Why Do I Keep F--in' Up?

Neil Young hits the nail on the head here:

Even though I think he intended this to be rhetorical, it's a fundamental question that deserves careful attention. To make an impact it's best to avoid the big errors, the ones that drain our energy in fixing and cleaning up the consequences.

Many would cite poor decisions, bad luck, lack of information, emotions, being mislead, rushing etc. as reasons for our snafus. All are valid, but are there some deeper causes that lead to our propensity to mess up? One answer comes from the discipline of systems thinking which shows that often, no matter how good our intentions, we end up making the wrong long-term choices and creating problems because we fail to see the underlying systems that dictate outcomes. When something appears broken we have a natural inclination to take it apart and fix it, applying solutions that mend the broken item or issue. The systems thinking idiom is that you cannot mend the system by fixing the parts; you must begin with the system in mind, and act to benefit the system goals. A classic example is the climate change conundrum, where current paradigms constrain us to continually contribute to a problem that will eventually make life on the planet untenable. Even when we see the system it is not easy to change the underlying structures.

Being able to visualize dynamic complexity--interrelationships when all variables are constantly in flux--is not trivial and requires considerable computing power. Nevertheless, it is powerful to just shift our mindset and appreciate the extent to which everything is interconnected, understanding that changes in one area lead to results that are separated in time and space. Our lives and their impact on the world represent our principal system of concern. When we begin to discern how choices and actions affect others and subsequently feedback on our own lives, we begin to see different strategies to make the most impact. There are true points of leverage (and I don't mean "leverage" in the corporate jargon sense*). We can construct a means of really learning from our mistakes by using them to understand interrelationships, and the mental models that we used in the situation [Got Impact Models]. Seeing these structures and models ever more clearly is the path to continual learning and impact.

Cause and effect is rarely unilateral and linear; effects may be distant in time and location from their cause. As of writing this post, the current Isis insurgency in Iraq is a good example of a core concept in this systems worldview: "today's problem is yesterday's solution".

Don't be fooled, look at every step in the context of the larger journey, strive to understand your mental models and the structures that govern cause and effect. Learn, integrate and test; understand that sometimes the fuck-ups that occur are the result of the system, and the better you understand the system (and challenge it, redesign it, change it!) the better you will be able to answer Neil Young's question.


*"we can leverage that Jim"

Roll Away the Stone

A Mott the Hoople flavored post on the idea of pushing while making sure we are pushing in the right direction! Firstly, some classic British glam rock for those that enjoy this:

“Negotiation is the art of letting them have your own way” 

Daniel Vare (Italian diplomat)

There is a thin line between the idea of going with (while ensuring it’s where we want to go) and manipulating someone to get your own way. However this thin line can be walked in instances that necessitate it. As Robert Green wrote in his book ‘The 48 Laws of Power’:

“The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice….give people options that come out in your favour whichever one they choose.”

This is in effect the principle of Hobson’s Choice: “a situation in which you are supposed to make a choice but do not have a real choice because there is only one thing you can have or do”. Hobson’s choice relies on setting up the situation. There’s a card trick in which the audience member is asked to choose between four “stars” laid out on a table (each star containing four cards, placed face down in a cross shape). The spectator first points to two stars, then to one, then to two cards within the four remaining, and finally to one card of two. Each time the other cards are removed from the table, leaving a final card unturned. The denouement is revealing that the last card is in fact the card that the spectator memorized earlier in an exercise where the deck is shuffled into vertical lines of cards. The trick works every time as in fact the player does not have a choice, even though they believe they are choosing freely. The person playing the trick pushes the spectator to pick their card (previously identified through a simple ruse) by either removing the cards pointed to, or the cards that were not pointed to, depending on whether the target card is outside or inside the selection, respectively. Done well, the spectator does not realize that the card removal is based on inconsistent rules, and is amazed to see that they “randomly” selected their chosen card, the identity of which was not previously revealed to anyone.

This same technique can be used in martial arts and life. Get your opponent to want to go in the direction you wish. One way of achieving this is to use the principle of opposites. Remember that the best way to push a big guy out of a door is not to push him out of it. Stand in front of the door and push the guy in the opposite direction; as he resists strongly, reverse and pull, letting his inertia propel him out of the door with little effort on your part. Similarly, sometimes it’s best to push in the opposite direction to secure that which you desire. It plays on our natural tendency to go against, such that pushing in one direction is more likely to get people moving the opposite way. One example might be employee retention. Rather than hide the benefits of other places to work, it is better to emphasize that employees will always be able to move on from their current company with the skills and knowledge that they develop. Encourage them to look for other options; engendering this feeling of freedom and choice results in a deeper loyalty and a propensity to stay, rather than the opposite impression of being trapped with few options, which is more likely to lead to employees quitting. 

So, the Hobson’s choice idea captures many of the nuances of the art of impact--going with, generating options, finding the hidden, setting-up, pushing against--that can all be combined into a strategy leading to that exhilarating feeling of flow and impact.

There's more than one way to roll a stone!

Always Something Hidden

There's a rock garden in Japan where, when standing at any point in the garden, seventeen large stones are visible. An aerial photograph shows that there are, in fact, eighteen rocks in the garden.

A simple story but, for me, memorable and I think of this often (it was told by the karate sensei Shigeru Kimura during one of his training sessions). The message that I take from it is that there is always something hidden--in all circumstances, with everyone we meet, in ourselves--there's always something we cannot see or perceive. It's this hidden aspect that can be a risk, an opportunity, an explanation, a root cause, the key to something positive or negative. Constantly searching for the hidden, being aware that all is not as we see is a critical element in the art of impact. It's the rocks that we are not aware of that obstruct us unexpectedly and it's especially true in all our interactions, where the attitudes and experiences of others guide their judgments and choices.

Our ability to perceive things dissimilated can however be improved.  Think of the Japanese rock garden; its true nature was revealed by studying it from different angles. It's possible that someone with excellent visual perception would have noticed a discrepancy in the patterns of rocks between the different viewpoints and realize that there were more rocks than those immediately visible. The real number of stones was readily apparent from the aerial angle. The same principle applies in life: look at every problem, interaction, relationship, person, process from different angles. Look for patterns and then compare the patterns to see if they are consistent. We're good at pattern recognition and can quickly recognize discrepancies; if we're looking at lots of data, then we have tools to graph them, filter them, represent them in ways that reveal the hidden patterns.

This is a classic interview or interrogation technique: ask the same question to different people involved (or ask the same question repeatedly to the same person) and look for the patterns in their answers. It's auditing and science, looking at data to see if they are consistent with what we would expect from theory or process. Once we perceive the previously concealed, the next step is to assess its significance. Is this really a problem, risk, threat, or opportunity? Does this really explain the pattern we noticed? Seeing the discrepancies and being curious about these, understanding their significance, is to open the door to serendipity, or luck, noticing something good or bad. This is borne out by history where all manner of "serendipitous" discoveries have been due to these principles. Think of Alexander Fleming and the discovery of penicillin; he was curious about the patterns of bacterial death in the petri dishes contaminated with mold, and related these to similar patterns he had seen with other agents.

There's always something hidden in our exchanges with others: we never know everything about the person's motivation and reasons for acting in a particular manner. The traditional advice of "walking a mile in their shoes" applies, trying to understand their perspective. In a karate contest the opponents constantly test each other, looking for gaps and hidden abilities. In perceiving the reasons governing decisions that are made by others, one useful principle is that of "positive intent". When we are treated in a way we feel is unfair, it's better to assume that the person responsible acted with positive intent, rather than an intent to harm us. This idea helps avoid being clouded by emotion in such circumstances, by first assuming that the underlying reason for the action was a beneficial one. Using this technique for searching for the hidden elements we can more easily analyze situations and reach a productive resolution.

So, always remember the rocks! Whatever is happening, remember that we do not see everything, and part of our attention should be on what we don't see. Staying vigilant in this way helps to enhance serendipity, avoid misfortune and stay on balance to make an impact.