Dan Erwin

Gut Check

In today’s highly competitive, fast-paced, volatile work world, employees are constantly being called upon to make decisions. Often, almost instantly. As a result, today’s workers rely heavily upon their intuition. There’s no doubt that intuitive thinking can be astonishingly effective for decision making. Intuition, in fact, is often described in almost mystical terms because of its contributions. Poker players have a sixth sense, good mechanics just know, and ballet dancers feel their steps. Examples like these lead most of us to believe that we can rely completely upon our intuition in making most any kind of decision.

But truthfully, your gut is way overrated. Don’t trust it. As Cambridge elite, Michael Schrage (MIT) puts it, your gut deserves skeptical vigilance. Sorry, but your gut instinct and gut feelings will betray you. Instead, the key to smart use of intuition is to follow President Reagan’s rule for working with the Soviets: Trust, but verify, with a strong emphasis on “verify.”

What is intuition?

Gut feeling or intuition is a judgment that comes very fast when we’re faced with a problem. We don’t know why we have this feeling. And we don’t fully know where the insight comes from. It’s just automatically there. Just something you know. Yet the feeling is strong enough to cause us to act on it.

Research has shown that intuition is “rules of thumb,” a set of patterns based on years of experience. When certain cues, based on old “rules” or “patterns” are presented to us, intuition, gut-feel or instinct flashes into the gray matter with resolutions.

If we lack experience in a subject, we won’t have those intuitive insights. For example, I’m not a rocket scientist, so if you ask me about rockets or flight problems, no flashes of insight will surface. But in contrast, if you ask me about human behavior and coaching, which I’ve studied and practiced for 50 years, I’ve got a lot of rules of thumb--patterns that automatically flash to cues. Information and solutions to a behavioral problem are often just there. But . . . I still defer strongly to evidence.

Problems with intuition.

A huge body of systematic research tells us how intuition works, and also, how it doesn’t work.

• Intuition takes years of experience and study to develop. Experience is the one differentiator for effective intuition. Research has shown that it takes approximately ten years to develop trusted intuition. Expert chess players typically have passed the 10,000 hour threshold of experience. That’s why I was so appreciative of one recent MBA grad who was hired as COO for an architectural client. The managing partner kept telling him to “go with his gut.” “I don’t have any gut insights (intuition) to go with,” he kept telling his boss. He lacked the experience for the development of useful management patterns and he was smart enough to know it.
• Intuition only works well in environments that provide “valid” cues and rapid feedback. The environment must have a degree of regularity for a cue to be considered valid. Games such as bridge or poker are highly valid, while long term weather forecasting and stock trading lack validity. The huge scale of weather environments and stock environments and the lack of recognizable patterns in the two make intuitional judgments difficult, even impossible.
• Intuition is fast, but reasoning is slow. This is obvious—but still very important. The rapidity of changes in today’s work environment makes intuition a highly rewarded skill. It’s seductive, leading us to ignore its weaknesses.
• We apply intuition inconsistently. Even experts apply what they know inconsistently.
• Our biases powerfully impact intuition, leading to bad judgments.
• To quote MIT’s Andrew McAfee, we have lousy intuition about our intuition. There’s no way for us to tell whether a spontaneous idea is expert intuition or a dumb bias.

My conclusion from all this research and much more that I’ve looked at is that intuition is dangerous territory. Once more . . . intuition is vastly overrated and used far too often. Real experts seem to know what they don’t know. But those lacking expertise (and they may not know they lack expertise) certainly don’t know what they don’t know. Subjective confidence is therefore a very unreliable indication of the validity of our intuitive judgments and decisions.

So what works better than intuition?

There’s a terrific amount of evidence revealing that systematically-collected data and mathematical models can outperform our very human, intuitive judgments. A systematic analysis of 136 studies that compared human to statistical (analytical or research-based) judgments found that the preponderance of data favored the statistical and systematic data approach to important decision making. Sixty-five of the studies failed to find a significant difference between human judgment and systematic prediction. Sixty-three of the studies found that evidence-based (statistics, etc.) were significantly better predictors of the case at hand. Only eight (yep, just eight) of the studies found that people were better predictors. There’s a large toolkit of statistical techniques that are actually designed to find patterns in huge masses of data—even when it’s messy data. This makes it possible to deliver “best guesses about cause-and-effect” relationships. Quoting Andrew McAfee’s report, If you’re keeping score, that’s just under a 6% win rate for the people and their intuition and a 46% rate of clear losses.

How to control the quality of your decisions.

Although there are a large number of ways to vet any decision, I regularly start with four key questions.

• Is my self-interest, or the self-interest of others driving this decision? No question that people can lie with statistics and most any kind of evidence and reasoning. Indeed, I’ve been told by my astute protégé that I’m exceptionally good at lining up data for my own objectives. He once commented with a smirk that I have a statistic for everything. I agreed with him on both. Still, if the decision is important to my thinking, my well-being or my future, I’m very cautious about the issues of self-interest. Self-interest can readily sabotage decision making. Like most people I can fall blindly in love with a decision—and miss the inherent problems.
• Are there dissenting opinions on this issue? Are there other ways of looking at this decision, and does the team or colleagues dissent on their conclusions. Whatever. The absence of dissension on a complex issue is a red flag. It’s nearly impossible for four or five people to agree on a complex issue.
• Have credible alternatives been considered? That’s usually my first thought. It sounds like this: How else can we look at this problem? Am I thinking about it the best way? What alternative data have we missed?
• If I had to make this decision again in a year, what info would I want and how can I get more of it now? I’ve just begun to look at this question and found that it can be exceptionally useful. My intuitive mind readily constructs a story based on the evidence at hand. But asking this question gives me a bit more light.

So what’s in it for you to revise your thinking about intuition and set it aside 95% of the time?

As a result of a more evidence-based focus, I’ve found that my decision batting average has gone up significantly. As a coach and mentor, evidence-based thinking has given me far better insights for working with clients and helping them to resolve their issues. In addition, as I’ve gradually become more and more familiar with evidence-based thinking, I’m a much more critical and intelligent recipient of political and economic comment. Politics aside, Reagan really was very accurate in his approach to decision making: Trust, but verify. I’d put it more strongly. If the decision is significant, put 95% of your input into verification.

• See especially: Daniel Kahneman (Nobel laureate), Dan Lovallo, and Olivier Sibony, Harvard Business Review, The Big Idea: Before You Make That Big Decision [PDF], and HBR blog, The Big Idea.
• Andrew McAfee, HBR blog, Less Intuition, More Evidence.
• Michael Schrage, HBR blog, Tell your gut to please shut up.

Are You Nice?

Typically I give the Times' Corner Office in Sunday's paper a quick skim and go on. But today's was a show-stopper. Entitled A Deal-Breaker Question for Job Interviews, Adam Bryant interviews Andy Lansing of Levy Restaurants in Chicago. After a bit of his background and how he became CEO of the company, Bryant asks Lansing what he's looking for when he's in a hiring mode.

Here's Lansing's answer: I have a pretty nontraditional approach to hiring. I hire for two traits--I hire for nice and I hire for passion. If you sit down with me, no matter how senior you are in the company or the position you're applying for, my first question to you is going to be, are you nice? And the reactions are priceless. There's usually a long pause, like they're waiting for me to smile or they're waiting for Ashton Kutcher to come out and say, "you're being punked." Because who asks that question? And then I say, "No, seriously, are you nice."

I read the interview again to make sure that was Lansing's question. Yep. That's it. My first response was self-centered to the core. "So, Erwin," I thought, "when a client hires you, is he hiring someone who's nice?" I won't tell you my answer.

But my second response was that Lansing's question was actually a very smart riff on Bob Sutton's no asshole rule. Sutton's groundbreaking book is a lot more than just a reflection about social friction among colleagues. Sutton details the kind of people who make you scream "What an asshole." Even more significantly, he musters the kind of research that ought to make any exec sit up and take notice to the assholes working for them. Bennett Tepper's research on abusive supervision is just one telling example. Tepper examined 712 employees in a midwestern city, finding that many of them had abusive bosses who "used ridicule, put-downs, the silent treatment, and insults like 'tells me I'm incompetent' and "Tells me my thoughts or feelings are stupid.'" These not-nice bosses drove people out of organizations and "sapped the effectiveness" of those who stayed. When Tepper followed up his research six months later, he found that those with "abusive supervisors quit their jobs at accelerated rates, and those still trapped in their jobs suffered from less work and life satisfaction, reduced commitment to employers and heightened depression, anxiety and burnout."

So when Andy Lansing hires for "nice," he's got his finger on an exceptionally important matter.

But my gray matter didn't stop with that. I momentarily questioned whether "passionate" people would be productive people. Obviously, yes. Passion may well be the driving component for competency. A person who's passionate about her job is going to perform at the highest level possible. What came immediately to mind was that meta-research on warmth and competency. What studies consistently find is that the person who's both nice and passionate, translated as "warm" and "competent," consistently performs at the highest level.

Warm, nice guys--friendly, helpful, trustworthy, sincere and moral--are easy to relate to and good to have around. If they're just nice, though, eventually they elicit pity and sympathy from other--get ignored, and lose their status. That's why you're reading a lot of new research about the fact that nice guys (guys who are only warm and likable) don't make it to the top.

In contrast, passionate guys--competent, efficient, smart, creative and productive--are great for their team and their company. Of course, if they're just competent, though, these cold fish, stinkers and assholes get added to the jerk heap.

But, as Lansing has found, put nice and passionate together and you've got a winner.

Sounds to me like Andy Lansing would be a great guy to work for. And I'll bet his company does very well. Which leads me to ask the question: Are you nice? And are you passionate about your job?

How to Be Halfway Intelligent About School Reform

You know the line: you’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. The opinions about school reform are all over the map. The real problem with school reform is that there are too many issues and too many facts. Some are “true facts” while some are suspicious facts.

School reform has been a major issue since that landmark 1983 policy report by Ernest Boyer of the Carnegie Foundation on the high school and secondary education in America back in 1983. For many of us, that was an eye-opener. School issues have become more complex since then—and also more numerous. Easily, 30 to 40 major issues impinge on school reform, varying from teacher education and quality to funding, global competition, alternative education forms and nonschool factors like poverty and parent illiteracy.

Thankfully, we know a lot more about problem solving and decision making today than in the 1980’s. Grasp the relevant facts from the experts, figure out whether the people making recommendations are intentionally clouding the facts, and finally, apply our experience knowledge, and reasoning to decide whether recommendations are right. Sounds easy, eh? Not so. The process is fraught with potential for distortions in judgment that result from biases at every stage of the process.

High-stakes decisions, when the issues are numerous and complex, do not respond to a few simple solutions. There is no silver bullet. Solutions will have to be found piecemeal. And for a decent batting average, we’ll have to pilot them. The Gates Foundation has been doing just that. They’ve learned that a lot doesn’t work. Not surprisingly, many people believe the research failures indicate that Gates is wasting his money. That’s a dumb response. Any research scientist will tell you that learning what doesn’t work is just as valuable as learning what does work. There are always a finite number of potential solutions. For research to be successful, usually you’ll have to go through most of the options to find some positive results. You may also need to completely reframe the problem several different times.

Since reforms will need a lot of popular support, we’re all going to have to have a basic understanding of the issues—not just flagrant opinions. Which brings me to my blog’s question: How can you begin to be halfway intelligent about school reform? Here’s a step in the right direction.

Though I’m not at all impressed by Steve Brill’s, Class Warfare, Sara Mosle’s review of the book in Sunday’s NYTimes Books is highly illuminating. No, her review is a fabulous take on the majority of the issues school reform faces. Those two-and-one-half pages will give you more insight into our problem than three or four books. The review, Steve Brill’s Report Card on School Reform, frames the issue superbly. Furthermore, the research Mosle brings to the review is impeccable.

Brill, a Yale lawyer, mounts a zealous case against teachers’ unions. As Mosle writes, at the heart of his book is a belief that “truly effective teaching” can “overcome student indifference, parental disengagement and poverty.” Brill cites policy advocates and research for his case.

But, Mosle reminds us, Brill . . . glosses over an important qualifier to such research. Teacher quality may be the most important variable within schools, but mountains of data, going back decades, demonstrates that most of the variation in student performance is explained by nonschool factors: not just poverty, but also literacy (and whether parents read to their children), student health, frequent relocations, crime-related stress and the like.

Mosle’s conclusion is worth remembering: Brill likens the battle over the nation’s schools to “warfare,” but the better analogy may be to the war on cancer. For years, scientists hoped a magic pill would cure this ravaging disease. But increasingly, doctors have recognized that they will have to fight a multifronted war, as cancers (like failing schools) aren’t all alike. Each comes with its own complex etiology. Improving teacher quality and working to create better schools, like charters, are part of the arsenal. But such efforts, alone, are unlikely to boost long-term survival rates without a continual, dispassionate look at the incoming data, no matter how counterintuitive, and a willingness to revise tactics midtreatment as we pursue multiple paths in a race for the cure. Although Brill doesn’t say so until the book’s last few pages, he finally acknowledges just how much we still have to learn.

 Mosle’s analogy puts school reform into a highly appropriate focus, giving us a realistic perspective of the difficulties we face. It challenges the easy opinions and so-called facts that glide from talk radio and cable. 

Old Farts and Young Punks in the Workplace (Part I)

Generational differences are an issue that affects work process, teams, boss-subordinates and client relationships.  It rears its nasty head in that magnificent buzz-word, “communication breakdown.” Generational differences are fraught with conflicting assumptions, frustrations and misunderstanding. The same Gen-Yers who have not the slightest difficulty working with issues of sexual orientation, culture and color often find themselves and their elders going bonkers over their generational differences.

What’s different about generational differences? 

The world in which a person grows up shapes his life far more than he or she realizes. The number of issues and experiences which can cause interpersonal differences is extensive: 

• Differing world events including wars and depressions versus economic prosperity.
• Differing religious experiences, including whether and how you were churched or not churched. Jew, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, secular.
• Differing perspectives on family and human sexuality.
• Differing geographical experiences, including urban, suburban, rural, deep South, Southwest, Upper Midwest, or all over the world (army brats)
• Differing kinds and quality of education, including grade and high school, public or private, state or tech colleges, private colleges, major universities and elite schools.
• Differing educational focus such as vocational versus professional or liberal arts.
• Differing interests and attitudes about sports, music, etc. 

Generational distinctions are usually tacit. That is, we are unaware of them until problems, opportunities, misunderstandings and relations force their presence into conversations. That can make them doubly problematic.

When all this is translated into workplace terms, it usually means different values, ideas, objectives, work ethics, attitudes toward work and authority and outlooks on life. Though today’s workplace culture values speed, turnaround time, and how hard and how many hours you’re willing to put in, all of this is subject to generational interpretation. Toss in age bias and you have a perfect mix for cross-generational conflict. Or, a perfect mix for fascinating, enlightening, creative and fun work relationships.

Developing work relationships.

The foundations for successful work relations are the same no matter what generation you belong to. When relations lack the glue of inherent similarity, it’s the strategic smarts that make for success. All relationships, whether up/down, sidewise, or extremely diverse are built on the same communication foundation: mutual dialogue that involves disclosure, reciprocity, liking and respect. Of course you can toss in all kinds of characteristics and skills, but we believe these four are the overarching rubrics for the development and maintenance of work relationships.

Relationships can’t work without conversations around these four foundations, regardless of the setting. By conversation I mean a shared inquiry, an act of thinking and reflecting together. Conversation, in contrast to the mere advocacy of the idiocracy, is a living experience of inquiry within and between people. So if you don’t know how to talk, ask questions and/or reflect on ideas with another person, you’re going to be stymied.

• Disclosure conversations. By definition, self-disclosing messages reveal something about oneself. It may be background and history, or, significantly personal opinions and underlying attitudes. But disclosure is a dance between two or more people in which mutual revelation takes place. Although self-disclosure loses its capacity for achieving goals when used indiscriminately, it is best used as a fundamental means of accomplishing significant objectives. Furthermore, you can’t really connect with a person without self-disclosure. Studies show that self-disclosure is not only valuable in relationship maintenance, but also in cross-generational communication where one party sees the other as possessing desirable knowledge.
• Reciprocity conversations. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours is true in work just as it is in romance. It’s just that the content differs. Without reciprocity, relationships, especially in the work setting, come to an end. Extensive research, especially in anthropology and sociology, point to both the necessity and immense impact of reciprocity on relationships.
• Liking conversations. Although we can work with people we don’t like, we tend to work better with those we like. The research on liking captures the traits that are related to positive intentions such as friendliness, helpfulness, sincerity, trustworthiness and morality. We show liking at work with the sharing of jokes, light teasing, coffee together or a beer after work.
• Respect conversations. The research on respect emphasizes competence and focuses on efficiency, intelligence, skill and creativity. Although communication rules may keep you from saying directly that you “respect” her, respecting is shown in the workplace by conversations about one’s appreciation of her friendship, insights or support, teamwork and so forth. Systematic research over the years points out the necessity of both respect and liking as key characteristics of effective relationships.    

 Strategic communication behaviors.

 My protégé, Liam O’Dea, who’s nearly 50 years younger than I, has spent the last five years working out the issues in this blog with me. Without making our own example as the fundamental model, we came up with two sets of communication strategies. 

Acting on the basis of a social contract. The success of what we call a social contract is based upon the understanding that relevant problem solving and decision making are joint undertakings. Social contracts between people give equal attention to both the political and technical issues. When you work in collaboration, one person doesn’t solve problems for the other. Instead, both are actively involved, for example, in gathering information, setting goals, and creating and following through on a solution. Social contracts require a lot of talk about what we’re doing, how we go about it, how we divvy up responsibility, where we’re stymied, etc. The collaborative role requires a fair amount of conversational sophistication. There are significant demands for authenticity and vulnerability. However, only collaboration can provide for the quality of relationship that can consistently meet the ever-growing demands of today’s business. To a high degree, collaboration in the social contract is built upon negotiation and re-negotiation. They are both inevitable.

Liam and I have a social contract that includes a great deal of experience negotiating and renegotiating with each other. There’s a terrific amount of liking and respect for each other, but we decided a long time ago that handling each other with kid gloves is a waste. We can always renegotiate—and we do! 

Here are some verbal tidbits to give you a sense of what it may sound like. Recently Liam asked for some insights into nonprofit proposal. D: “I don’t know much about nonprofits.” L:“Yeah, but you work on a proposal basis all the time.” D:“OK, but take what I say with a grain of salt.”  L: “Yeah, yeah.” D: “When I go about it, this is what I do, blah, blah, blah.”  L: ”Why are you giving me all that information? Just answer my questions. I don’t need a long story to do this.”  D: “Wait a minute. I’m making a point for you.” L: “The clock is ticking.” D: “That’s frustrating, but here goes.” L: “You’re not listening to me. What’s the relevance of what you’re saying?”  Etc. . . .

At the end of our conversation, Liam pulled it together and said, “Well, we had to fuss a bit for me to get what I wanted from you. But, that’s OK.” D: “Yeah, we usually do a lot of circling in the heat of problem solving.” Again, bear in mind that Liam and I have a long history and comfort level with each other. As you can tell from the tidbits, we are both highly driven characters. Our direct language may not be appropriate in the early stages of a relationship. The office context may require you to be softer and more tactful, but we thought our example would provide a useful illustration of the openness, transparency and productivity that is possible. 

What’s also obvious to us after such solutioning is that we both are highly refreshed and satisfied at the conclusion of the process. We get better thinking, better decisions, and better results. Notice that the conversation included inquiry, advocacy, challenging, comments on the communication, frustration, etc. These are typical in a social contract.

Unique cross-generational actions. Although the following conversational behaviors take place in all effective relationships, we believe that they are more necessary, even exaggerated in cross-generational messaging.

• Conversational clarification. Asking and giving explanations of terms and ideas is hugely necessary when cross-generational conversations take place. Fifty years of difference (for us) means that we often fail to share or understand meanings between each other without clarification.
• Conversational listening. Although listening seems to be a larger problem for me than Liam, we both jump to conclusions and draw inferences very fast. Unless we’re listening intently to each other, we don’t recognize the misunderstanding until the conversation is down the pike. Since both of us talk concretely and abstractly very rapidly, on occasion, each of us has to insist the other listen more intently.
• Conversational interruptions. Interruptions before one has finished his ideas create havoc. “Wait until I’m finished,” comes out of both our mouths readily.
• Conversational push-back. It’s important to learn to identify disagreements, verbalize, and clarify them as soon as possible. Although any and all conversations can be revisited at a later date, the sooner you can push back on a person’s ideas, the more effective. When there is immediate disagreement, then the push-back should take place instantaneously. Typically, you may not realize your disagreement until you’ve slept on the other’s ideas. We’ve found that next-day push-back can be typical of our collaborative exercises

 In part two we’ll lay out specific strategies that include examples, protocols and scripts for your use.

Memo to America: Time to Let Go of the Fairy Tales?

I have been fatigued for a number of years by America's idiocracy. The seeming unwillingness or perhaps inability of some of its political leaders and far too much of the population to engage in a genuine conversation. You know. . . a conversation where people talk, advocate, inquire, clarify, rethink, argue, ask for evidence, display reasoning, analyze ideological perspectives and dump the ones that once made sense but are now out of date.

I suspect, and here I always appreciate other perspectives, that we are neither trained nor do we have models for thinking together. It's rare for a conversation on talk radio. There are a few exceptions on NPR, but that seems about where it ends.

Bill Isaacs puts it together rather well in talking about our inability to think together:

This is not an unusual situation. It is so embedded in the very fabric of present-day human interaction. This kind of inability to think together has become so familiar that it might seem strange to talk about it as a deficiency. "That is just how human beings are," most people would suggest. It is actually counterproductive, the skeptics among us might argue, to get too close to one another's thoughts. To do so is to risk losing our objectivity, our distance, our cherished beliefs.

Of course, the fact that most of us live in very homogenous neighborhoods doesn't help the conversation much either. Just yesterday I was talking to an astute Gen-Yer from my apartment who's moving into the city near her work at a half-way house. My comment was that our neighborhood was "too white," and that on occasion my upbringing in the 1940's and early 1950's in metropolitan Detroit caused me to be uncomfortable in our nearly all white, culturally homogenous neighborhoods of the Minneapolis suburbs. What you need, she commented was a community like the one in which she worked at the half-way house--and I laughed in agreement.

Still, today's NYTimes Magazine has what amounts to a conversation that I found deeply gratifying. The article by Rebecca Traister, aptly titled, If Hillary were president. . . we would still be in this mess, is actually a conversation. Ignore the "liberal politics," and look at the conversation. It reminds me of Tevye's conversations with himself (Fiddler on the Roof): On the one hand, but on the other hand. The article is delightfully filled with questions, answers, disagreements, hopes, skepticism, etc.,etc.,etc. It's a glorious model for renewed conversation, an art desperately needed in today's idiocracy.

Are U.S. Students Really Ready to Compete?

As the Washington Post’s Matt Miller puts it, the gig is up. Research published by Harvard’s Kennedy School gives us the horrible truth. And the answer to my question is a big fat NO! Not if only 32% of our students are proficient in math. And if American business and the public don’t act to do something about our mediocre public schools, our nation is going to be in deep trouble. Is this really merely a marshalling of alarmist statistics? Read on. . . .

It’s not just minority children. While the 42% math proficiency for U.S. white students is much higher than the averages for students from African America and Hispanic backgrounds, U. S. white students are still surpassed by all students in 16 other countries.

Matt Miller doesn’t miss a beat when he starts out with a quote from Rick Perry, and then interprets reality afterward. Perry says, “If we put our minds to it, there’s nothing we can’t do together as Americans.” Miller continues Perry’s declarative with, “Why, if we really apply ourselves over the next 10 or 20 years, we can have schools as good as those in Estonia or Slovenia.”

Still, let’s not kid ourselves, this is a profoundly difficult, complex and highly nuanced problem that won’t respond to political talking points.

How important are math scores?

It’s not just reading ability, it’s also math. The core technological underpinnings of an advanced society are all math subjects: science, technology, engineering and math—the so-called STEM disciplines.

Who does this impact?

It’s easy for me to say that I don’t have any skin in this game. We have the family resources to take care of the education of my grandchildren. But that’s shortsighted. Without young adults capable of managing the technological needs of business, industry will go elsewhere to fill its people needs. The problem is already showing up in that American companies have skilled job openings that they are unable to fill. Ultimately, the problem will impact the majority of Americans. As Miller comments in an aside, if we don’t demand more than the usual pabulum from our leaders, the American middle class cannot be saved.

How do we resolve the issue?

As I commented earlier, this is not a problem that lends itself to easy or ready solutions. The leadership and funding will have to come from the people and the legislators of our institutions. Poor families know that their kids are getting the shaft, and the middle class is starting to learn the same. Thus far, they both lack the clout to demand and pay for better teachers and facilities. Here’s Miller’s antidote:

In the early GOP primary and caucus states, we need parents, educators, CEOs, labor leaders, foundations and the press to come together to trumpet this report's findings and use them to elevate the issue through high-profile events, special education debates, candidate report cards and everything else they can think of—including creative heckling. Get students themselves to ask candidates why Estonian math scores seem beyond our reach. It's scary but true: If we don't demand much more than the usual pabulum on schools from those seeking to lead us, America's middle class is going the way of the dodo.

I doubt that Miller fully understands the role of creative heckling. Those of us from the field of rhetoric have an in-depth knowledge of social campaigns and their development. What all of the studies show is that “creative heckling” is a key factor in successful campaigns. That’s true for women’s suffrage, the feminist movement for equal rights, the Black civil rights movements as well as the anti-Vietnam War campaigns. Creative heckling is usually one of the first steps of a long term challenge to the establishment. But inevitably, it will have a significant role in the changing of the American educational narrative. So who’s going to rise to that challenge?

For further info:

Kennedy School report: Globally Challenged: Are U.S. Students Ready to Compete?

Matt Miller: Treason on Schools.

Don Peck: The Atlantic, Can the Middle Class Be Saved?

Stacy Teicher Khadaroo, Christian Science Monitor, Can US Compete if only 32 percent of students are proficient in math?

5 Ways Relationship Communication Can Go Wrong

Even under the best conditions, work relationships can go wrong. And even when we try very hard, communication between workers can go very wrong. To a surprising degree relationship problems are the result of rigid, deeply held mental models. These out-of-sight, out-of mind assumptions about interpersonal communication can seriously impact our judgment. Here are the big five assumptions that get us into trouble.

1. Consistency. Americans value consistency to a phenomenal degree.  Emerson's misquoted phrase, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, is rarely heard today. That's because politicans and the public believe strongly in consistency and don't want to bad-mouth it. Politicians and commentators constantly upbraid each other when they find inconsistent remarks. Years ago, when Peter McGrath was President of the University of Minnesota, he changed his mind about a very important subject. He also stated publicly that he'd changed his mind. The behavior was so unusual that his remark and picture appeared on the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The fact of the matter is that the most "ideal" relationship never has a stream of consistent messages. And so, it's far more useful and productive to recognize that inconsistent messages between people is the norm, not unusual. In fact, trying to straighten inconsistency out is not nearly as valuable as viewing it as an opportunity for learning more about the other person and your relationship with that person.

2. Simple meanings. "You said it, so you must have meant it." We're taught to pay attention to what is said--the words. Meanings, however, are derived from many other sources. A better way to understand meaning is this: "Meanings are in persons, not in words." In short, we don't always say what we mean, or even mean what we say. "He's crazy," means one thing in a psychiatric evaluation, and another in Comedy Central. Studies suggest that in organizations misunderstanding is more prevalent than accuracy. Get used to the fact that communication breakdowns are much more typical than we normally expect. So it's important to listen to how messages are presented as well as the context. Recognizing this assumption can make us especially careful about meanings and interpretations, whether sending or receiving messages.

3. Communicator independence. Communication is always interdependent. In other words, we're a lot more responsible for our partner's responses than we think. It's obvious that how we listen to what a partner is communicating impacts the quality of the message sent. If my nonverbals show that I'm giving full attention to a person, that person will inevitably send more info and better quality info. If I look away from a speaker, that speaker will give me less input. We unconsciously match each each other. Our behavior, whether listening or talking, determines the messages other's send us far more than most of us realize. If my message is open and transparent, I'm liable to receive open and transparent messages from others. If I treat the other with cautious and subtle messages, I'm liable to receive cautious and subtle messages from them. So when I interview in behalf of a client, I ask questions in exceedingly transparent and open fashion. That determines the quality of feedback. How that plays out for me is that if I'm not getting the info I need from a recipient, I'll double the quality of attentiveness and the message for the recipient. It's not merely the questions I ask, but how I ask my questions that determine what I'll get. Message-making is inevitably interdependent. So it's important to train yourself to examine very carefully the effects of your communication--by watching and listening more and "telling" less. The others' responses, expressions, and actions tell what they have understood.

4. Obvious motivation. Interpreting (misinterpreting) other's motivation creates as much difficulty among workers as any relationship issue. When it's important to understand why a person does what he is doing, it's easy for us to jump to conclusions about that person's motivation. Contrary to pop psych, the motivations of another person are not readily decipherable. On the one hand, if a person's motives aren't clear to us, it's difficult for us to think that another person might understand. And second, we inevitably filter our perceptions of another's motives through our own needs and expectations. When it comes to communication and relations, we are egocentric souls. The true-fact is that motivations are usually complex and well hidden. Nuance and subtlety are the norms. If understanding a person's motives is important to me and my business, I do four things: withhold judgment (that can be really difficult, too), sleep on my interpretation, dig out three to five other possible motivations, and then question and pay attention to that person's behavior to get a better fix. I've found these to be especially advantageous, even positively impacting my business bottom line.

5. Finality. To a business person, "finishing" means that she can get on with the next task. Since corporate America rewards "results-oriented" employees, finishing has assumed an unrealistic power. Furthermore, my use of the Myers-Briggs in business settings reveals that few are comfortable with change. In short, 90% of business people don't like to revisit problems. Still, the need to change, whether solution-wise or person-wise, cannot be ignored. So shift your assumptions about finishing and change--be open to better resolutions, but be able to say no to change when the improvement will not be significant. (You're going to have to decide what "significant" means.) People who make change for change sake get a reputation for wasted time and money. And people who can't change when change is needed, eventually end up on the streets. 

Communication is a lot more than just words. These five assumptions are widely prevalent, and persistent in all organizations. They are all flawed in some way, but:

• They explain why two people see the same experience differently.
• They shape how we act in various situations.
• They determine how we problem solve.
• They are usually “out of our awareness.” 

What I Learned About Creative Problem Solving from a High School Sophomore

For the past 12 days, I’ve been at our summer condo by beautiful Gull Lake, near Nisswa, MN. It’s always a learning experience for this granddad. My teachers are my two grandsons and granddaughter. I’ve had a number of lessons this summer, the most important being how to learn creative problem solving from a 15 year-old.

Evan, who merits my blogging a strangely diverse set of topics (lying, civil action, laptops as serialized interruption, American mythology, etc.) detailed with (amusing) frustration his honors class in Algebra II. First, a bit of context: Though an avid reader and superb scholar, my grandson Evan is not a nerd, his parents are not helicopter parents, he has a passel of friends, and he’s nuts about ski-boarding [32 days this past winter], golf, skateboarding, his kid-brother (a real piece of work) and investing.  He attends one of the top prep schools in Massachusetts, a school that emphasizes not only academics, but also leadership and social justice.

The algebra class took up 2/3 of the year.  His teacher like all of his teachers is “awesome.” This teacher made a pot of money on Wall Street and turned to education in his retirement years. (He also advises students on investment strategy. Intriguing . . .) Evan and his classmates took about 10 or 12 tests over the two semesters. The tests were typically 5 or 6 questions, each very complex, demanding and time consuming. The first 5 questions covered material from the class and the 6th was always about material the students had not discussed in class nor covered in the syllabus or book.

Evan tells me that you try to figure it out for yourself, based on prior learning. He assumed that his familiarity with all previous material would make it possible to be figured out. Typically, he said, you look for patterns. The sixth question was “really, really hard.” Over time, they began to think like the teacher, using his mental techniques for solutions. Of course, they put their assumptions and conclusions on paper, getting partial credit for their thinking. But at the end of the semester, no one had gotten more than half of those questions correct.

Evan received his lowest grade in that class, a B+, but since it was honors, the grade was figured in as an A-. Neither he nor his classmates is shy, so on several occasions they went to their teacher and complained of the process and the lack of preparation for that last question on each test.

The message from their teacher was four simple words: “Get used to it.” On several occasions he explained to the students that when he was in college he had to teach himself a lot. And when he went to Wall Street, he also had to teach himself a lot.

More significantly, the teacher said, the world is like that. You won’t always have a teacher around. The problem may be nearly insurmountable. And you’ll have to use every resource imaginable to solve problems. And . . . some problems won’t be solvable.

Evan told me that he strongly disliked the results at the time. But since he’d had a couple months to think about it, he decided that he learned an awful lot. He thought that the lessons were very valuable, but that “he should have gotten a higher grade.” Ha!

We talked over the lessons learned from his experience.

1. Expect that you will inevitably face difficult, even insurmountable problems in life and work.
2. Resolution will require every possible resource from the past, including techniques and thinking that you’ve never used before.
3. Joint problem solving offers keys that are unavailable to the individual. Collaboration is a must for success.
4. Part of your responsibility as an adult is to take on very difficult problems.
5. “Get used to it.” Reality presents us with complex, difficult problems, and may not readily—sometimes never—bend to our desires or hopes.

We now know that the teen-aged brain develops the executive functions between 13 and 18 years of age. As the prefrontal cortex matures, teenagers learn to reason better, develop more control over impulses and make better judgments. Intriguingly, this part of the teenage brain has been dubbed “the area of sober second thought.” It strikes me that Evan’s math teacher was approaching brain growth in brilliant fashion and with exact timing, forcing his students to reason about the difficulties of problem solving and adult reality.  He was also forcing the students to develop neuronic patterns in their gray matter, patterns that would be functional over their lifetime.

The research also shows that adolescence is a supremely important time to learn to deal constructively and innovatively with reality. It leads me to think that a major reason that many have great difficulty with adaptability, innovation and creativity is at least partially because few experienced opportunities like Evan. Just yesterday, a Gen-Y acquaintance called me with a very difficult problem he faced on a small professional board of musical leaders. Although we talked for more than a half-hour, it was rather clear that he had a great deal of difficulty dealing with the realities of the group. He seemed unable to understand a basic fact: The world is not a just place.

Failure to learn about complexity and social and physical reality has two big negative effects. First, it hinders our ability to learn from all situations, including those whom we don’t like or respect. Second, it anesthetizes us to the need to be proactive in building the kind of thinking skills and intelligence network that are of ultimate value.

5 Keys to Strengthening Workplace Relations

All of us like to receive praise and support--especially in the workplace. It makes for happiness and work engagement. Its no surprise, then,that over the past two decades systematic research has found a significant correlation between social support and workplace productivity. The implication, of course, is that the more social support you’re provided by managers and colleagues, the more significant the job satisfaction and the greater the work engagement. 

However, as Shawn Achor has noted, that research is easily misinterpreted.  The research on social support has focused on how much social support you receive, not how much social support you provide. It turns out, that giving feels better, does more for you, and provides greater returns in the long run, than getting ever does.

Using a research base of 1600 participants, Achor broke the group into quartiles. He found that the top quartile are 20 times as likely as the bottom quartile to make up for the work of other employees. He also found that of the bottom group, 95% of those who provide no support to others, are not engaged productively in their work. Furthermore, only 7% of those in the bottom group received a promotion during the past year, while 40% of those in the other three groups received promotions. Most significantly, not only were those who supported others more productive, but they also were more satisfied and happy in their work. In short, Achor has found that there is a lot of getting in giving.

Achor, a Harvard Divinity grad, has taken his religious teaching seriously, and found that as in St Francis’ prayer, “it is in giving that we receive.”

That being the case, what are the best ways for giving? To rephrase, how do you go about strengthening your workplace relationships? Here are five important keys to that issue. They’ve been shown to be highly useful for strengthening relationships at work.

Positive feedback. Of course, the generic stroke, such as “thank you, good job,” or even “congratulations,” is important. But most important in giving positive and negative feedback is an explanation of the “why.” So detailing why you appreciated the job and explaining what about the performance was special are very important. Effective positive feedback reinforces not only the value of the performance, but also the process or means of achievement. Positive feedback not only raises morale among your peers, it also helps to insure the type of support you would like to receive in return. 

Mediating conflict. Dealing with differences, coping with, resolving and mediating conflict are especially useful skills for giving in today’s organization. No one wants to be miserable at work, and those who can intervene to stop the “pain” in a work setting are often looked up to. Differences often require additional skills in developing not only your own relationships but also the relationships between others. These skills can add not only to the productivity and happiness of an organization, but also to its vitality. Indeed, a person who is able to give by mediating differences among peers will often receive by being chosen as the leader of a team.

Talking about talk. Talking about how you talk to each other, the communication process itself, is one step removed from the actual communication event. If you are able to talk to peers about the way in which you are communicating with one another, not only will you surface differences before they mature or explode, but you’ll also gain a great deal of additional, practical information about each other’s values, goals and attitudes. Acknowledging these similarities and differences can grease the way you work together and make for an easier time even over very difficult projects. For example, you might say to a colleague, “I was thinking about our team meeting this morning, and I’m wondering if I’m clear about the scope of our project. Did that make sense to you? I saw you frowning and thinking about it, I wondered if I wasn’t being clear or if you disagreed. I’d really like your opinion.” Talking about your talk, what’s known as meta-communication, is rare in most work settings. But it can make many “undiscussables” part of the conversation, thus increasing effectiveness. Although this is new stuff for most, it’s an exceptionally useful form of giving in today’s diverse organizations.

Help manage relationships. As the workforce adapts to the changing demands of customers, increasing competition and globalization, diverse teams become essential. Diversity reflects not only the differences of background (race, ethnicity, nationality), but also knowledge and expertise.  Diverse teams can be especially challenging early in their formation. Research, however, finds that the negative effects usually diminish over time, yielding to positive contributions. People who have learned the skills of talking about talk are especially valuable in diverse settings, often making the difference between success and failure. For some, interpersonal relations within the organization are of prime importance, whereas to others the task assumes priority. In spite of the research on satisfaction and engagement (mentioned above) a significant proportion of workers keep their important relations outside of the work environment. Understanding all these differences and helping others to manage them successfully goes a long way toward strengthening relations and effectiveness. Mediation skills are valuable in settings even where conflict is not an issue. The personal satisfaction as a helper can be very gratifying.

Providing resources. One of the obvious means of giving and strengthening relationship is offering resources to those when schedules, expertise and head-count create problems. Although it’s not always possible to make such offers because of one’s own schedule, many managers and employees ingratiate themselves to colleagues through these provisions. Our culture runs on a you-scratch-my-back-and-I’ll-scratch-yours basis. Paying attention to that model goes a long way toward strengthening work bonds, which ultimately pays its own dividends.

These keys overlap, yet I’ve separated them for the sake of emphasis. All, of course, deal with the interpersonal and are a form of conversational leadership. In the final analysis, the success with which you manage your interpersonal relationships at work can make the difference between looking forward to going to work each day or dreading the next negative interaction with colleagues.

Beware of the Leadership Literature: It's Hazardous

One of the big obstacles most business people have to overcome is the leadership literature. Books by well-known execs and most lectures, courses and even media pronouncements about leadership should be stamped: CAUTION: THIS MATERIAL CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH.

Here’s why. Mainstream leadership books, writers, the media, and even studies tend to privilege and separate leaders from followers. Think Jack Welch, Jon Kotter, CNN , Fox or MNBC and even Warren Bennis, and you’ll understand what I’m saying. What these people preach is that real leaders have a great deal of power and that leadership is about using that power to achieve personal and organizational objectives. So leaders today are viewed as either heroes or villains, elevated or blamed, either the solution or the barrier to organizational success. Indeed, 95% of the population seems to believe that complex organizational problems should be solved by the leaders themselves. Amusing, but largely nonsense. It’s just not possible. 

If it’s true that leaders have all the power and followers are merely their lackeys to get things done, well. . .  you can see the consequences. On the one hand, some will do what they’re told—and probably no more than that. And others, who don’t like what they’re being told will gripe, complain and eventually sabotage. Plenty of leaders, even in the old industrial world, are brought down by the sabotage of their “passive” followers. That’s far more prevalent than most think. If in contrast, leaders understand that they’re highly dependent upon their followers, that their followers have a lot of power, you can be damned certain that with a modicum of gray matter they’ll treat their followers a lot differently. . . even as partners. 

It shouldn’t be a surprise that sabotage is prevalent in companies like the old General Motors. My brother, a retired GM plant foreman, recently described in colorful detail how subordinates got rid of leaders who were control nuts. They had a number of execution strategies in their toolkits. Workers would stage, one-by-one conversations with HR, mixed with both truthful and false info. But, he went on, more often than not, the workers would simply sabotage the objectives of their boss. In both cases the higher-ups would move the person around a few times until he got the message and left the firm. “There are,” my brother went on to say, “limitations as to how much control any boss or leader has. And that,” he said, “goes all the way to the top of the organization.”  With flatter hierarchies, knowledge workers have even more power. It’s more and more obvious that today’s leaders have shared power. . . or no power at all. 

Terrific research dating from as recent as 2008 confirms my notion. David Collinson, in Dialectics of Leadership, completed what amounts to a mega-study on the same issue in 2005. His conclusion is that leader-led relations, contrary to the traditional view, always contain the potential for conflict, dissent and resistance, making the whole notion of leadership an overblown idea. Though the idea of leader and follower identities are deeply embedded in Western society, they simply are no longer sustainable.

PERSONAL HISTORY 

Because I started my career in the protestant church ministry, I realized from nearly the first month that my role of leader had huge constraints and controls placed upon it at all times. Power, insight, intelligence, expertise is distributed throughout the congregation. And if I was to become a successful leader, I had a lot of talking to do. I learned early on, as a result of a number of very caring parishioners, that I needed to talk, talk, and talk some more with all my constituency in order to achieve any kind of measurable objectives. I also learned that if I attempted to make significant decisions of any sort without those conversations, negotiations, agreements, changes, readjustments and sign-offs from 40 or 50 different people with leadership power, I would be in deep shit. 

So, years later, when I was invited into a consulting conversation by the CIO of the Pillsbury Company, he asked a telling question of me. “You come highly recommended, but what does being a pastor have to do with working for me?” I asked whether he had church experience, and he responded affirmatively. “Tell me, “I asked, “how many political factions were there in your church?” He was silent for a few moments, and then he responded with no other questions, “I understand your value. You have the job.” 

On another occasion, he dealt with the notion of distributed leadership better than anyone I’ve ever heard. I happened to sit in on a conversation between him and one of his directors, who was asking for a promotion. The C IO clarified the matter most eloquently: “I don’t promote you. Your subordinates, your peers and your clients promote you. I merely confirm what they tell me about you.” That director changed his ways fast, sharing his power, insights and resources with the relevant constituency. There were a lot of changed conversations and behaviors taking place as a result of that straightforward message. He didn’t learn ‘till late in his career that in his business, everyone had leadership power. 

SO HOW DOES THIS IMPACT YOU? 

First, recognize that all this business about McConnell, Obama, Pelosi, Boehner and Cantor and their leadership successes and failures being ultimately determinative for our country is loaded with a fair amount of bullshit.  John Boehner of the House has gone from being a great success, to under attack, to a failure, to a great success. Will Eric Cantor eventually take control? And President Obama has gone from being a great, cutting edge success to a wimp, to a compromiser and to a failure. The assumptions of leadership—followership are sacrosanct. But you’re going to have to look a lot deeper than at the top to figure out what’s going on. And all five of those guys are going to have to have a lot of conversations with their constituency--and create more constituency--to get anything done. The subterfuge of the Tea Party in the House ought to have made that clear to everyone by now. But just in case, I’ve written this for you, dear reader. 

Second, be aware that most anyone in your firm that wants it, can develop leadership power of one sort or another. It’s merely the power to get things done through other people, and there plenty of workers with no vested power who use all kinds of leadership power in achieving their objectives. 

This entire business of leadership and leadership notions is a big balloon that needs to be punctured. Nahhh.  It really needs to be exploded. It’s largely nonsense that makes for great press, creates conflicts that the media can pay attention to, and sells a lot of books. But be very careful. The belief in leaders and leadership as it’s usually discussed is very bad for your health. 

The truth is that though leaders have considerable power, their control over subordinates is just as often shifting, paradoxical and contradictory.  Followers are frequently proactive LEADERS for themselves, knowledgeable and opposed to their bosses and their objectives. Leadership control is shaped by the resistance and the conversations of direct reports and the organization. The communication in organizations is a dynamic knot of contradictions, ceaseless interplay between contrary and opposing tendencies. Subordinates, like their bosses, selectively disclose, exaggerate, conceal and/or understate information. And that’s very much reality. With the knowledge revolution, it becomes even more so. 

So leadership roles are a lot more fuzzy than perhaps most of us want to believe. And the power of leadership is never distributed clearly or definitively. That’s organizational reality. It galls me, for example, that guys who’ve never been invested with power or given direct power, like Russ Limbaugh or Grover Norquist, can simply take on leadership power in the GOP at their own will. But I know it happens just as much down the totem pole as with the so-called higher ups. But them’s the facts of life, buddy, and the sooner we acknowledge them, the better off we’ll be.