There is an awesome quote by no one else but Mahatma Gandhi: 

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.”

(BTW, I feel like only Gandhi can pull off such a run-off sentence without half the audience nodding off).

As a sales professional, a leader, or a marketer; we are in the business of changing behavior. We want people to stop doing that, to do this. We want “them” to try something new, or just think differently about something. I try not to forget this, especially when we have a self imposed goal, or we are asked to hit one (a “destiny”?).

In our increasingly results-driven society, we may be tempted to give-in and accept that we must promise to produce an outcome, to hit the metric, when in reality, to effect lasting change, we just have to follow some version of Gandhi’s advice. Brainstorm, innovate, spell it out, and communicate it; put products, services, and marketing campaigns behind it, and then, incentivize the behavior. Create new habits. Sustain that cycle enough, and those habits will become ingrained deep enough to turn into values, which will generate lasting results and will become destiny. 

The shortcut’s life is short. Start with the daily habit.

Responsibly, I would say. Nothing crazy.

I poured myself a Negroni and slowly sipped on it. (If you like an Old Fashioned, or a Manhattan, and don’t know what a Negroni is, you have to remedy that. Sweet, bitter, opens your appetite and gets to your head quickly. Anthony Bourdain recommended it: “Have a Negroni. Have two Negronis.”)

I walked away from what could become some day a great business deal.

Why?

Four reasons:

• My “partner” changed the terms of the deal unilaterally. Twice.
• I wasn’t crazily in love with the vision.
• Regardless of that, I was not confident that my business partner would be the best leader to execute on that vision.
• I wasn’t willing to invest two years of my life to realize that vision, especially knowing that I may be double-crossed trice.

Cheers all! The point is, it’s better when these things happen early. Besides that, Negronis never let you down.

We may want to think that we follow those who align with the way we think, but the opposite may also be true. Who we follow, defines us. Either for someone observing us looking from the outside, or by slowly changing the way we think.

Who we select as our leaders, says something about us. If we don’t align with their vision. If we would not like to be called their followers, and if their leadership does not serve us in some way; perhaps we should stop following them, especially if doing so causes us pain and suffering.

Otherwise, we should not complain if we get called one and the same.

From time to time I revisit some seminal business books. This is the case of the E-Myth, which every small business owner and entrepreneur should at least know what is about. Through a number of anecdotes, the author makes his case for building businesses with a system in-place from the very beginning.

In one of the chapters, the concepts of the Technician, the Manager, and the Entrepreneur are introduced. These three characters are not different people, but they are rather all living in the business owner’s head. They rarely talk all at the same time, but they take turns, depending on the context, or just the mood of the business owner.

Let’s take a look at each of them and understand why are they important, and why is it also important not to let them take over completely:

THE TECHNICIAN

This is the part in you that knows the craft. You have probably done this (whatever “this”means!) for years, you understand the market, the industry, and know very much what has to be done to produce a quality output.

Why is it important? It is the basis of the commodity you produce. It is necessary for having domain expertise and know how to create the state of the art.

Why must be kept in check? The business is never the commodity you produce, but the value that you create for your customers. Technicians seek refuge in their craft and generally want to produce what THEY believe the customer SHOULD love. The Technician is at odds with the Entrepreneur who tends to fly high and doesn’t know what can and cannot be done, and is also at odds with the Manager who wants consistency and to follow process, when the Technician just wants to express themselves through their craft.

THE ENTREPRENEUR

This is the creative, hard-charging, visionary part in you. The Entrepreneur comes up with new ideas, products to try. Gets excited about the possibilities and drops everything to pursue the next thing.

Why is it important? The only way to move a business forward and face adversity, is with this spirit. The Entrepreneur is what keeps the business evolving and makes sure that there is “business creation”, instead of just putting out products. Without an Entrepreneur, the output that the business generates can lose its appeal.

Why must be kept in check? The Entrepreneur does not like sticking to a predetermined process, they would like to try something new (again!). The Entrepreneur also gives little regard to the craft, to getting product out the door. The Entrepreneur is at odds with the Manager who wants to control things, make them repeatable, and with the Technician, who is the one tasked to execute on some of the crazy ideas the Entrepreneur comes up with.

THE MANAGER

The Manager is the one who builds a repeatable business. Creates processes, documents them. Trains people to do things the same way. Control costs.

Why is it important? Without a real Manager, there is rarely a sustainable business. The Manager creates value by creating repeatable processes that produce repeatable products and services that customers can buy.

Why must be kept in check? The Manager, left to its own, will create procedures that are so rigid that don’t allow space for creativity, for producing things that are of value for the customer. The Manager is at odds with the Entrepreneur who wants to change things around constantly, and with the Technician who thinks they know the craft enough that there is no need for them to follow process.

Do you recognize these inside you? Do you lean more towards one, or the other?

Here is a thought:

In every pond today, it is no longer the big fish that eats the small fish. Size doesn’t matter that much anymore, the field has shifted. In fact, it is more likely that the fast fish will eat the slow one, regardless of size.

Does that make sense?

If it does, What are you doing about it? “We’ll wait and see” won’t work anymore. Given how fast things are moving, a few months, a year, could be the difference between making it big, or fade into oblivion.

Make a plan.

Do you remember that campaign?

In the early iPhone days, when Apple was attempting to jumpstart the AppStore and to get the ecosystem going, it would come up on all media. It quickly became a catch phrase to convey that whomever was on the receiving end was not acquainted enough with current technologies, and that was probably struggling with something that could be solved much easier with an App.

What’s brilliant about it, is that even though the campaign was conceived to push the AppStore concept (something that, by the way, both Nokia and Palm attempted to do before with partial success), and by extension, the iPhone, the emphasis was never on the “there’s and app” part, as much as on the “for THAT” piece.

It is never about the cold beer, but about the spot it hits on a hot summer day. It is never about the scratch, but about the itch it stops. From the client’s perspective, is never about your product, and always about the use-case, the pain point they are trying to solve.

When I decided to pause The Daily PPILL sometime in Summer, I was hoping to restart it gently once Fall would hit us.

It happens to be that restarting something can be almost as hard as getting it going in the first place. We have all kinds of questions in our heads. Questions like, should I change the writing? Is it good enough? Can I just wait a little more and line up a few topics?

After the extraordinary experience of last night, I have no more excuses, I am breaking the silence.

I have to.

Last night, we went to see Coldplay, and it was great. The opening act was wonderful as well. H.E.R. as an opening act? The tickets were definitely not cheap, but worth it.

Some say, that what we pay for when we go watch an artist, is to see a human being in a state of flow. In that perfect zone where they are just taken away from what they are, and they become purely what they do. That’s exactly what we saw. You could see how the whole band was enjoying the concert just as much -or even more- than the audience. No wonder they can consistently deliver outstanding and deeply moving performances. Going above and beyond what they are asked to do, every time they play, and enjoying it. I am pretty sure they get paid handsomely, but I don’t think that’s why they showed up for work on a Wednesday evening.

So for the rest of us, what’s left? Is there a way we could get everybody in a state of flow, have them deliver outstanding results AND enjoy it? And how would the world look like if this was possible? A happier world? With unparalleled progress?

Lighting Up 58,000 Souls in Harmony

There was another remarkable thing we experienced.

Chris Martin, Coldplay’s lead singer is an artful crowd commander. He is capable of getting 58,000 individuals to sing a particular tune, at whim. While Martin is especially gifted in this skill, engaging the audience, hitting a chord in their emotions, and making them participate in a collective experience, this is something that great artists have always been able to do.

But there was something more.

Before the show, the band handed out thousands of illuminating bracelets. These light up on command, in color. The spectacle included some clever ways of lighting up the stadium with these colors, but the most beautiful to me was when they would allow all lights to come up, in a random color. Each light, was one wrist, one person, one soul in the audience. And just as the artist would connect with each individual in their own way, their light would also come up in one color. I just couldn’t ignore the metaphor.

Some version of this technology is available today everywhere. Many of us wear smartwatches and we got IoT devices everywhere. Cannot wait until we start using these for expressing feelings.

Have a great Thursday!

Summer comes to an end. Long days and the open windows will be gone.

But the one thing that we know about summer, is that once it ends, and we go through the gray days of winter, eventually, there will be another summer. Most of life is cyclic. Waiting is an option.

Consulting is an interesting role. We go about our lives being somewhat experts at what we do, and we think that we have all the answers. That’s why most of us think that doing the same thing as a consultant will be a piece of cake.

Having been on both sides of the table, I am here to tell you that it is, actually, a very different skillset. Most people, in a regular role, will never consider confronting a customer. But not the consultant. In many cases, they actually get hired to confront the client, in a respectful and constructive way. It is very much like pulling off the Band-Aid.

In hindsight, successful startups always have great teams, however, the recruitment process rarely has to do with résumés.

Sure, skills are important, but more important is to share a strong vision. A vision that prospective team members can get inspired by and join our journey. This is the underlying idea of something called “the crazy quilt”, one of the principles of “Effectuation”, a method for building entrepreneurial ventures. Personally, throughout my career I have always felt more moved by a resonating vision of the future than by compensation or any other perks.

Here is one process to develop an effective vision:

First, it has to be authentic. It has to come out of the founder’s own passion. This way, it will attract team players who will share the same goals, and there is no use in attracting people who are behind the wrong goal, Right?

Second, has to be as simple as possible, but also very vivid. Whoever listens to our story should be able to “get it” immediately, but also “feel it”. 

Finally, it still has to be achievable. A vision works better when is scaled appropriately to be inspirational, but yet attainable with some effort. I would look for “wow”, not “no way”. 

One exception to this last one are the “Moon Shots”. In this case, to make it work, substitute as much “achievable” you have to take out, by an equal portion of “inspirational”.

Once we have their attention, check for attitude, then aptitude. In that order. Do you agree?