Can You Judge a Book By Its Cover?

In a previous blog entry, I discussed an Economist article that showed:

1. There is a perception that particular traits are important to good leadership, namely competence, dominance, and facial maturity. Likability and trustworthiness are not.
2. Just by looking at a picture, we can get a sense of someone’s leadership qualities and hence their personality.

In that earlier blog entry, I focused primarily on point #1 and its relationship to the Presidential elections.

Today I want to talk a bit about point #2. The correlation between looks and personality has always been an interesting topic for me.

I remember a friend of mine from high school. Everything about him screamed “nerd.” He wore polo shirts buttoned to the top (back when this was not popular). His hair was greasy and slicked to the side. He always walked around with a stack of books in front of him. And yes, he wore a pocket protector with a myriad of pens. It may come as no surprise that he was the captain of the math and chess clubs. His looks matched his personality.

This made me wonder…which came first: his looks or his personality/interests.

Do nerdy looking people choose nerdy endeavors? Or do people who enjoy nerdy endeavors groom themselves to look the part?

What’s the Causality between Appearance and Personality?

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Goals That Work

I recently received an email from a reader of this blog. He describes what he calls a “loophole” in the goal-setting process: either you achieve a goal and then invalidate it with counter-productive behaviors, or you see that a goal won’t be achieved so you give up totally. He then describes what works (something I suggest on this blog): setting a theme. Here are his thoughts.

I am still setting goals on 43things.com. Very difficult except for shopping list type goals like “buy a new hat”.

I’ve been sleeping 12 hours per day. I had set a goal to get up at 6am and have an afternoon nap. I’ve been doing exactly that, except I go back to bed at 7am until 11am! The other day I set a new goal: “have a morning productivity score of 80/100.” This all-or-nothing goal didn’t work because as soon as I knew I couldn’t reach 80 I let the whole thing go and scored 25.

Goals that have worked are like ongoing themes which are achieved when the first example of the theme is achieved.

One goal was “perform a miracle of friendship.” What I had in mind was that it would take a miracle for someone who wouldn’t make time for me to change their mind. However it was achieved in an immediate, unexpected way. Within a day I remembered a friend who keeps sending me his poetry and that I received some the day before. Previously I found it boring (and the opposite of “bored” in the Thesaurus is “caring”) then I realized I could write and send him a special poem just for him. It rhymed too.

I achieved the goal of performing a miracle of friendship and it will also be an ongoing theme.

This same concept holds true for organizations. Employees are not stupid. They will do what they need to in order to hit their performance targets – even if the end result is detrimental to the overall performance of the business. People are motivated by a clear sense of direction, purpose, vision, or theme. When individuals are incented to “do the right thing” rather than hitting targets, you will find increased creativity, improved performance, and a happier workforce.

Innovation and the Performance Paradox

Today, my article on “The Performance Paradox: When Less is More” was published by the American Management Association.

You may recall that I introduced this concept in a blog entry last month.

What is the Performance Paradox?

The more fixated on your goal you become, the greater your chance of success, right? Yes, but only to a certain extent. It turns out that when people are too fixated on the future, their creativity and overall performance actually diminish.

Read the entire Performance Paradox article on the AMA website.

How to Perform at Optimal Levels

In the early 1900s, Robert Yerkes and J. D. Dodson developed the aptly named Yerkes-Dodson Law. The premise is that performance increases relative to motivation (they call it “arousal”) only to a point, after which performance drops. It is typically drawn as an inverted U-shaped curve.

You will notice that I superimposed three “goal” concepts on this graph to give you a sense of how they (roughly) relate.

If you are goal-less, you have no sense of direction and no motivation. Therefore, your performance is low. This is not surprising.

As your motivation increases, your performance increases. Being goal-free – having a sense of direction and purpose, without specific deadlines and limitations – can increase performance…to a point.

Then, as you become goal-driven, performance paradoxically decreases. Goals increase stress and focus you on the future rather than the present.

This phenomenon has been documented in numerous places throughout this blog. Race-car pit crews who increase performance when they are not worried about the stop watch. Students who perform better on exams when they are not as focused on grades. Sales people who sell more when they are not driven by sales targets.

Yerkes and Dodson suggest that different types of tasks require different levels of arousal (to use their word). To improve concentration, intellectually challenging tasks require lower levels of arousal for optimal performance while physically demanding tasks require higher levels. This may explains why professional athletes tend to be more goal-driven. However, even then, goals can limit performance. Listen to my interview with Dr. Doug Gardner, former sports psychology consultant to the Boston Red Sox.

Goal-Free Living is NOT about eliminating your goals. You can have goals and still perform at optimal levels. They key is to have the RIGHT goals (ones that “pull” you forward and don’t create stress) and be PRESENT to what you are doing (being detached from the desired outcomes).

Do you have examples of where you performed at optimal levels by freeing yourself from the stranglehold of rigid goals?

How To Always Be On Time

Right now I am sitting in the Las Vegas airport. With an hour to kill, I decided to write this blog entry with the harmonious sound of slot machines ringing in my ears.

I know so many road warriors who pride themselves in being able to get to the gate just as the doors are closing. Not me. I appreciate having extra time at the airport to relax and work before my flight. In fact, I tend to get to most places early. And there is a good reason.

My background is process design where there is a concept called “the theory of constraints.” The general idea is that “success” is limited by at least one constraining process (i.e., a bottleneck). In the business world, this means that if you want to make more money, the best way to do that is to increase the throughput at the bottleneck so that overall throughput is increased. You can think of this as strengthening the “weakest link in the chain.”

I use the theory of constraints in my personal life. With nearly 1 million miles of flying under my belt, I have never missed a flight. How is this possible? Because I allow plenty of time to get to the airport. I live a mere 15 minutes from Logan International in Boston, yet I typically leave for the airport two hours before a flight. Why?

We are all at the mercy of various bottlenecks: traffic on the way to the airport and long lines at the check in counter, baggage drop-off, and security. Any one of these could prevent me from getting to my plane on time…and I can’t predict when it will happen.

Therefore, instead of sitting in my office working until the last minute and then scrambling to get to the plane on time, I get to the airport early and work there. My philosophy is to put as many of the potential bottlenecks behind me before I settle down. When I get to the airport, I always check in first and drop off my luggage (I know I can print my boarding card from my computer before going to the airport, but I find this saves me very little time as I still need to check my luggage). Although I could then sit down at Dunkin’ Donuts and relax, I still have another bottleneck – security – ahead of me. Therefore, if possible, I go through security before getting my bagel and diet Coke. Besides, we can’t bring liquids through security anymore.

With technology these days, I can be as productive at the airport as I would be in my own office. I have a BlackBerry which delivers my email. I use my BlackBerry as a modem to connect my computer to the internet. The airport is an effective remote office. And doing it this way allows me to be totally stress free. I “put bottlenecks behind me” nearly every day.

If I am heading to a meeting, but haven’t eaten, I may drive through the known traffic spots before getting some food. I always leave plenty of extra time. The worst that happens is I arrive at my destination ahead of schedule. And since I assume that I will be early, I plan activities (work or pleasure) for me to do during this spare time. The good news is, I never have to have a contingency plan for if I am late.

It costs $2 to ride the T (Boston’s subway/train system), and you must have a ticket to go through the turnstile. When finishing one trip, I always purchase tickets for my next trips. This way I do not need to buy tickets when I am in a hurry to catch a train. There is nothing worse than shoving dollars into a ticket machine (and having the machine spit out your crumpled bills) when you hear the train pulling into the station. I know if I miss a train, I will have to wait at least another 15 minutes.

With potential bottlenecks behind you, you save yourself time and frustration. You will almost always be on time. And you can still be highly productive when you arrive at your destination early. OK, you won’t get that wonderful adrenaline rush this way. But in the long run, this approach keeps my blood pressure in check. Besides, numerous studies show that people who are not under severe time constraints operate at higher levels of performance. Goal-Free Living is stress-free living which is highly-effective living.

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