Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
The Porcelain Elephant In The Room
We need to talk.
I subscribe to Harvard Business Review’s (HBR) Management Tip of the Day and, every business day, I get a one-paragraph idea for improving my communication and management skills. It’s an intriguing way to get exposed to a wide-range of ideas in short period of time. (Click here to subscribe).
A recent tip summarized how to “Avoid Fighting With Your Spouse When You Get Home From Work.” The article notes “It’s unrealistic and unhelpful for couples to expect that they’ll automatically be in sync when they arrive home; different needs, different recovery times, and different experiences…make it more likely that you’ll be out of sync.”
It’s a good point and it reminds me of a story from a young colleague of mine named Molly. Molly and her husband have been married for just a few years and they both work outside the home. They’re settling in to their careers and their jobs are demanding. They noticed that, when they arrive home, their emotional states are often “out of sync.”
Sometimes Molly would arrive home after a tough day and notice something askew in the house. She might stew on it a bit and, when her husband arrived home, she would “pounce” on him. Sometimes, it’s the other way round – husband arrives home first, stews on something, and pounces on an unsuspecting Molly when she arrives. I suspect that all married couples have had similar experiences.
What makes Molly and her husband different is that they realized that neither one of them was at fault. It wasn’t his or her fault. Rather, it was a question of timing and the degree to which they were in or out of sync emotionally.
So they decided to … buy a porcelain elephant. They also agreed to a timing-and-discussion protocol. The porcelain elephant normally sits on a bookshelf. However, if either Molly or her husband is stewing about something, he or she moves the elephant to a coffee table in the living room. It’s a quiet signal that “We need to talk.”
Let’s replay the same scenario. Molly arrives home in a bad mood, notices something askew in the house, stews about it, and … moves the elephant to the coffee table. Her husband arrives home and notices the elephant. He can immediately ask her what’s wrong or – if he’s really not in the right mood – he can ignore it for up to 12 hours. They’ve agreed that, when the elephant comes out, they’ll have a meaningful conversation to resolve the issue, but not necessarily upon walking in the door.
I think it’s a genius move and a very mature strategy for a young couple. It ensures that the conversation happens while leaving some flexibility for both parties to get in sync emotionally. As the HBR article notes, don’t have the conversation “…right when you get home. Set aside some time to talk when you’re both feeling more relaxed.” Molly and her husband have figured out exactly how to do that.
The Art Of Transformation
What’s the difference between an art and a craft?
A traditional definition focuses on differences in expectations and outcomes. With a craft, we know precisely what the outcome will be, even before we start. We have a set of instructions and, if followed faithfully, the outcome is guaranteed.
By contrast, an artist doesn’t know what the outcome will be. Creating an artwork involves exploration, doubt, questioning, trial-and-error, and no small amount of anxiety. An artist explores the unknown and aims to give us new insights. A good artwork may not be beautiful in a classic sense, but it is always imaginative. A craftsman, on the other hand, creates the expected and delivers beauty and pleasure through execution more than imagination.
I thought of these distinctions the other day when I toured a major new exhibition, Women of Abstract Expressionism*, at the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition highlights a dozen leaders of the abstract expressionist movement and their work from roughly 1945 to 1960. Here’s how two of the artists describe the creative process:
- Grace Hartigan: “Eventually, the painting tells you what it wants to be.”
- Jay DeFeo: “When I start, I don’t know what’s going to happen. When you’re dancing, you don’t stop to think: now I’ll take a step … you allow it to flow.”
It occurs to me that the distinction between art and craft also applies to organizational development. Change management is a craft. Organizational transformation is an art.
We often invoke change management when we begin a concise and well-delineated project. We understand the boundaries and the players. We move through well-defined phases that we can measure objectively. We expect changes to occur between people – perhaps with new reporting structures and alignments. Change management is not easy to master but it seems to me that it is a craft. We often celebrate the end result. We can do that precisely because it is a craft – we know when the process ends.
Organizational transformation is much more like an art. When we seek to transform an organization’s culture, we have only a fuzzy idea of where we’re going. Milestones exist but they’re not well defined. Transformation requires changes within people rather than only between people. We can’t see those changes; nor can we measure them. If we try to measure the unmeasurable, we’ll go off course. Like any other art, transformation involves exploration, doubt, questioning, trial-and-error, and no small amount of anxiety. Paraphrasing Grace Hartigan, “Eventually, the organization tells you what it wants to be.” The secret to success is listening, not measuring.
I sometimes ask my artist friends how they know when a piece they’re working on is finished. None of them has very good answers. Some say they “just know”. Others say that they just get tired of it. Others say that it’s never finished. Whenever they see it again, they’re tempted to make “just a few minor changes.”
It occurs to me that I’ve never been to a party to celebrate an organizational transformation. Perhaps it’s because we just don’t know when the transformation is finished. It’s an art not a craft.
*The Women of Abstract Expressionism exhibit is both superb and unexpected. The paintings are exciting and energetic. The painters are almost anonymous. This is the first major exhibition – anywhere in the world — of the women who energized the abstract expressionist movement. That it happened in my hometown makes me more than just a little bit proud. You can see it – and should see it — until September 25th.
The painting illustrating this article is Grace Hartigan’s The King Is Dead, from 1960.
Do Nudges Work? Should We Use Them?
It’s for your own good.
Ever since Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein published Nudge in 2008, we’ve been debating the ethics and practicality of “nudging” people into making the “right” decisions.
Thaler and Sunstein mine the same intellectual vein worked by Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Dan Ariely, and Charles Duhigg. We may think we make rational decisions but we have biases, habits, and quirks that inject a degree of irrationality into every decision we make. While the other researchers explain how our heuristics work, Thaler and Sunstein give practical advice for nudging people toward rational decisions that serve their best interests.
Thaler and Sunstein refer to their work as “libertarian paternalism”. It sounds like an oxymoron but the basic idea is that you still have the right to screw up your life by making bad decisions. At the same time, we (whoever “we” is) will nudge you into making decisions that are good for you.
Most observers seem to have accepted that nudging by the government or by your employer is ethically acceptable. After all, it’s good for you, right? But there is a minority that objects to the paternalism inherent in the concept. For instance, Michael Beran writes that, “The authors of Nudge seem not to understand that the welfare of a people depends in part on their being free to choose badly. … Probably most people … can point to experiences where their mistakes proved fruitful. … Should we gradually foreclose the freedom to be stupid, we will almost certainly end up being less intelligent.”
So is nudging libertarian paternalism, as Thaler and Sunstein would have it or false benevolence, as Beran would put it? It seems like a debate that’s worth having … but not before we answer a more basic question: does nudging work? Why bother to debate the ethics of a concept if it doesn’t actually work?
So, does nudging work? We have a lot of anecdotal evidence that making one choice easier than another can nudge people in the “right” direction. For instance, if we want to encourage organ donations, we can offer people a choice to donate or not when they get their driver’s license. The driver’s bureau can structure the default option in one of two ways: 1) You’re not a donor unless you opt in; 2) You are a donor unless you opt out. It seems likely that Option 2 would nudge people in the right direction.
As we know, however, anecdotal evidence is very weak. We tend to make up stories that fit our preconceived notions. And Frank Pasquale, writing in The Atlantic, argues that nudges are often too weak to overcome ingrained behaviors. So, is there any controlled, randomized research that would answer a simple question: does nudging work?
Somewhat surprisingly, the first such research was published just last month in Science magazine. (Click here). John Bohannon, the article’s author, reports on 15 controlled trials that involved more than 100,000 people in the United States. The trials involved signing up for various government-supplied social services. In each case, some randomly selected participants were given the “standard application.” Other participants were given a “psychological nudge in which the information was presented slightly differently … for instance, … one choice was made easier than another.”
The results? “In 11 of the trials, the nudge modestly increased a person’s response rate or influenced them to make financially smarter decision.” Bohannon includes data on three of the trials, which moved decisions in the right direction by 2.9%, 3.6%, and 11%. As Bohannon notes, these are modest changes but the costs were probably low as well (no data were given on costs). If so, the cost-benefit may be positive as well.
We now have some solid evidence that nudges actually work. We don’t know the cost-benefit ratios but let’s assume for a moment that they’re positive. If so, the question becomes, should we encourage the government to use them? On the one hand, as Bohannon notes, businesses pay billions of dollars per year for their own nudges, known as advertising. Why shouldn’t the government participate on (closer to) equal footing? On the other hand, libertarians argue that it’s really another kind of nudge – toward the nanny state. I’ll write more about the debate in the future. In the meantime, what do you think?
The Best Way To Disagree
I disagree.
I find that I often disagree with people. It’s not that I’m a bad person or that I have evil intentions. I just have a specific and somewhat idiosyncratic way of looking at the world that doesn’t always fit with other people’s views. There’s certainly nothing wrong with being out of step with the world. There are, however, good reasons to consider how to deal with it.
When I was younger and snarkier, I dealt with it by being competitive. I focused on winning. I’m pretty good with words and I could often come up with a snappy comeback or putdown. I could be sarcastic and snide. I could put the other person in his place. If I left the other person speechless, so much the better. That just proved that I had won the encounter. I felt superior.
Now that I’m a bit older, I realize that it’s more important to win over than to win. When I sarcastically put someone down, I doubt that I won many hearts and minds. Instead of winning people over, I pushed them away. Humiliating another person may feel good but it doesn’t do good.
I’ve learned that the best way to disagree is to begin by agreeing. You start by finding some point of agreement with the other person’s position. It may be small or large, but it allows you to start by validating what the other person has said. You say – metaphorically or literally – “Yes, I’ve heard you. I understand your position.” The other person feels affirmed and recognized.
Then you change the frame, shift the focus, or alter the timeline. Here are some general-purpose ways to do just that:
- Alter the timeline – “I agree that your suggestion would be helpful in the short run. But I worry that the long-term effects would be very detrimental. Here’s why…” (Of course, you can flip long-term and short-term if that suits your argument).
- Agree conceptually then shift to the literal or practical aspects of the issue – “I think you’re right. A successful businessman should make a good president. I would just feel better if we had an example of that actually happening.”
- Agree with your interlocutor’s frame of reference and then change the frame. Often, you’ll want to broaden the frame, like this: “I certainly agree that this would help first graders. But I’m concerned about all primary school students. How can we determine if this will help all students, not just beginners?” On other occasions, you may want to narrow the frame, like this: “I agree that this tax change will be good for most companies in our industry. But our company is an exception because of the way we account for our overseas profits.”
The general technique is known as concession-and-shift. It’s been in use at least since the days of Aristotle and his rhetorical colleagues. The idea is simple: start on a positive note rather than a negative note. Agree before disagreeing. If your interlocutor senses that you’re agreeable and reasonable, she’ll be much more likely to listen to your side of the argument. That’s exactly what you want.
When I Met Muhammad Ali
The smile.
In 1968 or 69, when I worked on the student newspaper at the University of Delaware (UD), I drew an assignment to interview Muhammad Ali. I was a fairly random choice since I didn’t cover sports. But the angle of the story was Viet Nam and the antiwar movement. Since I wrote about politics, I volunteered eagerly to meet the man behind the legend.
At the time, Ali was in his three-and-a-half year exile from boxing. In 1967, Ali had refused to be drafted in the army and filed for conscientious objector status. He also made the memorable statement, “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.” His political positions coupled with his fame made him one of the most polarizing figures of American history. Boxing commissions stripped him of his title and no state would grant him a license to fight. (The Supreme Court later unanimously granted him conscientious objector status and he resumed his boxing career).
My assignment was straightforward. Ali was on a speaking tour of college campuses and was preparing to give a speech at Delaware State University. I was to drive to DSU and, with a dozen or so other journalists, spend an hour interviewing him. The fact that Ali was speaking at DSU, instead of UD, was telling. Though the state of Delaware was a not “southern”, its educational system was highly segregated. The University of Delaware was for white students; Delaware State was for black students. Indeed, Delaware State was founded in 1891 as the State College for Colored Students. Perhaps for obvious reasons, Ali chose to speak at Delaware State.
Ali was a member of the Nation of Islam, often referred to as Black Muslims. (He later converted to mainstream Islam). At the time, the Nation of Islam advocated the separation of races and viewed “white devils” as an inferior race created by an evil scientist. On judgment day, white people would be destroyed.
I had followed Ali’s career closely and knew something about his strength and speed. It’s a little known fact that I boxed in the Golden Glove preliminaries in high school. I wanted to box like Ali. I knew that we were both the same height – 6 foot 3. His reach was 78 inches. So was mine. He was fast. So was I. The difference: he weighed 215 pounds and was athletic. I weighed 160 pounds and was nerdy. I could float like a butterfly but my sting was like a damp Kleenex.
I found my way to the right building on the Delaware Sate campus. The meeting room was just down the hall and around the corner. I rounded the corner and practically tripped over Muhammad Ali.
I wasn’t prepared and didn’t know what to expect. I was eager to meet him but also nervous. He was the most famous person I ever met (still true today). But perhaps he wouldn’t be happy to see me. Perhaps he would deem me a white devil and ban me from his presence. But, in fact, he was one of the most gracious people I have ever met. I was stammering awkwardly and he had no particular reason to be nice to me but he welcomed me warmly and offered me a hand that seemed twice as large as mine.
Since we were the same height, I assumed that I could look him in the eye. But no – he seemed so much bigger than I was. I don’t know where charisma comes from but he had it in vast quantities. He was far more charismatic than Bill Clinton, whom I met many years later. Ali seemed to float in the air in front of me.
I’ve just read several obituaries of Muhammad Ali. They discuss his athletic prowess, his political views, his religious development, and, course, his verbal jousting. What I saw was a thoughtful, caring, magnetic individual who invited me into his world for about an hour.
During the press round table, I know I asked some questions, but I don’t remember them. I know I wrote an article, but I don’t remember it. What the obituaries don’t mention was his smile. It was magnanimous and all encompassing. That’s what I’ll remember.
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