What Marketers Can Learn From Obama's Campaign

Change -- and Positioning -- You Can Believe in

By Al Ries (Advertising Age)

Nov. 4, 2008, will go down in history as the biggest day ever in the history of marketing.

Take a relatively unknown man. Younger than all of his opponents. Black. With a bad-sounding name. Consider his first opponent: the best-known woman in America, connected to one of the most successful politicians in history. Then consider his second opponent: a well-known war hero with a long, distinguished record as a U.S. senator.

It didn't matter. Barack Obama had a better marketing strategy than either of them. "Change."

Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels was the master of the "big lie." According to Goebbels, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."

The opposite of that strategy is the "big truth." If you tell the truth often enough and keep repeating it, the truth gets bigger and bigger, creating an aura of legitimacy and authenticity.

Clinton's 'solutions' fizzle
What word did Hillary Clinton own? First she tried "experience." When she saw the progress Mr. Obama was making, she shifted to "Countdown to change." Then when the critics pointed out her me-too approach, she shifted to "Solutions for America."

What word is associated with Ms. Clinton today? I don't know, do you?

Then there's John McCain. An Oct. 26 cover story in The New York Times Magazine was titled "The Making (and Remaking and Remaking) of the Candidate." The visual listed some of the labels the candidate was associated with: "Conservative. Maverick. Hero. Straight talker. Commander. Bipartisan conciliator. Experienced leader. Patriot." Subhead: "When a Campaign Can't Settle on a Central Narrative, Does It Imperil Its Protagonist?"

Actually, Mr. McCain did settle on a slogan, "Country first," but it was way too late in the campaign and it was a slogan that had little relevance to the average voter.

Tactically, both Ms. Clinton and Mr. McCain focused their messages on "I can do change better than my opponent can do change."

"Better" never works in marketing. The only thing that works in marketing is "different." When you're different, you can pre-empt the concept in consumers' minds so your competitors can never take it away from you.

The ultimate slogan
Look at what "driving" has done for BMW. Are there vehicles that are more fun to drive than BMWs? Probably, but it doesn't matter. BMW has pre-empted the "driving" position in the mind.

The sad fact is that there are only a few dozen brands that own a word in the mind and most of them don't even use their words as slogans. Mercedes-Benz owns "prestige," but doesn't use the word as a slogan. Toyota owns "reliability," but doesn't use the word as a slogan. Coca-Cola owns "the real thing," but doesn't use the words as a slogan. Pepsi-Cola owns "Pepsi generation," but doesn't use the words as a slogan.

As a matter of fact, most brands follow the Pepsi pattern. Every time they get a new CMO or a new advertising agency, they change the slogan. Since 1975, BMW has used one slogan: "The ultimate driving machine." Since 1975, Pepsi-Cola has used these advertising slogans:

* 1975: "For those who think young."
* 1978: "Have a Pepsi day."
* 1980: "Catch that Pepsi spirit."
* 1982: "Pepsi's got your taste for life."
* 1983: "Pepsi now."
* 1984: "The choice of a new generation."
* 1989: "A generation ahead."
* 1990: "Pepsi: The choice of a new generation."
* 1992: "Gotta have it."
* 1993: "Be young. Have fun. Drink Pepsi."
* 1995: "Nothing else is a Pepsi."
* 2002: "Generation next."
* 2003: "Think young. Drink young."
* 2004: "It's the cola."

Thirty-three years ago when the "Ultimate driving machine" campaign started, BMW was the 11th-largest-selling European imported vehicle in the U.S. market. Today it's No. 1.

Thirty-three years ago, Pepsi-Cola was the No. 2-selling cola in the U.S. market. Today, many advertising slogans later, it's still No. 2.

The average Pepsi-Cola advertising slogan lasts just two years and two months. The average chief marketing officer lasts just two years and two months. The average corporate advertising campaign in BusinessWeek lasts just two years and six months.

The Obama campaign has a lot to teach the advertising community.

1. Simplicity
About 70% of the population thinks the country is going in the wrong direction, hence Obama's focus on the word "change." Why didn't talented politicians like Ms. Clinton and John Edwards consider using this concept?

Based on my experience, in the boardrooms of corporate America "change" is an idea that is too simple to sell. Corporate executives are looking for advertising concepts that are "clever." For all the money being spent, corporate executives want something they couldn't have thought of themselves. Hopefully, something exceedingly clever.

Here is a sampling of slogans from a recent issue of BusinessWeek:

* Chicago Graduate School of Business: "Triumph in your moment of truth."
* Darden School of Business: "High touch. High tone. High energy."
* Salesforce.com: "Your future is looking up."
* Zurich: "Because change happenz."
* CDW: "The right technology. Right away."
* Hitachi: "Inspire the next."
* NEC: "Empowered by innovation."
* Deutsche Bank: "A passion to perform."
* SKF: "The power of knowledge engineering."

Some of these slogans might be clever, some might be inspiring and some might be descriptive of the company's product line, but none will ever drive the company's business in the way that "change" drove the Obama campaign. They're not simple enough.

2. Consistency
What's wrong with 90% of all advertising? Companies try to "communicate" when they should be trying to "position."

Mr. Obama's objective was not to communicate the fact that he was an agent of change. In today's environment, every politician running for the country's highest office was presenting him or herself as an agent of change. What Mr. Obama actually did was to repeat the "change" message over and over again, so that potential voters identified Mr. Obama with the concept. In other words, he owns the "change" idea in voters' minds.

In today's overcommunicated society, it takes endless repetition to achieve this effect. For a typical consumer brand, that might mean years and years of advertising and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Most companies don't have the money, don't have the patience and don't have the vision to achieve what Mr. Obama did. They jerk from one message to another, hoping for a magic bullet that will energize their brands. That doesn't work today. That is especially ineffective for a politician because it creates an aura of vacillation and indecisiveness, fatal qualities for someone looking to move up the political ladder.

The only thing that works today is the BMW approach. Consistency, consistency, consistency -- over decades, if not longer.

But not with a dull slogan. Hitachi has been "inspiring the next" for as long as I can remember, but with little success.

Effective slogans needs to be simple and grounded in reality. What next has Hitachi ever inspired? Red ink, maybe. In the past 10 years, Hitachi has had sales of $786.9 billion and managed to lose $5.1 billion. When you put your corporate name on everything, as Hitachi does, it's difficult to make money because it's difficult to make the brand stand for anything.

3. Relevance
"If you're losing the battle, shift the battlefield" is an old military axiom that applies equally as well to marketing. By his relentless focus on change, Mr. Obama shifted the political battlefield. He forced his opponents to devote much of their campaign time discussing changes they proposed for the country. And how their changes would differ from the changes that he proposed.

All the talk about "change" distracted both Ms. Clinton and Mr. McCain from talking about their strengths: their track records, their experience and their relationships with world leaders.

As you probably know, Mr. Obama was selected as Advertising Age's Marketer of the Year by the executives attending the Association of National Advertisers' annual conference in Orlando last month. But one wonders if these CMOs are getting the message.

As one marketing executive said: "I look at it as something that we can all learn from as marketers. To see what he's done, to be able to create a social network and do it in a way where it's created the tools to let people get engaged very easily. It's very easy for people to participate."

Whatever happened to "change"?

Awesome viral videos campaign for Obama

Obama's Loss Traced To "Your Name"



Obama in 30 seconds



And the winner is...
"Obamacan"
by David Gaw & Lance Mungia (Monrovia, CA)



After 1100 entries and more than 5.5 million total votes cast, the results are in. From among 15 amazing finalists, a panel of top filmmakers, artists, musicians, and progressive heroes picked the winning ad, "Obamacan." Over 100,000 people have already seen it online, but we need your help to air "Obamacan" on TV.

"I Got a Crush...On Obama" By Obama Girl



MyBO Tutorial
Find out how you can use My.BarackObama tools to help elect Barack

Life Without Limits

Are you facing challenges? Frustrations? Obstacles? Tragedies?

How big are they?

How are you responding to them?

Do you live in fear & defeat or in courage & triumph?

Be Inspired by Nick Vujicic!

From a Life Without Limbs to a Life Without Limits!





LIFE IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT

The power to succeed or fail is yours alone.

You alone have the responsibility to shape your life.

Nothing and no one can deny you greatness once you understand this.

There's no one to stop you but yourself.

No one can cheat you out of ultimate success but you.

More powerful then all the success slogans ever written

is the realization that everyone has but one boss.

That boss is you.

Picture yourself vividly as winning,

and that alone will contribute immeasurably to success.

The MLK of Classical Music

Awakening the possibilities in yourself and others

Zander starts off by brilliantly and simply illustrating, in his own unique way, the power of getting yourself and others to "do it on one buttock." If you watched the presentation you get the point, but ask yourself this: How can you turn your presentations into one-buttock presentations? How can you turn your organization (company,school, church, etc.) into a one-buttock organization? Doing it "on one buttock" is not only for musicians, it's for athletes, teachers, artists, business people, and on and on. Leaders of all types must understand the need for doing it on one buttock.

What is your role?
Benjamin Zander is a master at awakening the possibilities in others. He shows how in just twenty minutes one can expose people to new ideas, new possibilities and new passions. He truly embodies his belief that "one of the characteristics of a leader is that he's not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he's leading to realize whatever he's dreaming". I especially liked his realization that since the conductor of an orchestra doesn't make a sound, he depends for his power on his ability to make other people powerful. "The conductor's power depends on his ability to make other people powerful. My job is to awaken possibility in other people. If the eyes are shining, you know you are doing it. If they aren't shining, I must ask, "Who am I being that my players aren't shining?" His job is to awaken possibility in other people.So, what's the role of a good leader then? Is it not to awaken the possibility of an organization (or a nation)? What is the role of a good teacher? Is it not to inspire and awaken the potential of each student? Is not the role of a good parent, among other things, to awaken the possibilities within each of their children?

How do you know if your connecting?
How do you know if you are "awaking the possibility" in each student, or each audience member, Zander asks. The answer? "Look at their eyes. If their eyes are shining, you know you're doing it." Zander goes on to say "...if the eyes are not shining you have to ask yourself a question: who am I being that my player's eyes are not shining?" This goes for our children, students, audience members, and so on. For me that's the greatest takeaway question: who am I being when I am not seeing a connection in the eyes of others? Zander's lessons go far beyond the world of music and the art of presentation, and although the ideas may seem simple, they are not easy. Some of the best ideas out there are the simple-but-not-easy ones. These are the kind of ideas that change things.

Beyond the Fuck It
Zander also introduced the idea of BTFI(Beyond The Fuck It), an idea from his book "The Art of Possibility". This is a simple idea: What would happen if you stopped worrying, stopped holding back, and avoiding the possibility of mistakes and just said "Fuck it!" and then just did it. No thought of technique or of victory or defeat...just the moment.

What Makes Messages Stick?

Most of the great books that will help you make better presentations are not specifically about presentations at all, and certainly not about how to use slideware. One such book is Made to Stick (Random House) by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The Heath brothers were interested in what makes some ideas effective and memorable and other ideas utterly forgettable. Some stick and others fade away. Why? What the authors found—and explain simply and brilliantly in their book—is that “sticky” ideas have six key principles in common: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories. And yes, these six compress nicely into the acronym SUCCESs.

The six principles are relatively easy to incorporate into messages—including presentations and keynote addresses—but most people fail to use them. Why? The authors say that the biggest reason why most people fail to craft effective or “sticky” messages is because of what they call the “Curse of Knowledge.” The Curse of Knowledge is essentially the condition whereby the deliverer of the message cannot imagine what it’s like not to possess his level of background knowledge on the topic. When he speaks in abstractions to the audience, it makes perfect sense to him, but to him alone. In his mind it seems simple and obvious. The six principles—SUCCESs—are your weapons, then, to fight your own Curse of Knowledge (we all have it) to make messages that stick.

Here’s an example that the authors used early in their book to explain the difference between a good, sticky message and a weak yet garden-variety message. Look at these two messages which address the same idea. One of them should seem very familiar to you.

* “Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives.”

Or

* “...put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.”

The first message sounds similar to CEO-speak today and is barely comprehensible, let alone memorable. The second message—which is actually from a 1961 speech by John F. Kennedy—has every element of SUCCESs, and it motivated a nation toward a specific goal that changed the world. JFK, or at least his speechwriters, knew that abstractions are not memorable, nor do they motivate. Yet how many speeches today by CEOs and other leaders contain phrases like “maximize shareholder value yada, yada, yada?” Here’s a quick summary of the six principles from Made to Stick that you should keep in mind when crystallizing your ideas and crafting your messages for speeches, presentations, or any other form of communication.

*

Simplicity. If everything is important, then nothing is important. If everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. You must be ruthless in your efforts to simplify—not dumb down—your message to its absolute core. We’re not talking about stupid sound bites here. Every idea can be reduced to its bare essential meaning, if you work hard enough. For your presentation, what’s the key point? What’s the core? Why does (or should) it matter?
*

Unexpectedness. You can get people’s interest by violating their expectations. Surprise people. Surprise will get their interest. But to sustain their interest, you have to stimulate their curiosity. The best way to do that is to pose questions or open holes in people’s knowledge and then fill those holes. Make the audience aware that they have a gap in their knowledge and then fill that gap with the answers to the puzzle (or guide them to the answers). Take people on a journey.
*

Concreteness. Use natural speech and give real examples with real things, not abstractions. Speak of concrete images, not of vague notions. Proverbs are good, say the Heath brothers, at reducing abstract concepts to concrete, simple, but powerful (and memorable) language. For example, the expression “iiseki ni cho” or “kill two birds with one stone”? It’s easier than saying something like “let’s work toward maximizing our productivity by increasing efficiency across many departments, etc.” And the phrase “...go to the moon and back” by JFK (and Ralph Kramden before him)? Now that’s concrete. You can visualize that.
*

Credibility. If you are famous in your field, you may have built-in credibility (but even that does not go as far as it used to). Most of us, however, do not have that kind of credibility, so we reach for numbers and cold hard data to support our claims as market leaders and so on. Statistics, say the Heath brothers, are not inherently helpful. What’s important is the context and the meaning. Put it in terms that people can visualize. “Five hours of battery life” or “Enough battery life to watch your favorite TV shows nonstop on your iPod during your next flight from San Francisco to New York”? There are many ways to establish credibility—a quote from a client or the press may help, for example. But a long-winded account of your company’s history will just bore your audience.
*

Emotions. People are emotional beings. It is not enough to take people through a laundry list of talking points and information on your slides—you must make them feel something. There are a million ways to help people feel something about your content. Images are one way to have audiences not only understand your point better, but also feel and have a more visceral and emotional connection to your idea. Explaining the devastation of the Katrina hurricane and floods in the U.S., for example, could be done with bullet points, data, and talking points, but images of the aftermath and the pictures of the human suffering that occurred tell the story in ways that words, text, and data alone never could. Just the words “Hurricane Katrina” conjure up vivid images in your mind. Humans make emotional connections with people, not abstractions. When possible, put your ideas in human terms. “One hundred grams of fat” may seem concrete to you, but for others it is an abstraction. A picture of an enormous plate of greasy French fries, two cheeseburgers, and a large chocolate shake will hit people at a more visceral level. “So that’s what 100 grams of fat looks like!”

Stories. We tell stories all day long. It’s how humans have always communicated. We tell stories with our words and even with our art and music. We express ourselves through the stories we share. We teach, we learn, and we grow through stories. In Japan, it is a custom for a senior worker (sempai) to mentor a younger worker (kohai) on various issues concerning the company history and culture, and how to do the job. The sempai does much of his informal teaching through storytelling, although nobody calls it that. But that’s what it is. Once a younger worker hears the story of what happened to the poor guy who didn’t wear his hardhat on the factory floor, he never forgets the lesson (and he never forgets to wear his hardhat). Stories get our attention and are easier to remember than lists of rules. People love Hollywoord, Bollywood, and indie films. People are attracted to “story.” Why is it, though, that when the majority of smart, talented story-loving people have the chance to present, they usually resort to generating streams of vaguely connected information rather than stories, or examples and illustrations? Great ideas and great presentations have an element of story to them.

Robert McKee on the power of story

Why should a CEO or manager pay attention to a screen writer?

"A big part of a CEO's job is to motivate people to reach certain goals. To do that she must engage their emotions, and the key to their hearts is story." The most common way to persuade people, says McKee, is with conventional rhetoric and an intellectual process that in the business world "...usually consists of a PowerPoint presentation" in which leaders build their case with statistics and quotes, etc. McKee says rhetoric is problematic because while we are making our case others are arguing with us in their heads using their own statistics and sources. Even if you do persuade through argument, says McKee, this is not good enough because "...people are not inspired to act on reason alone." The key, then, is to aim to unite an idea with an emotion, which is best done through story. "In a story, you not only weave a lot of information into the telling but you also arouse your listener's emotion and energy."

What is a story?
At it's core, story is about a "...fundamental conflict between subjective expectation and cruel reality," says McKee. Story is about an imbalance and opposing forces (a problem that must be worked out, etc.). A good storyteller describes what it's like to deal with these opposing forces "...calling on the protagonist to dig deeper, work with scarce resources, make difficult decisions...and ultimately discover the truth." Can not a presentation on a technical or scientific topic be a story — with plenty of data and information along the way — about a long journey of discovery, of trial and error, and so on?

How can executives/leaders learn to tell stories?
We tend to forget lists and bullet points, McKee says, but stories come naturally to us; it's how we've always attempted to understand and remember the bits and pieces of experience. McKee's point is that you should not fight your natural inclination to frame experiences into a story but should instead embrace this and tell "the story" of your experience/topic to your audience.

What makes a good story?
It's not what you think—the beginning-to-end tale about how results meet expectations is boring and banal, McKee says. Avoid this. Instead, it's better to illustrate the "struggle between expectation and reality in all its nastiness." So, what's wrong with painting a positive picture? McKee says that spin and a glossy, rosy picture actually works against you because everyone knows it can't be exactly true. What makes life interesting is "the dark side" and the struggle to overcome the negatives — struggling against the negative powers is what forces us to live more deeply, says McKee. Overcoming the negative powers is interesting, engaging, and memorable. Stories like this are more convincing.

Isn't this just exaggeration and manipulation?
McKee admits than business leaders are often skeptical of story. But "the fact is," he says, "statistics are used to tell lies...while accounting reports are often BS in a ball gown — witness Enron and WorldCom." When McKee helps executives turn their dull presentations into stories, he starts by looking for the dramas and the difficulties, the antagonists and the struggles, and even the dirty laundry. People prefer to present only the rosy (and boring) picture. "But as a storyteller, you want to position the problems in the foreground and then show how you've overcome them." If you tell the story of how you struggled with the antagonists, says McKee, the audience is engaged with you and your material.

The Last Lecture

“…the brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They are there to stop the other people.”

" It's better to fail spectacularly than to pass along and do something which is mediocre."

“If you’re going to do anything that pioneering you will get those arrows in the back, and you just have to put up with it. I mean everything that could go wrong did go wrong. But at the end of the day, a whole lot of people had a whole lot of fun.”

The Lessons I'm Leaving Behind

By Randy Pausch
Published: April 6, 2008 What are your childhood dreams?

At many colleges, professors are asked to give a “last lecture.” In this talk, they ruminate on what matters most to them. As they speak, audiences mull the same question: What wisdom would you impart to the world if you knew it was your last chance?

Last year, I agreed to give a last lecture at Carnegie Mellon University, where I’m a professor in the computer science department. A few weeks later, I learned that I had only months to live—I was dying of pancreatic cancer.

I knew I could cancel. I have three young children, I’m married to Jai, the woman of my dreams, and there were so many things to be done. But by speaking, I knew I could put myself in a bottle that would one day wash up on the beach for my children, Dylan, Logan and Chloe. Here’s what I want to share.

Always Have Fun

Before I spoke, Carnegie Mellon’s president, Jared Cohon, said to me, “Please tell them about having fun, because that’s what I’ll remember you for.”

I came to an early realization. Each of us must make a decision, best captured in A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh characters. Am I a fun-loving Tigger or a sad-sack Eeyore? It’s clear where I stand.

For my last Halloween, Jai, our kids and I dressed up as the Incredibles. I put a photo of us on my website and explained that chemo had not affected my superpowers. I got smiling e-mails in response.

I won’t let go of the Tigger in me. Someone asked what I want on my tombstone. I said: “Randy Pausch: He Lived 30 Years After a Terminal Diagnosis.” I could pack a lot of fun into 30 years. If that’s not to be, I’ll pack fun into the time I have.

Dream Big

I was 8 in the summer of 1969, when men first walked on the moon. I was at camp, and we campers were brought to the main house to watch the moment on TV. But the astronauts were taking a while, and it was late. The counselors sent us to our tents to sleep, and we missed the first walk.

I was peeved. I thought: “My species has gotten off our planet and is in a new world for the first time, and you people think bedtime matters?”

When I got home, my dad gave me a photo that he’d taken of our TV set the second Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. We still have that photo.

Give yourself permission to dream. Fuel your kids’ dreams too. Once in a while, that might even mean letting them stay up past their bedtimes.

Ask for What You Want

On a trip to Disney World, my dad and I were at the monorail with my son Dylan, then 4. Dylan wanted to sit in the nose-cone with the driver, and my father thought it would be a kick too.

“Too bad they don’t let regular people sit there,” Dad said.

“Actually, I’ve learned there’s a trick to getting to sit up front,” I said. “Do you want to see it?”

I walked over to the attendant and said: “Excuse me. Could we please sit in the front car?”

“Certainly,” the attendant said. He led us to the nose-cone. It was one of the only times I ever saw my dad flabbergasted. “I said there was a trick,” I told him. “I didn’t say it was a hard trick.”

Now I’ve gotten even better at “just asking.” As we all know, it can take days to get medical results. Waiting is not how I want to spend my time, so I ask: “What’s the fastest I can get these results?”

“Oh,” they often respond, “we might be able to have them for you within an hour.”

Ask. More often than you’d suspect, the answer you’ll get is, “Sure.”

Dare To Take a Risk

In a virtual-reality course I taught, I encouraged students to attempt hard things and not worry about failing. At the end of the semester, I presented a stuffed penguin—“The First Penguin Award”—to the team that took the biggest gamble while not meeting its goals. The award came from the idea that when penguins jump in water that might have predators, well, one of them’s got to be the first penguin. In essence, it was a prize for “glorious failure.”

Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you wanted. And it can be the most valuable thing you have to offer.

Look for the Best In Everybody

I got this advice from Jon Snoddy, my hero at Disney Imagineering. “If you wait long enough,” he said, “people will surprise and impress you.” When you’re frustrated with people, when you’re angry, it may be because you haven’t given them enough time. Jon warned that this took great patience, even years. “In the end,” he said, “people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting. It will come out.”

Make Time for What Matters

When Jai and I went on our honeymoon, we wanted to be left alone. Since my boss demanded a way for people to reach me, I recorded this greeting:

“Hi, this is Randy. I waited until I was 39 to get married, so my wife and I are going away for a month. I hope you don’t have a problem with that, but my boss does. Apparently, I have to be reachable.” I then gave the names of Jai’s parents and the city where they lived. “If you call directory assistance, you can get their phone number. And then, if you can convince my in-laws that your emergency merits interrupting their only daughter’s honeymoon, they have our number.” We didn’t get any calls.

Time is all you have. And you may find one day that you have less than you think.

Let Kids Be Themselves

Because I’ve been so vocal about my childhood dreams, people have asked me about the dreams I have for my own kids. As a professor, I’ve seen how disruptive it can be for parents to have specific dreams for their children. My job is to help my kids foster a joy for life and develop the tools to fulfill their own wishes. My wishes for them are very exact and, given that I won’t be there, I want to be clear: Kids, don’t try to figure out what I wanted you to become. I want you to become what you want to become. And I want you to feel as if I am there with you, whatever path you choose.

Adapted from the book The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch and Wall Street Journal reporter Jeffrey Zaslow. Copyright © 2008 Randy Pausch. To be published by Hyperion. All rights reserved.

AFTER THE LECTURE

After I gave my lecture in September, I expected to go home and quietly spend time with my family. I never imagined that my talk would be viewed online by millions worldwide. The response has overwhelmed and moved me. Thousands of people have written to me about their life lessons. I’ve also been buoyed by former students who’ve told me how my teaching made a difference to them. There’s no greater gift for a teacher.

I’ve used my unexpected fame to advocate for pancreatic cancer research. Last month, I testified before Congress to seek funding for my disease, which is considered the deadliest of cancers.

I’ve had great fun too. In my lecture, I told of two childhood dreams: playing in the NFL and being Captain Kirk on Star Trek. Strangers fulfilled those wishes. I was invited to scrimmage with the Pittsburgh Steelers and got to say a line in a new Star Trek film. Both experiences were thrilling.

I’m lucky to be living longer than I expected, allowing me more time with my kids. I’ve tried to do unforgettable things with them—such as swimming with dolphins—so they’ll have concrete memories of us and of my love for them.

I am honored that my lecture will live on and that people have found it beneficial. Honestly, though, the talk was for my kids, and it gives me comfort to know that they will one day watch it.

你是「愛將」還是「礙將」？

「愛」將與「礙」將讀來同音，意義卻有天壤之別。前者贏得老闆青睞，升遷像搭直升機，後者備受質疑，時刻擔心飯碗難保。伴君如伴虎，究竟該把握哪些原則，才能一路長紅，地位不墜？

「愛將」這個在老闆口中鏗鏘有力的字眼，是不是你在午夜夢迴時，既期待又怕受傷害的渴望？

期待的是「愛將」的光環等同於當紅炸子雞，是一種能力的肯定；害怕的是稍一不慎，反成老闆眼中的「礙將」，屆時不知能否忍受冷板凳的滋味？
愛將，先「愛」還是先「將」？

把「愛將」兩字拆開來看，「愛」是欣賞與信任，「將」則是專業與執行力，二者放在不同文化的企業，就有不同的排序。

歷練本土與外商公司，深受上司賞識的美國人壽人力資源部資深經理張虹慧觀察，有些以「情感、人際」為導向的本土企業，會把「愛」字擺在前面，意味得先認同你為「自己人」，才放心把重要任務交給你。

這種認同的過程，常常不是以專業負責為標準，而是以台語的一句話「疼乎入心」概括。

也就是說，「你要對主管體貼入微、忠心耿耿，時時不忘照顧他的需求。做事時，能不計較私利、獎金，完全對公司付出，以大我為方向，讓他能把你疼到心坎裡！」

以performance-driven（績效導向）為優先的外商公司，主管則是把「將」字作為「愛」字的先決條件。

張虹慧分析，外商用人制度成熟，一切看的是數字與績效。主管下面的能者多，可以幫他「水漲船高」，若他偏愛的人才不足成事，成敗的責任他得自付，完全沒有模糊空間。因此，「執行力是你能不能成為愛將的重要條件。」

「即使講求執行力，愛將也得視老闆性格，適時改變自己的角色，」個性很急，自認十足outcome driver（結果導向）的奧美廣告副總經理唐心慧強調。

她以自己歷經5任老闆的經驗指出，若老闆愛說卻不做，下屬要能快速落實成方案。若老闆事必躬親，你不妨變身為參謀，多做功課，提供精準的資訊與判斷。
做老闆分身而非替身

「老闆是經營公司的人，你必須認同他的信念與價值觀，就算你能力很棒，但不認同他的領導，只會被當作可用之才，卻永遠不會變成真正的愛將，」唐心慧點出「愛將」的核心特質。

所謂「伴君如伴虎」，在認同之餘，還必須注意自己的角色分寸，否則極有可能由紅轉黑，變成欲除之而後快的「礙將」。

橙智知識管理顧問公司總監洪曉芬提醒，愛將要懂得做老闆的「分身」，而非「替身」。「分身」懂得壓低自己的身段，知道「分憂解勞」，把自己當作老闆身邊「拱月」的「群星」；「替身」則是認為自己是「代言人」，是「明日之星」，越殂代刨、替他決策，一有機會即鋒芒畢露、當仁不讓，對主管常有「取而代之」的威脅。

在ING安泰人壽行銷本部資深副總經理呂艷芳看來，一個好的分身，是懂得管理老闆的期待：若遇到好大喜功的上司，不妨將光環歸給他，避免功高震主；若老闆是個爛好人，歸功他時，還得在目標訂定與遊戲規則上有所堅持。
檢驗愛將的關鍵場合

會議桌、飯桌的你來我往，不僅是老闆檢驗愛將的關鍵場合，也是邁向愛將之路兵家必爭之地。

一之鄉事業開發處處長侯禹充以自己過去15年銀行工作的經驗分析，光是會議前上呈的卷案，就充滿學問。

他指出，能進銀行的人，學歷、能力差距不大，能比的就是對細節的掌握。由於業務眾多，案子很趕，大部份人寫完，就直接丟給老闆，侯禹充則是反覆檢查，他知道上司會拿大家寫的案子比較，從中挑出一個接經理，若常寫錯字、用詞不當，或是數字抄錯，等於自動放棄晉升的機會。

其次，會議上的簡報與發言，同樣也是贏得目光的機會。

以中小企業為例，雖然人員不多，在辦公室都看得到，但老闆對員工的印象深刻與否，仍得靠會議桌上的發言。「你有沒有做功課，對自己部門業務數字清不清楚，老闆只要跟你開過幾次會，心裡就有數！」侯禹充強調。

一直在外商歷練，現為YAHOO!雅虎國際資訊行銷暨媒體策略企劃部總監韓志傑提醒，若你跟著部門主管參與大型會議，簡報好壞就是他對外的一張臉，若你掌握住他要的方向，協助他表現得有組織與想法，短短40分鐘的業務review，就能替他取得大老闆的信任，你自然也是一號功臣。

對業務導向的工作，餐桌上杯觥間的應酬，是愛將另一個發揮的舞台。「主管會帶你去應酬，表示你在他心中佔有重要的位置，基本動作是酒要稍微會喝，一般的禮儀要懂！」侯禹充說。

他補充，應酬過程，老闆會觀察你的行為，客戶談的若是你不熟悉的事物，切忌不懂裝懂，即使專心傾聽，也是一種得體的禮儀，當你通過基本的測試，老闆才會開始放心的帶你。「出去應酬口風要很緊，回到辦公室更不能拿來招搖，因為此舉會招忌，也會引起不必要的困擾。」

侯禹充進一步指出，應酬時，一定要保留實力，避免爛醉，「老闆會從喝酒看個性，一喝酒就失態的人，代表的是自我控制能力出了問題。」

應酬的場子，更是訓練觀察力的好地方，像是對方講些什麼，做什麼動作，喜歡吃什麼東西，喝酒的速度，今天帶什麼人來，誰是重要人物，「下次談生意找他多半可以掌握一半的勝算！」侯禹充笑著說。

愛將的辦公室生存術

1. 與老闆保持安全距離

有的老闆習慣掌握愛將的隱私，做為安全感的來源，美國人壽人力資源部業務訓練發展資深經理王怡婷提醒，老闆並非值得傾訴私事的角色，當他詢問你的私領域，只需把握「他知道的別人知道也無妨」的原則，且避免牽涉到金錢上的借貸往來，或男女情感的進一步發展。

畢竟，老闆的嘴沒有人管得住，他最終思考還是會回到績效上，當你工作表現不如以往時，他便會以「有色」眼光，打量你的私生活。

另一個愛將常遇到棘手的問題，就是老闆「愛過頭」，視你為「救世主」，把別的部門的難題全丟給你。

王怡婷認為，此舉不僅可能造成越權對立，還可能因負擔加重，荒廢自己部門的業務。因此「安全距離」的拿捏是愛將必修的功課，「老闆會去試你的底限，當他進一步，你是迎上去，還是適時往後退？你的原則與性格，逢迎還是正直，在他心中會是一面對待你的鏡子。」

2. 皇親國戚更要公私分明

白手起家，客戶囊括台鐵、高鐵、高工局，營業額1年5億元，員工規模達1,000人的台灣斯巴克環保工程公司董事長林錦堂認為，中小企業組成多是親屬、戰友，若外來的專業經理人成為愛將，就會考驗組織的文化與目標。

他提醒，老闆的態度是一個觀察的重點，若領導者一心求改革，此類愛將得先展現專業，在規劃與變革上擬定完整的計劃，若牽動的是老臣或親戚，不妨關起門來找老闆講真話，由他做最後的裁示，不必在會議上，因顧忌而縮手，或氣不過而直接攻擊。

尤其，對「國王人馬」最好採取「公私分明」的態度，不要隨派系起舞，不妨藉著提高自己被利用價值，讓自己專業成為不可取代的地位。若企業的派系鬥爭過於激烈，選邊站變得難以迴避。既然你是有實力的人，實在沒必要花力氣在內耗，而是該替自己找機會另謀出路。

3. 低調、謙虛對待同事

侯禹充回憶過去在銀行界，儘管業績突出，他都會考慮同事觀感，保持低調，譬如在辦公室手機一定關靜音，避免客戶太多刺激到別人，下班之後也會配合同事聚會，不標新立異。

當同事拿愛將之名揶揄他時，他更祭出耍寶的神情四兩撥千金：「愛將愛將，我還甜麵醬哩，我進去被罵很慘時，你都沒看見啊！」

想成為愛將也好，不屑當愛將也罷，張虹慧一番的「愛將哲學」倒是頗有見地：「我不會把注意力放在老闆的『一顰一笑』，而是放在是不是有『成長的機會』，若我幫助主管，自己又能成長，何樂而不為？」

畢竟，老闆是過客，愛將是一時的，你終究要脫離關愛的眼神，成就屬於自己的生涯與事業。

唯有從每個老闆身上，學到的能力與格局，才是你受用無窮，不可取代的魅力。

創意，來自於良好的習慣

創意不是無中生有，而是需要充分的準備與持續的練習，你應該讓創意成為日常的例行工作，成為一種習慣。

即使最偉大的藝術創作者，在他們創意的背後其實有著不為人知的努力心血。我們看到了莫札特的天賦異稟，卻忽略了在他12歲時雙手手指因為長時間的練習而變形的事實。「人們都以為我的創作是信手拈來、毫不費吹灰之力，沒有人知道我在創作一首曲子時投入了多少的精神與時間，一次又一次的揣摩大師的作品，」莫札特在給好友的一封信上說道。

「要讓自己保持創意，就要懂得如何做好保持創意的準備。只有做好準備，才知道如何找到創意、如何運用創意。」以下就是夏普累積多年的親身經驗，所體悟出的方法與原則。

創造一個創意思考前的準備儀式

在創意思考的過程中，開始的時候是最困難的，我們很難立即進入狀況，總是感覺心浮氣躁或是全身疲累，無法專注於創意的思考，而且很容易就輕言放棄。所以，在開始創意思考之前，應該有一些準備的儀式，讓自己的心理和身體調整到最佳的狀態，才能夠真正的專注在創意這件事情上。

「儀式」指的不是宗教上或是任何正式的活動，而是你固定會做的某些簡單活動。當某件事成為一種儀式，代表它是重要的、是你所相信的、是你願意投入心力的，你的內心不會有任何的質疑，不會猶豫自己是否該做或不該做。這些儀式可以讓你進入最好的工作狀態，讓你有股衝動想要趕快開始。

俄國作曲家伊格爾‧史特拉文斯基（Igor Stravinsky）每天早上走進音樂室，就會坐在鋼琴前彈奏一段巴哈的作品，再開始音樂的創作。一位廚師出門前必定會到家中的庭園走一圈，自然的環境可以讓他自由的發想新的味道或是餐點的創意。

也許是一杯熱咖啡，也許是一段演奏音樂，也許是10分鐘的散步，總之任何對你來說不會造成負擔、可以輕鬆完成的活動，都可以成為創意思考之前的準備儀式，幫助你重新整理好自己的心情和身體狀況，開始接下來的工作。「它可以時時提醒我，當一切都不可行時，我還可以依靠自己。我必須依靠我的身體工作，如果我的身體狀況良好，才有可能創造更多，」夏普說道。

找出你的創意DNA

創意DNA就是你的創意密碼，好比基因密碼決定了你的外表，你的創意密碼決定了你看待這世界的思考模式。有人擅長觀察出整體的現象，有人擅長從細微的事件推論未來的趨勢；有些人擅長發展抽象的概念，有些人擅長描述具體的事實；有的人習慣用文字表達，有的人則喜歡用圖畫或是照片說故事。同一件事情，不同的人有不同的觀點，這就是每個人的創意DNA，而且沒有任何人是相同的。

在進行創意思考時，應該從自己的創意DNA出發，才能夠比較容易發揮創意。假使你正要為某個消費產品設計廣告文案，該從正面角度或是負面角度切入？要訴諸於整體社會的情緒還是某個特殊的事件？該採取抽象的或是具體的意象？這些問題答案就在於，你自己所擅長的思考模式是什麼？你的創意DNA是什麼？

曾多次榮獲百老匯東尼獎的知名美國劇作家尼爾‧賽門（Neil Simon）可說是當代最成功的喜劇作家。幽默的筆觸是他所擁有的獨特創意，他也不斷的發展與延伸自己的創意能力。但是他從未想過要寫出像是尤金‧歐尼爾（Eugene O'Neil）的悲劇作品，那並不是他所擅長的戲劇類型，但是他會嘗試將某些黑暗面的元素或是嚴肅的主題加入他的喜劇當中。他利用自己在喜劇方面的專長，融合其他領域的元素，而不是完全轉向另一個不符合自己創意DNA的領域。

過度憂慮與分心是創意的兩大殺手

一提到創意思考，對於許多人來說是一段痛苦掙扎的過程，想來想去，總覺得沒有一個想法是好的，幾個小時過後，還是沒有任何的結果。這時候很有可能是你自己太過憂慮了，一直擔心自己的創意不夠好，所以感覺綁手綁腳的，限制了創意的空間。我們在進行創意思考時，最常擔憂的問題是：

．害怕被嘲笑。會嘲笑你的人不值得你的在意。

．以前有人做過了。沒有任何的事情是完全原創的，即使偉大的荷馬與莎士比亞都是如此。

．我不知要說什麼。每一個人一定有一些想法要說，不要想太多，直接說出來。

．執行之後結果會不如預期。正如同文藝復興時期著名的義大利建築理論家阿伯提（Leon Battista Alberti）所說：「不論先前思考得多週到，在描繪設計圖與製造建築模型時，還是會發生許多的錯誤。」心裡所想的和我們所能做的一定會有些差距，只有真正做了才知道要如何修正，否則都只是空想。

．我不知道怎麼做。有做總是好過沒有做，如果不成功，再試試其他的方法。

另一個影響創意的原因是分心，生活中有許多因素會分散了我們的注意力，影響創意的思考。正如同當你希望保持苗條的身材時，就會強迫自己不吃某些食物；當你想要控制自己的消費慾望時，就會毅然決然的剪掉信用卡；當你想一個人靜一靜時，就會關掉手機。當你進行創意思考時，就應該盡力排除不必要的干擾因素。例如：

．一心多用。沒錯，有很多人可以一心多用，一邊接電話、一邊打報告，一邊聽音樂、一邊閱讀；渡假時工作，餐會時談交易。但是，當你同時做兩三件事，你所花費的精力比起各別進行所花費的精力總和要多得多。而且沒有一件事情可以做得很好。

．資訊與數字：電話號碼、帳單、合約等等。我們的生活中充滿了數字，尤其在現在資訊爆炸的時代，每天不斷接收到各種的數字。你應該讓自己暫時遠離這些數字，不看新聞、不看報紙、不上網，讓左腦休息一下，同時讓掌管直覺的右腦有機會活動一下。

．時鐘。我們無時無刻不盯著時鐘，望著秒針不停的移動，不斷的告訴自己就快要來不及了。當你心裡只有時間，根本無法專注，總覺得時間走得好快，快到你永遠都趕不上。而且分心的結果，事情永遠也做不好。但是，當你真正專注在一件事情上，幾乎感覺不到時間的流逝，彷彿一切都是停滯的。相信很多人都有過這樣的經驗。不要讓時間控制了你，你要專注的目標不是時間，而是手上的工作。

記憶與經驗是創意的源頭

你的記憶孕育了無數的創意種子。創意並非是無中生有、憑空發生，它可能來自於你以前聽過的一句話、讀過的一段文字、看過的一幅畫面、或是做過的一件事。回到過去、想起過去所發生的事情，這些地方才是創意發生的所在。

知名的法國滑雪選手、奧運金牌得主珍‧克勞蒂‧凱莉（Jean Claude-Killy）在經歷一次嚴重的受傷之後，無法再像過去一樣練習滑雪動作，但是每次比賽前他都會依據過去的經驗，想像整個滑雪的過程，包括將會滑過的每一個斜坡、每一個彎角。

許多成功的企業人士都會事前想像如何結束一段困難的交易談判，達成他們所希望的結果。他們會開始回想過去談判成功時的感覺或是情境，以及當時談判成功的過程是如何發生的，然後再來思考如何運用在當下的情況。

「在職場中，多數好的想法其實早已存在，也許是在某一個檔案中，也許是在某個人的腦中。你唯一要做的是找到方法開啟這些記憶。」一位成功的企業人士說道。每當他感覺思慮枯竭、找不到創意時，就會翻閱4到5年前的檔案或是資料，或是找來資深員工聊一聊公司的過去。即便是突然想起遺忘許久的員工的名字，都有可能激發他的創意想法。

從小創意開始，衍生成大的創意

「創意從何而來？」每一個人都想知道這個問題，我們總以為創意存在於某個特別的地方，需要特別的方法去取得。這個問題就好比是在問：「你從哪裡找到呼吸的空氣？」其實，創意就在你的四周。生活中隨處都有創意。

所有的創意都是從生活中的小地方開始。對街的醫院急診室或是捷運車站公車站牌，可以讓你看到人們在混亂緊急的情況下的情緒反應；轉角的警察局可以讓你看到人們在壓力下的工作情形；購物中心、便利商店、早餐店、洗衣店……都是你取材的好地方。服裝設計師不會成天坐在設計桌前空想，而是四處逛服飾店、觀看音樂錄影帶，甚至坐在路邊的咖啡店，看看路過的行人都穿些什麼。

即使一段隨意的對話，也可能激發你的靈感。你知道披頭四的情歌「一星期八天」（Eight Days a Week）是如何寫成的嗎？某天保羅‧麥卡尼（Paul McCartney）坐車到約翰‧藍儂（John Lennon）的住處，麥卡尼隨口問了司機：「最近還好嗎？」司機回答說：「一直都很努力的工作，而且是一星期工作八天。」兩人最後用了這句話寫出了膾炙人口的情歌。

任何大的創意都是由無數的小創意累積與衍生而成。作曲家不是一開始就想出整首曲子的旋律，而是從一個音符、一個節拍開始，慢慢堆砌出動人的旋律。一個好的廣告創意，也許是從一句話、一個畫面、一個事件而起。

所以，你也應當隨時做好準備，把你所看到的好創意全部紀錄下來。就像是漫畫家會隨身攜帶鉛筆與畫板，攝影師隨身帶著相機，作家則是筆不離身。你也應該隨身帶著你習慣使用的工具，隨時隨地紀錄眼前所見的好點子。


創意需要有組織的資料整理過程

創意的發想過程不是漫無目的、天馬行空，必須有良好的資料整理習慣。雜誌的編輯通常有剪報的習慣，一段故事、一張照片、或是一幅插畫，這已經成了他每天必須做的一件功課。他只是不斷的蒐集，他知道總有一天會需要這些資料。這些剪報就是他的創意資料庫。

即使才氣縱橫的貝多芬，也不是憑空創作多首撼動人心的作品。除了流傳百世的音樂作品外，他留給後世最珍貴的資產就是無數的筆記本，他將所有的想法依據創作過程的三個不同階段，分別紀錄在不同的筆記本，包括了不成熟的原始構想、原始構想的修改經過、以及最後完成的想法。

夏普喜歡利用紙箱作為檔案整理的工具。「每當我開始編舞之前，就會準備一個紙箱，外面寫上舞作的名稱，裡面放滿了所有相關的物品，包括筆記本、剪報、CD、錄影帶、照片等等。」這個紙箱裝滿了她創作時所想、所見、所聞，所有和她的創作有關的資料都會整理好放進紙箱中，讓她可以在過程中隨時隨地用來參考。更可以讓她在作品完成後，回頭再重新思考，「我是如何完成這個創作？過程中發生了哪些問題？後來是如何解決的？最後的結果與最初的想法之間，有了哪些改變或是變化？」


創意來自於實際的執行，而非完美的計劃

「我在拍攝前必定會做好萬全的準備與計劃，先決定好自己要使用哪一種相機、底片、腳架、背景，而且一定會事先與拍攝的對象會面討論。不過，所有的計劃也就到此為止，進入攝影棚之後，一切就交給創意與直覺，」這是知名攝影師理查‧艾佛頓（Richard Avedon）對於計劃的看法。艾佛頓絕不會事先設想好拍出來的照片應該是什麼樣的畫面或是構圖。

計劃就好比建造房子時所搭建的鷹架，當你在建造建築物的外牆時，鷹架是非常重要的輔助工具。一旦外牆完成，開始進行室內工程時，就必須拆除鷹架。同樣的，計劃可以讓我們在開始工作前，有比較完整的思考與準備，但是當你開始將抽象的想法轉化為實際的行動時，就不可能百分之百依據計劃進行。

很多人總以為所有的事情必須達到百分之百的完美，才可以開始進行下一步。完美主義其實是沒有執行力的掩飾藉口。創意不是來自於完美的計劃，而是來自於執行的過程。過程中難免會產生許多的變數，但是這些意外的改變也正是新創意的源頭。過度的計劃，只會扼殺了你的創意。

一位好的經理人知道，公司的目標與所能取得的資源之間，永遠不可能達成完美的平衡；你所收到的訂單與你的存貨水準之間也永遠不可能達成平衡。你永遠沒有足夠的時間回答所有的電話與電子郵件；你的員工總是要求更多的資金與資源。所以，真正優秀的經理人隨時隨地準備好執行，而不是等待一切規劃完美之後再開始行動。


創意建立在多元的技能基礎之上

偉大的作曲家通常也是一位技藝精湛的音樂家，他懂得如何演奏各種樂器，熟悉各種樂器的音色。所以，他的創作是可以演奏的，而且能夠完全發揮各種樂器的特性。創業家也必須瞭解如何研發產品、與供應商談判、設計廣告宣傳活動、處理客戶抱怨、分析財務報表等，才能成功經營一家企業。

創意必須建立在穩固的技能基礎之上，否則也只是空想。你心裡所想的與你所能做的之間，必定存在有某些落差，如果你擁有了必要的技能，才能彌補這些落差，而你心裡所想的才是可實現的。

然而，我們常常是不斷的加強原本已經熟練的技能，卻忽略了那些我們所不熟悉的。因為不熟悉，所以害怕犯錯、害怕失敗，只好選擇遠離。對於自己所擅長的技能愈來愈熟練時，我們對它的依賴也愈來愈深，也不願意再去學習新的技能，更壓縮了創意的空間。如果作曲家懂得更多的樂器，他創作的曲子就可以有更多的變化；如果你所擁有的技能愈多元，你的創意就能有更多的可能。

不妨給自己一個考驗，假使今天你失去了自己原本非常擅長的一項技能，你該怎麼辦？當夏普為米洛斯‧福曼所執導的電影《髮》（Hair）排練舞步時不小心扭傷了腳踝，這是她第一次無法運用自己的身體編舞，不能示範給舞者自己想要的舞步。「整整8個星期，我訓練自己將我想要的舞步具體化，然後轉化為舞者可以理解的語言。這時我才知道，原來自己的文字表達能力比原先所想的還要好，」夏普說道。

正如同貝多芬在失去聽力之後，創作出生平最偉大的音樂作品。假設今天你失去了視力，你的聽力或是觸覺必定會比現在更為敏銳。現在想一想，你擁有哪些熟練的技能？如果失去了其中一項技能，你要如何完成原先的工作？你可以不需要這項技能就能成功嗎？你是否具備許多自己從未發現過的能力？

讓工作變簡單的10種方法

「我從早忙到晚，但是沒有一件事情是完成的。我這麼的拚命，結果卻是白忙一場，沒有什麼成果。感覺自己一直被工作追著跑。我到底在忙些什麼呢？」你的忙亂不是因為工作太多，而是因為沒有重點、目標不清楚，所以才讓工作變得愈來愈複雜，時間愈來愈不夠用。

你的一天只有1,440分鐘，你能完成多少的工作？在資訊龐雜、速度加快的職場環境，我們必須在愈來愈少的時間內，完成愈來愈多的事情。在如今愈趨複雜與緊湊的工作步調中，「保持簡單」是最好的應對原則。「簡單」來自於清楚的目標與方向，你知道自己該做哪些事、不該做哪些事。這正是生涯顧問專家比爾 ‧詹森（Bill Jensen）給所有工作者的衷心建議。


追求簡單，解決效率低落問題

目前擔任溝通管理顧問公司詹森集團（Jensen Group）總裁兼執行長的比爾‧詹森，自1992年開始至今，持續進行一項名為「追求簡單」（The Search for Simpler Way）的研究調查，長期觀察企業員工的工作模式，探討造成工作過量、效率低落的原因。最初的調查對象包括了來自460家企業的2,500名人士，持續至今已經擴大到1,000家企業，人數達到35萬人，其中包括了美國銀行（Bank of America）、花旗銀行（Citibank）、默克（Merck）、與迪士尼（Walt Disney）等知名的大型企業。

2001年，詹森出版了第一本書《簡單就是力量》（Simplicity），甫上市立即登上了《紐約時報》（New York Times）的暢銷書排行榜，引起了熱烈的迴響。今年11月，他再度推出最新著作《簡單工作，成就無限》（The Simplicity Survival Handbook），更得到了《出版人週刊》（Publishers Weekly）的推薦。

這次詹森將「簡單」的概念運用到日常的工作實務上。根據他多年的研究調查結果，現代人工作變得複雜而沒有效率的最重要原因就是「缺乏焦點」。因為不清楚目標，總是浪費時間重複做同樣的事情或是不必要的事情；遺漏了關鍵的訊息，卻浪費太多時間在不重要的訊息上；抓不到重點，必須反覆溝通同樣的一件事情。

「少做一些，不是要你把事情推給別人或是逃避責任，而是當你焦點集中、很清楚自己該做哪些事情時，自然就能花更少的力氣，得到更好的結果，」詹森在接受最新一期的《快速企業》（Fast Company）雜誌訪問時如此說道。換句話說，目標清楚、掌握重點、做好溝通，是簡單工作的不二法門。

以下我們整理出10種最實用的簡單工作的方法，提供給你作為參考。


1. 問清楚工作的目標與要求，可避免重複作業與減少錯誤的機會

通常的情況是，你不知道自己應該做什麼：這個目標對你的工作會有什麼樣的影響？這個目標對你的意義是什麼？當你釐清了所有的問題後，再開始工作。

你必須釐清的問題包括：

‧我現在的工作必須做出哪些改變？

目標清楚不是要對方跟你解釋公司的目標或是策略，而是這個目標對你的意義是什麼，公司的目標與你個人目標之間的關聯是什麼。如果老闆重新設定公司未來一年的營運策略與目標，你可以問說：「我的工作目標應該做出哪些調整？是否有必要改變現在的工作方式？」

舉例來說，如果公司預計提升10％的營業額，那麼行銷部門必須達成什麼樣的部門目標或是個別業務員必須達到多少的業績，才能完成公司整體的目標。

‧可否建議我，要從哪個地方開始？

你要知道的不是工作細節的問題，而是要確定大致的方向與優先順序。例如，應該先確認好哪些事項，才能開始進行後續的作業；哪些事情應該排在最後，以避免其他流程的變動而必須一再的重做；各項流程之間應如何協調與整合等等。

‧我應該注意哪些事情，避免影響目標的達成？

可以尋求主管的建議，在過程中有可能犯下哪些錯誤或是疏失，應該要如何避免；根據過去的經驗，曾經發生過哪些意料之外的情形，必須預做準備。這樣可以大幅減少不必要的錯誤嘗試，當然更能增加成功的機會。

‧有哪些可用的工具與資源？

你應該先瞭解公司有哪些既有的資源可以應用，可以尋求哪些支援，這樣才能更有效規劃自己的時間以及工作進度。

2. 懂得拒絕別人，不讓額外的要求擾亂自己的工作進度

對於許多人來說，拒絕別人的要求似乎是一件難上加難的事情，你總是擔心：

‧會不會因此丟了工作？

‧我和同事之間的友誼是否就此結束？

‧老闆有可能接受嗎？

拒絕的技巧是非常重要的職場溝通能力。只有你最清楚自己的工作情況，你必須對自己負責，管理自己的時間與工作，不應讓別人的額外要求，讓自己陷入忙亂的局面。

在決定你該不該答應對方的要求時，應該先問問自己：「我想要做什麼？或是不想要做什麼？什麼對我才是最好的？」你必須考慮，如果答應了對方的要求是否會影響既有的工作進度，而且因為你的拖延而影響到其他人？而如果你答應了，是否真的可以達到對方要求的目標？

一旦有了決定之後，該怎麼拒絕呢？如果是比較熟識的同事、朋友，或是完全不相識的人，最好是直接了當的說：「抱歉，幫不上忙，」或是「現在真的很忙，抽不出時間。」不要多費唇舌，也不需要解釋一堆的理由，只要簡單的一兩句話就可以。而且必須在當下直接回絕，不要拖延一兩天才說出你的決定。不要考慮太多，寶貴的時間應該花費在以下提到的另一種情況。

如果是面對客戶或是比較不熟識的其他部門同事，就應該採取比較間接委婉的方法。你要考慮的問題是：要如何回應才能維持更好的關係，建立未來合作的基礎？

首先，你要說明為何無法答應的原因，並表示你的歉意。然後，最重要的是幫助對方找到另一個更好的解決方法，有沒有可能找到其他人幫忙。讓對方覺得你不是在推卸責任，而是真的想幫助他解決問題。

這時候的回答不再是「是」與「否」的問題，而是溝通與對話的過程。你不是拒絕對方，而是與對方溝通解決的方法。溝通的過程也同樣讓對方瞭解你實際的工作情況，而不會無緣無故的一再找上你，請求你的幫忙。

3. 主動提醒老闆排定優先順序，可大幅減輕工作負擔

「手邊的工作都已經做不完了，又丟給我一堆的工作，實在是沒道理。」但是有沒有可能問題是出在你自己身上？你有沒有適當的反應真實的情況？如果你不說出來，老闆就會以為你有時間做這麼多的事情。況且，他可能早就不記得之前已經交待你太多的工作。老闆其實是需要被提醒的。

你當然不可能同時完成這麼多的工作，為什麼不主動的幫助老闆訂出工作的優先順序。你不是不做，但是凡事有先有後。你可以事先衡量哪些工作可以為公司帶來最大的效益，必須優先處理。然後列出手中有哪些工作正在進行，需要哪些支援才能在期限內完成。

當你做好以上的準備時，再開始與老闆面對面討論，你可以問說：「未來幾天或幾星期內必須先達成哪三個目標？」或是直接告訴他：「我已經先排定未來幾天應該要優先完成的工作項目，想聽聽你的建議？」總而言之，把短期內應該先完成、而且你有能力完成的工作項目確定下來。這樣不僅可以減少自己的工作負擔，更可以提醒老闆，讓他瞭解你的實際工作量。

最後提醒一點，討論的過程中必須時時站在主管的立場思考，體諒他所面臨的壓力。你該做的是協助主管解決問題，而不是把問題推給主管。當然，更不應該自己承受問題。

4. 報告時要有自己的觀點，只需少量的資訊即可讓老闆感到滿意

多數人在向主管或是老闆報告時，總是擔心資訊不夠多，「萬一老闆問起來，答不出來，該怎麼辦？」根據商業心理顧問公司（Psychology for Business）的心理學家約翰‧維佛（John Weaver）所進行的研究顯示，有10％到15％的人在面對老闆時會有恐懼的心理，而且如果向老闆報告時手中的資料不夠多，感到恐懼的人數比例又會更多。

其實，這種擔憂是多餘的。太多的資訊會變得沒有重點，如果又缺乏解釋，對於老闆一點幫助也沒有。「內容精簡、切中要點，最重要的是能夠幫助我快速的做決策，」這是詹森訪問多位資深主管對於簡報內容的要求時，所得到的一致結論。

你要做的是利用重要的資訊或是數據提出解釋，一定要有自己的觀點，而不是模稜兩可的描述。如果你是老闆的話，你會做出什麼樣的決定：新產品上市的最佳時機是什麼時候？該不該跟隨競爭對手降價，還是要逆勢操作？

此外，向老闆報告時，要能精準的掌控時間，你要有心理準備，在報告的過程中必定會被打斷，老闆可能得先接個電話，或是提出一些問題，必須花時間說明與討論。所以，如果你有30分鐘的時間，只要準備10分鐘的報告內容，不僅可以避免超出時間，而且可以替老闆省下更多的時間，更能顯現出你的工作效率。

如果報告的主題是關於長期的規劃，要記住：過去以及未來的90天是最重要的。如果你要製作10頁的簡報，報告未來一年的年度規劃，未來90天的計劃應該佔9頁的內容，需要詳細的說明，至於其餘的部分只要1頁就可以。

此外，如果你希望得到老闆的支持，必須清楚、直接、而且是簡明扼要。不要讓老闆覺得你只是想偷懶，把責任推給老闆。舉例來說，如果你希望老闆支持你的提案，你應該條列已經完成的工作項目，而後提出未來30到60天之內需要老闆協助的事項：例如，他可能要參加哪些會議、參加會議的人員有哪些、他需要公開向所有員工宣佈哪些事項等等。

5. 簡報時增加互動的機會，可縮短簡報的內容與報告的時間

PowerPoint的發明，讓我們有了更方便的溝通工具，但事實上也佔據了不少的工作時間。每一年每一個人製作的簡報數目不斷的在增加，製作簡報所要花費的時間也是有增無減。在詹森的研究調查中，最高的紀錄是，25分鐘的議程總共有108頁的PowerPoint。有多少人能記得108頁的內容？

一份好的簡報，必須能產生影響力，改變對方的決定。在製作簡報時，我們時常忘了聽眾的存在。真正成功的簡報在於清楚而正確的傳達訊息，創造溝通與對話的機會，進而讓對方因為你的簡報內容而改變思維、決策、或是行動。因此，重點不在於簡報，而是溝通的品質。你不只是「報告」，而是要引發雙向的對話，試圖影響對方。

在做任何的簡報之前，你必須思考以下三點原則：

‧你希望聽眾聽完簡報之後記得哪些重點？

‧聽眾會有什麼樣的感受？

‧你希望他們聽完簡報之後有什麼樣的決定？

接下來就是實際的製作問題了。最好的開始方式，就是把聽眾想知道的重點轉換為問題，這樣不僅可以立即吸引聽眾的注意力，更可以大幅減輕你的工作負擔。簡報的過程不應只有你一個人在說話，提出問題，可以讓你和觀眾有互動的機會。這樣一來，50分鐘的議程你只需要準備30分鐘的簡報內容，其餘的時間應該是與聽眾互動的時間。

舉例來說，在解釋產品策略時，不是滔滔不絕的解釋策略的第一點、第二點、第三點……，而是提出問題：我們的產品對你們有什麼好處？可以為你的部門帶來哪些改變？

每一次的簡報都必須有一頁的內容摘要，不是要列出報告的重點，而是簡要敘述這份報告所要傳達的最重要訊息。此外，一頁一個重點，這樣才能讓他們印象深刻，而且真正的去思考你所說的內容。過多的訊息，只會讓聽眾感覺無聊，甚至記不得你說了些什麼，等於是一次失敗的簡報。

6. 有效過濾郵件，讓自己的注意力集中在最重要的訊息上

電子郵件以及即時通訊技術是一種幸福，同樣也是一種詛咒。因為它，你可以看到全世界，也因為它，你被雜亂、沒有焦點、不必要的訊息給淹沒了。你應該要做的是知道何時要該關閉你的虛擬溝通之門。

賈德納市場研究公司（Gartner Research）認為，現代人無可避免的陷入了所謂的「無所不在的連結」（pervasive connectivity）的迷思，你讓所有人在任何時間都可以接觸到你。不僅是電子郵件，包括手機、即時簡訊等等。這些科技讓我們可以即時的溝通，我們也自然而然的覺得必須隨時讓人找得到、必須回應每一件事情、必須立即完成每一件事情。所有人都因為這種不切實際的期待而工作過量、過度消耗自己。

垃圾郵件的氾濫或許是原因之一，但更重要的是，我們不知道要如何利用客觀的標準快速有效的過濾以及編輯大量的資訊，花費太多時間在不重要的信件上，真正需要你注意的卻被遺漏了。

正確的過濾流程，第一步是先看信件主旨和寄件人，如果沒有讓你覺得今天非看不可的理由，就可以直接刪除。這樣至少可以刪除50％的郵件。

第二步開始迅速瀏覽其餘的每一封信件內容，除非信件內容是有關近期內（例如2星期內）你必須完成的工作，否則就可以直接刪除。這樣你又可以再刪除25％的信件。

前兩個步驟所花費的時間不應超過10分鐘。現在你的信箱應該只剩下25％的信件，但是並不表示你必須全部保留剩下來25％的信件。你必須判斷這封信件：

‧是否與你現在的工作內容有關

‧是否有提到你必須完成哪些事

‧是否有說明應達成什麼樣的目標

‧是否有列出可使用的資源

如果不符合以上的條件，就直接刪除或是回覆給寄件人，請求對方盡快回覆以上的問題。

經過以上三個階段的步驟，你應該可以成功的刪除90％的信件。

7. 郵件內容盡量精簡，節省寫信的時間並增加對方回應的機會

「最容易閱讀、理解、與回覆的信件，最吸引我的注意。」這是詹森在進行「追求簡單」的研究計劃時，一位資深主管對於電子郵件使用習慣的回答。

每一個人的時間與注意力是有限的，電子郵件的內容愈精簡愈好，不僅可以節省自己的時間，更能吸引收件人的注意，提高回應的機率，否則你的電子郵件就會成為對方90％的刪除名單之中。你必須利用最小的空間、最少的文字，傳遞最多、最重要的訊息，而且必須更容易閱讀，節省對方的時間。

該怎麼做呢？信件的文字必須限制在3×5英吋的空間範圍內，大約是一張照片的大小。為什麼是這樣的數字？因為對於接收訊息的人來說，這樣的空間可以讓他們在2到3秒鐘的時間迅速瀏覽全部的內容，不需要捲動畫面。

你該如何利用這有限的空間寫電子郵件的內容？

‧每一封電子郵件的內容大約在8到12句的範圍內。

‧超過20個字就應換行。

‧如果超過3行必須空行。

8. 當沒有溝通的可能時，不要浪費時間想要改變

主管對於你的意見通常會有以下5種可能的回答：

‧完全同意：「我完全同意你的看法，也會全力的支持你。」

‧同意：「我並不是完全同意，但是我相信你的判斷。」

‧不置可否：「我不同意你的看法，原因是……不過很謝謝你的意見。」

‧不同意：「就照我的方法做。」

‧完全不同意：「我絕不允許有這樣的想法，更不允許其他人有這樣的想法。」

如果你發現，在溝通的過程中，主管的回答多半是前三種情況，就表示這個主管是可以溝通的，願意接受別人的想法。如果多半屬於最後兩種的情況，就代表他是不容易溝通的人。總是聽不進別人的意見、衝動做出決策、不願意反省、只為了個人的利益或權力……不論你提出什麼樣的想法或意見，每一次都是吃了閉門羹。

如果真的遇到這樣的主管，完全沒有溝通的可能時，這時候你就不必再浪費時間或精神做無謂的溝通或是嘗試改變。這時你必須做出選擇，你是否能夠接受這樣的工作環境，凡事只依照主管的意見做事；或是你比較喜歡有自己發揮的空間。這是選擇的問題，無關乎好與壞。你可以有以下的做法：

‧微笑點頭：你已經決定不會將所有的精力投入在這家公司，只當這是一份工作，做好份內的事情就可以。這份工作不是你生活中非常重要的一部份，你寧願花更多的時間在家庭或是自己的興趣上

‧尋求其他發聲管道。你仍然相信這家公司，也認為這是不錯的工作環境，只是遇到了不好的主管。所以你還希望再做一些努力：公司內是否有其他的管道可以讓你的想法或是建議被公司其他的人或是更高階的主管聽到，例如全體員工大會等。

‧準備轉換跑道。你已經知道問題是無法解決的，也許是這家公司不願意解決，或是缺乏健全的制度與管道，這時你應該當機立斷，轉換新的環境。

9. 只要取得信任，不需要反覆的溝通，同樣可爭取到你要的資源

在經營成本的壓力下，要向公司爭取更多的資源，可不是一件簡單的事情。尤其是碰到錢的問題，事情似乎就變得複雜許多。即使經過無數次的討論或是精確的計算，成功的機會卻是少之又少。

然而，多半時候，爭取預算成功與否並非僅是關於錢的問題，它更是人際關係與信任的問題。如果老闆信任你可以真正解決問題，為公司創造利益，自然而然可以得到你要的預算。但是如果他對你沒有足夠的信任，即使公司有再多的盈餘或者只是爭取一小筆的預算，都很困難。

不要只看到錢的問題，如果你一直陷入數字遊戲當中，情況對你永遠是不利的。公司必須面對嚴酷的經濟壓力，永遠是希望可以用更少的錢，創造更多。

老闆對你的信任來自於你解決問題的能力。所以你必須從不同的角度去思考：什麼是讓你的老闆感到最頭痛的問題？

‧無法依照原定計劃完成。

‧無法掌控情況，對於未來感到不確定。

‧希望員工能夠做得更多，減少更多的成本。

當你在爭取預算時，必須先想清楚老闆可能擔心的問題，作為你的說服理由，這是最有效的。例如，「如果再增加兩個人，只需要6個星期，就可以按照預定計劃完成。」

而且，不要只強調你的單位或是部門的需求，你爭取預算的目的是為了幫助老闆解決問題，達成目標。所以，你的重點在於老闆所擔心的問題，而不是預算數字。

當你第一次提出要求時，最重要的是讓老闆瞭解你的提案，會議時間愈短愈好，最好不要超過15分鐘的時間。千萬不要在第一次提案的時候就直接要求需要多少的預算，這樣通常不會有太高的成功機率。你的目標應該是有第二次討論的機會。如果老闆願意再次討論預算的問題，通常成功機會可高達八成以上。

10. 專注工作本身，而不是績效評量的名目，才能真正有好的表現

績效評量本身立意良好，我們每一個人都應該隨時知道自己的工作績效如何。只是多數企業的情況是，績效評量被過度操作，有各種不同的名目，還有複雜的計算。主管根本沒有足夠的時間做深入的評量，最後只是淪為數字遊戲。

公司真正的目標是擴大控制、減少成本，績效評量的制度讓公司有合法的藉口可以開除不適任的員工。員工為了保住工作，只想著該怎麼讓自己的成績好看一些。

事實上，你根本不必把精神花費在這些數字遊戲上，不要因為公司今天要評量外語能力，所以你開始自費上課惡補；某一天公司決定加入提案企劃能力的考核項目，你又開始煩惱該怎麼辦。這樣只會讓你疲於奔命，結果卻適得其反。

要有好的績效，你的出發點是工作本身，而非績效評量。你只要想到以下的問題：該怎麼把這件事情做好？你必須加強自己哪方面的能力？當你順利完成目標、有了具體的成果，自然會有好的評量結果。你要做的只有以下兩件事情：

‧至少每個月詢問你的主管：「我做得如何？」盡量提出具體的問題，例如「老闆對於我所排定的進度是否有什麼意見？」「我想會議流程非常順暢，你認為還有地方要改進的嗎？」

你應該隨時和主管溝通自己的工作表現，而不是只有在每年一次的績效評量，這樣你可以事先知道自己的缺點在哪，及時做出改正，同時也可以瞭解主管的期望。

‧至少每個月詢問：「原先的工作安排有沒有必要調整？」也許你的目標是在年初，甚至是前一年年底所訂下的，然而外在的環境有所改變，先前所設定的目標勢必要做出調整，所以應該隨時確認最優先的目標是哪些。

當你做到以上兩件事情，便可以隨時瞭解自己的工作績效，以及確認自己是在處理應優先完成的事項，自然可以達成具體的成果與績效。

The Audacity of Hope

Barack Obama 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dick Durbin. You make us all proud.

On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, Land of Lincoln, let me express my deepest gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention.

Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father -- my grandfather -- was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.

While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army, marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised a baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through F.H.A., and later moved west all the way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.

And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two continents.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined -- They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.

They're both passed away now. And yet, I know that on this night they look down on me with great pride.

They stand here -- And I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our Nation — not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.


That is the true genius of America, a faith -- a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted -- at least most of the time.

This year, in this election we are called to reaffirm our values and our commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we're measuring up to the legacy of our forbearers and the promise of future generations.

And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I say to you tonight: We have more work to do -- more work to do for the workers I met in Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour; more to do for the father that I met who was losing his job and choking back the tears, wondering how he would pay 4500 dollars a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on; more to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The people I meet -- in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks -- they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. Go in -- Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.

People don’t expect -- People don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.

They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

In this election, we offer that choice. Our Party has chosen a man to lead us who embodies the best this country has to offer. And that man is John Kerry.

John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service because they’ve defined his life. From his heroic service to Vietnam, to his years as a prosecutor and lieutenant governor, through two decades in the United States Senate, he's devoted himself to this country. Again and again, we’ve seen him make tough choices when easier ones were available.

His values and his record affirm what is best in us. John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded; so instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he offers them to companies creating jobs here at home.

John Kerry believes in an America where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves.

John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren’t held hostage to the profits of oil companies, or the sabotage of foreign oil fields.

John Kerry believes in the Constitutional freedoms that have made our country the envy of the world, and he will never sacrifice our basic liberties, nor use faith as a wedge to divide us.

And John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option.

You know, a while back -- awhile back I met a young man named Shamus in a V.F.W. Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid -- six two, six three, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he’d joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to him explain why he’d enlisted, the absolute faith he had in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might ever hope for in a child.

But then I asked myself, "Are we serving Shamus as well as he is serving us?"

I thought of the 900 men and women -- sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who won’t be returning to their own hometowns. I thought of the families I’ve met who were struggling to get by without a loved one’s full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but still lacked long-term health benefits because they were Reservists.

When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.

Now -- Now let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued. And they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.

John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper -- for alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

It is that fundamental belief -- It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us -- the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of "anything goes." Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America -- there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an "awesome God" in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end -- In the end -- In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?

John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope.

I’m not talking about blind optimism here -- the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.

Hope -- Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!

In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.

I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.

I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.

I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.

America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do -- if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as President, and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.

Thank you very much everybody. God bless you. Thank you.

Steve Jobs speaks out

Steve Jobs speaks out

In an exclusive interview, Apple's CEO talked with Fortune senior editor Betsy Morris in February in Kona, Hawaii, where he was vacationing with his family, about the keys to the company's success, the prospect of Apple without Jobs, and more. Here are excerpts.


On the birth of the iPhone
"We all had cellphones. We just hated them, they were so awful to use. The software was terrible. The hardware wasn't very good. We talked to our friends, and they all hated their cellphones too. Everybody seemed to hate their phones. And we saw that these things really could become much more powerful and interesting to license. It's a huge market. I mean a billion phones get shipped every year, and that's almost an order of magnitude greater than the number of music players. It's four times the number of PCs that ship every year.

"It was a great challenge. Let's make a great phone that we fall in love with. And we've got the technology. We've got the miniaturization from the iPod. We've got the sophisticated operating system from Mac. Nobody had ever thought about putting operating systems as sophisticated as OS X inside a phone, so that was a real question. We had a big debate inside the company whether we could do that or not. And that was one where I had to adjudicate it and just say, 'We're going to do it. Let's try.' The smartest software guys were saying they can do it, so let's give them a shot. And they did."


On Apple's connection with the consumer
"We did iTunes because we all love music. We made what we thought was the best jukebox in iTunes. Then we all wanted to carry our whole music libraries around with us. The team worked really hard. And the reason that they worked so hard is because we all wanted one. You know? I mean, the first few hundred customers were us.

"It's not about pop culture, and it's not about fooling people, and it's not about convincing people that they want something they don't. We figure out what we want. And I think we're pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That's what we get paid to do.

"So you can't go out and ask people, you know, what the next big [thing.] There's a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, 'If I'd have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me "A faster horse." ' "


On choosing strategy
"We do no market research. We don't hire consultants. The only consultants I've ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway's retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made [when launching Apple's retail stores]. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products.

"When we created the iTunes Music Store, we did that because we thought it would be great to be able to buy music electronically, not because we had plans to redefine the music industry. I mean, it just seemed like writing on the wall, that eventually all music would be distributed electronically. That seemed obvious because why have the cost? The music industry has huge returns. Why have all this [overhead] when you can just send electrons around easily?"


On what drives Apple employees
"We don't get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we've chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we've all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is."

On why people want to work at Apple
"The reason is, is because you can't do what you can do at Apple anywhere else. The engineering is long gone in most PC companies. In the consumer electronics companies, they don't understand the software parts of it. And so you really can't make the products that you can make at Apple anywhere else right now. Apple's the only company that has everything under one roof.

"There's no other company that could make a MacBook Air and the reason is that not only do we control the hardware, but we control the operating system. And it is the intimate interaction between the operating system and the hardware that allows us to do that. There is no intimate interaction between Windows and a Dell notebook.

"Our DNA is as a consumer company -- for that individual customer who's voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That's who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it's not up to par, it's our fault, plain and simply."


On whether Apple could live without him
"We've got really capable people at Apple. I made Tim [Cook] COO and gave him the Mac division and he's done brilliantly. I mean, some people say, 'Oh, God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.' And, you know, I think it wouldn't be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple. And the board would have some good choices about who to pick as CEO. My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that's what I try to do."

On his demanding reputation:
"My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects. And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be."


On Apple's focus
"Apple is a $30 billion company, yet we've got less than 30 major products. I don't know if that's ever been done before. Certainly the great consumer electronics companies of the past had thousands of products. We tend to focus much more. People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

"I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done. The clearest example was when we were pressured for years to do a PDA, and I realized one day that 90% of the people who use a PDA only take information out of it on the road. They don't put information into it. Pretty soon cellphones are going to do that, so the PDA market's going to get reduced to a fraction of its current size, and it won't really be sustainable. So we decided not to get into it. If we had gotten into it, we wouldn't have had the resources to do the iPod. We probably wouldn't have seen it coming."


On his management style
"We've got 25,000 people at Apple. About 10,000 of them are in the stores. And my job is to work with sort of the top 100 people, that's what I do. That doesn't mean they're all vice presidents. Some of them are just key individual contributors. So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know - just explore things."

On finding talent:
"When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself. They'll want to do what's best for Apple, not what's best for them, what's best for Steve, or anybody else.

"Recruiting is hard. It's just finding the needles in the haystack. We do it ourselves and we spend a lot of time at it. I've participated in the hiring of maybe 5,000-plus people in my life. So I take it very seriously. You can't know enough in a one-hour interview. So, in the end, it's ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they're challenged? Why are they here? I ask everybody that: 'Why are you here?' The answers themselves are not what you're looking for. It's the meta-data."



On the benefits of owning an operating system
"That allows us to innovate at a much faster rate than if we had to wait for Microsoft, like Dell and HP and everybody else does. Because Microsoft has their own timetable, for probably good reasons. I mean Vista took what -- seven or eight years? It's hard to get your new feature that you need for your new hardware if it has to wait eight years. So we can set our own priorities and look at things in a more holistic way from the point of view of the customer. It also means that we can take it and we can make a version of it to fit in the iPhone and the iPod. And, you know, we certainly couldn't do that if we didn't own it."


On his marathon Monday meetings
"When you hire really good people you have to give them a piece of the business and let them run with it. That doesn't mean I don't get to kibitz a lot. But the reason you're hiring them is because you're going to give them the reins. I want [them] making as good or better decisions than I would. So the way to do that is to have them know everything, not just in their part of the business, but in every part of the business.

"So what we do every Monday is we review the whole business. We look at what we sold the week before. We look at every single product under development, products we're having trouble with, products where the demand is larger than we can make. All the stuff in development, we review. And we do it every single week. I put out an agenda -- 80% is the same as it was the last week, and we just walk down it every single week.

"We don't have a lot of process at Apple, but that's one of the few things we do just to all stay on the same page."


On dealing with roadblocks
"At Pixar when we were making Toy Story, there came a time when we were forced to admit that the story wasn't great. It just wasn't great. We stopped production for five months.... We paid them all to twiddle their thumbs while the team perfected the story into what became Toy Story. And if they hadn't had the courage to stop, there would have never been a Toy Story the way it is, and there probably would have never been a Pixar.

"We called that the 'story crisis,' and we never expected to have another one. But you know what? There's been one on every film. We don't stop production for five months. We've gotten a little smarter about it. But there always seems to come a moment where it's just not working, and it's so easy to fool yourself - to convince yourself that it is when you know in your heart that it isn't.

"Well, you know what? It's been that way with [almost] every major project at Apple, too.... Take the iPhone. We had a different enclosure design for this iPhone until way too close to the introduction to ever change it. And I came in one Monday morning, I said, 'I just don't love this. I can't convince myself to fall in love with this. And this is the most important product we've ever done.'

"And we pushed the reset button. We went through all of the zillions of models we'd made and ideas we'd had. And we ended up creating what you see here as the iPhone, which is dramatically better. It was hell because we had to go to the team and say, 'All this work you've [done] for the last year, we're going to have to throw it away and start over, and we're going to have to work twice as hard now because we don't have enough time.' And you know what everybody said? 'Sign us up.'

"That happens more than you think, because this is not just engineering and science. There is art, too. Sometimes when you're in the middle of one of these crises, you're not sure you're going to make it to the other end. But we've always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder. I think the key thing is that we're not all terrified at the same time. I mean, we do put our heart and soul into these things."


On the iPod tipping point
"It was difficult for a while because for various reasons the Mac had not been accepted by a lot of people, who went with Windows. And we were just working really hard, and our market share wasn't going up. It makes you wonder sometimes whether you're wrong. Maybe our stuff isn't better, although we thought it was. Or maybe people don't care, which is even more depressing.

"It turns out with the iPod we kind of got out from that operating-system glass ceiling and it was great because [it showed that] Apple innovation, Apple engineering, Apple design did matter. The iPod captured 70% market share. I cannot tell you how important that was after so many years of laboring and seeing a 4% to 5% market share on the Mac. To see something like that happen with the iPod was a great shot in the arm for everybody."

On what they did next:
"We made more. We worked harder. We said: 'This is great. Let's do more.' I mean, the Mac market share is going up every single quarter. We're growing four times faster than the industry. People are starting to pay a little more attention. We've helped it along. We put Intel processors in and we can run PC apps alongside Mac apps. We helped it along. But I think a lot of it is people have finally started to realize that they don't have to put up with Windows - that there is an alternative. I think nobody really thought about it that way before."


On launching the Apple store
"It was very simple. The Mac faithful will drive to a destination, right? They'll drive somewhere special just to do that. But people who own Windows - we want to convert them to Mac. They will not drive somewhere special. They don't think they want a Mac. They will not take the risk of a 20-minute drive in case they don't like it.

"But if we put our store in a mall or on a street that they're walking by, and we reduce that risk from a 20-minute drive to 20 footsteps, then they're more likely to go in because there's really no risk. So we decided to put our stores in high-traffic locations. And it works."


On catching tech's next wave
"Things happen fairly slowly, you know. They do. These waves of technology, you can see them way before they happen, and you just have to choose wisely which ones you're going to surf. If you choose unwisely, then you can waste a lot of energy, but if you choose wisely it actually unfolds fairly slowly. It takes years.

"One of our biggest insights [years ago] was that we didn't want to get into any business where we didn't own or control the primary technology because you'll get your head handed to you.

"We realized that almost all - maybe all - of future consumer electronics, the primary technology was going to be software. And we were pretty good at software. We could do the operating system software. We could write applications on the Mac or even PC, like iTunes. We could write the software in the device, like you might put in an iPod or an iPhone or something. And we could write the back-end software that runs on a cloud, like iTunes.

"So we could write all these different kinds of software and make it work seamlessly. And you ask yourself, What other companies can do that? It's a pretty short list. The reason that we were very excited about the phone, beyond that fact that we all hated our phones, was that we didn't see anyone else who could make that kind of contribution. None of the handset manufacturers really are strong in software."


On managing through the economic downturn
"We've had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren't going to lay off people, that we'd taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place -- the last thing we were going to do is lay them off. And we were going to keep funding. In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that's exactly what we did. And it worked. And that's exactly what we'll do this time."


On failing, so far, with Apple TV
"Here's how I look at it. Everybody's tried to make a great product for the living room. Microsoft's tried, we've tried -- everybody's tried. And everybody's failed. We failed, so far.

"So there's a whole bunch of people that have tried, and every single one of them's failed, including us. And that's why I call it a hobby. It's not a business yet, it's a hobby.

"We've come out with our second try -- 'Apple TV, Take 2' is what we call it internally. We realized that the first product we did was about helping you view the content of whatever you had in iTunes on your Mac or PC, and wirelessly sending it to your widescreen TV.

"Well, it turns out that's not what people really wanted to do. I mean, yeah, it's nice to see your photos up on the big screen. That's frosting on the cake, but it's not the cake. What everybody really wanted, it turned out, was movies.

"So we began the process of talking to Hollywood studios and were able to get all the major studios to license their movies for rental. And we only have about 600 movies so far ingested on iTunes, but we'll have thousands later this year. We lowered the price to $229. And we'll see how it does. Will this resonate and be something that you just can't live without and love? We'll see. I think it's got a shot."

The Effort Effect

The Whole New Mindset - The Effort Effect

Dweck, the author of the book "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success", posited that the difference between the helpless response and its opposite—the determination to master new things and surmount challenges—lay in people’s beliefs about why they had failed. People who attributed their failures to lack of ability, Dweck thought, would become discouraged even in areas where they were capable. Those who thought they simply hadn’t tried hard enough, on the other hand, would be fueled by setbacks. This became the topic of her PhD dissertation.

She continued to do so as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, collaborating with then-graduate student Carol Diener to have children “think out loud” as they faced problem-solving tasks, some too difficult for them. The big surprise: some of the children who put forth lots of effort didn’t make attributions at all. These children didn’t think they were failing. Diener puts it this way: “Failure is information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, I’m a problem solver, and I’ll try something else.’” During one unforgettable moment, one boy—something of a poster child for the mastery-oriented type—faced his first stumper by pulling up his chair, rubbing his hands together, smacking his lips and announcing, “I love a challenge.”

Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students thought they lacked ability just because they’d hit a setback. Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized—and, with colleague Elaine Elliott soon demonstrated—that the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than “performance goals.”

Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat. So they pursue only activities at which they’re sure to shine—and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor. Students with learning goals, on the other hand, take necessary risks and don’t worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn. Dweck’s insight launched a new field of educational psychology—achievement goal theory.

Dweck’s next question: what makes students focus on different goals in the first place? During a sabbatical at Harvard, she was discussing this with doctoral student Mary Bandura (daughter of legendary Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura), and the answer hit them: if some students want to show off their ability, while others want to increase their ability, “ability” means different things to the two groups. “If you want to demonstrate something over and over, it feels like something static that lives inside of you—whereas if you want to increase your ability, it feels dynamic and malleable,” Dweck explains. People with performance goals, she reasoned, think intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a growth mind-set about intelligence, believing it can be developed. (Among themselves, psychologists call the growth mind-set an “incremental theory,” and use the term “entity theory” for the fixed mind-set.) The model was nearly complete.

Culture can play a large role in shaping our beliefs, Dweck says. A college physics teacher recently wrote to Dweck that in India, where she was educated, there was no notion that you had to be a genius or even particularly smart to learn physics. “The assumption was that everyone could do it, and, for the most part, they did.” But what if you’re raised with a fixed mind-set about physics—or foreign languages or music? Not to worry: Dweck has shown that you can change the mind-set itself.

The most dramatic proof comes from a recent study by Dweck and Lisa Sorich Blackwell of low-achieving seventh graders. All students participated in sessions on study skills, the brain and the like; in addition, one group attended a neutral session on memory while the other learned that intelligence, like a muscle, grows stronger through exercise. Training students to adopt a growth mind-set about intelligence had a catalytic effect on motivation and math grades; students in the control group showed no improvement despite all the other interventions.

“Study skills and learning skills are inert until they’re powered by an active ingredient,” Dweck explains. Students may know how to study, but won’t want to if they believe their efforts are futile. “If you target that belief, you can see more benefit than you have any reason to hope for.”

In his 2002 essay that relied on Dweck’s work, Gladwell cited one of her best-known experiments to argue that Enron may have collapsed precisely because of the company’s talent-obsessed culture, not despite it. Dweck’s study showed that praising children for intelligence, rather than for effort, sapped their motivation (see sidebar). But more disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised overstated their scores to peers. “We took ordinary children and made them into liars,” Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who’d been celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to problems and work to fix them.

Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says Dweck’s research has implications for the more workaday problem of performance management. He faults businesses for spending too much time in rank-and-yank mode, grading and evaluating people instead of developing their skills. “It’s like the Santa Claus theory of management: who’s naughty and who’s nice.”

Leaders, too, can benefit from Dweck’s work, says Robert Sternberg, PhD ’75, Tufts University’s dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. Sternberg, a past president of the American Psychological Association, says that excessive concern with looking smart keeps you from making bold, visionary moves. “If you’re afraid of making mistakes, you’ll never learn on the job, and your whole approach becomes defensive: ‘I have to make sure I don’t screw up.’”

Social psychologist Peter Salovey, ’80, MA ’80, dean of Yale College and a pioneer in the field of emotional intelligence, says Dweck’s ideas have helped him think through a controversy in his field. Echoing an older debate about the malleability of general intelligence, some scholars say emotional intelligence is largely inborn, while others, like Salovey, see it as a set of skills that can be taught and learned. “People say to me all the time, ‘I’m not a people person,’ or ‘I’m not good at managing my emotions,’” unaware that they’re expressing a fixed mind-set, Salovey says.

Stanford psychology professor James Gross has begun extending Dweck’s work to emotions. In a recent study, Gross and his colleagues followed a group of Stanford undergrads as they made the transition to college life. Those with a fixed mind-set about emotions were less able to manage theirs, and by the end of freshman year, they’d shown poorer social and emotional adjustment than their growth-minded counterparts.

AS SHE APPROACHES THE END of her third year at Stanford, Dweck has embraced the challenge of cross-country culture shock in a manner consistent with the growth mind-set. Nearby San Francisco provides her with the benefits of a great city, she says, including a dining scene that rivals New York’s; and the University supplies a more cozy sense of community. She’s also brought a bit of the New York theater scene with her in the form of her husband, critic and director David Goldman. He founded and directs the National Center for New Plays at Stanford.

At the Association for Psychological Science convention in May, Dweck will give the keynote address. The topic: “Can Personality Be Changed?” Her short answer, of course, is yes. Moreover, holding a growth mind-set bodes well for one’s relationships. In a recent study, Dweck found that people who believe personality can change were more likely than others to bring up concerns and deal with problems in a constructive way. Dweck thinks a fixed mind-set fosters a categorical, all-or-nothing view of people’s qualities; this view tends to make you ignore festering problems or, at the other extreme, give up on a relationship at the first sign of trouble. (The growth mind-set, though, can be taken too far if someone stays in an abusive relationship hoping her partner will change; as always, the person has to want to change.)

These days, Dweck is applying her model to kids’ moral development. Young children may not always have beliefs about ability, but they do have ideas about goodness. Many kids believe they’re invariably good or bad; other kids think they can get better at being good. Dweck has already found that preschoolers with this growth mind-set feel okay about themselves after they’ve messed up and are less judgmental of others; they’re also more likely than kids with a fixed view of goodness to try to set things right and to learn from their mistakes. They understand that spilling juice or throwing toys, for example, doesn’t damn a kid as bad, so long as the child cleans up and resolves to do better next time. Now Dweck and graduate student Allison Master are running experiments at Bing Nursery School to see if teaching kids the growth mind-set improves their coping skills. They’ve designed a storybook with the message that preschoolers can go from “bad” one year to better the next. Can hearing such stories help a 4-year-old handle a sandbox setback?

Dweck’s students from over the years describe her as a generous, nurturing mentor. She’d surely attribute these traits not to an innate gift, but to a highly developed mind-set. “Just being aware of the growth mind-set, and studying it and writing about it, I feel compelled to live it and to benefit from it,” says Dweck, who took up piano as an adult and learned to speak Italian in her 50s. “These are things that adults are not supposed to be good at learning.”