Proceed Until Apprehended

First, let’s accept that risk is required. It’s required to cross the street, make a phone call, buy a product, sell a product, start a program, end a program, quit a job, start a job, continue in the job the same way you did yesterday… the list goes on. I think you get the picture. Any one of those things could have negative implications.

Each one of these examples also has a Worst Case Scenario that we could have all sorts of fun with. For example, as you cross the street, the city’s electrical system goes haywire and the intersection’s light changes color. A businessperson that’s on their cell phone at the light, complaining about the $1,000,000 they just lost that morning goes from seeing red to seeing green. In an instinctual response, they step on the gas a little too aggressively just as you put your right foot (the better of your two feet, in your opinion) in the path of their SUV. Squish, snap, hospital.

Is that an acceptable risk? Was it really worth getting to the other side? Let me assure you, you’ll forever regret choosing that particular restaurant for lunch.

The reason we choose to accept that risk, however, is that there’s a big difference between the magnitude of the implications and the probability of it happening. We choose to cross the street because the benefit significantly outweighs the real risk.

In reality, we don’t work with possible risk. We work with probable.

At work, however, our judgement changes. Why, all of a sudden, is the 1% probability up for discussion? It’s actually even more than just a discussion. That improbable event weighs heavier in the deliberation than realistic issues. We invest in low percentage concerns at too high a rate. Everything I’ve been reading lately says, “Start, then steer to correct.” Most days, I’m invited to “Steer, steer, steer, correct, steer, then maybe, just maybe, start.”

It’s a simple solution, I suppose, and one that starts with you and me. If we want to absolve ourselves of the risk, we identify the improbable to our boss or coworker. That makes them responsible. Instead, as an experiment, choose to accept some improbable risk and skip that step. Just proceed. What do you think will happen?

Here’s a hint:  The magic of Proceed Until Apprehended is that the Apprehended part rarely happens.

I recommend you watch The Matrix again. I just watched it for the first time in years, and I CAN’T BELIEVE how simply and accurately The Matrix serves as a metaphor for the world we live in, the conventions we ascribe to and the blissful ignorance we live with each day… except for when it’s not blissful. If it wasn’t for the Hollywood-style violence, I’d say this movie is as important to school curriculum as the classics of English class. It probably is anyway.

I went and found a good description of the metaphor between the Matrix and our life. As the article suggests, The Matrix offers us the ability to examine our world with exceptional clarity.

This got me thinking, though. I saw all of this ten years ago. I think I “got it” then. At that time, why did I go back to my job on Monday and keep working in my own Matrix? Or, the real mind-bender, how different is it this time?

Before Neo becomes Neo, he’s Thomas Anderson. Don’t you think Thomas Anderson got to go to a movie on a Friday night and watch something like The Matrix? Did he step out into the cool evening air and realize he was inside an artificial construct? Apparently not. The human mind doesn’t seem to have that kind of sudden-insight capacity. It wasn’t until he took a red pill from Morpheus and physically got some distance that he understood the limitations of what he was thinking and seeing.

So, as I see this movie for the second time, I think I have some physical distance from my artificial construct, and I’m trying to get more. The first time I saw this movie, it was sort of a description of what was going on, while I was in it. I was like an early Neo, hearing the whisper of “Matrix” in the corners of a dark room. There was a more fulsome theory of what was real and what was artificial that needed to be poked and prodded, but I couldn’t see it. As Morpheus says, “Unfortunatley, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

Fast forward ten years, I’ve made some pretty significant leaps outside the conventional lines of my Matrix. I’ve chosen in places not to follow the rules of social expectation. I’ve shed some of the consumer/recipient role. I’m no longer a dispassionate observer saying, “wow, what if that were real?” I’m a participant, receiving motivation and inspiration that I’m not alone in believing our current world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, or has to be.

If my quasi-rambling post isn’t making sense, let me put something on the record. I don’t think machines are putting artificial constructs in my mind. I think the systems and conventions we’ve built up over generations are.

The movie also reminds me that I chose the red pill. I have an obligation to do something with what I’ve seen and learned.

Morpheus: “Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realize, just as I did, that there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”

I just listened to Seth Godin speaking with Nora Young on the CBC radio program Spark.

Best. Interview. Ever.

I think what happened is Seth dialed down his usual brilliance for his audience, just a little bit. I’ve never heard him so accessible. He used language that explains a new internet economy to people that haven’t really gotten the bug. He also demonstrated a focus I haven’t heard from him, one that’s about bridging the growing divide between people and organizations that are running away with the new economy and people and organizations that aren’t even participating.

My favourite bits from Seth:

“…I’m seeing more and more is this growing divide. And the people who are on the losing side don’t understand what happened. It’s one thing to play a game and lose. It’s another thing to lose without realizing that you’re playing a game. And I want to call that out…”

“we were brainwashed through 10 or 20 years of school to do what we’re told, to fit in instead of stand out, to have a resume that looks like everybody else’s resume, to get a job like everybody else’s job, and to put in our time and then we’ll get rewarded. And the sad truth is, the reward isn’t coming.”

“… people who work with ideas and with people, also have the ability to do something scarce, if we choose to. But a lot of us got lazy and said, “OK, we’ll take the high pay, we’ll take the nice working conditions, but no, I don’t want to put myself on the line.” And for a long time there was enough productivity out there that we could pull that off.

But now that’s going away, and so when the boss is trimming the number of people who work there, or when they’re deciding who to hire, guess who gets to keep the job? It’s the person who did the hard work, which was scarce, not the person who merely followed the manual, which wasn’t.”

“It turns out that the knee jerk answer, which is, “My boss needs to fix this,” isn’t going to happen. Because the minute you say, “I want to do something creative but my boss won’t let me,” what you’re really saying is, “I want my boss to take responsibility if I fail, but I want to get the credit if I succeed.”

Do you think there’s a business model that allows me to post Seth Godin quotes all day?

By the way, he’s on the circuit promoting a new, free e-book that you should check out, What Matters Now.

I’ve found it quite frustrating to see up close some organizational attempts at improving culture. We seem to make piecemeal attempts. At one moment, senior leadership may set out a new vision or a new set of expectations but there’s no resources for follow-up. At another time, there may be a change in processes or compensation that is intended to influence the culture of the organization, but they compete against incentives supporting stasis. Next, an initiative is unveiled that promises you autonomy and the ability to make decisions… but no-one tells your boss. It’s unfortunate, but it’s a pretty rare circumstance where we see an all-hands-on-deck effort to address organizational culture. When an organization does, they’re an anomaly, they’re newsworthy and they might just get bought out for $847 million.

Culture, it seems to me, is a pretty static, identifiable thing. If only someone had studied the essential elements of culture… which brings me to my post title. Isn’t anthropology ALL ABOUT understanding culture? Well, not quite. Google tells me there’s more to it than that: define: anthropology – the social science that studies the origins and social relationships of human beings

On Wikipedia, I learned that E.B. Tylor is one of the grandfathers of anthropology. He described culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

There’s a start! If we’re trying to address culture, this definition provides some assistance. First, we can acknowledge that culture is “complex.” Perhaps with that knowledge we can forever disavow the use of uni-dimensional solutions that barely scrape the surface of addressing culture. Second, what a helpful list: knowledge, belief, art, morals, laws and customs. Maybe this needs a little tinkering for the contemporary organization, but we see all of these in the workplace:

• knowledge in, well, knowledge, and how we transfer it, share it and use it
• belief in our paradigms, like “senior staff always knows best” and “mistakes are bad”
• art – well, this one’s a stretch. There’s not much expression at work. Our lack of expression – the corporate language and the way we communicate is our “art,” I think, and it is significant in defining our culture.
• morals like putting in lots of hours, being available 24/7, producing just what the boss asked for… you know, the required societal behaviours to earn promotion
• custom – customs are things we just do because everyone else does, right? Like taking our shoes off at the door, shaking hands when we meet and defending our program even though the critic has a point.

This isn’t just a fun comparison, though. We could use this list. If we really want to address culture, this list is a great place to start. Tom, you create some solutions to improve how we write our documents. Sally, please put together a team to identify and question the customs we’re just doing.

I’d be pretty excited to work in an organization that said, “Culture is necessary for our success. Let’s put our energy into getting it right for the long haul.”

Erring on the side of caution is really bad advice.

Erring on the side of caution is a vote for the status quo. It says, “Let’s keep this really simple and round the corners off of it. That way, the potential failure will be minimized.”

Everyone sleeps well the night before the launch. After, I can envision smug and knowing smiles as “disaster” is averted. Nothing really changes and no-one looks bad… unless you step back. From there, you can see that avoiding failure cost you the opportunity to make something valuable happen.

An example:

There’s a theory that goes something like this:

• employees have great ideas
• our system doesn’t allow them to invest in or launch those ideas
• if our employees had resources and corporate support, these ideas would flourish
• we need some sort of “outside of the system” system that TOTALLY supports our employees
• some of the ideas will be stinkers, so we’ll need a way to identify the good ones before we take them too far. We don’t want to waste money/look bad/prove the naysayers right/give our bosses a reason to say no.

Do you see a flaw? The “safe” resolution to our innovation need is to keep the paradigm but change the forms. We’ve decided to institute a new and improved Bureau of Idea Approval. We’re exchanging one form of vetting for another.

Well, here’s some surprising news. We have enough vetting in our organizations to kill excellent projects already. It’s layered so thick, you could take out every official “sign off” process in your organization and you STILL wouldn’t get ideas. There’s a culture of safety and maintenance that goes well past the policy and procedures manual.

Building a process that remotely acknowledges that there might be bad ideas is a mistake. Trust me, stuff that won’t work will get caught. You don’t have to design more roadblocks.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a test: If your boss announced a prize for the biggest mistake, would you still be cautious?

When we get a huge stinker out of the gates, that’s when we’ll know we’ve had some success.

this joker is actually learning more than his classmates about solving tomorrow’s problem.

Unfortunately, class doesn’t necessarily encourage creativity, challenging conventions and proceeding despite the snickers. You have to study it on your own.

Try this with me. Use both your index finger and your middle finger to point with both hands. Tilt your head slightly forward, place your newly formed pointers at your temples and try and turn on your screensaver. Sometimes it takes up to five minutes, but you’ll get it. I promise.

If that’s not your cup of tea, try this: By simply using your free will, you can alter the behaviour of others.

This is sci-fi, mind-bending stuff, but I need you to bear with me. By simply deciding what you’re going to do (and not do), you can influence the way others act.

Here’s an example. I decided not to be so beholden to email. Actually, I decided not to allow my day to be dictated by all members of the interruption family – walk-in requests, phone calls and voicemails, emails, the day’s media stories… I made a conscious choice to work on the most important things, not the last thing.

I still deal with all the “incoming,” but I do it on my schedule. That means twice a day email checks, all phone calls screened, polite requests to reschedule if an interruption is inconvenient and I disregard local media.

You know what happened?

Nothing.

Well actually, better than nothing. Colleagues quit sending me urgent stuff. I quit being so quick to respond to what I saw as distractions and I received less of them.

How did that happen, you say? Well, this is where the paranormal piece is strongest. I don’t really know what caused it. I don’t think it was a conscious utility decision by my colleagues (Danielson won’t help, keep him off the list). I think it was that, over time, I was no longer considered the guy who just gets stuff done. At some point, I stopped being top of mind for panic situations. I quit being an enabler of urgency addiction.

Maybe another example makes it clearer. I like to ride my bike to work. I’m a die-hard commuter during the months we’re not covered in snow. When I first started biking, I was a timid, apologetic cyclist, using the roadway when I wasn’t being an obstruction for vehicles. I’d squeeze over to the right side, as far as I could without falling onto the curb and make myself small when a vehicle skimmed past. And vehicles came real close. Drivers saw that I was offering the lane and they took it. It was their lane after all, I was just an interloper.

Now, though, I’ve decided my bike is a vehicle. it’s MY LANE to do with as I please. I’m right out in the middle of it, and if a driver doesn’t like it, well, they can not like it. It’s now a rare occurrence that a vehicle doesn’t give me a wide berth.

You could say I’m moving three tons of glass and metal with my mind. Pretty impressive, huh?

I tend to think of my bike actions as “signaling.” The behaviours I consciously exhibit (and remain steadfastly committed to) create a constant that others simply choose to work around. In a way, I’m counting on the smaller commitment of others. They may desire to move/operate/function in a certain way, but it’s not worth their time to argue with the obstinate guy.

Of course, I don’t think I’m obstinate. I think I’m passionate, and committed, and thoughtful. Sometimes it’s hard because I feel like other’s eyes are boring into me either at the office or on the road, but that’s actually my baggage. I can definitely influence that.

At my high school graduation, they held a play-money casino night as our social event. One of the venues at our casino was a horse-racing game. You’d bet on your horse, they would play the video of the race and you’d see how your horse placed. Now, I don’t know if the game was flawed or someone just hadn’t read the directions, but we had odds for all future races for the evening. Same horses, same names, just a “different day” at the track. After one race, it became apparent to me that the odds for each horse in the next race were adjusted based on their earlier performance. Essentially, the future odds told you what was going to happen in the current race.

Like any good bettor, I used the available information to place my bets. It looked like a tremendous winning streak, until there were too many wins to just be luck. Then others suggested that I had the game at home, or somehow I was cheating. I wouldn’t call it cheating. I was taking the loosely formed (and mostly just implied) rules of the game and using them as best I could. By (math) skill and insight, I was cleaning up.

Rationalization aside, I don’t think I can adequately describe the anxious feeling I had as I exploited my loophole. I was so far ahead, I was sure I must be doing something wrong. It couldn’t be this easy. I felt huge pressure to stop playing the game. Eventually, I did stop.

It’s a goofy little story, but I was reminded of it today as I read Moneyball by Michael Lewis. It’s an artfully crafted story about one team’s application of objective, rational assessments to the selection of baseball players when seemingly every other team in the league uses judgments steeped in baseball culture. They’re using beliefs that are irrational. The only thing that keeps the beliefs alive is that it’s what everyone else is doing, too. General Manager of the Oakland A’s, Billy Beane, is at a completely different level as he selects ball players because they’ll perform and win games, even if they’re not the traditional prototype. It’s a massive success. As an outsider looking in, it’s sort of a “well, duh” thing, but I know it wasn’t easy. There’s a breaking of convention. Unfulfilled social expectation. People that look for how you’re cheating. The possibility that you’re wrong, that you’ll fail. It would be so much easier to just follow the same implied rules as everyone else.

The lesson, of course, is that it’s the person with the willingness to stare down those pressures and stick to a new, rational belief that finds the way to be much more effective and, perhaps, eventually change the game.

If I had figured that out in high school, I could have purchased a bigger plastic novelty item with my play money.

I wouldn’t say it’s happened a lot, but a few times when I’m being an effective volunteer and I’m addressing an issue, I’ve been asked to take an “executive” role, like chair or board member. It’s flattering, and given the old rules of power and hierarchy, I have an immediate gut reaction to say yes.

Thankfully, I’ve trained myself enough that I’m able not to blurt out the first thing that comes into my head. You see, I don’t want to run the movement, I want to help lead it.

Organizations come with responsibilities and obligations. Being the change-junky I am, I’m usually not too keen on helping out with all those old expectations and deliverables. There’s a bright, exciting future to be had, and the old stuff seems to be a distraction to the story. Now, I know that there are some old things that still need to be done… let’s call those the fundamentals. Things like budgeting, stakeholder communication or volunteer development, but there seems to be a steady supply of people to take on those roles. I’m really thankful those people exist. I want to play where there are no rules, no expectations. It’s people taking adequate care of the fundamentals that allow for others to explore innovations and growth.

So, back to the opportunity. What to  do? The roles have offered influence, but only if you’re not too busy being distracted.

I’ve found it works well to be uflinchingly honest in what I’m capable of doing. I’ve found myself saying, “I really care about the outcomes and am passionate about the work this organization can do. I like the idea of a bigger platform, the access to resources, the ability to influence the thinking of others, but I’m not really interested in many of the conventional things being done. In fact, I’ll probably be frustrating to you as I don’t ‘pull my weight’ on some of this stuff. You can have me, but I’m not going to be very helpful for maintaining business as usual.”

Kinda sounds like my job interviews, huh?

What I’ve found is that there’s a HUGE appetite for this kind of truth telling. The response has been a ready acceptance for this kind of approach. The big hurdle here isn’t the people inviting me to join. The hurdle is in my head, and whether I’m going to embrace the discomfort of being something different than expected.

The older I get, the more I see meaning, purpose and fulfillment in not-for-profit, community service activities. I’m ashamed to say that for a good long period, they just didn’t seem relevant to me. Most organizations in this category are really passive and reactive. Rarely do they reach out, market or do something remarkable. If you’re not looking, they’re not selling.

It seems to me many don’t even know (or question) if they’re relevant. They laid out their charter in about 1967 and they’re sticking to it.

In the past ten years, I’ve woken up to these organizations and how much they mean to me. Now, I sign up, I get plugged in, I participate, I wonder why it’s done that way, I shrug it off and just provide my time, I get frustrated, I decide to pull back for my sanity. Later, I try again. I come up with a good idea, it’s met with resistance… it’s sort of a circular, love/hate relationship. I’ll feel foolish if this is only my story, but I don’t think it is. I think many of us struggle with finding organizations that are willing to receive new ideas and challenges to the old model.

I tend to try and volunteer at the governance level. That may be the problem, but it’s also where I feel like I can make a difference. I’m struck by how un-strategic and short-sighted these boards can be. I guess much like our for-profit organizations, many of the “leaders” around the table are those who proved their mettle in the rank and file, doing the blood, sweat and tears-work. Unfortunately, there are different issues at a board table, but old habits die hard. Being an excellent fundraiser isn’t a strength in that discussion. Constantly pulling the discussion back to a side issue or a particular project is downright detrimental.

That table needs questions like, “why do we exist?” and “are we relevant?” Those are the earth-shattering questions that could bring these organizations back from the brink of extinction.

Personally, I don’t think it’s in the cards. More non-profits are going to dwindle away than build an evergreen culture. I haven’t lost my passion for community service, but creating alternate methods of delivery looks more appealing, even if it’s a lot of effort to start them.