The Buck Stops Here – A Lesson in Leadership

Passing the buck seems to be one of America's favorite pastimes  Actually, I shouldn't pick on the US. Passing the buck is something that people seem to do generally. As you probably know, passing the buck means passing responsibility on to someone else. The phrase seems to have originated with the game of poker. In the old frontier days a knife (a buck) was placed in front of the person whose turn it was to deal. When it was your turn, and you did not wish to deal, you could simply pass the buck on to the next person. Thus, passing the buck became synonymous with passing responsibility.

If I were to ask you to list America's greatest Presidents I would imagine you would mention names like Lincoln, Washington, FDR and maybe Kennedy or Reagan. One name that probably wouldn't end up on your list is Harry Truman. And that would be rather unfortunate because Truman is an excellent example of superb leadership. Leadership is currently a very sexy topic and there's no shortage of books on the subject. A lot of talk is about the attributes and character traits of leaders. But what we know now is that leadership isn't about characteristics, it's about behavior. Leaders do what needs to be done. And they come in all shapes and sizes.

As we know, Truman was a rather unassuming man from Missouri. Harry was selected to serve as Vice President, under Franklin D. Roosevelt, because he was totally concerned with domestic issues. The reason being because it was generally accepted that the end of World War II was near. With the end of the war most people assumed the nation would return to an almost complete focus on domestic issues.

From a 1999 book, “Truman had never shown the slightest interest in foreign affairs, knew nothing about them, and was kept in total ignorance of them. He was still totally focused on domestic affairs when, within a few weeks after his ascendancy, he went to the Potsdam Conference after Germany surrendered. There he sat for a week, with Churchill on one side and Stalin on the other, and realized, to his horror, that foreign affairs would dominate, but also that he knew absolutely nothing about them. He came back from Potsdam convinced that he had to give up what he wanted to do and instead had to concentrate on what he had to do, that is, on foreign affairs. He immediately ... put himself into school with General Marshall and Dean Acheson as his tutors. Within a few months he was a master of foreign affairs and he, rather than Churchill or Stalin, created the postwar world – with his policy of containing Communism and pushing it back from Iran and Greece; with the Marshall Plan that rescued Western Europe; with the decision to rebuild Japan; and finally, with the call for worldwide economic development.”

So what are we to learn? Most importantly, leaders don't ask, “What do I want to do?” Rather, leaders ask, “What needs to be done?” This is an extremely important distinction. A lot of people do only what they want to do. That is, whatever might be comfortable or familiar. And this is a big part of the reason why a lot of people aren't leadership material. But the fact of the matter is, the world needs leaders now more than ever. The world needs as many people as possible who are willing to do whatever is necessary rather than just what's convenient.

A lot of great things happened in the 1960's. But one event that has backfired was the creation of the, “Do your own thing,” mindset. The billboard for that generation's mentality might have been Timothy Leary's famous advice to, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” Don't get me wrong. Nobody should be required to act, in any one way, all the time. Sometimes we do need to do our own thing. The problem is that the pendulum has swung too far. Sometimes we also need to do what needs to be done. That is, to face the difficult issues.

Leadership is about people. Society is compromised of people. Society needs leadership. A society of people all doing their own thing would fall apart at the seams. So what I'm really saying is that leadership is about taking responsibility. Responsibility for what needs to be done. This had a lot to do with why Harry Truman was such an effective President. Below is a picture of President Truman and the sign he had on his desk. The plaque has become quite famous and simply read, “The buck stops here!”

Book Review: Mindset

This is an overview of the book
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck

Dweck's bio: Ms. Dweck earned her PhD in social and developmental psychology from Yale University in 1974. She has been a professor at Columbia University and is currently on the faculty at Stanford University.

Key point: Our skills and abilities are not written in stone. They can be improved and expanded throughout life.

Ms. Dweck's area of expertise is on self-theories and the role they play in our development. She informs us, “For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.”

This book is about the self-theory we have pertaining to our belief about what's possible in our lives. That is to say, what we're capable of accomplishing. Here Dweck tells us there are two basic mindsets: fixed and growth. The fixed mindset involves believing that your skills and talents are carved in stone. That they're set and unchangeable. The growth mindset is believing that your basic talents and skills are things you can cultivate through your own efforts.

One way to establish your mindset is the following. If you had to choose, which would it be? Loads of success and validation or lots of challenge? People with a fixed mindset pick the validation and those with the growth mindset go for the challenges. In a way, people with the fixed mindset believe we born with native talents and they don't really change over a lifetime, at least not after adolescence. Growth oriented people believe in the possibility of learning and improving our current skills. They also believe in the possibility of developing new skills. If you think you're in one group but wish you were in another, I have good news for you. Research shows that we can change our mindsets.

The standard IQ test was created by a Frenchman named Alfred Binet in 1903. The purpose of the test was to, as Dweck says, “Identify children who were not profiting from the Paris public schools, so that new educational programs could be designed to get them back on track. Without denying individual differences in children's intellects, he believed that education and practice could bring about fundamental changes in intelligence.”

Benjamin Bloom, an eminent educational researcher said it like this, “After forty years of intensive research on school learning in the United States as well as abroad, my major conclusion is: What any person in the world can learn, almost all persons can learn, if provided with the appropriate prior and current conditions of learning.”

Neither mindset, fixed or growth, is better than the other in any sort of moral sense. However, the most accomplished people in the world tend to have a growth mindset. As clear evidence to the power of the growth mindset Dweck tells us, “Many of the most accomplished people of our era were considered by experts to have no future. Jackson Pollock, Marcel Proust, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, and Charles Darwin were all thought to have little potential for their chosen fields.”

On the flip side, the author almost seems to be picking on tennis great John McEnroe. She repeatedly holds him up as a poster child for the fixed mindset. In the fixed mindset, “If you're successful, you're better than other people. You get to abuse them and have them grovel. In the fixed mindset, this is what can pass for self-esteem. Instead of trying to learn from and repair their failures, people with the fixed mindset may simply try to repair their self-esteem. For example, they may go looking for people who are even worse off than they are.”

The authors points out, “Malcolm Gladwell, the author and New Yorker writer, has suggested that as a society we value natural, effortless accomplishment over achievement through effort.” From the point of view of the fixed mindset, effort is only for people with deficiencies. “In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. The growth mindset allows people to value what they're doing regardless of the outcome.”

The author writes, “A remarkable thing that I've learned from my research is that in the growth mindset, you don't always need confidence.” Faith in your ability to improve can stand, as a place holder, while your confidence develops.

So, just by virtue of knowing the two mindsets, you can start thinking and reacting in new ways. First, Carol addresses young people and schooling. She says, “Students with the fixed mindset tell us that their main goal in school – aside from looking smart – is to exert as little effort as possible.”

Dweck ran a research study of hundreds of students, most of whom were early adolescents. She gave the students a set of problems to solve and then scored the results. With half of the students they praised their ability saying things like, “Wow, you got [say] eight right. That's a really good score, You must be smart at this.” The half other of the students were praised for their efforts, in ways such as, “Wow, you got [say] eight right. That's a really good score. You must have worked really hard.” Any guess on the the results of the study?

The children that were praised for their abilities quickly adopted a fixed mindset. “They rejected a challenging new task that they could learn from. They didn't want to do anything that could expose their flaws and call into question their talents.” In contrast, the students that were praised for their efforts moved right into a growth mindset, “90 percent of them wanted the challenging new task that they could learn from.”

Dweck says, “Then we gave students some hard new problems, which they didn't do so well on. The ability kids now thought they were not smart after all. If success had meant they were intelligent, then less-than-success meant they were deficient. The effort kids simply thought the difficulty meant, 'Apply more effort.' They didn't see it as a failure, and they didn't think it reflected on their intellect.” In somewhat surprising results, the students who had been praised for their abilities in the previous test did worse on the second test and the students praised for their efforts actually improved their performance. Dweck writes, “You might say that praising abilities lowered the students' IQs. And that praising their efforts raised them.” This is truly monumental information. What this clearly demonstrates is the importance of EFFORT OVER OUTCOME.

In further research Carol found that a mindset can create liars. When asked to report the score they received, 40 percent of the students with a fixed mindset lied. Dweck reports, “In the fixed mindset, imperfections are shameful – especially if you're talented – so they lied them away. What's so alarming is we took ordinary children and made them into liars, simply by telling them they were smart ... Telling children they're smart, in the end, made them feel dumber and act dumber, but claim they were smarter.”

This speaks a lot to the importance and power of labels. Once a person with a fixed mindset accepts a label, it is very hard to shake. “Almost anything that reminds you that you're black or female before taking a test in the subject you're supposed to be bad at will lower your test score – a lot.” Conversely, having students check about a box about their ethnicity can cause Asians to improve their math test scores. Stereotypes are very powerful things.

Here's more from Dweck , “Praising children's intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance ... We should keep away from a certain kind of praise – praise that judges their intelligence or talent … We can praise them as much as we want for the growth-oriented process – what they accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good strategies. And we can ask them about their work in a way that admires and appreciates their efforts and choices … Don't judge. Teach. It's a learning process.” What's more, “Next time you're in a position to discipline, ask yourself, What is the message I'm sending here: I will judge and punish you? Or I will help you think and learn.”

In the world of business, Dweck points to Enron as a shining example of the fixed mindset. Carol first mentions the management consulting firm McKinsey & Company and how they insist that corporate success today requires the “talent mind-set.” Dweck writes, “Enron recruited big talent, mostly people with fancy degrees, which is not in itself so bad. It paid them big money, which is not that terrible. But by putting complete faith in talent, Enron did a fatal thing: It created a culture that worshiped talent, thereby forcing its employees to look and act extraordinarily talented.” And, we all know how that ended up.

One of the most celebrated CEO's of the 20^th Century was Jack Welch. The youngest CEO in GE's history, Welch held the top spot for twenty years. While General Electric has a long, and storied, history of developing great leaders, Jack made lots of great decisions himself. Let me give you just one, because it relates to this book Mindset. When Welch chose executives, he usually did do on the basis of what he called their “runway.” For Jack runway meant the person's capacity for growth. In essence, Welch understood the growth-mindset and looked for it in ohers.

Dweck also references Jim Collins and his book Good to Great. In his book Collins searched to discover what separates thriving (great) companies from the ones (good) that just putter along. There were several qualities that facilitated the transition from good to great, and one of them was the type of leader at the helm. Carol writes, “These were not larger-than-life, charismatic types who oozed ego and self-proclaimed talent. They were self-effacing people who constantly asked questions and had the ability to confront the most brutal answers – that is, to look failures in the face, even their own, while maintaining faith that they would succeed in the end.” Dweck says this is the very definition of the growth mindset.

The flip side, the companies that never become great, are often run by leaders with the fixed mindset. Dweck says, “Collins's comparison leaders were typically concerned with their 'reputation for personal greatness' – so much so that they often set the company up to fail when their regime ended.” As Collins puts it, “After all, what better testament to your own personal greatness than that the place falls apart after you leave?”

Carol reports on the very words of these various leaders, ”Fixed-mindset people want to be the only big fish so that when they compare themselves to those around them, they can feel a cut above the rest. In not one autobiography of a fixed-mindset CEO did I read much about mentoring or employee development programs. In every growth-mindset autobiography, there was deep concern with personal development and extensive discussion of it.”

Some examples of fixed-mindset leaders, that are given in Mindset, are Lee Iacocca, Albert “Chainsaw” Dunlap, and David Rockefeller (Chase Manhattan Bank) among others. On the opposite end of the spectrum Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon, once said, “I wish to have as my epitaph: 'Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring into his service men who knew more than he.'” And, summing up the growth-mindset, Dweck writes, “Leadership is about growth and passion, not about brilliance.”

There's a chapter in the book about relationships. When it comes to love Dweck says, “People with the fixed mindset expect everything good to happen automatically.” She continues, “Aaron Beck, noted marriage authority, says that one of the most destructive beliefs for a relationship is 'If we need to work at it, there's something seriously wrong with the relationship.' Says John Gottman, a foremost relationship researcher: 'Every marriage demands an effort to keep it on the right track; there is a constant tension...between the forces that hold you together and those that can tear you apart.'”

Dweck writes, “A no-effort relationship is a doomed relationship, not a great relationship ... Aaron Beck tells couples in counseling never to think these fixed-thoughts: My partner is incapable of change. Nothing can improve our relationship. These ideas, he says, are almost always wrong.” Some people think that if things are meant to be, they'll just be. To this Carol writes, “If you looked only for perfect people, your social circle would be impoverished.”

The last chapter of the book is titled “Changing mindsets: A workshop.” As the name suggests it is intended to provide specific examples, as models, that we can comprehend and use. Dweck gives seven examples in all and I will transcribe one of them, verbatim, in a minute. But first we need to talk about a man named Aaron Beck.

Beck is a psychiatrist by training (Yale) who is currently a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Aaron is widely considered the father of something called “cognitive therapy.” Beck first developed cognitive therapy in the 1960s and it has been scientifically proven to be one of the (if not the) most effective therapies to date. Without getting too much into it, what Beck discovered, while working with his clients, was that their beliefs were causing their problems. The problems were often emotional disorders such as anxiety, depression, anger, etc. Realizing it was the persons' beliefs (thoughts) that were causing the problem might sound trite but it revolutionized psychology.

Quoting Dweck, “They weren't beliefs people were usually conscious of. Yet Beck found he could teach people to pay attention and hear them. And then he discovered he could teach them how to work with and change these beliefs.” Anxiety and depression are at epidemic levels in the United States and cognitive therapy has been of tremendous help in alleviating the suffering.

Dweck writes, “Cognitive therapy helps people make more realistic and optimistic judgments. But it does not take them out of the fixed mindset and its world of judgment.” To do this Carol provides this last chapter in the form of a workshop of various dilemmas.

Now for the transcription of Dweck's example. This section is called “Denial: My life is perfect”:

People in a fixed mindset often run away from their problems. If their life is flawed, then they're flawed. It's easier to make believe everything's alright. Try this dilemma.

The Dilemma. You seem to have everything. You have a fulfilling career, a loving marriage, wonderful children, and devoted friends. But one of those things isn't true. Unbeknownst to you, your marriage is ending. It's not that there haven't been signs, but you chose to misinterpret them. You were fulfilling your idea of the “man's role” or the “woman's role,” and you couldn't hear your partner's desire for more communication and more sharing of your lives. By the time you wake up and take notice, it's too late. Your spouse has disengaged emotionally from the relationship.

The Fixed-Mindset Reaction. You've always felt sorry for divorced people, abandoned people. And now you're one of them. You lose all sense of worth. Your partner, who knew you intimately, doesn't want you anymore. For months, you don't feel like going on, convinced that even your children would be better off without you. It takes you a while to get to the point where you feel at all useful or competent. Or hopeful. Now comes the hard part because, even though you now feel a little better about yourself, you're still in the fixed mindset. You're embarking on a lifetime of judging. With everything good that happens, your internal voice says, Maybe I'm okay after all. But with everything bad that happens, the voice says, My spouse was right. Every new person you meet is judged too – as a potential betrayer. How could you rethink your marriage, yourself, and your life from a growth-mindset perspective? Why were you afraid to listen to your spouse? What could you have done? What should you do now?

The Growth-Mindset Step. First, it's not that the marriage, which you used to think of as inherently good, suddenly turned out to have been all bad or always bad. It was an evolving thing that had stopped developing for lack of nourishment. You need to think about how both you and your spouse contributed to this, and especially about why you weren't able to hear the request for greater closeness and sharing. As you probe, you realize that, in your fixed mindset, you saw your partner's request as a criticism of you that you didn't want to hear. You also realize that at some level, you were afraid you weren't capable of the intimacy your partner was requesting. So instead of exploring these issues with your spouse, you turned a deaf ear, hoping they would go away. When a relationship goes sour, these are the issues we all need to explore in depth, not to judge ourselves for what went wrong, but to overcome our fears and learn the communication skills we'll need to build and maintain better relationships in the future. Ultimately, a growth mindset allows people to carry forth not judgments and bitterness, but new understanding and skills.

This is the end of the transcription from the book.

I'll end with one of my favorite quotes from the book, “Beware of success. It can knock you into a fixed mindset: I won because I have talent. Therefore I will keep winning.” It's exactly like that old saying about how pride goes before the fall. Success can make each of us lazy and dumb. Steve Jobs had a great quote, which he borrowed from The Whole Earth Catalog, that he uses to combat this problem of pride and complacency. In a commencement speech he gave, at Stanford University in 2005, he quotes the farewell message on the back cover of the last edition of the WEC (1974) as saying, “Stay hungry, stay foolish.” To say it in a slightly different way I'll quote Ray Kroc would have said, “When you're green you're growing, when you're ripe you rot.”

How Will You Measure Your Life?

Peter Drucker once said, efficiency is about doing things right, and effectiveness is about doing the right things. This is an idea many people are familiar with. One of the problems is we only apply it to our work lives. In fact, efficiency is so highly valued many people take pride in their supposed ability to “multi-task.” If you're a muli-tasker you might take offense to my use of the word “supposed.” But the fact of the matter is, multi-tasking is largely an illusion. I'll explain my claim in later posts. For now, back to the topic at hand.

We need to understand the efficiency/effectiveness distinction in all walks of life, not just in work. Drucker said, there's nothing worst than efficiently doing the wrong things. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey alludes to the efficiency/effectiveness distinction, when he writes, “It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busy-ness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall.” It seems we're all in a hurry to race up the ladder when we should be spending some time checking which wall it's leaning against.

If you really understand what Drucker's saying, by distinguishing between efficiency and effectiveness, you'll understand the importance of creating your life's goals. If you don't know your goals, how can you know what are the right things to do? I don't think you can. Creating goals might be a scary endeavor. But chances are, if you don't do it, you'll become highly efficient at helping other people achieve their goals. People like your boss. And ultimately, you'll end up at a place you don't want to be.

There is a professor at the Harvard Business School named Clayton Christensen. Christensen is a world-renown expert on disruption and has written many books including his landmark The Innovator's Dilemma. The professor's most recent book is titled How Will You Measure Your Life? Clay says, “When I was a Rhodes scholar, I was in a very demanding academic program, trying to cram an extra yearʼs worth of work into my time at Oxford. I decided to spend an hour every night reading, thinking, and praying about why God put me on this earth. That was a very challenging commitment to keep, because every hour I spent doing that, I wasnʼt studying applied econometrics. I was conflicted about whether I could really afford to take that time away from my studies, but I stuck with it—and ultimately figured out the purpose of my life … Think about the metric by which your life will be judged, and make a resolution to live every day so that in the end, your life will be judged a success.”

In this earlier post: (What do you want to be remembered for?) I posed the question, “How do you want to be remembered?” In this current post, I am revisiting the subject from a slightly different angle. As far as I'm concerned, Peter Drucker is peerless on the intellectual front. Yes, efficiency is important. But even more important is effectiveness. It doesn't really matter what your goals are. They come in all the colors of the rainbow. However, I do wish to help you achieve them. The key to realizing your goals is effectiveness. This is a subject I am passionate about, and will speak to often.

So please answer the question, “How do you want to be remembered?” or the modified version, “How will you measure your life?” I realize, those are difficult questions to answer. So first you might want to create shorter term goals. What do you want to accomplish this month? This year? In the next five years? In the next ten years? Having these answers will also allow you to do the Best Possible Self exercise. An idea I spoke about in this post: Scientific Permission to Dream

Ready? Steady? Go!

Book Review: The Fifth Discipline

This is an overview of the book
The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter Senge

Senge's bio: Senge (pronounced SEN-GEE) got his PhD at MIT and is currently a senior lecturer at MIT. He is also the founder of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL).

Key point: The fifth discipline is systems thinking. And it ties together the other four disciplines.

The book starts off, “From a very early age, we are taught to break apart problems, to fragment the world.” Breaking things apart can be called differentiation while putting things back together I'll call integration. To learn it is often necessary to differentiate because life is so vast and complex. But to build things, such an organization/business, we need to integrate separate pieces to form a whole.

What's more, we are in the information age. It was back in the 1960's when Peter Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker." Being that our economic life is built upon knowledge it makes a lot of sense to build learning organizations. Which is exactly what Senge is advocating.

The five disciplines are:
1. Personal Mastery
2. Mental Models
3. Building Shared Vision
4. Team Learning
5. Systems Thinking

Senge write, “Anyone can develop proficiency through practice. To practice a discipline is to be a lifelong learner. Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human.”

Senge talks about the “beer game,” which was created at MIT and is often played in management classes. It's too long to explain but the purpose of the game is to show the importance of thinking about the whole system that is your company. By only taking responsibility for your job, that is the tasks you execute, and ignoring how your job fits in a larger context, we blind ourselves to the big picture, the system. And being focused on events is another common way we disable our ability to see how all the pieces fit together.

“When placed in the same system, people, however different, tend to produce similar results,” he says. “In the beer game and in many other systems, in order for you to succeed others must succeed as well.”

Systems thinking and learning organizations are high leverage activities. “Buckminster Fuller had a wonderful illustration of leverage that also served as a metaphor for the principle of leverage – the 'trim tab.' A trim tab is a small 'rudder on the rudder' of a ship. It is only a fraction the size of the rudder. Its function is to make it easier to turn the rudder, which, then, makes it easier to turn the ship. The larger the ship, the more important is the trim tab because a large volume of water flowing around the rudder can make it difficult to turn,” writes Senge. Another definition of leverage is, the ability to do more with less. This goes all the way back to the words of Archimedes who said, “Give me a lever long enough....and single-handed I can move the world.”

For many years manufacturers thought that you could either have low cost or high quality, but they were mutually exclusive. Senge says, “What they didn't consider was how basic improvements in work processes could eliminate rework, eliminate quality inspectors, reduce customer complaints, lower warranty costs, increase customer loyalty, and reduce advertising and sales promotion costs.” The fact is you can have both higher quality and lower costs. An overly simplified example would be robotics. By making machines do repetitive work instead of humans you can both lower your costs and improve your quality. Senge states, “Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing the 'structures' that underlie complex situations, and for discerning high from low leverage change.”

Senge gives the example of terrorism and the problems that are created by linear thinking. From America's perspective the logical process is:
Terrorist attacks → Threat to Americans → Need to respond militarily
But from the terrorists' view it's:
U.S. military activity → Perceived aggressiveness of U.S. → Terrorist recruits

What systems thinking reveals is that the two lines of thinking are not independent or separate but rather are joined in a circle of causality. So that terrorist attacks pose a threat to Americans leading to a need to respond militarily. But that U.S. military activity causes a perceived aggressiveness of the U.S. leading to additional terrorist recruits which end up causing more terrorist attacks and the cycle repeats itself over and over. Senge writes, “Here, as in many systems, doing the obvious thing does not produce the obvious, desired outcome.”

The goal of system analysis is to see patterns and major interrelationships.

“The practice of systems thinking starts with understanding a simple concept called 'feedback' that shows how actions can reinforce or counteract (balance) each other. Learning to recognize types of 'structures' that recur again and again.”

Senge says, “One of the most important, and potentially most empowering, insights to come from the young field of systems thinking is that certain patterns of structure recur again and again. These 'systems archetypes' or 'generic structures' embody the key to learning to see structures in our personal and organizational lives.” Senge explains that researchers have identified about a dozen system archetypes, but remember, this book was written in 1990.

One archetype is called, “Limits to growth.” The definition is, “A reinforcing (amplifying) process set in motion to produce a desired result. It creates a spiral of success but also creates inadvertent secondary effects (manifested in a balancing process) which eventually slow down the success.” From this comes the following management principle, “Don't push growth; remove the factors limiting growth.” This idea applies to the management of people. We don't yet know how to motivate people very well. But we know all kinds of ways to de-motivate them. A manager's job is to eliminate the de-motivators and stay out of the way.

Another archetype is called, “Shifting the burden.” The definition is, “An underlying problem generates symptoms that demand attention. But the underlying problem is difficult for people to address, either because it is obscure or costly to confront. So people 'shift the burden' of their problem to other solutions – well-intentioned, easy fixes which seem extremely efficient. Unfortunately, the easier 'solutions' only ameliorate the symptoms; they leave the underlying problem unaltered. The underlying problem grows worse, unnoticed because the symptoms apparently clear up, and the system loses whatever abilities it had to solve the underlying problem.” And here's the management principle, “Beware the symptomatic solution. Solutions that address only the symptoms of a problem, not fundamental causes, tend to have short-term benefits at best. In the long term, the problem resurfaces and there is increased pressure for symptomatic response. Meanwhile, the capability for fundamental solutions can atrophy.”

Senge writes, “In effect, the art of systems thinking lies in seeing through the detail complexity to the underlying structures generating changes.” The goal, as mentioned previously, is to see patterns and major interrelationships. With that being the case, Senge advocates for a learning organization. The way to build organizational learning is through the five disciplines listed above.

Personal Mastery

Senge starts off, “Organizations learn only through individuals who learn.” And continues, “Personal Mastery is the phrase we use for the discipline of personal growth and learning. It means approaching one's life as a creative work, living life from a creative as opposed to reactive viewpoint.”

A part of personal mastery is personal vision. It is important that the vision be positive not negative. Meaning, it is not about the negatives we wish to eliminate but rather the positive things we wish to achieve. Senge puts it this way, “Real vision cannot be understood in isolation from the idea of purpose. By purpose, I mean an individual's sense of why he or she is alive.”

Senge talks about how our personal vision can be a great source of energy. He calls the gap between vision and current reality, “creative tension,” saying, “the gap is the source of creative energy.”

Senge counsels us to, “Focus on the desired result itself, not the 'process.' We must work at learning how to separate what we truly want, from what we think we need to do in order to achieve it.” It's a reintegration of reason and intuition.

Mental Models

Mental models are the images, assumptions and stories we carry in our heads that helps us make sense of the world. Senges writes, “Mental models can be simple generalizations such as 'people are untrustworthy,' or they can be complex theories, such as my assumptions about why members of my family interact as they do.” He goes on to say, “Two people with different mental models can observe the same event and describe it differently.” Senge quotes Einstein as saying, “Our theories determine what we measure.”

Senge warns, “The problems with mental models lie not in whether they are right or wrong – by definition, all models are simplifications. The problems with mental models arise when they become implicit – when they exist below the level of our awareness.” This harkens back to the Delphic Oracle's advice to, "Know thyself."

Reflective practice is the essence of the discipline of mental models, and reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one's thinking while acting. Senge states, “Failing to distinguish direct observation from generalizations inferred from observation leads us never to think to test the generalization.” He expounds, “What is needed is blending advocacy and inquiry to promote collaborative learning.”

Senge says, “If managers 'believe' their world views are facts rather than sets of assumptions, they will not be open to challenging those world views.” Knowing that we operate from mental models is a big part of making effective decisions.

Shared Vision

In the words of Mr. Senge, “Shared vision is vital for the learning organization because it provides the focus and energy for learning. While adaptive learning is possible without vision, generative learning occurs only when people are striving to accomplish something that matters deeply to them.” He goes on, “You cannot have a learning organization without shared vision. In the absence of a great dream, pettiness prevails.”

“Shared visions emerge from personal visions. Building shared vision must be seen as a central element of the daily work of leaders. Leaders intent on building shared visions must be willing to continually share their personal visions. They must also be prepared to ask, 'Will you follow me?'"

Senge points out the difference between commitment and compliance, “The command and control hierarchy requires only compliance. The committed person doesn't play by the rules of the game. He is responsible for the game.” But ultimately, “There is really nothing you can do to get another person to enroll or commit. Enrollment and commitment require freedom of choice.”

Team Learning

Within organizations, team learning has three critical dimensions:
1. There is the need to think insightfully about complex issues.
2. There is the need for innovative, coordinated action.
3. There is the role of team members on other teams.

Senge gives a word of warning, “Systems thinking is especially prone to evoking defensiveness because of its central message, that our actions create our reality.”

To facilitate collective learning it is necessary to have collective dialogue. Senge quotes physicist David Bohm saying, “Bohm identifies three basic conditions necessary for dialogue: 1. all participants must 'suspend' their assumptions, literally to hold them 'as if suspended before us'; 2. all participants must regard one another as colleagues; 3. there must be a 'facilitator' who 'holds the context' of dialogue.”

“Contrary to popular myth, great teams are not characterized by an absence of conflict. On the contrary, in my experience, one of the most reliable indicators of a team that is continually learning is the visible conflict of ideas. The free flow of conflicting ideas is critical for creative thinking.”

STOP IT!

Most people would be surprised by the number of things they do that are completely unnecessary. In 1967 Peter Drucker wrote a book that talks about the various requirements of becoming a more effective executive. Rule number one was, “Know thy time.” Drucker wrote, “Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time.”

Whenever you makes plans you are (obviously) going to consider the actions you will undertake. What you probably don't think about are the things you are going to STOP dong. And this second list is every bit as important as the first.

After Peter Drucker would give a talk, members of the audience would inevitably thank him for the wonderful information. Peter told them, in no uncertain terms, that he didn't want them to tell him “thank you.” Drucker was all about action. And, what he wanted them to tell him was what they were going to do the very next day. Every bit as important, he wanted to know what they were going to stop doing.

If we keep piling things onto our plate, we're going to run out of space. This is a common problem. People take on way more than they can handle. The problem isn't that we take on responsibilities. The problem is that we have a difficult time letting go. It is for this reason Drucker prescribed the action of “organized abandonment.” We need to systematically review our lives and our commitments with the intent of abandoning that which no longer produces results. Of course, this is easier said than done. So, what's the problem? Why can't we eliminate unproductive things from our lives?

According to Dan Ariely, a professor at Duke University, one of the reasons is that we humans are, “predictably irrational.” Predictably Irrational is the name of Ariely's first book and it's a great read. In the book Dan reports on an experiment he conducted while at MIT. The experiment was basically a computer simulation that involved keeping doors open. Behind each door were various financial rewards to be given to the player for opening said door. If a particular door was ignored, for 12 moves in a row, it would disappear forever. In total, the participants were given 100 clicks. Each room had a range of payouts but let's say door A rewards the player with an average of four cents, door B with five cents, and door C contained six cents on average (for brevity's sake I'm simplifying things.) Even though it was against their financial interest, players would waste a click keeping door A from disappearing, when they could have made more money by clicking on B or C. This happened repeatedly and it confirmed people's irrational inability to let things go.

In this previous post (Paging Ron Johnson) I talked about the Status Quo Bias. What I suggested was , in order to become more effective, it's a good idea to understand our biases. Because our biases are often irrational and often hold us back. As I've mentioned, Ariely contends humans are predictably irrational. The reason he can say this is because these biases are consistent and persistent. However, once we are aware of our biases and irrationalities, we are better able to overcome them.

Ariely writes, “We need to drop out of committees that are a waste of our time and stop sending holiday cards to people who have moved on to other lives and friends. We need to determine whether we really have time to watch basketball and play both golf and squash and keep our family together; perhaps we should put some of these sports behind us. We ought to shut them because they draw energy and commitment away from the doors that should be left open–and because they drive us crazy.”

I'll end back with Drucker. Peter said, “If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday, to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.” One of the best things about Drucker was his ability to teach with simple metaphors and analogies. On the subject of organized abandonment he had this to say, “There is nothing as difficult and as expensive, but also nothing as futile, as trying to keep a corpse from stinking.” Hopefully that will stick it your brain, I know it has mine.