Scott Porad

From last week’s post on thinking out side of the box, a commenter (also named Scott) left this very insightful thought…

I have a theory I’m calling the 2nd order, and goes like this. If I own a computer store, I don’t market computers, I market service you get after buying one. If I have a site about taxes, I market what you can do with the return $. If I have a problem I do a search for how to solve x. But when I land on a site, I’m not looking for x, I’m actually seeing if I might get y and z.

When I took karate as a kid, I didn’t aim to hit the front of the bag, I aimed to hit the back and when the front stopped my path it was met with a lot of force.

My advice, don’t think about what you can do right now. Just think about what you want to do tomorrow and you see how today’s fall into that plan almost automatically.

I read a New York Times article today on the qualities of people who rise to the top.  The author interviewed 70 executives and summarized their input into five core qualities.  I wonder if the author is correct or not.

1. Passionate Curiosity – do you want to understand everything?
2. Battle-Hardened Confidence – have you developed confidence through adversity?
3. Team Smarts – do you value teamwork?
4. A Simple Mind-Set – can you make a point succinctly?
5. Fearlessness – how do you handle being outside of your comfort zone?

As people who read my blog regularly know, I really connect strongly with #3, Team Smarts.  Like the CEO interviewed in the article, I have come to value teamwork over the last several years more than pure talent.

A few years ago, I would have taken the smartest people I could find, but these days I prefer to put together teams of people who work well together.  We all know the story of the underdog sports team that beats the dominant favorite—that’s teamwork, plain and simple.

Anyhow, do these resonate with you?  What do you think?

Take a team of people and give them a project.  Oh, I don’t know…any project…digging a ditch, building a web site, whatever.  Then, take another team with the same number of people and give them the exact same project.

Of course, these teams aren’t going to be exactly the same.  So, imagine you had a way to add up the intelligence of all the members of each team.  Since not everyone is identical it follows that one team is going to be smarter than the other.

Now, the conventional wisdom is that the smarter team is the one that will do a better job on the project, yield better results and have more success.  But, in fact, that isn’t true.

It turns out that the team with greater “social awareness” will have more success, according to new research by Anita Woolley, a professor at Carnegie-Mellon University.  That is, the determining factor is the ability of a team to understand it’s social cues, and as a result, the needs, wants and attitudes of its members.

In other words, teams that get along better with each other will have more success than other teams which, may be smarter, but don’t get along as well.  To me, this makes perfect sense, and jibes with both my work and life experience.

For one, there’s the “no assholes” policy of team building that so many companies, including Cheezburger, try to follow.

Then, there’s the classic example of the lesser-skilled underdog sports team beating the more-skilled Goliath because of better team work.

And, finally, I’m reminded of something from growing up: I had a friend who’s dad always said, “you can’t have success unless you’re having fun”…something, of course, we embrace at Cheezburger.  But, the expression makes perfect sense because it’s hard to have fun if you’re not getting along with the people you’re working with.

David Aronchick at Seattle 2.0 reviews my post about Day One at Cheezburger.  While listing reasons he thinks our approach is positive he says:

Second, it lets people win instantly.

Which leads me to one of the many sayings I have for for success:

Bugs Beget Bugs, Success Begets Success

By this, I mean the following: when you have buggy code, it tends to lead to more bugs.  This has been my experience, and I’m sure many of you will affirm that with similar experiences.  There are numerous reasons for why this occurs, but let me summarize them by saying that a culture or environment that allows bugs to exist tends to be permissive of new bugs being introduced.  (Please feel free to leave your reasons in the comments.)

The same, although opposite, can be said for success.  Teams or people that have success tend to have more of it.  Again, numerous reasons for this, and I think the most powerful is that success is fun.  People enjoy success, and as a result will work hard to get more of it.  (Again, please leave your reasons in the comments.)

Of course, there’s a way to catch all of this in one commonly known saying:

When it rains, it pours.

All of this brings me back to Aronchick’s comment about winning instantly.  Getting people a small, but significant, win on Day One is really valuable in terms of getting them started off on the right foot.  The small success of contributing something valuable smooths the path for the next contribution, and before you know it, the experience has snowballed.

This evening I was reading Thomas Friedman’s weekly column in the New York Times.  Friedman typically covers foreign policy and America’s place in the world, and tonight was no exception: he wrote about why Newsweek ranked the United States the 11th best country in the world.

That ranking isn’t something that a lot of people are talking about, but Friedman isn’t afraid to raise the subject.  From the sound of his column, his view is that we’re doomed if we don’t address these issues directly.  What really piqued my attention was his conclusion:

China and India have been catching up to America not only via cheap labor and currencies….but, most importantly, [with] values like our Greatest Generation had. That is, a willingness to postpone gratification, invest for the future, work harder than the next guy and hold their kids to the highest expectations.

Specifically, the phrase “postpone gratification” reminded me of an article I had read in The New Yorker magazine earlier this year subtitled, “The secret of self-control“:

For decades, psychologists have focussed on raw intelligence as the most important variable when it comes to predicting success in life, [however, researchers now understand] that intelligence is largely at the mercy of self-control

In other words, the ability to control oneself, to postpone gratification now for something in the future, is the single most important determinant of success in life, all things considered equal.

And, when you think about the evolution of American society from The Greatest Generation to The Me Generation it makes perfect sense why America is seemingly falling apart at the seams with intractable problems which we cannot seem to solve.

But, alas, this is nothing new…I am reminded of a line written thousands of years ago in the Tao Te Ching:

He who controls others is strong; he who controls himself is all-powerful.

At about 10pm each night I catch a second wind which lasts until about 1am.  This is a blessing and a curse.  If there’s some work I want to get done, or if I want to stay up later to enjoy the evening, then it’s a blessing.  If I want to go to bed at 10:20pm it’s a curse.

With that in mind, some new research indicates that “morning people” have more success, generally, than night owls.

“[Morning people] tend to get better grades in school, which gets them into better colleges, which then leads to better job opportunities. Morning people also anticipate problems and try to minimize them. They’re proactive.” (Not that evening people are life’s losers: They’re smarter and more creative, and have a better sense of humor, other studies have shown.)

Notwithstanding my issues with a 10pm bedtime, I enjoy getting up early, especially in the summer.  In Seattle, the sun rises at about 4:45am (and sets at about 9:45pm).  By 6am, it’s typically full-on daytime and I can really get a lot out of the day.

Can you change whether or not you’re a morning person?  According to the researchers, “somewhat,” but it’s largely genetic.  Anecdotally, I would disagree.  I can sleep in, or I can get up early…let’s say I’m “ambidextrous”…but I can tell you that I’m definitely more productive when I start the day earlier.

Recently, Liz Strauss asked me via e-mail:

How do you delegate responsibility to inspire the best performance from people you work with?

and she asked the same question to a dozen other leaders and managers as well. The result was 7 tips for effectively delegating work.

In no particular order, they are:

1. Know the Outcome You Want
2. Work with and Trust the Right People
3. Set Clear Expectations
4. Let People Know Why You’re Counting on Their Performance
5. Be There After the Assignment
6. Value Great Performance
7. Remember to Delegate Even When You Don’t Want To

Food for thought from David Brooks:

The Internet-versus-books debate is conducted on the supposition that the medium is the message. But sometimes the medium is just the medium. What matters is the way people think about themselves while engaged in the two activities. A person who becomes a citizen of the literary world enters a hierarchical universe. There are classic works of literature at the top and beach reading at the bottom.

…

A citizen of the Internet has a very different experience. The Internet smashes hierarchy and is not marked by deference. Maybe it would be different if it had been invented in Victorian England, but Internet culture is set in contemporary America. Internet culture is egalitarian. The young are more accomplished than the old. The new media is supposedly savvier than the old media. The dominant activity is free-wheeling, disrespectful, antiauthority disputation.

Right now…the Internet culture may produce better conversationalists, but the literary culture still produces better students.

Yesterday I wrote about the Six Steps to Success with Everything and was reminded of one of the lessons I learned while raking the yard with my son.  In that post I wrote:

The lesson here was that when working on a project, you need to feel progress through small successes. Success feels good, so set yourself up to have lots of it, even if they’re small. When you’re having success, you’ll be having fun and want to keep on going. Success is a drug, it’s addictive, so organize your project to get the biggest high possible.

Coincidentally, as I was walking up my driveway last night I noticed that the pine cones are falling in my yard again.  I wonder what lesson they’ll teach us this year?