randori mind, control the chaos

Placing the best, most affordable and hopefully most desired product on the market is every businessman’s goal. Sometimes we prevent ourselves from reaching the optimal levels of product development because we take the product and process far too seriously.   The route to this end may be something other than what is taught in MBA classes.

The optimal development outcome is to deliver a product under budget, over functional and ahead of schedule. Is this really enough? What about quality standards? Achieving those Six Sigma performance levels, reaching the statistically minimum accepted level of defectives should bolster product acceptance. Yet, even with this level of quality there needs to be more. There are the marketing efforts to convince people that their lives are better, more fulfilling and less stressful when they use this new product. Companies employ legions to generate market buzz and customer testimonials. There are far easier methods to make your products the most sought after on the planet. After all, what is high quality and how is it really valued by consumers.

Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee in the world, selling for between $120 and $600 per pound in United States. The coffee is grown in Indonesian and produced in a singularly unique manner. Civets, native cats, are fed raw coffee berries, which are digested except for the coffee bean. The bean passes through the digestive system and is defecated by the animal. We are told that the beans are then collected, washed, and given only a light roast so as to not destroy the complex flavors that develop through the process, and offered for sale. These are the facts known to every civet coffee consumer.

What is the connection to American product development processes? Despite the combined efforts of major US corporations, a few marketing geniuses from Indonesia have shown the simple way to success. The United States spends more than $320 billion annually on R&D, to remain at the leading edge of technology and maintain market share. The Indonesian coffee growers simply catch a few more civets and feed them coffee berries. The United States spends billions more on developing distribution channels for our product supply chains. The civet coffee growers, they use small one pound cans costing less than a dime apiece and have buyers beating a path to their door. Finally we spend additional billions on advertising and marketing, trumpeting the new and improved products. The civet coffee growers simply describe how their product is organically processed. Consumers buy every gram of civet coffee that is produced annually, while in the US, there are continuous streams of overstocks and failed products.

Let’s add an additional aspect to this analysis, honesty. By law American products need to be thoroughly tested, extensive records maintained for three to seven years, and insurance bought to cover liability. The directors and executives of companies are held accountable for the accuracy and details of their product development and QA records. Yet, for all of the experience, professional education, money and effort American corporations cannot exceed the results of a few simple coffee growers. Let me describe the irony in a civil manner.

 I will use the first person for illustrative purposes. Fact: I am coffee drinker, and for personal consumer satisfaction, I am willing to pay up to $600 for a pound of coffee that was extracted from the feces of a cat. OK, so the growers claim it is washed, but what is the cleanliness standard of a person who crumples dry cat droppings for a living? If I buy it ground, how am I to know how well it was washed? Could there be a case for labeling the product as completely organic? Then, the growers claim it is delicately roasted so as to not disturb the delicate flavors. Again, the root question, why do I believe somebody who grabs beans from a litter box and claims they’re tasty? For all that I the consumer know, that roasting could simply be to eliminate surface moisture. The addition of preserving that delicate bouquet could easily be nothing more than a tag line.  It certainly beats, “We give it a few minutes in a clothes dryer with some wood shavings so our packers don’t complain about the litter box smell.” And yet with the facts clearly and audaciously stated, year in and year out, the entire crop is sold with production restricted only by the appetite of the native civet.

So, when you’re working eighteen hours a day, struggling to deliver that critical, next generation product, ask one question. Is it the need for perfection that drives product acceptance or is it something else? Processing and selling litter box clumps for $600 per pound seems to indicate that success is possible outside the perceptual box of perfection.  Sometimes the ‘best’ is not what you think it is, and sometimes it certainly doesn’t sound perfect, but that is to your ears and way of thinking. In the end, the best of anything is what others believe. It is through their perception and needs that a product is accepted as superior and even coveted. Sometimes it is just to show that they are capable of drinking anything.

Greg Chenevert

It’s normal to pursue goals, to develop a better life and strive for success. A common problem is that we believe that possessing a single additional skill, technique or method will allow us to achieve our success. This is why you often hear such phrases as, “If I had only done…” or “If I had only said…” Following this belief you will discover stress and frustration because you are not missing a single element, you are fighting against natural laws.
Quantum mechanics, initially quantified by Werner Heisenberg, examines how our reality operates. From his work, one principle arose that equally applies to both quantum physics and daily life, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. The short version of the Uncertainty Principle is that the more you focus on a single point solution within a dynamic environment the more unlikely your goal will be achieved.
Life is a series of dynamic, flowing events, combining personal change, learning and experience. Your life is further randomized when the actions of others impact your options and choices. Uncertainty is everywhere, you never know when you will need to engage a skill, or resolve a problem. You don’t know the future, but by now you have experienced the results of random events, they’re called accidents.
So, why do we always look for the magic solution, that one “Aha!” moment? Perhaps it’s hope overwhelming logic, possibly it is emotion working in conjunction ego, maybe we’ll never really know. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is having the solution to overcome uncertainty and achieve your goals. Your solution is to not fight against the Uncertainty Principle but to embrace it. Some groups and individuals have done so for centuries, well before the Uncertainty Principle was quantified, they knew how to achieve success. These were the old school martial artists, whether Japanese, Chinese and others, use identical fundamentals that consistently provide success.

Your first step to success is to stop wasting time looking for the magic bullet. Remember, the more you convince yourself that the magic bullet is your salvation, the less likely that you will achieve your goal. Specific techniques, methods work only when perfectly matched with very specific circumstances and only during a miniscule window of opportunity. You waste precious time focusing on techniques, learn only the basics so that you can identify them when others attempt to use them. You know that you cannot predict which technique will be immediately available for every randomly occurring situation. Instead, bear one fact in mind, there is at least one solution to everything that you encounter.
Solutions for every problem or the directions to any goal are defined by principles. For example, learning the principles of dealing with people enables you to interact with others and achieve results in any circumstance. Learning the principles of conflict resolution allows you to direct the outcome of any situation regardless of inception, people involved or the time that has passed since it started. Your knowledge of operating principles prevents you from attempting to force fit a technique to a situation. Focusing your efforts to apply a singular technique to a problem increases the probability that there is no match, and in all likelihood makes the solution unusable. The alternative is to draw upon your adaptive knowledge and skills and apply them in conjunction with the events of the situation. This is the Heisenberg Solution, which is employing principles to increase your probability to solve a problem, any problem, and achieve success.

You will more readily achieve your goals when you overlay principles of action and response to generate two results. You will to trump the Uncertainty Principle through a flexible, balanced strategy, and you will direct outcomes to benefit your future. Through continued practice you will eventually discover that when random events occur, your manner and outlook will negate their effects. The ability to apply principles instead of techniques will set you above the problems of daily life and will provide for your continuously improving success.

Greg Chenevert

The basis for this blog, and for that matter everything that I write, is that you know inside, in your most private of moments what is best for you and what you really want. My goal is to make you think and to provide you with the tools that you need. It is your life and therefore your choice as to which tools you want to use, and when you want to use them. With that in mind, consider the following information.

A hamster racing in its exercise wheel, running as fast as possible and yet it remains living in a cage. I wonder if the people who feel that their lives are stalled sense a connection with its plight. Nobody wants to feel like that hamster, caged and helpless. You want success, now and in the future, yet, too often there seems to be an obstacle between where you are and where you want to be, an obstacle that seems to cage in your efforts. Success starts once you set your direction through your obstacle. This effort is very personal and requires that you only answer two questions. That’s all that is required to move forward. But, why take my opinion when you can prove it to yourself.

Try this small experiment; ask a dozen people what success means, you will receive a dozen different answers. After they reply, “Winning the lottery,” and once the awkward expression or possibly a nervous giggle subsides it will be replaced by thoughtful consideration. At this point they will each provide you with their personal concepts. Most often their answers will revolve around health, love and family, and possibly financial stability; excessive amounts of money are seldom mentioned. Now ask a second question, “Why is it that the concept of success is diverse and so elusive?” This will lead to a conversation about life and achieving what each person wishes their life to become. After doing this experiment a few times you’ll get the idea that success is a feeling of accomplishing certain goals, some of intrinsic value and others of a more material value. Here is where the subject of success returns to you. The fact is that answering these two questions honestly will provide twenty five percent of your journey to living a successful life. The reason for this leap forward towards your goals is because with only two questions you have identified the gap between what is and what you want to be.

In business development answering these questions is part of the concept of gap analysis. The procedure is done to discover where the shortcomings of a plan reside. Once the deficiencies are known it becomes far easier to define what needs to be done to fill the gap for present and future operations. This is the process that has worked to improve business operations for decades. It is also the procedure that has been used in martial arts training for centuries. It has proven to develop some of the best individuals in the arts for generations and can supply you with similar results in your life.

Let’s return to our running hamster for a moment, lots of activity and no change. Your life can be this way when you expend hours of effort reviewing what is wrong with life, why you haven’t gotten ahead and yet repeating the same behavior that you have used in the past. When you develop or explain away your lack of success with excuses you are adding bars to your mental cage. Excuses bound your thinking, narrow your observation and limit your sense of opportunity.

One common excuse: I don’t have enough education to succeed where I want.

Reality: A friend of mine has not graduated from college; he is now in his mid-forties and never considered this excuse. He works from his home, travels about three weeks a year and earns over a quarter million dollars a year. He spends time with his family, makes every school event for his children, every sports game and special event. He takes his family on vacation for a month each year and does nothing but enjoy his time with them. He is successful, not because he makes the salary he does, but in his words, “I’m successful because I get to be a father, husband and son to my family”. How does he do this? Well, he learned how through time and effort and without artificially blinding himself with excuses or limitations.

If you want more details than this, write to me and I’ll tell you, or read more of my blogs and learn how to succeed in your life as he has in his.

Greg Chenevert

During a recent sales workshop I focused on eliminating an underlying concept that often sabotages sales efforts. This concept is one where the seller follows an incremental approach, feeling out the prospective buyer for their sentiment or position on a product or service. This wastes valuable time and often causes the prospective buyer to question the knowledge or credibility of the seller.

In martial arts training we learn one critical skill, you do one action to achieve one result, anything less and you’re either hit or picking yourself up from the mat. This same budo mind-set is very applicable in your business or professional life. The ‘secret’ to this ability is your commitment. When you are committed to accomplishing something you consciously identify the desired result. Your commitment then moves you to minimize your actions and focus solely on those that will achieve the desired result. With practice you will be able to make the shift from taking multiple steps to the result to making a single step to the result. During the seminar, one person asked, “So this means that with a single statement you can get a sale?” The answer is, “No, you get a result. The sale is a derivative of achieving the result. It isn’t the goal; it is your reward for achieving the goal.”
This sounds kind of Zen like, but consider what you really need to do when you either sell a product, service or yourself during a job interview.

Your goals for sales should be: 

Gain acceptance as a professional and equal
Have the other person listen to you and accept your concepts
Attain mutual understanding
Develop a method to fulfill mutual needs

When you sequentially achieve these four results, your reward is a sale, or if you are a job seeker, who in that circumstance you are selling yourself, you receive a job offer.  The sales process is then broken into four actions to achieve four corresponding results. When you master these and achieve them you get the reward. For those who attended the seminar, well, they couldn’t wait to get out the next day and try what they learned. The feedback since then has been one of incredulity at how simple, yet enormously effective, their training was.

We are wonderfully individual in so many ways, and yet so remarkably identical in others. One example of our identical behavior is when we review past efforts in order to discover why we failed to achieve a particular goal. Far too often, we decide that our methods and knowledge were up to the task, and with this interim conclusion then deduce that the failure probably happened because of an unknown variable. This should fire off those Flashing Red Lights in our minds, because the next conclusion invariably is, “I didn’t try hard enough.” With this set in our minds we then repeat our efforts with more energy only to generate the identical results. The second failure elevates our frustration and stress, and then plops us onto the mental hamster wheel of circular analysis that leads nowhere.

Let’s start over. When you discover that you come up short on a goal, accept the fact that you can direct outcomes, yet didn’t that time: as Shakespeare wrote, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.” Outcomes occur, not by mysterious, unknown variables, but simply by your not reading and directing the situation efficiently. And yet, you do have the ability to direct any situation when you engage the most important skill that you possess, your ability to learn. It only takes two steps to traverse from almost accomplished to successfully accomplished.
The first step is simple. All that you need to do is acknowledge that while you have been educated, and know enough to earn a living that you can always learn more so as to do more with your life. Learning is the process of discovering unused methods to make your life better, period. The second step is adopting new skills to accomplish your goals with less effort, or achieve more with the same degree of effort.
 
So, the next time that your inner voice begins the common circular analysis of failure, close your eyes to see the Flashing Red Lights, and pause. Then analyze what you need to add to your skills to get what you want, get the knowledge and apply it. The results will be short term achievement, a sense of control and you will be developing the pattern for long term success.