Tag:

Culture

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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Four Tools of Discipline

by Ron Potter December 9, 2021

Shane Parrish (my favorite blogger) wrote an article titled “The Four Tools of Discipline”. The four he lists are:

Delaying Gratification
Accepting Responsibility
Dedication to Reality
Balancing

Dealing with Difficulties

Shane sets up the article with a few quotes from other well-known people.

Scott Peck from “The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth”. This has been one of my favorite books through the years.

Peck points out that most of us want to avoid problems. They’re painful, frustrating, sad, and lonely. All things that we would prefer to avoid. But he also points out that the whole process of facing, dealing with, and solving problems is what gives meaning to our lives.

Benjamin Franklin said, “Those things that hurt, instruct.” He said that fearing the pain involved we attempt to avoid them. We procrastinate, ignore, forget, and pretend they don’t exist. We attempt to get out of the pain rather than suffer through it.

Avoiding problems avoids the opportunity for growth! Shane lists the four disciplines needed to face and deal with the problems.

Delaying Gratification

We’ve all seen this play out in our lives. I’ve been desiring a new watch. Do I need one? Not really. Do I need one right now? Definitely not! What would delayed gratification tell me to do? Wait? The price will likely come down. I have a watch that meets my needs right now? Will I put off the purchase of the new watch? Probably not. Why? Because I want it and I want it right now.

You can see the difference in children who have learned to delay their gratification. If they haven’t, they want something now and will raise all kinds of calamity so that the parents will stop trying to delay their gratification and just give them what they want in order to shut them up. The child has learned that if they just throw a new and louder tantrum, they’ll eventually get what they want. They never learn delayed gratification. Unfortunately, that leads to difficulties as young adults and even into their adult lives.

Accepting Responsibility

Shane says that accepting responsibility is emotionally uncomfortable. He’s right. It’s easier to say

traffic delayed me
someone else did the wrong thing, it wasn’t my fault
no one told me about the bigger picture or what was at stake
It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.

The list goes on and on. Shane closes that section with the following statement

Whenever we seek to avoid responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual, organization, or entity.

Dedication to Reality

My blog last week was titled “Reality is Constructed by Our Brain”. In that blog, I quoted Brian Resnick who said “Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong. Knowing that you might be wrong should drive you to be curious about how others see their “reality”. If it doesn’t create that curiosity, it causes us to dig in our heels about what we believe to be true and our own version of what reality is.

Scott Peck says “Truth or reality is avoided when it is painful. We can revise our maps only when we have the discipline to overcome that pain.”

Shane says “The only way we can ensure our map is correct and accurate is to expose it to the criticism of others.”

If we believe our view of the world is the one and only correct view, we remain closed to the view of others.

Balancing

Shane says that “Balancing is the discipline that gives us flexibility. Extraordinary flexibility is required for successful living in all spheres of activity.”

A few blogs back I talked about Simone Biles and the balance she exhibits in her gymnastic routines. There are only a handful of people in the world who can come close to the physical balance she exhibits. But many of us can work at and accomplish that kind of balance in our mental thinking.

Delaying gratification.

Accepting responsibility.

Dedication to reality.

Balancing.

Let’s close with the last one, “Balancing”. Think about balancing the other three. If the first three get too far out of balance with each other, problems arise.

Too much-delayed gratification without a dedication to reality will lead to frustration. Eventually, the question will arise, delayed gratification to what end? If there is nothing at the end of the tunnel, the delayed gratification is for nothing, it only leads to frustration.

As I was about to write the next statement about “Accepting Responsibility”, I found myself looking over at a picture of my father. He had lost a leg during WWII. I never heard him talk about how the Germans were responsible. I never heard him talk about how the generals and leadership were responsible. While he may not have accepted responsibility, he did accept reality. He came home from the war, married, started a business, and had four children.

The picture I found myself looking at was dad (with his cane) and all four kids out on a frozen pond with a hatched while he taught us to cut a hole in the ice for ice fishing. Looking at that picture reminded me why he has been one of the most influential in my life.

Balance. Balance. Balance.

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Blog Culture

Are You a Hedgehog or a Fox?

by Ron Potter October 14, 2021

Years ago I was working with a client in Scotland. It was mid-June so the days were very long. Because Scotland is so far north the sun rises at about 4:30 in the morning. This allowed me to play nine holes of golf before my meetings started. While I was on one hole a small hedgehog came walking out from a nearby woodpile. He seemed oblivious to my presence and walked right into the line of my pending putt. I reached out with my putter and “patted” him on the rear end assuming he would scamper off the green. Instead, he curled tightly up into a ball and held his defensive position. I watched him for a few minutes but he never came out of his defensive ball. I then took my putter, treated him like a golf ball, and putted him off the green. After a few minutes, he got up a scampered off.

So when I saw the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Hedgehogs of Critical Race Theory”, I was intrigued.

Archilochus

Archilocus was a Greek poet and philosopher who said, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”. The WSJ article says that the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay in 1953 suggesting that the world was divided between hedgehogs and foxes. He identified Karl Marx as a supreme hedgehog and Franklin Roosevelt as a restlessly improvising fox.

The WSJ article expresses that the world’s hedgehog population tends to expand in times of stress and change. Lately, it has exploded in the U.S. with all of them advancing One Big Thing or another, each peering through the lens of a particular obsession. (Italics are mine)

The theologian Richard Niebuhr, explained it this way: “There is no greater barrier to understanding than the assumption that the standpoint which we happen to occupy is a universal one.”

Barrier to Understanding

Do you want to understand or would you rather stick with your hedgehog approach to one big standpoint? This is the difference between normal teams and great teams.

In great teams, everyone suspends their opinions and standpoints for a moment while they attempt to completely understand each members’ viewpoints. This requires that we listen to understand rather than listening to respond.

It’s a natural human trait to keep score in our head of the issues that we agree with and disagrees with while another person is explaining their viewpoint. STOP IT! It does take a great deal of energy and discipline to fully listen with the intent to understand where the other person is coming from and what is forming their opinion. It takes hard work.

Work at it! It will make you a better person and a better team.

Koosh Ball

A colleague called me the other day and asked if I had ever dealt with someone that was so convinced that their opinion and perspective was right that they never stopped talking or interrupting. And if so, how did I deal with it? My answer was a Koosh ball.

It was an exercise I often used when we had a “talker” on the team. The rules were simple:

Only the person who was in the possession of the Koosh ball could speak.
When that person was done expressing their opinion and perspective they would then decide who the Koosh ball was tossed to next.

Two things I often observed was the the “talker” still needed a signal to stop talking even though they knew the rules. I often had to put my hand up to cut them off and remind them that their job was to fully understand the perspective of the talking person. They still seemed to have a difficult time. It took hard work on everyone’s part.

The other thing I often observed was that the team was so tired of constantly hearing the talker, they would toss to anyone other than the talker. It became obvious that we were hearing the other’s perspective for the first time. Very refreshing and very empowering to everyone.

Opinion and Perspective

It’s OK to have clear and powerful opinions and perspectives. However, don’t assume that each person sees that same universe. Every person is unique and comes from individual experiences and understandings. Just look at your own family. I have three siblings. We grew up in the same household with the same parents and were only a few years apart. And yet, each of us had very unique experiences and developed a unique set of values.

That is why great teams outperform average teams and individuals. Pulling all of those experiences and unique views of the world together into a team decision is very powerful. If you haven’t experienced that, I hope you do someday.

It’s incredibly satisfying.

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Blog Culture

Communication

by Ron Potter August 5, 2021

You’ve heard me talk often about the need to listen with the intent to understand. The better you get at this the better you’ll understand what’s being said.

But the other side of communication is talking. Just because you said something doesn’t mean your listener understands. Simon Sinek says “Communication is about ensuring others hear what we mean”. Just because you said it doesn’t mean your listener(s) understood it.

Communication

Our word communication is from the Latin communcare, meaning to share. “The act of developing meaning among entities or groups through the use of sufficiently mutually understood signs, symbols, and semiotic conventions.” To quote Simen Sinek again “Communication is not about saying what we think.”

Act like an owner

I once worked with a client that was publicly owned and had a leadership team from all over the world. It seemed to the CEO that there was too much command and control attitude coming from his leadership team so he began talking with them about acting like owners, not just managers running a company that was owned by the stockholders. He was hoping this “Act like an owner” attitude would institute a more caring and inclusive approach by his leadership.

However, one member of the leadership team seemed to “double down” on the command and control approach to his leadership. The CEO asked me to talk with the individual to see if we could figure out why the message didn’t seem to be getting through.

I talked with the VP and asked what he thought of the “ownership” approach. His response was very positive. He agreed that the entire team should act like owners and that should produce some great results. I was having a hard time aligning his words with his actions so I asked him what “ownership” meant to him.

As it turns out the neighboring country had invaded his homeland 600 years ago. They took over all the land and essentially enslaved the native population. To him, that was ownership. Complete control to rule the land as they wanted with a complete command and control attitude. His reaction was that the leadership team should absolutely act like owners!

Communication is about conveying meaning

“Communication is about ensuring others hear what we mean” Ownership meant one thing to the CEO and an entirely different thing to the VP. The meaning had not been communicated. Because this leadership team was a globally diverse team, it became almost necessary that we parse the language to assure the meaning was understood— to ensure others hear what we mean.

Extraversion vs Introversion

I began to see a similar issue a few years later working with the Asian culture. In North America, it seems that our extraverted, outgoing leadership style is the style that is associated with a lot of corporate leaders. In Asia, it seems that the introverted, quiet, thoughtful style is the one that is more revered by the culture.

I began to observe that in North America if someone was walking past and the CEO was sitting quietly, apparently “not doing anything” it would be a good time to stick their head into the office and interrupt the “not doing anything” moment with a question or a statement. In the Asian office, if the CEO was sitting quietly, the person would silently tip-toe past the office so they wouldn’t interrupt the CEO’s deep thought.

Two different cultures with different beliefs about the same action.

Communication is about sharing meaning

Our corporate world is becoming more global all the time. The Covid pandemic has accelerated the use of virtual meetings which puts even more emphasis on speaking and listening with the intent to convey and understand meaning.

Communication is a two-way street:

Learn to listen with the intent to understand
Speak with the intent of ensuring others hear what we mean

We must do both for the betterment of everyone and the company.

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Blog Culture

Zoom Fatigue

by Ron Potter May 13, 2021

My first regret with Zoom is that I didn’t invest in the company in the early days. I’ve been a user since the early days but had no idea what was coming. Covid increased users rapidly and the last I looked they had around a half-million users. One more investment opportunity missed!

For this blog, I will use the word Zoom as a generic term for all of the video conference applications from Microsoft, Cisco (Webex), Google, and others.

Exhausting

Even though Zoom has become essential, the environment has become exhausting at the same time. Why?

I’m a highly extroverted person and you would think I would enjoy the Zoom environment. And in fact, I do prefer it to one-on-one phone calls. And I even do OK and experience quite a bit of value in small team meetings.

But for those who are in several meetings per day and often with large numbers of participants, it’s exhausting. I have always experienced mental fatigue deeper and harder to recover from than physical fatigue. Zoom meetings are all focused on mental fatigue.

Evolution

We have evolved (and survived) because of our ability to understand very small expressions and understand meaning from them. One of my pleasures is reading spy novels. Almost all of them talk about microexpressions as a means for understanding truth, lies, confidence, fear, and other emotions. Human communications is a combination of words, movement, timing, gestures, and others. Scientists even have a name for all of this coordination. They call it synchrony.

Synchrony is essential for complete communication and humans work hard to achieve it. I believe that synchrony is essential to build trust! It’s interesting to me that Zoom and all of its competitors are working hard to improve teamwork through this media. I believe it was Microsoft that talked about the “art of teamwork”. And yet, they are all looking at things that can be measured like: “Who are you meeting with?”, “How often are you meeting?”, “What time of day do you meet?”. None of these things have anything to do with building the trust essential in good teams.

Fight-or-flight

Scientists at Stanford University found that the size of images can trigger our innate “Fight-or-Flight” state of mind. When another person’s image looks larger and closer than others on the conference call, they can seem threatening. Looking at a screen of nine faces where there is no coordination of closeness to screen is very different than having nine people around a conference table. When every image is a different proportional size, the human mind is trying to figure our fight-or-flight threat. It’s exhausting.

Feel Good Conversations

Studies also show that face-to-face conversations release neurotransmitters like dopamine. Dopamine is linked to our feelings of pleasure. I look forward to meeting with people one-on-one. It feels good!

Another quote from Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction lab is “Zoom smothers you with cues, and they aren’t synchronous. It takes a physiological toll.”

What to do

So what do we do about all of this? So far, I’ve seen no good answer.

Virtual Apps

I’m working with a group putting together an app we call GPS4Leaders (GPS4Leaders.com). It was originally meant to be a stand-alone app that leaders and teams could have instant access to through their phones, tablets, laptops, and desktop computers. We have built the app based on years of consulting work with clients.

Since the rapid shift to virtual meetings, we are moving away from the stand-alone app to a Zoom-based app. We’re currently working with one of the Virtual Meeting Software companies to incorporate the “trusting team” concepts into the virtual environment. We’ll see how it goes.

Pick up the phone

If it’s impossible to meet someone directly, pick up the phone and talk together. You can even revert to the Zoom environment but do it one-on-one, not in a group. Talk with the other person directly. Get to know who they are, not just what they do. What makes them a unique individual? What is their background? What experiences have they had? What are their ambitions? Anything you can do to get to know them as human beings the better. We are human beings, not human doings!

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Blog Myers Briggs Type Indicator Myers-Briggs

Myers Briggs Type Indicator: Perceiving

by Ron Potter March 25, 2021

The perceiving pair in Myers-Briggs (MBTI) helps identify how you perceive the world. Each of us has a preference for either sensing or intuition.

The Positive and Negative of Sensing

This preference is for seeing and understanding as much detail as possible. When making decisions, the sensing preference wants the facts. What information is available to help make a decision?

The sensing function also seems to be focused on more of the near term than the future. In the business world I’ve seen the sensing types have the attitude that if we don’t make the right decisions at the moment, there will be no future to worry about.

The positive side of sensing is that they will often pay much more attention to detail than the intuitive preference. Like many married couples, my wife and I tend to be on the opposite ends of this scale. She has more of a sensing preference while I have more of an intuitive preference.

This has saved our (my) bacon many times, sometimes in big ways like purchasing a new home. I tend to think about the overall look and feel of the home and how that will help or hurt us when we’re ready to sell in the future. I’m also thinking about future market conditions and how that will affect our purchase. Meanwhile, she is going through the buy-sell agreement with a fine-toothed comb and is also paying attention to the details of the mortgage. I may be ready to buy or reject based on my preference when she’ll point out something I didn’t catch that changes my decision foundation.

The negative side of sensing is they will always want more detail. Having more detail is always a positive thing in their preference world. However, this can often delay decisions.

The Positive and Negative of Intuition

The positive side of the intuitive preference is that it is almost always thinking about the future. The intuitive preference will want to know why a decision is getting made, what will be the positive and negative outcomes of that decision, and will a sensing-based decision support our future goals?

Often the intuitive preference can discount the current data. They might ask questions like “Will this decision help prepare us for the future?” or “Should we be hiring now when the skills we need at the moment don’t align with the skills we’ll need in the future?”

Best to Use Both

Obviously, the best decisions will be made (keep this in mind when we look at the statistics) when we balance sensing and intuition. In my consulting work, I would often say to the teams, it never really matters which side of this scale (or any of the other scales) you fall on, the key issue is balance, balance, balance!

We talked in our last blog about a technique of pausing during a team meeting to have people write down key points. That helped balance extravert and introvert preferences. You can also use that time to ask team members to identify meaningful details and discuss their future implications. This helps balance sensing and intuition.

Statistics

It’s important to note that in the MBTI nomenclature, we use an N for the intuitive types rather than a I. This was done to help distinguish between introverted and intuition. Introverted = I; Intuitive = N. You have a preference for E I and S N.

US Population: Sensing = 74% iNtuitive = 26%

Leadership Teams: Sensing =41% iNtuitive = 59%

Operations Teams: Sensing = 60% iNtuitive = 40%

Notice that Leadership Teams are highly iNtuitive. This helps a team to be prepared for the future but can become a problem if they ignore or discount current details that the sensing preference will provide.

Operations teams need to be much more sensing focused because they are dealing with the here and now.

Balance, Balance, Balance

I’ve told my consulting clients that I don’t care if they ever remember what their natural preference is in the MBTI. What I do care about is that they learn to balance each of the four types. It’s the balance that brings the power of better thinking and better decisions.

I’ve spoken of a few of the CEOs that I considered the best I ever worked with. Their common trait is that they learned to balance the preferences. It didn’t mean that their personal preference changed.

It did mean that they had learned to balance the preferences by becoming better at asking themselves questions that their natural preference wouldn’t have thought of and by appreciating the balance they had in their leadership teams. They never let themselves or anyone else on the team ignore the questions that may come up based on opposite preferences.

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Blog Culture

High Tech – High Touch

by Ron Potter July 23, 2020

Those words keep haunting me. They are the four words I remember from the book Future Shock. The book was written by Alvin Toffler in 1970. That’s 50 years ago!

Description

Wikipedia says that

Alvin Toffler argued that society is undergoing an enormous structural change, a revolution from an industrial society to a “super-industrial society”. This change overwhelms people. He argues that the accelerated rate of technological and social change leaves people disconnected and suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation”—future shocked.

Stress and Disorientation

I am familiar with these feelings. I wrote about them recently in my blog titled “Divided” where I talked about being confused, hurting, and even angry. I love this country and love the people in this country. But I am feeling stress and I’m definitely disoriented.

Virtual World

Covid-19 is contributing to this stress and disorientation. By all predictions, more than half of employees indicate that they would like to stay in the virtually connected world, rather than go back to the office. I believe that many corporate leaders are salivating at the cost savings of shedding their physical office space by allowing everyone to continue in the virtual world of video connection, they just don’t know the real costs.

High Tech, High Touch

Toffler was emphasizing one point with these words. You can have all the high tech you want, but without high touch, it won’t work well. In this day of division, with many taking “sides”, what can we do to help this situation? The answer is also in the four words: High Tech, High Touch.

Without building personal, “high touch” relationships, we don’t have a chance of solving this issue.

Virtual World Better

So, if we’re going to be in this virtual world for some time to come, how do we solve the “High Touch” issue. Unfortunately, I don’t think we do completely. But with some additional High Tech we can at least get focused on the issue and help people connect and build relationships if they’re willing.

I’ve been working with a group of consultants (High Touch) and technical people (High Tech) over the last couple of years in anticipation of this virtual world happening. Even without Covid-19 impacting the world, I was seeing more and more geographically separated people working together on teams. Through this effort, we have created a platform we call GPS4Leaders. It’s made up of four modules: Interact, GPS4Teams, GPS4Leaders and GPS4Culture. We might refer to it as iTLC.

Here is a short video about the iT of iTLC.

We have designed the GPS4 modules to help virtual teams. It can help in the following ways:

Identify the makeup of the team from a personality type. Built into the system are three assessments based on Social Styles, Competing Values, and a partial Myers-Briggs. If there is discord on the team or the teams lack the ability to make decisions, the Interact Module can help.
GPS4Teams will also help the team to determine where they are now and how they get to the needed future state of a highly functioning team. This happens through team assessment and pulse surveys.
GPS4Teams also identifies disagreements. While protecting individual member scores, it will show if there is Diffusion, Polarization, or an Outlier.

The best that can happen in this virtual world is to help teams focus and spend time developing understanding and relationships between members.

Reach for the Best

It’s going to be difficult to create the relationships that are required for high functioning teams. Using the tools available can help focus the need for building these relationships. But, it’s going to be up to the team leaders and team members to use technology to help build high functioning teams. It looks like the only thing we’re going to have as the world changes.

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Overused Teamwork

by Ron Potter July 9, 2020

Team Leadership Culture: Teams first. I’m a big fan of teamwork. However, when it creates an overcommitted organization and conflicting priorities it is counterproductive.

The foundation of this post was inspired by a Harvard Business Review article, The OverCommitted Organization, written by Heidi K. Gardner and Mark Mortensen.

The Overcommitted Organization

In the article, they talk about the dysfunction that can happen when people are assigned to too many teams at the same time. They break it down to the following pros and cons:

PROS: By assigning people to multiple teams at once, organizations make efficient use of time and brainpower. They also do a better job of solving complex problems and sharing knowledge across groups.

CONS: Competing priorities and other conflicts can make it hard for teams with overlapping membership to stay on track. Group cohesion often suffers. And people who belong to many teams at once may experience burnout, which hurts engagement and performance.

Increased Pros or decreased Cons

So now we face the question: Is it worth increasing the PROS at the expense of decreasing the CONS?

My answer is a clear NO! Look in more detail at the expense of the CONS.

Difficult to stay on track.
We have looked at the cost of distraction many times in this blog. Our social media and instant communication can and will negatively affect productivity.
In fact, we can become so distracted on a regular basis that it reduces the brain’s ability to concentrate and think deeply. These are two features that we need more today than ever!
Group cohesion often suffers.
Without group cohesion, there is no team! Teams that tell each other the truth with respect and fully commit to team goals (regardless of personal or department goals) is at the core of great organizations. Group cohesion is essential!
Burnout.
People who experience burnout experience reduced energy, brainpower, commitment, drive, and many other aspects that make them top performers and good team members. Avoid burnout!

PROS

In my mind and experience, the list of pros is actually cons.

Efficient use of time
It’s been proven that the only people capable of multi-tasking are highly trained fighter pilots. And even these highly trained individuals are not capable of transferring the multi-tasking beyond the cockpit when their life depends upon it.
Brainpower
It’s also been proven that teams function better when multiple brains are open about a problem or situation. However, using “one” brain across multiple teams does not increase multiple team’s “brainpower.”
Solving Complex Problems
Complex problems are solved with deep thinking and moving in and out of team subgroups. Complex problems are not solved by having one brain on many teams. In fact that leads to burnout and reduces the ability to solve complex problems.

The Overcommitted Organization

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not opposing what Gardner and Mortensen are stating in their article. In fact, they use experience and solid research to prove their points. And, they reach the same conclusion that I did.

One paragraph right near the middle of their article says

Launch the team well to establish trust and familiarity. When fully dedicated to one team, people learn about their teammates’ outside lives—family, hobbies, life events, and the like. More important, it forges strong bonds and interpersonal trust, which team members need in order to seek and offer constructive feedback, introduces one another to valuable network connections, and rely on one another’s technical expertise. (Italics are mine)

This is a powerful conclusion that reinforces everything I have learned and experienced. Teams that establish trust and have an environment of constructive feedback are the most beneficial.

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Divided

by Ron Potter July 2, 2020

I hesitated to use the word Racism in the title of this blog. Many would say there is no way I could understand because I’m a gray-haired white male. I’m sure there is some truth to that statement. But, I was a young adult, going to college and living in southern Michigan when the Detroit riots occurred in the late sixties. Those riots left me confused, hurting, and even angry. I wasn’t sure what I should do.

Pastor of local Black Church

When the riots hit the city where I now live, many of those same feelings of confusion, hurting, and not knowing what to do surfaced again. Turning into a gray-haired, old white male didn’t seem to help much.

Then I had an opportunity to listen to a teaching pastor at a local black church. I really wanted to learn from what he had to say. I found it interesting that he was “struggling, frustrated, angry, and hurting.” He was not gray-haired or white but he expressed the same feelings I had been experiencing.

Five things that will help

It turns out that the scripture passage we were studying was about being peaceable. When the local pastor was asked what it took to be Peaceable he gave a well thought out and knowledgable answer.

Slow to Judge
Quick to Listen
Eager to learn
Willing to identify
Ready to speak up and act.

Slow to Judge

In today’s social media, internet-based, global world, it’s very easy to judge and too many people judge too quickly. Maybe it’s a liberal or conservative making the statement and instead of listening what is said, people instantly write it off because it was said by the “other side”.

Maybe it’s a statement made by a European or Asian and people in the US judge it quickly as meaningless because they “don’t understand” how things work in the US.

The list would be too long to identify all of the times we’re quick to judge. When you’re quick to judge, you leave no room for learning.

Quick to Listen

Do you listen with the intent to respond? Or do you listen with the intent to understand? Most of us, most of the time are listening with the intent to respond. While the other person is talking (or shouting) we’re keeping track of each point made and creating our “checklist” of either reinforcing or countering the point being made.

How does that make the other person feel?

You’re not listening.
You’re stupid (or at least ignorant).
You want to win the argument which makes me want to say it louder and more forcefully.
The louder voice “wins.”

But, how does the other person feel if you demonstrate your desire to understand?

You’re truly interested in what they have to say.
You’re trying to expand your knowledge base to understand where they’re coming from
You’re not trying to win a shouting match.
Maybe we can reach a mutual understanding because they now may want to know what you have to say.

Eager to Learn

Socrates believed that knowledge was the ultimate virtue, best used to help people improve their lives. “The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance,”

Notice that Socrates said knowledge helped improve lives. Ignorance is (not stupidity) is the lack of knowledge. Why do some people remain Ignorant? They refuse to learn.

Each person is coming from a perspective that is real and “true” to them. For instance, I grew up in a small town. But in my adult years, my business took me all over the world. That changed my perspective. I now saw the world differently than my friends and family who remained in that small town.

That doesn’t make it wrong, it just gives them a different perspective. The best way to develop relationships and understanding is to understand someone’s perspective. This requires the first two elements, Slow to Judge, and Quick to Listen.

Psychology tells us that cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous quote says “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

The world is full of opposing ideas and perspectives. Don’t hold on to yours to the point of stress and discomfort. Learn!

Willing to Identify

In my mind, this may be the most difficult. Not because we don’t want to identify with the other person but because our perspectives become so strong in our lives. I don’t have the same experiences as someone else. They also don’t have the same experiences that I have. We can identify by hearing their story, listening to their experiences, and finally relating it to some experience we’ve had. Then we begin to identify.

Don’t take the position that “You just don’t understand! You haven’t had the experiences I have!” That’s true. I haven’t had the experiences you’ve had. But I’ve had good and bad experiences. And I can empathize with what you’re experiencing. It’s how we grow together.

Ready to Speak up and Act

There are a lot of forces in our lives that tell us to just be quiet. It actually starts in elementary school. The teacher often told us to sit down and be quiet.

We’ve also been told by people (with different perspectives) that our ideas and words are stupid. So we sit quietly because we don’t want to look stupid.

In today’s world of social media, we can quickly be criticized for our thoughts and ideas. In this anonymous and divided world, it can quickly be labeled as hate language. There is a fear of being labeled for our thoughts.

I experienced it writing this blog. What if I push a wrong button and it is all of a sudden seen as hateful rather than helpful. I just want to speak up in an effort to help. But I have this fear of pushing the wrong button. One I’m not even aware of.

And what about unconscious bias? We hear that phrase a lot today. And people are being accused of having unconscious bias as if it’s a flaw. But what do the words mean? Unconscious: the part of the mind which is inaccessible to the conscious mind. It’s inaccessible! It’s ignorance, not stupidity.

I’ve chosen through the years to keep this blog focused on building team, leadership, and corporate cultures. I didn’t want to venture into politics, religion, or racism because of this fear of being misunderstood. But the pastor’s five steps ends with “Be ready to speak up and act.”

I don’t’ know if he intended to put them in order but I do suggest that we don’t speak up until we’ve progressed openly through the first four steps.

Teams

And just to get back to more familiar ground, these five steps also help grow great teams.

Slow to Judge
Quick to Listen
Eager to learn
Willing to identify
Ready to speak up and act.

Learn and practice the five steps to address division. They help us become better people and build better teams.

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Blog Culture

The Power of Positive Feedback

by Ron Potter April 30, 2020

I received a note a couple of days ago telling me how one of my posts had positively affected a person’s life. They mentioned a post I had written nine years ago. Was I really writing blog posts nine years ago? That surprised me. My second response was that I didn’t remember that blog. I had to go back and read it.

We were never allowed to be Victims.

That blog ends with a quote from Condoleezza Rice explaining how she made it from being a young girl of color in the South to being Secretary of State of the United States. The headline above is her quote. She was calm, confident and yet very humble. She was an amazing person.

Easy to become Victims

In this pandemic that we’re all experiencing, it’s easy to feel like the victim. It’s interesting to note that we’re already seeing the results of feeling like victims. Our obesity levels and alcohol rates are already climbing. We’re looking for an escape from feeling like victims.

As that blog noted from nearly ten years ago, the opposite of the victim is creativity.

Be Creative

Almost everyone I’ve talked with recently speaks to how lethargic they’re feeling. They just can’t seem to get motivated. I’ve experienced the same issues. But as I mentioned in my last post, deep thought and creativity are the paths to feeling better under trying circumstances. Just like exercise, which has tremendous benefits if you’ll just spend about 30-60 minutes at least three times per week, spending at least an hour in deep thought and reflection three times per week will increase your creativity. You’ll feel so much better and think about your circumstances so differently, you’ll come out the other end being a much better and maybe totally different person.

This pandemic is very victimizing. Don’t let it get you down. Be creative. Spend some time in deep thought and self-reflection every week. View this as an opportunity that seldom happens more than once in anyone’s lifetime.

Positive Feedback

So what does this have to do with positive feedback? Reading that comment about how my blog made a positive difference in one person’s life motivates me! I was having difficulty keeping up with my blog. I just couldn’t find the motivation. And then that comment arrived. I’ve been writing blogs almost every day since that feedback.

Positive feedback made a difference. It only takes one. In the nine years since I wrote that blog, I’ve written somewhere between 400 and 500 blog posts. Did they all make a difference? Probably not. Did I hear some positive feedback on many of them? No. Did positive feedback on less than one percent of the bogs I’ve written make a difference? Absolutely!

Pass on some positive feedback today. It may be to that neighbor who just happened to wave “hi”. It may be to someone at work where you’re trying to conduct virtual business.

Just give some positive feedback. It makes a difference.

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Blog Team

The Illusory Truth Effect

by Ron Potter April 9, 2020

Not everything we believe is true. We may act like it is and it may be uncomfortable to think otherwise, but it’s inevitable that we all hold a substantial number of beliefs that aren’t objectively true. It’s not about opinions or different perspectives. We can pick up false beliefs for the simple reason that we’ve heard them a lot.”

This is a quote by Shane Parrish, blogger at Farnam Street. Shane was the first blogger that I followed and one reason I turned to him is his focus on critical thinking. What I mean by critical thinking is his ability to examine where his own thoughts start and progress.

Illusory truth effect

Shane points out reasons. “The illusory truth effect is the reason why advertising works and why propaganda is one of the most powerful tools for controlling how people think. It’s why the speech of politicians can be bizarre and multiple-choice tests can cause students problems later on. It’s why fake news spreads and retractions of misinformation don’t work.” I don’t intend to turn this blog into a political statement but his point is a good one. We can get caught up in the belief of the day very easily.

Why does the effect exist?

“As with other cognitive shortcuts, the typical explanation is that it’s a way our brains save energy. Thinking is hard work—remember that the human brain uses up about 20% of an individual’s energy, despite accounting for just 2% of their body weight.

The illusory truth effect comes down to processing fluency. When a thought is easier to process, it requires our brains to use less energy, which leads us to prefer it. That means that processing them was easier for their brains.”

Cause of misinformation

This can become a harsh reality on business teams that must be guarded against. Why does it happen in the first place, especially when team members are smart and well-intended? “It’s the result of people being overworked or in a hurry and unable to do due diligence. The signal to noise ratio is so skewed that we have a hard time figuring out what to pay attention to and what we should ignore. No one has time to verify everything.”

Cure for misinformation

As a business that must make decisions based on the truth, how do we sort it out and make sure we’re making good decisions?

SHARE!

First, understand that this susceptibility to illusory truth is very natural. It happens to everyone. Agree that no one is above the siren call and all are susceptible. There is no one (except GOD) who knows it all!

Second, share your illusory truth and label it as such. It’s not that any person on the team knows the truth and all others are working with a handicap, even the boss. It’s that we all work with our illusory truths.

Once the illusory truth is shared by each member we can

Begin to understand where that person is coming from
Begin to form the truth (or at least a team illusory truth)
Make some action plans

While it’s natural that every person has their illusory truth, it’s also natural that every team has their illusory truth as well. You may make a team decision or commitment to an illusory truth and that’s OK. As long as you know it’s based on illusory truth and not what’s true or false.

Get all the illusory truth on the table by sharing. Make a team decision and commitment. This may be based on real or illusory truth. Make sure it’s identified properly. And no matter which type of truth the decision is made upon, make sure there is a team commitment to the decision. Commitment is what’s important.

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Blog Leadership

“Soft” Skills Win

by Ron Potter April 2, 2020

Start with skills

An article in the Wall Street Journal was written with and about Bob Funk, founder of Express Employment Professionals and former chairman of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. Mr. Funk makes his living by matching people who want jobs with employers who need good employees.

When Mr. Fund talks about the interview process he starts with what most employees think of as the Hard Skills.

Hard skills and experience, he says, are only half the equation, and not the important half. “So many people do not realize how important the soft skills are to unlocking job opportunity,”

Mr. Funk offers a quote from a boss he had over 50 years ago. “There’s a person for every job and a job for every person. That’s still true.”

Try before you buy

Most of the companies he works for are small and medium-size companies with fewer than 250 employees and he places most of his workers in part-time positions. But over 60% of them go on to be full-time employees.

Hard skills and experience are only half of the equation and not the important half. (Italics are mine). Soft skills are the important part of unlocking job opportunities!

Soft skills rule

Mr. Funk found that the top five skills that employers look for are:

While Mr. Funk concedes that education is vital, the most important thing for most people is the ability to be trained. And while I agree with Mr. Funk on this issue I don’t believe he gives enough credit to that ability to be trained with people of education.

Higher Education

So many of today’s graduates from major universities have been convinced that their degree from that particular institute has taught them everything they need to know to be successful. I’m a graduate of the University of Michigan Engineering school and for a period of time recruited new hires from that institute. What I discovered was that it didn’t make any difference which university the candidate graduated from. What made the difference was number 5 on the list above, the ability to think critically that made the biggest difference between potential employees.

Learning is what’s important

As a consultant, I once ran an old exercise that didn’t produce any results. When I asked my client why the effort fell flat they said they got the most out of sessions where I was sharing what I was learning. My own learning produced the best results for my clients. I believe that a college education gives you the opportunity to start learning. Showing up to work every day assuming you’re there to share what you already know will get you nowhere. Showing up to work every day ready to learn will show an eagerness to learn, which will carry you a long way.

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