Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Lying isn’t new, but it is certainly in the ascendancy. It doesn’t matter what media you follow, not a day goes by without a story about someone in a position of trust lying — whether politician, corporate chief, religious leader, friend, relative, or someone else. It is important to remember that few, if any, see their actions as problematic.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Lying and cheating are common occurrences and recent research shows that, contrary to popular wisdom (wishful thinking?), they do not make people feel badly.

In an interview, Dan Ariely, a leading behavioral economist at Duke and author of The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves, made two comments that especially caught my eye for both their perception and accuracy.

“I have had lots of discussions with big cheaters — insider trading, accounting fraud, people who have sold games in the NBA, doping in sports. With one exception, all of them were stories of slippery slopes.”

“When you are in the midst of it, you are in a very, very different mindset…. You are not a psychopath, and you are not cheating. You are doing what everybody else is doing.”

Slippery slopes, indeed.

KG’s comment after reading the interview brings forth another salient point.

It is my belief no person ever quite understands their own artful dodges used to escape from the often grim shadow of self-knowledge.

Long before lying became the issue it is today, Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924) had a great response.

The question is not how to get cured, but how to live.

The problem with this solution is that it requires self-awareness, personal effort, determination and grit.

All of which, if there is no financial reward, are in short supply these days.

Flickr image credit: Sean MacEntee

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Are you familiar with tuits? More specifically round tuits?

Round tuits are extremely dangerous. They are disappointing, disruptive, and even destructive.

And they don’t just attack in the workplace; they can cause even worse damage in your personal life, as we’ll discover tomorrow.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Have tuits invaded your team’s culture?

Have they seeped into your personal culture and infected your values?

Tuit culture is insidious; it usually starts with small inconsequential stuff and then quietly spreads.

If not dealt with immediately it can delay projects, impact vendors, damage customer relationships, substantially increase turnover, especially among your best and brightest, and ruin your street rep.

Are you familiar with the warning signs, so you can take action before tuit culture takes root?

Be warned if you notice any of the following:

• Small tasks aren’t done on time or just aren’t done.
• One or more of your team are slow to respond to requests.
• Individuals and teams find ways of bypassing one or more of their members or bosses.

The best antidotes to tuit culture are vigilance, awareness, transparency and open communications.

Image credit: RampUp Solutions

It’s always gratifying when something I wrote in years past, based on my own experience, is validated by current research. Yesterday’s Oldie about privilege is no exception.

I wrote it in 2015 and last week I read the validating research in the Harvard Business Review (love these little ego trips).

There are lots of people held back by bias. And that means that some of the people at the top have advanced partly through privilege.

Our research finds the idea of being advantaged to be uncomfortable for many senior leaders. We interviewed David, a senior executive who recognizes both having benefited from unfair advantages and the injustice of bias. He’s tall, middle-aged, well-educated, heterosexual, able-bodied, white, and male — and these provide David with unearned advantages that he intellectually knows he has, but that in practice he barely notices. He tells us he feels an underlying sense of guilt. He wants to feel that his successes in life are down to his abilities and hard work, not unfair advantage. “I feel like a child who discovers that people have been letting him win a game all along,” he says. “How can I feel good about myself succeeding if the game was never fair?”

Over the years, I’ve found the idea of ‘fairness’ and ‘unfairness’ deeply embedded in people’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) where it has a major impact on all three MAP components.

In speaking with leaders about their built-in advantages, we have seen that David’s experience is widely shared. Acknowledging these advantages can challenge their very identities and sense of worth.

As is often the case, normalcy erases awareness.

Our research on speaking truth to power shows there is often a blind spot among the powerful, preventing them from seeing their impact on the less powerful. We call this advantage blindness. When you have advantage blindness, you don’t feel privileged. You don’t notice a life of special treatment; it’s just normal. You don’t think about your physical safety most of the time; you don’t worry about holding hands with your partner in public; when you get angry, no one asks you if it’s because of your hormones; and people in power generally look like you.

The results of the researchers interviews list three negative reactions

• Denying the playing field is unlevel.
• Focusing on one’s own disadvantages.
• Denying the playing field is unlevel.

And three positive ones

• Owning personal prejudice and bias.
• Empathy from connecting with people who are “other.”
• Putting personal advantage to collective good use

The one problem with the research is it’s focus on executives, which is to be expected from Harvard, but the same advantages, bias, guilt, and negative reactions can be found at all levels.

The good part is that the positive approaches discussed also work at all levels.

What should you do next?

• Read the article.
• Consciously and honestly identify your own advantages.
• Write (not keyboard) them down.
• Reread the list often.
• Heighten your awareness.
• Lower your defensiveness.
• Implement the actions described and add your own.

While you can’t eliminate societal advantages, you can put them to work for the greater good. Doing so will go a long way to validating your advantaged success.

Image credit: Duck Lover

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over nearly a Decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

I wrote this six years ago, but it could have been 60 or 160 or longer. There isn’t now, nor has there ever been, a good substitute for initiative — and I doubt there ever will be in the future. Read other Golden Oldies here.

Monday I wrote that so-called leadership skills are actually the skills everyone needs to live a satisfying life and to that end they are well worth developing.

I also said I would share the most important trait of leadership—and life.

It’s Initiative.

Initiative is the number one key leadership ingredient.

More so than vision or influence, it’s initiative that puts you in the forefront of any action, large of small.

Initiative is what

• separates the doers from the observers;
• stokes creativity and innovation;
• drives entrepreneurial activity at all levels; and
• makes the world a better place.

Initiative isn’t about schooling, although education can enhance it; it’s not about birth or clothes or cool. It’s not about networking or connections or followers on Twitter.

It’s about awareness; about noticing what needs to be done and doing it whether or not anybody is around to notice; doing it whether or not there is credit and kudos.

Initiative doesn’t wait for someone else to lead the way, nor does it play Monday morning quarterback to initiative taken by others, instead it actively contributes to that initiative.

Initiative doesn’t wait to occupy a certain position before becoming active, preferring to constantly seek ways in which it can contribute.

I believe that initiative is latent in every person, but it’s up to each individual to make it active.

Image credit: business mans on sxc.hu

Lying and cheating are common occurrences and recent research shows that, contrary to popular wisdom (wishful thinking?), they do not make people feel badly.

In an interview, Dan Ariely, a leading behavioral economist at Duke and author of The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone – Especially Ourselves, made two comments that especially caught my eye for both their perception and accuracy.

“I have had lots of discussions with big cheaters — insider trading, accounting fraud, people who have sold games in the NBA, doping in sports. With one exception, all of them were stories of slippery slopes.”

“When you are in the midst of it, you are in a very, very different mindset…. You are not a psychopath, and you are not cheating. You are doing what everybody else is doing.”

There’s a lot I could say about this, but I prefer to share a quote that KG sent me after reading the article.

I believe it is the key to the solution and states it succinctly.

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

The question is not how to get cured, but how to live. –Joseph Conrad (1857 – 1924)

The only problem with this solution is that it requires self-awareness, personal effort, determination and grit.

All of which are in short supply these days.

Flickr image credit: Sean MacEntee

Bosses often miss good hires for very dumb reasons and one of the dumbest is looks.

The bias holds true for investors, too.

A series of three studies reveals that investors prefer pitches from male entrepreneurs over those from female entrepreneurs, even when the content of the pitches is identical. Attractive men are the most persuasive pitchers of all, the studies show.

According to Gordon Patzer, author of The Power and Paradox of Physical Attractiveness,

“We are just hard wired to respond more favorably to attractive people. This is something anthropologically that has existed for as long as history exists.”

Anthropologically, not biologically.

Every living creature “responds more favorably” to attractiveness as defined by its species, but that isn’t the same as biological hardwiring.

Awareness of a prejudice allows you to put it in perspective and see past it.

But you have to want to.

I’ve always said that charm is the number one reason for bad hires, what I forget is that looks are the number one reason for missing good hires.

Now it seems that applies to funding as well.

Flickr image credit: Image Editor

I read an interview with Cognizant CEO Francisco D’Souza and several things stood out that would be useful in hiring and juice your corporate culture.

Juice your culture, because, as you grow, your culture will assimilate and mimic the traits of those you hire.

D’Souza was a diplomatic brat whose family moved every two years. The result was an ingrained learning curve and appreciation for those different from himself.

We learned how to love the world. There’s this great richness of diversity, yet people are far more similar than they are different. You’re not as likely to learn that when you grow up in one town, in one environment, in one culture or in one country.

This applies as well to those who change companies, since every company has its own culture and every manager a subculture.

Culture is a reflection of values, so the trick to good hiring is to know what which values in your own culture are truly critical.

It’s not important if previous cultures were similar to yours; what is important is understanding in which cultures the candidate thrived and how they compared to yours. As discussed Friday, skills and performance are not independent of environment.

The lesson I learned is that when you have to evolve that quickly as a person, you need to be aware of two things. One is personal blind spots and the other is personal comfort zones. Those two things can be real gotchas.

Good cultures foster personal growth, which requires personal awareness and a willingness to recognize what needs to change.

Finally, talent and attitude are far more important than current skills.

And you need somebody who’s got just raw smarts and talent and an innate ability to learn. Because the thing about functional expertise is that unless you’re in some very specific area, almost everything that we need to do our job becomes obsolete quickly, and the half-life of knowledge is becoming shorter and shorter. So do you have the personal agility to continuously renew those skills, to reinvent yourself?

Your team and therefore your culture are stronger when people crave new challenges that not only stretch their current skills, but are outside their comfort zone.

People who aggressively drive to constantly learn, grow and change are only a challenge to management when they aren’t given those opportunities.

When that happens everyone suffers; the individual; the team; the company; and you.

Flickr image credit: ennox_mcdough

I frequently write about the importance of self-awareness, knowing yourself, understanding your MAP  and looking in the mirror for solutions when problems arise, instead of assuming the cause and its fix are external.

In the 1970s, Chris Argyris, a business theorist at Harvard Business School started researching the effect of obstacles on organizations and people and found two distinct responses.

Professor Argyris called the most common response single loop learning — an insular mental process in which we consider possible external or technical reasons for obstacles.

LESS common but vastly more effective is the cognitive approach that Professor Argyris called double-loop learning. In this mode we question every aspect of our approach, including our methodology, biases and deeply held assumptions.

While finding the answers within, instead of without, is the subject of a new book, it will take more than a book about high achievers to induce people to look inside first instead of as a last resort.

Why is looking inside so difficult for most people?

Probably because it requires an objective, no-holds-barred, nothing-is-sacred look at every opinion, thought and assumption we have.

It is a concentrated effort that can’t be done while multitasking or in-between games of Angry Birds.

In many ways this kind of intense self-assessment plays against current social norms and, for many, even how they were raised.

So the question becomes, is the gain worth the pain?

It is if what you really want are solutions to problems and success in your endeavors.

Flickr image credit: Siri Spjelkavik

Has tuit culture invaded your team’s culture?

Has it seeped into your personal culture and infected your values?

Tuit culture is insidious; it usually starts with small inconsequential stuff and then quietly spreads.

If not dealt with immediately it can delay projects, impact vendors, damage customer relationships, substantially increase turnover, especially among your best and brightest, and ruin your street rep.

Are you familiar with the warning signs, so you can take action before tuit culture takes root?

Be warned if you notice any of the following:

• Small tasks aren’t done on time or just aren’t done.
• One or more of your team are slow to respond to requests.
• Individuals and teams find ways of bypassing one or more of its members or bosses.

The best antidotes to tuit culture are vigilance, awareness (both group and self), transparency and open communications.

Beware the Round Tuit

Image credit: RampUp Solutions

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Arthur Bart-Williams recently shared the story of his startup on Entrepreneur Thursday. He’s back today to share insights he got while attending a major Valley conference on innovation—insights to both the industry and his own path, so listen up and if the shoe fits…

You Can’t Get  Where You’re Going if You Don’t Know Where You Are

by Arthur Bart-Williams

First a little background, I’m a serial technology entrepreneur working on my fourth company.  My first one, ViaNovus, was around for over 12 years and had two incarnations before being acquired, and I’ve been working on the most recent one, Canogle, for almost two years.

I’m passionate about startups, consider myself to be a student of the process, and am very familiar with the entrepreneurial roller coaster ride.  And although I’ve done all of this while living in the Bay Area, I’ve never delved into the Silicon Valley culture and consider myself an outsider.

Thanks to some prodding I’ve started carving out time to spend at events around the Valley and attended the AlwaysOn 10^th Annual Innovation Summit in Mountain View this week.

It was definitely worth the time, with great exposure to impressive people and relevant conversations, but I was surprised at how overwhelmed I felt.

At first I thought it must have been from the volume of information that was presented and discussed, but after some reflection I’m clear that it was from the realization that as hard as I’ve been working I’ve still got a steep hill to climb that seems taller than Mount Everest in order to achieve the success that I want.

It’s going to take a whole lot more than I thought to make the annual AlwaysOn Global 250 list.  While depressing at first, it helps to know where you are on whatever journey you’re on.

I’ve always done a decent job at getting out of the building for customer development; now I’m getting an appreciation of doing it for company development.

That said, here are a few takeaways from the conference:

• Surprise, the future of media for consumers is mobile (an over $50 Billion market), but it is also transforming the user experience of applications in large enterprises as they compete and cater to a younger workforce.
• Brands, businesses and organizations need to be educated on how to use mobile and social platforms effectively.   The shift from the web to mobile is as significant as from radio to TV, and the code is yet to be cracked.
• A next phase in mobile development is a consolidation of the hundreds of thousands of apps that compete for users’ attention along with an emphasis on hyper-localization, contextual relevance of marketing and facilitating instant actions.

I’ll be happy to respond to any thoughts or questions you have, so don’t hesitate to share them in the comments.

Option Sanity™ provides insights to company culture.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

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Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist