DrContrarian

I attended the ‘Presentation Day’ at my son’s primary school today. As a matter of principle I put all my children through the public school system (as opposed to private schools). There are probably 300 or so kids in the school and has reasonable ethnic diversity. It was the principal’s last presentation day – not sure where he is going but he is leaving. The cadre of female teachers appeared scarily close to 5 years from retirement. It was my first presentation day – you should know that too. I have successfully avoided any involvement with the school (from parents’ nights to fundraising events to presentation days) for the better part of 14 years now. My deal with the school is that I will educate my children (including a solid set of values) and the school can provide the schooling: call me if you have a problem, otherwise we leave each other well alone. This is not as weird as it sounds at first; but as an educator myself I feel that riding shotgun for my child while the teachers ...

Mandossian: " The only marketing genius is the customer." Price: "Every cent spent on marketing activities is an admission of failure."

Failure to assess your own competence In many ways this related to the prior posting about inability to recognise weaknesses. But it actually goes further than that: people simply over-rate themselves. We have been fed an American diet of: over-achievement, positive thinking, self-belief, that we end up believing our own press. Capability and talent is distributed on a normal distribution curve. Half the world is below average. (Of course the readers of this blog do not fall into that half J .) But the reality is that not everybody gets to be no 1, gets to be the CEO or whatever. Because people believe they are better than they really are, they end doing poorly in jobs/ situations which they never should have let themselves get into. (May I confess that I am not exempted.) It has been documented a long time ago that there is a Peter Principle at play in the management ranks. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle ) The phenomenon of overestimating our abilities is re...

Part 5 in this short series. (Who knows how long it will be? J ). Initially I thought I’d stick to the fundamental, root causes only, but the reality is that most people will only read titbits, and not necessarily in one go, so I will simply highlight these reasons as they come to mind; whether it is primary or secondary cause… Inability to influence. Managers spend more than half their time influencing other people would be my guesstimate. Some time to do own work and some unproductive time etc. but the bulk of productive time is spent influencing people. The difference between a good manager and a poor one is directly correlated to their ability to influence others. Failure is usually a result of an inability to influence – especially an inability to exert upward influence. It is something we learnt as children, but many of us lose the knack for making people with more power do the stuff we want them, or rather need them to do. The psychology of influence is fascinating. But ...

I must be honest about the previous post and admit the weakness that I have fallen in love with. (Blogs should be about honesty, right? And besides, and can’t just point the finger at everyone else without acknowledging my own failures; that would be hypocritical and that is NOT one of my weaknesses.) My own weakness parading as a strength is that I can be am argumentative. This is because I believe TRUTH is paramount (at least my version of the truth). And I have been ‘truthful’ to the point of hurting people’s feelings: as long as the truth can prevail. It is not just a weakness; it is quite sadly more than that. But instead of dealing with the cause of it, I have learned to justify it to myself to the extent that I have even become proud of it and started justifying it to everyone else. It is quite easy to put truth on a pedestal; how can anyone argue against ‘honesty’ as positive attribute? But the fact is that no society can function properly without the small white lies tha...

Weaknesses parading as strengths Managers, myself included, often refuse to acknowledge that our personalities are defective; or at the very least that we have traits and attitudes (that are in essence weaknesses) but that we have become comfortable with and have grown to accept and even like. We often see this in interview when candidates are asked about their weaknesses. The response is usually to identify a weakness that can equally be perceived to be a strength; to wit: “I am sometimes too detailed orientated.” This is just another demonstration of how misguided people can sometimes be. The sad thing is, the candidate parades the ‘weakness’ only because they know some people might see that as a weakness, but deep down they do not really believe it is a weakness. I have interviewed 100s – and I am not exaggerating here – and I have NEVER met a candidate who has answered the question with anything that can remotely be considered to be a realistic and truthful representation of ...

There are a host of reasons. I have studies enough, learned enough and failed enough to have some compelling arguments as to why managers fail… Over time I’ll explore a few of those. The obvious one is incompetence – but I will ignore that as a reason. Arguably that is the error of the manager’s manager more than anything, but most importantly; I don’t believe that people reading this would fall into that category. And if you are incompetent – at managing only of course - The number one reason – without any doubt in my mind is misunderstanding or underestimating the nature of POWER. Do you have power? Do you know who (else) has power? Do you know what you derive it from? Do you know why you have it? Do you know how to use it? Do you know when to use it? Do you know how it is used against you? Are you super aware of how it ebbs and flows on a daily basis, from meeting to meeting, from person to person? Are you using power ‘prem...

I promised upfront not to blog unless there was something to say - so I had a quiet week. Until I read http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2007/04/the_big_dip_ten.html - Guy Kawasaki's blog. I have contrarian views - most of the time, but usually agree with Guy on almost everything. Until now. In my view, the essential question (when do you quit?) is a very important one. It is hard to distinguish the difference between focus & discipline, and being smart enough to adapt and change or innovate. The difference between success and failure are tallied in the decisions you have made. Only with hindsight do you know if a decision was right or wrong - and that is why so many people believe in 'luck'. Sometimes 'sticking to a decision' gets the right outcome - much like a broken clock is 100% right at least twice a day. Sometimes you have to 'desert a sinking ship' or 'stop throwing good money after bad'. In this case, the question has been answered by a stat...

Is confidence really all it is cracked up to be? It may be counter-intuitive (hey I am contrarian) but confidence may be counter-productive. When you are confident you are less aware of your situation, your environment and the people around because you simply don’t need to be. In the first instance that makes you extremely vulnerable to delusions of grandeur which turns you into an instant arsehole. (Which might not matter to you, because you are Mr Big) but it matters to the people who buy from you, it matters to the people who want network with you. Granted, arseholeness does not follow confidence automatically, but too often it does. (Ask Trump…) The difference between confidence and over-confidence is only a wink away. Confidence makes you vulnerable to your enemies because you simply cannot physically remain alert to danger signals if you are focused on yourself and ‘being confident’. Confidence requires a high level of self-awareness (and some may say self-absorption), and t...