We have all read and been told by the business guru’s that people are your most important asset. Given that about 70% of US businesses are service and information oriented, most of us have experienced that people are not only the asset, but also a good portion of the problem. In fact, one of the hardest things to do in business is to get people on the same page. It’s not easy to find a balance of working together happily and growing, without people fighting back thinking you are trying to control them.

Have you worked with someone that stifles the conversation and has all the answers? At the other end of the spectrum, have you worked with someone that brings people up and lifts the intelligence of the group?

The first is called a Diminisher, and the second a Multiplier, based on the extensive research that Liz Wiseman did and wrote about in her book Multipliers. She spoke at the recent Fortune Growth Summit and exposed us to some very profound ideas around leadership that I have never heard before.

Liz gave an example on how powerful the right questions can be, and if you’re a parent, you may want to try this. Liz was telling a colleague about how difficult it was around her house at bedtime. She described how she was bossy and frustrated with her kids. Her colleague challenged her to speak to her kids only in the form of questions. No orders, no statements, only questions. That night at bedtime, Liz asked her kids “What time is it?” They said bedtime. She then asked “What do we do at bedtime?” The kids scrambled to put on their pj’s, brush their teeth, and get ready for bed, all while Liz stood in the hallway in shock. She continued the questions, with the kids understanding and eager to respond. She went on to say that this approach transformed her parenting, along with many leaders that she had coached using this method.

We have all shown characteristics on each side. Even Bill Campbell, the coach to many popular CEO’s like Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt, talks about his Diminisher qualities over his career. I too have found that I stifle my team with my Maximizer tendencies, by jumping in to fix things or make something happen. This causes them to sit back and let someone else figure it out, rather than thinking and acting themselves. On the other hand, I also go into meetings with lot of questions and try to pull out the group’s knowledge. Remember my “WHY” addiction?

So are you a Multiplier or a Diminisher? Check out Liz’s book Multipliers to see all the differences and learn how to be a better Multiplier. Also check out this interview Liz had with Verne Harnish.

Are you creating the world that you want to live in, or is the world you live in creating you? Is your life what you want it to be, or one you plan to change…someday? If there were a proven method to create the life you want to live, would you use it? What if I said that there is one, and I’ve used it, and it’s changed my life?

Back in the early 90’s I read the book Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. I know it has one of those names that sounds too cliché to believe there is actually a powerful message found inside. It was written in the early part of the 1900”s, after Hill interviewed all the successful men of the day like Ford, Edison, Rockefeller and even a few presidents over the previous few decades.

Hill says “There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it. No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it”. So how do you get to that level of belief? You do it by creating a reality statement. Then you repeat that reality statement aloud, to yourself, with passion. You work your subconscious into believing in the world you want to create. This passionate belief helps to attract the people and resources that you need to bring it into existence.

John Assaraf, in the book The Answer, says “that thought creates everything” and “Your thoughts not only matter, they create matter. Your thoughts are where your business comes from”. His book is more recent and gives the detailed explanation that Hill did not get into of how the brain works and how recent science can explain this phenomenon. Assaraf discusses how making a reality statement can allow your desires to manifest.

When I started working with my life coach, Steve D’Annunzio, about 10 years ago he helped me create a reality statement. I’ve had many over the years and they all have helped me create the reality that I wanted to live in.

In the next blog, I will share the necessary ingredients to making your own reality statement.

Did you know that if you have 2 piano’s in the same room, and you play a note on one piano, it will cause that same note to vibrate on the other piano without ever touching it?

You can create that same kind of vibration in your life, where you radiate a belief that attracts like-minded people. These people can help you manifest the kind of life that you want to live. This is a follow up to my last blog on reality statements, so if you didn’t read it, check it out here.

1 Brainstorm all the positive things you want in your life. The job, career or business you want to have, the relationship you want to have, the income, the net worth, what you want to give, and any material things or spiritual accomplishments.

2Write out your statements in a clear phrase, present tense (very important) and creating a vivid picture of the world you are creating. It isn’t good to use the word “want”, because that leaves you in a state of wanting something, rather than having it.  Instead, say “I will make a million dollars this year” or “I am giving a million a year to help parentless kids in India”.  Also, adding descriptive details helps you to paint a picture that sinks into your subconcious mind quicker by engaging your emotions.

3Practice autosuggestion and say the statement out loud 3 times a day with passion and emotion. Create the emotion by remembering a time that was a highly positive, emotional moment in your life and relive that moment while saying your statement. This creates the magnetic force that is the attractor.

4This should be done every day for at least 60 days to sink into your conscious mind. Saying it more often is good, and it can also be said in your head instead of out loud.

In Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says on planting a seed in your mind “any idea, plan or purpose may be placed in the mind through repletion of thought. This is why you are asked to write out a statement of your major purpose, or definite chief aim, commit it to memory, and repeat it, in audible words, day after day, until these vibrations of sound have reached your subconscious mind”.

For a much deeper explanation of how to create your reality statement read The Answer or The Prosperity Paradigm.

By having the belief and faith around what you want your life to be….you can create it by feeding your subconscious mind the right messages that will set in motion decisions and actions along with attracting to you the resources you need.  Most importantly, it will help us get past our biggest obstacle, ourselves!

Looking at the economy and how it operates can give you insight into a model of reality that helps to make business decisions that keep you alive and evolving instead of dying off and becoming extinct.

Many people think of the economy as a mechanical instrument that you can control and operate with the twist of a knob or a pull of a lever. This seems to come from the Newtonian perspective that the universe is predictable, stationary, and perfectly knowable with its mathematical formulas. This Newtonian approach was given life by economists of its time.

Interestingly, the players in an economy follow more of a biological approach then a mechanical one, where things change, it is a living organism, history matters, and no eloquent equations predict the future. When have you seen more than a handful of lucky economists predict what was going to happen next?

In the earlier part of the 90’s, my former partner in my investment firm had a PhD in biology. He looked at the world as an interconnected group of living organisms, more like a biological complex ecosystem. We invested in companies that were connecting the world at the time because, from this perspective, more connections create more intelligence, ideals and stability. History had shown that more connectivity led to more value creation opportunities, like when shipping, the telegraph, the railroads and the phone connected people. We ended up with the #1 growth and income fund in the country by using this model.

Our thinking was supported by the book Bionomics, which discusses in detail how the economy is a living, self organized, evolving ecosystem, just like any biological system. The author, Michael Rothschild, says in the book that instead of a zero sum process, the economy is “A positive sum process, where the whole is worth more than the sum of its parts – a phenomenon where value is created by the cooperation of diverse economic specialists”.

Thinking about the economy biologically is important because, as in life, your surroundings are filled with cooperators, competitors, and innovators. They will change your world unless you continue to evolve and stay up with the hungry opportunists that will find their niche, which could make yours extinct.

I just got back from a conference for EO Injected Forums in Sonoma, CA where I had a great time with my Forum mates sharing and learning together. It struck me that I talk about Forum lot in my blog, but not everyone has had the opportunity to be in a forum or even understand what a Forum is, so let me tell you about the Forum experience.

My EO Injected Forum biking through wineries in Sonoma, CA

I am in two Forums. One is a local EO Forum that I have been in since 99, which meets monthly. The other is a regional Forum made up of EO members from the South East who have been in EO for more than 7 years, and meets quarterly.

A Forum consists of anywhere between 6 and 12 people, usually staying in the 8-10 range. The purpose of Forum is to create an environment that is trusting and confidential, allowing a high level of sharing to take place. Members usually discuss issues they’re experiencing, both personal and professional. The issues are presented and discussed in a very organized fashion. Time is allotted for an issue to be presented, followed by a period for questions, then ending with experience sharing by other members. The experience sharing is the most important part of Forum, as the key to helping someone comes from sharing what you have experienced, and letting them know what worked and what didn’t work.

My East TN Forum Retreat in Atlanta, GA

Experience sharing should not be confused with giving advice. There are 2 important reasons why this time is called experience sharing: (1) people don’t like to be told what to do, and by sharing your experience they are more likely to take that information and figure out how to apply it to their own situation, (2) if you take someone’s advice on something and it doesn’t work out, it’s too easy to blame that person who advised you, thereby breaking the trust and respect between the members. I have found that this practice is better for all relationships, and wish I could do it all the time.

Confidentiality and trust are key in Forum, because without them, the level of sharing is not at its highest. Having the right Forum can be life changing and can allow for growth beyond comprehension in all areas of your life. It has done that for me, and sharing with all my EO friends around the world has given me perspective that has helped, changed and allowed me to grow in both small and large ways.

If you have been in a Fraternity or Sorority, you probably have experienced the closeness of a group of people similar to Forum. We take a yearly retreat to bond, get to know each other and to build trust. It has been said that you will talk about 95% of your life to most people. Forum is where you talk about the other 5%.

If you want to know how to set up a forum, how they’re run, and all the details, read Forum: The Secret Advantage of Successful Leaders by long time forum trainer Mo Fathelbab.

As I’m writing this, I’m on a plane returning from the 2010 Fortune Growth Summit, where I was exposed to some amazing speakers and content on growing and making your business better.

Some of the speakers included David Sokol (who Warren Buffet calls his Mr. Fix it, more to come on him soon), Chip Heath with his bestselling book Switch, Liz Wiseman with her new leadership book Multipliers (very impressive!), Robert Bloom who is a marketing legend and David Meerman Scott who shared his new book Real Time Marketing & PR. The conference ended with Tom Adams, CEO of Rosetta Stone. 

I am on my way home from India and excited about what is going on at our office in Pondicherry, where we have our software development office.  Each time I go, it is exciting to see what has manifested from a small 10’ x 15’ room with 2 people back in 2004 to a facility expanding 4000 square feet and about 40 people today!  This team is filled with smart, highly analytic minds with a desire to grow, progress, and improve their lives while making a positive impact on their families.  I have watched as they have matured, gotten married, had children, and bettered their lives, increasing their standard of living.  It is a great feeling to see this evolution and connection we have with the team! 

Connectivity is an important word.  My increasing exposure to the effects of connectivity has opened my mind to new levels of thinking.  In 1999, I created a mutual fund called the iFund.  It was the first shareholder-controlled fund, where connectivity drives intelligence making the group smarter than any individual.  To make this happen, we utilized software to bring shareholders together to manage the portfolio.  From that moment, I knew software would be the driving force connecting a business to it’s customers, financials, inventory, and new markets. 

 I recently read an exciting article by Marc Andreessen in the Wall Street Journal called “Why Software is Eating the World.”  Marc invented the Netscape Browser which changed the landscape of how we connect online.  He explains that software is a huge growth opportunity!  Companies like HP are transitioning from the PC hardware biz into software for better prospects.  He believes the future of the world economies is brighter because of the potential expansion of the software industry.

Marc says, “My own theory is that we are in the middle of a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy.”  He believes the growth we saw over the past decade from about 50 million people to 2 billion people connected will translate to 5 billion connected using smartphones in the next 10 years!  Imagine the power of 5 billion people connected . . . real time, all the time!

This makes me wonder about the possibilities for new businesses, including low start-up costs for internet based operations, as well as the potential problems for existing businesses not moving in this direction.  His examples include how software has changed music with Apple, books with Amazon, movies with Netflix, direct marketing with Google and Groupon, telecom with Skype, and recruiting  with LinkedIn.  Organizations in every industry need to be aware of this software revolution!

My partner April Cox and I created Efficience in 2004 to build custom software applications for others and to generate products that are niches to help businesses improve.  Sluice and MeetingHabits are two products we have out there, and we look forward to creating even more to meet our core purpose:  Discover solutions that make life better for all.

What are you doing to not get eaten by the software world or to benefit from the software world? 

Having been in business for a while I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what motivates people and what I can be doing to help increase their motivation. I wonder how they get excited about what they do or what outside forces motivate them to want to do more. I have seen the Carrot and Stick work, and I have seen when it did not push people to do better. This made me wonder if it was the people, the culture or other factors that didn’t follow the traditional Carrot and Stick model.

I’ve read some of Daniel Pink’s work in the past, but when he wrote Drive I was excited to see what he had to say about motivation and what drives people to want to do better.

The research says that what worked before is what he is calling Motivation 2.0, and is relevant in an industrial world of parts and pieces. This model isn’t so relevant in the newer Motivation 3.0, where knowledge and creativity are the output you are trying to motivate.

Pink says that these 3 elements are necessary for Motivation 3.0: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose.

When you have Autonomy, you have freedom in the task at hand, freedom in the time required to complete the task, and freedom within the team working together on that task.

When you have Mastery, people are in “flow” with the work they are doing. They do it with engagement, aspiring to a level of mastery, but knowing that it is hard work and will always be short of fully reachable.

When you have Purpose, there is a cause that is bigger than the individual; it allows the extra effort to be pulled out of people that goes beyond the effort for just a paycheck.

Check out this really cool video that really helps to understand these key points to Motivation 3.0: If you are a creative and knowledge based company, have you noticed issues around motivation? Could the incorporation of more autonomy, mastery, and purpose in your company help?

I have tried many times to write a blog on bias in the decision making process, but other current events pushed the issue to the back burner.  How we see the world is crucial to how and why we make decisions.  Ultimately, our success in business and in everyday life is guided by how we perceive the world and how that affects our decisions.

Back in my investment days, I discovered a CIA report called the “Psychology of Intelligence Analysis.”  This held vast information on gaining an understanding on our world view and how we make judgments on incomplete and ambiguous data.  This often occurs when we are analyzing stocks and making decisions without all the data and with the biases built into our thinking. 

Published in 1999 from a series of internal CIA writings from the ‘70’s & ‘80’s, this article by Richards Heuer Jr popped into the public spotlight after 9/11 in the discussions of what went wrong within the CIA causing them to be unaware of and unable to prevent the attacks.  This reveals how we, and even the CIA, are biased in our thinking and how these biases can affect our business and personal decisions. 

Key aspects of the writings emphasize the observer in determining what is being observed and how it is interpreted.  Education, culture, experience, and position influence a person’s perception.  Complex mental processes filter my version of “reality” determining which information is utilized, how it is organized, and what it means.

This creates the mental models or mindsets and all we think we know about a particular subject.  Keeping the mind open to different interpretations in a changing world is the best prevention.  We think we record what we perceive, but Heuer says we actively construct reality.  We tend to perceive what we expect to perceive.  In a classic card experiment, you have various cards with some designed with red spades and black hearts.  When you flash the cards before subjects, the normal cards are quickly and accurately identified.  However, the cards that fail to meet our expectations are missed, even if the subjects were told the changes in advance. 

The next part of the article discusses how much information is enough.  Do we really do better with more information?  The studies show that while we feel better when we have more information, we don’t necessarily make better decisions. 

In the next blog, I will further evaluate the biases we create for ourselves when we confront an issue and the ability of these biases to impact our view or blind us altogether. 

 Since we all have them and before I discuss next week, what do you think the biases are in your decision making?  Are you ready to look within and examine your own biases? I am trying and it is not easy. 

We are continuing our discussion from last week on the decision making process and the “Psychology of Intelligence Analysis” released by the CIA.  Let’s look at the different types of biases and how they affect our decision making process.

The report discusses various preconceptions such as cognitive biases, hindsight biases, biases in perception of cause and effect, biases in estimating probabilities, and subsets of these biases like anchoring.  Each of these affect how we view the information set before us and can slant our judgment from reality.

Discussing each bias would take more than one blog post to do it justice.  Therefore, I will focus on anchoring because it has real world implications for most of us in the way we negotiate.

The report contends that anchoring is a natural starting point from which we make judgments from other information we have received and used as a first approximation of a desired judgment.  We will then adjust as we gain new information, but the starting point, or anchor, holds us back from venturing too far and may hinder better judgment.

For example, you separate two groups of people and ask a question to which they do not likely know the answer, such as “How many miles is it from the earth to the sun?”  Tell group A to give an answer but suggest it might be around 5-billion miles, but tell group B to give an answer but mention it may be around 100-billion miles.  Each group will respond with an answer fairly close to the anchored suggestion even if it is far from correct.

Also, if you are selling a piece of furniture at a garage sale and think it is worth $500, but the potential buyer offers $100, then he has anchored you to go much lower to get the sale.

How many times have you heard that the first person to name a price in a negotiation is the loser?  However, using this information, the person saying a price first wins because in doing so, he anchors the other party to the belief that if he strays too far from that number, it will be outside his comfort zone. 

Victoria Medvec, a negotiation expert whom I saw at the EO Chicago University, also supports the use of anchoring.  I often utilize her advice with negotiating with others. 

As we mentioned last week, everyone is subject to many biases, including the CIA analysts.  For the CIA, and for us, these can have serious consequences in our decision making.  Being aware of and knowing how to utilize the bias of anchoring can empower you not only as a business owner but also in everyday life.    

Do you recognize your own biases?  How are you going to use this awareness in your future decision making and negotiating?.