15 things successful CEOs want you to know

As a young CEO of a growing company, I find that the most valuable insight I’m gaining these days has been from other CEOs. Certainly this realization isn’t revolutionary – YPO, EO, Mindshare and a host of other organizations are set up just for this kind of knowledge exchange.




But who has time for that? This is a social media world. We’re live in 140-character sound bites. So I decided to ping my favorite CEOs via Twitter to see what kind of wisdom they could drop on me. Here’s the great advice they shared.

source: http://gigaom.com/2012/01/28/corbett-15-things-ceos-want-you-to-know/

Daniel Ek, CEO, Spotify

Figure out what the top five most important stuff is, focus relentlessly on that and keep iterating. Less is more.

Dennis Crowley, CEO, FourSquare

Don’t let people tell you your ideas won’t work. If you have a hunch that something will work, go build it. Ignore the haters.

Sarah Prevette, Founder, Sprouter

Just do it. Get it out there, absorb the feedback, adjust accordingly, hustle like hell, persevere and never lose your swagger.

Sarah Lacy, CEO, PandoDaily

Follow your gut. it may be wrong, but you won’t regret it if you fail. You’ll regret it if you ignore your gut and fail.

Craig Newmark, Founder, Craigslist

Treat people like you want to be treated. Apply to customer service.

Gary Vaynerchuk, CEO, VaynerMedia

Do work for your customers, not for press or VCs. The end user is what matters long term.

Matt Mullenweg, CEO, Automattic

Only reinvent the wheels you need to get rolling.

Jason Goldberg, CEO, Fab.com

Pick one thing and do that one thing — and only that one thing — better than anyone else ever could.

Alexis Ohanian, CEO, Reddit

Make something people want. Then give more damns than anyone else about it and you’ll make something they love.

Chris Brogan, President, Human Business Works

Buy @ericries’s book. Beyond that? Build a platform. This is the big year.

Matt Howard, CEO, ZoomSafer

Startup wisdom: The number one job of a CEO is to not run out of money.

Brian Wong, CEO, Kiip

Always be learning from others. Whenever you meet someone, you don’t want something from them, you want to learn from them.

Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninja, SCVNGR and LevelUp

Something my dad taught me: Ask forgiveness, not permission!

Hooman Radfar, Founder, Clearspring

Give away the wins, own the loses. Your job is to curate greatness.

Alexa Hirschfeld, CEO, Paperless Post

Users and employees are key predictive indicators of a company’s success; press and investors generally months behind.

Train Your Brain to Focus

Next time you are sitting in a meeting, take a look around. The odds are high that you will see your colleagues checking screens, texting, and emailing while someone is talking or making a presentation. Many of us are proud of our prowess in multitasking, and wear it like a badge of honor. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Multitasking may help us check off more things on our to-do lists. But it also makes us more prone to making mistakes, more likely to miss important information and cues, and less likely to retain information in working memory, which impairs problem solving and creativity. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Over the past decade, advances in neuroimaging have been revealing more and more about how the brain works. Studies of adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) using the latest neuroimaging and cognitive testing [PDF] are showing us how the brain focuses, what impairs focus — and how easily the brain is distracted. This research comes at a time when attention deficits have spread far beyond those with ADHD to the rest of us working in an always-on world. The good news is that the brain can learn to ignore distractions, making you more focused, creative, and productive. Here are three ways you can start to improve your focus. Tame your frenzy. Frenzy is an emotional state, a feeling of being a little (or a lot) out of control. It is often underpinned by anxiety, sadness, anger, and related emotions. Emotions are processed by the amygdala, a small, almond-shaped brain structure. It responds powerfully to negative emotions, which are regarded as signals of threat. Functional brain imaging has shown that activation of the amygdala by negative emotions interferes with the brain's ability to solve problems or do other cognitive work. Positive emotions and thoughts do the opposite — they improve the brain's executive function, and so help open the door to creative and strategic thinking. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What can you do? Try to improve your balance of positive and negative emotions over the course of a day. Barbara Fredrickson, a noted psychology researcher at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, recommends a 3:1 balance of positive and negative emotions, based upon mathematical modeling of ideal team dynamics by her collaborator Marcial Losada, and confirmed by research on individual flourishing and successful marriages. (Calculate your "positivity ratio" at www.positivityratio.com). You can tame negative emotional frenzy by exercising, meditating, and sleeping well. It also helps to notice your negative emotional patterns. Perhaps a coworker often annoys you with some minor habit or quirk, which triggers a downward spiral. Appreciate that such automatic responses may be overdone, take a few breaths, and let go of the irritation. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What can your team do? Start meetings on positive topics and some humor. The positive emotions this generates can improve everyone's brain function, leading to better teamwork and problem solving. Apply the brakes. Your brain continuously scans your internal and external environment, even when you are focused on a particular task. Distractions are always lurking: wayward thoughts, emotions, sounds, or interruptions. Fortunately, the brain is designed to instantly stop a random thought, an unnecessary action, and even an instinctive emotion from derailing you and getting you off track. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What can you do? To prevent distractions from hijacking your focus, use the ABC method as your brain's brake pedal. Become Aware of your options: you can stop what you are doing and address the distraction, or you can let it go. Breathe deeply and consider your options. Then Choose thoughtfully: Stop? or Go? What can your team do? Try setting up one-hour distraction-free meetings. Everyone is expected to contribute and offer thoughtful and creative input, and no distractions (like laptops, tablets, cell phones, and other gadgets) are allowed. Shift Sets. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ While it's great to be focused, sometimes you need to turn your attention to a new problem. Set-shifting refers to shifting all of your focus to a new task, and not leaving any behind on the last one. Sometimes it's helpful to do this in order to give the brain a break and allow it to take on a new task. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What can you do? Before you turn your attention to a new task, shift your focus from your mind to your body. Go for a walk, climb stairs, do some deep breathing or stretches. Even if you aren't aware of it, when you are doing this your brain continues working on your past tasks. Sometimes new ideas emerge during such physical breaks. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What can your team do? Schedule a five-minute break for every hour of meeting time, and encourage everyone to do something physical rather than run out to check email. By restoring the brain's executive function, such breaks can lead to more and better ideas when you reconvene. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Organizing your mind, and your team members' minds, will yield a solid payoff in the year ahead. Adding "high-quality focus" is a great place to start. Try holding a no-multitasking meeting and see what happens when everyone in the room gives their undivided attention. Have you ever tried this in your organization? If not, do you think it would fly?

Engage Yourself!

Engage Yourself! Written by Mitch McCrimmon, Ph.D. Sunday, 13 March 2011 19:00 Are you waiting for your manager to engage you? If you were a business would you wait for customers to come to you or would you seek them out? Top-down approaches to engagement expect you to wait for your manager to engage you, a bit like being an animal in a zoo just waiting to be fed. Not many organizations encourage you to think like an independent business person, but entrepreneurs are much more engaged than employees. Yes, they get to keep their own profits too, but it's more than money. They're highly motivated because they feel in control of their own agendas and careers. By contrast, with an employee mindset, you can only take direction from your boss, work hard and hope to be noticed. You may not be as passive as an animal in a zoo but there is a limit to how engaged you will ever feel if you need your boss to engage you. Engagement versus self-engagement Employee engagement has a very limited focus on motivating employees to work hard in their jobs. It's up to the organization or its managers to do the engaging. Self-engagement, with its independent contractor slant, is about you involving yourself and shaping your own destiny, just as you would do if you really were self-employed and building your own business. With self-engagement you proactively search for opportunities to contribute more. You're always looking for new ways to get involved in emerging trends and problem areas. You network and ask loads of questions in your search for new ways of contributing, looking for "new business" for yourself. Perhaps you have had experience of a job morphing into something different over time as new responsibilities are added and old ones dropped. Self-engagement simply means that you drive this role-morphing process yourself. Recall John F. Kennedy's famous quote: "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." You might reply: "Why should I think about what I can do for the organization? I'm in it for myself" Well, your organization is your customer and helping customers succeed is the only way your business can be successful. Asking that question shows that you have an employee mindset, not an independent contractor one. How to engage yourself OK, so how do you do it? The first step is to start thinking like a self-employed contractor not a conventional employee. With an employee mindset, you might feel that you had a good day or week when you didn't see your boss. Now you need to start treating your boss and other managers as your customers. You should have a short term and a long term objective. In the short term, your goal should be to shape your job so that you are doing the kinds of work you most enjoy and finding ways to contribute more. Longer term, your goal could be to shift your role in a new direction or take on greater responsibilities. Your feeling of engagement will develop as you gain confidence in your ability to shape your role. Frustration with a lack of control over career progress is a major reason why employees leave. They may complain about other things but there is an underlying resentment of feeling powerless to influence their own success. As soon as you start engaging yourself, this frustration should evaporate and you should feel in charge. Start by looking for interesting projects that you can sign up to. Find out what key players are doing, those who could become customers and could potentially offer you a new role at some future point. Too busy? Everyone is extremely busy, but we can always find time for things that are really important to us. To take on more, think creatively about how you can unload other things. To engage yourself, ask questions of internal customers every chance you get in order to diagnose their needs and unearth opportunities for you to contribute more. Ask questions like: • What are you working on at the moment? • What new trends (or initiatives) are you focusing on? • What issues are keeping you awake at night these days? • How is your ABC initiative going? What's going well and not so well? When you get some initial answers, drill down with further questions such as: • What sorts of obstacles are you up against? • What options do you see for addressing those issues? • What is the potential impact of this project on the business? (or certain specific aspects) • What sort of input/support would you value from others? If some managers are suspicious of your motives, explain that you are simply interested in what's going on in the business beyond your own role or that you want to learn more about what the organization is doing. Your aim is to sell yourself to your customers, but this doesn't have to mean talking about how great you are. Just showing interest in what other people are doing goes a long way toward selling yourself. Also, your questions alone, without any suggestions from you, could generate some fresh thinking about a problem that might help a customer move forward. Tone of voice is important too. If you sound like a police interrogator, you won't get very far. You need to adopt a respectful manner that suggests an eagerness to learn from the experience of key players. So, you might ask a question like: "In your experience, what is the best way to handle issues like that?" This sounds like you are asking for advice and people are flattered by that, so again you are subtly selling yourself. You might object that the managers you need to get closer to are too busy. But that's true for external contractors as well. They also find it very hard to get clients to spare any time to see them. So, you need to think creatively. Try an email question or see if you can get to people who have some influence with your key prospect. Ask around to learn what issues or initiatives your main prospective customers are working on. Learn all you can about their pet projects and then ask questions about how they are going. It's important to focus on a manageable number of key players, not likely more than a half dozen at any one time while dropping those who aren't receptive. Making an immediate impact Your boss is your number one customer at the moment. You can engage yourself more fully in your current role by taking any initiative you can think of to improve the way your function operates. You don't need to come up with all the ideas yourself, however. Asking questions of your colleagues and your boss can generate novel improvement ideas. The key is to think of your job as your business, continually asking yourself how you can manage your business more effectively. Make your boss understand that you see him or her as your customer. To best meet your boss's needs, you should regularly ask questions to ensure that you are focusing the majority of your time and effort on the right priorities. Your goal is to make sure you are investing the bulk of your time and talent in those activities that add the most value in your boss's eyes. Most employees simply assume they know what those activities are, unless their boss tells them otherwise (employee mindset) but your boss's priorities change and you need to keep abreast of them, just as you would do as an external contractor with real customers. It's a good idea to get your boss (your customer) to agree to regular update meetings where you run through what's gone well and what priorities you are currently emphasizing. Such meetings are a selling opportunity. By reviewing what has been going well (not just where the problems are) you're letting your customer know how much you have done for him or her. Also, by discussing current priorities, you can realign them if necessary and get your customer's buy-in to your current focus. Taking more initiative along these lines is a better way to boost self-respect and pride than simply doing your job well. If you regard your job as your business and engage yourself in it, you should look forward to coming to work more than you do now, feel more engaged and be more motivated to contribute in line with your full potential. source: http://www.lead2xl.com/engage-yourself.html

Harvard Business School Essay Analysis, 2011–2012

The 2011–2012 MBA application season is officially afoot. Harvard Business School (HBS) has just released its essay questions, maintaining its tradition of being the first school to do so each year. HBS usually strikes first in early May, and the other top 15 schools follow suit shortly after, throughout May and even into early June.

The HBS watchers among you will notice two significant changes this year, the first of which is that the school has released almost all new questions. Of the six essay prompts that HBS offered last year, only one remains—the school’s famed “three accomplishments” essay. The second major change is to a streamlined application that offers candidates few options. For the past few years, HBS has required MBA candidates to respond to two essay questions, allowing them to choose from among four. Now applicants face four mandatory questions, leaving them nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. So, this change could limit your ability to play to your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. Our analysis of HBS’s essay questions follows:

1. Tell us about three of your accomplishments. (600 words)

This mainstay of the Harvard MBA application challenges the applicant to quickly “wow” the reader by recounting three individual accomplishments that, together, reveal a true depth of experience. Generally, candidates should showcase different dimensions of themselves within the three subsections of this essay. Applicants can select from their professional, community, personal, academic (must be truly outstanding), athletic, interpersonal, experiential and entrepreneurial accomplishments, but certainly, no formula for the right mix of stories exists.

This essay—along with its sister essay, which follows—is one of HBS’s longest in terms of word limit, and many candidates treat it as three mini essays. Remember, though, that constructing individual stories within 200-word subsets can be quite challenging. Keep in mind that the experiences you choose to describe are crucial and that shamelessly bragging in this (or really any) essay is unwise. No one wants to hear “I am awesome because….” However, if you have a story that is truly worth telling (that is unquestionably “awesome”), the reader will naturally conclude on his/her own that you too are indeed “awesome” after learning how you performed. In fact, this question previously read, “What are your three most substantial accomplishments, and why do you view them as such?” This year, HBS has dropped the portion of the question that asked, “Why do you view them as such?” We believe this indicates that the admissions committee is content to glean this information from your discussion of the experience itself.

Candidates often wonder if the three stories they discuss in this essay must all link thematically. An essay in which each accomplishment described flows naturally into the next is good, but candidates should not fret if their essay covers three distinct stories instead. Moreover, we have seen many an applicant skip a formal introduction and simply launch into a story, grabbing and holding the reader’s attention by placing him/her in the middle of the action.

Note: Avoid beginning each accomplishment with such phrases as “My first significant accomplishment is…” and “My second most significant accomplishment is….” Because many candidates actually do present their essays this way, you risk losing your reader’s interest almost immediately if you do so as well. Further, by telling the reader what each accomplishment is in the first sentence, you kill the mystery, and your reader is left with nothing to discover—nothing is driving him/her to want to continue reading your story.

2. Tell us three setbacks you have faced. (600 words)

HBS obviously wants to learn about your ability to overcome, because they want to know about not one, not two, but three different setbacks you have faced. If you have not encountered any obstacles in your life, then HBS seemingly does not want you! Well, that may be a bit extreme, but clearly HBS is acknowledging that success is earned, not given, and requires a certain resilience and fortitude.

The word “setback” should not be construed to mean outright “failure” and is instead fairly broad—it incorporates events that happened to you, not just those you yourself created. So if, for example, you went to a football tryout and earned your way onto the team, only to break your ankle in your first game, that is a setback—the unfortunate break derailed your initial plans, but you did not cause it. Basically, the experience was still a tough one and required you to pick yourself up and refocus your energies. Of course, if you created a problem for yourself—say, for example, you started a small business that ultimately failed because you were still employed full-time elsewhere and thus were not completely committed to the venture—that experience is fair game as well. Do not be afraid to stand accountable for your actions, and do not seek to shirk responsibility by only sharing stories in which things happened to you.

Although this question is not directly asked, it is implied: What did you learn? The setbacks you choose to describe are important, but your ability to overcome or learn from a setback that could not be redeemed is crucial and must be conveyed.

3. Why do you want an MBA? (400 words)

If you are planning to spend $100,000 in tuition and $100,000 in living expenses (minimum) and to accept the opportunity cost of two years of missed salary, we hope your answer to this question is already crystal clear. However, if not, now is the time for you to examine this aspect of your future carefully and develop clear—and genuine—goals. Do not try to guess what HBS “wants” or game the system by trying to present yourself as something a friend told you to be. You cannot be anything or anyone that you are not and will not fool anyone by offering insincere career plans.

This HBS essay question incorporates both aspects of a typical personal statement question: “What are your short- and long-term goals?” and “How can our school help you achieve them?” In writing your essay, you should present solid educational goals that pertain to your career aspirations, but take care not to take a rigid “My career goals are…” approach. Because this question is so open-ended, we feel that HBS is seeking to understand your purpose and the impact you hope to have. We also believe that the admissions committee is interested in learning about the particular tools you need (and the school can provide) to help you get there, but your response needs to be a thoughtful discussion of the specifics and not a clichéd lauding of the case method or the program as a general whole.

4. Answer a question you wish we’d asked. (400 words)

As we noted earlier, because all of HBS’s essay questions are now mandatory, you have “nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.” Yet this question may provide a bit of latitude. If you have not yet had the chance in your HBS application to share a few crucial stories about yourself, this is the place to do so. Because this question is so flexible, you have the opportunity to create a question that allows you to present these important stories you still need to tell. However, this essay should not be just a story “receptacle.” You still need to be thoughtful about what the school already knows about you from the other essays and portions of your application and then ensure that you, as we are constantly saying at mbaMission, keep the reader learning. Ask yourself, “What does the admissions reader know about me thus far?” Then, scour your memory for key experiences that will help fill in the gaps in your story and present a more complete and compelling image of you as a candidate. Thinking strategically with this essay will ensure that you have offered a full picture of yourself.

Note: We strongly advise against simply reusing the best essay you wrote for another school and changing the question ever so slightly to appear original here. HBS will easily recognize a slightly altered and basically redundant Stanford, Chicago Booth or Wharton essay. You will need to actually work at this—after all, as the school clearly demonstrates in essay question two, HBS does not want people who take the easy way out.

Source: http://www.mbamission.com/blog/2011/05/10/harvard-business-school-essay-analysis-2011%E2%80%932012/

This Email Got One Stanford Student A Huge Job At Foursquare Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-email-got-one-stanford-student-a-huge-job

Two years ago, a Stanford business school student named Tristan Walker sent Foursquare cofounders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai an email out of the blue, asking for a job.

Today, Tristan is Foursquare's director of business development. During his tenure, he's built partnerships between Foursquare and huge brands such as Bravo, MTV, CNN, New York Times, NBA and Starbucks.

To celebrate the two year anniversary of the email, Tristan just published it on his personal blog, along with some notes:

Today marks two years since i sent my very first email to dennis and naveen (wow i was such a nerd! ha). naveen sent a reminder to team foursquare today and i thought i’d share it on my blog. Man, how times have changed:

Hey Dennis and Naveen

How’s it going? Hope all is well!

My name is Tristan Walker and Im a first year student (going into my
second year) at Stanford Business School (originally from New York).
Im a huge fan of what you both have built and excited about what you
guys have planned for FourSquare. It is an awesome , awesome service.

I would love to chat with you guys at some point, if you’re available,
about FourSquare. This year, I’m looking to help out and work
extremely hard for a startup with guys I can learn a ton from. Dennis,
with your experience at Google and the Dodgeball product, and Naveen,
with your experience at Sun and engineering in general, I know I could
learn a great deal from you both!

Before business school, I was an oil trader on Wall Street for about
two years and hated it! Moved out to the Bay/Stanford to pursue my
passion for entrepreneurship and the startup world. This past spring I
had the opportunity to work for Twitter as an intern and learned a
ton. Solidified my commitment to working at a startup that I’m
passionate about, and FourSquare is one of those startups that I
believe in.

I know you guys are probably getting inundated with internship-type
requests, but thought it’d be worth a shot! I can assure you Im humble
and Im hungry! Let me know if you’d be interested in chatting further.
I definitely look forward to hearing from you.

Stay awesome!
Tristan
@tristanwalker

———————————————————————-
tristan j. walker | mba class of 2010
stanford graduate school of business

A few things to note here:

i spelled foursquare “FourSquare”…capital F and capital S….TWICE! (so taboo these days) ha. Talk about green…and who says “stay awesome!” (hilarity!)
i sent this email after really thinking hard about this post from Jenn Van Grove at Mashable (thx jenn!). After reading, i IMMEDIATELY started to think about the potential for merchants and brands to start interacting with customers in ways that have never been done before. I read that post in May of that year I believe and signed up that same day
After my using foursquare everyday for about two months I knew i had to work for the company. On July 16th i scoured the internets, found Dennis and Naveen’s emails (#crazytristan) and shot them an email right away. This was before they even had @foursquare.com email addresses (and well before our series A round).
This is the first of 8 emails i sent Dennis/Naveen. They both must have thought I was crazy. On the 8th email Dennis replied

“you know what, i just may take you up on some of this, are you ever in nyc?”

-dennis

You could tell he was a bit annoyed (sorry dennis! oh well…ha) I thought on it for a little bit, and replied back (something along the lines of…):

hey dennis, yeh I was planning on being in ny tomorrow [i was in LA at the time!…and no, i definitely had zero plans to be in NYC] how about we meet up live at your offices?

-tristan

then i booked my flight that night, flew out the following morning, hung out with him and naveen for a week and one month later I was full time at good ol foursquare

which brings me to the last point. a lot of folks ask me how Ive been able to secure some pretty cool spots at awesome companies and my answer is always the same. “be so enamored with the product that you would work for the company even if they didnt hire you….more importantly find where the needs are within the organization and be willing to do whatever it takes to help them fill the need (work for free even!)…and MOST importantly make sure that youre filling a need that the organization doesnt have the resources to fill on its own. If a company is not willing to let a hungry, passionate, smart, unpaid advocate of the product help the organization to fill that need (when it doesnt have the resources to do it itself) then you probably shouldnt be working at the company anyway. They’re just being arrogant”…Dennis and Naveen made pretty clear that their passion was with product (and theyre the best in the world at it). I knew i could help them (without much guidance and hand holding) to think through the business opportunities / potential for foursquare. And i did it for free (for 30 days at least :)). I gained their trust, which was most important.

The past two years for me have been nothing short of amazing. Dennis/Naveen didnt have to but they gave me a shot and really did change my life. I owe those guys a ton and im truly appreciative of it all. Now, back to work…. :)

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-email-got-one-stanford-student-a-huge-job-at-foursquare-2011-7#ixzz1SW9jPmIR

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.

To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.
If you want change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011). She is also an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today. Her personal blog, The Science of Success, can be found at www.heidigranthalvorson.com. Follow her on Twitter @hghalvorson

Harvard Business School Essay Analysis, 2011–2012

May 10th, 2011

The 2011–2012 MBA application season is officially afoot. Harvard Business School (HBS) has just released its essay questions, maintaining its tradition of being the first school to do so each year. HBS usually strikes first in early May, and the other top 15 schools follow suit shortly after, throughout May and even into early June.

The HBS watchers among you will notice two significant changes this year, the first of which is that the school has released almost all new questions. Of the six essay prompts that HBS offered last year, only one remains—the school’s famed “three accomplishments” essay. The second major change is to a streamlined application that offers candidates few options. For the past few years, HBS has required MBA candidates to respond to two essay questions, allowing them to choose from among four. Now applicants face four mandatory questions, leaving them nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. So, this change could limit your ability to play to your strengths and mitigate your weaknesses. Our analysis of HBS’s essay questions follows:

1. Tell us about three of your accomplishments. (600 words)

This mainstay of the Harvard MBA application challenges the applicant to quickly “wow” the reader by recounting three individual accomplishments that, together, reveal a true depth of experience. Generally, candidates should showcase different dimensions of themselves within the three subsections of this essay. Applicants can select from their professional, community, personal, academic (must be truly outstanding), athletic, interpersonal, experiential and entrepreneurial accomplishments, but certainly, no formula for the right mix of stories exists.

This essay—along with its sister essay, which follows—is one of HBS’s longest in terms of word limit, and many candidates treat it as three mini essays. Remember, though, that constructing individual stories within 200-word subsets can be quite challenging. Keep in mind that the experiences you choose to describe are crucial and that shamelessly bragging in this (or really any) essay is unwise. No one wants to hear “I am awesome because….” However, if you have a story that is truly worth telling (that is unquestionably “awesome”), the reader will naturally conclude on his/her own that you too are indeed “awesome” after learning how you performed. In fact, this question previously read, “What are your three most substantial accomplishments, and why do you view them as such?” This year, HBS has dropped the portion of the question that asked, “Why do you view them as such?” We believe this indicates that the admissions committee is content to glean this information from your discussion of the experience itself.

Candidates often wonder if the three stories they discuss in this essay must all link thematically. An essay in which each accomplishment described flows naturally into the next is good, but candidates should not fret if their essay covers three distinct stories instead. Moreover, we have seen many an applicant skip a formal introduction and simply launch into a story, grabbing and holding the reader’s attention by placing him/her in the middle of the action.

Note: Avoid beginning each accomplishment with such phrases as “My first significant accomplishment is…” and “My second most significant accomplishment is….” Because many candidates actually do present their essays this way, you risk losing your reader’s interest almost immediately if you do so as well. Further, by telling the reader what each accomplishment is in the first sentence, you kill the mystery, and your reader is left with nothing to discover—nothing is driving him/her to want to continue reading your story.

2. Tell us three setbacks you have faced. (600 words)

HBS obviously wants to learn about your ability to overcome, because they want to know about not one, not two, but three different setbacks you have faced. If you have not encountered any obstacles in your life, then HBS seemingly does not want you! Well, that may be a bit extreme, but clearly HBS is acknowledging that success is earned, not given, and requires a certain resilience and fortitude.

The word “setback” should not be construed to mean outright “failure” and is instead fairly broad—it incorporates events that happened to you, not just those you yourself created. So if, for example, you went to a football tryout and earned your way onto the team, only to break your ankle in your first game, that is a setback—the unfortunate break derailed your initial plans, but you did not cause it. Basically, the experience was still a tough one and required you to pick yourself up and refocus your energies. Of course, if you created a problem for yourself—say, for example, you started a small business that ultimately failed because you were still employed full-time elsewhere and thus were not completely committed to the venture—that experience is fair game as well. Do not be afraid to stand accountable for your actions, and do not seek to shirk responsibility by only sharing stories in which things happened to you.

Although this question is not directly asked, it is implied: What did you learn? The setbacks you choose to describe are important, but your ability to overcome or learn from a setback that could not be redeemed is crucial and must be conveyed.

3. Why do you want an MBA? (400 words)

If you are planning to spend $100,000 in tuition and $100,000 in living expenses (minimum) and to accept the opportunity cost of two years of missed salary, we hope your answer to this question is already crystal clear. However, if not, now is the time for you to examine this aspect of your future carefully and develop clear—and genuine—goals. Do not try to guess what HBS “wants” or game the system by trying to present yourself as something a friend told you to be. You cannot be anything or anyone that you are not and will not fool anyone by offering insincere career plans.

This HBS essay question incorporates both aspects of a typical personal statement question: “What are your short- and long-term goals?” and “How can our school help you achieve them?” In writing your essay, you should present solid educational goals that pertain to your career aspirations, but take care not to take a rigid “My career goals are…” approach. Because this question is so open-ended, we feel that HBS is seeking to understand your purpose and the impact you hope to have. We also believe that the admissions committee is interested in learning about the particular tools you need (and the school can provide) to help you get there, but your response needs to be a thoughtful discussion of the specifics and not a clichéd lauding of the case method or the program as a general whole.

4. Answer a question you wish we’d asked. (400 words)

As we noted earlier, because all of HBS’s essay questions are now mandatory, you have “nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.” Yet this question may provide a bit of latitude. If you have not yet had the chance in your HBS application to share a few crucial stories about yourself, this is the place to do so. Because this question is so flexible, you have the opportunity to create a question that allows you to present these important stories you still need to tell. However, this essay should not be just a story “receptacle.” You still need to be thoughtful about what the school already knows about you from the other essays and portions of your application and then ensure that you, as we are constantly saying at mbaMission, keep the reader learning. Ask yourself, “What does the admissions reader know about me thus far?” Then, scour your memory for key experiences that will help fill in the gaps in your story and present a more complete and compelling image of you as a candidate. Thinking strategically with this essay will ensure that you have offered a full picture of yourself.

Note: We strongly advise against simply reusing the best essay you wrote for another school and changing the question ever so slightly to appear original here. HBS will easily recognize a slightly altered and basically redundant Stanford, Chicago Booth or Wharton essay. You will need to actually work at this—after all, as the school clearly demonstrates in essay question two, HBS does not want people who take the easy way out.