Why the Majority Is Always Wrong

Earl Nightingale once said, “If in you’re in a situation and you don’t have any clear way forward and want for clear advice, look around and see what everyone else is doing and do the opposite”.

Earl Nightingale was the dog’s.

I still find it staggering people genuinely seem to believe they’ll get different results if they continue in existing behaviour or copy the behaviour of others.

However, even given the two statements above, don’t make the mistake of thinking you can’t learn from others. I guess this shouldn’t need saying, although not to do so violates one of the fundamental principles of marketing, that you should keep repeating your message and not assume people have “got” it.

So, while you should indeed be wary of mimicking or modelling others’ behaviour willy-nilly, it is a very powerful strategy to model the behaviour of people who are already successful (although there is also a big danger here, too).

And this, of course, at the root of the awesome power of Association. The old adage, “birds of a feather flock together” has real meaning. One of the big benefits of Business Supremacy Inner Circle (http://www.businesssupremacy.ie) is the interaction with me and the other Members on the Discussion Group.

As Charter Member Mark Davisdon put it to me yesterday:

“Mate, just want to drop you a quick note.

The guys you have as subscribers are first class. As you would have seen I have been swamped with responses and people offering thoughts etc.

Good job putting this group together.

Thanks Jon. Make sure you keep the fuckwit filter on so that it stays first class

Mark”

Much as you might like to think it’s not the case, you will begin to absorb the behaviours of the people you spend your time with.

When people who screw up use the excuse about how they “got into a bad crowd”, there is a lot of truth in it. This does not, however, excuse them from suffering the consequences of their behaviour.

See, here’s another thing: optimistic, upbeat people will tend to motivate pessimistic, downbeat ones, and vice versa.

This is actually even more damaging and destructive than it sounds.

And here’s why…

There are more pessimistic, downbeat people than there are optimistic and upbeat ones. You’re almost always going to be outnumbered.

Even if you’re not, the best you can hope for is a cancelling out, where neither of you amounts to very much.

Because it’s easier to be negative than positive (because inaction is less effort than action and passivity less cerebral than activity), as the optimistic upbeat one, you’re having to work harder to stake your claim.

Just think back to your own experiences and remember how many times one miserable, unhappy git has brought gloom to an entire group of hitherto happy people.

The upshot of all this leads me to make two points:

First, don’t model people unthinkingly; and secondly, do model successful people.

I’ve been privileged over the years to work with several clients whose example to me in terms of behaviour was worth more to me than any fee I could possibly ever asked of them.

Corollary: never, ever disconnect your critical thinking from reality. This is how people get sucked into cults and other dumb schemes and behaviours.

P.S. The Business Supremacy Newsletter is at the printers. I’ve got 10 spares being run up, and they’ll go pretty quickly. So to join me and the other non-fuckwits in the group, you know what to do: http://www.businesssupremacy.ie

Tagged as: entrepreneurship, irish business, positioning, small business marketing