Imagine being Jeff Bezos in 1994 – I think I’ll give-up a promising career in New York as an investment banker and start an on-line book store called Amazon. There were many people he spoke to who thought his idea was crazy, a long-shot. And there were some, who thought it was brilliant. (Picture of warehouse here courtesy of BusinessWeek.)

So, imagine how you would go about persuading senior executives or investors to “invest resources” in that idea?

Many times in your career you will want to persuade someone to back or buy your idea. I have two tips for you.

First Tip – An Idea from Professor Baba Shiv. If you are working in an organization and you have an idea that requires someone in upper management to approve it, Professor Shiv from Stanford University has these two suggestions:

1. “Figure out if the person you’re trying to pitch is really open to new ideas. If not, find a champion in upper management who you think might be.” (As published in Shiv’s article The Art of the Imperfect Pitch on the Stanford Business School website and referenced in Build magazine.)
2. “Don’t provide your champion with a polished pitch. Let it be a little bit rough around the edges. This may seem counterintuitive, but having something that leaves room for expansion inspires people to get involved in your vision. Having the ‘perfect solution’ on the other hand, tends to inspire critique.” Very interesting advice.

Second Tip – Understand the Five Styles of Decision-Making. Gary Williams and Robert Miller published a very interesting article in the Harvard Business Review called Change the Way You Persuade. Their research of 1,600 executives indicated there are five types of decision-makers and each is persuaded differently.

Here is a summary (% indicates what percentage of total sample these types represent):

1. Charismatics (25%) – Easily enthralled by new ideas, but life experience has taught them to look for balanced information and not rely on emotions. They are risk-seeking but wise. They absorb lots of information easily. Often they are visual learners. Persuasion strategy – Get to the point quickly and focus on results and use visual aids to describe features and benefits.
2. Thinkers (11%) – Like arguments supported by data and don’t like risk. However, they like to know what the risks are so they think around the pitfalls with you. Slower to make decisions. Persuasion strategy - Use lots of data, research, surveys, and a cost-benefit analysis.
3. Skeptics (19%) – Suspicious of data especially if it conflicts with their view of the world. They can be disruptive and disagreeable. Persuasion strategy - Get an endorsement from someone the skeptic trusts.
4. Followers (36%) – Tend to make decisions based on prior decisions and experiences or decisions made by other trusted executives. They, too, don’t like risk. Persuasion strategy – Use references, testimonials, and how others were successful.
5. Controllers (9%) – Hate uncertainty and want to control events. Only accepts details presented by experts and will shut down when confronted with pushy techniques. Persuasion strategy – Give them facts and let them decide.

As you think about persuasion I’m sure you will note that these tips can apply to both promoting an idea you might have and selling a product or service to a customer. It's also is advisable to try and get a sense of what kind of decision-maker you are dealing with in advance – it can make all the difference.

Persuasion reminds me of these words from Henry David Thoreau, “Thaw with her gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other breaks into pieces.” Melt away!

I thought I would use this week’s “puff of white smoke” to clear my head of 10 questions or thoughts that have been bouncing off my cranial walls these past few weeks. I don’t know what you will think, but ignore what you wish!

1. Why do goats have rectangular pupils? They improve the goat’s peripheral vision and helps them see predators in a wider spectrum than animals with oval shaped pupils. Maybe our politicians could use them.

2. “Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions." - Oliver Wendell Holmes. I’ve experienced this a few times over the last few weeks. The more I do it, the more I like it.

3. Point of reference – did you know the federal income tax rate was 66% for inflation adjusted incomes around $200,000 in 1953? This was because we were still paying back the debt we accumulated during and after WWII. Good thing the political leaders of past generations were responsible, imagine what our debt would be today if they weren’t? Just shows you how irresponsible the leaders have been over the past 40 years or so.

4. I saw a homeless man with a laptop not too long ago in the evening. He was in the bushes near a Panera Bread and he had all his belongings with him. I stopped to talk with him because I was really curious. I learned he was on his Facebook account, he knew where all the wireless networks were, he knew where all the outside electric outlets were, and he liked the freedom that being homeless offered him.

5. Don’t forget Michael Collins. Astronaut Michael Collins is often forgotten. He was the pilot of the Apollo 11 mission that first landed on the moon in 1969. He was the one who piloted the command spacecraft and orbited the moon waiting for Armstrong and Aldrin to finish playing on the moon. He made 25 orbits around the moon and endured 45 minute communication blackouts each time the craft went dark on the opposite side of the moon. I think that, too, takes courage.

6. “The goal is common action not common thinking.” - Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education. I think this is great advice for anyone leading a team or organization. Encouraging debate and inquiry is an important job of the leader. Don’t avoid the conflict that comes with this.

7. Why do zebras have stripes? This is one question I have wondered about since I was a child and has been debated for years. No scientist really knows. Two popular theories are (1) the stripes fool horseflies and (2) the white stripes keep the zebra cooler. Whatever the reason, it is a marvelous example of how life mutates itself to adjust to surrounding conditions.

8. Boyle’s Law – a gas expands to fill its container. I often refer to this law, which I learned when taking SCUBA lessons. In organizations leaders need to be mindful that team members will always find ways to fill their day with tasks. It is our job to make sure they are the tasks that advance the mission of the organization and aren’t wasteful ones that create unproductive and unmotivated people.

9. Rhythm is everything when giving CPR. I heard recently in a podcast that to give proper CPR you need to do 100 beats a minute. One clever CPR trainer discovered that two songs deliver just the right tempo in his classes – “Stayin’ Alive” by the BeeGees and “Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen. Now that’s a clever tip I can remember!

10. “Do what you love with people you love and you won’t work a day in your life.” This quote has morphed over the years, but its message is a great one. I am very fortunate that it is true for me. Often, when I hear people talk about job satisfaction, this theme appears again and again. Is it true for you?  

Over the last few weeks we have watched an asteroid explode near the surface of Russia and a few others miss us with close orbits. Here on earth many of our companies, including mine, are watching two economic asteroids approach – the Affordable Care Act and federal budget cuts and sequestration. We know both will have a significant impact on us.

What should we do?

I think it was good timing this week for me to finish reading Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen. The question that inspired them to write the book was “Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others not?”

Two Explorers, Two Different Outcomes. The book begins with a very compelling story that compares and contrasts the race to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen and Robert Scott in 1911. This was a great example of two teams with similar goals facing similarly harsh, uncertain forces. Both leaders had the same amount of time to prepare, chose their own starting location, and faced the same weather conditions. The winner, Amundsen, returned on time and in good health after pausing to photograph the crew and Norwegian flag at the Pole. Scott’s crew perished on their return from the Pole after arriving there over a month after Amundsen. Throughout the rest of the book the authors continually connect their findings on great companies to Amundsen and Scott.

Great by Choice Findings. After studying 20,400 companies and making 11 levels of cuts, Collins and Hansen ended up with seven companies that stood out and grew at consistently high rates - Amgen, Biomet, Intel, Microsoft, Progressive Insurance, Southwest Airlines, and Stryker. Here are the lessons I took away from the book about how these companies survived and thrived.

1. The companies were fanatically disciplined. These companies set reasonable revenue and profit targets and were disciplined about hitting them, consistently. For example, Southwest Airlines has been profitable every year for over 30 years – no other airline has come close. And they didn’t chase after huge, unknown growth opportunities.

A term the writers used was the “20 mile March”. They wrote about how Amundsen did 17-20 miles, every day. When there was good weather and his team wanted to do 35 miles, he said no. Likewise, when conditions were rough, they did 17-20 miles. On the other hand, Scott drove his team to exhaustion on good days, and then they couldn’t go far on subsequent days.

A disciplined 20 Mile March has several elements, but these four are key:

• The March has “performance markers” or goals that set minimum acceptable goals that are especially challenging during down cycles. The markers should create “productive discomfort.”
• The March has “self-imposed constraints” that create upper bounds for how far you would chase opportunities.
• The goals are “tailored to your enterprise”, not the same for every company.
• The goals lie “within your control to achieve” and you don’t have to rely on luck.
• The goals are consistently achieved; good intentions don’t count.

2. The companies fire bullets, then cannonballs. These companies were always “one fad behind” and were not early adopters. They tested assumptions carefully. They tried pilot projects and measured results, adjusted their plans, and tested again.

The authors used a clever metaphor for how these companies approached new business - “they fire bullets, then cannonballs.” If you are on a ship with limited gunpowder and an enemy ship aggressively approaches what should you fire, bullets or cannonballs? If you shoot a cannonball you will likely miss the ship because you haven’t been able to calibrate the distance yet. You will soon be out of gunpowder and you will lose the battle. However, if you use bullets, which require a fraction of the gunpowder, you can fire a number of bullets until you figure-out the distance – then you shoot the cannonball. Three tips on what makes a good bullet:

• The bullet is low cost for the business.
• The bullet is low risk so failure has a minimal impact on the business.
• The bullet is a low distraction for the overall business.

3. The leaders are productively paranoid. In the book there are several examples of how the leaders of these companies seemed to live in a constant state of fearful uncertainty, regularly asking “what if” questions. They wanted to make sure their companies were prepared for an “asteroid”. As an example, the authors used the 1996 Mt. Everest story made famous in the book Into Thin Air. One climbing team, there to film an IMAX movie, stopped short of the summit and went down to a lower camp to wait for both weather to improve and the large climbing group behind it to go up and finish. The leader of the IMAX team, David Breashears, could turn back because he had brought plenty of extra air canisters and food to allow for unexpected events. He also asked many “what if” questions at a critical point in the climb. The leaders of the other team, Rob Hall and Scott Fischer, pushed on because they had commercial clients who wanted to get to the summit. They ignored their own rules and limits. They along with six others died over the next day.

Collins and Hansen describe three types of productive paranoid they observed in the companies.

• The companies built cash reserves and balance sheets (their oxygen canisters) to survive surprise events or bad luck.
• The companies bound their risk (the death line) and didn’t let the organization go too far.
• When a threat appeared, the leaders Zoomed-out, then Zoomed-in. This means they went up to 30,000 feet and looked for and studied threats. They developed plans and strategies to deal with the threat. Then they moved in close and executed the strategy with precision.

I think our team has done many of these things, but could always be more disciplined. We have recently “zoomed-out” to study the ACA "asteroid" of 2014, but I wish it would explode long before it hits us.

Unless you are the parent of a young child who has asked the question a million times, the one question we should be able to answer is “Why?” More specifically, “Why does our organization exist?”

I have been thinking about mission and vision and the future quite a bit recently. Because the external environment is so unstable, most of us are doing what we need to do to stay viable. We try to search for growth opportunities. We think about the products and services we offer, we might think about what our customer value proposition is, but we rarely think about “why” we exist.

Luckily I stumbled across Simon Sinek who appears to have made a living out of helping organizations answer this “why” question. What really got my attention was his 18 minute talk on Ted TV in which he teaches us about the power of knowing why our organization exists. He postulates that when we know the answer we will attract more customers and employees.

The Golden Circle. Sinek, who was first in the advertising business, uses several examples to teach us about what he calls the Golden Circle. He says it is the rare business that starts with the inside “why” question and moves outward to the “what” question.

The inner-most circle challenges us to answer “why” we exist or what we believe questions. The “how” circle is where the organization determines how they add value for their customer. The outer-most circle is where the business determines “what” product or service they will sell to customers.

He says most businesses start with the outside circle and move in - first make a product or design a service, then think about what the value proposition or differentiation strategy is. Then try to find a customer to buy it. Rarely, do they even talk about why they exist.

Sinek says that when you start with and understand what you believe in, it shows-up in your products or services. It resonates with your customers and potential employees. It provides you the foundation you need. Let’s look at Apple, which Sinek uses as a great example of a company that does this.

I have created an Exhibit here of Sinek’s Golden Circle with his Apple Computer example. He believes Apple and their late CEO, Steve Jobs, always began with the inner “why” circle and moved outward.

If you ask Sinek why Apple exists he says, “They believe in challenging the status quo and doing things differently.”

“How” Apple does this is by making products that are beautifully designed, unique, and easy for the customer to use.

After attending to these inner-most circles they present their products to customers. When we think about what Sinek says you can see how the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad flowed from an understanding of the inner-most circle.

Steve Jobs himself was someone who rejected the status quo and energized the growth and development of the “How” and “What” Apple did.

Wright Brothers vs. Samuel Pierpont Langley. Although I have read accounts of how both the Wright Brothers and Samuel Langley tried to build the first airplane, until listening to Sinek I hadn’t thought of the “why” question before. Langley, who was the head of the Smithsonian Institute, was leading a team of people trying to invent a flying aircraft. He had plenty of money and resources at his disposal. “Why” was he leading the project? For the fame and fortune that would surely follow. The Wright Brothers only had the money and parts from their Ohio bicycle shop. “Why” did they do it? Because they wanted to fly and do it as a team.

As soon as the success of the Wright Brothers flight got back to Langley, he quit the project. Clear to see he mostly believed in himself.

Sinek reminds us, “If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood and sweat and tears.”

What do you believe? The answer will lead you to the “why.”

When my son, Scott, was about 18 months old Santa brought his father a fun toy gun that shot ping-pong balls. We still have the video of me hitting him with the ping-pong balls and the sheer joy and laughter flying out of his little body as ball after ball flew toward him. Every time I or anyone else watches it we just start laughing. It is a great example of how often the simplest things can make us so happy, especially when we see others happy.

I thought back on that video twice this week. First, when I observed this little unknown girl and her sister and brother jumping for joy through this water fountain in Curacao.

The other time was when I was listening to Radio Lab as they explored “Bliss.” What caught my attention was their interview with Aleksander Gamme, a polar explorer, who is the star of a 500,000 hit Internet video. In this video we get to see his pure joy on day 86 as he discovers special treats he stuck in the snow on his way to the South Pole. Like many explorers before him, including Amundsen and Scott 100 years ago, he left survival packs of food and other materials on his way to the South Pole for discovery and use on the return trip back to the base camp.

What he discovers were fun food treats like Cheez Doodles and sugar candies he had forgotten he packed away. We can each imagine what it must be like to discover those treats after so many hard days. The video is only three minutes and 22 seconds long, so go ahead, make your day!

For over 10 years I have been connected to some very good friends who have worked together on an important project. Recently they reminded me of a very compelling poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, that really helps us center ourselves on the joy of our daily lives. Here it is:

Write it on your heart
That every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.

Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in,
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
Begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
To be encumbered with your old nonsense.

This new day is too dear,
With its hopes and invitations,
To waste a moment on the yesterdays.

These words from Emerson help us start every day. Happiness and joy are one of the special gifts we humans can experience. When was the last time you were really, really happy? Don’t forget that when you are really happy, others around you will be too. A good lesson for all leaders.