We are the wolves!"

I wanted to write one last post in honor of Women's History Month, which officially ends today, 3/31/2021.  International soccer star, Abby Wambach, gave the 2018 Commencement Address at Barnard College at Columbia University.  It's a great speech, so I am posting it here (or you can watch the video here):

Greetings to President Beilock, Barnard faculty, trustees, and honorees: Katherine Johnson, Anna Quindlen, and Rhea Suh.

And to each of the 619 bad-ass women of the Barnard graduating class of 2018: Congratulations!

Doesn’t it feel like the second you figure anything out in life, it ends and you’re forced to start all over again?

Experts call these times of life “transitions.” I call them terrifying.

I went through a terrifying transition recently when I retired from soccer.

The world tries to distract us from our fear during these transitions by creating fancy ceremonies for us. This graduation is your fancy ceremony. Mine was the ESPYs, a nationally televised sports award show. I had to get dressed up for that just like you got dressed up for this, but they sent me a really expensive fancy stylist. It doesn’t look like you all got one. Sorry about that.

So it went like this: ESPN called and told me they were going to honor me with their inaugural icon award. I was humbled, of course, to be regarded as an icon. Did I mention that I’m an icon?

I received my award along with two other incredible athletes: basketball’s Kobe Bryant and football’s Peyton Manning. We all stood on stage together and watched highlights of our careers with the cameras rolling and the fans cheering—and I looked around and had a moment of awe. I felt so grateful to be there—included in the company of Kobe and Peyton. I had a momentary feeling of having arrived: like we women had finally made it.

Then the applause ended and it was time for the three of us to exit stage left. And as I watched those men walk off the stage, it dawned on me that the three of us were stepping away into very different futures.

Each of us, Kobe, Peyton and I—we made the same sacrifices, we shed the same amount of blood sweat and tears, we’d left it all on the field for decades with the same ferocity, talent and commitment—but our retirements wouldn’t be the same at all. Because Kobe and Peyton walked away from their careers with something I didn’t have: enormous bank accounts. Because of that they had something else I didn’t have: freedom. Their hustling days were over; mine were just beginning.

Later that night, back in my hotel room, I laid in bed and thought: this isn’t just about me, and this isn’t just about soccer.

We talk a lot about the pay gap. We talk about how we U.S. women overall still earn only 80 cents on the dollar compared to men, and black women make only 63 cents, while Latinas make 54 cents. What we need to talk about more is the aggregate and compounding effects of the pay gap on women’s lives. Over time, the pay gap means women are able to invest less and save less so they have to work longer. When we talk about what the pay gap costs us, let's be clear. It costs us our very lives.

And it hit me that I’d spent most of my time during my career the same way I'd spent my time on that ESPYs stage. Just feeling grateful. Grateful to be one of the only women to have a seat at the table. I was so grateful to receive any respect at all for myself that I often missed opportunities to demand equality for all of us.

But as you know, women of Barnard—CHANGE. IS. HERE.

Women have learned that we can be grateful for what we have while also demanding what we deserve.

Like all little girls, I was taught to be grateful. I was taught to keep my head down, stay on the path, and get my job done. I was freaking Little Red Riding Hood.

You know the fairy tale: It’s just one iteration of the warning stories girls are told the world over. Little Red Riding Hood heads off through the woods and is given strict instructions: Stay on the path. Don’t talk to anybody. Keep your head down hidden underneath your Handmaid’s Tale cape.

And she does… at first. But then she dares to get a little curious and she ventures off the path. That’s of course when she encounters the Big Bad Wolf and all hell breaks loose. The message is clear: Don’t be curious, don’t make trouble, don’t say too much or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN.

I stayed on the path out of fear, not of being eaten by a wolf, but of being cut, being benched, losing my paycheck.

If I could go back and tell my younger self one thing it would be this:

“Abby, you were never Little Red Riding Hood; you were always the wolf.”

So when I was entrusted with the honor of speaking here today, I decided that the most important thing for me to say to you is this:

BARNARD WOMEN—CLASS OF 2018—WE. ARE. THE. WOLVES.

In 1995, around the year of your birth, wolves were re-introduced into Yellowstone National Park after being absent for seventy years.

In those years, the number of deer had skyrocketed because they were unchallenged, alone at the top of the food chain. They grazed away and reduced the vegetation, so much that the river banks were eroding.

Once the wolves arrived, they thinned out the deer through hunting. But more significantly, their presence changed the behavior of the deer. Wisely, the deer started avoiding the valleys, and the vegetation in those places regenerated. Trees quintupled in just six years. Birds and beavers started moving in. The river dams the beavers built provided habitats for otters and ducks and fish. The animal ecosystem regenerated. But that wasn’t all. The rivers actually changed as well. The plant regeneration stabilized the river banks so they stopped collapsing. The rivers steadied—all because of the wolves’ presence.

See what happened here?

The wolves, who were feared as a threat to the system, turned out to be its salvation.

Barnard women, are you picking up what I’m laying down here?

Women are feared as a threat to our system—and we will also be our society’s salvation.

Our landscape is overrun with archaic ways of thinking about women, about people of color, about the “other,” about the rich and the poor, about the the powerful and the powerless—and these ways of thinking are destroying us.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

We will not Little Red Riding Hood our way through life. We will unite our pack, storm the valley together and change the whole bloody system.

Throughout my life, my pack has been my team.

Teams need a unifying structure, and the best way to create one collective heartbeat is to establish rules for your team to live by. It doesn’t matter what specific page you’re all on, just as long as you’re all on the same one.

Here are four rules I’ve used to unite my pack and lead them to gold.

Rule One: MAKE FAILURE YOUR FUEL

Here’s something the best athletes understand, but seems like a hard concept for non-athletes to grasp. Non-athletes don’t know what to do with the gift of failure. So they hide it, pretend it never happened, reject it outright—and they end up wasting it.

Listen: Failure is not something to be ashamed of, it's something to be POWERED by. Failure is the highest octane fuel your life can run on. You gotta learn to make failure your fuel.

When I was on the Youth National Team, only dreaming of playing alongside Mia Hamm. You know her? Good. I had the opportunity to visit the National Team’s locker room. The thing that struck me most wasn’t my heroes' grass-stained cleats or their names and numbers hanging above their lockers—it was a picture. It was a picture that someone had taped next to the door so that It would be the last thing every player saw before she headed out to the training pitch.

You might guess it was a picture of their last big win, of them standing on a podium accepting gold medals—but it wasn’t. It was a picture of their longtime rival—the Norwegian national team—celebrating after having just beaten the USA in the 1995 World Cup.

In that locker room, I learned that in order to become my very best—on the pitch and off—I’d need to spend my life letting the feelings and lessons of failure transform into my power. Failure is fuel. Fuel is power.

Women, listen to me. We must embrace failure as our fuel instead of accepting it as our destruction.

As Michelle Obama recently said: "I wish that girls could fail as well as men do and be okay. Because let me tell you watching men fail up—it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating to see men blow it and win. And we hold ourselves to these crazy, crazy standards."

Wolf Pack: Fail up. Blow it, and win. 

Rule Two: LEAD FROM THE BENCH

Imagine this: You’ve scored more goals than any human being on the planet—female or male. You’ve co-captained and led Team USA in almost every category for the past decade. And you and your coach sit down and decide together that you won’t be a starter in your last World Cup for Team USA.

So… that sucked.

You’ll feel benched sometimes, too. You’ll be passed over for the promotion, taken off the project—you might even find yourself holding a baby instead of a briefcase—watching your colleagues “get ahead.”

Here’s what’s important. You are allowed to be disappointed when it feels like life’s benched you. What you aren’t allowed to do is miss your opportunity to lead from the bench.

During that last World Cup, my teammates told me that my presence, my support, my vocal and relentless belief in them from the bench is what gave them the confidence they needed to win us that championship.

If you’re not a leader on the bench, don’t call yourself a leader on the field. You’re either a leader everywhere or nowhere.

And by the way: the fiercest leading I’ve ever seen has been done between mother and child. Parenting is no bench. It just might be the big game.

Wolf Pack: Wherever you’re put, lead from there.

Rule Three: CHAMPION EACH OTHER

During every 90-minute soccer match there are a few magical moments when the ball actually hits the back of the net and a goal is scored. When this happens, it means that everything has come together perfectly—the perfect pass, the perfectly timed run, every player in the right place at exactly the right time: all of this culminating in a moment in which one player scores that goal.

What happens next on the field is what transforms a bunch of individual women into a team. Teammates from all over the field rush toward the goal scorer. It appears that we’re celebrating her: but what we’re REALLY celebrating is every player, every coach, every practice, every sprint, every doubt, and every failure that this one single goal represents.

You will not always be the goal scorer. And when you are not—you better be rushing toward her.

Women must champion each other. This can be difficult for us. Women have been pitted against each other since the beginning of time for that one seat at the table. Scarcity has been planted inside of us and among us. This scarcity is not our fault. But it is our problem. And it is within our power to create abundance for women where scarcity used to live.

As you go out into the world: Amplify each others’ voices. Demand seats for women, people of color and all marginalized people at every table where decisions are made. Call out each other’s wins and just like we do on the field: claim the success of one woman, as a collective success for all women.

Joy. Success. Power. These are not pies where a bigger slice for her means a smaller slice for you. These are infinite. In any revolution, the way to make something true starts with believing it is. Let’s claim infinite joy, success, and power—together.

Wolf Pack: Her Victory is your Victory. Celebrate it.

Rule Four: DEMAND THE BALL

When I was a teenager, I was lucky enough to play with one of my heroes, Michelle Akers. She needed a place to train since there was not yet a women’s professional league. Michelle was tall like I am, built like I’d be built, and the most courageous soccer player I’d ever seen play. She personified every one of my dreams.

We were playing a small sided scrimmage—5 against 5. We were eighteen-year-olds and she was—Michelle Akers—a chiseled, thirty-year-old powerhouse. For the first three quarters of the game, she was taking it easy on us, coaching us, teaching us about spacing, timing and the tactics of the game.

By the fourth quarter, she realized that because of all of this coaching, her team was losing by three goals. In that moment, a light switched on inside of her.

She ran back to her own goalkeeper, stood one yard away from her, and screamed:

GIVE. ME. THE. EFFING. BALL.

And the goalkeeper gave her the effing ball.

And she took that ball and she dribbled through our entire effing team and she scored.

Now this game was winner’s keepers, so if you scored you got the ball back. So, as soon as Michelle scored, she ran back to her goalie, stood a yard away from her and screamed:

GIVE ME THE BALL.

The keeper did. And again she dribbled though us and scored. And then she did it again. And she took her team to victory.

Michelle Akers knew what her team needed from her at every moment of that game.

Don't forget that until the fourth quarter, leadership had required Michelle to help, support, and teach, but eventually leadership called her to demand the ball.

Women. At this moment in history leadership is calling us to say:

GIVE ME THE EFFING BALL.

GIVE ME THE EFFING JOB.

GIVE ME THE SAME PAY THAT THE GUY NEXT TO ME GETS.

GIVE ME THE PROMOTION.

GIVE ME THE MICROPHONE.

GIVE ME THE OVAL OFFICE.

GIVE ME THE RESPECT I’VE EARNED AND GIVE IT TO MY WOLF PACK TOO.

In closing, I want to leave you with the most important thing I’ve learned since leaving soccer.

When I retired, my sponsor Gatorade surprised me at a meeting with the plan for my send-off commercial. The message was this: Forget Me.

They’d nailed it. They knew I wanted my legacy to be ensuring the future success of the sport I’d dedicated my life to. If my name were forgotten, that would mean that the women who came behind me were breaking records, winning championships and pushing the game to new heights. When I shot that commercial I cried.

A year later, I found myself coaching my ten-year old daughter’s soccer team. I’d coached them all the way to the championship. (#Humblebrag.) One day I was warming the team up, doing a little shooting drill. I was telling them a story about when I retired. And one of those little girls looked up at me and said: “So what did you retire from?” And I looked down at her and I said, “SOCCER.” And she said, “Oh. Who did you play for?” And I said, “THE. UNITED. STATES. OF. AMERICA.” And she said, “Oh. Does that mean you know Alex Morgan?”

Be careful what you wish for, Barnard. They forgot me.

But that’s okay. Being forgotten in my retirement didn’t scare me. What scared me was losing the identity the game gave me. I defined myself as Abby Wambach, soccer player—the one who showed up and gave 100 percent to my team and fought alongside my wolf pack to make a better future for the next generation.

Without soccer who would I be?

A few months after retirement, I began creating my new life. I met Glennon and our three children and I became a wife, a mother, a business owner and an activist.

And you know who I am now? I’m still the same Abby. I still show up and give 100 percent—now to my new pack—and I still fight every day to make a better future for the next generation.

You see, soccer didn’t make me who I was. I brought who I was to soccer, and I get to bring who I am wherever I go. And guess what? So do you.

As you leave here today and everyday going forward: Don’t just ask yourself, “What do I want to do?” Ask yourself: “WHO do I want to be?” Because the most important thing I've learned is that what you do will never define you. Who you are always will.

And who you are—Barnard women—are the wolves.

Surrounding you today is your wolf pack. Look around.

Don’t lose each other.

Leave these sacred grounds united, storm the valleys together, and be our salvation.

"Why We Fight"

Anyone who knows me fairly well knows that one of my favorite television series of all-time is the 2001 HBO television mini-series "Band of Brothers", based largely on the 1992 non-fiction book of the same name by historian Stephen E. Ambrose.  The show itself is a master class in leadership, and it focuses largely on the soldiers of "Easy" Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division.  One of the later episodes in the series, episode number 9 is entitled "Why We Fight," in which the men of "Easy" enter Germany for the first time and liberate a concentration camp.  As they witness both the surviving prisoners who are obviously emaciated and starving, as well as the horrifying victims of Hitler's mass extermination program, they begin to appreciate the reasons why they have been through the last several months fighting to liberate Europe.  It's a particularly poignant and moving episode.

As we celebrate National Doctor's Day today, March 30th, I am reminded of what we have all been through in the last year ("This year especially, Happy Doctor's Day").  The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, but I do think that it is fair to say that we have come a long, long way in the last 12 months or so.  Our public health efforts (wearing a face mask, washing your hands, and social distancing) have been incredibly effective at preventing the spread of this disease.  We now have several vaccines that have shown to be incredibly effective at significantly reducing the risk of COVID-19-related hospitalizations and death, and there are now a number of studies suggesting that these vaccines may be effective at lowering the risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.  Finally, we now know a lot more about how to effectively treat patients with COVID-19, thereby preventing the serious complications that have been associated with this illness.  It's a time to celebrate, but it's also a time to maintain vigilance.  We are certainly not done yet, but I think it is safe to say that we are finally starting to win the war against this disease, thanks in large part to the incredible efforts of a number of physicians, scientists, nurses, and public health experts.  

I am also reminded today about the incredible heroism of our nation's health care providers.  They have been literally on the front lines of this pandemic since day one.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of today, 454,627 health care workers in the United States have tested positive for COVID-19 and 1,509 health care workers have died in the line of duty.  One could argue that this year has been the "Year of the Health Care Worker", and actually the World Health Organization did make that formal declaration earlier this year.  I am thankful for all of the providers and staff at my own institution, but I am particularly thankful for our physicians.  I am honored to be a member of this great profession.

Today, as I thank about Doctor's Day, I can't help but think about why I chose to become a physician in the first place.  There was a movie about medical school in 1989 starring Matthew Modine called "Gross Anatomy" - I remember it vividly, as I was in the process of applying to medical school at the time.  Matthew Modine's character, Joe Slovak, is asked during an interview why he wants to go to medical school.  He answers, "That's easy, I want to help people."  While his answer sounds cliched (and it is probably the most common answer to the question), it really is true.  Most of us went to medical school to "help people."  I certainly did.

So bringing everything back to my opening paragraph, for most of us physicians, this - the COVID-19 pandemic - is "Why we fight."  Perhaps it is destiny, or fate, or even as some would claim, just rotten luck.  We are here at this moment, at this point in history, to help people by fighting COVID-19.  History will remember what the world's physicians, scientists, nurses, and health care workers did this past year.  And while today is Doctor's Day, a time to celebrate physicians around the world, it is also a day to reflect and celebrate what all of us in the health care profession have done and continue to do.

Happy Doctor's Day to all of my fellow physician colleagues around the world.  May God bless you and keep you all safe.  Thank you for what you do every day.

"Change is the law of life"

My wife and I were driving around yesterday and passed a store with a large sign out front saying, "Family Video Store."  We were both surprised at first, until we noticed that the store was empty and looked like it had been abandoned long ago.  It's amazing how the entertainment industry has changed in the last several years.  Video stores are a thing of the past.  I can't even remember the last time I watched a movie or show using a video cassette it was so long ago.  I do remember watching a couple of episodes of "Game of Thrones" last year on my daughter's old portable DVD player, but that was out of desperation during the middle of the pandemic when I didn't have a television (long story).  

I am starting to wonder if I will ever watch cable television again.  We've become so used to binge watching shows or movies on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu.  The pandemic has certainly accelerated some of these changes, but having witnessed the relatively rapid ascent and decline of the home video rental industry, I suspect that these changes would have happened anway.  

President John F. Kennedy once said that "Change is the law of life."  He was right.  We are surrounded by constant, perpetual change.  If there is any fundamental law to the universe, Kennedy perhaps stated it best.

The home video industry is a really good example of the power of incremental change.  We rarely notice small, incremental changes, but they compound over time in such a way that, before you even know it, you can no longer recognize the world around you.  But here is the key point.  We can use this power of incremental change to our own advantage.  The cosmic power of the universe is within our grasp!

Leverage the power of incremental change to achieve your personal and professional goals.  For example, let's say that you've always wanted to run a marathon.  Even if you've never really been a runner, you can still achieve that goal.  The trick is to start small - maybe go out and run a half mile or mile as a start.  Every week, add a little more distance.  The key is to keep changing the mileage every week.  

Think about it this way - what if we tried to be just 1% better every week?  It really doesn't matter what we are trying to be better at, but we have to be just a little better each week.  Compounded over time, if we improve by just a little every week, at the end of the year we will have made significant progress.  Don't believe me?  Check out the math below.

The law of percentages tells us that if we increase something by 1%, we need to multiply that something by 1.01, right?  So for example, say we have 10 dollars in our wallet.  If we wanted to know what a 1% increase in our money would be, we multiple:  10 x 1.01 = 10.10.  Got it?

So, back to our original example of improving something by just 1% every week.  If we do that every week for a year, we multiply by 1.01 52 times to find out how much we've improved over the course of the whole year:  1.01^52 = 1.68.  In other words, by improving by just 1% every week, we will have improved by 168% over the course of the whole year!

Cameron Readman, writing on "The Power of Incremental Change" also warns us that the opposite is also true.  If we get worse by just 1% every week, the difference at the end of the year will be huge!  Again, remembering our math from middle school, in order to calculate a 1% decrease in something, we multiply it by 0.99.  So again, getting worse by 1% every week means that we multiply by 0.99 52 times:  0.99^52 = 0.59, or 59%.  Small changes compounded over time lead to really large, dramatic changes.

Change is the law of life.  We can take advantage of the power of incremental change, or we can let it be our master.  The choice is ours in the end.

Thought experiment

Let's run a quick thought experiment.  I promise it won't take very long - just watch this trailer for the 2003 American comedy film, "It's a Guy Thing" starring Julia Stiles, Selma Blair, and Jason Lee.  If you've seen the movie, just skip the trailer and read on.

You've just watched a 2:21 movie trailer clip of a movie that is 1 hour and 41 minutes long.  Now tell me exactly what happens in the movie.  Describe Selma Blair's character - her career, her personality, and whatever else comes to mind.  Now do the same for Julia Stiles' character.  What about the character played by Jason Lee.  Who gets the guy in the end?

I would be willing to bet that your answers are all very similar.  I've run this thought experiment for the past several years, and I usually get the same, consistent answers.  Here is how most of my test subjects have described the movie.

Selma Blair plays a rather stuck-up, prudish character.  She's wealthy, and she's probably a lawyer.  Julia Stiles, on the other hand, is happy, go lucky, and a little scatterbrained.  She bounces around from job to job, and she really doesn't know what she is going to do with her life.  Finally, Jason Lee's character isn't sure what he wants in life either.  He's probably a little introverted, and while he likes to have fun, he rarely if ever takes risks.  Most of you say that Jason Lee's character ends up with Julia Stiles' character.  

To this day, I've never seen this movie.  I actually have no idea what happens in the movie, nor do I know if any of the character descriptions above are correct.  But again, the results of my thought experiment have been fairly consistent over the years.  Why?

Our brains are really quite remarkable!  Whenever there is missing information, our brains will fill in the gaps.  The Israeli psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics and author of "Thinking, Fast and Slow" would call this System 1 thinking (as opposed to System 2 thinking).  We use System 1 thinking whenever we need to make quick decisions based on limited information.  Here, our brain's conserve limited resources to make decisions almost automatically and based on instinct.  System 1 thinking is fast and efficient, but it is also prone to bias.  Conversely, System 2 thinking is more analytical and based on reason.  It is slower and uses more mental energy.

We used our System 1 to fill in the gaps.  We completed the story using information from other similar movies that we may have seen (as it turns out, the plot elements of most romcoms are fairly similar).  Stereotype and implicit bias also likely played a role here.  Our brains constructed a complete story based on a short sequence of movie clips lasting just over two minutes.  

As it turns out, we use System 1 thinking all the time.  We are therefore subject to biases and stereotypes, and we often make mistakes.  As my one of my former bosses said, "Whenever there are two people involved, there's always three versions of the story, only one of which is 100% true."  There are times when System 1 thinking is appropriate.  But as leaders, there are other times when we would be better served by using System 2 thinking.  

What is your morning cup of Joe?

I've written a few blog posts about morning routines in the past (see "Today, I was a doofus...maybe I should use a checklist?" and more recently, "Feierabend").  As it turns out, the so-called morning routine is incredibly important, perhaps moreso than I even thought!  

I recently came across an article in the journal Personnel Psychology entitled, "Stumbling out of the gate: The energy-based implications of morning routine disruption."  It's really an interesting study, even if it's a bit lengthy (most cognitive psychology studies are longer than what we typically see in the biomedical science literature).  The investigators base their set of hypotheses on something called cognitive energetics theory (CET), which essentially says that we all have a limited amount of cognitive energy which we draw upon to achieve our goals - think of it as the energy of motivation.  Morning routines allow us to go through the motions at the beginning of our day without expending any of this cognitive energy.  The routine is automatic - we rarely, if ever, have to think about what we are doing.  When our morning routine is disrupted, we have to utilize these limited stores of cognitive energy, thereby depleting this crucial resource for tasks that we do later in the day.  In other words, our ability to perform our tasks at work require a certain amount of cognitive energy.  If we use this cognitive energy to deal with a disruption in our usual morning routine, we will not be successful in completing our work.

I see a lot of parallels here with the infamous radish experiment and the Stanford marshmallow experiments.  These experiments also suggested that we have a limited pool of cognitive energy (in this context, referred to as ego depletion).  In these classic experiments, cognitive energy was used to resist temptations (a plate of chocolate chip cookies or marshmallows, respectively). Once that finite source of energy was exhausted, subjects in the studies could no longer resist temptation.

Let's turn away from radishes and marshmallows and head back to our discussion on the morning routine.  The aforementioned studies found that when workers experienced a disruption in their normal routine (in one set of experiments, having the all-important morning cup of coffee and in the second set of experiments, more in-depth but varied routines, such as walking the dog or exercising), they were less calm (in other words, they experienced a greater degree of stress at work) and more likely to be less engaged at work.  Together, greater stress and less engagement resulted in a failure to complete their job responsibilities at work.  

Collectively, these experiments provide convincing (at least in my opinion) evidence that disrupting our morning routine is incredibly counterproductive!  As it turns out, that morning cup of coffee is really important.  It's not simply an effect of the caffeine in the coffee either - the follow-up set of studies support the notion that any routine is important, whether it's walking the dog, watching the morning news on television, reading the newspaper, or exercising.  

What is your normal routine in the morning?  Stated another way, what is your "morning cup of Joe?"  Whatever it is, these studies suggest that you should continue to maintain this routine in order have a successful day at work!    

 

March Madness

It certainly feels like Spring again!  The last couple of days marked the return of the NCAA Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments.  Both the tournaments were cancelled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  As of this morning, at least the men's tournament has lived up to the tagline, "March Madness" due to the number of upsets that have already occurred.  It feels great to have a bit of normalcy once again, even if it does mean that Buckeye, Boilermaker, Aztec, Volunteer, Tiger, Longhorn, Cavalier, Husky, and Cougar fans are going to have to wait until next year!

But for all of the hope and excitement about things starting to feel normal again, there is still an urgent need for caution.  Just this morning, I read that the Mayor of Miami Beach declared a state of emergency and set an 8 PM curfew due to the number of maskless Spring Breakers who were out and about.  We are starting to see an increase in COVID-19 cases in certain parts of the country.  As an example, cases have increased by 53%  during the past week in Michigan.  While we can celebrate that vaccination rates are finally starting to increase (there are now more Americans who are vaccinated than there are COVID cases), now is not the time to let up.  We need to continue to wear our masks in public, maintain social distancing, and continue to wash our hands!  

We recently passed the infamous "Ides of March" (March 15th), the notorious day when the Roman emperor, Julius Caesar, was assassinated in 44 BC.  It seems appropriate, therefore, to end with a quote from Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar.  "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves..."  Our fate is not pre-ordained.  If we do not beat the COVID-19 virus, the fault will be ours alone.

"Better a live donkey than a dead lion..."

I have found significant value in studying the history of what the systems scientist, Barry A. Turner, called man-made disasters.  Man-made disasters are distinguished from natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, etc) in that they are (of course) "man-made."  In other words, these accidents generally result from human error.  As I have emphasized in previous posts ("Past is Prologue", "Study the Past", and "...all of this has happened before"), we can learn a lot by studying the experiences of how other leaders in the past have handled crises and how high reliability organizations (HROs) have prevented catastrophic accidents.  

With this in mind, our hospital's patient safety team and I have been holding a series of sessions in which we study famous catastrophes, such as the Space Shuttle Challenger accident or the BP Deepwater Horizon accident.  I am doing some background research to prepare for an upcoming case study on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.  There were two commercial mountaineering expeditions involved in this man-made disaster.  Basically, teams have to depart from the last outpost, Camp IV, at around midnight in order to make the summit of Mount Everest in time to turn around and return safely before nightfall.  One of the cardinal rules is that if climbers haven't reached the summit by 2 PM, they should turn around.  If they don't turn around, they run the risk of running into late afternoon storms and darkness.  They also run the risk of running short on their oxygen supply, a necessity at an altitude of just over 29,000 feet.  Unfortunately, on this particular expedition, a number of climbers (including the two expedition leaders) chose to ignore this cardinal rule and were caught in a blizzard on the top of the mountain.  Eight climbers died while trying to descend back to Camp IV.

There is a lot to unpack here.  Compare and contrast the experience in 1996 with the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton's Nimrod expedition of 1907-1909.  The goal of this expedition (the first of Shackleton's three expeditions to Antarctica) was to be the first to reach the South Pole.  Of course, that objective was not met (the first expedition to reach the South Pole was an expedition led by the Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen  on December 14, 1911).  Shackleton and his team came within approximately 100 miles of the South Pole before turning around to return safely home.  As Shackleton said, "We have shot our bolt."  

Rather than seeing the Nimrod expedition as a failure, Shackleton viewed the expedition as a success.  Only half of the expedition's goal was to reach the South Pole.  The other half of the goal was to actually make it back home alive.  And as a matter of fact, Shackleton and his team barely succeeded at the goal.  Shackleton returned to England a hero and was knighted shortly thereafter.  He would famously tell his wife, "Better a live donkey than a dead lion" (I actually think he said, "better a live ass" but who really knows).  

The other interesting point here is that the explorer Robert Falcon Scott led the Terra Nova Expedition at around the same time as Shackleton's Nimrod expedition.  Scott and four companions reached the South Pole 34 days after Amundsen and his team had achieved the feat.  However, whereas Amundsen and his team survived the journey back home, Scott and his four companions died of starvation and hypothermia before making it back to England.  In other words, Scott and his team suffered the same fate as the mountaineers of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster.

I think that these four stories (the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, Amundsen's South Pole expedition, Shackelton's Nimrod expedition, and Scott's Terra Nova expedition) make the point fairly clear.  The goal is to reach the mountaintop (or the Pole) AND to make it back alive.  Perhaps Scott and the mountaineers on Everest succumbed to hubris or they just plain old made a poor decision.  Unfortunately, they died as a result.  Setting your sights on a stretch goal is fine, but only if it doesn’t jeopardize the rest of the things that are important.  Sometimes, failing to achieve the goal is okay.  Sometimes, it's better to fail and live, than to succeed and die.  Sometimes, it's better to be a live donkey than a dead lion.

"Time for Spring?"

With my last post ("Castles and Bullet Holes"), I introduced the concept of survivorship bias and told the story of the mathematician Abraham Wald and the Missing Bullet Holes.  Today, I wanted to talk about another type of cognitive bias, starting again with another question.  Have you ever noticed that during the Fall season, as the temperature gets colder, we tend to dress more warmly?  It makes sense, right?  When the temperature drops from into the 50's on the Fahrenheit scale, we break out our sweatshirts, jackets, and long-sleeve shirts.  Okay, now think about what happens in the Spring.  Those same temperatures (50's) bring out our shorts and T-shirts!    

During the Fall season, we think that 50 degrees is cold, but when it comes to the Spring, 50 degrees is short weather (see a couple of articles from the Washington Post and New York Times here and here)!  The explanation seems to be most consistent with something called "framing effect".  When we are used to warmer weather, a drop down into the 50's seems really cold.  However, after we've experienced temperatures in the 20's for a few months, 50 degree temperatures seem like the tropics.    

Our frame of reference determines how we perceive change.  I offer that as a special warning for leaders today.  We just passed the one-year-anniversary this past week from when the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 an official pandemic.  Last year, things changed quite abruptly with lockdowns, remote working, and social distancing.  Now, just over a year later, there's finally hope that things will return back to normal.  We will want to change back just as quickly.  It's like we've been used to wearing winter clothes for so long, and the temperature has gotten just a little warmer.  Our natural inclination will be to jump back into our old routines - metaphorically putting on our shorts and T-shirts, if you will.  But the best available scientific evidence tells us that we shouldn't - we should be more deliberate in our pace of change this time around.  

The SARS-CoV-2 vaccine roll-out is going much better now.  However, we still have a ways to go before we achieve the right level of herd immunity.  So for now, even if you are one of the fortunate ones to have received the vaccine, don't put away your mask just yet.  We've come this far, let's get to the finish line.  Keep those shorts and T-shirts in the closet for just a little while longer.

Castles and Bullet Holes

I want to conduct a quick thought experiment.  Please indulge me for a moment.  Close your eyes and picture in your mind a European Medieval castle.  Now describe it for me out loud (and pretend I can actually listen).  How did you describe it?  Chances are that you told me that the castle was made out of stone.  Your castle probably had towers and parapets, and there's a good chance that it had a drawbridge and a moat too.  Here's the interesting plot twist.  The kind of castle that you described was actually not very common during the Middle Ages.  As a matter of fact, most castles were made out of wood!

The so-called Motte-and-bailey castle is a fortification consisting of a wood (most commonly) or stone structure built on a raised area of ground (the motte), accompanied by a walled courtyard (the bailey) and surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade.  They were first built in the 10th century and were first introduced to England and Wales following the Norman invasion of 1066.  Most of the castles that were built in the Middle Ages have not survived to the present day.  Only the ones made out of stone have survived.  As such, when we think of castles today, we almost always think of the ones built out of stone.  It's a cognitive bias known as survivorship bias, a form of selection bias in which we tend to concentrate on the people or things that made it past some selection process (e.g. the stone castles) and overlook those that did not (e.g. the wooden castles).

There's another well-known example of survivorship bias from World War II.  Abraham Wald was a mathematician working at Columbia University during World War II.  Wald and his team of mathematicians were trying to determine how best to prevent U.S. airplanes from being shot down.  Engineers could add steel armor plates to the airplanes to protect the pilot and crew and other vital areas of the plane, but the problem was that steel armor plates also made the airplanes heavier and slower to fly.  Wald's team was tasked with figuring out where to strategically place the armor plates so as to keep the planes from getting shot down without sacrificing speed, which clearly was also important.

Wald's team examined the damage done to all of the airplanes that returned at the end of a mission.  These airplanes were often riddled with bullet holes, so Wald's team determined where the bullet holes were concentrated the most.  Here is what they found (the plane's location is on the left, the concentration of bullet holes, in terms of the number of holes per square foot, is on the right):

Engine                    1.11

Fuselage                 1.73

Fuel system            1.55

Rest of the plane    1.80

The team reviewed data that looked something like this:

At first glance, the military engineers recognized an opportunity to maximize protection without sacrificing speed, thinking that they could get the same protection with less armor if the armor was concentrated on the places with the greatest need, i.e. where the planes were getting hit the most.  Abraham Wald disagreed.  He told the military engineers that the armor plates don't go where the bullets are but where they are not.  He recognized that the military engineers were making a mistake due to survivorship bias.  Rather than focusing on the actual bullet holes, Wald suggested that it was the missing bullet holes that were most important.

It didn't make sense to Wald that the bullet holes would be concentrated in different parts of the plane.  They should be distributed evenly.  So where were the missing bullet holes (the ones that should have been on the engine casing if the damage had been spread equally all over the plane)?  Wald suggested that the missing bullet holes were on the missing planes - the ones that didn't make it back. The reason planes were coming back with fewer hits to the engine is that those were the planes that didn't make it back.  The large number of planes returning to base with most of the bullet holes concentrated on the fuselage was really solid evidence that hits to the fuselage weren't likely to cause the plane to crash.  Hits to the fuselage could therefore be tolerated.  In other words, the armor plates go where the bullet holes are not - on the engine casing!

There are many more examples of survivorship bias.  We should recognize and remember that the survivorship bias is a statistical artifact - in other words, we should ignore it.  The next time someone tries to imply that a correlation between an observation and an outcome implies causality, we should look for evidence of the survivorship bias.  Chances are that we will find it.  And then we will remember about castles and bullet holes.  

"I think I literally have a better understanding of who killed Kennedy than what is offside."

Okay, thanks once again to COVID-19, my wife and I binge-watched another television series this past week!  We just happened to be watching the Golden Globes for a brief hot minute last weekend when actor Jason Sudeikis won the Golden Globe Award for Lead Actor in a Comedy or Musical Series.  We decided to give the show a watch, and exactly one week later, we are eagerly anticipating the hopeful release of season two!

Sudeikis plays the lead role in the Apple TV + television series, Ted Lasso.  Lasso is an American football coach (who recently won the Division II NCAA College Football National Championship for the Wichita State Shockers) who is hired to coach for AFC Richmond, an English Premier League football team.  The key point here is that while he was a successful coach of American football, he knows absolutely nothing about what those of us in the United States call soccer (and what everyone else in the world calls football).  The idea for the series came out of a series of television promos for NBC Sports' coverage of the English Premier League.

What's interesting to me is that Lasso actually exhibits several key characteristics of great leadership.  Now I will admit, there is probably zero chance that an American football coach who knows nothing about soccer could be successful in the English Premier League.  At the end of the day, domain-specific or technical expertise is fairly important.  However, just as important to the success of any leader are the soft skills of leadership.  I have commented on this topic a few times in the past (see, for example, "Cool Runnings" or "My shoes are brown and those are wings of gold on my chest").  

It's actually a question that comes up a lot.  For example, Amanda Goodall and colleagues published results that suggest that the best hospitals are managed by doctors.  Goodall has also published a study ("Why do leaders matter? A study of expert knowledge in a superstar setting") that suggested that NBA teams who are coached by former NBA players are more successful than the ones who are not coached by former players.  More importantly, Goodall and her colleagues also found that NBA teams who are coached by former NBA All-Stars are particularly successful.  Dr. Goodall has also published the results of a study ("Do economics departments improve after they appoint a top scholar as chairperson?") suggesting that academic departments (in this case, economics departments) do better when the chair of the department is a successful academician (in terms of research productivity, as measured by grant funding and number of publications).  Collectively, these studies, which in fact are only a few examples (there are several more examples here), strongly advocate that technical expertise is very important for success in a leadership position.  In other words, Dr. Goodall and her colleagues would argue that Ted Lasso would be a terrible football coach!

So does this mean that someone without technical expertise is doomed to fail?  As it turns out, not necessarily.  Michael Roberto, a former faculty member at the Harvard Business School and currently at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island would argue that technical expertise is not as important.  In a 2017 blog post ("Are technical experts better leaders?") argued that most NBA championships have been won either by non-players or players who never made the NBA All-Star team).  He followed that post up with a similar analysis ("Do technical experts make better leaders part 2") conducted with NFL head coaches.  At the time of this analysis, the overwhelming majority of Super Bowls had been won by either coaches who were not superstar players.  As a matter of fact, in a more recent post ("Super Bowl coaches, the curse of expertise, and the importance of perspective taking"), he argues the exact opposite - success as a player may, in fact, lead to failure as a NFL head coach.  

Clearly, this is an argument that is far from over.  Ted Lasso is, after all, a fictional character, so we can't make any definitive conclusions about his success or failure as a soccer coach.  What is important to recognize, however, is that the "soft skills" of leadership are just as important!  If you don't put the needs of your team above your own, you are probably not going to be a successful leader.  One of my favorite scenes in Ted Lasso occurs when one of his players makes a mistake on the field.  Coach Lasso recognizes this moment for what it is - a teaching moment.  He pulls the player aside and asks, "You know what the happiest animal in the world is?  It's a goldfish.  It's got a ten second memory.  Be a goldfish."

Coach Lasso recognizes that there is more to life than football (regardless of what one of his players, Dani Rojas says all the time, "Football is life!").  He tells a reporter, “For me, success is not about the wins and losses. It’s about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.”  By doing that, he is successful in the end.

"Let us speak no more of this..."

I was having a conversation with someone about a concept known as 5:1 feedback, the concept that (1) there is an ideal praise-to-criticism ration and (2) that ratio is 5:1.  I've posted about this concept before (see Gratitude).  Providing feedback well is a critical leadership skill (see also, Real leaders say "thank you" a lot... and Magical Feedback).  But what is so special about 5:1 feedback?  Let me explain by talking about one of my favorite movies, the 1993 film Gettysburg based on Michael Shaara's superb historical novel, The Killer Angels. 

There is a scene about half way through the movie (see "Lee Chews Out Stuart" for the clip).  It's the evening after the second day, July 2 of the three-day battle.  The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee has invaded the North.  General J.E.B. Stuart commands the Confederate cavalry - one could say that he has been gallivanting around "getting his name in the papers" while the Army of Northern Virginia confronts the Union Army of the Potomac at the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg.  There have been multiple casualties on both sides, but the battle has not gone well for the Confederates.  It's important to realize that during the Civil War, the cavalry would protect the infantry's flanks and provide intelligence on the whereabouts of the enemy.  Many historians feel that Stuart did not fulfill his responsibilities, which forced the Confederates to fight a battle that Lee would rather have not fought.  

During the scene, General Lee provides a textbook example of outstanding feedback.  He first gives the facts, explaining what Stuart's mission was and why he did not fulfill that mission.  He tells Stuart, "You sir, with your cavalry, are the eyes of this army.  Without your cavalry, we are made blind.  That has already happened once.  It must never, never happen again."

Stuart responds by trying to offer General Lee his sword (basically resigning his commission).  Lee, of course refuses.  He then compliments General Stuart, "You must take what I have told you and learn from it as a man does.  There has been a mistake.  It will not happen again.  I know your quality.  You are one of the finest cavalry officers I have ever known, and your service to this army has been invaluable.  Now, let us speak no more of this.  The matter is concluded.  Good night General."

Criticism followed immediately by praise.  Lee knew that Stuart had made a mistake.  He wanted to make sure that Stuart understood that mistake, but he also wanted him to learn from it.  Lee also knew that Stuart was a very good officer, and he couldn't afford to lose another officer.  So he refused his resignation, he made sure that he softened the blow, and he made his point.  And then he moved on, "The matter is concluded."

It is absolutely one of my favorite scenes in the movie, and it provides a textbook lesson in leadership.  Discipline (which, incidentally, comes from the Latin word discipulus meaning pupil, in other words, to teach or instruct) is about providing positive feedback (i.e. praise).  We should recognize, first and foremost, that all humans make mistakes.  We shouldn't punish individuals for making a mistake - but we should teach them what to do the next time in order to prevent that same mistake from happening again.  Discipline also requires that we hold individuals accountable for bad behavior.  

The whole purpose of 5:1 feedback is to make sure that we have the kind of "just culture" that allows our teams to learn from their mistakes and be recognized when they are doing a good job.  It also allows leaders to correct bad behavior (for example, if someone does not follow standard operating procedures or willfully does something that is widely accepted, such as washing their hands before seeing a patient).  If we are providing praise, it's really difficult to provide criticism.  Five-to-one feedback establishes the kind of psychological safety that we need to build a just culture.

Now, "let us speak no more of this.  The matter is concluded."

"Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein."

History is riddled with irony.  Take, for example, the story of the English rock band, The Beatles and the story of how they first "made it big."  The story begins with their long-time manager, Brian Epstein, who tried to set up an audition for his artists with a number of record companies in London in December, 1961.  After multiple rejections, he secured an audition with Decca record executive Mike Smith on New Year's Day, 1962.  The Beatles (which at that time consisted of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Pete Best) performed and recorded 15 songs, most of which they had performed in various clubs over the years.  However, the set list also included 3 original Lennon-McCartney tunes.  Decca would ultimately reject the Beatles - one executive (reportedly Dick Rowe, even though he denied it until his dying day) told their manager, "Guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein."

If you listen to The Beatles Anthology Volume 1, Epstein goes on to tell how he took the audition tapes over to EMI records, where he met producer George Martin, "the man who would produce 20 number one hits by my artists."  Imagine being the individual who said "no" to the Beatles.  It's not exactly known for sure who ultimately rejected the Beatles - it could have been either Mike Smith, Dick Rowe, or producer Tony Meehan, though most contemporary sources suggest it was Rowe.  Which group did Decca records choose instead? The group was called Brian Poole and the Tremeloes (you may have heard their hit, "Do you love me?" which appeared in the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing).  I guess things could have turned out worse - still, there is no comparison between the Tremeloes and the Beatles!

There are other examples in the sports and entertainment world.  Can you imagine missing out on professional basketball player, Michael Jordan, one of the greatest players to ever play the game?  He was drafted third, after Hakeem Olajuwon (drafted number 1 overall by the Houston Rockets) and Sam Bowie (drafted second by the Portland Trailblazers).  Olajuwon had a Hall of Fame career too, but Sam Bowie was plagued by injuries throughout his 10 year career in the NBA and never led his team to a championship.  The Trailblazers already had Clyde Drexler and weren't interested in another guard.

Seven-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Tom Brady was drafted in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft.  There were 198 other players that were drafted ahead of him!  I don't know for certain, but there's a good chance that he's outlasted every single one of them, and no one has come close to matching any of his records or championship wins.  

These are just a few examples.  I haven't even talked about some of history's biggest missed opportunities in the business world,  For example, there is the story of how Kodak had an opportunity early on to invest in digital cameras (one of Kodak's own engineers, Steven Sasson, actually came up with the idea - Kodak declined because they felt it would threaten traditional film).  There's also the story of how billionaire Ross Perot had a chance to buy Microsoft in 1979 for between $40 million to $60 million.  The social media company MySpace had an opportunity to purchase Facebook, and the home video store chain Blockbuster could have purchased Netflix and declined to do so.  As I stated at the beginning, history is indeed riddled with irony.  And as it turns out, people throughout history have a lot to say about missed opportunities.

First, when it comes to making a bet on the future, it's a gamble.  It's difficult to predict the future and how things will eventually turn out.  Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair from 1992 until 2017, once said, "History is nothing if not an epic tale of missed opportunities."  And, at times, opportunities are staring us right in the face and we fail to recognize them.  Mark Twain said, "I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one."  

Second, and perhaps more importantly, these examples should tell us that if we are faced with an opportunity, we should carefully consider it.  "Opportunities of a life-time" don't come often for a reason.  There's a really good chance that if we don't take advantage of an opportunity, someone else will do so.  As Andy Rooney said, "...opportunities are never lost; someone will take the ones you miss."

Third, we shouldn't be afraid that taking advantage of an opportunity will bring change.  Opportunities require investment of time, energy, and resources.  Thomas Edison said, "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."  

Finally, don't be afraid if you take advantage of an opportunity and find out it was the wrong decision.  We tend to be too worried about failure.  Failure can be costly for sure, but we only learn when we fail.  

Just as important, if you fail to take advantage of an opportunity, learn from that and move on.  The architect I.M. Pei said, "Stop worrying about missed opportunities and start looking for new ones."  Abraham Lincoln said, "I don't really have any regrets because if I choose not to do something there is usually a very good reason.  Once I've made the decision, I don't view it as a missed opportunity, just a different path."