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Alan C. FoxAuthor. Entrepreneur. Game-changer.
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Patterns Persist Because We Are Creatures of Habit

by Alan C. Fox 2 Comments

 

Whenever I visit a buffet restaurant I eat more than I had intended. This was true when I was twelve years old. It remains true today, and I’m now seventy-four.

Patterns persist.

When I hired Karen five years ago to be my assistant her references were outstanding. She was extremely personable at her interview and earned a very high score on our thirty-question logic test. There was only one item on her resume which concerned me.

“Karen, you’ve held a number of previous positions, but you have never stayed at any job for more than eighteen months. If I hire you, why should I believe that you will stay with me for more than a year and a half?”

The more things change, the more they remain the same.
—Alphonse Karr, Les Guépes

I don’t recall Karen’s answer but I did hire her, ignoring my own conviction that patterns persist. Did she stay with me for even a year and a half? Nope. After five months her ideal job came along and it was “adios” for Karen.

Patterns Persist. Persistent patterns persist persistently.

In 1991 my wife and I traveled to Hawaii to see a total eclipse of the sun. We stayed for a week at what was then the Hyatt hotel on the Kona coast. We found that the entire staff, from reception desk to bus boy, was extremely friendly and helpful. That same pattern has persisted in every Hyatt hotel we have stayed at since. Yes, patterns persist for organizations as well as individuals. A Big Mac tastes the same in San Diego or St. Louis or even Moscow.  That is why we trust (or dislike) MacDonald’s.

When you try a restaurant for the first time and are met with poor service and mediocre food, do you go back? I don’t. I assume that the pattern will persist, and I’m almost always right in this assumption.

Nothing is stronger than habit.
—Ovid, Ars Amatoria

A friend of mine, Steve, badgered me for years to invest money with him to speculate in Treasury bill futures. He was convinced he could triple my investment.  Of course, he needed my stake because he had previously lost all of his own money doing exactly the same thing. I agreed to open an account for $30,000 and split the profit or loss with Steve. It was a rousing ride, but in less than three months he lost half of my original capital. I grabbed back the $15,000 that remained, and haven’t touched the commodities market since.

What are the lessons here?

1. Recognize your own patterns and expect them to persist. If you like the pattern, embrace it. If you dislike the consequences of the pattern either avoid the area entirely (I will never speculate in the commodities market again), work around it (eat in a restaurant which has no buffet), or intentionally try to change it (use a different approach, or People Tool, than you have in the past).

2. Recognize the patterns of behavior in others. Expect those patterns to persist. On your 25th wedding anniversary your husband will probably still refuse to ask for directions when you get lost. Ask my wife.

3. Recognize the patterns of an institution or marketplace. Expect those patterns to persist. If you are interviewing for a job with a company which experiences high employee turnover, don’t expect to be with them    for very long.

Patterns Persist. Persistent patterns persist persistently.  Believe it.  Or, if you don’t believe it, you might be continuing a pattern which will continue to return the favor and disappoint you yet again.

Alan

 

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Always Leave Them Wanting More

by Alan C. Fox 2 Comments

 

When I was twelve years old my mother took me and my younger brother to Hawaii to meet my father who had been traveling in Asia with the Xavier Cugat band. We stayed for one week at a small motel in Waikiki.  By now a fifty-story hotel has undoubtedly risen from that same small plot of land.

While in Honolulu we toured the Dole pineapple plantation where I was treated to what felt like Christmas in April.  Sweet, delicious pineapple. The sight of it. The scent of it. The taste of it in unlimited quantities. And it was all free.

There were fountains from which no water flowed, just pineapple juice. Not from a can that cost eighteen cents, but from a pineapple juice fountain!  Free. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a fat, ravenous young boy who didn’t have nearly enough money to pay for everything he wanted. I ate pineapple. I drank pineapple. I bathed in the pineapple juice which covered my face, neck, and sticky hands.

You can probably imagine what happened next. Thanks to my pineapple binge I couldn’t stand the sight or taste of that cloying tropical fruit for many years. Even the thought of pineapple juice chased my appetite to never-never land. At Dole I simply had too much.

Dole was generous.  Too generous.  They completely ignored the basic show business adage that you should always leave your audience wanting more. If you think they will sit still for twenty songs, sing fifteen. TED Talks are strictly limited to eighteen minutes, not an hour and a half.  If you’ve ever fallen asleep in class you know exactly why.

Ever since my pineapple splurge as a twelve-year-old, I’ve applied my Dole lesson in many ways. If I think I would enjoy two weeks of vacation, I plan nine days. I eat at my favorite restaurant less often than I think I might prefer.  I don’t turn on my TV set for every soccer game, though I have been taking in more than a few World Cup games from Brazil.

Let’s have lunch once a month, not twice.  When my children were young I bought them candy at the market, but not every time. Whenever I am tempted to overindulge I remember the Showbiz mantra.  Well, not every time.  Today I gobbled down two (small) hamburgers for lunch.  I won’t touch another hamburger for a week or two.

In the interest of your own future enjoyment, you might consider showbiz wisdom and leave yourself wanting more.  You might also leave others wanting more, including more of you.

Years ago I asked a Texan “How did you like our three hour dinner?”

“Waahl,” he drawled, “Ah feel like the monkey who made love to the skunk.”

He paused for dramatic effect. “Ah enjoyed about as much as Ah could stand.”

Enjoy yourself, and your life, in moderation.

Why do I aim to limit my blog entries to six hundred words?  To leave you wanting more, not less.  This one is five hundred fourteen words.

Alan

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I Always Want the Best for You

by Alan C. Fox 4 Comments

 

I always want the best for you, even if what you want for yourself may not ultimately be the best for me.

Ellie was one of the best secretaries I ever had. She was the only one who knew how to use our IBM MT/ST (Magnetic Tape/Selectric Typewriter) which was a very early version of an electronic word processor. Her successors never got the hang of it.  And neither did I. One Saturday morning I tried it out.  My project was to “self-address” twelve envelopes for the U.S. Post Office so they would return to me twelve stamped “first day covers” for the first moon landing on July 20, 1969.  I spent three hours addressing those twelve envelopes.  Many more than twelve envelopes ended up in the wastebasket.

Ellie told me that she wanted to be an attorney.  I encouraged her to go to law school, which she did. After becoming an attorney she worked in the office of my former law partner. Several years later she returned to my company as our general counsel.  Ellie is still an investor (she might very well be reading this blog at the same time that you are).

Another long-term employee, Jeanne, began working with me in 1969.  She was actually my second choice.  Thank goodness she was still available after I fired my first choice less than two weeks into the job (My record in hiring has since improved, but it will never be perfect).

Jeanne expressed interest in becoming an interior designer and I encouraged her to go into that field.  After several years of study she obtained the appropriate credential, and eventually opened her own successful practice.  After fifteen years in business for herself, possibly tired of swimming upstream as an entrepreneur must, she returned to work with me

I could share many other examples, but my point is this:  I always want the best for you, even if what you want for yourself may not ultimately be the best for me.

I encouraged my six children, when they were young teenagers, to gain business experience by working in my office.  Imagine the shock of a caller who heard an adolescent male voice answering, “Good morning.  ACF Property Management.  To whom may I address your call?” That was my son Steven, who today is a professor at the U.S.C. School of Medicine.  My other children are a tenured professor at U.C.L.A., a trial attorney in Palo Alto, a yoga teacher (with an MBA) in Boulder, Colorado, the assistant executive director of a mindfulness center, and a linguist, soon to enroll in a San Diego acupuncture school.  I have encouraged each of them to find their own niche in life, and I believe they have.

I also want to help you attain the best life for yourself – and here are several reasons why:

  1. I am thrilled when I believe that I have helped someone I care for discover a better life.
  2. When you are happy, I am happy.  Our relationship, for as long as it may last, will be more fulfilling for both of us.
  3. It’s the right thing to do.  I refer potential clients to another investment company when I feel that would be a better “fit” for their needs.
  4. I like to “pay it forward.”

I am grateful to my parents and to so many teachers, employers, and friends along the way who have encouraged me to find my own niche.  Thankfully, today my niche is writing, a role I thoroughly enjoy.  I truly hope that you have all the encouragement and support you need to pursue whatever it is in life that will leave you as happy as you can possibly be.

Alan

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