Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1318

Pronouns Matter when Psyching Yourself Up

Some people seem to have an amazing ability to stay rational no matter what. They efficiently make good, clear decisions while the rest of us waste energy doing things like panicking about upcoming tasks, ruminating pointlessly, or refusing to move on from our failures. Those cool-headed rationalists also seem adept at getting ahead, while we’re mired in our all-too-human, biased habits of thinking. Could we ever become like them? The gulf between the two types of people seems vast and unbridgeable.

But it’s not. It can be crossed, via a simple linguistic shift.

“You.” Or “he.” Or “she.” Or even via your own name.

It’s a matter of how you talk when you silently talk to yourself, as you probably do often, especially when you’re confronted with a difficult task. Do you say something like “It’s up to me”? Or “I can do it”? Or do you say “It’s up to you” or address yourself by your own name?

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Nobel Prize–winner Malala Yousafzai demonstrated the use of the latter approach when she was asked by Jon Stewart how she felt upon finding out that she was on a Taliban hit list. She was fearful, but then she imagined how she’d respond if she was attacked: “I said, ‘If he comes, what would you do, Malala?’ … Then I would reply [to] myself, ‘Malala, just take a shoe and hit him.’”

Does this shift from “I” to “Malala” represent a simple quirk of speech? Or does it reflect something deeper — a process that helped her manage the intense threat that confronted her?

We, along with seven of our colleagues — Jiyoung Park, Aleah Burson, Adrienne Dougherty, Holly Shablack, and Ryan Bremner of the University of Michigan; Jason Moser of Michigan State; and Emma Bruehlman-Senecal of UC Berkeley — recently addressed this question in a series of experiments. We found that cueing people to reflect on intense emotional experiences using their names and non-first-person pronouns such as “you” or “he” or “she” consistently helped them control their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.

For example, in one study we found that participants who silently referred to themselves in the second or third person or used their own names while preparing for a five-minute speech were calmer and more confident and performed better on the task than those who referred to themselves using “I” or “me.”

The effects extended beyond the task, too: People who had used non-first-person pronouns or their names felt more positively about their performance on the speech once it was over. They also experienced less shame about it and ruminated about it less. Those are big pluses — ruminating endlessly over past experiences can hurt not only your psychological well-being but also your physical health.

It didn’t matter whether the research subjects were anxious or calm at baseline; both types of people benefited from the subtle shift in language.

Nor were there different effects for use of the second- or third-person pronouns or their own names. All that mattered was whether the participants did or didn’t use first-person pronouns.

It was impressive to see how a simple change in language could produce these effects. Having observed the power of this subtle shift, both of us now intentionally make use of it. One of us (Ozlem Ayduk) has even been known, when facing a difficult task, to write herself emails using her name. The other (Ethan Kross) regularly prompts his five-year-old daughter to use her own name in thinking about why she feels distressed when she doesn’t get her way.

Our findings are just a small part of a much larger, ongoing stream of research on self-talk, which is proving to have far-reaching implications for altering the way people think, feel, and behave. Not only does non-first-person self-talk help people perform better under stress and help them get control of their emotions, it also helps them reason more wisely.

Our past research indicates that a self-distancing effect can be achieved by cueing people to mentally adopt a “fly on the wall” perspective on their problems. Shifting visual perspective like that may work in situations where people have the time to reflect on experiences that have already occurred. What’s exciting about the self-talk effects we found is that they lend themselves to real-time situations that are unfolding quickly. When you’re in the midst of performing a task or interacting with others, the substitution of “you” for “I” can be done quickly and easily, and the results may surprise you.

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Managing Privacy in the Internet of Things

Photo by Andrew Nguyen

One of the promises of the Internet of Things (IoT) is that everything should talk to everything else. These talkative “things” include sensors, consumer appliances, home automation systems, and even connected vehicles. The frameworks through which such interconnectivity is arranged, controlled, and mediated – that is, how these things “entitle” each other to connect – is going to be a fundamental part of IoT. Managing this “entitlement,” which defines who can access your device data, and under what conditions it can be found and used by others, will be one of the major challenges for consumers and businesses.

The data from all these things will be valuable not just to the companies that deploy them, but also to people or companies operating in other domains. For example, your thermostat might talk to your neighbor’s weather station to determine an appropriate temperature setting, and then switch on the heating when your phone’s GPS tells it that you’re nearing home.

It’s this many-to-many and cross-domain aspect of connectivity that distinguishes IoT from earlier remote monitoring/control systems and M2M (machine-to-machine) systems, where only one organization created, owned, and used the data. In the IoT, each connection won’t be predetermined; these things should be able to structure their conversations on the fly, in an automated and ad-hoc manner. But this raises a number of questions and concerns around privacy, interoperability, and data-access privileges.

First, how do all these things automatically find each other? In the web world, discoverability (the ability to be found quickly) has been key to growth, but this isn’t necessarily the case in IoT, where many private things will not want to be found. Having a heart monitor at a home can be useful to your doctor, but you wouldn’t want an unknown company to be able to access that data. Knowing you have a heart monitor, a blood pressure monitor, and a dialysis machine could lead to unwanted targeted advertising. Things must define how, when, and by whom they are found.

Once they’ve found each other, how do they “speak” to one another? This has led to a focus on “interoperability,” which is getting things to talk in a common language. Yet even human beings have been unable to converge on a single language to share information. And where we are speaking the same language, we have different ways of describing the world. Some of us use Celsius and others use Fahrenheit. The same is true for our “things”: they are used in a variety of contexts. There may even be a disincentive to adopt a common protocol, data format, or parameter, since that can restrict inventiveness.

Then what happens when the data from one thing is used by another out of context? Imagine a thermostat making a decision based on a nearby temperature sensor, even though that’s measuring the temperature of a baby, not the room temperature. Developers of sensors can’t pre-define all the potential contexts in which their devices will be used. So how might their owners help refine or restrict the conditions in which data is employed?

Most importantly, how do people control which things can access the data generated by their things? People have different comfort levels when it comes to making their data available to others. One person might be happy to make his real-time energy usage profile available to an energy supplier, because that supplier offers competitive rates or services; but another person might not want to release that information. Real-time energy usage data can provide intimate information, including behaviour patterns – i.e., when people are present and active in their homes.

People are also nervous about how their things report contextual and geolocation information (where the things are and what is near them) — especially in the wake of revelations about how the NSA in the U.S. has used such metadata. Some might be happy to let others to see their real-time geolocation (if they’re using a mobile app that helps friends find each other in crowded locations), but others will want to keep it private.

On the web, we have largely ignored these issues. The data that we’ve grown used to making public has seemed innocuous. So people don’t protest too much when their personal profile or usage data is employed by companies like Facebook and Google to deliver highly targeted advertisements. But in the Internet of Things, the data generated by all these things tends to be much more personal and commercially sensitive; and the way it’s consumed (via non-screen devices) means that an advertising model isn’t necessarily going to be sustainable. These challenges don’t mean that IoT is impossible, they just mean that it will be complex — technically, socially, and economically.

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What to Do When Your Colleague Comes Out as Transgender

By now, many professionals have openly gay colleagues at work, including the 66,000 U.S. employees of Apple, whose CEO, Tim Cook, famously became the first Fortune 500 CEO to come out last October. But far fewer people have had the experience of working with an openly transgender colleague (i.e., someone “whose gender identity or expression is different from those typically associated with the sex assigned to them at birth,” according to advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign).

Partly that’s a matter of numbers. UCLA’s Williams Institute estimates that there are 700,000 transgender Americans – a significant number, but much smaller than the 8 million gays, lesbians, and bisexuals living in the U.S., according to surveys. And partly it may be a result of fear. In 32 states, it’s possible to fire someone for being transgender, and a 2011 survey revealed that 47% of transgender respondents had experienced a “negative job outcome – such as being fired, not hired, or denied promotion” because of their gender identity or expression.

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Your company needs to tap the best talent possible, and research has shown that workers perform better when they’re comfortable being out at work rather than constantly worrying about “covering” their identity. Here’s how you can make your company, department, and team a more welcoming place for colleagues who have – or might in the future – come out as transgender.

Unless you’re already good friends, keep your reactions to a minimum. Someone who comes out to you as transgender certainly hopes for a positive response – but also doesn’t want coming out to be a huge deal. Treat the person as you always have, and go for understatement. “I always appreciate it when all I get is a nod,” says nonprofit consultant Robbie Samuels. “Like, thank you for sharing that – noted. I’m not looking for a big reaction or to focus the conversation on me and my gender.” If you’re pals with your newly out colleague, however, you can get a little more creative. Advertising copywriter Chris Edwards, who is writing a memoir about his transition experience, recalls a note – actually a Bar Mitzvah card – one colleague left on his desk. “On the cover it said, ‘Congratulations. Today you are a man.’ It was perfect. I still have it.” Supportive humor can be great – but only try it if you’re already close to your colleague. Perhaps the best response of all was one received by Jessica Mink, a noted astronomer. She recalls, “My boss’s boss…said that he hoped [my coming out] didn’t mean I was going to leave, and told me how valuable my work was.”

Take your cues from your colleague. Some of your transgender colleagues may be pleased to discuss their own experiences or trans issues in general, while others may be more reticent. Follow their lead. Mink is open to discussing trans issues but often first points colleagues to a blog post she wrote – “On Being a Transgender Astronomer” – that provides an overview of her experience. Edwards notes, “If you’ve never really spoken to them before, to start now by asking personal questions probably isn’t the best idea.” But he’s a fan of breaking the ice where appropriate. “One time I was walking past the AV suite and the editor was showing her intern how to hook up the equipment. Just as I approached, she held up an adaptor and said, ‘This is a female to male,’ so I popped my head in the door and said, ‘Hey, stop talking about me!’ I could hear them laughing all the way down the hall. You can bet they told that story to others, which helped people know I had a sense of humor about it and that they could talk to me without fear they were invading my privacy. I encouraged questions and said, ‘If you ask me something that crosses the line, I’ll tell you.’ It worked pretty well.”

Be mindful of the pronouns. No one is going to expect you to become an instant expert on transgender issues. But there are two things you really, absolutely have to get right: the person’s chosen name and preferred pronoun. Just as it might be offensive if someone consistently called you by the wrong name or kept calling you “she” when you’re a “he,” the same is true for your transgender colleague. An occasional mistake is no big deal – just correct yourself and move on. (Profusely apologizing and calling attention to the mistake only makes it worse.) But repeatedly using the wrong name or pronoun for your colleague looks less like an honest error and more like malice – so make sure to get this one right.

Relax about the bathroom. Bathrooms were a source of great sturm und drang during the debate about gays in the military, and they may be so even more when it comes to transgender issues. As some courts have ruled, transgender employees should use the restroom that matches their gender identity, even if there’s a period during their transitions where they might not “look like” they fit in. While that may make some traditionally-gendered employees uncomfortable, it’s the transgender employee that’s at infinitely greater risk for insult or physical harm, so it’s important not to blow the issue out of proportion.

Do research on your own. You may be tempted to pepper your colleague with questions about transgender issues, and on one hand, that’s a laudable impulse. On the other, lots of people are probably doing the same thing, and having to answer the same question 30 times stops being interesting or productive. Don’t treat your colleague as your personal Google; you can read about transgender issues yourself and learn a great deal. “Make the effort to educate yourself so you can be a better ally,” advises Samuels. In particular, many transgender advocates recommend the in-depth site operated by the Human Rights Campaign and books such as Nicholas Teich’s Transgender 101 and Joanne Herman’s Transgender Explained For Those Who Are Not. Memoirs like Jennifer Finney Boylan’s She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders may also be helpful.

You may – or may not – work with with a colleague who comes out as transgender. But to tap the true potential of your workforce, you have to ensure everyone feels comfortable being themselves. These strategies can help make that a reality.

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Get More Done by Focusing Less on Work

Photo by Andrew Nguyen

When people want to get more done at work, they double down on the time they put into their jobs. They adopt a new productivity approach, stay at the office late, work weekends, revamp to-do lists, and try to cram more into every day. But what if the secret to performing better at work, and feeling more satisfied, isn’t to put more effort and energy into work but less? Instead of working harder and longer, what if you better integrated the four domains of your life – work, home, community, and self?  My research has shown just that: By focusing more on the areas of life you care most about, even if those aren’t work, you’ll perform better at your job.

In July 2013, I wrote a piece and launched an assessment on HBR.org meant to help readers take a clear view of what they want from — and can contribute to — each domain of their lives. My advice to people was to carefully consider the people who matter most to them and the expectations they have of one another. I then suggested that they experiment with small changes to see how those tweaks affected all four domains over a short period of time — what I call “four-way wins.” I gave practical guidance derived from my book on how to conduct the experiment. (See this article for more on designing four-way win experiments.)

But — as I’ve seen in thousands of cases from years of field research, teaching, and practice — there are serious barriers to this type of integration, and even to trying small experiments. Those barriers are fear, ignorance, and guilt. People are afraid of change, don’t know how to go about it, and feel guilty even trying because they worry it will negatively impact others. If you can learn to minimize these barriers, you make it far more likely that you will try something new and successfully experiment, thereby getting more done and creating greater harmony in your life. Here’s how:

Lower risk by scaling the intended new action down so it’s manageable, and less frightening. Let’s say the experiment is to shut down your digital stream periodically so you can focus on people at home and in your community. Instead of setting the goal for three hours of detox every day, try three hours per week.


Gather information about what might and might not work by sharing ideas for action with stakeholders who’ll be affected. For example, let your boss know that for the next month, you’re going to try shutting down for three hours per week — and which specific hours you plan to do so. Explain to her how you believe this will benefit her and ask her what her concerns might be. If need be, adjust your plan so she sees it as a win for her, as well. Ideally, she’ll then want you to do this more often.


Deliberately assess the positive impact you expect your actions to have not just on you personally, but on the people who depend on you at work, at home, and in the community — reducing any sense of selfishness you might feel because you’re doing it for them and for you. With your boss, for example, agree on a metric (e.g., your attentiveness to co-workers or your level of crankiness) that assesses an aspect of your performance that matters to you both. Then, figure out a simple way to collect data on this metric so you can quickly capture the results of your experiment and inform any further adjustments.

It might seem counterintuitive that you will perform better at work if you spend more time with your kids, leave work early to volunteer at a local nonprofit, or take an hour out of your workday to go to the gym. But that’s just what happens.

You and Your Team



Getting More Work Done


How to be more productive at work.

My research team observed in a 2005 study of 300 business professionals a paradoxical result (reported in my book Total Leadership): when you undertake smart experiments with the intent of better aligning your actions and your values in a way that’s consciously designed to benefit yourself, your work, your family, and your community, you are likely to spend less attention on work while experiencing enhanced well-being and better performance (as assessed by others) in all domains. Consider the following chart:

As the chart illustrates, we found that what’s important to individuals didn’t change much over the course of the four months of the experiments we studied. People still rated each domain with the same level of importance. But participants shifted their focus of attention to better match what they cared about — that is, generally away from work to other domains — family, community, and self (mind, body, spirit). At the same time, their satisfaction in every domain increased, particularly in self. It’s easiest to make gains in this domain because it’s (usually) rated lowest to begin with, so there’s nowhere to go but up. Further, the positive spillover from better experiences in the other parts of your life has an especially good effect on your mind, body, and spirit. And not only did people’s sense of well-being improve across the board, their ability to meet performance expectations — as reported to them on a standard scale by key stakeholders — went up in all domains, too.

But, how can performance at work improve with less attention paid to it? There are several reasons:

Clearer focus on results that really matter to the people around you.
Less wasted effort on activities that aren’t that important.
Reduced psychological interference across domains as a result of being less distracted, because you’re taking care of critical needs in those other parts.
A virtuous cycle of benefits from one part of your life spilling over to other parts; for example, greater confidence, less crankiness, and a stronger sense of control.

Barriers to creating meaningful changes in where you focus your attention — your most precious resource — are real, and there are ways to surmount them. Take action that’s within your control and that you believe will benefit the people who matter most to you in all the different parts of your life, gather data on your impact, and continually adjust so you’re increasingly able to do what’s good for you and for them. Your mindset will shift as you start to see more opportunities for realistic four-way wins. You just have to look for them, as a leader, in all parts of your life, by doing the basics: Envision a better future and bring others along with you.

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Closing the Gap Between Blue Ocean Strategy and Execution

At the highest level, there are three propositions essential to the success of strategy: the value proposition, the profit proposition, and the people proposition. For any strategy to be successful and sustainable, an organization must develop an offering that attracts buyers; it must create a business model that enables the company to make money out of its offering; and it must motivate the people working for or with the company to execute the strategy. While good strategy content is based on a compelling value proposition for buyers with a robust profit proposition for the organization, sustainable strategy execution is based largely on a motivating-people proposition. Motivating people requires more than overcoming organizational hurdles and winning people’s trust with fair process. It also rests on aligned and fair incentives.

In this sense, the three strategy propositions provide an organizing framework to ensure an organization is taking a holistic approach to the formulation and execution of strategy. The three strategy propositions correspond to the traditional activity system of an organization. As the ultimate outputs of an organization’s activities are value for the buyer and revenue for itself and its inputs are the costs to produce them and the people to deliver them, the three strategy propositions of buyer value, profit (revenue minus costs), and people capture the essence of what an organization’s activity system does. Unlike marketing, manufacturing, human resources, and other functions, a good strategy should cover the entire activity system of an organization. A marketing department, for example, may focus on the value proposition and pay insufficient heed to the other two propositions. Similarly, a manufacturing department may neglect buyer needs or may treat people as a cost variable. This is why a sustainable blue ocean strategy requires a fully developed and consistent set of three propositions. If a strategy does not fully develop and align the three strategy propositions, short-lived success or failure typically results. This is a trap many companies fall into. Lacking a holistic understanding of strategy, it is easy for an organization to focus overridingly on one or two strategy propositions to the exclusion of the other(s). For example, think of an organization that zealously focuses on getting the value or profit proposition right, but pays little heed to getting the people proposition aligned. Corporate graveyards are filled with such examples. This is a classic case of execution failure. Likewise, good strategy execution via a motivating-people proposition with poor strategy content as reflected in the value or profit proposition is also a path to poor performance.

In some situations, there may be more than one group of stakeholders that a strategy proposition must address. For example, if successful strategy execution rests on the buy-in of only employees, there is only a need for one people proposition. But when a company needs the support of a supply chain partner, for example, it must also give the potential partner a compelling reason to back the strategy. In that case, a company would be required to have a distinct people proposition for both employees and the supply chain partner. Similarly, in a business-to-business environment, there might have to be two value propositions: one for the business customer and another for the business customer’s customers.

Strategic alignment is the responsibility of an organization’s top executives versus those in charge of marketing, manufacturing, human resources, or other functions. Executives with a strong functional bias typically cannot successfully fulfill this important role because they tend to focus on a part, not the whole, of the three strategy propositions, hence missing the alignment. A manufacturing department, for example, might neglect buyer needs or treat people as a cost variable. Similarly, a marketing department might focus on the value proposition and pay insufficient heed to the other two propositions. However, when the three disparate strategy propositions that cut across an organization are fully developed and aligned, a high-performing and sustainable strategy is achieved.

Creating a full set of consistent strategy propositions is, of course, essential, whether a firm follows blue ocean or red ocean strategy. Where the two approaches really diverge is how organizations achieve alignment around the strategy propositions. Under red ocean strategy, an organization’s three strategy propositions need to be aligned with the distinctive choice of pursuing either differentiation or low cost within given industry conditions. Here, differentiation and low cost represent alternative strategic positions in an industry.

In contrast, under blue ocean strategy, an organization achieves high performance when all three strategy propositions pursue both differentiation and low cost. It is this alignment in support of differentiation and low cost that ensures a successful blue ocean strategy that has sustainability. While one or two strategy propositions can be imitated, imitating all three is difficult, especially the people proposition because it is embedded in human relationships that take time to cultivate. When external stakeholders are involved and important, getting the people proposition right takes even more time and effort for potential imitators, hence typically prolonging the aligned strategy’s sustainability.

Achieving Blue Ocean Strategic Alignment

To understand how an organization achieves alignment to produce a high-performing and sustainable blue ocean strategy, let’s look at Comic Relief, a UK fund-raising charity. Founded in 1985, Comic Relief leapfrogged existing UK fund-raising charities and emerged as one of the most distinctive charities in the UK that also enjoys the lowest costs. In an overcrowded industry that suffered rising costs, declining demand, and a public confused by the sheer number of fund-raising charities, Comic Relief rapidly achieved 96 percent national brand awareness and has raised over £950 million by inspiring everyone from traditional wealthy donors to previous nondonors to give. What’s more, while UK charities get, on average, only 45 percent of their funds from the public—the rest coming from government grants and corporations—Comic Relief has raised 100 percent of its donations directly from the public and has done so with no paid marketing or mail solicitations. Now, nearly thirty years on, there are still no credible imitators in the blue ocean it created. Let’s see how it has achieved this sustained high performance through alignment.

In the case of Comic Relief, customers are donors whom it needs to attract with a compelling value proposition. Its profit proposition is about the business model it built to maximize its “profit,” which for Comic Relief is its revenue surplus over costs that can ultimately flow to charities. And its people proposition is about the positive incentives and motivations put in place for its employees and network of volunteer fund-raisers, corporate partners, and celebrities.

Consider the differences between Comic Relief and other UK charities’ value, profit, and people propositions. As we go through these, you will see that when the three strategy propositions are aligned around differentiation and low cost, key factors from one proposition often support and reinforce the other two propositions, creating a strong, positive cycle. For example, organizations can leverage a compelling value proposition to strengthen its profit and people propositions or build on a powerful people proposition to create a strong value proposition, which in turn strengthens the profit proposition, which makes imitation that much more difficult. Here’s how Comic Relief’s value, profit, and people propositions work.

 The Value Proposition

Traditional fund-raising charities in the UK use sad or shocking images in their campaigns, stimulating negative feelings of guilt and pity to trigger donations. Their focus is on securing and recognizing large gifts mainly from high-income, educated, older donors through year-round campaigns and solicitations of funds.

Comic Relief, in contrast, has eliminated pity and guilt. It uses a breakthrough new fund-raising approach, Red Nose Day, a double-whammy combination of a national day of whacky, community “fun”draising when people volunteer to perform zany antics to raise money, and a star-studded comedy telethon, Red Nose Night. Forget pity. It’s all about doing something funny for money to change the world.

With Comic Relief, donors don’t need to write a big check. Taking part is cheap, easy, and fun. People can contribute by buying a little plastic red nose that costs a £1, is sold everywhere, and can’t help but make you smile. Over 66 million have been purchased so far; everyone wears them. Or you can donate by sponsoring the silly antics of friends, family, neighbors, or colleagues, thereby giving money while having a great laugh. For example, friends and colleagues sponsored a London travel agent with a reputation as a chatterbox to stay silent for twenty-four hours; they collectively donated over £500 in sponsorship while having a blast watching the chatterbox struggle to stay silent.

Comic Relief’s unique use of community fund-raising not only leverages people’s fondness to have fun. It’s also personal. It is not some unknown person asking for donations as at most other charities. Rather it’s a friend, loved one, or colleague who you care about and want to support.

Unlike traditional charities, Comic Relief values and recognizes even the tiniest donation, for example, when Red Nose Night explains that the generous donation of one little girl, who gave “all her pocket money” of £1.90, will feed seven children in Africa. People know their every cent counts and makes a difference. This opens the door for even the poorest and youngest person to realize that even he can make a major contribution and become part of a greater cause of personally contributing to “changing the world.”

While traditional charities solicit funds from a regular base of supporters year-round and every year, Comic Relief focuses on creating this unique experience once every two years to avoid boredom and nagging. Instead of feeling donor fatigue, as with other charities’ continuous solicitations, people actually look forward to the excitement of the next Red Nose Day, which has nearly become a national holiday in the UK.

Lastly, Comic Relief donates 100 percent of all funds raised with its golden pound promise that it spends none of the funds on its own overhead or operating costs, as the average UK charity does. This transparency is reassuring to people who often wonder what percent of funds actually makes its way to charity. The result is a value proposition that not only is fun, exciting, and clear but also allows donors to make a huge difference with a small donation. In other words, it is differentiated and low cost, affordable to everyone from the very young to the very old and from low to high income.

The Profit Proposition

How does Comic Relief raise such extraordinary sums and support its operations while maintaining the golden pound promise? It has done so by complementing its compelling value proposition with an unbeatable profit proposition that simultaneously achieves a low-cost structure while generating funds in a differentiated way.

Traditional charities use a variety of methods to raise funds from several sources such as writing grant proposals to governments, trusts, and foundations; holding fund-raising galas for wealthy influential people and corporations; directly soliciting via mail and telemarketing; and operating charity shops. Almost all these activities entail significant overhead costs in staff, management, and administration as well as the possible renting or purchase of facilities.

Comic Relief, by contrast, eliminated all of these. It doesn’t plow time and money into expensive fund-raising galas, it doesn’t write grants to solicit funds from governments and foundations, and it doesn’t have charity shops. Instead it leverages existing high street retail outlets from supermarkets to fashion stores to sell its little red noses. And because Comic Relief makes grants to other charities, rather than introducing competing programs into an already crowded market, the costs of administering the funds it raises are cut dramatically. By some estimates, Comic Relief has stripped away more than 75 percent of traditional fund-raising operations.

Comic Relief can afford to keep costs low due to the unique way it raises money. What Comic Relief understood is that with community “fun”draising, it is no longer the charity pushing the donor to make a contribution, but the cause pulling the donor in. And with people volunteering to do the bulk of fund-raising by engaging in silly antics that others sponsor, Comic Relief’s staff costs stay very low. Whereas traditional charities’ use of community fund-raising is completely accidental and infrequent, through Red Nose Day, Comic Relief focuses on community fund-raising, making it the systematic, dominant channel through which to get contributions.

While traditional fund-raising charities tend to focus on wealthy older donors, Red Nose Day is all about targeting the mass and raising funds via lots of small increments. On Red Nose Day, ordinary people do extraordinary things and raise huge amounts of money, from a large number of small contributions.

What’s more Red Nose Night—the star-studded comedy extravaganza that makes people laugh to raise money for charity—doesn’t cost a penny. Everyone gives his or her services for free (the network, the studios, the stars). Unlike traditional charities that engage in costly marketing to stand out in the overcrowded industry, Comic Relief avoids large advertising costs, thanks to the widespread media attention and free word-of-mouth advertising that all the excitement of Red Nose Day generates.

To help Comic Relief realize its golden pound promise, corporate partners cover its operating costs in cash or in kind. The overall result is that Comic Relief has not only a compelling value proposition, but a differentiated, low-cost profit proposition.

The People Proposition

At Comic Relief, all the people involved win, not just those they help. With a small number of motivated staff members who are inspired by its value proposition, Comic Relief’s people proposition focuses on inspiring volunteer fund-raisers, corporate sponsors, and celebrities whose buy-in is needed to make the value and profit propositions sustainable.

Excerpted from







Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant

Competition Book
W. Chan KimRenee Mauborgne


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Toward this end, Comic Relief begins by creating a legitimate platform, Red Nose Day, for everyone to go a bit mad and have an outrageous time volunteering in order to raise money. Next, Comic Relief makes participating easy: its website offers all sorts of zany ideas to fire up your imagination for funny antics and tips on how to get people you know to easily sponsor you. By taking part and becoming an actor in fund-raising, people earn the respect of friends, family, and colleagues, while feeling a sense of pride that they are visibly part of a group working to better the world.

By offering people the opportunity to be actively involved in raising money through silly antics, not only are people having fun, but they become part of a greater cause of personally contributing to bettering the world. With Comic Relief, volunteers are the actors in fund-raising and part of a large one-day event where everyone is doing his or her share to positively change the world while having a great time.

All of this is achieved while conserving volunteers’ most valuable resource, time; participating in Comic Relief doesn’t take a lot as you only have to do something silly every other year. In this way, Comic Relief creates a compelling, low-cost people proposition that inspires people across the nation to volunteer and fund-raise on behalf of Comic Relief. Contrast this with traditional charities where volunteering can be a drag and people often silently feel they are sacrificing to help out.

Comic Relief’s low-cost and differentiated people proposition extends to corporations and celebrities as well. Only in this case, in addition to the benefits that ordinary citizens get for volunteering, sponsoring corporations and participating celebrities get tremendous free publicity across the UK. That’s because Comic Relief’s differentiated, low-cost value proposition triggers enormous free press, including over two hundred hours of TV time, hundreds of hours of radio coverage, and over ten thousand press articles. The result is that Comic Relief does not have to beg corporate sponsors or celebrities to take part. Instead it has corporate sponsors and celebrities eager to volunteer to help it realize its golden pound promise of giving 100 percent of donations to great causes, creating a win all around. As the Comic Relief case illustrates, the aligned value, profit, and people propositions around differentiation and low cost create powerful, reinforcing synergies and a win-win for all.

To produce a high-performing and sustainable blue ocean strategy, you need to ask the following questions. Are your three strategy propositions aligned in pursuit of differentiation and low cost? Have you identified all the key stakeholders, including external ones on which the effective execution of your blue ocean strategy will depend? Have you developed compelling people propositions for each of these to ensure they are motivated and behind the execution of your new idea? Do you have a holistic understanding of strategy? Has your new strategy fully developed and aligned the three strategy propositions for sustained success? The continuing success of your company’s strategy depends on it.

This article is adapted from the Harvard Business Review Press book Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant (2015).

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The Ambitious Business Goals Aiming to Change the World

Sam Walton once said, “High expectations are the key to everything.” An increasing number of companies — particularly in the auto industry — are heeding that call, setting aggressive, creative, and visionary goals that change their approach to business and how they relate to the wider world.

Consider Nissan’s “Vision Zero” which aims for “zero traffic accidents involving Nissan vehicles that inflict serious or fatal injuries,” according to COO Toshiyuki Shiga. A broad, seemingly impossible systemic goal like this might seem like a social responsibility or public relations strategy — and of course it has those elements. And I’m sure some corporate lawyers aren’t exactly thrilled, since it’s hardly only the car company’s issue – we all have an individual responsibility to drive safely, too. But Nissan is, I think, ignoring the risk-averse nature of our normal business culture and putting itself out there.

It’s brave. But it’s also very good for the business.

In order for Nissan to actually pursue the Vision Zero goal, the company is forced to think differently about innovation and product development, developing technologies that keep cars from hitting each other. But since there’s no way Nissan could address the goal solely through its products, it also propels creativity in marketing in order to change how all of us drive. The company’s “Red Thumb” campaign encourages people to wear a red band to remind them not to text and drive, and they’re using some star power, with Maroon 5 front man Adam Levine and the popular show The Voice to raise awareness.

Rethinking products and how you talk to your customers at the same time is systemic thinking at its best.

Nissan is not alone in setting big goals. My firm has collected 4,000 environmental and social targets set by the world’s largest 300 companies. A surprising number reach for deep changes in the world, going well beyond the expected and narrower kind of goals like “reduce energy use 10%.” Just within the auto and transportation industries, a few goals stand out:

Honda: Bring well-to-wheel CO2 emissions down to zero.
Deutsche Bahn: Achieve rail transport that is CO2-free and powered by renewables.
Maersk: Safely recycle all their ships at the end of their service life.

These systemic goals have enormous repercussions for the companies and their value chains. How can Honda influence the emissions profile of oil production or move away from oil burning vehicles entirely? How will trains run on renewables without some deep investment by utilities and European governments? What kind of reverse logistics and markets for recycled materials does Maersk need in place before it can recycle ships that are now larger than the Empire State Building?

These are meaty questions that go to the core of what these businesses do. And they take into account the stark realities of a world dealing with resource constraints, climate change, and other mega challenges. These are the kinds of goals that bring about a big pivot in how business runs.

Importantly, this pivot is not just about arbitrary visionary goals, but ones based on the reality of the challenges we face – that is, based on science. Ford Motor, for example, has used “science-based CO2 targets” to shape its product development plans for 10 years. The company has been developing vehicles that help the world meet its carbon reduction goals, including most prominently the 2015 F-150 truck. Ford made this vehicle, its top-selling brand, 700 pounds lighter by shifting from steel to aluminum. The Automotive Science Group just named the F-150 the best large truck on environmental and economic performance (a lighter truck also saves the driver money on fuel).

Even tactical operational goals can be transformative. GM wanted 100 landfill-free (“zero waste”) manufacturing sites by 2020. The company has already surpassed this target as part of its larger goal, to be “the leading auto-maker in waste reduction.” Managing its waste, which once cost GM billions of dollars a year, now makes the company more than $1 billion annually.

Automakers are not the only ones setting visionary targets. Consider a few more:

Unilever wants to halve its greenhouse gas impact of its products across the product lifecycle by 2020.
Coca-Cola will “replenish” 100% of the water used by 2020 (and Diageo just set a similar goal).
Walmart will eliminate landfill waste from U.S. stores and Sam’s Club by 2025 (and actually, 39 of the Fortune 200 have zero landfill goals).
Biotech firm Novozymes plans to “deliver 10 transformative innovations…and save 100 million tons of CO2through the use of its products by 2020.”
French utility EDF wants to “ensure equal pay for female employees.”

These targets set a high bar for both business and society. Coca-Cola depends on water resources for its products. Unilever believes that increasingly aware and concerned consumers will buy more of its sustainable products. And won’t EDF attract the best talent by compensating women better? And for Nissan, the company recognizes that a brand known for safety will certainly attract buyers.

The leading large companies seem to be realizing that their size gives them great influence over the world and creates unusual opportunities to tackle big issues. By setting big, visionary, science-based goals these companies are taking on a larger role in the world, creating new levels of performance, creativity, and business value.

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Your Data Should Be Faster, Not Just Bigger

It’s universally acknowledged that Big Data is now a fact of life, but while large enterprises have spent heavily on managing large volumes and disparate varieties of data for analytical purposes, they have devoted far less to managing high velocity data. That’s a problem, because high velocity data provides the basis for real-time interaction and often serves as an early-warning system for potential problems and systemic malfunctions.

Moreover, data proliferation has been accelerating. EMC recently reported that data volumes can be expected to double every two years, with the greatest growth coming from the vast amounts of new data being produced by intelligent devices and sensors. Oracle president Mark Hurd has predicted that the number of devices connected to the Internet will grow from 9 billion to 50 billion by the end of this decade.

What makes device data, sensor data, and other forms of “fast data” distinctive is that, unlike historical data, it is live, interactive, automatically generated, and often self-correcting. Historical data is used to identify patterns that inform future decision-making, while fast data is designed for real-time decisions and real-time responses. Think of fast data as the continuous processing of events and data in order to gain instantaneous insight and take instantaneous action.

While fast data is not really new, it has been largely restricted to a couple of high-value uses: complex event processing (CEP) activities that operate on event streams, examples of which include algorithmic trading and fraud monitoring in financial services; and event correlation, which includes the systems that monitor and manage complex industrial components such as jet engines.

So, what has changed? First, the explosion of fast data has driven the demand for instant action. Second, innovators in social media and services like Uber have shown that businesses can be differentiated based on their ability to act on data instantly. Uber knows where you are, where you’re going, and how you will pay to get there because it can capture, analyze, and act on data in real time. The availability of lower-cost memory is making fast data accessible for a broader set of applications, including:

First responder systems that rely on integrating fast response data collection and analysis
Network usage systems that respond instantly based on traffic patterns
Customer-experience management systems that analyze vast amount of behavioral data in real time to tailor interactions and support self-service

Organizations that know how to use fast data will be more nimble, adaptive, and competitive. What can companies do differently to prepare for the opportunities created by high-velocity data? Here are a couple of suggestions:

Automate decision-making to increase customer engagement. Monitor customer activities to identify—and respond to—patterns, thresholds, and triggers. One major retailer is seeking to engage with customers in real time while they are online, but is hampered by traditional systems and batch processing environments. They are now creating an environment that marries customer and inventory data with streaming data so they can, for example, report to the customer whether a product is in stock and address any inventory gaps immediately.
Integrate machine-generated data to personalize interactions. EMC projects that soon nearly two-thirds of all data will be generated by machines, not people. That presents a technical challenge: how can companies capture and analyze many flows of data concurrently? The good news is that next-generation data systems that prioritize real-time data are in the early stages of adoption. By integrating new sources of machine-generated data, and combining it with traditional data sources, firms can further personalize their customer interactions. Ericsson, the mobile broadband company, has developed real-time visibility into its system performance, using device and user data as it is generated. This enables Ericsson to identify and improve slow performance as needed and to serve customers with programming tailored to them.

Firms that take these steps now will be well positioned to improve their operations and better serve their customers using high-speed data.

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We Shouldn’t Be Dazzled by Apple’s Earnings Report

Apple’s record Q1 earnings report may have led some consumers to believe that the “old” Apple is back. And the world wants that Apple back. We want the Apple that revolutionized industries and communication in the last decade.

But does the fact that it earned more money in one quarter than any company in history mean that our beloved Apple is alive and well? A look at the bigger picture within which these numbers sit suggests an alternate view.

To see that larger picture, let’s locate Apple within its larger context as a once disruptive innovator that’s now essentially an incumbent.

A fundamental tenet of disruptive innovation is that established firms normally do not react to disruptors. And for a good reason. Generally, disruptors take over the least profitable customers of the industry, and as that happens, established firms usually redirect the resources they might have spent defending their low-value consumers toward their high-value consumers. For instance, when Dell started its upmarket march, Hewlett-Packard’s executives weren’t too concerned. They considered HP to be too premium a brand to justify investing resources in defending the low end. When Southwest Airlines started to occupy the same market space as established air carriers, the incumbents predictably focused more on business class and international routes. When Curves (a gym that specialized in women) started to grow, established chains didn’t see it as competition. When online banks first started to appear, retail banks did not consider them as “real banks.” Insurance companies initially neglected selling insurance by phone and later online.

One of the most common misunderstandings about disruptive innovation is thinking that incumbents are either blind to the opportunity disruptors are creating or they are deliberately choosing to ignore it. It’s more accurate to say that they see it, but are unable to adopt the disruptor’s business model for some reason. Established insurance companies, for instance, had difficulty selling direct to customers over the internet because they could not risk alienating their own agents (and, worse, the independent brokers) who stood between them and their customers.

But not reacting at the business model level does not mean failing to react at the technological level. Very often incumbents do adopt a disruptor’s technology if it serves their best customers. For instance, HP did try (and succeeded, for a time) at selling PCs online. Established airlines adopted many of the technologies of disruptors, including online reservation, fleet optimization, and internal management practices. Established gyms launched their own version of programs for women.

In many cases, what is gold for the disruptor is only the cost of doing business for an incumbent, which can now serve its best customers better — even if it does not earn much in the way of additional revenue or profits. Many banks, for instance, now offer the convenience of online banking, but they still rely on branches to bring in new customers.

But there are the cases when new technology helps incumbents better monetize their premium customers. One such example is the smartphone’s screen size.

In a smartphone market that is growing at a healthy rate of over 25%, data indicates that Apple had lost 2% of market share in the last three years. This loss of market share came from new customers that chose other brands and, even more importantly, from former Apple customers who defected because of frustration over a particular feature: screen size. By launching the iPhone 6, Apple has regained a portion of these customers, as well as an additional share of new customers, who now can compare different phones without screen size being an issue.

So at a strategic level, what Apple has done is what incumbents usually do: adopt a disruptor’s technology (Samsung’s and Xiaomi’s, mainly) to sell more to its premium customers. The astounding results are explained in large part by the power of its scale – the reach of Apple’s mighty marketing capability and its capacity to manufacture a large number of phones, admittedly the result of good, traditional management by CEO Tim Cook. (Consider that Apple sold 74.4 million phones in Q1 alone, while Xiaomi cannot produce 70 million phones in an entire year.) And as disruption theory predicts, it is rumored that Apple is already thinking about implementing new screen sizes in other products, most notably the iPad.

Despite these record numbers, though, the process of disruption continues. Xiaomi and other disruptors still eat away at the low end with business models that are capable of monetizing their products much more effectively than Apple.

But one thing has changed. Apple used to revolutionize industries, announcing record sales numbers because it had introduced a new technology, feature, or product that we had never imagined but that, when we saw it, we all instantly wanted. That Apple seems no longer present. In this instance, all Apple has done is copy a feature for its own best customers. While that’s very effective for today, it does not solve the problem of tomorrow for a company that competes on serial innovation.

But even more fundamentally, this is not the Apple that we want or need. We, as loyal customers, believe Apple exists to revolutionize industries (and in the process earn a ton of money).  Announcing boatloads of money, as if that were point, makes us think Apple no longer has the vision to keep on revolutionizing. It makes us think that it can no longer do what it did before — which is to tell us what comes next.

What’s more, by dazzling us with dollars, it seems that Apple’s leaders are deliberately trying to divert our attention. By making such a communication effort to let us know how much money they’ve made — instead of what they’ve done to change the world recently — they are inevitable forcing us to ask ourselves, is this what we get from the new Apple?

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McDonald’s and the Challenges of a Modern Supply Chain

Recently, McDonald’s, the world’s iconic largest food service provider, has been (forgive the cliché) through the grinder. Poor performance has led to the departure of its CEO and plenty of critical attention in the business pages. Part of this story relates to the provenance, or origins, of its products: Chains that provide more upmarket “fast casual” dining such as Panera, Chipotle, and Shake Shack have brands that speak of freshness, health, and trustworthy sourcing.

In 2010, I wrote an HBR article predicting increased interest in supply-chain transparency: firms needed to develop strategies for knowing and explaining where stuff comes from. Since then the idea of product provenance has steadily crept up the corporate agenda and is now a compulsory issue for boards and governments. In the UK, for example, legislation is in progress that would build on the California Supply Chain Transparency Act, potentially applying to wider range of firms. Across Europe, the 2013 horsemeat scandal generated widespread panic about contaminated meat. In a wide range of industries — electronics, software, toys, aerospace — provenance is increasingly a critical concern.

McDonald’s woes offers three lessons for others about supply-chain transparency.

Transparency needs a long game; reputational problems don’t mend fast. Few firms have faced such reputational challenges as McDonald’s. In the 1990s, an ill-judged legal case, the McLibel trial, saw the corporation acting against a tiny environmental group in one of the longest civil cases in UK history, with terrible reputational consequences. The movies Super Size Me and Fast Food Nation cemented the view that the corporation was complicit in promoting bad health, bad environmental practice, and food that was just, well, disgusting.

Faced with these challenges, McDonald’s has not been idle. It has taken on its critics and made substantial changes to both its practices and its communication. Indeed, in the UK, the official government review of the horsemeat scandal, the Elliot Review, singles out the McDonald’s supply chain for praise. In the United States, a series of documentary-style promo films with celebrity presenter Grant Imahara have tried to give customers a clear and unvarnished account of sourcing and production processes. You may still not like the firm or its products, but you can’t deny it has made serious efforts.

The trouble is bad reputations aren’t lost that easily. A generation of cynical middle-class customers have already decided that McDonald’s is a tarnished brand. Supply-chain transparency is that kind of challenge: It’s rarely the top thing on consumers’ minds, but it is an issue that sticks in the imagination. And when newer, less tarnished players like Chipotle arrive, consumers can tacitly exercise the prejudices and cross the street. The lesson for other firms: If you have problems in your supply chain, don’t let the critics get there first.

Global operations need consistent global standards. Despite the great strides that McDonald’s has made in some markets, its progress and practices have not been uniform. Last year McDonalds — and other major food companies — were plunged into a food safety scandal in China. This is a case of your defense being as strong as your weakest point. Bad headlines about foreign operations tell consumers, “This company still can’t be trusted.” And such bad news doesn’t just reduce the impact of your good work elsewhere; it means that its credibility is fundamentally undermined. So firms need to be cautioned: Supply-chain transparency initiatives are not a normal program to be rolled out region by region.

Sometimes transparency has paradoxical consequences. Let’s return to those videos with Grant Imahara. “Look,” they declare, “it’s real wholesome meat!” Imahara holds up great chunks of flesh from the conveyor as if to say, “Appetizing!” But even hard-core carnivores like me blanch queasily at this amount of dead animal. OK, you’ve convinced me there is no pink slime, but you’ve reminded me that this whole process is kind of horrific. That’s one of the curses of transparency of provenance: I might now approve of your food-safety practices, but you’ve just reminded me of things that, deep down, I don’t want to know. This is a paradox that firms in a wide range of industries will inevitably need to grapple with. (Question: What does an unethical shirt factory look like to a naïve consumer? Answer: Appalling. Question: What does an ethical shirt factory look like? Answer: In truth, still pretty appalling.)

It may be that McDonald’s future lies in yet further reinvention of the brand. The Corner, one of its experiments, is a “McCafé” that looks and feels nothing like a McDonald’s restaurant. But even then, the provenance agenda is not going away: The new CEO (who holds an honorary visiting position at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, where I teach) will need to tough out the current problems and stick to the mission of ever-greater openness.

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Staying Motivated After a Major Achievement

In 1993, after leading his country to an Olympic gold medal, winning his third NBA championship, and scoring more points than any player in the league for a seventh consecutive season, Michael Jordan announced his retirement from basketball. He was 30 years old.

“I just needed to change,” Jordan would later recount. The regular season was just weeks away and he was finding it impossible to get motivated. “I was getting tired of the same old activity and routine and I didn’t feel all the same appreciation that I had felt before and it was tiresome.”

Jordan’s sentiments were recently echoed by another prominent high achiever. In a November interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Jon Stewart made the following remark about returning to the routine of The Daily Show after directing his first film. “I don’t know that there will ever be anything that I will ever be as well suited for as this show,” said Stewart, whose contract to host the show expires later this year. “That being said, I think there are moments when you realize that that’s not enough anymore, or that maybe it’s time for some discomfort.”

Many of us have experienced some of the same feelings after completing a major project, or winning a big sale, or making a crucial presentation to the board. For months or weeks you were ruthlessly focused on a single, herculean undertaking. And then inevitably, that assignment is done.

When we think about achieving a major goal, we picture the exhilaration of reaching new heights. What we often fail to anticipate, however, is that once we’ve scaled that mountain, it can be surprisingly chilly on the other side. After a period of massive productivity we have to revert back to life as usual and settle back into an established workplace routine.

It’s a lot harder than it looks.

For one thing, it’s because of the emotional letdown of going from an exciting, challenging, or pressure-filled situation to one that’s considerably less demanding. High-stress situations and the adrenaline rush they produce can be addictive. When the constant sense of urgency we’ve adapted to comes to an abrupt halt, we experience withdrawal.

In many cases, reverting back to a predictable routine also means the work is no longer as stimulating. To be fully engaged, we need to experience an ongoing sense of growth on the job. At no point is the gap between rapid learning and intolerable stagnation more prominent than after a period of intense professional development.

But perhaps the biggest reason we have a hard time motivating ourselves after a major success is that we fail to recognize the symptoms of burnout.

Mastering new challenges involves an outpouring of mental, emotional, and physical effort. Sustaining that effort over an extended period of time depletes your energy. Burnout can happen when the amount of energy required consistently exceeds the amount of energy you have available.

But here’s the thing we often miss: unlike exhaustion, burnout can be surprisingly hard to detect. You won’t find any glaring markers. The symptoms are subtle. You might notice yourself taking a few extra minutes in the morning to get out of bed. Or delaying important decisions. Or feeling a bit more cynical about your job.

Even mental health experts whose job it is to identify these symptoms struggle recognizing their own burnout. In part, it’s because of this unfortunate fact: burnout damages your ability to recognize the symptoms of burnout.

We’re all susceptible to burnout, especially in the wake of tackling difficult challenges. That doesn’t mean, however, that inefficiency, cynicism, and procrastination must necessarily follow every major success. Here are some adjustments worth considering the next time you transition from a big win back to your normal routine.

Recognize that your job is about to get more difficult. A common mistake we make after succeeding at a major challenge is having unrealistic expectations about the work that follows. After a major outpouring of effort, your energy stock is likely to be depleted, which makes it hard to maintain your concentration. Tasks that may have required little exertion in the past suddenly demand a lot more of you. Adjusting your expectations is important because it helps minimize the self-blame that often accompanies and exacerbates burnout.

Separate thinking from doing. If your job is like most, it’s rare for you to have the opportunity to savor your successes for very long. In fact, there’s probably an enormous backlog of work that accumulated while you were seeing your project out the door, because the rest of your job didn’t stand still during that time.

While you may feel tempted to immediately dive in, doing so is generally not in your best interest. When we’re depleted we find it harder to distinguish tasks that are important from those that simply feel urgent. It’s at this point that we’re at our most vulnerable to doing busywork.

Carve out a few hours outside of the office to list, clarify, and prioritize your tasks. A focused strategy session will help declutter your mind and ensure that you devote the limited energy you have to activities that have value. The sense of direction is itself energizing, while preventing you from falling prey to easily-accomplishable tasks with limited worth.

Unapologetically restock your energy. To achieve top performance the human body requires periods of recovery. Laboring when our physical and cognitive resources are depleted yields low quality work and makes engagement more difficult.

When taking extended time off after a big win is not an option, integrating recovery into your day is especially valuable. Schedule intermissions onto your calendar and use them to take a walk. Have lunch away from your computer. For a few days, turn off your work email after hours, or better yet, when you arrive home, leave your phone in a different room.

What should you do at home to replenish your energy? A 2014 Journal of Occupation Health Psychology article offers clues. Within the study, psychologists compared how different after-work activities affect employees’ recovery from burnout. While many of us assume that passive, relaxing activities are best, researchers found evidence that engaging in exercise and social interaction can be even more revitalizing.

The lesson: slowing down isn’t the only way of filling up your tank. Sometimes renewal requires accelerating in a different direction. Instead of just flipping on the TV and vegging out, consider calling your friends and suggesting a game of tennis.

Find your next mastery goal. To be at our most engaged, we require experiences that grow our competence. Leadership consultant Jim Collins argues that organizations need a “big hairy audacious goal” to achieve great things. The same can be said for employees.

If you’re aiming to perform at your best, you need something new to be excited about. Building time into your routine to explore new ideas, for example, by reading before work or setting aside 15 minutes after lunch to review industry blogs, helps foster a sense of growth even when the tasks you’re working on are predictable.

Another method of growing on the job: mentoring. We tend to think of mentoring as a means of educating others and improving their performance. But new studies indicate that in many cases, it’s the mentor who reaps the greatest benefit, especially when it comes to mitigating perceptions of having reached a “career plateau.”

How does mentoring help? Research suggests mentoring prevents job monotony and enhances the way we look at our jobs. It contributes to the perceived meaning we derive from our work. In so doing, mentoring helps us find growth in new ways, mitigating emotional exhaustion.

Ultimately, how you approach your work in the days and weeks following a big win can be just as critical to your long-term success as the achievement itself. By anticipating and proactively addressing a depleted mental and physical state, you’re more apt to turn an isolated victory into a consistent winning streak.

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