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How to Better Manage Your Poor Manager

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Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash

“Management,” described Clayton Christensen, “is the opportunity to help people become better people. Practiced that way, it’s a magnificent profession.” And while this should be the goal of all management, many employees don’t consider it a positive aspect of their jobs, instead identifying with Peter Drucker’s thoughts that “most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done.”

Indeed, despite spending billions of dollars annually on managerial and leadership development, managers still struggles to be a positive influence – with 64% of employees saying that their managers don’t provide adequate support and 75% of Americans saying that “their boss is the most stressful part of their workday.”

And yet most managers are not only trying their best to be effective – they also believe they’re doing a good job.

If you walked around and polled every manager in your company, the vast majority will consider their performance to be above average. How then, do we seem to be surrounded with management incompetence?

A Modified Peter Principle

“In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” – Laurence J. Peter, The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong

In 1968, Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull developed The Peter Principle, a satire in which everyone in an organization continues to be promoted until they reach their level of incompetence. Eventually – given enough time and promotions – every position in a company contains someone who can’t do the job.

Another variant suggests that people aren’t necessarily promoted to their level of incompetence, but to a level that overwhelms their abilities and creates enough anxiety that they lose all ambition and dreams of further success. Thus changing people from energetic go-getters to the jaded curmudgeons full of bad advice from the “good-old-days.”

I’m sure you know both types. But I also think these groups generally fall in the minority. The bigger problem is simply that managers are human. And as humans, they’re equipped with both strengths and weaknesses.

Yes, a certain percentage of managers that believe themselves to be above average are falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect. Darwin was spot on when he said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

But the majority believes they’re doing a good job because they’re measuring their performance against different factors. Different people have different views on what makes a good manager – and for managers, this often aligns with their strengths and the reasons they were promoted in the first place.

A manager who excels in technical reviews will focus her behaviors around that strength. Consequently, she’ll bias her means of measuring success towards this trait. The fact that she’s a poor communicator won’t factor as highly into her consideration for managing successfully.

Managers end up in a cycle of doubling down on their specialties while ignoring the areas of their struggles. The issue isn’t that the majority of managers are incompetent and overwhelmed (although some certainly are), it’s that they’re good enough at a couple things that their failures and struggles are overlooked.

And while this issue is easier to handle than outright incompetence, it’s still a concern for the affected employees. After all, they continue to be saddled with managers that are blind to their shortcomings.

So everyone needs to choose – do you let your manager’s weaknesses limit your own career? Or do you do something about it?

Accept It, Change It, or Leave It.

“In any situation in life, you only have three options. You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It’s that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery.” – Neil Ravikant, Tools of Titans

As angel investor and founder Neil Ravikant laid out, every situation has three options. Change it, accept it, or leave it.

Having a struggling manager is no different. We can choose to change it, accept it, or leave it.

Most people’s actions align with the “accept it” option. They wait around and hope that the company will eventually step in to address the issue for them. All the while complaining to whoever’s willing to listen. And nothing ever changes.

But there’s many ways employees can take greater agency in their career and influence a poor managerial situation. Even small actions can have a drastic improvement

For those looking to take some agency over the situation, even small actions can have a drastic improvement. It just depends on which struggling manager you find yourself stuck with.

The Can’t-Make-a-Decision-to-Save-His-Life Manager

“Many a false step was made by standing still.” – Fortune Cookie (via The 4-Hour Workweek)

Poor decisions can usually be corrected, but indecisiveness is often fatal. Whether the boss is a perfectionist who’s always waiting for that perfect option or someone who simply struggles with the responsibility of choosing a path, it’s an especially hindering situation for their employees.

And one that we can’t allow to continue and simultaneously advance our careers.

The first step is to recognize the reasons behind your manager’s hesitation. And nine times out of ten, it comes down to being uncomfortable with the perceived risk.

So our solution just comes down to reducing the potential risk in making a decision. And this usually stems from a level of knowledge of the problem and the ability

People become more comfortable with risk when they have more knowledge of the problem and the potential solutions. Instead of just presenting solutions to your manager, try involving her in the process to frame the problem and generate ideas. That way, she’ll see the full process and better recognize the alternatives.

Additionally, recognize that of all the decisions we make, many will turn out to be wrong. Even high quality decisions eventually become obsolete.

So instead of treating decision-making as a one-time milestone, make it just one step in the overall process. Show your boss that you’ve planned for feedback mechanisms into the aftermath and can validate the decision’s effectiveness. When you can monitor the results and change course if needed, the risk (and stress) of decision-making goes way down. As Peter Drucker wrote, 

“One always has to expect the assumptions to become obsolete sooner or later. Reality never stands still very long.”

The Never-Take-the-Blame Manager

“Oh, yes. The past can hurt. But the way I see it, you can either run from it or learn from it.” – Rafiki, The Lion King

“It wasn’t my fault, the supplier dropped the ball.”

“Don’t look at me, I wasn’t set up for success.”

“Sometimes things just go wrong. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

We all know people who never take any blame. No matter what happens, their failures are always due to some external event. They’d be the next Steve Jobs if the universe wasn’t committed to keeping them down.

One of my friends insists that he’s the world’s greatest poker player, yet he can never win because he always gets bad cards. Instead of working on improving his game, he just complains about his bad luck. You can guess how we’ll this strategy is working out for him.

Learning requires an iterative process. If we’re constantly downplaying our own role when we fail, we’re ignoring the feedback mechanism that helps us grow and develop.

When a manager refuses to recognize the group’s responsibility in these struggles, he hinders the entire group’s ability to learn. As Bradley Staats wrote,

“When you assign responsibility for a failure to outside events, you negatively impact your motivation to try to learn. If you were simply unlucky, why even try to learn from it?”

It’s important to note that we’re all prone to overly weight components such as luck or task difficulty in our own failures while underweighting them in the struggles of others. We are, by default, subjective human beings. And for this reason, it becomes everyone’s responsibility to provide honest feedback and hold people accountable to their performance.

This isn’t solely a managerial responsibility but a requirement of everyone who makes up the team. Encourage everyone to be completely honest with themselves following a crisis and open yourself to their feedback as well. Then, a year later when your boss is still complaining about his ill fortune, you’ll be the one that’s driving improvement. And there’s few people more critical than those who push people to constantly improve.

The Disengaged Manager

“Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.” – John C. Maxwell

I once had a manager who was completely uninvolved in the daily operations of our engineering group. In some ways this was a positive – we had the freedom to choose our own paths and weren’t bothered with a lot of overhead. But it also brought drawbacks, he was so disengaged that he couldn’t help out when needed. Without a basic understanding of our work, he was largely ineffective in managing the group.

In retrospect, I mismanaged this situation from the start. I grumbled about his lack of involvement. I blamed it on a combination of disinterest and lack of ability. And as I spitefully cut him further out of the loop, his level of involvement continued to decline.

He was ineffective based on a lack of involvement. I resented it and involved him less. Which caused him to know even less and become more ineffective. Which I further resented. And so the vicious circle continued.

In actuality, this manager was trying to give me more freedom and control. He was overwhelmed with other responsibilities and figured his time was better spent in other areas.

Instead of responding with the petulance of a toddler, I should have put myself in his shoes. I would have seen the benefits of having the increased freedom and figured out a way to give him the information he needed to be more effective.

If you have a manager who’s too hand-off, try looking at things from her point of view. She’s trusting you to manage your own work and giving you the opportunity to take more initiative. She’s also trusting that you’ll keep her informed and engaged as needed.

Let her know that you appreciate the trust that she’s demonstrated in you, but that you’d also like the benefit of her expertise in certain areas. Then outline a plan to keep her regularly engaged and can highlight areas where you’d appreciate her thoughts.

Ultimately, a manager’s effectiveness will be dependent on the information they receive from their employees. You can choose to help this situation or initiate your own vicious circle.

The No-Feedback Manager

“The role of leaders in every organization,” Aubrey Daniels wrote, “is not to find fault or place blame, but to analyze why people are behaving as they are, and modify the consequences to promote the behavior they need.”

People don’t frequently do what they’re told. If they did, we would only eat healthy foods, never lose our temper, and exercise regularly. In reality, behaviors are driven not by instructions or antecedents, but the consequences that follow.

So when management offers initial instructions without follow-up feedback, it’s unlikely to be effective in driving the right behaviors throughout the organization. Worse, it sends a message to people that their efforts are unnoticed.

Despite endless advice on the importance of giving feedback in the workplace, many managers still fall short of this expectation – myself included. Most recognize the importance, yet don’t give it the priority it needs amidst all of the other issues.

If you feel as though your boss doesn’t recognize your work, resist the impulse to become a shameless self-promoter. No one likes that person.

Instead, focus on demonstrating the change that you want to see. Recognize the work of others in your group and offer feedback to your peers. Peers and coworkers can often give the most effective reinforcement because they see the daily behaviors and are in a better position to provide immediate feedback.

And if you’re concerned that your manager doesn’t recognize your own work, take more accountability for how your performance is viewed – send updates on progress, discuss setbacks and lessons learned, and regularly get feedback from stakeholders and pass it along to your boss. Don’t pester her with questions on how you’re doing, but show her what you’re working on and tell her how you think you’re doing. That opens the door for her to agree or offer any additional perspectives.

The Everything’s-a-Priority Manager

“The best thing I did as a manager at PayPal,” wrote Peter Thiel, “was to make every person in the company responsible for doing just one thing. Every employee’s one thing was unique, and everyone knew I would evaluate him only on that one thing.”

Peter Thiel recognized that for people to excel, they need to have clear focus and defined priorities. Yet managers routinely put their employees in double binds of conflicting priorities.

How frequently do we hear companies promising to deliver the highest technical quality while also being the lowest cost option?

Or who hasn’t been “empowered” to be innovative and take risks in the same conversation where they’re told to follow the procedure and make sure not to jeopardize this quarter’s numbers?

The result on employees isn’t surprising. People quickly become frustrated and disengaged to be put in a situation that they can’t win.

A situation that’s often made worse when management refuses to recognize the bind they’ve created – telling people that “of course you’re expected to do it all. That’s just the way it is here.”

Yet we can’t do it all. A lesson that most of us have learned – and are still learning – the hard way. Trying only dilutes our focus on the true priorities and sacrifices our opportunity to make a real difference.

In these situations, it’s up to each of us to recognize the area that we’ll deliver the most value. While management may be unwilling to recognize the trade-offs, taking the time to lay out your own priorities and critical responsibilities is a necessary part of making a positive impact. As Greg McKeown wrote in his book on the disciplined pursuit of less,

“Essentialists see trade-offs as an inherent part of life, not as an inherently negative part of life. Instead of asking, ‘What do I have to give up?’ they ask, ‘What do I want to go big on?’”

Where can you make a big enough impact that no one will care about the trade-off? What values and priorities are you unwilling to compromise on? Because as Ray Dalio outlined in Principles,

“In order to be great, one can’t compromise the uncompromisable.”

The “Incompetent” Manager

“I am, as I’ve said, merely competent. But in an age of incompetence, that makes me extraordinary.” – Billy Joel

If every employee who claimed to have an incompetent boss was correct, it wouldn’t speak well of our human species. With some of the stories that you hear, it’s a wonder that so many people are able to find their way into an office in the morning.

Make no mistake, there’s plenty of incompetent people out there. Flat earthers, anti-vaccers, and climate change deniers seem to be actually growing in numbers despite the overwhelming evidence disputing their theories.

But the majority of managers deemed “incompetent” are typically those who’ve just lost their technical edge. As management’s focus turns away from the hands-on technical work, it’s natural that their depth moves into different areas.

Which is a much easier problem than just general incompetence. And one that presents an opportunity for our own development.

Often the best way to further your own knowledge on a subject is to teach it to someone else. Similar to Frank Shamrock’s plus, minus, equal training mentality, the path to mastery includes teaching someone else the skills you’re looking to perfect.

When we teach others, we need to further our own understanding of a topic and be able to relate it to someone with a different background and perspectives. In the words of Seneca, “Docendo discimus,” (“By teaching we are learning”).

If your boss has lost his technical edge, see it as an opportunity to teach. Not only will it increase your own depth on a topic, but it will build trust in your relationship as well. And if there are responsibilities that his technical knowledge can’t support, offer to step in and help with those areas – it’ll increase your own responsibility and provide better overall support for your team.

Make Your Choice. And Commit to It.

“The effective executive accepts that the boss is human (something that intelligent young subordinates often find hard). Because the superior is human, he has his strengths; but he also has limitations. To build on his strengths, that is, to enable him to do what he can do, will make him effective—and will make the subordinate effective. To try to build on his weaknesses will be as frustrating and as stultifying as to try to build on the weaknesses of a subordinate. The effective executive, therefore, asks: ‘What can my boss do really well?’ ‘What has he done really well?’ ‘What does he need to know to use his strength?’ ‘What does he need to get from me to perform?’”- Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive

It would be wonderful if all of our managers were effective and successful in every area. But as long as we continue to promote human beings, we’ll gain the benefits of their strengths as well as the liabilities of their limitations.

The choice then, is whether you want to become a victim of a struggling manager or take agency and positively influence the situation. Accept it, change it, or leave it?

Many of these issues are manageable. We just need to make a decision and commit to it. As Seneca put it, “It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.”

Encourage People to be Curious. It’s Easier Than You Think.

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Photo by Jonas Verstuyft on Unsplash

“A society that values order above all else will seek to suppress curiosity. But a society that believes in progress, innovation, and creativity will cultivate it, recognizing that the inquiring minds of its people constitute its most valuable asset,” wrote Ian Leslie in his inspirational book on the power of curiosity in propelling us forward.

In my many years of interviewing, hiring, and managing people, I’ve consistently found curiosity to be the most underrated quality in an employee.

Integrity is critical. We need to trust peoples’ decision-making ethics. While it may not accomplish anything on its own, a lack of integrity disqualifies everything else.

And work ethic is essential. We want people who will push through the difficulties they’re sure to encounter.

But third – and most uncommon – is curiosity. With enough curiosity, we can learn nearly anything. It’s the spark behind the spark of every great idea and major breakthrough. It admits that we don’t have all the answers. And recognizes that not only is this okay, it’s essential to growth.

This isn’t a new concept. Many companies do recognize the inherent value of encouraging curiosity and want to drive a healthy level of skepticism towards the status quo. Yet we still struggle to implement this trait – too often trading it for the relative safety of procedures and past precedent.

It’s easy to blame this mindset on an outdated educational system, online echo chambers, and right-wing political pundits. Yet too many of our companies are also contributing to the problem, often without even realizing it.

Curiosity Empowerment is Not the Answer 

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” – Albert Einstein

In a recent study of over 23,000 people, 83% of senior managers said curiosity was encouraged at their companies. Unfortunately, only 52% of their employees said the same. Even worse, a shocking 81% of employees said that curiosity has no impact on their compensation.

These senior managers weren’t lying. Well, maybe some of them were. I mean, there’s likely to be some lawyers in the mix. But the majority recognize the value that curiosity brings to an organization and truly believed that their company was encouraging this behavior.

Yet if this encouragement isn’t making its way to the individual contributors, it’s all for naught. Companies are built and thrive based on the people who add hands-on value every day. If that group doesn’t believe curiosity is encouraged, they’re unlikely to delve into new information and push the bounds of new opportunities.

As the rift continues to widen between senior management intentions and the actual message that makes its way to the people on the front lines, we need to consider whether we’re looking at this in the wrong way. We’ve become focused on empowering our employees to be creative, yet we forget that the only reason we need to empower someone is because we’ve previously disempowered them.

Maybe instead of lining the halls with motivational posters and offering lip service to the notion of curiosity, we should just focus on avoiding the behaviors that are stifling it. And make sure the message we want to send is the one that actually comes across.

And more than anything, I think this all comes down to whether we take a long or a short view on risk.

A Long View on Risk

“He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.” – Muhammad Ali

Imagine that you have the following pair of decisions:

Decision 1: Choose between

A: a sure gain of $240

B: a 25% chance to gain $1000 and 75% chance to gain nothing.

Decision 2: Choose between

C: a sure loss of $750

D: a 75% chance to lose $1000 and 25% chance to lose nothing.

The vast majority of people will choose the combination of options A and D, taking a sure gain and avoiding a sure loss. And yet, the pairing A and D result in a worse likelihood of success than the BC combination.

We tend to be risk averse in the area of potential gains yet risk seeking when facing a potential loss. Which is understandable. It’s linked to an emotional desire to avoid loss in general – even the perceived loss of a potential sure gain. Yet this reaction also limits us and blinds us to the long-term view. As Daniel Kahneman described the results of this experiment,

“It is costly to be risk averse for gains and risk seeking for losses. These attitudes make you willing to pay a premium to obtain a sure gain rather than face a gamble, and also willing to pay a premium (in expected value) to avoid a sure loss. Both payments come out of the same pocket, and when you face both kinds of problems at once, the discrepant attitudes are unlikely to be optimal.”

When our default choice is driven by loss aversion, we make decisions that are driven by exaggerated caution. While this mindset protects us in the short-term, it limits our willingness to seek out new opportunities and maximize our potential benefit.

Consider another choice. Imagine that you face a chance that could, in equal probabilities, either double or halve your monetary contribution to your company. Would you take it?

Most people would say no. Because the consequence of delivering half of their expected value is far worse than the potential benefit of doubling it.

Yet if you asked your company’s CEO, she’d likely want everyone to take this risk. Because if everyone splits the odds, the company comes out well ahead.

People are frequently loss averse within their own domains. And this is natural. But this behavior – when performed throughout an organization – will discourage the overall organization from taking risks.

In each instance, our default response is to protect against loss in individual decisions. When we take this short view of risk, it’s easy to rationalize excessive caution and limit our overall risk posture. Yet this position, when repeated across multiple events, limits our potential to grow and expand.

If we want to encourage people to be more curious, it starts with redefining how the company encourages people to take risks. Instead of having everyone make these decisions in a vacuum, it’s up to the company leadership to take and encourage a long view – one that recognizes individual losses aren’t paralyzing as long as the company is moving in the right direction. Because in the long view, the benefits will outweigh the losses. Or in the wise words of Ed Catmull,

“It is not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It is the manager’s job to make it safe to take them.”

And the most important step in making it safe for people to take risks is to stop punishing people when they don’t work out.

A Long View on Failure

“Failure isn’t a necessary evil. In fact, it isn’t evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new.” – Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.

The fear of failure is curiosity’s mortal enemy. While I believe that most people are naturally curious, it’s this fear of negative repercussion that keeps them from pushing these boundaries.

How many people have been encouraged to take risks, only to be punished when they don’t work out? How many of these same people will take a risk again the next time?

When we take a long view on risks, we recognize that the chance of failure is the cost of curiosity. And that absorbing the occasional setback is worth the breakthroughs that come from encouraging risk and curiosity.

When organizations prioritize the desire for everything to go smoothly, they measure people on their ability to avoid mistakes as opposed to solve problems and create new opportunities. And it doesn’t take long for people to realize that the safest course of action is to maintain, not innovate. Follow directions, don’t ask questions.

The alternative is to take the long view on failure. To recognize that the large majority of successes don’t start out successful. They go through periods of struggles and setbacks before eventually finding their way to success. It’s the leader’s job to create an environment where people can work through these struggles until that eventual success can emerge. As the great Orson Welles put it,

“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”

I’m not suggesting that we lose accountability. People need to be responsible for their decisions. But the next time you’re confronted with someone who took a risk that didn’t work out, recognize that your response will not only influence their future behavior, but the behavior of the entire organization.

And with each failure that we punish, we push people towards a risk-averse – and curiosity-averse – mindset.

Curiosity Needs a Long View

“We are all lifelong learners, from day one to twenty-thousand-and-one, and that’s why we keep exploring, wondering and discovering, yearning and learning, reaching with more than just our hands… The future belongs to the curious.” – Skillshare Manifesto on Curiosity

Most managers recognize that you get what you measure. But more than that, you get what you celebrate. So if we really want to encourage curiosity, we need to ask ourselves – what exactly are we celebrating?

Successful organizations always have a culture of curiosity. In an ever-changing world, companies need employees at all levels to seek out new information and make new connections.

And people are naturally curious. Most employees want to dig into topics that interest them and gain more knowledge in areas that will help them make a bigger difference.

But if we’re creating environments that discourage risk and punish failure, why would we expect our people to embrace curiosity? The motivational posters just aren’t that convincing.

As leaders, it’s our responsibility to celebrate the behaviors that we want to see. To celebrate not just the successes and end results, but the entire process. And to recognize that risk and failure are necessary byproducts of an environment that encourages curiosity.

When we take a long view on risk and failure, it’s easier to see that change and uncertainty are a part of life. Our job then isn’t to avoid them, but to build the capacity to recover when things don’t go our way. And in a world where the one constant is change, creating this environment becomes one of our most critical leadership responsibilities.

Because the future truly does belong to the curious.

4 Ways to Encourage People to Use Their Vacation Time

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Photo by Deanna Ritchie on Unsplash

“The mind ought sometimes to be diverted that it may return to better thinking,” wrote Plato in Phaedrus, capturing the importance of rest and recovery in our ability to make a meaningful impact. And now, over two millennia later – amidst our productivity obsessions and busyness status symbols – this advice is as timely as ever.

Last year over half of all Americans left vacation time on the table, forfeiting over 212 million days. Our time away from work seems to have gone from  a way of expanding our experiences and mindsets to a luxury of the self-indulgent and a sign of the uncommitted.

Yet we know that vacation and recovery are critical for not only our peace of mind but our ability to learn and grow. Underscoring this thought, The Mission Daily recently revisited multiple ways that vacation can expand our minds and contribute to accelerated growth. And as Bradley Staats wrote in Never Stop Learning,

“When we’re rested, we can fully tap into our analytic horsepower. We are also more likely to notice the details around us, rather than fixating on a particular aspect of a problem, or perhaps missing the problem entirely. It is impossible to keep at highly demanding tasks, be they cognitive or physical, indefinitely; breaks—both within a day and across days—allow us to recover and recenter so that we can move forward in a productive manner.”

As leaders, we often have people who are ambitious and driven to excel in their careers. And many people do enjoy their jobs. They’re putting in extra time because they want to, not because their boss is forcing them.

Yet it’s important to recognize that we need to take the long view. Yes we want our people to excel and succeed in their careers. But for people to be successful in the long-term, they also need to develop healthy habits and have fulfilling lives outside of work.

Demanding too much of our people – even when they want to give it – is poor leadership. It sacrifices their long-term success for the immediate gains. It likens them to machines on an assembly line – commodities to be used and replaced as necessary.

Yet encouraging our teams to find the time for recovery and vacation goes beyond offering lip service to the notion of work-life balance. Instead, we need to make it easier for them to achieve that balance. We need to create environments that actively promote this behavior.

And while there’s no one answer on how to create this environment, the following are a number of ways that have worked for me.

Measure Performance. And Only Performance.

“All one can measure is performance. And all one should measure is performance.” – Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive

Conventional wisdom tells us that those who work more hours end up being more productive. Yet, as is often the case with conventional wisdom, reality offers a different view.

Boston University professor Erin Reid studied firms with high expectations for working significant extra hours and measured the impact it had on performance. She found that while managers would penalize employees who admittedly put in less time, they couldn’t differentiate between those who actually worked long hours and those who just appeared to. She also found no correlation between actual performance and hours worked.

So why the obsession with extra time if it didn’t translate into a relative impact? For one, it’s easy. Measuring hours doesn’t require any leadership or management engagement. Any moron can run a timekeeping report – beware any manager who prioritizes this measure because it’s usually a sign that he doesn’t understand what else is going on.

But another reason is that too many managers grew up making these same sacrifices. They’ve missed out on their children’s lives and have lost touch with their spouse. Cognitive dissonance rarely lets them acknowledge this as a poor life decision, so they rationalize it away as a necessary commitment. As Reid wrote,

“Leaders of organizations, however, who are already invested in how things work, and who themselves likely made many personal sacrifices to advance, may have trouble accepting the possibility that there might be another way to work.”

If we expect people to develop healthy habits and lead fulfilling lives outside of work, this is the mindset that needs to change. And it starts with today’s leaders.

Peter Drucker often said, “what gets measured, gets managed.” So we all need to choose what we want to manage. Time someone spends logged into a computer? Or the actual value of their contribution?

Choose wisely, because we don’t get to pick both.

Develop Defense in Depth.

“The reliability that matters is not the simple reliability of one component of a system, but the final reliability of the total control system.” — Garrett Hardin

While Hollywood movies often portray elevators as an impending danger, always ready to send the car and its hapless inhabitants plummeting to the ground, there is very little chance of this happening in reality.

The main reason is that elevators are built with several redundant safety features. Elevators typically have eight cables while just one is enough to handle the weight of the car plus riders. Even if all of the cables somehow, each elevator has a built-in brake system that will grab the rails if the car begins moving too fast.

Many engineering designs include multiple layers of redundancy, which limit the overall reliance on one specific feature. And just as our cars offer multiple brake circuits and your private airplane includes a fail-safe engine, our teams need a level of redundancy to limit the reliance on any one person.

Most employees take pride in their work and in their ability to make a unique impact. They enjoy being relied upon and want to be a critical resource. And we should encourage this behavior. It opens new opportunities and expands the company’s overall capabilities.

But we also need to develop defense in depth by cross-training our people. Not only does it eliminate single-point failure liabilities, but it also reduces the burden placed on any one individual.

When people feel as though no one else can cover their work, they’re less likely to take time away and more likely to always be plugged into the office. This represents a leadership failure in that we’ve poorly managed our resources to overly rely on any one contributor.

The time to develop effective backups is before there’s an emergency. The time to cross-train employees is before your critical talent turns in her notice. In the wise timeless words of Confucius,

“The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.”

Help People Be Effective at Work.

“The effectiveness of work increases according to geometric progression if there are no interruptions.” – Andre Maurois

Before my daughter goes to bed each night, we tell each other about our days. She shares information about the goings-on of her third-grade class in exchange for anecdotes of what I did at work that day. Although the other day she told me, “Daddy, I don’t think you’re telling me everything. It seems as though you should get much more done in your day.”

Despite my assurance that I was in fact telling her everything I accomplished that day, she remained skeptical. The fact was, my daily achievements were unimpressive to an eight-year-old.

Apparently, time spent in meetings and slogging through bureaucracies doesn’t warrant a lot of respect. And thinking about it some more, it really shouldn’t.

Yet what if we actually used our time at work to…you know…work?

It’s no wonder that our people struggle to take time off. We fill their (and our own) days with tangential efforts and “urgent” distractions until there’s little time remaining to actually perform their key job responsibilities.

In a 1981 interview, Nobel laureate Richard Feynman discussed how he makes sure he has time to think about difficult problems,

“To do high, real good physics work you do need absolutely solid lengths of time… it needs a lot of concentration—that is, solid time to think—and if you’ve got a job in administrating anything like that, then you don’t have the solid time. So I have invented another myth for myself—that I’m irresponsible. I tell everybody, I don’t do anything. If anybody asks me to be on a committee to take care of admissions, no, I’m irresponsible.”

Feynman avoided all administrative duties that he considered to be distractions. He knew that although he could do them – and often cared that those tasks were done well – they would negatively impact his ability to focus on the truly important, namely “doing real good physics work.”

If we want to encourage our people to lead fulfilling lives outside of work, they need to have a better opportunity to complete their work at work. And this starts with protecting their time and giving them the best opportunity to focus on the work that really matters.

Before you re-prioritize people throughout the day, stop and consider whether you’re helping them focus on their critical responsibilities, or whether you’re just piling on distractions and breaking up their concentration.

Set the Example. 

“The reality is that the only way change comes is when you lead by example.” – Anne Wojcicki

More than anything, leaders need to set the example through their own behavior.

People watch the leader. Every action, every response, offers an example for how they should respond in future situations.

I once had a manager who never took time off. He was there when I arrived and there when I left. And there never seemed to be a time of day that he wasn’t sending out emails to the team.

He didn’t overtly demand this level of supplemental effort from anyone else, but the message was clear: he prioritized work above all else – and if we wanted to get where he was, we should do the same.

Good leaders are always conscious of the fact that their actions set the example for others, for better or worse. Just as kids learn more from watching what their parents do than what they say, people watch a leader’s actions and learn what behavior is valued.

So to affect the behaviors we want, we need to lead by example. Doing anything else sends an unclear picture to our team. In the words of leadership expert John C. Maxwell,

“Followers may doubt what their leaders say, but they usually believe what they do.”

Take your own vacation time. Unplug and let yourself be unavailable for a little while. Develop healthy habits and make sure there are things in your life that give you meaning outside of work.

In short, show people that you don’t expect them to live at the office – because you certainly don’t plan to.

Not only will it encourage them to detach and lead healthier lives, but I’m guessing it will have some benefit for our own lives as well.

Balance Over Burnout

“Burnout is not the price you have to pay for success.” – Ariana Huffington, Tribe of Mentors

There’s the often-used cliche of the evil boss forcing his employees to work under constant threat of firing. And these degenerates are out there, sowing disengagement and generally giving management a bad name. We’ve all met a real-life version of Bill Lumbergh at some point in our lives.

But this article isn’t for them. For people who choose to manage that way, it’s highly unlikely that a seven-minute online article will convince them to change their ways. But I do believe this group’s in the minority, and getting smaller with each passing year.

Most leaders are just trying to do the best that they can within difficult roles. They’re trying to balance the expectations for improved quality within heightened budgetary and schedule pressures. They work with good people who want to make a difference and be proud of their contributions.

Which makes this all the more difficult. When we have teams of ambitious, dedicated people, they can push each other into unhealthy habits in their pursuit of success. It’s the leader’s responsibility to see this and manage it with a long-term view, not exploit it for short-term gains.

It’s the leader’s responsibility to protect their people, even from their own ambition and drive when needed. To do anything else would be irresponsible. And we’d no longer deserve the role of a leader. Returning again to the wise words of Peter Drucker,

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

Why Most Plans are Terrible. And How to Improve Them.

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“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail,” was the advice of Benjamin Franklin and every sanctimonious boss that ever lived. Yet what happens when our very plans set us up for failure?

We’ve all heard about the importance of planning. It’s an easy thing to preach, which probably explains why so many people drone on about it. Yet for all of this diatribe, it doesn’t seem as though we’re getting any better at finishing things on time. Whether it’s a new development project, a kitchen remodel, or the time that it should take me to write this article, we’re constantly underestimating the time needed to do our work.

Despite the push to schedule every aspect of our day – and create endless checklists of trivialities – we continue to repeat these same mistakes. Maybe it’s time to try something different. Or just consider whether any of us really know what we’re doing.

Conjunctive and Disjunctive Events

“We must become more comfortable with probability and uncertainty.” – Nate Silver

Imagine that we have a bag filled with red and white marbles. Which of the below choices would you prefer to gamble on?

A. Draw a red marble from a bag of 50% red marbles and 50% white marbles.

B. Draw seven red marbles in a row from a bag containing 90% red marbles and 10% white marbles.

C. Draw at least one white marble in seven tries from a bag containing 90% red marbles and 10% white marbles.

As psychology professor Maya Bar-Hillel found out, the majority of people choose B, then A, then C. Yet the actual likelihood runs in the opposite direction, C (52%) – A (50%) – B (48%).

In multiple studies similar to this one, people repeatedly overestimate the probability of conjunctive events and underestimate the likelihood of disjunctive events.

When we consider the likelihood of drawing seven red marbles in a row, we start with the initial probability of 90%. While we all inherently know that probability decreases with compounding events, we rarely adjust to fully account for this impact.

Conversely, we see the 10% likelihood of drawing a white marble and extend this probability across each subsequent opportunity. As with any type of anchoring bias, we struggle to sufficiently adjust from our starting point, skewing our final position and giving us an inaccurate perspective of future probabilities.

So why should you care? Well, not only does this example give you a piece of trivia that’s sure to earn eye rolls at parties, but it also helps show why most of our plans are doomed from the start. We fail to plan for disjunctive events.

Expect the Unexpected

“The unexpected always happens—the unexpected is indeed the only thing one can confidently expect. And almost never is it a pleasant surprise.” – Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive

Nothing new is easy. Or simple. Most projects – whether it’s a new product development or an organizational change – contain hundreds of different events that all need to occur for the overall project to succeed.

Each of these projects represents a series of conjunctive events. If a project has 100 different tasks, each with a likelihood of success at 99%, it stands to reason that the overall project will finish on time.

Yet, the probability of these 100 conjunctive events all succeeding is less than 37%. As the total number of events increases, our overall likelihood of success drops significantly.

We rarely know where the problem will occur or which event will fail to happen as planned. And this often causes us to put together success-based plans that don’t account for any deviations. But even though the probability of each event is small, the likelihood that something will go wrong is high. And we ignore this probability at our peril. Or as the great J.R.R. Tolkien pointed out,

“It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.”

Prepare for the Worst

In 1911, two teams of explorers set off to be the first people in history to reach the South Pole. One expedition was led by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, the other by British naval officer Robert Falcon Scott. Both developed plans and provisions for their trip, yet one ended in success while the other cost the lives of everyone he led.

Amundsen studied the methods of the Eskimos and experienced Arctic travelers to determine the best method to transport his team’s equipment and supplies was by dogsled. He assembled a team of expert skiers and dog handlers and planned a schedule that limited the daily travel to 15-20 miles over a six-hour period, making sure people had plenty of time for rest and recovery. Amundsen stocked supply depots along the way so that his team didn’t need to carry everything throughout the entire trip. He gave his people the best gear possible so they could adapt into different conditions and better handle any issues.

Scott, in contrast, elected to use motorized sledges that ended up breaking down five days into the trip. As a result, his team needed to haul all of their own supplies, exhausting everyone. He also stocked supply depots, but failed to bring extra reserves and his team was constantly short on food and water. Their gear proved to be inadequate for the Antarctic environment and it wasn’t long before every team member had frostbite. One man reportedly needed an hour every morning just to get his boots onto his swollen, gangrenous feet.

When Scott’s team eventually did reach their destination on January 17, 1912, they were greeted by the Norwegian flag and a letter from Amundsen, letting them know that the other team had beaten them by five weeks. Amundsen’s team was well-prepared to deal with the harsh Antarctic environment and they returned safely to their base camp – the worst thing that happened was one team member got an infected tooth that needed to be removed. Scott, on the other hand, failed to prepare his team for the unexpected difficulties they experienced. The elements ultimately became too much for them on the return trip and they died 150 miles from their base camp.

We know Scott’s story from his diary, with some of his last words being, “We took risks, we knew we took them; things have come out against us, and therefore we have no cause for complaint, but bow to the will of Providence, determined still to do our best to the last.”

Scott died blaming the environment for his failure. Yet it was his own preparation and inability to respond to changing situations that cost him and his team their lives.

Planning Over Plans

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the life-and-death situations surrounding a trek to the South Pole, it’s easy to recognize the importance of accounting for the unexpected. Yet our daily work brings this same need.

Failures are, by definition, unpredictable. The predictable failure never occurs.

If I told you the exact manner by which your project would fall apart, you’d change plans and protect yourself against that risk.

Thus it’s those struggles that we don’t anticipate which ultimately become our downfall – the unknown unknowns that seemingly come out of nowhere to foil our carefully laid plans.

The answer then, I think, isn’t to double down on our obsession with plans. That route only leads to more rigidity. And more misplaced confidence in our perceived chances of success.

Instead, we need to recognize that we don’t have all the answers. Assume that we don’t have a perfect map and prepare ourselves to deal with those surprises – whatever form they take – that will eventually come up.

The purpose of planning then isn’t to develop plans, but options. Options that set us up to adapt to the changing circumstances that are sure to happen.

Challenge your assumptions. Give yourself extra time and resources to manage the unexpected. And ask yourself, what will I do if things don’t go as planned?

As Dylan Evans wrote in Risk Intelligence: How to Live with Uncertainty, describing the essential skill of understanding the limits of our knowledge and using that insight to improve our decision-making,

“Our ability to cope with uncertainty is one of the most important requirements for success in life, yet also one of the most neglected. We may not appreciate just how often we’re required to exercise it, and how much impact our ability to do so can have on our lives, and even on the whole of society.”

There are always more possibilities before us than we can imagine. The best we can do is be ready to change and adapt with them.

Stop Wasting Time on the Unimportant

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When the infamous bank robber Willy Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”

We all spend the majority of our day looking to make a meaningful impact. But how many of our efforts set us up to actually deliver one? Are we going where the money is or just chasing the same dead-ends of frustration?

Pareto’s Law states that 80% of our outputs come from 20% of our inputs. If we focus our attention on activities that rank in the top 20% in terms of importance, we’ll get an 80% return on our efforts. If our to-do lists have ten items on them, the two most important ones will give an 80% return on our time.

Yet what is this 20%? What are these items that deliver the vast majority of our impact?

It’s a difficult question. For one, it’s context specific, the answer changes for most people. But mainly, it’s because we struggle to project long-term impacts. We just don’t always have the clarity to recognize which investments will pay out 10x. Otherwise, this would all be much easier.

As a result, we’re saddled with unfocused ambition that is more likely to lead to frustration than fulfillment. And as Tim Ferriss wisely put it, “Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.”

But maybe we just need to look at the question in a different way.

The Benefits of Inversion

Charlie Munger is fond of saying, “All I want to know is where I’m going to die, so I’ll never go there.” His thinking was inspired by the German mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, who made great strides in the field of mathematics by following the strategy “man muss immer umkehren” (loosely translated to “invert, always invert.”) In Munger’s words,

“[Jacobi] knew that it is in the nature of things that many hard problems are best solved when they are addressed backward.”

Instead of locking down that 20% that will yield an 80% return, try thinking about that 80% of your time that isn’t doing it’s fair share. While it’s difficult to project long-term benefits and major successes, it’s much easier to recognize which parts of our day have little chance of delivering worthwhile returns.

Yeah, those two hours spent on YouTube probably fall directly into that bottom 80%. But for those other less clear areas, I’ve found that a couple questions typically help differentiate between the critical and the non-essential.

What problem is this solving?

“The people above you (bosses, management, and organization leaders) want one thing most of all—they want solutions to problems.” – Jay Abraham, Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got

The large majority of entrepreneurs and founders have one thing in common. They didn’t necessarily start out with a great product or world-changing idea. Instead, they all started with the hopes of solving a problem.

If you’re not solving a problem – or opening up a new opportunity – it’s unlikely that you’re going to inspire people to make a change. And if you’re not inspiring them to make a change, why should they bother noticing?

Ask yourself, is this work solving a problem or just perpetuating the current status quo? I realize that not everyone is working to resolve the organization’s biggest issue. But most companies have a whole host of inefficiencies and struggles that no one is currently handling (or at least handling well). With these opportunities surrounding us, why would you want to spend your time working on something that isn’t going to bring about a positive change?

Can someone else do this just as well?

“Our world no longer fairly compensates people who are cogs in a giant machine.” – Seth Godin, Linchpin

Effectiveness comes from unique contributions. We’re more productive and generally happier when we’re working in areas that align with our strengths and help us make a unique contribution.

Would you rather do work that’s unique and will be associated with your legacy, or work that can be easily replicated by any number of employees? Because if your work can be easily replicated, there’s not much that’s setting you apart. As Seth Godin wrote,

“You don’t become indispensable merely because you’re different. But the only way to be indispensable is to be different. That’s because if you’re the same, so are plenty of other people.”

Too many people fall into the trap of doing work because they can do it. When in actuality, just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean that you should. If it doesn’t align with your strengths, there’s likely to be other people who are better suited for that work. Find them. Develop them. Train them. And get back to focusing on work that let’s you stand out.

Is this in line with your mission?

In his tremendous book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, Greg McKeown tells the story of a twelve-year old girl named Cynthia who was waiting to spend a special evening in San Francisco with her father. They made plans to catch a trolley to Chinatown, eat their favorite Chinese food, see the sights, and catch a movie together. Everything was going according to plan until her father ran into an old college friend and business associate, who invited them out for a seafood dinner at the Wharf. Her father responded: “Bob, it’s so great to see you. Dinner at the Wharf sounds great!”

Cynthia was crestfallen. Her special evening with her father was falling apart. Until he continued: “But not tonight. Cynthia and I have a special date planned, don’t we?” And with that he grabbed her hand and they ran out the door to what was an unforgettable time together.

Cynthia’s father was the famed management thinker Steven R. Covey. A man who lived his advice on prioritization and insisted on using his time to focus on those things he believed truly mattered. In Cynthia’s words, this one decision, “bonded him to me forever because I knew what mattered most to him was me!”

It’s easy to mistake the non-essential for the essential when we lack clarity on which work aligns to our mission. The alternative is to stop and consider which efforts further our mission and which ones are non-essential distractions. As Covey was fond of saying,

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

Are you doing this to avoid something else?

“Being busy is most often used as a guise for avoiding the few critically important but uncomfortable actions.” – Tim Ferriss, The 4-Hour Workweek

One hundred years ago, a consultant named Ivy Lee met with the president of Bethlehem Steel, Charles M. Schwab, in an attempt to improve the effectiveness of Bethlehem’s executive staff. Lee’s method for achieving peak productivity was simple and is as relevant today as it no doubt was in 1918. His method:

  1. At the end of each workday, write down the six most important things you need to accomplish tomorrow. Only six.
  2. Prioritize those six items in order of importance.
  3. Tomorrow morning, concentrate on the top task. Don’t move on to the second task until the first is finished.
  4. Approach the rest of the list in the same manner and repeat going forward.

The simplicity of Lee’s method forces us to prioritize our work and avoid procrastinating on those critical, yet uncomfortable, actions. Personally speaking, if I’m developing my priorities at the end of the day, I’m much more likely to sign tomorrow’s version of myself up for difficult tasks that I know are important. If I wait until the morning to set those priorities, it’s too easy for me to rationalize away the important for the immediate.

Too frequently we sacrifice the discipline of doing what we know is most critical. Throughout each day, ask yourself: If this is the only thing I accomplish today, will I be happy with my day?

If the answer is no, then perhaps there’s a better use for your time.

Does it involve the word “meeting?”

“If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be ‘meetings.’” – Dave Barry

Don’t trust anyone who actively looks forward to a day of meetings. There’s no surer sign of someone who’s looking to avoid doing actual work for the majority of their day. As the great Peter Drucker put it, “one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.” 

Meetings are sometimes necessary. We need to make sure people have the knowledge they need to do their jobs. But they should be the exception instead of the rule. Most meetings are to report status. And most status can be communicated through other more efficient means.

Limit meetings to those that require one. And maybe everyone won’t be so burned out that they’ll actually be useful.

If you didn’t do this, are there any (real) negative consequences?

Have you ever issued reports that you suspected no one read? Or held meetings that didn’t benefit anyone? If you just stopped doing them, would anyone complain?

My engineering group used to issue a weekly progress report. It gave a detailed update to senior management on each project and the varying levels of performance. It was a pain to pull together each week, not the least of which involved pulling the engineers out of their work to fill out a report that was outdated the second it was issued.

One day, we just stopped issuing it. And no one said anything. Instead, we were able to take this time and turn it towards more productive areas.

This practice, referred to as the “reverse-pilot” encourages us to stop doing a suspect effort and see if anyone notices its absence. It often exposes those tasks which were at one point useful but no longer offer a benefit worth the cost.

Ask for forgiveness rather than permission. Because while most people are fast to say no beforehand, they’re hesitant to object afterwards.

Is this something you truly enjoy?

Because life’s too short to fill our days with tasks we don’t like to do.

A To-Do List and a Not-To-Do List

“One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always runs to simplicity.” – Bruce Lee

There’s few things more depressing for me than coming home from a busy day yet having the realization that I didn’t really accomplish anything worthwhile.

It’s tempting to say that everything is important. It’s easy to make everything a top priority and hedge our efforts by focusing on everything all at once. The only problem is that nothing meaningful ever really gets done.

The sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, once recounted his experience as the Secretary of State as one of ineffectual busyness and empty accomplishments. As he wrote in his journal,

“Every day starts new game to me, upon the field of my duties; but the hurry of the hour leaves me no time for the pursuit of it, and at the close of my Career I shall merely have gone helter skelter through the current business of the Office, and leave no permanent trace of my ever having been in it behind.”

Without the discipline to focus on the truly important, it’s easy to fall into the busyness trap. Without taking the time to set our own priorities, others will be happy to do it for us.

While it’s often difficult to see what work will be a top investment, it’s much easier to recognize the efforts those efforts that fill our days with empty accomplishments and frustration instead of fulfillment.

Decide what you’re not going to do. Returning to the advice of the great Charlie Munger, “It is remarkable how much long-term advantage we have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.”

5 Reminders to My Future Self: How to Be a Better Parent

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“No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,” Nietzsche wrote in his  classic piece on education and the journey we all undertake to become who we are. And yet, as parents we seem more intent on not only building these bridges for our children, but specifying every design detail as well.

My son started kindergarten today. As he walked up the steps onto the school bus – too excited to look back and give me another wave good bye – he officially began what I hope will be a long journey through learning and self-discovery. One that will take him further away from me and expose him to a completely new world of influences and opportunities.

And it’s a good thing. I know that. Even if a part of me still wants to help guide him through his day, helping him with each decision, being there if he needs me.

Yet the truth is that he needs this freedom. Whether he’ll ever be fully ready for it is immaterial. Risks and mistakes are part of growing up. They’re necessary steps towards encouraging our kids to build their own bridges. As parents, we inherently know this, even if we find it difficult to implement on a daily basis.

In a recent Mission Daily podcast, Chad Grills and Stephanie Postles discussed the impact that our collective helicopter parenting has on our kids. With parental oversight and management at an all-time high, it shouldn’t be a surprise that childhood anxiety has climbed with it – getting to the point that 1 in 3 kids meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder.

I don’t want this for my kids. I mean, who would? Yet I know it will be a struggle. I want to be involved and helpful yet not overbearing. And I’m sure this line will continue to blur and I’ll occasionally find myself on the wrong side.

So I’m writing out these reminders. A couple of thoughts to help the future versions of myself stay grounded with what’s important. To be read every time I find myself worrying about a spelling grade instead of areas that are much more important.

1. Help Him Follow His Passions. Not Yours.

When Albert Einstein was 5, his mother enrolled him in piano lessons. Yet he didn’t start loving music until he was a teenager, after he stopped taking lessons and found Mozart’s sonatas. Many years later, he wrote a letter of advice to his son, saying that “you learn the most from things that you enjoy doing so much that you don’t even notice the time is passing.”

Trying to sculpt your kids into your vision of success won’t bring them a fulfilling life. Just as you shudder at the thought of your own parents defining your success, your kids need to have their own first-hand experiences. They need to have their own adventures.

Constant involvement and daily management will only teach him that he can’t do it without you. It robs him of having agency in his own life. Are you raising someone who has the courage to pursue his own path? A rebel or a conformist?

By all means share your obsessions. Lead with enthusiasm. And show him the wonder of pursuing things that you find truly meaningful. But recognize that you can’t mandate excitement. And if you want him to make his own mark on the world, let him pursue his passions, not yours.

2. Help Him Develop a Love of Learning

If he gains one thing in this entire year, let it be a love of learning. He has it now. He’s full of questions. He loves understanding how things work, building new contraptions, and doing any puzzles he can get his hands on.

Maybe it’s less about gaining this love than preserving it in the face of everything else. Don’t worry so much about the vocabulary tests and whether he colors in the lines. Is he taking on new challenges and interested in trying new things? This curiosity will matter far more in life than how many sight words he can master before his sixth birthday.

Encourage continuous discovery. In the words of the great Bruce Lee, “Learning is definitely not mere imitation or the ability to accumulate and conform to fixed knowledge. Learning is a constant process of discovery and never a concluding one.”

3. Recognize His Efforts. Not His Struggles.

Just as it’s important to encourage that he try new things, it’s equally important not to be critical of his failures. Otherwise, don’t be surprised when he reverts back to the easy successes that earn him praise.

Lead with your own imperfections. Demonstrate that spirit of experimentation. Then acknowledge your own mistakes without regret.

Remember the lessons we learn best are the ones that we learn the hard way. Encourage him to see experimentation as a means of exploration and not as a race to the finish line. This perseverance and resiliency is the cost of admission in a world that will be defined by those who can solve interesting problems.

4. Treasure Your Time Together. Be Present.

I won’t tell you that time is precious. You know this. But as commitments grow and time refuses to expand with them, recognize the importance of making the most of the time you do have together. Would you rather be reading with your son or reading on your phone? Would you rather be catching up on emails or teaching him to play catch in the backyard?

When you look back on these decisions, which ones are you going to be happy with? To quote Seth Godin, “What could possibly be more important than your kid? Please don’t play the busy card. If you spend 2 hours a day without an electronic device, looking your kid in the eye, talking to them and solving interesting problems, you will raise a different kid than someone who doesn’t do that.”

5. Be the Hero He Thinks You Are.

Remember that right now, you’re his hero. When you’re there, he’s safe. In his eyes, you can take care of anything he needs.

This won’t last forever. As him and his sister continue growing up, they’ll eventually see that their dad can’t change the world for them. A hug won’t always make everything better. Their perspectives will grow and their eyes will open more and your faults will be more visible. Your limitations more defined.

But those limitations don’t need to define you. Remember that they’re watching you. Every minute that you spend together they learn something. Every interaction helps form the basis for their behavior in the future.

Recognize the rare privilege that this is. Be that hero. Give them lessons and memories they’ll carry forward with pride. And show them that the cape they put on your shoulders really belongs there.

Create the Environment. And Let Them Grow.

For anyone that claims to be a parenting expert, I don’t think this role actually exists. We’re all strictly amateurs.

So while there’s an often-overwhelming pressure to help our kids reach that success finish line, I can’t imagine they want us to sculpt them into our vision of success. Just as we would likely cringe at the idea of our own parents choosing our futures.

Instead, we can provide a positive, supportive environment. One that encourages them to realize their own paths and grow within them. Because in Goethe’s timeless words, “There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.”

How to be a Better Leader by Keeping Your Mouth Shut

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“The power of preserving silence is the very first requisite to all who wish to shine, or even please in discourse; and those who cannot preserve it, have really no business to speak,” wrote Arthur Martine, whose advice on conversation and connection has, if anything, become more relevant today than when first published over 150 years ago. And while most of us recognize the negative social aspects of failing to keep our mouths shut, we struggle to see silence as a critical part of leadership.

We’ve come to picture great leaders as those who give inspirational speeches and always have the perfect answer. We celebrate the leader who lives in the spotlight and is the constant center of attention.

But this image sets us up with unreasonable expectations. For one, no one has all of the answers. And two, people who constantly preach inspiration generally make us want to gag.

We all want to be effective. And we all want to be heard. Yet it’s not always the job of the leader to be heard. More importantly, their role is to make sure everyone else can be.

And its this choice that often determines the difference between success and failure.

Opportunities for Improvement?

“Be the silence that listens.” – Tara Brach

“That’s a great idea, but what if you changed this part? And maybe added this?”

“Umm…okay.”

“Don’t you think that makes it better?”

“Yeah…I guess…”

Imagine you have a young employee. Someone who’s worked on a new idea and finally has it to a point where she’s comfortable enough to present it to you, her manager.

And it’s a good idea. you like it and think it has real potential to make a difference.

But as the smart, experienced manager that you are, you think that you can make it even better. So what do you do?

“What kind of ridiculous question is that?” you may ask, if you’re the type of person who argues with an online article. “It’s obvious we should help people make improvements.”

And maybe the answer is yes. After all, you are smart and experienced. But before we immediately offer our suggestions, we’d do well to recognize the cost that comes with them.

Don’t Underestimate Execution

“To me, ideas are worth nothing unless they are executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.” – Derek Sivers, Anything You Want

The best ideas in the world are useless unless they’re executed well. Regardless of an idea’s brilliance, it will eventually run into obstacles. Without strong execution, that’s where it’ll die.

Conversely, combine a good idea with great execution and it can transform into a brilliant success. Ideas evolve and grow. As long as they have a strong advocate.

Written as an equation, the opportunity for an idea’s success often equals the product of its quality and it’s strength of execution.

Why does this matter? Because while your suggestions and improvements may increase the quality of your employee’s idea, they’ll also decrease their commitment to execute it.

With every suggestion we make, the idea belongs less to the employee and more to the group. With this change comes a decrease in employee ownership. And people don’t work as hard to execute ideas they don’t own. It’s simply human nature.

So if your suggestion increases the idea’s quality by 20% but cuts your employee’s commitment in half, you’ve drastically reduced the idea’s opportunity for success. And suddenly offering that suggestion no longer seems like such a great idea.

Where’s the Best Value?

“People who offer great advice understand that their goal is to help someone on their unique journey. People who offer bad advice are trying to relive their old glories.” – Mike Maples Jr., Tribe of Mentors

I’m not suggesting that we never offer our ideas for improvement. There will doubtless be times where it’s needed. But before we bestow our “genius” ideas on everyone around us, we’d do well to stop and consider the unintended consequences.

We all want to add value. But we need to decide which side of the function we want to expand upon. Idea quality or execution? Which side will deliver the best value in this situation? And does the benefit outweigh the cost?

David Foster Wallace once described a real leader as one who “can somehow get us to do certain things that deep down we think are good and want to be able to do but usually can’t get ourselves to do on our own.” In one of the best definitions of leadership I’ve ever seen, there’s no requirement for rousing speeches or having all of the answers. Just an understanding of the people around you and what will help them perform to their very best.

Idea quality or commitment to execute? Where will you add the most value? And if that means staying silent, then swallow your pride and keep your mouth shut. Because as Harry Truman put it, “It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

Conquer These 5 Statistical Mistakes and Make Better Decisions

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Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

“If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science,” said Richard Feynman, concisely capturing the scientific method and our best-known process for decision-making.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the view of science that most people hold. For too many, science meant rote memorization and a series of overly complicated equations. Neither of which inspire a lot of excitement in the subject.

But science is much more than understanding the mechanics. It’s a process – a way of learning. And one that we all do every day. In the words of Carl Sagan,

“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”

Science is assessing new information as it relates to our existing beliefs. Then developing new (and hopefully improved) beliefs based on this information. All the while becoming more or less certain of our previous positions.

It’s a process that helps anyone who’s looking to make more informed decisions. And it’s a process that could be in for some significant changes.

A Millennia-Old Decision Model

“Now I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law. In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it, no, don’t laugh, that’s the truth. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works.” – Richard Feynman

What if the scientific method – a process that has been a cornerstone of discovery and development since the days of Aristotle – was going to significantly change in the next few years?

What if – instead of starting with a guess as Feynman describes – we use the overwhelming amount of available data to frame that initial hypothesis? In today’s world of nearly unlimited data accessibility, are we on a path to eliminate that first guess?

How long before we don’t even need to pontificate on the uncertainties any longer? How soon will these massive troves of data merely point us in the next direction?

It seems like an incredible efficiency. Why waste time guessing if we can just figure it out initially?

But with this path comes even greater reliance on the initial data. And with that, an even greater need to make sure we’re using it responsibly.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a strong suit for the majority of us.

The Double-Edged Sword of Stats 

President Dwight Eisenhower once expressed astonishment and alarm upon hearing that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence. He quickly realized his mistake and chuckled over his mistake, but gaffe aside, it can be easy to misread the nature of statistics.

Recent years haven’t improved this situation. We’re inundated with data claims on a daily basis. Newscasters seem intent on throwing numbers at us until we just tune them out.

So it’s not surprising that we create mental shortcuts to limit our own cognitive burden. Our minds develop biases and heuristics to conserve our precious mental energy. And there’s few bigger drains on it than evaluating data and statistics.

Yet statistics can be interesting. I recognize your skepticism, but donate 4 minutes to watching Hans Rosling’s brilliant distillation of 200 countries over 200 years and it’s difficult not to get caught up in his excitement. Or watch any of his TED talks which are more reflective of a sporting event than a statistics discussion. In Hans’s words,

“There’s nothing boring about statistics. Especially not today, when we can make the data sing. With statistics, we can really make sense of the world. With statistic, the “data deluge,” as it’s been called, is leading us to an ever-greater understanding of life on Earth and the universe beyond.”

As our decision-making process continues to evolve, and data and statistics play larger roles in not just assessing our hypotheses, but framing them as well, we have more responsibility than ever to use these tools effectively.

We can no longer tune these numbers out. And that starts with confronting these shortcuts and accounting for them. In the wise words of Daniel Kahneman,

“The best we can do is compromise: learn to recognize situations in which mistakes are likely and try harder to avoid significant mistakes when the stakes are high.”

For each one, the solution is merely awareness. To condition ourselves to recognize these tendencies and mentally guard ourselves against their influences. And while this is by no means a conclusive list, in my experience there are a common handful of biases and heuristics that seem to repeatedly influence our views of data and evidence. And limit the effectiveness of our decisions.

Anchoring

One of the main reasons that we need to pay attention to the accuracy of statistics is our tendency to anchor to irrelevant information. Once we establish our initial position (or anchor), we rarely adjust sufficiently from that position in the presence of new information.

We see anchors in everything from first impressions to asking prices. And once we associate ourselves with an initial anchor, we struggle to develop arguments to move away from it, defaulting us back to our initial position.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, anchors have also been shown to have an impact even when they’re completely unrelated to the topic.

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman ran an experiment where they spun a wheel marked 0 to 100 that was rigged to only stop at 10 or 65 in front of a group of students. They then asked them to write down the number on which the wheel stopped, either 10 or 65. They then asked them two questions:

  • Is the percentage of African nations among UN members larger or smaller than the number you just wrote?
  • What is your best guess of the percentage of African nations in the UN?

While no one would say that the number on the wheel would yield relevant information about the percentage of African nations, people were still affected by it. The average estimates of students who wrote down 10 and 65 were 25% and 45% respectively.

In another study, participants were asked whether Gandhi died before or after age 9, or before or after age 140. Clearly these values are incorrect and shouldn’t have an impact on an estimate of when Gandhi died. But each group showed a significant difference in their estimates (average age of 50 versus 67).

While there’s multiple theories and explanations of why our minds anchor against initial values, the effect is still the same. Whether we realize it or not, we’re influenced by starting values. In response, we should assume that any starting value will have some level of anchoring effect on us. And we need to recognize consciously take steps to dissociate our mental position from this initial anchor.

Insensitivity to Sample Size

“They say 1 out of every 5 people is Chinese. How is this possible? I know hundreds of people and none of them is Chinese,” Carl Sagan joked in The Demon-Haunted World, giving a tongue-in-cheek example of how easily we fall astray of reality when we neglect sample size.

If I flipped a coin four times and got heads on three of them, you probably wouldn’t think much of it. But if I flipped it four million times and got heads on three million of them, you’d probably start looking more closely at that coin.

We quickly recognize the difference between a sample size of four and four million, but we’re less successful at differentiating between less extreme variations. Or worse, we neglect to even inquire about the sample size before running with the conclusions. Kahneman attributes this to our tendency to fixate on individual stories,

“The exaggerated faith in small samples is only one example of a more general illusion – we pay more attention to the content of messages than to information about their reliability, and as a result end up with a view of the world around us that is simpler and more coherent than the data justify. Jumping to conclusions is a safer sport in the world of our imagination than it is in reality.”

Unless we immediately negate the message, we get caught up in the story over focusing on the accuracy of the data. We frequently see this in engineering developments and justifications, relying on past precedent over analytical assurance. As Steven Vick points out in Degrees of Belief: Subjective Probability and Engineering Judgment,

“If something has worked before, the presumption is that it will work again without fail. That is, the probability of future success conditional on past success is taken as 1.0. Accordingly, a structure that has survived an earthquake would be assumed capable of surviving with the same magnitude and distance, with the underlying presumption being that the operative causal factors must be the same. But the seismic ground motions are quite variable in their frequency content, attenuation characteristics, and many other factors, so that a precedent for a single earthquake represents a very small sample size.”

Years ago, a report came out saying 41% of Muslims in the US supported jihad. Now there was a host of issues with this study, including the fact that it was an online opt-in study with no real guarantee that anyone taking it was actually Muslim. And the fact that the majority of respondents defined jihad as a “Muslim’s personal, peaceful struggle to be more religious.” But another major flaw was that the respondents totaled 600 people. In a country of over 3.3 million Muslims, no one should consider 600 to be a representative sample.

But none of these degenerate methods stopped multiple news outlets from parroting out misleading clickbait headlines.

In these situations, awareness is our best weapon. Ask questions. Be skeptical. And make sure you’re checking the validity of the sample before becoming swept up in the story.

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

Denominator Neglect

Which childhood vaccine seems more dangerous, one that carries a .001% chance of permanent disability or one in which 1 of every 100,000 children will become permanently disabled?

Most people will instinctively choose the latter, even though a few moments of consideration show that the relative risks are the same. As Kahneman explained,

“The second statement does something to your mind that the first does not: it calls up the image of an individual child who is permanently disabled by a vaccine; the 99,999 safely vaccinated children have faded into the background.”

Paul Slovak termed this phenomenon denominator neglect, showing that people more heavily weight low probability events when seen in terms of relative frequencies as opposed to probability or likelihood.

In another example, people saw information about a disease that kills 1,286 people out of every 10,000 and another that kills 24.14% of the population. People found the first disease to appear more threatening, even though the risk is only half of the second.

Savvy practitioners will exploit this tendency when presenting statistics. Someone wishing to incite fear may report that “approximately 1,000 homicides a year are committed nationwide by seriously mentally ill individuals who are not taking their medication.” While another way of reporting the data would be to say “the annual likelihood of being killed by such an individual is approximately 0.00036%.”

Let your analytical mind do it’s work. Ask yourself whether you’re seeing the full picture. Often the difference between getting swept up in an emotional story and recognizing the best analytical choice is a few moments of dispassionate consideration.

Misconceptions of Chance

“Chance is commonly viewed as a self-correcting process in which a deviation in one direction induces a deviation in the opposite direction to restore the equilibrium. In fact, deviations are not ‘corrected’ as a chance process unfolds, they are merely diluted.” – Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases

How often have you seen people load up their roulette bets on black after the wheel hits red a couple of times?

Just as we mistakenly extend the influence of small sample sizes, we often expect the probability of broader outcomes to apply themselves immediately. As Peter Bevelin writes in Seeking Wisdom,

“We tend to believe that the probability of an independent event is lowered when it has happened recently or that the probability is increased when it hasn’t happened recently.”

We take a broad focus of behavior and mistakenly believe that chance events will quickly self-correct. Except nature doesn’t abide by a sense of fairness. And as the annoying guy at the roulette table likes to remind you, “the wheel has no memory.”

We often apply a skill philosophy to chance events, tricking ourselves into believing that we can predict future events based on past ones. Shane Parrish offers a good strategy for discerning the difference, suggesting we ask ourselves whether we can lose on purpose. If not, the previous instance was likely the result of chance, and shouldn’t be given any predictive credibility.

Taken at a broad view, chance events will eventually balance out. We just need to resist the tendency to expect this broad view to occur right now.

Insensitivity to Base Rates

Similar to anchoring and our availability bias, an insensitivity to base rates causes us to favor available information over more relevant data in making decisions. In one example, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky invented a fictitious woman named Linda and gave her the below description:

“Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in antinuclear demonstrations.”

Now, which statement do you consider more likely:

People were then asked to cite which statement was more likely:

  • Linda is a bank teller.
  • Linda is a bank teller who is active in the feminist movement.

Did you choose the latter option? It’s easy to see someone like Linda being involved in feminist causes. And it’s much easier to picture her in that role than as a bank teller. Undergraduate study participants agreed. Nearly 90% said that Linda was more likely to be a feminist bank teller than a bank teller.

Except this choice completely defies the laws of probability. Since all feminist bank tellers are included within the overall base of bank tellers, the probability of Linda being a feminist bank teller must be lower than the probability of her being a bank teller.

It’s easy to see when we think through it, but much more difficult to recognize when our minds grab onto the story and neglect the base rate. Instead, take the time to establish the appropriate reference base rates up front. Then, use the available information to alter the likelihoods from those starting points, instead of jumping to the finish line based on the story alone.

Be Skeptical. Be Analytical. Be Informed.

“Being a scientist requires having faith in uncertainty, finding pleasure in mystery, and learning to cultivate doubt. There is no surer way to screw up an experiment than to be certain of its outcome.” – Stuart Firestein, Ignorance: How it Drives Science

With each technological development, our capacity for more accurate predictions and more informed decisions continues to improve. And as this available data continues to influence not only our assessments, but also our initial hypotheses, the need for responsible analysis increases with it.

But while the scientific method may see some change, the intent behind it does not. We still need to make sure that we anchor our initial positions within the bounds of logic. And we still need to question the credibility of any evidence that either confirms or conflicts with this position.

None of the biases and heuristics here are overly complicated. They just require us to stop and question the evidence that is now more easily accessible than ever before.

Above all, take responsibility for the information that you’re taking in. As the father of modern anthropology, Claude Levi-Strauss, articulated over 50 years ago,

“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers, he’s the one who asks the right questions.”