Author Archives: Sherri

The Half Life of Effective Communication

Half Life of a Radioactive Element

I have been forming in my mind a series of essays called “Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I learned in Freshman Chemistry”.  As I was working on my PhD, I taught freshman chemistry every semester.  I truly enjoyed the teaching but also began to see that virtually every theory you learn in that survey course has an element (pun intended) broadly applicable to life.  They don’t call it a Doctorate in Philosophy for nothing.  From the Laws of Thermodynamics through Quantum Mechanics, there is always something important we can learn about life if we think about that theory in a broader context.

Today, I want to share one piece of advice about communication that I often gave to mentees (still do, in fact).  It is related to the concept of the half-life of a radioactive element.  Really.  Let me explain.  All radioactive elements decay over time, meaning they release subatomic particles and energy and become a more stable element.  If you control this process, you can use that released energy to generate electricity.  If you choose not to control the process, you can level cities in seconds.  The graph that accompanies this essay demonstrates how this process can be viewed:  the amount of the element remaining over a period of time drops exponentially; how fast this happens–the rate constant–is characteristic of that element.  The time that it takes for half of the starting quantity of the element to decay is called its half-life.  This concept is very useful, actually, in thinking about human interaction.  I call this law the “Half Life of Effective Communication”. 

When I first formulated this theory, there were limited means of communicating with someone.  You could meet face-to-face, of course.  You could talk on the telephone or leave voice messages.  You could send letters, emails, faxes.  That was about it.  Texting came later, as did video conferences and now virtual and augmented reality.  I began to realize that it was those face-to-face meetings that drove the quality of the relationship between individuals and my theory took shape:   the effectiveness of communication via telephone, email, etc. decays exponentially since the last time you met with that person face-to-face.  Additionally, the rate constant—or how fast that effectiveness decays—is a function of the relationship depth between the two individuals.  If I’ve known you for a long time or if we worked next door to each other for a while, then one face-to-face visit will mean fun phone calls and preferential email attention for quite some time.  If I’ve never met you or barely know you or it’s been ages since I saw you, then don’t expect preferential response.  You are just less on my radar.  While I admit to being very face-to-face oriented, I have found that most people are like to this at least to a degree.

Here is one way this plays out for me and this requires a bit of a confession:  I really, really hate talking on the phone.  I hate calling people I don’t know.  I hate calling people I do know.  I hate the phone.  Whenever I want to be a really good partner to Trish, I volunteer to call and order the pizza.  I’m still trying to convince her that is an effort worth recognizing.  If you get a phone call from me, know that I’ve had to work up a certain amount of courage and/or overcome a significant amount of “eh” to dial you.  If I actually answer the phone when you call me, consider it a small miracle (unless we’ve arranged a time for a chat and I’ve had a chance to prepare myself emotionally).  I just hate talking on the phone.  But if I recently saw you, I still have warm fuzzies from that personal interaction.  Picking up the phone feels like continuing that recent face-to-face.  It’s easy.

When you think about it, this theory makes sense.  We humans have at least five senses (many consider intuition a sixth sense and who knows what else our bodies may be doing that we don’t yet know about).  However, in phone calls we are using only one of those senses—hearing.  You have the advantage of hearing tone, but you get no body language.  In the written word, which we have become increasingly reliant on, we are using only sight in the form of reading.  Not only are you not getting body language, you are not even getting tone (no matter how many emoticons someone uses).  And we wonder why there is so much miscommunication!  In person, we use sight, hearing, smell, touch, maybe even taste as an adjunct to smell.  And our intuition is in overdrive, pulling on data from these senses and more.  Relationships are built on all these data.  In fact, they require all this information to get a holistic picture. 

What happens if you are only using sight (in the form of reading) and maybe sound?  Your brain fills in the gaps with assumptions.  And you all certainly know how I feel about assumptions!  How many times have you begun a relationship with a colleague by phone or email and when you finally meet them they are totally different from what you had pictured in your mind?  Or a long distance working relationship seems rocky but YOU HAVE NEVER EVEN MET?  There IS no relationship yet.  How many times have you tried conflict resolution by email?  Did that ever work for you?  This phenomenon is even worse in our personal life, either on-line dating or social media, when people purposely try to show you only a small part of who they really are. 

When video conferencing first came out, it was marketed as a way for companies to save money on travel since it would be “just like being there”.  Except that it isn’t, even while increases in bandwidth have smoothed out early jerky movements.  I worry that virtual and augmented reality are being touted anew as substitutes for being there IRL (in real life).  We rely so much on social media for connection, but even Facebook is most effective with those with whom you have a deep personal relationship.  There truly IS no substitute for IRL for honest relationship building.  These other tools are all wonderful for extending the effectiveness of getting together face-to-face, but they can’t replace it.

I remember a commercial many years ago for some airline.  The Big Boss had called his subordinates into a conference room and talked about how doing business had changed.  They were doing so much more by phone and email and less in front of their customers face-to-face.  In fact, he had recently gotten berated by an old friend and longtime customer for that lack of attention.  He then tossed airline tickets on the table to each person, sending each out to see a key client.  He held up his own ticket—one to go visit that old friend.  Corny and self-serving to be sure—but with a big dose of truth.  We MUST get face-to-face to build and maintain relationships.  Don’t shy away from calls, emails, texts, video conferences, VR/AR–but remember the Law of The Half Life of Effective Communication.

It Could Have Been Me

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Next Sunday will mark one year since the senseless massacre at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Shortly after that happened, I wrote this essay. I am posting the essay, unedited, in commemoration of this horrid anniversary. As we need to say for too many reasons in the Jewish community: Never Forget.]

Last night I went to an interfaith vigil at Beth Or.  It was because of the slaughter of eleven Jews at Shabbat services the previous day.  Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.  Etz Chaim.  I sat there amongst the standing room only crowd, worthy of High Holiday services, flowing over into the social hall.  I sat there, listening to all the words of support, and thought “it could have been me”.

Etz Chaim in Pittsburgh is a Conservative shul, much like the shuls I’ve attended all my life.  I’ve attended services on and off for many years and when I go it’s usually the Saturday morning Shabbat service.  Let me take you inside for a typical Shabbat.

The Conservative service on Shabbat morning typically runs for about 2 ½ hours and follows a prescribed order.  Unlike in many other religions, most conservative Jews don’t come for the entire service.  I’ll never forget the first time a non-Jew came with me to a service when I was younger.  She was absolutely flabbergasted at how people just wandered in and out, all throughout the service, stopping to greet and visit as they went.  To me, though, that was how the services went:  it was a time for prayer, but it was also a time for community.

The heart of the Shabbat morning service usually comes about an hour or so in:  the Torah service.  This is when the weekly section of the Torah is read aloud, followed by the Rabbi’s sermon.  Most people gauge their arrival to coincide with the Torah service.  I used to arrive earlier because I enjoyed the quiet sanctuary of the earlier parts of the service.  I could settle in, get into the zone, and if I timed things right be able to say the Shema three times.  You see, I’m a little OCD and have a thing with the number three.  The Shema—Hear o Israel, the Lord thy Gd, the Lord is One—is a seminal prayer in Judaism.  It’s the prayer that defines you as a Jew.  It’s the prayer that summarizes the key tenets of Judaism.  It’s the prayer that is on martyrs’ lips as they face death.  The Shema and its attendant prayers are said three times during the Shabbat service.

I would arrive around 9:15.  At that point, we’d be lucky to have a minyan of 10 Jews in the sanctuary.  The cantor would be reciting in Hebrew from Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Fathers.  I’d don my tallis and kippah.  I’d grab the Shabbat prayer book and the Chumash–the book with the text of the Torah and related commentary that we’d read from during the Torah service.  I’d whisper “Good Shabbos” to the regulars as I’d settle into a seat not too far forward, not too far back.  Usually on an aisle.  I’d listen to the cantor for a few seconds and usually be able to pick up where he was in the prayers.  I’d search for the page with his most recently recited phrases in my mind and catch up to where he was.

The service is almost entirely in Hebrew.  I can read and pronounce Hebrew but will admit that I don’t fluently understand it.  I can read English translations of the prayers on the facing page, but usually just follow along in the Hebrew, singing softly along with the cantor in the familiar, comforting tunes I’ve known since I was a child.  We’d transition into the different parts of the service, knowing when to stand and when to sit; when to recite and when to listen; when to pray out loud and when silently.  We’d say the Shema.  We’d recite the Amidah.  I’d get into that zone of prayer and sanctuary.

Knowing the timing of when the gunman entered the shul, I’m thinking the service would have been at about this point.  Maybe they were still reciting the silent Amidah, standing in personal prayer, focused on their prayer books.  Maybe they were into the recitation of the Amidah, when the congregation starts to transition from the quiet solitude of the early parts of the service and gets ready for the Torah service.  More people would have been streaming in at this point.  The Gabbi, something of a Director of the service, would be wandering around assigning honors.  Would I get to the hold the Torah today?  Would I get an Aliyah to recite blessings for a section of the Torah reading?

What would I have done?  Would I have run?  Would I have hit the floor and hid?  Would I have tried to be a hero and rush the gunman?  You know what I honestly think I would have done?  I would have stood there and stared.  And I would have been easily dropped by a spray of bullets from an assault rifle.  They say in this day and age that we should all be vigilant.  We should all be ready to jump into action at any time!  The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun!  But FOR GD’S SAKE!  I was in the zone!  I was wrapped in the sanctuary of my community! I was thinking about the service.  I was lulled into song and prayer!  There could be nothing more incongruent with that than a crazy man with a gun shouting that all Jews must die!

No, I would probably stand there, like those eleven probably did.  Mouths open, not understanding what was happening.  I would probably have been killed.  It could have been me.  It could have been me!  And if it could have been me, it could have been you.

My Take on Gratitude

As with Leadership Characteristics, tackled in an earlier essay, much has been written on Gratitude.  While I do not intend to compete with Oprah and Eckhard Tolle on this topic, I do have a take on gratitude that has been bubbling around for a while.  I’d like to discuss it with you.

It’s only fitting that the formative thoughts on this essay happened while discussing life with Trish and my sister, Wendy, during a week-long stay at my timeshare in Aruba.  It’s a little hard not to feel grateful for what you have while sitting on the beach at sunset, sipping a mango-tini and being served the best scallops you’ve ever eaten.  Spending a week in Aruba is a once-in-a-lifetime, dream vacation for many.  For countless others it’s even outside of the realm of possibility.  I go there for a week every year, unless I’ve decided I have somewhere better to go.  I am grateful for this opportunity and for the station in life that I’ve achieved that make this possible.  But that’s not what I want to talk about when I talk about “gratitude”.

Sure, Sherri, it’s easy for you to be grateful.  You were born into a position of privilege in this country as a white child in a middle class home, had a great education, chose a lucrative field of work and had countless unbelievably lucky opportunities.  You were fired before your 54th birthday and yet were able to happily slide into retirement.  Don’t freakin’ talk to me about “gratitude”.

Oh, but I will!  Because that’s not the type of gratitude I want to talk about.  Look, I know I have had countless advantages but there are many people more advantaged than I am that are totally miserable and have made a mess of their lives.  Just watch Entertainment Tonight or scan the tabloid headlines in the supermarket.  When I talk about gratitude, I’m not talking about privilege or wealth or even about hard work to take advantage of those lucky breaks. 

All the discussion along those lines is about gratitude as a comparative measure, almost as a punitive tool: 

“Eat your dinner.  There are starving children in the world.” 

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.  You have so much more than so many people.  You should be grateful.”

“I know you wrecked your car, but be grateful that it wasn’t worse.” 

“Get off the couch and exercise!  At least you can.  Think of all the people who can’t exercise.  You should be more grateful.” 

We’ve all beat ourselves up numerous times with thinking like that above.  But that’s not really gratitude.  That’s a rank order of privilege.  Should you keep things in perspective?  Yes.  Should you also recognize that someone’s pain is their pain, regardless of comparative measures?  Yes again.

I started to flesh out a different meaning of “gratitude” listening to a meditation given by Deepak Chopra.  This particular meditation was part of a series he did with Oprah entitled “Manifesting Grace through Gratitude”.  (Mindfulness Meditation, while something of a recent fad, is a practice that kept me from climbing walls during my professional days.  Now it helps me fall asleep.)  Somewhere during that 22 part collection of 10 minute meditations, Deepak said something that blew me away.  True gratitude, he said (and I’m paraphrasing), is not about comparing yourself and what you have to others.  True gratitude is about recognizing all the abundance around us every day.

Think about that for a minute.  We, as human beings, are incredible creatures biologically and otherwise.   Anyone who has taken a biology or biochemistry class knows that even the simplest protozoan is a complex miracle. Humans are absolutely amazing beings!  We think, talk, love, learn and grow with our complex brains.  Even the most annoying, frustrating, seemingly “worthless” person is an absolute marvel.  Similarly, the world around us is filled with the abundance and beauty of nature—the sunshine, the rain, the plants and animals.  We are blessed just to be who we are and with every breath we take.  I know this sounds like crunchy granola speak from someone that has no worries in the world.  And I DO understand that unless your basic needs for food, shelter and personal safety are met that it is a challenge to see the abundance around us all the time.  However, I doubt anyone reading this essay has much of an issue with the bottom rung of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (food, shelter, security). 

This is the challenge that I have with respect to gratitude.  On a beautiful, sunny day with the birds chirping and time to read and to think, I don’t have problems feeling grateful.  I have problems when I’ve got a pounding headache and everything and everyone is getting on my last nerve.  Or when I watch too much of the news and get this helpless feeling and anxiety about such pervasive hate and distrust and evil in the world. Or when I am witness to too much heartache and pain in people I love.  Those, though, are the times we need to learn to see and feel the abundance around us and feel that basic gratitude for life and our world.  Not because it could be worse, but because it couldn’t be better!  We are surrounded by so much and are such miracles ourselves!  Oh, how I want to able to feel that all the time!

I mentioned earlier that the foundational thoughts for this essay formed in Aruba.  I find it equally fitting that the final edits on this essay are happening almost six months later during the Jewish High Holy Days (the 10 days inclusive of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur).  These are days of significant introspection for me.  I take stock of myself, look back over the last year and think forward to the coming year.  The comparisons I draw are not external.  I do not make comparisons with other people.  The measure I take of myself is internal—versus what I expect of myself.  My goals are around personal improvement, looking inward.  Gratitude comes from there and there alone.

We’ve all seen the stories of the desperately poor or disabled or however unfortunate being amazingly positive and optimistic and/or doing unbelievable acts of giving.  They aren’t like that (necessarily) because they see someone worse off than them.  They have that attitude and do those things because they are grateful for the life they have, for the abundance they see around them, and the fundamental need to give to and help others.  Let’s all work to focus more on the magic of the world we live in.  There’s something to the cliché to “stop and smell the roses”. That is true gratitude.

The Danger of the Defining Characteristic

In the last essay I posted, I started a discussion around “bias”.  That is a tricky and deep topic that can’t be concluded in one paper.  So today, I want to probe a related topic that I had alluded to before:  the danger of the “defining characteristic”.  But first we have to back up a bit.  In the essay on “bias”, I mentioned our tribal history as human beings.  Not too long ago (just a few millennia) it was very rare for people to wander outside their tribe or to meet people from other tribes—at least, people notably different from their own.  If they did meet someone who looked and/or sounded different, that person was a curiosity and not to be trusted.  In fact, anthropologists have determined that tribes would grow to the size of about 150 people before they would start to splinter off.  That number seemed to be the maximum size of a group wherein all the members could know each other reasonably well.  In these numbers, deep personal knowledge not only lent a degree of trust in those around you but also created a strong sense of accountability.  If someone did not behave or perform as expected, there was no place to hide.  A bad actor was identified and dealt with quickly.

It wasn’t long, though, until this tribal format was supplanted by the development and growth of cities as we moved from nomadic to agricultural to a communal industrial society.  Now we were living in environments in which we just couldn’t know everyone well enough to develop an organic level of trust and accountability, so we developed rules and laws and governments and police and jails and all kinds of systems to address the need for “expected behaviors”.  But even within these growing cities, the population was still relatively homogeneous.

More recently, other things happened that caused a lot more “mixing” of tribes.  First, it was the availability of faster modes of travel:  ships and trains and cars and planes.  Then, the globalization of the economy—trade drives more interaction among people than anything else.  Finally, the internet has democratized the availability of information and with it the ability to spread information (both for the good and the bad).  The problem is that this mixing has occurred over such a short time span (a few hundred years) that our instincts haven’t kept up with it.  We are still trying to figure out whom we can trust and rely on!  And since we can’t take the time to definitively know so many different people, we rely on a pretty dangerous judgement technique that we don’t even realize we are using:  the defining characteristic.

What on earth do I mean by this?  If we are hardwired to trust people who look and sound like us and distrust those who don’t look and sound like us, then we instinctively judge those different from us based on whatever stereotype we have absorbed about that group.  For example, when I first meet someone who is a fairly observant Christian and/or a conservative Republican, I immediately pull back and close up.  Why?  Because a stereotype of both of those groups that has proven sadly true to me time and again is that members of those groups are anti-gay.  Now, intellectually I know it is absurd to apply that stereotype too broadly since I know many, many people from both those groups who strongly support the LGBT community and are even a part of it.  But I have experienced enough bias first hand and, even more so in the media, to convince me to make that snap judgement and require the person to prove to me otherwise.  That process works through quickly when I have a chance to develop some sort of relationship with these people.  But it probably never will be completed with chance acquaintances, store clerks, event attendees, people I see on television, etc.  So the judgement remains.  The defining characteristic that I judge them by is their religiosity or political persuasion and the assumption I make it that they are anti-gay.

If you are African American, particularly from an inner city, and your entire life you have been stopped by police repeatedly while walking or driving, or followed around stores, or been locked up for flimsy reasons AND you’ve seen the same thing happen to the majority of people like you, guess what?  You are not going to trust the police!  When I lived in Mexico, the police were not to be trusted.  Particularly in Mexico City.  My second week in the country I was robbed by a cop.  When I repatriated to the US, after only 3 ½ years in Mexico, I found myself scared to death every time I saw a cop!  I’ll bet it was more than a year before I could see a police car and not panic.  I know most cops are honest.  Maybe even most in Mexico City.  But my reaction was driven by an assumption related to a defining characteristic that I had internalized:  police = bad news for me.  And let’s take it the other way:  if you are a cop and a disproportionate number of crimes you are exposed to are committed by people who look a certain way, you are not going to immediately trust anyone who looks that way.  Is it fair to place distrust on an entire community because of the behaviors of a few? No.  Is this profiling? Yes.  Is it intentional?  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  This is why community policing, whereby citizens get to know their local cops as holistic humans and vice-versa, is so important.  Break that defining characteristic assumption.

This is why words matter so much!  If all you hear about Latin American immigrants is that they are undocumented, evil, dangerous people, that’s what you will believe whenever you see someone who fits that defining characteristic.  Never mind that data clearly show that undocumented immigrants conduct crime at a lower rate than American citizens.  You will instinctively clutch your purse or wallet and your children around someone who fits that defining characteristic.  You probably will not even realize you are doing it.

I find it interesting that when a shooting or some other crime is perpetrated by someone of Middle Eastern descent, white Americans often automatically assume it is a terrorist attack.  If it’s perpetrated by a racial minority, they assume a racially motivated crime that reflects on anyone of that race.  If it’s conducted by a white guy, he’s a misguided mentally ill person.  Why does this happen?  White Americans, like all people for better or worse, use race as an initial defining characteristic and apply historic or media-driven stereotypes.  Since they are white themselves, they know that there is much diversity within their racial “tribe”, so the reason the person committed this crime couldn’t be because of the defining characteristic of race.  It must be because of something else. But we don’t apply that thinking to members of other tribes.  We apply the defining characteristic assumption. Making snap judgements based on defining characteristics happens.  We are hard wired for it to happen.   It is going to happen.  Your goal is not to stop this from happening, either in yourself or others.  Your goal is awareness that you are doing it (or pointing it out to others) and then questioning the assumptions to see if they hold true.  Take a deep breath and look for additional data.  Get to know people different from you.  Don’t trust someone just because they look and talk like you; don’t distrust someone just because they don’t.  Know that each person has their own complicated story.  Stereotypes exist for a reason:  enough people in that affinity group share certain characteristics, or did at some time.  But the stereotype doesn’t tell the whole story—not for you, not for me.  Not for anybody

A Less Punitive Perspective on Bias

Bias is a touchy subject to write about.  It’s certainly not a new topic, but in this age of #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter and #(insert city of latest mass shooting here)Strong, the rhetoric around bias has grown to a fever pitch.  I’ve been thinking about the topic a lot lately, as well as talking back to the TV news while gesticulating wildly, so I think it’s time to tackle it here.  Interestingly, I also debated a while on how to title this essay since bias has become such a hot button in public discourse.  Hopefully, I have made you curious enough with this title to get you to read. Well, at least you’ve gotten this far.

There are a few key points that I want to make during this discussion so I might as well lay them out now:  1) Everyone has bias.  Everyone.  Anyone who says they don’t is disingenuous or doesn’t know themselves or probably both.  2) Expressions of bias need to be put into context, usually time period.  3) Recognizing bias in yourself or others is not nearly as important as what you then do with that knowledge. 4) Work on yourself before you judge others. (Gee, where have I heard that before?  Maybe half my essays?)

Let’s start by defining “bias”.  The dictionary defines “bias” thusly:  prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.  I’m choosing to use the word “bias” because it is broad.  It includes all forms of “the other” when we are talking about people–racism, misogyny, anti-semitism, homophobia or just anyone who is different from who you are.  It also includes judgement on behavior, usually dictated by dominant behaviors or norms in society, such as around gun ownership or the role of religion in your life.  Bias is impossible to avoid in our globally connected, media-drenched world.  Not too long ago, the majority of people never came across anyone different from their “tribe”.  We are hardwired to not trust people different from us.  But that is a topic I am going to delve into next time.  Today, I want to talk more about recognizing and dealing with bias.

I grew up in Atlanta in the 1960’s.  Wow, that sounds like a long time ago!  And to you and me, it was—because we tend to think of time in the context of our own life span.  But it wasn’t really, when you think of time in the context of human history.  While societal norms can change very rapidly in that longer context, they always seem to change very slowly during your own lifetime.  This phenomenon makes it seem like a given norm has “always been this way” and thus is immutable and cannot change. 

I was a small child in the deep South, born before the Civil Rights Act was passed.  I could not HELP but be surrounded by racist thinking and verbiage and actions because that was simply the standard in the deep South at that time.  (It is still an issue now, of course.  Less so than when I was a child, but still much room for improvement.)  I am not being accusatory.  I did not grow up in a virulently racist family.  I am making an observation, though, about the pervasive influence of the society around me.  I certainly absorbed some of that thinking.  There was no way to avoid it.  But explanation is not excuse.  As I grew older and especially as I left the deep South to attend college, I had other influences and life experiences and I began to profoundly question my instinctive ways of responding to race. I worked to actively change them.  I am not the same person I was as a teenager growing up in Atlanta.  We all do that.  We say and do things when we are younger that are contextually common, but with time and experience we grow past those thoughts and behaviors.  Even politicians.

Another flash point is in the area of bias toward women.  I’ve got a little experience on the receiving end of bias here.  I think back to when I first entered the workforce as a PhD chemist.  I was a rarity and treated as such.  This was in 1988, not 1888!  It just wasn’t that long ago!  However, it was not uncommon when I was introduced to a new colleague or customer (typically a middle aged white man) for the response to be something along the lines of “Isn’t that great that you have a PhD!”  This was intended as a compliment and I took it as such but, good lord!  How condescending and marginalizing!  Those comments would never have been made to a male colleague.  However, as damaging as that comment was in the late 80’s, comments like that, if uttered today, can and should be condemned more forcefully than memories from 30+ years ago.

The way our society seems to react equally to biased comments from decades ago and biased behaviors conducted more recently has a really unfortunate consequence.  It causes the perpetrator to refuse to take ownership for his or her behavior.  Take Brett Kavanaugh.  While I am treading carefully here since I don’t want to equate criminal behavior with biased behavior, I would have felt a lot better about the guy if he had just owned his objectification of women when he was a rowdy teenager instead of pitching a denial fit like a toddler.  However, I understood why he didn’t own it.  Any sort of ownership of past bad behavior would have tanked his nomination, even if he had followed that statement of ownership with something like: “But I am not 19 anymore.  I have learned from that behavior and this is how I am a different man….” 

What on earth is wrong with people taking responsibility for past actions and then demonstrating how they have learned and grown from them?!  Who among us feels that they have not changed one iota from when they were 19?  I’m not the same person I was at 20, nor 30, nor 40.  I’m not the same person I was LAST WEEK!  Every day I evolve as a human as I learn and think and grow.  I implore you to be a little more selective in your condemning, both of yourself and those around you.  Something said today or an action committed today should carry much more weight.  Importantly, though, your next question after an admission of bias should be, “OK, what have you learned?”  I can’t stress this enough.  We are having the wrong conversation over and over again.  Emphasis needs to be on learning from earlier bias, not just on whether or not biased was expressed. We seem to have lost our ability to differentiate between those who truly need to be punished and those who are modeling how to learn and grow.  No wonder there is so much anger out there. 

While we love to beat people up for bias, we rarely apply the same yardstick to ourselves.  We seem to be much more forgiving of our own trespasses.  So maybe while we need to allow more grace to others, we need to be a little tougher on ourselves.  We are all the “other” somehow.  Find that difference in yourself and use it to raise awareness of when you are using your dominant position instinctively.  The goal here is self-reflection and growth.  Own what you’ve done in the past but then learn from it.  Give that same grace to others who have learned from their past.  And be very wary of those who have not.

Lessons From the Galapagos

In early August, Trish and I took an amazing trip to the Galapagos Islands.  The time in the islands, along with the reading materials I consumed preparing for the trip, really got me to thinking.  I’m not in the habit of posing open ended questions without also proposing answers, but the answers here are too complex.  I want you to think about these questions and apply the answers you come up with to your own life.  Herewith, five observations and attendant questions from the Galapagos.  (Those who read American Scholar will be familiar with this format.)

1.  In the book, The Beak of the Finch, Jonathan Weiner takes us through the amazing journey of Rosemary and Peter Grant, two evolutionary biologists who spent decades on the island of Daphne Major studying and following the major species of ground and cactus finches.  Their work produced a number of astounding revelations and I highly encourage the read.  One tale that struck me was of the behavior of a small percentage of cactus finches.  These finches rely on cactus flowers and resultant seeds and fruit for food.  One year during an extreme drought, they discovered that a very high percentage of cactus flowers were missing their stigmas (a part of the flower critical for pollination and thus continuation of the cactus).  Observing the cactus finches, they found that the vast majority, around 90%, would wait for the cactus flower to open in the morning, then alight to feed on the pollen.  They would gingerly hold the stigma aside with one foot to allow them to reach into the flower to feed.  However, around 10% were hungry early (or just wanted to beat the rush) and would force the flower open early by peeling back a petal.  The stigma would typically poke them in the eye when they went for the pollen, so they would just snip the stigma off with their beak, then feed.  The result of course is that the flower would not pollinate, there would be no seed or fruit, and food availability for the whole group of cactus finches dropped off precipitously. In a normal year, there is plenty of food for all.  In drought years, this behavior leads to a quick drop off in cactus finch population because many starve.

Now, these are birds.  They know not what they do.  But the behavior of 10% of the birds basically destroyed the on-going food source for 100% of cactus finches in lean years.  There are no finch cops.  This behavior was not identified as destructive and stopped by the 90% of properly feeding finches.  So they all suffered.  We, however, have our large prefrontal cortex and, as sentient beings, are aware of the damage of such self-serving behavior and the need to protect the greater good.  Except that we don’t.  Or can’t.  From bank collapses to over-fishing to texting and driving, we are overrun with examples of humans who act in their own best interest regardless of the impact on the rest of the population.  These selfish actions lead to suffering of many and crisis or death for a few, but at some point we are going to have large scale loss of life.  How do we avoid the fate of the cactus finch and rein in behavior that is individually beneficial but bad for the flock?

2.  Elsewhere in the book, Weiner describes an experiment with E. Coli, a common bacteria found in our gut.  A sample of E. coli is nurtured in a petri dish, resulting in a pile of tens of millions of bacteria in under half a day.  When that colony is challenged with an antibiotic, almost all the cells die in minutes.  Almost all.  A few have a mutation that makes them resistant to the antibiotic.  Within a half day, those cells have multiplied and replaced the entire colony, but now with antibiotic resistance.  Further work has shown that, when stressed like this, bacteria will actually throw out plasmids (little bits of DNA—genetic material) to cells around them and those plasmids will be randomly taken up by other cells creating new mutations.  In other words, attacking the bacteria causes them to mutate faster and thus find that resistant mutation even more quickly.  Nature always find a way.

Throughout human history but particularly over the last few hundred years we have worked hard to try to control nature.  We have developed pesticides, herbicides, fungicides galore.  Insects, weeds and fungi always develop resistance.  We have engineered control of great rivers and oceans to build our cities and nature always finds a way to take them back.  She is very patient.  When are we going to stop the Sisyphean battle of trying to make nature do what WE want and instead work WITH nature to identify and utilize natural processes to get to our desired endpoints?

3.  There are always winners and losers in nature.  Species come and go.  During hard times, species fail. In the early 80’s, the Galapagos experienced a severe drought.  The finches died out by the thousands.  The Grants and their assistants watched it happen, marking off the death of each finch, banded for identification, in their notebooks. I can’t imagine how hard it must have been for the Grants to watch all those finches die during the drought years and avoiding the temptation to intervene!  At this point, they knew a couple thousand finches on sight and had watched them grow for years.  But as researchers, they just could not intervene.  They needed to let nature run its course.  The finches are not gone.  Their numbers dwindled by 90%, but after the drought the species rebounded.  The species rebounded; however, individual “finch family” suffering was extreme.

As humans with compassion, we intervene with our species (and others) all the time.  We have developed amazing medical advances to save lives from all sorts of disasters that would normally kill.  We have developed social systems that look to identify and help those of lesser means (although one could also argue that social systems have also created the inequality that in turn lead to those lesser means).  We have intervened to help numerous species survive, especially when our own actions have endangered them.  However, we have also created a huge imbalance in nature by, well, creating so many humans.  Scientists don’t call this era the Anthropocene for nothing.  Technology has been a boon and curse in addressing the needs of our growing population, creating conveniences and processes that help our species grow and thrive but that have had significant unintended consequences on the balance of nature (plastics, fossil fuels, production farming).  Our sheer numbers are changing the planet in unsustainable ways.  If we let her, Nature will indeed restore balance, yet the thought of just letting millions of people die out is abhorrent to most of us. How do you balance the non-meritocracy of nature with human compassion while recognizing and minimizing the impact of unintended consequences?

4.  As this trip was predominantly Penn State alumni, a professor from PSU, Carter Hunt, joined us on the trip.  Carter is a cross-disciplinary researcher, currently at the Charles Darwin Research Center in the Galapagos on a Fulbright grant.  Carter is studying ecotourism.  Why study ecotourism?  Let’s back up for a second.  During the 16th and 17th centuries, the Galapagos Islands became a favored rest stop for pirates and sailors who brought goats, cows, rats, cats, and other non-native species to the islands; it was fished and whaled to an extreme degree because of its rich waters.  The ecological balance (and uniqueness) of the islands was almost destroyed.  After Ecuador annexed the archipelago and with the help of the international community, significant efforts were begun to return the Galapagos to the ecological conditions of Darwin’s time.  These efforts have been largely successful, but are under constant attack.  For example, while there is an enormous protected sea area around the archipelago, it is impossible to police effectively and marine poaching has been a real problem.  The Galapagos conservation teams brought the fishermen, local and not, to the table along with ecologists to discuss a solution.  “True blue” conservationists probably screamed at this tactic, but the reality is that you cannot achieve movement toward conservation without engaging all constituents, whether you like them or not.  Ignoring and excluding people who are doing things you do not like does not bring them into line and policing is not a 100% solution.  A balanced solution, which involves some controlled “marine extraction”, is the only one that will really work.  Similarly, ecotourism (like the trip we just took) creates an army of evangelists for the conservation cause, but is certainly not carbon neutral—not with a full day and a half of flying in large airplanes and the pampering we received aboard ship.  However, without this carbon expenditure, you don’t move the needle toward conservation support.  So, this question is really for Carter:  how do you find the right balance between the needs of those whose actions work against the planet’s apparent best interest along with conservation efforts aimed at restoring a needed balance such that everyone comes to the table and the whole moves toward conservation with time?

5.  Finally, as our trip wound down, our group of 23 travelers sat in the airport on San Cristobal awaiting our flight to Guayaquil and the long trip home.  The airport was crowded with other travelers, mostly Ecuadoreans moving between the islands and the mainland.  I looked around at these people I had just spent 10 intense days with.  All were strangers before the trip began, yet I looked at each one with a mixture of fondness and protectiveness that makes me smile as I type this essay.  How could I feel such a strong bond with these people?  We shared a very intense experience over a short time, yes, but I was amazed at the strength of the feeling for each one of them.  I put voice to this thought and my friend, Lynn, responded with “Why can’t we feel that way all the time with all those around us?”  I think that’s the most profound question in this essay.  Our shared humanity should be enough to bridge our differences.  It’s not hard to see that shared humanity in those around us if we just look.  Why not, indeed, Lynn.  Why not.

If Something Looks Simple, It Means I Don’t Know Enough About It.

From 1975 until his retirement in 1988, Senator William Proxmire from Wisconsin published a monthly winner of his Golden Fleece Award.  A fiscal hawk, Proxmire aimed to expose what he considered a wasteful use of taxpayer money.  The idea was quite popular and I remember many a newscaster gleefully exposing the latest in government waste.  Years later, in some discussion on scientific research, the Golden Fleece Awards came up again.  The grant money for fundamental R&D came overwhelmingly from government agencies like the DoE, DoD, NIH, etc and research grants were often the “winners” of Proxmire’s award.  We discussed one of these winners in depth: a research program to understand the sex lives of roaches.

I can see the eye brows raising.  The sex lives of roaches?  That seems a fairly ridiculous thing to study.  Except it wasn’t.  The researchers were investigating pheromones, those naturally produced agents that attract a member of a species to breed.  All jokes aside about actually wanting roaches to breed more, the identification of a cockroach sex attractant led to a fairly useful invention:  The Roach Motel.  Pre-Roach Motel, you would need to spray a poison around your kitchen or bathroom to hopefully banish the beasts (good luck with that).  The Roach Motel, however, attracted the roach to the “device”, which it entered and found the nicely contained poison.  (“Roaches check in….but they don’t check out.”)  For anyone with small children or pets, this was a huge safety improvement.  Now, pheromones are part of our common vernacular and are a critical part of the pest control industry.  Worth a little basic understanding of the sex lives of roaches.

There are several jumping off points from here on which to build an essay.  I could talk about how important basic research is and how scary it is that the US has severely reduced its support for fundamental knowledge building.  I could talk about how the practical application of knowledge is often a twisty turny unexpected road and most often cannot be managed through the use of Gantt charts, but patience in funding R&D is a topic for another time.  No, I want to go more general.  What the above example inspires in me today is this thought:  If something looks simple, or ridiculous, or stupid to me, my first thought is that I just don’t know enough about it.

A wonderful aspect of being retired is that I now have the time and the mental energy to read a whole lot more than I did while I was working.  I was a great skimmer, before.  And a great buyer of books and magazines that would pile up.  Now, not only do I have time to read these things; but being a lover of non-fiction, I have time to let my curiosity take me further into answering those follow on questions.  What I invariably find is that the truth has nuance and what I thought was fairly clear cut is not quite so clear.  For example, right now I am reading a lengthy treatise on Cliven Bundy—the Nevada rancher who has been fighting the Federal government for the right to graze his cattle on federal grasslands without paying a fee.  Reading the backstory is giving me a much greater understanding of where the Bundys are coming from.  While I still don’t agree with most of their positions, I do see a different way to have the conversation to come to an agreement.  And couldn’t we all do with a bit more understanding of where others are coming from?

Before I went to grad school at Penn State, I was a city girl who ardently opposed sport hunting.  I remember walking on College Avenue one day, seeing a car drive by with a deer strapped across the roof rack.  “How can they just kill these magnificent creatures?!” I would judgmentally exclaim.  Then I began to talk with my new friends, many of whom had been sport hunters all their lives.  I learned about deer overpopulation because their natural predator, the mountain lion, had been driven out.  I learned how deer were starving.  I learned about the true sport hunter and the ethics of sport hunting:  only fire when you can make a clean kill, use the meat, follow the state game rules.  I still abhor people who sit on the tops of hills with a high powered rifle, just knocking off animals for the fun of it.  But I understand and appreciate true sport hunting.  I appreciated it even more after I had a car accident with a deer!

In a business environment, assuming “easy answers” brings a lack of understanding across business functions that need to work together to accomplish a goal.  Things always look simple from a distance.  If you are in sales and you need a tweak to a product to close the deal, that tweak can often seem pretty minor–unless you are the process engineer who needs to figure out how to do that tweak.  Magnify this difficulty ten times when someone gets the “bright idea” to enter a new market without sufficient research.  Distance from the details always makes things look simple and straightforward.  We’ve talked about assumptions.  Don’t assume that just because you don’t know how difficult something can be that it must be easy.

This issue is exasperated in large organizations where those several layers above the people doing the work do not understand what it takes to get something done.  I remember a time when a hurricane flooded out a production facility.  Once the flood waters receded, a team was put together to assess the damage and execute repairs.  These people worked day and night for several weeks.  It was an amazing effort!  The quick turnaround saved the company loads of money in lost sales.  I was in a meeting where this result was brought up in side conversation. The senior manager’s take was “Geez, why can’t we get people to work like this all the time?” DO YOU HAVE ANY FREAKIN’ IDEA WHAT THOSE PEOPLE WENT THROUGH?  No, you don’t.  You were too far removed from the details of the effort. That was not sustainable! 

In this current world, where we are inundated with sound bites from all directions, resist the temptation to just accept what you read and hear.  Consider the source.  Dig a little bit to find all sides of the story.  As with other topics we’ve discussed, though, you do need to pick your battles.  It is time consuming and mentally exhausting to try to research every little thing.  However, never doing it is just as dangerous.  Even just retaining the consciousness that you may not know enough to judge is a very good thing.  Certainly you would want people who might judge–or misjudge–you and your actions to take the time to understand.  So even if you don’t have the time to dig into it, at least remember that if what you are hearing sounds ridiculous, simple or dumb, you probably just don’t know enough about it.

Wednesdays with Peg

A few times in your life you are lucky to meet someone who can best be described as a force of nature.  My mother-in-law, Peg Lawlor, was such a person.  As we recognize the one year anniversary of her passing, I wanted to share a little of her with you and the impact she continues to have on me. 

I met my wife, Trish, not quite five years ago after a lifetime of searching.  How we met is a story for another time, but suffice to say that we met, and when we did my life changed immeasurably for the better.  I had considered myself a “fully formed” person by the time I hit my 50’s, yet Trish opened up an entire world to me that I didn’t even know I wanted.  She had a close group of long time friends and an extended family that was both physically and emotionally close.  But no one in this group taught me more about the importance of family (both blood and chosen) than her Mom, Peg.

Meeting Peg was by far the most angst-inducing part of the process of integrating into Trish’s life.  Not that the rest of it was easy!  The members of her “posse”, a group of wonderful down to earth and embracing people, each pulled me aside one by one to basically threaten me with dismemberment if I mistreated this woman who meant so much to them.  Her two sisters, brother, attendant spouses and nine nieces and nephews essentially descended upon me en masse to check me out.  Keep in mind that I come from a small, very quiet southern family.  My head just about exploded trying to keep track of who-knows-how-many gregarious, story-telling, everyone-talking-at-once Irish Philadelphians.

I sensed, though, that meeting Peg—the matriarch of this clan—was going to be a critical step.  Knowing that she was a fellow scotch drinker, I made sure to pick up a bottle of her favorite label before our introduction (just the three of us).  I don’t think Trish knew how nervous I was.  But I didn’t need to be.  I felt folded into her metaphorical embrace from the moment we met.  And also from the moment we met, I knew someone very special had just come into my life.

The family would get together regularly, be it for holidays, birthdays or just because.  Peg held court wherever and whenever we were together.   She inherited a wicked story telling gene from her father and while she clearly passed it on to her offspring, she was still the best.  She would hold us in rapt attention and laughing in stitches every time.  I learned to restrict fluids whenever going to one of these gatherings.  (Any post-menopausal woman reading this essay will get that reference!)

All the grandkids wanted to hear GrandMarge (she didn’t want to be called Grandma) tell stories.  For Peg, this was a critical way of keeping family lore intact and establishing that critical family bond across the generations.  And thanks to a turn of luck, I got to spend a good amount of one-on-one time with this amazing woman during the last few years of her life. 

Life was clearly sending me a signal toward the end of June in 2016.  Over the span of just one week, Trish and I combined households, my old home sold, and I lost my job.  As I looked to transition to retirement, I took on a bit of regular “Peg” responsibility since I had the time during the week.  Every Wednesday, I would take Peg to the hairdresser, run a few errands for her and usually grocery shop.  This was one-on-one time for us and gave us the chance to really talk.  I will treasure those Wednesdays with Peg for the rest of my life.

We talked about a lot of things, but most often family.  I learned about her father, how important family was to him and how he ingrained that thinking into his children.  She told me so many stories about when her kids were young, summers in the Poconos, all the trouble they (ok, especially Trish) would get into and the blessing that her grandchildren had been.  Knowing that she was nearing the end of her days on this earth, we talked a lot about how important it was to her that her children and grandchildren carry on that family closeness.  It wasn’t about her.  It was about passing on the richness of those connections and the security of that familial embrace.  Look, life was not perfect.  There were times of stress and discord.  She would agonize whenever any of her kids weren’t getting along, but knew she couldn’t interfere.  “They are going to have to work things out once I’m gone,” she’d say. “I know they will work through it now.”  She had provided the example and push during their younger lives.

But it was more than these discussions of family.  It was that sense I would get during our time together of feeling strongly connected and cared for by someone I also cared for deeply.  I struggle over the words, here, because this was such a unique relationship for me.  She made me feel special just by spending time with me.  We would verbally spar and tease each other.  She would ask my thoughts just as often as I asked for hers.  She brought me into this fabulous world that revolved around her (although she never noticed how much people wanted to be around her).

I know members of my own birth family are reading this essay and I don’t want them to feel that I have absorbed my in-laws to the exclusion of them.  On the contrary, the lessons I’ve learned from Peg have caused me to pull closer to them.  Everyone has been up here to visit (as well as at our wedding) and I think they each understand what I mean when I talk about the uniqueness of this family.  Peg taught me to value every member of my family more deeply and try to understand them and engage with them in a way that will continue to strengthen bonds.  The distance is hard, but we’re trying (with varying degrees of success).

Peg suffered through a long and painful decline.  It took its toll on the family and strained relationships at times.  Her passing hit all of us hard.  But at the luncheon after her funeral, dozens of friends and extended family members laughed and drank and told stories until the wee hours.  (I didn’t last until the wee hours, but I heard tell.)  We even passed a microphone around so all could share in the laughs.  And now, about a year later, I know Peg is with us whenever we get together in fours or eights or a dozen or more.  We laugh, we love.  We share minutia, we back each other during difficult times.

That legacy that was so important to Peg, even though she didn’t see it as her legacy, lives on and will continue to live on through her kids and grandkids, cousins and spouses, and even various hangers-on that so want to be a part of this magic.  I was so blessed to know this woman and be embraced by this family.  What I will be forever most grateful for, though, were those Wednesdays with Peg.

Personal Accountability

I have been anticipating writing this essay since the idea for this blog went from idea to reality.  People who know me know that this concept of owning your decisions and actions, owning your own role in creating the situation you are in, is a BIG hot button of mine.  I’ve built your expectations of an “essay to beat all other essays” as I’ve teased the appearance of this entry.  We’ve been building up to it over the last three essays, discussing first identifying the RIGHT problem to solve, then thinking forward a few steps in your decision-making process to ensure you are making the best decision, followed by a discussion on the consequences of the actions (or inactions) you take.  It all boils down to this thought, though:  whatever decision you make, whatever actions you take (or don’t take), whatever consequences occur because of those decisions and actions, you must own the outcome and deal with it.  So, here we go. (Steps up onto soapbox)

All of you out there, whether you’ve been in large multinational corporations or small “mom and pop” shops know someone like this:  They walk around every day grumbling about how unhappy they are.  “This place SUCKS,” you will often hear them sneer.  “I hate it here.”  After a while, you lose your patience and ask the obvious question:  why don’t you leave?  Invariably, the answer is “I can’t.  I’m stuck here.”  Oh, I got so tired of hearing “victim talk”!  You were not stuck there!  You just didn’t like the consequences of your other options.  You chose to stay, whether you wanted to admit it or not.  That was usually when I wanted to scream, “Shut up about it and make the best of the situation!  Own your choice to stay.”

I know another person, a serial small time entrepreneur.  He has had glimpses of brilliance, but invariably within a year or two each venture has failed.  Miserably.  Every time our paths would cross, there would be another sob story about what went wrong.  It was always due to issues beyond his control:  I couldn’t find good employees; the location was bad; there was too much local competition; and, my favorite, I was misled about the opportunity.  Do you know what I have never heard from him?  I have never heard any such version of:  this is what I’ve learned from this venture and what I know to look out for next time.  Never, I repeat, never has anything ever been his fault, or had he done anything which he could consider learning from for his next venture.

While I hesitate to go here, there is an awful lot of victim-playing going on in our current social environment.  The types of opportunities available to certain groups of people have changed as our economy has evolved.  Accepting that and asking the hard questions about what you need to do differently to get on a better path is hard work.  And often depressing.  And can leave you feeling helpless and hopeless.  For many, it is easier to play the victim and blame the “other”.  Unfortunately, our current social environment has embraced blaming the “other” to a violent and clearly counterproductive degree.  I know it’s hard, but OWN your situation.  Life may not have treated you fairly but blaming someone else is not going to make your situation better.

Although I’ve now spent about half this essay talking about how annoying, frustrating or even dangerous it is when other people don’t own their choices, I want to focus on you.  Or, rather, get YOU to focus on you.  As much as I’d like to complain about the behaviors of others, I can’t make them act any differently.  I can only affect my own actions, just as you can only affect yours.  So, as I step down from my soapbox, let’s discuss some ways to resist playing the victim and set strategies for successfully owning your own decisions and their consequences.

First, let’s be clear and honest about one thing:  consistently owning your decisions and their consequences, consistently resisting playing the victim, is difficult work.  It is downright exhausting.  And it is hard.  You will, at times, blame others or something out of your control.  That’s ok.  Sometimes that becomes a self-preservation mechanism.  The key is to not do this most of the time nor to get stuck in that mode even for a given situation, like a job loss or relationship crumble.

I hear the cries from the gallery:  “Sherri, what do you, or anyone else, care about how I handle my own crises?  It’s none of your dang business.  Leave me alone and stay in your lane.”  I hear you and in some cases that is true.  However, in most cases, you not owning the consequences of your decisions affects many others.  And those of us affected care very much!  Even if we don’t care much about you, personally, we care that you’ve impacted our situation.  So, gallery, it’s not just about you.

Over the years, I have sat on panel discussions aimed at various age ranges, to discuss “what should students/young adults do to best prepare themselves for success in the ‘real’ world?”  I would listen to my fellow panelists wax poetic for extended periods of time discussing various strategies for success.  When the mic came to me, I always shared some short version of this:  Show up on time; do what you say you’re going to do; own the consequences of your decisions and actions.

As someone who has hired and managed scores of people over my career, these were always my guiding principles for evaluating employees and the standard to which I tried to hold myself.  It’s not rocket science, but nor is it necessarily easy.  I promised strategies, so here is what I recommend:  as noted above, no one can hold themselves to this standard 100% of the time.  It’s ok to give yourself a little pity party.  We all do it.  But make it short and keep it as private as you can.  Remember that you are not doing this to be accountable to anyone but yourself.  Others will benefit, but no one more so than you.  You are worth it.  You want to like what you see when you look in the mirror.  It can be extraordinarily frustrating to see many others around and above you shirking responsibility but I guarantee this:  over time, it will in some way come around to them; and the longer it takes the worse it will be.  Shut them out.  Focus on yourself.  Show up on time.  Do what you say you’re going to do.  Own the consequences of your decisions and actions.

Consequences

When I was in high school, I had a math teacher named Ms. Counts.  Yes, really.  And I didn’t see the humor in that name until I was much older!  Ms. Counts was a no nonsense lady.  She dressed impeccably and sat ramrod straight on a stool next to her overhead projector where she’d teach her lesson for the day.  As she wrote, the spool of transparency film containing her writing (this was the ‘70s) would ooze down the aisle behind the projector as we all tried to keep up.  My classmates would often raise objections when she announced a test or homework.  Invariably, Ms. Counts would respond, “You don’t have to take the test” or do the homework or whatever.  She’d wait a beat to get hopes up and then would say, “as long as you are willing to accept the consequences.” Then she would smile her Ms. Counts smile. 

Decisions and consequences.  In the last couple of essays, we discussed the need to make sure you are identifying the REAL problem to put your efforts toward solving and then the equally important need to think forward a few steps to make sure the pathway you are evaluating is not actually going to make things worse.  This process is all about evaluating the consequences of actions and that is what I want to spend time unpacking today.

Throughout my life, I have heard people make this statement in explanation of an action or inaction:  “I had no choice.” For a long time, I accepted that justification.  I would look at the situation from my best guess of their point of view and say, “Well, I guess you are right,” even if that decision had a fairly negative impact on me.  Once I entered my Ferocious Forties (and all the life experience that came with that age), I realized that comment is absolute bullshit.  Repeat after me:  You always have choices; you just don’t like the consequences those choices bring. You will always choose the decision that has the most acceptable (or least unacceptable) consequence.  You are assuming, of course, that you truly know what the consequences are.  But since most of us do this evaluation subconsciously (and instantaneously), the assumptions you are making about which consequences you are facing are often faulty.  The first step toward addressing this issue of faulty assumptions is to first realize that you DO have choices and those choices DO have different consequences.  What are the choices?  What are the consequences you have presumed?  What assumptions have you made that led you to those presumptions and have you tested their veracity?  (Starting to understand why I find “assumptions” so critical?)  Following this process consciously will not only lead to better decisions but also, I hope, better ownership of the choices you have made.

Choices and consequences are also strongly related to priorities.  Thus, this process also works well when someone tells you that they just don’t have time or money for (blank).  That is wimp-speak for “what you are asking me to do is not a high enough priority for me and I don’t accept the consequences of shifting said priorities.”  Here is another repeat-after-me:  You always have time and money for the things that are important to you (read: high priority).  One of my last deadly volunteer activities while I was at Air Products was taking over the leadership of a cross-business task force looking into the need for a formal Career Development activity at the company.  Since this would invariably cost money and take time, this group was tasked first with defining the need for access to this capability.  The process involved interviewing many employees from across levels and business functions as well as senior executives.  Executive after executive would tell me, “Gosh, Career Development is so important.  I wish I had more time to devote to it.”  After talking to dozens of employees who said, essentially, “I have no idea where to even START,” I reported back to the Executive Committee.  What I tried to get across were two thoughts:  1) Knowing how to kick start your career was either instinctive to you executives or you lucked into great mentors when you needed them.  You had no trouble, so you don’t understand why anyone else does; and, 2) You would have plenty of time to devote to this issue if you considered it a higher priority—see #1.  I don’t need to tell you how that went over.

Look, I don’t want you to beat people up who don’t give to your fundraiser because they don’t consider it a high priority (“I don’t have the cash to spare”) or don’t do something with you because “they don’t have enough time”.  Focus, instead, on how to make what you want a higher priority for them.  How does your cause impact them directly (or someone or something they care about)?  What do they get out of spending time with you—are you proposing an activity they like?  Make whatever “it” is about them and not just about you.  Similarly, don’t get mad at (or judgmental about) someone for making a decision that you think is idiotic based on the consequences that YOU see. What are the consequences of action or inaction that they are evaluating that led them to their choice?  Increasing transparency to information may change how they see those consequences.  Or, perhaps, understanding their “big picture” might cause you to reevaluate how you see the consequence trade-off.

My high school math class would always sigh and murmur after Ms. Counts would say that line about accepting consequences. But we all knew what she meant.  No one is MAKING you do anything.  You may not WANT to take the test or do the homework, but neither are you willing to fail the class.  You know the consequences.  Don’t whine and play the victim.  Own your choices; own your actions; own the consequences of them.  And regarding that personal accountability?  We’ll tackle that one next time. I dare say my classmates and I internalized those critical lessons about consequences, choices and priorities and we are all the better for it.  Ms. Counts, wherever you are, thank you.