The Desirable Difficulty

I have a love/hate relationship with Malcolm Gladwell and I have never even met the man. For those of you not in the know, Mr Gladwell is an author and is probably one of the best around. He tends to take things you and I take for granted and completely blow them out the water.
I love his work, I love the controversy. The hate part of the relationship is that I don’t always agree with him.
Take for example his premise that it takes 10 000 hours to become an expert in a field.
I would argue that 10 000 hours is an average and that more likely some people get in 8 000 and some poor suckers are at it for an extra two years.
With his work you always have great material that you can use in debates. I bought myself a New Year’s present, his latest offering “David and Goliath” deals with the idea of the underdog.
He ploughs through examples of underdog success and failure in business and in life to hound out a few principles that work in the favour of the “less fortunate”.
One of those that resonate well is the concept of the “Desirable Difficulty”.
What if there were certain traits that the world would generally regard as undesirable that have an ultimate positive effect if worked through.
In the book, he highlights the idea of dyslexics who invent coping mechanisms that enable them to succeed as businessmen.
Richard Branson, Jetblue founder David Neeleman are a couple of names on the list of dyslexics who have made it big.
Now some would look at doing business in Zimbabwe as the biggest difficulty in the world.
We have been through hell and back economically. What if doing business was really easy here?
What if anyone could push through the bureaucracy required to start-up?
What if sourcing goods was as simple as a phone call and didn’t require dealing with crazy transport logistics, sanctions and the odd corrupt official?
What if we could obtain all we needed to run our business locally at a price cheaper than the rest of the world?
Sounds wonderful doesn’t it. I’m just not so sure that it would be.

You see the challenges we face require us to be innovative. It requires a tenacity and creativity to bootstrap a business when loans are not readily available.
It requires a certain amount of disagreement with the status quo and as George Bernard Shaw put it — a degree of unreasonableness.
He said “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.
“Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
Unreasonable here does not mean impolite, it just means an ability to not take no for an answer and to find a solution that works, even if that solution if out of the ordinary or breaks a few social norms along the way.
Ecocash is unreasonable for example. The norm for years has been that you go to a bank, stand in a queue to do a transaction.
Even in a world of internet banking there are still some things you need to go to the bank for.
Bank charges mean that transactions need to be meaningful to make them work. Wait, now your phone is your bank.
Transaction size is less of a limit. Of course the normal banking world is going to be upset.
A difficult world teaches us the meaning of failure. I had a friend at high school. He was an A grade student, he was beyond A grade.
He passed everything with over 90 percent. He complained if he fell out of the top five percent of the school.
Then one day he failed a test. His world ended. This was Armageddon, how would he ever recover from this.
Compare his reaction to someone who was more “average”, who failed maybe one in 10 tests.
They fail and their reaction is “oh look there is failure, yeah I met it before and I know you can recover from it so I’m going to recover.”
They move on to the next task and do better at it. Failure is never pleasant, but it is the tenacity that recovery from failure brings is what you want.
Imagine a country filled with people who have a mentality that says we recovered from the worst inflation figures in history.
We started, fought for and built businesses in the most desperate economic environment. We turned that economy around. People like that, a country like that will change the world.

2014 The Start

In case you overslept on December 31st and missed the whole affair, it it now 2014 (cue drumroll as last year leaves graciously stage right).
More time is spent looking back at the past and predicting the future in this season that any other couple of week period. The web is full of bumph and blurb...some of it is actually really good.
Check out BBC Magazine's list of 20 words to remove from the English language for overuse.
Sadly many of them have crept into my own writing over the last year or so, time to cut them out for a bit.

Stuck for something to do while waiting for the holidays to end? Go buy some trendy, slick blank cards and write thank-you notes to the people that have impacted you the most this last year, add a bit at the end about the positives you expect this coming year.
Have fun with it, it is only the start!

Global Entrepreneurship Week in Harare.

Regular readers of this column will know a few things about me by now. Firstly entrepreneurship is like life blood to me, secondly, I am a firm believer in the power of relationships. This week is Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) which hits both those chords strong and hard. GEW is the world’s largest celebration of the innovators and job creators who launch startups that bring ideas to life, drive economic growth and expand human welfare. During one week each November, GEW inspires people everywhere through local, national and global activities designed to help them take the next step in their entrepreneurial journey. These activities, from large-scale competitions and events to intimate networking gatherings, connect participants to potential collaborators, mentors and even investors—introducing them to new possibilities and exciting opportunities.

 

Like most—if not all—new ventures, Global Entrepreneurship Week started with an idea. What if there was a global movement to inspire people everywhere to unleash their ideas and take the next step in their entrepreneurial journey? The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation launched GEW in to connect aspiring entrepreneurs and others who can help them take the next step in their entrepreneurial journey.

 

More than 130 countries now celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week each November from Guyana to Zimbabwe. Global Entrepreneurship Week is not one single event--it is tens of thousands of events, activities and competitions happening around the world.

 

"Countries around the world are embracing their entrepreneurs as significant drivers of economic activity and growth," said Jonathan Ortmans, president of Global Entrepreneurship Week and a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. "Through GEW, we are instilling an entrepreneurial mindset in millions and helping them unleash their ideas."

 

Hundreds, if not thousands, of new startups will square off in competitions that offer prizes of startup capital, support and services to help them grow to scale. Policymakers and researchers in dozens of countries will examine best practices in accelerating efforts to support high-growth entrepreneurship. And millions of aspiring entrepreneurs will make connections with potential collaborators and mentors through a wide range of events and activities that provide inspiration as well as practical support.

 

A recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, "Getting the Bug: Is (Growth) Entrepreneurship Contagious," suggests that there is a significant link between knowing an entrepreneur and becoming one. Global Entrepreneurship Week exposes individuals to entrepreneurs and others in the startup ecosystem—encouraging them to start their own ventures, spurring increased economic activity and growth. Relationships matter.

 

In Harare there is the Global Entrepreneurship Meet-Up on Friday 22nd of November (that’s tomorrow) at the well-known Celebration Centre. Free coffee, trendy start up pitches that you didn't even know existed in the city, and high level connecting over a genuine interest in building the creative ideas of entrepreneurs. There'll be 3 riveting start-ups that talk for 4 minutes. From a tech company that's facing Apple and Samsung Head-on to a brick and mortar guru who has the first batch of funding on building a new city. Lots of questions and answers, and lots of coffee. Starting at 630pm you can learn more at http://zw.unleashingideas.org . You can also join in online and discuss Zimbabwe’s Entrepreneurial Landscape by using the hashtag #GEWZim on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

 

As most businesses are thinking of winding down for the year or preparing for the Christmas rush, this week represents a chance to rekindle the fire of entrepreneurship within, to network with like minded people, and take a step in the direction of skyrocketing Zimbabwe’s economy once more.

Doing More in Order Do Do Less

Morning to all , I am of course making the possibly false assumption you are reading this in the morning.
I want you to take part in yet another challenge. Put down the paper and stare at the watch or cellphone for an entire minute.
Do not do anything during this minute, except maybe sip coffee. After a minute continue reading. Go!
Would you look at that, I got you to spend an entire minute doing nothing. I just made you spend a precious minute of your life on a random and futile task.
The sense of urgency associated with time usage is so deeply engrained in us that you are probably experiencing a mini-apoplectic fit at the fact that I made you “lose” a minute of your time. Some of you will probably never forget this lesson. That is probably worth the minute you spent doing nothing.
We spend our lives trying to fill our time with meaningful activities. We start each day with a precious 24 hours and try to cram as much into it as possible.
We are taught that you can never recover time once you have lost it, that time is money or time is important. Above all, we are told to manage time wisely.
You cannot manage time. Think about it; you cannot tell it to slow down or speed up, you cannot tell it what to do neither can you place it somewhere else.
Time is the immutable trundle of seconds flowing past you into the waste basket of “then”. You cannot waste time either, you merely waste yourself.
What we term as “wasting time” is merely our failure to achieve more or to be better people during our lives. You cannot manage time. You can only manage yourself.
Today, I would like to share with you two tricks to enhancing self-management. I learnt these from Todd Henry’s book ‘‘Accidental Creative” and have found that when I engage in both regularly I am much more relaxed and effective.
Both come out of the fact that due to our pre-conceived training on time usage we feel the need to fill every available moment with productivity.
We cram our time with tasks and projects. Most of these are aimed at fulfilling some deadline at work or the appearance of being busy (checking emails every 10 minutes falls under this category).
We get to the end of a day with checklists that are incomplete, actions that will occur again tomorrow and a false satisfaction that comes from being busy.
Busy does not mean productive, nor does it mean money.
What I am sharing with you will not make you less busy, but it may make you more productive. A warning though, these are not quick fixes. They will not work unless routinely applied. The first thing is set time aside each week to think. Diarise it, stick to it and use this time to be creative and to think about solutions to problems.
This is not a time to plan, do that elsewhere. This is thinking time not design time. Take a problem or problems and think about creative solutions. One way to look at this is to outline the current problem, describe it. Then flip it and describe what it would look or feel like if it were not there or solved. Then let your mind churn through creative and innovative solutions.
For example, how can a supermarket improve the checkout experience of its clients? What does the presence experience look like bored customers, long queues, tellers looking sour, card machines often offline.
What would it look like if solved: smiling customers leaving the shop feeling happy, short queues with quick turnaround?
Solutions, there are hundreds, give away random prizes at the till, put up televisions with fun stuff to watch, jazz up the waiting zone with lights on the floor that change colour when you walk over them, hire a random celebrity to come chat to customers for the day, have a trolley queue race. Creative time is important.
We all know this. How many of you believe that ideas are key to your business’ survival? So why aren’t you taking the time to generate them not as a group either.
You need your own thinking time not a company brainstorming session. The second thing is to do something for yourself. I’m not talking about treating yourself to a shopping spree.
Take up a hobby or activity that requires you to be creative, not for anyone else’s satisfaction but yourself. Find something you can lose yourself in for hours.
I said earlier that most of our tasks are aimed at fulfilling some deadline at work. They are aimed at fulfilling something external to us, for an organisation, company or client. Pick something you can enjoy for you. Now it needs to involve creativity or something challenging, preferably something using your hands.
Watching television does not count. Take up writing, art, pottery, do jigsaw puzzles, take dance lessons, woodwork, gardening, learn to code a computer game.
There is an endless list. Why is this important?
Firstly, it makes you value time spent on you. It also allows your brain to meander and flow while you engage in something with no deadlines and no external pressures. It helps to foster and stimulate creativity.
I know that I seem to be asking you to do more in order to do less, but if you can engage in these two activities on a regular (think weekly) basis you will find that your creativity and idea generation is enhanced, your management of yourself will improve, you will be more effective and more fulfilled.

Zach's Two Planning Universes

Today was an experiment. Depending on your point of view, the experiment was a total success, but only because today went so badly. Confused yet? Allow me to elaborate.

The experiment was to see how my day would go if I didn’t take time to plan it, answered all calls to my phone myself (no secretary answering, no voicemail, no missed calls allowed), and if anyone wanted me I had to deal with them. This was despite having a full diary of appointments to keep, and to top it all it was a Monday.

By midday I had received a dozen calls, been interrupted by staff five times (at least two of which required leaving the room I was in), was mentally in a spin and no longer in control of my day. Due to the increased chaos I found myself degenerating in other areas as well, I checked my emails at least hourly, and replied to them.
Lunch was eaten on the run while two clients sat in my reception.

I had no focus, no direction, and got very little meaningful done at the end of the day. My mania was saved by my gym session at the end of the day, which serves as a buffer that allows me to mindlessly vent any trauma from the day into unfeeling mental and get it out of my system, rather than in- advertently unleashing aggravation in the direction of the beautiful lady in my life.

Perhaps my day sounds normal to you? There was a time when it was normal for me, when I was at the mercy of the flood of life.

Life was simpler once in the pre- cyber days, if you were out the office, no one could reach you.

If they wanted your opinion on something they wrote a letter or made an appointment. People kept appointments on time because you could not phone from your car to say you were running late.
Well, that last point is debatable.

Then the cellphone appeared and email became the norm.

We became connected and the world demanded our attention all the time. We can access mail from home, while on holiday in the Bahamas, and not just at work. Roaming means that we can be contacted anywhere at any time in theory.
I know some people who never switch their phones off; even when asleep they put them on silent so at least they can see your missed calls and texts when they wake up. There is more to distract us from our productivity than ever.
Life went from being a gentle stream to a raging river bursting its banks at every opportunity.

Here is another alternative to my Monday from a parallel universe, where Zach chose not to engage in an experiment just because he needed material for an article.

Zach arrives at his office at 8am, despite having to start the day with a pre-arranged earlier meeting.

The next hour is Zach’s time.

His phone is left with his secretary with a strict no disturb rule as he plans his week. Taking into account the total picture of his life, his current goals for the month, quarter and year, Zach checks where his time and energy can best be spent.

He knows that there is a doctor’s appointment on Wednesday, that it is Avril’s birthday, lunch on Thursday, and that he needs to spend at least one evening this week with the beautiful lady in his life on a “Date Night”.

Juggling all this into his schedule (Zach is a little old fashioned and writes his in a diary rather than a new fandangled iPad thingy) by the end of the hour, Zach knows what is happening this week.

• The next hour is spent with his secretary re-arranging any meetings that have to be shifted, seeing what he needs from her this week, replying to weekend emails and returning any calls that have come in.

Rather than simply drifting from crisis to crisis, Zach now has specific goals that he can achieve.

He has a list of the top three priorities for the rest of the week. Now Zach is not stupid, he knows that disasters may occur during the week that could hamstring his best laid plans.

Instead of being rigid, Zach is flexible enough to be able to adapt to curve balls. The only thing that Zach is lacking at this point is an idea, for a really cool article that can inspire others because he chose not to turn his life into an experiment.
Somewhere between being totally unplanned and at the mercy of life’s ebb and flow and, at the other extreme, being so rigid in our regime, that we eventually snap when the pressure is too much, somewhere there is the ability to bend and recover from the unexpected yet still have a structure and system to our life.
There is no perfect system to achieving this but here are a few tips.

• Plan your week at the start of it. This planning time is to be uninterrupted and inviolate.
• Pick three top priorities for the week that have a degree of specifics to them.
• Consider the whole of your life when you are planning.
• If you know you have an energy-sapping meeting on Tuesday afternoon then do not plan a romantic dinner with your wife that night.
• Group similar smaller tasks together, the energy from one will carry over into the other.
• Split up unpleasant tasks with buffers; a coffee break, an email check, small things that allow you to recover your energy. Consider leaving a blank slot to fill with emergencies, you can always drop something else into it later if it is free.
• Consider using “cloud based” tools like a Google calendar, that can be accessed by both you and your secretary to help fill in appointments without clashing.
• This may also save you having to phone her to tell her about a new, urgent meeting you have just created.
• Diaries can still work but need a slightly different dynamic of chunking time that your secretary can play with and not double book you.

You can if you wish still choose not to plan things a bit better.

You can just go with the flow and try surf the waves of life.

Of course, sooner or later one of those waves is going to dump you in the ocean and you will have no say in which beach it spews you up in.

The Right Questions

The ability to ask the right questions is crucial when solving a problem. To many people simply start a brain storming session with an undefined problem. E.g. writing on a board “Market Share” and going “any ideas?”. What about it? Do you want it up or down or sideways? Whose market share even? Which Product?

Rather take it a step further. Keep “Market Share” on the board, but ask..

“How can we increase our market share from x%?

“Which of our products can we lever effectively to impact the market more?”

“What is our current target market and how can we increase it?”

“What new markets can we get into?”

These are sample questions, each scenario will have its own. But now it is easy to discuss each one.

Moving Forward

MOVEMENT, it is always happening. Even now as you sit reading you are moving, your eyes are scanning the page, a breeze may ruffle your hair, there is movement.
Our lives reflect this. There is always momentum in our lives, it can be forward or backwards momentum. As individuals we are never really static.
Even a person, who is stationary while the rest of the world moves forward, is in fact going backwards think of sitting in a moving vehicle while you leave your house, the car goes forwards but you leave the “stationary” house behind.
Enough on the theory of relativity, suffice to say you need to be moving forward or else you will naturally fall behind.
Moving forward generally means hitting your deadlines, setting and achieving your goals, improving your quality of life, improving the environment around you, promotions at work, raises, growth in all areas of your life.
You get the idea? Great. Today I would like to examine some of the hindrances to movement in our lives. I want to take a closer look at the ones that we have control over, I see little point in bemoaning things that we are unable to change.
Being comfortable with where you are has to be possibly the biggest single limit to going forward. You get home at the end of a long day, collapse into the sofa, put your feet up and settle there.
You are comfortable. You do not really feel the urge to move, in fact come bedtime the thought of getting up is just too much.
Even though there is a better, more restful bed awaiting you, would rather just stay put on the couch. Now extrapolate that on a larger scale to the rest of your life.
There is nothing wrong with sleeping on the couch, if that is where you want to stay, but there is a much better solution.
We all reach “couch points” in our lives in different areas. Perhaps you are comfortable with your current income, with the neighbourhood you are living in or your attitude towards life in general.
The question is are you stuck in the couch or have you reached the bed? Related to the comfort issue, yet subtly different is the limitation of apathy.
With apathy you may not be comfortable, but you just cannot be bothered any more. You have been dulled and worn out to the point where change no longer matters.
You find fault with anything that could be better, unable to be pleased, using your excuses to justify your laziness and stinking attitude.
Apathetic people refuse to take responsibility for their movement, they expect the world to be handed to them on a silver plate as though they have earned the right by their mere existence.

They blame their employers, their upbringing, the government, the church . . . in fact they blame anything but themselves for their status quo. When you shift blame you shift responsibility and no longer have to move.
Another way of generating a significant amount of apathy is to become preoccupied with time suckers and mind numbers.
Go ahead spend a few hours on Facebook or any other social media. Surf the web randomly. Play computer games for hours.
Read drivel rather than substance. Catch up seven seasons of a series. Go on waste your time. Each of the listed activities is not inherently bad, if done in small doses they may even be beneficial, but there comes a point where they just sap your creativity and will.
It is like getting fat, evidence suggests that there comes a point where the substances produced by fat cells sap your energy, affect your appetite and end up making you grow fatter as you eat more and drop your will to exercise.
While apathy is the extreme, it is safe to say that we all have an internal resistance to movement. In the same way that the initial inertia of a heavy object makes it harder to start pushing than to keep it moving (think of pushing your car).
There is a part of our brain that seeks to keep us where we are. It will make excuses for you, encourage self-sabotage and point out every reason for failure.
Recognise that this is part of you, put it in its little corner to rant, and move forward anyway by recognising all the benefits to moving.
Your resistance feeds off two great stimuli. The first is the voices of other people. Any criticism by others, any negativity, sets your internal resistance off with an “I told you so” and “what if”.
The “what ifs” are fuelled by the second stimulus to your resistance, the fear of the unknown. The future can be guessed at, predicted and imagined but it still remains an unknown factor.
Regardless of how accurate your predictions there is always the element of doubt that things may not go according to plan. Fear can be paralytic, stops you moving.
Alongside the unknown is the fear of apparent lack. This manifests in the waiting for everything to be absolutely perfect before starting a project.
While you wait someone else is going ahead to do the same process. Now I am not talking about recklessness or stupidity, you still need a solid business plan fleshed out with market research before venturing out.
However, there comes a moment when you just need to bite the bullet and go for it, working the details out as you go, correcting mistakes and continuing to go forward.
Why point out all these reasons Zach? Once you can recognise the enemy you can combat it better. Recognising the hindrances to your progress enables you to take charge and over come them. Stop making excuses and move forward lest you find yourself left behind