Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
Ice Cream and Muggings
Feel like mugging someone?
Did you know that the sale of ice cream is strongly correlated to the number of muggings in a given locale? Could it be that consuming ice cream leads us to attack our fellow citizens? Or perhaps miscreants in our midst mug strangers to get the money to buy ice cream? We have two variables, X and Y. Which one causes which? In this case, there’s a third variable, Z, that causes both X and Y. It’s the temperature. As the temperature rises, we buy more ice cream. At the same time, more people are wandering about out of doors, even after dark, making them convenient targets for muggers.
What causes what? It’s the most basic question in science. It’s also an important question for business planning. Lowering our prices will cause sales to rise, right? Maybe. Similarly, government policies are typically based on notions of cause and effect. Lowering taxes will cause the economy to boom, right? Well… it’s complicated. Let’s look at some examples where cause and effect are murky at best.
Home owners commit far fewer crimes proportionally than people who don’t own homes. Apparently, owning a home makes you a better citizen. Doesn’t it follow that the government should promote home ownership? Doing so should result in a safer, saner society, no? Well… maybe not. Again, we have two variables, X and Y. Which one causes which? Could it be that people who don’t commit crimes are in a better position to buy homes? That not committing crimes is the cause and home ownership is the result? The data are completely tangled up so it’s hard to prove conclusively one way or the other. But it seems at least possible that good citizenship leads to home ownership rather than vice versa. Or maybe, like ice cream and muggings, there’s a hidden variable, Z, that causes both.
The crime rate in the United States began to fall dramatically in the early 1990s. I’ve heard four different reasons for this. Which one do you think is the real cause?
- Legalized abortion — in 1973, the Supreme Court effectively legalized abortion in the United States. Eighteen years later, the crime rate began to fall precipitously. Coincidence?
- The “broken windows” theory of policing — police traditionally focused on serious crime while ignoring petty crimes. In the 1980s, sociologists began to argue that ignoring petty crime sent a signal to would-be criminals that citizens will tolerate crime in a given area. Even minor crimes like broken windows could send the wrong message. Police adopted the idea and started cracking down on petty crimes. The message? If minor crimes are not tolerated, just think what they’ll do for bigger crimes!
- The aging population — we’re getting older. Young people commit a disproportionate number of crimes, especially violent crimes. As our nation ages, we become more sedate.
- The “get tough” sentencing movement — politicians in the 1980s began to sponsor legislation to “get tough” on crime by imposing longer, mandatory sentences. One result has been a dramatic rise in our prison population. (In fact, I read recently that the U.S. has 700 people incarcerated for every 100,000 citizens. In Sweden, the equivalent rate is 70 prisoners. Could it be that we’re ten times more criminal than Swedes? Swedes are blonde and they don’t commit crimes. Cause and effect, right? Perhaps we should all dye our hair blonde.)
Which of the four variables actually caused the declining crime rate in America? A lot is riding on the answer. Unfortunately, the data are so tangled up that it’s difficult to tell what causes what. But here are some rules for thinking about correlation and causation:
- If you think X cause Y, always ask the reverse question. Is it possible that Y caused X?
- Always look for a hidden variable, Z, that could cause both X and Y.
Actually, the only way to prove cause and effect beyond a shadow of a doubt, is the experimental method. Which leads us to our question for tomorrow: does smoking cause cancer in humans?
More Creative Creativity
I’m a traditionalist. And an iconoclast.
In his classic research on creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote that creative personalities often display ten contrasting characteristics. In previous articles, we’ve looked at the first six. (Click here and here). Today let’s look at the final four.
In all cultures, men are brought up to be “masculine” and to disregard and repress those aspects of their temperament that the culture regards as “feminine,” whereas women are expected to do the opposite. Creative individuals to a certain extent escape this rigid gender role stereotyping. Csikszentmihalyi refers to this as androgyny — not just in the sexual sense but in the broader, cultural sense: “a person’s ability to be at the same time aggressive and nurturant, sensitive and rigid, dominant and submissive…” In his sample of creative personalities, Csikszentmihalyi found that the men were more sensitive and the women more assertive than their cultural norms would suggest.
Generally, creative people are thought to be rebellious and independent. Yet it is impossible to be creative without having first internalized a domain of culture. To master the vast knowledge of a given discipline, novices need to work very hard. They wouldn’t work so hard unless they believed deep knowledge of the field were important. Thus, in some senses, they are traditionalists as much as they are iconoclasts.
Most creative persons are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well. To perform difficult tasks that might take years to complete, one needs to be passionate. Yet to place one’s work against an existing domain’s framework — and to make it credible — one needs to be clear-eyed and objective.
Finally, the openness and sensitivity of creative individuals often exposes them to suffering and pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment. Leading a discipline into a new way of thinking is a lonely job. Being sensitive (as noted above) only complicates the issue. Csikszentmihalyi asks an important question: does suffering lead to creativity or does creativity lead to suffering? Normal people may see divergent thinking and obsessive interest in obscure topics as weird or even deviant. As a result, “the creative person may feel isolated and misunderstood …. Yet when the person is working in the area of his or her expertise, worries and cares fall away, replaced by a sense of bliss. Perhaps the most important quality, the one that is most consistently present in all creative individuals, is the ability to enjoy the process of creation for its own sake.”
So we have ten different contrasting personality types that commonly occur in creative people. In each case, the creative personality appears at two different points on the spectrum. They are both traditionalists and iconoclasts. Smart and naive. Energetic and quiet. Introverts and extroverts. Imaginative and realists. As Csikszentmihalyi points out, “…without the second pole, new ideas will not be recognized. And without the first, they will not be developed to the point of acceptance.”
Click here for Csikszentmihalyi’s book. By the way, his surname is pronounced Six-Cent-Mihaly.
Innovation and the City
I’m looking for a connection.
Let’s say that the city of Groverton has 100,000 residents and produces X number of innovations per year. Down the road, the city of Pecaville has 1,000,000 residents. Since Pecaville has ten times more residents than Groverton, it should produce 10X innovations per year, correct?
Actually, no. Other things being equal, Pecaville should produce far more than 10X innovations. In predicting innovation capacity, it’s not the number of people (or nodes) that counts, it’s the number of connections. The million residents of Pecaville have more than ten times the connection opportunities of the residents of sleepy little Groverton. Therefore, they should produce much more than ten times the number of innovations.
In Where Good Ideas Come From, Steven Johnson makes the point that connections are the fundamental unit of innovation. The more connections you can make, the more likely you are to create good ideas. Scale doesn’t matter — more connections are better at a very small scale or a very large scale. This is where cities come in. In terms of innovation, larger cities have multiple advantage over smaller cities, including:
- There are more “spare parts” lying around — Johnson points out that most new ideas are created by combining — or connecting — existing ideas. Existing ideas are “spare parts” that an enterprising “mechanic” can assemble in new ways. (In an earlier post, I referred to this as mashup thinking. Click here.) Cities have more of everything, including more spare parts to fool around with.
- More information spillover — I know a lot about information science. If I keep it to myself, it doesn’t do a lot of good. If I share it with, say some sociologists, we might just come up with something useful. My information spills over to them and vice versa. In Johnson’s terms, the information I share becomes spare parts that the sociologists can plug into their framework. The question is: how likely am I to meet up with a bunch of sociologists? It’s much more likely in a big city than a small town.
- Not only are there more connections, the connections are more varied — if I mainly talk to people who are like me, the chances of something innovative happening are fairly low. It’s when I talk across boundaries — to people who aren’t like me — that interesting ideas begin to emerge. It may happen when I bump into a random sect of sociologists. But if it doesn’t happen then, well… maybe it will happen when I encounter an enclave of entomologists. Or maybe I’ll bump into a bevy of brewers who need to know about information science. In a big city, I’m likely to interact with many more disciplines, opinions, experts, and enthusiasts than I am in a small town.
Does this work in real life? Johnson provides some very interesting anecdotes. More recently, last Friday’s New York Times had an article (click here) on manufacturing and innovation. The article argues that more innovation happens when designers are close to the manufacturing floor. Why? Because of information spillover. Researchers claim that offshore manufacturing reduces our ability to innovate precisely because it reduces information spillover. Connectivity seems to work on the manufacturing floor as much as it does in big cities. Scale doesn’t matter. Bottom line: if you want to be more innovative, get connected.
Sunday Shorts
Pardon me while I unitask.
Interesting items I’ve discovered in the past week or so:
- Who’s the world’s most famous unitasker? It may well be Sherlock Holmes. When presented with a case, he didn’t multitask; he simply sat still and concentrated. It’s an example of mindfulness and meditation that can help us be more attentive, think “younger” and be more creative. For Maria Konnikova’s article, click here. For my recent article on multitasking, click here.
- If the bride is eight moths pregnant, should you mention the fact or pretend not to notice? In “Law and Disorder”, Jonathan Rauch argues that we would be better off if we would just mind our own business. It’s the difference between “hidden” law and “bureaucratic” law. Rauch’s essay is more than a decade old, but I just discovered it. You can find it here.
- Would the economy be better off without MBA students? That was the subject of a recent weeklong debate hosted by The Economist magazine. By a narrow margin — 51% to 49% — readers of The Economist agreed with the proposition — we would be better off without MBA students. Read why here.
Three Myths of Change Management
My attention span is less than 12 minutes.
A majority of change management efforts in organizations fail. Indeed, the failure rate may be as high as 70%. As we’ve discussed before (click here), strategy and culture are intertwined. Before you change your strategy, you’ll probably need to change your culture. But, if the failure rate is 70%, is it even worth trying? Not if you believe in myths.
According to Bain & Company, there are three great myths that inhibit the success of change management efforts. Let’s look at each of these today. (For the complete article, click here).
Myth #1: As long as the effect on people is minimized, change will succeed. To change successfully, we all know that the whole organization needs to coalesce around a common vision. That’s easy to say but hard to do. If you’re being disrupted, you may not want to align around somebody else’s vision. So smart change managers identify those employees that are likely to be most disrupted and invite them to co-create the vision. This often takes the form of workshops “that help the leadership team paint a clear picture of what the change will look like when it’s finished.”
Myth #2: So much about change is irrational and hard to predict. Bain & Company has developed a list of 30 specific risks that can disrupt change. The list is not surprising; in fact, it’s very predictable. You can organize the risks into five major categories: 1) Balance ambition; 2) Mobilize leaders; 3) Change behaviors; 4) Shape execution; 5) Extend success. The 30 risk factors occur in “predictable patterns” and only a handful will be disruptive at any given time. By studying the predictable patterns and applying them to your organization, you can create heat maps that help you focus your attention on the right spots at any stage of the change process.
Myth #3: All you need is good leadership and day-to-day management. Once you start a major change process, you put immense stress on your organization. Weird things start to happen. For instance, people in normal business situations may have an attention span of an hour or so. In stressed out organizations, attention spans shrink to about 12 minutes. People may retain only 20% of the information they receive. Stressed employees will tune you out altogether if they think you’re not credible or that you don’t care about them. They’ll decide in roughly 30 seconds whether you’re trustworthy or not. Even the best orators find it difficult to establish trustworthiness in 30 seconds. That’s why it’s so important to deliver high-stress information via sponsors that the audience already trusts. Normal communication doesn’t work in a high stress situation. You need to simplify your message and deliver it through trusted channels. (For more on trusted channels and message cascades, click here).
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