Ben entered the meeting room with the biggest stack of paper in the history of budget meetings. The meeting went smoothly for Ben. He was not challenged once, in fact. While no one can say for sure, it’s widely suspected that his paper tower created among management types the perception that he had the answer to any question they might ask.
Fresh college graduates can have a hard time adjusting to the perception rule. They’re used to dealing with numeric test scores and specific letter grades. The Real World is filled with abstraction and built on shifting sands, with an entirely different set of priorities and measurements.
In the Real World, a fresh college grad cries foul if he or she is passed over for a promotion or a raise he or she thinks is deserved simply because he or she has fulfilled the requirements of his or her position. Their problem is that they don’t know how to keep score in the Real World. They’re under the impression that it’s enough to do their job properly.
Truth is it’s more important the boss thinks they’re doing a good job. This is not a veiled endorsement for brown-nosing. Not at all. Brown-nosing, butt-kissing, or politic playing is best left to those who don’t have the brainpower to accomplish something of substance.
“It’s not boasting when you deliver.”
– Richard Saunders
Perception is about marketing yourself. It’s about selling your substance, skills, and abilities. Muhammad Ali was arguably the greatest sports promoter of all time. His mouth generated worldwide attention. But the bottom line was that he delivered on his boasts in the ring. You either loved him or you hated him. But in his prime, no one doubted his ability as a boxer.
In the Real World, one must always remember to deal with how one is perceived. Are you seen as industrious, committed, and passionate about your work? Do you show up early every day? Are your reports on time? Do you anticipate problems or react to them?
“Life, like love, is not logical. Life is a three-dimensional sensory perception.”
– Richard Saunders
Franklin addresses the importance of perception in his autobiography. When he was starting out in the newspaper business, he occasionally had to borrow money. To that end, he’d make a great show of hauling the metal type from his press back and forth from his home to his print shop in a rickety wheelbarrow, passing by the tavern, where he knew the bankers would be drinking and discussing the issues of the day.
The clanking, clattering wheelbarrow drew the bankers’ attention night after night. Before long, they formed an impression. That young Franklin, they’d say, certainly is an industrious type. A real go-getter.
In fact, he was. But the bankers wouldn’t have discovered it for themselves as quickly as they did had he not set the stage by creating the proper impression.
With that, we have arrived at the fifth Self-Evident Eureka! Truth, namely:
YOU HAVE TO SWING TO HIT HOME RUNS!
Remember Reggie Jackson, the baseball player? Man, that guy could hit home runs! He knocked 563 balls into the seats during his 21-year major league career, good for 11th place on the all-time home run hitter list.
Reggie Jackson is No. 1 on another all-time list: he struck out more times than anybody—2,597 times in all.
Indeed, the top 10 home run hitters in big league history took 54 swings for every homer they hit. But swinging involves more than just making the effort. It also involves risking and accepting failure. On average, the top home run hitters of all time made eleven outs for every home run they hit.
How would you deal with 11 failures for every success in your life? Would you keep swinging for the fence, or would you start declining your at-bats?
“Being alive is about playing to win. Being brain dead is when you play not to lose.”
– Richard Saunders
In that sense, ideas are like home runs. It takes a lot of whiffs to knock one out of the park.
The June 28, 1993, issue of Newsweek reported these findings by Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California, Davis:
“In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Simonton found that the most respected produced not only more great works, but also more ‘bad’ ones. They produced. Period.”
The same article spoke to the importance of trying:
“The creative geniuses of art and science work obsessively. They do not lounge under apple trees waiting for fruit to fall or lightning to strike. ‘When inspiration does not come to me,’ Freud once said, ‘I go halfway to meet it.’ Bach wrote a cantata every week, even when he was sick or exhausted.”
How hard you try is rooted to how often you try. I’m always hearing from this person or that who is looking for a job or has an idea to sell. The first question I ask is, how many doors have been slammed in their faces? If they haven’t already succeeded, a dozen doors aren’t nearly enough. Not if they believe in themselves or their ideas.
“It’s to be expected that you make mistakes when you’re breaking new ground.”
– Jerry Greenfield, Co-founder Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, Rolling Stone, July 9, 1992
“Every shot you don’t take is a guaranteed miss.”
– Richard Saunders
There’s no way around it. You have to keep trying until you’re convinced you’re all tried out. And then you have to try some more. Because one more try is often all it takes. Look at it this way:
| STANDARD | No. of Failures Before Giving Up |
| If you’re as good as the top home run hitters | 54 |
| If you’re half as good as the top home run hitters | 108 |
| If you’re 10 percent as good as the top home run hitters | 540 |
It’s the same story with ideas—the more ideas you generate, the more good ones you’ll have. And your good ideas will be of a higher caliber. Quantity is the shortest possible distance to quality. And more quantity is a straight line to higher quality.
This was the finding of a series of experiments conducted in the fairly sanitary confines of the Eureka! Ranch laboratories. We assembled groups of ordinary people and asked them to invent ideas for new products. Each group’s ideas were typed and tabulated.
An independent panel then reviewed the ideas, rating each for how “wicked good” it was. Stat man Mike Kosinski advised me that he could say with 96 percent statistical confidence that the quantity of ideas is directly related to quality. Mike modeled the data and found the following relationship between quantity and quality.
| No. of Raw Ideas | No. of Wicked Good Ideas |
| 25 | 5 |
| 50 | 10 |
| 100 | 19 |
MORE CHOICES MEAN SMARTER DECISIONS
Research with owners of small and mid-sized companies found that those companies with more choices for growth in their development pipeline grew 1.5 to 5.8 times faster than those with fewer choices. Net: in the real world it appears that the more choices you have the smarter the decisions you make. This is why I challenge clients to come up with at least 50 written choices for growth before making decisions on what action to take.
Summary
So there you have our self-evident Eureka! Truths, in no particular order. One more time, in short form, the list looks like this:
•You Have to Swing to Hit Home Runs (go for quantity)
• Reality Is Not Relevant (think of perceptions, feelings, tastes, sights, sounds, smells)
• Breakthroughs Contradict History (forget