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.

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.

I’ve always struggled with giving to charity. I wanted my money to have a large impact on people. The problem with charity is that it’s terribly inefficient, and rarely fixed the root problem (though The Gates Foundation may change my mind on this). If the goal is to help some 3rd world society, I feel like it was a waste of money.

Then I ran across Kiva.org and the idea of micro-loans. This is where entrepreneurs from 3rd world countries w/o credit systems need a small amount of money to get their business started. One example is a Kenyan woman who need $80 for an irrigation pump, and can now increase her income between $120 to $1200 a year. However, this woman could not get a loan without going to the village loan shark getting charged 100% interest.

Now on Kiva, you can loan money to this woman, change her life, and get your money back to help the next person.

Most investors worry about the risk of default. However, an interesting thing occurs. The other people in the village realize that if someone defaults on their loan, that no one else will loan the rest of them money. So there is a peer monitoring system and assistance within the community. This keeps the repayment rate over 95%, which is better than credit card portfolios in the US.

Typically it’s lack of credit which holds 3rd world countries back from bettering their standard of living. It’s not charity, but ideas like mico-loans is what will pave the way to a better world.

I’ve been doing some soul searching as of late, and much of it has stemmed from my latest class, “Innovations in Business Marketing”. The class really should be called “Intro to a Startup”. The prof. (he’s a VC) tells stories about the lifestyle of these startup entrepreneurs. How they do not even know their children.

So that makes me think…what do I really want out of life?

I used to believe it was owning the next Microsoft. I’m realizing that I’m not willing to sacrifice my future family (whenever that may be).

My soul searching has led me to believe, that I want to see my children grow up, financial independence, and business creation.

So, what does that mean?

I think a more intelligent/balanced way of going about my goals is multiple small-medium businesses (SMBs). Start a SMB, one that might make only 150k profit a year. Hand if off to someone else to run, and now income from that is only 70k. Only a small percentage of time is needed to oversee it. Now with all that free time, start a new SMB and hand it off. Do this over and over again, and wealth will start to accrue.

Eventually a point is reached when the 8 hour day is spent just overseeing the businesses…Hopefully income is substantial at that point and what I want out of life is achieved.

Goals are the single most important driving factor towards success. If there is not a destination in mind, how can you figure out where you are going? Furthermore, in setting these goals they should be made measurable stretch goals. How will you know your potential if your goals are easily attainable. It is not what a goal is that matters, it is what a goal does.

So what about my life goals:

1.) Create a fortune 500 company
2.) Write a best seller
3.) Million dollar net worth by age 32
4.) Have a happy family (yes, I know it’s neither measurable nor stretch, but important nonetheless)
5.) Travel Africa
6.) Speak in front of 5,000 people
7.) Own a house on Lake Austin
8.) Speak a second language
9.) Have a separate Austin home for my parents to live in whenever they want to visit
10.) Retire by 55, and own the Lions

Perhaps one of the most insightful questions that can be made. This simple question tells what a person’s ambitions are, how much self-confidence they possess, what they believe is important in life, and what they think they can achieve. Its open-ended nature evokes a litany of possible responses. From someone who believes they will be a great mother, to someone else who believes they are the next Steve Jobs.

The interesting thing to look at is how the response is worded. When a person crosses over from what they “will” do to what they “want” to do, that is a good indication at the line in which a person really believes they will achieve in their life. As one of my esteemed colleagues pointed out, the delta between the “will” and the “want” is your potential.

So, if I were asked if I’d be great, I’d respond: I believe I will be a great innovator and pioneer of technology. I will start a number of successful businesses, and at least one will be a fortune 500 company. I want to be considered a peer of Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and possibly even Bill Gates.