Month: January 2020

I have a natural bent towards communicating what I’m doing and thinking about (up and down the org chart, and with peers).  Yet in 1994 I was working on a significant project without my boss knowing even the broad strokes of what was going on.  He found me in my office one afternoon, slammed my door shut behind him, and vented his substantial anger. 

“I just told [Mr. VP] that you couldn’t possibly be working on X because I would surely know about something that committed my department to that big a change.  He produced emails.  I look like an idiot managing a moron with a Ph.D. degree!” 

It took me 2 years to fully crawl out of that credibility crater.

Don’t ever let your boss be ignorant.  Don’t make them plead ignorance when some issue surfaces.  This supports Rule #2: Make your boss look good.  

Adapt to your boss’ preferences about how to be informed.  Some prefer verbal updates, some written.  A tactic which has worked well for me, especially in situations where my boss is remote and has large responsibilities, is to send a deliverables update every 2 weeks or so.  Takes me about 10-20 min to compile, and actually helps me think through what needs to happen next.  The email is structured like this:

Delivered:

• Specific deliverable
• Specific deliverable
• Specific deliverable
• Specific deliverable
• Specific deliverable
• Specific deliverable

In flight / Upcoming:

• Planned actions and tasks (include date where you can)
• Planned actions and tasks (include date where you can)
• Planned actions and tasks (include date where you can)
• Planned actions and tasks (include date where you can)
• Planned actions and tasks (include date where you can)

Reminder about PTO or other significant travel

Definitions matter. What do I mean when I say that I’m politically conservative?  Conserving what’s precious. Here is what I believe:

• Our individual rights come from God, not from man
• The purpose of government is supportive in citizen’s lives, rather than intrusive and overbearing: maintain law & order, defend citizens in war, promote free trade
• Freedom of speech regardless of content
• Freedom of assembly and association
• Freedom of thought, including religious belief
• Character and behavior are far more significant than inherent characteristics like race and gender

(I do not list free-market capitalism as a conservative belief, though it has done more to lift billions of people out of poverty than any other economic system.  All economic systems can be corrupted because men are not angels.  Free-market capitalism is a good outgrowth of conservative beliefs.)

My observation is that progressives do not hold these principles.  They elevate the State’s power in determining who gets what rights. They actively speak and act against free speech, free assembly, and freedom of thought.  They generally favor larger and more intrusive government as solution to an escalating set of problems.  Progressives use inherent characteristics as primary identifiers and value them above character and achievements.  

There is a weak correlation between political parties and conservative/progressive beliefs.  Not all Republicans are conservative; not all Democrats are progressive. 

My conviction: Holding to conservative beliefs about people and government is the best hedge against slipping into far left communism or far right fascism.  

I’m increasingly convinced that the key “superpower” for leaders going forward is the ability to focus.  Focus is key to each of these:

• Staying calm in the swirl and making good decisions
• Sufficient time-on-problem thinking to generate breakthrough solutions
• Listening to others deeply (including what is not being said)
• Absorbing complex information and acquiring new skills
• Discerning signal in noisy environments

There is very little in our modern culture which helps you focus.  The powers-that-be often benefit when you’re distracted and occupied with minutiae. I like Chuck Palahnuik’s insight:

“Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s busy holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed. He’s making sure your imagination withers. Until it’s as useful as your appendix. He’s making sure your attention is always filled. And this being fed, it’s worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.”

The three best modern books I’ve read about focus are:

Deep Work (Cal Newport)

Indistractable (Nir Eyal)

Essentialism (Greg McKeown)

However, books only take you to the brink of experience. 

There are some helps:  Close your email (or work offline), turn off notifications on your phone, rearrange meetings so you have blocks of time, find a working environment where you won’t be interrupted, take 3 minutes for deep breathing to calm your mind, set a timer for X minutes and work until you hear it go off, etc. 

Fundamentally you must practice and develop your ability to focus for longer periods of time.  It’s worth the effort.

Here are five books I’ve read since November 15, 2019 which I recommend to a broader audience. (I read several I don’t recommend.)

The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus

A collection of aphorisms and sayings which influenced Seneca the Younger, Renaissance and Enlightenment writers. Syrus was a Syrian slave who was freed by his master in Italy. He died in 43 BCE.

The Hundred Year Marathon (Michael Pillsbury)

Well-documented account of China’s very long-term strategy of defeating the western hegemony using lessons learned from their Warring States period. Sobering. Insightful.

Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin’s Most Dangerous Hackers (Andy Greenberg)

Reads like a thriller. The new era of cyberwar connects the digital world and physical infrastructure. We’re deeply vulnerable.

The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer — translated by Gerald Davis)

The classic collection of tales of pilgrims journeying together to the shrine at Canterbury. Davis’ translation is readable and enjoyable. I got so much more reading this in my late 50’s than I did when I was 19 years old.

Leadership Strategy and Tactics (Jocko Willink)

Extremely readable and engaging. Jocko recounts personal stories where he learned, and translates combat leadership into strategy and tactics for any and every leader.

The real world is loaded with feedback loops.  They’re a critical part of healthy, constructive systems.  Your organization must build them, listen to them, and exploit them to out-perform the market and competitors.

Many of the greatest works of genius in the past 300 years are based on understanding feedback loops:

• James Watt – the steam engine
• Adam Smith – economics
• Charles Darwin – adaptation to environment
• Claude Hopkins – advertising
• Maria Montessori – education
• John Boyd – warfare (OODA loop)
• Edwards Deming – quality in manufacturing
• US Constitution framers – distribution of government power

You can readily observe the problems caused by feedback loop break-down.  Cancer cells run amuck rather than growth limited by normal feedback signals.  Blood sugar levels spike and stay high because a diabetic doesn’t have insulin levels to direct cells to pull sugar out of the bloodstream.  Predator and prey cycles are amplified when humans take out the predators.  Businesses over-stock inventory because the signals of decreasing demand aren’t received (and acted upon).  Tyranny happens when a political leader has no countering feedback about his plans. 

A common set of runaway problems are fundamentally about breaking feedback loops by introducing a 3^rd party payer.  Student loan debt soared in the US after Congress made federal student loans non-dischargeable (can’t use bankruptcy) and federalized all student loans.  There is the related case of costs of college tuition skyrocketing because of 3^rd party payment systems.  Health care costs explode when an insurance company (or a government entity) pays instead of the patient.  All began with sincere intentions.  None have significantly changed because the bureaucracy won’t embrace feedback or change.

The greatest human-caused disasters have spun from a desire to rule through ideas absent any feedback loops: communism, socialism, fascism, crony capitalism (completely different than free-market economics).  Ideology is considered much more powerful than reality.   

Let me come down to your leadership, rather than the real-but-abstract that you don’t directly influence. 

Your key question should be “Where best to put feedback loops into our business?” 

The key principle: Put the responsibility for designing, collecting, and responding to feedback as low in the organization as possible. 

Operations: Violate this rule and the operational parts of your organization will experience spiraling costs and inefficiencies because there is no feedback loop at levels where things are small and immediate.  The CEO and board of directors getting feedback is much less useful because of the length of the cause and effect loops. 

New products and services: Design feedback early and often is critical to success. It’s a foundation of Lean Startup methodology.

Leading professionals: People management and coaching for performance thrives on immediacy (time and space) of feedback.   Professionals crave it.

Again, build feedback loops, listen to them, and exploit them to out-perform the market and competitors.

HT:  This was inspired by comments from Perry Marshall and Tom Meloche.

Many people are surprised to learn that I’m introverted rather than extroverted, and routinely battle self-doubt and anxiousness. I’ve learned to act in effective ways — stepping forward, starting conversations, boldly publishing and broadcasting, acting counter to the crowd when I disagree.

Most people have doubts. They struggle with occasional bouts of anxiousness. It’s common, and these are valuable. Let me explain why.

Picture your situation like driving a car — you have a brake, an accelerator, and a steering wheel. Self-doubt and anxiousness are brakes on your contribution. Boldness and action are the accelerator. You have choices about where to steer.

Narcissists and psychopaths don’t have any brakes. They constantly stomp on the accelerator. They’re a tremendous hazard to the people around them.

Embrace your doubts and anxiousness as friends to keep you humble and from preventable error. Use your judgment to decide when to accelerate harder or to coast.

I’ve consistently read 2-3 books/week for many years, plus my systematic Bible reading.  Many fine books are published each year, in addition to the long history of great books.  We live in a privileged time when so many books are widely available. I feel a special surge of pleasure when someone asks me about a book and I can say, “Yes, I’ve read that.” 

My strategy going forward:

• Focus 80% of my time re-reading the classics and a set of books I find most significant. Read deeply, unhurriedly – dive deep, and ponder.  I plan to spend the next 10 years going back through the Great Books of the Western World collection, and about 40 other books of enduring value to me.
• Continue my systematic Bible reading – 10 chapters/day, plus periodic read-throughs of the whole Bible.  (Reading about 50 pages/day takes me through the whole Bible in 30-35 days.)
• Intentionally ignore all but the most-compelling new books in leadership, business, and history.

It made perfect sense for me to read widely and rapidly when I was younger.  This adjusted strategy improves my ability to think deeply and wisely about the most significant issues. 

Have you articulated your strategy for book reading and consuming information? 

Every dynamic organization contains some polarization.  Organizational leaders need to be aware of polarized views.  The best leaders can step “up and out” of their perspective to assess the larger picture and decide how to work with this reality.

The pattern is easy to see in contemporary US politics:

People on the right and left are unaware they have the same behaviors, even as they tell themselves completely different stories.  A centrist politician struggles to gain traction because all the money and attention goes to the extremes.  Though the combine extremes are a minority of the population they overwhelm all the communication channels.  The people in the middle aren’t heard.  They find it safest not to care, and not to publicly participate.

This polarization persists and tends to become stronger. Technology options created an environment of a million channels so it’s easy to pick your preferred echo chamber and never hear a contradictory word for years.  Our collective and voluntary choices got us into this situation.  There are relatively few incentives to listening to different perspectives. I’m skeptical that people will come together again, short of an external existential threat. 

(Sidebar:  The printing press expanded information flow, but it didn’t unify masses of people.  The Internet connected a billion people but accelerated fragmented perspectives and worldviews.  Proliferating communication channels has never automatically resulted in greater peace and cooperation.)

This is a general pattern that occurs in many organizational settings, not limited to politics:

I’ve seen this pattern in these instances, and I’m sure there are more:

• Mission strategy and adjustments
• Structuring a support team
• Building budgets (e.g., baseline vs. bottom-up reset)
• Which customers to favor and why
• Product development, “stage gate” decisions
• Defining metrics for a business process
• Deciding how to allocate an unexpected windfall, or blame

The middle view may not be the correct view. The polarization pattern does not inherently identify the correct view of the past or present situation, nor automatically help you decide on the best path forward.  You’ll need information outside of the polarized paradigm. 

Leaders have choices when they recognize this pattern.  Willfully ignoring polarization does not help. You may choose to

• Exploit the power available by aligning with one polar view.
• Help people recognize an alternative to the current state polarization. 
• Selectively elevate “middle” perspectives to keep the polar ends in check.
• Pit the polarized views against one another as a distraction or to buy time while developing alternative scenarios.

No easy answers, no formula, but the first step is always recognizing the polarization pattern.