Book Review: Mojo by Marschall Goldsmith

How to Get It, How to Keep it and How to Get it Back When You Lose it!

MOJO

by Marshall Goldsmith

Book Review by Hazel Jackson, CEO of biz-group

The term Mojo was popularized by Austin Powers as something humorous and risky but Marshall Goldsmith, crafts the concept into a compelling and fascinating read.

His operational definition is:

Mojo is that positive spirit towards what we are doing now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside.

It is that moment when we do something that’s purposeful, powerful and positive, and the rest of the world recognizes it.

Goldsmith explains that there are four vital ingredients in order for you to have Mojo, get it back if you lose it and keep it!

1) Identity. Who do you think you are?  Not what other people think of you, but how you perceive yourself.

2) Achievement. What have you done lately?  Things that would have meaning and impact. This ingredient is looked at in two elements- what we bring to the task and what the task gives to us.

3) Reputation. What do other people think you are?  What do others think you’ve done lately?  There is no subtlety about these questions, no hiding.  It is measured through a scoreboard from co-workers, customers, friends, family and sometimes even strangers, all who have the right to grade your performance.

4) Acceptance. Being realistic about what we can’t change in our lives. Sounds like the easiest of the four ingredients to control.  But proves to be one of the hardest.  Moving on from a challenge and letting go can be so tough it literally destroys your Mojo.

Goldsmith believes Mojo is the ultimate measure of success.  Professionals are working longer hours and feeling more pressure than ever before.  We are connected through new technology 24/7, which blurs the boundaries between professional and personal lives. The quest for meaning and happiness in our lives becomes more challenging and yet more important than ever.

The book provides case studies that talk through each of the four ingredients, a comprehensive toolkit with practical suggestions on how you can work on all four areas and it gives you a process to measure your current Mojo.  The writing style is easy to follow filled with practical examples and is a pleasure to read.

Some of the most interesting insights:

The Two Question Discipline:

Goldsmith suggests we should evaluate all of our activities through two lenses. Asking the following questions and rating the answers on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the highest).

a)    How much long-term benefit or meaning did I experience from this activity?

b)   How much short-term satisfaction or happiness did I experience in this activity?

We’re typically more alert to how we behave, perform and appear to others when we know someone is judging us.  The only difference in this experiment is that you are the one asking the questions and doing the evaluation. This approach will lead to a happier and more meaningful life.

Ingredient #1 Identity:

We need to find the sweet spot of how and what we think about ourselves. A lot of this section reminds me of, Shad Helmstetters book, ‘What we say when we talk to ourselves’.  It is fundamentally how we are programming in our minds, repeating the messages until they are believed and listening to others.

We need to focus on the positives, but also not cling to an image of ourselves in the past.  The key to Mojo is your created identity, the conscious choice of who you want to be.   But all factors play a role in how you perceive yourself now.

Individuals need to review the various components of your current identity.  They look at how you see yourself today and who you’d like to be in the future.  It is your choice to change the way you see yourself – it’s a matter of programming.

Ingredient #2 Achievement: There are two elements

Professional Mojo – what we bring to the job.  If we have the motivation, ability or skill, understanding or knowledge, confidence and authenticity to excel we will be “winners” in terms of achieving goals.

Personal Mojo – is what the job brings to us. If we find happiness, meaning, reward, learning and gratitude in what we are doing – we will define ourselves as “winners”.

Both are connected to achievement, just two different types.  Sometimes we perform brilliant in work but it doesn’t elevate how we feel about ourselves.  Other times we do something wonderful for the world and no one else is impressed.  A mojo crisis can sometimes arise when there is a disconnect between the two criteria – when what others feel about our accomplishments is not in sync with what we feel about them ourselves.

What have you done lately? A powerful question that stops you in your tracks and is at the heart of ingredient #2.

Ingredient #3 Reputation

Goldsmith says “We often want to believe that we have character that is different than reputation.  We define our character as ‘who we really are’ and our reputation as ‘who other people think we really are.’ In situations where there assessment is different that our own, we generally define the assesments of others as wrong.  It takes courage to realize that, in some cases, other people’s views of us many be just as accurate – or even more so – that our view of ourselves”

He challenges readers through a really thought provoking question with regards to the power of reputation:

You are offered a Brain Pill.  If you swallow this pill, you will become 10 percent more intelligent that you currently are; you will be more adept at reading comprehension, logic and critical thinking.  However, to all the other people you know (and to all future people you meet), you will seem 20 percent less intelligent.  In other words, you will immediately become smarter but the rest of the world will perceive you as dumber (and there is no way you can ever alter this universality of that perception).

Do you take the pill?

You’ll have to read the book and see what Goldsmith says he will do!  Check out page 67. He also provides a Reputation Questionnaire for you to complete and assess what people think of you.

The key to reputation is that it doesn’t happen overnight.  One event can’t build your reputation, just like one corrective action can’t reform it.  You need consistency to build reputation or change it.

Ingredient #4 Acceptance

When can you let go?  The wonderful question “I’ll be happy when….”   Goldsmith challenges us to make the most of the situation in we are right now. Too much time is spent thinking about how everything would be better if.  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t set goals, but we should also enjoy the journey.

The book shares six Mojo killers that we come across in organizations.  My favorites are:

Over Committing – this is a stealth Mojo killer.  Always give work to a busy person, but too much makes people ultimately sloppy, dissatisfied with that they have produced and bashes our spirit.

Waiting for the Facts to change – very relevant for people who lost jobs or where industries have changed significantly.  Not doing anything to change your own skills or circumstances but relying solo on the external conditions to change.  The whole of chapter 10 covers ‘That Job is Gone’ about how the world is changing rapidly and how some professionals need to accept some jobs will never come back.

Looking for Logic in all the wrong places – Humans in fact are profoundly illogical.  Yet we devote many hours to trying to find logic in situations where no logic exists. Our minds need order and fairness and equity and justice.  But much of life is neither fair nor just.  That’s a problem for many of us – and a Mojo killer.

Mojo Toolkit

Finally he provides a full toolkit of approaches to impact each of the four ingredients.  An overarching choice you have to make is Change YOU or Change IT.  If you have lost your Mojo, these are the two areas you initially must focus on.  The rest of the Toolkit gives you guidance on how to then go about changing you or it.

A selection of my favorite tools:

• Finding out Where You’re Living: “where” is defined by how we balance short-term satisfaction and long-term benefit at work and home
• Be the Optimist in the Room: There is power in Going for it and not being afraid to look foolish
• Take Away One Thing: How would life look if you eliminated something big from your daily schedule?
• Reduce This Number: It’s the percentage of time we spend on boasting or criticizing – by ourselves and others
• Adopt a Metrics System: How personally created stats reveal what you need to know
• Influence up as well as down: turn important decision makers into your best customers

Overall this was a great read packed with practical ideas and intriguing questions.  I’d recommend it to any individual who is questioning if this is all life has to bring.  Any individual who is going through a change of job or career who feels out of their depth?  Or someone who is on a winning streak but is a bit concerned about keeping it up.

Finding and keeping your Mojo should be on everyone’s list of things to do!

A further breakdown of the operational definition:

Positive spirit is unambiguous.  It’s a feeling of optimism and satisfaction and it conveys both happiness and meaning.

Toward what we are doing focuses on the facts that we are dealing with as a opposed to state of mind or a situation.

For example:  When we are assessing our Mojo at work, we are not assessing the size of our office or the size of our pay check.  We’re assessing the various layers of engagement in the job we are doing.

Now’s meaning is obvious but important.  Finding happiness in the present

That Starts from the inside is the authors reminder that measuring Mojo is an exercise in self-assessment and that there are no wrong or right answers.

And radiates to the outside is the cause and effect dynamic between what we feel inside and how much of it we show, and how it is perceived by others.

coach Clark Kent