Multiple groups have highlighted tremendous increase in US youth anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts. Anger, theft, and bullying have all measurably increased. We also have an enormous number of working age men who simply aren’t working.
No simple answers here, but I wonder… consider about the messages that these young people consistently hear:
Climate change could end the world before you’re 30 years old
Your home country is fundamentally and incurably racist, sexist, and patriarchal. This is the source of all inequality.
You can’t trust your parents to help you understand things like your sexuality or spirituality.
Your sexuality is fluid and changeable.
Covid is an existential threat to the human race and therefore every means to combat it is justified.
Equal outcomes are the necessary state. When that doesn’t happen, there are victims, something is terribly wrong and must be corrected.
AI is already smarter than you will ever be.
Digital and virtual are equal or superior to being together in person.
Never take risks.
Rich and famous people will not be held to the same standards as others.
Contrarian points of view are dangerous and divisive. There is no need for vigorous exchange of ideas in the process of discerning truth or the right things to do.
Everything is relative, there is only your truth. Only evil people would deny your truth.
Democracy and freedoms will die if the wrong politician is elected.
You’re super special. If the world doesn’t treat you right, claim victim status.
This is a potent cocktail. If you wanted young people to feel more disconnected, uncertain, and hopeless, you’d marinate them with these ideas. This is not a foundation for responsible relationships, growing in maturity, or citizenship in a diverse society.
I implore you, within your sphere of influence, share positive and hopeful messages. Express gratitude and confidence in future possibilities, even as you deeply understand our flawed nature and the corrupting power of lies. Honor history with all its messiness and the best of our social and technological progress. Model these things!
My acquaintance was despairing about how few people think globally. “We have all these massive problems and need solutions which work for everyone, globally, or we’ll disappear as a dominant species.”
My response to him:
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It’s not natural for people to think globally. What’s natural is to think about yourself, your immediate connections, and beyond that the tribes you belong to. Thinking globally requires levels of abstraction which completely ignore local variations. Genuine flesh-and-blood people are messy and don’t fit neatly into models and spreadsheets well.
One of the telling characteristics about Star Trek plots is that in Gene Rodenberry’s future there is always a planetary government. There might be a resistance group or a few minorities. One could argue that this is just simplicity for the sake of story-telling. But I suspect Roddenberry really did believe that the desirable future state is a planet-wide government system (peaceful, of course). Ruling the whole world has been a dream of multiple empires and rulers.
This is a warm and fuzzy fantasy, but highly unrealistic. No human leader, no leadership team, no central planning committee can successfully work at even a regional scale for long. After hundreds of economics books and multiple Nobel Prizes for economics, no one understands macroeconomics in a predictable way. Every experiment we’ve done in history shows us that global and central requires optimizing on a few variables – which creates the cracks in the foundation and sows the seeds of collapse. The lag between changing conditions and top-level decision-making creates an implementation gap that cannot be overcome.
It will take a divine intelligence and a pure heart to rule globally in a way that everyone and creation itself thrives. I believe that Jesus will return as the true king. The prophecy is clear: Every knee will bow. It does not say that everyone will like it.
Also, there is probably a clue to how best to rule large numbers of people in Exodus 18:13-26.
Given these constraints, rather than insisting on perfect global solutions, we’ll probably get further along doing the best we can (using moral principles, and putting the good of others ahead of our own), where we are, right now, with what we have, knowing than loving and omniscient, omnipresent God is caring for all of us.
That’s about solutions. Ideas and core principles, which can be global, must be fought for at every level.
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. – Frank Herbert, Dune
ChatGPT v3 became publicly available November 30, 2021. More than 1 million people used it in the first week. You enter in a question or request, ChatGPT responds with beautifully written and substantial answers, and retains the context of your ‘chat’ so you can follow-up. ChatGPT creates text articles, can write poems and songs in a style you desire, and can produce working code in multiple computer languages.
I asked ChatGPT to describe itself to me. I entered “Please describe ChatGPT and its potential impact in 200 words or less.” It gave me this response in 17 seconds:
ChatGPT is a large language model developed by OpenAI. It is trained using a variant of the transformer architecture and is capable of generating human-like text on a wide range of topics. It is a powerful tool for natural language processing and can be used in a variety of applications, such as language translation, text summarization, and conversation generation.
One of the most significant potential impacts of ChatGPT is in the field of natural language understanding and generation. With its ability to generate human-like text, ChatGPT can be used to create more natural and engaging interactions between humans and machines. This could be used to improve customer service and support, and to create more realistic virtual assistants and chatbots. Additionally, ChatGPT could be used to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of natural language search and information retrieval systems.
Another potential impact of ChatGPT is in the field of content creation. With its ability to generate text on a wide range of topics, ChatGPT can be used to generate news articles, stories, and other written content. This could be used to save time and resources for content creators, such as journalists and writers.
Overall, ChatGPT is a powerful tool that has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with machines, as well as how we create and consume written content.
I asked ChatGPT to write a haiku about encouragement:
Encouragement bloom,
Like spring flowers after snow,
Hope in every word.
I asked ChatGPT to give me 5 blog post ideas for advanced strategic decision-making, then asked for an outline of #5:
“5 Common Mistakes in Strategic Decision-Making and How to Avoid Them”
“The Role of Data Analysis in Strategic Decision-Making”
“Using Scenario Planning to Anticipate Future Challenges in Strategic Decision-Making”
“The Importance of Encouraging Creativity and Innovation in Strategic Decision-Making”
“Strategic Decision-Making in the Digital Age: How Technology is Changing the Game”
Please give me an outline for #5
I. Introduction
Briefly introduce the topic of strategic decision-making in the digital age
Explain how technology is affecting the way decisions are made in organizations
II. The impact of big data on strategic decision-making
Discuss the importance of data collection and analysis in decision-making
Describe the challenges of managing big data and how they affect decision-making
III. The use of artificial intelligence in strategic decision-making
Explain how AI can be used to improve decision-making processes
Discuss the challenges of implementing AI in decision-making and how to overcome them
IV. The role of digital platforms in strategic decision-making
Discuss the impact of digital platforms on the way decisions are made
Explain how organizations can use digital platforms to gain a competitive advantage in decision-making
V. The future of strategic decision-making
Describe the emerging technologies that will shape the future of decision-making
Discuss how organizations can prepare for the future of strategic decision-making
VI. Conclusion
Summarize the main points discussed in the article
Offer recommendations for organizations looking to improve their strategic decision-making in the digital age.
All this in seconds, in English language queries, using a web browser with an internet connection.
I could go on to share how ChatGPT responded to these queries:
Write a 10-minute homily on the Beatitudes
Summarize the key events in the first year of the French Revolution
Write a poem about snow fences in the style of Mary Oliver
Suggest a meal plan for one week for a low carb but not keto diet, but without avocadoes
What do you recommend for a tourist see in Rome that hardly anyone visits?
Generate an Excel formula to strip out all characters before the @ symbol in column C, then merge with the text in columns D and F, putting the answer in a new column.
Here was the answer to the last request – note that it explains the formula and recommends how to adjust it!
This formula uses the CONCATENATE function to join together the text from three different cells: the part of the text in column C after the “@” symbol, the text in column D, and the text in column F. It uses the RIGHT function to get the right side of the text in column C after the @ symbol, which is determined by the subtraction of the number of characters before the “@” symbol using the LEN function and the position of the “@” symbol using the FIND function. The result will be displayed in a new column. Please note that you’ll need to adjust the cell references (C1, D1 and F1) to match your specific sheet.
ChatGPT, along with related AI tools for image and video generation, are a step change improvement over previous interactive capability. This is a game-changer level capability comparable to the first electronic spreadsheet, internet search engines, and online GPS-driven maps with real-time driving instructions.
It’s astounding, frankly.
The creators at OpenAI are using user feedback to make it better. ChatGPT v4 coming in 2023 will be good enough to pass a bar exam and certain medical certifications. This kind of tool will accelerate our need to re-engineer education approaches. Not all but much of the hype is warranted.
A digest of my thoughts and observations:
ChatGPT is a tool, which can be used for better and worse. We shape our tools and our tools shape us. Humans don’t uninvent tools. This is a new kind of tool in our world and we’ll need to learn to use it well.
This is a category of digital capabilities, not just one tool. This kind of AI tool will wind up in many other tools. It’s already being embedded in apps for writing, image and video composition.
It’s crucial that we understand the limitations of these tools. ChatGPT responses are perfectly written, but sometimes wrong. (It reminds me of some people who are perpetually 100% confident even if they’re wrong.) Authority + Assertiveness + Inconsistent Accuracy is a dangerous combination.
This capability is sufficiently advanced that it will accelerate our conversation about how to educate children and youth, what constitutes original work, how we manage information, and many work roles (not plumbers, but certainly coders and copywriters).
This level of AI, as it evolves into new applications, could become a trillion dollar economic value and disrupt multiple business models, including ad-supported search engines.
ChatGPT can’t think for you, but it can support better thinking. It can’t make a decision for you, but it could support better decision-making. ChatGPT takes nothing away from your responsibilities, but could improve your ability to fulfill your potential. This AI capability will continue to improve and will pressure us to focus on generating better questions and using our imaginations.
It’s a mistake to humanize this tool concept. ChatGPT is not conscious. Nor will it somehow mysteriously develop a consciousness. It reflects and relies upon its designers and the data sets used to train it. God/The Muse/The Voice does not talk with algorithms and robots.
ChatGPT is at the ‘inflated expectations’ stage of the Gartner hype curve, but I suspect not yet at the peak:
Neil Postman’s questions for a new technology (from his lecture On Culture’s Surrender to Technology) are useful here:
1. What is the problem to which technology claims to be a solution?
2. Whose problem is it?
3. What new problems will be created because of solving an old one?
4. Which people and institutions will be most harmed?
5. What changes in language are being promoted?
6. What shifts in economic and political power are likely to result?
7. What alternative media might be made from a technology?
I’ll leave these as thought problems for you, and share more thoughts and ideas below:
ChatGPT Limitations
An acquaintance, a former special forces operator, tells me that he was trained to excel at finding vulnerabilities, exploiting them, and blowing stuff up. In that spirit, what are the limitations of this awesome AI technology?
It requires massive compute power, electricity, connectivity, and digital devices.
It can’t do anything in the physical realm.
It can write a beautiful homily, but it can’t “rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.” It has no capacity to hear God and respond. It has no capacity to tailor a sermon or guidance to what one congregation needs to hear on this particular Sunday.
It can craft a legal brief, modeled after precedent, but it has no ability to make a judgment.
It’s only as good as the data sets used to train it. It has no ability to discern what is truthful and beautiful within that data set.
It doesn’t cite its sources for what it produces. (This gives it a veneer of originality, but remember, it’s fundamentally a clever mimic based on pre-existing information available to it.)
Business Perspective
OpenAI was started with seed money from Elon Musk, Microsoft, and others. ChatGPT runs on Microsoft Azure cloud computing, not Amazon or Google’s cloud platforms. Microsoft has offered to buy 49% of OpenAI, which would give OpenAI a market valuation of $29B. Tools like ChatGPT integrated into Bing search and Office could reposition Microsoft relative to Google and Apple. (I worked closely with Microsoft for several years earlier in my career – they’re savvy, think long-term, and have massive cashflows.)
ChatGPT is currently (largely) free to use in research mode, but it’s not free to run. It requires massive compute power to run large language models and train them. ChatGPT already has an API, so it’s straightforward to connect the capability to other software. Presumably licensing the capability to others (“Just add our AI to your system for $X per month for up to 20,000 queries”) is how OpenAI will generate revenue.
The business model is crucial for AI success. Most people don’t understand that Alexa and Siri are money losing operations. Amazon lost about $10B in 2022 with Alexa devices and running the back end software. ChatGPT-level sophistication is impressive, but organizations can’t lose money forever.
We know that government agencies interface with technology companies. I expect ongoing controversies about how much governments (foreign and domestic) influence the businesses operating this technology.
Open questions to be explored
Amidst all the hype, there are uncomfortable questions which don’t have answers today. Examples:
Who owns the copyrights to what ChatGPT produces? If I ask ChatGPT to create a collection of haiku poems, can I publish them as “my” work? Will OpenAI get licensing revenue if a musician uses ChatGPT to create lyrics to what becomes a hit song? [Same questions for AI tools that create image and video.] If something profitable emerges because ChatGPT created a derivative from copyrighted work, should the original author receive compensation?
What governance models should apply to ChatGPT? Is OpenAI liable for text it generates which someone finds offensive? (Side note: Microsoft had to shut down an earlier and impressive chatbot called Tay because it essentially became a Nazi afficionado.) This is a powerful tool, and will certainly be useful to propogandists and marketers alike. There should be conversations, too, about the training data sets – what content is selected, and how are they weighted?
How does AI fit into quality education? This AI capability will impact our education models. How can we preserve the value of the difficulty of writing when there’s a cheap tool that could easily get you a B- on your next essay assignment? The process of writing and editing is a mind-sharpening effort, with long-term payoffs. And how will we evaluate teachers and professors in the academic world if it’s easy to craft decent text articles that sound authoritative even if they’re unoriginal?
To what extent will people choose to interact with an AI like ChatGPT rather than interacting with other people? What would be the secondary consequences of that choice? We know this about ourselves: We desperately long for communication and social interaction, and need it, but also fear and dread it because it’s difficult and fraught with challenges. We’re less than one lifetime into a digital communication age and already struggling with some of the downsides. This level of AI toolset introduces new complexities.
What other questions come to your mind?
Near-term Technology Trends
ChatGPT-type of AI tools are already being integrated into software for writing (Lex), research, and managing personal information collections (e.g., Notion). That trend will accelerate now. Search is next – we’ll likely see a combination of a list of links to content and an AI-generated commentary.
Expect that biometrics will be much more important for information security. A simple password will not be sufficient to protect your information. The typical Captcha step will easily be overrun by AI.
Plagiarism-checkers will need a new evolution.
Before long we’re going to have to testify that our work is original and not created by an AI. That’s going to push enhanced trust-checking software, probably more biometrics.
Using ChatGPT Wisely as a Tool
New tools give us options. I suggest that AI tools like ChatGPT put a premium on good questions, imagination, and discernment. ChatGPT will be a boon for generating ideas and starting points for further editing. One can get a pre-first draft easily, and use that as inspiration and mechanical help.
Treat the output like you would a wet bar of soap in the shower – don’t grip too tightly or you lose it. Do not put all your trust in an AI tool. Keep your ‘Captain Skeptical’ hat close by, and check what it generates carefully. This is a powerful research tool to explore topics and ideas. If you work with code, it could reduce carpal tunnel problems.
We must be ever vigilant and discerning as these tools evolve and improve. The responses are slick and impressive, even if they’re wrong. There will be times when you should sniff out garbage amidst a lovely meal presentation. The way to become discerning about lies and manipulation is to focus your attention on what is true and beautiful – so that the lies and manipulation stand out as wrong, even if you’re not sure why or how. Years ago, banks trained employees handling money to identify counterfeit bills by only letting them handle genuine currency bills for weeks. After that, they could rapidly pull out bills that didn’t feel right somehow and set them aside. Nearly all of these were indeed counterfeits. A wise person saturates himself with the truth.
Be mindful of ChatGPT’s limitations (see list above) and don’t over-humanize these tools. Remind yourself that AI is all A and no I. Honor the value of the tools without diminishing the value of flesh-and-blood people who are both physical and spiritual in ways no AI can ever attain.
I can’t easily predict what will happen in education and fields of work which are heavily text oriented. I can’t easily predict what new legal and regulatory changes are coming. I can say that we’re going to need wise and patient people in this effort. This technology is advancing far faster than our education, social, and legal systems can evolve. We should not trust these serious decisions with infantilized unserious ‘adults.’
As one of my mentors advises, use tools without being a victim or addicted to them, and sleep with one eye open.
Many personal, political, economic, and social problems happen — and grow worse over time instead of better — when we decide that the consequences of someone knowing the truth will be FAR worse than hiding the truth. Lies are always at the root of evil, and therefore accountability and transparency slow the effects of evil. This is fractal; the benefits of being truthful and the problems of hiding the truth affect us as individuals, in families, in communities and tribes, in nation states.
[Sidebar before someone brings up Santa Claus or vulnerable people: I’m talking about functioning adults. I don’t have a problem with shielding young children from the whole truth when they can’t handle it, or an elderly person with dementia.]
Students of power have long observed that retaining power is most likely when you “deny till you die.” Never admit. If you can’t deny any longer, switch to “that’s old news.” Keep enough dirt on everyone so that you can smear it on anyone who challenges you with truth. If you can’t find dirt, make it up, and project on them what they accuse you of doing. Point out hypocrisy. Distract, distort, downplay. Rely on the “I have no recollection” card. History is replete with examples of people doing this “successfully.”
I say “successfully” because it’s only successful from a limited perspective. There is nothing wholesome or fulsome about it, however much it “works.” Individuals are scarred and hardened. Trust is eroded. Cynicism is fueled. Anger is kindled. The positive dimensions of justice and liberty are pushed further out of reach. Plus, there are all the missed positive examples of someone courageously telling the truth.
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Science requires that there be objective, attainable truth. Scientists are in pursuit of the yet-unknown truth – that’s the mission of the whole enterprise. Every answered question leads to more questions to explore, more unknowns. (The rate of new unknowns is higher than the rate of new learning. The gap between what we know and what we don’t yet know will always get bigger!)
Our problem is with the institutions that create and protect The Science™, not with scientific inquiry as a practice. The Science™ begins with the right answer, which is anathema to inquiry. The clue is that force, or at least the threat of force, is required to sustain The Science™.
We have multiple instances in recent years which illustrate the problems created when people vested in a certain way of thinking about a scientific question are more fearful of consequences than the truth. Queries about the covid-19 virus (origins, effectiveness of masking and lockdowns, treatment options) were actively suppressed – I highly recommend Jay Bhattacharya’s commentary here. There are amyloid plaques in the brains of people who died with Alzheimer’s, but we now know that some of key papers that launched a multibillion-dollar enterprise in drug treatment were fabricated. You probably didn’t hear much about that. Analysis in 2009 documented fraudulently cloned embryos. Baker and Penny published a Nature paper in 2016 documenting that more than 70% of medical papers could not be reproduced. I can share much more.
I’m not anti-science. But we’ve come to a point where people rightfully begin to distrust the institution and the broad swath of ‘experts.’ A portion of this is simply that we make errors in measurements and even more in interpretation. That portion can be resolved by genuine inquiry and challenge. A generous helping is that people “with a lot to lose if the truth comes out” aren’t telling the truth. They’re spending energy to squelch any challenge. As Richard Feynman said, “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
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One can go on to other institutions: Education. Contemporary HR departments. Departments of the Intelligence. Military branches. Unions. Church denominations. The Financial Advisory Industry. Large media companies. Practically any sizable bureaucracy. Pick-your-favorite-big-corporation. This problem is endemic, which should tell us about the perfectibility of human nature. By some measures, general trust in institutions is extremely low.
We need to demand the truth from leaders and institutions which have broad influence and impact. Pointing fingers at politicians, corrupted institutions, and organization leaders is practically a sport. People have long noticed that everyone wants to change the world, and few want to change themselves. It’s much more fun than reflecting on your own situation where you prefer lies to the truth because the consequences are hard and scary.
Which we often do. We hide things we’re not proud of. We shape our stories.
The way to strengthen institutions as truth tellers is for a critical number of influential individuals in those institutions to believe that truth matters more than consequences. “Fixing” institutions goes back to individuals making courageous choices.
This is a true statement: “The question ISN’T what you need to do. The question IS who you need to be.” — Dan Rockwell
And so is this: “The important thing after deciding is DOING.” – Michael Smith
Is it Be or Do? We are what we do; we do what we are.
It’s convenient to get internally caught up in this, stalling rather than moving forward. Marcus Aurelius wrote in his personal diary, “Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.”
We get more of what we celebrate. We become more like what we imitate. The dearth of mature role models (men and women, in all walks of life) is a tragedy in our time. I’m saddened that much of our edu-tainment culture celebrates immaturity, goofiness, and narcissism. I’m encouraged that the deepest-resonating stories are still about people fighting for the good and growing through adversity.
Be aware of this tendency: We want to be the noun with doing the verb. We want to be fit, but don’t want to exercise. We want to be a great writer, but am unwilling to write systematically day after day. We want to be a good person while giving free rein to every impulse. We want to have X mastery, and want it instantly.
I suggest we adopt this paradigm: Choose to do the things congruent with the person you want to be. Especially do the private work that others don’t see that enables a person to perform consistently and well. Do those, today, and again tomorrow. Let the power of compounding carry you to mastery.
You might think, “Glenn must do that really well all the time.” And you’d be wrong.
…
Glenn Brooke’s biggest problem is Glenn Brooke.
There, I said it.
Self-management and self-leadership are crucial to maturity. We’ve never ‘arrived’ at a point where we no longer need to battle against our flawed hearts and minds. Wishing this were so, or thinking that other people have gone beyond this battle, is evidence that we must continue to battle.
The military language is useful because it resonates with us – we fight for what is important and against that which works against human thriving. Some have told me they’re uncomfortable when I use conflict and military language to describe this reality. I’m open to suggestions. I’ve asked what they prefer. No one has given me suitable alternatives.
Sure, I have enemies. There are forces actively arrayed against what I believe and people I love. Their powerful strategies including exploiting my internal flawed nature. Example: “Let’s ‘help’ Glenn get angry about this less important thing, and then he’ll overlook the more important thing we’re doing over there. If that fails, we know how to trigger Glenn’s pride and puff him up just before we puncture him. That works reliably well.”
I concur with Jordan Peterson about the source of courage: Fear of God. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” we read in Scripture. Our courage to speak out against what is evil comes because we know where evil takes us (and people we love, and all made Imago Dei) – and we fear that more. Therefore, we speak and act. Therefore, we pray about what we ourselves cannot defeat or persuade, mindful that our true enemy is spiritual darkness.
We build our courage in small moments. We like the story where our courage is tested in the big moment, the point of crisis, but the more difficult reality is that our courage is built and tested day by day. A practical help here: We tend to think other people are thinking about us far more than they are thinking about us. Nearly everyone is consumed with their own stuff. Remember this when you’re worried about what people will think of you.
Anticipatory self-reflection is useful. What courage do I need today? Using my imagination and predictive power, what moments could occur today where courage is needed, and what will I do in that moment? How do I want to look back on today’s moments that required courage? What’s far bigger than my fears of others?
There is an account about Jesus’ interactions with the teachers of the law where they publicly ask him about his authority while there is a crowd around him. He asks a question in response about the authority behind John the Baptist’s message. They confer and decide that they fear the crowd around them more than they want to know the answer. “We don’t know,” they say. We enjoy this story because of the way Jesus “puts them in their place” when he says, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.” Perhaps later those teachers of the law wondered, “What if we’d had the courage to give him our answer, what might we have learned, what might we have gained?” I suggest a lesson here is that some learning and growth only comes when we don’t fear the crowd.
How does courage fit into “Glenn Brooke’s biggest problem is Glenn Brooke?” Socrates urged “Know thyself.” Self-leadership is about overcoming the self that is dangerous and holding you back. Self-control is required for the self to be worthy of our calling and potential, staying out of the pitfalls of Ego and Despondency. Proverbs and the New Testament letters speak of self-control, as did Sun Tzu, Confucius, Aristotle, and multiple Stoics. This is hardly a new thought. It remains our contemporary challenge.
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Echo chambers are comfy.
One reason living in echo chambers is bad for us is that we’ll stay wrong about something much longer than we need to. You and I are wrong about some things, but we often can’t learn which things until someone challenges our ideas and forces us to defend them. The sharpest scientists, philosophers, pundits, and military leaders know that the ‘enemy’ is the best teacher.
Take your ideas, perspectives, and practices out into the larger world. Let them get hammered on the anvil of dialogue. Let them get cooked in the crucible of conflict. What remains is far stronger and better.
Think of it this way: an echo has no force for change.
What would you say to your VP or CEO if she gave you 30 seconds to explain what your team does, and why it’s valuable?
What if she gave you 5 minutes?
In other words, can you distill your key messaging to senior leaders and deliver it concisely and well?
This framework – which has been used by sales professionals for many years – will help you:
“This is a __________ that does __________. This helps people ____________.”
Your 30 second pitch could sound like these:
“Our XYZ operation consistently delivers high-quality ______ at an industry-low price. This helps the organization keep repeat customers at 40% margins.”
“Our team identifies key alliance partners in adjacent markets. This supports our corporate strategy of branching into a new sales channels.”
“Our team is focused on improving financial margins by analyzing opportunities to phase out less profitable products without losing our best customers. We have recommendations for an 8% margin improvement in two regions.”
Note the use of “our team” vs. “my group” or “I….”
If the question is really about what you have done as an individual, frame your response in terms of organization benefit. “I was invited to take responsibility for staunching talent loss and boosting engagement of XYZ group after product and sales failures last year. We’ve made progress as demonstrated by 60% less turnover this year and tangible sales gains.”
Survival skills in the wilderness include starting a fire (and maintaining it), building shelters, finding water and purifying it, treating injuries, signaling, navigating, avoiding poisonous plants and animals, finding and preparing food.
You can train on these independently. That kind of focus is necessary to master the basics. In the real situation, you have the added challenge of putting them together. A fire without a shelter will be of limited value in a cold rainy night. Spending hours on making the shelter ‘just right’ limits how much energy and daylight left find water. Treating injuries is usually first. Water is more critical than food, for at least the first two weeks. But which is more important next – fire or shelter? The answer varies depending on your specific situation.
You can think about leadership skills – analyzing, deciding, communicating, developing relationships – in much the same way. They are all part of the package, but it takes experience and wisdom to know what to do first, and then next.
There are two more parallels. First, preparedness matters. Information, equipment, training, and prior experience matter. In tense situations we rise to the level of our training, not the level of our knowledge.
Second, the moment you realize you’re lost, or facing an unknown situation, you should sit down and think before wandering further. How did you get here? What’s the most critical thing to do next. Breathe deeply and let any panic evaporate. Make a plan – the simpler the better.
You have a clear vision for the future. You have the big idea that will revolutionize the market. You can see how a transformed process approach would work far better than the current successful model.
Wise leaders don’t get too far ahead of their organization. Product developers can’t get too far head of customers.
We read the stories of Henry Ford transforming the car industry, of multifunction smartphones destroying Nokia’s mobile phone dominance, or of Abraham Lincoln’s vision for winning the war and then reconstructing a unified country. After the fact they look like amazing and fast leaps. They were incremental steps along a vision.
If you go racing along as a leader and people can’t keep up, you’re in front of the line but you’re no longer leading. People will naturally find someone leading at a slower pace.
Yes, it’s frustrating. Yes, this requires patience. Celebrate the wins along the way without becoming satisfied with the destination.
You might have a few opportunities in your career to rapidly expand your team through a hiring surge. It’s a welcome change from downsizing and cost cutting, but you do face different problems. Here are hard-won lessons so you can avoid some of the mistakes I and others have made when given this opportunity.
Develop a clear mission statement for adding positions. Something like “We’re adding 6 positions with _____ skills to deliver __________ which helps the organization [this way].” Repeatedly communicate the focus area and expectations.
Think team hires vs. individual hires. Interview candidates for several positions. Use broad-strokes job postings which can encompass several positions. Work closely with HR to ensure they understand what you want to accomplish. Accept their help for keeping you out of trouble with hiring protocols.
Continue to be selective in hiring to get the best people for the roles (and anticipated work to come). Treat hiring as a disqualification process to sort through candidates. Having six open positions is not a reason to substitute quantity for appropriate quality.
Onboarding is crucial, and a considerable energy investment. (See The Ultimate Guide to Onboarding New Knowledge Workers for strategy and tactics.) A helpful approach when you have multiple people coming on quickly is to assign portions of the onboarding to existing employees. “Jill, I’d like you to handle onboarding for all the safety protocols and give them tours of the facility. Mike, I’m giving you the responsibility to review the division structure, and introduce them to our contacts in HR and Production. I’ll give them the overview of how our current projects fit into the business goals.” Two-fold benefit: The workload is distributed and more consistent; the new employees quickly get into discussions with others in your team.
Demonstrate fast value capture from new hires. Look for opportunities to demonstrate early progress. Permission for hiring surges always comes with high expectations.
Don’t slack off on performance management for your weaker performers. It’s tempting because poor performers can ‘hide’ more readily in a larger team. It’s a mistake because senior leaders expect a higher level of contribution from the whole team.
Decide if and where you can take more risks with projects. There are likely projects where the risk of delegating leadership to someone more junior is manageable. Take advantage of development opportunities for people who demonstrated trustworthiness.
Be wary about giving all the cool, sexy projects to the new hires, leaving loyal long-timers with the routine. Don’t unintentionally create space for resentment to fester.
Talk with your direct reports about how to preserve and amplify the best of your culture as the organization gets bigger. Get their input and cooperation.
A hiring surge often requires re-structuring of reporting relationships. There is no ideal org chart; consider all the tradeoffs. Consider which of your existing people managers can take on more direct reports. You might have opportunities for a first-time manager. Keep in mind that they’ll need extra help and feedback for a season. Be realistic about your own capacity to add direct reports; keep margin in your own role to be able to address issues and lead a larger group.
Plan to give your boss a periodic update on personnel and project expansion. They’re putting trust in you. Demonstrate you’re validating that trust. Put meetings on the calendar at 3 months and 6 months to review current state and get their feedback.
Hiring surges are an exciting opportunity and a chance for you to shine as you create more value for your organization. The tips above can help you!
