ego

Fixed mindset – can’t welcome constraints

constraints, ego, Fear, possibility thinking, problem solving

Yesterday I had written about how I have changed over the years, growing old has also got me to become more open to different thinking patterns, to stop fearing problems and constraints and to rather welcome them.

Sometimes I do get blocked by my own fixed mindset or by others in the team who are not willing to take a different route to solve a challenge. This happens because the existing method had helped solve similar challenges till now. So we try harder to use the same method with the same failure. But because the path has got so strongly ingrained in our mind, we don’t like to change.

At one point in time, calling out or sending physical letters was the best method to get connected to B2B prospects, then came email, then social media. Today with a plethora of methods available you sometimes have to use all of them.But if we were to only stick to calling – and I am guilty of this – then our connections will fall.

So while using various tools like the ones which are shown in ” A Beautiful Constraint” help open the mind to look at possibilities, if you are not willing to work on the results that the tools throw up, you will still be where you started from.

I think our ability to have a growth mindset, possibility thinking and an outward looking nature are all intertwined, as are, a fixed mindset, inward looking and pondering over problems for too long. The later could be because of a fragile ego or a fear that someone else thought of a solution rather than us.

We live in interesting times right now, there are lots of challenges and therefore a lot of opportunities. Its all about what you want to spend you time with.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The curve balls that life throws at us

Character, ego, Energy, Fear, Human Brain

Life has a queer way of throwing curve balls (sudden challenges) at us, when we least expect it. That’s why curve balls or googlies (as they are called in the game of cricket) are so effective in getting the person “out”.

Life throws these curve balls to see how prepared we are to handle them and then navigate them and come out a winner. And no one will ever live a life without getting their fare share of curve balls. The type and duration of the challenge may change from person to person but everyone will get them.

Its how people navigate these challenges is what builds character of the person. The bigger the challenges that a person has encountered and successfully managed , more humility the person generally has. Most of the so called “great” people are also some of the most down to earth because of this reason. They recognise the fact that nothing in life is permanent and you never know when things can change within a matter of minutes. That is also one of the reason why, when we are younger we tend to be brash with a lot of ego, but as we grow older, we become more modesthuman

I used to think of the major challenges that life had sent my way and would wonder the typical response “why me”. Then over the years I have read hundreds of books, auto-biographies etc. and one common element in most of them has been the fact that all these people had as many or even more challenges than me.

That’s when I realised the significance of what Tony Robbins says “life happens for me not to me”. I need to build the capabilities to handle the “curve” balls. As I build the capabilities, I will become more successful.

Here I will tie it in with what I wrote in my post yesterday. Fearing the curve ball is a game which your brain plays on you. Most curve balls are not life threatening, but your brain makes you feel scared , because it wants to conserve energy , to use the energy when your survival is at stake.

If you can tame your brain to handle these situations and build capabilities, you can move forward at a much faster and higher level. As they say – a plane will not be able to take -off if it does not get resistance from air. It uses the resistance to get the lift -off.

Till next time then – build your capabilities and love to play the curve balls.

Carpe Diem!!!

Just Ask …. identifying failure points

ego, Marketing, Product Management, Questions

There’s a term called “confirmation bias” which was coined by cognitive psychologist Peter Cathcart Wason. He ran a series of experiments called the Wason’s rule discovery task. Through these experiments he demonstrated the people have a tendency to seek information that confirms their existing beliefs.

So why is this important for a marketing / product management leader. In the earlier posts that I have written about this topic I have been cajoling you to start asking questions because you don’t know what could be the reason that people like or dislike your product.

However if you only ask questions and search only for data points which confirm what you are wanting to hear then there’s a problem. And all human beings have this confirmation bias. Its because of our ego that our first instinct is to prove ourselves correct.

But failures happen because we didn’t ear what the market was trying to tell us. And we didn’t hear because of this confirmation bias which Wason had showcased all the way back in the 1960s.

However every negative (relative to your data point) that you hear has the potential to get you closer to the truth. If you have watched “CSI” the detective show (its available on Amazon Prime) , you will see a lot of times the evidence doesn’t prove the hypotheses that the detectives have and then they have to dig deeper until the evidence and the hypotheses are in sync otherwise it won’t stand the questioning of the jury.

As a product management person, you have to stand back and let the market give you the evidence and if the evidence doesn’t suit your opinion, you need to change your opinion, otherwise you are in for big failure. The point is not to prove yourself right or wrong, it is to let the evidence (inputs from the market that you get by asking relevant questions) confirm where are the blind spots in your strategy or tactics. Once you cover your blind spots you may actually come out with a strategy which could break all records.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Just Ask ….you never know – Part 4

ego, Fear, Marketing, Product Management, Questions

This topic has, I think been one of the longest, I have pondered on.

Yesterday I wrote about why it was critical for the marketing / product management / sales folks to be asking questions and how it impacts the ability to succeed in the market.

So why don’t most of the sales / marketing / product management folks do it. One of course is vanity / ego….we know all the reasons why someone does not buy, after all we have been doing this for “xxx” years. The other bigger one is fear because most of us are not prepared to listen to the truth, we don’t know how the prospect will react, we may realise we are the actual cause of the problem.

We would rather end up being busy sending emails, doing “busy” work, attend a lot of internal meetings, rather than go out into the market. These are things we know to do so we do them rather than go and check out the unknown.

Ozan Varol in his book – Think Like a Rocket Scientist has a very nice story – and I paraphrasing it here to get the point out – of your boss asking you to get a monkey to stand on a pedestal and recite from Shakespeare. You break down the problem into different stages – building a pedestal, identifying a monkey and making it learn Shakespeare. What would you do first here.

Most people would first think of building the pedestal first – why because that’s the easiest to do and you will be able to show progress to your boss. If you were to first go to identify a monkey which can speak English, you will never be able to show progress to your boss.

Similarly its easier to show that you have done some activity by telling your boss that you sent a mail, than it is to get to identifying why some one is not buying your product.

This is one of the biggest frustrations I face in trying to get my teams to figure out why people are not buying something from us. If you can master this art of just asking – you can’t imagine what all you will learn.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!