When we come across an obstacle, people typically do one of three things:

• Turn back
• Get through it by any means necessary
• Get to a vantage point to see if the reward is worth the effort to overcome the obstacle

For a long time, I was very much the second person.  Call it an ego thing, call it stubbornness, but I did whatever it took to achieve a goal.  Sometimes at great sacrifice to myself.  I don’t believe this is necessarily a bad thing, as I think we all need to build tenacity.

However, after the past few years, I’ve come to change my thinking.  I’ve come to value the “resources” it would take to acheive some goals, and I realize that often a goal is not worth the sacrafice.  So, before I dedicate my time and energy, I put some due dilegence into making sure the outcome is worth it.  This saves unneccessary effort.

The takeaway from all of this is to keep the end result in perspective and realize what it’s value is.

On rare occasions we have downtime in the office.  However, how we spend that downtime can greatly improve our effectiveness when we get swamped.  I look for ways to improve my productivity.  This typically involved improving my setup.

The first thing I do is look at the new technologies to see if any of them are viable as a productivity enhancement.  If one of them is, I’ll try it out and integrate when appropriate.  The second thing I do is learn something ancillary to my current area of focus.  This usually is something which is not required to perform my job, but could aid tremendously.  By doing this “homework”, when you’re back in crunch time, you’ll be greatly more effective.

For example, when I was doing a lot of coding, I’d spend my downtime improving my .emacs file so I could code much more effectively.  For ancillary learning, I learned about proper interviewing techniques.  This came in very handy when I was interviewing people to join my team as I had some of the best hires of the group.

To succeed in corporate America a person must continually take more and more work.  To do this, it requires the ability to scale.  However, many very smart people do not scale because they feel the need to show their brilliance on all tasks assigned to them, and they eventually run out of hours in a day to get all the work done. It is almost an arrogance which inhibits them from delegating (speaking from my personal experiences).

The average person career is able to rise above the brilliant person’s when they are able scale more effectively.  To scale effectively it requires the ability to delegate.  If one of your direct reports is able to perform a job that you are performing at the same quality, then you are “paying” too much to get that task done (assuming you make more than your direct).  Instead, it should be delegated.  With that extra time, you should be able to perform the more important tasks to a higher quality, or else take one of your boss’ tasks.

As a person moves through their career it becomes less about how brilliant you can make a presentation, but rather about the people under you who will determine how far your career goes.

At the risk of my management reading this, here is a little trick which leads to faster promotions.

Plant the “promotion seed” in your manager’s mind far before you think you’re up for a promotion.  This is done by simply asking your manager if you will get a promotion at the next opening.  While it may seem innocuous, by having them think about you getting a promotion, you have planted the seed for consideration of a promotion.

Managers have an internal clock of how long they need to consider someone for a promotion before they act on it.  By making them “consider” you earlier, you have started that internal clock sooner.  This has the double effect of additional pressure on a manager knowing that you expect a promotion from them.  If there is no pressure, then the manager thinks you’re okay with your current level and has no guilt about not promoting you.

Do this whenever you get a new manager, or right after you just got a promotion.  For example, I waited 2 months from getting a promotion before I planted the next seed.

I have 3 models which I use more than anything else in my business life. The beauty of them is that they are simple, yet they are capable of going very deep the more you understand them. Even better, they can be extended into other situations.

• DISC - Helps with human interaction to understand how _other_ people try achieving success
• Twin Pillars - Marketing in its most simplistic form. However, applicable to daily life
• “Strategic Focus” - Strategy in it’s simplest form. Can break down a company quickly with this

DISC: (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientious)

Once you understand how someone goes about achieving success, you can understand how to speak to them so they “hear” you. I love this model because it’s easy to see each of these traits and it is not nearly as complex as Myers-Briggs. For example a dominant personality, will want to achieve success for prestige. So, to influence them, you tell them that by doing something, they will look good to the rest of the organization.

Twin Pillars - Segmentation and Differentiation

Marketing doesn’t get any more basic than this.  To be successful, identify customer needs (segmentation), and then deliver more value to the customer (differentiation) than the competition.  While it seems simple, there can be a large drill-down into each of these pillars.  From my experience, this concept is lost to most technical people.

Strategic Focus

This model says that a company’s strategy must be either operational efficiency (a Dell/Walmart), product innovation (Google), or customer intimacy/relationships (most local businesses).  A good company will focus on one, and do it very well.  If a company is lucky it can do 2.  However, no company can do all three well.  The model says that depending on what a companies strategic focus will determine what it should invest in.

by Mahatma Gandhi

1. Wealth without work
2. Pleasure without conscience
3. Knowledge without character
4. Commerce without morality
5. Science without humanity
6. Worship without sacrifice
7. Politics without principle

The ability to make quick and accurate decisions in our daily life is premised on being able to recognize patterns and knowing how to react to them. Otherwise the brain would have to start from scratch and spend time categorizing the input that it sees. When a pattern is recognized the brain can focus on a more in-depth analysis. For example, traders see trends in the graphs of their stocks, lawyers know how to best handle witnesses, and programmers know where to look for bugs.

The value of models is that it allows a person to simplify a lot of information down to something which can be retained in an individual’s head. By “freeing up space” they can focus on the next set of information. This allows a person to retain much more data than they could otherwise. More data leads to a better decision.

The additional benefit of a model is that when another person knows the model, communication is much crisper and clearer. The other person does not have to churn on categorizing what you are saying, but instead can focus on what your point is.

Models also allow a person to jump up the experience ladder when thinking about a situation. They can do an accurate strategy analysis for the first time using SWOT. Not using a model would require years of experience to do just as well.

In MBA school, I learned a ton of models. For the most part, they were worthless because they we too complex for me to keep straight in my head, or else they were too specialized to be applicable in the majority of situations.

A truly great model has the following attributes:

• Simple - 3 or 4 categories tops
• Covers the majority of case - There will always be corner cases which models miss
• Others can understand it quickly - If you need to teach it, it’s quick
• Requires little experience to apply

A great model will not cover the every situation, but it will certainly reduce the need to start from scratch in decision making.

Next time I will cover my favorite models and touch on some of the worse models.

New server, new look, and new inspiration for blogging.

I finally wrapped up MBA school and spent the last few months getting my life back in order.  I’m now ready to get back to blogging.

This blog will now focus on:

• Human Behavior - Understanding why we do what we do
• “Little Things” - Items in life that make a huge difference
• Technology - Trends, Performance, and Emerging Technology
• Entrepreneurship - Business Ventures

Additionally, I will try keeping the posts concise and go for quality over quantity.

I’m looking forward to it.

Wisdom:

I saw an interesting article on how Jerry Seinfeld developed motivation to write jokes and made it into a habit. He took a large calendar and every day he wrote jokes, he put a big red “X” on that day. After a few days a chain developed.

Then his whole goal become to not break the chain.

By not breaking the chain there is not an opportunity to skip a day. Because once you skip a day, it is easier to skip the next day.

This is along the sames lines which of what Tony Robbins talks about. Doing something small everyday keeps your mind focused on it, and your subconscious continues to work on it even when you are not consciously. The small efforts build and soon build into momentum. When momentum develops, that’s when much is accomplished in a short amount of time.

Looking back at some of my major accomplishments, they all came by making small investments early on…and regardless of the fact that I did not see immediate results, I kept plugging away at it and after awhile I started seeing progress. Progress built and built until one day the “landslide” came and not only did I achieve my goal, I achieved far more than I ever thought possible.