People Are Awesome
This may be the best compilation of physical mastery that I’ve seen yet. It’s an amazing video that demonstrates what can be achieved with Flow and optimal performance.
Nature vs Nurture in the Realm of Success
What makes our top achievers in business, sports, or music great at what they do? Is it something they’re born with? Is it an overbearing parent pushing them to succeed? Is it hard work? Most of us think that talent is something we’re born with, that you either have it or not. We think that how smart someone is determines their potential. Not so much. Sure, some people have inherited advantages in rare cases, but these advantages being smarter, stronger, taller, etc, have little to no relation to how successful someone will be. How hard we work at something also has little to do with how successful we’ll be. Working hard is not equal to achievement. We all see people who work 50 hours a week and have little to show for it. Pushy parents can be helpful in the beginning to keep kids focused on practice, but in the long run, kids need to want to practice and get better to succeed.
Some things are very relevant to high achievement. Growing up in an environment where parents support their children’s growth. Believe in one’s ability to achieve, “What you believe about the source of great performance thus becomes the foundation of all you will ever achieve.” Geoff Colvin, in his book Talent Is Overrated. Having a directed practice designed to develop skills that focuses on what Dan Pink calls “Goldilocks tasks” - ones that aren’t too hard or too easy but push you just beyond what you can do now. Most of us need a coach or a mentor to help us design our directed practice. Things like sports or arts tend to be parental, at least at the start. In business, if you’re lucky, you’ll find a mentor.
So it’s not your inherited traits or hard work alone that determines if you’ll be a high achiever, it’s a dedicated lifelong practice focused on improving the skills you need most to succeed. And equally important, you have to believe that you can succeed. Becoming a high performer is not rocket science; it does not take a 130 IQ. It does take dedication and focus. According to Colvin, it takes about ten years to get from novice to exceptional performance in most areas of study or work. Even if you’re not willing to do what it takes to be a Tiger Woods, you can still improve your ability to achieve. So if you’re willing to do the work, the sky is the limit.
Are You at Your Best?
Do you strive to get better at what you do? Whether it’s fixing cars, selling shoes, or programming software? Or are you already at your best? Getting better at something you care deeply about is called personal mastery. Peter Senge, in his book, The Fifth Discipline, says,” Personal mastery goes beyond competence and skills, though it is grounded in competence and skill. It means approaching one’s life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to a reactive viewpoint.” Mastery is a lifelong practice.
“The ability to focus on ultimate intrinsic desires, not only on secondary goals, is a cornerstone of personal mastery,” says Peter Senge. The key to mastery is following your passion and creativity, not going to meetings and putting out fires. When you’re able to do what you want to do, when you want to do it with who you want to work with, you’re much more likely to achieve mastery. This is at the heart of intrinsic motivation, or motivation that comes spontaneously from within us - doing things for the joy of doing them.
Very few of us are fully engaged at work because workplaces use top-down management and carrots and sticks to motivate people. You can’t sell, enforce or cajole mastery - it has to be something we choose to do.
It’s the reason I’ve been successful in my various careers. I’ve been able to define my roles and that of my teams. I’ve had the trust of upper management to do things the way I think they should be done, to hire the right people, and make what I think are the best purchases for my workplace. For the last 20 years, I’ve had a large amount of autonomy, which led to developing personal mastery. As Somerset Maugham said, “Only mediocre people are always at their best.”
Unarticulated Needs
Filling needs that people don’t know they have is hard. Earlier this week, I read a blog post that Seth Godin wrote about: Marketing to the bottom of the pyramid. It got me thinking that that’s what I’m trying to do, fulfill unarticulated needs. Needs that most folks don’t know they have. The average person doesn’t know that they could have a work-life that lifts them up and makes them feel great. For the last 100 years, we’ve been programmed to believe that work is a necessary evil, that we need to give up 40-60 hours of our week to purgatory, and that being happy, fulfilled, and engaged at work is more of a fairy tale than a reality.
A handful of companies are practicing new ways of managing companies and people that give people dignity, purpose, and self-determination at work. I know that the tenants of Motivation 3.0 work because of the success of these innovative companies. Companies like Semco with a 30-year track record of success. Yet most of the time, when I have a one-on-one conversation with someone about how companies are increasing productivity by way of empowering employees, what I get back is, “That sounds great, but it could never work at my company. “
There’s an upside and a downside to trying to sell ideas people don’t know they need. On the upside, it’s an untapped market with unlimited growth potential. On the downside, the market has to get created. This is in part, the purpose of this blog, to help spread the ideas of autonomy, mastery and purpose. At the bottom of my pyramid are the millions of workers who don’t know that there is a better way that they can make a difference, if not for themselves than at least for their children. It could take a generation for these ideas to find the tipping point. Like my dad always said, “Nothing good ever comes easy.”
Corporations, our Psychopathic Citizens
Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by an abnormal lack of empathy combined with strongly amoral conduct, masked by an ability to appear outwardly normal.
In the US, corporations, limited liability corporations, and other types of a business have a clear common goal, to make a profit. That is their primary and in many cases their sole purpose. While corporations have been assigned many of the rights given to US citizens, such as first and fourteenth amendment rights, they are certainly lacking in empathy and I think it’s fair to say that many corporations act amorally. That is to say that they operate without morals, good or bad. Corporations have been around since the mid-14th Century and up until the 18th century they were mainly chartered companies that governments used to do their biddings like the British East India Company or educational institutions.
Before the industrial revolution, most businesses were sole proprietorships or partnerships. In both cases, the owners were liable for the debts and the actions of their businesses. Business owners paid the price for their failures and reaped the benefits of their success. Starting in the 19th century, with the advent of the industrial revolution, corporations started becoming more popular, their main feature is that the owners were not liable for their debts and their investors could only be held responsible for the level of their investments.
So let’s say you have $10,000 in your personal bank account, and you own ABZ Corporation, which has $1000 in its bank account. You order 5000 widgets monthly on credit, every month for a year. Widgets cost you $1 each, and you sell them for $3 each. On the 13th month, your widget order gets eaten by your pit bull. Widgets-R-Us want their money. You tell them that the company only has $1000; they can take it or take you to court. Even if they took you to court, they’d not get more than the $1000(I’m not a lawyer, and don’t pretend to know the law, don’t let your dog eat your widgets). You, as the business owner, are not liable. The corporation is liable. If you had a partnership, you and your partners would be liable.
Which one of these business models sounds like it would promote empathy and morality? The one that makes people responsible for their actions or the one that isolates them from their actions?
Corporations have enabled moral ambiguity that has contributed to many of the problems the world is experiencing. From the global financial crisis to BP’s oil rig disaster in the gulf, focusing on short-term profits at the cost of long-term goals sounds like something you’d expect from a toddler, not from educated adults. What can we do?
As employees, we can influence our corporate cultures and move towards creating transparency at our workplaces. It’s hard to make backroom deals and perpetuate shady practices when most people in the company know what’s going on and you have a corporate culture that’s moral and empathetic. As a people, we can embrace motivation 3.0. Self-directed employees who are allowed to develop mastery/optimum performance and be a part of something bigger than themselves are thoroughly engaged and unbelievably dedicated to their work. They stop being cogs and become innovators and collaborators. They also increase profits and productivity.
As business owners, we can look at new corporate structures like L3C, or B Corps. An L3C is a low-profit limited liability company. It’s a cross between an LLC and a nonprofit. A B Corp or Beneficial Corporation has to go through a certification process to ensure that the work they are doing or products they are selling are beneficial to society. It also covers environmental practices, employment practices, and purchasing policies. Currently, there are over 300 B Corps in the US, including Seventh Generation household products and King Arthur Flour.
It’s time we embraced the needed changes to make our companies more sustainable and responsible and our citizens happier and more productive.
You Mean I Don't Have to be Dumb?
Is your IQ fixed? Can anyone learn to play the violin or compete in a triathlon? Is a particular gift a requirement to learn these things? It turns out that intelligence, sports ability, music ability, and just about any ability can be learned, according to 25 years of research by Carol Dweck, a former Columbia, and current Stanford Psychologist.
You are what you think. Perception is reality. That’s the core message from Carol Dweck’s book, ‘Mindset.’ She says we have two mindsets, fixed mindsets, and growth mindsets. People with fixed mindsets believe that intelligence and ability are fixed and can’t be changed or augmented. People with a growth mindset believe that intelligence and ability are a byproduct of focused effort and that we can improve our intelligence with effort and determination. Sounds like mastery to me.
Not only does mindset apply to mental ability, but it also applies to athletics, art, personability, and relationships. Dweck’s research says, “When you learn new things, these tiny connections in the brain multiply and get stronger. The more you challenge your mind to learn, the more your brain cells grow. Then, things you once found very hard or even impossible—like speaking a foreign language or doing algebra—seem easy. The result is a stronger, smarter brain.”
“After seven experiments with hundreds of children, we had some of the clearest findings I’ve ever seen: Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation, and it harms their performance,” say’s Dweck. More evidence that carrots and sticks are harmful. If you praise effort and growth instead of intelligence or talent, it will have a positive effect. This kind of praise encourages a growth mindset.
In the last six months, I’ve been thinking about the limitations I’d created for myself and decided that that’s just what they were, self-set limitations, not limitations that I was born with or stuck with, but ones I’d put there myself. About a month ago, I took those limitations and turned them into goals. With the help of Mindset and Carol Dweck, I’ve just added a couple more goals to the list.
I’ve been telling myself that I don’t have the talent or ability for drawing (even though I have a BFA), sports, foreign languages, playing a musical instrument, or starting a business. All of these things are now on my goal list. Do you have fixed mindset messages you have accepted or created for yourself? If I can flip the switch on my fixed mindset limitations, you can too! What are you so afraid to fail at that you don’t bother trying?
‘Argue for your limitations; sure enough, they’re yours.’
Richard Bach
Zappos: Happy People, Delivering Happiness and Shoes.
Tony Sheih, CEO of Zappos, has just written his first book,‘Delivering Happiness, a Path to Profits, Passion and Happiness.’ It chronicles Tony’s life, from childhood entrepreneurial efforts to college and his time at LinkExchange. In some ways, it reads like Ricardo Semler’s‘Maverick, The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace,’ Both books talk about lessons learned, mistakes made, and happy coincidences that lead them to success.
What is Zappos? It’s not a ROWE (Results Only Work Environment). It’s not democratically run, like Semco. Zappos does manage to keep its employees very engaged. Engaged employees result in growth and profits by way of creativity and innovation. The management, led by Tony Sheih focuses on the company culture and delivering happiness.
Zappos has a Culture Book it publishes every year. Everyone who works with or for Zappos is encouraged to contribute to the book describing Zappos culture. They publish all comments and only edit for typos, so the good, the bad, everything gets published.
Zappos does use carrots and sticks, though in a way that employees can control. You can take classes that will bring you to the next career level, and after taking them, you get a small raise. You can take them at whatever speed you like or not at all. Employees are empowered to do their jobs in whatever way works best. There does seem to be a large amount of autonomy. If you look at the Zappos Core Value Document, it’s obvious that they focus on mastery as well:
Create a fun, creative work environment where people are largely self-directed, are encouraged to get better at what they do, and acquire new skills, combined with being a part of something larger than themselves and the result is growth and profit. While Zappos may not be a new business model like ROWE, Results Only Work Environment, it is game-changing.
Their purpose is their culture and delivering happiness. They’ve put most, if not all, of their marketing dollars into customer service, letting their customers be Zappos marketers. This approach is one of the cornerstones of Zappos’ success sounds like it came out of Seth Godin’s playbook. Check out www.deliveringhappinessbook.com. Tony is trying to start a movement.
Flow, Mastery and the League of Extraordinary Dancers
The League of Extraordinary Dancers performance at the February 2010 TED is the most amazing performance I’ve ever seen. Have you ever watched the TED videos? How about the performances? I’ve overlooked the performances until last week. I recently stumbled upon The LXD (League of Extraordinary Dancers) performance at this year’s TED. LXD is an example of taking optimal experience to its outer limits.
These dancers are fully engaged in their art, they have to be extremely dedicated to develop this level of skill. Michalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s research on Flow, the science of optimal performance, says that anyone in just about any line of work can experience flow and develop mastery. His research spans fields from science and the arts to factory workers. How would you like to look forward to going to work, to get lost in your work and feel great about what you’re doing? Giving our workers the freedom to define their work and how they do it is the the way to start down this path.
Gallup has done extensive research on the engagement of the US workforce, it’s estimated that about 50% of US workers are not engaged and that 20% are actively unengaged with their work. The estimated cost to US companies for employees that aren’t into their work: 300 billion dollars a year. In some parts of the world only 3% of employees are engaged. It’s time we focused on letting our workers do work in ways they find engaging, lets put command and control to rest permanently! Are you listening managers and CEO’s?
