Mother's little helper

Some mother's day musings:

Jeffrey Gitomer is one of my favorite business personalities.  His books, blogs, videos and seminars on sales and selling contain the kind of practical, no-nonsense nuggets that can only come from someone who not only has a true passion for his craft, but has truly mastered it. Such as:

"Your Mother taught you everything you needed to know about connecting to people before you were 10 years old: make friends, play nice, tell the truth, take a bath and do your homework!"

On the other hand, Dan Ariely's observations are a not exactly motherly, unless your mom is a cognitive scientist and behavioral economist.  His belief is that you can't always trust your intuition, or your eyes. But his delivery is every bit as pithy, and his conclusions are as trenchant, as Gitomer's.

Enjoy your week, all you moms and mom's helpers.  Be clean, be helpful and be mindful of your irrational behavior.

Staying afloat

From the time we are young we are schooled in the necessity to persevere.  Parents, teachers, clergy, classic literature and popular culture all channel adages and aphorisms designed to inculcate the idea that if you just keep at it, all will eventually work out in your favor.  

In other words "soldier on."  

Perhaps one of the most famous quotes on the subject from my boyhood was Vince Lombardi's motto: "Winners never quit and quitters never win."  We've written about overcoming failure as an ingredient in the recipe for success on a couple of occasions ourselves, including this post.

We all want to be winners in life, whatever our personal definition of that term may be.  Lost in the sea of exhortation though is practical, actionable advice:  "How do I do that?" Science shows that it is much more than simply the power of positive thinking.



In his book, "To Sell is Human," author Daniel H. Pink notes that whether or not the job title includes the word "sales," the vast majority of us humans are selling in some form or fashion -- moving others to take an action.   Pink lays out the attributes of a successful human "salesperson," and examines what psychologists and social scientists say are the three components of one of them: a characteristic that Pink calls "buoyancy."

1. Interrogative self-talk:  We all talk to ourselves.  Pink writes that science shows that the best internal conversation is not necessarily positive self-talk (I am the best) but one that allows for questioning in building or reinforcing a belief (Can I do this?), and "inspire thoughts about autonomously or intrinsically motivated reasons to pursue a goal."  Think more "Bob the Builder," than Tony Robbins.
2. Positivity ratios: Positivity is incredibly important in moving people to take action.  In his book, Pink quotes researcher Barbara Frederickson saying: "Positive emotions...broaden people's ideas about possible actions, opening our awareness to a wider range of thoughts and...making us more receptive and more creative."  Negativity is important too, judiciously and appropriately applied.  The perfect ratio for success?  3:1.
3. Explanatory style: How you interpret events and explain them to yourself is a critical success factor.  Those with a more optimistic view of setbacks ("it's just temporary") have significantly higher success rates than those with a more pessimistic view.  Scholar Martin Seligman says "flexible optimism -- optimism with it's eyes open," is a key to what Pink calls "tough-minded buoyancy -- the proper balance between downward and upward forces."

Pink writes that "staying afloat in an ocean of rejection is [an] essential quality of moving others." I say it's an essential quality of success in all things.

Carry on.

It's magic

A few months back, we wrote about optimism and pessimism and the need for a small business owner to have a pragmatic view of his or her world.

Fixating on the bigger picture -- that is the macro environment -- is often more valuable as personal entertainment than it is productive for your enterprise.

Everyone lives in the same macro environment.  It suits some; doesn't thrill others.  The difficult job you have is to figure out how these big picture issues do, will or won't affect you and organization, without letting your personal preferences and interests color your judgement.

It's a hard task.  There are many cognitive biases that we all succumb to from time to time.  Here's a link to a list of 61 of them. 

Which gets us back to positive thinking, or rather, rational pragmatic thinking.  How do you check your own work, so to speak?  In a recent article, The Danger of Positive Thinking, Geoffrey James offers some tips for preventing a lapse into magical thinking:

Winners and...

35 years ago (I can't believe I just typed that phrase) I coached little league baseball. My youngest brother was a player and somehow I ended up running the team, and did so for several years, until he stopped playing.

I now find myself coaching (and thankfully not running)  little league baseball for my youngest son.  Talk about a time warp.  Personally, I find that I don't jump to the left like I used to.

While it is still baseball, it is a completely different world, as one would expect three and a half decades later.  There are many reasons, and they seem to me to condense down to two:  expectations and performance.

The players' expectations are high, but that has always been so.  The kids are eager to emulate their favorite pros and do so down to how they set themselves in the batting box or wear their caps in the field.  Many kids are decked out in brand-name gear and while the brands have changed, the debate over which is better and worn endorsed by which major leaguers is timeless.

Parental expectations are high, as well, but a little less innocuous.  They are eager for their kids to do well, of course, but parental pride and support is to be expected, if not always a given.  The difference I've noticed is that their desire to see Johnny/Sally excel comes with an expectation that their progeny will or should not fail.  This belief is manifested in what some call the "everyone gets a trophy" syndrome.

The path you choose

The word entrepreneur is not of modern vintage.  It is about about three centuries or so old, and not of English origin.  According to Wikipedia:

"Entrepreneur is a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish-French economist Richard Cantillon as the person who pays a certain price for a product to resell it at an uncertain price, thereby making decisions about obtaining and using the resources while consequently admitting the risk of enterprise. The term first appeared in the French Dictionary "Dictionnaire Universel de Commerce" of Jacques des Bruslons published in 1723."

In the original definition -- a reseller or middleman -- the word entrepreneur hardly conjures up the glamor and symbolism that are associated with it today: a world of Valleys, Alleys, start-ups, venture capital, IPOs and potential riches.

Despite the pop culture mythology attached to modern entrepreneurs, life for most business owners is more mundane than commonly portrayed. They are a practical lot, more concerned with making payroll than the size of their bankroll.

And even though Americans like to think we are the masters of commercial risk-taking, we aren't even the most entrepreneurial society.  Be that as it may, both the uncertainly and the "risk of the enterprise" surely remain the same as it ever was.

For many, the difference between success and failure comes down to how well they "make decisions about obtaining and using resources." In other words, the path they choose to get what's in their head (vision) into operation (execution) in their business in a way that allows them sufficient sustained profitability to endure.

Information duncity

Did you ever notice how some memes seemingly appear out of nowhere, then are suddenly ubiquitous -- like the car you never noticed until you bought one and now it seems everyone owns one?

I recently wrote about how failure can actually lead to success, and how "one's errors are a portals of discovery."  Turns out lots of people are talking and writing about mistakes lately.

One of the best pieces I've seen is one from TAB colleague John Dini, who recently wrote on the value of mistakes in business. His advice to start a "mistake budget" is one that I will steal gratefully, with generous attribution.

However, mistakes aren't always all they are cracked up to be.  In this unforgiving economy, we need to maximize "good" mistakes and minimize the "bad" ones.  We need to make better decisions.

And there's the rub.

You say you want an evolution

Change:  there are few words in the human lexicon that evoke more angst than this, both good and bad.

Strange, that.

Change is a constant in our lives.  As constant as the dawn or the sunset.  Every day is different and change is an ever-present aspect of living.

Change is feared because often we are not in control of it, especially in business. Key employees leave, new competitors emerge, customers disappear.  (These changes are in your control, but that's the subject of another post.)

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change. Charles Darwin

Change forces us out of our habits.  And habits are a basic human mechanism for dealing with the  complexities of everyday life.

In a recent book, The Power of Habit, NY Times business writer Charles Duhigg explores the science behind why we do what we do (and how.)