Susan Piver is the author of several books including Quiet Mind: A Beginner’s Guide to Meditation and her latest,  How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life. I had the good fortune to take a brief meditation instruction from Piver at a recent writer’s workshop. Although my jury’s still out on inner peace, I have to admit, five minutes of concentrated nothing certainly was the medicine I needed that day. It was enough to make me want to know more, so I asked Ms. Piver if she’d answer a few questions.

The name of your last book is intriguing – what do you mean by being ‘afraid of your own life’?

SP:  Most people are too afraid to simply be who they are. Most of us have trouble even figuring out who we are — our unique personal presence — through all the advertising, parental admonitions, and cultural conventions. Instead of knowing ourselves, we try to stereotype ourselves in our own minds to fit neat categories. Meditation practice can help enormously. It teaches you to observe with who you really are, without judgment. 

 
In terms of work life, or entrepreneurial pursuits, what are some situations where people might be afraid of their own lives?

SP:  I don’t know about you, but i spend most of the day reassuring myself that my existence is basically nothing to apologize for. Forget about expressing myself creatively, which is what any entrepreneurial pursuit requires — it takes enormous courage just to stand in your own shoes. Again, meditation or other spiritual practice can help you relax. 

  
Business and spirituality are not necessarily considered to be complimentary. How can a spiritual practice enhance business performance?

SP:  I don’t really see much of a split. You can be a spiritual business person without cheating either occupation. If you look at spirituality as the act of being who you really are from moment to moment (which i do), then there is no problem, no split whatsoever.

Can you give us one practical application we can all use at our desks right now?

(or coffee shops or sofas or wherever you happen to be!)

SP:  Pretend you’re someone who loves you a whole, whole lot. Ask them to tell you what you most need to hear today.

 
That’s sound advice we can all use, even if we can’t crunch into the lotus position (which, by the way, is totally unnecessary for mediation). Chill out, relax, and for goodness sake – unplug! If you want to know more about Susan Piver and her books, check out www.susanpiver.com.

Have a great weekend!

Image Credit: drab makyo

The Peter Principle

In 1969 Canadian academic, Dr Laurence Peter stated that in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence and boy did it stick. Peter’s book (written with Raymond Hull) The Peter Principle highlighted the weaknesses of hierarchy in organizations. The Peter Principle states that members of a hierarchy are promoted as long as they work competently, but eventually they will be promoted to a position where they are no longer competent. That becomes the level of incompetence and that’s where they stay.

Peter was concerned with uncaring entities who would promote individuals beyond their limits despite inevitable damage to their health and happiness. Nah, that never happens anymore. Back in those flower power days, Peter conducted a survey of general practice doctors. He wanted to find out the most common medical complaints among successful patients. These included ulcers, colitis, high blood pressure, alcoholism, obesity, hypertension, insomnia, cardiovascular problems and impotence. Impotence? That one actually turned out to be more of a business opportunity, but that’s another story.

The flip side of the Peter Principle is his idea of super-competent employees. These are the creative, enlightened people who are more likely to be canned than promoted. A leader’s inherent tendency to violate the entrenched hierarchy is exactly what many organizations desperately need but cannot endure.

So what do you say, is Peter still relevant?

Large companies aren’t the only ones feeling the crunch of economic hardship. Small businesses are going out of business as well. On top of the challenge to survive the first two years of business, inflated costs of doing business are growing at rates never seen before.

The question then is, “What do you do when your business fails?” For many small businesses they started with someone’s savings, an investment fund, loans from friends and family just to get started. Now that’s gone, the reality of “shutting down shop” sinks in and the entrepreneur/small business owner is again with his idea and the thoughts of what could have been.

At some point you have to embrace the reality that it’s over and when that happens now what?

Focus on the Positive Things that Were Accomplished
It doesn’t matter how long you were in business every business has had bright days. It could have been new contacts and partnerships. Patients for products that you know can work. Systems that you developed and implemented. Perhaps, it was the day or week you reached records sales.

Ask The Hard Questions
Why did it fail? Was it poor planning? Was there lack of knowledge of the market? Did it come down to personnel? Maybe it was the wrong sales strategy. Whatever it was, as an entrepreneur asking the hard questions will help get away from the blame game and addresses the facts, both good and bad.

Learn and Move On!
Entrepreneurs can be extremely strong-willed individuals. It’s because of that they experience success and reach their goals. However, the one thing that separates them from others, is that the fail, learn and move on. Often times it’s in the same type of business and same product: just a new approach.

Ask the hard questions, learn from it and move on. Assemble another team, think creative about your funding and try again. What is that age-old adage, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.”

Have you had a business that has failed? What did you do? What did you learn?

by Lela Davidson

My first job was picking strawberries in muddy fields in extreme northwest Washington state. If you’re thinking this is some cruel child labor, you may be correct, but it’s what we did. Not only was picking strawberries the only employment available to industrious fourth graders, it was the cool thing to do. How else would we earn money to buy rainbow shoelaces and scented ball point pens?

I lasted exactly three days. Make that exactly three days, two years in a row.

Child Labor
Once school let out in June, kids had the option of choosing a berry farm to work for. I picked the one my neighbor, Lori, chose. If you’re not familiar with the weather in the Pacific Northwest, it rains several times a week – most of the summer. This is no excuse to get out of doing anything. Because we never knew how much rain was too much, sometimes we stood soaking and waiting for an hour for the school bus before going inside, free to watch TV.

At the farm, each kid took a five-gallon bucket to an empty row. Strawberries grow low to the ground, so we worked on our knees. Picking a row took about 30 minutes. Buckets were weighed and someone punched cards we wore around our necks with the number of pounds we’d picked. I did this over and over again and went home with stained, cracked fingers and mud soaked through the knees of my jeans.

Fair Pay? Eat Your Weight in Fruit
Did I mention we were paid by the pound? If I recall it was about $.07 a pound. You could expect to make a few hundred dollars over the course of a summer, depending on your level of dedication, but it wasn’t close to minimum wage. In order to get us kids to stick it out for the entire season, the farms paid a bonus to stay until the end. You made more per pound the longer you worked. And we didn’t get paid at all until we quit or all the berries all were picked, whichever came first.

The strawberries were free – all we could eat.

Quitters Sometimes Win
By the second day Lori and I had decided to retire from strawberry picking and start a business of our own. L&L Odd Jobs was born. We spent a week making up the perfect ad and hung it at the corner store. We got one job. Lori’s mom paid us to pick weeds.

We had less money for rainbow shoelaces and scented ball point pens that summer, but more time to play in the lake, take long bike rides, and plan our next business venture.

What did I learn toiling in the strawberry fields?
· Know what you’re getting into.
· Know when to quit.
· Failing at something fun can be better than succeeding at something awful.

What early job pointed toward your self-employment?

Everywhere you can find pubs and cafes that are filled with self-promoted experts that have a piece of advice about anything and everyone. They know exactly what their boss should do and they speak with authority as they bark out their wisdom about business and finance.

The problem with this group of people is that they have earned a degree in speaking, but have never passed the exam of doing. The reason why is that their afraid to take risks. Their preference will always be to converse rather than conquer.

However, the least amount of risk that is taken, the less of a chance there will be for success. To succeed in any business you must willing to take risks. For you to be successful as a risk taker you must:

Not be too critical of yourself…
Perfectionism can kill your willingness to take a risk. Let’s face it, as much as we want every piece of the puzzle to be put together, it’s not going to happen. Often times as you “go for it” things happen that only happen because you decided to take a risk.

Not be driven by fear…
Fear can be real, but it must never way into your decision to take a risk. Fear in itself can often times be an illusion that sends false signals that can keep you from taking a risk. The more calculated the risk you take, the less fear you’ll find yourself dealing with.

Go for broke!
Risk takers that see their initiatives bring major success have never been governed by options. The only option that they have is a willingness to do EVERYTHING it takes to see their idea work. If that takes selling the house, getting creative to find funding, it doesn’t matter. They’ll do what it takes.

If you are struggling to take a risk, what are the things that concern you? If you’ve been successful because of a risk you’ve taken, what are the things that kept you going?

Leave a comment and be a part of the conversation.

According to Webster’s, a pundit is either a  learned man (ie. teacher), or a person who gives opinions in an authoritative manner usually through the mass media (ie. critic).  So I’ll aspire to be both, except the man part.  Because I’m a Lady Pundit. 

What Do I Know?

Why should you listen to what I have to say?  I’m not sure you should, but if you decide to, here’s what you’re getting:  I believe everything is business.  If you need to get things done, from a home renovation to a multi-national merger.  It’s all business.  If you are interacting with others, from the POA to the board of directors – business.  And no matter what you do, if you hope to earn money for yourself or others you’re in business.  You there, university fundraiser, you’re in business.  Engineer, Astrologer, Baker?  Business.  Teacher?  Management by numbers for sure. 

When I was young I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up.  All I knew for sure were the kind of clothes I wanted to wear.  I liked big eighties style shoulder pads and high pumps so I got a job in a bank.  Among other things, I learned I had a knack for numbers and getting things done.  I went to college and majored in accounting.  That let to all kinds of opportunities, interesting work, and a ten year plan for attaining partnership at a top tier firm. 

Then I did the unthinkable.  I had a baby and went all gushy.  I Mommy Tracked myself by transferring to the family-friendly tax department and reducing my client load and hours.  Then another unthinkable occurred.  My husband got transferred – more than once.  I spent the next few years working at various smaller accounting firms feeling un-challenged and training new kids to be my bosses.  They were, after all, full time employers without outside responsibilities like laundry and carpool.

Again, I decided to follow my fashion sense.  I needed jeans.  I bagged the tax grind and decided to focus on my family and a new found passion:  writing.  Suffering culture shock, but inspired by the characters I met in middle America, I wrote short stories and joined writers groups and felt very arty, not at all businessy, and far from Pundit. 

Then I started writing online and here we are back in business again.  Even art led me back to business.  That’s because It’s All Business.

What about you?  What’s your take on business?

If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy. — Jack Handey

Jack Handey, author of the popular deep thoughts, would have a tough time making it in today's business world. Why? Because it's not what you think, it's not how good you are, it's ultimately who you know.

I first began to realize that in 1995 when I was an electrical engineering student at the University of Kentucky. I applied for a co-op position at Lexmark, and never heard anything back.

I applied every semester for two years. Still nothing. Then one day an accounting professor or mine gave the class an assignment – go interview someone in your industry.

I found someone at Lexmark to interview about engineering, and we kept in touch after the interview. At the end of the semester he sent me a note saying that their co-op was leaving, and asking if I wanted to co-op in his department. Two years of following the rules got me nowhere. One hour of meeting with a real engineer got me what I wanted. He never asked for my resume. Never asked about GPA. Never asked anything except whether or not I wanted the position. It was my first taste of a major life lesson – it's who you know, not what you know.

Fast forward to my first real job out of college. It didn't take long for me to realize that management's perception of who should be promoted was heavily biased by who they liked. There was one engineer in particular who was highly skilled and detail oriented, but was one of the last to be promoted to the next level. Why? Because he was always working instead of schmoozing. As a result, it was thought that he "didn't have good people skills," when really, he was an excellent communicator, but simply didn't waste time with frivolous talk and schmoozing.

Fast forward to today. I sit in meetings with strangers and say things that are deep and insightful (at least, I think they are), but no one pays attention. A friend of mine in the group says "Rob has a popular business blog…" and suddenly I can say nothing wrong. My ideas are the same, but five minutes earlier, no one cared. Now I'm perceived as popular. Now my ideas matter.

The point of all this is that, in business, you really do get ahead more by being liked rather than by being brilliant. Sure, you need to have some minimum level of competence, but if people like your personality, they will let mild transgressions slide. And deep deep down, they really don't want to work with someone disciplined and demanding, because it might make them look bad. No one likes to be held accountable.

We wonder what is wrong with business today. I will tell you what is wrong. Corporate executive teams are unbalanced. They are heavy on the popular, but light on the deep thinkers.

I'm not saying that the deep thinkers should replace the jovial people-oriented executives. The latter bring a lot to the table, and are an important component of a well balanced team. I'm simply saying that corporate hierarchies should have both, and that my (admittedly limited and anecdotal) evidence is that corporate hierarchies heavily favor schmoozers.

People often ask me what I'm good at or what I love to do. They want me to say "finance" or "marketing," or some business discipline that has nice clean borders. That makes it easier to put me in a box with the others. For a long time I felt lost, because I would recite a long list of things that I enjoyed and felt qualified to do, and it came across to people as "this guy is unfocused." Eventually I figured out what they all have in common, and now I tell people "I'm good at holding complex models of systems in my head, and optimizing them for certain outputs." To me, designing a circuit, teaching a college course, starting a business (I have done all three) all have this trait in common – they are complex systems that need to be understood and manipulated to attain certain goals. By understanding how the parts of a circuit fit together, I can create the voltage I need at the output. By understanding the interaction of variables in a business, I can move them around one way to maximize cash flow, another to maximize market share, or a different way to maximize profit. It depends on what is needed.

I fancy myself a deep thinker, but the truth is that I've gotten ahead primarily by schmoozing.

I guess what I really want to accomplish with this post is two things. First, to those of you who hire regularly, I want to encourage you to look beyond minimum qualifications and how much you like someone as a person, and to probe for deep intuitive thinkers. They can bring a creative problem solving touch to your organization that may otherwise be lacking.

For those of you that are deep thinkers and feel like you sometimes get overlooked, I want to encourage you to suck it up and network as much as you can. The world works a certain way, and it makes no sense to fight the system until you have a position of authority that allows you to make a difference.

Just last night I was on a phone call explaining to someone that I was worn out from "meeting with people." She said that it didn't sound too hard. But she's not an introvert. It's not hard for her. We discussed that for a second, and then I explained that, even though I don't enjoy it, it is something I have to do to be successful.

Ultimately, a business that only promotes one type of person is like a car that without a steering wheel. It's fine as long as there are no curves on the road. Long term success comes from being flexible, and for that, you need a team of people who don't all think and act the same way. Embracing the deep thinkers in your organization is a step in the right direction.

This writeup of Munger's speech is fantastic. Here are just a few snippets of wisdom from it.

[Told the story of Max Planck and his chauffeur. After winning the Nobel Prize, Planck toured around giving a speech. The chauffeur memorized the speech and asked if he could give it for him, pretending to be Planck, in Munich and Planck would pretend to be the chauffeur. Planck let him do it and after the speech someone asked a tough question. The real chauffeur said that he couldn't believe someone in such an advanced city like Munich would ask such an elementary question and as such, he was going to ask his chauffeur (Planck) to reply].
In this world we have two kinds of knowledge. One is Planck knowledge, the people who really know. They've paid the dues, they have the aptitude. And then we've got chauffeur knowledge. They have learned the talk. They may have a big head of hair, they may have fine temper in the voice, they'll make a hell of an impression. But in the end, all they have is chauffeur knowledge. I think I've just described practically every politician in the United States.

]]> http://www.businesspundit.com/charlie-munger-at-usc/feed/ 3 http://www.businesspundit.com/business-morality-markets-are-relationships/ http://www.businesspundit.com/business-morality-markets-are-relationships/#comments Wed, 05 Apr 2006 20:26:09 +0000 Rob May http://www.businesspundit.com.php5-6.websitetestlink.com/?p=2625 O'Reilly Radar has an interesting post about business as morality. The beginning is ok, but I don't totally agree with Doc's notes about three systems of morality. I tend to believe that almost anything you do ends up being for... Read more

]]> O'Reilly Radar has an interesting post about business as morality. The beginning is ok, but I don't totally agree with Doc's notes about three systems of morality. I tend to believe that almost anything you do ends up being for self-interest. (Even devoutly religious people are self-interested. They want to go to heaven).

The part that I found interesting was this (emphasis mine).

But relationship is what actually makes markets. I'm talking about real markets here: places where we do business and make culture. Relationship takes the passions we put into creating businesses and makes them work in the social context we call a market. (Did anybody ever go into business because they were looking for a way to please stockholders?)

That is an excellent question. Did they? For public companies no. For small closely held companies, possibly. But the broader point he is trying to make is still valid. You do things for customers first, not stockholders. The latter will profit when you take care of the former.

If you are interested in this, you can also read Doc's old post about the concept, and an old post I wrote about a Drucker passage on the purpose of business.

]]> http://www.businesspundit.com/business-morality-markets-are-relationships/feed/ 0 http://www.businesspundit.com/what-is-the-purpose-of-business/ http://www.businesspundit.com/what-is-the-purpose-of-business/#comments Mon, 20 Mar 2006 02:17:46 +0000 Rob May http://www.businesspundit.com.php5-6.websitetestlink.com/?p=2600 Over at Recruiting.com there is a nice discussion about the purpose of business. Is it profits? Is it customers? Click over and leave your comments. I gave my $.02 on the... Read more

]]> Over at Recruiting.com there is a nice discussion about the purpose of business. Is it profits? Is it customers? Click over and leave your comments. I gave my $.02 on the site.

]]> http://www.businesspundit.com/what-is-the-purpose-of-business/feed/ 0