Theory of Incremental Advantage

Focus Produces Results

The most successful people have the ability to bring a laser-like focus to the mission at hand. Ultra-high achievers are immune to distractions. For instance, Albert Einstein would work out the highly complex mathematical equations involved in his theories while holding his baby, Eduard, in one arm and monitoring his toddler, Hans Albert, who would play at his feet.

When Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play professional baseball he was subjected to a constant stream of vile, racial epithets, beanballs, pikes and hard outs, black cats tossed onto the field, and every conceivable insult and injury. He received death threats. He was hit by more pitched balls in his first season than some players were in their entire careers. When playing first base, he was intentionally spiked in the leg by runners who were out by a mile. He kept his promise to Branch Rickey, co-owner of the Dodgers, never to respond to these humiliations. Despite all of the distractions that were leveled against him, Jackie Robinson was able to maintain focus. In a game where pitches are fired at batters at over eighty miles an hour, a blink of the eye can cost a batter a strike. The difference between a hit and an out is measured fractions of seconds and centimeters. In his debut game with the Montreal Royals, the Triple-A affiliate of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Jackie Robinson hit safely four times, including a three-run homer, scored twice, and stole two bases. A year later when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers, he hit .297 for the season, including twelve home runs and forty-two successful bunts, and helped the Dodgers win another pennant. The Sporting News named Jackie Robinson their first ever rookie of the year. Two years later, he was voted league MVP. He played ten seasons for the Dodgers and helped them win six pennants and their only World Series.

Focus on What You Do Best

One's brain is wired to excel in different pursuits and the synapses in one's brain are fused as a result of repeated activity. The more frequently you practice karate moves, lay-up shots in basketball, neurosurgery, completing tax returns, and creating advertising campaigns, the more effectively your brain will function because the synapses will be better calibrated. Therefore, one can leverage and further refine the activities that he does best by focusing on those same activities.

When Albert Einstein died in 1955, his brain was removed, measured and preserved. In 1999, three scientists from McMaster University in Canada compared Einstein's brain to the university's collection of "normal brains" donated for research. Einstein's brain had unique attributes not seen in any of those in the McMaster collection "nor in any specimen documented in the published collections of post-mortem brains," the professors wrote in the British medical journal The Lancet. The variations in the brains' geometry and cabling can have real consequences for thinking, feeling and behavior.

Questions to Ask Yourself Periodically

Here are a few great questions that came from Mavericks at Work that all managers should ask themselves from time to time:

• If you do things the way everybody else does them, why do you think you are going to do any better?
• If a particular line of your business were to disappear, would it be sorely missed in the marketplace? If not, can you identify one good reason why your company is not at risk of disappearing?

Validate Your Vision with Numerical Scrutiny

You should subject your passions to some, at least informal, numerical scrutiny. Thinking about numbers tends to slow down some of the least rational parts of our brains. It forces us to look at the matter from a less emotional perspective.

The Brain is the Engine of Imagination

The most successful people do not regard their brains as receptacles of trivia. It is more important to know how to get information that to retain every piece of information. Research suggests that the more information the brain retains, the slower it will function, similar to a computer. When memory is flooded with details it becomes difficult for such people to get the gist of a story. Indeed, mega-savant, Kim Peek, whose life the Academy Award film Rain Man was based on, doesn't understand expressions such as "get a hold of yourself." When such terms are directed towards him, Kim Peek begins grabbing himself.

When Henry Ford sued the Chicago Tribune for defamation, the tribune tried to prove that Mr. Ford was an ignoramus by asking him questions such as “When did America win its independence?” and “Who was Benedict Arnold?” Henry Ford responded by saying, “I don’t need to know the answers to these questions. I have a row of buttons hanging over my desk. I can press a button and one of 50 men will be summoned to my office who can tell more everything I need to know about any subject that you ask me.”

As Plutarch said, “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” Albert Einstein concurred when he said that imagination is more important than knowledge. The most successful people focus their mental energies on devising plans to actualize their imaginations.

American education is not all bad. It inspires. The important thing is not knowing how many grains of sand exist on a beach, nor even coming up with a mathematical formula to estimate the number of grains of sand. True genius is seeing the world in a grain of sand (silicon wafers are the bedrock of semiconductor production.)

President Carter Had Too Many Legislative Initiatives

Howard Baker said that Jimmy Carter had never been able to prioritize his legislative goals. He sent up dozens of initiatives and lost his focus.

The Best Managers Have a Near-Term Focus

Top performing CEOs are focused on executing near-term plans, not on pursuing grandiose visions. Even chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov is reported to have said that he thinks only four or five moves ahead. Some of the reasons that long-term planning is counterproductive are:

• Resources may be allocated for functions that may never be needed. A good rule is “create scarcity and develop systematically.”

• Management focuses on the distant future and loses touch with the day-to-day needs of the business.

• Managers begin thinking about how they will cash out when their long-term plans are realized and thus lose touch with operating the business.

• Employees lose confidence when they do not see their companies making incremental progress.

• Investors lose confidence when the company deviates from its long-term plan.

Another disadvantage of excessively long-term planning is that companies become less nimble in anticipating and responding to market conditions.