Lessons in humility

There's an old Mac Davis song with a rather interesting title, "It's hard to be humble" with an even more interesting first line, "Oh Lord it's hard to be humble, when you're perfect in every way."  Unfortunately, Mr. Davis provides a very good example of hubris, not humility.  As I have stated before (on numerous occasions), humility is an important and indispensable characteristic to leadership.  I will agree with Mr. Davis on one point though, humility can be difficult.

I bring up the topic of humility today in response to a superb article written by David Leonhardt in today's New York Times, "The Power of Humility".  Leonhardt's article is timed perfectly with tonight's NFL Draft, and he opens his article with, "Tonight at the Caesars Forum Conference Center near Las Vegas, thousands of people will gather for an annual demonstration of human overconfidence."  Wow - what gives?  He goes on, "I recognize that many readers of this newsletter are not football fans.  Still, I think the draft is worth a few minutes of your attention, because it turns out to be a delightful case study of human hubris, one with lessons for other subjects, like the economy and COVID-19."  Okay, now you have my attention Mr. Leonhardt!

Fundamentally, the NFL Draft is no different than what most employers do nearly every day - recruiting and choosing which job candidates to hire for an open position.  What is different about the NFL Draft is that the employers (in this case, the team owners, general managers, and coaching staffs) have more information about each prospective candidate than any other employer.  College football players entering the draft are subject to an intensive process which is far beyond what most employers do.  An individual player's performance is judged on the field by thoroughly reviewing game films from their college careers.  They are run through a battery of physical and mental tests (you can test yourself with what the NFL teams use - the Wonderlic test - here) at an event known as the NFL Combine.  They are interviewed by coaches and general managers.

Despite having all of this knowledge, NFL teams notoriously fail when it comes to making the right choice.  Just take a look at the following chart from Leonhardt's article today, showing the top quarterbacks that were selected in the Draft (including the #1 overall pick, Heisman Trophy winner Baker Mayfield):

As you can see, if teams had the opportunity to repeat the 2018 NFL Draft, Josh Allen would likely have been the first quarterback taken.  As a matter of fact, Josh Rosen, Sam Darnold, and Baker Mayfield will likely sit on the bench this year.  Imagine spending all of that money on a bust!  Unfortunately, teams more often than not fail to make the right pick.  Most of the best quarterbacks in the NFL right now were actually drafter after other quarterbacks who haven't performed as well.  And then there is the example of Tom Brady (likely the greatest NFL quarterback of all time), who was selected by the New England Patriots with the 199th pick of the 2000 NFL Draft.

Leonhardt references one of his earlier articles in the Times (this one written on the morning of the 2020 NFL Draft), which referenced a study by the economists Cade Massey and Richard Thaler (incidentally, Thaler won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2017).  Massey and Thaler studied the NFL Draft and analyzed a player's performance with where they were selected in the draft.  They found that teams were notoriously bad at selecting players.  They found that the chance that a player at a given position (e.g. quarterback, wide receiver, or offensive lineman) turned out to be better than another player at the same position drafted next was only 52% (basically a coin toss, or better yet, dart-throwing monkeys).

Massey said, "Even the smartest guys in the world, the guys who spend hours with game film, can't predict this with much success.  There's no crime in that.  The crime is thinking you can predict it."  Take for example the New York Jets (a team that hasn't been to the Super Bowl since Joe Namath played in Super Bowl III in 1969).  They traded away four of their draft picks in the 2018 NFL Draft in order to move  up only three spots to the sixth pick.  Who did they select with that pick?  Quarterback Sam Darnold, who as you can see in the figure above, has simply not been worth it (he's not even playing for the Jets anymore).  

As Leonhardt points out, the NFL Draft provides us with a lesson in humility and hubris.  Experts simply cannot predict an individual player's performance as well as they think.  As it turns out, what is true for football experts is true for most experts in many other fields.  We do not predict as well as we think, whether the prediction involves what the stock market will do, who will win the next presidential election, or even what will happen during a global pandemic.  Leonhardt writes, "The world is frequently messier and harder to understand than people acknowledge. We tell ourselves artificially tidy stories about why something happened and what will happen next."

If NFL teams can't accurately predict a player's future job performance, even with the mountain of information that they possess on each player, how do you expect employers in other industries will fare with picking top talent?  As it turns out, we are not as good as we think either.  And that is probably okay, as long we acknowledge it.  Humility is better than hubris.  As Albert Einstein once reportedly said, "A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing."

Revolutionary love

My wife and I recently went to the beach for a week of rest and relaxation.  Our idea of "fun" is to do absolutely nothing.  We both usually bring a few books along, and this time was no exception.  I ended up reading three books (one of which I had started before we left) - a gigantic 1,000 page biography on Winston Churchill (Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts), which I thoroughly enjoyed (this was the one I had already started); an older book on game theory (Thinking Strategically by Avinash Dixit and Barry Nalebuff); and a dystopian novel that is apparently the first in a trilogy (The Dandelion Insurrection by Rivera Sun).  

I spend most of my time reading non-fiction.  Lately, or so it seems, the novels I've read are from the post-apocalpytic or dystopian genre (what's that say about me?).  Here are some of the recent ones: The Postman by David Brin, which was made into a movie starring Kevin Costner and Will Patton, New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy, which was made into a movie starring Viggo Mortensen.  Unfortunately, while I enjoyed the story, there was something about The Dandelion Insurrection that just didn't click with me.  Regardless, the major theme of the book was powerful and poignant for our time.  

Towards the beginning of the story, one of the main characters, "The Man from the North" wrote to his followers, "In a time of hate, love is a revolutionary act."  Wow!  If ever there was a time for revolutionary love, we are living in one.  The statement was so powerful that I wanted to dig a little deeper into its meaning.

I came across a TED talk by the filmmaker, lawyer, and activist Valarie Kaur, who gave a TED talk entitled, "3 lessons of revolutionary love in a time of rage" in 2017 and founded the Revolutionary Love Project.  One of her friends was killed in a hate crime after September 11, 2001, prompting her to document hate crimes against Muslims and Sikhs in the United States, which resulted in an award-winning documentary, Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath.

Kaur defines revolutionary love as follows:

“Revolutionary love is a well-spring of care, an awakening to the inherent dignity and beauty of others and the earth, a quieting of the ego, a way of moving through the world in relationship, asking: ‘What is your story? What is at stake? What is my part in your flourishing?’ Loving others, even our opponents, in this way has the power to sustain political, social and moral transformation. This is how love changes the world.”

“Love calls us to look upon the faces of those different from us as brothers and sisters. Love calls us to weep when their bodies are outcast, broken or destroyed. Love calls us to speak even when our voice trembles, stand even when hate spins out of control, and stay even when the blood is fresh on the ground. Love makes us brave. The world needs your love: the only social, political and moral force that can dismantle injustice to remake the world around us – and within us.”

“To pursue a life of revolutionary love is to walk boldly into the hot winds of the world with a saint’s eyes and a warrior’s heart – and pour our body, breath, and blood into others.”

Perhaps all of this is a little too deep for a beach read, but I was absolutely mesmerized by it all.  Given everything that is going on in our world today (and I won't catalog them here, as all you have to do is watch the evening news), we need revolutionary love.  It could be the only thing that keeps our world from falling apart.

I occasionally get accused of politicizing too much (see "A Brief Hiatus" from July, 2020).  You can certainly choose to ignore this post.  But I ask you, before you do, to just take a moment to peer deep inside your own heart and ask yourself, "What can I do to make this world a better place?"  I bet that your answer sounds a lot like revolutionary love.

"In a time of hate, love is a revolutionary act."

GoRuck

A few weeks ago, I watched an in-flight movie on a trip to a medical conference in San Diego called The Standard.  The movie is now available on Hulu, Amazon Prime, and YouTube.  Apparently there is an organization called GoRuck that claims to sell the world's toughest "rucking" gear (according to the company's website, "rucking" is "just walking with weight on your back").  GoRuck was founded in 2008 by a former U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret named Jason McCarthy.  The company employs about 150 Special Forces veterans.

The organization also sponsors and runs a series of training clubs and competitions, including "GoRuck Selection", a self-proclaimed "world's toughest endurance event" in which competitors spend just over 48 grueling hours being tested by a group called the Cadre (all veterans of U.S. military Special Forces).  The event is patterned after the U.S. Army's Special Forces Selection.  The movie, "The Standard" is about one of the "GoRuck Selection" events (Class 019).  Only the toughest competitors (about 2%) finish the entire 48 hour competition.  The movie was tough to watch, as these competitors go through hell and back.  What's incredible is that the "GoRuck Selection" provides competitors with just a glimpse into what Special Forces soldiers go through during their 24-day selection (if you want to learn more, check out "Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior" by former Navy SEAL Dick Couch).

I have been told that the selection process for any branch of the U.S. military's special forces (U.S. Navy SEALs, U.S. Army Rangers, U.S. Army Special Forces are perhaps the best known examples) requires more mental fortitude and resilience than physical strength and endurance.  For example, one of the recurring themes in "The Standard" movie was that individuals often can go far beyond the point of physical exhaustion.  As the American psychologist and philosopher William James said, "Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they've got a second."

I've posted about this concept before (see "Winnie the Pooh and the Navy SEALS").  William James wrote in The Energies of Man ""Beyond the very extreme of fatigue and distress, we may find amounts of ease and power we never dreamed ourselves to own; sources of strength never taxed at all because we never push through the obstruction."  Former Navy SEAL David Goggins calls it "the 40% rule". Simply stated, the "40% rule" states that when your brain is telling you that you can't go on anymore, you are really only 40% done.  Deep down, your body can handle more stress and you can face even greater challenges.

All of this - the "40% rule" and "The Standard" is really about something that we call resilience.  I won't argue that any of us will ever come close to pushing ourselves to the point that the U.S. Navy SEALs or U.S. Army Special Forces seem to do on a daily basis.  But as leaders, we should be able to appreciate that we can do more than we think.  Our teams can do more than they think.  Maybe it really is about "mind over matter".  That "never give up" attitude is something that we all can and should aspire towards - we should commit to resilience.

Be compassionate...

Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter, and Marissa Afton recently wrote a nice article on the subtle, but important differences between empathy and compassion in an online article for the Harvard Business Review ("Connect with Empathy, But Lead With Compassion").  As they point out in their article, the words sympathy, empathy, and compassion are often used interchangeably, but that is not quite right.  Using a classic 2x2 chart with "Understanding of the other's experience" on the x-axis and "Willingness to support" on the y-axis, they explain the difference between these words and why we need to understand that they are different:

  

Looking at the lower left-hand side of the graph, we see that when we experience pity for someone, we feel sorry for them without necessarily fully understanding what they are going through or being willing to help them.  When we experience sympathy, we are a little more willing to help and perhaps understand someone's experience better.  As we move diagonally up and to the right on the graph, we move towards empathy, where we may share the lived experience of the other person (literally taking on the emotions that they are feeling) and be even more willing to help them.  Finally, rather than just sharing the person's emotions (empathy), compassion is when we take a step away and actually move to help that person.  As Hougaard, Carter, and Afton write, "Compassion is an intention versus an emotion."

If you are still confused on the difference between empathy and compassion, perhaps a quote from Paul Polman, the former CEO of Unilever will help, "If I led with empathy, I would never be able to make a single decision.  Why? Because with empathy, I mirror the emotions of others, which makes it impossible to consider the greater good."

Empathy is a necessary step towards being compassionate.  Unfortunately, when we stop at empathy, we may not always make the right decisions that can help someone who is in distress.  When we are showing compassion, it's almost as if we are stepping outside ourselves and taking a broader view of the individual's circumstances, which allows us to better assess the situation, make better decisions, and actually act to positively address the situation.

The psychologist Paul Bloom talks about a study from the mid-1990's in his book, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion by C. Daniel Batson and colleagues, "Immorality from empathy-induced altruism: When compassion and justice conflict".  Study participants were told that they were going to work for a charity (entirely fictitious) called "The Quality Life Foundation" which provided funds to help improve the lives of terminally ill children (sort of like the real Make-A-Wish Foundation).  After listening to an interview with a 10 year-old child named Sheri Summers (again, fictitious), participants were given the opportunity to move Sheri up on the priority list, although this would mean that another child, perhaps one more deserving than Sheri, would not receive the funds.  Half of the participants were told to be objective, while the other half were told "try and imagine how the child who is interviewed feels about what has happened and how it has affected this child's life" (a prompt designed to elicit empathy).  Nearly three-fourths of the subjects who read the empathy prompt moved the fictitious patient Sheri up on the list (compared to just one-third in the group who were told to remain objective)!

Compassion then, is being able to take a broader view in order to actually help serve the greater good.  As Paul Bloom writes in his book, "I want to make a case for the value of conscious, deliberative reasoning in everyday life, arguing that we should strive to use our heads rather than our hearts."  Compassionate leaders use their heads and their hearts.

Hougaard, Carter, and Afton go on to suggest five key strategies for compassionate leadership:

1. Take a mental and emotional step away - As the study mentioned above by Batson and colleagues suggests, we can often make the wrong decisions when we are too empathetic.  We can avoid falling into this "empathy trap" by stepping out of the emotional space to get a clear perspective of the situation so that we can make a decision with our head, not our heart.

2. Ask what they need - Asking the simple question, "What do you need?" is sometimes all it takes to help someone.

3. Remember the power of non-action - Remember that in many situations, people don't need you to solve their problems, but rather just listen and care.  

4. Coach the person so they can find their own solution - As Hougaard, Carter, and Afton write, "Leadership is not about solving problems for people.  It is about growing and developing people, so they are empowered to solve their own problems."

5. Practice self-care - Show self-compassion by taking care of yourself!  It's hard for leaders to be compassionate when they are struggling themselves.

We could all use a little more compassion and kindness in the world.  Long ago, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote, "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle."  The Chinese philosopher Confucius wrote, "Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of man."  And more recently, Albert Schweitzer suggested that "the purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others."

Dostadning

My wife and I have been living in two different places for the past two years (it's a really long story and has a lot to do with the COVID-19 pandemic).  We moved to a new city about 2 years ago and decided to rent a condominium close to my work.  We kept our old house during this time and drove back and forth at least once a month.  We recently sold our house, and we are close to completing our transition to our new home and city.  It's an exciting time, even if a little bittersweet.

We've been packing up a lot of the furniture and personal belongings that didn't make the move to our new city.  Surprisingly, we still have a lot of things in our old house.  We've made several trips back and forth to our local Goodwill , and we've thrown a lot of old things out (thank you 1-800-Got-Junk? and our local trash company).  Notably, had we moved two years ago, I do not think we would have thrown as many things out or donated as many items to Goodwill.  I suspect that, in the interest of time, we would have just moved everything.

I made a comment to a co-worker that perhaps Marie Kondo could learn from our experience!  We told ourselves that, "If we haven't touched it for at least two years, it's probably time to donate or pitch it."  One of our daughters told us, "When in doubt, throw it out!"  My colleague at work told me, "You are just doing a Swedish death cleaning - it's called dostadning."  I am always curious to learn new things, so I searched for the word dostadning on the Internet.

The word dostadning apparently comes from two Swedish words - "do" meaning "death" and "stadning" meaning "cleaning."  As it turns out, my colleague was right, the word literally means "death cleaning."  There's even a book by Margareta Magnusson called, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter.  The concept here is that you should declutter your life now, so that your family won't have to do it after you die (it's a little morbid, I realize, but the concept still makes a lot of sense to me).

Here's the thing, though.  Dostadning doesn't have to be just about decluttering the things at home.  We can and should metaphorically declutter the things we have accumulated in our professional lives too.  Every so often, we should take a good, hard look at the things that we do that keep us busy.  Are we spending our time and energy on activities that are going to make us better as individuals or that help us to achieve our goals?  If not, it's time to stop.  We should remove all the junk and the clutter, and focus our attention on the things that are important to us.

As Marie Kondo herself said, "From the moment you start tidying, you will be compelled to reset your life. As a result, your life will start to change."  She was referring to tidying up your house, but I think she meant that we should tidy up our lives too.  Dostadning.

Go ahead and wear that Barry Manilow shirt!

My wife and I attended a wedding a few months ago.  The wedding was a three hour drive away from us, so we left on Friday evening after work.  Neither one of us packed ahead of time, so we each threw some clothes in a bag and left home in order to beat the rush hour traffic.  Unfortunately, I brought one of my dress shirts with French cuffs and forgot the cuff links.  I had to wear the shirt, so I just went without cuff links.  My wife kept telling me that no one would notice, but I wasn't so sure.  Rather than risk being caught, I simply told my sister-in-law who was sitting next to me what had happened.  She just shrugged it off.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was experiencing what cognitive psychologists call the "spotlight effect".  The "spotlight effect" is that tendency that we apparently all have to overestimate how much people notice things about us.  It's as if we had a spotlight shining on us to highlight all of our personal flaws for everyone in the world to see.  The "spotlight effect" was first described by Thomas Gilovich, Victoria Husted Medvec, and Kenneth Savitsky in a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.  These investigators found that college undergraduate students significantly overestimated how many of their classmates would notice that they were wearing an embarassing T-shirt to class (in this case, the T-shirt was a Barry Manilow shirt!).  It wasn't even close!  

Apparently we are so self-absorbed that we believe that we are the center of the universe.  Okay, it's probably not quite that extreme, but you get the picture.  We falsely believe that we stand out in the eyes of others, both in a positive sense ("Wow, look at the dude, he is so cool!") and negative sense ("Wow, look at the dude, he is such a nerd!").  The evidence tells us that this is simply false - unless we are wearing a clown outfit in the middle of a crowd, people aren't likely to notice anything different about us.  

So next time you are having a "bad hair day" or have a spot of coffee on your shirt, don't worry about it.  Chances are that people aren't going to notice.  As Adam Grant recently said on Twitter, "The people you are trying to impress are probably busy trying to impress someone else."  Go ahead and wear that Barry Manilow shirt - proudly!

Michael Scott's 10 rules for business

I never really watched the television show, The Office, when it was on regular television, but since the pandemic I've become absolutely addicted to it.  As I stated in two previous posts (see "Is Michael Scott a bad boss?" and "Leader...ship"), my wife and I binge-watched the show on Netflix all the way from start to finish.  I've found that both the cable television networks Comedy Central and

Freeform broadcast reruns of the show on an almost nightly basis, so I end up wasting a lot of free time watching old reruns of the show.  I've yet to go to The Office Experience here in Chicago, but it is definitely on my "To Do" list (assuming that I can get tickets - it's been sold-out for a while).

A few nights ago (I told you that I watch the show a lot), I watched episode 4 of the second season ("The Fire"), where Michael Scott, the Regional Manager of Dunder Mifflin Scranton tries to provide mentorship to the temporary employee, Ryan Howard, by giving him his "Ten Rules of Business" (all while everyone in the building evacuates due to a fire that Ryan accidentally started by the way).  I thought they were pretty good.  I realize you can probably just look them up on the Internet, but I decided to list them here and give my own interpretation instead.

Rule #1: You need to play to win, but you also have to win to play.

I like the first half of this rule a lot.  I think the key issue here is that in order to be successful (and you can define success however you want), you have to be willing to take risks.  You have to to start somewhere.  One of my mentors once told me, "You will never get the research grants that you don't apply for, so go ahead and apply."  An ancient proverb says that the journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step, and that is absolutely true.  You will never complete a journey that you don't begin.  So take that first step.  Put yourself out there, and go for it.

The second half of the rule is a little more nuanced, and in order to fully appreciate its meaning, you are going to have to take a close look at it.  The individuals who are winning in the game of life are the ones who persevere through the tough times and find a way to win.  These individuals see obstacles, not as barriers, but as ways to move forward.  As the ancient Stoic philosopher and Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said, "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way."

Rule #2: Adapt, React, Readapt, Apt.

Here is a great example of a typical improvisation by Michael Scott (he calls it an "improversation") - he literally makes things up on the fly.  However, I find again that there is a lot more truth in this rule than even Michael Scott probably intended.  I am reminded of the OODA loop developed by U.S. Air Force Colonel John Boyd (Observe-Orient-Decide-Act) or the PDCA cycle (also known as the Shewhart Cycle, Plan-Do-Check-Act, which is more commonly known as a PDSA cycle for Plan-Do-Study-Act).  

I'm not sure what "Apt" means here in this context (and neither did Michael Scott I suspect).  I suspect he meant to say "Act" here.  Regardless, what is important is the sequence of actions that help leaders make decisions and react to situations, no matter how complex or unexpected.  

Rule #3: In business, image is everything.

Michael Scott was referring to the Canon television commercials ("Image is Everything") from the late 1980's featuring U.S. tennis star Andre Agassi.  Once again, Michael Scott nailed it with this one.  Image, i.e. how an individual or an organization is portrayed and perceived by the public, matters a lot more than you think.  Respect, trust, and loyalty are earned with difficulty.  Unfortunately, they are also very easy to lose.  

Rule #4: Safety first, i.e., don't burn the building down.

Remember that during this specific episode, everyone had to evacuate the building due to a fire.  At the end of the episode, we learn that the fire was started by a piece of bread in the toaster (and apparently Ryan was the one who had accidentally started the fire by trying to make a piece of toast).  Again, there is more here than meets the eye.  I interpret this rule as "Take care of yourself" and "Don't burn out."  There is a strong association in health care between employee engagement, wellbeing, and safety and patient outcomes.  As the saying goes, "Put on your own oxygen mask first."

Well, that's it.  If you're paying attention closely, I said that I was going to tell you "Michael Scott's Ten Rules of Business."  If there are indeed ten rules, he never told anyone on the show.  I suspect that he was making these up on the spot all along, but then you have to remember that this show was a situation-comedy.  Regardless, even his four rules have a lot to tell us.  We would all do well to keep them in mind, both in our personal and professional lives.