Belief Makers

So, I totally get the idea of not placing artificial limits on ourselves and that our default sense of our own limitations tends to be artificial. Growth is simply the process of transforming what we can't do into what we can do. If we peer far enough down the sequences of growth steps, eventually one of them will always look impossible. Yet, if take each one as it comes, voila!

I'm a great advocate of being able to do anything you set your mind to, but "a man's got to know his limitations."

Conservation of Stuff
You've probably heard the law of conservation of matter, i.e., matter can be neither created nor destroyed. As big as it is, the universe is still finite. Essentially, it's a zero-sum game.

There's also Kaufman's Law of the Conservation of Hair. Once a man reaches adulthood, hair can neither be created nor destroyed. It simply moves from place to place.

I'd like to introduce you to Teflon's Law of the Conservation of Doing. Being part of this finite universe, we operate finitely. Each time we decide to do one thing, whether we're aware of it or not, we actively decide not to do another thing. We can become more efficient and effective at doing, but in the end, it's still a zero sum game.

Simply, Teflon's Law of the Conservation of Doing is:

Everything we do requires that we not do something else.

Why is the Conservation of Doing important? Well, first of all, whether or not you're aware of it and whether or not you believe in it, it seems to be in effect. You never ever make a decision to do something that doesn't have an impact on other things you're doing.

Second of all, not recognizing the first of all has it's own consequences. If you continue to make decisions to do things not realizing that your choices affect what you're already doing, everything you do slowly degrades in quality. People who do this often end up in a general malaise where nothing feels right, nothing is going well, and they can't quite put their finger on what it is.

Third, the impact of violating conservation of doing may not always be immediately apparent if you're surrounded by others who pick up the slack. However, once you either burn-out or exhaust the capacity of the slack-picker-uppers, the consequences of ignoring Conservation of Doing can result in an explosion rather than a slow degradation.

Doing Anything vs. Doing Everything
I've been called everything from eternal optimist to patron saint of lost causes and it's always been tricky as there are many times in my life when I've been able to accomplish things that everyone said were impossible, and, there have been many times where, well... they were right.

What's the difference? I've realized that one of the fundamental differences for me has been the difference between doing anything and doing everything.

When I find myself in an impossible situation where I'm surrounded by people who are smart, talented and motivated, it seems that the impossible always becomes possible.

However, when I'm surrounded by people who are doubtful or pessimistic (people with a wait-and-see attitude), well, it never works. My first response is to believe that I can get them there, but the net is that I end up trying to fill all the gaps myself, i.e., trying to do everything. In the end, it typically fails.

Confusing Philosophy with Practice
A common thread I've uncovered among people who tend not to do what they say they're going to do is a philosophical bent that completely ignores conservation of doing. For example, I know lots of people who wax poetic about the infinite capacity of love and how the more they love, the more love they have. I think this is a beautiful notion akin to the mythical perpetual motion machine. Beautiful, but, well, stupid.

Folks who subscribe to this belief tend to fall in and out of relationships on a regular basis. Or they tend to have many dissatisfied customers. Infinite love tends not to last very long. Why? Because each of us has only so much time to spend with others each day, and, while the quality of our love may be wonderful, quantity sometimes matters.

This can be explained in terms of food:

Let's say that you depend on me for food and that I commit to feeding you. Let's also say that I make these commitments on regular basis so that I have more and more people I'm feeding. Over time, I start to ration the food because of quantity limitations, but the quality of the food gets better and better.

At some point, you're down to 1 teaspoonful per day, but it's the best spoonful ever. Eventually, you starve to death, but with really, really great food!

Love begetting love and setting no limits on my capacity for love are both wonderful concepts, philosophically.

Your Stop List
Do you ever find yourself in situations where you're overwhelmed by all that you have to do feeling that you're not doing anything well? Perhaps you feel that you're doing some things well, but really slacking on others. Are you burning out the people who work for you or with you whether their employees or friends or family members? Have you exhausted the limits of your capacity to improve your efficiency?

If so, it's likely that you're violating Teflon's Law of Conservation of Doing.

The solution to this is simple and straightforward albeit perhaps a bit challenging to implement. The solution is simply to, as Faith put it so eloquently, "Just Stop It!"

However, in this case, the Stop It doesn't refer to how you're feeling, it refers to what you're doing.

Creating a Stop List
A key management technique that many people never learn is the creation of a stop list. A stop list is simply a list of activities that you're going to no longer do, or at least put on the back burner. If you're overworked to the point of exhaustion, a stop list can literally be a lifesaver. If you're in business, a stop list can be the difference between success and bankruptcy. Stop lists are amazing tools.

To create a stop list:

1. Grab a piece of lined paper and draw four columns labeled Activity, Time, Priority, and Stop.
   
2. In the activities column, write down all the activities that you're doing or trying to do. (Don't forget things like sleeping, eating and driving to work).
   
3. For each activity, roughly estimate in hours or fractions of hours the amount of time required each day to do that activity well and write it next to that activity in the Time column.
4. For each activity, specify a priority level from 1 to 10 in the Priority column making 1 the highest priority. The priority level should reflect the priority you desire, not the one that you've put into action.
5. Add up all the hours and write the number down at the top of the page.
   
6. Walk through your list and write Stop in the Stop column of each low priority activity you intend to stop. As you do so, subtract the amount of time for that activity from your total time.
   
7. Repeat step six until the number of hours is less than 24.
   

Implementing Your Stop List
As you implement your stop list you'll be amazed to find out how much time you spend on activities that you don't consider important or perhaps not desirable at all. Also, as you implement your stop list, don't be surprised if not everyone is happy about it.

If you're a slack-picker-upper, then the slack-droppers might not be pleased. If you spend a lot of time in inane socializing around the water cooler, the office-gossipers may miss you. If you spend lots of time chasing down meaningless data for executives who don't know what to do with it anyway, you may be asked to explain yourself. The people who routinely walk into your office to gripe may get their noses out of shape when you stop them after the third time you've heard the same complaint.

However, as you implement and stick to your stop list, you'll also start to feel much better. The quality of the things that you do will improve dramatically. You'll see progress in your life and you'll improve in areas that matter to you.

Corollary to Teflon's Conservation of Doing:

As you stop doing things that don't matter to you, the quality of the things that you continue to do will get better and better.

What will you stop today?

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

One of the guys I used to work with would annually conduct what he called the Miss Management Pageant, an annual ceremony in which employees honored the company's worst managers and their accomplishments. I don't recall all the award titles, but one example is the Forgotten, But Not Gone award.

One day, while talking with my dad about the Miss Management Pageant, he mentioned that he'd always found bad managers to be really great teachers. For some reason, when someone is an excellent manager and leader, it can be quite difficult to see what exactly they're doing that is making them great. On the other hand, bad managers are easy to spot and their dubious methods easy to articulate. My dad would also add, "Only fools learn from their own mistakes."

So, in honor of the Miss Management Pageant and in recognition that we can often learn more from what doesn't work than from what does work, I decided to write down a top-ten list of bad management techniques.

1. Micro-manage
   The most common way to let people know you're in the running for the Miss Management crown is to micro manage. Micromanagement is easy, fun and a great way to distract yourself from all those nasty, difficult challenges that you never had to deal with before you were a manager.
   
   If broader management responsibilities start to interfere with your micromanagement activities, hire an assistant! If he's any good at all, he'll start to make "important" decisions for you. If they work out, you can take all the credit; if not, you can blame him.
   


2. Aspire to nano-management
   Nowadays, micromanagement skills are just table stakes in the highly competitive Miss Management Pageant. To be a real contender, you'll need to expertly hone those micromanagement skills and become a nano-manager.
   
   Unlike micro-managers who merely obsess on irrelevant and meaningless details, nano-managers develop such strong commitment to form over function that they often completely discard the function part.
   
   For example, if an employee walks into your office really hot-under-the-collar and begins telling you about a pressing problem, make sure that you focus exclusively on the her inappropriate attitude and manner. A great nano-manager will segue from these to other topics such as her attire or her manner in other meetings. With any luck, she'll never get to her point. If it turns out that there had been actual substance to her complaint, you can always say that no one ever told you about it.
   
   
3. Never hire people whose skills and capacity exceed your own
   The easiest way to create an organization that is completely out of control is to hire people who are smarter and more talented than you are. If you really want to put a cap on your organization and keep things in check, make sure that you're always the smartest person in the room.
   
   
4. Let poor performers make hiring decisions
   If you sometimes find it difficult to pass on really smart and talented people, then let your worst performers start to do the interviewing and hiring. Surely their personal insecurities and biases will cause them to completely overlook the strongest candidates. And even if they don't, what powerful, talented dynamo would accept a job working with such weak people.
   
   An additional benefit of having your worst people do the hiring is that it keeps them from screwing up other more important tasks.
   
   
5. Offer strong performers raises, promotions and better assignment only when they threaten to quit
   Strong contenders for Miss Management awards know that paying people at different rates based solely on their skills, talents and contributions is a slippery slope. If you start paying your really good people more money or giving them special treatment, before you know it, everyone will want the same.
   
   Only resort to these extreme measures when your best people finally get fed-up and threaten to quit. If you find someone whose disparity between compensation and contribution is so great that you feel compelled to give them a bump in salary, control yourself and hold out until they've at least asked for it.
   
   
6. Don't fire anyone, ever
   When you have an employee who simply isn't delivering, don't fire him. Firing people can be traumatic and can lead to all sorts of HR issues. Instead, transfer him to another organization. If no other organization will take him, give him a meaningless and irrelevant job where he can't hurt anything. If he refuses the meaningless and unimportant job, promote him.
   
   If you must fire him, put him on a "performance improvement plan" with benchmarks that you know he'll never make. To the best of your ability, never indicate your intentions.
   
   
7. Blame your employees for things that go wrong
   If you're in a situation where you're called on the carpet for something that went wrong, blame someone on your team. Explain to your boss how the employee in question has really been a problem and how she has made this kind of mistake before. Nothing highlights mismanagement better than refusing to take responsibility for your own organization.
   
   
8. Dismiss employees who criticize management decisions as being antagonists and not team players
   Nothing can ruin your morning coffee break quicker than an employee walking into the break room with an issue over a management decision. If you find it impossible to avoid one of these naysayers, then join him in his lament and blame "the company" or the "big wigs" at the top.
   
   
9. Go with the advice of people you like
   When you think about it, who really wants to work with a bunch of smart, articulate, strongly opinionated people who seem to always win arguments. Before you know it, it becomes nearly impossible to defend or support your own ideas and plans. In some godawful instances, you might actually find yourself implementing a business plan that you don't agree with simply because these people are "good arguers!"
   
   The easiest way to avoid this kind of debacle is to hire, listen to and promote people like you, people with the same ideas and thought processes, people you enjoy being around.
   
   
10. Rely on management reports to run your business
    The greats know that their most important tool is the management report. With management reports, you don't need to waste time talking to your employees in order to see what's going on.
    
    To make it into the big leagues, you'll need to isolate yourself and other managers from your employees (the troops). If you're a second or third level manager, consider creating a management wing or management floor far removed from the day-to-day activities of your staff. Insist that all your other managers move their offices to the management wing.

Ahh... I could go on and on an on... I hate to leave out such wonderful techniques such as:
- confusing personal aesthetics with quality
- assigning staff people to line jobs
- dismissing strong people because they're difficult to deal with
- avoiding conflict by never stepping in to resolve employee disputes
- demanding that employees respect the corporate hierarchy when communicating
- taking criticism and feedback personally
- allowing meetings to go wherever they will
- prioritizing internal meetings over customer meetings

The wonderful thing is that you don't even need to have a job to be in the running for Miss Management! You can apply these techniques or some variant in numerous situations from working with volunteer organizations to leading the church choir to dealing with your kids.

If you really, really want to win the Miss Management Pageant, start with just one or two of these techniques and you'll find that the rest come easily.

Don't be dismayed! If you consider what I've outlined above, you may find that you're already skilled in any number of these methods of mismanagement.

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa

Them's Gettin' Fired Words
One night, while out to dinner with our friend Paul from the Netherlands, Paul, in describing having attempted to connect with some people said, "But they never got back to me!"

When I asked him what he meant by that, he explained that he had called them and that they'd never returned his calls. When I asked him about how many times he'd called them, he said, "Once."

After a few more questions, I mentioned to Paul that, in past lives, I had fired people for just such a statement, i.e., "I called so-and-so, but he never got back to me!"

In each case, the firee had been assigned an important task that they had agreed to complete quickly and effectively. When asked about having completed the task, effecting a manner of earnestly having taken every possible action to accomplish it, they responded with this lamest of all excuses, or some variant like, "I sent him an email, but he never replied."

Paul seemed a bit dumbfounded that I would actually fire someone for something so trivial, but for me the words symbolize the epitome of victimhood and lack of ownership.

My management style has always involved recruiting strong people, setting the tone for what we want to accomplish, ensuring that they have the resources they need, and then giving them room to work. Doing this creates teams that can run circles around larger, more bureaucratic organizations, but it also puts your team in a position where any one of you can sink the boat. So, with the freedom and empowerment comes a lot of responsibility. Making mistakes is acceptable; not owning mistakes is not.

A keep-your-job response would look something like, "Hey, I called him once, but I didn't really put enough effort into tracking him down and connecting. I'll go right now and figure out a way to get this done!"

Many see firing someone as a terrible act performed by cold-hearted bastards who don't give a damn about people; I see not firing someone who is not owning up to their role on the team as a disservice to the rest of the organization (sorry about the double negative).

Destroying Our Future
Yesterday, I listened to a news report on the radio regarding the California Board of Regents deciding to increase student fees to cover a $1.2 billion state funding gap. The reporter spoke of large student gatherings protesting the 32% increase in fees. He played recordings of angry taunts from students repeatedly shouting at the regents, "Shame on you!"

He played interviews of teary students lamenting their helpless state and expressing righteous indignation at the Board of Regents for "destroying their futures and the future of California."

As I listened, I wondered, "Just how much money per year are we talking about here? Are these kids going to have to pony up another $10 thousand, another $20 thousand?"

Finally, after all the big numbers and large percentage gaps, I heard the actual dollar amount of the tuition increase, $2500 (twenty-five hundred dollars). I thought, "OK, $2500 is a lot of money for someone going to school, but it's not even close to future-destroying. It's like $50 a week. It's like an extra two to four hours waiting tables, or if you're really good, an extra one hour."

Then I thought, "Wow, California is going (or has gone) bankrupt and kids can still go to a University for $10 thousand per year! That's pretty amazing. What's up with these students! Have they become so entitled in their attitudes that everything that disrupts that entitlement is evil and insurmountable? God help us if they're the future!"

Well, I probably wasn't thinking that dramatically, but you get the point.

Now here's the kicker. At the end of the report, the reporter played a interview with one of the Regents who said, "These kids are blaming the wrong people; they should be marching in Sacramento, not Berkeley!"

Sigh... so according to the regent, the kids should all go march on the governor's office or the state senate (or whatever they have in California). You've got a basic situation in which there's not enough money to cover expenses; it makes sense that the primary beneficiaries of the services would help cover the gap, and even this regent is buying into the students' sense of entitlement and victimhood.

Cold-hearted Bastard
A friend of mine who recently divorced has subsequently had a rather rocky relationship with his two kids. Both are in college and both blame him for "ruining" their lives by divorcing their mother and "breaking up" their family.

My friend has been doing his best to connect with his kids, but can't seem to find any common ground. For them, he's an uncaring, self-absorbed, cold-hearted bastard who has totally disappointed them and they'll never forgive him.

Now, we're not talking about kids who've been left high and dry with their future on the rocks (like the poor children of California). We're not talking about someone who's run off with all the money, leaving his ex-wife with nothing. We're not talking about someone who's acted vindictively when working through the divorce. In fact, we're talking about someone who has always provided everything that his kids wanted, who has invested lots of time in helping them and working with them, and who has shown amazing patience in trying to reconcile his wants to those of his children.

And yet, his kids, who themselves exhibit incredible powers of self-absorption, are now victims with no sense of ownership in terms of what comes next.

So What?
Lately, through my work with relate to autism, I've been blessed to meet and converse with parents who exhibit the exact opposite of what I've described above: parents who would never say, "but, he never called me back"; parents who after finding all the doors locked, start checking the windows; parents who despite all the naysayers and doubters, display unrelenting faith; parents whom even I would hire!

As I consider the contrast, I think about the pervasiveness of entitled victimhood and wonder if it's increasing or if I'm just more aware of it or if it's just me. My belief is that people who choose not to be entitled victims also empower themselves to choose happiness and to overcome amazing challenges. The solutions to the energy problem, global warming, and other challenges facing our planet are clearly not going to come from the entitled victims at University of California; they're going to come from self-empowered dynamos that own the problem regardless of who or what caused it.

I guess I feel pretty strongly about this whole thing.

What about you? Are you the embodiment of self-empowerment and ownership, or do you occasionally say, "but they never called me back?"

As a boss or coworker, are you inspiring others to show up and be great, or are you letting things slide when people don't own up? As a parent, who are you helping your children to become?

What do you think?

Labels: business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

The other day I was talking with Kat who had just returned from a conference in New York. Kat was excited and spoke enthusiastically about all that she had learned. In a nutshell, and no doubt inadequately paraphrased by me, Kat had learned about new theories regarding the fundamental causes of Autism and approaches that might successfully address them. At one point Kat was so taken by the implications of these new insights, that she felt as though she knew absolutely nothing about Autism.

Now, to be clear, over the past decade Kat has totally invested herself in understanding Autism and helping families of children with Autism. Not only has she completely immersed herself in the Son-Rise Program, but she has also undertaken the deep study of numerous theories as to the causes of Autism as well as the various and often contradictory approaches to Autism treatment. She's made Autism treatment her life. She knows more about Autism and its treatment than anyone I've ever met.

And yet, in the light of her new discoveries, Kat was willing to put down everything she'd learned so far were the new insights to prove more useful or beneficial.

This struck me as the essence of intellectual integrity: the willingness to abandon everything you've done so far, no matter how passionately, in the light of new insight (even if the new insight came from someone other than yourself).

Hanging On to What You've Got
Maybe it's simply the fact that I and the people around me are getting older, and therefore, we tend to have more to lose, but I've noticed that more and more people are less and less willing to take risks... less willing to go for something that could be truly life changing and wonderful... less willing to, well... live.

I've seen this frequently in friends who've "done well" for themselves. They've made money; they've established families; they may even have grand kids.

They may not like their jobs. They may not like where they live. They may not like their partners. But, you know, they've already come this far... They're getting older... They're not sure if they could handle a change or a loss... and so on.

It's strikes me that there are two basic reasons they hang on to what they have although they find it less than satisfying. The first and perhaps more obvious one is the fear of losing what they have. The second, and perhaps less obvious one, is the fear of what change would imply about all they'd done so far.

It's the second one that interest me today.

Sunk Cost Decisions
One of the most common mistakes in business is making decisions based on "sunk costs". Sunk cost decisions occur when you let the time and effort spent on a specific project or task influence your perspective on what to do next. Sunk cost decisions are often accompanied by phrases such as, "We've already invested so much into this project, we can't just drop it and do something else!"

In fact, the astute business answer to that statement would be, "But, of course we can!"

Savvy and honest business people don't look at what has been invested so far; they look at what the costs will be going forward. If you find a new alternative that can get you where you want to go more quickly and less expensively than your current initiative would, you go with it. No question.

The reason I threw in the word honest is that there are savvy business people who will still go with the sunk-cost decision because they don't want to get saddled with having made the wrong decision. Avoiding blame (even blaming yourself) and fear or embarrassment are other reasons for sunk cost decisions.

Sunk Cost Lives
Sunk cost decisions are even more prevalent in daily life. When we stay to watch the whole dreadful movie because we already paid for it... sunk cost decision. When we plow more money into a hopeless automobile because we've already spent thousands on repairs... sunk cost decision. When we stay in a career we don't like because we decided at eighteen to spend our parents savings on a specific college curriculum... sunk cost decision.

I imagine that you can think of times when you've said something like, "Hey, we've come this far already, we might as well keep going."

Looking at sunk costs not only leads to really bad decisions, it also artificially limits the choices that we consider. We not only make a bad choice, we don't even consider the best choice.

The Greater the Cost
If you've read many of my blogs, you might read references to my dad who, through expert use of anger, frustration, self-righteousness, malcontent and alcohol, may be the king of self sabotage. Still, over the past ten years, due primarily to his participation in programs at The Option Institute and his exposure to people who have really embraced the Option philosophy, my dad has managed to completely free himself from anger, frustration, self-righteousness and alcohol to become downright contented and happy!

...at least for a period of time, and then it slowly falls apart.

Dig Your Own Hole
The thing that's amazing about this is why it falls apart. It's not that my dad doesn't get it. He understands that how he feels is really up to him. He also understands that how others feel is up to them. He even understands that our lives' purposes are defined by us, not discovered.

And yet... Just at the point when he seems ready to really run with his new found freedom, he starts to consider the implications to every decision he's ever made. For example, what if all these years, he could simply have decided not to drink? All those destroyed relationships and lost days! What if life just is and all meaning is that which he ascribes to it? What would that mean about all the years that he spent going to church and studying the bible? What if he could have been a medical doctor rather than an electrical engineer? Did he completely waste his career?

As he considers these questions, everything slowly unravels. It's not that he's calling into question his new insights; he truly believes them. However, he simply can't tolerate the implications of his new insights; he's invested too much of himself into where he is. The sunk costs are too high; he retreats.

And then everything goes to hell.

Achieving Escape Velocity
I can remember the time that my dad came closest to breaking through. He was 76 years old and doing really well. He had a new girlfriend whom he adored. He was traveling. He was happy! He was even funny!

One night, he started playing the sunk cost game and I said to him, "Dad, I hope that the remaining years of your life are so amazing, so exciting, so engaging, that you completely forget everything that happened in all the preceding years of your life."

To be clear, it was not as though my dad was laden with responsibilities. I was the only one of his kids that would talk to him or return his calls. He had no debts or commitments to fulfill. His past friends weren't anxiously awaiting a visit.

I could see the gears turning as he considered the possibilities. I watched him taste the freedom. I swear, he seemed to sit taller as the burden of the sunk costs fell away.

And then... Sigh.

Are You Drowning in Sunk Costs
In business, considering sunk costs is just bad business. If you're a business person, you may want to consider decisions you or your organization has made based on sunk costs and revisit them.

By extension, in life, considering sunk costs is just bad living. If any of what I've written resonates with you, you might want to start looking at your decision process and identify the sunk cost components. Start with the easy ones: eating the entire terrible meal because you paid for it... throwing good money after bad into a wreck of a car... keeping your kids in a specific educational program simply because you've spent so much on it already.

Once you've tuned into the sunk cost model, you might want to consider bigger life decisions or your general life situation.

How much of who you are and who you're becoming is due to sunk costs? Your career... Your location... Your friends... Your house... Your partner... Your religion... Your politics...

What would you do differently if the sunk costs didn't matter?

They don't!

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Today, I'm writing to ask for your help addressing a challenge that has reached epidemic proportions. A scourge that knows no ethnic, racial, religious or geographic boundaries. An insidious affliction that affects rich and poor, tall and short, red and blue, public and private.

The problem I refer to is bullshit.

Once the province of politicians, scalawags and the kid who always forgot to do his homework, bullshit is now pervasive touching every one of our lives. Odds are you know someone who bullshits daily... it could be you!

Bullshit costs tax payers trillions of dollars annually. It results in wasted time and missed opportunity. It ruins relationships.

It you know someone who bullshits, then this article may be for you.

Causes of Bullshitting
The debate rages on as to the real cause of bullshitting; experts are at odds with one another. Yet, I would hazard to propose three causes that seem to pretty much cover it:

1. Wanting to win an argument at all costs
2. Not wanting to be found out (e.g., cheating on your partner, failing to fulfill a promise, not completing a work assignment, not wanting people to know that you listen to Barbara Streisand records, etc.)
   
3. Not wanting to be honest about your real intentions or beliefs (e.g., agreeing with something to avoid an argument, saying you can't make an appointment when you simply don't want to go, saying you loved something that you really didn't like, etc.)
   

Identification and Acknowledgment
The first step to eradicating bullshit in your life is to recognize it when it's happening and then to act swiftly and decisively. Fortunately, many bullshitters are not skilled. You can tell immediately when they turn it on by looking for one or more of the following signs:

1. An upward inflection at the end of a statement making it sound like a question, rather than a fact.
2. Eyes looking up and to the left indicating that they're accessing visually constructed images rather than visually remembered images (eyes up and to the right).
3. Eye looking left indicating that they're access constructed auditory images, versus remembered auditory images (eyes right).
   
4. Hesitation and stammering.
5. A smile that involves there mouth only, and not the rest of their face.
   
6. Looking at you to see if you bought it before continuing.
7. Really, really ridiculous statements.
8. Statements preceded by "Would you believe..."
   

When seeing one or more of these key indicators,the easiest and perhaps best response is to ask, "Is that true?"

Typically, the inept bullshitter will stop in his tracks. He may hem and haw. He'll look to his left seeking some kind of visual or aural inspiration. He may avert his eyes or look away so that you can't see his mouth.

With any luck, he'll simply say, "no" or "no really" or "not exactly."

At this point, he may launch into myriad explanations, justifications and excuses, but you're not through the hard part.

Dealing with the Adept
As the epidemic rages on, practicing bullshitters are getting better and better and better. I'm going to outline several techniques used by adept bullshit artists to help you identify it when it's happening.

The Confident Bullshitter
Many bullshitters learn early on that, if you look someone directly in the eye, say things with strength and confidence and without hesitation, and if you don't let the ends of your mouth curve up, you can get away with pretty much anything.

The thing that gives away these artists is that they don't actually believe what they're saying. They find it hard to hold your gaze for an extended period of time. The mask that they screw their face into feels unnatural and is hard to maintain.

For example, if they're smiling, it's likely that just their mouth will be smiling and not the rest of their face. Their gestures and timing will be a little bit off. Over time, they'll start checking in to see if you're buying it.

In this case, the best solution remains asking "Is that true?" or perhaps a slight variant, "Do you really believe that?"

The confident bullshitter will not likely be deterred by these questions, initially. However, she'll also find it difficult to maintain the facade of confidence, slowly revealing the signs of an inept.

Hey, Is that Elvis?
A commonly employed technique of even inexperienced bullshitters is distraction with things that are irrelevant. In high school, I really, really, really hated math class. Each day I would walk out of Mr. Reedy's class feeling even further behind than the day before.

Over time, I noticed through his comments that Mr. Reedy loved handball and loved to complain about his wife. So, on days when I believed that I simply couldn't take another hour of falling behind I would start the class by asking Mr. Reedy a question about handball or his wife. It would easily chew up half the class.

Given that most of us have a difficult time staying on track, the distraction technique can be quite effective. Still you can address it by knowing what you're talking about (by what, I refer to the topic, not the subject matter), recognizing the attempt at distraction, and then simply asking, "what does that half to do with thus and such?"

Playing to Doubts
Some great bullshitters use the technique of positing. Let's say that you're in a meeting trying to make a decision. As you approach a conclusion, the bullshitter (either having failed to make any contribution to the discussion or not liking where the discussion is going) will posit, "Hey, have we considered thus and such? Even though we believe that we've come to the right conclusion, we don't know it's right. It could still be thus and such!"

What makes this technique so insidious is two-fold:

1. There's no lie in the statement. The statement that some other course of action could possibly be correct is absolutely true.
2. The posit plays to the fears and doubts of the decision maker.

This technique is typically employed at times when decisions are being made. They can be corporate decisions, Son-Rise team meeting decisions, personal life-choice decisions. The posit-er may come in the form of a team member, a friend, a family member. The posit-er's goal is typically to delay or divert.

When you recognize that someone is using the posit technique, there are several reasonable counter measures.

You can say, "Sure, thus and such is a possibility, but then, so are this and that. Why did you bring up thus and such? And why now?"

Alternatively, you can say, "Sure, thus and such is a possibility, but so unlikely as to not be relevant."

Or, perhaps best of all, "Do you really believe that thus and such is going to happen?"

The Best Liars are the Sincere Ones
The most difficult bullshitter to recognize and deal with combines all the above techniques with an overwhelmingly powerful catalyst, sincerity. In the moment he's saying what he saying, the bullshitter absolutely convinces himself that it's true. All the gestures are there. There are no telltale signs of eye movement. There's no hesitation.

These bullshitters often go on to become powerful politicians or prominent religious leaders or great lovers. They're the players. Over time, a player tends to lose touch with who she or he really is. They morph from situation to situation, relationship to relationship, adapting and sincerely playing the part.

The easiest way to identify this type of bullshitter is to bring their worlds together. For example, bringing people from work home to dinner, or bringing family members from home to work. Most players will vehemently resist having their worlds collide (a key indicator). If the worlds do come together, it can be an amazing show.

Alternatively, you can simply watch over time to see consistency in statements and beliefs.

If you find yourself in the company of a player, again, the easiest approach is simply to ask, "Do you really believe that?" Sometimes that simplicity and the directness of the question can have an immediately sobering effect.

Alternatively, you can ask questions like, "Why did you say that?" or, if they're referring to someone not present, "Hey, let's call so and so on the phone right now and check it out!"

A Bullshit Free Life
In the end, we only have bullshit in our lives because we allow it there. Even if your life is full to the brim, it's easy to completely eradicate it of bullshit.

1. Decide that you want a bullshit free life
2. Learn to recognize bullshit (it's easier than you think, and you probably already can do it)
3. When you see it, call it (just ask, "Do you really believe that?")

You'll be amazed at how quickly either a) the bullshitter stops bullshitting, or b) the bullshitter stops inviting you to dinner.

What kind of weekend will you have?

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Businesses all over the world conduct a ritual known as the Annual Review. The Annual Review takes on many forms and many implied meanings. Some annual reviews are conducted on or about the service anniversary of each employee; others are conducted en masse.

Some reviews are designed to provide feedback on an employee's performance based on a set of goals established the previous year, others are designed to rate employees to establish a basis for compensation.

The King of All Reviews
When I was at Bell Labs, we went through this incredibly rigorous process that took days (not the use of the word incredibly). Each employee would submit a list of their accomplishments for the year. We called it the Why I'm Great! form. Next, taking the Why I'm Great form as input, each manager would complete forms for each employee including accomplishments, strengths, weaknesses, and so on.

We would distribute all the forms to all the managers within a given area and then convene a series of meetings whereby we would rank order (i.e. from 1 to n) every employee in the organization.

As we rank ordered the employees, we would pursue vigorous discussion of the employees strengths, weaknesses and areas of improvement. We would talk about development plans and so on.

Adding a Little Pressure
At times, the discussions would get quite heated. The reasons were three-fold.

First, once we established a ranking for each employee, we would discuss salary treatment. The reason we called it salary treatment rather than raises is that the process was designed to align compensation with performance; ostensibly, the highest ranked employee would have the highest salary and the lowest ranked employee, the lowest salary. Makes sense, right?

The problem was that the rank ordering didn't always reflect the salary ordering. Some employees might have had an off year, others might have transferred from another organization where they were paid more highly or more lowly, and so on.

Since we had a limited pool of funding for raises, truly aligning salary and performance meant providing some people with negative raises. If I had a highly rated person who was poorly paid, in order to fund their salary increase, I would have to take salary away from a poorly rated person who was highly paid. You can imagine the discussions that would arise when a manager was told that one of his or her employees would be receiving a significant negative raise.

Second, in order to be promoted within the organization, one would need to be consistently highly ranked. So, we often had lots of debate over the people who were in almost in or just in the top ten percent.

Third, as a matter of policy, we would look to let go people who were in the bottom ten percent. Again, lots of heated discussion about who deserved to be let go.

All in all, I really enjoyed the process. I liked the debates and what they revealed about both the topic of debate and the debaters. I also really liked the concept of aligning compensation and performance.

The Bell Curve
One of the the most amazing things I discovered in the Bell Labs annual review process was that the distribution of employees' performance levels complied with what's referred to in statistics as normal distribution. When you plot data that distributes in this manner it has the appearance of a bell, so we often call it Bell Curve distribution.

In bell curve distributions, the amount of data decreases as you move away from the center of the bell and increases as you move towards the center of the bell. The farther you move from the center (either to the left or to the right), the less data you'll find.

You might have heard people in science or statistics referring to standard deviations. A standard deviation is simply a way of referring to clumps of data within the bell. If you start at the center of the bell expanding simultaneously to the left and to the right until you've included 68% of the data, you have one standard deviation. If you keep expanding evenly to the left and to the right until you include 95% of the data, you have two standard deviations. At 99.7% of the data, you have three standard deviations.

There's a lot of math that people use to compute this, but in the end, that's all standard deviations mean.

Data that falls into one standard deviation is referred to as being one sigma data, data within two standard deviations as two sigma data, and so on.

So What?
When you think about it, the whole idea of a bell curve distribution seems kind of silly.

If I were to measure the height of every tree in a given forest where the shortest tree was ten feet tall and the tallest tree was 100 fee tall, why wouldn't I find just as many ten foot trees as I did twenty for trees as I did fifty foot trees, and so on? Or, why wouldn't I find all the trees were either ten feet tall or 100 feet tall, with no other heights?

If I were looking at SAT test scores, why wouldn't I expect an equal distribution of poor scores, moderate scores and high scores?

The answer is, "I don't know!"

Nonetheless, as we collect countless data on observable natural phenomena, they seem to conform to bell curve distribution.

It's pretty amazing.

Back to Annual Review
The crazy thing is that Bell Curve distribution seemed to apply to the performance levels of employees at Bell Labs.

Why is this crazy?

It's crazy to me because every one of the people being rated had always been in the three sigma category. They were at the top of their class in high school, at the top their classes as Berkeley and Stanford and Cal Tech and MIT, and so on. They were all used to being the best at what they did. And still, when we did our rank ordering, everything complied with Bell Curve distribution!

The three sigma people (the highest rated and the lowest rated people) were easy to identify. Accordingly, the people in the middle (the one sigma and two sigma people) were also quite easy to identify.

In the end, although we could spend weeks trying to figure out the linear rank ordering of each and every employee, all we really needed to do was decide into which standard deviation they fall. Within each category, the differences weren't that meaningful or significant.

So, How Does this Apply to Me?
If you've hung in here this long, congratulations and thank you!

If you think about it, when it comes to decisions in our daily lives, most of spend most of our time focused on the nuances that distinguish items within a certain group and almost no time on selecting the group itself.

I know managers who will agonize for months or years about a poorly performing employee trying to figure out how to get him or her up to snuff, when in fact, the employee is simply not a match for the job. Alternatively, I have three sigma friends who have miraculously found a compatible three sigma girlfriend or boyfriend, and yet they harp on all minor incompatibilities.

In the end, I think the most useful approach is to understand into what deviation our challenges fall, and then look for a solutions that are in the same deviation. If you have a one sigma challenge, then all you need is a one sigma solution. If you have a three sigma challenge, then don't waste any time looking at one sigma solutions, go right to the three sigma category.

You can apply this approach to everything from thinking about where to eat dinner to what car to buy to where to send your kids to school to whom to marry! By matching the standard deviation of the challenge to the solution, you can make better, faster decisions, and you won't waste time on solutions that will never ever work.

If you made it all the way to here, thanks for your indulgence!

Happy Sunday

Labels: all blogs, business, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

I spent years working in the research group at Bell Laboratories. It was an amazing job. We had a $350M budget, about 300 scientists, no responsibilities for delivering revenue (or in some cases even results) and the freedom to pursue almost anything we could think of.

I came to learn that the thing that distinguishes the great research scientists from the not-so-great research scientists has nothing to with their degrees and pedigrees, nothing to do with their experience or craft, and nothing to do with their knowledge of the subject matter. It's simply this: the great research scientists know how to ask the most useful question.

Oftentimes, the questions posed by the great scientists seem outlandish or irrelevant to the mainstream. Yet, it's with these questions that we see the breakthroughs.

Einstein posed the question, "Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?"

He realized that the answer was, "Yes, it does depend on its energy content!"

And you get to E = MC².

Getting Ahead of Heart Attacks
After my friend Jonathan and others developed a chip that could detect and electrically block epileptic seizures, it occurred to them that they could probably do something similar for heart attacks. When they concluded that they couldn't actually block the attack, they asked themselves, "Even if we can't do that, what can we do?"

This got them on the train of thought that led them to an implantable device that can detect heart attacks six to eight hours before they occur. The device communicates with a little pager that instructs you to either call your doctor (if the issue isn't an emergency) or call 911 (if it is). When you get to the hospital, rather than running all sorts of tests, the doctor simply downloads information collected by the device and then treats you, all before the heart attack occurs.

If Jonathan and his crew had stuck with the question of how to create a device that blocks heart attacks, they would still be at the drawing board. Instead, by re-framing the question, they have a device that is in clinical trials and has already saved peoples' lives.

Stuck in the Wrong Question
What I've noticed lately is that, in general, people seem to be terrible at picking questions.

For example, as I drove from New Jersey back to the Berkshires yesterday, I listened to a "conservative" radio talk show where the host was blasting liberals and democrats for wanting public this and public that. He was a strong advocate for keeping things in the private sector. This was in stark contrast to the opinions that I hear voiced here in the Berkshires.

The question of whether things like health care, banking, etc should be public or private has taken on almost religious proportions, and it's the wrong question! The question is one of how to to deliver services in the most cost effective manner with the highest quality.

I then heard a an interview with a man in a nearby town who was trying to figure out how to get federal funding for a wind-powered electricity generator. Sounds good on the surface, but he lives in an area where there's not enough wind to power the thing effectively. So, what's the question?

Not long ago, I was working with an organization that was sponsoring a European lecture series. In the middle of an executive meeting, just days prior to the series, someone burst into the room telling us that much of the material that was required for the lectures had not been sent to Europe. Several people exclaimed, "How could this have happened?"

Of course, the best question would have been, "What are we going to do about it?"

Becoming a Better Questioner
There are several things that to me seem common to skilled questioners.

Skilled questioners seem to start with what they want, and then look at what they have.
Unskilled questioners tend to look at what they have and then consider what they can get.

Skilled questioners start with the assumption that there must be an answer.
Unskilled questioners start with the assumption that there are many questions for which there are no answers.

Skilled questioners constantly reconsider and re-frame questions.
Unskilled questioners tend to harp on exactly the same question over and over and over.

Skilled questioners always ask, "Hmmm..., is that really the question?"
Unskilled questioners just jump into the fray.

So What's Your QQ (Questioner Quotient)?
Whether you're already a great questioner or not, improving your skill of asking the most useful question possible in any situation can absolutely change your life.

Look at the questions you ask yourself on a daily basis and consider the alternatives. It might mean re-framing a question such as How should I get to work? into How might I work from home?

Which of these diets should I pursue? might become What's the perfect mix of foods for me?

Should I go to this university or that? might become Which professor do I really want to work with?

Whatever your questions are, whether they're the big life questions of the mundane daily questions, I invite you to revisit them and consider, "Is that really the question?"

Have an inquisitive Friday!

Labels: all blogs, business, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Thursday morning, Iris and I walked into the coffee shop at a bit past 7:00 to be greeted by the rousing sound of a lively debate regarding the alignment of specific tasks and services with public sector versus the private sector. Our town's lone republican seemed to be holding his own, but looked like he could use some assistance. Since I have no alignment with any particular political perspective and since, in this case, it sounded to me like I would be more likely to agree with his perspective than the other one being offered, I jumped right into the debate.

Ahhh... it felt wonderful. Over the past couple of months, we've had lots of house guests who were either not particularly interested in intense and lively debate or who weren't very good at it. To me, walking into the coffee shop felt like the pool had finally opened on a hot summer's day and the water was wonderful.

I seem to remember Iris passing me on her way out saying something like, "Breathe". I was totally enthralled.

As debate wound down, I concluded that the whole public versus private thing was a bit of a red herring and that the real challenge was ensuring that people did their jobs effectively and efficiently regardless of where they worked. As we talked about this, the question arose as to how you can get people to actually do their jobs effectively and efficiently. One member of our little debating group voiced his frustration at trying to get anything done when working with public employees.

I then recalled a lesson I'd learned early in my career regarding using authority to manage people versus using influence to manage people.

Who's In Charge Here?
Most of us grew up with hierarchical organizational models. We see it in businesses, we see it in government, we see it in educational organizations, we see it in non-profit groups. Hierarchical organizations tend to operate using an authoritative management model. The person above me in the hierarchy, the boss, has the authority to tell me what to do. Although the boss may be polite and considerate when telling us what to do, even phrasing assignments as requests, at the end of the day, the boss is in charge.

Because we are so familiar with this model of management, we often treat it as the model of management. If we run into a situation where we can't get someone at work to do what we want, we go to their boss. If we're on the phone with someone at the phone company and can't get what we want, we ask to speak with their supervisor. If we can't find anyone in charge who will do what we want, we get frustrated and give up.

Bureaucrats and Entrepreneurs
Both the person starting his own company and the one who's the low man on the totem pole in a large bureaucracy have something in common; they have almost no management authority. They're the boss of no one. They don't have teams of people ready to get things done for them. They have no one to whom they can delegate

So, then, how does either one of them ever get anything done that requires more than they can personally accomplish? How do they make things happen when dealing with unresponsive peers or suppliers or people who are higher up in the food chain than they are?

The answer is management through influence.

How's It Work
The basic idea behind management through influence is to get people to do what you want because they want to. The key to doing this is to understand what motivates the person with whom you're trying to work.

Let's say that you've got a great idea that's going to improve your company's efficiency and save the company a lot of money. Let's say that you've been selling your idea to anyone who will listen and they seem somewhat resistant to it. You've worked through all your numbers and you know the idea is sound, yet no one is picking up on it.

The problem could be that many people immediately translate cost saving into job cutting. Further, although many people would agree that saving the company money is a good idea, not many people are strongly motivated by it. So, the key is to find out how your plan benefits the people you're trying to sell it to in a manner that motivate them.

This requires a little happy detective work. Ask questions about what people like about their work and what they don't like. Find out what really excites them and gets their juices going. Then, look at your proposal and translate it into terms that align with those motivations.

As you get to the core of what motivates people and then translate what you want into those terms (or modify what you want to gain alignment), you'll be amazed at how many impossible situations become possible!

Remember, It's What Motivates Them
This may seem obvious, but it's not what motivates you, it's what motivates them. I can't recall all the times someone has come into my office with a proposal for a new project or a request for a raise or the desire to see some changes and then launched into why they want it.

After I hear them out, I'll often say, "Wow, I can see that you really want what you're asking for, but you never gave me a reason why I should want it!"

Remember, influence involve understanding the other person's motivations.

More than Just Business
Since there will always be more people over whom you don't have authority than people over whom you do have authority, learning influence as a management technique can be quite useful. It comes in handy everywhere from being served a late night dinner after the restaurant's kitchen has closed to garnering the support of your local government case worker when looking for assistance with your special child.

The beauty of the influence model is that you not only get what you want, but you also create win-win situations and develop great relationships.

Happy Saturday (Evening)!

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa

The other night, Iris and I were hanging out in the living room with our Dutch friend Paul. Paul and I were jamming with Paul on harp (harmonica) and me on piano.

I noticed that Paul tended to stay on the low-end of the harmonica seemingly shying away from the higher notes. What he was playing sounded great, but I thought it would be cool to hear some higher notes. So, I asked Paul about playing something a bit higher on his harp.

Paul responded, "Most harp players play mainly the lower notes of the harmonica."

I remember one college professor who, after reading responses to various essay questions would say, "That answer's not even wrong!"

This statement reflected my sentiments regarding "Most harp players play mainly the lower notes of the harmonica." It all started feeling like I was talking with Mark K.

So, I asked Paul, "When you say most harp players, what do you mean? How many harmonica players are we talking about here? What percentage of them constitutes most?"

Paul quickly recovered saying, "Well, I mean, most harp players that I know."

So, I said, "Cool, how many is that? What percentage of them are we talking about?"

Paul quickly recovered again saying, "Well, I mean, I've heard other people say that most harp players play mainly the lower notes."

(See what I mean about this sounding like I'm talking with Mark K).

Anyway, I grabbed my MacBook, plugged it into the PA and fired up some Blues Traveler whose lead singer and harp player extraordinaire, John Popper, is one of my favorites. John Popper plays all over the harmonica with virtuosic speed and agility. He's amazing.

After playing a couple of songs, I said to Paul, "I don't know about most harp players or not, but that's what I'm talking about."

On to Niagara Falls
On Saturday, Paul, Iris and I drove to Niagara Falls to show Paul a bit different part of America, namely Canada. I've got a couple of projects I've been working on, so yesterday afternoon, I sat in the hotel lobby with my Mac while Iris and Paul went to the iMax theater.

When they came back, they told me about what they'd seen and how much they'd liked it. Iris mentioned that there were many funny parts of the movie where she laughed, but none of those Americans laughed. Iris believes that the Dutch sense of humor is much dryer than the American sense of humor; indeed, we're often in movies where she will burst into laughter when everyone else is dead quite.

I said, "We're in Canada. How do you know that it was Americans rather than Canadians who were not laughing?"

Iris, looked at me and said, "Well, actually almost everyone else there seemed to be Japanese."

I looked at Paul and then back at Iris and said, "Wow, I think what Paul's got is contagious!"

So this morning, I started thinking about how pervasive the use of generalization is.

A General Epidemic
Generally speaking, and most experts would agree with me, the broad-based use of generalizations is generally out of control.

Just kidding. Actually, now that I've turned on my spot-generalizations filter, it's amazing to me how often we use them.

How often have you said "most people would..." (or some variant thereof) in describing a normative way of doing something?

Have you ever said, "I tried that before and..." or "We tried that before and..." as a way of dismissing a new idea as if your experience had anything to do with what someone else could do?

Or perhaps you've used "The thing about so-and-so..." or "The thing about thus-and-such" as a way to paint a picture of some one or some organization with a single brush stroke?

Even people who generally think quite clearly using well formed logic, specific examples and verifiable data can easily slip into the use of generalizations.

So, you gotta ask, "Why?"

What's Up with That?
I imagine that there are as many reasons for using generalizations as there are for anything else we do.

Sometimes it's because we feel a need to justify what we want. You know, "But mom, all the other kids parents are letting them..." At other times it's away to quickly dismiss something we don't want to take time to explore, e.g., "No one else is doing thus and such, so why should we?" And still at other times, it's arrogance or insecurity, or both. You know, "As a trained professional, I can tell you that..." or "Experts agree that..."

The thing is that, generally speaking, generalizations are less than useful.

So, I invite you this week to crank up your generalization spotter. When you catch yourself using a generalization, stop and ask yourself "why?"

When you catch someone else using a generalization, dive into specifics. Ask questions? Solicit details? Importantly, if you want to keep your job, do it in as loving and supportive a way as you can.

Happy Monday!

Labels: all blogs, business, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

One of my favorite mottoes is:

The path to the future is brightly illuminated by the bridges burning behind us.

I like this motto for a bunch of reasons.

First, it reminds me of a time in my life when I left the security of a highly paid position in a large company for the the uncertainty of a start-up that I founded using savings and credit cards to pay people until I could get funding.

Second, for me, it provides a shortcut to confidence, whenever I find myself hesitant or anxious about moving into something new.

Third, the motto that I find so edifying and comforting seems to provoke a visceral and negative response in many people. "Hey, you don't want to burn any bridges!"

Freedom's Just Another Word...
There are so many cases in which burning bridges is the best way to guarantee success in a new endeavor.

If you've embarked on a new adventure but find yourself consistently distracted by thoughts of turning back, cutting off your path of retreat can help you attain new levels of focus and clarity. If you find yourself holding back or hiding because of concerns of what others will think of you, then simply letting the cat out of the bag can be a wonderfully freeing experience.

To be clear, you don't need to actively burn your bridges to benefit from the motto; you need only adopt the attitude that "not being able to go back" is okay.

EilaNevaFailYa
Just prior to her senior year in high school, my daughter Eila (pronounced with a long A) and I were talking about her class selection which was filled with advanced placement classes for college. As we talked, it occurred to me to ask, "Hey Eila, are these the classes that you really want to take?"

Eila immediately responded, "Oh, no dad. I'd much rather take art and music classes, but that would be so impractical."

So, we talked about it.

Eila ended up filling her senior year with art and music.

The next year, she enrolled at Emerson College in Boston. By the middle of the first semester, she decided that it was "boring". She dropped out, took a job at Urban Outfitters and considered her next move.

She decided that she wanted to study fashion design in Florence, Italy. She found the school, did all the prep work, and then headed off to Florence. She spent the year studying, speaking Italian, meeting new people and spending her weekends traveling on the cheap to different parts of Europe.

The following year, she enrolled at Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. She was living on Union Square West and doing great.

Obliged to Continue
One day, just after her mid-term exams, Eila and I were talking on the phone. She told me about all she was doing and the amazing feedback that she had received from all her teachers.

Then she started crying.

I said Eila, "Why are you crying? You're doing so well!"

Eila responded, "Yeah, Dad. And I hate it."

It turned out that, although Eila was doing really well in school, she simply didn't like what she was doing. Yet, she felt that, because she was good and because she'd invested so much in getting where she was, she was somehow obligated to continue.

As we talked about it, Eila decided that she didn't want to continue at Parsons.

Everyone told her she was crazy. Her teachers saw that she had a promising future in design. Her friends had all drunk the "you have to finish college" cool-aid.

Optimal Self-Trust
With all this feedback, Eila started to doubt her decision. One day, she told me that she wasn't sure if she could really trust herself. I grabbed a copy of the Option Institute catalog and looked up the Optimal Self-trust program which as it turns out was being offered the following week. We called Zoe and enrolled Eila in the program.

From my perspective the program had an amazingly transformative effect. Eila, who was already a quite confident person, came home a powerhouse of confidence and self-ownership. On her way home from the program, she gave me a call. I asked Eila what her biggest learning had been in the program. Eila said:

"Dad, I realize why I was so uncomfortable not being in school. When I'm not in school, I have no one to grade me. I decided that I don't need anyone to grade me anymore."

Today Eila is the general manager of a restaurant in Harvard Square called Border Cafe. She absolutely loves the restaurant business and her job. Despite the dire predictions regarding her financial future, she's doing fine. And most importantly, she's really happy.

Burning Your Bridges
One of the things that I've learned over the years is that, when you start something really new and different, there are going to always be people who aren't happy about it. It might be that they simply don't understand what you're doing. It might be that they see it as wrong. They might feel threatened by it. They might see your confidence and energy as an indictment of their own lack of action.

Regardless of their motivations, you may find yourself in the position of choosing between your friends, colleagues and family, and your vision of who you want to become or what you want to do. In these instances, the most useful path forward may involve bridge burning.

Some Bridges Just Won't Burn
I should note that some bridges only appear to burn. I've had many times in my life where people got outright angry at me for moving forward with something they didn't want me to do. Oftentimes, they would see what I was doing as somehow threatening.

From my perspective, they simply didn't understand and I didn't want to wait for them to understand. I also figured that they'd probably come around eventually, but I was going to be concerned about it.

What's really cool is that, oftentimes, they do come around.

Have an awesome Wednesday!

Labels: all blogs, business, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy