Never Tell People What You Do

by Bruce Kasanoff

  Rule 4: Only talk numbers to numbers people. (Your boss may be ego-driven, not numbers-driven.) One of the biggest mistakes people make with their boss is that they fail to understand their mindset. If someone is ego-driven, appeal to their ego. Numbers-driven? Give ’em numbers. If you flood an ego-driven boss with numbers, your numbers will never add up the way you want.

  Rule 5: Talking louder is seldom an effective persuasion strategy. No raise? Perhaps your boss didn’t hear you when you asked the last nine times. Nah. Try smarter, not louder.

  Rule 6: Never inflate results. Trust is more important than short-term wins. So you had a bad month? Admit it…and at the very least, you will build trust. If you BS your boss instead, your boss will mentally place a scarlet letter L on your forehead for liar .

  Rule 7: Don’t obsess over whether you are treated fairly. Obsess over results. Your job is to deliver superb results, even if all you do is greet people at the door. Instead of asking “What’s in it for me?” focus on “How can I help others?”

  Rule 8: No surprises. Ever. Every time you surprise your boss in an unpleasant way, it’s like saying, “Here, take the keys to my new car.”

  Rule 9: Look like the salary you want to earn. Don’t dress for the job you have. Dress for the job you want. People have no imagination, and they don’t believe you will get a makeover the day they pay you more money.

  Rule 10: Don’t overcommit. Take on more than you can handle at work, and you’ll start to get a reputation that resembles Homer Simpson’s. Overcommitting is like buying a billboard that says: “I suck worse than I know.”

  Rule 11: If you screw up, admit it. Then fix it. Apologies are nice, but they’re not enough. If you break a window, replace it. If you lose a customer, find a better customer. Never leave a mess that your boss has to clean up.

  Rule 12: Be yourself. Life is too long to fake a role. Famous last words…“I can do it, I’ll change.” No, you won’t. You can be a better version of yourself, but if you try to be someone else, at best you will be a pale, sickly version of them.

  Rule 13: Relax—there is no Rule 13.

  Rule 14: Pay more attention to the details of your business than your boss does. Unless your boss has only one employee (danger sign for your career), he or she can’t afford to know every detail of your business. You be the expert.

  Rule 15: Only promise results you KNOW you can deliver. See rule #8.

  Rule 16: Don’t waffle. If you promised ultra , deliver ultra . I once spent an entire weekend in a Macao factory across the table from four Chinese engineers whose job seemed to be to convince me that their $4 toy car was actually the $100 precision die-cast model my firm had commissioned. This taught me: crappy is not ultra.

  Rule 17: Keep your cool. Anger causes tunnel vision. The moment you lose your temper, your IQ plunges 40 points. Unless you are a bona fide genius, this is more money than you have in the brain bank.

  Rule 18: Don’t get full of yourself. Always show respect. Are you on a roll? Maybe you were interviewed on TV, or invited to the CEO’s home for dinner. This is when life gets dangerous. Don’t morph into a faux Master of the Universe. More than ever, you need to show respect to your boss and colleagues.

  Rule 19: When you get feedback, actually listen to it. In contrast to Rule #17, listening raises your IQ by 40 points.

  Rule 20: Ask for a raise after you have mastered Rules 1-19.

  The Secret of Life-No Kidding

  Since most readers are over the age of seven, here’s a quick reminder of how a seesaw works. You sit on one end, and another person sits at the other. You use your feet to push your side up in the air, which makes the other person’s side go down. Then the other person does the same, and your side goes down. You keep taking turns until one of you gets bored, falls off, or has to go home and take a nap.

  Every healthy civilization, organization, and team works like a seesaw.

  Sometimes, you’re in control—and sometimes you’re not. Sometimes you’re hanging high in the air, trapped and at the other person’s mercy, because s/he thought it would be funny to lean backwards and control your fate.

  Each of you is dependent upon the other, and you give the other person your trust...because both of you know that if you jump off while the other person is in the air, they will immediately slam to the ground.

  In a healthy society, power never rests with one interest to the exclusion of all others. That’s called a dictatorship. It is what sparks civil wars and breaks apart partnerships.

  If your group or opinion is out of favor, you can probably tolerate that state of affairs as long as you know that eventually, your way will get another try.

  Things fall apart when you think that you will always be trapped at the bottom (or at the top…whichever you fear the most).

  Likewise, businesses stop functioning properly when one skill set or functional area takes complete control. A firm that is all about execution and never about imagination will eventually lose the interest of its customers. The reverse is also true: a team that spends all of its time dreaming will never bring anything worthwhile to market.

  The same is true for your career and your life. If you always have to be one up, you will never be successful at working with others. If you have to win every debate, you will eventually run out of people who are willing to be in the same room with you.

  The more power you accrue...the bigger your ego grows...the easier it becomes to forget about the Seesaw Principle. You have to be willing to let power, ideas, energy, and control go back and forth.

  Of course, life is slightly more complicated than a playground seesaw. Sometimes the other person or group will be in control longer than you might wish—and the reverse can also be true. That’s okay. What matters is that the other person perceives that you are engaged in a back-and-forth process that will ultimately benefit you both.

  Spread the word. The seesaw can save the world.

  Be Quiet, Have a Purpose, Make Friends

  A good friend of mine likes to say that when your body is trying to get your attention, you had better listen. It will keep kicking you harder and harder until you do.

  I like simple principles that people can remember. Too often, we receive advice that is so hopelessly complicated and convoluted that you can’t even understand it, never mind live by it. (How many times have you walked out of a meeting confused by what, if anything, was decided?)

  Be quiet, have a purpose, and make friends stands as a simple prescription for a spectacular life and career. If you have a minute, I’d like to explain why.

  The odds are stacked against you.

  Everything in your life is external: your friends, family, colleagues, possessions, obligations, and smartphone…with one exception: the Quiet You.

  The Quiet You knows that you (I’m making this up) really hate bossing people around, even though you manage a staff of 150. It knows that you’re scared of dying, that you really want to be a singer, or that you’ve never liked your sister.

  In other words, the Quiet You is you—stripped of all pretensions and social conventions.

  All of that external stuff distracts you from paying attention to the Quiet You—but this is a mistake. Without regular check-ins, it’s all too easy to start living someone else’s life.

  I’m not going to tell you that you have to:

  Meditate

  Practice mindfulness

  Learn relaxation exercises

  Take tai chi

  Go for long walks alone on the beach

  Chant “om ”

  Swim laps

  Pray

  Practice loving kindness

  Sit quietly with good friends or someone you love

  ...but any of these would be a step in the right direction. Do what works for you, and stick with it.

  This is the first, critical step to being happy and productive.

  For a deeper understanding of what I’m talking about, try watching the film Mindfulness: Be Happy
Now . My brother made it, and you can rent it on Amazon , Google , iTunes , or Vudu .

  There’s a big difference between a reason for getting out of bed in the morning and something that makes you smile when you wake up. It’s the difference between an obligation and a purpose.

  At the risk of harping on one point, knowing that difference is directly related to paying attention to the Quiet You.

  Sorry.

  What do you most value? Where can you have the greatest impact? What is possible, given your stage of life and personal circumstances?

  I received a note earlier this week from a woman who sounded desperately lonely, and very upset that she had no support. She was wrestling with some real problems, none of which I could solve with an email. Instead, I made a simple suggestion: find a way to help others. If she flipped her mindset, she might be able to form meaningful connections with other human beings. Instead of waiting to be helped, she could help others. Would she still have serious problems? Yes. Would she be as lonely and isolated? No.

  Find a way to help others, and identify the intersection between doing so and giving yourself satisfaction.

  “Social capital is one of the biggest predictors for health, happiness, and longevity,” reports BeWell@Stanford University. Many physical and mental ailments are basically loneliness manifesting itself in your body.

  If you don’t believe me, let me make the same point from a negative perspective. “Captors use social isolation to torture prisoners of war—to drastic effect. Social isolation of otherwise healthy, well-functioning individuals eventually results in psychological and physical disintegration, and even death,” observes this research report.

  In order to stay healthy, you have to make good friends—and I’m not talking about getting ninety-eight Likes on your latest Instagram post. I’m talking about making the kinds of friends who will help you clean your garage, or invite you over to dinner on the spur of the moment.

  Epilogue: Is Your Company Mindful or ADD?

  This section is a bit different from the rest of this book. For one thing, I wrote it with Christoph Zohlen of Radius.1 Consulting in Berlin.

  My reason for including it is that readers of this book are more likely than the average population to effect the changes that Christoph and I hope to bring about in business.

  So…please feel free to make your company more mindful, whether you are the youngest employee, the only employee, or the CEO.

  ***

  If companies were children, many would be on Ritalin. They operate in a hyper-frenzied manner that leads to distraction, a lack of consistent focus, and bad outcomes. In short, they behave as though they had attention deficit disorder.

  Do you run an ADD company? Here’s a quick quiz:

  Are people texting or checking email during meetings you attend?

  When you talk to someone, is he or she doing something else?

  When you call someone, do you hear them typing in the background?

  Do you get conflicting messages from your company?

  Does one memo stress that “sales is our top focus,” while another criticizes your team for not providing better service?

  If you answered “yes” four or more times, your firm has ADD.

  How is this different from a ten-year-old who can’t stay on task, and sometimes speaks out inappropriately?

  Think about a business that lists its new top three goals, but doesn’t change its compensation systems to reward people who accomplish those goals. Is that logical? Is it mature behavior? Is it much different from a student who claims he wants to get into a good college, but can’t remember or finish his homework assignments?

  If your goal were to design a company for the specific purpose of encouraging ADD-like behavior among employees, you would do many of the things that routinely happen today in many firms:

  Meetings would conflict with other meetings and other obligations

  Employees would be overloaded with “urgent” but ultimately unimportant tasks

  No time would be set aside for introspection or considered thought

  Opinions would be given more weight than facts, and facts too difficult to unearth (can you say “siloed databases?”) would be ignored

  Forceful personalities would have more say than intelligent and creative ones

  People would be promoted because they are fun or funny (i.e., their boss likes them) rather than because they focus well on what matters most.

  In contrast, let’s consider how a person behaves when he or she engages in mindful behavior. As Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote in Wherever You Go, There You Are , “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of present-moment reality.”

  A person in this state does one thing at a time. S/he not only observes carefully, but also notices small details. S/he can observe reality for what it is rather than being blinded by his or her own opinions and preconceptions.

  Many artists and athletes strive to be mindful, because it can lead to flashes of insight and “flow” moments in which they become so absorbed in what they are doing that their performance rises to extraordinary levels. I play squash—badly—and during most games, I swipe at the ball in a rushed manner. There are, however, occasional matches in which time seems to move more slowly for me, and I can see both the ball and my opponent’s position more clearly. It becomes easy to beat the person who swept eight games in a row from me the night before.

  Comparing mindfulness on an individual level to mindfulness in the context of corporate culture can be fraught with difficulties. On the individual level, it involves meditation and an attempt to get past the often-foggy perspective of our normal waking state. It sometimes involves doing nothing at all. It can be the furthest thing in the world from a bunch of people working together to make money.

  At its core, mindfulness represents an idea essential to the success of any business competing in today’s volatile and often-confusing environment. It requires the ability to focus intently upon what is happening right here, right now.

  Look around your organization. Are people dealing with reality? Does your boss really understand what you are doing? Are your subordinates shocked by the way you evaluate their performance? Do people have diametrically opposing views on what your group needs to do to succeed? In many organizations, that is exactly what happens.

  People appear deluded…because they are. On a day-to-day basis, they see what’s happening through a lens clouded by their own ambitions, circumstances, goals, and marching orders. In many companies, it is simply impossible to speak the truth. (Try saying, “Face it, we stink at this” to your CEO.)

  Being deluded can work in the short run—and the short run can last years. The more competitive and volatile your marketplace, the less likely it becomes that this practice will work in your favor.

  What would mindfulness mean on a corporate level? A mindful company wouldn’t have to burn incense in the cafeteria and conduct daily meditation breaks (though the latter wouldn’t hurt.) A giant step forward for such a company would be to simply minimize the time spent being distracted by nearly everything…and maximize the time team members spend intently focused upon one thing at a time.

  Being a mindful company means changing company values and management to insistence upon the idea that all employees deal with reality, speak and accept the truth, and abandon distraction in favor of focus.

  This is no small task.

  The dirty little secret of mindfulness is that it is incredibly difficult. You either practice every day, or you end up just as distracted and disjointed as everyone else.

  Work Smarter, Not Harder

  Keep your nose to the grindstone in today’s market, and you’ll not only end up with a short nose, you’ll also be overrun by your competitors. Hard work in the wrong direction is futile. Since there are no clear paths to success (yet), you’ll need t
o apply intelligence to the countless developments and surprises that arise each week.

  You’ll need to be smarter than your competitors.

  Distraction doesn’t lead to smart behavior. Quite the opposite: it leads to a convoluted, often random, path. The ADD-like behavior that drives many firms is flat-out wrong for our times. Far too many executives have their heads in the sand, choosing to ignore disruptive technologies that are all but certain to render their current business model unworkable within just a few years.

  It is dangerous and immature to make million-dollar decisions by the seat of your pants. It is foolhardy to invite a researcher, contentious manager, or other employee in to brief you, only to miss every other word they say simply because some random person texted you three times.

  Investors shouldn’t tolerate distracted behavior, and neither should customers. You can see the results everywhere: phone systems, ATMs, new products, product packaging, offensive ads…all of which look like they were designed by a hyperactive ten-year-old rather than via thoughtful professional process.

  Above all, employees should revolt against ADD corporate cultures. They cause incredible amounts of stress, place immense pressures upon marriages and families, and ultimately undercut the financial security of all involved. “Work like a dog, then fail” ought to be the mantra of ADD firms—because that’s where they are headed.

  The Case for the Mindful Company

  Let’s consider the alternative: an organization that focuses close to all of its energy on what matters most. Such a firm can recognize the reality of most situations, and adapt to that reality. It will be smarter together than any of its members on their own.

  Such an organization would need a culture that encourages, enables, and rewards mindful behavior. It would need leaders who behave mindfully, metrics and reward systems that reinforce this type of behavior, and the ability to state with clarity why mindful behavior will lead to success.