Sunday, January 24, 2010
New Year, New Life-Don’t be trapped by the calendar. Create the life you want right now. Here’s where to start.
Friday, December 11, 2009
The Sport of Business
Written by Mark Cuban
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/12/09/the-sport-of-business-3/
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/12/09/the-sport-of-business-3/
Friday, July 31, 2009
4 Agreements to Live By
Everything we do is based on agreements we have made. In these agreements we tell ourselves who we are, what everyone else is, how to act, what is possible, and what is impossible. What we have agreed to believe creates what we experience. When these agreements come from fear, blocks and obstacles develop keeping us from realizing our greatest potential.
Based on ancient Toltec wisdom , the Four Agreements offer a powerful code of conduct that can rapidly transform our lives and our work into a new experience of effectiveness , balance and self supporting behavior.
BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.
DON'T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgement, self-abuse, and regret.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
To Anyone Who Told You That You Couldn't Do It..
So you have tried something and you have failed. Maybe numerous times. You may have been told you have no talent, aren't cut out for "this business" or are never going to "make it in this line of work". Well don't be discouraged. The following are stories of other people who were told the same thing or something similar and went on to be major successes! You might just recognize a few:
The Vice President of Columbia told this actor that he was never going to make it in the business. The actor? - Harrison Ford
His first book was rejected by 12 publishing houses and sixteen agents. - John Grisham
Turned down by a recording company saying "We don't like their sound and guitar music is on the way out" They were talking about the Beatles
Was told by his father that he would amount to nothing and be a disgrace to himself and his family - Charles Darwin
Told by a music teacher "as a composer he is hopeless" - Beethoven
Was told that "he couldn't sing at all" Enrico Caruso
Fired from a newspaper because he "lacked imagination and had no original ideas" - Walt Disney
Were told by Publishers that "anthologies didn't sell" and the book was "too positive "Rejected a total of 140 times. The book? Chicken Soup for the Soul. It now has 65 different titles and has sold over 80 million copies all over the world.
Told by a teacher he was "too stupid to learn anything" Thomas Edison
Failed the sixth grade - Winston Churchill
Wasn't able to speak until he was almost 4 years old and his teachers said he would "never amount to much" - Albert Einstein
Did poorly in school and failed at running the family farm - Isaac Newton
Was not allowed to wait on customers in the store he worked in because "he didn't have enough sense" - F. W. Woolworth
Was cut from the high school basketball team, went home, locked himself in his room and cried - Michael Jordan
Producer told her she was "unattractive" and could not act - Marilyn Monroe
This book was rejected 18 times before it was published. It then sold over one million copies the first year. The book was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Auditioned for All My Children and got rejected - Julia Roberts
Received 30 rejections and the author threw it in the trash. Luckily his wife fished it out again and encouraged him to resubmit it. The book was Carrie - the author Stephen King
As you can see, these are just a few of the people who refused to listen to the criticism or the "experts". If they could do it - so can you!
The Vice President of Columbia told this actor that he was never going to make it in the business. The actor? - Harrison Ford
His first book was rejected by 12 publishing houses and sixteen agents. - John Grisham
Turned down by a recording company saying "We don't like their sound and guitar music is on the way out" They were talking about the Beatles
Was told by his father that he would amount to nothing and be a disgrace to himself and his family - Charles Darwin
Told by a music teacher "as a composer he is hopeless" - Beethoven
Was told that "he couldn't sing at all" Enrico Caruso
Fired from a newspaper because he "lacked imagination and had no original ideas" - Walt Disney
Were told by Publishers that "anthologies didn't sell" and the book was "too positive "Rejected a total of 140 times. The book? Chicken Soup for the Soul. It now has 65 different titles and has sold over 80 million copies all over the world.
Told by a teacher he was "too stupid to learn anything" Thomas Edison
Failed the sixth grade - Winston Churchill
Wasn't able to speak until he was almost 4 years old and his teachers said he would "never amount to much" - Albert Einstein
Did poorly in school and failed at running the family farm - Isaac Newton
Was not allowed to wait on customers in the store he worked in because "he didn't have enough sense" - F. W. Woolworth
Was cut from the high school basketball team, went home, locked himself in his room and cried - Michael Jordan
Producer told her she was "unattractive" and could not act - Marilyn Monroe
This book was rejected 18 times before it was published. It then sold over one million copies the first year. The book was Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
Auditioned for All My Children and got rejected - Julia Roberts
Received 30 rejections and the author threw it in the trash. Luckily his wife fished it out again and encouraged him to resubmit it. The book was Carrie - the author Stephen King
As you can see, these are just a few of the people who refused to listen to the criticism or the "experts". If they could do it - so can you!
Friday, July 17, 2009
PRESS RELEASE- 7 Promotions, Inc. is Having Promotions!
7 Promotions, Inc. is Having Company Promotions
Even in this trying economy, 7 Promotions, Inc. is growing and projected to accomplish their 2009 goals.
Valhalla, NY, June 26, 2009 (PR.com)
7 Promotions, Inc. is hiring and ready to promote their entry level account executives to branch and client management positions.7 Promotions, Inc. is an outsourced sales and marketing firm. Fortune 500 companies hire 7 Promotions, Inc. for their unique face-to-face approach to their small and medium business sales and marketing.
“Our company uses a specific sales and marketing system that can be used with any client and in any market share, giving our company a lot of freedom and choice on where our future take us,” said Brad Hiller, Hiring Manager for 7 Promotions, Inc.
The big question is what clients will 7 Promotions, Inc. be working with by the end of the year, where will they be opening, and who will be managing them.
“It depends on our account executives personal and professional growth,” said Rene Leveque, Hiring Manager for 7 Promotions, Inc. “There is a strong sense of urgency from our clients to take on more market share and we have a waiting list of clients to work with. Since our company only promotes within and all promotions are based on an individual’s performance, it’s anyone game.”
To learn more about 7 Promotions, Inc. please check out their website: www.7promotionsinc.com
Even in this trying economy, 7 Promotions, Inc. is growing and projected to accomplish their 2009 goals.
Valhalla, NY, June 26, 2009 (PR.com)
7 Promotions, Inc. is hiring and ready to promote their entry level account executives to branch and client management positions.7 Promotions, Inc. is an outsourced sales and marketing firm. Fortune 500 companies hire 7 Promotions, Inc. for their unique face-to-face approach to their small and medium business sales and marketing.
“Our company uses a specific sales and marketing system that can be used with any client and in any market share, giving our company a lot of freedom and choice on where our future take us,” said Brad Hiller, Hiring Manager for 7 Promotions, Inc.
The big question is what clients will 7 Promotions, Inc. be working with by the end of the year, where will they be opening, and who will be managing them.
“It depends on our account executives personal and professional growth,” said Rene Leveque, Hiring Manager for 7 Promotions, Inc. “There is a strong sense of urgency from our clients to take on more market share and we have a waiting list of clients to work with. Since our company only promotes within and all promotions are based on an individual’s performance, it’s anyone game.”
To learn more about 7 Promotions, Inc. please check out their website: www.7promotionsinc.com
How to Become a Better Leader: Raising Your Level of Leadership: John Maxwell
John Maxwell’s Formula For Raising Your Level of Leadership
Published: September 12, 2007 in Knowledge@Emory
Best-selling author and leadership guru John C. Maxwell asked a packed Emory University’s Goizueta Business School audience to raise their hands if they had ever worked for a lousy boss.
The hands shot up. After all, isn’t the wretched boss one of nature’s most sublimely enduring creatures?
“Every one of us knows what it’s like to dread going to work because Mr. Magoo is leading the pack,” says Maxwell in a recent appearance sponsored by the Goizueta Christian Fellowship and the Leadership Speaker Series. “It’s just not any fun.”
The author of 47 books—including The 360 Degree Leader and The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership—Maxwell discussed what he terms the five levels of leadership, which are taken from his book Developing the Leader Within You.
Maxwell says it’s easy to tell a company characterized by Level One leadership, the lowest level, where the corporate ethos is this: We’re the boss and you’re not.
“People follow because they have to,” he told students and faculty in Boynton Auditorium. “If quitting time is 5 p.m., all the desks are cleared at 4:30. At 4:55, employees put on their gym shoes because they want traction. They wouldn’t want to slip on the way out and spend an extra minute there. At 4:59, they’re waiting for the gun to sound, and at 5 o’clock, they’re gone. It’s like a fire drill.
“In an organization high on positional leadership, the employees (think), ‘How little do I have to do, how little do I have to commit, to keep my job?’ ”
By contrast, effective leaders learn and grow, extending their influence and rising to the other leadership levels described by Maxwell:
• Level Two: People follow this type of leader because they want to. Leaders on this level—a quantum leap from Level One—are likeable. Relationships develop; people begin to feel passionate about their work; and energy grows within the company. Employees don’t put on their tennis shoes at 4:55 p.m.
• Level Three: People follow because they realize what the leader has done for the organization. Momentum builds. “All leaders know that the most important thing they can do for their company is to create momentum. When you have the ‘Big Mo’ going for you, everything gets easier,” observes Maxwell.
• Level Four: People follow because of what the leader has done for them. Such leaders develop the employees around them, which promotes long-term growth. “Loyalty kicks in at this level because you’ve made the people around you better. They’ve become loyal to you.”
• Level Five: People follow because of who the leader is and what he or she represents. Leaders on this level have spent years developing employees and building the organization. “Go through the first four levels and one day—guess what? —your people will put you on Level Five.”
Trouble is, many bosses never advance beyond Level One.
“Nothing wrong with it, just that it’s the lowest level,” says Maxwell. “What’s amazing is that nine out of 10 people think it’s the ultimate level. Many people get to this level and think, ‘OK, now I’m a leader.’ But that doesn’t make you a leader, it just means that you have a leadership position. The position doesn’t make the leader, the leader makes the position. If you have to tell the people in your group that you’re the leader, you’re not.”
Namely, successful people get along well with others; develop teamwork in the organization; maintain a good attitude, especially in the face of adversity; and lead effectively.
“People won’t go along with you unless they get along with you,” notes Maxwell. “Every one of you has worked in an environment where relationships were not what they should or could be. People lead people, not companies. When there’s a change and transition within a company, it’s almost always a people issue. After a while, they say, ‘Hey, I don’t need to work in this kind of environment.’ ”
Indeed, the ability to connect with people is absolutely critical to a leader’s success, he says. “Very few times do you see a highly successful person who has made a habit out of having bad relationships. Interestingly enough, I have three degrees, but I’ve never had a course in how to understand people.”
In addition, successful people are able to overcome adversity, often experiencing financial difficulties — even bankruptcy — before hitting their stride, he notes. “They have all kinds of issues in life. Anybody can have a great attitude on a good day, but (what counts) is when you’re in a corner and have to think creatively. The greatest gap between successful and unsuccessful people is the thinking gap.”
Added Maxwell, “Attitude isn’t everything—it won’t substitute for competence—but it’s the most important thing in your life. Successful people have a (good) attitude, especially about adversity, that really sets them apart.”
Maxwell cited two laws from his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. The Law of the Lid states that leadership ability determines a person’s effectiveness. The Law of Influence holds that influence is the true measure of leadership.
“Your business isn’t going to grow beyond your leadership (skills),” says the Amazon.com Hall of Fame author, whose books have sold over 12 million copies. “Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. The person who has the most influence within a given group at a given time is the true leader of the pack.”
A corporate executive once asked Maxwell for help in resolving a ticklish dilemma. Three employees were in the running for a leadership position. Which one to pick?
Replied Maxwell, “Put all three in some community volunteer project, where people don’t have to follow them. In six months you’ll know who your best leader is because the leader will be the one who can get people to follow who don’t have to follow.”
In the Goizueta audience was one executive MBA student long familiar with Maxwell’s philosophy. Lin R. Rogers (08MEMBA) is chairman of Rogers Electric, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based company he founded in 1983. Today it’s a multi-state operation with over 1,200 employees and $325 million in annual revenue.
“We’ll call John in when we have ‘dents in the armor’—weaknesses we need to work on,” says Rogers. “He’s also helped us develop second-and third-tier leadership in our organization.”
Rogers believes the W. Cliff Oxford Executive MBA at Goizueta will help prepare him for rapid growth in a company projected to top $500 million in annual revenue by 2012. “You want to make sure you have the skill set needed for that kind of growth,” explains Rogers. “The program strengthens your capabilities to adapt and grow in different environments.”
Indeed, Maxwell says leaders need to grow and develop themselves, so they can then develop the people in their organization. To do this, they must understand what it is that their employees value.
Developing an employee’s strengths and not correcting his or her weaknesses is a good place to start, Maxwell says. Even with great effort, he adds, someone lacking in talent in a given area can become only average at best. “Nobody wants to pay for average. When you’re developing people, find their strength zone and develop that.”
To add value to people, leaders must first value them, he says. “The Achilles heel of most leaders is that they don’t value people like they should. The first sign is when they start manipulating them—moving people for (the leader’s) own advantage —which is always wrong.”
Building teams and developing the people around them, is the essence of leadership, adds Maxwell. “They understand that the only way you can compound influence is to put a team together. One is too small a number to achieve greatness. To make an impact, you have to do it with other people—through partnerships, relationships and team-building.”
Published: September 12, 2007 in Knowledge@Emory
Best-selling author and leadership guru John C. Maxwell asked a packed Emory University’s Goizueta Business School audience to raise their hands if they had ever worked for a lousy boss.
The hands shot up. After all, isn’t the wretched boss one of nature’s most sublimely enduring creatures?
“Every one of us knows what it’s like to dread going to work because Mr. Magoo is leading the pack,” says Maxwell in a recent appearance sponsored by the Goizueta Christian Fellowship and the Leadership Speaker Series. “It’s just not any fun.”
The author of 47 books—including The 360 Degree Leader and The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership—Maxwell discussed what he terms the five levels of leadership, which are taken from his book Developing the Leader Within You.
Maxwell says it’s easy to tell a company characterized by Level One leadership, the lowest level, where the corporate ethos is this: We’re the boss and you’re not.
“People follow because they have to,” he told students and faculty in Boynton Auditorium. “If quitting time is 5 p.m., all the desks are cleared at 4:30. At 4:55, employees put on their gym shoes because they want traction. They wouldn’t want to slip on the way out and spend an extra minute there. At 4:59, they’re waiting for the gun to sound, and at 5 o’clock, they’re gone. It’s like a fire drill.
“In an organization high on positional leadership, the employees (think), ‘How little do I have to do, how little do I have to commit, to keep my job?’ ”
By contrast, effective leaders learn and grow, extending their influence and rising to the other leadership levels described by Maxwell:
• Level Two: People follow this type of leader because they want to. Leaders on this level—a quantum leap from Level One—are likeable. Relationships develop; people begin to feel passionate about their work; and energy grows within the company. Employees don’t put on their tennis shoes at 4:55 p.m.
• Level Three: People follow because they realize what the leader has done for the organization. Momentum builds. “All leaders know that the most important thing they can do for their company is to create momentum. When you have the ‘Big Mo’ going for you, everything gets easier,” observes Maxwell.
• Level Four: People follow because of what the leader has done for them. Such leaders develop the employees around them, which promotes long-term growth. “Loyalty kicks in at this level because you’ve made the people around you better. They’ve become loyal to you.”
• Level Five: People follow because of who the leader is and what he or she represents. Leaders on this level have spent years developing employees and building the organization. “Go through the first four levels and one day—guess what? —your people will put you on Level Five.”
Trouble is, many bosses never advance beyond Level One.
“Nothing wrong with it, just that it’s the lowest level,” says Maxwell. “What’s amazing is that nine out of 10 people think it’s the ultimate level. Many people get to this level and think, ‘OK, now I’m a leader.’ But that doesn’t make you a leader, it just means that you have a leadership position. The position doesn’t make the leader, the leader makes the position. If you have to tell the people in your group that you’re the leader, you’re not.”
Namely, successful people get along well with others; develop teamwork in the organization; maintain a good attitude, especially in the face of adversity; and lead effectively.
“People won’t go along with you unless they get along with you,” notes Maxwell. “Every one of you has worked in an environment where relationships were not what they should or could be. People lead people, not companies. When there’s a change and transition within a company, it’s almost always a people issue. After a while, they say, ‘Hey, I don’t need to work in this kind of environment.’ ”
Indeed, the ability to connect with people is absolutely critical to a leader’s success, he says. “Very few times do you see a highly successful person who has made a habit out of having bad relationships. Interestingly enough, I have three degrees, but I’ve never had a course in how to understand people.”
In addition, successful people are able to overcome adversity, often experiencing financial difficulties — even bankruptcy — before hitting their stride, he notes. “They have all kinds of issues in life. Anybody can have a great attitude on a good day, but (what counts) is when you’re in a corner and have to think creatively. The greatest gap between successful and unsuccessful people is the thinking gap.”
Added Maxwell, “Attitude isn’t everything—it won’t substitute for competence—but it’s the most important thing in your life. Successful people have a (good) attitude, especially about adversity, that really sets them apart.”
Maxwell cited two laws from his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. The Law of the Lid states that leadership ability determines a person’s effectiveness. The Law of Influence holds that influence is the true measure of leadership.
“Your business isn’t going to grow beyond your leadership (skills),” says the Amazon.com Hall of Fame author, whose books have sold over 12 million copies. “Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less. The person who has the most influence within a given group at a given time is the true leader of the pack.”
A corporate executive once asked Maxwell for help in resolving a ticklish dilemma. Three employees were in the running for a leadership position. Which one to pick?
Replied Maxwell, “Put all three in some community volunteer project, where people don’t have to follow them. In six months you’ll know who your best leader is because the leader will be the one who can get people to follow who don’t have to follow.”
In the Goizueta audience was one executive MBA student long familiar with Maxwell’s philosophy. Lin R. Rogers (08MEMBA) is chairman of Rogers Electric, an Alpharetta, Ga.-based company he founded in 1983. Today it’s a multi-state operation with over 1,200 employees and $325 million in annual revenue.
“We’ll call John in when we have ‘dents in the armor’—weaknesses we need to work on,” says Rogers. “He’s also helped us develop second-and third-tier leadership in our organization.”
Rogers believes the W. Cliff Oxford Executive MBA at Goizueta will help prepare him for rapid growth in a company projected to top $500 million in annual revenue by 2012. “You want to make sure you have the skill set needed for that kind of growth,” explains Rogers. “The program strengthens your capabilities to adapt and grow in different environments.”
Indeed, Maxwell says leaders need to grow and develop themselves, so they can then develop the people in their organization. To do this, they must understand what it is that their employees value.
Developing an employee’s strengths and not correcting his or her weaknesses is a good place to start, Maxwell says. Even with great effort, he adds, someone lacking in talent in a given area can become only average at best. “Nobody wants to pay for average. When you’re developing people, find their strength zone and develop that.”
To add value to people, leaders must first value them, he says. “The Achilles heel of most leaders is that they don’t value people like they should. The first sign is when they start manipulating them—moving people for (the leader’s) own advantage —which is always wrong.”
Building teams and developing the people around them, is the essence of leadership, adds Maxwell. “They understand that the only way you can compound influence is to put a team together. One is too small a number to achieve greatness. To make an impact, you have to do it with other people—through partnerships, relationships and team-building.”
Secrets of Greatness - Fortune Magazine - What it takes to be great
FORTUNE:
Secrets of Greatness
What it takes to be great:
Research now shows that the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work
By Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor-at-large
October 19 2006: 3:14 PM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett the world's premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was "wired at birth to allocate capital." It's a one-in-a-million thing. You've got it - or you don't.
Well, folks, it's not so simple. For one thing, you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don't exist. (Sorry, Warren.) You are not a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that's demanding and painful.
Born Winner? Golf champ Tiger Woods (pictured at 3 years old) never stopped trying to improve.
Woods devoted hours to practice and even remade his Swing twice, because that's what it took to get better.
Buffett, for instance, is famed for his discipline and the hours he spends studying financial statements of potential investment targets. The good news is that your lack of a natural gift is irrelevant - talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. You can make yourself into any number of things, and you can even make yourself great.
Scientific experts are producing remarkably consistent findings across a wide array of fields. Understand that talent doesn't mean intelligence, motivation or personality traits. It's an innate ability to do some specific activity especially well. British-based researchers Michael J. Howe, Jane W. Davidson and John A. Sluboda conclude in an extensive study, "The evidence we have surveyed ... does not support the [notion that] excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts."
To see how the researchers could reach such a conclusion, consider the problem they were trying to solve. In virtually every field of endeavor, most people learn quickly at first, then more slowly and then stop developing completely. Yet a few do improve for years and even decades, and go on to greatness.
The irresistible question - the "fundamental challenge" for researchers in this field, says the most prominent of them, professor K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University - is, Why? How are certain people able to go on improving? The answers begin with consistent observations about great performers in many fields.
Scientists worldwide have conducted scores of studies since the 1993 publication of a landmark paper by Ericsson and two colleagues, many focusing on sports, music and chess, in which performance is relatively easy to measure and plot over time. But plenty of additional studies have also examined other fields, including business.
No substitute for hard work
The first major conclusion is that nobody is great without work. It's nice to believe that if you find the field where you're naturally gifted, you'll be great from day one, but it doesn't happen. There's no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.
Reinforcing that no-free-lunch finding is vast evidence that even the most accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule.
What about Bobby Fischer, who became a chess grandmaster at 16? Turns out the rule holds: He'd had nine years of intensive study. And as John Horn of the University of Southern California and Hiromi Masunaga of California State University observe, "The ten-year rule represents a very rough estimate, and most researchers regard it as a minimum, not an average." In many fields (music, literature) elite performers need 20 or 30 years' experience before hitting their zenith.
So greatness isn't handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn't enough, since many people work hard for decades without approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What's missing?
Practice makes perfect
The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call "deliberate practice." It's activity that's explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one's level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.
For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don't get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day - that's deliberate practice.
Consistency is crucial. As Ericsson notes, "Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends."
Evidence crosses a remarkable range of fields.
In a study of 20-year-old violinists by Ericsson and colleagues, the best group (judged by conservatory teachers) averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next-best averaged 7,500 hours; and the next, 5,000. It's the same story in surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance.
The skeptics
Not all researchers are totally onboard with the myth-of-talent hypothesis, though their objections go to its edges rather than its center. For one thing, there are the intangibles. Two athletes might work equally hard, but what explains the ability of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to perform at a higher level in the last two minutes of a game?
Researchers also note, for example, child prodigies who could speak, read or play music at an unusually early age. But on investigation those cases generally include highly involved parents. And many prodigies do not go on to greatness in their early field, while great performers include many who showed no special early aptitude.
Certainly some important traits are partly inherited, such as physical size and particular measures of intelligence, but those influence what a person doesn't do more than what he does; a five-footer will never be an NFL lineman, and a seven-footer will never be an Olympic gymnast. Even those restrictions are less severe than you'd expect: Ericsson notes, "Some international chess masters have IQs in the 90s." The more research that's done, the more solid the deliberate-practice model becomes.
Real-world examples
All this scholarly research is simply evidence for what great performers have been showing us for years. To take a handful of examples: Winston Churchill, one of the 20th century's greatest orators, practiced his speeches compulsively. Vladimir Horowitz supposedly said, "If I don't practice for a day, I know it. If I don't practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don't practice for three days, the world knows it." He was certainly a demon practicer, but the same quote has been attributed to world-class musicians like Ignace Paderewski and Luciano Pavarotti.
Many great athletes are legendary for the brutal discipline of their practice routines. In basketball, Michael Jordan practiced intensely beyond the already punishing team practices. (Had Jordan possessed some mammoth natural gift specifically for basketball, it seems unlikely he'd have been cut from his high school team.)
In football, all-time-great receiver Jerry Rice - passed up by 15 teams because they considered him too slow - practiced so hard that other players would get sick trying to keep up.
Tiger Woods is a textbook example of what the research shows. Because his father introduced him to golf at an extremely early age - 18 months - and encouraged him to practice intensively, Woods had racked up at least 15 years of practice by the time he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, at age 18. Also in line with the findings, he has never stopped trying to improve, devoting many hours a day to conditioning and practice, even remaking his swing twice because that's what it took to get even better.
The business side
The evidence, scientific as well as anecdotal, seems overwhelmingly in favor of deliberate practice as the source of great performance. Just one problem: How do you practice business? Many elements of business, in fact, are directly practicable. Presenting, negotiating, delivering evaluations, deciphering financial statements - you can practice them all.
Still, they aren't the essence of great managerial performance. That requires making judgments and decisions with imperfect information in an uncertain environment, interacting with people, seeking information - can you practice those things too? You can, though not in the way you would practice a Chopin etude.
Instead, it's all about how you do what you're already doing - you create the practice in your work, which requires a few critical changes. The first is going at any task with a new goal: Instead of merely trying to get it done, you aim to get better at it.
Report writing involves finding information, analyzing it and presenting it - each an improvable skill. Chairing a board meeting requires understanding the company's strategy in the deepest way, forming a coherent view of coming market changes and setting a tone for the discussion. Anything that anyone does at work, from the most basic task to the most exalted, is an improvable skill.
Adopting a new mindset
Armed with that mindset, people go at a job in a new way. Research shows they process information more deeply and retain it longer. They want more information on what they're doing and seek other perspectives. They adopt a longer-term point of view. In the activity itself, the mindset persists. You aren't just doing the job, you're explicitly trying to get better at it in the larger sense.
Again, research shows that this difference in mental approach is vital. For example, when amateur singers take a singing lesson, they experience it as fun, a release of tension. But for professional singers, it's the opposite: They increase their concentration and focus on improving their performance during the lesson. Same activity, different mindset.
Feedback is crucial, and getting it should be no problem in business. Yet most people don't seek it; they just wait for it, half hoping it won't come. Without it, as Goldman Sachs leadership-development chief Steve Kerr says, "it's as if you're bowling through a curtain that comes down to knee level. If you don't know how successful you are, two things happen: One, you don't get any better, and two, you stop caring." In some companies, like General Electric, frequent feedback is part of the culture. If you aren't lucky enough to get that, seek it out.
Be the ball
Through the whole process, one of your goals is to build what the researchers call "mental models of your business" - pictures of how the elements fit together and influence one another. The more you work on it, the larger your mental models will become and the better your performance will grow.
Andy Grove could keep a model of a whole world-changing technology industry in his head and adapt Intel (Charts) as needed. Bill Gates, Microsoft's (Charts) founder, had the same knack: He could see at the dawn of the PC that his goal of a computer on every desk was realistic and would create an unimaginably large market. John D. Rockefeller, too, saw ahead when the world-changing new industry was oil. Napoleon was perhaps the greatest ever. He could not only hold all the elements of a vast battle in his mind but, more important, could also respond quickly when they shifted in unexpected ways.
That's a lot to focus on for the benefits of deliberate practice - and worthless without one more requirement: Do it regularly, not sporadically.
Why?
For most people, work is hard enough without pushing even harder. Those extra steps are so difficult and painful they almost never get done. That's the way it must be. If great performance were easy, it wouldn't be rare. Which leads to possibly the deepest question about greatness. While experts understand an enormous amount about the behavior that produces great performance, they understand very little about where that behavior comes from.
The authors of one study conclude, "We still do not know which factors encourage individuals to engage in deliberate practice." Or as University of Michigan business school professor Noel Tichy puts it after 30 years of working with managers, "Some people are much more motivated than others, and that's the existential question I cannot answer - why."
The critical reality is that we are not hostage to some naturally granted level of talent. We can make ourselves what we will. Strangely, that idea is not popular. People hate abandoning the notion that they would coast to fame and riches if they found their talent. But that view is tragically constraining, because when they hit life's inevitable bumps in the road, they conclude that they just aren't gifted and give up.
Maybe we can't expect most people to achieve greatness. It's just too demanding. But the striking, liberating news is that greatness isn't reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone.
Secrets of Greatness
What it takes to be great:
Research now shows that the lack of natural talent is irrelevant to great success. The secret? Painful and demanding practice and hard work
By Geoffrey Colvin, senior editor-at-large
October 19 2006: 3:14 PM EDT
(Fortune Magazine) -- What makes Tiger Woods great? What made Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett the world's premier investor? We think we know: Each was a natural who came into the world with a gift for doing exactly what he ended up doing. As Buffett told Fortune not long ago, he was "wired at birth to allocate capital." It's a one-in-a-million thing. You've got it - or you don't.
Well, folks, it's not so simple. For one thing, you do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don't exist. (Sorry, Warren.) You are not a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that's demanding and painful.
Born Winner? Golf champ Tiger Woods (pictured at 3 years old) never stopped trying to improve.
Woods devoted hours to practice and even remade his Swing twice, because that's what it took to get better.
Buffett, for instance, is famed for his discipline and the hours he spends studying financial statements of potential investment targets. The good news is that your lack of a natural gift is irrelevant - talent has little or nothing to do with greatness. You can make yourself into any number of things, and you can even make yourself great.
Scientific experts are producing remarkably consistent findings across a wide array of fields. Understand that talent doesn't mean intelligence, motivation or personality traits. It's an innate ability to do some specific activity especially well. British-based researchers Michael J. Howe, Jane W. Davidson and John A. Sluboda conclude in an extensive study, "The evidence we have surveyed ... does not support the [notion that] excelling is a consequence of possessing innate gifts."
To see how the researchers could reach such a conclusion, consider the problem they were trying to solve. In virtually every field of endeavor, most people learn quickly at first, then more slowly and then stop developing completely. Yet a few do improve for years and even decades, and go on to greatness.
The irresistible question - the "fundamental challenge" for researchers in this field, says the most prominent of them, professor K. Anders Ericsson of Florida State University - is, Why? How are certain people able to go on improving? The answers begin with consistent observations about great performers in many fields.
Scientists worldwide have conducted scores of studies since the 1993 publication of a landmark paper by Ericsson and two colleagues, many focusing on sports, music and chess, in which performance is relatively easy to measure and plot over time. But plenty of additional studies have also examined other fields, including business.
No substitute for hard work
The first major conclusion is that nobody is great without work. It's nice to believe that if you find the field where you're naturally gifted, you'll be great from day one, but it doesn't happen. There's no evidence of high-level performance without experience or practice.
Reinforcing that no-free-lunch finding is vast evidence that even the most accomplished people need around ten years of hard work before becoming world-class, a pattern so well established researchers call it the ten-year rule.
What about Bobby Fischer, who became a chess grandmaster at 16? Turns out the rule holds: He'd had nine years of intensive study. And as John Horn of the University of Southern California and Hiromi Masunaga of California State University observe, "The ten-year rule represents a very rough estimate, and most researchers regard it as a minimum, not an average." In many fields (music, literature) elite performers need 20 or 30 years' experience before hitting their zenith.
So greatness isn't handed to anyone; it requires a lot of hard work. Yet that isn't enough, since many people work hard for decades without approaching greatness or even getting significantly better. What's missing?
Practice makes perfect
The best people in any field are those who devote the most hours to what the researchers call "deliberate practice." It's activity that's explicitly intended to improve performance, that reaches for objectives just beyond one's level of competence, provides feedback on results and involves high levels of repetition.
For example: Simply hitting a bucket of balls is not deliberate practice, which is why most golfers don't get better. Hitting an eight-iron 300 times with a goal of leaving the ball within 20 feet of the pin 80 percent of the time, continually observing results and making appropriate adjustments, and doing that for hours every day - that's deliberate practice.
Consistency is crucial. As Ericsson notes, "Elite performers in many diverse domains have been found to practice, on the average, roughly the same amount every day, including weekends."
Evidence crosses a remarkable range of fields.
In a study of 20-year-old violinists by Ericsson and colleagues, the best group (judged by conservatory teachers) averaged 10,000 hours of deliberate practice over their lives; the next-best averaged 7,500 hours; and the next, 5,000. It's the same story in surgery, insurance sales, and virtually every sport. More deliberate practice equals better performance. Tons of it equals great performance.
The skeptics
Not all researchers are totally onboard with the myth-of-talent hypothesis, though their objections go to its edges rather than its center. For one thing, there are the intangibles. Two athletes might work equally hard, but what explains the ability of New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady to perform at a higher level in the last two minutes of a game?
Researchers also note, for example, child prodigies who could speak, read or play music at an unusually early age. But on investigation those cases generally include highly involved parents. And many prodigies do not go on to greatness in their early field, while great performers include many who showed no special early aptitude.
Certainly some important traits are partly inherited, such as physical size and particular measures of intelligence, but those influence what a person doesn't do more than what he does; a five-footer will never be an NFL lineman, and a seven-footer will never be an Olympic gymnast. Even those restrictions are less severe than you'd expect: Ericsson notes, "Some international chess masters have IQs in the 90s." The more research that's done, the more solid the deliberate-practice model becomes.
Real-world examples
All this scholarly research is simply evidence for what great performers have been showing us for years. To take a handful of examples: Winston Churchill, one of the 20th century's greatest orators, practiced his speeches compulsively. Vladimir Horowitz supposedly said, "If I don't practice for a day, I know it. If I don't practice for two days, my wife knows it. If I don't practice for three days, the world knows it." He was certainly a demon practicer, but the same quote has been attributed to world-class musicians like Ignace Paderewski and Luciano Pavarotti.
Many great athletes are legendary for the brutal discipline of their practice routines. In basketball, Michael Jordan practiced intensely beyond the already punishing team practices. (Had Jordan possessed some mammoth natural gift specifically for basketball, it seems unlikely he'd have been cut from his high school team.)
In football, all-time-great receiver Jerry Rice - passed up by 15 teams because they considered him too slow - practiced so hard that other players would get sick trying to keep up.
Tiger Woods is a textbook example of what the research shows. Because his father introduced him to golf at an extremely early age - 18 months - and encouraged him to practice intensively, Woods had racked up at least 15 years of practice by the time he became the youngest-ever winner of the U.S. Amateur Championship, at age 18. Also in line with the findings, he has never stopped trying to improve, devoting many hours a day to conditioning and practice, even remaking his swing twice because that's what it took to get even better.
The business side
The evidence, scientific as well as anecdotal, seems overwhelmingly in favor of deliberate practice as the source of great performance. Just one problem: How do you practice business? Many elements of business, in fact, are directly practicable. Presenting, negotiating, delivering evaluations, deciphering financial statements - you can practice them all.
Still, they aren't the essence of great managerial performance. That requires making judgments and decisions with imperfect information in an uncertain environment, interacting with people, seeking information - can you practice those things too? You can, though not in the way you would practice a Chopin etude.
Instead, it's all about how you do what you're already doing - you create the practice in your work, which requires a few critical changes. The first is going at any task with a new goal: Instead of merely trying to get it done, you aim to get better at it.
Report writing involves finding information, analyzing it and presenting it - each an improvable skill. Chairing a board meeting requires understanding the company's strategy in the deepest way, forming a coherent view of coming market changes and setting a tone for the discussion. Anything that anyone does at work, from the most basic task to the most exalted, is an improvable skill.
Adopting a new mindset
Armed with that mindset, people go at a job in a new way. Research shows they process information more deeply and retain it longer. They want more information on what they're doing and seek other perspectives. They adopt a longer-term point of view. In the activity itself, the mindset persists. You aren't just doing the job, you're explicitly trying to get better at it in the larger sense.
Again, research shows that this difference in mental approach is vital. For example, when amateur singers take a singing lesson, they experience it as fun, a release of tension. But for professional singers, it's the opposite: They increase their concentration and focus on improving their performance during the lesson. Same activity, different mindset.
Feedback is crucial, and getting it should be no problem in business. Yet most people don't seek it; they just wait for it, half hoping it won't come. Without it, as Goldman Sachs leadership-development chief Steve Kerr says, "it's as if you're bowling through a curtain that comes down to knee level. If you don't know how successful you are, two things happen: One, you don't get any better, and two, you stop caring." In some companies, like General Electric, frequent feedback is part of the culture. If you aren't lucky enough to get that, seek it out.
Be the ball
Through the whole process, one of your goals is to build what the researchers call "mental models of your business" - pictures of how the elements fit together and influence one another. The more you work on it, the larger your mental models will become and the better your performance will grow.
Andy Grove could keep a model of a whole world-changing technology industry in his head and adapt Intel (Charts) as needed. Bill Gates, Microsoft's (Charts) founder, had the same knack: He could see at the dawn of the PC that his goal of a computer on every desk was realistic and would create an unimaginably large market. John D. Rockefeller, too, saw ahead when the world-changing new industry was oil. Napoleon was perhaps the greatest ever. He could not only hold all the elements of a vast battle in his mind but, more important, could also respond quickly when they shifted in unexpected ways.
That's a lot to focus on for the benefits of deliberate practice - and worthless without one more requirement: Do it regularly, not sporadically.
Why?
For most people, work is hard enough without pushing even harder. Those extra steps are so difficult and painful they almost never get done. That's the way it must be. If great performance were easy, it wouldn't be rare. Which leads to possibly the deepest question about greatness. While experts understand an enormous amount about the behavior that produces great performance, they understand very little about where that behavior comes from.
The authors of one study conclude, "We still do not know which factors encourage individuals to engage in deliberate practice." Or as University of Michigan business school professor Noel Tichy puts it after 30 years of working with managers, "Some people are much more motivated than others, and that's the existential question I cannot answer - why."
The critical reality is that we are not hostage to some naturally granted level of talent. We can make ourselves what we will. Strangely, that idea is not popular. People hate abandoning the notion that they would coast to fame and riches if they found their talent. But that view is tragically constraining, because when they hit life's inevitable bumps in the road, they conclude that they just aren't gifted and give up.
Maybe we can't expect most people to achieve greatness. It's just too demanding. But the striking, liberating news is that greatness isn't reserved for a preordained few. It is available to you and to everyone.
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