Untitled

There are a bunch of things I probably 'ought' to be doing. My interviewer indicated I should get a conditional job offer, so I'm stuck in limbo hoping/waiting to hear something, and it makes it hard to do all those things I 'ought' to be doing.

Like applying to other jobs, since I don't actually know if this one will work out. Or continuing to study up on computer science stuff.

I'm giving myself a little bit of time to goof around (and hopefully hear about that position), and then I'll buckle down and get back to it.

But all that job hunting stuff brings up some things I guess I need to get out of my system before moving on to my current series.

Job hunting is rough, not just for the uncertainty, not just for the worry, but because you get rejection after rejection. (Got rejected for another position just the other day, which is frustrating to no end).

And it brings back a feeling I've had, off and on over the years, in one situation or another. That deep-seated frustration and misery that comes from feeling like you could be amazing, if you just had the chance. If someone would just believe in me enough to hire me. Or give me the training and experience I need.

I know the world doesn't owe me anything. I know that I can't really blame them for not seeing what feels like a glowing sun inside of me (or perhaps I should use Camus, and call it an "invincible summer", though some days it doesn't feel quite so invincible).

But it's just so very, very, frustrating... to not be able to bring it into being. I hate sounded whiny, or self-pitying, so I try not to complain about it too much. "It is what it is", and I hate that saying. It's not the army's fault, for example, that they need to fill various positions and saw me as an appropriate person to use in one of them. Even though I had wanted to go into Human Intelligence, even though I'd taken the Defense Strategic Debriefer Course (which I enjoyed, but never used professionally, so from the army perspective ought to be considered a waste. I mean, the whole bit about building rapport and whatnot is kind of useful in interviews and other places, tbh, and I think I do okay at it in person. Have trouble branching off from that into other things, i.e. people generally need to feel like you're in touch with them and have an ongoing relationship to really  network right. Sending articles you know they'd be interested in, or newsletters like my aunt used to do... and I'm really awful at that sort of thing. So I appear to do well enough initially, but not to the point where someone I met as a one-off will open doors six months down the road when I need a job. And my friends and co-workers seem to like me well enough to send some openings my way, but that's apparently not enough to get whoever is hiring to take my application seriously. Maybe it's my resume, though I've had people review it often enough that I think that shouldn't be the issue. Other than currently trying to do a career change, and thus not having a lot of work experience in the field. Enough of that, though.)

Anyways. I was doing my darndest to try to say "this person should be developed in this way", but nobody cared.

Which is ultimately why I left the Army. I don't blame them, they're a large organization and they've got positions to fill. But...

Yet again I find the best analogy in Hope for the Flowers. We're all caterpillars, with the potential to become butterflies. But becoming a butterfly isn't as easy as following some predetermined path. It's as much about following your instincts, with no real certainty about what's going to happen next, as anything else. I want to be a butterfly, have some sort of instinct (that I can't explain) about what sorts of positions are necessary to make that happen...

And I just can't seem to make them occur.

And - the reason I'm posting this, really - that sense of frustration is the driving force behind a lot of my current posts.

Because I don't think I'm the only one who feels that. I'm actually pretty sure most people do, other than the lucky few. Like this scene from the book:

Where the caterpillar realizes everyone he sees has a potential butterfly inside.

But (as my own experience, and frustration, shows), reaching that potential is not easy. You have to create the right environment for it to happen. You have to have the resources to do so.

So it is easier for some than for others. My Little would probably not be able to do softball and basketball if I wasn't a part of her life. She'd have probably missed far too many practices while her mom was at work. And in middle school she'd probably have had a horrible grade in band, since she'd probably have missed some of her concerts.

Which may or may not have been a problem. She doesn't have an interest in playing professionally, so not playing would not have prevented her from transforming into her own personal butterfly... but it could for someone else. And schools often look at how many extracurriculars you do, so not being able to reliably get to practice could affect what school she gets into (though she might have found another way. One never can tell.)

None of which is probably too big a deal, because she's expressed an interest in running a daycare, so she's not likely to need an Ivy League education. Helping her turn into her particular butterfly is more about helping her keep her grades up, guiding her a bit on some classes to take (she took a child care development one earlier this year, and a business one), and so on and so forth. If I had the resources, when she got older I could probably talk to her about giving or loaning some start up capital, but if she's serious about this I'd probably direct her towards business plans and small business loans, assuming other things occur in the next few years. (She may lose interest, or other things may happen, and she probably ought to actually work in a daycare for a bit before trying to start her own business... and maybe she'll decide she doesn't care about running it herself. Who knows?

Her potential butterfly is different than mine, her talents and interests are different, so what she needs is definitely not what I need.

If I were to try to imagine a true utopia, I think that would pretty much be it - that everyone was able to reach their full potential, and turn into beautiful butterflies. And (if you believe in God, and trust that He knows what He's doing, which can be quite a lot to ask) I suspect that everyone's butterfly is pretty darn amazing, and would lead to a pretty awesome society.

I don't really have to understand why people are drawn to one thing or another. One of my brothers is a teacher, particularly for special needs kids. He originally went to college for something else, but took a business calculus he really enjoyed, wound up helping some of his classmates with the material, and realized he liked doing that sort of thing. He's really good at breaking things down into basic steps and explaining them (which he also does when teaching someone a new boardgame. I do sometimes feel he goes a little bit slow for my taste, but then I'm not generally his target audience.)

People feel called to do all sorts of different things, from teaching to nursing to national security. Sometimes they get paid to do it professionally, sometimes it's a side job or hobby, and they just hold down a job to help pay for that hobby.

The fact that so many people out there feel the sort of frustration I do, feel an inability to become who they want to be, feel stymied by a world that just doesn't care...

That bothers me to no end.

I don't believe in compulsion, for the most part. I think the government is all too often a sledgehammer used to crack a nut.

But I also know that people turn to it when other options fail. That the sentiment "there oughta be a law" comes when something isn't being taken care of privately.

If the nut needs to be cracked and all you have is a sledgehammer, than sometimes that's what you do.

When the top 1% have more money than the bottom 90%, when the minimum wage in 1956 was $1.00/hr, and a CPI inflation calculator shows that's equivalent to $9.49 today, and today's minimum wage in Illinois is $8.25/hr...

And that's just one example of how wages haven't kept up with inflation, how the top 1% sucked up more of the money and the bottom have less and less to live off of...

When there's so much out there discussing this that I feel you either get it or you don't (and if you don't, you probably have a strong self-interest in NOT getting it, and are almost willfully choosing to dismiss it all)...

I have to wonder how anyone in the top 1% can look at themselves in the mirror and feel proud of who they are.

If life is a race (which is not a given), then they're winning it... but they're winning it when over half the competition is tied down with a ball and chain.

But whatever. There's enough resentment of the 1% that I don't feel I'm contributing much of anything by discussing it. I sometimes like to imagine I have an audience from that stratum, but I also imagine they'd fail to be persuaded by any argument that sounded like sour grapes.

I do find myself wondering, though, whether they're truly any happier with our current system then those of us 'have-nots'. Whether, with all the resources at their disposal, they're using them to become the butterflies they're called to be.

An odd question, I suppose. I don't have any personal experience with anyone at that level, after all, and the wealthy can get away with stuff the rest of us don't (since "the poor are crazy, the rich just eccentric"). Many of them, from what I can tell, actively support some great causes.

But... some of them also appear, perhaps, even more constrained by social norms than the rest of us. Even more worried about other people's opinions, and making a good impression, to the point where they're unable to be their authentic selves (and clearly unable to become their butterfly).

And although I can't judge any one particular individual, we all know that the class as a whole has the resources to make serious changes if they wished. (I'm not advocating a particular way of doing so right now... I'd actually prefer private philanthropy over government regulation, tbh, but there's apparently not enough voluntary private effort to get the job done, so once again... if you've got a nut to crack and all you've got is a sledgehammer, that just might wind up being what you use. The 'job', by the way, is  catch-all for all the various inequalities going on right now.)

The fact that they don't shows a certain complicity in and acceptance of a status quo that leaves far too many people miserable.

Anyways. To bring this back full circle - I'm currently quite frustrated, and tired of knowing that the world just doesn't care, and wish we could all do our bit to make a world where everyone (not just me) could live up to their full potential.

On Gerrymandering

The Washington Post had a good article discussing the challenges in preventing gerrymandering.

I also found the suggestion that states adopt proportional representation intriguing. Too many of our political movers and shakers display arrogance and fear in the way they try to influence the system, something I plan on discussing further in a future post.

Bringing It Together

I covered a lot of different things, though I haven't yet gotten to the part about social media campaigns and bots (nor tied in that article about black feminists on twitter.) Bear with me, I'm getting there.

I try not to talk about utopia, in part because we've had such a long history of failed attempts to build them. At the same time, I think there should be some sort of ideal shaping our efforts, some goal to work towards. That is, if we're not just accepting the status quo. It may not be achievable, but better to work towards it than accept something that leaves people behind. (It's sort of like the ideal of justice, fairness, and whatnot. Saying 'it's impossible to be unbiased' may be true, but is often used to justify being selfish. Trying to be unbiased leads to something better, even if we don't always get it right.)

What I'm left with is a mishmash of things, including my 11 years of Catholic schooling, our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and various other things... though I don't think you necessarily have to believe in God to go along with this.

I do believe that "all men are created equal", though 'men' in this case is just the catch-all for 'human being'. Male and female. There is something special about every single one of us, though whether you wan to call it the 'spark of the divine' or 'our inherent shared humanity' or something else, I leave that to you.

In certain circumstances, we are in touch with that spark. Or our higher self. (Again, whatever you want to call it.) It's generally something we hear in silence. That is, in quiet stillness, when we tune out the noise of the world around us. It's easy to dismiss, to ignore. To decide we don't want to deal with all the consequences of listening. We can't hear it when we're angry, or scared.

When people are given the right environment, the type of environment where they can listen to that higher self, we're often amazed at what results. We're creative, playful, joyful. Our best selves.

And, well. I think a bit of that whole 'Wisdom of Crowds' comes into play. No one of us sees all, knows all, and makes the best choice... but together, we can.

And yet it's all too easy to undermine and subvert all of that. The 'wisdom of crowds' doesn't hold up when a determined party decides to spread misinformation. It also doesn't work when people conform too much, like all my previous posts on groupthink.

It's true that people aren't always smart, but the discussions we have (and the willingness of people who aren't experts to listen to the opinions of the mavens who are) can make  us all smarter, collectively, than you'd think.

So my next posts, tomorrow or the day after or whatever, will focus a bit more on that sort of thing.

All in This Together

The Helmand River is the longest river in Afghanistan, and is the main source of water in Helmand Province. Access to water is one of the major issues in the province, especially since farmers upriver often grow water-intensive crops, leaving less for the farmers downriver. (And Iranians, who apparently have threatened war over the Helmand River. Plus the Kajaki Dam apparently caused some salinization, and since opium grows well in salty water it contributed to the spread of opium.)

Water usage and irrigation is one of the common examples of a social dilemma, and something Elinor Ostrom talked about a lot. I remember talking to a USAID (or another similar agency) hydrologist, and he said that there was enough water in the province if it was managed correctly...

But issues like this are as much about managing people as they are about actually managing the water.

Or rather, people act differently when they have a scarcity mindset. It turns it into 'us against them', as opposed to 'how can we work together to make sure everyone gets what they need.'

Of course farmers downriver have an incentive to cooperate. Any agreement will probably benefit them, since it will probably include limiting how much water the upriver farmers use.

But why would the upriver farmers agree? Right now they've got the water to grow whatever they want, so why should they care about anyone else?

The answer...

Well, it may not be one they want to hear. I mean, I suppose I could go the route of 'what happens to one happens to all' (sort of like Matthew 25:35-40) but I'll go for a more realpolitick answer here.

Which is, mainly, that people don't just roll over and die when they're prevented from getting the resources they need. And when they're at risk of starving, they'll probably find a way to attack the ones they blame. In this case, the upriver farmers. (Consider, again, that Iran threatened to go to war with Afghanistan because by the time the Helmand River crossed into Iran too much water was being taken.)

Certain things are... well, now that I'm studying computer science I suppose I'll put it like this:

There are vulnerabilities in society, and hunger is one of them. A software vulnerability doesn't automatically mean that you've been hacked - it still takes someone writing malicious code and infecting your system - and hunger in and of itself doesn't mean society is going to fall apart. But the risk of someone exploiting the vulnerability will always be there. (This is where the analogy falls apart, though, as 'exploiting the vulnerability' in society is not necessarily done by malicious actors the way most malware is.)

And just as businesses try to patch vulnerabilities before they can be exploited, anyone who wants to live in a stable society should have a vested interest in patching these types of vulnerabilities before they lead to problems.

To put it another way, some of the studies on game theory have shown that if people feel they're getting a raw deal they will sometimes take action that hurts themselves, just to express their displeasure at the other party.

Our current system allows for a high degree of inequality, and we consider it acceptable because of the belief in a meritocracy, that we can succeed or fail by our own efforts, and that the wealthy earned what they have.

But too much inequality becomes a vulnerability, especially if it's coupled with the widespread belief that we're no longer a meritocracy, and that the wealthy haven't really earned the money they've got. (Or earned it at the expense of the rest of society, where people who work hard no longer reap the benefits of doing so... not when they have to have two or three jobs just to make ends meet, as wages fail to keep up with inflation and whatnot.)

You can never predict when a vulnerability will be exploited, of course. I can't honestly say "if nothing changes X will happen in ten years."

But I can note that there are vulnerabilities, and that if/when those vulnerabilities are exploited the people currently benefiting by our system will probably not like what happens.

That the growing popularity of the phrase 'eat the rich' is a symptom of this, and that if the Powers That Be aren't aware and willing to address this (and NOT by force, or dismissing everyone as a bunch of whiners and socialists), then they're fools.

Pitfalls, Gatekeepers, Conformity, and Dissent: Some Ramblings

Getting overly focused on the last move in a chess game is just one potential pitfall. Our tendency to self-censor, particularly under a certain type of leadership, can lead to another.

Going back to my example (determining how to defend when the enemy could come through a very large pass or a much smaller/narrower pass), if the leader thought they already knew what the enemy was going to do and quelled any 'dissent', they could potentially defend the wrong thing. (Or the right one. That's the trouble here... so long as the person in charge gets it right, nothing appears to be wrong, and everything seems even better than the alternative because you don't have to deal with the frustration of trying to forge a consensus, or that one person who stubbornly disagrees with the plan. But sometimes when you get it wrong, you get it very, very wrong. Instead of hashing out a plan that's more flexible, that may be centered on the main pass but can shift to defending the smaller pass as needed, any attempt to suggest the enemy would take the other pass is squelched. And next thing you know, they're coming down whatever pass you didn't expect, you're defenses are all wrong and you lose. Bigly.)

In that experiment on conformity, it seems that having two or three people agree is enough for everyone else to start self-censoring... which makes this easy enough to prevent (assuming it's not deliberate). Speak up. Let your light shine. If you can provide an alternate opinion early, it generally opens the floor to a true discussion - as opposed to a meeting that rubber stamps someone's predetermined decision. Even if that initial moment has passed, if you have any doubts at all, if you truly question the decision, speak up.

This is not necessarily without consequences. Sometimes people resent you for breaking the perception of a unified consensus. In the case of the Challenger explosion, the one engineer who spoke out about the risk of launching in cold weather had been removed from his job and demoted. People will pressure you for not going along, you may get marginalized, discredited, and ignored. But... would you rather be one of the people who conformed, and went along with a decision that resulted in the explosion of a space shuttle? Or be the person who stood for what you believed in, even if you lost your job? (In case it's not obvious, I'm not trying to tell you the answer. I'm trying to tell you a few things to consider when deciding what you can live with. I want everyone to be able to look at themselves in the mirror with pride, accepting their flaws and faults and being okay with who they are, and any decision that makes that harder is probably something you should think carefully about.)

Knowing this, btw, also means I'm a bit more skeptical whenever I hear someone being marginalized and discredited. Like, it could be a legitimate criticism, or it could also mean that person took a stand and is being penalized for it, and I'd want to see how the person acted for myself before lending any credence to such accusations. If they're discredited for being opinionated, skeptical, and stubborn, well... most of the time I can work with that.

On a related note -

Self-censorship occurs in more situations than just 'we're in a meeting, and two or three people agree already'.

We generally self-censor when we're talking to our boss, which is not exactly a surprise given the power they have over our careers.

This is part of why people in positions of wealth and power, in particular, have to work extra hard on 'getting out of the bubble', or 'developing good lines of communication', or whatever you want to call it. Consider the intel world. Some analyst may write a report taking a strong position on something. They're boss passes it along, but softens it up just a little. They know it's not what they're bosses want to hear, so they try to make it more palatable. The next layer softens it up even more, and so on and so forth, until the intelligence received at the top is a bastardized version of the original assessment. This is a very real risk, and one the intel community tries to mitigate.

People in power generally are too busy to adequately evaluate everything they get. They're deluged in information, e-mails, letters, and the like. That's why they have gatekeepers... but the gatekeepers have to know what to do with the information coming their way. What to pass along, what to handle themselves, what to ignore, and so on and so forth. And even they aren't necessarily getting the straight scoop, since they may have gatekeepers or subordinates of their own.

Getting accurate information means making sure every link in the chain is doing their job correctly. All it takes is one person deciding that "o-rings failing in cold weather is a crock of s***" to keep that risk from reaching the right decision-maker.

You have to have some way of evaluating your gatekeepers, and making sure they're passing along what you need to hear as opposed to what you want to hear.

Rules, Choices, and Endgames, Cont.

The point of discussing endgames, chess moves, micro-managing and the like was to help highlight the signs/symptoms of when we're stuck in a losing endgame, and what sorts of things to consider to break out of it.

Obviously we can't go back in time and fix something the past, but we can draw a map for the present and future.

For example, if you're a team lead and feel stuck between doing a task yourself or failing, figure out what you need to do for the immediate situation (if you've got the time, proceed to the next step... but I understand if you don't have the time you might have to do something else just to get through it), and look at your 'unreliable' subordinates. Go ahead and assign them something, just make sure you have a plan to monitor their progress and ensure it gets done. Specifics are, as always, situation dependent. It can be anything from telling them "send me a quick e-mail telling me where you're at before you go home at night" to "write a report" or "brief me at our weekly staff meeting".  Do your best to put the burden of keeping you informed on the one who knows the situation best (i.e. the person assigned to the task) and make sure you've got time to fix things if they fall behind.

You're not off the hook, of course. Any time you give an assignment like that, you have to be prepared to notice if/when they don't follow through. If you say "send me a quick update" and they forget to do so, you have to say something. Saying something shows you're paying attention, and since most people try to keep the boss happy they'll probably try harder to remember (depending on the specific people involved.) If, however, they don't send the update you requested and you fail to say something, you've shown that they can blow you off with no consequences.

Be prepared to document if needed, because by the end of this they will either be a productive member of your team or you'll have documentation showing that they're not.

You should have those sorts of thoughts any time you feel stuck with unpalatable choices, really. Take the soccer cheating scenario - if you feel you have to either cheat or lose, consider what you can do to clean up the sport. Maybe try to have a meeting discussing the problem, and asking everyone (without pointing fingers) to commit to playing a clean game. The specifics will depend on the exact situation, the people involved, etc... so don't take this as a real suggestion.

The point is to consider your options, not to let your choices be constrained to unpalatable options, and if you can't fix it immediately, start working on a long-term plan to change your future choices.

And, for the purposes of these posts, recognize when you need to pull back a bit and look for these sorts of options.

A Clarification

I mentioned some people aren't aware that they're changing anything, and figured I ought to explain that a bit more.

Consider a sport, like soccer. Your team wins by getting more goals than the other team, so you should have a good offense and defense in place.

But some people cheat, and if you think 'everyone does it' and that 'that's just the way it is', you're pretty much justifying your own cheating.

Now, it may or may not have been true at the time, but if enough people think like that, then the game suddenly does become more about who can cheat and get away with it best, instead of about which team can kick a ball into a goal more often.

If, early on whenever someone first cheated, everyone had acted like the annoyed drivers in an earlier post (i.e. Rolled their eyes and called the cheaters a-holes... And probably maybe try to get proof of cheating, or get in a fight outside the game or something - not that I'm recommending you do so - but refuse to follow the example set by cheaters) then cheating would be a problem, but ultimately wouldn't change the nature of the game.

In case it's not already glaringly obvious, I really hate it when people justify doing something shady because 'everyone does it' or 'they started it'.

There's a reason why the Golden Rule (and Silver Rule) exist, and if you're in doubt about an action just picture what would happen if Every. Body. acted that way. If you don't like the image, don't help make it a reality.

Anyways, that's enough phone posting for today. Given that I'd been in an enclosed space with a planeful of people a few days ago, I am not surprised to discover I've come down with a mild cold. I expect/hope it'll clear up with a good night's rest.

For Later

Seems relevant to a future post

https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/black-feminists-alt-right-twitter-gamergate.amp?__twitter_impression=true

Rules, Choices, and Endgames

I don't claim to be a fantastic chess player, though at one point I was fascinated by the endgame. There was some site or game or something that would give you an in-progress chess game and tell you how many moves it should take to reach checkmate, so it basically focused just on the endgame.

The thing about it is, at some point checkmate becomes inevitable. When the king is in check the only move available is to get the king out of check, so your choices become constrained. If there is only one way to move the king out of danger, your opponent can predict your move and act on it... generally by placing your king in check yet again.

If you want to win (or at least avoid losing) it does no good to go back a turn, because your choices are still constrained and there's only one move available. You would have to go back four or five (or however many moves - I hear chess grandmasters may be able to see 15-20 moves ahead) and do something different there.

While there are problems with drawing too many parallels between a game (no matter how complex) and the real world, I think this is a reasonable one - sometimes your options narrow, and you get too focused on taking the immediate logical action, and really you should think over how you got there and go back four or five steps to make a change there. Obviously you can't turn back time, but life isn't a turn-by-turn game, and you probably have a similar situation in the present. Choose differently.

This all would make more sense if I gave an example, so here goes.

Leading people is tough. When your only responsible for yourself and the boss gives you an assignment, you know what to do. Do the work, make the boss happy, look good. You put in the work, you decide if it's acceptable, and if you procrastinate or do a poor job that's on you.

When you're a leader, and the boss gives you an assignment, your reputation and job depend on other people doing theirs.

And you'll very quickly learn that you can't just give someone an assignment and leave it at that. They forget, or your tasking gets buried under 20 e-mails as they deal with their most recent request, or they get sick, or their kids get sick, or their car breaks down, or they've fallen behind and don't want the boss (aka you) to know and are desperately trying to fix it before you find out.

Really, when you have an employee who reliably gets stuff done they are gold, they make your job So. Much. Easier. (And then you tend to go to them for all your critical tasks, and they get overworked and burnt out while they're colleagues collect the same paycheck for doing hardly anything, and ultimately you lose.)

Inexperienced people managers are a bit like a checked king. Only one or two (or, if I include the scenario with the 'go-to' employee, three) moves seem obvious, and they're next logical step, but each move ultimately leads to checkmate.

The first move is to just do it all yourself. You know you can get the job done, and get it done right, and you can't trust your people to do the same. So you just stay a little later to work on it, or come in earlier. Devote your morning to it, or lunch.

There's all sorts of problems with this, though. If you're doing you're employee's job, you're probably not doing yours. There's only so much one person can do, and there's a reason you were given a team to lead... trying to do the work of a team all by yourself is a recipe for failure. (If you can't grow as a leader to the point where you're not doing this, you shouldn't be in a leadership position.) Not only that, but it tends to be demotivating to your employees, who aren't given the chance to grow and excel. They'll underperform, and kick even more work your way, and they won't be happy.

The second move is to micromanage. If you can't rely on your people to get it done without supervision, you supervise... and then some. Now, to be fair, some people may need a hefty degree of supervision. Part of your job is assessing where your people are and giving them that appropriate level. Maybe you've got a new hire who needs a lot of oversight, maybe you've got a twenty-year veteran who already knows what to do. You've got to figure out where they're at and what level of support they need, because if you supervise that veteran like a new hire they'll get upset that you won't just let them do their job... and if you neglect to provide the supervision that new hire needs, you're setting them up to fail.

Not only that, but again - if you're doing this you're not doing the job you were really hired to do, and one person can not do the work of five. Or, in this case, one person will run themselves ragged trying to micromanage a group of people. Maybe you spend one hour watching over one person's work, and the next hour watching over someone else's... and the moment you're no longer peering over the shoulder of the first person, maybe they'll switch to watching youtube videos or something.

What you need to do is go four or five moves back, before you feel compelled to either do it yourself or micromanage your subordinates, and put in the work to build your team.

This is not a quick or easy solution, and it requires a lot of work. In my most recent job, for example, we had a clear policy on how to deal with a new hire. They were assigned a more experienced employee to train them on the specific steps (how to log in to your voice headset, how to find locations in the warehouse, best practices for ensuring you counted the correct number of parts, etc.) That's time my trainer, generally a good employee or they wouldn't have been picked to train, isn't actually producing. And our company had forms to use for a 30-day, 60-day, and 90-day meeting where we'd give the new hire feedback on how they were doing. You had to be clear on what your expectations were, what the standards were, and how well they were doing at meeting those standards. Maybe you'd have to give them a bit more time with the trainer, or maybe they picked it up quickly and easily. That's all person-specific.

You do something similar for all your employees, though they may not need quite as much attention as a new hire. Unless they're underperforming, and then it's (again) giving them time with a trainer, and providing feedback, and documenting it... you want to give them the tools to succeed, everything they need in order to do so... and if they still can't do it, then maybe this isn't the right position for them.

This example was for a warehouse environment where there is pretty clear standards on what's expected. It's a little trickier if you're a person managing other people managers, or managing something less clear cut. I think one of our instructors at the Captain's Career Course had a great analogy for that:

Imagine you're a Captain in your office, sitting at your desk, and your young Lieutenant comes in carrying a huge, slimy, smelly fish that s/he promptly dumps on your desk. Now, you may be tempted to yell at the LT to take the fish out of there (as one of my classmates suggested when the instructor asked what you'd do... though that wasn't the answer he was looking for), and you may be tempted to just do whatever it takes to get the smelly thing out of there... but, as a people leader, what you really should do is talk the LT through how to handle the big ol' smelly thing, and then get him/her to dispose of the fish as you'd discussed.

You're teaching that subordinate how to handle difficult problems. What sorts of things to consider, where to go, etc. Then the next time s/he gets a smelly fish, they'll know exactly what to do.

Do that often enough, and your team will know what's expected of them, how to handle any problems, and can pretty much run itself.  (A half-truth. There's always turnover, always new hires and under-performers, and drama between people who just can't get along... it's just that you'll have that regardless of whether you've done what I've suggested or not, and it really is easier if you don't have to worry about everyone.)

This gives you more time to sit in your office playing solitaire. J/k. It means you'll have the time you need to, you know, plan ahead. Coordinate for the ammo and other supplies for weapons qualification next month, or figure out how to procure an extra computer and printer, or order the batteries needed for the picking headsets, or decide when you'll pull everyone out for annual training, or coming up with that lean six sigma project to improve the business, or working on some special project to please your boss, or whatever. Point is, you don't have to spend all your time doing the work your team should be doing (or standing over their shoulder in order to make it happen) and can devote yourself to other things.

You may have to put in a lot of effort up front, and at least a little effort in maintaining it, but this is how you build a team that can make yourself irrelevant (a good thing, really. Like that book about being a "One-Minute Manager" our ROTC instructor talked up back in the day. I've heard it said that the best leaders are smart and lazy, so they make their team do all the work, and it makes sense to me.)

To bring this back to my starting point - when a leader is doing all the work on their own, or micromanaging their employees, or assigning everything to their 'go-to' employee, it's a bit like when a king is in check during a chess endgame. Each move appears to be the next logical one given the situation, each step makes sense... and ultimately you're going to lose.

You need to go back four or five moves, and start doing something different there. Set your expectations, provide clear and consistent feedback, develop your people. Teach them how to handle problems on their own (and what criteria to look for when deciding to kick the issue up to you.) Get them to the point where they're confident and capable of handling it themselves. And maybe they'll come to you if they're trying to work with another department and that dept is being uncooperative, because you can reach out to your colleague there and sort things out (or kick it up to your boss, whatever.) You do the things that need done for your level, and make sure you have the resources on hand to set your people up for success.

To give another less business-related example (because I feel like it)...

When I first got paired with my Little through Big Brothers Big Sisters, her mom was always working and her grandma didn't want her in the kitchen because she didn't want to deal with cleaning up the mess. So one of the first things we did as a match was cook - I can't recall if it was cookies, or brownies, or a meal. Over the years we've cooked all of the above.

Anyways. Initially I had to go through everything in-depth. You know, 'this is how you read a recipe. That 'c' stands for cup. This is a one-cup measuring tool. That t or tsp stands for teaspoon. Here's a teaspoon, here's where you look to see whether it's 1 tsp or 1/2 tsp or 1/4 tsp. That T or Tbsp is a tablespoon. Here's a tablespoon. When you measure the flour, make sure you level it off so that the cup is full but not over full.  And here, the recipe doesn't call for it but I always add almond extract to the cookie dough, and cut the sugar in half. Or if you're making chili or something similar, just sniff your various spices and decide what smells like a good fit. Add it, taste it, see if you want add a little bit more.'

As she gained experience and grew confident, she started being able to do more and more of it herself. This, btw, is something most kids love. They'll excitedly demand that they get to crack the eggs this time, or measure out the flour. My Little would sometimes save recipes she saw online, and ask if we could make them. Or we'll be planning dinner and she'll look for recipes online.

You may have to peer over their shoulder the first few times, remind them that 'that's a small 't', not a bit 'T', so you've got to use the teaspoon not tablespoon', but they'll get better. Soon enough they'll be able to do it all by themselves (though generally it's a social activity, so it's not like I just leave her to it.)

As a Big in the program, I love teaching kids these sorts of things. First, cooking is a useful life-skill. It gives you options, and means you don't necessarily feel compelled to eat out all the time. Second, it's the sort of thing that gives children a sense of mastery. Let's them feel like they're capable of something, at least. People, especially children, need that. Need to feel like they're have things they can succeed at.

I've been matched with my Little for six or seven years now, and even though I'm not the only one who taught her how to cook (once she started doing it with me, she sometimes did it at home), I get a warm feeling when I see her use those skills, and use it well. I can't even describe how proud I was when she said she'd fixed dinner for her mother and grandmother all by herself.

That's the other thing, btw. Doing all that stuff? Setting people up for success, teaching, developing? It's rewarding as hell. Sure, giving feedback and documenting things can be a pain, but seeing someone succeed? Seeing them grow, and excel?

So. Rewarding.

Rules and Choices, Cont

I think there are a couple of mindsets that drive change (as opposed to supporting the status quo, which tbh most people do.)

All of them understand that the status quo is malleable, that they are free to choose something other than what currently exists. In other words, they understand that rules are meant to serve man, and not the other way around.

I generally categorize these change-leaders in a couple of ways, but that's just what I've come up with for this post and shouldn't be considered hard and fast.

You've got your idealists, who don't accept the status quo and believe something better is possible. For the driving analogy, they could be the ones who thought up stop lights, turn signals and the like. (Somebody had to, and it was definitely a change to the status quo at the time.) The main pitfall here is that idealists are not always grounded in reality, so the changes they make can have unintended consequences.

In one of my classes we were asked - is it better to have a good plan and poor execution, or a poor plan with good execution?

Imho, the poor plan with good execution is better, because part of executing a plan is checking to see whether it's working... and adjusting if needed. If you have good execution, that bad plan will eventually keep getting better and better, until it does what you wanted it to. Otoh, a good plan is useless if it's not executed very well, and can even be counterproductive. Especially if poor execution means people believe the idea itself is bad.  The point of all this? An idealist needs to have good execution skills, and the ability to adjust their plans if/when the results aren't what they wanted. It's too easy for an idealist to get caught up in their hoped for goal, and to forget or ignore any sign that things aren't working out as intended.

Somewhat related, and perhaps the same (though in my head they're different) are visionaries. Again, they see past the status quo, but imo the vision they have is a) not necessarily about ideals. I.e. they can have a vision of everyone owning a radio, or personal computer, or dishwasher. It's not about a 'better' world, per se, but it is a vision and b) they tend to be better at execution.

I think I make that distinction because we so often call people like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates 'visionaries', and effective execution is a key part of how they got there. Elon Musk, btw, could probably be tagged as a visionary. I remember when electric cars started being a thing, one of the problems with it was that there were not many places where you could publicly recharge your car. Elon Musk has not just built a bunch of electric cars, he's been working steadily to create an entire EV infrastructure to support them. I believe he's even been working to create solar paneled roofs, which would definitely boost the benefits of electrical vehicles.

There are other change-leaders, like the driver who uses the shoulder of the road to cut ahead of other cars, who know they're not bound by the rules... and seem to choose whatever benefits themselves. These guys are close cousins to the barracks-lawyers and rule-bend who don't really break the rules so much as twist and bend them in their favor. For these type of change-leaders, well... it's funny. From what I can tell, most of them probably don't think of themselves that way at all... or if they do, it's not for the same reasons. Why do I say that?

Because most of them would consider themselves 'realists'. That whole "I got mine, how you do?" attitude implies an acceptance that 'this is the way the world is'. They can be cynical, and worldly, and believe that 'it is what it is' and think that they're just doing what everyone else is doing.

Which means they don't really think they're changing anything. Or, if they are pushing a change, it's not about 'changing the world' (they know idealism is naive, and are too smart to believe that) so much as doing what it takes to win.

The problem here is again, the law of unintended consequences. They don't necessarily see the end result of the world their choices make, and don't necessarily want to live in that world any more than the rest of us do. They just think that that's already the way the world is, or that they're exploiting the loopholes in the world as it exists... as any smart person would do.

But they are changing the world, they live and breathe and model a world where that's just what people do, and in the process they make it more real.

There's one more pitfall I want to mention, one that can trip up any of these... from idealists to cynical realists, and in some ways it comes from their very strength... their willingness not to blindly accept the status quo.

See, in doing so there's a tendency to dismiss older rules and traditions as inconvenient, outdated, and irrelevant. Which sometimes is true, of course, and a necessary mindset for change. But traditions developed for a reason, they got passed down for a reason, and if you don't understand the purpose they served you can't accurately tell whether it's outdated, expired, and time to throw them away.

This is one area where, in another era, I would probably consider myself more conservative. Well, that's not quite true. It's just that I've seen far too many people do change for change's sake (or to look good to their boss) without actually improving anything. Like the receiving dock at my last work place, which was a prime target for 'lean six sigma' projects. The supervisor would come up with some plan to change the layout, supposedly to improve the efficiency with which product was received. Looks good to the boss, of course, since it shows you're always looking to improve the business (and have the execution skills to make it happen)... but if your change was really all that great, then why does another supervisor make another project out of redesigning the same area just four or five years later? Especially when there was no real system change to explain why a new layout would really be more efficient. If the first project had been done right, how could a new layout be more efficient? The same holds true almost everywhere, tbh, and I know some long time non-commissioned officers who internally roll their eyes as their leadership comes up with a 'new' plan that is pretty much exactly what they'd seen someone try five years prior.

If you're going to throw out the status quo, you should at least understand how that status quo came to be. It's sort of like a variation on Sun Tzu - "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

If you know the driving forces behind the status quo (as well as the other drivers of change) and know yourself, then you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself, but not the driving forces behind the status quo and other change drivers, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the driving forces behind the status quo, the other change drivers, nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Eh, that makes it a bit too long to by pithy, but I hope you get the gist.

Anyways, the point is that people are sometimes so determined to make changes that they see any obstacle as a threat to be overcome... and in the process they may undo the hard work of prior generations. Like removing the checks and balances generations of people fought hard for, because they don't really understand why those checks and balances were created in the first place, and just see them as an obstacle in their way.

The pitfall here is this: there's a natural tendency to overcome obstacles by consolidating or amassing enough power to smash through them. Again, it can lead to unintended consequences, and some pretty bad ones at that. (I want to go into this more in another post, but this is probably enough for today. To remind myself of the thread I want to pick up - it'll touch on the endgame in chess.)

 

Rules and Choices, Cont.

I had a few ideas for writing a post, but they just weren't coalescing. Or rather, the ideas ran in my head like a Choose Your Own Adventure, and went in different directions every time I thought about them.

I've been thinking about them for over a week (mostly), but what with the interview last week and various other things the thoughts slipped away. I don't think this post will be exactly what it would have been if I'd tried writing it earlier, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I have a thread, a beginning thought that reminds me of some of the subsequent ideas...

Actually, there's two or three threads (i.e. drawing on the driving analogy a bit more, discussing the type of people who create change, and a bit on how to make responsible decisions. All interrelated, so they sometimes lead into each other and sometimes don't.) Unfortunately, they keep slipping away when I try to grasp them. Maybe I should have jotted them down last week.

Right. Well. Let's start with the driving analogy. I first mentioned drivers who always followed the rules (and often rely on that so much that they stop paying attention to other drivers, relying on everyone else to abide by traffic laws just like they are.) The only real pitfall here is that they can easily forget that they have a choice. The rules seem ironclad, inflexible, and their only job is to follow them. But the rules are created to make all of our lives easier, and if they aren't working it's up to us to change them. (and if they're wrong, it's up to us to speak out against them.) The rule-bound driver is basically giving up the conscious decision to choose the norms that create their world, though in doing so they still influence those norms... they just lend weight to existing norms. There's nothing really wrong with being a rule-abiding driver, and the more of these there are the more predictable driving is, but if you value "thinking outside-the-box", these are rarely going to do so. They're quite comfortably in-the-box, and often forget that there's anything outside of it. (You can also have someone aware enough to remember they have a choice, who then deliberately chooses to follow the rules. They generally support the status quo and don't look any different from the other rule-abiding drivers unless circumstances turn them into the type of driver who occasionally chooses to disregard the rules.)

The other drivers - the one willfully disregarding the rules in order to get somewhere faster, and the one who disregards the rules when unusual situations seem to require it - don't need reminded that they're free to drive how they want. That outside-the-box thinking helps them become drivers of change, because they're not just blindly accepting the status quo. But doing so puts more of the responsibility for their decisions on their own shoulders, as they're choosing to disregard accepted wisdom.

The rest of these posts will focus more on that - on how to use that power wisely. And, since the ones who use that power to abide by the rules are basically supporting the status quo, this is also about using that power to create change.

Easter Update

Happy Easter, for those of you who celebrate it. (And best wishes for a good day to those of you who don't.)

Been a while since I posted - I had an interview Friday, and had to fly out for it Thursday. Wasn't entirely sure I would make it back as planned (flight got delayed about an hour or so, maybe because of the tornado warning in the area, though I'm not 100% certain of that. Missed the follow-on flight home, but the airline got me in on the next flight so I made it... Much later than I was supposed to, but oh well.)

Given that I had to be up at 5:30am local time, which was more like 4:30 my time, it made for a very long and exhausting day. (I hesitate to admit that I also had trouble sleeping the night before. I don't think I was nervous, per se, and the interview seemed to go well... but I kept wanting to jump the gun to what happens after I find whatever job I'm going to find. Like, if this particular interview goes well, the next step is probably a background check... which I ought to pass, but don't like counting on it until it happens. And you never know how long that would take, and can I really handle waiting indefinitely to finish this step? Assuming all of that works out, and I land the job, then what? Do I rent a place in my new location and move most everything there, then try selling the house? What about my pets? Most of it was pretty much pointless until I passed the interview stage and got an offer, of course. Meh. The position seems to fit my interests very well, so I kind of hope it works out... which means moving, and selling the house, so I also hope the house sells quickly - and at a reasonably good price - if/when it comes to that.)

Much though I do love traveling, there's always a part of me that is happy to get home and says "I don't want to go anywhere, I don't even want to think about it...

Not for another month, at least."

Which is why I'm debating whether or not I'll visit my folks next weekend. I flat out told them I wasn't coming up for Easter, since I knew I didn't want to try cramming in a four hour road trip right after flying back from my interview. But Dad holds that Easter is really an eight day event, and my brother didn't want to make the (20 minute) drive today if I wasn't going to be there, so my father really wants us to celebrate it next weekend.

If I was forced to decide in the immediate aftermath of traveling, it would be a surefire way to get told 'no', but I figure I'll wait a day or two and see if I feel differently.

I also wanted to note something that amused me, particularly in light of my recent posts. I used the hotel shuttle service to get to a couple of places, and on one of those trips a motorcycle driver moved onto the shoulder of the road to bypass a couple of cars that were going slower then s/he desired.

And on another trip, our shuttle was trying to merge into a somewhat busy highway... so we were stuck waiting until traffic moved. I saw a car drive on the shoulder of the road to get past us, which initially annoyed me... then I noticed them take the exit a few feet further, and realized they were doing exactly what I'd described in my previous post. They knew their turn was just ahead, and took the shoulder to get around all the people trying to merge onto the highway.

They were shortly followed by another car also driving on the shoulder, though I'm not sure if the second car had seen what the first car did and was imitating it, or came up with this on their own. The only problem is that this car wasn't actually taking the next exit, and instead tried getting ahead of the line of merging cars. In other words, an a-hole selfishly trying to get ahead.

Seeing three irl examples of driving decisions, just as I'd described in my posts, tickled my fancy. It also reminded me of an addendum I wanted to add -

The majority of the people can refuse to follow the rule breakers. That second car might (or might not) have been following the first one, but everyone else in the line chose not to. They may even have rolled their eyes and muttered 'a-hole', like I probably would have done, but they didn't decide to go drive on the shoulder of the road themselves.

As I keep saying, leaders can't lead people where the people don't want to follow. If you don't like the trend someone else is setting, then just keep on keeping on. Don't imitate them. If enough people choose likewise, that trend will quickly die.

In some ways, a-hole behavior like this presents a social dilemma of sorts. That is, if everyone chose to drive on the shoulder of the road (like that motorcycle and those two cars) then we all would lose. There'd be no place to go if/when emergency vehicles are trying to get past, and more people would suffer - and mayhap die. It would take too long for ambulances and police to reach the scene of an accident, which means it may also take too long to clear the road after an accident, which means the people in need of immediate help may not get it in time... and everyone else will probably be stuck in the ensuing traffic jam for even longer. We all lose.

If nobody drives on the shoulder to bypass traffic, then the shoulder is clear for emergencies. Either people pulling off to get out of the way of ambulances and police cars, or as a route the emergency vehicles can use to bypass everyone else and get to the scene of the accident.

What I witnessed, however, was a few a-holes giving themselves the privilege of bypassing traffic... probably with the hope and expectation that nobody else will do likewise, thereby giving them all the benefits without any of the consequences.

Which is why I'm calling them a-holes. They don't actually want anybody else to act like they're doing, and would probably be unhappy if everyone did. Their advantages rely entirely on doing something that nobody else is willing to follow their lead on, and yet (from my experience with the mentality) they probably look down on all the rule-abiding 'sheep' that are essential to making their behavior a success.

Meandering Thoughts on Leadership, Command Climate, Social Norms, and Decision-Making

I wanted to carry on from my previous post, but I'm a little uncertain which direction to take this. Especially since I feel like I'd be rehashing topics I've talked about plenty (i.e. groupthink), and sort of want to do something new. If you're not already sold on the dangers of having a group of people come to a decision without properly weighing the pros and cons - and ensuring good decision-making is made throughout the entire process of funneling information to decision makers - then I don't know what I could possibly say to convince you.

Still, perhaps it's worth rehashing old territory in order to flesh things out a bit. *shrugs* I'll just type a bit more and see what comes out.

Right.

So. My previous post talked a bit about traffic rules, leadership, and choosing the world we want to live in. I mentioned that 'leadership' might involve showing people a different way of doing things, but that such leadership may not involve a well-thought out plan to get us somewhere we actually want to be.

"Where we actually want to be" is something I could write pages on, since it's essentially a value judgment... and since people are different, and sometimes have conflicting wants and needs, one person's answer might not be another's. There are some guidelines I think we can use, a way to envision a world where most people would want to be, but I think that'd be too much of a digression for now.

In a similar fashion, there are ways of leading that give better results than others. Again, this is a value judgment, but I think the risks of outright disasters (like the Challenger explosion) outweigh the disadvantages. I want to start out with some fairly uncontroversial, basic things that leaders can do to shape the command climate.

Consider, if you will, a fairly common claim that "there are no stupid questions."

I think most people know that this is a half-truth. There are stupid questions. It's just that when you see a colleague have their head bit off - figuratively - for asking a question, it immediately makes you start self-censoring. People grow afraid that the same thing would happen to them if they're not careful, and they start questioning whether it's worth bothering anybody at all.

Given the conformity experiments, and how many people decided to give the wrong answer rather than go against the rest of the group, this shouldn't exactly be a surprise. I said that social norms and conventions were as binding as tissue paper, but that's not quite true. In one of my undergrad classes, a sociology class, we were given an assignment to break one of those norms. Do something like stand on top of a desk (a classmate had done that once before, she must have taken the same class a semester or two prior to me), or wear a winter coat in summer. In my case, I chose to eat dinner with a couple of friends while sitting on the floor.

What's funny about this assignment was that initially I didn't think much of it. I mean, okay... I sat on the floor. It was weird and awkward. There's a reason we eat at a table, you know? But it's not like anyone was going to arrest me for it. And then I realized that I'd felt compelled to make little jokes. That every time I made eye contact with my friends (sitting properly in their seats at the table, so I had to look up at them) I was reminded of how strange this was, and had to say something to show that I wasn't really a weirdo who wanted to do this. That I was only doing it for a class assignment.

I definitely felt pressure, of a sort. Doing an assignment like that helps you see just how binding social norms and conventions can be... and, at the same time, how easy it can be to break free, depending on your willingness to tolerate feeling awkward. Willingness to tolerate other people thinking you're weird. And your willingness to confront the occasional 'enforcer' who tries to do more than just silently judge you. (I heard whoever wore a winter coat on a bus in spring/summer upset somebody enough that they got yelled at, which seems strange since wearing a coat is a personal choice that doesn't harm anyone else.)

Even more interesting was that after the assignment was handed in, and the professor swore that she had graded them and wasn't going to change them, she asked for a show of hands... asked how many people were truly able to bring themselves to do the assignment.

A LOT of people couldn't bring themselves to break even one of our unwritten rules.

Social norms and conventions are as binding as tissue paper... except they're not. If you're willing to go against the flow, you can easily break them... but other people often find ways of showing their displeasure when you do so.

Something I'd read pointed out that this makes sense. We're social animals, and we instinctively sense the danger in being too isolated. It feels awkward and threatening to go against the group...

Which is why good leaders shape the environment, so that you don't feel you're going against the group when you speak your mind. So you feel rewarded and encouraged to state your opinions, and ask your questions.

It's all too easy for a (bad) leader to take charge and create an environment where everyone feels they  have to agree with them. If they state their opinion forcefully, mock anyone who gives a hint of disagreement, maybe even get one or two of their supporters to immediately chime in with agreement...

Then anyone with even a hint of doubt will probably self-censor it, bury it so they don't look 'stupid', and think that they're the only ones that feel that way.

Telling everyone that 'there are no stupid questions' is sort of like how good investigators are taught not to ask leading questions (since it gives too many hints about what you're looking for, and people respond with what they think you want instead of telling you what they actually saw.)

Sure, dealing with people's 'stupid questions' can be time consuming and exhausting. And although I made a negative comment about blind obedience earlier, it does have it's time and place. (Mostly when you're under fire and don't have time.) But frankly, if you're NOT under fire... or in a situation where you need immediate action... you've got the time to do it right.

You set the tone. You shape the environment. You send clear signals about whether it's okay to 'bother' you with something, or whether you expect everyone to shut up and go along with what you want.

And maybe, most of the time, you've got good judgment. Maybe you can get by without getting everyone's input. But eventually, especially when things grow complicated, no one person can do it all by themselves.

Which is why good leaders also build a great team, one with enough knowledge to fill in for each other's gaps... and an environment where they're able to bring that knowledge to the table.

I have worked places where even if I disagreed with the decision made, I was part of the debate and knew what the issues were. I knew that I prioritized some of those issues differently than others on my team (and ultimately my boss), but I could see the point of their arguments and even though I didn't get what I wanted, I was okay with it. Mostly. (If it happened too often I'd wonder why I'm even there, since my input clearly isn't wanted or needed... but generally I'm not completely shut out.)

And knowing that I pointed something out, knowing that maybe something else was changed because of the concerns I brought up... that's important too. To give a military analogy, imagine you're debating whether the enemy will come through a large mountain pass or a smaller one. The large one is big enough to maneuver through in a timely fashion, but fairly obvious and most of our forces are set to defend it. The smaller pass doesn't have as many defenses, but it's less likely the enemy will come that way anyway.

If everyone just assumed the enemy would come through the main pass, then they'd be royally screwed if the enemy chose to do something different. Unless... unless enough people spoke up about the smaller pass that the possibility got taken into account. Maybe a unit or two was placed where they could support the defense at the main pass, but tasked to watch over the smaller pass and move to defend if needed. To hold off the enemy until the rest of their forces could pivot to the new threat. And maybe a drone or sensor or something was set along the smaller pass to give warning if the enemy chose to come that way.

By having people speak out about other possibilities, a more well-thought out plan was developed. One that could adapt to the possibility that everyone was wrong, and the enemy wasn't going to do what they expected.

To bring this back to the beginning of my post - leaders shape their environment, and there's a bit of a value judgement involved in how they do so. Someone who shows no patience for questions may, for example, be creating an environment where decisions are quickly made and you're not stuck endlessly debating what to do. There's not one pure 'good' and 'bad' way of doing it, and all the stuff I just wrote about has it's downsides in terms of time and effort.

However.

When time is not of the essence (i.e. any decision making that isn't happening in a state of emergency, where you are close enough to take immediate action) the risks of making a poorly thought out decision outweighs the challenges of creating an environment where people are encouraged to speak up. Immho, that is.

Nobody can know everything, nobody can be right all the time. The mark of a great leader is building a team that, collectively, makes wise decisions.

That can require a lot of work up front, especially if the leader has to teach their people what to prioritize... but the ultimate goal should be to create a team that can handle it all without you.

Btw, this may be a bit of a tangent, but it feels like it fits best here...

I have run into people who seem central to an organization. One person that everyone goes to in order to get things done. This is, all too often, a sign of bad leadership. If you make yourself essential, you also make a system that will fail if/when you're not there to manage it. If you move to another company, or retire, or die... the system will fall apart. People all too often seem to think being essential is a sign of talent or something, but it's not.

A good leader will build a team that can continue without them, and doesn't need them. (Hence the difference, imho, between a George Washington and a Joseph Stalin.) This is also why the criticism that Democrats haven't been building their leadership pipeline ring true.

Actually, that's why any criticism about not building a leadership pipeline rings true. If you're not considering how to develop your people, if you're not getting them to the point where they can take over for you, you're not a very good leader. (I'm tempted to say 'idiot', but I've been thinking it's not really the best word for it. I've been making the distinction between intelligence and wisdom, you see... you can be very intelligence and very foolish at the same time. Besides, there are some great people who don't do so well on IQ tests, and it's not something they have control over. 'Wise' and 'foolish' seem to involve our choices more... maybe I should start using 'fool' more often? It doesn't feel right, though.)

Continuation of Rules, Choices, and Other Things

I figured it was time for a follow up to my previous post. There's actually a lot to it, so I suppose I ought to start unpacking it.

The drivers who follow the rules without thinking...

Well, they're not bad necessarily, though they can be inflexible and unprepared when the unexpected occurs. In this situation, their attitude towards following traffic rules exemplifies their attitude towards rules in general, and there are three issues with this.

First, you could probably replace such a driver with one of those self-driving cars and not notice any difference. That is, they're sort of acting without thought. Doing what they're programmed to do. To draw on all those religion classes as a kid, they seem like the type of people Jesus would want to remind that "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath."

It's like... they're basically turning off their own brain and accepting the wisdom of whoever created the rules in the first place.

Which, again, is not bad per se. It's just that you can't really outsource that sort of responsibility. There's a reason "following orders" is not considered an acceptable reason for committing war crimes. No matter how much the military (or society, or whoever) tries to instill blind obedience in you... you still choose whether or not you obey. And you have an obligation to recognize when orders are illegal, immoral, and just plain wrong... and to disobey when given such. You can't shove all the responsibility off on whoever gave you the order, because you are a thinking being who chose to accept and follow it. (When it comes down to legal cases I understand prosecution has been mixed, and I'm sure some of it is tied in with whether or not you were aware that the order was illegal in the first place, and how much you really knew when you decided to obey. Which is part of why it's important to teach people ahead of time what makes an order illegal in the first place, so that nobody can claim ignorance as an excuse.)

And (the third reason) if you believe that power corrupts than you'd understand that any organization, or person, given blind obedience grows corrupt more easily. History has repeatedly shown that all man-made organizations are vulnerable, whether we're talking religious, government or corporate. It's our willingness and ability to show that there are lines that shouldn't be crossed, orders that won't be followed, and that we are paying attention and will take action when things go too far that hinders corruption. Blind obedience enables abuse.

So the law-abiding drivers are, well... they're okay. Not bad. You might even say they're 'good'. But...

They're less than they're capable of being. Like they're half-asleep. Not thinking. Not fully engaged with the world around them. And (again drawing on that religious upbringing), you might even call them 'lukewarm'.

As for the driver careening through traffic, weaving in and out heedless of the havoc left in his (or her) wake...

I wouldn't call them a 'leader', though there is something about seeing someone choose a different path that tends to draw followers, so I suppose they are leading by example. It's just...

Okay, so they set the example for a different way of driving. And others, upon seeing it, decide they want to do the same. More and more people see such behavior and choose to imitate it, until eventually traffic (which previously consisted mostly of rule abiding drivers) now becomes a free-for-all that requires all your skill to navigate.

I won't say it's bad... some people may even find it exhilarating. Adrenaline coursing through their  body at yet another near-death experience on their daily commute. Then again, others may come home exhausted, stressed out by narrowly missing other cars five times on the way home, and swear to themselves that they are not leaving the house again unless they absolutely have to.

The point, though, is that someone modeled a behavior that was since imitated to such a degree that it entirely changed the nature of the commute. And if it was deliberate, if someone was trying to create that changed environment, then I would probably call it 'leadership'. But I suspect it was really just one person being selfish, someone with a disregard for the rules as applied to themselves, who wanted to get wherever they were going as fast as possible (and the idea that everyone would do the same, and would thus create an environment where they would be unable to pull the same tricks to speed through traffic, well... it probably never even crossed their mind.)

The third example is the trickiest and most complicated by far. They're the type of driver who, when stuck in a traffic jam and able to see their turnoff ahead, might drive on the shoulder to reach it. Like... they wouldn't drive on the shoulder  just to get further ahead, because cops and ambulances might need the shoulder to get to wherever the source of the traffic jam is. But if they can clearly see their turn off, and can get there without causing any sort of problems, they'll go for it. It's a win/win... letting them get out of the traffic jam sooner, and removing a vehicle from the congestion on the highway.

Or maybe they're turning on to another road, but they choose to wait until an oncoming car passes (even though, if they really hit the gas they could probably make the turn ahead of them) because they know they'll only be slowing down for another turn just down the road. There's no point rushing ahead just to brake again, especially when it forces the car behind you to slow down as well. It's like, if you personally hate having a car get in front of you only to brake seconds later... don't do that to the car behind you.

The point, with this driver at least, is that they're not blindly obeying the law... but they're also not selfishly disregarding it, either. And while I won't say every decision is made mindfully - all drivers  go on auto-pilot at some point or another - this driver is, in some ways, consciously creating the driving environment they want.

We, as a society, make a lot of 'thinking outside-the-box', and having a vision, and seeing beyond what is to what could be.

And that's important. It really is. It's something all the 'blindly obeying every traffic law' driver doesn't have, which also means they're not actively shaping the world around them.

But just because you've realized that social norms and conventions are as binding as tissue paper, doesn't mean that you're making good decisions about what to do with that realization.

What world are you creating? Is it one you'd really want to live in? (If not, well... you know what to do.)

Promising

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/12/education/lebron-james-school-ohio.html

On Rules, and Choices, and Other Things

Ever see a fellow driver who appears totally zoned out? Like, they're following every law of traffic... but they don't show any sort of awareness of what other drivers are doing. Sometimes they even (to much annoyance) are driving in the left hand lane on a highway at the exact same (legal) speed as the car next to them. Which generally causes a blockage, as cars behind them aren't able to pass.

They technically are correct. They're going the speed limit, they use turn signals, they stop when the stoplight is red and go when the light turns green. And so on, and so forth. But the lack of awareness is disturbing, because they probably aren't going to react in time if someone else screws up.  They won't wait that extra second when the light changes, because they don't notice that another car isn't slowing down to stop.

Traffic rules are there for our safety, but they aren't enough to compensate for being an alert and aware driver (especially come winter, when the roads are slippery. Pausing that extra second or two can help prevent accidents if another car starts sliding through an intersection, for example.)

In almost the exact opposite fashion, there are people who seem to believe traffic rules are optional. And, I suppose, if you're alert and aware enough you may even get away with it. That's one of the things that made deploying seem a bit wilder and crazier, in a sense. It's not just the crazy driving our own soldiers had to do in order to stay safe. I recall seeing drivers - was it Kuwait? I think it was in Kuwait - driving the wrong way up a traffic ramp.

Of course, when you choose to disobey the commonly accepted standard you are taking a risk. Risks you can mitigate, of course, but risk nonetheless.

Once you realize that traffic rules are made for you, and that you aren't required to blindly obey them...

Well, responsible people will probably still follow the rules most of the time, because they know the rules were designed for everyone's safety. And if they occasionally don't, it's generally done for a reason (maybe the lights stopped working) and they take every precaution to make sure that nobody's endangered by their actions.

And then there's the people who decide to ignore most of the rules, zipping through lights, rapidly changing lanes to get through congested areas quickly... and completely unconcerned with whatever accidents they may cause along the way. Especially if they're not the ones who get hit. (After all, the other drivers should be paying better attention.)

This is, of course, a metaphor. But I've gotta get going, so I'll elaborate on it some other time.

Be The Change, and Other Odds and Ends, Cont

My previous post talked a lot about choice, and how little we consciously exercise our ability to do so.

This post is meant to talk a bit more about what sorts of choices we can make, and the impact they can have.

Perception and perspective... well, it's a bit like being an optimist or a pessimist. Both are valid ways of looking at the world. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. And it's practically impossible to convince an optimist to be pessimistic or a pessimist to be optimistic - or at least, that's the perception. Life changing events may change that.

But the other funny thing about optimists and pessimists is that the way they view the world can shape the world around them, and what they find. The observer effect appears to apply to more than just physics, which is probably why so many self-helf books argue that you need to change your mindset, change the way you perceive the world around you.

Anyways, tuck all that in the back of your mind as I discuss something somewhat different. I think I've touched on this before, though I forget what I've posted and what I haven't, so forgive me if I repeat myself.

Some decades ago I was reading about Pablo Escobar, and how the US Government worked with Colombia to try to take down him and his cartel. One of the things that struck me was that he genuinely didn't seem to understand why the US Government was out to get him. The idea that President Bush (iirc) and his administration genuinely saw it as a matter of justice, genuinely wanted to capture a perceived criminal... he just didn't believe it. He kept thinking there was something else going on.

It reminds me a bit about Russia, and their perception of human rights issues. Noting the hypocrisy in so much of what we do, they fail to realize that there are people who genuinely believe in these issues and honestly are pushing for them as a matter of justice, and instead seem to think it's just another bargaining tactic.

It's as though 'truth, justice, and the American way', the perception that (for better or worse) I'd say I was raised with, is somehow foreign and anathema to people who grow up in a grittier world.

Just as optimism and pessimism seem reasonable to optimists and pessimists, people who grow up in a world without justice (a world where might makes right) feel justified in living and acting as though that's how the world works, just as people who grow up in a nicer world feel like it's reasonable to believe differently. How you answer a question like "is justice possible", "can people be unbiased", "is fairness possible" says a lot about which attitude shaped you.

When I was assigned to the New York National Guard for deployment, I felt as though I was dealing with culture shock. It was a very different world, one where "I got mine, how you do?" seemed to sum up their perspective on everything. And just as an optimist can't convince a pessimist (and vice versa) they felt that any other way of looking at things was unreasonably naive. A colleague explained to me once that he didn't bother getting offended at the various shenanigans, because you knew that if you were in that position you'd be doing the same thing. Like, don't get upset when the HR person somehow 'loses' the paperwork for someone they dislike... if you get into that position of power you'd do the same to whoever you disliked.

Deploying to Iraq at the same time was interesting, because their perspective seemed to match the local culture better than mine. I heard many American soldiers express a negative perception, more in keeping with my midwestern American upbringing, regarding the blatant corruption of the societies we were working with. (Never mind that Iraqis and Afghans would point out that our own society has corruption aplenty, particularly when you start talking about corporations and big money, and that paying an administrative fee for a driver's license isn't much different from bribing a government official for one.)

The tweet that started off all this kind of reminded me of this, because it makes me think of a similar question - is it better to have the black and white mentality of the average white American, even if it's not consciously chosen? Or is it better to have someone raised in a world more like the one Pablo Escobar lived in, who consciously chooses to try and be more just?

The 'consciously chosen' part is key, here... as that black and white morality all too often comes without any conscious choice. Any awareness that there's another way of looking at things. Pablo Escobar is a criminal, one who profited from selling harmful and illegal drugs to millions of people, and he's just plain bad.

But the world that created him, the world he probably grew up in, the world that so many criminals do... is a world where the very concept of justice seems a joke. Where they learn to do what they've got to do in the world they live in, and accept that that's just what you do. "I got mine, how you do."

In some ways I think that the importance of Christianity, an importance that we've forgotten as the world it created became mainstream and accepted, was in helping people who grew up in a 'might makes right' sort of world to realize that they can choose to make it different. That if you follow the guidelines set down (to try and love thy neighbor as thyself, to treat a stranger with the same care and consideration you do your closest friends, to stop judging others, etc.  To break out of the tribal mentality where you treat your family and close friends differently, offer them honesty and respect and a good deal in business where you might try to take advantage of a stranger)... you, collectively, will create an entirely different world. One where complete strangers can enter into a business agreement and not be afraid they'll be cheated.

I think Christianity, as it's meant to be, is in direct opposition to the sentiment that "I got mine, how you do."

As I keep saying about optimism and pessimism, both perspectives have some validity. There's evidence in the world for both. You can choose to focus on things that support either, and it'd be hard to argue that you're wrong.

So the real question is - which world do you want to live in?

Because whichever perspective you hold will shape your actions, and in turn shape the shared experience of you and those around you. If you believe that you would do exactly what those in power are doing if given the chance, if you accept that 'that's just the way it is', and focus on getting yours... you will make choices that prove the truth of your perspective. You help perpetuate the belief, through the choices you make. And you make that world more and more a reality.

If, on the other hand, you believe that there is some possibility of justice (hard though it is, impossible though it may be to prove), that belief will also shape your actions and the shared experience of those around you. As one example, your willingness to accept results that are not in your favor so long as the process is perceived as fair and just helps create a world where people believe we can get past the biases and self-interest endemic to our experience.

Both perspectives can also play an interesting role in the perception of power... one accepts the perks that go with power (like the ability to hire an expensive lawyer to reduce your sentence) while the other holds that with power comes responsibility, and those in power should be held to the same standard - or even higher - as everyone else.

In one, it's perfectly acceptable to use everything at their disposable to pursue their own self-interest. In the other, the powerful have to be even better than the rest of us, wiser and more honest. After all, the ability to hold the powerful accountable is the truest test of whether the world is capable of justice.

Which world do you want to live in? And what conscious choices are you making to create that world?

Be The Change, and Other Odds and Ends

Someone on twitter asked who you should trust more, someone with kind instincts (who makes less effort to be kind) or someone with unkind instincts who is making the effort to be kinder.

I don't know the answer to that, but it triggered some thoughts that I'm going to try mashing all together here. It might take a post or two (or maybe more, who knows?)

Long ago, I heard someone claim that the West is focused more on the individual, and the East is focused more on collectivism. I thought that both were true, but focused on different parts of human nature. That 80-90% of our behavior can be explained by... I dunno... how we were raised, what the people around us believe, how they think, the stuff we absorb growing up in a particular family and a particular society. But there's always that 10-20% - roughly estimating, as it varies considerably, and from person to person - that comes from specific individual choices we make.

That focusing on the individual helps remind us that we do have a choice, that we can choose differently. That we are not stuck following the path laid down by the generations before us, not stuck repeating patterns of behavior learned as a child, especially when the results don't make us happy.

It may not always be as true as we think, we may not always consciously choose, but it's well worth remembering. It frees us.

But it's only part of the story, and one most people don't use all that often. You can see a great deal of this at play with the cycle of poverty, with how people who are raised poor struggle to get out of it. How changing socio-economic class often involves changes in values and attitudes.

But it's true for more than just people at the poorer end of the scale. There was a thought-provoking article discussing how so many Ivy League graduates wind up on Wall Street, and it struck me that (according to the article) doing so was not actually the goal for most of them. They had other things they wanted to do with their lives, bigger purposes they wanted to do...

But, in a process that reminded me all too much of the 'golden shackles' that may handcuff you to deploying (i.e. the money is more than you can make elsewhere, which gets addicting... and when you finish a deployment and go back home you can live off the money for a little while, but eventually it runs out... maybe you find it hard to find a comparable job stateside or something... and you soon wind up deploying again) people wind up living a life that they hadn't planned on, and hadn't intended.

The part I find, well, a bit less forgiving about this in the 1% as opposed to the poor, is that they have so many more options than the poor caught up in the cycle of poverty. Like, maybe there are choices you can make to get out of being poor, but it's a long and hard slog no matter how strong your willpower... and it takes a very, very long time to get enough resources to have genuine choices... you are constantly limited in what you can do. Maybe you have to choose between paying rent, eating, and paying tuition. Or paying for health insurance, and praying that you don't get sick in the meantime. Sure, you've got choices... but they're very different from deciding whether to buy that tenth yacht or not.

But what are the golden shackles holding the 1%?

Most of it appears, on the outside at least, to be social programming. The pressure to "keep up with the Joneses". Things that, well, that in a society that admires individualism you'd think they could easily escape. Like... do you really need 10 yachts? It's not like you can sail them all at once, you know. Or do you give a different family member one? 

How often are they in use, and how often are they idly sitting somewhere? How much of it is conspicuous consumption, signaling how wealthy they are to their peers, and how much of it is genuine need?

For those of us who don't even have one yacht, much less ten, it all sounds ridiculously unnecessary. Spending a ludicrous amount of money on things that are almost a complete waste (aside from the companies that make yachts and the people they employ. Said resources which could probably be used elsewhere, tbqh.)

Every time someone (who always considers themselves middle class, and barely getting by) posts some out-of-touch editorial where they lament how hard it is, and how everyone else just doesn't understand...

The matter-of-fact way they describe the expenses of nannies, and maids... all of it just serves to remind the vast majority of people - who can't afford a nanny or a maid - just how privileged this person is. Like, if a poor person could somehow manage to get an education and find a better paying job (and stop being poor) how much more could a person who has nannies and maids do if they cut out completely unnecessary expenses like that? (The editorialists don't seem to consider them unnecessary, of course, and someone has to take care of the kids and clean house. It's just, well, deciding not to use a daycare - and having the resources to do so - is a privilege. Whether that's hiring a nanny or having one of the parents stay home, in this era where most families need two incomes to survive, it's all a sign of wealth. Deciding not to do all the house cleaning yourself - and, again, having the resources to do so - is a privilege.)

Books and movies often show the 'poor little rich kid', who elicits a range of mixed emotions, because on the one hand wealth isn't everything, and it makes sense that they'd struggle as well. Everyone has challenges, rich or poor, though the particular type varies greatly.

At the same time, it's like... so many of the challenge of a 'poor little rich kid' are things that could easily be overcome, given the resources available. (I say 'easily', but things like 'finding love' are just as hard. Or perhaps even harder, since there are all sorts of parasites willing to crowd around. And it's a lot harder to tell who is genuine and who isn't when people have an incentive to impress you. Still, if you feel called to do something particular with your life and you've got the resources, the only thing holding you back is yourself. If you don't feel satisfied with your job, if whatever your daily life is like is unfulfilling, you've got the key to undoing your golden shackles any time you want.)

All too often we wind up making choices without really thinking about it, shunting aside the occasional feeling of discomfort. The vague sense that we aren't living up to our full potential, aren't being who we want to be...

And that's true for people from all walks of life. Perhaps that's what the concept of 'mindfulness' is all about. Becoming consciously aware of the choices we make, and deliberately - mindfully - living in the present, choosing the ones that bring us closer to our most authentic self.

(If I criticize the wealthy for doing what most people do, i.e. following the well-beaten path, brushing aside the sense that they could be doing something else, that maybe they should give up that well-paying corporate job and risk it all for some uncertain and vague promise of better - it's in part because our society so often claims they deserve the position they're in because they're able to make those sorts of decisions. The entrepreneur and businessperson who makes it big by taking risks... the person compensated by society for offering something unusual, and rare, and needed. We think they deserve the rewards they get for consciously choosing to do something different, to see something nobody else has seen and act on it. The person who inherits wealth and privilege, who gets all the benefits of being well-off without having to take those sorts of risks, without having to consciously think about what they are doing or who they want to be... they don't seem to deserve the power and status our society confers on them. They're just muddling through like everyone else, and aren't really offering up anything special. It's like the perspective so many people had on the 'golden parachutes' for leaders of failed companies. I could come in and ruin a company just as easily as they did, so why do they deserve to get the type of compensation that would set me up for life? Sure, they may lose the friendship of some of their peers. Sure, they may be ashamed to face everyone, knowing they were a failure. They're still able to live comfortably for a very long time, so long as they don't squander that compensation on ten yachts or something.)