode what all this Coffee Attention actually meant. I am sharing that in an intentionally humorous way below :-)
Step 1: Why am I Getting all these Coffee Seekers?
First, you have to understand, why are people asking you to Coffee in the first place? Well, if this was official business coming from your own firm, you would get an Outlook meeting request with a whole bunch of people copied, and an email outlining the purpose. So this is not official business, but its business nonetheless, Coffee = “Sideways Business”.
Step 2: Coffee Seeker Groups
Being a thinker I just had to break it down and analyse it. What are the biggest groups of Coffee Seekers I’ve encountered? Its cold calling, job prospecting and spying all in one.
Type J. “Job” Coffee Seekers.
By far the biggest category of traffic to your Email / LinkedIn, but they never say they are seeking a job. Usually that comes through game of smoke & mirrors, if you do take the coffee you start to understand by the line of questioning that this person has been made redundant, or would just love to do something more inspiring and is fishing with you. I developed a keen sense of early warning radar for this group, they rarely get through to the desired caffeinated event. When I want to hire someone its almost never someone I know. Its skills outside the known community and that I don’t have access to, so I will go seek it myself.
Strategy: Redirect to HR website. No Coffee.
Type F. “Do Something For Free for Me” Coffee Seekers.
If you give a few good speeches the demand for you to come do this for everyone just explodes in a company and outside the company too. This is the second largest flow of Coffee Seekers, people who want you to come to inspire their event, to do an energetic, passionate view towards the future — and they will always assume you are for FREE. As a sub-type, the University Masters/PhD students also fall into this category — help me write my doctorate and let me be a resident n your lab for six months — also for free. All of this is very distracting from your core mission and can kill your time faster than a PowerPoint request. In 2015 I counted 150+ “Come Inspire Us” requests — while its a sign of love and culture it could also kill you if you let it. We have scaled and are recording videos now — got to go scalable or you won’t get any new work done.
Strategy: If event re-route to Comms team for analysis & response, else Decline with standard response. No Coffee.
Type C. “Consultants and other Bottom-Feeders” Coffee Seekers.
These guys are the most blatant and offensive about wanting to waste a big chunk of your time. These usually come via a senior ranking company officer, who gets a cold call email (its always email like 1999 from consultants) — this gets filtered down, if its an R&D / innovation type pitch it gets to my desk fast. These guys usually come with the attitude of “we urgently need to meet — and I have discovered the answer to your company’s future you just need to listen”. These guys are time-murderers! They really think they have some insight / pre-product that we haven’t thought of yet — and worse they almost always have a PowerPoint (paper-only, no tools) strategy that, sell us back our own ideas for several millions and walk away for free whether it launches or not. They will insist on a physical meeting, where they will bring some guru expert who usually turns out to be their PowerPointer. The longer these hang around in email Inboxes the worse it will get so react fast.
Strategy: Decline without really declining, usually requires phone call politely citing doubts about value prop and follow-up covering email, all being careful to avoid friendly-fire troubles in own firm. No Coffee.
Type S. “Spy” Coffee Seekers.
This is the most dangerous and nefarious, or potentially helpful, group. Spies sent to “align” you. Many folks want to make their agenda your agenda, or try to find out what you’re planning next so they can intervene and kill your next thing before it can see the light of day. Spies are never clear about being spies — its Game of Thrones and Bridge of Spies all wrapped up into one big Machiavellian equation of intrigue. Read your Sun Tzu, you need spies and you need to work with them on both sides. So…Who does this guy work for? What are his allegiances? Why is he really here? Great spies of course make this very opaque and act like your friend. Blunt, less-experienced spies just come to try to “align” you directly. Know both types and learn how to work in espionage if you want to win a war.
Strategy: Take the Coffee, strengthen your own agenda and don’t cause damage. Yes to Coffee, and let them pay.
End: So the Bottom line is — if someone asks for for a Coffee my radar goes up and I will scan the incoming packet for type, and see what viruses its carrying. Now if someone would ever ask me for a single malt Whiskey (never happens) that might be more my people. Strategy: Always Say Yes to Whiskey.
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