Think about it for a moment: even crazy ideas catch (or else we wouldn’t have so many conspiracy theories). The spectrum of human ideas might be vast and far-reaching, but every idea has its own adepts.

So how can we convince someone else of a particular idea? How can you influence the outcome of anyone’s mental processes? Is it even possible to consistently exert the authority needed to make your ideas catch like wildfire?

Why language is important

When we talk about authority, don’t think of it as some sort of tyrannical delivery of ideas. On the contrary, authority is subtle. And irresistible. In an increasingly self-protective world, influence is authority. And the way we exert influence has a lot to do with the language we use.

To make my point, consider that more than anything, people will recognize their own brilliance and greatness before they’d be willing to recognize the same qualities in others. Think about it: in the face of modern or contemporary art, man says “I could have done that too”.

Write this down somewhere and remember it well: we trust ourselves more than we trust others.

Consequently, we trust our own judgement almost blindly. When we speak, the language we use projects our ideas the exact same way our brain thinks about them. Some words have personal meaning to them. They often stray from the conventional understanding, sometimes enough to prevent us from being “properly” understood.

How to choose the right language

There’s a very simple trick when it comes to speaking someone else’s language: use their own words.

And when I say their own words, I mean the exact same words they use. Listen carefully, remember the words, and say them again. It doesn’t have to be a whole phrase, it can be as little as a sequence of one to three words.

The best chance you have of actually making people believe they came up with your ideas by themselves is to repeat the words they say. This short-circuits their brain and makes them think: “I said that.” So when you follow up with your idea, they’re already thinking that you’re just repeating something already theirs.

A word of advice: don’t be too eager or too insistent about spreading your ideas. The result will not be instantaneous. The bigger the idea, the longer it will take for it to take roots.

What you’ll typically experience is this: no matter the initial response, after a while you’ll hear your idea repeated as if you never had the discussion in the first place.

If you don’t believe me, try it

My wife is naturally very good at this, and didn’t even realize it until we talked about it. She often complains to me that people steal her ideas, when really they’re being influenced into thinking they were the first to think of it.

She’s partially right: people steal ideas from each other all the time. The more appealing it seems, the likelier to be “borrowed”. And even though you might initially think “hold on a second, why would I want my ideas being stolen?”, the answer is: results.

That’s right, if what you’re after is results, then this technique will work wonders. Just like in the movie Inception, the moment you convince someone an idea originated in their head, the brain is going to work very hard to convince itself of its origin. Once it’s finished, however, you’re going to hear the words you once used take a new life from someone else’s lips.

Language, verbal or not, is a very powerful tool. To master its use is to break free from our own limitations. In the hope that you’ll use it for good, I leave you today with one last lesson:

In the beginning, it wasn’t chaos. In the beginning… was the Word.

The post How to Exert Influence Through Language appeared first on Sebastian Ungureanu.

Imagine you and your main competitor are engaged in an iterative variation of the Prisoner’s Dilemma. You don’t know if your opponent will make a misstep, but you know they have an inclination not to.

Let’s call that the Business Prisoner’s Dilemma.

It’s a fitting name because a) it’s based on the classical Prisoner’s Dilemma from game theory, and b) your choices are influenced by knowing that your opponent is constantly trying to maximize their return.

In reality, you never know what kind of internal decisions are made by your competition. They might be playing the game well, or they might be cutting corners just like you. In the absence of information, it’s better to assume the conditions laid out by the Business Prisoner’s Dilemma.

In that case, there’s only one good strategy you can apply. By the end of this article, you’ll hopefully be able to use this line of thinking the next time you make a decision about your product, your team, or how you run your business, and understand that even minor choices have repercussions.

The Business Prisoner’s Dilemma

First, let’s have some fun with a real-world example.

We all know from a very fine-tuned PR machine that Steve Jobs was a perfectionist who would rather be remembered as arrogant than launch anything other than a great product. True or not, imagine you’re playing the Business Prisoner’s Dilemma against Steve Jobs.

And just to make sure everybody knows what the original Prisoner’s Dilemma is, let’s re-state it with this particular example in mind:

You and Steve are in the smartphone market, initially on perfectly equal positions, and are competing in “business rounds” that would normally have four possible outcomes. Every business round, corresponding to a new product launch, there’s a possibility that:

1. You and Steve both compromise on quality for the next generation of smartphones. You launch similarly spec’d phones – neither is particularly good, but you might trick a couple of people into buying them. Sales are not great, but it’s enough for both companies to keep going.
2. You compromise on phone quality, but Steve doesn’t. Uh-oh. Steve’s phones fly off the shelf, while your company gets buried. Investors are seething, and demand someone’s head (just between you and me, it’s most likely yours.) Steve knows how you feel. But hey, now he’s being hailed as a genius. Kudos, Steve!
3. Steve compromises, but you don’t. We might never know what made Steve accept compromise. However, for you life is good: company stocks are soaring, and you can finally afford to drive the Lambo on your bucket list. Steve wouldn’t feel sorry if he were you, either.
4. Neither you nor Steve compromise. Competition is tough and fanboys start taking sides. Sales are great, and the only way you’d have made more money is if Steve had compromised. Darn. You’ll get Steve eventually. Next round. Maybe.

As you can see, there are different payoffs for every outcome. The best scenario is if you put a great product on the market, while your competition somehow manages to botch it up.

But since we said from the beginning that Steve is an overachiever who’d rather drive everybody else insane than compromise on quality, design, or schedule, the Business Prisoner’s Dilemma is reduced to a subset of the original problem. Let’s try to summarize what we know:

Even in the absence of the vital piece of information that Steve (just like his friend Jon) doesn’t bend the knee (and I’m talking about Jony Ive here, of course), there are only two possible outcomes when you compromise:

1. You get lucky, and your competition does a poor job as well (resulting in everyone being average);
2. You fall behind.

Neither of those are truly good for you. But add to the mix the information that Steve never compromises, and prepare for a very Blackberry-like fate.

The optimal business strategy, no matter what you do: strive for excellence

You could be competing in any domain. But one choice in particular will help you stay ahead no matter the circumstances: never accept compromise. And if you’re ever forced to do, then be prepared for trouble later on.

Think about this: Would you base your product strategy for the next launch around your competition making a mistake? Hopefully not, especially if you’re competing against a Steve-like opponent.

At this point, you might be saying “Well, everybody’s forced to meet deadlines, have budget constraints, and are basically forced to compromise from time to time.” It’s true. There will be rounds where your competition has a slow year and not a very good output. But instead of relying on something inherent and unpredictable, what you should be doing is pushing yourself to excel every time.

What happens if you don’t?

You might find yourself in a particular situation, common to mature markets, where competition becomes stale and some players start to relax: the accumulation of compromises.

When this happens, even established players that seem to be doing an OK job will slowly start falling behind, with no immediate explanation. Top management starts to panic, and chaos ensues. Few companies recover from this. For some, the silver lining is being sold to other companies.

Perhaps the best example of that is Yahoo!, sold to Verizon for $4.8 billion in what was rightfully called “the saddest deal in tech history“. That might not sound too bad to everyone (it is). But know this: at one point in its history, Yahoo! was worth $125 billion, and had previously refused a $45 billion offer from Microsoft.

The bigger picture is harder to see: previous concessions on budgets, engineering or business decisions, and hiring anything other than top talent have a snowball effect. You could say that poor decisions only become critical when you’ve made enough of them.

Therefore, no matter how big or small your company (or your role in your current company) is, I want you to think about The Business Prisoner’s Dilemma right now. Take a moment, and make a list of what you’ve compromised on recently. Then, think about how it could affect you in the future.

Is it worth the risk?

BONUS IDEA #1: The accumulation of compromises also applies to some of your personal choices. Think vices. How many “rounds” ago should you have given up your bad habits? Think toxic friendships. How many years ago should you have given up bad influence?

BONUS IDEA #2: Whereas Steve was an unreliable opponent in the twist to the Prisoner’s Dilemma above, there will be people in your life who you’re better off playing co-op with. Because they’re not like Steve. And because sometimes it’s better to get rich and enjoy life together than to constantly compete against the Steves next door.

The post The Secret Behind Launching Successful Products appeared first on Sebastian Ungureanu.

“You never had a camera inside my head.”

– Truman Burbank

It’s been 20 years since Truman Burbank escaped the simulated reality set that made him a star for millions of television viewers. In the 1998 satire, Jim Carrey portrays a man who discovers his life is a set-up, and wakes up to the fact that his improbable, ideal world is a carefully crafted construct from which privacy has been banished. A couple of decades later – and I’m not talking about fiction anymore – anyone can become the star of their very own Truman Show. All it takes is an Internet connection.

***

The cutting-edge technologies on the verge of mass adoption – augmented (AR) and virtual (VR) reality – are driving the final nail in the coffin of privacy as we know it. Remember when President Trump signed that bill repealing Internet privacy rules? Well, your entire browsing history is now up for sale. If you thought that was bad enough, imagine your entire life digitally recorded and sold to the highest bidder.

We’ve also reached a point where voice assistants are no longer a cool feature, but rather a must-have for any smart home. Siri launched less than 7 years ago, and now we have Cortana, Alexa, and the Google Assistant. Samsung’s Bixby brought the game to a whole new level – the 2017 line featured a “use it or lose it” physical button for summoning Bixby, and the manufacturer has plans to bring the virtual assistant to a whole slew of smart devices.

The catch with voice assistants? They only work if you let them record everything.

Want to set a reminder for dinner at Dorsia? “OK Google“. Want to know where you can get the lowest price for the new Nike sneakers? Point a camera at them and let Bixby have a look. Watching South Park from your couch? Careful, it might trigger your Alexa.

***

All the tech companies driving these innovations swear by tight privacy rules and are publicly committed to preserving at least some degree of anonymity. But isn’t it worrisome that any single company could access almost every aspect of your life?

Many past and current Internet giants have faced data breaches: Yahoo, LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Sony to name just a few. The sad state of events: sooner or later, bad things happen. In a post-VR world, a data breach would include more than your username, password and credit card details. It would include everything. What you saw, what you did, what you heard and, as soon as we can control a computer with a direct neural link, what you thought at any particular point in time.

***

So is loss of privacy inherently a bad thing? Ironically enough, I don’t think that’s for us to decide. It’s the generation that’s growing without intimacy that will eventually have to answer that question. Generation Z, the “linksters”, the three year-olds born with an iPad in their hands, the young hip people who use Snapchat Spectacles and browse UniLad daily. They’re going to grow up and realize how much of their life is already out there on the Internet. And they’re going to be mad about it – or not. But they need a chance to have their say.

***

There is one fundamental difference between The Truman Show and what future we’re likely to face. At the end of the movie, Truman crashes into a wall onto which the sky is painted. He walks up a flight of stairs. At the top, there’s a door that says “EXIT”. As he is about to walk out of the show, the director addresses him directly, trying to make Truman stay.

But he declines, and simply leaves. The studio ceases transmission.

Can you do that in our highly connected world? Give up social media, and your history is still on a server somewhere. Disconnect entirely, and you’re still featured in someone else’s online show. There’s no “EXIT”.

You’re gonna get a pop-up trying to make you stay, but even if you leave – you’re still right there.

And in Truman Burbank’s wise words:

“In case I don’t see ya, good afternoon, good evening, and good night.”

***

NOTE: This article has been originally published on Medium here in October 2017.

The post The Truman Show Will Not Be Televised appeared first on Sebastian Ungureanu.