British Petroleum: Why can't they say they are sorry and trying to make sure it will never happen again? by Bob Sutton

BP: Why can't they say they are sorry and trying to make sure it will never happen again?

As I read The new York Times and Wall Street Journal every day, I ended-up reading BP's huge "Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Response" ad twice today.  I suspect it was written by their legal department, as there are things it does not contain that really bug me and will bug others and -- by the way, are bad crisis management, if you believe the best studies on what leaders can do to protect the reputation and long-term financial performance of their firms when the shit hits the fan (I talk about some of this research here and in links within it).

1. There is not a hint of human compassion, it is cold, carefully crafted language. It simply lists facts, it offers no sympathy to the people who died, none to those whose livelihoods will be affected, and none about the animals who are dying.  The language is utterly without a hint of warmth or empathy for anyone.  This gives me the creeps and I believe reinforces the perception they are a cold heartless company with executives who care about no one but themselves.

2. There is not a hint of an apology or admission of mistake.  The language is very indirect and legalistic. They say: "BP has taken full responsibility for dealing with the spill.  We are determined to do everything we can to minimize impact.  We will honor all legitimate claims."  Perhaps they can't apologize or admit error, but look at research on executives and firms that weather crises more effectively (a great example is Maple Leaf Foods, see the CEOs apology). Researchers who study errors or setbacks have shown that the problem with this strategy of pointing fingers at others and not accepting blame is that when you talk as if you are a hapless victim of a problem caused by others or by forces that no one can control (as BP seems to be doing), you also are seen as lacking the power to fix it.... it amplifies the perception that you are out of control and don't know what you are doing.

3. Finally, and this is also consistent with research on how to deal with a crisis or failure, I see not even a hint in this statement that BP is doing everything (or anything) within its power to learn from this horrible spill so that it is unlikely to ever happen again, and if it does, so they will be able to respond more quickly and effectively next time. This kind of language and attitude is crucial for both perceptual and objective reasons.   From a perceptual standpoint, it conveys more compassion and also that all those people and animals will not have suffered in vain.   From an objective standpoint, clearly, there are many lessons from this fiasco, and any competently ran company learns from mistakes -- indeed, I think all of us wonder what they might already be doing differently in their many other drilling platforms.  I think that talking about that would help them.

There is plenty of blame to go around here, and I am sure that BP does not deserve all of it.  But I think they could handle both the optics and objective elements of this crisis far more effectively (And I wonder if in the end the lawyers' advice will cost them more money, as so many politicians and prosecutors will be motivated by their heartless response to go after them with special vehemence).

No doubt, there are many facts I don't know about what is really happening.  But these omissions disturb me and, if you are a leader, you might want to use this as an opportunity to think about how you would handle such a PR nightmare if it hit your organization.  It is a lot cheaper and easier to learn from BP's errors than it your own.

Forget carrots and sticks, they don't always work - Telegraph, Daniel Pink

Forget carrots and sticks, they don't always work - Telegraph

Forget carrots and sticks, they don't always work

In the first of a new series on business development, we reveal how a new approach to motivating teams is changing corporations for the better

 

By Daniel H Pink
Published: 5:53PM BST 22 May 2010

Truth often begins as heresy. Five centuries ago, human beings were certain that the Earth stood at the centre of the universe and that the lowly sun revolved around our glorious planet. Then Copernicus came along with a shocker: Sorry, folks, it's the other way around. Today, every school child knows that the Earth revolves around the sun – that this once heretical notion is, in fact, correct.

Neil Davidson might be launching his own Copernican revolution in business. In 1999, he and Simon Galbraith founded Red Gate Software, a firm based in Cambridge that makes development tools for programmers. Like almost all companies, Red Gate has a sales force. But unlike most companies, Red Gate has committed an act of managerial heresy: it has eliminated commissions for its salespeople.

 

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As I write in my new book, Drive, about what motivates us, we all think we know that commissions are the fuel of sales. Without commissions, where's the motivation?

But maybe, in the end, money isn't the best motivator.

In the early days of the company, Davidson created a fairly straightforward commission scheme. But, of course, salespeople figured out a way to game it – by pushing sales into the time period most advantageous for them, by underselling one month to show a bigger gain the following month, and so on. This wasn't because they were unethical; it was because they were rational humans responding logically to a particular incentive structure.

So Davidson made the system more complex – and salespeople responded by increasing the complexity of their own behaviour. On and on it went, until both the management team and the sales force seemed more focused on the compensation system than on making great software and selling it to customers who needed it.

Davidson feared that commissions were doing more harm than good – that this largely unexamined business practice might be quietly undermining his 150-employee company. He wrote on his blog: "That's what our sales salary system felt like – a gigantic, complex and medieval Spirograph centered on an assumption that wasn't true."

So, with some trepidation, he approached his sales team with the bizarre idea of scrapping sales commissions altogether and simply paying people a healthy flat salary. The response surprised him.

"The salespeople thought the move was, generally, a good one, but that other salespeople wouldn't," Davidson says.

"When I explained it to Tom [not his real name] he said, 'It sounds like a really good idea. But James would never like it; he's solely motivated by money. Remove the commission and he'll leave.' James said, 'Sounds great. But it will never work with Tom. Money is all that drives him.'"

Not only were commissioned sales not leading to better performance, it wasn't even the arrangement salespeople themselves preferred.

In the absence of commissions, Red Gate's total sales have increased. And while two salespeople left the company – uncomfortable with the new regime – most stayed and are thriving – including Tom and James.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, Maury Weinstein – founder of System Source, an IT services company in Baltimore, Maryland – followed a similar path. He and partner Bob Roswell eliminated commissions for their company's sales force in 1994. Weinstein says it's one of the reasons that System Source has flourished for so long – and why the median tenure at his company is 17 years, greater than the lifespan of most firms in this intensely competitive industry.

Both Weinstein and Davidson have found that challenging the sanctity of commissioned sales can bring several, often unexpected, benefits.

For example, in Red Gate's case, managers were spending a huge amount of time and energy policing the compensation system and arbitrating disputes over who deserved what. Once pay arrangements became simpler, leaders could focus their efforts on more useful activities.

Davidson says: "Rather than relying on carrots [sell more and you can buy the new car] and sticks [don't sell enough and you won't be able to feed your kids], we are compelled to make our salespeople's work more interesting, to set better goals and encourage teamwork."

Indeed, improved teamwork is another advantage.

"By their very nature, individual commissions discourage collaboration. Why help 'Mary' close the deal when she'll get the gains from the sale?" says Weinstein. "The comp plan was dividing people."

But at both Red Gate and System Source, once commissions were no longer around, collaboration and commitment increased.

And then there's the experience of the companies' customers. When we buy, we often see the salesperson as an adversary with whom we're locked in a zero-sum battle. That sort of relationship, says Weinstein, is ultimately bad for business.

Ending commissions, he said, sent "a strong message to the staff: We're not just paying you for what you close in the next five minutes. We want you to be an agent for the customer rather than a salesperson."

In the end, an elaborate system of commissions might have been the problem rather than the solution.

"Imagine you could construct a sales robot, programmed solely by the rules in any sales structure," Davidson wrote on his blog. "How would it behave? It would steal deals off other salespeople, sell customers software they didn't need, argue with its boss over its commission and backstab its colleagues. That wasn't the behaviour we wanted, but our commission structure sent a strong signal that it was."

Should every company eliminate commissions for its sales staff? Probably not. But should entrepreneurs, managers, and the rest of us step back every now and again and question the supposedly fixed laws of the universe? Definitely. Just ask heretics like Copernicus, Neil Davidson and Maury Weinstein.

Daniel H Pink is an author and business leader who writes about the world of work. His most recent book is Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Canongate Books)

Narcissism, Partnership and Strategy, by Walter Kiechel

Narcissism, Partnership and Strategy:

As the great Nebraskan Fred Astaire (born Frederick Austerlitz, Omaha, 1899) used to sing, 'There may be trouble ahead...' An article in the latest issue of Academy of Management Learning and Education reports that over the past 25 years college students in the U.S. have scored steadily higher on tests for narcissism. Professors Bergman, Westerman and Daly note that 'the mean narcissism score of 2006 college students on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) approached that of a celebrity sample of movie stars, reality TV winners and famous musicians.'

Fabulous. If that weren't bad news enough, 'Narcissism in Management Education' (Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2010, Vol. 9, No. 1, 119-131) also cites research indicating that 'narcissistic tendencies such as materialistic values and money importance tend to be particularly evident in business students.'

Most studies of narcissists in business focus on their usually awful eventual effect on co-workers. To ride along with them can be energizing, even inspiring at first, but frequently ends in tragedy. As I was reminded last week when I caught one of the last New York performances of Lucy Prebble's 'Enron,' which pretty much reduces that company's rise and fall to a story about Jeff Skilling's increasingly delusional hubris. (A hit in London, the play bombed in Babylon on the Hudson, which already has enough challenges to its own hubristic tendencies these days.)

In a terrific 2001 HBR article, Michael Maccoby argued that a "productive narcissist" can be good for a company — setting out a vision, rallying the troops to achieve it. (As examples he cited Jack Welch and George Soros.) But in my observation, narcissism in strategy-makers almost always represents an invitation to disaster.

This for at least two reasons. Narcissistic executives usually create around themselves a miasma of distrust. They take credit for other's work, value no one else's ideas as highly as their own, and are so busy looking after No. 1 that they can be oblivious to the welfare of others. This makes it tough to develop a strategy in consultation with colleagues, who usually know more about vital details of the competitive situation than the Great One. And even tougher to actually carry the strategy out, except under the narcissist's lash, which most talented people quickly lose a taste for.

The more fundamental problem may be that with sufficient feeding of their grandiosity, narcissists deteriorate in their ability to do what psychologists call 'reality testing,' being able to spot the difference between the movie they're playing in their heads (guess who the star is) and what's actually going on in the world.

The classic posterboy for this syndrome: John De Lorean, father of the Pontiac GTO, who when he wasn't hanging out with movie stars or marrying again was going to set the automotive world on fire with the De Lorean Motors gull-wing doored DMC 12. The entrepreneur's arrest for drug-trafficking — allegedly to raise money for his failing company — put the finishing touches on that endeavor; even though he eventually beat the charge, he would spend the rest of his days bouncing down the stairs, eventually into personal bankruptcy.

In the face of what may be a rising tide of MBAs with, how shall we say, narcissism issues, and the chance that some may climb into strategy-making positions, the news of Britain's new coalition government comes as all the more intriguing. Here you have two politicians, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, heads of rival parties, who, admittedly under serious pressure, manage to quickly form a partnership that has at least some observers suspecting that the country may have lucked into a governing solution better than any one party could have afforded.

For all the usual bromides about how 'you can't run a company by committee' and 'you gotta have clear lines of authority,' partnerships have worked remarkably well in running a few fabled companies, including in setting their strategy. The modern Walt Disney Co. was at its best when Michael Eisner was complemented by Frank Wells. Coca-Cola's patrician, aloof Roberto Goizueta wouldn't have accomplished nearly as much without the consummately personable Donald Keough presenting a smiling corporate face to the world. Some of us wonder whether Goldman Sachs would be in the doghouse it is today if it had stayed with its tradition of two-headed leadership — John Weinberg teamed with John Whitehead, Robert Rubin with Steve Friedman. Astaire wasn't the only Nebraskan who appreciated the value of a good partner — to every Warren Buffet, his Charlie Munger.

If you have responsibilities for forging strategy, consider asking yourself three partnership-related questions:

1. Would the enterprise be better off if I were sharing this work? More information boiled into the process, including that all-important dissident information? More minds and hands enlisted in the success of the strategy from the outset?
2. If I were to recruit a partner or two, who would they be, and why? As wonderful as you and your mix of skills likely are, imagine all that a complementary set might bring to the brew.
3. If you don't have a partner already, why not?

Hmmm, anyone else detect of slight whiff of narcissism in the air around here?

Walter Kiechel III is the former Editorial Director of Harvard Business Publishing, former Managing Editor at Fortune magazine, and author of The Lords of Strategy: The Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World. He is based in New York City and Boston.

"

The Creative Process Gone Wrong, by Bob Sutton

The Creative Process Gone Wrong:

One of my students, Rob, just sent me a link to this video on how the design of the stop sign is ruined by a bad creative process -- unfortunately, this parody resembles the process in far too many organizations and teams that try to do creative work in real organizations. It is funny but disturbing. He
saw this in Tina
Seelig's class, who teaches a fantastic class on the creative
process.

This video brought to mind three things:

1. One of the main sicknesses you see in this video is a failure to kill ideas. Most of the ideas are, on their own, sort of logical. But when you mash them all together, the complexity ruins the experience for the users and the designers end up doing many things, but none very well. See this post about Steve Jobs on the importance of killing good ideas for more on this crucial point.

2. Th process in the video, where a good idea isn't shown to users or customers, but each internal voice adds more and more, and forgets the big picture in the process, also reminds me of the stage gate process at its worst, where it each stage, the product or service is made worse as it travels along.

3. Finally, if you want a great companion innovation video, check out Gus Bitdinger's amazing song "Back to Orbit," which he wrote and performs. I wrote a bit more about it here. It was Gus's final project for an innovation class that Michael Dearing and I taught a few years back, and he does an amazing job of summarizing the key points of my favorite creativity book, Orbiting the Giant Hairball. It sort of addresses both the problems in the stop sign video and the solutions -- and in general is a delight and very instructive on the creative process.

This all raises a broader question: What are the most important things a boss can do to speed and improve the creative process. Certainly, talking to customers and users to identify their needs and test your ideas is standard and increasingly, so is the advice that you've got to kill a lot of good ideas, not just bad ones. I have also always been enamored by the power of a fast and civilized fight, and touch on a lot of other related topics in Weird Ideas That Work. Also, don't miss Diego's 17 Innovation Principles at Metacool;I especially like #17: It's not the years, it's the mileage. But I also know that there are some essential elements being left out here... what would you add?

"

Graduation Advice, by Michael Josephson

Whenever I’m asked to give a commencement speech, I’m intimidated by the challenge of finding something to say that’s profound and practical without being trite. I haven’t succeeded yet, but that hasn’t stopped me from trying. So here are some thoughts for graduates:

• By all means, set goals and go after your dreams, but know that your ultimate happiness will depend not on your plans but your ability to cope with unexpected turns and unavoidable ups and downs. You may not get what you thought you wanted, but if you’re willing to adapt, you can get something even better.



• Don’t ever underestimate the power of character. If you want to win, don’t whine. Success is made from hard work, perseverance, and integrity, not luck.



• Listen to both your heart and your head. Pursue your passions, but don’t confuse feelings with facts. Almost nothing is as good or as bad as it first appears, and all things change.



• Remember, pain and disappointment are inevitable, but tough times are temporary. The enduring impact of experiences and the true nature of relationships are only revealed by time. Persist with confidence that no negative emotion can withstand your will to be happy.



• Fill your life with laughter, but don’t confuse fun or pleasure with happiness. Don’t sacrifice a thousand tomorrows for a few todays.



• Live within your means and don’t overestimate your ability to resist temptations that threaten your relationships or reputation.



• How you make a living is important, but how you make a life is vital. If you don’t pay attention to your personal relationships, no amount career success will be enough.

This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.

"

the tao of productivity, by leo babauta

the tao of productivity

Become content, want little.

Post written by Leo Babauta. Follow me ontwitter or identica.

In this age of digital communication, we’re busier than ever. And yet, in all of our sound and fury, we seem to have no time for focus, for what’s important, for thinking.

To find this focus, we will need to completely rethink the need for productivity.

Think of our culture’s obsession with productivity: with the need for “hard work” and working long hours to get things done, with the need to be busy busy busy all the time, with the need to make lists and check them off, with the need to juggle countless projects and make more revenue and accomplish more and more. But for what? What’s the point of all this obsession? It leads to burnout, stress, anxiety, unhappiness, greed, confusion, and no time for family, friends, and yourself.

What would happen if we threw all that out the door? What if we said, “I want to get important things done, but the rest can go to hell.”? Let’s create a new creed: Simplicity, purpose, focus, silence, and joy. Let’s make beautiful and useful things, and love doing it.

With this “new” conception of productivity (which is actually as old as work itself), we can adopt some new principles. The principles I propose are inspired by Taoism, a philosophy that has deeply informed my life. I am not a Taoist, nor an expert at it, and many of the things I’ll write below are not exactly in line with it.

Be Content

Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.
~Lao Tzu

This is the foundation of the Tao of Productivity: the old version of productivity was founded in the desire for more, to be greater, to accomplish more. But instead, let go of this desire, and realize you already have enough.

If you realize that you have enough,
you are truly rich.

If you’re already rich, do you need to make more money? Do you need to do more and more?

If you’re content, you do because it gives you joy, not because of a desire for more.

When there is no desire,
all things are at peace.

Master Non-Action

The gentlest thing in the world
overcomes the hardest thing in the world.
That which has no substance
enters where there is no space.
This shows the value of non-action.

Teaching without words,
performing without actions:
that is the Master’s way.

This will be the hardest principle to master, I believe, because our old obsession with productivity was an obsession with doing. It helps me to think of nature: it does nothing, it doesn’t hurry, and yet everything gets done.

Why does everything get done in nature? Because:

1. There is nothing that truly needs to get done — whatever happens is good.
2. What happens is a result of the actual nature of things — they will do what they do because of what they are.

Think of how this applies to your work: can you relinquish what you think “needs” to be done? And can you rethink things so that things happen because of what they are, not because you force them to happen? It’s not an easy task, but it can happen if you keep an open mind and contemplate “needs” and the nature of things.

The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets the Tao speak for itself.

Relinquish Control

The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.

This is another difficult change: to let go of our need for control. We try to control our environment, control our behaviors, control our minds, control other people, control outcomes. And yet, it’s all an illusion: we have no control over what happens. Things go wrong all the time, plans fail, we fail, and we feel like failures because of it. Because we thought we could control something, and it didn’t happen.

Controlling other people is a huge source of conflict. Stop trying to control employees, co-workers, bosses, team members, loved ones. Let them do what they want, and work with you how they will.

So how do you work without control? It takes time to learn this, but the idea is to let things happen, and act (or not act) within the flow of those events. Let people do as they please, and find calm amid this swirl of activity and people.

The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets the Tao speak for itself.

Stop Planning

Other people have a purpose;
I alone don’t know.
I drift like a wave on the ocean,
I blow as aimless as the wind.

This goes hand-in-hand with letting go of control. Stop planning, stop trying to control how things will go and what the outcomes will be. Life never goes according to plan, so why stress yourself out worrying about the future and then worrying about the past when plans get disrupted?

Live in the moment, with no fixed outcome in mind. Let things happen, and be content with what happens. Do work, of course, but do it because it gives you joy.

My system for doing this: The One Thing System.

Because he has no goal in mind,
everything he does succeeds.

Let Go of Success & the Need for Approval

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
you position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

Success is something that’s ingrained in our culture, and almost every moment of our childhoods and schooling are geared towards success. But it’s a hollow concept. Who defines success? Why is it so important? What happens when we don’t achieve it? And what happens when we do, and still want more, or realize it wasn’t worth all the effort, and that we’ve wasted our lives?

Keep your feet on the ground. Find balance, and contentment. Forget about “success”.

The Master does his job
and then stops.
He understands that the universe
is forever out of control,
and that trying to dominate events
goes against the current of the Tao.
Because he believes in himself,
he doesn’t try to convince others.
Because he is content with himself,
he doesn’t need others’ approval.
Because he accepts himself,
the whole world accepts him.

That quote says it all really. I have nothing to add. Give up the need for approval, and the need for “productivity” fades away.

Do Your Work, & Step Back

Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval
and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

This is a lesson we have a hard time learning. We do our work, and then need to do more, and more. Instead, step back. You will thank me for it.

How To Stop the Blame Game, by Nathanael Fast

Executives of the three companies at the heart of the recent massive Gulf oil spill were grilled by lawmakers this week in back-to-back Senate inquiries. Instead of accepting responsibility, however, they fell over each other in attempts to shift the blame. No one was impressed.

Playing the blame game never works. A deep set of research shows that people who blame others for their mistakes lose status, learn less, and perform worse relative to those who own up to their mistakes. Research also shows that the same applies for organizations. Groups and organizations with a rampant culture of blame have a serious disadvantage when it comes to creativity, learning, innovation, and productive risk-taking.

That's why creating a culture of psychological safety is one of the most important things a leader can do.

But this isn't easy, and some recent findings offer another reason why: Blaming is contagious. A set of recent studiesconducted in collaboration with Larissa Tiedens of the Stanford Graduate School of Business showed that merely being exposed to someone else making a blame attribution for a mistake was enough to cause people to turn around and blame others for completely unrelated failures. This is different from the "kick-the-dog" phenomenon, where a person is more likely to blame the person below them in the hierarchy when they, themselves, have been blamed by a higher-up. Instead, it appears that all you have to do to "catch" the blame virus is to be exposed to someone else passing the buck.

How does this happen? Our findings, reported in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, demonstrated that goal contagion is at work. The "germ" that spreads is the goal of protecting one's self-image. When people observe others protecting their egos, it spreads. Mood and social learning were ruled out as alternative explanations.

These findings mean that blame can spread virally. They also, thankfully, offer some insight into how to prevent the spread of blame in one's organization. Here are a few practical steps you can take:

• Don't blame others for your mistakes. The temptation is huge to point the finger elsewhere when you make a mistake. Resist it. Not only will you gain respect and loyalty from your followers, you'll also help to prevent a culture of blame from emerging.
• When you do blame, do so constructively. There are times when people's mistakes really do need to be surfaced in public. In these cases, make sure to highlight that the goal is to learn from mistakes, not to publicly humiliate those who make them.
• Set an example by confidently taking ownership for failures. Our findings showed that blame was contagious, but not among those who felt psychologically secure. So try to foster a chronic sense of inner security in order to reduce the chances that you'll lash out at others.
• Always focus on learning. Creating a culture where learning — rather than avoiding mistakes — is the top priority will help to ensure that people feel free talk about and learn from their errors.
• Reward people for making mistakes. Some companies are actually starting to incentivize employees to make mistakes, so long as the mistakes can teach valuable lessons that lead to future innovation.

Nathanael Fast is an assistant professor of Management and Organization at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business.

Two Rules for a Successful Presentation, by Nick Morgan

Most presentations go bad because the presenter didn't prepare well enough in two ways. In fact, so important are these two classic errors that I'm going to elevate them to The Two Rules for Preparing a Successful Presentation.

Rule One: Know Thy Audience.

Presentations are about their audiences, not their speakers. Before you write anything down, or commit anything to a Power Point slide, you must give some thought to your listeners. So ask yourself obvious — but easy to forget — questions like, what time of day am I speaking? How many people will be in the audience? Will they just have eaten, or will they be looking forward to a meal? Will they have heard a number of other speeches, or is mine the only one? The answer to each of these questions should affect the length, style and content of your presentation.

People have more energy and more ability to hear complex ideas early in the day; later in the day their energy flags and they don't want to entertain as many new ideas. Larger audiences demand more energy from the speaker and want to laugh more than they want to cry. The worst audience (from the speaker's point of view) is a tired, fed, slightly inebriated audience. That audience needs President Reagan's rule for after-dinner speeches: 12 minutes, a few jokes, and sit down before the audience stands up.

But the really interesting things to know about audience members are, what do they fear? What are their dreams? Where do they want to be led? And what have they had recent cause to like or dislike? Only once you understand the emotional state of the audience are you ready to begin to design a presentation for them. Far too many speakers make the mistake of believing that one size fits all. I have seen executives give the same speech about the financial state of the company to investors, to the general public, and to employees — with very different results.

Rule Two: Tell Them One Thing, and One Thing Only

This is a difficult rule for most presenters to follow. But it's essential. The oral genre is highly inefficient. We audience members simply don't remember much of what we hear. We're easily sidetracked, confused, and tricked. We get distracted by everything from the color of the presenter's tie to the person sitting in the next row to our own internal monologues. I'm afraid the company's not in very good shape. That comment that Joan made last week. Maybe I should dust off my resume. Now, what was that guy up front saying?

So you've got to keep it simple. Many studies show that we only remember a small percentage of what we hear — somewhere between 10 – 30 percent.

But when a speaker gets in front of an audience, the urge to tell 'em everything you know is very hard to resist. Far too many speakers perform a data dump on their audiences at the first opportunity. Unfortunately, we can only hold 4 or 5 ideas in our heads at one time, so as soon as you give me a list of more than 5 items, I'm going to start forgetting as much as I hear.

Against this dismal human truth there is only one defense: focus your presentation on a single idea. Be ruthless. Write that one idea down in one declarative sentence and paste it up on your computer. Then eliminate everything, no matter how beautiful a slide it's on, that doesn't support that idea.

Follow these two rules and you'll find that audience will remember — and maybe even act on — your speeches. After all, the only reason to give a speech is to change the world.

Nick Morgan is President of Public Words Inc, a communications consulting firm, and author of Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma.

Bad is Stronger Than Good: The 5 to 1 Rule

Bad is Stronger Than Good: The 5 to 1 Rule: "

"Bad is Stronger Than Good" is the title of one of my favorite academic articles, which shows that negative information, experiences, and people pack a far bigger wallop than positive ones. I touched on this theme in The No Asshole Rule and dig into in detail in the forthcoming Good Boss, Bad Boss. But perhaps the most important finding for most of us is the research on romantic relationships and marriages: unless positive interactions outnumber
negative interactions by five to one, odds are that the relationship will fail. Scary, isn't it?

Several studies found that when the proportion of negative
interactions in a relationship exceeds this “five-to-one rule” divorce rates go way up and
marital satisfaction goes way down. The implications for all of us in long-term relationships are both instructive and daunting: If you have a bad interaction with your partner, one (or apparently two, three, or four) positive interactions aren't enough to repair the damage. It apparently takes at least five -- at least over the long-term. Related studies on workplaces suggest, along similar lines, that bosses and companies will get more bang for the buck if they focus on eliminating the negative rather than accentuating the positive (although the latter is important, the best evidence suggests that more effort and resources should be focused on getting rid of bad people and experiences).

P.S. The citation is Baumeister, R.F.,
Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K.D. (2001). Bad is stronger than
good. Review of General Psychology, 5, 323-370. Here is a link to the pdf: http://www.csom.umn.edu/Assets/71516.pdf.

"