Category Archives: Leadership

Mismanaging Uncertainty & Risk is Killing Our Businesses

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Mismanaging Uncertainty & Risk is Killing Our Businesses

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

During September 2011, the English language officially died.  That was the month that the Oxford English Dictionary, long regarded as the accepted authority on the English language published an update in which “literally” also meant figuratively. By 2016, every other major dictionary had followed suit.

The justification was simple: “literally” has been used to mean “figuratively” since 1769. Citing examples from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, they claimed they were simply reflecting the evolution of a living language.

What utter twaddle.

Without a common understanding of a word’s meaning, we create our own definitions which lead to secret expectations, and eventually chaos.

And not just interpersonally. It can affect entire economies.

Maybe the state of the US economy is just a misunderstanding

Uncertainty.

We’re hearing and saying that word a lot lately. Whether it’s in reference to tariffs, interest rates, immigration, or customer spending, it’s hard to go a single day without “uncertainty” popping up somewhere in your life.

But are we really talking about “uncertainty?”

Uncertainty and Risk are not the same.

The notion of risk and uncertainty was first formally introduced into economics in 1921 when Frank Knight, one of the founders of the Chicago school of economics, published his dissertation Risk, Uncertainty and Profit.  In the 114 since, economists and academics continued to enhance, refine, and debate his definitions and their implications.

Out here in the real world, most businesspeople use them as synonyms meaning “bad things to be avoided at all costs.”

But they’re not synonyms. They have distinct meanings, different paths to resolution, and dramatically different outcomes.

Risk can be measured and/or calculated.

Uncertainty cannot be measured or calculated

The impact of tariffs, interest rates, changes in visa availability, and customer spending can all be modeled and quantified.

So it’s NOT uncertainty that’s “paralyzing” employers.  It’s risk!

Not so fast my friend.

Not all Uncertainties are the same

According to Knight, Uncertainty drives profit because it connects “with the exercise of judgment or the formation of those opinions as to the future course of events, which…actually guide most of our conduct.”

So while we can model, calculate, and measure tariffs, interest rates, and other market dynamics, the probability of each outcome is unknown.  Thus, our response requires judgment.

Sometimes.

Because not all uncertainties are the same.

The Unknown (also known as “uncertainty based on ignorance”) exists when there is a “lack of information which would be necessary to make decisions with certain outcomes.”

The Unknowable (“uncertainty based on ambiguity”) exists when “an ongoing stream [of information]  supports several different meanings at the same time.”

Put simply, if getting more data makes the answer obvious, we’re facing the Unknown and waiting, learning, or modeling different outcomes can move us closer to resolution. If more data isn’t helpful because it will continue to point to different, equally plausible, solutions, you’re facing the Unknowable.

So what (and why did you drag us through your literally/figuratively rant)?

If you want to get unstuck – whether it’s a project, a proposal, a team, or an entire business, you first need to be clear about what you’re facing.

If it’s a Risk, model it, measure it, make a decision, move forward.

If it’s an uncertainty, what kind is it?

If it’s Unknown, decide when to decide, ask questions, gather data, then, when the time comes, decide and move forward

If it’s Unknowable, decide how to decide then put your big kid pants on, have the honest and tough conversations, negotiate, make a decision, and move on.

I mean that literally.

Image credit: Pixabay

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Why Big Ideas Often Fail to Survive Victory

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Why Big Ideas Often Fail To Survive Victory

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

I still vividly remember a whiskey drinking session I had with a good friend in my flat in Kyiv in early 2005, shortly after the Orange Revolution had concluded. We were discussing what would come after and, knowing that I had lived in Poland during years of reform, he was interested in my opinion about the future. I told him NATO and EU ascension was the way to go.

My friend, a prominent journalist, disagreed. He thought that Ukraine should pursue a “Finnish model,” in which it would pursue good relations with both Russia and the west, favoring neither. As he saw it, the Ukrainian people, who had just been through months of political turmoil, should pursue a “third way” and leave the drama behind.

As it turned out, we were both wrong. The promise of change would soon turn to nightmare, ending with an evil, brutal regime and a second Ukrainian revolution a decade later. I would later find that this pattern is so common that there is even a name for it: the failure to survive victory. To break the cycle you first need to learn to anticipate it and then to prepare for it.

The Thrill Of A New Direction And An Initial Success

In the weeks after the Orange Revolution I happened to be in Warsaw and saw a huge banner celebrating democracy movements in Eastern Europe, with Poland’s Solidarity movement as the first and Ukraine’s Orange revolution as the last in the series. Everyone thought that Ukraine would follow its neighbor into peace and prosperity.

We were triumphant and it seemed like the forces of history were on our side. That’s one reason why we failed to see the forces that were gathering. Despite our enthusiasm, those who opposed our cause didn’t just melt away and go home. In fact they redoubled their efforts to undermine what we had achieved. We never really saw it coming.

I see the same thing in my work with organizational transformations. Once people get a taste of that initial success—they win executive sponsorship for their initiative, get a budget approved or even achieve some tangible progress on the ground—they think it will all get easier. It never does. In fact, it usually gets harder.

Make no mistake. Opposition doesn’t erupt in spite of an early success, but because of it. A change initiative only becomes a threat to the status quo when it begins to gain traction. That’s when the knives come out and, much like my friend and I after the Orange Revolution, most people working to bring about change are oblivious to it.

If you are working for a change that you believe in passionately, chances are you’re missing a brewing storm. Almost everyone does the first time around (and many never learn to recognize it).

Propagating Echo Chambers

One of the reasons we failed to see trouble brewing back then was that, as best we could tell, everyone around us saw things the same way we did. Whatever dissenting voices we did come across seemed like an aberration to us. Sure, some people were still stuck in the old ways, we thought, but with history on our side how could we fail?

Something similar happened in the wake of the George Floyd protests. The city council in Minneapolis, where the incident took place, voted to defund the police. Taking its cue, corporate America brought in armies of consultants to set out the new rules of the workplace. In one survey, 85% of CHRO’s said that they were expanding diversity and inclusion efforts. With such an outpouring of news coverage and emotion, who would dare to question them?

The truth is that majorities don’t just rule, they also influence in a number of ways. First, decades of studies show that we tend to conform to the views around us and that effect extends out to three degrees of relationships. Not only people we know, but the friends of their friends—most of whom we don’t even know—affect how we think.

It isn’t just what we hear but also what we say that matters. Research from MIT suggests that when we are around people we expect to agree with us, we’re less likely to check our facts and more likely to share information that isn’t true. That, in turn, impacts our informational environment, helping to create an echo chamber that reinforces our sense of certainty.

The Inevitable Backlash

Almost as soon as the new Ukrainian government took power in 2005, the opposition went on the offensive. While the new President, Viktor Yushchenko was seen positively, they attacked the people around him. His Prime Minister, Yulia Tymoshenko, was portrayed as a calculating and devious woman. When Yushchenko’s son got into trouble, questions were raised about corruption in his father’s administration.

A similar pattern took hold in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Calls for racial justice were portrayed as anti-police and law enforcement budgets across the country increased as “We Support Our Police” signs went up on suburban lawns. Critical Race Theory, an obscure legal concept rarely discussed outside of universities, became a political punching bag. Today, as layoffs increase, corporate diversity efforts are sure to take a hit.

These patterns are not exceptions. They are the rule. As Saul Alinsky pointed out, every revolution inspires a counter-revolution. That is the physics of change. Every reaction provokes a reaction. Every success impacts your environment and some of those changes will not be favorable to your cause. They will expose vulnerabilities that can be exploited by those who oppose your idea.

Yet Alinsky didn’t just identify the problem, he also pointed to a solution. “Once we accept and learn to anticipate the inevitable counter-revolution, we may then alter the historical pattern of revolution and counter-revolution from the traditional slow advance of two steps forward and one step backward to minimizing the latter,” he writes.

In other words, the key to surviving victory is to prepare for the backlash that is sure to come and build a strategy to overcome it.

Building A Shared Future Rooted In Shared Values

In the two decades I have been researching transformation and change, the failure to survive victory is probably the most consistent aspect of it. In fact, it is so common you can almost set your watch by it. Amazingly, no matter how many times change advocates experience it, they rarely see it coming. Many, in fact, seem to take pride in how many battles they have lost, seeing it as some kind of badge of honor.

The uncomfortable truth is that success doesn’t necessarily begat more success. Often it breeds failure. People mistake a moment for a movement and think that their time has finally come. Believing change to be inevitable, they get cocky and overconfident and miss the networks of unseen connections forming in opposition. They make sure to press a point, but fail to make a difference.

Lasting change always needs to be built on common ground. That’s what we failed to see all those years ago, when I began my journey. You can never base your revolution on any particular person, technology or policy. It needs to be rooted in shared values and if we truly care about change, we need to hold ourselves accountable to be effective messengers.

We can’t just preach to the choir. Sometimes we need to venture out of the church and mix with the heathens. We can be clear about where we stand and still listen to those who see things differently. That doesn’t mean we compromise. In fact, we should never compromise the values we believe in. What we can do, however, is identify common ground upon which to build a shared future.

These principles hold true whether the change you seek is in your organization, your industry, your community or throughout society as a whole. If you fail to learn and apply them, don’t be surprised when you fail to survive victory.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pexels

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Five Triggers of Burnout at Work

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Five Triggers of Burnout at Work

GUEST POST from David Burkus

Demands at work have been piling on in recent years. Including the demand on employees to continue to do more with less. And those demands come with a lot of potential burnout at work. Burnout at work is a series problem for most organizations. Burnout can lead to decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, and even physical and mental health issues.

It’s incumbent on every leader to be aware of and attempt to avoid burnout on their teams. But burnout isn’t always caused by asking too much of employees. Being overcapacity can be one element that triggers a burned-out team. But there are other triggers leaders need to be aware of.

In this article, we will explore the five triggers of burnout at work and discuss how leaders can mitigate them to create a more engaged and productive team.

Trigger 1: Lack of Margin

The first trigger of burnout at work is a lack of margin. As said above, often burnout happens because people are just at capacity. In many organizations, the reward for good work is more work. This can lead to employees constantly feeling overloaded with assignments and overwhelmed. To mitigate this, leaders can redistribute tasks more equitably and avoid rewarding good work with additional responsibilities. And they can identify priorities more clearly so teammates know what tasks matter most and which can afford to wait until later. In addition, regular individual check-ins and team-wide huddles can also help identify areas where margin can be borrowed from other team members, ensuring that everyone has a manageable workload.

Trigger 2: Lack of Control

The second trigger of burnout at work is a lack of control. Employees who feel they lack autonomy over their work are dramatically more likely to burnout than employees who can control certain elements of their job. In addition, employees who feel left out of the decision-making process and lack the necessary resources to do their job can quickly become burnt out. Leaders can address this trigger by providing employees with more autonomy in when, where, or how they work. This could involve flexible work hours, remote work options, or giving employees a say in the decision-making process. By empowering employees and giving them a sense of control over their work, leaders can help prevent burnout and increase job satisfaction.

Section 3: Lack of Clarity

The third trigger of burnout at work is a lack of clarity. Leaving employees without clear expectations or without a firm belief that increased effort will increase performance is leaving employees open to burnout. Vague job descriptions and frequent changes in roles and tasks can leave employees feeling uncertain and overwhelmed. This trigger can often sneak up on employees and their leaders because the demands of a job change over time, and gradually move people away from the role they were initially hired for. Without frequent updating of expectations and clear feedback, the job becomes ambiguous. Leaders can help avoid this through regular check-ins, clear project definitions, and resources to help employees achieve their tasks. Clear communication and setting realistic goals can go a long way in reducing burnout caused by a lack of clarity.

Section 4: Lack of Civility

The fourth trigger of burnout at work is a lack of civility. Working in a toxic team or organization can be extremely detrimental to one’s mental well-being and job satisfaction. Whether it’s a single individual or a bad boss, negative experiences in the workplace can quickly lead to burnout. This can happen even in overall positive company cultures, because one toxic boss or dysfunctional team can have an outsized effect on the team and its potential for burnout. Leaders can address this trigger by modeling respectful behavior and reinforcing expectations of respect and cohesion. Creating a positive and inclusive work culture where everyone feels valued and supported can help prevent burnout and foster a more harmonious work environment.

Section 5: Lack of Social Support

The fifth trigger of burnout at work is a lack of social support. Humans are social creatures—and work often meets a small or large part of our social needs. Feeling isolated and lonely at work can significantly contribute to burnout. Without social connections and friendships, employees may struggle to find motivation and support in their roles. Leaders can create opportunities for social support and friendships within the team by organizing team-building activities, encouraging collaboration, and fostering a sense of community. You can’t force people to be friends, but you can create the environment where friendships develop. And having friends at work can not only drive productivity but also decrease stress and enhance overall job satisfaction.

By addressing these triggers of burnout, leaders can create a work environment that promotes employee well-being, engagement, and productivity. Redistributing tasks, providing autonomy, ensuring clarity, promoting civility, and fostering social support are all essential steps in preventing burnout and creating a more positive and fulfilling work experience. And a positive work experience helps everyone do their best work ever.

Image credit: Pexels

Originally published at https://davidburkus.com on June 26, 2023.

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How to Not Get Depleted

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How to Not Get Depleted

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

On every operating plan there are more projects than there are people to do them and at every meeting there more new deliverables than people to take them on. At every turn, our demand for increased profits pushes our people for more. And, to me, I think this is the reason every day feel fuller than the last.

This year do you have more things to accomplish or fewer? Do you have more meetings or fewer? Do you get more emails or fewer?

We add work to people’s day as if their capacity to do work is infinite. And we add metrics to measure them to make sure they get the work done. And that’s a recipe for depletion. At some point, even the best, most productive people reach their physical and emotional limits. And at some point, as the volume of work increases, we all become depleted. It’s not that we’re moving slowly, being wasteful or giving it less than our all. When the work exceeds our capacity to do it, we run out of gas.

Here are some thoughts that may help you over the next year.

The amount of work you will get done this year is the same as you got done last year. But don’t get sidetracked here. This has nothing to do with the amount of work you were asked to do last year. Because you didn’t complete everything you were asked to do last year, the same thing will happen this year unless the amount of work on this year’s plan is equal to the amount of work you actually accomplished last year. Every year, scrub a little work off your yearly commitments until the work content finally equals your capacity to get it done.

Once the work content of your yearly plan is in line, the mantra becomes – finish one before you start one. If you had three projects last year and you finished one, you can add one project this year. If you didn’t finish any projects last year you can’t start one this year, at least until you finish one this year. It’s a simple mantra, but a powerful one. It will help you stop starting and start finishing.

There’s a variant to the finish-before-you-start approach that doesn’t have to wait for the completion of a long project. Instead of finishing a project, unimportant projects are stopped before they’re finished. This is loosely known as – stop doing before start doing. Stopping is even more powerful than finishing because low value work is stopped and the freed-up resources are immediately applied to higher value work. This takes judgement and courage to stop a dull project, but it’s well worth the discomfort.

If you want to get ahead of the game, create a stop-doing list. For each item on the list estimate how much time you will free up and sum the freed-up time for the lot. Be ruthless. Stop all but the most important work. And when your boss says you can’t stop something because it’s too important, propose that you stop for a week and see what happens. And when no one notices you stopped, propose to stop for a month and see what happens. Rinse and repeat.

When the amount of work you have to get done fits with your capacity to do it, your physical and mental health will improve. You’ll regain that spring in your step and you’ll be happier. And the quality of your work will improve. But more importantly, your family life and personal relationships will improve. You’ll be able to let go of work and be fully present with your friends and family.

Regardless of the company’s growth objectives, one person can only do the work of one person. And it’s better for everyone (and the company) if we respect this natural constraint.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Back to Basics for Leaders and Managers

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Back to Basics for Leaders and Managers

GUEST POST from Robyn Bolton

Imagine that you are the CEO working with your CHRO on a succession plan.  Both the CFO and COO are natural candidates, and both are, on paper, equally qualified and effective.

The CFO distinguishes herself by consistently working with colleagues to find creative solutions to business issues, even if it isn’t the optimal solution financially, and inspiring them with her vision of the future. She attracts top talent and builds strong relationships with investors who trust her strategic judgment. However, she sometimes struggles with day-to-day details and can be inconsistent in her communication with direct reports.

The COO inspires deep loyalty from his team through consistent execution and reliability. People turn down better offers to stay because they trust his systematic approach, flawless delivery, and deep commitment to developing people. However, his vision rarely extends beyond “do things better,” rigidly adhering to established processes and shutting down difficult conversations with peers when change is needed.

Who so you choose?

The COO feels like the safer bet, especially in uncertain times, given his track record of proven execution, loyal teams, and predictable results. While the CFO feels riskier because she’s brilliant but inconsistent, visionary but scattered.

It’s not an easy question to answer.

Most people default to “It depends.”

It doesn’t depend.

It doesn’t “depend,” because being CEO is a leadership role and only the CFO demonstrates leadership behaviors. The COO, on the other hand, is a fantastic manager, exactly the kind of person you want and need in the COO role. But he’s not the leader a company needs, no matter how stable or uncertain the environment.

Yet we all struggle with this choice because we’ve made “leadership” and “management” synonyms. Companies no longer have “senior management teams,” they have “senior/executive leadership teams.”  People moving from independent contributor roles to oversee teams are trained in “people leadership,” not “team management” (even though the curriculum is still largely the same).

But leadership and management are two fundamentally different things.

Leader OR Manager?

There are lots of definitions of both leaders and managers, so let’s go back to the “original” distinction as defined by Warren Bennis in his 1987 classic On Becoming a Leader

LeadersManagers
·       Do the right things·       Challenge the status quo·       Innovate·       Develops·       Focuses on people·       Relies on trust·       Has a long-range perspective·       Asks what and why·       Has an eye on the horizon·       Do things right·       Accept the status quo·       Administers·       Maintains·       Focuses on systems and structures·       Relies on control·       Has a short-range view·       Asks how and when·       Has an eye on the bottom line

In a nutshell: leaders inspire people to create change and pursue a vision while managers control systems to maintain operations and deliver results.

Leaders AND Managers!

Although the roles of leaders and managers are different, it doesn’t mean that the person who fills those roles is capable of only one or the other. I’ve worked with dozens of people who are phenomenal managers AND leaders and they are as inspiring as they are effective.

But not everyone can play both roles and it can be painful, even toxic, when we ask managers to take on leadership roles and vice versa. This is the problem with labeling everything outside of individual contributor roles as “leadership.”

When we designate something as a “people leadership” role and someone does an outstanding job of managing his team, we believe he’s a leader and promote him to a true leadership role (which rarely ends well).  Conversely, when we see someone displaying leadership qualities and promote her into “people leadership,” we may be shocked and disappointed when she struggles to manage as effortlessly as she inspires.

The Bottom Line

Leadership and Management aren’t the same thing, but they are both essential to an organization’s success. They key is putting the right people in the right roles and celebrating their unique capabilities and contributions.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Sometimes Ancient Wisdom Needs to be Left Behind

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Sometimes Ancient Wisdom Needs to be Left Behind

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

I recently visited Panama and learned the incredible story of how the indigenous Emberá people there helped to teach jungle survival skills to Apollo mission astronauts. It is a fascinating combining and contrast of ancient wisdom and modern technology, equipping the first men to go to the moon with insights from both realms.

Humans tend to have a natural reverence for old wisdom that is probably woven into our DNA. It stands to reason that people more willing to stick with the tried and true might have a survival advantage over those who were more reckless. Ideas that stand the test of time are, by definition, the ones that worked well enough to be passed on.

Paradoxically, to move forward we need to abandon old ideas. It was only by discarding ancient wisdoms that we were able to create the modern world. In much the same way, to move forward now we’ll need to debunk ideas that qualify as expertise today. As in most things, our past can help serve as a guide. Here are three old ideas we managed to transcend.

1. Euclid’s Geometry

The basic geometry we learn in grade school, also known as Euclidean geometry, is rooted in axioms observed from the physical world, such as the principle that two parallel lines never intersect. For thousands of years mathematicians built proofs based on those axioms to create new knowledge, such as how to calculate the height of an object. Without these insights, our ability to shape the physical world would be negligible.

In the 19th century, however, men like Gauss, Lobachevsky, Bolyai and Riemann started to build new forms of non-Euclidean geometry based on curved spaces. These were, of course, completely theoretical and of no use in daily life. The universe, as we experience it, doesn’t curve in any appreciable way, which is why police ask us to walk a straight line if they think we’ve been drinking.

But when Einstein started to think about how gravity functioned, he began to suspect that the universe did, in fact, curve over large distances. To make his theory of general relativity work he had to discard the old geometrical thinking and embrace new mathematical concepts. Without those critical tools, he would have been hopelessly stuck.

Much like the astronauts in the Apollo program, we now live in a strange mix of old and new. To travel to Panama, for example, I personally moved through linear space and the old Euclidean axioms worked perfectly well. However, to navigate, I had to use GPS, which must take into account curved spaces for Einstein’s equations to correctly calculate distances between the GPS satellites and points on earth.

2. Aristotle’s Logic

In terms of longevity and impact, only Aristotle’s logic rivals Euclid’s geometry. At the core of Aristotle’s system is the syllogism, which is made up of propositions that consist of two terms (a subject and a predicate). If the propositions in the syllogism are true, then the argument has to be true. This basic notion that conclusions follow premises imbues logical statements with a mathematical rigor.

Yet much like with geometry, scholars began to suspect that there might be something amiss. At first, they noticed minor flaws that had to do with a strange paradox in set theory which arose with sets that are members of themselves. For example, if the barber who shaves everyone in town who doesn’t shave themselves, then who shaves the barber?

At first, these seemed like strange anomalies, minor exceptions to rules that could be easily explained away. Still, the more scholars tried to close the gaps, the more problems appeared, leading to a foundational crisis. It would only be resolved when a young logician named Kurt Gödel published his theorems that proved logic, at least as we knew it, is hopelessly broken.

In a strange twist, another young mathematician, Alan Turing, built on Gödel’s work to create an imaginary machine that would make digital computers possible. In other words, in order for Silicon Valley engineers to code to create logical worlds online, they need to use machines built on the premise that perfectly logical systems are inherently unworkable.

Of course, as I write this, I am straddling both universes, trying to put build logical sentences on those very same machines.

3. The Miasma Theory of Disease

Before the germ theory of disease took hold in medicine, the miasma theory, the notion that bad air caused disease, was predominant. Again, from a practical perspective this made perfect sense. Harmful pathogens tend to thrive in environments with decaying organic matter that gives off bad smells. So avoiding those areas would promote better health.

Once again, this basic paradigm would begin to break down with a series of incidents. First, a young doctor named Ignaz Semmelweis showed that doctors could prevent infections by washing their hands, which suggested that something besides air carried disease. Later John Snow was able to trace the source of a cholera epidemic to a single water pump.

Perhaps not surprisingly, these were initially explained away. Semmelweis failed to format his data properly and was less than an effective advocate for his work. John Snow’s work was statistical, based on correlation rather than causality. A prominent statistician William Farr, who supported the miasma theory, argued for an alternative explanation.

Still, as doubts grew, more scientists looked for answers. The work of Robert Koch, Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur led to the germ theory. Later, Alexander Fleming, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain would pioneer the development of antibiotics in the 1940s. That would open the floodgates and money poured into research, creating modern medicine.

Today, we have gone far beyond the germ theory of disease and even lay people understand that disease has myriad causes, including bacteria, viruses and other pathogens, as well as genetic diseases and those caused by strange misfolded proteins known as prions.

To Create The Future, We Need To Break Free Of The Past

If you were a person of sophistication and education in the 19th century, your world view was based on certain axiomatic truths, such as parallel lines never cross, logical propositions are either true or false and “bad airs” made people sick. For the most part, these ideas would have served you well for the challenges you faced in daily life.

Even more importantly, your understanding of these concepts would signal your inclusion and acceptance into a particular tribe, which would confer prestige and status. If you were an architect or engineer, you needed to understand Euclid’s geometric axions. Aristotle’s rules of logic were essential to every educated profession. Medical doctors were expected to master the nuances of the miasma theory.

To stray from established orthodoxies carries great risk, even now. It is no accident that those who were able to bring about new paradigms, such as Einstein, Turing and John Snow, came from outside the establishment. More recently, people like Benoit Mandelbrot, Jim Allison and Katalin Karikó had to overcome fierce resistance to bring new ways of thinking to finance, cancer immunotherapy and mRNA vaccines respectively.

Today, it’s becoming increasingly clear we need to break with the past. In just over a decade, we’ve been through a crippling financial crisis, a global pandemic, deadly terrorist attacks, and the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. We need to confront climate change and a growing mental health crisis. Yet it is also clear that we can’t just raze the global order to the ground and start all over again.

So what do we leave in the past and what do we bring with us into the future? Which new lessons do we need to learn and which old ones do we need to unlearn? Perhaps most importantly, what do we need to create anew and what can we rediscover in the ancient?

Throughout history, we have learned that the answer lies not in merely speculating about ideas, but in finding real solutions to problems we face.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: 1 of 950+ FREE quote slides from http://misterinnovation.com

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Metaphysics Philosophy

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Metaphysics Philosophy

GUEST POST from Geoffrey A. Moore

Philosophy is arguably the most universal of all subjects. And yet, it is one of the least pursued in the liberal arts curriculum. The reason for this, I will claim, is that the entire field was kidnapped by some misguided academics around a century ago, and since then no one has paid the ransom to free it. That’s not OK, and with that in mind, here is a series of four blogs that taken together constitute an Emancipation Proclamation.

There are four branches of philosophy, and in order of importance they are

  1. metaphysics,
  2. ethics,
  3. epistemology, and
  4. logic.

This post will address the first of these four, with subsequent posts addressing the remaining three.

Metaphysics is best understood in terms of Merriam-Webster’s definition: “the philosophical study of the ultimate causes and underlying nature of things.” In everyday language, it answers the most fundamental kinds of philosophical questions:

  • What’s happening?
  • What is going on?
  • Where and how do we fit in?
  • In other words, what kind of a hand have we been dealt?

Metaphysics, however, is not normally conceived in everyday terms. Here is what the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has to say about it in its lead definition:

That branch of speculative inquiry which treats of the first principles of things, including such concepts as being, substance, essence, time, space, cause, identity, etc.; theoretical philosophy as the ultimate science of Being and Knowing.

The problem is that concepts like substance and essence are not only intimidatingly abstract, they have no meaning in modern cosmology. That is, they are artifacts of an earlier era when things like the atomic nature of matter and the electromagnetic nature of form were simply not understood. Today, they are just verbiage.

But wait, things get worse. Here is the OED in its third sense of the word:

[Used by some followers of positivist, linguistic, or logical philosophy] Concepts of an abstract or speculative nature which are not verifiable by logical or linguistic methods.

The Oxford Companion to the Mind sheds further light on this:

The pejorative sense of ‘obscure’ and ‘over-speculative’ is recent, especially following attempts by A.J. Ayer and others to show that metaphysics is strictly nonsense.

Now, it’s not hard to understand what Ayer and others were trying to get at, but do we really want to say that the philosophical study of the ultimate causes and underlying nature of things is strictly nonsense? Instead, let’s just say that there is a bunch of unsubstantiated nonsense that calls itself metaphysics but that isn’t really metaphysics at all. We can park that stuff with magic crystals and angels on the head of a pin and get back to what real metaphysics needs to address—what exactly is the universe, what is life, what is consciousness, and how do they all work together?

The best platform for so doing, in my view, is the work done in recent decades on complexity and emergence, and that is what organizes the first two-thirds of The Infinite Staircase. Metaphysics, it turns out, needs to be understood in terms of strata, and then within those strata, levels or stair steps. The three strata that make the most sense of things are as follows:

  1. Material reality as described by the sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology, or what I called the metaphysics of entropy. This explains all emergence up to the entrance of consciousness.
  2. Psychological and social reality, as explained by the social sciences, or what I called the metaphysics of Darwinism, which builds the transition from a world of mindless matter up to one of matter-less mind, covering the intermediating emergence of desire, consciousness, values, and culture.
  3. Symbolic reality, as explained by the humanities, or what I called the metaphysics of memes, which begins with the introduction of language that in turn enables the emergence of humanity’s two most powerful problem-solving tools, narrative and analytics, culminating in the emergence of theory, ideally a theory of everything, which is, after all, what metaphysics promised to be in the first place.

The key point here is that every step in this metaphysical journey is grounded in verifiable scholarship ranging over multiple centuries and involving every department in a liberal arts faculty—except, ironically, the philosophy department which is holed up somewhere on campus, held hostage by forces to be discussed in later blogs.

That’s what I think. What do you think?

Image Credit: Unsplash

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The Tricky Business of Tariffs

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The Tricky Business of Tariffs

GUEST POST from Shep Hyken

Tariffs are creating havoc and panic for both customers and businesses. Depending on what you read, the cost-of-living increase for the average consumer can be thousands of dollars a year. And it’s the same for business, but often at a much higher cost. Anything a business purchases to run its day-to-day operations is potentially exposed to higher prices due to tariffs. Whatever businesses buy—supplies, inventory, equipment and more—when it costs them more, that cost is passed on to their customers.

This isn’t the first time there has been “tariff panic.” As recently as 2018, there were tariffs. I wrote a Forbes article about an e-bike company that was forced to raise its prices due to a 25% import tariff. The company was open about the reasons for the price increase and embraced the problem rather than becoming a victim of it. Here are some ways to manage the impact of tariffs:

  • Be Transparent: Everyone may know about the tariffs, but explaining how they are impacting costs will help justify the price increase. In other words, don’t hide the fact that tariffs are impacting your costs.
  • Partner with Vendors: Ask vendors to work with you on a solution to lower costs that won’t hit their bottom lines. If you buy from a vendor every month, maybe it’s less expensive to buy the same amount but ship quarterly instead of monthly. Work with them to find creative ways to reduce costs. This can benefit everyone.
  • Improve Efficiency to Offset Costs: If you’ve thought about a way to improve a process or efficiency but haven’t acted on it, now may be the perfect time to do so. Sometimes being forced to do something can work in your favor. And be sure to share what you’re changing to help reduce costs. Customers may appreciate you even more.
  • Add Value Instead of Just Raising Prices: When price increases are unavoidable, find a way to justify the higher cost. It could include anything—enhanced customer service, a loyalty rewards program, a special promotion and more. Customers may accept paying more if they feel they are getting more value in return.

What NOT to do:

  • Don’t Take Advantage of Customer Panic: As I write this article, people are going to car dealerships to buy cars before the prices increase and finding that the dealers are selling above the retail sticker price because of the demand. Do you think a customer will forget they were “gouged” by a company taking advantage of them during tough times? (That’s a rhetorical question, but just in case you don’t know the answer … They won’t!)
  • Don’t Say, “It’s Not my Fault”: Even when price increases are beyond your control, don’t be defensive. This can give the impression of a lack of confidence and lack of control that can erode the trust you have with your customers.
  • Don’t Say, “It’s the Same Everywhere You Go”: If the customer understands tariffs, they already know this. Stating you have no choice isn’t going to make the customer feel good. Go back to the list of what you can do and find a way to avoid this and the “it’s not my fault” response.

Customers want to hear what you’re doing to help them. They also like to be educated. Knowledge can give the customer a sense of control. Demonstrating genuine concern for the situation and sharing what you’re doing to minimize the impact of tariff-related price increases builds trust that will pay dividends long after the current economic challenges have passed.

Image Credits: Unsplash, Shep Hyken

This article originally appeared on Forbes.com

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Strategy Lacking Purpose Will Always Fail

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Strategy Lacking Purpose Will Always Fail

GUEST POST from Greg Satell

In 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama published an essay in the journal The National Interest titled The End of History, which led to a bestselling book. Many took his argument to mean that, with the defeat of communism, US-style liberal democracy had emerged as the only viable way of organizing a society.

He was misunderstood. His actual argument was far more nuanced and insightful. After explaining the arguments of philosophers like Hegel and Kojeve, Fukuyama pointed out that even if we had reached an endpoint in the debate about ideologies, there would still be conflict because of people’s need to express their identity.

We usually think of strategy as a rational, analytic activity, with teams of MBA’s poring over spreadsheets or generals standing before maps. Yet if we fail to take into account human agency and dignity, we’re missing the boat. Strategy without purpose is doomed to fail, however clever the calculations. Leaders need to take note of that basic reality.

Taking Stock Of The Halo Effect

Business case studies are written by experienced professionals who are trained to analyze past situations from multiple perspectives. However, their ability to do that successfully is greatly limited by the fact that they already know the outcome of the situation they are studying. That can’t help but to color their analysis.

In The Halo Effect, Phil Rosenzweig explains how those perceptions can color conclusions. He points to the networking company Cisco during the dotcom boom. When it was flying high, it was said to have an unparalleled culture with people that worked long hours but loved every minute of it. When the market tanked, however, all of the sudden its culture came to be seen as “cocksure” and “naive.”

It is hard to see how a company’s culture could change so drastically in such a short amount of time, with no significant change in leadership. More likely, seeing Cisco’s success, analysts looked at particular qualities in a positive light. However, when things began to go the other way, those same qualities were perceived as negative.

When an organization is doing well, we may find its people to be “idealistic” and “values driven,” but when things go sour, those same traits come to be seen as “impractical” and “arrogant.” Given the same set of facts, we can—and often do—come to very different conclusions when our perception of the outcomes changes.

In most cases, analysts don’t have a stake in the outcome. From their point of view, they probably see themselves as objectively analyzing facts and following them to their most logical outcomes. Yet when the purpose for writing an analysis changes from telling a success story to lamenting a cautionary tale, their perception of events tends to change markedly.

Reassessing The Value Chain

For decades, the dominant view of business strategy was based on Michael Porter’s ideas about competitive advantage. In essence, he argued that the key to long-term success was to dominate the value chain by maximizing bargaining power among suppliers, customers, new market entrants and substitute goods.

Yet as AnnaLee Saxenian explained in Regional Advantage, around the same time that Porter’s ideas were ascending among CEOs in the establishment industries on the east coast, a very different way of doing business was gaining steam in Silicon Valley. The firms there saw themselves not as isolated fiefdoms, but as part of a larger ecosystem.

The two models are built on very different assumptions. The Porter model sees the world as made up of transactions. Optimize your strategy to create efficiencies, derive the maximum value out of every transaction and you will build a sustainable competitive advantage. The Silicon Valley model, however, saw the world as made up of connections and optimized their strategies to widen and deepen linkages.

Microsoft is one great example of this shift. When Linux first rose to prominence, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer called it a cancer. Yet more recently, its current CEO announced that the company loves Linux. That didn’t happen out of any sort of newfound benevolence, but because it recognized that it couldn’t continue to shut itself out and still be able to compete.

When you see the world as the “sum of all efficiencies,” the optimal strategy is to dominate. However, if you see the world as made up of the “sum of all connections,” the optimal strategy is to attract. You need to be careful to be seen as purposeful rather than predatory.

The Naïveté Of The “Realists”

Since at least the times of Richelieu, foreign policy theorists have been enthralled by the concept of Realpolitik, the notion that world affairs are governed by interests, not ideological, moral or ethical considerations. Much like with Porter’s “competitive advantage,” strategy is treated as a series of transactions rather than relationships.

Rational calculation of interests is one of those ideas that seems pragmatic on the surface, but is actually hopelessly academic and unworkable in the real world. How do you identify the “interests” you are supposed to be basing your decisions on if not by considering what you value? And how do you assess your values without taking into account your beliefs, morals and ethics?

To understand how such “realism” goes awry, consider the prominent political scientist John Mearsheimer. In March, he gave an interview to The New Yorker in which he argued that, by failing to recognize Russia’s role and interests as a great power, the US had erred greatly in its support of Ukraine.

Yet it is clear now that the Russians were the ones who erred. First, they failed to recognize that the world would see their purpose as immoral. Second, they failed to recognize how their aggression would empower Ukraine’s sense of nationhood. Third, they did not see how Europe would come to regard economic ties with Russia to be against their interests.

Nothing you can derive from military or economic statistics will give you insight into human agency. Excel sheets may not be motivated by purpose, but people are.

Strategy Is Not A Game Of Chess

Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist who researches decision making, became intrigued when one of his patients, a highly intelligent and professionally successful man named “Elliot,” suffered from a brain lesion that impaired his ability to experience emotion. It soon became clear that Elliot was unable to make decisions..

Elliot’s prefrontal cortex, which governs the executive function, was fully intact. His memory and ability to understand events were normal as well. He was, essentially, a completely rational being with normal cognitive function, but no emotions. The problem was that although Elliot could understand all the factors that would go into making a decision, he could not weigh them. Without emotions, all options were all essentially the same.

In the real world, strategy is not a game of chess, in which we move inert pieces around a board. While we can make rational assessments about various courses of action, ultimately people have to care about the outcome. For a strategy to be meaningful, it needs to speak to people’s values, hopes, dreams and ambitions.

A leader’s role cannot be merely to plan and direct action, but must be to inspire and empower belief in a common endeavor. That’s what widens and deepens the meaningful connections that can enable genuine transformation.

— Article courtesy of the Digital Tonto blog
— Image credit: Pixabay

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Seeing the Invisible

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Seeing the Invisible

GUEST POST from Mike Shipulski

It’s relatively straightforward to tell the difference between activities that are done well and those that are done poorly. Usually sub-par activities generate visual signals to warn us of their misbehavior. A bill isn’t paid, a legal document isn’t signed or the wrong parts are put in the box. Though the specifics vary with context, the problem child causes the work product to fall off the plate and make a mess on the floor.

We have tools to diagnose the fundamental behind the symptom. We can get to root cause. We know why the plate was dropped. We know how to define the corrective action and implement the control mechanism so it doesn’t happen again. We patch up the process and we’re up and running in no time. This works well when there’s a well-defined in place, when process is asked to do what it did last time, when the inputs are the same as last time and when the outputs are measured like they were last time.

However, this linear thinking works terribly when the context changes. When the old processes are asked to do new work, the work hits the floor like last time, but the reason it hits the floor is fundamentally different. This time, it’s not that an activity was done poorly. Rather, this time there’s something missing altogether. And this time our linear-thinker toolbox won’t cut it. Sure, we’ll try with all our Six Sigma might, but we won’t get to root cause. Six Sigma, lean and best practices can fix what’s broken, but none of them can see what isn’t there.

When the context changes radically, the work changes radically. New-to-company activities are required to get the new work done. New-to-industry tools are needed to create new value. And, sometimes, new-to-world thinking is the only thing that will do. The trick isn’t to define the new activity, choose the right new tool or come up with the new thinking. The trick is to recognize there’s something missing, to recognize there’s something not there, to recognize there’s a need for something new. Whether it’s an activity, a tool or new thinking, we’ve got to learn to see what’s not there.

Now the difficult part – how to recognize there’s something missing. You may think the challenging part is to figure out what’s needed to fill the void, but it isn’t. You can’t fill a hole until you see it as a hole. And once everyone agrees there’s a hole, it’s pretty easy to buy the shovels, truck in some dirt and get after it. But if don’t expect holes, you won’t see them. Sure, you’ll break your ankle, but you won’t see the hole for what it is.

If the work is new, look for what’s missing. If the problem is new, watch out for holes. If the customer is new, there will be holes. If the solution is new, there will be more holes.

When the work is new, you will twist your ankle. And when you do, grab the shovels and start to put in place what isn’t there.

Image credit: Pixabay

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