DrContrarian

1. Lapse in corporate memory. 2. Staff turnover.

Commentators often talk about the ‘2- percenters’ - that is doing those things that are tough, have a low probability of success and yet goes to show an attitude of perseverance and commitment to the small details other people will overlook. (It is often used as a sporting analogy to illustrate the point (for instance) that you still chase down an opponent even if they have already crossed the line because the pressure may just result in a drop ball.) This analogy is misleading because it focuses on the 99 th and 100 th steps in the percentage of effort. True success comes from the 101 st and 102 nd percentage points of effort. Sprint athletes are told to finish ‘through the line’ and martial arts experts will tell you that you get hurt when you stop the momentum of your blow on impact; you must hit through the brick to break it. This is not the proverbial ‘extra mile’ that you must walk – which is merely an optional, nice touch. That would be gesture to differentiate yourself ...

One: Anything = Nothing, and Anything = Everything. Therefore, 'Anything' is the most powerful idea. Two: Outcome - (Objective + Action) = Zero.

The biggest killer of success is success. (The fear of failure grows in direct proportion to what you have got to lose.) This Contrarian principle has a number of corollaries: Bigger is always worse Innovation leads to less innovation Growth leads to death If you think you disagree, just add (ultimately) to the end of each of the above. Such is Life.

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...

Read an article by an ex-executive of Shell Corporation. It reports on material and significant findings of research project ( http://www.businessweek.com/chapter/degeus.htm ) that was designed to establish which factors account for the survival of companies (for more than 500 years). Read it - its fascinating. If you are in a hurry - here is a short summary of the findings: 1. Sensitivity to the environment represents a company's ability to learn and adapt. 2. Cohesion and identity, it is now clear, are aspects of a company's innate ability to build a community and a persona for itself. 3. Tolerance and its corollary, decentralization, are both symptoms of a company's awareness of ecology: its ability to build constructive relationships with other entities, within and out-side itself. 4. Conservative financing is a very critical corporate attribute: the ability to govern its own growth and evolution effectively. As usual the research raises further questions, b...

Read an article the other day (somewhere) that the war for talent is hotting up (again?). It makes sense in Australia where unemployment is just on 4% - a 30-year low. Being a newly minted entrepreneur – in Aus at least – I wonder about that. How and where will I find good people? People who will care as much as I do about my customers? I care because I know very personally that they are the people who allow me to eat and look after my family. Can any employee care as much? As soon as you are an employee, the person who feeds you is the boss – one step removed from the customer, and employees will always act accordingly: please the boss before the customer – that is only human. Even when I consider myself as an (ex-) employee, I must be honest and say… ‘I guess not!’ As much as I considered myself to be a valuable employee (no comments required on this one, thanks) I still did not care as much as I care now. And it is only when you are the owner of your own business that you get tha...

People usually take pride in saying that they are ‘not good with the detail’ but they really ‘get the big picture’. The uninitiated managers suffer from the misguided belief that it is somehow admirable to admit to being a ‘big picture’ thinker. They believe of course that the big picture is more conceptual, more strategic and more important. The Brotherhood of Management knows better. There are only a handful of people in any organisation who need to get the big picture – and you are almost certainly not one of them. Brothers should never admit to being better at the detail than the conceptual, for it is necessary that not all workers pay attention to the detail. It suits the Brotherhood if workers are concerned with the big picture items because it is in the detail where we can lay the landmines that trip up the unsuspecting. Nothing could be further from the truth that you should not sweat the small stuff. It is all about the small stuff. The devil is truly in the detail and if you ...

Belief generates attitude. Attitude generates emotions Emotions generates performance. Performance generates results Results reinforce belief, completing the cycle

There are so many books, blogs, speakers and gurus that emphasise a few ‘mantras, millions of titles, the same old story: Believe in yourself Follow your hear and your passion and success will follow (i.e. don’t do if for the money) Stay true to yourself/Stay true to your brand Stay focussed/ Be disciplined You must have a unique selling proposition/ a niche Have a goal/ set your objectives (and write it down and read them every day) Over the coming weeks I want to debunk some of these myths/ beliefs, but for today, all I want ask is whether all these people could possibly be right, or whether these observations are simply obvious and logical (very hard for the guru followers to argue with) and that we started to believe these things through sheer repetition, rather than because of any veracity.

The Secret continues to gain traction. For every disciple there seems to be a dozen detractors. The basic response of the unbelievers is simply a ‘rational’ reaction that scoffs at the notion of people being luck magnets. Being able to attract abundance through sheer will is just too close to ‘magic’ to be realistic. There are many very credible naysayers, but there are equally powerful proponents of ‘the secret’. Who to believe? Like any good sect, that adopts the best bits from traditional religion but leaves out the inconvenient bits, the secret does the same with reality. It is true that we are simply manifestations of energy. But the truth is also that opposites attract (in the real world of positive and negative poles of magnets). By spinning ourselves into a ‘positive’ state of expectation, we will sure attract the opposite if science is anything to go by? It is true that people are by and large responsible for their own miserably lives, but the truth is also that control...

The Secret continues to gain traction. For every disciple there seems to be a dozen detractors. The basic response of the unbelievers is simply a ‘rational’ reaction that scoffs at the notion of people being luck magnets. Being able to attract abundance through sheer will is just too close to ‘magic’ to be realistic. There are many very credible naysayers, but there are equally powerful proponents of ‘the secret’. Who to believe? Like any good sect, that adopts the best bits from traditional religion but leaves out the inconvenient bits, the secret does the same with reality. It is true that we are simply manifestations of energy. But the truth is also that opposites attract (in the real world of positive and negative poles of magnets). By spinning ourselves into a ‘positive’ state of expectation, we will sure attract the opposite if science is anything to go by? It is true that people are by and large responsible for their own miserably lives, but the truth is also that control...

There are many obstacles to achieving success. Failure is the default position, I think. (Several 100 million sperm, one baby. Etcetera.) So what are the obstacles? Let me not count the ways… there still many blogs to come, but I’ll just focus on one: CYNICISM. Cynicism is such an easy, ‘adult’ excuse. It masquerades as word-weary experience, so it is very handy to pull out. And because success is more exceptional than it should be, the cynics are often right. But to be successful, you need an almost child-like naiveté: To remain positive in the face adversity, to persist against the odds – all these things require a suspension of ‘reality’ that’s seems very self-evident to the cynic. There are always more reasons to give up than there are to keep going so to be cynical is more realistic and possibly even more rational. Cynicism also provides the rationale after you quit – making it the easy option; justifiable under the circumstances. And because the circumstances are always s...

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...

A rhetorical question today: Do you also wonder (sometimes) if we are truly able to make our own life (successes and failures) or whether it has been pre-determined by God? The age-old debate of predeterminism: God must know everything - or else He is not omniscient. If God knows everything, then my decision is already made. Is life worth living if my success or failure is not as a result of my labour and initiative and creativity? The answer lies in what the image to the right represents. It is an image of Pollock's paintings ("Convergence: Number 10, 1952" at The Albright-Knox Gallery). It is a fractal image. Just Google 'fractal pattern') and you will see tens of thousands examples. Fractal image is an image of chaos. It illustrates one of the tenets chaos theory very clearly: At the level of the whole it appears chaotic; random swirls and lines. Look closer and you will see fine repeating patterns. And Life is like that: For the individual in his or her own ...

Margaret Wheatley asked this question: Who are you? http://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/eightfearlessquestions.html The question is not new - in fact it is probably the original question (or maybe even the primordial) question. But her take on the response is interesting: Your answer should be 'big' enough to hold your life. Do you define yourself as a cancer survivor? A father? A marketer? Are any of these answers 'big' enough to hold your whole life? Suddenly we start needing multiple lables - and maybe that is a cop out? What is the 'lable' that will define who you really are? And here is my little insight: Those who can define who they are most clearly and soonest, are the ones who become who they think they are best, and hence are the most successful? It is the philosophical equivalent of a USP or a brand proposition, or maybe even the sales equivalent of your 30 sec elevator pitch. You don't only need it - but you need to live it. That is when the...

I read an article on the net that has me (mentally) running for the hills. Check it out: http://www.collegejournal.com/aidadmissions/newstrends/20050425-kronholz.html In essence it highlights the lengths that college-hopefuls are going to in order to secure a place at the better tertiary institutions. There is evidence that Australia is already heading that way; to wit: the fierce battle for selective school places, the after-hours tutoring colleges, and the private school enrollment boom. Simply put, people are putting their lives on hold to get access to what is perceived to be a better education. People are spending a fortune and accelerating the learning curve to secure a foothold in the ‘good’ schools. The most obvious question is of course: does it really work? There are a dozen things wrong with this hyper-competitive approach, but if it works, none of those arguments will stack. The answer is so obvious that it boggles the mind: There is absolutely zero correlation betwe...