Number One Skill Needed for Success

The ability and success (proven results which are repeatable) at SELLING YOURSELF is an absolute must have for any and everyone to be successful. Everything else is a distant, and nearly irrelevant second. Whether its a job hunt or an entrepreneurial launch, or picking up someone at the bar. Your comfort and smooth articulation in talking about yourself without being an egomaniac in many cases will be the only thing that opens doors. Introverts are successful only by luck or default, extroverts by position; position has so much better odds.

Everything is Marketing, it is what you convince your audience of, not whether you have it, know it, or can do it; and it is not your confidence, it is the decision maker's confidence that you can do it that wins every time. Everybody needs an elevator speech. And the speech needs to be practiced and refined so that it can be delivered and executed flawlessly at a moments notice. Depth, in experience, knowledge or skills, is not the relevant factor, presentation is.

Tied to this is the ability to get someone talking, talking about themselves, their problems, their wants. This extends any conversation, puts you in an empathetic light, and gives you information to adapt, at least focus, your pitch of selling yourself. If you can put yourself in a picture or vision of unburdening their problems or delivering their wants, getting them to that association of you and that positive outcome. That association is needed because they won't be thinking of you, it's those other things that keep them up at night, the association you make is laying that bridge that takes them to you, makes them even consider you. 

The spontaneity of this is needed as success is seizing an opportunity, very few people have the outright tenacity let alone influence and power to just plan to do something and then just do it. Best selling authors, top level executives, political leaders all seized opportunities that were presented to them, not that they made their own opportunities. It was being in the right place at the right time, not to say they didn't work hard to get there or stay there once they reached it, but they had to sell themselves, convince someone to take a chance on them, market a decision maker to decide on their behalf.

And everyone is subject to a decision maker somewhere. Some get to also be decision maker for some number of others. No one is immune from needing this skill to be successful, in any market, any career, any situation.

Star Trek and Transporter Ethics

I would have been done this article hours ago but I was beamed up unexpectedly and unsuspectedly. Now while the experience and ability is quite cool, and I could have used it many times in the past to get into as well as out of trouble, not to mention the gas savings and frequent flier miles pile up. Taken 'up' or away when I do not want to is a bit disconcerting.

I bring this up as an ethical debate - once transporting from place to place is in place, what is to stop people and or institutions (read government or military ) from just beaming someone against their will? In the most recent Star Trek movie Into Darkness, the limitations on the use of tranport-beaming on unsuspecting individuals was limited only by technical hurdles - moving too fast, line of sight, capacity or other technical issues, not lack of intent or desire - which in the movie was resolved by sending surprise visitors to the intended target - how many uncomfortable scenarios could we imagine for that...."Mom! Really? Now?"

Embarrassing risks may not be enough to warrant an ethical dilemma, but criminal and authoritative sure can. Should there be a limit on authorized locations to beam to or from? It is likely how it would have to start technically anyway. What about a request and authorization before execution? Like a phone call - BUQ (beam up request) that you have to answer or accept, or a meeting request where all parties are identified and location agreed upon before commencement.

The American Civil Liberties Union or what ever representing and defending body needs to start looking at these science fiction movies and start these ethic debates and have guidelines established before the technology gets here. I certainly think Star Trek: Into Darkness violated some 'beam up code of ethics', even if it was for the greater good (another angle of the debate). Though if On-Star wants to beam me out of my car just as it senses a crash, or some other "don't have to ask me twice" winning situation (fill in your own fantasy here) they can go right ahead.

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1. Deacon Jones dies
2. Jill Kelley
3. Tim Tebow
4. Taco Bell employee
5. Transgender Navy ...

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Telecommuting Receives a Bodyblow

With Yahoo and Best Buy's cutting off the practice of telecommuting, the very idea receives a significant setback. The movement and practice was building up with an averring of the technology now widely available and enabling the practice and the reports of its benefits like quality of life improvement, increased efficiency and carbon emissions. Even Maynard Webb's new book, Rebooting Work using this as an enabling foundation for the work anywhere you want as CEO of the individual entrepreneur.

What this all fails to consider is, as manifested by these recent examples of retraction, the choice is not in the hands of the workers. Executives decide. Unless they can be convinced through a patience long enough to see any results, and a vision bold enough to change the rules a little about the view of work, the critical mass of getting this idea of working without visual feedback will not become the norm.

Management in general is weened on bodies and clocks. Management control is: "If I see you, and if you where here for 8 hours (or more), you must be working and productive." They are not thinking about the effects beyond the short term, many won't be around long enough to see. And there is a "if you are here and not productive and efficient it is your fault, if you are not here then it is my fault" view on responsibility. The trust is not there,  Douglas McGregor's Theory X management is in the political foundation and the company Kool-aid, no change is happening until executive management accepts that maybe Theory Y will prevail if it is allowed to. If consultants and human resource professionals really think there is merit to this telecommuting, they need to spend time converting the deciding executives, not expecting a grass roots revolution by telling individuals that they would love it. Most of them know it already, they just don't have the power or the option to do so.

Now there are contrasts to this. I recognize a significant benefit of spontaneous collaboration which is difficult (but not impossible) in a remote configuration, so I think we want to encourage people to come to the office, but lets give them compelling reasons, not generic edicts. And there will always be those that abuse freedom and circumvent the work when telecommuting, but I have news, people even do this when they are "at work". There needs to be a feedback loop that effectively measures productive contribution (easier said than done with growing knowledge work and skill) and to regularly (and intelligently) wean out the ones avoiding work.

Telecommuting will happen in a broad way eventually. But news and examples like Yahoo and Best Buy - two companies in need of a wild idea or innovation, not a retraction to ancient models of management oversight and illusional productivity - sets back the adoption of telecommuting at least 5 years from any path or trend line it may have been on. Unless a significant number of executives who believe in it go all-in to the idea, we will have to await an outside of work factor like forced carbon footprint reduction or other political, environmental or economic event of significance to push telecommuting over the acceptance and adoption hump.

Traffic Has Shifted Lanes

Maybe it is a cosmic message that I should drive slower, or everyone else is oblivious to their impact on others and the basic principles of optimum traffic flow. But my understanding in the 30+ years of driving is that slower traffic should shift to the right lanes on the highway. Sure there is always the random distracted driver who hangs in the left lane of a three lane super highway, likely with their turn signal still blinking from two miles back, but this is more than that.

In the last six months I have had the need to run a semi-regular course of part of the PA Turnpike, The Blue Route and then 95 and then back. This has given me some interesting and unfortunately frustrating observations on the driving habits of the general public. Now lets get the rather obvious, if un-admitted out of the way; no one drives the speed limit. I mean NO one. You have to drive at least 5 miles over the posted number just to keep up with the blue haired lady in the Prius. In the spirit of full disclosure, I do drive between 10 and 15 over posted limit (on good weather days) though I am not one of the duck and weave drivers that are cutting 10 people off, just to get two cars further ahead on the road.

At 15 over the posted number, I would be passing most people on the road, but not blowing past them like I just forgot to turn the siren on. But if I look at the distribution of the cars most people are in the left lane. Even on a three lane highway, its left, then center than right. I have seen more often than not the clear path ahead is in the right lane. The right lane. Now I know there must be a law about this, because my son actually got a ticket a couple years ago not for speeding, but for staying in the left lane - now in his case there was no one else around him, when he got pulled over the officer just said he should have moved into the right lane if he wasn't passing. I think the officer was just looking to give the young driver a ticket for something, anything.

Maybe its cruise control, you know people set it for a particular speed and figure since they are going over the speed limit they should be in the left lane - obviously oblivious to the fact that everyone is going over the posted number, and still ignoring the fact that they are not passing anyone, there is no one in front of them and there is a line of cars behind them. You really feel like shouting through their passenger window as you have to pass them on the right: Move Over.

So forget about single car advancement, what about general efficiency. Traffic flow is similar to other independent agents moving through constraint and is a dynamics problem. Optimum flow is maintain by one, a controlled speed (I don't think the on-ramp metering really works) which is difficult with independent agents. This may be easier to regulate when self-driving cars to arrive, they would just get hooked into the virtual or physical track to drive at the predetermined optimum speed for the traffic, or two by an outlet value or channel to allow faster traffic to move ahead of slower traffic avoiding the you are only as fast as your slowest vehicle. This is the purpose of the mutli-lane highway (as well as the obvious maximum traffic capacity)

So let us all keep this efficiency working. If no one is in front of you, you are not actively gaining on a driver in the next lane, and the lane to your right is clear: Move Over. Otherwise I think we will start to see a practiced inversion of the rules of the road and passing will be on the right and slower traffic to the left.

Big Oil Profits Don't Add Up

While my college economics is a bit rusty and possibly outdated, I fail to comprehend the market forces at work in this period of economic turmoil and new record high crude oil prices that continually lead to atypical profit figures for the world's big oil companies.

Is there any other industry that directly benefits from the cost increases of their raw materials? I think not. Typical forces as a result of increases in material cost result in lower margins, at least temporarily before prices can be increased, as concurrently, marginal supply quantities are reduced or dropped off due to the new (higher) cost prohibitions for these supply sources; also driving up prices to a new equilibrium of supply and demand quantities. These higher prices force consumption cutbacks by consumers, investment in alternatives and the like, which add the the pressures of lowering demand - which in turn must (you would think) also effect profits negatively [at least in the short term].

So while I have no specialized insight into the petroleum industry and their ability to "print money" in a logically suppressed economic scenario, I still am troubled by how - even logically this increase in raw material cost, not only has no ill effects, but that it results in the opposite anticipated effect. Additionally I would love to be able to apply this "inverse cost effect" to other industries, there's a fortune to be had in consulting fees alone.

So let us over simplify the model; at $3 a gallon, let's assume that $1 a gallon is material and $1 a gallon is processing and overhead, for a net profit $1 (way over simplification, but hang with me). If my material cost instantly go up to $1.25 and my processing and overhead remains the same - they have some variable cost here, but not THAT variable in the short term [less than 6 months], so my profit is directly reduced by that $0.25 increase. Even if I could directly tie my pricing to my material cost and immediately charge $3.25 a gallon, that would leave my profits identical only assuming the demand was the same. Which in aggregate seems unlikely.

So in this simple model how do I get my profits to rise, when material costs increase, and make up for the lower sales (however small that may be)? Logically - and mathematically, if I have this right - I would have to IMMEDIATELY increase the price by a greater amount that the increase in my material cost. Isn't his price gouging? This of course only works in a product with a very inelastic demand curve - such as gasoline.

But there is something inherently 'wrong' about this from a society perspective, there is certainly no incentive for the big oil companies to work to negotiate lower material costs (unless they maintain the higher pricing levels - which increase their profits - that is gouging, isn't it?), nor are they incentived to increase efficiency or develop alternate raw materials or sources...they're already making RECORD PROFIT.

My economic understanding has passed the way of the rotary phone. Man I wish I owned a oil company.

Baseball as Religion

This is no attempt to diminish or admonish the traditional religious conviction and beliefs, nor is it a treatise to analyze the influence and importance on the human race; supported or unsupported by the deities of faith. It is simply an assertion that Baseball for those that are devout, is a religion.

Baseball has its rituals, repeated and expected with fervent piety; whether its the throwing out of the first pitch, the singing of the national anthem, or the simplified benediction of 'Play Ball!' The drawing of the faithful, through promise of deliverance is the message to the masses and the faith in that belief that sustains them.

The cycle of renewal that begins each spring and is celebrated each 'opening day' in each parish of green and brown, of sun and wind; a veritable cathedral to the game they love. Their faith in their collective ability to influence the fate of the results and triumph through the long tribulations leading to the crowning of champions of cold October days.

And those left less fortunate can take solstice in the support from their fellow man - if in nothing else but a tax distribution - and believe again that anything can happen when the cycle begins again. Even though the colors and the allegiance make for distinctions among this congregation, it is all still baseball and makes us all brothers and sisters in this pastime.