We dwell too much in the past. Missing the opportunities the future presents. With so much change happening around us all the time, it’s easy to get accustomed to it and forget how fast things are moving. For example, if you’re over forty, you’ve been around longer than personal computers. Change can be overwhelming but we must embrace it, only then can we convert it to opportunities. Irrespective of who you are, where you are you must rise to the occasion and use change a force of opportunity. How do you do that? By thinking like futurists. Thats not just a title or designation or a group of experts at a tech startup it's a mind set for being a disrupter vs a follower.

Think like a futurist? What does that imply? Simply wrapping your head around whats about to happen even if it has no basis in history. Meaning to change before change forces your hand. Looking around society at large and Pakistanis in specific, we’re not too good at.

Can you blame us? We have so many day to day constructs that kill our spirit our ambition given we are fighting one good fight every day, we are missing out on what the future holds. I ran a poll, taken by about 4000 people some time back, more than 75% people don't think about or plan for the future 5 years out. That was shocking but not un-expected.

So a vast majority don't even contemplate what the future holds let alone, plan for it. We are leaving too much on the table by being blind sided by this, it's called the “future gap”. This lack of long term thinking is leaving a vast majority of Pakistanis at a distinct disadvantage to those who frequently think about and plan for the future, locally, regionally and globally.

If we aren't trained to think about the future how can we at-least make a conscious choice to start now? We can start small, by looking at what's happening globally in terms of shifts in thinking and progress, we need to then insert our selves in to looking at what outcomes those changes may have and how they will impact us but above all, have an open and innovative mindset to accept, investigate and study things that are outside our belief system or current understanding. It wont happen over night but if we plan for it today, we can likely hitch a ride on future-proofing our outcomes.

Outcomes

To get better outcomes you must know how to negotiate and steer conversations and arguments in your favour. It is a skill learnt over time with a deep basis in human psyche. To get better outcomes you need to think with your brain and act with it too vs over indexing on the heart and do what feels like achieving an "in moment victory".

Think about the future, think long term, think about winning by conditioning your self to be in the other persons shoes.

Strategy #1

Throwing people off guard.

How?

To win your opponent, give a sincere compliment during the argument/discussion. It throws them off guard and they will be more agreeable because they walked in with the preconceived notion that you are against their views or them. Never make it personal unless it's a compliment.

Strategy #2

Asking the How vs the Why

What?

To win in a negotiation you need move past held beliefs and challenge the depth of your opponents knowledge you do that by asking How something works vs Why. Everyone knows 'why' they support something, but only few can explain HOW that actually works. Always focus on the How...

Strategy #3

Stay calm whilst making them loose their temper

Really?

Bring calm where there is chaos. But also be ready to create chaos to induce calm. Seems counter productive but it is a key item to winning any thing. People become irrational when they loose their temper, never loose yours, adding a steady pair of hands aka being calm in any situation can throw off others, to a point where you actually make them realise that their stance + tantrum is likely the wrong outcome.

One New Thing

Be Mr/Ms 1%. Every one talks about the 80-20 rule and many other rules but we all forget the 1% rule. What is that?

The Aggregation of Marginal Gains

It is so easy to overestimate the importance of one defining moment and underestimate the value of making small improvements on a daily basis. That is the 1% rule, trying to get 1% better at some thing every day. Don't believe me? See the math.

Take any thing in life that if you can improve by 1% every day for a year, at the end of the year, you will be 37 times. Yes you read that right. So 37X better at the end of one year.

Too often, we convince ourselves that massive success requires massive action. The above basis clearly corrects that error in our judgement. We can have 37X better outcomes only by committing 1% every day.

Look at our lives, whether it is losing weight, building a business, making amends, fixing some thing, or achieving any other goal, we put pressure on ourselves to make some earth-shattering improvement that everyone will talk about and internalise it as being one big effort hence likely never get to it.

Small choices , Small data, Small gains = Big Wins

The best way to think about it is that on day zero, there is basically no difference between making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse. Meaning in todays $s there is no difference. But in future dollars it will compound.

But heres the kicker , as time goes on, these small improvements or declines compound and you suddenly find a very big gap between people who make slightly better decisions on a daily basis and those who don't. This is why small choices don't make much of a difference at the time, but add up over the long-term. So over-index on small choices, using small data to get small gains so that you can have outsized outcomes and big wins.

Boring stuff that scales

Customer service. We just don't get it. But if done right it scales. Here are some thoughts from a previous post I wrote, Incase you want to read the details.

The art of customer Service is an art that we need to look at very carefully. Just look around, from banks to telcos, from restaurants to every thing else in between. The common thread is the apathy in how we get treated. It seems that we don’t value the basic tenant of what makes a good customer experience, let alone a great one.

Let's examine the basic act of going to a restaurant. The experience starts from

1) being greeted at the door

2) being seated, followed by

3) a server promptly taking your order. The orders are then written down(one would expect), so far so good.

This is where the process breaks down and doesn't scale.

Without fail, when multiple people are seated together and the server returns with the food, chaos ensues. Typically finger pointing starts as to where each order needs to go, a simple problem that perhaps is not a problem for many, but examine this critically as it sheds light into our customer service makeup.

All it takes to solve this problem is a simple note pad and a pencil and the act of noting who ordered what, so when the order comes through just placing the food corresponding to the person who ordered it.

Without fail, every time I go to a restaurant in Pakistan , this is the rule and not the exception it seems. The servers are always scrambling to figure out, what goes where. Else where in the civilised world this is a common practice yet we some how fail to adopt it, frankly most of us don’t even care.

This is the boring stuff, that we over look and this is what gates us from having good things. Why does McDonalds have 1000s of locations?It's simply because of process. We need to have customer service as a process, its mundane and boring yet critical to help us scale our outcomes.

We can draw inspiration for great customer service from global organisations like Costco stores, Zappos and Apple to name a few. There is always a starting point for these things and it must start from organisations reviewing who runs their customer service function and if they have real world experience in providing world class service.

It’s a mind set thing, any body can get customer service right when you are dealing with higher end products, the real difference comes when mass market product and service companies get it right.

You heard(read) it here first

Small Data Wins. By now if you are a regular reader, you know my morbid fascination with small data, in a world full of big data. There is a method to the madness. Being reductive helps in every thing. In a world full of choices, know that you are not alone if struggling with making a quick choice. Quick choices are an oxymoron in a world cluttered with options.

An experiment showed that customers were more likely to purchase jars of jam when there were six flavours displayed than when there were 24 flavours, because making the difficult decision when there were too many flavours deterred potential buyers. This phenomenon is called the Hicks law.

Hick's law is a psychological principle which states that the more options are available to a person, the longer it will take for him or her to make a decision about which option is best. So for better outcomes you must learn to limit options. Hick's law only applies to situations in which decisions are simple or based on quick reactions.

Conversely, a decision which requires more thought or research will not be affected, such as choosing a restaurant to eat at or a multiple-choice question on a test.

What you should be reading(& then watching)

The Bear Trap: Afghanistan's Untold Story. Timing seems about right. To judge history or to make sense of the present or the future, this is a must read for every Pakistani. Controversial when it came out and remains to this day. First published in 1992, this reissued book is the memoir of the Pakistani brigadier general who masterminded the equipping and training of the Afghan mujahideen in their struggle against the Soviets in the 1980s. He is, in fact, as the book demonstrates, the only general since the Second World War to have directed troops in action within the Soviet Union's own borders. It is a fascinating read and some thing that will allow us to understand to some degree the makeup of the challenges we are about to face.

Monetise your time (by)

Being Indispensable. Simple. Short. The one trait that you need to optimise for is to be indispensable in every thing you do. If you do it right you can monetise all your outcomes.

In this exclusive video interview, Seth Godin explains how to be INDISPENSABLE. Godin argues that one of the main barriers to innovation is the "lizard brain," the primitive part of the human brain adapted for survival. He explains that the lizard brain "loves being a cog in the system" because it's safer than doing something foreign and untested. It is the best gift you can give your self this 14th Aug. Invest the time to see the video & monetise your time.

Made in Pakistan

Non processed Artisanal Cheese. We have been exporting away $s to import cheese, but a lot has changed domestically. Finally we are producing incredible local hand crafted cheese. One such story is that of FCM (Farmers Cheese Making). There is a VOA Short film on their journey along with some content below.

One Last Thing

The day after Pakistan was created the front page of Dawn read 'Birth of Pakistan an event in history'.

Let us reflect on what we have been able to achieve since birth and what we can do to enhance our outcomes as a people, nation and country.

#PakistanStrong