Success Secrets: Don't Tolerate "badness"

In my last post, I mentioned Hedge Fund giant Ray Dalio's intolerance of "badness" . It really does seem that it takes an intolerance of problems to build a truly great organization. Here is an article about commodity giant Glencore, which makes the same point. A key quote: "Those stresses are in part explained by a culture in which blunders are not tolerated.".  Link posted at The Reformed Broker.

Success Book Reviews: Ray Dalio's "Principles"

How do you become a billionaire? Solving one important problem at a time. That is one of the messages I take from one of the most unique “Success Books” I have ever read, billionaire Ray Daio’s Principles. The PDF is, apparently, freely available ( I don’t know if this has changed or will change)

The more I delve into the science of personal achievement, the more I am amazed at the incredible wealth of information that has been made freely available by successful people, such as Charlie Munger (billionaire), Charles Koch (billionaire) and many others. We are truly living in a wondrous age where such masters are eager to part with their secrets.

Why would these guys do such things? Why would they part with such life-changing information, passing it on to  the rest of us at zero or trivial cost? They are certainly not dumb. On reason could be that they may welcome the compounding effect that their works produce. In other words, if a billionaire writes a book that stimulates others to be entrepreneurial, visionary, productive, disciplined, etc, this could, eventually, have a significantly positive effect on the environment that the billionaire himself live in. For instance, hugely successful investor Monish Pabrai, took his idol, Warren Buffett to a $650,000 lunch, using profits accumulated by emulating Buffet (the money went to a charity Buffett favors). Great link about it here.

 Ray Dalio built and runs the largest hedge fund in the world (as of 2010), Bridgewater, managing, at the time of this writing, over $90 billion in assets. He wrote the Principles as a management document. Apparently the principles are “fractal” in that they worked for him, as the head of Bridgewater, and they work at all levels beneath him in the organization he created. So the incentive is clear in this case.

 His Principles range from the general and universal, down to the incredibly specific. What is the key to building such a might organization as Bridgewater?  An unflinching acceptance of reality, and the refusal to tolerate problems (also termed “badness”).   Consider this: where might the tolerances be more lax? Building a skyscraper or building an investment company? I would have to answer “probably the latter”.  Maybe that’s why very few skyscrapers fall down, and so many organizations do.  Dalio’s tolerances, in my opinion, are much closer to engineering /architectural tolerances, than a “soft”, “people-oriented” business tolerances.

Dalio has assembled a far-reaching exhaustive roup of rules designed to unmask “badness”. One of the reasons may be that people are not girders. They don’t come in standard sizes and specifications. Girders don’t have hidden agendas, egos, laziness, or lack of motivation. People, of course, do. So Dalio provides some methods to cut through the foibles of individual human behavior in order for the group to function as (in his term) a “machine”.

In the books and interviews I have read, it has seemed to me that many successful men such as Jamie Dimon, Bill Gates, and Jack Welch, have that same characteristic. Small, nagging problems, often related to peoples’ underperformance,  just cannot be tolerated because they have  a “multiplier effect”; perhaps similar to a bunch of rivets in a suspension bridge , if each rivet is just a little under “spec” , the sum total could be catastrophic.

One of Dalio’s tools for rooting out problems seems simple: an “issues log”.  Once you keep careful track of issues, you are well on the way to solving them. Simple? Maybe. Butt is the first time I encountered such a tool, and I am a bbig fan of success tools.  I have kept lists of goals, I have lists of visualizations, affirmations, etc, but I have never kept a separate “issues” log. But, when  you think of it, how else can you continually improve the purity of the outputs of your efforts?

Dalio also uses his incisive drive for clarity to make sure we separate functions (such as issue drilldown vs problem solving) so as not to muddy the waters when optimizing the organization

There is lots more  in the Principles. These principles demand courage. Personal courage. They demand faith that huge results come from facing every aspect of reality, working with it, and improving your results as quickly as possible.

This may be the most outstanding document of its kind, ever. I think it is a life-changing read.

Success Master Skills: Pay Up For Knowledge

I have written in this blog before that life is now so complex, and the paths to success so specialized, that expert knowledge is needed in almost every area of life, if oen wants to make the most of one’s efforts.

Well, last year, I decided to take a dose of my own medicine. Instead of “going it alone” with a few books, I decided to head out into the world and take some courses with experts. The result?

The results exceeded my wildest dreams.  Every facet of my life improved. So, I strongly recommend the following Success Secret: Pay up for knowledge!

In March 2010 I took an statistics-oriented trading course from John Joseph , a brilliant trader, system developer, and CTA.  Immediately, my trading systems improved, and I have been much more consistently profitable as a result

In May, 2010 I went to the Market Technicians Association Symposium in New York and, as an outgrowth of that trip, managed to learn some key  material which I put to use in my longer term trading, and which has yielded some very satisfying results in the almost 12 months since the Symposium.

 In June 2010 I took three weeks of training in Microsoft Access, because, thanks to the trading course just mentioned, I was generating so much data that I had to put it together and keep track of it much better. Result? Much better record keeping, much faster and more creative “slicing and dicing” of my data. Also, the ability to handle many more systems.

From August to October, I took the Dale Carnegie Course, their flagship course.  This was truly life-changing. I had known a few people who took it, and so, 30 years too late, I took it myself.  My life changed for the better  immediately: better friendships, less of an “edge” to my interactions with others, and so much more. I will be studying that material for a lifetime.

None of these efforts was cheap. And not only in money terms. You have to face your demons and come to terms that, to get a better life, you must admit you are not an expert. But once you go through that door, the rewards are truly beyond measure.

2010 was my Annus Mirabilis. May 2011 be yours.

Success and Convexity Part 5: Negative Convexity

This is Post 5 in my series on Success and Convexity. For our non-mathematical purposes, we’ll define positive convexity as opening the door to many good things while limiting the access of many bad things.

What then is negative convexity in the world of personal success and achievement? It's negative luck.  It is opening the door to many bad things. Maybe not even consciously opening the door, but just leaving the door open, or even forgetting to close it. If you do this in your house, it’s not that you know something bad will come in, it’s that you don’t have any good idea what may come in. You are giving unrestricted access to negative possibilities.

Our goal should be, for the most part, to restrict access to “the unknown bad things” that can happen. We only want things to get “out of control” on the good side of things. We want to get into a line of work with an unlimited upside; around friends with drive, courage, vision and good hygiene. We want to make sure we wander into bookstores and libraries and classrooms and not wander into bars and crack houses and , hopefully, as few greasy burger joints as we can manage.

Here are some examples of negative convexity. Often these actions turn out badly because they “open the door” to unknown bad things.

Giving your opinion
Sad to say, no one wants to hear your opinion. And the louder your opinion, the less someone wants to hear it. Furthermore, down the road, that person may retaliate in some way if your opinionated remark has injured their self-esteem. Oh…another minor point…your opinion could be totally wrong. The point is, favoring the world at large with your many "fascinating" opinions is a virtual “kick me” sign to the universe, and can open the door to a surprising number of repercussion, many of them painful

Using credit and leverage
The more you lever up, the more it can work against you in the exact proportion to the amount you have borrowed/leveraged. Much of the financial agony of the past few years was caused by huge amounts of leverage, from homeowners putting up miniscule amounts  as down payments, to giant banks borrowing against those same mortgages at 30-to-1 margins. There are even hints that the U.S. Government could lose it’s own Triple-A credit rating because of too much borrowing. Again, it is the “unknown” side of the coin that is the bombshell. You don’t know what will precipitate the destructive side of leverage: you might lose your job; your industry could go into a slump; you could have miscalculated the whole nature of the bet you made. The fact is you just don’t know, but one thing you can know is that leverage is a door to the unknown. You never know what might walk through.,

Avoid washing your hands, annual checkups, exercise
None of these actions are a ticket to doom. What they are is a ticket to the unknown. You don’t wash your hands? Well…perhaps you will never get sick from some germ. Or maybe you’ll be sick 2,3,or 4 weeks per year and it will just “slip under the radar”, with those lost weeks of productivity, family activities, friends, etc just “gone” without your even thinking about them.

Skipped your checkup? So what? You’re feeling fine. Maybe there’s nothing there. Or maybe you have something quiet and chronic that could chew up a few years of your life, but you won’t know that for a while.

Don’t exercise enough? Maybe you lose an hour of life per hour of exercise…I don’t know. Maybe you lose just a teeny biit of flexibility over time, so when you have to lift that heavy object, instead of some aches and pains, you rupture something. Again, these are issues of playing the odds. Of letting the unknown, or ignored, into your life. And once it gets in, because convexity tends to increase, you may find yourself in the “steep part of the curve of “hurt”, when you never needed to be there.

More on Negative Convexity in another post.

Success and Convexity Part 4: More on Positive Convexity

This is post 4 in my series on convexity. For the purposes of these posts, out definition of positive convexity will be opening the door to many good things, while limiting the access of incoming bad things.

I mentioned in my last post two secrets to adding positive convexity to our lives:
1. Hard Work and
2. Exploratory behavior.

Here are two more:

3.Margin of Safety

Shakespeare said “discretion is the better part of valor”. Woodworking experts admonish “measure twice and cut once”. Billionaire Warren Buffett and his mentor Benjamin Graham emphasized investing with a “margin of safety”, a level of business value that would endure no matter what the price or vicissitudes of the business, thus making it safer to invest in. Airplanes and space shuttles are designed with redundancy: multiple systems that can be pressed into service if a main system (hydraulic, navigation, etc) fails.

For us to “spread our wings” in our chosen field, to take advantage of the many opportunities for positive convexity (strings of good outcomes building on each other), each step should be taken only after the worst-case scenario is considered.’’

A simple example would be buying a house. If you, for instance, were to buy the house with 100% cash, you could take full advantage of the positive convexity of the purchase: the potential that your investment would increase over time. Furthermore, if you paid with cash, you would have no worries about meeting the mortgage, ever, thus you would have the absolute minimum chance of losing that house. This would meet our laymen’s definition of convexity of maximizing the planned and unplanned positive outcomes, while cutting off the risk of outsized negative outcomes.

Do the scheduled maintenance on your car. Get your checkup. Eat your bran flakes. File your taxes on time. Why? Because these actions generate margins of safety, allowing you to “blossom” the rest of the time. They “cut off the tails” of the “bad” side of the “curve”. They limit your downside, and then your creativity and drive can generate the”upside”.

4.Noticing and recording

Noticing and recording is an amazingly effective method of creating positive convexity. Walking around with a notebook or voice recorder will exponentially increase the number of “positive inputs” that you experience everyday. In a moment, a million-dollar idea can be captured before it disappears into your unconscious. Or you may see something: a book, a piece of property, a new product, etc and note it down for future reference. Many of us get terrific inspiration when we are out walking or driving…the kind of inspiration that might change your life. If you take 3 notes a day that’s over a thousand new inputs per year. One out of a hundred might even be a breakthrough. And ten breakthroughs a year is a lot of positive convexity.

5. Consistency

Woody Allen once said "eighty percent of success is showing up". A pithy and ever-so-true Success Secret. I went to the grocery store today and they didn't have my favorite focaccia bread. Big deal? Sure, but now, in the back of my mind, I have this meme that reminds me:  "well, if you go out of your way, they might not have the focaccia". Similarly, if you don't show up, your clients, friends, etc may start taking you off the "guaranteed list" and putting you on the "maybe" list. On the other hand, if you always pick up the phone, meet your deadlines, get your eight hours sleep, etc, you create a "base" from which to build. You certainly wouldn't like it if various bodily organs worked "inconsistently".  How could you get through your day?  We should expect of ourselves the same consistency that we expect of many of the small, but priceless goods and services we enjoy today without even thinking about it. Many nations don't have consistent power, water, and other infrastructure. Whole countries get avoided by international investment because you can't build a factory there, because you don't know if the lights will be on. Consistency seems like a little thing, but it is a base from which positive convexity can be built.

Success and Convexity Part 3: Generating Positive Convexity

This is Part 3 of Success and Convexity. I will begin to cover the factors that can encourage “positive convexity”.  How can we accrete higher and higher levels of success in our lives? Our careers? How can we use the randomness of the Universe to produce positive outcomes for us, and for those positive outcomes to produce further outcomes?

Factors Generating Positive Convexity

1. Hard work
Renowned golfer Lee Trevino has said “the harder I work, the luckier I get”. He’s right. Recent research has revealed that skilled participants in athletics are more prone to have “streaks” (consecutive positive outcomes). A “streak” would be an excellent example of positive convexity. Life presents random events, but the ability to capitalize on those events is represented by the hard work, “deliberative practice”, etc which goes into skill-building.

Hard work on a challenging topic, which involves out passionate interest, also may generate iterative reflection.  As a young composer (35 years ago), and as a trading system programmer now, I would wonder:  “when is this composition finished? Am I done ? How do I know?” That’s because once a creative person looks at their work, they frequently make changes based on how the work looks to them. This process can go on and on. In fact, The process is not limited to an individual work, but may last a lifetime, as work upon work generates new “answers”, new music, new algorithms, new solutions.

And that is exactly the positive convexity we are looking for. If we can generate a current of interest that carries us along through our work, this concentrates our focus and allows expertise to build on top of expertise.

2. Exploratory behavior
Luck (or what we currently call “luck”), is correlated with exploratory behavior. Whenever you are “out and about”, whether at a bookstore, an event, a family gathering, a class, etc you are bringing your skills and goals with you. The fact that "you are you", tends to “filter” the randomness of your encounters, as you respond to the outside world’s inputs, oriented, as you are, toward your own goals and intentions. You “collapse the wave function” of the world by allowing the world to impinge upon your particular mindset. You literally “see” different “worlds” from other people. Therefore, the more experiences you seek out, the more often a small percentage of those experiences will be relevant to your goals and ambitions.When I am driving with a particular friend of mine, I am always startled that she sees so many new restaurants, stores, etc on the very streets that I drive through every day. She simply “expects” different things from the world, and as a result, she gets them.





We'll continue our series on generating positive convexity in an upcoming post.

Success and Convexity Part 2

This is Part 2 of a series exploring personal success and Convexity. For purposes of this blog I have defined convexity as opening the door to many good things, while limiting the access of incoming bad things. I suggested that convexity means seeking an unbounded upside and a bounded downside.Why do we have such a two-sided concept such as convexity? There might be a lot of explanations, but one way of looking at it is this: the same forces that can contribute to a bright and successful life: passion, energy, curiosity, attractiveness, charisma, intelligence….can also morph into destructive forces. Even “pure chance”, which has often contributed to spectacular breakthroughs, can, in the form of entropy, seep in and undermine the finest career, the most sterling reputation, the most secure future.

Another scenario is single-focus “tunnel vision” in which the individual makes progress on a given front, but ignores the errors and defects accumulating on other fronts which can sabotage the hard-won success.

Still another common occurrence is that a person who has achieved excellence in one field assumes he or she has excellence in another field, or even all fields, which of course, leads to blind alleys and failure.

For Instance :

Consider the countless stories of sports and entertainment greats who made tens of millions of dollars, but ended up destitute due to some combination of personal defects (drugs, over-spending, or other unsavory activities). These people succeeded in achieving an “unbounded upside” but failed to create a “bounded downside” to secure the benefits of that success.

Consider Long Term Capital Management, a team of brilliant financial minds, including some Nobel Prize Winners, who caused a near-meltdown of the world financial system when those same , previously-successful money-making formulas imploded.

Consider that Leonard Nimoy made …vocal albums?


Pat Boone made Rock albums???



Bill Clinton achieved the Presidency but was nearly impeached because he …ahem…allowed access to, his..er…unbounded downside????

The above areas demonstrate the potential of “negative convexity”.

However, it is also important, while guarding against downside risks, to consider this: where can I generate “unbounded upside”? How can I maximize the “happy accidents” that can put me on the path to success? How can I maximize my “luck”, opportunities, or skills to geometrically or exponentially improve my situation over the years and decades?

A starlet gets discovered on Hollywood and Vine.
A graduate student (William Sharpe) changes his thesis topic and leaves the path of obscurity ending up with a Nobel Prize.
The molecular structure of Benzene is discovered in a dream!!!

Yes, we can try to avoid the unbounded downside, but, also, how do we discover the unbounded upside?

We’ll consider these factors in upcoming posts.

Success and Convexity Part 1

I am going to do a series of posts about personal success and Convexity. It’s an interesting word and can be used as a lens to view personal success from multiple angles. In a previous series of posts I explored the metaphor of entropy and personal success. However, recently, as I was reading the magnificent books by Steven Drobny Inside the House of Money and The Invisible Hands , I noticed that many of the brilliant hedge fund managers he interviewed repeatedly used the term “convexity” to define the characteristics of the financial returns they were seeking. Now there are precise financial definitions of this term, but my overall impression was that these investors were using convexity to define an investment that had a strong potential to do increasingly well if conditions were right, but had the additional property of not creating a ruinous loss if things went bad. In short, they were seeking something like this:

Now, this blog has often tried to take concepts from the business and scientific world and examine them for their potential to facilitate personal success. So, it occurred to me one day that Convexity might be one of those concepts.

Simply put, convexity (and here I am speaking of positive convexity), might be defined as opening the door to many good things, while limiting the access of incoming bad things. We seek convex outcomes. Things that could get better and better. And a much-to-be hoped-for corollary of those outcomes would be: we also want to achieve those outcomes at as low a risk as possible. Strictly speaking, we would like an unbounded upside and a bounded downside.

We’ll examine this concept further in upcoming posts.

Success Tools: Google Voice for Idea Capture

Idea capture is a crucial area for personal achievement and success. It is a key component of David Allen's GTD methodology and a key success secret of creatives, entrepreneurs, and innovators of all stripes. No, you are not going to remember that light bulb flash of an idea in 6 hours, or tomorrow, or when you get around to it. You are going to forget about your new concept, that new product you glanced at at the mall, that new restaurant you passed, that short conversation you had with a potential client, etc., unless you record the memo immediately.

Google Voice is my newest favorite success tool for this process, although it does about a million other things. I use it primarily for voice memos, as a companion to the pocket spiral notebook I carry around, surgically attached to my body (OK, just kidding). How many ideas do you have per day? You may never know until you record them in a reliable way. Google voice really helps. Google voice allows me to call, send a voice memo to myself, and also reminds me about it later when a transcript and audio file show up in my email. If I'm in my car, I can't pull out my spiral notebook and record ideas, but I can speed dial Google Voice in a flash.

Case in point: I was wandering around Costco the other day and, today, 4 days later, I happened to review my Google Voice memos from that trip. At least 6 important (and forgotten) items came up, which I had sent to myself 4 days ago. Now multiply this by 365 days and you can imagine the implications of retaining all of those potentially lost inputs. In my own experience I almost never recall everything I dictated to Google Voice.

I am only scratching the surface of what Google Voice does, but it has already proven priceless.

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Success book Reviews; Thomas Stanley "Stop acting Rich"

Thomas Stanley , best-selling author of The Millionaire Next Door has added a fascinating new work to his paradigm-shifting catalog of research on the wealthy. It is Stanley who taught us that the rich often live frugal lives, buying Sears suits instead of Armani, and driving Chevrolets instead of Bentley. He continues that superb research here. From watches to wines, the millionaires just don't fit "central casting". They buy inexpensive brands, drink inexpensive alcohol and live in inexpensive houses.

Stanley also introduces a "glittering rich" category . He suggests that many non-rich "aspirationals" spend their money imitating the extremely successful decamillionaires, who actually can afford the high-priced brands, which few "garden variety" millionaires would ever touch.

Over and over Stanley shows us how deluded we are in our consumption-oriented lifestyles. The people we are imitating are often laughing at us...all the way to the bank. Their bank, that is.

Success Videos: Jamie Dimon at Harvard

I've watched Jamie Dimon's career unfold for over a decade now and it is gratifying to notice the harmony between his articulated principles and the actual results he has achieved. This video is probably the most extensive exposition of his principles that I have found. I'll mention a few points of importance, but the video is well worth watching in full.

Lifted almost verbatim from Denton's "Executive Charisma" is the injunction to treat all employees, from clerk to CEO, equally. Now "equally" , for Dimon, means, with intellectual honesty, without politics, and with loyalty to a vibrant J.P. Morgan, not loyalty to a particular person's job, title, salary, etc.

Another key quality for the leader (and the organization) is lifelong learning. One key quality that emerges over and over in the stories of leaders such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Charlie Munger, and others is the central element of reading as a central activity for any successful person. I would say, in my observation of my fellow human beings, I have never seen any rule more frequently ignored. And they wake up at age 60 and wonder why their life's a mess.

A few other gems: Seek the best models, not the second-best. Continuous improvement. Seek relentlessly for the facts. Seek the full information. Get "the right people in the room"...i.e. the people who will be implementing or otherwise dealing with the results of your executive decisions.

I won't belabor my commentary, please watch this remarkable video.

Success Master Skills - More Passion, Less "Balance"?

Great post on work-life balance at Journey of a Serial Entrepreneur. Makes simlar points to a few of my own remarks in my review of Pete Peterson's new book. Usman Sheik is a startup founder and loves his work. Like many successful people, he sees the lines between work and "the rest of life" as blurred. There is work-as drudgery, and there is work-as-passion. And when work is your passion, there may not be as much need for "balance".

Success Secrets: Reading and Thinking

Here is a short video by investor (and Warren buffett disciple) Monish Pabrai and a long video of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. In both videos it is clear that the key to these peoples' success is not hyperactivity, but reading and thinking. They spend huge parts of their days reading, and they rank it as their most important activity. Even Pabrai, already a Buffett admirer, was struc by how "empty" Buffett's schedule was. You don't look very busy when you're reading, but the results speak for themselves.

Success Book Reviews: Pete Peterson, American Dreamer

What a life. In The Education of an American Dreamer Pete Peterson, billionaire founder of the Blackstone group and one of the most successful leaders ever in business and government, has given us a fast-paced look at a dynamic career. Hugely successful at a young age, in both advertising and also as the very young CEO of Bell and Howell, he moved on to Washington (Secretary of Commerce), Lehman Brothers, and, eventually private equity firm Blackstone. Along the way he was tapped to run numerous foundations, and later set up several himself. The book moves quickly, and , as an autobiography, it is sometimes difficult to get beyond the surface to the “WHY”…how did such success came so easily to this individual? I picked up a few principles as I read, and was gratified to see that, at the end of the book, Peterson himself dubbed them to be part of his key success factors.

First, it is important to note a bit of what Peterson might call “dumb luck”. Like Warren Buffett and Alan Greenspan, Peterson was spared military service and as such got a head start in university environments that were somewhat depleted of competition. A lot of bright young males were busy fighting in WWII and Korea while Peterson, Greenspan, Buffett, and others were already finishing business school.

But there was a lot more than luck involved in Peterson’s career. Peterson developed two key success factors early, perhaps partially due to his MBA work at the University of Chicago: he had an analytical bent, and an interest in communicating his ideas. It is interesting to note that, around the time of his attendance at U of C, economics was undergoing a transformation from a more “literary” to a “quantitative” discipline. And, in his early work at McCann Erickson, the advertising agency, he did much the same: he became a champion of research, as well as an expert at making that research client-centric. As far as communicating, it is interesting to note that the young Alan Greenspan, while immersed in his studies of American business statistics, was, like Peterson, eager to communicate the ideas he was uncovering. Both men strove to reach a wider audience through speaking and writing articles. Buffett also strove to teach.

Another two success characteristics are, interestingly, also highlighted as success drivers in Thomas Scwheich’s informative book Staying Power : a relaxed attitude toward career “pre-planning”, and a willingness to lead an “un-balanced”, career-centric lifestyle. Schweich’s interviews with successful people echo what Peterson also claims to be a key principle: avoid a restrictive set of career goals: “follow your bliss”. As far as the consequences of imbalance are concerned, Peterson suffers two divorces , most likely related to his career focus. In my own life, I’d tend to agree with the “work ethic” approach: “work/life balance” is not conducive to high achievement. That’s just the way it is.

I won’t reveal all of Peterson’s “lessons learned”, but I will mention that Peterson appears to be quite comfortable among all sorts of people, something we introverts envy. As I think back and wonder how his interpersonal skills might have developed, I focus on his many years of working in his father’s café. I wonder if being around so many different types of people at such a young age perhaps enabled the development of self-confidence. It’s one thing to be a great student (which he was) , and altogether another thing to be at ease and unafraid among the mighty of the earth (Rockefeller, Kissinger, etc.). Perhaps it all started at his dad’s café in Nebraska.

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Success Book Reviews: Benton's "Executive Charisma" Part 2

This is Part 2 of my review of D. A. Benton’s Executive Charisma: Six Steps to Mastering the Art of Leadership. Part 1 is here.

Benton has enumerated “The Sacred Six” components of Executive Charisma:

1. Be the first to initiate
2. Expect and give acceptance to maintain self-esteem
3. Ask questions, and ask favors
4. Stand tall, straight, and smile
5. Be human, humorous, and hands on
6. Slow down, shut up and listen

A few personal reactions to her concepts follow.

Be the first to initiate
In my acquaintance with successful people, this was probably the very greatest difference between them and a typical person. I would go so far as to say that the more often you initiate, and the more significant the goals, the greater chance you will have in personal success. Successful people think in terms of big dreams. They go where they have to go, meet the people they have to meet, and take continuous action in the direction of their goals. They do not wait for others to approve. If they move one inch ahead of the pack every day, because of a propensity to initiate, that adds up to miles ahead over the years.

Be human, humorous, and hands-on
There were two or three great leaders I enjoyed being around in a crisis. They always knew how to lighten the emotional burden when things got tough. They never took a situation, or themselves, too seriously. By behaving in this way, they drew good people around them. Since people enjoyed their company, they got good advice, good mentoring, advance information that was helpful to the business, and, of course, were able to bring in a lot of business. Now, being an enjoyable person does not mean they were not, to use the rest of Benton’s phrase, “hands-on”. I remember several instances in my career as a music arranger and producer, when extremely high-ranking executives would work with me well into the night (or the next morning!!!) on a project, adjusting it down to the very finest details. These people were truly gifted: they are as hard-working as they were likable, and these qualities brought them outstanding (and much-deserved) success.


Expect and give acceptance to maintain self-esteem
I suspect that this point is the “secret ingredient” that underlies the success of so many truly outstanding people. In my work with some top people, I never felt I was being demeaned as a person, even if my work was being criticized. Also, I am astounded at how often these highly successful people used praise to initiate a meeting, and how often I was treated as a knowledgeable expert first, and as part of a results-oriented project second.. Not that I wasn’t an expert, but these people went out of their way to “put me in the room”. At the table. They knew that they needed great input from everyone around them, and the only way to get it was to make them feel comfortable, and on an equal footing.

The rest of Benton’s “Sacred Six” are equally important. Her book is loaded with examples and “how-to’s”. As I often do with inspiring books, I took the time to make an outline of the whole book so that I can refer to it easily in the future. And, speaking of the future, if you want to have one in business or in life, you should read this book.

Success Book Review: D. A. Benton "Executive Charisma"

D.A. Benton is an internationally recognized speaker, coach, author and consultant. She is an expert on executive skills, image, presentation, and effectiveness. Her wonderful book, Executive Charisma: Six Steps to Mastering the Art of Leadership is a cornucopia of secrets about successful leadership behavior. Although I am not now part of a large organization, I certainly wish I had read it during the years I was interfacing with executives at billion-dollar companies. As I think back to those who rose to great heights, and as I watch high-ranking leaders on television, the crucial principles that Benton elucidates in “Executive Charisma” leap out in strong relief. If one could master even one of her “Sacred Six” principles, it would probably make a huge positive change in their career. Master all six…and it’s a home run. But, there is no single moment of mastery. As Benton repeatedly reminds the reader: mastering her principles is a lifelong, vere-ending task.

Benton's "Sacred Six":
1. Be the first to initiate
2. Expect and give acceptance to maintain self-esteem
3. Ask questions, and ask favors
4. Stand tall, straight, and smile
5. Be human, humorous, and hands on
6. Slow down, shut up and listen

In my next post I will discuss a few of her concepts in more detail.

Success Secrets: Ken Griffin, Billionire

Wonderful article on Bloomberg today about billionaire Ken Griffin of Citadel Investment Group. What can we mere mortals take away from an article about this titan? At least two key details.

Detail 1:
"He was always comparing himself to the biggest players on Wall Street,” says Frank Meyer, former head of Glenwood Capital Investments LLC"


As Brian Tracy says in so many of his books and tapes, part of your success depends on your chosen" reference group". Clearly Griffin, even as a student, saw his reference group as the the biggest and best

Detail 2:
" 'In retrospect, I wish I had had less leverage,' Griffin says..."

Warren Buffett calls leverage a "weapon of mass destruction". Both Jamie Dimon and Sandy Weil believed in a "fortess balance sheet" with a preponderance of assets over liabilities.

It is no surprise that, over and over again the key success secrets uncovered in this blog emerge as part of the personality structure of the greats. The only mystery...why so many have so much trouble emulating them. But then...that's why they're great.


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Success Videos: Craig Barret's (In)Telling advice

I was listening to one of my favorite Podcasts, Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders, which was presenting a talk by Craig Barrett , former CEO and Chairman of the Board of Intel. In the middle of the podcast, as Barrett was discussing advice to the students, he mentioned this as his first concept:

“There is no replacement for sophisticated problem-solving methodology in life”

I repeat, for emphasis

“There is no replacement for sophisticated problem-solving methodology in life”



Note, he did not say “in business”. He said “in life”. This statement is the core of why this blog exists. Simple problem-solving methods don’t always work. From-the-gut “solutions” don’t always work. Life is complicated. Life is probabilistic. Modern life contains many many domains of expertise that have to be dealt with, either by learning, or by retaining the services of someone who has learned that domain. Even a “rising tide” may not lift your “boat” without expertise and problem-solving skills. Here are some of the methodologies I have come across throughout this blog, which relate to Barrett's advice:

Kepner and Tregoe "The Rational Manager"

Michel Michalko "Cracking Creativity"

Plan/Do/Check/Act , or, the Deming/Shewhart Cycle, mentioned by Barrett in his talk

G. Polya "How To Solve it"

But, in reality, this entire blog exists for the purpose of searching out methodologies that reach across domains, from business, to personal planning, to solving life problems. and Barrett's statement is a concise and telling reinforcement of this idea, probably the best statement, from a distinguished source, of what I am attempting here.

Success Tools: Thomas Stanley's website

I am an unabashed fan of Thomas Stanley and his breakthrough book The Millionaire Next Door, so it was a great pleasure to come across both a new book Stop Acting Rich: ...And Start Living Like A Real Millionaire and his wonderful website.

Thomas Stanley has studied millionaires for decades, and the results of his research have uniformly shown the rich to be primarily hardworking, unostentatious people, who live far below their means and who very much enjoy hard work, saving, investing, and the simple pleasures of family life . The website also contains a blog, which is useful for continuous inspiration as well as the wonderful nuggets of fact he serves up. For instance, this quote from his blog post Avoiding The Money Pit:

There are nearly three times more millionaire households (1,138,070 versus 403,211) living in homes valued at $300,000 or less than there are millionaires living in homes valued at $1 million or more.

I'm sure I will be heading back to his site frequently for inspiration and instruction

New On My Reading List: Pete Peterson, Billionaire

Pete Peterson, legendary American businessman, public servant, co-founder of the Blackstone Group, and billionaire, has written an extraordinary autobiography. I am in the midst of reading it and hope to review it shortly. It has a lot in common with other biographies of World war II vintage titans, like Warren Buffett and Alan Greenspan. More to come.