The Wrong Stuff is Now the Right Stuff: Teaching Tiger Woods to Play World of Warcraft
Mar 22, 2009 Strategic Planning, Talent Acquisition and Strength
When three different business leaders, from three different coasts, representing three different industries quote the same example to me in the same week, it’s worth taking note.
What’s with the Mozart and Tiger Woods 10,000 hours image that is striking a chord with so many sharp business minds?
For people who aren’t familiar with the reference, there are 2 best sellers out now that tell similar stories about expertise: Talent is Overrated by Geoff Colvin, and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, both loosely based on research that appeared in the Harvard Business Review as The Making of an Expert and research compiled in The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance. It turns out that the genius of Mozart has something in common with the genius of Tiger Woods—each one owes his success not only to an innate talent, but even more to the investment of 10,000 hours, which equates to 4 hours a day for 6 days a week, for 10 years. Since they both started so young, they had a chance to cut their teeth on the tough losses at a young age, but they still hit their stride only after hours and hours of hard work.
It takes 10,000 hours to become an “overnight success”
What is it that a California-based builder of hospitals, a Washington DC-based marketing guru, and a global leader in chemical manufacturing have in common that puts the same story on the tip of their tongues at the same moment? It’s the appeal of expertise finally having its day. Finally, the dirty secret of accomplished leaders is out—it takes a ton of hard work to get ahead of the pack in business. Especially in a week filled with scandals and stories of excessive rewards and bonuses, it is important to be reminded of the not-so-glamorous school of hard knocks and swings that takes true talent to the level of expert.
So much for today’s common wisdom—important, yes. But before everyone puts in the 10 years of 4 hours a day of 6 days a week to perfect his or her game, it’s worth considering the deeper question: “are the 10,000 hours you’re about to invest in expertise focused on the RIGHT STUFF?” Or, simply stated, How Would Tiger Woods do at World of Warcraft?
10,000 hours of expertise in the old stuff or the new stuff?
The first time I learned this lesson was in 5th grade, when I was learning the basics of basketball. Our teacher spent a couple of weeks teaching us the basics and it was a hell of a lot of fun. Shooting the perfect hoop, running fancy footwork drills, passing the ball, dribbling—easy to become addicted to that. Appealing to picture 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 10 years having a ball with that kind of hoopla.
Until the teacher explained that on Monday, we’d be facing THE OTHER TEAM. What? You mean we have to do all the stuff we just learned with someone else blocking us? Sticking their arms in our faces and screaming to distraction? Good thing I learned that early, so that my 4 hours a day, 6 days a week for 10 years could include the skill of training my peripheral vision for the unexpected jab or the distracting jump.
Or, in my case, in a 98-pound, 5 foot 2 frame, give up on basketball altogether and move on to a life in business.
But, the point is, sometimes we as business leaders get focused on hard-driving, nose to the grindstone commitment without reflecting on the RIGHT STUFF that is required for the business challenge at hand.
Breaking the “Other” Sound Barrier
Which brings us to Chuck Yeager, the guy who broke the sound barrier and was the inspiration for The Right Stuff.
The Right Stuff or Yesterday’s Stuff? Are our companies Wired for the Wars to Come?
It’s easy for Chuck Yeager to be everyone’s hero—he was mine for years, an inspiration because he represented the perfect combination of instinct, moxie, attitude, and machismo that inspired us all to be bad-asses in the day.
But last week, in the same week that everyone around me was quoting Gladwell and Colvin, I heard Chuck Yeager talking about warfare. Real warfare. And dogfights. With planes. And what he said blew me away (I’m paraphrasing): “with all the robotics of war these days, there’s a new kind of guy (gal) that will win wars—a person with manual dexterity and attitude, yes, but also the well-trained trigger finger of a gamer and the mental skills of a robotics expert.”
What? You mean it might be the Poindexters of the world, with their taped glasses, pocket protectors, ivory-white skin from sitting indoors all day, un-cut muscles, who have been playing those damn video games all day long for 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, for the past decade who might have the NEW RIGHT STUFF?
P.W. Singer pointed out at a recent lecture I attended, that modern wars are way more likely to be fought by robots controlled by geeks in cubicles than by soldiers with bayonets on the ground. So, 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, for 10 years training in jumping over fences and holding a weapon, will now include training new instincts with new reflex responses.
This is news that is too painful to admit.
Almost like when I realized that the cool artistic types who drew their lower-case “a’s” like architects and had fingers covered with charcoal were soon to be replaced by the binary code toting AutoCad-ers.
But, we’re not in the business of fighting wars. Not literal wars. Or drawing pictures. We’re in the business of creating shareholder value. So, it’s more about Steven Johnson’s book, Everything Bad is Good for You, where he made the point that young Poindexters, with over-developed thumbs from gaming, might be smarter than we think. And, better-prepared to lead in business in the future than we thought.
What is the secret weapon that we can insert into our arsenal that will prepare our companies for the coming era?
Which questions do we need to ask ourselves before we embark on a company-wide initiative that will require 4 hours a day, 6 days a week for years level of effort? How can we instill a sense of the right stuff attitude in our companies that incorporates a forward-view of the forces that will face us sooner than we admit: global competition, scarcer resources, a need for innovative product design, pressure to accelerate time to market for new service offerings?
It turns out that the secret weapon is a question, not an answer. It’s actually a state where we, as business leaders, force ourselves to Aim before we Fire. We need to insert new questions into the equation before we blindly (or deaf-ly) go about copying the Mozart model:
- Have we scanned the business landscape first so that we are certain we’re practicing discipline in the right areas?
- Before we take on a new initiative designed to streamline our processes (like a Six Sigma optimization process), have we thought about whether the processes we’re trying to perfect are the ones that matter most to our customers?
- Before we rigorously pursue a business-to-business market strategy, have we looked beyond what our suppliers are telling us and touched the people who are using our stuff?
- Insert your Questions here.
What are the questions that you’ll ask yourselves the minute before you embark on your next turnaround?
How will you know that you’ve got to change course on your 4 hour a day, 6 day a week initiatives? How will you know that you’re leading your teams down a road where their huge efforts will pay off? How will you know that your stuff is the right stuff for the future?
Most of us aren’t facing Doomsday Missions, at least not right now. But, it turns out that these questions are the proven remedy in the area of Doomsday-Avoidance, where we train ourselves 4 hours a day, 6 days a week not in one particular skill, but in one very important mindset—looking ahead and making sure we’ve asked the right questions about our stuff.
So, in the spirit of Doomsday-Avoidance, we present Elvis Perkins, who turns a funeral dirge into a real butt-kicker.
Elvis Perkins: Doomsday
Lyrics to Doomsday (excerpted)
And while I forget your name
I forget your sweet face
Till Doomsday fell out again.
Man I went wild last night
Oh yes I’ll pay tonight
but I don’t let Doomsday bother me.
Does it bother you?
I know you told me again and again
will it mean that we won’t be friends
when Doomsday rears her ugly head again?
Not in all my wildest dreams it never once was seen
that Doomsday might fall anywhere near a Tuesday.
But flight across the skies seein’ fate before my eyes
there isn’t any sense to feel the light
for I don’t plan to die
nor should you plan to die
when Doomsday rears her ugly head again.
Tags: experts
Darwin-ners and Dar-losers: How to Adapt, Anticipate, and Avoid Extinction
Feb 10, 2009 Strategic Planning
This week marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, and I just attended the 2009 TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, and Design www.ted.com) where there was a lot of discussion about evolution and other biological and scientific themes juxtaposed with presentations on the economy and the future of business.
Which brings to mind an important theme about the differences between business ideas that make it versus business ideas that go extinct.
At the TED conference, Nina Jablonski, author of Skin: A Natural History, presented evidence that skin offers valuable clues to adaptation. For example, when people with high levels of melanin, designed to protect from the sun, suddenly relocated to places with radically different climates, melanin, the very thing that allowed people to thrive in the tropics set the stage for vitamin D deficiencies and other ailments because tropical skin was not well-adapted for colder, less sunny climates.
How do the forces of adaptation and evolution apply to the world of business? Which attributes separate the winners from the losers as shifts in business climate occur? And, is there a trait that keeps business ideas and even companies ahead in the evolutionary cycle?
It’s easy to point to signs of extinction in business, where the equivalent of the horse and buggy yields to the equivalent of automobiles. Many a business concept hit the cutting room floor because it did not keep up with changing times.
But, we can learn even more valuable lessons from companies that adapted nimbly to changing times.
In December 2008, Ravi Mehrotra, chief scientist and co-founder of IDeaS, a revenue optimization software company with a focus on the hotel industry, explained how they avoided extinction when the hotel industry shifted dramatically post-9/11. “With the firm on the verge of extinction IDeaS decided to sell its software over the Internet. That model, now called software-as-service, enabled IDeaS to quickly and cheaply distribute its technology to big and small hotels alike.” (www.startribune.com)
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, IDeaS’ approach not only helped IDeaS avoid extinction, but led to their acquisition by SAS Institute, Inc. Today, IDeaS software calculates most hotel prices in the United States and is expanding into car parks in London, bus service in Mexico and sports arenas in the United States.
By contrast, a recent report describes the threat of disappearance of the garment industry in New York’s Garment District, whose manufacturers produce roughly one-third of all clothing sold within the United States. According to statistics from the NYCEDC, the fashion industry in Big Apple employs about 169,000 people, but rising rents and reduced demand put that industry at risk of disappearance. Nanette Lepore, a fashion designer whose entire collection was designed and sewn in the Garment District, brought the economic issues for the industry to light when she was quoted in a recent article in a college newspaper (www.loyolagreyhound.com): “Here in the fashion capital of our country, the factories, trim and fabric shops, design studios and showroom are on the verge of extinction.”
The differences between a company or an industry that faces a chilling turn in the business climate and is nimble enough to survive versus those where the forces are too overwhelming ultimately separate those that adapt and thrive from those that disappear.
Businesses are luckier than the biological species described by Dr. Jablonski. It can take an entire generation or longer for animals to change their skin. But, business leaders can see a shift in climate and react much more quickly. For business, the ability to see the signs quickly and change course becomes the most important attribute in the survival of the fittest.
Tags: Evolution in business
2009: What Do You See Out There?
Jan 21, 2009 Strategic Planning
Welcome to 2009. The year of uncertainty. A time when people are feeling betrayed by the economic models and equations and forecasting that had given us our sense of security.
What Do You See Out There That Lets You Know it’s Monday?
A boy, looking out the window for signs of the future.
It’s the beginning of a new era as we swear in a President of the United States who was, just a few months ago, a long shot. As our world gets more uncertain, the desire to know the future remains constant: every business leader I meet greets me with the question, “What is your prediction for business for 2009?”
They want to know specifics about the stock market, about oil prices, about purchasing patterns, about global commerce. What they really seem to be asking is, “how can we avoid being blindsided? Which emerging forces should we be tracking right now to lead our companies toward a more certain and thriving future?”
It struck me that the skills that are required for businesses to thrive are less about the knowledge of one particular fact, or about keeping our eyes on one particular competitor. By definition, all of those measures are defined by what is, what was, or by what has always been.
The skills that are required for uncertain times should be driven less by facts and more by sensitivity and rapid response. The better approach for changing times should focus more on sensitivity to trends, the discipline of being prepared for adaptation, and the processes that lead to nimbleness.
The questions should be: “What am I noticing that could lead to change? Which factors might lead my company to extinction? Which factors open the window of opportunity to beat the odds, capitalize on the trends, gain momentum in the market, drive sales, and set our company on a path to growth? What can I learn from other industries that have faced these issues to improve my chances at success?”
We need to interpret differently.
Easier said than done?
Not necessarily. It’s a matter of focus.
When we focus all of our business processes and strategic planning efforts on absolutes and predictions, we sometimes make the assumption that double digit growth will come from taking a spreadsheet of 2008 and hitting: “multiply by 1.10″ and convincing ourselves that we’re all set for 2009.
Better to initiate the discipline of training ourselves and our co-workers to start to read the signals of what’s changing in our business environment, instilling a sense of urgency for considering how those shifts could affect our business, and pouncing on the chances to adapt to the changing environment.
Most experienced people see change coming. They are like the elephants before the tsunami who felt the tremors way before the storm. But if all of our measures are geared toward events that have happened, all of our measures will miss what’s to come. On the other hand, if we synthesize our gut sense of what the signals all mean, we can have a better starting point for responsiveness.
How can we become companies that know how to read signals, interpret, and take action?
I’m reminded of a scene from years ago, when my friend’s 4 year old son was standing at the window, looking out at the neighborhood at the beginning of the day. He looked out for a long time, and finally turned around and said, “Dad, just what is it about what you’re seeing out there that lets you know it’s Monday?”
What signs and signals do you see out there and what do you think your “Monday” is?