“If you act like your wedding day is the greatest moment in your life, it’s all downhill from there.” –Elizabeth Johnson

What looks like a throw-away line actually packs a lot of wisdom.

Any moment you consider the greatest moment of your life sets up the same downhill scenario.

If your college graduation is greatest, what comes next?

If you consider the founding of your company, product launch, revenue or even profitability the greatest day of your life what will its acquisition or IPO be?

If the birth of your children rates as the greatest, what will their graduation, marriage, and their children’s births be?

Instead of setting up a downhill move from your life highlights, you can open the future to more just by removing the ‘est’.

If they are ‘great’ moments instead of ‘greatest’ then you are setting your self up for ‘greater’ moments.

Isn’t that a better life scenario?

It is only when you are dying that you can choose the ‘est’ in retrospect.

And I’m willing to bet that you will be hard-pressed to choose just one.

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

A founder recently told me he didn’t have time for culture because he was too busy building an awesome company.

As I said in a post this spring, Culture is the font, the basis, the cause and the reason. It is the Tao.

I said that in response to Culture Trumps Strategy Everytime by Nilofer Merchant, author of The New How (use link above).

Culture doesn’t happen, it stems from your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and is propagated through the company as you hire.

At first it’s easy to share your culture because startup founders hire their friends and friends of fiends, which usually means that everyone shares similar values.

But if you don’t think your culture through and then embed it deeply in your company’s soul it won’t stick—to work culture must act like stain not paint.

Perks don’t equal culture; perks are easy, culture takes work,

Your work unless you are comfortable building your company based on someone else’s cultural vision or their interpretation of yours.

Culture is your present and your future; your edge to achieve success and its lack is the first step to failure.

Do you have time for culture?

Option Sanity™ is culture
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” 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.

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My post today has only three links, but the subject matter requires a good deal of thought and (uncomfortable) self-analysis if you are to take advantage of it, so I didn’t want to add anything else.

McKinsey is well-known for its consulting and studies; its newsletters are an amazing resource. Registration is free; I mention this because you will have to register to access information that will be of use whether you are running a Fortune 50 corporation, dealing with teenagers or anything in-between.

Have you heard of cognitive bias? It refers to the set way our brains work, whether we are aware of it or not—mostly not unless you make an effort. Keep in mind that although McKinsey is talking about corporate situations you can tweak the information for use under any circumstances.

• Behavioral strategy: Yet very few corporate strategists making important decisions consciously take into account the cognitive biases—systematic tendencies to deviate from rational calculations—revealed by behavioral economics. It’s easy to see why: unlike in fields such as finance and marketing, where executives can use psychology to make the most of the biases residing in others, in strategic decision making leaders need to recognize their own biases.

• Countering biases: Addressing cognitive challenges like these is hard because executives can’t change how their brains work. What they can do is put in place processes for challenging entrenched beliefs and approaches.

• Visual wrap: A quick, simple summary of the various types of bias.

I am familiar with many of my own biases and have found ways to either avoid or short-circuit them, so I know it is possible. And I encourage you to identify your own—just don’t waste your time trying to change them, because it’s not going to happen.

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Shakespeare wrote in his description of Feste, the jester in Twelfth Night that one should never underestimate a man who is “wise enough to play the fool.”

I’ve given that advice to executives, managers, workers and friends and it always works, especially if you broaden your concept of “fool.”

Being a fool doesn’t mean being foolish; it is more acting innocent or ignorant instead of showing off your knowledge or expertise.

Playing the fool draws out the other person; it gives you the opportunity to learn what they know and get a far better understanding of where they are coming from, where they are going and how they plan to get there.

Playing the fool is sort of like Undercover Boss where the CEO learns far more about her organization by pretending to be a candidate than she ever could in her normal persona.

However, I find fewer people willing to play the fool in these days of social media no matter how successful the technique.

They worry that playing the fool might be misconstrued in 140 characters and that is more important than the beneficial outcome that can result from playing the fool.

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How often do you encounter ID ten T errors?

Do you think ID ten T errors are technology or human based?

How accurate is your identification of ID ten T errors?

How often is your analysis influenced by your own preexisting ideas or MAP?

How do you deal with ID ten T errors?

Do you ever produce ID ten T errors? (I do.)

How do you deal with your own ID ten T errors?

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Media has long focused on youth in all its myriad forms.

Another leading focus is that small segment of any group that acts out, whether positively, think entrepreneurs, or negatively, think criminals.

Media melded these two consuming subjects together in its stories on young entrepreneurs.

If you didn’t know better you might end up believing that most startups were hatched by a kid working out of her dorm room or a guy in his parents’ basement when the reality is that the great majority of entrepreneurs have that touch of gray.

Research by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) shows that entrepreneurs over the age of 35 accounted for 80 percent of “total entrepreneurial activity” in 2009…

80-20. That’s a whopping difference.

Not counting recession-driven entrepreneurialism here is an over-simplified answer to the complex question of why. Obviously both statements are generalizations—there are plenty of people in both groups that don’t fit the mold.

Young people are a tightly conforming group, tending to go where the majority goes and do as they do, wanting to “fit in” and needing approval.

That seems to change after a decade or more in the trenches, with a wealth experience, a greater understanding of themselves as individuals and less need of external approval.

“I think I’ve grown more fearless as I’ve gotten older. I just feel like, what is there to lose? Do you know what I mean? You take a chance—the world still turns. Taking chances and doing things that scare you only make you stronger.” — Alan Cumming

Cumming’s words really resonate in the entrepreneurial world.

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Good culture empowers employees, juices creativity, sparks innovation and powers productivity, while bad culture kills them.

Not just lowers or slows them, but kills them dead.

Bad culture kills by instilling fear, stoking mistrust, destroying teams and building silos.

Bad culture always kills the messenger.

The seeds of bad culture are found in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and produce a toxic culture when they grow.

But weeds can be pulled and seeds kept from sprouting.

It’s your choice—it’s always your choice.

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There are many ways to consider leadership’s future and I often focus on schools and education (not the same thing) and kids—who are the leaders, actual and positional, tomorrow.

But there is another view of leadership’s future worth considering and that is of leadership as an industry, as opposed to an action or description.

Make no mistake, leadership, directly and indirectly, is definitely an industry.

Consider the standard definition of ‘industry’: A category used to describe a company’s primary business activity, usually determined by the largest source of a company’s revenues.

From individual coaches to major consultants and every size in-between, thousands of people earn their daily bread and pay their mortgages with money made through their activities in the leadership industry. Even those who aren’t paid in money are earning something, whether it’s enhanced reputation, a way to spread their opinions/beliefs, an ego boost or something still more esoteric.

I’m not saying that this is a bad thing or a good thing, but it is a thing worth noting.

In a previous post I warned of the need to digest and tweak expert information as opposed to swallowing it whole and this is even more important when it comes to leadership, considering the vast volume of it and the media’s constant focus and insistence that it is leadership that separates the winners and losers.

Even if you subscribe to that idea you need to develop a definition that is relevant to your world and stands the test of time, not some offered up by the industry.

Leadership terms are casually thrown around, applied by some to any and every action that a person does, may do or should do and by others only to the actions/words of those in positional leadership roles.

Perhaps these two points are worth accepting, although I’m sure many will disagree with me,

1. Leadership is an industry in which people, directly or indirectly, earn their living.
2. Leadership information comes in a multiplicity of forms and the quality varies widely.

Accepting these two ideas results in one conclusion: like investing information, leadership information should be digested, internalized and tweaked for your individual needs at both that point in your life and in your future.

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In a recent post Steve Roesler asks this question “Is your organization deliberate about identifying–up front–people who have the heart to learn about themselves and the humility to make changes accordingly?” and ends with this summary comment, “A well-bred head lights up a single office. A smart heart lights up the organization.”

I believe that a “smart heart” goes beyond the changes required for personal growth.

Whether you are a manager, aspiring leader or team member a smart heart will advance you in any arena.

It is the quality that draws people to you; it makes people want you on their team; it assures people that you have their best interests in mind; a smart heart goes hand-in-hand with trustworthiness.

Faking a smart heart for an interview might get you hired, but faking isn’t sustainable. People aren’t stupid and the truth will out.

Think about it.

Then go and light up your world.

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