The Top 10 Things We Should Know About Life

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1. Realize that nobody cares, and if they do, you shouldn't care that they care. Got a new car? Nobody cares. You'll get some gawkers for a couple of weeks—they don't care. They're curious. Three weeks in it'll be just another shiny blob among all the thousands of others crawling down the freeway and sitting in garages and driveways up and down your street. People will care about your car just as much as you care about all of those. Got a new gewgaw? New wardrobe? Went to a swanky restaurant? Exotic vacation? Nobody cares. Don't base your happiness on people caring, because they won't. And if they do, they either want your stuff or hate you for it.
   
2. Some rulebreakers will break rule number one. Occasionally, people in your life will defy the odds and actually care about you. Still not your stuff, sorry. But if they value you, they'll value that you value it, and they'll listen. When you talk about all of those things that nobody else cares about, they will look into your eyes and consume your words, and in that moment you will know that every part of them is there with you.
   
3. Spend your life with rulebreakers. Marry them. Befriend them. Work with them. Spend weekends with them. No matter how much power you become possessed of, you'll never be able to make someone care—so gather close the caring.
   
4. Money is cheap. I mean, there's a lot of it—trillions upon trillions of dollars floating around the world, largely made up of cash whose value is made up and ascribed to it, anyway. Don't engineer your life around getting a slightly less tiny portion of this pile, and make your spirit of generosity reflect this principle. I knew a man who became driven by the desire to amass six figures in savings, so he worked and scrimped and sacrificed to get there. And he did... right before he died of cancer. I'm sure his wife's new husband appreciated his diligence.
   
5. Money is expensive. I mean, it's difficult to get your hands on sometimes—and you never know when someone's going to pull the floorboards out from under you—so don't be stupid with it. Avoid debt on depreciating assets, and never incur debt in order to assuage your vanity (see rule number one). Debt has become normative, but don't blithely accept it as a rite of passage into adulthood—debt represents imbalance and, in some sense, often a resignation of control. Student loan debt isn't always avoidable, but it isn't a given—my wife and I completed a combined ten years of college with zero debt between us. If you can't avoid it, though, make sure that your degree is an investment rather than a liability—I mourn a bit for all of the people going tens of thousands of dollars in debt in pursuit of vague liberal arts degrees with no idea of what they want out of life. If you're just dropping tuition dollars for lack of a better idea at the moment, just withdraw and go wander around Europe for a few weeks—I guarantee you'll spend less and learn more in the process.
   
6. Learn the ancient art of rhetoric. The elements of rhetoric, in all of their forms, are what make the world go around—because they are what prompt the decisions people make. If you develop an understanding of how they work, while everyone else is frightened by flames and booming voices, you will be able to see behind veils of communication and see what levers little men are pulling. Not only will you develop immunity from all manner of commercials, marketing, hucksters and salesmen, to the beautiful speeches of liars and thieves, you'll also find yourself able to craft your speech in ways that influence people. When you know how to speak in order to change someone's mind, to instill confidence in someone, to quiet the fears of a child, then you will know this power firsthand. However, bear in mind as you use it that your opponent in any debate is not the other person, but ignorance.
   
7. You are responsible to everyone, but you're responsible for yourself. I believe we're responsible to everyone for something, even if it's something as basic as an affirmation of their humanity. However, it should most often go far beyond that and manifest itself in service to others, to being a voice for the voiceless. If you're reading this, there are those around you who toil under burdens larger than yours, who stand in need of touch and respect and chances. Conversely, though, you're responsible for yourself. Nobody else is going to find success for you, and nobody else is going to instill happiness into you from the outside. That's on you.
   
8. Learn to see reality in terms of systems. When you understand the world around you as a massive web of interconnected, largely interdependent systems, things get much less mystifying—and the less we either ascribe to magic or allow to exist behind a fog, the less susceptible we'll be to all manner of being taken advantage of. However:
   
9. Account for the threat of black swan events. Sometimes chaos consumes the most meticulous of plans, and if you live life with no margins in a financial, emotional, or any other sense, you will be subject to its whims. Take risks, but backstop them with something—I strongly suspect these people who say having a Plan B is a sign of weak commitment aren't living hand to mouth. Do what you need to in order to keep your footing.
   
10. You both need and don't need other people. You need others in a sense that you need to be part of a community—there's a reason we reflexively pity hermits. Regardless of your theory of anthropogenesis, it's hard to deny that we are built for community, and that 'we' is always more than 'me.' However, you don't need another person in order for your life to have meaning—this idea that Disney has shoved through our eyeballs, that there's someone out there for all of us if we'll just believe hard enough and never stop searching, is hokum... because of arithmetic, if nothing else. Establish your own life—then, if there's a particular person that you can't help but integrate, believe me, you'll know.

Business Benchmarking

Way back in 1998, Sik Fong, Eddie Cheng and Danny Ho wrote a great article citing Camp (1989) referring to benchmarking as “the search for industry best practices that will lead to superior performance”.  Where they state that “this definition is broad enough to accommodate all levels or types of practices to benchmark;” going on to say that “benchmarking can work in all possible areas of products, services, and related processes across different national or business boundaries. It involves changing the current work practices or business methods to achieve predetermined goals. For example, Motorola’s general systems division learned from the delivery systems of Domino’s Pizza and Federal Express, aiming at shortening the cycle time between order receipt and delivery of its cellular telephones,”(p. 408).

 

But in 2013 with most organisations operating in a double or triple dip recession, or the aftermath thereof,  is it smart to benchmark yourself against other organisations when whole industries are operating in uncharted territory and ‘comparisons’ could easily give a false picture, as you might not be comparing like with like in terms of the business environment.

 

Benchmarking against competitors makes sense in a reasonably stable business environment where you’re looking to ensure you’re either setting the standards for others to follow or at least being competitive; and making strategic and operational changes to improve specific key performance areas in line with current ‘best practice’ in your industry sector.

 

But what if the market is so volatile that benchmarking yourself against your competition could just lead you to follow them to obscurity, highlighting that maybe there are times when the business environment is so uncertain that it requires ‘great leaders’ to go with their experience, knowledge and instincts (not necessarily in that order) to lead their organisation through the ‘hard times’, where they prefer to ‘watch’ and manage their internal key indicators; have a very dynamic strategic process, where the organisation is ‘primed and able’ to change direction at a moment’s notice; and actively listen to their customers. 

 

Maybe there are times in the business cycle where ‘optimal future success’ is more dependent on leadership than comparing yourself with your competition through benchmarking in its classic form; and where you, as the leader, have the confidence in your people and your products and/or services to make it through to better times.

 

Where at the same time those unfortunate leaders promoted to a level beyond their real capabilities find themselves standing out like a sore thumb, following traditional business practices hoping (and praying) this will see them through and simply survive until normality returns to their market and business environment.

 

There are times in business and the industry life-cycle when history can tell us a lot and help us define our future strategies and actively allow us to monitor and improve performance; but we must be alert to the fact that there also times when history in itself can detract from performance improvements, and if used as a benchmark can lead to unrealistic performance target and expectations; leading to misdirection, demotivation and suboptimal outputs that could, if not checked in time, lead to corporate failure.

 

Sik Fong, Eddie Cheng and Danny Ho highlight four essential themes for performance benchmarking offered by the Design Committee of the International Benchmarking Clearing House in the USA, (p. 408);

 

1. The value of learning from contexts outside an organization’s usual frame of reference (Cox et al., 1997);

2. The importance of undertaking this learning using a structured, formal approach (Cox et al., 1997);

3. The comparisons of practices between oneself and the best-in-class on a continuous basis; and

4. The usefulness of information to drive actions for performance improvement.

 

Critically though even these definitions neglect to highlight the possibility of benchmarking based on internal comparisons when the external environment is too uncertain to be trusted to guide you to ‘best practice’ performance.

 

When the business environment is uncertain, you cannot simply assume that your competitors, who were successful ‘yesterday,’ are actually on the right strategic path for sustainable growth; and if you’re a truly effective leader you must trust your instincts to guide your organisation through these uncertain times to arrive safely ‘on the other side’. Check on what the competition are doing by all means, but don’t blindly follow them, as they could be more lost than you.