Blink.

In a nod to Malcolm Gladwell's seminal tome of 2005, the art of thin slicing, "our ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience", has seen me recently gauge and react accordingly to people I have not met before or known for a very short period of time. Gladwell indicates that often we have too much information and decision paralysis along with prejudices, likes and stereotypes can get in the way of a spontaneous decision. Often the further collection of information just goes to validating our original thinking or belief and that micro seconds are all that is needed when summing up people from the expressions on their faces.

In a meeting last week, I met a young man who was in charge of a very large and powerful innovation fund. He had come to a meet us and learn more about the business and the team behind the strategy. Half my age and twice as wise and unusual in a good way, is how I described him later, when my wife asked how the meeting went. For the longest time he said nothing, listened intently, had a totally open mind and was completely non judgemental. I gathered that from his body language and facial expressions and as the studies of Paul Ekman, who came up with the Facial Action Coding System, indicate, the face is a rich source of what is going on inside our minds and that micro-expressions give note to emotions and thoughts picked up if studied closely. The meeting went on to last for 6 hours, so was my initial thinking, my initial "thin slicing" correct? It was validated over and over again as the young man brought forth salient points of interest to the business, asked the most probing questions, couched in language that made the room comfortable and showed he knew it was all about us and not about him.

The so called 7 seconds, you have to make an impression, the power of body language and the ability to sum yourself up in less than 30 seconds in an "elevator speech", have long been the arena of sales folklore and many make their living touting the value of that first meeting and what can be accomplished long term, if all the right signals are sent. Seth Godin often quotes "if you can't state your position in eight words, you don't have a position", giving further rise to the power of decisions made on a big picture rather than gathering mountains of information.

Many push back and address the conundrum with a wait and see attitude, gathering data, facts and information to be analysed, appraised and evaluated. For many this analysis becomes a wall too high to scale and all the advantages gained by intuition, "gut feelings", insight and instinct fall by the wayside and they stay closed to the surprise of meeting someone for the first time and knowing they'll be a great friend or colleague, just by the smile on their face.

When asked I often tell people my philosophy is based around the thinking, the next person I meet, could be my best friend for the rest of my life, so why wouldn't I smile and extend my hand. You never know who you might meet if you are open to the moment.

If I didn't have a dime ....

And I didn't take the time to play the jukebox, Gene Pitney's lament to love discovered on a Saturday night, has interesting overtones and analogies to business today and making sure you are prepared and in the right place to take advantage of opportunities that may come your way. Being in the right place and being prepared are the hallmarks of good business acumen but how do you go about being prepared and knowing where the right places are?

Is an MBA a guarantee of knowledge, of knowing, of being prepared? Not by itself of course but as part of a package you sure cant go wrong if you have the maximum amount of learning at your disposal. Having said that, learning is not about higher tertiary qualifications, learning is about your capacity for openness and acceptance of ideas that may not "float your boat" or "rock your world". Being prepared is about building on your skill set, having the motivation to dig deeper than your competitors and realising there is no end to the preparation. For many, the mistake is thinking graduation, course completion and the end of projects is all you need, for others there is no finish line and everything they do is in preparation for opportunities. The question you continually need to ask, is which are you?

So you set your course, you learn continuously, you stay open to new ideas but how do you put yourself in a position to be in the right place at the right time for the opportunities you have prepared for? Like learning and new ideas finding the right people that can help you, mentor you and guide you means getting out of your comfort zone. It means opening yourself up to others, other than your small circle of influence and safety. It means going out of your way to meet people in circles you may think have nothing to do with your end game. You can't prepare and ready yourself for the next level on the business ladder by working in a silo environment. Leave your ego at the front door and find the people more intelligent and capable than yourself and you have a good recipe for your mix of preparation and being in the right spot. Your supporters, mentors, colleagues, will find the right spot and when get there, you'll have the "dime" to play the "jukebox". You just need to put the coin in the slot.

Okay so the decision analogy maybe a bit thin but the final scenario in all of this effort is about your mental state and self worth that has hopefully been built from your learnings, your openness and preparation and the support and guidance of people around you. The idea isn't to build and prepare yourself for monumental decisions way in the future but to have the ability on a daily basis to play the jukebox with a pocket full of dimes, always ready to embrace the opportunity. Gene Pitney, wherever you are, I hope you're okay with this?

New phone.

The release of the new iPhone this week will see a global media frenzy targeting the Apple zealots lining up to be first, the Apple disbelievers who will pull apart the phone to show there is no magic inside and business analysts citing the aberration between Apple's low 13% marketshare and high 60% profit of the entire smart phone sector. There will be debates over usability, the latest operating system and how well the phone fits into a handbag. For me the most interesting numbers centre on the small marketshare of the iPhone and the large influence it has globally. Most companies that have such a small marketshare in their sector are generally relegated to third or fourth place in the pecking order, with no voice and certainly no influence, especially when it comes to innovation and design.

So why will every media channel carry the launch? Why will every analyst and pundit put forward their opinions? Why will your neighbour want to beat you to the post, showing off his latest acquisition, the iPhone 6? Some tribes become powerful because there a lot of them, some because they are the smartest and some because they are led by the smartest and most powerful. Such is the Apple tribe and they don't care what anyone says about them, they don't care the majority of the world carries Samsung, they don't care there could be alternatives that match or better their product, for they are safe within their tribal zones with a chief constantly validating their choice of technology.

The closed ecosystem that Apple has created is the most powerful of business relationships because everyone believes and works towards the same determination within a support system geared towards the end user. Apple worked out early, if they made it about you, there was less opportunity to point the finger back upstairs amid accusations of profiteering and mismanagement. Apple worked out early that brand allegiance was the most powerful mindset for profit and longevity, allowing the company flexibility to innovate and fail, innovate and fail, innovate and launch, products designed purely for the Apple tribe user and not to pander to marketplace trends.

With over 5 billion mobile phones on the planet, over 1 billion being smart phones, Apple figured out early, mass domination was a futile pursuit, think Nokia, Blackberry and Motorola. What they concentrated on doing well, was designing a phone that appealed to a small but influential tribe, happy to pay a premium for a product that exceeded their expectations, gave them a sense of exclusivity via a small tribe and gave them something to look forward to every time there was a launch of a new iPhone.

From a personal and business viewpoint, the Apple model works if you know it's about them and not about you, know it's about delivering on what you say you are going to do, know it's about having the authenticity to be able to fail and still hold true to your beliefs. Go on, start your tribe.

Social proof.

I used to walk past empty restaurants. Why not, surely without patrons, the assumption of bad service, bad food and bad experience was a given. That was until I opened my own establishment back in the late 90s, catering for what I thought might be a new wave of foodies interested in the flavours of southern USA and Mexico. Attendance at the Santa Fe cooking school and introducing new flavours and ideas was all I needed for my start up. That was until people walked by and went to the local greasy spoon, not because the food or service were any better, far from it, but because it was filled with patrons. I could never understand the reasoning behind the herd mentality or as Cialdini calls it, pluralistic ignorance. Why didn't people experiment, leave their comfort zone or want to be early adopters was a mystery to me.

This mentality of group behaviour has a name, social proof, and Wikipedia describes it as “a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others, reflect the correct behaviour for a given situation, driven by the assumption the surrounding people possess more information about the situation.” So it wasn't my cooking after all, just a mistrust of individual decision making. The restaurant survived and eventually gained crowds via social proof from locals looking for something new, people hearing about a new cuisine and word of mouth generated by individuals of influence. It's these individuals willing to be first, willing to lead a tribe and willing to be scrutinised I thank the most for the success of the restaurant and I was determined from then on, to not be part of the herd mentality, for there was so much more to discover if you were brave.

The famous murder case in 1964, where Catherine Genovese was stabbed to death over a period of 35 minutes with over 30 witnesses in surrounding apartments, gave new highs to pluralistic ignorance as everyone assumed everyone else would report the murder and no one did. It was social proofing to the maximum where everyone assumed and no one acted. Social proofing is not a new phenomenon but one taken to great lengths today by the social media giants or anyone wanting validation of their skill and expertise online. How often have you seen bloggers, tweeters, celebrities and anyone selling a product, brandishing the number of followers, after all a 10 million people can't be wrong and we're wired to learn from others, so let's follow this site. You can go back as far as 1955 for examples of social proofing, when Ray Kroc of McDonald's fame put up the conspicuously aggrandising sign "over one million served", leading people line up for hamburgers for the first time in history.

The trick to not becoming a part of the herd is having a mind of your own, trusting your judgement and not being concerned what people think, if you have your own thoughts and ideas. Seems simple enough, but all the indications point to global herds led by a few and validated by many. Everyone has the opportunity to stand out and make a difference, but it takes unflinching individualism. How brave are you?