Month: November 2021

What happens if you get 5% better each year?  We’re an impatient species so it’s important to remind ourselves of the power of continued progress over time.

5% better each year means that after 30 years you’ll be 4.3 times better.

10% better each year?  You’ll be 17.4 times better.

What if you could reduce your weaknesses and vulnerability by 5% each year?  After 30 years you would be 5x less vulnerable.  10% reduction each year would mean you would be 25x less vulnerable.

Consistency matters immensely. This is a key part of playing the long game.  Especially when you can’t know precisely how long it is.

A friend is looking forward to retirement because of his increasing frustration with his job situation.  “Only 132 more Mondays, Glenn!  I can endure it.”

Years ago, I heard a men’s speaker describing how precious Saturdays are with his boys.  He calculated how many Saturdays he had left until his youngest son turned 18.  He bought that many marbles and put them in a big jar in his bedroom.  Each Saturday night he would take out a marble and throw it in the trash.  The shrinking jar of marbles became a powerful visual reminder of where to put his energy and attention.

Another friend of mine has been sober for over a decade.  He can tell you the years, months, and days since his last drink.  He has a calendar near his desk and every night he puts a red X through the day.  “I keep the chain going.”  He likes the advice of long-distance hikers: Never quit on a bad day.

“So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm 90:12)

Numbering is important.  Numbering gives us perspective. Numbering helps us live better.

There are times when numbering does not help.  When the drill sergeant barks, “Do pushups until I get tired” it will not help to count.  When you’re sitting with your elderly loved one who no longer recognizes you because of advanced dementia, it will not help to count.  When you need to defeat the temptation to compare your life to another, counting will not help. When you’re in a situation with no possible way to see the end, the only counting which matters is whatever counting helps you get to the next day. Or the next hour

Everyone you know is counting things, marking events and times – some excellent, some bitter, some bittersweet.  Remembering this helps us be generous and gracious with others.

One of the encouraging themes in the Bible is that God sees us.  He knows all our counting, from the number of hairs on our heads, to the days of our suffering in exile, to the days until we meet someone again, to the great Day of restoring all things.  This helps us trust God, even when our counting feels like a burden.

There is a deep scene in the movie Gladiator where Marcus Aurelius and Maximus talk about Rome and home, and how they will be remembered.  “There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter.”  One of the brilliant aspects of this scene is the connection between their conversation about home, their sons, and the future state of the empire.  We are often tempted (and even directed) to disconnect family and state but it is unwise.

There is a corresponding connection between commercial or non-profit organizations and families.  People in these organizations are part of families.  The people contribute to the organization, and the organization is providing some benefit or influence on the family through the employee/member.  Organizations are not families, but the best organizations support families. 

Any leader in an organization should be mindful that no one can perfectly compartmentalize their work and family.  Remember the iceberg metaphor.  What you see is a small fraction of what is invisible below the waterline. 

I hear more people talking openly now about a “cold war” with Chinese Communist Party leadership.  God forbid we get into a “hot” war!  It would be a mistake to think about fighting this cold war the same way the West defeated the USSR. Both regimes deeply believe in Communism, but there are three significant differences between the Soviets then and the CPP now:

One. The Soviets had no ethnic center.  They fostered communism to all kinds of people groups, across the globe, to build a political empire.  By contrast, the CPP is strongly Chinese.  They consciously create almost-enslaving economic ties with many countries (see their Belt & Road initiative) but have little interest in building up leadership or political centers which they perceive as non-Chinese. 

Two. The Western nations had very little economic exchange with the USSR.  Westerners did not invest in Soviet businesses, and the USSR exported almost nothing to the West.  The US government loaned them money to buy US grain in multiple years.  The CPP leverages economics heavily as a strategic weapon.  They learned from the failures of the USSR and adopted economic strategies that supported the fantastic recovery of Germany after WW1 under the Nazis (e.g., fiat money, state control of key businesses, propaganda). The global manufacturing picture and supply chains were completely transformed by China’s ability to become a low-cost manufacturing center within a few years of joining the WTO.  The West has benefitted from cheap goods.  Remember Thomas Sowell’s pithy insight about economics:  There are no solutions, only tradeoffs. Note that both the Soviet and CPP leadership have been willing to sacrifice economically when it served state interests.

Three. There were relatively few Soviet citizens in Western universities and cities.  The Soviets had limited ways to influence academia, news media, sports, and entertainment.  The CCP learned from this and openly fund academic programs, aggressively work in media circles, and leverage all kinds of market pressure on professional sports and entertainment.  They’ve cultivated influence in the attitude-shaping institutions.

The wisdom of generals failing because “they fight the last war” applies.

(I am compelled to remind you that I have multiple Chinese friends, in China and elsewhere in the world.  I have no animus against individuals.  My observations are about the political leadership.  Remember that in geopolitics nations are never friends, it’s only a question of aligned interests. I would rejoice to see a billion people in China with deep liberties and economically thriving.)

Sharing a personal observation, suspecting you might resonate with this…

I’m most likely to be unproductive and waste precious time when I sit down to “work” but don’t have a specific plan for the work I need to do. 

This situation invariably prompts to do things like defragment my hard drive (again), sort through old emails, check the latest on LinkedIn, and rewatch a fun movie clip I’ve seen a dozen times before.

Develop a plan for your working time.  Know what needs to be delivered, done, created, edited, reviewed, and imagined.  Decide what needs to be done next. Don’t miss the opportunity to make progress on the important-not-urgent projects. Assign working times accordingly. 

The key is to make these decisions early, so I have a plan and a schedule.  It’s a mistake to think “I’ll decide at 1:30pm what I work on next” because it’s a low-energy part of my day.

Discipline yourself to do what you planned to do, when you planned to do it.

This is my best antidote to wasting time.

Yes, interruptions happen and priorities can shift.  Adjustments need to be made.  Sometimes I’ll fail to do what I planned to do.  This is life.  But this approach means I am still largely productive and effective over days/weeks/months despite the flux of the real world.

Here are questions I’ve asked people in the past few months which tend to make them uncomfortable:

“So what?”

“Do you ever change your mind when presented with new information?”  (My friend Mike asks a nice variation on this: “Tell me about the last time you changed your mind about something important.”)

“How do you define ‘white’ and ‘black’ in a multinational company?  What if I decide today to identify as a black woman?”

“Will this matter to you in 3 or 30 years?”

“If it doesn’t matter how much money the government prints, why bother to collect taxes?”

“When was the last time screaming at someone persuaded them to love you more?”

“Are the forces that drove cycles of ice ages and glacial retreats still at work today?”

“Why do stories about sea level rise in Boston never mention sea level falls in Oslo?”  (The North American land mass is sinking; there are other areas in the world where the earth is uplifting.)

“What is the difference between loving humanity and loving unlovely individuals?”

“What are you willing to sacrifice in this situation? Your pride, perhaps?”

“Where the line between community safety (or integrity) and individual liberty?”

“What are we shocked at behaviors which are endemic in human history?”

“Why not make the minimum wage one million dollars per year?”

“Does this situation deserve unrestrained fear?”

“What would be risk-free in a universe where the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is true?”

“I’m intrigued with the idea of insisting leadership teams be representative and inclusive. Would that extend to a balance of liberals and conservatives, say, in college faculty?  Whites and Asians in the NBA?”

“Do you care who gets the credit for this good thing?”

“What questions are we now not allowed to ask, and why not?”

I ask these questions not to be snarky or clever, but with a genuine intent of exploring ideas.  The point of questions like these is to challenge overly simplistic assumptions.  Questions are useful to sustain conversation.

Notice in many of these questions I’m hoping to help people explore a limiting principle. How do you know when you’ve gone too far?  Where do you draw a line, and why?   People with agency – the ability to make decisions – need intelligent and wise frameworks to decide on limiting principles.  The Ten Commandments, for example, are a set of limiting principles. 

Suppose you went to a doctor for stomach pains and he listened to your description impatiently for 12 seconds before eagerly writing you an eyeglass prescription.  Would you automatically buy new glasses?  

Suppose a vendor calls you, describes a product you can’t imagine fits your business, and recommends you adopt it. “It’s the latest innovation, everyone is trying it!” Would it make sense to proceed? 

Leaders must beware solutions looking for problems. 

The primary danger to avoid is falling in love with a solution to problems you don’t have.  Serial solution-lovers lurch from solution to solution without the hard work of defining their true problems and then searching for (or inventing) matching solutions.   

Perhaps you don’t have a problem matching that solution now, but you will in the future.  In that situation leadership wisdom is needed to know what to adopt and what.  Maybe it’s worth a proof-of-concept or pilot test with manageable risks.  You can learn even from “failures” if the test is well-designed.  It’s like that successful solutions evolve with new features, so delaying a short time might give you a better opportunity to evaluate it.  Consider your competition in the market; you might need to be experimenting sooner just to avoid being left behind.  Again, it comes down to wise choices in allocating your attention and resources.  

Leaders should also be conscious that “solutions” might spark ideas about how you could improve a process, or a new line of business.  They can be a source of creativity, even if you don’t adopt this exact solution.  It’s useful to keep your antennae tuned to new ideas, but ensure the antennae is also wired to your critical analysis engine and Captain Skeptical hat.   

Summing up: 

• Keep your antennae up for new ideas and “solutions” people offer you. 
• Beware solutions looking for a problem you don’t have. 
• Consciously test and evaluate solutions if they might have future value. 

I am more concerned about the dangers of eroding values and principles in our culture than I am inequality, pandemics, and climate change.

Provocation for leaders thinking about strategies to improve the culture of their congregation, community, nation, and business: What if our strategy is to focus on the fruit of the Spirit? (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control – see Galatians 5:22-23)

Years of studying systems has demonstrated that you get what you optimize for, so choose your optimization angle wisely. Businesses which are optimized exclusively for near-term profit will always struggle with human issues and long-term sustainability. An organization optimized to increase size (or budget) will inevitably become an ineffective bureaucracy. An organism hyper-optimized for a specific ecological niche is likely to go extinct when the world changes. A man or woman who optimizes for sensual pleasures will end in a sorry state of regret.

Select what you optimize for carefully, for the long game.

“We won’t offend anyone.” That was the sign outside the religious studies building near the campus of Indiana University. I walked by that sign going to and from the lab where I finished my post-doctoral work (1990-1993).

When I saw that sign, I would think, “I’m offended that you won’t stand for something as good or evil.” No one should aim for a deathbed claim of “I never offended anyone.” Our mom used to tell my sister and me, “If Jesus didn’t make everyone happy, you’re not going to, either.”

Mature people hold these truths in constructive tension:

1. Being perpetually offended is not a fruit of the Spirit.
2. Never giving offense means you are unprincipled.

As we grow in maturity let us press hard to know what we stand for (and are willing to suffer for because we have a conviction of its truth), and where we are flexible. This is living in truth and grace.

Distinguish ideas and behaviors from relationship interactions. It is right and proper to be offended by demonstrably bad ideas and behaviors which do not support human flourishing or are clearly not in step with the wisdom from God. Learn to choose not to be offended by rude and crude interactions with other people.

The way to defeat the ‘cancel’ culture and media-accelerated ‘perpetual outrage’ is to use the power of forgiveness coupled with a willingness to be teachable. Choose to be a learner rather than be offended. We can collectively move forward through the abundant foolishness in the world.