martin zeman's blog

We all want other people see the world as we see it. That’s the root of all arguments. We all want to feel being right.

I have learned that changing someone else’s view is extremely difficult often even impossible. People don’t like to change their opinions – it means admitting they were wrong in the first place. Some people are capable of the change, some people are not whatsoever, but no one really likes it.

The only person whose view you can easily change is you. Trying to change others is often just a wasted effort.

So how do you make people around you see the world as you do? Find people that already see the world the same way as you and spend more time with them. There are plenty of people like that out there – find them and you will feel much better understood and you will be happier.

Plus if you aspire to make the world a better place you are much more likely to get support and encouragement from these people. They understand how what you are doing it’s going to improve the world. It make sense to them because their world and your world are the same.

I have always found it very funny when people were showing off with their fancy titles – being it a job title or a university degree. That’s why I felt quite hesitant to accept a title of a director in elexu. How can one be a director in a company which hasn’t made a single penny yet?

When I met new people I even felt a bit ashamed that my business card said ‘Director’ and I tried to explain what I actually do so I wouldn’t look like one of those people I used to laugh at. But that has changed. I have changed.

It started when I changed my main status on Linkedin to ‘director at elexu’ it is a big thing when all your business contacts see it but what really pushed me was a comment from my friend and coach saying that it is really important to know what we are. And that’s when all the dots connected.

In several books I’ve read this year (Influence by Robert Cialdini or Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, Awaken the giant within by Anthony Robbins) the authors explained that often when people make decisions of what to do they don’t think about what they want to do or what would be the best thing to do but instead they ask themselves what would a person like them, or a person they would like to be, do.

Here is a nice little example about hotel towels. Another typical example might be selection of a college – where do people like me apply to?

While reading those books I thought this doesn’t apply to me as I rarely do what others do and quite often I do exact opposite but when I think about it now maybe that’s why I behave that way – because I see myself as an outlier, person that would do exact opposites than others.

It is without a doubt that the image we have about ourselves heavily influences our behaviour. All you need to do to change your decisions and behaviour is to change the way you see yourself. This is a very powerful weapon and I am now using it to my advantage.

I am Martin – Director at elexu.

PS: It’s also good to know the above works both ways – you can’t make a lasting change in your behaviour without changing the way you think about yourself. Anthony Robbins illustrates it well on people who try to lose weight or quit drugs.

What is the root of the UK riots? Is it greed, ‘professional’ criminals, bad parenting or bad economy? Bit of everything, really – but I guess the determining factor is grim outlook for the future for a lot of people and especially youths.

Imagine you have just finished high school, you can’t go to university (it’s too expensive), you can’t go to work (no jobs for people without experience), money you get from the government are likely to shrink, so what do you do? Live off your parents, hang out with your friends who are exactly in the same situation. If you could at least hope it will get better, but how could you?

With governments having less money to spend and with companies cutting jobs down it’s hard to see the light ahead. But I believe there is a hope – all we need to do is to change the way governments and companies spend money.

Instead of spending money on big and costly projects in case of governments and means-to-an-end advertising in case of companies we should distribute the money among big number of small projects. Big investments come with big expectations which requires costly experts to deliver them.

Small projects on the other hand don’t require big investments therefore they don’t carry a high risk (respectively the risk is distributed among a high number of projects which makes it safer) but they represent a high opportunity for big success. Even if such a project is not successful in financial terms the experience it gives to people involved is extremely valuable and makes it worth it.

The difficult part is to show companies and organizations that it’s worth spending money that way. And that’s what we are going to do with elexu.

Check out Live UnLtd – they fund great ideas of young entrepreneurs. There are more companies and individuals with similar agenda. These people know how to use money efficiently – we need to discover them, give them funds and let them do their work.

Last week I have attended a Mini Lean Camp – informal mini conference about lean methodology. It was an inspiring event attended by a lot of great people. There was one presentation that in particular grabbed my attention. It was a talk about solving arguments by Benjamin Mitchell – he is, among other things, a team coach who helps SW development teams work smoother and faster.

Benjamin said that when people argue they often focus on their ‘positions’ (what they want to happen) instead of their ‘interests’ (why they want it to happen) which reduces chances for a win-win solution and generates a lot of ill feelings and stress.

How to solve arguments in three simple steps

Benjamin suggested these three simple steps to resolve arguments:

1. Ask the other side why they like their solution.
2. Tell the other side why you like yours.
3. With the the knowledge of each others interests, rethink your options – isn’t there a solution that would suit both sides’s interests? And while looking for it consider what would happen if agreement is not found.

Bejamin challenged us to role play an argument on the spot with people sitting next to us. During those few minutes the difference between positions and interests became absolutely clear. It’s one of those things that is invisible until someone else tells you about it and then you are like: “Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? Normal common sense.” The challenge is to remember it during an argument and act on it.

Put into practice at elexu

I have applied this advice at elexu right away. We had been arguing with David for a while about our approach to elexu site development. While I was pushing for lean approach (starting with the minimal viable product and growing it gradually based on users’ feedback) David wanted to launch it with all the core features he had envisaged (in other words his vision of minimal viable product was much bigger than mine). Neither of us was willing to step down from our positions and even if we agreed on a compromise one day, exhausted from trying to persuade each other about our truth, a week later we appeared to be back at square one – the compromise forgotten.

So last week we sat down and talked about the reasons why we push in our directions. David was concerned that it is very difficult to add new functionality successfully into a product later on especially during a time of big growth. My biggest concern was wasting time and effort on developing something that users will not use. We both understood each other’s interests but it wasn’t yet clear how to fulfil both of them.

The real golden nugget of the discussion came when David mentioned that when I push for something he is not convinced about it’s just my word against his which is not strong enough argument to do it that way and then he said that in such cases we need to listen to potential elexu users to validate our hypothesis. Which was exactly what I thought would be the best as well. We’ve just never brought it up before and fought blindly on behalf of the users based just on our assumptions as if our design should be the final one.

This discussion really helped us align our direction and I am more motivated than ever. All we needed was to stop fighting about positions and discuss our interests instead. It’s wonderful how such a small change can be so helpful. Thank you for it, Benjamin.