It’s amazing how powerful these 2 letters are, together.
In combination, they have..
.. shot down many a great idea.
.. killed many a great initiative.
.. caused rejection paralysis in human beings all over.
.. resulted in many singles wondering if they would ever find a partner.
.. infused fear, which has crippled action, time and time again.
The idea that pops straight to mind is one of rejection, of worthless-ness, of disappointment. The word i.e. the two letters in combination, implies none of that, of course.
So, the next time, we hear a “No”, let’s remember to separate the idea from the word. We hear a million words in any given week.
Let’s face it – there are very few events we actually control. For the most part, life just happens to us. And we spend a big chunk of our time reacting to these events.
That said, there are big parts of certain constants we actually do control.
For example, we don’t control what others think of us at work. But, we do control how we go about doing work. Or, we don’t control what our final exam papers look like. But, we do control how we prepare for it.
It’s easy to get into one of two modes of thinking –
“I don’t control anything.” So, who cares, right?
“I have too many choices.” Do I play politics, back stab that colleague, pretend I was working at 2am on Monday morning? Cue decision paralysis.
We have a penchant for complicating things. Let’s keep things simple – work hard, study hard and as Steve Martin would say..
This week’s book learning is part 3 of a 5 part series from ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’ by Cal Newport. (Parts 1, 2)
We spoke of the “craftsman mindset” as the best way to build career capital. Today, we will take a deep look at the 5 habits of a craftsman –
1: Decide what capital market you are in. There are 2 kinds of markets –
Winner-take-all: One killer skills with a few winners all over the world (e.g. hollywood script writer)
Auction: Diverse collection of skills. Here, there are many different types of career capital and each person might generate their own unique collection (e.g. CEO of a Fortune 500 company)
2: Identify your capital type. Ignore this if you are in a winner-take-all market as there’s only one type of capital. (i.e. be amongst the top 10 script writers in the world to make it in Hollywood)
For an auction market, however, seek open gates i.e. opportunities to build capital that are already open to you. Open gates get us farther faster. Skill acquisition is like a freight train: Getting it started requires a huge application of effort, but changing its track once it’s moving is easy. (e.g. keep moving upwards in an organization and then laterally instead of trying to move laterally and start from scratch)
3: Define “good”. Set clear goals. For a script writer, the definition of “good” is clear – his scripts being taken seriously.
4: Stretch and destroy.Deliberate practice – that uncomfortable sensation in our heads that feels like physical strain, as if neurons are physically re-forming into new configurations.
5: Be patient. Look years into the future for the payoff. It’s less about paying attention to your main pursuit, and more about your willingness to ignore other pursuits that pop up along the way to distract you.
While the craftsman mindset can be applied to most kinds of work, Cal also indicates three disqualifiers for applying the craftsman mindset. These are jobs that
1. …present few opportunities to distinguish yourself by developing relevant skills that are rare and valuable.
2. …focus on something you think is useless or perhaps even actively bad for the world.
3. … force you to work with people you really dislike.
Over to principle #3 then. Coming up next week..
Here’s to developing the 5 habits of a craftsman this week!
Want to finish that bar of chocolate? Play that extra hour on the play station? Wear that expensive dress and go for a fancy dinner? Curl up in your bed and just read a book in quiet?
Go for it. Don’t think twice.
Tomorrow, we can go about worrying about all of life’s little problems – our waist lines, crazy projects, bosses and plan.
Tomorrow, we will exercise, work, and study.
Today, we will indulge.
Tomorrow, we will do.
Today, we will just be..
Self control is so incredibly critical to long term happiness. But it’s nice to let go once a while and give in. The key is once a while of course.
Networking is a flawed concept. If we really want to leverage people, it’s got to be thanks to deep relationships. And building deep relationships requires both time and fit. If we are getting to know people just because it’s useful for us to get to know someone, that’s neither deep nor sustainable.
But, that’s how networking is done. Go to a big get together, hand out business cards hoping that something clicks. It’s pretty desperate, but we didn’t have any better way..
The internet has, of course, exposed the flaws of this approach. We don’t need the random hit approach anymore. There are many inspiring folk who have significant online presences – a blog, an active twitter feed etc.
I realize this as I reach out to people I have never met for Real Leader interviews. Thanks to the internet, we suddenly have the means to build relationships with some truly wonderful people. Of course, like all good things, it takes a bit of work. But it’s more possible than ever before. My experience with a whole bunch of relationships built almost entirely online is the depth of trust in these relationships. I realized that last weekend when I met a reader of this blog in person, at home, for a couple of hours to review her resume.
There are so many inspiring folk all over the world waiting to meet you. You just have to reach out.
I wrote about when the Heathrow Express disappointed me. It’s only fair I write about when they redeemed themselves.
I asked an official if there was time to buy a ticket yesterday morning. He told me not to worry and just get in. He managed to get another family in as well. As soon as we got in, he got us tickets with a big smile on his face. No extra charges – the norm is that you pay 5 pounds extra if you buy tickets on the train. He went out of the way.
2 observations
1. People working in companies often forget that companies are just a collection of individuals. What you do really does make a different, no matter how far removed you are from the customer. There’s probably a customer somewhere “feeling” the dedication and care you have put in.
2. This friend had to go against company policy (not charge us 5 pounds) to do something a normal human being should do. That’s telling, isn’t it?
1. Discuss i.e. we have an initial concept, idea or draft and we’d like to pick your brain. And your input is welcome. (Small groups are ideal. Large groups probably mean a facilitated workshop.)
2. Propose i.e. we have made a tentative decision after discussion/debate. We are letting you know so we have you bought in. Your input is welcome, for tweaks, in our proposal – massive ground shattering thinking or suggestions are not.
3. Announce i.e. this is our decision. Thanks for your agreement (i.e. shutting up and dealing with it.)
Running meeting is part art, part science. Understanding the purpose of the meeting is a big part of the science. Sticking to the purpose is a large part of a successful meeting.
It descends to chaos if the purpose is not clear i.e. when an announcement is made open for discussion, for example..
If we take a typical month, we are likely to have a couple of great days and a couple of bad days. Most of the rest are divided between the good days and the “statue” days, depending on how we run our lives.
The term “Statue” day is inspired by the “some days you are the pigeon, some days you are the statue” quote. These are days when we just don’t feel with it. And they are part of being human, part of the usual ups and downs. If we run our lives well, we have less of these but there’s practically no way of avoiding them.
I have one big learning about statue days – be ruthless in shutting them down. Often, we head back home on a statue day thinking about all the things we could have done and tempted to make amends in the evening. Don’t. Shut it down. Go home. Sleep. Start afresh the next day. It will be better.
Great and good things are not done on so-so days. Great and good things are achieved on great and good days.
Today’s interview is that of a friend and person who’s gone from being a corporate person to then being a consultant and author, and then back to corporates before setting out to be an entrepreneur. His story as an entrepreneur is one of characteristic tenacity – he started up with an idea and, when that didn’t become the success he thought it would be, began working on a new idea which has been doing really well over the past year.
One year ago, William had reached out to test a product he was developing – Engagio. I had gotten to know William through Fred’s wonderful blog – AVC.com. His first minimum viable product launched on AVC a few weeks later and William hasn’t looked back. It’s a really cool story. Thanks William, for taking the time!
About William Mougayar
William launched his second start-up Engagio in 2012, having started Eqentia in 2008. He has more than 30 years of strategic, operational, and leadership experience in the technology industry, as an entrepreneur, business executive, professional speaker, management consultant and best-selling author. His career spanned 14 years at Hewlett-Packard in a mix of senior sales and marketing management roles, 10 years as an independent thought leader, and 2.5 years as global VP of Corporate Marketing at Cognizant Technology Solutions.
He was also the best-selling author of Opening Digital Market (McGraw-Hill, 1997), co-author of The Business Internet and Intranets (Harvard Business School Press, 1997) and was a columnist for Computerworld, LANTimes and Business 2.0. William is a graduate of the University of Washington (BSc), the University of Western Ontario (Marketing Management), and attended the University of British Columbia’s Graduate Commerce School.
Rohan: It would be great to start with your story, William..
William: Thanks for having me again on the program, Rohan.
I was born in Lebanon and my family moved to Canada when I was 17. We moved here in 1976 exactly because of the war and we landed in Montreal since we spoke French. I was not speaking English so well back in those days; it was more of a third language.
I went to the University of Washington, Seattle. Vancouver in British Columbia became our home in Canada. After university I started my first job in 1982 with Hewlett Packard (HP) when I was 23. My first job was in Sales in the medical division. HP was the leader in that sector those times. I stayed with HP for a good 14 years! As you can see I spent most of my formative years in HP. HP was the most admired company and held a great place in the Fortune rankings year after year. It was a 2.5 billion dollar company in the year I joined and when I left in 1994 it was 32-34 billion dollar company in terms of sales.
I think I have learnt a lot from HP. I have been in different roles there. I had also worked in the computer division. I was a salesman, a marketing manager, national sales manager and even in-charge of reengineering at one point. In 1995 when I realized the internet was going to be big, I jumped and become part the HP internal initiatives. It was called the information highway then.
Later I decided to leave HP and become a consultant. I wanted to write books on internet commerce and internet business. I did write some books and started speaking on these topics. This happened for ten years until 2005. I decided to go back to the corporate world and I joined Aberdeen, the research company. I went on to work with Cognizant Technology Solutions of Chennai. I was the head of global marketing out of New Jersey. It was a very global company and it did not matter where you lived. We would get on a plane and have conference calls. I used to work in the evenings because of India time on a routine basis.
In 2008, I decided to jump ship again and become an entrepreneur one more time. I founded my first start-up at that time (Eqentia) and a year ago I founded Engagio. To sum it all up, I went from a big company to a small company back to a big company and back to a small company. This is kind of the fourth stage of my career!
Rohan: If you could tell us more about the logo and the background, it would be great..
William: That logo you see there has just been changed. We are launching next week. We have twisted the e and it looks like an @ sign now. It symbolizes engagement as the new e-mail and communication segment out there.
Rohan: So what’s the story of Engagio? What is your vision?
William: Engagio is based in Toronto. I am at the intersection of Yonge and King Streets now. It’s where the financial district is located and somehow it has also become the place for start-ups to be located. Between where I am and ten blocks going to the west of King Street, there’s probably about a hundred start-ups.
You and I being prolific commentators on Fred Wilson’s blog, we know what it is to comment. I was commenting here and there in a lot of places including blogs. And I was finding it difficult to keep track of all of these discussions. It dawned on me to put all these discussion in one place – aggregate them like e-mail.
I called Fred Wilson and said ‘what do you think of this idea?’. This was almost one year ago in October 2011. Fred really liked the idea and said ‘make it look like Gmail’. And we did that in 9 weeks! And we launched on AVC.com. Our story is known with the AVCers as well.
As for the progress of Engagio, there are three phases of development. Phase one is when you start by managing your own conversations at the inbox level. We evolved it into following your friends’ conversations through the dashboard – that was stage two. These are dipping points on engagements in all of your networks not just Disqus and blogs. What we are launching next week is a place where you can see anybody’s discussions and anybody’s conversation.
By the time this interview is out, we will be a search and discovery destination for the online social conversations out there. When you go to the homepage you will be able to see the discussions that are going on and you’ll be able to dip in even if you weren’t involved in these discussion.
Rohan: What do you mean by discussions here?
William: I refer to the comments on blogs and also the conversations on social networks. You tweeting or re-tweeting is not a discussion. The minute someone else responds to you it becomes a discussion. Especially when there is more than one person. The more the number of people in these discussions the more prominence these discussions get on our platform.
He goes back to describing Engagio…
Along with this discovery we have a Search component. This has been the vision of Engagio since day one from January 2012. It took a little bit of time to have a mass of conversation before we could launch this aspect. When you search through conversations, you’ll find valuable information. You’ll be able to create alerts on the conversation about the topics that matter to you.
This is the first time we bring such a feature to the mass market. Of course there are expensive business solutions that do this. This is the first time we have a consumer-based solution that lets you generate your own alerts. We are working with 14 different APIs right now from social networks to social communities to blogs to vertical networks. We are indexing millions of conversations.
Rohan: So essentially if I look for a conversation about Manchester United game on Saturday, I’ll be able to see all the discussion around that game on Engagio, right? Is that the potential you see?
William: Well, I wouldn’t say all the conversations because we are slowly building our customer/user base. We have started with a majority of American users, so the probability of finding discussion about a football game might less. We have about 5 million user profiles now and it is growing fast!
What we are doing is going under the surface. If you subscribe to Google Alerts and such you don’t get the information under the headline. We are doing that – going beneath and seeing what is being said. A 500-word blog post could generate 300 more comments with thousands more words. So we are looking below the iceberg here.
Rohan: There is a lot of talk about social here. People are speculating if it’s a bubble or not a bubble. What is your view on it?
William: When we say Social I like to say Social Web. It is not just social media but a web. The web is becoming social. Everything we do online is becoming social. We are becoming more engaged. The trend I see is that the online world is influencing the physical world. We are becoming more and more Advocates. Online advocacy is becoming more real, powerful and effective in bringing change. For an example we can look at what happened with the SOPA and PIPA bills. Few months ago, these privacy bills were going to be pass in the US Congress. Suddenly the blogosphere, comment sphere and social sphere started to discuss those issues and in the end we saw the online world defeating the traditional lobbyists from the legislative policy making world. The raise-up from the online world saw passionate commenting changing those laws.
That is equivalent to other parts of the world where governments are being toppled because revolutions have started online in the social media. It’s not just about changing policy it’s also about changing the minds of people for the good of mankind.
I think we are barely starting to scratch the possibilities of what online advocacy can do and how it can influence the physical world. We also think Engagio can play a role in helping the people that want to be advocates connect with each other. As an example, recently because of what happened with the Hurricane Sandy in New York, Albert Wenger realized we should come up with ways to protect the New York to prevent damages and the first thing he did was suggest an online Kickstarter initiative There would be discussions about the issue and that would become important foundations for the real world change.
Rohan: What were some defining moments that come to mind when you think of yourself as a leader?
William: I don’t think I have had one defining moment that changed everything. I have had small moments that I keep remembering. I had the opportunity to spend two days with Alvin Toffler (Author of Future Shock & The Third Wave) back in 2000. We were speaking at the same conference in Santiago, Chile. I spent a lot of time with him. We ended up flying back together to Los Angeles. He is the dean of the information age and of what’s happening right now in the world of web.
I have role-models who have been guiding me. They don’t know that they are my mentors, but I follow them and learn from them. Alvin Toffler is one such person. Of late, Fred Wilson has become a great mentor. Not just as an investment guru but also as a professional advisor and as a friend. I benefit from my relationship with Fred and that has helped me a lot.
Rohan: Is there a productivity hack that you would like to share?
William: There are a couple of things I do. I used to have to-do lists but I don’t use them anymore. What I do instead is e-mailing myself the task that needs to be accomplished. I use headers to guide me when I am looking for these e-mails. For example, I would use ‘to-do’ as the subject line and when I search for that phrase, I get the list of things I need to complete.
I have another one where the subject line is ‘listen’ for podcasts or audiobooks or just music. I spend a lot of time travelling, so during those times I use these e-mails to listen to things in my car. Similarly I have ideas for my products and I use the ‘product’ subject line. Other examples are ‘marketing’ and ‘pitch’. I essentially have four or five categories of things to e-mail myself with. Haha.
Rohan: What is an idea that you would like to pass to our small and growing group of audience?
William: To never give up. I am bold, tenacious and I try things. That is what I want to give to others. When things don’t work out don’t take it personally. Take what you learn from it. Don’t let it affect you. My baseline thinking is this and I have been believing in it for 25 years now – I never let problems get to me.
I need to be in a full position of control to deal with these problems.I park them and I go and deal with them when I am in a better state of mind. Obviously there are some things you have to deal with right away. But the astonishing thing is that you don’t have to deal with them immediately. Some of them go away and if the others stay you just need time to think about them. If you spend a couple of days thinking about it you can come up with a way to solve it; you can be in a better position to be effective with them.
Thank you for the interview William. We loved your thoughts on the online advocacy – with social web becoming the new platform for businesses we should be aware of its effects on the real world, indeed.
This week’s learning is part 2 of a 5 part series from ‘So Good They Can’t Ignore You’ by Cal Newport. (Part 1)
There are 2 parts to this principle.
First, build “career capital“. Career capital theory says that you first build up rare and valuable skills and then use these skills as leverage to shape you career into something you love.
So, how do you build career capital? Adopt the craftsman mindset.
Why? The deep questions driving the passion mindset i.e. “Who am I?”, “What do I truly love?” are essentially impossible to confirm and can keep us perpetually unhappy and confused. The craftman mindset, instead, asks us to leave behind our self centered concerns and just plug away at getting damn good.
So, Cal’s advice here is simple – regardless of how you feel about your job right now, adopt the craftsman mindset and focus on what you deliver. By doing this, we move from asking the question “What can the world offer me?” (passion mindset) to “What can I offer the world?” (craftsman mindset).
Another incredibly powerful thought. I realized, as I was writing this, that 4 parts would not be enough. So, I added a 5th part to ensure I did justice to a question that is likely on your mind – what is this “craftsman” mindset all about?
Coming up next week..
Here’s to simply focusing on what we deliver and can offer, this week!
William launched his second start-up 
A Learning a Day 