Brilliant ideas

How to Reinvent Yourself

2016-11-09T22:39:00.003-08:00

1. Know what you want.

Don't just understand what you don’t want. Work toward something with the reinvention. Don't just simply run away from something else.

2. Get clear on what you want and why.

Then when you get it, you will want what you have.

3. Don’t feel the need to justify your move.

If someone is curious about your why, tell him or her in simple and truthful terms. No one can argue with the facts. He or she may have opinions, but the five minutes he or she spends thinking about you is nothing like having to live your life 24 hours a day.

4. Find others.

Get in touch with a reinvention mentor and someone who has transitioned from one thing to another. Such people are available more places than you would think -- and more people are wanting to reinvent themselves than ever before.

5. Take action.

Every day you spend in stagnation is one less day you’ll spend in success. Small deliberate steps add up. Take one.

There are simply too many people looking at reinvention as a risk, when it is an opportunity with a poor name tag.

Instead of asking yourself, What should I do? consider asking yourself, What do I want to get out of what it is that I do?

This rephrasing illuminated a lot for me during my reinvention and I hope it does for you, too. It is after all less about getting what you want and more about wanting what you get.

5 Ways to Turn Your Fear Into Fuel

2016-11-01T08:39:00.000-07:00

Fear is part of the human experience. We all have fear. The question is, how do we make sure our fears don’t hold us back from achieving success?

I’m talking about the kind of success that’s more than financial stability. My definition of success is that nobody has their thumb on you. You’re the captain of your ship. You can control what you do with your life and who you spend time with. The people I’ve met with that kind of success are more motivated by one specific fear than any dream, desire or lofty goal.

They’re motivated by the fear of failure. I believe we can use any type of fear as fuel to reach our highest potential. Over the course of my life, I have achieved more out of fear of failure than a desire for success. Growing up, all my mother had to say to me was that she was disappointed, and I would be crushed. My drive to make her proud gave me a healthy fear of failure early on in life.

Let’s be clear: There are healthy fears and irrational fears. The management of those fears is what puts you into the successful category or not. We’re not ever going to conquer all our fears. I’m deathly afraid of snakes, and I do not like heights. I’m stuck with those fears, but how I manage them is up to me.

The key is focus. In some ways, we’ve all got a 5-year-old kid in our heads, telling us we should be afraid of this and that. If we’re going to move forward, we’ve got to take control of that 5-year-old kid. We’ve got to sort out the healthy fears driving us to success from the irrational fears holding us back.

I’ve discovered five areas of focus that are essential in transforming the fears that could cripple us into the fuel for our journey.

1. Focus on your dreams.

I heard a guy tell the story of an eagle’s nest on a mountain. An egg rolled out of the nest down the mountain and wound up in the nest of a prairie chicken. When the egg hatched, it was surrounded by prairie chickens. So this eagle is picking the ground for worms just like it’s a prairie chicken. But he’d look up and see eagles soaring high above, and he’d say, “Oh, I want to do that, Mom!” And Mom would say, “Oh no, that’s eagles. We’re prairie chickens. We peck the ground.” So the eagle spent his whole life pecking the ground.

A lot of us are programmed this way by our upbringing. It’s called the imposter phenomenon. We feel like we don’t deserve success, we’re not worthy of financial stability, or we’re going to be uncovered as frauds. No matter how successful we become, this old fear dogs us unless we turn our attention to our dreams. Rather than focusing on what others would say or listening to the self-doubt in your mind, you’ve got to focus on your goals and keep your eyes to the sky. That’s where you belong. You’ve got to feed your dreams and starve your fears.

2. Focus on the positive.

Bring an attitude of positivity to how you view yourself and the world around you. Focus on the things in life that are good. Don’t fill your head with junk. Stay away from the constant stream of negativity that’s so prevalent in this world. How you view life seeps into your head and creates fears and what if’s. You have control of what you take in and how you react. Look, if you spend all your time focused on your troubles or your weaknesses, you’re never going to become great. Keeping your eye on what’s wrong with your life, yourself, your spouse or your business is a good way to end up broke and alone. You’ve got to focus on what’s right with yourself and the world.

3. Focus on what you can influence.

When fears do creep in, don’t totally give in to them. Focus on what you can control. I see leaders all the time who focus on areas where they have immediacy, not where they have influence. They get distracted by urgency when what they should be focused on is their power to change things for themselves and their organizations. Aim your efforts at the tasks and thoughts that will produce positive results.

4. Focus on the future.

We all make mistakes. I know I do. My life is full of them. But the difference between someone who is dragged down by their mistakes and someone who overcomes them is their ability to focus on the future. Let go of what happened yesterday or last year or 10 years ago. Forgive that person who wronged you so you can be free. It’s not about who’s right or wrong. It’s about freeing yourself from the baggage so you can move forward. You have the opportunity today to create new successes using the lessons you learned from those mistakes.

5. Focus on gratitude.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people bogged down by resentment, self-pity and just a general bad attitude. Unless you’re surrounded by enemy fire on all sides, you have something right nowto be grateful for. Your life is filled with chances to say thank you, to focus on being grateful for the simple things and to share that gratitude with others. Life is short. Practice being a person of honor and gratitude and I promise you that good things will come back to you in return.

15 Reasons Why Daydreamers are Better Learners

2013-01-18T01:13:00.001-08:00

The student’s eyes drift to the classroom window and the teacher’s voice fades from consciousness. The daydream begins.

It’s a familiar scene, one we have likely both experienced as students and struggled against in our students as teachers. But daydreaming is not what it might seem. Recent research in both psychology and neuroscience clearly shows that daydreaming is an essential part of mental processing, reasoning and, yes, even learning.

1. Daydreaming is the Mind’s Natural State

The most common view of the human mind assumes that our normal way of thinking consists of concentrated focus upon immediate tasks at hand. But researchers have found that this is not the case.

Daydreaming is now considered to be the normal state of our minds, with focus appearing as a break from the more common mind wandering. A recent study has found that our mind wanders forty seven percent of the time we are awake with very few activities not equally peppered with natural periods of daydreaming.

Another study has shown that the parts of the brain stimulated during daydreaming consist of the “default network” regions of the brain that are associated with most higher level mental activity. This suggests that we have evolved specifically to be a daydreaming species. It is even more telling that those who suffer injuries to the region of the brain in which daydreaming occurs suffer from a lack of spontaneous speech and thought.

The fact that daydreaming is the natural state of the human brain suggests that those who take most naturally to daydreaming will best exhibit the skills necessary for successfully navigating the human world. Far from representing a lack of discipline, daydreaming is a hallmark of a healthy and active human mind.

2. Critical Thinking and Intelligence

Aside from the “default network”, one of the main regions of brain used during daydreaming consists of the “executive network”, the region of the brain associated with complex problem solving. Before this was revealed, for example through the 2009 study at the University of British Columbia, it was commonly thought that the “executive network” was only active during focused problem solving.

As this study suggests, a healthy amount of daydreaming is connected to improved critical thinking capabilities, an invaluable characteristic in successful learners.

It has also been shown that daydreaming is dramatically more present in those considered to be of superior intelligence when compared with learners of average intelligence. One study suggests that the improved integration of the default and executive networks developed through their continual exercise through daydreaming significantly contributes to the formation of increased intelligence.

3. Motivation

It’s a truism that our “dreams”, by which we usually mean our goals and desires, provide motivation in life. What is less recognized, however, is the central role played by the process of daydreaming in envisioning and imaginatively experiencing the lives we wish to lead and people we want to become.

Our goals and desires are what they are because we have spent time freely living through our daydreams what it would be like to achieve them. For these reasons, daydreaming in learners is related to higher levels of ambition and a deeper sense of motivation.

4. Confidence

Freely imagining “what you would do if…” is far from idle. Having envisioned scenarios and played out possible events gives us an increasing sense that we can handle them.

In this way the imaginative anticipation that often occurs in daydreaming contributes as much to a robust sense of confidence as it does to a healthy motivation. Think about it this way, daydreaming is a training ground for your mind where it plays through and sometimes struggles with scenarios it has not experienced or wants to react differently to in the future.

Though successful training certainly doesn’t guarantee success during the real event, it does provide a mental preparedness and a firm sense that no matter what may occur we can deal with it. For this reason some of the most confident learners are also those with the healthiest daydreaming lives.

5. Increased Insight

Did you ever wonder what causes that moment of insight when something suddenly clicks or a solution becomes clear? The answer is a lot of hard work on the part of your brain that goes unnoticed.

Moments of insight, those sudden revelations that seem to come from nowhere, are long prepared for through the brain’s ongoing hidden organizing and processing. Daydreaming, as a mental state activating both the default and executive networks of the brain, plays an important role in that organizing and processing. What you may think is just your mind drifting is actually your mind actively forming connections between information, synthesizing what was previously only chaos, and preparing the ground for the moment when things suddenly fit into place.

Once we appreciate this we see that daydreaming is just as productive as spending an hour working on a difficult math problem. Recent work has shown that spending less time on the problem and more time letting our mind wander could contribute to getting the answer faster.

Benjamin Baird and Jonathan Schooler at the University of California at Santa Barbara have shown, as discussed in an article in The New Yorker, that spending time daydreaming after first being given a task leads to more insightful responses to the task than focus and concentration do.

6. Thin-Slicing

In his book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking Malcolm Gladwell discusses the phenomenon of “thin-slicing”, the mind’s jumping to conclusions based on surprisingly little information.

Despite what we tend to assume, Gladwell demonstrates that jumping to conclusions based on limited information is often statistically the most reliable way to arrive at the right decision. For example, Cook County Hospital changed the way it diagnoses heart attacks to focus on less information.

Here is how Gladwell describes this part of the book on his website: “They instructed their doctors to gather less information on their patients: they encouraged them to zero in on just a few critical pieces of information about patients suffering from chest pain–like blood pressure and the ECG–while ignoring everything else, like the patient’s age and weight and medical history. And what happened? Cook County is now one of the best places in the United States at diagnosing chest pain.”

The key point about thin-slicing is that its effectiveness depends upon two factors. Knowledge, especially when derived from experience, and mental integration that allows for swift access to the knowledge and experience we have gained. If we return to our image of daydreaming as the training ground of the mind, the increased integration it imposes on knowledge and experience we have collected improves our ability to successfully jump to conclusions based on little information.

It makes us more successful thin-slicers and improves our split-second decision making.

7. Improved Problem Solving

What is problem solving? From what we have already said we might suggest it is an effective use of the default and executive networks of the brain resulting in increased intelligence, critical thinking, insight and thin-slicing.

The argument that the integration of default and executive networks results in improved problem solving is offered by the author of Daydreams at Work: Wake Up Your Creative Powers, Amy Fries, in an article at Psychology Today: “…your mind-wandering capacity is like that computer program–it can get to solutions that your conscious mind just can’t see.”

In general daydreaming makes us better thinkers. Being better thinkers makes us better learners.

8. Coping

The traditional view of daydreaming understands it as a form of escapism.

We are unhappy or uninterested in where we are and so imagine we are somewhere else. It is important, this view assumes, to resist this escapist urge and instead cope with the world as it is. It turns out, however, that daydreaming is itself a central element of our mental coping mechanisms.

As already mentioned, daydreaming provides the brain with the exercise course where it can secretly play out different solutions to problems. More than this, however, those precious daydreaming moments allow us the conscious rest necessary to face difficult tasks or situations with a fresh mind. Yet, during these seeming moments of rest, the brain is still hard at work beneath the surface organizing potential responses without the generally awkward interference of conscious thought.

Researchers such as Eric Klinger have shown that children who weave an imaginative story around their play are likely to be happier at play and to play longer. It is easy to generalize this point to adults as well, the ability to tell ourselves imaginative stories about the world and our own lives through daydreaming makes even the tedious or downright painful parts of our life more enjoyable.

In learning the ability to cope with challenging, frustrating or boring tasks is a key ingredient for success.

9. Mental Elasticity

Coping is a key element of mental elasticity, the ability to shift our thought and behavior smoothly in response to changing situations and information.

Daydreaming, as the practice ground for mental processing, greatly increases the mind’s ability to smoothly shift in the face of unanticipated events and situations. So while daydreaming clearly contributes to organizing information and experience we have already learned, making the learned material more useful by improving our ability to apply it, it also enhances our response time in the face of the unexpected.

10. Creativity

Recent research has shown that children with a healthy amount of empty play time, i.e. play time not directed through specific games or spent watching television, display a greater amount of creativity.

Those, on the other hand, who tended to turn to entertainments such as television when bored were unable to invent interesting stories. The time spent daydreaming during imaginative play is a practice period for creative invention. The neuroscience of this should be clear when one considers the similarity between problem-solving and creativity in general.

Those parts of the brain used during creative problem solving are also used during daydreaming.

11. Concentration

Concentration, while certainly important in both education and life, is not something we can increase simply through hard work, practice or will.

The brain, much like a muscle, can indeed be improved but there is a limit to how far it can be developed. The fact that we are a daydreaming species and that daydreaming is the natural state of the human mind points to the artificiality of the mental states associated with extended concentration.

What is becoming clearer is that concentration is not as simple as one might think. Rather, what appears to be the ability to continually concentrate on one problem or subject is looking more like a complex play involving using daydreaming rest periods, even surprisingly brief breaks, in a way that refreshes our ability to concentrate. Consider daydreaming like taking a power nap.

Even a half-minute spent briefly relaxing control upon the mind can improve a learner’s concentration immediately after this break.

12. Increased Short Term Productivity

Even as concentration works best interspersed with brief, and some times longer, moments of daydreaming “rest” during which the mind synthesizes what has been gained, so too does productivity in general go up when it is demanded in smaller bursts and peppered with healthy moments of daydreaming.

This is nowhere demonstrated as clearly as through the highly successful Pomodoro Technique for time management. This technique employs a timer and breaks productive work into twenty-five minutes segments with a short five-minute break between each segment of work. After four such segments of work and breaks you take a longer break of fifteen minutes. This technique’s surprising ability to increase productivity depends upon the mind’s limited power of concentration with moments of daydreaming rest needed between periods of increased mental control.

What it suggests is that teachers would do well, not only to appreciate the importance of daydreaming for successful learners, but even to organize lessons so as to actively encourage short breaks for daydreaming.

13. Connection to Class Material

Learning is nearly impossible if students do not feel connected to the material they are learning.

Students have to care about what they learn to be the most successful learners. This connection to the material involves imaginatively playing with the material through which students rearrange and experiment while finding ways to connect it to their wider concerns, life, and fantasies.

For this reason students who actively daydream, especially when they are encouraged to incorporate class material into their daydreams in whatever way they like, are much more successful learners.

14. Increased Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

One of the most important skills for people in general, let alone learners, is what we might call the “moral imagination”.

The moral imagination is the ability to think oneself into another person’s shoes, to imagine what it would be like to be them. This skill is necessary if one is to expand one’s sense of sympathy and empathy, but it is also a key element in problem-solving and reading comprehension. If a student is to understand a text or solve a problem what is required is creatively putting themselves in the place of the characters in the text, or in the sphere of life that most naturally relates to the problem to be solved.

For this reason emotional intelligence, the ability to have a varied and complex emotional life through engagement with and response to the emotions of others, is a central if unexpected element of all mental processing and learning. It is just this ability to imagine our way out of our own situation and into that of another that daydreaming develops and encourages.

For this reason not only are daydreamers more empathetic and emotionally open people, they are also better at comprehending literary and historical texts.

15. Improved Self-Knowledge

Since the time of Socrates it has been thought that coming to know ourselves is both a major goal and the foundation of all truly successful learning. We can think about daydreaming as carrying out a dialogue with ourselves.

In contrast, watching television or playing video games primarily involves an external exploration or dialogue, one that can involve learning but doesn’t often involve reflective self-discovery. If we are to be successful learners we need to have a robust sense of our interests, our goals and the talents or skills we wish to have.

This intimately involves the imaginative self-exploration only a healthy daydreaming life can provide.

6 Keys To Delivering A Powerful Elevator Pitch

2012-10-28T11:08:00.003-07:00

When you only have a small window of opportunity to make a lasting impression, it's crucial to be prepared long before a chance encounter.

In her book Small Message, Big Impact, Fortune 500 consultant Terri Sjodin discusses the most effective ways to deliver an elevator pitch. She's given us permission to outline the best tips from her book here:

1. Know exactly what you want the outcome to be

Whether to get the ball rolling on a job or project or something larger, you should know exactly what you want from this presentation before you plan on going out and executing it.

"Your message is like your song, and you have to let it be heard," Sjodin wrote. "Believe in it, share it, and eventually, it becomes a natural part of your communication."

If you don't have an aim or goal for what you're setting out to accomplish, there won't be much conviction or direction in your message.

2. Tell your audience what they'll get from your proposal

Use "Monroe's Motivated Sequence" to be informative and persuasive in your speech:

1. Gain their attention by being able to relate to them.

2. Convince your target that they "need" your services or product.

3. Satisfy their problems with a suitable solution.

4. Get your audience to visualize their future with your product or service.

5. Tell your audience exactly what you want them to do today and exactly how to do it, and explain what you will do once they have made a decision to move forward.

3. Speak in your own authentic voice

Unless you practice your speech, you won't be able to speak with poise and polish. And with poise and polish comes certainty and confidence. Finding the right words and using a comprehensive vocabulary will allow you to make your case with conviction.

4. Control movement to attract your audience

Is there a way you should walk and pace to best control your audience's attention? Sjodin has created a six-position approach to aligning your stance and movement:

1. Start in the center of the room to make your introduction.

2. Take 2-3 slight steps to the right, plant your feet and make your first point.

3. Then walk 3-4 steps back to the center and make your second point.

4. Next, go 3-4 steps further to the left and make your third point.

5. Walk slightly ahead and towards the center to start your conclusion.

6. Finally, finish your conclusion by taking 1-2 steps forward.

5. Break down each talking point

You can break it down into:

1. Argument: You have to show your audience why they need you, your company and your product.

2. Proof: Use statistics, stories or analogies to make your point and satisfy your audience so they'll have the incentive to need you.

3. Visualization: After your argument and proof, your audience may be thinking "so what?" You need to show your audience what your argument means to them and how it will directly benefit them both immediately and down the line.

6. Close in an unforgettable way

You spent all this time on developing your argument, but getting your audience to make the next step is crucial. It's the reason you came up with this speech in the first place.

At this point, you should have engaged and enticed your listener or listeners in a creative and mildly clever way.

If you don't build a strong argument with a compelling case for why your pitch should matter, you won't be taken seriously.

Secrets Of The 30%: 5 Rules To Turn B2B Marketing And Sales Into A Growth Engine

2012-10-23T01:37:00.004-07:00

If you knew that you had a 70 percent chance of failure before starting something, would you still go ahead and do it? Those are the odds B2B leaders in marketing and sales (M&S) face when they embark on a transformation effort, and they underscore why attempts to raise brand visibility, customer satisfaction, and sales often flounder.

That’s a big problem because an effective M&S transformation drives significant growth. We’ve seen companies increase their operating income by as much as 10 times the cost of the transformation program in its first year.

grow the top line or when the company finds it needs to switch to a new business model to keep up with changes in the industry or with its customers. These transformations need to focus on increasing ROI for the company, improving organic growth, or out-executing competition.

One steel processing company, for example, overhauled its M&S function to stop a steady deterioration of margins. It reorganized the sales organization and built account management, prospecting, and customer segmentation skills across the entire company. The result? Product profitability increased by almost 50 percent within one year, and the company outperformed its peers for the next three years.

The 70% – why they fail

Our survey of 2,300 executives unearthed three key reasons why M&S transformations fail:

No love. Marketing often does not have a seat at the executive table because of a perceived lack of bottom line impact. This issue makes it hard for marketing to get the kind of support from other departments that it needs for the transformation to work.
No discipline. All change efforts take time, but M&S programs take even longer because they tend to be more complex and require more cross-functional cooperation. “Get-it-done-yesterday” pressures undermine the discipline and patience required to see big changes through.
No muscle. Our survey found that 75 percent of companies lack people in M&S groups who are skilled in change leadership.

Joining the 30 percent

So how can you make sure that your company is among the 30 percent that succeed? Here are the five things you need to do:

1. Hold yourself and others accountable. Our survey found that this aspect was the most important influencing skill in up to 52 percent of successful transformations. Leaders need not only to model activities and report results for which they’re responsible, but also to identify issues that slow down the change process. One European telecom company, for example, was trying to improve its customer experience to help avoid churn. The head of sales asked that 25 percent of his variable pay and that of his direct reports be determined by the company’s success in delivering a great customer experience. That accountability sent an unambiguous signal to the organization about how important the transformation was.

2. Reach out across the organization. M&S leaders can’t do it on their own. The IT department, for example, can help develop relevant analytics; product development can work to increase customer satisfaction. While the CEO must encourage cross-departmental collaboration, our data make it clear that ultimately it’s up to M&S leaders themselves. We recommend holding regular “marketing summits” with members from relevant departments to discuss progress and concerns. Make sure that everyone understands their individual and team role in the transformation, and is responsible for specific assignments.

3. Monitor project performance AND health. It’s critical to focus on performance during a transformation, of course, but 63 percent of successful M&S transformations balance team health with performance. Morale can flag and transformations run out of steam, especially when it can take more than a quarter or two to put numbers on the books. So it’s crucial to have a balanced scorecard that measures both performance (e.g. How have we generated more revenue?) and health (e.g. Are people building their capabilities?) to track how everyone involved is doing. When signs of flagging surface, you need intervene quickly with more training, for example, or better progress communications.

4. CEO: Step up and step in. Yes, change starts at the top. But for an M&S transformation, the CEO has to really step up to make it happen because M&S often lacks the support across the organization. We’ve seen two areas where the CEO can really help: i) being intimately involved in both planning and process. For example, the CEO of one industrial company demanded the project have discrete, measurable, carefully-sequenced initiatives so that sales could “ring the cash register” quickly to win over skeptics within the organization; ii). acting as a “Communicator-in-Chief.” The CEO/ needs to use simple, clear language to inform the organization about goals, successes, and progress. This is much more than sending the occasional email. CEOs need to consider, for example, regular internal webcasts, internal blogging, and visiting local offices to talk with leadership and employees.

5. Promote trickle-down leadership. More than 60 percent of our survey respondents said that having committed change leaders across the organization was ‘extremely important’ to the transformation effort. Companies that succeed install strong change leaders who lead by example, help people maintain their energy and focus, and constantly measure progress. They also celebrate wins, evangelize the transformation, and reward and promote people who successfully build new capabilities.

While these five lessons are critical to make an M&S transformation succeed, the actual design of the program has must take into account specific needs of the company, such as short-term financial impact. With customer behaviors and technologies changing rapidly, M&S transformation is not so much a choice as a necessity. When done well, it can drive significant growth.

7 Ways to Network Better

2012-10-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

1) Don’t interrupt. This takes a great deal of patience in my experience. When you see someone to whom you would like to be introduced, take note of their body language. If they are in a group of three or more and standing, by all means, go up to the group, stand quietly and slightly back and wait to be acknowledged. Once you are, introduce yourself, ask if they (and other parties to be polite) have a few minutes later to chat. If they are speaking one on one in a private room or sitting down, wait for another opportunity.

2) Focus on their work… People love to talk about what they do or themselves. Usually those at a professional conference have some impetus to speak about their product or service and you should ask. Not only does this make them happier to talk to you but it makes you a better informed networked Also, you should want to know what’s going on.

3) …as a way to eventually talk about your own. Networking does you no good if you don’t have a succinct and interesting way to talk about how you fit into the picture. If you’re anything like me, you might stumble over your words a few times, so as silly as it sounds, practice. Learn how to explain what you do and why it’s important to at least three audiences (in under 30 seconds).

4) Talk to the vendors or sponsors. This is probably the most overlooked networking idea… ever. It might surprise you but the vendors and sponsors of networking events and conferences have done this many times before, they've been to loads of sessions and talked to your counterparts all over the country, either face to face or during implementations and service calls. So, they know a lot. Talking to vendors can yield a ton of information and they are literally there to speak to you.

5) Go to the dinners and not the parties. I ignore this one because I have the attention span of a gnat, but you shouldn't The intimacy and conversation that comes from a dinner far outweighs the crazy shenanigans that comes with the parties. But if you have the energy and the bandwidth, go to both.

6) Stay comfortable. Or as comfortable as possible in networking attire (ties, heels et c . If you want to have a conversation longer than 5 minutes, always be the one to suggest that you and your companion(s) sit down. I guarantee they’ll take you up on it and then you can all focus on doing some business rather than how much your feet hurt.

7) Be friendly. I used to wait for people to come up to me at networking events because I didn't want to bother them and then I realized that almost everyone feels the same way. A smile and a warm approach go a long way toward making new networkers and conference goers feel welcome and (I don’t care if this sounds corny) makes a first impression that people really do remember, for years.

3 Ways To Lead A Creative Life

2012-10-20T00:21:00.004-07:00

1) Live with awareness. There was a resounding consensus that inspiration is in everything and everywhere. Some of the artists I talked to draw their inspiration from contemplating nature, some from reading history books or reminiscing about their childhood, while others from observing and playing with architectural designs, shapes, and colors. The bottom-line: creativity does not happen in a vacuum. Picasso, for example, is known to have drawn inspiration for his Young Ladies of Avignon from roaming the hallways of the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadéro.

2) Make space for your unconscious mind.Artists pointed out that they can best tune into their creative spirit when their critical, conscious mind is at rest. Some achieve that by meditation, some by hiking, while others by drinking a glass of wine or listening to music. The connection between our unconscious mind and creativity has been vastly supported by research, which found that we are most creative during our ‘non-optimal’ time of day (i.e. evening for morning people and morning for evening people), when we are more inclined to see unlikely connections; or when we distract our conscious mind with puzzles and other mentally challenging activities, thus making room for our unconscious mind. The old adage, “sleep on it” can in fact do wonders.

3) Exercise the creative muscle. Most artists agreed that just like any other skill, great creativity comes with practice. Of the artists I met, many admitted they often started with one idea and end up with a totally different one. Creativity is not just a spark of genius; creativity is also a process. So why wait, start today! You may be surprised with the outcome.

Linda Peia has worked with Ashoka in Mexico, Brazil, and currently D.C. An economist by training, she loves to explore the intersection between behavioral economics, neuroscience, and entrepreneurship.

9 tips to prepare for a job interview

2012-06-11T22:45:00.000-07:00

(MoneyWatch) If you watch elite athletes right before a competition, you'll see they are fiercely focused. Whether they're quietly preparing or psyching themselves up as a team, all the attention is directed at the goal ahead. Last-minute job interview preparations are similarly important.

Take these 9 steps from the moment you exit your car or step off public transportation and before you sit down to snag your dream job, and you'll be at the top of your game at go-time.

Check Twitter one last time.
Presumably you've done your due diligence prior to heading to your interview -- Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, the whole social media shebang. On your way in, tap on Twitter and the company's website one last time to see if there is any company breaking news you might be able to relevantly reference. "It will make you seem interested, informed and help you stand out from other candidates," says Meryl Weinsaft Cooper, co-author of Be Your Own Best Publicist: Using PR Skills to Get Noticed, Hired and Rewarded At Work.

Check yourself out, too.
Especially if your appointment is after lunch, find a mirror and do a quick stain/spinach-in-teeth check. So simple, yet so often forgotten in the well-intentioned desire not to be late. "One of my clients, in her haste to dress and rush to the interview, discovered that she was wearing her blouse inside-out," says Roy Cohen, career coach and author of The Wall Street Professional's Survival Guide.

Respect the front desk.
The security team or receptionist isn't just a gateway into the office, he or she may be a pseudo-spy for your boss-to-be. Act as if anything you say or do will be relayed to your interviewer. "Many candidates don't realize that the receptionist holds more power than you think. Starting on the wrong foot with the receptionist could prematurely end your candidacy for the position. And the worst part is that you may never know what happened," says Cheryl Palmer, founder of Call to Career, a career coaching firm. Part of showing respect means finishing any cell phone conversations before you enter the building and turning off your ringer.

Use the bathroom beforehand.
If you're traveling a longer distance, try to leave time to use the ladies' or mens' room. "Nothing is more distracting than nature's call mid-interview. [You] may not be able to concentrate fully on questions that you are asked and those you need to ask to appear engaged and focused," says Cohen. Having to take a bathroom break during your meeting will make you seem unreliable and disorganized.

Scope out your competition.
Being aware of the people around you and your surroundings from the time you enter the building until the time you sit down across from your interviewer can give you clues that you can use on the fly. "Often the person leaving as you are arriving is your competitor. Or you may be waiting in the same area as other candidates. See how they are dressed, how old are they, what are they carrying," says David Couper, career coach and author of Outsiders On The Inside: How to Create a Winning Career...Even When You Don't Fit In. He suggests tailoring your answers appropriately with the information you gather: "If they seem older than you they may have more experience. Be ready to talk about the quality rather than the quantity of your work knowledge."

Check out the scenery.
Part of being aware of your surroundings is noticing what's on the walls, in people's cubicles, and in the lobby. This can give you nuggets about the company that can't be found with Google. "Sometimes looking at what is on a whiteboard in a conference room can give you valuable information. A client once saw three issues that were hitting sales on a board in the room he was asked to wait in. He was able to talk about them during his interview," notes Couper.

Get your mind revved up.
Ever feel like you settle into an interview after a few minutes? That doesn't go unnoticed. "As a former recruiter, I would see candidates come alive three or more minutes into the interview," says Caroline Ceniza-Levine, partner with SixFigureStart, a career consulting firm. Unfortunately, that's a big strike against you: "That's three minutes too late, as I've already formed an opinion about them," notes Ceniza-Levine, a former Fortune 500 recruiter. She suggests taking five minutes in the waiting room to review an index card with key points or an inspirational quote to make sure you're operating at 100 percent the moment you sit down.

Organize your grand entrance.
An interviewer is not a surprise situation -- you know you'll probably be in a waiting room and that at any moment you'll be called in. So be ready. "I can't tell you how many candidates scramble for their bag, their coat, their water, their book, and hunched over and arms full still try to shake my hand. It's hard to look professional and poised this way," says Ceniza-Levine. So pare down what you're carrying and leave a hand free to shake. She adds that you should make sure your first impression isn't a wardrobe malfunction (for women, that may be a skirt that rides up too far, and for a man, pants that are hemmed too short). "One job seeker wore Mickey Mouse socks that so distracted an interviewer, he went from front-runner to discard," recalls Ceniza-Levine.

Smile like you mean it.
Of course you automatically smile when you introduce yourself -- you're a reasonably socially competent human being, right? But the thing is, when you're nervous, you may simply be breezing through the motions and a half-hearted effort can leave a bad first impression. So smile purposely, with confidence and with every person you meet. "Too many people are timid through the process of letting receptionists, security and others know they are there for an interview, as if the job seeker is putting people out. It's hard to turn that attitude around to one of power when you sit in the hot seat so I recommend starting with that confidence the moment you arrive," says Tracy Brisson, founder and CEO, The Opportunities Project, a career coaching firm for younger employees.

To Build Your Business, Smash Your Silos

2012-06-06T03:31:00.000-07:00

Silos are necessary in companies. They provide the structure that allows companies to work. Every company is split into divisions, departments, or groups, such as sales, technology, and finance. This structure allows expertise in different areas. In companies, silos tend to be places where information, focus (another word for choosing priorities), and control flow up and down. But company silos also cause problems--that same structure prevents the flow of information, focus, and control outward. And in order for a company to work efficiently, decisions need to be made across silos.

There are three aspects to the organizational silos barrier:

• Nonaligned priorities

• Lack of information flow

• Lack of coordinated decision making across silos

Silos occur naturally because of the way organizations are structured. Each part of a company reports up to a manager who has responsibility only for that part of the company. But none of the parts is truly independent. Each relies on others to perform its function, and the company performs well only when each of these sometimes many parts or units work closely together.

This kind of company structure is also necessary because it keeps accountability and responsibility in the silo. It also fosters a sense of independence and pride of ownership, which is a good thing. Senior management’s role is to look broadly at the organization; a department manager’s is to look deeply into his or her own area. The problem is, doing this creates what I call “tower vision.” Managers tend to look up and down only within their own silos--never looking around or across--so all they see, and tend to think about, is their own silo. They don’t know what is happening elsewhere in the organization or how their actions impact other areas. They act primarily in the interest of their own silo.

This makes sense. After all, when you are a division manager, your priorities naturally and appropriately center on your division. You may not even be thinking about other groups. And when you have to make decisions that may affect other silos, you are conditioned to think about your own silo first.

Just because a course of action makes sense for a silo manager doesn’t mean it is the best way to do things or even in the best interests of the entire company. From a company point of view, silos need to work together. But too often that doesn’t happen. Problems arise when departments do not share the same priorities, knowledge, or information, and when managers work in an independent, entrepreneurial manner--in short, when people are operating with tower vision.

You see the organizational silo at work all the time. Every manager is part of a silo and has been frustrated when his or her priorities did not align with someone else’s in a different department. (Can you remember telling a colleague that whatever you needed was reallyimportant? Or telling another colleague that you were doing something that has a higher priority? We have all been on both sides of the equation.)

Customers also see the organizational silo barrier at work. Think about the process of buying a new car. The salesman at the dealership sells you a car but has to rely on a computer system to tell you if it is in stock. The dealership’s sales department is run by a sales manager, who has no control over how the computer system works. She relies on another unit to keep technology running smoothly.

The salesman also needs to know how quickly he can get the car to you. This is also not in his manager’s control. Even if the auto manufacturer actually has a car in stock in the color and with all the features that you want, and even if the computer inventory program is accurate, it is up to the distribution department, under the control of yet another manager, to get the car to you. And if you want to finance the car, that is yet another department--and another department the salesman and his manager have no control over. It is only when all of these units within the dealership operate successfully together that the salesman is able to make you happy with the purchase of your new car.

Breaking The Barrier

To break the organizational silos barrier, the goal is not to destroy silos themselves but to eliminate the problems that silos cause. That is a critical distinction. Managers may be tempted to think that getting rid of silos is the answer. But the structure that silos bring is very important in terms of creating accountability and responsibility within the organization. Silo managers know clearly what they are responsible for. Cooperation, communication, and collaboration are the three keys to working across silos. Those are components that ideally any successful working relationship would have, but they are must-haves if you are going to break the organizational silos barrier.

You can break this barrier when knowledge, focus, and control are shared among more than one silo. The solution is about losing tower vision and being able to look at--and see--things from a different person’s or department’s point of view.

Breaking this barrier is also not about proving who is “wrong” and who is “right.” It is perfectly understandable why silo heads have different priorities and why they believe that they are doing the best thing for the company when they are doing the best thing for their silo. When managers have been given responsibility and authority, it is only natural that they will choose to exercise them--and not always in moderation. When decisions to reprioritize do get made, it is because collaboration or communication has allowed a shift in perspective.

Human nature forces people to want to do the best they can within their own “sandbox” at the expense of everybody else. “Owning” a function or a part of a business naturally brings forth a manager’s entrepreneurial spirit, and you don’t get to be head of a silo without being competitive. Managers rationalize their lack of cooperation as “I’ve been given this area to run as I see fit and I need to do the best job I possibly can."

This is easier said than done, of course. We are, after all, in typical silo heads talking about a group of very focused, highly competitive individuals. A good process to remove barriers highlights where cooperation is not occurring, and it points out the consequences of those lapses. It puts in place measures to ensure that decisions are not made in isolation going forward.

A Simple Tool You Need to Manage Innovation

2012-06-05T01:26:00.001-07:00

Management knows it and so does Wall Street: The year-to-year viability of a company depends on its ability to innovate. Yet many companies have not yet learned to manage innovation strategically. The companies we've found to have the strongest innovation track records do things differently: Rather than hoping that their future will emerge from a collection of ad hoc, stand-alone efforts that compete with one another for time, money, attention, and prestige, they manage for "total innovation."

One tool we've developed to help companies manage their innovation portfolio is the Innovation Ambition Matrix (see the chart below). It is a refinement of a classic diagram devised by the mathematician H. Igor Ansoff to help companies allocate funds among growth initiatives. Ansoff's matrix clarified the notion that tactics should differ according to whether a firm was launching a new product, entering a new market, or both. Our version replaces Ansoff's binary choices of product and market (old versus new) with a range of values. This acknowledges that the novelty of a company's offerings (on the x axis) and the novelty of its customer markets (on the y axis) are a matter of degree. We have overlaid three levels of distance from the company's current, bottom-left reality.

In the band of activity at the lower left of the matrix are core innovation initiatives — efforts to make incremental changes to existing products and incremental inroads into new markets. Whether in the form of new packaging (such as Nabisco's 100-calorie packets of Oreos for on-the-go snackers), slight reformulations (as when Dow AgroSciences launched one of its herbicides as a liquid suspension rather than a dry powder), or added service convenience (for example, replacing pallets with shrink-wrapping to reduce shipping charges), such innovations draw on assets the company already has in place.

At the opposite corner of the matrix are transformational initiatives, designed to create new offers — if not whole new businesses — to serve new markets and customer needs. These are the innovations that, when successful, make headlines: Think of iTunes, the Tata Nano, and the Starbucks in-store experience. These sorts of innovations, also called breakthrough, disruptive, or game changing, generally require that the company call on unfamiliar assets — for example, building capabilities to gain a deeper understanding of customers, to communicate about products that have no direct antecedents, and to develop markets that aren't yet mature.

In the middle are adjacent innovations, which can share characteristics with core and transformational innovations. An adjacent innovation involves leveraging something the company does well into a new space. Procter & Gamble's Swiffer is a case in point. It arose from a set of needs P&G knew well and built on customers' assumption that the proper tool for cleaning floors is a long-handled mop. But it used a novel technology to take the solution to a new customer set and generate new revenue streams. Adjacent innovations allow a company to draw on existing capabilities but necessitate putting those capabilities to new uses. They require fresh, proprietary insight into customer needs, demand trends, market structure, competitive dynamics, technology trends, and other market variables.

The Innovation Ambition Matrix offers no inherent prescription. Its power lies in the two exercises it facilitates:

First, it gives managers a framework for surveying all the initiatives the business has under way: How many are being pursued in each realm, and how much investment is going to each type of innovation?
Second, it gives managers a way to discuss the right overall ambition for the company's innovation portfolio.

For one company — say, a consumer goods producer — succeeding as a great innovator might mean investing in initiatives that tend toward the lower left, such as small extensions to existing product lines. A high-tech company might move toward the upper right, taking bigger risks on more-audacious innovations for the chance of bigger payoffs. Although this may sound obvious, few organizations think about the best level of innovation to target, and fewer still manage to achieve it.

This blog post was excerpted from Bansi Nagji and Geoff Tuff's article "Managing Your Innovation Portfolio" in the May issue of the magazine.

Distinguish Yourself from the Market, Not Just Other Applicants

2012-04-03T12:59:00.003-07:00

If you're an experienced professional, it can be tough to find a job in today's market. Sally (name has been changed) was laid off six months ago. She was a training manager for a large corporation, advising middle and senior managers on career development. She'd worked for her company for a dozen years and was regarded by her boss and her peers as a good performer. Located at the home office, she developed long-term relationship with her clients. Because management and professional services have traditionally been delivered face-to-face, Sally thought her job and location were reasonably safe. But they weren't.

Looking for a job was harder than Sally thought. She didn't just face tough competition from younger job seekers. The market dynamics that pushed her out of a job were happening across the whole marketplace for her profession. Global IT and increasing global pressures have dramatically changed the game. More people and companies are increasingly comfortable with virtual collaboration and remote professional services. As a result, many companies cut costs in those areas, just as they outsourced manufacturing decades ago. Between 2007 and 2008, financial, information, and professional service jobs were outsourced at an average rate of 5.4% (PDF). John McCarthy of Forrester Research predicts that at least 3.3 million white collar jobs and $136 billion in wages will shift from the U.S. to low-cost countries by 2015.

This shifts knowledge work from a craft into a knowledge production system. Where Sally was a skillful collaborator integrated into her division and providing tailored services, the new low-skilled remote staff advises clients with a semiautomated template of choices.

You might think you are immune to this shift if you are a manager, but that's not the case. This is a fundamental shift in how professional and managerial work gets done, and you can't merely sharpen your skills to stay competitive. You need to do something to distinguish your skills from "everyday" professional services.

We've known for a decade or more that this shift to more production-engineered knowledge work was underway. Like most of us, you probably couldn't have anticipated how much it could impact local job markets. It's not easy, but you can still chart a career through this difficult this environment.

Get on the cutting edge of your discipline. It's tempting to concentrate on your core skills. But if your previous company isn't keeping your skills at your high-cost location, chances are high that prospective employers aren't either. You'll need to differentiate yourself. Every discipline evolves. You don't have to be a "fresh young thing" to bring new ideas and approaches to prospective employers. In fact, cutting-edge, seasoned expertise might be even more valuable. Learning about new developments in your field will be more engaging than pounding the pavement for your old job. Niche professional expertise is less likely to be reengineered and sent to an offshore or low-cost provider. Expertise that directly supports corporate leadership is also likely to remain in its current location because of its centrality to the leadership center of the organization.
Become a contractor. If cost is a driving force for potential employers, you can still be cost competitive. As a consultant, you absorb the costs of benefits, and hiring you is a low-commitment proposition for employers. As you prospect for new clients, you can test out different combinations of your new cutting-edge focus. And as a consultant, your internal experience is a plus. Many companies in this transition hire back former employees as contract workers.
Don't sell yourself short. It's tempting to get a job lower than your expertise. But with this global shift, de-skilling yourself is not likely to be an effective way to stay competitive because it puts you in direct competition with the low-cost, less-skilled competitors that are changing your field. Yes, as a contractor, you'll likely do some things that only use some of your skills, but it leaves you clear to continue to develop your edge. You offer your clients more for less.
Find a market niche. A CPA was laid off from her high-paying, high-pressure job as comptroller in a small private sector company. When she became a consultant, she shifted her focus to accounting in nonprofits. Even though the accounting aspect of her niche is below her level of ability, she serves as the top advisor to the senior management team on the organizations' financial health and the potential financial impact of their decisions. Although she makes less money, it is better than competing with the literally hundreds of applicants for comptroller jobs. Her clients appreciate the fact that she can speak the language of senior management. She chose nonprofits that she had an emotional interest in and loves contributing to something she cares about. Finding a niche not only distinguishes you, but your expertise will be genuinely appreciated.

You're not just competing against other professionals; you're competing against the shifts in the market itself. What other market-level shifts do you see in impacting your job search, and what other strategies can you think of to distinguish yourself from both other job seekers and market trends?

The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs

2012-03-24T12:45:00.000-07:00

His saga is the entrepreneurial creation myth writ large: Steve Jobs cofounded Apple in his parents’ garage in 1976, was ousted in 1985, returned to rescue it from near bankruptcy in 1997, and by the time he died, in October 2011, had built it into the world’s most valuable company. Along the way he helped to transform seven industries: personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores, and digital publishing. He thus belongs in the pantheon of America’s great innovators, along with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney. None of these men was a saint, but long after their personalities are forgotten, history will remember how they applied imagination to technology and business.

In the months since my biography of Jobs came out, countless commentators have tried to draw management lessons from it. Some of those readers have been insightful, but I think that many of them (especially those with no experience in entrepreneurship) fixate too much on the rough edges of his personality. The essence of Jobs, I think, is that his personality was integral to his way of doing business. He acted as if the normal rules didn’t apply to him, and the passion, intensity, and extreme emotionalism he brought to everyday life were things he also poured into the products he made. His petulance and impatience were part and parcel of his perfectionism.

One of the last times I saw him, after I had finished writing most of the book, I asked him again about his tendency to be rough on people. “Look at the results,” he replied. “These are all smart people I work with, and any of them could get a top job at another place if they were truly feeling brutalized. But they don’t.” Then he paused for a few moments and said, almost wistfully, “And we got some amazing things done.” Indeed, he and Apple had had a string of hits over the past dozen years that was greater than that of any other innovative company in modern times: iMac, iPod, iPod nano, iTunes Store, Apple Stores, MacBook, iPhone, iPad, App Store, OS X Lion—not to mention every Pixar film. And as he battled his final illness, Jobs was surrounded by an intensely loyal cadre of colleagues who had been inspired by him for years and a very loving wife, sister, and four children.

So I think the real lessons from Steve Jobs have to be drawn from looking at what he actually accomplished. I once asked him what he thought was his most important creation, thinking he would answer the iPad or the Macintosh. Instead he said it was Apple the company. Making an enduring company, he said, was both far harder and more important than making a great product. How did he do it? Business schools will be studying that question a century from now. Here are what I consider the keys to his success.

Focus

When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, it was producing a random array of computers and peripherals, including a dozen different versions of the Macintosh. After a few weeks of product review sessions, he’d finally had enough. “Stop!” he shouted. “This is crazy.” He grabbed a Magic Marker, padded in his bare feet to a whiteboard, and drew a two-by-two grid. “Here’s what we need,” he declared. Atop the two columns, he wrote “Consumer” and “Pro.” He labeled the two rows “Desktop” and “Portable.” Their job, he told his team members, was to focus on four great products, one for each quadrant. All other products should be canceled. There was a stunned silence. But by getting Apple to focus on making just four computers, he saved the company. “Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do,” he told me. “That’s true for companies, and it’s true for products.”

After he righted the company, Jobs began taking his “top 100” people on a retreat each year. On the last day, he would stand in front of a whiteboard (he loved whiteboards, because they gave him complete control of a situation and they engendered focus) and ask, “What are the 10 things we should be doing next?” People would fight to get their suggestions on the list. Jobs would write them down—and then cross off the ones he decreed dumb. After much jockeying, the group would come up with a list of 10. Then Jobs would slash the bottom seven and announce, “We can only do three.”

Focus was ingrained in Jobs’s personality and had been honed by his Zen training. He relentlessly filtered out what he considered distractions. Colleagues and family members would at times be exasperated as they tried to get him to deal with issues—a legal problem, a medical diagnosis—they considered important. But he would give a cold stare and refuse to shift his laserlike focus until he was ready.

Near the end of his life, Jobs was visited at home by Larry Page, who was about to resume control of Google, the company he had cofounded. Even though their companies were feuding, Jobs was willing to give some advice. “The main thing I stressed was focus,” he recalled. Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up, he told Page. “It’s now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they’re dragging you down. They’re turning you into Microsoft. They’re causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great.” Page followed the advice. In January 2012 he told employees to focus on just a few priorities, such as Android and Google+, and to make them “beautiful,” the way Jobs would have done.

Simplify

Jobs’ Zen like ability to focus was accompanied by the related instinct to simplify things by zeroing in on their essence and eliminating unnecessary components. “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” declared Apple’s first marketing brochure. To see what that means, compare any Apple software with, say, Microsoft Word, which keeps getting uglier and more cluttered with no intuitive navigational ribbons and intrusive features. It is a reminder of the glory of Apple’s quest for simplicity.

Jobs learned to admire simplicity when he was working the night shift at Atari as a college dropout. Atari’s games came with no manual and needed to be uncomplicated enough that a stoned freshman could figure them out. The only instructions for its Star Trek game were: “1. Insert quarter. 2. Avoid Klingons.” His love of simplicity in design was refined at design conferences he attended at the Aspen Institute in the late 1970s on a campus built in the Bauhaus style, which emphasized clean lines and functional design devoid of frills or distractions.

When Jobs visited Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center and saw the plans for a computer that had a graphical user interface and a mouse, he set about making the design both more intuitive (his team enabled the user to drag and drop documents and folders on a virtual desktop) and simpler. For example, the Xerox mouse had three buttons and cost $300; Jobs went to a local industrial design firm and told one of its founders, Dean Hovey, that he wanted a simple, single-button model that cost $15. Hovey complied.

Jobs aimed for the simplicity that comes from conquering, rather than merely ignoring, complexity. Achieving this depth of simplicity, he realized, would produce a machine that felt as if it deferred to users in a friendly way, rather than challenging them. “It takes a lot of hard work,” he said, “to make something simple, to truly understand the underlying challenges and come up with elegant solutions.”

In Jony Ive, Apple’s industrial designer, Jobs met his soul mate in the quest for deep rather than superficial simplicity. They knew that simplicity is not merely a minimalist style or the removal of clutter. In order to eliminate screws, buttons, or excess navigational screens, it was necessary to understand profoundly the role each element played. “To be truly simple, you have to go really deep,” Ive explained. “For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it’s manufactured.”

During the design of the iPod interface, Jobs tried at every meeting to find ways to cut clutter. He insisted on being able to get to whatever he wanted in three clicks. One navigation screen, for example, asked users whether they wanted to search by song, album, or artist. “Why do we need that screen?” Jobs demanded. The designers realized they didn’t. “There would be times when we’d rack our brains on a user interface problem, and he would go, ‘Did you think of this?’” says Tony Fadell, who led the iPod team. “And then we’d all go, ‘Holy shit.’ He’d redefine the problem or approach, and our little problem would go away.” At one point Jobs made the simplest of all suggestions: Let’s get rid of the on/off button. At first the team members were taken aback, but then they realized the button was unnecessary. The device would gradually power down if it wasn’t being used and would spring to life when reengaged.

Likewise, when Jobs was shown a cluttered set of proposed navigation screens for iDVD, which allowed users to burn video onto a disk, he jumped up and drew a simple rectangle on a whiteboard. “Here’s the new application,” he said. “It’s got one window. You drag your video into the window. Then you click the button that says ‘Burn.’ That’s it. That’s what we’re going to make.”

In looking for industries or categories ripe for disruption, Jobs always asked who was making products more complicated than they should be. In 2001 portable music players and ways to acquire songs online fit that description, leading to the iPod and the iTunes Store. Mobile phones were next. Jobs would grab a phone at a meeting and rant (correctly) that nobody could possibly figure out how to navigate half the features, including the address book. At the end of his career he was setting his sights on the television industry, which had made it almost impossible for people to click on a simple device to watch what they wanted when they wanted.

Take Responsibility End to End

Jobs knew that the best way to achieve simplicity was to make sure that hardware, software, and peripheral devices were seamlessly integrated. An Apple ecosystem—an iPod connected to a Mac with iTunes software, for example—allowed devices to be simpler, syncing to be smoother, and glitches to be rarer. The more complex tasks, such as making new playlists, could be done on the computer, allowing the iPod to have fewer functions and buttons.

Jobs and Apple took end-to-end responsibility for the user experience—something too few companies do. From the performance of the ARM microprocessor in the iPhone to the act of buying that phone in an Apple Store, every aspect of the customer experience was tightly linked together. Both Microsoft in the 1980s and Google in the past few years have taken a more open approach that allows their operating systems and software to be used by various hardware manufacturers. That has sometimes proved the better business model. But Jobs fervently believed that it was a recipe for (to use his technical term) crappier products. “People are busy,” he said. “They have other things to do than think about how to integrate their computers and devices.”

Part of Jobs’s compulsion to take responsibility for what he called “the whole widget” stemmed from his personality, which was very controlling. But it was also driven by his passion for perfection and making elegant products. He got hives, or worse, when contemplating the use of great Apple software on another company’s uninspired hardware, and he was equally allergic to the thought that unapproved apps or content might pollute the perfection of an Apple device. It was an approach that did not always maximize short-term profits, but in a world filled with junky devices, inscrutable error messages, and annoying interfaces, it led to astonishing products marked by delightful user experiences. Being in the Apple ecosystem could be as sublime as walking in one of the Zen gardens of Kyoto that Jobs loved, and neither experience was created by worshipping at the altar of openness or by letting a thousand flowers bloom. Sometimes it’s nice to be in the hands of a control freak.

When Behind, Leapfrog

The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first. It also knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind. That happened when Jobs built the original iMac. He focused on making it useful for managing a user’s photos and videos, but it was left behind when dealing with music. People with PCs were downloading and swapping music and then ripping and burning their own CDs. The iMac’s slot drive couldn’t burn CDs. “I felt like a dope,” he said. “I thought we had missed it.”

But instead of merely catching up by upgrading the iMac’s CD drive, he decided to create an integrated system that would transform the music industry. The result was the combination of iTunes, the iTunes Store, and the iPod, which allowed users to buy, share, manage, store, and play music better than they could with any other devices.

After the iPod became a huge success, Jobs spent little time relishing it. Instead he began to worry about what might endanger it. One possibility was that mobile phone makers would start adding music players to their handsets. So he cannibalized iPod sales by creating the iPhone. “If we don’t cannibalize ourselves, someone else will,” he said.

Put Products Before Profits

When Jobs and his small team designed the original Macintosh, in the early 1980s, his injunction was to make it “insanely great.” He never spoke of profit maximization or cost trade-offs. “Don’t worry about price, just specify the computer’s abilities,” he told the original team leader. At his first retreat with the Macintosh team, he began by writing a maxim on his whiteboard: “Don’t compromise.” The machine that resulted cost too much and led to Jobs’s ouster from Apple. But the Macintosh also “put a dent in the universe,” as he said, by accelerating the home computer revolution. And in the long run he got the balance right: Focus on making the product great and the profits will follow.

John Sculley, who ran Apple from 1983 to 1993, was a marketing and sales executive from Pepsi. He focused more on profit maximization than on product design after Jobs left, and Apple gradually declined. “I have my own theory about why decline happens at companies,” Jobs told me: They make some great products, but then the sales and marketing people take over the company, because they are the ones who can juice up profits. “When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off. It happened at Apple when Sculley came in, which was my fault, and it happened when Ballmer took over at Microsoft.”

When Jobs returned, he shifted Apple’s focus back to making innovative products: the sprightly iMac, the PowerBook, and then the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. As he explained, “My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything—the people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings.”

Don’t Be a Slave To Focus Groups

When Jobs took his original Macintosh team on its first retreat, one member asked whether they should do some market research to see what customers wanted. “No,” Jobs replied, “because customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them.” He invoked Henry Ford’s line “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’”

Caring deeply about what customers want is much different from continually asking them what they want; it requires intuition and instinct about desires that have not yet formed. “Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page,” Jobs explained. Instead of relying on market research, he honed his version of empathy—an intimate intuition about the desires of his customers. He developed his appreciation for intuition—feelings that are based on accumulated experiential wisdom—while he was studying Buddhism in India as a college dropout. “The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do; they use their intuition instead,” he recalled. “Intuition is a very powerful thing—more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.”

Sometimes that meant that Jobs used a one-person focus group: himself. He made products that he and his friends wanted. For example, there were many portable music players around in 2000, but Jobs felt they were all lame, and as a music fanatic he wanted a simple device that would allow him to carry a thousand songs in his pocket. “We made the iPod for ourselves,” he said, “and when you’re doing something for yourself, or your best friend or family, you’re not going to cheese out.”

Bend Reality

Jobs’s (in)famous ability to push people to do the impossible was dubbed by colleagues his Reality Distortion Field, after an episode of Star Trek in which aliens create a convincing alternative reality through sheer mental force. An early example was when Jobs was on the night shift at Atari and pushed Steve Wozniak to create a game called Breakout. Woz said it would take months, but Jobs stared at him and insisted he could do it in four days. Woz knew that was impossible, but he ended up doing it.

Those who did not know Jobs interpreted the Reality Distortion Field as a euphemism for bullying and lying. But those who worked with him admitted that the trait, infuriating as it might be, led them to perform extraordinary feats. Because Jobs felt that life’s ordinary rules didn’t apply to him, he could inspire his team to change the course of computer history with a small fraction of the resources that Xerox or IBM had. “It was a self-fulfilling distortion,” recalls Debi Coleman, a member of the original Mac team who won an award one year for being the employee who best stood up to Jobs. “You did the impossible because you didn’t realize it was impossible.”

One day Jobs marched into the cubicle of Larry Kenyon, the engineer who was working on the Macintosh operating system, and complained that it was taking too long to boot up. Kenyon started to explain why reducing the boot-up time wasn’t possible, but Jobs cut him off. “If it would save a person’s life, could you find a way to shave 10 seconds off the boot time?” he asked. Kenyon allowed that he probably could. Jobs went to a whiteboard and showed that if five million people were using the Mac and it took 10 seconds extra to turn it on every day, that added up to 300 million or so hours a year—the equivalent of at least 100 lifetimes a year. After a few weeks Kenyon had the machine booting up 28 seconds faster.

When Jobs was designing the iPhone, he decided that he wanted its face to be a tough, scratchproof glass, rather than plastic. He met with Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning, who told him that Corning had developed a chemical exchange process in the 1960s that led to what it dubbed “Gorilla glass.” Jobs replied that he wanted a major shipment of Gorilla glass in six months. Weeks said that Corning was not making the glass and didn’t have that capacity. “Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was unfamiliar with Jobs’s Reality Distortion Field. He tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges, but Jobs had repeatedly shown that he didn’t accept that premise. He stared unblinking at Weeks. “Yes, you can do it,” he said. “Get your mind around it. You can do it.” Weeks recalls that he shook his head in astonishment and then called the managers of Corning’s facility in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, which had been making LCD displays, and told them to convert immediately to making Gorilla glass full-time. “We did it in under six months,” he says. “We put our best scientists and engineers on it, and we just made it work.” As a result, every piece of glass on an iPhone or an iPad is made in America by Corning.

Impute

Jobs’s early mentor Mike Markkula wrote him a memo in 1979 that urged three principles. The first two were “empathy” and “focus.” The third was an awkward word, “impute,” but it became one of Jobs’s key doctrines. He knew that people form an opinion about a product or a company on the basis of how it is presented and packaged. “Mike taught me that people do judge a book by its cover,” he told me.

When he was getting ready to ship the Macintosh in 1984, he obsessed over the colors and design of the box. Similarly, he personally spent time designing and redesigning the jewellike boxes that cradle the iPod and the iPhone and listed himself on the patents for them. He and Ive believed that unpacking was a ritual like theater and heralded the glory of the product. “When you open the box of an iPhone or iPad, we want that tactile experience to set the tone for how you perceive the product,” Jobs said.

Sometimes Jobs used the design of a machine to “impute” a signal rather than to be merely functional. For example, when he was creating the new and playful iMac, after his return to Apple, he was shown a design by Ive that had a little recessed handle nestled in the top. It was more semiotic than useful. This was a desktop computer. Not many people were really going to carry it around. But Jobs and Ive realized that a lot of people were still intimidated by computers. If it had a handle, the new machine would seem friendly, deferential, and at one’s service. The handle signaled permission to touch the iMac. The manufacturing team was opposed to the extra cost, but Jobs simply announced, “No, we’re doing this.” He didn’t even try to explain.

Push for Perfection

During the development of almost every product he ever created, Jobs at a certain point “hit the pause button” and went back to the drawing board because he felt it wasn’t perfect. That happened even with the movie Toy Story. After Jeff Katzenberg and the team at Disney, which had bought the rights to the movie, pushed the Pixar team to make it edgier and darker, Jobs and the director, John Lasseter, finally stopped production and rewrote the story to make it friendlier. When he was about to launch Apple Stores, he and his store guru, Ron Johnson, suddenly decided to delay everything a few months so that the stores’ layouts could be reorganized around activities and not just product categories.

The same was true for the iPhone. The initial design had the glass screen set into an aluminum case. One Monday morning Jobs went over to see Ive. “I didn’t sleep last night,” he said, “because I realized that I just don’t love it.” Ive, to his dismay, instantly saw that Jobs was right. “I remember feeling absolutely embarrassed that he had to make the observation,” he says. The problem was that the iPhone should have been all about the display, but in its current design the case competed with the display instead of getting out of the way. The whole device felt too masculine, task-driven, efficient. “Guys, you’ve killed yourselves over this design for the last nine months, but we’re going to change it,” Jobs told Ive’s team. “We’re all going to have to work nights and weekends, and if you want, we can hand out some guns so you can kill us now.” Instead of balking, the team agreed. “It was one of my proudest moments at Apple,” Jobs recalled.

A similar thing happened as Jobs and Ive were finishing the iPad. At one point Jobs looked at the model and felt slightly dissatisfied. It didn’t seem casual and friendly enough to scoop up and whisk away. They needed to signal that you could grab it with one hand, on impulse. They decided that the bottom edge should be slightly rounded, so that a user would feel comfortable just snatching it up rather than lifting it carefully. That meant engineering had to design the necessary connection ports and buttons in a thin, simple lip that sloped away gently underneath. Jobs delayed the product until the change could be made.

Jobs’s perfectionism extended even to the parts unseen. As a young boy, he had helped his father build a fence around their backyard, and he was told they had to use just as much care on the back of the fence as on the front. “Nobody will ever know,” Steve said. His father replied, “But you will know.” A true craftsman uses a good piece of wood even for the back of a cabinet against the wall, his father explained, and they should do the same for the back of the fence. It was the mark of an artist to have such a passion for perfection. In overseeing the Apple II and the Macintosh, Jobs applied this lesson to the circuit board inside the machine. In both instances he sent the engineers back to make the chips line up neatly so the board would look nice. This seemed particularly odd to the engineers of the Macintosh, because Jobs had decreed that the machine be tightly sealed. “Nobody is going to see the PC board,” one of them protested. Jobs reacted as his father had: “I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it’s inside the box. A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it.” They were true artists, he said, and should act that way. And once the board was redesigned, he had the engineers and other members of the Macintosh team sign their names so that they could be engraved inside the case. “Real artists sign their work,” he said.

Tolerate Only “A” Players

Jobs was famously impatient, petulant, and tough with the people around him. But his treatment of people, though not laudable, emanated from his passion for perfection and his desire to work with only the best. It was his way of preventing what he called “the bozo explosion,” in which managers are so polite that mediocre people feel comfortable sticking around. “I don’t think I run roughshod over people,” he said, “but if something sucks, I tell people to their face. It’s my job to be honest.” When I pressed him on whether he could have gotten the same results while being nicer, he said perhaps so. “But it’s not who I am,” he said. “Maybe there’s a better way—a gentlemen’s club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code words—but I don’t know that way, because I am middle-class from California.”

Was all his stormy and abusive behavior necessary? Probably not. There were other ways he could have motivated his team. “Steve’s contributions could have been made without so many stories about him terrorizing folks,” Apple’s cofounder, Wozniak, said. “I like being more patient and not having so many conflicts. I think a company can be a good family.” But then he added something that is undeniably true: “If the Macintosh project had been run my way, things probably would have been a mess.”

It’s important to appreciate that Jobs’s rudeness and roughness were accompanied by an ability to be inspirational. He infused Apple employees with an abiding passion to create groundbreaking products and a belief that they could accomplish what seemed impossible. And we have to judge him by the outcome. Jobs had a close-knit family, and so it was at Apple: His top players tended to stick around longer and be more loyal than those at other companies, including ones led by bosses who were kinder and gentler. CEOs who study Jobs and decide to emulate his roughness without understanding his ability to generate loyalty make a dangerous mistake.

“I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people, you don’t have to baby them,” Jobs told me. “By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. Ask any member of that Mac team. They will tell you it was worth the pain.” Most of them do. “He would shout at a meeting, ‘You asshole, you never do anything right,’” Debi Coleman recalls. “Yet I consider myself the absolute luckiest person in the world to have worked with him.”

Engage Face-to-Face

Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew all too well its potential to be isolating, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings. “There’s a temptation in our networked age to think that ideas can be developed by e-mail and iChat,” he told me. “That’s crazy. Creativity comes from spontaneous meetings, from random discussions. You run into someone, you ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.”

He had the Pixar building designed to promote unplanned encounters and collaborations. “If a building doesn’t encourage that, you’ll lose a lot of innovation and the magic that’s sparked by serendipity,” he said. “So we designed the building to make people get out of their offices and mingle in the central atrium with people they might not otherwise see.” The front doors and main stairs and corridors all led to the atrium; the café and the mailboxes were there; the conference rooms had windows that looked out onto it; and the 600-seat theater and two smaller screening rooms all spilled into it. “Steve’s theory worked from day one,” Lasseter recalls. “I kept running into people I hadn’t seen for months. I’ve never seen a building that promoted collaboration and creativity as well as this one.”

Jobs hated formal presentations, but he loved freewheeling face-to-face meetings. He gathered his executive team every week to kick around ideas without a formal agenda, and he spent every Wednesday afternoon doing the same with his marketing and advertising team. Slide shows were banned. “I hate the way people use slide presentations instead of thinking,” Jobs recalled. “People would confront a problem by creating a presentation. I wanted them to engage, to hash things out at the table, rather than show a bunch of slides. People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.”

Know Both the Big Picture and the Details

Jobs’s passion was applied to issues both large and minuscule. Some CEOs are great at vision; others are managers who know that God is in the details. Jobs was both. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes says that one of Jobs’s salient traits was his ability and desire to envision overarching strategy while also focusing on the tiniest aspects of design. For example, in 2000 he came up with the grand vision that the personal computer should become a “digital hub” for managing all of a user’s music, videos, photos, and content, and thus got Apple into the personal-device business with the iPod and then the iPad. In 2010 he came up with the successor strategy—the “hub” would move to the cloud—and Apple began building a huge server farm so that all a user’s content could be uploaded and then seamlessly synced to other personal devices. But even as he was laying out these grand visions, he was fretting over the shape and color of the screws inside the iMac.

Combine the Humanities with the Sciences

“I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics,” Jobs told me on the day he decided to cooperate on a biography. “Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.” It was as if he was describing the theme of his life, and the more I studied him, the more I realized that this was, indeed, the essence of his tale.

He connected the humanities to the sciences, creativity to technology, arts to engineering. There were greater technologists (Wozniak, Gates), and certainly better designers and artists. But no one else in our era could better firewire together poetry and processors in a way that jolted innovation. And he did it with an intuitive feel for business strategy. At almost every product launch over the past decade, Jobs ended with a slide that showed a sign at the intersection of Liberal Arts and Technology Streets.

The creativity that can occur when a feel for both the humanities and the sciences exists in one strong personality was what most interested me in my biographies of Franklin and Einstein, and I believe that it will be a key to building innovative economies in the 21st century. It is the essence of applied imagination, and it’s why both the humanities and the sciences are critical for any society that is to have a creative edge in the future.

Even when he was dying, Jobs set his sights on disrupting more industries. He had a vision for turning textbooks into artistic creations that anyone with a Mac could fashion and craft—something that Apple announced in January 2012. He also dreamed of producing magical tools for digital photography and ways to make television simple and personal. Those, no doubt, will come as well. And even though he will not be around to see them to fruition, his rules for success helped him build a company that not only will create these and other disruptive products, but will stand at the intersection of creativity and technology as long as Jobs’s DNA persists at its core.

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Steve Jobs was a product of the two great social movements that emanated from the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s. The first was the counterculture of hippies and antiwar activists, which was marked by psychedelic drugs, rock music, and antiauthoritarianism. The second was the high-tech and hacker culture of Silicon Valley, filled with engineers, geeks, wireheads, phreakers, cyberpunks, hobbyists, and garage entrepreneurs. Overlying both were various paths to personal enlightenment—Zen and Hinduism, meditation and yoga, primal scream therapy and sensory deprivation, Esalen and est.

An admixture of these cultures was found in publications such as Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog. On its first cover was the famous picture of Earth taken from space, and its subtitle was “access to tools.” The underlying philosophy was that technology could be our friend. Jobs—who became a hippie, a rebel, a spiritual seeker, a phone phreaker, and an electronic hobbyist all wrapped into one—was a fan. He was particularly taken by the final issue, which came out in 1971, when he was still in high school. He took it with him to college and then to the apple farm commune where he lived after dropping out. He later recalled: “On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: ‘Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.’” Jobs stayed hungry and foolish throughout his career by making sure that the business and engineering aspect of his personality was always complemented by a hippie nonconformist side from his days as an artistic, acid-dropping, enlightenment-seeking rebel. In every aspect of his life—the women he dated, the way he dealt with his cancer diagnosis, the way he ran his business—his behavior reflected the contradictions, confluence, and eventual synthesis of all these varying strands.

Even as Apple became corporate, Jobs asserted his rebel and counterculture streak in its ads, as if to proclaim that he was still a hacker and a hippie at heart. The famous “1984” ad showed a renegade woman outrunning the thought police to sling a sledgehammer at the screen of an Orwellian Big Brother. And when he returned to Apple, Jobs helped write the text for the “Think Different” ads: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes…” If there was any doubt that, consciously or not, he was describing himself, he dispelled it with the last lines: “While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.”

Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, is the author of Steve Jobs and of biographies of Henry Kissinger, Benjamin Franklin, and Albert Einstein.

Measure the Money You’re Making

2012-03-12T20:37:00.002-07:00

To understand your company’s financial, knowing these three measures of if and how money is coming in is a good place to start:

Growth. Growth in sales is usually — but not always — a positive sign. Look for year over year growth but remember that it has to be profitable and sustainable.
Cash generation. Cash allows companies to stay in business. Cash generation is the difference between all the cash that flows into the business and all the cash that flows out. Investigate where the cash is generated, how it’s used, and whether enough is coming in.
Return on assets. A company’s return on assets is its net profit divided by the average value of its assets during a given period of time. This measure shows you how well your company is using its assets to make money.

The History of Happiness

2012-02-26T03:14:00.000-08:00

A modern Russian adage holds that “a person who smiles a lot is either a fool or an American.” It’s true that when McDonald’s arrived in Russia, in 1990, one of its first tasks was to train clerks to seem cheerful. I’ve spent time since with Russian friends, discussing cultural rules on showing happiness, agreeing that differences remain.

The point here is not to disparage Russians. Most East Asian cultures also have lower happiness expectations than Americans are accustomed to. Some Latin American cultures tend in the other direction. The point is that cultural variations on happiness are considerable, contributing to the findings of international happiness polls that dot the contemporary public opinion landscape.

Moreover, attitudes toward happiness don’t just vary; they change. Danes, the current polls suggest, are no longer so melancholy. Exploring the nature of such change not only illuminates our own context for happiness but also allows us to assess its advantages and downsides. Without historical perspective, American expectations seem so normal and so natural that they’re difficult to evaluate.

The fact is that the commitment to happiness in Western culture is relatively modern. Until the 18th century, Western standards encouraged, if anything, a slightly saddened approach to life, with facial expressions to match. As one dour Protestant put it, God would encourage a person who “allowed no joy or pleasure, but a kind of melancholic demeanor and austerity.” This does not mean people were actually unhappy—we simply cannot know that, because cultural standards and personal temperament interact in complicated ways. But there is no question that many people felt obliged to apologize for the moments of happiness they did encounter. Sinful humanity had best display a somewhat sorrowful humility.

This changed dramatically with the 18th century and the values of the Enlightenment. Alexander Pope declaimed, “Oh happiness! our being’s end and aim!” while one John Byrom urged that “it was the best thing one could do to be always cheerful…and not suffer any sullenness.” The charge here was double-edged and has remained so. On the one hand, it was now perfectly legitimate to seek happiness. On the other, not being happy, or at least not seeming to be, was a problem to be avoided. Ordinary people began writing about their interest “in enjoying happiness and independence.” Disasters, such as the brutal yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia in 1793, produced recommendations to the survivors to keep up their spirits and avoid excessive grief.

The list of historians working on happiness is not long, but those who’ve tackled some aspect of the subject generally agree: At the level of rhetoric, at least, a significant shift occurred in Western culture around 250 years ago.

The obvious question is why, and while some causes are pretty clear, we probably still fall short of a fully satisfactory explanation. Components include, certainly, the intellectual shift toward a higher valuation of matters in this world and a reduced commitment to traditional Christian staples such as original sin—all part of the cultural environment created by the Enlightenment. It’s important to stress that the happiness surge was not antireligious; a key component was the new idea that being cheerful was pleasing to God. The 18th century also saw some measurable advances in human comfort for the middle classes and above, ranging from better home heating to the availability of umbrellas to provide shelter from the rain. (Only a few British traditionalists objected to the latter as undermining national character.) One historian has also noted the 18th century as a time of improved dentistry, when people became more willing to lift their lips in a smile; he argues that the ambivalent smile of a Mona Lisa probably reflected embarrassment at tooth decay. The several shifts driving the happiness surge were powerful enough to propel happiness into politics by century’s end, with the American revolutionary commitment to the pursuit of same.

Indeed, there seems to have been a bit of an American twist on all this even early on. A British journalist in 1792 was surprised at “the good humor of Americans,” and 40 years later another noted that Americans seemed unwilling to complain, for the sympathy they might gain would be outweighed by their friends’ disapproval. It was in the 1830s that Harriet Martineau, often described as the first female sociologist, professed amazement at how often Americans tried to make her laugh: One stranger “dropped some drolleries so new to me, and so intense, that I was perplexed what to do with my laughter.” The smiling American was becoming a stereotype two centuries ago, as a new nation sought to justify its existence by projecting superior claims to happiness. It was no accident that this same new nation, at this same point, quietly revolutionized the approach to death by introducing the garden cemetery, where people could gain a sense of contentment, if not happiness, as they contemplated the end of life.

The Great Repeatable Leader

2012-02-24T13:23:00.002-08:00

Admiral Lord Nelson, Britain's famous naval leader, owed his enviable record of victories to the ability of his officers to make synchronized decisions in the heat of battle without communicating directly.

These commanders, personally trained by Nelson, he called his "band of brothers" and they took the right decisions because they knew what he would do in their shoes. By projecting his key principles of decision making and his strategy out to the front line Nelson created a faster and more adaptable Royal Navy that regularly overwhelmed far larger enemies.

Few businesses are like Nelson's Navy. Rather than speeding up their decision-making, they're slowing down. Of course, they're doing it with the best of intentions.

Here's how it works. In an effort to cover all the bases in an uncertain, changing world companies are trying to give themselves as many strategic and organizational options as possible. In doing so, however, they are making themselves unconsciously more complex organizations. It is a trend that's slowly and silently killing them. Complexity turns people inward and distorts information flow, slowing the pace of decision-making down and making the decisions themselves increasingly incoherent.

How can leaders prevent this from happening?

To find the answer to that question I attended a session on leadership at the World Economic Forum in Davos. It was led people by who have devoted their career to this topic and included Daniel Goleman, coiner of the term "emotional intelligence." What emerged was a consensus that the most successful leaders in the future will be those who - like Nelson - can cut their distance to the front line through three key traits: the ability to be authentic, empathy with the customer and front line, and true self-awareness.

As I sat through the session, I realized that these principles meshed closely with the work that my Bain colleague Jimmy Allen and I had been doing in strategy. We have just completed a three year study at Bain & Company that identified the "design principles" of businesses that outperform and out-adapt their rivals. We called these principles the "Great Repeatable Model" because companies whose business models embodied the principles were able to replicate their successes over and over again.

Let's review what the two sets of principles have in common:

The first design principle, the "principle of focus" demands a clear source of differentiation at the core of a business that can be replicated and adapted over and over to new situations, markets, applications - because differentiation is how you make money in business. Typically, 80% of a company's managers believe their company has this differentiation. But only 8% of their customers agree. This is a huge gap and it demonstrates that managers are fooling themselves. This is where the leadership principle of authenticity comes in. It is all about being able to recognize this gap and find ways of really delivering something different to the customer.

The second design principle, the principle of embeddedness" is the ability to hard wire the key values that should drive decisions and behaviors all the way to the front line routines that touch the end customer and end product. This is also not that easy. In fact, over 60% of employees in the average company say they have no idea of the strategy or its key principles. Imagine if that were true for a marching band? This is where you need a leader who is genuinely empathetic and in touch with the concerns of front line employees and seen as one of them. A leader like this can define the strategy through the language, incentives, measures, and capabilities of the people executing it.

The third design principle, the "principle of adaptability" is the ability to turn the rate of learning into a competitive advantage through the way a company measures quality and performance and how it interprets what it finds. Central to this is self-awareness and a willingness to question core assumptions. It starts with brutal honesty: competitors will catch up, customers will raise their standards and the old repeatable model will need to be a better repeatable model to win tomorrow.

The close concordance of our business model design principles with the principles of great leadership explain why so many of the Great Repeatable Models of the companies we studied also had Great Repeatable Leaders who successfully steered their businesses through a number of transitions, continually repeating their success in adjacent markets and product categories.

Interestingly, quite a number of these were family companies such as IKEA, Tetra Pak or Enterprise Rent-a-Car. Here closeness to the front line was baked into the DNA of the successive managers and where a sharp differentiation was central to the reason for existence of the company. We also saw these characteristics in some of the instances where a CEO restored struggling companies to former glories (Lego and P&G, for example). In all these cases the CEOs refocused on a rejuvenated version of the core differentiation and drove that focus down into the day to day routines of the business by listening and paying close attention to the front line.

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

2012-02-22T13:52:00.000-08:00

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.

To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.

If you want to change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.