QTalks

Avoiding the ol' Coconut Headsets

For a long time, one of my favorite business writers has been Rob May. He used to post frequently at a blog called BusinessPundit, which is now run by a different group of people. Today he blogs infrequently at a site called Coconut Headsets, where he commands a much smaller audience of people like myself who enjoy thinking independently about business. He took the title from the Cargo Cult phenomenon of primitive tribes mimicking technical equipment like radio headsets so they would have the power that radio operators had--to command planes down from the skies.

Managers wear coconut headsets when they blindly copy ideas, or grossly misapply them, instead of thinking through each situation to see if adopting a new idea makes sense. Leaders wear coconut headsets when they confuse cause and effect, like believing that happy employees leads to better corporate performance, when perhaps the real link is that better corporate performance leads to happy employees.

Rob recently went on a pretty civilized rant about business publications which make money by telling people what they want to hear. I agree with him and have found most of my valuable ideas recently in books that aren't about business at all: The Mona Lisa Stratagem, Spiritual Evolution, and Educating Intuition.

Coconut Headsets: My Business Magazines Lied to Me, 2008-Jun-21, by Rob May

My final thought is that the best place to learn is to look at unpopular sources of information. If you read what other people read, you will think like other people think. Relish the obscure, the contrarian, and the unpopular, because they can seed your thoughts with unique ideas. Always keep a skeptical eye and remember that media is frequently lying to you, even if they don’t always know it themselves.

Making Rebellion Work

After years of having my rebellious ideas rejected, I finally began to find role models who can make their rebellious ideas work, and one of them is Chip Conley. His company, JDV Hotels, is a hospitality business that includes a chain of California hotels, but his business goal is NOT to fill rooms. Each hotel has a distinct personality and his goal is to match hotel rooms and people. He truly creates a community where everyone, including employees, can find themselves.

Musings, 2008-Jan-2, by Chip Conley

After five years of phenomenal times for Bay Area hotels, we experienced a bubble burst heard round the world. Suddenly assets became liabilities. Someone once told me that all businesses have a start-up phase, a throw-up phase, and a grow-up phase. My goal in 2001 was to graduate to the grow-up phase as quickly as possible.

Burning the midnight oil reading Maslow and his iconic Hierarchy of Needs gave me the confidence to take a contrarian path in the hotel industry wreckage that was 2001-2005. Rather than purely living in trench warfare for half a decade, we decided to focus on the higher needs of our employees, customers, and investors. Creating peak experiences for these three constituencies helped us to create peak performance for my company. And, almost exactly seven years later, our annual revenues are triple what they were back then.

Where Emotions Come and Go

George Vaillant argues that our most 'advanced' human emotions, such as forgiveness and compassion, are actually among the most ingenious survival mechanisms developed by early mammals as they evolved. The real problem is that our human brain power keeps getting in the way of our base animal instincts.

from Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith, by George E. Vaillant, M.D.

The neocortex is the most recently evolved part of our brain, and its size relative to our bodies distinguishes us from the other mammals. Anthropocentric vanity has led us to place our more noble emotions within its huge, conscious, reasoning embrace. But our vanity has misled us. Many dogs, admittedly having been selectively bred by humans for these qualities, radiate trust, hope, forgiveness, and love, and some very brilliant scientists and theologians do not. When a beloved woman is weeping, both golden retrievers and two-year-old children will rush thoughtlessly, speechlessly, but empathetically to her side to provide comfort. In contrast, her highly educated physician may piously suggest over the phone, "Take two aspirin and call back in the morning."

In this book, he spends a lot of words worrying about the evolutionary value of spiritual faith, but for me, the big message of the book is the way he keeps reminding us that our positive emotions are the keys to unlocking love and happiness. It's miles away from the 'power of positive thinking' but demonstrates over and over again that when we focus on finding joy and caring for others, we allow ourselves to evolve into stronger, healthier people.