"It takes 10 hands to score a basket..."

I recently finished a great book by Edward Luce, a biography of Zbigniew Brzezinski, a political scientist who served as the National Security Advisor for President James "Jimmy" Carter, our nation's 39th President.  President Carter died on December 29, 2024 at the age of 100 years, making him the longest-lived President in U.S. history.  Even though I was very much aware of most of what was happening in the world during the Carter Administration (or at least as aware as a middle schooler can be), I learned a lot more from reading Luce's biography of "Zbig", as Brzesinski was more commonly known by his friends and colleagues.

There was a lot happening during the Carter Administration.  I've certainly forgotten some of these events, but there are others that I can recall as easily if they happened yesterday.  For example, I remember in particular the Iran hostage crisis, when 66 Americans were taken hostage at the Embassy of the United States in Tehran, with 52 of them being held until literally minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as our nation's 40th President on January 20, 1981.  I can also remember the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan, which prompted President Carter to boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics that were held in Moscow (more on this in a moment).  

Both the Iran hostage crisis and Soviet invasion of Afghanistan started in 1979, but they both lasted for the remainder of President Carter's time in office.  The 1980 Winter Olympics were held in Lake Placid, New York during the tumultuous 1980 Presidential Election.  While I don't remember most of what happened, I do know where I was at the same moment men's hockey Team USA defeated the Soviet Union in what is now known as the "Miracle on Ice" game.  I may touch on some of the other events I read about in Luce's book in later posts, but for today's post, I want to focus on the Olympics.

First of all, the Summer and Winter Olympics used to be held during the same calendar year.  Second, there used to be a sharp distinction between amateur athletes and professional athletes.  Only amateur athletes were permitted to participate in the Olympic Games.  Both the U.S. men's basketball (Summer Olympics) and men's hockey (Winter Olympics) teams were comprised of elite college athletes.  The men's basketball team, in particular, was loaded with talent.  The team was led by future NBA stars Mark Aguirre, Buck Williams, Rolando Blackman, Sam Bowie, and future Hall of Famer Isaiah Thomas.  Unfortunately, due to the U.S. boycott of the Summer Olympics in Moscow, they never got the chance to play for a Gold Medal.  Instead, the U.S. Olympic Committee worked with the National Basketball Association (NBA) to organize a series of games against NBA All-Stars, known as the "Gold Medal Series".  Surprisingly, Team USA, which at that time was the youngest American national basketball team ever assembled (three players, including both Sam Bowie and Isaiah Thomas, were freshmen), defeated the NBA All-Stars 5 games to 1.  Most of the games weren't even close.  

All 12 players on the Olympic squad would eventually go on to become first round selections in the NBA draft.  Both Mark Aguirre and Isaiah Thomas would go on to become NBA World Champions for the Detroit Pistons.  Sam Bowie is perhaps most famous for being drafted with the second overall pick in the 1984 NBA Draft, just one pick ahead of future Hall of Famer Michael Jordan.  Bowie's career was unfortunately plagued by injuries.  Buck Williams was a three-time NBA All-Star, but the rest of the team members did not have the same level of success in the NBA.  Regardless, they still beat a team of professional basketball players in five out of six regulation games, which is noteworthy.

Similarly, the 1980 men's hockey Olympic team consisted of college players.  They were coached by legendary college hockey coach Herb Brooks, who famously built the team specifically to compete head-to-head with the Soviet Union.  Brooks stressed player conditioning and team culture.  At the time, the Soviet men's hockey national team was the greatest in the world.  They had won the last four Olympic Gold Medals in a row, and they in fact had only lost the Gold Medal once since the first time that they played in the Olympics in 1956.  Since the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, in which they won the Bronze Medal, Soviet hockey teams had gone 27–1–1 (wins-losses-ties) and outscored their opponents 175–44.  During that same period of time, the Soviet team outscore Team USA in head-to-head matchups 28–7.  Even more impressive, the Soviet team had not lost a single game in Olympic play since 1968.  

The players on the Soviet men's hockey team were de facto professionals, having played together on international teams for years.  They were the clear favorites by a very large margin to win the Gold Medal again at Lake Placid.  After breezing through group play (they defeated Japan 16–0, the Netherlands 17–4, Poland 8–1, Finland 4–2, and Canada 6–4), the Soviets moved on to the medal round.  Team USA had a more difficult time, but they surprised many of the experts with physical and cohesive play.  Team USA was set to play the Soviet Union in the medal round.  ABC had decided not to broadcast the game live, and before the game aired, ABC's Olympics host Jim McKay openly stated that the game had already occurred and promised not to spoil the results.  To this day, many people who watched the game on television still believe that it was broadcast live!

The game was closely fought, but in the end, Team USA outscored the Soviet Union 4-3, scoring two of their goals in the third period.  Legendary sportscaster Al Michaels who was calling the game on ABC along with former Montreal Canadiens goaltender Ken Dryden, picked up on the countdown in the hockey arena during the broadcast and delivered his famous call:  "11 seconds, you've got 10 seconds, the countdown going on right now! Morrow, up to Silk! Five seconds left in the game! (Dryden: It's over!) Do you believe in miracles? YES!"  Team USA would go on to score three goals during the third period in the next game to beat Finland 4-2 for the Gold Medal!  

There are a couple of important points here.  First, Team USA men's basketball was a "team" in every sense of the word.  They had practiced together, played exhibition games together, and spent a lot of time off the court together.  By comparison, the NBA All-Star team was a group of professional basketball players who normally didn't play together.  They came together for perhaps a few practices (I actually don't know for sure) and played what is probably best described as a series of pick-up games versus the men's national team.  Talent is important for any team's success, but so is working together as a team as opposed to a mere group of individuals.  

Second, the men's hockey team was built solely to compete with the Soviet national team.  Herb Brooks emphasized conditioning, but he also specifically selected the players that he thought would work the best together as a team.  As depicted in the 2004 Disney movie Miracle, he emphasized team culture over individual talent.  I've spent a lot of timing researching so-called Superteams, which I define as sports teams that are built largely through free agent acquisitions or trades in order to assemble a team of superstars (think most recently LeBron James and the Miami Heat from 2010-2014).  What is surprising is the fact that so many of these superteams fail to live up to expectations.  

As legendary Coach John Wooden once said, "It takes 10 hands to score a basket."  Talent isn't enough - teams have to play well together as a team.  Both the 1980 USA men's basketball team and the 1980 USA men's hockey team are great examples of this important point.  Next time, I will continue to build upon these points, because I think they are applicable to all teams, not just teams in sporting competitions.

Welcome to the Age of Uncertainty

 A few months ago, I wrote a post that asked the question, "What if this isn't the storm?"  The post was based, in part, by a Harvard Business Review article written by Cheryl Elnhorn, Founder and CEO of Decisive, a decision sciences company that trains people and teams in complex problem solving and decision-making skills.  Elnhorn asked the question, "What is this isn't the storm?  What if it's the climate?"  In other words, what happens if the VUCA world in which we live is not a blip, but the new norm?

There is no question that we live in uncertain times.  The journalist Simone Stolzoff recently cited statistics from a global economic uncertainty index that suggested that the five highest periods of uncertainty since the 1980's have all occurred during the last five years (see the graph below).

Stolzoff further makes the argument (see his article in Harvard Business Review, "Leader's, It's time to Build Your Tolerance for Uncertainty") that the ability to manage uncertainty has never been more important to leadership success.  His new book, How Not to Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers (coming out in May 2026) provides a roadmap for not only dealing and tolerating uncertainty, but thriving in it!  Here are three key principles, based upon his work with leading psychologists, economists, and philosophers:

1. Find Your Anchors

Stolzoff writes, "Certainty in some aspects of your life makes it easier to hold onto uncertainty in others."  If you are dealing with uncertainty (and if you are a leader in today's society, you are certainly dealing with uncertainty), find the areas in your personal and professional life that are constant and unchanging.  If you can anchor on those areas that are certain to you, you will be better prepared to navigate through uncertainty.

2. Build to Learn

I want to talk more about this principle in greater detail in a future post, but suffice it to say that we should spend less time planning for how to navigate through uncertainty and more time experimenting.  We should use uncertainty as an opportunity to change for the better.

3. Row Through the Fog

Stolzoff compares being a leader during a period of unprecedented uncertainty to rowing a boat on a foggy lake.  "You can't see far ahead or know precisely where you'll end up, but you have two jobs: to maintain faith that you'll eventually reach land and to keep rowing."  When we see uncertainty as an opportunity to learn and grow (see too the point above), we tend to see the world with a different set of eyes, which will allow us to explore new ways of thinking.

Remote Work and Productivity: Chicken or egg?

I recently read an article about a city employee who requested to work remotely two days per week.  The human resources department rejected the employee's request.  But here's the catch.  The city worker who had made the request was a gardener, tasked with the upkeep of the public green spaces around city hall, including landscaping, pruning bushes, cutting the grass, etc.  The city appropriately asked how the worker thought that he would be able to perform these duties while working remotely.  It almost sounds too crazy to be true, but this is apparently the world in which we live in today!

Some jobs just aren't made for either a remote or hybrid option, but for those that are, there's a concern that remote work may impact an employee's productivity.  Studies show that productivity can either increase or decrease when an employee works from home.  Several of my posts in the past have touched on this important question (see, in particular, "The WFH question", "Remote work, again..."), "Big Brother is watching", and "The evolution of working from home").

What is clear is that employees prefer a flexible schedule with the option to work remotely.  A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research ("Home sweet home: How much do employees value remote work?") found that many job applicants are willing to accept less pay for positions that are either fully remote or allow a hybrid schedule.  The study was conducted by researchers at Harvard, Brown, and UCLA, who surveyed 1,400 workers, most of whom were software engineers, product managers, and data scientists, who had at least two job offers (and accepted one offer) between May 2023 and December 2024.  Those workers who accepted a remote or hybrid position accepted a salary that was on average 25% less than what they were offered for a similar position that did not allow remote or hybrid work.

Several organizations that embraced remote work (or even hybrid work) during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic are now changing their tune.  For example, Amazon has had a five day per week in-office policy since January 2025.  Microsoft told its employees last September that they will be required to work in the office at least three days per week.  Google and Facebook have instituted similar policies in the past year.

Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington published another study in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Staff Reports in 2023 ("Working remotely? Selection, treatment, and the market for remote work") that provides additional context to the productivity of remote work question.  They studied a U.S. Fortune 500 firm's call center operations that employs both remote and on-site workers for the same jobs.  They took advantage of a so-called natural experiment provided by the COVID-19 pandemic.  Prior to the pandemic, remote workers answered 12% fewer calls per hour than on-site workers, despite handling calls randomly routed from the same queue.  Emanuel and Harrington surmised that one of two things could be happening.  On the one hand, remote work could in fact be associated with lower productivity.  For example, remote workers could be less motivated or more distracted when working outside the office.  On the other hand, it is also possible that less productive workers choose remote jobs.  Economists would call this adverse selection, but I would call it a chicken/egg problem ("Which came first, the chicken or the egg?").

The call centers closed during the pandemic, and everyone moved to remote work.  The workers who were previously in the office full-time answered 4% fewer calls relative to the already-remote workers!  In other words, the shift to remote work led to a decline in productivity for the formerly in-office workers (note that productivity declined even more in the formerly fully remote workers).  With these results, Emanuel and Harrington concluded that at least a third of the initial productivity gap between fully remote and fully in-office workers was "caused" by the shift to remote work, which means that two-thirds of the initial gap was due to adverse selection (in other words, less productive workers chose remote job options).

The quality of the service provided by the call center also declined following the shift to remote work.  The workers themselves reported that working from home made it more difficult to quickly consult with their co-workers, which directly led to an 11% increase in customer hold-times following the shift to remote work.  Customer callback rates (which usually indicates that a customer's questions or concerns weren't adequately addressed) also increased by 3 percent.  

There are certainly other disadvantages to remote or hybrid work.  JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is pushing back hard on employees who recently petitioned for hybrid work following a change in company policy that mandated working in the office five days per week.  Dimon argues that when employees opt to work from home, new or inexperienced employees miss out on essential on-the-job training.  He said, "I'm not making fun of Zoom, but younger people are being left behind.  If you look back at your careers, you learned a little bit from the apprentice system.  You were with other people who took you on a sales call or told you how to handle a mistake or something like that.  It doesn't happen when you're in a basement on Zoom."  The lack of professional development can certainly lead to lower promotion rates for remote or hybrid employees, which has been observed in a number of studies, including the one from Emanual and Harrington.

These are important results to consider.  I'm not sure we will ever be able to return to 100% in-office work, that is, for those jobs in which remote work is a feasible option.  What remains clear to me is that we, as leaders, will have to learn to address all of these concerns.  Most importantly, perhaps, are the concerns around professional growth and development.  We will need to make sure that remote and/or hybrid workers are productive employees have the same opportunities for development (and promotion) that the in-office employees have in the future.

Happy National Women Physicians Day!

Today, February 3rd, is the 205th birthday of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the very first woman in the United States to earn a medical degree.  Dr. Blackwell was famously allowed to attend medical school as a prank by her fellow students.  She had applied to a number of medical schools, only to be told that medicine was a profession not meant for women.  She applied to Geneva Medical College (now known as Norton College of Medicine at SUNY Upstate Medical University).  Apparently the faculty asked the other (both current and incoming) medical students to vote on whether to accept her or not (the stipulation was that the vote had to be unanimous).  The students voted unanimously for her acceptance as a practical joke to get back at the faculty.  Dr. Blackwell entered medical school with the 1847 class and graduated in 1849.  During those days, medical school consisted of a one year course of study that was repeated in the second year.  The faculty and students eventually came around, and when the dean of the medical school awarded Dr. Blackwell her diploma, he stood up and bowed to her.

Dr. Blackwell continued to encounter prejudice throughout her career, and later left the United States to continue her training in Europe.  There, while caring for an infant with ophthalmia neonatorum, she accidentally contaminated her own eye and contracted the infection.  Unfortunately, she became blind in that eye, which forced her to abandon her dream of becoming a surgeon.  She would later return to the United States, where she founded the New York Infirmary for Women and Children with her younger sister, Emily Blackwell (who incidentally was the third woman to graduate from a U.S. medical school).  Both Drs. Blackwell focused on women’s health, pediatrics, and social justice.  

The Doctors Blackwell were pioneers in medicine and early advocates for a woman’s right to practice our profession.  Their story was superbly told in an excellent book by the author Janice Nimura (The Doctors Blackwell: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women and Women to Medicine).  National Women Physicians Day was established to honor Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell and recognizes the contributions of all women in medicine.  While we have come a long way since Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from Geneva Medical College, the struggles for women’s equity in our profession remain real today (see my post from 2018, "Do we need a National Women Physicians Day?", as well as a follow-up post from 2021).  There is work ahead, and we all must play a role.  However, for now, congratulations to all of my women colleagues and friends in medicine, and Happy National Women Physicians Day!

"We all need the human touch..."

The pop song "Human Touch" by Rick Springfield, released in 1983, was the second single from Springfield's seventh album Living in Oz.  The song would eventually reach number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.  The song's lyrics talk about the isolation of modern life (kids in the 1980's were spending more time in front of video games, personal computers, and televisions) and the need for real connection.  Google's Gemini artificial intelligence app says that the song "...contrasts technological detachment with the essential, vulnerable act of genuine human interaction and love...the song highlights how we build "prison cells" but need someone to break through, emphasizing that despite feeling "cool and calculated," we crave that physical and emotional closeness."  The American music magazine Cashbox emphasized the irony of using synthesizers and drum machines in a song that rails "against the impersonal coldness of computerized society."  

Ironically, I used AI to write about the meaning of the song's lyrics!  Did you catch that?  I've written a number of posts in the past year highlighting some of the drawbacks of technology (television, social media, mobile phones, and even artificial intelligence) and the role that technology has played in what former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy calls "an epidemic of loneliness" in today's society (for more on the "loneliness epidemic", please see my posts "The Loneliness Epidemic" and "Ubuntu").  For example, I've posted a lot about the role that television (see "Amusing Ourselves to Death"), technology (see "The Walkman Effect", "The Quiet Commute", and "Take a Break...") and social media (see "Familiarity breeds contempt...",  "Liberation", and "The truth about connection") have played in this epidemic of loneliness.  I have referenced the author and journalist Nicholas Carr a number of times in the past (see his most recent book, Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart).  I've mentioned Jonathan Haidt's book The Anxious Generation, which has received a lot of attention in the past year as well.  Haidt argues that a dramatic shift in childhood, largely driven by smartphones, social media, and changes in parenting styles, has led to a surge in anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems among young people.  

In my post, "Connections", I talked about Aaron Hurst and "The Six Points of Connection" that can help foster a sense of community and restore our trust in society today.  We need to get back as a society to emphasizing personal connections and the "human touch".  It's no mere coincidence that nonhuman primates (gorillas, chimpanzees, etc) spend close to 20% of their day on grooming behaviors, where one ape will groom another.  Grooming behaviors are an important aspect of the social behavior of nonhuman primates.  Touch builds the kinds of bonds that are important to surviving (and thriving) in the wild.

We humans too can benefit from fostering personal connection via touch.  Importantly, this was tested in an incredible study published in the journal Emotion in 2010 by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley (see "Tactile communication, cooperation, and performance: An ethological study of the NBA").  Researchers analyzed game film and collected key statistics from the 2008-2009 National Basketball Association (NBA) season.  They specifically looked at the tactile communication in one game played within the first 2 months of the season for all 30 teams, yielding data from 294 different players from all 30 NBA teams.  They specifically focused on 12 distinct types of touch that occurred when two or more players were in the midst of celebrating a positive play (scoring a basket, blocking a shot, etc) and included everything from fist bumps, high fives, chest bumps, and leaping shoulder bumps to half hugs and full hugs.  Early season touch positively predicted the team's performance during the full NBA regular season.  Players on winning teams fist bumped, high fived, chest bumped, and hugged more than players on losing teams.  These seemingly small forms of tactile communication significantly increased the cooperative workings of the team, which in turn translated to better performance.

Personal touch goes a long way towards establishing the bonds of human connection, and that's hard to do via a computer screen.  Bottom line, I do think that emphasizing the personal connection will help address some of the problems around trust, collaboration, and engagement that appear to be so widespread with today's workforce.  There's no question that technology is here to stay, but we can't let technology replace the need for personal connection.  Rick Springfield perhaps said it best, "We all need the human touch..."

Red light, yellow light, green light, GO!

A few years ago, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at my former hospital came up with what I thought was a brilliant initiative focused on nursing staff wellbeing.  Basically, at the end of every shift, each nurse would place a colored ball (red, yellow, or green) into a jar by the main desk.  The red-colored ball indicated that the shift was very stressful, while the green-colored ball indicated that the shift was not stressful at all (the yellow-colored ball signaled that the shift was somewhere in the middle of those two extremes).  The unit leadership collected and counted all of the colored balls to get an idea of how stressful the shift had been for the unit as a whole, which they then used to retrospectively look at other key factors, such as the unit census (total number of patients), acuity (how critically ill all of the patients were during that shift), and staffing levels (how many nurses were working that shift, how many patients each nurse had been assigned, etc).  

Admittedly, the system that the NICU leadership had created provided a good retrospective view of the shift, but it could not have been used to adjust staffing levels or increase the number of manager check-ins and leadership rounds during that actual shift.  I filed away the NICU's initiative as something to consider for the future, but to be honest, the retrospective nature of the system of colored balls limited its widespread application to other inpatient units.  

I was reminded of this same NICU initiative after recently coming across a blog post about using a similar system during leadership check-ins (see Chad Dickerson's blog post, "The magic of the personal check-in: Red, yellow, green").  Here, meeting participants kick off every meeting (whether a 1:1 meeting or group meeting) by stating at the outset how they are feeling at that particular moment.  As Dickerson writes, "Red means you are having trouble focusing, you're extremely distracted, and/or you're feeling distressed.  Green means you are feeling good, focused, relaxed, and ready for any discussion.  Yellow is somewhere in between."

Dickerson explains why this simple "trick" works so well, stating, "The reason that the red/yellow/green exercise is so powerful is that it can quickly create a space of psychological safety that helps teams do better work.  It's also quick and simple.  You don't need to hire expensive consultants or take personality tests or get a special certification."

Participants don't have to explain why they are feeling Red, Yellow, or Green.  Rather, just by stating how they are doing at a particular moment in time creates a sense of authenticity, vulnerability, and humility, which in turn helps build psychological safety and engenders mutual trust.  There is perhaps no better way to build trust within a group or team than by individual members being vulnerable and honest.  

Incidentally, Dickerson references a Harvard Business Review article ("How One Hospital Improved Patient Safety in 10 Minutes a Day").  The article was written by Roel van der Heijde and Dirk Deichmann and presents a very similar initiative developed by leaders at Rotterdam Eye Hospital.  Prior to the start of every shift, team members would "huddle" together and rate his or her own mood as red, orange, or green.  The team leader then asks if there is anything that the team needs to know to work more effectively together that shift.  Lastly, the team leader assigns two staff members to each draw a card.  One card has a safety-related quiz (e.g. "What are the five steps in hand hygiene?"), while the other card asks the person to observe something during the shift and share his or her findings during the next day's team huddle.  Of particular interest, Rotterdam Eye Hospital claims that this routine has resulted in an improved safety culture, improved patient safety performance, and increased staff engagement and wellbeing!

What I particularly like about all of these similar initiatives is that they are so simple and easy to use.  As Dickerson suggests, they do not require specialized certification or training and can be easily implemented.  Incidentally, I am feeling particularly "green" today!  Now it's time to go!

For nearly a quarter of a century, nursing is the most trusted profession!

Gallup released the results of their annual Honesty and Ethics of Professions survey earlier this month, and once again nursing ranked as the most trusted profession in America.  The nursing profession has now held the top spot for the last quarter century!  Nurses have ranked number one every year since being added to the survey in 1999, with the sole exception of 2001, when firefighters ranked first (and nurses ranked second) following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  Military veterans, who were added for the first time in this year's survey, ranked second, while medical doctors and pharmacists also received high marks.  In contrast, telemarketers (5%), members of Congress (7%) and car salespeople (7%) remain the lowest-rated professions for honesty and ethics.

Notably, while the nursing profession continues to be the most trusted profession in America, their latest rating is near the 73% low for the profession and 14 percentage points shy of their record high in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Similarly, the rankings of the other two professions that rank just behind nursing (medical doctors and pharmacists) have also fallen by 20 and 18 points, respectively, since peaking during the pandemic and remain below pre-pandemic ratings.  

Seven of the 21 occupations surveyed in the annual poll, conducted December 1-15, 2025, reached new low points or tied their previous lows (these include, most notably, nursing, accountants, advertising practitioners, bankers, members of Congress, building contractors, and car salespeople).  A core group of professions has been tracked consistently over the past four decades, including 11 that have been measured annually since 1999. The average positive rating across these 11 professions is now 29%, the lowest historically by one percentage point.

Gallup concluded with the comment, "Although nurses and other healthcare professionals remain among the most trusted, their ratings, along with those of many other professions, have declined from pandemic-era highs, leaving overall ethics ratings across many occupations at or near historic lows."