Month: December 2022

We need contrasts to help us clarify and unify.  Every hero needs an enemy.  Every organization needs to strive against the status quo (or at least what threatens their status quo).  Parents worry about children who don’t follow the rules, and/or that a child is too much of a rule-follower. 

Part of how we define what we are for is to define what are you opposed to. My working list:

A purely mechanistic view of the universe and everything in it.  A worldview which says everything and everyone is just particles and information will consistently fail to explain our collective human experiences.  Life has agency. Life is an anti-entropy entity that defies thermodynamics.  Our breakthrough understanding of quantum mechanics means there is an unsettling weirdness underlying the predictable attributes of bodies at rest and in motion.  For those who insist there is nothing divine or spiritual, only mechanisms we don’t yet understand, I ask for the historical examples of a thriving and peaceful civilization that denied the divine.  We observe that a religious majority can readily accommodate a minority viewpoint, whereas historical examples of state-sponsored atheism cannot tolerate religious views.  (Note:  See the link for Stuart Kauffman’s new paper below)

“Everything is relative, and there is no absolute truth, only your truth and my truth.”  We’re deeply flawed and inadequate to understand the full picture.  We twist ourselves into odd knots when “your truth” and “my truth” are incompatible. There are foundation truths which support our ability to thrive together.  The follow-through of ‘everything is relative’ has always led to far more problems than it “solved,” and only provided short-term convenient benefits at a terrible price. 

Emphasizing “the state collective” over the individual.  There’s a spectrum here.  The phrase “one another” occurs 138 times in the New Testament.  We are meant to be in healthy communities that love, serve, protect, and encourage one another.  I’m opposed to a collectivist view of a political state because every historical example becomes willing to murder people for “the greater good.”  Most people find it easier to fear all-out nuclear war than all-out state control. I prefer the challenges that come in the tension between individual rights and body politic. The flip side of the coin is being opposed to “every individual must always get their way,” because that’s also a path to destroy families and communities. 

Censorship of competing ideas rather than engaging in uncomfortable dialogue.   Fears drive censorship; we should not be afraid to work through competing ideas.  Nor should we allow people who prefer monologues over potential learning to control the agenda.

A fixed-term education mindset.  Far too many people think of education as something that finishes at X point (e.g., High School, College) and then… you get on with life.  The processes of learning and maturing are life long and joyous.  Every day presents learning opportunities.

Indoctrination.  The test to differentiate indoctrination and education is whether the student is permitted to go beyond the teacher after a reaching a basic level of mastery.  Indoctrination cannot tolerate this; education expects it.  We all need to be instructed to develop functional competence as a foundation for creatively expanding.  We all need feedback and reinforcement, but even this can be accomplished without indoctrination.  Some fields (e.g., math) have correct and wrong answers. 

Social environments where forgiveness and redemption aren’t possible.  Soul-crushing intolerance of an ‘error’ does not allow people to learn and mature.  Dinged relationships cannot be restored and strengthened.  Fear becomes the primary driver.

Making Science an idol.  (I write this as a trained Ph.D. scientist, folks.)  The scientific method is an powerful approach to discovery in domains where you can make measurements and control some variables.  You make a hypothesis, design experiments which could disprove your hypothesis, and interpret the data you can collect.  There are major portions of things we care about where the scientific method cannot, by definition, give us answers.  There is no such thing as “The Science™” because current understanding is always subject to new information and new technical capabilities.  DaVinci, Galileo, Newton, Jenner, Franklin, Pasteur, Curie, Maxwell, Einstein, and McClintock all updated “The Science” of their time.  Scientists, even the best, can incorrectly interpret data and draw wrong conclusions.  Respect scientific views but never worship them.  Be particularly wary of mixing market forces with science.

I’m likewise opposed to turning away from science.  Science and technology have been, and will be, the keys to growth and modernity.  We must be wise in the ways we use them as tools.

Unequal application of the law and its consequences.  Or, not enforcing the consequences of the rule of law because someone thinks it shouldn’t apply. Justice operates from constraints and consistency.  “Rules for thee but not for me” has led to some of the worst of the history of our species. 

Tolerating lies.  Lies are the foundation of evil, and the path of least resistance to broken relationships, eroded trust, and wholesome justice.  We casually say, “Of course politicians lie, it’s practically their job description” – and we shouldn’t.  Reminder to self:  You get what you consistently tolerate, not what you expect. 

Prayerlessness. I advocate almost daily for more self-leadership and personal responsibility.  Yet this must be in the humility and recognition that we all kneel before God and are desperate for His sustaining love and guidance.  We weren’t designed to do this on our own. 

What’s on your list?  Anything you’d add or disagree with? 

Something endemic to organizations:  Certain corporate decisions and business landscape realities and the consequences of decisions made years ago create headwinds that make a manager’s job more difficult.  The military describes this as ‘friction’ in the battlefield. 

The fundamental step is to recognize that you will always have some level of headwind working against you.  It’s not personal.  It’s not exceptional.  It’s not unique to your situation.  Some headwinds are temporary; others are more persistent.  Some of our own making!

So how do you handle headwinds?

Sailboats can go into the wind by tacking.  They zig-zag a bit, using the power of a headwind to drive the boat forward.  Managers are wise to think about tacking.

When you get into moments of despair about the headwinds, to the point of wondering if perhaps you should leave for another role/organization, consider two points.  First, are you ready to trade one set of headwinds for another in the new environment?  Second, are you still in a position for contribution and learning despite these headwinds?  These are part of your stay vs. leave equation.

Embrace the opportunity to learn to navigate and endure headwinds.  The more senior your role, the larger your responsibilities, the more headwinds you’ll encounter.  Experience and endurance matter.  A spirit of “this too shall pass” can take you a long way.

Niccolò Machiavelli wrote this in The Prince, published in 1532:

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things; because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

You’ll encounter the Machiavelli Effect many times in your career.  It’s always going to be present when power accrues to one group over another.  Sometimes you’ll be the innovator.  Sometimes you’ll realize you’re on the side of the resistance, or the “lukewarm defender” role. 

You’ll be able to spot it frequently once you understand the pattern.  Then you can decide what you need to do:  persist, support, or resist. 

For years now I have told people “It’s never problem vs. no-problem.  It’s about which problems you prefer to have.”

Going forward I will end it better by saying, “which problems you prefer to have, and when.”

The “and when” was always implied but specifying it brings out clarity in discussions.  Usually it’s about short-term vs. longer-term problems.  I find in conversations that the time element forces one to think about the costs of procrastination, or the power of patience. 

My criteria for great non-fiction books:

• “2×4 whack to the forehead” insights multiple times
• Challenges my assumptions and points out inconvenient or uncomfortable truth that I must wrestle with, not instantly resolve
• Presents a coherent framework which is usable to assess new situations
• Is well-written, quotable, shareable
• Is unlikely to be outdated in only 3 years
• Is documented, or at least presents follow-up trails to investigate

Three contemporary books I read in 2022 which fit these are Strange New World, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, and Failure of Nerve.  

Proven truth:

• Your performance is built on your strengths.
• Mastery of a strength area is a life-long journey.  We are always working on our craft.
• No one is perfectly well-rounded.
• Both strengths and weaknesses can become derailers in a role, and therefore both must be managed.

It’s a mistake to be overly-dependent on your strengths.  Your weaknesses are a roadmap to interacting better with others.  

I recommend you spend 80% of your effort improving your particular strengths. We effectively manage our weaknesses with 20% of our energy in several ways:

Adopt a mature mindset. Don’t beat yourself up over your weak areas, but don’t wallow in status quo either.  Pick one weakness area and work on it for a quarter, then switch to another one. 

Intentionally draw complementary strength people around you to offset your weaknesses.  This is the power of effective teamwork.  Keep in mind, this is not only about an org chart, but who is in your network.   

Learn enough to appreciate and work better with the strengths of others.  Example: I frequently work alongside biostatistics experts.  Although stats is not a strength area for me, I can read a few articles to better understand how Bayesian models work and cooperate with their expertise. 

Multiple people have asked why I am optimistic about the future, given all the difficult news we face daily. 

I was whacked like a 2×4 to my forehead recently when one of my mentors listened to me expressing my (many!) concerns, then quietly said “He still moves stones.”  There is One who is in charge.  His words reminded me of Jesus asking his disciples “Where is your faith?” (see Luke 8:25)

Here’s my message of optimism from a secular perspective:

Consider our situation, just 20 years ago, a year after 9/11. The dot-com crash crushed many hopes for the nascent internet ecommerce world.  Governments were spending money faster than any drunken sailor could have imagined.  The new “Homeland Security” ratcheting up made people nervous, even as we were fearful of terrorism and sheepishly accepted TSA security rules.  The general economy had taken a huge hit.  Confidence in world leaders reached new lows.

And then, from a business perspective at least, a new world order emerged:  Google, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, iPads and iPhones, commonplace broadband and wifi, Uber, GoFundMe, Wikipedia, Siri and Alexa, Tesla and SpaceX, Chunnel, and new tallest buildings.  All things we take for granted today as ‘ordinary’ parts of our world.  One of my acquaintances refers to this as ‘Axis Shift.’

Yes, new capabilities create new problems (or at least, old problems in different clothing).  My point is how quickly we resurged from a horrendous low.  We are an adaptable people.  I’m old enough to remember the difficult economics of the 1970’s, made worse by the OPEC embargo.  The struggle through recession in 1980-82.  Then, the fall of the Soviet Union a few years later.  Things we thought unbreakable, broke.  Trends we considered unstoppable, reverted. 

…

We recently celebrated Thanksgiving in the US, so it’s good to remind ourselves of the Turkey Fallacy.

Every day the farmer brings food for the turkey.  Day after day. Doesn’t change.  The turkey happily thinks “This will go on forever!” Until a certain day in November when the farmer cuts his head off.

My uncle once put it in simpler terms.  “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.” 

…

“But Glenn, what about all this uncertainty?  So many wildcards, so many possible concerns?”

Compare walking in bright light vs. walking in darkness.

Compare walking in familiar places vs. walking in someplace unfamiliar.

The difference is your confidence level.

I can’t think of a time in my life, or in the history our species, when there was no uncertainty, and no concerning developments. I’m also mindful of Mark Twain’s insight: “I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

Our car headlights light up about 100-150 yards in the darkness.  Even so we can make long trips through the night.  The key is to move forward.

…

“But what if we make the wrong decision?”

We will, at least sometimes.  Here’s what I’m learning more as I grow older:  The specific decision matters less than what I do after making the decision and the results. 

The decisions of others affect us, too.  I don’t have to like their decision, but I am responsible for my own actions after they make the decision whether I think it was a good decision or not.

Let’s keep learning about the difference between our sphere of influence and our sphere of control. 

…

“It’s a hurting world, Glenn!”

Optimism doesn’t mean lack of feeling and resonance with the sadness, pain, loss, and suffering in others.  Optimism doesn’t quench grief.  Optimism helps us avoid being forever trapped in these and recovering balance. Optimism is about holding up our heads and moving forward.  Optimism takes the long view.  Optimism recognizes the view out the windshield is bigger than the rear-view mirror.

…

“But everything feels like it’s changing!”

I agree that we are at edge of great changes, and much of what we’ve taken for granted for the last decades could change significantly.  All change creates some loss.  Yet we can be hopeful that some changes will be a net positive.  There are old things which can be recovered and set anew.  There are some popular but unhealthy things which can be set aside in favor of what is better. 

Optimism helps us do what we can, with what we have, where we are, right now.  And that’s all that we ever can do. 

…

“I can’t believe how stupid people are, and it’s getting worse! They’re going to get what they deserve and get it good.”

When was the last time in history that there weren’t many foolish people?  No man is an island; we’re all in this together.  Let’s make a mature choice in how we relate with other, especially fools and idiots.

Consider this 1968 (a very disturbing year in the US!) perspective by Kent Keith:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.

Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.

Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you have anyway.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

…

Compare optimism with your other options.  Winston Churchill famously said to reporters during the worst of the London Blitz, “I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.”  Pessimism is impractical because it refuses to spend energy to solve problems.  Apathy makes progress more difficult because it won’t confront challenges and can’t see opportunities.  Cynicism is a nasty, loveless imitation of wisdom.

My grandfather used to tell me, “Don’t do things that make the Devil happy.”  Pessimism, apathy, and cynicism make the Devil happy.   

Choose optimism.