Psychology Archives - Page 9 of 10

Is It Better to Start a Company at 25 or 45?

A VC An entry that Fred Wilson wrote back in May has been stuck in my mind. What’s the optimal age of being an entrepreneur?

It’s a bit of a contentious question. He started by asking innocently, “Do you know any 45 year old entrepreneurs?” Or rather, one of his friends asked him that.

Then Nick Denton of Valleywag picked it up and asked, “Is 30 too old to start a company?“, adding more fuel to the fire. Denton also selected some media darlings and compared the ages at which they founded their companies:

Valleywag Age Question Chart

Finally, Clay Shirky weighed in with what he referred to as the (Bayesian) Advantage of Youth:

I’m old enough to know a lot of things, just from life experience. I know that music comes from stores. I know that you have to try on pants before you buy them. I know that newspapers are where you get your political news and how you look for a job. …

In the last 15 years or so, I’ve had to unlearn every one of those things and a million others. This makes me a not-bad analyst, because I have to explain new technology to myself first — I’m too old to understand it natively. But it makes me a lousy entrepreneur.

So is 25 really a better age to start a company than 45?

Personally, I agree with Wilson’s conclusion: “I don’t totally buy that age matters. I think, as I said in my original post, that age is a mind set.”

Shirky has a point about inexperienced minds being able to make connections that more experienced minds wouldn’t see. Age can usually offer that, but not always. I know some really dumb young people.

One can also train one’s mind to think more creatively. IDEO is a famous example of a company that’s done just that. Then there’s also the Conceptual Innovator vs Experimental Innovator effect as well. So if you’re not 25 anymore, don’t lose heart!

What I believe to be more of a factor is not making mental connections and creativity — but risk. Creative thinking can strike at almost any age. But being able to take grand risks doesn’t; at least, not really.

In our society, the older we become, the more likely we’re in a situation where we have to care for a house & mortgage, an immediate & extended family, and a host of other responsibilities.

Compare that to a fresh college graduate with only him/herself and some school loans, and what do you see? A younger adult who’s realistically able to take greater risks.

That’s just an assumption, of course. But when Entrepreneur magazine recently published their “2007 Hot 500 Fastest-Growing Businesses in America” results, I thought: Ah!

What did they find was the average age of the entrepreneurs in their Hot 500? Forty-four! 44 years of age, for the average entrepreneur of one of America’s fastest growing businesses. Food for thought!

Their survey cover all sorts of businesses, tech and non-tech. Wilson, Denton, and Shirky, I believe, were thinking mainly about technology businesses. So it’s possible I’m comparing red apples to green apples here – same topic, but slightly different versions of that topic.

Still, I’m hopeful. It’s not the age that matters, it’s the mindset, the creativity, and the courage to take a big risk that matters.

The First Week

“How was your first week out?” I asked Eric. “Now that you’ve left your job, has it been great waking up and not having to go to work?”

He sat back in his chair. “The first week was great. I did a bunch of errands, got onto all the necessary social networks, and set up my routine. It was a lot of prep work.”

I nodded and took a sip of my coffee.

“The second week though, wasn’t as easy. That’s when reality began to set in,” he laughed.

“Oh? What do you mean?”

“When you’re working for a big company, it’s easy to screw around and waste time. But when you’re working for yourself, the time you waste is your own.”

“Ahhh…” I nodded slowly.

“I also miss my coworkers. I had a lot of good friends at work. It was easy to just get up and get coffee with them. Now, I can’t really do that.”

“I can see that. I had a lot of good friends at work too. I’m really going to miss them all.”

“Staying focused and motivated is hard too. It’s easy to get distracted. Sometimes I need to write down my goals helps me keep focused.”

I sipped my coffee and continued nodding.

“Staying at home can be a little cabin-feverish too, if not distracting. So I’d go out and work in a cafe or something.”

“That’s a good idea. I totally plan on working from cafes also.”

“I don’t about you, but for me, getting into a routine helps too. I decided to replace my morning commute with working out. So now I do that everyday, first thing in the morning.”

“That’s a really good idea.” I smiled. “A really good idea.”

“Finally, since I sometimes feel a little isolated, I make an effort to go out and meet with people. I’ve been calling up friends, ex-coworkers, former classmates, and doing lunch or coffee with them. I find it really helpful to stay socialized and in touch with people.”

I nodded. “That’s awesome advice man. Thanks!”

Eric smiled. “It’s not all fun and games. People think that when you quit your job, you’ll have a lot of fun. Not true if you’re an aspiring entrepreneur. Instead, you have to work really hard. But as long as you realize that, and keep focused on your goals, you can totally do it.”

Globalism and Racism

There’s been some drama over the German social bookmarking site Mister Wong lately. If you’re in the US, you may be able to guess the controversy. If you’re not, you probably have no idea what could be wrong.

The controversy is over the branding of the site: it’s name, illustration, and slogan. 8Asians, a group blog of Asian American & Asian Canadian bloggers (of which I am a member) was the first that I know of to publicly decry Mister Wong. As written by Ernie, one of the founders:

Maybe people aren’t as sensitive to political correctness as they are here in North America. But seriously, one of their web badges has the slogan “ping pong, king kong, Mister Wong.” Which I, of course, interpret as “ching chong, Mister Wong” and get INCREDIBLY FUCKING ANGRY.

The first few comments were sympathetic. One commenter expressed some confusion though. “Enlighten me. What on earth is offensive about the Mr. Wong website?” he wrote. After a few back-and-forth explanations, the issue died.

Two months later, Kristen Nicole of Mashable wrote about how Mister Wong was launching a US version. In her review, she wrote, “Despite the questionable name, Mister Wong has a lot going for it…” A commenter there also expresses some confusion: “Kristen, can you explain why you think the name is ‘questionable’?”

Another commenter replied, “It’s not so much the name that is questionable, more the cliched stereotyped image of Mr. Wong that comes along with it. I really hope they get rid of that on the US beta at least, otherwise there’ll be some angry Asian Americans out there.”

Then Kai Tietjen, the founder of Mister Wong, removed the illustration from the logo.

It was never my intention, nor that of my company, to hurt anyone with the use of the illustration. We are extremely sensitive to this issue and the feelings of others. We removed the original illustration off the top of the page some time ago, when the issue first arose, in hopes that no one would be offended by it any longer.

Apparently the 8 Asians article and angry comments on Mashable’s articles led to this decision. A short time later, a German newspaper picked up the story and Germans flooded the 8 Asians site. Some politely expressed their confusion and defended Mister Wong. Others haven’t been as polite, unfortunately.

Pete Cashmore from Mashable followed up on the story and succinctly summed it all up:

These kinds of clashes seem inevitable when companies launch globally: what’s culturally acceptable in one place is a hanging offense elsewhere. Often, as in this case, people are puzzled by the fact that they caused any offense at all. The “racist” label, however, is one that all startups will want to stay a million miles away from, even if they don’t fully understand their infraction.

That’s the real takeaway here, especially for any business going global. You may not agree with the controversy, but once you operate in the global arena, you have no choice but to respect the sensibilities of all the societies with which you want to do business. Even if you don’t agree with or understand those sensibilities.

Remember the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy? That’s probably an extreme example, but you get the point. A less extreme example is the Chevorlet Nova and how it didn’t sell in Spanish-speaking countries because “Nova” translates to “doesn’t go” in Spanish. This is actually an urban legend, but it’s a commonly cited example of going global.

Ernie, in my opinion, may have saved Mister Wong quite a bit of heartache and money by expressing his views at the early stages of their entry into the US market. For better or worse, the US society is relatively much more politically correct than other societies of the world. Denounce that all you want, but I guarantee you that if Ernie hadn’t spoken up, someone else would have.

Tricks of the Trade

I don’t remember how I first came across the site Tricks of the Trade. But I’ve kept it bookmarked and occasionally return to it because I think it’s pretty cool. (Unfortunately it’s not updated too often.)

The site is basically a list of tips & tricks for all kinds of random things, like how to make mayonnaise or get a ride home from a pizza delivery guy after a night of heavy drinking and no means of transportation. Or, as the site’s tagline says, “Professional secrets from those in the know.”

The author is Matthew Baldwin, of defective yeti fame. I don’t know him or anything, but I’ve heard of his site (again, I don’t remember how) (I probably should get my memory checked, eh?).

If you’re familiar with Haley’s Hints or Haley’s Cleaning Hints, this site is just like that. If you’re not familiar with Haley’s Hints, they’re a collection of household hints, like how to remove stains or construct a satellite radio/microwave using toothpicks and vinegar. Or something like that.

Tricks of the Trade goes beyond household hints though. Here are a few business-related ones:

For Managers: If you manage a large number of people who are always offering suggestions, insist that feedback be submitted in writing. Blame your faulty memory, if you want to be diplomatic. The bad ideas will be discarded before you hear them, as the employee won’t want to go through the effort of writing them out; the good ones will be more complete and better articulated, as the submitted will have to think his idea all the way through before sending it in.

For Bartenders: When serving alcohol, card every woman who looks like she’s in her 30’s or 40’s. They will to tip better. (Mike’s note: BTW, I was a bartender once, and this is certainly true!)

For Meeting People: If you are unable to remember someone’s first name, simply ask them: “What’s your name?” When they reply with their first name, laugh and say “Oh no, I knew that, of course. I meant your last name”. This is a much more acceptable thing to forget–and you still get their full name.

For Partiers: If you need a ride home after a wild night out, walk into a pizza parlor that delivers and order a pie to be sent to your house. Then ask if you can get a lift to your house — hey, they’re going there anyway! (Mike’s note: This isn’t really a business-related tip, but it’s a good idea!)

For Office Workers: If you are sending an email with an attachment, add the attachment first, then compose the message, and then add email addresses tothe send line. Now there’s no chance you’ll have to send the ever-popular “whoops, forgot to attach the file” follow-up. In fact, it’s a good practice to always put the email addresses of the recipients in last, to ensure that an errant carriage return or mouseclick won’t fire off the message half-baked.

For Salespeople: If you’re calling a business to speak to someone specific and you get a receptionist, it’s often helpful to say “I’m returning a call for such-and-such,” instead of just “I’m calling for…”. It will typically get you transferred in with less fuss.

For Business Travelers: Always ask for a business discount. You may not have a business, but you work for one–and even if you don’t, how would I know? The worst that will happen is someone will say no. Most motel and hotels have corporate discounts. Nobody tries very hard to find out how legitimate people’s business claims are, and most of us secretly don’t care. In fact, when buying any product or service, try asking for a discount. You’ve got nothing to lose, and you’ll be surprised by how often it works.

Matthew was solicited to write a book with these tips a couple of times. Unfortunately, none of them panned out. But he hasn’t given up on the idea. So if you have a tip or trick, submit it and maybe you’ll get into his book! Or just check out his site for some amusing tips & tricks.

Focus On Strengths, Manage Around Weaknesses

It is more effective to invest in building strengths and working around weaknesses.

People are able to improve their strengths faster than they can their weaknesses. Why?

People generally have an affinity for their strengths
An affinity means a stronger motivation for using that strength
Increased usage leads to an improved strength (practice makes perfect)

For a manager, this means that the ROI of the time & effort spent on building a strength is greater than the ROI spent on building a weakness.

A weakness, in this definition, is not a trainable skill or piece of knowledge. Those can be learned and corrected. A weakness here means an innate inability to perform some part of the job well and cannot be corrected through training.

Since weaknesses hurt the employee and even their team, managers should find ways to work around those weaknesses. How?

Provide tools and processes to counteract the weakness
Partner the employee with another who has complimentary skills
Put the employee into a different role where the weakness is no longer a detriment

Let’s look at this concept pictorially. The chart below is a representation of Mr. Employee’s skills:

Skill Levels

If Mr. Employee was asked to build Skill C, one of his strengths, here is how it would increase over three periods of time:

Skill Levels: Increasing Strengths

However, if Mr. Employee was asked to build Skill D, one of his weaknesses, here is how it would increase over three periods of time:

Skill Levels: Increasing Weaknesses

This doesn’t mean that weaknesses shouldn’t be addressed, especially if they are a detriment to the employee’s ability to do the job. Weaknesses can be managed around, with this kind of a result:

Skill Levels: Managed Weaknesses

Now let’s take a look at an example:

Andrew is a manager of an IT consultancy. He notices that one of his consultants, Brian, has memorized the statistics for every Major League Baseball team. Andrew realizes that Brian has a strength in memorizing facts. So he builds that strength by training Brian to memorize all the facts about IT software.

Brian, however, is prone to impatience and some clients have complained about his pushy behavior. Interpersonal skills training hasn’t helped. Andrew realizes that Brian has a weakness in working with sensitive customers.

So he manages around that weakness by partnering Brian with Chris, another consultant who is great at talking to his clients, but doesn’t comes across as an expert because he has trouble memorizing all the facts about IT software. Chris’ strength is in making small talk and putting his clients at ease. He’s also grown a lot from interpersonal skills training because he finds such training fascinating.

After pairing Brian and Chris together, Andrew notices with glee that their combined efforts increase client satisfaction significantly. Andrew has successfully improved the strengths of his consultants and managed around their weaknesses.

Mindset: The Effort Effect

Last month, Guy Kawasaki wrote about Carol Dweck, a psychology professor at Stanford. In the Stanford Magazine article by Marina Krakovsky, “The Effort Effect“, Dweck explores why “a really capable child [gives] up in the face of failure, [while] other children [are] motivated by the failure.”

Her field studies in learned helplessness and attribution theory led her to launch a new field of educational psychology: achievement goal theory.

In short, there are people who believe they have a fixed mental capacity (known as a “fixed mindset”) and there are people who believe they can always learn new things (known as a “growth mindset”). A person with a fixed mindset, even highly capable ones who are already highly intelligent, don’t try as hard as those with a growth mindset and therefore don’t excel as well. Dweck’s new book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, goes into more detail about these conclusions and offers parenting tips as well, since her field studies were conducted mostly on elementary school children.

Guy, useful as ever, cites some of Dweck’s tips and adds the word “employee” to show how they are relevant to business and management:

Listen to what you say to your kids [employees], with an ear toward the messages you’re sending about mind-set.

Instead of praising children’s [employee’s] intelligence or talent, focus on the processes they used.

Example: “That homework was so long and involved. I really admire the way you concentrated and finished it.”
Example: “That picture has so many beautiful colors. Tell me about them.”
Example: “You put so much thought into that essay. It really makes me think about Shakespeare in a new way.”

When your child [employee] messes up, give constructive criticism—feedback that helps the child [employee] understand how to fix the problem, rather than labeling or excusing the child.

Pay attention to the goals you set for your children [employees]; having innate talent is not a goal, but expanding skills and knowledge is.

Don’t worry about praising your children [employees] for their inherent goodness, though. It’s important for children [employees] to learn they’re basically good and that their parents love them unconditionally, Dweck says. “The problem arises when parents praise children [employees] in a way that makes them feel that they’re good and love-worthy only when they behave in particular ways that please the parents.

Late Bloomer, Late Genius

The Tortoise and The Hare I marvel at all the smart people around me. The people who’ve hit success at a ripe young age. The Jerry Yangs, the Larry Pages, heck, even the Shawn Fannings. And I wonder: is it too late to make a big splash?

Then I read Daniel Pink’s article in Wired: “What Kind of Genius Are You?” He begins with an anecdote about a 17th-century Dutch art class at Harvard.

On the first day of class, the professor displayed a stunning image of a Renaissance Madonna and child. “Pablo Picasso did this copy of a Raphael drawing when he was 17 years old,” the professor told the students. “What have you people done lately?”

Hmmm. I ate a banana for breakfast, read a bunch of emails, thought hard about improving some processes on my team… but no Renaissance Madonnas. Damn. What’s that say about me? Am I doomed to mediocrity?

Fortunately, no! There’s still hope!

The article explains how David Galenson, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago, made an interesting realization. Using the careful analysis of a trained economist, he scoured volumes of data and “sliced and diced the numbers with his econometric ginsu knife.” The end result showed two types of geniuses:

Conceptual Innovators: These are people who “do their breakthrough work when they are young”, “then decline steadily.” Examples are Edvard Munch, Herman Melville, and Orson Welles.
Experimental Innovators: These are people who go through “a lifetime of trial and error and thus do their important work much later in their careers.” Examples are Auguste Rodin, Mark Twain, and Alfred Hitchcock.

An entry by Stephen Dubner on the Freakonomics Blog corroborates these results. It cites an article by David Wessel in the Wall Street Journal: “Why Middle Age May Be Healthy For Your Wallet“.

Baseball players are said to peak in their late 20’s. Chess players in their mid-30’s. Theoretical economists in their mid-40’s. But in ordinary life, there’s an obvious tension between sheer smarts, often seen in the supple minds of the young, and experience, which comes only with age.

Ah ha! So maybe I’m an Experimental Innovator. Maybe I’m the kind of person who is able to arrive at genius through trial and error and experience. I know I’m definitely no baseball player.

So if you were to ask me, “What have you done lately?” I’d say, “I’ve done lots of things! Like eating a banana for breakfast, reading a bunch of emails, and thinking hard about improving some processes on my team… All things that will give me valuable experience for my budding late genius!”

(And heck, I don’t need to be the next Mark Twain. Wessel explains that most people make their smartest personal finance decisions in their 50’s. I’ll gladly settle for that.)

ScienceDaily Week by Guy Kawasaki

Last week, Guy Kawasaki ran a series of posts that highlighted choice bits from ScienceDaily. This online magazine (ezine?) aims to be The Source for the latest research news in science, technology, and medicine, by including stories “submitted by leading universities and other research organizations around the world.” Guy notes that their studies have implications on business practices as well.

So with that, Guy highlights:

Which is more effective: bonuses or raises?

For example, have you ever wondered whether giving employees a pay-for-performance bonus or a merit raise fosters greater productivity? According to this “Bonuses Boost Performance 10 Times More Than Merit Raises” in Science Daily which pointed to a Cornell study called “Using Your Pay System to Improve Employees’ Performance: How You Pay Makes a Difference” by Dr. Michael C. Sturman, a bonus yields far better results.

Interesting! Same probably goes for commission-based compensation too.

Hype Kills

…assistant professor Vanessa Patrick (University of Georgia) [and] co-authors Debbie MacInnis and C. Whan Park (University of Southern California) [published the study] “Marketing: Too Much Hype Backfires.” The study shows that “people take notice when they feel worse than they thought they would, but—oddly—not when they feel better than expected.”

This supports the old adage that people tell five others about a bad experience but only one about a good experience (“negative evangelism”?). Thus, it sure looks like “under promising and over delivering” is the way to go.

It’s well-known that losing something creates a stronger emotion than winning something, so I guess human beings are wired to feel negative emotions moreso than positive emotions?

Advertising and Sexy Content

…advertising during television programs with sexy content is less effective than during programs with no sexy content. This is the research finding of Ellie Parker and Adrian Furnham of the Department of Psychology of the University College London.

To quote Robin Williams: “God gave you a penis and a brain, and only enough blood to run one at a time.” So when you’re watching that sexy content, your brain isn’t going to be remembering a damn thing.

Here’s a three-fer

Researchers at the University of Oregon found that when people watch someone perform a task that they know they’ll have to repeat later, similar parts of the brain are activated that are used doing the the task itself. The source is “Watching With Intent To Repeat Ignites Key Learning Area of Brain.”

An article called “Subliminal Advertising Leaves Its Mark On the Brain” cites how researchers at University College London found that subliminal images attract the brain’s attention on a subconscious level. An implication is that subliminal advertising could work. That is, of course, assuming you don’t Tivo past the ads.

Seeing the color red can hinder people from performing their best on tests. This is the conclusion of a study called Research On the Color Red Shows Definite Impact On Achievement” at the University of Rochester.

So our brain is like a sponge, absorbing not just the spilled milk, but all the dust and gunk on the floor too, for better or worse. Great.