May 18, 2012
My last HBR blog post, How to Close a Sales Call, reviewed sales call closing techniques. Now let's analyze whether or not you are a natural born closer.
The drive to take command of a situation is instrumental to a salesperson's success. Salespeople with a weak dominance instinct are never quite in control of an account. They operate under the direction of customers or are at the mercy of the competition...
Polymath is one of those words more likely to show up on the SAT than in everyday conversation. But the reason we don't use the word much these days has less to do with vocabulary than it has to do with practicality: there aren't a lot of polymaths around anymore.
In case you don't have your pocket dictionary handy, a polymath is a person with a wide range of knowledge or learning. Think people like Leonardo da Vinci (...
May 16, 2012
Ever been shut down by someone who supposedly knows more than you? It happens to me daily. I get denied by people that are more senior, more polished, and more knowledgeable than me. I'd be lying if I said I enjoyed professional rejection, but I try my best to dust myself off and move forward, reminding myself that that a series of controlled failures are necessary for eventual success.
Not...
Technology is meant to serve us. Instead it increasingly runs us — and runs us down.
Where we put our focus shapes our agenda and defines our experience in every moment. More and more, we're turning over this precious resource to our digital technology, allowing it to define the depth and span of our attention, and to seduce us into operating at such high speeds that we don't notice the insidious toll that's taking.
I see it in myself, as I fight to stay focused on...
May 9, 2012
Inspired by the loss of her thirteen year-old daughter, Candice Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) in 1980 to combat drunk driving through education and legislation. Just a few years later, Lightner and MADD played a pivotal role in passing a federal law which penalized any state that didn't raise the minimum drinking age to 21.
After Barbara Minto joined McKinsey as the firm's first ever female consultant...
May 3, 2012
You probably don't know as much as you think you do. When put to the test, most people find they can't explain the workings of everyday things they think they understand.
Don't believe me? Find an object you use daily (a zipper, a toilet, a stereo speaker) and try to describe the particulars of how it works. You're likely to discover unexpected gaps in your knowledge. In psychology, we call this...
May 1, 2012
Tomorrow is my birthday — always an opportunity for reflection, but especially this time. For several weeks now, I've been thinking about what I've learned during the past six decades that really matters. Here's a first pass:
1. The more we know about ourselves, the more power we have to behave better. Humility is underrated. We each have an infinite capacity for self-deception — countless unconscious ways we protect ourselves from pain, uncertainty,...
April 30, 2012
Your passion for your career can sabotage your attempts to succeed.
When you go from feeling energized, excited and in control of your work to feeling an overwhelming compulsion to achieve and produce, you've tipped from helpful harmonious passion into harmful obsessive passion.
But when you've grown accustomed to operating from a state of obsessive passion, you may want to act differently, but you...
When you write online, no one checks to see if you have a journalism degree before they start to read. If you experience an earthquake and want to report on its danger or safety, no one asks your credentials before you report to Ushahidi. And if you were interested a...
April 26, 2012
The unthinkable happened at a friend's wedding last month. As the groom was asked to confirm his desire to accept the bride as his lawfully wedded wife, he held up his hand, as if to say "wait a minute." The audible gasps among the attendees turned to relieved chuckles as he pulled out his iPhone in the middle of the vows. He was tweeting, "I Do," to his hundred or so followers.
At a coffee catch-up yesterday, the person I met with was too busy typing meeting minutes in Google Docs...
