Category: K.E.E.N. skills

How to Take Action on Uncertain Opportunities

Following up on our post ‘How to be More Lucky in Life: the Luck Factor‘, one specific aspect is taking action on opportunities. Once one has increase the number of potential opportunities, remains the need to take action to benefit from the luck. And it is sometimes difficult – and often makes the difference.

It is always psychologically difficult to decide to enter an uncertain venture. It is a bet and there is no certainty as to its outcome. How can one be more comfortable taking those decisions?

Based on my experience here are some pointers. And I find that the stock market is an excellent teaching ground to determine behaviors that can later be applicable to many other fields :

  • the foreseeable worst case outcome should not impact substantially our well-being. For example for financial decisions its worst possible impact should be less than a limited % of our total assets, or the time involved should not burden excessively our calendar.
  • The possible best case outcome should produce substantial value
  • It generally boils down to the confidence we may have with certain people. How is the fit with those people, what is our hunch?
  • Do we have a portfolio of opportunities that spreads the risk and ensures that on average, there will be benefits and possibilities to enhance further lucky strikes?

In addition, one should be ready to stop losses when it becomes obvious that the opportunity does not work out (including in time and money involved), and the other aspect is not to be too persistent on luck: know when to fold on a lucky opportunity, it will not last forever.

Grab opportunities, act on them: the secret for luck to realize! Are there opportunities lying there where you did not take action? Go for it!

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How Creating Lateral Growth Opportunities Becomes Rarer in the Modern World

Following up from the previous post ‘How to Create More Opportunities in Your Life‘, I am concerned how modern technology rather tends to close us up to new opportunities.

Typical modern restaurant scene: everyone on their own screen!

This is extremely obvious in public transportation of even at restaurants: people are closing themselves in their own chosen world, sometimes including with headphones, and remain in their bubble. Human interaction and the possibility of chance encounters diminishes drastically.

In addition it is well known that most social networks tend to close us further in our bubble of interests and opinions. While they do give opportunities to meet with new people with similar interests on a global scale, they don’t encourage us to encounter contrarian opinions and views.

Therefore, there is a real premium to those that will know how to take some break off this modern addiction to create lateral encounters that can create substantial new opportunities and make oneself grow in new directions: read books that bring new ideas, participate and listen to meetings and presentations with new approaches, etc.

How much time to you take to create those lateral opportunities in your life?

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How to Create More Opportunities in Your Life

Following up from the previous post ‘How to be More Lucky in Life: the Luck Factor‘ inspired by the book ‘The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind‘ by Richard Wiseman, let’s dwell on the specific issue of increasing opportunities in our life (whatever their luck content). When I read this book I realized I may need to do some effort in that respect.

In this instance, Richard Wiseman exposes 3 sub-principles:

  1. Lucky people build and maintain a strong ‘network of luck’
  2. Lucky people have a relaxed attitude towards life
  3. Lucky people are open to new experiences in their life

It is all about trying not to be closed-in in our usual world but be open to new ideas, new people, new encounters and welcome those inputs that may be outside our comfort zone. Richard Wiseman insists on the opportunity offered by meeting new people we don’t know and the need to be able to accept widely different worldviews to open our horizons and create new opportunities.

“Luck is when preparation meets opportunities”: the issue here is to create more opportunities, and then be prepared to act on them through openness and availability (in terms of time, mentally and emotionally).

For me, this acts as a useful reminder that it is extremely important to act laterally, meet people and go to meetings that may not be directly connected with what I am doing, but that allow to expand my worldviews; and also to try to take advantage of chance encounters as much as possible. I have tried to increase those opportunities in the last few months.

And you, what will you do to create more opportunities in your life?

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How to be More Lucky in Life: the Luck Factor

I read with great interest the excellent book ‘The Luck Factor: The Scientific Study of the Lucky Mind‘ by Richard Wiseman, a professional magician turned psychology professor. He studied scientifically, through a number of experiments, how “lucky people” differ from “unlucky people”. The interesting point is that it basically describes what are the behaviors to have in a random world where a number of events happen, that can be good or bad.

He describes 4 principles for a lucky life:

  1. Maximize your chance opportunities
  2. Listen to your lucky huches
  3. Expect good fortune
  4. Turn your bad luck into good

When looking at those principles, it is all about: 1 – increasing the flux of possible events (lucky and unlucky) in your life, 2 – based on your conscious and subconscious analysis, bet more on those that appear lucky, 3 – be open-minded and persist, 4 – do not persist in bad luck, and consider positively what you learn from bad luck to get more lucky the next time.

This is the application to life of the right behaviors to have for example when speculating on the stock market: increase the frequency of bets, try to bet more on stocks that have good fundamentals, be positive and persistent but cut losses when they appear.

The interesting part is that it seems that by applying those principles more consistently, it is possible to become more lucky in life. What about trying?

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How to Decide When To Persist or to Quit

Following up from the previous post ‘How the “Entrepreneur Struggle Myth” May Becomes Excessive‘, the issue of when to quit on an entrepreneurial endeavor comes up front from the fact that struggling too much may be detrimental.

In the previously mentioned excellent piece “No More “Struggle Porn”” by Nat Eliason, he explains that “Working hard is great, but struggle porn has a dangerous side effect: not quitting. When you believe the normal state of affairs is to feel like you’re struggling to make progress, you’ll be less likely to quit something that isn’t going anywhere.”

This is complemented by a great post by Tim Berry, ‘You Have to Know When to Quit‘, based on the same piece. And of course he refers to the excellent little book by Seth Godin ‘the Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick)‘. I love Tim Berry’s simple explanation of the choices in an entrepreneurial or creative venture: “There’s no virtue to persistence when it means running your head into walls forever. Before you worry about persistence, that startup has to have some real value to offer, something that people want to buy, something they want or need. And it has to get the offer to enough people. It has to survive competition. It has to know when to stick to consistency, and when to pivot. So persistence is simply what’s left over when all the other reasons for failure have been ruled out.”

Therefore, be persistent and work hard but only when you see progress and some pre-conditions are met that demonstrate that your project has some chances to become something workable!

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How the “Entrepreneur Struggle Myth” May Becomes Excessive

Following up in our myth-busting spree after our previous post ‘How Waking Up Early Is a Myth and May Not Be the Success Recipe‘, let’s turn to the masochist myth of the fact that entrepreneurs must suffer to be successful. In this excellent disruptive piece “No More “Struggle Porn”“, Nat Eliason busts a myth established by prominent bestselling authors and entrepreneurs.

As Nat Eliason explains, “There are [always] two messages being sent. The first, the obvious one, is “Entrepreneurship is hard, work hard and you can succeed.” Nothing new or wrong with this. The issue is the second layer, the message underneath much of what [bestselling authors] broadcast: struggling is good.”

As he explains, “Entrepreneurs devour this message like doughnuts at a WeWork because most of them are failing.”. It gives a reason for the situation, while in many cases it is probably down to poor luck and circumstances, and not the lack of hard work. “Struggling and hustling become success proxies unsuccessful people can brag about to give themselves the dopamine hit they would otherwise get from, you know, actually succeeding at something.”

So if you catch yourself to complain too much that you’re struggling, it might be because you’d need to try something else. Watch out! I must say this piece has given me a lot to think about….

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How Waking Up Early Is a Myth and May Not Be the Success Recipe

One of the key recommendations of a lot of self-help books describing successful people is that ‘successful people wake up early’. It is for example, a key approach of Robin Sharma and of a lot of entrepreneurs. In this Quartz paper ‘Waking up early won’t change your life—but it’s awesome for capitalism‘, this assumption is examined and is not found to be particularly relevant.

We learn there that this waking up myth is so widespread and deeply engrained that some people take it so extreme that they wake up at 2:30 in the morning!

The paper makes the point that “the cult of early rising seems to miss a pretty obvious point: There is an opportunity cost involved“. Basically, it is linked to spend a larger proportion of one’s waking hours doing work: this includes not having long evenings to do alternate activities, and starting earlier to work and be productive (before the lazy ones wake up presumably, so that we won’t be interrupted).

It seems to me that the issue is to find some time without interruption to be more effective. It can be early or late, depending on one’s own rhythm. But at the end of the day we still need our night’s sleep to be productive. As the paper recommends, the best is simply to have such a rhythm that we don’t need an alarm to wake up!

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How to Deal With an Evolving Circle of Friends and Acquaintances

Following up on our post ‘How to Decide When It is Time to Know New People‘, the associated question with looking for some new acquaintances to help us grow is, because we have only limited time in our lives, that it means stopping, or seeing less some people. That is often the most difficult part of having our circle of relationships evolve.

It may be more obvious or easier to stop seing someone that is exceedingly negative and continuously speaks about impending doom, or involves us in a toxic relationship. It is far less easy to spend less time with some people that just don’t grow at the same rate than us, because it is so subjective. And we may have such common emotional baggage and history that it is just difficult to spend less time together.

Let’s take this statement positively: it is good to try to meet new people that will accompany our growth, and at least get to know a few every year. It is also good to help people we are with grow together with us. It may be that we evolve in such a way that some relationships may get less close, but let’s never forget where we come from, and let’s keep in touch. Eventually we may become some day the person they will need to grow themselves.

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How to Decide When It is Time to Know New People

Robin Sharma writes “If you’re the smartest person you know, it’s time to know new people“. As we evolve and grow, we realize from time to time that we need to know new people that are in a position to help us grow.

It is well known that “you are the average of the 5 people you are the most with“. As we evolve and grow, the people we stick with may not evolve and grow at the same pace. This calls for renewing acquaintances and looking for people that can support us in our continuous development.

We should probably have a rule to try to identify every year a pair of new acquaintances we feel we need to make to support our growth objectives and direction.

Have you identified some new people you feel would support your growth? Go for it!

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How Mediocrity Is About Giving Up When You Don’t Have To

I like this quote I noted in a post from Hugh McLeod from Gapingvoid in this post ‘How You Strive for Excellence‘: “[Mediocrity is] ‘People who Gave Up, When They Didn’t Have To“.

This statement is powerful and puts an interesting different view on mediocrity. Of course when it comes to giving up, the question is always when. Sometime it does not make sense to pursue something further, but too often people give up too early, not showing enough perseverance or grit.

When looking at mediocrity as giving up too early when people did not have to, reference is made to the fact that irrespective of the objective and the reality, and whether they could have been successful or no, those people gave up much too early, even when investment or suffering was much too low to justify it. And when I think about some examples I know, I find that this statement is right on target.

So, make sure you don’t give up when you don’t have to!

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How Proactive Career Moves Are Better Than Defensive Ones

Following up on my previous post ‘How Most Executives’ Should Plan For a Second Career after Age 45‘, I would like to share my experience and view on how a proactive career move at that stage is better than a defensive move – and thus, why it is so important to anticipate the ceiling of corporate career.

When placed in a defensive situation, i.e. having been terminated forcefully from an existing position, the executive often has some benefits in the form of termination premium which can sometimes be sizable. However, it is often not sufficient for the following reasons:

  • the executive’s personal finances are not adapted to the new career path with a high running expenditure flow, and often he does not have sufficient reserves to experiment with a new career keeping calm about the time it takes to build something new
  • if not anticipated, the time to change one’s mindset can be very long, in particular if it only happens if the executive spends too much time trying to find an equivalent corporate position and only considers a new career after a long time. This strains the cash situation

Therefore it is essential that executives take a proactive career change approach as soon as they identify that their corporate career seems to approach a potential ceiling. Proactive planning can even involve taking active action in parallel to the executive role, and even negotiate a mutually beneficial severance package with the corporate employer, leveraging on possible social benefits.

I can only recommend executives to consider proactively their second career early enough. Once awareness sets in, their dynamism will do the rest – still it takes time for awareness to set in and mindsets to change.

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How Most Executives’ Should Plan For a Second Career after Age 45

I read in an article written by a leading executive headhunter how the reality of most executives and senior executives’ career, with few exceptions, is that it growths and will reach a ceiling around age 40-45: seats in the executive management committee are few and far between. Therefore, for executives, it is important to realize and understand this fact, and plan accordingly for a second career.

This issue is becoming particularly acute nowadays because organizations will not any more keep deserving executives in their payroll for past services rendered, if they don’t have an operational role. I meet too many executives that for a reason or another have been made redundant and are struggling with their identity and career prospects between 45 and 55.

It is really amazing how this issue is not part of the collective consciousness. The reason is probably because the corporate world first and foremost presents as role models those exceptions that continuously rise throughout their careers.

There are plenty of interesting and exciting second careers open to executives that have reached the ceiling of their corporate career: founding or taking over a smaller business, investor, interim management roles, independent professional, leading a para-public organization, being elected into political roles etc.

But too few are planning ahead for this second career and life, as they are too committed to trying to be successful in their corporate life. Statistics don’t lie – most will have to change. This is why I am now recommending executives I meet that ponder this issue to figure out something of interest, and start building this new second career in a proactive way, which is always much better than doing it in a defensive manner.

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