Parents matter in the lifelong moral worldview of a person and the leadership philosophy thereof. In Edward Kennedy’s example, his mother was the teacher, his father the spark. Rose Kennedy, ever the torch bearer for the oppressed and the disadvantaged, inspired her youngest child and entire family with the source of great leadership: having a worthy cause.
“Teddy” Kennedy’s policy legacy is proof positive: despite tragedy and personal turmoil, over 46 years as a senator, he influenced the passing of 2,500 pieces of legislation. They included expanding health care (the “cause” of Kennedy’s life), increasing the minimum wage, revamping immigration laws and championing equal opportunity regardless of race, gender or disability.
The significance of our upbringing is a “no-brainer”. We know this. But, in the context of leadership for better or worse, it’s troublesome. Are constituents doomed or blessed depending on the early influences of their leaders? Given our storied human history to date, it appears we are. Yet, if we broaden our view from the short term, for example, in Teddy Kennedy’s case, there is a “long steady glow” which persists and is emblematic of progress. Leaders emboldened by worthy causes which benefit many not just a few do eventually have sustainable impacts.
The journey, however, is not easy, as illustrated by Teddy Kennedy. Mental resilience and toughness are necessary because causes have a cost: the journey is messy, taking unpredictable twists and turns often involving personal sacrifice and distress. One’s imperfections smack us in the face calling for “lessons learned”.
Are we up for this? Wangari Maathai, winner of the Nobel Peace prize, makes that point loud and clear in her recent book The Challenge of Africa. She sees hope amidst the poverty and desperation and the trails and tribulations. Her “Green Belt Movement” combined with the efforts of multiple other fearsome and extraordinary, ordinary leaders past and present are flicking the flywheel of positive change. Patience is required because change often spans more than any one person’s lifespan!! But, the legacy endures.
The “political mind” is a source of considerable study in the social and biological sciences. Breakthroughs in our understanding of neuropsychology show promise that we don’t have to be the prisoners of our early upbringing when faced with challenges outside our assumptions and beliefs. That is the learning opportunity for leaders.
There is one key ingredient which never goes away in the ongoing inquiry about great leadership and management: empathy. It’s a natural part of our human history. Without that in our family legacy, without empathy as a leader, it is difficult to nurture the “long steady glow” of progress.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Canadian Consular Officials in Kenya Low on Aristotle's Practical Wisdom
Now my retired mother is becoming extremely wary of travelling. She travelled all over the world with my father on business. But airplane crashes, VIA rail strikes and breakdowns, an ever-thickening U.S. border and no guarantee of protection from adversity by Canadian consular officials have dimmed her enthusiasm.
The apparent lack of good judgment by the Canadian consular officials in Kenya with respect to Suaad Hagi Mohamud’s plight sends shivers up our collective ordinary citizen spines (that’s most of us). The confidence that we will be protected from unfounded accusations as to our identity when travelling abroad has been dealt yet another huge blow, as many cases have preceded Hagi Mohamud’s.
Given what we know of the case, the most mysterious is the way in which decisions were made. They seem almost laughable in that the starting point was the Kenyan customs officials determining that Hagi Mohamud’s lips did not match those on her passport. After that the process went from bad to worse.
What was going on? Were Canadian consular officials spooked by some current terrorist threat and inadvertently transposed that to Hagi even when she produced every imaginable form of seemingly valid identification? Or, were they so rule bound that they lacked the ability to make a good decision? Is it possible that in the absence of this learned skill, they were tricked by their brains into making “bad” decisions and as a consequence created a truly farcical situation right up the line to the Prime Minister?
Aristotle would argue that in the face of what we know, all involved who had the authority to shape a good decision lacked “practical wisdom”—a master virtue that guides the application of the right amount and mix of their leadership virtues to a context specific situation. He called this a person’s “executive decision maker” necessary for stopping our range of virtues from “running amuck” and enabling us “to do the right thing in the right way at the right time”.
Practical wisdom evolves from experience and works best in an environment in which people are expected to use their good sense not just the rules. To be wise in the face of non-routine situations requires practice. A rigid bureaucracy does not allow wisdom to improve. Quite the contrary, it gets worse. This may be the real root cause of the problem.
The apparent lack of good judgment by the Canadian consular officials in Kenya with respect to Suaad Hagi Mohamud’s plight sends shivers up our collective ordinary citizen spines (that’s most of us). The confidence that we will be protected from unfounded accusations as to our identity when travelling abroad has been dealt yet another huge blow, as many cases have preceded Hagi Mohamud’s.
Given what we know of the case, the most mysterious is the way in which decisions were made. They seem almost laughable in that the starting point was the Kenyan customs officials determining that Hagi Mohamud’s lips did not match those on her passport. After that the process went from bad to worse.
What was going on? Were Canadian consular officials spooked by some current terrorist threat and inadvertently transposed that to Hagi even when she produced every imaginable form of seemingly valid identification? Or, were they so rule bound that they lacked the ability to make a good decision? Is it possible that in the absence of this learned skill, they were tricked by their brains into making “bad” decisions and as a consequence created a truly farcical situation right up the line to the Prime Minister?
Aristotle would argue that in the face of what we know, all involved who had the authority to shape a good decision lacked “practical wisdom”—a master virtue that guides the application of the right amount and mix of their leadership virtues to a context specific situation. He called this a person’s “executive decision maker” necessary for stopping our range of virtues from “running amuck” and enabling us “to do the right thing in the right way at the right time”.
Practical wisdom evolves from experience and works best in an environment in which people are expected to use their good sense not just the rules. To be wise in the face of non-routine situations requires practice. A rigid bureaucracy does not allow wisdom to improve. Quite the contrary, it gets worse. This may be the real root cause of the problem.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The "Jen Ratio": A More Nuanced View of Emotional Intelligence
Think of the jen ratio as a lens through which you might take stock of your attempt at leading a meaningful life.
---D. Keltner, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life
Did you know that if you engage in five acts of kindness a week, you can elevate your personal well-being in lasting ways? You might think this is obvious. Try doing it while coping with the real world of chaos, much uncertainty for many, and news that is more bad than good. It’s a job to be kind and compassionate.
Think of how any organization would benefit from acts of kindness coursing through it hourly and daily. The rise of its positive emotion quotient would directly affect the quality and quantity of innovation!
“Jen” science, the study of positive emotion, has been hinted at for centuries by various philosophers and scientists such as Confucius, Socrates, Plato and Darwin. But “jen” has only come into its own recently in the shadow and dying embers of the industrial revolution.
As elite athletes have known for some time, we do not rise to our best through fear. The latter helps us survive under dire circumstances but it is not sustainable as a way of being.
The latest financial global crisis has demonstrated that Adam Smith’s “Homo economicus” has its limits. The pursuit of self-interest which does not focus on bringing out the good in others can lead to serious destruction. As Dacher Keltner, author of Born to be Good reiterates, self-interest, competition and vigilance have been built into our evolutionary makeup in order to survive, but these tendencies are only “half the story”. “Homo reciprocans” is a more apt description of our reciprocating nature and the importance of emotions when making economic or any other kind of decisions.
The good emotional side of humanity, called “jen” by Confucius, has always been with us. It is gaining ground in our consciousness globally as we become more connected and better informed. We were reminded of our good side by Henry Patch, the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War, who died at age 111 on July 25, 2009. In his memoirs, written after he turned 100, he described the pact he and his fellow soldiers made: avoid killing the enemy if possible. Aim for the legs instead. Academics have picked up on this theme of our good emotional side for a number of decades.
In the 1990’s, Daniel Goleman and other researchers revived the rightful place of emotional intelligence as a driver of great leadership—the higher you go in an organization, the more important it is.
Not long after, Marcus Buckingham through his Gallup research of over 80,000 managers found that building on strengths of employees is a faster route to a positive climate and employee success than trying to change what isn’t there (transforming weaknesses).
Of late, even strategic planning has had a facelift with the introduction of the process called “Appreciative Inquiry” or “AI” for short. Like elite athlete practices, AI takes the high road by working on creating more of the exceptional performance of an organization through aspirational discovery, dreaming and design.
Since the late 90s, Martin Seligman, who became famous for his “learned helplessness” theory in the 1970s and 80s, started a growing worldwide movement called “positive psychology”. It builds on the works of famous humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Erich Fromm.
Recently, neuroscience is lending credibility to the value of “jen” (meaning “humane”), long ago advocated by Confucius. We are hard-wired to give to others and to act cooperatively. When we do so, the reward centers of our brains dense with dopamine receptors light up and hum with activity. Confucius recognized that cultivating “jen” developed character in self and others, led to the meaningful life and offset violence, materialism and needless hierarchy.
What is the “jen ratio”? The numerator refers to acts of kindness, compassion, awe, love, gratitude and even embarrassment. The denominator embodies the “bad” action when instead of establishing one’s own character by bringing the good of others to completion, a person is disdainful, critical, condescending and contemptuous (all the elements that make for “bad” relationships). It is well-documented that these actions do not lend a helping hand to anyone anywhere.
Researchers are now taking stock of the “jen ratio” of individuals, married couples, nations, cultures and different age groups. As Keltner remarks, “nations whose citizens bring out the good in others to completion thrive” as “trust (a key result of “jen”) facilitates economic exchange with fewer transaction costs, adversarial settlements, discrimination and economic inequality”.
Winners of a number of Nobel prizes in Economics concur. Cooperation beats cut-throat, winner-take-all competition in a complex societal system where trust ultimately must be a guiding principle. New research from the Center for Neuroeconomics further substantiates the value of trust to yield economic and well-being benefit.
Scandinavian and East Asian countries fare better in this regard than those in South America and Eastern Europe. Even poorer nations like India generate a higher trust level than wealthier nations like the United States. “Jen” trumps money!
The “jen ratio” is a simple measure and another tool for leader-managers. Acts of “jen” and “not jen” can be counted (see Buddhist “Pebbles in a Bowl” story below, as a simple method). With some deliberate practice, managers can generate higher “jen” ratios leading to higher performance all round---hard and soft--- underpinned by the increasing momentum of the “flywheel of progress” through good acts.
Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6xYmh4Y-w
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html
http://www.neuroeconomicstudies.org/
http://www.myleadership.com/index.php?title=Pebbles_in_a_Bowl
---D. Keltner, Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life
Did you know that if you engage in five acts of kindness a week, you can elevate your personal well-being in lasting ways? You might think this is obvious. Try doing it while coping with the real world of chaos, much uncertainty for many, and news that is more bad than good. It’s a job to be kind and compassionate.
Think of how any organization would benefit from acts of kindness coursing through it hourly and daily. The rise of its positive emotion quotient would directly affect the quality and quantity of innovation!
“Jen” science, the study of positive emotion, has been hinted at for centuries by various philosophers and scientists such as Confucius, Socrates, Plato and Darwin. But “jen” has only come into its own recently in the shadow and dying embers of the industrial revolution.
As elite athletes have known for some time, we do not rise to our best through fear. The latter helps us survive under dire circumstances but it is not sustainable as a way of being.
The latest financial global crisis has demonstrated that Adam Smith’s “Homo economicus” has its limits. The pursuit of self-interest which does not focus on bringing out the good in others can lead to serious destruction. As Dacher Keltner, author of Born to be Good reiterates, self-interest, competition and vigilance have been built into our evolutionary makeup in order to survive, but these tendencies are only “half the story”. “Homo reciprocans” is a more apt description of our reciprocating nature and the importance of emotions when making economic or any other kind of decisions.
The good emotional side of humanity, called “jen” by Confucius, has always been with us. It is gaining ground in our consciousness globally as we become more connected and better informed. We were reminded of our good side by Henry Patch, the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War, who died at age 111 on July 25, 2009. In his memoirs, written after he turned 100, he described the pact he and his fellow soldiers made: avoid killing the enemy if possible. Aim for the legs instead. Academics have picked up on this theme of our good emotional side for a number of decades.
In the 1990’s, Daniel Goleman and other researchers revived the rightful place of emotional intelligence as a driver of great leadership—the higher you go in an organization, the more important it is.
Not long after, Marcus Buckingham through his Gallup research of over 80,000 managers found that building on strengths of employees is a faster route to a positive climate and employee success than trying to change what isn’t there (transforming weaknesses).
Of late, even strategic planning has had a facelift with the introduction of the process called “Appreciative Inquiry” or “AI” for short. Like elite athlete practices, AI takes the high road by working on creating more of the exceptional performance of an organization through aspirational discovery, dreaming and design.
Since the late 90s, Martin Seligman, who became famous for his “learned helplessness” theory in the 1970s and 80s, started a growing worldwide movement called “positive psychology”. It builds on the works of famous humanistic psychologists such as Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Erich Fromm.
Recently, neuroscience is lending credibility to the value of “jen” (meaning “humane”), long ago advocated by Confucius. We are hard-wired to give to others and to act cooperatively. When we do so, the reward centers of our brains dense with dopamine receptors light up and hum with activity. Confucius recognized that cultivating “jen” developed character in self and others, led to the meaningful life and offset violence, materialism and needless hierarchy.
What is the “jen ratio”? The numerator refers to acts of kindness, compassion, awe, love, gratitude and even embarrassment. The denominator embodies the “bad” action when instead of establishing one’s own character by bringing the good of others to completion, a person is disdainful, critical, condescending and contemptuous (all the elements that make for “bad” relationships). It is well-documented that these actions do not lend a helping hand to anyone anywhere.
Researchers are now taking stock of the “jen ratio” of individuals, married couples, nations, cultures and different age groups. As Keltner remarks, “nations whose citizens bring out the good in others to completion thrive” as “trust (a key result of “jen”) facilitates economic exchange with fewer transaction costs, adversarial settlements, discrimination and economic inequality”.
Winners of a number of Nobel prizes in Economics concur. Cooperation beats cut-throat, winner-take-all competition in a complex societal system where trust ultimately must be a guiding principle. New research from the Center for Neuroeconomics further substantiates the value of trust to yield economic and well-being benefit.
Scandinavian and East Asian countries fare better in this regard than those in South America and Eastern Europe. Even poorer nations like India generate a higher trust level than wealthier nations like the United States. “Jen” trumps money!
The “jen ratio” is a simple measure and another tool for leader-managers. Acts of “jen” and “not jen” can be counted (see Buddhist “Pebbles in a Bowl” story below, as a simple method). With some deliberate practice, managers can generate higher “jen” ratios leading to higher performance all round---hard and soft--- underpinned by the increasing momentum of the “flywheel of progress” through good acts.
Links:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6xYmh4Y-w
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/martin_seligman_on_the_state_of_psychology.html
http://www.neuroeconomicstudies.org/
http://www.myleadership.com/index.php?title=Pebbles_in_a_Bowl
Sunday, July 05, 2009
When You Answer to No One: The Michael Jackson Effect
When Michael asked for something, he got it. This was the great tragedy.
----Uri Geller
Michael Jackson’s great talent is undeniable. So is his tortured persona. Tragically, Jackson’s story is an extreme example of disaster catalyzed by the absence of accountability with some healthy built-in checks and balances.
Organizational life can be frustrating and not always fulfilling. But one characteristic both great and not-so-great organizations have in common is a modicum of accountability. That is, individuals are forced to report to someone and be held accountable for their behaviours and the results they produce. Shared values guide every day actions in the absence of thick and detailed procedure manuals. Formal and spontaneous feedback among peers and between “bosses” and their direct reports constantly adjusts decisions and behaviours toward “what works”.
The atmosphere of having to negotiate our agendas and views with others keeps us on our toes. We cannot simply run off easily on a self-destructive path (The Enrons, Nortels and other like companies excepted). Through teamwork, we actually arrive more often than not at better decisions than if left to our own devices.
There’s an evolutionary reason for this: our survival.
Sadly, there was no effective system of support for Michael Jackson. In this case, money did corrupt. A cautionary tale for all of us.
----Uri Geller
Michael Jackson’s great talent is undeniable. So is his tortured persona. Tragically, Jackson’s story is an extreme example of disaster catalyzed by the absence of accountability with some healthy built-in checks and balances.
Organizational life can be frustrating and not always fulfilling. But one characteristic both great and not-so-great organizations have in common is a modicum of accountability. That is, individuals are forced to report to someone and be held accountable for their behaviours and the results they produce. Shared values guide every day actions in the absence of thick and detailed procedure manuals. Formal and spontaneous feedback among peers and between “bosses” and their direct reports constantly adjusts decisions and behaviours toward “what works”.
The atmosphere of having to negotiate our agendas and views with others keeps us on our toes. We cannot simply run off easily on a self-destructive path (The Enrons, Nortels and other like companies excepted). Through teamwork, we actually arrive more often than not at better decisions than if left to our own devices.
There’s an evolutionary reason for this: our survival.
Sadly, there was no effective system of support for Michael Jackson. In this case, money did corrupt. A cautionary tale for all of us.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Citizen Journalism: A Force for Leaders to Welcome and Fear
Iran and Michael Jackson have one thing in common: the power of the Internet to report in warp speed the good with the bad. Citizen journalism is here to stay thanks to the Internet. With such transparency, leaders are faced with a demand for openness and transparency not necessarily within their comfort zones. This is a steep learning curve!
All action is local, so the saying goes. Taken further, all living is local whether in an organization or community. And, that is the hardest nut to crack for many top leadership teams and middle managers. Neat and tidy bureaucracy has reached its end. Messiness and chaos are upon us as we invent new ways to make a better world.
TMZ reported the death of Michael Jackson before any TV station or newspaper had wind of the story. Like CNN’s “i-reporters” TMZ locals had their ears to the ground. As in Iran, cell phone photos, Twitter, texting, blogs and the like combined to turn on a furious reporting force that took down websites and slowed down the entire Internet even the almighty Google as it was trying to discern the nature of the “attack”. What’s interesting is that it took the confirmation of the “long of tooth” L.A. Times to validate the claim. So, there is a partnership role for the new with the old!
The upside of citizen journalism is the opportunity to create new and better ways to communicate, collaborate, learn and improve. The disconnect between consumers and organizations narrows as those who wish a product, service or policy change can input and shape at the front end and every step in-between. In many ways, this new partnership enables organizations of any stripe to serve more accurately and readily the needs and wants of customers and citizens.
The downside is formidable. If you are the leader of an entrenched bureaucracy or dictatorship as is the case for a government, citizen journalism upends how you like and want to do business. It’s hard to untangle the red tape, although most enlightened leaders want to do this. But, if you are into power and control, citizen journalism can be down right scary.
We have no choice though to go down this road. Our more complex, highly interconnected world with big brain issues to tackle requires amplification of dialogue, debate and testing out of new ideas in a distributed not a centralized way. This is the advantage of the Internet and all of its linked peripherals.
Serious scholars of decision science know that the emergence of heightened dialogue enabled by the Internet increases the probability of better decisions and better prevention and management of disasters. Although this era in which we live continually morphs like a galloping wild horse, the ride is and will be exhilarating for any and all open-minded leaders and managers.
All action is local, so the saying goes. Taken further, all living is local whether in an organization or community. And, that is the hardest nut to crack for many top leadership teams and middle managers. Neat and tidy bureaucracy has reached its end. Messiness and chaos are upon us as we invent new ways to make a better world.
TMZ reported the death of Michael Jackson before any TV station or newspaper had wind of the story. Like CNN’s “i-reporters” TMZ locals had their ears to the ground. As in Iran, cell phone photos, Twitter, texting, blogs and the like combined to turn on a furious reporting force that took down websites and slowed down the entire Internet even the almighty Google as it was trying to discern the nature of the “attack”. What’s interesting is that it took the confirmation of the “long of tooth” L.A. Times to validate the claim. So, there is a partnership role for the new with the old!
The upside of citizen journalism is the opportunity to create new and better ways to communicate, collaborate, learn and improve. The disconnect between consumers and organizations narrows as those who wish a product, service or policy change can input and shape at the front end and every step in-between. In many ways, this new partnership enables organizations of any stripe to serve more accurately and readily the needs and wants of customers and citizens.
The downside is formidable. If you are the leader of an entrenched bureaucracy or dictatorship as is the case for a government, citizen journalism upends how you like and want to do business. It’s hard to untangle the red tape, although most enlightened leaders want to do this. But, if you are into power and control, citizen journalism can be down right scary.
We have no choice though to go down this road. Our more complex, highly interconnected world with big brain issues to tackle requires amplification of dialogue, debate and testing out of new ideas in a distributed not a centralized way. This is the advantage of the Internet and all of its linked peripherals.
Serious scholars of decision science know that the emergence of heightened dialogue enabled by the Internet increases the probability of better decisions and better prevention and management of disasters. Although this era in which we live continually morphs like a galloping wild horse, the ride is and will be exhilarating for any and all open-minded leaders and managers.
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Comedian-in-Chief, Fly-Swatter Extraordinaire: Obama Raises the Stakes
I have a cartoon from one of the newspapers showing President Barack Obama responding to a request from Prime Minister Stephen Harper: “Well, I’ll cough on you if you insist, but I don’t think charisma is contagious. Now with additional Obama feats such as swatting a fly successfully within the tenth of a second required and charming the press corps with skillfully delivered good jokes, the bar just keeps rising higher. Harper will need to go to improv school to crack the Obama leadership ceiling.
There’s a spontaneity within President Obama not well-developed in Harper. Comedians know how important that quality is to connect with an audience. That’s why they take improv, or responding and creating in the moment, very seriously. Deep down, it’s a control and trust of oneself issue. Loose or tight. Acting into thinking rather than planning into acting. Tough to do if a leader wants to have everything figured out and never look silly.
Yet, we warm to anyone, let alone a leader, who shows he’s just like us. He has to battle some of the ordinary things in life like swatting annoying flies and not taking life too seriously all the time. When we engage in these day-to-day activities, we don’t always win. The fly gets away because we were not fast enough or the joke goes over “like a lead balloon”.
It could have gone either way for Barack Obama. But, would it have really mattered? Negative results would most certainly have given his critics more reason to doubt his abilities. But, those with a gentler, kinder view would have applauded his efforts because he tried. “No guts, no glory”, as the saying goes.
Plato argued that we are “sitting in a chariot drawn by two horses: reason and passion”. Researchers who study how good decisions are made have found, not surprisingly, that we use both horses to do so. Interestingly, emotions usually lead the way as they make a direct unconscious connection with our actions just as our breathing does. Reason takes a little more work. From an evolutionary perspective, as Joseph LeDoux from New York University describes in The Emotional Brain, connections in our brains from the emotional to the cognitive systems are stronger than connections from the cognitive to the emotional systems.
Given the automatic precedence of emotion over reason in our brains, President Obama has a significant advantage over those leaders who muffle their fun and passionate sides. Like many aspects of leadership, much can be learned. If Prime Minister Harper spent some time with our Second City folks, I’ll bet we’d see a slightly more spontaneous and funny side of him. It would be good for his ratings. His rational, highly competitive nature might just buy into that!
There’s a spontaneity within President Obama not well-developed in Harper. Comedians know how important that quality is to connect with an audience. That’s why they take improv, or responding and creating in the moment, very seriously. Deep down, it’s a control and trust of oneself issue. Loose or tight. Acting into thinking rather than planning into acting. Tough to do if a leader wants to have everything figured out and never look silly.
Yet, we warm to anyone, let alone a leader, who shows he’s just like us. He has to battle some of the ordinary things in life like swatting annoying flies and not taking life too seriously all the time. When we engage in these day-to-day activities, we don’t always win. The fly gets away because we were not fast enough or the joke goes over “like a lead balloon”.
It could have gone either way for Barack Obama. But, would it have really mattered? Negative results would most certainly have given his critics more reason to doubt his abilities. But, those with a gentler, kinder view would have applauded his efforts because he tried. “No guts, no glory”, as the saying goes.
Plato argued that we are “sitting in a chariot drawn by two horses: reason and passion”. Researchers who study how good decisions are made have found, not surprisingly, that we use both horses to do so. Interestingly, emotions usually lead the way as they make a direct unconscious connection with our actions just as our breathing does. Reason takes a little more work. From an evolutionary perspective, as Joseph LeDoux from New York University describes in The Emotional Brain, connections in our brains from the emotional to the cognitive systems are stronger than connections from the cognitive to the emotional systems.
Given the automatic precedence of emotion over reason in our brains, President Obama has a significant advantage over those leaders who muffle their fun and passionate sides. Like many aspects of leadership, much can be learned. If Prime Minister Harper spent some time with our Second City folks, I’ll bet we’d see a slightly more spontaneous and funny side of him. It would be good for his ratings. His rational, highly competitive nature might just buy into that!
Saturday, May 30, 2009
How CEOs and Presidents mess up: a case of the U.S. border security saga
Each president is in a certain way a prisoner of the structure of power.
---Hugo Chavez
Until former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush squared off in a debate in Toronto, I believed that the relentless thickening of the border between the United States and Canada was due mainly to ignorance, paranoia and myopia. I also believed that if we could “hit” those roadblocks head on with evidence seasoned by diplomacy and some creative thinking, then we could stave off the “an error of a hundred miles from a slight deviation of a hair’s breath”.
Whoops, it’s far more complicated! Ignorance of a different and more serious order: those at the top have no idea what it’s like to cross the border. The power gap (or bubble) is the real driver of ignorance. How does one counter that?
The stunning realization hit me when both Clinton and Bush professed ignorance about the June 1, 2009 date when everyone must have a passport when entering the United States either by land, sea or air. As reporters in the major newspapers reported, both men were “befuddled”:
Clinton: “I literally don’t know anything about this. And most Americans don’t. I promise you’ve got my attention.”
Bush: “I’ll be frank with you Frank (directing his comment to the chair of the debate, Frank McKenna, former Premier of New Brunswick). I don’t know about the passport issue. I’m sorry to claim ignorance but….I guess I am. What happened to the E-Z pass?”
The legacy of the 9/11 disaster lives on: same mistakes. The guys at the top don’t know what’s going on. Why? Their privileged positions enable them to escape the ordinariness of life. Sure, Bush is now scooping up his dog’s poop after a sabbatical of eight years but I’ll bet he’s never gone through the hassle of the U.S.-Canada border crossing, ever. Ditto for Bill.
This is a CEO/President problem in any organization. Take Nortel which is a shadow of its former self, teetering on oblivion. Back in John Roth’s time at the helm, I was asked to help its major research lab in Brampton to “get with the program”, code for having to make a 90 degree turn in its strategic direction and start aligning itself with Roth’s vision. This was an order.
The lab, which had grown into a creative and vibrant ecosystem of hundreds of engineers, software designers, programmers and the like, dutifully generated, through many brainstorming sessions, an exciting roadmap forward. It took about 6 months—a quick turnaround. People were pumped and engaged. Then, without warning, Roth disbanded the lab. A team that was an in-house strength for Nortel never had a chance to help the organization adapt. All those relationships and talent wasted!
The insider “intelligence” was that Roth was never informed well enough, if at all, about the lab’s value—current and potential. People speculated that the “power bubble” prevented Roth from being better informed. With no strong advocate, the lab disappeared into oblivion. Perhaps this was the “deviation of a hair’s breath” that, if prevented, might have helped Nortel be more resilient when the technological meltdown followed shortly thereafter.
Are we seeing the same phenomenon now with the U.S. border security issue? It seems eerily similar. The people at the very top (the Presidents) not aware that the genie is really out of the bottle and impending disaster of a bigger kind lurks around the corner.
Psychologists call this “cognitive dissonance”: once we have made a judgment, we embrace confirming information and discount disconfirming information. We hold the view in place by tagging the confirming information with a positive emotion and the disconfirming with a negative emotion. In the common vernacular, these are called “pigheaded” decisions. History is replete with copious examples of leaders falling prey to such emotional tagging, unable to “see” reality and the best solution, as a result.
Will Barack Obama be able to transcend the power bubble and the cognitive dissonance that goes with it? The jury is out.
Check out S. Finkelstein, et al in the January/February 2009 Ivey Business Journal or their book, Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep It From Happening to You.
---Hugo Chavez
Until former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush squared off in a debate in Toronto, I believed that the relentless thickening of the border between the United States and Canada was due mainly to ignorance, paranoia and myopia. I also believed that if we could “hit” those roadblocks head on with evidence seasoned by diplomacy and some creative thinking, then we could stave off the “an error of a hundred miles from a slight deviation of a hair’s breath”.
Whoops, it’s far more complicated! Ignorance of a different and more serious order: those at the top have no idea what it’s like to cross the border. The power gap (or bubble) is the real driver of ignorance. How does one counter that?
The stunning realization hit me when both Clinton and Bush professed ignorance about the June 1, 2009 date when everyone must have a passport when entering the United States either by land, sea or air. As reporters in the major newspapers reported, both men were “befuddled”:
Clinton: “I literally don’t know anything about this. And most Americans don’t. I promise you’ve got my attention.”
Bush: “I’ll be frank with you Frank (directing his comment to the chair of the debate, Frank McKenna, former Premier of New Brunswick). I don’t know about the passport issue. I’m sorry to claim ignorance but….I guess I am. What happened to the E-Z pass?”
The legacy of the 9/11 disaster lives on: same mistakes. The guys at the top don’t know what’s going on. Why? Their privileged positions enable them to escape the ordinariness of life. Sure, Bush is now scooping up his dog’s poop after a sabbatical of eight years but I’ll bet he’s never gone through the hassle of the U.S.-Canada border crossing, ever. Ditto for Bill.
This is a CEO/President problem in any organization. Take Nortel which is a shadow of its former self, teetering on oblivion. Back in John Roth’s time at the helm, I was asked to help its major research lab in Brampton to “get with the program”, code for having to make a 90 degree turn in its strategic direction and start aligning itself with Roth’s vision. This was an order.
The lab, which had grown into a creative and vibrant ecosystem of hundreds of engineers, software designers, programmers and the like, dutifully generated, through many brainstorming sessions, an exciting roadmap forward. It took about 6 months—a quick turnaround. People were pumped and engaged. Then, without warning, Roth disbanded the lab. A team that was an in-house strength for Nortel never had a chance to help the organization adapt. All those relationships and talent wasted!
The insider “intelligence” was that Roth was never informed well enough, if at all, about the lab’s value—current and potential. People speculated that the “power bubble” prevented Roth from being better informed. With no strong advocate, the lab disappeared into oblivion. Perhaps this was the “deviation of a hair’s breath” that, if prevented, might have helped Nortel be more resilient when the technological meltdown followed shortly thereafter.
Are we seeing the same phenomenon now with the U.S. border security issue? It seems eerily similar. The people at the very top (the Presidents) not aware that the genie is really out of the bottle and impending disaster of a bigger kind lurks around the corner.
Psychologists call this “cognitive dissonance”: once we have made a judgment, we embrace confirming information and discount disconfirming information. We hold the view in place by tagging the confirming information with a positive emotion and the disconfirming with a negative emotion. In the common vernacular, these are called “pigheaded” decisions. History is replete with copious examples of leaders falling prey to such emotional tagging, unable to “see” reality and the best solution, as a result.
Will Barack Obama be able to transcend the power bubble and the cognitive dissonance that goes with it? The jury is out.
Check out S. Finkelstein, et al in the January/February 2009 Ivey Business Journal or their book, Think Again: Why Good Leaders Make Bad Decisions and How to Keep It From Happening to You.
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