admin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is my best antidote to wasting time.

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

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

“So what?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Does this situation deserve unrestrained fear?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaders must beware solutions looking for problems. 

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

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

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

Summing up: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mature people hold these truths in constructive tension:

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

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

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

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

It’s all A and no I.    All intelligence requires agency.  None of the machines we’ve built have agency in themselves.  Yet these are very useful tools, just as woodworking, machine tools, hydraulics, and electric motors greatly extend what our physical bodies can accomplish. 

What we term “AI” can be grouped into algorithms and machine learning.

Algorithms are created by individuals who have agency.  “IF this then that,” and “do this next” programming.  The intelligence is in the individual, who can reasonably explain the why and the how of the algorithm.  Millions of us receive customized email messages from Amazon which recommend products based on our previous searches.  These are created by algorithms and software written by intelligent individuals.  Glenn Brooke gets recommendations on an odd collection of old books, new business books, backpacking gear, laundry soap, and dog poop bags.  

Machine learning is a relatively new kind of tool.  Intelligent people create a training data set and a decision model to make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed to do so.  During the training phase there is a feedback loop so that over time the model gets better at making predictions.  There are some similarities to the way we think neurons in our brain work, but machine learning make progress in a different way than human thinking (which is partly why it’s a valuable tool).  A machine learning system cannot explain how it arrives at a prediction, but the predictions are useful.

There are many different applications for machine learning.  Most are quite specific to a business or research process.  Famous examples are the machine learning models that play Go and Chess better than any human or earlier software program.  Alpha-Go, for example, was trained by giving the model tens of thousands of games of Go, then played against itself.  Alpha-Go plays quite differently than any human Go master.  Alpha-Go can’t play backgammon or checkers or Monopoly — but the underlying machine learning technology could be pointed to new training data sets to create a world-class players in those games.  Another powerful example of machine learning is DeepMind’s system to predict 350,000 protein structures – a real leap forward for medical treatments.

The ability to make better predictions or decisions from messy, complex data is a powerful asset.  The key thing to recognize about machine learning is that no one can really explain in detail how the prediction was made, and the machine learning tool is not self-aware of why it has been optimized a certain way.  Intelligence is still required to decide what to do with the prediction that machine learning made.  

There is no universal “AI.”  Algorithms and machine learning models are exquisitely built to accomplish tailored tasks.  You can combine many of them into systems which appear to act intelligently, but all the intelligence is in the creators.  The idea that a new intelligence will spontaneously develop when we connect a sufficiently large amount of computational power is simply false. Intelligence requires inference and leaps of connections which are impossible in today’s 0 and 1 binary coding systems. Everything that “appears” intelligent is a function of human designs. Scientists and philosophers have at best working definitions of alive, intelligence, and consciousness which are far short of being able to engineer these things.

Remember: We shape our tools, and our tools shape us.  He who shapes the vocabulary shapes understanding.

“Things are going downhill.”

“We need to stop this before it gets worse.”

“Back in my day we never had this mess.”

Embedded in these statements is an implicit “things used to be better.”  Sometimes that is true.  Yet there remains the pervasive idea that things are worse now and we need to “return to” something. 

Challenge question: “When were things great for everyone? At what point in history was 99% of the human race experiencing a life free of struggles and corruption and failing?”

When in history were these things — globally, for all peoples — not an issue?

• Lack of accountability
• Partisan news  
• Lying politicians and corrupt rulers
• Ungrateful youth
• Nepotism and favoritism surpassing competence
• Elders resistant to progress
• Racism, sexism, classism
• Elites believing they have the right ideas
• People believing wild rumors and rejecting facts
• Censorship and suppression of information
• Failures of masculinity and femininity
• Unfair employer practices
• Distrust in institutions
• Wealth spent foolishly

We have made enormous progress, and there is still progress needed.   People have experienced “Camelot” moments in time but they didn’t last and certainly didn’t include many people.   Heaven is in the future, not the past.  

Watch out for this: Many manipulators and unscrupulous leaders desiring power will constantly refer you back to some time “before X was lost.” The scrape the wounds rather than heal them because they know open wounds ooze energy and passion. They don’t want to solve the issue, just make promises in a way that pulls you into their orbit and fuels their desires. This is at the root of many mob behaviors.

What can I do to positively influence the next 10 generations?  What is in my 300 year plan?  My legacy is most likely through developing people and creating through communication rather than inventing something.

Therefore, I begin by clarifying the characteristics of the people, and then asking what I can do to foster those characteristics.  Wise people have observed that history is biography.  So, too, is the future.

Given the scenarios of the next 300 years, what are the people characteristics we should encourage, foster, and reinforce?  In no particular order, maybe some overlap and redundancy:

• Strong sense of identity
• Pragmatic problem-solvers
• Change-shapers
• Rule themselves before they rule others
• Know, fear, honor, and worship the Lord
• Attentive to the Holy Spirit / Muse
• Lifelong learners, creators, lovers
• Optimistic and realistic
• Not easily fooled or tempted to evil
• Clear understanding of their gifting and calling
• Easily pleased and difficult to satisfy
• Generous hearts
• Understand the truth of “There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.”
• Abiding sense of personal and collective responsibility
• Ability to learn from history and biographies
• Skilled communicators and persuaders.  Excellent listeners. Skilled at coaching, and mentoring.
• Tech-savvy and know how to keep technology in its proper place as a tool
• High level of self-respect
• Able to lead themselves before they lead others
• Teachable, and able to teach
• Seek forgiveness, and willing to forgive others
• Good citizens, participating in civic and political spheres
• Know the Bible.  Prayerful and worshipful.  Strong intercessors.
• Effective parents and grandparents
• Good neighbors
• Hospitable
• Courageous
• Mentally and physically tough
• Active, not passive, but knowing that genuine rest has ROI.
• Live fearlessly out of their calling.  Not victims.
• Use money well
• Crush lies with truth, knowing that the truth is good enough.
• Know peace, what it costs, and willing to fight for it.
• “Rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn.”
• Entrepreneurial — able to create value from what others see as nothing
• Effective managers in organizations
• Chain-breakers, freedom-lovers, justice-seekers
• Able to laugh at themselves
• Readers
• Thoughtful decision-makers
• Persistent, faithful, persevering
• Full of hope and confidence in God
• Conveyers of joy
• Mindful of evil and the ways of evil
• Dreamers and doers, adapters and overcomers
• Able and willing to stand up to bullies, thugs, and tyrants
• Protectors of the weak and defenders of the defenseless
• Know how to talk to themselves and feed their minds with what’s needed
• Future-focused without severing themselves from the best foundations of the past
• Resilient and antifragile — get stronger with stress

(What have I missed, or surprised you?  Let me know in the comments.)

These characteristics must be taught and modeled, recognized and acquired.  They don’t “just happen.” They are “the better angels of our nature” to borrow a line from Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address. 

Every individual in every generation needs to strive for these characteristics.  Indeed, fight for them. They’ll only succeed with the help of parents and family, neighbors, teachers, mentors, pastors, employers, and philosophers – the people who create the space which fosters these characteristics, and specifically teach them. (Government powers always seek to press into this space, but the consequences speak for themselves.)

I heard recently that basketball is the most over-coached and under-taught sport.  In my lifetime I have witnessed a growing passivity to character-building.  We are drawn to the coaching part, and fear the teaching part – or perhaps, we don’t know how to teach for character. So, what can I do to foster and develop people like this, over the next 10 generations?  I don’t expect to be alive on the planet in the year 2321, but I could be influential even then.