The Greatest Lesson I Ever Learned

[Blogger’s Note: I guess I’ve been a pretty bad blogger. I’m new at this but I’ve received a lot of complaints – justified – that I started my blog with a lot of hoopla and fanfare and then – after about 4 postings – didn’t post again for over a week. I assume successful bloggers blog with some regularity – every day or every week – and I certainly hope to post in the future 2-4 pieces a week. I have to learn to write shorter pieces more often so it doesn’t take so much time.

That said, this is a real cool essay, IMHO.]

There are two lessons I learned at different ages that I consider the greatest lessons of my life. The second one I learned in my early thirties and that is that some problems have no solution. Not that they don’t have a good solution, or an easy solution, but that they don’t have ANY solution whatsoever. An unsolvable problem. And I’m not talking about someone with an incurable disease. That I had already known about. I just thought that every problem had some solution, but that is not always true. And I considered it a sign of maturity to learn and accept that some problems have no solution. They just are problems and will always remain problems. (If a problem you think is unsolvable gets solved, it means it wasn’t really an unsolvable problem, but other unsolvable problems will continue to exist and continue to prove that there are problems with no solution.)

The single greatest lesson of life that I learned was one I learned in 1981 at a training class in computer support given at IBM. The instructor was Dave Mollen, a fascinating gentleman and a brilliant trainer. I am forever indebted to him for this lesson. Here it is:

There is a formula for Satisfaction:

Satisfaction = Realization / Expectation

Let me explain by example. Say your 14-year-old kid asks for cash for his birthday present, and is expecting $50. If you give him $50, his realization is $50, his expectation was $50, $50/$50= 1; he is satisfied because you (the gift) met his expectation. If you give him $100 he is DOUBLY satisfied (100/50=2) and if you give him $25 he is only HALF satisfied (25/50= ½) which is the same as disappointed.

The formula is rather cool in and of itself. But it is NOT the lesson. Here it comes.

Say that you’re the father and you KNOW your kid is expecting $50 and you KNOW you want to give him $25. That means you know you will disappoint him – UNLESS YOU GIVE MORE THAT YOU WANT TO by upping your gift to $50.

But you’d be WRONG. What people forget that is that you can satisfy your kid without upping the gift, by instead LOWERING HIS EXPECTATION. What people forget, says Dave Mollen, is that you not only control the Realization but that you CAN ALSO CONTROL THE EXPECTATION. Tell your kid a few days before his birthday how tough things are in business these days. How your stock portfolio went plummeting in values. Talk about your massive bills that need to be paid. Remind your son that six months earlier you chipped in half for his new Ipod even though there was no occasion. In his mind, as he hears these things, the Expectation meter starts clicking – backwards: $50… $45… $40… If you’re lucky it may not even stop at $25; it may even go down to $20! In which case when you give him $25 on his birthday, you look like a freakin’ hero!

This is not a great secret. Good negotiators and mediators know this and use this ploy all the time. Union leaders always promise the world to their members BEFORE they enter into contract talks. Then, as they go into the room, they lower expectations by saying how tough it is going to be to win any concessions from management.

Buy a product advertised on TV – or on QVC. It’s no doubt, “THE GREATEST – EVER!” They have raised your expectations TO GET YOU TO BUY IT. But once you’ve bought it, open the box and read the User Manual: It won’t do this, it won’t do that, it can’t be expected to work under these conditions, etc. They are controlling your expectations.

The problem – or challenge – is that even people who practice this art professionally forget that it applies to almost EVERY ASPECT OF LIFE. People who are in advertising, forget to apply it to the relationships with their spouse, with their parents, with their children, with their colleagues, with their softball league teammates, etc.

And it applies to politics, as well. And President-elect Obama is a MASTER of this lesson.

More on how it applies to Barack Obama in a future posting.