The Mysteries of the Brain

The Power of Habit – Charles Duhigg (Random House)

 I was interested in this book from a variety of perspectives:

·         As a professional marketer the formation of habits certainly has some implications for what I do for a living.

·         My wife suffered a stroke which impacted her brain and the way she deals with information.

·         A family member with addictive tendencies and shows signs of obsessive compulsive and bipolar disorders.

In the The Power of Habit author Charles Duhigg certainly discusses how the brain reacts and acts in the formation of habits. Duhigg also gives examples of how people who have suffered some form of traumatic brain injury may have unaffected portions of their brain compensate for the injured sections. Along the way Duhigg really highlights the overall lack of definitive knowledge physicians and scientists truly have about the brain and its function.

Duhigg offers some basic steps in the formation of habits as well as the modification of habits and how even small changes in the process can have a dramatic impact in altering habits; including both positive and negative habits. When it comes to those with addictions, many will disagree with this section, which in the end doesn’t really have a foundation in science but does have some practical implications in our lives.

Particularly interesting are the portions of the book that deal with consumer habits and how businesses and marketers can use big data and predictive analytics to drive consumer habits by altering the decision making process to drive choice.

While it doesn’t offer “scientific proof” that some may be seeking, The Power of Habit does offer some intriguing insights into habit formation and the potential methods of alteration.

Finding The Stars in Your Universe

The Star Factor – William Seidman and Rich Grbavac (AMACOM)

I don’t recall the source, but I recently saw a post on LinkedIn to the effect of a company bean counter talking to a CEO about paying for special training for a talented staffer: loosely paraphrasing-  “what if we pay and they leave?” to which the CEO responded- “what if we don’t and they stay?”

One of the biggest challenges that businesses face, even in a difficult economy, is to identify and retain talented individuals. All too often it is the process to identify the talent that is the hard part; like the song says, “you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

In an effort to help businesses identify and retain star talent, Dr. William Seidman and Richard Grbavac from the the performance improvement company Cerebyte have put together the book, The Star Factor – Discover What Your Top performers Do Differently – and Inspire A New level of Greatness in All.

Seidman and Gbravac have boiled down the identification process to a set of three simple questions that you can ask yourself-

1.      Who are the people you most respect for their ability to perform some or all of the functions associated with the initiative, program or project?

2.      Are these the people you would go to if you needed to solve a critical problem or to identify leadership for a new initiative, program, or project dealing with this function or area of expertise?

3.      If these people told you how to do something would you (a) believe them and (b) do whatever they said to do, without question?

Do you notice a common theme that runs clearly through these questions? What is it that sets your team’s stars apart from the rest of the pack? TRUST! You can trust them to get the job done, to bring their A-game every day and to be able to take the reins of a project and move it forward without you needing to micromanage every step of the way. The stars on your team are the people you trust.

Now the question becomes how do you give those stars and the potential stars on your team the tools and resources they need to take things to the next level and succeed? The difficulty for some leaders is fear; fear that they will lose those stars or be outshined by the people on their team. It is that “fear factor” that you will have to learn to manage and overcome to continue you growth and success.