Todd Sattersten wrote an interesting e-book called Fixed to Flexible. In it he makes this observation he calles the Maney Continuum. As you read the quote below, don’t necessarily think “this is dry business stuff” but ask yourself where on the continuum you find your business, job, ministry, even what you offer your family.

Technology writer Kevin Maney makes a keen observation: He says successful companies always make a strategic choice between providing convenience and fidelity.

Wal-Mart delivers convenience. The big box retailer makes it easy to buy from them through their “everyday low prices”, focused product lines, and near ubiquitous presence.

Harvard University delivers fidelity. The “product” is really an experience. The Ivy League school possesses an aura of exclusivity and prestige. Being a Harvard graduate forms part of the customer’s identity.

Maney is clear though. Companies must make a choice. The dual pursuit of convenience and fidelity causes companies to chase a value mirage and over time these companies are sucked into a place of increasing irrelevance where customers understand less and less why they need those products. Marketing expert John Moore believes this is what has happened to Starbucks as the company has moved away from their fidelity based roots but not fully embraced being a provider of convenience.

If this sounds familiar, convenience versus fidelity is just another way of describing transactional versus relationship-driven businesses.

Are you offering something for everyone at the lowest transactional cost (in the family situation: are you just doing what is convenient), or such a high quality that it may cost time, sacrifice, and deep relationships? There may be room for something in the middle, but the middle should push towards either end.

The authors, founders of 37signals, provide a lot of advice that goes against the grain – which is wonderful. The grain left me rather itchy most of the time anyway. Get the book, it needs to be sitting on your desk or somewhere easily accessible. Here are some of my favorite blurbs (for more, just get the book):

• More people should be learning from their success instead of their mistakes
• Plans = Guesses
• The message > tools
• A one hour meeting with 10 people = 15 hours of lost productivity
• What are you against?
• Say no by default
• Let your customers outgrow you
• Test-drive employees
• Nobody likes plastic flowers
• Everyone should be on the frontlines
• Don’t scar on the first cut (policies are the scar)

My favorites of the favorites:

• Inspiration is perishable
• Build an audience by teaching (not selling)
• Focus on what won’t change

It really doesn’t matter, because you are going to focus on the bad news anyway.

Over and over, psychologists find that the human mind reacts to bad things more quickly, strongly, and persistently than to equivalent good things. (Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis, 29)

That is the negativity bias at work. But just because it is more natural to jump to the negative thoughts and emotions, doesn’t mean that is what you should do.

When you don’t hear back from someone as quickly as you expected, do you think negative thoughts or do you give them the benefit of the doubt? Are you more focused on not failing than you are on risking and trying to grow? Are you right now trying to justify any of your negative behaviors rather than taking the hard step of facing them?

In the book The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, the author Tony Schwartz talks about the incredible value of appreciation.

In one study, researchers found that giving a small gift of candy to medical residents improved the speed and accuracy of their diagnoses. Another study found that a 10 percent increase in something called “motivating language” from leaders boosted worker satisfaction by 10 percent and performance by 2 percent. The neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor came to believe that positive encouragement lay at the heart of her recovery from a stroke that nearly killed her. “I needed those around me to be encouraging,” she wrote. “I needed to know that I still had value. I needed to have dreams to work toward. I needed people to celebrate the triumphs I made every day because my successes, no matter how small, inspired me.” Every leader would do well to heed Taylor’s prescription. (167)

You could change someone’s day by something as simple as a handwritten note. You could have a life-changing habit if you set aside one hour a week to write notes.

What was fascinating was that it wasn’t an all-day, consuming activity. It was intense practice without interruption. And that kind of focused practice is draining, which means 90 minutes was the longest length of practice time and 4 hours was the limit for the day. After that level of activity, deep recovery was needed and the second most important activity was often a part of that – sleep. The masters took more naps and got better rest at night so that they were at their best during their work time.

Their 4 hours of hard practice was the equivalent of what many do with their 8-10 hour workday (long periods of unfocused, multitasking activity). Add to that the fact that many people do not get the rest they need at night, and start their day already unfocused and have a hard time catching up.

Because the number of hours we work is easy to measure, organizations often default to evaluating employees by the hours they put in at their desks, rather than by the focus they bring to their work or the value they produce. (7)

What if you decided that you weren’t just going to punch a clock and settle for mediocrity, whether it is with work, your family, or a hobby, but you would give that time your best and most focused effort? It may be exhausting, but the energy you gain from bringing something of value will more than make up for it. You might even sleep better at night.

It led us to this thought: on this special day in which we celebrate the life of this boy who is growing up to be a young man that contributes to society, we make it a party that completely revolves around him and getting more.

It reminded us of a friend in Abilene, TX, who does birthdays differently for her boys. For their special day, they pick a cause or a charity. The kids who attend bring gifts for that cause, and her boys get to take those gifts, which will be used to serve others, to the charity. On their special day, they receive the gift of serving others, something that they can treasure and use for a lifetime.

I rebelled at the time against the idea. I wanted my kids to get new stuff. And if I look deep enough, it’s because I believed that getting was more valuable than giving. And it being a special day makes the life lesson that more memorable. What do I do on special days? I want more stuff.

It doesn’t have to be all about the serve – the day should be a fun one for my kids where they get some of the attention. I’m certain that we can re-find our imagination to make it a celebration for everyone.

My birthday is next. I’m going to try and throw a party that shows how much I have been given over my years by giving back.

I heard this first from Radiolab’s “Obama Effect, Perhaps” based on this article (with the caveat that the study has not gone through formal peer review). The study showed that African American’s average grades on a standardized test improved as Obama’s prominence rose. In a different study, if African-Americans were told that they were solving a “puzzle” instead of taking a “test,” their scores rose. Radiolab also discusses a test in which women with the exact same math credentials as men did worse on a difficult test – until they were told that this particular test showed no difference between men and women.

The most fascinating study to me was a putting test. When participants were told it was an intellectual test about problem solving, the white participants scored higher. When the scientists told a new group that it was a measure of athletic skill, the African-American participants did better.

The studies seem to show that there is a large impact on societal perceptions – whether you believe them or not. You don’t have to even buy into the stereotype, it just has to have the chatter happening in your brain to keep you from full concentration.

“The real subtle power of a stereotype isn’t that it prevents you from the thing you want to do, it distracts you for just a beat from the thing you want to do. And that may be all the difference.” (Radio Lab’s Jad Abumrad)

What you are telling others, or what you are telling yourself, can improve how you perform and how you perceive the world. Believe it.

Postman’s main beef isn’t with mindless TV shows, which can be found endlessly. It’s with the programs that try to be thoughtful, such as the news and religious programming, but are ultimately about entertainment because of the form of the medium. TV programs are trying to spread a simplistic message to the widest audience possible, and must do so with pictures that are meant to stimulate emotions rather than your intellect within a few minutes.

In the age of the printing press, your dialogue and words were permanent when written down; thus you had to be thoughtful about what you were writing because it could be examined at length and rebutted. It was a world that respected rational and abstract thinking. Now we have political debates that last at most for an hour with 5 minutes each to explain complicated policies – or, as Postman laments, politicians trying to pose and pass along one-liners that really have little to no meaning. We vote based on 30 second ads condemning opponents. And then we have opinionated chats over the water cooler about events and activities far from us with very little knowledge of what is actually involved.

Because it’s the entertainment factor that matters, not any actual content. If you’re not sure about that, ask yourself the next time you watch any TV program: What information did that provide that leads me to meaningful action?

The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether. (87)

His best example is the use of the phrase “Now…this”. We are going to show you something startling about society for the next two minutes on a very superficial level, but before you think too long about it or start to form some real questions about the context of the situation, we are moving on. Don’t take that last segment too seriously.

There is no murder so brutal, no earthquake so devastating, no political blunder so costly – for that matter, no ball score so tantalizing or weather report so threatening – that it cannot be erased from our minds by a newscaster saying, “Now…this.” (99)

And guess which media form is winning? The one that has no relevance to our daily decisions. By the time the average person turns 65 years old, he or she will have watched TV for 12 years of  life. What else could you have done during that 12 year span?

I enjoyed the book because it was thought provoking, but I wish it wasn’t framed so much as a lament. The world is not going back to the days when the book press reigned. And while I appreciated his viewpoint on the necessary entertainment format for religion on TV, it was tainted with his seeming disdain for entertainment in religion at all, or that spaces where religion should be taken seriously must be “decontaminated.”

Do you care that society seems to be drifting subtly towards passivity? If not, you might want to check your TV habits to see if you’re not entertaining yourself to death.

We don’t like to go through those phases in our lives in which some belief that we held falls apart before us, creating a struggle to make sense of the world. But sometimes we need them, because just hearing something doesn’t mean much unless we somehow experience it for ourselves.

Social psychologist Leon Festinger coined the term cognitive dissonance to describe this affect when two different ideas or perceptions of realities pound into each other, causing quakes in our lives.

Rob Walker, in his book Buying In, talks about cognitive dissonance leading to:

inventing, on a nonconscious level, a rationale for behavior that justified it despite clearly contradictory evidence – much the same way a smoker who knows cigarettes are dangerous invents rationales for having another one just the same. Elliot Aronson, another social psychologist, built on Festinger’s work in arguing that we regularly adjust our beliefs to make sense of the facts in a way that allows us to tell ourselves, “I am nice and in control.” (38)

That’s what it really boils down to: the illusion that you are in control. Maybe when we realize how little we really do control, we will be more open to learning and listening, and a little less dissonance.