Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1430

A Social Brain Is a Smarter Brain

It is well established that brain games and puzzles act as calisthenics for our brains, expanding their capacity and improving their overall health. More surprising are the findings of a study led by researchers at the University of Michigan. It shows that just as effective in building cognitive strength are social interactions.

The design of the study was simple – the researchers took one group of participants, randomly paired people up, and instructed them to get to know each other by asking probing questions. After ten minutes of such interaction, the participants were given a battery of cognitive tests. In parallel, participants in a second group were given challenging brain-game activities to perform, also for ten minutes, and followed by the same cognitive tests. A third group served as the control and took the tests with no prelude. The result? The social interaction group outperformed the control group on the cognitive tests, and did not differ from the brain games group. For the researchers, this suggests that the active perspective-taking one does in conversation involves mental gymnastics as demanding as any brain-teaser.

I find it fascinating that a good way to keep your brain “oiled” is simply to spend time talking with people. I’m also happy to note that this makes the case for open innovation even stronger.

Open innovation projects (where organizations facing tricky problems invite outsiders to take a crack at solving them) always present cognitive challenges, of course. But they also force new, boundary-spanning human interactions and fresh perspective-taking. They require people to reach out to other people, and thus foster social interaction.

Two other recent studies underscore how deeply social an activity open innovation is.  The first, from Newcastle Business School in the UK, looks directly at knowledge exchange between higher education institutions and industry (a typical exchange in open innovation challenges) and concludes that its success depends upon the social processes that facilitate the collaboration. The second, from the University of Lapland in Finland, explores what executives who sponsor open innovation challenges value most about them, and finds that the broader benefits of the multidisciplinary social interaction outweigh the concrete results of getting specific solutions.

In my experience, the “solvers” of challenges also recognize the value of open innovation as social exercise. Take one of the teams that recently responded to the GE/NFL Head Health Open Innovation Challenge, which NineSigma managed. GE and the NFL were looking for fresh approaches to diagnosing concussions, and someone at The University of Akron saw a connection to “neuromarketing” work being done by the school’s Suarez Applied Marketing Research Laboratories. But they recognized they would also need to address other angles, so they assembled a team drawing on the University’s Department of Sport Science and Wellness Education, its Statistics Department, Akron Children’s Hospital, and NE Ohio Medical University. These groups had never before worked together on a common solution, or even imagined that their research could be combined into a larger solution.

As it happens, the solution they proposed didn’t win the challenge. But the University of Michigan research suggests the team members themselves got smarter in the process. Maybe that’s why they are eager to maintain the connection, and have collaborated in other ways since.  And I would go a step further and posit that GE and the NFL built their brainpower, too – not just because they got a smart solution to their challenge but because they expanded their networks. Every time we run a technology search for an organization, proposals pour in from world-class solution providers – usually more than a dozen, and often many times that amount. When our clients reach out to these submitters, they make new connections that sharpen their thinking – even more so if the interaction persists after the immediate search is concluded.

On this point, I can’t help recalling yet another interesting study, published in Nature Neuroscience in 2011. It demonstrated a positive correlation between the size of the amygdala – a part of the human brain that performs a primary role in the processing of memory and emotional reactions – and the size and complexity of a person’s social network. In other words: Bigger brain, greater social interactions. It’s a correlation, and the first assumption people make is that the larger amygdala supports greater emotional intelligence and better memory, allowing the individual’s social network to expand. But perhaps the causality also goes the other way, and interacting widely with others – as companies do when they use open innovation – grows the capacity of brains.

The Commencement Speech Parents Need to Hear

For graduating seniors, spring marks the season of advice as predictable as the flip-flops under their caps and gowns. Throughout the May and June rituals of Class Day celebrations and graduation ceremonies, successful members of older generations will urge this year’s crop of Millennials to pursue their dreams and, by extension, travel the same path they did. But most of their young audience already knows better. They know they face an uphill climb on their path to economic independence and the markers of full adulthood.

The upbeat entreaties of this year’s commencement speakers will likely not mention the graduates’ extraordinarily high student debt load that, in the last year alone, has grown by 10%. Nor are they likely to reference data showing that recent graduates aren’t earning enough to pay off their loans and face an estimated 12% unemployment rate.

Over the past several years, I have surveyed more than a thousand Millennials as well as researched thousands of articles, books, and studies about this young generation for my book, You Raised Us – Now Work With Us. Through it all, I have been most struck by the fact that, even if the graduates are lucky enough to find a job, they are entering a workplace where senior generations have already formed a negative opinion of their commitment, work ethic, and tendency to ask questions and seek feedback.

For Millennials to move past these stereotypes and succeed in the workplace, perhaps it is time to change the patterns of the season, and have the senior generations be on the receiving end of the advice. After all, Millennials have been urged to speak up throughout their lives, but never has it been so important for other generations to listen. Before the 2014 graduates embark on their collective journey into workplaces still struggling to adapt to changing demographics, senior generations would benefit by heeding advice from the Millennials’ perspective.

For Millennials, such a speech would be directed primarily to one particular group in the audience: the parents who raised them at home but cannot understand them at work. And that speech would likely go something like this:

Parents, as you come here to celebrate your child’s graduation milestone, remember that the young person whose accomplishments you celebrate will soon be in the workplace – which also means that the Millennials raised by those who surround you will be in yours. Remember that each time you form a stereotype or paint the entire generation with an unnecessarily broad brush. And in that spirit, consider these six principles as guidance in your interactions with young people at work.

First, think of each new hire as a future leader. As 10,000 Boomers turn 65 each day, and with too few members of Gen X available to replace them, Millennials will be taking on increasing responsibilities at younger ages. Do not expect this exceptionally large, diverse, and educated young generation to walk into your workplace and assimilate. To retain Millennials and develop their leadership potential, set aside preconceived notions and, instead, pay attention to what truly will motivate young employees.

Second, recognize that the “entitled” label you tend to attach to Millennials is not entitlement at all, but rather the self-confidence and self-respect that you have instilled in them since birth. You raised your children to believe in themselves and to believe in their future success. They will need this self-confidence now more than ever, since the economy serves as a sobering backdrop to their positive expectations. Embrace this generations’ confidence as a building block of future leadership.

Third, many of you were fortunate enough to provide your children with a large safety net. Once Millennials are away from that protection, it may be difficult to learn how to thrive in an environment that encourages risk-taking through reach assignments and problem-solving without clear direction. There is a difference between being pushed by parents along the path to success and knowing what to do when that path must be traveled alone. Workplace navigation skills are critical to career success and advancement, but do not assume that all young workers arrive adept at steering their way forward. But if you are willing to invest in the process of meaningfully integrating young employees into the culture of your workplace, you will maximize the likelihood of optimal performance.

Fourth, replace clout with mutual respect. Millennials are often viewed as being disrespectful for asking too many questions. Getting past this reaction is crucial, however, to bridging generational differences at work. A free and open exchange of ideas invariably leads to a better result and a more engaged workforce.

Fifth, pay greater attention to workplace dynamics, particularly around technology. Consider ways to provide internal credit for a Millennial’s unrecognized role as tech support when they are frequently asked to troubleshoot the problems senior workers encounter on their devices. In addition, formalized reverse mentoring programs can help Millennials develop stronger relationships with their more senior colleagues, which has the added benefit of making older workers more technologically proficient.

Finally, recognize that research consistently documents that Millennials are committed to a life in which family responsibilities are not overshadowed by work. This is no longer a woman’s issue alone, as the desire for flexibility has become a gender-neutral issue. Millennials value work-life flexibility and its availability leads to workplace loyalty and engagement.

In the pomp and circumstance of the next several weeks, graduates need to hear speeches grounded in an understanding of the actual challenges they are about to face, as well as the expected acknowledgment of their past accomplishments. As this year’s Millennials embark on their career journeys, the best graduation gift would be a workplace in which senior generations stand ready to welcome them with an understanding of their strengths, and a genuine desire to help them succeed. The health of our workplaces, and our economy, depends on it.

Generating Data on What Customers Really Want

At a fundamental level, the decisions managers make about revenue and profits fall into two categories—those related to growth and those related to cost reduction. Both types are meant to increase margins. But how data are used in each decision-making process is completely different.

Cost reduction data are precise. Firms know their cost structure very well and can compute with a reasonable level of certainty the savings each alternative being considered will generate. Managers use cost-related data as an objective input for decision making, since they consider it both reliable and reasonably predictable.

Managers do not treat growth-related data in the same way, and for good reason. Growth alternatives usually involve either launching new products or entering new markets, and these are activities where uncertainty is high. Here data are used mainly as a tool for persuasion among managers. A stereotypical example would go more or less like this: Managers gather the data that reinforce their own point view on what they believe is the right business decision. During a meeting they all explain their various rationales and present their various data points. Usually, they end up reaching a consensus that they all consider makes sense. Then they leave the room still thinking that their own alternative was best but that in life you have to make tradeoffs.

Most growth-related decisions in management are made this way because managers do not have data that reliably predicts how new customers will react to their offerings or how any customer new or old will react to innovative offerings. If only Coca Cola would have predictably known that its customers would not embrace New Coke! But its executives lacked a way to generate predictable information on that score or tell them that the data they’d generated from their taste tests would ultimately not be relevant.

Disruptive innovation practitioners have just such a tool for reliably predicting customers’ behavior. It’s a methodology that uncovers what in disruptive innovation parlance is called a person’s “job to be done.” Briefly, the idea is this: Consumers don’t go to the store to buy products. They go to the store to buy something that will enable them to get some important job done in their lives. The classic example, attributed to HBS professor Ted Levitt, is that people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want something that will make a quarter-inch hole. Making a quarter-inch hole is the job to be done. The product that does that job most reliably, easily, conveniently, and less expensively is the tool they will be most likely to purchase for that job.

Work out your customer’s jobs-to-be-done, disruptive innovation practitioners have found, and you will generate data that more reliably predicts what a customer will buy and why. How do you do that? Traditionally, corporate innovators are told to conduct ethnographic studies, starting with no preconceptions, and to observe customers’ behavior and frustrations with the same open mind that start-ups employ. Human nature being what it is, that’s a hard thing to do.

Here, instead, is a simplified version of a methodology for identifying a customers’ job-to-be-done that starts with information about your own product. Since product information is not part of a job-to-be-done, the information about your product will drop out of the process in step 6, so that it doesn’t distort your results. But in this way, you can make your way to a new insight by starting in familiar territory. (And you’ll not keep the people you’re interviewing wondering what all your questions are about during the entire interview process.)

Step 1. Prepare a list of the key characteristics of your offering. List at least 10 of them. Your product or service may be faster than your competitor’s. Or cheaper. Or have a better screen resolution. Or have leather seats. Or a battery that lasts for many days. Or connect to the internet and let you play with other people online. Let’s say you sell cars. Your list might include characteristics such as speed, gas consumption, how little it pollutes the environment, number of doors, colors, type of seats, cup holders and amenities inside the car for the driver and the passengers.

Step 2. Interview at least 10 consumers and 10 nonconsumers about the various features connected to your offering. Nonconsumers are people who are not buying either your offering or your competitors’. So in this case you would be interviewing both people who drive cars and people who could drive cars but chose not to. The interviews can be anonymous, but you need to record the entire conversation. For each of the characteristics listed above ask three questions. First, “Where are you when you are using this feature?” Second, “When you use this feature, what are you really trying to do?” And third, “If this feature were not available, what would you be using instead?” Now, here’s an important part: for consumers, you need to ask the second two questions without reference to your product. So, to return to the car, let’s say you asked: “Why do you sit in the passenger’s seat of your own car?” and the answer was: “I am a salesman, and in between meetings I work in the car.” Then you ask: “When you do that what are you trying to accomplish?” He answers: “I try to have an environment that mimics my office space so I can concentrate and work comfortably for a while.” Then the third question: “If you could not do that what would you do instead?” He replies: “In the car I use the cup holder for my coffee, and in the passenger’s seat I can work with my laptop and recharge my phone. If I could not do that I would go to a cafeteria, but it is difficult to concentrate there. It’s noisy and I waste time locating one.”

Step 3. Transcribe the recordings. It is important that you do not miss anything. The transcript must end up looking like an interview, faithfully recording exactly what was said, complete with pauses. Being systematic about when the data stop is important for the statistical analysis used in step 5.

Step 4. Codify the transcripts by tracking all the meaningful nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. To continue our example we would extract from the sentence: “I try to have an environment that mimics my office space” will result in the following codes: “try,” “environment,” “mimics,” “office,” and “space.” With this you create a table in which you count the number of instances of each word (so if in the entire first transcript the word office is only repeated once you would have a 1 in the first row). Complete the table until all the sentences from all the transcripts have been codified. There are software tools available to do that more easily.

Step 5. Group the codes. Using the statistical technique of cluster analysis, group the codes based on their proximity. That is, it measures how many times each word appears close to one another (that’s why the pauses matter). Let the software that you choose determine the optimal number of clusters. The end result is that all your codes will now appear in groups.

Step 6. Remove descriptive data so you have only prescriptive data left. To do this, you remove all the groups that contain information about your product, in this case, all the groups that contain the word “car.” The end result is a series of groups that each contains a number of different code words. Within each group, these codes refer to the customer’s way of thinking and the portions of the context that the customer considers relevant to deciding on which product alternative to buy. If you compare how product performs in relation to the concerns expressed in each group, your next product improvement will become compellingly clear, not only to you, but also to your colleagues. In this example, it would become easy to make the case for focusing an innovation effort on helping salespeople become more productive and work more comfortably in their cars. Better electrical outlets, perhaps, so people can charge more than one item at a time? Storage for computers or samples? Something that mimics a desk more effectively? The point here is this is a fruitful avenue for further attention since most car models sell fewer than 100,000 units per year, but millions of people work in their automobiles.

During the 1950s Edward Deming and others developed such tools as statistical process control charts and total quality management techniques that have made the cost-reduction data we use today predictable and reliable. Before that, though, data about cost reduction was as unreliable as growth related data are today. Now the first tools are starting to emerge that add predictability and reliability to growth related decisions. Jobs-to-be-done is one such tool. Once managers learn how to compute a job-to-be-done by themselves, their growth related decisions will become much more objective and less opinion based.

Persuading with Data

An HBR Insight Center




Visualizing Zero: How to Show Something with Nothing
Data Alone Won’t Get You a Standing Ovation
Data Doesn’t Speak for Itself
Data Goes Best With a Good Story (and Vice Versa)

The Best Lecture I’ve Ever Heard

Mr. Frost, my superb economics teacher in England, once shared the story of two people talking about a lecture given by the late Milton Friedman, the father of Monetarism. The first said, “Twenty years ago, I went to the worst lecture I’ve ever heard! Friedman gave it and I still remember how he just muttered on and on and all I could make out was the word ‘money.’” The second man responded, “If you can remember what the key message was some twenty years later, I think it might be the best lecture you ever heard!”

Indeed, Friedman’s singular message — that by controlling the supply of money, you can stabilize the whole economy — became, arguably, the most impactful economic theory of the second half of the 20th century. The point I wish to emphasize is not an economic one, but a human one: if you try to say too many things, you don’t say anything at all.

It is clear, in the conference keynotes that I give anyway, that if we take on too many subjects, the message will not be remembered 20 days later, never mind 20 years later. The communication challenge is immense: often such events are packed with a dozen different speakers, each with a plethora of ideas. Then there is the digital distraction of the participants’ smart phones within easy reach. According to research reported in TIME magazine, the average phone user unlocks their phone 110 times a day and at the highest levels, 900 times a day. The best compliment I ever received from a conference organizer was that she had not seen one person reach for a digital device during my presentation. That doesn’t happen every time, of course. But through trial and error over many years, I have learned a few lessons about ensuring that the essential message is heard amidst all the nonessential noise:

1. You can’t communicate what you haven’t defined. I was once asked to work with an executive team who wanted to find a sticky message for a new initiative they wanted to run. But after interviewing a series of executives involved, all on video, I realized the problem was really a strategy problem dressed up as a communications problem. They couldn’t communicate the message with greater effectiveness until they defined their message with greater clarity. And that meant making decisions about what their initiative was and what it was not. I have found that designing a message around the following helps: “I am teaching [this narrow subject] to [this specific audience] in order that they [clear learning objective/call to action].”

2. Lose the slides and have a conversation. I recently spoke at SXSW, a conference held in Austin, Texas that attracts thousands of creative movers and shakers.When I spoke, there was standing room only and a palpable energy. Sensing the pulse in the room, I killed the slides and just had a conversation. Basically, I asked one question: “Why are otherwise intelligent people tricked by the trivial?” Lots of people shared their thoughts and we riffed on each of the comments, which ranged from “We’ve been trained from our first days in school to do what we’re told without question,” to “We have so many things to do, we’re overwhelmed.”

Then, instead of simply moving on to another question, I led the conversation back to the same one. We just kept going deeper on the same question and the conversation in turn became richer. Slides would have inhibited that conversation. One person said afterwards that the session had been the highlight of SXSW for him; another said it was the most interactive session of the whole event. Slides lead people to lean back in their seats while a conversation causes them to lean forward and engage.

3. Kill your darlings. Stephen King has written that in order for a story to come to life, you must “kill your darlings, kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” The same type of self-editing can be applied to telling stories. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Square and co-founder of Twitter, thinks his primary job is to be the Chief Editor of the company in order to “present one cohesive story to the world.”

4. Be repetitive without being boring. Alastair Campbell, the communications advisor to Tony Blair for years, explained at a CIPR conference the challenge we face today in getting a message through in our noisy world: You’re in a huge room with a wall on the far side that’s painted white. Your job is to paint it blue using only the paint gun in your hand. You shoot a single ball and it hits the wall on the other side and makes the tiniest blue mark. You’ve got your message out there once, but it’s still drowned out. So you shoot another ball over. Then another and another and another. You keep going with great persistence until you look over there and the wall starts to look as if you aren’t sure if it’s white or blue. This, according to Campbell, is the best you can hope for.

But before you can be repetitive, you have to decide on the one message you want to hammer home – which means prioritizing. When the word priority came into the English language in the 1400s, it was singular. What did it mean? The very first or prior thing. It continued to have that useful definition for the next five hundred years. However, in the 1900s we pluralized the term and started speaking of priorities. But can we really have many first or prior things? Words can be potent enough to change the world, but if we try to share too many different messages, we water down the power of our message.

Whether you’re an executive preparing to give a high stakes keynote or an event organizer (which might be the most underappreciated job out there), you want participants to be impacted and inspired. You want a home run, not another forgettable talk. You want participants coming up to you months—or years—later thanking you for giving that talk or bringing in that speaker. It can be done, if you practice the disciplined pursuit of less, but better. That is the price for having people say, “That was the best lecture I’ve ever heard.”

Create a Work Environment That Fosters Flow

Everywhere we look in business, timetables once measured by calendars can now be clocked by egg timers. So how can we keep up? In a word — and according to an ever-increasing pile of evidence — “flow.”

Technically defined as an “optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best,” the term takes its name from the sensation it confers. In flow, every action, every decision, arises seamlessly from the last. In this state, we are so focused on the task at hand that all else falls away. Action and awareness merge. Our sense of self vanishes. Our sense of time distorts. And performance goes through the roof.

In my book, The Rise of Superman, I examine how extreme athletes — surfers, snowboarders, skydivers, and others — have used flow to lift athletic performance to levels unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, but the much more important point is that anyone can tap this state. It’s ubiquitous. It shows up anywhere, provided certain initial conditions are met — and that includes the world of business.

In a 10-year study conducted by McKinsey, top executives reported being five times more productive in flow. Think about that for a moment. This means, if you can spend Monday in flow, you’ll get as much done as your steady-state peers do in a week. In fact, according to these same McKinsey researchers, if we could increase the time we spend in flow by 15-20%, overall workplace productivity would almost double.

At the heart of this doubling sits a complicated cascade of five neurochemicals which, when combined, accomplish intrinsically what most organizations fail to achieve by fiat. In flow, the brain releases norepinephrine, dopamine, endorphins, anandamide, and serotonin. All five affect performance. Norepinephrine and dopamine tighten focus, helping us shut out the persistent distractions of our multi-tasked lives. Endorphins block pain, letting us burn the candle at both ends without burning out altogether. Anandamide prompts lateral connections and generates gestalt insights far more than most brainstorming sessions.  And serotonin, that feel-good chemical at the heart of the Prozac revolution, bonds teams together more powerfully than the best-intentioned offsite.

But really understanding what makes these chemicals so powerful requires diving deeper into their impact on motivation, learning, and creativity. Let’s take them one at a time.

Motivationally, these five chemicals are the biggest rewards the brain can produce, and flow is one of the only times the brain produces all five simultaneously. This makes the state one of the most pleasurable, meaningful and — literally — addictive experiences available.

And we’ve all seen this in action. When coders stay up three says straight to launch a new app, flow, even more than caffeine and cold pizza, is what gets them to the finish line. “Researchers describe flow as the source code of intrinsic motivation,” says Jamie Wheal, Executive Director of the Flow Genome Project (where I am Director of Research). “Once an experience produces the state, we will go to extraordinary lengths to get more of it.“

Equally critical in an environment of rapid change is our ability to learn faster. Here too, flow can help. The more neurochemicals that show up during an experience, the greater the chance that experience moves from short-term holding into long-term storage. As flow produces one of the most potent neurochemical cocktails around, the state has a massive impact on our ability to acquire new skills and knowledge. DARPA, for example, found that military snipers trained in a state of flow learned 230 percent faster than normal. Scientists at Advanced Brain Monitoring in Carlsbad, California, ran a parallel civilian study and found that flow cut in half the amount of time it took to train novice marksmen up to the expert level.

“In all our studies of extreme performance improvement,” says John Hagel, co-founder of Deloitte’s Center for the Edge, “the people and organizations who covered the most distance in the shortest time were always the ones who were tapping into passion and finding flow.”

Flow’s impact on creativity may be its most important role in today’s accelerated climate. “The major complaint you hear from people today is they’re overwhelmed by the amount of information coming at them,” continues Hagel. “Flow allows you to absorb that information, synthesize it, and integrate it. This drives the creative process. So while everyone else is driven to distraction, people in flow are adapting — they’re using the state to take performance to the next level.”

This happens because creativity is recombinatory — the product of novel ideas bumping into old thoughts and birthing something utterly new. In flow, norepinephrine and dopamine help us shut out distraction and gather more information (i.e. novel ideas). But these same chemicals also enhance pattern recognition, allowing us to make faster connections between ideas. Anandamide, meanwhile, augments lateral thinking, producing connections between much farther-flung ideas.

By turbo-boosting learning, motivation and creativity, flow is amplifying the three core competencies required to keep pace with radical change. Yet these dividends don’t come without serious investment. Restructuring businesses around flow means radically altering their DNA, shifting emphasis from mechanistic efficiencies to deep human engagement. Not many companies are up for this challenge. But in an era of relentless progress, making a present tense commitment to flow may be the only way to stay ahead of a breakneck future.

So how can we produce more flow in our lives and organizations? Flow states have triggers — pre-conditions that lead to more flow. Some are psychological, while others are environmental, social or creative. But since flow is a state of total absorption, all are ways of heightening and tightening attention, driving focus into the present moment.

Take high consequences, one of the environmental triggers. The idea here is straightforward: flow follows focus, and consequences always catch our attention.

For the extreme athletes I studied, these were often physical risks, but the science shows that other risks — emotional, intellectual, creative, social — work just as well. Moreover, all risk is relative. Sure, a professional surfer may need to paddle into a 50 foot wave to pull this trigger, but if you’re shy and quiet, then simply speaking up during an important meeting is enough to do the same.

These facts also tell us that those Silicon Valley companies with “fail forward” as their de-facto motto have an incredible advantage. If employees don’t have the space to fail, then they don’t have the ability to take risks. And if you’re not incentivizing risk, you’re denying access to flow.

One of the psychological triggers is the challenge/skills ratio. Our attention is most engaged when there’s a very specific relationship between the difficulty of a task and our ability to perform that task. If the challenge is too great, fear swamps the system. If the challenge is too easy, we stop paying attention. Flow appears near the emotional midpoint between boredom and anxiety, in what scientists call the “flow channel” — the spot where the task is hard enough to make us stretch; not hard enough to make us snap.

This sweet spot keeps attention locked in the present. When the challenge is firmly within the boundaries of known skills — meaning I’ve done it before and am fairly certain I can so again — the outcome is predetermined. We’re interested, not riveted. But when we don’t know what’s going to happen next, we pay more attention to the next. In other words, just like with the high consequences trigger, uncertainty is our rocket ride into the present moment.

So how hard do we have to push exactly? While the answer varies between individuals, 4% appears to be a loose rule of thumb. The challenge must be 4% greater than the skills one brings to it. And here’s where many get it wrong. A high performer will blow by 4% without noticing. They’ll go for challenges far harder and miss the sweet spot and, without the motivational reward of flow (to say nothing of its performance boost), they’ll burn out. Underachievers miss because 4% is the point where one gets seriously uncomfortable. So while high performers must learn slow and steady wins this race, underachievers must learn the opposite: that being uncomfortable is a sign of progress, not a reason to run away.

These two triggers are only the beginning, but two other points are worth remembering. First, when people tend to think about action and adventure sports, the danger involved tends to blind many to the obvious. Certainly, the abundance of physical risk in these environments drives flow, but these athletes also rely upon 15 other triggers — none of which require any physical risk. They range from uninterrupted concentration (sorry, open office plans), to clear goals, to immediate feedback.

Second, flow science is already being applied in business. Some companies (Facebook, Google) are focused on individual triggers, while others (Toyota, Patagonia) have already made flow a fundamental part of their core philosophy. Thus, it’s not just that tapping into flow can help an organization keep pace with an exponential world, it’s that there’s a good chance that your competition is already applying these principles and soon — because of the state’s significant amplification of performance and productivity — there may be no other way to keep up.

Electronic Tolls Do a Lot More Than Speed You on Your Way

Electronic toll collection has such a powerful effect in cutting highway traffic congestion, and therefore vehicle emissions and air pollution, that it leads to reductions in premature births and low birth weights, say Janet Currie and Reed Walker of Columbia University. Introduction of the E-ZPass system in New Jersey reduced prematurity and low birth weight among mothers within 2 kilometers of a toll plaza by 10.8% and 11.8%, respectively, in comparison with births to mothers near traditional toll plazas. Carbon monoxide, an important component of engine exhaust, has been implicated in negative birth outcomes.

Win More Sales with an Indirect Strategy

For the past two decades, business-to-business selling has been conducted in basically the same way. Salespeople directly approach customers armed with facts, features, and the benefits of their products to convince customers to buy. However, customer decision making has changed and today’s buyers are smarter and more sophisticated than ever. In addition, competitors have not sat idly by. They’re focused on defeating you so they have educated themselves about your products and sales tactics.

Sales success today requires a new way of thinking about sales strategy. The question is, what is the right strategy?

In his classic book Strategy, famous military historian Lidell Hart detailed the “indirect” approach to war. In painstaking detail he described the superiority of the indirect strategy over the direct strategy, using examples throughout the history of warfare. He theorized that the outcome of every major war from Roman times through World War II could be attributed to the grand strategy the parties selected. Instead of a brute force direct attack to overwhelm the enemy, the victors always chose to battle indirectly. When forced to fight, the indirect strategy involves using surprise, intelligence, logic, and human nature to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses.

For example, at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, the smaller Carthaginian army under the command of Hannibal defeated a numerically superior Roman army using the indirect strategy.  Hannibal placed his weakest infantryman in the middle of his line to give the impression of vulnerability while positioning his heavy infantryman and cavalry on the flanks. As the battle progressed, his flanks closed in on the surprised Romans and they were vanquished.

Hart argued that the indirect approach was not solely a war strategy but also an influential philosophy that could be applied wherever opposition to new ways of thinking exists. He said, “The direct assault of ideas provokes a stubborn resistance, thus intensifying the difficulty of producing a change of outlook.” For example, “The suggestion that there is a bargain to be secured is far more potent than any direct appeal to buy.” Below, you will find seven principles of the indirect strategy and their business-to-business sales application.

1. Employ psychology. The first and foremost principle is that the indirect strategy is a psychological operation (“psy-op” in military jargon) based upon understanding, predicting, and influencing human nature. In sales, winning requires earning the trust, respect, and friendship of another human being. The victor builds the strongest customer relationship. The secondary psychological goal is to sew doubts among your enemies, because a halfhearted warrior is more than halfway to losing.

2. Plan your overriding strategy. During a long sales cycle of several months or more, it’s easy to focus on individual battles and lose sight of winning the war. The sales cycle is reduced to a series of battles without an overriding grand strategy. Salespeople become fixated on the next customer interaction, proceeding from the initial sales call to the sales presentation, then on to the product demonstration and evaluation. However, all salespeople are like generals who should create a strategy to win their wars long before the first battle begins. The successful military leader preplans how and where he will attack in accordance with the resources at his disposal. The victorious commander achieves his objective through calculated maneuvers to gain the advantage and counter tactics to neutralize his enemy’s advantages.

3. Know your enemies. How well do you know your competitors? How much time do you spend studying their websites, products, and marketing collateral? Do you take the time to perform an honest win-loss analysis after each engagement? Most salespeople argue that they simply don’t have enough time for these types of activities. However, history repeats itself for those who don’t learn from the past.

4. Be the first on the battlefield.  As a rule, it is always best to be the first salesperson in an account. The chance to understand a customer’s environment first, establish relationships, and set the criteria for the selection process are obvious advantages. But if you work for an underdog company that competes against industry favorites, being the first on the battlefield is the difference between success and failure.

5. Get privileged information from spies. Nearly twenty-five hundred years ago, Chinese general Sun Tzu wrote about the indirect strategy when he said, “Knowledge of the enemy’s position can only be obtained from other men. Hence, the use of spies.” These words are still true today. In order to win any complex sale you need proprietary information that only a spy can provide. These spies are members of the selection team, other company employees, or business partners. They provide valuable information about the internal machinations of the selection process and inform you about the thoughts of the various selection team members. Without a spy, you never know how well you are positioned in an account or what the enemy’s next move will be.

6. Understand how the objective is organized. All battlefield commanders need location-based information so they can map the way to reach their objective. Similarly, salespeople need a complete understanding of how the evaluators are organized within their company because political power during the decision-making process goes far beyond the lines and titles on an organization chart.

If you are involved in selling an enterprise solution, you already know the importance of understanding the inner workings of the various departments within a company. Your product might be purchased by the information technology department and used by accounting and manufacturing. Therefore, it’s critical to map out the political interrelationships between evaluators and their respective departments of the organization.

7. Create turning points. The indirect strategy is based upon creating turning points which cause enemies to lose momentum they can never regain. Like a battle, every deal has a critical moment, or turning point, that determines the winner and the loser. In sales, information can be used to create turning points that eliminates competitors. Your expertise on the customer’s industry, understanding of best practices, knowledge of unflattering facts about your archrival, and the willingness to raise critical issues the customer is unaware of can be used to create turning points.

For the sales warriors of the business world today, the difference between being hailed as a hero or branded a failure hinges on winning. But in order to win, you must know the steps it takes to develop a winning strategy. Winning is everything in sales as it is in war. In the words of master strategist Napoleon Bonaparte, “Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.”

10 Kinds of Stories to Tell with Data

For almost a decade I have heard that good quantitative analysts can “tell a story with data.” Narrative is—along with visual analytics—an important way to communicate analytical results to non-analytical people. Very few people would question the value of such stories, but just knowing that they work is not much help to anyone trying to master the art of analytical storytelling. What’s needed is a framework for understanding the different kinds of stories that data and analytics can tell. If you don’t know what kind of story you want to tell, you probably won’t tell a good one.

This insight came in an interview a couple of years ago with Joe Megibow, a leading analytics practitioner who was head of web analytics at Expedia and is now Senior Vice President of Omnichannel E-Commerce at American Eagle.  We simultaneously realized that there are several different types of analytical stories, and that it might be useful to create a typology of them.  I later created what I think is the first typology of analytical stories in my book (with Jinho Kim) Keeping Up with the Quants and, since its publication last year, I’ve refined the typology further. Practically speaking, there are four key dimensions that determine the type of story you can tell with data and analytics:

Time:  Analytical stories can be about the past, present, or future. The most common type of analytical story is about the past—it’s a reporting story using descriptive analytics to tell what happened last week, month, quarter, or year. By the way, most visual analytics stories are also of this type. They’re not the most valuable form of story, but it’s undeniably useful to know what happened.

Stories about the present are most likely to involve some form of survey—an analysis of what people or objects are currently up to. It may actually involve survey research—asking people what they think about something. In some cases survey analysis involves a statistical model of what factors drive others. We might call those explanatory survey stories. In general there are lots of minor variations on the survey story. In the book we talk about social science surveys, surveys of cable TV viewers, and surveys of bombers in World War II.

Stories about the future are predictions; they use, of course, predictive analytics. They take data from the past (it’s hard to get data from the future!) to create a statistical model, which is then used to predict the future. Quants create prediction stories all the time—about what customers are likely to buy, about how likely it is for an event to happen, about future economic conditions. These types of prediction stories always involve assumptions (notably that the future will be like the past in some key respects) and probability. The good news is that we can specify the likelihood that the story will be true; wouldn’t that have been nice for fairy tales?

Focus: Are you trying to tell a what story, a why story, or a how to address the issue story? (I am thankful to several Procter & Gamble executives for pointing this out). What stories are like reporting stories—they simply tell what happened. Why stories go into the underlying factors that caused the outcome. How to address the issue stories explore various ways to improve the situation identified in the what and the why stories. A really complete story may have all of these focus elements. P&G has made considerable progress in getting agreement on the what story quickly, and then spending more time and energy on the why and how topics. Key to doing that is having all parties involved in telling the story working off the same data.

Depth: There is also a depth dimension to analytical stories. When I spoke with Joe Megibow, then at Expedia, about this, he said that many of their stories were “CSI” projects—relatively small, ad hoc investigations to find out why something suboptimal was happening. One of his favorite examples involved discovering why some Irish customers were dropping online transactions when they got to the postal code input form. It turned out that some rural Irish locations don’t have postal codes. Just like on CSI—story solved in a short time.

The alternative I call “Eureka” stories, which involve long, analytically-driven searches for a solution to a complex problem. When you solve it, you want to yell, “Eureka!” My primary example in the book involved discovering the right way to refer and price potential buyers to real estate agents at Zillow. The project was core to the company’s business model and was worth a long story; after a few false starts and the use of several different analytical methods, they got it right. These types of stories are typically long, important, and expensive, so getting stakeholder buy-in is critical if you plan to reach the end of them.

Methods: Finally, there are different types of stories based on the analytical method used. Are you trying to tell, for example, a correlation story—in which the relationships among variables rose or fell at the same time—or a causation story, in which you’ll argue that one variable caused the other? In most cases, doing some sort of controlled experiment is really the only way to establish causation. People—particularly those in the media—tell bad stories all the time because they confuse causation with correlation.

These ten kinds of stories are not mutually exclusive.  There are certainly other method-based stories, and probably other important dimensions as well. But knowing that there are at least ten ways to tell analytical stories is much more useful than knowing only that you should tell one. There are other important aspects of analytical storytelling as well, such as that the story told to businesspeople should generally begin with the result and recommended outcome. You can save the details of how you got there analytically for the footnote of your report or presentation. And terms like R2, coefficient, logistic, and heteroskedasticity should not be appearing in your public story at all!

Persuading with Data

An HBR Insight Center




Visualizing Zero: How to Show Something with Nothing
Data Alone Won’t Get You a Standing Ovation
Data Doesn’t Speak for Itself
Data Goes Best With a Good Story (and Vice Versa)

The Trouble with Leadership Theories

Several years ago a client of mine, Rob, fell in love with Jim Collins’s book Good to Great. Within a month he had given copies to everyone on his team.  Soon after, language from the book made its way into Rob’s everyday speech.

One idea he especially loved was Level-5 leadership. “If we want to be great,” Rob would say, “we need more Level-5 leadership.”

I quickly grew tired of hearing him say it. His references to it were too vague and preachy. I could tell that his team was growing tired of it too.

Eventually, I asked Rob what Level-5 leadership meant to him. And more importantly, what it looked like in his organization. Not in a sound bite, but in his own words.

His answer:

We need a vision of this company for the next 10 years. We’ve spent too much time resting on our successes from the past 10. Either we come together as a team to figure it out or we’re going to drift into oblivion.

We have to be focused on building something bigger than our own bank accounts. We’ve lost sight of a broader purpose.

Our success has to start with our people. We have to inspire them to want to build something great alongside us. We have to be crystal clear about what the vision looks like in action. Then we have to walk the talk ourselves.

Rob’s answer wasn’t really what Collins meant by Level-5 leadership. Yet it was powerful in its own right. I could understand where Rob stood and what he believed. The power, of course, didn’t come from just his words; it came from his strong connection to them. That connection was missing when he tried to use Level-5 leadership as shorthand for his own thinking.

To be clear, Good to Great is filled with excellent research and insights. And leadership theory has its place. Theories pull disparate ideas and data into working models, distinguishing concepts and providing a systemic perspective.

But the trouble with leadership theories is they’re easy to hide behind (often inaccurately). They become proxies for actual leadership. When something important is on the line, people don’t follow five-tiered triangles, four-box matrices, or three concentric circles. They follow real people.

I advise clients to capture theories of leadership in their own words. Merge book smarts with street smarts. Avoid using jargon and vague concepts.  Make it visceral and real. Keep it brief; write it on a single sheet of paper.

A year ago, a client asked to see my one-sheet theory of leadership. I hadn’t done the exercise in a decade. That night I revisited my theory and rewrote it.  In fifteen minutes and six brief lines I captured my current thinking about great leadership, exactly as it came to me.  Here’s what came out:

I believe:

There’s too much noise in business today.  There are too many things vying for our attention.  Senior leaders must be diligent about cutting out the noise to get their organizations focused on what really matters.

Playing it safe is dangerous.  You never maintain the status quo by playing it safe.  You get worse.  You lose your edge.  You lose your confidence.  You don’t feel alive. You can’t win.  

Mediocrity is cancerous.  Once you begin to accept mediocrity, it sends signals that it’s acceptable.  Before long everyone and everything around you is mediocre.

Unless you’re relentlessly open and honest in your communication—constantly—things fall apart.  I believe that close to 100% of all business problems can be traced back to poor communication at some point.

People want to do great things.  They want to build great things.  They want to be involved with other great people.  Great leaders create the conditions for other people’s greatness to come out.

You need to hold people’s feet to the fire.  Do it with compassion.  Do it with love.  Do it with respect.  But don’t let people off the hook.  This is where mediocrity starts.

I was surprised at how good it felt to write these statements. It felt better than I remember from my previous versions. When I shared the statements with clients, there was strong resonance. Two people actually posted them at their desk. I wondered why; after all, the content wasn’t topically new.

A colleague shared her take. “The statements are powerful because they’re not polished. They’re just what you believe. You’re not trying to encapsulate hundreds of data points into a grand, catchy theory. You’re not trying to be politically correct and perfect.”

I think she’s right. People are tired of the leadership buzzwords and models that feel too tidy, analytical, and removed. A client recently told me his executives are suffering from “framework fatigue.” I understand; I think we all are. The language of leadership has become so cookie-cutter and cliché that we filter it out.

Of course, the act of great leadership is never cliché. It’s an art. It should be informed by smart research, yet it should be shaped by on-the-ground experience. Both are critical.  By all means read the theories, attend seminars, and talk to luminaries. They provide a solid foundation. But then ask yourself, what do I believe makes a great leader?  Trust your gut and experience. Don’t worry about making it perfect. Worry about making it a reflection of what you truly have found to work. Your theory might not have all the spit and polish of formal leadership theories, but it just might be what takes you and your organization from good to great.

How a Public-Private Partnership Is Saving Lives

Every day, about 800 mothers die bringing new life into the world. If nothing is done, that will translate into about 3 million deaths in the next decade. But if corporations join the public sector in recognizing that this problem is a convergence of societal, economic, and cultural factors and apply good management practices to address it, we can bend the curve.

This is one of the central findings of Merck for Mothers, a 10-year, $500 million initiative that my company has undertaken. Now in its second year, the initiative’s goal is to create a world where no woman dies from complications during pregnancy and childbirth. More than 75 programs involving a wide range of partners (maternal health experts and providers, NGOs, governments, academia, professional and quality improvement organizations, private sector businesses and scientists) are under way in 30 countries, including the United States.

Within the numbers of women’s deaths are real-life stories. When her mother died in childbirth, nine-year-old Gudia Devi of Uttar Pradesh, India, faced an unfair, all-too-common situation: She forfeited going to school in order to take care of her younger siblings. This domino effect has no end. Without change, young people like Gudia are likely to be caught in the same cycle − sacrificing their youth and education to become surrogate mothers and bear the unintended responsibility of parenthood.

If you believe this is a problem confined to the developing world, consider this: The rate of maternal mortality in the United States has doubled in the past 20+ years. Right here in this country, every year approximately 900 women die − and 50,000 nearly die − from complications due to pregnancy and childbirth. Shockingly, 46 countries in the world have a lower rate of maternal mortality than the United States.

And it gets worse. The vast majority of these deaths don’t have to happen, which make these losses even more tragic.

While there has been progress made in many countries by smart, passionate people in global health, the United Nations acknowledges that its Millennium Development Goal to dramatically reduce maternal mortality by 2015 is at great risk for failure.

Maternal mortality is an enormously complicated problem. In sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, crisis epicenters, mothers are at risk due to a host of problems including scarce medical supplies, inadequate refrigeration for life-saving medicines, lack of transportation to medical care facilities, and cultural norms such as hiding pregnancy. In some countries, what passes for an ambulance is a donkey cart. Long-awaited bulk shipments of medical gloves can arrive full of holes, unusable. Getting medical assistance might require the permission of a reluctant mother-in-law or husband who regard intervention as embarrassing or dangerous.

But by applying a business lens to the challenge − looking beyond traditional health models to identify private-sector approaches − Merck for Mothers and our partners are making progress toward creating a world where no woman dies needlessly in childbirth.

Understand the customer. Businesses gain their strategic focus from understanding the “customer” − in this case, that’s the mother-to-be herself. To help understand a woman’s preferences and challenges, Merck for Mothers has begun to incorporate focus groups and community advisory committees in our work. This is essential to developing services she will use and, longer term, putting into place solutions that will have a lasting impact.

One of my favorite examples comes from Zambia, where our team spoke with local women to get their take on what should be done to stop women from dying. Voices we heard in this “market research” told us that pregnant women may walk for miles through dangerous floodlands and game reserves to get to a place where they can deliver. These conversations gave Merck for Mothers and our partners (governments, a medical professional group and NGOs) clear direction. We are now finding ways to design self-sustaining models of maternity “waiting homes.” These are places where women from remote areas in the late stages of pregnancy can stay to be close to the clinics where they will give birth.

Develop the capabilities of small businesses. The private health sector − independent midwives, private clinics, and local pharmacies − enjoys high levels of trust among patient customers throughout rural Africa and India. These small, entrepreneurial businesses have vast but unrealized potential to deliver high quality, affordable, and comprehensive maternal health services. On one level, they need to learn and implement basic business essentials such as financial management and human resource development. Yet the harder challenge is to make sure the resulting models we help develop are sustainable. To this end, Merck for Mothers is funding programs that help teach these small businesses franchise design, accreditation strategies, performance-based incentives, and supply-chain management to help address the persistent problem of inventory stock-outs, for example.

Measure and evaluate. These staples of management excellence are central to making progress. We are applying them to our programs in two ways: 1) to enhance data collection and reviews here in the United States to better understand why the maternal mortality rate has been climbing; and 2) to assess the effectiveness and sustainability of our own partnerships, both from an epidemiological and health economics perspective, through a third-party evaluator.

Pursue scientific innovation. This, of course, is critical in reducing maternal mortality and requires management. Merck’s scientists consulted with dozens of health care providers to understand and identify ways to overcome barriers to treating the leading causes of complications and death in pregnancy and childbirth, including post-partum hemorrhage and pre-eclampsia. The conversations underscored that technologies that save women in more developed countries are totally impractical in places without refrigeration or electricity. To save lives in low-resource countries, our scientists are connecting research counterparts who together can make real progress. By building alliances, and adding to them our own complementary scientific expertise, we are taking forward steps to make medicines easier to use and less likely to degrade in settings with limited infrastructure.

Raise awareness. This is an enormously powerful part of the equation for saving mothers. Just look at how patients and patient advocacy groups have moved us forward in combating HIV/AIDS, heart disease, and breast cancer. The private sector was a major contributor to those successes; we must use our voice now to create awareness of the causes of maternal mortality and its impact, and to help bring about innovation to save mothers.

What has been achieved? In a year’s time, maternal mortality in the areas in Zambia and Uganda where we’re working with partners has decreased by a third. Management expertise from the private sector has been crucial to that result, bringing about better health care delivery − and new hope for women as they bring new life into the world.

Problems as complex and heartbreaking as maternal mortality will require continued analysis and constructive solutions. Imagining a mother’s joyful embrace of her newborn is reward enough to rally for results.