The benefits of being stupid at work

“Superior intelligence often comes with hidden costs. Say you’re a person for whom schoolwork was always effortless. You may be more likely to become frustrated when a job doesn’t yield readily to effort.

“I often think that having had to work harder for good grades would have taught me much earlier that not everything worth doing comes easily — and not being immediately good at something doesn’t mean that mastery can’t come with hard work,” says Sara Grace, host of Ferrazzi Greenlight’s “Social Capitalist” podcast. …

The trick is not to play dumb, exactly, but rather to learn when to assert your superior intelligence and when to hide your light under a bushel. (And mix metaphors.) In other words, there’s being terrifically clever, and there’s making sure everyone realizes you’re terrifically clever. Those of us who don’t feel the urge to make sure everyone in the room understands, at every available opportunity, just how smart we are might do best of all. …

If you’re not worried about being perceived as a bit slow, you can ask better questions — better in the sense that they will likely yield more illuminating answers.”

Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything

“Launching a new enterprise—whether it’s a tech start-up, a small business, or an initiative within a large corporation—has always been a hit-or-miss proposition. According to the decades-old formula, you write a business plan, pitch it to investors, assemble a team, introduce a product, and start selling as hard as you can. And somewhere in this sequence of events, you’ll probably suffer a fatal setback. The odds are not with you: As new research by Harvard Business School’s Shikhar Ghosh shows, 75% of all start-ups fail.

But recently an important countervailing force has emerged, one that can make the process of starting a company less risky. It’s a methodology called the “lean start-up,” and it favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition, and iterative design over traditional “big design up front” development. Although the methodology is just a few years old, its concepts—such as “minimum viable product” and “pivoting”—have quickly taken root in the start-up world, and business schools have already begun adapting their curricula to teach them.”

The Invaluable $1.80 Beer Lesson on Selling Products and Buying Habits

“The great bear experiment

People were offered two beers–a premium one at $2.50 and a bargain beer for $1.80. … About 80 percent chose the more expensive one.

In the next experiment, an even cheaper option joined the first two–a beer for just $1.60. … 80 percent of people nabbed what became the middle option–at $1.80–and the rest bought the $2.50 offering.

Then the third take happened: the $1.60 beer was switched out for one of those ultra-premium offerings at a cool $3.40. … most people chose the $2.50 option, relatively few chose the low-cost $1.80 option, and about 10 percent nabbed the most expensive option.

…  Shifting the options influenced buyer behavior. The experiment confirms an old sales heuristic: if you offer different price points, people will choose between the plans rather than whether to buy the product or not. …

… The most obvious application would be to incorporate the three-way price-plan into your product … use the strategy on your friends and colleagues. … say you want to grab lunch with your work BFF but you don’t want to boss them into going to your favorite Cuban place–you’d rather allow them to arrive to that decision on their own.

… suggest three lunch spots: cheap and average Italian, reasonably priced and conveniently located Cuban, or distant and expensive Chinese. So instead of contemplating the worthiness of Cuban in and of itself, your BFF is comparing it to the crap Italian and the too-fancy Chinese, which should tip the lunch-scales in your favor–if that beer experiment was any indication.”

Why Does Apple Care About Its Share Price?

“Beset by critics and bedeviled by a declining stock price, Tim Cook, the company’s beleaguered chief executive,announced a big stock buyback and a substantial dividend increase. … these actions do raise the question why Apple (APPL), which has too much cash on its books and … unlikely ever again to need to raise money in the public markets, should worry so much about its share price anyway? …

Although many people believe that total shareholder return (TSR), which consists of changes in stock price and dividend payouts, actually reflects something about the quality of the company’s management, I am far from convinced. …

As research (pdf) by Stanford accounting professors Ron Kasznik and Maureen McNichols has shown, stock price returns are related to whether companies either beat or fall short of expectations, and earnings surprises can be a more important determinant of a stock’s price than actual operating performance. …

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for underpromising and overdelivering in jobs at all levels—it’s a nice way to build your managerial reputation. But we ought not to confuse image management with substantive performance. Some of the best-managed companies have share prices that don’t move much because their superior management and results are already reflected in their stock price. (Southwest Airlines (LUV) is one example.) That fact does not negate their outstanding results in the least.

Put simply, executives should spend more time on product development and customers and less time worrying about something (their stock price) that is more outside their control.”

What They Didn’t Teach Me in Engineering School

“The technical stuff is the easy part. Technical systems respond predictably, but people don’t. …

Engineering analysis can win minds, but not hearts. And hearts govern minds. …

What people believe is far more powerful than what they think. …

All technical systems are really human systems masquerading as technical systems.

If you let it, fear dominates. Be afraid and do it anyway.”

A New Way to Look at Optimism’s Role in Success

“General Stockdale was held captive for eight years during the Vietnam War. After being tortured 22 times and losing many friends in prison, he eventually made it out alive. A few decades later, Jim Collins, author of the famous book Good to Great interviewed Stockdale about his experiences as a prisoner of war. … Collins asked: ‘Who didn’t make it out alive?’

Stockdale’s answer was blunt: ‘Oh, that’s easy, the optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas …  We’re going to be out by Easter’ … then Thanksgiving … then … Christmas again … they died of a broken heart.’

… I had always considered myself an optimist, as anyone out there striving for greatness might. But was I setting myself up for failure?

The Stockdale paradox: Faith trumps optimism

There is a very clear line between keeping faith and plain optimism that everything will be okay. The last words that Stockdale shared with Collins stress that more than anything else: ‘You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end–which you can never afford to lose–with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.’

… It’s a small change in thinking that made huge difference … If you have faith that you will eventually succeed, by changing and trying over and over, without being frustrated after each individual setback, that’s when things work out. Then the fact that optimists lose (most of the time) isn’t so bleak, after all.”

Making Things Better Without Authority

“Without broad authority, you have to lead by facts … You have to lead by learning more. You have to lead with a positive spirit. You have to help people raise their consciousness. People want to do better, they don’t have a method. You’re bringing the method.”

Stop Trying to Catch Lightning in a Bottle

“I’m sure you’ve all heard saying derived from Voltaire, “don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good” which in a way is encapsulated in the lean startup movement and the ideology of shipping a “minimum viable product” (MVP) and then learning from your customer base. …

Because I live in startup land where everybody is a perfectionist. … every startup entrepreneur is trying to catch lightning in a bottle. … They want the perfect feature set, the PR company lined up to do the perfect press release, they want maximum coverage, rave reviews, viral adoption and they want to sit back and then wait for the signups to come roaring in. …

Even in the age of MVP worship I see founders who want to bundle too many features into a release because they’re worried that customers will be unhappy if they don’t. I see teams holding back on product releases even when the product is complete because they’re nervous it’s not yet good enough to get positive journalist reviews. They hold back on announcing their funding because they want to be sure they have 3 other important announcements to bundle …

Stop trying to catch lighting in a bottle.”

When Not to Listen to Your Employees

“Consider Joe and Sally, who report to Carla. Joe tells Carla what he thinks ought to be done and why Sally is wrong. Sally tells Carla what she thinks ought to be done and why Joe is wrong. Carla tries to figure out who is right, and comes up with her own idea. Joe, Sally and Carla are not working together, which is what they should do to find the best solution.

… unilateral escalations, have more negative consequences. … they create bad blood between the team members. Each believes that the other is going behind his or her back to lobby the boss, and rightly so. … they foster a political culture where everybody strives to secure a 500-pound gorilla – the manager – to play for their team.

To avoid end runs, … establish the following principles:

1. … Everybody can speak to anybody about any issue they find relevant.
2. If two people have a conflict they must first try to solve it among themselves through interest-based negotiation.
3. If they can’t reach an agreement, they must bring the problem to their manager together. …
4. They must present the disagreement as a shared narrative with alternative resolutions, highlighting the trade-offs they cannot resolve without the manager’s help.
5. If one of the parties (e.g. Sally) refuses to escalate jointly … the other can then escalate unilaterally.

… the manager must refuse to listen to any argument brought to her unilaterally unless she obtains an affirmative answer to the following questions: ….”

The Three Things It Takes to Be Wildly Successful

” … research shows … our relationships play an even more important part in an individual’s success. We need to operate in a much more interdependent manner. …

• Project-based work is on the rise. … Having strong interpersonal skills has a huge impact on the results the team is able to achieve.
• Shift to a knowledge and service economy. Having a “service mentality” to meet client/customer needs … You have to understand and CARE about their needs.
• The rise of online social networks. You and your reputation is out there for the world to see. …

… those who put the interests of the team (others) first are the ones who will achieve long-term success.

… “Takers” strive to get as much as possible from others and “Matchers” aim to trade evenly. “Givers” are the rare breed of people who contribute to others without expecting anything in return. … behave more like a Giver …

1. Be willing to give more than you receive. It could be something as simple as sharing an article …
2. Find your “helping” speciality. … a networking master? Invite people to join you at an event or make introductions.
3. … make an unpopular task … more fun, interesting or meaningful. How about playing music while filing or putting together binders? …

… Helping others does ultimately serve you best and sets you up for a wildly successful life. Amen to that sista!”