Brain science supports the notion of No More Rules!

Photo by blatantnews.com

[tweetmeme]

I haven’t touched the issue of No More Rules! for a while now (link straight to the presentation). But something I came across last week reminded me of it. It turns out that a couple of years ago, two scientists did an interesting experiment that links directly to my claim.

They studied Jazz musicians while they improvised their music. Jazz improvisation is unique in that it demands a lot of creativity to play as it is distinct in style and in the way it is played. They compared those people to people who played regular music, out of notes. What they studied was their brains.

It turns out, that when the musicians improvised, thus needing creativity, the areas associated with creativity in their brains lighted up. When they played what on the notes in front of them, the areas in their brain associated with following rules lighted up. Up to this point, there were no surprises. However, what was surprising was that when the musicians improvised, the areas in their brain that are associated with following rules, not only did not light up, they showed decreased activity. As if in order to improvise and be creative, you need to let go of the rules and inhibitions. Here is a short paragraph from a summary from the Johns Hopkins website:

The scientists found that a region of the brain known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a broad portion of the front of the brain that extends to the sides, showed a slowdown in activity during improvisation. This area has been linked to planned actions and self-censoring, such as carefully deciding what words you might say at a job interview. Shutting down this area could lead to lowered inhibitions, Limb suggests

Those of you who have been following my writings about rules and how they inhibit practical wisdom and creativity which are the building blocks of the current economy are already nodding in understanding of the implications of this research.

How do we expect our people to be creative and generate value when we keep surrounding them with rules and inhibitions? Now, it is not only logic and behavioral experiments supporting my claim, it is also brain science.

Elad

Shorts: Bill Taylor on the ideas of power and leadership

[tweetmeme]

Read Bill Taylor’s HBR.org post: Where Have all the Business Heroes Gone?

A very short excerpt:

Here’s why: So much of the way so many of us think about business remains rooted in the logic of power. How big has a company become under its hard-charging CEO? How much wealth have its shareholders amassed as a result of strategic calculations made in the corner office? But as my friend and publishing-industry legend Harriet Rubin likes to say, and as I’ve written before on this blog, “Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you control. Freedom is about what you unleash.”

Very nicely written. Some might say – inspiring!

Reminded me of this post, in which I wrote:

First, the assumption that there is only one way. Maybe, for some companies and in certain situations, the flamboyant visionaries are the best fit as CEO’s. But not in every situation. Some companies need the quiet leadership behind the scene, the steady hand that improves and creates processes that lead to growth and innovation. Taylor’s choice of the historic Great Man Theory seems appropriate. It too claimed that only certain people are fit for leadership roles. We know today that this attitude was plain wrong.

I find Taylor’s post to be especially strong and important in comparison to the post which appeared next it in my HBR.org RSS feed.  Jeffrey Pfeffer‘s post: Why the Powerful Can Be So Rude. I will leave it up to you to compare and contrast. I will say one thing – I don’t think the end justifies the means.

Elad

The right job and the manager’s role

Photo by quapan

[tweetmeme]

Bob Sutton wrote a very interesting post a few days ago. Here are the main parts of it:

I realized that while much of what I write about focuses on bad versus good bosses, jobs, and organizations, that I ought to also be emphasizing that there are many perfectly good jobs out there held be people who are, nonetheless, quite unhappy because the kind of work they do, the mission of their organization, and a host of other factors simply do not mesh well who they are and what they would want to be.

…

But some of us have jobs that don’t fit who we are and we would be much happier doing another kind of work … I thought of three signs that someone is in the wrong job. These are:

1. “People whose careers aren’t the right fit often feel like impostors, even if they are very skilled at their jobs.”

2. “Another symptom is constant annoyance with the demands being made of them, even though these are reasonable for the business they’re in.”

3. “An additional warning sign is a feeling that their current work doesn’t rank very high in their value system.”

This little list just begins to scratch the surface…

Sutton raises great points and I think the three signs are right on. As someone who went through (and actually is still going through) a career change, I can say that this is exactly what I felt before I made the decision to make the move for a different career and job.

Having said that, I think Sutton de-emphasizes the importance of the subject so close to his heart – good bosses and bad bosses. Yes, we need people need to find a fit between them and the job and not everybody can do any job. However, I believe there is a connection between the boss (or manager), his relationship with his employee and the appearance of the signs in that same employee. If a manager’s job is to take the hurdles of employees out of the way and help each employee find his or her strengths and help reach a sense of flow, then it is a manager’s job to see the sign in his employees. It is not always in his ability to influence all of the relevant dimensions (the entire organization value system for example) but he does have an important affect on the employee’s day-to-day environment.

So, the three signs Sutton details are not only important as a self-reflection tool but also as a management tool. If your employees are experiencing any of the signs, maybe you are not doing your job as a manger very well…

Elad

On the difficulties of the questions-based approach

Photo by Kalleboo

[tweetmeme]

This week I spent in the Israeli Air Force training some of its commanders on different aspects of communication and feedback. While there, I tried to implement some of the issues I regularly write about in this blog, trying to practice what I preach. What did I find? It is so hard!

One of the main exercises I participated in is a simulation of a feedback situation between a commander and a soldier. After I watch the feedback I am supposed to give my opinion of how the conversation went and use a pre-determined scale to score it. The soldiers are used to being asked a question or two about how they did and then hearing an account of their performance with recommendation for the future.

I, however, believe in the importance of resisting the temptation to provide answers, so I conducted my sessions using a lot of questions, trying to allow the person de-brief himself, see other points of view and gain insights as well as develop an ability of reflexivity. I knew it is going to be hard for me to resist saying what I think is right instead of taking the slow path of asking questions. What I did not expect is the resistance of the commanders to my method.  “Just tell us what the bottom line is”, they demanded. “All these questions and self-reflection is a waste of time, we did some things right and some things wrong – tell us what!”. For a minute there, I had to question what I believe in. For a minute there, I had to ask myself, am I doing the right thing, insisting not to give them the answers? And after I thought about it a little, it just hardened my resolve.

I do believe that people do not always know what is good for them. Not because their stupid, but because the human mind is built in a way that minimizes effort, be it physical or cognitive. Just this week the blogosphere is filled with the results of a study saying humans are happier when they’re busy, but inclined towards idleness (also see here). We know from an abundance of research into behavioral economics that people are really bad in predicting what will make them happy and how happy they will be. I do believe that there are things in life that for some people, need to be forced upon them, because they are not able to appreciate them until they actually experienced them. Yes, in the short-run, this method is annoying, frustrating and time-wasting. But when it comes to developing commanders, managers, leaders and every other kind of employee, we should not focus to much on the short-run. We need patience to build an ability of practical wisdom.

It is more important to built abilities, to make sure there is no dependency and to make sure there is always a challenge for the people around us, then making them happy in the short-run. I am not saying you should NEVER give answers. It is not like I sat there and said nothing the entire week. I am just saying you should sometimes deliberately avoid it and just focus on asking the right question and helping others ask the right questions themselves. Nametag Scott has a great post on this issue this week. Here is a short excerpt:

“Is it your place to fix this?”

That’s the question you have to ask yourself.

Especially when someone you love finds themselves on the precipice of disaster.

Sometimes you have to back off.

Yes, it requires great emotional restraint.

Yes, it requires significant self-control.

But if you don’t let people come to their own conclusions, make their own decisions and make their own mistakes, you fractionize their experiences and rob them of valuable learning opportunities.

So, I ask you once again: are you resisting the temptation to give answers?

Elad

Re-recruiting employees

Photo by bgottsab

[tweetmeme]

Adam Bryant conducted an interview with Linda Heasley, president and chief executive of The Limited, and published it on The New York Times. Interesting interview overall and I loved this quote:

Q. And what’s your philosophy of leadership?

A. I believe that it’s not about me. I believe it’s very much about the team. I believe that my associates can work anywhere they want, and my job is to re-recruit them every day and give them a reason to choose to work for us and for me as opposed to anybody else.

So it’s about making it fun. It’s about making it exciting. It’s about keeping them marketable. I encourage people: “Go out and find out what the market bears. You should do that and then come back and help me figure out what you need in your development that you’re not getting, because we owe you that.”

Usually managers, consciously or unconsciously believe that everybody working with them should be thankful. That going out looking for alternatives is a kind of betrayal. I wrote in the past on the tendency of managers to look at the people working with them as serfs. If you are the king, everybody needs to be loyal to you. But just like the best kings in the fairy tales, the best managers understand, that the power of a manager comes not from fear and blind loyalty, but from giving, trusting and serving others. The manager is the serf and not the other way around.

Bruce Temkin wrote about the same quote from this interview in his blog:

This is the right attitude. Every manager should take on the personal responsibility of making their team members continuously chose to be on their team. Often times, that means preparing them with skills to leave the team… or to leave the company. When you can no longer re-recruit someone, it’s probably time for him/her to leave.

I agree. By treating employees like partners and not like subordinates we let go of the fear and enjoy the benefits of trust and human connection. Yes, some will leave. Yes, some will take advantage of you. But most won’t. Most will revel in the trust you put in them and will reach levels of performance unparalleled because you, as a manger, are there to make sure that they have what they need and because you both know that they are there as a result of a choice.

Elad

Preconceived ideas about management

[tweetmeme]

As very often happens, Paul Hebert, the Managing Director for i2i and writer of Incentive Intelligence, writes something that resonates deeply with my held beliefs. In two related posts, one on his blog and one in Fistful of Talent, he touches upon the issue of the meaning of the word “management” and how it is perceived, especially in comparison to the word “supervisor”. Here is the gist:

… I checked the online dictionary to compare the definition of supervise and the definition of manage. The interesting thing? The root of supervise is all about “vision” – overseeing, watching. The root of manage is about controlling, training … After viewing these definitions, I believe we’ve got too much management and not enough supervision.

Managing = External Locus of Control

When “managing” projects to you “tell” people what to do, when to do it by and how to do it?  Most would say sure because  – “I’m the manager and my butt is on the line if we don’t deliver.”

Supervising = Internal Locus of Control

Supervising however means watching – overseeing and correcting when something goes awry.  In this case the real locus of control is with the individual with the supervisor allowing them to do their work, their way (obviously with some constraints such as time/cost.)

I have written before about the fact that I believe that language matters, especially in the world of management.  I have puzzled about the different definitions of the word manger. I tried to explain why I think management and leadership are different things and that opposite to what some think, it is not true that you manage resources and lead people. I am also part (although humble) of an attempt to reinvent management as management 2.0.  God knows, I am an advocate of losing control and stopping with management by rules.

But the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that we don’t only have a problem with our habits, our ingrained assumptions and our language and usage of words. The words themselves – leader, manager, and supervisor – have lost their original meaning and are full of the preconceived ideas that stand behind them. I think Hans Rosling opening statements (which I shortened) for his amazing TED talk, are appropriate:

About 10 years ago, I took on the task to teach global development to Swedish undergraduate students … And I started in our medical university, Karolinska Institute, an undergraduate course called Global Health … I thought, these students coming to us actually have the highest grade you can get in Swedish college systems — so maybe they know everything I’m going to teach them about. So I did a pre-test when they came. And one of the questions from which I learnt a lot was this one: “Which country has the highest child mortality of these five pairs?”

And I put them together, so that in each pair of country, one has twice the child mortality of the other. And this means that it’s much bigger a difference than the uncertainty of the data. I won’t put you at a test here, but it’s Turkey, which is highest there, Poland, Russia, Pakistan and South Africa. And these were the results of the Swedish students. I did it so I got the confidence interval, which is pretty narrow, and I got happy, of course: a 1.8 right answer out of five possible. That means that there was a place for a professor of international health and for my course.

But one late night, when I was compiling the report I really realized my discovery. I have shown that Swedish top students know statistically significantly less about the world than the chimpanzees. (Laughter) Because the chimpanzee would score half right if I gave them two bananas with Sri Lanka and Turkey. They would be right half of the cases.

But the students are not there. The problem for me was not ignorance: it was preconceived ideas.

Our problem today is not ignorance as much as the fact that the words, loaded with preconceived ideas, represent ideologies. In his book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions, author Dan Ariely Writes:

“Once we take ownership of an Idea – Whether it’s about politics or sports – what do we do? We love it perhaps more than we should. We prize it more than it is worth. And most frequently, we have trouble letting go of it because we can’t stand the idea of its loss. What are we left with then? An ideology – rigid and unyielding”.

And as we know so well from politics, once the discussion is about ideology, everybody tends to forget the original question. And in our struggle with words like management, supervision and leadership, loaded with preconceived ideas as they are, we forget what we are trying to achieve. As someone wrote in a Linkedin discussion I am taking part of:

To convince managers to change from obsolete 1.0 to 2.0 is like to convince Luis XIV to change to republic – I’m afraid a revolution is necessary!

I debated with myself how to finish this post, because I try to keep the blog focused on practical suggestions and specific issues to consider. And I have no bottom line for this post. I guess, just raising the issue is part of the solution! Any thoughts/ideas?

Elad

Do you have to know where you are going in order to create something wonderful?

[tweetmeme]

Joshua Prince-Ramus gives an interesting TED talk called: Building a theater that remakes itself. In it, he says the following:

Now, I believe that one really amazing thing will happen if you do this. I’d like to call it the lost art of productively losing control. You do not know what the end result is. But I promise you, with enough brain power and enough passion and enough commitment, you will arrive at conclusions that will transcend convention, and will simply be something that you could not have initially or individually conceived of.

…

And to remind you that here is an example in which architecture actually did something. But we got to that conclusion without understanding where we were going, what we knew were a series of issues that the company and the client was confronted with. And we took positions with them, and it was through those positions that we began to take architectural manifestations and we arrived at conclusion that none of us, really none of us could ever  have conceived of initially or individually.

Those few of you who regularly follow my blog (thanks by the way) know that lately I have written a lot about creativity and how it is the opposite of productivity as it entails purposeful loss of control. This is due, in part, to research I am conducting these days on the issue of knowledge creating teams.

Prince-Ramus saying resonates with these concepts and highlights an important facet of this. For years, the idea that we must understand the goal and the destination we want to reach before we set on the path. “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there” says the Cat to Alice. But as Alice’s amazing journey shows, and Prince-Ramus tries to convey, sometimes, the real creativity comes from not knowing what the final destination is. The creative process by definition is one that requires we reach a destination that we haven’t encountered before and while some people can envision it, the real innovative destinations today come out of a combination of minds that allows synergy.

So, do you always know where you are going or do you allow for some productive loss of control?

Elad

Coercing cognitive-thinking hierarchy

Photo by conorwithonen

[tweetmeme]

Two unrelated quotes connected in my head this week.

The first is a short sentence I read while reading an interview with one of Isreal’s leading investment manager (sorry, can’t find link) which roughly translates to something like this:

Off course you have managerial hierarchy, but it does not mean that you must have a coercion of cognitive-thinking hierarchy

The second quote comes for Bob Sutton amazing book Weird Ideas That Work: How to Build a Creative Company:

Another reason so many companies rely on obsolete methods and technologies is that the people who defend and use them are often more powerful than those who advocate new and superior ways. The past successes of the old guard helps them gain powerful positions and control precious resources, which they use to undermine people who come who come along with better ways that will help the company, but threaten their dominance.

In places where innovation is key there is a need to shift gears and understand that the top-down approach is good for parts of the process, but not for the intellectual parts of it (and in many jobs, this is the main part). There is a big difference between standing up, heading or leading something, being accountable for it on one side and controlling it on the other. In creativity, control is an illusion, as the success of a manager depends on others and on his ability to lose control. The fact that you are responsible does not mean that you have all the answers. Probably the opposite is true. Status and power, especially those based on past success should make a manager less confident in his ability to produce new ideas and demand that he will be open to new perspectives and ideas.

So, in addition to managerial hierarchy do you also coerce cognitive-thinking hierarchy? Is that really wise?

Elad

Shorts: Clay Shirky on the gap

[tweetmeme]

In this wonderful TED talk, Clay Shirky says one mind-blowing sentence:

The gap is between doing anything and doing nothing.

Think about it. When have you last crossed the gap and did anything? What’s stopping you? Is there any chance that doing nothing will result in good things for you?

Elad

Handouts of slides and the right questions

Photo by tvol

[tweetmeme]

I have been in the business of teaching with digital presentations for a few years now. Since my early days as an instructor in the Israeli Air-Force, when computers were emerging and we were trying to understand how to use this tool to enhance our teaching abilities.

And as long as this tool has been around, there was this debate about whether, as a teacher, you need to distribute your slides before the class, so people can use it to jot down notes while you talk, or after the class, so it won’t distract the students and allow them to look up ahead in your notes.

This is a question I have been grappling with for a long time now (I usually give everything away before class, but in a slightly different version). So, I was excited yesterday to read in the BPS digest blog about a new study trying to find an answer to this question in an organized research methodology. This is how the conclusions of the study are explained by the blog:

The findings provide preliminary evidence that lecturers should provide their students with handouts during the lecture. Regarding the more extensive note-taking that took place when handouts were held back until after a lecture, the researchers speculated that this was ‘unlikely to be a deep encoding task’, which would normally be expected to aid memory retention, and may instead have acted merely acted as a distraction.

‘The data reported here represent only a first step and do not resolve this issue,’ the researchers concluded. ‘In no case, however, did having the handouts during a lecture impair performance on the final tests. Even when there were no differences in final test performance, students still benefited in the sense that they reached the same level of learning with less work.

While I totally agree with Bob Sutton’s take on this that: “This is not an earth-shaking problem or issue, but I have been amazed to see how vehemently some faculty feel about this issue, so I am glad to see a little evidence”, it still left me wondering. Are we asking the right question? Isn’t this a simplistic way to see the world? Black or white. Yes or no. With handouts or without? Evidence is necessary, especially in a debate that borders on the emotional without any factual representation, but the question in my mind should be a little different.

The question should not be whether giving out handouts before class is good or not, the question should be why, when and how we should give out handouts. My experience (as a student) is that most handouts are a waste of paper; they usually don’t explain the material very well and are a waste in every sense. In many cases, instead of giving a handout of the slide with six pages, a simple word handout is much more effective. However, I have seen some professors preparing and handing out great slides, because their class is built-in a way that supports the use of the slide as handouts as well. Some of the best uses I have seen are those that use a different set of slides for the class (as a handout) and a different one for the presentation, so they don’t lose the element of surprise and keep the text on every slide to a minimum, but are still able to provide the class with concise and useful slides to take notes on.

I guess research on this issue will continue into the future, but that is a good thing. I also know that this type of quantitative research has to focus on a small question in order to pinpoint a specific issue. But we not all live in academic experience. And in many areas of life, asking the right question is an important skill.  This happens in many fields of life, personal issues, politics, and business. We tend to go into an issue and see it as a yes-no question. Should we or shouldn’t we. However, sometimes, the question is not yes-no but why, how and when.

Elad