"To be of importance to others is to be alive..."

I read a powerful anecdote in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review ("The Power of Mattering at Work") written by Zach Mercurio.  The article was adapted from his newly released book, The Power of Mattering: How Leaders Can Create a Culture of Significance.  Mercurio starts the article by telling a story about Jane, an environmental services employee at a local university.  Jane had just started the job after previously working as a live-in caregiver for a beloved family member who had recently passed away.  After a few shifts, she found herself struggling and asking, "Why couldn't I have done something more with my life?" or "I wish I were more than just a janitor."  

Luckily, Jane's supervisor noticed her struggling and handed her a dictionary.  She asked Jane to look up the word custodian and read the definition out loud.  Jane responded, "A custodian is a person responsible for looking after something."  Her supervisor pointed at her and said, "That's you.  You're responsible for and take 'custody' of this building and everyone in it."  

Jane's perspective changed because her supervisor pointed out to her that what she was doing mattered.  She wasn't "just" a janitor - she was "responsible for the building and everyone in it."  She was their custodian.  Jane ended up staying on the job for the next 18 years before finally retiring.

The story reminds me of another one that I've mentioned a couple of times in the past (see "Back to that Vision thing...NASA, cathedrals, and an automobile executive" and "We are all caregivers...").  The story involves President John F. Kennedy and a janitor that he met during a tour of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).  President Kennedy asked the janitor, "What do you do here?"  The janitor responded, "I'm helping put a man on the moon."  Even if there's no evidence that this story actually happened (there's a similar story about the famous architect Christopher Wren, who designed St. Paul's Cathedral in London), it's yet another powerful reminder of the importance of mattering.

Mercurio defines mattering as the experience if feeling significant to those around us because we feel valued and know that we add value.  It's more than just a sense of belonging (feeling welcomed and accepted in a group).  When we matter to the group, we feel significant to the individual member's of the group.

Study after study has shown that when employees feel that they matter at work, they experience greater self-esteem, self-worth, and self-efficacy.  Mattering strengthens motivation, well-being, and performance.  Unfortunately, Mercurio cited polls that show that 30% of individuals feel "invisible" at work, 65% of employees feel underappreciated, and close to 82% of individuals feel lonely at work (see my previous post on the epidemic of loneliness).  He wrote further, "Many of the workplace challenges currently plaguing leaders - a 10-year low in engagement numbers, demands for dignity and equity, increased labor action, declining employee mental health, and a few years ago, quiet quitting and the Great Resignation - can be traced to a growing mattering deficit."

The great Modernist poet T.S. Eliot reportedly once said, "To be of importance to others is to be alive."  If we can make that connection in someone's mind that what they do truly matters to the mission of the organization, we can take an important step in addressing the growing mattering deficit that Mercurio refers to in his article.  Mattering matters.  And I'll come back to this topic in a future post.

I'm a cheerleader, really!?!?

I briefly mentioned the paradox of emotional well-being in aging in a recent post.  Once again, the paradox refers to the fact that despite what happens to our physical and cognitive abilities as we get older, we tend to be more positive and experience significantly fewer mood swings.  Think about it for a moment.  As we get older, we aren't able to do all the things that we could physically do when we were younger.  We aren't as mentally sharp as we once were - just think about how many times you forget something that you were going to say, and when you finally get the chance to say it, it's lost forever!  Our social networks get smaller.  We may experience the death of a parent, a spouse, or a close friend.  Our health tends to get worse.  And yet...studies consistently show that we are more positive than we were younger. 

I also have mentioned the Harvard scientist and author Arthur Brooks in the past (see, for example, "The mathematics of happiness", "Are you happy?", and "All shall be well").  Dr. Brooks studies happiness, specifically, what makes us happy!  I signed for a free online class by Dr. Brooks through the platform EdX, and one of our "assignments" was to take a test called the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS).  Dr. Brooks has a free version of the test, though it requires you to enter your name and e-mail in order to get the results.  I've talked about the PANAS test before in a previous post, "Are you happy?"  I was curious to see if my scores changed compared to when I last took the test earlier this year.  They haven't, which is a good sign for the test (and for me).  I still score as a very positive person.  My positive score was a 38 (50 is the highest), and my negative score was a 13.  Based on that score, Dr. Brooks would classify me as a Cheerleader, i.e. someone with a high positive affect and a low negative affect.  

As with all things, there are advantages and disadvantages to being a Cheerleader.  If I were to be 100% honest, I don't necessarily see myself as a Cheerleader, but I do consider myself a positive person.  According to my profile, I tend to be optimistic about the future, a good motivator, and a reliable source of happiness for friends and family.  Okay, I agree with the optimistic part, but I'm not sure about the rest.  

My profile also suggests that I am so buoyed by my positivity, that I am often highly averse to bad news.  I may try to explain away or ignore bad results.  I may give rosy advise to friends in need, rather than deliver the hard truths.  I may be less sensitive to others who are experiencing distress.  Okay, there's probably some truth in there as well, but I honestly don't feel like I have a problem being straight with people and delivering the truth, even when it may be uncomfortable.   

Dr. Brooks does make an important point, "Remember, no affect profile is better than another.  You are not rigidly bound to the best and worst qualities of your profile.  The point is to know yourself.  Now that you know your strengths, act on them with purpose.  And now that you know your weaknesses, keep an eye out for your pitfalls."

Hopefully I don't receive a lot of spam messages in my email inbox as a result!  That's not very cheerleader like, is it? Overall, I found taking the PANAS to be a useful exercise, and I would highly recommend it.

The Messy Middle

I recently posted about The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, an Episcopal priest who is currently serving as the head of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington (District of Columbia) and her 2023 book, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments of Life and Faith.  Bishop Budde made several great points in the book that I thought were worth sharing.  Today I wanted to introduce a concept that she learned from a book by the American author, entrepreneur, and early-stage investor  Scott Belsky.  Belsky was named one of Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People in Business" in 2010.  The book is called The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture.

Bishop Budde used Belsky's definition of the "messy middle" with a direct quote from his book:

"What's in the middle?  Nothing headline-worthy yet everything important: Your war with self-doubt, a roller coaster of incremental successes and failures, bouts of the mundane, and sheer anonymity.  The middle is seldom recounted and all blends together in a blur of exhaustion.  We're left with shallow versions of the truth, edited for egos and sound bites.  Success is misattributed to the moments we wish to remember rather than those we choose to forget. Worst of all, when everyone else around us perpetuates the myth of a straightforward progression from start to finish, we come to expect that our journey is meant to look the same.  We're left with the misconception that a successful journey is logical.  But it never is."

In other words, we often see the successes (and the failures too, of course) of individuals, teams, and organizations.  What we don't see is the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears that are behind the success.  Failure to see and appreciate the work that goes into any successful endeavor can create anxiety, stress, and fatigue when we don't experience a similar degree of success.  Others have referred to this concept as the "Iceberg Illusion" (the figure by the illustrator Sylvia Duckworth below explains this well):

Don't forget about the "messy middle"!

The Bullwhip Effect (again)

One of my favorite exercises in business school was a simulation called the "Beer Game".    The simulation was developed by Jay Wright Forrester at the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1960 and is probably the best illustration of the importance of logistics.  I first heard about the "Beer Game" in the book "The Fifth Discipline" by Peter Senge.  

There are a number of simulations available for free online.  Game play is fairly straightforward.  Individuals play the role of a brewer, a distributor, a wholesaler, or the manager of a local retail store (in some games that I've seen, the distributor and the wholesaler are combined into one role).  The game's objective is simple in concept, but difficult in execution - keep up with the changing customer demand for beer.  The trick is to look at these individual players as being part of a system.  During the first few rounds of the game, the system establishes a certain equilibrium where beer moves through the supply chain without any significant problems.  

Once an equilibrium is established, the game adds in a new twist.  A popular singer or famous professional athlete appears in a video drinking a certain brand of beer, and when the video goes viral, demand for that particular brand of beer skyrockets.  The individual playing the part of the manager of the retail store tries to keep up with the demand by placing more orders for beer.  Unfortunately, the supply chain is unable to keep up.  As with all popular fads, the demand for the brand of beer quickly returns to its baseline.  Unfortunately, the orders for the brand of beer have already been placed.  Soon, the local retail store has a huge supply of the once popular brand of beer, but now the demand for the beer is just no longer there.

The "Beer Game" is a great illustration of a concept known as the "bullwhip effect".  The "bullwhip effect" (or "whipsaw effect" as it is sometimes called) is a well-described problem in supply chain logistics that describes the role played by periodical orders as one moves upstream in the supply chain toward the production end.  Even when demand is stable (as in the initial equilibrium phase of the "Beer Game" above), small variations in demand at the retail-end can dramatically amplify themselves upstream through the supply chain. The result is that order amounts become very erratic - they may be very high one week and then zero the next week.  The most recent example of the "bullwhip effect" occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic and involved the toilet paper supply chain (remember when you couldn't buy toilet paper because all the stores were out of stock?).

As I mentioned in a recent post ("The world is changed..."), the worldwide demand for wine has dramatically declined in the past several years.  According to a recent article ("California's Wine Industry Is in Crisis") in The Wall Street Journal, the California wine industry in particular is experiencing a perfect storm in which people are drinking less wine (particularly the younger generations), tariffs have caused the biggest foreign market for California wine (Canada) to dry up, and the weather has been unusually favorable (cool temperatures), causing the grapes to grow in abundance.  As a result, some winemakers are destroying their grapes, while others are simply getting out of the business.  One estimate suggests that 30% of the grapes grown this year will not be sold.

However, all that being said, I am starting to wonder if we will see another real world example of the "Beer Game" and the "bullwhip effect" in the wine industry.  The pop singer Role Model recently appeared as the musical guest on the television show Saturday Night Live and sang his hit song "Sally, When the Wine Runs Out".  Apparently, whenever Role Model sings the song live, he invites a fan to join him on stage and dance during the bridge (as he calls out, "Where's my Sally tonight?").  A number of celebrities have also joined him on stage, including his mother, Susan Pillsbury,  Dylan Minnette, Renée Rapp, Bowen Yang (during a performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon), Conan Gray, Natalie Portman, Olivia Rodrigo (at Lollapalooza), Troye Sivan, Kate Hudson, Hilary Duff, and Charli XCX (during his recent appearance on Saturday Night Live).

Given the popularity of the song (I know it's hit the top of the charts), I do wonder whether we will see a "bullwhip effect" on wine sales, given the title and prominence of the lyric, "when the wine runs out".  Who knows?  Stranger things have happened.  Apparently the U.S. sales of merlot decreased by 2% (and pinot noir increased by 16%) after the main character in the 2004 film Sideways trashed merlot.  The character played by Paul Giamatti loved pinot noir and apparently said during the film, "“No, if anyone orders Merlot, I'm leaving. I am NOT drinking any f#$&!@* Merlot!"  If you are in the wine industry, perhaps the anxiety about "the wine running out" will lead to the opposite effect!  Only time will tell...

Southwest Airlines' New Boarding Plan

Times are definitely changing. As Dawn Gilbertson wrote in The Wall Street Journal this past July ("I'm calling it.  Southwest's new seat policy is just another money grab"), "Southwest [Airlines] is officially just another airline."  I guess I've been hiding under a rock, because I wasn't aware of their plans to change.  I first heard about it after seeing a commercial on television advertising the Southwest's upcoming switch to assigned seating.  A representative from the airline stands at a podium and asks, "America, are you sitting down?  Southwest Airlines is introducing assigned seating!"  The rest of the commercial shows Americans cheering and clapping.  

The airline will officially make the switch on January 27, 2026.  But wait, wasn't the open seating arrangement at Southwest Airlines one of the perks that everyone was supposed to like?  Wasn't their open seating policy supposed to be a market differentiator?  And as Ms. Gilbertson suggested, are they now just another airline?

One business school case study on Southwest Airlines from a few years ago stated, "Southwest is profitable because of two factors: its low costs and the loyalty of its customers. Its low costs come from a number of sources. Southwest offers a no-frills approach to customer service. No meals are served on board, and there are no first-class seats. Southwest does not subscribe to the big reservation computers used by travel agents because it deems the booking fees too costly."

The author of the case study went on to say, "Southwest also has a reputation for being the most reliable carrier in the industry. It has the quickest turn ­around time in the industry (it takes a Southwest ground crew just fifteen minutes to turn around an incoming a craft and prepare it for departure), which   helps keep flights on time."  Part of the reason for the rapid turnaround time was the open seating policy.

Adam Richardson wrote an article in Harvard Business Review in 2011 ("Southwest Airlines Is Playing with Brand Fire") and stated, "A major part of Southwest’s brand is simplicity (a key piece of the larger convenience message): Pick your own seat so you don’t have to plan ahead. Check-in online on your smartphone. Everybody is in the same class of seating. Need to swap a ticket for another date or grab an earlier flight? No problem. From an operations standpoint, they use Boeing 737’s for every flight, simplifying training and maintenance."

Simplicity.  Consistency.  The same no-frills service again and again.  That is the essence of the Southwest Airlines brand.  But as Richardson also emphasized, as Southwest Airlines expanded and tried to keep up with some of the changing airline regulations (particularly after 9/11/2001), they had to change some of the practices and procedures that were essential to their brand.

In a more recent WSJ article this past week ("Here's a Sneak Peek Into Southwest's New Boarding Plan") , Ms. Gilbertson wrote, "The last time Southwest Airlines changed its boarding process, nearly 20 years ago, it launched an online boarding school to teach passengers the basics.  This time, travelers might need a graduate-level course. The airline that has offered open seating for more than 50 years is switching to assigned seating in January, including its first premium seats. Those changes dictate not just a few boarding tweaks but a dramatically different system."

Ms. Gilbertson thought that there was "a lot to love" about the new boarding process (she got a sneak peek at the airline's Dallas headquarters), even if it will be a major change for Southwest Airlines customers.  As a general rule, and speaking strictly from on a scientific basis, there are certainly better ways (and much more efficient) to board a plane, but unfortunately no airline uses them and probably never will - these scientific methods would require a lot more coordination, and more importantly, they would require doing away with some of the priority boarding perks (e.g. first class passengers board before everyone else) that some of us love.

Time will tell whether Southwest Airlines' new boarding procedures will prove better in the long run.  And more importantly, it will be interesting to see if people are still cheering after experiencing the new procedure!  As my wife used to often tell our kids, "We'll see..."

"Beyond the holacracy hype"

Several years ago, our clinical operations team invited Harvard Business School professor Ethan Bernstein for a visiting professorship.  I was fortunate to have dinner with Dr. Bernstein during his visit, and he taught me a lot about organizational structure.  He wrote an article for Harvard Business Review a few years ago that I've mentioned a few times in previous posts (see "Lovable Losers once more...", "A Flock of Starlings", and "Any old map will do...") called "Beyond the Holacracy Hype".  I've also posted about Dr. Bernstein's other research several times in the past (see "Vox Populi", "The Search for Meaning", and "Big Brother is Watching").  Reading his article, "Beyond the Holacracy Hype" led to the purchase of a book by Brian Robertson entitled Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World.  Earlier this year, I finally picked Robertson's book off my shelf and read it.  I think I originally purchased the book two years ago - remember "Tsundoku"?

I have a been a major proponent of the concept of "Deference to Expertise" and some related leadership concepts, such as empowerment, Auftragstaktik, "commander's intent", and "Pushing Authority to Information".  I have read with interest some of the research on self-managed teams, some of which touches upon the even broader concept of complex adaptive systems.  And up until relatively recently, I've thought that a decentralized model of leadership would work best in today's environment.  I now believe that organizations have to centralize (at least somewhat) before they can take full advantage of these more decentralized models of leadership (see my post "You centralize so that you can decentralize...").

So, my leadership philosophy has evolved somewhat since the first time I met with Dr. Bernstein.  I'm not saying that everything I've posted on this topic in the past was wrong - quite the contrary.  I'm simply saying that a fully decentralized model, similar to what is suggested by Brian Robertson in his book, Holacracy: The New Management System for a Rapidly Changing World, may not be the best model in today's environment.  Perhaps management theory and organizational behavior will catch up with Robertson one day, but not just yet.

Holocracy is defined as a method of (mostly) decentralized management and organizational governance, that distributes authority and decision-making through a which claims to distribute authority and decision-making to self-organizing teams (or self-managed teams) rather than being vested in the management hierarchy of the more traditional organizational structure.  The conceptual basis of Robertson's model is not new.  For example, the management guru Gary Hamel said at the 2009 World Business Forum in New York, "The world is becoming more turbulent than organizations are becoming adaptable.  Organizations were not built for these kinds of changes."  

Hamel wrote in an article for Harvard Business Review in 2011 ("First, Let's Fire All the Managers"), "Give someone monarch-like authority, and sooner or later there will be a royal screw-up...in most cases, the most powerful managers are the ones furthest from frontline realities.  All too often, decisions made on an Olympian peak prove to be unworkable on the ground."  Robertson said something a little stronger, when he wrote, "Today's organizations are quickly becoming obsolete.  

Robertson suggested, "Our organizations today are simply not designed to rapidly evolve on the basis of inputs from many sensors.  Most modern organizations are built on a basic blueprint that matured in the early 1900's and hasn't changed much since.  This industrial-age paradigm operates on a principle I call predict and control: they seek to achieve stability and success through up-front planning, centralized control, and preventing deviation...the predict-and-control approach focuses on designing the perfect system up front to prevent tensions...This model worked well enough in the relatively simple and static environments faced in the era in which it matured."

The traditional models that worked well in the past are no longer appropriate for today's VUCA world.  Robertson would certainly agree on this point.  He wrote, "In today's postindustrial world, however, organizations face significant new challenges: increasing complexity, enhanced transparency, greater interconnection, shorter time horizons, economic and environmental instability, and demands to have a more positive impact on the world...the predict-and-control foundation of the modern organization often fails to provide the agility desired and needed in this landscape of rapid change and dynamic complexity.  And the structure of the modern organization rarely helps ignite the passion and creativity of the workforce."

Unfortunately, Robertson's model replaces the traditional org chart with something as equally complex and, at least to me, confusing.  Work is structured around roles, not titles (that part makes sense to me). One person can hold multiple roles, and these roles can change over time (that part also makes sense, but it's starting to get harder to follow).  The organization is divided into "circles" (basically, self-managed teams), each responsible for a specific function.  These "circles" are semi-autonomous and nested in even broader circles (okay, that part sounds like Robertson is replaced the pyramidal-shaped classic org chart with a bunch of nested circles, which still sounds to me like an org chart).  There are governance meetings and tactical meetings, with rotating membership and different rules of order to follow (at this point I became thoroughly confused).  The pre-defined and agreed upon rules, regulations, and processes that are used to run these two different meetings and, as a result, the operations of the organization itself, seemed just as prescribed and rigid as any other operating model.  And indeed, that has been one of the biggest criticisms of Robertson's holocracy model - it can be so complicated and rigid to implement that it quickly overwhelms teams.

I am not saying that we don't need rules and standards.  David Allen, who wrote the Foreword for Robertson's book is the author of two similar books, called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity and Making It All Work: Winning at the Game of Work and the Business of Life suggests, "There is no freedom without discipline, no vision without a form...If there were no lines painted on the road, you wouldn't be free to let your mind wander and be creative while you drive.  You'd be too busy hoping no one hits you.  But if there were too many lanes and restrictions and rules, you'd have traffic moving much slower than it should, as everyone was trying to pay attention to the right place to be."  Allen makes a lot of sense to me and states something that I've argued for in the past - the fact that "Deference to Expertise" (or whatever you may wish to call it) has to come with guardrails (see "The Nelson Touch" and "Empowering employees doesn't mean leaving them alone...").  

Overall, I had higher hopes for Robertson's book (and model).  Again, perhaps my leadership and management philosophies have evolved somewhat over time.  I still believe STRONGLY in the concepts of empowerment, Auftragstaktik, "commander's intent", and "Pushing Authority to Information".  And I do think we need to look at organizational structure differently than we have in the past.  However, replacing the complicated structure of a heavily matrixed organization with the equally complicated structure of nested circles doesn't really sound to me like a major improvement.

The courage to be brave...

My wife checked out a book from our local public library that I ended up reading.  She had heard an online interview with the author, The Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde, an Episcopal priest who is currently serving as the head of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington (District of Columbia).  The book is entitled, How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments of Life and Faith.  

Bishop Budde is perhaps best known for delivering the homily at the January 2025 interfaith prayer service following President Donald Trump's second presidential inauguration (see the transcript of the homily here).  The theme of her homily was, poignantly enough, unity.  She said that unity is "the threshold requirement for people to live together in a free society."  She went on to say that unity is not conformity, and it is not partisan.  She said, "Unity is a way of being with one another that encompasses and respects differences, that teaches us to hold multiple perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect; that enables us, in our communities and in the halls of power, to genuinely care for one another even when we disagree."

Bishop Budde also said that we should not be naive to the realities of politics.  As I've stated before (see "Political Animals"), politics is really about how people in a group make decisions, even when people in the group want different things or don't agree.  She said, "When power, wealth and competing interests are at stake; when views of what America should be are in conflict; when there are strong opinions across a spectrum of possibilities and starkly different understandings of what the right course of action is, there will be winners and losers when votes are cast or decisions made that set the course of public policy and the prioritization of resources. It goes without saying that in a democracy, not everyone’s particular hopes and dreams will be realized in a given legislative session or a presidential term or even a generation. Not everyone’s specific prayers—for those of us who are people of prayer—will be answered as we would like."

Bishop Budde suggests that there are (at least) three characteristics that are foundational to unity in our world today: (1) Honoring the inherent dignity of every human being, (2) honesty, and (3) humility.  She then goes on to say, "Unity is relatively easy to pray for on occasions of solemnity. It’s a lot harder to realize when we’re dealing with real differences in the public arena. But without unity, we are building our nation’s house on sand" (note that she used, as pretext, a passage from the Bible, Matthew 7:24-29).

At the end of her homily, she admonishes President Trump "to have mercy on the people in our country who are scared now (specifically referring to the members of the LGBTQ+ community, immigrants, and refugees, stating, "Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were once strangers in this land."  As you can imagine, her homily was not well-received by the current administration (for more, see the transcript of an interview she gave later that same week for NPR).  Regardless, the overall message that she delivered - the need for unity - is one that we all should embrace, regardless of our political leanings.  

Her book was first published in 2023, so it first came out before the January 2025 homily.  The theme of the book is fittingly appropriate given her message in the homily.  She talks at length about the need for courage in order to be brave (in her own personal case, the courage to be brave to speak up for unity and justice in our country).  She provides a number of anecdotes, both from her personal experience and from various walks of life.  

For example, she mentions J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy, The Lord of the Rings and cites a passage from the first book of the trilogy (The Fellowship of the Ring).  Interestingly enough, I've mentioned this passage as well in a previous post (see "I wish").  The characters Frodo and Gandalf are speaking with each other during their passage through the Mines of Moria.  Frodo is lamenting the fact that the burden of carrying the ring to Mordor has somehow fallen on him, saying "I wish it need not have happened in my time."  Gandalf responds with what I think is a powerful message, "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."

Later in the same conversation, Gandalf tells Frodo, "There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil, Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you also were meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought."  

Bishop Budde explains further by adding, "We do not choose where we are in the human story, only how we live in the time we are given."  The way I would summarize this particular point, and I think it's an important lesson for all of us who live in "interesting times", and especially for those of us in leadership during "interesting times", is that whether we like it or not, or even whether we feel adequately prepared for it or not, we may be living in times that we did not choose.  We may be faced with challenges that we did not want.  We may be called upon to solve problems that we feel that we cannot solve.  What is important is that we accept our circumstances (a very Stoic sentiment), focus on our own personal responsibility (i.e., "focus on what we can control"), and empower ourselves by choosing to act ("clear the mechanism"), regardless of whether we think it will make a difference or not.  More than likely, our actions will make a difference.

While Bishop Budde didn't mention it, there is another passage from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings that I think is important to mention here.  This particular passage is from the second book of the trilogy (The Two Towers), and it's often referred to as "Sam's Great Stories Speech".  Here, Samwise Gamgee is helping Frodo carry the ring to Mordor.  Frodo starts by saying, "I can't do this, Sam."  

Sam replies, "I know.  It’s all wrong.  By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened. But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something."

Frodo asks, "What are we holding on to Sam?"  To which, Sam replies, "That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for..."

It's a beautiful sentiment, and one that I think is consistent with Bishop Budde's theme of having the courage to be brave.  She ends her book with a short prayer:

"My prayer is that, by grace, we all will be emboldened to lean into the wisdom, strength, power, and grace that comes to us, whenever we find ourselves at a decisive moment.  May you and I dare to believe that we are where we are meant to be when that moment comes, doing the work that is ours to do, fully present to our lives.  For it is in this work that we learn to be brave."

"When colleagues compete outside the firm"

My wife and I recently went to go see our beloved (well, mostly my beloved) Chicago Cubs play their second game of the best of five National League Division Series against the Milwaukee Brewers.  Unfortunately, the Cubs lost, and we left the game early.  It was our first time at American Family Field, and it will probably be our last!  It wasn't that the Brewers faithful were unfriendly - to the contrary, most of the Brewers fans were very friendly.  However, when we asked one of the ticket ushers outside the ballpark which gate we should enter in order to get to our seat the fastest, we were told (in a friendly manner), "Go to the next gate down and then turn left."  It seemed like we walked half way around the ballpark before we finally came to our section.  When we left the game, to our surprise, we walked straight out of the gate that was closest to our seat, which happened to be the one that we should have entered on the way inside.  More importantly, it was the exact gate where we first saw the usher, who either mistakenly gave us the wrong directions (doubtful) or purposely steered us in the wrong direction (more likely).  By the way, we were both proudly wearing our Cubs gear!

I should have remembered the Robbers Cave experiment from the 1950's.  I should have realized, prior to attending a play-off baseball game in an "away" ballpark, that I represented the "outgroup".  Groups, teams, and organizations are usually very loyal to the other members of their "ingroup".  As described by Dr. Saul McLeod on Simply Psychology, the Robbers Cave experiment was conducted by Muzafer Sherif, who studied intergroup conflict and cooperation among 22 boys at a youth camp in Oklahoma. The boys were initially separated into two groups, and both groups went through the typical stages of group formation and eventually developed a group identity as well as a common bond and esprit de corps. When Sherif and his team of investigators introduced competitive tasks, the two groups were outright hostile to one another. The later introduction of cooperative tasks reduced this conflict, highlighting the role of shared goals in resolving group tensions.

I've posted a few times in the past about the Robbers Cave experiment (see "The Wager" and "Blueprint").  It's an important, if not controversial, study that could never be conducted today (for a more in-depth account, see the book The Lost Boys by Gina Perry).  Apparently, the psychologist Lufty Diab conducted a similar experiment in the 1960's with 18 boys from Beirut, Lebanon.  The "Blue Ghost" and "Red Genies" groups each contained 5 Christians and 4 Muslims. Fighting soon broke out, not between the Christians and Muslims but between the Red Genies and Blue Ghosts.

We all bring different backgrounds, interests, and life experiences to our groups, teams, and organizations.  That is a key reason why groups often make better decisions than individuals alone - diversity makes us strong!  However, there's a very good chance that we belong to more than one group.  For example, we may associate with a certain religious group, political party, club, or civic organization outside of our professional group.  And the interests and goals of one group may fail to align (or even outright clash) with those of another group in which we belong.

With this in mind, Thorsten Grohsjean, Henning Piezunka, and Maren Mickeler published an interesting study in the Strategic Management Journal, "When colleagues compete outside the firm".  They studied whether coworkers' collaboration inside an organization can be adversely impacted if their extra-organizational affiliations make them competitors outside the organization.  Importantly, they suggested that this effect could occur only if two conditions were present.  First, the individuals had to identify strongly with the external group, team, or organization.  Second, the level of competition between the internal group and external group had to be significant.

The investigators took advantage of a natural experiment involving professional football (soccer) players.  Players in the top five major European football leagues (English Premier League, French Ligue 1, Italian Lega Serie A, Spanish Laliga, and German Bundesliga) often represent their home countries on their national teams during the FIFA World Cup, an international football competition held every four years.  So, they may find themselves playing against their teammates during the World Cup competition.  They used a difference-in-difference study design, comparing the number of passes between players (player A to player B and vice versa) during the professional football season before the 2018 World Cup (2017/2018 season) and the season after (2018/2019).  They specifically compared teammates who competed against each other during the World Cup versus teammates who did not compete against each other during the World Cup.

The "treatment group" (teammates who competed against each other during the 2018 World Cup) consisted of 142 pairs of teammates, while the "control group" (teammates who did not compete against each other during the 2018 World Cup) consisted of 842 pairs of teammates.  The average number of passes between teammates who competed against each other during the 2018 World Cup decreased by about 11 percent!  In other words, there was something about competing against each other in the World Cup that led to a decrease in cooperation (as measured by the number of passes between teammates) in the subsequent professional football season.

While this is just one study, the results are likely generalizable to groups and organizations outside of professional football.  I would also say that as society becomes more polarized, these findings may assume even greater relevance.  What we experience outside of the work setting likely influences how we cooperate and collaborate inside the work setting.  

Oh and by the way, the fifth and deciding game between the Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers is being played tonight - in Milwaukee.  It's a good thing that most of my co-workers are Cubs fans too!  Let's go Cubbies!

The Pacific at War

I have been on a "World War II in the Pacific" kick lately, which has been an ironic and unexpected surprise.  It's ironic in that the Pacific was my own "theater of operations" while on active duty in the U.S. Navy.  Our family and I spent about six years "island hopping" around and across the Pacific Ocean, spending time, albeit at times only briefly, in San Diego, Hawaii, Guam, Wake Island, Okinawa, Palau, Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae, Bali, and Japan.  The places and names are certainly familiar to me, as many of these islands were the sites of some of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific Theater during World War II.  And yet, to my surprise, there was a lot about the the Pacific Theater during World War II that I did not know.  

Everyone probably knows that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 (see my posts "FDR's 'Day of Infamy' Speech" and "Never Forget" for more).  But what is less commonly known or even talked about was that the Japanese also attacked Malaya (part of present day Malaysia), Singapore, Thailand, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippine Islands, and Wake Island at the same time (technically, these attacks occurred on December 8, 1941, because of the International Date Line).  In other words, the attack on Pearl Harbor was part of a larger coordinated attack on all of the U.S. and British territories and colonies in the Pacific.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt mentioned these simultaneous attacks during his "Day of Infamy" speech to Congress requesting a formal declaration of war on December 8, 1941.  Those of us in the United States spend a lot less time learning about what the other Allied Forces were doing in the Pacific Theater, and that is unfortunate, for these battles were no less important.

I recently finished watching the HBO television mini-series The Pacific for at least the fourth or fifth time, which started my current "World War II in the Pacific" kick.  I finally got around to reading the three books on which the series is based - With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa and China Marine: An Infantryman's Life After World War II by Eugene Sledge and Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacific by Robert Leckie.

Towards the end of his book China Marine, Eugene Sledge comments on the question on whether the U.S. needed to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945.  It's an important question, and one that is still debated to this day.  Eugene Sledge said, "The A-bombs saved my life, saved my buddies' lives, and most decidedly saved the lives of millions of Japanese, civilian as well as military."  

That is certainly one of the most commonly cited justifications, particularly for the Hiroshima bomb.  But even Sledge and his fellow Marines heard rumors of a looming Japanese surrender after the first atomic bomb, prompting questions on whether the Nagasaki bomb was truly necessary.  To this, Sledge quotes one of his fellow Marines, who said, "They [the Japanese] won't surrender.  We'll have to go back into the islands and wipe 'em all out just like Peleliu.  Even if they do surrender in Tokyo, we'll have to fight 'em for years until every last one is knocked off."  

Another Marine agreed and said, "Yeah, they might throw in the towel to keep their cities from being bombed flat, but those bypassed [Japanese] troops on Truk, Rabaul, and other places are not going to surrender."  I suspect that the Marine was right.  While living on the island of Guam, we heard stories about a Japanese soldier named Shoichi Yokoi who spent nearly three decades only in the jungle, waiting for his rescue.  He never once thought that the war had ended.

Keeping with the story of the U.S. Marine Corps fighting in the South Pacific, I also read two books about Major Gregory "Pappy" Boyington, a combat fighter pilot ace (he shot down 28 planes during aerial combat), Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, and former Prisoner of War.  The first book, was Boyington's memoir, Baa Baa Black Sheep, which was the basis of an American television series of the same name in the late 1970's starring Robert Conrad.  Apparently the other members of VMFA-214 (the famous "Black Sheep" squadron) neither agreed with or appreciated how they were portrayed in the television series, which led to a much better book by Frank Walton, who served as the squadron's operations officer during their South Pacific campaign, called Once They Were Eagles: The Men of the Black Sheep Squadron.  Both books provided a personal perspective on the war in the South Pacific theater of operations.

Speaking of the South Pacific, this past year, I also enjoyed reading the collection of short stories in Tales of the South Pacific (and its sequel, Return to Paradise) by James Michener, which are largely based upon his own experiences during World War II.  These stories are so much more than what is portrayed in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, "South Pacific".  Rather than focusing solely on combat, Michener's stories explore the relationships, cultural clashes, and moral dilemmas faced by soldiers, nurses, and islanders that experienced the war firsthand.

I've already mentioned the British Army fighting in Singapore, Malaysia, and China in a couple of recent posts (see "Through the Valley of the Kwai- Part 1" , "Through the Valley of the Kwai - Part 2", and "A masterpiece of fiction!").  Another important story is what happened to American and British citizens in Japanese-occupied China.  The author J.G. Ballard wrote an exceptionally captivating and powerful story that was in part based on his own personal experiences in his book, Empire of the Sun.  If you've never seen the 1987 movie of the same name (directed by Stephen Spielberg and starring the actor Christian Bale in his first major role), I highly recommend watching it!  The book tells the story of a young British boy named Jim growing up in Shanghai at the outbreak of World War II. When Japan invades China, Jim is separated from his wealthy parents and must survive alone in a war-torn city before being captured and sent to a Japanese internment camp.  Towards the end of the book, Jim witnesses a sudden bright flash in the sky, "like a second sun", that is later revealed to be one of the two atomic bombs (it's never revealed which). 

After Jim is liberated and returned to his parents, he spends a few months in Shanghai before getting on a ship to go back to England.  While boarding the ship, he witnesses a large group of drunken American and British sailors standing outside a local night club.  They form a "chorus line" and urinate down the steps.  Ballard described the scene perfectly with a hauntingly prophetic statement, "...the Chinese watched without comment as the arcs of urine formed a foaming stream that ran down the street.  When it reached the pavement the Chinese stepped back, their faces expressionless.  Jim glanced at the people around him, the clerks and coolies and peasant women, well aware of what they were thinking.  One day China would punish the rest of the world and take a frightening revenge."

Whether or not Ballard's prediction about China becomes true or not, remains to be seen.  The best-selling writer Simon Winchester suggests that the Mediterranean Ocean helped to shape the classical world, while the Atlantic Ocean connected Europe to the New World.  But it is the Pacific Ocean that will define the future (see his book, Pacific: Silicon Chips and Surfboards, Coral Reefs and Atom Bombs, Brutal Dictators and Fading Empires).  President Obama once spoke of need for a "pivot to the Pacific".  While that didn't necessarily occur, it is clear that the Pacific will continue to be an important focus for American foreign policy.  

I have often mentioned the statement by George Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (see also my posts, "Past is Prologue", "Study the past", and "...all of this has happened before").  When it comes to the Pacific, we would all do very well to remember Santayana.  What is also evident to me that in order to deeply immerse oneself into the history of a particular region, we should take advantage of memoir, fiction, and non-fiction writing as well as our own personal experience.  While I have still a lot to learn, I feel that I know a lot more about history of the Pacific War and its impact on world history.  And that is a start to learning about the Pacific's role in our future. 

The emotional well-being paradox of aging

There's a great scene from the 1981 movie Stripes, in which the character played by Bill Murray asks his fellow Army recruits whether anyone cried at the end of the 1957 Disney movie Old Yeller.  Of course everyone raises their hands (although some required encouragement).  I absolutely cried when I first saw the movie (Old Yeller, not Stripes).

As I've gotten older, I've found that I cry a lot more frequently than I have in the past.  If you want to see tears flowing like the Mississippi River, show me the final scenes of Band of Brothers, The Pacific, or Saving Private Ryan.  But it's not just old war movies that make me cry.  The tears will start flowing even if I watch a short YouTube video from the movie Sea Biscuit.  I've even found myself crying at the end of RomComs.  I remember finishing up a massive biography of Winston Churchill a few years ago, and reading about Churchill's death made me cry.  I recently came across a scene from the movie Hachi: A Dog's Life in which Hachiko the dog is finally reunited, in the afterlife, with his owner, played by Richard Gere (for more about Hachiko, check out my posts, "Dogs Really Are Our Best Friends" and "Trust, Loyalty, and a Story About a Dog").  I swear that I was balling like a baby!

I'm not depressed.  I'm not sad.  I'm not even pessimistic.  I actually consider myself a very positive person, and I think most people would say that about me.  So what is going on with me that I seem lo to get more emotional as I get older?  I actually looked it up.  As it turns out, I'm not alone in my sense that I've become more emotional as I have gotten older.  There was a Washington Post article a few years ago exactly on this topic.  However, most of the research that I've found on this topic suggests that most older adults actually enjoy high levels of well-being and emotional stability.  Older adults are happier (contrary to the stereotype of the "cranky old man"), more positive, and even less emotionally reactive than they were when they were younger.  

Some experts in aging have labeled this phenomenon the paradox of emotional well-being in aging.  It's a paradox because research also shows that as we age, our physical and cognitive abilities decline.  Our social networks get smaller.  Our health gets worse.  We may experience the death of a spouse or close friends.  And yet, we have a more positive outlook, we don't experience dramatic mood swings, and we lose our temper a lot less.

All that research is very interesting, but it still doesn't explain why I seem to cry more at the movies.  Actually, after thinking about it and reading about it a lot more, I believe the answer is fairly simple.  I think I've become more empathetic as I've gotten older.  Empathy is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of others.  It's that ability to place ourselves in someone else's shoes and truly understand (and even experience) what they are feeling.  And it doesn't even have to be a real person or even a human being!  Sometimes, it's a dog.  The website Psychology Today states, "Developing empathy is crucial for establishing relationships and behaving compassionately. It involves experiencing another person’s point of view, rather than just one’s own, and enables prosocial or helping behaviors that come from within, rather than being forced."

There's a common adage that, with age comes wisdom.  I do believe that's true.  But maybe we should also be saying that with age comes empathy...

A masterpiece of fiction!

I recently posted (see "Through the Valley of the Kwai - Part 1" and "Through the Valley of the Kwai - Part 2") about one of my new favorite books, Through the Valley of the Kwai by Ernest Gordon.  Gordon was an officer in the British army during World War II, serving in Southeast Asia.  He escaped with a couple of fellow officers after the British surrendered on the island of Singapore, but he was eventually captured by the Japanese and spent the remainder of the war as a prisoner-of-war, working on the infamous Burma Railway.  As I've mentioned before, the Burma Railway was also the subject of a fictional novel by the French author Pierre Boulle, which was later made into a movie starring Sir Alec Guinness and William Holden.  Gordon mentioned Boulle's book and stated that it was a work of fiction - the famous "bridge over the river Kwai" didn't quite happen as described in Boulle's book or the subsequent movie.

I've never read Boulle's book (although I've seen the movie more than once in the last few years), so after reading Gordon's account, I decided to check Boulle's book out at our local public library.  Even if it's a work of fiction, it's a brilliant masterpiece!  I highly recommend it.

I've posted in the past on the movie (see "The Bridge Over the River Kwai Syndrome" and "The IKEA Effect"), which faithfully (mostly) follows the story in the novel.  The main protagonist is Lieutenant Colonel Nicholson, the senior British officer at the prisoner-of-war (POW) camp.  He is all spit and polish and lives 100% by the rules.  Colonel Saito is the Japanese commander of the POW camp and the novel's main antagonist.  His orders are to use the British POW's to build a railroad bridge across the River Kwai (hence the name of the book) as part of the Burma Railway.  

At the beginning of the story, Saito orders all the POW's, including the officers, to perform manual labor.  Colonel Nicholson disagrees, because under the Hague Conventions (1899 and 1907), officers cannot be forced to do hard labor.  Saito places Nicholson in a small, iron box without food and water, thinking that he will eventually relent.  Nicholson ends up outlasting Saito, and his stubbornness eventually forces Saito to relent.  Officers won't do hard labor.

Nicholson believes it is his duty to comply with Colonel Saito's orders to complete the construction of the bridge.  As testament to the ingenuity, knowledge, and skills of the British Army, Nicholson leads his men to build the bridge on time, on budget, and according to specification.  The bridge becomes an object of pride and admiration for the men.  What's ironic is that while Nicholson is pushing his men hard to finish the bridge (out of a distorted sense of pride and duty, mixed with a healthy dose of perfectionism), a British commando unit called Force 316, led by a British special forces soldier named Shears is making plans to destroy it.

There are several passages in the novel where you, as the reader, just shake your head in amazement at how warped Nicholson's reality has become.  At one point, some of the men are intentionally trying to sabotage the completion of the bridge.  Nicholson responds by punishing the saboteurs and ordering his men to work harder.  

Boulle writes, "In any case, Colonel Nicholson had taken steps to avoid any chance of misunderstanding, first by delivering an address in which he explained quite clearly what was expected of them, and secondly by inflicting severe punishments on a few recalcitrants who had not fully understood.  This action had seemed so well intended that the victims did not hold it against him."

At another point in the story, the British army surgeon who is serving as the camp's medical officer argues with Nicholson and asks him not to force the sick and wounded to continue to work.  Nicholson refuses and continues to order "every man who can walk" to work.  Once the British POW's come close to completing the bridge, one of the officers asks Colonel Nicholson if he is going to have the bridge painted.  Nicholson responds, "Don't even think of such a thing, Clipton.  The most we could do would be to give it a coating of lime - and a fine target that would make for the planes, wouldn't it! You seem to forget there's a war on!"

After the bridge is completed, and before the bridge is first crossed by a Japanese army train, Colonel Saito and his officers inspect the bridge.  Colonel Nicholson is not satisfied with their inspection, and goes to personally inspect the bridge to see if it's ready.  That's when he spots some of the explosive wires that had been set the night before by Shears' commandos, which the Japanese soldiers had not seen.  Nicholson responds, "If I'd been one of them, I shouldn't have been so careless.  Any British soldier would have spotted the sabotage.  Ah well, the train won't be long now."

As I stated in my post "The Bridge Over the River Kwai Syndrome", there's an interesting dichotomy at play here.  Nicholson starts off leading by example, risking his own life to stand up for his principles and for his fellow officers.  His leadership is further on display as he leads the POWs to build the bridge in record time.  However, he seems to lose sight of the fact of the long-term goal of winning the war!

Here is a great lesson about goal obsession that has been called the "Bridge Over the River Kwai syndrome."  As leaders, we should never work so hard to "do a good job" that we end up helping the wrong cause or forgetting the ethical stakes.  As Samuel Bacharach writes in Inc. magazine, "Leadership can be an intoxicating, distracting force that blurs common sense and straight thinking.  The Bridge Over the River Kwai reminds all leaders that they must never forget their bigger mission."

Ramblin' Wreck

The college football season is in full swing!  There were several notable upsets over the weekend, and as usual my Purdue University Boilermakers are already mathematically eliminated from the national championship!  But I don't want to talk about that (please go back and read my post "That's what being a Boilermaker is all about" for brighter days).  Today, I want to go back to something that Head Coach Brent Key of the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets said following his team's upset win over then highly ranked Clemson University.  Coach Key was asked in post-game interviews how his team would maintain focus after such a big win.  He quickly replied with a lesson that he learned from legendary football coach Nick Saban.  Key said, "Coach Saban use to tell us more people die on the way down from Mount Everest than on the way up and you can't relax."

Coach Key was the offensive line coach at Alabama from 2016-2018, working for the legendary coach Saban.  Key further explained, "You can't relax, you have to be prepared every week.  There is no crescendo or top.  Our goals at the start of the season were not to win Game 3 of the season.  They weren't to win Game 4 of the season.  They weren't to win Game 8 or 12.  Our goals are a lot bigger than that, our expectations internally are a lot bigger than that.  As long as we keep our heads on the right place and stay focused, the other things will take care of themselves."

The climb down from the summit of Mt. Everest is a great analogy.  While a specific number isn't cited, it is believed that between 38% to 56% of all fatalities on Everest occur on the descent from the summit, when climbers are exhausted and perhaps taking more risks now that they've reached the top.  For example, the author and mountaineer Jon Krakauer joined an expedition on Everest in May, 1996 during which 8 climbers died, in what was then the worst single-season death toll in Everest history.  Notably, all 8 climbers had reached the summit and died on the descent back down, when a fierce storm struck and trapped several of the climbers.  The tragedy was the subject of Krakauer's book Into Thin Air, as well as a 2015 movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Brolin, and Jason Clarke.  

The take-home message here is to be wary of when you have finally achieved one of your goals.  The easiest thing in the world to do after finally reaching the summit is to take a deep breathe, relax, and let your guard down.  Instead, you should constantly challenge and push yourself to even greater heights.  

"You've got mail!"

I recently learned that the Internet service provider America Online (AOL) officially ended their dial-up Internet service this past week.  It's hard to believe that dial-up Internet was the most common (and only) way that individuals accessed the Internet in the early days.  Even now, I can hear the screeching sound of my computer trying to establish a connection, followed by a ping and a computer voice announcing, "You've got mail!"  The phrase became so popular that it ended up being the title of a 1998 romantic/comedy movie starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

At its peak, AOL had more than 20 million users (including our family, who still has an AOL email address).  The company merged with Time Warner in 2000, which at the time was the largest corporate deal in history, creating a media conglomerate worth over $350 billion.  As broadband Internet became more ubiquitous, AOL's users left in droves, until the company was sold with Yahoo to Verizon in 2021.

I was also surprised to learn that AOL still has approximately 163,000 users, most of which live in rural areas where there is no broadband Internet.  It is, indeed, the passing of an important era in media history.  And for that matter, AOL represents an important part of our nation's history.  Farewell dial-up Internet.  And thank you.

Trust, Loyalty, and a Story About a Dog...

I came across a great quote the other day.  The author was listed as "unknown" (and I haven't been able to find another reference about the quote's origin).  The unknown author simply asked, "Do you know why the universe didn't allow our dogs to speak?  To teach us that love and loyalty come from actions and not words."

It's true - dogs are incredibly loyal, and they are perhaps the textbook example of unconditional love.  I will admit that I am a dog lover, but I see unconditional loyalty, love, devotion, and trust every time that I look into the eyes of our two dogs at home.  But if you want real proof from someone else, just read about the story of the Japanese dog, Hachiko, which I wrote about in a post last March, "Dogs Really Are Our Best Friends".  

Hachiko was a Japanese Akita dog who lived in Tokyo during the 1920's with his owner, Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor in the agriculture department at Tokyo University.  Hachiko would meet Professor Ueno every single day at the Shibuya train station when he returned home from work.  Sadly, Ueno died of an acute brain hemorrhage while at work.  Hachiko waited for him at the end of the day, just as he had always done, only this time Ueno never returned.  Hachiko would return every single day to wait for his owner for the next 10 years until his death on March 8, 1935.  Hachiko became a national symbol of trust, loyalty, and friendship in Japan.  There are statues of Hachiko at Tokyo University (the statue with Ueno on the right) and outside of the Shibuya train station (the statue on the left).  

Hachiko's story was the basis for a 2009 movie starring Richard Gere and Joan Allen called Hachi: A Dog's Tale (a real tear-jerker!).  The 2009 movie took place in Rhode Island, not Japan, and there is now a statue honoring Hachiko there too (see below)!

One is tempted to ask, why are dogs such loyal companions?  Why can't humans be as loyal as dogs?  What is the secret to their unconditional loyalty and love.  Some scientists would suggest that it's just a part of their pack mentality, and they are being loyal to the other members of their pack.  The less romantic ones among us would simply claim that we feed and take care of our dogs, so their loyalty is just payback for what we give them.  If that were true, we should be saying that cats are just as loyal as dogs.  I'm not sure that we can say that cats show us unconditional loyalty and love (while I am speaking from personal experience, I did find one study suggesting that dogs are more loyal than cats). 

Paul Zak studies the neuroscience of trust (see his excellent article in Harvard Business Review from 2017, "The Neuroscience of Trust").  Zak also wrote about his research on trust in a book that I recently read, Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High-Performance Companies.  His research found that what we call trust has a chemical basis.  In his research, Zak has found that oxytocin mediates trust between humans (see "Oxytocin is associated with human trustworthiness").  Moreover, when we show empathy and kindness towards strangers, the levels of oxytocin in our bloodstream increases, which results in even greater generosity towards others (see "Empathy towards strangers triggers oxytocin release").  Even more important, when Zak administered oxytocin to his research subjects, they were more generous (see "Oxytocin increases generosity in humans") and more trustworthy (see "Oxytocin increases trust in humans").

Oxytocin is a hormone that is released by the pituitary gland that plays a key role in social bonding, reproduction, and emotional regulation.  The maternal-infant bond is mediated, in part, by oxytocin.  Similarly, the emotional bond between humans and dogs is also mediated, again in part, by oxytocin (see "How dogs stole our hearts" and "Oxytocin-gaze positive loop and the coevolution of human-dog bonds").  As a result, oxytocin has been called the love hormone, the cuddle hormone, and the trust hormone.

Could differences in the trust hormone explain why dogs are more loyal than cats?  Some of Paul Zak's unpublished research suggests that this could be the case (see his article "Dogs (and Cats) Can Love" in The Atlantic magazine).  I bet that Hachiko's and Ueno's oxytocin levels were through the roof!

Hachiko's story is one that should warm even the coldest hearts.  We now know that our canine companions' trust, loyalty, and unconditional love has a neurochemical basis.  We now know that there's a hormone that can mediate trust.  Stay tuned for more on the neuroscience of trust in a future post.