Month: March 2023

People talk about “half-assed” efforts, but what would “full-assed” effort look like?

I’d like to see “Time happens” on a bumper sticker.

It’s amazing what a little bit of silliness does to refresh the day.

“Distracted from distractions by distractions” – a line from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets – nicely sums up a big chunk of most people’s day.

If you want to influence people, know what they idolize.  If you want to avoid being manipulated, let only a few know what you idolize. 

A trait common to the people I most admire:  They never whine.

Many people would be wise if they didn’t think they already were.  When was the last time you heard someone lament about their deep foolishness?

The contrarian is not automatically the smartest person in the conversation.

It’s significant that Jesus commanded his disciples to be innocent as doves AND wise as serpents.

Wisdom is knowing what to do when there is no established rule.

Distinguish the respect and perks you deserve as an individual from what people associate with your leadership role.  The role ends or changes.  This famous story teaches it well.  I have a friend who will occasionally text me “Styrofoam cup” as a reminder to keep my head in the right place.

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I heard a story about a former Under Secretary of Defense who gave a speech at a large conference. He took his place on the stage and began talking, sharing his prepared remarks with the audience. He paused to take a sip of coffee from the Styrofoam cup he’d brought on stage with him. He took another sip, looked down at the cup and smiled.

“You know,” he said, interrupting his own speech, “I spoke here last year. I presented at this same conference on this same stage. But last year, I was still an Under Secretary,” he said.

“I flew here in business class and when I landed, there was someone waiting for me at the airport to take me to my hotel. Upon arriving at my hotel,” he continued, “there was someone else waiting for me. They had already checked me into the hotel, so they handed me my key and escorted me up to my room. The next morning, when I came down, again there was someone waiting for me in the lobby to drive me to this same venue that we are in today. I was taken through a back entrance, shown to the greenroom and handed a cup of coffee in a beautiful ceramic cup.”

“But this year, as I stand here to speak to you, I am no longer the Under Secretary,” he continued. “I flew here coach class and when I arrived at the airport yesterday there was no one there to meet me. I took a taxi to the hotel, and when I got there, I checked myself in and went by myself to my room. This morning, I came down to the lobby and caught another taxi to come here. I came in the front door and found my way backstage. Once there, I asked one of the techs if there was any coffee. He pointed to a coffee machine on a table against the wall. So I walked over and poured myself a cup of coffee into this here Styrofoam cup,” he said as he raised the cup to show the audience.

“It occurs to me,” he continued, “the ceramic cup they gave me last year . . . it was never meant for me at all. It was meant for the position I held. I deserve a Styrofoam cup.”

“This is the most important lesson I can impart to all of you,” he offered.

“All the perks, all the benefits and advantages you may get for the rank or position you hold, they aren’t meant for you. They are meant for the role you fill. And when you leave your role, which eventually you will, they will give the ceramic cup to the person who replaces you. Because you only ever deserved a Styrofoam cup.”

Thought experiment, only a small step from today’s capabilities:  Microsoft offers an AI-based query interface to a combination of the whole internet plus all the content in your organization’s Office 365 apps (mail, calendar, documents, meeting content, instant messages).  You can swiftly get answers to:

• Which people in our company know the most about ______ ?
• Summarize the key product information about X and compare with Y
• Who does ____ and ____ talk with most often about ____?
• What are employees saying about this leader?
• Please find a slide from before <date> which showed our inventory trend line
• Please find relevant spreadsheets from the last 3 months with data on ____
• Compare the marketing plans for NA and EMEA regions
• How many employees are making resumes?
• Please summarize evidence that anyone on this distribution list are being recruited by a headhunter or are thinking of leaving.
• What is the protocol or procedure for ______?
• What are the three most common items in employee development plans this year compare to last year?
• Summarize the comments posted in the last town hall
• Who are the most likely people to bridge between these two functions in the company based on their email correspondence and meeting attendance?

The benefits would be palpable. This would be a very attractive as a tool to extract more value from the phenomenally large amount of unstructured and messy data.  It would also be a boon to reduce the cost of employee turnover.  Re-use of information would reduce time wasted re-constructing something already available.

What are the consequences?

• HR and IT groups will need to update rules and constraints about personnel information to ensure compliance with laws (which vary by legal entity).  Legal will want to review the rules about retaining information.
  
• Some people will insist that their information be excluded from this level of query, based on their roles.  Attorneys, for example, might have a good case for this.

• Employees might intellectually know that all the content belongs to the company, not them personally, but today few behave this way.  Employees will be increasingly reluctant to record anything about their opinions or insights which might surface in unexpected ways. 

• Employees will need coaching and help to ask better questions, or intentionally ‘tag’ or label some content (e.g., presentations and meeting notes) to make them more accessible to this search.

• There might be a recognition/reputation opportunity for people who generated most-used content.  (Similar to how scientists build a reputation by the number of citations for their published papers.)

• It will be difficult at times to assess the accuracy or relevance of what such a query returns.  What is signal, and what was signal then but noise now? “Trust and verify” will be important.   

• There will be significant temptations to use this additional capability in “Big Brother” ways to monitor employees. 

What have I missed?

Study is the renewing of our mind as fasting is to our bodies.  The discipline of study is necessary to become a deeper person.  

Study is a discipline because it requires energy, persistence, and learnable skills.  We love the modern fantasy that we could simply “plug in” and download knowledge and expertise.  Perhaps someday data transfer directly into our brains will be feasible.  But I’m skeptical that this will generate knowledge and expertise.  We already know the act of study, the hard work of absorbing and using information, shapes our neural connections.  Study transforms our brain at a cellular level and we benefit from the meta effects of this process. 

Study is not just formal schooling, or reading books, or apprenticeship learning a craft.  Study is fundamentally about paying attention, making observations, questioning, testing ideas, pulling together threads across time and space, seeking understanding and insights that help one another live better. We certainly pursue what intrigues us and we examine everything that touches our sphere of influence.  We study both people we admire and people who disgust us. We study the natural world of creation, and we study what our fellow humans have created.  We study the past as we build the future while walking in amazement in the present.

We study ourselves and other people.  Self-reflection is a hallmark of being truly human; it is unclear if any other animal in creation studies itself.  We’re created as intensely social creatures, so we consciously study other people.  There is great wisdom in being able to discern intentions and motivations that drive behaviors, whether conscious or unconscious. 

Many of us were required to read one of Shakespeare’s plays in school, likely Romeo and Juliet.  Did your eyeballs pass over the page, or did you actually read it?  Did you read it well enough to temporarily remember enough to pass a test?  Did you read it and ponder it and think about how the story speaks to all kinds of inter-family conflicts?  If you read it as a teenager and then in your 40’s, how much more did you recognize and grasp about the patterns of relationships and the angst of love?   Only the read-reflect-reread work makes you a deeper person.                        

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I won’t sugar-coat this for you: Study is about leaning into the old, the new and the difficult to find wisdom. I have friends and colleagues who consider reading old and hard books impossibly difficult. One asked if there is a GetAbstract summary for Plato and Aristotle.  (I don’t think he was kidding.)  

Here’s good news: Genuine wisdom comes in finite amounts that you can absorb. You can get your head around it because it simultaneously grounds you.  You have the time to both absorb wisdom and act upon it.  The requirement: shut all the noise off.  Connect with deep people, whether dead authors, distant, or in personal touch.  Study is an investment to generates rewards over time.

Becoming a deep person requires selective input, emphasizing wisdom and truth.  

We’re awash in data and information.  We’re spending a big fraction of our waking hours interacting with electronic screens. Chances are good that you’re enduring multiple firehoses of media negativity and confusion.  The people generating this brew are savvy and intentional, but they’re not deep.  They benefit at your expense when you’re confused, distracted, and undiscerning.

Nearly everyone reading this newsletter lives in a world of abundance.  We have more food and stuff than we need, and more than is good for us.  Self-control is a difficult-to-gain strength.

This is where we apply the discipline of fasting. 

(Right now at least a few of my readers will agree with my friend Bob: “Ack! Can’t I just give money instead of fasting?”)

Fasting from food builds our self-control and tempers our physical appetites. Deep people develop and refine self-control. The ancients didn’t need to know about dopamine resets and autophagy to recognize the health benefits of fasting.  Intermittent fasting is popular today to better manage our body weight. I consider that the side benefit of fasting, not the primary aim. 

Fasting from news or social media will also help you break the addictive power of media.  It’s frankly unpleasant at first, and you’ll need to ignore the little voice that says you’re missing out.  After a short while you’ll have much more clarity.  When you come back to media you’ll sense the difference between useful information and noise.

Fasting from easy abundance (automated tools, convenient foods for cooking, book summaries, Google searches instead of memorization, and dare I say ChatGPT essay writing) reinforces thinking.  I could write at length about the dangers to individuals and societies when we don’t think. Thinking is hard work and necessary work for thriving.  This kind of fasting also prepares us to be better craftsman and leaders, too.  We intuitively know the superior value of hand-made, hand-written, and in-person, right?

Anyone can become a deep person, or at least a deeper person, because it is a journey. We make significant progress without ever “arriving.” Deep people aren’t manufactured, they’re formed.

Though there is a large body of knowledge about how to form crowds and masses, what I’m interested in here is forming individuals.  Here are the basic realities for forming individuals:

·         Everything has the potential to form us because humans are inherently imitators and emulators. 

·         Not everything forms us well.

·         Our choices and behaviors influence what forms us.

·         Formation is ongoing and not final; what has been formed can be reformed.

We are individually and collectively a product of our formation.  What we’ve experienced and learned from family, peers, friends, schooling, churches, organizations, media of all kinds, entertainment, hobbies, sports, wars, and more shape us.  We’re inescapably swimming in the multigenerational cultures we live in even if we’re swimming differently than others.  Every generation absorbs and learns. Formation is not static.  You are not the same person you were at 12, 18, or 30, or yesterday.

(I’m assuming here that we have common agreement that there is good and evil, that love and morality matter, that there is more than power, more than the material world.  Formation still matters if you disagree – but logically there is no point to pursuing the journey to become a deep person.)

What works against good formation? There are modern conceits like these:

·         “I’m already good enough.  I don’t need to improve.”  This is usually followed with “It’s those people.”

·         Modern people are automatically smarter and better than everyone who came before us.  We have evolved beyond those primitive ignoramuses.

·         “I can be the <noun> without doing the <verb>.”  Examples: I can be fit without consistent exercise, I can be good without self-discipline and sacrifice, etc.

·         There’s nothing wrong with being double-minded and living a duality (good & deep in some areas, wicked and shallow in others).  

·         “I’ll have more time later.”

Hmmm… perhaps none of these conceits are modern.

Today there are passionate advocates and critics about our schools, our media, entertainment, censorship narratives, and political perspectives.  Why?  These are means of forming people.  We might not articulate the “formation” part.  What you and I are exposed to (or not) has enormous consequences in how we think, feel, and interpret the world. 

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When we go deeper in the ocean or the earth, it becomes darker and darker.  When we pursue depth as a person we are growing brighter and see more light.  We become more aware than ever.  There is a terrific line from the movie “Joe Versus the Volcano”: “My father says that almost the whole world is asleep.  Everyone you know. Everybody you see. Everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake and they live in a state of constant total amazement.”  I think the key word there is ‘amazement.’  Not everyone is truly asleep.  Everyone truly awake is amazed. That’s what greater light brings forward.

Perhaps one way to describe a deep person is that they’re increasingly well-grounded in light.

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The Apostle Paul gave the Romans the paradigm to becoming a deep person (emphasis mine):

“I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:1-2)

The paradigm (whether you’re Christian or religious or not) is two-fold:

First, actively put your body in a place of sacrifice that you may be formed well.

Second, fight the default messages of shallowness by renewing your mind with narratives consistent with becoming a deep person.

This is conscious, planned, diligent, ongoing work.  No one becomes a deeper person passively, by osmosis, or through random sleepwalking.  It requires bodily work – it’s not purely a mental matter.  It requires shaping our minds – shaping the body is insufficient.  This makes sense because philosophy and biology concur that we’re body and mind together.

The journey to becoming a deep person has everything to do with voluntary and cooperative formation.  You must push your will towards a collection of behaviors and chosen environments to maximize your deep formation and minimize your shallow formation.

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I published a book last year about influencing the next ten generations. You have far more influence potential than the “shallow” world wants you to know.

I believe my calling now is to enroll others in the great journey to becoming deep people.  It’s easy to criticize shallow people, but this only leads to more shallow relationships. Instead, observe the power in a positive example.  Deep people somehow catalyze an inner conversation where a person says to herself, “I want to be like that person.”  Inspiration (literally, breathing in the spirit) creates the attractive pull into the journey of depth.  Isn’t this why we honor the great people of history? They inspire us to become more like them.  

We speak sloppily about “time management.”  You can certainly make decisions based on a time factor.  You can choose how to watch time.  But the idea that you can manage time is a bit silly.  Try telling time “Do this, not that.”  Or “Change the consequences of your motion.” Try giving time feedback on what happened.

Maybe I should start a side hustle selling bumper stickers that say, “Time happens.”

What you can (and must) do is manage yourself and other people working with you.  You can make choices based on your energy level.  You can take actions which shape your energy level. You can direct and redirect your focus.  You can give specific directions related to time. 

My dad used to tell me that the way to understand a situation is to follow the money and follow the power.  This works well but doesn’t always explain people’s behaviors.

You can broaden this into systems analysis by asking “Who is incentivized/disincentivized to behave how?”  Money and power are a subset of all kinds of incentives.  The story we want to tell ourselves (or want others to believe about us) is an incentive – as I wrote before, people die for ideas.  The desire to either fit in or stand out is an incentive.  Vengeance and fear work as incentives.  The common thread of most atrocities in the 20^th century was a powerful conviction that God did not see the perpetrators or hold them to account.  Interpersonal and social cohesion operates with incentives and disincentives, too.

Fundamental: If you want to change a system you must adjust the incentives.  Half the challenge is that the people with power to change a system benefit from the current incentive structure! 

Consider a complex system like healthcare in the US.  It’s incredibly difficult to change because at least four major participants in the system have learned how to optimize it for their own interests.  (Sadly, patients are not one of these four.)  I’m surprised that a high-leverage proposal from years ago – offer individuals the same tax break on insurance we grant corporations – is systematically rejected, but I shouldn’t be.

Consider legislative bodies.  Even the highest character individuals with noble ambitions are usually overwhelmed by the incentive structure of the political system.  Disincentives against greed and corruption have weakened in my lifetime.  Lies are first tolerated, then celebrated. This is a deep echo from the decline of the Roman republic, and Greek and Babylonian history before that.

You can probably think of other examples with larger and smaller scopes.  Education and school administration. Regulatory oversight. Industries dominated by a small number of players. Religious denominations. Voluntary associations.

We trend towards perverse incentives.  Left unchecked and unchallenged, we create the conditions for Caesars.  “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars but in ourselves…”