BuiltEnvironment

Success and failure -- what the brain remembers

Early this year, I heard a piece on NPR that I felt had direct relevance to A/E marketing. The piece was from an article in the (then) current Harvard Business Review (HBR). The next time I was at Barnes & Noble, I bought the issue.

I'm just now getting around to reading it. In fact, it has been so long since hearing the NPR piece that I don't remember which HBR article interested me. So today, I opened the magazine and read the first 36 pages.

One article ("Success Gets into Your Head--and Changes It") was about what the brain remembers. Apparently, if you get a reward (i.e. when you succeed), the brain remembers what it did right; failure has no impact. This is very interesting information for those of us who manage marketing departments and proposal teams. It says a lot about recognizing success and good work, and not wasting time casting blame.

On the other hand, when it comes to the nuts-and-bolts stuff, the processes, the technical knowledge, we're told that we learn more from our failures than from our successes.

It seems to me, then, that the answer is to give failure equal time on the technical and procedural stuff, and learn what you can from it -- but when it comes to the behavioral stuff, let go of failure quickly and move on.

Six pages later, I found an article called "We Can Measure the Power of Charisma." What an interesting piece of writing. We've all known that if you walk into a short-list presentation thinking you can't win the project, you won't win the project. It's hard to be positive when you believe the effort is doomed to failure. But this article talks about ways to measure charisma -- our gestures, expressions, tone of voice -- and predict with some accuracy the outcome of a competitive situation.

This is something all marketers -- especially proposal managers, presentation managers, marketing managers, directors and CMOs -- need to learn about and put to use.

So because of the value in just the first 36 pages of the January-February 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review, I did something I rarely do. I actually started a new magazine subscription!

Second nature

Life is now moving at such a fast pace that we have become a society of abbreviations.

When was the last time you purchased a new computer from Hewlett-Packard? Everyone calls that company "H-P" now.

When was the last time you heard of an architectural firm called Hellmuth, Obata, Kassabaum? They call themselves "HOK" now, and so does the rest of the world. In fact, very few people even remember what the initials stand for.

But sometimes we get the abbreviations wrong, because our minds apply the wrong associations to things. I was looking at personal profiles on a chat site earlier today and realized that some things that are incorrect can be so set in our minds that we have to make a real effort to not be trapped.

For example, I'm located in Austin, Texas. Every time I see the abbreviation "UT" (as in the State of "Utah") for a person's location, I automatically think, "UT, University of Texas, they're right nearby." Similarly, when I see the location abbreviation "LA," I always think the person is located in Los Angeles, and have to remind myself that "LA" stands for Louisiana.

Every now and then, it's good to stop yourself when you realize you've made an automatic - and incorrect - link, to consciously examine where the link comes from and how it is sometimes/often/always incorrect. Using automatic links is a good habit to break so you don't mis-identify a client or their location, send something to the wrong person or place, ask a question that shows you're not really paying attention, etc.

These kinds of errors tend to look like carelessness, and will not endear you to your clients or to your prospective clients.

The upside of fixing this is that making your brain work full-time and properly can not only help you in business, but it can help keep your mind sharp and delay (or even prevent) the onset of Alzheimer's Disease!