Art of Negotiation

My wife thinks I am good at haggling.I have to admit that I am a better haggler than my wife. It has nothing to do with any skill, but the fact that I am not embarrassed to ask for the lowest price. But the haggling most of us do is called as position based bargaining. When I haggle with the road-side or footpath vendors, my formula is to buy things at half the quoted price. So my low-ball number will be much lower than half-price so that when we finally settle at the half-price, I make it look like a fair deal for both sides. The truth is that even the vendor is aware of this and his objective is to slow down the rate at which he concedes. He starts reducing the price in smaller steps, extending the time taken to come to a conclusion, and thereby testing your patience. He will also use psychological tactics to make you feel embarrassed. The moment you walk away, he would drop the price steeper. He will be observing the pace at which you are moving away from him. The moment he realizes you are slowing down, he will stop dropping the price. Haggling is a psychological contest. Now you know why you should leave your shame at home before you go for shopping. You should be even more shameless to haggle in China. My h-constant (not the Plank’s constant, but the haggling factor) for shopping in China is 10 : to settle a price that is 1/10 the quoted price. You need to be extremely unemotional and fully shameless. I realized while shopping in China that the calculator is more than a number crunching machine. It acts as a translator. The vendor punches his price and you shake your head sadly, take the calculator and punch in your quote. The calculator changes hands back and forth till a final price is arrived at. The Chinese vendor uses another psycho trick, of raising the voice and keeps uttering the word “No Joking”. You should be impervious to all of this if you want the best deal.

But doing negotiation based on positions is not a recommended option in business. Any negotiation may be judged by three criteria: It should produce a wise agreement; It should be efficient; It should improve the relationship between the parties. Any negotiation based on positions does not meet these criteria. As the person’s ego is associated with the position he takes, it is highly unlikely that a wise agreement can be arrived at. The more extreme the opening positions and the smaller the concessions, the more time and effort it will take to discover whether or not agreement is possible. Positional bargaining becomes contest of will and thus strains, and sometimes shatters the relationship between the parties.

In the book “Getting to Yes”, the authors suggest that for a better result, one needs to focus on interests and not positions. The book quotes the example of Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Israel insisted on keeping part of the Sinai peninsula. Egypt, on the other hand, insisted that every inch of Sinai be returned to Egypt’s sovereignty. Negotiating on position did not lead to any amicable agreement. Looking at their interests, instead of their position made it possible to develop a solution. Israel’s interest lay in security and did not want Egyptian tanks poised on their border ready to roll across any time. Egypt’s interest lay in the sovereignty. Knowing these interests behind the positions, the two countries agreed to a plan that would return the Sinai to complete Egyptian sovereignty and, by demilitarizing large areas, would still leave Israeli secure.

Reconciling interests, rather than positions works for two reasons. First, for every interest there usually exists several possible positions, that could satisfy it. Secondly, behind opposed positions lie many more similar interests than conflicting ones. So how do we identify interests? Ask “Why?”. Put yourself in their shoes. Examine each position they take, and ask yourself “Why?”. You can also ask the other party, why they take a particular position. Make it clear that you are asking, not for justification of the position he made, but for an understanding of the needs, hopes, fears or desires that it serves.

Ask “Why not?”. Think about their choice. One of the most useful ways to uncover interests is first to identify the basic decision that those on the other side probably see you asking them for, and then ask yourself why they have not made that decision. Which of their interests stand in the way? If you are trying to change their mind, the starting point is to figure out where their minds are now.

Realise that each side has multiple interests. To understand that negotiator’s interests means, to understand the variety of somewhat differing interests, that should be taken into account. The most powerful interests are basic human needs like security, economic well-being, a sense of belonging, recognition and control over one’s life. These are easy to overlook. To sort out the various interests of each side, it helps to make a list. It will help in the quality of your assessment, as you acquire new information, and to place interests in their estimated order of importance.

If you want the other side to take your interests into account, explain it to them. Part of the task of impressing the other side, with your interests lies in establishing the legitimacy of those interests. You need to convince them that they might well feel the same way if they were in your shoes. Acknowledge their interests as part of the problem. If you want the other side to appreciate your interests, then demonstrate it\.

If you want someone to listen and understand your reasoning, give your interests and reasoning first and your conclusions or proposals later. Put the problem before your answer. Beware of arguing with the other side about the past, instead, talk about what you want to have happen in the future. Instead of asking them to justify what they did yesterday, ask, “Who should do what tomorrow?”

To summarise- focus on interests and not on position to result in a win-win solution. I wish I could use this learning to get an iPad with 3G and 32GB for $499 :-)

Happy Negotiating,
Ram

?B? - Question Behind the Question

Last week, I attended an off-site meeting of my group. One of the sessions, in the meeting, was to discuss “Personal Accountability”. We were asked to read the book “Question Behind the Question” by John G Miller. I found the concept explained in this book to be very profound. This blog highlights the summary and learnings from this book.

Anyone who has interacted with any government institution knows that, to get a job done one literally has to go from pillar to post. “It’s not my job”, “Go to that table”, etc., are the common phrases one hears. This problem is not restricted just to the government institutions. It can be seen in any organization. We call this malaise “passing the buck”. People take the functional boundaries very religiously and are not willing to go the extra mile, beyond the function to help others. These people do not have personal accountability. A few of the very many questions that can define lack of personal accountability are: “When is someone going to train me?” “Why do we have to go through all this change?”, “Who dropped the ball?”. The Question Behind the Question” (QBQ) is a tool that’s been developed and refined over the years, to practice personal accountability, by asking better questions.

The QBQ is built on the observation that our first reactions are often negative, bringing to mind incorrect questions, but in the moment of decision we can instead discipline our thoughts to look behind those initial questions and ask better ones (QBQs), the questions themselves will lead us to better results. One of the guiding principles of the QBQ is “The answers are in the questions”. If we ask a better question, we get a better answer. Here are the three simple guidelines for creating a QBQ.

1. Begin with “What” or “How” (not “Why”, “When”, or “Who).
2. Contain an “I” (not “they”, “them”, “we”, or “you”)
3. Focus on action.

Don’t Ask “Why?”. Why is this happening to me? Why am I not getting support? When one asks this question he feels powerless - like a victim. Questions with a “Why me?” tone to them say, I’m a victim of the environment and the people around me. Instead of “Why” question if you follow the QBQ guideline, the question can be rephrased as “What can I do to improve the situation?” “How can I support others?”.

Don’t Ask “When?” What we’re really saying is that, we have no choice but to wait and put off action until another time. Questions that begin with “When” lead to procrastination. Instead of “When will they take care of the problem?”, ask the QBQ “What solution can I provide?”. Notice the difference.

Don’t Ask “Who?” When we ask “Who” questions, what we’re really doing is looking for scapegoats, someone else to blame. Blaming others is always counterproductive. Instead of the question “Who made the mistake?” “Who dropped the ball?”, ask the QBQ “What can I do today to solve the problem?” or “What action can I take to ‘own’ the situation?”

Personal accountability begins with “me” not “you”.It is about, each of us holding ourselves accountable,for our own thinking and behaviors as well as the results they produce. This is why the second QBQ guideline contains an “I”,not “they”,”them” or “you”. Questions that contain an “I” turn our focus away from other people and circumstances and put it back on ourselves. We can’t change other people. We often can’t control circumstances and events. The only things we have any real control over are our own thoughts and actions. I can only change myself.

More often the term “we” is used to express the personal accountability. One should be careful not to mix-up personal accountability with team accountability. We can hide behind the team with thoughts – which become excuses- such as: “The team wasn’t given enough resources”. Personal accountability is not about changing others. It’s about making a difference by changing ourselves.

Practicing personal accountability calls for taking actions. If I don’t ask what I can do or make or achieve or build, then I won’t do or make or achieve or build. Only through action is anything accomplished. Action, even when it leads to mistakes, brings learning and growth. It leads us towards solution. It builds confidence. It is better to be the one who is told to wait, than one who waits to be told.

The spirit of QBQ is personal accountability: No more victim thinking, procrastinating, or blaming. I can only change me. Take action!.



Happy reading,
Ram

India Shining - Breakthrough Innovation

I have the habit of roaming around book stores at any airport before check-in. Lately I have noticed many management books written by Indians. Subrato Bagchi, with his trilogy of books, has captured the attention of both Indian and foreign readers. One of the recent books, I picked up, was on "Making Breakthrough Innovation Happen" by Porus Munshi. It talks about how 11 Indians pulled off the impossible. A very refreshing read, it makes every Indian proud of the innovations that are happenning in India. If the last decade made the world notice "India shining", the next decade will be even more prosperous for India. I pick the strides made by Cavinkare as the topic for this blog. Cavinkare has innovated to take on giants like Unilever ( Hindustan Lever in its previous avtar).They break the myth that R&D and technology-led innovation can happen only in large organisations. They have demonstrated how entrepreneurs can create winning ideas, even in markets dominated by giants.As we begin the new year, I felt it is apt to share these learnings on Innovation.



CK Ranganathan who started Cavinkare came from the family that pioneered the satchet marketing revolution in India by introducing the famous Velvette shampoo. He branched off and setup his own company and produced Chik shampoo sachet to be sold at 1 Rs. In creating his marketing network, he decided to change the norms. He did not enter into arrangements with established players, but with stockists who had no prior experience in selling FMCG products. He did this so that the stockists would work on his terms. Though the Chik business grew, it did not command the share Velvette shampoo had. Ranga came up with an out-of-the-box strategy to make consumers come back again and again and ask for Chik shampoo. He came up with the innovative marketing idea : he would give one sachet of Chik shampoo free for every four empty sachets of any shampoo. This scheme was the first of the kind and it took the market by storm. Later he changed the strategy and began giving one free sachet for every four used Chik sachets. The sale of Chik shampoo soared and it became an established brand. It had become second-largest selling shampoo in Tamilnadu behind Velvette.



Ranga realised that the penetration of shampoos in India was only 14%. He found out the rest of the 86% were using soap. The strategy of educating the people of disadvantage of using soap and advantages of using shampoo was not helping. One of the insight he had was that, if the consumer believed strongly in something, then don't attack it. Instead find the barriers to their using your product. Indeed, he found price as the barrier. So he came up with yet another innovation of making a concentrated version of the shampoo that was half the size of the original Chik shampoo. The size perception would make the Rs 1 consumer feel that it was a small size, therefore not for him. The existing consumers would, he believed, continue with the Re 1 sachet, while hordes of new customers, who were earlier locked out, would come in at the fifty-paisa price point. The Rs 1 shampoo was improved to have more conditioning and fragrance. With these types of, and more innovations Ranga tapped huge untapped markets and increased the market share of Chik from 5% to 22%. Today it is the second largest selling shampoo in the country.



He further found out that there were many people who were using natural products like shikakai, hibiscus leaves etc., He then created the shampoo "Meera" which had reetha nuts and almond. It was an instant success and still sells at a premium. He then launched Meera with shikakai in Tamilnadu, with hibiscus leaves in kerala. Because of the innovative initiatives, Cavinkare is the largest overall hair wash company in South India. Hindustan Lever and P&G are behind them.

He then took on the "Fair & Lovely" fairness cream. This was the business with higher margins and was dominated by a single player - Fair & Lovely.He realised that he needed to build credibility in the minds of his customers and make his products appeal to them. He found that pregnant women were given saffron and milk as they felt this would make the child fair and healthy. He used this fact and created the fariness cream that has milk and saffron in it. He also wanted to position this cream as something that could help change one's life/future forever. So he branded the fariness cream as "Fairever" and priced the product at a premium, based on insights that told him that the customers were willing to pay more as they knew that saffron was expensive. Again Fairever was able to wrest upto 18% market share in the first year of its introduction in South India.



What learnings can one can take from the success story of CavinKare? Go beyond market segmentation. See how to grow the overall market share. Listen to the customers. If it is the high price that is the barrier then innovate and create products that are low in price and tap into markets that did not exist. Keep prototyping in real time: do limited launch, let customers use the product, get feedback, make changes and launch again. Prototyping is one of the highest forms of insighting. Co-evolve the product working with the customers. Playing fields of the giants can be leveled by using insights that lead to innovation.

Wishing you a happy new year and that it bring lots of opportunites for innovation.

Happy reading,
Ram

Reflections, Priorities and Resolutions

Hey there ! ABABABAB…. . Oh what I meant was “Long time no see (C)”. The past weekends have been very busy for me - travelling on business and taking care of personal chores. However, I did not want to end the year without a blog. So here it is.

This is that point of the year, when an organization reflects on the year gone-by; what are the few best practices to continue onto the next year. More importantly, what are the practices that they would NOT like to repeat. The usual practice is to have a “lessons learnt” session and reflect on what went right, what went wrong - at the end of each project. However the year-end reflection, is more to take stock of the health of the entire organization. Usually reflection session are done off-site and preferably with an external leadership consultant who can observe the dynamics of the session and give valuable unbiased feedback.

Landing up in an offsite without an agenda for this session, can sometimes veer the discussion away from the main theme and may not conclude the session. Please note that the participants will be emotionally charged and want to let the steam out on the issues that have been brewing over the past year.

A formal pre-work including a frame-work to collect feedback, prior to the session will go a long way in having a fruitful session. The leader of the group has to be clear and state the objective of the session and let the external consultant moderate the discussion. Having the leader of the group as a co-participant, adds more veracity to the whole discussion. When the burning issues are debated, the leader may be tempted to defend it. But it is better to restrain from it, so that people can open-up and express their feelings and opinion freely. Based on the pre-work, one can have the team form into few groups to have parallel break-out sessions and discuss critical issues. The leads of these groups can come back and present the gist of the discussions and the actions they would like to take. The external consultant can then present his observations. The leader and the group together can prioritise the key actions.

One of the common mistakes made at this juncture is to have a laundry list of actions. Given that the following year will always be busier than the current one, it is best to take top three actions. To bring more accountability, it is advised that volunteers are sought to own these actions. If none volunteers, the leader can volunteer the owners for the actions. It is critical that the session concludes with a clear action plan and respective owners identified.

Some fun games can be planned during the course of the session to relieve the tension, if any and use this opportunity to further enhance the teamwork. Everyone likes freebies. This is the perfect opportunity to buy a book, relevant to the issues that the group is facing.

One of the follow-up of these reflections, which is usually missed, is the communication to the rest of the team, on what was accomplished in the off-site meeting. Remember that the rest of team knows that the leaders of the group were off for an off-site. If they do not hear from the leaders about what was accomplished, then they can ridicule the off-site meeting and will not be serious in implementing some of the actions that could percolate to them.

The other most critical follow-up of the reflection meeting is to tie-in the actions from the meeting to the next year’s priorities. This ensures that learnings from one year feed into the actions for the next year.



Talking about priorities, every company sets priorities every year. Similar to the reflections of a group leading to the actions/priorities for next year, a company does the same exercise with the top bosses of the company to come up with the priorities for the next year. Usually the priorities of the company are deliberately kept generic – For example Growing Market Share, this gives a sense of direction where the company wants to head.

The different business units and the sub- business units will have their own set of tangible priorities that will be linked to the company’s priority.

For nerd engineers, priorities may seem like yet another management fad. The responsibility to educate and lay emphasis on the importance of the priorities, lies with the leaders. They need to clearly communicate them so that every employee is aware of the company’s priorities and the group’s priorities. Visits by senior management of the company and the business unit to the local site are a perfect time for communicating about the priorities and reinforcing the same.



At an individual level, the leader or the supervisor has to set the priorities for the employee and show how it is linked to the group’s priority and to the business unit and company’s priority. This is very important and the employee needs to unambiguous on how his actions help meet a company’s priority.



At the turn of the new year, people talk about resolutions. Many of them make no resolutions finding the excuse that resolutions are meant to be broken so why set one at all. In the life of a person, if one takes every new year as a milestone, then these are valuable opportunities that can be used to set one goal at a time and become a better human being. These resolutions need not be big ones that are difficult to stick to. Instead of resolving to quit smoking, a person can resolve to reduce the number of cigarattes he smokes a day. May be, over a few years this will lead him to quit smoking completely.

As the new year dawns, be clear on your priorities, group’s priorities and the company’s priorities. Make and meet your new year resolutions and become a better person. Last but not the least, spend time with your near and dear. Convey your greetings to near and distant friends and family.

Wishing you all Happy Holidays and a very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Accountability

Accountability is currently the buzz word in the corridors of an organisation. In a bullish market, the pressure on the managers to meet the bottom-line is less. However when the chips are down, the manager is held more accountable for the results and the bottom-line. Various metrics are created to evaluate the performance of the organisation. Everyone, at every level of the organisation, is held accountable for the results. It is unfortunate that importance to accountability is given only during these downturn times. Had it been given enough importance during the good times, we wouldn't be seeing bad times.

Accountability and responsibility are often assumed to mean the same thing. In contrast with accountability, responsibility is defined as an obligation that arises from tasks we assume, to accept the consequences arising from the results of our decisions, actions, or inactions. Being responsible involves the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong and to act accordingly.



As per Wikipedia's definition: Accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies including the administration, governance, and implementation within the scope of the role or employment position and encompassing the obligation to report, explain and be answerable for resulting consequences.

You often hear employees asking for more responsibility. What is less understood by people is that, with responsibility comes accountability. Being responsible is not just about getting the offical designation, but also delivering on it. If someone gives you a job to do, you can get it done by someone else, but you are still accountable for producing the results. If the job isn’t done right, the only person to blame is you, because - even though you’ve delegated the responsibility, you are still accountable.Unlike responsibility, accountability cannot be delegated or shared.



President Truman's famous quote, "The Buck Stops Here" is the most well-known statements of accountability ever made, and it leaves no doubt in anyone's mind as to where the ultimate responsibility lies. But, if you, even for a moment, blame any obstacles for your lack of success, then you've given up your accountability and you are "passing the buck".



Sometimes a very big deal is made in the organisation, when everyone talks about accountability. In my opinion,You are paid for the job you do, so it becomes your duty to deliver the expected results. Accountability in this sense is the basic expectation an organisation should have, from an indivudual. There is no shying away from it.

Stevel Covey says “Accountability breeds response-ability.” As an individual, you are accountable for making and meeting your commitments.You are accountable to abide by the values of the organisation. As a manager, you are accountable for delivering results of your team, for maintaining team work, for taking care of the aspirations of the employees. As a senior manager you are accountable for meeting customer demands, for meeting the expectations of the shareholders and stakeholders. There is no room for blame, excuses or "victim mentality" attitude.



Bringing out accountability in employees depends on the level of competence and commitments of the employees. The employees who are new in the organisation are very enthusiastic about the future and their own ability to deliver results. But they are low on competence. In such cases, the manager's approach should be directive. He should provide clear direction about tasks, expectations, responsibilities and simultaneously build a strong relationship with the employee.

Over time, the employee may become highly competent. Although competent, without commitment the employee often displays negativity and procrastination. The manager, in this case, should focus on rebuilding and restoring the relationship by using a "supportive" model of listening and engaging with the employee. The goal is to get the frustration out, so the energy can flow again.

Star employees bring experience and commitment to the job. They are able to set goals and deliver results. They are very self-motivated and self-directed.The manager, in this case, has to empower the star. Challenging goals should be identified and the employee should be given great latitude to design and develop his own approach. The manager only provides guidance when needed.

I would sign-off the blog with an excellent quote from Sir Josiah Stamp:

“It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.“

Happy Reading
Ram

Managing Upwards

What comes to mind when you hear the the term "managing", is how to manage your subordinates. While, managing subordinates is the focus, most of the time, you should not ignore managing upwards. In the everchanging business environment and the re-organisations of management structures, managing yourself to work with your boss, is becoming even more critical. In the book "It Takes Two" Gene Boccialetti talks about three dimensions that make up a person's style.By knowing your style and your boss's style, you can manage yourself in the authority relationship. More important is to know the circumstances when your style works best, and when it is likely to fail you.

Boccialetti identifies three main factors that make up subordinate style: Deference, Distance and Divergence.

Deference asks the question: How important is it, that I hold onto a large share of power in relationship to my boss and try to exert influence in decision making?

Managers who are low in deference tend to push back, resist and counter argue everything that their bosses say. They want a large say in problem solving and decision making. They tend to be uncomfortable with implementing decisions that they did not have a hand in making, particularly where the reasoning behind the decision is unclear to them. They tend to thrust their own judgements and ideas at least, as much as they do the boss's. People with high educational credentials are generally associated with lower deference to authority. A common spectacle in the high technology R&D organisations. A common characteristic of low deference orientation is a discomfort with many of the customary trappings of authority, such as status symbols and other special privileges. In their view, deference means loss of dignity; the act of deference is equated with playing tactics and even so called kissing up.

Managers who are high in deference are content to let their bosses sort out priorities and solve problems. They may act as good soldiers and prefer to have their impact through action and implementation. They like the boss to be clear and provide structure and guidance.High deference managers are disproportionately represented in engineering, finance and accounting.



Distance asks the question: How important is it that I establish a person-to-person, not just a role-to-role, relationship with my bosses?

A manager who is oriented to a more personal relationship has a low-distance style.Such a manager believes that a boss and subordinate should establish more personal contact and engage in more personal disclosure in the course of business together. They argue that the such personal contact improves decision making, performance, and motivation. Having close relationship with the boss, gives them the feeling of confidence and security that the boss will be interested in their own development and advancement.People from human resources, sales and marketing are more oriented to personalizing relationships than those in accounting and engineering.



On the other hand, managers who prefer to maintain a more business-like or arm's-length approach to relationship, have a high-distance style. They believe that more work can be done because less time is consumed talking about things that are not immediately and obviously relevant, to the task at hand. They also feel less political vulnerability in this orientation, as there is less chance that personal information might be used against them.

Divergence asks the question: How important is it for me to protect myself? Should I assume our goals are aligned, our methods are alike, and my boss is my ally, not my competitor or even my adversary?

Subordinate managers with an orientation to low divergence assume there is a close alignment between themselves and their bosses over legitimate goals and the means for achieving those goals. The boss is seen as an ally who can be trusted.Many low-divergence subordinates see the big decisions being made at higher organisational levels and accept that their primary contributions are made by joining others to operationalise decisions.Government agencies, hospitals, military rank lowest in divergence.

Subordinate managers with an orientation to high divergence, on the other hand, tend to see the boss as a competitor or adversary and are likely to mistrust the boss.They see the relation to authority as one that is very likely to involve divergence over goals and over the means for achieving them. Rather than trying to directly influence the boss, high-divergence managers would generally chose other options like sabotaging thieir bosses' directives, independent action, finding allies and forming a coalition, leaving the organisation, or blowing the whistle.

Deference, Distance, and Divergence are the factors that make up subordinate style, but they do not occur in isolation. The varied degrees of each of these factors, combined in different ways, result in an individual style. You have to assess your style based on the above factors.



To be effective in managing upwards, you have to develop flexibility in your approach. You have to recognise the situation that would be better handled with a style, different from your usual and accustomed approach. If you are a person with low deference, you need to pay special attention to crisis situations. This is no time to push back and seek influence. It is time for action. Similarly, if you are a person with low distance style and realise confidences are not respected and you have clear data to support it, then be careful and selective in whom you confide.

Find out what your boss thinks of your effectiveness, as a pair. Find out how your boss judges this effectiveness. Find out how your boss sees you, on each of the three factors.Does your boss's view differ from your view of yourself? If so, find out why? Then, develop a plan to bring underused traits into play - if you lean towards accomodating the boss, then work at being more inner-directed - pushing for influence. Establish clear unambiguous behavioral indicators and monitor it.

Continually monitor, get feedback, adjust, evaluate and monitor again until new, variable patterns become reflexive and shifting your orientation becomes second nature.

Happy reading and good luck in identifying your style and managing upwards.

-Ram

The Effect of Expectation

For the past two weeks I was on travel and then celebrating Diwali, that I missed out on blogging. Having made decent progress on blogging this year, I feel an inherent pressure to continue blogging every week. BTW the visitor counter on my blog page rolled over 1000, a small milestone met. I imagine readers expecting more blogs. So what does expectation do to a person? How can expectation be used as a positive force? In this blog, I explore the effects of expectation. Yet again, I take a chapter from the book "Predictably Irrational" to emphasise this theme.


Expectation is a mighty power indeed—so much so that a doctor can take an inert pill and tell a patient that it is a powerful drug, and the patient will react as though the actual drug has been taken. This well-documented phenomenon is called the placebo effect. It might also be called the "expectation effect". Back in Hyderabad, we have a family doctor who has pills filled in different plastic bottles. All these bottles looked alike. Even the pills were white in color. Some of the bottles contained pills of different sizes. For any illness we report, we get some white pills from one of these bottles. Within a few days, we were cured. Sometimes, what I wonder is whether these pills actually cure our illness, or is it our expectation that the doctor is good and he can cure any illness. The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that the placebo effect was playing a big role in our getting cured.



Whenever we start something believing that it would be good ,it generally is. When we think it will be bad, it will be bad. Dan Ariely in the book "Predictably Irrational" shares the experiment he and his colleagues carried out. They did a beer experiment. They told a set of MIT students the presence of vinegar in the beer before they tasted the brew. To the other set they told about the presence of vinegar after the brew was tasted. As it turned out, the students who found about the vinegar after drinking the beer liked the beer much better than those who were told about the vinegar up front.Telling the participants about the vinegar at the outset actually reshaped their sensory perceptions to align with this knowledge and accordingly influenced their expectations.

A profound and irrefutable law of life is that what is expected, tends to be realized. It happens all the time. The most famous experiment about this in education happened in the '60's in San Francisco and you can read about it in "Pygmalion in the Classroom." In that study, a normal distribution of students increased their IQ's by 15 to 30 points in one year simply because the teachers believed they were the best teachers and that they were given the best students (neither of which was true).Expectations drive so much of what happens around us.


Expectation can influence nearly every aspect of our life. The other evening at a team dinner,given by my boss,I was intrigued by the exotic description - mint with lemon and sprite, of a mocktail. I ordered it in anticipation of its taste and when it arrived, I thoroughly enjoyed it. My colleague who just repeated my order without reading, did not enjoy it. Now you know why most of the upscale resturants have fancy names on their menus and give detailed exotic descriptions. They can effectively influence the taste of the customers with this pre-knowledge.

Dan explains experiments done by neuroscientists to compare consumer's preference to Coke or Pepsi. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging machine. It turned out that the brain activation of the participants was different depending on whether the name of the drink was revealed or not.The dorsolateral aspect of the prefrontal cortex of the brain, an area involved in higher human brain functions like higher-order cognitions and ideas, was also activated. This should be good news to any advertisement agency because it means that the bright red can, swirling script and myriad ad messages, that have come down over the years, are as much responsible for our love of Coke as the brown bubbly stuff itself.

Expectations also shape stereotypes. This is why we have the expectation that an elderly person will need help using computers, or a student in IIT will be intelligent, or a succesful businessman has to be a Gujarati, or the kirana stores are run only my marwadis etc. One can see these stereotypes, even at work. Consider, a team that is aggressive, innovative and delivering consistent results. The expectation is that, any person joining the group will already have the DNA of this group.



Sam Walton said "High expectations are the key to everything". When you lead a team, set high expectations for the team. The team will find ways to meet them. My new boss says that he never apologises for setting a high bar for his team. I found this statement very profound. The more successful the team becomes, the more they believe in themselves.They then become better at triggering the anticipated positive result of whatever event they are trying to bring about.Along with the team, as you grow into a better person, better begets better and you do indeed become better and better.



Karen Stephens on parenting exchange says :Clear expectations help kids behave. Be specific about expectations. Focus on what children can do, rather than what they can't do. Give children reasons for expectations. Communicate expectations, offer choices, and then move on without haggling. High expectations move children forward, even if they don't always succeed.

So never underestimate the power of your expectations—on the people around you—or on yourself! Raise the bar.

Michael Jordan quotes "You have to expect things of yourselves before you can do them".

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