Several years ago, I discovered Laurence Gonzalez’s (’03) book, Deep Survival – Who Lives, Who Dies and Why about individuals surviving “do or die” situations. Recently, I glanced through it again thinking it might be helpful for business people grappling with the challenges of this economy. I couldn’t put it down. Now, I’m convinced of its value for anyone going through any kind of crisis.
Gonzalez studied hundreds of survival stories and presents many of them in his book. He shares tales of people surviving harrowing crashes and others lost in the wilderness. Fascinated by their travails, he ponders why some people make it, while others perish? What general lessons can we learn from how the survivors behaved?
Gonzalez finds that one of the key features “deep survivors” possess is the capacity to focus on “doing the next right thing”. Instead of becoming overwrought, survivors accept what’s happening earlier in the process and focus on extricating themselves. They reason, “Okay, I’m here. This is really happening. Now I’m going to do the next right thing…”
Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn
I recognize the value of mindfulness and have meditated intermittently since my college days. But often, I’ve placed my desire to succeed in the corporate world ahead of other interests. This book, by Michael Carroll, is a reminder to integrate mindfulness into all aspects of one’s life, including work.
You never know with these things when you’re trying something new what can happen. This is all experimental. ~Richard Branson
Over the years, there have been surprisingly few breakthroughs in the airline customer experience - until recently. Sir Richard Branson’s venture into the U.S. market, Virgin America, (VX) is redefining air travel by providing passengers with a fresh, distinctive on-board experience. The carrier is less than two years old but it’s quickly becoming a template for what’s possible in the future.
The choices VX is making demonstrate a “customer experience mindset” that’s all too rare in the industry. It’s evident that the VX team devoted their attention to passenger comfort and convenience. Features “baked in” to the customer experience include seats with power-outlets and USB ports. Cabins in their new A320s have soft mood lighting.
It is with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. ~Antoine De Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
Business stories about “empathy” are springing up again. BusinessWeek ran one (Empathy = Growth) last week. Fast Company covers the subject periodically. Authors are urging readers to consider the merits of empathy despite the need to cut operating costs as demand for services declines. It makes sense for businesses to re-evaluate their customer relationships in this environment. I think empathy remains widely misunderstood and its role is undervalued in the business community.
Simply put, empathy is rooted in the capacity to see the world through the eyes of another person. Empathy enables a provider of service to recognize the buyer’s feelings, needs, and wants in order to fulfill these drivers through various means.
I’m interested in a broad spectrum of “relational competencies,” including empathy, and how they are used in business. Skillful practitioners use these competencies to show their understanding, respect and appreciation for others. These skills include self-awareness and various social competencies that enable the practitioner to listen to and validate customers which forms the basis of relationships.
Can you name any noteworthy scholars who anticipated the current economic crisis? Here’s one: Nassim Taleb, author of the fascinating ‘06 book, The Black Swan. (Here’s my earlier blog entry about it.)
Taleb wrote in The Black Swan:
Globalization creates interlocking fragility, while reducing volatility and giving the appearance of stability. In other words it creates devastating Black Swans. We have never lived before under the threat of a global collapse. Financial Institutions have been merging into a smaller number of very large banks. Almost all banks are interrelated. So the financial ecology is swelling into gigantic, incestuous, bureaucratic banks – when one fails, they all fall.
The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crisis less likely, but when they happen they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. We have moved from a diversified ecology of small banks, with varied lending policies, to a more homogeneous framework of firms that all resemble one another. True, we now have fewer failures, but when they occur ….I shiver at the thought.
In 2006, Taleb noticed a pattern that others missed. How did he do that?
Martin defines integrative thinking as the ability to deal with the tensions of competing solutions to a problem. Instead of choosing one solution at the expense of the other, the practioner generates a solution integrates both solutions.
In his ‘07 book, The Opposable Mind, Martin argues that integrative thinking is superior to conventional thinking which consists of “accpeting unattractive and unpleasant tradeoffs”.
This concept is relevant to how government and business leaders ought to approach the financial crisis. Instead of deciding between implementing tax cuts or a stimulus package – seemingly contradictory models – why not try both? Instead of businesses merely cutting operating costs, why not implement initatives that preserve high margin business increase customer retention and profit per customer.
Martin considers these issues in an October 8 interview. He applies integrative thinking to the vexing challenges associated with the economic crisis affecting today’s leaders.
Despite the shaky underpinnings and dire economic climate, the U.S. still ranks ahead of the other nations in competitiveness, though economists see thorny challenges ahead. On the plus side, the U.S. still brings a lot in the area of production potential, well-functioning labor markets, sophisticated businesses, academic leadership and technological innovation.
While these are sustainable virtues, the U.S. has its work cut out to stay on top as other countries take steps to improve their competitiveness (see Fareed Zakaria’s seminal The Post American World). Globalization is leading to the “Rise of the Rest”. This pattern has been evident to anyone involved in business dealings across markets over the last decade.
The report had few surprises. A notable exception is that the UK slipped (from 9th last year to 12th) due to its heavy reliance on a flagging financial services sector.
Singapore, the Scandinavian nations and Switzerland have been perennial leaders for several years. And it isn’t surprising that the Gulf nations are on the rise due to worldwide demand for hydrocarbons coupled with concerted economic reforms.
Fiinally, some sub-Saharan nations are making headway though, as a region, it still lags behind. These economies have had 5-6% annual growth rates and relatively low inflation in recent years. But their infrastrusctures are fragile and they may be hit hard by a global slowdown.
The WEF report is a lagging indicator of the strengths and weaknesses of global economies. For example, it doesn’t take into account the prospects of a global slowdown which reduces the demand for resources.
The take away is that governments play a substantial role in shaping a nation’s long-term capacity to compete in an increasingly global and crowded world. Good governance rules.
Now I really like Taleb’s work, and this book is a fascinating look at the world of unpredictable events. Taleb is an mathematician who explains why such events are impossible to predict. But Anderson tells it better than I could, and I’m sharing:
Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. “Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall–they are the real distorting prisms of human nature.” Chief among them: “Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature.” Now consider the typical stock market report: “Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production.” Sigh. We’re still doing it.
Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don’t–and, most importantly, can’t–know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but it’s something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt.
The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the “millionaire next door,” when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls them Black Swans, which is a reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment. In Europe all anyone had ever seen were white swans; indeed, “all swans are white” had long been used as the standard example of a scientific truth. So what was the chance of seeing a black one? Impossible to calculate, or at least they were until 1697, when explorers found Cygnus atratus in Australia.
Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it’s practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, “History does not crawl, it jumps.” Our assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls “Mediocristan,” while our world is really shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of “Extremistan.”
In full disclosure, I’m a long admirer of Taleb’s work and a few of my comments on drafts found their way into the book. I, too, look at the world through the powerlaw lens, and I too find that it reveals how many of our assumptions are wrong. But Taleb takes this to a new level with a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature.
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