Tag Archives: life lessons

July 7, 2016 · 8:33 am

One Ear At A Time

Today’s screed comes courtesy of my mom. While I’m doing the writing, she provided the inspiration for some business thinking. Isn’t that what moms do? 

I’m in Florida with my folks. My mom is having a procedure today and they’ll need a little help while she is recuperating. There was a little drama late yesterday about what time we are to go to the hospital. At one point she had a cell phone in one ear and a landline in the other as she tried to speak with a doctor and the doctor’s nurse. These were entirely separate conversations, mind you, and not some mashed-up form of a conference call. Combine that with my dad’s kibbitzing from the couch and it was quite a scene. Her attention was quite divided and it was actually comical listening to the circular conversations and the obvious lack of progress.

I described the scene to someone afterward and they remarked that you really can’t hear either conversation when you’re not focused, which is our business thought today. How many people do you know who claim to be great a multitasking? I’m here to tell you that they’re lying:

The short answer to whether people can really multitask is no. Multitasking is a myth. The human brain can not perform two tasks that require high-level brain function at once. Low-level functions like breathing and pumping blood aren’t considered in multitasking, only tasks you have to “think” about. What actually happens when you think you are multitasking is that you are rapidly switching between tasks.

In other words, we really can only pay attention to one ear at a time or one task at a time yet many of us insist on trying to do several contemporaneously. My guess is that each task takes longer than if we’d paid full attention to it and that the quality of the result is lower as well. I’m just as guilty as you are of trying to do too many things at once but I’m going to remember my mom and a phone in each ear as I try to change my ways. You?

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 5, 2016 · 10:55 am

Living Your Life Loving Chaos

I heard someone discussing chaos theory the other day. Uncertain as to exactly what they were describing, my natural curiosity took over and I did a little poking around so I could understand the term a little better. What I learned is a great place to start the week and the second half of the year.

I suspect that most of you aren’t mathematicians. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of you didn’t go on to study advanced math much beyond high school (I sure didn’t and even remembering what I did study makes my head hurt). As it turns out, chaos theory is a branch of fractal math that describes business pretty well:

Chaos is the science of surprises, of the nonlinear and the unpredictable. It teaches us to expect the unexpected. While most traditional science deals with supposedly predictable phenomena like gravity, electricity, or chemical reactions, Chaos Theory deals with nonlinear things that are effectively impossible to predict or control.

Doesn’t that sound like the business lives we lead? The nice part of it is that within chaos there is order. Patterns emerge over time. Business is a series of interconnected, complex systems. When there are that many moving, independent pieces, predicting how each one will behave, or even how they MIGHT behave, is impossible. We can’t spend our time focused solely on predicting those behaviors. Our time is better spent in understanding where patterns come from and what they are as order emerges.

I think the most important line in the quote above for us as businesspeople is the last – things that are impossible to predict or control. We need to live our business lives embracing that uncertainty and not getting outraged when some unpredictable event intervenes. We can’t know everything although we can try to be prepared for anything. We need to embrace the chaos of business and to look for patterns. Those who will win will be the ones that find them first. You?

Leave a comment

Filed under Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , , ,

June 28, 2016 · 11:00 am

Going Backward Is Dumb. Looking Backward Isn’t.

There was a story in this morning’s paper that had me shaking my head once again. Seems as if it’s a daily occurrence, I know. This one got me thinking about the things we can take away from the subject and apply to business, which is also a daily occurrence. The story was about our shared stupidity and our general refusal to learn. Let me explain.

Here is the headline: American Drivers Regain Appetite for Gas Guzzlers. I’ve linked to the story but as you can imagine it has to do with many people giving up their fuel-efficient cars to buy gas guzzlers as the price of gas has fallen. Of course, in addition to adding a lot of room to the passenger compartment, these vehicles also add a lot of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere, and unless you’re one of the few who are ignoring virtually every scientist on the planet, that is creating a changed climate for us all.

I’m not ranting today about the politics of this. To me, it’s not very different from what a lot of managers do in their own businesses. The higher price of gas was a crisis. Many car owners adjusted by decreasing driving, buying more efficient vehicles or using mass transit if it was available. Most good managers do the same sort of thing in a crisis. They cut spending, focus on business development, eliminate inefficient product lines, and do all of the other things one can do to continue on until the crisis has passed. What the great managers do is to continue to operate with that mindset even after the crisis is long gone under the assumption that the same problem or another one is virtually certain to rear its head at some point. That doesn’t mean they fail to invest once conditions have improved. It does mean that they learn from the crisis and adjust and they don’t go back to doing exactly what they were doing before.

I own a hybrid and my family owns two others. I can’t see going backward with respect to fuel efficiency and greenhouse emissions no matter how cheap gas becomes. I try not to go backward in business either. Going backward is dumb. Looking backward and learning isn’t. Your call.

1 Comment

Filed under Consulting, Huh?

Tagged as , , , , , ,