admin

Relative position and absolute position are completely different measures.  

I was top of my elementary school class, in the top 1% of high school, but only in the top 15% of my university. 

Some mid-level managers have $200 million budgets, and some organizations have VPs with a $220,000 budget. 

The shortest member of the NBA is taller than me, and has a vertical leap about 30 inches higher than me. 

I’m wealthier (funds, access to resources, opportunities, education) than 95% of population of Earth, but don’t feel that way in everyday life.

When I am sitting still, completely relaxed, my body is traveling with the earth.  The rotational speed of my location in Iowa is about 900 miles/hour. The earth is moving an average of 19 miles per second (67,000 miles per hour) in its orbit around the sun.  Our solar system is traveling about 155 miles per second as part of the Milky Way galaxy.   Astrophysicists estimate the Milky Way galaxy is moving about 185 miles per second through the universe. 

Leaders get to decide whether to focus on relative or absolute reference points.

I’m hard on the “climate change” conversation.  I’ve been asked why I am so critical, and why I can’t “accept” what the scientists say.   

It’s personal.

As a boy I devoured the eco-dystopian science fiction stories of the 1970’s.  I read and re-read books like “Limits to Growth” (Donna Meadows et al) and “The Population Bomb” (Paul Erlich).  I asked my dad to get me cassette tapes of seminars by Erlich, Peter Gunter, and Kenneth Watt. I eagerly went to every winter camping opportunity I could with my Boy Scout troop because I read so many articles about the coming Ice Age and wanted to be prepared.   I relished the Earth Day celebrations, which began in 1970.  Though I wasn’t too worried about my home in rural West Virginia being targeted by a Soviet nuke, I talked with my parents about how we could survive on our 11-acre property during the subsequent nuclear winter and drew up plans for a fallout shelter to ride out the first 3 months while the radiation subsided.  (In fifth grade my teacher was worried about how many sketches of fallout shelters and lists of supplies I created, and she talked with my mom about it.)  I did a science project on plants that would still grow in harsh environments I believed were inevitable.  I mapped out which places my family could move to that might still be livable.

I was mentally and emotionally invested.  I would get worked up into a mixture of tears and anger that my parents and grandparents’ generation had “done this” to me.  I had nightmares about my beloved fields and woods becoming a wasteland, and not having enough food to feed everyone I knew.  I wondered if I should become a doctor so I could help all the sick and dying people.

Over a few short years from 1981-1987 I realized that none of the ecological disaster forecasts came true.  Acid rain was a serious problem, but a few regulations and industry innovations eliminated it in the US.  We didn’t run out of oil or natural gas or copper.  There were no food riots in the US, and no mass famines in Russian, India, and China.  The primary famine was in the horn of Africa, and that was caused as much by war as drought.  The US had more trees instead of fewer.  We had warming temperatures and milder winters instead of every winter being like 1977 and 1978.  Commodity prices mostly fell rather than rising exponentially.  The number of earthquakes and forest fires and hurricanes were far lower than had been predicted.  Animal species were not dying off in the thousands per year, and the soils did not uniformly become less productive.

Now I was angry because I had believed all the predictions and wasted all that emotion and energy.  They wrote and spoke so confidently, cleverly using some facts.  They had “computer models,” which we believed must be correct because only smart people could make computer models.  As I investigated more I realized they had suckered me into their narrative, and I had willing – eagerly — gone along.  I also more carefully studied the history of science and found many cases where “everyone” believed something was true but it wasn’t.  When was the last time you heard anyone talking about the canals someone built on Mars?  Yet from the mid-1800’s to about 1975 everyone believed they existed.

This experience reinforced three things:

1.       Be a skeptic about any predictions of the future.  Humility, humility, humility.

2.       Guard carefully against anyone and everyone trying to manipulate my emotions. 

3.       Sincerity is not a measure of truth.

I look at the hysterical dystopian accounts about climate change catastrophes breathlessly promulgated today and think “I’ve seen this script before.”  I listen to kid’s tearfully pleading with adults to fix the climate so they won’t die, and I think “I was that kid.”  I watch smart people totally sucked into “the seas will rise and storms will grow worse” narrative and think “I was smart and believed the stories, too.”  I spot clear examples of data manipulation and skewed data presentation and think, “I often fell for those kinds of charts without checking how they were created.”  

We have a stewardship responsibility to care for the natural world. Weather and climate are important. Many aspects of Earth Day are commendable, and certainly the US has done an enormous amount of good work to clean up our air and water.  I applaud the progress. I’ve written an extensive article documenting what we should be talking about related to climate change.  And I am still concerned about nuclear weapons as a threat to the planet!

The designers of the US Government specifically granted freedom of religion, forbade religious tests for elected office, and promoted religion and education as good for the nation (see the details in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, for example).  These men lived across a spectrum of religious practice themselves. 

Their personal letters and public writing speak to their consistent views about the importance of morality.  John Adams famously wrote “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People.”  He wrote this in a short letter to the officers of the Massachusetts Militia in October 1798 while he was president.  He included these sentences as he commended their work as responsible citizens:

“Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by <, Start deletion,[. . .], End,> morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition <, Start deletion,and, End,> Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The key idea (which is more crucial than “Is the United States a Christian nation?” discussions) is this:  Continued liberty under government by the people requires a population of individuals who have self-control, care for themselves, and care for others.  Only moral and religious people can do that.  You don’t have to be specifically religious but you must be moral.  Amoral and irreligious people are far too selfish and greedy to sustain a structure of liberty.  History provides multiple examples of these individuals bringing down even great empires. 

I recently said “Leaders are readers” in a meeting, and someone responded “Ack, I am so tired of hearing that old saw.”  Another chimed in with “I prefer to listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos.” 

I would encourage everyone to exploit the mediums that work best for them.  There is great content in audio and video form.  But don’t give up on reading, especially reading books.  Reading good and hard books transforms you differently than watching many movies. 

There is a kind of compound interest that comes from systematically reading books.  You’re building up a library of ideas, stories, quotes, and insights.  Your brain percolates through the material and you develop an increasing ability to smoothly transition across ideas and disciplines.  You can summon the experiences of others at will. You will see patterns in your real world experience and tie it back to the books.  The vicarious experiences absorbed from books help you assess situations quickly and make better decisions.  Books can teach you much faster than making all the mistakes yourself. 

Leaders can use this compound interest to identify worthwhile objectives, and persuade people to come along with you. 

Early in my career at Pioneer, one of the VPs used to stop in my office for a few minutes and we would discuss the books we were reading. (This was a privilege I didn’t appreciate until much later.)  I learned a great deal from what he shared, and hoped I was helping him.   I felt we had an open relationship.

One day I exploited that relationship.  There was a big issue brewing and I was convinced he should step in immediately and fix this.  I think I got out four or five sentences before he interrupted me with laughter.

“I’m sure you think that’s a big issue, Glenn,” he said.  “You think it’s a bleeding artery.  From my perspective it’s not even an infected hair follicle.”  And he chuckled again.

Those words stung.  I was shocked that he saw it differently than me.  For a short while I thought much less of him, frankly. (Oh, the arrogance of a promising young manager in a big organization!)

Over the next few months this VP kindly gave me a few insights about the kinds of issues that merited his attention.  It was a great education about the different levels of focus and attention, and radically different timescales that execs need to manage.  Execs aren’t immune from the tyranny of the urgent and crisis du jour, but it cannot occupy more than a fraction of their effort.

He also turned me on to some different books that I wouldn’t have picked out myself but he knew were influential.   I’m grateful for this mentoring.

One of the greatest gifts a leader gives to others is perspective.

One of the most unexpected things I picked up in grad school was the value of a competitor.  I was in competition with another research program working on yeast DNA replication, a race to publication.  We made nice and exchanged some information and materials, but… we were competitors. 

Competitors show up in geopolitics as well, and nation states vie for supremacy and control. Think of  how trade conversations play out between nations. A dictator who inflates an “enemy” to consolidate his power is really creating a competitor. 

Competitors play a critical role in businesses. Steve Jobs said that if Microsoft and IBM didn’t exist, Apple would have invented a competitor.  Monsanto, despised as they were in the seed industry, forced every other company to transform their capability or be co-opted into submission.

Every profitable market has competitors, or entices them shortly after an economically valuable market exists.  Many VCs will not invest in startups who lack a competitor because it’s a strong signal that there isn’t much money available in the market yet.

Competitors teach us about our vulnerabilities.

Competitors force us to sharpen our game.

Competitors push us to create better products and services, and pay more attention to customers.

Competitors don’t let us relax and drift into entitlement.

Competitors motivate us to work smarter and longer.

Competitors bring out our best as we stay in the game.

Smart leaders understand and exploit competitors.  Got competitors?  Be grateful.

Aristotle pointed out that politics is downstream of culture.  If anyone thinks the polarized, partisan politics we see today is a new thing, they haven’t read much world history. 

Culture – the English word has the same root as “cult” – is downstream of religion.  Religion, in this sense, isn’t necessarily confined to man’s relationship with god(s).  Religion is what we exalt, celebrate, and worship.  Sports, hobbies, political parties, social affiliations, patriotism, physical fitness, fashions, scientific paradigms – all can have the attributes of religion.

Religion >> Culture >> Politics

Long-term, the best way to change politics is to alter the vectors of culture by shaping what is exalted, celebrated, and worshipped.  In organizational change, changing mindsets and behaviors requires a change in what is exalted, celebrated, and worshipped.

There are significant changes, and some things are quite different than the past.  Here is my list of the most significant disruptor factors in play (even if I cannot easily forecast the consequences):

• New technologies fueling new business opportunities: 5G wireless, 3D manufacturing, algorithms, augmented reality, sensor proliferation, anti-aging meds, quantum computing, robotics, etc.
• Political “solutions” to address wealth inequality
• Decisions related to halt/mitigate climate change
• Government and pension debt, and actions of central banks
• Ageing populations, global demographics
• Accelerated urbanization
• Deglobalization of manufacturing and trade
• The human being’s place in the workforce – employees, contractors, gig work

Standing amidst the 5^th century monastery ruins at Glendalough in the Wicklow mountains south of Dublin, I pondered our obsession with the “exceptional Now,” always thinking “it’s different this time.”

These things make it difficult for us to truly understand the tides and motions of history:

• Our myopia for immediate place and within our lifetime
• Our failure to appreciate the small events which have disproportionately large effects
• The deep interconnection of geography, farming and industry, religion, and tribal history of people groups
• The small percentage of institutions lasting more than a century
• Political will and mankind’s ambitions
• Biases in historical narrative (history is largely written by the winners)
• How little we know of history before 2800 BCE

The consequences of events plays out over hundreds thousands of years.  Zhou Enlai, a Chinese philosopher and politician, when asked in the early 1970s about the significance of the French Revolution, answered, “Too early to say.”

I intentionally juxtapose these two lists to keep us humble.

My two grandfathers were very different men, and I loved them both dearly. As a boy I treasured time with them, looked up to them, paid attention to what they said – which was often surprising. Here are a few things I heard them say that made a deep impression on me. I won’t distinguish which grandfather said what, because that’s not important to a general audience. But I write in hopes my grandfathers will inspire you, and also to encourage men to be good teaching grandfathers for future generations. 

One time I was watching my grandfather pruning rose bushes. I was startled at how much he cut them back! “If you ask the rose bushes, they don’t like to be pruned,” he replied.

“Don’t argue with idiots. They like it too much.” I probably should have followed this advice more frequently in my life. 

I could tie my shoelaces as a youngster, but my shoes were often loose enough to come off my feet. My strategy was to keep tying more knots in the laces until I didn’t have any shoelace left to work with. My grandfather said to me, “Glenn, if the first knot isn’t tight, it doesn’t matter how many more knots you tie on top.” I’ve found a lot of ways to apply that insight over the years!

A simple framework for determining what’s wrong: “Don’t do things that make the devil happy.” 

Whenever I expressed that I was a little tired of working on a chore, I heard my grandfather’s classic response was classic: “The work isn’t done yet.” Learning about the rhythm of work is more caught than taught. 

When I rationalized that he cut wood better because he had a sharper axe: “It’s the workman, not the tool.” Even at age 15 I knew he was right.  

“Every driver thinks they’re above average.” One of my earliest insights into the fact that self-perception is unreliable. 

“You have a belly button, Glenn, so you’re entitled to your opinion. That’s about all you’re entitled to.” Needless to say, my grandfather was not keen on entitlement programs and people who thought they deserved this or that. 

Commentary on a local figure who was caught in adultery: “He threw a lot away for a few minutes of fun with a zip at the end. A man does well to keep his pants on.” 

One time I asked my grandfather why he shaved in the morning and the evening before bed. He just looked at me, smiled, and continued shaving. (It was several years before I figured this one out!)

Sometimes these men showed ignorance or stereotyping. Here’s an example: “Those foreigners have a different word for everything. If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me!” I suspect my grandfather was a little surprised in heaven to find that blue-eyed English-speaking Caucasians were the minority population in heaven. He was convinced that Jesus spoke King James English, and that the apostles switched to the red ink quill when recording his words. 

What did you learn from your grandfathers?

I originally published this in 2011 here. 

We need a rich conversation about the interplay of feeding people, energy sources, and stewarding the environment.  Focusing on climate alone is not getting us to the necessary depth and complexity.

Let’s posit these things are true:

• Humans thrive best when we have clean water, clean air, and natural spaces.
• Human civilization thrives when we have abundant food and energy sources. 
• Humans have a responsibility and opportunity to make decisions and behave in ways to better steward the natural world.
• Humans choices have shaped the planetary surface, and human activity affects the soil, water, and atmosphere.  We’ve burned prairies, forests, coal, oil.  We’ve made decisions which have decreased air pollution and reduced raw sewage and chemical runoff into waterways.
• Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have been steadily increasing over the past decades.  The CO2 levels have been lower and higher at different times over the past thousands of years. 
• Nothing is static on our planet, in this solar system, in this galaxy, etc.  Weather changes constantly, and climate changes have happened over the entire geological record.  We’ve had multiple cycles of glaciation and retreat.  Land masses have moved.  The orbit of the Earth around the sun has not been perfectly constant. The Earth’s magnetic field has flipped multiple times in history.
• Every complex system works on trade-offs; the laws of thermodynamics do not allow for a “free lunch.”
• Humans have a high ability to adapt to change, and technology gives us even more adaptation options.
• Affluent people have more choices and can absorb increased costs better than poor people. 
• Data doesn’t “say” anything.  Humans say things.  Human nature is loaded with biases.

What is blocking a constructive dialog about these critical issues? My thoughts:

• Labeling someone a “climate change denier” or “science denier” to end conversation rather than engaging in the difficult work of conversation about solutions is a cop-out.
• The fundamental thesis is that increasing CO2 levels is driving a global temperature increase which has many bad effects.  Weather and climate are driven by many factors, so an exclusive focus on CO2 is unlikely to address the problems well.   
• The intense focus on the “CO2 driving temperature” narrative has affected how people collect and present data and interpretation. Willfully ignoring the abundant evidence of data manipulation, skewed data presentation to favor a narrative, and glossing over spectacularly wrong predictions – see references below – leads people to conclude some aren’t interested in using genuine scientific inquiry to study the situation. We need accurate information to make decisions.  Systematically abusing the data poisons our ability to be thoughtful and test our approaches. 
• It’s not science if you only use data (or reports of data) which supports a preferred conclusion.  “Settled science” is not science at all; we have multiple examples of universally accepted “truth” which turned out to be wrong.  
• It’s foolish to make decisions about massive investments and changes in policies that affect billions of people based on the track record of predictive models to date.  We should be sober of our limited ability to build a model of something as complex as planetary weather over long periods of time.  “All models are wrong, and some are useful.” 
• Refusing to answer questions like “What is the right level of CO2?” and “What is the right global temperature?” suggests very limited thinking about the deep and difficult issues.
• Automatically ruling out any nuclear power or natural gas, even as a transition option in the next 20 years, suggests they aren’t serious about workable strategy to achieve a non-carbon energy future.
• Positing that only central government solutions can solve the problem hints at a desire for political power and control above all else.  The US is only producing 15% of carbon emissions as I write this. All the posturing and treaties and agreements in the past 30 years have not reduced the rate of global CO2 increase.  The historical track record of collectivist government approaches is largely negative and mixed at best.  

I propose we reframe the conversation around the trade-off issues, because these are where the policy decisions need to be made to support effective end-to-end solutions, and collective behaviors need to change.  Our current and default behaviors lead us to a default future scenario (even if we can’t predict it precisely).  If we can imagine a preferred future, what do we need to do differently to reach that future?  Let’s leverage our capabilities as agents of choice.

• There are many positives to a more electrified future.  What are the most efficient ways to generate, store, and transfer electrical power?  How can we radically improve the electrical grid?  What investments allow us to transition vehicles and services to electric without committing obvious and predictable errors?

• We must increase food production and efficiency to feed our growing population. Hungry people feel forced into doing horrible things. How can we accelerate our agriculture production methods to simultaneously increase food production, reduce food waste, and lower the negative impact on the natural world?  

• What are constructive ways for governments (national and local) to incentivize private innovation to create planet-friendly and economically viable solutions?  How can we create a business-friendly approach to spreading solutions globally wherever they are effective?  How can we foster many experiments that allow us to learn faster?

• We can’t optimize for everything simultaneously, and nothing is risk-free.  What should we optimize for?  What risks are we willing to take? 

• What adaptations can we make if we cannot alter the weather and climate from current trajectories?

• Automation, robotics, and AI tools destroy some jobs and produce others.  How can we tie these transitions into a conversation about stewarding the planet and caring for all people?

• The conflicting interests of geopolitics are as real as the global environment; not everyone will agree to a given solution.  How do we continue to make significant progress even if perfect cooperation is impossible?

These are difficult questions indeed.  (All the simple questions have been answered.)  Let us strive for wisdom, humility, boldness, and far-sighted willingness to work together. 

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

References showcasing data manipulation, skewed data presentation, and wrong predictions:

1. “An Engineer’s Critique of Global Warming” (Burt Rutan)  https://www.burtrutan.com/category/hobbies/global-warming/
2. Tony Heller has published many critiques of NASA and NOAA manipulating past and present data to fit a “CO2 causes global warming” narrative.  Though he has loud critics, I respect Heller’s published work as he presents historical data and challenges shoddy data presentation and clickbait headlines.  He also brings forward disturbing information about where and how temperature data is collected (e.g., more than 50% of the US data published is predicted rather than measured, and until recently we had very little temperature data collection in Africa, South America, Asia, and the oceans.) Starting points:
   1. https://principia-scientific.org/tony-hellers-climate-forecast-from-three-years-ago/
   1. https://realclimatescience.com/
   1. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCprclkVrNPls7PR-nHhf1Ow
3. An example of the vigorous debate about whether CO2 and Temperature is a causal relationship, or correlated, and the challenges of getting agreement on how to measure these things.  https://skepticalscience.com/co2-temperature-correlation.htm
4. Thousands of leaked emails documenting data manipulation and shaped presentations to fit a preferred narrative https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/11/23/climategate-2-0-new-e-mails-rock-the-global-warming-debate/#1365074227ba 
5. There are many assessments of the problems in Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” film – significant errors, falsified data presentation (e.g., showing 20 feet of ocean rise rather than the 2 feet the UN study predicts), and failed predictions. One example: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2007/10/04/detailed-comments-on-an-inconvenient-truth/
6. An example list of climate predictions which did not come true, underscoring how difficult it is to accurately predict the future https://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
7. A short discussion of the challenges in creating climate models, reviewing their limited success to date https://www.hoover.org/research/flawed-climate-models
8. An example article documenting why the CO2 level may be too low https://humanevents.com/2014/03/24/the-carbon-dioxide-level-is-dangerously-low/

Reasonable people will counter with a long list of “here’s why that’s bullhockey” responses.  My point is that weather and climate are incredibly difficult to measure and predict.  This is not “settled science.” Humans are fallible.  Therefore, we need to humbly approach our decisions about policies and practices.

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

Glenn Brooke is the author of the soon-coming book, “Bold and Gentle: Living Wisely in an Age of Exponential Change.”  This article is adapted from one of the chapters.

Learn more at https://encouragingpress.com