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Month: September 2009

What a lazy psychologist knows about Sundays and holidays

BROCKWORTH, ENGLAND - MAY 25:  Contestants in ...
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There is a reason why most religions tell us to take a day off a week. And have the occasional holiday.

It seems to be this.

We humans are creatures of action.   Or, activity, rather.  There is nothing that we like more than scurrying around – looking for our cheese like a mouse in a maze.

But we get so focused that we stop noticing the maze.  And we don’t notice signs warning us the cheese is about to finish – or be moved by some scurrilous self-serving mouse-licious mouse who has always hated us – well you know what I mean.  We get maze-vision.

So we need to take time out regularly to keep our perspective, to keep sight of alternatives, to remember what we truly value.

Did you take Sunday off?

And if Sunday, is not your day off, have you taken a full day off during the last week – not to shop but to relax, to let your mind wander, to remember the good things in life, to celebrate, to find renewed purpose?

To keep your eyes on the horizon, to feel the earth beneath your feet, to touch and feel what is around you, to smile at your companions.

If you didn’t, reform your busy ways.  Become a lot more idle.

You’ll get a lot more done and be nicer to be with too!

And for the lazy psychologists popping-in here, can we get theoretical for a moment?

I have three unresolved ‘issues’ with the theory of action.

I begin by asking: what is the ontology of humankind? Cognito ergo sum. I think therefore I am?  Or I am busy, therefore I am?  Your thoughts?

And why is action so inimical to good judgment?   I have a sneaky feeling that the tension between the tunnel vision of action and the lateral thinking of creativity and wisdom is a tension we have created somehow.  But I don’t know the answer to that.

So for now, I resolve that dilemma by zig-zagging along.

I find clients whose life is in disarray won’t take holidays.  They work 24/7.  I include young people in that group.  We think of them as fooling around a lot.  Actually they are working hard at being young.  Taking a break is hard for them.  It seems they are anxious about their goals.

I haven’t resolved this dilemma either.

If you have answers to any of my predicaments, I would love to hear from you.

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5 rules of motivation for the lazy psychologist

Cheese on a market in Basel, Switzerland
Image via Wikipedia

I’m not moving until I can see the cheese

And Google is not coming without lots of keywords. This post is about MOTIVATION and all the misunderstandings and controversies that seem to swirl about us endlessly.

1  Motivation is distance to your goal

The mouse runs faster when it sees the cheese!

Motivation is not constant.  We aren’t motivated by cheese.  We are motivated by distance to the cheese.

Motivation gets stronger when we can see what we want and our goal comes tantalizing closer as we move toward it.

2  Motivation blinds us

When the mouse sees the cheese, it moves towards it . . . and the mouse trap.

That’s why business people and politicians like greedy people! So easy to dazzle.  So easy to trap.

3  Motivation is never so strong that we ignore a better cheese

So we put the cheese where the mouse can see it, and the mouse takes off . . .  Will it keep going, no matter what?

Yes, . . . unless we put a better cheese next to a dull cheese, or a duller cheese a little closer.  Our mouse is as fickle as the English weather.   It doesn’t matter whose day it spoils, the mouse will go where it is easier or better.

We make rapid calculations about what we will gain and change direction in a flash!

4  Motivation makes us stupid

Yet, when someone moves the cheese, we are temporarily confused. The trouble is that seeing the cheese focused our attention. And we forgot everything else. We forgot that other cheese exists. We forgot there are other routes to the cheese.

Take away the cheese suddenly, and we get cross and disoriented. Though there are plenty of alternatives, for a moment we can’t see them or remember them.

5  Motivation needs to be simple

And if we put two equally attractive cheeses in opposite directions, one to the left and one to the right, we get a confused mouse.

Come on cats, now is your chance.

Worse, if two or more mice are discussing which way to go, we may be there all week.

We need to toss two coins – the first to see if we go together or in different directions, and the second to see which way we go.  Most times we just argue. We don’t think of laying out the problem so tidily.  Two cheeses – we can have one or the other.  Shall we go together or not?  If not, who goes first and in which direction? If we are going together, in which direction?

Action is hard . . .

We can’t move, we won’t get moving, until our choices are simple and the end is in sight. We are easily distracted by alternatives and paralyzed by thought.

.  .  . and action it is also dangerous

We are easily entrapped by our greed – or to be kind to ourselves – easily engaged by the plain fun of scampering towards our cheese and wolfing it down.

Someone has to manage the cheese

We do have to work hard to keep the cheese-system simple and to fend off distractions.  While we are busy managing the cheese, we make ourselves vulnerable because we are just as blinkered in that goal as the cheese-chasers are by the cheese-chase.

So we need people to manage the people who manage the cheese

This is beginning to sound like a nursery-rhyme.

We do need lookouts to watch out for when we are getting blinkered.

We also need our lookouts to challenge us and to ask why we need to chase this cheese at all?  Well, the answer is as always, for the fun of it. We’ll chase something, just for the fun of it.  So, the question is which cheese will we chase?  And who will be sufficiently above the action to referee the debate and not get blinded by the thrill of the chase?

We do need some people to manage the people who manage the people who chase the cheese.  That will be their job, their only job.  Because if they get involved in the action, they will be blinkered too.  We will give them their share of the cheese if they ask us, over and over again, whether we should be chasing the cheese at all.

We must have these people.  Or the cats will have us

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The world turned this week – did you notice?

I think we will look back on this past week as a turning point.  And like most positive turning points, it arrived quietly.

This week we moved past a point where cool in American is Fonzi and Grease.  This week became the week when it is cool to work hard at school and to get up at 04:30am to do extra work if necessary.  This week, schools became a place where students explore opportunities and we as adults and teachers make doorways to bigger and more exciting worlds and put away treadmills that are pounded for no reason.

This week the momentary Acting President while Congress was listening to Obama’s health speech was a Nobel winning scientist.

This week it has become clear that sulking is not an option. Engage in intelligent debate about solutions. Negotiate. Find answers.

We will look back on this week as the point when the world turned.

I for one am very glad.

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Selling organizational acumen: my how-to has a gap

Not a popular profession

I’ve always been a ‘managerialist’- a dirty word, I know.

But I’ve been a managerialist because I am fascinated by good management.

Bad management is just annoying, if not disgusting, in the way we always find cultural incompetence dispiriting – dirtying. Yuck.

So I don’t necessarily love managers. In the way, I don’t necessarily love cricketers but I appreciate a well played game that entertains us.

I just like watching managers.  I like figuring out what they do. And I like it when we can spot how to simplify operations.

  • It’s fun to figure out some back-room system that makes life for people on the front line a lot easier.
  • It’s fun to figure out a set of shelves that cut out 15 minutes of daily rummaging in filing cabinets and operate simultaneously as a kanban system, alerting us to when we need to reorder.
  • It’s fun to automate a clerical system so something repetitive can be dispensed in with 1% of the work.
  • It’s fun to throw out a computer system and use a simple diary to record what we do because that is easier.

But our fun should always result in ways that let people do their jobs more easily and more effectively.

An indecipherable profession

Of course, people don’t always say thank you. They might not have a strong sense of how a little order in the background cuts down a lot of day to day irritation.

Yet, it is fun to watch them perform more smoothly and more elegantly as a result.

Who has written on the selling of management consultancy?

I don’t recall reading anything about the relationship between people who sell management ideas and the people they sell them too.

Anyone?  Or is this just one particular case of selling services?

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10 questions I ask about a venture’s readiness to win

Fast Break

There is nothing I relish more than a “fast break”. I love the way that we can turn a rebound into a few deft passes and race the opposition to a slam dunk.

Carpe diem ! Sieze the day!

Can you take the Fast Break when it comes?

The conditions are right. The rewards are there.

Are we organized to dispatch our fast break specialist, take that rebound and pass it down the court, with ball and fast break specialist arriving together – right foot down, left down, into the air, done! 2 points?

Are we organized?

Well, there are the permanent spectators in life.  There are some who have a go, but don’t really get it.

And there are some who understand the game.  They get ready in advance.  They practice with others.  And when the opportunity breaks, they are running immediately, moving at speed in coordination with their prepared team, and they score. Sweet!

What are you ready for?

1.  What is the equivalent of the ball and the equivalent of the basket in your business?  2. What do you win by putting the ball in the basket?

And when you can tell me that, tell me this.

  • 3.  Who is working with you? 4.  And who must you outpace to pull this off?
  • 5.  What is the signal that sends the fast-break specialist off?  6.  Who is taking the ball off the back-board?  7.  Who is the play-maker (mid-fielder) in the middle?
  • 8.  When do you train together?  9.  When do you celebrate your wins?   10.  How long will you play together?

10 questions . . . oh, but do remember this is a game.   When we are straining too hard, to get this done, it is time for a coffee break to think again.

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Social media: revolution or same-o same-o?

Ready for Take Off
Image by D.Reichardt via Flickr

Yesterday, Paul Seamen published a long post on why he think social media does not pack the revolutionary punch celebrated by enthusiasts such as Jeff Jarvis, Clay Shirky and the leading lights in UK social media.

I must declare my position at the outset. I am a social media enthusiast. Rather than rebut any particular points in Paul’s long contrinution, I thought it better to print out his post, read it carefully, and try to get to the nub of what he is saying. After all, I don’t have to agree with him; but if I am serious about a career in social media and about espousing its potential to others, I should be able to explain positions other than my own.

So this is my attempt to disentangle what is new about social media

Paul makes an important point that we form institutions to bring together diverse groups of people to accomplish something together. We have schools which cater for all children in the neighbourhood. We have companies in which we can all buy shares.

The very nature of an institution is that it takes on a separate persona, recognized in law. A school can speak for itself. A company can speak for itself.

And the agents, or the Directors or the management or the front line staff, speak for the institution, not themselves. They leave their personal views at the door so to speak, because they speak of and for the common purpose.

It is their role to continuously interpret the institution’s purpose ‘faithfully and robustly’ in terms of the specifics of any situation in which they find ourselves.

An institution thus has a sharply different purpose than that of social media which is an essentially personal medium. In social media, each of us speaks for ourselves. There is an essential tension, therefore, between the purpose of social media and the purpose of any corporate communication.

If I have summarized Paul’s position correctly, then I agree, wholeheartedly. I teach management and related subjects for a living and this is the essence of what we teach. It is the essence of what we do as accountants, lawyers, etc. We run the collectives of contemporary life, and in that capacity, we represent the common purpose, not our own personal purpose.

What is the general position of social media mavens?

It is my general understanding that social media mavens are noticing the emergence of a new collective action – much as the commercial company emerged around the time of the South Sea Bubble. And they are describingtthe mechanics of those collectives as they emerge, piece-by-piece. Because the emerging forms are still very new, there is still a lot of experimentation, deliberate and accidental, and their observations take the form of “look at this, look at that” – a point that has already been made by Clay Shirky.

What is the debate?

The debate comes when we consider whether any of the old institutional forms will fade away. Will the old forms be displaced by the new forms?

Paul does not think so and I do not think the old forms will fade entirely either – for many reasons, one being that we won’t change what we are used to until we have to. Convents and monasteries still exist, after all.

What is the issue?

What matters for any one of us as individuals, or what matters for any institution or type of institution, is whether the institutions we work for or depend upon for income, will be displaced. What will their position be in the ecology of human purpose in five years, ten years, etc.?

My reasoning

There is an basic rule-of-thumb in management (and military) studies that broadly says theory doesn’t matter a toss.

In management-speak, we say that structure is contingent on circumstances. In the words of Sun Tzu, we say “Know the situation, know the circumstances”. In general military parlance, we say that “no plan survives meeting the enemy”. In short, we plan to pre-load relevant details into our heads so that we can act quickly and effectively in the cut-and-thrust of battle.

In short, we can talk in broad terms about what will happen but we have no way of knowing exactly. What counts is how we monitor unfolding events and how we position ourselves as events unfold. And as we are all jostling for positions that we believe to be advantageous to ourselves, what emerges is not the result of what any one of us wants, but what we all want , how well we play the game, and probably a large amount of happenstance.

This is my summation of the broad direction that social media is taking

Existing institutions

It is entirely likely that many of Paul’s clients will be largely untouched by social media . Their challenge is to think very carefully about the muddling of the personal voice, which has been made more clamorous with social media, and the institutional voice, which they are charged with expressing ‘faithfully and robustly’ on behalf of us all.

And they should attend to that with speed because the two are already well and truly muddled in public affairs.

New social movements

It is likely that other collective processes will emerge to aggregate the clamours personal voice enabled by social media, and it is the role of self-appointed community leaders to work out the responsibilities for the temporary and permanent associations that they stimulate and represent.

Examples of these processes include the tweeting of events like the Mumbai bombing and inadvertently providing the perpetrators with information; and tweeting in the Iranian elections and risking the ire of the prevailing authorities.

Emerging institutions

I increasingly suspect new types of institutions will emerge through social media . These institutions will be much the same as institutions that I described at the top of the post, at a very general level, but they will have been made possible by the technology of social media and they might change the relationships between people working within them.

I also think the profit-and-loss process might change. I’ll save discussions of these issues for other posts because these developments are embryonic anyway.

(This argument goes a beyond causing the destruction of old institutions by reducing transaction costs.)

My summary of the opportunities and imperatives of the social media age

To sum up, I agree with Paul that many large institutions formed in pre-social-media days will continue to exist for the reasons that they were formed. And I look forward to how they disentangle personal and institutional voice and start incorporating the essential precepts in the undergraduate curriculum. It is a fair test, I think, that they can layout out their principles clearly for a MGMT101 class.

I also think the Social Media crowd can help with this process and perhaps need to try to see the issues through the lens of the obligations of these institutions.

The work on social movements I find interesting, and as I have taken an active role in some effective social movements, I am happy to pass on any tips to people heading in that direction.

My main interest though is in the new institutional forms that are emerging:

  • New social media businesses
  • New markets for traditional businesses such as small town shops
  • New frontiers of competition for small towns and possibilities of strengthening local economics
  • Businesses (such as Boeing) who have re-jigged their business model to take advantage of the new communication possibilities
  • And the skills and roles in running these new enterprises including developments in commercial law.

I don’t know if I have summarized Paul’s position correctly. I hope he will comment. He makes a host of other points too.

And I don’t know if I have clarified anything for anyone else. That’s for you to say!

But I have benefited from trying to see the issues through Paul’s eyes.

Now let’s see if the debate continues to be productive.

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WANTED: A 5 yr forward bank-integrated cash-flow system

Who has an expenses, budget and payment system that they are happy with?

When I was growing up, we were paid neatly on the 25 of the month, all our bills were raised on the last day of the month, bills arrived during the first week of the month and you had 30 days to pay.

One evening each month, you sat down and reconciled your bank account, you paid your bills, and if you were really organized, you entered your payments into you cash flow plan.

Isn’t life complicated now? Employers happily pay you in the first week of the month. Credit card periods end any time. Some credit card payments are due in 3 or 4 days;others in 30 days.

Some firms want direct debits but beware – if they allow a fraudster access to your account, which happens quite often, you will spend ages cleaning up the mess and restoring your credit record.

Needed: easy cash flow payment systems

What we need are some easy cash flow payment systems. I have seen one, I forget where, that liases with a bank but that is pretty frightening. I can’t get into my internet bank reliably as it is (British banks don’t seem to get computers.)

So how do we solve this conundrum?

I am looking for a simple system to manage expenses and to plan payments at least 5 years ahead to cope with payments like domain registrations that get forgotten.

Do you know of such a system?

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3 best known ways to improve a blog (that bored me silly)

This week was supposed to be a week of blog experimentation.  I picked out 3 best known ways to improve a blog, and set to with gusto.

This was my plan from improving my blog

Two posts a day (one at midnight to catch the eastern hemisphere and one at 17:00 to catch the western traffic)

More careful choice of keywords (at least check the keywords in Keyword Tool and make sure the words are in the title, tag and in two or three places in the text)

Better use of headlines (at least check down a list of good headline recipes and improve a little).

Do you think these are the most important ways to improve a blog?

I am sure if I persisted, I would get better results.   Do you think I would get better results with these three disciplines?

My results after 3 days

But I am bored.  The Secrets of . . . Doing X like a Y.   It just doesn’t grab me.  This feels like writing university essays.

I don’t even want to run experiments.   Experiments are close-ended.   There is no surprise.

I want adventure in what I do – even in a blog post written from a town in the countryside.

I want a set of headlines that talk about adventure.   Are there none because the audience doesn’t like adventure or because copy writer don’t think adventure?

How do you get the best return from your blog?

How do you approach blog writing?  What have you done consciously to improve your blog?  Did it work?

Any ideas about how I can make my blog into an adventure – even a little one.  An itsy bitsy tiny adventure that is surprising?

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The Secrets of Leaders Who Step Up in Bad Times

Leading in shocking times

Because I have lived in shocking times, I’ve spent some time thinking about leadership when the situation is hopeless – by any objective standards – hopeless.

It is a horrible time to lead. People want us to make the problem go away.  And we cannot make the problem go away.  When the ‘people’ are angry, they can become quite abusive.  They can make a horrible situation worse.

Though not horrific, in today’s world, we get a lot of low level practice of this sort in airports.  It is quite interesting which passengers take the lead and which do nothing.  I might be wrong, but some people seem scared to take the lead.

We also get practice in economic downturns, when we have the unpleasant task of announcing and administering budget cuts.

What can we do as leaders when the situation is hopeless?

Here is what we must NOT do

Get angry ourselves.

Our dignity is not the point here.

Tell people not to be angry, scared or dejected.

They are not fools. The situation is bad.  We can show respect and listen to their emotion courteously.

Tell people to be rational.

They might sound irrational but rationality is not the issue.  They understand – as we do.  We all feel foolish already.

Ask people to share the blame.

Rehearsing our mistakes is not going to take us anywhere.

Lament their disorganization or lack of initiative.

Well, if you believe something should be done, do it!

Here is what we can do

Be calm and pay attention.

Repeat the goals aloud.

Be positive and realistic. “Our first preference is X. If we cannot achieve X, then we want to achieve Y.”

State our shared values out loud.

People want to know they still belong to the group and the group still belongs to them.

Gather resources and note the strengths we have among us.

Reassure people that we will use our resources and strengths well.

Identify actions and ask people to take charge of what they are uniquely able to do well.

When we are informal leaders, as we might be at an airport, we might hesitate because we are not “in charge”.  We might also hesitate at the “edges” of our job when we aren’t paid to do more than what we are doing.

But isn’t it easier to do something than to sit and fret?

Do you take charge when a situation is hopeless?  Are there some steps I am missing or that I have got wrong?

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5 Little Understood Ways to be Resilient in Hard Times

I am 99% persuaded by positive psychology, largely because I thought like a positive psychologist long before it was invented.  I never took to clinical psychology so I had nothing to discard, so to speak.

But it is the darker side of life where I think positive psychology has its limits.  Maybe the typical positive psychologist does not feel that because they have the skills to deal with people who are deeply unhappy.

My reservations come at many levels.   As a practitioner, though, I want to know what to do when we are in a dark place.

What does it mean to be resilient when times are terrible?  What are the critical processes that we are trying to leverage?

If I succeed at exercising leadership when times are miserable, if I show resilience and help others to be resilient, what might these processes be?

Here are 5 processes underlying resilience

I would be interested in your thoughts.

Active listening

The key to listening to angry people, among which I include people who are deeply insulted, humiliated, frightened, defeated and generally gibbering wrecks, is to acknowledge their emotion.  We don’t have to agree with their emotion.  We don’t have to copy their emotion.  We don’t have to make any comment about the circumstances.

We simply have to acknowledge the emotion, and show, through our acknowledgement, that we still respect the person, in spite their emotional display, and in spite the circumstances that led to these humiliating circumstances.

Generally, that leads to slight embarrassment on their part but that is a much more comfortable emotion than the anger and hurt.

Developing a group

We are often angry and humiliated when we have lost status and losing status usually means losing status in a group or being ejected from a group. Referring to a group to which we are both a part helps restore status.

Additionally, when people have been humiliated in front of their nearest and dearest, particularly the partners, children and parents, we should restore their status in their eyes too.

Identify small actions

Anger comes from loss of status and be implication, loss of control. When we look for small things we can do now, and we do them, we feel better.

Be grateful ourselves for having the opportunity to help

While we are doing all three above, we are active. We take the initiative. We are in control. We belong.

Be grateful, and allow our gratitude to show to the other person.  They will be grateful in turn.

Gratitude is a great mood-lifter.

Enjoy the results

As the other person lifts from utter dejection to a willingness to try, enjoy.  And be grateful again.  That way we share the ‘positive feedback’ with the other.   Let them share the way our mood has improved.

And watch the entire group become more buoyant

If we have done our job well, collective efficacy and trust should have risen.  And we all know that collective efficacy – our belief that our colleagues are competent – is the most powerful factor in raising school quality.  It is bound to have the same impact in other circumstances.

Trust also creates upward positive feedback spirals.  Though, we may need a lot when we start from a dark place.

What do you think?

  • Are these the effective mechanisms for regaining resilience in desperate places?
  • Are these effective mechanisms for encouraging people who really have few ways forward and little to push off from?
  • Would these questions even help you in the day-to-day dispiriting trials of the western world – like getting stranded in an overcrowded airport?
  • Are you able to try them out in the less-than-terrible conditions so that one day you can use them when life is truly terrible?

To recap:

L – Listen

G – Group

A – Act

G – Gratitude

E – Enjoy

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