Mind Tools Newsletter 40 - 17 January 2006

Outsmart Your Opposition! This newsletter is published by Mind Tools Ltd, of 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London, EC1V 4PY, United Kingdom. To contact us, please email us from this page. You have received this newsletter because you have subscribed to our double opt-in newsletter.To unsubscribe, just click the link at the bottom of the email se sent you.If you are not already a member and you would like to subscribe, please visit http://mindtools.com/subscribe.htm.

Contents: What's New Concept Attainment Better Public Speaking and Presentation Mind Tools Store Thinking Strategically A Final Note

In this issue, we give you a new communication tool, which helps you reach a shared understanding on important points with all members of your team. You'll already know the frustration that can arise when different people unknowingly have different interpretations of important messages?

Here's a simple tool that helps your team overcome the frustration and reach a consistent and deeper understanding. Try it with you team and let us know what you think

We are excited to debut a new section in this issue of the newsletter, called "Two Minute Tips". This section gives succinct tips and nuggets from well-loved articles. In just two minutes reading (or thereabouts), you'll learn tried and tested tips to apply immediately for positive results.

Given the time constraints we all face daily, this seems like a great way to convey some of our most important tools and techniques to our valued newsletter readers.

Of course, if you want to know more about any of the tips in this section, there is more detail the main sections of the Mind Tools site. Just follow the link at the end of the “Two Minute Tips” feature.

Last but not least we feature a review of one of our favorite books, “Thinking Strategically” by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff. In this review, we reveal some of the powerful Game Theory techniques the book has to offer, and offer an insight into how this powerful approach can be applied to outsmart your competitors.

As always, we hope you enjoy this issue and encourage you to use the information in it to get your New Year off to a great start.

Happy reading!

James & Kellie

James Manktelow and Rachel Thompson
MindTools.com
Mind Tools – Essential skills for an excellent career!

To find out about new tools on the Mind Tools site the moment they’re uploaded, click here to subscribe to the Mind Tools RSS feed (you'll need an RSS newsreader installed), or here to find out more about RSS.

New tools on the Mind Tools site

• 13th Jan 2006 - Concept Attainment - Reaching a shared understanding of important ideas.
• 10th Jan 2006 -Coercive Power - Not to be relied on.
• 6th Jan 2006 - Using Maslow's Hierarchy - Building a happier, more satisfied team.

Find out about new tools on the Mind Tools site the moment they’re uploaded by subscribing to the Mind Tools RSS feed. Click here to subscribe (you'll need an RSS newsreader installed), or here to find out more about RSS.

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New Tools:
Concept Attainment:
Reaching a Shared Understanding of Important Ideas

"Concept Attainment" is a simple group learning technique that helps you achieve a consistent understanding of important concepts and ideas. It is particularly powerful where team members’ judgment plays a large role in how they respond or make decisions and where consistency is important across your teams.

By discussing examples and individual attributes of the issue being discussed, you can help your team gain a deeper and unified understanding of the issues they face, so that they solve problems in a similar, effective way.

Examples of where this is useful are:

• In a customer support team: Helping understand service standards and service level definitions so that customer get a truly consistent, good service, whoever they talk to;
• In a customer service team: Defining "complaint escalation" so that important issues only are escalated to senior management;
• In a sales team: Understanding the company brand so that team members consistently "deliver the brand" as well as specific products to customers; and
• With wine tasters: Defining "taste vocabulary" so that team members describe and grade wine consistently.

How to use the tool:
Use the tool in small team meetings of up to, say, 8 people. Your role as the team leader is to introduce the concept or approach you want to explore, and guide people through a productive discussion, using the following steps:

1. Define the concept:
   As team leader, bring to the team meeting well-thought-through, written definitions of the concept. Make sure that you collate any pre-existing definitions, such as those published in staff manuals, corporate communications and so on. Present the team with these as the starting point.
   
   
2. Explore the concept:
   Within the team, discuss what the concept means and how it specifically applies to the team. Unravel specific aspects or elements of the concept to achieve a deeper understanding. For example, a team discussing the concept of “service excellence” may unravel elements such as timely response, prompt replacements, courteous calls, and tone of voice.
   
   As you go, encourage team members to explore elements in more detail, allowing details (such as tone of voice) to emerge as the discussion deepens. As team members become engaged with the detail, so their understanding will increase. This is especially important when discussing ideas in relation to team members’ specific roles and behaviors.
   
   
3. Test the concept using examples and "non-examples":
   Ask team members for examples and also "non-examples" of the concept. A non-example is simply something outside of definition. For example, if you want to look at "escalation" in relation to customer complaints, ask the team for examples of complaints that must be escalated, and also ones that must not (these are the non-examples).
   
   Notice how attributes change for different examples and non-examples. If there seem to be lots of exceptions and "special cases", dig deeper into the concept and expand the emerging definitions.
   
   
4. Review and agree revised definitions:
   As the deeper understanding emerges, so will revised and more detailed definitions. Agree these with your team, and write them down. Amend any team-owned documents to reflect the team’s new understanding.
   
   
5. Test definitions in practice:
   As the team moves forward, make sure that definitions are regularly revisited and updated to reflect what really happens.

Tip 1: It is important that all team members participate and that the team achieves agreement. If team members do not "buy-in" to the final agreement, the team will not reach a shared understanding, and it may not apply the concept consistently. Tip 2: One of the team leader's roles is to draw attention to the concept's most important elements, and to make sure that these get sufficient attention.

Example:
Mike Brown leads the business service center for K-CO Inc, a telephone company providing business services and networks. He is frustrated to see that the number of customer complaints escalated to account managers has risen again. And yet the customer survey results published last week were excellent – suggesting that customers are happier than ever.

So Mike investigates the problem thoroughly over the next few days and he concludes that the problem is in fact internal. There have been two new members of the center's supervisory team and, although new supervisors are experienced and well trained, Mike has found that the supervisors are inconsistent in how they escalate complaints.

He decides to test out his theory at the next meeting of the service team supervisors. He holds an extended meeting of the 6 supervisors, and uses the "concept attainment" technique to explore the issue of escalation. As the team discussion evolves, team members offer examples of when they have escalated customer complaints. Very importantly, they also explore when they have not escalated (or should not have). They look at how various factors have affected their decision: types of complaint, types of customer, person calling, how the customers complained (by phone, email or letter).

As the discussion evolves, the team drafts new more detailed definitions to supplement the complaints procedure. Their shared understanding deepens, and the new team members report that they have increased confidence not to escalate certain types of complaint. And as next week's statistics show, the team is now more consistent than ever in dealing with customer complains, and more will be dealt with without the need for escalation.

Key Points:

The concept attainment technique helps team members gain a deeper understanding of important concepts. By using examples, non-examples and exploring the attributes of the concept, the team can arrive at a team-owned definition that enables the concept to be applied consistently.

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Quick Tips
Better Public Speaking and Presentations… in 2 minutes

In this section of the Mind Tools newsletter, we feature a favorite Mind Tool and provide a few quick steps to help you achieve quick, positive results. Keep in mind that these quick tips are provided as an overview or short synopsis: To obtain the full benefits, we recommend you use the link at the end of this section to visit additional information on this tool at the Mind Tools site.

In the Communication Skills section of the Mind Tools site, we provide more than a dozen different tools that are sure to enhance your communication skills – covering everything from verbal and written communications to electronic communications and communicating more effectively (and more appropriately) across different cultures.

Following, we highlight a few tips that you can put to use in no time at all to enhance your public speaking and presentation skills.

Whether your next audience (today, tomorrow or next week) is large or small, follow these tips and you will be better understood:

• Set meeting and presentation times well in advance – allow yourself time to prepare, and give your audience plenty of notice so they can set aside enough time to receive your message;
  
  
• Prepare – know your message (this gives you confidence and the knowledge to convey the message most effectively). Remember the "6 Ps": Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Poor Performance;
  
  
• Keep your message short and simple – Don't waste time, and don't waste words;
  
  
• Keep your message clear – Stay on track and focused;
  
  
• Be vivid when delivering the message – Use examples and stories to excite the audience and vary the pace
  
  
• Be natural – Believe in your message and make it you own – you will be more believable;
  
  
• Be interesting – Even the most boring of topics can be made more attractive with a little thought and effort; and
  
  
• Be audience focused – Answer your audience's “How does this affect me?” question before it’s asked.

These tips are expanded and supported with additional communication tools and resources on the Mind Tools site. Find out more at http://www.mindtools.com/page8.html.

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The Mind Tools Store:

• How to Lead: Discover the Leader Within You: Learn the 48 simple but essential skills you need to become a top leader in your industry. More >>
  
  
• The Mind Tools E-book: All of the tools on the Mind Tools website in one convenient, easily-downloadable, easily-printable PDF file. We have excluded advertising to enhance clarity and have formatted sections to be easy to read, print and use. More >>
  
  
• Make Time for Success: Learn 39 essential personal effectiveness techniques that help you bring your workload under control and maximize your productivity, so that you can make the most of the opportunities open to you. More >>
  
  
• Design Your Life Design the life you want to live. Set the clear, vivid, powerful goals you need to live it to the full. More >>
  
  
• Personal Coaching from Career Excellence Professionals: Find career and life direction, bring your job under control, build self-confidence and put yourself on the path to long term success with a Mind Tools coach. Our coaches give you the focused personal coaching you need to make the very most of your career and life. More >>

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Book Review :
Thinking Strategically
By Avinash K Dixit & Barry J Nalebuff
Reviewed by Rachel Thompson

How do you make the best decision when the outcome is dependent not only on your own actions but on those of your competitors? This is one of the crucial questions of life and business today, and is one that can make the difference between success and failure for your team and your organization. After all, do you want to be outwitted by your competitors?

The answer? Think strategically – learn when to outsmart your opponents, when to cooperate (and when not to), and how to pick your best course of action.

Consciously or sub-consciously, we all make competitive decisions, big or small, every day. Thinking Strategically teaches a whole tool-kit of strategic thinking techniques, helping us make these decisions wisely and effectively. By learning the techniques – many of them simple yet surprising – you can learn to make better strategic decisions and achieve your best outcome more often.

The techniques taught in Thinking Strategically are based on "Game Theory". Game Theory is a mathematics-based science that has evolved and found many practical applications in the last 50 years (for example, it underpinned much of the negotiation between the Superpowers during the Cold War.) Using Game Theory techniques, Thinking Strategically helps you understand the "games" you are playing, so that you can develop your strategy to “win”.

And what's more, Dixit and Nalebuff make it easy to understand, practical and interesting, using examples and case studies ranging from sports to economics, from military to media, and from politics to business. The mix of clear explanation and varied case studies makes for a good read and a unique reference of techniques that you are sure to apply.

The games people play
In their introduction, Dixit and Nalebuff explain: "You must recognize that your business rivals, your prospective spouse, and even your child are intelligent and purposive people. Their aims often conflict with yours, but they are also potential allies. Your [decision making] choice must allow for the conflict, and utilize the cooperation".

And so Dixit and Nalebuff guide their reader to understand the types of strategic "games" people play and the techniques that he or she can use to make the most of their position.

Here are just a few of the concepts and examples from the book, so that you can see how the book reveals practical techniques and interesting examples:

• First, the "sequential-move game". You move, your opponent moves and so on. What’s your best strategy?
  
• Next, the Prisoner's Dilemma. A classic decision making scenario used to illustrate many principles, techniques and applications of Game Theory and strategic decision-making.
  
• Finally, the idea of using credible threats to change an opponent's behavior.

Sequential-move games
Real examples of a sequential-move game include a game of chess, or perhaps a product launch against a competitor's product. Dixit and Nalebuff explain the principle "look forward and reason back" for unraveling strategies in this type of game.

Using a game tree technique (similar to decision trees, explained elsewhere on Mind Tools), you plot the actions that you could make, the actions your opponent could take in response, and so on. You anticipate your opponents move by finding his best option at each decision point, and then plan how you'll counter this or turn it to your advantage.

To illustrate this, Dixit and Nalebuff's case studies and examples range from world conflict to baseball to product launch. The technique is easy to apply to your own decision-making.

The Prisoners’ Dilemma: Cooperate or Confess?
The classic Prisoner's Dilemma: Two suspects are questioned separately - each can confess or keep silent. If suspect A keeps silent, then suspect B can "win" by confessing. If A confesses, B had better confess to avoid harsh treatment. Confession is B's "dominant strategy". The same is true for A. So will they both confess?

However, both will do better if they both COOPERATE and stay silent. But can they trust each other? What if one "cheats" and confesses?

The characteristics of the Prisoner's Dilemma appear in many real-life scenarios: Market competition, international negotiations, team work. By examining a range of these, Dixit and Nalebuff uncover ideas and techniques to apply in everyday strategic decision-making. For example, they examine the effect of "repeat play" versus one-play on a strategy. They look at what makes a "credible commitments" to cooperation. They consider the options and effects of punishing "cheats". And they explore the dynamics of unpredictability, and of revealing and concealing information.

Credible Threats and Burning Bridges
"Burning your bridges" is a commonly used term for "closing down your options". Game theory (and history) says sometimes that is a good thing. Dixit and Nalebuff recount the story of 16th century conquistador Hernan Cortés, who burned his own ships upon arrival in Mexico.

Cortés purposefully eliminated retreat as an option. Without ships in which to retreat, he had to succeed... or die. His soldiers were vastly outnumbered. But their threat to fight to the death demoralized the opposition. And his opponents chose to retreat rather than fight against such determination.

So Cortés threat to fight to the death was credible and successful. Dixit and Nalebuff show how such strategies can enhance your moves and negotiations.

So that's it. Thinking Strategically is brimming with techniques, overflowing with interesting examples and, most of the time, easy to follow on the theory. If you are looking to hone your winning strategies and outsmart your competitors (or maybe just find out more on game theory) I strongly recommend this book.

Click here to see "Thinking Strategically" at Amazon.com.

Rachel Thompson is a regular contributor to the Mind Tools newsletter. An experienced change management consultant of 17 years experience, she now writes, edits and commissions for Mind Tools.

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A Final Note From James

In recent months, the Mind Tools team has worked hard to provide our valued readers with new mind tools. We continue to add useful material on these new tools to our site in the recently added “What’s New” section. Don’t forget to check back here often, for this section is expanded every week. And, if there is a tool you would like us to include, just let us know.

In our next issue we'll focus on how you can use well-established ideas of marketing and branding to make the most of your own career. And we take a fresh look at some of the techniques you can use to take the pressure off during an often-hectic time of year.

We look forward to working with each of you as you make the most of your life and enjoy the many successes you deserve. And, as always, we love to hear from you if there is a tool, tip or technique you would like explored. By emailing us you will help us to meet your needs – which remains our goal in 2006 and beyond.

Best wishes, and until next time!

James & Kellie

James Manktelow & Kellie Fowler

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