Everyone wants to be successful, but success is built upon 1,000 small improvements every day. You can’t practice winning a tennis match, but you can practice your backhand cross-court shots, you can practice your volleys, and you can introduce a new shot – topspin lops. You can add new features to your game that you would have never used in a previous match. You can watch what others do. Study them, analyse their games, see how they are superior to you, and then graft their ideas into your game.

• What things you’re not happy about and you would like to improve?
• What things you’re doing that you want to stop doing?
• What skills and techniques do you want to improve on?
• How have you gone backward during the year?
• What are the good things you used to do but have slipped away?
• What technique and approaches do you want to try?

Be honest.

Honest assessment is so important. During the next year, inevitably, we will lose some team members as they fall behind their goals and assessments. No one wants that. Those who don’t improve and fall behind will eventually be left behind. Change is hard. Sometimes, we look at those naturally gifted among us and say, “Wow, it’s so easy for them.” But, in my opinion, it’s 50/50. You need natural ability and application.

When I started university studies, I had the lowest entrance score in my cohort. Sitting in my first Calculus class, we all asked each other what Tertiary Entrance Score we were allocated. We boys were setting the pecking order of the class, who was whom – where did I rank in comparison to others? Men do it a lot, like rutting. Everyone wants to know where we sat in the student hierarchy.

For a variety of reasons, my entrance was a lowly 865 (the lowest possible for the course was 850), and theirs were all 950 or 990 which was the maximum possible score. No one in my whole class had a score less than 900. I was truly the runt of the litter. I managed to stumble through the first year of studies with very average grades, but in the second year of University, I learned something. That, although the other students were clearly, more naturally gifted at mathematics than I was, I discovered a simple fact, that I could still outwork them.

I was determined to even up the balance of natural ability and work, but just outworking them. I studied like a trojan, pre-reading every lecture to give myself more context and get better value from the lectures, working 2 weeks ahead of every assignment, finishing the semester with no rush, and 3 weeks to revise everything – every page, every assignment, for every subject. I did and revised every exercise and every practice session. “Student labor is cheap,” I told myself.

I changed the way I studied and the way I approached university and problem-solving. I was going to brute force my learning.

Eventually, of course, with all those practices and work, my skills started to improve. I made up for my poor first year and more. My knowledge expanded, and the once difficult problems became easier. My memory improved. It’s a compounding effect. The more you work on your improvements, the faster your improvement becomes. I started getting +90% scores.

At the end of the 3-year university course, overall, even given my poor first year, I finished 2nd in my class and went on to complete another 4 university degrees, all empowered by this newly learned, learning ability.

So, I encourage you all. Take 30 minutes, review your year. Talk to your Team Leader and Manager, ask them for an honest assessment. Agree on what areas you want to improve or even to stop declining. Set a plan on how you will improve and then get to work. Don’t expect instant success. Plan to come back in a year’s time, proud of the changes you made, and proud of the person you have become.

“I am not very happy. I am going to put on my Boxing Gloves and have a fight with you”.

Those were the words that greeted me, when I walked into the office the other week.

Dread filled my heart. “Oh what next” I thought.  “What trouble has happened? What is it now, and what has upset that person? People! Who wants to work with people!”.

One nanosecond earlier I had strolled into the office cheerful and looking forward to another day.

Those few words had transformed the outlook of my day.

Our words can be powerful things. They define to our own ears how we perceive the world. They are the medium of transfer of our emotions, hope and ideals.

They are the stuff of poetry, hatred, love and life.

They start wars and bring peace. They inspire, depress, encourage and give hope to the hopeless.

They are powerful swords. What comes out of our mouths is a torch that shows the attitudes and aspirations of our inner heart.

They define how we view the world, and more importantly, they define how the world perceives us and we perceive ourselves.

Those ‘boxing’ words really did affect me.

They made my job unhappy. Unpleasant. Full of dread. They de-motivated me. I was affected by the words of another person.

How much do words really affect us, and define how we view the world?

Cricket and Stress.

A child’s world is filled with play. Not Stress or pressure. I have never met a 3 year old coming back from a ‘hard day’ in the sand pit complaining of the pressure of the ‘mound’.

Kids have joy not stress. They have the right focus. Few of us carry that joy into the world of adulthood. Children never complain about play or sport or games. Only Adults do.

The media and the world want to push our feelings and thoughts to the extreme.

They exaggerate and magnify. They interview people made recently unemployed and talk about disaster and worse things that could happen to people. They, wanting to fill air time or space in a column, try to make mundane normal things more stressful and exciting.

Life, in their view is one exciting thing after another, when we in the real world can see mostly life is a daily mystery gently revealing itself , sprinkled with the occasional exciting bit. They try to make entertainment, sport and work as exciting life fulfilling events, even though they aren’t.

Keith Miller was a famous Australian cricketer and WWII fighter pilot – and was  arguably perhaps second only to Donald Bradman in cricketing esteem.

He had a yardstick in his life about stress, pressure and his life that I try to model myself on.

As a pilot of the fast wooden and highly flammable night reconnaissance and path-finding aeroplane, the British mosquito  – which was effectively a large fuel tank and engines mounted on a wooden chassis, Miller knew about the absolutes in life.

After WWII, as a very successful sportsman, Miller was asked how he dealt with the ‘pressure’ of the sport of cricket by a journalist. His famous reply was.

(Note: A Messerschmitt was a deadly German WWII fighter plane, with a version specifically designed to shoot down and kill the Mosquito.)

Miller had a useful life experience to measure his life against. He didn’t judge his circumstances as defined by others but  used his own maxims of life to deal with the trivialities that the world wanted to turn into ‘tragedies’.

He didn’t let other’s molehills turn into his mountains

His life experiences allowed his compass not to stray from true north when it met the interferences of mediocrity and immediacy.

Uncle Reg and Camouflage.

I loved my Uncle Reginald ‘Reg’. He was the only son of my Mother’s Father and inherited the family property ‘Ridgedale’. I spent many happy holidays running around the family farm, riding motorbikes and chasing cattle, sheep and running through wheat and sorghum fields. A dream childhood.

One thing about Reg that was memorable upon first occurrence of his presence, was that his language was as colourful, as you later found out, his heart was big.

Even when mildly annoyed, I swear literally every other word that came out of his mouth was a swear.

F-ing this and F-ing that. F-ing Everything. It started as F-ing early as F-ing breakfast.  I can’t remember any F-ing time where by any F-ing minor Bl-dy annoyance brought a F-ing verbal F-ing barrage. (I think you get the idea).

However, after a while, you just seemed to ignore the verbal onslaught and started to love that man.  He was kind and patient and loving. However, after that initial experience, it would be difficult to develop an immediate affection and  closeness. The language masked the kind man underneath.

I was thinking about Reg and the ‘boxing’ incident. One thing about Reg, was that the casual observer didn’t really know when he was really annoyed. You couldn’t tell easily. His standard volume was ‘high’. When he was really annoyed, perhaps you could judge by volume, but only after a long and arduous exposure to his standard volume of verbiage.

His language colour rather than becoming a highlight of his canvas of emotions was an effective camouflage of his feelings and personality. The real man was hidden in his outbursts.

Mind your Words:

Later in the morning, those ‘boxing’ words proved harmless after all.  My trepidation and fear, were brought about by a minor error in a payslip, and were soon fixed. The ‘boxing’ comment, really was a call for ‘Help me. I need your help’.

Someone else’s burr under their saddle had become a big issue in my mind needlessly.

I remembered Keith Miller’s fortitude of mind, and realised that on that morning I wasn’t as robust as he was, and that I too was affected by the attitudes and confessions around me.

My Uncle Reg had manifested himself in my member of staff and I took it at face value.

Upon reflection, I made a couple of observations.

(1) Choose verbal Maximum’s carefully. Don’t’ Stress others.

We should be careful in our usage of absolutes or maximums. If we attribute the maximum volume to minor crises then other people around us will become stressed and have difficult reading our intentions.  We should carefully meter our comments. Choose the right adjectives. Don’t let expletives, rule your descriptives.

Don’t cry wolf with other words.  Is it a ‘disaster’, or merely an inconvenience?

Remember your words have a powerful and unknown affect on others.

Without metering, and calibration, others have difficulty reading your words and intentions.

Develop a skill of selecting the right word for the right occasions.

We should encourage verbal calibration, in ourselves, our partners, our family and our colleagues.

My favourite overused word is ‘hate’.  When my kids say ‘I hate these vegetables’, I try to remember to say, “‘hate’ is a very strong word, are you sure you meant that? What did those vegetables do to you to make you hate them?”

(2) Don’t let other’s words foster trouble for you.

If you are in a position of leadership at home or at work. Try to recalibrate your reaction to the words that surround us.

Look at the intention rather than the word’s meaning.

Look for intention rather than behaviour.

Don’t rely on e-mail as a carriage of emotions. It can’t carry the emotional nuances of the verbal and non-verbal. Neither can text messages, tweats, or facebook posts.  Don’t expect  them to be. Don’t over read emotion into emails.

When others strong words come over and start to affect you. Visualise yourself in the mosquito aeroplane fighting off for life and death. Is anyone going to die if this happens? What is the worst thing that can happen?

Is there really a Messerschmitt up my arse, or merely a burr under someone else’s saddle?

“The best laid schemes o’ mice and men go oft awry; And leave us naught but grief and pain For promised joy”
Robert Burns

I am continually amazed by the frequency of ‘suckers’ that I see going about my day to day business.

You know ‘suckers’: Those people easily taken in by confidence tricksters- whose cohort include the newbies, the ‘wet behind the ears’, the inexperienced, the idealists and novices.

In the morning – in the evening – everywhere I travel.  I find them everywhere.

In fact, I regularly see a particular one travelling to work each day in my car.

He’s also there when I travel home.

In fact I see him in the mirror every morning.

I am a sucker I admit it.  But I am not alone.

I am constantly battling my ‘habit’ of being drawn into confidence tricks and schemes and ending up with the usual ‘rewards’ that follows.

The ‘con-artists’ scheme that I fall for inhabits and appeals to my earthly needs for comfort, reassurance and security.

That need of reassurance – the one that you had when you were safe in you mothers arms when you were a child, or those encouraging words by my coach in the under 13s Devils Aspley Junior Rugby League team, or the one that yearns for validation and affirmation of the things that you do.

The need for security and predictability is something that I think society values – and that we all secretly crave.

“There’s a sucker born every minute”
PT Barnum

To wit, many years after retiring from my junior rugby league career, and no longer hearing the coachly exhortations  I still find myself listening to  the regular morning finance report – and hanging on their every word.

Some ‘expert’ is predicting what is likely to happen in the markets today and I’m intently listening. I am getting sucked in without thinking.

I’m listening. Intently listening, in order to gain some sort of comfort or reassurance. Irrationally listening.

Reassurance and comfort in the knowledge of the performance or otherwise of my superannuation nest egg – or to apply a mental balm to some sort of worry or another that is inhabiting my subconscious.  Some expert is talking about the GFC, or Greek Debt, Mining Tax, the euro and the ASX.

For me it’s finance. For others it is parenting. For some career, employment or education. Others sport. We want someone to do the thinking for us.

The ‘expert’ validates my current financial approach. I now think,  that what I am doing is fine. Relax. You’re smart. Everything is okay. You’re perfectly safe. Your long term plan is guaranteed. See, even the Experts agree.

Politicians trade on this need for re-assurance. “Trust us. We are from the government and we have experts working for us”.

I want to believe that the Mr K Rudd Ms J. Gillard will solve the green house problem with an emissions trading scheme (or maybe not), or more traffic cameras will somehow halt the road toll.

I want to believe that adding a solar cell to the roof of my house really does make a difference based on the financial model expertly predicting energy prices  and government subsidies spanning the next 20 years. (Spain just cancelled their subsidy scheme- I wonder how much longer until we do too).

If things look bad, or if the market closes down, I’ll be thinking of switching my investments, worrying or trying to put it out of my mind.

I’ll be ordering another water tank or going to www.localpower.com.au (the best solar power provider – seriously they are great!) and ordering my solar cells.

What ever the ebullience or otherwise of the financial ‘oracle’, I can’t help myself listening to what they have to say.

If things aren’t going well, I look for an expert’s opinion that aligns with what I want to hear.

For the same reason over the millennia , experts, oracles, astrologers, meteorologists, financial market soothsayers serve their auguries for our consumption everyday – and we readily accept their regular dispatches.

The human creature in us craves certainty, reassurance  and  the calming stroke of our mothers hand, saying “everything will be all right”.

The media play on this need for reassurance with their array of talking heads commenting on the day’s activity. Government placates us by reams of reports and expert opinions. The trend is towards the nanny state – where all the hard decisions are made by the infallible high priests of economics.

Of course, rational evidence suggests that all this is bumf.

The worlds best computer weather forecasters can only predict localised weather with any certainty in the order of days ahead. Analysis has shown that financial market forecasters are no more accurate than a toss of a coin as to if the market is going up or down . Economists expert opinion varies widely.

Forecasting the future precisely is futile. Tomorrow is mostly unknowable. The most accurate prediction of tomorrow is that it is something like today.

So how can we use this revelation to our advantage? How can we use this realisation to achieve our goals?

How can we wean ourselves from the need for reassurance?

The first step of course is to acknowledge that we are natural suckers for this con-artist scheme.

Think independently. Research and learn from a diverse range of views. Accept that you’ll make mistakes and make sure that you prepare you can accept mistakes. Don’t invest based solely on an experts opinion who doesn’t know about your personal circumstances. Slow down. Act  Slower.

And most importantly, when people try to sell you “certainty” and “reassurance”, remind yourself that the future is uncertain, and sit back, relax and enjoy the current. Because as the saying goes.

Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That’s  why it’s called the present.
Bil Keane

The world is awash with the current craze of sending vast volumes of short messages into the ether. Twitter, linked-in, Facebook, myspace and a phalanx of their cohorts extol us to send and receive constant brief updates and information to our friends and followers.

We become welded to our  iPhone or Blackberry  waiting for the satisfying vibration of the next tweet, email, or update.

If removed from this constant flood of stimulus we feel deprived. Disconnected. Alone. Anti-social. We begin to crave them like an addict.

Sure there are benefits in light use, but does it do us any real good?

The media and the ‘herd’ mentality extol us about the virtues of such activity and they focus on  benefits that ‘social networking’ provides – in some cases a form of social status.

“Get with it newbie”, they say. “I have xxx thousand following me, how many do you have….”. Some compare each other’s twitter follower’s list like some strange personally insecure form of rutting ritual. Or when we don’t know some fact we get – “Why don’t you know? I posted it on my facebook page”.

But is all this actually a beneficial activity, or is it the equivalent of the yo-yo or Rubik’s cube of the internet – entertaining fad but of no real long term benefit.

I’d argue much worse than just a fad. I contend that deep engagement with twitter and its cohorts – a state which these tools encourage – prevents you from seizing opportunity and advantage, and building new real relationships with people, friends and family.

They can stop you finding the gold of your life.

Understanding the nature of Twitter and Facebook

Twitter and the like, encourage the sharing of random thoughts or ‘updates’ between people.  Each day people are encouraged to consider tens, dozens or hundreds of ‘updates’ from friends and family.

(NB: I resist using the term ‘social networking’ because that term has become a brand name, which doesn’t necessarily describe what these tools do.)

Panning for Gold on an empty stomach.

Imagine you are a down on your luck gold prospector. With nothing but your wits, an empty stomach and a tin pan you head down to the river to try your luck.

If the river is flowing fast, you may have trouble finding the  traces of gold that prevail and drop into the sediments. In fast flowing water they tend to be washed down stream with the flow.

You try to find the slower flowing edges and eddies where sediments collect. Carefully depositing a ladle of a morass of miry mud and silt, you gently wash and look. Hungry, you concentrate hard. Wash and Look. Wash and Look. Examine and Consider. Until you see the glint of hope and prosperity.

Trying to understand and identify important information is more difficult when you are receiving dozens, scores or hundreds of messages each day. You can’t stop to consider the information provided.

You become to need the stimulus of the next update. The hit. You can lose the ability to identity issues and think strategically, because you are training yourself only to react to stimulus.

Sure, it doesn’t hurt. But remember, you will act tomorrow as you train yourself to day. Practice thoughtful, strategic consideration today, because you may need it tomorrow.

Information and Energy

At any point in time there is a fixed amount of facts in the world.  A finite number of facts and raw observations.  Most pass without the effort of measurement – unknown – at no great loss. Apply a time and a little energy in the form of monitoring or observations and we can collect this as data.

We can take this data, apply a little effort and analysis – a little more energy and then add value to the data – meaning, context, analysis and creativity  to produce information – something that can be of wider use.

Chemistry and food become cook books. Mathematics becomes engineering, physics, which become roads, bridges, buildings which becomes schools, hospitals, office blocks and churches.  Transistors, become computers which become GPS’s which become TomToms and other personal navigation devices. Raw stock tickers  and company financials become analyst reports, which then become investment portfolios.

It takes time and effort to increase the value of information.

That is, the more facts we collect as data, the lower the average ‘value’ of all our information. The more we collect tweets, the lower the value of information we receive.

You can only consume so much.

“It’s amazing that the amount of news that happens in the world every day always just exactly fits the newspaper.”
Jerry Seinfeld

Newspapers have long understood that each person can only consume a certain amount of information each day. Sure there is more news than can fill the internet or newspapers each day, but most of it isn’t meaningful. What get’s put into major newspapers is information that would be appealing to the most number of customers both in volume and content.

So metaphorically each of us can only consume our ‘newspaper’ of data and information for today.

So what sort of newspaper would it be to add value to your life. What sort to help you become a better person, father, mother, son, investor, manager of member of your community?

Would it be the Economist, the Australian, or the Daily Truth?

Do you want your life’s daily newspaper to be filled with low value information distractions?

Just Tell me How you are!

Recently, when speaking on the topic,  Anthony Josephs –  travelling preacher and pastor vented his frustration in keeping in touch with people whist he was travelling. He exclaimed, recounting seeing yet another “at home watching TV” type tweet. “ I don’t want to know what you’re doing – tell me how you are!”, he exclaimed.

The low value messages can’t build relationships or friendships or provide real growth of relationships.

Twitter State: November/2009: Kevin Spacey, following 4 people with 1,361,763 followers. Why does Kevin Spacey only follow 4 and get followed by so many. Perhaps he’s twigged on. It’s not about social networking, its about celebrity promotion and publication. Twitter is New Idea without the Paparazzi.

The long term end game of high use of Twitter et al.

Twitter et al and the constant stream of updates, floods with low value information. Using twitter constantly, fills your daily ‘newspaper’ with  less and less information and more and more low value data. Sure, you keep in context with of people, but does it add real value to your life.? Does it build real relationships that cement the bricks of your life? I say no.

It is interesting that the ASX200 has gained 1/2 point  during the hour, but how does that help me to invest better? It’s nice to know that John is having a wonderful time in Kyoto, but how does that make me a better friend of his?

Final Thoughts:

In my recent article on busyness, I made the point that being over busy leads to poor decisions.

Reading and consuming large amounts of low value communication, augments that ailment.

Making comparisons between what is important and what is trivial becomes harder when the rate of communication increases.

Low value communication, doesn’t build new relationships or build long term deep friendships.

I love technology and entertainment, but for twitter and facebook – from now on I’m going to try to use them as little as I can.

Call me on the phone. Come round for coffee. Have a meal with me. I’d love to have a chat and tell you how I really am.

Imagine for a second that you and I are walking down a busy down town street, and we casually see a clump of loose $100 notes fluttering in the wind – blown together with a pile of old McDonald’s rubbish, Red Bull drink cans and other modern city detritus. We’d be a fool not to go over, and liberate the cash from the rubbish.

“What luck!” we would proclaim. We’d praise each other for our diligence and fortune, as we wiped the muck off those plastic monetary notes.

Now imagine if we were deeply in discussion. Worrying about the next events. Discussing plans. Choosing options. Would we have seen them? Would we have noticed the opportunity? Maybe perhaps, maybe not.

Now, what would be the probability of seeing those $100 notes if we were driving a car down that street – rushing to our next appointment – on that day rather than walking? Almost Zero.

The Busy Fool

I have been thinking about the bout of busyness I have been struggling through of recent times and the effect is has been having on my productivity and strategic activities, and I havn’t been happy with what I have been contemplating.

I have reached the conclusion that busyness is a key reason why people never succeed.

It’s one reason why the owner-tradesman, struggling to survive and feed his family never can ‘break out’ of the personal exertion game and magnify his or her earning opportunity. Why public servants, shuffling paper to and from each other in the creation of yet more pointless activity fail to achieve real benefit to the community.

You can tell you are on the road to failure if you define ‘busyness’ or activity as success.

Henry David Thoreau:

It is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?

Busyness robs Judgment

When you are busy, you lose the ability to judge effectively.

A gaggle of Junior staff each seeking 5 minutes of your time, every 5 minutes for hours on end. Walk in staff, coming in to see you unannounced. Phone calls and emails. Interruption.

When we are busy we can loose the perspective of  importance of particular decisions and judging correctly in the sea minor decisions that flood our desk.

Maintaining decision making against absolutes (key goals), gives way to decision making amongst comparatives (current available opportunities) and the problem of “Group-think”.

We can be influenced by others in assisting them in solving their problems. Another person’s priorities (even your own staff’s that you have given them) shouldn’t be necessarily yours.

You can end up being lead by other person’s or situation’s problems and priorities, rather than leading and overcoming them.

I worry about our current government and prime minister Kevin Rudd, and his exhortation of staff to over-work to “serve the country” verses the quality of decisions that they are making.

The Myth of the Modern Work-Life Balance Problem.

I see many people fall victim of the so called modern problem of ‘work-life’ balance.  I don’t think it actually exists.

There is no ‘work-life’ balance, it’s all about busyness. I know many marriages fail when children cause busyness of one partner to the point of neglect of the other. I know many other marriages and families destroyed by misproportioned priorities, of the busy mother or father.

I see fathers becoming work-a-holics,  placing priorities to the company or their career, usually disguised as busyness, over the ‘true’ rational priorities of spouse and family. Equally, I see mothers, neglect their children and families as they become over busy with career, community and caring.  Demands of the ‘company/career’ ‘must’ be met in preference over short term neglect of  ‘true’ priorities, again and again and again and again.

These are of particular problem in situations of busy times of our lives with young children, accelerating career and caring for elderly parents or grandparents.

These are all cases, I would argue that fall in the general issue of busyness causing poor decisions and priorities to be distorted, not about “work-life” balance.  Rarely, does a person rationally decide that family isn’t a priority, but relationships become subsumed in a mire of mal-aligned time and priority decisions.

These are not new problems. You can see them in the character of the scrouge in the 1800’s Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol”. Or in the Bible in Luke 10:38-42 when Jesus scolds Martha about complaining about Mary not helping at all when she was so busy serving guests.

6 Ways to defeat busyness.

(1) Control your diary and Lead.

Don’t let others place entries in your diary. I have seen problems when organisations allow modern calendaring systems such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, or Novell Groupwise, start clogging up priorities with endless meetings  of large groups of ‘stakeholders’.

(2) Say no. Be Strong. Stand up for your priorities.

Have someone else answer your phone. Don’t go to every meeting. Get staff to meet you at an appointed time, not when they walk in. Don’t respond to inquiries over the phone. Ask staff to write you a hand written note, or at least an email. If they resist, it may not have been important.

I remember a story of an executive who left his business at 5:00pm every day to attend an important meeting, excusing himself no matter what was occuring. That appointment? – his family.

(3) Maintain perspective

Write Down the top five things that matter to you in your whole life. Write them down. Stick them on the wall. Judge your priorities every day against those things.

(4) Walk away from Opportunities.

Be picky on what opportunities you take. Be patient. Consider the impact on the course of events over your strategic goals. Don’t judge on comparatives (which is the best option). Judge on absolutes (should we be doing this business. Is this a priority for me? Am I being compromised in my decision making against priorities?).

(5) Measure Value against your actual Time.

Keep track for a month of your time and then see if it matches your written down priorities. Change things if it doesn’t match.

(6) Do it NOW.

Avoid over planning and over preparation. It creates pointless busyness. Remember, that plans should be only as certain as the assumptions upon which they are based, or the environment upon which they operate.

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.
George S. Patton

Some Immutable statistics:

• There are more than 6,706,993,152 people in the world.
• The world’s bond market is $67,000,000,000,000
• Every day only has 1440 minutes.

The world has abundant resources in everything…. except time.

In business and life the only real restriction is time.

I have been working developing a new product line and customer base.

Essentially, a new enterprise. New products, new customers,  in a new industry, managing new employees and working out new processes.  I have been busy.

There is frustration, complaints, mistakes, stuff ups, success and lots of work.

The success or otherwise of the product line lies essentially in my sole ability to make the right decisions at the right time. There is no-one else to blame. They are my decisions. The outcome of the venture will be exclusively my responsibility.

I have been making and re-making a lot of decisions:. Some good, some bad.

Some decisions remaining in a strange zombie like limbo – making on-going promises of virtue and goodness – even as doubts remain, like a prospective beau to a beautiful belle at a country B&B dance – only to reveal their true nature in some distant future (most likely on the morning of next day in the case of a B&B).

A lot of these decisions are trivial but time consuming. What kind of PABX should we implement. VoIP? What’s the best way to extend a network to the new building? Which printing quote do I take? What is the best product option for this individual customer?

There are also intermixed macro decisions. What is the best way to manage growth and staffing requirements in a cash tight environment?  Who do I hire next? Who should I let go? Is this employee working out? How do I meet the needs of this class of customer? How do I want this brand to be viewed in the marketplace? How can I get this customer to pay?

Compounding value in decision making.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are some of the world’s richest men. They employee directly or indirectly ten’s of thousands of people and oversee organisations with turnovers in the scores of billions. Yet they like me only have 1440 minutes in the day.

They can only make roughly the same number of decisions as I can make in the day.  Even though the world views them as ultra-successful, they can only drive one car at a time, step into their pants one leg at a time: and they too have only 1440 minutes in any day to make decisions.

Its just that the value of their decisions weigh in value so much more than mine.

My realisation was (as I was trying to yet decide about another item of minutia), was that the most important decision I needed to make was to the decision to make my decisions compound their return.

Compounding the value of your decisions.

I needed to make the value of my decisions to compound  – to increase the value of everything I decided – to allow me to make high value decisions without having to reinvest my time in being locked into the minutia. Not only better decisions, but decisions of higher value to the objective to which I sought.

Here is my list of things I decided to do to increase my decisive “value”.

(1) Lists and Checklists:
Ensure my decisions are embodied in checklists. This frees me up from having to remember decisions and options.  Filter out options to make the decision process faster. Develop rules of thumb.

(2) Pick a strategy- and stick to it!:
Document a rule, a strategy or an approach, commit to it and give it time. Changing ideas mid stream causes you to rework. Hasten to change the macro slowly, as it can cause me to rework many of my decisions. In otherwords, when things aren’t working try tweaking before you toss the idea out.

(3) Procedures and Processes:
Capture my thought processes in writing. Share it with others, so they can build on my ideas and decisions.

(4) Invest in People, Delegate- Trust and accept errors::
Delegate, and allow others to manage decisions for you. Build layers of trust.

(5) Simplify
Know what’s your knitting and stick to it. Don’t go for the complex option. The more complexity the harder on-going operation will be to manage. Complexity, overloads decisions that you don’t have to make.

(6) Incrementalism- not Strategism
Don’t make decisions about things you can’t yet know. Don’t be drawn in by sales pitches for ‘strategic capacity/capabilities’. If we make decisions on forward options – on things which might happen, we are wasting our time on deciding on items which may not occur. Base decisions on only what you know now.

By doing these things, I am finding that I can focus on ‘bigger’ decisions so that my decisions compound and my “big” decisions of today are my “small” ones of tomorrow.

regards
Alan

I was on hold on the phone with Energex recently – a large government owned monopolistic electricity network provider.

It was on a friday afternoon, and I thought I had quite a reasonable request for information and was being given the run around.  It was my 6th or 7th phone call to the company.

I wasn’t having any luck.

However, the resultant “recommendation” that I should write a letter to a “design” department, who could get back to me in 20 working days, for information that obviously was collected electronically and provided electronically by other similar companies over the phone – with no other options – was incredulous.

The customer services officer was rude, arrogant, condescending, sarcastic and snide.  (and that was their good points). I felt that they were deliberately giving me the slowest and most painful option.

I went home that night venting my spleen on the disappointing experiences I had with Energex.

I almost wrote an epistle here on my frustrations.

I am glad I didn’t.

The next day, when I was thinking more clearly, I reminded myself of the “top shelf” service I had received in the past from Energex from Roger Dunston – a helpful, dedicated and customer focused engineer. And the other people inside Energex who had gone beyond the “norm” to meet my requests. I realised that, although I wasn’t the most complying customer and didn’t deserve the treatment I received,  I was making a mistake in judging too soon.

Susan Boyle 100 Million YouTube Views in 2 weeks.

If you want to see the mistakes of judging too soon. You should spend  7 minutes of your life viewing Susan Boyle’s audition on the reality TV show “Britain’s Got Talent”. Click here to see this video. I recommend you do. Now. Seriously.

Here a plain looking plump Scottish middle aged homely spinster, who lives alone with a cat,  who I judged (and most people did) as not having any chance of success in any talent competition, absolutely knocks the condescending judge’s socks off, in an emotional, spine chilling, moving, uplifting 7 minute video.

It is reported that over 100 Million people have watched the YouTube video in less than 14 days. She’ll have millions of dollars, triple platinum record sales and a sold out world wide concert tour by Christmas.

What Do I  Believe that is actually False?

Are we making mistakes in our snap judgments? Are we taking the wrong short cut in making evaluations too soon? Are we missing out on exceptional opportunity by following the crowd?.

Ken Fisher in his book “The only 3 questions which count – investing by knowing what others don’t”, asked this question. (which is one of the 3 questions).

“What do I believe that is actually false?”

We make judgments  and decisions based on the belief that bad companies give bad customer service. Or outstanding singers, should be young, slim and rich. We have a preset of biases, and beliefs that have been formed by our own experiences, the media, our family and colleagues. But are these biases causing us to miss the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, that rolls around every month or two?

His point being that  true bargains are only found when others don’t think they are. The seller is wanting to offload a “dog”, when the bargain buyer knows it is a “jewel”.

Perhaps one bad experience at customer service has biased you not to receive great products.

Success in these times.

I believe that these are the most exciting times to be in business. The Global Financial Crisis has scared people, made them irrational, and causes them to sell and dispose of assets way below their true value.

To seek and take advantages of these opportunities, we shouldn’t judge quickly – nor take the advice of the “crowd”. Look and seek for the true opportunities that currently abound, by not being influenced by others and thinking rationally.

Until Next Time.

Alan

Life is Unfair.

There is not such thing as a level playing field. The dice of life are loaded.

As a youth, I would have expected that life was fair – that sporting teams were selected on merit equally without favour, that  tenders in business always were selected on the best quotation, that funding grants were chosen on merit and the best ideas always prevailed.

I am afraid that is all idealistic nonsense.

Tenders are inherently biased. Sporting teams selection is  biased.

In fact by the end of this article you’ll be calling Cricket Australia, demanding the heads of the selection committee. Well perhaps not, but you’ll see there is  bias in selection in the Australian Cricket Team.

Now, just like there is always two sides of a business transaction, it’s good to  be on the right side of an unfair advantage.

Who is complaining, if they are winning government tenders, or being selected for sporting teams, or winning that funding grants?

As you bask in the glory of our success, taking sales awards, accepting promotion, being photographed in the representative cricket squad who is to think that the success that you are achieving is actually not about  you, but about your temporal unfair advantage.

Suddenly, you come a cropper.

You do the same things, but success avoids you.

How many “successful” CEO’s leave one company as a hero, to land up at another a complete failure?  Perhaps, they were only “successful” due to some unfair advantage, that they lost when they moved jobs.

The question to determine is, if I have unfair advantage, how do I keep it.

Inherent Bias (There is always a current running, which way are you swimming?)

You think that Cricketers are picked on ability? You’ve been fooled.

The strongest selection criteria on Australian Cricketers is not ability but month of birth. Australian cricket selectors don’t like people born in February-July. They prefer not select them, particularly bowlers.

Don’t believe me?

Consider this, the distribution of month of birth of the current 2008/9 contracted australian cricket team?

Even more so, consider the bias in selection when considering bowlers in the current contracted cricket squad.

(source:www.cricinfo.com.au)

These figures show that if you are born in the period of September to February you are almost twice as likely to play in the Baggy Green.

If you are a bowler, if you are born in the time from January to August, you have only just over a 20% chance of representing australia. Bowlers born Aug-Feb, based on the current squad is over 4 times more likely to be successful, regardless of their talent and ability.

Why is this the case? Are the australian selectors corrupt, or on the calendar take?

No, its all about growing up and compounding opportunity.

The cut off in age group from one year to the next is August 31st in Cricket. If you fall on one side of the line you become the oldest in your team, and on the other, you are the youngest.

As a youth if you are the oldest in your team, you are the most developed, your co-ordination is most developed, you are physically stronger, bigger and more confident over your smaller rivals.

Even with the same amount of talent as your team mates, you are more likely to be picked in training squads and representative teams with your increased age and confidence. The additional training builds on your talent and improves your sport playing ability.

Your team mates with equal talent, born later just never catch up. Your compounding advantages just swamp their limited opportunities.

Cricket isn’t the only sport that suffers from age selection bias Malcolm Gladwall in his excellent book “Outliers”  showed  with ice hockey players in Canada that the selection was based around a January age-group cut off date, and that it was also found in many other sports.

Unfair Advantage is Temporary.

If you are currently riding high, and going well because of unfair advantage, stay alert, because sooner or later, your unfair advantage will end.

Consider our young cricketer who was fortunate enough to be born on the right side of an age-group cut off. For the first few years, he or she finds themselves earning representative honours easily and they dominate their team. They are easily the ‘best’ on the field.

However, after a few years,  the unfortunate ones, who were younger and born on the wrong side of the line, albeit perhaps equally talented, drop out as ‘failures’. As the number participants of the teams reduces, the age cohort distorts, so that most of the cricket team is equally biased ‘older’ team members.

The young player trading off their age bias, in lower age group teams, suddenly finds themselves competing with true age pears.

Life suddenly becomes very hard.

I was fortunate enough always to be the ‘dumbest’ student in the ‘smartest’ class during high school. I had to work particularly hard just to keep up with my peers.  My university tertiary admissions score was the lowest of the ‘smart’ class in our year.

I was forced to my third choice of university courses, and went to a regional university for my first degree.

I was amazed during the first 6 months of study, how many students, whom had a clearly higher  university entry score than I failed and dropped out.

Perhaps, they in a less competitive high school class found success in study all too easy. When the heat of true battle in a ‘non-spoon’ fed learning environment tested their mettle out to eventual failure.

My very smart peers in high school, with whom I could barely keep up, had inadvertently provided me with an unexpected advantage at university – a good work ethic.

This work ethic given to me by my high school peers eventually took me as the ‘dumbest’ smart kid to near the top of my graduating year and carry me on to 3 other post graduate degrees at prestigious institutions.

Keeping Advantage:

The cricketer will only be successful in a fierce competition if they have a disciplined mixture of effort and talent.

In business if you have allowed cost structures, attitudes, and arrogance to escalate as you have ridden the wave of advantage, when the tide turns, you’ll find the end coming quickly.

How often have we seen  business of this ilk fail in the past few months?

Final Thoughts:

To what degree is your success due to unfair advantage, and are you trading on the basis of that unfair advantage, or on what you truly earn and do for your success?

At the end of the day, providing value for your customers, clients or stake-holders, keeping costs low, eliminating excess and hubris, maintaining organisational flexibility and remembering that the taxpayer or client is paying your bills and servicing them accordingly may be the key to keeping any unfair advantage.

For you may be the only one who can truly permanently keep that unfair advantage of serving your customers or community well.

Dealing with failure:

“I lack personal commitment. Honestly I do. I can’t trust myself. I want to improve but every time, I just can’t. That lamington is too tempting for my diet.  Going cold turkey is too hard, because I really enjoy that cigarette with a drink.”

Ever felt that way?

Late last year I wrote on new year’s resolutions, and how the ones we make about becoming someone different or improving are always the hardest ones to change. (You can read about “change for the better” ). My thoughts are the new years resolutions are the hardest to keep, because they require genuine personal change of habits.

Normally, the next mental step in failing to achieve these goals  is to rationalise them away.

“I am naturally big boned. Its not my fault, my boss is draconian. The targets are unrealistic. My customers are idiots. They just don’t get it. These products are deficient. I don’t care, I just like a smoke when I drink. Men think I am more attractive with a cigarette, and I’ll have plenty of time to quite when I am older. I am a Man, I am not going to any prostrate clinic. My parents just brought me up that way. My DNA is to blame.”

Many of these thoughts are just that :thoughts. We never say them. We rationalise them away. Accepting them as reasons for failure. You see were were not really commited to them. They were just intentions.

These are mental notes that we pile away from our point of view.  We tick them off as valid reasons and put away without a second’s reflection.

They fly in and out of our minds as easily and as with as little impact and import as the initial resolutions which spurred them.

How to Avoid Failure (and Success)

The easiest way to avoid failure is of course not to commit and be accountable.

It’s what we normally do.  It’s what I do.

We make the new year’s resolutions in our mind, where no one can see or hear or hold us to our word or commitment. Those are the ones we easily forget.

You see the easiest way to go through life is never to make a commitment and never fail. If we do make a commitment, then lets just do it in our mind, that way when we fail, we’ll just let the excuse and rationale fly away with the commitment.

“Let’s keep out commitments light and easy, so we can easily rationalise them away.”

The level of commitment to a goal, despite initial failures and successes is proportional to our public and self commitment to it. We actually do “fail”, but because we have only a ‘non-core’ commitment to the goal, we can easily rationise these away as not a non-failure.

We give up at the first sign of resistance.

The lighter the publicity, the lighter the commitment. The lighter of the self acceptance of the goal, the lighter to chance of successes.

How to Achieve Your Goals: Use Consistency to your own Mental Advantage.

Caldini in his book “influence” sites another example of a study of the group of students who were asked to estimate a length of a sentence.

Some were asked to write down their estimates and sign their name, a second sent were asked to write them down on a Magic Writing Pad’s plastic cover and then quickly to lift the cover erasing their work and a third set of students asked to keep the estimates in their own mind privately.

When presented with further evidence that their initial judgment may be incorrect, it was shown that the group that wrote down their estimate and signed it was most loyal to it- the most persistant, with the group what that did not write down their estimate was least loyal to it with more  changing their mind on their initial estimates.

The act of writing down their estimates and signing their name, increased the students commitment to the estimate. This is the same force as I wrote recently on “Consistency” in a recent article regarding Racetrack Punters confidence in their bets.

Want to achieve the Goals? -> Then write them down and tell someone.

Formalise and write your goals down. Sign them.  Publicly tell someone. Really commit yourself to them. Have those friends hold you accountable. Report back to them on your progress.

General DeGaulle whose remarkable results for France was said to have an ego almost as big as his country. He wanted to quit smoking, and so publically announced that he was stopping smoking. When asked why he publically announced his intention he replied “DeGaulle cannot go back on his word”.

If you really want to achieve a goal. Take a risk. Write it down. Tell someone about your goal and then go and do it. You’ll be amazed at what you can acheive.

One of the most prized compliments to give someone is consistency. “He’s a good employee, he’s always on time”. “Although he is not the sharpest tool in the shed, at least he’s reliable”. “She’s like clockwork”. “She’s always there when we need her”.

Society prizes consistency. Its easier to plan and do things when you can predict and rely on the actions of others.

For example, how could you run a business or your organisation if everyone just decided to turn up any day of the week at any time. Or if someone who gave their word to you to do something,  regularly changed their minds.

So consistency is a prized and valued thing.

But is it always good?

I was recently re-reading one of my most valued books – “Influence: Science and Practice” – by Robert B. Caldini a trained clinical psychologist, and he has stirred this thinking in me once again.

Off to the Races: Punters and their Punts.

Caldini noted the work of two Canadian psychologists. They found something fascinating about people at a racetrack. Just after placing the bet on the horse, they were much more confident of the horse winning, than just before they placed the bet.

They found that the act of placing the bet, actually increased the confidence of something happening.

However, their reasoning didn’t change, the jockey’s didn’t change and horses couldn’t care less about the odds or book size.

You see, now the Punter has committed to the bet – they felt more confident. To change that decision would be inconsistant.

A more sobering example:

Caldini continues, about a story of a woman in an abusive relationship. Who left the relationship, but upon promises of reform by her partner,  accepting him back. Soon, his old ways returned. But yet she felt better about the relationship after accepting him back – justifying that he must be her true love, even though the abusive behaviour remained as before.

Consistency. Sticking to your word. Its important and valued. But what trouble can it get us in?

The Salami Slice Sale Technique.

He also researched an effective sales technique of the power of consistency. Sales techniques that rely on the subject agreeing to a small demand, that sets a behavioural precedent. Agreeing to attend a “free” seminar on time share units. Agreeing to a small sample. Buying a small contract. All things which set a behavioural precedent that we feel compelled to comply with.

All these set a behavioural consistency that society normally rewards us for and places us in the position that we “have” to comply with further requests. Get a small concession, then build on it- the sales man’s mantra- start to eat the salami, one slice at a time.

How much trouble do we get into, when  starting with something small, trivial , but nevertheless that’s wrong and bad.

Time to be Inconsistent:

Here is today’s challenge.

What areas in our life and business are we committed to wrongly. What areas and items of work are we doing, that if we were to make the that decision again would we rationally agree to again?

If you a share holder, or property investor, would you have bought that asset, if you had the cash today? Are you convincing yourself that it has to be right decision, because otherwise, your inconsistency would be challenged?

Are we in a relationship with people we shouldn’t be with? Are we with the “right” crowd?

Find out where to be inconsistent.

Let each decision stand on its own. Don’t let your commitments escalate. Revisit your commitments.

I am learning to value of the female mind more and more, because I realised that ladies have the ability to re-evaluate, change their minds, and be “indecisive”, much more easily than most “decisive” men do.

That used to trouble me and my oversized male ego, now I realise this is a is blessed powerful personal attribute.

It’s not just being inconsistent, but revisiting a decision, rationally re-evaluating – avoiding trouble.

Inconsistency – it’s not always a bad thing.

Decide to be thoughtfully unreliable – in those area’s that need change.