Monkey Business Leads to Bigg Success

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:00:47 +0000

Let’s go back in time to the year 1897. Jockey Tod Sloan transformed the horse racing world. Up to that time, jockeys had dangled their legs down the sides of the horse.

Sloan didn’t follow the custom. He squatted in his stirrups. It looked so strange that people called it the “monkey crouch”.

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Well, monkey see, monkey do. Sloan’s technique quickly caught on.

It is given credit for improving race times by 6% over the last century. No other improvements have been as successful as Sloan’s monkey crouch.

Scientists have recently discovered why racing times improved so dramatically with the monkey crouch. Using the old way, the horse had to push the jockey up with every stride because the horse moves up and down more than the jockey.

By crouching above the horse, the jockey allows the horse to expend less energy with every stride. The jockey works harder but the pair is more efficient.

What can we learn about personal productivity from Sloan’s monkey crouch?

Think outside the monkey cage.
This is an obvious one but it bears repeating. Just because it’s always been done a certain way doesn’t make it best. Always be on the lookout for a better technique. Sloan found it; so can you.

Get the monkey off your back.
People made fun of Sloan until his method got results. What works may look strange. What works may feel strange. You don’t care about that. You just care that it works!

Make monkey trial and error your constant companion.
Look at your life as your laboratory. Always test new ideas, new techniques and new tools to see which ones pan out.

Don’t swing from tree to tree.
You can’t dilute your resources. You have to concentrate your efforts on one thing at a time. If you try to improve too many things, you won’t improve any.

Set the monkey bar a little higher.
Bigg success comes from sequential small improvements. So focus on doing just a little bit better today and a little bit better tomorrow.

Don’t be afraid to monkey around.
Sometimes the best improvements come by accident. Always be tuned in to your environment because you never know from where your bigg discovery will come.

It just shows you that, sometimes, monkey business leads to bigg success!

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Thanks so much for reading our post today. Please join us next time when we talk with John Tantillo, The Marketing Doctor, about giving your brand a brand-over. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

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Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
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(Image by Paolo Camera,CC 2.0)

Moving Beyond Personal Productivity

George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:30:06 +0000

A bigg salute to Stowe Boyd for his recent post on the /message blog. He argues that personal productivity isn’t important anymore. It’s the productivity of your network that matters.

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That made us think of Stephen Covey. As he says in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, we have to move from independence to interdependence in order to achieve maximum effectiveness.

In the higher order of things, personal productivity is important, but interpersonal productivity is most important.

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Producing The Bigg Success Show takes a lot of work. We have five deadlines every week. We’ve divided up our duties pretty evenly. But sometimes I get done and George is still working. Sure I could move on to something else I need to do. But in some cases, it’s better if I help him catch up.

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We’re programmed to think that it’s our individual effort that matters. However, in the end it’s the team that wins or loses – helping your team, by helping your team mate, helps you. Mary-Lynn helps me when I need it, so I help her when she needs it.

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Interdependence leads us to a new business venture

It’s the network, stupid! That’s the paradigm for the 21st century – for us as individuals and for businesses and other organizations. It’s the end result that matters so we must focus on being effective, not just efficient. Our network can produce results that we couldn’t produce on our own.

Recently, we had an idea for a business. We talked a friend whose business is in the market we were targeting. After our conversation, we had a different idea so we started working on it!

Interdependence got us a better idea!

Now, we could do this whole thing ourselves. However, we have another friend who has a business that dovetails nicely with our expertise. We believe that we can grow the business much faster by working with him.

We’re a couple of months away from launching this national business. So far, it’s taken us two meetings and three series of e-mails.

Interdependence got us further faster!

Perhaps even more importantly, we think we’ll make more money by letting him do what he does best and sticking to what we do best.

Interdependence will make us more productive!

Developing a business at that speed couldn’t have happened if the relationship didn’t exist already. Trust has been built up over time and it’s taken a lot of trust to get to the point we are, especially at the speed we’ve been traveling!

If you’re willing to be truly interdependent, you can enjoy the power of interpersonal productivity. That’s what it takes today to be a bigg success!

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