Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The Newsletter shares the source code, through quick snapshots, for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done.
Why “Love” Is the Key to Career Success: Marcus Buckingham
Surely, this book can make you think and reflect on how you feel about your work. Marcus Buckingham writes that you don’t have to love all that you do, but if you have no love for any of your work, then you won’t be creative, innovative, or resilient.
Marcus puts out some ideas which will make you think. Here are a few that are interesting:
Doing something you don’t have any love for, but just for a paycheck, can damage you as a person.
When you are doing something that you love, the chemical cocktail in your brain, the anandamide, the vasopressin, the norepinephrine, the dopamine, that chemical cocktail looks almost exactly like when you’re in love with someone!
The opportunity to open your mind to broaden, build, and grow will only happen when you’re doing something you love.
If you’ve got 20% of your activities in a day that are things that you love, you are far less likely to burn out, far less likely to attrite, and far less likely to have all those negative outcomes of lost workdays and so forth.
The Unmarketing Code for Meaningful Brands
Thomas Kolster is the Founder and Creative Director of Goodvertising Agency. Thomas is one of the pioneers in turning environmental, societal and health risks into market opportunities where growing the bottom line goes hand in hand with creating better communities and a better planet. He has advised numerous Fortune 500 companies, Startups, Government Agencies, and NGOs.
In this conversation, he talks about how Monolithic Brands need to get ready for a change, why brands should care more about “Me” and do more “Unmass” Marketing, how to apply the LEGO brick idea to a Mobile Phone, need to put the Marketing Mix in the hands of the Consumer, why a change in leadership style is necessary for the Unmarketing philosophy.
Listen to the full episode on:
The Anti-CEO Playbook
Hamdi Ulukaya is the owner, founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Chobani, the #1-selling strained yoghurt brand in the US.
In this TED Talk, Hamdi Ulukaya talks about the importance of companies prioritising people over profits. He talks about the importance of nurturing local communities and improving their lives.
As a CEO, Hamidi talks about his philosophy and beliefs. He says that spreadsheets are lazy, they rarely tell anything about people or communities. But, he says, unfortunately, this is how too many business decisions are taken today. He says many companies and their CEOs primarily work for Money, Shareholders and Profits. It makes no sense.
He emphatically says the old playbook CEOs and companies have used for the last 40 years is broken. He says more and more businesses need anti-CEOs and outlines what an anti-CEO playbook should look like.
Why work is not working for many.
It is widely reported that many companies are going through a resignation tsunami. A Forbes article indicated that 41% of the workforce is considering leaving their employer this year in the US. The story is not different back in India, as MINT reported the Great Resignation story in IT service firms. Imagine in a company like Infosys, in 4 years, the entire workforce may be new as they have a 25% attrition rate! In contrast, a company like Zoho has the lowest attrition rate of less than 2%! There is a thread to think about this in this interesting article on Convention vs Zoho Conviction.
This made us think as we read Marcus Buckingham's book on Love+Work. No more companies can ‘buy’ people to fill roles. The reverse is also true - people cannot ‘sell themselves’ to a role, as they will be famished when they don’t enjoy or love doing that job. Take the case of a doctors, they have punishing work schedules, but their love for the profession is key to them being energised every day. Similarly, architects are overworked when they design projects, but the root is their love for their work which keeps them going every day. So, is the case with Lawyers or Chartered Accountants.
Maybe most companies today still apply age-old manufacturing principles in an increasing knowledge or service economy transition. The business efficiency model that Fredrick Taylor perfected with the time-motion study principle treats everybody as a worker whose efficiency is always the focus.
Most of the professions we spoke about, where love for the work comes first, don’t pay even the best professionals top dollars when they start their careers. It is a gradual personal growth that is painstakingly difficult for them. They look for challenges that have not been solved before - it could be a new surgery, new litigation case, new financial restructuring or a building design. It’s time for employees to ask companies for job challenges rather than more perks. And also for companies to redesign jobs and measure them against these new benchmarks.
It will be interesting for you to plot your work challenge- compensation curve over time across the companies you have worked for. It may be very rare that a job with the highest challenge paid you the best, but the ones that paid you the best did not have enough challenges as you had envisaged. If you have the clarity about the work you love the most, want to find a way to do it and are not swayed by early money offers - these may be better over the long term than the short term.
It’s time to think of a career like a craftsman waiting to chisel their way to being the best in what they do, rather than behaving like a shopkeeper vying for the highest paying employer. Love is a slow poison.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
Resilence, innovation and creativity at work starts with loving what you do at its root.
Unmass marketing is gaining momentum. How marketers and brands gear up for it will be critical to their success.
Putting people and communities before shareholders and profit is a part of Anti-CEO’s playbook.
Why work is not working for many starts with challenging fundamental beliefs about work, learning, looking at personal aspirations, and how currently institutions design job roles and compensate for your skills.