Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Boy's Book of Pseudoscience: Oprah - Queen of Pseudoscience?
Here is a little cross linking. Why not promote my own blog? Sort of like a snake eating its tail...
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
A Tribe of Fear - Persuasion and feeding time at the zoo
Why am I always talking about persuasion and influence? What does it have to do with the zoo?
I have never worked at a zoo. But there are a lot of animals in the zoo we call business. The first time I decided to go down this path of persuasion was my first attempt at selling an idea to a couple of wild engineering critters at Northrop.
I lost a bid to replace about a million dollars of work with a 75 cent part. I was shot down hard by a couple of good 'o boy, about to retire, last hurrah engineers that were in charge of a 10 million dollar project to create a piece of test hardware to test the the test hardware of the guidance system of the MX (Peacekeeper) Missile. Yep you heard it right, a tester for the tester of a mulit-megaton, death from the sky, firecracker.
How could I fail? It was 75 cents verses a lot of money. I worked for 6 months to write software verses 75 cents (well really about $150 after labor costs). How can you loose an argument like that? But I lost.
I was not just humbled by it, I was slammed to the ground with little understanding of why. The 'why not' was even sillier. Quite simply there was no real counter argument worth writing about. Just a dismissive attitude. I was selling to people unwilling to save a million bucks at the cost of a question to the accuracy of their design.
Nothing better than failure to learn how to do it right the second time. That was the day I decided that no idea can stand on its own. You must sell ideas:
o Find the reason from the customer's viewpoint as to why they need to accept your idea.
o You can sell all day long, but the buyer has to want to buy.
o Sell need, desire, a reason, motivation, and a cause.
o Find the reasons for change, make it easy to change, and don't pull or push, use honey to attract the bees.
o Help the process with influence techniques like reciprocity, authority, liking, scarcity, exclusivity, etc.
Persuade! Influence!
Persuasion is not just what you say, but the context. To sell that 75 cent part successfully, I needed to understand that the engineers would have been embarrassed to no end by my wet behind the ears and thus unencumbered creative thinking. Why is it so bad? Because if they failed to see a million dollar mistake, then they have made a really big get-you-fired mistake.
Where there is one mistake, there may be more. Where there is a mistake, there is a reason to loose your job. This is basic stuff. No competence, no job, no food, no house. People and lions get all uppity and irrational when you get between them and their food.
I'd be doing worse than stealing their food in this case. These guys were close to retirement. I was stealing their early retirement to green pastures.
I should not have sold my idea as my idea or even mention the savings. It had to be their idea. It had to be based on other motivations. It had to be their win. It had to be a reason for the boss to put more food on their table. All the persuasion I could muster would just bounce off without defusing even the tiny notion of a mistake.
Good book to read on this area: Dinosaur Brains: Dealing with All THOSE Impossible People at Work
. The premiss of the book is that small bit of brain associated with primal wants, needs, and desires is alive and kicking in the modern brain.
The workplace is filled with over-stressed animals. Every day you can see the grim nature of fight or flight as territory is defended and ideas and blame substitute for contributions to the heard.
Primal actions are destructive. Most of us just see anger and irrational behavior rather than the true motivators. You know it when you see it. Pull out the wild animal guidebook or watch the Discovery Channel to understand the key indicators.
For the record, before I could learn all of this great wisdom, I also submitted a design that would have saved about 8 million on the same project. I was again shot down in flames.
Funny though, the Air Force a couple years later said to loose 8 million in costs or cancel the project. Funny how the new design looked just like my unsavory proposal.
No reason to gloat over my design wining out in the end. The proposal was submitted two years before and could have saved even more of our tax dollars in a very over budget project.
Back to leading the tribe. Irrationality is everywhere. It usually comes from a fear of loosing food and shelter or membership in the tribe. Persuasion and influence is just as important to a sale as it is to keeping the tribe healthy. Do you want your tribe to make million dollar mistakes because they are being territorial animals acting on instinct rather than rational thought?
It might be time to teach your people how to set the animalistic fears and motivations aside. Especially in this economy. Imagine how dysfunctional the world is starting to get as people fear for their jobs.
I'll talk about removing fear in my next post. For now, what do you think, right now? Have you experience the animals in the workplace? Is it getting worse when the market dips? Let us know by posting a comment below.
I have never worked at a zoo. But there are a lot of animals in the zoo we call business. The first time I decided to go down this path of persuasion was my first attempt at selling an idea to a couple of wild engineering critters at Northrop.
I lost a bid to replace about a million dollars of work with a 75 cent part. I was shot down hard by a couple of good 'o boy, about to retire, last hurrah engineers that were in charge of a 10 million dollar project to create a piece of test hardware to test the the test hardware of the guidance system of the MX (Peacekeeper) Missile. Yep you heard it right, a tester for the tester of a mulit-megaton, death from the sky, firecracker.
How could I fail? It was 75 cents verses a lot of money. I worked for 6 months to write software verses 75 cents (well really about $150 after labor costs). How can you loose an argument like that? But I lost.
I was not just humbled by it, I was slammed to the ground with little understanding of why. The 'why not' was even sillier. Quite simply there was no real counter argument worth writing about. Just a dismissive attitude. I was selling to people unwilling to save a million bucks at the cost of a question to the accuracy of their design.
Nothing better than failure to learn how to do it right the second time. That was the day I decided that no idea can stand on its own. You must sell ideas:
o Find the reason from the customer's viewpoint as to why they need to accept your idea.
o You can sell all day long, but the buyer has to want to buy.
o Sell need, desire, a reason, motivation, and a cause.
o Find the reasons for change, make it easy to change, and don't pull or push, use honey to attract the bees.
o Help the process with influence techniques like reciprocity, authority, liking, scarcity, exclusivity, etc.
Persuade! Influence!
Persuasion is not just what you say, but the context. To sell that 75 cent part successfully, I needed to understand that the engineers would have been embarrassed to no end by my wet behind the ears and thus unencumbered creative thinking. Why is it so bad? Because if they failed to see a million dollar mistake, then they have made a really big get-you-fired mistake.
Where there is one mistake, there may be more. Where there is a mistake, there is a reason to loose your job. This is basic stuff. No competence, no job, no food, no house. People and lions get all uppity and irrational when you get between them and their food.
I'd be doing worse than stealing their food in this case. These guys were close to retirement. I was stealing their early retirement to green pastures.
I should not have sold my idea as my idea or even mention the savings. It had to be their idea. It had to be based on other motivations. It had to be their win. It had to be a reason for the boss to put more food on their table. All the persuasion I could muster would just bounce off without defusing even the tiny notion of a mistake.
Good book to read on this area: Dinosaur Brains: Dealing with All THOSE Impossible People at Work
. The premiss of the book is that small bit of brain associated with primal wants, needs, and desires is alive and kicking in the modern brain.The workplace is filled with over-stressed animals. Every day you can see the grim nature of fight or flight as territory is defended and ideas and blame substitute for contributions to the heard.
Primal actions are destructive. Most of us just see anger and irrational behavior rather than the true motivators. You know it when you see it. Pull out the wild animal guidebook or watch the Discovery Channel to understand the key indicators.
For the record, before I could learn all of this great wisdom, I also submitted a design that would have saved about 8 million on the same project. I was again shot down in flames.
Funny though, the Air Force a couple years later said to loose 8 million in costs or cancel the project. Funny how the new design looked just like my unsavory proposal.
No reason to gloat over my design wining out in the end. The proposal was submitted two years before and could have saved even more of our tax dollars in a very over budget project.
Back to leading the tribe. Irrationality is everywhere. It usually comes from a fear of loosing food and shelter or membership in the tribe. Persuasion and influence is just as important to a sale as it is to keeping the tribe healthy. Do you want your tribe to make million dollar mistakes because they are being territorial animals acting on instinct rather than rational thought?
It might be time to teach your people how to set the animalistic fears and motivations aside. Especially in this economy. Imagine how dysfunctional the world is starting to get as people fear for their jobs.
I'll talk about removing fear in my next post. For now, what do you think, right now? Have you experience the animals in the workplace? Is it getting worse when the market dips? Let us know by posting a comment below.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
If I could only read your mind... oh yeah, I can!
It is amazing how the internet works. I wrote an article for a software magazine a few years ago about using magic and mentalism to help create better software. Funny though that the magazine either does not exist or does not have a googlable index so the only reference from the Googleplex was this:
Magic Is Golden - Pulling Rabbits Out of Hats (Software and Magic).
Follow the link and take a look. It is pretty good stuff and could open your mind to a new way to think about human/software interactions or even the harder human/human interactions.
The gist of it all is this: Use the information you have to both impress that you know something and further use the information to make accurate predictions about the demographics and psychographics of your coworkers/customers/tribe.
One of the important rules of persuasion is 'Liking' and found in the following book:Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
. The point here is that a person that finds common ground is more apt to do a deal with you. By using mentalism techniques you can find common ground that you can leverage opportunities.
Use the clues. Don't just sit in your customer's office! Look around. Find the sports, art, books, etc. Find common ground, even if it is common ground between your customer and another customer of yours. Just knowing someone like your customer helps you seem likable because of the common thread in your shared social network.
Caildini also looks at authority as persuasion. A simple lab coat can make people do things they would never do for anyone else. you can use mentalism techniques to be the knowing doctor. This is wacky simple. Look at many drug ads. Old=disease. How fortunate that they know and understand my problem!
But Cialdini also talks about the dishonest persuader. If you trick simply to gain advantage, the lack of honest persuasion causes issues later on. The key is to truly use a technique to to help the target of persuasion. If you simply trick, then you don't get repeat business. This is clearly seen with reciprocity (exchange of gifts). The Hari Krishna are a great example where they would give an unexpectant rube a flower which caused a reaction to give a donation. But the ploy failed as there was no real benefit and people learned to avoid the followers. The Hari Krishna are now banned from many places mainly because of their less than honest techniques. Of course many of you reading this don't have any idea what a Krishna is and that is in large part their own doing causing society to bad a practice and thus also limiting the exposure so much that it is no longer as widely known.
services
Here in Bangkok (I am here 6 months out of the year) we have horribly disfigured beggars. Though there is a travesty for these poor people, they are placed by criminal gangs that reap the donations. The result is that these poor people that would have normally eked out a living are now mostly ignored. On the other hand the Buddhist temples bring in vast sums of money because their spending of the money is usually transparent. The reciprocity is in the form of both offerings and luck/fortunes and other spiritual services. The people are happy to pay for the spiritual piece of mind and it pales in comparison to the offering plate at your local church.
Back to mentalism, a less spiritual miracle of observation, statistics, choice words, and a little prestidigitation. Be honest, surprising, and appear to know things that others do not. This will help you go far if you do so honestly with the benefit of your friends, family, and tribe clearly a goal.
What is a the most important part of the tribe beyond the leader? Shaman or witch doctor and in some cases they are the leader as well.
Magic Is Golden - Pulling Rabbits Out of Hats (Software and Magic).
Follow the link and take a look. It is pretty good stuff and could open your mind to a new way to think about human/software interactions or even the harder human/human interactions.
The gist of it all is this: Use the information you have to both impress that you know something and further use the information to make accurate predictions about the demographics and psychographics of your coworkers/customers/tribe.
One of the important rules of persuasion is 'Liking' and found in the following book:Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
. The point here is that a person that finds common ground is more apt to do a deal with you. By using mentalism techniques you can find common ground that you can leverage opportunities.Use the clues. Don't just sit in your customer's office! Look around. Find the sports, art, books, etc. Find common ground, even if it is common ground between your customer and another customer of yours. Just knowing someone like your customer helps you seem likable because of the common thread in your shared social network.
Caildini also looks at authority as persuasion. A simple lab coat can make people do things they would never do for anyone else. you can use mentalism techniques to be the knowing doctor. This is wacky simple. Look at many drug ads. Old=disease. How fortunate that they know and understand my problem!
But Cialdini also talks about the dishonest persuader. If you trick simply to gain advantage, the lack of honest persuasion causes issues later on. The key is to truly use a technique to to help the target of persuasion. If you simply trick, then you don't get repeat business. This is clearly seen with reciprocity (exchange of gifts). The Hari Krishna are a great example where they would give an unexpectant rube a flower which caused a reaction to give a donation. But the ploy failed as there was no real benefit and people learned to avoid the followers. The Hari Krishna are now banned from many places mainly because of their less than honest techniques. Of course many of you reading this don't have any idea what a Krishna is and that is in large part their own doing causing society to bad a practice and thus also limiting the exposure so much that it is no longer as widely known.
services
Here in Bangkok (I am here 6 months out of the year) we have horribly disfigured beggars. Though there is a travesty for these poor people, they are placed by criminal gangs that reap the donations. The result is that these poor people that would have normally eked out a living are now mostly ignored. On the other hand the Buddhist temples bring in vast sums of money because their spending of the money is usually transparent. The reciprocity is in the form of both offerings and luck/fortunes and other spiritual services. The people are happy to pay for the spiritual piece of mind and it pales in comparison to the offering plate at your local church.
Back to mentalism, a less spiritual miracle of observation, statistics, choice words, and a little prestidigitation. Be honest, surprising, and appear to know things that others do not. This will help you go far if you do so honestly with the benefit of your friends, family, and tribe clearly a goal.
What is a the most important part of the tribe beyond the leader? Shaman or witch doctor and in some cases they are the leader as well.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Why are we surprised
Beware, this is a long one. But I think you will like the ride. I won't say this is a new idea, but it does have new possibilities.
Reading blogs on Discovery.com is interesting. The scientific mind often gets bent out of shape when logic seems to drift. Read this post about a nest of wasps that formed in the shape of a Buddha in Rochester MN. Not only is there the incredulusness of the idea that Buddha and wasp are related, but the people intervied in the referenced story and the author of the original article keep confusing bees for wasps.
The funny thing about Buddhism is that no matter how much it is a philosophy, it still spirals into religion. Not saying that it can't be a pure way of life, but that is not what it is in all Buddhist-based cultures (barring those in California).
The wasps (through the miracle of self-delusion actually bees) must have a 'human' explanation. The purist Buddhist philosophy would simply be that they were being wasps as is their nature - nothing more.
The trick is that Buddhism does not deny the religion that existed prior to the adoption of Buddhism before it arrived. Look at Thailand (I do for 6 months of every year) where there is never a Buddha that is not within arms reach of a creature or god from the indian-based religions. Because they were also very prone to believing in the influence of these other worldly beings, they attribute a lot of how the world works to them. The number of rituals or signs, belief in the cause and effect of the rituals is amazing. This is not necessarily peasants in the jungle. We are talking about the educated masses bowing to the Buddha as well as multi-armed Shiva and other dieties.
I'll add one more thing. No matter how you slice it, humans are the problem - not a religion or other excuse. We can make anything seem reasonable. A Buddhist will not cause damage to another living being. But a Buddhist can (and I have seen it) create a situation where pain or worse is inevitable just as long as they don't strike the death blow... or can claim it was just a reflex. A mosquito cannot be killed, but should it wander into a death trap through misadventure, that's alright.
The purist Buddhist would not do such a thing, but the non purist would argue that they were pure as well. Imagine a dictionary with only one definition for every word. Imagine a book that could not be interpreted to having different meanings (barring pure math).
The simple fact is that we are human. Murphy's law is all about the human's ability to believe something will work, that it is designed right, that it will be used as intended and the consequence of believing any of these has a shred of truth.
And now, the missing ending.
In this case it is all about the sloppiness of belief. A Buddhist can cheat, lie, make mistakes, and do silly things as easily as a Christian or Islamist. Just as an engineer can put in a part backwards (the source of the Murphy tale) people easily can reverse/twist/expand a belief or embelish liberally to support the initial position of their belief or action. Even stranger is how beliefs and their supporting arguments are easily picked up by others. This is acually a bit less surprising because it is simple to go with the flow.
Back to philosophical Wasps building Buddha-shaped nests in Buddhist temples (we call them Watts in Thailand). What stuck me funny as I have said is the bashing of the very science-based blogger of people that are... well, being people. On the one end, Mr Wizard. On the other end, Mr Wizard with prejudice of religion rather than understanding that the human condition easily mistakes a wasp from a bee and gets bent out of shape when deities show up built by insects.
Where is this going? The referenced blog seems to say these folks are stupid. Stupid isn't about being educated or facts. Stupid is is a state of mind that got there through human experience and the way the mind works. Stupid, ten to one, is nothing more than a belief that is wrong. Stupid comes from lack of Critical Thinking
, perhaps education, and even our parents - but it is something that is always there in some amount in all of us.
So, here we are in Triiibes. What does this have to deal with leading? People are not stupid. Note: Not talking about IQ. Lots of smart people belong to cults. Lots of people do stupid things. Stupidity is sometimes fleeting, but I am talking about a persistent stupid. How do you lead stupid?
First, drop the 'stupid' moniker. Treat stupidity as a belief. Find what led to a problem that you have with a co-worker, client, targeted customers, and the rest of the world. Remember that belief is hard to change. Most beliefs exist even in that face of evidence, so don't expect a belief to change.
A variation of what we often label with 'stupid' is related to skills. I want to call this out separately because the English language sucks (it is a human invention and ha a lot of flaws). Good book to read is The Myth of Laziness
. Spelling, the ability to write, speaking skills, fine motor skills are all are related to how the brain is wired. You can't do a lot about that. Worse lots of kids with developing brains or adults that are not quite wired perfectly are labeled as lazy which is closely related to and often called 'stupid'. You get the same issues leading these folks. In addition they have additional beliefs caused by not being perfect and what that entails.
Full disclosure, can't spell, handwriting from hell, and until I learned to juggle, I could not lay on the ground while chewing gum without tripping. But, I use a spell checker, I type, and I now have motor skills thanks to learning to juggle when I was about 35 (balls, knives, flaming torches and toilet plungers in their order of danger to my self and audience). Juggling rewired a brain stuck at age 13 because my beliefs kept me tied to avoiding improvements in my motor skills. The rest are just coping skills that work quite well in modern society.
The trick to leading most beliefs or handicaps of all kinds is to first accept them. Suspending belief should be the game. I became a writer when I realized that nobody really cared as long as I used a spell checker (at a guess I have used the spell checker on about 30 words in this blog entry so far). I also became a writer because I had a goal where the writing was only a small part of reaching the goal. Juggling too was just a means to a really good joke rather than being able to own glassware rather than high impact plastic.
So, here are my steps for curing stupidity caused by beliefs:
1) Accept the belief. If possible, find the source and acknowledge that this makes the belief true given the evidence.
2) Suspend a belief with a different reality or conditions where another belief can be possible. Alternately, ask that a belief take a little time off and try another belief and have the subject see how it works out with their own observations. Goals that are related, but not the focus of the belief are very useful.
3) Follow up and if possible confirm a change or at least progress in loosening the grip of an old belief
There are pitfalls to consider:
Inertia - If you are not dead, the belief has not really affected you that badly. If it is not life threatening, it is hard for the brain to find a reason to change. It takes a lot of effort to change direction in a car or a mind.
Self-limiting beliefs - Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being seen as inferior, fear of mediocrity and others will help support a belief. These can be teated as stated above, but they are deeply held beliefs that likely caused the belief. My favorite book on such limiting beliefs: The Luck Factor: The Four Essential Principles
Energy - The brain uses a lot of energy when rewiring itself. Nature likes to conserve energy. A closed mind is a low energy mind. Changing the energy level through the effort of changing a belief is not something the brain likes to do. That is why having other goals are important. The need needs to be sweeter than the effort so that the effort pays big or such that the effort isn't even noticed against the greater need to reach the goal.
All of this applies to groups as well. Think about Microsoft and Apple. In the minds of Apple fans they have beliefs with inertia, the fear of failure by being wrong, and all the baggage of understanding how to use the products. Microsoft might call these people stupid and Apple plays the same game with Mr Hodgman. Microsoft is playing on the need to be part of a group with their new adverts which is also a deep belief.
Apple is winning market share as much from the new inertia of converts that bring in others simply because nobody dies from buying Apple and they do seem a bit happier. The energy of changing your mind is easier if you observe others succeeding - why waste energy when all the thinking has been done for you?
How many Republicans call Democrats stupid and hear their words mirrored back? How did Obama win? My guess is that he put the goal of change in the air until it overcame many beliefs that were held by Republicans and non-voting youths that had found no reason to vote before. McCain mostly spoke to the beliefs of other Republicans rather than a new belief that would sway youth or existing Democrats.
You can now start to see a new strategy. Don't push against stupidity. Stupidity is just a belief. Change beliefs. You are already changing your mind a little and that has its own inertia.
Let us know what you are thinking. The fear of commenting in public is not a belief we have here :o)
Reading blogs on Discovery.com is interesting. The scientific mind often gets bent out of shape when logic seems to drift. Read this post about a nest of wasps that formed in the shape of a Buddha in Rochester MN. Not only is there the incredulusness of the idea that Buddha and wasp are related, but the people intervied in the referenced story and the author of the original article keep confusing bees for wasps.
The funny thing about Buddhism is that no matter how much it is a philosophy, it still spirals into religion. Not saying that it can't be a pure way of life, but that is not what it is in all Buddhist-based cultures (barring those in California).
The wasps (through the miracle of self-delusion actually bees) must have a 'human' explanation. The purist Buddhist philosophy would simply be that they were being wasps as is their nature - nothing more.
The trick is that Buddhism does not deny the religion that existed prior to the adoption of Buddhism before it arrived. Look at Thailand (I do for 6 months of every year) where there is never a Buddha that is not within arms reach of a creature or god from the indian-based religions. Because they were also very prone to believing in the influence of these other worldly beings, they attribute a lot of how the world works to them. The number of rituals or signs, belief in the cause and effect of the rituals is amazing. This is not necessarily peasants in the jungle. We are talking about the educated masses bowing to the Buddha as well as multi-armed Shiva and other dieties.
I'll add one more thing. No matter how you slice it, humans are the problem - not a religion or other excuse. We can make anything seem reasonable. A Buddhist will not cause damage to another living being. But a Buddhist can (and I have seen it) create a situation where pain or worse is inevitable just as long as they don't strike the death blow... or can claim it was just a reflex. A mosquito cannot be killed, but should it wander into a death trap through misadventure, that's alright.
The purist Buddhist would not do such a thing, but the non purist would argue that they were pure as well. Imagine a dictionary with only one definition for every word. Imagine a book that could not be interpreted to having different meanings (barring pure math).
The simple fact is that we are human. Murphy's law is all about the human's ability to believe something will work, that it is designed right, that it will be used as intended and the consequence of believing any of these has a shred of truth.
And now, the missing ending.
In this case it is all about the sloppiness of belief. A Buddhist can cheat, lie, make mistakes, and do silly things as easily as a Christian or Islamist. Just as an engineer can put in a part backwards (the source of the Murphy tale) people easily can reverse/twist/expand a belief or embelish liberally to support the initial position of their belief or action. Even stranger is how beliefs and their supporting arguments are easily picked up by others. This is acually a bit less surprising because it is simple to go with the flow.
Back to philosophical Wasps building Buddha-shaped nests in Buddhist temples (we call them Watts in Thailand). What stuck me funny as I have said is the bashing of the very science-based blogger of people that are... well, being people. On the one end, Mr Wizard. On the other end, Mr Wizard with prejudice of religion rather than understanding that the human condition easily mistakes a wasp from a bee and gets bent out of shape when deities show up built by insects.
Where is this going? The referenced blog seems to say these folks are stupid. Stupid isn't about being educated or facts. Stupid is is a state of mind that got there through human experience and the way the mind works. Stupid, ten to one, is nothing more than a belief that is wrong. Stupid comes from lack of Critical Thinking
, perhaps education, and even our parents - but it is something that is always there in some amount in all of us.
So, here we are in Triiibes. What does this have to deal with leading? People are not stupid. Note: Not talking about IQ. Lots of smart people belong to cults. Lots of people do stupid things. Stupidity is sometimes fleeting, but I am talking about a persistent stupid. How do you lead stupid?
First, drop the 'stupid' moniker. Treat stupidity as a belief. Find what led to a problem that you have with a co-worker, client, targeted customers, and the rest of the world. Remember that belief is hard to change. Most beliefs exist even in that face of evidence, so don't expect a belief to change.
A variation of what we often label with 'stupid' is related to skills. I want to call this out separately because the English language sucks (it is a human invention and ha a lot of flaws). Good book to read is The Myth of Laziness
. Spelling, the ability to write, speaking skills, fine motor skills are all are related to how the brain is wired. You can't do a lot about that. Worse lots of kids with developing brains or adults that are not quite wired perfectly are labeled as lazy which is closely related to and often called 'stupid'. You get the same issues leading these folks. In addition they have additional beliefs caused by not being perfect and what that entails.
Full disclosure, can't spell, handwriting from hell, and until I learned to juggle, I could not lay on the ground while chewing gum without tripping. But, I use a spell checker, I type, and I now have motor skills thanks to learning to juggle when I was about 35 (balls, knives, flaming torches and toilet plungers in their order of danger to my self and audience). Juggling rewired a brain stuck at age 13 because my beliefs kept me tied to avoiding improvements in my motor skills. The rest are just coping skills that work quite well in modern society.
The trick to leading most beliefs or handicaps of all kinds is to first accept them. Suspending belief should be the game. I became a writer when I realized that nobody really cared as long as I used a spell checker (at a guess I have used the spell checker on about 30 words in this blog entry so far). I also became a writer because I had a goal where the writing was only a small part of reaching the goal. Juggling too was just a means to a really good joke rather than being able to own glassware rather than high impact plastic.
So, here are my steps for curing stupidity caused by beliefs:
1) Accept the belief. If possible, find the source and acknowledge that this makes the belief true given the evidence.
2) Suspend a belief with a different reality or conditions where another belief can be possible. Alternately, ask that a belief take a little time off and try another belief and have the subject see how it works out with their own observations. Goals that are related, but not the focus of the belief are very useful.
3) Follow up and if possible confirm a change or at least progress in loosening the grip of an old belief
There are pitfalls to consider:
Inertia - If you are not dead, the belief has not really affected you that badly. If it is not life threatening, it is hard for the brain to find a reason to change. It takes a lot of effort to change direction in a car or a mind.
Self-limiting beliefs - Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being seen as inferior, fear of mediocrity and others will help support a belief. These can be teated as stated above, but they are deeply held beliefs that likely caused the belief. My favorite book on such limiting beliefs: The Luck Factor: The Four Essential Principles
Energy - The brain uses a lot of energy when rewiring itself. Nature likes to conserve energy. A closed mind is a low energy mind. Changing the energy level through the effort of changing a belief is not something the brain likes to do. That is why having other goals are important. The need needs to be sweeter than the effort so that the effort pays big or such that the effort isn't even noticed against the greater need to reach the goal.
All of this applies to groups as well. Think about Microsoft and Apple. In the minds of Apple fans they have beliefs with inertia, the fear of failure by being wrong, and all the baggage of understanding how to use the products. Microsoft might call these people stupid and Apple plays the same game with Mr Hodgman. Microsoft is playing on the need to be part of a group with their new adverts which is also a deep belief.
Apple is winning market share as much from the new inertia of converts that bring in others simply because nobody dies from buying Apple and they do seem a bit happier. The energy of changing your mind is easier if you observe others succeeding - why waste energy when all the thinking has been done for you?
How many Republicans call Democrats stupid and hear their words mirrored back? How did Obama win? My guess is that he put the goal of change in the air until it overcame many beliefs that were held by Republicans and non-voting youths that had found no reason to vote before. McCain mostly spoke to the beliefs of other Republicans rather than a new belief that would sway youth or existing Democrats.
You can now start to see a new strategy. Don't push against stupidity. Stupidity is just a belief. Change beliefs. You are already changing your mind a little and that has its own inertia.
Let us know what you are thinking. The fear of commenting in public is not a belief we have here :o)
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Why the car industry is in trouble? It's just a bad story they tell themselves.
Why is the car industry in trouble? It is sort of simple if you think about it. They have made a model of customizing looks, high-end performance, and amenities, but not more important things like fuel economy or even ways to green out the car.
Why? Because for the most part it is easier to tack on a new plastic part or high-end brakes. It is not as easy to swap an engine or drop 3 or 4 thousand pounds off the weight to reduce the need for power.
If automakers would prioritize concepts like swapping engines based on the market of gas rather than the demand of SUV's, we would not be in this mess. If I could buy a wimpy powered SUV today, but swap in a few cylinders when gas is low again, why not?
Here is the problem: Car companies sell cars, not engines. Somebody else sells engines to the car companies. More profit for the bigger item I guess. But this does not imply that it would not work, just a story these folks tell themselves which prevents them from seeing a different truth.
Anything is possible. But people get in the way. Silliest thing I heard at the peak of high gas prices was that Americans would not buy a 50+ mile per gallon diesel because Americans don't like diesel...
Sorry, but that is just plain silly. How are Americans different from the rest of the world? The sillier fact is that this is coming from the same car company. Owned but the same stockholders, with the same management. They just keep telling the same stories to themselves and believing their own fairy tails.
In Seth's book, All Marketers are Liars, he talked a lot about such stories for marketing. It is a good concept, but it works both sides. There are stories that stifle and smother innovation.
We need new stories.
Think of a current story that would create a petrified forest and make one that would create the Amazon. When someone sings the blues, stop it in its tracks. Change the tune, change the story, look for opportunity, not reasons for inaction.
My idea to save the world? An add-on device that would turn off an engine when stopped at a stoplight or in traffic. What about air conditioning? Stop whining. An electric compressor can be added too if you live in the hot west or an electric heater in the chilly places. More important, an override button. When gas is $5 a gallon, you switch that puppy on and save some cash.
How do I know this is a good idea? What do you think a hybrid is? It saves most of the fuel by just being off when you are not moving. It is a good idea. There are a few things to do, like automating the start process, but that too was solved with hybrids.
See how easy that was? It is just an option, but it is an economy option.
What is your idea? What is the new story? What is your comeback line to the doubting Thomas?
FYI this is a version of a blog moved from a limited membership blog site at http://www.triiibes.com/. I am moving many of those blog entries here for your entertainment and enlightenment.
Why? Because for the most part it is easier to tack on a new plastic part or high-end brakes. It is not as easy to swap an engine or drop 3 or 4 thousand pounds off the weight to reduce the need for power.
If automakers would prioritize concepts like swapping engines based on the market of gas rather than the demand of SUV's, we would not be in this mess. If I could buy a wimpy powered SUV today, but swap in a few cylinders when gas is low again, why not?
Here is the problem: Car companies sell cars, not engines. Somebody else sells engines to the car companies. More profit for the bigger item I guess. But this does not imply that it would not work, just a story these folks tell themselves which prevents them from seeing a different truth.
Anything is possible. But people get in the way. Silliest thing I heard at the peak of high gas prices was that Americans would not buy a 50+ mile per gallon diesel because Americans don't like diesel...
Sorry, but that is just plain silly. How are Americans different from the rest of the world? The sillier fact is that this is coming from the same car company. Owned but the same stockholders, with the same management. They just keep telling the same stories to themselves and believing their own fairy tails.
In Seth's book, All Marketers are Liars, he talked a lot about such stories for marketing. It is a good concept, but it works both sides. There are stories that stifle and smother innovation.
We need new stories.
Think of a current story that would create a petrified forest and make one that would create the Amazon. When someone sings the blues, stop it in its tracks. Change the tune, change the story, look for opportunity, not reasons for inaction.
My idea to save the world? An add-on device that would turn off an engine when stopped at a stoplight or in traffic. What about air conditioning? Stop whining. An electric compressor can be added too if you live in the hot west or an electric heater in the chilly places. More important, an override button. When gas is $5 a gallon, you switch that puppy on and save some cash.
How do I know this is a good idea? What do you think a hybrid is? It saves most of the fuel by just being off when you are not moving. It is a good idea. There are a few things to do, like automating the start process, but that too was solved with hybrids.
See how easy that was? It is just an option, but it is an economy option.
What is your idea? What is the new story? What is your comeback line to the doubting Thomas?
FYI this is a version of a blog moved from a limited membership blog site at http://www.triiibes.com/. I am moving many of those blog entries here for your entertainment and enlightenment.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Marketing truths of fear, guilt, paranoids, and the lonely.
Wouldn't it be nice to decrease the psychological foibles in the world? If you are not selling anti-anxiety drugs you still need to think about what motivates decisions.
Fear motivates, but avoiding a fearful encounter is more powerful. Fear is usually temporary. Avoiding fear is much easier and easier to believe.
Guilt is not as good a tool as a fear of guilt. If you are already guilty, why bother? With fear of guilt, you have a chance at redemption without the messiness of sin.
There are those that avoid pain and those that prevent pain. It is two sides of the same coin but very different approaches. Avoiding pain is about fear and never confronting pain. Preventing pain is a planed activity that includes things that might normally have come with the pain.
Want to know where most pain management is practiced? In hospital management, not patient management. Overheard: "Let's not buy that new hospital IT system. It would be too painful to train our people."
People without fear are really adrenalin junkies. One is simply more powerful than the other.
Being paranoid is a hobby. You always have something to think about.
There are things you do for your self to feel good and then there are things you do so that you can talk about yourself to others so that you can feel good.
The brain is a messy place. It is difficult for some to look at these as part of marketing. The fact is that this is all real. Avoiding these motivators is sometimes bad for your marketing. People like their problems, needs, and fears addressed. In fact they get turned off when you don't.
Our motivations are a resource that you should use. Be careful not to abuse or exaggerate! Use the truth. People will exaggerate the problem far more by themselves than you could anyway. It's just how you phrase the truth that matters.
Fear motivates, but avoiding a fearful encounter is more powerful. Fear is usually temporary. Avoiding fear is much easier and easier to believe.
Guilt is not as good a tool as a fear of guilt. If you are already guilty, why bother? With fear of guilt, you have a chance at redemption without the messiness of sin.
There are those that avoid pain and those that prevent pain. It is two sides of the same coin but very different approaches. Avoiding pain is about fear and never confronting pain. Preventing pain is a planed activity that includes things that might normally have come with the pain.
Want to know where most pain management is practiced? In hospital management, not patient management. Overheard: "Let's not buy that new hospital IT system. It would be too painful to train our people."
People without fear are really adrenalin junkies. One is simply more powerful than the other.
Being paranoid is a hobby. You always have something to think about.
There are things you do for your self to feel good and then there are things you do so that you can talk about yourself to others so that you can feel good.
The brain is a messy place. It is difficult for some to look at these as part of marketing. The fact is that this is all real. Avoiding these motivators is sometimes bad for your marketing. People like their problems, needs, and fears addressed. In fact they get turned off when you don't.
Our motivations are a resource that you should use. Be careful not to abuse or exaggerate! Use the truth. People will exaggerate the problem far more by themselves than you could anyway. It's just how you phrase the truth that matters.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Time to write about the marketing of the end of the world
The crazies are coming out. I don't mean the people touting the end of the world. I am talking about the people that believe that horse pucky. It is one thing to produce an end of the world special for the History Channel, another entirely to believe that silly tripe.
On the other hand, there is a lot of money in Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD). FYI FUD was created by IBM.
Here I think there is a great deal of the fun with poking fun with the opposite story. Here are a few good zingers to throw around at the water cooler when people start chatting up the various Discovery Channel specials:
The Aztecs couldn't predict their way out of death-by-Spaniards. Why predict the end of the world in 2012?
The Aztec calendar does not end in 2012, it simply resets. There isn't a mushroom cloud or even aliens on that last day. Heck, our calendars are so much better to predict that January 1st 2012 is New Years Day. Look it up if you don't believe me.
They say that Nostradamus predicted the fall of the twin towers. Really? I don't remember anyone hanging out in the lobby that day shooing people away because it was the day.
Nostradamus had gout. He was said to be a healer? Oh, and he died at about age 62, hardly a sage age. None of that rising from the dead stuff either. David Blaine is harder act to follow.
Nostradanus wrote in quatrains and you can say either it was in code or riddles, but why not in the clear French he spoke?
The Aztec calendar was wheel-shaped. Do you really think that a calendar shapped like a wheel could predict the end of time when they could not have invented the actual 'wheel''?
The Aztecs had blood sacrifices. So, how did that work out for them? Did it prevent their demise as a culture?
Nostradamus died with today's equivalent of $300 thousand dollars. Not bad for being psychic without having to prove everything was really predicted accurately.
Alvin Toffler (Future Shock and The Third Wave), probably has a better record than Nostradomas for predictions because he wrote in clear English. Though Alvin did predict that a large part of society would become nomads and that the Mobile Home was the future of housing. Guess that means he didn't predict the housing credit crash either.
The Bible predicts the end of the world too, no surprise. But the book of Revelations was written between the years 68 and 96 A.D. But why not spill the beans in Genesis? Why wait? Why get people all hot and bothered when the end times can't be put on the calendar you got for Christmas? Why the suspense?
Why not just 2000 years? Did we really have to wait for Bush to end his term? Seems a little arbitrary to tack on an extra 12 as well. It's all just a tease! I'll bet they end up changing the date... again! Who want's in on the End Times betting pool. I got $20 on April 1, 2020.
Faith Popcorn is said to have a low return on her predictions too. What do Toffler and Popcorn have in common, they wrote in clear English, not riddles. But they both got some things right. They predicted the future too, not divine it.
What about the last time the world ended? Get in line, here it comes again!
I'm seriously thinking of writing an end-of-the-world book. People will buy it. When the chips are down people will believe anything that wiggles the crazy meter. You don't even have to prove anything. There are a lot of options:
How The World Will End
Digging Your Shelter - Five Shelter Designs From Home Depot
Top five religions to be a part of when the world ends - or, Improving your odds of the hereafter in 2012.
How to make money after the world ends!
Fifty Pithy Phrases For Your Last Words
Introducing Yourself To Your Alien Overlords
What To Do New Years 2013 With Your 2012 End-Of-The-World Hoard
Revelations in Marketing - How to sell your products to the end of time
I'd ask you to comment, but why? Don't want to get between you and your family with less than 3 years to go. But if you have a new date and time for the end of the world, I'd like to know. I need better lead time on the marketing budget.
Here is my other blog of the end of the world. The book will be coming soon!
FYI this is a version of a blog moved from a limited membership blog site at http://www.triiibes.com/. I am moving many of those blog entries here for your entertainment and enlightenment.
On the other hand, there is a lot of money in Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD). FYI FUD was created by IBM.
Here I think there is a great deal of the fun with poking fun with the opposite story. Here are a few good zingers to throw around at the water cooler when people start chatting up the various Discovery Channel specials:
The Aztecs couldn't predict their way out of death-by-Spaniards. Why predict the end of the world in 2012?
The Aztec calendar does not end in 2012, it simply resets. There isn't a mushroom cloud or even aliens on that last day. Heck, our calendars are so much better to predict that January 1st 2012 is New Years Day. Look it up if you don't believe me.
They say that Nostradamus predicted the fall of the twin towers. Really? I don't remember anyone hanging out in the lobby that day shooing people away because it was the day.
Nostradamus had gout. He was said to be a healer? Oh, and he died at about age 62, hardly a sage age. None of that rising from the dead stuff either. David Blaine is harder act to follow.
Nostradanus wrote in quatrains and you can say either it was in code or riddles, but why not in the clear French he spoke?
The Aztec calendar was wheel-shaped. Do you really think that a calendar shapped like a wheel could predict the end of time when they could not have invented the actual 'wheel''?
The Aztecs had blood sacrifices. So, how did that work out for them? Did it prevent their demise as a culture?
Nostradamus died with today's equivalent of $300 thousand dollars. Not bad for being psychic without having to prove everything was really predicted accurately.
Alvin Toffler (Future Shock and The Third Wave), probably has a better record than Nostradomas for predictions because he wrote in clear English. Though Alvin did predict that a large part of society would become nomads and that the Mobile Home was the future of housing. Guess that means he didn't predict the housing credit crash either.
The Bible predicts the end of the world too, no surprise. But the book of Revelations was written between the years 68 and 96 A.D. But why not spill the beans in Genesis? Why wait? Why get people all hot and bothered when the end times can't be put on the calendar you got for Christmas? Why the suspense?
Why not just 2000 years? Did we really have to wait for Bush to end his term? Seems a little arbitrary to tack on an extra 12 as well. It's all just a tease! I'll bet they end up changing the date... again! Who want's in on the End Times betting pool. I got $20 on April 1, 2020.
Faith Popcorn is said to have a low return on her predictions too. What do Toffler and Popcorn have in common, they wrote in clear English, not riddles. But they both got some things right. They predicted the future too, not divine it.
What about the last time the world ended? Get in line, here it comes again!
I'm seriously thinking of writing an end-of-the-world book. People will buy it. When the chips are down people will believe anything that wiggles the crazy meter. You don't even have to prove anything. There are a lot of options:
How The World Will End
Digging Your Shelter - Five Shelter Designs From Home Depot
Top five religions to be a part of when the world ends - or, Improving your odds of the hereafter in 2012.
How to make money after the world ends!
Fifty Pithy Phrases For Your Last Words
Introducing Yourself To Your Alien Overlords
What To Do New Years 2013 With Your 2012 End-Of-The-World Hoard
Revelations in Marketing - How to sell your products to the end of time
I'd ask you to comment, but why? Don't want to get between you and your family with less than 3 years to go. But if you have a new date and time for the end of the world, I'd like to know. I need better lead time on the marketing budget.
Here is my other blog of the end of the world. The book will be coming soon!
FYI this is a version of a blog moved from a limited membership blog site at http://www.triiibes.com/. I am moving many of those blog entries here for your entertainment and enlightenment.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Teenagers Can't See Your Point of View - Can you fix that?
New Scientist is full of fun stuff this week. There is an article today about how teens and their inability to see another person's point of view.
This is called Theory of Mind. Wikipedia says: Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own.
According to the article, Theory of Mind gets better as we grow older and that's good news! But you need to really work hard to deal with teens to overcome this.
The article has more bad news saying, "adolescents show strong egocentric behaviour that is very similar to that of young children..." I sort of translate into 15 years old with terrible two's syndrome.
What might this all mean? How could we use this? I suspect that you cannot impose your will or give examples. You could lead and see if they follow. My guess however is that you really need to ask a lot of questions and use their directed opinions to whittle down the possibilities.
You: "What is cool/rocken/all-that/phat/spiffy/mayonnaise to you?"
Teen: "I think X is spastic!"
You: "Why is X... well, spastic?"
Teen: "Because it's what Slink Borders all wear."
You: "So what are Slink Borders?"
Teen: "They are ..."
Eventually you get to some sort of understanding. You figure out what Slink Borders are and what they do, say, believe, and consume. You see how close the teen is to these and you have a better understanding of their point of view and motivations. Pick a subject and work your way around it.
Teaching Theory of Mind is a bit different. Sadly I have found few good references because a lot of this is aimed at Autism and not teenagers. I did find this paper, but it is long and scholarly and I must be off to work. Read it at your leisure.
One more thing to add. People can loose their Theory of Mind over time or may have functional Asperberger's syndrome. In either case we have high functioning adults that seem like angry assholes. They can't understand why the world is so stupid. I have and currently know many of these people. One was officially diagnosed with Asperberger's when he was about 40 years old. He was like a 185 I.Q. train wreck.
Others I know with impaired Theory of Mind are less problematic, but I must say they are really bad. Lots of yelling. World against them. It is worse as stress gets higher. They just fail to see the implications of their actions and anger. Think of the sales mistakes.... The overselling. Not listening. Jumping before understanding a key word.
I am going to be reading a lot more on Theory of Mind and training/confronting those impaired. It seems like a very skill to be good at. My goal would be to learn to do this without the other person noticing. Nobody likes the implication that their thought process in wrong. That is why a lot of stuff bounces off teenagers.
I will caution. There are also Narcissists out there. They could really be Asperberger's, but they are far nastier. Very often they will say they are everyone's friend but they exude evil from every pore. These folks can't be changed. Don't bother. Get far far away.
The common misconception is that Narcissists are egotists. Truth is that Narcissists feel out of control a lot of the time and gain that control by manipulating others to feel out of control. In other words, they are in their element when you are a complete and total failure and pulling your hair out.
Almost forgot. What is your opinion? Words of wisdom? War stories? Stand up, take a break and start writing!
This is called Theory of Mind. Wikipedia says: Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own.
According to the article, Theory of Mind gets better as we grow older and that's good news! But you need to really work hard to deal with teens to overcome this.
The article has more bad news saying, "adolescents show strong egocentric behaviour that is very similar to that of young children..." I sort of translate into 15 years old with terrible two's syndrome.
What might this all mean? How could we use this? I suspect that you cannot impose your will or give examples. You could lead and see if they follow. My guess however is that you really need to ask a lot of questions and use their directed opinions to whittle down the possibilities.
You: "What is cool/rocken/all-that/phat/spiffy/mayonnaise to you?"
Teen: "I think X is spastic!"
You: "Why is X... well, spastic?"
Teen: "Because it's what Slink Borders all wear."
You: "So what are Slink Borders?"
Teen: "They are ..."
Eventually you get to some sort of understanding. You figure out what Slink Borders are and what they do, say, believe, and consume. You see how close the teen is to these and you have a better understanding of their point of view and motivations. Pick a subject and work your way around it.
Teaching Theory of Mind is a bit different. Sadly I have found few good references because a lot of this is aimed at Autism and not teenagers. I did find this paper, but it is long and scholarly and I must be off to work. Read it at your leisure.
One more thing to add. People can loose their Theory of Mind over time or may have functional Asperberger's syndrome. In either case we have high functioning adults that seem like angry assholes. They can't understand why the world is so stupid. I have and currently know many of these people. One was officially diagnosed with Asperberger's when he was about 40 years old. He was like a 185 I.Q. train wreck.
Others I know with impaired Theory of Mind are less problematic, but I must say they are really bad. Lots of yelling. World against them. It is worse as stress gets higher. They just fail to see the implications of their actions and anger. Think of the sales mistakes.... The overselling. Not listening. Jumping before understanding a key word.
I am going to be reading a lot more on Theory of Mind and training/confronting those impaired. It seems like a very skill to be good at. My goal would be to learn to do this without the other person noticing. Nobody likes the implication that their thought process in wrong. That is why a lot of stuff bounces off teenagers.
I will caution. There are also Narcissists out there. They could really be Asperberger's, but they are far nastier. Very often they will say they are everyone's friend but they exude evil from every pore. These folks can't be changed. Don't bother. Get far far away.
The common misconception is that Narcissists are egotists. Truth is that Narcissists feel out of control a lot of the time and gain that control by manipulating others to feel out of control. In other words, they are in their element when you are a complete and total failure and pulling your hair out.
Almost forgot. What is your opinion? Words of wisdom? War stories? Stand up, take a break and start writing!
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Why crying wolf pays and how to shame that little boy into honesty and positivity
Mary Louise Penaz (you need to be a member of Triiibes) made a comment on an earlier blog of mine about the end of the word:
Mary said "...and who doesn't like being right? Right?"
It made me think about why there are so many detractors and especially a lot of doomsayers.
Predictors of the future are always right until the future is the past. For those that predict with riddles, they will always be right while there is a shred that they could be right sometime soon.
I think the 'cry wolf' story is like this. There are wolves. Crying wolf is never wrong because there 'might' be a wolf. It just wasn't there when you came to help or you scared it away. See how good it was for me to cry wolf? Eventually there will be a wolf. Yeah, we missed all those wolves, but that last time that little kid was dead on. Smart kid!!!
It is amazing though that it is far easier to believe that something will go wrong. What is the ratio of people that believe that aliens will come and shower us in a golden age verses all those that believe in the end of the world?
It is easier to be right about failure than success. I think this is because wrong is wrong. Right can be easily cast as wrong or even not totally right. A successful product can be wrong even if it brings in millions because it could have brought tens of millions.
It is easy to pick apart success and hard to find silver linings in failure without still seeing the failure.
But how do you stop this sort of thing? How do you stop the hobby of doom and gloom spreaders?
I actually have this issue in my tribe. Why does a customer want that? They say it rhetorically and dismissively. There is no question because they see no value. What's a product manager to do?
The key offense is to force them to write positives first. We do that in our product vision. It help set the stage. I also never respond to one negative with one positive. The equation is lopsided in tit for tat. One bad has more points that one good, even when it is a home run of a zinger.
Another good comeback is to challenge. Get them to write the list of possibilities for good. What are the 5 success factors? What do you think will be the five most used features? If that is a problem, what are three possible solutions?
But be careful. Never ask, "so, what would you suggest instead?" This is too open. Ten to one, this guy hasn't a clue. At least I've yet to meet one that had enough mental foresight to buy even a discount clue. They are dissing your idea because they are defending their empty wasteland of ideas. You'll hear the tension and anger in their voice. Tread carefully because exposing this fact will create a shit storm. Concentrate on the attack, not the attacker. You don't win a fight by questioning if the guy's father and mother were related before they were married.
Keep on point. Don't allow the conversation to waver away from the subject the guy is dissing. You can not reward negativity with a voice and a lever of power.
Get a copy of a book on how to argue and a few books on critical thinking. Keept the examples with you written on little cards with the reference. Put them in your slides to cut off the types of arguments you know you are going to hear. Think of the argument and disprove it before the peanut gallery even wakes up.
There are a lot of web resources, like this one. Just type illogical argument into Google to get a bunch.
BTW, you want to have the worst arguments and have the most animosity? Try running a meeting with Robert's Rules of Order. Take my word for it and don't let it happen to you. The issue is that all it takes is one negative space cowboy to take over. Put one guy in charge and force them to read a bunch on controlling meetings, critical thinking, and detecting illogical arguments.
Have a fantastic win against a negative nelly lately? How did you do it? Give us the play by play.
Mary said "...and who doesn't like being right? Right?"
It made me think about why there are so many detractors and especially a lot of doomsayers.
Predictors of the future are always right until the future is the past. For those that predict with riddles, they will always be right while there is a shred that they could be right sometime soon.
I think the 'cry wolf' story is like this. There are wolves. Crying wolf is never wrong because there 'might' be a wolf. It just wasn't there when you came to help or you scared it away. See how good it was for me to cry wolf? Eventually there will be a wolf. Yeah, we missed all those wolves, but that last time that little kid was dead on. Smart kid!!!
It is amazing though that it is far easier to believe that something will go wrong. What is the ratio of people that believe that aliens will come and shower us in a golden age verses all those that believe in the end of the world?
It is easier to be right about failure than success. I think this is because wrong is wrong. Right can be easily cast as wrong or even not totally right. A successful product can be wrong even if it brings in millions because it could have brought tens of millions.
It is easy to pick apart success and hard to find silver linings in failure without still seeing the failure.
But how do you stop this sort of thing? How do you stop the hobby of doom and gloom spreaders?
I actually have this issue in my tribe. Why does a customer want that? They say it rhetorically and dismissively. There is no question because they see no value. What's a product manager to do?
The key offense is to force them to write positives first. We do that in our product vision. It help set the stage. I also never respond to one negative with one positive. The equation is lopsided in tit for tat. One bad has more points that one good, even when it is a home run of a zinger.
Another good comeback is to challenge. Get them to write the list of possibilities for good. What are the 5 success factors? What do you think will be the five most used features? If that is a problem, what are three possible solutions?
But be careful. Never ask, "so, what would you suggest instead?" This is too open. Ten to one, this guy hasn't a clue. At least I've yet to meet one that had enough mental foresight to buy even a discount clue. They are dissing your idea because they are defending their empty wasteland of ideas. You'll hear the tension and anger in their voice. Tread carefully because exposing this fact will create a shit storm. Concentrate on the attack, not the attacker. You don't win a fight by questioning if the guy's father and mother were related before they were married.
Keep on point. Don't allow the conversation to waver away from the subject the guy is dissing. You can not reward negativity with a voice and a lever of power.
Get a copy of a book on how to argue and a few books on critical thinking. Keept the examples with you written on little cards with the reference. Put them in your slides to cut off the types of arguments you know you are going to hear. Think of the argument and disprove it before the peanut gallery even wakes up.
There are a lot of web resources, like this one. Just type illogical argument into Google to get a bunch.
BTW, you want to have the worst arguments and have the most animosity? Try running a meeting with Robert's Rules of Order. Take my word for it and don't let it happen to you. The issue is that all it takes is one negative space cowboy to take over. Put one guy in charge and force them to read a bunch on controlling meetings, critical thinking, and detecting illogical arguments.
Have a fantastic win against a negative nelly lately? How did you do it? Give us the play by play.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Magic and persuasion - I'd like to float an idea in front of you.
Flying, levitation, people just floating in the air. Imagine how you feel when you see a magician perform a trick that breaks the laws of physics. Our brains are wired to expect gravity. When someone floats into the air, you feel the hair go up on the back of your neck and the chill of goosebumps.
I'm not taking about watching David Blaine or Chris Angel on TV. I mean really seeing this live and in person. You feel like you just jumped out of an airplane - your stomach does a little twist like you are flying too. It is powerful stuff.
I tried a new trick last night. I am not really a good magician, but there are a few good tricks that work themselves and even the most honest magician - i.e. I feel bad that this is a trick and it shows - can pull off something that spins the audience's mind. In this case, just my girlfriend, but a group of 100 tomorrow. This trick is so good, I'll be doing it every presentation or talk in the coming months.
Quite simply, it is full body levitation. Flying up in the air seven inches or so (higher depending on circumstances). It is a bit incredible to see someone see you break the laws of physics. It is even more incredible when you say, "hey watch me do this new trick". People are still falling out of their chairs! It is a trick, they know it, you know it, but they still are surprised! The human brain just works that way. Even if you repeat the trick several times, people still can't stop having their minds twist at the sight.
The brain is predictive. That is how you can know a song fro the first three notes. But when you break that predictive pattern, all hell breaks loose. The brain is both confused and in a state that is far different than normal life. It is also in a state of newness. The brain is ready to see whatever is next because it has gotta figure this all out.
Persuasion can be this way too. Don't need to hide the fact that you are selling an idea or a product. It is in the art of surprise and stickiness of ideas that sell. Knowing it's just there to make decisions easier and entertaining helps drop resistance to the idea or sale.
The world is too full of blah blah blah buy me. It should be more empty hat (the problem), the rabbit (the solution), producing a rabbit from a hat (the idea/product).
You want to sell shoes, I got the trick for you! But I'd guess that anyone that can fly 'literally' through their presentation is going to be able to spin the freedom and power over the 'gravity' of the problem is going to make a sale.
I'm not going to give this trick away. I'm not even going to tell you where it is commercially available. It is for magicians. Are you a magician? Are you the witch doctor of your tribe? Let me know what your tricks are and I'll share mine.
Time to go. Gotta feed my rabbit.
I'm not taking about watching David Blaine or Chris Angel on TV. I mean really seeing this live and in person. You feel like you just jumped out of an airplane - your stomach does a little twist like you are flying too. It is powerful stuff.
I tried a new trick last night. I am not really a good magician, but there are a few good tricks that work themselves and even the most honest magician - i.e. I feel bad that this is a trick and it shows - can pull off something that spins the audience's mind. In this case, just my girlfriend, but a group of 100 tomorrow. This trick is so good, I'll be doing it every presentation or talk in the coming months.
Quite simply, it is full body levitation. Flying up in the air seven inches or so (higher depending on circumstances). It is a bit incredible to see someone see you break the laws of physics. It is even more incredible when you say, "hey watch me do this new trick". People are still falling out of their chairs! It is a trick, they know it, you know it, but they still are surprised! The human brain just works that way. Even if you repeat the trick several times, people still can't stop having their minds twist at the sight.
The brain is predictive. That is how you can know a song fro the first three notes. But when you break that predictive pattern, all hell breaks loose. The brain is both confused and in a state that is far different than normal life. It is also in a state of newness. The brain is ready to see whatever is next because it has gotta figure this all out.
Persuasion can be this way too. Don't need to hide the fact that you are selling an idea or a product. It is in the art of surprise and stickiness of ideas that sell. Knowing it's just there to make decisions easier and entertaining helps drop resistance to the idea or sale.
The world is too full of blah blah blah buy me. It should be more empty hat (the problem), the rabbit (the solution), producing a rabbit from a hat (the idea/product).
You want to sell shoes, I got the trick for you! But I'd guess that anyone that can fly 'literally' through their presentation is going to be able to spin the freedom and power over the 'gravity' of the problem is going to make a sale.
I'm not going to give this trick away. I'm not even going to tell you where it is commercially available. It is for magicians. Are you a magician? Are you the witch doctor of your tribe? Let me know what your tricks are and I'll share mine.
Time to go. Gotta feed my rabbit.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Squinting and Pirates
Why you squint, pirates, and millions of dollars lost in the sporting goods industry!
Because I'm right handed, but my eyes are left handed - sound crazy? Read on to see how society has messed up a lot of us with assumptions about being right or left handed.
Yesterday I went to an Archery range with my boss (perhaps a tale for another time). When I shoot a bow, I close my left eye for a very uncomfortable squint to take aim on the target. This one eye squint is annoying. I can hit the target, pretty good too, but the squinting is super annoying. But what is crazy is that this is all caused by bad marketing.
The subject (sounds boring, but we will get to pirates in a moment) is about eye dominance. Eye dominance is like being left or right handed except your eyes are also left or right dominant too and they don't always match your hand dominance.
The squinting and poor aiming comes when your eyes and your hands don't have the same dominant side. Simply you use a bow, a gun, darts, throw a ball, and some tools are meant for or depend on a right handed person but your eyes are aiming like a lefty.
Nothing special, right? I'd hazard a guess that their are millions of people with their lives affected by not understanding this little known fact about our eyes. Perhaps that is worth billions of dollars especially in recreational sports.
If you do one thing today, test your eye dominance (instructions below). Have your friends test theirs and if you have children, please have them test their eye dominance too. This isn't a medical issue about eye disease, it is simple quality of life as you will soon see (pun intended).
The revelation of a lifetime
I had not plied my archery habit in over 20 years, so I thought I'd read the latest literature in preparation of buying a new target shooting bow. But in an odd corner of one archery web site I started to read about eye dominance. I was floored by the simple statement that I was aiming with the wrong eye. Suddenly a lifetime of squinting from archery, to target shooting, to even using my telescope were seen as something totally avoidable - if it was taught to me as a child.
Squinting is something that every expert, from archery to darts and many sports, will tell you is bad. Very bad! Enter the pirate eye patch left over from last year's pirate theme party. Eye patches work, but they are frowned upon unless you really are a card carrying pirate. The patch really is just a crutch for more comfortable squinting. But why squint or join a band of pirates? Why is eye dominance a huge issue? What is up with squinting?
Lets look at the geometry (sorry) of eye dominance. Simply, one eye is oriented to look directly at an object, while the other is looking from the side. Imagine in pool (billiards), if you have the cue stick held in the right hand, your right eye is above the cue and looking straight at the cue ball. The left eye is looking at an angle at the ball. Of course this is only true with a person with right eye dominance. A person with left eye dominance must squint or play left handed (I play pool as a lefty and never knew why until now).
We assume the right hand is related to the eye we aim with. So if I buy a bow, gun, or many other implements built for right handers, I squint and likely miss what I aim at. Even in a simple game like darts, the eye you align your dart and target to will make a huge difference in accuracy.
Right handed with left eye dominant (or the opposite) people don't learn that left handed aiming will stop the squinting. They are just criticized about the squinting. They become social misfits of the accuracy club... or pirates.
The right may be left
Why our preconceptions and marketing are making you squint.
The answer to why we continue to squint when aiming is simple marketing, my friends. If you are right handed, everything is supposed to be on the right (pardon me for leaving behind my left handed friends for a bit). If you are right handed, you buy right handed scissors, right handed bows, right handed mice, your keyboard has the all important return key on the right.
Keep the marketing simple. Why look at the uncomfortable scientific research? And hey, why stock more stuff for lefties, isn't that low odds for a sale? But the reason the marketing sounds like this is that we just want to sell the right handed products because of a collective assumption of left and right handedness.
The assumption that the whole body (except the brain) is right or left dominant. Now it is time for some research and a few facts.
Eye dominance and hand dominance
and the horror of statistics
A study at USC showed that slightly more than 50% of men and women did not have the same hand dominance to their eye dominance. In other words you have about a 50% chance being a pirate or squinting.
In another study we can see the real evil of hand/eye dominance differences. In competitive Archery 62% were right handed and right eyed. But only 12% of shooters are right handed but left eyed. What? Based on statistics, the number of left/right eye should be about the same.
What does this mean? A lot people gave up archery that were left eyed and right handed... because they should have been shown on day one that they needed a left-handed bow.
If the Archery market concentrated on educating new customers that the eye is more important than the hand, this should be 50%. For coaches it is an astounding 3% for lefty eyed marksmen that sign autographs with their right hand - the rest quit because of squinting.
For football, two thirds of players have the same hand and eye dominance. No wonder my spirals were clean, but missed the person I threw to. Imagine wearing an eye patch on the football field!!!! If you don't have the same hand/eye dominance, you better be good at tackling.
Pirates!
Why do pirates have eye patches? My guess is that it is all about telescopes. If you are left eye dominant, you should look through your pirate issue telescope with your left eye. But the marketing for the telescope is usually littered with scantily clad wenches holding the scope in the right hand and looking through the right eye. Pirate monkey see, pirate monkey do. But the 50% of pirates end up getting a patch (assuming a hook on the right hand is a sign pirates as a group are generally right handed).
So, right handed, left eyed, and peer pressure of a lovely marketing wench, Q.E.D. the pirate must use a patch to keep from looking like a squinting land lubber. The patch becomes a constant accessory because only sissy pirates use a patch to look through their scopes. The peg leg is probably a result of an injury due to depth perception and a bad fall rather than hard core swashbuckling.
Pirates are cool, but it is the eye patch that has always annoyed me and now I know why. I hate pirates and their smug eye patches because they look cool, quick with a musket pistol, and can use a telescope, all without squinting.
I am sure my fellow lefty eyed compatriots would join me in raising a toast to the demize of eye patch pirates. But via marketing and the popularity of pirates by Disney and others, hard to rock the boat. The only pirates to hate nowadays are Somali Pirates and they probably use binoculars because I have never seen one with an eye patch.
Testing for eye dominance
Hold out your arm in front of you and make a circle with your thumb and second finger (the universal hand sign for OK.
Look through the circle of your hand at a small object in the distance. Now close your left eye. If the object stays in the circle, you are left eye dominant. If the object moves, you are right eye dominant.
Another interesting tip is that if you are aiming with one eye closed and aiming with the non-dominant eye, you will struggle to keep the dominant eye closed. This is why, in part, that using an eye patch is feels better because your dominant eye isn't struggling to see.
Show me the money!
Do you sell anything (tools, sporting goods) where aim is important? Educate your customers and if your tools are right or left handed, stop selling based on the hands, but the eyes. You may not sell eye patches this way, but you will sell more products to happier customers.
Not every right hander can use left handed equipment. Odds are that you will win over more than you have before. You also have a more educated consumer that is aware of the problem and can correct for it.
Change your marketing! Start with the simple eye dominance test and sell to the right (or left) dominance of the customer. Put it on the first page of the manual! It does not matter one bit that your product is the most accurate if your customers are squinting or just plain horrible with your great equipment.
The catchphrase here is "repeat business". If the use of your product causes eye strain, I won't use it as much. If I don't use it, I don't get into the sport and buy new stuff. You loose me because you either sold me the wrong stuff or didn't educated me on one of the most important subjects for success.
There is a downside. If you teach people that lefty equipment is good for right handers, you need to stock up on the left handed products. Maybe sell more ambidextrous designs? For pool or darts, the only downside is a rework of the manual to test eye dominance and show how to aim accurately for your situation.
The good news perhaps is that all those lefties out there might find what they want in stock. Remember, 50% of lefties are right eye dominant and could use the righty's equipment.
Please send me a check when your sales numbers go up. Eye patches were cheap, but now I am looking at a very expensive left handed bow.
Extra goodies
Here are a few excellent explanations for different target-intensive sports and ways to correct for mismatched hand/eye dominance: Archery, Billiards/Pool , Darts, other sports.
Also found the book: The Dominance Factor: How Knowing Your Dominant Eye, Ear, Brain, Hand, & Foot Can Improve Your Learning
. What is interesting is that it is the only one on Amazon that is clearly aimed at both eye and other body dominance issues.Have you done the eye dominance test yet? Are you a pirate or are you ready to ditch the patch for the right equipment?
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Welcome budding Marketers!
This is not really a blog/book for little boys and/or girls. Sorry. It is just a catchy title and part of my marketing of a series of books that take serious subjects and throws caution to the wind with humor and fun.
This is all about the humor in marketing. Maybe some wisdom. But if I can't make it funny, well I'll have to torture you with a pun or two.
I'll cover a lot of things in marketing. From the ads to the psychology. The idea is to see the silliness in the worst and the opportunity for silliness in the best.
Send me your horror stories or the stories that make milk squirt out your nose (I want to pitch a new ad campaign to the Milk industry). I need the material, really! Marketing is just a hobby, so if you are in the trenches, I want to hear from you.
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