An interview with Dr. Maya Angelou, renowned author. For more, read the Life’s Work section in the May issue of HBR.

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A written transcript will be available by May 10.

RealNLPTraining

Last week over 100 leading cancer specialists signed their names to an op-ed in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology, which lambasted the prices of cancer drugs that often exceed $100,000 annually. These researchers opined that high prices are preventing patients from being treated, and they questioned the ethics of pharmaceutical companies.

This isn’t a problem only facing uninsured patients: The op-ed claims that in the U.S., for instance, even insured patients pay an average of 20% of drug prices out-of-pocket, meaning these drugs can cost a patient $20,000 a year. Those numbers can be even higher because many patients suffer multiple ailments, requiring more than one pricey drug.

The key to solving this problem is to forget about regulation, charity, or public shaming and instead focus on how to help drug companies make even more money.

This may sound counterintuitive, but a win-win opportunity exists. Making expensive drugs more accessible and getting pharma companies on board involves adapting pricing tactics successfully used by other companies in similar situations to help them sell more. The key components that lead to a solution are as follows:

Understand the dynamics of a high fixed cost/low variable cost industry. While pharma companies spend billions on research, the actual cost of manufacturing a treatment (such as a pill) is minimal. This cost structure enables pricing flexibility. This is why Las Vegas hotels, for instance, have premium prices on weekends and rock bottom discounts during the middle of the week. As long as mid-week prices cover the low nightly variable costs (mostly the cost of cleaning the room), any higher amount is gross profit. With the current high prices, pharma companies are only serving weekend customers. Like other high fixed cost/low variable cost industries, they could make more money by learning to extend discounts in the right circumstances.

Understand that there’s profit in serving discount-oriented customers. Activating dormant customers through discounts is a common growth strategy. Coach, the manufacturer of fine accessories such as handbags, activates price-sensitive dormant customers via a network of outlet stores that offer up to 70% off full retail prices. In North America, for instance, over 30% of its stores are outlets, and 45% of its total retail square footage is dedicated to discount outlets. Even “dollar menus” at fast food restaurants generate enviable cash flows. For example, the incremental gross margin of a $1 McDonald’s double cheeseburger is 55%.

Understand micro-differential pricing. The dream of every pricing strategist is to somehow determine and charge the highest price that each customer is willing to pay. This is why, for instance, auto salespeople size you up by noting how you dress and asking questions such as “What do you do for a living?” They are trying to figure out how much you are willing to pay — this process results in different prices for different customers. Solving the $100,000 drug problem involves emulating car salespeople. Pharma companies should be encouraged to set prices based on a patient’s income as well as their other drug costs.

To implement smarter pricing that saves more lives, and brings in more revenue, the pharma industry should create a straightforward grid that specifies the annual maximum a patient should pay out of pocket on pharma expenses. Key variables that determine this maximum include income (verified by IRS data), family size, and their other pharma costs. Patients can submit this data to a third party agency, discounts will be applied based on these criteria. For instance, if it is determined that a 30% co-payment on a $100,000 annual treatment for a middle class family of four is too much, the patient can be reimbursed $15,000 by the drug company, which still nets a healthy $85,000 in incremental revenue (since this family wouldn’t have purchased the drug without the discount).

There are already several foundations and prescription assistance plans in place today to help low income patients. But the $100,000 drug issue is also a middle to upper-middle income issue — and the industry should address the problem in a way that helps create more revenue.

Discounting shouldn’t be thought of as charity. In fact, it’s smart business for pharma companies.

Drug companies already profitably implement differential pricing on a macro-level: This is why drugs are cheaper in third world countries than in the U.S.. Why not employ differential pricing on a micro individual-to-individual basis? The U.S. may be a rich country, but there’s a gigantic income difference between poverty-ridden inner city areas and, say, Beverly Hills. If a patient skips a treatment due to price, that’s not only a loss for the patient (whose health will suffer), but it’s a missed gross margin opportunity.

Micro-differential pricing is a win-win strategy: higher profits will be reaped and more patients will be served.

Doctors signed on to the Blood op-ed in hopes of starting a dialogue on high drug prices. It’s an important topic, and one that demands a solution. The key to solving the $100,000 drug challenge is to encourage the invisible hand actions of profit-seeking. The micro-differential pricing opportunities available due to the high fixed/low variable costs structure of drug companies would enable as many people as possible to benefit from pharmaceutical advancements.

RealNLPTraining

I admit that I’m prone to an optimistic outlook, a belief that most problems can be tackled with hard work and the right mindset. I’ve read the research that indicates that positive thinkers tend to do better in school, work and life. Perhaps I even assumed that optimism was infectious and that people wanted to work with a confident, hopeful leader. In the true spirit of optimism, how could this possibly go wrong?

Then I found out from a colleague that he didn’t find my optimism nearly as reassuring as I did. We were in the middle of a high-stakes research project with a small window of opportunity to write an article for a prominent academic publication. To pull this off, we needed to complete a complex analysis, do a round of additional research, and actually write the article, all while working on several other projects and operating on a thin budget.

To me, this seemed like a feasible, interesting challenge, and I enthusiastically dove in. Then at one critical meeting, a more junior colleague turned to me and said, “Liz, I need you to stop saying that!”

“Saying what?” I asked.

“Saying that thing you always say — ‘How hard can it be?’” I looked puzzled. He explained, “You say that all the time. ‘How hard can it be? We can do this. After all, how hard can it be?’”

I recognized what he was saying and began to explain my logic: While I was working for Oracle Corporation, a small but rapidly growing company, I had been thrown into management at the tender age of 24 and was told that I was now in charge of training for the entire company and was tasked with building Oracle University and making it work in globally. I learned to say to myself, “We can do this. After all, how hard can it really be?” Now, I explained how this growth mindset had worked beautifully for me and many of my colleagues over the years. Yet steadfast, my colleague reiterated, “Yes, but that is what I need you to stop saying.”

“But why?” I probed.

He paused and said, “Because what we are doing is actually really hard, and I need you to acknowledge that.”

He wasn’t opposed to the idea that our enormous task was doable; he simply wanted me to acknowledge the reality of the challenge and recognize his struggle. He didn’t want me glossing over the challenge with my coat of optimism. So I did admit, “Yes, what we are doing is hard. It is really, really difficult.” I then assured him that I would do my best to stop saying that thing. Meanwhile, in the back of my mind I told myself “Sure, I can stop saying that. After all, how hard can it be?”

Is it possible that a can-do attitude that worked so well for you as an individual contributor may actually work against you as a leader? When you play the role of the optimist, you may undervalue the struggle the team is experiencing or their hard-fought learning and work (or give the impression that you do). Your staff may wonder if you have lost your tether to reality. And, when a leader seldom focuses on the problems, it leaves more junior managers to worry about those risks. In fact, by being too optimistic, you may actually be putting your employees in the role of having to play the “sensible pessimist.” Or worse, you might be sending a message that mistakes and failure are not an option because, after all, “How hard can it be?” And yet wise managers know that mistakes are inevitable, and that failure is just the price of creativity.

Having coached many executives, I know that senior leadership ranks are filled with glass-half-full types (in fact, one might need to be an optimist to cope with the inherent pressure of these positions). Consider how Nike, Inc.’s chief of global design, John Hoke, sparked a transformation in his organization once he realized the restrictive impact his and his management team’s optimism was generating. John gathered his senior leaders for a week-long offsite to explore new thinking in design and how leaders can multiply the talent inside their organization, which I helped facilitate. As I described the profile of the optimistic, creative, energetic leader, John and his team quickly recognized their own reflection and were curious how they might be inadvertently diminishing capability and ingenuity in others. John asked that we pause our agenda to better understand how his own hopeful style of leadership might actually be causing some angst. His team explained the extraordinary pressure they felt to deliver flawless design, every time. With the London Olympics around the corner and a brand promise to sustain, the group insisted that there simply was no room to fail.

With John’s encouragement, we decided to define a space for experimentation. We rapidly laid out their various work scenarios into two buckets: One where failure was OK and the other where success had to be assured. The group debated each until they agreed on every scenario. Within an hour, they had created a playground — a safe space for their teams to struggle and potentially fail without harming their stakeholders or their business. This thinking rippled across Nike’s design community and sparked leaders like Angela Snow, VP of creative operations and Casey Lehner, senior director of global design operations, to introduce the “risk and iterate” performance goal that encouraged each team member to identify something they would take a risk with and then iterate solutions throughout the year. This effort legitimized the possibility of failure and created safety for designers to tackle the scary problems.

John Hoke and his management team didn’t lower their aspirations or become less optimistic about the capabilities of their team. But, by acknowledging the downside and recognizing the messy, iterative path of innovation, they liberated their team to go bigger and reach further.

Go ahead and be optimistic. But first, be sure to acknowledge the downside so your team is free to explore the upside.

RealNLPTraining

Three people die every minute from tuberculosis — a treatable and largely preventable disease. Resistant forms continue to thrive, and increased travel makes the global threat very real. We face a public health emergency.

Without adequate financing, ministries of health and even private hospitals in developing countries often don’t have the resources needed to purchase diagnostic equipment, train workers, and ensure access to appropriate treatment. These obstacles make it difficult to track or report disease rates and also to purchase medications in sufficient quantity to create economies of scale.

What can the health care industry do to help fight disease, while still maintaining its commitments to shareholders?

While currently crippled by inadequate infrastructure in many countries, low- and middle-income countries will be the fastest-growing markets for pharmaceuticals and medical devices over the next decade. We at Becton Dickinson saw the opportunity to marry public health and business objectives through our Global Health Initiative, which we established to find sustainable ways to fortify over-burdened and under-resourced health care systems in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Our teams work in partnership to provide technical assistance and training to expand lab workers’ skills, secure pricing agreements to increase access to our products, and design medical technologies appropriate for resource-limited settings.

Fast and accurate diagnosis is essential in effectively treating a TB patient and preventing the further spread of the disease. Unfortunately, in sub-Saharan Africa, many labs use outdated diagnostic equipment, and the public health systems lack the infrastructure needed to ensure that patient specimens are properly transported and analyzed. Addressing systemic problems requires long-term commitment and cross-sector collaboration; a partial solution, such as donating equipment, is useless if workers are unable to use it or patients don’t receive their diagnoses.

Our vision is to establish sustainable health care systems that offer high-quality care using high-quality products, whether from BD or someone else. Our motives are both idealistic and realistic: We want to improve the standards and quality of health care in areas of the world afflicted with the greatest burden of disease, and we also expect to benefit from early experience in a nascent market. That is, we are after real shared value.

In partnership with the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Centers for Disease Control, we designed a platform to invest in the labs for TB and HIV in Ethiopia, Uganda, and Mozambique (and eventually in other high-growth markets like India).

Public-private partnerships are not new to corporate social responsibility, but we believe the breadth and scale of our lab-strengthening partnership are rare. Through the many challenges we’ve faced along the way, we’ve gained some insights that we hope will serve us and others as we continue to try to transform health care systems in Africa, India, and beyond:

Set and measure ambitious goals — together. In a large, multi-country, multi-organization partnership, it’s critical that all parties be equally invested in its high-level goals, not just rhetorically, or even philosophically, but because they each really have something equally ambitious to gain. Seeking to “improve the quality of laboratory diagnostics critical for the treatment of HIV/AIDS and TB,” certainly aligns with the missions of the CDC and local ministries of health to dramatically improve the quality of care in developing nations. But it also aligns with BD’s goal of improving our knowledge of developing markets and our understanding of specific customer challenges, so that we can adapt or develop new technologies appropriate for these diverse settings and then bring these technologies to market.
Redefine ROI. Rarely do public-private partnerships result in increased short-term sales, and if you measure ROI that way, your initiative will be doomed. A wiser approach recognizes benefits like improved reputation, strengthened customer relationships, and a deeper appreciation for an emerging market. While we cannot make a causal link from the initiative to BD’s bottom line, we do see our business growing successfully in the markets where we’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with partners, and can credit these collaborations as a catalyst that has enabled our company to develop its business in these challenging yet high-potential markets.
Learn in order to teach. Partnerships are rarely straightforward, and determining underlying needs for program beneficiaries is often part of the process. To improve national TB programs, for example, we needed to improve not only the labs but also the tracking process of TB specimens from the patient to the lab, and we needed to learn how. To do so, we enlisted one of our NGO partners to teach our IT team how to use geographic information systems (GIS). We then, in turn, trained local lab workers, who then trained others.
Make a multi-year commitment. After five years, BD, PEPFAR, and our local partners have made significant progress. But we are a long way from conquering TB or transforming these markets into sustained customers. That said, we hope that in the next five years through our continued collaboration, we’ll be able to show continued improvements in labs around the world.

Today’s health care marketplace calls for global problem solvers, not just products, and that is something we should all strive for — together.

RealNLPTraining

By Sonya Yeh Spencer, ITA Certified NLP Trainer, Approved New Code NLP Trainer, Advanced NLP Coach

…you are communicating about who you are to you on the inside all of the time, and this “Self Image” is what your unconscious sees every second, every minute, every day, even when you are asleep and at work to help you maintain that image!

Did you know that how you see yourself might just be the key to your personal success? Have you checked yourself out in the mirror lately? No, not in the normal sense in front of your dresser. But in your mind, how do you look? What kind of adverbs would you use to describe yourself? How do you represent yourself inside?

Why is this important? Because you are communicating about who you are to you on the inside all of the time and this “Self Image” is what your unconscious sees every second, every minute, every day, even when you are a sleep and at work, to help you maintain that image. This is like a program that runs behind the things we do and think. We do not deviate from what our self image represents.

So, why not spend some time and understand how you see yourself on the inside and make necessary changes. Really ask, “is what I see on the inside matching the reality?” If not, it is time to do something about it.

This article follows from where we left off in our earlier article “The Inner Game of Success” . We are going to show you a way to check your current self image and your desired self image and how to get yourself image aligned. In many ways, this process will help you make a conscious choice about who you want to be and align your unconscious process through conditioning and self programming. Our self-image is a bit like self fulfilling prophecy, by skilfully working with it, you can have more choices in how you would like yourself to be. Like this Dove ad youtu.be/XpaOjMXyJGk this process can help you discover aspects of you that you can choose to nurture, so you can accentuate them to be really a part of you.

note paper – take notes of what you find

Steps to check and align your self-image

Read the following steps first, then do it. All of the steps can be done in your mind, or you can lay out all the positions outside of you by following your instincts. The purpose here is to understand more about you, not to make judgements about what is good or bad. By understanding more about yourself, changes can be made to create an inner world that suits your current needs. You might need some note paper to complete this process, otherwise with practice, you can remember your thoughts along the way.

1. Ask yourself “How do I see me now”? If there is a location where this current self-image resides, then where would it be? Is it inside of your or outside of you? If it is outside of you, use a marker (post-it note, rock…) to mark the location of your current self-image. If it is inside of you, lightly touch the part of you and say thank you
2. Make the current self-image real, life size. If your self-image is outside of you, once you make it real – life size, step into this self-image and ask the following: Otherwise, pay attention to your inner, real – life size self-image and step into it in your mind while asking the questions below…
3. What are the adjectives you use to describe yourself? How would you describe you? How would people who are close to you describe you? Write down all the good, not so good, and the neutral self descriptions. Act as if you were your loved ones or close friends and write down how they would describe you
4. What do you believe about yourself to describe the you (from the previous step)? Also, write this down
5. What are the values that you hold dear that have been expressed in your and the other’s descriptions of you? Write them down
6. What are the behaviours that you do – that are a reflection of what your current self-image? What are the beliefs and values that you hold in that self-image? Write both of these answers down

We do not deviate from what our self image represents

7. Step out of your current self-image and move about a bit, then repeat the steps from one to six – but instead of stepping into your current self-image, this time ask yourself “What is the self-image that will enable me to achieve ……” This is the preferred, or future you
8. By now you have identified specifics for both your current and preferred self-image. Now stand in a neutral place where you can see both your current and preferred self-image clearly. Act as if you are a bystander and observe the two self-images. Notice any differences between the two. You can walk around and observe them from different angles to gain insight. It is okay if you feel that words escape you right now, but you might get a sense of something that is happening on the inside
9. Notice if there is anything that you might like to change in the preferred self-image? Make these changes now
10. Ask yourself, what would happen if I change my current self-image to be exactly the same as the preferred self-image and taking on all the beliefs, values and the behaviours that are associated with this preferred self-image. Consider both pros and cons of making this change. Notice your reactions on the inside. Is there any resistance? Step into this preferred self-image a few times and act as if it is now your self-image, just so you familiarise yourself with it. Are there any changes you need to make? Make all the changes you need until you are comfortable with it and are willing to make the change.
    Note: If there are strong signals not to make the change, ask is there any fear? If there is, ask what is it that you are fearing and where does it come from? Also, if it is okay to make the change for just a week to try it, if it does not work, we can always put it back. If by now you do not get a sense of agreement – thank yourself for voicing concerns, and leave the process here. You might want to leave this for a few days and insight into the situation might just come to you. You can also seek a professional NLP trained specialist for help. Make sure you find someone who is well trained to a high standard (at least 120 hours of training and 150 hours of practice after the training). Any concerns you can email us
11. So if you are Ok to proceed with the change you can go ahead and make both self images the same. Step into each one of them once they seem the same and make final adjustments to ensure they are the same
12. Step out and be in the neutral position and act as if you are the observer again. Ask yourself what do I want to do with both self images now? Just follow your instincts. If you have your self-images located outside of you, and have used markers to represent them, ask yourself “what do I want to do with these two markers?” Then do whatever your body tells you to do.
13. Be still for a moment; notice how you are feeling differently. How do you see yourself now? How do you see the world and things you want to achieve in life? Imagine how you will behave with this “self” in a situation you are about to face. Do it a few more times with different situations

Congratulations

One simple change can be a giant leap! Especially if it would be a change from a tropical reef salt water environment to a fresh-water world.

You have now just made changes to your self-image. This is a powerful pattern and you might need to repeat it a few times to make refinements. There might be things that come up during the process in the form of an unhelpful belief. Challenge yourself and ask “how do I know it is true?” Take your time to implement this process and allow yourself the time to integrate; just like putting it in the back of your mind and go about your daily life.

At the end of the week, spend some time to review what is different about this week? Have a look at this new self-image see if there are any shifts or is it how you would like this self image to be? It is important to understand that you are changing something that is quite deep and fundamental and new to you, so take your time. The more that you do it, the more you are going to discover yourself and have a sense of “I can direct myself and this is within my control”.

Again, we always welcome feedback and questions, just sent us an email. The above process has been implemented many times with our clients and students with great results. The differences are that this process was done under our guidance and many challenges were dealt with easily in sessions. I am quite confident that the above process after many refinements, most situation have been catered for.

If you are NLP trained you will realise this process is a combination of many different processes and ecology is built into it. Please note, unless there is true internal agreement, i.e. congruence has been achieved, do not make the change.

Live life and prosper!

RealNLPTraining

By Mark Spencer, ITA Certified New Code and Classic Code NLP Trainer and Change Agent

I came across the golden ratio recently in a documentary video about The Human Face presented by John Cleese, and published by the BBC. What intrigued me was that this ratio seemed to be so profound and yet I had not heard about it. Furthermore, it’s usage seemed to be so wide, and that it appeared in nature, which for me is an endorsement in itself for me. I then researched further into it, and found a whole body of information from various sources pointing to the same ratio that really took me by surprise.

There may be implications with this ratio for how we relate, our patterns of behaviour, generalised ratios in life, and a peek into the reverence that some have for elegance, beauty and timelessness of some constructions. Phi, the Greek symbol for the golden ratio has claims into areas of mathematics, Geometry, the proportions of the human body, the proportions of many plants, animals, DNA, spirals, the solar system, art and architecture, music (hear the sound of Phi), population growth and even the stock market. So, what is it?

What is the Golden Ratio?

I will not attempt to recreate the detailed mathematics behind the Golden Ratio. Its history stems back 2,500 years at least. There are claims that the ratio also goes back to the ancient Pyramids, and that there are examples found in Feng Shui. The golden ratio is also called the golden section (Latin: sectio aurea) or golden mean. Other names include extreme and mean ratio, medial section, divine proportion, divine section (Latin: sectio divina), golden proportion, golden cut, and golden number.

The golden ratio as defined in Wikipedia, where the Greek letter phi (far left character) represents the golden ratio.

The golden ratio (phi) represented as a line divided into two segments and if you divide a line into two parts so that: the longer part divided by the smaller part is also equal to the whole length divided by the longer part.

See Wikipedia as a starting point for further studies into the Golden Ratio.

Ancient Greeks

This ratio was first named the golden ratio by the ancient Greeks. In the world of mathematics, the numeric value is called “phi”, said to be named from the Greek sculptor Phidias. There are so called golden rectangles throughout the columns and other shapes of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. The space between the columns create perfectly formed rectangles.

Fibonacci Sequence

The Fibonacci Spiral / Sequence

Associated with the Golden Ratio is also the Fibonacci Sequence, a number sequence that starts like this: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55 and so on forever. Leonardo Fibonacci came up with the number sequence when calculating the ideal expansion pairs of rabbits over the course of one year.

The Fibonacci Sequence also forms some of the fundamentals of fractal spirals, but was originally based upon the breeding patterns of rabbits, where the first season the numbers are slow to change (in fact remain as 1), but as the family grew, the number sequence increases at a rate which eventually settles to the golden ratio, where it increases by a number which when divided by the previous number, would equal 0.618 each interval. This creates a spiral that becomes progressively wider as it grows.

Disk florets of yellow chamomile (Anthemis tinctoria) with spirals indicating the arrangement drawn in.

Today, its emergent patterns and ratios (phi = 1.61803…) can be seen from the micro-scale to the macro-scale, and right through to biological systems and inanimate objects.

The Fibonacci Sequence can be seen in Seed pods (Sunflowers), Pine Cones, Tree branches, Sea Shells (Nautilus), Spiral Galaxies (astronomy, the Milky Way), Hurricanes, Human Face, Human Fingers, Animal bodies and DNA molecules.

For the full article, see 15 Uncanny Examples of the Golden Ratio in Nature on io9.com/ We come from the future.

How do we perceive Beauty and Attraction?

To complete this look into the Golden Ratio, by touching on beauty, where I commenced my look into it. Some theorists call the ratio the Divine Proportions when the theory is related to faces and bodies.

So, why is it that some objects, especially people can be considered beautiful or attractive and some are deemed to not be beautiful. Many too have asserted that we make these decisions about beauty and attractiveness and a host of associated attributes within seconds of seeing a person, or even a picture of a person. What is happening – have we all been brain-washed by media and been told to see this person as beautiful until we believe it? There is something going on here I am sure, but the Golden Ratio claims to override this personal attraction because of natural laws.

Is there something in our unconscious, where these golden ratios are encoded, an innate drive to breed with the best and healthiest stock? If we have paired ourselves with someone that is not of these divine ratios, have we been driven by another aspect of the person? Is our perception of self driving us towards someone who is of a similar ratio?

The Human Body

The Golden Ratio as applied to body dimensions

Why is this attractiveness important or worthy of mention? Well, we live in a world where there are many stereotyped notions about the personality traits possessed by individuals of varying attractiveness, and there is evidence of this in the workplace as proposed by Karen Dion et al, in their book, What is Beautiful is Good.

Table of some findings

Find out the dimensions of some of the common modern day creations that may or may not be ‘like’ the Golden Ratio, such as neither of the global standards for paper sizes – A4 and letter sizes, but the old 8×5″ photographs were. Televisions – where the old 4:3 TVs and PC screens are filling landfills, and the 16:9 was a compromise of standards and is close to the Golden Ratio.

In the world of iPhones, iPad, iPad mini… I found that the iPad-mini was the first of the Apple iPhone/iPod/iPad family to be constructed according to the Golden Ratio. I am wondering if Apple learn something recently and had to bring out the iPad mini to fix it? Could they not do it while Steve Jobs was involved? I could not find many references to suggest either way, except that Steve Jobs didn’t think the market needed a 7″ iPad, which is close to what an iPad mini is.

As Applied to Photography

From www.phimatrix.com/demo.htm

Potential Uses for the Golden Ratio

Area

Potential Use

Internet

Webpages, WordPress Themes, Diagrams, advertising constructs or templates

Created objects

Phones, hand-held devices, tablets, laptops, screens, remotes, books, gifts, cards, business cards, credit cards (already used)

Advertising

Logos (already used by many car logos), icons, ads in magazines, ads in newspapers, billboards, ads on TV, packaging

Other

Sleep/Wake ratios, food consumption ratios, anything you can do in a cycle, architecture (as is already used), landscaping, desk/workspace, ergonomics

Conclusion

Maybe there is something very universal with the golden ratio. A part of me still wonders if we have been conditioned to see these relationships and consider one shape or proportion as ‘good’ when compared against another. Do countries adhere to this and some do not? Does it span cultures and timeframes or eras?

I wonder if we could do an experiment, where participants where not primed with notions of a ratio, and they were presented with shapes, some adhering to the golden ratio, and some not, and see if there was skewing towards a ‘golden’ rectangle or spiral. I am guessing some would need to know the purpose or context for deciding which is better.

Are there some other areas that we could apply the golden ratio? Like the wake:sleep ratio, where we perform better if we have 38.2% of our time in quieter, meditative or sleeping states? 38.2% of our day would be just over 9 hours.

Has the ratio (especially the spiral) been applied to when a video or post goes viral, where the number of hits grows at a rate of 1:618 just as rabbits breed (its origin)?

What relevance is there to NLP?

Well, nothing directly…. However, when we start to uncover some of the biases and influences we and those around us have as humans, there can be some bearing on our behaviour. That can be for you to decide if in your opinion, there is evidence of the ratio and how it may affect you and/or your clients.

Metaphors

There is another aspect regarding any concept like this – when we consider the world of metaphors, we observe patterns in nature and make connections as appropriate to our world or the world of our client, and the more we know about the world around us in terms of broad principles (golden ratio and perfect spirals), the richer might our metaphors be. So, whether we remember this as a piece of maths, a guide to beauty, knowledge of body proportions, a law of nature or a theory that bears little relevance to you personally, what can we learn and where can we apply it? For me personally, I will be viewing the world with open eyes (and maybe a tape measure) and see what relevance it has to my world.

Patterns of Learning

Are there implications to learning, patterns of study or teaching. For example concentration span – there have been many studies into the length of time that classes should be for teaching, and some say 40 mins, some 50 mins – the golden ratio would be 37:23, where this could be trialled as 37 mins teaching with a 23 minute break.

Are there other areas for high performance states, patterns that could be trailed to improve these, proportions of predicates…

Further References and Examples

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oL0wpOXX5-k (Phi-Matrix for photos)

www.flickr.com/search/?q=golden%20ratio (Golden Ratio photo group)

www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/calculate_convert/goldenratiocalculator.html (iPhone/iPad Application)

www.goldennumber.net/facial-beauty-new-golden-ratio/ (Facial beauty ratios)

www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.html Fibonacci References

pinterest.com/goodstfconsgmts/golden-mean-ratio-fractal/ (Golden Mean Ratio Fractal group on Pinterest) including Fractals, TEDxCharlotte 2010 – Randy Powell – Vortex Based Mathematic, Golden Mean (Beauty Ratio), Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvius, Pythagoras, Parthenon and TODAY, and many other references, articles, images and videos.

www.phimatrix.com/examples.htm Examples of applications of Phi in graphic design

www.goldennumber.net/uss-enterprise-golden-ratio-design/ (Star Trek’s USS Enterprise conforms to the Golden Ratio)

net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/other/the-golden-ratio-in-web-design/ Usage in web-design
d2o0t5hpnwv4c1.cloudfront.net/163_goldenratio/images/page-anatomy.jpg Usage in web-design

www.hongkiat.com/blog/golden-ratio-in-moden-designs/ Reference

www.phimatrix.com/design.htm

www.phimatrix.com/images/pmgridexample.gif

www.phimatrix.com/images/s-parthenonx.jpg

cdn.macrumors.com/article-new/2011/06/goldenratio.jpg iCloud, using the 1 and 1.618 relative sizes for parts of the clouds

designorz.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/toyota_logo_golden_ratio.png?w=730

designorz.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/twitter-logo-circles.png?w=730 Twitter logo

www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/06/the-sound-of-phi/ The Sound of Phi (the Golden Ratio) on Wired

Nautilus Golden Ratio -Animated, where the proportions are maintained as 1:618 throughout the spiral

And some who debunk the theory

education.theage.com.au/cmspage.php?intid=147&intversion=151

www.cdlmadrid.org/cdl/htdocs/universidaddeotono/unioto/matematicas/markowsky.pdf Myth Debunked

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Between 2002 and 2012, the shareholder return of the average airline company rose an uninspiring 5.6% a year. Diversified consumer services were a notch lower, gaining just 4.2% a year. Worst of all were computers and peripherals companies, with a 3% average annual return — barely the rate of inflation in many parts of the world.

It was just lousy timing if you happened to be in one of these industries, which were all in the bottom quartile of total shareholder returns (share price change plus dividends paid) in the 10 years through 2012.

However, one thing you can probably count on, if you are in one of these industries, is that average TSRs in your sector will be better in the next 10 years. Perhaps by a lot.

This isn’t just a hopeful observation. It is, rather, a statistical fact. Of the worst-performing industries between 1992 and 2002, almost 60% percent wound up in the top half in the most recent 10-year period. These industries’ returns improved as the supply-demand dynamics in their markets came into better balance, as the companies themselves became more efficient, as less well-managed companies got acquired or left the market, and as investors came to realize that the industries’ problems had been exaggerated and that they shouldn’t have been left for dead in the first place.

What’s the takeaway? Not, certainly, that you should relax if you’re in an industry that is going through a rough stretch. Nor that you should panic if your industry has been a recent darling of Wall Street, on the assumption that it’s only a matter of time until you’re out of favor. The takeaway is to stop thinking about whether the industry you are in is “good” or “bad” — recognizing that as the wrong question — and to focus instead on what you can do to win where you are.

Indeed, our study shows that the biggest variations in TSR are not between industries but within them. Yes, at 21%, the median annual return of tobacco, the best-performing industry between 2002 and 2012, was seven times higher than computers and peripherals, the worst-performing industry. The difference in the averages between those two industries was 18 percentage points — no small potatoes.

But the TSR variations of companies within these industries were far greater: 44 percentage points in tobacco and 69 percentage points in computers and peripherals.

In fact, among the 65 industries and almost 6,000 companies we studied across the globe, no industry had a TSR variation that was lower than 30 percentage points, and the variation in one industry, chemicals, was a whopping 206 percentage points. Top dogs in poor-performing industries (like LATAM Airlines, the Santiago-based airline company; Sotheby’s in diversified consumer services; and Apple in computers and peripherals) didn’t have to fret about their TSR performance. For them, industry was not destiny.

So how do the winners do it? In our analysis of companies that generate a top-quartile TSR within their industry, two data points stand out. First, these companies have revenue growth that is often two to three times the average of their industries; they are highly successful at increasing their market share. Second, top-quartile companies operate more profitably than other companies. Simply put, they best find ways to consistently beat their rivals.

Companies that grow their market shares while retaining above-average profitability usually offer a product or service that customers love — and which they can’t get elsewhere. Or they offer an identical product, but capitalize on cost-efficiencies and other operational advantages to offer it at a lower price. They are able to create these unique or low-priced products and services because of a system of differentiating capabilities that they’ve spent years developing. If they know what they’re doing, they reinforce and reinvest in these capabilities, protecting them even during times when they are making cuts elsewhere. If they don’t, they don’t remain consistent share gainers and profit leaders for long.

Profitable growth requires discipline: a realistic assessment of where the opportunities are and how they line up with your strengths. Inorganic growth can be a part of this — especially if the acquirer concentrates on assets that take advantage of its existing capabilities. As for organic growth, one method we use that works particularly well revolves around a framework called headroom. This is a systematic approach to identifying the customers in a market who are not wedded to any one supplier, figuring out which attributes would get them to give all of their business to you, and then adding those attributes. The key is to focus on attributes that draw on your differentiating capabilities. When you do that, it creates a disruption in the market that can work to your benefit.

How Not to Grow

To be sure, gaining share in a market that is a natural fit for your capabilities isn’t the only way to try to improve your financial performance. You could always roll the dice. And in periods when their core markets are weak, plenty of companies do just that — making “transformational” acquisitions or moving into less-familiar markets that they justify as adjacencies. A lot of times they are pushed in these directions by investment bankers and others on Wall Street who make a living off of other people’s willingness to take big risks. The moves that result (the stretch-acquisitions and adjacencies) may in fact lead to higher revenue in the short term. But they are rarely done at the urging of, or to benefit, existing customers. And the absence of needed capabilities within the companies making the moves frequently leads to unforeseen problems and financial losses. You may as well take a wrecking ball to everything you’ve built up.

We aren’t anti-risk and do not believe that any company should ever stand pat. But the shareholder return data over the long term make a pretty good case for staying put. Take your chances where the odds favor you: in your own industry, with customers you can get, using capabilities no one else can match.

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Most people think standard operating procedures are a strait jacket that limits their flexibility. Yet in our increasingly complex world of work, with so many possible decisions and steps, clever use of standards can liberate. They can actually make it easier to tailor customer experiences at low cost.

Consider how standards are helping the Cleveland Clinic, rated one of the top hospitals in the United States. As Chief Marketing Officer Paul Matsen told me, “We use enterprise-wide standards. There is one marketing communications team, and we work across all our institutes, such as heart and vascular, or cancer. Having a single enterprise brand and image creates organizational challenges because it seems as though it constricts autonomy. But it actually creates freedom within a structure. For example, we are building a development platform for the iPad, and defining how it will interact with our electronic medical record system. When we resolve that for this first application, then our people will be able to create content for other applications using the same standard platform. Once you set up the standards and platforms, you can do more, and you can do it well.”

The Cleveland Clinic cleverly uses standards to deliver operational consistency, reliability, and low cost. Yet at the same time they use these standards as a springboard for creating unique solutions for each customer based on a deep understanding of their needs. (I call this understanding and tailoring “customer intimacy”). The result is a powerful combination that fulfills two customer value propositions at the same time.

Another example at Cleveland Clinic is in search engine marketing. Paul Matsen: “We’ve seen that when patients are diagnosed with a disease, they’re increasingly going to the web to research care, diagnosis, treatments and doctors. We’ve reshaped our marketing mix to reflect this new patient behavior. We spend half our media dollars to reach consumers searching for health information, and we have built reliable and useful experiences for those who come to our site. We partnered with institute leaders to build a few patient pathways, and we’ve expanded to over 100. It’s a very efficient model for patient access. Building on our standard approach, we were able to scale and replicate easily.”

Twenty years ago my friends Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema asserted in their HBR article “Customer Intimacy and other Value Disciplines” that leading companies succeed by excelling at one of three “value disciplines” — operational excellence, customer intimacy or product leadership — while meeting industry standards in the other two. They predicted that future winners would need to master two of these value disciplines. And the smart use of standards, as at the Cleveland Clinic, is part of the answer.

I see more and more companies mastering “operating models” — that is, their culture, business processes, management systems, and computer platforms — that use standard work to drive operational excellence and also provide a platform for tailoring customer solutions. For example, in a previous post, I described how Tesco made major strides in its supply chain management in the 1990s by applying standard process disciplines. It then added customer insights it gained from its Clubcard loyalty program and online shopping data to those more capable supply chain processes to tailor customer offerings in local stores and online.

The traditional view that complying with standards is part of a rigid “command and control” management system should be replaced with a new model: clever application of standard work allows you to have both efficiency and the flexibility to offer unique solutions to each customer. In my next post I’ll delve more deeply into different kinds of standards, from checklists for safety to the standard work that forms the basis for continuous improvement.

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Although it doesn’t show up explicitly in any personality test, some people seem to be more prone to creating complexity than others. Instead of cutting to the heart of an issue, they tangle it further; rather than narrowing down projects, they allow the scope to keep expanding; and instead of making decisions, they defer until there is more data and better analysis.

These behaviors are characteristics of people that I call “complexifiers.” Like Pig-Pen, the Peanuts character who carries around his own cloud of dust, complexifiers seem to leave complexity in their wake, making it more difficult for subordinates, colleagues, customers, and even family members to get things done. Here’s a brief (disguised) example:

Due to changing market conditions, price compression, and the slow introduction of new products, a billion-dollar consumer products unit was starting to see erosion in market share and profitability. To turn things around, senior management brought in a new general manager, an industry expert named Phillip who had previously run the consumer products practice for a large consulting firm.

Phillip turned out to be a classic complexifier. At every meeting with his team he asked for additional data and berated his people for not knowing the answers to every detailed question he could think of. And although he seemed to be dissatisfied with some members of his team, he kept telling HR that he wanted more time to evaluate them, so no changes were made. Eventually he reorganized the unit into a functional/geographic matrix that he explained through an intricate series of slides that most of his people didn’t fully understand. He also created additional metrics that required people to spend more time on reporting. The net result of all this work was that people in the unit were busier and under more pressure than ever before — but market share and profitability continued to decline.

Obviously Phillip represents an extreme example of a complexifier with his insatiable hunger for additional data and inability to make fast decisions. But all of us fall into this category from time to time. If this kind of pattern seems all too familiar to you, and you want to learn how to think more like a “simplifier,” here are four questions that you can ask yourself and/or discuss with your team:

How much data is enough? Complexifiers always want more information, with the hope (or fantasy) that the next bit or byte will answer all questions and hold the key to success. Simplifiers understand that there will never be complete data and that it’s necessary to create hypotheses and action plans based on an intuitive sense of how much is enough.

Have we agreed on the key priorities? Complexifiers like to hedge their bets and not commit to a definitive course of action, particularly since some new information might surface that will change the plan. So rather than get locked in to a few things, complexifiers ask their people to keep multiple balls in the air. Simplifiers on the other hand narrow the focus to a few key things and give their people permission to stop doing things that don’t make the cut.

Do we have an efficient process for rapid review and course correction? Complexifiers like to spend their time in long meetings, sorting through reports and analyses, and trying to manage lots of disparate and unfocused work streams. Simplifiers have focused reviews of the key priorities and hold people accountable for their commitments and results. They also learn as they go, continually testing their hypotheses about what should be done against the reality of what’s working and what is not. This allows them to shift course whenever it seems appropriate or necessary.

Can we explain our plan to others? Complexifiers have a hard time communicating their plans to colleagues and customers, relying on intricate charts and diagrams and convoluted slides rather than simple, straightforward messages. One of the key characteristics of a simplifier is the ability to tell stories that convey the situation, the goals, and the plans — in a way that helps people understand what they need to do and how their work fits with everything else.

Some people are naturals at simplification. But for the rest of us, asking these questions can help keep us honest about whether we are slicing through complexity, or creating it.

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It is a profound irony that the more you know about a particular industry, and the more experience you gain in it, the more difficult it can be to move it forward with truly meaningful innovation. But it’s true, thanks to something known as “the curse of knowledge” — one of the most vexing cognitive biases identified by psychologists and behavioral economists. (Another big one is “functional fixedness” — a topic I will save for another day). Cognitive biases are very human and arise from our need to make sense of a situation before deciding on a course of action. As we acquire, retain, and process relevant information, we filter it through the context of our own past experience, likes, and dislikes. Not surprisingly, with every subsequent challenge, our response is increasingly shaped by our knowledge of “how we’ve always done it.”

This is part of why open innovation is so powerful. By definition, it sources valuable ideas and inventions from outside the walls of an organization. That not only brings more brainpower to bear on a problem to be solved, it brings minds that are not constrained by industry conventions.

But if you think that by merely opting for open innovation you will escape the curse of knowledge, you may be wrong. Assumptions based on convention can still undermine the effort because, at the outset of any open innovation, someone has to communicate what is being sought.

Made to Stick authors Chip and Dan Heath share a vivid illustration of how the curse of knowledge leads to communication failures. In an experiment, psychologist Elizabeth Newton asked subjects to choose among 120 well-known songs and then tap out the melody with their finger on a table for a listener to try to identify their choice. When she asked the tappers to guess how likely listeners were to recognize the songs, they predicted a 50% success rate. As it turned out, the listeners correctly identified only 2.5% of the melodies they heard tapped. (Newton’s 1990 PhD dissertation, “Overconfidence in Communication and Intent: Heard and Unheard Melodies,” gives full details.)

Try it yourself — tap away while a familiar tune plays in your head — and you will understand why the answers seemed so obvious to the tappers. In the same way, the knowledge in an engineer’s or technologist’s head (or a group of them) causes them to make assumptions about what should be clear to anyone, while failing to give outsiders the understanding of a problem that would allow them to solve it in a new way.

Sometimes the curse of knowledge leads experts to communicate what they’re looking for at too low a level. Recently, for example, my colleagues and I assisted a large consumer products company attempting to improve its packaging. It sells a perishable product that consumers don’t use all at once, so its engineers had identified the need for a better re-sealing solution. But when we articulated the need, we went beyond describing what would constitute an ideal sealing technology; we specified how much freshness and taste quality had to be maintained over what length of time. (Other packaging performance factors such as ease of use and cost were also stipulated.) Being clear that the need was to preserve food quality, not just to seal a package, affected how solution providers approached the problem. The overall set of submissions was of high quality, as judged by how well each met the criteria for an ideal solution. Most important, the search resulted in a new package innovation -creatively combining different approaches to achieve the goal — which was promptly patented by the client.

In another search, the curse of knowledge made an organization communicate its need at too high a level. This was the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, which decided to sponsor an open challenge to the scientific community to come up with an effective inoculation against that terrible disease. Unfortunately, defining the Request for Proposals as a vaccine challenge did not yield many high-quality responses. Our advice was to break down the need to a level where scientists who did not think of themselves as vaccine creators would engage. More fundamentally, this was a protein stabilization challenge. Once it was refocused on that critical stumbling block, the technology search brought back 34 proposals from highly qualified scientists in 14 countries. Three of these were sufficiently promising that IAVI funded their further development with $875K in research grants. Even for an organization full of smart scientists — indeed, especially for such an organization — it can take a third party, unencumbered by presupposition, to overcome the curse of knowledge.

The vaccine example underscores that if you define a challenge and its ideal solution’s qualities and characteristics in an application-agnostic way, you defeat the curse of knowledge in two ways. First, the knowledge of the expert sourcing the solution doesn’t translate to limiting assumptions about what form it will take. Potential solution providers are given an understanding of the challenge that doesn’t constrain their ideation. Second, the potential solution providers are less likely to self-select themselves and their ideas out of contention because they don’t think they’re relevant.

I regularly see companies’ open innovation efforts being undermined by the curse of knowledge. They write detailed specifications for the technology they are seeking based on what they have seen work in the past. They draw up exclusion lists that automatically remove certain companies or industries, and the science they have mastered, from their consideration. Without even recognizing that they are making assumptions, they contract their universe and discourage viable submissions.

The only way to avoid these missteps is to place a lot of emphasis on how the need for a solution is communicated up front. In open calls for innovation, we need to clearly communicate to others the real problem to be solved and the benefits the solution must deliver, as well as our own understanding of the chief stumbling blocks and the features a solution will offer.

In our role as innovation facilitators, we have to remember that a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing — and a lot of knowledge can be a curse.

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