The power of the human imagination is still relatively little researched. Productivity literature, parents and teachers ask us to focus on the task in hand and our project plans. Yet we know through our human history that it has been the big thinkers that have enabled our faster progress as a human race: not those who just focus on the here & now and accept the norm.

As animals, we are goal oriented (food, sex….) and from what we know about our evolution, we can speculate that a sophistication in our goal setting was introduced as we developed consciousness. We could defer satisfaction. Invest time and energy, working together for a longer-term and ultimately more rewarding goal. I suspect this skill is also subject to further evolution. We can be bound by what we know, as framed by our human history and what we tell each other. Limited by the current ‘realities’ of our knowledge. Or we can recognise this will just bring us a tomorrow that looked like yesterday.

Instead, we need to recognise our own power of imagination. We use the same parts of our brain in imagining as we do in remembering. Your ‘brain’ doesn’t really know that your big vision hasn’t already happened; therefore you are the only blocker to your dreams. Your limiting self-beliefs, your why-nots. So let’s take advantage of our sophistication. Let’s blow the doors off everything that limits us. Let’s all start to have visions that we’re proud of: our reality is what we make it.

Fortunately a giant robot dinosaur called FAKEGRIMLOCK comes to the rescue of our human limitations on a post on Eric Ries’ Lean Startup blog. My favourite part:

EVERYONE GOOD AT SEE CAN’T. EVERYONE LIVE IN WORLD FULL OF IMPOSSIBLE.

EVERYTHING THAT MATTER IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL SOMEONE DO IT ANYWAY.

STOP BEING EVERYONE. STARE AT WHY NOT UNTIL IT GIVE UP AND BECOME HOW TO.

1. Relentlessly pursue bold ideas – Organizations must have the patience, courage, and foresight to encourage, provide resources, and remove barriers for their “wild ducks” to pursue and realize break-out ideas.
2. The customer rules – Organizations need to identify and accelerate the careers of high potential employees who are attuned to the marketplace in ways that drive products and/or services intended to always surprise and delight the customer.
3. Ego serves the organization – Leaders can have big egos, but their efforts are fundamentally channeled in the service of making organizations successful.
4. Don’t confuse activity with results – Successful leaders leverage competitive drive to maintain traction/deliver distinctive excellence. They are not distracted from achieving the organization’s strategy and primary objectives.
5. The 3 Rs – Strong leaders ensure that the right people are in the right jobs and that the right conditions have been created for them to succeed.
6. Truth-telling – Don’t tolerate mediocre ideas, and be willing to take decisive action when people are not cutting it in their assigned roles.
7. Inspirational communication – Provide frequent and intensely motivational communication about compelling objectives, and the importance of speed to market.

Avoid the following pitfalls:

1. Prizing boldness to a fault – Don’t push ideas at the expense of forming and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders; inducing unnecessary political problems both within and outside the organization.
2. Misreading the customer – Customers may or may not be ready for the next “shiny object.” Objectively gauging customer readiness is key in the pacing and release of technological advances.
3. When ego doesn’t serve the organization – Acting like the 800-pound dominant gorilla and/or always needing to be the smartest kid in the room can have intensely de-motivating and or dis-empowering effects on others.
4. Excessive drive for results – People will feel trampled, unnecessarily stressed, pushed beyond what is reasonable, neglected, or otherwise de-humanized in the name of achieving results.
5. The 1 R – Getting the people right, but failing to assimilate them well or supporting them fully, expecting them to solve organization obstacles that really require senior management intervention, and failing to mentor employees won’t build talent bench strength within the organization.
6. Destructive truth telling – Excessive negative feedback that gets personal, and also the absence of “psychological paychecks” that recognize and affirm stellar efforts and results does nothing to drive results.
7. Un-inspirational communication – Messages that are diminished by a leader’s hyperbole, grand-standing, and/or failure to help employees see their place in the journey leaves workers uninspired and lost.

via The Real Lessons from Steve Jobs’ Career | ChiefExecutive.net | Chief Executive Magazine.

Break process when necessary to get things done

Processes are well and good for many things, but not much remarkable was ever done as part of painting by numbers.  If you see opportunity to do something amazing outside your processes, do it.  Don’t waste time asking permission, just do what needs to be done.  If you break a process to achieve your objective and succeed, the right management team would never be upset.  If they are you’re with the wrong team.

Believe in what you’re doing (and bring emotion to the table)

A lot of people check their emotions at the door when starting their day.  You shouldn’t do this – especially if you are in a creative industry.  Your emotions, directed by the high road, can be a powerful tool of persuasion and allow you to execute far better than you would without them.  Believing in what you’re doing requires that you bring your emotions.

Fear nothing

I’ve previously promoted the notion you should fear nothing.  Just like Jack faced adversaries without fear, you too should embrace this in anything you do in your industry.  Fear is a dated emotion, having little relevance in modern society.  What’s the worst that can happen to you, really?

Strategist and tactician

It’s a potent combination to be able to not just develop effective strategic plays, but also put them into action yourself.  It is the rare strategist who is able to masterfully execute on the front lines and lead other tacticians to success.  Further, that individual will have greater respect from the execution team than anyone else on the management team who simply sits in their ivory tower.

Don’t seek recognition

If you notice something is broken, quietly fix it and move on.  You don’t need to bring it up to others that you’ve done it — if you’re committed to what you’re doing it’s not about recognition anyway, it’s about winning.  Those seeking recognition instead of actually caring about what they are doing don’t deserve to stay at your company.

Ability to persuade others to your line of thinking

If you’re serious about the idea of becoming a linchpin as the concept of this post implies, you need to get your unique ideas executed and change your organization for the better.  However, the extent to which you can evoke change on your own may be limited (especially if you’re in a larger organization).  If you can persuade others at targeted levels of the organization you will be able to bring big ideas into reality.

The rules don’t apply to you

Rules are for drones and if you blindly follow rules all day you deserve the position you’re in.  If your heart is in the right place and rules stand in the way of something, ignore them.  If it comes back to bite you later but the rule was absurd, say so and make your case why.  Again smart management team members want to see this – I would always rather work with a group like this vs. a team of robots.

Take risks, have contingency plans

You’ll never achieve anything of value without taking a risk.  Valuable things just aren’t easy to achieve — everyone else is already accomplishing the easy stuff, meaning none of it is rare or of extreme value.  However, along with taking risks, think several steps ahead and ensure you have a contingency plan available should the situation go awry.  Failure is always an option – be ready for it.

Fierce loyalty to those who matter

If you’re going to become the Jack Bauer of your company you’ll never get away with that sort of reputation unless it’s combined with loyalty.  But ensure your loyalty is to the right individuals, otherwise this can and will backfire.

Be irrationally committed

If you consider your work merely a “job” – you can never be as valuable a team member as someone who is irrationally committed to what they’re doing.

Have opinions, take sides

Standing on the sidelines is for the weak.  If you really want to be a key person at your company you need to have opinions or take sides even if it’s not your job to do so.  Take a stance on things and the right people will respect you for it.

Be a jack of all trades

All industries have specific areas of specialization within that industry.  But you unlock an even more valuable and unique skill set when you study and become proficient at them all as opposed to only having knowledge of one area.  Interesting results always happen at the intersection.

Not everyone is going to like you

Inevitably, if you are doing things in a different or unique way, not everyone is going to like you.  You may even create some enemies.  But consider this a positive:  a nemesis can inspire you to live up to your potential and work with greater focus and creativity.  Competitiveness is a positive and should be embraced and leveraged

via How To Be The Jack Bauer Of Your Company.

1. Look for disruptive change. As you are about to start a new venture, ask yourself these questions: What is becoming possible or necessary that wasn’t possible before?  Is a new product or service able to take over an existing market or create a new market? When I co-founded LinkedIn in 2003, the tech industry was in a deep depression. I looked at all the opportunities created by the Internet and had the idea that eventually everyone would need a professional profile online. This profile would enable them to connect with similar professionals and share news, tips and other information. The development of online professional profiles that people could create and control themselves led to an enormous, disruptive change in the recruiting industry. It provided a way for people to directly reach the best candidates rather than hoping for responses from a listing in the paper.

2. Aim big. Regardless of whether a start-up is targeting a big idea or small one, it will still require the same amount of blood, sweat and tears — so aim big! What is big? It is a new product or service that creates or dominates a significant market. If the market is small or your product is only a marginal improvement over what is already available, you will be taking the same risks but for a much smaller potential gain. I am on the board of a company called Shopkick, which aims to revolutionize retail shopping through a mobile application and incentive program that will enable retailers to attract new and more frequent shoppers. Shopkick founder Cyriac Roeding didn’t think small. He is targeting ALL retail shopping.

3. Build a network to magnify your company. A lot of people seem to think that behind every great start-up is a single entrepreneur with an idea. The reality is, great companies are built by a number of people with talent who are surrounded by supportive networks. Going beyond recruiting exceptional talent, the most successful entrepreneurs bring in advisers, investors and even early customer relationships. Building out this network of alliances massively increases the size and probability of a positive result. Zynga, a global social-gaming company based in San Francisco and founded four years ago, has raised a great deal of capital yet the company’s founder and CEO, Mark Pincus, has yet to use most of it. He raised that money in order to bring in strong board members who could help him build his gaming empire. The capital those investors bring to the table is just insurance.

4. Plan for good and bad luck. Whenever you are about to embark on building a new company you should assume two things: You will have good luck and you will have bad luck. Good luck is not as simple as “it works out.” Rather, good luck is when you suddenly discover a great opportunity and can quickly shift to go after it. Bad luck is what happens when your idea doesn’t work out. It doesn’t mean instant failure, but means you need to go to plan B. PayPal was founded at the turn of this past decade. When we launched the first product, the company still thought of itself as a mobile payments company. We came upon some good luck when we noticed the massive traction and growth from just one week of providing payments for eBay’s marketplace. The company quickly pivoted so that its main focus was powering eBay’s marketplace.

5. Maintain flexible persistence. Very often entrepreneurs are given conflicting advice. They are told, “Be persistent! Stick to your vision! Drive through adversity!” At the same time they are told, “Listen to customer feedback! Pivot on key data! Know when to change!” The challenge for entrepreneurs is to be able to follow both pieces of advice at the same time. In other words, you must know when to maintain flexible persistence. Over the years PayPal has made multiple significant pivots. The company started as a mobile encryption platform. Then it was a mobile payments company. Next PayPal was a combination mobile and Web site payments company. Finally PayPal became an email payments company. Each pivot over the life of the company was the result of rethinking the business but maintaining the vision. The focus was always to become a payments operating system; but the nature of the operating system changed multiple times.

Reid Hoffman is co-founder and chairman at LinkedIn and a Pprtner at Greylock Partners. He is a member of the founding team at PayPal and has been an angel investor and adviser to dozens of organizations including Facebook, Zynga, Flickr and Last.FM.  He currently serves on the boards of LinkedIn, Zynga, Shopkick, Kiva.org and Mozilla. His complete profile can be found at www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman.

via LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman: Five Lessons for Entrepreneurs – Tech Europe – WSJ.

1. The cost of understanding your product/service has to be less than the immediately obvious benefit that comes from using your product/ service.People will stay with you (pitch/ marketing message/ website) for as long as their needs being solved are made immediately apparent, are sufficiently significant, and the ways in which your product/ service solves that need are clearly understandable (and the cost of understanding is less than the benefit) [adapted and evolved from SuperConnect]
2. A CEO should be aiming to only focus on strategy and people development: your head should be 12-18mths hence at first (longer over time), and your heart should be in developing the person better than you.You are the only person in the business whose job it really is to ‘develop the insights/ perceptions/ abilities to detect patterns of change and relate them to your landscape, industries, competition and business’ [adapted from Execution]. You should always be looking to develop the person better than you to be able to take your job. If they don’t yet exist in your company, make sure you hire them. ‘Yes’ or ‘passive no’ people will kill your business.
3. If the core transactions of your business don’t exist without funding (including your time/cost funding), then your sole focus should be on adjusting your business model to be profitable in its core operation without investment.However well-funded or visionary your plans are, the cash flow monster eats the investment and then chases and kills 99% of its prey.
4. If you can’t translate what you do into an emotional need solved, your business idea will struggle. I always get my businesses and clients to then translate this further into the company’s mission: its reason for existing. This aligns the owners, team, stakeholders and clients behind a common mission.Compelling needs are fine. Emotional needs take your business to another level. Just make sure you go back to the ‘patterns of change’ point in 2. above, because as soon as a need is solved another tends to appear.
5. The primary reason for failure (after cash) is a lack of self-awareness. A lack of honesty where the founder/ owner/ MD is doing things which they shouldn’t and others should. An inability to analyse their own blockers and get out-of-the-way of their own business’ success. Only focus on what you and only you can do. Delegate or outsource all else.This is the reason all my current businesses (Scarlet Monday, MyNeuroCoach.com, MyOwnChairman.com) exist to enable entrepreneurs, CEOs and MDs to fulfil their ambitions for their business by removing their own blockers to success.

[Steve Jobs - Stanford commencement speech, June 2005]

via Steve Jobs Quotes.

There is no magical “secret” to this effect, and no, you cannot change the world simply by wishful thinking. But your attitude and beliefs about yourself affect how you behave, and sometimes attitudes become self-fulfilling. The general principle seems to be – that it is better to be optimistic than pessimistic.

A new study is in line with this principle.  Researchers in this case focused on attitudes regarding the ability to learn from one’s mistakes. They gave subjects a simple test – identifying the letter in the middle of a five-letter sequence. This is an easy task, but when done over and over eventually people make mistakes. The research focused on how they react when such mistakes occur. Some individuals seemed to learn from their mistakes, increase their effort, and improve later performance. Others did not recover from the mistake and improve their later performance.

These behaviors correlated with the subjects’ attitudes. Those who felt they could learn from their mistakes, did. Those who felt that intelligence and performance are fixed characteristics did not improved their performance after the error. Again – these attitudes appear to be self-fulfilling.

via NeuroLogica Blog » Learn from Your Mistakes – Or Don’t.

Confidence is an essential ingredient of success in a wide range of domains ranging from job performance and mental health to sports, business and combat. Some authors have suggested that not just confidence but overconfidence—believing you are better than you are in reality—is advantageous because it serves to increase ambition, morale, resolve, persistence or the credibility of bluffing, generating a self-fulfilling prophecy in which exaggerated confidence actually increases the probability of success. However, overconfidence also leads to faulty assessments, unrealistic expectations and hazardous decisions, so it remains a puzzle how such a false belief could evolve or remain stable in a population of competing strategies that include accurate, unbiased beliefs. Here we present an evolutionary model showing that, counterintuitively, overconfidence maximizes individual fitness and populations tend to become overconfident, as long as benefits from contested resources are sufficiently large compared with the cost of competition. In contrast, unbiased strategies are only stable under limited conditions. The fact that overconfident populations are evolutionarily stable in a wide range of environments may help to explain why overconfidence remains prevalent today, even if it contributes to hubris, market bubbles, financial collapses, policy failures, disasters and costly wars.

via Deric Bownds’ MindBlog: Evolutionary rationale for positive illusions..

You need to put in place a few important frameworks within which a large number of people can operate in a way that maximizes their energy.

The key is to control and shape the three most important levers of sustainable business growth—the Brains, the Bones, and the Nerves.

The brains of a business are its vision and strategy, and here the enterprise leader must shape and set direction.

The bones are the organizational architecture, and here the enterprise leader must design the organization in order to execute the strategy.

The nerves refer to the culture and climate of the organization, and here the enterprise leader must foster a culture of long lasting excellence.

Just as the human body needs all three systems—the brain, bones, and nerves—functioning in perfect harmony to maximize longevity and performance, a business needs its strategy, architecture, and culture to work in harmony in order to maximize results. As an enterprise leader, you should focus on these three as your most important focus areas; everything else must be delegated.

Here are a few simple but powerful ideas about how to lead a large workforce by shaping and managing the brains, bones, and nerves of your organization.

via The Only Three Things a Leader Should Focus On — Brains, Bones, and Nerves | ChiefExecutive.net | Chief Executive Magazine.