NLP Is A Tool For Programming Change, But...

Beware of duplicity?

Consider the hammer. It's the tool that, probably more than any other, built Western civilization. In the hands of a Michelangelo, it helps to sculpt David. But in the hands of a psychopath, it becomes truly frightening.

All tools are like that: neutral by nature, beneficial or maleficent depending on intent and application.

Next, consider NLP, or neuro-linguistic programming. It’s an approach to therapy, self-help, and behavior modification that’s been around since the 70s. It leverages the mind’s atavistic reaction to language, in order to alter demeanor, improve performance, and develop communications skills.

Now go Google NLP; or worse yet, do a search for that term on YouTube. You’ll find every type of huckster peddling NLP miracles, and promising of the ability to manipulate people to your will. Books like The Game by Neil Strauss detail how “pickup artists” use NLP to razzle-dazzle females into submission.

Some of it’s disturbing. Some is disgusting. But that’s what happens when powerful tools are used by bad people. None of it should discourage good people, though, who can use a tool like NLP for the best of reasons.

Want to improve your ability to communicate? Collaborate better with your peers? Shed harmful habits and cultivate healthy ones? Neuro-linguistic programming might be your ticket. It’s worth looking into.

As with all your endeavors, this one requires caution and common sense. Do your homework and be wary of inflated promises. There are scores of honest NLP instructors who can build a targeted course to help you and your organization reach your goals. You just need to separate the honest ones from the hucksters.

So will it work for you? Only one way to find out. All we can hope for is that you’ll respect it for the tool that it is, and use it only with the best intent.

The C4:

1. Neuro-linguistic programming is a behavior-modification technique developed by psychotherapists in the 1970s that uses language, rapport, and suggestion to achieve goals.
2. NLP can be used in business to create better communications methods, increase sales, and improve collaboration throughout the organization. It can also be used on a personal level for targeted self-improvement.
3. NLP is earning a bad rap, though, because some truly awful people are using it — selling courses that promise Svengali-like manipulation, and demonstrating pickup techniques based on deception and duplicity.
4. A tool in the hands of a bad person does bad things. In the hands of a good person it can better the world. What can you do with NLP?

A Dark Knight For Trading...

Are these gyrations the dawn of more NYSE angst?

Wall Street and its arcane world of securities trading — could anything be more complex? But really, the principles of stock trading are forthright and easily understood, and haven’t much changed in a couple centuries…

You buy fractional ownership in a corporation. You make money, if not through dividends or shares of profit, then by reselling your shares as their values tick higher. Thus the familiar refrain, buy low/sell high.

The complexities creep in as you try to wrest loose every erg of possible profit. Can revenue be gained when share prices rise by a quarter penny or so? It can, but only when you’re trading thousands of shares, thousands of times per second. Here’s where trading software comes in, the likes of which has revolutionized the securities market.

But it’s also imperiled it.

On August 1, 2012 the Knight Capital Group began executing a series of erratic, rapid-fire transactions that had over 100 stocks gyrating wildly for more than 45 minutes, until the NYSE suspended trading. In the meantime Knight was losing more than $10 million per minute, for a final hit that equaled more than quadruple that firm’s total profit last year.

The culprit of course was software. Knight was trying out a new trading algorithm that had been regrettably rushed into service without due testing and bug-fixing. When you or we come up against a bug, we might curse at a blue screen for a while. When it happens to a company like Knight (which executes trades for Citigroup, TD Ameritrade, and others, and was responsible for 11% of all U.S. securities trading in the first half of this year), markets shudder.

It’s a fact of life in this new century of ours that we rely on technology in more ways than we can count. It’s also a fact that our reliance sometimes outstrips the technology’s capabilities. There’s nothing abstract about binary code that can eliminate vast fortunes in the blink of an eye. We have software today that can bankrupt companies and destroy lives.

If we’re resolved to keep it, then we’d better find a way to make it work.

The C4:

1. On August 1, a trading-software glitch caused 45 minutes of erratic stock transactions that have so far cost the Knight Capital Group $440 million and over 75% of their company value. They’re likely headed for bankruptcy.
2. This is hardly the first time this sort of thing has happened. The Facebook IPO in May was marred by a $40 million glitch and the 2010 “Flash Crash” caused a thousand-point swing in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in just over six minutes.
3. Every broker, day-trader, and 401k dabbler relies on stock-trading software. It’s made our modern securities market possible.
4. But when it goes wrong the consequences are devastating. The risks here are way too high. Stricter regulation is never a popular solution, but if anyone has a better idea for protecting our markets from software glitches, we’re all ears.  

The Booming Voice From Boomers:

"Hey, we're over here!"

Here’s a message that marketers aren’t accustomed to hearing: “Please advertise to us.”

But that’s exactly the message delivered by a campaign recently kicked off by AARP, intended to goad advertisers into embracing the over age 50 demographic.

“I may be gray but my money is as green as it gets,” reads one of AARP’s broadsides. “I may be creased but my money is crisp,” says another. These are not-so-subtle reminders that although Madison Avenue loves to cater to 20-somethings, those millennial youngsters aren’t exactly rife with purchasing power these days.

The AARP crowd, by contrast, is doing OK. The average annual income for baby boomers as a group now tops $70,000. Those over age 65 are among the few that saw a net increase (from $29,400 to $29,775) in the challenging years between 2008 and 2011. And Americans over the age of 50 account for more than 60% of new car sales in this country.

Older adults tend to dine out more often, take longer and more luxurious vacations, and spend as much — if not more — on consumer goods as any other group. Yet marketing in these areas tend to focus on the younger set. This perplexing misfire might be explained by an out-of-date tradition — MadAve started targeting baby boomers when they were age 18-34, and never readjusted as that generation grew older. Or maybe it’s because MadAve itself is young: 40% of the advertising workforce is under 35. 

Either way, AARP makes clear that the advertising industry spins its wheels selling to a generation that’s all but broke, while effectively ignoring one with pretty deep pockets. That’s self-defeatism at its worst, which is something marketing should never be accused of.

We’ll speak for ourselves, and hopefully for our most ambitious clients: AARP, you don’t have to tell us twice.

The C4:

1. AARP — formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons — is now titled solely by that four-letter acronym and represents any Americans over the age of 50, retired or not.
2. AARP has kicked off a campaign to remind advertisers of the purchasing power of its members.
3. Americans of AARP age buy more than 60% of new cars. They’re among the few groups that saw little or no income decrease during the Great Recession. They dine out more, travel more, and spend generously on consumer goods.
4. These statistics haven’t exactly been kept secret, yet somehow we advertisers still treat millennials (age 18–34) like they, not the boomers, are the golden geese. It’s a shame that AARP had to remind us how to do our jobs, but now that they’ve done so we’re happy to assure them: we’re on it.

A Wealth of Ideas

Don’t let them go fallow.

There’s a precious business asset that is ultimately responsible for all success. It costs nothing to own, so it’s present at every startup. Amazingly, though, some businesses stop using it. They let it go fallow, forgotten.

We’re speaking of creativity, the art of ideas.

You were creative when you went into business. You must have been. You must have devised something new and untested. You thought of a new way of delivering services, or an innovative way to sell a product.

Which is laudable, of course. But how creative were you today? How creative will you be next week? You’re not sitting back and letting your earliest ideas define your future, are you?

The most creative companies — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and others — constantly innovate because they encourage their people to constantly create. Many set aside up to 20% of their employees’ time to work on emerging ideas. A lot of those ideas, maybe even most, go nowhere. But there’s brilliance enough in the rest to make the exercise worthwhile.

We said creativity costs nothing to own, and that’s true (hint: you were born with it, as was everyone you know). That doesn’t mean it’s free to nurture, though. It takes time and care and a loving environment. It’s rather skittish. Demand it to come forth and it’ll run and hide. Be gentle and inviting and it’ll trot right up and feed from your hand.

There’s creativity permeating your organization. Everyone for whom you sign a paycheck is teeming with ideas, ideas that have the potential of catapulting your success.

All you have to do is let it happen.

The C4:

1. Creativity was the founding asset of every business, and it’s the cause of every future success. Some businesses forget this at their peril, thinking that first good idea was all they’ll ever need. That’s folly.
2. Smart businesses realize that a constantly changing world calls for constant new ideas. They foster creativity as a way of eternally reinventing themselves.
3. Creativity is free, but harnessing it for business success takes investment. Invest in the time and environment needed for a free flow of ideas, and those ideas will greatly repay you.
4. Creativity abounds. You’re a font of ideas, so are your managers and entry-levels. So is the guy who cleans the floor. There’s a wealth of this resource all around you. Harvest it.

Predicting Gold

Let's see if statistical modeling pans out.

The 2012 Summer Olympics won’t end until August 12, but the results are already in. Team USA will be the overall medal winner, although China will win the most gold. Russia will take third place and host country Great Britain will be fourth.

Statistical modeling. It’s that accurate.

The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth has perfected this predictor, basing their model on surprisingly few factors: population, GDP, and home-field advantage. The most successful teams come from countries with a population base large enough to produce cadres of athletes, and with economies big enough to support them. More amorphous, but historically proven, is the host-country effect. Olympians are spurred on, apparently, when performing for their own countrymen. That’s what gave Greece an outsized 16 medals in the 2004 Athens games, and Australia 58 medals in Sydney, 2000.

It’s a simple concept with some powerful math plugged in. Tuck has fine-tuned the weighting for each variable, resulting in an accuracy ratio well into the 90th percentile for the last several Olympiads. For Beijing in 2008, their numbers were 95% correct.

Those are betting odds, and they have us thinking about a lot more than Olympic gold. Statistical modeling is used throughout the business world, from insurance to financial services to macroeconomics. It’s a way of quantifying a world of possibilities, and giving startlingly precise glimpses of the future.

Chances are your business is already relying on statistics in ways you’re not even aware of. Chances are you can (and should) be using them a lot more. Statistical modeling is complex, difficult to master, and decidedly unsexy. It doesn’t even exactly deliver the gold. But as the Tuck School so ably demonstrates, it can tell you exactly where the gold is going to be.

The C4:

1. The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth has created a statistical model that predicts, with up to 95% accuracy, who will win the most gold, silver and bronze at the Olympics.
2. That’s the Tuck School of BUSINESS. Clearly they’re not overly concerned with international athletic competition. They’re making a powerful point about the versatility and reliability of statistical modeling.
3. It’s a point you should heed. Your insurers' actuaries do. So does your broker, your banker, and probably your baker. Statistical modeling is how modern businesses can see the future and control their own fates. Are you using it to its fullest potential? Statistically, probably not.
4. OK, thanks to Tuck we already know how London will end. But Michael Phelps will still be in the water, and Kerri Walsh will still be in the sand. We won’t miss this for the world, no matter what Tuck predicts. Go Team USA!