Month: January 2020

The Bird-Poop Robbery

by live an untethered life, posted in travel

brown-leather-wallet-and-us-dollar-banknote-915915wallet.jpgNormally my situational awareness is pretty good, but this technique caught me unawares for a brief moment.

On our first day touring Quito in Ecuador, we stopped at the edge of a park to consult a map. Suddenly I was sprayed by a brown unpleasant smelling liquid. Looking up I saw nothing, but a nice man pointed out pigeons and offered me a tissue. This pigeon would have to have been the size of a pelican considering the volume that hit me. Out of nowhere, two other men offered to help clean my shirt since I was suddenly struck again. All three men were very swarthy, albeit short. One was nice enough to bend down in front of me to clean my pant leg. He nicely proceed to feel up my right front pocket and moved over to the left. Never put things in your back pocket.

The Mountain Equipment Co-op pants happen to come with zippers on both front pockets. This undoubtedly saved the situation somewhat. This lightly upset their highly polished routine. But they managed to grab my iPhone and were working on the wallet. Since the leader was still in front of me bending down and attempting to grab my wallet from my now unzipped front pocket, I reciprocated and firmly and not gently grabbed the nape of this neck. This allowed him to drop the phone and back away and revert to his normal helpful persona.

We were aware of this splash and grab technique from Spain. A younger group by-passed us and splashed coffee on the older couple a few seconds behind us. They made off with wallets and passports before we could do anything.

As they say. S**T happens.

 

#Quito #travel #theft

Speak up for yourself!

by live an untethered life, posted in business, Untethered Mind

pexels-photo-206784 monkeesInteresting TED talk by Adam Galinsky. Sometimes you don’t speak up when you should, and speak up when you shouldn’t. This force to speak up arises from moral conviction.

He suggests that the range of times that you can appropriately speak up can depend upon the amount of power you have in a particular situation.

You can expand the range of times you should speak up by increasing the amount of power you have.

This power can be increased by

  1. advocating on behalf of others
  2. possessing some particular expertise
  3. obtaining social support and allies

Once you have at least one of these, then speak with conviction and passion.

As an irrelevant aside, this sort of reminded me of the precautionary poem by Yeats, The Second Coming:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity”

 

So, Be Best, not worst.

 

motivation management personaldevelopment business leadership

Sell me this pen!

by live an untethered life, posted in business

pexels-photo-261450 penI thought this an amazing example of establishing need for a product. Spoiler alert. In the Wolf of Wall Street, DiCaprio asks someone to sell him a pen. The person answering takes the pen and asks DiCaprio to write down his name. This created a need, albeit somewhat artificial.

During an interview, you might be asked a similar type of question. Some people simply discuss the value attributes of the pen. Shiny, easy to hold. Others ask questions as to what the interviewer might look for in a pen. What did they like about the last pen they had? Others identify a problem, as above, and show how the pen solves the problem. The solution based approach.

There appears to be one more step beyond that. In Shiller’s book, Narrative Economics, he discusses how the first solution based approach is analytic self-referencing. Why you need the pen to write your name. He suggests a narrative self-referencing and narrative transportation approach. This suggests telling the interviewer to imagine themselves taking this pen and signing a multi-billion dollar contract.

Perhaps a bit delusional, but impactful all the same.

A suggestion to raise yourself above the pack.

#management #personaldevelopment #business #leader #innovation #marketing