Venture capitalist Fred Wilson shares a friend’s take on how success and failure can lure both companies and individuals into distinct — yet both undesirable — mental ruts:

The winner’s curse is Microsoft…It happens when a company is so good at one thing that they win big. But when its time to change, they just can’t stop doing the things that made them so successful in the past that no longer work.
The loser’s curse is when you fail at something so badly that you never want to try it again even if there are other and better ways to do it that may result in a better outcome.

Re-inventing yourself, even when things are going peachy, is the solution to the former. Desire, persistence, and ego subordination seem to be the top prescription for the latter.

Simple, but not easy. Yet absolutely necessary in a competitive, always-evolving environment.

A must-read article in a recent issue of Fortune magazine: Managing in chaos.

I don’t proclaim “must-read” very often, but was compelled to do so here after reading these words (bold italics are mine):

Across sectors — retailing, brokerage, software, publishing, computers — business models that produced profits for decades have shut down. In most cases managers aren’t sure what the new model will be, but they’re absolutely certain it won’t have a multi-decade lifespan.

We are going through a transition that will interest historians centuries from now. It’s partly a result of globalization, partly the digital revolution and the information-based economy it spawns.

Author Geoffrey Colvin explains what’s driving this transition:

By freeing companies from physical assets, it has made them both more flexible and more vulnerable to competitors.

The digital revolution also makes business more chaotic by shifting information and power toward customers.

I’m well aware of the media’s propensity for hype, but I found it difficult to disagree with Colvin. Some big changes are going down in the world of commerce. Paradoxically, “staying the course” is likely to take you off-course. Seth Godin agrees:

[D]oing what you’re doing now is wacky. Because what you’re doing now is certain to become obsolete, possibly sooner rather than later.

Ed Sim points to Judy’s Book CEO Andy Sacks, who offers these questions for management teams to ponder once every few months:

1. What are the hardest problems in our current business approach - the market issues that we keep struggling with over and over?
2. What’s (surprisingly) easy about our business – the things that are working better than expected?
3. Where’s the parade? What major trends are we trying to get in front of with our business?

What would our business look like if we:

- Stopped trying to do what’s hard,
- Did more of the things that are easy, and
- Made sure we were in front of the biggest parade we can find?

Seth Godin on the importance of thinking small:

One of the reasons small is so much more important than big is that people who think small have the power and flexibility to do things for their customers.

In Zen Golf, PGA Tour instructor Dr. Joseph Parent writes about mastering golf’s mental game. The very first concept he addresses in the book is beginner’s mind:

Beginner’s mind is a mind that is open, eager to learn, an empty cup. If your mind is open, empty of preconceptions, it is always inquisitive, receptive to whatever arises, and ready to engage.

[N]o matter how good the instruction is, it is only as useful as the student’s interest and effort in learning.

Dr. Parent notes that Buddhist teachings offer an excellent analogy for the learning process:

Four types of cups symbolize four kinds of students. Instruction is symbolized by water being poured.
The first cup is upside down. This represents a student who is supposedly there to learn, but pays no attention. You may have experienced something similar while reading a book: Your eyes move across the words all the way down the page, but when you get to the bottom, you realize you were daydreaming and have no idea what you read. That’s what happens when a cup is turned upside down. No matter how much is poured, nothing gets in.
The second cup is right side up, but has a hole in the bottom. We hear what’s being taught, but we forget it all too soon. We don’t chew on it and digest it and take it to heart…This is the classic case of “in one ear and out the other.”
The third cup is right side up and doesn’t have a hole in it, but the inside is covered with dirt. When the clear water of instruction is poured in, the dirt makes it cloudy. This symbolizes the way we can distort what we hear, interpreting and editing it to fit into our preconceived ideas or opinions. Nothing new is actually learned. When we take a lesson, if the instruction matches how we already see things, it is taken as confirmation. Anything new that doesn’t match our opinion is resisted, ignored, or disregarded.
The fourth cup represents the ideal way to be a student. It is upright, receiving what is taught. It has no holes, retaining what is taught. It is clean, open to learning something new.

NPS = Net Promoter Score

Ever heard of it? GE CEO Immelt says his entire company will be using it. The metric is apparently a key part of his strategy to drive growth there.

Here’s NPS in a nutshell:
Promoters are the assets that drive your company’s growth. Detractors are the liabilities that stifle growth.
Ask customers to score your company, using a 0-to-10 scale, on this question:
“How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?”
Label those who rate your firm with a score of 9 or 10 as promoters.
Label those who give your company a score from 0 to 6 as detractors.
NPS = [percentage of promoters] - [percentage of detractors], or assets minus liabilities.

Business Week just published NPS: The Next Six Sigma? Some highlights:

Loyalty leaders such as Southwest Airlines and American Express register NPSs around 50%…[but] the average U.S. company sputters along with an NPS of only 5% to 10%, meaning that promoters barely outnumber detractors.

Like any good metric, NPS presents challenges. Companies must spend a significant amount of resources gathering and reporting reliable data. They must track variations in NPS, and they must understand how and why customers react as they do to their products and services.

Like Six Sigma, NPS is more than a metric—it’s a set of disciplines for using that metric to understand customers and drive strategy and operations.

I wouldn’t be surprised if, like Six Sigma before it, NPS create certification levels which borrow from the martial arts. Maybe GE employees are already clamoring for their NPS Black Belt.

Marketing headhunter Harry Joiner confesses that he’s hired to fix problems that are totally preventable.

One of his latest candidates, a talented Internet marketer, tells her boss that others in her field are earning up to 50% more than her current paycheck. Her boss replies, “[I]f you can get that kind of money elsewhere, go for it…Take [your current pay level] or leave it.”

Pogo said it best: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Harry tells us how such stories usually play out:

The best way to keep your recruiting costs low is to not lose good people. [Her] defection is totally unnecessary. She’s trained. She has solid intercompany relationships. She’s well-respected by her peers outside of the company. And her desk is very cash-flow positive. Replacing Susan will be a costly hassle if the company does it without my help. And if the company does it with my help, I’ll charge them 20-25% of the replacement’s base salary…The total cost to clean up this mess will be $60-70K.

Trust me, if I get an unsolicited call from one of your A-players, I will remind them that you don’t appreciate them. That’s my job: I’m a management recruiter, and I’m pretty good at it.

Joiner even provides the simple fix which, if adopted globally, would dent his own paycheck:

[I]f you want your company to go from Good to Great, for each employee under review ask “Would I hire this person again?” If the answer is yes, then keep in mind the total cost to replace that person and assign their bonus accordingly.

Must reading from Seth Godin for customer service reps, salespeople, waiters/waitresses, agents, consultants, managers, leaders — in other words, anyone who has a customer to serve :
How to Deal with an Angry Customer

Rob Millard and Anecdote point us to — dare I say — a beautiful representation of complex systems thinking: The Art of Complex Problem Solving.

(For full enjoyment, mouse over the bullet point list in the upper left corner of the page.)

In this modern age, most white collar workers rely heavily on their computer. News, email, spreadsheets — all emitted from a glowing LCD screen.

Christopher Kenton is no different. He claims here that he gets 95% of his information digitally. I can relate to that!

That’s why Kenton’s latest revelation, News at Life Speed, struck me. Just when I’m thinking that I should ditch the hard copy life and go 100% digital, he explains what happened after ordering real subscriptions of some of his favorite news publications (bold text is mine):

I [ordered] these publications with what suddenly feels like a nostalgic binge. It’ll be nice, I think, to sit on the porch swing with my coffee and read [the Wall Street Journal]. And that’s exactly what happened. I found myself kicking back at various times to relax and absorb the news and insight I’m so addicted to. And that eventually led to an unexpected, but not very surprising insight. I’m getting more value out of the print journals than I am online. Why? A simple side effect of psychology: it’s not only the data that matters, but the environment–the experience in which the data is collected.

When I gather information on my computer, I’m firmly rooted in the same environment and attitude I use for so many action-oriented tasks. I communicate through my computer. Think on my computer. Entertain myself on my computer. It’s all so…functional, and rigid. I sit up straight in my chair, staring at a single point in space, processing. When I read a magazine–just like when I read a book–I can kick my feet up, relax, and absorb. And I’m finding it makes a difference. I read deeper into the stories. I think about them more. I enjoy the experience more. But more importantly, I’m finding that I retain a lot more. It may sound a little strange, but I have the impression that I’m not emulating a computer with my brain–processing so many bits of data–but feeding my brain with ideas. It’s not a function of the information I’m gathering, but the environment I create to gather it. And what a subtle, but effective difference it seems to make.

Christopher’s insight was made in the context of news publications. I think it applies to nearly all text-based content, and I’m sure he would agree.

I’m not giving up television, the web or other digital sources of information. But Kenton is right. Sometimes we need to savor ink on paper.