Disinfect Your Mind

The Other 90%: How to Unlock Your Vast Untapped Potential for Leadership and Life by Robert K. Cooper – Three Rivers Place, NY, 2001, ISBN 0-609-80880-X, 316 p.A very nice book by a Dr. Cooper. He is not just a management consultant, he is also a doctor, at least he was one. Here are some interesting facts about the biochemical computers running our bodies and lives that we call brains:

• There are 100 millions neurons in guts – more than in spinal column
• There are 40,000 neurons in heart
• Thinking is the last thing what our brain does before acting, and sometimes thinking is bypassed altogether

In Dr.Cooper’s view, most of us are trained from the childhood to use just our human brain in the head – cerebral cortex, which is roughly about 10% of all neural tissue in our bodies.

These numbers are important to understand why we need mind viruses – or at least, memes with strong anchors – for ourselves. That’s how we engage our lower brains. Other 90% of our brains.

Before Your Quite Your Job: 10 Real-Life Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Building A Multimillion-Dollar Business By Robert T. Kiyosaki, Sharon L. Lechter – Warner Business Books, 2005, 259 p., ISBN 0-446069637-4People have different, often opposite views on Robert Kiyosaki’s books, the author of popular “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” series. This particular book is interesting because it talks about excuses that people use to decide not to go into a business on their own. Among those are “I don’t have money”, “I don’t have contacts”, “I’m not smart enough”, “Business is risky”, “I have to support family”. When you look at them from the memetics point of view, you will recognize our old acquaintances – mind viruses.

It’s interesting that the author divides all people into two categories, employees and entrepreneurs. The excuses he lists are typical for employees. He also points out that school is what usually conditions people to become employees, not entrepreneurs. After reading my book, you all know what the school does culturally, right? Yes, it plants a lot of mind viruses in the young minds to cultivate them into a predominantly expected kind of a person.

Let’s consider it in details. First, all these excuses have very strong anchors. “I have to support my family” goes straight to the procreation anchor. In fact, this anchor is so strong that for most people their memetic mind simply can’t notice any flaws in this argument. It’s only the cognitive mind that is able to leave no stone on stone in this virus, because (a) most employees don’t earn enough to support their families as they think they should, and (b) a lot of entrepreneurs are supporting their families just fine.

For other excuses it’s a little harder to find their anchors. Say, “I don’t have money” or “I don’t have contacts”. Where is an anchor here? In fact, there is none. These are not complete viruses, but rather payload parts of special antiviral viruses that are supposed to prevent penetration of the subjects by matching entrepreneur culture viruses. The whole viruses are “success stories” like “this guy had a lot of money, and he makes even more out of them”, or “this guy has a lot of connections, and he makes a load of money out of them.” The main anchors of success stories are both curiosity and self-justification. The self-justification one works like that: “This guy has a lot of money, that’s why he makes even more money, and I don’t have money, so it’s not me, it’s actually the absence of money that prevents me from financial success.” You see? Here we’ve got the payload that later surfaces as an excuse. And it also make the carrier, because by passing a “success story” along, you justify yourself in front of another person for not having the same success. And we are all really hooked on justifying ourselves in front of other people. It seems to be in our genetic make up.

Now, why would such a virus be successful? They are clearly not very successful in entrepreneur subculture. What makes these viruses to proliferate so widely in an employee subculture? An employee subculture itself.

If you consider an employee and an entrepreneur, they have to live in different styles, or, at least, they had to in the XX century. Employee was naturally risk avert, seeking security and stability, oriented for the control of resources, not results. An entrepreneur cannot avoid risk, he has to live with it and enjoy it. He does not have security beyond the one provided by his own capabilities. And if he does not set his mind on the results, he soon may find himself among employees. Naturally, such two different environments resulted in two different subcultures with their own system of supporting memes and mind viruses.

Each subculture to be stable have to keep several kinds of mind viruses. Some of them are useful symbiotic mind viruses that help their hosts to adapt to the environment. Risk aversion in a XXth century corporation was a symbiotic mind virus because it helped people to keep their jobs. But subculture also have to carry mind viruses that prevent their subjects from escaping – retainer viruses. Most of the excuses listed above are exactly these kinds of mind viruses.

Compare it to two extreme environments where these kinds of mind viruses are evident. A religious cult is normally built around a mind virus “leave us and you’ll go to hell.” That’s a typical retainer virus. In a concentration camp during World War II the guards on watch-towers and barbed wire was not exactly communicating a mind virus, but rather a simple meme that escaping is not an option. Although in the second case the meme was mostly correct, the purpose of guards and wire was rather communicating the meme than actually physically killing escaping prisoners. In fact, in the cases of mass escape, guards and wire was normally unable to function with 100% efficiency. Making them evident to the prisoners and implanting appropriate meme into their minds was from all point of view much more efficient measure against escaping than their direct purpose. In fact, killing those who try to escape was rather used to enforce the meme in the minds of remaining prisoners. That’s why guards, towers and wire was not hidden but rather demonstratively exposed, that’s why bodies of those who failed to escape could have been left in a common view. As it often does, perception was more important than reality.

Well, I beg your pardon for making such grim comparisons to the employee subculture, I just wanted to make clear the concept of a retainer virus.

By the way, arguments of Kiyosaki is based on the XXth century employment. Today, most of us even in the employment have to carry some elements of entrepreneur subculture, recognize the risks, and rely on peer relations. Except some obscure corners like some government agencies, employment does not provide anymore stability or security. Read Peter Drucker and Tom Peters on that (see below for some links).

[1] The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management by Peter F. Drucker - Collins, 2003, 368 p., ISBN 006093574X

[2] Management Challenges for the 21st Century by Peter F. Drucker - Collins; 1st edition, 2001, 224 p., ISBN 0887309992

[3] Re-imagine! by Tom Peters - DK Publishing, 2003, 352 p., ISBN 078949647X

[4] The Brand You 50: Or Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an ‘Employee’ into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion! by Tom Peters - Knopf, 1999, 224 p., ISBN 0375407723

The Dangers of Chronic Distress: Are you worried, irritable and socially inhibited? A simple test may help predict the health effect by Michael C. Miller, M.D. – Newsweek, Oct 3, 2005, p.58-59.Miller is editor in chief of the Harvard Mental Health Letter.

“And among people who already have heart conditions, those with the highest scores – the so-called Type D personalities – are less responsive to treatment and have poorer quality of life. They are also more likely to die prematurely.”

Not a big surprise, of course, but a very good illustration to the thesis of a self-destruct programming in humans and how to avoid it. Personality types are all about predominant memes ruling the choices and views of a person. It seems that some memes are capable of bringing our body machinery to premature break ups, whether by design or by mere mismanagement of the body resources.

Of course, when I refer to other authors, they usually talk about much deeper, often cellular-level self-destruct programming. But this example, which comes as no surprise to most people in the XXI century, illustrates it with evidence: a person’s choice of memes to carry is a choice of how good and how long life he or she is going to live.

25 ways to win with people: How to make other feel like a million bucks by John C Maxwell and Les Parrott, Ph.D. – Nelson Business, 184 p., ISBN 0-7853-6094-3 0785260943Let’s just consider anchors on the title page.
“25 ways to…” Many publishers believe that starting the title with a number helps. It feels like you get a choice and the topic is covered thoroughly – compare to “One Way to…”. It feels like something manageable – compare to “A Millions Ways to do…” It feels like something well defined and precise – compare to “Some Ways to…”

“Win with People” is the key anchor for social status, power and influence. Actually, it’s a very nice anchor, wouldn’t you want to win with people? I would. In fact, it almost got me. The problem is that the anchor does not have to match the content.

New York Time Best-Selling Author…” brings the social proof.

“Ph.D.” - nice touch. It’s amazing how much we don’t pay a sh*t about this stuff when facing a person, and how much we believe it when we see it in print. I can tell it from the first-hand experience - I have Ph.D., and that’s why I don’t mention it too often.

Now about the content. Here is the quote from the beginning: “If you try to practice the “ways” of winning with people that you are about to learn in the following chapters before you give serious attention to how you can be a winner yourself, you’ll be sorely disappointed.” Here we are. Paraphrasing the authors, if you are not a winner already, why do you think this book will help you?

Today, let’s consider an example of how two conflicting mind viruses may result in a thick emotional screen and an elaborate net of lies to ensure that they both survive.Imagine that you work on a new product. An ancient mind virus “I am what I do” – (Me, is, my product) – makes you to strive for good quality and design. Sounds like a fine idea, right? The problem is that it links your product to your identity. You cannot ship something inferior at the threat of feeling diminished, defective, unworthy of your place in the society.

So, what’s the problem? Just do a superb job and be happy, right? Alas, it’s not always possible. You are allowed to have too few people, too small salary fund to hire the right people, too few resources to do the job, and too little time. In fact, from a business perspective it may make a lot of sense. But not from the perspective of your mind virus that forces you to strive for doing a better job.

Now we have two mind viruses:

(1) “Do a superb product” anchored in your personality and identity (pretty much a survival anchor) and carried in society on reciprocal basis starting from your parents telling you – no, not good grades yet – to eat your breakfast porridge until the plate is clean.

(2) “Finish the product on time on budget” anchored in your job security, enforced by upper management and carried by the need to enforce the same imperative in the whole group.

Now the time comes and the product is not ready. First, the deadline virus strikes, because there is no way you can really ship what you’ve got, and there is no way to fix it in time either. If this is a car, it still misses the wheels; if it is a software product, it has problems installing, not to mention doing something useful; if it is a plane, let’s not even go into it… But slipping the deadline is deadly, nobody wants that. So, you get the quality mind virus and talk to your boss, to your reports, and finally higher powers agree to move the deadline. After all, they have the same mind viruses and they have similar pressures that you do, if not from the upper management, then from their peers.

Let’s see what happened. You slipped. You missed the deadline. Everybody knows that. Everybody does not speak about it. Everybody speaks about “the right decision”, “importance of good quality”, and “interests of a customer”. Mentioning that you slipped becomes socially improper behavior, like eating with hands or sneezing in public.

Then the reality and market forces press and you have to ship something finally. You still don’t have the quality required by your personality mind virus. You cannot abandon the virus, so you have to convince yourself (and everybody around) that you are shipping something of a good quality; something that does not harm your identity; something that deserves your status in the society. At the same time, you have to ship the damn thing, no matter what its current condition is. If you don’t, there may be no company to work for and no product to ship whatsoever. Or, maybe, simply no job at the company where you work on the product. Now comes the time of the “quality” game.

Suddenly, you don’t want zero defects, you just want zero defects that you know of. Actually, quite a reasonable idea except that you don’t want to know what you test team found. Then it becomes zero defects except those that you reviewed and decided that you can live with them. Guess what? You quickly find more and more defects that you are willing to live with. But, if you decide to fix something, that absolutely must be fixed! Your integrity would not stand for anything less. Of course, if another review will not reveal that you can live with it. And now the day comes. You are shipping the product. You are proud of its quality. After all, you fixed all the defects that “must” be fixed, right? And you are proud of delivering on time. Yeah, there were some reviews of schedule, it always happens, but you delivered right on the final schedule! Right? Of course, right. Two little mind viruses in your head would not settle for anything less. And neither would you.

The only little problem is that you did not ship on schedule and you left a lot of problems inside the product. Fortunately for you, everybody around (management, peers, your team) share the same mind viruses and wholeheartedly agree with you. They would not settle for anything less either! Well, almost everybody. Except those dissidents, that you got rid of in the process.

Sounds familiar?

Presentation S.O.S.: From Perspiration to Persuasion in 9 Easy Steps by Mark Wiskup – ISBN 0-446-69554-8, 181 p.

The book is written by a renowned communications expert who speaks nationwide to many Fortune 500 companies. The main subject of the book is how to prepare and deliver powerful presentation that make people buy – speaking either figuratively or literally.What’s interesting is that his central piece of advice is a “Power Sound Bite”, a piece of reiterated information that glues the whole presentation together and represents the core idea you want people to remember and bring out of presentation. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” (FDR), “I have a dream” (Martin Luther King, Jr.), “To be or not to be?” (William Shakespeare), “The tribe have spoken” are just few examples of Power Sound Bites.

If you already read the draft of my book or followed the advice and checked one of the books in memetic bibliography, you already recognize PSBs as something very familiar – a meme. Even better, a meme with an anchor and carrier – a mind virus.

Of course, he does not approach this from the memetic point of view, and hence the book has a few shortcomings. Here is an example of PSB, he believes is good:

When you support these goals for the direction of our marketing effort, you’ll
be assuring a good, profitable year for the company, making your customers
happy, and putting more money in your wallet.

Gees… What a bite of a corporate politically correct B.S. Marketing making customers happy?

Although, I have to admit, it’s a lousy meme, but a good wrapper and delivery mechanism for a really strong meme expressed in the last five words: “more money in your wallet.” The rest of the message simply gets the guards off. People listen to the beginning of this sentence and immediately classify is at “managerese” mumbling leaving it to internal defenses to filter it out. But when it drop there, internal filters see “more money in your wallet”, and, wow! Your inner self gets interested.

Let’s get a bit more formal, here is what this statement is in memetic notation:

(support me, is, extra money)
(support me, is, happy customers)
(support me, is, profitable year)

The long introductory part means simply “Support me”, because it does not carry any information about the “effort” or “goals” or “direction”. These terms are simply a bubble-talk to express simple “support me” directive. “Extra money in your wallet” = “More personal income” is the main anchor of the statement. The second two are auxiliary anchors in a case your audience has corporate profit or customer satisfaction metrics in the performance objectives.

As any marketing expert will tell you, in the XX century the dominant way to sell goods and services was based on branding and positioning. This is more questionable now, in XXI century, but we will talk about that separately. Just as a refresher, what is branding and positioning?Branding, in a nutshell, is linking a completely non-sensible logo or name to the category of a product or a service. Positioning is about positioning your own non-sensible logo or name relative to others in the same category, so that you still sell even if there is a lot of contenders. 

How does it all work memetically? By putting a meme into your mind. (Car rental, is, Hertz), (Soft drink, is, Coke), (Computer, is, IBM). Then once you need a car rental, soft drink or a computer you go to Hertz, Coca-Cola or IBM. Why? Let’s see how our brain make decisions.

First, it gets a notion of what you need, like “Car”, “Week”. Then (Week, is, temporary) meme is applied and it gets “Car”, “Temporary”. Then (Temporary, use, rental) applies, so you get “Car, rental”. All this happens very fast, so you even don’t notice the process. In fact, you cannot notice the process, because it’s the same process as noticing something – that’s your thoughts. Then the branding meme strikes and you end up with “Hertz”. Simple enough, isn’t it?

The idea of branding is to link a triggering need to the company, hence directing everybody who has this particular need to buy from a particular company rather than its competition. Introducing a meme that will make the link was the job of marketing.

To the disappointment of marketing firms’ customers, this gave the initial result but then stopped working for most companies. (Computer, is, IBM) is fine, but what could you do if the customers are bombarded with competitive memes (Computer, is, Compaq), (Computer, is, Dell), (Computer, is, Hewlett-Packard), (Computer, is, Sony, Samsung, et al.) It was found that only the top two conflicting memes survive, the rest of them hit the dust with only marginal recognition. So, positioning become the king by trying to get a meme of a specific company in the top two slots, or invent a new category, where it can get into the top two slots.

So, why do only the top two memes survive in branding and marketing? Let’s see again, how our mind works. First, we have a need. Then we use a meme with the needs on the right side with the left side of the same meme. (Car, week) -> (Car, temporary). Then we do that again with new matching memes, (Car, rental), and so on. Each time many memes match, but only the strongest is used. Once we get the solution, we may like it or not. Or we may just hit a dead end. In both cases, we rollback a step or two and apply the second strongest meme to get a different answer. If we hit a dead end or a solution that we don’t like, we go back again and try the third strongest meme or we may roll back a step or two more. Now, if you need a soft drink, how many times will you hit a dead end? Zero. And if you don’t like it, you get “the other cola” in an instance. When buying a commodity product, there is simply no way you can hit a dead end too many times. It’s not like you cannot go through the endless list of different “cola’s”; you can, but it would simply be a waste of time, and there is no reason why you would want that.

Hi folks,Have you ever received a mail that starts with something like 

“Dear Stupid,
I am Giving Away My Secrets on Getting Rich with …”

I do. You see, when I subscribe to the mail lists I often give names like “Stupid”, “Fool”, “Junk” instead of my first name. Really, these guys don’t really need my name. They only use it to fool me into a false sense of a personal touch. So, why not pull a little prank on them?

Really, why? Why am I doing that?

Do I enjoy being called “stupid”? Well, not exactly, there is much better reason for that.

Many mail lists on the internet are designed to lure you into buying something – a report that reveals secrets, a guide that should make you rich, schemes that are supposed to bring you wealth beyond your wildest dreams, pills that make you a sex legend, diets that will let you die healthy… You name it, and somebody on the Internet is already promising it.

You may wonder why somebody would ever consider such offers, and the answer is “marketing”. Marketing and advertising. A sales copy filled with anchors and mind viruses. A sales copy that pretends to be a messages from your old friend; a message that tries to start with something like “Hi, Joe,…” or “Hey, Bob, …” to make you think that it was written by an old friend specially for you. There are no friends behinds it, actually, there are no real people either, it all happens automatically. Your name was harvested, put into a database, and now it was automatically inserted into a template like, “Hi, ,…” Once you are deceived into the friendly mood, it becomes much easier to penetrate your mind and infect you with a buying virus. Yes, just that.

Now, you see what my little prank does? Instead of cheating me into a friendly open-mind mode, it automatically arms my defenses with an unexpected offense.

You know, it’s not what they call you, it’s what you do after reading their stuff that makes you stupid or smart.

Till the next time!