The finest things in life...

My wife and I recently took a trip to the Willamette Valley in Oregon for some hiking and wine tasting.  Neither one of us had ever been to Oregon, so we were able to cross the state off our bucket list.  More importantly, we had a great time!  Of course, I also learned a few things about wine that I didn't know.  I've never been a huge fan of sparkling wine, but after tasting some really good sparkling wines in Oregon, perhaps I will reconsider.

I will admit that until a few years ago, I never knew that there was a difference between champagne and sparkling wine.  I thought that there was "Champagne" with a capital C (made in France), as well as "champagne" with a lower-case C (which was made everywhere else).  Contrary to popular belief, there's a difference between champagne (regardless of whether it is spelled with a capital or lower-case letter) and sparkling wine.  "Champagne" refers to a sparkling wine that is specifically made in the Champagne wine region in northeastern France.  All other varieties should just be called sparkling wine and not champagne, even though most of us do so.  

Sparkling wine is usually white (wine produced by the fermentation of the grape pulp minus the skins) or rosé (an intermediate between red and white wine), but there are also examples of red (wine produced by the fermentation of the grape pulp with the skins) sparkling wines, including the Italian sparkling red wines, Brachetto and Lambrusco.  Sparkling wine can range from dry (which is actually a technical term for wine that contains very little sugar, so it's not sweet) - also known as brut (French for "hard") to sweet (which of course is a wine containing a lot of sugar) - also known as doux (French for "soft").    

The sparkling (fizzy) nature of sparkling wine is due to higher content of carbon dioxide which is produced during secondary fermentation, either in a bottle (which is the traditional method) or in a large stainless steel tank (which is the more commonly used method today).  Apparently, the effervescence or "fizziness" of certain wines was noted as far back as Ancient Greece, but the cause was often misunderstood.  Ancient winemakers thought that the presence of bubbles was due to phases of the moon or to the influence of good versus evil spirits.  

The French Benedictine monk Dom Pierre Pérignon actually did not invent the French sparkling white wine that we now call "champagne".  As a matter of fact, his superiors at the Abbey of Hautvillers once tasked him with trying to remove the fizziness out of the sparkling wine, because the bottles had an uncanny tendency to bursting in the cellar.  Even though he didn't invent champagne, Dom Pérignon did a lot to perfect how champagne was made, which is why even today Dom Pérignon champagne is considered one of the finest brands of champagne out there.

I also recently learned another bit of trivia about champagne.  Apparently, a group of divers found a crate of 70 bottles of champagne from a 19th century shipwreck in the Baltic Sea in 2010.  The champagne was 172 years old and thought to be worth at least $4 million.  The bottles were still corked, and the champagne was perfectly preserved due to the cold temperatures in the Baltic Sea.  Imagine drinking a bottle of "shipwreck champagne" from the 19th century!

So, what is the take-home message from all of this talk about sparkling wine?  Great question!  Both the history of champagne and Dom Pérignon, as well as the story about "shipwreck champagne" prove to me once again that some of the finest things in life were once thought to be flaws.  Sometimes, when we see a flaw, we should change our perspective.  The effervescence that makes champagne so appealing to many of us was originally thought to be a flaw.  When viewed in a different way, it became the defining characteristic of a whole family of fine wines.  I am also reminded that some of our most important advances came about as a result of mistakes and accidents.  It is true that we can learn a lot by taking risks and making mistakes.  There is no better way of learning and growing.  And every once in a while, we may find ourselves with 200 year-old champagne worth millions!

"The clothes really do make the person..."

I was working late last Friday night and caught one of the last commuter trains back to the suburbs.  I happened to be wearing a suit that day, and one of my fellow commuters noticed and acknowledged that the two of us were "probably the only two people on the train wearing a suit that night".  He was correct - everyone else was dressed for going out for a fun Friday night.  My fellow commuter told me that whenever he worked downtown, he usually wore a suit.  I don't remember his exact words, but he said something to the effect that we should always dress for the occasion and how we dress makes an impact on how we feel and how we are perceived.

His comments reminded me of the old adage that "the clothes make the man", which is often attributed to the American author, Mark Twain.  It is true that Twain wrote the following passage in his short story "The Czar’s Soliloquy" in 1905:

[One] realizes that without his clothes a man would be nothing at all; that the clothes do not merely make the man, the clothes are the man; that without them he is a cipher, a vacancy, a nobody, a nothing… There is no power without clothes.

  

Regardless of its origin, there is now scientific proof to suggest that how we dress truly impacts how we feel, and how we feel has an impact on how we show up, how we portray ourselves, and how we are perceived by others.  It's called "enclothed cognition", a term first used by the American psychologists Hajo Adam and Adam Galinsky in a study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.  Adam and Galinsky cite other examples to support their findings, including the popular book, Dress for Success by John T. Molloy or the television series, What Not to Wear.  They write, "...the clothes we wear have power not only over others, but also over ourselves."

In the first experiment, Adam and Galinsky randomly assigned college undergraduate students to one of two conditions - wearing a lab coat versus not wearing a lab coat.  Subjects were next asked to perform a series of selective attention tasks (known as the Stroop test), in which they had to focus on relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant stimuli.  Those students wearing a lab coat made about half as many errors as those who weren't wearing a lab coat.  It was almost as if wearing a lab coat (a status symbol of knowledge authority and expertise) increased the students' level of confidence, allowing them to successfully perform their task.

In the second experiment, Adam and Galinsky again randomly assigned college undergraduate students, this time to one of three conditions - wearing a lab coat versus wearing a painter's coat versus seeing a lab coat.  The students were told that local officials were thinking about making certain clothes mandatory for certain professions in their area, and one of the purposes of the study was to determine what people think about the clothes.  The interesting part about this experiment was that students in the lab coat and painter's coat group actually wore the same coat, it was just described as a doctor's coat in the first group and a painter's coat in the second.  Students in the third group merely saw a lab coat displayed on a table across the room.  The students were next asked to perform a sustained attention task.  Again, students in the lab coat group were more successful at the task compared to the other two groups, consistent with Adam and Galinsky's concept of "enclothed cognition".

The results of the second experiment demonstrated that wearing a lab coat led to greater success in the sustained attention task and that this effect depended on whether (1) the clothes were worn and (2) the symbolic meaning of those clothes.  Of interest, there was no difference between the painter's coat group and the group who saw the doctor's coat.  In the last experiment, college undergraduate students were randomized to one of three conditions - wearing a doctor's coat versus wearing a painter's coat versus identifying with a doctor's coat.  The experimental set-up was very similar to the second experiment, except in the "identifying with a doctor's coat", students saw the doctor's coat during the entire experiment and were asked to write an essay about how the coat represents them and has a personal meaning (this was to "prime" the students to closely identify with the lab coat).  Students who wore the doctor's coat still performed better on the sustained attention task, however this time, the students who identified with the doctor's coat performed better than those students who wore the painter's coat.

I remember once during residency at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego several years ago a fellow resident asking me why I was wearing a lab coat in clinic over my Navy uniform.  I responded, "Because I am a doctor."  I do think that there is something to this concept known as "enclothed cognition".  I do think that we should all be "dressing for success".  Regardless of our own opinions, the clothes that we wear do have an impact, not only on how we feel, but how we are perceived by others.  I can't help but wonder how the recent trends towards a "casual workplace" have adversely impacted how different professions are perceived.  

"What does not kill me makes me stronger..."

Long before American pop singer Kelly Clarkson said it, the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said "What does not kill me makes me stronger."  Whenever I hear this quote, my mind goes back to my high school Physical Education teacher, who first taught me "the principle of progressive overload".  Simply stated, if you want to get better at anything, you have to push yourself past your zone of comfort.  For example, if you want to build up your muscle strength so that you can increase your maximum bench press, add 5-10 pounds to your bench press work-out every few days.  Alternatively, if your goal is to run a marathon, start out with running one long run every Saturday and add 1 mile every week.  Slowly but surely, over time, you will build up your muscle strength (so you can bench press a couple of hundred pounds) or increase your stamina to the point where you can run that marathon.

Not surprisingly, "the principle of progressive overload" applies to more than just sports and exercise.  If you are afraid to speak in public, you have to challenge yourself by actually starting to speak in public.  You should start out with something relatively short, maybe giving a toast at a dinner with friends.  As you gain confidence and with further practice and experience, you can eventually challenge yourself with a speech in front of a small crowd.  

The same principle applies to leadership.  Sarah Horn starts off her recent article for Forbes magazine, "Why Discomfort Builds Better Leaders" by stating, "In today’s hyper-optimized world, comfort and convenience are often prized. But in doing so, we may evade the very experiences that enable deep leadership growth...Uncomfortable or challenging experiences teach leaders to perform under pressure, nurture teamwork in adversity, and recover quickly after failure.  This creates a virtuous cycle: mastering setbacks builds confidence and resilience, which enables faster progression and greater impact, which in turn attracts more growth opportunities."

Horn references a study by Kaitlin Woolley and Ayelet Fishbach, published in the journal Psychological Science ("Motivating personal growth by seeking discomfort").  Over two thousand study participants participated in five studies in which they intentionally and actively sought out personal discomfort - by taking improvisation classes, engaging in creative writing, or even exploring alternative political viewpoints.  These study participants consistently reported greater perceived goal achievement, engagement, and personal long-term growth.  

Horn writes, "Leaders who cognitively engage with discomfort learn to understand their limits, recognize their triggers, and manage their responses when stakes are high."  When they push and challenge themselves beyond their personal zone of comfort, they learn how to deal better with uncertainty, anxiety, and fear.  She continues, "The key is intentionality. Hardship does not automatically create better leaders. However, deliberately chosen challenges – whether physical, emotional, or intellectual – can strengthen neural pathways that serve leaders in high-stakes situations."

Rather than being afraid to challenge ourselves, we should embrace the opportunity to push ourselves and learn, grow, and develop.  When we take risks and move out of our own personal comfort zone, we will likely fail.  But when we fail, we learn, grow, and develop into better leaders.  Even if she didn't say it first, Kelly Clarkson maybe said it best, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger!"

The Siren's Call

Earlier this year, my wife and I attended a lecture by Chris Hayes, Emmy Award-winning host of "All In with Chris Hayes" on MSNBC.  Hayes was touring in support of his new book, The Siren's Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource.  I've never actually watched Chris Hayes, but I thought he was a good speaker.  I ended up reading the book, which I also enjoyed.  He wrote an article based, in part, on his book for The Atlantic, "You're Being Alienated From Your Own Attention".  Hayes claims that "Attention is a kind of resource: It has value, and if you can seize it, you seize that value."  He goes on to suggest that "Every single aspect of human life across the broadest categories of human organization is being reoriented around the pursuit of attention."

The Canadian-American journalist Robert MacNeil was perhaps best known for co-founding (with fellow journalist Jim Lehrer) the public television news program, the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, which aired from 1975-1995 (the show has since been renamed the PBS News Hour).  MacNeil wrote an essay in 1993 entitled "The Trouble with Television" (you can find it relatively easily on the Internet).  He raises many of the same issues that Neil Postman wrote about in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public discourse in the Age of Show Business, which I discussed in a recent post (see "Amusing Ourselves to Death...").  

MacNeil wrote, "The trouble with television is that it discourages concentration.  Almost anything interesting and rewarding in life requires some constructive, consistently applied effort...but television encourages us to apply no effort.  It sells us instant gratification.  It diverts us only to divert, to make the time pass without pain...In short, a lot of television usurps one of the most precious of all human gifts, the ability to focus your attention yourself, rather than just passively surrender it."

There is a fight for our attention.  And we are losing.  Hayes writes, "Those who successfully extract it [attention] command fortunes, win elections, and topple regimes.  The battle to control what we pay attention to at any given instant structures our inner life - who and what we listen to, how and when we are present to those we love - and our collective public lives: which pressing matters of social concern are debated and legislated, which are neglected..."  

I've caught myself in the past "doom-scrolling" through various social media sites and wasting precious time that could have been better spent on a more productive activity.  I started to find that a lot of what I was reading was garbage, which prompted me to quit both X and Facebook a few months ago (see my post "Liberation").  

I think I agree with most of the arguments that Chris Hayes makes in his book.  He admits that his job is to capture our attention, and certainly most (if not all) media today is all about capturing attention.  Like Hayes, I'm not sure that there is a straightforward and easy fix to this dilemma.  We've been traveling down this road for quite some time (hence the article by Jim Lehrer that appeared over 30 years ago).  I think the first step is to recognize and clearly state the problem, if any, that we are needing to solve.  Once the problem is recognized, the next step is to begin a frank dialogue about the problem itself.  Once there, we can start talking about potential solutions.

Has Gen X lost out when it comes to the C-suite?

The Wall Street Journal columnist Callum Borchers wrote an interesting article a few days ago entitled, "The Gen Xers Who Waited Their Turn to Be CEO Are Getting Passed Over".  It's well worth a read on your own, but the very first sentence in the article summarizes Borchers' point perfectly.  He writes, "When it comes to the C-suite, Gen X might be doomed to live up to its "forgotten generation" moniker."

Apparently, there are two trends happening simultaneously in the corporate world.  First, baby boomers are working past the traditional retirement age and staying on in their current leadership roles in the C-suite.  For example, 41.5% of chief executives of companies in the Russell 3000 are at least 60 years of age or older, which represents an increase from 35.1% in 2017.  As Borchers explains, many organizations have played it safe in recent years, particularly during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic, by either keeping their current CEOs in place or hiring experienced and/or well-established (read "older") CEOs.

Second, given the rapidity of technological change, especially with advances in computing and, in particular, artificial intelligence, companies are beginning to hire younger CEOs in their 30's and 40's.  Again, by way of example, the share of CEOs in the Russell 3000 in their 30's and 40's increased from 13.8% in 2017 to 15.1% more recently (please see the figure below from the WSJ article). 

As Matteo Tonello from the Conference Board said, "We're starting to see a barbell phenomenon in the CEO role where Gen X is being squeezed in the middle."  Gen X is typically defined as those individuals born between 1965 and 1980.  They are starting to reach their late 50's, an age which, at least historically, many first-time CEOs have been hired.  What's happening instead is that companies are skipping a generation and hiring younger first-time CEOs.  Borchers further notes that Gen Xers are looked upon as skilled tacticians rather than visionary leaders.  They are just not being viewed by Boards as transformational leaders or rising stars with big ideas about what the future could look like.

I've previously commented on the so-called "youth movement" when it comes to head coaches in the National Football League (see my post "Youth Movement").  At that time, I also commented on the growing trend for companies outside of football to hire younger CEOs.  Similarly, Becker's Hospital Review reported last year that the average age of hospital CEOs has decreased slightly over the last decade, but it still remains higher than it was in 2014.  Health care organizations are subjected to the same challenges and trends that companies in the Russell 3000 encounter, so it wouldn't surprise me at all to see a growing "youth movement" with respect to hospital CEOs.  Whether this is the right or wrong approach is a decision that most hospital boards will have to make in the best interests of their organization.  

Give trust to build trust...

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post entitled "Deference to expertise builds trust..."  What's interesting is that, in at least the way that it is used in the High Reliability Organization (HRO) literature, the word deference has almost the same meaning as the word trust.  Please allow me to explain.

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines deference as a readiness or willingness to yield to the wishes of others.  By comparison, the word trust is defined in three ways as a verb - first, to give a task, duty, or responsibility to (as to "entrust"); second, to put (something) into the possession or safekeeping of another (as in "to hand"); and third, to regard as right or true (as in "to believe").  However, the word trust may also be used as a noun, as in a firm belief in the integrity, ability, effectiveness, or genuineness of someone or something (as in "confidence") or alternatively, responsibility for the safety and well-being of someone or something (as in "custody").

So, by deference then, we mean are placing our belief, our confidence, and our trust in someone to make the right decisions for their team(s) and organization.  We are entrusting and empowering them with taking responsibility for not only their actions but for the actions of their teams.  We are giving them responsibility, and with responsibility comes accountability.  It follows then, that by entrusting (empowering) others, we are establishing an interdependence that is based on mutual respect and trust.  When we show others that they have our confidence, we in turn increase the likelihood that they will share that confidence by trusting us in return.

If you want an example that perfectly illustrates the concept of "giving trust to build trust", look no further than the "Open Prison" concept in India.  An "open prison" is one in which prisoners serve their sentences with minimal supervision and security.  Think of a prison without walls, towers, and barbed wire.  Prisoners are not even locked up in cells.  They are essentially free to come and go as they please, often leaving the prison to go to a job outside the prison during the day, only to return at night.  In some cases, their families are allowed to stay with them.  

The "open prison" concept started in the late 1950's and early 1960's in the Indian state of Rajasthan, where it remains a popular model today.  As Kavitha Yarlagadda writes (see "India's 'Open Prisons' Are a Marvel of Trust-based Incarceration"), "Designed to foster reform as opposed to punishment, the system is based on the premise that trust is contagious. It assumes — and encourages — self-discipline on the part of the prisoners. On a practical level, letting incarcerated folks go to work also allows them to earn money for themselves and their families, build skills, and maintain contacts in the outside world that can help them once they’re released."  In other words, "trust begets trust".  

Now, what does an open prison in India have to do with HROs?  I think they illustrate a key principle that is foundational to the concept of deference to expertise.  Deference to expertise is built upon mutual trust.  By giving trust, we build further trust.  Just like what happens with the open prisons in India.  "Trust begets trust, which then begets even more trust."  It's a virtuous cycle that leads to high performance teams and high reliability organizations.

Another alternative to VUCA...

 Last December, I posted about the concept of BANI (see "Welcome to the age of chaos..."), which was proposed by the author and futurist Jamais Cascio in a blog post from April 29, 2020, "Facing the age of chaos".  Cascio wrote, "The concept of VUCA is clear, evocative, and increasingly obsolete.  We have become so thoroughly surrounded by a world of VUCA that it seems less a way to distinguish important differences than simply a depiction of our current default condition."  He then suggested that perhaps BANI was a more important description of the constant chaos that is characteristic of the world we live in today.  Here, B=Brittle, A=Anxious, N=Non-linear, and I=Incomprehensible. 

David Magellan Horth, writing for the Center for Creative Leadership, proposed yet another VUCA alternative - RUPT (see his post, "Navigating disruption with RUPT: An alternative to VUCA").  While RUPT is also an acronym, Horth suggests that the acronym was developed with the Latin word rumpere, meaning to break or to burst, in mind.  The English words rupture and disruption are derived from the Latin rumpere.  The acronym itself stands for the following:

R = Rapid

U = Unpredictable

P = Paradoxical

T = Tangled

The acronym suggests then that our world is characterized by rapid change (in Horth's words, overlapping like "waves emerging from different sources cashing in mid-ocean").  These changes are unexpected and defy prediction, challenging our view of the world, which makes them paradoxical.  All events are connected (as Horth describes, "everything is connected to everything else").

Perhaps we don't really need another acronym to describe the state of our world.  What's more important is Horth's suggestion about how we as leaders can navigate today's RUPT environment by:

1. Nurturing and practicing learning agility.  The CCL defines learning agility as the ability and willingness to learn from experience and subsequently apply that learning to perform successfully under new and challenging conditions. 

2. Developing leadership across divides.  Here, the CCL suggests that cross-collaboration between different disciplines is incredibly important.  Diverse teams with diverse backgrounds and experiences will bring different frameworks and paradigms about the world to the table.  However, in order for these diverse teams to work effectively, leaders have to establish mutual trust, respect, and psychological safety.

3. Leveraging polarities inherent in complex challenges.  A leader's natural tendency when confronted with a new challenge is to go back to what has worked well in the past.  Here, the CCL sees new challenges not as problems to be solved, but as polarities to be managed.  They encourage leaders to shift their mindset, thinking, and decision-making from either/or to both/and.