Foolhardiness is when you rush in regardless.

Bravery is when you consider the downside, and do it anyway.

Trust me, bravery is always more successful in the end.

Dr. Nick Bayliss, “The Rough Guide to Happiness”

“If it can’t be fixed with duct tape or a Martini,
it isn’t worth fixing.”

They (whoever you think ‘they’ are) are too busy worrying about themselves to think about you too much.

By suppressing who you really are, you stop bringing all of yourself to life, school, work, whatever. That means you lose your impact, your power, and don’t create the amazing difference only you can create.

Advice to my daughters, Alice & Olivia, #1

Salvator Rosa was an Italian Baroque painter, poet and printmaker know for being “unorthodox and extravagant” and a “perpetual rebel”. Wikipedia

I particularly like that in his self portriat he painted the inscription ‘Aut tace aut loquere meliora silentio’.

Shut up or say something useful.

In this always-connected, always-on world they are words worth heeding.

A complex subject, with lots of opinion and ‘experts’, there are 7 key ideas:

• Heuristics
• Anchoring
• Framing
• Social norms
• The seductive-present moment
• Loss aversion
• Ambiguity aversion

HEURISTICS
People generally act on ‘rules of thumb’, rather than on rational thought.
‘Fat people are lazy’ is a mental shortcut held by many; a bias, rather than reality.

ANCHORING
When making decisions people focus and over-rely on a piece of information they think is valuable, often to the exclusion of anything else.
I know it’s a great stock because my friend told me; and he always does well in the markets.

FRAMING
People’s thoughts on a subject are affected by how it is presented.
As Rory Sutherland so eloquently shared with us, when towel reuse signs in a hotel said “three-quarters of our guests reuse their towels” 50% did the same; vs. the 30% who reused when the message was an environmental one.

SOCIAL NORMS
Other people’s behaviour matters; we do what we believe most other people do.
Most people reuse their towels, so we do too.

THE SEDUCTIVE-PRESENT MOMENT
In the moment people often make choices that are not in their self-interest. Their willpower is weakened because the immediate pleasure is far more powerful than the long-term gain. The less real the future gain seems, the more vivid the current pleasure.
A cake in front of you now is far more attractive than watching your figure.

LOSS AVERSION
The pain of loss is twice as powerful as the pleasure of gain: people strongly prefer avoiding losses.
Losing £50 affects your happiness much more than winning £50.

AMBIGUITY AVERSION
People prefer a known risk to an unknown risk.
Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.

As you will have worked out, these concepts can mash together to provide powerful emotional and rational influences on the choices we make. Do read more around the subject and don’t ‘Anchor’ too much on what I say here!

About establishing a different position to your competitors.

A difference which people want.

A competitive difference you can successfully defend in the eyes of your customers by continually undertaking activities that reinforce this difference.

And so continually deliver unique value to consumers, through a mix of activities different from those used by competitors.

Strategy is about what you choose to do, and what you choose not to do.

Strategy is choices to be different based in insights.

And thanks to an excellent article by Roger Martin in the Harvard Business review, to create strategy there are 6 questions you should ask yourself:

1.  What are our broad ASPIRATIONS for our organization & the concrete GOALS against which we can measure our progress?
2.  Across the potential field available to us, WHERE will we choose TO PLAY and not play?
3.  How can we create NON-EXISTING playing fields to play where nobody else is playing?
4.  In our chosen place to play, HOW will we choose to WIN against the competitors there?
5.  What CAPABILITIES are necessary to BUILD and maintain to win in our chosen manner?
6.  What MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS are necessary to operate to build and maintain the key capabilities?

“It’s not about you” is a must-read article by New York Times columnist David Brooks:

“Follow your passion, chart your own course, march to the beat of your own drummer, follow your dreams and find yourself. This is the litany of expressive individualism, which is still the dominant note in American culture.  Today’s graduates are also told to find their passion and then pursue their dreams. The implication is that they should find themselves first and then go off and live their quest.”

“Most successful young people don’t look inside and then plan a life. They look outside and find a problem, which summons their life.  Most people don’t form a self and then lead a life. They are called by a problem, and the self is constructed gradually by their calling.”

With beautiful synchronicity an email from Mike Dooley pops into my Inbox – just to make sure I get the message:  “It’s often from a sense of discontent, feelings of incompleteness, or even a twinge of true unhappiness, Magnus, that the seeds of great accomplishment are sown.”

Finally, and just to make sure that even stupid me works it out, a couple of days ago one of my best friends Kevin said to me “I need to learn to cook, I enjoy it but I don’t know what to cook and how to do it during the busy week.”

I am passionate about inspiring people to eat better every day “Remarkable food every day.  We can do this” as my food blog is subtitled.  Looks like I’ve found my purpose then: people who lead busy lives want to eat better but don’t always know how, think it’s too hard to create great meals in minutes, or lack inspiration.  If we all eat better, we’re healthier, and contribute more to the world.  By helping busy people like Kevin to cook better, particularly during the week, I’m solving his problem, and helping making the world a better place.  His lovely wife, Alexia, is happier because he’s cooking great meals, and so Kevin thinks I’m an even greater guy.  Multiplied by all the people I reach with my inspiration to help them cook remarkable food every day.  What’s not to like?

So, it’s not about you but it is about finding a problem that draws you, and applying yourself powerfully to answering it.

What’s been bugging you, and won’t go away?

However I love this view which can be found in the IPA guide to evaluating creative ideas (somewhat dogmatically called ‘Judging Creative Ideas’), which can be downloaded here.

PRODUCT DEMO
When you show what the product does in an engaging and powerful way.

SIDE-BY-SIDE COMPARISON
When you are able to make a competitive claim about your brand’s performance.

CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENT
When the values of your brand can be enhanced by those of a famous personality.

TESTIMONIAL
When the target audience can see that people like them use and benefit from the product.

PROBLEM SOLVED
A problem/solution scenario in which the brand is the hero.

SLICE OF LIFE
When you show the brand in the lives of its consumers.

BORROWED INTEREST
When the idea springs from and refers back to a known property e.g. a film or TV series.

There, I’ve shared it.  Probably should go off now and have a martini whilst chatting up my secretary.