Tuck Prof On ‘Triggers’ That Hold Us Back

What triggers should current MBAs be most cognizant of as they go through their programs and begin to re-enter professional life?

One of the things I talk about in the book is a great learning from Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker taught me that every decision in life is made by the person who has the power to make the decision—not the best person, the right person, the smartest person, or a wonderful person. And decision makers are the customers. He said your job is to make a positive difference—not to prove how right you are.

My advice for your readers is when you graduate into a job market, you’re in the role of sales. You’re predominately selling yourself and you don’t sell to your needs—you sell to your customer’s needs, as Peter Drucker said. You really want to communicate that you are a person who can make a positive difference—and not just communicate that you are smart. The danger with a bunch of graduates—especially from high-end schools—is that they are so focused on proving they are smart. They forget about making a positive difference and when they go into the job market, they’re more interested in trying to be impressive than they are talking about how they can help the companies they are going to work for.

Do you see certain triggers impacting this generation of MBA students compared to previous generations?

Oh yeah, and the huge difference is the internet and the advent of very sophisticated online media in all forms. About 20 or so years ago, I wrote an article and I predicted that media addiction would surpass drug and alcohol addiction combined as a social problem and we’re already there. The average kid who’s flunked out of school spends an average of 55 hours a week on media. We’re on to something called the monkey mind, which is a Buddhist concept. The monkey mind is the idea our mind is like a monkey, swinging from vine to vine through the jungle. And if we look at our concept of the monkey mind, the internet provides amphetamines for the monkey mind.

So for example, if you’ve ever gone online and said, ‘I’m going to look up something that takes about five minutes,’ three hours later, you’re still online and you don’t even remember why you went online in the first place. What happens is, you go click, click, click, and your mind is like the monkey swinging through the vines in the woods—without any thought into what we’re doing. So I’d say a greater challenge today than any generation before is keeping people on focus and not being distracted by the myriad triggers in the environment and things like social media or the internet, that can just take us completely off course. By the way, these are things that can be very positive, but they can also take us completely off course.

What piece of advice do you have for current and future MBAs to avoid these modern triggers?

As you wander through life, I would recommend something called the daily question process. It’s very simple. You get on an Excel spreadsheet and on one column, you write down the behaviors that are most important in your life. It could be things like job search, school, family, friends, or exercise. You write down a list of questions that are most important in your life. Every question has to be answered with a yes, no, or number. If the question is answered as a ‘yes,’ that is put as a ‘one’ on the Excel sheet, or a ‘no’ is ‘zero,’ or a number such as how many pushups did I do? I would say do this every day. It takes two minutes a day and it will help you get better at almost anything—it’s amazing how well this works.

Some people might be skeptical, thinking two minutes a day will help me get better at almost anything sounds too good to be true, but half the people doing this, within two weeks, quit. And they don’t quit because it doesn’t work; they quit because it does work. Because even though this is very easy advice to understand, it’s very challenging to do. You have to look in the mirror every day and it can be painful to do that. Especially for an MBA student, who’s a very busy person, this is a great discipline that takes two minutes a day and will help better than almost anything.

Many MBA applicants and students have had successful early careers and are on a trajectory to continue that – why should they consider your new book and the concepts in it?

Well, again, and the MBA students may have had large amounts of success in their lives, but the amount of success they’ve had in their lives compared to people who I coach, and the 27 major CEOs who endorse the book, is actually quite minimal. The people who I coach include the CEO of Ford, who was considered the CEO of the year in the United States; the winner of the presidential medal of freedom; the CEO of Pfizer; the CEO of Best Buy; the CEO of Target; the president of World Bank; etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. So these are all mega, mega successful people who are trying to get better. While MBA students are moderately successful, relative to people I’m used to coaching they’re not really in the big leagues yet. They might have a little room for improvement and the people I coach, who endorse the book, might be a little higher up the food chain than they are.

Any final thoughts?

In the book I talk a lot about active questions and how it’s important to ask yourself active questions. An active question that we talk about in the book begins with the phrase, ‘Did I do my best?’ And there’s six active questions I suggest your readers ask themselves every day. Number one, ‘Did I do my best to set clear goals?’ Not, ‘Did someone else set goals for me,’ (but) ‘Did I do my best to set clear goals for myself?’ Number two, ‘Did I do my best to make progress towards my goals?’ Number three, ‘Did I do my best to find meaning in whatever I did?’ Number four, ‘Did I do my best to make myself happy – did I do my best to be happy?’ Number five, ‘Did I do my best to build positive relationships?’ Number six, ‘Did I do my best to be fully engaged?’ These are six basic, active questions to ask every day.

We did a research study involving goals, so far with 2,537 participants, and we’ve done 79 different studies to test people asking themselves these questions every day. At the end of two weeks, we ask people if things are better or worse. Thirty-seven per cent of the people report they’re better at everything. Sixty-five per cent say they got better at four out of six; about 89% say they got better at at least one. About 11% said ‘no change’ and about .04% say they got worse. Every day these six questions get us to focus not only on what we cannot change, it gets us to focus on what we can change.

On a side note, if any of your readers would like to participate in our research, they can get tested themselves every day on these questions and see how it works for them. All you have to do is send me an email—marshall@marshallgoldsmith.com—and put in the subject, ‘six question research,’ and I’ll enroll any of your readers up in our research study.

For the MBA audience, one final point, specifically, is there tends to be a very high focus on intellectual expertise, which is a good thing. One thing I would focus on while an MBA student and what will be even more important afterward is interpersonal skills. Don’t get so focused on learning technical skills that you neglect the importance of interpersonal skills. At the end of the day, interpersonal skills will probably take you further than technical skills.

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