Month: November 2023

I want to get better at eye contact when I’m listening to people.  I’m not very good at it today.  A few things I’ve learned which can help you and me get better at this:

Humans generate equate eye contact with being heard.  A person is much more likely to leave the conversation thinking “they really listened to me” when you made good eye contact.

About 90% of people are right-eye dominant.  Therefore, focus your attention on their right eye (which is the eye to your left)

Don’t stare or blink unnaturally.  Let your gaze be relaxed.  An intense stare is perceived more like shouting than listening.

A crucial leadership skill is to stay focused on ideas, plans, and observable facts when your team is evaluating options and making decisions.  Aim for vigorous discussion of possibilities and scenarios.  Go last in presenting your ideas to minimize the situation where people are reluctant to disagree with “the boss.”

It’s healthy to critique ideas, statements, and plans.  It’s always a bad idea to criticize individuals or groups of individuals.  Focus on behaviors.  It’s equally bad to interpret criticism of your idea as a personal attack.  You are not the same as your proposal or idea. 

Immature people attack others, and tend to take any criticism personally.  Foster maturity in yourself, model it for others, and train people to have vigorous discussions without making it personal. 

Note: Hard-edge message first, then why it’s ok

Life is hard.  Parenting and becoming an adult are hard.  Jobs are hard, too.

There is no perfectly-joyful-always-wonderful-I-love-it-every-hour job.  20-40% of any job is necessary but not joyful.  20-40% of your hours you’ll be battling boredom, fatigue, a desire to be distracted, and reluctance to do what needs to be done. 

This is true for everyone.  In fact, the larger your range of responsibilities, the bigger risks you manage, the more likely that you only find joy and satisfaction in 10-20% of the job.

So don’t beat yourself up when you have an off hour or day.  Recognize this not as “what’s wrong with this job, or me?” but rather “part of the work, and I can do it.”  Don’t give in to excuses and whining.  We can all up our game, improve our craft, develop better competency, even in the face of the “bleahs.”

You can also watch for this in the people around you. 

Adopt this strategy:  The end-result value is worth the difficulty and annoyances.  The 20% result dwarfs the 80% less pleasant and troublesome.  It’s good that your job is hard. 

I often hear calls for tolerance, balance, and harmony. There are specific problems with each as a goal. Let’s unpack these.

“We should be tolerant!”

If you multiply -1 by -1 you get a positive number.  In that spirit, we must be intolerant of intolerance to get back to tolerance.  It’s uncomfortable.  It means calling out intolerance with gentleness and respect for people and steel spines with hard eyes for ideas and behaviors. 

This brings us back to the difference between being nice and being kind.  Nice people default to avoiding saying anything which might trigger conflict.  Kind people will tell you your fly is open, you have lettuce stuck in your teeth, you’re being a hypocrite or foolish, and to stop claiming victimhood.  Seek out coaches and mentors who are kind, not nice – they’ll give you life-growth feedback.  The old saying “If you can’t say something nice, say nothing at all” is for children still learning self-control, not mature adults navigating challenging opportunities.  And yes, sometimes maturity means shutting up and saying nothing, because that’s the kindest choice. 

…

“But Glenn, it’s about balance!”

First, people speak as if balance is free and self-sustaining.  Balance requires significant work.  I’ve been practicing balance and stability exercises this year.  I assure you, balance requires an amazing number of small muscle movements.  Certain balance positions and balanced slow movements drench me in sweat.

Second, I only want some forms of balance.  I don’t want a balance of good and evil, I want all good.  I don’t want a balance of healthy and unhealthy, I want all healthy.  I don’t want the bad guys to win half the battles.  I don’t want an equal mix of proven-bad ideas and good ideas in an education system.   I’m not being silly, just pointing out the foolishness of “balance” as the ultimate objective. 

We must live with tradeoffs because the world is dynamic.  Instead of seeking balance, aim for constructive tension, rhythms of effort and recovery, and resilience.

…

“Glenn, I just want to live in harmony with everyone.”

Worthy ambition!   My response questions: Is harmony the same as absence of conflict?  Is harmony the same as immediate and perfect consensus?

If so, then we’re in the shallows and wearing masks, suppressing the truth when it’s inconvenient.  We all say some foolish things and have poor ideas. We’re going to miss opportunities to collectively put our ideas on the anvil, hammering them out to improve them, or at least break the bad ideas.  Harmony and consensus are active duty, not passive, not waltzed into on a whim. 

A certain degree of conflict is necessary and desirable.  Read Socrates’ dialogues or Jesus’ interactions with people – constant questioning and challenging assumptions, and frankly, highly uncomfortable! 

I’ve made the argument before that our rich imagination is the single greatest evidence that Homo sapiens sapiens (that’s our official name of our species) is distinct from all other animals, and we’re made in the image of God.  Other animals have language, can solve problems, are self-aware, and use tools.  But the ability to richly imagine something in our minds, discuss it, and create it is not evident in other plants and animals.  God imagines, speaks, and it becomes so.  We imagine, speak and work, and can create something new that did not exist before.

Imagination, like all gifts, must be stewarded.  Stewardship means caring for it – feeding it healthy information, guarding it from harm, and exercising it in the service of God and others.

…

We should feed our imagination rich and good things.  Healthy relationships with laughter (and struggles).  Beauty of all kinds: literature, art, music, crafts.  Productive work.  Time in natural spaces. 

We should not fuel our imagination with wickedness.  This requires some maturity because we must be wise to the ways of evil, including the ugliness in our own hearts.  I understand our fascination with the Borgias, the Godfather movies, stories about gangs – there is much to learn about power and human nature – but we should not want to be these people.  I understand that some people (not me) like horror films, but we should not be seeking entertainment that puts us in the serial killer’s place.  

Our imagination is like an engine.  Don’t put diesel into an engine made for gasoline, even though they are both liquid hydrocarbons.  

…

We steward things for their purpose.  Curiosity is the driving force behind creativity.  Curiosity emerges from exercising our well-fed imagination. Curiosity compounds.

Consume, consume, consume, but never create?  That’s effectively constipation.  Or more politely said, it’s like the Dead Sea, with no outlet for the incoming water other than evaporation.  This is not what Jesus commanded when he said “Have salt in yourselves” (Mark 9:50, ESV).  Flowing water is healthier than stagnant pools.

You and I need to use our imagination to develop questions, explore, dive beneath the visible surface, build and create physical manifestations of what was only in our minds.  This is why we steward our imagination.  Imagination fueled by wickedness only produces what will sicken others and reinforce our weaknesses.  Imagination stocked with truth and beauty will serve as a springboard to create more truth and beauty.

Choose.

“Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil.” (Carl Jung)

“The trouble is, you think you have time.” (Jack Kornfield)

I doubt Carl Jung believed in an actual Devil, but he understood the destructive power of hurry.  I think of hurry as speed-without-decisive-purpose, which will harm rather than help you.  

Jack Kornfield’s comment is a powerful mantra for leaders.  We only have so much time.  We need to be efficient where we can, while being decisive and purposeful.  

Challenge your project team members to squeeze out chronological days between milestones.  Get a series of related tasks done in 3 days instead of 5.  Finish a block of work in 2 sessions of 2 hours, instead of meeting an hour weekly for 6 weeks.  In many ways, work seeks to expand to fill the time we allocate for it.

Many projects seem to have a first 90%, and then a second 90% to complete them.  Can you get the first part done in a few hours, or in two days?  Concentrated effort has ROI.  Constraint creates focus and creativity.  

There are many cases where an 80% solution is adequate.  (Yes, I want you to pursue excellence and have high standards.)  That last 20% might not be worth the 80% additional effort.  These are leadership judgment calls.

Above all, know what you will do with time saved!  Additional small projects.  Study. Improve your network.  Execute a process improvement.  Time carved out should not be frittered away on less valuable things. 

Challenge yourself, challenge your team, raise the bar!  

The normal situation in your career as a team or organization leader is “We don’t have enough people/money/whatever to comfortably do everything we’d like to do, or are asked to do.”    There will be plenty of times when you need to run on lean.  In fact, I encourage you to develop the ability to excel while running on lean resources.  You should be trimming unproductive fat from the program – that’s simply smart management.   The reason why a trained runner only needs the calories of a Wendy’s Triple burger to run a sub-3 hour marathon is that her body is highly efficient.  From the mitochondria up to organ systems and total cardiovascular capacity, every calorie of fuel is burned efficiently.    I suggest you apply strategic allocation to the portfolio of your team’s work that turn into results which measurable help the organization.  This distribution is not at an individual level, but the overall team.   70% of the total team effort needs to go to imperatives (must-do’s) and high ROI initiatives which you will happily feature in the end-of-year summary.    20% of the total team effort should go to a rich mix of wins.  Include some work to develop new capabilities and streamline existing capability to improve productivity.  There is undoubtedly some run-maintain work that is necessary to avoid a future crisis.  Identify areas of growth and innovation, too, based on what you can anticipate about future organization needs.  Not all this needs to be visible to the world; there are plenty of high ROI projects which are foundational and enabling phases of work.  But nothing in this 20% should be embarrassing to discuss.   10% of the total team effort should go into capability & capacity development.  New business and technical skills.  Improved people skills.  Investment in relationships with other groups.  Onboarding new hires.  Better documentation and cross-training.   Why 70-20-10?  Every time I’ve seen a group let one of these 3 get too large, or too small, bad things began to happen.  This distribution isn’t magic, and still requires disciplined execution for success, but it’s a proven pattern you can replicate.   At this point you’re probably saying, “But…” and I’m sure you’re half-right.  Only half.  Push your work into these three categories.  Check at least quarterly to see if the team is still on track.

“You don’t have to attend every argument you’re invited to.” (Kevin Kelly)

This is a good strategy to keep your center in the right place when the political campaign and news-media landscape are sending you 2,419 invitations a day.  Try this: Step back and notice how frequently information is pitched to you as something you should get into arguments about.  And then how large a subset of these are ‘existential’ threats that DEMAND your immediate involvement. 

The inevitable outcome is that many people become jaded, overwhelmed, and don’t do anything specific. They’re already half-defeated. They’re more likely to be inclined to let others do something for them.  This fits perfectly into the power plan. 

I’m still pondering the connections between anger, overwhelm and fear.  You don’t need to study Machiavelli, Locke, Hoffer, or Greene to understand how valuable those three elements are to those who pursue power (or are desperate to grow and retain it). 

Current hypothesis:  The individuals least likely to become part of the senseless populace are those who control their anger, make progress on what’s critically important in the face of overwhelm, and know Who is worthy of their fear.  They pursue optimistic possibilities. They see a brighter future and will work for it.

What do you think?

You know those scenes in Star Trek and Star Wars where Spock and C-3PO calculate the odds of successful whatever (e.g., navigating an asteroid field)?  Great fun, helps drive the plot, but impossible.  They can’t calculate the odds because they don’t have enough information.

The realistic approach when you don’t have enough information is to run simulations many times.  We know these simulations are based on incomplete information, so they’re inherently “wrong but useful.”  We can get some idea of the range of possibilities, rather than a specific number.  We can see where our “gut” response might be wildly off, or relatively aligned.

Appreciating the limits of your predictive power is crucial to being a wise person.  Consider the track record of predictions made about

Tomorrow’s weather, next winter snowfall, and the number of hurricanes

Costs for commodity products like oil, grain, and copper

Outcomes of political elections

Which geopolitical events will drive the news

Who gets cancer or has a heart attack or stroke

We should humbled by our miserable ability to accurately predict the future.

…

As a kid I loved time machine stories.  The idea of being able to go back in time to experience an event is loads of fun.  I especially like something I saw on TV once – can’t remember the title of the show – where people from the future built a time machine to figure out what started the global nuclear war.  They thought if they understood this, they could find a way to prevent it from happening.   It turns out that their invention of the time machine was the catalyst.  Everyone wanted it so they could go back in time and kill their enemies or get rich or secure their power. 

I can remember walking in a park in Cleveland when I was in college, thinking about time travel.  It dawned on me that time travel would require bridging both time and physical space.  The earth spins.  The earth rotates around the sun.  Our solar system is rotating around a massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.  The galaxy is racing along as part of the expansion of the universe.  How could you accurately calculate the right place to ‘appear’ back in time given all these axes of movement? 

The value of time machine stories is to contemplate the precious nature of the present, in the flow of time that includes the past and the future.   We don’t control time; we can only control ourselves, and that’s enough.

…

People watch Star Trek and think “I want the phasers, warp drive, transporters, and the holodeck.” 

Those would be pretty nifty, but I’d start with the sensors and computer systems, then I want the artificial gravity.  Then, the inertial dampers – it’s quite a trick to go from X times the speed of light to an instant full stop without splattering yourself on the forward bulkhead.  

…

Technology breakthroughs happen, they’re coming faster, and they do transform the way we live and perceive the world.

Almost no one alive has memories of what life was like before World War 1.  It was remarkably different than what we have experienced in the last 100 years.  There were many kings, queens, and emperors, and frequent wars between countries.  Extensive colonies and mercantilism were the norm.  Segregation was legal; institutional racism and fixed class structures were common worldwide.  Ships and trains were the way to travel long distances, not planes; letters, not email.  Newspapers ruled, radio was still new, electricity was uncommon, TV was unknown, no satellites, no GPS, no mobile phones.  No plastic.  No antibiotics aside from sulfa and herbal remedies, and only primitive vaccines.  Medicine was still fundamentally the same practice it had been for 400 years, albeit with the concept of germ theory.  About half of your children would die before they were 12 years old.  Wood and coal were the most common means of heating a home, and no one had air conditioning.  Indoor plumbing existed but sewage treatment plants were a futurist concept.  Cars were uncommon and a minority of roads were paved.  Natural disasters and work accidents killed many thousands of people annually.   There was limited global commerce.  Most everything you owned and nearly all the food you ate was produced within 200 miles of your home. 

100 years is a blink in the span of human existence.  

I wonder what some writing in 2123 will say about the remarkable differences between their contemporary life and 2023.  I’ll bet they’re still talking about the problems of being human, with all our weaknesses and struggles, about relationship challenges, and how to manage organizations, and reading biographies for clues about working past rapid change and conflicts.