Leading Questions

Quick Takes: The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge

A couple weeks ago, I hosted a Bunko Breakfast (actually afternoon tea) with the Roan Scholars at East Tennessee State University.  We had a great time discussing the six lessons that Johnny Bunko learns in Dan Pink's book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need. We also discussed The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge.  Here watch the video. It will explain everything.

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo.

I'm submitted mine 7th lesson. I'll share it with you sometime in a blog post and Real Life Leadership column. It is an important completion to the six lessons.

Age of Conversation 2: Let the Conversation Continue

Collaborative ventures have always appealed to me. So many of my projects are collaborative at their core because they involved transition and change. In those instances, people have to communicate well in order for the venture to be a success. 

With this in mind, I am very pleased to announce the publication of Age of Conversation 2: Why They Don't Get It, a collaborative publishing effort that focuses on the place of conversation in leadership, marketing, professional life, and the effective functioning of organizations.

My contribution - Moving from Idea to Impact - is a conversation guide. A one page diagram of the process for how a group can move from an idea that they may have to its eventual impact. It is a four step process that I'll let you discover by reading the book. The guide is designed to be copied and given to each person in the group.  As is typical for me, each step has a set of questions to ask that leads to the next step.  As in most disciplines, collaboration is a form of discipline for both the participants and the group as a whole, and this discipline requires practice. The more people use the guide, the more comfortable they will become at being able to move quickly from an idea to its resulting impact in action.

The proceeds from the sale of Age of Conversation 2 goes to Variety, an international children's charity.  Last year's edition raised $15,000, and I hope we are able to top that this year.

You can now purchase Age of Conversation 2 at http://www.lulu.com/ageofconversation. There are three formats. A downloadable e-book, at a cost of $12.50, of which $10 will be contributed to Variety.  Also, orders will be taken for a limited number of printed books in hardcover ($29.95, with $6.04 to charity) and softcover ($19.95, with $8.02 donated to charity).

I hope you'll acquire a copy of Age of Conversation. You'll find ideas and insight that can fuel your life and work. If you just read one contribution a day, you'll have a single idea that you can then learn to apply for reaching impact. That's the idea, doing well, by doing well with others.

UPDATE: I downloaded AOC2 and begun to read through it. This book is even better than I thought. Check out page 185 (Please excuse the self-promotion.)

Click through here to find links to all the Age of Conversation 2 authors.

Emotions: Validation or Liberation

The posts over the past few days that focus on behavioral economics prodded me to begin to think about how emotions actually function in a more practical sense in how we work, live and even lead organizations.

I know in my own experience, my emotions for the vast majority of my first 50 years of life were never released, were kept in check, and only paraded out in the most secure settings. An experience with my oldest son watching the series Band of Brothers changed it for me forever.

We were watching the last segment which is a documentary on the men in the unit portrayed in the mini-series where they talked about their experience fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.  They described the closeness, the camaraderie, the trust, the bond, the absolute confidence that their fellow soldiers had with one another, and how they never experienced this depth of friendship during the rest of their lives. As these men, of common birth, of no remarkable accomplishments after their war experience, spoke of their relationships with one another, I realized that they had experience what I had desired in my own relationships with people. As that revelation swept over me, I began to cry, no sob, uncontrollably.  Once, I got control of my emotions, I turn to my son and told him, "What these men have experienced is what we all long to experience. If during the course of your lifetime, you find relationships with others like these men have had, then consider yourself more than fortunate. You will have experienced the kind of friendship we all long for, and most never, ever experience."

Emotionally it was a turning point for me, and to a certain extent has allowed me the opportunity to grow as a person. How odd that we find that through our emotions we find progress. The question is what exactly does this mean?

As I've reflected on this over time, I've come to a few conclusions that may make some sense.

First, I really don't have a scientific basis for what I'm about to write, but I'll not let the idea succeed or fail on its own merits.  I believe that our emotions are connected to the right hemisphere of our brain, and that it is the seat of our ability to create. Pure emotion cannot create lasting good. Establishing a connection to the more analytical left hemisphere is how our best attempts at creativity find success. This is my own interpretation of the many things I've read and heard on brain science. It is my own take.  If we want to be effective as creative persons, then we must bring both sides of our brain's life together.

When I was in my twenties, I had the opportunity to spend time with a number of artists. I loved their creativity. I had a real identification with them, but didn't really know how that could work for me. I had no real artistic talent that I could identify. I had taken a number of art history courses in college because visual culture was interesting to me. But, the closest that I ever came to doing with I thought artists did was take photographs.

The banner picture above is one I took this summer in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It is a several pictures stitched together to create an image that the camera could not produce with one shot, and is not really the picture you see if you stand at this spot in this side channel of the Snake River. There is an emotional connection to this place for our family. It is here just to the right side of the picture where our family has swam with horses, riding bareback through a deep pool where both horse and rider float, and we get wet, and experience a rare moment of real oneness with the horse.   

Through the release of the emotions of creativity, new openness and opportunities occur. We must look for them, seek them out, and take advantage of them for them to have any lasting meaning. But they are there none the less. For me the release has meant a greater level of sensitivity to the delicate situations occurring in my work with clients. It isn't simply formulaic analysis and standard set of recommendations. It is rather identifying the unique path that each person or organization must travel through a time of transition. It is where my creative work now occurs.

Second, I've observed that peoples' emotions also serve a validation purpose. In this sense, the emotions serve to defend against the intrusion of ideas and influences that might threaten those beliefs and practices that have come to provide security.  It is what connects to others, creates a social bond and provides a real sense of personal identity.

Throughout my life, I have encounter many, many angry people. Why are they angry? There any number of reasons. They feel threatened. They feel a loss of control. They are afraid. They feel misunderstood. They are embarrassed. They are confused.  Any number of reasons. They look to their emotions to validate their claim. The emotions become defensive.  We've all encountered these emotions in others, and may even feel them ourselves at times.

When we look to our emotions to validate rather than to liberate, we have closed a circle around our lives. We have determine (rationally?) that I no longer need to consider new ideas, new perspectives, new approaches. I know what I need to know, and any outside influence should be viewed as a threat.

If then, as I said earlier that the emotions are the seat of creativity, then what we have done by seeking only emotions that validate is that we have closed off our ability to create, to learn, to grow, and to make the transitions in life that are necessary for happiness and fulfillment. It means it is very difficult to venture across the narrow confines of our comfortable, secure, safe set of relationships in networks of relationships that much to us and we to them, but requires a greater level of personal security because the validation factor has changed. 

Why am I going to such lengths to describe emotions in this way?  I am because I believe that managing change or transition is as much an emotional process as it is a rational, analytical one. And if Danny Kahnemann and his cohort of behavioral economists are correct, then our emotions lead us, and are not merely a response.

All transitions are emotional. If you take the image here as a guide, you'll see that at these transition points, we can either move up or go into a decline. From an emotional point of view, if we approach these transition points with resistance,looking for validation of how we have been functioning up to that point, then we'll continue to see a flattening of our performance or possible decline.

However, if we approach these transition points with openness to the opportunities that may lie ahead, our emotions will liberate our creative side to bring resources that would be constrained and confined otherwise. We will see that that what brought us to this level of success is not necessarily going to take us to the next level. Which means that we must change. We must stop doing some things and start doing new ones.

So, when you are in a meeting, and you are listening to some one who is angry, ask yourself this question. "What is this person telling me about what they love?" Why this question? Because I'm convinced that at the heart of our emotions is love. And the anger is telling us that this person feels that something they love is being threatened. If you want to move beyond the anger, then identify what it is that they love, and validate it, affirm it, and figure out someway to carry it through the transition with safety.

Do we have a choice in these matters? Can we liberate our emotions to greater creativity and impact?  I believe so. But it isn't an analytical process. Rather, it is an expressive one. Go put yourself in the position to be creative. Take a pottery course at the local community college. Join a Toastmasters group. Begin to mentor a underprivileged kid. Start writing a blog. Do something that is not primarily mental, but expresses your creativity in some way. As you do, you'll find greater confidence and insight into who you are. You'll discover aspects of your life that your emotions have kept hidden for a long time. 

My Wireless Leash

Right now, I'm sitting in the passenger seat of our family's care headed to Nashville for Family Weekend at our son's school. My wife is driving, and I'm blogging. It is so cool listening to the business news on the radio, and being able to check websites as we motor along at 70mph.

How is this possible? My ATT Wireless Broadband Card in my new Dell XPS computer. I'm amazed at how well this works. Hardly a hiccup. I'm not an early adopter of technology,but I am a beleiver in it being the great equalizer for those of us whose small businesses employ fewer than 2 people.

Quick Takes: What about the Community Banks?

Joe Nocera, NY Times business columnist, received an email from a banker that is revealing as to the realities of the financial crisis. Here are two quotes that capture the importance of this bankers message.

The government has already done plenty for the big banks. It needs to stop worrying about them now. Instead, it need to pump money into the local community banks because those are the bankers who understand their markets, and know the businesses in their markets. They lunch with small business owners at Rotary Clubs and Chamber meetings. They learn, first-hand, about their businesses and the challenges they face. They go to their stores and factories and “kick the boxes.” And most importantly, they learn about the ways in which those business owners are making the tough decisions in cutting back expenses to stay ahead of this economic crisis.
...

Why do the big banks act like this? Because they don’t have a personal relationship with their small business customers. Instead, over the years, they have come to rely on impersonal credit scoring. They let a computer make the decisions previously made by the local bankers. Then they started to “reduce paperwork” and processing time. They allowed businesses to use a one-page form for loan applications where the owners could “state revenue and income and personal assets” without verification. Then, for loans under $150,000, the banks decided the small business borrowers didn’t have to file UCC filings. These filings are important because they tell all the other banks who lent money to whom. So loans made by one bank became invisible to everyone else. And since business loans, which the owners personally guarantee, are not reported to credit agencies on personal credit reports, they are even more invisible.

So far, despite doling out more than $125 billion in new capital to banks, the government has been unwilling to do anything more than politely ask the banks to make more loans. That approach is never going to work. Since 1999, the government has issued several guidelines to the banks, warning them of the potentially disastrous consequences of diving into the risky subprime mortgage market. It has urged them to curtail this behavior. The banks refused to listen and went head-long into that market, driven solely by greed. For the government to now believe that the big banks are somehow going to have an epiphany and change their behavior is delusional.

This is a message that is not being discussed by the candidates. The US economy isn't the European one. We have always been a nation of small businesses. And they are the ones suffering the most in this time of financial turmoil. We aren't talking about greedy capitalists. We are talking about the foundation of social welfare of the nation at the most basic level, the local community. 

Make sure you read the whole coluimn. It isn't very long. Well worth reading, and shared with your network of friends and associates.

Change: the alluring appeal

Steve Roesler, of All Things Workplace blog and a fellow Age of Conversation 2 author, commented on my Taleb on the Crisis post. It was so good, I felt that it was worthy of a post on its own.  Steve commented:

Ed, This is one of the finest articles that I have seen on this topic; I wish I had written it myself:-) Consistent with this is the nebulous, but unbelievably alluring, notion of "change." We see it in business, politics, and organizations in general. As one who has made a substantial living from phone calls requesting help with "change," the term now has new meaning for me and I treat it as such. "Change" is merely a catch-phrase for dissatisfaction with something. Yet instead of doing the reality-based and often painful work of addressing the underlying issue(s) of substance, "Change" is trotted out as a not-to-be challenged rallying cry. It has been allowed a special, almost sacred, status. Those who would question it are quickly deemed resistant, old-school, and/or (gulp) "traditional." (Each of these words has also been purposefully and inaccurately redefined when used in the context of "change." Those "in the know" will simply wink at each other, thus distinguishing themselves from the un-washed; no actual analysis of fact is needed). What continues to fascinate me is that, in a world with so much helpful and oft-quoted behavioral research, important decisions continue to be made in ways described by you and the authors. Which, I guess, is exactly the point. The result, then, would seem to offer the prospect of this worldview: "I would rather live with unsubstantiated hope that makes me feel good now than spend time investigating an evidence-based foundation on which to build my future." Film at 11.

Steve, you are absolutely right that change has become "merely a catch-phrase for dissatisfaction with something." 

My experience with people who want change is that they don't know what change they want, just that they want it. There is some intuitive sense that they have reached a transition point, and change is necessary. In this image, the dots are those transition points. The emotion that people feel at these points is discomfort or disorientation or greater constraint, less ease at achieving their performance than before. They realize that something is not quite right. Change is needed. They feel it, but their rational mind which is always trying to create order says,"Resist it. Fight it. Keep doing what you've been doing." 

In most cases, what they have been doing is no longer as successful, so performance is flattening out or declining.  If they could step outside themselves, they could see it.  As a consultant, this is the privilege that I have everyday of walking into organizations and seeing the change they are in.

What Nassim Taleb and Danny Kahneman are wanting us to understand is that we are not purely ratioanl beings. In fact, the more intelligent, the more highly educated you are, the more likely you are denial about the role of emotions in your decision-making.

Our emotions are leading indicators of what is to come. The more in-tuned with our emotions we become, the greater the capacity for anticipating the arrival of a transition point, and knowing how to adapt to the constant micro-changes that are required to make the macro change to a new direction.  For in the diagram above, to move to a new level of performance requires that we stop doing some of the things we have been doing before, and begin to do new things that will carry us to that new level. It takes mental fortitude to turn our backs on what has made us successful to this point, and create new capacities that will carry us forward.

On a personal note ... about five or six years ago, I passed through an emotional transition point. The specific situation is not relevant to my point, but the change I went through is. I am now more emotionally moved by situations than ever before. These deep emotions of both happiness and sadness have made it possible to be a better analyst of the transition points that leaders and the organizations are going through. And as I have analyzed what is taking place, my emotions are being touched by seeing my values expressed in the statements and actions of people. So, values are a key to these transition points.

Two examples.

Being the catalyst for an agreement where by a for-profit health care provider purchases the "operational" assets of a non-profit provider, resulting in an informal partnership where the for-profit provides the services, and the non-profit continues in existence as a foundation to provide funds for indigent care.  At the heart of this win/win situation is a commitment by both parties to the people of the rural county where the services are provided.

Being the catalyst for an organization to move from an almost total focus on the past to an emerging vision of the future, with the senior executive recognizing without solicitation or prompting that he is not the one to lead them into that future. So, instead of holding on until retirement in four years, he resigns effective one year out, giving them time to find his replacement.  This frees the organization to start new initiatives right away instead of waiting for his retirement to begin to pass through their historic transition point.

When emotions and the rational analytical mind are a dynamic balance, transitions can be achieved in a win/win fashion. And win/win is the game of the future. This is what is so disappointing about the poltical culture of our country. We are at a transition point, a point of change, and change is merely a way to play the old political zero-sum game of I win/ You lose. 

How does one get in touch with ones emotions in this context?  I don't think pop psychology is the answer. There is too much narcisisstic self-deception embedded in that perspective.

Rather, begin by admitting that your emotions are leading indicators of change, and listen to them. If you can't hear them, then begin to write a journal,or begin to blog. I know that my blogging has provided my emotions an outlet for expression that I never had before.

Do something that connects your emotions to some tangible action that is constructive and beneficial. If you are angry about something, get involved in some way where your anger can be constructive. While not an expert, I imagine this is the next step in the evolution of emotional intelligence.

Thanks Steve for a provocative comment. It has given us much to reflect on.

Quick Takes: Weekly Leader

Peter Mello of Sea Fever Consulting has a new website - Weekly Leader.

We are inundated with so much information through so many different channels, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to keep on top of it all.  This is especially true with the extraordinary demands on our time and attention as we try to balance our work and life responsibilities.

Well, we set up Weekly Leader to help.

Each week we will search the Internet and print world for news about the latest and best practices in leadership and Weekly Leader will present summaries filled with links to the original content; you could consider us your Cliff Notes for leadership.

It is going to be a great resource for all sorts of information on leading. Check it out and subscribe to its RSS feed.

Taleb: the Risk Maverick

I've reference Nassim Nicholas Taleb quite a bit over the past few weeks. His books Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan are essential readings for understanding how we find ourselves in the financial crisis that we are in, and why a whole different way of thinking is needed if we are going to survive.

I keep bringing this topic up because what the federal government does about the economy is the most important issue in this presidential campaign.

I linked to this video on an earlier post. It is ten minutes long, and worth watching because it presents a different perspective on our situation than you get from the candidates or the media. It is important that we understand the wider implications of this financial crisis.

Is there any doubt why there is so much fear? 

So, what is a person to do?  Two things.

One, we need to admit to ourselves that not only do we not know enough about the economy and what the candidates will do, but we don't even know what we don't know.  The purpose of this recognition is personal humility and the need for greater skepticism about the claims and promises of political candidates and financial experts make.

Two, we need to learn to look very carefully at our decisions, especially those where we are dependent upon experts to give us information we need. The way to do this is ask questions. Don't be satisfied to easily when there are huge consequences involved.

The implication to me is that we are at a unique juncture in our history and this presidential election could well determine the course of global history for the next generation.

Quick Takes: Taleb on the Crisis

If you've read me for a while, you'll know that I am a fan of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the former derivatives trader and author of Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan.  He's written about the current financial crisis here and there is an excellent interview with him in Time. If you are not familiar with Taleb's worldview, start with the Time interview.

According to Taleb, black swans are ocurrences that are unforeseen yet happened. In the Time interview he points to the rise of the internet as one positive one, and the 9/11 attacks as another. At his website, Taleb has extracted a set of quotes from The Black Swan that describes one of the contributing factors to the global financial crisis that we are facing. Here's the quote.

Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall.  The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.

Banks hire dull people and train them to be even more dull. If they look conservative, it's only because their loans go bust on rare, very rare occasions. But (...)bankers are not conservative at all. They are just phenomenally skilled at self-deception by burying the possibility of a large, devastating loss under the rug.

The government-sponsored institution Fannie Mae, when I look at its risks, seems to be sitting on a barrel of dynamite, vulnerable to the slightest hiccup. But not to worry: their large staff of scientists deemed these events "unlikely".

There is no way to gauge the effectiveness of their lending activity by observing it over a day, a week, a month, or . . . even a century!

(...)  the real- estate collapse of the early 1990s in which the now defunct savings and loan industry required a taxpayer-funded bailout of more than half a trillion dollars. The Federal Reserve bank protected them at our expense: when "conservative" bankers make profits, they get the benefits; when they are hurt, we pay the costs.

Once again, recall the story of banks hiding explosive risks in their portfolios. It is not a good idea to trust corporations with matters such as rare events because the performance of these executives is not observable on a short-term basis, and they will game the system by showing good performance so they can get their yearly bonus. The Achilles’ heel of capitalism is that if you make corporations compete, it is sometimes the one that is most exposed to the negative Black Swan that will appear to be the most fit for survival.

As if we did not have enough problems, banks are now more vulnerable to the Black Swan and the ludic fallacy than ever before with “scientists” among their staff taking care of exposures. The giant firm J. P. Morgan put the entire world at risk by introducing in the nineties RiskMetrics, a phony method aiming at managing people’s risks, causing the generalized use of the ludic fallacy, and bringing Dr. Johns into power in place of the skeptical Fat Tonys. (A related method called “Value-at-Risk,” which relies on the quantitative measurement of risk, has been spreading.)

Please, don’t drive a school bus blindfolded.

Owing to [...] misunderstanding of the causal chains between policy and actions, we can easily trigger Black Swans thanks to aggressive ignorance—like a child playing with a chemistry kit.

My conclusion is that as a society we are practicing cognitive dissonance on a global scale. We are doing what Paul Simon penned his his classic '60s hit The Boxer, "People believe what they want to believe and disregard the rest."  People believe what they want to believe about the financial crisis, about presidential candidates, about whether whatever it is that they don't want to actually address in reality.

In my previous post on Michael Malone's rant about the decline of journalism, the same holds true there. The Black Swan of this election is not what we don't know about these candidates that will wreck havoc upon the country, but what we do know and what we choose to ignore.

The financial crisis we are in isn't a classic Black Swan. The signs were there for all to see if they only chose to do so. The problem isn't that we are not a smart people, but we are indifferent and ignorant of the consequenses of our opinions and choices. And no more amply seen in this year's presidential election.

Addendum: David Brooks, in today's NY Times, writes about Taleb and the growing influence of behavioral economists like Danny Kahneman, whom Taleb credits highly for his understanding of the perception of risk. It is an excellent look at what I'm calling cognitive dissonance. Brooks writes about Taleb.

His writing is idiosyncratic, but he does touch on many of the perceptual biases that distort our thinking: our tendency to see data that confirm our prejudices more vividly than data that contradict them; our tendency to overvalue recent events when anticipating future possibilities; our tendency to spin concurring facts into a single causal narrative; our tendency to applaud our own supposed skill in circumstances when we’ve actually benefited from dumb luck. And looking at the financial crisis, it is easy to see dozens of errors of perception. Traders misperceived the possibility of rare events. They got caught in social contagions and reinforced each other’s risk assessments. They failed to perceive how tightly linked global networks can transform small events into big disasters.

Edge.org, who published a Taleb piece linked to above, also has a lot of material on Kahneman. This is pretty heavy stuff, but ultimately worthwhile. The simple idea that emerges is that we are much less rational, as intelligent beings, than we want to think of ourselves being. In reality, we are emotional beings who use our rationality to rationalize our choices. Hence, the person who is either emotionally conflicted or immature, could well make really bad decisions by practicing a high level game of self-deception.

The best treatment of self-deception is the Arbinger Institute book, Leadership and Self-Deception.  I highly recommend this book. It will be a revelation to you about how we fool ourselves into self-justifying rationalization that is intended to help avoid accountability for our bad decisions. It is the very thing which I see played out in the news over the past few weeks. Everyone is rushing to fix blame on someone else. As a result, we get a bail out plan that has not worked, and a market that is continuing to lose value.  What this tells me is that the people (wisdom of crowds?) is not yet emotionally comfortable with what the federal government is doing.

The same self-delusion that leads to looking for scape goats in our relationships, is at work in how this financial mess gets cleared up, and how we are selecting a president. You may not like George Bush's performance as president, but that is no basis for deciding who the next president will be. They should be selected on their own terms. As I told some friends yesterday, it feels like the 1970's all over again, now as then, the self-deception is at the heart of our decision making processes is alive and well.

And be sure to watch this PBS NewsHour interview with Taleb and his mentor Benoit Mandelbrot.

Quick Takes: The Sad Case of Media Bias

For the past four years, I've been writing Real Life Leadership, a business leadership column for the Asheville Citizen-Times. It has been a great experience. Especially because of the reactions I get from readers. It is always gratifying.  In the 1885, my great, great grandfather, A.H. Belo, then owner of the Galveston News, established the Dallas Morning News. So, there is some justifiable pride in my love of newspapers and the people who write for them. While true, it is also not the whole story.

That story is better told by Michael Malone of ABC news.

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game -- with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.

The media have covered this presidential campaign with bias and that ultimately could lead to its downfall.

The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun -- for the first time in my adult life -- to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist

On this I agree. With every pass that the media gives Obama, the less likely I will vote for him. There is a consequence to shoddy, prejudicial journalism. It is a sad piece,for here is a man who is a fourth generation journalist, and he is now embarassed by the nature of the decline.

Read the whole article. It is worth your time, whether you have decided who you will vote for or not.