Archive for November, 2009
Thanksgiving in Mexico
Nov 29th
Since moving to Mexico, we’ve become accustomed to differences between our expectations and the culture. Since Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated here, Thursday felt like any other day, and since my wife didn’t have class on Friday, we planned a celebration with her class of 13 (plus guests) from the University. The plan was to meet at our house at 2pm and she recruited them to bring some of the various ingredients to the feast (mashed potatoes, rice, pumpkin pie, etc.)
Several said they would show up early, but we expected most to show up later. As such, we thought we might eat around 3pm or a little before. We really started cooking in earnest around 1:45 since we didn’t really expect anyone at 2pm – though we thought maybe those that said they would show up early, might.
At 2pm, a total of zero people had arrived. This was to be expected. At 2:20, noone. 2:40, still noone. At this point, we were beginning to wonder if anyone was going to show up (we had considered that several would likely not show up, but we didn’t expect they all wouldn’t show up). The first guests arrived at 2:55pm, and by 3:40pm, most had shown up so we started the meal.
In addition, since we live in a small row home, we weren’t sure how we were going to find seats for that many people in our house. We bought several extra folding chairs to make sure we would have enough places so that if everyone showed up, they would all have a place to sit. Eventually, there were 17 guests (19 including us) and still there were empty seats (plus we hadn’t even gotten all of the seats the we had out). Whereas we Americans tend to like our space, our guests were more than willing to squeeze into small spaces. I am still amazed that there were 8 people sitting at our 6 seat table, not because there weren’t other places to sit, but because sharing a seat was just fine by them. Even from the get go, 4 people decided to sit on the stairs (even though there were plenty of other places to sit).
Like most experiments in life, we learned more about the culture and how it differs from our expectations. This process is very similar to most processes in life. You plan based on the the best of our knowledge, you try things out and roll with the punches, and then learn more about yourself and the situation. Too often in business or personal situations, we skip this final step, dismissing the things that didn’t go as expected as outliers, or not even reflecting on them to see how to improve.
Overall, it was a fun time and great to meet all of my wive’s classmates. We were thankful to have so many friends come to our house and to enjoy celebrating Thanksgiving and I was thankful for the opportunity to learn more.
Blame Avoidance vs Name Making
Nov 24th
With the economic uncertainty that we are living through, there is a marked shift in thinking that effects almost everyone.
When things are good, there is a desire to be great, to stand out, to make a name for yourself. You want attention because attention is sparse. Success is celebrated and missteps are quickly forgiven.
When things are bad, people take a different strategy — avoiding blame. They fall into group think, and take the course of action that is more conservative — a course that no one could question or find fault with, even if it fails.
This creates a disparity of innovation and only encourages the sluggishness of a company. Moreover, once a company moves into this mode of operation, it can be difficult to move out of it, especially as corporate politics begin to win the day and no one wants to stand out.
However, this is the very time that you can truly make a difference in a company. To avoid the inertia of uncertainty, and instead drive results that help the company grow. It’s not easy, but living in fear isn’t any fun.
For Fear of Getting Burned
Nov 23rd
Everything is in a constant state of flux, except our first impressions.
Over the last few years, I can’t tell you how often I have been warned away from some solution or another because someone was burned by it in the past (often times in the distant past). It’s not that past experience should be ignored, but things must be revisited when conditions have changed.
I hear this about not using parts of computer languages that were broken 10 years ago, or not trying a business strategy that failed 8 years ago, or not using an international web software service because the server used to crash 4 years ago. Technology and conditions change and our previous learnings are not longer valid.
When we try something and run into difficulties, it becomes permanently damned in our mind. In many situations, this is a good things. Hot stoves will always burn you.
But as our world continues to change at unparalleled speeds, this coping mechanism can also come at a cost especially when others are willing to go where you are too afraid. We need to be willing to reevaluate past decisions, particularly when it’s clear that it’s something that should have been fixed in the years since your last evaluation or when conditions may have invalided our previous operations.
We shouldn’t be stupid and continue touching the hot stove, but we also shouldn’t be stupid and not recognize that the stove has been off for hours.
Preemptive Apologies
Nov 20th
We are hiring, bringing the requisite meetings with people to find the one that is a good fit.. Earlier this week, we had breakfast with one such candidate. He was really nice and had a good skill set but it wasn’t a match with what we were looking for.
After the breakfast, he sent a couple nice follow up emails – one to the CEO and then one more broadly to all of us that were there. He went back to several questions and reiterated some points. Overall, it was a great follow-up, but about 3/4 of the way through his email he put in a paragraph that apologized for spitting out his food twice during breakfast.
Even though I hadn’t noticed at all, I now how the pleasure of imagining him spitting out his food. I pulled the others, and only one noticed it once, but didn’t think much of it. None were in the slightest offended or even considered it, but by bringing attention to it, we all simulated picturing him spitting out his food.
When your actions clearly cause offense, it can be good to apologize preemptively, but if the person wasn’t offended, apologizing can actually create offense. The problem of course, is that we notice the things we wish we did differently or said differently upon further reflection, and we project our perception on others.
This same thing applies as much when you are trying to convince someone of a point and, instead of simply presenting your case, you preemptively begin to respond to arguments that haven’t been said yet. In this situation, you provide the person you are trying to convince more information about why they shouldn’t be.
For example, if you really believe a product could help someone and you are trying to help them see that, you don’t want to launch into why previous problems have been resolved and won’t happen again. It adds doubt rather than helps them to be convinced. Moreover, don’t apologize for things that may have gone unnoticed.
And remember, apologizing for farting during the sales call is never the best follow up. 
Why Read Books?
Nov 19th
How often have you heard someone suggest after reading a book:
“The point of this book could have been summarized in a few pages and didn’t need a few hundred.”
While this critique is valid of a large number of books whose ideas are simple and shallow, it often gives people an excuse not to read books. Even though almost all books can be summarized briefly, the true value to reading a book is spending time living with and dwelling on the ideas. This can only come from spending the time to read.
Our brains remember and deal better with situations or ideas that actually have more detail (consider that a story with more information actually makes it easier to remember than a story with little information). As a result, spending time reading a book allows you to remember and apply ideas to your life where as reading summaries just lets you look smart at cocktail parties.
All that said, some ideas are clearly not worth spending that much time dwelling on and therefore aren’t worth reading and in those cases, I highly suggest just getting the summary. But if the ideas are of sufficient quality, spending time dwelling on them is really the only way to truly understand them.
Mixed Messages & Uncertainty
Nov 14th
My wife and I were walking this evening and we arrived at a light that was completely lit up – Red, Yellow, and Green – all shining brightly. The cross street also had all lights turned on — Red, Yellow, Green Left Arrow, Green Right Arrow.
This is the ultimate mixed message. If all the lights were off, this is a “no message”. With all the lights on, it leaves you to guess which one you should decide to follow.
So we all know that mixed messages lead to uncertainty, what I found most interesting (besides the challenge of figuring out when it was our turn to cross the street) was how traffic responded. It reminded me that when we are faced with uncertainty, we look to those around us for confirmation [Previous Post].
One side of the street was just crossing the light without even appearing to slow – “Hey, that car looks like it’s going I guess I will too.” On the other side, one car stopped so they all stopped, but then couldn’t figure out when to start again.
It was groups of people making decisions based on subtle clues about what others were thinking. This creates a type of either virtuous or vicious cycle which can be signaled entirely on random things (someone takes their foot off the gas, looks like their slowing so the next person brakes expecting them to stop, more cars see stopping they all stop – how do they decide to go again – same way, one car inches forward a little, another thinks they are going so starts going through, this indicates to the “incher” hey it’s time to go.”
This should tell us a few things: First, if we send mixed messages, we are leaving the recipient in a position where they will simply look around to figure out what is going on. Second, when we find ourselves as the recipient, we should either ask for clarification or step back from the scenario and decide what is best independent of the crowd.
If this topic interests you, you might like the previous post as it talks more about just how much we look to others to make our decisions in times of uncertainty.
Projecting Your Perception
Nov 13th
El ladrón cree que todos son de su condición.
This expression in Spanish, literally translates to, “The thief believes that all are of his condition”. In other words, they see everyone else as a thief. Another example would be that a liar believes everyone else is dishonest. This happens to all of us. We believe that what is important to us is important to those that we work with or are friends with. We don’t understand why someone doesn’t behave in a “rational” way — read: in a way that differs from how we would act.
This problem affects all communication that we have with our customers, our colleagues, our friends, and our family. This is a close pair to the Curse Of Knowledge problem and one which we must consider. Others are not us and do not see the world as we do. Accepting this is the first step to truly being able to communicate in a way that resonates with those around you.
Tea Bog Beet Knee [The Curse Of Knowledge]
Nov 9th
In the process of learning Spanish, I’ve had a lot of thoughts regarding the nature of communication. When we are communicating, we know what we are trying to say and so whatever we say sounds completely unambiguous. The “Made To Stick” authors talk about this concept as “The Curse Of Knowledge” and it’s extremely present in learning a new language. Sometimes, I will say the same word with slightly different vowel sounds to my teacher until I see her face finally go from a scowl of incomprehension to a look of enlightenment. The whole time, I know exactly what I’m trying to say and it makes perfect sense to me.
The same thing can happen to us when we are trying to explain something to our customers or our colleagues. It makes perfect sense to us, but not to the person you are trying to communicate with.
If a child walked up to you and said, “Tea Bog Beet Knee”. You might look at him perplexed, or take the expression I have become very experienced at using – smile and nod. The words all sound remarkably close to the meaning but not quite right. You can even add the correct pronunciation to some of the words without adding much value: “The Bog Beet Me”. Still it’s not easy to understand.
Perhaps if you saw teeth marks on the child’s arm, and saw a dog running down the street you might put together that he was saying “the dog bit me”. But before that, as you are smiling and nodding, the child is likely to say the same sentence with greater earnestness, slower, and louder. None of which actually help in the comprehension.
Yet how often do we take the same approach and get frustrated when we get looks of confusion from the people we are trying to explain ourselves to? This problem is one of the main sources of miscommunication that we have has people. The speaker already knows all about what he is trying to say. There are no ambiguous pronouns in his sentences and there is only a single connotation in all of his words. When the listener doesn’t understand, saying the same phrase more emphatically doesn’t work.
All of us as communicators should remember that the mere fact we are expressing something verbally to our audience means they don’t know what we want them to know and as such, we would do well to remember it is our responsibility to communicate with them. Not their responsibility to guess what we are thinking. Remember, as the speaker, you are cursed with knowledge, and this is the first obstacle you have to overcome.
Book Worth Reading: Made To Stick
Nov 8th
About a year ago, I read Made To Stick and would put this book up there with one of the must reads for anyone that is desiring to communicate and propagate an idea. The two authors, Dan and Chip Heath, were both trying to figure out what caused ideas to stick in the world of business marketing (Chip Heath) and what made good teachers (Dan Heath). In their research, they discovered several concepts that were useful in making ideas and messages stick.
One of the main premises they mention is, “The Curse Of Knowledge”. Essentially, experts in a field have created a huge vocabulary and set of abstractions to facilitate their communication about a topic. When they are teaching it to someone new, they speak to them as someone that already is fully aware of what they are trying to say and therefore, there mechanism makes complete sense to them but looses their audience.
In order to over come this, they suggest 6 principles that follow the Acrostic: SUCCES [sic].
- Simple – The message should be a simple as possible and no simpler. Don’t try to boil the ocean or necessarily show all of the details. Give the 50,000 foot view of the message because when your audience doesn’t need to know all of the details. This can be a challenge with those that have the Curse Of Knowledge because they believe an over simplified view is inaccurate or even deceitful. The reality though is that the audience can’t understand the full view and you need to hook them first with a high level view that they can understand
- Unexpected – Secondly, the idea should be presented in a way that is unexpected. This concept is well known in speech writing – i.e. use a teaser. This grabs peoples attention and makes them want to pay attention to the rest.
- Credible – Third, the message should come from a credible source. They talk about various ways to get this credibility, one interesting way is to use the anti-authority. For example, the person with a tracheotomy who is telling you not to smoke.
- Concrete – Fourth, make the message as concrete as possible. The authors give several excellent examples on how to do this is a way that facilitates the audiences comprehension.
- Emotional – Fifth, engage the emotions in the message as much as possible. Emotional reactions creates a more memerable experience in how the brain is able to store information.
- Stories – Finally, use stories. I’ve discussed the importance of using stories quite a bit on this blog. The most fascinating conclusion that came from this book was the statement that stories are how we simulate reality. We listen to stories in a completely different way than we do facts and figures.
I would recommend this book to pretty much anyone and believe it to be one of the more enlightening books that I have read. That I can remember much of the book a year after reading it, should be a testament to their ability to follow their own advice.
No Longer Young
Nov 7th
Many years ago, as I was starting out in my career, one of my close friends told me “You are no longer young when it doesn’t matter how old or young the people are around you”. In other words, age becomes something that you don’t notice. This was hard for me to understand. Age seemed very important. I was judged for my age and was continually seeing the age of those around me.
A decade later, we joined a Young Married’s group at our church to meet some other couples. The people at the group were all struggling with the same real life issues: providing for their families, finding their way in life, living in their own home. Responsible adults with the same challenges that we go through. What shocked me was when I started realizing that most of these people were a decade younger than I was. Some of our friends in the group, started talking about how they typically hang out with “older” couples [like us].
I have oft reflected on my friends advice. My age or the age of others is no longer something that is very important or even something that I notice much. There is a commonality about adulthood that gives rise to camaraderie across very large differences in age. I still have a great degree of respect for the depth of experience that those older than I have, but also am interested in the views and perspectives of those younger.