Turning a yellow spot into the sun

This is the #1 trait I look for when hiring high performers. Here's why you should aim to be someone who turns a little into a lot and raises the bar for what's possible.

Image: Maven designer Yuan Wang who, in the true spirit of turning a yellow spot into the sun, casually whipped up graphics to accompany each of Maven’s company values in a few hours, unprompted.

👋 Hey, it’s Wes. Welcome to my weekly newsletter on managing up, driving growth, and standing out as a high-performer.

⛑️ Update: It’s been an incredible few months of working with startup CEOs and tech directors/VPs, and I’m constantly amazed at how brilliant my clients are. I’ve noticed many conversations are about these four juicy topics: Managing up, communicating with executive presence, giving hard feedback to improve team performance, and delegating while maintaining high quality. I love digging into the nuances, sharing scripts of exactly what to say, having them practice dry-run presentations or role-playing tough conversations, etc. If you’re interested in how I can support you in these areas, hit reply or learn more about my coaching approach.

In this week’s newsletter, we’ll cover why, given relatively similar backgrounds and resources, most operators create mediocre work—but others are able to create magic.

• Part I: What it means to turn a yellow spot into the sun

• Part II: The wow factor, or lack thereof

• Part III: Setting a higher bar for what’s possible

Read time: 10 minutes

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I want to share one of Maven's company values that I believe is helpful for high performers everywhere: turning a yellow spot into the sun.

Picasso said,

“There are some painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are other painters who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

This is one of my favorite quotes. It encompasses one of the attributes I look for in new hires and encourage in team members.

Here’s a question: Given relatively similar resources (years of experience, hours in a day, access to channels), most people create average work, but some people exceed expectations. Why?

Because some operators are able to turn yellow spots into the sun.

Screenshot of Maven’s company values Notion doc.

Part I: What it means to turn a yellow spot into the sun

When people are given similar assets, there is a spectrum of quality for the results.

You can give 100 painters the same access to canvas, brushes, and Winsor & Newton watercolors. Most will turn the sun into a yellow spot. Some will turn a yellow spot into the sun—they will infuse life into the work, so the final product is surprising, breathtaking, and magical.

This analogy applies to anything you write, make, design, code, or build. There is art in what you do. If you’re building something new, there is nothing that’s purely mechanical and robotic. It all requires some judgment. Your sense of judgment is your art.

Turning a yellow spot into the sun means:

1. Turning a little into a lot. Most people do the opposite: they have near-infinite resources at their fingertips, but come back with mediocre work.

2. Creating work that surprises and delights. The output is better than what folks described or originally imagined. Shows flashes of brilliance.

Other aspects of turning a yellow spot into the sun:

• No one told you what to do step-by-step. You brought your skill, vision, and judgment to fill in the blanks. You made good decisions about what to do.

• In someone else’s hands, the work could have turned out average. It’s living the answer to the question, “If you weren’t there, how would this have turned out differently?”

• Some people do a mildly difficult task, and are knocked off their feet. They are completely overwhelmed and need time to recover. They need applause for what they just did. They need a lot of reassurance and validation, ongoing. This is not turning a yellow spot into the sun.

• Clean, elegant, resourceful; solving problems folks didn’t even know was annoying until you got rid of it. Among a range of potential outcomes, none of which were guaranteed, you created the best expression of what the idea could be.

Turning a yellow spot into the sun is shorthand for all of the above.

This even applies to technical topics that are mostly seen as the opposite of art. I’ve heard engineers talk about beautiful code. People outside your field might not appreciate the art the way fellow operators in your field can. When I see amazing emails, I think, “Damn, that is really good. It just works.”

Once I went to a new dentist and he said, “That crown is beautiful. Which dentist did it?” Most people wouldn’t think dentistry is art. But there’s opportunity for je ne sais quoi in every field.

Turning a yellow spot into the sun is not simply about “being resourceful.” Resourcefulness is part of it, but it feels too utilitarian and flat. It’s like saying your favorite artist and most brilliant work of art is “creative.” Like, yes, Tolkien was “creative” but that hardly captures what he was.

Turning a yellow spot into the sun captures the spirit of exceeding expectations that “being resourceful” simply does not.

Part II: The wow factor, or lack thereof

The best way to understand what turning a yellow spot into the sun means is by seeing examples of the opposite. I love this story from Fortune 500 CMO Stephanie McCarty about why she’s frustrated by traditional ad agencies:

“Here's my beef with ad agencies.

They do SO MUCH rework.

I get it. They want to go deep. They want to talk to people. They want to do surveys. But at the end of the day, what they come up with is almost the same strategy, with a slightly different spin. And now I've just paid $500,000 (or more) for something I’ve already paid $500,000 (or more!) for several times before. I can’t stand it.”

Agencies spend half a year researching your customer, brand, industry… and what they come up with is very similar to what you had originally.

This is the epitome of not turning a yellow spot into the sun. They have ALL the time, budget, and resources at their disposal, yet the thing they come up with is basic at best.

Another example: My team member was drafting a case study for a marketing instructor. The first draft was lackluster even though the instructor had one of THE most interesting backgrounds. I imagine an unskilled biographer could turn even the most interesting person’s story into a boring read, and vice versa.

It’s useful to have shorthand because I gave the team member feedback: “We kind of turned the sun into a yellow spot here.”

I like to tell folks: “There’s no strict budget and nothing is off limits IF you can make a strong business case.” You might spend hours sharing context, being a thought partner, riffing with them—but what they come back with was mediocre. If the progress you worked on together was 1 mile, their addition (after going off on their own) might be 1 inch beyond what you did. If this happens enough times, it’s probably not a fit.

I’ve also seen the range of “yellow spots into the sun” with job candidates. Most candidates have access to the same publicly available information about companies. But there is a spectrum of quality in what candidates do with this information.

Some candidates have pitches that are significantly better. Why is that?

They used good judgment: They picked up on the right clues, identified where they fit in, discerned the company’s needs, picked the right medium for their pitch, while minimizing their level of effort to stay leveraged. All of this contributes to their ability to turn a yellow spot into the sun.

While you might think turning a yellow spot into the sun is mainly about strong execution, it’s equally about inventiveness and vision. There are situations where I wouldn’t have been able to describe what the person ended up creating. I had a version of what “great” looked like in my mind—and they surpassed it in ways I wouldn’t have been able to articulate in advance.

For example, I had been working with a direct report on managing up more. One day, she sent me this fantastic Slack DM:

Screenshot from 11 ways to get better feedback from your manager

I had mentioned a few guidelines on what to include that would help me reply quickly. But I had no idea a quick approval DM could be so neat and impactful—until I saw this. She took something mundane and elevated it. She turned a yellow spot into the sun.

Doing great work without making a fuss

Turning a yellow spot into the sun isn’t only about your intention and skill. It’s also about actually choosing to execute in the first place.

An example of this is Arielle Kimbarovsky, Head of Marketing at Balsamiq. I met Arielle because Balsamiq is a newsletter sponsor. She shared a story that’s an example of turning a yellow spot into the sun. Here’s what she said:

“Something I did that completely changed my career in its early years: I kept a work journal. I noted down decisions I made as an IC and manager, decisions my managers made, the outcomes, the impact, and what I learned. I wrote down those "inside thoughts" we all have during meetings. I wrote down the advice I HATED and why, as well as the helpful stuff. I wrote down pivotal interactions with clients, peers, leaders, and direct reports. I wrote down specific phrases different leaders liked to use. It was almost scientific—I applied basic tactics I learned in science/psychology classes about field observation. I still reference that journal to this day.”

No one told Arielle to do this. No one was stopping her from doing it, so she didn’t need permission. It was internal for herself, so she didn’t even show this to anyone.

This is one of those things that all of us could theoretically do—but only a tiny percentage actually do or even think of doing. 

Most people in her shoes would have said, “I need a mentor. I need someone to teach me strategy. I need support. I need to ask execs to explain their decisions and get their feedback.” Not Arielle. Arielle took a little (i.e. the lived experiences she was getting on the job, like all her peers)—and she turned it into a lot.

I’ll give a non-work example too:

My mom came to stay with us and she noticed a random spot in our kitchen. We previously had a mini fridge there, so it was a hole in the island that wasn’t being used.

One day, I noticed she turned cardboard boxes into two makeshift shelves as extra storage space for our appliances. She had actually changed the dimensions of the boxes to fit into this space.

No one asked her to do this. She proactively identified and solved a problem we didn’t realize was annoying—until the problem was no longer there. Now, all the appliances fit neatly in a spot that was previously dead space. She didn’t make a big deal about it. She didn’t ask, “How do you change the dimensions of a box?”

She figured it out and did it. She turned a yellow spot into the sun.

The lesson above is not “don’t ask people how to change the dimensions of a cardboard box” or “always do something reversible.” That’s not it.

There is no set of rules (beyond the first principles I cover here each week) to memorize. It’s the same foundational principles, like knowing your assets/levers/constraints, asking the question behind the question, thinking rigorously, etc.

The psychotherapist Eric Maisel said, “We have enough experiences in a day to make art for a decade.” You probably don’t need more material, you need more insight.

• Before you say you’ve exhausted the well, dig deeper.

• Before you say the tactic doesn’t work, perhaps you’ve only scratched the surface.

• Before you say you need more, consider if you’ve fully explored making the best out of less.

• Before you move on to the next shiny object, consider if you’ve really squeezed every last drop of juice from your current endeavor.

Ask yourself: How can I do more with what I have in front of me?

Part III: Setting a higher bar for what’s possible

I know when I see a “yellow spot into the sun” moment when I whisper “holy shit” under my breath to something because I think it’s so good. Most people would assume there isn’t room to make X much better. And then someone comes along, and makes it better.

It’s like Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir.

Among figure skaters, ice dance is the least cool, with singles figure skating, then pairs coming in second, and ice dance a far third. Until Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. They single-handedly turned a very uncool sport into one that was powerful, athletic, and thrilling. How? 

Were they technically skilled? Yes. Were they artistically skilled? Yes.

But so were dozens of other Olympic skaters with technical and artistic skill. I would argue that until Tessa and Scott, no one was able to elevate the sport on a global stage. They brought an element of je ne sais quoi.

If you haven’t seen their 2018 Olympic performance, it’s worth watching. It has 22M views. They turned a yellow spot into the sun.

Elevating the mundane

I believe the big things that succeed are usually the result of many compounding micro-decisions along the way. People celebrate the strategy at the beginning and the outcome at the end, but if you look more deeply, there was usually good decision-making and craft at each step, which layered up to greatness.

That’s why turning a yellow spot into the sun isn’t only for dramatic projects. It’s equally about elevating stuff most folks think of as boring and small. For example, one of my clients replied to my scheduling email in a way that was crisp:

Screenshot of my client’s email. I love how clear and concise this is.

I chose a tactical, seemingly minor example on purpose. We all write emails every day, but this one made me pause and take note. There’s something elegant about how clean it is.

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How do you know when you’ve turned a yellow spot into the sun? A good sign is when people say “wow” and comment on your work. I encourage you to point this out to your colleagues and ask them to point it out for you. Other times, you’ll come to a satisfying solution to a complex problem, and only you know how messy it could have been.

Keep an eye out for anything that makes you stop in your tracks, even small things. Note what makes it feel magical and add it to your mental swipe file.

What counts as turning a yellow spot into the sun is not a strict set of rules. It looks different for everyone and every project, just like there are successful founders of every personality, orientation, and style. It is idiosyncratic by nature.

That’s why there are no step-by-step directions. You will need to bring your own point of view.

Aim to do it, and do it in your own way.

What’s resonating with you? What did you find most helpful? Feel free to hit reply.

Thanks for being here, and I’ll see you next Wednesday at 8am ET.

Wes

PS If you found this valuable, here are more ways I can help:

1. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn for insights during the week (free).

2. Check my availability to do a keynote talk for your team.

3. Work with me for 1:1 executive coaching. Hit reply and I’d love to share more.