Do you listen to what people say about you? Do you believe what they say?Do you listen without realizing it, buying into the negatives and allowing them to shape your life?

Whether you do or don’t is a function of your MAP and that’s within your control—in other words, it’s your choice.

So when someone tells you that you can’t, think about it honestly—first about the source of the comment and then about the comment itself—and make your choice.

Here are a number of folks who fortunately didn’t listen.

Can’t act. Can’t sing. Balding. Can dance a little. –MGM executive, reacting to Fred Astaire’s screen test, 1928

You’d better learn secretarial work or else get married. –Emmeline Snively, to Marilyn Monroe, 1944

Many others who’ve won fame and riches were told they couldn’t/wouldn’t succeed…

• Elizabeth Taylor because “her eyes are too old”
• 5’6” Alan Ladd was too short, as were Laurence Olivier and David Niven, James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson.
• Esther Williams, Alexis Smith, Patricia Neal and Ingrid Bergman were all too tall
• 5’7”Katharine Hepburn was considered too tall to work with Spencer Tracy
• Barbara Streisand’s nose was too large and too ethnic
• Anne Bancroft left Hollywood for acting lessons in New York and won several Tony Awards
• Sylvester Stallone’s lisp, face and voice were all considered no-wins

And finally a business favorite of mine straight from the horses mouth,

“So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary; we’ll come work for you.’

And they said, ‘No.’ So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, ‘Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.’” –Steve Jobs on efforts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak’s personal computer.

To whom do you listen?

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I know, you were expecting to read about the fifth chapter in IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12 (be sure and download your free copy), but I’m taking a break in the name of politics.

As you all know, John McCain announced his running mate in an acknowledged effort to blunt the Democratic convention momentum (yawn). Nothing new there.

McCain chose Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Based on my limited knowledge of political maneuvering, her main advantages are gender, Conservative credentials, and age.

Upon reading here and there today, I got the impression that the Republicans are hoping that “Hilary women” will vote the Republican ticket because the Vice Presidential candidate has the same plumbing. Never mind that Palin stands in diametric opposition to most of Clinton’s beliefs.

At the Democratic Convention and in the media Obama was hailed as a personification of Dr. King’s Dream, but If he (an eighth cousin to Dick Cheney and an 11th cousin to G. W. Bush) does win he’ll actually be the seventh black president (after Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower)—just the first one who shows and, as Americans have proved over and over, appearance is everything.

Are we [the American people] really as shallow as we’ve made ourselves out to be?

Is our vision truly so focused on form that substance sinks into oblivion?

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Yesterday CandidProf wrote about what he’s expected to do as “reasonable accommodation” for his students with disabilities.

Many of these struck me as totally UNreasonable. For example, the additional 18 hours a week for just one student is ridiculous—even more so because the work is expected to be done gratis in addition to a normal professor’s workload. No corporation could get away with that.

And CandidProf’s situation applies in the majority of universities, colleges and even high schools across the US.

I realize that in many lofty universities, such as Stanford and Harvard, there are rock star professors who teach only a few classes and spend their time and reputations acquiring grant money to fund research, which, in turn, attracts more alumni donations and an ever larger endowment fund. And although much of that research is valuable and needed, that’s not the issue here.

The issue is the choices being forced on our educators in the name of politically correct and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)—but not on the educational facility.

Our educational system is continually being dumbed down in the name of “fairness,” initiatives such as “no child left behind” and laws like the ADA, with compliance tied to ever scarcer funding.

All mandated by the Powers That Be—mandated but never paid for. So the actual cost is pushed down from Federal to State to local to individuals, with, as usual, those who care, who haven’t been burned/burned out by the system, footing the bill through unpaid hours of work.

The more I read CandidProf’s posts the more depressed I become. I wonder how long he, and others like him, will choose to continue teaching, continue being put in the position of doing more and more for which they weren’t trained, aren’t paid for,  and never dreamed would be required.

What is “reasonable” when it comes to education? And how reasonable is it when that accommodation can have a ripple effect? Do you want an accountant doing your taxes who achieved professional status through a series of accommodations? How about your lawyer or doctor. Would you want your house wired by an electrician whose training was eased over because he had difficulty reading schematics?

How fair is it to the students who do all the work to achieve the same status as the disabled student who was “accommodated?”

Is it even fair to the disabled student? How fair is it to take that student’s money, tell them that they are qualified only to have the world and the law tell them that they aren’t?

Finally, before you tear into what I’ve said—

There are teachers in my family. My niece taught English and history in middle school for several years. Burned out from the constant battles with parents demanding better grades for their children and children talking about suicide as their only choice she returned to school for a MS in Library Science. As a librarian, she can focus on nurturing a love of reading. Her husband teaches college-level economics to high school honor students and runs afoul of the same problems as CandidProf.

As to myself, I have an 85db hearing loss—the typical hearing aid is designed for losses below 65 db—specifically in the consonant range of the human voice. Normal noise, coupled with today’s ultra-fast speech patterns, has eliminated my ability to do much out in the world. It has been years since I’ve attended a function and actually taken an intelligent role in the conversations; and forget podcasts and videos (unless they’re closed captioned). Even in a quiet conference (or living) room I can’t understand the back-and-forth talk between people. That’s why I switched my consulting to coaching via phone, instant messaging and email.

I can tell you first hand that it’s enormously difficult for people to modify their speech patterns and the majority don’t want the bother, which I can understand having been on their side in communicating with my mother.

What truly amazes me is that in spite of all this there are still people who want to teach.

What do you feel is “reasonable accommodation” in an educational situation? And how should it be paid for?

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By CandidProf. This is the second part of a discussion about what today’s teachers face and the choices that they make. Read all of CandidProf here.

There are some students who come along who are indeed beyond anything that we should realistically be expected to deal with.  Yet, all too often, we are expected to deal with those students.

Every semester I get a notice from the Disabled Students Office about several students who are taking my class who are registered as disabled.  We are expected to make “reasonable” accommodations.

Unfortunately, nobody seems to know what constitutes “reasonable.” Some students have hearing problems and need to record the lectures to play back later.  No problem.  Others need extra time on tests.  I can do that.  Some with visual difficulties need class handouts to be printed with extra large fonts.  OK, that is not such a big deal.

These all take extra time, but I put them in the category of students that I mentioned earlier that simply need more of your time.  But, of course, we have NO training in how to handle such cases.  Again, we are trained in our disciplines, not in how to deal with disabled persons.  We have people who have studied that, but they have not studied the individual academic disciplines, so they can’t help.

The real problem comes with those students who have major disabilities.  For example, students who are blind or have major motor impairments.

We have curricula set up that involves students doing certain things to learn; part of that is lecture, homework, and tests.  But in the sciences, there are also labs.

I have had students come along that simply could NOT do the regular laboratory work.  In some cases, safety is an issue.  How to you keep a blind student safe in a chemistry lab when there are open flames, beakers of dangerous chemicals, and fragile glassware?

What about a biology student whose hands shake and then tries to use a scalpel to dissect something?  This means that you have to stick with that student through the laboratory exercise to make sure that they are safe.  But you are also supposed to be watching out for other students.  It often isn’t possible.

One solution is to meet with the disabled student to do the lab at some other time with just them.  That means that you are effectively teaching an extra class, only not being paid for it.  Some institutions have TA’s to help, some don’t.  But, do you want to put the safety of this student in the hands of a TA even less trained to deal with them than you are?

I have had blind students before.  The Office of Disabled Students is supposed to have someone to read the textbook to them and to read the test questions to them.  Only for physics questions those people don’t understand the symbols that we use and they don’t want to come to class to learn the material, so they ask me to read the text and questions. Of course, that is extra, unpaid, work.

I have had other students with cognitive difficulties.  One in particular required me to sit with her for about 3 hours after each one hour lecture explaining things.  There are three of those per week.  I worked with her for about 9 hours per week doing each lab that the other students did in less than 3 hours.  That means that I was spending about 18 hours per week, extra, with just that one student. I still had a full teaching load, plus my other duties.  And, of course, I did not get paid one dime for that extra 18 hours per week.

There have been other times when I have had to write entirely new laboratory exercises for some students who could not do what the existing labs required because of some physical limitation.  That is even more work than teaching an extra section of the class because I was unable to use the existing lab manual.  I had to spend about 6 hours per week writing new labs and then 3 hours per week doing the lab with the student.

Naturally, I did not get paid for teaching a special section of the class for this student.  I don’t want to sound like all I’m after is money, but it really is not fair to expect me to put in all that extra time without ANY compensation other than that I feel good about helping someone.  At least they could cut back on my teaching load, or actually count these special circumstances as part of my regular teaching load, but they don’t.  I do it all on top of a full load.

Some might suggest simply not having the students do the exercises, but then that defeats the whole purpose.  Those are supposed to be teaching experiences that help them learn.

Besides, is it fair to give laboratory science credit to a student who does not do a lab of any kind?

Is it fair to the disabled student to just hand them a degree if they have not earned it?

Apparently we got in trouble some years ago for giving a student a degree in a field that required passing a state licensing requirement, only for said student to be unable to pass that state licensing exam and get a job in the field because of their disability.  The department in question had made many adjustments to its curriculum and requirements in order for the student to pass classes.  The problem was that the student was unprepared for what came later.

Would it be right to adjust the curriculum so that a student got an accounting degree even though they had a cognitive problem that prevented their understanding numbers?

There has to be a better way.

This quickly gets past where I feel like I have any experience or ability to truly help someone.  However, all too often, it falls on my shoulders to do the work.  Of course, I am not the only one.  This is happening in colleges and universities all over the nation.

Obviously disabled people can do quite well. I have met a blind astronomer and a blind computer scientist.  I know of a deaf news reporter.  Look at Stephen Hawking.

But these are people who did most of the work in overcoming their disabilities themselves.  They did not have their accomplishments handed to them.  They earned them, and they did so the hard way.

I know that I am probably going to upset a lot of people with these posts.  But I see this as a problem facing us in the colleges and universities.  I am not suggesting that we not work with disabled students.  My fiancée is disabled and I really appreciate all that was done for her in her education.  That is particularly true because I recognize that most of that was done by individuals who bent over backwards for her.

Until she met me and saw how much I have to do to help disabled students, she had been thinking that it was her university that had done all of that work.  Now, she realizes that the university probably didn’t do as much as she thought.  Rather, it was her professors who did most of the accommodating.

But I don’t want to leave her out.  She has worked hard to not let her disabilities disable her.  She often never asked for what would have been reasonable requests.  She worked to perform like everyone else and she still does.  To me, she seems to be quite a leader herself.

Readers of this site, I suppose, are looking for insights into leadership.  Well, as I see it, a leader’s role is often more than just directly job related.

We are all human beings and human beings interact in all sorts of complicated ways.

We cannot totally separate our individual beliefs, feelings, and emotions from our professional selves.  We bring all of these things into the job.  They are what build the framework of how we see things, both on and off the job.  So, when extraneous things are going on, they impact how we do our job.

Sometimes a leader needs to recognize that the people they are leading are people not robots.  They can’t totally forget whatever else is going on in their lives.  So, in order for them to be the best followers, their leader needs to help them address these outside influences.

Unfortunately, that takes time and it is often beyond what the leader is trained to do.  I think part of the innate “leadership potential” that some people have is in their ability to help people focus on the job at hand.

You also have to know your own limitations.  You need to know when dealing with these outside factors is over your head.  That is when you need to refer the problem on.

Leaders have limits, too, and the best ones know their limits.

What do you consider “reasonable accommodation” in a college setting? [Miki]

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Don’t miss my other WW: grab your future

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By Wes Ball. Wes is a strategic innovation consultant and author of The Alpha Factor – a revolutionary new look at what really creates market dominance and self-sustaining success (Westlyn Publishing, 2008) and writes for Leadership turn every Tuesday. See all his posts here. Wes can be reached at www.theballgroup.com.

I was reading Miki’s postings on Saturday about “disruptive innovation” as described in IBM’s Enterprise of the Future, so I downloaded my free copy.  I walked away with a nagging concern that these 1000+ CEOs are still chasing their tails, because they seem to be looking for the answers to long-term growth in places that require the highest investment and the highest risk.  Instead, there are much greater sustainable profit and growth opportunities sitting right in front of most of them.

The point of looking for “disruptive” innovation is that it is believed such innovation will drive a long-term, sustainable competitive edge for the innovator.  The trouble is that such innovation models typically require technology development or other innovation into untried areas that more often than not fail to deliver either long-term or sustainable growth.  It is often too easy to “one-up” such innovations, so the investment often never quite pays off as hoped.  Not everyone can deliver an iPhone or a Blackberry.  Too often the technology “breakthrough” only offers a short window of opportunity until someone else improves upon it.

This drive to find ”new” places or ways to sell is usually driven more by frustration at the failure of marketing and sales to provide sustainable growth opportunities than it is by a real lack of opportunity in existing markets and business models.  The fact is that customer satisfaction and fulfillment is very low in most product and service categories, which leaves a readily addressable opportunity for growth to the organization that can understand what to look for.

When we do research in most product and service categories, I am almost always surprised at how low customer expectations are compared to how high their dreams and aspirations are.  That gap represents a significant opportunity that can often be addressed without large investment.

What it takes is a willingness to open up the focus of innovation to go beyond product improvement, process refinement, or other functional innovation (including technology breakthroughs).  The real focus to create really disruptive innovation should be upon those dreams and aspirations, not functional improvement.

Innovation that focuses upon these dreams and aspirations (the Alpha model shown in my book refers to these as “self-satisfaction” and “personal significance”) can drive growth that catches competitors flat-footed and often unbelieving that success could come so simply.  We’ve had many examples where an organization used this kind of innovation, created dramatic growth, and their competitors doggedly proclaimed that “there must have been something else that happened to create that growth.”  In many cases, competitors never figure out what the real ego-satisfaction innovation was that drove success, so they waste time and money unsuccessfully trying to “compete” by copying other things they see happening that they think must be the true cause for the success.

Apple’s iPhone just experienced this.  The success of the iPhone put several competitors on a panicked innovation track to try to at least get “in the game.”  None have succeeded, because all of their efforts have been on the product improvement and functional innovation side, while the real success of the iPhone is far more on the ego-satisfaction side of the equation.

I own one of the original iPhones.  Functionally, it’s pretty darn good, but so was the Blackberry to which I compared it.  In some ways the Blackberry was better; in others the iPhone was better.  But on the ego-satisfaction side, there was no comparison.  Like the iPod or the MacBook Air or just about any of the other Apple products available right now, all you have to do is touch an Apple product and you feel that you’ve been transported to a planet where companies suddenly know how to make customers “happy.”

Who can describe what happens or why?  It’s so emotional that it’s beyond description.  But it is real enough that people are buying them like crazy despite the “economic downturn” we find ourselves in.  Address a person’s ego-satisfaction needs well and every competitive product pales by comparison.

We did that with so many products throughout our Alpha Factor Project that it’s hard to recall them all.  The funny part about each one was, however, that competitors seldom figured out what was really going on.  That was truly disruptive.  Often we would wait, expecting competitors to catch on, only to see them blindly fall into the product improvement trap trying to copy what we had done without addressing the core ego-satisfaction needs that had actually created the success.

The point is:  if you absolutely have to change business models or find new markets, because you’re selling in a way or to a market that is a dead-end, then by all means change.  But if you’re just frustrated with your lack of success at getting enough out of your current model and markets, then make sure you aren’t focusing upon product improvement and functional innovation, when the real need is on the ego-satisfaction side.

Do your products/services address ego-satisfaction?

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Kelly, our channel editor, loves handing out themes for us to write about on a specified day. It’s interesting and, judging by the traffic, our readers seem to enjoy the various takes.

The theme for today is “Taking a Break” interpreted any way we choose.

Now, giving carte blanche to a group of quirky bloggers (bloggers are quirky by definition) by saying that they may define something any way they choose is bound to yield eclectic results.

I have no idea who will write about Taking a Break, or what their spin will be—my own leans more to making a break than taking one—but here are possible headlines for the channel.

Please add headlines for your favorites or just a quirky idea based on the blog’s name.

• Behind The Buzz: You deserve a break today…
• Biz Chicks Rule: Rules were made to be broken…
• Biz Levity: Rhetoric breaks sound barrier deafening convention audiences. Doctors say condition temporary, over Election Day—audience cheers.
• Brandcurve: Branded break, the best kind
• Business & Blogging: Blogs can make—or break—your business
  
• Buzz Networker: How to break into the hot blogger ranks
  
• Contract Worker: Microsoft breaks out parity for temps (a fantasy)
• Copyblogger: 5 content breaks to make your readers happy
• Daily Blender: What to do when the blender breaks
• Doing Biz Abroad: Taking currancy breaks to the next level
  
• E-shop Owner: Give your feet a break
• Everyday Networker: Authenticity breaks down networking walls
  
• Franchise Pick: Franchising Bathroom Breaks
• Greener Assets: 7 things you can do today to break your brown habits and go green!
• Health Care Insiders: 3 breaks for our healthcare costs
• Home Biz Notes: 2 breakthrough ways to  stand out from the crowd
  
• Interview Chatter: When should you take a break from interviewing?
  
• Just Make Money Online: Take a break from the current recession.
• Leadership Turn: “Taking a break” across the channel
  
• LifeDev: All the world is a stage—break a leg!
• My Organized Biz: 5 ways to breakthrough your logjam
• One Vote Matters: Will the voting record be broken in 2008?
• Pimp Your Work: You won’t get the breaks hanging out in the breakroom!
• Property Crossroads: 5 things to do if the big break on your new home left you broke
• Slacker Manager: Juice innovation! Break the ties that bind your people
• Small Business Boomers: Breaking the bonds that slow you
• Startup Spark: Breaking the mold for the next big thing
• Successful Blog: Blogging, blogging everywhere, but not a break in sight
• Talk Stock Trading: Breaking even is better than being broke
• Taxgirl: Breakthrough tax havens guarantee long expense-paid vacations
• The 501(c) Files: Give! Need doesn’t take a break just because the economy slows down.
• The Golden Pencil: If the lead breaks try a ballpoint
• Yielding Wealth: Take a break from your credit card

C’mon, indulge your quirkiness!

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We’ve all had experience with hindsight and learned up close and personal that it’s usually 20/20. But how many knowledgeable people would be wrong about the same project at each stage of its evolution?

More than you’d think. Gone With the Wind is a great example judging by these comments.

“A period novel! About the Civil War! Who needs the Civil War now—who cares?” –Herbert R. Mayes, Editor of the Pictorial Review, when turning down a prepublication offer to serialize Margaret Mitchell’s novel (Just shows that you should ignore rejection letters, keep on writing and you, too, may win a Pulitzer.)

“Forget it, Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel.” –Irving Thalberg’s warning to Louis B. Mayer. (Good thing Mayer didn’t listen.)

“I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling on his face and not Gary Cooper” –Gary Cooper on turning down the lead. (Coop as Rhett? I just can’t see it.)

“Now I am happy I did Gone With the Wind. I wasn’t when I was 28, but it’s part of black history.” –Butterfly McQueen (Part of all history.)

What’s your favorite bit of hindsight?

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Continuing the focus on disruptive innovation as discussed in chapter four  from IBM’s The Enterprise of the Future (a steady Saturday feature since July 12; be sure and download your free copy) begs the question as to what is being disrupted? What are companies really doing to drive financial performance?

The most common approach is “revenue model innovations, nine out of ten are reconfiguring the product, service and value mix. Half are working on new pricing structures.”

Changes include offering more services; moving to recurring charges (as opposed to one-time payments); bundling or unbundling depending on products and industry.

The major change in pricing is being driven by more knowledgeable customers who can tap into global choices. “More are starting to price based on value to the customer, rather than on cost plus.”

The truly disruptive innovation, i.e., industry model innovation, you may have been hoping for isn’t as likely.

“CEO s mentioned several reasons for not pursuing industry model innovation. But most can be summed up with: it’s tough to do. For similar reasons, industry model innovators are more focused on redefining their existing industries (73 percent) than on entering or creating entirely new ones (36 percent).”

Not surprisingly, it’s the outperformers that usually focus on industry model innovation—think Apple.

So, what can you do to embed innovation in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and strategic planning?

“Think like an outsider; draw breakthrough ideas from other industries; empower entrepreneurs; experiment creatively in the market, not just the lab; manage today’s business while experimenting with tomorrow’s model.” (See the details I the doc.)

And be sure that you can answer the following four questions with a resounding “Yes!”

1. Is a disruptive business model about to transform your industry? Is it more likely to come from you or your competitors?
2. Do you spend time thinking about where the next disruption will come from?
3. Are you watching other industries for concepts and business models that could transform your market?
4. Are you able to create space for entrepreneurs and innovative business models while continuing to drive performance today?

If you can’t, then start working on them today!

Is your MAP in tune with disruptive innovation?

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Books on leadership, management and associated subjects abound. Jim Stroup has a great post on the dangers of buying into the books written by academics. Jim points out that many academics do do valuable work,

“But when you pick up a book by an academic, look for a sense that the author feels he or she is examining a species of being (you and me) that is not meaningfully self-aware. Such an author may interact with us while conducting research, but will not assign any validity to our own assessments of what we do or why. We are expected to cede that to him (or her), the scholarly expert, whose role it is understand and explain. Ours is merely to learn as best we can, sufficient to be able to comply with the scientific prescription for our suffering – and that with submissiveness and gratitude… Do not let yourself become vulnerable to an academic coup. Keep the scholars in the campus.”

Although I agree that countless academics have taken this approach over the years, I find the attitude not that much different from many of the business “leaders,” consultants, and gurus (self-proclaimed or otherwise) who write how-to and how-I-did-it books.

There are a few gold nuggets in almost everything written, but there are no silver bullets.

And, valuable as it is, reading takes time, so your goal should be to find the highest value for the lowest time/energy cost, which means that reviews and referrals are a good way to go.

But you need to keep certain things in mind,

• nothing will have value if it isn’t at least synergistic with your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™)
• consider the source of a referral or review first;
• Google the book and read several reviews;
• remember that reviewers review through the prism of their own MAP; so
• trust your MAP and your reactions to what you hear/read.

Finally, never forget that you don’t have to finish a book you start—I promise that no thunderbolt will strike. If the book is a chore to read it’s unlikely that you will derive enough value to warrant the cost of reading it.

Please! Share your favorite business books here.

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