Last night I heard a television commentator say that the Republican nomination is going to come down to “who wants it more.”

I sincerely hope that this is not the case.

Republican or Democrat, I sincerely hope that we’re not going to choose our leaders on the basis of who wants it more. I mean, really, would you make any other choice that way?

“Honey, where would you like to eat tonight?”

“Well, the Mexican place is always great. The Italian place is kind of grimy and the food’s not that good, but I think they want it more.”

“Italian it is, then!”

Or:

“Which one of these guys should we pick for the basketball team?”

“Well, the guy on the left is seven foot six, lightning fast, and can dunk the ball without leaving the ground. On the other hand, that little fellow next to him—the one who comes up to his waist—really, really wants it.”

“Welcome to the big leagues, little guy!”

Sounds kind of preposterous, doesn’t it? That’s because in the real world (which apparently excludes the world of politics) we reward performance, not wishes.

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Today we’re going to do a bit of reverse engineering to see just what it is that makes us tick. Ready? Here we go:

Our life—which includes our job, our relationships, our income, our health—is determined, to a large extent, by our actions.

Our actions are determined, to a large extent, by our beliefs.

Our beliefs are determined, to a large extent, by our thoughts (and vice versa). But what determines our thoughts?

Our thoughts are determined, to a large extent, by the questions we ask.

And most of us ask bad questions.

If any of this rings true for you, then it really comes down to one simple equation:

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Branch out.

That’s my mandate/order/request/challenge to you today. Branch out.

Let’s face it, most of us live our lives on autopilot. We get up at the same time every day, we eat the same things for breakfast, drive the same route to work, listen to the same radio stations, read the same books, talk to the same people. And the sad thing is that we seem fine with that.

Whatever happened to curiosity? Curiosity about the world, about other people, about other ideas. Whatever happened to the idea of being a well-rounded person? (Not just a round person—we all know that there’s a weight problem in America.) It’s been replaced by the new gold standard: specialization and expertise. We get really good at one thing and one thing only.

Don’t get me wrong—there’s nothing wrong with specialization and expertise. There is something wrong with specialization and expertise to the exclusion of all else!

I have what I think is a better model. It is, admittedly, an oversimplified model, but here it is:

Become a jack-of-all-trades and master of one.

That’s right—I said master of one. To achieve award-winning performance, you do have to have one area where you are an undeniable expert. You can have more than one, but you must have at least one. In many of my speaking engagements and private coaching conversations I challenge people to answer the following question:

What is it that you can do better than anyone else?

So that’s an important focus. But if that’s all you focus on, you’re missing the boat. When you branch out, you open yourself up to entire new worlds.

“So what?” you say, somewhat belligerently. “I like the world I’m in.”

Fair enough. So here are just three things you gain when you branch out and bring new information, new ideas, and new people into your life:

1. You start to see connections that the competition misses.

We all know how important creativity is in today’s ultra-competitive world. It’s a world where the next great idea wins, while the rest of us just play catch-up. But what is creativity, really? It’s nothing more than seeing connections that the others miss. And it’s hard to see creative connections through the myopia of specialization. Take your intellectual blinders off. Read outside of your area of expertise. Biographies are especially good (particularly biographies of people you think you have no interest in); so is great fiction. Once a month, have lunch with someone outside of your normal circle—and outside of your particular field. If you’re a businessperson, have lunch with a beekeeper. If you’re a retailer, have lunch with a history professor. If you’re a Republican, have lunch with a Democrat (and vice versa). Why? Because creativity is a game of connect-the-dots, and you never know where the next dot—the one that completes the picture—is going to come from.

2. You become a more interesting—and more successful—person.

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but people don’t want to talk about your interests. They want to talk about their interests. And to the degree that you can have a conversation with them about their interests, they will find you fascinating! Here’s my benchmark:

I like to know enough about everything that I can ask an expert an interesting question about their topic.

If you can do that, they’ll take care of the rest. I remember being at a party once where I found myself talking with a doctoral student in Russian history. I said to him, “I don’t know much about Russian history, but it seems to me that Czar Nicholas II was a great husband, but a very weak czar. What do you think?” That question comprised pretty much my entire knowledge of Russian history (I read a biography of Czar Nicholas II once, years before), but it was the catalyst for a wonderful half-hour conversation—a conversation during which I may have asked two or three follow up questions, but that’s it. The student did virtually all of the talking. Later on he said to me, “I’m so glad I ran into you; I was afraid this was going to be another one of those boring parties.”

Now, picture yourself in that same situation—except instead of a doctoral student, you’re talking the boss’s husband, or a potential big client. If you can find out what they’re interested in, and ask them an interesting question about that topic, you’ll be perceived as an interesting person in your own right—and one that they’ll want to keep an eye on. But you can’t do that if all you can talk about is your stamp collecting hobby.

3. You’ll enjoy life more.

It’s a rich world out there. I don’t mean just in financial terms, although that’s true as well. Our world is rich in art, in music, in history, in politics, philosophy, economics, science, and a multitude of other things. You are doing yourself a huge disservice if you choose to isolate yourself from 99.9% of what the world has to offer—and yet people do it all the time.

Have you ever had this experience? Somebody tells you—or maybe you read in the newspaper or a magazine—some little factoid, some little piece of trivia that makes you smile and think, “I didn’t know that!” For example, I just read that humans share 60% of their DNA with a banana (I think the percentage is higher for some of my friends and most members of Congress). That’s a fun little fact. And the world is full of them!

There are 7 billion people alive on the planet, and each one has at least one unique story that you don’t know. That woman that you just passed on the sidewalk? She might be the one with the missing piece to your puzzle.

Life is meant to be lived, and you can’t really live it from a hole in the ground. Come on up where the sun is shining. See what else there is to experience.

Branch out.

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I recently had the privilege of delivering the opening keynote address at the annual convention of Mensa. This can be a little intimidating, because the sole requirement for membership in Mensa is that you be a genius (in the top 2% of IQ). Granted, I’m a member, but I’m pretty sure I got in under some sort of affirmative action program. In addition to my keynote presentation, I also delivered a workshop on creativity and innovative thinking. And it was during this workshop that I found myself going way off script and found myself admonishing my audience. Basically, yelling at the geniuses.

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I recently read a wonderful book called Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead by David Meerman Scott and Brian Halligan. Since I’d written a book extolling the business virtues of the Beatles, I was curious to see how these two iconic bands stacked up in the world of corporate smarts. In some areas I found that their methods (whether conscious or not) were similar; in others, they were miles apart. For example:

Embracing technology: Scott and Halligan talk about the Dead’s state-of-the-art, 26,400 watt concert sound system—the Wall of Sound. It was a system that truly left other bands in the dust. The lesson, of course, is that businesses need to learn what is state-of-the-art in their industries, and embrace these new technologies to keep themselves ahead of the competition.

The Beatles, by contrast, didn’t have the luxury of a Wall of Sound. Most of their concerts were played through a meager 500 watts of amplification—less than some home theater systems today. Still, the Fabs embraced what early technology they could. It was, for example, at their insistence that EMI Studios (now Abbey Road Studios) finally upgraded from four-track to eight-track recording capability. But more important, perhaps, the Beatles readily embraced whatever technology was best for the job, whether it was new or not. Part of the background instrumentation on the song Lovely Rita consists of all four Beatles playing combs wrapped with toilet paper!

So yes, embrace technology…but remember that technology itself is just a tool, not the goal.

Free your content: The Grateful Dead were famous for not just allowing bootleg recording of their concerts, but actively encouraging it. They knew that the more widely disseminated their music was, the bigger their fan base would become. The parallels to social media and Internet strategy are unmistakable: giving away content—which may seem counterintuitive—ultimately results in more customers and more profits.

Contrast this with the Beatles, who have just as famously kept a very tight leash on their music distribution (witness the almost Herculean efforts it took to get their 40 year old songs on iTunes). Pretty much the exact opposite of the Dead’s strategy, and yet both bands are immensely successful. What gives? What’s the difference?

The difference is that the Dead and the Beatles were selling different products. Although in a general sense both bands were in the music business, the Dead were selling concerts while the Beatles were selling records. The Dead’s product was the next live concert, and they figured (correctly) that if fans could hear previous concerts (which were always different), they’d be inspired to buy a ticket to the next one. Not so with the Beatles. After 1966, there were no concerts. If you got a free copy of the Sgt. Pepper album, you wouldn’t be inspired to go out and buy the product, because the album was the product. Instead, they put giveaways inside the album itself. Sgt. Pepper came with a series of cardboard cut-outs, and the subsequent White Album included glossy photos of the individual Beatles as well as a full-size poster.

The lesson is to understand what your real product is, and to not give that away. Instead, give away services and products which will lead to further sales of your real product.

Experiment, experiment, experiment: The Grateful Dead were the ultimate jam band. In concert, their songs would become lengthy improvisations—sometimes brilliant, sometimes not so much. But that willingness to experiment kept it fresh, for both the band and the fans, and it made each Dead concert a truly unique event.

Nobody would mistake the Beatles for a jam band. Their concerts were short (around 30 minutes) and virtually the same, night after night. But it was in their recordings (particularly from Rubber Soul on) that the Beatles’ experimentation shined. Each album was unlike the one before; each was a risk (most of their fans didn’t want them to change); and each left the competition in the dust.

So although the Beatles and the Dead manifested their experimentation in different ways, they both understood the importance of shaking it up, of stretching the boundaries.

It’s as true in the rock world as it is in the corporate world: if you keep doing the same thing you’ve always been doing—even if you’re the best in the world at it—eventually the competition can catch up. And if you wait for that to happen, it may already be too late.

One band was together fewer than ten years, the other was around for thirty. One band thrived primarily in the recording studio, the other was the ultimate stage act. Different bands, different styles. But they both have one thing in common: they are unbelievably successful. And isn’t that a great model for us all?

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So I was reading an online article yesterday about the iPad (because, as we all know, there haven’t been enough articles about the iPad). The article itself wasn’t earth-shattering—something about how the iPad is outselling Mac computers—but I thought one of the comments was hugely insightful. The thread was about why Apple products, particularly the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, are so immensely popular. The comment that caught my eye (or, in AppleSpeak, my “i”) was this:

Everybody else is creating things that people want. Apple creates things that people will want.

And isn’t that a great philosophy for your business?

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You’ve got a nice little business with all the things that a nice little business requires: a great product or service, a company web site, maybe even an expensive sales and marketing campaign. The only problem is, you’re not getting the customers. You’ve built it, but they’re not coming. What’s the problem?

You have no hook.

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As a professional speaker, I get to visit with many different businesses in a cross-section of industries. I’m noticing some trends that I find encouraging—trends that I’ve confirmed with several of my speaker colleagues. Now, I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you that we’re completely out of the economic doldrums. You’re too smart to fall for that (except for you—the guy in the yellow flowered shirt—you’ll believe anything I tell you). But in broad terms, here’s what I’ve noticed:

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How much time are you wasting trying to solve problems that could simply be eliminated?

I once spent nearly an entire summer trying to solve a problem. But when I finally came around to eliminating the problem instead, the “solution” seemed so simple! Here’s what happened.

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I’ve never run a pre-school daycare, but for fifteen years I was the boss of ten multi-Emmy Award winning comedy writers, which amounts to pretty much the same thing. As the Executive Producer of Seattle’s sketch comedy TV show, Almost Live!, it was my job to keep a highly creative team motivated and productive. I learned a lot of things along the way, but primarily I learned that a creative team needs two seemingly incompatible things in order to thrive: direction and freedom—with a little fire thrown in along the way. Let’s take these one at a time. But first, a disclaimer:

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