Swing through the ball

I was never very good at golf.  Several years ago, my son and I signed up for golf lessons at one of the local public golf courses.  After about five or six lessons, I felt like I could at least do the basics.  It was a lot of fun.  But I am still not very good.

One of the things that I remembered most about the lessons is that when hitting the ball, you should swing through the ball (also known as "Ball is in the way of the swing; it's not the target").  In other words, rather than stopping your swing at the moment that the club makes contact with the ball, you should keep swinging and following through as though the club was constantly in contact with the ball.  But does that make sense?  Check out this slow motion video of PGA professional Brooks Koepka.  The ball literally gets launched into the air as soon as the club makes contact with it.

The whole point of a good golf swing is to reach maximum swing velocity at the exact moment that the club makes contact with the ball.  Golf instructors will say that swinging through the ball makes sure that you don't slow down your swing as you approach the ball. "Golfers who see the ball as the ultimate destination will undoubtedly start to decelerate shortly before impact. This happens because your mind has been trained to coordinate – more or less – the end of your swing with the wrongly defined final act – the ball."

As I think about it more, the same concept is true for setting personal and professional goals.  Once you set a goal (and we've talked about the concept of using SMART goals, i.e. setting goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound), you should keep pushing through and even past the target, just as you would keep swinging through the ball in golf.  The point is to maintain maximum effort until the goal is reached, and the best way to do that is to aim past the goal!

"The Few and the Proud"

Whoever came up with the marketing slogan, "The Few.  The Proud.  The Marines." was brilliant!  The slogan has been used by the United States Marine Corps since the late 1970's.  Major General Richard T. Tryon was the Commanding General of the Marine Corps Recruiting Command when he said, "This slogan reflects the unique character of the Marine Corps and underscores the high caliber of those who join and serve their country as Marines."  I could not agree more.  I was proud to help our Marines during my brief stint as a pediatrician at the Naval Hospital in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina (now called Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune).

The United States Marine Corps is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States (see if you can name all of them!) and has been part of the Department of the Navy since June 30, 1834.  The Marine Corps was first established on November 10, 1775 by resolution of the Second Continental Congress during the American Revolutionary War.  The Marine Corps was originally founded to serve as an infantry unit aboard naval vessels and was responsible for the security of the ship and its crew during boarding actions and raiding parties.  

Today, the Marines play a critical role as both an expeditionary and amphibious warfare force.  Former Marine Corp Commandant General Alfred M. Gray, Jr established the doctrine of "Every Marine is a rifleman", emphasizing the fighting spirit and combat abilities of the Marines.  As I have posted in the past, the Marines in my mind uniquely qualify as a High Reliability Organization with their doctrine of "commander's intent" which is the ultimate example of the High Reliability principle of "Deference to Expertise".  "Commander's intent" is designed to provide frontline leaders with the flexibility of execution and deviate from a specific plan of attack as the conditions dictate, yet still meet the overall goals and objectives of the commanding officer.  The guiding principle of "commander's intent" is that operational orders should specify the end state but leave open the method of execution.

As you can imagine, the process by which a man or woman becomes a Marine is not an easy one.  As the Marine Corps Boot Camp website states clearly, "There are few reputations more storied and none more deserving than that of Marine Corps Recruit Training. The difficulties this process presents to every recruit are as deliberate as they are legendary, as physical, mental and moral toughness are prerequisites to fight among our ranks. During these 13 weeks of intense battles, it is not enough to simply endure, you must prevail. Pushing through surrender’s pull. Pulling together to prevent all from falling apart. Tapping into the purpose that brought you here, to win for the Nation you fight for."

The final challenge of Marine Corps Boot Camp training is known as "The Crucible", a 54-hour test of the recruits' physical stamina, mental toughness, and ability to think critically under the most challenging of circumstances (check out the documentary produced by the Marine Corps here).  The name comes from the word "crucible" which is defined as "a severe test, or, a place or situation in which concentrated forces interact to cause or influence change or development."  First introduced in 1996 by then Commandant General Charles Krulak, "The Crucible" is what separates recruits from Marines.  It is both a test and an indoctrination, and it is the defining moment of recruit training.  

For many recruits, "The Crucible" will be the first time that they push themselves to the limits of their mental, physical, and emotional endurance.  If they do not quit, they will know what they are capable of in the future, which is usually much more than they ever could have imagined.  During their 54-hour test, recruits will encounter unique obstacles and challenges, all of which bear the name of a heroic Marine from the long, proud history of the Marine Corps.  After they complete each obstacle, one of their Drill Instructors will provide feedback and retell the story of the Marine for whom the obstacle is named.

Theodore Roosevelt once said, "Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well."  I think that Theodore Roosevelt would have loved the concept of "The Crucible".

While most, if not all of us, will likely never go through an onboarding process quite like "The Crucible", we can certainly appreciate the great lengths to which the Marine Corps goes to make sure their recruits are properly onboarded and indoctrinated in their organization's culture.  Perhaps there is something here that other organizations can learn from in their own onboarding process.

"Early to bed, early to rise..."

There's an old proverb that I learned when I was a child, "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."  The proverb is often attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who first wrote it in his Poor Richard's Almanack.  I like this version a lot better than another similar proverb, "The early bird gets the worm."  The assertion is that if you get enough sleep at night (by going to bed early) and start your day off early, there is a greater chance that you will be successful in life.  Apparently there are several studies to back this up (see the post, "7 Ways Science Proves Early to Bed and Early to Rise Really Works").

I wasn't always a morning person.  When I was in high school, my father had to wake me up every morning to go to swim practice.  I suppose that I should have set my alarm, but he was waking up anyway (he woke up and went to work early!).  For the last several years, I have always made a point of getting to work early.  It's probably my most productive time of day, as there are fewer distractions in the early morning hours.  Of course, getting up early in the morning means that I have to go to bed fairly early too.

Retired U.S. Navy SEAL, entrepreneur, leadership consultant, and author Jocko Willink recommends getting up early and "getting after it."  Willink believes that getting up early provides him a jump-start to the day.  Waking up early, when nobody else is awake, gives him the chance to get the things he needs to get done.  He wakes up at the same time every morning, 4:30 AM (if you don't believe me, follow him on X or Instagram, as he sends out a photo of his watch at his wake-up time every morning) and heads straight to the gym for his morning work-out.  Willink says that there isn't any secret to establishing a morning routine.  He says, "What you need to do is, when the alarm goes off, you get up and you go get some.  That's what you do.  Impose discipline on your life."

The late Kobe Bryant, certainly one of the greatest basketball players in the history of the National Basketball Association, also believed in getting up early.  During his acceptance speech for the Icon Award at the 2016 Espys, Bryant famously said:

"We're not on this stage just because of talent or ability.  We're up here because of 4 AM.  We're up here because of two-a-days or five-a-days.  We're up here because we had a dream and let nothing stand in our way.  If anything tried to bring us down, we used it to make us stronger.  We were never satisfied, never finished.  We will never be retired."

Bryant was certainly talented, but he wasn't a great basketball player because of talent alone.  The secret to his success?  He became great because he worked hard, maybe even harder than anyone else.  There's a great video online of him talking about getting up early every morning to practice at 4 AM.  He called it his "4 AM Rule".  He started getting up early to begin practice in high school and kept doing it for the rest of his career.  Waking up early gave him extra training and practice.  When it all adds up over the years, Kobe Bryant's work-out routine - his "4 AM Rule" - gave him years of extra training and practice, over and above what his peers were doing!

Kobe said, ""If your job is to try to be the best basketball player you can be. To do that you have to practice, you have to train. You wanna train as much as you can, as often as you can. So if you get up at 10 in the morning, train at 12. Train for 2 hours, 12-2, you have to let your body recover. You get back out, you train. You start training at 6, train from 6-8 and now you go home, you shower, you eat dinner, you go to bed, you wake up and you do it again.  Those are two sessions. Now imagine, you wake up at 3 and you train at 4, go 4-6, come home breakfast, relax. Now you back at it again, 9-11, you relax and now all of a sudden you back at it again, 2-4. Now you back at it again, 7-9.  Look how much more training I have done by simply starting at 4. So now you do that as the years go on the separation that you have with your competitors and your peers, just grows larger and larger and larger and larger and larger. By year 5 or 6, it doesn't matter what kind of work they're doing in summer, they're never gonna catchup. So it makes sense to get up and start your day early because you can get more work in."

Here are the five pillars of Kobe Bryant's "Mamba Mentality":

1. Passion.  "Passion is the fuel for success."

2. Obsession.  "You want to train as much as you can, as often as you can."

3. Relentless.  "Rest at the end, not in the middle."

4. Resiliency.  "The proposition of losing to these guys in these finals again and knowing what that means as a Laker fan. I don’t think so."

5. Fearlessness.  "If you’re afraid to fail, then you’re probably going to fail."

As Darren Hardy, former publisher of Success Magazine said, "What do successful people and unsuccessful people have in common?  They both hate to do what it takes to be successful.  Successful people just do them anyway." 

Pi and Infinite Monkeys

I've been saving this post for March 14th, but I decided that I couldn't wait that long!  At times, I am absolutely fascinated by mathematics.  International Pi Day occurs every year on March 14th.  Mathematics enthusiasts the world over celebrate in their own special way.  For example, several years ago, my daughter and I toured Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology on a college visit.  Rose-Hulman has one of the best engineering programs in the country.  The visit happened to occur on International Pi Day, and the tour guide was absolutely thrilled to share with us that "someone" the night before wrote down in chalk all the digits of Pi on all of the sidewalks around campus.  My wife is a middle school math teacher and always holds a competition to see which student has memorized Pi to the most decimal places - oh, and they always eat pie too!

Just in case you didn't know, Pi (denoted by the symbol π) is a constant that is the mathematical ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.  It is an irrational number, which means that it cannot be expressed exactly as a ratio of two integers (the ratio 22/7 comes awfully close, but not close enough).  As a result, its decimal representation keeps going on and on and on without ever repeating.  The decimal digits appear to be randomly distributed, though this has never been proved to the satisfaction of most mathematicians.

Well, I was "today years old" when I first learned that there is a sequence of six consecutive nines starting at the 762nd decimal place of Pi.  It's actually a HUGE coincidence - some would say it's a statistical anomaly (more on that below).  The world renowned physicist Richard Feynman allegedly once said that he used to memorize all of the decimal points of Pi up to this sequence, after which he would say "and so on!"  Subsequently, the 762nd decimal place became known as "Feynman's Point".

The author Douglas Hofstadter wrote in his book Metamagical Themas:

"I myself once learned 380 digits of Pi, when I was a crazy high-school kid.  My never-attained ambition was to reach the spot, 762 digits out in the decimal expansion, where it goes "999999", so that I could recite it out loud, come to those six 9's, and then impishly say, "And so on!"

What's simply amazing is that the probability of having a string of six 9's in a completely random sequence of numbers is exceedingly low - some mathematicians have calculated the probability to be 0.08%.  I have no idea how they came up with that probability, so for now we will just have to trust my sources.  I suppose it has something to do with what is known as the infinite monkey theorem, which states that if you let a monkey hit the keys on a typewriter an infinite number of times, at some point the monkey will type out the entire works of William Shakespeare (for a humorous anecdote, check out the article "The Infinite-Monkey Theorem: Field Notes" in The New Yorker).  Well, infinity is a long time, so I guess that a monkey could do that, right?

Apparently there is a relatively straightforward proof to the infinite monkey theorem.  I won't bore you with the details, but it only requires a basic understanding of the laws of probability and some basic mathematics.  The point is that the probability of a monkey randomly typing out even a short passage from any of the plays of Shakespeare is exceedingly small, but it's not zero!  In other words, given enough time, anything is possible!  

What's absolutely profound, in my opinion, is that something that is as ordered as a sequence of six 9's can appear out of the blue in the infinitely long number of decimal places of Pi.  As Adam Frank wrote several years ago in an online post for NPR ("The Infinite Monkey Theorem Comes to Life"), "The emergence of such intricate complexity from randomness is counterintuitive to brains that have evolved to see pattern and meaning everywhere.  To digest the true significance of the infinite monkey theorem, it's best to turn from science to art..."  

I've been spending my "Summer Break"  reading a lot about chaos theory, complexity science, and complex adaptive systems, all topics that I want to explore further in upcoming posts.  For now, back to Adam Frank, "Order emerging from chaos, meaning emerging from randomness, right before your eyes and not a banana in sight."  And it all started with Pi.

"Be like water"

The world in which we live in today can perhaps best be described by the acronym VUCA, where V=Volatile, U=Uncertain, C=Complex, and A=Ambiguous.  I would absolutely agree and perhaps add the letter "T" for Turbulent.  It's often been said, with good reason in my opinion, that the most successful leaders are the ones who can adapt and modify their "leadership style" to the situation at hand.  Leaders today require a special blend of resilience, flexibility, and grit.  With that in mind, I'd like to briefly talk about Stoic philosophy, which I've found particularly suited to leadership in a VUCAT world.

Ryan Holiday, from "The Daily Stoic" recently blogged about this exact topic with his post "You Can't Be Fragile Like This".  Cato was a Roman Senator during the last days of the Roman Republic (he is often referred to as "Cato the Younger" to differentiate him from his great-grandfather, "Cato the Elder" who was also a Roman Senator).  He was also a follower of Stoic philosophy and a symbol of liberty and justice for America's Founding Fathers.  Cato: A Tragedy of Five Acts by Joseph Addison was reportedly George Washington's favorite play.  Apparently he was also known to be rigid and inflexible.  He held tightly to his moral code, but Ryan Holiday suggests that perhaps his inability compromise, even a little, hastened the demise of the Roman Republic.  When Pompey, one of ancient Rome's greatest military leaders suggested forming an alliance with Cato through marriage to one of his relatives, Cato refused.  Pompey allied with Julius Caesar instead.  This alliance significantly altered Roman politics and likely hastened the fall of the Republic.

Ryan Holiday uses this story to further illustrate one of Robert Greene's concepts from his The 48 Laws of Power, in this case Law #48 "Assume Formlessness: Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed."  Greene further writes, "The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water."  There is a famous interview (I've posted about this in the past too, see "HRO: Commitment to Resilience" and "Enter the Dragon") with the martial artist Bruce Lee, whose own philosophy blended concepts both Asian and Western philosophy.  Lee was greatly influenced by Taoism and Buddhism.  The Indian philosopher and writer, Jiddu Krishnamurti was a major influence as well.  His martial arts were largely a metaphor for his philosophical beliefs and teachings. 

In the interview, Lee tells us:

"You must be shapeless, formless, like water. When you pour water in a cup, it becomes the cup. When you pour water in a bottle, it becomes the bottle. When you pour water in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can drip and it can crash. Become like water my friend."

In order to survive and thrive as a leader in today's VUCAT world, we need to learn to compromise, adapt, and shift our leadership style to the times.  We should not compromise our own morals, values, and ethics, but there are times when we should compromise in order to come up with the best solution to a problem or disagreement.  The author and politician Edi Rama said, "Compromise in colors is gray."  I like that.  Our world is neither black nor white - it's gray.  It's often formless and shapeless, like water.  We should be like water too.

War Games

Okay, I promise I am not going to be talking about the 1983 movie War Games, starring Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman, and John Wood - actually, I already did that once before (see "The only winning move is not to play")!  With this post, I am really going to talk about war games.  You see, when I was growing up, my parents gave me the Avalon Hill game "Midway".  It's a strategy board game that is based upon the historical Battle of Midway, a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II that was a major victory for the United States over Japan.  It was a great game - still is, in fact (it's been ages since I've played it, but I still have my old copy).  It's almost impossible to play by yourself, which is perfectly okay since my best friend growing up really enjoyed playing it too.  Unfortunately, he used to beat me all the time.  As it turns out, coming from a military family, he was apparently much better at battle strategy than I was at the age.

I was thinking of my war game "Midway" earlier today after coming across a post from the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island (I've posted about that place too, see "Tap Code").  Apparently, the Naval War College (NWC) recently hosted its 10th Wargaming 101 course from August 1st to August 10th.  Even more interesting (to me at least), the NWC has an entire department dedicated to wargaming!  Apparently the United States Navy thinks its a worthwhile investment.

Captain Mike O'Hara, who chairs the NWC Wargaming Department said, "It improves decision making under risk and uncertainty. Its power stems from competing against a thinking adversary -- a ‘red team’ -- trying to accomplish its objectives while seeking to undermine your own."

At first, the Wargaming Department was created and developed to educate and train students attending the NWC.  However, in the last 5 years, they have conducted similar "war games" for individuals from outside the War College, including non-Department of Defense organizations such as the U.S. Congress, State Department, and U.S. Coast Guard (yes, the Coast Guard is a branch of the U.S. military but is actually housed within the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Defense), reflecting a growing interest in wargaming as a useful tool for analysis of national security issues.

I've also been reading about the 18th century Prussian war game, Kriegsspiel.  The word "Kriegsspiel" literally means "war game" in German (I am proud to say that I knew that from my DuoLingo!).  Apparently, Kriegsspiel was the first official war game to be adopted by a military organization for education and training purposes.  The games were reportedly highly realistic and forced players to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity.  Following Prussia's impressive victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War, a number of other countries adopted similar methods to train their military officers.

Why all the emphasis on wargaming?  In short, wargaming is an effective way to train military officers in tactics and strategy.  If you think about it, the health care industry has adopted a number of similar approaches - think about mock codes, simulation training, and mass casualty / disaster drills!  What do all of these have in common?  They train health care providers to respond to events that occur fairly infrequently, maybe even rarely.  The natural question though, is why haven't hospitals and other health care organizations adopted wargaming (or whatever you wish to call it) to help leaders learn how to make effective decisions under conditions of uncertainty, ambiguity, and stress?  How many health care organizations have "simulated" or "gamed" a strategic decision such as an acquisition or merger?

I believe that leaders in health care organizations can and should adopt wargaming methods to help them learn to make better decisions.  We live in a world characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiquity (the Army War College first used the acronym VUCA to describe the world in which we live today).  Why not take full advantage of all of the things that can help us to drive to better performance?

"Shall we play a game?"

Two pizzas

I have been reading a lot on what it takes to run a productive meeting.  One of the most important considerations is the size of the invite list - according to an article by Paul Axtell published a few years ago in Harvard Business Review, the most productive meetings have fewer than 8 people attend.  He writes, "There is a tipping point beyond which the quality of the conversation begins to erode."  If too many people are invited to the meeting, there is never enough time for everyone to participate in the conversation.  When the group becomes too large, some people tend to clam up and not say anything, or when they do say something, they are more guarded.  Large group meetings tend to increase the likelihood of "social loafing", which is the tendency for some individuals to exert far less effort in a group compared to when they have to work alone (see my post, "Social loafers on a free ride" for more on this point).  Finally, if the goal of inclusivity is to increase group diversity, adding to the invite list can and usually does backfire due to something known as the "common information effect".  Basically, whenever we are in a group, we tend to focus primarily (and at times, exclusively) on things we have in common.  Larger groups only increase this tendency.

Whether an invite list of only eight individuals is a hard and fast rule is probably not as important as making sure that the individuals who attend actually contribute.  In general, if you are inviting someone to a meeting only so that they are "kept in the loop", it's probably better not to invite them and to communicate with them afterwards.   In general, (see "How to know if there are too many people in your meeting", also from Harvard Business Review), when you are putting together the meeting attendance list, give careful consideration to include individuals from the following key categories:

1. The key decision makers for the issues involved

2. Individuals with information and knowledge about the topics under discussion

3. Individuals who have a commitment to or stake in the issues

4. Individuals who need to know about the information you have to report in order to do their jobs

5. Anyone who will be required to implement any decisions made

One trick is to follow the so-called 8-18-1800 rule.  If you have to solve a problem or make an important decision, invite no more than 8 people to the meeting.  If you want to brainstorm about an issue, or if the purpose of the meeting is to provide updates (though I would argue that there are better ways to disseminate information than in a meeting), you can go as high as 18 people.  Finally, if the purpose of the meeting is to rally the troops, go for 1,800 people or even more!

Amazon supposedly uses the so-called "two pizza rule".  Jeff Bezos reportedly once said, "If you can't feed a team with two pizzas, it's too large."  I guess that also depends on how big of an appetite everyone at the meeting has though, right?  The bottom line is, bigger is not always better!