Blind taste tests...once more

I mentioned the book The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by the physicist and Northeastern University professor, Albert Laszlo-Barabasi in a recent post (see "Blind Taste Tests and the Universal Laws of Success").  Laszlo-Barabasi uses professional wine tasters as an example to help explain why there isn't always a perfect correlation between performance and success.  In reality, there's often a fairly poor correlation between the two!

Given my growing obsession with wine, I was fascinated by his claim that professional wine tasters aren't always accurate in their assessments of fine wine!  In his book, Laszlo-Barabasi references two studies performed by Robert Hodgson, an emeritus professor of oceanography and statistics at Cal Poly Humboldt.  Hodgson is also a vintner who started making wine in 1976 at the Fieldbrook Winery, which he co-owns and operates with his wife Judy, in northern California.  As the story goes, Hodgson started wondering how one of his wines could win a gold medal at one wine competition and "end up in the pooper" at another competition held in the same year.  So, in order to better understand how professional wine tasters evaluated wines, he studied to become one himself.  At some point, he became involved with the California State Fair wine competition, the oldest and most prestigious wine competition in North America.  He convinced the other judges (after what he described as "lots of begging") to allow him to run a controlled scientific test of the wine tasting competition held there.

As he discussed in a podcast called Vintage Year, hosted by the Journal of Wine Economics, which published his study (see "An examination of judge reliability at a major U.S. wine competition"), Hodgson found that expert wine judges are rarely, if ever, consistent.  Between 65-70 judges participated in the study at the California State Fair wine competition held every year from 2005 to 2008.  Each panel of expert judges received a flight of 30 wines, which included four triplicate samples of the same wine poured from the same bottle (unbeknownst to the judges).  Only ten percent of the judges were able to replicate their scores on the same wine.  According to the 100-point wine rating system first popularized by the American wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr (more on him shortly), the judges' ratings typically varied by plus or minus four points on scales ranging from 80 to 100.  In other words, a wine rated 91 by one judge at the first tasting could be rating an 87 or even a 95 at the next tasting (again, each wine was scored three different times by the same judge in the same flight).  Only 1 judge out of 10 could score the same wine with a two point range using the same scale.

In a follow-up study, again published in the Journal of Wine Economics (see "An analysis of the concordance among 13 U.S. wine competitions"), Hodgson analyzed over 4,000 wines entered into thirteen different U.S. wine competitions.  Of the wines entered in more than three competitions,  roughly 47% received a Gold medal at at least one competition. However, 84% of these exact same Gold-winning wines received no award at all in at least one other competition.  When he analyzed all of the data, Hodgson concluded that the probability of receiving a Gold medal at any competition depended largely upon chance alone.  Importantly, certain wines consistently received no award or Bronze medals across multiple competitions, suggesting that judges mainly agree on what they dislike rather than what they love.

Later that same year, the American physicist and author Leonard Mlodinow wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal reporting on Hodgson's findings, "A hint of hype, a taste of illusion" (I've posted about Mlodinow in the past, see "Drunkard's Walk").  Mlodinow references a number of other studies that shed further light on this issue.  Apparently, as far back as 1963, a team of investigators from the University of California, Davis added flavorless food coloring to a dry white wine to simulate several different varieties of red wine.  The professional tasters description of each wine reflected the type of wine that they thought they were tasting (e.g. sherry, rosé, Bordeaux, burgundy, etc) as opposed to what the wine actually was - a dry white wine.  

Several years later, a French neurophysiologist named Frédéric Brochet served 57 French sommelier students the same Bordeaux wine served in two different bottles.  One wine was served in an expensive Grand Cru bottle, while the other was served in the bottle of a cheap table wine.  The sommelier students greatly preferred the Grand Cru wine to the cheap table wine, rating the Grand Cru as "excellent" and the table wine as "flat" or "unbalanced" (note that Brochet also published a study as the 1963 study in which food coloring was added to "turn" white wine into red wine, with similar results).

Several studies have replicated Brochet's method of presenting a cheap table wine as an expensive wine (through packaging and pricing information) and vice versa (see, for example, Robin Goldstein's working paper, "Do more expensive wines taste better? Evidence from a large sample of blind tasting").  One study even used functional MRI (which looks at brain activity) and showed that increasing the price of a wine increases subjective reports of wine quality as well as brain activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (one of the area's of the brain responsible for pleasantness).  I guess that's nature's way of telling us that we can't tell a cheap wine from an expensive wine when it comes to flavor, but instead, we just need to look at the price on the bottle!

As you can imagine, Hodgson's results were fairly controversial when they were first released to the public.  What's compelling is that the test subjects in his study were professional wine judges.  The Goldstein study referenced in the paragraph above included both professionals and non-professionals.  Non-professionals slightly preferred the cheaper table wines to the expensive wines in blind taste tests, while professionals did slightly better picking the more expensive wines correctly, though still leaving a lot to be desired.  Similarly, Richard Wiseman, a professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire conducted a study in which over 400 members of the general public correctly classified their wines as expensive versus cheap about 50% of the time, which is about what would be predicted based on chance alone.  So, the question is whether someone can be trained to taste wine accurately.  Hodgson's studies suggest not.

While reporting on Hodgson's results, Leonard Mlodinow contacted the American wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr.  According to an article published in December 200 in The Atlantic magazine, "The Million-Dollar Nose" (the title of the article comes from the fact that Parker has a million dollar insurance policy for his ability to smell and taste fine wine), Parker tastes approximately 10,000 wines every year and claims that he can remember every wine he has tasted over the past 32 years and every score he has given, within a few points.  Parker told Mlodinow that he didn't find Hodgson's results too surprising, and he further confessed that he had participated in a blind wine tasting of fifteen top wines from Bordeaux in 2005 (which he labeled, "the greatest vintage of my lifetime").  Parker apparently failed to correctly identify any of the wines, and confused so-called "left bank" wines and "right bank" wines several times during the tasting (note, in general "left bank" wines are grown in regions west of the Gironde Estuary, and "right bank" in the regions east).  Parker had previously tasted and rated each wine, which was why these 15 wines were specifically selected.  He told Mlodinow that his second rating (during the blind taste test) was always within 2-3 points of the first, unblinded tasting (which all ranged from 95-100).

While Parker did not do too bad, he is, after all, the world's expert at wine tasting.  For all of us mere mortals, there appears to be no hope.  Getting back to Albert Laszlo-Barabasi's argument in The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success, there are all kinds of reasons to explain why professional wine tasters fail to perform consistently or, at least in blind taste tests, accurately.  He states, "Wine competition judges don't fail because they lack expertise, preparation, or thoroughness.  They fail mainly because the wines they're judging are all excellent...And they have no 'stopwatch', no simple tool to determine which anonymous glass of Malbec, raised to the nose and swished in the mouth, is, definitively, a winner."  More generally, "even though performance does drive success, the problem is that the differences among top contenders are so tiny that they're often nearly immeasurable."  

"Per aspera ad astra"

I recently finished reading two books written by two U.S. Navy SEALs, Andy Stumpf (Drownproof: Eight Life Lessons to Keep Your Head Above Water) and Rorke Denver (Damn Few: Making the Modern SEAL Warrior).  While the two books were very different in terms of the writing and major themes, they did provide me with another reminder that the U.S. Navy SEALs are another prototypical example of a High Reliability Organization (HRO).  There is no doubt that Navy SEALs are highly trained - Denver perhaps said it best when he said, "Constant improvement is one of the hallmarks of being a SEAL."  However, both Stumpf and Denver wrote at length about the SEAL selection process, known as Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL or BUD/S, one of the most grueling and demanding training programs in the U.S. military, designed to prepare candidates for the rigors of Navy SEAL operations.  BUD/S is a six-month program that tests the physical, mental, and emotional fortitude of all the trainees.  Depending on the year, only about 15-30 percent of all trainees complete all three phases of the program to eventually become a U.S. Navy SEAL.  

The ancient Greek historian and general Thucydides said, "We should remember that one man is much the same as another and that he is best who is trained in the severest school."  To say that the process of becoming a U.S. Navy SEAL is the "severest school" is a vast understatement.  But I couldn't agree with Thucydides more - true excellence is often forged through extreme hardship and adversity.    They are what we call "Crucible Moments".  

Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas summarized the findings of a study they performed in a 2002 article in Harvard Business Review, entitled "Crucibles of Leadership" (see also their book, Geeks & Geezers: How Era, Values & Defining Moments Shape Leaders).  They interviewed more than 40 top executives from a variety of organizations from several different industries.  To their surprise, each and every leader was "able to point to intense, often traumatic, always unplanned experiences that transformed them and became the source of their distinctive leadership abilities."  They called these moments "the crucibles of leadership" and generalized further, "Everyone is tested by life, but only a few extract strength and wisdom from the most trying experiences.  They're the ones we call leaders."

A "crucible moment" is any severe test or transformative experience that challenges an individual's character and resilience.  The figurative meaning of a "crucible moment" is derived from the literal sense of a crucible as a place of intense heat, where impurities are burned away and the substance is refined.  Elite organizations, such as the U.S. Navy SEALs or the U.S. Marine Corp have even gone as far as designing their selection and training processes around "crucible moments" (see again, Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL or BUD/S).  For example (see also my post, "The Few and the Proud"), the Marine Corps Crucible is a 54-hour, grueling test that all recruits undergo before officially becoming Marines. It's designed to simulate the harsh conditions of combat, testing physical and mental endurance, and fostering teamwork and camaraderie. The Crucible includes physical challenges like hiking, obstacle courses, and simulated combat scenarios, as well as challenges that test moral development and leadership skills.

The health care leadership consultant Carson Dye wrote about "crucible moments" in an online post.  Dye admitted, "While I am a very active leadership teacher, lecturer, and author, I strongly believe in the power of experience in shaping the behavior of leaders."  He too called these experiences "crucible moments."  He wrote, "A crucible experience is one in which one is tested, stretched, challenged by something that is real...Crucible experiences can take place when leaders are put into very novel situations they have not confronted before."

There are a lot of famous quotes about "crucible moments," but here are two of my favorites:

In school, you get the lesson and then you take the test.  In life, you take the test and then you get the lesson.

Life will always test you.  Don't worry about passing the test.  Just learn the lesson.

I have always believed that leaders are made and not born.  And it is through these so-called "crucible moments" that leaders are truly made.  Very few leaders will ever graduate from BUD/S or the Marine Corps Crucible, but chances are that all of us have been through some "crucible moment" in either our personal or professional lives that helped shape us and define us and made us better leaders.  There is a Latin phrase, Per aspera ad astra, which translates to Through hardships to the stars.  By enduring and overcoming adversity, we often find that we achieve our highest goals.  It is through these crucible moments - our adversity - that we become leaders.

The "Trust Hormone"

I read an interesting book by Daniel Coyle on corporate culture called The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups a few years ago. Coyle studied a number of great teams, including Pixar, the San Antonio Spurs (specifically, the teams that won the NBA Finals in 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2014), and the U.S. Navy SEALs and found that great organizations are not created by talent alone.  Rather, great organizations build cultures of excellence through specific behaviors that foster trust, cooperation, and commitment.  Coyle wrote that "culture is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. We sense its presence inside successful businesses, championship teams, and thriving families, and we sense when it’s absent or toxic."  However, he also emphasized that culture is "not something you are. It’s something you do."  The great organizations that he studied created strong cultures by fostering trust through psychological safety, cooperation through shared vulnerability, and commitment through purpose and meaning.

I hear a lot about culture these days.  Laszlo Bock, previously the Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google and author of Work Rules! said, "Culture underpins everything we do at Google."  It's no wonder that culture was Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year in 2014!  Culture is what truly separates the great organizations from merely good ones. 

Unfortunately, many organizations struggle with creating the kind of culture that both Coyle and Bock talk about in their books.  For example, a survey of 200,000 employees at over 500 companies reported that 71% of companies have mediocre to poor cultures (see Bourree Lam's article in The Atlantic "Why do workers feel so unhappy?").  Paul Zak, who wrote The Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies believes that lack of trust is one of the major reasons why organizations do not succeed.  Trust is the foundation of corporate culture.  Without trust, there is no psychological safety.  Without trust, there is no shared vulnerability.  Without trust, there is no commitment.

Trust drives not only corporate culture, but also workforce engagement.  Zak cited statistics from the 2015 Society for Human Resource Management Employee Job Satisfaction and Engagement Survey that suggested that trust between employees and senior management was the second most important contributor to job satisfaction (only "respectful treatment of all employees" was chosen more than trust).  Google's Project Aristotle studied 180 high-performing teams and found that the best predictor of high performance was a culture of trust.  Finally, the Canadian economist John Helliwell found that a 10% increase in employee trust in a company's leaders has the same impact on life satisfaction as a 36% increase in salary!

A culture of trust isn't built with mission statements.  It must be cultivated through daily actions by leaders.  Zak identified eight leadership practices that help to build a culture of trust. Together they form the acronym OXYTOCIN (recall from my post "Trust, Loyalty, and a Story About a Dog..." that the neurohormone oxytocin mediates trust between humans.  Zak (and others) have called oxytocin the "trust hormone".  

Ovation: Leaders need to recognize and celebrate achievements in meaningful ways.  Recognizing individuals who contribute to the organization's success goes a very long way to building trust.

eXpectation: Leaders should set clear, challenging goals and provide feedback.  I've mentioned so-called SMART goals in the past (see my posts "Clear the mechanism" and "Engaged and burned out?").  Leaders can build trust by clearly communicating expectations about roles and responsibilities, who has decision-making authority (see more on this below), and what measures will be used to determine success.  When leaders set so-called "stretch goals" (see my posts, "Pygmalion" and "Think big, act small"), they show that they are confident in their teams and believe that they can be perform at a high level.

Yield: Leaders need to give people autonomy over how they accomplish their work.  Empowerment builds trust!  The New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc.(NUMMI) was a historic automobile manufacturing plant in Fremont, California that was operated as a joint venture between General Motors and Toyota from 1984 to 2010.  Prior to the joint venture with Toyota, the employees at the GM plant were considered "the worst workforce in the automobile industry in the United States."  The plant was known for poor quality, constant strikes, and high absenteeism.  Instead of replacing the staff, Toyota kept 85% of the original GM workers and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. By empowering employees with the famous Andon cord (Toyota Production System) to stop the assembly line when issues arose, and focusing on teamwork and mutual trust, absenteeism and defect rates.  Similarly, Best Buy once implemented what was called a "Results Only Work Environment (ROWE)" whose main focus was on workforce autonomy.  Unfortunately, despite impressive results, ROWE was later abandoned after a change in executive leadership.

Transfer: Leaders should delegate authority rather than merely assigning tasks.  I've mentioned the book Turn The Ship Around! by David Marquet several times in the past (see "Fix the environment, not the people...", "Turning around the ship...", "Classic Rookie Manager Mistakes", "The definition of power is the transfer of energy...", and "The power of empowerment").  Marquet assumed command of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine which was perhaps one of the worst commands in the fleet.  Using what you will recognize essentially as High Reliability Organizations leadership principles (particularly "Deference to Expertise"), Captain Marquet turned the USS Santa Fe into one of the best commands in the fleet.  Zak also mentioned the Dutch home nursing company Buurtzorg Nederland, which implemented a self-governing model for its home health nurses (essentially "deference to expertise").  By placing nurses in charge, Buurtzorg has earned high patient and employee ratings and consistently provides high-quality home care at lower cost than other organizations.

Openness: Leaders should share information transparently and solicit input and feedback from their teams.  One of the simplest ways that leaders can demonstrate vulnerability and build trust is by admitting their mistakes.  As Jim Whitehurst writes in the Harvard Business Review ("Be a Leader Who Can Admit Mistakes"), "Being accessible, answering questions, admitting mistakes, and saying you’re sorry aren’t liabilities. They are exactly the tools you can use to build your credibility and authority to lead."

Caring: Leaders should focus on building genuine relationships and demonstrate empathy.  I am reminded of the late Paul H. O'Neill, who served as Chairman and CEO at Alcoa and later Chairman at the RAND Corporation, before serving as the 72nd U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under President George W. Bush.  I had the pleasure of meeting Secretary O'Neill during my tenure at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.  Secretary O'Neill was famous for engineering a remarkable turnaround at Alcoa by focusing on making Alcoa one of the safest places to work.  During his inaugural speech as CEO at Alcoa, he said, "I want to talk to you about worker safety.  Every year, numerous Alcoa workers are injured so badly that they miss a day of work. Our safety record is better than the general American workforce, especially considering that our employees work with metals that are 1500 degrees and machines that can rip a man’s arm off. But it’s not good enough. I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries."  And he did.  

Invest: Leaders should help people grow both professionally and personally.  Leaders should be advocates, coaches, mentors, and sponsors.  Professional development through coaching and mentorship is a long-term strategy, but it's a vital one.  As Doug Flaig writes in Forbes magazine, "Organizations that invest in mentorship are not only preparing individuals for success but are also strengthening their own future. As mentees grow into leaders, they often become mentors themselves, creating a culture of learning and development that perpetuates success."

Natural: Leaders should lead authentically, admitting their mistakes and showing vulnerability.  Zak wrote, "A Natural leader is a servant leader.  A servant leader's primary focus is helping members of the organization be successful and fulfilled human beings."

Zak mentioned the Scandinavian concept of Arbejdsglaed, which literally means "happiness at work" or "joy at work".  He stated that Arbejdsglaed depends upon trust and purpose.  I've posted about purpose and meaning in the past (see most recently, "It's a wonderful life").  And while purpose and meaning are critically important, trust is equally so.  Without trust, there is no psychological safety, no shared vulnerability, and no commitment.  And without those things, there is no joy.  And without joy, there is no culture.  And without culture, the organization will not succeed.  And it all starts with the "Trust Hormone" (OXYTOCIN).

Chance discovery of a national treasure...

Imagine for a moment what it would feel like to stumble upon an old copy of the United States Declaration of Independence.  I'm talking about finding an actual copy of the Declaration from the same year that it was written, 1776!  Well, that apparently just recently happened.  Michael Scurr, a retired insurance broker living in London, England has been volunteering at the National Archives in London for more than a decade.  This past May, Scurr was cataloging boxes of a Royal British Navy ship captain's correspondence from the American Revolutionary War period.  While unfolding an old document, he noted the word "Declaration" at the top and immediately called his supervisor, who confirmed Scurr's discovery.

Experts at the National Archive confirmed that Scurr had found a rare copy of the Declaration that was printed in Exeter, New Hampshire and published in the New Hampshire Gazette or Exeter Morning Chronicle between July 16 and 19 of the year 1776.  Only ten other copies of the so-called Exeter Declarations are known to exist today, and apparently all of them have been found in the United States, making this the first and only copy to have been found outside the United States. 

The newly discovered copy is thought to have belonged to an American privateer named Eleazer Johnson, who was the captain of the Dalton.  He likely read the Declaration aloud to his crew after reading his commission and orders, so that his men knew what they were fighting for.  The Dalton was captured by the Royal British Navy ship HMS Raisonnable off the coast of Portugal on December 24, 1776.  Captain Johnson threw all of the ship's written records, log books, and code books into the water before the British sailors came aboard, saving only three documents: his commission, his orders from the Continental Congress, and the copy of the Declaration.

Thomas Fitzherbert, the captain of the HMS Raisonnable, sent the copy of the Declaration to the Admiralty, which subsequently forwarded the document to the National Archives, where it was finally discovered by chance by Scurr earlier this year.  The document is believed to be the only copy of the United States Declaration of Independence to be captured in a military action.  The newly discovered Exeter Declaration is currently on display at the National Archives.

All of this makes for a very interesting story, particularly as it happened around the same time that all of us in America were celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of our founding document, the Declaration of Independence.  I have been personally celebrating our nation's 250th birthday this year by reading about our history, particularly the events that happened leading up to the American Revolution.  I came across mention of what is called the Sherman copy of the Declaration of Independence.  The so-called Sherman Copy is a rare, early draft of the Declaration of Independence likely used by Roger Sherman in June of 1776. 

As many of you may know, the Continental Congress commissioned a "Committee of Five" to draft the Declaration of Independence - John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman.  Everyone remembers Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson, though few probably know about Livingston's and Sherman's contributions to the Declaration.  Notably, Sherman should be recognized for the fact that he and Robert Morris are the only two Founders who signed all three of our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the United States Constitution.

The Sherman Copy contains several edits to the document, as well as a short note, likely written by John Adams (who, based on handwriting analysis is thought to have copied the entire draft from an earlier draft), stating simply, "A beginning perhaps – Original with Jefferson – Copied from Original with T.P.'s permission."  Who was Adams referring to when he said, "...with T.P.'s permission"?  Some scholars believe that he was referring to Founder Thomas Paine.

I don't know about you, but I didn't learn very much about Thomas Paine, other than the fact that he wrote the pamphlet Common Sense, which was published anonymously on January 10, 1776 and became an immediate sensation.  In fact, the 47 page pamphlet is still being published today and thought to be the number one selling American publication of all time.  Common Sense made an excellent case that the American colonists should be pushing for complete separation, i.e. independence, from England.  It would be fair to say that Paine had as much, and in some cases, more, influence on American independence than the other, better known founders.  Even John Adams said, "Without the pen of Paine, the sword of Washington would have been wielded in vain."

So why then do we Americans know so little about Thomas Paine, at least when compared to Founders such as George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, the Adams cousins (John and Sam), Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton?  For one, Paine was more radical than some of his fellow Founders, particularly when it came to how much power should be given to the people.  Madison was famously wary of the so-called "tyranny of the majority" and designed our government with the goal of limiting the influence of the popular majority in order to protect the rights of the minority.  Paine argued for a strict democracy based on the popular will of the majority.  Many of the Founders recognized that giving to much power to the majority could lead to tyranny, as manifest during the French Revolution of 1789 which evolved in subsequent years to a "Reign of Terror".  Paine himself was both a hero in France for his political views, as well as a participant in the French Revolution (ironically, he was later imprisoned during the "Reign of Terror" and narrowly escaped the guillotine).  Finally, Paine was later condemned for his religious views - he was particularly vocal about his opposition to any form of organized religion, though he still believed in God.  At least at that time in America, that was not the popular sentiment.

All of this is to say that there is a lot more to learn and know about our American history.  I do think it is our duty as citizens of the United States to learn both the good and the bad about our history as a nation.  We should take this opportunity during the year of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence to learn more about all the men and women who helped make our country what it is today.  In order to understand where we are going as a country, we absolutely need to fully understand where we came from.

The Big Sort

We live in a highly polarized society, or at least that's what the experts are telling us.  The American journalist Bill Bishop wrote an interesting book called The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded Americans is Tearing Us Apart that explains how and why we have become so polarized.  According to Bishop, Americans have spent the last several decades sorting themselves (sometimes consciously, but at other times unconsciously) into alarmingly homogeneous communities at the local level (city and neighborhood).  As our neighborhoods have become more homogeneous, we tend to select where we live and what we pay attention to based on what is most compatible with our own lifestyles and beliefs.  As a result, society is now more polarized than perhaps it ever was, such that people don't know and can't understand other people who live just a few miles away.

A few years ago, I took a MOOC (Massive Open Online Class) called "Models Thinking" by the University of Michigan professor Scott Page.  In one of the sessions, Dr. Page introduced Schelling's Model of Segregation (see an online simulation here), based upon a 1969 study by the game theorist Thomas Schelling in the journal, American Economic Review.  It's a really interesting model that shows how individuals' mild in-group preferences (i.e. mildly preferring neighbors from the same group) can unexpectedly produce highly segregated neighborhoods, even when no one wants a completely segregated society (Schelling referred to these mild preferences as "Micro-motives" and the outcomes that they produced as "Macro-behavior" and used that as a title for one of his books).  When those in-group preferences become even stronger, the neighborhood quickly becomes very homogenous to the point where, as Bill Bishop's research also suggests, they are all members of the in-group.  

Bishop suggests that there are several explanations for the so-called "Big Sort".  Most Americans (but certainly not all) have greater freedom to choose where they live.  If they don't like a particular neighborhood, for whatever reason, they are free to move to another one.  Bishop cites a wealth of data showing that educated professionals, retirees, religious groups, and even individuals with certain political views (conservative vs liberal) are gravitating towards neighborhoods and communities where they feel comfortable, i.e. where there are people like them.  For example, just looking at the two major political parties in the U.S. today, the majority of individuals in big cities tend to vote for the Democrats, while the majority of individuals living in rural areas tend to vote for the Republicans.  The "Big Sort" affects more than just neighborhoods - churches and social organizations are also becoming more homogenous, attracting individuals who all think alike and have the same values, beliefs, and views.   

Businesses and political campaigns are increasingly using data to identify and appeal to narrow lifestyle groups, which also contributes to the "Big Sort".  Several years ago, John O'Toole published an editorial in the Journal of Advertising that called attention to the fact that targeted marketing campaigns segmented individuals based on a small set of demographics.  Unfortunately, the strategy employed didn't always get things right.  He described the following individual as a profile for a specific marketing campaign:

A woman.  25 to 35 age group.  Family income over $15,000 [this was 1973 by the way].  Urban. Working. College graduate. Let's say a college like Finch in New York.  2 to 3 members of household. White. Probably comes from an upper-income family herself with professional or executive father who belongs to Republican Party.

O'Toole then proceeded to explain that this marketing profile describes both Tricia Nixon Cox, daughter of then President Richard Nixon, as well as Grace Slick, who was the lead singer in the rock-n-roll band Jefferson Airplane.  Look them up - these two women could not be any more different in their political views or personalities!  O'Toole's point was that any marketing campaign designed for the aforementioned profile, which he admitted was probably more detailed than most, would probably not be the correct one.  Bishop's point is that this kind of segmentation only serves to reinforce segregation - "Micro-motives" produce "Macro-behavior".

Bishop goes on to show why the "Big Sort" is a problem for all of us.  He cites several research studies showing like-minded groups tend to become even more extreme the longer they spend time together.  For example, the American legal scholar and author Cass Sunstein co-wrote (with David Schkade) an important op/ed piece in 2003 for the New York Times ("Judging by where you sit"), reporting that when politically like-minded judges sit together on a three-judge panel, they become significantly more extreme in their rulings.  For example, conservative judges vote even more conservatively when sitting with two other Republicans, while liberal judges shift further left with two other Democrats.  Conversely, when a Republican judge sits with at least one Democrat, or a Democratic judge sits with at least one Republican, the judges tends to rule much closer to the ideological center.

Sunstein followed up his 2003 op/ed piece with a book, Why Societies Need Dissent, in which he argued that groups function better when they encourage dissent, as it prevents groupthink and promotes better decision-making.  As like-minded groups start to think more and more alike, they become even more polarized and extreme in their viewpoints.  As someone once said, "What begins as a preference becomes conviction, which turns into the group identity."  The consequences include increased polarization, declining trust in opposing groups, and reduced capacity for compromise.

Bishop suggests that the greatest threat to democratic society today is the gradual disappearance over time of places where people with different views regularly interact.  When we all increasingly live, worship, work, and socialize only with other individuals who think exactly like us, our existing beliefs and views become even stronger, making compromise even harder.  As Sunstein stated, "Organizations and nations are far more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness."  Welcoming dissent and promoting a more open society begins with each and every one of us.  Only we can choose to move out of our own personal comfort zones to live, worship, work, and socialize with other individuals who may not think exactly like us.

"Only the disciplined ones are free in life..."

I've mentioned the Kenyan marathoner Eliud Kipchoge a few times in the past (see "Almost doesn't count, except in horseshoes and hand grenades" and "Blind taste tests and the universal laws of success").  The first time was in the context of his goal to try to be the first long-distance runner to finish a marathon in under 2 hours, while the second time focused on a concept from the book, The Formula: The Universal Laws of Success by  Albert Laszlo-Barabasi (the fact that performance is bounded, but success is not).  I have more to say on goals (and our level of motivation to achieve these goals, depending upon how close we are to achieving them), but for today's post, I want to focus on one of Kipchoge's great quotes.  Kipchoge, who is considered one of the greatest marathon runners of all time, gave a speech at the Oxford Union in England in 2017.  He said, "Only the disciplined ones are free in life. If you aren’t disciplined, you are a slave to your moods.  You are a slave to your passions. That’s a fact."

I've thought about Kipchoge's quote a lot lately.  I understand the self-discipline that is required to successfully train for a marathon, as I have run three marathons during the past 10 years or so.  I stopped running regularly about 2 years ago, which was not good for me.  For the past 6 months or so, I've been slowly building my endurance back up to the point where I can run three miles at a time and feel pretty good.  In order to save my hips and knees, I've committed to only running every other day.  I've learned that the discipline required to maintain my every other day running schedule is just as hard.  Discipline is important.

Kipchoge's quote suggests to me that true freedom - the kind that lasts anyway - comes from self-discipline and not from doing whatever we feel like doing.  If we learn to control our habits, emotions, and impulses, we are making a conscious decision and effort to stay focused on our purpose and our long-term goals, not on our moods on any given moment, which are temporary.  That is liberating in and of itself.  If we do not have self-discipline, we are controlled by our emotions and moods - even though we may feel "free" at first, the reality is that we are "slaves" to our emotions and passions.  We are no longer living our own best life.

Kipchoge's quote is a powerful reminder of why self-discipline is so important.  Breaking a good habit is worse than breaking a bad one.  It takes discipline to maintain good habits.

"Trust is the glue of life..."

I've been posting about the so-called five Waves of Trust, a concept developed by Stephen M.R. Covey in his book, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything.  I introduced the topic in a post from last November, "Change happens at the speed of trust..."  Again, Covey compares trust to the well-known ripple effect, in which waves start out small at the center and become larger and more powerful as they move and expand outward.  He describes five "waves of trust" to drive home the point that trust begins with oneself and expands outward to relationships, organizations, the market, and society.  

Covey said, "Trust is the glue of life."  Today, we will cover the third, fourth, and fifth Waves of Trust, which Covey collectively describes as "Stakeholder Trust":

The third Wave of Trust is Organizational Trust.  Here, Covey refers to a concept called the "Economics of Trust" - he is simply using the analogy of a bank.  Organizations (and to be honest, the analogy works for individuals as well), are always paying a "Trust Tax" or earning a "Trust Dividend".  If the dividends are greater than the taxes, the organization builds up its "Trust Account Balance."  Organizations build up their account balance based upon how well they align systems, processes, and culture.

Covey describes seven common "Trust Taxes" that create unnecessary bureaucracy, red tape, inefficiency, and suspicion.

1. Redundancy

2. Bureaucracy

3. Politics

4. Disengagement

5. Turnover

6. Churn

7. Fraud

The management theorist Laurence Peter (who is most famous for describing the eponymous "Peter Principle") said, "Bureaucracy defends the status quo, long past the time when the quo has lost its status."  

On the dividend side, Covey described seven common "Trust Dividends" that foster open communication, collaboration, efficiency, and speed to action ("Speed of Trust").

1. Increased value

2. Accelerated growth

3. Enhanced innovation

4. Improved collaboration

5. Stronger partnering

6. Better execution

7. Heightened loyalty

Organizations should focus on increasing the Dividends and decreasing the Taxes!  I won't spend as much time on the fourth and fifth Waves of Trust, but I do not wish to diminish their importance.  The fourth Wave of Trust is Market Trust and refers to the level of trust between the organization and its customers and stakeholders.  Market Trust describes an organization's reputation in the marketplace.  If an organization consistently delivers  on its promises, Market Trust will increase.

The fifth and final Wave of Trust is Societal Trust and refers to the level of trust within the community.  Organizations have an important role to play on building mutual trust within the community.  He refers to the concept of "Corporate Social Responsibility".   Organizations should act as good citizens within broader society by protecting the environment, investing in communities, and dealing fairly with stakeholders.  Integrity and ethics are key here.

Overall, I thought Covey's book was superb, and I highly recommend it.  Given the widespread (and growing even more so) lack of trust in society today, I think we can learn a lot from Covey's book.  Carol Stephenson wrote an excellent article on trust entitled "Rebuilding trust: The integral role of leadership in fostering values, honesty and vision" (unfortunately, I can't find a link to the article on the Internet).  I will conclude with what she thinks about leadership and trust.  She said, "A leader must do three things.  First, leaders must not only talk about their ethical values, they must live those values - every day - and in every action they take.  Second, leaders must create a climate of trust and compassion based on open communication.  And third, leaders must embrace a strong vision or purpose for their organization, and that vision and purpose must take into consideration both the economic and the social impact of the business."  And with that, you have the Five Waves of Trust in a nutshell.