You’ve met Derek Sivers before (here, here, here and here), as I love his brief but oh-so-insightful book Anything You Want. What you may not know about him is that he was a musician, and his story of becoming an entrepreneur (founding, growing and selling CD Baby) stemmed from his desire to sell his music online.
As a musician, Sivers recalls the story of the many exercises one of his voice teachers had him do:
“For each lesson, I’d bring in one song I was trying to improve. First, I’d sing it for him as written. Then he’d say, ‘OK, now do it up and octave.’ ‘Uh… up an octave? But I can’t sing that high!’ ‘I don’t care! Do it anyway! Go! One, two, three, four.’ I’d sing the whole song again, in screeching, squeaking falsetto, sounding like an undead cartoon mouse. But by the second half of the song, it was almost charming. Then he’d say, ‘OK, now do it down an octave.’ ‘Down an octave? But I don’t think I can!’ ‘Doesn’t matter! Go! One, two, three, four.’ I sounded like a garbage disposal or lawn mower, but he made me sing the whole song that way. Then he’d made me sing it twice as fast. Then twice as slow. Then like Bob Dylan. Then like Tom Waits. Then he’d tell me to sing it like it’s 4 a.m. and a friend woke me up. And then he’d give me many other scenarios. After all of this, he’d say, ‘Now, how did that song go again?’ It was the clearest proof that what I thought was ‘the’ way the song went was really just one of an infinite number of options.”
When we are stuck, or when we think there’s only one way, it’s helpful to keep this exercise in mind as it will help offer many options. Sivers goes on to illustrate how he was taking an entrepreneurship class and the group was analyzing a business plan—that proposed just one idea. He felt like saying things his teacher would have said:
“OK, make a plan that requires only $1,000. Go!”
“Now make a plan for ten times as many customers. Go!”
“Now do it without a website. Go!”
“Now make all your initial assumptions wrong, and have it work anyway. Go!”
“Now show how you would franchise it. Go!”
Sivers says, “You can’t pretend there’s only one way to do it. Your first idea is just one of many options. No business goes as planned, so make ten radically different plans.”
ACTION
TODAY: Is there a place in your professional or personal life where you are feeling stuck? Are you clinging to just that one option because you think it’s the best possible, or you’re afraid of exploring what’s out there, or you think it’s your last chance or (insert your thoughts here)? Take a moment to go through this exercise creating options for yourself. Some options will be funny, others crazy, a few may be awful… but you will certainly experience a shift inside that will make you truly realize there are other options. And while you’re at it, you may discover some options that are just great for you. OK, Go! One, two, three, four!
FUTURE: As you consider projects or plans for the future, keep this great exercise in mind. It will open up your eyes to the myriad possibilities that are out there, and provide you with flexibility to make your plans happen. There are many routes to get to your goals, so don’t be afraid to take the road less traveled or take a detour now and then. I especially like this option and suggest you keep it in mind: “Now make all your initial assumptions wrong, and have it work anyway. Go!”
Know someone who would benefit from expanding his or her options? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you! OK, Go!
“The only purpose of starting is to finish,” writes Seth Godin in his remarkable book Linchpin. Finishing or shipping, as Godin calls it, “means hitting the publish button on your blog, showing a presentation to the sales team, answering the phone, selling the muffins, sending out your references. Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world.”
But one of the things that makes shipping so difficult is thrashing. Thrashing is “the apparently productive brainstorming and tweaking we do for a project as it develops… sometimes thrashing is merely a tweak; other times it involves major surgery.”
Thrashing is essential; however, it’s the timing of the thrashing that can make or break a project. In the video below, Godin insists on thrashing early because that is when it’s easy and cheap. He is right. Professionals thrash early and then they get to work so as to ship with top quality and pride, respecting deadlines and other people’s time, and doing so within budget. It’s not a dream, it can be done.
The problem comes when people behave in an amateur way and do all the thrashing near the end. Godin continues, “the closer we get to shipping, the more people get involved, the more meetings we have, the more likely that CEO wants to be involved. And why not? What’s the point of getting involved early when you can’t see what’s already done and your work will probably be redone anyway? The point of getting everyone involved early is simple: thrash late and you won’t ship. Thrash late and you introduce bugs. Professional creators thrash early. The closer the project gets to completion, the fewer people see it and the fewer changes are permitted.”
Thrashing allowed at the end leads to missed deadlines, much stress, unnecessary changes, late nights, much heartache, frustration and resentment. Coordinating all the thrashing from teams of people that increasingly get larger as the deadline approaches is very difficult. “Projects stall as they trash. Nine women can’t have a baby in one month, no matter how closely they coordinate their work.”
So, what to do? Godin offers two solutions. Both will make people uncomfortable, yet they are the only way in which projects will be shipped on time and without the unnecessary heartache that too-many-cooks-in-the-kitchen brings. Here they are:
1. “Relentlessly limit the number of people allowed to thrash. That means you need formal procedures for excluding people, even well-meaning people with authority. And you need secrecy. If you have a choice between being surprised (and watching a great project ship on time) or being involved (and participating in the late launch of a mediocre project), which do you want? You must pick one or the other.”
2. “Appoint one person to run it. Not to co-run it or to lead at task force or to be on the committee. One person, a human being, runs it. [His or] her name on it. [His or] her decisions.”
In the video, Godin tells the story of how his boss loved to show up the day before with “just a little suggestion” that led to a domino effect of changes resulting in missed deadlines. Godin’s solution was to adopt a disciplined approach: thrash at the beginning and allow people to share their input and ideas early on. Then, have the thrashers sign a form stating that they have given their input and that they will not provide further input or changes after a certain deadline. This allows the people who are working on the project the necessary time for completion and shipping.
ACTION
TODAY: Think of ways in which you can apply early thrashing to your projects. How can you also instill the discipline in your team of thrashing early and shipping on time?
FUTURE: As you encounter the start of new projects, think of the optimal time and way in which thrashing should take place. Should it be a meeting? Should it be one-on-one? Should it be via a form? Think also of the time when thrashing should come to an end. Don’t veer away from the discipline of thrashing early and having a cut off point. Then take the best ideas, incorporate them into the project and get to work so that you can ship the best possible project on time and on budget.
Know someone who needs to stop thrashing at the end of a project? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
I recently went through an experience where an airline performed a procedure a specific way one time, and then—under the same circumstances—performed a completely different procedure a second time.
As I pointed out the discrepancy in performance (because it was to the detriment of my time and money), the airline started pointing fingers at possible culprits of said discrepancy. It was very unfortunate: instead of fixing it, airline personnel were focused on making up excuses and blaming.
This reminded me of M.J. Ryan’s book Habit Changers, specifically the passage where she says, “When a crisis hits, fix it. Don’t waste time analyzing why or who. Then afterward solve for the pattern so that it doesn’t happen again.” Or put another way: “First correct, then prevent.”
ACTION
TODAY & FUTURE: Don’t blame or point fingers: focus on correcting first and preventing second. Learn what happened so that you can apply those valuable lessons towards the future.
Breakfast has been lauded as the most important meal of the day. I love my breakfast and have no plans to stop eating it. So does author Dan Pink, “As a devout breakfast eater, I endorse this principle.” However, in his book WHEN, he says, “As someone paid to muck around in scientific journals, I’ve grown skeptical.”
While there are indeed virtues to breakfast, leading British research in nutrition points to the myths and merits and concludes, “The current state of scientific evidence means that, unfortunately, the simple answer is: I don’t know.”
So, you’re off the hook: you can eat or skip breakfast, as you prefer. But how about lunch? According to Pink, “social scientists are discovering that it’s far more important to our performance than we realize.”
The “often-maligned and easily dismissed meal called lunch” has been even touted as “for wimps” on TV. But that is about to change right now. A 2016 study between people who ate at their desk (known as sad desk lunch) and those who didn’t, found that “the non-desk lunchers were better able to contend with workplace stress and showed less exhaustion and great vigor not just during the remainder of the day but also a full one year later.”
Your lunch break, if indeed a break, can provide “an important recovery setting to promote occupational health and well-being—particularly for employees in cognitively or emotionally demanding jobs.”
The key here is not just your lunch meal but also the break itself. Pink goes on, “the most powerful lunch breaks have two key ingredients—autonomy and detachment. Autonomy—exercising some control over what you do, how you do it, and whom you do it with—is critical for high performance, especially on complex tasks. […] Detachment—both psychological and physical—is also critical. Staying focused on work during lunch, or even using one’s phone for social media, can intensify fatigue, according to multiple studies, but shifting one’s focus away from the office has the opposite effect.”
With all this evidence, Pink concludes, “Lunch is the most important meal of the day.”
Happy lunching!
ACTION
TODAY: If you suffer from sad desk lunch (especially if you live in the US where this is prevalent), know that there is help out there. Take a moment to check out the Box Lunch Lifestyle philosophy. It’s a great concept for lunch and oh-so-simple: plan and make your meal (ahead of time); then every weekday take time to eat, and take time to do something that you’ve always wanted, in as little as 30 minutes. You won’t mess with your weekends in case you have kids or social activities. The result? You’ll love your meal, you’ll eat healthy, and you’ll finally find the time to do something you’ve always wanted. Parts of this blog have been written during lunch breaks applying the Box Lunch Lifestyle ideas. It works for me, so I truly hope it works for you too!
FUTURE: Find a way to take a walk or to escape from your desk at lunch as much as you can. Exercise the autonomy and detachment that Dan Pink talks about. Socialize. Do something that takes your mind away from your work. Enjoy your food. Your imagination is the limit, so come up with a list of things to do during your lunch now that you know that it’s the most important meal of the day!
Know someone who eats at his or her desk? Share this post with them via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
When we think of the bottom line, the first thing that comes to mind is money. However, in Thinking for a Change, leadership guru John C. Maxwell says that if we solely focus on financial matters as the bottom line, we may miss something critical. He says, “Instead, think of the bottom line as the end, the take away, the desired result. Every activity [and organization] has its own unique bottom line. If you have a job, your work has a bottom line. If you serve in your church, your activity has a bottom line. So does your effort as a parent, or spouse, if you are one.”
Maxwell tells the story of Frances Hesselbein who headed the Girl Scouts of America for many years and turned it around into the successful organization that it is today. When she became CEO of the organization, it was in trouble because it lacked direction, and interest in it was dwindling from girls to participate as well as from adults to volunteer. She needed to focus on the bottom line. In her words, “We kept asking ourselves very simple questions. What is our business? Who is our customer? And what does the customer consider value? If you’re the Girl Scouts, IBM or AT&T, you have to manage for a mission.”
Asking these questions and her focus on a mission led Hesselbein to find the Girl Scouts bottom line: “We really are here for one reason: to help a girl reach her highest potential. More than any one thing, that made the difference. Because when you are clear about your mission, corporate goals and operating objectives flow from it.”
In this case, her bottom line was not measured in dollars but in changed lives.
If you are wondering how you can put bottom-line thinking to work for you, Maxwell shares the following five points to do this.
1. Identify the real bottom line.
“It can be as lofty as the big-picture vision, mission or purpose of an organization. Or it can be as focused as what you want to accomplish on a particular project.” Be very specific. “What are you really trying to achieve? When you strip away all the things that don’t really matter, what are you compelled to achieve? What must occur? What is acceptable? That is the real bottom line.”
2. Make the bottom line the point. Your bottom line will be your guide and goal for all you do, and everything else revolves around it. “Sometimes, for example, an idealistically stated mission and the real bottom line don’t jibe. Purpose and profits [seem to] compete [… but] profits serve purpose—they don’t compete with it.”
3. Create a strategic plan to achieve the bottom line. Organizations should identify and focus on the “core elements or functions that must operate properly to achieve the bottom line. […] The important thing is that when the bottom line of each activity is achieved, then THE bottom line is achieved.”
4. Align team members with the bottom line.
“Ideally all team members should know the big goal, as well as their individual role in achieving it. They need to know their personal bottom line and how that works to achieve the organization’s bottom line.” (A post to reinforce this point is Believe.)
5. Stick with one system, and monitor results continually. “Bottom-line thinking cannot be a one-time thing. It has to be built into the system of working and relating and achieving. You can’t just tune in to the desired result every now and then. Achieving with bottom-line thinking must be a way of life, or it will send conflicting messages.
ACTION
TODAY: Do you know the bottom line for the various aspects of your life? Take a moment today to pick one area you want to focus on and find out the bottom line.
FUTURE: Don’t lose sight of that clarity and the bottom line you just figured out. Everything you do should revolve around that bottom line. As you embark in any action or project, ask: is this in alignment and getting me closer to my bottom line? If the answer is yes, go for it! If it’s no, then course-correct and do something instead that gets you closer to your goal.
Happy bottom-lining!
Know someone who could benefit from figuring out his or her bottom line? Please share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
The business world is peppered with quotes and slogans to never give up and never quit. When I wrote about Selective quitting from Chris Guillebeau’s book Born For This, the post highlighted how to quit projects or courses of action that were not in our best interest. In today’s idea, from Seth Godin’s The Dip, we’ll take a look at when to quit and when to stick.
Godin explains that “Most people will tell you that you that you need to persevere—to try harder, put in more hours, get more training, and work hard. ‘Don’t quit!’ they implore. But if all you need to do to succeed is not quit, then why do organizations less motivated than yours succeed? Why do individuals less talented than you win? It involves understanding the architecture of quitting, and, believe it or not, it means quitting a lot more than you do now.”
The author continues, “Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations [and individuals]. Reactive quitting and serial quitting are the bane of those that strive (and fail) to get what they want. And most people do just that. They quit when it’s painful and stick when they can’t be bothered to quit. […] Understanding the different types of situations that lead you to quit—or that should cause you to quit—is the first step toward getting what you want.”
Godin shares two curves that define virtually all situations that we face. Understanding them is the basis for success.
CURVE 1: THE CUL-DE-SAC
Cul-de-sac means dead end in French. We’ve all seen it and experienced it: “It’s a situation where you work and you work and you work and nothing much changes. It doesn’t get a lot better, it doesn’t get a lot worse. It just is.” And there’s not much to say about the cul-de-sac other than when you find yourself in it, you need to get out of it as fast as you can. “A dead end is keeping you from doing something else. The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that’s not going to get better is just too high.”
CURVE 2: THE DIP
Image courtesy of Seth Godin.
When you first start something there’s a fantastic rush of energy and excitement: you’re learning by leaps and bounds and making much progress. This growth and rapid learning keeps you going over the ensuing days or months. And then you fall into the Dip.
“The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery… the long stretch between beginner’s luck and accomplishment… [but it’s] actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.” Those that stick through the Dip and make it to the other side come out victorious, because “almost everything in life worth doing is controlled by the Dip.”
The important thing to keep in mind is that “just because you know you’re in the Dip doesn’t mean you have to live happily with it. Dips don’t last quite as long when you whittle at them.”
The things or skills that we most value are scarce. Without the Dip, scarcity—and thus value—wouldn’t exist. “What’s hard is getting there… there’s a huge Dip along the way.” If it were easy, everyone would be there already. That’s why “the people who invest the time and the energy and the effort to power through the Dip… are the ones who become the best in the world.”
To sum up, Godin gives the following wise advice: “Stick with The Dips that are likely to pan out, and quit the Cul-de-Sacs to focus your resources. That’s it.”
Both Seth Godin and The Dip were mentioned recently in the Billions TV series on Showtime. Here’s the video clip. (Courtesy of Seth Godin. Note: strong/uncensored language). And I’m absolutely thrilled and very proud that, today, Seth Godin—whose mind and writings I’ve long admired, and who I have the honor and joy of calling a friend—is being inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame.SUPERCONGRATS SETH!! For these and billions of other reasons, you are indeed on the other side of the Dip as the best in the world: well deserved and hats off!
ACTION
TODAY: Are there any cul-de-sacs among your current life or business projects that you need to quit? Are you experiencing any Dips? Take a moment to think about your future and the goals you want to achieve. And then determine the best course of action for you.
FUTURE: As you periodically examine your goals, quit the cul-de-sacs to free up energy and resources as well as to make valuable room for other endeavors. When you find yourself in a Dip, remember that you don’t have to like it or enjoy it, but you can certainly push through it to get to the other side, and once you’re there, the effort will have been worthwhile.
Know someone who is in a cul-de-sac and needs to quit? Or someone who is in a Dip and needs encouragement to keep at it? Share this post via email, Facebook or Twitter!
TODAY’S IDEA: One of many options
