JAMES DALE
THE OBVIOUS

Everything you need to know to succeed

Dedication

To my wife, Ellen. I was going to make a list of all the things you mean to me, but the publisher said I had to leave room for the book. I love you. Obviously.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Introduction

Part I – Work is a verb

The bottom is a good place to start

There are no shortcuts

Work is a challenge. Or it should be.

Part II – It’s not about you

It is about everyone but you

Go on an ego diet

The credit will find you

Part III – Don’t be a jerk. Be reasonable, kind, decent, fair – in a word – nice.

There’s something to this Golden Rule thing

The bad guys make the good guys look better

Play fair – what a concept

You’re judged by the company you keep

Part IV – Listen more than you talk

Shut up

Listen. Then hear.

You can learn a lot from great listeners. And bad ones.

It’s okay to be ignorant. It’s not okay to stay that way.

Ask. It’s a great way to find out what you don’t know.

Part V – Every job is sales

Don’t sell. Solve.

Give people what they want (not what you want them to want)

Buying is selling

The customer is always right … even when she’s wrong

Part VI – Simple is better than complicated

You can see more clearly from a distance

Ahem. Pay Attention.

Throw out your mental trash

Part VII – Less is more

Extra long is for suits, not meetings

Don’t write in ink (50% of all meetings get changed)

Cut the budget

Cut your losses

Part VIII – Say what you mean

It’s more important to do business than to speak business

A weasel is a rodent

Mean what you say

Part IX – Honesty – the most oowerful weapon in business

There’s no such thing as a good liar

An excuse is not a reason

Apologize

Take responsibility

Part X – Open your mind – let ideas in

Whatever you think, think the opposite

Failure is good

Change happens

Global is the new local

Just because someone is rich doesn’t make him smart

You have to get old. You don’t have to think old.

Part XI – Reality – deal with it

Life isn’t fair. Get over it.

Consistency beats a hot streak every time

Don’t look backward. There’s nothing there.

Most things aren’t as serious as they seem (but some are)

Part XII – Don’t keep score

Envy is ugly

Grudges are stupid

Forgive and forget – or at least one out of two

Ignore titles, especially your own

Money is a tool, not a god

It’s 0–0 tomorrow

Part XIII – Energy – the unfair edge

Show up

Today is a good time to do something

Obsessive–compulsive isn’t all bad

Patience is a virtue. So is impatience.

Don’t take “no.” Press “0.”

Work is not a hobby

Part XIV – Imagine you worked for you

Be the boss. Don’t be bossy.

Take Boss 101. Learn from best and worst.

Hire someone smarter than you

Promote someone who isn’t ready

Trust someone – besides yourself

Firing hurts – or it should

Everyone has a boss – even the boss

Part XV – Take inventory

If you wait for things to be different, you’re in for a long wait

If you have to ask for a raise, quit

Start over tomorrow – but don’t do it the same way

Copyright

About the Publisher

Introduction

The secrets to success in business aren’t secrets at all. They’re beliefs, ideas, values, and strategies most of us already know, but ignore. Tell the truth. Share the credit. Listen more than you talk. Open your mind. They’re in plain sight, staring us in the face, fundamental and familiar – in a word, obvious. Maybe too obvious. They’ve been recited to us by our parents and grandparents. Words to live by. As likely to appear in a fortune cookie as an MBA textbook. In fact, they are so fundamental, they may have been taken for granted or ignored, and certainly not practiced to their highest effect.

They’re simply obvious. Not tricky, sly, clever, or even complicated. Just proven effective, over and over, irrefutably. Not in a hypothetical case or historic analogy or cute parable, but in real life, in real deals, in real business. They work. Regardless of the field of business – from airlines to biotech to apparel to building to marketing to shipping to demolition to design to wholesale to retail to service to security to insurance to entertainment. Regardless of the job – from sales rep to department head to regional manager to HR to CFO to CEO. Same principles, same results, always effective.

If they’re obvious and they work and we’re already familiar with them, why do we ignore them? Maybe because human beings have a weakness for tricks, gimmicks, and schemes – shortcuts to the pot of gold – anything but the obvious. Maybe because we haven’t treated The Obvious with same respect as we treat shortcuts. Maybe because we’ve never looked at The Obvious closely enough to see not only how effective they are, but why, and how best to use them. Maybe they haven’t been assembled and explained in one place where we could see how compelling they are, individually and especially, together.

Here they are. The Obvious, a collection of the principles – beliefs, ideas, values, and strategies – that work. Where did they come from? The best sources on earth. From historians, story-tellers, moralists, famous minds like Ben Franklin and Woody Allen, humble minds like our grandparents and parents, from real life, from fairy tales, and from experience, the wisest teacher of all. Their efficacy has been proven; their potency has rarely been realized; they are effective immediately. Every new self-help book would have us believe they’ve discovered the new secret formula for success. It’s not new; it’s not secret; and it’s not a formula. It’s old; it’s well-known; and it’s all here. The Obvious – all assembled in one book, divided into logical categories, explaining why each principle is obvious, how and why it works, and how you can use it. They’re all you need to know. Period.

Part I WORK IS A VERB

Work means, literally, “to exert oneself.” Work is hard. It’s demanding, frustrating, stressful, complicated, challenging, even exhausting. It’s heavy lifting, for the body and the mind. No wonder a lot of people don’t like to do it. Or would rather rationalize why they didn’t, can’t, or won’t do it. Who wouldn’t rather point the remote control at the TV?

We live in a world that has named and rationalized virtually every shortcoming and excuse, inside and outside the workplace. People can’t just be lazy. They must be under-challenged, distraction-prone, or decision-averse. Which leaves a lot of work un-done. Which creates enormous opportunity for anyone willing to do it. And reward.

Work is a verb. It’s an action – not an observation. Get to it.

The bottom is a good place to start

There’s no shortage of people willing to sit in an executive office. Gaze out at the city from the 58th floor. Buzz for coffee. Have your own bathroom. But you rarely see that ad on Monster.com. Wanted: Inexperienced, unqualified person to tell everyone else what to do, take long lunches. Obscene salary plus bonus, outrageous perks, possible private plane.

It’s hard to start at the top. The bottom, on the other hand, often has openings.

Consider Mark Shapiro. In 1991, after being turned down by 25 of 26 baseball front offices, Shapiro took the lowliest job in the Cleveland Indian organization, “assistant in baseball operations.” Translation: Pick up players at the airport, do math on player stats for contracts, office gofer. Evidently he did it well because he was promoted from one job to another – marketing, scouting, minor league management – all the way to assistant GM and then to General Manager … in charge of a turn-around, just the kind of unglamorous challenge he loves.

Whatever field you’re in, or want to get in, find the job that needs to be done, that people don’t seem to want to do. Sift the data on domestic production vs. off-shoring to Southeast Asia. Research employee benefits to find ways to attract and retain better staff. Pore over competitors’ profile until you find the market they’re neglecting. An interesting thing about the bottom as opposed to the top: There’s a lot to do down there.

Done well, it shows at the end of the quarter and the year – the times when promotions get passed out. And promotions lead to the top.

There are no shortcuts

Did you ever wonder how overnight business sensations get to be overnight sensations? One thing is for sure, it isn’t overnight. It’s over a lot of nights and weekends and years. Most of them were number 2s or 3s, after being division heads, after being in field offices, after coming out of training programs, after graduate school. They don’t call it a ladder of success for nothing. There are rungs. Climb them.

Case in point: the bio of Alan (A.G.) Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s most successful companies. All he did was his job, over and over, all the way to the top.

1977 – Brand Asst, Joy

1978 – Sales Training, Denver

1978 – Asst Brand Mgr, Tide

1980 – Brand Mgr, Dawn & Ivory Snow

1981 – Brand Mgr, Special Assignment & Ivory Snow

1982 – Brand Mgr, Cheer

1983 – Assoc Ad Mgr, PS&D Division

1986 – Ad Mgr, PS&D Division

1988 – GM, Laundry Products, PS&D Division

1991 – VP-Laundry and Cleaning Products, Procter & Gamble USA

1992 – Group VP, Procter & Gamble Co/Pres, Laundry & Cleaning Products, USA

1994 – Group VP, The Procter & Gamble Company/Pres, Procter & Gamble Far East

1995 – Exec VP, The Procter & Gamble Company, (Pres, Procter & Gamble Asia)

1998 – Exec VP, The Procter & Gamble Company, (Pres, Procter & Gamble N. America)

1999 – Pres, Global Beauty Care and N. America

2000 – President and Chief Executive

2002 – Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive

Sure, now and then someone skips a few rungs by inventing a product, starting a company, or inheriting the family business. But you still have to perform. Ask all the dotcom geniuses whose venture capitalists replaced them with veteran CEOs. Or how about the case of the three partners, John, Paul, and George, who squeezed out the fourth, Pete Best, in favor of a guy named Ringo for a musical start-up called The Beatles. Or Edsel Ford who came within a breath of being forced out of the family automobile business by his father, Henry. In the end, nothing matters but results.

There are no shortcuts. It just seems like there are if you’re looking in from the outside. If your job description is “respond to and resolve customer care issues,” if you actually do it effectively every day, pretty soon you’ll be in charge of hiring and training, then setting up an out-sourced customer care unit in Bhopal, India, then overseeing global Customer Relations, then Sales and Marketing, then …

Work is a challenge. Or it should be.

Push yourself. When you master something, take on a tougher task. Not more of what you already do, not another job at another company that’s just a clone of the one you have. Sure, you can coast and do fine. But over time, you’ll get stale and tired and probably lose your edge. It’s like only playing par-three golf courses.

You perform at your best when you’re tested. So, if you’re good at what you do, if you can almost do it blind-folded, stop. Walk away. Raise the stakes. Do something you want to do even if you’re not sure you can do it.

Do what Andrea Jung did. After earning her degree from Princeton, Jung’s high-achiever family was likely less than thrilled that she passed up law school to go into the crass world of retailing. But she rose through the ranks of Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus to become a star in luxury merchandising. About the time her family might have acknowledged her success, she walked away from what had become relatively easy, to see if she had what it took to re-energize venerable, but aging, make-up marketer, Avon.

It wasn’t like her last job, repeating what she knew; it was taking on a challenge. Jung invested in research to develop new lines of skin cream, opened up overseas markets, and found celebrity endorsers to attract younger buyers. Sales climbed 45%. Avon stock rose 160+%. So did Andrea Jung’s stock. After doing the non-glitzy job of remaking a traditional company, she’s been chased for lots of bigger, glitzier jobs.

Take on a challenge. Even if you fail, you failed at something hard, not easy. And you learn something you didn’t already know.

Part II IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

Don’t expect applause, a raise, the admiration of your peers, or even your boss, when you accomplish something at work. No one else is excited that you made your monthly quotas. Wow! Look at me! Your peers are worried about making their quotas. No one is going to slap you on the back because your orders shipped early, your clients paid their invoices, or you were wooed by a competitor. Wow! Look at me some more! Those things are nice, but they’re expected to happen.

And by the way, no one really cares that you were late because your toddler threw up on your suit on the way to daycare. Or that you need a new transmission. Or that your paycheck doesn’t go as far as it used to.

Because it’s not about your quotas, your orders, your suit, your transmission, or your paycheck. It’s just not about you. It’s about the bottom line – market share, profit and loss, earnings, the stock price. That’s why it’s called business … not Wow! Look at me! Help the company do better and you’ll do better. It’s an old cliché, but clichés get to be clichés by being true.

It is about everyone but you

So, if it’s not about you, then how do you get ahead? Concentrate on what does matter: Results. After you’ve made your quotas, help somebody else make theirs. Find new customers, even for other divisions. Read up on industry trends. Study your competitors. Help young hires find their way. Stay late and re-write presentations. Don’t try to be a hero. Be a problem-solver.

Take the Apollo 13 approach. When we all heard the words, “Houston, we have a problem,” and the mission seemed doomed, who was the hero that saved the day? Was it the commander, Jim Lovell? Or the flight director, Gene Kranz? One of the other astronauts, Fred Haise or John Swigert, or member of the ground team like Ken Mattingly? No, it was not any one of them. It was all of them. They all collaborated to solve the problem, to save the day, and the mission. One of the great rescues of all time, and not one hero … or all heroes.

The best way to lead is to feed. When you’re not just a team member but the one in charge, whether it’s of a meeting, a project, a division, or a company, put everyone else ahead of yourself. Retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch said, “The day you become a leader, it becomes about them. Your job is, walk around with a can of water in one hand and a can of fertilizer in the other hand … and build a garden.”

Go on an ego diet

Cut the “I” out of your thought process and your vocabulary. Also “me” and “my” and “mine.” Starting tomorrow, try to consciously remove the first person from all communications. Literally. Imagine a buzzer goes off every time you invoke yourself or your self-interest. No sentences with “I thinks …” or “the way I see it …” or “I said …” iNo memos or messages with “get back to me” or “that job is mine” or “my department.”

Imagine you don’t exist alone, only as part of something larger. Replace “I” and “me” with “we” and “us” and “ours” instead. “What can we do?” “It’s up to us.” “The challenge is ours.”

It’s not that you don’t count. It’s that the best way to look out for you is to look out for everybody else – the “we” – the sales force, the audit group, the engineers, the designers, R&D, your supervisor, her supervisor, the CEO, the guy in the next office, the whole team, even your arch-rival. If they, we, us survive, you survive. If they, we, us thrive, you thrive.

On the other hand, if you beat your chest, you just get a sore chest.

The credit will find you

If you consistently accomplish things that help the department, division, company, or team, you won’t have to worry about the credit. Success doesn’t hide. Want to be a real star? Don’t shine the spotlight on yourself. Let the results do it for you.

That’s what Phil Jackson taught the Chicago Bulls to take them from playoff bridesmaids to league champions. He invoked poetry, the Grateful Dead, and Zen Buddhism (hey, whatever works) to convince a collection of NBA-sized egos they’d garner more glitz, glamour, money, fame – a.k.a. credit – if they did their jobs together, than if they pursued the credit on their own. He even had to persuade a guy named Michael Jordan he’d be a bigger star if he passed the ball than if he shot it. In the 1991 playoffs, with the entire L.A. Laker team keyed on Jordan, a last-second pass from Jordan to John Paxson resulted in the winning basket … and the first of three back-to-back-to-back championships. Passing the ball isn’t glamorous, just effective.

Think of yourself as a movie producer. You didn’t write the script; you aren’t the lead actor, or the director, or even the special effects expert. You just quietly keep the whole production going. No one asks for your autograph. But if it’s a hit, you make the most money. You’re the one they come to when they want the next hit. That’s more than enough credit. That’s a real star, not a shooting star.

Part III DON’T BE A JERK BE REASONABLE, KIND, DECENT, FAIR – IN A WORD – NICE

The world has enough jerks. They’re everywhere, especially in business. People who think being tough makes you a better boss. Or who refuse to give a good deal because it might show weakness. Or who can’t compromise. People who yell, demand, intimidate.

Let’s say being a jerk and being nice were equally effective. Which would you rather think of yourself as? Which would you like your children to think of you as? If it were a toss up for efficacy, you’d be nice. But here’s a surprise: Being nice can actually be more effective than being a jerk.

Ron Shapiro is a lawyer/sports agent. Nobody, it would seem, needs to be tougher or more demanding than a sports agent. But Shapiro and his partner, Mark Jankowski, practice, and conduct seminars, in a negotiation philosophy called The Power of Nice. The basic premise is: The best way to get what you want is to help the other person get what he or she wants. Shapiro took that approach to the bargaining table to cut deals for Hall of Fame ballplayers Jim Palmer, Brooks Robinson, Eddie Murray, Kirby Puckett, and (future Hall of Famer) Cal Ripken, Jr., to settle a symphony orchestra strike, to intercede during the baseball shutdown of 1994–1995, and to help the Major League umpires work out their differences with the team owners in 1999–2000. If an agent can be nice – and succeed – so can you.

There’s something to this Golden Rule thing

If you’re unreasonable, unkind, indecent, unfair or not nice to your co-workers, employees, vendors, associates, clients, investors, or partners, they’ll pick up the cues and respond just as badly. Then you have two or more jerks trying to out-jerk each other. On the other hand, if you’re nice, people will be nice back to you, to each other, and to customers, clients, and the outside world.

The J.M. Smucker Company, the jam and jelly giant, believes that being nice, even in little ways, makes everyone happier, which makes the company better.

The company serves all of their many employees complimentary bagels and muffins every day (along with a selection of jams and jellies, of course).

Wegmans, the innovative grocery chain, believes so strongly that being nice is contagious, and good for business, they’ve incorporated the idea into their motto, “Employees first, customers second.” The Wegman family’s rationale: When employees are happy, customers will be too.

You don’t have to own the company or be the boss to be nice. You can pick up an extra mocha grande for your fellow IT guy, acknowledge the innovative thinking of another space designer, encourage an entry-level research assistant, or even tell your supervisor you thought the meeting was productive (if it was.) Guess what? They’ll be nice back.

Being nice is selfish and contagious … in a good way.

The bad guys make the good guys look better

There are a lot of jerks in the world, and unfortunately, many have gravitated to the world of business. Some people can’t help it. Others do it on purpose under the misguided notion that acting tough or demanding or perpetually dissatisfied equates to power and intimidation. The good news is all those jerks make you look better.

In contrast to the typical autocratic method of determining compensation – I’m the boss. I’ll tell you what your pay is – Gore-Tex takes a surprising and very disarming approach. Workers participate in evaluations of fellow team members to determine annual compensation. It’s not only nice, it’s fair. After all, who knows your work better than your fellow employees? Imagine how much more enlightened Gore-Tex looks than their competitors. Imagine how effective that is for attracting and retaining good people.

All employees complain about their benefits, don’t they? Not at Starbucks. In sharp contrast to notoriously stingy global giants, the coffee chain offers healthcare coverage for all employees, including part-timers, including spouses or partners, whether opposite or same sex. They even cover hypnotherapy and naturopathy. Now you know why those baristas treat customers so well. They’re being treated well themselves.

Chances are there are some jerks where you work. At the mortgage company, the biotech lab, the remodeling firm, the moving and storage company, the travel agency, the school, or the government agency. Be nice and just imagine how good you could look by comparison.

Play fair – what a concept

People – even people who are skeptical and cautious and cynical – have trouble maintaining their doubting attitude toward someone who is polite, asks how they’re doing, respects their time, keeps promises, responds openly, treats them with dignity. It’s just so … reasonable. You’ll find you actually get your way, achieve your goals, make your sales, sign your deals, get hired, get promoted, make more money, by being equitable, kind, decent, and fair.

Playing fair doesn’t mean you give in when challenged or automatically compromise. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. On the contrary, it signals your strength. It means you’re sensitive, mature, sensible, open, intelligent, rational, consistent, and firm when necessary. Could anything be better? And besides, there’s no downside.

Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, offers on-site childcare. Why? Investment banks aren’t known for their short hours so this way the company makes it easy for parents to maximize output and minimize guilt.

Law firm Arnold & Porter lets associates spend six months at public interest organizations; has ombudsmen to handle employee issues, and a peer committee to give lower-ranking lawyers a voice. Do these policies make Arnold & Porter a bunch of patsies? No, they just know what it takes to make better lawyers and keep them.

At American Express, women hold nearly 57% of managerial and supervisory positions and make up 40% of executives and senior managers. Minorities hold more than 18% of positions at those levels. Diversity is a stated policy and value on the AmEx Web site. Are they acting out of social pressure or good business? Both. Sensitivity is smart. Qualified women and minorities have their pick of jobs. And of credit cards. The more they pick American Express, the better.

Google, the company that has changed or discarded almost all the old rules of business, not surprisingly operates under a very non-corporate-sounding motto: Do no evil. Not only is that their guiding principle in business practice, but it has resulted in a wholesale redefinition of the term “employee benefits.” At Google, benefits include onsite medical and dental care, a $500 allowance for take-out meals for new parents, child care, adoption assistance, shuttle service, at-work dry cleaning and haircuts, and a fuel efficient vehicle incentive.

Playing fair works. And it doesn’t mean you’re a pushover … unless a pushover is smart, sensitive, evenhanded, sound, and strong.

You’re judged by the company you keep

Every year Fortune Magazine assembles a list of the best companies to work for. Take a look at a recent sampling. They’re of different sizes, categories, parts of the country and the world, seemingly with little in common but the fact that people like to work for them. But, in fact, there is a pattern, their management practices:

Ikea – This Swedish furniture retailer gives employees extraordinary opportunities. They’re encouraged to take international assignments, with employment opportunities or tuition allowances for spouses.

Pfizer – World-class benefits are offered at this huge drug company, including on-site childcare at four locations (parents pay on a sliding scale based on income) and an elder-care program that includes counseling.

Men’s Wearhouse – Company execs gave away 113 trips to Hawaii at holiday parties in 2003. For those who didn’t score tickets, a three-week paid sabbatical is available after five years; 619 employees took one in 2003.

General Mills – This food company makes it easy for employees to get smart: It reimburses tuition at 100% up to $6,000 per year, even for new employees. And if the employees leave afterward, they need not repay the money.

Proctor & Gamble – Now here’s an innovation: The consumer-products giant pairs junior female employees with a senior manager for reverse mentoring to help the mostly male higher-ups understand the issues women face.

In every case, management has been responsive, even pre-emptive to employee issues. These CEOs, COOs, and CFOs could have simply ignored the human needs of their workforces, rationalizing that each worker, whether on an assembly line or in a windowed office, was getting a paycheck and if any of them wanted different conditions or benefits or understanding, he or she could simply work elsewhere. Instead, these managers determined that they would get a much greater return by being reasonable, kind, decent, fair … that is, nice. And the attitude filters down through the ranks, through every level of management, perpetuating itself throughout the organizations. As it turns out, by and large, these companies are also highly successful, year after year, in up and down economies. Coincidence? Hardly.

Do business the way these kinds of corporations and executives do and you’re in good company. Do business as a jerk and you’re not. Either way, you can probably make money. But when it comes time to hire or win new customers or just look at yourself in the mirror, whose company do you want to keep?

Part IV LISTEN MORE THAN YOU TALK

Every day your job is to solve impossible problems: unhappy clients, over-worked employees, rising costs, falling quality, late shipments, broken products, broken promises, fierce competition, out-sourcing, down-sizing, shrinking margins, inflation, deflation, interest rates, overheads…

But the fact is inside most business problems is a solution trying to get out. It’s just that we’re usually making too much of our own noise – selling, pitching, assuring, assuaging, talking, talking, talking – to hear the solution.

Stop talking! Start listening! Your customer, client, vendor, shipper, contractor, supervisor, boss, competitor, whomever is trying to tell you the answers if only you’d pay attention. As they teach young medical students, “When you hear hoof beats, don’t look for zebras.”

Listen twice as much as you talk and you’ll learn twice as much, and solve twice as many problems.

Shut up

It’s hard. When you hear a problem, you want to make it go away. With words – Let me explain. It’s really like this I promise. Got it. Done. No problem. But the problem is still there. It’s just buried under a barrage of language. Next time you face an issue, next time your reflex reaction is to say something … don’t. Not a sentence, not a word, not a grunt. Just imagine you have a mute button and push it. Close your mouth. The mere silence will communicate that you’re taking the issue seriously. What isn’t said can be as powerful as what is.

McDonald’s is famous for their all-powerful ad campaigns – slogans, songs, promotions, in every medium, 24/7 – based on the belief if they sell hard enough and loud enough, we’ll all buy it. They should have lowered their volume enough to hear the stampede to the salad bar, granola bars, yogurts, fruits, and bottled waters. They’d have realized sooner that some people in the family, the car, or the office group don’t want deep-fried, high-fat, super-sized, mega-meals. And if you don’t have something else for those people, you run the risk of losing the rest of the people. So they had to play an expensive game of menu catch-up.

A simple test: You’re invited to present your product line to a new customer. Before you even begin, he tells you his last vendor’s goods often arrived late, didn’t measure up to specs, and came in over budget. Then he tells you that all salespeople over-promise. Your lips part, your tongue is poised, your brain is composing rebuttals: Not us. Not my company. Not my products. Whoa. Close your mouth. Look him in the eye. Wait. What’s the message? You hear him. You’re not like other vendors. Not talking, not selling, not promising, and just absorbing the situation, the issue, or the problem is the first step to solving it.

Listen. Then hear.

Once it’s quiet, open your ears. Listen to the words, the volume, the inflection, nuance, whispers, emotion, pauses, even repetition. The people presenting the problems are trying to give you the answers. Let them.

If he makes money, you make money: Your new shopping center tenant invested his life savings in a business with high potential sales per square foot. What kind of lease do you offer: high fixed rent or low base plus overages on sales? He’s practically screaming the answer. He invested his life savings so he can’t pay much during start-up. But if he makes money, he’s happy for you to make money. Low base plus overages.

Conventional wisdom? Your investment client – single mother of two, manager of women’s boutique, facing private school tuition, a car payment, and full-time nanny – inherits $150,000 from her uncle. How do you recommend she invest it? Conventional wisdom says a diversified portfolio of growth stocks, mutual funds, and high-rated bonds. But if you’d have been listening, you’d know she needs income more than growth. Fewer stocks and mutual funds, more high-yield bonds, throwing off cash for expenses.

The early boss. Your supervisor gets in early every morning, walks the office to see who’s there. Even if you’re a high-producing sales rep, he’s giving you a message: Get in early. His message may be silent, but it’s loud and clear … if you’re listening.

When you go to work tomorrow, you can be sure you’ll be hit with a problem or two. Before you open your mouth, open your ears. The person with the problem is trying to give you the solution. Listen to the problem. Hear the answer.

You can learn a lot from great listeners. And bad ones.

Look at the marketplace and you can tell who’s been listening to the solutions within the problems and who hasn’t.

Target heard Wal-Mart customers saying they liked the prices, not the style, or lack thereof. So Target signed up designers like Michael Graves (home appliances and kitchenware), Isaac Mizrahi (fashion and furniture), Mossimo (beach and casualwear), and Thomas O’Brien (vintage/modern combinations for home décor).

Car rental companies heard travelers say, when the plane lands, they want to get in a car and go, not stand in line, fill out forms, show their license, swipe their credit card, accept or decline insurance, fill up or return empty, etc, etc. So they created Number One Clubs, Preferreds, and Emerald Aisles to preregister data, so members can get off the plane, get in a car and … go! They even pay extra to belong, which shows that listening pays.

Cable companies still don’t hear. Customers can’t wait at home between 8 and 12 or 1 and 5 for an installer who may or may not show up.

Online universities heard the problem and the solution. Lots of students can’t go to an ivy-covered institution paid for by mom and dad. Some have to work, raise families, or take care of a parent. They get online degrees without leaving home or the office.

Banks used to only see customers during “bankers’ hours.” Then they found they could handle more customers with ATMs and online banking, 24/7, for less than keeping the branches staffed even a few hours a day. Cable companies, take note.

Most newspapers still haven’t heard. They sit unread on front porches and in vending boxes, barely changing format or content, creating virtually no synergy between their paper and online versions, while the world turns to CNN, Bloomberg, C-Span, The Daily Show, satellite radio, MSN, dotcoms, and blogs.

Consumers honked through heavy traffic until we got HOV lanes and EZ Passes, complained about unsanitary bathrooms until we got automatic flushes, demanded and got free wireless internet thanks to Starbucks and others. Now we want parking meters that don’t need exact change, humans instead of phone prompts, and cars that don’t dent … in case someone is listening.

Listen. You will look brilliant when all you’re doing is giving people what they’re asking for.

It’s okay to be ignorant. It’s not okay to stay that way

Humans have a fear of appearing stupid. So we try to act like we know what we’re doing, especially at work, even when we don’t have a clue. The problem isn’t appearing stupid. It’s being stupid. Albert Einstein, who knew a thing or two, said: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”

Ignorance is the absence of knowledge. It can be fixed. Stupidity, on the other hand, is not even knowing what you don’t know. Go get some knowledge, fill the void, and the problem is solved. Research. Read. Find a mentor. Imitate. Absorb. Test. Validate.

If you’re ignorant, as the Wright Brothers were, you don’t understand why birds can fly and humans cannot. So, you study the elements of aerodynamics – wind resistance, acceleration, lift, drag, etc. – and fill the void with knowledge. The result? The development of the airplane, from props to jets, airlines from the first airline, TWA, to the latest no frills flyer, to airports, runways, towers, flight attendants, baggage handlers, ticket machines, metal detectors, reclining seats, air sickness bags, and miniature liquor bottles – one of the largest industries in the history of the world. But if you’re stupid, you flap your arms and crash to earth, with luck only breaking a leg.

Ignorance is temporary. It can be cured with knowledge. Stupidity, on the other hand, is forever.

Ask. It’s a great way to find out what you don’t know.

Animals learn by experiences only, especially bad experiences. Big animals eat little animals. Lesson: Avoid big animals. It’s getting cold out and there’s no food. Lesson: Store nuts for winter.

But we humans have an advantage over other animals. We don’t have to wait for bad experiences in order to learn. We don’t have to lose an account, a customer, an order, or our job, to learn. We have a shortcut.

When we don’t understand, we can ask. But we rarely do. We refuse to ask the very questions that would have informed us and prevented or fixed the problem we face.

All we had to do was ask. What time is the audit committee meeting? Do fair trade laws apply in California? How do you get from the Denver Airport to the client’s office? Is it plugged in? Will the boss be there? Can I wear jeans? What was the stock’s closing price? Can we amend our offer? Do we have a contingency plan? How does that work?

Journalists live by who, what, where, when, and how. Ask.com is an entire website devoted to answering questions. Today, virtually every business offers us FAQs – Frequently Asked Questions. Why? Because they’re really FNAQs – Frequently Not Asked Questions (we’re too embarrassed to ask) that once answered, can save us a lot of trouble.

Asking not only provides and clarifies information, prepares us for what may come, assures that we can execute as promised, avoids embarrassment, covers our tails … but it also gives rise to new ideas.

What if Fred Smith had never wondered why it took the U.S. Post Office so long to get packages from one place to another? He might never have created Federal Express.

What if no one had ever asked the furniture questions: How come it costs so much? Why do you have to order it and wait so long? Why can’t you take it home and put it together? Ikea might never have come into existence and introduced the Björkudden dining table or the Leksvik dresser, which we can’t pronounce but which we can take home, assemble in a few minutes with the small tool provided, and even afford to replace when we move or our tastes change.

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