If you’re the kind of driver who sometimes has trouble finding the brakes in your car, you should be driving an Audi. Last month, in 35mph crash tests of an airbag-equipped Audi 100, the mannequin in the driver’s seat suffered the lowest crash force ever recorded by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, in this kind of test. And yet, according to the Center for Auto Safety–a self styled public interest organization that sells its research to plaintiffs’ lawyers–the Audi 100′s predecessor, the Audi 5000, was as deadly as the Audi 100 is safe. It exhibited “sudden acceleration,” a fatal propensity to take off at full speed even as the terrified driver rammed the brake pedal to the floor. CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a devastating exposé of the Audi 5000. Audi customers fled. Lawyers cashed in. The American public was saved, yet again, from the perils of technology gone awry. Only one little noticed footnote remains at the end: There was nothing wrong with the car. The Audi story is by now, dismally familiar. “Sudden acceleration” accidents occurred when the transmission was shifted out of “park.” The driver always insisted he was standing on the brake, but after the crash the brakes always worked perfectly. A disproportionate number of accidents involved drivers new to the vehicle. When an idiot-proof shift was installed so that a driver could not shift out of park if his foot was on the accelerator, reports of sudden acceleration plummeted. But a story to the effect that cars accelerate when drivers step on the accelerator doesn’t boost television ratings or jury verdicts. And driver error is understandably hard to accept for a mother whose errant foot killed her six year old son. So with the help of such mothers, CAS and CBS knitted together a tissue of conjecture, insinuation, and calumny. The car’s cruise control was at fault. Or maybe the electronic idle. Or perhaps the transmission. 60 Minutes, in one of journalism’s most shameful hours, gave air time in November 1986 to a self styled expert who drilled a hole in an Audi transmission and pumped in air at high pressure. Viewers didn’t see the drill or the pump—just the doctored car blasting off like a rocket. Junk science of this kind moves fast. Real science takes time to catch up with this kind of intellectual cockroach and squash it. Government agencies in Japan and Canada, as well as in the US, conducted painstaking studies. The Canadians who are franker about such things, called it “driver error.” In America, where we can’t attach blame to anyone whose name doesn’t end with Inc., it was called “pedal misapplication.” And unsurprisingly, it’s not just Audi drivers who commit it. So, in the long run, the truth does come out. In the short run, the lawyers swoop in. Most soon recognized that they couldn’t prove any defect in the Audi’s engine or transmission. But our liability system today is a master of the bait and switch—the switch was to “pedal misdesign.” No doubt about it, the original Audi like other European cars, placed brake and accelerator pedals slightly closer together than is usual in many American designs. This allows the good driver to move faster between the pedals in highspeed emergency. Perhaps it also makes it easier for the bad driver to mix up the pedals. Nobody, including NHTSA, is quite sure whether, overall, the old Audi pedal placement was marginally better or marginally worse. End of case? Hardly. With Audi shellshocked and vulnerable from the earlier junk engineering claims, the pedal placement lawyers moved in. The 60 Minutes story starred a mother who had run over her six year old son. On the air, she insisted that she had had her foot on the brake the whole time. When her $48 million claim came to court in Akron, Ohio, in June 1988 the investigating police officer and witnesses at the scene testified that after the accident the distraught mother had admitted that her foot had slipped off the brake. The jury found no defect in the car. Trial judges in New Jersey and New York have overturned bad pedal design verdicts against Audi. Last July a federal court in Pennsylvania issued a summary judgment for Audi. And that should have been the end of Audi’s legal troubles. Except that it wasn’t. An appellate court reinstated the New Jersey verdict: an appeal is pending. The New York case was settled before retrial. A California jury returned a $3.5 million verdict against Audi on a pedal placement theory, after the plaintiff’s lawyers abandoned a sudden acceleration claim. Another appeal is pending. Today, Audi is reportedly defending itself in more than 140 different suits, and damage claims are in excess of $5 billion. Not that the aggregate claims have the slightest connection with reality, of course. At one point, a single demented plaintiff in New York filed identical $5 billion claims in both federal and state courts; both have since been thrown out. How about the US government safety report? In July, 1989, shortly after the report was released, Audi ran a hopeful advertisement titled “Case Closed.” “The case is not closed,” responded Robert Lisco, a Chicago plaintiffs’ attorney. “Those guys must be smoking something.” 60 Minutes never even acknowledged the final US findings, although it did grudgingly note identical conclusions of an earlier, blue-ribbon study, and then proceeded to rebroadcast inflammatory videos from the earlier segment. CAS denounced the government study and cheerfully cranked up yet another sudden acceleration smear, this one against Cadillacs. Lawyers for the “Audi Victims Network” brazenly declared that the report strengthened their clients’ cases. They may be right. The largest suit now pending against Audi is an Illinois class action, ostensibly representing 300,000 or so Audi 5000 owners. The charge? That because of the sudden acceleration controversy, Audi’s have lost resale value. Yes, sudden acceleration is real. A powerful engine kicks into gear without warning or reason. It crashes through a respected business, ruins the livelihood of hundreds of innocent dealers, and devalues the property of hundreds of thousands of bewildered car owners. The windfall goes to those who destroy and then successfully blame others for the wreckage. For heaven’s sake, where are the brakes?

As a consequence of the 60 Minutes story, sales of Audi’s in the United States collapsed. According to one account:

The show had an enormous impact in the marketplace. Sales of all Audi models in the US, which had peaked at 74,061 in 1985, plunged sharply after the 60 Minutes broadcasts. “It was a nightmare for the company,” says Thomas McDonald, former head of public relations at Audi’s parent, Volkswagen of America, Inc. “We lost billions of dollars in sales and revenues. Audi’s average annual sales of 14,000 cars from 1991 to 1995 were just 19 percent of its pre 60 Minutes peak.”

No one was ever able to duplicate the alleged occurrence of unintended acceleration with the car. Not a single person who filed a case against Audi ever won. Nevertheless, even to this day a perception still seems to linger in the marketplace that Audi’s are somehow dangerous and unsafe. What the Audi example teaches and has always taught me is that perceptions are one of the most important things to take note of. 60 Minutes, with all of its marketing might, was able to shape perceptions and the way people viewed Audi cars. Despite the fact that nothing was wrong with the car, 60 Minutes changed the way an entire generation of people perceived the automobiles manufactured by a particular company, and this almost destroyed the company in the process. One of the most powerful and important aspects of our careers and our lives is how we are perceived by others and how we control our own perceptions of those around us. People can use perceptions to their advantage or to their disadvantage. The most successful people are able to use perceptions to their advantage. After all, everything we may surmise about a person, a job, or any situation is based upon our perceptions. Often how something is perceived matters more than the facts surrounding it. For years I have opened the paper each week and seen various advertisements by American car companies wherein they try and compare their cars with German or Japanese rivals. For example, the company may have a chart that shows that the American car stops in a five foot shorter distance, that the car accelerates a little faster that its Japanese counterpart and that its JD Power Initial Quality Survey score is higher. I have seen these advertisements and their corresponding charts for 25+ years–and every single year American manufacturers have sold fewer and fewer cars in the United States. At the same time, the Japanese have continued to sell more cars each year. What is going on here, I think, is that people simply have different perceptions. The Japanese cars are perceived as better. The advertisers can throw around all of the facts and figures they want. People simply tend to have a better perception of Japanese cars. Perceptions matter more than facts. A couple of years ago my assistant was out purchasing me a little television for my bedroom. She called me from the store and gave me two options. One was a brand of television I had never heard of, LG, and the other was a Sony. She told me the LG one was bigger, had a nicer picture, and was a lot cheaper. I did not care. I told her to buy the Sony television. This was all because of my perception of the Sony brand. I had a much better perception of Sony than I had of LG, and consequently there were no facts that could change my mind–not even the fact that the LG model may have indeed had a bigger and better picture; and it definitely did cost less than the Sony model. Many people feel that their job search and the quality of the job they get is a battle of their résumé, and that their entire future depends on what is visible on their résumé. For example, people who go to the best colleges often assume they will get a much better job than those who go to lesser colleges. People who have the best work experience believe they will generally get the best job. There is a tremendous amount of truth to this reasoning; however, more important than any of this is how we are perceived. Perceptions matter far more than facts. When I was recruiting full time, I remember that I did not care as much about what was on someone’s résumé as who they were and how they were perceived. My greatest love in recruiting was managing how an employer perceived someone, which was always my greatest skill. Managing a perception instead of just the black and white characteristics surrounding a person was probably the most important thing I could do. I remember I met a girl once who was losing her job at a highly prestigious law firm in Los Angeles. I sat down with her and learned that she had grown up on a hippie colony with her parents, and that her father had some extreme beliefs about growing his own food and so forth. She had been rebelling against this lifestyle over the course of her entire life, and consequently she had become incredibly disciplined and motivated to succeed as a lawyer. This material made for incredibly interesting reading for the law firms that interviewed her, and I remember that her being perceived as someone who was “rebelling against the antiestablishment” went over very well. I remember writing a 15-page letter to the law firms about this aspect of this woman’s personality. What most recruiters would have done with this girl is send her around to law firms and so forth without managing her presentation–and therefore the perceptions of those that might hire her. She would have simply been presented as someone seeking a position at a new firm, a girl who had had a job at a good law firm and who had attended a decent law school. This would not have done her too much good, however. What the best recruiters do and what really changes everything around for the job seeker is when the perceptions of the employers about the prospective employee are conscientiously and properly shaped. There is a very good documentary on HBO about the disgraced Evangelical minister Ted Haggard. Haggard was a well known Evangelical leader who was the former president of the National Evangelical Association, representing 30 million Christians. He was also the Founder of the 14,000-member New Life Church. In 2006, Haggard resigned after a male prostitute claimed that Haggard had hired him numerous times for gay sex and used crystal meth with him. The fascinating documentary follows Haggard after being expelled from the Church as he moves from town to town looking for work. Unable to get a job, Haggard eventually gets a job as a traveling insurance salesman. Seeing Haggard go from a powerful man who is on top of the world and lecturing tens of thousands of people, meeting with American presidents, and being interviewed on major news programs–to someone whose entire range of possessions now fits in the back of a U-Haul truck was incredible. What makes the Haggard story so interesting is that it shows, like the Audi example, that everything is about perceptions. The public perception of Haggard was changed overnight when it came out that he did not represent what he stood for, having engaged in behavior that was considered immoral. The public perception of Audi was changed overnight when people started to believe the car was incredibly dangerous, because of a news program. Ultimately, the truth was that the Audi 5000 was among the top cars in terms of safety on the road. You need to realize the power of perceptions in your life, and to use them to your advantage. Aim to control, shape, and influence the perceptions that others have about you. Consciously work to create the image you will project to those around you. One of the most fascinating things to me about recruiting has always been what happens when a given law firm gets a bad reputation. The law firm may have earned a bad reputation due to a partner going to prison, or due to consistent layoffs, or something else along these lines. In most cases, the reputation is confined to only one aspect of the law firm. For example, out of 10 practice groups in the law firm, there may be a problem with only one practice group–not every practice group. What ends up happening, however, is that people often do not go beneath this skin to recognize that the true problems within the law firm are really confined to only 10% of the entire organization. What this means is that there are less applicants and therefore more opportunities available for people to get jobs at this firm, who might not otherwise get jobs there. This is all due to a poor perception about the firm that is not well founded. Perceptions are often far more important than facts. You will get a better job due to how you are perceived over and above how good your résumé is. You manage how you are perceived by the people you know, how you present yourself to the world and how your reputation will grow. The most important thing you can do in your life and career is make perceptions work for you. THE LESSON Perceptions matter more than facts; others’ perceptions of you, your perceptions of others, and how you control both are the most important aspects of your career. Realize the power of perceptions in your life and use them to your advantage. Aim to control and shape the perceptions that others hold about you by shaping the image that you project to the world.

• “You’ll never be able to do that.”
• “That’s for other people, not people like us.”

We receive these sorts of messages again and again. Whether someone is trying to get you to buy something or is afraid of you improving because it will illuminate his or her own inadequacies, it is important that you are aware that others around you may be trying to keep you down, make you insecure, or control how you feel about your life. Do not allow others to control or influence you negatively, and be aware of this kind of behavior. If you allow others to influence how you think or feel, you will be in service of them and not in service of yourself.

LOS ANGELES (CNN) — Mark Hughes, the founder of Herbalife International, one of the world’s leading distributors of herbal products, died of an accidental overdose after mixing alcohol with a “toxic level” of antidepressants, authorities said Friday. Scott Carrier, of the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, said final autopsy results found that Hughes, 44, had high levels of both alcohol and an antidepressant in his blood. The cause of Hughes’ death recalls that of his mother. Hughes’ mother died of an accidental overdose of prescription diet pills when he was 18. He often cited her death as motivating him to succeed in the herbal products industry–to provide millions with products that were not available to his mother. Carrier attributed the death to “alcohol-Deoxpin intoxication.” Deoxpin is an antidepressant, which Hughes was taking to “treat insomnia,” the coroner said. Hughes’ blood-alcohol level was recorded at .21 percent. A “toxic level” of Deoxpin was also found in his system at 2.1 micrograms per milliliter, Carrier said. Hughes was found dead in his Malibu mansion May 21. The initial autopsy, conducted on May 23, was inconclusive and required additional tests. In February 1980, Hughes founded Herbalife International. It has since become one of the world’s largest distributors of herbal products, with sales of about $1.7 billion annually.

At the time of his death, I knew people who were working at Hughes’s Malibu mansion, including people who were installing incredibly ornate marble floors–and even Hughes’s personal trainer. For people who knew Hughes, it was no mystery that he had been headed down the wrong path. His personal trainer would sometimes show up at 8:00 a.m. and find that Hughes had been up drinking all night and had not yet gone to sleep. Another time, the personal trainer allegedly came over in the early afternoon; Hughes was drunk and made himself vomit so that he could exercise. It is definitely surprising that a guy like Hughes had a serious drinking problem, since he was running one of the largest health food companies in the world at the time. Someone going out there promoting health and wellness, who became incredibly rich doing so, seems unlikely to become a raging alcoholic. Hughes did not need to work. He had all the money he would ever need and seemed to have it all. The guy who would walk around telling everyone “Happy Friday” actually used to work for Hughes at Herbalife. He wanted to be someone like Hughes, who had all that money and power, so that he could sit around and do nothing. I wonder, however, what he thought of when he learned that Hughes had died such a tragic and senseless death. Did he still see the value of having nothing to do? The interesting thing about success is that once people have achieved incredible goals, they often become complacent, and then they start having the most problems. There is a huge danger to complacency because when you reach this state, everything in your life can end up going to hell. You are never truly happy because of the things you get; instead, you are happy because of what you become. If you are not becoming something (i.e., progressing toward a goal) you will generally not be happy. What makes people happy is the process of continually becoming something and growing. If we are not growing then we are dying. Regardless of what your dreams may be, most people are not and can never be happy being complacent. Some of the guys I knew growing up made complacency their goal in life. They are complacent now–and fat and boring. Their lives revolve around things like looking forward to Happy Fridays. They live for the weekends. One of the greatest challenges in your career and in your life is to learn how to handle, or more specifically, how to avoid complacency. Complacency can literally destroy your career and life. You are either moving up or you are moving down. You cannot afford to move down, but when you are complacent, you will most certainly end up moving down. You need to learn to judge yourself by your potential rather than by what your peers are doing. Also, you need to surround yourself with people who have high expectations for themselves so you too can have high expectations for yourself. Pay very close attention anytime you are not challenged and any time you feel like you might be getting too content. A good coach does not allow a player to rest on her laurels and you should not rest on your laurels either. You need to be your own coach and constantly push yourself forward. If you do this, you will achieve more in your life. THE LESSON Avoid complacency, as it can literally destroy your career and your life. You are either moving up or moving down, and complacency will always place you on a downward trajectory. Surround yourself with people who will continually challenge you to become better. Surrounding yourself with mediocre people will introduce mediocrity into your own life; when you surround yourself with people who accept nothing but the best, you are likely to become exceptional as well.

• They sign up for a course in school, forget they are enrolled, and get an F in the class–crushing their chances of getting into a good graduate school.
• They constantly have strange health problems.
• People around them seem to constantly be dying or having accidents for no apparent reason.
• They are robbed and beaten up, even in good neighborhoods.
• The sewer pipes explode in their house and destroy their home a week after they forget to pay their home insurance.
• They get fired and dismissed from jobs after being accused of things they did not even do.
• They touch a microwave oven to heat up some food and the microwave breaks.
• Their cars keep breaking down–even new ones–and they are always late and missing out on this or that.
• They have strange auto accidents, like being directly behind a truck making bottled water deliveries, which suddenly discharges its load onto the freeway, causing them to drive into a ravine.
• They have a couple of drinks and go for a bike ride, then get arrested and thrown in prison for drunk driving.
• The companies they join go out of business.
• They lose an important sporting competition because they have a bizarre accident right before they are to compete.
• They constantly lose purses, keys, and other personal articles.

I could go on and on about various people like this whom I have seen bad things happen to over and over again. However, the most interesting thing about these people is that they just seem to swim in a constant stream of bad luck. Like clockwork, one issue or another continually affects them in a negative way. As these issues affect these people, they become resigned to a belief that the world is an unfortunate place, and that it is just difficult to make things work. In the job and career realm, these people always have a difficult time. Rather than getting ahead, they are plagued with one thing after another that seems to make the workplace extremely difficult. If you think that none of the above (extreme) examples relate to your own situation, or that you cannot learn anything from the examples above, you are wrong. Your effectiveness in the world is largely based on the level of control you are able to exert over your surroundings. Some people are controlled by their surroundings and others control their surroundings. Your sanity, success, and happiness in the world will come in direct proportion to your ability to control your surroundings. The person who is affected by one negative occurrence after another is typically someone who is unable to control his or her surroundings. The person who thrives in any environment is one who is typically able to control his or her surroundings. What is competence? When we say someone is competent, what we are essentially saying is that the person has the ability to control his or her environment and what happens around him or her. A competent surgeon is able to control her instruments and perform an effective surgery. A competent proofreader is able to proofread work and correct any errors that may occur. Competency means being able to control the outcome and effectiveness of our work, rather than being controlled by external factors. When we call someone incompetent, what we are essentially saying is that the person cannot control the outcome and effectiveness of his or her work. An incompetent individual is someone who is unable to do a good job. The idea of incompetency is that the person’s work and environment dominates him or her, not the other way around. Over the years we have had lots of people work in our various companies whose jobs were to fix computers, phone systems, and so forth whenever they went down. Right now we have someone absolutely fantastic doing the job. These systems hardly ever break down around this guy, and when they do, he fixes them instantly. Before he joined our team, we had another person in his position, and the computers always broke down. There were viruses on the computers. The phone system was always having problems. With this new person, everything works perfectly and almost all the time. The reason is competence. This man has taken preventive measures to make sure that everything is working all the time. He is aware of what could or might go wrong at any given time–before it actually does. When he fixes something, he puts it back together and does not leave any aspect of his work unfinished. If he does not understand something fully, he speaks with as many others in the field as he can, and he makes every effort possible to fix the problem. This person is, in a word, competent at what he does. His work area is clean. There are no unfinished projects. He knows his business and does not take on work he does not understand. The opposite would be if he did not finish assignments completely, and let his work pile up. If he disassembled a computer and then did not reassemble it, and just moved on to something else. If he failed to read up about the latest developments. If he were not out there networking and exchanging information with other computer engineers. What would happen to him in this case is that his work would eventually take control over him, not the other way around:

• Phone systems and networks would be going down all the time.
• People would be yelling at the person, and he would eventually be at the mercy of his work and the world.
• He would not receive any pay raises.
• He might lose his job.
• He would be agitated all the time.
• He might start drinking too much.
• He would make justifications for the problems he was having at work due to old computers or phone systems, and use these excuses in discussing his performance with management.
• He would begin searching for another job to relieve the pressure–and then another one after that.
• The process would repeat itself at each new job.
• He might yell at his wife and kids at night.
• He might be angry with his employers–and the world at large.
• He might sue an employer for firing him.

You see, all of this would be caused by this person’s inability to control his environment. Controlling your environment is among the most important things you can do. People who are exceptional at their jobs and in their lives are generally able to control their environment and to resist being controlled by their environment. When I joined my first law firm with a group of around fifteen other recent law school graduates in 1997, there was a young partner in the law firm who was a little bit insane, I think. I suspected the partner was a cocaine addict but I was not sure. You see, this guy rarely came into the office, and when he was there, he would grab an associate and give some cryptic instructions to do this or that. He might tell the associate that it would take “at most three to four hours”–when in reality it was a twenty-five-hour job. The associate would do the work and might find herself being berated or humiliated by the partner for not doing some task that was not part of the original assignment. The partner would then lie about having assigned the task, when he had not. The entire process of working with the guy was quite exasperating for everybody in the firm, because of his outrageous behavior. As a young attorney starting out in a law firm, the most important thing you can do is complete assignments and impress the partners you are working for. I remember that a very talented young associate was given a workload by this particular partner, and after a few days the associate flat-out refused to work with him anymore. He made a point of going to the head of the law firm at the time, John Quinn, and telling Quinn that he would no longer be able to work with this particular partner. This was something that people just did not do, and everyone in the office was very impressed that the young associate had done this. The guy who refused to work with the partner was one of two people in this class of fifteen who ultimately ended up making partner in this law firm. He never got flustered and was always respected by his peers. I think that the reason he was so effective and able to do so well was that he knew the importance of controlling his own work environment. He refused to work with a partner who did not allow him to control his own work. A few years ago, I had a very talented assistant working for me. She had gone to an excellent college and had finished near the top of her class. Her work ethic was exceptional and she did a really good job in everything that she undertook. She was working on a real estate matter with me, and the real estate agent she was dealing with kept lying, not showing up for appointments, and telling me and others that the young woman had said things she did not. It was a bizarre situation, and the real estate agent eventually ended up losing his license for similar behavior. I remember one day my assistant took a stand and refused to work with the agent. “I’ve had it. I am not going to work with someone who lies and changes things around. It makes it impossible for me to do my job. You can fire me if you want, but I simply cannot continue like this.” This girl was controlling her environment. By controlling her environment she was able to make sure that she could do her work effectively. Because the lying, scheming, and so forth of the real estate agent was making it impossible for her to control her environment, she refused to have anything to do with him. You need to control your environment at work. This means lots of things–like not taking on more work than you can handle and making sure you do everything with competence. One way of not controlling your environment is by just being plain lazy. Being lazy means letting work pile up, not doing your job, being preoccupied with things besides work and so forth. I do not have a lot of sympathy for lazy people, and neither does the rest of the working world. Lazy people never end up doing all that well at anything. These sorts of people are let go from organizations rapidly and frequently. Darwinian forces in most organizations typically take over quickly, and the lazy end up having major problems. The lazy and the careless are people who perpetually fail to control their environments–probably because doing so requires energy and focus. These people can create major problems for organizations and themselves. Another, more unfortunate example of failing to control your environment is taking on too much work or, similarly, doing work you do not really understand. This is a huge problem that affects countless individuals in the workplace. When you are good at something, people may give you more and more work. You need to know when to say no and you need to develop a keen ability to politely decline any assignment that is beyond your scope of expertise. Many people come into jobs and soon get in way over their heads–trying to take on too much work. I have seen this time and time again. When you have more work than you can handle, or you are doing work that you do not understand, you are not controlling your environment; instead you are being controlled by it. When I started the same legal job I mentioned earlier, there was a girl a few doors down from me who had recently graduated from Yale Law School. The girl was absolutely brilliant and very hard working. We shared secretaries who worked at the same station, and I used to see this woman’s time sheets, which she would turn in every day. After I had been at the firm for around six months, I started noticing that the time sheets she was turning in each day were adding up to a full twenty-four hours. This meant, effectively, that she was working entire shifts of twenty-four hours without a break. I would notice these hours adding up to twenty-four hours at least a few times each week, and it was astonishing to me. I could not imagine, at the time, working this many hours on anything. Within several months of this woman’s starting these twenty-four-hour shifts, she had left the firm and gone to work for the government. I do not know why she did this; however, my guess is that she simply had taken on too much work. She had become unable to control her own work environment. Had she been able to turn down work and refused to work such long hours, she would have been controlling her environment–and she might not have burned herself out of what promised to be an illustrious law career. Control of your environment starts with you. I know of employers who will not hire people who are grossly overweight, drink too much, or smoke. People have actually said this to me before. Why? The reason is that the employer figures that people who are grossly overweight, drink too much, or smoke are unable to control themselves, their urges, and their body and therefore will be unable to control their work. I knew of an attorney once who had a job offer from a major law firm and was invited out for drinks with an important partner a few weeks before he was supposed to start. The partner ordered two drinks over a few hours and the prospective new associate ordered four drinks. He was not hired on account of this, for the reasons mentioned above. I will never forget that one. You show your ability to control your environment by the way you dress and carry yourself. I have heard of people not being hired for important jobs due to their collars being frayed. I know of contractors who will not hire people who do not organize their tools well. All of this translates into an ability to control your environment. The person with the frayed collars is showing that he does not care about having a professional appearance, evidenced by his refusal to update his wardrobe or to get new clothes. Having a professional appearance is important in many lines of work. The contractor who is unable to keep his tools organized is not controlling the tools of his trade; therefore he looks weak to the potential employer. If you have ever known someone who seemed a little crazy, it is likely due, at least in part, to an inability to control his or her environment; chaotic surroundings often lead to a chaotic state of mind. The stresses of the world impact this person over time and to an extraordinary degree, and things are constantly going wrong in this person’s life, all because this person is acted upon by the environment–not the other way around. People who are chronically stressed out and upset are typically being acted upon by the environment, not the other way around. One of the greatest dangers (and opportunities) out there is when an individual gets a promotion or a company starts to expand when things are going well. This is always a giant opportunity for the individual or group to move to a higher standard. With more responsibility and growth often comes the challenge of controlling more variables in the work environment. In this case your standards, your attention to detail, your desire to do a good job, and your ability to exert control over your work environment, all determine if you will succeed. If you have watched films about the military, or if you have ever been in the military, you know that there are countless procedures that are in place. People are always communicating back and forth, seeking clearance for this procedure or that procedure. Certain high-level military personnel may even call the president to seek clearance for one thing or another. The reason so many procedures exist in the military is that it would be impossible for the military to control its environment without the procedures. An absence of procedure would equate complete chaos. The larger a company or organization is, the more procedures you are likely to see. There may be multiple levels of management, legal divisions, marketing teams–and all sorts of procedures in place for every one of these groups. All of this enables the company to control its environment so that it is optimized for continued growth and expansion. Organizations cannot function without numerous procedures and various methods to assist them in controlling their environment.

• A lack of procedures, standards, and ways of controlling incoming work can lead to major difficulties and problems, and often lead to individuals having stress, emotional problems, career difficulties, and more.
• A lack of procedures, standards, and ways of controlling incoming work can lead to major difficulties and problems, and often lead to companies having stress, organizational problems, severe business difficulties, and more.

An interesting trend happens in the economy: There are “booms” and then there are “busts.” During a boom cycle, lots of people are being hired in a short amount of time. In short, there is a lot of opportunity. During a “bust” the exact opposite starts occurring. People are let go and fewer people are hired. The people who remain inside of organizations are given more and more tasks, and their work is made more efficient. Productivity typically increases during a “bust.” All that is occurring here, essentially, is that the organization is exerting more control over its environment in order to survive. Control means having fewer workers, monitoring what each worker is doing, having higher hiring standards, and so forth. Those who are the most efficient at their work are generally kept on. When a group is rapidly expanding during a boom, a lavish and decadent sort of culture often sets in: Expenses are not overseen very carefully, and there is a great deal of unnecessary spending. Things get out of control, and the company starts to lose profits. When the bust cycle occurs, control is brought back. The ability of an organization to exert control over its workers, expenses, and so forth has a direct connection to its ultimate success in both good and bad times. Poorly run organizations are unable to control their workers, they are unable to control their expenses, and they are unable to control their products–and they ultimately go out of business. Everything in terms of an organization’s success is about control. Just as an organization’s success depends on effective control, your own ability to succeed in your career and life depends on your ability to control your environment, and to not be controlled by it. THE LESSON You need to control your work environment. People who are successful in their work and personal lives are generally able control their environment, and resist being controlled by it. Do not take on more work than you can handle, and make sure to competently handle the work that you do take. An organization’s success depends on its control over its assets, and your own success similarly depends on your ability to control your environment rather than the other way around.

Word has been spreading that there were mass layoffs… CenterNetworks has the story, saying they’ve received several unconfirmed reports that there have been mass firings at the company’s New York City offices. The story also points to several comments on Twitter, including some from an employee who posted comments from the conference room where the layoff notices were given. Product Manager Derek Tumolo also posted on Twitter that at least eight people were fired, but other rumors are suggesting the total is much higher. There also are reports of visibly angry people on the street and security guards stationed outside the company’s headquarters. Further, a comment from “Tucker” left on Cheezhead’s own article notes, “Not sure if this story still holds true. Heard that …. massive layoffs just this morning. Seems really contradictory to what they say in the Crain’s piece.” We’re keeping our ears open for more official information and will update this post accordingly. UPDATE: After requesting a confirmation or denial of the mass layoffs, we received the following statement from Lou Casale [COMPANY NAME REDACTED]…: While demand for our service remains strong and we continue to grow, we regularly assess our business and the economic environment around us to ensure we remain a healthy, strong, growing company. Given the current economic environment, we have made some adjustments, which includes a reduction in workforce. [COMPANY NAME REDACTED] is taking these steps to position the company for long term. http://www.cheezhead.com/2009/04/15/layoffs-at-theladders/

The company at issue is a good company. It is just like most companies in that it is trying to portray constant growth in the face of hardship. There is something about the concept of growth that is incredibly important to people, which is why people talk about it on an ongoing basis. Even when companies are laying people off, they talk about the fact that they are expanding. This entire mentality seems extremely strange to me–that we are so focused on growth and how large an organization is as a measure of its success. A couple of years ago our company had more than 750 employees. The managers in the company seemed very excited about the number of employees we had and the fact that we were growing so rapidly. Interesting to me is the fact that at that time the company was not all that profitable–not with so many employees. In fact, many companies and their managers seem to believe it is more important to be expanding and growing than to be profitable and to have a company that runs like a tight ship and is built for long-term stability. We are programmed to believe that expansion is the most positive thing and that not expanding is equivalent to dying and contracting. Here are some instances where we see evidence of this mentality:

• Religions talk about the fact that they are gaining followers and take great pride in this.
• Companies talk about their expansion, and take great pride.
• Groups talk about how they are getting new members and are therefore becoming stronger.

There is a belief out there that if something is expanding, it must be good, and if it is not expanding, there must be something wrong with it. Businesses are generally either growing or contracting. It is very rare that any organization just remains the same. And businesses that seek to remain leveled are usually really contracting. Expansion is always considered the most positive thing. We expect companies and organizations to be growing because this indicates that the organization is well received in the world. In order to expand, an organization, business, or government generally needs to have a product, ideology, or service that is in demand. Providing something that is in demand brings the opportunities to expand. There must be at least some positive public response to what an organization is offering, and due to this positive public response, more people are interested in joining, purchasing, converting, and so forth. There are numerous products, organizations, and ideologies out there that are very good but that, for whatever reason, have been unable to expand. I spend a lot of time in Malibu, California, and in my time there, I have had the opportunity to meet numerous extremely wealthy people–people who live in homes that are worth $25 million or more, fly around on private jets, and have vacation homes all over the world. Most of these people sell some sort of product, service, or ideology. Yet it is not just that they sell a product, service, or ideology; it is that they have been able to dramatically expand this product, service, or ideology. The service might be a little pizza, hair shampoo, a restaurant, a tequila, it might be a type of radio station, it could be a religion (my next-door neighbor has his own religion), beauty products…. It could even be a law firm. Whatever the product, service, or ideology is, the person has managed to EXPAND its reach to more locations and more people throughout the world. It is rare, for example, that the people I meet who are superrich, with their private jets, and so forth–have a product that is just sold in Los Angeles, or even just in California. Instead, these people have created a way to market and sell their product throughout the country and, in most cases, the world. Generally speaking, it is not the product itself that is that great. Rather, it is the ability of the entrepreneur(s) or business owner(s) to take a small local demand and expand it to a larger market. This is where the real skill lies. I like to spend time in malls because inside of malls you can see the products and services that have managed to expand. In most cases, these products or services have originated in large cities like Los Angeles and New York. The reason I think this is the case is that rent is extremely expensive in larger cities, and businesses need to do their work extremely well and efficiently to survive in these markets. Those that are able to survive in the largest markets are most often the services, products, and ideologies that are best able to deliver using exceptionally well executed organizational methods. It is the ability to expand that product, service, or ideology that is most significant, not the offering itself. Anyone can open a steakhouse that serves steaks and salads. Not everyone, however, can open a Ruth’s Chris Steak House, with outlets all over the country. Expanding requires tremendous organization and skill. A budding religion cannot expand unless its leaders have incredible organizational and management skills. A service cannot expand unless its leaders have organizational skills. It is the ability of the company to organize its product and service that is most significant in business, politics, and life. If the business organizes properly to meet the demand for what it has to offer, the company will grow stronger and will be more likely to survive. If it does not organize properly to meet the demand, then it will likely die off. Countries are another example of organizations seeking to expand and grow. So are groups that support ideologies such as democracy, socialism, Islamic fundamentalism, Christianity, Communism, Mormonism, and so forth. Through expansion, each group believes it can increase its influence, and therefore its power. Wars are generally fought by groups seeking to expand their influence. Wars are generally won when the ideology that the war seeks to expand is met with enthusiasm by the people the war is against. When the ideology is met with indifference or hostility, the war is generally lost.

• It would be very difficult for an Islamic nation to take over the United States because the majority of the United States is not Muslim and most people have no interest in that ideology.
• It would be next to impossible for Americans to go into a Muslim country, for example, and conquer it. The “American ideology” simply would not sell in a predominantly Muslim country, just as the “Islamic ideology” would not sell in the United States.

Each of these hypothetical examples could be viewed as an attempt to “sell the wrong product in the wrong place.” If, however, there were a huge demand for Islam in the United States due to the ideology being accepted by most Americans, then it might be relatively easy for an Islamic country to take over the United States. Back when the British were colonizing many countries, before the British government would arrive on the new land, Christian missionaries often showed up and converted people in the country to the new religion. When the British government eventually showed up, the people were much easier to colonize and to win over, because they had already converted to a common religion. Islam, Catholicism, capitalism, democracy, and other methods are all ideologies that have generally expanded and been successful in their expansion in cases whereby the product/ideology was appealing to the audiences that they expanded into. Russia, for example, very quickly converted to capitalism, when it became an option. The people were ready for this shift, and they wanted it. It would be very hard to make a comparable switch in the United States over to communism, however, because the substantial majority of the people in the country are not ready for and do not want it. In Nazi Germany, when the Germans marched into some of the first countries they took over, they were met with little resistance. The territories conquered arguably were people of “Germanic” descent and they shared similar social philosophies with the Nazis. It was only when Germany attempted to conquer areas that did not share its political or social philosophies (such as France) that it started to get into serious trouble. Without an audience interested in what Germany was “selling,” the Germans were destined to lose the war. So too was it with the Romans, the Ottoman Empire, and other governments and ideologies throughout history that have come up against the wall in their attempts to expand into places where they were not welcome. So too was it with the United States in Vietnam and in Iraq. When any organization or ideology is expanding, there will always be forces in the market that want to slow down the expansion or to stop it completely. These forces are generally competitors and others who are accustomed to working under one ideology, or business model, and are trying to protect their territory. Therefore, you will see:

• Dictatorships attacking signs of democracy.
• Communist countries attacking democratic countries.
• Small businesses attacking large businesses as impersonal.
• Large businesses attacking small businesses as inefficient.
• Companies that make handmade products attacking those that mass produce them.
• Companies that use “natural” ingredients attacking those that do not.
• Organizations that employ well-trained workers attacking those that do not.

Organizations and individuals are constantly doing everything in their power to find and create demand in order to spur expansion. At the same time, there are constant forces out there trying to slow the expansion. The entire world of business, politics, and religion is a tension between expanding and contracting. Certain things expand while others contract. When something is expanding, it is growing and when something is contracting, it is considered to be dying. If a product or ideology is considered to be beneficial and in demand then it will be poised for expansion. If a product is not considered to be beneficial, then it will not be poised for expansion. In business, companies are continually reinventing themselves in an attempt to come out with products and services that are considered more beneficial. Religions are also continually reinventing themselves to appear beneficial. The Catholic Church, for example, has made many changes in the 20th century in an attempt to continue to appear relevant. There is a giant struggle amongst religious groups–and many types of organizations–over being relevant to people and not being relevant to people. What does all of this mean to your career and life? In business, religion, and politics, nothing is ultimately more important than being on the side of expansion–not contraction. All types of organizations want people around them who are going to help them expand.

• When you see the résumés of strong managers, they often discuss how they “grew” a division.
• Candidates for a chief executive officer, chief operating officer, and so forth always talk about how they have “grown” a department, for example.
• The résumés of salespeople always mention how a candidate has increased sales and performance.
• A candidate for a marketing job might emphasize the role his work played in helping a company or product expand.

Employers and all organizations are interested in those who can help them expand and grow. Everything for employers is about expansion. Everything for most religions and political parties is about expansion. Life is about expansion and to most of us, the very ideas of expansion and growth seem necessary to our survival. True expansion only occurs when there is a genuine demand for the product or ideology seeking to expand. Many people can create demand for a product or service by virtue of their skill; however, this is generally “artificial demand,” which does not really “hold” for the long term. For example, after September 11, 2001, General Motors sold a ton of cars with its “Zero Percent Interest” and “Employee Pricing” sales, which were advertised aggressively. While the public may not have been as enthusiastic about General Motors cars compared to other cars on the market, GM was able to expand in a quick and short-term manner, with aggressive advertising. In order to expand, most businesses must keep the phone ringing and people coming through the door. Advertising is one way they accomplish this goal. If you go to almost any town in the U.S., you will probably see a billboard for a personal injury attorney somewhere on the road. I have yet to encounter a decent-size town where I do not see this. Some of these attorneys who advertise on billboards are excellent attorneys; however, many of them are not. Despite being horrible attorneys, these are the most recognizable attorneys in the cities and towns in which they live, and they are therefore considered the top attorneys. It is all because of the “artificial demand” they have created for their companies through use of the media. Good services are able to expand easily and to hold their expansion. For example, McDonald’s is a fast-food restaurant that people seem to really enjoy. This fast-food restaurant went from one location to tens of thousands over the years, and very few of them have closed. When the business expanded into new markets, it discovered there was a genuine demand for its products. Other restaurants that attempted such expansion may not have been so lucky. The reason for this is related to (1) the popularity and demand of the product (often based on a perception of value), and/or (2) the ability of the restaurant to manage its expansion. Business is about expansion. Expansion can occur when the product is so good that it catches on virally (such as Google did–in a very short time), or it can occur through advertising, whereby the perception of demand and value can be artificially boosted (as in the GM sale after September 11 example). Your job, in every company or organization that you work for is to be on the side of expansion. The more you can contribute to expansion and growth, the more job security you will have. The more you can show potential employers that you can help them expand, the more likely it is you will be hired. One of the most important keys to securing and holding a job is being on the side of and assisting with expansion. The more you can assist with expansion and can be seen as someone who will make this happen, the better career you will have. THE LESSON You will greatly benefit your career by helping and promoting your company’s expansion. A common belief is that expansion is fundamentally positive, and a lack of expansion is fundamentally negative. You must be on the side of expansion rather than contraction in every area of your life. All employers seek people who will help them expand, and the more your ability to contribute to this expansion will provide you increased job security and a greater likelihood of being hired.

• It is this way for every plant.
• It is this way for every house and every building.
• It is this way for every piece of machinery.
• It is this way for every boat, car, and airplane.
• It is this way for every single thing on earth.

The order that exists will always become disorganized and put into varying states of disorder. When something is put into a state of disorder, it will be transformed into a new state again, whereby it will once again be reorganized into something that represents order. This is a never-ending cycle. Ideally, each time something is subjected to further disorder, it has the opportunity to reorganize itself into something different. An example of order coming into being from disorder is the creation of diamonds:

Diamonds form between 120-200 kms or 75-120 miles below the earth’s surface. According to geologists the first delivery of diamonds was somewhere around 2.5 billion years ago and the most recent was 45 million years ago. That is a long time, my friend! According to science, the carbon that makes diamonds, comes from the melting of pre-existing rocks in the Earth’s upper mantle. There is an abundance of carbon atoms in the mantle. Temperature changes in the upper mantle forces the carbon atoms to go deeper where it melts and finally becomes new rock, when the temperature reduces. If other conditions like pressure and chemistry is right then the carbon atoms in the melting crustal rock bond to build diamond crystals. There is no guarantee that these carbon atoms will turn into diamonds. If the temperature rises or the pressure drops then the diamond crystals may melt partially or totally dissolve. Even if they do form, it takes thousands of years for those diamonds to come anywhere near the surface. http://www.gemsutra.com/diamonds.html

The creation of diamonds represents disorder being changed and coming together as something quite beautiful. The pressure on the rocks creates a diamond. However, not every type of disorder becomes something great. When many people are exposed to disorder, what emerges is something bad. In addition, many people stay isolated from others and the world, in an effort to avoid disorder. When you are in a company and lose your job, you are exposed to disorder. Almost any job you are working at, you will eventually lose or leave–disorder is a natural law. Almost every company that you are working for will eventually go out of business (some time in the future). Many people’s lives and careers are punctuated by an extreme amount of disorder. They move from relationship to relationship and job to job and profession to profession. Each exposure to this lack of security and order in their lives is a chance to expose themselves to disorder, and to potentially change their lives for the better. When you lose a job, this is an example of being exposed to disorder. How you react to this disorder will, in large part, determine how successful you become in your career and life. Many people panic and get extremely upset and desperate when exposed to this sort of disorder:

• They take the first job they are offered, even if it is beneath their skill level.
• They may not look in other geographic areas where there are more opportunities.
• They may get depressed and turn to drugs and alcohol.
• They may confine their job search to looking on one job board, rather than exploring all the additional options available.

There are numerous potential responses to disorder when we face it in our lives. Disorder needs to be seen as a good thing and should be viewed as a chance to create a diamond, instead of something worse than what existed before. It is very powerful knowing that the disorder we face will lead to order. If you are not near retirement age and you are fired from a job, or lose a job, you need to understand that the “order” of a new job will come back to your life and you will find another job. Disorder always leads to order. The methods that you follow and how you go about creating the new order, represented here by the new job, are very significant and powerful. When disorder is imposed upon you, or you face impending disorder, it is an incredible opportunity for you to reorganize yourself and your life into something better. There are all sorts of responses we can have to disorder. I read an interesting article today, about an alarming increase in bank robberies in Spain due to current unemployment rates hovering at 20%. The article dealt with a contractor who had robbed four banks to pay his employees (before he was finally caught). This is a negative response the man had to the disorder he was facing, due to a bad economy. A positive response to a bad economy might be to find new sorts of work that need to be done, instead of robbing a bank. Another response might simply be having fewer employees on the payroll. Disorder always leads to order. It is the same with relationships. There is order and there is disorder. Both order and disorder are related and are present in every relationship. Sometimes things are going well and other times they are not. Many people crave order in relationships and others crave disorder. In every relationship there will always be order and disorder. It is important to make disorder work for you in relationships and not against you. Because order always leads to disorder, it is important that we look upon disorder as something positive and not something negative. In addition, there are times when we are in an ordered condition, when being in this condition may not really be in our best interest. There is a real danger in isolating yourself and not allowing yourself to be exposed to disorder. The more you are exposed to disorder, the better the chance that you can reorganize and become ordered at a higher level. There are many people out there who are in stable relationships but who are not growing in these relationships. They may have paired themselves with people who did not challenge them, or who are far beneath them in terms of intellect or something similar. This is very common. Many people seek out people and situations that do not challenge them so they are not exposed to disorder. They are frightened of disorder. In their careers, many people put themselves in situations wherein they are not challenged, just so they can avoid the risk of being exposed to disorder (i.e., being forced to learn new skills and to push and grow outside of their comfort zone). They choose to live lives of mediocrity and deny the achievement of their own potential, because they are unable to challenge themselves. This is extremely common. It is more than likely occurring with you at some level within your own life. The two laws that (1) order leads to disorder and (2) disorder leads to order, are something you should understand in your own life. You need to make order and disorder work for you. You need to utilize disorder so that you can grow. The best thing that can often happen to you is to be exposed to disorder by losing a job, or experiencing some other sort of setback. The times we are exposed to disorder are some of the most important times in our lives. Our reaction to disorder shapes our lives to come. THE LESSON Two fundamental laws of the universe are that order leads to disorder, and disorder leads to order. Since disorder always leads to order, you must always view disorder as a positive rather than a negative; disorder in your life is an opportunity to reorganize your life and career into something better. Making both order and disorder work for you will enhance your chances of success in career and life.

DIEPSLOOT, South Africa — The two robbery suspects had already been viciously beaten, their swollen faces stained with rivulets of red. One of them could no longer sit up, and only the need to moan seemed to revive him into consciousness. The other, Moses Tjiwa, occasionally stared into the taunting crowd and muttered, “I didn’t do anything.” The suspects were awaiting the final cathartic wrath of the mob, the torment of being burned alive, wrapped in the fatal shawl of a gasoline-soaked blanket. Then suddenly they were saved from that hideous death by the brave intervention of a local politician. “Let the police handle this,” he implored. As usual, the police arrived late on that recent evening, and many in the mob angrily objected to their being there at all. Finally, one police inspector shouted: “Get back or I’m leaving this place and never helping you people again. I hate Diepsloot!”

When procedures are followed in society, we are said to be in a “civilized society”. Revolutions and other social movements are typically caused by or accompanied by a lack of procedure in the society. When a society does not trust the procedures of the people who investigate the crimes, or the people who run the society, there is a breakdown of order. For example, in many countries like India and Mexico the police are not trusted by the people. Stories of police taking bribes in Mexico to assist drug lords can be seen in the papers on an almost daily basis. In India, many police will not investigate a crime unless they are paid off first. Procedures are not just confined to how police operate, however:

• There are procedures for how officials are elected, procedures for how the Congress, Senate, President, and the Supreme Court share power on a national level.
• There are procedures for the division of power between the state and federal government.
• There are procedures for how state and local governments run themselves.
• There are procedures for how companies run themselves.
• There are procedures for how departments within companies run themselves.

The election between George Bush, Jr. and Al Gore and the “voting chad” controversy was an issue of procedure. Every single time we sense there is something wrong with procedure, we become fascinated with this, and we are simultaneously appalled if the procedure has been abused or circumvented in any way. The United States was founded primarily on the belief that it had a better procedure for government than the British Commonwealth. I remember when I was the President of my fraternity in college. I kept a copy of Robert’s Rules of Order on my desk during meetings at all times to ensure that we were following proper procedure. Even a group of rowdy college kids follow procedure. Most groups spend a great deal of time making sure they are following clearly defined procedures in everything they do. If procedure is so important to groups, what role does it have in our own lives as individuals? For the most part, once we become adults, we are expected to come up with procedures and rules that allow us to succeed on our own. This is a huge challenge for many people. Our ability to come up with various procedures and to modify these procedures to suit our individual goals and lifestyle ends up having a massive impact on our success or failure in life. For several years, I lived next door to a couple of kids from mainland China, whose mother had brought them over to the United States to attend school. The father had remained back in China. Several times a month I would hear the mother yelling at the kids. My neighbor on the other side, who was also Chinese, told me that the woman was saying things like: “If you do not study, you will be a failure! Do your homework!” and so forth. My neighbor had extremely regimented procedures that she had implemented with her kids. She would pull out of her driveway to take her kids to school at the same time ever day. In addition, she carted them to tutors and to piano lessons. I was living in San Marino, California at that time. San Marino has extremely good schools. Back then, the area’s population was also nearly 50% Chinese. This is not just a neighborhood with a large Asian population. It is an area where most of the parents have spent most of their lives in China, and where even a substantial percentage of the children were born in China. After a year or so, I started interviewing students planning on attending the University of Chicago, and San Marino was one of the areas where I interviewed kids. I was amazed at the test scores and grades, as well as the massive variety of extracurricular activities the kids from San Marino undertook. Each of the kids looked like he or she was headed for greatness. In fact, if the kids were from Michigan where I was from, I am sure they all would have gone to Ivy League schools for the most part. The kids in San Marino, all for the most part, stuck to very regimented schedules. Many of their parents got them up for school each day, took them to school, mandated that they study at certain times, got them tutors during the week, and sent them to academic camps during the summer. Most of the women had been taking piano lessons since the age of 5 or 6. The parents had just so many procedures in place for these kids I could not believe it. But there was another thing I noticed that was extremely interesting. A lot of the kids had older siblings, and I was always eager to ask the students what their brothers and sisters were doing. Most of the brothers and sisters had gone to good schools like UCLA, Brown, and so forth. However, I started noticing a disturbing pattern after some time. Lots of the kids would tell me that their brothers or sisters had dropped out of school, having gone completely wild when they got to college. It happened so many times I could almost predict it. Many times the student’s older brother or sister had moved back home from a prestigious school, and were now finishing up school at a community college. This surprising occurrence did not make sense to me at first–not at all. When I started to think more about it, though, I started to realize what must have been going on. Many of the kids I was meeting and interviewing from San Marino had never learned to develop their own procedures for how they studied and ran their lives. When they got to college they found themselves on their own for the first time; their parents were no longer there telling them when to do this or that. When I got to college, I saw this in so many other students–from all backgrounds. The fewer procedures these kids had in place for themselves, the less successful they generally were. And this brings me to you and your career. If you examine your career closely, you will generally find that your success, or lack thereof, is related to the procedures that you have in place for how you run your life. Most people who experience a lack of success in their lives believe that success is some sort of secret, or something sent by God. Success is, for the most part, based upon the power of the procedures that we follow. All you need to do to become more successful and prosper at whatever you do, is to investigate the procedures you are following in your life and strengthen them where appropriate. For example, if your job were to sell computer systems to businesses, one method of doing this might involve driving around the country, stopping at every business you found, and trying to sell them a computer system. Here are some ways you might incrementally step up your procedure in order to become more productive and successful:

• You could concentrate on just doing this in large cities.
• You could pre-qualify people by calling businesses on the phone to see if they needed a computer system–before driving out to see them.
• You could make sure you had the most desirable computer system to sell before calling to pre-qualify. This would be even more effective.
• You could test the script you would use when calling, in order to determine which script would work the best.
• You could send a packet of information to the business before visiting them.
• You could send someone ahead of you to do a study and assessment of the current computer systems at the businesses before visiting.

The list of procedures that you could follow and refine is almost limitless. But the point I wish to make is that your success or failure as a salesman of computers is going to be almost entirely dependent upon the strength of your procedures, and how consistently you integrate them. The success or failure you may experience in your job search is always directly related to the procedures that you follow. The better your procedures are when searching for a job, the more success you are likely to find. If you are not finding success in your job search, then look at your procedures and either (1) strengthen certain procedures, (2) drop certain procedures, or (3) create new procedures. Your success in your job search and career is a product of the procedures you follow.