Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.: How to Recognize Strengths (Especially Your Own)

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D.

Motivational psychologist and author, 'Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals'

Posted: 9/7/11 01:40 AM ET

Why do colleagues working toward a common goal so often fail to see eye-to-eye when it comes to achieving it? At times, you feel like you aren't on the same page, or even the same planet, as your coworkers, even when everyone involved is clearly capable and has a proven track record of success. Why the disconnect?

The answer is a remarkably simple one: There is more than one way to look at the same goal. Take, for example, a goal that many of us share: I want to do my job exceptionally well. For some of us, doing our jobs well is about achievement and accomplishment -- we have what psychologists call a "promotion focus." In the language of economics, promotion focus is about maximizing gains and avoiding missed opportunities.

For others, doing our jobs well is about security, about not losing the positions we've worked so hard for. This "prevention focus" places the emphasis on avoiding danger, fulfilling responsibilities and doing what you feel you ought to do. In economic terms, it's about minimizing losses, trying to hang on to what you've got.

Promotion and prevention-focused people work differently to reach the same goal. They use different strategies, have different strengths and are prone to different kinds of mistakes. One group will be motivated by applause, the other by criticism. One group may give up too soon -- the other may not know when to quit.
So, do you spend your life pursuing accomplishments and accolades, reaching for the stars? Or are you busy fulfilling your duties and responsibilities -- being the person everyone can count on? Start by identifying your focus, and then use the information below to better understand and embrace your strengths, your potential weaknesses and the strategies that will work best for you.
What Motivates You: Criticism or Praise?

When you are promotion-focused, your motivation feels like eagerness -- an enthusiastic desire to really go for it. Eagerness is enhanced by positive feedback -- the more you are succeeding, the more motivated you become. Confidence heightens your energy and intensity. Doubting yourself takes the wind right out of your sails.
When you are prevention-focused, your motivation feels like vigilance -- you are on the lookout for danger. Vigilance actually increases in response to negative feedback or self-doubt. There's nothing like the looming possibility of failure to get your prevention juices flowing. Over-confidence or effusive praise, however, may lead you to let down your guard and undermine your motivation.
Do You Embrace Risk, or Avoid it?

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained" pretty much captures the promotion-focused philosophy. The promotion-minded have a habit of saying, "Yes" to every opportunity, having what psychologists call a "risky bias." Prevention-minded people, on the other hand, are cautious. They tend to say, "No" more, and have a more "conservative bias."
These biases manifest themselves in all sorts of ways. For example, people with prevention goals are reluctant to disengage from one activity to try another, preferring the devil they know to the one they don't. But their conservative nature also makes them less likely than their risk-loving colleagues to procrastinate, for fear that they won't have time to get the job done.
Is Your Thinking Abstract or Concrete?

When people have promotion goals, they feel free to be more exploratory and abstract in their thinking. They brainstorm. They generate lots of options and possibilities to reach their ideals and are more creative. They are also particularly good at picking up on connecting themes or synthesizing information.

In pursuit of prevention goals, abstraction and creativity seem reckless and time-consuming. Prevention-focused thinking is concrete and specific -- you pick a plan and stick to it. The prevention-minded are great with details and have better memory for what they've seen and what still needs to be done.

Speed or Accuracy?

Executing any modestly complicated task involves what psychologists call a "speed-accuracy tradeoff." The faster you go, the more mistakes you make. But going slow has costs too -- particularly if time is valuable and you are in a hurry to get the job done. It won't surprise you to learn that promotion and prevention-minded people end up on opposite sides of this particular trade off, with promotion favoring speed and prevention preferring the slow-but-flawless route.

Are You Better at Getting There or Staying There?

Promotion-focused thinking leads to energetic and enthusiastic motivation in the shorter term but can be less effective when it comes to long-term maintenance. Prevention-focused thinking, on the other hand, is ideal for making sure your hard-earned gains don't slip away.

Do You Get What You Want?

When it comes to negotiating, having a promotion focus will give you the clear upper-hand. Studies show that promotion-minded negotiators stay focused on their (ideal) price or pay targets, while the prevention-minded worry too much about a negotiation failure or impasse, leaving them more susceptible to less advantageous agreements. When it comes to getting what you want, it pays to focus on what you have to gain, rather than on what you might lose.

Armed with an understanding of promotion and prevention, so much of what we do (and what our coworkers do) makes a lot more sense. Perhaps now you see why you've always been a risk-taker, or why you've always avoided risks like the plague. It's clear why you are uncomfortable with being too optimistic, or why you are known for your sunny outlook. You get why some things have always been hard for you, while others came easily.

There's no need to fight it -- embrace your promotion- or prevention-mindedness! After all, both kinds of motivation can bring you success, and each brings something of value (e.g., innovation, attention to detail) to you and your organization. Just remember to take with a grain of salt the well-meaning advice and input from others when it doesn't feel right for you, focus on the strategies that play to your own strengths and see the value in what your differently-motivated colleagues are bringing to the table.

For more on promotion and prevention and choosing strategies that play to your strengths, check out my book "Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals." Follow me on Twitter @hghalvorson.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, is a motivational psychologist and researcher. She writes about the scientifically-tested strategies we can use to be more effective reaching our goals at work and in our personal lives. Her new book is "Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals" (Hudson Street Press). She is also the co-editor of the academic handbook, "The Psychology of Goals," a regular contributor to the BBC World Service's "Business Daily," an expert blogger for Fast Company and Psychology Today, and a guest blogger for Harvard Business Review. Her website is www.heidigranthalvorson.com.

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Inside Influence Report: When What Comes First Should Go Maybe Second

October 25, 2011

By Steve Martin, CMCT


Decisions are rarely made in a vacuum and as a result the order in which options and choices are offered becomes important. Regular readers of the Inside Influence Report will be familiar with the phenomenon of perceptual contrast -what the idea that you can change someone’s perception of an offer not by changing the offer at all, but instead by changing they experience immediately before you present your offer (Cialdini, 2009). A $25 wine seems expensive if it appears halfway down a list that begins with a house wine priced, at say, $10. However that same $25 wine will appear more reasonably priced if the options on the list are reversed and start with a $50 wine first. Nothing changes about the wines, just the order in which they are presented.

However, rather than just single items, products and services will often be made up of a package of multiple items. For example a movie theatre might offer customers the option to watch 15 movies for $99. A lawyer may offer 10 hours of consulting time for $2500. An online music retailer might charge $29 to download 70 songs.

In such situations does the order in which the price and number of items is presented actually matter? And if it does, what might be the implications for your influence attempts?

Whether it is supermarkets selling 12 cans of soup for $10 or a newspaper marketing monthly or annual subscription rates, package pricing is increasingly employed in both online and offline market places. When it comes to structuring how packages are offered, three major features might be altered in an offer without actually changing the offer. Each of these changes has the potential to influence a customer’s or consumer’s decision.

The first feature concerns price / item order. For example a movie theatre might present potential customers with an offer to watch “15 movies for $99”. Alternatively they could frame their offer as “$99 for 15 movies”.

The second feature concerns changing the size of the package on offer. A lawyer could offer a client a larger package, for example 10 hours of consultancy time for $2500 or alternatively a smaller package of 2 hours for $500.

The third feature concerns the difficulty in calculating potential offers. On the fly, $29 for 70 songs is arguably harder to calculate on a per unit basis than say $20 for 50 songs even though there is only a penny per unit difference.

Marketing researchers Rajesh Bagchi and Derick Davis from the Pamplin School of Business at Virginia Tech University conducted a series of three studies looking at the influence that order, size and calculation effects have on decision making.

In one set of studies participants were randomly assigned to different groups and asked to consider a series of offers made by a web based television broadcaster. Some groups received ‘price-first item- second’ offers ($300 for 600 hours of TV) whilst others received item-first price-second offers (600 hours of TV for $300).

Additionally some groups received offers where the packages varied in size (600 hours for $300 or 60 hours for $30). Finally some groups received offers where the difficulty in calculating the offer was varied. For example one group received an offer of 600 hours for $300 and others 580 hours for $285.90 meaning that the relative cost per hour was $.50c v. $.49c.
All the study participants were asked to indicate how good a deal they thought they had been offered, the value for money it represented and, most importantly, how likely they were to make a purchase.

The resulting analysis showed that when an offer was easy to calculate people rated that offer as better value and were more likely to trial it when it was presented in the order ‘price-first item-second’. This was true regardless of whether the packages were small ones ($30 for 60 hours) or large ($300 for 600 hours).

However when an offer was more difficult to calculate and the package offered was large then the reverse was true. People were more likely to prefer and trial the ‘58 hours for $289.50’ offer compared to the ‘$289.50 for 58 hours’ offer. Interestingly this reversal effect didn’t occur in the small package condition.

In summary, Bagchi and Davis’s findings contribute further to the idea that when offered a choice people will typically anchor on the first piece of information presented to them and adjust (sometimes insufficiently) for the second piece of information that follows. Furthermore this effect is amplified the more difficult it becomes to calculate the offer, leading to different evaluations and preferences for what are essentially the same things.

In their concluding remarks the authors offer a practical and potentially useful lesson for those of us in business whether we are managers, consultants, marketers or salespeople. To think that clients and customers judge larger packages and offers as a better deal irrespective of how the price order is presented is a misconception.

Imagine for example that you are putting together a proposal for a client to supply a range of consultancy services over a period of time. Imagine further that your proposal is quite complex involving multiple people delivering a variety of services at different rates. In such situations the results of these studies suggest it would be particularly important to lead with a ‘price-first item-second’ approach especially in the early stages of your proposal.

However for businesses whose offers are much easier to calculate or where offers involve smaller numbers of units or products then the results suggest it will be more effective to present your offer in terms of ‘item first – price second’.

As a result there will be certain situations in your influence attempts when what currently comes first, maybe should go second.

Discussion:

Aside from price which other contexts are especially appropriate to consider contrast or ordering effects?
What examples of ordering effects have you employed or have seen employed that have been both ethical and effective?

Sources:
Bagchi, R. and Davis, D.F. $29 for 70 items or 70 items for $29? How Presentation Order Affects Package Perceptions. Journal of Consumer Research (forthcoming). Electronically published August 18, 2011.

Cialdini, R. B. (2009). Influence: Science and Practice (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Steve Martin:

 Is the Director of INFLUENCE AT WORK (UK). Along with Dr. Noah Goldstein & Dr. Robert Cialdini he is co-author of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week International bestseller Yes! 50 secrets from the science of persuasion which to date has sold over ¼ million copies and has been translated into 26 languages. In 2008 the book was long-listed for the Royal Society’s annual prize for science writing and in 2009 the Harvard Business Review listed the book on their prestigious ‘Breakthrough Ideas for Business’ list.

Steve regularly features in business and the national press including his monthly ‘Persuasion’ column for the British Airways in flight magazine Business Life and he is a columnist for the Harvard Business Review online and the UK’s Institute for Leadership & Management. His columns are read by over 1 million people each month.

Steve speaks and runs workshops about the science of influence and persuasion and its application to a wide variety of business, government and non-profit organisations around the world. At the time of writing he is working closely with the Behavioural Insight Team within the UK Government’s Cabinet Office and he is a member of the Secretary of State’s Behaviour Change Network Team within the UK Dept. of Health.

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The Values Proposition: Do Small Things with Great Love - Bill Taylor - Harvard Business Review

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Bill Taylor

William C. Taylor is cofounder of Fast Company magazine and author of Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself, published January 4, 2011. Follow him at twitter.com/practicallyrad.

Monday October 24, 2011 Comments ( 13)

The world confronts vast uncertainty, from unrest in the social climate to accelerating shifts in the climate itself. The economy faces huge challenges, from public-debt crises in Europe to the overhang of mortgage debt in the U.S. The business community faces an ongoing series of stops and starts, from the loss of an icon like Steve Jobs to the rise of new-economy giants like Amazon and Facebook.

There is a temptation, amidst the turmoil, for pundits to conclude that the only sensible response is to make bold bets — new business models that challenge the logic of an industry, products that aim to be "category killers" and obsolete the competition. But I've come to believe that a better way to respond to uncertainty is with small gestures that send big signals about what you care about and stand for. In a world defined by crisis, acts of generosity and reassurance take on outsized importance.

I've written before about not-so-random acts of kindness that humanize companies and offer an uplifting alternative to a demoralizing status quo. Earlier this year, for example, a Southwest Airlines pilot delayed a flight from Los Angeles to Tucson to accommodate the needs of a distraught grandfather who was racing to the hospital bedside of his toddler grandson, the victim of criminal abuse. Despite the obvious security concerns and schedule pressures, the pilot, who had gotten wind of this late-arriving passenger's urgent situation, refused to budge until he made it to the plane.

"They can't go anywhere without me," the pilot told the grandfather, "and I wasn't going anywhere without you." The story immediately went viral, with travel writers and bloggers celebrating the stubborn pilot and his values. His genuine kindness was a welcome change of pace in an industry known for lousy service, surly passengers, and miserable conditions.

I experienced something similar myself not so long ago, and found it a striking enough to devote an entire HBR blog post to the experience. In an entry called "Why Is it So Hard to Be Kind?" I told the story of my father, his search for a new car, a health emergency that took place in the middle of that search — and a couple of extraordinary (and truly human) gestures by an auto dealer that put him at ease and won his loyalty.

"Nobody is opposed to a good bottom-line deal," I concluded at the time. "But what we remember and what we prize are small gestures of connection and compassion that introduce a touch of humanity into the dollars-and-cents world in which we spend most of our time."

We remember the lack of connection as well. A month or so ago, I visited my optometrist, who was troubled about something she saw in my routine eye exam and sent me to a renowned retinal specialist for a more in-depth look. This doctor did an utterly competent exam, explained my situation, and offered a sound course of action. So I'm fine.

Yet I keep thinking back to the experience, not because of the quality of the medical care I received, which was superb, but because of how uncaring the experience felt. As I sat in the waiting room, it seemed more like the offices of a payday lender or a bail bondsman than that of a highly credentialed surgeon. "If you arrive late, your appointment may be rescheduled," one sign warned. "Copay is due upon arrival," another signed explained. "We accept Visa, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express." However, a different sign warned, "If you do not have your copay, your appointment may be rescheduled." Finally, blared another sign, "If you have an overdue balance, your appointment may be rescheduled."

Since I had to wait an hour past my appointment time to see the doctor (there was no sign about what happens when the doctor is late), I spent a lot of time thinking about the surroundings, and the bizarre messages all these signs were sending. My fellow patients and I were nervous, anxious, worried about our eyesight. Yet it felt like the doctor thought of us as a collection of truants, tightwads, and general layabouts. Were we visiting a healer, or the ocular equivalent of the "Soup Nazi" from Seinfeld, for whom one wrong move means "No appointment for you!"?

Two weeks later, by the way, I got a call from the doctor's office. "Does the doctor want an update on how I'm doing?" I asked the staffer who placed the call. "No," she said. "Insurance did not cover the full cost of the exam, and we need to know if you want us to charge the credit card we have on file or use a different card."

Oh, right.

It's always risky to look to great humanitarians for lessons about business, but something Mother Teresa said long ago strikes me as a pretty good epitaph for our disruptive times — and for dispiriting experiences of the sort I had with this doctor. "We cannot do great things," she famously told her followers, "only small things with great love."

Yes, success today is about price, features, quality — pure economic value of the sort that requires you to rethink your strategy and business models. But it is also, and perhaps more importantly, about passion, emotion, identity — sharing your values. And all that requires is a way of doing business, a strategy for connecting with customers, that communicates who you are and what you care about.

As the value proposition gets rewritten in industry after industry, it's organizations with an authentic values proposition that rise above the chaos and connect with customers. Few of us will ever do "great things" that remake companies and reshape industries. But all of us can do small things with great feeling and an authentic sense of emotion.

What's your values proposition?

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Employers Share List of Most Unusual Excuses for Calling in Sick, According to CareerBuilder’s Annual Survey - CareerBuilder

·One-Third of U.S. Employers Say Workers Call in Sick More Often Around
the Winter Holidays

· Nearly Three-in-Ten U.S. Workers Called In Sick with a Fake
Excuse in
the Last Year

Chicago, Illinois – October 20, 2011 – Employers expect to see more empty seats around the office as the holidays approach, a new CareerBuilder survey finds. One-third (33 percent) of employers reported that workers call in sick more often during the winter holidays.

While the cold and flu season is a heavy contributor to workplace absences this time of year, some workers may be using sick days to take care of some holiday shopping or visit with family. Twenty-nine percent of workers have admitted to already playing hooky from the office this year, citing errands and plans with family and friends among the top reasons for calling in sick when they were well. The nationwide study was conducted by Harris Interactive from August 16 to September 8, 2011 and included more than 2,600 employers and 4,300 workers.

Top time of year for absenteeism

While employers reported heightened absenteeism around the holidays, the prime time of year when companies say employees call in sick is in the first quarter:

· January through March – 34 percent

· April through June – 13 percent

· July through September – 30 percent

· October through December – 23 percent

Texting in sick

When it comes to notifying employers that they are taking a sick day, some workers reported they are bypassing a phone call to the boss and relying on digital communications.

· Phone call – 84 percent

· Email – 24 percent

· Text message – 11 percent

Most unusual excuses

When asked to share the most unusual excuses employees gave for missing work, employers offered the following real-life examples:

1) Employee’s 12-year-old daughter stole his car and he had no other way to work. Employee didn’t want to report it to the police.

2) Employee said bats got in her hair.

3) Employee said a refrigerator fell on him.

4) Employee was in line at a coffee shop when a truck carrying flour backed up and dumped the flour into her convertible.

5) Employee said a deer bit him during hunting season.

6) Employee ate too much at a party.

7) Employee fell out of bed and broke his nose.

8) Employee got a cold from a puppy.

9) Employee’s child stuck a mint up his nose and had to go to the ER to remove it.

10) Employee hurt his back chasing a beaver.

11) Employee got his toe caught in a vent cover.

12) Employee had a headache after going to too many garage sales.

13) Employee’s brother-in-law was kidnapped by a drug cartel while in Mexico.

14) Employee drank anti-freeze by mistake and had to go to the hospital.

15) Employee was at a bowling alley and a bucket filled with water crashed through the ceiling and hit her on the head.


Checking up on employees

Calling in sick without a legitimate excuse can have serious consequences. Fifteen percent of employers said they have fired a worker for this reason. Twenty-eight percent have checked up on an employee, citing the following examples:

· 69 percent required a doctor’s note

· 52 percent called the employee

· 19 percent had another employee call the employee

· 16 percent drove by the employee’s home

“While outrageous events are known to happen, frequent absences and over-the-top excuses can start to bring your credibility into question,” said Rosemary Haefner, Vice President of Human Resources at CareerBuilder. “Many employers are more flexible in their definition of a sick day and will allow employees to use them to recharge and take care of personal needs. This is especially evident post-recession when employees have taken on added responsibilities and are working longer days. Your best bet is to be up front with your manager.”

Survey Methodology

This survey was conducted online within the U.S. by Harris Interactive^© on behalf of CareerBuilder among 2,696 U.S. hiring managers and human resource professionals and 4,384 U.S. workers (employed full-time, not self-employed, non-government) ages 18 and over between August 16 and September 8, 2011 (percentages for some questions are based on a subset, based on their responses to certain questions). With pure probability samples of 4,384 and 2,696, one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/-1.48 and +/-1.89 percentage points, respectively. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies.

About CareerBuilder®

CareerBuilder is the global leader in human capital solutions, helping companies target and attract their most important asset - their people. Its online career site, CareerBuilder.com®, is the largest in the United States with more than 24 million unique visitors, 1 million jobs and 40 million resumes. CareerBuilder works with the world’s top employers, providing resources for everything from employment branding and data analysis to recruitment support. More than 9,000 websites, including 140 newspapers and broadband portals such as MSN and AOL, feature CareerBuilder’s proprietary job search technology on their career sites. Owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI), Tribune Company and The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI), CareerBuilder and its subsidiaries operate in the United States, Europe, Canada and Asia. For more information, visit www.careerbuilder.com.

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Three Leadership Skills That Count - Morten T. Hansen - Harvard Business Review

11:58 AM Thursday October 20, 2011
by Morten T. Hansen Comments ( 3)

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How do you lead successfully in an uncertain, disruptive, even chaotic world?

In our new book Great by Choice, Jim Collins and I pondered that question. To get some empirically derived answers, we studied leaders of companies that grew to become great in highly uncertain, even chaotic, industries. They include the biotech, semiconductor, personal computer, and airline industries. Over the years, the CEOs of these companies faced massive technology disruptions, deep industry recessions, sudden collapses in demand, price wars, oil shocks — you name it. But even so, they led their companies to great long-term financial performance. Their experience can guide leaders who now must lead in today's disruptive world.

Some of these leaders have become legends, such as Andy Grove of Intel and Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines. Others remain fairly unknown outside their industry, such as John Brown of Stryker and George Rathmann of Amgen. What then were the leadership characteristics that separated the winning leaders from their industry peers?

Surprisingly, they were not more visionary (they did not stand out for their ability to "see" the future), and they were generally not more charismatic (yes, a few were, like Herb Kelleher, but not all, and so were some industry peers). Instead, we found three other characteristics.

Productive Paranoia. Bill Gates was hyper-vigilant about what could hit and damage Microsoft. "Fear should guide you," he said in 1994. "I consider failure on a regular basis." Herb Kelleher predicted eleven of the last three recessions. Andy Grove ran around "looking for the black cloud in the silver lining." Productive paranoia is the ability to be hyper-vigilant about potentially bad events that can hit your company and then turn that fear into preparation and clearheaded action. You can't sit around being fearful; you must act, like Herb Kelleher, who insisted on cutting costs and running lean operations in good times, so that they would be prepared for the next storm, imagined or real.

Empirical Creativity. Well, just staying alive does not produce greatness. You must also create. So we should expect these leaders to be highly creative — to create new, wonderful products. Yes, but here's the rub. The leaders of the average industry peers also displayed lots of creativity. We found that the differentiating leadership principle was a certain approach to creativity, what we call empirical creativity — the ability to empirically validate your creative instincts. This means using direct observation, conducting practical experiments, and engaging directly with evidence, rather than relying on opinion, whim, and analysis alone (and, as a prior management consultant, I would include pure market analysis void of testing in this category). When Peter Lewis of Progressive, the car insurance company, had the idea of expanding into the safe-driver market, he did not move in one big swoop. Rather, he started with trials in Texas and Florida, then added more experiments in other states, and finally, three years later, when the concept was validated, he bet big on the new business. His idea was rooted in empiricism, not analysis alone.

Fanatic Discipline. Discipline can mean many things — working hard, following rules, being obedient, and so on. We mean something else: The best-performing leaders in our study exhibited discipline as consistency of action — consistency with values, long-term goals, and performance standards; consistency of method; and consistency over time. It involves rejecting conventional wisdom, hype, and the madness of crowds — essentially being a nonconformist. When John Brown of Stryker set the long-term goal of 20% annual net income growth, year in and year out (he hit it in more than 90% during 21 years), he was so committed to this quest that it could only be described as, well, fanatical. Markets down? Competition severe? Recession? Market hype? He did not care. He built a system of fanatic discipline to achieve the quest, no matter what. He was highly disciplined by showing consistency between his words (the goal) and his behaviors (everything he did to make it happen).

You need all three leadership skills in an uncertain world: Fanatic discipline keeps you on track; empirical creativity keeps you vibrant; and productive paranoia keeps you alive.

When I speak to leaders, I find it helpful to ask: When you consider these three leadership skills, which do you perceive as your weakest one, and how can you turn that into a strength?

A note on our research: We selected industries characterized by high levels of uncertainty and disruption, and contrasted companies that created outstanding long-term financial performance with industry peers that did not. Because our observation period was from the 1970s to 2002, we do not claim that these companies will continue to outperform in perpetuity.

 

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Morten T. Hansen

Morten T. Hansen is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and at INSEAD, France. He is the author of Collaboration and coauthor of Great by Choice (with Jim Collins). Follow Morten on twitter @GreatByChoice and at http://www.mortenhansen.com/.

A conversation with Zingerman’s Ari Weinzweig | SmartBlog on Leadership

A conversation with Zingerman’s Ari Weinzweig SmartBlog on Leadership

By Mary Ellen Slayter on October 17, 2011 Comments (2)

Excerpts:

- Describe your leadership philosophy.

- When you’re looking to hire, how do you decide if someone is right for your team?

- What is the biggest challenge your business is facing this year?

- Describe your approach to innovation.

- Outside of your own industry, whose work do you admire most?

- If a recent college grad came to you and said he wanted to start his own business, what advice would you give him?

---------------------------

If a recent college grad came to you and said he wanted to start his own business, what advice would you give him?

Without question I’d tell him—or her—to start by writing a vision of greatness. Visioning is a huge piece of what we do here at Zingerman’s. The vision is a picture of what success will look when you get to where you’re going at a particular point in the future. It’s got a good bit of detail—it’s a rich picture of what that future looks like, with plenty of detail about:
-  how big your business is,
- what you’re known for,
- what the people who work in it think about their jobs,
- how the community views you.

It’s hugely helpful to do a personal piece as well—getting clear about:
-  how you feel about your work,
- what sort of work you do,
- how much money you make,
- how much you work, etc. is really valuable to know before you start.


There are no “right” or “wrong” visions—but if you’re not clear on where you’re going it’s pretty unlikely that you’re going to get to where you want be. A vision is not the same as a strategic plan. We do those too. But the vision is where you’re going; the strategic plan is how you’re going to get there.


Access Article and Content Source: http://smartblogs.com/leadership/2011/10/17/a-conversation-with-zingerman%E2%80%99s-ari-weinzweig/

How to Really Listen - Peter Bregman - Harvard Business Review

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Peter Bregman is a strategic advisor to CEOs and their leadership teams. His latest book is 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done. To receive an email when he posts, click here.

7:37 AM Wednesday October 19, 2011 Comments ( 2)

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The Science of Thinking Smarter: A Conversation with Brain Expert John J. Medina

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One morning, my wife Eleanor woke up, turned over, and said, "I am not looking forward to this day." I asked her why.

What came out is that we were at the start of the Jewish high holy day season, which means colder weather and three weeks of big social meals, long religious services, broken routines, and children out of school. Eleanor didn't grow up with these traditions, and they can be overwhelming.

Now, I run a management consulting company; problem solving is what I do. So it didn't take me long to jump in.

"Cold weather means ski season is about to start," I said. "You love skiing. And these holiday meals are fun and filled with people you love — they'll make you feel better. And I'll be with you; you won't be alone with the kids. Also, you know, Jesus was Jewish, so it's kind of your tradition too."

Even as I said it, I knew that last one was a reach. It became clear that I was making her feel worse and now she wasn't just sad, she was angry.

And when she got angry, I felt myself get angry too. And self-righteous. Here I am trying to help her and this is what I get?

But then I smartened up. Instead of giving in to my anger, which would have really blown things up, I shut up and listened. When I did, I began to hear the real stuff, the things that neither of us was actually saying.

What I discovered was that she was upset because the focus on mothers during the Jewish holidays taps into her insecurities about motherhood, not being a Jewish mom, and not having time to spend on her own work.

I also discovered that my own babbling wasn't so much to help her feel better as to help me feel better. I'm the reason she's in New York City, living through cold winters, and part of a Jewish family.

In other words, by trying to make her feel better, I was doing the opposite of making her feel better. I was arguing with her. In fact, most of the time when we try to make people feel better, we end up arguing with them because we're contradicting what they're feeling. Which, inevitably, makes them feel worse.

Listening, it turns out, is magic. Not only did it help me understand what was going on with both of us, but it helped Eleanor feel better, too. It made her feel that she wasn't alone in her feelings; I was with her.

All I had to do was listen.

But listening isn't easy. The more we listen to others, the more likely we will react — or overreact — to what they say. Listening, it turns out, is much harder than speaking. We have to allow things we might disagree with to hang in the air. We have to move over a little and create space for those things to linger.

That kind of listening takes tremendous courage.

But if we're interested in learning — about ourselves as well as others — then it's worth it. And if we're interested in being connected to others, showing them respect, helping them feel better, and solving problems between us, than it's more than worth it. It's essential.

Until people feel heard, they will fight to be heard. But once they are heard, there is little left to fight for, and then we can move on, not as "us vs. them" but simply as "us."

So how do you listen in a way that transforms conversations and relationships?

1. Actually listen. And only listen. That means don't multitask. I'm not just talking about doing email, surfing the web, or creating a grocery list. Thinking about what you're going to say next counts as multitasking. Simply focus on what the other person is saying.
2. Repeat back. This feels a little silly at first but works magic. If someone says she is angry about the decision you just made, you can say "you're angry about the decision I just made." I know, I know, she just said that. But it shows you're listening and it communicates to the other person that she's been heard. If you don't have the courage to try it with an adult, try it with a child. You'll see what a difference it makes and it will embolden you to try it with a colleague or your spouse.
3. Ask questions. Explore the other person's thoughts and feelings more deeply. And "You don't really believe that, do you?" does not count as a question. You are not using the Socratic method to prove your point; you are trying to better understand what's going on so you can better understand your partner in this conversation.

Really listening can feel risky, which seems strange because listening doesn't materially change anything. But sometimes you'll hear things that are hard to hear.

Remember that listening is not the same thing as agreeing. And it will never force you to take any particular action. If anything, it will reduce the intensity of people's insistence that you take a specific action. Because in many cases what they're looking for is proof that you've heard them. So if they feel you've really heard them, their need for action diminishes.

As Eleanor spoke, I noticed my own resistance to various things she was saying. There's no question that it's hard to really listen. But once I relaxed into it, I heard her in a much deeper way. That made her feel better. Call me co-dependent, but it made me feel better too.

It turns out that sometimes, just listening is problem-solving.

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More US Companies Having Difficulty Attracting Critical Skill Employees

WorldatWork Newsline
Oct. 10, 2011 — With the U.S. economy still unsteady, most U.S. companies are finding it relatively easy to attract or retain workers, with one major exception — critical-skill employees. A new survey from Towers Watson and WorldatWork shows that for the second consecutive year, the number of U.S. companies having difficulty finding and keeping critical-skill workers has increased.

The Towers Watson Talent Management and Rewards Survey, a study of 316 North American companies, including 218 from the United States, also found that nearly two-thirds of respondents expect their employees to work more hours now than they did prior to the recession and see this trend continuing for some time. Additionally, respondents are concerned about the impact that organizational changes they made in response to the recession are having in areas such as employees' work-life balance, productivity and willingness to take risks. Most companies have already made or are planning to make additional changes to their reward and talent management, and other organizational, programs.

According to the survey, nearly six out of 10 U.S. companies (59%) reported problems attracting critical-skill employees this year. That is an increase from 52% last year and 28% in 2009. Forty-two percent also reported difficulty attracting top-performing employees. Additionally, more than one-third (36%) reported difficulty retaining critical-skill employees, an increase from 31% last year and 16% in 2009. Overall, only one in 10 companies is having difficulty attracting or retaining employees generally.

"Companies are taking longer to fill these positions, and more of them are open," said Laura Sejen, global head of rewards consulting at Towers Watson. "There is clearly a greater-than-normal mismatch between the skills employers seek and those that are available in the marketplace. In short, despite the overall weakness in the job market, companies need a more appealing offering to attract critical-skill employees."

Employees Working More HoursNearly two-thirds (65%) of U.S. respondents report that employees have been working more hours over the past three years, and more than half (53%) expect this trend to continue over the next three years. Additionally, about one in three (31%) companies said their employees have been using less of their vacation or personal time off over the past three years.

The survey also found that more than half (56%) of U.S. companies are concerned about the long-term effects that changes they made during the recession will have on their employees’ ability to maintain a healthy balance between work and their personal lives. And more U.S. employers are becoming concerned about employee productivity (39%) and their employees' willingness to take risks (37%). As a result, almost two-thirds (66%) of respondents have made significant changes in the HR area — reward and talent management strategies, organizational structure, job evaluation process and competencies — and many expect to continue to do so.

"In the short run, having employees work extra hours can increase productivity, but in the long run, extended hours can negatively affect employee well-being and retention," said Laurie Bienstock, North America leader of rewards consulting at Towers Watson. "Employees at many organizations are already suffering from change fatigue. As a result, when the labor market does recover, companies can expect a sharp increase in voluntary turnover, especially if they do not address employee concerns, and deliver reward and talent management programs more effectively."

"Employees generally don't mind doing more with less especially when economic conditions are tough," said Ryan Johnson, CCP, vice president of research for WorldatWork. "But when this drags into multiple years, and they start to hear anecdotes of recovery, they become less understanding. At that point, the entire employee value proposition is crucial to retention."

Additional Resource: The Talent Management and Rewards Imperative for 2012: Leading Through Uncertain Times (Towers Watson and WorldatWork Survey)
Contents © 2011 WorldatWork. For more information, contact the Copyright Department at WorldatWork.

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The Worst Question a Salesperson Can Ask - Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson - Harvard Business Review

8:06 AM Friday October 7, 2011
by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson Comments (197)

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This post, the second in a four-part series, is also part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line.

"What's keeping you up at night?"

This one question is probably asked by more sales people in a given day than any other. But while it seems innocuous — maybe even the right thing to ask a customer — it's a question that simultaneously prevents sales while also destroying customer loyalty.

To understand what makes this question so destructive, we need to first understand where it comes from. For years, most sales training has focused on a single core principle: the shortest path to sales success is a deep understanding of your customers' needs.  If we can understand what's keeping customers up at night, we can build tight linkages between their problems and our solutions, thereby improving our chances of selling something.

As a result, companies have poured money into teaching their reps to ask better questions. But while it sounds great on paper, this approach suffers from two major problems. First, improving reps' ability to diagnose needs on the fly proves colossally difficult — especially among average performers. Second, and more to the point, this approach is based on a deeply flawed assumption: customers actually know what they need in the first place.

But what if customers don't know what they need? What if customers' single greatest need, ironically, is to figure out exactly what they need? If this were true, the better sales technique might be to tell customers what they need.

In our previous post we described a type of rep we call a Challenger. These gifted, high-performing reps succeed by doing just this, revealing to customers problems — and solutions — that they don't even see. This isn't your standard solution-selling approach, focused on open-ended needs diagnosis. A sales conversation with a Challenger provides valuable insight to customers instead of extracting it.

What does this sound like in practice? In our book, we present several case studies, but one of our favorites is from W.W. Grainger, Inc., the distributor of maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) supplies. In the past, Grainger reps led with facts and figures about their company — how old they are, how many items they stock, how many distribution centers they have, and so on, all leading to the inevitable "So, that's who we are. Now tell me, what's keeping you up at night?"

Today, a conversation with a Grainger rep is very different. It focuses almost exclusively on a series of proprietary insights Grainger has developed about its customers that prompt them to think very differently about how to manage their MRO spending — in ways that could potentially save them millions. Rather than trying to convince customers to go with Grainger as their supplier of choice for planned MRO purchasing (which inevitably leads to a price-focused discussion), Grainger reps start by showing them how much money they are likely wasting every year on unplanned purchases, which Grainger's research shows can be up to 40% of the average company's MRO spending.


No supplier wants to be in the business of free consulting — and Grainger is no different. The key is to teach in a way that leads customers to your unique benefits as opposed to leading with them. After reframing the way customers think about MRO spending, Grainger reps create an opportunity to talk about a set of capabilities they can offer to better manage that spend, ultimately leading to higher-level sales conversations and bigger deals.

These conversations aren't happenstance. There's a specific art to getting them right. We've found that insight-led sales conversations like Grainger's follow a distinct choreography that's markedly different from your standard sales pitch. Importantly, this isn't something to leave to your individual reps to figure out. Marketing plays a critical role in identifying these teachable insights and equipping reps with the tools to deliver them to customers.

Done well, this sort of sales approach creates a powerfully differentiated interaction for customers because it leads with insight, not tiresome questions. And, as it turns out, that difference really matters.

In a survey of more than 5,000 business customers, we found that of all of the possible factors that could drive customer loyalty — including brand, product and service quality, and price-to-value ratio — by far the biggest driver is something most companies don't even think about: the sales experience, accounting for 53% of the overall total.

Customer loyalty, it turns out, is more a function of how you sell than what you sell. Specifically, customers reward suppliers who "offer unique and valuable perspectives on the market" and "educate them on new issues and outcomes."

(click on the image for a larger version)

Customers were painfully blunt on this point: They perceived very little difference between suppliers on things like brand, product or price. At the same time, the sales experiences they delivered were highly variable. Some reps, they said, would so thoroughly waste their time that at the end of the sales call they felt as though they'd just been robbed of an hour of their lives. On the other hand, those same customers told us that other reps would take the time to provide information so interesting and valuable that — to paraphrase Neil Rackham — the customer would have been willing to pay for the conversation itself. "I love meeting with those folks," customers would tell us, "I always learn something when I spend time with them."

When you think about the conversations your sales reps are having with your customers, how would you describe them? Are they asking your customers what's keeping them up at night — or telling them what should be keeping them up at night?

Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson
Matthew Dixon is Managing Director of the Corporate Executive Board's Sales and Service Practice. Brent Adamson is Senior Director of the Sales Executive Council, a division of the Sales and Service Practice. Their new book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, is forthcoming November 10, 2011 from Portfolio/Penguin.

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Why Your Salespeople Are Pushovers - Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson - Harvard Business Review

8:17 AM Friday October 14, 2011
by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson | Comments ( 19)

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This blog, the third in a four-part series, is also part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line. Its conclusions are based on data from a global study of more than 6,000 sales reps across nearly 100 companies in multiple industries.



One of the age-old stereotypes in business is the pushy salesperson. But what if we told you that the real issue in sales today isn't that salespeople tend to be too pushy, but that they're not pushy enough?

In our first post in this series, we introduced you to a special type of high-performing sales rep called the Challenger. One of the defining attributes of Challengers is that they take control of the sale by being assertive.

What does this look like in practice? Challengers take control in three important ways.

First, as we discussed in last week's post, Challengers use proprietary insights to change the way customers think about their business and that highlight the suppliers' unique ability to create value. If customers respond, as they invariably do, that the insights don't apply in their situation, Challengers don't back down. They know that if they want customers to buy differently, they're first going to have to get them to think differently — and that they may have to get a little scuffed up in the process.

Second, knowing that today's complex deals are often just as difficult to buy as they are to sell, Challengers actively guide customers through the purchase process. They maintain the momentum of the sale by pushing customers to engage the right internal stakeholders at the right time with the right message. Challengers don't ask customers how the deal is going to get done, waiting for the customer to "coach" them. They teach customers how to drive consensus for the purchase — as more often than not, customers themselves don't really know how to do it.

Finally, Challengers take control in negotiating commercial details — especially at that crucial moment when the customer looks them in the eye and says, "If we could just get a 5% discount, I think we could get this done by the end of the week." Unlike most reps whose response to a discount request is either to "consult with a manager" or to "meet the customer half way," Challengers table the discount request altogether and instead push the conversation back to the value they're providing to the customer. They acknowledge the request for a price concession, but defer a decision and, if pressed, offer other less costly concessions.

Now, of course, in all of these situations Challengers push back respectfully, professionally, empathetically and in a manner consistent with local culture (the way you challenge in Japan is different than the way you challenge in the U.S., for example). But, make no mistake, Challengers do push back.

When we present this research to sales leaders, we hear a common refrain: "If we tell our reps to sell like Challengers and be more assertive, they'll go too far. They'll take it as a license to become aggressive." But more often than not, this concern is unwarranted. In reality, most reps are far more likely to be passive than aggressive with customers. Guided by years of training and a deeply seated but mistaken belief that they should always do what the customer wants, reps seek to resolve tension with customers quickly, rather than prolong it. But maintaining a certain amount of constructive tension is exactly what Challengers do.

Why do most reps fear tension? We see two reasons. First, they feel they have no choice — it's either acquiesce or lose the deal. Yet, in a recent survey of sales reps and procurement officers, BayGroup International determined that while 75 percent of reps believe that procurement has the upper hand in the rep-customer relationship, 75 percent of procurement officers believe that reps have more power. What does that tell us? At the very least, if reps give in simply because of a perceived power imbalance, they're conceding way too easily.

Second, most reps adopt a passive posture because senior management has told them to. How so? In ongoing efforts to differentiate their companies, virtually every leadership team has exhorted their team to "put the customer first," or "place the customer at the center of everything we do." It's not a bad strategy, mind you, but it backfires when leadership is vague about how this translates to specific behavior. Without clear guidance, most reps simply slip into "order taker" mode, closing small, disaggregated, price-driven deals at a discount all in the name of "giving customers what they want."

How would you describe the best reps in your organization? Do they acquiesce to customer demands and passively take business that's given to them or do they push their customers and use tension to their advantage?


Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson


Matthew Dixon is Managing Director of the Corporate Executive Board's Sales and Service Practice. Brent Adamson is Senior Director of the Sales Executive Council, a division of the Sales and Service Practice. Their new book, The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation, is forthcoming November 10, 2011 from Portfolio/Penguin.



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Why Choose Happiness? | October 15, 2011 Happiness Newsletter

By Lionel Ketchian

You're unhappy because you have a problem. Now, you have cut yourself off from the choices you have available. The problem becomes bigger than life, as it consumes and overwhelms you. You feel there is nothing you can do about it because your state of unhappiness directs you to see life in only that one negative way. Once you think unhappily, and think in terms of the problem and not the solution, you disempower yourself from dealing with the problem.

In a happy state you can deal with any problem because you can see with clarity what choices you have. This clarity enables you to deal with your problem. You can only make the best choice available to you. First, you need to know what your choices are. Happiness allows you to see these choices very clearly. Unhappiness does not allow you to see your choices.

Take a look at your problem. Do you have a choice about your problem? If you have no choice then you have something you do not like. It's not that you really have a problem. Problems have solutions. What choice or choices do you have regarding the problem? If you do not have a choice, why make it a problem? If you don't accept the problem you are going to be unhappy. If the problem is just a part of life and you don't accept it, than you will suffer as a result of your reaction to you're own negative thinking. This is also your choice, but you have another choice ... to live and enjoy your life, just be happy!

The way to empower yourself is to decide to be happy no matter what. Choose happiness over everything else. This gives you the power to deal with life and deal with yourself. Happiness is a powerful strategy for those who practice it. When you're happy it gives you the awareness to realize the choices you have and what option is right for you. What is the real power that you have in doing this? You have power over yourself, and this is very important my friend, because being happy is authentic power.

We all know that money can't buy happiness, because happiness is a decision. Happiness is a decision that only you can make. The happiness decision is just a one step method, not three steps, or twelve steps. Who can remember so many? But everybody can remember just one step. All you have to do is remember to choose happiness in every moment in your life over anything that can take your happiness away! Now that you have made the happiness decision you realize that happiness is where you're headed. Choose happiness instead of allowing anything to upset you. Once you have made the happiness decision, it becomes easier and easier to be happy from one moment to the next.

Have you noticed how hard it is for you to control anyone or anything? Well, you can control yourself by lightening up, relaxing, and laughing about things, having fun, and enjoying life. Being happy allows you to learn that you can control yourself, and not let anyone or anything else control you. Learn to let go of the things you can't change. This way you do not let them change you. Live with happiness and allow the experience of being happy to work for you.

Do you know the reason why people do not live with happiness? Many people are not even aware that happiness is a choice they can make. Once you learn that being happy is a choice, you may think you don't deserve it. Some people do not even love themselves enough to treat themselves with happiness. BE HAPPY, take my word for it, YOU'RE WORTH IT!

Why be happy? Because it's the best way to live, and it's the best way to give. You can't give away what you don't have. When you're happy, you start to share your happiness with others. Show them your happiness and let them model this behavior from you. They will become aware of happiness through you. Others will see the wisdom of choosing to be happy for themselves. It is all about controlling yourself, not others. People can't contaminate you with their unhappiness. To the contrary you will infect them with your happiness.

Learn to change what you can, and accept what you can't change. Being Happy allows you to tap into your own wisdom and common sense. Choosing happiness will make a big difference in your life ... and a big difference in the world.



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Stop Procrastinating...Now - Amy Gallo - Best Practices - Harvard Business Review

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Straightforward, actionable advice for novice managers, seasoned leaders, and people at all levels in between.

9:25 AM Tuesday October 11, 2011
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It seems that no one is immune to the tendency to procrastinate. When someone asked Ernest Hemingway how to write a novel, his response was "First you defrost the refrigerator." But putting off tasks takes a big hit on our productivity, and psyche. Procrastination is not inevitable. Figuring out why you postpone work and then taking concrete steps to prevent it will help you get more done and feel good about yourself.


What the Experts Say
According to Ned Hallowell, a psychiatrist and the author of 12 books, including Driven to Distraction, delaying work is often a symptom of how busy you are. "We procrastinate because we all have too much to do," he says. And of course, we want to dodge things we don't like. "Many people procrastinate because they fear the drudgery or the difficulty of the task they are avoiding," says Teresa Amabile, the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and coauthor of The Progress Principle. But, as you have likely learned, it doesn't pay to dawdle. "Putting it off doesn't make it go away. Getting it done does," says Hallowell. Here are five principles to follow next time you find yourself deferring important work.


1. Figure out what's holding you back
When you find yourself ignoring or delaying a task, ask yourself why. Hallowell points out that there are two types of tasks most often deferred:

• Something you don't like to do. This is the most common one. As Hallowell says, "You don't put off eating your favorite dessert."
• Something you don't know how to do. When you lack the necessary knowledge or are unsure of how to start a job, you are more likely to avoid it.

Once you've identified why you've put something off, you can break the cycle and prevent future bouts of procrastination.

2. Set deadlines for yourself
One of the simplest things you can do is create a schedule with clear due dates for each part of a task. "As soon as you get the project, chunk it down into a few manageable segments that you can complete in sequence," Amabile advises. Then, assign deadlines for each piece. "Put an appointment in your calendar to work on a small piece of the next segment each day to allow yourself to get it done a bit at a time," she says. These "small wins" make the work more manageable and contribute to your sense of progress. And achieving them is much easier than trying to barrel through a complex project.
Setting deadlines also makes sure the project doesn't get buried. For things that you are likely to put off, add reminders in your calendar or put a Post-It on your computer screen. Use whatever visual cues will ensure you don't avoid the project.

3. Increase the rewards
We often dally because the reward for doing a certain assignment is too far off. Regina Conti, an associate professor of psychology at Colgate University and an expert in motivation, provides the example of doing your taxes. "A person may want to complete their taxes to avoid the legal penalties of not doing so, but because those penalties are far in the future and the task is a boring one, they will not have much incentive to get started with the project," she says. To make a task feel more immediate, focus on short-term rewards, such as getting a refund. Or if there aren't any, insert your own. Treat yourself to a coffee break, or a quick chat with a co-worker once you've finished a task. You can also embed the reward into the task itself by making it more fun to do. Work with someone on a particularly difficult project or set up a game for yourself so that doing the task isn't so boring or onerous.
4. Involve others
One of the principles Hallowell often repeats in his work is "Never worry alone." If you don't know how to do something, ask for help. Turn to a trusted colleague or a friend for advice. Or, look for an example of the project you are working on to use as a starting point. "Others are a great source of extrinsic motivation," says Conti. Asking someone to review your work can spur you to get started knowing they will expect it. You can even enter an anti-procrastination pact with a co-worker: share what you are working on and hold each other accountable to set deadlines.

5. Get in the habit
"People throw up a hand and say 'I'm such a procrastinator' as if they have no control," says Hallowell. "You do have control over this and you'll be very proud when you change it." Hallowell says that he used to be a procrastinator but trained himself to stop. "I don't procrastinate at all now. I just do it," he says. There are immediate benefits when you start getting things done right away, and it's a habit you can cultivate. Amabile suggests tracking your improvement. "Spend just five minutes a day to note the progress you made, any setbacks you encountered, and what you might do the next day to enable further progress," she says. She recommends you do this in a work diary. Then see yourself, and talk about yourself with others, as someone who gets things done. "The most powerful event, for maintaining positive inner work life, is making progress in meaningful work," says Amabile.
Principles to Remember

Do:

• Identify which tasks you are most likely to put off
• Use deadlines to motivate you to get things done within a certain timeframe
• Reward yourself for reaching milestones

Don't:

• Call yourself a procrastinator as if it is an intrinsic part of who you are
• Tackle arduous tasks on your own — ask others to help you get over the hump
• Try to finish a project in one sitting — break it down into smaller, achievable chunks

Amy Gallo is a contributing editor at Harvard Business Review. Follow her on Twitter at @amyegallo.

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Lessons In Business From Dr. Love's Hug Orgy | Fast Company

BY Dawn LimMon Oct 3, 2011

There's a science to creating a world that's happier and more profitable, says neuroeconomist Paul Zak.

Over a microphone, neuroeconomist Paul Zak is exhorting 500 New Yorkers to give more love. "Everyone has to hug at least one stranger by the end of tonight," he insists, "No creepy hugs, please." We're at the luridly named "Love Night" at the BMW-Guggenheim Lab on a Friday night, to be test subjects for experiments in what triggers our brains to trust. Zak (above) wraps the guy next to him in a bear hug, and the heart-shaped, heat-sensitive cutout on his T-shirt turns neon green. That starts a hugging orgy that lasts for the next three hours.

Zak got the name "Doctor Love" from looking at how oxytocin--simply put, it's the brain chemical that makes people cuddle and bond--affects people's economic decisions. The chief-architect of "Love Night," Zak has to convince this roomful of hipsters, academics, and the most hardened of New Yorkers that a hug--or anything that jump-starts our brains' love circuitry--is a powerful thing. Applied to business, it means that when people really connect with those they work with, they'll feel more committed to the ideas that they're making happen together, Zak says. To prove his point, he greets me by sweeping me up with a hug so strong that it almost hurts.

"There's a science behind creating a world that is happier and more profitable," says Zak, a Claremont Graduate University professor who takes his research team go-cart racing and holds beer parties in his lab. "It's can be as simple as eight hugs a day."

More thoroughly explained, oxytocin has been popularized as the love-molecule that gets people empathetic and generous. It's the chemical that motivates mothers to care for their children, or inspires two strangers to connect. Oxytocin release is a virtuous cycle: The more of this cuddle-molecule your brain pumps out, the more your brain is triggered to release it. A hug is one way to start this oxytocin loop, says Zak.

Another way is to create an environment where people know it's all right to be connecting. Google does this by establishing ping-pong tables and snack areas in its offices. After all, happier people tend to be more invested in their projects and customers, the thinking goes. "As much as it is intuitively obvious that there are effects from how you design your work environment, there's a science behind it," Zak says, "That includes whether there's beer in the fridge in the office."

In a corner at the Guggenheim lab this Friday night, 50 people are arguing about how to build the ideal city. They're playing Urbanology, a game in which they have to resolve and vote on real-world urban dilemmas. Some of the topics being debated: Should a city have dog-free zones? Should lawmakers be allowed to debate whether gay people should be banned from kissing in public? A couple of people jump in with some lively Detroit-bashing. After an algorithm calculates the net effect of everyone's decisions, it turns out that they've collectively built a city with "the lifestyle of Abu Dhabi, the sustainability of Johannesburg, and the transportation of Mexico City." But deeper into the night, as more people get oxytocin-high from all the hugging, the cities they build are a little kinder and greener.

In the garden, a psychologist is making pairs of strangers to walk toward each other till they get almost too close for comfort. He's also attached cuffs to their hands to measure activity in their sweat glands and determine their states of arousal. Each time a pair gets into one another's face, their arousal spikes, indicating they're feeling more alive and responsive.

In another corner, a large screen is projecting hopes and fears people have anonymously jotted down and dropped into a box. The desires are startlingly basic, and similar. Why is everyone saying they hope to find love, or that they want to make it in New York City? Maybe it's something about living in a city that pulses with so much life, and yet can be so indifferent. Part of this exercise is to show that it's cathartic to be able to share our thoughts freely with one another. And that's food for thought on how to build a workplace. "There are real chemical effects that are measurable and which you can manipulate," says Zak. By the end of the night, he's dispensed 100 hugs. "Completely wiped out," he says.

Ten years ago, Zak wouldn't have been comfortable brandishing the L-word so freely. Oxytocin was a hormone known mostly just in ob-gyn circles. After years of measuring blood samples and churning out peer-reviewed research, he's more at ease with proselytizing about the love-drug. But neuroeconomics, which studies the interplay between economic decisions and our brain's mechanisms, still remains a young field. It's difficult to study people outside a controlled lab setting--or convince the whole academic community that this isn't the stuff of pop-science.

Emanuele Castano, a New School social psychology professor who tried to carry out experiments on Love Night, knows that field tests are no cakewalk. For fun, he's testing whether people are more likely to trust strangers when they're holding a warm rather than a cold drink. The hypothesis: Those who feel the warmth from cups of hot cocoas in their hands will score higher on trust, and agree to fill out a survey given out by a stranger. There was just one problem: His control group was skewed. "Everyone was just too trusting from all the hugging," he sighs.


[Image: Matthew Stanton]

Dawn Lim has reported about tech for Dow Jones MarketWatch, Wired, and NextGov. You can find Dawn on Twitter at: Twitter.com/dawnmlim.

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On Entrepreneurship, Steve Jobs, and Unashamedly Loving Your Work - Jeff Stibel - Harvard Business Review

11:27 AM Friday October 7, 2011
by Jeff Stibel Comments (1)

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The world lost a great inventor and entrepreneur when it lost Steve Jobs. He left a legacy of simple, elegant designs that demystified technology.

For me, as a fellow entrepreneur, Steve Jobs left a legacy even more valuable than his design ideals: he set an example for how to run your business to make the most of the time you're given. He lived and acted with a sense of urgency and an abundance of passion.

My friend Erik Calonius had the pleasure of interviewing Jobs early in his career and reminded me of a quote that defined him throughout his life:

"For the past 33 years I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

When you think that every day could be your last, you start thinking about the things that are really important to you. Of course, for almost everyone, there is an automatic response: family, friends, charity, community all make the top of the list. And indeed, in honor of Steve, I am heading home early today to play with my kids and kiss my wife. Then I plan to enjoy a nice glass of wine while staring out the window for a relaxing reverie.

But after that, I am going back to my second favorite place: work.

There is some irony to this for people who know me: For years, I have done this work-home-work routine each and every day. Even when I have a Board meeting that lasts into the night, I take a break to head back home to see my wife and tuck my kids in — always. And then I go back to work.

We've all read a lot about Steve Jobs in the past few days, and the "live every day like it's your last" sentiment is running high. I think the challenge — and the thing that Jobs was great at — is doing that day after day after day. We all make time for our favorite things after a seismic event — a death, an illness, an earthquake — but it is far more important, albeit more difficult, to do so on a random Tuesday. I think that if Jobs could pick a legacy, it would be to inspire a few more brave souls to make sure that that the things they will do today, both in business and in life, aren't so far off from what they would do if they knew there were no tomorrow.

That's the part that, sadly, the majority of Americans miss out on. And nowhere is that more true than at work, where we spend most of our time. For too many, work is a grind instead of a passion, a four-letter word. I'm lucky enough to share Jobs' absolute passion for work. A good number of my friends and colleagues I know feel the same way — and entrepreneurs absolutely have to, or their businesses will fail. But it is sad to see how many people do not cherish what they do for a living. I've written before about having a passion for work — the art of loving what you do. There is a test: You know you're doing the right thing when you pop out of bed in the morning (before your alarm goes off) because you're excited to start the day.

Work involves way too much time and energy to not enjoy the process — life is just too short. That message is the simple, elegant design Jobs truly left us.

Jeff Stibel

Jeffrey Stibel is Chairman and CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. and author of Wired for Thought. Follow him on Twitter at @stibel.

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