Are You Happy?

I don't often read books that are found in the "self-help" section of the library or bookstore.  However, after a conversation with my wife about a podcast that she had listened to by the author and "Happiness" researcher Arthur C.Brooks (I've posted about him once in the past, see "The mathematics of happiness"), I checked out his most recent book, Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier, that he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey.  Apparently it's a book that needs to be read widely!  According to research cited by Brooks and Winfrey in their Introduction, the percentage of Americans saying that they are "not too happy" increased from 10% to 24% in the past decade, while the percentage of Americans saying that they are "very happy" has decreased from 36% to 19% during the same time period.  There is no question that the COVID-19 pandemic had an adverse impact on our overall level of happiness, but importantly these trends started even before the pandemic.  Regardless of why, the simple fact of the matter is that we are just not as happy as we once were in the past.

One of the most important things that I learned from the book is that happiness is not a destination, but rather a direction.  People can in fact be happy and unhappy at the same time!  It makes perfect sense to me that our level of happiness exists along a continuum, but "unhappiness" and "happiness" are not opposite ends on the same continuum.  It's not like this:

Instead, both our level of happiness and our level of unhappiness exist along a continuum.  It's actually like this:

In other words, feelings of unhappiness and happiness can co-exist.  We can feel both at the same time!  Some neuroscientists even believe that the positive feelings of happiness and the negative feelings of unhappiness correspond to activity in different hemispheres of our brain!  Negative emotions, such as unhappiness, largely involve the right brain, while positive emotions like happiness involve the left side of the brain (see in particular research by Richard Davidson).

Brooks and Winfrey use a scale developed by three psychologists at the University of Minnesota and Southern Methodist University in 1988 (see the original study here) called the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, or PANAS (you can take a free version of the test online on his website here).  It's quick and easy!  Basically, you rate yourself on 20 different emotions, some of which are positive and some of which are negative, using a five-point scale (ranging from 1=very slightly or not at all to 5=extremely).  It took me less than three minutes to complete, so it is super easy.  I did take the PANAS test on two separate days and scored fairly similar.  I scored 35 on positive affect and 15 on negative affect, which is right around the average.

The original PANAS study constructed a 2x2 table based upon whether an individual scores "high" or "low" in positive emotions and negative affect, thereby generating four different archetypes:

Individuals that score "High" on both positive affect and negative affect are classified as "Mad Scientists" who tend to react very strongly, either positively or negatively, to things that happen in life.  Individuals that score "Low" on both positive and negative affect are classified as "Judges".  "Judges" are "cool as cucumbers" and don't react much to anything.  Their friends and relatives may get a little frustrated with them, because they don't respond positively or negatively to things that happen.  

Individuals who score "High" on positive affect and "Low" on negative affect are classified as "Cheerleaders", which I think is self-explanatory.  Conversely, individuals who score "Low" on negative affect and "High" on positive affect are classified as "Poets".  "Poets" often are labeled pessimistic by their friends and family members.  However, they are also good to have around, because they often detect problems before things get too out of hand.  

Brooks writes, "Learning your PANAS profile - your natural blend of happy and unhappy feelings - can help you get happier because it indicates how to manage your tendencies, but in separating the two sides, it also points out vividly that your happiness does not depend on your unhappiness."  

If I were to be 100% honest, I was a little surprised to be smack dab in the middle of average.  Perhaps that means that, depending upon the situation, I may lean towards all four archetypes? Knowing how others perceive me, I would have guessed that I would lean more towards a "Judge".  Regardless, I thought this was a useful exercise that taught me a lot about myself.

There are some other useful tidbits in the book that I will address in future posts.  I generally consider myself a fairly happy person, but I also realize that self-care is important.  With that in mind, I do plan on incorporating some of the exercises discussed in the book.  I will leave this post, as I frequently do, with a quote - this one from the book.  Brooks said, "Happiness isn't found in some finite checklist of goals that we can diligently complete and then coast. It's how we live our lives in the process. That's why the four pillars of happiness are faith, family, community and meaningful work. Those are priorities we have to keep investing in."  

Autonomy and Alignment

I wanted to revisit the book The Art of Action by Stephen Bungay.  The book is in essence a guide to improving how we, as leaders, can navigate through our VUCA world, based upon lessons from military history, particularly the nineteenth century Prussian generals Carl von Clausewitz (who wrote the classic treatise on strategy On War) and Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder).  One of the reasons that I like this book so much is that Bungay introduces a leadership concept that he calls "directed opportunism", which reminds me a lot about the High Reliability Organization principle of "Deference to Expertise".  The German Wehrmacht in World War II called it Auftragstaktik, and today the U.S. military calls it mission command.  Retired Navy Captain David Marquet (check out his book Turn The Ship Around) calls it "pushing authority to information".  Whatever you choose to call it, the concepts are all the same.  Front-line leaders, who have the most up-to-date information about the situation at hand, should be empowered to make decisions that will help the team to achieve its overall mission objectives.    

There are two additional points that Bungay makes that are critical to the success of this style of leadership, and of course they were first learned by von Moltke when he re-organized the Prussian Army as Chief of Staff in the early nineteenth century.  Prior to a disastrous defeat to Napoleon at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt on October 14, 1806, the Prussian military selected its leaders from the aristocracy.  Before developing the operating model that would become Auftragstaktik, von Moltke recognized that military leaders would have to be selected based on their success on the battlefield.  The Prussian army officer corps became a meritocracy.  He also recognized that his military leaders would need to be trained, so he developed a war academy and invested significant time training his front-line leaders in strategy and tactics, as well as instilling a culture of independent thinking and initiative.  The lesson for us today is that if "Deference to Expertise" is going to work, we have to train our leaders as well as empowering them.  We have to similarly instill a cultural mindset of independent thinking and initiative, so that these leaders will make the necessary decisions to achieve the overall objectives of the organization.

Helmuth von Moltke knew that he needed to provide a high level of autonomy to his front-line leaders for his new operating model to be effective.  However, von Moltke also knew that a high level of autonomy demanded a high level of alignment at the same time.  He realized that the more alignment you have, the more autonomy you can grant.  The one enables the other.  Alignment is achieved when everyone is on the same page about the strategic intent (what to achieve and why).  Autonomy is thereby granted around actions (what to do and how).  

The key to successful leadership is to find the right balance between autonomy and alignment.  While alignment ensures that all of the members within an organization or team are working toward the same overarching goals, autonomy allows individuals to use their expertise and situation awareness to make decisions within the context of their particular role, without being micromanaged.  According to Bungay then, the secret to achieving high performance is both alignment and autonomy.  Leaders set clear strategic direction while trusting their teams with the autonomy to execute.

"A gift you can open again and again..."

I grew up with books.  I was lucky enough that my parents loved to read as much as I do, and they kept a large stock of books on hand in our family room.  I used to love going to the public library, and every summer I would participate in the library's summer reading program.  I remember that a librarian once questioned if I really read all of the books that I was turning in for credit - she found out when she quizzed me on what each of the books were about!  I agree with the writer Jorge Luis Borges, when he said, "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library."  Or Malcolm X, who said, "My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity."

I'm not just an avid reader, I am a bibliophile in every sense of the word.  To this day, I still have a hard time walking into a bookstore without buying at least one book (see my posts, "Today's word is...tsundoku", "Anti-library", and "Clean your room!").  As Garrison Keillor once said, "A book is a gift you can open again and again."  

I just don't understand how people can read on either their cell phones or a Kindle device.  To this day, I still like to read hard copies of books, short stories, articles, manuscripts, and essays.  I just can't seem to read anything well online.  At least for me personally, my level of reading comprehension and ability to retain what I read is just better with paper versus digital.  As it turns out, I'm not that different from everyone else!

I read a recently published meta-analysis ("Don't throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on reading comprehension") published in the journal, Educational Research Review, with great interest.  Remember that a meta-analysis is a statistical technique used to combine the results of multiple scientific studies on the same topic. By pooling data from multiple, similar studies, investigators can greatly improve the statistical power of the available research on a particular topic.  Here, a group of international investigators reviewed research published from 2000 to 2017 that compared reading comprehension when reading text on paper versus digital media.  The meta-analysis gathered data from 54 studies that involved a total of 171,055 study participants.  They found:

1. Paper-based reading yields better comprehension compared to digital-based reading.

2. The advantage of paper over digital has increased over time (at least since 2000).

3. The advantage of paper over digital increased even further when readers were pressed for time (compared to self-paced or leisure reading).  

There were some additional findings of note.  Apparently, having to scroll through digital media is a major disadvantage, at least when it comes to reading comprehension.  In addition, online reading on computers performed slightly worse than reading using hand-held devices.  

There are a number of other potential benefits to paper-based reading.  Printed books provide a tactile, sensory experience (even the smell of paper contributes to the experience) experience that digital books just cannot replicate. Printed books are easier on the eyes, while online reading can cause eye strain.  Finally, from a sustainability perspective, digital-based reading would seem to be more environmentally friendly, though the production and disposal of digital devices is certainly not without its own environmental impact.  

I suspect that others are starting to catch on.  Books are more appealing to read for a variety of reasons.  Perhaps that's why the big-box retailer Barnes and Noble seems to be making a comeback!

Welcome to the age of chaos...

I recently came across a blog post written by Jamais Cascio on April 29, 2020 entitled "Facing the Age of Chaos".  The first few sentences quickly grabbed my attention: 

"We are in an age of chaos, an era that intensely, almost violently, rejects structure.  It isn't simple instability, it's a reality that seems to actively resist efforts to understand what the hell is going on...The methods we have developed over the years to recognize and respond to commonplace disruptions seem increasingly, painfully inadequate when the world appears to be falling apart.  It's hard to see the big picture when everything insists on coloring outside the lines."

It's important to consider the context during which the post was first written.  Some experts would argue that the year 2020 was the worst we've ever experienced.  The World Health Organization had just declared COVID-19 to be a worldwide pandemic on March 11, 2020.  In and of itself, the COVID-19 pandemic was enough to make 2020 a year of chaos, but also recall that there was a lot of political turmoil leading up to one of the most contentious U.S. presidential elections in history, as well as a number of climate disasters (remember the bushfires in Australia?) even before March, 2020.  

Cascio used the well-known acronym VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) to describe 2020.  If anything, our world has become even more chaotic since 2020, leading some authorities to describe this era in which we currently live as the "Age of Chaos".  Cascio has an interesting take on all of this and said, "The concept of VUCA is clear, evocative, and increasingly obsolete.  We have become so thoroughly surrounded by a world of VUCA that it seems less a way to distinguish important differences than simply a depiction of our current default condition."  

In other words, Cascio feels that VUCA is our new normative state.  If everything is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous all of the time, it seems pointless to use a label for it.  As a way of getting around the fact that VUCA is our "default condition", Cascio proposes a new acronym, which he calls BANI.  Here, B=Brittle, A=Anxious, N=Non-linear, and I=Incomprehensible.  Jeroen Kraaijenbrink wrote an article on BANI in Forbes (What BANI Really Means) suggested that BANI as a framework "says something about people and how they have mistakenly perceived the world up to now" and that "BANI should be seen as a correction, or a reality check, intending to shatter four illusions of humanity's current perception of the world."

B=Brittle

When something is brittle, it is easily broken or subject to sudden and often catastrophic failure.  Cascio uses the term to describe something that appears to be strong until it isn't, at which point (the breaking point) it falls apart.  Its strength is merely an illusion.  For this reason, Kraaijenbrink refers to the concept of brittleness as the "illusion of strength".  It's the widespread and mistaken belief that "everything will be alright" except when it won't be.  

Brittle is the complete opposite of resilience (Cascio uses the term anti-resilience).  We frequently make systems more brittle by trying to maximize their efficiency.  For example, there's no question that the Just In Time (JIT) inventory management strategy has greatly improved efficiency and lowered costs.  At the same time, however, JIT has made our supply chain more brittle.  If there is a sudden and acute shortage of a raw material or other critical component, the system can rapidly fall apart.  We've seen other examples of brittle systems in the past several years, including the 2008 Financial Crisis, the impact of the grounding of the container ship Ever Green in the Suez Canal on the global supply chain, and the U.S. energy grid, to name just a few.  

A=Anxious

As Cascio writes, "In an Anxious world, every choice appears to be potentially disastrous."  Everyone is waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop.  Anxious describes a state or feeling of helplessness, or not being able to cope with or deal with the world asks of us.  More importantly, it represents the inability to effectively manage what happens in the world around us.  For this reason, Kraaijenbrink refers to it as the "illusion of control".  

Cascio suggests that anxiety drives passivity - we can't make a bad decision if we don't make any decision, right?  Anxiety is largely driven by the 24/7 access to information.  Unfortunately, at times, the news media prioritizes the immediate over the accurate, which only creates misinformation, disinformation, hoaxes, exaggerations, or even fake news.  Our anxious world makes it difficult, if not impossible, to fully trust where we get our information from, even our leaders.  

N=Non-linear

I've talked about complex systems in the past (see "A jumbo jet is complicated, but mayonnaise is complex..." and "Like clockwork?"), and one of the defining characteristics of a complex system is non-linearity.  In a linear system, the output is directly proportional to the input and can be described with the equation for a line that we all learned in middle school, y=mx + b.  Conversely, in a non-linear system, output is not proportional to the input.  Therefore, in a non-linear world, our actions and the results that they produce can be wildly out of balance.  The best example of non-linear systems is the famous butterfly effect, first described by the MIT meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the early 1960's (see his classic paper here).  Lorenz suggested that the flap of a butterfly's wings in one part of the world could produce a tornado in another part of the world (for more on the butterfly effect, see my posts "For want of a nail...", "Butterflies", "Butterfly wings and Stone heads", and "Robin Hood and the state of Texas").

Non-linearity means that what we expect to see as the result of the decisions that we make isn't always what we actually see - small changes can have surprisingly big effects and vice versa.  Poor decisions can spiral out of control.  There is no cause-and-effect relationship.  For these reasons, Kraaijenbrink refers to non-linearity as the "illusion of predictability".  

I=Incomprehensible

When something is incomprehensible, it is difficult or even impossible to fully understand.  Here, we try to find answers but the answers just don't make any sense.  Whenever we seek to understand, we often ask for more information, more data.  Unfortunately, this information overload often makes our world even more incomprehensible!  For this reason, Kraaijenbrink calls this concept the "illusion of knowledge".  

I am not sure that I see a significant difference between VUCA and BANI, but Kraaijken adds one final point, which I think is important.  He writes, "Rather than saying something about the world, it (here he is referring to BANI, as opposed to VUCA) first and foremost says something about how we perceive it.  It is not the world that has become more Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, or Incomprehensible.  It is us  who finally have to let go the illusion that it is not.  As such, BANI is one great reminder for all of us. We're living in a world that's delicate, uncontrollable, unpredictable, and impossible to comprehend. Let's celebrate, accept, and wonder."

"Attitude Creates Reality"

The older I get, the more I realize that attitude is everything.  Thomas Jefferson once said, "Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude."  Albert Einstein said, "Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character."  Winston Churchill said, "Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."  

And sometimes, just a change in perspective can make all the difference in helping to change one's attitude.  The American businessman and author Harvey Mackay once said, "When you wake up every day, you have two choices. You can either be positive or negative; an optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist. It's all a matter of perspective."  I recently posted about a new Honda commercial ("Unstoppable Dreams") that demonstrates how a change in perspective, in this case, reading a poem from the bottom up rather than from the top down, can flip the meaning from a negative to a positive.  Here's another poem that I came across that does the same thing.  Read the poem from the top down first, then repeat and read from the bottom up.

Today was the absolute worst day every

And don't try to convince me that

There's something good in every day

Because when you take a closer look,

This world is a pretty evil place.

Even if

Some goodness does shine through once in a while

Satisfaction and happiness don't last.

And it's not true that

It's all in the mind and heart

Because

True happiness can be obtained

Only if one's surroundings are good

It's not true that good exists

I'm sure you can agree that

The reality

creates

My attitude

It's all beyond my control

And you'll never in a million years hear me say that

Today was a good day.  

It's incredible how a change in perspective can change the meaning.  Perspective changes attitude, and as the poem states, attitude creates reality.  Next time you find that you have a poor attitude, try changing your perspective.

Be humble

The organizational psychologist and author Adam Grant posted this past weekend about a new article published in the journal Nature Behavioral Health that I thought was really interesting (see the article "The effect of seeing scientists as intellectually humble on trust in scientists and their research").  The investigators (Jonah Koetke, Karina Schumann, Shauna Bowes, and Nina Vaupotic) examined the relationship between trust, principally in scientific research, and humility.  One can easily deduce their motivation for doing so, given all of the mistrust around scientific research and public health that exists today.  For example, in a recent post ("If only out of curiosity..."), I provided data from several Gallup surveys that shows trust is declining in a number of our institutions and organizations, including the federal government, the health care system, and even organized religion.  The public's trust in scientists took a major hit during and shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic, and while trust has improved slightly, it is still nowhere near pre-pandemic levels.

Koetke, Schumann, Bowes, and Vaupotic defined "perceived trustworthiness" as having the qualities of expertise (seeing the scientist as competent), benevolence (seeing the scientist as concerned for the wellbeing of the public), and integrity (seeing the scientist as honest).  They defined "intellectual humility" as the intrapersonal awareness of the limitations of one's own knowledge and that he/she could be wrong.  The investigators conducted five studies involving over 2,300 participants.  They found that seeing or describing a scientist as higher in "intellectual humility" increased their perceived trustworthiness, and most importantly (perhaps), increased the participants' intentions to follow the scientists' research-based recommendations and/or seek further information.  

Grant summarizes the research findings by stating simply, "Scientists are more credible when they admit what they don't know, acknowledge what they got wrong, and update their views."  He went on to generalize these findings by stating, "What leads us to ignore experts isn't their knowledge.  It's their arrogance...Trust is earned by expressing humility, not by asserting authority."

The Hollywood actor Dick Van Dyke perhaps said it best, "Just knowing you don't have the answers is a recipe for humility, openness, acceptance, forgiveness, and an eagerness to learn - and those are all good things."  What he didn't say, is that just knowing you don't have all the answers may be the key to trust.

Backbriefing

We often talk about closed-loop communication as a technique to improve patient safety in health care.  In this particular context, closed-loop communication is a three-step process:

1. The sender initiates the message.

2. The receiver accepts the message and provides feedback confirmation

3. The sender verifies that the message was received.

The Joint Commission (previously known as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, an organization that accredits more than 22,000 healthcare organizations in the U.S.) recommends using readback/hearback in order to make sure that communication is clear, concise, and most importantly, understood.  Similarly, in order to make sure that patients and family members understand medical instructions, a number of hospitals have implemented what is called "teachbacks", in which the patient or family member verbalizes their understanding by explaining back to the healthcare provider what was originally explained to them.  

Suffice it to say then, that I was interested to hear about a technique proposed by the historian and leadership consultant Stephen Bungay called "backbriefing", which he discussed in his excellent book The Art of Action.  The book is in essence a guide to improving how we, as leaders, can navigate through our VUCA world, drawing upon lessons from military history, specifically from two nineteenth century Prussian generals - Carl von Clausewitz (who wrote the classic treatise on strategy On War) and Helmuth von Moltke (the Elder).  Bungay recommends "backbriefing" to make sure that leaders and teams are aligned on the goals and objectives of the organization (specifically to close what he calls the "Alignment Gap", which is the gap between what leaders want their teams to do and what the teams actually do - see my post "Friction and Leadership" for more on the Alignment Gap).  

Similar to the closed-loop communication process used in healthcare and discussed above, "backbriefing" consists of three steps:

1. The brief.  The leader provides an explanation of the goals and objectives of the mission, as well as any guardrails or rules of engagement.  The leader doesn't discuss a specific plan, but rather the specific problem that needs to be addressed as well as the leader's own intent for what he or she wants the team to accomplish.

2. The backbrief.  The team repeats, in their own words, both what they heard, including their plans for how they will carry it out.  The backbrief describes again the problem to be solved, as well as the initial proposed solution for it.

3. Feedback and adjustment.  Both the leader and the members of the team review the intent and the work and revises as necessary.  For example, there may have been either a miscommunication or a misunderstanding, and this step is when that gets corrected.  Importantly, if changes are made to the original brief and backbrief, a repeat brief and backbrief is performed.

For more on "backbriefing", take a look at Stephen Bungay's article in the Harvard Business Review, "How to make the most of your company's strategy".  Or better yet, check out his book The Art of Action.