Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Nagesh Belludi

Facts Alone Can’t Sell: Lessons from the Intel Pentium Integer Bug Disaster

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Facts Alone Can’t Change Minds

In my previous article, I discussed Aristotle’s framework for persuasion and argumentation: to persuade people on a particular point of view, it is necessary to appeal to ethos (credibility,) pathos (emotion,) and logos (logic and reason.) Some people are swayed by logic, others by appeals to emotion, and yet others defer to those who seem to possess authority, expertise, and credibility.

In this article, I give a case study of the “Intel Pentium Integer Bug Disaster” to illustrate that facts (logos) alone sometimes don’t have the power to change minds. Many people are adept at those elements of persuasion that Aristotle characterized as logos: i.e., they are proficient at making their case logically and rationally to their audience. But they may not recognize the need for the pathos aspects of persuasion and may struggle to emotionally connect with their audiences.

Mathematical Errors by the Pentium chip

Intel endured one of the most painful episodes in its history soon after it launched the Pentium processor. It was ridiculed by customers and the media for a flaw in the Pentium chip. Intel’s handling of the crisis was even worse than the bug itself. The Pentium flaw and its aftermath eventually led Intel to undertake large-scale product replacements that resulted in a $475 million write-off on its balance sheet.

In June 1994, about a year after Intel launched the Pentium microprocessor with much fanfare and a massive advertising campaign, some Internet newsgroups started discussing a flaw in the Pentium’s floating point unit. This error caused occasional mathematical errors in the chip’s advanced number-crunching component.

Intel knew about the problem. Internal investigators had established that the error “caused a rounding error in division once every nine billion times … an average spreadsheet user would run into the problem only once every 27,000 years of spreadsheet use.” Consequently, Intel’s executives concluded that the error was insignificant and didn’t pay much attention.

Much to Intel’s astonishment, some trade publications caught wind of the online discussions. In November 1994, CNN aired a nasty report about the Pentium flaw. Other media outlets pounced on Intel; The New York Times published an article titled “Flaw Undermines Accuracy of Pentium Chips.” As a direct result of all the negative publicity, Intel’s customers were up in arms and flooded Intel’s customer service lines with customer complaints. By then, Intel (through IBM, Compaq, HP, Dell, Gateway, and other computer OEMs) had shipped two million Pentium chips.

Intel Decided Stuck to Its Guns and Refused to Replace All Pentium Chips

Throughout this crisis, Intel’s leadership underestimated the scale of customer reaction because they believed that facts were in their favor. Intel’s illustrious CEO Andy Grove decided to set the record straight and issued a memo in which he acknowledged the Pentium fault, but declared that it affected only “users of the Pentium processor who are engaged in heavy-duty scientific/floating-point calculations.”

Back then, microprocessors were not yet a commodity product and consumers had paid a premium to buy computers with Pentium chips instead of those with the discounted previous-generation 486 processors. Justifiably, Intel’s customers were enraged and started demanding that Intel send them replacement chips.

In response, Intel decided to stick to its guns, because management believed in the persuasive ability of their facts. Intel’s leadership declared that they would not replace the chips unless consumers would individually call and establish that their chips would be used for advanced math calculations. At the company’s toll-free customer service line, customers had to endure a protracted interview process for Intel to deem them worthy of receiving a corrected chip. Customers who couldn’t convince Intel that they may encounter the bug in their daily computer-use didn’t make the cut.

In December 1994, all hell broke loose for Intel when IBM stopped shipments of all Pentium-based computers. Grove later recalled, “The phones started ringing furiously from all quarters. The call volume to our hotline skyrocketed. Our other customers wanted to know what was going on. And their tone, which had been quite constructive the week before, became confused and anxious. We were back on the defensive again in a major way.”

Ignoring Customer Sentiment (Pathos) Aggravated the Intel Pentium Crisis

Eventually, Intel caved in. Grove reflected, “After a number of days of struggling against the tide of public opinion, of dealing with the phone calls and the abusive editorials, it became clear that we had to make a major change.” Intel reversed its policy, established a huge customer service operation, and announced that it would replace the Pentium chip for any customer who wanted it replaced. The crisis came to pass only after Intel replaced hundreds of thousands of Pentium chips at a cost of $475 million.

The Intel Pentium Bug is a textbook example of how not to handle a delicate situation and hurt a product’s image. A good deal of this mismanagement could be attributed to an engineering-driven corporate culture within Intel, shaped in part by Grove’s attitude that facts alone could—and should—sell. He believed in the no-nonsense way of doing business: all through the crisis, Intel stuck with the facts, refused to bow before pressure, and told customers to get on with the flawed Pentium processor.

Amazingly, the Pentium Crisis Did Not Affect Intel’s Brand

Fortunately, Intel not only survived the Pentium crisis, but its brand recognition increased and Intel even appeared on Fortune magazine’s list of most admired companies. In the two years prior to the Pentium launch, Intel had embarked on an aggressive marketing campaign to build up the Intel brand. The “Intel Inside” slogan was plastered on billboards in all major markets and TV commercials repeatedly blared the renowned “Intel Inside” jingle.

Another upshot of this crisis was that the attention Intel and Pentium received brought microprocessor chips bang into the public consciousness. With the August 1995-release of Microsoft’s Windows 95, the “Wintel” partnership between Microsoft and Intel ushered a wave of consumer demand that brought inexpensive personal computing to the masses around the world.

Lessons from the Intel Pentium Disaster: Just Being a Truth Teller May Not Be Enough

'Only the Paranoid Survive' by Andrew S. Grove (ISBN 0385483821) It is fallacious to assume that logic, reason, and facts are all potent and that rationality will triumph over irrationality. During the Pentium crisis, Intel had assumed that an honest appraisal of facts of the Pentium bug would have the strength to change customer’s minds. However, sticking to facts alone backfired.

Following Aristotle’s ethos-pathos-logos framework, Intel had logos right: Intel’s assessment that the Pentium errors would not affect most people’s use of their computers was accurate. As the CEO of Intel, Grove had ethos right: his engineers were the prevalent authorities on microprocessor technology and Intel was the dominant producer of computer chips. But Intel got pathos wrong: by just presenting facts (logos) with authority (ethos) and ignoring customer sentiment (pathos), Intel’s arrogant stance was not only ineffective but also aggravated the whole Pentium crisis.

Idea for Impact: During Argumentation, Ignore Pathos At Your Own Peril

When persuading others of your ideas, don’t assume that logos alone has the power to change their minds. Don’t arm yourself with just bulletproof facts, scientific evidence, logic, and rationality and expect logos to sway others to your point of view. Recent research suggests that emotion plays a significant role even in situations where logic seems to be the dominant driver of decision-making.

Decision-making isn’t just logical, it’s emotional too. Remember, “When the heart pulls, the head tends to follow.”

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Persuade Others to See Things Your Way: Use Aristotle’s Ethos, Logos, Pathos, and Timing
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  3. How to … Make a Memorable Elevator Speech
  4. Deliver The Punchline First
  5. Why Good Founding Stories Sell: Stories That Appeal, Stories That Relate

Inspirational Quotations #616

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He surely is most in need of another’s patience, who has none of his own.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (Swiss Christian Poet)

It is a good thing to laugh, at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness. Beasts can weep when they suffer, but they cannot laugh.
—John Dryden (English Poet)

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

We never desire strongly, what we desire rationally.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

We cannot overstate our debt to the past, but the moment has the supreme claim.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

He who has no faith in others shall find no faith in them.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

The essence of justice is mercy.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (American Universalist Preacher)

A homely face and no figure have aided many women heavenward.
—Minna Antrim

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.
—Walter Lippmann (American Journalist)

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.
—Alvin Toffler

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Next to love, sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

Necessity does everything well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

This Manager’s Change Initiatives Lacked Ethos, Pathos, Logos: Case Study on Aristotle’s Persuasion Framework

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In my previous article, I reviewed Aristotle’s framework for persuasion and argumentation: to win over others to a particular point of view, it’s necessary to appeal through ethos (credibility,) pathos (emotion,) and logos (reason.) In this article, I give a case study of organizational initiative that lacked ethos, pathos, and logos.

Consider the case of a young mid-level manager I coached last year. Helen (name changed for anonymity) recently joined the finance department of a capital-goods company. Two months into her job, she was bothered by her lack of initial success in bringing about change at her workplace.

Helen was smart, driven, and had a great professional track record. During her interviews, she had impressed her supervisors by her hard work, drive, and creative ideas. They recruited her to implement rigorous audit processes.

Just a few weeks after joining, Helen drew from her previous experience and generated many new and creative ideas to overhaul the financial audit processes. Her supervisors had given her all the responsibility and authority to bring about the necessary changes. However, she quickly encountered a problem: her peers and team members would not buy into her ideas.

In meetings where Helen spoke of her vision for change, her peers and team members would politely pay lip service to her ideas, but when it came to actually implementing her suggestions, nothing seemed to happen. Helen received a 360-degree feedback exercise about how her peers and team members perceived her and her ideas.

Helen was startled by the feedback she received. In response, she decided to improve her approach to selling her ideas by working on all three dimensions of Aristotle’s persuasion framework.

  • Ethos: Helen lacked ethos among her peers and her team members. She possessed ethos in the eyes of her superiors who’d recruited her and granted her authority to bring about the necessary change, but not with her peers and team members. She realized that she needed to prove herself and her ideas’ credibility.
  • Pathos: Helen had failed to elicit pathos and never took the time and effort to involve her peers and team members in the decision-making and convince them of the need for change.
  • Logos: Helen assumed that the problems she had faced at her previous employer were the same problems her new employer faced. Without learning about the corporate culture and the existing audit processes by interviewing her peers and team members, Helen had made all her recommendations for change based on things she had seen work in other settings. Her suggestions found no resonance for her new colleagues—to them she seemed to be trying to fix problems that did not exist.

Idea for Impact: To persuade others to your point of view, you must understand what truly moves your audience and then appeal through all the elements of Aristotle’s ethos-pathos-logos framework.

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  5. Honest Commitments: Saying ‘No’ is Kindness

Persuade Others to See Things Your Way: Use Aristotle’s Ethos, Logos, Pathos, and Timing

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During argumentation—i.e. when putting forward a point of view—your goal is to persuade your audience that your thesis is valid, engage them in your favor, change their opinion, and influence them to act as you’d like them to act.

The American literary theorist Kenneth Burke wrote in his Rhetoric of Motives, “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is meaning, there is persuasion.” Learning to make effective arguments is helpful in every facet of decision-making and sharing ideas with others—not only in verbal and written discourses, but also in marketing, sales promotion, crisis-management, storytelling, courtship, social etiquette, and education.

Some 2400 years ago, the Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote one of the most important works on argumentation. In his treatise Rhetorica, he explained that arguments are more persuasive when applied in three distinct but inseparable dimensions: ethos (credibility,) logos (reason,) and pathos (emotion.) He wrote,

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself … The modes of persuasion are the only true constituents of the art: everything else is merely accessory.

There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions—that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.

Element #1 of Persuasion: Ethos (‘Character’ in Greek)

Aristotle contended that audiences are more likely to be convinced when an argument comes from someone of standing, repute, authority, and legitimacy:

We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is generally true whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided … It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatise on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasions; on the contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses.

Your ability to persuade depends on demonstrating that you are a credible authority on a subject. Credibility comes from your academic and professional credentials, social standing, integrity of character, and trustworthiness.

Ethos is also about how you express your expertise. Enhance your ethos by projecting confidence and paying attention to your mannerisms, dress, demeanor, tone, style, posture, body language, and crispness of your message. Appeal to ethos because your audience is likely to be persuaded if they believe you’re likeable and worthy of their respect. If you lack credibility, you must determine how to produce credibility, address your lack of it, or involve somebody credible who can vouch for your ideas.

Element #2 of Persuasion: Pathos (‘Suffering’ or ‘Experience’ in Greek)

As the saying goes, when the heart pulls, the head tends to follow.

Aristotle contended that persuasion also depends on making an emotional and imaginative impact on the audience by “putting the hearer into a certain frame of mind” (“ton akroaten diatheinai poos”):

Secondly, persuasion may come through the power of the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

To appeal to emotion, you must understand and relate to the needs, values, and desires of your audience. Identify and appeal to what motivates the audience to anger and happiness, what irritates them and leads them to fear, what animates them and arouses their empathy. Defense attorneys often use this technique: they try to appeal to a jury or judge’s emotions by invoking sympathy for the accused and swaying them into thinking that the accused has done little or no wrong.

Element #3 of Persuasion: Logos (‘Word’ in Greek)

Logos refers to the argument’s clarity and integrity. Aristotle stressed logic and the appeal to reason:

Thirdly, persuasion is effected by the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.

Appeal to your audience using logical consistency, analytical reasoning, rationale, and supporting evidence. Don’t just persuade your audience from your vantage point. Instead, construct a viewpoint that can assert your audience’s own objectives and goals.

Element #4 of Persuasion: Timing

Aristotle mentioned that timing of delivery is a fourth dimension of successful argumentation. Therefore, even if ethos, pathos, and logos are in place, efforts to persuade may fail if they are deployed at the wrong time.

These three kinds of rhetoric refer to three different kinds of time. The political orator is concerned with the future: it is about things to be done hereafter that he advises, for or against. The party in a case at law is concerned with the past; one man accuses the other, and the other defends himself, with reference to things already done. The ceremonial orator is, properly speaking, concerned with the present, since all men praise or blame in view of the state of things existing at the time, though they often find it useful also to recall the past and to make guesses at the future.

To persuade your audience, know where to focus the conversation—the past, present, or future. As the Greek didactic poet Hesiod emphasized in Works and Days, “observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor.”

Use Four Vantage Points to Improve Your Abilities in Argumentation and Negotiation

You can be more persuasive if you understand what truly moves your audience. Some people are swayed by logic, others by appeals to emotion, and still others quickly defer to those who seem to possess authority and expertise.

Aristotle’s ethos, pathos, and logos provide a clear, understandable, and easy-to-apply framework for developing argumentation. Although these three elements can be analyzed separately, they often overlap and work together. Often it may not be possible or useful to completely distinguish them.

Recommended Resources

Round up your persuasive skills by combining Aristotle’s technique with these recommended approaches.

  • Robert Cialdini’s best-selling books, Influence The Psychology of Persuasion and Science and Practice, identify six ways to persuade another person. Watch this and this YouTube videos for excellent summaries of these six principles.
    1. reciprocity, when the other acts in expectation that his/her favors will be returned
    2. commitment and consistency, when the other takes actions consistent with his/her self-image
    3. social proof, when the other replicates the actions of others
    4. authority, when the other acquiesces to authority even if the request is questionable
    5. liking, when the other is persuaded by those whom they know, like, respect, and admire
    6. scarcity, when an object becomes more desirable because it is in short supply
  • Simon Sinek’s Start with Why advocates that when pitching a product, service, idea, or proposal to an audience, you must start with answering why they should they care. “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Sinek’s TED talk (this YouTube video) describes his concept of “The Golden Circle”—with the ‘why’ at the core, surrounded by ‘how,’ and the finally the ‘what.’
  • Richard Shell and Mario Moussa’s The Art of Woo recommends that people use relationship-based, emotionally intelligent approaches to persuade others of the value of their ideas to “win them over” rather than to “defeat” them.
  • William Ury’s The Power of a Positive No offers a “yes-no-yes” framework to (1) connect a situation, circumstance or dilemma to your core set of interests and values, (2) communicate your decision assertively and respectfully and yet obtain the most positive outcome for you and for others.
  • Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton’s popular book Getting to Yes offers an step-by-step plan of action for coming to mutually satisfactory agreements to conflict.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Facts Alone Can’t Sell: Lessons from the Intel Pentium Integer Bug Disaster
  2. How to … Make a Memorable Elevator Speech
  3. Deliver The Punchline First
  4. Why Good Founding Stories Sell: Stories That Appeal, Stories That Relate
  5. This Manager’s Change Initiatives Lacked Ethos, Pathos, Logos: Case Study on Aristotle’s Persuasion Framework

Inspirational Quotations #615

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Never tell a man how to do something. Tell him what to do and let him surprise you with his ingenuity.
—George S. Patton (American Military Leader)

The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.
—Max Beerbohm

To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
—William James (American Philosopher)

Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

The world is too must: with us; late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste our powers. Little we see in nature that is ours.
—William Wordsworth (English Poet)

None but the brave deserve the fair.
—John Dryden (English Poet)

He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.
—Herman Melville (American Novelist)

Leaders must live by higher standards than their followers.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

Nothing is more fatal to health than an over care of it.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

How to Make Wise People Decisions

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Here are eight basic management principles for making wise people decisions:

  1. Pay attention to your people decisions. These are the decisions that determine your team/organization’s performance. Hiring and coaching employees is a manager’s most important task.
  2. For any assignment, pick people who’ve shown at least some evidence of the ability to do it well. Don’t expect them to be productive in their new role within days or weeks.
  3. Do not give new people major assignments. First, put them into positions where expectations are known and help is available. Help them make the transition.
  4. Set the right expectations. A manager can forestall a great deal of employee problems by proactively setting expectations.
  5. Don’t ignore concerns until they morph into problems. Conflict can be emotionally distressing, but being decisive and doing what’s best eventually works out well for everyone.
  6. If an employee is doing poorly, first attempt remediation and coaching. If those don’t solve his/her underperformance, it’s usually prudent to cut your losses. Giving the employee more time to improve not only wastes time and energy, but increases the mutual hostility and chances of a claim of wrongful termination.
  7. Take responsibility for mistakes. Don’t blame the person you hire or promote for not performing. Your decision put them there.
  8. Take your managerial duties seriously. It’s your obligation to make sure that responsible people in your organization perform. In turn, they have a right to expect you to be a competent manager.

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  5. How to Manage Overqualified Employees

Effective Goals Can Challenge, Motivate, and Energize

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One of my blog readers asked me to write more about goal-setting and performance against goals. In response, I studied the work of University of Maryland’s Edwin Locke and University of Toronto’s Gary Latham, two renowned researchers on goal-setting. Here is a summary.

Goals Impact Performance in Several Ways

  • Goals can help direct: A person’s goals should direct his/her attention, effort, and action toward goal-relevant actions at the expense of less-relevant actions.
  • Goals can help motivate: A person’s goals can motivate him/her to pursue specific outcomes. The person can be motivated only when his/her goals are sufficiently challenging and can nudge him/her to put in special efforts.
  • Goals can help persist: A person is likely to persist at his/her efforts when his/her goal is worthy enough to attain.
  • Goals can trigger learning: Goals can either activate a person’s knowledge and skills that are relevant to performance or induce the person to acquire such knowledge or skills.

Best Practices for Goal-Setting and Performance

  • Specific, difficult, but attainable goals lead to better performance than easy, vague, or abstract goals such as the general-purpose exhortation to “do your best.” Hard goals motivate because they require a person to achieve more in order to be content with his/her own performance.
  • 'Goals' by Brian Tracy (ISBN 1605094110) Goal specificity and performance share a positive, linear relationship. When a person’s goals are specific, they direct and energize his/her behavior far more effectively than when they are vague and unspecific.
  • Performance is directly proportional to the difficulty of a goal as long as a person is committed to the goal, has the requisite ability and resources to achieve the goal, and does not have conflicting goals.
  • Taking on excess work without access to the necessary resources to realize the goals (“overload”) can moderate the effects of goals.
  • A team performs best when the goals of the individuals on the team are compatible with the team’s goal. Therefore, when an individual’s goals are incompatible with his team’s, his/her contribution to the team will be subpar.
  • The goal need not be in focal awareness all the time. Once a goal is accepted and understood, it resides in the periphery of the person’s consciousness and serves to guide and give meaning to his/her actions.
  • While long-term goals are relevant and helpful, most people find short-term goals more effective because they channel a person’s immediate and direct efforts and provide quick feedback. This suggests that it’s best to divide long-term goals into concrete short-term objectives.
  • 'Living in Your Top 1%' by Alissa Finerman (ISBN 1453619232) Self-efficacy plays a key role in the achievement of goals. A person is much more likely to buy into and pursue goals if he/she believes himself/herself to be competent enough to reach those goals. The most effective goals must therefore embrace a person’s strengths—such goals help him/her strive towards success by leveraging the best of who he/she is and what he/she can do.
  • One reason a person may lack self-efficacy is his/her past failures with undertaking similar goals. Such a person may believe that he/she may never reach his/her goals and should first undertake a series of small, near-term goals instead of difficult, distant goals. The person’s success with a series of smaller goals can boost his/her confidence and can inspire him/her to undertake larger goals. For example, a chain-smoker will find the goal of smoking cessation daunting. He should therefore focus on smaller goals like gradually cutting down the number of cigarettes he smokes every day. Experiences of goal achievement can build up momentum to tackle the larger goal.
  • Goals are not effective by themselves. Feedback is the most important moderator of goal-setting because it tracks the progress of performance towards goals and creates new sub-goals. If a person finds his/her progress towards a goal unsatisfactory, the feedback he/she receives can drive corrective efforts to develop new skills or pursue the goal in a new way.

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  5. Intentions, Not Resolutions

Inspirational Quotations #614

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If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose. So the one is pretty equal to the other.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Some troubles, like a protested note of a solvent debtor, bear interest.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could only do a little.
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer (Polish-born American Children’s Books Writer)

Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Those who are held wise among men, and who search for the reason of things, are those who bring the most sorrow upon themselves.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Read an hour every day in your chosen field. This works out to about one book per week, 50 books per year, and will guarantee your success.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
—Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand-born British Author)

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Desire is the presentiment of our inner abilities, and the forerunner of our ultimate accomplishments.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

If You Want to Create Positive Change, Instill Pride

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Eliciting top performance in employees is the essence of management.

And one of the most effective ways to motivate employees is to instill a sense of pride.

Very often, managers try to command and control by instilling a sense of shame or fear: managers use these emotions when they are either unwilling or unable to persuade employees to meet expectations. Sure, shame and fear get results, but they do so at a cost: employees not only behave irrationally when they’re afraid or put to shame, but also become stressed, lose self-confidence, and grow resentful towards the manager and the organization.

The best way to motivate positive change is to invoke pride; try, “Jeremy, I am disappointed with your performance [on this task]. Given how well you did [an excellent job] on [a previous assignment], I know you can do a lot better than this.” This technique conjures up in the employee a sense of pride about a great previous performance and invokes a sense of guilt about failing to excel as before.

Pride is the most prominent element of intrinsic motivation that can be levered effectively to instill change. Remember that extrinsic motivation is in itself pointless; people will change only if intrinsically motivated.

Idea for Impact: Whether you’re managing or parenting, if you want to penalize, instill shame or fear; if you want to create positive change, instill pride.

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  4. How to … Lead Without Driving Everyone Mad
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What Is the Point of Life, If Only to Be Forgotten?

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While traveling around the magical Norwegian Fjords and contemplating life one day last summer, I recalled a young man’s story. He had spent many years in an Indian prison despite being acquitted because everyone had forgotten about him.

Forgotten

In 1988, Pratap Nayak was arrested at the age of 14 after getting caught in a violent clash between two rival families in his village in the state of Orissa. A corrupted lower court promptly sentenced him to life imprisonment.

Thanks to the Indian judicial system’s sluggishness, it took six years for a High Court to pronounce Nayak innocent. Unfortunately, nobody informed him or the prison officials about this judgment and his lawyer had died during the intervening years. Nayak’s family had assumed helplessness and lost touch with both him and with the lawyer.

Nayak remained in jail for eight more years after acquittal until a prison system auditor realized that Nayak wasn’t supposed to still be in prison. When he was finally freed at age 28, he was astonished and said, “no one bothered about me … not even my own family.”

When Nayak was finally reunited with his impoverished family of bamboo craftsmen, his father cried, “How shall I take care of him? We don’t get enough to eat ourselves. Had he completed his education, he would have had a good job by now. They ruined his life.”

“Life’s but a walking shadow … then is heard no more”

Shakespeare’s Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, Lines 22–31) contains one of the most eloquent expressions of our lives’ cosmic insignificance:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

What Difference Does It Make What We Do with Our Lives?

Whenever I’m enjoying the splendor of the mountains and the waters—as I did in the Norwegian Fjords—and marvel at how these natural elements came to be millions of years ago, I meditate upon the fact that what we identify as our lifespan is but a tiny sliver in the grand timeline of the cosmos. We’re born, we live, we die, and then, as Shakespeare reminds us in Macbeth, we are “heard no more.”

In the grand scheme of things, everything is pointless, irrelevant, and ultimately insignificant. Our lives are impermanent and almost everything that most of us accomplish during our lives will someday become obsolete and be forgotten.

Yet, we rouse ourselves out of bed every day and engage in various activities that are all somehow tied to a purpose or mission—a mission we’ve either consciously created for ourselves or subconsciously accepted as an assignment from somebody. Central to this mission is that we hope to bring about more meaning to the lives of people around us.

This mission imbues us with a sense of purpose—invariably, it is a manifestation of a strong desire within ourselves to bring value, meaning, and joy for others and ultimately for ourselves as well. Even the prospect of smiling, complimenting, or expressing gratitude to another person feels good and adds to our own happiness because we know we’re adding more meaning to the other’s life.

Idea for Impact: The Key to a Life Well-led Is to Make as Big a Difference as You Can

The utmost measure of a life well-led is how you use your unique talents to do the most good you can. Enrich your life by trying to make a difference. Better yet, try to make the biggest difference you can. Perhaps if you’re fortunate enough—as the Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, Bill Gates were/are—your contribution can create ripple effects and create an enduring legacy that lasts long after you’re gone.

If you want to be remembered and appreciated for having contributed something to the world, strive to live in the service of others and make the largest possible positive difference you can. That’s the key to a life well-led.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Dance of Time, The Art of Presence
  2. Buddhism is Really a Study of the Self
  3. Two Questions for a More Intentional Life
  4. What Do You Want to Be Remembered for?
  5. You Are Not Special