Be Different or be dead

October 11, 2021

Why the best people to execute new ideas are ‘double-downers’

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Why the best people to execute new ideas are ‘double-downers’.

Why successful people don’t take NO! for an answer.

What happens when someone tells you “No”?

“No” to your application for a job.
“No” to a proposal you’ve submitted to your boss.
“No” to a new product idea.
“No” to added functionality to the Chatbot feature on your website.
“No” to the vacation suggestion you’ve offered to your partner.

I’ve seen 3 typical responses to this classic dilemma: Retreat — Hover & Meander — Double Down.

#1. Retreat — do you walk away licking your wounds?

In my experience, the most common response is the person holding the genius simply backs off, believing that since their idea was rebuffed, it was a bad idea.

Or that to pursue the matter any further isn’t worth the emotional trouble they would likely endure by going another round of pitching and trying to convince the other person that their idea has merit and is the rightful owner of the podium.

I’ve never been a fan of this approach.

First of all, it implies to me that the owner of the bright idea really isn’t all that committed to it. It’s like they’ve lobbed their position up in the air to see if it would fly and since it didn’t, they are ok with the rejection outcome.

In addition, backing off is another way of saying that the owner has no passion for their ideas. Perhaps their mind—and not their heart—owns it, and if that’s the case it’s easy to rationalize why they should accept defeat.

The lack of spirit around their idea is foreshadowing of a future problem as well if it came to implementing it.
Execution happens when emotion and passion are in play, not when the intellect is active.

As the recipient of the proposal, my conclusion when the owner backs off after rejection, is their idea would never see the light of day anyway, so justice is served.

#2. Hover & Meander — are you willing to incrementally change your idea and meander around it until you negotiate a compromise with the other person?

This is the response most often advocated by academics and experts of conflict management: the search for common ground upon which a compromise can be built.

When have you ever witnessed a crowd do anything remarkable?

Unbelievably amazing ideas NEVER result from a negotiation process. They are begotten from someone’s soul and stand the test of time to thwart rejection and, I’d needed, force fed to non-acceptors and unbelievers.

The compromiser isn’t my favourite person for a number of reasons:

✔️ they’re ok with a watered-down—‘hold-your-nose’—solution but in my experience don’t really apply themselves to implementing it because it lacks the lustre of their original thought.
✔️ they’re totally driven by logic and lack the emotional element necessary to do anything with their insight even if others agreed with it.
✔️ their willingness to find common ground is tantamount to allowing the crowd to be the prime influence on their idea. They are ok with becoming a member of the herd of average thinkers and allowing them to have a say (with the belief that herd members would then be committed to supporting the implementation of your morphed idea—rarely the case).

When the herd owns the idea, nothing magic happens.

✔️ they are empirical evidence that the drive to be truly innovative and different in one’s thinking can be shut down by the crowd, and that’s an issue for me.
✔️ The compromiser is forced to ‘round the corners’ of their original idea in order to feed the herd and thus the remarkability of their seed is lost.
✔️ When the holder-of-originality says of a crowd-influenced change ‘I’m ok with the new version’, they lose a certain amount of their drive to find new, interesting and different ideas — compromise reduces the innovation process.

When the crowd is the influence, average happens.

#3. Double Down — do you take a step back, take a deep breath and have another go at trying to convince the other person of the worth of your idea?

This response to being told ‘NO!’ is for the person offering original thought to stay in the moment and keep trying to sell their idea until either they win or they finally are beaten into submission (really response #1 after prolonged debate).

It’s ironic to me that the pundits favour compromise and yet the amazing ideas most often come from a vision and polarized thinking.

Elson Musk, Sir Richard Branson and Steve Jobs are/were polarized thinkers whose genius never touched a crowd.

We need to be teaching people how to advance their ideas with a minimum of crowd intervention rather than teaching them how to water down their ideas by taking the input from the masses.

We need more ‘Double Downers’ in the world; here’s why:

✔️ pushing for groundbreaking progress should be the priority these days, not looking for compromise. Climate change solutions, for example, require polarized holistic thinking not biased thinking based on how the needed change will impact us personally.
✔️ we need stronger innovators—more double-downers—given the rapid changes we’re experiencing in the world and the unexpected body blows that we have to deal with along the way.

We need to teach people how to push forward and learn the new skills necessary to advance their new ideas.

Double-down learning must take precedence over compromise teaching.

✔️ implementing anything new is an arduous job and it requires a champion to lead it. The Double-downer, because they are emotionally all in with their idea makes the best implementer. As mentioned before, the passive compromiser is less willing to push implementation to the limit.
✔️ double-downers require resilience and strong character, a trait we need more of in our organizations and lives. So let’s do what we can to breed people with this competency rather than dilute it by asking them to compromise themselves and find the lowest common denominator.
✔️ like it or not, achieving anything worthwhile today requires a high pain threshold to navigate a compelling thought through the maze of critics that sit in judgement of it.
Double-downers have assumed ‘pain absorption’ as a skill they must develop to see their creativity through to successful completion.

Double-downers have a reticence to submit; we need more not fewer of them.

✔️ double-downers have developed the uncanny skill of making their idea so compelling that they more often make the sale than lose it.

This is fundamental to audacious leadership where the leader makes the call after gathering input (which they may or may not heed) and is able to convince everyone around them that their direction is absolutely the right one to take.

Double-downers may not always be viewed as the nice, socially acceptable, politically correct persona to advance a creative agenda, but they get the things done that need to be done.

We need them.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 10.11.21 at 05:18 pm by Roy Osing
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October 4, 2021

Post pandemic mentors: 5 ways to get the very best

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Post pandemic mentors: 5 ways to get the very best.

The COVID pandemic has caused unbelievable discontinuity into the world. Organizations have had to pivot to new business models, business supply costs have increased with consumers having to pay higher prices for goods and services and the norms for social interaction have changed substantially.

And for people in the hunt for a satisfying and rewarding career, things look a lot different.

Specifically, the process of finding a mentor requires a careful review because the pandemic is forcing a different approach to seeking a coach and advisor to help us continue to make wise career choices.

Here are 5 NEW steps you should take to find a mentor as you navigate your way through the pandemic.

1. Find a survivor leader

Find an organization that is surviving the pandemic chaos and figure out a way to get close to its leader.

These people house the secrets of staying alive when they have no control over the unexpected blows inflicted upon them. These astonishing leaders figured out how to harness the negative energy of the unexpected and turn it into a successful outcome for themselves.

These leaders are a gift to the young professional, for they have achieved what few others have in the environment that will define the future for any organization.

Their advice, help and guidance is invaluable to anyone looking to build a successful career in the face of this uncertainty.

And focus on the small businesses that are surviving—restaurants for example—to get the real visceral ‘in the moment’ actions they took to stay alive. The leaders of these businesses have zero cushion for failure (unlike larger organizations) and are therefore able to provide more meaningful tactical guidance.

2. Find a caregiver

Find an organization whose employees give amazing shoutouts to the managers in it for their care and empathy. Use social media to get a conversation going on the ‘stars’ who actually give a damn about their employees and who make a priority of caring about their comfort and well-being.

Caregivers are great sources of valuable counsel; their sensitivity and empathy is the essence of what they can offer a young professional aspiring an improved leadership role.

3. Find a ‘repeat offender’

Find an organization that tried a number of potential ways to beat the pandemic and eventually struck one that worked.

And look for the person—the repeat offender—who was at the heart of the failure process but persisted until they discovered a successful solution to their challenge for survival.

This is a mentor who is worth their weight in gold. Winning is all about the number of tries you make and the willingness to absorb the pain of momentary failure, so if you can find and get close to one of these amazing people you will reap the rewards over and over and over again.

4. Find an analyst

Find a ‘pandemic student’; someone who has analyzed and studied what it takes to survive the pandemic and befriend them.

It’s not that they will necessarily have the right survival solution for you, but they may have clues based on their studies as to what might work for you.

You’re not looking for the precise prescription for your malady, you want possibilities based on informed opinion; the analyst is such a person.

Cast your mentor net far and wide; you’ll be surprised with what you catch.

5. Find an outlier

Find an organization that basically threw out their business plan and decided to not just pivot, but to reinvent themselves and take a completely different direction.

It’s not easy spotting these organizations because most look for the incremental change—pivot—rather than the metamorphosis.

The influencers—outliers—that are behind such changes are home run mentors. They present dramatic possibilities to the young professional which serve as another perspective anyone looking to enhance their career should consider.

I’m a fan of looking for the upside when confronted with the downside; looking for the pony that created the crap one is buried in.

The pandemic is forcing all of us to look at things differently, to look for opportunities to not only survive but to thrive.

And opportunities abound when it comes to discovering a mentor who can help our careers and our lives.

Follow my 5 simple suggestions and you’ll be looking at your career competitors over your shoulder.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 10.4.21 at 03:37 am by Roy Osing
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August 9, 2021

Why the most important reason for success is staying relevant

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Why the most important reason for success is staying relevant.

Why is relevance a key strategic concept; why does it matter?

Relevance drives the motivation of people and organizations; to be relevant is to be successful.

Irrelevance, on the other hand, is the state to be avoided because to be irrelevant is to be ignored by those you wish to be visible to and admired by. And being ignored is to not have a voice listened to or a place admired in the world.

Relevance in business

Successful businesses remain relevant to their customers and we can see vividly what happens when they’re not. They go out of business; they die.

Relevance is a dynamic state; it is a function of what’s going on in the the environment around you.

Irrelevance is not keeping pace with the changes impacting you; relevance is embracing them.

To maintain relevance in your business you need to skillfully manoeuvre your organization through the following set of dynamics:

— Customers’ needs change.
— New competition emerges.
— New technologies appear.
— Unexpected cataclysmic events happen.
— Regulations restrictions are imposed.

In the face of this variability, organizations must find their way if they are to remain relevant and survive.

I can’t offer any organization a prescription for survival under such circumstances; but what I can tell you for certain is that what worked for you yesterday is unlikely to work for you tomorrow.

But I can offer you my process that has been stress tested in the real world and will help you arrive at your own solution if you put in the work.

The process is pretty simple but if you do the work and trust it, you will figure out what you need to do.

The relevance question

Ask yourself ‘The Relevance Question’:

”Now that I find myself in this new reality, what do I have to do differently to stay relevant?”

Possible outcomes from asking the question:

1. Failure to ask the question and assume you can carry on in a business as usual way will most certainly doom you to failure; your organization will die.

2. Asking the question but choosing a solution that doesn’t work - maintaining an irrelevant condition - means it will take longer to recover and survive, but only if you keep asking the question and seeking more workable solutions.

3. Asking the question and landing on a workable solution right away is nirvana; relevance is immediately maintained and death avoided (until the next unexpected discontinuity hits you at which time you have to ask the question again).

The critical thing here is the mindset of understanding an organization must constantly test their relevance in the markets they serve and to have a process to do it.

Look at the business failures that have occurred and you will see irrelevance in action. Leaders either assumed what made them successful prior to their difficulty would continue to serve them well in new environments and didn’t ask the relevance question, or they asked the question and didn’t come up with a workable answer.

Regardless of the reason they failed.

Role of leadership

Leaders must take a more proactive role in assessing relevance without having to wait for a crisis to do it.

▪️ In formal business planning sessions, rather than just ask about product life cycles and where products fit, ask about where the organization is on the relevance cycle and discuss the strategy options they should adopt to maintain or increase their relevance;

▪️ Ensure the appropriate data gathering tools are in place to feed the discussion around this question. If you’re not continually probing where your organization is on the relevance scale — 10 = highly relevant; 0 = totally irrelevant — you can’t answer the question and hence won’t be able to take any meaningful action;

▪️ Ask the frontline about their opinion. They will be able to tell leaders where the major customer ‘pinch points’ that signal relevance issues are and how severe they are.
Leaders need signals that foreshadow irrelevance and the frontline are excellent sources for them. And they won’t sugar coat the truth like some managers might;

▪️ Conduct a relevance appraisal on each of your top competitors to see where they might be vulnerable. Integrate the results into your business planning process; take action to exploit any opportunities exposed by the analysis.

Maintaining relevance should be a success and survival competency of every organization and it should be an essential element of culture.

If you’re not relevant, you’re dead (or soon will be).

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is my latest…

• Posted 8.9.21 at 02:35 am by Roy Osing
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July 12, 2021

Why being different is key to career and business success

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Why being different is key to career and business success.

If you are not different from others in some meaningful way, you will likely achieve no more than 50% of your potential; you leave 50% of your net worth on the table.

This is what young professionals face today as they begin their journey to fulfill their career dreams and be successful.

There are more people looking for jobs than there are jobs.

And the people in the crowd approaching organizations for an opportunity look the same.

When being interviewed, members of the job hunting herd are literally indistinguishable from one another.

— They have a boilerplate CV they downloaded from the internet;

— They talk mostly about their academic credentials and the marks they earned;

— They exhibit a superficial understanding of the organization they are speaking to and the challenges it faces;

— They don’t ask meaningful penetrating questions about the company and the markets it serves;

— Their answers to interview questions rely more on what they’ve been taught in school rather than from a practical perspective;

— The conversation is replete with standard cliches: “My strength is dealing with people”; “I understand new technologies”; “My weakness is trying to do too much, or I’m impatient at times” and on it goes.

When they cannot demonstrate something unique about themselves, they unfortunately provide hiring organizations no compelling reason to pay attention to them over others and to consider them high for employment potential.

Some say that it is ok to possess skills and competencies similar to others; that there is a limit on how people can be different.

Not true! That’s like saying there is no way you can turn a commodity into a differentiated product and we all know that is absolute rubbish.

Products can be made to be special in a myriad of ways and all it takes is imagination and creativity to create something different and unmatched in the marketplace - ever heard of The Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas?

It’s no different with people.

Each and every one of us can be distinct from every other person in some special way if we are motivated to discover our specialness.

The problem is we have never been led to think that being different was expected. Rather, ‘the system’ imposes on us conformance and compliance expectations and has brainwashed us to believe that fitting in was the only acceptable outcome.

The school system is all about grinding our students who have all mastered the same stuff in the same way.

Being different is not driven into young people; it’s frowned upon.

So the consequences of not being different are:

▪️first, young people have an extremely tough time getting a job and launching their career;

▪️organizations are robbed of the creativity they need to survive and thrive in our unpredictable and chaotic world.

Double jeopardy with very unfortunate outcomes.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

‘Audacious’ is coming soon…

• Posted 7.12.21 at 02:47 am by Roy Osing
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