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Establishing a new habit

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Today’s Get-it-Done Guy episode deals with how to form a new habit. Becoming more productive, setting new years resolutions, brushing your teeth differently … any sort of behavior change involves, well, changing behavior. Unfortunately, humans aren’t very good at changing behavior.

I’ve been fascinated for years by psychology and the human brain. I read research into cognitive and social psychology, behavioral finance, brain-based science, and so on, always looking for stuff that works to help develop new skills or change old ones.

I do all this because I love learning, and really enjoy anything that helps me do it better. One of the most effective models I’ve found for understanding how humans think is NLP or neuro-linguistic programming. Developed in the 70s, it’s considered a pseudo-science and not taken seriously.

I found, however, that I could use it and get effective, repeatable results. To this day, I teach elements of it to clients and friends and get demonstrable, measurable results.

Over time, various areas of science are independently discovering elements of NLP. Just this month in the January/February 2011 issue of Scientific America Mind, there’s an article discussing how we talk and think about the world in ways that correspond pretty directly to our bodies. In NLP, we call this “organ language” (I am shouldering a burden). Another NLP phenomenon called “submodalities” suggests that we speak literally about our internal world. “Things are looking up” would suggest that the speaker is making a mental picture and positioning it in the top area of their mental field of vision. I suspect submodalities will be next on the rediscovery agenda.

This Get-it-Done guy episode is the NLP “new behavior generator.” When it was developed 35 years ago, no one knew about mirror neurons, and sports psychology was in its infancy. Today, visualization is established as producing measurable results in sports performance. I’ve attempted to capture the essential elements of the actual behavior change technique, while augmenting it somewhat with poisoned apples and the occasional lesson in introspection and emotional self-management.

Facebook’s new UI: Productive? Failure?

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There’s been much ado about Facebook’s new profile pages. Facebook noticed people like pictures. So they added lots of pictures, hoping of course to hijack our attention completely, while they slide ads into our peripheral vision. But just because it’s more compelling, does that mean the new interface will actually work? I think not.

read more…

What are your droid recommendations?

After ten years of owning a Blackberry, I’ve decided to switch. I really, really, really want an iPhone. Sadly, it’s not available outside of AT&T for at least another year, and I don’t want to wait.

People say droid-based phones are excellent. What do you recommend? There are a gazillion droid-based phones. How do I choose?

Authenticity? Hogwash.

I’ve  been reading a lot about how important it is for companies to be “authentic” with their customers. People love to point out how “authenticity” is now what people need, and social media makes it all that much more important.

I beg to differ.

Authenticity doesn’t matter.

What matters to customers is not authenticity; it’s believing that they’re being treated authentically. There’s a world of difference between the two.

Here’s the authentic story: the companies you do business with are in business to make money, create prestige, and give people power. Very few of them would exist if the founders and employees had other sources of cash, status, and power. Maybe some of those founders and employees truly, genuinely care about the business as a vehicle for meaningful relationships. Here’s how you can tell: next time the company founders, see how many top managers reduce their salaries to keep their employers employed. Next time there’s a problem with a company’s product, let’s see how many companies actively seek out customers to refund their money (versus simply having a silent policy that complainers get refunds). And next time the company does something wrong or unethical or breaks a promise, watch how it eagerly rushes to its blog to discuss its ethical transgressions.

For most businesses, social media is simply another new hurdle to be dealt with. An appropriate brand image is designed and an ongoing conversation is created to reinforce that image. If part of that image is to be “authenticity,” then it helps for the blogger to put in a few embarrassing self-effacing comments or air a few customer complaints. And voila–authenticity achieved.

The Internet Doesn’t Necessarily Lead to Authenticity

There’s a theory that now there’s so much information around that it’s hard to hide misdeeds or give a crafted impression. Huh? Since when. I have direct experience to the contrary.

Several years ago I posted a blog post about a controversial issue in which a particular Fortune 500 company had a large, vested interest. Within an hour of my post, I got a call from the Board of Director’s PR person, informing me that they wanted to spread word of my post. It seems they had a database of 10,000 bloggers with a cumulative following of several tens of millions, who believed that they (the bloggers) were privileged keepers of truth. By leaking information to this network of bloggers, the company could flood the internet with whatever information (or misinformation) they wanted. It would appear to come from thousands of independent sources, all of whom were being played by being fed the pre-packaged information along with lots of flattery about how important they and their blog are to the world.

The company wins: it gets its message out there in ways that seem completely unrelated to the company.

The bloggers win: they are privvy to “inside” information, they increase their followings, and get a huge ego boost.

The consumers: well, they get to pay more money for stuff and keep consuming.

Authenticity is a Choice; Know Why You’re Choosing It

For some people, authenticity is a choice. They strive hard to present an online image that reflects what they’re like in person. I’m like that. As someone whose product is information–the market price for which has been steadily pushed down by the internet–what makes me unique is my personality. So I strive to present myself online with all my offline quirks.

So what do I do when someone tweets me, telling me they like my Get-it-Done Guy persona better than my Twitter or Facebook personae? I hadn’t realized they were different, but yeah, the Get-it-Done Guy is a kinder, gentler version of me, in part because he goes through an editing process first. So even when I’m doing my best, my different online presences bring different parts of my personality to the fore. I’m being authentic, it’s just that each lens into me is getting a different part of the whole.

Rather than worrying about authenticity, realize that internet commerce is about transactions. It’s not about making friends with a company. And as a company, the internet is simply one more playing field where reputation management matters. In my humble opinion, the easiest way to manage your reputation is to do a good job, ethically and morally. Then you don’t have to worry about handling the coverups.

I’ll end with the $100,000 question: is this blog post sincere, or just an attempt by me to give the impression I’m authentically sharing my thoughts?

Negotiating equity with a co-founder.

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A student entrepreneur wrote and asked how he should negotiate with his company co-founder, a Professor, for equity. The Professor has proposed the the student get almost nothing, and the Professor get the bulk of the equity. Here’s my response to the student.

Negotiating around equity is tricky. There are conventions, but at the end of the day, it really comes down to nothing more than the ability to conversationally create huge perceived value and then use that as a negotiating leverage.

Check out this article I wrote on the topic: https://www.steverrobbins.com/articles/equitydistrib.htm

The book Co-opetition defines your “value-added” in a negotiation as the value-of-the-deal-with-you-in-it minus the value-of-the-deal-without-you. Once you know your value added, it can help with negotiation. Let’s say you and a friend are starting a business and neither of you can be replaced. With both of you present, the business is worth $100. If either of you leaves, the business is worth $0, so you each have a value added of $100, which gives you symmetric bargaining power.

Let’s change the situation a bit. Let’s say that you have special technology without which the startup won’t work. He’s bringing valuable sales skills, but if he were to drop out, you could find someone else who could do sales, but let’s say it would take enough time and money that you’d have to spend $5 replacing him. (Thus, the value of the business without him would be $100-$5, since you spent $5 on a Craigslist ad to replace him.) Your value added is $100 – $0 = $100. His value added is $100 – ($100- $5) = $5.

In this scenario, you have considerably more bargaining power than he does. Note that having the bargaining power doesn’t mean you can or should get that proportion of the total pie, just that you have that relative strength of bargaining power.

I wouldn’t actually try to do specific numeric calculations. But do think about what you bring to the table that would be hard to replace, and use those as your disucssion points. There may be many things you bring to the table that justify a request for equity:

  • If you helped originate the idea.
  • If you plan to take lower wages or work longer hours that would be expected solely from your salary.
  • If you’re the only one who can do the work.
  • If you bring any unique resources or connections to the table.
  • If you put in initial cash to get it off the ground.

My prediction for the 2010s

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In 1999, I put forth the theory that we all had enough basic computing power and the competitive shift in the 2000s would be towards usability and user interface. I think that was about half right. The other half was the rise of social media, powered in large part by smartphones (whose success may be partially due to usability and user interface).

My prediction for the 2010s is that we’ll shift from “be connected” to “be less connected, but in just the right ways.” I suspect that by about 2013, we’ll begin to see a real backlash against the total information saturation we’re currently experiencing.

How do *you* stay motivated?

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A listener recently wrote in asking how to stay motivated at a really undesirable job, especially given that are job hunting and ready to bail the moment a good opportunity comes along.

How do you stay motivated when you have to do something you don’t like on an ongoing basis? (Even something like taking out the trash weekly.)  Please note that I may use your answers/suggestions in the episode based on this question.

See me on NBC tonight!

I had a great interview with Shelly Palmer on NBC today! It airs today at 6:30pm and 10pm. Here’s a quick guide for finding the correct channel in your area:

Service Provider Channel
Cablevision 109
Cablevision – Fairfield County, CT 118
Time Warner 161
Comcast 248
Comcast – Western NJ 158
Verizon Fios 248
RCN 28
Antenna (over the air) 4.2