"Never stop fighting until the fight is done!"

Movies are magic.  I'm not talking about what the film industry does with special effects and CGI, which is incredible.  What I really love is how a motion picture soundtrack just completes a scene and makes it so much more memorable.  There are a couple of iconic scenes that I will watch over and over again because of the music playing in the background. The opening sequence with the 1924 Olympic British Track and Field team running along the beach with background music by Vangelis in the 1981 movie "Chariots of Fire" is a great example.    The Promontory sequence (composed by Trevor Jones and Randy Edelman) in the 1992 film "The Last of the Mohicans" is another one.  I can watch Pickett's Charge in the 1993 movie "Gettysburg"  (also composed by Randy Edelman) over and over again.  Pure magic. But my absolute favorite and likely the most iconic scene I have ever witnessed is the bridge shootout scene in the  1987 movie "The Untouchables".  

First of all, whoever thought of including a scene in which the four main protagonists ride horses and charge across a grassy plain in a mobster film about Al Capone and Eliot Ness in 1920's Chicago? I I don't Regardless, it just seems to fit perfectly.  Brilliant.  Add the musical score to the scene (the song playing in the background is called "Victorious" and was composed by Ennio Morricone) and it becomes pure magic!

I recommend reading today's post while listening to "Victorious" in the background!  "The Untouchables" was a great movie with an incredible cast, including Kevin Costner (as Eliot Ness), Robert DeNiro (as Al Capone), Sean Connery (who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor that year for his role as Jimmy Malone, an Irish police officer), and Andy Garcia.  There are some great lines and memorable quotes from the movie that are relevant to the topic of leadership.  

It's interesting that most of these quotes come from Sean Connery's character, Jimmy Malone, as he mentors Eliot Ness on how to fight crime the "Chicago Way".  For example, when Malone is asking Ness if he really understands what it's going to take to capture Capone, he asks simply, "What are you prepared to do?"  He even asks twice and then cautions him, "If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they're not gonna give up the fight, until one of you is dead."  In other words, achieving something special and unprecedented requires dedication, commitment, and focus.  You must commit 100% of your efforts and resources to achieving that goal.

Later, Malone again tells Ness, "If you're afraid of getting a rotten apple, don't go to the barrel. Get it off the tree."  In this case, Ness is worried about putting together a team of "untouchables."  He doesn't want to have corrupt police officers on his team who might be working for Al Capone.  Malone recommends that they go straight to the local police academy and find an individual there who hasn't started working for the Chicago police.  However, I think there is another way to look at this quote, which is more relevant to leadership.  

Al Capone (Robert DeNiro) even has a memorable scene with a leadership "tip" about teamwork.  In this case, he is using the sport of baseball as a metaphor for teamwork.  He says, "Baseball! A man stands alone at the plate. This is the time for what? For individual achievement. There he stands alone. But in the field, what? Part of a team. Teamwork... Looks, throws, catches, hustles. Part of one big team. Bats himself the live-long day, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and so on. If his team don't field... what is he? You follow me? No one. Sunny day, the stands are full of fans. What does he have to say? I'm goin' out there for myself. But... I get nowhere unless the team wins."  It's all about the team.  Of course, shortly after his soliloquy, he beats one of his henchmen over the head with a baseball bat, so maybe it wasn't the best metaphor for teamwork and leadership.

The last memorable quote occurs towards the very end of the movie, after Al Capone was convicted of tax evasion.  Ness goes up to him and says, "Never stop fighting until the fight is done!"  Ness, of course, had learned this lesson earlier in the movie from his partner Jimmy Malone.  It's related to the earlier comments about dedication, commitment, and focus on the goal.  Never give up.  Keep trying.  Keep fighting.  And if you get knocked down, get up and fight again.

"Here endeth the lesson..."

"Have a bias towards action..."

I don't remember the exact dates or even how old I was at the time, but our family once took a summer vacation to a number of historic sites, including Mount Vernon, Williamsburg, Monticello, and the Yorktown Battlefield.  It was a great trip, and besides the memory of getting into a long "discussion" with my older sister on whether Thomas Jefferson's home was pronounced with a "Ch" or "S" sound, my favorite memory was the trip to the Yorktown Battlefield.  For those of you who don't know, General George Washington's defeat of the British Army under General Charles Cornwallis at the Battle of Yorktown in October, 1781 was a major turning point in the American Revolutionary War.  While the War didn't formally end until the Treaty of Paris was signed on September 3, 1783, for all intents and purposes the war was over after Washington’s victory at Yorktown.

I learned a lot about the Battle of Yorktown during our visit, but one of my most vivid memories involved the attacks on the British Redoubts No.9 and No.10.  Some additional context is required to fully appreciate the story here.  In the summer of 1781, British General Lord Charles Cornwallis had started raiding parts of Virginia in order to reduce the amount of food and supplies that were being provided for Washington's Continental Army.  In addition, General Sir Henry Clinton, who was the overall British commander of all military forces in North America, ordered Cornwallis to capture a coastal area where British naval ships could harbor safely.  Cornwallis chose Yorktown and Gloucester Point, a peninsula that was nearly half a mile across the York River from the town of Yorktown.  The British Army built a series of fortifications to defend the town, including a series of Redoubts (earthen forts), two of which (#9 and #10) were located at the extreme left of the British line.

At the same time, Washington and his French allies saw an opportunity to trap the British Army at Yorktown (take a look at the map above).  He moved the Continental Army in secret towards Yorktown, while the French navy fought a decisive battle against the British navy, thereby taking control of Chesapeake Bay and cutting off any chance that Cornwallis could escape or be reinforced by sea (the Battle of the Chesapeake was absolutely key to Washington's plans and is the subject of an excellent book by the American author Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Hurricane's Eye). 

The main Continental and French army, numbering over 17,000 men arrived in late September to find that the British had abandoned most of their outermost fortifications (except Redoubts #9 and #10) to pull their defenses close to the town of Yorktown.  Washington laid siege to Yorktown and constructed the First Parallel, a trench and series of fortifications approximately 2,000 yards in length to the south of Yorktown to protect his artillery during the bombardment of Yorktown.  As British resistance flagged, Washington began construction of a Second Parallel, within 300 or so yards of the main British line.  However, the Second Parallel could not be completed until Redoubts #9 and #10 were captured from the British.  Washington ordered the French to attack Redoubt #9, while the Americans under Lt. Colonel Alexander Hamilton would attack Redoubt #10 (note that this story didn't make it into the musical!). 

What I distinctly remember from my childhood tour, and what my subsequent research now has confirmed, is that the French attack was more planned and sequenced.  French military engineers first removed some of the defense works and were shortly followed by the main attack numbering about 400 soldiers.  The French captured Redoubt #9, which was defended by about 120 British and Hessian troops, within approximately 30 minutes.  In contrast, the American forces, also numbering about 400 soldiers were led by Alexander Hamilton captured Redoubt #10 in less than 10 minutes.  The American attack was less coordinated than the French, or at least that's what I was told so many years ago.  Once Redoubts #9 and #10 fell, Washington was able to complete the Second Parallel, and the defeat of the British was only a matter of time.  Cornwallis saw the futility in continuing the fight and surrendered his forces.  

I talked several years ago about one of my favorite quotes from General Dwight Eisenhower, who said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable" (see my post from August, 2017).  I recently learned that Winston Churchill said something similar - "Plans are of little importance, but planning is essential."  I don't doubt that both the French and Americans planned ahead of time for the attack on Redoubts #9 and #10.  However, I can't help but think that perhaps the American forces better adapted their tactics to the immediate situation, allowing them to be more agile and accomplish in less than 10 minutes what the French accomplished in half an hour.  I am also reminded of an online video that went viral, which was the subject of my post LeeeeeeeRoy Jenkins (the video was spoofed by the television series The Family Guy - see video here)!

Please don't misunderstand me.  I don't think we should dive headfirst into any unknown situation without thinking about it (similar to what LeRoy Jenkins does in the video game).  It's important to have a strategy and an agreed upon a set of tactics ahead of time.  However, it's just as important to have the agility to be able to pivot when those tactics aren't aligned with the particular situation at hand.  Flexibility, adaptability, and agility are the watchwords for today's VUCA world.  As former Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi said, "Have a bias towards action - let's see something happen now.  You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away."

I want to end this post, as I frequently do, with a few quotes that I believe help drive home today's message.  John F. Kennedy said, "The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."  The author J.R.R. Tolkien (author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy) said, "It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near one."  Finally, American writer Claire Cook said, "If plan A doesn't work, the alphabet has 25 more letters..."  In other words, be proactive and plan ahead.  But don't be paralyzed by your plans if you find that they aren't working.  Have a bias for action!  Oh, and by the way, it's Monticello with a "Ch" sound, and I was right!

Don't be a chronic firefighter!

I talked about the tendency for organizations to adopt the bad habit of operating continuously in crisis mode in a recent post, "Never let a crisis go to waste...or maybe not?"  I specifically mentioned a LinkedIn post by Andre Ripla ("Navigating the Storm: Identifying and Overcoming Continuous Crisis Mode in Business Leadership").  I also mentioned that what Ripla calls continuous crisis mode, the two High Reliability Organizations experts Kathleen Sutcliffe and Karl Weick call chronic firefighting and collapse of sensemaking, respectively.  

There's no question that today's environment requires (maybe forces is a better word) organizations to be agile.  Becker's Hospital Review recently published an article calling agility the new C-suite buzzword for 2025!  The article asked several hospital and health system executives about the need for agility.  For example, Biju Samkutty, Chief Operating Officer at Mayo Clinic said, "The most valuable lesson I learned in the past year is that agility in decision-making is just as critical as having a well-defined strategy...In a rapidly evolving environment, lengthy planning cycles [see below] and excessive consensus-building must give way to iterative execution, data-driven insights, and cross-functional collaboration."  

Dr. Steve Davis, President and CEO at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center added, "The pace of change in healthcare is accelerating, making traditional change management approaches inadequate.  Instead of rigid, top-down strategies, we must foster agility, resilience, and adaptability within our workforce...Thriving organizations will be those that cultivate a culture of adaptability, empowering teams to navigate uncertainty, embrace innovation, and iterate quickly...Our focus must shift from managing change to building the capacity to sustain it."

While I agree with both Mr. Samkutty and Dr. Davis (full disclosure, Dr. Davis is actually a former boss), I do think that organizations have to be careful to avoid spending too much time in continuous crisis mode or what Dr. Sutcliffe calls chronic firefighting mode.  Becker's Hospital Review also interviewed Dr. Cliff Megerian, CEO of University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio.  Dr. Megerian emphasized the importance of balance, stating, "...while agility and resourcefulness are crucial, they are ideally utilized in a measured manner...We've seen that it is best to avoid being overly reactive...A disciplined approach to prioritizing is vital so that critical objectives will receive the necessary resources and attention."

With Dr. Megerian's comments in mind, I wanted to re-visit this particular topic in today's post, specifically to answer the question, "How do I know if my organization is operating in chronic firefighting mode?"  Ripla lists several organizational signs that suggest a pattern of continuous crisis:

1. Decision-making is largely reactive.  While he didn't use these exact words, the management guru Peter Drucker described the key differences between reactive versus proactive decision-making in a 1967 Harvard Business Review article, "The Effective Decision".  When decisions are made primarily to address immediate and pressing issues at the expense of longer range objectives, an organization is likely to be stuck in chronic firefighting mode.  Similarly, if tactical decisions override strategic ones, then an organization is being reactive more than its being proactive.  

2. The so-called planning horizon is shrinking.  A planning horizon is the length of time into the future that a plan or strategy considers when making decisions.  Organizations that are operating in chronic firefighting mode focus more on short-term outcomes (days to weeks) than long-term outcomes (months to years).  Leaders in these organizations simply do not have the time or energy to focus on long-term initiatives or to engage in strategic discussions.

3. Allocation of resources become erratic and often haphazard.  Organizations that are always operating in chronic firefighting mode tend to abandon initiatives, shift priorities, and re-direct resources to address emergencies and short-term problems.  

4. Meeting patterns shift.  If meeting agendas are dominated by problem-solving and/or rarely involve discussions about long-term strategy, then it's likely that the organization has fallen into the habit of chronic firefighting.  Similarly, these organizations tend to cancel regularly scheduled meetings in order to hold emergency ones.  For example, if hospitals are always activating Incident Command (a formalized system used by organizations to effectively respond to emergencies, such as mass casualty incidents, natural disasters, and pandemics), it's likely that they are stuck in chronic firefighting mode.

5. Communication changes.  There is a nuance to crisis communication that is distinctly different from regular communication within organizations.  If an organization is always operating in chronic firefighting mode, this style of communication becomes the norm, rather than the exception.

6. Rules around governance change.  Standard decision-making protocols, approval processes, and governance structures are routinely bypassed in organizations that are operating in chronic firefighting mode.

7.  Innovation declines or is absent.  True creative problem-solving rarely occurs when organizations are constantly putting out fires.

8. Organizational learning declines or is absent.  Related to the point immediately above, when organizations are constantly in chronic firefighting mode, key learning cycles, post-mortem reviews, root-cause analyses are often abbreviated or eliminated entirely.  As a result, the organization loses its ability to develop shared learning, which in turn, adversely impacts development of an organizational memory.

W. Edwards Deming was one of the early founders of the quality improvement movement.  He disagreed with chronic firefighting too.  Deming said, "Putting out fires is not improvement of the process.  Neither is discovery and removal of a special cause detected by a point out of control.  This only puts the process back to where it should have been in the first place."

As I mentioned in my last post, when chronic firefighting becomes the default mode in an organization,  the organization will suffer.  Acting like there's a crisis when there isn't one is exhausting both mentally and physically.  It can tax human resources, impair effective decision-making, destroy organizational culture, and ultimately threaten the long-term sustainability of an organization. The important point here is to recognize here is for leaders to recognize these signs of chronic firefighting mode and change their approach accordingly.

Ikigai and Meaningful Work

The American author Mark Twain once said, "Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life."  While I understand the sentiment, I am not sure that I fully agree.  Some of us our lucky enough in life to have a job, career, or profession (and I do think that the three of these are all different - more on that shortly) that we enjoy - maybe even love.  Even those of us who are lucky to be in that situation will have days (or weeks) that we really just don't want to go to work.  We will likely even have days where we will come home at the end of the day and say, "I had a miserable day at work."  We may even occasionally say, "I hate my job."  What's important in the end is that the good days outnumber the bad days.

As I wrote in my post, "Are you happy?", which I based on the wonderful book by the Harvard Business School professor Arthur C. Brooks and Oprah Winfrey, Build the Life You Want, happiness is not a destination.  It's a direction.  People can even be happy and unhappy at the same time.  Happiness is not the opposite of unhappiness.  They are two distinct emotions.  I think the same is true when it comes to work - you can be happy with work and unhappy at the same time.  Our happiness at work will depend upon having (1) a sense of purpose, (2) a sense of community (i.e. the personal connections that we have with our co-workers), and (3) a sense that we are valued.  Similarly, as I wrote in my post, "The Five Pillars of Happiness", whether we our work is meaningful is also important.  Again, Arthur Brooks defines meaningful work as work that yields both earned success, which he defines as a sense of accomplishing something valuable and work that involves service to others.

As I mentioned above, I agree with many others that having a job, career, or profession means three different things.  Simply stated, a job is a specific position of employment or task that someone is paid to perform, a career is the progression of jobs and roles throughout one's working life, and a profession is a career that requires specialized knowledge and training, often with ethical standards and societal respect.  Importantly, we can be happy at our job, career, or profession, as long as we have the three senses of purpose, community, and value discussed above!

Lastly, you've probably read articles or posts on the Japanese concept of ikigai.  The Japanese word ikigai has no direct English translation, but it roughly means "the thing that you live for" or "the reason for which you get up in the morning."  Ikigai is the intersection, overlap, or common ground between (a) what you love, (b) what you are good at, (c) what the world needs, and (d) what you can get paid for:

I think we all strive to find ikigai.  However, I think ikigai is an ideal that is close to perfection.  The legendary NFL football coach Vince Lombardi once said, "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence."  To that, I would say, ikigai may not be attainable for all of us, but if we strive for ikigai, we may find meaningful work, as defined by Arthur Brooks.  And that is probably more than enough!

How to be happy at work...

I just finished reading a book by Annie McKee called How to Be Happy at Work: The Power of Purpose, Hope, and Friendship.  I was interested in how to improve workforce engagement in general, and I thought that this book would provide some helpful insights.  I thought that the overall themes discussed in the book were helpful.  McKee emphasizes that happiness is an active choice that requires both individual effort and a healthy, supportive work culture (see my posts, "The mathematics of happiness", "Attitude creates reality", and "Success is not the key to happiness" for more on this point).  To that end, generating happiness at work is all about developing the right mindset and cultivating a positive work environment.  

McKee discussed three key drivers of happiness: 

1. Meaning and purpose: McKee argues (convincingly) that when you can connect your work to a greater cause or vision, work will be more fulfilling

2. Self-awareness: We need to understand our own emotions, strengths, values, and motivations in order better align our work with what is important to us.

3. Positive relationships: We need to build and develop supportive, collaborative, and trust-based relationships with our co-workers and managers.  Working in a positive social environment improves motivation, satisfaction, and engagement. 

Richard Clarke writes a blog called "Boosting Happiness at Work" and posted "The real secret to being happy at work - Understand your own needs..." on LinkedIn last year.  Importantly, he suggested that we need to be asking ourselves the question, "What do I need to be happy?"  If we find it hard to answer that question, perhaps we can get some help from the following fourteen statements that are used in the Indeed.com Workplace Wellbeing Survey:

My work has a clear sense of purpose.

I feel happy at work most of the time.

I feel stressed at work most of the time.

I am paid fairly for my work.

There are people at work who give me support and encouragement.

There are people at work who appreciate me as a person.

I can trust people in my company.

I feel a sense of belonging in my company.

My manager helps me succeed.

My work environment feels inclusive and respectful of all people.

My work has the time and location flexibility I need.

In most of my work tasks, I feel energized.

I am achieving most of my goals at work.

I often learn something at work.

It's striking to me that several of these statements involve McKee's purpose, self-awareness, and positive relationships!  Similarly, the U.S. Surgeon General released a report in 2022 entitled "Workplace Mental Health and Wellbeing") that highlighted five essentials to finding happiness at work - safety, community, autonomy, opportunities for growth, and purpose.  Again we hear about the importance of having a sense of purpose and being part of a community.

I don't know if reading Annie McKee's book or even perusing the U.S. Surgeon General's special report will help you unlock the key to workplace happiness.  However, I do think that both the book and the report provide some important insights and are great places to start.  Given that we spend nearly 1/3 of our lives at work, we should be happy at work!

What is your lighthouse?

In a recent post ("A life with meaning and purpose..."), I mentioned a recently published study that found that having a purpose in life was the key to living a longer, healthier, happier life.  How can we find our purpose?  I also mentioned the neurologist, psychologist, and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who wrote perhaps one of the greatest books that I've ever read, Man's Search for Meaning.  Frankl wrote, "Those who have a why to live can bear with almost any how."    

It's helpful to define "purpose" at the outset.  Dr. Leah Weiss, who teaches about compassionate leadership at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business writes about the need for "Purpose with a capital P" in her book, How We Work: Live Your Purpose, Reclaim Your Sanity, and Embrace the Daily Grind.  While "purpose could be any direction in which we're heading with some degree of intention", "Purpose with a capital P" describes a far-reaching goal that is "personally meaningful and self-transcending that, ideally, shows up in our lives every day."  She writes on that "Purpose has impact only if we sincerely care about it."

Jane Ferré defined "purpose" in a slightly different way in her blog post, "What is your lighthouse?"  She mentions the lighthouse in Albion on the western coast of the island of Mauritius (recently proclaimed as "the most beautiful lighthouse in the Southern Hemisphere") and reminds us that the word "lighthouse" is defined as "a tower or other structure containing a beacon light to war or guide ships at sea."  She then asks the question, "Have you worked out what it is that guides you when you are out at sea?"  The lighthouse is a beautiful metaphor for our purpose in life.  Even during the most difficult times, our purpose, just like a lighthouse, will serve as a beacon of hope to guide us to safer waters.  Unfortunately, not everyone can confidently say that they have a clear sense of purpose in life.

According to a study ("Well-being assessment: An Evaluation of Well-Being Scales for Public Health and Population Estimates of Well-Being among US Adults") published in the journal Applied Psychology: Health and Wellbeing, only about 1 in 4 adults living in the U.S. strongly endorse having a clear sense of purpose in their lives, and almost 40% of adults are either neutral or say that they don't have a clear sense of purpose.  Given what we know about the impact of living a purpose-filled life on health, this seems like an incredible opportunity.

Amy Morin, writing for Verywellmind.com provided seven tips for finding your purpose (note that Dr. Weiss provides a very similar list of steps in her book):

1. Donate time, money, or talent.  Spending time helping others is a great way to add meaning to your daily life.

2. Listen to feedback.  Sometimes, our friends and family can help us identify what we our passionate about doing.

3. Surround yourself with positive people.  We can draw inspiration from the positive people that we associate with in our personal and professional lives.

4. Start conversations with new people.  Establishing connections with others can help inspire us to be better as individuals.

5. Explore your interests.  Morin (and others) recommend cataloging our activities or journaling to help us identify what we are good at and what we are passionate about - hopefully those two things overlap.

6. Consider injustices that bother you.  Identifying with an important cause can help us find our purpose.

7. Discover what you love to do.  Try to identify what type of skills or special talents that you have and whether these can be aligned with your passions (see the Japanese concept of Ikigai).  Then think about how you can turn that passion into something meaningful to you. 

Dr. Dhruv Khullar, writing for The New York Times ("Finding Purpose for a Good Life.  But Also a Healthy One"), adds the important caveat that "finding purpose is rarely an epiphany, nor is it something you pick up at the mall or download from the app store.  It can be a long, arduous process that requires introspection and conversation, then a commitment to act."  At the end of the journey, you will likely find that "the key to a deeper, healthier life isn't knowing the meaning of life - it's building meaning into your life."  

How do we know when we've finally found our purpose in life?  Amy Morin writes, "Ultimately, you've likely found your purpose if you've stopped asking whether you have."  Once you find your lighthouse, you've found your way home.

"Never let a crisis go to waste...or maybe not?"

Several years ago (it's hard to believe that I can say that now), I wrote a post about one of the fundamental tenets of the eight step change management model first proposed by Harvard Business School professor John Kotter in the 1990's (for more details, please see again his 1995 article in Harvard Business Review, "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail").  The post was called "Never let a crisis go to waste".  At that time, I naively believed that the first step in Kotter' change management model, "create a sense of urgency" equated with the perhaps overly used cliché "Never let a crisis go to waste."  When I wrote that post fives years ago, I did caution leaders against trying to create an artificial crisis just to motivate their teams or organizations to change, and I even referenced a LinkedIn post by Joseph Paris entitled "Real leaders never say burning platform".  

It's almost a universal truth that organizations who go through a crisis emerge at the end of the crisis (assuming that they actually survive the crisis) as different organizations.  Given that point, why wouldn't leaders leverage a crisis to motivate change?  Isn't that what Kotter meant by "creating a sense of urgency"?  Having experienced the past five years as a leader in an organization that has endured what has seemed at times like crisis after crisis after crisis, I am not so sure anymore.  I'm starting to wonder whether the word crisis is overused.  And I will also note that Kotter intentionally used the phrase sense of urgency and not the word crisis.  

Kotter suggested (in the HBR article) that the threshold for motivating an organization to change occurred when at least 75% of the organization's managers are convinced that "business-as-usual is totally unacceptable."  That seems about right, but a legitimate crisis is characterized by anything but "business-as-usual" operations!  In his 2008 book A Sense of Urgency, Kotter suggests that a crisis, when handled correctly, can be leveraged to create the necessary sense of urgency for change.  However, he also states that leaders can and should avoid complacency by behaving with urgency every day.  Urgency should be a constant, not just a reactive response to a crisis.  He also cautions leaders against creating a crisis merely to build a sense of urgency where none exists.  The individuals in an organization can usually see through a fabricated crisis and will respond in ways that are opposite to what was intended - often by doubling down on the old ways of doing things.

What's clear to me is that leaders should continue to leverage crisis moments to motivate their organizations to change.  At the same time, however, leaders should refrain from continually being stuck in "crisis mode."  Being able to effectively respond to a crisis is crucial in today's volatile, uncertain, and turbulent environment.  Just as important, however, is the ability to distinguish between a true emergency and habitual emergency thinking.  Unfortunately, given the volatility, uncertainty, and turbulence that most leaders experience on an almost daily basis (at least for the past 5 years), it's both very easy and very tempting to slip into constant "crisis mode".  

Andre Ripla posted an article on LinkedIn entitled "Navigating the Storm: Identifying and Overcoming Continuous Crisis Mode in Business Leadership".  Ripla defines "continuous crisis mode" as "an organizational state characterized by persistent high stress, reactive decision-making, and a pervasive sense of emergency that extends beyond genuine crisis events."  Kathleen Sutcliffe and Karl Weick, who wrote the definitive book on High Reliability Organizations (Managing the Unexpected: Sustained Performance in a Complex World) would call this kind of response "chronic firefighting" or "collapse of sensemaking", respectively.  What's important to realize that organizations in continuous crisis mode fail to progress through the distinct phases of a genuine crisis - pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis.  It is during the post-crisis phase that organizations recover, learn, and improve for the next crisis.  If an organization is always operating in "crisis mode", there will never be sufficient time for recovery, reflection, learning, and improvement!

Robert Tanner suggests that there are five reasons why managers stay in "crisis mode" all the time (even when they are not in the midst of an actual crisis):

1. Lack of direction: Tanner suggests that "Being agile and adaptable is critical for leaders, but it's just as critical for these leaders to have a clear sense of where they want to go."  Leaders have to be crystal clear about where they want to take their organizations.  That simply does not happen without a clear mission, vision, and purpose, nor does it happen without being proactive and planning ahead.

2. Procrastination: Related to "lack of direction" above, leaders who delay key decisions and actions, avoid confronting unpleasant issues, or fail to prioritize will risk falling into continuous crisis mode.

3. Failure to develop others: Tanner refers to the old proverb, "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day - Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."  Leaders who fail to develop the individuals on their teams create teams that are dependent upon the leader to tell them what to do.  

4. Ineffective delegation: Related to the point above, leaders who don't delegate not only fail to develop the individuals on their teams, but also create decision-making bottlenecks since everything has to go to the top of the hierarchy.

5. Lack of foresight: As Benjamin Franklin once said, "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail."  Particularly in today's volatile, uncertain, and complex environment, leaders have to be prepare their organizations to respond to just about anything.  Murphy's classic law applies here - "if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong!"

Working in "crisis mode" may work well when there is an actual crisis (though that's not always the case), but when it's the default mode it can tax human resources, impair effective decision-making, destroy organizational culture, and ultimately threaten the long-term sustainability of an organization.  Moreover, working constantly in "crisis mode" creates a vicious cycle that only further reinforces working in "crisis mode" through a number of psychological patterns (as listed by Ripla in his post):

1. Threat-Rigidity Effect: Under constant threat, organizations tend to narrow their focus, rely on familiar routines, and centralize decision-making, even when these approaches have been shown to be ineffective in the past. 

2. Learned Helplessness: The theory of "learned helplessness" was developed by Martin Seligman and Steven Maier after they noted that dogs who could not escape being repeatedly subjected to electrical shocks stopped attempting to escape, even when escape became possible later on.  These kinds of experiments could never be replicated today, but research has consistently shown that individuals who are repeatedly exposed to stress come to believe that escape and/or recovery is no longer possible.  Organizations can suffer "learned helplessness" too - here, organizations that go through crisis after crisis eventually come to believe that they have little to no control over what happens to them.

3. Cognitive Tunneling: When we are constantly exposed to stress, we narrow our thinking in such a way that we focus only on immediate threats and ignore any peripheral information that may suggest a creative solution to a problem.

4. Negativity Bias: We tend to weight negative information more than positive information, and because this tendency is amplified by stress, organizations often overestimate threats and underestimate their capabilities.

Unfortunately, the psychological responses listed above make it difficult, if not impossible, to get out of continuous crisis mode.  To that end, Jeneen Interlandi recently wrote an excellent article for The New York Times entitled, "We Tire Very Quickly of Being Told That Everything Is on Fire".  Interlandi writes, "The United States is in what can only be described as an epoch of crisis.  There is no quarter of American life that has not been claimed by the term, from the planet (climate) to the Republic (democracy, migration, housing) to the deepest chambers of the human heart (loneliness, despair).  In the future, if we survive that long, historians will marvel at either our capacity to endure so much hardship at once or our ability to label so many disparate problems with the same graying word."  

Interlandi spoke with Joshua Sharfstein, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in preparation for writing her article.  Sharfstein told her, "Crisis can be a powerful catalyst for shaping policy and improving society.  But just like any tool, it can be misused as easily as used."  Overuse of the word can also make things worse, as discussed above.  Framing everything as a crisis can lead to a fatalistic mind-set (similar to Seligman's theory of learned helplessness), which can make people apathetic and even more resistant to change!  Instead, Interlandi advises that we should "strive for a system that is less crisis-dependent overall and more thoughtful and consistent about when and how to hit the panic button."

Leading an organization through change often starts with creating a sense of urgency.  Similarly, organizations should take time during the recovery phase of a crisis to reflect, learn, and improve.  Just as important (maybe even more so), leaders and organizations should try to avoid operating in continuous crisis mode at all costs.  Never let a crisis go to waste, but be careful not to overuse the word!

Drinking the sand...

My wife and I were sitting in a hotel room the other night after a great day at the beach.  We sat down to watch, probably for the umpteenth time, the 1995 film "The American President".  The movie features an all-star cast, including Michael Douglas, Annette Bening, Martin Sheen, Michael J. Fox, and Richard Dreyfuss.  There's a powerful scene in the middle of the movie that says a lot about leadership.  I'll say more on that in a moment, but first I have to set up the scene.

Douglas plays President Andrew Shepherd, a widower who pursues a romantic relationship with environmental lobbyist Sydney Ellen Wade, played by Bening.  President Shepherd and his team are also trying to win passage of a crime control bill during a re-election year.  Sheen plays President Shepherd's best friend and Chief of Staff, while Fox plays a senior advisor on domestic policy.  Dreyfuss plays his principal opponent, Senator Bob Rumson.  Senator Rumson has been questioning President Shepherd's "family values" given his relationship with Ms. Wade.  President Shepherd, to this point in the movie and against the recommendations from his advisors, has avoided any discussion about his personal life.  His previously high approval ratings have fallen since the relationship with Ms. Wade became public, and he is losing votes on his signature crime bill.  His team asks him to hold on the environmental bill (which is being pushed by Sydney Ellen Wade) until after the election, in order to get enough votes to pass the crime bill.

There are a couple of key points made in the dialogue.  First, during a heated argument, when the Chief of Staff (Sheen's character) tells Michael J. Fox's character that the President doesn't answers to him, Fox's character responds by saying, "Oh yes he does, I'm a citizen.  This is my President.  And in this country it's not only permissible to question our leaders, it's our responsibility!"  

I actually think this statement applies to more than just political leaders.  Benjamin Franklin reportedly said (though this is questioned), "It is the responsibility of every citizen to question authority."  Questioning those in authority, when done respectfully and tactfully, helps assure that leaders are accountable for their actions and decisions.  It also promotes transparency and fairness.  I know very few leaders (at least good ones) that would suggest otherwise.  Blind obedience to authority is not only counterproductive in the long run, it can often be deadly (see the description of a number of very well-known examples here).

I wanted to focus on the second point that Fox's character's makes in the scene.  He follows his comment above by saying, "The American people want leadership. And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone [meaning Senator Bob Rumson]. They're so thirsty for it, they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand."  

President Shepherd responds, "We've had Presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink it because they don't know the difference."

Cue the dramatic music!  I've thought a lot about this last statement over the years, and I actually think that the two points are interrelated.  For example, blind obedience to authority can lead us to follow leaders who we think have all the answers but actually don't.  It's also not always clear to distinguish the good leaders from the bad ones.  Leadership is certainly not about popularity - in fact, leaders who make the hard, difficult decisions can be very unpopular, at least for a period of time.  As President Shepherd admits in another speech (shortly after the one mentioned above), "I was so busy worrying about keeping my job, I forgot to do my job" (or something similar).  

Good leaders aren't afraid to make the hard decisions or tackling the problems that are difficult to solve.  Good leaders lead by example and demonstrate both integrity and accountability in all that they do.  Good leaders empower their teams by trusting them and delegating responsibility.  Good leaders support their teams and provide them with resources and opportunities for growth and development.  Good leaders are honest, open, and transparent.  Good leaders are empathetic and understanding.  Good leaders persevere and inspire others to persevere.  By all accounts, President Shepherd was a good leader.  We don't know as much about Senator Rumson, but by all accounts, he wasn't a good leader.

I am reminded of a quote by General Douglas MacArthur, who said, "A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent."  Don't be fooled by the mirage.  Don't drink the sand.  

Long Live Rock!

As I've mentioned in the past (see "You can't always get what you want..."), when I was in high school, I decided to post a "Quote of the Day" on a small dry erase board on the refrigerator in our family's kitchen.  I planned to only use quotations borrowed from rock-n-roll lyrics.  It worked great for about 3 days, then I quickly started losing momentum, gave up, and stopped.  The first quote that I used was from a Rolling Stones song called, "You can't always get what you want".  I've also wondered in the past whether Mick Jagger, the lead singer for the Rolling Stones was a Stoic philosopher (see "Was Mick Jagger a Stoic?")!  It's not far-fetched at all - Mick Jagger once studied economics at the famous London School of Economics and Political Science, which boasts an acceptance rate of about 8 percent!  

As it turns out, I've learned a lot from rock-n-roll lyrics over the years.  One of my favorite rock-n-roll artists, Bruce Springsteen once said, "The best music is essentially there to provide you something to face the world with."  With "The Boss" in mind, I decided to build upon my earlier posts and talk about some of the most important lessons that I've learned from listening to rock-n-roll:

1. "You can't always get what you want..." by the Rolling Stones:  Let's start with the song I've already mentioned.  There's a lyric in the song's chorus that goes: You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you'll find, you get what you need.  It's a pretty amazing sentiment, if you really think about it outside the context of a rock lyric.  I think that you will find in life that you don't always get what you want.  Things won't always go the way that you hoped.  If you find yourself in that situation, take a pause and reconsider.  Chances are that you will come to realize that things always happen for a reason.  Even if you don't always get what you want, you will find that you will get exactly what you need.  What Mick Jagger is singing is a particular brand of philosophical thinking that encourages us a a sense of acceptance and contentment with what life offers, rather than constantly chasing after unattainable goals.

2. "Against the Wind" by Bob Seger: I've always thought that this is an absolutely amazing song.  There's an incredible lyric at the beginning of the song which may be the most poignant statement about life that I've ever heard in a rock-n-roll song: Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.  Here, Seger is lamenting the fact that as we grow older (and wiser), we learn some hard lessons about life that we don't necessarily appreciate when we are younger.  The lessons we learn as we grow older can be painful - the most important lessons in life usually are so.  The Roman general Julius Caesar himself said that "Experience is the best teacher" (he technically said it in Latin, "Ut est rerum omnium magister usus").  It's also been said (by many) that "experience is the hardest teacher, because it gives the test first and the lesson afterward."

3. "Follow Your Heart" by Triumph: The Canadian rock band Triumph was one of my favorite bands growing up.  They were known for their powerful guitar-driven rock songs with lyrics that always seemed to have an inspirational message as opposed to the "sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll" cliché - "Fight the Good Fight" (which was written for one of the band members' aunts who was suffering from cancer), "Lay It On the Line", and "Magic Power" to name just a few.  There's a line in their song "Follow Your Heart" that goes: People say don't ever look behind, happiness is just a state of mind.  The underlying message here is one that I've been posting a lot about recently - we can choose to be happy and optimistic, or we can choose to be unhappy and pessimistic.  It's truly a choice.  It all comes down to how we react to life's difficulties and experiences.

4. "The Grand Illusion" by Styx:  I loved this entire album growing up!  The theme for the entire album (Styx was big on concept albums) was that things aren't always what they seem and that it's a "grand illusion" that success will make you happy (see my post, "Success is not the key to happiness...").  Here's the key line from the title track: So if you think your life is complete confusion, 'cause your neighbors got it made.  Just remember that it's a grand illusion, and deep inside, we're all the same.  Here's another line that is just as powerful (and definitely still appropriate given the adverse impact of social media on trust and happiness in society today): Don't be fooled by the radio/the TV or the magazines/They'll show you photographs of how your life should be/But they're just someone else's fantasy...Just remember that it's all a Grand Illusion/And deep inside we're all the same.

5. "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin: This song is one of the all-time classics and probably has one of the greatest guitar solos of all time (definitely when performed live, but even the studio version's solo is great)!  There's a powerful line in the middle of the song that goes: Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on.  In other words, throughout life we will be faced with choices.  The important thing to remember is that if we make the wrong choice, it's never too late to correct course and choose the alternative route.  

There are definitely more lessons from rock-n-roll that I've shared in the past (see in particular "And the world will live as one..." and "Give me something to believe in!").  And there are some that I hope to share in the future.  Art is powerful in that regard.  U2's guitarist, The Edge, said, "You see, rock and roll isn't a career or hobby - it's a life force. It's something very essential."

The Marshall Plan

One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite movies ("Saving Private Ryan") involves one of my favorite leaders, General George C. Marshall.  It's the scene where General Marshall first learns that Private Ryan's three brothers have been killed and orders a rescue mission to bring Private Ryan back home.  During the scene, General Marshall pulls out and reads a letter, which is the famous "Letter to Mrs. Bixby" written by President Abraham Lincoln in response to a similar situation that had occurred during the American Civil War (see also my post "Courage, Honor, and Commitment").  I've never found out if the scene actually occurred as Hollywood showed it, but it is a very powerful and emotional scene nevertheless.  

General Marshall was one of only five U.S. Army generals to have been awarded the rank of "General of the Army" ( a five-star general) during World War II (the others were Douglas MacArthur, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry H. Arnold, and Omar N. Bradley).  He served as the Army's Chief of Staff under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman, and he later served as Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense under President Truman.  British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called General Marshall the "organizer of victory" in World War II and wrote:

During my long and close association with successive American administrations, there are few men whose qualities of mind and character have impressed me so deeply as those of Gen. Marshall. He is a great American, but he is more than that. In war he was as wise and understanding in counsel as he was resolute in action. In peace he was the architect who planned the restoration of our battered European economy and, at the same time, labored tirelessly to establish a system of Western defense. He has always fought victoriously against defeatism, discouragement and disillusion. Succeeding generations must not be allowed to forget his achievements and his example

As Secretary of State, General Marshall was an early advocate for an American commitment to Europe's post-war recovery.  He was the architect of the Marshall Plan, which provided over $13 billion in foreign aid to Western European countries (roughly $135 billion in today's dollars).  In recognition of that work, General Marshall was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953, the only Army general ever to receive the honor.

Prior to all of this, however, while serving as aide-de-camp to General John J. Pershing (Pershing was the Commander of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I), then Major Marshall wrote a letter to General John Mallory, dated November 5, 1920, in which he outlined the four qualities necessary to be a successful leader during combat.  What's important to emphasize is that these same four qualities aren't specific to war-time leadership - they are fundamental aspects of leadership in general.  To this end, two of the qualities overlap with what Warren Buffett looks for in a potential leader.  

Marshall writes, "To be a highly successful leader in war, four things are essential, assuming that you possess good common sense, have studied your profession and are physically strong."  

1. Optimism:  A leader should be "cheerful and optimistic."  Marshall's belief here is aligned with several other, more contemporary, views of what qualities are necessary for leaders, including my own (see my most recent posts, "All shall be well", "Hope is not a strategy...or is it?", "Two words - wait and hope", and "Leaders are dealers in hope..." on this topic).  What's important to remember is that hope is optimism with action.  In other words, hope goes beyond simply believing things will turn out well (which is, in essence, optimism).  Hope goes one step beyond and involves actively envisioning a path and taking steps to achieve desired outcomes.  As leaders, it is our job to restore and provide hope - we do that by taking action.

2. Energy:  As General Marshall writes, "When evening comes and all are exhausted, hungry, and possible dispirited...you must put aside any thought of personal fatigue and display marked energy in looking after the comfort of your organization, inspecting your lines and preparing for tomorrow."  Leadership is hard (see my post, "No Easy Victories"), but it is our job as leaders to never show that our will, our resolve, and our commitment to the cause is flagging.  As I've mentioned in the past, leaders are always on stage.  The individuals in the organization will look to their leaders first for any signs of quitting or giving up.  

3. Loyalty:  General Marshall admonishes General Mallory, "Make a point of extreme loyalty, in thought and deed, to your chiefs personally..."  I do believe it is important for leaders to be loyal to their organizations and their teams.  One of my former mentors, the head of our Division of Critical Care Medicine, used to say that he would never ask the other members of the Division to do something that he was not willing to do himself.  That's always stuck with me, and it is certainly something that I try to practice to this day.  

4. Determination: What General Marshall calls determination, I like to call grit.  He again admonishes General Mallory, "The more alarming and disquieting the reports received or the conditions viewed in battle, the more determined must be your attitude."  Persistence.  Resilience.  Grit.  Determination.  These are the qualities that help leaders persevere through the challenges that come with leadership.

Incidentally, Warren Buffett said that he looks for three qualities in a leader - integrity, energy, and intelligence.  General Marshall assumed that leaders must have common sense, be physically fit, and know their craft.  So, he certainly would have agreed with Warren Buffett that leaders should be intelligent.  They should study their profession and continuously learn and develop their knowledge and skills.  Buffett also agrees with General Marshall that leaders should have energy.  

I've mentioned an online video by Simon Sinek in the past called "Trust and Performance" (see my posts, "Do the Cleveland Browns have a trust issue?" and "Attitude > Talent").  Sinek talks about how the U.S. Navy SEALS select the members of their elite group, SEAL Team Six - they select individuals who perform well (of course), but the weigh trust and integrity higher than performance.  In other words, they would choose a SEAL with "high-trust" and "medium-performance" over another SEAL with "high-performance" but "medium-trust".  In other words, they look for individuals who are loyal to their teams, their organization, and the mission.  I think the Navy SEALS would agree with both General Marshall and Warren Buffett.

A life with meaning and purpose...

When I think of all the books that I've read throughout my lifetime, there are a few that stand out as having an enormous impact on my life for one reason or another.  There are others that I just really enjoyed.  I would have to say that Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is one of the most important books that I've ever read.  I can measure the impact that it's made on how I've come to view the world in which we live by the sheer number of posts that I've written about it.  Frankl was an Austrian neurologist, psychologist, philosopher, and Holocaust survivor.  He developed an entire philosophy and form of psychotherapy called "Logotherapy" (literally meaning "healing through meaning") based largely upon his Holocaust concentration camp experience, first at Auschwitz and later at Bergen-Belsen.  Frankl talks about the three fundamental tenets of "Logotherapy" in his book.  First, life has meaning, even under the most miserable of circumstances; second, our main motivation in life is to find meaning in life itself; and third, we are free to find meaning in who we are, what we do, and what we experience.  If you are searching for that elusive "one thing" that captures the essence of what it is to live with purpose and meaning, these questions are a great place to start.

Studies have consistently shown that psychological well-being is a key determinant for living the good life.  Individuals with positive well-being live longer and suffer fewer health problems compared to those without positive well-being.  Frank Martela and colleagues recently published a study ("Which predicts longevity better: Satisfaction with life or purpose in life?") that compared "satisfaction with life" (subjectively determined using a validated measure) and "purpose in life" (again, using a validated measure) and mortality.  Having a purpose in life was a much better predictor of living a longer life than simply being satisfied with life.  In other words, having a sense of purpose not only makes us happy, it helps us to live longer lives with fewer health problems!

  

Both Western and Eastern philosophical traditions suggest that finding your purpose in life is one of the keys to a happy life.  For example, Buddha said, "Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it."  Viktor Frankl said, "Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself."  

Another one of my favorite authors, Mark Twain, said that "The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why."  As it turns out, finding your personal "why" is perhaps one of the most important things that you can do in life.  It is the key that unlocks both our happiness and our success.  Finding one's purpose is a highly personal journey, but thankfully there's been a lot of great articles that can certainly help pave the road and make the journey a little easier.  Stay tuned for a summary of the articles that I've found most helpful in my next post.

The third place no more?

I just read that McDonald's just overtook Starbucks' near decade-long run as the world's most valuable restaurant brand.  According to a report by the global marketing consultant firm Brand Finance, McDonald's brand value rose 7 percent in 2025 to US$40 billion, while Starbucks brand value declined 36 percent to US$38 billion.  Jason Aten, writing for Inc. magazine (see "McDonald's just got big news in its decades-long battle with Starbucks"), McDonald's has been playing the long game by investing heavily in its McCafé brand by improving the quality of its coffee and adding free WiFi.  He writes, "In doing so, McDonald's made a bold move: it started positioning itself as a viable third place."

Let's go back in time to talk about what Aten meant when he referred to McDonald's as a third place.  Several years ago, I happened to be speaking at the Risky Business Patient Safety Conference in London at the same time that my sister and her family were touring England.  We decided to meet up and see some of the sights together.  We had a fantastic time!  There's even a picture somewhere of all of us recreating the Beatles' famous Abbey Road album cover.  We had planned to meet at a specific location (I can't remember the exact location), and we had to travel separately via the Tube in order to meet ("Mind the Gap").  Apparently my youngest nephew was just a little too late jumping on to the train at the last minute, and so the rest of my sister's family inadvertently left him at the station and went on without him.  He was already in high school at this point, but his mobile phone didn't have an international plan.  He went to a Starbucks close by and used the free WiFi there to text my sister and find out where they could meet.  Very resourceful!

Starbucks used to be a place to hang out and work while enjoying a great cup of coffee.  The company actually encouraged customers to come and spend free time in their stores and had done so almost from the beginning.  There's a well-known story of how former CEO Howard Schultz wanted to re-create the ambience and experience of a European coffeehouse.  Starbucks was originally founded in 1971 by Gerald Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Ziev Siegl, primarily as a small coffee shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market.  The store specialized in selling whole arabica coffee beans to a niche market.  Schultz joined the marketing team in 1982, and during a business trip to Europe, he became fascinated with Italy's coffee culture, particularly the important role that neighborhood espresso bars played in the everyday lives of the individuals living there.  When Schultz returned to Seattle, he was excited to recreate the same environment at Starbucks.  The small company set up an espresso bar in downtown Seattle, which would serve as the prototype for what Schultz envisioned was the future of the company.  

Schultz described his vision, saying, "The idea was to create a chain of coffeehouses that would become America's third place.  At the time, most Americans had two places in their lives - home and work.  But I believed that people needed another place, a place where they could go to relax and enjoy others, or just be by themselves.  I envisioned a place that would be separate from home or work, a place that would mean different things to different people."

The three founders didn't want to become a restaurant business, so Schultz left the company to start his own company, Il Giornale (apparently the Italian word for newspaper).  His coffee shop quickly became popular, and to close the circle, Schultz eventually purchased Starbucks from its original founders.  Over the next several years, he built Starbucks into what it is today - a global brand developed around the concept of a third place.  

Schultz served as Chair and CEO at Starbucks from 1986-2000, 2008-2017, and again as Interim CEO from 2022-2023.  Over the years, Starbucks has occasionally lost its way by de-emphasizing the third place concept.  Schultz famously came out of retirement in 2008 to resurrect the brand and the company by returning to its roots as a third place for people who love coffee.  Schultz famously wrote an open letter to all of the company's partners (what Starbucks calls its employees) in 2018, "Great coffee and our stores will always be catalysts for community.  Now more than ever the world needs places to come together with compassion and with love.  Providing the world with a warm and welcoming third place may just be our most important role and responsibility, today and always."

As it turns out, always doesn't always mean forever.  Over the last several years, Starbucks, under new executive leadership, began to prioritize goals like efficiency and volume over the customer experience.  The legendary (often mythical) third place was de-emphasized.  As B. Joseph Pine II and Louis-Etienne Dubois write in an online article for Harvard Business Review (see "How Starbucks Devalued Its Own Brand"), "Starbucks is in trouble again...Going to Starbucks isn't what it used to be, and the brand itself isn't what it used to mean.  The fundamental problem: Starbucks has been commoditizing itself."

The meteoric rise of Starbucks as a company has been covered in a number of Harvard Business School case studies, articles, and books (see in particular "Starbucks Coffee Company: Transformation and Renewal" by Nancy Koehn and colleagues, as well as Schultz's book, Onward: How Starbucks Fought For Its Life Without Losing Its Soul).  What is remarkable is the fact that prior to Schultz and the third place, coffee met almost every definition of a commodity.  Any business person in their right mind wouldn't have predicted a company built around specialty coffee would become one of the world's best known brands.  The secret recipe for the success of Starbucks really comes down to the third place concept.  As Schultz himself suggested in an open letter on LinkedIn to the company leadership, Starbucks has lost its soul.  Starbucks, as Vetha Varshini Kavya Alam writes on Medium, has become just another coffee shop.  As a result, McDonald's has taken over as the world's most valuable restaurant brand.

Daniel Kline writes (see "Starbucks CEO sounds the alarm on coffee chain's problems") that "Starbucks seems to bounce between two types of CEOs: those who care about coffee and atmosphere and those who worry about efficiency and operations...Laxman Narasimhan and Kevin Johnson, both of whom followed Schultz in the top spot, always seemed more concerned about operations than coffee."  Starbucks' new CEO, Brian Niccol, who was CEO of Chipotle prior to becoming CEO at Starbucks on September 9, 2024, appears to be a hybrid of the two.  He wrote in an open letter shortly after taking over the company, "We're refocusing on what has always set Starbucks apart - a welcoming coffeehouse where people gather, and where we serve the finest coffee, handcrafted by our skilled baristas."

Time will only tell whether Niccol can keep operations smooth and efficient, while at the same time emphasizing the quality of the customer experience.  It's a position (and predicament) that many leaders in health care know all too well!  At least for the moment, however, it seems that Starbucks can no longer claim to be the third place.

Squaring a circle

Once again, I learned a rather interesting bit of trivia about the number π a few weeks after (not before) International Pi Day (see another post from the past, "Pi and Infinite Monkeys" which I posted on September 3, 2023).  March 14th is always a fun day in our house, because my wife is a middle school math teacher!  She always celebrates International Pi Day by having her students bring in either pizza or pie, and there's always a contest to see which student can recite the highest number of digits in π.  While I am confident that almost everyone can remember that π is roughly equal to 3.14, I suspect that many of us forget that (1) π is what is classified as an irrational number (a real number that cannot be expressed as a fraction), (2) the decimal representation of π never ends and never repeats itself (although there are occasional short repeating elements, such as the six consecutive nines that appear starting at the 762nd decimal place, commonly known as Feynman's Point after the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman, (3) π is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.

What I didn't know is that my home state of Indiana almost passed a law in 1897 to change the value of π to 3.2.    

Since antiquity, mathematicians have tried to solve a problem known as "squaring a circle".  The problem can be stated as follows: Given a circle, construct a square with the same area as the circle using only a compass and straight edge.  Unfortunately, solving the problem has proven to be impossible, which is why "squaring a circle" is now an idiomatic expression used to describe a problem that is impossible to solve.  Here's where the Indiana law comes in.  Back in 1894, an Indiana physician and math enthusiast named Edward J. Goodwin believed that he had discovered a solution for the "squaring the circle" problem.  He was so proud of his proof that he asked his friend, Taylor I. Record to introduce a bill (Bill 246) in the Indiana House of Representatives under the title, "A Bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth" in 1897.  Bizarrely, if passed, the law would have allowed the state of Indiana to publish his discovery in its textbooks for free, while everyone else would supposedly have to pay royalties to Goodwin.  I'm not sure that's exactly how copyright laws work, but that didn't seem to bother Goodwin or Record.

Interestingly enough, Goodwin's proof only worked if π was equal to 3.2.  The other state representatives in the Indiana House were confused by the topic and whether it was even appropriate for them to vote on such a bill.  One representative referred the bill to the Finance Committee, presumably because the bill involved numbers.  Another representative joked that the bill should go to the Committee on Swamplands, where it would "find a deserved grave."  The bill eventually made its way in the House Education Committee, which approved it and sent it to the General Assembly for a vote.  The Indiana House of Representatives voted by majority to approve the bill on February 6, 1897.

Before the bill went to the Indiana Senate, however, another mathematician caught wind of the bill.  Purdue University's Clarence Abiathar Waldo had apparently stopped by at the Indiana Statehouse in order to request funding for the Indiana Academy of Science.  Instead, he found himself teaching Indiana Senators on the finer points of geometry.  Waldo later recalled in the Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science, "A member then showed the writer a copy of the bill just passed and asked him if he would like an introduction to the learned doctor, its author. He declined the courtesy with thanks, remarking that he was acquainted with as many crazy people as he cared to know."

Despite Waldo's impromptu geometry lesson, the bill nearly passed the Senate.  However, the Senate agreed to postpone consideration of the bill indefinitely on February 12, 1897, narrowly avoiding what would assuredly result in widespread ridicule.  Waldo later wrote, "My state did not further this monstrosity, and it was probably the Indiana Academy of Science alone which prevented it.  That one act of protection was worth more to Indiana, jealous of her fair fame as she is, than all she ever contributed or can contribute to the publication of the proceedings of her Academy of Science."

It's an interesting footnote in the history of mathematics.  I wonder why I was never heard about this story when we were taught Indiana State History in grade school?  And even though I am posting this on April Fool's Day, as far as I can tell, the story is absolutely true (Goodwin even published his proof in the prestigious journal, The American Mathematical Monthly under the title "Quadrature of the Circle")!