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Success

You Will Probably Lose

By Jack Malcolm / 4.9.2014 / No Comment

I’m preparing a speech that I’ll deliver next week to a group of aspiring entrepreneurs who are participating in a program that teaches them how to commercialize new technologies. My topic area is the venture pitch, and I’ve been asked to talk to them about public speaking.

There’s only one catch. I’ve been told that I’m not allowed to teach them anything.

Yes, you read that right. I’m not allowed to teach them anything. It’s a federally-funded program that follows a carefully defined curriculum, so technically anything that I say of an educational nature is a violation of some law!

But I specialize in finding creative ways to meet my clients’ needs, so I think I’ve come up with a solution we all can live with. I’m going to tell them stuff that’s so obvious, that any learning that takes place will surely be accidental. The worst that can happen is that I may be charged with involuntary education.

So here goes my first obvious point to them: You will probably lose. I haven’t told you anything that you don’t already know. Look around you, there are twenty teams here, so the odds are stacked against you. It’s a mathematical fact that you will probably lose. Sure, you may be thinking that you know that your team is better than everyone else’s, so the odds are much better for you. But everyone else here is probably thinking that, too, and you can’t all be right.

And it doesn’t get any easier when you leave the program. You actually have a much better chance of winning this competition than you have a chance of winning funding from a real investor with a real pitch. According to Chris Lipp, author of The Startup Pitch, a typical venture capitalist may hear 750 pitches a year and invest in only three.

So, yes, you will probably lose. And that’s the best part about the entire program.

It’s good because the difficulty of winning drives the competition and pulls the best out of you.
It’s good because it gives you a taste of the odds you will face in the real world.
It’s good because losing can be a way better teacher than winning.

You will probably lose, but you will definitely win.

By being a part of this program, you’ve already won. By participating in the training, you’ve already won. By shaping everything you’re doing with your business idea into the discipline of an eight-minute presentation, you will continue to win. By facing the gauntlet of questions after your presentation, you will win by gaining the experience and confidence that will help you continue to win when you leave these walls and this program. By facing a high probability of losing – and moving forward anyway, you have already won.

By the way, dear reader, if you’ve learned anything from this post, please let me know what you learned, so I can take it out.

Persuasive communication - Success

Two Simple Words that Can Mean So Much

By Jack Malcolm / 4.8.2014 / No Comment

Although we consultants and bloggers like to make things more complicated than they are, sometimes success boils down to very simple things. One excellent example is writing thank-you notes.

I was discussing this idea with my friend, Rick Hertan, who is a recruiter and executive coach, and he told me a story about a candidate he once put in front of a major Midwest-based Fortune 500 company for an EVP position. The candidate was perfect for the job; he interviewed well on the first interview, and afterwards he and his girlfriend were flown out for more interviews as well as dinner with the outgoing EVP and his wife. Things went so well that he was offered the position with a generous compensation package. A week later, the company rescinded the offer, simply because the candidate did not send a thank you note!

Rick tried to rescue the deal, but he was told that they were a family-oriented company who took these types of values very seriously, and had decided that the candidate would not fit their culture. To this day, the candidate tells Rick that was the single costliest mistake he has ever made in his career.

I’m the furthest thing from an etiquette expert, so take the rest of this in that spirit. The first rule should be: write the damn note! I personally think email is fine for business dealings, although a handwritten note or letter is probably a much better idea for a social situation. Of course, it never hurts to pick up the phone and actually give thanks in person.

I’m also not an expert on how to write them. I envy people who seem to have a knack for finding just the right tone of appreciation between the extremes of gushing flattery and cold bland clichés. My best advice, judging from the ones I’ve received and really liked, are to be sincere and be specific. Let them know they are appreciated and tell them specifically how they helped you.

In this age of electronically-powered networking, it’s easy to forget the simple social graces and common courtesies, but they are so easy to do and can mean so much.

Thanks for the story, Rick!

Success

Lessons from a Platoon Leader in Afghanistan

By Jack Malcolm / 4.7.2014 / No Comment

If you like reading about leadership and personal development, and if you want to see a fine example of clear and credible communication, I recommend that you read this short blog post: What I Wish I Knew: From Cadet to Lieutenant in Afghanistan, by First Lieutenant Scott Ginther.

Probably everyone will relate differently to Ginther’s 20 points, but here are three that stood out for me:

First, he says something profound even before he gets to his points. I’ve been writing a chapter about clarity for my book on credibility, and ironically have found it difficult to encapsulate what clarity means. Ginther expresses it as well anyone:

“I swore I would do three things: 1) provide an honest answer, 2) express the truth in the most unvarnished way possible, and 3) keep things short.”

Any writer or speaker who can do these three things does not need any further advice on clarity.

Point #2: “Your job is to take responsibility. You control your own consequences.” This is advice that applies to anyone who wants to be a leader. There are two sides to this. First, although leadership does not come from a title, if you have the title you have the responsibility whether you want it or not. Use it. Second, even without the rank or the title, assuming responsibility for outcomes makes you a leader.

Point #17: Your soldiers will do amazing things. “I have the following Soldiers in my platoon: a former blacksmith and rodeo clown, a NASCAR pit crewman, two carpenters, a private who is a multi-millionaire and drives and Audi R8, a Sugar Bowl-winning, University of West Virginia offensive lineman and a SSG who graduated college at 17 years old and taught physics at Tulane before the age of 26.” Although Ginther doesn’t say it this way, my takeaway from that statement is that leaders will get the best results by pointing the way and then getting out of the way.

After reading this, I’m sure you’ll agree with me that this lieutenant in Afghanistan succeeds in providing honest lessons in an unvarnished way, and keeps it brief. I wish most business books were written this way.

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Numbers: It Depends on How You Look at Them

By Jack Malcolm / 4.4.2014 / No Comment

You would think that a number is a number is a number, that it means the same thing regardless of how it’s presented. But that’s not true, as an example in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal shows.

If your reliability is 99.7% and your next best competitor’s is 99.4%, that doesn’t sound like a large enough difference to be worth touting. That’s because you’re starting from zero. But if you start from 100% and work backwards, the picture totally changes, as you can see in this explanation:

“Last year, Delta canceled just 0.3% of its flights, according to flight-tracking service FlightStats.com. That was twice as good as the next-best airlines, Southwest and Alaska, and five times better than the industry average of 1.7%.”

Seen in this light, Delta is 5 times better than the industry average. It is totally accurate and there is nothing underhanded about saying it this way. If you had to choose between two airlines for an important trip, would you pay a little extra for the one that has half the chance of being cancelled? Maybe the practical side of you says the chances of cancellation are so small in either case that you wouldn’t spend the premium, but what if the choice was between two surgical procedures, would that change your decision?

The point is that even something as objective as a number can mean different things to different people, depending on the context that it comes wrapped in. Think carefully about that when you use numbers in your next presentation.