Think big, start small, improve fast

M: "Any thug can kill. I want you to take your ego out of the equation and judge each situation dispassionately."

James Bond: "So you want me to be half-monk, half-hitman."

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Vesper: "It doesn't bother you, killing those people?"

James Bond: "Well, I wouldn't be very good at my job if it did."

===

Conclusion: Bond is superior to Vesper physically, but inferior to M intellectually.

In other words, he can do what Vesper cannot, but M can think and infer what he cannot.

So here we have the two keys to success: being able to think clearly (without passion, without feeling), and being able to act decisively (without passion, without feeling).

Of course, this is easier said than done. Most people think emotionally, not rationally. After all, we're human beings, not robots!

However, people who do take the time to improve their thinking so that they make decisions RATIONALLY, usually succeed in life. Warren Buffett admits himself that during his formative years and especially after meeting Charlie Munger, he began to constantly correct his thinking. From his success, we can safely infer that the rate at which he corrects his thinking is much faster than the rate at which the market corrects itself.

George Soros, the billionaire investor, also believes in "the pursuit of truth through a critical process."

They both are masters of rationality. They don't make decisions based on emotions, the past, the crowd, popular opinion, or sunk costs (which is an investment you made in the past, but which has no relevance to the decision that you have to make today), but on knowledge, facts, reality.

So why is it that most people don't make decisions rationally?

Probably because, as Soros suggested in his book The Age of Fallibility, we are involved and, therefore, subjective. We no longer see reality objectively, but through our colored, subjective lens.

It seems to me that the more objective you are in decision-making, the higher the likelihood that you will be correct, especially in business.

This is why I recommend to entrepreneurs that they present a brief business plan to a group of experienced friends and family, and ask this group to invest in their business. If nobody will invest in the business, then the following may be possible reasons:

1. The business plan has not been communicated clearly enough
2. The business plan is not valid, therefore the entrepreneur should not launch
3. The business plan is too ambitious
4. The business plan is not complete

If the group agrees that the business plan is complete (4), is not too ambitious in terms of goal-setting (3), has been communicated clearly enough (1), but that it's simply not a good plan or the entrepreneur is not deemed fit to execute the plan, then the entrepreneur should seriously reconsider whether to launch the business.

Through the exercise above, a person can really "take his/her ego out of the equation" and begin to think critically, without any delusion.

Of course, as we all know, success -- especially great success -- is not so logical. Often, at the beginning of a great project, a person might engage in what is called "fertile fallacy" and think that something is true while in fact it is false.

However, fertile fallacy can be useful sometimes: because he/she believes it to be true, he/she will start a project. This is what I call the magical aspect. Goethe is often quoted as saying that "Boldness has magic in it."

However, there always comes a point where the person has to take off the "magical" hat and put on the "logical" hat.

If quasi-magical belief is not followed by logic and rationality at the implementation phase, then the project will fail.

JFK's vision, for instance, of putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade was an almost magical belief. However, the science and technology of NASA were subsequently used to deliver the goods!

Similarly, the founder of Sony one evening had the "magical" idea of creating a Walk-Man (a tape player that he could wear on his belt, with earphones), after he was annoyed that his niece's noise-making prevented him from listening to his favorite music. He just proposed that idea to his engineers and told them to "make it happen." The rest, as we know, is history.

My conclusion: both magical thinking and logical thinking are necessary to succeed.

People who engage in magical thinking without taking the time to monitor their performance and obtain real data/stats about their performance in order to improve them, eventually fail.

Similarly, people who are good at measuring performance and calculating costs, but do not have the imagination to think big, also fail.

The success secret is to use and leverage both sides of the brain.

The best sequence that I've found so far, and I do use it in managing Talentelle, our little strategic training company for women, is to:

• Think big
• start small (so you can experiment and track results)
• and improve fast.