Questions from Seth

By: Karen Rulifson

I just read this on Seth Godin's blog (great blog by the way), and it really resonated with me. Take a minute to ask these questions to yourself, and most importanty, ask the question, 'why?' after each one. This is a great quick way to help you prioritize.

Who are you trying to please?
What are you promising?
How much money are you trying to make?
How much freedom are you willing to trade for opportunity?
What are you trying to change?

What do you want people to say about you?
Which people?

(and after each answer, ask 'why?')

Prime Your Mind For Action

By: Nick Tasler

In my last article, I explained why people who believe they control events in their life are such an asset to the companies they work for. Good leaders also wanted to know what about everyone else? How can they get other team members to adopt that same proactive mentality, even during anxious and uncertain times? At least temporarily, you can inspire that grab-the-bull-by-the-horns attitude in just about anyone. A quick experiment illustrates how:

Phase 1: Think about a decision weighing on you right now. It can be any choice that involves asking "should I do X or should I do Y?" For example, should I stay in my current position, or make a lateral leap? Should I go to that training seminar next week or play hooky? Should we invest in that new venture now or wait until next year? Once you have that vexing question in mind, think about a couple of the short- and long-term consequences of both options, and then about some of the challenges you'll face with trying to act on one of those options.

Phase 2: Think about a project you're already working on. Maybe you've already given that new venture a green light and are ready to dig in. Maybe you've decided to go ahead with that systems upgrade you had been putting off. Or maybe you already concluded that you want to try your hand leading a new department. With that project in mind, jot down a few of the steps you'll need to take in order to successfully implement that plan.

Deliberation vs. Implementation
The two phases above represent routine mental exercises we carry out every day—deliberating some choices and implementing others. Had we been monitoring your mood, your self-esteem, and your perceptions of risk during this experiment, we would have likely found you in two very different states of mind. In experiments like these, psychologists Shelley Taylor at UCLA and Peter Gollwitzer at NYU found that when people think about implementing a decision they've already made (Phase 2) it puts them in a far better mood, significantly raises their self-esteem, and makes them feel much more in control of the world around them. In fact, while locked into phase 2—what Taylor and Gollwitzer call the "implementation mindset"—people even believe they are less vulnerable than others to random events like getting mugged, being in a car crash, and falling victim to an earthquake.

When we mentally shift gears from deliberation to implementation, from contemplation to action, it changes more than the just way we see the decision at hand. While mapping out the plan for implementation, we feel more confident and more invincible about ourselves in general. That's because implementation is a cue for our brains to zoom in on how to get the job done and to tune out the self-doubt and vulnerability that inhibit action.

A Mindset is a Powerful Thing to Waste
The implementation mindset stirs up what Shelley Taylor calls "positive illusions," which are somewhat unrealistic, self-serving beliefs. Around 90% of people believe they are just a little more competent, smarter, or kinder than average. "Generally, most people are more optimistic than facts warrant," she observes. Nearly all people hold healthy, positive illusions about themselves some of the time, but Taylor says that's a good thing. That's not just because positive illusions make people feel more chipper. She has found that mild self-aggrandizing can also foster higher creativity and productivity, and help us persist more when tackling challenging goals like, say, weathering a recession.

But positive illusions come and go. When we find ourselves knee-deep in deliberation—agonizing about how we will continue to provide for our families, or how we can retire when the funds in our 401(k) have vanished—positive illusions disappear almost entirely, leaving us feeling much more like pawns than knights. That's why recessions are a double-whammy. Economic ruts are hard enough to pull out of even when we're operating at full steam. But uncertainty about the future also puts employees and managers in a constant state of deliberation—fretting about the consequences of what might happen next, rather than confidently implementing plans of action.

The good news is that, with a little effort, we can kick-start the implementation mindset.

How to Bite Back When Reality Bites
One of history's great mysteries is why George Washington felt so compelled during the first year of the Revolutionary War to meticulously oversee every detail of the renovations on his homestead, Mt. Vernon. Washington knew full well that if he didn't win the war, he almost certainly would be granted a one-way ticket to the hangman's gallows for treason. He also was fully aware that he was getting clobbered. Despite all the stress and anxiety, Washington spent late nights on the front lines writing letters home specifying things like what colors the new curtains should be in the living room.

Washington wasn't delusional. By mapping out his home improvement project, he was fostering the implementation mindset, which then allowed him to persist in the overwhelming war effort. You can do the same thing from the front lines of your battle to beat the recession or meet your growth targets for the coming quarter.

1. Pick a Project You Are Already Thinking About.
As Washington proved, this project doesn't need to have anything to do with your work. It just needs to be a project you have some measure of control over. It could be growing tasty tomatoes, planning a vacation, shaving a few strokes off of your golf game, helping your kids do better in school, or losing 10 pounds.

2. List Five Implementation Steps. Jot down five actions you will take that, if carried out properly, will virtually guarantee success on your project.

3. Identify When, Where, and How. Peter Gollwitzer's research has proved that this last piece is critical, so don't take a shortcut now. Write down when, where and how you intend to take each of the five implementation steps. For example, if your project is "plan a vacation," one step might be: "After dinner tonight, I will look at vacation packages on my laptop." From there, your brain will know what to do.

You can then do the same exercise with your people. To get more bang for your buck, you might want to work with them to select a work-related project that you would both like to see accomplished this quarter. Then coach them on breaking down the implementation steps and identifying the specifics of when, where and how they will carry out these steps. When performed this way—as a coaching exercise focused on a real work project—your reward will be twofold. You'll not only prime your people's minds for action on all their work activities, but also help them to deliver on a specific milestone for the quarter. Everybody wins.

The Time to Implement
When I spoke to Shelley Taylor, she was quick to point out that "positive illusions are rather like fire. They can light your house, or they can burn down your neighbor's house." What she calls "windows of realism" furnished by the deliberation mindset are vital to accurately estimating risks and costs. You could (and indeed many people do) argue that propping open more windows of realism a couple of years ago might have prevented the recession altogether. When you're trying to determine whether or not it's a good idea to embark on a new venture or invest in expensive real estate, the implementation mindset in you or in your people can be very detrimental. It can inspire unwarranted optimism and careless judgments.

But if you're an executive trying to clear the recession malaise from your corporate climate, the windows of realism in your office space are probably open far enough. It's time to implement.

Gary Hamel: Three Challenges Facing Organizations

By: Karen Rulifson

I just read this blog and couldn't say it better myself:

Published by Michael Lee Stallard on October 11, 2009

Last week I was invited to attend the World Business Forum in NYC with 50 other leading bloggers. The presentation that resonated the most with me was Gary Hamel’s. In it, he outlined three challenges facing today’s organizations:

1. How do we build an organization that can change as fast as change itself? Change is accelerating at this time in history and organizations need to act faster to deal with opportunities and threats. Consider the changes in the last century including in healthcare, microprocesssors, transportation, computing power, the internet, telephony, gene sequencing, biotech, etc.

2. How do we build an organization where innovation is everyone’s job? The accelerated pace of change makes this a necessity. Do employees understand their organizations innovation insights? Is every employee’s contribution to innovation measured?

3. How do we build an organization that actually inspires extraordinary accomplishment? This is the most important of the three challenges facing today’s organizations. On average, seventy-five percent of employees are not engaged in their jobs. We need employees who regard their jobs as the way to bring their passion in the world. Our job as managers is to build a work climate, a sense of purpose that inspires initiative because obedience, diligence and intellect are mere table stakes in today’s hypercompetitive marketplace.

These ideas are from Hamel’s book, The Future of Management.

The Kinds of Employees You Want to Hire

Those who are innately confident and self-directed routinely outperform co-workers, regardless of their backgrounds

By Nick Tasler

There are two kinds of employees. Some believe they can make things happen, and the others believe that things happen to them. The first group believes that the outcome of their life and career is more or less in their own hands, and they wouldn't have it any other way. The other group takes the approach of sitting around and waiting for a bus to take them somewhere.

This distinguishing feature is captured by something called a "core self-evaluation." After more than a decade of research, psychologist Tim Judge has discovered that virtually all superstar employees—from rainmakers in the field to line workers on the floor to big guns in the boardroom—have one thing in common: a high core self-evaluation. Judge describes core self-evaulation as "a person's fundamental bottom line evaluation of their abilities."

Judge and his colleagues have shown overwhelmingly that employees who feel like they control the events in their lives more than events control them, and generally believe that they can make things turn out in their favor, end up doing better on nearly every important measure of work performance. They sell more than other employees do. They give better customer service. They adjust better to foreign assignments. They are more motivated. They bring in an average of 50% to 150% more annual income. Not surprisingly, these employees also like their jobs a lot more.

Better Performers in Good Times and Bad

In one study, Judge and his team tracked the progress of more than 12,000 people from their teenage years to middle age. He found that core self-evaluations predicted who did and didn't capitalize on the advantages life dealt them. With only a bleak view of their capacity to handle life's challenges and opportunities, even the brightest kids born to executives and engineers failed to reach as high an annual income as their less fortunate classmates.

By contrast, the supremely confident sons and daughters of roofers and plumbers who had only mediocre SAT scores and below average grades earned a 30%-60% higher income than the smart kids with dreary views of their abilities. And those kids with all the advantages of intelligence and pedigree plus a firm belief in their competence earned three times as much money as their otherwise equally blessed peers.

It seems that the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful employees has as much to do with an employee's beliefs about her ability as the reality of that ability. Considering that this difference is based as much on illusion as on reality, you might think the employee's performance would take a serious nosedive under challenging circumstances.

After all, if you think you're special, what happens when your superior or your board tells you about the areas in which you're falling short? Worse yet, what happens when the self-described superstar finds himself laid off or responsible for a division with tanking revenues? In other words, what happens when people who believe they are capable of controlling the world find themselves in an economy that is out of control?

It turns out that this is when the true stars shine. Tough times weed out both those with low self-evaluations and those who only pretend to have a high self-evaluation. In a series of studies by different researchers, employees with high self-evaluations have been found to respond better to corrective feedback. They also experience less stress and burnout than other employees, struggle less with work-life balance, and persevere more when searching for a job. Rather than shattering their beliefs in their abilities, it seems that a high self-evaluation creates a mental toughness that makes these people stronger and more resilient even when the chips are down.

The Core of Your Recovery Strategy

To identify these stars who can take charge of your organization's rebound, you can use Judge's simple 12-question "Core Self-Evaluations Scale." (You can learn more about the scale and download it for free on Tim Judge's Web site.) It would also be a good idea to start keeping an eye out for these positive go-getters already working for you and consider giving them more responsibility and visibility in your recovery efforts. Here is how to spot them:

• "I Think I Can" Attitude: Kindergarten never taught a lesson more supported by empirical evidence than this: People who believe they can overcome challenges are more successful in virtually every sphere of life, including work.

• In Control: Does this employee take control of his work, or does he always point to outside circumstances when his projects go astray?

• Confident, Not Narcissistic: There is an important difference between having a high self-evaluation and being a narcissist. Does the employee pitch in when teammates need help, or bad-mouth co-workers they view as threats? Are they receptive or defensive when you give them feedback?

• Emotionally Stable: Employees who aren't easily discouraged are less likely to succumb to stress and burnout. They solve problems instead of saying, "See, I knew it wouldn't work!"

You could argue that getting these winners and their can-do attitudes on board still can't do much about a dismal economy. After more than a year of watching the economy go the way of the Titanic, nobody would blame you for trying to wait out the hard times. But do you really want to spend the coming months soothing your anxieties with a box of chocolates, and hoping that your bus arrives before the wind picks up?

Making Better Decisions

By: Karen Rulifson

Nick Tasler recently had an interview done for his book, The Impulse Factor, and I wanted to share it here. Through his years of research, he found our efforts to make better decisions aren't complete if we don't take into consideration who is making the decision. He mentions about one quarter of the population have impulsive tendencies while the rest of the population are risk managers. He then provides a clear understanding of how we make the choices we do and the tools to make better decisions. Here is his interview:

How is your book different from other books out there on improving your decision making?
There are a lot of really great books on decision making out there. Virtually all of them are focused exclusively on how certain situations are going to impact the decisions we make. Now, that’s really important information, but a key piece of the puzzle is missing if you really want to improve the way people make decisions. You must take into account the natural tendencies of the decision maker. How each of us differs—whether we are more cautious or more impulsive—is going to impact how we see a given situation, and ultimately how we make a decision in that situation. Genetics have a lot to say about which kind of decision maker you are, and so do the experiences that have shaped you over the course of your life.

How are they alike – and how are they different?
Some people simply are more impulsive than other people, and they tend to make quicker—often riskier—decisions than other people. We know from a slew of psychological research that’s been done over the past decades that the majority of people steer clear of risk whenever they can. But not everybody fits that cautious mold. A naturally more impulsive person—that includes about a quarter of the population--doesn’t make decisions the same way most people do. They see things differently. Where the cautious majority of people see situations in light of what they might lose and how to manage the risks, the more impulsive people make decisions based on what they stand to gain from that situation. Cautious people tend to be more concerned with preserving their peace of mind, where impulsive people are concerned with scoring a bigger piece of the pie.

Another key difference is that the impulsive people tend to be much hastier when making decisions. And they actually prefer it that way. Think about this: impulsive people are nearly five times more likely to prefer making decisions under time pressure than cautious people are. In fact, 72% of cautious people said that they are least comfortable making decisions under pressure-packed conditions. On the other hand, over half of impulsive people said that they are most comfortable making decisions when they are pressed for time. As you can imagine, that stark contrast in styles has a huge impact on the conditions individual people need in order to make good decisions. To get the best results, some people need enough time, and others need limited time.

Why is it important for people to know their decision making style?
It’s absolutely vital knowledge if you ever intend to become a better decision maker. If you don’t know the way you naturally tend to approach decisions, then you’re going to end up reading a lot of advice and trying a lot of strategies that simply don’t apply to you. We often hear that you need to allow yourself plenty of time to make decisions. That’s fantastic advice for cautious people, but not for impulsive people. On the other hand, we generally don’t need to tell a more cautious person to think things through or to count the costs – they do plenty of that already. Both kinds of decision maker play a crucial role, and there are strategies they can both apply to become better decision makers. But the strategies are going to be different depending on which kind of decision maker you are.

The Impulse Factor talks about a genetic difference between the two, tell me more about that.
That’s one of the most fascinating things I found when researching the book. For a long time, I had been seeing these stylistic differences between people even though most researchers were glossing over it. But only recently have scientists begun to focus a lot of attention on a certain dopamine gene. Basically, this gene affects the way some people’s brains deal with dopamine. Dopamine is a brain chemical what makes us feel excited. For example, when you’re standing at the edge of an open airplane door with a parachute on your back or getting ready to buy a risky stock, your dopamine levels jump before you do. Except about 20-25% of the population has a certain dopamine gene that mutes the response that these people have to dopamine. So, where most of us can get excited by a good book or a roll in the hay, it doesn’t cut it for these people. They are wired for more stimulation, which makes them do things that most of us wouldn’t. They end up doing a lot of things without fully considering the risks or the consequences--it makes them impulsive.

In today’s fast environment, wouldn’t it be better if we were all impulsive?
Not so fast. We can’t forget that positive developments have come hand-in-hand with some rather unpleasant side effects. The need for stimulation seems to play a big role in addiction and other social ailments that we would be better off without. Traditionally, we haven’t paid enough attention to the positive aspects of impulsivity, but we absolutely can’t deny its negative aspects. If everyone were impulsive, businesses would all function like Enron, family life as we know it would be almost non-existent and human society would probably slip into unrelenting chaos. The truth is that we need a balance of impulsive people and cautious people in virtually every family, team, company and society. In fact, we need just as many, if not more, cautious people than impulsive people.

Ahh, and what might the most cautious segment of the population learn to improve their decision making style?
First of all, they really need to understand that caution is sexy too. Without fail, every time I give a group of people the Impulse Factor test, some people are always disappointed to find out that they are more cautious. They feel impulsive people are the only ones having fun or achieving success, which is clearly not the case. Impulsive people might sound more exciting, but on the whole they are also far more dangerous—to others and to themselves. Acting on a healthy respect for risks and consequences the way more cautious people do, is a good thing. Cautious people are three times as likely to consider risks before acting and are much less prone to taking shortcuts than impulsive people. An impulsive person left to their own devices will spend more time chasing their tail than creating any kind of value for themselves, their company or their society. So, if you’re cautious take pride in the fact that you don’t usually act rashly or carelessly.

The Great Entreprenuerial Leader

by: Gina L. Kellogg, MA

As an entrepreneurial leader you are moving in what feels to be a thousand different directions. You are balancing business development, operations, employee management, your personal life and the desire to do the craft you love. You find yourself in a circle of dismay, at the same time being filled with the satisfaction of making "it happen". You wear all the hats, play all the roles and make sacrifices beyond the imagination of the mainstream. You do this because you know, in the core of your being, that what you believe is possible. You can feel, smell, see, taste and hear the reality of your dream. You are already living in the vision and image of what your hands are in the process of creating.


In coaching entrepreneurial leaders, I have found there to be a great difference between entrepreneurial leaders who "make it", and those who find themselves choosing to settle back into a life of "clocking in". Those who "make it" know what they stand for. They honor their personal values, and are an inspiration to others because they exude through every ounce of their being truth, authenticity and a genuine understanding of self. They have a vision, believe in their vision, and articulate their vision with such conviction and meaning that others gravitate to the mere image of what the entrepreneur already knows to be true. They are courageous, face their fears and view the inevitable challenges as opportunities to transform, grow and learn. Most of all, they embrace and welcome the evolution and constant change that will create a greater brilliance than even they themselves are able to imagine.

The Perfect Entrepreneurial Storm

By: Sarah Sladek, Limelight Generations

A few weeks back, I was a mentor for the Girls Going Places Entrepreneurship Program in Minneapolis. I was truly inspired by how business-saavy these young girls were, and being in the generational line of work, I know that today's students and young adults claim the largest volume of start-ups in America. This business-savvy generation presents great opportunity for some, and great challenges for others. In either case, this generation presents significant change for our business climate as we know it.

An April 27, 2009 article in BusinessWeek refers to this change as the "perfect entrepreneurial storm". Just as the famously independent Generation Y enters business school, the world economy goes to hell in a handbasket. The former blue chips of Wall Street can no longer offer long-term job security and generous end-of-year bonuses, giving this new generation of MBA graduates the impetus to pursue their own business ownership dreams.

If business schools are smart, they will rush to embrace this entrepreneurial generation and give them the tools they need to realize those dreams. The time is certainly ripe. Most colleges had already observed declines in enrollment in nearly every major--with the exception of business.

What can business schools do to unleash this generation's inner entrepreneur? The BusinessWeek article advises them to take a cue from the Tuck School of Business (Tuck MBA Profile) at Dartmouth, which is hosting a new business plan competition, with a $50,000 prize, in an effort to inspire new entrepreneurial ideas and create jobs on both a local and national level.

Or they can follow the lead of schools like the Haas School of Business (Haas MBA Profile) at the University of California, Berkeley. The school's Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation provides students with the expertise to pursue their ideas and improve their negotiating hand with venture capitalists. It's a great example of how to encourage innovation in both new and established companies, and we need more such schools offering innovative solutions to the entrepreneurial challenge. With their accumulated store of knowledge about how to launch a business, and proximity to the profitable ideas in technology and the sciences, business schools should be the ideal platform to nurture a new generation of entrepreneurs. And this generation—highly social, confident, and networked—seems ready for the challenge.

I would add that high schools could take a lesson from Thomas Alva Edison High School's Business Entrepreneurship Program. The Business Enterprise program utilizes work-readiness training, job shadowing, e-mentoring, college site visits, guest speakers, and entrepreneur and high-tech clubs to give students a foundation of skills to build upon and transition from a high school setting to post-secondary two-year and four-year educational programs. If more schools provided business training at an earlier age, perhaps America's workforce would be successful at bridging the talent gap and not be in danger of lagging behind Europe, India, Australia, and other countries already preparing their next generation workforce.

Certainly the world needs this new generation of business-savvy entrepreneurs—now more than ever before. If the economy is going to recover, their optimism and their new ideas will be a big part of the reason.