The consulting side of my life (Foresight Plus) is a combination of enough left brain mixed with a lot of right brain thinking. It’s about bringing creativity, storytelling and leverage to the marketing side of any business. So, my cards for Foresight Plus had to have a mix of all of them. A pack of 100 cards comes with 100 mini sagas (stories in exactly 50 words). Each story is fictional at the same time comes with a life or business lesson. I call these ThinkCards – business cards that make you think.

Recently, Prashanti Ganesh from The New Indian Express interviewed me for her article on innovative business cards. She quoted a few things from the interview but the entire interview is below.

PG: Why did you think having a business card that stood out was important?

RS: To be honest, this experiment was mostly accidental. I was working with my designer friend Aaina Sharma to create two sets of playing cards called ThinkDecks (to be launched soon.) Every ThinkDeck had 52 mini sagas. When the designs for ThinkDecks were completed, I really liked them and started wondering where else I could use these mini sagas. As luck would have it, right at the same time, I was running out of business cards. I put two and two together ThinkCards were created. To my surprise, people loved these cards and rest you already know.

That’s the real story.

PG: How and why did you come up with the idea of the mini sagas?

RS: A few years ago, I observed that people buy books but they really don’t read them. I mean they read one or two chapters and move on to the next book. Soon, they have a pile of unread books on their night stand but they will continue to buy books.

I started looking for ways to spread ideas in a world where A.D.D. is the fashion. Call it serendipity as I was reading a book called “A Whole New Mind” by Dan Pink at the same time. In this book, Dan talks about mini sagas – stories in exactly 50 words. I fell in love with the format right away. I decided to quickly take advantage of the format and write fictional stories but with business lessons embedded in each one of them. I have written 123 mini sagas in the last six years. You can see most of them here:

http://www.squidoo.com/minisaga

PG: What do these stories tell and how have people responded to them? What do you want and expect people to take away from these cards?

RS: Every story has a business lesson embedded within it. Long time readers of my blog have seen one or more of these mini sagas as I have been writing them for years. Mini saga section has been the most visited section on my blog for a long time so I am guessing readers like them.

Now, what do I want people to do by reading mini sagas? I am hoping that they will read, reflect and think about the message embedded in the story. Hopefully, one or two mini sagas will strike a chord with them in a profound way.

PG: Are they good conversation starters?

RS: Yes, they are. I get asked a LOT of questions about the cards and then a conversation ensues about other things.

PG: What is the one big advantage of having a “different” business card?

RS: These cards are social objects. Like you rightly identified, they are conversation starters. A VERY different card will also create a clear “pattern interrupt” because that kind of card is not what the other person is expecting especially after I spoke about a serious topic. I have found that time and again, people drop their guards and start engaging in a conversation – first, about the cards and then about everything else. In other words, the ThinkCard breaks the ice more easily.

In the long-term, I hope that the recipients of the card will take a few seconds to read the story behind the card, stop and reflect on the message for a moment. That would make it all worth it.

PG: Who do you think should put an effort into creating such cards?

RS: Anyone whose job involves some kind of creativity should definitely spend some time and effort to bring that aspect to the forefront whenever and wherever possible. With that in the background, business cards become one more place where they can bring that forth.

To be clear, I am just not talking about artists and painters – that is where creativity is at play directly. There are dozens of other professions where creativity is not at the forefront but is a definite part of their jobs.

PG: Do you think the sagas reflect your personality?

RS: I hope they do. Be it on my blog or elsewhere, I strive to de-mystify seemingly complex things and publishing it.

Where I consult with companies, I bring creative approaches to work and assets like ThinkBooks (http://www.gothinkbook.com), ThinkDecks and ThinkCards demonstrate the kind of creativity I bring right out of the gate.

For the curious, I have explained how I write a mini saga here:
http://www.rajeshsetty.com/2010/07/29/mini-saga-workshop-and-mini-saga-58-karma/

PG: Any memorable instances/ stories to do with the cards?

I have had these cards for only a three months. But I have had many memorable stories in this short period. A few months ago, I was speaking at a conference on the topic of personal branding, there were around 80 people or so in the audience. At the end, several of them came to see me and I started giving away my cards. I must have given away close to 100 cards as many people took 2 or 3 cards each. There was one girl who was searching for a good card for a long time and keeping all the greenish cards towards one side. Since she was blocking others, I asked her whether she would like to keep all the green cards. She looked at me with disbelief for a moment but then picked up about 14 cards, smiled and said, “Thanks” and walked away. I couldn’t resist smiling myself.

PG: Also, I heard you handle the business cards like a deck of playing cards. Does it make you feel theatric and like a magician?

RS:I never thought of it that way. I try to give people an option to choose a card that strikes their fancy. Handling the business cards like a deck of playing cards is the easiest way to do it.

Photo Courtesy for the main photo: Nambirajan Vanamamalai

Warning: This is blog post #1762 on this blog. This blog post falls into the 0.1% of the posts that fall under the “controversial” label.

The profound lessons that startups can learn from Facebook IPO

NONE!

Yes, I am exaggerating this and I am intentionally doing this to make a point in the end. I will also keep this short else it will contradict my own point in the blog post.

Reverse Engineering the Facebook Story

Tomorrow is the Facebook IPO and I am not expert enough to predict what is going to happen. There are enough people out there who are qualified to construct a theory that will explain what happened was what was supposed to happen. These reports will be insightful as those who write them are experts in reverse engineering a situation. They can go back to history of the company and pick all the things that will support their theory.

It’s hard to copy extraordinary success

I wish Facebook all the success and while it is inspiring (for me) to watch its phenomenal growth, I am not in the fantasy land to decode and discover the secret sauce that made Facebook happen AND apply it one of the startups I am involved with. What works for a company that had a meteoric rise rarely applies to a company that was founded in different times under different circumstances by different set of people.

So, while it’s interesting to learn what made Facebook successful, it’s not a good idea to recreate parts of it in the hope that it will work for your case.

Your attention is someone’s currency

In this day and age, you don’t need to always pay by cash – you could pay with your attention. There are several people out there who are vying for your attention and stories like Facebook IPO is a great way to DEMAND that attention. Just being aware of this will alert you when you are going overboard on this or any such story.

What Can Startups Do During These Times?

Let others reverse engineer and provide you the analysis of whatever happened to reach the current destination. You have your work cut out and if you spend inordinate amount of time reading up everything and anything related to this topic, automagically your work gets piled up. The more you get sucked into this, the more your work gets piled up.

So, resist your own temptation to over-analyze and over-consume the story and focus on creating your own story however big or small.

Have a great day.

Photo Courtesy: Search Engine Journal

As you can see, the original price is $229.99 and the clearance price is $229.00. You will save a whopping 99 cents if you buy the item in clearance.

Hmm..

Obviously, that item does not belong there and it makes no sense to announce a GRAND SALE that will save the customers on a purchase of $229 to save 99 cents.

The world of boundary conditions

One reason this kind of goof up happens is that systems were not designed to handle boundary conditions. As we all know, there is a logic built into the systems that will determine which items go into the clearance table and the labels get printed. Somebody had to build one more piece of logic that will ensure that there is a minimum of X% discount when an item goes into clearance. Since most items (probably 99% of the items) will have a large discount anyway, there is no big problem. However,  1% of the items that have a meaningless discount make it to the clearance table.

The Consequences

These boundary conditions invoke feelings that range of amusement to pure distrust on the pricing of every item in the clearance table. Rather than creating “impulse buys” at the clearance table, now you have created skeptical prospects who will want to check the prices again and again and possibly compare that with what price the same item is sold for online. Earlier, it would be difficult to do all those checks but now a simple scan with a shopping assistant such as RedLaser will reveal prices for the same item in a dozen different outlets.

Lessons for all of us

Boundary conditions exist in almost every project that you undertake – be it launching a product, writing a book or simply trying out a new recipe. It would take a few extra minutes during your planning process to pause and think about these boundary conditions and see if you have factored in your plan to handle at least the major boundary conditions. It would be better to pay a small price upfront than to pay a big price at a later date.

Just imagine you get to work on a project of your lifetime. You know that this is history in the making and if you do well, it would give immense satisfaction. You know that it would be lot of hard work. Burning the midnight oil would be default on a few days. There would be sacrifices for sure and a price has to be paid. But you don’t mind paying that price as you know that the stakes are high enough in this game.

Support Eco-System:

People who love you are there to support you and deep in their heart they want you to do very well. After all, why would they not want you to make the most of this opportunity. There are many well-wishers who are willing to give you a helping hand in your quest to succeed. You have teachers, coaches, mentors, co-workers, friends and relatives all coming together as a big ecosystem of support. Some are just waiting for you to ask them for help. They are ready.

Reflection Time

Reflect on this opportunity for a few moments…

• How would you prepare for such an opportunity?
• How grateful to you to this Universe (or God, depending on your beliefs) for this opportunity?
• How much of commitment will you bring to bear to make this a successful project?
• What lengths would you go to make things happen?

Your Opportunity

You don’t have to look far for an opportunity which is going to be a history in the making. It’s right in front of you. YOU are that opportunity and whether you are conscious or not, your history is in the making EVERY single day that you are on this earth.

As you can see, it is an opportunity of a lifetime and NOBODY else other than you can make the most out of this opportunity.

You will also notice that the stakes are high for YOU on this project.

You have the support eco-system waiting for you to succeed.

The Real Question

The real question is simple -

You have an opportunity of the lifetime right in front of you. It’s going to be your history in the making. Will you seize it with everything you have got TODAY? 

Only you can answer that question.

Request for you: You may already be seizing this opportunity with both hands giving your 110%. But, you may know someone that might benefit from this. Consider sharing this with them.

Photo Courtesy: Adnams on Flickr

Here are 9 ways to ensure that you DON’T get good help:

1. You Feel entitled to receive help

This is the number one reason most people go wrong. Nobody is entitled for anything. An exception may be with members of your circle of love but other than that you got to earn your way into getting good help.

2. Your timing is Wrong

Mediocre help is everywhere and good help will ALWAYS be scarce. This means people who can provide good help are busy. Sometimes they are VERY busy. You catch them on those times and your chances will be slim.

3. You are an opportunity cost rather than an opportunity

If someone lends you really good help, they are making an investment in you for the future. If they don’t see you as a good enough investment, you are an opportunity cost rather than an opportunity.

4. You make ridiculous requests

I have heard this from many smart people. The requests they get for help are ridiculous. To fulfill their requests, one has to go through the hoops, doing a reverse somersault and try to fly across a bridge (Not literally.. just trying to make a point here)

5. You don’t even attempt to make a case

Some requests are so poorly constructed that they it takes time to understand what exactly was asked. When you are asking someone to “invest” time on your behalf it would be reasonable to expect that you will “invest” your time to make a case for deserving that help.

6. You direct your requests to the wrong people

If you don’t make a request in the area of their core strengths, you have directed your request to the wrong person. It’s not OK to ask just because you can ask.

7. You are following wrong advice

This will be a controversial one. There is a lot of bad advice about making requests out here. One of the classic ones is, “If you don’t ask, the answer is always no.” Follow this advice at your own peril. In general, if you ask for good help without deserving it, you will be mentally blacklisted AND there is a good chance that your future requests are deeply discounted. In other words, your future requests go a few places back in the queue.

8. You tend to spray and pray

This is the classic model for people like spammers to those blindly dialing for dollars. You think it’s a game of numbers. Getting good help rarely fits into the model, unfortunately.

9. Your willingness to pay twice

You need to be willing to pay twice. First time for the help itself and second time to implement and follow through as an outcome of receiving that good help. Most people are not even willing to pay once and being ready to pay twice is a rarity.

All of us need good help and all of us also need to provide good help. Here are two articles on those topics:

1. The Art of Giving and Getting Help – Part 1
2. The Art of Giving and Getting Help – Part 2

Photo Courtesy: The Tactician on Flickr

The Wrong Question

The dilemma or the catch is in situations where you have to stretch and go beyond the call of duty. Let’s take a hypothetical situation where you are bringing your 110% into the game. Unfortunately, the situation is such that your 110% is not sufficient to make things happen. It requires a lot more from you.

One option is that you keep giving more. A lot more – may be 200% to make this happen. This comes with a heavy price as you will be probably bringing 10% of you into other part of your life – generally to relationships that you (think) can take for granted for a while.

The question is: how far should you stretch?

The Right Question

This is the time for reflection. If you started answering the question above, you will lose even if you find the right answer. Because it’s the wrong question. While it would be cool to say you have got to do what you got to do to make things happen, you should ensure that you are not breaking your other part of life to pieces to go after something. It is not worth pursuing something while building up a bag of regrets to be opened after you reach your current destination.

The right question should be:
By how much should you increase your capacity so that you don’t have to give your 110% to make this happen?

Obviously, there are stages in a project where you have to walk the extra mile and you will. But, every project should make you think about capacity expansion so that it costs less and less of your time and energy to make things happen.

All the best!

“Show, not tell” is something that works every time like a charm. This is simply because the burden of proof is no longer in question once you show.

Even people who just “tell” know that “show, not tell” is better.

The Articulate Incapable

A class of people who are “articulate incapable” are creating a new kind of problem for everyone else. Once someone has had a bad experience with one or more “articulate incapable” people, they suspect everyone else. Because they don’t know whether you belong to the class of “articulate incapable,” they think it’s better to see some proof.

When you show, the proof is right there.

The Real Problem

Many people have nothing to show. So, they decide to keep telling and worse yet, they lean towards perseverance, “not giving up” mentality and positive thinking attitude etc to explain away why nobody is listening when they talk and continue to simply talk to more people.

Their strategy? Strength of Numbers. If they “tell” to a large number of people, at least some of them will listen and act – at least that’s what they believe.

To add to their woes, there are a few people around them who are also following the same strategy giving them false proof (in the name of social proof)

A Better Posture

When you don’t have anything to show, you have a real problem. You can get away with that (may be) in the early part of your career but that’s about it. After that, it’s all about solid proof of creating measurable value in whatever you claim.

A better posture will comprise of the following:

1. When telling doesn’t work, stop telling even more

There is a reason what you are telling is not sticking. By telling more, there is no guarantee that it will stick. In fact, if you keep telling the same thing (like a broken record) you will probably annoy the listener.

2. Don’t dodge the question

When it is clear to you that they are looking for proof, don’t dodge the question. Being honest and admitting that you have no proof is probably the best option than trying to fool someone.

3. Spend bulk of your time on creating something that you can show

Every moment you are spending on thinking about what to tell can be used for creating an asset that will help you show what you were going to tell. Granted that you can’t take this to an extreme but you can shave off a large chunk of your “time to tell” and refocus it on “creating.”

4. Sometimes you need to sacrifice to get a chance to show

When you are doing something for the first time, you face a dilemma of not having anything to show to get a chance to perform. So, what do you do?

You can do a number of things. Here are a few suggestions:

• Agree to Results-Based-Compensation: This will remove the risk of you not coming through with your promise. So the other party may be more open.
• Show accomplishments in related areas: You may be able to prove your capabilities indirectly.
• Work for No Compensation: This will be your investment in the future – a price you will pay make that necessary switch.
• Create a smaller version on your own: If you are writing a novel, start with a short story. If you are building a product, start with a prototype. If you are starting a band, start with a song. Do something small to show that you are on the path.

The above are some examples and in most cases it will require you to sacrifice something probably your entertainment quota in order to gain time for more important things.

5. Avoid the temptation for short-term wins.

Creating meaningful accomplishments takes time and effort. Usually a very long time. The biggest temptation that will derail you from your goals is the search for a short-term strategy to achieve something that you can only achieve in the long-term. Once you avoid the temptation, you can reclaim valuable time to focus on the right things.

All the best!

Photo Courtesy: Thaiskickass on Flickr

Do you want to be a
1) burden for some OR
2) blessing for many

Rarely will anybody pick the option 1. Nobody wants to be a burden for some. Besides, it would be politically incorrect to pick that choice, don’t you think?

So, it is safe to assume that 99.9% of the people will pick option 2. They want to be a blessing for many. In other words, intention-wise, we are all doing good. Majority of the people want to change the world for the better.

Then, why do you think we have so many problems?

The answer is in the old adage – “knowing is not doing but doing is doing.”

Let us dig deeper into the two options:

1. Burden for Some

When will you be a “burden for some”? When you can’t take care of yourself.

When can you not take care of yourself? When you don’t have the capacity or will to.

When will you not have the capacity to take care of yourself? When you have not invested in yourself.

So, it boils down to a series of choices you made along the way to invest (or not invest) in yourself.

2. Blessing for Many

When will you be a “blessing for many?” When you can make others life more meaningful.

How can you make the lives of others more meaningful? By caring for what they care about.

How can you care for what others care about? When you have extra capacity beyond what is required to take care of yourself.

How can you have “extra” capacity? By investing in yourself over a long period of time.

Summary: If you don’t invest enough in yourself, whether you want or not, there is a good chance that you will be a burden for some. On the other hand, when you invest in yourself over a long period of time, you have an “option” to be a blessing for many. Please note that I didn’t say you will be a blessing for many but you have an option to be a blessing for many. Because, it is a still a choice you have to make. In the first case, you don’t even have that choice.

All the best!

Think about it.

It seems like unfair to complain about people who get their job done.

Why blame them?

The birth of mediocrity

Mediocrity is not meeting the standards expected. That would be non-performance.

Mediocrity takes birth when people choose to do JUST what is required of them. If everyone in a department, takes that approach, the choreographer (the leader or manager) gets overloaded as he or she has to stitch the pieces of work with utmost care.

Now, imagine the exact opposite scenario. If every member of the team starts doing what is required of them and goes beyond that a bit to ensure that what they did really creates the necessary impact that the organization is expecting it would. This would mean that they have to walk a few extra steps or a mile as the case may require. The goal is for the team members to do things that will create the necessary impact their actions were designed to create. In this scenario, the choreographer has to spend very little time thinking through the pieces as the team is pretty much autonomous working in alignment of organizational goals.

The second case, as you can see, is far better than the first case.

The Case of Coupons

Recently, I was at a restaurant where there was a packet of coupons from Kohls. The packet was packaged in a neatly sealed plastic. Someone (probably) a customer had tried to open the packet but must have given up so all the coupons were inside the packet.

There was no incentive for the restaurant staff to open the packet.

So, that “someone” who will open the packet will be a restaurant customer who wants those coupons. This customer will have fumble through the packaging for at least a minute to get that coupon. As you can see, nobody had dared to do that for whatever reason.

I am confident that if those coupons were available freely many of them would have been taken.

The person who delivered the packet of coupons did his or her job. And, nothing more. If the person had thought even for a minute, he or she would have realized that the real value comes when people take these coupons and use them in the store. The first step was to make these coupons easily accessible. But, obviously, that would mean that the delivery person has to be more thoughtful about what else he or she needs to do beyond tossing the packet of coupons on the table.

C’est la vie!

Reflection time

Think about your own current project. Are you doing your job OR are you making sure that you are taking bigger responsibility to deliver the impact your piece was designed to deliver?

You know the answer for this and if you are not happy with the answer, you have the power to change it!

These are three photographs from an airline.

No smoking in the Lavatory (not that it’s allowed in the cabin, BTW)

No Cigarette Disposal (just in case you decide to break the rule)

Ash Tray (For your convenience, please)

Do you see?

Being congruent is hard work. Before you laugh at the above-mentioned example, will you please take a few moments to reflect on your own life and see where you are challenged to remain congruent?