Read Online What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20 by Tina Seelig - Free Book Online
Authors: Tina Seelig
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ask me how a neuroscientist ended up teaching entrepreneurship to engineers, I have to say, “It’s a long story.”
All of these cases illustrate that in any complex organization, there are always opportunities around you. Even if tackling them doesn’t seem like a natural fit for you, with a little bit of creativity, you can usually find a way that your skills are relevant to the challenge. Paul Yock identified a missed opportunity in a university setting and designed a brand-new program to fill the need; Debra Dunn saw holes in her organization and found a way to leverage what she knew to take on roles others would not necessarily have chosen for her; and I figured out a creative way to reframe my skills so I could move between two fields that on the surface looked completely disparate.
Another way to anoint yourself is to look at things others have discarded and find ways to turn them into something useful. There is often tremendous value in the projects others have carelessly abandoned. As discussed previously, sometimes people jettison ideas because they don’t fully appreciate their value, or because they don’t have time to fully explore them. Often these discarded ideas hold a lot of promise.
Michael Dearing started his career in strategy at Disney, went on to launch a retail venture that failed, and then landed at eBay, a leading online auction Web site. Michael was initially assigned to a job he wasn’t thrilled about. He decided to use his free time to look at features that had been designed but then ignored or abandoned, ideas just waiting for someone to exploit them. It was the year 2000, and Michael saw that there was a new feature that let customers add a photo to their standard listing for an additional twenty-five cents. Only 10 percent of eBay customers were using this feature. Michael spent some time analyzing the benefits of this service and was able to demonstrate that products with accompanying photos sold faster and at a higher price than products without photos. Armed with this compelling data, he started marketing the photo service more heavily and ended up increasing the adoption rate of this feature by customers from 10 percent to 60 percent. This resulted in $300 million in additional annual revenue for eBay. Without any instructions from others, Michael found an untapped gold mine and exploited it with great results. The cost to the company was minimal and the profits were profound.
This wasn’t the first time Michael found a way to tap into resources around him. Even as a kid he wrote letters to famous people and was pleased to see that most of the time they wrote back. He still continues that habit, sending unsolicited e-mails to people he admires. In almost every instance they respond, and in many cases the correspondence results in long-term relationships and interesting opportunities. He never asks the folks he writes for anything. His initial contact is all about thanking them for something they’ve done, acknowledging something they’ve accomplished, asking a simple question, or offering to help them in some way. He doesn’t wait for an invitation to contact these people, but takes it upon himself to make the first move.
There is considerable research showing that those willing to stretch the boundaries of their current skills and willing to risk trying something new, like Debra Dunn and Michael Dearing, are much more likely to be successful than those who believe they have a fixed skill set and innate abilities that lock them into specific roles. Carol Dweck, at Stanford’s psychology department, has written extensively about this, demonstrating that those of us with a fixed mind-set about what we’re good at are much less likely to be successful in the long run than those with a growth mind-set. Her work focuses on our attitude about ourselves. Those with a fixed image about what they can do are much less likely to take risks that might shake that image. But
All of these cases illustrate that in any complex organization, there are always opportunities around you. Even if tackling them doesn’t seem like a natural fit for you, with a little bit of creativity, you can usually find a way that your skills are relevant to the challenge. Paul Yock identified a missed opportunity in a university setting and designed a brand-new program to fill the need; Debra Dunn saw holes in her organization and found a way to leverage what she knew to take on roles others would not necessarily have chosen for her; and I figured out a creative way to reframe my skills so I could move between two fields that on the surface looked completely disparate.
Another way to anoint yourself is to look at things others have discarded and find ways to turn them into something useful. There is often tremendous value in the projects others have carelessly abandoned. As discussed previously, sometimes people jettison ideas because they don’t fully appreciate their value, or because they don’t have time to fully explore them. Often these discarded ideas hold a lot of promise.
Michael Dearing started his career in strategy at Disney, went on to launch a retail venture that failed, and then landed at eBay, a leading online auction Web site. Michael was initially assigned to a job he wasn’t thrilled about. He decided to use his free time to look at features that had been designed but then ignored or abandoned, ideas just waiting for someone to exploit them. It was the year 2000, and Michael saw that there was a new feature that let customers add a photo to their standard listing for an additional twenty-five cents. Only 10 percent of eBay customers were using this feature. Michael spent some time analyzing the benefits of this service and was able to demonstrate that products with accompanying photos sold faster and at a higher price than products without photos. Armed with this compelling data, he started marketing the photo service more heavily and ended up increasing the adoption rate of this feature by customers from 10 percent to 60 percent. This resulted in $300 million in additional annual revenue for eBay. Without any instructions from others, Michael found an untapped gold mine and exploited it with great results. The cost to the company was minimal and the profits were profound.
This wasn’t the first time Michael found a way to tap into resources around him. Even as a kid he wrote letters to famous people and was pleased to see that most of the time they wrote back. He still continues that habit, sending unsolicited e-mails to people he admires. In almost every instance they respond, and in many cases the correspondence results in long-term relationships and interesting opportunities. He never asks the folks he writes for anything. His initial contact is all about thanking them for something they’ve done, acknowledging something they’ve accomplished, asking a simple question, or offering to help them in some way. He doesn’t wait for an invitation to contact these people, but takes it upon himself to make the first move.
There is considerable research showing that those willing to stretch the boundaries of their current skills and willing to risk trying something new, like Debra Dunn and Michael Dearing, are much more likely to be successful than those who believe they have a fixed skill set and innate abilities that lock them into specific roles. Carol Dweck, at Stanford’s psychology department, has written extensively about this, demonstrating that those of us with a fixed mind-set about what we’re good at are much less likely to be successful in the long run than those with a growth mind-set. Her work focuses on our attitude about ourselves. Those with a fixed image about what they can do are much less likely to take risks that might shake that image. But
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