The IKEA effect

Today is my 600th blog post!  I have really enjoyed reading and writing about leadership.  Looking back to my very first post (entitled, appropriately enough, First blog post!), I mentioned two goals for starting my own blog.  First, I wanted to write more.  I have always enjoyed writing, and I thought that having my own blog would be a great way to continue to develop and refine my writing skills on a subject that I thoroughly enjoyed.  Second, I wanted a place to collect stories, lessons, articles, and good examples of leadership.  I never thought that I would get to 100 posts (I did start slowly, going almost seven months without a post during the first year), let alone six hundred!  It's truly been a great experience for me, and even if no one outside my own family reads this blog, it's been worth it!

My first post was just an introduction and an explanation for why I was starting my own blog.  My second post introduced a favorite personal strategy on learning about leadership ("What can we learn about leadership from a movie?").  I enjoy watching movies, particularly those movies that have important lessons about leadership (see my post "12 O'Clock High" for a list of some of my personal favorites).  Last year, I watched the famous war movie, "The Bridge Over the River Kwai" starring Sir Alec Guinness and William Holden as two prisoners of war during the Burma Campaign of World War II.  Guiness stars as Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson, the senior British officer at the POW camp, who provides a very interesting case study in leadership.  He is all spit and polish and lives 100% by the book.  

The Allied POW's are forced, at least at first, to build a railroad bridge across the River Kwai (hence the name of the movie).  Ultimately, Nicholson leads his men to build the bridge on time, on budget, and according to specification.  The bridge becomes an object of pride and admiration for the men.  Nicholson seems to forget about the bridge's strategic importance, but William Holden's character, Navy Lieutenant Commander Shears does not.  Shears escapes from the camp and leads a band of commandos to destroy the bridge.  

At one point, Nicholson unbelievably tries to prevent Shears and his team from bombing the bridge.  At the last minute, he comes to his senses, uttering "What have I done?"  He is shot, and as he falls, he detonates the bridge just as a Japanese train is crossing it.  The mission ultimately succeeds.  Why was Nicholson so attached to the bridge?  He was either incredibly stupid or deranged to the point where he tried to save the bridge for the Japanese Army Colonel who ran the POW camp.  Actually, there's a simpler explanation.  The bridge was his creation, or at least he saw it that way.

If you have a chance to read anything by the cognitive psychologist and author, Dan Ariely, please do so.  He's authored a number of books and research papers, and he most recently started writing a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal called "Ask Ariely".  A few years ago, he published the results of a study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology on something he calls, "The IKEA effect".  After reading this study, I suspect that Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson's behavior in The Bridge Over the River Kwai will make a lot more sense.  Ariely and his team conducted four studies in which study subjects were asked to build IKEA boxes, fold Origami, and build Lego sets.  Subjects were consistently willing to pay significantly more money for their own creations than someone else's creation.  

Ariely's "IKEA effect" (so named to honor the Swedish company whose products require assembly) reminds me of another famous study by the cognitive psychologists Daniel Kahneman, Jack Knetsch, and Richard Thaler on something known as the "endowment effect".  In this study, subjects who had been given a coffee mug were offered a chance to trade it for some pens or sell it for a certain amount of money.  The price that subjects were willing to sell their mugs was almost twice as much as the price that they were originally willing to pay for it.  Ariely also demonstrated the endowment effect in another study, in which students were willing to sell four NCAA basketball tournament tickets for twice as much as they would have been willing to pay for them.  In other words, once we own something, we tend to want to hold on to it and are reluctant to part with it.

Okay, now that we've introduced the "IKEA effect" and reviewed the "endowment effect", what's the lesson for leadership?  I will suggest that there are two points to be made here - both have to do with change management.  First, according to the "endowment effect", individuals will want to hang on to the "way that we've always done things around here,"  making any significant process or culture change that more difficult.  Leaders should be cognizant of this fact.  Second, according to the "IKEA effect," we place a greater value on things that we have created or built.  Leaders should absolutely leverage this cognitive tendency when it comes to change management.  Individuals and groups will be more receptive and supportive of change when they have a hand in what, how, and when it happens (more on this in a post next month).  

Perhaps the "IKEA effect" can overcome the "endowment effect" here - remember, at least in the movie "The Bridge Over the River Kwai", the "IKEA effect" was so strong as to overcome patriotism and loyalty to the Allied cause!  At least in my own experience, change is easier to manage when the individuals or groups have at least some input into it.  

As I close this 600th post, I will end, as I frequently do, with a quote.  Going back to one of the main reasons I started this blog - to write - I will leave with a quote by the author Louis L'Amour, "Start writing, no matter what.  The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on."  And one more, from the essayist, Anais Nin, "We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect."  I have enjoyed writing these posts, and I look forward to the next 600 with even greater anticipation.

"Skate to where the puck is going..."

I spent several years of my life in the city of Indianapolis, Indiana.  For those of you who don't know, Indianapolis is actually the state capital, the largest city in the state, and the 16th largest city (by population) in the United States (just behind Charlotte, NC and just ahead of San Francisco, CA).  When I was young, there was only one professional sports team that called Indianapolis home - the Indiana Pacers (the Indianapolis Colts were the Baltimore Colts until 1984).  We also had a World Hockey Association professional hockey team called the Indianapolis Racers from 1974-1978.  I do remember going to a few Racers games at Market Square Arena (which hosted both the Racers and the Pacers), but I will confess that I wasn't a huge hockey fan growing up.

The Racers weren't very good, and they certainly didn't last very long - the World Hockey Association actually folded in 1979, and only four teams (Edmonton Oilers, Quebec Nordiques, Winnipeg Jets, and New England Whalers) joined the older and more well-established National Hockey League.  The Racers had a number of players that went on to have successful NHL careers, including Pat Stapleton, David Keon, Mark Messier, and most famously, Wayne Gretsky.  Gretsky was only seventeen years old when he played for the Racers, his first professional major league hockey team, and he only played eight games for the Racers (there is a rumor that he attended my high school's arch-rivals, Carmel High School while playing for the Racers, but I don't know whether that is true or not).  The Racers were losing money and simply could not afford Gretsky's contract (a seven year contract worth $1.75 million at the time).  Gretsky was traded to the Edmonton Oilers, where he played for most of his career.

Gretsky is widely considered the greatest hockey player of all time (his nickname is "The Great One").  He was never the strongest player or the largest player - he relied instead on unrivaled stamina, intelligence, and game-sense.  When asked why he was so much better than everyone else at hockey, he reportedly once said, "I skate to where the puck is going to be, not to where it has been."  

Gretzky captured nine Hart Trophies as the most valuable player, 10 Art Ross Trophies for the most points scored in a season, two Conn Smythe Trophies as playoff MVP, and five Lester B. Pearson Awards (now called the Ted Lindsay Award) for most outstanding player as judged by his peers. He led the NHL in goal-scoring five times and assists 16 times. He also won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy for sportsmanship and performance five times, and often spoke out against fighting in hockey.  When he retired after the 1999 season, he was immediately inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, and his number (99) was retired league-wide.

While I like Gretzky's quote above and often use it ("Skate to where the puck is going"), what impresses me most was something he said later on.  Hockey fans used to think that Wayne Gretzky had a "sixth sense" or instinct that he was born with.  He disagrees, "It's all practice.  I got it from my Dad.  Nine out of ten people think it's instinct, and it isn't.  Nobody would ever say a doctor learned his profession by instinct; yet in my own way, I've put in almost as much time studying hockey as a medical student puts in studying medicine."  In other words, Gretzky learned to play the game that he loved to play in a way far better than anyone else ever has or likely ever will, by hard work, practice, and a commitment to studying the game.

I've said it over and over again - great leaders are not born, they are made through study, practice, and good old fashioned hard work.  If you want to be a great leader, read and learn about other great leaders.  If you want to be a great leader, practice your craft.  Great leaders critically self-evaluate every leadership decision they make so that they learn from their successes, as well as their mistakes.  Take advantage of every opportunity to get feedback from those who you lead, from your peers, from your mentors, and from the leaders that you yourself follow.  Leadership is a skill that can only be improved through practice, practice, practice.

It is true that great leaders - like great hockey players - skate to where the puck is going.  But what is also true is that they achieve that level of intuition, vision, and perceptivity through hard work, dedication, commitment, and practice.

The real bridge to nowhere...

Several years ago, members of the Alaskan congressional delegation helped secure federal funding for a bridge from Ketchikan, Alaska (the state's southeasternmost major city) to Gravina Island.  At the time, there were only 50 Alaskans who lived on Gravina Island.  So why, do you ask, would anyone propose to build a bridge (with projected costs around $398 million) to an island with a population that small?  The Ketchikan International Airport is also located on Gravina Island.  Before the proposed bridge, passengers would have to travel to Gravina Island to reach home - or the airport - by ferry.  The proposed spending bill encountered significant opposition and became a symbol for so-called "pork barrel" spending.  The "Bridge to Nowhere" even found its way into the 2008 Presidential election campaign, when the Republican nominee for Vice President, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, told a crowd on August 29, 2008,"I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere!"  Interestingly enough, the Alaskan government continued work on the Gravina Island Highway, which would have connected with the proposed bridge, at a cost of over $25 million.  The road has now become known locally as the "road to nowhere."

There is a perhaps less famous "Bridge to Nowhere" that I find more interesting.  There is an old bridge in the city of Choluteca, Honduras that was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1935 and 1937 that was considered one of the greatest works of architecture in all of Honduras.  The bridge was modeled after the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California.  The bridge is part of a major thoroughfare that controls traffic flow from Guatemela to Panama.  At some point in the early 1990's, the Honduran government recognized that a second bridge was necessary to help accomodate the increasing amount of traffic in the city of Choluteca along this major thoroughfare.  The new Choluteca Bridge, known as the "Bridge of Rising Sun" was built by a Japanese construction company beginning in 1996 and was completed in 1998.  

Hurricane Mitch is the second deadliest Atlantic hurricanes on record, causing over 11,000 deaths in 1998, both from the storm itself and the floods that occurred in its aftermath.  Seven thousand people died in Honduras, where much of the flooding occurred.  Aside from the catatrophic number of deaths, the President of Honduras claimed that the storm's damage set the economic development in Honduras back at least fifty years.  The storm wrecked about 35,000 houses and damaged another 50,000, leaving up to 1.5 million people homeless (about 20 percent of the country's population).

The storm and flooding caused over $6 billion in damages across Latin America.  The country of Honduras was hit particularly hard, with just over $2 billion in damages alone, most of which was due to ruined crops and damage to transportation infrastructure.  Many of the roads and bridges across the country were either heavily damaged or destroyed, including the Old Choluteca Bridge above.  However, the new "Bridge of Rising Sun" survived the storm completely intact.  Unfortunately, while the bridge itself was in near perfect condition, the roads on either end of the bridge were completely destroyed.  As a matter of fact, the roads had completely vanished without a trace.  The Choluteca River, which was over 100 meters at the bridge, had carved itself a new channel during the massive flooding caused by the hurricane and completely re-routed itself.  The bridge no longer crossed the river!  Here is a picture of the bridge in the aftermath of the hurricane:

As you can see, the new Choluteca Bridge had truly become a "Bridge to Nowhere."  The bridge has become a perfect metaphor  for dealing with the constantly changing dynamics of the world we live in today.  Admittedly, the fact that the bridge withstood a category V hurricane and a "once in a generation" flood of biblical proportions is an impressive feat of engineering, particularly when so many other bridges and structures collapsed.  Moreover, I would bet that most engineers don't factor in such a rare occurence as a river completely changing its path - it is a completely unexpected kind of event!

High Reliability Organizations are perfectly positioned to manage these rare, unexpected, "Black Swan" kinds of events.  Just consider the title of one of the earliest and by far the best book on High Reliability Organizations HROs) - at least in my opinion - by Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe - Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World.  I have written a number of blog posts in the past on HRO's, so I won't go in too much detail here.  Suffice it to say that HROs are perfectly positioned to deal with "Bridge to Nowhere" kinds of events because they are:

1. Preoccupied with failure

2. Reluctant to simplify

3. Sensitive to operations

4. Committed to resilience

5. Defer to the experts

Organizations may never have to deal with an incident even remotely close to what the city of Choluteca had to deal with following Hurricane Mitch.  Regardless, learning how other organizations have dealt with similar issues, or better yet, adopting many of the principles that these organizations followed, will help position your organization to deal with any variety of these unexpected, rare events.  I will end this post, as I frequently do, with a quote, this one from Senator Elizabeth Warren.  She said, "Never be so faithful to your plan that you are unwilling to consider the unexpected."  Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts said, "A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when anything unexpected happens."  Herein lies the essence of high reliability.

"What makes a champion?"

While I have never listened to him in person, I suspect that P.J. Fleck, currently the Head Football Coach at the University of Minnesota would be a great motivational speaker.  Coach Fleck has developed an entire philosophy around "elite performance" (see my previous posts, "Row the Boat" and "Golden Gopher Leadership 101" for more on his philosophy).  He really likes to use the word "elite" A LOT!  He suggests that when it comes to level of performance, there are five kinds of people in this world - Bad, Average, Good, Excellent, and Elite.  He distinguishes between "excellent performance" and "elite performance" (he is clearly pushing his football players towards more of the latter than the former).

Can we really distinguish between "excellent" and "elite" performance in sports?  I believe so.  As an example, the Kenyan runner Lawrence Cherono won the 2019 Boston Marathon with a finishing time of 2:07:57.  The second place finisher, Ethiopian runner Lelisa Desisa finished right behind him with a time of 2:07:59.  In other words, just 2 seconds separated the top two finishers.  Ok, great.  What about the rest of the runners?  Apparently, Cherono was approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes (almost a full two hours) faster than the average finishing time of the rest of runners in the field.  That's even more impressive when you consider that runners have to qualify for the Boston Marathon, so the "average" runner in this highly selective field is still fairly fast.  

What about other sporting events?  Can we similarly distinguish between "excellent" and "elite" in other events as well?  Someone determined that the odds of a master-level chess player (in other words, an excellent chess player) beating the currently #1 ranked chess player in the world, Magnus Carlsen, is about 1 in 1,000,000,000!  

It's not as easy to quantify performance in other domains, such as music, art, writing, science, or even leadership.  However, what is true for sports performance is likely true for these other domains as well - there is a clear separation between "excellent" and "elite."  Assuming we can agree on this point, the more interesting question is how does someone become an "elite" performer versus simply just being an "excellent" one.  The age-old "Nature versus Nurture" debate is certainly relevant here.  Are elite performers born with incredible abilities or are these abilities developed over time?  Similarly, we can ask (and many have), "Are leaders born or made?"

There have been a number of books that have attempted to answer this very question.  See, for example, Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, Daniel Coyle's The Talent Code, Geoff Colvin's Talent is Overrated, David Epstein's The Sports Gene and Range, and Anders Ericsson's and Robert Pool's Peak.  All of these are FANTASTIC books, and I would highly recommend each one..  I think that when it comes to sports performance, these authors would suggest that both "Nature" and "Nurture" are important to success in sports (and certainly some of the other domains too).  At least when it comes to "elite" level performance in sports, having good genes (i.e. the "Nature" side of the debate) is definitely important.  However, there is no question that having good genes is not sufficient - "elite" athletes achieve "elite-level" performance through training (i.e. the "Nurture" side of the debate).

Okay, so both nature and nurture are important.  But how much nurture?  If training is important, should athletes begin training in their chosen sport as early as possible?  Everyone knows how successful athletes like Tiger Woods, Venus Williams, and Serena Williams were at an incredibly early age.  Similarly, they focused on their chosen sports (golf and tennis, respectively) at an incredibly early age.  Conversely, it's also well known that basketball superstar, Michael Jordan, was cut from his high school basketball team.  He developed his superhuman basketball skills much later in life.

It is this latter question that Arne Gullich, Brooke Mcnamara, and David Hambrick addressed in their recently published meta-analysis, "What makes a champion? Early multidisciplinary practice, not early specialization, predicts world-class performance".  Essentially, is it better to focus on just one sport early in an athlete's life, or should athletes spend time developing general athletic skills and abilities through participating in multiple sports?  The meta-analysis analyzed the results of 51 different studies (this is a popular topic!) from 14 different countries and involving over 6,000 athletes published between 1998 and 2018.  The outcome of interest was the ultimate performance level achieved (world class versus national class).  

There's no argument from these investigators (or these studies) that the more time an athlete spends practicing in a specific sport, the greater the chance of elite-level performance (more time, more coaching, and more practice leads to improved performance).  Aside from this point, there were three major findings of interest from the meta-analysis.  First, the amount of multisport practice discriminated between athletes who achieved world-class levels of performance (world championships, Olympic medals, etc) compared to those who achieved national-class performance (e.g., U.S. championships).  Elite, world-class athletes generally spent more time playing several different sports early in life, switched to a singular focus later on, and reached performance milestones at a slower rate than national-class athletes.  In other words, world class superstars like Tiger Woods or Serena Williams who started early in life are the exception and not the rule.

Second, athletes who found success in early-stage competitions, such as the Junior Olympics typically started their singular focus on a specific sport early in life.  That sort of makes sense, right?  If you want to peak early in life (e.g. Junior Olympics), you should start focusing on a specific sport early in life.  However, if you want to compete on an elite, world-class level in senior-level competition, you are better off playing multiple sports.  The third finding, which is perhaps not as relevant to the present discussion, was that time spent in non-organized, general play (participating in a pick-up basketball game, for example) had negligible effects on both junior-level and senior-level elite performance.

Whether these findings can be universally applied to domains outside of sports is a reasonable question.  If so, it seems logical to suggest that acquisition of generalized knowledge in a wide variety of domains should occur before the acquisition of domain-specific knowledge.  By extension then, perhaps we should be training general leadership skills in the early career stages before focusing on more technical, domain-specific leadership skills.  These questions will certainly require further study.  As David Epstein writes in his book, Range, "Everyone needs habits of mind that allow them to dance across disciplines."  He goes on, "In a wicked world, relying upon experience from a single domain is not only limiting, it can be disastrous."

"Too much time on my hands?"

I was driving back to Chicago the other day and saw a billboard advertising an upcoming concert by the rock band Styx.  They were really popular in the 1970's and early 1980's, and at one time, I owned a number of albums by the band.  One of their best-selling albums was a concept album called Paradise Theatre.  The album told a fictional account of the story of the real Paradise Theatre in Chicago, which was a metaphor for the changing times in America from the 1970's to the 1980's.  The album was released in 1981 and was certified triple-platinum, reaching #1 on the album charts for about three weeks.  There were four singles released from the album, and two of these singles made it into the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 ("The Best of Times", which made it to #3 and "Too Much Time on My Hands", which made it to #9).

Notably, the second hit single ("Too Much Time on My Hands") doesn't really have anything to do with the Paradise Theatre story.  It's still a good song that talks about a guy who spends all day at a local bar because he has too much free time.  The following lines sums up the rest of the song perfectly:

Well I'm so tired of losing

I've got nothing to do and all day to do it.

Well I'd go out cruising, but I've no place

To go and all night to get there.

Now that you see how a billboard advertisement can trigger a fond memory from my adolescence, let's get to the topic at hand, which actually, is about having too much free time (see, there's a method to my madness).  I want to talk about a recently published study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  The study received a lot of attention in the lay media, and I actually think I first heard about it via a Twitter post by Adam Grant.  The study's main objective was to determine the relationship between discretionary (i.e. "free") time and subjective well-being.  In other words, how do Americans feel when they have "too little" or "too much time" on their hands?  I suspect that there would be few to dispute the point that having "too little" time on our hands is not good for our state of well-being.  

What's unique about this study is that the investigators (Marissa Sharif, Cassie Mogilner, and Hal Hershfield) are proposing that there is an inverted U-shaped curve between discretionary time (on the X-axis) and well-being (on the Y-axis).  Think about the inverted U-shape curve as following the "Goldilocks principle" - too little or too much discretionary time is associated with lower subjective well-being, with an optimal point somewhere in the middle where the amount of discretionary time is "just right" for subjective well-being.  

The first portion of the study utilized a large pre-existing data-set (National Study of the Changing Workforce), in which 13,639 American workers were surveyed between 1992 and 2008.  Study participants were asked to rate, among many other things, their subjective well-being, as well as the average amount of discretionary time per day.  While they were unable to demonstrate a U-shaped curve here, there was a significant negative quadratic (i.e. curved) relationship between discretionary time and subjective well-being.  In other words, as the amount of discretionary time increased, subjective well-being decreased (at least after a certain point).

The second portion of the study utilized another pre-existing data-set (American Time Use Survey, or ATUS), which included survey data from 21,736 Americans (both working and non-working).  This particular survey was a little more detailed, in that individuals were asked to provide a detailed account of all the activities that filled the 24 hours before completing the survey (among several other questions, including of course subjective well-being).  Sharif, Mogilner, and Hershfield conducted a second survey of 500 individuals to classify the various activities listed in the ATUS as discretionary or non-discretionary.  With this second data-set, the investigators showed that there is an inverted U-shape relationship between discretionary time and subjective well-being.  As a matter of fact, they found that overall, subjective well-being increases as discretionary time increases from zero to two hours per day, peaks between two to five hours per day, and then decreases after five hours per day!

Sharif, Mogilner, and Hershfield took their analysis one step further.  They were able to drill down and determine that (1) when individuals spend their discretionary time in social (as opposed to solitary) activities, more discretionary time is better (there is no peak, where a further increase in discretionary time leads to lower subjective well-being) and (2) when individuals felt that their discretionary time was productive (the time is not "wasted"), more discretionary time is better (again, no peak).  

The last two portions of the study were simulated experiments, in which individuals were asked to mentally simulate having a certain level of discretionary time per day over the course of six months.  Study subjects were randomized to different amounts of discretionary time.  The results of these last two portions of the study were consistent with the second data-set analysis, in that there was an inverted U-shape relationship between discretionary time and subjective well-being.

I can imagine what all of you are thinking right now.  The last several months have been incredibly disruptive, and there is a national labor shortage in a number of industries, including health care.  It's difficult to imagine that having more free time could actually worsen our subjective well-being.  That was my feeling too, when I first heard about this study.  However, as I think about it more and reflect on my professional life before the pandemic, I start to understand (and agree with) the results of this study more.  Think about a time when you had plenty of down time at work.  Did you feel "bored out of your mind"?  

We all need down time in our lives, both our professional ones as well as our personal ones.  What these investigators have shown (and perhaps what we've know all along) is that having too much down time is not necessarily a good thing.  The sense of being unproductive when we have too much down time causes a level of stress that actually lowers our sense of well-being.  Shifting that down time towards either productive (think of spending time exercising or doing an outdoor activity as productive free time versus watching television, which is unproductive, at least according to this study) or social activities may help alleviate this negative effect on well-being and lead us back to eudaimonia!

Languishing and Flourishing

Earlier this year, the Wharton School organizational psychologist, Adam Grant wrote an article for The New York Times that was as timely and important as it was interesting ("There's a name for the blah you're feeling: It's called languishing").  Corey Keyes, a sociologist and psychologist at Emory University initially described the concept that mental health lies along a continuum from languishing to flourishing.  I particularly like this model, as I think it perfectly describes what I think everyone would agree with - mental wellness cannot be measured using a binary (yes/no, present/absent) approach.  Mental wellbeing is not simply the absence of mental illness, just as it is not simply the presence of high levels of wellbeing.  As Keyes describes the two opposite ends of the mental health continuum, individuals with complete mental health are "flourishing" - they have high levels of physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.  Some psychologists call it "flow".  Conversely, those individuals who are not flourishing have lower levels of physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing.  

Languishing is not the same as burn-out or depression, but individuals who are languishing are at risk for both.  These individuals are not functioning at full capacity.  Languishing is characterized by apathy, as well as a feeling of being unsettled or unfulfilled.  Individuals who are languishing aren't necessarily interested in the things that typically bring them joy.  They are simply "going through the motions" - the complete opposite of "being in the zone" or "firing on all cylinders" (both commonly used idioms for "flourishing").

While the COVID-19 pandemic certainly increased the number of individuals who were languishing, this is not a new phenomenon.  For example, The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard developed a Flourishing Index (also published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) to measure the degree of flourishing.  The index consists of two questions from each of five domains: happiness and life satisfaction, mental and physical health, meaning and purpose, character and virtue, and close social relationships.  While there is no single threshold score to indicate whether someone is flourishing or not, higher scores are better.  Of interest, the national average for this score (it's been used in a number of large studies and by a number of organizations, including Harvard) was 70 before the pandemic.  By June, 2020, the national average had decreased to 65.  Unfortunately, I am not aware of a specific "Languishing Index" (though there are a number of tools to assess burn-out, including the Maslach Burnout Inventory.

So, now that we have at least defined "flourishing" and "languishing" (and we've even provided a way to objectively measure "flourishing"), what can we do to shift our mental state so that we are flourishing instead of languishing?  Dani Blum, writing for The New York Times ("The Other Side of Languishing is Flourishing.  Here's How to Get There."), provides some suggestions.  Adam Grant also has a TED talk on how to stop languishing.  

First, assess yourself.  Determine where you are on the Flourishing Index scale.  Knowing and recognizing where you are and where you need to go is the first, but most important step.  Second, make sure that you take the time to celebrate and savor the small things in life.  Appreciate even the tiniest of victories.  Notice all of the good things happening in your life.  My wife used to have us all give one example of something positive that happened to us during the day at the family dinner table.  It worked wonders and helped us all focus more on the positives and less on the negatives that particular day.  As it turns out, there is some really great evidence for this technique (see "Counting blessings versus burdens: An experimental investigation of gratitude and subjective well-being in daily life").  Third, do five good deeds a day.  Call them good deeds, random acts of kindness, or "paying it forward" - it doesn't matter what you call them, the evidence (see one study here) strongly suggests that doing a good deed increases our own wellbeing!  Fourth, look for communities or connection.  Finding connections again, particularly after the pandemic, is something we should all be doing both in our personal and professional lives.  Finally, find purpose in your everyday routines.  Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man's Search for Meaning (literally, one of the best books that I have ever read) said, "The quest for meaning is the key to mental health and human flourishing."  For many of us, we lost some of that sense of purpose during the pandemic.  Finding it again will help us flourish again.

The ancient Greeks had a name for flourishing - Eudaimonia.  In his Nicomachean Ethics, the philosopher Aristotle defined Eudaimonia as "the condition of human flourishing or living well."  Importantly - and this is absolutely crucial - the Ancient Greeks did not believe that the purpose of life was to be happy.  Rather, they proposed that the purpose in life was to achieve Eudaimonia.  As the writer Mark Twain said, "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."  Purpose is the key to unlock the door to flourishing.

Happy Veterans Day 2021

On November 11, 1919, President Woodrow Wilson issued a message to all Americans on the one-year anniversary of Armistice Day, which marked the end of major hostilities in World War I at the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of 1918.  Following that tradition, the anniversary of the end of World War I was unofficially celebrated every year on November 11th, until Congress passed a resolution to officially honor and observe November 11th every year as Armistice Day in 1938.  

Later on, a World War II veteran named Raymond Weeks petitioned General Dwight Eisenhower to expand Armistice Day to celebrate all veterans, not just those who died or served in World War I.  General Eisenhower, of course, supported the recommendation until he signed the bill that officially named November 11th as Veterans Day in 1954.  Incidentally, Weeks was later honored with a Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan and was recognized as the “Father of Veterans Day."

Today, we celebrate Veterans Day, which honors all military veterans, those individuals who have served in one of the branches of the United States Armed Forces (Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Space Force, and the National Guard).  Veterans Day coincides with other holidays that are celebrated in other countries (Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries, for example), though it is distinct from Memorial Day, a U.S. holiday honoring those who died while in military service and Armed Forces Day honoring those individuals who currently serve in the military.

While most calendars print November 11^th as “Veteran’s Day” (with an apostrophe), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs states that the apostrophe is not necessary, “because it is not a day that ‘belongs’ to veterans, it is a day for honoring all veterans.”  The U.S. government also recommends that we honor all veterans at 2:11 PM Eastern Time with two minutes of silence.

If you have read my blog in the past, you will know that one of my favorite television mini-series of all time is the HBO show Band of Brothers, based on the book of the same name by the historian and author Stephen E. Ambrose.  There is a scene towards the end of the show, when a General in the Wehrmacht (German Army), now a prisoner of war, asks to speak to his men.  His speech (in German, of course) is translated by a member of Easy Company into English.  The men of Easy Company and listen that the words apply to them as well.  It's a powerful reminder, I think, of what it means to serve, even if not in times of war:

Men, it's been a long war. It's been a tough war. You've fought bravely, proudly for your country. You're a special group. You've found in one another a bond that exists only in combat, among brothers. You've shared foxholes, held each other in dire moments. You've seen death and suffered together. I'm proud to have served with each and every one of you. You all deserve long and happy lives in peace.

If you are a veteran, today, we celebrate and honor you.  Thank you for your dedication and commitment to our country and thank you for your service!  You all deserve long and happy lives in peace.

United we stand...the power of teams

I wanted to continue on the theme of high-performance teams in today's post.  Last time (see Team Chicken McNugget), I talked about some of the defining characteristics of high-performance teams, at least according to the large study of teams by Carl Larson and Frank LaFasto.  

Ron Friedman wrote a really good online article on teams in the Harvard Business Review, called "5 Things High-Performing Teams Do Differently".  Friedman and his research team at ignite80 surveyed over 1,000 U.S.-based office workers to determine what high-performance teams do differently, compared to teams that don't perform.  They found that 5 key characteristics separated the high-performers from the low-performers:

1. High-performing teams are not afraid to pick up the phone.  I suspect that this characteristic was a proxy for communication, though it's not as simple as that.  Individuals on high-performing teams did tend to communicate much more frequently as a whole, but they actually did communicate more using the telephone than the individuals on low-performing teams (10.1 calls/day versus 6.1 calls/day).  The key point here, I think, is actual communication in real-time (synchronous) as opposed to the asynchronous forms of communication that characterize email and/or text messaging.  

2. High-performing teams are more strategic with their meetings.  Patrick Lencioni wrote a book a few years ago appropriately called, Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable.  The book, as the title ("fable") suggests is a fictional account of a leader who turns his company around by improving how meetings were structured and conducted.  In the ignite80 study, high-performing teams were significantly more likely to require pre-work from meeting participants, use and follow a meeting agenda, and begin each meeting with a check-in that keeps team members apprised of each other's progress.  Bad meetings are incredibly non-productive and de-motivating, to say the least.  Last year, I wrote a post ("Death by Meeting") that mentioned a report (again, in the Harvard Business Review) by Michael Mankins that calculated that one weekly meeting takes up to 300,000 hours per year, when you factor in all the preparatory meetings and "meetings before the meeting" by everyone who has to attend the weekly meeting.  In an earlier article, Mankins discussed several strategies that can help companies "Stop Wasting Valuable Time" with bad meetings.

3. High-performing teams invest time bonding over non-work topics.  Teamwork is all about relationships.  The high-performing teams in the ignite80 study invest time and energy in building these relationships.  Team members were 25% more likely to spend time discussing non-work matters with their colleagues, and they were also significantly more likely to have met their colleagues for coffee, tea, or drinks over the past six months.  Mark Miller, author of The Secret of Teams says, "Your team will never perform at the highest level if the members of the team don't exhibit genuine care and concern for one another."  Call it esprit de corps or camaraderie or fellowship, the truly high-performing teams have it.

4. High-performing teams give and receive appreciation more frequently.  What is another great way of building esprit de corps?  Showing appreciation and recognizing someone's contributions to the team is one of the best ways of establishing camaraderie and mutual respect.  Recognition by peers is incredibly motivating - some studies suggest that it is more motivating than even money!  The members of high-performing teams in the ignite80 study reported receiving more frequent appreciation at work from their colleagues (72% more) AND their managers (79% more).  Just as important, they also reported expressing their appreciation for other members on the team significantly more often (44% more) compared to members on low-performing teams.

5. High-performing teams are more authentic at work.  Similar to the findings above, members on high-performing teams were significantly more likely to express positive emotions with their peers.  However, just as important, they were also more likely to express negative emotions at work.  Building an environment of psychological safety where everyone on the team is empowered to speak up, dissent, and provide constructive feedback is critically important.  Authenticity builds mutual trust and respect, which lead to greater authenticity, and so on and so on.  

I would like to make one last point.  A leader's job is to create the conditions that lead to high-performance.  He or she sets the tone and models the behaviors that are important to establishing psychological safety, trust, and respect.  When a leader shows genuine concern for his or her team members, they will respond in kind.  Finally, leaders on high-performing teams empower the rest of the team.  As Mark Miller writes, "The more decisions a leader makes, the further he or she is from leading a high-performance team...Make too many command decisions, and you'll doom yourself and your team to mediocrity."  

Team Chicken McNugget

One of my favorite shows of all time is the HBO television miniseries, Band of Brothers, based on the book of the same name by the historian and author, Steven Ambrose.  The final scene of the final episode shows the real life Major Richard Winters telling a story about one of the men in his unit (the following passage is from the book):

In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?'

No,'" I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes.

It's a powerful reminder that in almost every facet of our lives, we will be doing things, not individually, but as part of a team.  The late Steve Jobs, when he was still the CEO at Apple, said, "Great things in business are never done by one person; they're done by a team of people."  And as the old African proverb says (which hangs on my office wall, by the way), "If you want to go fast, go alone.  If you want to go far, go together."

Our success is critically dependent upon how well we work together as a team.  As leaders in an organization, it makes sense that we would invest time and money in developing our teams.  The question is, do we really know what makes a team perform at the highest level?  As it turns out, there is a lot of research to help us figure out just what goes into a high-performing team.

Several years ago, Carl Larson and Frank LaFasto conducted a large study on high-performing teams and published their results in a book called Teamwork: What must go right, what can go wrong.  They first identified a sample of teams noteworthy either for their achievement (first phase) or for the insight each team would provide into the nature of their teamwork (second phase).  They analyzed each team and identified a group of distinguishing characteristics for high performance teams.  Most of their book talks about the characteristics that set these teams apart from others.  However, Larson and LaFasto took an additional step.  They operationalized these characteristics into a set of measures, and used the measures to monitor and provide feedback to 32 management teams. all of which improved their performance as a result.

The list of teams that Larson and LaFasto analyzed in the first phase is fairly interesting:   

American Leadership Forum

Mt. Everest Expedition / British Antarctic Expedition (led by the famous mountain climber, George McCleod)

Mt. Kongur (China) mountaineering expedition

Presidential Commission of the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident

U.S. Space Command

Cardiac Surgery Operative Team (led by Denton Cooley and Michael DeBakey)

Notre Dame 1966 National Champion football team

US. Naval Academy Football Teams 1961-1963

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

For the second phase, they focused on (1) executive management teams, predominantly from industry and (2) project teams, which notably included the McDonald's Chicken McNuggest team (led by Bud Sweeney) and the Boeing 747 Project team  As a final check, they also analyzed disaster response teams, theater production teams, the flight deck team on the USS Kitty Hawk, tthe U.S. Navy Strike Warfare Center, and a number of Presidential Cabinets.

I am willing to bet that most of you would never have associated Chicken McNuggets with championship sports teams, Presidential Cabinets, U.S. Navy carrier flightdeck operations, or cardiac surgery teams!  Regardless, after analyzing ALL of these different teams, Larson and LaFasto determined that the following eight characteristics defined these myriad high-performing teams:

1. Clear, elevating goal - I believe that having a clear sense of purpose or vision for the future is critical to high-performing teams.  The highest performing teams have shared team goals that are inspiring, challenging, and clearly understood by every member of the team.  Again, Steve Jobs said, "If you are working on something exciting that you really care about, you don't have to be pushed.  The vision pulls you."

2. Results-driven structure - Teams should have clearly defined roles and responsibilities with effective lines of communication.  High-performing teams also have standardized processes and procedures in place that are shared and understood by every member of the team.

3. Competent team members - The team's purpose should determine the technical and content expertise that is required on the team.  High-performing teams are comprised of a diverse group of members with complementary skillsets that work together and collaborate effectively.

4. Unified commitment - Every member of a high-performing team is focused and committed to the team goal.  Members are so committed to the team, that they are willing to cover for each other and pick up the slack for others, if necessary.  As legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson said, "The strength of the team is each individual member.  The strength of each member is the team."

5. Collabortive climate - High-performing teams are built on a foundation of trust, respect, and commitment to each other.  The Hall of Fame baseball player, Babe Ruth, said it best, "The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime."

6. Standards of excellence - Clearly articulated goals and a shared sense of purpose aren't enough.  The members of high-performing teams hold each other accountable to their own high standards.  Their are consequences for non-performance, though due to the members' level of commitment, these consequences are rarely, if ever, required.

7. External support and recognition - High-performing teams are appropriately resourced and supported by the organization's management.  The members are intrinsically motivated, and extrinsic rewards are rarely required.  Recognition by each other is just as important as recognition by the rest of the organization.

8. Principled leadership - The leaders of high-performing teams create a sense of purpose, a shared vision, a North Star.  The best leaders help the rest of the members on the team to realize that change is possible and that the team's goals are achievable.  The leaders of high-performing teams unleash the talents of their teams - they do not micromanage team.

I would have never guessed that the team that launched the successful product release of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets would be characterized as a high-performing team, but there you have it!  I will leave with one last quote, this one by the Japanese writer, Ryunosuke Satoro, "Individually, we are one drop.  Together, we are an ocean."

The Perfection Premium

I will bet (even though I'm not the gambling type) that if you walk into just about any bowling alley in the United States, there will be a sign or plaque honoring the last individual to bowl a perfect game.  The plaque will have the bowler's name and the date on which he or she scored 300 points (which, if you bowl, is a perfect game - basically, it's when you bowl 12 strikes in a row during a single game).  

Perfection can be many things.  All of the students in my wife's classroom want to score a 100% on their test.  Golfers dream of hitting a hole in one.  A few years ago, there was a story in the local newspaper about a group of 17 high school students, all from the same high school, who scored a perfect score of 36 on the ACT college admissions examination.  Musicians practice hard so that they can play an entire song without any mistakes.  Hospitals want to eliminate hospital-acquired infections and other safety events with a goal of zero patient harm.  Our society is absolutely obsessed with perfection.  

As a matter of fact, we are so obsessed with perfection, that cognitive psychologists have defined something known as the perfection premium.  Simply put, people categorize both individuals and products on whether or not they are perfect, or just near-perfect, and they overexagerrate the differences between these categories because of the perfection premium.  Using the ACT example above, the general population would rate an individual who scores a 36 (i.e., a perfect score) on the ACT as much more intelligent than an individual who scores just a 35 (i.e., just below a perfect score). 

Mathew Isaac and Katie Spangenberg published a group of studies last year in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science that beautifully illustrated the perfection premium.  In the first study, subjects were asked to choose between two types of unsweetened baking chocolate for their dessert recipe.  Chocolate bar B was slightly more expensive (by only 20 cents) than chocolate bar A, but B always contained 1% more of pure ingredients.  Subjects were randomly assigned to choose between 100% and 99%, 99% and 98%, or 98% and 97%.  Subjects almost always chose the more expensive bar with greater purity.  Consistent with the premium paradox, 68% of the subjects chose bar B when it was 100% pure, compared to 51% who selected bar B when it was just near perfect (99% or 98% pure).  

Isaac and Spangenberg found similar results when the studies involved ACT scores, Merino wool socks, or test scores - in all three studies, subjects showed a greater preference for things that were perfect (ACT score of 36, 100% pure Merino wool, or 100% score on a test) than when they were just close to perfect (in fact, 1 point below perfection).  Li and Chapman showed similar results in their study in which subjects showed a greater preference for a vaccine with 100% efficacy versus ones that were 95% effective (they called it the 100% effect, but it is very similar to what Kahneman and Tversky called the certainty effect; see also the so-called Allais paradox).

I have to admit, 100% of something sounds a lot better than 99% of something, right?  We all like perfection.  We all strive for perfection.  The irony here is that achieving perfection is next to impossible (notice that I did NOT say that the chance of achieving perfection is absolutely zero, which is the perfection premium in reverse).  Some would argue that if we always aim for perfection, we will always be disappointed ("Perfection is the enemy of good" right?).  The American author (and at least recently, the owner of a bookshop called The Painted Porch), Ryan Holiday said, "Perfectionism rarely begets perfection, or satisfaction - only disappointment."

If you've ever spent time reading a book about goal-setting, you've likely come across a concept known as "SMART" goals.  "SMART" is an acronym that helps individuals set proper goals:

S = Specific:  You want to define your goal in such a way that you can explain it easily to someone else, which can usually be achieved when the goal is focused on a specific area.  For example, "I want to get better at golf" is not very specific.  Setting a goal to improve your golf handicap by 5 strokes is much more specific.

M = Measurable:  You need to know whether or not you've achieved your goal, which is easier when it is a goal that can be measured.  For example, a common hospital goal is to reduce the number of central line infections; central line infections are easily measured.

A = Actionable: You want to set a goal for something that is within your span of control.  For example, as much as I would love to see it, I should not set a goal to have the Cubs win the World Series next year.  I've seen some articles that substitutes "Achievable" here, which is slightly different (see my next point below).

R = Relevant: Again, you want to set a goal that is relevant or important to you.  I've seen some articles that use "Realistic" here (particularly when A = Actionable, as opposed to "Achievable").  I think that as long as "Achievable" or "Realistic" (not both) is used, the goal can still be a SMART goal.  The point here is that, while it is good to set so-called stretch goals, you still have to make sure that the goal will not be impossible to achieve (otherwise, you end up with disappointment and disillusionment).

T = Time-bound: Goals should be time-limited.  In other words, give yourself a deadline.  For example, "I will improve my golf handicap by 5 strokes within 6 months."

The legendary NFL football coach, Vince Lombardi, once said, "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."  I think Coach was really trying to say is that rather than focusing on perfection, we should strive for continuous improvement.  Always get better.  Excellence, not perfection, is the goal.