What happens when you have a Top Performer with Toxic Behavior in a Team?

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There are bosses who care about their managers' personalities and management styles if it fits the company culture and there are also bosses who don't really care about personalities and management styles as long as their managers get things done - no matter what.  I think each one has its own merits depending on one's objectives.  For me, the former's impact is more long-term while the latter may be ideal to achieve immediate results. Then I read the leadership fable "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" by Patrick Lencioni where the protagonist shared an insightful anecdote.

The protagonist, Kathryn, is the new CEO of a Silicon Valley company and she shared a story with her management team.  In her younger years as a manager, she had an analyst who produced more reports than anyone else. She shared - 

This guy took any assignment I gave him and he became my most reliable employee. But no else from the department could stand him and to be honest, he annoyed the heck out of me too. He didn’t help anyone with their work and he made sure everyone knew how much better he was in his job which was undeniable even to the people who hated the guy.  Anyway, my other staff came to me a number of times complaining about him and I spoke to him about adjusting his behavior.  But he mostly ignored them... I was also not about to come down on my top performer. 

Eventually, the output of the department began to slide and so I came to him who complained a little but managed to get it all done. In my mind, he was carrying the department. 

Pretty soon, morale in the department began to deteriorate more rapidly more than ever and our performance slid further. Again, a number of analysts came to me to complain about him and it was becoming clear that he was indeed contributing to the problems of the group more than I thought. After a tough mind of thinking and losing sleep, I made my first big decision. 

At that point, one of Kathryn's mancom members interrupted her and made a guess - You fired him?

She replied - No, I promoted him.

Everyone in the room was shocked.

Then Kathryn continued - Two weeks later, 3 of my 7 analysts quit and the department fell into chaos. We dropped way behind in our work and my manager called me to talk about what was going on.  I explained the situation and why I had lost the other analysts.  The next day my boss made a big decision.

One of Kathryn's mancom members interrupted her again and guessed - Your boss fired the guy?

Kathryn replied - No, my boss fired me.

The mancom members were shocked.  Then one of them asked - What happened to the guy?

Kathryn replied - He resigned a few weeks later and they hired someone to run the department. Performance improved dramatically within a month a after his departure even if the department had 3 fewer analyts than before.

One of Kathryn's mancom members asked - Are you saying that his behavior alone hurt the production of the group by 50%? 

Kathryn replied - No, it wasn't his behavior.  It was my tolerance of his behavior. They fired the right person.

Very insightful, right?  And packed with a lot of lessons ranging from accountability, prudence, objectivity, among many others. 

The author shares that it's not finance, not strategy, not technology but it’s teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage both because it is so powerful and so rare. He said that a founder of a startup that grew to a USD1B annual revenue best expressed the power of teamwork this way:

If you can get all the people in the organization rowing in the same direction, you can dominate any industry in any market against any competition at any time.

So the next time you have a performer who is rowing alright but rows alone and demoralizes other good performers, it's time to re-read Kathryn's story and practice good judgment no matter how tempting it is to just ignore what everyone else is saying.  But of course, you have to exercise due diligence and validate if everything is true and make sure the others who are giving feedback are really good performers and are not just ganging up on the top performer. 😉    

The life story of Elon Musk

Source

The thought of colonizing a planet used to be pure fantasy… just a theme for sci-fi movies and comic books.  But guess what? There’s a real person who’s stated life purpose is to turn humans into space colonizers. Elon Musk. One of the richest men the world with a net worth of USD12B as of September 2015 based on Forbes.

With the innovations Musk's companies have produced, Musk is the closest to a real-life Tony Stark.  He has revolutionized the aerospace, automotive and solar industries like no one had since the Wright Brothers.

Reading "Elon Musk:  Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future" by Ashlee Vance gave me peek into Musk's life story.

So who is Musk?  What is his life story?

He’s the man behind SpaceX, a company that builds affordable rockets in the US.  Why did he focus on affordability?  Simply put, his analogy was why build a Ferrari for every launch when it was was possible that a Honda Accord might do the trick?

SpaceX sends a rocket up about once a month, carrying satellites for companies and nations and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS). Its USD60 million per launch cost is much less than Europe’s, Japan’s, even Russians' and the Chinese. (One player for example charges USD380 million per flight.) 

Musk with with Falcon 9.  (Source)

But even if SpaceX is the price leader already, it continues to develop better and more affordable rockets. 

Dragon V2 Spaceship (Source)

Musk is also the biggest shareholder of Tesla Motors which delivered the Model S, a beautifully designed, all-electric sedan.

Tesla Model S (Source)

In November 2012, just a few months after it started shipping, the Model S was named Motor Trend’s Car of the Year out-beating eleven other vehicles from companies such as Porsche, BMW, Lexus, and Subaru in terms of raw speed, mileage, handling, and storage space. And it could be recharged for free at Tesla’s stations located in highways across the US.

Tesla had transformed the car into a gadget—a device that actually got better after you bought it.  While owners sleep, Tesla’s engineers tap into the car via internet connection and download software updates. How cool is that?!

Several months later, Consumer Reports gave the Model S its highest car rating in history—99 out of 100—while proclaiming that it was likely the best car ever built. The Model S was not just the best electric car; it was best car, period, and the car people desired.

America had not seen a successful car company since Chrysler emerged in 1925. One year after the Model S went on sale, Tesla had posted a profit, hit $562 million in quarterly revenue, raised its sales forecast, and become as valuable as Mazda Motor.

In October 2014, Musk unveiled a supercharged version of the Model S with two motors—one in the front and one in the back. It could go zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds. The company had turned a sedan into a supercar.

Musk isn’t technically the original founder of Tesla but he just bought into the company in the early stages (incorporated in 2003, the original founders were Eberhard and Tarpenning and they named it Tesla Motors after Nikola Tesla, the inventor and electric motor pioneer). But as what people say, without Musk’s money, marketing savvy, engineering ingenuity, and leadership, the innovation may not have unfolded the way as it did.

When Musk accomplished these 2 feats - SpaceX and Tesla - analysts started comparing him to Steve Jobs who had successfully claimed similar achievements in two different industries (a new Apple product hit + a blockbuster Pixar movie in the same year).  In Musk’s case, there was even a third feat - SolarCity - started in 2006, it is now the largest installer and financier of solar panels for consumers and businesses.  In 2014, SolarCity was valued at close to $7 billion. Whoa...

And do you know what made Musk get into solar energy? It just made sense to him since enough solar energy hits the Earth’s surface in about an hour to equal a year’s worth of worldwide energy consumption from all sources put together.

Brilliant mind. It makes one curious how his mind is wired. And why ordinary mortals like us don’t have thoughts like that. Hahaha….

Anyway, before telling you how his mind wired, some may remember Musk in his early tech successes. In 1995, he had a company called Zip2 (described as a primitive Google Maps combined with Yelp) which Compaq ended buying in 1999 for USD307M (where Musk got USD22M).

His next startup was a payment solution called X.com but he ended up buying another payment startup called Paypal to consolidate with X.com (again, he wasn’t the original founder of PayPal; he just bought into it).  eBay bought PayPal in 2002 for USD1.5B and being the biggest shareholder, Musk got a lot and that’s what he used to initially fund SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity.   But it wasn’t an easy ride as most of his companies took several years to perfect the inventions and start making money.

So what makes Musk special? What was his growing up years like that made him what he is today?

Musk was born in South Africa in 1971 (his grandparents and parents were born in Canada but they moved to South Africa).

When he was a kid, his parents thought he was deaf because when people spoke to him, he seemed to be in trance and had a distant look in his eyes.  But according to Musk, in those trance-like moments, he was able to concentrate on a single task ... he could see images in his mind’s eye with a clarity like an engineering drawing produced by computer software. Wow....

Musk also loved to read. After school, he would go to the bookstore and stay there from 2pm to 6pm to read. When he ran out of books to read at the library (around 3rd or 4th grade), he started to read Encyclopedia Britannica. And since he had a photographic memory, he remembered a lot of facts. At the dinner table, when one of his siblings would wonder aloud about the distance from Earth to the Moon, Musk would say the exact measurement at perigee and apogee. (I can’t even remember these terms! Wahaha…)

Musk was 10 when he saw a computer for the first time in a mall and got awed, and soon got his own computer.  At 12, he designed a video game about alien space fighters he called Blastar and which was featured on a trade publication in South Africa.

(Side note: His gift on being able to study something new and put all the details together is very much still there.  When SpaceX was just starting, Musk and team went to Russia to buy a rocket but the sellers wouldn’t budge in to the price he wants. He told his team that they could just build their own rocket and presented a document detailing the costs of the materials needed to build, assemble, and launch a rocket! Wow...)

Growing in South Africa, Musk was exposed to apartheid.  He was bullied too - very badly. He mentioned in the book that he even got a nose job when he was an adult to repair the damage bullying did to his face.

His classmates in South Africa remember Musk as likable and quiet but not considered as one of the smartest. But the reason for this was Musk didn’t have interest in subjects that didn’t make sense to him where he was ok with just getting a passing grade. But for subjects like like physics and computers which he found important and useful, he got high grades. In his own words: 

There needs to be a reason for a grade. I’d rather play video games, write software, and read books than try and get an A if there’s no point in getting an A. I can remember failing subjects in like fourth and fifth grade. Then, my mother’s boyfriend told me I’d be held back if I didn’t pass. I didn’t actually know you had to pass the subjects to move to the next grade. I got the best grades in class after that. 

At 17, Musk left South Africa for Canada. He spent the next year working a series of odd jobs around Canada like tending vegetables, shoveling out grain bins and cleaning the boiler room of a lumber mill.

One activity which Musk likes to do together with his brother is to read the newspaper and identify interesting people they would like to meet. They would cold-call these people to ask if they were available to have lunch. Among those that they called was a top executive at a bank. It took six months to get a sked with this bank executive but the 2 made an impression that this bank executive ended up offering Musk a summer internship at the bank and became his trusted advisor.  His exposure during his internship greatly influenced him to do his tech startups (Zip2 and X.com) and the rest is history. 

That is Musk's life story in less than 2,000 words. :)

So what else is in Musk’s pipeline other than turning humans into an interplanetary species?

The latest software update of Model S gives the car autopilot functions. The car has radar to detect objects and warn of possible collisions and could guide itself via GPS. “Later, you will be able to summon the car,” Musk said. “It will come to wherever you are."  Wow.

Tesla’s third-generation car, or the Model 3, due out in 2017, is expected to be priced at around USD35,000 - a milestone that would officially make electric cars truly mainstream. 

Tesla has also begun modeling a type of submarine car that could transition from road to water.  Double wow.

SpaceX, on the other hand, is developing reusable rockets. Instead of the conventional disposable rockets which break apart and crash into the sea, SpaceX is testing rockets that can return to Earth on a floating pad at sea or precisely land back at their original launchpad.   Imagine, rockets that can be used over and over again for trips to space (just like planes!).  Reusable rockets are expected to further cut prices to at least 1/10 versus its rivals. Amazing.

Musk also unveiled something he called Hyperloop – a new mode of hi-speed transportation via cars in pods inside a tube. You might wondering how fast is fast when he says hi-speed?  The Hyperloop could take you from LA to SFO in 35 minutes!  He explained that the pods would float on a bed of air produced by skis at their base. Each pod would be thrust forward by an electromagnetic pulse, and motors placed throughout the tube would give the pods added boosts as needed. These mechanisms could keep the pods going at 800 mph. And it's going to be solar-powered.  Mind-blowing, right?!

Hyperloop (Source)

I hope I get a chance to visit SpaceX, the Tesla factory or even the Hyperloop test site and see all the brilliant engineers of Musk working on these mind-blowing inventions.

The things which Musk's companies have developed are the kind of things we used to see only in fictional movies and books.   And once upon a time, a kid in South Africa read about them too.  But this kid, unlike us ordinary mortals, didn't just stop at the pure enjoyment of reading about them.  He was able to figure out how to make them happen. :)  

What is growth hacker marketing?

Traditional marketing, as we know it, is creating brand awareness via TV, radio, print, billboards, getting celebrity endorsers, etc.  The book "Growth Hacker Marketing" by Ryan Holiday explains how a new generation of megabrands like Facebook and Dropbox have successfully created global brand awareness without spending big budgets on traditional marketing.

In an article written by an influential technologist and entrepreneur, it is predicted that growth hackers will replace marketing. 

So what is growth hacking and what do growth hackers do? 

Here's the simplest definition I could find in the book: 

The end goal of every growth hacker is to build a self-perpetuating marketing machine that reaches millions by itself. - Aaron Ginn

One of the earliest examples of growth hacking actually dates back to 1996 when Hotmail was launched. During a meeting between the Hotmail founders and a venture capitalist, the VC asked the founders - could you put a message at the bottom of everybody’s screen?

So Hotmail put this at the bottom of each message sent via Hotmail: 

P.S. I love you.  Get your free Hotmail. 

By just adding that one-liner, Hotmail's growth became exponential - 1M users within 6 months.  Users doubled in 5 weeks.  By December 1997, with nearly 10M users, Hotmail was sold to Microsoft for USD400M.  Everything was implemented and executed by people without the slightest bit of marketing experience.   (The stats may not look impressive today but don't forget, in 1996, the global internet penetration was less than 1%.)  

Given the Hotmail case study, you could say that the job of a growth hacker isn’t to do “marketing”, it’s to grow companies really fast ... to take something from nothing to make it something enormous within an incredibly tight window.   

What else makes growth hackers different from marketers? 

A growth hacker is someone who has thrown out the playbook of traditional marketing and replaced it with only what is testable, trackable, and scalable.  Their tools are emails, pay per click ads, blogs, and platform APIs instead of commercials, publicity, and money.  While their marketing brethren chase vague notions like “branding” and “mind share” , growth hackers relentlessly pursue users and growth - and when they do it right, those users beget more users, who beget more users.  They are the inventors, operators, and mechanics of their own self-sustaining and self-propagating growth machine that can take a startup from nothing to something.

But beyond getting the product out there, the book also highlights the important of the product itself.  Holiday cites that the single worst marketing decision you can make is starting with a product nobody wants or nobody needs.   Or to put it another way - the best marketing decision you can make is to have a product or business that fulfills a real and compelling need for a real and defined group of people  - no matter how much tweaking and refining this takes.

  

An example of tweaking or refining would be Instagram.  Did you know that Instagram didn't start as Instagram?  It was previously called Burbn and its purpose was a location-based social network with an optional photo feature.  

The founders realized that its users were flocking to only one part of the app - the photos and filters.   In one meeting, one of the founders asked - how are we going to evolve this product into something millions of people will want to use?  What is the one thing that makes this product unique and interesting?    

So Burbn was tweaked and refined.  It became Instagram - a mobile app for posting photos with filters.  The result?  100,000 users within a week of relaunching.  Within 18 months, the founders sold Instagram to FB for USD1Billion. Whoa...

When a product reaches a point where its value proposition and customers are in perfect sync with each other, this is called the Product Market Fit (PMF).  It's considered the holy grail for every growth hacker.  And this isn't expected to happen at launch. Achieving PMF could be after several tweaks resulting from understanding user feedback. 

And achieving PMF, as Holiday pointed out, is very critical because he explains that the prize and spoils no longer go to the person who make it to market first.  They go to the person who makes it to Product Market Fit first.

The last important point discussed in the book is about virality.  I like how virality was defined in the book - Virality is not an accident.  It is engineered.

How do you engineer virality?

1. The product must be inherently worth sharing.

2. Don't just encourage sharing but create powerful incentives to do so.  If you do it right, people will advertise your product and feel like they are the ones getting something out of it. 

The best example for me here is Dropbox.  You get rewarded for various user actions.  Link your account to FB and get free 150MB storage, refer a friend and get 500MB free storage, and so on.   And guess what?  35% of Dropbox customers come from referrals.  Wow.    

Since everything in growth hacking is trackable, the virality of a product is measured by  its K factor.  K factor, in the medicine world, is used to describe the contagion of disease.  In the startup world, the viral coefficient measures the number of new users that each existing user is able to convert.  

The book has a lot of other interesting things and this is just a peek.  It's an easy and fast read - only about 100 pages.  I have the revised and expanded version published in 2014; the original version was published in 2013.

In the expanded version, there are additional sections like the FAQs with Holiday - these are frequently asked questions Holiday gets via email and Twitter. I picked one question that's the most useful for startups.  Here you go:

If you were launching a startup or new product, what questions would you ask yourself before launching?

- Who are my ideal early adopters?

- How can i make my platform particularly enticing to them right now?

- Why is this service indispensable? Or how do i make it indispensable to them?

- Once they come on board, does the service provide/encourage/facilitate them inviting or bringing more users with them?

- How willing and prepared am I to improve based on the feedback and behavior of these users?

- What kind of crazy/cool thing can I do to get attention - something that, ideally, no one has ever done before?

If you're into marketing, or thinking of having a startup, or have a startup already, or just simply interested in technology, Growth Hacker Marketing is a great read.  :)

How to create a valuable and sellable business

Built to Sell's sub-title is what caught my attention - Creating a business that can thrive without you.  How cool is that? :)

The author, John Warrillow, wrote the book based on the premise that most business owners start their companies because they want more freedom like working on their own schedules, but later on, they become too involved that the company can't function without them. Warrilow points outs out, if this is the case, the company, no matter how big or profitable, is worthless to a buyer if everything depends on the owner.  

So in Built to Sell, Warrilow gives some tips on how to create a valuable and sellable business.  The book is an easy read as it is written in the form of a simple story - there's an advertising agency owner (Alex) who's having some business challenges - typical problems like non-performing employees, demanding clients and slow collection of accounts receivables.  He reached a point of giving up and he just wanted to sell his agency.

He sought the advice of a family friend (Ted) whom he considers his mentor.  Ted has a successful track record in building and selling businesses over the years.

But during their first meeting, Ted's assessment of Alex's agency is worthless because everything depended on Alex so Ted guided Alex on how to make his agency a valuable and sellable business.

Here are excerpts of Ted's tips to Alex which could be applied to any kind of business:

- Create a standard service offering, a consistent process for delivering our product or service.    (In the case of Alex's agency, they have identified it as its unique methodology for designing a logo which they have broken down into a specific and repeatable 5-step process.)

- Make sure the product or service is something clients would need on a regular basis so you could count on recurring revenue.  

-  Stop thinking as a service company and start thinking like a product company.  Your product is your unique methodology.  Because if you think as a service company and customize your approach to solving client problems, there is no scale to the business and your operations are contingent on people.  When people are the main assets of the business -  and they can come and go every night - the business will not be worth very much.     

- Acquiring companies use an earn-out formula to buy a business when they know the founders are the business.   What does earn-out mean?  In an earn-out, the owners typically get some money up front and the rest of their money is contingent on hitting performance goals in the years ahead.   Usually, owners need to stay on for 3 to 5 years and a lot can happen which can make it difficult for the owners to meet the acquiring company’s performance goals. This is the reason why you have to build a product company so it's not dependent on the founders.

- When you offer a product, people expect to pay for it in advance versus when you offer a service which they expect to pay after services have rendered.  

-  Avoid the cash suck.  Once you’ve standardized your service, charge up front or use progressive billing to create a positive cash flow cycle.  

- When someone buys a company, they look at the amount of capital they need to tie up to buy the business.  If your business is a cash suck, then they will be willing to pay less for the business.  If your business generates cash, they will be willing to pay more to buy your business.

- Promote your specialized process so you'll be more memorable and referable.  Again, in Alex's case, it's their specialized logo design process.  Ted points out that if Alex were to offer a generic service like advertising or marketing, people will have trouble describing to their friends why his agency is special because they are just like everyone else.  If, however, Alex's agency is positioned as the best logo creator, people could easily describe their service and refer them.

- Don’t be afraid to say no to projects.  Prove that you’re serious about specialization by turning down work that falls outside your area of expertise.  The more people say no to, the more referrals you’ll get to people who need your product or service.

- To sell your business, you need to demonstrate to a buyer that you have a sales engine that will produce predictable, recurring revenue.  Figure out how many sales reps you need to drive your sales engine.

- Hire people who are good at selling products, not services.  These people will be better able to figure out how your product can meet a client’s needs rather than agreeing to customize your offering to fit what the client wants.  

- You need at least 2 years of financial statements reflecting your use of the standardized offering model before you sell your company.

- If you’re going to sell your business, you need to demonstrate that it can run without you.  You need to show a potential acquirer that you have a management team that can keep the business running when you’re gone.  

-  Build a management team and offer them a long-term incentive plan that rewards their personal performance and loyalty.  In Ted's case, he doesn't like giving equity as equity could get messy and time-consuming.  He also points out that equity is only worth anything if there is a market for the shares.  Assuming that the company will never go public, it's easier for an employee to understand a cash bonus plan.   

Ted uses a long-term incentive plan designed to reward his managers' performance and their loyalty to the company.  He gives his managers targets and corresponding bonus for achieving their personal targets.  He pays them their bonus at the end of each year and puts aside the exact same amount into a social pool of funds earmarked for them.  Three years after launching the plan, and each year thereafter, they were allowed to withdraw 1/3 of the pool.  That way, their pool grew in value each year corresponding with their personal achievements, but they could not access the extra money until 3 years after earning it.  If they ever decided to leave, they would be walking away from 3 years’ worth of bonuses sitting in the pool.   

Another reason why Ted doesn't like stock options it is could also complicate the process of selling your business as minority shareholders have rights.  You will be required to to keep them in the loop as you review offers.   So Ted advises to keep it simple by giving your management team a simple, one-time cash bonus if you successfully sell your business as a thank you for helping you with the management meetings and their dedication to the business.  Pay the reward in 2 or more installments to those who stay so that you ensure your key staff stays on through the transition.

- Avoid an adviser who offers to broker a discussion with a single client.  You want to ensure there is competition for your business and avoid being used as a pawn for your adviser to curry favor with his or her best client.  

-  Strategic buyers will typically pay more because you’re worth more to them than you would be to a financial buyer.  A strategic buyer  will model how you would perform as a business if they owned you and applied all of their resources to your business.  A financial buyer is simply looking for a return on their investment and wouldn’t bring much more than their checkbook to a deal.   With few synergies to exploit, financial buyers will typically offer you a lower price to ensure they get a good return on their money.  

Built to Sell is a great read whether you're just thinking of starting a business or you already own one.  It was first published in 2010 and was tagged as one of the best business books of 2011 by both Fortune and Inc Magazine.  

Life lessons from the World's Greatest Salesman

While scanning through titles in a bookstore, I saw a yellow book.  The top of the cover says - “From the World’s Greatest Salesman... Joe Girard’s 13 Essential Rules of Selling”.  I wondered what he sold and what made him the world's greatest salesman.

I quickly scanned the book and found out that he holds the Guinness Book of World Records for having sold the most number of new retail vehicles in a 15-year career.  How many? 13,001 vehicles! You know the highest no. of vehicles he sold in a year? 1,425 vehicles!  In a month, it was 174.  In a day, his highest was 18 vehicles but on an average day, he sold 6 vehicles. Wow!

So I ended getting a copy to know more about the world's greatest salesman.

Source

Joe Girard was born on November 1, 1928 in Detroit, Michigan (which makes him 86 years old today).  At the age of 9, he started working as a shoeshine boy. At age 11, he worked as a newspaper delivery boy. When he was in his teens, he became a school dropout, then worked in a factory to assemble stoves. At age 18, he joined the army but had an accident which injured his back so he got discharged. Then he became a contractor but got duped - he lost his business and all his savings, and was left with a USD60,000 debt from the business.

Having a hard time looking for a job and with nothing to feed his family at age 35, he pleaded with a sales manager of a Chevrolet dealership to hire him as a salesman. The manager was hesitant because Joe didn’t have any car sales experience and it was a slow month for cars that time. But guess what?  On that same day, he was able to sell 1 car!   On his second month, he sold 18 cars and trucks. Unfortunately, he got fired because the other salesmen complained about him - for being too aggressive. (What a loss for that dealer!)  Anyway, he applied in another car dealership and the rest was history.

Joe Girard's 13 Essential Rules of Selling don’t just actually apply to Sales but to life in general. Here you go:

1. Make a healthy choice

2. Have a positive attitude

3. Organize your life

4. Work when you work

5. Observe Girard's No-No’s (Examples of these are – Don’t smoke, don’t chew a gum, don’t use heavy cologne, don’t use profanity, don’t tell dirty jokes, don’t be late, etc.)

6. Dress the part

7. Listen

8. Smile

9. Stay in touch

10. Tell the truth

11. Lock up every opportunity

12. Stand in front of everything you do for others (character and reputation)

13. Reward yourself

It was refreshing to read a business book whose author’s top rule is health-related. This particular excerpt struck me:

To get into the right frame of mind mentally and emotionally to take on life, start by taking care of yourself physically. For most of us the problem is not a condition, a disease or illness - it's neglect.

<Guilt> No more procrastinating with our health goals. “I was too busy to be healthy” is the last thing we would want to tell the doctor.

The book is peppered with Joe’s in-your-face life advice. Here are my favorites:

Nobody can guarantee where you'll wind up in this life, not even General Motors <or insert your employer here no matter how big and stable it is>. Your best shot is you.

*******
If you're waiting for someone to make the world just right for you so you can succeed, you're on the road to nowhere.

*******
Edmund Hillary who climbed Mt Everest 60 yrs ago (1953) didn't say:  This mountain is too high. It's too cold up here. These rocks are too uncooperative. There's no trail to follow. My equipment doesn't feel right. It's all the manufacturer's fault. Mount Everest can't be conquered.

*******
You will question decisions you made that you believed were carefully thought through. You will have doubts. You can't control that. It's being human. You can, however, control how you respond to those kinds of situations. The key is attitude. That's where the difference lies between winning and losing.

*******
…..if you look like a bum, you are a bum. Why? Because the vast majority of people won’t take the time to find out that you’re really an intelligent, nice, hard-working person after all...

********
You can't let one (bad or unfortunate) incident rule your life. Once you stop trusting and believing in people who make a difference in your life, you might as well put your best outfit on and climb into a coffin because the end can't be far away.

********

Nobody ever said life was fair, so quit blaming the world for your shortcomings.  Just be smart about making sure important commitments are in writing. Learn from your mistakes and move on. Many people can't do this. They prefer to spend their time plotting ways to get even with someone who cheated them or lied to them. When that happens, you know you've reached the bottom.

********
I also like how Joe pointed out how priceless time is –

I guard my time like it is gold. In fact, it's even worth more than gold because you can't buy a sack of time with a sack of gold.

And why we should strive to live a healthy balanced life -

Life is not about one thing. Your life is more than just your job. To live a balanced life, you must pay attention to everything's important to you.

How did he do it?  He divided his life into 4 areas and when he’s doing any of the four, he doesn’t let anything get in the way. What are these 4?
1. When he works, he works.
2.  When he sleeps, he sleeps.
3. When he eats, he eats.
4. When he plays, he plays.
And how about us? When we do something, we also do 2 or 3 other things!  Tsk-tsk....

Lastly, I admire the way how Joe consciously made sure he stayed grounded despite all the achievements.   Here are 2 of my favorite excerpts:

Remember your success is never all about you. If you're in sales, you represent a product or service backed by lots of other people without whom you'd fail.

******
People who enjoy success too quickly can often be doomed to failure if they forget what got them there and where they came from. That's why I always keep that picture of me shining shoes as a 9-year old kid on the wall in my office. I never want to forget where I came from. It kept me in line and prevented me from thinking I was a hotshot.

And just in case you’re wondering about the photo Joe is talking about, here it is –

Source

The 9-year old shoeshine boy who became the world’s greatest salesman. :)

No such thing as boring work: Learnings from the Pike Place Fish Market

Last week, my fellow bookworm friends and I went National Bookstore’s warehouse sale.  We were able to buy books for as low as Php15! :)

One of the cheapest books I bought during the sale is Fish by Stephen Lundin, Harry Paul and John Christensen.  It’s a Wall Street Journal’s bestseller, and years ago, I do remember seeing it in bestseller stands.  I’ve no idea what the book is about but I thought – how could you go wrong with 15 bucks?!

The book is entitled “Fish” because it talks about the learnings of the world-famous Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle and how you can apply the same principles to your life - whether at work or in your personal relationships.

It is written from the perspective of an office worker named Mary Jane.  She and her husband relocated to Seattle for work.  Unfortunately, her husband unexpectedly passed away too soon due to aneurysm and she had to make ends meet for her family. 

Mary Jane was a supervisor in a financial company and later, got promoted to lead a new team.  The new team she was assigned to was a tough one as it was always the butt of jokes in their office.  The department was called “toxic energy dump” and the members there were called zombies because they were so slow, inefficient, don’t get things done, don’t pick up the phone when it rings and they intentionally misplace documents.  For the team members, their work in the accounting department is the most boring work because it was the same everyday.

One lunch break, Mary Jane went out for a walk and stumbled upon the action at the Pike Place Fish Market.   There was so much energy in the market.  Buying and selling of fish was almost like a show.

During that trip, Mary Jane met one of the fishmongers named Lonnie.   Their conversation lead to the discussion of Mary Jane’s challenges in the office and Lonnie, in turn, shared with her the story on how Pike Place was transformed from a plain fish market to a world-famous one. 

Here are excerpts from an insightful conversation between Mary Jane and Lonnie:

Lonnie:  “Have you ever considered the fact that any work can be boring to the person who has to do it?  Some dudes travel all over the world for business. It sounds pretty exciting to me, but they tell me it gets old fast.  I guess given the right conditions, any job can be dull.  

...There is always a choice about the way you do your work, even if there is not a choice about the work itself.  That was the biggest lesson we learned in building the world-famous Pike Place Fish Market.  We can choose the attitude we bring to our work. “

Mary Jane:  Why wouldn’t you have a choice about the work itself?

Lonnie:  Good point.  You can always quit your job, and so in that sense, you have a choice about the work you do.  But it might not be a smart thing to do given your responsibilities and other factors.  That’s what I mean by choice.  On the other hand, you always have a choice about the attitude you bring to the job.

...We can bring a moody attitude and have a depressing day.  We can bring a grouchy attitude and irritate our co-workers and customers.   Or we can bring a sunny, playful and cheerful attitude and have a great day.  We can choose the kind of day we will have.  We spent a lot of time talking about this choice, and we realized as long as we are going to be at work, we might as well have the best day we can have.

...Working in a fish market is cold, wet, smelly, sloppy, difficult work. But we have a choice about our attitude while we are doing that work.”

Lonnie also shared the other ingredients of their success – that of being playful, conscious effort to make someone else’s day and being totally present when you interact with people.  Beautiful lessons.  

The book is just an easy read – a little over 100 pages – you can quickly finish it in one reading.  It would make a great gift to people who always complain about work or who have lost the spark in their work life.

Source

Anyway, I haven’t been to Seattle yet but I remember watching Pike Place Fish Market's flying fish attraction in a travel show before.  Someday, I hope I could visit this world-famous market and see these wonderful guys in action. 

I quickly read up about the Pike Place Fish Market and learned that it was founded in 1930.  In 1965, it was purchased by one of the fish market employees named John Yokoyama.   

In 1986, the fish market was almost on the brink of bankruptcy.  At that point, Yokoyama and his employees decided to make a change by changing their attitude.  And they committed to become world-famous by introducing games and customer performances.  

By 1990, just 4 years after that positive change, TV shows started featuring them. And guess what today?  The Pike Place Fish Market attracts up to 10,000 daily visitors. Wow. :)  

If you want to read more about the Pike Place Fish Market, you can visit their website here.

How will you measure your life and live a life of integrity

Clayton Christensen earned his degrees (undergrad, masters, doctorate) from the world's most prestigious universities like Brigham Young University, Oxford University and the Harvard Business School.

Through the years, he saw a lot of his classmates rise up the ladder becoming heads of Fortune 500 companies and successful entrepreneurs who earn"life-changing amounts of money" (as he puts it) and yet were unhappy.  

He considers some of his classmates as not just the brightest but the most decent too.  But along the way, some got lost. One even got involved in the financial collapse of Enron.   

In his bestseller, "How will you measure your life?, Christensen tries to examine what causes things to happen and why in one's life.  He uses the very same principles he teaches in his HBS class "Building and Sustaining a Successful Enterprise", only this time, he applies the theories to individuals.

He makes use of a lot of interesting business case studies (e.g. how Netflix killed Blockbuster, how Asus beat Dell, how Honda motorcycles penetrated the US market, why Disney Paris lost billions) and from these, draws out analogies to family, career and personal life.  I enjoyed reading the business cases as much as the practical life applications. 

But the chapter that I really like the most when it comes to practical applications is the one on how to live a life of integrity.

Christensen cautions us that sometimes when confronted with a situation, a voice in our head would say, “Look, I know that as a general rule, most people shouldn’t do this.  But in this particular extenuating circumstance, just this once, it’s okay." ("Extenuating" means to make guilt or an offense seem less serious or more forgivable.  Not that I knew its meaning - I had to look it up! Haha....) 

He continues - And the voice in our head seems to be right; the price of doing something wrong “just this once” usually appears alluringly low.  It suckers you in, and you don’t see where that path is ultimately headed or the full cost that the choice entails.

The author cites some examples of well-respected people who made such mistakes.  People who began their careers with a true passion for what they were doing.  But because they allowed this “just this once” attitude, they got lost - athletes who got tempted to cheat, businessmen who got involved in scandals, etc.

One story which Christensen shared was that of the 26-year old trader who brought down the British merchant bank Barings in 1995 after racking up USD1.3 billion in trading losses before it got detected.  

Before it reached USD1.3B, you know how everything started?  The trader just committed a relatively small error which he didn't want to admit so he tried to cover it up by hiding the losses in a little trading account.  To recover the losses, he made a series of bets but unfortunately, the situation got worse and he lost more.  He lied to cover lies; he forged documents, misled auditors, and made false statements to try to hide his mounting losses.  Sadly, Barings was forced to declare bankruptcy because of the extent of the debt created by the trader.

When the trader got interviewed by BBC years after, he said he did what he did because he wanted success.  Getting rich was not his motivation but to continue to be seen as a success.  Since his trading mistake would ruin the perception of his success, he tried to cover it up, but at that time, he didn’t foresee how it would all end.  After taking the first small step, he didn't know when or how to turn around anymore.  In the interview he said “I wanted to shout from the rooftops… this is what the situation is, there are massive losses, I want it to stop.  But for some reason you’re unable to do it.”  

To cap the learnings and key takeaways, here are my favorite excerpts on how to live a life of integrity:

- Let us not allow ourselves to break our own personal rules “just this once” even if our mind can justify these small choices.   None of these things, when they first happen, feels like a life-changing decision.   But each of these decisions can roll up into a much bigger picture, turning you into the kind of person you never wanted to be. 

- What usually happens is it starts with a small decision.  You continue justifying small decisions that lead up to the big decision and when you get to the big one, it doesn’t seem enormous anymore.  You don’t realize the road you are on until you look up and see you’ve arrived at a destination you would have once considered unthinkable.

- You can’t apply your rules most of the time. It’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.  The boundary – your personal and moral line – is powerful, because you don’t cross it; if you have justified doing it once, there’s nothing to stop you doing it again. 

- The only way to avoid moral consequences of uncomfortable moral concessions in your life is to never start making them in the first place.  When the first step down that path presents itself, turn around and walk the other way.

- Decide what you stand for.  And then stand for it all the time.