This is my most recent article in the Online Jamaica Gleaner.
I thought this title was better than the one I came up with, whatever that was!
http://www.go-jamaica.com/jobsmart/view_article_details.php?id=113
An Opposable Mind
Reading an article today reminds me of why I love new ideas.
Usually, it’s not because the notion is absolutely foreign to me. Instead, the best feeling is when I am able to recognize some piece of thinking I have already done, taken to an entirely new level by someone obviously much smarter than I am.
In the July 2007 Harvard Business Review, an article entitled “How Successful Leaders Think” stopped me in my tracks. I realized upon reading it that the author had articulated for the first time in my understanding the way I try to think, when I do my very best thinking, or designing.
Roger Martin, the author, starts by quoting F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said that “the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function” is the sign of a truly intelligent individual.
His modern day research of successful corporate leaders backs this up.
He compares the importance of this kind of intelligence with the evolution of the opposable thumb. Human beings have the most developed opposable thumbs in the animal kingdom, and have been able to create magnificently simply because of their ability to maintain a sustained and precise tension between the fingers. Without it, there would be no ability to write, build, paint and use tools.
This mechanical tension is likened to a certain mental tension – the ability to hold competing ideas in mind at the same time, without discarding one or the other prematurely. In other words, an “opposable mind,” according to Martin.
With an opposable mind all sorts of magic can be created, and the good news that he delivers at the end of the article is that it can be learned, grown and deepened through practice, just like any other skill.
We are born with this kind of mind, he says, but often become anxious because we prefer simplicity and clarity to ambiguity and complexity. This leads us to develop simplistic answers, and to cling to them as if they were gospel truth.
My grandfather did not believe that man really landed on the moon. It was just simpler to believe that it was all a hoax.
Many believe that the earth was created in 7 days, that Eve ate an apple in a garden, that Noah built a boat that saved all creatures from a flood and that Jonah was literally swallowed by a whale which somehow happened to be a fish.
Over time, mankind has progressed in many ways, but not without a fight.
Our tendency is to seek the right answer and discard the wrong – quickly and permanently. Education systems that encourage this kind of thinking even into the college years don’t help the situation.
Martin notes that what he calls “integrative thinkers” welcome complexity, and are therefore able to see the entire problem at once, without trying to break it into small pieces. They also question cause-and-effect relationships that are over-simplified e.g. “if we pay people more money then they will be more productive.”
He gives the example of Red Hat, the software manufacturer, whose CEO was able to abandon the conventional thinking of his industry to create a new revenue model for itself, allowing it to stay ahead of its competitors.
If there is one thing that I aspire to bring to my clients, it is solutions that are based on opposable thinking. At the times when we have been able to achieve these kinds of breakthroughs, it truly has been a collaborative effort that pulls the best from their direct experience, and a fresh look at their issues that I sometimes bring.
While it’s not the easiest path to take, it usually is the most fruitful.
The Difference an Engaged Employee Makes
In a recent Trinidad Newsday article, a colleague of mine, Kwame Charles, makes the following observations:
Research findings:
The SHRM article highlights several research findings on employee engagement that demonstrate its link to competitiveness. Some of these findings are as follows:
- Highly engaged employees perform 20% better than disengaged employees and are 87% less likely to leave their organisation.
- Engaged employees work harder, are more loyal and are more likely to “go the extra mile” than disengagement employees.
- Engaged employees have been found to be five times less likely to have a safety incident and seven times less likely to have a lost-time accident than disengaged employees. In one study, the average cost of a safety accident for engaged employees was US$63, while the average cost for disengaged employees was US$392. This company was able to save over a million US dollars by increasing employee engagement.
Interesting, especially given my estimate that some 60-80% of Caribbean employees are disengaged.
Gone Fishing
For the first time in a very long time, I will be away from the internet for 9 days.
Be back after that!
Steve Jobs Speech at Stanford
I write a lot about doing what one loves to do.
I am fortunate to say that I wake up each morning being able to say this, and apparently so does Steve Jobs:
Re-establishing Trust Requires an Apology
I found this great post in a blog from an Australian company that seems to be Framework’s lost twin.
It speaks to the need to restore trust by apologizing, an action that I implicitly reiterated in my post about cleaning up a company’s promisphere.
Click here to be taken to the blog.
The 60-80% that are Resigned
I want to make a crazy estimate.
I am guessing that some 60-80% of Jamaicans are in jobs that they dislike.
I have no idea if this is a true estimate, but I think it might just be in the ball-park.
The reasons?
- An impossible education system that forced decisions at 16 about which 3-4 courses to take at CAPE/A’ levels.
- The narrow range of options available at UWI.
- The way jobs are structured
- Our moribund economy
- The lack of information about opportunities
They all combine to create a mindset of scarcity in which a job becomes something to hold onto at all costs. People get stuck in careers and in positions for which they are ill-suited, by virtue of their lack of motivation or skill.
The effect on a company’s productivity is cumulatively disastrous, as is the effect on our economy.
I’d be interested in hearing what other opinions are on this topic, and what might be done about it.
I’m not sure how this fits in with books such as Kenneth Carter’s “Why Workers Won’t Work,” except to say that I think he was focused on studying rank and file workers.
(A copy of Framework’s 2-page summary of the book can be obtained by sending email to fwc-whyworkers@aweber.com or by visiting our website under the Ideas section.)
Why Aren’t They Working on My Strategy?
This Framework white paper from 2004 illustrates the reason why employees in Caribbean companies find themselves so divorced from the strategic thinking that occupies most executives’ time.
To obtain a copy, send email to fwc-exstrategy@aweber.com.
For a full list of our white papers, visit our website www.fwconsulting.com, under the item: Ideas.
JobSmart Series: Staying in Touch
This week’s edition of the Jamaica Gleaner’s JobSmart series: Staying in Touch.
Written by me.
Shaping the Space — part 8
An intervention is intended to target is what we call the “space” or environment that a group of participants happens to be in.
This space is not a physical space, however.
It is more of a mental/social/emotional space that exists around the individuals. It is more clear when they are physically together, but it exists even when they are apart.
Before an intervention starts, a team or group of participants is operating inside of a particular space, most of which they are generating sub-consciously.
The overall intervention is meant to shift the space not once but several times in the course of a meeting, event or interaction of some kind.
The end-result is defined by the Outcome – described in an earlier post.
Defining the intervention is a matter of figuring out the actions that will shift the space from the starting point, through several intermediate states, until the final Outcome is achieved.
For example, the most common space that all groups of Caribbean people start in when they don’t know each other is a space of “Who are you, and who are they, and do you know who I am?”
Once this question is addressed, the most common subsequent space is “Why are we here?”
This is often followed by “What role will I play?” which in turn leads into “What is the agenda and the time requirement?”
Once these are squared away, along with any other logistics, the next space is “What is the first step?”
At this point, the actions vary according to the Outcome wanted from the intervention.
P.S. I did a search for prior posts in this blog on the topic, and found one that I wrote on my wedding day 2 years ago. In that post I wrote about how my wife and I used an Outcome-based approach to design our wedding day.