Meaning2Work

Most Plans Lack One Crucial Ingredient: Humility

You’ve gotta have a plan.

Plans are essential, are they not? Without a plan, your weekend jaunt to the Carribean can, thanks to a tropical storm, turn into a hotel room Netflix marathon. Without a budget, you may unknowingly forego your next home repair for an extra round of drinks. In short, if you had clean underwear and gas in your tank this morning, you have planning to thank.

Without a doubt, we need to have plans and not just for practical reasons like the ones discussed. Thinking ahead makes us FEEL better too. Theoretically, without the worries of tomorrow we are free to enjoy today. Not only that, a solid plan can make us feel just a little superior to others, like those poor souls who didn’t use call ahead seating at the restaurant.

It makes no sense to fight city hall (or the Future).

Despite their enumerable benefits, our best laid plans inevitably come under scrutiny. If you’ve ever done a major addition to your house, you’ve probably had to submit building plans for approval from a Zoning Board or Commissioner before beginning construction. In response to your submission, you typically get one of three responses: an approval, a denial, or an approval contingent on changes. In short, the process is not as simple as picking up a hammer and swinging.

Unfortunately, even outside of the construction world, life’s response to our planning efforts can be similarly uncontrollable. It’s as if a Future Commissioner hands down judgements of our plans. However, unlike the Zoning Commissioner, the Future Commissioner requires us to enact our plan before she decrees one of the same three answers, a denial, an approval, or a conditional approval.

Humility – the missing link to most plans.

Can you imagine cooking multiple meals for guests and allowing them to sample and pick their desired main course? In essence, we never truly know the right course of action in any given situation until we take action. And, however well-researched or thought-out, our plans can still be toppled as easily as a child’s tower of blocks. To acknowledge this fact we must be humble.

What if we somehow could see the future? No, I don’t mean in a prophetic way like a character in The Matrix. Instead, we can use an ability we’ve had since childhood – our imagination. Most conventional planning wisdom regards failure as something to be planned against, not accepted. What if, instead of fearing the worst we made peace with it? Wouldn’t we then be more capable to respond when things go bad?

It’s one of the most commonly misunderstood facts about planning. Failure is not an option, it’s an outcome. Success is also an outcome. Neither is a choice. If a Boeing MAX 8 lands on your car during your commute, anything else you planned to do that day will technically be a failure. True humility involves a surrender to fate.

Even if failure is not an option, it’s still a possibility.

At this point, you might claim your secret to success is denying the possibility of failure. In essence, you use pressure to motivate yourself. While stress has been shown to produce a short term boost in productivity, it’s also been proven to reduce creativity and drain our energy. Doesn’t this seem like a steep price to pay for the luxury of temporarily fooling oneself

Humility – the best insurance policy.

When it’s time to face the truth, humility can free us from the feeling of loss. The humble person knows they were never entitled to a good outcome in the first place. Our hard work was a prerequisite not a guarantee. The good news? It’s impossible to lose something we never had in the first place. We didn’t lose anything and, instead may have gained valuable experience.

I propose the key to better planning is a better perspective on planning. It’s a valuable tool to move us toward better outcomes – no more, no less. It’s time to acknowledge that we can never fully control what happens as a result of our efforts. Just as we have plans for the future, the future will inevitably have it’s own plans for us. We can only learn, adapt, and respond.

Sincerely,

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

Pride: What Ben Franklin Knew About It (and You)

Aside from Electricity, bifocals, the pros and cons list, and numerous other discoveries, there’s one idea Benjamin Franklin is credited for which you may not be aware. It affects you on a daily basis and has to do with your pride. Consider the following story.

According to his autobiograhpy, Ben Franklin once deliberately asked to borrow a valuable book from one of his political opponents. The rival obliged and, thereafter, treated Ben with a greater level of generosity and respect. In fact, they later became friends. This human desire for consistency was later labeled the “Ben Franklin Effect” and, most recently, was classified by psychologists as Cognitive Dissonance.

I’m the type of person who would…

Cognitive Dissonance is the tension we feel when we act in a way contrary to our past. Ben knew if he could get his opponent to do him one favor, he’d be more likely to continue doing them. For example, the moment you order steak at the seafood restaurant, you’ve just increased the liklihood you do the same on you next visit.

Ironically, Ben used Cognitive Dissonance to change someone’s behavior when, by definition, it’s more often used as a reason NOT to change. In my sales career, resisting change has been mostly detrimental. Early on, I was the type of guy not to ask for the sale. Therefore, I lost business. Later, I was the type of guy not to speak up at a meeting. Therefore, I remained unhappy and disengaged with my job for long periods of time. Whoever we are, we usually want to stay that way.

The Ben Franklin Effect = Cognitive Dissonance = Pride

I believe the issue truly at hand is pride and what puzzles me is the following paradox: pride in a possession entails care and periodic improvement. When we take pride in our house we tend to the lawn and replace things like shingles and gutters. Pride in ourselves, however, largely means being unwavering and resistant to change. A proud person holds fast to core beliefs knowing themselves and the truth.

Why the dichotomy in our definitions of pride? I attribute it to fear of being alone. In a literal sense, anyone who doesn’t know themself is forced to uncomfortably spend their every waking minute with a stranger. Therefore, we feel we must act in ways WE can predict. Besides, the alternative is a very traumatizing condition known as Amnesia. In comparison, we can easily see in our possessions (and our relatives and friends) the constant need for improvement.

Photo by Samuel Zeller via Unsplash.com.

Can I take pride in who I want to be?

Still, can’t we pride ourselves, not by the past, but by what we want to be in the future? Perhaps, like the car enthusiast toiling for hours on a heap of metal, envision what we plan to be and take pride in that.

Our biggest obstacle is how we understand and use power. A landscaper has the ability to dig, trim, and plant with their own hands. She can therefore make what she envisions come into reality. Many of our dreams involve money or accolades coming from others. And, try as we may, we don’t control others, we can only influence and observe. As we wait for the compliments, Facebook likes, and glowing performance reports to come in, we relinquish the power to cultivate and shape ourselves.

Is change mandatory?

Yes (gasp), at least in a scientific sense. Our bodies replace most of their cells over a period of seven years. Therefore, it would be impossible for us to physically stay the same, even if we wanted to!

One could argue that, in a mental sense, change is mandatory as well. After all, the people and situations around us are in constant flux. Some degree of change is mandatory just to adjust. That said, the way we change needn’t be dictated by someone else. We can certainly act as our own catlyst.

Again, that darn pride issue pops up! We look down on people who change to please others and, at the same time, yearn for people to like us for who we are! Pride without the willingness to change is essentially a lie. It’s like someone proudly showing you their rusting car, citing how sexy it was when they drove it off the lot. Who we are is fluid. We don’t have to live in the past.

Who’s in charge here?

To those of us, myself included, who desire too much to be perfect, the very suggestion of change can be an insult. Who are they to tell us how to change? You know you’re defensive when you can’t even question yourself! This is when we have to give up and resolve to no longer defend who we were in the past and instead plan what actions we can take in the future.

Of course, not all advice is good and much of it, however well-intentioned, should NOT be followed. Still, we shouldn’t dismiss criticism based solely on the source. That would again give up our own power to choose. Rest assured, when we think for ourselves, the choice to take advice is never weak. It’s probably the only way we can excercise true pride – the kind that improves who we are and doesn’t cling to the past.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

Leadership Lessons from Chernobyl

Over the years, thanks to HBO, I’ve learned quite a bit about dragons, Wight Walkers, and Valyrian steel. This year, before I routinely cancelled my subscription, I gave into the hype and watched Chernobyl. After doing so, I couldn’t help but draw some lessons applicable to today’s business world. Before reading any further, please be advised I’ve included a nuclear disaster’s worth of spoilers below.

Corporate Communism

In the miniseries’ pivotal moment, main character, and nuclear physicist Valero Legasov, surprises the scientific community when he not only testifies to operator negligence at the plant but also a host of bad decisions made by the Soviet Government and their subsequent cover up. In response, the KGB isolates him from his colleagues and takes away all his professional achievements. There was no need to kill him because his exposure to nuclear contamination would, in a few years, do the job for them.

Costly Corners Cut

Inspired by our news shows, we may fight tooth and nail to preserve a free and open marketplace. How else can we foster innovation and healthy competition? Remarkably, inside our corporations, we permit a version of communist rule. By this I refer not to the “we’re all equal” ideal but instead the “never question the state” reality of most communist governments. We therefore resolve to keep our praise public and our complaints private.

The nuclear reactors throughout the Soviet Union at the time we built in such a way that a disaster was bound to happen. They each had the same emergency shutoff feature that used rods of an element called Boron. When the reactor produced too much nuclear energy, the rods were moved close to the nuclear elements to slow down or stop the reaction.

To save money, the Soviet government made the tips that secured the rods out of graphite. Graphite, under extreme conditions like those at Chernobyl, doesn’t slow nuclear energy production, but enhances it. It was like throwing gas on a flame. As a result, the reactor exploded and began steadily throwing more radiation into the atmosphere per day than 48 Hiroshima bombs.

I suspect most of us are thankful not to work in such dangerous environments! The average American is much more likely to die of heart disease or Cancer than a nuclear explosion. Yet, somehow, the growth of insurance deductibles, premiums, and co-pays always seem to far out-pace wages. Yes, healthcare costs in our country are out of control but is that the fault of employees themselves? In the name of pleasing investors we shift the health cost burden to employees.

We All Sacrifice More Than We Think

Although many of the workers who worked at the plant or responded to the disaster died, not all knew the risks. They accepted, in some cases, large promised payouts without knowing they’d never be around to collect them. Many of them endured painful deaths over weeks as nuclear contamination melted their bodies at a cellular level.

Few us will ever have to make that kind of sacrifice. Yet, it’s not unheard of to spend 1/4 to 1/3 of our lives at work. If that sounds low, remember we also have to sleep. Does the time we spend at work adequately support the rest of our lives? That’s a question everyone must answer for themselves. That requires us, however, to take the time to think about the true meaning and value of the work we do.

Will our sad state of affairs every change? Not if we don’t. Instead of complaining, we can challenge our employers, current and prospective, to prove they value employees more than their competitors. After all, isn’t that what a free market is for?

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

You’re Only an Investment – Until You Decide Otherwise

You and I are an investment.

Hey no offense, when you were hired, your manager took a risk. He or she made a bet that you’d bring more in revenue to the company than you took away. As salespeople, we have the luxury (or curse) of being able to approximate, fairly accurately, our own return on investment. By definition, we bring in sales, which are easily quantified.

Make no mistake, however, we’re not the only people who are measured. Everyone else, from upper management to the assembly line, is as well. We all have a price tag and are expected to add more than what we subtract from the bottom line.

Methods to Pursue Value Can Differ

Whether she’s a supportive friend or an unrelenting driver, your boss will always need you to produce. Did I say produce? I meant produce MORE – more than you did last year or even last quarter. And, management styles can vary wildly. Whether she uses motivational sugar or spice, it’s your numbers in the end, that had better be nice.

Sadly, no matter how much they liked you and vice versa, your favorite boss still needed you to produce. Maybe it was your sales results that allowed them to treat you with such care and respect. This is not to say it didn’t matter. Some “leaders”can be so self-focused as to consider praise of a subordinate as weakness.

Resistance to ROI is Futile

Face it. It’s ingrained in the way we think about work. When we come home, we’re individuals and when we arrive at work, we’re part of the machine. To make a profit, a firm’s income MUST be higher than it’s expenses. And, it’s the existence of profit that attracts investors. Stock prices rise based on the anticipated value of the stock. Nobody invests with the goal to lose!

Consequently none of us are allowed to lose which begs the question, who is to blame? Your sales goals don’t start with your manager. Instead, look to upper management and investors themselves. However, before you condemn them, understand even they are just guessing. After all, what is a revenue forecast other than a highly-researched guess? Also, consider that without a rosy forecast, the share price of a company tends to go down, losing money for all invested.

The hard life of an investment. — Photo by John Salvino via Unsplash.com

It’s A Hard Life – As An Investment

What a cold, heartless, and vicious cycle being measured and evaluated like shares of stock! Hell, we even do it to our kids with their grades and sports. Everyone, in the end, must prove their own worth, right?

People who ascribe to this belief tend to believe they can control others. The idea that we can determine the value other people assign to us is a comfortable fiction. It protects us from randomness. In reality, we can ride the crest of stellar sales performance one quarter and be thrown against the rocks in the next – all with the same or greater level of effort.

Therefore, are we doomed to watch our own value tick up and down like the price of a pork belly? Not if we refuse view ourselves as a commodity.

We Can Stop the ROI Cycle – If We Choose To

To stop the ROI cycle you must decide who you are and what you do has a value that cannot be quantified. Your paycheck and your annual review, they’re still going to have numbers on them. Read them, learn from them, and move on.

Ironically, we also put some pressure on ourselves in the way we invest. As we complain about our goals, we contribute to their increase by buying our own company’s stock and expecting to profit. Whether or not to continue is your call.

The real hope lies in the way we evaluate ourselves. I suggest, when you start each day, resolve to be the one person to whom you don’t have to prove yourself. You’re not the investment, you’re the return. The purpose of your job is to support you, not vice versa. So go ahead, quantify everything you do, just not who you are.

Sincerely,

Meaning2work.com

The Non-Traditional Salesperson

Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel via Unsplash.com

Writing this blog, for over a year now, has caused me to wonder how I compare vs. the ideal salesperson. Was I meant to be in this profession? Would I have been happier in another career? As a result, I’ve come to the following conclusion: I’m a non-traditional salesperson. Surely some customers have liked me because of it while some hiring managers have passed me over for it.

How am I different? Let me count the ways:

Sports – I watch them but only care for the outcome when my team is doing well. Yep, I said it, I am band-wagon, fair-weather fan.
Money – Like everyone else, I want more of it and I don’t want loose what I have. Yet, aside when I feel I’m getting underpaid vs. my peers, I don’t really care. I’m thankful for the commission checks and, at the same time, know they don’t bring lasting happiness.
Achievement – I like winning awards but aren’t really motivated by them. Why not? Read on.
Sales Numbers – I am skilled and I work hard. Without me, my territory would suffer. That said, I believe sales results, mine and yours, are due to the combination of hard work and generous amount of luck.
Competitiveness – I like winning, but for the reasons provided, I believe sales contests are games of chance. In the grand scheme, someone else’s achievement doesn’t subtract from mine. Therefore, I’m usually willing to talk about my successes and failures and give my peers praise.
Attitude – For my own benefit, I try to maintain a slightly positive outlook on the future. When I think too negatively, I fail to notice important opportunities and when I’m too optimistic, I fail to plan effectively.
Demeanor – Occasionally, by high-strung, type A, sales managers I’m considered too calm. To reserved and pensive customers, I can be an annoying chatterbox. Take your pick.
Nerdiness – Most salespeople consider reading or sitting through a class a painful waste of time. I’m the opposite. My brain abhors boredom and craves new ideas. Why else would I keep writing this stuff? 😂

Why share all of this? Am I saying that you need to be like me? Absolutely not. In fact, many times I’ve wished I wasn’t this way! However, my greatest failures came when I wasn’t true to myself – when I couldn’t pull off being a hard-charging, dominant closer or the beloved relationship rep. Ironically, I’ve gotten a lot more done being myself. Maybe there isn’t one ideal personality type for this job and maybe we should allow people to be themselves.

My only advice is to think of your own picture as a salesperson. What is your style? What makes you unique? Despite all the books and articles preaching ‘best practices”, it could be your success is due not to what makes you ideal, but what makes you different.

Maybe it’s not so bad to be a non-traditional salesperson. Lord knows, it’s the only kind I can be!

Sincerely,

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

Skill vs. Luck: A Useless Debate

Photo by Joel Danielson on Unsplash.com.

My sales career (rose-colored glasses required):

When I’ve crushed sales goals, won awards, and made the big bucks, it was in situations where I had a:

Realistic sales quota
Territory with high quality customers
High quality product
Reasonably priced offering

In my mind, these factors combined to reveal the talent I already possessed. Finally, I was getting the recognition I deserved!

Sure, I know I’m special – a one of kind salesperson. See how I excelled when given the proper opportunities? Heck, I’ve even done well without having one or two of the above factors on my side!

Conversely, when my numbers were lackluster and the accolades weren’t flowing, my:

Sales goals were way too high
Territory had little to no potential
Product was low quality
Product was overpriced

I was clearly set up to fail! Luck and circumstances were not on my side!
And I went on thinking this way – for years.

Eventually I saw a pattern. When times were good I always took the credit. When times were bad I took none of the blame. And, in doing so, I wasn’t special. In fact, based on those around me, I was rather ordinary.

Are you ordinary too?

We all have a natural tendency to attribute our accomplishments to skill and those of others to luck. Ironically, when it comes to failure, we do the opposite. Ours is due to bad luck and theirs is due to lack of skill. Check out Thinking In Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke for an interesting read on this topic.

Sadly, all of us, from entry level reps to VPs of sales regularly fall victim to what Ms. Duke calls Resulting. It’s the tendency to judge skill and effort based on results. In doing so, top reps get promoted and bottom reps get fired sometimes for doing the exact same things. Only we don’t see it that way. Surely the top performer MUST be doing something better than the bottom one?

Is motivation the key?

It could be that those who find motivation are destined to win. Unfortunately, we see it as a prerequisite for superior performance without realizing the opposite may be true (I call it the Performance Effect). Seriously, what’s more inspiring than a rosy sales report or more damning than a performance improvement plan?

So, how can someone inspire themselves when their sales numbers scream, “There’s no use! You’re destined to fail!”? Here’s what I did: I stopped caring about things I had no control over and started focusing on things I did. Sales results? They never were totally about skill or luck, just a combination of the two. I control what I put into my job every day, not what comes out.

Skill vs. Luck – A Useless Debate

How much of our job is skill and how much is luck? It’s the million dollar question. Perhaps the answer would assure us a place at the top of our sales rankings indefinitely. Winning the lottery would be nice too! We may never know the answer. It may differ from job to job and rep to rep. For my own sanity, I’ve stopped pretending to have all the answers.

I’ll focus on what I can control.

Meaning2work.com

Bias as Usual: Beware of Representativeness

Photo by Taneli Lahtinen via Unsplash.com.

Are you an ideal salesperson? Do you possess the right habits and personality traits? Before you critique yourself, consider you may be battling an unseen enemy- representativeness.

Consider the following hypothetical scenario:
You’ve just learned your getting a new next-door neighbor. All you know is she will be one of two salespeople. Salesperson A drives a BMW. Salesperson B drives a BMW, has a confident personality, and travels extensively for work. Who is more likely to be your new neighbor, person A or person B? If you chose person B you would be… (drum roll please) wrong!

How is this possible? By definition, people like Salesperson B are a subset of people like Salesperson A. Therefore, the group of people who comprise all BMW-driving salespeople has to be bigger than those with the same car who are also self-assured road warriors. This means the likelihood of your neighbor being Salesperson A is higher. The reason it’s so easy to chose Salesperson B is because, in our minds, the extra details provided make them more representative of a typical sales rep.

According to Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow, representativeness is a mental shortcut. We use it to judge probability by looking for patterns. As a result, it’s easier to believe the validity of comparisons between reps when one meets our stereotype of the ideal rep and the other doesn’t.

In real life, high performing salespeople are a topic of great interest. Leaders, often set out to find what makes these overachievers unique. In doing so they often mistakenly settle on the traits they expected them already to have. And, rarely do they look any further. Rushing to judgement, leaders may neglect factors, like the local economic climate, that can have a strong influence on sales.

As we know, the comparing of salespeople is serious business. For reps themselves, it can determine not only their income but their overall job security. Given the stakes, sales reps and leaders both need to slow their thinking and look deeper into the validity of their measurements. It’s time to value representatives over mere representativeness.

Meaning2work.com

Bias as Usual: Illusion of Control

There I stood, spandex clad and heart pounding, at the start line of a bike race. BAM! The gun went off and I was going. Call it the ultimate test, me vs. the other riders vs. the muddy trail. Despite all my preparation, I got to the start line late and had to start in the back of the pack. To make up ground, I put my head down and focused on passing other riders until I was – in the front?

That NEVER happened before! I was in CONTROL! I no longer heard the other riders, just the rush of the air through my helmet and the pounding of my pulse. That day, I finished a respectable 3rd out of 20 racers. Despite leading most of the way, victory was snatched from me at the last minute.

It didn’t matter, from there on, I was hooked! I spent 2 years training and racing to replicate that result. It never happened. Later, I learned that another big race took place that fateful day and many of the skilled riders attended it. Sadly, my ability to control a race was a mere illusion.

Psychologist Ellen Langer named this fallacy the Illusion of Control. It’s the belief that we control things in our lives that we don’t. Imagine a gambler thinking she’s “on a roll” and can’t lose or a day trader thinking he can make a stock price rise just by buying shares. It’s not hard to see their folly.

However, are we able to spot this illusion in our own jobs? Do we in sales control what our competitors do? Do we set the purchasing budgets of our customers? We know these and other factors heavily influence customer behavior but ignore them after we’ve had a good year. THAT accomplishment came from us alone! At the same time, when our numbers are sub-par, we point to a multitude of factors out of our control. And, leadership often suffers from the same bias, no one wants to tell their team a dose of luck may be essential to achievement.

Therefore, we need to acknowledge that control of anything requires time and effort – two resources we MUST use wisely. When we stop straining for things out of our reach we free ourselves to be accountable for the things we DO control – our thoughts, actions, and skills.

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

Bias as Usual: Mistaking Luck for Skill

Photo by Freestocks.org via Unsplash.com

As I ascended to the stage for my sales award, I glanced over to my sales manager. It was hard not to crack a smile. There I was, six months at the company, with the skill to outperform people who were years my senior.

It went to my head. For the rest of that year, I didn’t hesitate to offer my opinion at sales meetings. I was all too happy to help others improve and, you know, be a bit more like me.

Little did I know, I was a text book example of someone with Illusory Superiority. Otherwise known as the Dunning-Kruger Effect, it’s the tendency for unskilled people to overestimate their abilities. In the years to come, I was to learn what I mistook for skill was a merely dose of good luck and timing.

Oddly enough, this illusion of internal assessment can take place in reverse. Skilled people often underestimate their abilities compared to others. Psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger demonstrated both sides of the phenomenon and published it in a study. They surmised that experienced people, knowing better their own limits, often take for granted the skills they use every day, ones that others may not possess.

So, how good are you? If your answer is relation to others, it pays to reconsider. You may be exaggerating due to the Dunning Kruger effect. Instead, why not make the unbiased choice to compare yesterday’s you to today’s?

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com

Bias As Usual: Errors in Sample Size

In the articles to follow, we’ll explore cognitive biases. These are the mental shortcuts we all occasionally use to make sense of the flood of information we face everyday. First up: Sample Size.

Imagine, for a moment, you are the lowest performer on a sales team. Complete fiction, I know. Now imagine that, for some reason, you enjoy wearing wearing khakis and polos to work while the rest of your team all wear suits. Is it fair to conclude that your lack of formality (and taste?) is the reason for your lower sales results?

Not so fast! Before we go explaining how formal clothing enhances credibility, there’s something more important to consider. Sample size. Exactly how many people are on your sales team?

According to Sociology expert, Daniel Kahneman, small sample sizes lend themselves to extreme results. In his book Thinking Fast and Slow, he and a group of experts questioned the belief that certain small towns have high disease rates due to toxic waste.

The result? The small sample size of residents in each town made extremely high or low disease prevalence more likely. This doesn’t, of course, prove industrial pollution to be harmless. It instead invalidates the data as proof that toxic waste was the cause of disease. Perhaps, if the towns studied were larger, the researchers’ conclusion may have been different.

Therefore, we in sales should be cautious about the quick interpretations we make of both success and failure. For example, it may neither be fair or helpful to compare the results of one sales rep with several medium-sized accounts to another who manages one or two large, make or break clients.

Ultimately, if we want to make better decisions, we must gather enough information and only then draw our conclusions.

Chris Pawar

Meaning2work.com