The Fundamental recipe for Success

Self-Improvement is common to all people across all cultures. In the West, traditionally people aspire to having more. In the East, traditionally people aspire to being more. I firmly believe that there is little difference between the two - a subject for another post. However, to improve in any area of life there are two undeniable determinants of success. The first is time, the second is practice.

Success = (Time) AND (Practice)

Time
Tiger Woods started playing golf at age three. Mozart started composing at age three. The Williams sisters started playing tennis as toddlers. These apparent "child prodigies" only appear to be so because they started so early that by the time they were teens they already had at least a decade of experience.

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"I want to be exceptional but I'm too old."
"I am too inexperienced to be great."
"I do not have any natural gifts."

Does that sound like you? Stop whining, your cries are falling on deaf ears and blind eyes. If you are 65 and live in a country with modern medicine you can live to be 85. That means you can spend 20 years becoming great. Give it a go, you have everything to gain.

To my peers, University students blessed with youthful energy, amazing opportunities, and fast brains - you have scores of years ahead of you. The time half of the success formula is all but guaranteed for you.

Practice
You watch TV for an hour a day. You read the news an hours day. You Facebook an hour a day. Bad.

You work ten hours a day. You go for a run an hour a day. You clean your apartment or house an hour a day. Possibly worse.

The first three habits are almost universally known to be time wasters. These are activities you bitch to your friends about. They bitch back. Your parents tell you to quit.

The latter three habits are things you bitch about. You friends bitch back. Your parents tell you to keep up the good work.

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To practice is to perform an activity regularly and repeatedly in order to maintain or improve your ability. Memorize that sentence, think carefully on it, then apply it. Determine one activity that you consistently do and get better at it day after day for one month. Practice is not always fun; practice is not always enjoyable. Practice is necessary for improvement and success.



Why and What Next


For me, this post is a practice in writing. It reminds me how much work remains on my path towards great writing and how much I have already accomplished. I will be writing posts and editing and improving them in the future.

As my amazing high school German teacher always said, "I know where I am going, I just don't know who is coming with me."

A Letter to Hanover Insurance Group

This evening at Boston University the Hanover Insurance Group sponsored the School of Management’s Business Plan Pitch Presentation. The presentations were presented by top performing teams from Boston University’s junior level set of cross-functional courses, collectively known as “CORE.”

Three teams went up on stage in front of an audience of over 150 students and presented their hearts out. The level of preparation was exceptional. The presentations were fantastic. The data was solid. The three teams went up there and showed the audience, which included a COO from a division of Hanover Insurance Group, just how brilliant Boston University Management Students are.

Following the presentations a team judges went out of the room to determine which of the three presentations was best.

In the interim, an esteemed COO from Hanover took the podium. It was clear to the audience what was coming next: A sales pitch.

The COO took the podium to tell the students in the audience that insurance is exciting, that it is great place to work, that it has great programs for graduating students. She went on for five minutes.  Her intention was clearly to motivate students to apply for positions. She failed miserably.

She had a golden opportunity; she had the attention in a captive audience of high-performing students, yet her words fell on deaf ears. Student snickered, yawned, and checked their phones. Towards the end she asked, “who is excited about insurance?!” I sarcastically shouted, “Yeahhh!” Some may think I was rude. Some may think I was justified. Regardless, the reason for the collective response of the audience was clear. She gave a lousy presentation.

She failed for many reasons, but the number one reason is that her words lacked conviction. In her words there was no excitement, no heart, no genuine passion.

Dear Hanover, listen up. As a student at Boston University’s School Of Management, I guarantee you that the best students in that audience were the ones who were yawning and checking their phones. The best students want to work for companies who show that they care about what they’re doing. The best students want to work for companies who give their employees not just a weekly paycheck, but a sense of purpose. If you want Boston University’s best students you will have to get to know them. If you want students who can lead and who can grow into industry leaders, I advise that you step your game up.

My advice, when you have the attention of a large part of the student body, give the student body a speaker who talks from the heart.
Three teams went up on stage and presented business plans that they spent months preparing. The audience could see their effort. Those teams set the bar for future teams and inspire those future teams to push that bar even higher.

If you want to share the stage with our students and receive the respect of all students, don’t tell us that you care. Show us.