…it may be time to grow up.
When we’re young, categories are liberating.
Student.
Actor.
Teacher.
Doctor.
Lawyer.
Entrepreneur.
Those words help us orient ourselves. They help other people know where to place us.
Categories reduce complexity.
That’s their job.
Nobody wants a twenty-minute explanation every time they meet someone.
It becomes that thing where you ask what they thought of a movie, and they proceed to describe it scene by scene, until you begin to wonder if the theater is still open and whether you could go watch it yourself.
So categories are useful. Necessary, even.
The tension begins when the thing you’re becoming grows faster than the language available to describe it.
Read that again.
The thing you’re becoming grows faster than the language available to describe it.
That’s not a branding problem.
That’s emergence.
At some point, many successful people notice an odd phenomenon:
The more they grow, the less accurate their introduction becomes.
The title stays the same.
The reality changes.
A lawyer becomes a movement-builder.
A CEO becomes a philosopher.
A consultant becomes an architect of ideas.
A keynote speaker becomes the steward of an entire body of work.
The label survives.
The person evolves.
And eventually the gap becomes noticeable.
Not because they’re trying to sound important.
Because they keep hearing reactions that don’t match what they actually do.
- “Speaker” means keynote delivery.
- “Coach” means accountability sessions.
- “Consultant” means recommendations.
- “Author” means the requisite business book.
Each word triggers a shortcut.
The shortcut misses the point.
That’s the frustration.
Not being misunderstood.
Being partially understood.
That’s much harder to detect.
Nobody says:
I have no idea what you do.
Instead they say:
Oh, you’re a consultant.
And now you’re trapped.
Because they’re wrong.
But they’re not completely wrong.
They’re just wrong enough.
And incomplete interpretation shapes opportunity.
Who calls you.
Who refers you.
How they do it.
Who hires you.
Who ignores you.
Who assumes they already understand you.
All from a shortcut.
Words describe what already exists.
Emergence describes something becoming.
That’s why people entering authority-transition phases often struggle to explain themselves.
They’re trying to describe a thing that isn’t fully formed yet.
The vocabulary was built for what they were.
Not what they’re becoming.
It’s true in my case.
None of the things I’ve been fully conveys what I have become.
So when someone asks me what I do, rather than tell the movie scene by scene, I ask:
Would you rather be known as the best in your field, or as the only person who can do what you do?
That usually earns a pause.
An answer.
A little look across the table that says, “Damn it, I thought this was going to be small talk.”
Then I add:
I work with people who are too big to define.
Too Big to Define.
As it happens, that’s the title of the book I’m writing now.
I use the phrase not because something becomes undefinable.
Everything can be described.
The issue is that the available definitions begin losing carrying capacity.
The container gets too small.
If you’ve noticed yourself giving longer and longer explanations, it may not be because you’re confused.
If it feels like all the good words are taken…
maybe you’ve just outgrown them.
Which explanation of yourself are you still carrying around long after it stopped being true?