A Learning a Day

“So what if I woke up 5 minutes later today?”
”So what if I told my friends I would be there today and didn’t make it?”
”So what if I told my colleagues I’d show up on time for our breakfast meeting?”

So what? Aren’t these small decisions anyway? When I have to make a promise to Bill Gates or the Pope, I’ll stick to it. Why wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t muck up on a big decision.

We like drawing a line between small and big decisions so we can draw a line between the consequences of choosing the easy way versus the right way. Waking up 5 minutes late may have a knock on effect on everything you do while your friends and colleagues may just lose silently faith in your word.. but we tell ourselves that they don’t matter.

They do. There are 2 truths we must internalize to get this right.

First, there are no small and big decisions. There are just decisions and we always have a choice between what’s right and what’s easy. The right path will require us to plan, prepare, and then adapt while the easy path will be..well..easy.

Second, a day is a collection of many “small” decisions; a week, a month, and a year, are just a collection of days and thus, a life time is just a collection of years (if you are lucky).

That small decision you’re about to make matters a lot more than you’d like to admit. In fact, it’s probably the only thing that does.

This week’s book learning is from How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen. (Part 1)

Have you ever wondered why Ikea has never been copied? The company is very successful and any competitor can walk through its stores, reverse engineer its products, and copy its catalog. Yet, it’s never been done.

Clay Christensen’s belief is that while other furniture makers define businesses by product or customer segments (high end, low end, etc.), Ikea understands the answer to the question – what job does my customer hire me to do? They know customers hire them when they want to quickly re-furnish a house. So they..

– make furniture easy to carry, deliver home, and assemble
– have a kids area to take care of the kids, and
– even have a restaurant so you can focus on shopping without worrying about your next meal

Similarly, great marriages involve spouses who have an understanding of why they’re ‘hired’. We often like projecting what we think our spouse wants onto our spouse instead of taking time to understand his/her needs.

Why has Ikea’s phenomenal success not been copied?

When Clay and team asked the question about schooling i.e. “What job do children hire schools to do?,” they found that going to school is not a job that children are trying to get done. It is something that a child might hire to do the job but it isn’t the job itself. The two fundamental jobs that children need to do are to feel successful and to have friends every day.

The problem is that only a fraction of students feel successful through school.

A great question to bring forth some very interesting insights..

My writing coach had an important tip for me – “Write like you want to convince someone.” Art and judgments go hand in hand, I learnt. You have to pick a side and speak with your biases. If you’re not willing to take a stand and describe what you believe, then you’re just being a hypocrite.

Shawn Coyne has a great post up on Steven Pressfield’s blog today called “Art and Polarity.” Below are the excerpts .

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The other day I overhead this conversation:

Man #1: “I ran into Frank Smith (not his real name) at the beach yesterday…”

Man #2: “Isn’t that the guy who cheated on his wife, got a DWI, and said all of those nasty things about Jill’s daughter in law?”

Man #1: “…Well…yes…but I try not to judge.”

I run into this “I don’t judge” stuff a lot and it infuriates me on many levels. But as this is a blog about what it takes to create art, I’ll just address why this “moral position” is at best hypocritical and at worst a force as undermining and dark as Resistance.

Not saying something is uncaring. Not saying something means that you do not want to put your ass on the line and take the risk that you’ll be shunned for your opinion. It has everything to do with you. Nothing to do with the other person.

I’m aware that the world is not black and white. There are shades of gray between the two poles of every value. On the spectrum of “Truth and Deceit,” telling a white lie when your cousin asks if she looks good in her bathing suit is not the same as running a billion dollar Ponzi scheme. I get it.

And yes, most of the time, keeping our big mouths shut is the right thing to do. We’re all guilty of misdemeanors and don’t need Earnest Ernies pointing out our shortcomings. And when we do confront someone about their actions, we need to do it with tact and care. That’s empathy.

But this “non-judgment, I toe the middle line” attitude is dangerous. There is no middle line.  Not judging is a judgment.  And it pushes people away from each other—I best not make a mistake and judge anyone or no one will like me…best to keep quiet and be agreeable—instead of bringing them together—I thought I was the only one who thought Animal House was genius…

The man I overheard who doesn’t “judge” the adulterous, alcoholic driving, rumormonger sends a message to the world that destructive actions are excusable. It is what it is… There is no right and wrong. Nonsense.

But it is his passive aggressive dressing down of the other guy for “judging” someone guilty of antisocial behavior that is even worse. It masks his cowardice as virtue. And to not judge whether something is right or wrong is the furthest thing from a virtue.

You must choose a position in this world on innumerable moral questions and stand by your judgments. Woody Allen made this point in six lines of dialogue. Ken Kesey riffed on it for an entire novel. It’s important.

If you are an aspiring artist and you wish to avoid “judgments,” you’ll find that you have nothing to say.

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As Seth Godin pointed out in his recent book, Steve Jobs was known to take strong views on one side one day and then flip to the other the next. The magic of Steve Jobs wasn’t that he was right.. it was that he was sure. He built products that resonated with his principles and refused to compromise – you can say what you want about Apple’s products but you have to admit that they aren’t a mish-mash of design principles.

There is a lot of gray in this world but there’s a fair bit of black and white too. If we’re running away from seeing the black and white using the gray as an excuse, then we’re only kidding ourselves.

When a player in Benjamin Zander’s orchestra makes a mistake (or on occasions Zander himself), Ben makes it a point to stop and say, with a beaming smile, “HOW fascinating!”

The best managers I’ve worked with are those who don’t rub it in when I make a mistake. If you care about the work you’re doing, then the very experience of making a mistake tends to hurt just enough.

Things get interesting when we then ask ourselves – how do we manage ourselves? Research reveals that we are all largely horrible managers. We are too hard on ourselves and shoot ourselves in the foot for our mistakes when it is completely unnecessary. Why else do most attempts at building willpower and creating great habits fall apart 6 days after the new year?

So, just for today, if you catch yourself or someone around make a mistake , erase the “oh sh*t” reaction, give a big smile and say.. “HOW fascinating!”

And hey, if it works, it might be worth continuing the practice tomorrow as well.

Pivot tables are the Excel gods’ greatest gifts. There is no better analysis tool within Excel.

As today’s example (download here), I’ve highlighted how you can analyze the amount of discounts and rebates that each customer receives within seconds. Insert pivot table, select the rows and columns that you want summarized and you are done! Just copy out the values for any analysis or chart. (We’ll be covering charting in a separate post)

3 things you must know about pivot tables –

1. The applications of pivots are huge. If you use Excel to track your accounts/expenses or your company’s expenses, you are just a step away from using pivots to view your data in many different ways.

2. The best way to become proficient in pivot tables is to do many of them. As you begin exploring them, you will come across many options to display your data differently to suit your needs. Just make sure you check out “Pivot Table Tools” and go through them.

3. If your job involves analyzing millions of rows or perhaps creating interesting pivot charts, you might want to consider a microsoft add in called “PowerPivot.” I haven’t used this myself but have heard good things.

Bottom line: If you’ve got a large set of data, don’t bother too with formulas. Just use pivot tables. They are very easy and you can get any kind of cut you want within seconds. You don’t have to be a superstar analyst to use them – they take 10 minutes to learn and will save you more time than you can imagine.

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Series introduction, Part 1 (Set up), Part 2 (Shortcuts), Part 3(SUMIFS, COUNTIFS), Part 4 (INDEX+MATCH)

Decisions come in all sizes and we make a whole lot of them. For a long time, I’ve wondered how you make good decisions – well, more good decisions than bad ones. If decision making is a skill, there ought to be a framework and a process for getting better. Here are my steps.

First, define “good.” In my case, “good” is not looking back 6 months down the line and saying “Damn it. I knew better.”

Second, figure out a process before you arrive at a big decision. Mine involves 3 steps –

1. Do your research and form an opinion.

2. Seek counsel – align why’s and how’s. This means going to wiser friends and figuring out how they would approach a problem. The first step is figuring out who would be best placed to help – this is done by understanding their motives/”why” and “how” they would approach it. More often than not, folks you go to for counsel/advice are aligned on “why” because they get you and why you do things and would probably do things similarly. So, the next step is to test if their approach is something you would be comfortable with.

3. Understand the other end of the stick. This is something I don’t do nearly as well as I should. Once you know a path forward, try and sit beside a strong thinker and understand what the decision implies. Every decision closes some doors and it helps understanding what the consequences of your decision could be (financial, emotional, etc.)

Third, whatever your decision, just run it by yourself and pay attention to that feeling at the pit of your stomach. Sometimes your gut rejects the most logical of decisions and gives you an unpleasant feeling. My learning has been to listen to it.

And finally, treat your decision like Gandhi did – as an experiment. It might not work. And that’s okay. Track the results and use the feedback you receive from life to tailor your decision making next time around. Like most things, it’s an iterative process but it’s a process worth paying attention to because there are few skills as valuable as learning to make decisions you can live with.

Dan Ariely had a great tip when we asked him about productivity – “I basically try not to waste time. What I do is when I get tired of one task, I move to another one. I think often when people get tired of one thing, they think “let me go to Facebook, and I’ll get some energy and I’ll go back to this.” When I get tired of one thing I just switch to something else. I think the amount of hours I end up working is much higher because of that.”

I am one of those who checks my RSS feeds/email when I get tired of a task. My aim for the week is to implement Dan’s approach. I find that a pre-requisite for this approach is a well planned list that includes a slew of work and personal tasks. That way, you just need to toggle back to the list and pick up the next one when you are tired of the current one.

More to follow.

Success does beget success. When Malcolm Gladwell studied the development of IQ in kids in primary school, he noted that the differences between kids from affluent families and the rest became marked after a summer break. While most kids bummed around during their vacations, kids from affluent families were taught to spend time productively, learn new skills, and continue their education.

So, what do affluent families inadvertently teach kids? Willpower.

I believe affluent families do 2 things right –

1. They teach kids to learn the most important application of willpower – forming rock solid habits. They figure out basic routines like exercise, reading great books, etc., in a way that kids have this ingrained.

2. They have kids exercising their willpower muscle from an early age. When a man on the streets in India comes into some money, he immediately spends it on alcohol. If the same man learnt to delay gratification, he could build significant wealth over a lifetime. The concept that he’s missing is delayed gratification. That only comes with willpower muscle training. Kids in affluent families “get” this concept.

If we plan to be successful as people, parents, and educators, we need to understand that the most important concept we can teach the next generation is how to understand and flex the willpower muscle. Of course, to do that, we must understand it ourselves. There are 2 great willpower books out there – Willpower by Roy Baumeister and The Willpower Instinct by Kelly Mcgonigal. I’ve read and loved the former and have the latter on my reading queue. I hope you get to it. It might just be the most important thing you ever do..

This week’s book learning is from How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen.

A fast food joint asked its customers how it could make milkshake better so they could improve sales. With customer feedback, they made it sweeter and nuttier but it led to no change in sales.

Clay Christensen and team were then called to solve the problem. They approached the problem by asking the question – what job did the customers hire the milkshake to do?

Careful observation revealed there were 2 types of jobs –
– Morning customers hired it to make their long commutes interesting. A milkshake was as filling as a donut or bagel, less messy, and easier to hold in their cars
– Evening customers were typically fathers who saw this was an opportunity to finally say “Yes” to their kid’s request (after many “no you can’t do this/that”). But they observed that, thanks to the thin straws, kids took too long to finish their milkshakes resulting in irritated fathers.

So, they implemented 2 changes –
– Morning milkshakes were made more viscous to last longer and included small pieces of fruit to surprise customers
– Evening milkshakes were made thinner and were provided with thick straws so kids could drink it faster

The outlet exceeded their new sales targets!

Clayton Christensen’s book is packed with many great insights. Next week, we’ll look at how Ikea understands and implements the “what job am I hired to do?” principle.