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"ideas"

Mind Like a Steel Trap

by Ron Potter March 16, 2023

Steel

I visited my chiropractor the other day and he had a new young assistant who checked me in. As this young man was checking me in on the computer, I patted him on the shoulder as I passed him on my way to a chair. Wow! This kid’s shoulders felt like steel to me. I asked him if he was still in college and if he participated in sports. He was indeed enrolled in a nearby college and he said he was on the track team. I said, “Wow, you’re a runner?” He said no he didn’t run but he threw things: the shot and the hammer. It came clear. Those shoulders that felt like steel came from the fact that he threw very heavy things. In this case, feeling like steel was a good thing.

I’m not very attracted by the images, but when you see bodybuilders, they often look like they’re cut from a block of steel or granite. The image of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was in his body-building days comes to mind. However, I’ve heard Arnold and other bodybuilders say that even though they work hard at building their bodies, they lose a lot of flexibility in the process. I think steel can be good, but the loss of flexibility is not.

You may have heard the old statement having a mind like a steel trap—or maybe it’s just a saying that us old engineers are familiar with. The idea is self-explanatory of course. You grasp an idea and your mind closes on it like a steel trap and won’t let go.

That’s a good thing if you’re setting up a trap to catch wild animals. It may not be the best approach when it comes to ideas.

Flexible Thinking

An article that Shane Parish wrote in his Farnam Steet blog caught my eye. His opening statement is “The less rigid we are in our thinking, the more open minded, creative and innovative we become.”

Shane has several quotes from a book written by Leonard Mlodinow. Shane’s opening paragraph says this about Mlodinow’s book: “Elastic: Flexible Thinking in a Constantly Changing World confirms that the speed of technological and cultural development is requiring us to embrace types of thinking besides the rational, logical style of analysis that tends to be emphasized on our society.”

I received a wonderful email from my grandson who is currently living halfway around the world with his parents. He said, “I look up to your logical thinking.” I certainly took that as a compliment from him but wasn’t sure it was the best thing to be known for in an ever-changing world. Shane, in his comments, says, “We need to accept that analytic thinking—generally described as the application of systematic, logical analysis—has limitations.” He goes on to say, “Although incredibly useful in a variety of daily situations, analytical thinking may not be best for solving problems whose answers require new ways of doing things.”

Experts Sometimes Know Too Much

In my years as a consultant to CEOs and their teams around the world, I would often observe a dynamic that fascinated me. Many people on the leadership team were outstanding on a particular topic. On that particular topic, they had a mind like a steel trap. However, there were many times when the team was stuck on a particular issue and couldn’t seem to come up with an answer outside of their expertise. But, on those occasions when there was a young (less expert) member of the team, they seemed to ask a question about their current dilemma that the “experts” had not thought of. In fact, they might often start their question with some qualifier like, “I don’t really know what I’m talking about here but I’ve just been thinking that it might be a good idea to explore ‘such and such.'”

I would often watch the team of “experts” go completely silent until one of them would acknowledge that they hadn’t really thought about it that way before. They were soon talking non-stop about how that opened them to a whole new way to think about their dilemma. Flexibility, not rigid “steel” thinking, had them coming up with new approaches.

“Flexible thinking” is required to work our way through our ever-changing world. Without it, we are just stuck and will quickly be left behind.

For next week’s blog I’m writing on a topic that really scares me. It scares me for personal reasons. It scares me to think about what my grandchildren will be facing in the world as they mature. It scares me for the human race in general. I’ve not yet figured out how to deal with the topic and not be afraid, but I and others must do it.

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Consensus Building

by Ron Potter March 2, 2023

I meet on a regular basis with a group of highly intelligent and successful guys. We have a name for ouselves which is SPACE CADETS. The story is too long about how we became known by that name but we’ve enjoyed it.

Our topics range across the things we’ve been thinking about: a difficult situation we find ourselves in or sometimes simply curiosity. But it often deals with how we reach consensus with our team or client. One of the definitions of consensus from Merriam-Webster is “group solidarity in sentiment and belief.” You can look up the word solidarity but it often leads back to something solid. You build something together that is solid and that you’ll all defend.

There are two words in the English language that are often associated with building consensus.

One of those words is discussion. The other word is dialogue. Most people think of a good discussion as a way to reach consensus. Most of us don’t think of the word dialogue. If fact we often mix the two words up and misunderstand their meaning.

Discussion

There are some interesting ideas that discussion is based on. They include:

Narrow focus
Debate of what is “right”
Defending certainty
Seeking closure

Notice that there is an assumed “right” and “certainty” in the word discussion. Add to that the narrow focus and seeking closure (instead of understanding) and you begin to see that discussion may not be the best approach to building consensus. One of the best definitions that I found said that the word discussion is based on the same root word as percussion. What do you think of when you think about percussion? Drums!

I played percussion in our high school band. When we were in an orchestra situation I remember our band director asking me to bring down the volume on the percussion. But when we were outdoors in marching band, it seemed like he was always asking me to raise the volume. He wanted more percussion. Discussion in an open area with lots of listeners may be useful. But in a small team setting, percussion is not useful. It seems to have all the negative aspects of the bullet list above.

Dialogue

Dialogue is very different from discussion. Dialogue is an exchange of ideas and opinions. Dialogue has some very interesting aspects that you would probably love to have in most instances. It:

Surfaces all assumptions
Names and faces defense routines
Slows down conversation to create learning and shared meaning
Suspends certainty

Suspending Assumptions

The last point in dialogue is suspending certainty. All of us have certain ideas that we feel certain about. This is natural and it’s certainly OK as long as we know they come from our own views and observations. I think we would have a tough time with life if we didn’t have things we were certain about. But it’s important that they are really our assumptions and another person (especially one with different experiences and coming up in a different culture) may see them entirely differently.

I was very fortunate that my consulting career had me working around the world and being exposed to different cultures. I remember one team that was made up of people from Spain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and the UK. It was fascinating to see them start talking about a topic from their own culture and history. Fortunately, this was a team that respected each other and was willing to understand how the different cultures viewed certain topics.

One funny experience I remember was working with a US CEO. He had gotten tired of people being late for meetings so he instituted the rule that if you were late, you had to stand on your chair or table and sing your college fight song or country national anthem. From his point of view that would have been very humiliating. Then one day we were waiting for a meeting to start and I asked him if he saw the people standing outside the conference room door. It seems that all the Irish were waiting outside the door so they could be late and have to stand on the table and sing their national anthem. They loved it.

Suspending Assumptions II

A couple of things to think about when you’re suspending assumptions are:

Let go of your own assumptions in order to understand the assumptions of others.
When it comes to your turn, help everyone understand your assumptions and what formed them.
Move from discussion to dialogue to help everyone understand all of the assumptions so that together you can come up with the best team solution.

It’s important to remember that you won’t win every argument and your assumptions won’t carry the day in every instance. Most often one assumption persuades most of the team but is enhanced by portions of some of the other assumptions.

One way to judge your ability to do this well is how you respond to people after the decision is made. When someone (who may have been fully aware of your position before the meeting) asks you what the decision of the team was, your answer should be something like, “The team thought this was the best solution.” When the person says they know that was not your opinion prior to the meeting, say again, “The team thought it is the best solution.”

Keep in mind that we all have different assumptions. I grew up with three siblings in the same house. We have certain similarities but, as a whole, we are each very different people. You’re no better or worse than the other person, you just have different assumptions.

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Blog Personal

Transister Radio

by Ron Potter February 2, 2023

When I was growing up there were no computers masquerading as radios. But I do remember my first transistor radio.
It had both AM and FM and would fit in my hand. This allowed me to lay in the front yard on warm summer evenings listening to the Detroit Tigers baseball game. But baseball games had a lot of downtime which allowed me to think, observe the Milky Way, and listen to the sounds of summer nights.

Polymath

I thought a lot about being a polymath.

Not really; I didn’t even know the word polymath. A polymath is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects and is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems. Those long evenings in the front yard allowed me to think about many ideas and subjects.

Curious

I was always curious. I was always asking a question related to seemingly unrelated topics. While this drove my mother crazy, my father seemed to get it and would always question me about the source of the question. My dad had a degree from the high school in our small community. But now that I know the term, I considered him a polymath.

Famous Polymaths

One article written by Zat Rana is titled “The Expert Generalist: Why the Future Belongs to Polymaths.”

While I don’t consider myself comparable to them:

Aristotle invented half a dozen fields across philosophy
Galileo was as much a physicist as an engineer
da Vinci might have been more famous as an inventor than an artist if his notebooks were published

The polymath is interested in learning.

Specialist

Don’t get me wrong, the world needs specialists. In fact, there are a lot more specialists than there are polymaths. The difference is that a specialist picks a topic and then goes deep. The world couldn’t live without them. The polymath, however, specializes in a domain or two of specialty.

Learning Is a Discipline

As I said above, the polymath is interesting in learning. Learning itself is a skill and when you exercise that skill across domains, you get specialized as a learner. When I was growing up it was common for people to have a single career and then retire. In the future (while it has arrived) people will likely have multiple careers that differ significantly. In such a world, learning becomes even more valuable.

Engineering and Microcomputers

I received an engineering degree from the University of Michigan. It was assumed I would spend my career working in the engineering industry. But then, I saw my first microcomputer. It had dual floppy drives and a 5″ green screen. I knew my career was going to change right there. When I arrived back at headquarters, I informed my boss that I was leaving the engineering business and going into microcomputers. His words were “What’s a microcomputer?” I said, just wait, you’ll find out.

After many years in the microcomputer business, I realized that I was being asked by key executives to help them think about their business more broadly. I didn’t realize it at the time, but they were asking me to be a polymath. I still didn’t know what the word meant but I did realize I was being asked about a broad range of businesses from construction to pharmaceuticals to food and other industries. They were asking me to learn about their business from a broad “polymath” viewpoint.

From that point, I worked on three continents, in multiple countries and cultures. I was being paid to think as a polymath. Once again, I’ll make the point that specialists are required. They invent things and get things at peak efficiency. But without polymaths, no ideas are sweeping across disciplines. They are also required and often seem to be thinking before the specialists understand their topic. Polymaths can often seem ahead of their time.

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Blog Personal

Loss

by Ron Potter January 26, 2023

I’ve lost both of my parents and all my aunts and uncles. Although my father died of wounds from WWII earlier than he should have, he likely would have died by this age anyway. He would have been 103 this year had he lived. Thankfully, I still have all my siblings but the loss of family seemed natural to me.

Loss of High School Friend

The loss of friends, however, seems different and for me hurts just a little bit more. I had a high school friend who I had been companions with since we had been a few months old. Our parents were friends so we were together right from the start. Throughout our high school years, we were almost inseparable. We had fun together and got into trouble together. Even the one cop in the small town we grew up in knew us and our parents. For high school kids, that can be good and bad.

I have one memory of some new walkie-talkies that my father bought. I took them to town and grabbed my friend as we went out “looking for trouble.” The only thing was our one cop in town seemed to show up wherever we were and put an end to any pranks we had in mind before we could get in trouble. We couldn’t figure out how he always knew where we were and what we were up to until we discovered that his police scanner could hear our walkie-talkies.

I couldn’t imagine being away from him until our lives diverged after high school. I headed for college. He went to Viet Nam. After he returned we just didn’t seem to have much in common anymore. That was sad to me but I figured it was part of growing up.

Cancer

But then years later he came down with cancer and came to Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I was living at the time, and he was getting treatment at the U of M Medical Center. I’m so thankful that he and his wife (who also graduated from the same high school) reached out to me and let me know what he was going through and arranged times together when he was in town for treatments. Our old friendship began to rekindle, and we had some wonderful times together.

A few months later my friend’s son called me and said his dad was bedridden and couldn’t speak and I should come and see him if I could. I immediately drove the 3 hours it took to get to his home to find him in bed with no hair and extremely emaciated. I wouldn’t have recognized him if I didn’t know who it was. His wife and two children told me he had been bedridden and comatose for a couple of days. I stroked his forehead, talked of some of our fun times together, and told him how much I missed him. He squeezed my hand!

After talking with his wife and two children I headed back home. By the time I got there, his son had called to say his father had passed soon after I left. I saw him during the last few hours of his life and I may have been the only one whose hand he squeezed. I just had to cry. We had been together for 18 years, apart for a few, then back together again for about a year before he died. Losing a good friend like that was very different than losing family to normal aging processes.

Post-College Friend

Another friend who graduated from Michigan, as I had, came to work for me a few years after I finished school. We became very good friends. In fact, after that first construction project together when we headed in different directions, we always kept in touch. As it turned out, our kids were not too different in age and they have known each other since childhood. In this blog, I couldn’t even begin to tell you all the fun we’ve had together through the years including river rafting, “up North” (Michigan) trips, and others.

I always had to laugh because he was one of the very first users of spreadsheet programs and recorded many aspects of his life and plans on them. If he was telling me about an upcoming trip I would finally say, “Show me the spreadsheet.” He would smile and then bring out the spreadsheet. He even began to incorporate color as technology advanced.

Cancer (Again)

He retired a few years ago but soon after was diagnosed with cancer. After we found out, he began to tell me all the things he wanted to do and accomplish while he still had his health. I said, “Show me the spreadsheet.” He smiled, then showed me the multiple-page, color spreadsheet. It was all there, everything he wanted to accomplish. He had some ups and downs but we were able to enjoy each other’s company on a regular basis.

He died recently. I was able to see him a few weeks ago on one of his good days but I’m having a hard time coming to grips with the loss. The next day I was in my doctor’s office for a regular check-up and I couldn’t stop crying. It took the doctor several minutes to diagnose grief over something physically wrong with me.

Grief

One definition is, “Grief is a strong, sometimes overwhelming emotion.” It certainly has been strong in my life with the loss of my friend, but I don’t think it has gotten too overwhelming where my own physical or mental health is concerned. That doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be careful and aware to make sure it doesn’t.

What is the Purpose of Loss?

I don’t know the answer to that. I’m sure there are some intellectual answers about making you stronger or preparing you for other or deeper losses. I just don’t feel it at the moment. This is terribly sad to me.

God set the example when His only son, Jesus, was crucified. God’s loss and Jesus’s sacrifice provided salvation for me.

I know that loss is supposed to make us stronger and it probably will in the long run. But right now it’s just painful.

I raised the question with a group of friends the other day. One of them who is a reader of my blog said he thought I was experiencing it because I would write about it in my blog and it would help many others.

All of those ideas are probably part of the answer but right now I just feel sadness.

Maybe that’s part of the answer. Much of the world tells us we should be happy all of the time. That’s not true! We will and do experience sadness in life. It’s unnatural to think we won’t or shouldn’t.

Handle your losses with dignity.

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Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Anyway

by Ron Potter May 12, 2022

Anyway by Kent Keith is a small quick read book. But, in spite of its small size, it is packed full of wisdom.

I’ll list all of the 10 Paradoxical Commandments here so that you can see all of them but then touch on a few that I believe are very powerful.

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love Them Anyway
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do Good Anyway
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed Anyway
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do Good Anyway
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be Honest and Frank Anyway
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest ideas.
Think Big Anyway
People favor underdogs but follow only the top dogs.
Fight for a Few Undergood Anyway
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build Anyway
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help People Anyway
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the World the Best You Have anyway

Love them, do good, succeed, be honest and grand, think big, fight for a few underdogs, build, help, give your best, ANYWAY!

So few of us do it anyway. There always seem to be obstacles in the way. I think some of the worst are personal fear and worrying about what others think. I’ve often heard “what will others think?” People who are driven by what others think never achieve their own satisfaction, desires, and goals. As the book says, people always look for ways of stopping you and criticizing you. Somehow it makes them feel better about themself or superior by stopping your goals and ideas even though they have either non or very small goals themselves.

Let’s take a look at a few of these that I believe have a major impact.

Do Good Anyway

The profound statement in this section is “People who act on their own selfish interior motives commonly accuse others of doing the same thing.”

I can’t say that I’m totally clear of selfish motives. But I accomplish enough things without ulterior motives that I’m always surprised that other people think I’m only doing things for selfish reasons.

My first reaction is one of total confusion and amazement. It seems the other person believes I’m doing something entirely for personal reasons when I feel that I’m doing something for the good of the whole or the benefit of another person. I’m totally confused and taken back. Then as I think about it, I realize that the person who thinks I’m doing something for selfish reasons runs their whole life on accomplishing things for totally selfish reasons. Because of this, they assume that everyone does things for selfish reasons and can’t even comprehend when someone is not driven by selfish reasons.

There is no way for them to understand doing something for the good of others because they would never think that way. Unfortunately, there are too many people in the world who think that way. It’s good for us to understand who they are, realize that they would never understand our motives, and do good anyway.

Think Big Anyway

Only a few people seem to think big. One of the reasons is that people don’t think of themselves as being “qualified.” I’ve gone through three different careers and have never felt qualified. Even though I had an engineering degree, it mostly taught me about the mathematics of engineering. I never felt “qualified” to walk structural steel 160 feet in the air.

My second career was developing a software company at the beginning of the microcomputer industry. I never felt qualified.

My third career was running a consulting business. I called it TLC (Team Leaders Culture). I never felt qualified to dispense wisdom in those three areas until a CEO client of mine told me one evening that I was good at all three (building teams by teaching leadership and transferring it down through the culture). But my real value was simply talking with him during our evening chats. I now felt qualified to simply talk with the client about any topic.

Living the Paradoxical Life

Living the paradoxical life finds great personal meaning in loving and helping others find meaning in their lives.

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Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

Management of the Absurd

by Ron Potter May 5, 2022

As I continue the review of some of the books I’ve read through the years, next up is Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson.

Management of the Absurd

A dictionary definition of the word absurd calls it “wildly unreasonable or illogical.” I consider myself both highly reasonable and logical so this definition didn’t make sense to me. Which may be why I read it. My notes alone for the book totaled up to 15 pages so I guess it caught my interest.

This book is written by Richard Farson. In the book, he lays out eight parts.

A Different Way of Thinking
The “Technology of” Human Relations
The Paradoxes of Communication
The Politics of Management
Organizational Predicaments
Dilemmas of Change
The Aesthetics of Leadership
Avoiding the Future

I’ll quickly touch on each of the eight parts but I think you’ll notice the absurdity in the titles themselves.

A Different Way of Thinking

The most important discoveries come from taking a fresh look at what people take for granted. They cannot see it because it is too “obvious” or is what they expect to see or not seen. Farson calls this the invisible obvious. I’ve often seen when the “expert” doesn’t pay any attention to the new person on the team or someone who doesn’t have the same “expertise” they do on a particular topic. The absurdity comes from the fact that the best new creative ideas come from the person who is taking a fresh look at a topic. This can come from the new person or, if you train yourself well, you can provide that fresh look no matter how much of an “expert” you are on a topic.

The “Technology of” Human Relations

Farson says that “The more important a relationship, the less skill matters.” In both parenthood and management, it’s not so much what we do as what we are that counts. It is the ability to meet each situation armed not with a battery of techniques but with an openness that permits a genuine response.

Effective leaders and managers do not regard control as the main concern. Instead, they approach situations as learners or teachers or sometimes both.

My take from this section is the openness and genuine response that people respect and will be motivated by. Trying to control or dictate situations will not motivate people.

The Paradoxes of Communication

Paradox is another one of those interesting words. Webster says that it is “a statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true.”

Listening can also be a disturbing experience. All of us have strong needs to see the world in certain ways, and when we really listen, so that we understand the other person’s perspective, we risk being changed ourselves.

The best kind of listening comes not from technique but from being genuinely interested in what really matters to the other person.

This is what I have come to think of as listening to understand rather than listening to respond. Often when we’re listening to the other person, we’re building a list in our head about how were are going to respond. That’s easier and takes less energy than listening to truly understand what the other person is saying and the belief system they are basing their statement upon. Listening to understand creates a different set of questions, often forcing the other person to expose their own belief system.

The Politics of Management

Fighting for the rights of special groups has contributed to an erosion of civility. When people are treated as representatives of special groups, society is fragmented. The achievement and preservation of the community must become our top priority. Otherwise, the concept of rights has no meaning.

Organizational Predicaments

Organizations that need help most will benefit from it least.

I experienced this with one client I worked with many years ago. The head of HR knew that the team needed help and convinced them to employ my services. After talking with the head of HR, I decided to highly discount my services because I didn’t believe that would have been willing to pay my going fee. In their mind, they just weren’t in that bad of shape. After working with the team for almost a year I believed we had learned a lot and gotten much better. If we were climbing a ten-step ladder, we had just successfully made it up to step one. However, to the team this was seen as such great strides—they felt like they had reached the top of the ladder. Because they were so much better than they had been a year ago they no longer had a need for my services. In their mind, they had achieved everything they could have.

Dilemmas of Change

I’ve talked about the word “dilemma” before. The foundation is “dilaminent” which meant horns. Being on the horns of a bull put you in a dilemma. You’re going to get gored either way.

Our author Farson makes the point that creative ideas are relatively easy to elicit. Implementing them is a much tougher task.

Farson says that it’s important that we fail. We need to fail ofter. If we don’t, it means we’re not testing our limits.

The Aesthetics of Leadership

Farson says, “There are no leaders, there is only leadership.”

One of the great enemies of organizational effectiveness is our stereotypical image of a leader. We imagine a commanding figure perhaps standing in front of an audience, talking, not listening. The real strength of a leader is the ability to elicit the strength of the group. Leadership is less the property of a person than the property of a group.

Avoiding the Future

Farson closes with “If absurdity is ubiquitous, if the most important goals are lost causes, why do we keep playing this absurd game? We play it because it is the only game in town. Of course, it is absurd. Of course, it is only a game. But it is a game well worth playing and worth playing well.”

Management of the Absurd is a long thought-provoking book. I have not done it justice in the blog so I suggest you find a copy, read it, and underline it so that you come away with the greatest learnings for you.

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Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

by Ron Potter April 28, 2022

As I continue the review of some of the books I’ve read through the years, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni seemed like a natural fit after looking at Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline.

Lencioni pictures a nice pyramid with the following elements:

Absence of Trust (as the base)
Fear of Conflict
Lack of Commitment
Avoidance of Accountability
Division of Company Results

Absence of Trust

This comes from the unwillingness to be vulnerable and not genuinely open within the team. This makes it impossible to build the foundation of trust.

The absence of trust comes from several issues but I believe the main one is a lack of being open about our belief system. It’s good to hold strong belief systems. But it’s important to remember that each of us is unique based on history and experiences. While holding too strong beliefs, it’s also important that we be open to exposing our ideas and beliefs to others on the team for scrutiny and building a shared belief system.

I have three siblings. We grew up in the same household with the same parents. However, speaking to each other as adults it became clear that we each have very different memories and belief systems. Think about that for a minute. Today’s society assumes that if we’re in a particular category then we all must think alike and have the same belief systems.

Oh, you’re a white person who grew up in rural America, therefore you must have these belief systems! Not true! Yes, I am white and, yes, I did grow up in rural America, but as I just explained that even with those similarities I don’t have the same belief system as my siblings who grew up in the same household with the same parents. Don’t let people (or for that matter yourself) be put into a category just because we have some broad-based backgrounds.

Fear of Conflict

The failure of building trust in a team can be damaging because it sets the tone for fear of conflict.

Teams that lack trust are incapable of engaging in an unfiltered and passionate debate of ideas. Instead, they resort to veiled discussions and guarded comments about people, never allowing their own belief systems to be questioned.

Lack of Commitment

Without healthy conflict, it’s impossible to reach team commitment. If we lack trust because of fear of conflict, it’s impossible to expose our ideas and beliefs to passionate and open debate. Team members may sign-up as being committed to an idea or position during the meeting but as soon as they walk out of the room and are questioned by someone who knew they believed something else going into the meeting they may say something like “I don’t necessarily agree with the team goal but I’ll support it until a conflict arises between the team goal and my true beliefs.” This is not commitment, it’s compliance. True commitment must be in place for a team to move forward together.

Avoidance of Accountability

This most often happens when team members are fearful to call out other members whose actions don’t align with their supposed commitment. Not holding each other accountable to the team commitment will quickly break down the trust and commitment of the team. Being a leadership team means you’ll need to make difficult decisions. Without the accountability to the difficult decision, you’re not really a team, just a group of people trying to lead on your own belief system without the commitment of a team with you.

Cohesive Teams

Cohesive teams:

Trust one another
Engage in unfiltered conflict about ideas (not people)
Commit to decisions and plans of action
Hold each other accountable for the commitment
Focus on the achievement of team results

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Blog In-Depth Book Reviews

The Fifth Discipline

by Ron Potter April 21, 2022

I retired from business travel at age 70. I just turned 74 and it seems impossible that it has already been four years. During my business career, I did a lot of reading. I read novels and business books. I never talked too much about the business books I was reading because I assumed that most of the business leaders I was working with were also reading the same books.

I Was Wrong

Those leaders were so engulfed in running and leading their businesses they really didn’t have time for outside reading. Although some of the books are old, they contain many pearls of wisdom about leading and running a business. I’m going to spend the next few weeks sharing some of the wisdom I picked up from those books.

The Fifth Discipline

This is a book by Peter Senge talks about four skills of great teams then wraps it all together with Integrated Learning, the fifth displine. He outlines this book into four categories:

Personal Mastery
Mental Models
Building Shared Vision
Team Learning
Integrated Learning
At the heart of a learning organization is a mind—from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world.
From seeing problems as caused by someone or something “out there” to seeing how our own actions create the problems we experience.

Personal Mastery

Senge talks about people with a high level of personal mastery are people who are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them.

They do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning.

Mental Models

Mental models are deeply ingrained assumptions and generalizations of how we understand the world and take action. This starts with turning the mirror inward, learning to unearth our internal pictures of the world, to bring them to the surface, and hold them rigorously to scrutiny. People expose their own thinking effectively and make that thinking open to the influence of others.

Building Shared Vision

We are hard-pressed to think of any organization that has sustained some measure of greatness in the absence of goals, values, and missions that become deeply shared throughout the organization.

The practice of shared vision involves the skills of unearthing shared “pictures of the future” that foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather than compliance.

Team Learning

Team learning starts with dialogue. To the Greeks, dialogues meant a free-flowing of meaning through a group, allowing the group to discover insights not attainable individually.

Dialog differs from the more common discussion which has its roots in percussion and concussion. Literally a heaving of ideas back and forth in a winner-takes-all competition.

Fifth Discipline: Integrated Learning

The fifth discipline is the discipline that integrates the disciplines, fusing them into a coherent body of theory and practice.

By enhancing each of the other disciplines, it continually reminds us that the whole can exceed the sum of its parts.

At the heart of a learning organization is a shift of mind from seeing ourselves as separate from the world to connected to the world, from seeing problems caused by someone or something “out there” to see how our own actions create the problems we experience.

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Unity Through Diversity

by Ron Potter January 27, 2022

Truth, Love, Beauty, Unity.

You’ve heard this several times from me as a saying from Aristotle. I actually use it for building teams.

Truth – be honest with each other and the team
Love – Show respect for each and every member of the team.
Beauty – Don’t make things complicated, make them simple. (I’ve talked about the beauty of Einstein’s genius. It was not his mathematical genius that helped him stand out as a pillar in his field. It was his ability to simplify things.)
Unity – Work as a team. Build unity.

In one sense we can view these as a progression. By bringing out the truth, showing respect for individuals, ideas, and opinions, and boiling things down to the simplest of forms: we can then reach unity. This doesn’t create uniformity; it creates unity through diversity.

Another Ancient Text

Many of us have heard the story about the Tower of Babel. Most scholars put the writing of this book as much as a thousand years before Aristotle. Most of us think this story is about the people of earth at that time building a tower so that they could become gods of their universe. The reason this might have been possible is that the text says they had one language and the same words. They had uniformity. Earlier text indicated that the intent was for a diverse language and people. The children of Noah (after the great flood) spread about the world and created different tribes and languages. The intent was diversity.

The story of the Tower of Babel was about building a nation with one language. In the passage from Genesis 11, God once again caused the nation to disperse into different tribes and different languages. The goal was always diversity!

Uniformity vs Unity

These are close words but they mean different things.

Uniform: The same in all cases and at all times. Unchanging in form or character.

Unity: The state of being in full agreement: Harmony.

The keyword in uniform is “unchanging.” Nothing changes. Beliefs don’t change. Arguments don’t create change. Different beliefs and opinions don’t change. Referring to Aristotle’s statement, there is no need for Love (Respect) because nothing is going to change. Without respect for other beliefs and opinions, nothing changes.

The keyword in unity is “Harmony.” Have you ever been part of a choir, quartet, or jazz band/quartet? I’ve been part of a choir off and on for many years. I sing bass. My sound and notes are very different from the altos and other sections of the choir. But when we join all of our voices together, we create a wonderful and enjoyable harmony.

Have you ever listened to a great jazz quartet? There is no written music, just great blended sound. In fact, any instrument may take the lead at any time. All of the other instruments listen, blend in, and create a great harmony together. They create unity.

Uniformity or Unity

We’re seeing a great deal of uniformity in our nation at the moment. Because of the lack of respect, there is no change, there is no listening. There are only hard stances with an unwillingness to be open (and show respect for) other beliefs and opinions. There is no ability to build a great nation in unity.

Business Teams have the ability to overcome this uniformity and create unity. Business teams have the ability to be together because they are smaller and closer—although I worry about virtual teams. Business teams have the ability to share beliefs and opinions and listen to each other to build unity.

Our nation has less of a chance because of the desire to push an agenda to create a uniform belief (at least at a tribe level).

Build Unity

Build unity where you can. I believe it’s easier at a team level because of the personal connections and a fewer number of members. But, where ever you can, build unity on a national level. This means examining your own “unchanging” views and being open to others’ believes and opinions.

Unity can save us from ourselves.

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Humans Project in Straight Lines

by Ron Potter January 6, 2022

“It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.” ~ Mark Twain

A friend of mine who recently retired and is now fighting cancer said to me the other day: You said something to me years ago that has helped me tremendously through these hard times. I immediately wonder what I might have said years ago that is having that kind of impact today. He then explained. You once said to me that the human mind projects in straight lines but nothing in the world runs in a straight line. I do remember learning and saying that. If things were going well, my mind assumed they would continue to improve. If things were going poorly, my mind assumed things would continue to get worse. It never works out that way.

Straight Line Projections

K&E Company (the makers of high-end slide rules) did a visionary study on their hundredth anniversary in 1967. I was a sophomore in college and did all of my calculations on a K&E slide rule. Their study missed the coming electronic calculator. K&E shut down their slide rule engravers in 1976.
A late 60″s prediction was cheap energy forever. The oil embargo happened in 1973.
By the late 80’s economic growth based on new industries and discoveries looked dim. Netscape went public with their internet browser in 1995.
People tend to overestimate what they’re experiencing at the moment and undervalue the possibilities in the future. This reinforces Mark Twain’s quote that it’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

Straight Lines Tend To Be Short

It’s OK to make predictions and decisions based on how things are going today. The mistake that most leaders make is assuming that the trajectory they are on (up or down) will last longer than it ever does.

I’ve seen many examples of this during my consulting career. I’ll have to be careful telling about one example because if people know that industry, they’ll know which company I’m talking about. In this example, the particular company had been the industry leader for over a hundred years. They made the best and highest quality product within the industry. They assumed that trend would continue and made plans and decisions based on the fact that the public would always purchase the highest quality product available. But the buying public is finicky. They actually changed their behavior and started purchasing less expensive products in large numbers.

I watched another client struggle with losing customers. When the leaders asked some of their key employees why they were losing market share, the answer was “customers don’t see us as a nutritious option anymore.” The leaders discounted their own employees by proclaiming that their products have been seen and promoted as a nutritious project for over a hundred years. That couldn’t have changed overnight. But it had changed overnight while the leaders were still projecting in straight lines based on the past.

This last example is not about a particular company but an entire industry. Many of my clients through the years have been in the pharmaceutical industry. The pharma industry may be one of the riskiest industries in existence. They will often take several years and invest nearly a billion dollars bringing a drug to market only to have it fail to pass human trials or FDA approval at the last minute. I can’t think of any other industry that takes that kind of risk.

I’m going to make a political statement here that I often avoid. There has been a lot of discussion from our government on price controls. It’s not a price control issue, it’s a trade issue. Nearly all other countries in the world do put price controls on drugs. This leaves the United States carrying the burden of the cost of development. If the US also puts price controls in place, there will be no further development of new drugs. Let’s fix the trade issue and have other countries pay their fair share of development.

Once a new drug has been accepted and makes it to the marketplace, there are a limited number of years left on the original patent for the company to earn back the high cost of development. Once a drug goes off-patent and becomes generic, I’ve seen many companies assume that the brand name drug sales still have a life that will tail off slowly. It never does. Once a generic is available, sales of the brand name drug drop to zero almost immediately. Thinking in straight lines can be deadly.

What’s a Leadership Team To Do?

It can be difficult for leaders and leadership teams to not get caught in the straight line syndrome. Here are a couple of ways to avoid that issue:

Listen to the outlier. When there is an outlier on the team their opinion is often discounted. It’s just easier to go with the majority rather than reconcile the outlier’s thoughts. Don’t do that. Listen to what they have to say. Listen with the intent to understand rather than reply. Don’t try to fit their thinking into your view of the world. Listen to how they see the world differently.
Nurture new and inexperienced employees to look at things differently. People from different disciplines view things differently. Listen to how they see the issue. Inexperienced employees often have the freshest views on things. They don’t know what they don’t know yet. They often ask interesting, novel, and surprising questions that experienced people have forgotten.
Listen to experts carefully. “Experts” know the answers they’re looking for and discount new ideas and outliers. We need our experts. But don’t just assume that their answers and opinions are right or the final answer. They know what they’re looking for and discount answers and opinions that don’t agree with their preconceived ideas.

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Loosing the Forest for the Tree

by Ron Potter December 23, 2021

You’ve seen me turn to Shane Parrish many times. I think he is one of the best “thinkers” around today which makes him my favorite blogger.

Einstein Essentials

In this article, Shane talks about how Albert Einstein sorts the essential from the non-essential.

I can also go back to one of my favorite Aristotle quotes that I use for great teamwork: Truth, Love, Beauty, Unity. Beauty is what Shane and Einstein are talking about here.

In Aristotle’s terms, he is talking about the simplest, most direct, most essential information. Sorting out the essential from the non-essential is the key to great success but it’s getting harder every day. Social media has filled our lives with more and more non-essential information. Years ago I decided that the daily news was not about the news but about entertainment and sensationalism in an attempt to gain larger marketing numbers. I stopped watching the evening news nearly twenty years ago because I found it irrelevant. It was not about wisdom. It was non-essential!

Einstein’s greatest gift

In Shanes’s observation of Einstein, he notes that a great mathematical mind was not his greatest gift. It was not. His greatest gift was the ability to sift the essential from the inessential, to grasp simplicity when everyone else was lost in the clutter. Too many people today are considered experts on a particular topic and work hard at making it more complicated. Real genius works hard at simplification. In Einstein’s biography, it points out that it wasn’t that Einstein understood more about complicated things that made him impressive. It was that he understood the value of simplicity.

In working with several corporate leadership teams through the years I would often observe those leaders who always wanted more information before they could or would make a decision. My reaction was they didn’t understand the problem or issue and therefore they wanted more information in an effort to understand. It seemed to me that the best leaders, investors, and advisors always simplified the situation to a few essentials that would make the decision clear and understandable.

We were talking with our own financial advisor recently. It seemed to me that the market had been in a wild gyration over the last few weeks with the Dow going up and down several hundred points per day. When I asked how they dealt with such volatility his answer was “It’s just noise.” To him, it was non-essential information.

Filtering Skills

Shane closes his article by listing the skills to better filter and process:

Focus on understanding basic, timeless, general principles of the world and use them to help filter people, ideas, and projects. The italics are mine. The news is not timeless, it’s daily. Timeless principles are the ones that last and ones we should be focused on.
Take time to think about what we’re trying to achieve and the two or three variables that will most help us get there. Three variables lead to six options. Four variables lead to 24 options. The human brain can only deal with about seven options at a time. Keep your variables to three or less. Otherwise, the brain cannot process it.
Remove the inessential clutter from our lives. This can be the things we think about, the number of balls we try to keep in the air, and even stuff. The stuff you collect over time only creates clutter in the long run. Sort it out. Get rid of the inessential.
Think backward about what we want to avoid. Start with the end in mind.

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Is Criticism Slowing You Down?

by Ron Potter October 7, 2021

As you’ve probably noticed in my blogs, I’m a fan of Aristotle’s philosophy. One of his quotes makes a great point about criticism:

“There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”

I have seen and met those people. They are so afraid of what others think that they tend to not do anything in fear of criticism. Therefore they say nothing that could be constructed as critical or even innovative. In doing so they become nothing. They become invisible. They are never considered for promotion. They are never considered to lead a team. Their thoughts are never considered when looking for innovative ideas. They are nothing.

Criticism Happens

If we think about Aristotle’s quote in reverse:

Do something
Say what’s on your mind (in a constructive way)
Be something.

You are a unique human being. You bring something unique and different from every other person. Recognize the value in that uniqueness.

Do Something

Doing nothing can be the result of a boss who is all-controlling. If that’s the case, look for another position, look for another job, look to a new company. Being in a position of never doing anything other than what you’re told and how to do it, will suck the life out of you! You will find yourself a greatly diminished human being that will destroy your self-esteem and it will be noticed by your loved ones.

But doing something will almost always bring criticism. If you step back and view the situation almost from a third-party position, you’ll often see that the criticism comes from people who themselves have low self-esteem. The criticism comes in an effort to make themselves look better or feel better about themselves. It never works. Healthy people see right through that maneuver and discount the other person, not you.

Say What’s on Your Mind

This one must be accomplished with good self-esteem. When you’re in that state of mind, you’re not criticizing, you’re just trying to look at things from a different perspective. Remember that we are all unique. We all see things from a different perspective.

Teams that can listen and respect each other’s points of view are the healthiest and strongest teams.

Always stay in a respectful position. Acknowledge that everyone has a unique perspective and it’s best if we all hear and understand that perspective. Great teams are not “group think” teams. We’re not lemmings blindly following the herd off the cliff. Someone needs to say “I see us heading for a cliff and the results aren’t good”. Just that simple statement will often get others sharing “you know, I’ve been wondering the same thing. This just doesn’t feel right”.

Be open, honest, and respectful. Understand what’s on everyone’s mind. It can save the team

Be Something

What do you want to be known for?

The one who gets the team thinking?
The respectful one who always brings the best out in others?
The Jerk?
The non-existent, silent one in the room?

This is your choice. Get to know the other team members as human beings. Help them get to know you as a human being. We are all unique. We become the best team when we understand, respect, and use that uniqueness to build a great teams and reach great team decisions.

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