Yes, I confess. I did the whole “undead” thing last week at the Cambridge Zombie March.
The Zombie March is just what it sounds like. A couple of hundred people dressed up as zombies and shambled a couple of miles across the city of Cambridge.
read more…
In my mastermind group, an HR consultant happily announced she just concluded a project standardizing job descriptions across a multi-thousand-person company. In that moment, she named herself my nemesis. For my job is helping people rise to their own strengths, and step outside the neat little boxes that give such comfort to the Standardizers of the World.
Everyone is forever asking how to motivate people. You can’t. All you can do is get out of their way. You want them to innovate? Break the mold and do something truly awesome? Standardized job descriptions aren’t the answer. Helping each person bring their unique strengths to bear is much more likely to produce great things. (Imagine if Patent Office clerk Albert Einstein had limited himself to his job description.)
The job market for CEOs and, indeed, executives places great stock in the notion that every Leader is a unique gem, whole clear sight and bold touch will transform an organization to greatness. We believe so deeply that we grant multi-million-dollar salaries in recognition of Executive Uniqueness.
Yet these very people diligently reduce everyone else to standardized job descriptions, salary bands, hours and schedules people work, and often even the clothes people wear. Then they complain that people show too little initiative, don’t think outside the [standardized] box they’ve so graciously been given, and won’t create a culture of innovation. No one seems to ponder that maybe we’re reaping exactly, precisely what we sow: the least common denominator. It’s easy to administer people if we treat them as interchangeable widgets, but then that’s all we get–the parts that are interchangeable.
It’s very easy to say that it makes things easier to manage to standardize job descriptions. And it does. It also sets up expectations, development plans, hiring processes, and a culture that values the standard, not the unique. In this age of “disruptive innovation” and “outsourcing” and yet the latest fad-of-the-month management concept, we’ve pretty much forgotten the basics.
Companies are built of people. No matter how many systems you put in place, it’s the people who endure and make those systems run smoothly. Most importantly, it’s the people who adapt those systems to changing circumstances. And when you treat people as interchangeable, standardized parts, you get people who like to have a known, predictable place in the world. It’s simple selection. People who are mavericks, who push the envelope, who are greatly creative likely won’t love working for a place where those qualities aren’t valued by the systems.
As the business world reaches an absurdly frantic pace, businesses–indeed, whole economies–claim they will thrive on innovation. But innovation comes from people who can move beyond the everyday assumptions into whole news realms. For example, people who step outside the notion that job descriptions must be standardized. You know “Gore Corporation,” the makers of Gore-Tex? They don’t have a hierarchy or job descriptions. Their facilities are self-organizing. They limit themselves to about 140 people (sociologists say that’s the largest group that can self-organize) and things run smoothly. They’ve realized that our notions of hierarchy and standardization aren’t natural laws, they’re just beliefs we’ve adopted and never questioned.
Look around you. Look at your leaders. Look at your peers. Look at your family, your children, and those around you. Where are they playing roles that don’t suit them? Where are they squashing their own strengths, or wasting endless energy trying to be something they aren’t? Is there any way you can help them? Find opportunities where their strengths can produce the most value. Give them chances to shine where they’re good. And where they’re not, rather than expecting excellence, rearrange things so they can refocus on the places they can real shine.
First, Break All the Rules by the Gallup organization studied millions to discover that success comes from a focus strengths, not weaknesses. Weaknesses are best handled with alliances and systems. You’ know a great idea person, who sucks at details? No sweat. Pair them with a details-oriented implementor and their team will be unbeatable. The energy that could move a weakness from “poor” to “average” can just as easily move a strength from “good” to “superb.”
Oh, and by the way, you’re a people too. Look in the mirror and do the same for yourself. Create a life and career where you can hone your strengths and let others do what you don’t do well. When you’ve organized your life around your excellence, not only do you get more done (the Holy Grail of the 21st century), but you’ll also become the Architecht of a fun, exciting, fulfilling life. And that’s a worthwhile job description.
It was worse than a Stephen King Novel. Eight hours from Milan to Boston. A newborn in the seat to my right. His 2-year old sister two seats to the right. One in the seat in front of me. Two other children (same family, apparently) in the row behind. One more, two rows behind me. All age 3 or under.
For Goodness sake, if you’re gonig to have kids, don’t travel with them until they’re old enough to handle the experience. The kids are miserable. The little girl sat in her seat before takeoff crying sadly, “I’m scared. I’m scared.” My heart almost broke. Airplanes are also notorious breeding grounds for germs. People bring viruses and bacteria from the world over and happily share recycled air for half a day. Kids–already prone to sickness as they build their immune systems–are innocent victims of our cosmopolitan lifestyle.
Leave the kids home. It’s a mercy for the kids!
(Have I mentioned that it’s also a mercy for the rest of us? This morning, I loved kids. Now I’m rapidly becoming an advocate for population control. As much as I advocate community, I’m trying really, really hard not to point out how much nicer it is for the other passengers as well. Kids are cute, but, well, they yell. And cry. And poop. And vomit. And extrude. And spit. And lots of other things. And when they do it in an enclosed metal tube for eight hours, the charm wears off for those of us not genetically related to the adorable little people.)
I have several important projects on my “to do” list. Instead, I’m typing on my BLOG. I’m making phone calls for my business school reunion. Everything except what I “should” be doing. Just the thought of the projects leaves me dizzy. But why?
When I have a hundred tiny, no-thought things to do, I can just stick ’em on a list and blast my way through them. When a project requires thought, Life Slows Down.
I was never a very fast problem solver. Pondering, reflecting, and going deep work best. My brain latches onto something and follows it and follows it … and follows it. The problem is that my brain’s not terribly good at following too many things at once. With four high-thought projects in the midst, the brain stalls, and none of them get any progress. But gee, does my BLOG get updated 🙂
Maybe there’s an important distinction here. Maybe overload is sometimes “detail overload,” where there are just too many things to keep track of. But maybe there’s also a form of “depth overload,” where there may not be high quantity, but the amount of thought needed for the few items is so great that progress is tough to make.
That suggests a simple solution: defer one or more of the high-thought projects until others are done. First, gotta figure out what the Deep Thought limit is. I fear in my case, it just may be One…
(Also see my more thoughtful articles at https://www.steverrobbins.com/overcomingoverload/index.htm)
My friend Andy Wibbels just published a book on BLOGging that’s already made it to #1 on some of the Amazon lists. Check him out at: http://andywibbels.com/post/1093
I just finished the Times Article on Climate Change. I’m really not sure what to say. We all keep thinking of climate change in terms of, “oh, golly jeepers, it might hurt the economy to slow down our use of greenhouse gases.”
Yeah, that’s true. Recent evidence from Arctic ice drilling suggests greenhouse gas levels are the highest in 650,000 years, and they’re rising faster than ever recorded.
Huh. Let’s see. We’re basically heading into totally uncharted climactic territory at a historically unprecedented rate, and we don’t want to slow down (much less stop) because it might hurt the economy.
Well, it strikes me that tinkering with something like the ecosphere is delicate business. All kinds of unintended conseqeunces come about when we do simple things like over-hunt a predator and its prey suddenly populates out of control.
Global warming is that times a million. Entire species are getting out of sync as the migration patterns of birds change faster than the birthing patterns of their prey. All kinds of things can get out of balance, and we barely understand 1% of 1% of the possible implications.
I’m worried that we might just tweak something essential for human survival. A single volcano splitting could send a devastating tsunami around the world. What would a melting ice sheet do? Or a bunch of them? Or maybe the extinction of part of the food chain that is critical for human survival?
Come on, people, this isn’t a matter of a new cutsie little tax. It may be bad for the ecomony to behave smartly towards global warming, but it could be fatal for the economy to ignore the problem.
We seem to believe that our current levels of economic expansion are somehow normal or healthy. There’s no particular reason to believe that. Through most of human history, we’ve developed much more slowly.
Personally, I’m a super-conservative kind of guy. I like life. I’d much rather slow or growth or enter steady-state while we figure out if we’re killing ourselves than run ahead at full speed, possibly right into oncoming traffic.
It’s nice to see that the trait of overconfidence followed by incompetence, followed by blame-mongering runs true in the Bush genetic code. Jeb Bush is blaming Wilma victims for not being prepared, as justification that the relief efforts are disorganized and half-assed.
Should Florida residents have prepared? You bet. Were they? Apparently not enough. Does that justify the Bushies, who have controlled Florida for much longer than just the current presidency, doing an incompetent job at one of the most important functions of government (disaster recovery) in a known hurricane zone? Not one bit.
I wish I thought this would make a big difference in how people vote for politicians, but it won’t. George Bush’s track record was there for everyone to see in 2000. As widely chronicled before he ran for President, he’d never run a successful business venture in his life. Every effort went nowhere or straight downhill until Daddy’s friends bailed him out, often in exchange for private White House meetings with Daddy.
Even Bush’s wealth ($14MM) doesn’t come from him. It comes from a single sweetheart deal in which taxpayer money was used to build a stadium for the Texas Rangers, turning Bush’s half-million-dollar investment into $14MM.
This was all quite public knowledge before he was elected the first time. He had been an alcoholic until age 40 (do you know what that does to the brain? I lived with an alcoholic relative. Going dry after that long still leaves scars). He had a track record of recklessness, fiscal irresponsibility, and failure. An entire book had been written on his competence. (Shrub : The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush by Molly Ivins, Lou Dubose)
Employers don’t call references, and they are well aware that hiring the wrong person costs money. It would be great if our electorate would check out references before someone runs for public office. But we don’t, and we won’t. We’ll continue to rely on sound bites, hearsay, and slick packaging rather than real debates, issue-centered coverage, and a search to understand the problems and the candidates’ solutions.
Not only does that make me sad, but it makes a whole, whole lot of us have much scarier, terror-filled lives of scarcity, when we could all be safe, sound, and well-fed.
To Florida: you’ve had Jeb for a decade. You knew what he was capable of. You saw him bungle the logistics for two elections, disenfranchising thousands of your residents. You’re without food and water and ice. Connect the dots. YOU and YOUR VOTES are the government. Jeb’s right. You should have prepared better. You should have voted him out of office.
I just read in The New York Times that we’re once again facing a record trade deficit. The article (and the government) explain how important it is for China to fix their manipulative ways and to help slow down the loss of jobs and manufacturing from the US.
This victim mentality is odd, coming from a Government that has no trouble imposing its will on smaller countries when it suits our wishes. China’s a bit too big to invade, however.
Want to stem the job losses caused by outsourcing to China? The government can do it through tariffs and by limiting free trade. Business people can do it by simply deciding not to outsource. That would, of course, result in higher prices that consumers would have to be willing to pay for (I’d be willing to pay higher prices, if my job depended on it).
Remember that free trade is all about letting money flow to where things are cheapest, with no barriers. America has some of the highest paid workers in the world, so of course labor dollars will flow away from America. This is probably a good thing, globally, as it spreads the capital around, even though it hurts at home.
(Prices would be more sensible [read: higher] and the system would probably adjust faster if we combined free trade with political systems allowing the free movement of people. We only have cheap labor in China to begin with because the Chinese can’t freely immigrate and are stuck in a country where $5/day is a lot of money.)
So next time you shop at Wal-Mart, or go online to conveniently find the lowest prices, ponder that your decision to comparison shop is an important driver behind the loss of American jobs overseas.
P.S. The oil trade deficit comes from our energy policy. Read it and weep.
The other big source of the deficit is oil. We have only, only, only ourselves to blame on this one. Many of us have been clamoring for years for a real national energy policy. Instead, we have an energy policy written by oil companies, endorsed by a President who is either blind to long-term consequences of his policies, or who really doesn’t care about much other than accumulating wealth for himself (oil family, remember) and his friends.
Have you seen the latest stories about global warming? It seems that we’re already committed to an 8 inch rise in sea levels and significant other warming. Some folks are saying that since it’s inevitable, we may as well not bother doing anything.
Um, hello? The actions we take today will have an effect several decades down the road. We can’t change today’s situation by acting today, but we can certainly reduce future catastrophe by acting today.
Unfortunately, humans aren’t built to reason well about time. We tend to ignore the long-term in our thinking, even if we intellectually know it’s there. When the effects of our actions won’t happen for a while, we think short-term.
Imagine if eating a fat and cholesteral-laden Big Mac immediately added those inches to a person’s waste, or caused their arteries to harden with an audible creaking sound? You can bet McDonald’s would be out of business faster than you can shake a stick.
Or how about cigarettes–if lighting up caused instant yellowed teeth, spotted hands, and blood-laced coughing fits, tobacco would likely be a lot less popular with the teenage set. And it would be too powerful an image to be put down, even by such a charistmatic figure as Joe Camel.
Just because we don’t think through future implications doesn’t mean they don’t happen, however. If we charge more on our credit cards than we can pay back, we’ll either have to declare bankruptcy (which may not be effective much longer), or … or what? Or we lose everything. And it will happen even if we don’t think that far ahead when buying that rhinestone encrusted, Dolly Parton-shaped fireplace rug.
I don’t know what the solution is, but we need to find a way to make the future consequences of our actions feel as real as if they were happening today. Think through some of the long-term beneficial things you know you should be doing… Now really consider them in detail. Find out how to make them real enough to you so you change your behavior. Your life, and the lives of those you love, just may depend on it.
This is about us. Global warming, indeed, global broiling, will affect all of us, in our lifetimes. We can’t change it for ourselves, but let’s at least try to do something for our kids, shall we?
It’s Christmas morning. The presents have been open, and we’re wandering around in our chocolate-induced post-carb fog of vague mellowness. One present, a book on the fabulous art festival Burning Man. Leafing through it, we come across a discussion of a playground of stuffed animals, teddy bears, etc. that was doused with gasoline and reduced to ashes in a complex art project. Reading it, I was sad. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for stuffed animals (as long as they aren’t shaped like politicians or lawyers).
Jeff tried to encourage me to explore other ways of looking at the piece: perhaps the simple juxtaposition of the comforting with the disturbing–turning the teddy bear into an instrument of destruction–was intended to get us thinking. Ultimately, the discussion it provoked would be much richer and more complex than the original simple theme. So let’s start discussing.
Perhaps the Society for Teddy Bear Immolation feels differently, but my reaction is basic and strong. Yes, a teddy bear in flames makes me sad. But the larger issue makes me much sadder: we’ve become a culture that motivates with fear. We’re addicted to turning the safe into the dangerous for fun, manipulation, and profit. Have you watched TV news lately? Our local affiliate scares us nightly, showing us how even the safety of our homes conceals lurking danger. Our drinking water is killing us. Strangers are all sex offenders waiting to rape and kill. Our TV may be damaging our unborn children’s brains. Our jobs may be sapping our will to live. PCBs are building up in our bloodstream. Fish, the only really healthy meat, now comes with fatal levels of mercury. Sunlight will kill you. Your drinking water contains dangerous levels of carcinogens. … Need I go on?
Most of our ads are built around making us feel pain, guilt, lack, and need where none existed before. Are you financially successful, with a family who loves you? Feeling happy? Guess again. Five minutes of TV ads will show you you’re not a real man without a gas-guzzling, top-heavy, unsafe SUV. (As if anyone who has the kind of job that can afford an SUV can actually aspire to embody the brand of masculinity so glorified in the commercials.)
So guess what? Creating pain where there was once comfort doesn’t impress me. Teddy Bear as Instrument of Destruction seems almost commonplace. Destruction–indeed, all violence–fundamentally, is easy. Just destroy. It takes little skill or finesse. The basic options are smashing it, burning it, or soaking it. If you’re a chemist, you can probably also dissolve it. There may be some creativity in the fuse and detonation mechanism, but destruction is easy. Construction isn’t.
That teddy bear that was so easily doused with gasoline had to be painstakingly made piece by piece. If it was made on an assembly line, the factory had to be designed, built, and organized. The toy had to be conceived, patterned, and made. Hundreds of people coordinated so that teddy bear could exist. Putting a lit match to it isn’t impressive. Teddy is one example among many. More and more we seem to be concentrating on the killing and smashing. We hit. We’re strong. *grunt* We’re surrounded by images of negativity. One of the most advanced pieces of simulation software ever built, Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, lets you simulate … gang warfare, drug deals, prostitution, theft, and crime. Yes, it’s fun, seductively so (I’ll likely buy it the instant it’s available for PC). But as with virtually all of our entertainment, it immerses us in the “fun” of negativity. I’m sure there are situations in life that are just plain bad. There are, indeed, unresolvable conflicts. There are people who want to engage in genocide (I was talking with one just last week, who wants adherents of the Islamic faith “reduced to ashes, each and every one” … and, of course, we’ve seen others who want the same thing for Americans).
So given that there are some real, genuinely hard negative situations to deal with, why do we insist on creating even more? Have you ever notice the total dearth of role models for functional relationships and communities? When was the last time you actually saw someone on the media begin an argument and resolve it in a way that demonstrated how real, mature people can deal with complex differences? Never. But boy, you can find a dozen daily role models for dysfunction.
Sometimes during an argument, I can even hear an echo of the TV show that programmed me with the abysmal crap I find myself saying. So darn it, I want to be impressed by something impressive: Someone who can bring a little peace to conflict. Someone who can be in a horrific situation and still find and share what beauty there is to be found. Someone who can find fun in connecting with other human begins and building enriching relationships, rather than just shooting them. And maybe–just maybe–someone who can live out some role models about how to have a healthy, successful, happy family life, work life, and community life. More and more, I want to be that kind of person. I don’t want to make teddy bears violent; I want to find ways of resolving violence and conflict. I want to help people find common meeting grounds. I want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. I want to be an agent of happiness, a spreader of grand dreams and good will. I want to walk away leaving people happier, freer, more optimistic, and more upbeat about their lives. Won’t you join me? Merry Christmas, whatever your faith.