Skills for Success

Our 10 Most Popular Articles of 2020

December 30, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Here are our most popular exclusive features of 2020. Pass this on to your friends; if they like these, they can sign up to receive our RSS feeds or email updates.

A Quick Way to De-stress. Whenever you feel frenzied, meditation can help you focus inward, pull together your scattered energies, and allow your mind to become calm.
Don’t Beat Yourself Up Over Your Mistakes. Don’t agonize about what other people are thinking about you. They’re perhaps busy worrying over what you’re thinking about them.
Better than Brainstorming for Rapid Idea Generation. Studies have shown that people think of more new—and practical—ideas on their own than they do in a group.
Don’t Let Small Decisions Destroy Your Productivity. Good routines can protect you from your more effective negative impulses and bring order and predictability to your life.
Never Outsource a Key Capability. By owning the entire customer experience, Domino Pizza has provided a consistent experience for customers and iterate quickly.
When You Talk About Too Many Goals. When it comes to persuasion, clarity and conciseness are critical.
Best to Cut Your Losses Early. Best to cut your losses early—you’ll have the least sunk costs and the fewest emotional attachments.
What Went Wrong on the Boeing 737 MAX. When you devise a highly reliable system, identify all single points of failure, and investigate how risks and failure modes can be mitigated.
How Much Risk Can You Tolerate? Encourage careful experimentation and conscientious risk-taking by lowering the risk waterline.
The Power of Negative Thinking. The Stoic practice of premeditatio malorum helps intentionally visualize the worst-case scenario in your mind’s eye and tame your anxiety.

And here are some articles of yesteryear that continue to be popular:

We wish you all a healthy and prosperous 2021!

Book Summary of Oprah Winfrey’s ‘The Path Made Clear’

December 8, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The title of Oprah Winfrey’s The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life’s Direction and Purpose (2019) might lead one to expect profound insights. Upon delving into its pages, one finds it’s merely a delightful mishmash of feel-good quotes from her illustrious guests.

Winfrey opens each of the ten chapters with a short personal anecdote of her hard work, persistence, and gratitude. Her meditations illuminate her passion-driven inner self: “Pay attention to what feeds your energy, you move in the direction of the life for which you were intended” and “Your life is always whispering to you.”

Apart from the prologues, the reflections of Winfrey’s guests are poorly organized and fail to effectively guide readers towards discovering their purpose and living it. Some of the guests’ thoughts are poignant and thought-provoking:

“When problems show up, relax, and lean away from the noise that the mind is making. Give the noise room to pass through and it does. It passes right through. Don’t let fear take over. Like if you get on a horse and you’re scared, you’re not going to be a very good rider, right? But that doesn’t mean you let the horse go wherever it wants. You learn how to interface and interact with life in a wholesome, participatory way. Letting go of fear is not letting go of life.”—Michael Singer, meditation teacher
“Inspiration comes from three areas. It’s the clarity of one’s vision, the courage of one’s conviction, and the ability to effectively communicate both of those things.”—Jeff Weiner, executive chairman of LinkedIn
“Don’t pray to have a challenge-free life. Pray that the challenges that come will activate your latent potential.”—Michael Bernard Beckwith, New Thought writer
“Luxury is a matter not of all the things you have, but all the things you can afford to do without.”—Pico Iyer, essayist & travel writer

Recommendation: The Path Made Clear is worth a quick scan. While it makes for a lovely addition to your coffee table or nightstand, offering moments for contemplation, don’t expect much in terms of substance.

How to Create Emotional Connections with Your Customers

September 21, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Consumers are shifting towards memorable experiences over material objects that bring happiness and well-being. Experiential consumption is increasing—the global spending on travel, leisure, and food service is estimated to grow from $5.8 trillion in 2016 to $8.0 trillion by 2030.

Businesses are responding by offering indulgences (think Apple products,) enhancing shopping experience (ordering and carrying-out Domino’s Pizza,) and creating more intimate experiences (Mastercard’s Priceless campaign) for consumers.

One particularly edifying case study is Unilever’s Persil brand of laundry detergents (Unilever licenses this brand from Henkel in many countries.) As part of the “Dirt is good” campaign, Persil’s sentimental adverts that remind “learn to be a kid” (clip,) “climb a tree, break a leg … that’s part of life” (clip,) and “dirt makes us equal” (clip) have attempted to connect with consumers emotionally.

Persil bucked the longstanding ritual of creating dull adverts for its dull products (cheery moms grabbing washing baskets and fragrant flowers and butterflies rising from the clean laundry.) Persil doesn’t focus on the detergent’s stain-busting attributes. Instead, Persil’s campaign signals that children must feel free to experience the world around them regardless of the impact on their clothes. One prominent advert (clip) presented a cheerless robot who slowly transforms into a child while playing in the open air and splashing around in a muddy pool during a rainstorm: “Every child has the right to be a child. Dirt is good.”

Even the UNICEF commended Unilever for “creating awareness of children’s right to play, the right to express themselves—in short, the right to be a child! It encourages parents to see the value of exploration, play, activity and exercise as critical to children’s development and important for full and healthy lives, even if it means that children get dirty in the process.”

Idea for Impact: Enhance how your customers see and feel the benefits of your products and services. Promote an emotional connection between products and customers.

How to Project Positive Expectations

June 4, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you want to be seen as a doer, somebody who can be depended upon to get a job done, answer with “I will” whenever possible.

According to George Walther, author of Power Talking: 50 Ways to Say What You Mean & Get What You Want (1991,) expressions such as “I’ll try” make you seem hesitant—even ineffective.

Recall all the people who’ve promise to do something by saying, “I’ll try to get back to you tomorrow.” They rarely do. They have to be reminded, prodded, and nagged.

Those who announce, “I’ll have an answer for you by two this afternoon,” typically follow through.

Idea for Impact: Watch Your Language

Your choice of words matters. You are building your reputation—your brand—one interaction at a time.

Your assertions set the tone for what others can expect from you. They also motivate you to get the job done as you’ve promised.

Speak the language of success.

Howard Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future // Books in Brief

May 8, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In Five Minds for the Future (2006,) developmental psychologist Howard Gardner argues that succeeding in a rapidly evolving world requires five proficiencies:

The Disciplinary Mind: “Individuals without one or more disciplines will not be able to succeed at any demanding workplace and will be restricted to menial tasks.”
The Synthesizing Mind: “Individuals without synthesizing capabilities will be overwhelmed by information and unable to make judicious decisions about personal or professional matters.”
The Creating Mind: “Individuals without creating capacities will be replaced by computers and will drive away those who have the creative spark.”
The Respectful Mind: “Individuals without respect will not be worthy of respect by others and will poison the workplace and the commons.”
The Ethical Mind: “Individuals without ethics will yield a world devoid of decent workers and responsible citizens: none of us will want to live on that desolate planet.”

Gardner is best known for his work on multiple intelligences—the theory that cast serious doubts about the simplistic concept of a “single” intelligence, measurable by something like IQ. Gardner’s notion that “there is more than one way to learn” has transformed education in the U.S. and around the world.

Recommendation: Speed-read Five Minds for the Future. Written through the lens of a skills-development policymaker, Gardner’s theses and prescriptions aren’t ground-breaking but make for thoughtful reflection. Complement with Gardner’s The Unschooled Mind (1991; summary.)

Make ‘Em Thirsty

May 6, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Sony’s Akio Morita, like Apple’s Steve Jobs, was a marketing genius. Morita’s hit parade included such iconic products as the first hand-held transistor radio and the Walkman portable audio cassette player.

Key to Morita’s success was his mastery of the art of the pitch. Morita pushed Sony to create consumer electronics for which no obvious need existed and then generated demand for them.

The best marketing minds know how to create a customer—previously unaware of a problem or an opportunity, she becomes interested in considering the opportunity, and finally acts upon it.

Coca-Cola marketers are but creating a thirst by showing the fizzle a freshly poured glass in Coke ads. “Thirst asks nothing more,” indeed.

The marketing guru Seth Godin has said, “So many people are unhappy … what they have doesn’t make them unhappy. What they want does. And want is created by the marketers.” Recall the old parable,

A sales trainee was trying to explain his failure to close a single deal in his first week. “You know,” he said to his manager, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.”

“Make him drink?” The manager sputtered. “Your job is to make him thirsty.”

Idea for Impact: Whether you realize this or not, you’re in marketing, as is everybody else. You’re constantly pitching your ideas, skills, time, appeal, charm, and so forth. Study the art of the pitch. Master the art of generating demand for whatever it is you have to offer. Learn to “make ’em thirsty.” Marketing is everything.

Our 10 Most Popular Articles of 2019

December 30, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Top Blog Articles of 2019 Here are our most popular exclusive features of 2019. Pass this on to your friends; if they like these, they can sign up to receive our RSS feeds or email updates.

Stop Searching for the Best Productivity System. Don’t keep looking for “better” ideas instead of settling on a “good enough” idea and then putting it into rigorous practice.
Charlie Munger’s Iron Prescription. Nothing deceives you as much as extreme passion. Stay away from extreme ideologies until you’ve examined the opposing viewpoint. Don’t ignore the counterevidence.
Do Your Team a Favor: Take a Vacation. When the hardworking manager does go away on vacation, he doesn’t truly get away. By butting in whenever he can, he subtly undermines his team by insinuating that his team members cannot run things on their own.
Fire Fast—It’s Heartless to Hang on to Bad Employees. Ending a bad fit sooner is better than doing it later—it’s better for both the employee leaving and the employees remaining. Many fired employees feel surprised that the axe didn’t fall sooner.
Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus. Starting your day by mulling over on “what should I have achieved today to leave the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment?” is a wonderful aid in keeping the mind headed in the right direction.
Benefits, Not Boasts. A tolerable way to promote yourself without sounding boastful: instead of “I have 15 years of experience in this field,” say, “I bring to you 15 years of experience in this field, promising you that, should any problems surface, I will handle them promptly and proficiently.”
Doesn’t Facebook Make You Unhappy? If you find yourself wasting time on social media or getting demotivated, consider using Facebook less or quitting it totally. Shun the narcissistic inclination to publicize the excruciating minutiae of your life to the world. Limiting social media participation can reduce your anxiety about work.
Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them. The “overconfidence effect” is a judgmental bias that can cause you to misjudge the likelihood of positive/desirable events as well as negative/undesirable events.
Don’t One-up Others’ Ideas. A manager who tends to put his oar in his employees’ ideas and “add too much value” ends up killing their ownership of ideas. This diminishes their motivation and performance.
Make Friends Now with the People You’ll Need Later. An essential lesson from Boeing’s 737 MAX debacle: a network of allies and confidants becomes indispensable during a crisis, whether the crisis is self-inflicted or caused by external events.

And here are some articles of yesteryear that continue to be popular:

We wish you all a healthy and prosperous 2020!

A Guide to Your First Management Role // Book Summary of Julie Zhuo’s ‘The Making of a Manager’

December 16, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

First-time managers are often unprepared for—even unaware of—the responsibilities and challenges of being a manager. This is particularly true at fledging startups that don’t have bonafide HR departments to guide their novice managers nor can afford management coaches. Besides, it takes a new boss a year or two to learn the basics and become comfortable in his/her new role.

When Facebook was small enough and “the entire company could fit into a backyard party,” 25-year old product designer Julie Zhuo was asked to become a manager. Zhuo had started at Facebook as its first intern and then gone full-time. Having no prior managerial experience, she acted how she thought managers were supposed to act and made many mistakes. In due course, she found joy in the role, expanded her skill set, and evolved to become Facebook’s VP of product design.

In The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You (2019,) Zhuo has chronicled her experiences from ramping-up into management and getting to know herself better. It’s the book she wishes had been there for the novice manager that she was.

Zhuo offers many hard-earned insights that only time in the trenches can reveal:

Operate from first principles. “Your job, as a manager, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together.”
Not everyone is cut out for a managerial responsibility. “Being a manager is a highly personal journey, and if you don’t have a good handle on yourself, you won’t have a good handle on how to best support your team.”
Let go of your old “individual contributor” role and make the shift to being the boss. Don’t spend time trying to do the work. Invest your time in coaching, supporting, and developing employees. Don’t run interference between them.
Discover your decision-making proclivities. Map out your strengths and weaknesses. “Great management typically comes from playing to your strengths rather than from fixing your weaknesses.”
Realize that the source of your power as a manager is everything but formal authority. Respect trumps popularity.
Don’t manage everyone in the same way. Learn to appreciate how distinctive each individual is in what he/she wants from work and what animates him/her to work well.
Trust is a critical ingredient in relationships. “Invest time and effort into creating and maintaining trusting relationships where people feel they can share their mistakes, challenges, and fears with you.”

Zhuo offers practical—if basic, but sufficient—advice for setting a vision, assessing the culture, delegating problems, giving feedback, aligning expectations, setting priorities, establishing a network of allies and confidants, hiring cleverly, and other responsibilities of leading a team. She delves into many difficult circumstances she’s encountered, e.g., handling previously-peers-now-employees whom she passed over for a promotion.

Recommendation: The Making of a Manager is an excellent primer for novice managers. It offers an insightful, practical, and relevant playbook for making the transition from being an outstanding individual contributor to becoming a good manager of others.

Complement with Andy Grove’s High Output Management (1983,) Loren Belker et al.’s The First-Time Manager (2012,) and Michael Watkins’s The First 90 Days (2013.)

Benefits, Not Boasts

July 18, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Just about every interaction is about selling something, whether you realize it or not.

When you try to be persuasive in a pitch or a presentation, you may come to pass as being overconfident at best, or boastful at worst.

Here’s a method that can help you transform your boasts into benefits in support of a prospective customer.

“I have 15 years of experience in this field,” may sound boastful. Instead, say, “I bring to you 15 years of experience in this field, promising you that, should any problems surface, they will be handled promptly and proficiently.” This tolerable way to promote yourself also won’t make you seem forceful.

More to the point,

Avoid self-superiority declarations such as “I am better than others.” Instead, couch your claims as endorsements from others: “My past clients have told me that … .” According to a study by organizational theorist Jeffrey Pfeffer, you’ll be regarded more likable and competent if you can get somebody else (even a paid agent) to sing your praises for you.
Steer clear of humblebragging, i.e. masking a boast as a self-deprecating statement as in “I’m a perfectionist at times; it is so hard!” Humblebraggers appear less sincere than blatant braggarts do.

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Idea for Impact: Watch Your Language

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