The Mundanity of Excellence

A huge barrier to effectiveness is lying. We do not necessarily identify the barrier as lying. But, lying it is.

The form of lying, which this barrier takes, is wishful thinking. The barrier results from the way we tend to lie to ourselves. Hoping that life is something other than it truly is.

I recently read an old article, by Dan Chambliss, a professor of sociology at Hamilton College. The article was titled, "The Mundanity of Excellence."

The truth is, achieving excellence is a rather mundane matter. It is an accumulation of small, seemingly trivial, things.

A lot of us would like to think excellence is achieved thanks to natural ability or talent. According to Chambliss, this mindset soothes by, "relieving those of us who are not excellent of responsibility for our condition."

As Jean-Paul Sartre has said, "What people would like is that a coward or a hero be born that way." Wish, though we may, this perspective turns out to be false.

Chambliss did the research, for his article, by studying Olympic swimmers. Dan theorizes, "Olympic sports, and competitive swimming in particular, provides an unusually clear opportunity for studying the nature of excellence. In other fields, it may be less clear who are the outstanding performers: the best painter or pianist, the best businessperson, the finest waiter or the best father."

Chambliss's conclusion? Excellence is mundane. Meaning, the behaviors and attitudes, which culminate in excellence, are not superhuman or special. They are ordinary, indeed, run-off-the-mill.

The professor takes direct aim at the talent myth. Saying the notion of 'talent' obscures more than it illuminates.

Talent is a weird, amorphous, catch-all term. According to Chambliss, "Talent is indistinguishable from its effects." For this reason, he writes, "Perhaps there is no such thing as talent."

Additionally, the requisite amount of talent, to achieve excellence, is not enormous. The author writes, "The amount of talent needed for athletic success seems to be strikingly low." Specifically, he says, "Wilma Rudolph had polio as a child, then came back to win the Olympic 100 meter dash."

In no way is this meant to say that excellence is easy. But, it is also not mystical. Indeed, it is mundane. For this reason, as I once heard said, it is important that we learn to, "Master the mundane."

It is a lot like how Drucker said you achieve productivity. Drucker said you get productivity, "The way the drill sergeant of old drilled recruits, which is you do the same thing every day. But you do it, and you do it, and you do it."

Excellence need not be some elusive concept. Let's keep it real. We cannot increase our effectiveness, we cannot take things to the next level, if we continue to live lies and half-truths.

Leadership means Effectiveness

Drucker once said, "Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things."

In slightly different terms, management is about doing things right. And, leadership is about doing the right things.

Leadership is about achieving results. It is about establishing the mission, setting a direction, and charting the course.

Leaders then take effective action, and stay the course, through to completion.

Drucker once said, the only true definition of a leader is someone who has followers. And, you cannot expect people to follow you if you do not perform. If you do not achieve results.

Leadership is largely about effective living. Which ain't easy. But it is necessary.

Am I Crazy?

One thing I have discovered, about myself, is that I really like to talk to myself. I am not completely certain, but, I am pretty sure this fact does not certify me as crazy.

The reason I talk to myself is because it is how I learn. I learn a lot by hearing myself talk. And, as it turns out, learning by hearing yourself taught is pretty common.

A couple weeks ago, I posted one of the most important articles I have ever read. It is titled, "Managing Oneself." And, it was written by Peter Drucker.

Click here if you have not yet read the article.

In Managing Oneself, Drucker advises that we ask ourselves the question, "How do I learn?" Peter says, "there are probably half a dozen different ways to learn."

One of the main ways to learn is by hearing yourself talk. This is how Drucker, himself, learns. And you might, too.

There is, however, one big challenge. A lot of us who talk to ourselves feel ashamed for doing so. We worry that people will think we are unhinged or even crazy.

This is a tendency which needs to be countered. And, the counteraction is the reason for this post.

You see, this past week I read another interesting article. The article was titled, "People Who Talk To Themselves Aren’t Crazy, They’re Actually Geniuses." And, it was written by Gigi Engle.

I am not sure talking to yourself will make you a genius. But, I am certain it does not qualify you as crazy.

Here is the article, in its entirety:

“If I were my peach smoothie body butter, where would I be?” I say to no one while I search for my favorite lotion. Then: “Aha! Here you are. You rolled under my bed.”

I talk to myself a lot. And I don't mean only in the privacy of my own home. I talk to myself while I'm walking down the street, when I'm in my office or when I'm shopping.

Thinking out loud helps me materialize what I'm thinking about. It helps me make sense of things.

It also makes me look insane. Crazy people talk to themselves, right? They're conversing with the voices inside their heads. If you're yammering on to nobody, everyone thinks you're a mental patient.

I'm sure many people have seen me wandering down the streets of NYC and thought, “The crack addiction is strong with that one.”

I'm positive I look disturbingly similar to Gollum in “Lord Of The Rings” when he dotes over his “precious.”

Well, the joke is on the judgmental assh*les who give me a side-eye on the train. (By the way, I SEE YOU!).

Talking to yourself, it turns out, is a sign of genius.

The smartest people on earth talk to themselves. Look at the inner monologues of the greatest thinkers. Look at poetry! Look at history!

Albert Einstein talked to himself. He wasn't an avid social butterfly when he was growing up, and he preferred to keep to himself.

Einstein.org reports that he “used to repeat his sentences to himself softly.”

So, you see? I'm not alone, and I'm not completely bonkers. I'm just really smart. Ha!

Talking to yourself makes your brain work more efficiently.

In a study printed in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, psychologists Daniel Swigley and Gary Lupya hypothesized that talking to yourself was actually beneficial.

We're all guilty of it, right? We might as well celebrate it and study the benefits.

In one experiment, Swigley and Lupya gave 20 people the name of an object (like a loaf of bread or an apple), which they were told to find in the supermarket.

During the first set of trials, the participants were bound to silence. In the second set, they repeated the object’s name out loud as they looked for it in the store.

According to Live Science, test subjects found the object with greater ease when they spoke to themselves while searching. Saying things out loud sparks memory. It solidifies the end game and makes it tangible.

Talking out loud to yourself helps you only when you know what you need.

If you want to find something, speaking the object’s name out loud is helpful only when you’re familiar with its appearance.

You have to know what it is you're looking for; otherwise, you'll just confuse yourself. According to Lupyan, “Speaking to yourself isn’t always helpful—if you don’t really know what an object looks like, saying its name can have no effect or actually slow you down. If, on the other hand, you know that bananas are yellow and have a particular shape, by saying banana, you’re activating these visual properties in the brain to help you find them.”

In other words, you can't make sense of something without knowing what you're dealing with. If you know what you need and verbalize its name, you will better your chances of finding it.

You learn as a child by talking to yourself.

Babies learn to speak by listening to grownups and mimicking what they say. Talking is all about practice.

We need to hear our voices to learn how to use them.

According to Live Science, “self-directed speech can help guide children’s behavior, with kids often taking themselves step-by-step through tasks such as tying their shoelaces, as if reminding themselves to focus on the job at hand.”

Think about all the munchkins you know. Haven't you seen them talking to themselves while they play with a toy car or favorite stuffed animal?

A toddler can remain focused by talking through his problems.

If a small boy is playing with his toy cars, he might say, “The small car can fit through this garage door, but the big truck is too big.” At the same time, he’ll test which of the cars fit inside the toy garage.

A child learns by talking through his actions. By doing so, he remembers for the future how he solved the problem. Talking through it helps him or her make sense of the world.

Talking to yourself helps you organize your thoughts.

What helps me the most when I talk to myself is that I’m able to organize the countless wild thoughts running rampant through my brain.

Hearing my issues vocalized calms my nerves. I’m being my own therapist: Outer-voice me is helping inner-brain me through my problems.

According to psychologist Linda Sapadin, talking out loud to yourself helps you validate important and difficult decisions. “It helps you clarify your thoughts, tend to what's important and firm up any decisions you're contemplating.”

Everyone knows the best way to solve a problem is to talk it out. Since it's your problem, why not do it with yourself?

Talking to yourself helps you achieve your goals.

Making a list of goals and setting out to achieve them can be hard to do. It can be overwhelming.

Talking yourself through those goals is a much steadier way to achieve them. If you walk yourself through the process, each step will seem less difficult and more concise.

Things will suddenly seem doable, and you'll be less apprehensive about diving into the problem.

As Sapadin puts it, “Saying [your goals] out loud focuses your attention, reinforces the message, controls your runaway emotions and screens out distractions.”

It puts things in perspective and grounds you.

Talking to yourself means that you are self-reliant. Like Albert Einstein, who “was highly gifted and acquired early in his life the ability to exploit his talents,” people who talk to themselves are highly proficient and count on only themselves to figure out what they need.

We “crazies” are the most efficient and intelligent of the bunch. We take the time to listen to our inner voices, out loud and proud!

Sales Trumps Innovation

Last week, I talked about the importance of entrepreneurial execution. I said, "A big part of execution is the sales and marketing which converts an idea into value."

Then, during the week, I read an interesting article. And, instead of trying to paraphrase, I figured you should hear from the source.

The author was a gentleman named Harry Red. The article was titled, "Why Even Space Startups Insist Sales Are More Important Than Technology." And it had a subtitle of, "It doesn't matter how great your product is -- if you can't sell it, you'll never be able to make it."

Here is the article, in its entirety:

When entrepreneurs get a new idea, they tend to wonder about how they can build it and what technology they'll need. They dive in, work like crazy and finally end up with a solution.

Bad move. If you can't sell your solution, your technical work amounts to precisely nothing.

Space technology startups know this well. Working on ambitious ideas in an industry most people consider outlandish, you'd think they have their hands full with technology only.

But guess what? Successful space companies assign a special priority to sales. They know every dollar and minute spent on tech must ultimately justify itself.

To save you a mountain of time, here are some space industry secrets to get the information you need without doubling down on product development.

1. Test for market need by pre-selling.

Take Jane Poynter, founder and CEO of World View Enterprises -- a space company which aims to use special high-altitude balloons as both a new kind of satellite and as a vehicle to take passengers on a trip almost 20 miles up into the sky. In an interview, Poynter told me:

“The moment we started talking about World View and the kinds of things we were going to do, our phone rang off the hook.”

Early on, Poynter experienced strong enthusiasm from her potential customers. People wanted to use their technology for all kinds of things. Hence, she saw a market need and redoubled her efforts to serve it. She sold the value proposition underneath the technology before developing it.

If your vision is so ambitious that people just won't believe you can do it, then don't panic. You just need to make your voice more authoritative so the right people can't ignore you.

For instance, Astrobotic Technology -- a space logistics company aiming to deliver payloads to the moon -- built significant authority over nine years by assembling a credible team of space scientists and engineers. And thus, it managed to pre-sell its logistics services to big clients. Suddenly, it no longer sounds crazy.

As Astrobotic CEO John Thornton told me: "The ultimate way to test for market need is by selling and collecting checks.”

You need to do the same. Describe what value your product or service will deliver for your customers and see if you can get them to buy it before it's built. Score even a few pre-sales and your voice will already weigh more -- and thus your vision will seem more attainable.

And once you start building, you're still not off the hook.

2. See if somebody already solved your technology problem.

Even when you do have a genuine technology problem, chances are somebody out there already had a crack at it.

Alistair Brett, a World Bank science commercialization expert and partner at innovation consultancy firm Rainforest Strategies, pointed out how science-based companies tend to reinvent the wheel. They face a specific technical problem, but can't find a solution outside the company, so they just roll their own.

“In a substantial number of cases, the problem has been solved by somebody who is not directly working in that field of research or development," Brett said in an interview.

He gave an example of a company that struggled to create a chemical adhesive. The solution was eventually found by an electrical engineer -- someone from an outside industry. An expert on a different kind of stickiness.

Bottom line? When you face a technical problem as an entrepreneur and go out to find an existing solution, a brief search won’t do. Instead, make a special search effort, because the solution might lie hidden outside your industry. See if you can find an expert on a similar problem and learn how they solved it.

Outside experts can help you stumble upon innovations. But watch out: an innovation by itself isn't the point. You have to go sell it.

For instance, when I spoke with Chad Anderson, managing director of Space Angels Network, a large community of investors and entrepreneurs in the private space industry, he told me:

“Engineers and scientists often discount the difficulty of getting an innovation out into the market. For the innovations that stick, it all comes down to the CEO and the team. It's a sales job.”

See the point? For an innovation to stick, you must be its salesperson. Successful space companies learned this lesson early on.

But, you don't need to have a space company to take value from their efforts.

3. Take a down-to-Earth example.

Let's say you want to solve information technology (IT) problems for small law firms.

First step? Consider talking to larger law firms, because law firms with in-house IT departments have wisdom for you. They can tell you what kind of problems lawyers have with IT, what technology they need to solve them, how much time this takes away from clients and so on. Instead of starting the puzzle from scratch, you extract wisdom from those who've been there before. Simple.

Then, you go talk to smaller law firms and put your new insights to the test.

Do they have the same problems? Can you pre-sell your value proposition? Better yet, will these law firms pay you right now so you can deliver a killer solution to their problems once you have everything in place?

Start this way and you save yourself from grinding through much of the initial learning curve.

Remember: It's always a sales job, even if you aim for the sky.

Commercializing Creativity

Innovation is the tool of the entrepreneur.

Innovation is about new wealth creation.

Innovation is not about bright ideas.

Innovation is not really about creativity.

Innovation is about commercializing creativity.

An idea, product, or service is only valuable if people are willing to pay for it.

Thus, the biggest part of an entrepreneur's job is about execution.

And, a big part of execution is the sales and marketing which converts an idea into value.

Thomas Edison once said, "Innovation is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."

He was so right.

Good ideas are ten-a-penny.

Good entrepreneurs, who are capable of sustained execution, are more rare than gold.

This is why overnight success stories are usually twenty years in the making.

Commercializing creativity is not easy. But it is worth it.