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“Modeling the world as it is, is one thing. But as soon as you being using that model, you are changing the world, in ways large and small. There is a broad assumption underlying many machine-learning models that the model itself will not change the reality its modeling. In almost all cases, this is false.”

Brian Christian

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“The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavor to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary, by teaching every man to think for himself.”

William Godwin

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Back in the 1970’s (maybe 80’s) Arie de Geus suggested “the ability to learn faster than competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage” and the idea of a business in perpetual motion was solidified. Well. That is assuming you were paying attention to Arie and agreed with him.

Business has, since then, gussied up constant learning with scale, velocity, and a variety of other nifty terms to communicate ‘business being in perpetual motion.’ At the core of all of this is that systems (business) are internal models of their environment which progressively and iteratively improve as systems accumulate knowledge and experience. In other words, systems learn. I share that because effective motion is a derivative of understanding systems and people and decision-making.

Which leads me to Motion (in general).

To do lists are endless with lots checked-off but never get shorter. People are working long hours but what is done never seems to create any meaningful progress. This is motion while being stagnant. It’s like a hamster in a wheel. It’s not only unsatisfying for the people in the wheel, but the business itself doesn’t gain any satisfying results (although managers are usually quite creative in result presentations to make it seem like shit is moving everyone forward).

What I am suggesting is motion is always about decisions. What I mean by that is there is never any lacks of things to do in a business but some just aren’t worth doing.

Meaningful motion projects fall into 2 slots:

• value creation initiatives which increase motion of value offered
• motion initiatives which increase the motion of the organization itself & indirectly enhances value

Choose your projects wisely. Meaningful motion is all that matters. That said. Motion will always inherently contain some ambiguity. What I mean by that is even with the existence of the best information available <and learning> it will be simultaneously true that (a) people will not agree what that information says and (b) people will not agree what the future will bring. This means goal commitment may be necessary, but not sufficient in accomplishing goals.

“Don’t confuse a flurry of activity for progress. That’s a magician’s trick.”

One of my past Bosses

What do I mean?

How often do we see a company doing lots and lots of shit yet we don’t really see any progress? That’s a business in love with motion in and of itself. That’s a business which justifies return off of doing and not progress. In the end. Motion has a direct relationship to ‘doing shit’ (progress type projects, not speed or stagnant projects) and “doing shit with utility”.

Which leads me to decision utility.

Motion, at its core, is about decision utility, i.e., which decision will create the greatest return. I call it Return on Choice (ROC).  In business you face a relentless onslaught of decisions to be made. Success is often dictated by how well you choose what is important versus what is not as important versus what is not important at all.

Let’s face it. No matter how good you are you will not always get this right.

Let’s face it. We could all become more adept at making choices because, let’s face it, if anything, we seem to have become worse at making thoughtful choices.

I would be remiss if I didn’t point out there is a direct relationship between ROC and impatience, i.e., too impatient poorer ROC and just enough patience higher ROC.

Now. I am all for, and a huge proponent of not dicking around <the technical term for ‘wasting time overthinking’> when a choice needs to be made. But there is a difference between making speedy decisions and making a decision because speed is the main criteria. The latter encourages impatient decision making which lessens decision utility.

This happens for two reasons:

• Impatience exacerbates our typically poor prioritization skills
• Impatience emphasizes Personal bias

That said.

A key part of decision utility and motion is prioritization skills

Since we live in a world of infinite possibilities, it’s so hard to figure out what to do, when, and where.

If you start thinking this way … well … you begin living in a world strewn with hypotheticals.

If I do A, then this will happen. But what if I do B?  Will it be better?  Will I get back more? Will everyone around me be more satisfied? Or what about C? That looks good. Oh. But someone suggested D.

You get it. There are 26 letters in the alphabet and while most of us stop way before Z, even getting to D can be maddening. It seems like the world is your oyster, everything is possible, but you don’t take advantage of any opportunities because you’re not sure of what’s best.

This is where I remind everyone what US President Dwight D. Eisenhower supposedly said: ‘The most urgent decisions are rarely the most important ones’. Misreading the urgent from the non-urgent and the important from the unimportant may create impatience at the wrong time and waste energy & focus. Smart business patience, and motion, at its simplest is grounded in the The Eisenhower Matrix. While Stephen Covey is often credited with the decision-making matrix it was actually Dwight Eisenhower, considered a master of time management, who developed the matrix.

Yeah. Decision utility is often driven by effective prioritization, i.e., what to do and what not to do.

“Mental clarity ain’t for the faint of heart.”

Katerina Stoykova Klemer

Which leads me to the battle between Motion and Personal bias.

Decision utility has to navigate the ‘personal bias’ maze.

“Being aware of our own biases doesn’t mean we aren’t still susceptible to them.”

Faris Yakob

When impatient we get, well, lazy. We lean in on our bias which is unfortunate because thinking takes hard work and every choice has opportunity costs. Unfortunately, most of us are not good at assessing ROC <return on choice> when viewing things thru a bias.

People need to invest in working to eliminate bias.

Invest in developing the choices <and however many we need to feel like we have enough to assess assuming that is a finite number>.

Invest in actually assessing the choices <better, betterest & best assuming a best can be actually identified>.

Invest in the actual choice.

Invest in learning so the choices make more and more sense.

I imagine we are talking about the proper investment in time because organizational impatience leads to the permitting of poor choices <and a quicker death of a thousand cuts>.

Let me be clear. Dealing with impatience and balancing impatience & patience ain’t for the faint of heart. Managing decisions is all about a thorough understanding of the decision’s hierarchy of needs, navigating bias & understanding the attributes in a span of time that generates the most rewarding outcome. Being impatient doesn’t mean you ignore this thinking but rather you incorporate it into your impatience <and it can dictate how patient you are in your impatience>.

Successful impatient decision making is about having, well, a rigid policy of flexibility.

Ok.

Translation. Effective impatient patience is all about mental clarity. Creating mental space to see things, feel things, absorb things and make those things into a decision or choice <that is learning by the way>.

Which leads me back to decision utility.

When you are facing a choice, making that decision <yes or no, do it or don’t do it>, you go through a cost-benefit check that may last anywhere from a split second to days, weeks, or even months <and yes even months can be an impatient patient choice>.

Such choices come up many times a day and time is a factor in virtually all of them.

It is easy to see how impatience can be abused if we regard life in today’s world as an almost unbroken fast-moving river of choices/decisions. In that world, utility becomes blurry and learning is a luxury.

Anyway. It is easy to see how with everything moving so fast all the time you can actually feel like you are speeding along even without making any good ROC choices. But 99 times out of a 100 there is little meaningful motion, just motion. I imagine my large point is that to ensure learning is useful and sustainable, you should probably iterate (OODA-ize) your motion. OODA makes tangible decision utility and learning value.

Which leads me to reductionism (which, OODA, used poorly, can lead to).

Reductionism never works because, well, it kills motion. Ok. It reduces larger motion of the whole system. It ‘right sizes’ motion under rationalizing energy use and thereby not only restricts expansiveness of motion but also the expansiveness offered by the larger system.

That said, to protect the ‘effective doers’ a bit, deliverers of effective consistency <let’s call us ‘the everyday working schmucks’> are kind of screwed in today’s business world in that you can clearly have focus and your consistency may be less clear to those around you.

If I have two major gripes in today’s business world, it is that we, leaders & managers, need to:

–      Better recognize the unseen portions of consistency <the focus within the inconsistency>

–      Better accept the unseen portions of consistency <the focus within the inconsistency>

Inconsistency and consistency <embracing both> is a skill & an art. I would note embracing some inconsistency and yet maintaining some consistency is kind of the key to successful perpetual motion in business.

Which leads me to motion in a complex, dynamic, environment.

Learning should seek to harness aspects of the system and complexity to enable perpetual motion. Yeah. Complexity is not an issue. The world is complex, an industry is complex, a business is complex, people are complex, heck, even learning is complex. We deal with complexity every day. To enable motion, we need to ‘de-confuse’ complexity. this does not mean dumbing it down or stripping it of important detail, it means making it understandable . The more things are understandable, the simpler they appear. When things appear simple, they become useful. On the other hand. Too simple is not useful. In addition, contrary to popular belief, complexity is actually interesting and people engage in complex environments BECAUSE they are dynamic. It has an inherent feel of motion (versus stagnancy) which people find appealing. Now. Too much ‘motion’ (or too fast), or being confused, kills the appeal. Therein lies the challenge with complex systems and business in general. Once again, I would argue information, well delivered, addresses everything I just noted and creates the sustainable advantage.

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“The woman who doesn’t require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet.”

Mohadesa Najumi

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“Everybody is looking for validation, no matter who you are, and I think that’s a need of the human condition – to look for affection or recognition or validation.”

Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

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So. We all need validation.

It would be silly to suggest you don’t.

That said.

If you type in ‘seeking validation’ in google you get about 341,000 results in about .57 seconds and, well, they are almost all about ‘approval seeking behaviors you need to stop. ’

Well.

That sucks.

Basically what this means is that if you went solely by what you could find online you could quite possibly think that you should simply “damn the torpedoes and go full speed ahead without anyone’s approval or validation at any point in the trip.”

Basically this suggests “fuck what other people think … fuck approval.”

That seems slightly out of whack from reality to me.

Look.

I am not going to suggest you should be waiting around for someone to validate your behavior or your existence … but … it kinda seems to make some sense to receive at least some validation ‘nudges’ on occasion.

Why?

Well.

Maybe just to make sure you are still within the guardrails of what makes sense and that you haven’t completely lost any sense of direction.

Maybe just to make sure your head hasn’t got too big … or too small.

Maybe just to make sure you are still … well … doing the right things and making the right decisions.

To be clear. You absolutely should not assess self-worth from solely from external validation. That is not only crazy, but basically means you are chasing Life and not leading Life.

All I am suggesting is that external validation, when viewed as some sign posts in your Life road, ain’t a bad thing.

And, yes, even good external validation can be tricky.

Most people seek validation <for who they are, their behavior, response to a situation> because they worry they cannot be objective or that they might be prejudiced/biased by their own beliefs.

And, yes, that is a fair worry.

We are all influenced  in some degree by our own personal perspective on things.

But here is the big problem looming in front of you if you do not trust yourself because of this self-distrust – you are then assuming the external validators will actually be objective themselves.

Uh oh.

99% of the time that is a really really bad assumption.

Sure. You may assume that they don’t have the same prejudices as you.

Sure. They most likely don’t have the same things at ‘stake’ so are at least one step removed from any natural stress of the situation.

Sure. They will definitely have their own prejudices, perceptions, beliefs and attitudes.

While we all want that occasional validation from someone else because we consciously discount our own feelings, perceptions and opinions, you have to be careful to not make someone an expert even if they aren’t qualified to actually be an expert.

Here is what I know about validation and business leadership.

Decision making Validation.

You will need it on occasion if you are in a constant decision making position.

Even the best decision makers can get slightly overwhelmed. Not overwhelmed in terms of “I cannot make any more decisions”, but rather ‘it is hard to reflectively assess decisions when smothered in decisions’.

** note: this is important because most great decision makers adapt and assess contextual learnings>.

Part of what makes good decision makers good is decisiveness once decision has been made. Occasional validation maintains the decisiveness muscle.

Leadership validation.

You will need it on occasion if you are in a leadership role with responsibility.

This one varies by person.

Some people don’t need this often — kind of like maybe once a quarter you receive some validation that you don’t suck as a leader.

Some people need this a lot — kind of like every day.

Neither is good or bad, it just is.

One last thought on leadership validation.

This validation can be required in a variety of ways:

maybe you want to make sure you aren’t too much of an asshole

maybe you want to make sure you are communicating effectively

maybe you just want a general sense that people think you are doing an okay job as a leader.

The worst business leaders look for shallow validation – better than predecessor, well liked, ‘strong’, etc. they tend to seek a linear ‘cause & effect’ validation which tends to reside in the ‘look who is at the door’ type feedback.

The best business leaders look for deeper validation – the organization is optimistic, vision is embraced, confident of future success. They tend to seek what I call “ripple validation” which tends to reside on the horizon type feedback.

Anyway.

We all need some validation on occasion.

And I get a little concerned when the only advice out there is about ‘how to ditch approval seeking behaviors.’

I kind of wish we had more ‘effective ways to gain some validation to maintain effectiveness’ type advice.

Because we all need some validation on occasion.

Ok. So what the hell is investing energy in life?

Let’s call it being able to discern between ‘resting’ versus ‘being stagnant.’ And, possibly, add in being able to discern when to use energy and when to not use it. By the way.  All of that translates into making choices.

Anyway. Let me use a quote to begin the discussion.

“As a rule, I am very careful to be shallow and conventional where depth and originality are wasted.”

Lucy Maud Montgomery

Ah. Now. Be careful when reading this. Lucy isn’t suggesting people not be original or seek to have some ‘depth.’ Nope. She is suggesting investing energy at the appropriate times is a choice. A choice for when energy invested won’t be wasted.

Look. Haven’t we seen those people who go 110% all the time on everything? And they get tired. And often frustrated. And they often don’t seem to get as far in life as you would expect for all the energy they have invested. While they may debate with me (because they feel like they are making the choice that has to be made, i.e., I am ‘working at being successful in life’), the reality is they aren’t making any real choice.  Anytime you do something 100% of the time you haven’t made the tough choice. Shit. You actually haven’t made any choice at all. The switch is simply flipped into a default mode.

The choice truth? There is a time to rest. And. There is a time for energy.

Oh, and yes, you do have to invest energy in life to get something out of it.

Because being lazy doesn’t get you shit.

In fact.

Being apathetic doesn’t get you shit.

Once again. That doesn’t mean 24/7 energy and pushing and shoving and being passionate and trying to kick ass 172,800 seconds (if I did my math correctly that is the amount of seconds in a day).  It’s about making choices. When and where type choices.

So.

What I am saying is you cannot have enough energy to kick ass every second of every day.

(and if you have someone suggesting you should? … ignore them)

But.

You also cannot be passive every second either.

There is resting (before investing energy).

There is stagnant (before never investing energy).

(former good; latter bad)

And they are significantly different because living a successful (happy) life takes energy. And life is a struggle that takes energy to manage and deal with. And frankly happiness doesn’t always come easily.

By the way. This ‘struggle’ isn’t a day-to-day get-things-done struggle.  I mean it is a mental and physical struggle.

Describing this struggle is interesting. Good ole Winston C. suggested Life is the struggle between energy and indolence:

“Life is a struggle between vitality and decay, energy and indolence”

Winston Churchill

Whew.  Good stuff.

Life is all about either growing or diminishing. You are either active or passive. And life is the struggle within the two. At all times.

Some people would simply suggest that an active life is better than a passive one. Oh. If only the solution were that simple (because it isn’t that one sided).  Sure. Embracing adventure or some activity you are passionate about (or believe will make you better) is important to what makes many of us happy and feel like we are being productive within our life. But it isn’t just about going out and doing a bunch of stuff.  It’s about going out and doing the right stuff. And, to be happiest, the right stuff at the right time.

So be careful.

You may elect to ignore people who tell you to “slow down and take it easy” because you feel like you are being productive and ‘doing.’ But be sure you are aware of what you are doing and how you are investing your energy. Because energy is not limitless.

Life is about balance. Balancing rest and energy. But this is where stagnancy or indolence issue steps up to the plate. Because happiness can be such a struggle and ‘doing nothing’ sometimes seems the easiest thing to do. It isn’t (no matter how it may look or feel at the time).  You HAVE to invest some energy at some point. If not for you then you have to for those around you. Because in the end we see that the energetic displaces the passive. Even if the passive is “good” (intentions or in heart). Because evil is restless.  And energetic.

“In this very real world, good doesn’t drive out evil. Evil doesn’t drive out good. But the energetic displaces the passive.”

Bill Bernbach

Ok. My fear is when people read this last quote they begin to dedicate all their energies to … well … doing.  With good intentions, but not seeing the forest because of the trees.

Remember. We are not Ever-Ready bunnies who can go and go and go.  Because all that “going” means investing energy.

And the people who you see going 110% all the time? Well.  The reason they do is because they haven’t figured it out.  They haven’t figured out when to rest and when to invest energy. And having already decided mentally that they need to invest energy to win the struggle they just invest.

And invest.  And invest (I would like to point out … with diminishing returns).

Please.  Everyone.  This isn’t about time management.

If you read my “time according to Lucy” post you know I am skeptical of the whole managing time concept. The closest suggestion I can make to clarify what I am trying to say in this post can maybe be found in the book Power of Full Engagement. The book suggests that instead of trying to manage time we should be conscious of managing our energy.

I am not talking as literally as the book author suggests (they suggest at different points in the day we have more energy than others as well as more motivated to do certain things at certain moments). I don’t think this is about planning your work times around when you expect to have creative energy (like the book suggests).

This is just about investing energy at the right times.

Yes.

Investing energy at the right time in the right place.

This is not about motivation or creative energy or any of that.  This is simply about recognizing ‘influential moments’ (moments that can swing your day or life) and acting upon them by investing energy.

And that, my friends, is a choice.

A choice to invest what energy you have available, no holding back, when the opportunity arises.

Yes. That is a choice.

And not investing energy at some times (when people look at you and worry if you are lazy).

And, yes, that is a choice.

Choices based on understanding the difference between rest and stagnancy.

Maybe that is “the” choice.

Yeah.  Life is a struggle. And a struggle of choices. But mostly it is a struggle of energy. When to invest and when to not invest.

Ponder. Ponder because it matters.

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“It is pretty to be in love. It’s magical, I’m sure. But it’s also wonderful to stop for ice cream in your prom dress with six other girls. It’s also wonderful to go visit the world with nothing but a bunch of buddies who are really excited about learning. The problem is: we’ve made everything about “the one”.

But maybe “the one” is just you, loving yourself, having fun, and being happy. Maybe instead of looking for our other halves, we should be piecing ourselves together.

Maybe I wasn’t born unfinished. Maybe I am the one who makes myself better.”

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This piece today isn’t about love, it about:

“maybe I wasn’t born unfinished”

When I read that line I stopped. Reread it. And challenged almost everything I have ever written and said about self and sense of self.

I love the thought.

I do think far far too often we find ourselves through others. It is kind of natural because comparisons tend to offer some outlines. It’s not that we shouldn’t look around us and find things we like, and dislike, and assess, but emulate? Yikes. I hesitate. At least a little.

I would much rather we see, think and assess and rather than simply emulate we evaluate who and what we are already. Maybe use the external to invigorate and energize the internal.

And maybe I suggest this because far far too often we think we are a reflection of our experiences rather than a reflection of who we are simply coming to life.

Is this a chicken or egg discussion? Maybe. But in one aspect you can suggest you are built by the external and in another aspect you can be suggesting you are simply blooming as you weather life.

Semantics? Sure. But an important one in my eyes.

Look.

I don’t want this to sound like it is an either or discussion. But I do love the thought of believing you are not born unfinished. I love the thought that everything you need resides within and all you need to do is figure out how to let it out, and shine, and grow.   It is kind of like the latin thought of “luctor et emergo” <I struggle and emerge>.

I do love the thought that maybe it is not who you are that could hold you back from what you could be ,but more often than not the challenge is who you think you are not. Ponder that for a second or two.

I say that because if you focus on the ‘think’ aspect you end up seeking external to validate, or as a corollary the external invalidates <voids, annuls>, that which resides within you and who you are.

That is a very very dangerous Life game.

It is dangerous because instead of piecing yourself together you steal or borrow pieces from others to shape yourself and you become, well, a Frankenstein <maybe not that bad but you get the point>. Or maybe you end up sacrificing parts of yourself to please the external.

All that said. I am sure the reality of a healthy self is somewhere in between. Sometimes uncovering that which exists within and sometimes finding a piece you see and borrowing it as you piece yourself together <although I could argue that any piece you see, and borrow, more often than not is something you already have within and that external piece simply brought your own finished, but unseen, piece to the forefront>.

Anyway.

I am a huge hope guy. I believe the biggest hope of all is the one we all carry within us, a hope we are born with, the one which is a hope to be the best person we can be.

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“I hoped for nothing. And yet I lived in expectation.”

Stanislaw Lem

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It is a hope of all that can be and, yet, ‘nothing’ in that it has yet to be.

It is a hopeful contradiction — to live in expectation of something and yet tempered with aspects of nothing. I love the hope found in the thought of being born finished and we don’t need others to piece us together and that each of us is strong enough, and born good enough. The thought that all we have is within us.

I certainly believe, and know, Life is significantly better not lived alone. But what an incredibly empowering thought … “maybe I wasn’t born unfinished and I am the one who makes me better.”

But maybe “the one” is just you.

What a fucking beautiful thought.

I wish I had written it.

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“We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – start thinking about learning as a continuous cycle rather than one off interventions to power ongoing development.”

Fosway Group

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“We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.”

Peter F. Drucker

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Google “how to change someone’s mind” and you will get more hits faster than any brain can ever absorb. In talking about teaching people to learn something today I will leave you with any of those articles to show you a path <albeit you will be confused> and forge ahead in a direction – teaching people to want to learn, not to teach them something new.

How would you enable and encourage to do so?

Business people talking about “learning organizations” all the time and education people talk all about “constant learners” and I imagine if you asked most people, they would suggest they like to learn. So why the heck isn’t it happening?
Well.

There is no simple answer but let’s begin with framing. Learning isn’t about being smart or being stupid, it is just about learning. Period.

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     “Educating yourself does not mean that you were stupid in the first place; it means that you are intelligent enough to know that there is plenty left to learn.”

Melanie Joy

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I don’t give a fuck what you read or what you learn. There are as many lessons in a well-crafted comic book as there is in a novel. Most business books are trash and you can learn more about business thinking through reading a great detective book. You get my point. Learning isn’t linear or about parallels, but rather analogous. Circling back to my main point, what you read or learn is not an indicator of smart or stupid, in fact, its an indicator that you are a learner. Period.

“It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated.”

Alec Bourne, A Doctor’s Creed

Which leads me to learning what you like.

As I have pointed out ad nausea learning is not about creating some ‘well rounded person’, but rather exploring what interests you. This means you learn unevenly. Learning advocates need to get their heads out of their asses and stop worrying over ‘rounded’ and encourage ‘uneven.’ This is a twist on curiosity in that I am suggesting teaching following what you are curious about not encouraging people to be curious. My belief is grounded in the fact people are encouraged to do what is positive, not negative. If I can feed into the learning dopamine part of the brain, I am more likely to get people learning than if I bludgeon them with less-than-satisfying learning experiences.

Here is the less-than-popular thought – this means not encouraging people to step out of their comfort zones, but actually encourage them to foster their learning comfort zones. Yeah. I think if we can teach people that learning is grounded in becoming better at what they are currently good at, simply by expanding current knowledge/skills/whatever, in any size/pace/whatever, they feel comfortable with. This actually means learning resides in our grasp and belief of what learning is, and how it feels to us, rather than what someone else suggests learning is. Maybe more importantly this suggests learning isn’t focused on what we do not know well or do poorly <and certainly not what someone suggests to us we do poorly or know poorly> but instead cultivate the good thinking we have done to date. This, in my mind, cultivates some version of ‘flow’, at least in a learning sense, which inevitably opens the mind up to possibilities, imagination and even productivity. I have said for years that learning isn’t about changing; its about opening. If we can teach people that opening up their minds to explore, even on some very focused topic, is good and fun and engaging, it increases the likelihood at some point in time they will explore something unexpected <without anyone telling them they should explore it>.

As to that last point. Let me be clear. Nudging learning is not a bad thing. Just as Amazon prompts people “if you liked this, you may like this”, I probably send “oh, you may like this” notes probably a dozen times a week via social media and in almost every conversation I have. That is my version of ‘teaching people to learn’ not by telling but maybe nudging them into a different learning space.

In the end.

Maybe what I am saying is we don’t need to teach people how to learn, but rather remove the obstacles to learning. Learning is a positive thing. I do not know one person in the entire world who does not like to learn something new. This means we don’t need to teach people to learn, and it certainly means we should stop telling people what they need to learn <implying they are stupid or learned the wrong thing>, but rather get out of their way and tell them to learn what they want .. and maybe give a little nudge on occasion to expand the learning space. Oh. Oh shit. As I reread that last sentence that would mean we, as in you & I, will have to have learned enough to offer up an analogous nudge rather than some simplistic parallel nudge. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … maybe the key to teaching people how to learn begins within ourselves. Ponder.

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“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t.”

Anatole France

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“… congratulated the staff for churning out so many A-star grades, but I told them to get in touch when the kids were about 50 and tell me which institutions they were inmates of. If you train people to push for the sake of pushing, they’ll live their lives chasing the golden rabbit and ultimately find no satisfaction.

Don’t get me wrong, I know we all need a little stress to get us going. But if we keep our foot on the gas pedal all our lives we can kiss bye bye to our sanity.

If I were queen for a day, I’d teach kids that sanity exams are the ones to pass.”

Ruby Wax

—

“Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky

—

I actually believe there is a lot to be learned about meaningful progress from the pandemic.

Like what you may ask? The heck with progress when survival is at stake. Yeah. That lesson. In this case drowning people weren’t clinging to straw, but rather toilet paper. You get it. Toilet paper is simply the metaphor for “the heck with progress, meaningful or not, I am worried about the basics.” That said. Uncertainty, tied to a health crisis, energizes our survival instincts.

Survival inherently starts squeezing your circle tighter and tighter.

My community becomes my family becomes me.

Panic is the clamp.

Uncertainty tightens the clamp.

There is a lesson here which can guide us a bit toward how to define and energize people toward meaningful progress. But to do so we would have to embrace the most simplistic level any business faces; the two basic demands, as Toffler stated in 1985, “it must execute its current activities to survive today’s challenges and adapt those activities to survive tomorrow’s.”

This means executing and adapting at exactly the same time. Uh oh. Business tends to dislike discussing two things at the same time. But the truth is meaningful progress cannot be discussed without discussing both at exactly the same time. In fact. We must discuss both the finite and the infinite. We must discuss both survival and the basics now and survival and more than the basics later.

Now. A shitload of people will want to immediately start talking about technology. I will not. We do need technological advances to enable some progress, but if people are not progressing, let alone progressing with meaning and at the same pace as any technological whizbang initiatives you may want to shove down their throats, you are screwed. The trick to meaningful progress is twofold:

• Aligned pacing

Organizations contain layers of pace. Meaningful progress, at its core, means there is some alignment or cadence between the nature of the organization all the way through its interactions with the external markets. But from a pragmatic standpoint it actually means there is some common platform of sensemaking (individuals through organization through external) and the choice making aligns with that sensemaking throughout the organization and across all ‘paces.’ Call it thinking and doing alignment or even executing current activities and tomorrow’s. That alignment does not mean everyone is progressing at the same pace just that everyone is comfortable at the pace they are at and the progress is achieved. I will note that this is incredibly difficult. It is difficult because patterns, actions and recognition, actually occur within a layer and throughout the layers. Its kind of like a constantly shifting Rubix cube.

• Non simplistic models/plans/objectives

We build simple models and plans inadequate for dynamic markets. As a result, both our sense making and our choice making fails to meet the challenges of the complex, interdependent systems we are part of. The future is neither certain nor predictable, yet, it can be envisioned and brought into being as Donella Meadows once suggested. Systems thinking exposes uncertain context and consequences both of which are difficult to understand, impossible to predict and beyond our capacity to control, yet, we plan, expand horizons and encourage agility to meet emergent opportunities. We do that because we are in the business of doing business and doing nothing isn’t an option. You assess probabilities and design to progress (and have business success) not despite the uncertainty and complexity, but because of opportunities uncertainty and complexity offer. This demands an additional aspect – conversations and people interacting with people. It demands iterative, interactive, exchanges.  This isn’t to say a business cannot construct a less adaptable version just that while it may offer some short-term success it would do so at the expense of some longer term resilience viability.

All that said. Where does meaningful progress begin? In objective setting? Vision alignment? Clarity of mission? Or, God forbid, Purpose?

Nope. None of them.

“Before you disturb a system, watch how it behaves.”

Donella Meadows

It begins with where you are and how you, and the system, is behaving.

Now. You never truly have accurate information; you only have directional information, so ‘behaves’ does not mean ‘figuring it out.’ It means recognition of patterns, cadence and rhythm.

This is a different version of data analysis. Its data that shows movement not answers.

It’s a different version of culture. Its how the organizations behaves in and of itself.

It’s a different version of ROI. Its how the system assesses ROC (return on choice).

Any viable discussion of progress begins with the system itself. Why? Because if you set some milestone or objective counterintuitive to the system you are doomed to fail not only anything meaningful but likely with no progress either.

This may sound counterintuitive to a traditional manager/leader because the typical approach to business emphasizes plan tied to specific intentions/objectives and then communicating them as actions to be executed by people. In Toffler’s terms, “executing current activities not to adapt to tomorrow’s challenges, but today’s challenge.” Yeah. Seems a bit short sighted, no? this is all grounded in an odd belief that you can understand the ‘system’ well enough to predict its behavior and actually forecast not only its behaviors, but outcomes. This actually becomes a weird dance of a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the management mainly ignores the market dynamics solely focusing on insuring outcomes meet forecast goals. It is weird because they eliminate uncertainty <thru some dubious cloaking machine> creating just certain goals/outcomes to be met. I imagine their assumption is the system will produce these things simply because we ‘assume’ it should. I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that while this can reduce some uncertainty, it can actually increase some anxiety if the market doesn’t do what it is expected to do **.

 ** note: it will not and you are lucky if it does within some range that permits you to meet forecasted objectives.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t point out the real anxiety should be in the meaningful progress opportunities missed.

Ok.

Which leads me to FOMO (fear of missing out).

Fear of missing out (FOMO) isn’t just about the new and innovative cutting-edge stuff, but it is about meaningful progress. In a world in which information is nonstop and someone somewhere is paying attention to something you are not (and invariably pointing it out), FOMO actually applies to, well, everything. Your neighborhood gossip/crime watch website, the school parent site, some Facebook group, your twitter ‘tribe’, favorite news site, the list goes on and on. Sure. It also applies to conspiracies (what if it is true and I missed out on the initial ‘truth’ ?!?), but in today’s world it is simply about everything. Now. Living in the present, a common fortune cookie Life wisdom, almost suggests if you are missing something you are not fully present. This entire paragraph outlines one huge blob standing in the way of meaningful progress. Ponder.

Next. This all leads to the wretched underbelly of FOMO — FOLC (fear of losing control). And, yeah, having information (often mistakenly conflated with knowledge) does equate to some sense of control in many people’s minds. In other words, in a firehose world of information people feel like they have more control if they could only drink from that firehose. The realization you only drown in doing so creates a asnse of anxiety and loss of control. This is where ‘understanding’ comes into play because understanding is the bridge between control and lack of control, certainty and uncertainty and missing out and ‘knowing.’ To be clear. You better enjoy the view from that bridge because that is where meaningful progress truly resides – not on either end. That said. You can increase your abilities in ‘understanding’ (or ‘capability of uncertainty’ as Bennett, Verwey & van der Merwe suggest) through sense of positive identity, acceptance of uncertainty, effective sensemaking, learning agility and relevant leadership experience during uncertainty. I would argue that these are actually components of meaningful progress (Dr. Jason Fox).

But their larger point is that once you have some experience, you usually have a sense of what lies ahead. To be clear, not exactly, but you can frame some possibilities with some probability to where you could potentially progress toward. This means you will then begin to make some choices. Here is where it gets a bit trickier. Some of those possibilities can look an awful lot like something like the present, or something in the past, which will inevitably trigger a default muscle to choose and do. In other words, you slam a round peg solution into what you think is a round hole, but is actually something slightly different than round. This is where sensemaking ability pays off. Possibilities can have a sense of similarity, but sensemaking uncovers the contextual differences or the variants. The variants are incredibly important because not all context differences are created equal. What I mean by that is if the essential components are NOT variants, an existing solution may actually be quite effective.  This is where you can push thru some crisis-inducing default choice making. This is where you can find meaningful progress.

Yeah. At the core of what I am suggesting is that ‘context’ is a lazy generic way to avoid talking about variations. Context is all that matters really means that today has some variants from yesterday so maybe you better not simply do exactly what you did yesterday. But it also then leads you to seeing patterns and variants as important things to, well, see combinations of what is common and what is not. It also permits you to become reasonably confident of common variants and expected performance – within a range. I would also suggest this leads you to your next big decision if you want a system producing meaningful progress – deciding what is effective standardization versus rigid implementation. I bring that up because standardization tends to make people break out in hives. But the truth is almost every business needs some effective standardization. The replicable stuff that undergirds value creation. this is important because nothing happens in a predictable way unless you build the system to permit, and cause, the predictable and replicable to occur. Yes. Meaningful progress always has a thread of some replication or standardization.

Which leads me to how can you ensure your effective standardization doesn’t drop down to rigid implementation.

Even standardization demands some constant improvement or learning with some speed (versus slow accumulation of learning). I would note that speed in learning can usually be done by squeezing your OODA loops into faster cycles, drive the observation/decision loop closer to the prior so learning becomes not only iterative, but more likely to be innovative/emergent focused. It also protects from rigid implementation. All that said. There is no substitute for knowledge. Period. But there cannot be knowledge without information. Information is the lifeblood, the nuclear power, the electricity, of any business – innovation, improvement, implementation, ideation, all are derived from information. Timely, useful, information uncovers everything you need to see to do what you need to do and should do in order to attain meaningful progress.

Which leads me to learning agility.

Learning agility is more than just learning. Lessons of experience are rarely linear/cause & effect just as lessons from information gathering is mostly of analogy, not parallel. The challenge then becomes how do you leverage new information in the present to create positive possibilities in the future. This objective almost demands someone who is constantly becoming and embraces a fluidity of roles (usually on a spectrum). So instead of simple knowledge extraction its reflective learning. By reflective I mean gathering knowledge that provides perspective (which is an essential aspect to dealing with constantly evolving contexts or what some people call ongoing uncertainty). This is also, from a systems thinking perspective, becoming a learner of a higher order – learning about multiple parts of a system. To be clear. This is not a “learn more is better”, but rather multifaceted learning (on a variety of adjacent topics, non-adjacent topics and applicable topics). By having a multi-level learning ‘input’ it increases one’s capacity to accept uncertainty, and complexity, as ‘normal’ and expansive in nature (not a reductive reality). That last thought basically means you have a positive view of uncertainty and complexity because the learning/knowledge you have makes it navigable.

To paraphrase Donella Meadows, you learn to love the dance with uncertainty and complexity. You have a positive relationship with systems, uncertainty and complexity and understand it is not about control, but in better understanding the one you dance with. In an odd-ish way, learning agility success also gets tied to survival. What I mean by that is part of meaningful progress is making it through the day and the ‘grind du jour’ every business faces. Surviving today to make progress tomorrow is an essential ingredient to meaningful progress. I am not suggesting simply surviving everyday in and of itself is progress (its just survival), but that there will be days in which you are simply trying to survive and those days permit you to get the progress in the future. Learning agility is your weapon for survival.

“Sensemaking involves generating a plausible and coherent account of what is going on through iterative processes of information gathering, conversations, thinking and actions.”

Maitlis & Christianson 2014, Weick, Sutcliffe & Obstfeld 2005

Which leads me to the importance of conversations.

Conversations liberate ignorance and complexity by offering perspective (and perspective on those survival days). Conversations are actually key to sense making, systems understanding and narratives (framing). It is an extension of the importance of experiencing complexity and uncertainty (which increases identity, confidence and understanding). If we are honest with ourselves, even our best experience in a dynamic/complex system is only a fraction of the entire system. The only way to broaden that experience is to have conversations to not only put that experience into perspective, but to gain a more generalist type learning. Those conversations become REALLY important in avoiding what is called ‘developmental blindness’. A good example is when conversations occur between two types of people (in my business model world) – roadmap is good people versus the roadmap is limiting people. You need both people so the trick is to not have them in conflict, but collaborating in some way (kind of like optimizing the road you progress on which is on your map but maybe veering off the roads you mapped out front). This mostly occurs through, well, yes, conversations. It was actually Dr. Jason Fox who tucked this thought into my mind – “honest communication creates coherent sensemaking”. From coherent sensemaking cascades all the good things you want – roadmap adaptation, metrics/objectives collaboration, agreement of progress and meaningful progress.

** note: the latter, meaningful progress, is achieved through common agreement on the roadmap is good/roadmap is limiting people on the journey and destinations.

Which leads me to definitions over details.

Common narratives, common aim and focus/vision, all important aspects of conversations, demands common agreement on definitions.

Quality. What do we mean by that?

Resilience. What does that mean?

Transparency. What is that exactly?

Vagueness permits a variety of expectations which makes meeting your own focus more likely to miss the target. Everybody has to have, fundamentally, the same view on whatever key ‘words’ you use. Different definitions make the details of what you do and how you go about doing it irrelevant. All I know is meaningful progress can never truly be attained without agreement on definitions.

Look.

Progress, let alone meaningful progress, can sometimes feel a bit muddled. Yeah. There are some objectives and specific deadlines strewn about, but for the most part you spend a lot of time seemingly standing in a fog shrouded crossroads. Our capability to navigate all of this is limited, or constrained, by a number of things, but let’s go with ‘survival.’ Survival has a number of dimensions – old habits survive, comfort survives, income survives, career survives, friendships survive, beliefs survive. You get it. Survival is often as much about the trappings of life as it is about Life itself. And while survival is possibly the most basic intrinsic human characteristic, in a progress mindset you find survival is less about keeping alive and more about possibilities. What I mean by that is keeping alive creates more possibilities and more choices. The more choices the more likely to steer toward success where possibilities and progress, meaningful and less than meaningful, is found.

Basic survival progress <which is a version of change> is slow and barely noticeable and most people will ignore it. Without any compelling reason to change most people just hold on to what they know. To be fair, viewed through this lens that seems like a logical move.  In fact, I would point out that for most people environment turbulence <which is more often a perception than a reality> almost demands stabilization. Even when the turbulence is only perceived, the reality will be a veering toward stabilizing and stability. Survival progress feels good because even with incremental change, its change, and you are surviving. Circling back to the beginning of this paragraph, this is a constraint, a limitation.

Effectively navigating a dynamic marketplace, turbulence or not, with meaningful progress in mind, actually demands adaptation, some agility, maybe some innovation, certainly some new strategies and, in the most extreme situations, actually restructuring the entire construct (make one malleable to the context). Paradoxically, extreme progress is navigated best with understanding (situational awareness skills, not guessing) yet due to its inherent uncertainty that ‘understanding’ is conceptual at best. I say that because, circling back to the first sentence in this section, progress can sometimes feel muddled.

In the end I would suggest meaningful progress is actually about escalating value so by the time a buyer arrives at the purchase decision, the value, perceived and real, is at its highest. While that may sound a bit simplistically capitalistic, I am speaking of meaningful progress within a business environment and a business’s mission is to offer value in order to charge for that value. This means that thinking and actions should escalate in value so by the time the project, initiative, coherent actions, reach its natural conclusion the value, perceived and real, is at its highest.

Meaningful progress demands that we, in business, conceptually observe, gain some orientation in a coherent way, deal with the unavoidable realities (finite possibilities), envision an objective (or multiple) and implement value creation. That, to me, is full sense making from a business perspective. This is sensemaking for value creation (which is the ultimate business objective). This translates into meaningful progress.

Ponder.

======

“If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything. You’re a leaf that doesn’t know it’s part of a tree.” – Michael Crichton

—-

“History is not, of course, a cookbook offering pretested recipes. It teaches by analogy, not by maxims.” – Henry Kissinger

—–

So. Studying history, and using what you have learned, is a tricky challenge. Often we study history, and the past, so that we can “not make the same mistakes.” Well. The attempt is one of valor <and good intentions>, but most actions using historical learning are misused <as they are misguided>.

Henry Kissinger actually said it the best:

“The study of history offers no manual of instructions that can be applied automatically: history teaches by analogy, shedding light on likely consequences of comparable situations. But each generation must determine for itself which circumstances are in fact comparable.”

Let me be clear. Studying history is always good <that is a Bruce postulate>. It is how you use what you learned studying history that is the issue.

Too often people want to use historical “learning” as a literal guide for what to do now or in the future.

You cannot.

Sorry.

But you can’t.

I do not care if we are talking about business, life or economics.

You cannot <I apologize for repeating myself>.

Hank Kissinger, discussing Foreign Policy, actually walks us through a nice way to think about this.

Intellectuals analyze systems & situations while statesmen build them.

And therein lays a vast difference between the analyst and the statesman. The analyst can choose what problem he wishes to study whereas the statesman’s problems are imposed upon him. The analyst can allot whatever time is necessary to come to a clear conclusion while the overwhelming challenge of a statesman is time. The analysts runs no, or little, risk. If the conclusions prove wrong he can rewrite and reanalyze. The statesman is permitted only one guess and his mistakes are irretrievable.

Sure. Typically the future is simply a version of the past. But what makes it challenging is that what appear to be superficial changes, that sometimes make it easily recognizable, are the things that transform situations into unrecognizable changed situations. Yeah. Not all variations are created equal. In addition, we tend to ignore the ‘collection of people’ variable <I will explain later>.

In the end? We use the past, we implement something, and invariably wonder what the hell happened <and why we didn’t learn from history> when it didn’t turn out as planned.

Well. Reminder. History teaches by analogy, not identity.

Unfortunately this means that the lessons of history are never automatically replicable.

This is mostly because the lessons are apprehended only by a standard which admits the significance of a range of experience, that the answers we obtain will never be better than the questions we pose.

Now. I do believe no significant decisions are possible without at least an awareness of the historical context.

For everything exists in time more than they do in a moment in time. What I mean by that is an explanation of ‘context.’ You may not be able to completely replicate the exact time, place, situation and experiences of any & all affecting what you are studying <or even replicate a majority of those variables/variations> however you can gain a sense of choices that were available and choices made. This is contextual learning or what some people call ‘sensemaking.’

Because people forget that what they are studying is a given moment which is simply a situation where it is not only a reflection of a collection of individuals <and their experiences>, but that situation also achieves a unique identity through the consciousness of a common history <those individuals are studying that particular moment colored by,or driven, by perceptions of beliefs of that time. or, the universe shapes us as much as we shape the universe>.

It is not often that we actually learn something ‘to use’ from the past and it is even rarer that we draw the correct conclusions from it.

Why?

The lessons of history <and Life experiences also> are contingent.

That means they teach the consequences of certain actions, but they cannot force a recognition of comparable situations.

Well. That is a BIG thought right there. One that many of us should think about more often.

Let me translate <for my own pea like brain>.

History is contingent upon a series of factors and to make it exponentially more difficult it is contingent upon a continuum <horizontally> as well as simultaneously <vertically>. In other words, patterns move across various layers as well as within a layer.

Yikes.

That means exactly replicating the situation in which you are ‘learning from’ is, well, dubious. The variations and variables almost seem limitless <try pointing that out in your next business meeting when someone says “what did we learn from past experience”>. Oh. Gosh. Doesn’t that kind of make you rethink every business book you have ever read?

Regardless.

History is just that — history. A series of factors & variables all aligned for one moment in time <vertically & horizontally>. Therefore change is not only the constant, but it also possibly represents the only legitimate path to progress. I say that to suggest that change may actually freedom from the past.

And to suggest that history, when one decides to live it and not learn from it, can cage you.

I know.

Learning to break free from the history that holds no value <or decreases value> is difficult. It is easier to simply use it as a handbook of ‘what to do.’ But if we truly seek to learn <and teach> we cannot be subjugated to history. If we truly seek to be better than what we already are, we cannot do simply as history ‘dictates.’

This makes ‘better’ a but tough because most people feel most comfortable mostly remaking things in the image of historical learning.

The corollary to that thought is in order to remake things better we have to be uncomfortable.

I believe what I just wrote will make a boatload of people very uncomfortable. Why? Well. This kind of thinking can drive you crazy particularly if you want to simply study and create conclusions <rather than hypotheses>.

So. The how do most people, and businesses, get around this type of thinking?

They suggest that they have isolated the most important variables and can draw a correlation to the current situation, draw some conclusive conclusions, and isolate the best plan of action <and offer predictive results>.

Well. They are nuts <if not crackpots or liars>. I do not doubt 99% of the intent of these people, but they are still wrong. History provides context not analogy. Now people <in general> do not like that. It makes them feel uncomfortable. They want to know unequivocally that they will not be ‘making the mistakes of the past.’ Sorry. Can’t happen. You may be able to reduce the odds, but cannot unequivocally guarantee it. Oops. Big trouble in the working world if you say shit like that.

But it is Truth. Truth in a business world. Truth in Life.

Another truth? <and something that most people will also feel uncomfortable with>

Studying history will make the in-the-moment decision better. I did not say “using history to make the decision”, but rather “people who have studied history will better be able to CREATE a unique decision in the moment.” Yup. I used the dreaded ‘unique’ word. Most decisions are discreet <unique to the moment>. That makes people feel very very <very> uncomfortable.

** note: “unique” does not have to be in totality but rather the decision will have some unique aspects/features to make it more malleable to the context within which it must exist and thrive.

Regardless. It is a Life truth.

In the end?

“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.”

Basho

Well.

That is a nice uncomfortable thought to end on. Ponder.

=====

originally posted March 2013

=========

“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”

Jean de La Fontaine

===================

“But I live elsewhere; it is only that the attraction of the human world is so immense, in an instant it can make one forget everything. Yet the attraction of my world too is strong.”

Franz Kafka

============

So. We talk a lot about the fact you cannot run away from things and far less about avoiding.

Yeah.

We talk about procrastination, which is a version of avoiding, but avoiding, in this piece’s case, is more along the lines of ‘ignoring’. Ignoring meant by that you see the world that you want to live in and conduct yourself in and go about ignoring the rest of the world doing your own thing. That is simply a different version of ignoring the real world. Simplistically you are assuming that the world & Life, in general, is indifferent to you therefore you will go unnoticed and just be able to do what you want to do <in  a less unfettered way than if you actually remained engaged in the ‘other world’>.

Sounds good, doesn’t it?

I will say that avoiding some of the more undesirable aspects of Life and the world is pretty appealing. I would also suggest that avoiding some of the more undesirable aspects of Life and the world is pretty unrealistic.

There are a number of reasons I say that, but suffice it to say the overwhelming amount of information, even within the narrower walls of a business, is stunning. In the good old days even the worst of things worth avoiding <lies, conspiracies & implications> needed a little time to grow to some size that they became unavoidable. In today’s world those same things need seconds to gain some traction and minutes to grow to some size that they are unavoidable.

Today Google processes 61,000+ search queries a second. That’s something like over 5 billion+ queries a day. This means information is everywhere — regardless whether it is good information or bad information.

Today 99% of all employees in business are online and nearly 50% of the entire world is online and with 5.27 billion people have a mobile device <which, depressingly, means more people have a mobile device than have running water>.

My point here is not about the challenges of being interconnected with so much information driven by technology, but rather avoiding the world is just not a viable option <no matter how attractive it may seem>.

But please do not focus on technology. Technology is simply a means. Without people technology is simply an unused ancient aqueduct. It is people which make avoiding impossible <technology just enables their ability to not be avoided more>.

My version of this is office politics. I hate office politics. Ok. Not just hate … I believe it is people wasting energy and all I want to do is to focus on getting the good shit done.

In a perfect world you can decide to avoid the real world of the office intrigue and just do what you believe is the right thing to do for the business and ‘do.’

It isn’t avoiding by ignoring it is more like avoiding by deciding to ride the parallel rail on a train track.

Unfortunately the business world, and the world in general, doesn’t work that way. No matter how much I may have wished to run on a parallel track it actually works more like an atom in which we all circle the business at some maddening speed in which you crisscross with even the shit you want to avoid.

This gets compounded in several ways … two of which would be:

• Someone will always make what you are doing political even if it is not.

Office politics always contain people who play politics to meet their own ends. That is their means to do so. I believe these people can only see the world through the eyes of palace intrigue and political maneuvering therefore they filter everything done by everyone through a filter of “what do they have to gain by doing that.” That is their first filter level. Yeah. Eventually they may get to the more important “what does the business have to gain by doing that”, but they almost always judge everything being done on a ‘who is a winner and loser’ scale.

• Someone will always find something nefarious in what you are doing.

I will not call this conspiracy thinking but, in general, a business culture more often than not breeds a sense that <a> everyone is out for themselves and <b> there is no such thing as a truly altruistic business motivation.

And while it would be naïve of me to suggest that avoiding those two thoughts as ‘stupid & untrue’ it is a little sad that those beliefs pretty much are somewhere in every organization.

Please note, once again, the people aspect in everything I have noted. You may want to avoid things, but you will find your destiny along the path you have chosen strewn with a shitload of people crossing your path — many uninvited and many unwelcome.

I would suggest that Life is best lived by not ignoring shit and avoiding shit, but rather stepping into the world and deal with it. Sometimes that may mean side stepping some of the shit you don’t want to deal with and sometimes that may mean bludgeoning your way over and through some of the shit you don’t want to deal with, but if you do this you actually have some control over your own destiny. I say that because the problem with trying to maintain your Life on a parallel track, and knowing that inevitably it will be crossed by people & shit you had been purposefully avoiding, is that you will always be reacting to the bullshit rather than proactively facing it.

Look.

While you may not care about business or business politics my point is my point — you cannot avoid the world to conduct yourself in the ways & means you want to conduct yourself. You are stuck with the world, and in the world, whether you like it or not.

Oh.

The other thing you are stuck with is the fact whether you stay on the road engaged with the world or take another road to try and avoid it, well, you will meet your destiny no matter which way you go. Ponder that.

“I’m only good at being young

So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun …

I can’t take the speed it’s moving in

I know I can’t but honestly won’t someone stop this train …”

John Mayer

<from the song Stop this Train>

——–

“I think about dying but I don’t want to die.

Not even close.

In fact my problem is the complete opposite.

I want to live, I want to escape.

I feel trapped and bored and claustrophobic.

There’s so much to see and so much to do but I somehow still find myself doing nothing at all.

I’m still here in this metaphorical bubble of existence and I can’t quite figure out what the hell I’m doing or how to get out of it. “

Matty Healy

————

fictional undertaker David Fisher from Six Feet Under response to a mourner’s desperate question:

“Why does there have to be death?”

“Because it makes life important.”

====

Aging. Or. Without all the political correctness and ‘thinking positively’ mumbo jumbo — getting old. Every time I hear John Mayer’s song “stop this train” <which is actually a fabulous song> it makes me think of getting older … oops … aging.

———

“… once in a while when it’s good

It’ll feel like it should.

And they’re all still around

And you’re still safe and sound

And you don’t miss a thing …”

——–

Aging seems relevant to write about as today is my birthday. Aging is tricky <physically> as well as tricky topic <to discuss>. And let me be clear — aging is personal.

Personal in how you deal with it with regard to your parents <watching them getting older & dealing with it>.

Personal in how you deal with it, well, with regard to yourself.

The former I have written about: dealing with aging parents. The latter is what I am discussing today – personal in dealing with aging or, I imagine, myself dealing with it. I am old, but I am not old. Let me explain.

As I think of aging I sometimes worry that there is all this incessant tripe of ‘you are only as old as you feel’ or ‘age is just a number’, but then I stop worrying because it is simply just window dressing on the fact everyone who is getting older already truly knows in their heart of hearts — it is not about your attitude or how you think about it, you just have to “nut up” <as Lemon says on 30Rock> or “deal” with getting older.

Yup.

You just gotta deal with it.

You can try and ignore it. But as you age you mostly just try and, well, not reverse it, but maybe pause it on occassion, or maybe even stop it <for a while as in moments or ‘a day’>.

I will admit in many of my writings I have noted that it is often suggested the older 50something generation is narcissistic, heck, I even suggested they ruined business, but at minimum the older generation <mine> seems to constantly seek ways to regain youth or find ways to turn back the in some fairly ludicrous embarrassing ways.

But, in thinking about it, I would actually argue that most of us simply want to ‘stop this train’ and renegotiate some things. Not really stop the clock as in simply stop aging, but maybe pause some things on occasion. I say that because most of us don’t mind aging and being older, we just don’t like the inevitable degradation in our lives. And what I mean by that is it seems like aging becomes more tangible in the diminishing physical rather than mental.

In fact. Mentally we become smarter and more knowledgeable and many actually become ‘wiser.’ It is just that the body just cannot do the same things it did before. Yeah. The body just doesn’t ‘show up’ every day.

What I mean by that is there are days as a 50something when everything is aligned physically – less aches, more energy, feel sharp, etc. – and, well, ‘once in a while its good … it feels like it should.’

We embrace those days. We want the train to maybe stop there for a little while.

I truly believe most of us do not want to regain youth or even recapture the trappings of youth <I certainly don’t>, we simply want to pause the clock at certain moments at this stage in our lives.

We do not hate age.

We do not regret aging.

But, let me be clear, despite all the tripe you find in gobs of articles and books … we are also not embracing aging. I am fine, and comfortable, in my age but that doesn’t mean I love all aspects of aging and I am certainly not embracing the additional years.

I would actually argue that most of us simply have a desire to embrace the <or ‘a’> moment.

And by embracing the moment I mean the present — not the past. But to suggest this is an easy topic is foolish. While I may have come to grips with aging all you have to do is scan publications to see some fairly absurd perspectives on getting older:

No one is ever old in their own heads. There may be fleeting moments of self-recognition – the inward flinch at the thought of wearing heels, the choice of bodyboarding over learning to kite surf, or looking at the snow and instead of thinking about sledging, wondering about falling.

Otherwise, 60 is the new 40, first-time mothers in their 50s are pushing swings in many a playground, and there is a category in the ironman world championship for any woman between the ages of 70 and 74 who enjoys extreme cycling, swimming and marathon running.

There’s nothing new about acting as old as you feel, except that it has suddenly become universally acceptable.

A generation ago, marriage was the launchpad into the life of the middle-aged. Where now women in their 60s wear their children’s clothes, then women in their 40s adopted their mothers’ wardrobes.

Getting old was respectable, and living in denial was looked on with pity.  For these new gerontocrats, living into their 80s and 90s has come as a surprise and not necessarily a good one.

Ann Perkins <The Guardian>

—-

This means my whole point of ’embracing the moment’ can be challenging because society, media and culture is banging us over the head with images and words telling us how we SHOULD be thinking about it.

Oddly shows like Mad Men and other period pieces and even Friends make many older people nostalgic for aspects of past.

In those moments of reflection we sometimes wish we could have ‘stopped that train’ on those aspects at those times. Maybe have recognized them and enjoyed them a little more.

I think it is human that all of us, all the time, at all and any age, find and see things about ourselves and some specific time in our Life we would like to ‘stop,’ keep that one aspect and that one feeling for, well, forever <or that’s how we feel at that moment>.

That is Life.

Aging is kind of the same.

Now, because Life is, well, Life; aging is about getting older. Yeah. I said it. Deal with it.

This means we renegotiate some things because the train doesn’t really stop. The struggle within ourselves often resides in that renegotiation there is an inevitable bit of anxiety. Anxiety because you realize renegotiation is finite. And that is where aging becomes challenging.

———

“I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity.

I want this adventure that is the context of my life to go on without end.”

Simone de Beauvoir

——-

 We are incapable of accepting infinity <because we know there is an end> and yet we balk at ‘finity.’ Therefore. While age is a number and the past can make us nostalgic inevitably we, the aging, measure Life in present moments and ‘adventures’ <accumulating finite-y type things>

I say that because it can become easy to get caught up in ‘youth invigorates’ , but it is more than that. It is … well … as stated earlier … it is personal.

Age, and reflection, often cannot give you some flash of insight that differentiates your life and makes it seem like a worthwhile venture. It is only within the moment, when it all feels right, where behavior is instinctively good, that we have the sense of mortality <i.e., this doesn’t happen as often as it used to> and immortality <i.e., I want this feeling to last forever>. Yeah. That’s an odd <paradox> of aging — the moments of ‘really good’ are actually the moments in which you most recognize your mortality. This ‘within the moment’ thing inevitably means that part of growing old is not really knowing what’s going to happen next to you in life and therefore seeking to savor “what is.”

I kind of believe maybe it is human nature to want time to slow down for things to stop happening so quickly … so maybe it slows down what you cannot see happening next. And as we try and slow things down we have a natural tendency to look backwards a little. Kind of look in the rear view mirror.

———

And I think of the years ..…. and the love that I’ve known.

I’m now an old man …….. and nature is cruel.

It’s jest to make old age ……. look like a fool.

The body, it crumbles ……. grace and vigor, depart.

There is now a stone ……. where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass …….a young man still dwell.

————

I imagine the challenge with age is that because more time now resides in the past … there is more to reflect upon … and as we reflect we realize some ‘young’ still dwells within.  To be clear. This doesn’t mean living in the past, or having regrets, it is more about … well … stopping this train so you can have more time in the now, in the present — to ‘do.’

And ‘do’ is the right word because we realize it’s not really about the spectacular or the glamorous — it’s about the moments & experiences we collect. The truth is that most of Life, and our lives, are rarely glamorous. And because most of us recognize that we tend to treasure the moments when everything ‘feels right’.

Oh. And I also tend to believe we start treasuring the right attitude.

I found this on a really neat Australian tumblr site <called MadisonLouise I think> with the picture I have here:

—–

“Surely, the solution to rainy day tram gloominess is to approach extravagantly-dressed elderly passengers for portraits.

This lady stepped onto the tram and I gestured to take a picture, eventually opening a dialogue about her modelling career in her youth which she was more than happy to announce to the full tram.

Shortly after, a character from Glasgow hopped on and tried to photo-bomb, so I took his portrait too and rode the rest of the way chatting to the pair of exuberant strangers.

I was interested to see how this impromptu shoot and social exchange effectively broke the ice and turned the stale, rigid and compartmentalised tram environment into something that more closely resembles the intended human experience.

Four strangers sitting in a booth opposite me began smiling at each other and chatting, while the people behind me tore their eyes away from their phones and elongated their hunched necks, if only for just a second.”

tumblr photographer

—-

The young dwells within. And that is the attitude. And most of us ‘we’ ,who are aging, keep this little secret inside us.

Sure. Sometimes someone comes along <like the story above> and as strangers make our young come out and play. Play if but for a moment.

Sigh.

“If but for a moment.”

No matter what anyone verbalizes … mentally … aging is not easy. Despite what 50somethngs or 60somethings say about ‘embracing age’ and ‘I feel more alive than I have ever felt’ … well … it is simply not true.

Trite & untrue.

I hesitate to say it is lack of acceptance. Conversely I don’t think it is rejection <fighting it>. Aging is somewhere in between “maximize what is left and minimizing what is wrong.” It’s like the train stops at a station you like and while you would love the train to stay stopped you know it will not and you make the most of the time it has stopped. To be clear. This does not mean we do not like aspects of being older just that many of the things we like about being older would have been nice to enjoy when we were younger <that is a subtle truism I believe most aging people would accept in some version>.

I have often expressed my belief about the strong link between acceptance and the need to control. In other words, the more we accept things as they are the less we need to control. And, conversely, the more controlling we are, the less accepting we are.

Which leads me to how acceptance and aging is important.

We obsess less about things over which we are effectively powerless. We are able to “see” practical options that lessen life’s adversities. We tend to be happier and tend to be more pleasant <less curmudgeonly>. Not surprising, an Australian study published in the Journal of Happiness concluded:

Accepting what can’t be changed is the key to happiness in old age.

Maybe what acceptance does is permits us to enjoy the good moments a little more. Not nostalgically but in the present. You actually think about maximizing the moment. Because you know it is there <it feels right & good> and you know it will not be there <maybe tomorrow if not even later the same day> and you know it will be there again <maybe not until next week … but it will be there>.

Acceptance is kind of a freedom.

Yup.

There is a freedom in admitting to yourself that you are middle aged <or older>. You can do what you want when you feel like doing it <within reason>.

Oh.

Here is a tip to those who are beginning to think about this whole aging thing.

Instead of exercise and taking some magical pills which have some dubious promises of youth … try reading. There is some research supporting some surprising health benefits of reading.

–      A 2009 study showed that reading for only six minutes can reduce stress by 68 percent, as well as slow your heart rate and minimize muscle tension.

–      Reading improves memory. In addition, another study showed that elderly people who read regularly are 2.5 times less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease.

–      Of course you can’t stop the aging process but reading can help slow it down. A study showed that reading can significantly reduce your rate of cognitive decline.

–      It can be stressful not knowing the future. One study showed that reading fiction can cause an increase in tolerance for uncertainty. As people read their minds actually open up and they become more comfortable with possibilities, options, and uncertainty.

Reading can really improve your health and life and helps slow down the train <at least mentally>.

Anyway. Life always changes. One year, or period of time, may seem ‘so much’ versus another. That may be so, but the train really never stops until it … well … stops. And it really rarely slows down. The train keeps chugging along, scenery changes, people change, life changes. Inevitability.

So much versus so little with regard to change is simply words we attach to the inevitable.

Ah. But the truly inevitable?

Every time you wish time stops or wanna go back a bit, despite the temptation to do so, for many of us <I included> something in our heads always keeps saying ‘keep moving.’

As John Mayer mentioned once when playing in concert:

==

“i have no idea how i’m going to play this live, because it’s definitely the most emotionally confrontational song for me….ya know, time is moving forward, all the time, and we know that, but..its kind of like running out of a continually burning hallway- and you can’t go back and get your stuff. and all i wanna do is yell, ‘i wanna go get my stuff!’, but people are going, ‘you can’t! keep running!!’. and this fireball’s coming up behind you, well it’s not exactly as indiana jones as that, but it feels like that sometimes… so this is a song begging to go back and uhh, it’s called ‘stop this train.'”

==

Look. Anyone older, or aging, doesn’t have to agree with what i have said so far, but, I feel relatively confident that whether we admit it or not, whether we actually do like ourselves as an older version, at some point, at some time, we want to ‘stop this train.’

It’s human.

The years start adding up and it is kind of silly to ignore that fact.

From a personal perspective it just means that all the things I believe I have left to do need to get crammed into fewer moments in time. That is what aging means to me.  In my mind it is now about maximizing the moments especially the ones when the train has stopped for me. I really don’t want to stop this train, but I do see the train moving and do recognize that when it stops, its time for me to not stop.

=======THE SONG========

Stop This Train by John Mayer

—–

No I’m not color blind
I know the world is black and white
Try to keep an open mind but…
I just can’t sleep on this tonight
Stop this train I want to get off and go home again
I can’t take the speed it’s moving in
I know I can’t
But honestly won’t someone stop this train

Don’t know how else to say it, don’t want to see my parents go
One generation’s length away
From fighting life out on my own

Stop this train
I want to get off and go home again
I can’t take the speed it’s moving in
I know I can’t but honestly won’t someone stop this train

So scared of getting older
I’m only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find away to say that life has just begun
Had a talk with my old man
Said help me understand
He said turn 68, you’ll renegotiate
Don’t stop this train
Don’t for a minute change the place you’re in
Don’t think I couldn’t ever understand
I tried my hand
John, honestly we’ll never stop this train

See once in a while when it’s good
It’ll feel like it should
And they’re all still around
And you’re still safe and sound
And you don’t miss a thing
’til you cry when you’re driving away in the dark.

Singing stop this train I want to get off and go home again
I can’t take this speed it’s moving in
I know I can’t
Cause now I see I’ll never stop this train

<

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“The life so short, the craft so long to learn.”

Hippocrates

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“Ninety percent of paid work is time-wasting crap. The world gets by on the other ten.”

John Derbyshire

We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism

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How many times have we sat back and said “I can do that job”?

Now. To be clear. I am going to talk about this from a business-to-business perspective and not the corner of the bar-to-‘some job’ perspective because from the corner of the bar, after a couple of beers, any of us can do any job better than the person who is currently doing it.

This is an “I have been in the workplace, I feel like I have had some success and … well … shit … I can do that job” perspective.

OK. I am chuckling a little, c’mon, let’s face it, I don’t care who you are and where you have worked, you have eyed what another person is doing and thought you could do it. At some point, if you have had some success, all jobs start having some commodity-like characteristics which tease you into believing shifting from one to another just isn’t that difficult.

Ok. To be fair. I have never lacked in business confidence. I do not believe there is a business problem that cannot be solved and I also believe <with some realistic pragmatic goggles on> that there is not a problem I cannot solve if I hunker down and get all the information I need. This can make me aggravating to work with on occasion because, well, I make no apologies for “how I may repair things”.

But that shouldn’t be confused with believing I can do any job.

Ok.

Yeah.

I admit.

I am certainly guilty at points in my career where I have certainly thought “I could do that job” over a wide array of responsibilities and unrelated industries.

** Note. I rarely thought I could do it better … just that I could do it.

……….. my MBA at Wake Forest experience ………..

I would say that my MBA experience, a great experience with great professors at Wake Forest, encouraged me to think this way. It was a case study program which inherently encouraged thinking skills over black & white discipline skills. I tend to believe a good MBA program insures you know enough about a specific discipline to be dangerous if you overestimate your own knowledge, but effective enough to be able to understand the discipline to apply it in a general management scope.

Now.

In general, I think this attitude, on the positive side, permits you to make the leaps you have to make to jump into new jobs, new responsibilities and new positions.

In general, I think this attitude, on the negative side, can make you overlook some skills other people have as well as … at its worst … can put you in positions in which you will fail in a spectacular fashion.

I imagine as someone gets promoted, as I did, every step up showed me that there was a shitload I didn’t know overall, as well as about the responsibilities of a specific job, but at the same time it also continuously reinforced that I could “do that job.”

Success in business is a double edged sword.

Conversely.

………. what you know versus what you do not know ………

As someone gets promoted they also can see that some people got their jobs not because they necessarily had the experience or skills for the job, but simply because they had the appearance they could do the job.

You watched as these people invested gobs of energy trying to “fake it until they actually make it” or, worse, they realized they were in over their heads and invested even more energy simply maintaining a facade of bullshit to hide their hollowness.

I would also note that given your experience on the last thing I just shared that also encourages someone to believe they could, well, “do that job.”

The higher I got and the broader my experiences, my sense of “I cannot really do that job” increased with regard toward the jobs I really shouldn’t do. It didn’t diminish my sense of ability to handle increased responsibility, it simply made me more reflective of other skill sets and the reality of certain jobs.

To be clear. There is a certain group of people who never reach this realization. They tend to be either sociopaths or oblivious narcissists, but they do exist.

Anyway. My real realization on this topic came when I reached a general management position <and did some consulting>.

It was there that I recognized jobs are like icebergs. 90% of a job you never see until you actually do the job. And to successfully do the part you don’t see needs a couple of things beyond the obvious ‘I need to be competent with regard to the specific skill itself’ aspect:

Attitude alignment

source: Tom Graves, Services and Disservices

This attitude goes way beyond the simplistic “I can do the job.” This attitude is more with regard to what you are actually good at.

As I have stated before I am more a renovator than a builder.  That is a mindset. My attitude is just put me in a room with all the puzzle pieces and I can rearrange them, maybe polish off a couple, maybe smooth out some edges that no longer fit well and put a different puzzle together that works better than the one that exists.

And then there are people who say ‘I envision a puzzle and build the pieces.”

Those are two different attitudes that, certainly, have some overlap but also, certainly, drive a different type of style and ability to succeed in one type of job versus another type of job. I believe many people are successful in their jobs, and new jobs, because they have the proper insight into themselves and position themselves well to take advantage of this insight.

I would also add that a leader who can see within a person’s ‘skill set’ to recognize this attitude will also be the type who can hire incredibly effectively. Not all leaders and hirers can. Some simply see the façade and surface abilities and believe they are easily transferable and hire them believing anyone can do the job if they have that appearance of a type of surface skill set.

The less-than-obvious skill set

… example of under the radar understanding (Juran Institute) …

Each skill, each specialty, has layers to its depth & breadth. Let’s say this is the “art” of the skill <I sometimes refer to it as “the shadow of your skill”>.

When you are a junior person you are demanded day in and day out to craft your pragmatic ‘non-artistic’ skills. You learn how to screw screws into holes efficiently and hammer nails into their proper places effectively.

As you gain seniority you are demanded to start incorporating the art aspects of your craft. I like to explain this as you have to learn to be more of an architect of your department, skill and specialty. By the way, not everyone can do his and not every department head is good at this and it tends to start filtering out those who move on to the next level … general management.

And if you move up even more into general management you are demanded to gain some skills in the “art” of combining all the skills into the overall progress of a company beyond the simplistic “are each department doing their fricking job.”

Ponder this.

In general the biggest difference between thinking you can do a job and actually being able to do the job is your less than obvious skill set. For example … I cannot tell you how many times I have sat in a conference room with a CFO who has displayed a skill set that made me think “shit, this company is lucky to have them” not because they knew all the accounting mumbo jumbo, but because they knew how to wield account skills in ways that  the company benefited beyond accounting.

Pick your C-level title and I would say the same thing.

At the corner of the bar you have no clue whether you have this ‘less than obvious skill set’ and if you actually have the experience you may only have a sense of whether this skill set exists. This is an intangible, however, 90% of the time this intangible arises from some relevant experience <maybe not within that specific discipline but a discipline nonetheless> … so your experience does matter.

So.

I decided to write about this today because, frankly, as a business guy I know you cannot do a job simply because you say “I can do that job” and that experience really does matter and that simply because you believe something … <sigh> … does not make it so.

I will say that I have learned this lesson the hard way and it permits me to be able to call a bullshitter a bullshitter and to be able to point out that some roles & responsibilities dictate at least some relevant experience in order to be effective & efficient. Just because you think you can “do that job” does not mean you can actually “do that job.” It takes some self-awareness to know that.

The lack of self-awareness has a ripple effect.

In a bar your lack of self-awareness can create a range of responses – some chuckles, out right laughter of disbelief and maybe even some aggravation if it inches into what some of the people actually do sitting at the table.

In a business your lack of self-awareness can create some real business repercussions. Not only may you be out of your depth, but you may actually start making some poor hires who are also out of their depth and that kind of shit gathers negative momentum <down the slippery slope of less-than-competent results>.

In business you get fired for that shit.

In business that kind of shit gets the entire business in trouble.

Anyway. Not everyone can do a job. That’s the message of the day.