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The Machines won’t stand a chance!

by Ron Potter

Earlier this year I reviewed the book Only Humans Nee Apply. The question raised by the book is:

How do we as humans survive in this incredible technology, robotic age that we’re now entering?

One way to look at history is through the “ages” that have been identified.

  • The Agricultural Age
  • The Industrial Age
  • The Information Age
  • The Technology Age

The Agriculture Age and Industrial Age are well documented and understood. One important thing to remember is the workers at the center of those ages were essentially the upper-middle class of the day.

The landowner or industry owners were the wealthy of that era, but the agricultural and industrial workers were the upper middle class of the day.

The steam engine brought an end to the industrial age when factory workers began making more money. The industrial age ended in September 2007 when the United Auto Workers wages dropped from $60/hour to $20/hour. Industrial workers could no longer make upper-middle class wages.

But when did the information age end? By some measures, it ended 50 years ago. We just haven’t noticed yet.

The Next Age

The next age has gone by different identifies. The Conceptional Age. The Creative Age.

What we know for sure is that we’re entering a new phase where the technology is finally hitting its stride and doing many things that the information or knowledge workers used to do. Several of our major colleges today employ sports writing “robots”. Plug in the stats from the game and the computer writes the sports story.

In his book, Only Humans Need to Apply, Tom Davenport talks about the different ways humans will survive and thrive in this machine age.

  • You can become a machine maintenance person, a technician. Machines will always need maintenance and repair.
  • You can use the machine to augment what you do. My first example of this was using spreadsheets. Spreadsheets began to augment what I did as an engineer. The problem with allowing machines to augment what you do is they quickly get smart enough to take over what you do.

Davenport says our best chance is to augment what the machines can do. How do we begin to use that technology and apply our creativeness? The one aspect that machines haven’t mastered is being creative (so far). How do we begin to apply creativity in ways that machines would never think doing? This is how humans will survive in the technology age.

Augmenting Teams

But, I believe our greatest augmentation opportunities lie in teams, not technology. We need to think about our teams in a similar way. How do we augment each other? If we don’t, we’re not gaining the incredible power of teams. We’re just a group of individuals working together. But in the same way, we think about augmenting machines, we can augment what each other do. By doing so we’re creating a team that can go far beyond even what the best individual on the team can do.

This idea of augmenting each other means we’re required to know each other not as human doings, not as what we do or how we do it but as human beings.

  • Who are we?
  • How do we think?
  • What are our beliefs and assumptions?
  • What are the values that we hold?
  • How are we going to face difficulties together?

This is where growth happens when we’re faced with difficult situations. Teams that learn to augment each other, that function better as a team than as a group of individuals. These are the teams that will be extremely successful in the future. In fact, my belief is that if teams fully augment each other as human beings, the machines won’t have a chance.

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BlogCulture

What’s your Therefore there for?

by Ron Potter

The word therefore has only been used in its current form for around 200 years. It’s a relatively new word in our language.

In the original old English, it meant: for that or by reason of that. Or it could be understood to mean “in consequence of that.”

The question is “What is that?”

We all too often give our reason for something without ever explaining what that reason is based upon.

By reason of that

In consequence of that

One of the practices I find myself talking to corporate teams about is conducting good dialogue. Good dialogue begins with clearly stating the “that” which your argument or conclusions are based upon.

Peter Senge wrote the book The 5th Discipline in 1990. In my experience with corporate clients, it was one of the most impactful books written at the time. Every client I worked with during the late 90’s and early 2000’s was anxious to show me what they were doing with systems thinking (the point of Senge’s book) and re-engineering projects to rethink how they were approaching their work. The book itself was over 400 pages long and my personal notes of highlights were nearly 40 pages. That means I highlighted nearly 10% of all the words written. It was impactful thinking!

One of the basic mental models in the book was Triple Loop Learning. It is most often attributed to Chris Argyris who was a colleague of Senge. In this model, they helped us understand that until we get at the beliefs and assumptions that drive our reasoning we will never actually learn or will always fall short of accomplishing major change efforts. Beliefs and assumptions will always overrule systems, policies, procedures, and processes.

Teams that get good at starting with beliefs and assumptions of each team member find renewed understanding and respect for each other and make great strides accomplishing great things beyond what one individual could accomplish.

In my experience, if you were to watch high performing teams from behind a soundproof glass, you would think they were at each other’s throats. They seem to be aggressively going at each other and getting in each other’s face. But, if you removed the glass and began to hear the discussions, you would be aware that they want to understand each other so deeply that they are aggressively going after the beliefs, assumptions, backgrounds, experiences that support everyone’s starting points when dealing with a difficult issue. By understanding beliefs and assumptions, the team is better at solving problems and reaching a committed solution they all will back and support.

So, what is your therefore there for? If you can’t share what you believe without condemnation, ridicule or repercussions your “therefore” conclusions, suggestions or directions will never be understood or respected. Build great teams that can openly share Beliefs and Assumptions so that “therefore” is understood and respected.

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5 Steps to Standing for Something GreaterBlogLeadership

5 Steps to Standing for Something Greater – Part IV: Seize the Higher Ground

by Ron Potter

People do not like to be put in boxes, and just as important, people do not like to be in the dark, outside the door where company values and vision are shaped. People are less energized and tend to drift when they are unsure of how they should be operating within an organization. People need to see their leaders’ commitment to values, and they want a part in helping to shape their organization’s core values and vision.

So how do you show this? There are five steps to helping your company and your team stand for something greater and this week, we’re digging into step 4.

Seize the higher ground

“John Gardner, Stanford professor, former secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and founding chairperson of Common Cause, has written that there are four moral goals of leadership:

  • Releasing human potential
  • Balancing the needs of the individual and the community
  • Defending the fundamental values of the community
  • Instilling in individuals a sense of initiative and responsibility.”

Gardner notes that concentrating on these aspects will direct you to higher purposes. They take the focus off of you and place it on the people around you. They enable you to let go of the things in life that do not matter and instead make time and create energy for the things that do matter: the welfare of others, the organization, and the larger community.

When working to plant a vision and sense of a greater cause in a team, you must first ensure that values are understood and owned. This is accomplished initially by cataloging the personal values of individual team members. When the personal values of individuals are understood, team values begin to emerge.

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Balance on the High WireBlogCulture

Balance on the High Wire – Part III: Stress and Health

by Ron Potter

The world is becoming a very fast paced environment. With each step of increased travel velocity, the world has become more interconnected than ever. With the advent of the internet and pipeline speed that velocity has become almost infinite in nature. It seems like a Niagara amount of information, data and connectivity are swirling around us every moment of every day. With each passing day, it becomes more difficult for us to maintain our balance. Without balance, bad things happen.

Over the last couple of blog posts (Balancing Act and High Wire), I’ve introduced that Balance is the key ingredient of great decision-making, health, and happiness (human needs). Today let’s explore Stress and Health.

Stress

The biggest issue in dealing with stress is founded in the ancient Serenity Prayer:

  • God grant me the serenity to ACCEPT the things I cannot change,
  • the COURAGE to change the things I can,
  • and the WISDOM to know the difference.

It’s the wisdom to know the difference that contains the real power of the Serenity Prayer. In their book “Performing under Pressure – The Science of Doing Your Best When It Matters Most” Hendrie Weisinger, J. P. Pawliw-Fry do a great job of helping us distinguish between pressure and stress. (See the TLC Short Book Reviews)

Stress refers to the situation of too many demands and not enough resources to meet them: Time, money, energy, etc. In a stressful situation, reduction is the goal.

Pressure is when you perceive that something at stake is dependent on the outcome of your performance and there are good and bad consequences. In a pressure moment, success is the goal.

It’s when we don’t balance these two and assume that everything is stressful that we begin to fail in performance and health. Knowing the difference between stress and pressure (wisdom) has a tremendous impact on our health.

Work-Life Balance

I’m going to toss this topic into the Stress category because I see them as interconnected in our work lives. Because of the stress, or by turning even pressure situations into stressful ones, it seems we begin to lose our work-life balance.

Nigel Marsh, author of several books on developing a good work-life balance says “Work-Life Balance is easy when you have no work!” Nigel says it’s too simplistic and destructive to think that it’s simply work vs life. Life is made up of many aspects:

  • Career
  • Family/Friends
  • Significant Other/Romance
  • Fun & Recreation
  • Health
  • Money
  • Personal Growth
  • Physical Environment

It’s when we make the small investments in the right places at the right time that our life feels balanced. Allowing our lives to get out of balance and sacrificing one or more of these areas leads to poor health and a shortening of life.

Balance, Balance, Balance.

Health

Microsleep is defined as a period of mere seconds when

  • Eyelids will partially or fully close
  • The brain becomes oblivious to all channels of perception including visual
  • There is no awareness of any event that occurs during a microsleep

The main victim of microsleeps is concentration. It’s impossible to concentrate when your brain is using microsleeps to recover from sleep deprivation. How much deprivation causes these microsleeps?

  • One night of missed sleep (pulling an all-nighter) causes a 400% increase in microsleeps.
  • Four hours sleep per night for six nights causes the same 400% increase in microsleeps. Eleven nights of 4-hour sleep is equivalent to two back-to-back all-nighters.
  • Ten days of six hours sleep per night is also equivalent to an all-nighter.

Eight hours of sleep per night provides nearly perfect levels of concentration with no microsleeps.

Being awake for 19 straight hours (5 am to midnight) produces the same impairment as being legally drunk.

Long hours of “dedicated” work seems to have gained a level of admiration in corporate circles. It shouldn’t. Longer hours of impaired work and concentration is dangerous for the company and dangerous for the individual. Let alone the shortcomings that are created with the work-life balance issues listed above. Stop doing it. Stop encouraging it. It’s healthier too:

Balance, Balance, Balance.

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5 Steps to Standing for Something GreaterBlogLeadership

5 Steps to Standing for Something Greater – Part III: Elevate People to a Higher Purpose

by Ron Potter

People do not like to be put in boxes, and just as important, people do not like to be in the dark, outside the door where company values and vision are shaped. People are less energized and tend to drift when they are unsure of how they should be operating within an organization. People need to see their leaders’ commitment to values, and they want a part in helping to shape their organization’s core values and vision.

So how do you show this? There are five steps to helping your company and your team stand for something greater and this week, we’re digging into step 3.

Elevate people to a higher purpose

Lincoln motivated people by leaving his office and spending time with everyone in the government and military hierarchy. One hundred and twenty years later, Tom Peters dubbed this kind of management style as “management by walking around.” When a leader gets out and interacts with all the people, the vision is communicated, the values are acted upon, the leader is observed, and the people are inspired.

Whether or not leaders literally walk around, the important factor is elevating and transforming people to serve a higher purpose. People respond by seeking higher moral standards for themselves and the organization. A higher purpose serves to develop common ground, and the common ground leads to energy in attaining goals. It creates a center of importance around which the team can rally and be unified.

How are you seeking to develop common ground for your team or organization? Have you seen any benefits to “management by walking around” in your own management style?

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5 Steps to Standing for Something GreaterBlogLeadership

5 Steps to Standing for Something Greater – Part II: Examine Your Values

by Ron Potter

People do not like to be put in boxes, and just as important, people do not like to be in the dark, outside the door where company values and vision are shaped. People are less energized and tend to drift when they are unsure of how they should be operating within an organization. People need to see their leaders’ commitment to values, and they want a part in helping to shape their organization’s core values and vision.

So how do you show this? There are five steps to helping your company and your team stand for something greater and this week, we’re digging into step 2.

Examine your values

While attending seminary, Martin Luther King Jr. read extensively in the areas of history, philosophy, and religion. With each book and each discipline, he questioned what he truly believed. As he read, learned, and reflected, he molded his values and vision on the anvil of discovery.

This kind of personal searching is essential for every good leader. How can you clarify values, set vision, get beyond yourself, and stand for something greater if you have not participated in the intense, personal struggle to clarify, define, and establish who you are as a person? As a leader you will be asked many questions—economic, moral, and personal. How will you know what answers to give unless you have wrestled with some of the questions? How can you shape who you are without struggling with opposing values?

The result of this struggle is personal integrity and credibility. Abraham Lincoln did not just “discover” his vision for America. As a young man, he saw the ravages of poverty and exclusion. As a lawyer, he defended the rights of people. As a father, he witnessed the death of two of his children. Lincoln struggled and fought with others as well as himself, and the result was a clearer picture of his personal values and a more defined vision. The result was also a president of high integrity and purpose.

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Balance on the High WireBlogCulture

Balance on the High Wire – Part II: Decision Making

by Ron Potter

The world is becoming a very fast paced environment. With each step of increased travel velocity, the world has become more interconnected than ever. With the advent of the internet and pipeline speed that velocity has become almost infinite in nature. It seems like a Niagara amount of information, data and connectivity are swirling around us every moment of every day. With each passing day, it becomes more difficult for us to maintain our balance. Without balance, bad things happen.

Over the last couple of blogs (Check out Balancing Act and High Wire), I’ve noted that Balance is the key ingredient of great decision-making, health, and happiness (human needs). Today let’s explore decision-making.

Myers-Briggs teaches us that human decision-making is a two-stage process of taking in information (Perceiving) and then making our decisions based on that perception. It has been my experience through 25+ years of team building and leadership development that we must keep those processes in balance.

My data is rather old (meaning more than a day at this point) but the last I remember seeing is that we create over 50,000 GB of data per second. I’ll let you look up what the size of that number really means.

The human mind can’t come anywhere near absorbing that much data (or even a fraction) every day to use in our decision-making processes. So, the mind needs to use shortcuts, models, and tricks to help us survive and make everyday decisions in our daily lives. Each of us uses a different method of taking in data related to a decision that we’re making. The two key areas that Myers-Briggs describes are:

  • Sensing
    • Facts
    • Details
    • Data
    • What do we know in the present?
    • What have we done so far?
    • What are the next steps?
  • Intuition
    • Bigger picture
    • Future
    • Implications
    • Where are we trying to go in the future?
    • What will the possibilities be?
    • What is the ultimate goal?

As you look at the written list you would likely agree that we need all that information in order to make a good, well-informed decision. The problem is that in our every day lives, our brain tends to focus on and give greater priority to either Sensing or Intuition. It takes a team and a good process to maintain a healthy balance. Without balance you’ll tend to be either too short-term or long-term focused. If this function isn’t balanced it can cause the business to fail.

Once the perceiving function is completed (and hopefully balanced) our “deciding” function kicks-in. Myers-Briggs identifies these as our Thinking and Feeling functions. A better way to think of these is logic and values. All too often in the business world, “feelings” are discounted as being too emotional. Decisions should be made on logic. But values are important to every organization. When values are violated, the culture begins to crumble, and the organization loses a sense of being. Logic and value must be balanced.

Just like on the high wire, goals cannot be met, and trust cannot be build when we lose our balance.

Balance, Balance, Balance.

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BlogTrust Me

Leading by Values

by Ron Potter

People are searching for a deeper meaning in their lives.”
—M. Scott Peck

The leader who understands this and who responsibly presents a great cause to followers will turn a key in many hearts and unlock vast reservoirs of creativity and productivity.

But just having personal commitment to a great cause is not enough for a leader. The vision for “something beyond” must be successfully transferred to the entire group, whether it be a small staff, a department, an entire organization, a state, or a nation.People are less energized and tend to drift when they are unsure of how they should be operating within an organization. People need to see their leaders’ commitment to values, and they want a part in helping to shape their organization’s core values and vision.

Leaders who form corporate values, vision, and strategy in a vacuum or just in the executive suite lack the humility and commitment to move beyond themselves and include others who have solid ideas and opinions on what should define the company’s values. When leaders don’t talk about the company’s values and vision, people feel alienated and less energized.

When working to plant a vision and sense of a greater cause in a team, you must first ensure that values are understood and owned. This is accomplished initially by cataloging the personal values of individual team members. When the personal values of individuals are understood, team values begin to emerge.

The following story illustrates the steps that one dynamic business leader took to win support for a great cause in his organization.

After agreeing with his executive team on a set of core values, the CEO of this large firm got so interested in employee input on team values that he asked a consulting team to go to six different locations and determine the values of the two hundred to three hundred employees at each site. In team settings, it is often easy to agree on the first five to seven values; however, discussions get very interesting as teams round out the full list of values that will govern their individual behavior and business practices. Using an audience response system, the consultants asked each table-grouping of employees to discuss and develop team values. Next, they worked on “room” values.

Upon completion of the six-city tour, the employee list of values was compared to the executive list. The two lists were surprisingly similar. After some final discussions and some tweaking of the list by the company’s leaders, a final list of values was issued.

Although the operative values came down from on high, every employee who had participated had a personal stake in and loyalty to the list. The company-wide discussion had galvanized the organization not just to a set of core values but to a gigantic something-greater goal pursued by the company’s CEO. This company desperately needed to reverse a quarter-century of declining market share for its products. The CEO used this exercise in determining values as well as a great amount of day-to-day, hands-on involvement with key personnel to successfully “sell” his organization on the dream of a huge reversal of the company’s fortunes. The entire company bought into the dream and now shared his passion for something greater.

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Blog

Top 10 Posts of 2017 – Part II

by Ron Potter

We’re recapping some of the most popular posts of 2017. Today we dig into posts 5 through 1.

5. Myers-Briggs In-Depth: Attending and Perceiving: Sensing vs iNtuition – Part II

Most successful business people have figured out that they need to balance this function. This balancing act most often takes the form of a trusted partner, colleague or consultant.

Continue Reading…

4. Being Humble is Being Down to Earth

It doesn’t seem to make much sense, but truly great leaders are humble.

The problem comes with how the word is normally used: Humble is thought to mean shy, retiring, unobtrusive, quiet, unassuming. Being humble can seem weak or, horrors, even borrrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnngggggg.

What does it really mean to embrace humility?

Humility is derived from the Latin word humus, meaning “ground.” One way to describe truly humble leaders is that they have their feet on the ground.

Continue Reading…

3. Myers-Briggs In-Depth: Judging vs Perceiving

I have set up the following two signs in a team meeting:

  • I have to get my work done before I can play.
  • I can play anytime

    • I then ask the team to position themselves along the spectrum between those two signs. Once positioned it almost always correlates between their Judging vs Perceiving preference on this scale.

    Continue Reading…

    2. Absurd!: The More We Communicate, The Less We Communicate

    People don’t want more information; they want more meaning. What does this mean? How should we interpret these numbers? Give us meaning. Tell us stories. Help us understand.

    Continue Reading…

    1. Character vs. Competence

    Bob Quinn in his book Deep Change introduced us to the concept of the “Tyranny of Competence.” This is a person that is so good at the skills of their job, leaders will tend to overlook their other flaws in character. They assume the character flaws would never cause enough negative issues to overcome the positive impact of being really good at their job.

    Don’t ever think that. The destruction caused by lack of character is always greater than the competency provided.

    Continue Reading…

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