The Business Sensei

Winning Was Easy: The Tragedy of Star Wars

Winning was easy young man. Governing’s harder.

                                                 — President George Washington (Hamilton)

When I’ve done jujitsu demos, we would often conduct “what if” scenarios: given a situation, how would one of the demonstrators use jujitsu to get out of it? Some of the situations members of the audience would imagine were, to say the least, creative: “You’re on your face, with your arms and legs twisted into knots and …”

The response to such scenarios was always, “How did you get there in the first place?”

Watching The Last Jedi, I had a similar reaction: “How did they manage to get into that mess in the first place?”

For those who haven’t figured it out from some of my other articles, I am something of a Star Wars fan. As I watched The Last Jedi, I couldn’t help but think of it in an organizational psych context. How did the galaxy get from the fall of the Empire and potential rebirth of the Republic at the end of Return of the Jedi, to the First Order and the collapse of the rebellion that we saw in Force Awakens and Last Jedi?

More simply, how did the First Order and Supreme Leader Snoke (or is it Snookie?) take power and establish the sort of industrial base necessary to build massive dreadnaughts and the Starkiller Base? One thing we can say with some certainty is that “Supreme Leaders” don’t just waltz in and take power when things are going well. However, when government is (at least perceived to be) not functioning and political and economic conditions are chaotic, Supreme Leaders tend to find much more fertile ground for their promises of order: humans (and aliens, but since Star Wars aliens are functionally human, we’ll treat them all as human) hate organizational ambiguity. Just think about how unpleasant it can be when you don’t know what’s expected of you on the job or how you’re going to get your job done, then multiple that by a few powers of 10.

This suggests that after Emperor Palpatine got shafted at the end of Return of the Jedi (remember, he was dropped down a shaft), the nascent Republic was unable to re-establish a functional government. Without a functional galactic government, when the remnants of the Empire returned as the First Order with Snoke at the helm, they would have found ineffective military resistance and a galaxy open to their message of order.

This is a little surprising: Palpatine had only been in power for roughly 25 years. The Galactic Senate had only recently been disbanded (during Episode IV). The mechanisms of government, as well as the actual people, should still have been in place. Sure, 25 years seems like a long time, but a galaxy is a very big place and cultures containing trillions or quadrillions of people do not change quickly. So again, how did we get there?

At this point we need to go to a very scary place: the prequel trilogies. I realize this may be painful for some, so I’ll try to keep it brief.

What we see in the prequel movies is that in addition to his dark powers, Palpatine is also a consummate politician. Most, if not all, of his manipulations were done using words and political acumen. The Force almost never came into it. In fact, Palpatine’s manipulation of the Galactic Senate, the Trade Federation, and the political system are no different from what plenty of less than scrupulous organizational leaders have done without any magical powers at all. Even Palpatine’s seduction of Anakin Skywalker was done purely through words and a deep understanding of practical psychology. Once Palpatine took control, he did not use the Force to govern; rather, he used the existing mechanisms of governance.

That’s the thing about organizations: no matter the size, they need social mechanisms to keep them functioning. Small groups can work informally with a loose decision-making process. Very large organizations, up to and including Galactic Empires, need a formal structure complete with functionaries and deliberative bodies that can carry out the instructions from the top. Even Palpatine, for all his power, could not rule a galaxy without that structure. The galaxy is just too big and there’s just not enough time for one person to pay attention to all the details. Organizations much smaller than the Empire run into that problem: Tom Watson Sr. maintained a very flat organizational structure at IBM; his son, Tom Watson Jr., instituted a management structure because otherwise the company would have become ungovernable as it grew. Once Palpatine dissolved the Senate, he replaced it with Moffs and Grand Moffs; essentially, middle managers. Even Sith Lords need lieutenants to carry out their orders, at least if they want to have time to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. More to the point, Palpatine recognized that running a galaxy requires a large bureaucracy and that transitioning from the existing mechanisms of the Republic to those of Empire took time. That sort of transition is necessary when implementing a dramatic cultural change.

Palpatine’s organizational changes provoked outcry and rebellion across the galaxy. To be fair, his changes involved altering the existing culture at a profound level, so resistance was to be expected. This is hardly surprising to anyone who has ever attempted even a more benign organizational change, although most fights over that changes do not include duels, battle cruisers, and Death Stars. However, those fights can still be extremely bitter and exhausting for all concerned, for all their lack of special effects.

The original trilogy, episodes IV-VI, told the story of that rebellion against Palpatine’s organizational change. However, the story did not focus on matters of governance or organizational behavior, but on using the Force to defeat Palpatine and Darth Vader. That the Force was the focus is hardly surprising: aside from the fact that lightsaber duels and telekinesis are more exciting that “Organizational Psychology: The Movie,” Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda are Jedi. They view the world through the lens of the Force. For Yoda and Obi-Wan, the goal was to train another Jedi capable of defeating the two Sith. Actual governance of the galaxy wasn’t really their primary focus. Like anyone who has a specific background or expertise, there is a tendency to view problems through the lens of that expertise (this article being no exception 😊). This tendency can cause problems when it blinds us to other, equally important, components of the situation, like who would run the galaxy once Palpatine was let go.

The answer, apparently, was no one. We might suspect, as one economist pointed out, that the construction, and subsequent destruction, of two Death Stars was enough to bankrupt the government and trigger a galactic depression. It may be that the recently disbanded Senate was unable to come together and pass legislation, and Palpatine’s governors were not inclined to cooperate. It may be something else. What we do know is that after another approximately 25 years, Luke Skywalker has given in to despair, the Republic is down to so few planets that they can be functionally destroyed by the Starkiller Base, the First Order has control of enough of the galaxy’s industrial base that they can build the Starkiller Base, and the remnants of the Resistance have no resources and no allies. Whatever the message of the Resistance was, it clearly hasn’t been convincing anyone other than the true believers. Similarly, in any organization, it’s important to seek out information from outside the group and find out how your message is being received.

Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, the man who defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor, could not recreate the Republic. Leia Organa, princess and general, was apparently also unable to do so. The new government that did eventually emerge was headed by Snoke and his disciple, Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. With Snoke’s death, the galactic government is now in the hands of a man with no impulse control and a tendency to throw temper tantrums and engage in the gratuitous use of Force. On the other side, Rey is at least Ren’s equal in the Force. Given Ren’s inability to control himself and Rey’s incredible self-discipline, she’s potentially far more capable than he is. And yet, neither one of them has the training to run a galaxy. Some things require expertise that comes from years of education and practice on top of raw talent. Just trusting your feelings isn’t going to cut it.

Organizations need to think about their needs both in the immediate term and in the future. Thinking about expected changes can help the organization predict what skills it will need. When Palpatine took charge, he knew exactly what to do and had the people in place to do it. Even so, it took him 25 years to mostly complete his personnel changes. The Rebellion was not so well organized, and paid the price. If you wait until the moment you need the skills to start developing them, it’ll be too late. This last point is true not just at an organizational level, but at an individual one as well.

The tragedy of Star Wars is that Our Heroes have spent their time focusing on the Force, as though the Force is what governs the galaxy. Like duct tape, the Force might hold the universe together, but it’s about as good at the actual mechanisms of governance as a roll of duct tape. As with any organization, to be successful the Rebellion needs to identify and develop its core competencies, which includes learning how to govern should they win. Otherwise, the cycle will just repeat. They can only get so far relying on Force.

Trust Your Feelings, Luke

“Trust your feelings…”

— Obi Wan Kenobi

Star Wars made it seem so simple: all a Jedi had to do was trust his or her feelings and they would do the right thing. It certainly worked out pretty well for Luke in the original movie (Episode IV), blowing up the Death Star and all. But then came The Empire Strikes Back and it turned out that learning to trust your feelings involved running around in a swamp with a grouchy Muppet on your back.

Feelings are certainly useful, and they can help us make better decisions. However, just as Luke discovered, it’s not quite as easy as Obi Wan originally made it seem. In fact, trusting our feelings in the heat of the moment can often lead to very bad decisions: in a training exercise I was running, one participant was completely convinced that another participant was lying to her. She based this on her infallible instincts, aka feelings. When we debriefed at the end, it turned out he wasn’t lying. He was telling her the complete truth and would have helped her if she’d let him. In general, letting our feelings rule the day works out badly when we’re tired, hungry, frustrated, confused, angry, or even overly happy.  In each of these cases, strong feelings can overshadow judgment.

So, when are feelings useful?

It helps a great deal to train your feelings. The point of Luke running around the swamp may have been primarily to make Jedi training look mysterious, however for serious athletes, constant drills and training serve to develop their skills and hone their instincts. The master fencer picks up on subtle cues of posture and blade position that reveal what their opponent is likely to do next. It is because of their training that they can trust and act on their feelings.

Feelings can be very useful when planning future strategy. When you feel strongly, good or bad, about a particular course of action, that’s often a good clue that it’s worth exploring that action more thoroughly. Why do you feel that way? What about that course of action appeals to you or does not appeal to you? Just to make things more complicated, feeling good about a course of action doesn’t mean that the action will succeed just as feeling bad about a course of action doesn’t mean it is a bad choice. You might feel good only because the action feels safe or you might feel bad because the action involves something new and different. In that case, the correct choice might be to go against your instincts.

When engaged in a long and complex project, be that designing software or producing marketing materials, it can help to pause periodically and admire your work. If you don’t like it while it’s in progress, that’s a bad sign. Pay attention to your feelings: they’re likely telling you something is wrong.

Training feelings can be tough. Athletes do it through many days and weeks of practice. Jedi do it by running around a swamp. In a business setting, sufficiently complex and elaborate training games can serve the same purpose, only with better food and without the humidity. Such games, in addition to their other benefits, are fun and can help build organizational cohesion.

Like Obi Wan said, “Trust your feelings.” But take the time to make your feelings trustable.

Cognitive Diversity? Mr. Johnson is Right!

In Mel Brooks’ classic comedy, “Blazing Saddles,” there’s a scene near the beginning of the movie where the inhabitants of Rock Ridge are trying to decide how to handle the crime wave besetting their town. As they meet in the church, Reverend Johnson calls up the various townspeople to speak: Van Johnson, Howard Johnson, Olson Johnson, Dr. Samuel Johnson, Don Johnson, Gabby Johnson, and so forth. After each Johnson says their piece, the next Johnson gets up to say, “Mr. Johnson is right.” The multitude of Johnsons don’t have any particularly creative ideas, but they did come to a very quick agreement on what to do.

I was reminded of this scene when reading Bari Williams’ article, “Tech’s Troubling New Trend: Diversity Is in Your Head,” in the New York Times.

Needless to say, the crowd in Rock Ridge are not very diverse. In the church scene, the high point of diversity comes when Gabby Johnson gives a passionate speech in authentic, if incomprehensible, frontier gibberish. What makes him an example of diversity? Well, all the other Johnsons spoke clearly articulated English. However, even Gabby’s authentic frontier gibberish didn’t stimulate any divergent thought in the group.

Bari Williams’ article discusses Apple’s vice-president of diversity and inclusion, Denise Smith, saying that, “There can be 12 white, blue-eyed, blond men in a room and they’re going to be diverse, too, because they’re going to bring a different life experience and life perspective to the conversation.”

Perhaps all 12 men could be named Johnson?

The problem with this concept of “cognitive diversity,” as it’s known, is that it doesn’t work. It might sound good (although even that’s debatable), but if the goal is a team that can come up with varied and creative ideas, “cognitive diversity” by itself is a waste of time. It’s more likely that such a team will come up with fewer, less creative ideas, and more rapidly reach a consensus without considering a variety of options.

Why doesn’t cognitive diversity work? Fundamentally, because we can’t see cognitive diversity. Our minds respond to our environments. What we see around us influences how we direct and use our mental focus: The inputs shape the outputs. A dull, flat, colorless environment tends to be vaguely depressing, while a bright, open, colorful environment tends to be mentally stimulating. When the people around us all look like us, our thoughts tend to converge as well. When the people around us are physically different from us, we start to think in more diverse ways. The group is more likely to come up with more different ideas, and more likely to spend a greater amount of time exploring and developing those ideas.

To be fair, it is harder to bring a more physically diverse group of people together into a team than it is to do so with a same-sized homogeneous group. The more diverse group might spend a longer period in an awkward, “get to know you,” stage before it really starts to become productive. On the other hand, more diverse groups tend to be able to solve a wider range of problems, deal with a wider range of unexpected situations, and generally perform better than more homogeneous groups.

A focus on cognitive diversity just yields homogeneity. If you truly want people to think different, a focus on physical (i.e. race, gender, ethnicity, etc) diversity is the best way to do it.

For the people of Rock Ridge, diversity came as a bit of a shock. They didn’t adapt to it easily, but when they did they were able to find a way out of their predicament. To succeed, they had to learn to break down some walls. Corporations may have to learn to break down a few barriers as well in order to build effective, diverse teams.

Guardians of Disunity

Guardians of the Galaxy 2  features the obligatory chase scene through an asteroid belt. This seems to be a Thing in science fiction movies: Han Solo was almost eaten by a giant space worm flying through an asteroid belt to avoid Imperial ships in The Empire Strikes Back, Star Trek did a version of it in Wrath of Khan (okay, it was a nebula, but oddly enough there were asteroids bumping the ship), and so on. In this particular version of the classic asteroid chase scene, our heroes, while trying to avoid getting blown out of space by their pursuers, are also busy fighting over who should be controlling their ship. This does make the Guardians version of the chase just a bit different from the usual. Normally, when confronted by an outside threat, particularly one trying to blow you out of space, teams pull together instead of pulling the controls in different directions. The resulting disaster is both predictable and comical.

Using an outside threat to unify a team is hardly new. Organizations have been doing it for a very long time: sometimes the outside threat is another company, sometimes it’s competition with another department, sometimes it’s just the threat of failing to meet a deadline. No matter which option is used, the results are fairly similar: if the team believes the threat, they put their differences aside and work together. Well, sort of.

When a team faces an outside threat, quite frequently the size of the threat makes the team’s own internal disagreements seem small and unimportant by comparison. This may then cause the members of the team to cooperate instead of arguing with each other. Of course, the disagreements haven’t actually been addressed nor have they magically gone away. They’re still there, waiting to spring back to life like the killer robot in Terminator. If the outside threat weakens, or the team just doesn’t take it seriously, the internal disagreements come roaring back with a vengeance. This can leave the team worse off than it was before.

What if the team does believe the threat? Well, that is still something of a mixed blessing. The good news is that the team may well hold together for a while, sometimes long enough to get the job done. If the external threat is an impending deadline, though, what will often happen is that the team will become so focused on avoiding conflict that they keep failing to hit the deadline. Not hitting the deadline becomes a way to keep conflict at bay: when the team does eventually deliver, then they’ll have to address all those long-simmering issues. Handled properly, experiencing some success may enable the team to do just that.

However, there are some other side-effects to using external threats to hold a team together: team members become less willing to argue with one another about anything, and, hence, are less creative. The conformity encouraged by the outside threat can easily get out of hand. Team members become so unwilling to argue that they start making nonsensical or stupid decisions. This rarely ends well. Even when the team doesn’t go down the full groupthink highway, their decision-making and inventiveness still suffer compared to teams that are unified through inspirational leadership. And, at some point, those disagreements still need to be addressed.

As a way of unifying teams, outside threats have their drawbacks. Getting hit by an asteroid may well be the least of them.

Mirror, Mirror

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?”

Magic mirrors have a habit of showing up in fairy tales and legends. The most famous, of course, was the mirror owned by the wicked queen in Snow White. But don’t think that magic mirrors were solely the province of the wicked queen. There were plenty of evil sorcerers, kings, and especially evil grand viziers who had magic mirrors of one sort or another. Given how ubiquitous those mirrors were, one can only imagine that entire fantasy economies must have depended on their manufacture. But that, as they say, is another story.

The interesting thing about magic mirrors is that what they show us is, well, us, with an emphasis on making us feel good about it. That’s the problem with magic mirrors: when we look into them long enough, we might actually start to believe that we really do look that good. If that happens, anything that spoils the illusion becomes a problem to remove rather than feedback that things might not be as they seem.

“Sorry Queen, but it is Snow White who’s better looking by day or night.”

We all know how that worked out.

In a business setting, the magic mirror is the people we work with. When we work as part of a team, we can see everyone on the team: we can see what they do, we react to their work, we hear their words. The one person we cannot see is ourselves. Is our work good or is it poor? Are we behaving intelligently, foolishly, wisely, or carelessly? We can only really tell by how we are reflected in the eyes of our team mates. Without that feedback, we have no point of reference. Sometimes, the mirror doesn’t show us what we want to see.

This mirroring phenomenon is a big part of how a group of people who happen to be wandering in the same direction learn how to come together as a team. We look at others and we see how people act, look, and dress. Because team members always seek some degree of similarity, we try to mimic what we see so that we’ll feel like part of the team. This is especially true when we are new to the team (when everyone on the team is new, each person is doing this. That can make things a bit tricky). Similarity brings the team together, but differences make it effective. The trick is making use of the first without losing the second.

Assuming that each member of the team sees and reflects the appropriate actions, appearances, and behaviors, the team has a much better chance of coalescing and achieving very high levels of performance. On the other hand, if people don’t reflect to one another or, in other words, see too much difference, the team doesn’t come together, members are less loyal, and the team is more likely to dissolve.

Points of similarity can be many things: behavior, clothing, common goals, an outside threat, annoyance at a particular member of the team, skin color, gender, etc. Some of these work better than others. Superficial characteristics such as physical appearance and gender can certainly help bring a team together, although at the risk of creating a more homogenous team. Simply looking at people who look like you might feel good, but it doesn’t do a whole lot to stimulate creative thought; for that, difference helps. As Terry Pratchett observed, we go on vacation so that we can come back to view home through new eyes. Seeing those who don’t look like us helps us consider multiple options and perspectives, an important component of successful products and services.

Bringing a team together against an outside threat has good short-term results, but often only succeeds in suppressing disagreements and preventing the group from learning how to argue effectively and develop consensus. Unifying around annoyance at a particular member of the team creates its own special set of problems. Both of these approaches tend to suppress difference in favor conformity. Common goals, interests, imitating behaviors, and having a common vision work best at building similarity while preserving differences.

How a group unifies then determines who else it lets in. Humans naturally form in- and out-groups, and we are all subject to viewing members of our in-groups more favorably than members of our out-groups. That means that we will tend to favor those who resemble the people around us. Over time, the group will reflect the dominant identifying characteristics: be that skin color, a penchant for puns, gender, style of dress, incisive problem solving capabilities, and so on. The magic mirror is telling us what the group looks like and, by extension, what new members should look like. And, because, we’re human, we are also very good at explaining why our group looks the way it does. In fact, we might decide that there are very good and very serious scientific reasons why it must look that way, and why any other group composition would be wrong. In reality, there may be nothing special about many of the dimensions of group composition other than happenstance.

Indeed, when we recognize the important dimensions of similarity, we can also take advantage of our differences. A key strength of a high performance team is its ability to see a problem from multiple perspectives, to generate diverse ideas, and to explore different and unexpected approaches. Team members must become comfortable along the axes of their similarities and their differences for that strength to manifest.

Just to make things more complicated, not all group members will always recognize which dimensions of similarity are the relevant ones for the group. For example, some people might assume gender or physical appearance is the driver, when, in fact, they are simply coincidental. Part of how a group matures is for members to connect along more significant dimensions than the merely superficial. People who cannot make this adjustment ultimately cannot remain as part of the group. Some will leave after discovering that the group is not what they thought; others will demonstrate their inability to connect along the important dimensions or will demonstrate that they are intolerant of valuable differences and will need to be forced out before they poison the team.

The team is a mirror for each of its members. It’s important to stop and reflect, and then learn to use the feedback correctly. Getting fixated on superficial similarities can break the team and lead to a great deal of bad luck.

Don’t Lose Your Marbles!

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to observe participants in an estimation contest. Participants were given a problem along the lines of figuring out how many marbles are in a jar or balls in a pit. Participants then had to come up with an approximate answer based on the information that they could glean from the scenario: for example, they might be able to at least approximately measure the size of the marbles.

I was particularly impressed by one of the groups: they were very analytical. They discussed the problem in very reasoned terms. They only included very few people in their discussion. They came up with a very well-written, very logically developed answer. They were very wrong. While all the other answers clustered around the correct response, this one group had an answer that was so far out in left field that it was in some other stadium.

This, of course, is the challenge in estimation games: it’s easy to make very simple mistakes early on and then run merrily off along a completely wrong, but apparently logical, trail. In estimation games this is pretty much harmless. However, in more general areas of problem solving the same errors that can derail an estimate can also lead to much more significant problems. This isn’t necessarily all that surprising in that real-world problems are much more similar to estimation games than we might like to acknowledge: they often require us to make assumptions, act with incomplete information, make deductions about facts we cannot easily observe, and come up with a best guess at the end. Fortunately, there are some lessons we can draw from estimation games that will improve real-world problem solving, particularly when people are involved. Consider, for instance, any scenario in which you need to work with other people or cooperate with another organization and where your goals are not necessarily in complete alignment.

It’s easy, as the left-field group did, to limit participation in the discussion. In fact, this is often necessary, as too big a group can easily become unmanageable and prevent any productive discussion from taking place. However, keeping the size of the group small does not mean keeping the knowledge base available to the group equally small. Group members need to track their assumptions and the conclusions based on those assumptions. They then need to go out and verify as many of their assumptions as they can: it’s easy to find evidence to support your conclusions; the hard part is looking for evidence that will contradict them. The second is what needs to happen. Identify what information would tell you if you’re making a mistake, and then figure out to identify that information. Speculate. Play “what if?” games.

Of course, it’s also important to remember that marbles in a jar have no motivation (outside of a bad joke about method acting). Situations dealing with people have considerably more moving parts.

An important part of “people estimation” is understanding motive. When dealing with human systems, being able to think about what other people are doing and why they might be doing it is critical. Peter Ossorio, of descriptive psychology fame, makes the argument that in any given situation people will try to make the most advantageous move they can. This doesn’t mean that they’ll always get it right or that they’ll always execute even a right action correctly or effectively. However, it does mean that it can be very productive to consider how other people might view a problem or situation and consider what their likely course of action might be. Consider as well why they might doing what they are doing.

Their reasons might not be obvious, they might not be comfortable for you to think about, and they may contradict some of your basic assumptions, but those reasons exist. Figuring out what they are goes a long way to enabling you to make a better “estimate” and take actions that are more likely to get you to a result that you like. To be fair, maybe the other people involved are stupid or evil; I’ve certainly heard this given as an excuse for not considering their perspective. Ultimately, what difference does it make? They will still take actions, and your success may well depend on your ability to anticipate and work with or around those actions. Approaches which shut down speculation and exploration are most likely going to do nothing more than decrease the accuracy of your estimate.

When dealing with marbles in a jar, being in left field just means that you’ve failed to win a prize. When dealing with people problems, being in left field might just mean that you’ve lost something considerably more valuable. In this case, maybe it’s not so bad if you’ve only lost your marbles.

Caught By The Chrome

Anyone remember the power failure during the 2012 Superbowl? Probably not, for all that it lasted for a whopping 35 minutes, or, as comedian Stephen Colbert put it, “only two months short of New Orleans’ personal best.”

The funny thing about the power failure, however, was not Stephen Colbert making jokes about it, but how a number of people blamed the failure on Beyonce. Did Beyonce have anything to do with it? Well, Beyonce was playing at the time, but that’s about the only connection. I know that a lot people think she’s pretty impressive, but knocking out the power to the Superbowl? Even for Beyonce, that’s a bit much. Nonetheless, the fact that the two events were coincident in time meant that, for many people, there must have been a connection.

This is called getting caught by the chrome: rather than focusing on the actual problem in front of us, such as a power failure, our attention is caught by something peripheral. Sometimes, if we get lucky, that bit of chrome might also turn out to be a symptom of the problem, but not always.

Basically, a problem is composed of three elements: the problem itself, the symptoms, and the chrome. Most of the time, we can’t actually see the problem. What we can see are the symptoms and the chrome. The symptoms are useful: they can lead us to the problem. When you go to the doctor and the doctor asks questions about how you are feeling, she is exploring your symptoms. Knowing your symptoms helps her identify what is wrong with you, or at least sound authoritative when she tells you to take two aspirin and call the advice nurse in the morning.

The chrome is the shiny stuff that’s nice to look at: the things that are easy to see and, because it’s easy to see, also easy to mistake for a symptom or the actual problem. Sometimes we also mistake the symptoms for the actual problem, essentially treating the symptoms as chrome instead of as clues to what is actually wrong.

Now, at least for those watching on TV, whether Beyonce was problem, symptom, or chrome, was probably pretty much irrelevant. But for those actually tasked with dealing with the problem, figuring out the difference is considerably more important.

Let’s consider the case of Tim, newly appointed CEO of big data company Hornblower Software. Hornblower is considered a rising star in the big data space, yet when Tim came in, the company hadn’t produced a product in over a year. The reasons for this varied, freely mixing chrome and symptoms. Was it the engineer who was incompetent and insubordinate, doing whatever he wanted and doing it all badly? Was it the engineer who was competent, but completely unwilling to take direction, making changes as he thought fit? Was it the several engineers who did enough to get by but who weren’t willing to make major efforts on the part of the team? The first guy quit shortly after Tim came in, producing a belief that the problems would all go with him.

There is a cliched scene in countless murder mysteries in which our hero is suspected of the murder and arrested. Another murder then occurs while he’s sitting in jail, forcing the police to grudgingly conclude that maybe he really isn’t guilty. The problems at Hornblower didn’t go away when the first guy quit, suggesting pretty strongly that he was at best a symptom of the larger problem, at worst nothing more than chrome. Well, in that case the problem must the other guy, the one would wouldn’t take direction! After all, as the VP of Engineering put it, “I can’t tell him what to do.”

We can certainly agree that if you have an employee who refuses to take any direction that is A problem, whether or not it is THE problem. In this case, it was also a distraction from the real problem.

The trick to solving the real problem is first to identify the real problem. To do that, you have to get away from the chrome and focus on the symptoms. There were many: the lack of products, rogue engineers, infighting, dispirited team members, to list just the major ones. When did they start? Where did they occur? Were there any common elements? When we take the time to examine the symptoms and identify the boundaries of their occurrence, then we can start to understand the real problem. In this case, the common element was the VP of Engineering, who, it turned out, was either intimidating or ineffectual: those who found him intimidating exhibited low motivation, while those who realized that he was a paper tiger simply ignored him. And while he might have been quite competent technically, he wasn’t capable of communicating with other team members, organizing them, or focusing their efforts. The net result was an ineffective engineering organization.

The only real question left at this point is whether Tim will be able to see past the chrome fast enough to make a difference.

Controlling the Little Things

One of the more painful experiences I had in jujitsu was when my instructor taught finger holds. We assume that because our legs are generally quite strong, it would be difficult for someone to force us to go somewhere we don’t want to go. That assumption lasted as long as it took my instructor to apply a finger hold. All he had to do was take control of the smallest joint of one finger and suddenly my legs would go exactly where he wanted them to go. By manipulating one little thing, he could convince people much larger and stronger than he was to become extremely cooperative. Controlling one small joint gave him control over their entire body, however controlling the body did not produce the same control over the arms and legs: the hands and feet still moved freely, and would regularly engage in what may be politely referred to as “nose seeking behavior.”

Now, you might be thinking, “Well, so what? That’s just leverage!”

Well, yes, it is leverage. And if that was the whole point, the correct reaction would indeed be “so what?”

Leverage, as we all know, enables us to move something large through control of something small. Jujitsu is merely a fairly straight-forward application of this principle. However, the principle is not limited to the physical. Our perception of control is determined not by the big things in life that we control, but by the little things. To put this another way, if we want people to tackle big, challenging projects, we have to convince them that they have at least some control over the outcome; they have to believe that their actions matter and have a reasonably good chance of producing positive results. Conversely, when we don’t have control over little things, we tend to assume that we can’t control the bigger things. Even worse, that feeling of not having control translates into a loss of initiative and creativity. Leverage cuts both ways.

In any organization, those stressors that decrease our sense of control are thus the most damaging. Organizational politics are one obvious example, but at a more direct level, the less control employees have over their immediate environment, the less initiative they take overall. Being able to, within reason, decorate your office or cubicle creates a sense of control. Conversely, when companies have elaborate rules that unduly limit personal expression, control is seriously decreased. Without that sense of control, employees become more like the person whose finger is being twisted rather than like the person doing the twisting: they might be compliant, but they are not enthusiastic or committed.

An article in the NY Times discussed how Google addresses exactly this issue. Google doesn’t just allow employees to decorate their work area; employees get to design their work area. Google provides them with the equivalent of high tech tinker toys that employees can use to build the work area they want. Feel like having a treadmill? No problem. Walking desk? Sure. The article pointed out that Google doesn’t even have an official policy about coming in to the office; rather, the assumption is that the employee will work out a reasonable schedule with her team. This is control in action: employees are given control over their environment, even whether to come to the office to work. This control, coupled with making the office an very enjoyable place to work, leads to employees who exercise their control to work longer and harder than anyone could ever force them to work. Indeed, one of the problems Google has is that sometimes they have to chase people out of the office! What would you do to have problems like that?

When we have to force someone to do something, either through threats or through lavish rewards, they don’t get a sense of control or commitment. They are being controlled, but they are not in control. Now, if all we want is compliance, maybe that’s just fine! Indeed, if the task is easy, that may even be sufficient. However, if we want a committed, enthusiastic work force that believes themselves capable of tackling big projects and overcoming apparently overwhelming obstacles, the secret to getting there is to give them control of the little things.

The Measure Of All Things

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

It’s a familiar refrain, one I hear quite often. There’s even some truth to it, at least for those things that are easily measureable. After all, if you want to keep track of how many widgets you are stamping out, maximize efficiency, profit, and so forth, then it really does help to be able to measure it. If you’re mixing ingredients for a cake, it helps be able to precisely measure out a cup of sugar or three eggs. The problem is, not everything quite so easily lends itself to being measured. Take, for example, enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is something everyone wants; let’s face it, unenthusiastic employees are particularly hard to motivate, whereas enthusiastic people are very much self-motivated. Enthusiasm, however, is difficult to measure. The most common attempt to measure something like enthusiasm is to look for things that might indicate enthusiasm: perhaps people arriving early and leaving late is a good marker of enthusiasm. On the other hand, perhaps neither of those behaviors are markers of enthusiasm. After all, why should they be? I admit that it seems likely that they are, but seeming likely is no guarantee of anything. In this case, we’re falling into the trap of grabbing onto something that easy to track and using it to measure the thing we care about. That’s sort of like using a tape measure to determine the correct quantity of flour for a cake simply because the tape measure is handy and the measuring cup is not. In fact, while some people manifest enthusiasm by showing up early and leaving late, others manifest enthusiasm through greater intensity of focus for shorter periods of time or by coming up with ideas at weird hours and so forth. The manifestation depends a lot on the person and the job to be done.

A related problem is confusing how we’re trying measure a thing for the thing itself. In this case, after deciding that coming in early and staying late must be valid ways to measure enthusiasm, someone comes up with the brilliant idea if you just require that everyone arrive early and leave late then they will become enthusiastic. In fact, quite the opposite is likely to occur. A Geiger counter measures radioactivity, but, outside of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, rewiring a Geiger counter so it clicks wildly doesn’t make the area radioactive.

So, we have a problem. We don’t want measure something by just picking the most convenient yardstick and hoping that it works. We also don’t want to mistake that convenient yardstick, or even an accurate yardstick, for the thing we’re trying to measure. What do we do?

At root, measuring is just a way of comparing two things. A ruler lets us measure length by comparing the length of an object to something – the ruler – with a known length. A Geiger counter lets us measure radioactivity by translating radiation into something we can hear. Thus, if we want to measure enthusiasm, we need to figure out what things we really are trying to compare with one another. Does enthusiasm mean less failure work? Does it mean fewer bugs in the product? More work done in a shorter time? How about greater creativity or a desire to come up with novel solutions to problems? Or maybe people coming up with unexpected and imaginative ways to approach their jobs? Any of the above, but not all of them at once?

Measuring by comparison does provide us with an approach to measuring, and potentially managing, things are inherently hard to measure. It does, however, lack a certain level of precision. On the other hand, that may not be all that important. Sometimes, all you really need is a reasonably good sense of which direction you are going.

“If you can’t compare it, you can’t manage it,” isn’t quite as snappy or as simple as “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” but it is more useful. You just have to find the right points of comparison and be willing to work with a certain degree of imprecision. Once you can do that, it’s amazing how many different, and effective, ways there are to manage the things you can’t measure.

The Incomparables

“Did you hear that? They compared me to Hitler!”

“Favorably, I hope.”

There is a simple way to not publish a book: just tell the publisher that there’s nothing like it on the market. If there’s nothing like it — in other words, it’s unique — then, so the logic goes, there must not be a market for it. Of course, the real problem is that they have nothing to compare the book to; it’s incomparable.

Blake Edward’s classic comedy, The Pink Panther, features the incomparable Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau pursuing a jewel thief. The thief is after the Pink Panther, an incomparable diamond.

“Incomparable” is a popular word in at least a few descriptions of the movie. However, at the risk of mixing metaphors, or at least movies, as Inigo Montoya says in The Princess Bride: “You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think means.”

The problem with “incomparable” is that when it’s actually true, it doesn’t really tell us very much. Comparison is key to knowing how to value something, be that a meal at a restaurant or a product we want to buy. As Robert Cialdini points out in Influence, knowing that a bracelet costs $50 is relatively meaningless because we only have the haziest idea of what it’s actually worth. But when that same bracelet is priced at “$50, marked down from $100,” now it seems like a much better deal. The comparison tells us the value, Granted, this may be manipulated by clever marketeers, but it still works surprisingly often. For example, in his book, Predictably Irrational, Daniel Arielly describes an ad from the Economist magazine: $59 for a web only subscription, $125 for print, and $125 for print and web combined.

Does this seem odd? The same price for print and print and web? Given that, who would take the print only version? The answer, of course, was very few people; that wasn’t the point. The real point was that putting in that “fake” middle option (yes, you could have chosen it, but why?) made the combined option much more attractive. In fact, the presence of the middle option caused more people to chose the more expensive combined option rather than the web only option, whereas without the middle option more people chose the cheaper web only option. The right point of comparison makes a big difference: given an apple, we look for something else that looks like an apple to compare it to; we don’t compare the apple to an orange. Comparisons are our mental landmarks that help us figure out which way to go: we compare PCs to Macs, grocery stores to grocery stores, clothing to clothing, etc.

This means that when marketing a product, we need to be able to provide some landmarks to go with it. If we don’t provide landmarks, then one of two things happens: either the product is ignored because we’re not sure what good it is or what it is really worth; or, it gets compared to something randomly. In other words, either the blank space in the map confuses people or they take the wrong turn. Thus, it is critically important to frame the comparison properly: being compared to Hitler might make someone look good. More seriously, Dunkin Donuts sells coffee, but Starbucks sells an elegant experience which happens to include a cup of expensive coffee. As coffee goes, Starbucks is expensive; as an “experience,” maybe not so much. Similarly, many companies sell smartphones, but Apple sells a device that, if their commercials are to believed, is integral to a life enhancing experience. On the flip side, Apple is struggling to convince people that the iPad Pro is a reasonable PC replacement: the Pro is a tablet, and it’s hard to compare a tablet to a PC; our brains want to compare it to other tablets because that’s what it looks like. It’s all a question of framing the comparison; even then, the frame has to make sense.

There was nothing incomparable about Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau. It’s exactly because the character of a detective is so easy to grasp that his portrayal of the bumbling Clouseau was so incredibly funny… by comparison (and you are probably imagining plenty of characters to compare him to). When you’re looking at your incomparable product, just what will people compare it to?