What can learn from the marshmallow?

photo by bill barber (very sporadic)

I have been watching this fascinating six minute lecture by Joachim De Posada from TED. In it, he describes the famous experiment with kids and marshmallows. They took a group of four year old kids and gave them a marshmallow. Then, they told them that if they will wait for 15 minutes without eating the marshmallow, they will get an extra marshmallow. About two thirds of the children ate the marshmallow right away.

15 years later those same kids, now adults, were invited again. This time the researchers surveyed their status in life. It turned out that the kids who did not eat the marshmallow right away were all very successful, had great grades and were doing very good socially. The kids who ate the marshmallow right away, were generally doing much worse, many of them, dropped out of school.

I heard about this experiment a number of times and I find it fascinating, but, I am not sure what the immediate implications of it are. If I am a parent you young children, what should I do to make sure that my child is in the group that waits?

But in this talk, De Posada explains, that this ability to postpone gratification, is predictive of success, because many times in life, if you wait, your success is bigger. He gives the example of a salesman not going for the quick deal, but sitting diligently with the clients to find out their real needs, thus making a more profound and sustainable sale.

I think there is a great lesson here. In a world ruined with havoc because of short term goals and gains the inclination to wait, to think things through, to try one more check, is increasingly important. And it is growing in importance even more, as are world is getting faster and faster. We hear a lot about flexibility of firms, their ability to respond quickly to the markets and the importance of constant change management. I am not saying all of that is wrong. But I am advocating, at least as part of some process, to be more patient. To learn to postpone our immediate gratification.

The problem is that it is extremely hard. Most people have a lot of trouble dealing with the unknown future and taking risk is part of the game. But there is a difference between taking a calculated risk and just taking a risk. So, how can me incorporate flexibility and risk taking and still think things through.

As usual, I think the answer lies in creating a better process, which will enable quick decisions within a more general framework, which keeps some kind of boundaries and keeps evaluating and re-evaluating decisions. This is, off course, easier said than done. I have a thought. Maybe, firms fail because they try to be both risky and prudent? What if we would allow our employees to be risky and flexible, but will create a better debriefing process. Create a process that checks every decision with milestones, ignoring sunk costs. Maybe, because we know the problems, the solution should be different?

Elad

Do you treat you employees like kings?

Photo by mountainbread

Sometimes, inspiration comes from the strangest of places. I am, among other things, a keen reader of epic fantasy. These days I am reading the wonderful book two of “The First Law” Trilogy by Joe Ahercrombie, called: “Before they are hanged“.

Here is a quote that is becoming of current days:

Anyone can face ease and success with confidence. It is the way we face trouble and misfortune that defines us. Self-pity goes with selfishness, and there is nothing more to be deplored in a leader than that. Selfishness belongs to children, and to halfwits. A great leader puts others before himself. You would be surprised how acting so makes it easier to bear one’s own troubles. In order to act like a king, one need only treat everyone else like one.

As usual, I think this confuses managers with leaders, because they have different roles. I think you should change to word leader in the quote to manager and then you will have a great manager‘s quote. But the questions remains notwithstanding: do you treat you employees like kings?

Elad

A little romance and fear in a manager’s life

Photo by g_a_b_r_i_e_l_e

In their book “Yes! 50 scientifically proven ways to be persuasive“, Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. martin and Robert B. Cialdini describe the six principals of persuasion: 

1. Reciprocation – we feel obligated to return favours performed for us.
2. Authority – We look for experts to show us the way.
3. Commitment / Consistency – we want to act consistently with our commitments and values
4. Scarcity – the less available the resource, the more we want it.
5. Liking – the more we like people, the more we want to yes to them.
6. Social proof – we look to what others do to guide our behaviour.

In a recent article in the May issue of the “Inside Influence Report” called: “Follow The Crowd? Or Go It Alone?” Steve Martin describes a new experiment aimed to test the effects emotions have on the Scarcity and Social Proof principals, especially fear and romance. The claim is that potentially, experiencing great fear or a romance just before being persuaded using either Scarcity or Social Proof can increase the effectiveness of the persuasion effort. They found that there is relationship between the four, but not equal. This is how they summarized the findings:

In summary, the study showed that fear can lead to messages using social proof as potentially being more persuasive than messages that use scarcity information. However feelings of romance would cause the opposite to be the case

This got me thinking on the importance of communication for managers and leaders. I wrote on this subject a number of times before, communicating accurately, is one of the biggest challenges of managers and leaders. Thus, every tip we can get could be important.

By now you are probably asking what does that have to do with us? Fear? Romance? All very nice and dandy, but not very practical. I beg to differ.

First, I urge you to read the last paragraph of the article. Describing different implications for marketers, salespeople and managers.

Second, I want to remind you that a great deal of what managers and leaders do is tell a story. For example, there is no doubt that the story being told today, in the midst of the global financial crisis is one of fear. But after that story, or together with that story, we want to motivate and persuade to action. Knowing which persuasion tactic to employ is crucial, if we want to be able to influence our employees and followers.

Elad

Reinforcing

Photo by 23hq.com/ciberado

I was reading this article from the Workforce Management site a few days ago, called: “Banking on Learning“. The article describes the corporate university of North Carolina Branch Banking & Trust Co.

Two interesting things. The first, which I will mention shortly, is something I talk about here frequently – outcome management. A quote:

“I had worked independently in Raleigh, North Carolina, for a long time. If I moved to Winston-Salem to work for the university, I was worried about being micromanaged,” she says. “But I quickly found that Will puts his faith in the people he hires to do their jobs and do them well.”

Alford also found that Sutton is unimpressed by employees who put in excessively long hours and work on weekends. Sutton makes it a priority to be home for nightly dinners with his wife and two young daughters. He wants the same kind of work/life balance for his employees.

The second and more important is the description of the banks approach: “Teach, Preach, Reach”, based on a maxim from Aristotle: “Excellence is an art won through training and habituation“. I am really interested in their interpretation of the second part: Preach.

Preach (Habituation): Local Managers must be actively involved in their employees’ learning by reinforcing what is taught in class.

I think that you can find many managers that look at their employees learning and personal development as something external to their job. As something that needs to be managed generally, by putting down on the paper that their employee learned this or that. Not many of them are really interested in what their employees actually do with that training.

How many times have you seen a manager, take his employee, after the employee returned from a training session and asked what did he learn and the employee thinks it can be used to improve his work? How many times, have you seen a manager take an employee three months after a training session and tries to analyse, together with him, what did the train contribute and how was it helpful or not? I did not see that a lot.

In their book, “Know-Can-Do“, Ken Blanchard and his co-authors talk about how to transform knowledge into action. One of the main things they advocate for is for people to learn less more and not more less. Your employees need less training but need better help in implementing that training into their daily lives. They need your help in reinforcing what they learned.

So, how do you reinforce your employees’ knowledge and skills?

Elad

Will the future be like the past? Probably not. So, what are you going to do about it?

Photo by SAN_DRINO

Many businesses make their decision on some form of prediction of the future. This prediction, usually, is made of some kind of reliance of the past. In fact, I just spent the last few weeks in my AGSM MBA studying about ways to predict the future, based on the past.

Today, I was reading a manifesto titled: “Ending the Illusion of Control [Let’s Kick This Bad Forecasting Habit]“. In it, the writers claim that the reliance people and businesses have on predictions in general and specifically economic predictions could be destructive. They present a list of empirical evidence collected through many studies replicated by others, regarding the use of forecasting and then, they present three pieces of advice:

1. Dispel the illusion of our ability to produce accurate forecasts.
2. Concentrate on uncertainty.
3. Evaluate forecasters, and hold them responsible.

All of this is sound advice and should be followed. But, I am afraid there is one problem. Some of them are just not practical. Like many other phenomena we hear about lately, people reliance on predictions stems from their irrationality. And that irrationally is not because people are stupid or incompetent. It is because they are people. Like the writers of “Billion Dollar Lessons” repeat again and again in their book: awareness is not enough. Just saying that we should: “accept that uncertainty exists” is not enough. Even if we explain to people, rationally, what the problems with ignoring uncertainty is, they will probably won’t be able to take it into their calculations. It is just the way their brain works.

So, what can be the solution? I think part of the solution can be found in the process. If we create processes that take irrationality into account, and makes people, for example, acknowledge the existence of uncertainty as part of the decision process, we can maybe overcome this problem.

Or take for example two points from the list of evidence presented in the manifesto: 1. “Forecasts made by experts are no more accurate than those of knowledgeable individuals”. 2. “Averaging the predictions of several individuals usually improves forecasting accuracy”. This is a well known fact from an abundance of research. But still, the advice of experts is sought after and is the base for many business decisions. But, if the decision making process will enforce taking into account a number of estimates in addition to that of the expert, by forcing people to bring more estimates, maybe we can start to overcome this problem.

So, how do the processes in your company, take into account the problem of reliance on predictions?

Elad

What will your employees do when you leave for a vacation?

Photo by mark(s)elliott’s

Imagine. You leave for a month of an overdue vacation. The catch is, it is on a deserted island, which has no way of communicating with the outside world. What will happen to your employees when you are gone? Will everything continue as usual? Will they be able to ask themselves, at every decision intersection they face – what does my manager would like to me to do, and answer that question? Correctly?

I believe that the most successful managers refrain from intervening in their employees’ processes, unless they are asked to by them. These great managers focus on the setting and explaining the right desired outcomes and let the people do their jobs in the best they can. But, even this outcome perspective about management does not come without limitations. The main limitation being, that people job should align with the organizational goals and strategies. So, one of the main jobs – and challenges – of great managers is to communicate these things to his/her employees.

Now, this could be done easily. You can tell your employees that every time they are in doubt or they think about a new idea, they can check with you. This is not meddling with their ideas and processes, it just a way to guide them. Right? Wrong. Even the greatest manager can’t be everywhere all the time. And as more organizations move away from simple manufacturing to jobs that require the use of judgment, specialties and  knowledge, the less a manager can be there to support his employees and answer all of these questions.

So, not only does the manager face the challenge of creating of a clear message to explain the desired outcomes, but, not less important, he needs to make sure that this message will guide the employees when he is not there.

Lao Tzu said:

The best of leaders when the job is done,
when the task is accomplished,
 the people will say we have done it ourselves.

Two thoughts:

1. We usually don’t think about what would happen if we won’t be there. Maybe it is just too frightening. But, just think about all the time you can save if your employees will be able to make all these decisions themselves. And I am not talking about your vacation time. I am talking about everyday at the office.
2. When we try to articulate the desired outcomes and limitation, we need to remember the curse of knowledge. Out employees don’t know what we already know. Don’t make any assumptions. Make sure they truly understand.

So, what are you doing to prepare for you next solitary vacation?

Elad

 

What to do with feedback?

photo by Shadowalker

Today on the Freakonomics blog, Stephen J. Dubner writes a very interesting post titled:  ”The Downside of Feedback“. As somebody who is very interested in feedback, I was immediately drawn to it. What? Is there a downside for feedback?

But when I started reading it, I realized, Dubner was not dealing with the kind of feedback I was thinking about. His post was inspired by an article in The Washington Post written by Hank Stuever dealing with the effects fans have on movie production, in this case the new Star-Trek movie. Here is the main idea:

Has our quibbling worked? Yes, if you believe in the collective force of fans and the “wiki” social ideal — that group input only improves the result, guiding by peer pressure if nothing else. No, if you think filmmakers are too beholden to fans. Quibbling does not produce a Heath Ledger-style Joker; that is the result of an actor and a writer and a director coming unhinged from the original material. Quibbling produces a Watchmen movie, which tenderly reproduced the 1988 graphic novel panel-for-panel and still failed — pleasing fans, perhaps, but excluding newcomers.

And Dunber adds:

It’s an interesting and timeless point that Stuever raises. Creators who wish to honor the fans’ concerns may wring out the originality that can make art compelling; and creators who ignore the fans’ concerns risk alienating them

This made me think about feedback in general:

1. We should never ignore feedback. We should always try to get some. Feedback is just a mirror. You look in the mirror almost every day. Why? Because it is the best way to know how you and what your state is. And because you see things in the mirror that you would never be able to see otherwise. In a business, professional or even a personal setting, these mirrors don’t always exist. This is what feedback is for.

 2. If we think about costumer feedback we need to think about what our customers want and listen to them. This is a given. But we need not forget two things. One:  the costumers don’t always know what they want. As Malcolm Gladwell tries to claim in his famous Sgpagethi Sauce talk at TED, we sometime need to create the market for costumers, one that they did not even think about asking for. Second: our non- customers are just, or maybe as important as our existing customers. A short quote from a manifesto called: “Uncovering Business Breakthroughs: Are you Tuned In or Tuned Out?“:

Existing customers represent a small percentage of the market opportunity for most businesses, so basing a product development strategy solely on what your existing customers want is flawed. Worse, existing customers have different market problems than noncustomers (buyers who don’t yet do business with you), and only frame their view of your future based on incremental improvements to their past experiences.

3. In business feedback, as in personal feedback, it is ultimately up to you to decide what you change and what you don’t change. Sometime, the feedback just isn’t suitable for you. Some time, the feedback does not understand your message. And sometime, the givers of the feedback just don’t know what they are talking about. But all of this does not mean that you do not have to listen, assess and re-examine your assumptions. It is up to you to use your judgment. Don’t forget that feedback is a tool.

So, how have you used feedback that you have been getting lately?

Elad

Motivation or Vision?

A few days ago I read this post on the Harvard Review Blog titled: “Don’t Live in a Half-Built House“. In it, Peter Bregman tries to make a point about leaders who need to do things now and not look at the future. Here is a little part:

David McClelland, a Harvard psychology professor, wrote the book on Human Motivation. It’s 688 pages long, but since the world might end in six months, I’ll give you the short version. Everyone is driven by three things:

1.Achievement (the desire to compete against increasingly challenging goals)

2.Affiliation (the desire to be liked/loved)

3.Power

•Personalized (the desire for influence and respect for yourself)

•Socialized (the desire to empower others; to offer them influence and respect)

If people have the opportunity to achieve, affiliate and influence, they’ll be motivated and engaged. Even without a clear vision of the future. So instead of worrying about what life is going to be like tomorrow, focus on these three things today. Sit in your office for an hour and think, one by one, about each of your people (including yourself).

If I understand this correctly, Bregman tries to argue against leaders thinking about vision and concentrating on the future. Instead, he says, focus on the now. Talk to your people. ask them how they are doing. Make sure they are motivated.

Who can argue with that? After all, just a few days ago I wrote here that I don’t think there is an ultimate theory of motivation. I said I think the most important thing is to talk to people and ask them what they want.

But still. I think Bregman’s argument suffers from the trap of talking about leaders in management terms and about managers in leadership terms. Bregman is right that managers should focus on the now. On talking with their people. Because that is their role. Leaders, should focus on the future. Because they have a different role. And when manager try to implement leader’s role in dealing with their people on a day to day basis, you get these mixed results Bregman argues against.

So, are you talking to your people as a leader or as a manger? are you focusing on motivation or on vision? What should you be focusing on?

Elad

Is good enough good enough?

In the last few days I was thinking a lot about the question of good enough.

When do you give up and just stop improving whatever it is your working on and when do you try to create something remarkable and different?

Two references for my thoughts. First, Seth Godin, who writes:

You end up, if you’re talented, with something good enough.

Is that enough? Is good enough enough to win? To change the game? To reinvent your organization and your career? In a crowded market, when all the competition is good enough, not much happens.

Good enough is beyond reproach. It’s safe at the same time it represents quality. Good enough demonstrates effort and insight and ability. People rarely get fired for good enough, which is a shame.

I must admit, I love this approach. Too many little things in life are just plain mediocre. Just because somebody decided that the service, or the design or the product should be only OK. If we really want to make a change, we should not settle for good enough, only for great. To many things are so mediocre, when they should not be.

But then, I think about the importance of picking your battles. And I am reminded, like I so often do, that there are no complete truths in life. Check this post, by Karlyn Morissette:

All too often in higher ed, we get bogged down seeking perfection, when something that is good enough will do just as well.  I can tell horror stories about tying up hours of time from five or six employees in search of the perfect Facebook Ad.  Yes, you heard me right – FACEBOOK AD.  The picture had to be designed just right and the copy had to be written and edited and it had to be mocked up so the client could see what it would actually look like in Facebook, etc.  It was absolutely ridiculous.

All of us have been there. We spend too much time on things that are not really important. Actually when I worked at a law firm, I guess that about 30% of my time was spent on perfecting things that had no real influence in the outcome. How the document looks, if the paper came out of the printer a little smeared, etc. Not that it is not important to produce perfect work. We just need to be realistic sometimes and understand that sometimes, good enough is good enough because it is more important to do stuff than to do them perfectly.

You might think that the question is, how do you decide? Which, I agree, is a very important question. But I actually think there is a question which is even more important. Do you stop to consider? Whatever you decide to go with perfection or good enough is not as important as actually stopping, and taking the time to make that a conscious decision. To weigh the consequences of each path. Don’t do things automatically or just because this is the way everybody does it here. Stop and think. Do I demand perfection? Why? Am I settling for good enough? Why?

I think that most of the time, you would find that the question, is more important than the answer.

Elad

Surprise with your presentation, even using technology

 

Umair Haque at BRITE ’09 conference from BRITE Conference on Vimeo.

I was watching this lecture by Umair Haque from the Brite Conference. It is a very interesting lecture where Haque claims that the creativity of the past is not good enough for the new economy and the new world. This is the second time this week I see an attack on the notion of creativity as we know it (link in Hebrew). I will not attempt to explain what Haque is saying because I am not sure I totally understand it (I really liked some of the examples and really disagree with some others). I will let you see and decide for yourselves. What I want to talk about is the way Haque gives his presentation.

Haque is not a very articulative presenter. The flow of the speech is not consistent. He does not capture the audience with good use of voice, movement or structure. But, one thing stood out -the visual aid he is using. Haque is not using regular PowerPoint presentation slides. Instead, he is using some kind of big flash or java sheet that allows him to “sail” (there is no other word I can think of to describe it) between the different points, magnifying on one point for a second and then moving to another. I never seen anything like it used in a presentation. The constant movement across this sheet, which represents linkage of different ideas, creates not only great repetition of the main ideas but a great sense of understanding of the connections between them.

This got me thinking. My training in presentations comes from the education background. I learned how to speak, present and structure according to the frameworks of education. I find myself struggling many times adapting this “bias” I have when I tried giving different kinds of presentations. When you teach, a lot of your concentration should go to structure and keeping consistency. You don’t use differences and surprises a lot, only when trying to make certain points. In other types of presentations, especially one time presentations, being different, surprising and inconsistent is a great and important tool that should be used throughout the presentation.

Haque’s presentation captivated me even though his regular public speaking skills were not remarkable. Because he used a new and different technological tool. That takes courage, but that also made him special, and made me pay attention closely. This shows that you don’t have to be a great speaker. You can use technology smartly in order to amplify your message. I hope to see more and more new tools that will allow us to create new visual aids that help improve our presentations.

Elad