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A handy business skill is knowing when you’re talking to someone – they’re always a CEO or similar – who brings epic certainty of the correct path forward in any situation, and it’s this:

You thought the CEO job was to analyse the torrents of advice from different sources, filter out the self-interest and politics from the genuine benefit, then bring down a balanced, considered decision like a judge. It’s nice when managers do that, particularly when they earn seventeen times as much you.

Some of them are just constantly under the spell of the last person they spoke to, as if they just bumped into Warren Buffett in the café. Rather than some random department head with something shiny to dangle in front of them.

“The reason I’ve called this meeting is that I had a breakthrough idea this morning, and I’d like to share it with you. It’s called Seven Sigma Excellence, and it’s a game-changer.”

And all your plans are diverted to chase some all-consuming whim that may be replaced by another in six months.

Why Do They Do That?

Sometimes it’s short attention span, sometimes it’s praise addiction, often it’s just basic egotism. Egotism is not always bad, it gets stuff done and helps bust through the common corporate preference to do nothing when sometimes apocalyptic change is the answer.

That egotism creates the belief that only they can see the truth, because they have special x-ray perception powers. And as they spend 80 hours a week surrounded by minions and yes-people, they don’t get out much. So every interaction with a non-employee becomes a valuable market insight.

They’re pretty pleased with themselves for doing some on-the-streets research by having a conversation with the peasantry. Or more likely, a conversation with someone exactly like them at the golf club or school fundraising dinner.

And oh they would like you to know it.

“Most bosses are locked in their ivory towers but not me. I was only talking to someone on the weekend, and they told me all the kids order their food from their telephone, that’s a trend we need to be on board with. Let’s investigate delivering our tax accounting services on demand, accountants on electric bikes. I need a feasibility study done.”

The Meeting Manipulation Shuffle

It makes them easy to manipulate because after a while everyone knows the game.

You plan to drop in your information late in the process. Say you’re in operations, and you have a vital proposal that needs funding. You check with the CEO’s assistant and you’re the first meeting, before IT, HR and marketing. Your plans are doomed.

So you call in sick that day, bump your chat back to just before the board meeting, and pow! Your plans get a glowing endorsement because the Goldfish-In-Chief has straight-up forgotten whatever benefits the other proposals offer.

You have to be on the alert for others using this technique against you. I’ll just pull out one example of mine from my employment years:

Me:      I think we should fire this departmental head, their numbers have been terrible for two years despite repeated counseling, now they have fallen embarrassingly in unrequited love with one of their direct reports, and now they just sit in their office moping like a teenager

CEO:    Good idea they are an irredeemable case

Me:      *fires dept head*

Fire-ee: *Calls CEO and puts in a pitch*

3 minutes later:

CEO:    I think you may have acted rashly on this one, let’s give them one more chance

Hot Trends, Sample Size = 1

There’s no leverage like getting a client to extrapolate a single experience into a trend.

Say you have a warehouse full of un-sellable mum and dad jeans. What do you do? Brainwave: cut off the legs and create a new brand of jorts, with a view to giving them youth appeal like the weird rise of normcore a few years back. You look for distribution through a national retailer, but you can’t get an appointment with their buyers because … well, because jorts.

No problem, find out where the CEO lives, and pay half a dozen kids to ride up and down that street on the weekend wearing the product.

Monday morning:

“I’ve got some breakthrough thinking on the youth market, jorts are a real game-changer. We can’t afford to miss this boat.”

Jorts sorted. This stuff actually happens. It’s the executive version of Bachelor Of What I Reckon From The University of Life where people create entire marketing plans based on what their sister-in-law likes.

Is This The Sort Of Thing You Can Do With Donald Trump?

Do you even need to ask?

Sales Goldfishing

This syndrome is also an essential thing to understand in sales. You visit a prospect. If you’re starting a new business, it might be someone you have known for years. You have a productive meeting where they promise to, say, put you on their tender list.

That meeting is a vivid memory because it felt really good at the time. To you. Because that feeling was turbocharged by your vivid hopes and dreams of a big sales score. Every client smile or nod fires up the Optimism Lobe in your fevered brain, and you’re all ‘they loved it’.

To the client it was just a regular meeting, one of many that week, where their mind was more on that board report they need to finish by tomorrow.

Three months later they completely leave you off that list as if you never existed. Another supplier came in after you did.

We went through years of this when we were starting up. It’s just how it is. It’s like advertising frequency, you need a certain number of exposures before your existence becomes real to them. Boring advice I know, but there’s no alternative to just plugging away until they give you a shot, even if it takes years.

The good news is that some of those clients who goldfished us are now nice ongoing clients. It’s a long game. Keep circling that fish tank.

And if you’re a C-Suite goldfish, on the off chance you’ve read this far … hey, look over here!

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Don’t be a goldfish. Build up a terrifying level of strange yet useful business knowledge week by week here at Motivation For Sceptics. A new story each Tuesday. So subscribe! It’s free, with no obligation for you other than to share it on all your social channels, because that’s the kind of supporting reader you are. Bless you!

Don’t be a goldfish. Build up a terrifying level of strange yet useful business knowledge week by week here at Motivation For Sceptics. A new story each Tuesday. So subscribe! It’s free, with no obligation for you other than to share it on all your social channels, because that’s the kind of supporting reader you are. Bless you!

Don’t be a goldfish. Build up a terrifying level of strange yet useful business knowledge week by week here at Motivation For Sceptics. A new story each Tuesday. So subscribe! It’s free, with no obligation for you other than to share it on all your social channels, because that’s the kind of supporting reader you are. Bless you!

Did I say that before? Don’t be a goldfish.