Tuesday, December 25, 2012

"This is a test"

A difficult conversation may not seem like a big thing, but a challenging conversation is challenging because there is something about it that makes us uncomfortable. It's easy to gear up for that Big Event on your calendar, but handling that thing that just pops up requires a different kind of preparation. It's not the presentation to the potential client or acing the interview that separates leads to success.We'll be judged by that new client or our new boss by how we handle those little things that nobody likes to do. We're the baboon out there chasing away the lion while the other baboons are hiding in a tree.

Getting better at doing the things that we don't want to do is the difference between settling for what we've always been and growing into what we want to become. The trick is recognizing when we're faced with an opportunity to challenge our limits. We're so accustomed to having the big moments presented to us in a formal and predictable manner in our organizations that we forget to practice how to handle the big moments of life. Big moments usually looks small. Their bigness only emerges as time reveals their impact. You can't study for every test, but you need to ace them all.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

What people see

Two events, which has the greater potential to significantly impact my career?

The first has been months in the making. I've been working with another scientist to develop a model that we can use to quickly assess the amount of drug in a new product. We finally got the model to work this week. There was no guarantee that our approach would work when we started the project. There were periods where I thought we were going to fail, but I had a sense that it had to work so we kept trying different tricks until we found one that worked.

The second event spontaneously emerged during a meeting to discuss our impressions of a candidate for an open position. Near the end of the meeting, I noticed that people were working hard to convince themselves that this guy was right for the job. He was probably going to get offered the position until it was my turn to give my rating. I decided to condense my thinking down to a single sentence. "We're working hard to rationalize that this guy is a good fit." The tone of the room shifted dramatically. Everybody felt the truth of what I had said. We liked him, but something about him just wasn't right.

I want figuring out how to get the model to work to be the event that defines me to the organization, but I sense that my comment will have more of a long term impact. My internal dialogue usually downplays the social/political aspect of my work life in favor of technical accomplishments. That's the wrong way to look at these things. The technical accomplishments merely offer evidence that you're competent. The social stuff determines how high you will rise. People see the social. They only hear about the technical.

Friday, December 14, 2012

Stepping Out

I'm not fighting my Dark Triad any more. Forget making myself smaller so other people can look bigger. That's for chumps. I'm going to fill up as much space, and garner as much attention, as I can get. No more selling myself short. If I'm the one whose made a project go, I'm going to accept the credit. No deflecting, no humble self-deprecating. I'm owning my ability. Why bother down playing my successes? Who gives a shit if I violate organizational norms or ruffle a few feathers by standing up and saying that I'm the magic piece that made this project go? What do I gain by down playing my role? Nothing. 

Being humble is just another way to be passive. 

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Keep the outside out

So you have more willpower if you view it as an endless resource rather than thinking of it as something that gets used up. Interesting observation, but it's really just a question of whether you let your external world define your state of mind. Do you seek validation from people "liking" your posts or giving you helpful votes on your Amazon reviews? The more you seek those forms of validation, the more you surrender what you're really about. Pursuing likes or votes means that you've handed power over to the outside. You've sacrificed what you stand for, who your are, to get somebody else's approval. External validation leaves your state of mind, your well-being, to the whim and fancy of everybody else.

Patagonia ran an ad telling people not to buy one of their jackets on Black Friday a few years ago. The ad resulted in a big bump in sales. Why? The ad let everybody know what Patagonia stands for, what they're about. They told the world what they were and let people who shared that mission come to them. There was no grovelling or surrender. Patagonia was the alpha. People love an alpha. Alphas make people feel safe. 

Alphas don't let other people tell them what to think or how to feel. Likes and votes and every other form of approval come from an authentic assertion of who you are and what you stand for. The more you become what you think everybody else wants, the more those people will go away.

Friday, November 23, 2012

Another step away from being a pathetic loser

Will I exert my desires on the physical world or will the physical world exert its power on me? Will I let other people dictate how I live my life or will I set the terms of my social exchanges? Will I allow the culture of an organization to shape my career or will I pursue what I find most valuable regardless of the consensus view on what is "right"?

My world has always dominated me. When I say my world, I'm referring to things as fundamental as the relationship between my mind and my body. All that talk of The Edge was my way of thinking about how hard I have to exert my psychic will over my physical body. My conscious, rational brain has a hard time dealing with my unconscious, irrational mind. My conscious mind has always been easily cowed by my fears. A little discomfort, either the physical pain of a workout or the psychological challenge of approaching a stranger, is all it takes to get me to go hide in the corner. I'm a pushover.

I've been struggling with this issue for over a year. My blog entries are a chronicle of my facing all the ways that I manage to be a wimp. You can see all the ways that I let the world dictate the terms of my life. For all that I tell myself I'm internally driven, the world exerts it will far more than I exert my will on the world. I've been dominated. I've never dominated. Just look at my last couple of posts. I'm lamenting how the reality of world does not mesh with my desires. That's my world pushing me around.

I tend to accept the terms offered by other people. I acknowledge their control of the situation. They shape the terms of the relationship. I come to them seeking acceptance and hope that they'll deem me worth their time. People sense that need. I sensed the plaintive yearning to be accepted when I interviewed people who had been out of work for awhile last year. They came into the interview grovelling. Their tail was between their legs and the rolled onto their backs, they were willing to do anything for a job. That submission was a huge turn off. Why would I want to associate with somebody so pathetic.

That was me in pretty much every social interaction I had with a girl until I was 18 or 19. I was pathetic. I put them in charge. They were the alpha in the interaction. That doesn't work very well with the ladies. I've made myself the beta, gamma, omega, whichever Greek letter is appropriate, over and over again in my life. I've always thought that being an alpha required some kind of vigorous physical exertion or extraordinary confidence, but it's really just a matter of exerting your will onto a situation. It's not letting the other person dominate an interaction. It's about meeting people's gaze, exuding confidence, and letting them know that you're not going to readily accept their terms for the interaction. It's about dominating rather than being dominated.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Inconsequential

Systems seek to render competition irrelevant. When the bureaucracy and its minions determines which ideas will have the advantage, competence stands little chance against connections, cronyism, or conferred status. All that really matters is how well you can work the system.

The "smart" people have figured this out a long time ago. My father-in-law told me how impressed he was with the intelligence of Tim Kaine, Senator-elect for my home state of Virginia. (He claims to have talked to Kaine at some event a few years ago.) The (former) Governor has it figured out. He's going to the center of power to curry favor and garner tremendous personal wealth by manipulating the output of the saps who insist on actually doing things. A guy I work with is pursuing a similar path. He's leaving behind doing things for managing things. He loves to drop little nuggets about the budgets he's working on and the presentations he's putting together for different managers. It's clear that he wants to get in a position where he has power in the system. I've seen him doing things for managers, running meetings, putting slides together, gathering information, all in an effort to show that he's capable of managing the system.

Of course the system will carry on regardless of who's at the wheel. It doesn't really matter if is this guy gets to manage a group or whether that role falls to somebody else in the organization. The capabilities of any one person in a system are largely drowned out by the complexity of the organization. The limits imposed by the structure of the system dictates how well a particular company will perform in the marketplace. Systems don't die (ie, big companies going bankrupt) because a bad manager was put in charge. Systems die when people stop buying the thing that the system has been built to deliver. Hostess is still the best in the world at making Twinkies. People just don't eat them anymore. There is limited value in working outside of the system to accomplish something new. The new is difficult to merge into an established system. It's better to spend your time integrating yourself into the hierarchy that controls access to the levers of power. Merging with the system ensures that you'll be able to stick around and maybe get a few perks that fall to the system's power positions (substantial for Tim Kaine, largely inconsequential for my colleague)

I have a strong aversion to simply fitting into the system. I'm fortunate to work in R&D. As much as managers try to make the development of a new pharmaceutical product routine and predictable, there will always be unexpected problems to solve. I get out of the system by working on these problems. It's becoming much more difficult to avoid encroachment of the system into other areas of my life. A bigger government means that a greater and greater portion of my life will fall under the purview of one bureaucracy or another. Eventually, there may be no way to escape the system. What I want for my children, my life, my career will mean nothing in the face of a system that requires complete and absolute conformity and compliance.

The success of the US rests (or maybe I should say rested) in its unique ability to nurture the human spirit. In the US, you are (were) free to pursue those things that make you want to get up in the morning. Warren Buffett can advise somebody to take the job that they would take if independently wealthy because there are virtually unlimited opportunities. The parts of the system that make those opportunities possible are rapidly closing. The lose of those opportunities leaves more people subject to the system. That means more people are no longer free to exert their individuality. They're just another part of the system now. No more or less important than the other guy in the system. They're inconsequential.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

What is lost with surrender

What do we give up when we surrender to processes, procedures, and an arcane systems of spoken and unspoken rules? Exceptional performance is no longer worth much. Because the rules and their arbitrary enforcement decide who will succeed and who will fail, success and recognition are no longer coupled to results. Compliance, which usually means that nothing of note has actually been achieved, becomes the go to strategy to power and riches. Well, that and corruption.

Personal effort and sacrifice are not recognized in a system that rewards compliance and conformity. Systems seek to perpetuate themselves. The best person to run a system is the person who has shown the greatest aptitude to preserve that system.  The Army of World War II was much different than the Army that has been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Post WWII, the Army became more bureaucratic. The system evolved to protect generals from the responsibility of leadership. Do what's expected and you'll be fine.

But exceptional performance is all about doing what is NOT expected. Sticking with the routine in pursuit of the status quo just returns more of the same. There's no growth. The next breakthrough will come when somebody goes outside of the system to find something new. That effort will come from an individual's desire to make shake things up. People look to shake things up for all kinds of reasons, but recognition for that effort justifies the risk and struggle. The success of the US can largely be ascribed to the financial and social rewards that come from working your ass off to make something happen. People want to get rich because rich people get the beautiful woman, the fancy house, and the freedom to do whatever the hell they want.

It also helps that there are plenty of resources floating around for people with the inclination to go get them. You can get a loan if you need one. Come up with a decent tech proposal and you can get funding. It's fairly straight-forward to start a business. In all these arrangements, an individual tasks on the risk of the loan and applies all their skill and effort into making something bigger and better. You take the risk, you get the rewards.

Accepting the system, surrendering to the ease and predictability of the illusion of comfort and predictability, removes the chance that you'll get rich and famous by applying your expertise to a valuable problem. The more systems we live under, the fewer opportunities there will be to pursue the rewards for individual excellence. On election night, I could feel that we're shifting to a state where more and more people are comfortable with the system. The implications of that recognition are profound and very unsettling.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

What can no longer be ignored

I'm struggling with the election results, but I'm not sure whether the issues I'm struggling with would be any different if the other guy had won. I could have ignored the issues if things had turned out differently, but as it is, I've spent the last hour trying to bring some sort of order to the chaos of my thoughts and feelings. My struggle isn't really with the concrete results of the election. As much as I dislike the current administration, there would be no dramatic difference with somebody else at the helm. Every national politician is primarily interested with expanding their power and influence. That means making the government more powerful and influential.

Confronting the implications of a more powerful and influential government is my real struggle. Government is bureaucracy. The rise of the bureaucracy marks the decline of the individual. Systems have little interest in or need for people driven to do things their own way. Disrupting the accepted way of doing things is actually suppressed in powerful bureaucracies. Success is determined by how well you can conform with and fit into the system. Success is a function of surrender rather than an expression of individual will.

Most of my professional aspirations are derived from a desire to work outside of a rigid hierarchy of expected behaviors. I strive to achieve things that require me to draw from my personal resources. I try to avoid those things that require me to rely on established processes and procedures. I want to become a leader so I can get people to leave behind their reliance on established routines to find their own way. I'm sitting here wondering if I'm crazy for thinking about going against the system. Who am I to think that I'm stronger than the system?

The election results make it hard to ignore the trend towards control by a central authority over more and more aspects of our life. I've been trying to ignore that trend. Rather than confront what the election of 2008 implied about the direction of our society, I worked hard to rationalize it away. I viewed it as an outlier rather than recognizing it as a valuable insight into the evolution of our culture. I wanted to ignore it and keep going on my merry way. After tonight, I recognize that the trend towards more control will only keep growing. 

There are other signs of the trend towards the reliance on rules to establish order in complicated situations. The pharmaceutical industry has been turning away from R&D for years. My initial response to an article that describes this rejection of research scientists by the pharmaceutical industry was to rationalize it away. I was poised to write a post or two on how that article illustrated the need for the research side of the business to exert itself. Our value is not being recognized. Once the business sees how much they need research, the precipitous trend away from R&D will reverse itself. Is that just wishful thinking? Fundamentally, research is complicated, expensive, and incredibly inefficient. It doesn't lend itself to simple metrics or efficiency measures. It's hard to bureaucratize. If the messiness of R&D is what is really keeping it from the core of the business, my effort to get the business side to recognize our value is doomed before it has really even begun. 

I can see a scenario that as I rely more and more on my personal abilities, as I become more and more of an expert, I weaken my ability to influence and shape my organization. In pushing away the bureaucratic, I will be isolating myself from the levers of power that are needed to get things done. My accomplishments outside of the system will result in rejection by the system. This line of reasoning leads to the conclusion that the course of action with the greatest probability of success is to embrace the system, yield my personal ambitions, and master the bureaucratic procedures that will allow me to increase my power. That course of action negates everything that I've been striving for during my entire career. 

So you can see why I'm struggling. Success in my field, scientific research, requires the skills and thinking style that run counter to an organization's desire for order and control. Success in my industry requires embracing the routine. In order to succeed as a scientist, I have to reject what is currently considered good business.  

Monday, October 29, 2012

Will my MBA make me an expert in anything?

Read, discuss, write, read, discuss, write, analyze, struggle with some canned simulation problem, that's what I've been doing for the last eight weeks. That's how Marist has been training me to manage change. Will these things make me an expert in change management? Maybe. That will really depend on what I DO with all of those random bits of information that I've picked up during my class.

My organization is getting ready to go through a very serious transition. At least the executive leading the change envisions a serious reorientation of what we do and how we do it. I'm not so sure that everybody else feels the same way. We had a big meeting on Friday where the details of the new organizational alignment and the philosophy behind that structure were shared with the entire group. There was no excitement when the meeting broke. Just another rearrangement or who reports to whom. Big deal.

A change management expert would recognize the mood of the meeting and know how to get people excited. That's what separates me from the expert. I may be able to draw from an inventory of different ideas and theories about changing organizations, but I really have no idea how to apply them. I see the same gap between my research skills and the less experienced scientists I work with. Both of us can do the same things in the lab, but they don't know how to use that knowledge to answer a question. They have the knowledge, they're just not as adept at recognizing when and how to leverage that knowledge.

The expert has that intuitive sense of what needs to be done to resolve an issue. That instinct comes from doing. Expertise is really just knowing what will work without being able to explain why. The last eight weeks certainly hasn't given me that sense, but I did get a much better sense of the implicit aspects of leading change efforts. Experts pick up on little things that other people miss. It's about seeing more than what's there to be seen. The explicit contains everything that you need to pick up on the implicit, the unseen, the felt. It's just a matter of being able to see how one relevant fact connects to other relevant facts.

I'm going to attempt to influence how my group receives the details of the new organization. It won't make me an expert, but it's a start.

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Will my MBA be nothing more than an incremental improvement?

I'm really just adding a feature that so many other people possess. My MBA won't even be from a program that gives me a boost through mere association. I know that I'm benefiting from the program, but I'm not just sure if the amount of time and effort that I'm putting in will be worth whatever benefits I may derive.

This thinking is really just me wondering if this program is the best use of my time. I think about the things that I would rather be doing than spending my nights working on school stuff and I start to wonder if the returns on this effort justify the lost sleep, the reduction in blog posts, fewer workouts, and neglect of various work activities.

I'm not really sure what I would do that would be a more radical improvement in my capabilities. Most of my voluntary activities would likely deepen my existing skills and expertise. I can't think of much that would broaden my perspective like the MBA classes. I guess if I can ever come up with something that is more compelling, I'll leave the MBA program and work on that. I guess I can use the amount of effort I put into finding something else to keep me busy as a gauge for my subconscious desire to keep pursuing this status quo project.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

A daily decision

My wife will start a half-marathon in about 15 minutes. She's been training for months. There was no fancy training program. Just the commitment to get up and run. She showed up and put in the time.

At the heart of it, that's all achievement really requires. You have to show up and put in the time. A writer has to write, a musician has to perform, a computer programmer needs to write code, a researcher needs to be in the lab. The consistent accretion of skills, knowledge, and experience that build from working on your craft, whatever that may be, day after day eventually becomes a spectacular ability.

The best don't become the best by accident. It's a decision. You have to make the choice to show up everyday. Day after day after day...

Friday, August 17, 2012

I'm a leader, now what

I've been trying to figure out how I should approach the first formal leadership role of my career. After struggling to develop some kind of cohesive plan for my new group of four, I stumbled onto a simple plan. I've spent the last five years silently critiquing my leadership. That well of observations offers a few good ideas to start developing a leadership style.

My first struggle was whether to treat my group as a group or individuals. I've long bemoaned the way that those of us in the lab are treated like interchangeable parts. I'm going to take the individual route. Rather than having a meeting with everybody together, I'll meet with each person individually, away from the lab, to talk about this new relationship and how we'll work together.

There is far too much emphasis on what needs to get done and far too little effort placed on what can be done to make it easier to get those things done. I think I'll try to focus more on how things are getting done and what I can do to make it easier rather than focusing on making sure things are getting done. I want to put the emphasis on the process more than the result. When you focus on the process, you have a better chance of finding ways to make it better.

Given that managers are focused on whether or not a task has been completed, most people feel that they are mere order followers. Managers are there to give assignments and make sure those things get done. They're not there to help people get out of a jam or find a way to make the work flow more smoothly. I'm going to take the approach that I'm there for my people rather than my people being there for me. I'm their resource. They are not mine.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

The Pursuit

In order to achieve something, you need something to achieve. Yes, it sounds a bit like a truism, but what guides your energies if you're not seeking to make something happen? There's a big difference between trying to get promoted and trying to achieve a specific goal.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Crowding out

Exceptional performance doesn't allow for automatic decisions. Settling into a routine, being comfortable, that's not going to get it done. You can't be satisfied with the way things are now. Get better, get better, get better. Small choices, what to have for lunch, when to go to bed, what to do with the 45 minutes you have to yourself before you go to bed, matter when you're pursuing excellence.

The decision to be the best dictates your every move. Total commitment. Eliminating the excess, getting to the core of building the skills and experience needed to achieve something extraordinary becomes the driver of everything else. Focus on advancing. There can be no more dabbling. You're going to have to give something up.

Six-pack abs don't come easy. Boston marathon qualifying times don't just happen with a few jogs through the neighborhood. Exceptional performance narrows your experience. Depth replaces breadth. The accumulation of experience required for expertise, the layer by layer acquisition of improving skills that requires concentrated effort over an extended period of time, doesn't leave room for much.

I'm spread too thin. I spend time writing blog entries rather than working on a paper describing some research I've done at work. I do school work instead of writing blog entries. I do school work rather than sleep. What do I have to give up to keep advancing? What am I trying to achieve?

Monday, July 30, 2012

What makes you weird?

What makes us weird is usually what makes us interesting (assuming what makes you weird isn't too, well, weird). Elite athletes are weird. They keep crazy schedules and follow odd diets, all in pursuit of being the best in their chosen sport. This kind of behavior is expected for money sports (the games that are on in sports bars every weekend), but when you tell somebody that you fence or row or do judo, that makes you weird, but that also makes you different.

Weird is in our wiring. I always see connections in things that I read. This blog post is about regrets. This book is about science monks (at least that's the best I can summarize in a few words). I was at the beach earlier this week and a water park this morning. Last year I thought that I would like to get rid of my gut so I could walk around these places without the roll of fat that virtually everybody at these places carry around. I'm a little thinner than I was last year, but you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference if you saw me walking around the park. So I'm thinking about how I regret not working harder to lose my gut over this past year. That gets me thinking about religious groups that demand adherence to a strict discipline. This discipline typically requires the observance of strict dietary and lifestyle rules. They also require the observation of regular rituals.

Is there such a thing as a weight-loss ritual? A ritual is just an activity that we observe on a regular basis. There's just as much discipline required in observing a ritual than abstaining from foods we enjoy. I've decided to link up this idea of regret with the idea of a ritual, and implement a regular abdominal exercise ritual into my day.

What will I be observing in this ritual? My virility. Belly fat is linked to low testosterone. I stopped carrying my cell phone in my pocket to preserve my testosterone. I'll be engaging in a daily rite of medicine ball exercise to keep myself masculine. I hope you don't think this makes me too weird...


Saturday, July 21, 2012

Good taste

Good taste is actually more about recognizing bad ideas than having a sense for the good (whatever the good may be). Good taste is knowing that your latest draft lacks that something it needs to be really exceptional. It's about being seeing what's missing, what doesn't work, what needs improvement. It's recognizing that there's more work to do.

Good taste emerges in the editing. It's throwing away an idea that you like because you know it won't work. It's recognizing that the competent version of a output could be better. It's preferring the remarkable to the adequate.

Good taste recognizes what's interesting and important. 

Friday, July 20, 2012

Why I am not powerful

Nice guys care too much about what everybody else thinks. The nice guy seeks approval. He wants to be liked, approved of, held in high regard. He lets other people define him. His goals are other people's goals. He seeks what he thinks people want rather than pursuing his desires. He has no desires of his own. He only seeks to become what other people want. Well, at least what he thinks other people want.

The nice guy never gets power. Power is nothing more than the freedom to act, the freedom to do what you think needs to be done (or what you want to do) with little regard to the expectations and feelings of others. The nice guy only cares about the feelings of others. The standard for all judgements is what other people, especially those deemed important, will think.

Who do you admire? Do you admire the milquetoast who goes with the flow, or do you admire the man who gets things done? We admire those who achieve, those who strive and claw and produce. That's not the legacy of the nice guy. The nice guy leaves no legacy. He leaves a trail of fading impressions.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Don't simplify. Expand

Simplify? That misses the point. Make your life richer by exploring new experiences. Unlimited experiences, new discoveries that warp and twist our perceptions of what's real and what's possible, beg for our notice. My explorations tend to focus on music, beer, and ideas. That's where I place my attention.

But that's really the point of the whole simplify your lifestyle movement. Our attention, energy, and focus are finite. Let's use those precious resources on things that really matter. Living in the moment. Appreciating what we have, not only the physical stuff but the important people in our life. Yes, the latest Facebook status update is probably not going to rattle the foundation of your beliefs. Your twitter feed probably won't reveal a fundamental truth that will have you questioning everything you thought was true about your life. Eliminate that noise. Don't eliminate all the good stuff.

Keep looking, trying new things, keep pushing the boundaries. This simplify stuff is all about how to make things smaller, more compact, more elegant.  Sure, if you're distracted and overwhelmed by the noise of modern life, shake free. But Don't shrink. Expand.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Why is every power point presentation the same?

Suffered through more marketing pap during a painful Brand School learning thing at work today. These seminars in conventional thinking are driving me crazy. Slides, talking, bad jokes, more bad slides, meaningless filler. It's becoming too much to bear. I want to do one just so I can rattle the cage a little bit. Put on a show. Make the damn thing an experience. Dramatic music. Maybe a light show.

The best talks are always entertaining. A little drama, a little storytelling. Create a jolting experience. Tickle the emotions. Make it more than a staid lecture. Make it an event. Make it something everybody will remember.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Snowden

One of my favorite bands, Snowden, has a new single out. It's good stuff.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Why bother going for good grades in an MBA program?

The grades that I get in my MBA classes may never have any relevance. If this is the case, I'm wasting my time when I put a big effort behind all of my assignments. Maybe my energy would be better spent getting more exercise or maybe I'd get a better long term return on the time I put into the assignment by going to bed earlier. Maybe. But I'm confident that it's worth my time to put in the effort to get the best grade possible.

Getting an MBA is about differentiation. Simply having the degree is one level of differentiation. The school is another level. Performance in the program is yet another differentiating variable. Plenty of people have an MBA. I'm not attending a big name school, although Marist is on everybody's favorite news magazine for rankings honor role for online MBA programs, so having a stellar GPA is the best way for me to influence how an evaluator incorporates my business school training into an overall evaluation of my abilities.

Reputation shapes our life. Anything exceptional carries tremendous weight in influencing the perception of others. Any opportunity to demonstrate exceptional performance must be seized. My MBA classes offer me an opportunity to do something exceptional. That's why I make the effort.

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Do different

The job seekers lacked an identity. There was nothing driving the acquisition of skills and experiences that they listed on their resume. They did as they were told and took pride in being a good instruction taker. Their only goal was to get promoted, to make a little more money, to have just a touch more job security. If I had asked them what they were trying to accomplish in their old position, what idea or vision were they trying to turn into reality, I would have gotten a blank stare.

That vision of what we're trying to achieve is all that differentiates us from the next guy. That something else is what drives us to do different. There is no reason to push if you're only trying to fit in. Finding the most comfortable spot in the hierarchy of some organization is an act of conformance. Using the organization to achieve your vision requires guts and balls.

It also requires having an idea of what you want to accomplish and what you want to achieve. You don't need a detailed plan. You just need to recognize that you don't want to follow along with the rest of the herd. You should expect to stand out. You'll be noticed if you're the only one challenging the system, asking the uncomfortable questions, and trying to do something that matters rather than simply doing something.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

Seeking surprise

I was watching the end of some catastrophe show on Discovery Channel, Scary Landings or some such drivel. The last bit of the show was about the crash landing of that plane in the Hudson. They were interviewing the captain and he mentioned that the airline industry does all that it can to avoid surprise. This statement blew me away. It was an almost throw away comment, but it spoke such a simple and profound truth.

I do all that I can to court surprise in my job. I try to find the new and unexpected to give us an edge. I look for surprises in a small range of things in my personal life. I like to try new beers. The internet makes checking out new music a virtually risk free endeavor.

My reaction to surprise, how much I need it, what I do when I stumble onto it, and whether I structure my life to tempt its arrival, says more about me than anything I may have professed on this blog. Our orientation to risk and surprise, whether we're thrilled by the new or uncertain about the uncertain, dictates our approach to all the really critical parts of life.






Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Stop thinking you're a machine. Create something

Nothing. That's what a senior manager in my organization said his group was working on during a high level meeting with other senior managers and executives. His group was working on nothing. People are speculating that he was trying to point out that our pipeline of new product ideas is a little dry. It doesn't matter if he was just being frank or trying to make a point. He willingly stood up in front of other leaders and confessed that his people are waiting around for somebody else to tell them what to do. He could have brought forward a list of proposals that his team has developed. He could have discussed research into some aspect of a formulation that could dramatically improve the quality of our products. He could have described work being done with other organizations to resolve some long standing problem. Nope. We're working on nothing.

That response makes R&D look like the flashing cursor on a computer monitor. Just sitting there, waiting for input. Waiting for instructions. Tell us what to do. Give us something to work on. Why should we put these kinds of limits on our potential? Rather than exploring our boundaries and finding new ways to broaden our capabilities, we're plotting ways to make other parts of the organization look bad. We're not machines. We're capable of doing more than merely executing instructions.
  

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Linear or Non-linear

The linear favors the predictable, orderly, and routine. Get a feel for how a linear system works today, and you can be reasonably sure that the system will work the same way tomorrow. Linear systems follow well-defined rules. A certain level of input yields a predictable level of output.

The nonlinear is harder to predict. What works well today won't work all that well tomorrow. It's harder to predict how much a certain input is going to change the system. Interactions between different elements of a system are harder to predict. Determining which aspect of the nonlinear will be the most important is more of a guess than an informed prediction.

The linear is easy to bureaucratize. Develop a procedure, put in place a few rules, determine how much stuff you want to come out of the end, and press the start button. The system reigns supreme. People are only needed to hold off entropy.

The nonlinear is immune to regimentation. Constant intervention is required to ensure that input becomes output. Systems exist to support individuals. There is no system without experts to improvise a process for a constantly changing sea of variables.

The linear is easy to ship overseas. The nonlinear will stay with the experts. The linear gets by with managers. The nonlinear must be led. The linear is easy to teach. Put the information in a book or two, design a training course, inculcate the masses. The essence of the nonlinear defies simply expression as a sentence or a code. It's nebulous and shifting. The nonlinear requires active participation and experience.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

The Essence of Non-Conformity

Being non-conformist does not require you to quit your day job to travel the world, live a minimalist lifestyle, or take up meditation. You can work for a giant corporation, have a wife and kids, and live in the suburbs. Lifestyle alone does not determine whether or not you're a conformist. A non-conformist simply rejects the notion that our options are limited. Life is not a multiple choice test. We are all free to create our own best way to get through life. We are not required to follow a prescribed path.

Being a non-conformist does not require that you reject society or traditional values. You stop conforming when you stop expecting that meeting other people's expectations will make you happy. A non-conformist takes responsibility for their own well-being. As soon as you recognize that you're the only person who can determine what kind of life will make you happy, you stop accepting the assumptions that we are all socialized to adopt and start seeking your own path. You stop trying to decide which pre-packaged choice looks best and start searching for a way to make your vision a reality.

"I'm doing everything right, but I can't get that promotion / find the love of my life / find my true passion" is the refrain of the conformist. The conformist pursues a marketed image of the good life and feels betrayed when that life lets them down. They pick an idea of who they are and what they should be and never deviate from that ideal. I was a tremendous conformist in high school. I had an idea of the kind of person I should be and put all my energy into making sure I never deviated from that course. I never tried somebody new. I was miserable.

I was a conformist when I explored leaving my current position for something new up in Boston. I was looking for an organization that I could fit into rather than making my organization fit me. Passive acceptance of the status quo defines conformity. Efforts to create something better, something that resonates with your purpose and meaning require going against the grain, breaking some rules, and defying expectations. Just fitting in will never make you happy.

Friday, April 27, 2012

New idea killing fields

I like to tell people that I don't really want to be a manager, but I do want to be a leader. Implicit in this reluctance to merely manage is an aversion to enforcing rules simply because a rule exists. This is especially the case when the rule offers nothing more than an assertion of bureaucratic power. Requiring people to work for a specified period of time in a specific location is just the kind of rule that I would love to undermine if I'm ever put in a position of authority. I just want to people to deliver by whatever means possible. Managers enforce the rules. Leaders free followers from restrictions that limit their potential.

Given this perspective, it should come as no surprise that I have very little regard for managers who feel compelled to demonstrate the authority granted to them by the bureaucracy. Aggressive assertions of bureaucratic control, especially through appeals to the ultimate bureaucratic authority, HR, vividly illustrate the lack of imagination and vision in a senior leader. If a leader's first response to a situation that challenges the established norm is to file a complaint with HR, that leader is simply expressing their reliance on the power granted by their place in the hierarchy. The complaint is nothing more than the recognition that they see their role as executor of existing systems. They might as well hang up a sign that says they believe in command and control management. Their office is the place where new ideas go to die because new ideas threaten the power that enables this managerial style.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Niche master

The lawyers who have achieved elite status in some specialized niche of the legal world charge much higher rates than lawyers who handle more routine matters. The money flows to those who do something different. They're unique. They stand out in a profession of largely interchangeable parts.

Niche masters compete on expertise while the less capable try to do more of the same at a greater rate for less money. Expertise is scarce. Scarce resources are expensive.

The niche master finds their "unique contribution" and exploits that skill in any way possible. That unique contribution emerges from what you know, who you know, and how you can mix those things up with what you've done to create a unique proposition.

If you're the only person doing something, you're the best in the world at that one thing.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Advice to job seekers

My advice to job seekers (based on my experience reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates for a few openings in my group, I don't get to make the final decision but I do get to offer plenty of input): STAND OUT. Forget the safe, boring resume that follows all the tips in some worthless book or website. If you've spent most of your career in the pharmaceutical industry, I already have a good idea of the kind of work that you've been doing. Show me how you've gone beyond expectations, broken out of your job description, and achieved something that could only come from your unique combination of skills, insight, intelligence, and experience. Stop spending so much time telling me what you can do and start telling me what you've accomplished. Give me your highlight reel.

Show me that you know how to invent. Demonstrate that you can take an idea that you pick up in a meeting and turn it into something valuable without needing step by step instructions from a supervisor. It's great that you can solve problems. Will you see hints of a problem that others may miss? Tell me how you spotted a problem and implemented a solution before your colleagues were even aware that there was a problem.

Stop being safe. I don't want to see you showing me what you think I'm looking for in a candidate. I want to see what you have to offer. Your fear that you're going to blow this interview when you are in desperate need of this job radiates from you with palpable heat. Nobody wants to date somebody who's desperate. The same rules apply to selecting co-workers.

I'm not going to respond well to fear, uncertainty, or listlessness. Don't put your passion in a corner. Put it out on display. If you can get me excited about something you've worked on, I'm going to get excited about working with you.

Drop the predictable answers. Stop playing it safe. Show me that you know how to push the boundaries while still playing by the rules. Take me to the edge.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Seek, and you shall find

This new book, Imagine, demonstrates the first step to take if you need to find a creative solution to a problem. DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN EVERYBODY ELSE. A product of our effort is considered creative when it is different than those things that have come before it. A book about creativity that delves into what the experts have to say about the topic in the context of the stories about the birth of innovative ideas has been done before. The experts, especially those that use fancy instruments to watch blood move around in the brain, are intensely focused on the individual. They're in constant pursuit of this getting to the bottom of why some people are creative and others are less so. What individual factors are at the root of these differences in creativity? All of those creativity books that are listed in my reading lists explore similar questions in varying levels of detail.

Is the individual the best place to look for the origin of creative thought? Sure people are the protagonists in the stories of creativity that continually pop up in books and articles about creativity. A person invented the post-it note, but the post-it note is really nothing more than the solution to a problem. The problem presented itself, how can you use small pieces of paper to mark pages in a hymnal?, and somebody with the appropriate experience was able to apply a fragment of their history to that problem.

Creativity is not a trait. It's a consequence of the interaction between a situation and the individual's life history. That life history includes everything that person has ever experienced. The more variable your experience, the more material you'll have to pull from when you're searching for a solution to a novel problem. That experience includes everything from which books you've read, where you've lived, the kind of food you eat, conversations that you've had, movies that you've watched, the content of your dreams, every moment of your life. The more of that experience you remember, the better. The more you're able to let your mind wander, the more receptive you'll be to random thoughts generated by elements of the problem bumping into elements of your problem.

To be creative, you must seek a problem and make the conscious decision to pursue a solution. If you're never thinking about a new way to clean floors, you're not going to come up with The Swiffer. If you're not immersing yourself in a problem, even something as mundane as cleaning the floor, you're never going to find a novel solution to your problem. If you're only working on one problem and nothing else, you're limiting your opportunity to happen onto a solution for some long standing problem. If you're not reaching out, tapping into other people's experiences, it will take you that much long to find a solution. If you don't have time to think about the problem, to stir the pot that holds your experience and elements of the problem, that magic combination that will get to the answer you're looking for will probably never present itself.

All of these random things that creativity researchers love to write about are never pulled together into a coherent picture of creativity. There's plenty of talk around tactics (see that new book Imagine), but very little discussion of a strategy to direct those efforts under a guiding principle connecting those disparate tricks (edit your work in a blue room). You can't schedule creativity into your day. The foundation of your ability to be creative is the entirety of your life. Creativity rests on experience. No experience, no creativity. You can't be creative if you don't pursue problems that require novelty (or seek novel solutions to situations that may be associated with a well-established and accepted routine).


Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Watching the brain while daydreaming

This idea of structured daydreaming may have some validity. In offering some advice on how to become more creative, Anne Kreamer suggests that we let our minds wander. She offers a link to a recent paper in PNAS that describes the results of experiments using functional MRI brain imaging to determine which areas of the brain are active when we're concentrating on a task and which regions light up when our mind wanders. They observe activity in both the "executive" (controlled thinking) and "default" (automatic thinking) networks. As activation of the executive network typically represses activity in the default network, daydreaming may create a state in the brain that is particularly well-suited to creative thinking. This parallel recruitment of the two networks

"is reminiscent of the neural recruitment observed during creative thinking, where executive regions and default regions are activated before solving problems with insight...Thus, mind wandering may be part of a larger class of mental phenomena that enable executive processes to occur without diminishing the potential contribution of the default network for creative thought."

The essence of staying loose is letting the random process of idea generation occur while paying enough attention to record the ideas but not being so actively engaged to inhibit idea generation.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Stay loose

I've bumped into three disparate ideas that have coalesced into a single harmonious principle. Embracing chaos and unpredictability, thinking without extending excessive cognitive attention and focus enhances creativity, and working to create a future rather than trying to anticipate future events all speak to the value of acting and reacting rather than planning and executing.

We always know where we start when we face a problem or establish a goal. I favor developing a plan that has a reasonable probability of success that requires minimal time and energy over blindly executing a detailed protocol. Get the plan started and adjust as dictated by events. Acting shakes out the unforeseen. Used wisely, unanticipated difficulties are easily altered to look more like unexpected opportunities.

Monday, March 26, 2012

Consistency

I frequently find myself thinking back to a hastily organized talk given by John Fenn on the morning of his Noble Prize announcement. He gave a retrospective of his career where he gave serendipity and luck a starring role in his success. He spent his career kicking over rocks, and he had been lucky enough to find something interesting underneath a few of them.

As I think back on his comments, I see how his consistent effort to understand and solve problems gave him the insight he needed to develop electrospray ionization. Sure, when you look back you can weave a modest story of how a kid from the back woods of Kentucky bumbled his way to the highest scientific award in the world. But at the heart of that story is a country kid who worked hard every day. He picked up a little something here and a little something there. By themselves those little bits of knowledge may not have been much, but the substantial mass of those little insights made all the difference when it came time to figure out electrospray ionization.

Every day offers valuable training. Just because we may not know what we're training for doesn't make it any less important.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Narrowness of Expectation

There was a nifty little summary of recent creativity research in The Wall Street Journal last weekend. The information wasn't new to somebody well-versed in the field, but it did distill a common theme that emerges from a number of these independent investigations. You can't think too hard when you're trying to come up with a new idea. Focused thought seems to rely on established patterns and connections. There is not likely to be much novelty in those well-trod paths. Attentive day-dreaming, where you may get your mind going down a particular track before sending it on its way, mines a richer vein of potential associations. Some crazy idea that would be rejected outright when you're critically evaluating every new idea could get a little traction and spin off in a new direction.

I spend too much of my time sitting at my desk and looking out the window. People have come to see me when I'm in one of these moments. I look idle, staring off into space, but I'm actually hard at work. It may not look like it, but these are my most productive moments.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Accumulating Body Blows

I've often wondered at the source of Anthony Trollope's prolific output. How could one man generate so many thick books that were written with a quill? Baumeister has provided the answer. Well, Trollope revealed his methods in an autobiography, but I just read about it in Willpower.

"He would write for two and a half hours, monitoring the time with a watch placed on the table. He forced himself to produce one page of 250 words every quarter of an hour. Just to be sure, he counted the words. At this rate, he could produce 2500 words by breakfast. He didn't expect to do this every single day, but he made sure each week to meet a goal. For each of his novels, he would draw up a working schedule, typically planning for 10,000 words a week, and then keep a diary/"

Brilliant work is never executed in isolation. Novels that change lives, paintings that transform art, or albums that change the way you think about music have their roots in the daily struggle to create something meaningful. The breakthrough success is built not a single moment of inspiration but countless hours of tedious accumulation.

Monday, February 27, 2012

It's not about me

My neighbors were talking about a poker game that they had played in the night before. Poker game? I hadn't heard a whisper about a poker game. My first impulse was to wonder what I had done that made my neighbors not want me at their game. Then I took a mental step back. Have I ever expressed interest in playing poker? Is it possible that they just weren't thinking about me when the poker game came up? Other explanations for my exclusion that did not require active social rejection were relatively easy to identify when I stopped looking at the situation as a commentary on me.

I'm getting ready to take a trip for work. My relationship with my wife usually gets a little strained before I leave on these trips. I recently recognized that I usually take her (entirely justified) frustration with the lead up to these trips as frustration with me. She not frustrated with me, at least not initially. She's frustrated with the situation. My response to her frustration, which is usually overly defensive as I interpret her displeasure with the challenges of my being gone for several days as displeasure with me, makes a difficult situation even more stressful. I'm approaching this trip differently. I'm not taking her frustration personally.

I once wondered why I didn't feel that my status was threatened at work but felt constant threats to my status in my personal life. I don't feel threatened at work because I don't take things personally. It's easy to discern the complicated web of agendas and pressures that prompt unpleasant behavior at work. My manager may appear aggravated at a meeting. That behavior was probably prompted by something that I had nothing to do with. There is no need to get defensive. My immediate response anytime somebody is short with me in my personal life is defensive. A defensive reaction implies that the the situation is all about you.

Making a situation all about you blinds you to the myriad of other concerns that swirl around every social interaction. You cut yourself off from the rich web of social interactions and relationships when your reactions to a situation have an overt personal bias. As a teenager, I was so obsessed with protecting myself from the pains of rejection that I never stopped to consider what other people might be feeling. How many relationships did I lose as a result. How much did I stunt my own development? Disregard for my wife's feelings has damaged our relationship. That disregard, which is usually rooted in an overwhelming focus on what I'm experiencing at any given point in time, pollutes our relationship. How much better would our relationship be if I had acted differently?

It's not always all about you. It's rarely all about you. It's almost always about something that has nothing to do with you.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

The Edge is everywhere


Pursuing The Edge defies the safe, comfortable, and routine. There are few things that are more uncomfortable and less routine than actively defying the expectations of others in the pursuit of a deeply personal goal. The social value, how that goal will be judged by others, is of little to no consequence to somebody chasing The Edge. Challenging acts are often maligned by the comfortable mass. Why waste your time on that frivolous thing that drives you to the extremes of your ability when you can be doing this frivolous thing that everybody else thinks is important even though it demands slightly more effort than merely showing up? You have to believe in the value of your pursuit if you are to persevere through the depths of the struggle. The call to turn back, do what you've always done, do what everybody expects, do what everybody else does, will become more seductive the longer you toil. The comfortable mass entices. The Edge challenges, taunts, and intimidates.

The process of pushing for something more is the essence of The Edge. The actual activity is not important. The activity's relationship to what you want to accomplish, what you want to become, is vital. Writing product reviews requires me to get closer to The Edge than taking online MBA classes. Most people would probably say that MBA classes have more value to me than product reviews, but I gain more from writing those reviews than taking a multiple choice quiz. I strive to say something unique and meaningful in those reviews. The effort to create something novel requires me to give my best effort. The act of striving for something beyond what I've done before changes me just a touch. It gets me that much closer to The Edge. MBA classes just require me to put in the time to understand some concepts of questionable validity long enough to answer some questions on an exam. I learned how to do that a long time ago. I may learn something. I may become more competent, but there is nothing to discover in that process.




Friday, February 17, 2012

Creativity, curiosity, and charting a career

I read a fascinating paper this week that used the correspondence of reclusive writers to establish a relationship between the density of a social network and creative productivity. "Structural Holes" was a recurring term throughout the paper. Sure, Wikipedia would have been the more direct way to find out what a structural hole might be, but that's so pedestrian. I followed the references to a second paper that dealt with this concept in a very detailed manner.. Unknowingly exploiting structural holes has been the secret of whatever success I have had in my career. They also provide a possible gap for me to drive more creativity into the organization.

A structural hole is nothing more than a gap that exists between two groups that are part of a larger network. If you had friends in two different cliques in high school, you were the bridge over a structural hole. As like usually hangs out with like, having a foot in different groups broadens your access to information and widens your perspective. Reading about the advantages of being in a position to transfer knowledge from one group to another got me thinking about the origins of the successes that I like to list on my resume and annual reviews. One of them came about because I spent a couple of hours a week hanging out in a friend's lab in grad school. She told me enough about her research that I could see a way to use her techniques to make part of my job easier. Another one of my successes came from not being satisfied with an answer I got from a formulator. Digging into that issue resulted in the development of an excellent working relationship on a project with high visibility. One of my current projects has me working in an entirely different group with responsibilities far removed from my job description.

I've gotten to where I am in my job (whatever that's worth) by sticking myself in the gaps between different groups. This was not done by design. I just can't dutifully deliver my part of the project without understanding how the data I generate will be used to advance the program. I can't leave a question alone when I know a way to find the answer. It's this curiosity that pushes me into these structural holes. Following my inclination managed to get me into a position to have some events that cast a positive light on my activities. People also seem to like the seminars that I give that summarize my work. Seeing that various departments are represented in these sessions, word of what I've been working on scatters to various parts of the organization.

Prior to applying the nuggets that I gleaned from those two papers to my on the job successes, I would have totally missed the social/network aspect of my accomplishments. I focus so much on what I was thinking about and the process I went through to figure out what was going on with a particular problem, how those activities spread information and insight through the organization went right over my head. This is a critical oversight. I've been missing a very direct application of how my preferred method of working generates positive results. This is something I can exploit to drive creativity deeper into my role and the organization as a whole.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

Implicit

A close cousin of the automatic response is implicit knowledge. These are things that we don't quite know how we know (if we're aware of knowing them at all), but we know them anyway. I came across a theory of problem solving that invokes these hidden nuggets of knowledge. While reading the paper, I was struck with a simple question. How much explicit knowledge (the things we can easily discuss and relate to others) is required to develop a robust body of implicit knowledge? At what point does explicit knowledge become implicit knowledge? How long do we have to consciously work to master the explicit knowledge of a domain before we start to develop an active and effective implicit knowledge of that domain?

A key argument of the paper is that both systems of knowledge are necessary to creative problem solving. There is a synergy between thinking modes that enable the development of creative solutions. I take that to mean that a robust body of implicit knowledge enables creativity. Internalizing the rules of chemistry or chess or fashion design or painting builds up a critical mass of internal memes that can start to intermingle and interact. When an individual who has developed this critical mass of knowledge encounters a problem, conscious consideration of the problem initiates a cascade of associations that reach deep into this person's knowledge network. This happens outside of that person's awareness. As more and more effort is applied to solving the problem, a feedback between explicit and implicit knowledge (and the associated processing systems) may eventually yield a solution to the problem.

The development of implicit knowledge feels tantalizing close to why I'm compelled to read books and papers on creativity. If implicit knowledge develops from experience, deliberate practice, reading, thinking, trying to solve problems, successfully solving problems, and focusing on internally derived goals rather than seeking to obtain the approval of others, all of my thinking and reading over the last year could be channeled into something very powerful.

One step closer to being unstuck...

Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Trying to get unstuck

Things are working in the lab. My creative energies are going in that direction rather than bleeding off as blog posts or Amazon reviews. It's either that or I'm just too tired to collect the rash of good ideas clamoring for my attention. I blame my mental fecundity on reading too many books and papers about creativity. A big audacious essay on the topic is trying to get out of me, but every time I sit down to write it, nothing comes out. Choosing to start with a blog post is probably not a good idea. There's too much pressure to come up with something formed and developed if I'm going to post something on the blog. I thought reviewing Creativity would be a good place to start, but that's no good either. I need at least an hour to write a good review. I spent too much time checking on the progress of an experiment to give myself enough time tonight.

These ideas may be the core of something that I can build on. I don't want to just drop them haphazardly and lose the coherence of my thinking. I need to take time to develop my thinking. Sort some things out. Figure out what I really want to say.

As practice, here's an idea that I had while walking down the stairs at work. I've noticed a shift in how I consume books, music, or papers (the main ingredients of my cultural diet). In the past, the book or music was always very external. It was something that existed outside of me that could be studied or understood. My emphasis was on understanding how it related to other works more than pulling the ideas and feelings of that work into my experience matrix. Where I used to merely passively observe, I have started to actively ingest what I read or hear. It's like my ability to incorporate experience into my being has been amplified. By reviewing it, I'm taking it deeper. Making it more meaningful.

That's just one idea. There are many others...

Thursday, February 9, 2012

The bureaucracy must die

I made an innocent comment to a coworker on Wednesday. This guy was basically in my position several years ago. He was a senior laboratory scientist who handled various issues with samples and methods. It was a role similar to mine, with one very big difference. I'll get to that difference in a moment. I asked him if he ever misses the lab. I was surprised by the emotion of his response. His heart was in the lab, but he didn't see himself going anywhere if he stayed in a purely technical role. Quality had more vertical potential so that's the direction he's taken his career.

I could never follow his path. My dissatisfaction at work rises in direct proportion to the amount of bureaucracy I have to deal with in a given period. The more I'm forced to work through a problem according to the obsolete rules and regulations of the organization, the greater my dissatisfaction. The quality group is a bureaucratic enforcer. It's their job to make sure that the rules are followed and all actions comply with various operating procedures. I never had the chance to work with this guy when he was in the lab, but I get the impression that he was very much of a quality type of mindset when he was in the lab. Follow the rules, run the procedure, comply, and crank through samples were his ideals for the analytical lab.

That's where we're different. He's very much an adherent to the bureaucracy. His views his job as making sure the procedures are performed as written in the most efficient way possible. Even his description of how he ended up in his current position spoke to his unquestioning faith in the established structure of the organization. He looked at the jobs that were available and picked the path that offered the best opportunity. He sacrificed whatever passion he had for science to the pursuit of greater bureaucratic control.

I seek to exploit gaps in the bureaucracy to give me greater opportunity to do science. My challenge is finding a way to do this that fits into the general scheme and mission of the organization. The needs of the organization must be met, but there are ways to go outside of the rules while adhering to their general guidelines. Rather than finding ways to demonstrate my mastery of the organization's control structure, my attention is focused on demonstrating ways to improve how we achieve organizational objectives. I seek to understand the origin of my lab's rules and regulations so I can plant the seeds of revolution.

What I long assumed were quirks of my organization are actually present in every pharma company. We're risk averse because the small chance that something bad might happen would lead to disastrous consequences. We're hyper-sensitive to project failures because mistakes are far more powerful come evaluation time than successes in an organization that offers little opportunity to exceed expectations. These insights are critical to figuring out how to get people to leave behind their old ways. My coworker sought the best established path. I'm looking to create an entirely new role. This will require more than mere technical knowledge. I need to be an expert in the bureaucracy so I can destroy it.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Expertise Understood

One of my big take-aways from Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow is the simple fact that we are not passive receptors of information. All of our sensory data is incorporated into a complex web of emotional/rational/irrational/biased processing systems. I'm still coming to terms with the fact that I'm largely unaware of this processing. Kahneman's book is a guided tour through his research into understanding these processing systems and how they impact our behavior.

At one point in the book Kahneman suggests that expertise is really nothing more than a highly refined data processing system. Experts have intuitions about a problem in their specialty area that less skilled practitioners may not reach even after considerable deliberation. These expert intuitions are attributed to an extensive network of associations built up in the memory from prolonged exposure to the area of expertise. The expert recognizes a problem and identifies a solution based on previous exposure to a similar problem.

The expert sees that part of world in which they are expert differently than those who have not cultivated that same expertise. How does an expert see what others overlook? The submersion in a topic required to achieve expertise allows the expert to "code" a problem in an manner that allows a solution to be identified. The expert knows what to look for.

Part of my obsession with understanding expertise is rooted in the desire to find ways to get better at what I already do well. This concept of expertise suggests a very clear way to improve my skills as a problem solving chemist. Find more problems and work on solving them.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Hunting Fear

I read this short little ebook that offered some tips on how to handle that uncomfortable feeling you get when you're about to do something unusual. It's the feeling that prevented me from approaching girls in high school. The Flinch, what the author of the ebook labels the physiological response to the psychological anticipation of physical or emotional discomfort, should  be taken as a sign that you're about to do something meaningful and significant. Push through it, we're urged. Once you've talked to that girl you'll see that there really wasn't a good reason to be scared. The ebook offers a number of suggestions to arouse The Flinch so you can start building up a tolerance to it's influence. Follow their plan and you'll start flinching into challenges rather than away from them.

Don't follow this advice. Rather than forcing yourself to simply push through your instinctive fear, embrace the discomfort of activities that fall outside of your status quo. Plunge into the rationalizations you automatically generate when you want to stop running before you reach your target. Those feelings are nothing more than a threat response. You can't identify the threat, or at least identify what some part of you perceives as a threat, if you simply charge ahead.

Instincts bubble up into our awareness from the deep recesses of our mind. They are defensive automatic responses generated well outside of our awareness. Don't waste an opportunity to delve into your darkest fears by simply pushing past The Flinch. Stop, look around. Get the thinking part of your brain to take in every detail of the situation. Why do you feel threatened? What outcome would make the pain you're anticipating a reality? Simply taking that step will probably prevent that outcome by short circuiting whatever deleterious automatic response you would have in that situation.

A pheasant hunter doesn't cower when a bird bursts out of the grass. He calmly assesses the situation and shots the bird. We can't hunt down our instinctive fears if we run around the field getting birds to take flight. If we don't kill them, they'll just go back to their hiding place. Instinctive fears built up to protect a fragile ego deserve to be destroyed. Don't miss an opportunity to take one down so you can mount it as a trophy.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

You can, but will you do it?

I was about 20 minutes into a 30 minute run on Friday when things started to get a little uncomfortable. I started wondering if I should slow down, but then I remembered that I've run this far at this pace before. There is no physical reason why I should stop. My body can handle the stress. Can my mind? I realized at that moment finishing the run wasn't a matter of whether or not I could do it. It was a question of whether or not I wanted to do it. Was I willing to put in the effort? That choice was up to me.

It was easy to keep going when I recognized that the only thing preventing me from finishing my run was my ability to tolerate the discomfort. It's so easy to build all kinds of excuses and rationalizations around why we can't do something. All too often, the only barrier between success and failure is the willingness to put in the effort. It's just a matter of facing whatever excuse we've developed and realizing that it's nothing more than our of fear of change trying to keep things the way they've always been.

I was terrified of talking to girls when I was in high school. I managed to ask one girl to the homecoming dance when I was a senior. That was the extent of my high school dating life. Fear held me back. What was I afraid of? The obvious answer would be rejection, but I think I was really afraid of what would happen if I talked to a girl and she was interested. What would I do then? I would have to do all kinds of new and different things. Those new and different things was what I was really afraid of. It was easier to just stay who I was and invent all kinds of excuses for why I was happier by myself.

Those excuses were all external of course. There was no way I was going to recognize that I was simply making the choice to stay a lonely loser. I had bad acne until Accutane finally cleared me up during my junior year. All those years of hating the way I looked were a convenient excuse for why I was unable to approach a girl. I'm an introvert. That made it easy to convince myself that it's against my nature to talk to people I don't know well. Anything to spare me from the recognition that the only thing standing between me and a date was the choice to talk to a girl.

Sure, we all face legitimate limits on what we can accomplish, but how many of us are actually held back by issue of can not? Most of us are held back by issues of will not. We choose to take the easy route rather than make the decision to change. Sticking with what we know is easy. Sure, we may hate being fat or lonely or being stuck in a crappy job, but it's what we know. Recognizing that making the decision to change is ultimately the only thing preventing us from overcoming whatever barrier we've put in our way is much more difficult.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Explore, discover, and share

I've been having a tremendous amount of fun writing album reviews. When I gave myself this challenge, I thought it would get to be a little bit of a drag after the novelty had worn off. Diminishing enthusiasm was actually the point of the endeavor. I wanted to force myself to stick with something that wouldn't be my first choice for a leisure time activity. It was supposed to be training for writing a research proposal and teaching philosophy.

I'm 11 reviews in and feel like I'm just warming up. There are no signs of waning enthusiasm (I expected to be bored with the process after the first 5 reviews). I only just realized why I'm having so much fun reviewing these albums. The music has been really tremendous, I've discovered some really good artists that I never would have even thought about checking out before starting this process, but what I've learned about how I like to work has been the really eye-opening discovery.

Writing a research paper or a development report or even these blog posts require me to mold my thinking to conform to the conventions and expectations of the medium. Science papers must be written in a particular vernacular to be taken seriously. Documents that I prepare for work are similarly restrictive. I resist writing informal blog posts (kind of like this one) for the simple fact that it's harder to write from a third person perspective than to simply jot down whatever I may be thinking at the moment. These album reviews basically have no restrictions. Other than my self-imposed rule to not say a particular band sounds like some other band, there are limits on the images that I can use to describe the listening experience of a particular album.

I can write whatever the hell comes to mind, in whatever form I think will work best, using whatever language I find most fitting to the situation. This freedom to work as I choose is intoxicating. The practical part of my mind thinks its crazy to spend my time writing these album reviews rather than working on something with more potential to further my stated career objectives. These concerns are easy to disregard. I don't want the career my practical nature thinks I should be pursuing. Why should I aggressively pursue promotion to a more senior role for the simple reason that's what you're supposed to do when you get hired by a big company. I really have no interest in joining the management ranks of my building. There are too many expectations of what needs to be done and in what matter it needs to be done. I want a career where I get to work on the problems that I find interesting using the approach that I have determined will work best.

I want the freedom to explore, discover, and share what I learn. That's how I want to spend my time. That's my ideal job description.

Monday, January 16, 2012

A one sentence explanation for a huge chunk of life

"Because you have little direct knowledge of what goes on in your mind, you will never know that you might have made a different judgement or reached a different decision under very slightly different circumstances." Daniel Kahneman in "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (page 225 of the hardcover).

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Step One

I wanted to start the year with an ambitious and audacious goal, but the more I thought about setting a goal, the more I wondered why I should spend my year pursuing something that sounded like a good idea way back in January. Besides, too many of my goals feel more tactical than strategic. They give me the impression that I'm staying on top of my business, but very little in the way of change seems to happen when I manage to achieve one.

I tend to set up my goals as little projects that distract me and keep me busy by using skills that I already possess in slightly different contexts. My law school application cycle is a good example. It took a year of my time and not an insignificant amount of money, but taking tests and writing essays are things that I can already do well. The exercise simply confirmed that I was good at those things. My MBA classes have given me better insights into the relationship of R&D to the rest of the organization, but I have not developed new skills while taking those classes. School was an easy development choice for me because it is virtually risk free. Taking classes does not challenge my limits or push me toward The Edge. There is nothing scary about it. That's pretty true of most of the goals that I pursue with any kind of enthusiasm. 

So I want to make purposeful steps towards something Unreasonable. Applying the tips and tricks that I pick up in my readings is worthwhile, but to what end am I applying those skills? Why bother? I've been talking about the flaws in my organization for well over a year. It's time to be a leader and do something to change it. It's time to stop playing by the rules. It's time to stop treading water and work to make meaningful change. I know the position that I want. I'm going to ask for it. I know the role that I desire. I'm going to take it. I know that I'm sick of being what I've been. It's time to make that change.

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Organization saves energy...who knew

I've learned to accept my lack of organizational skills. I marvel at the organized binders that some of my colleagues keep for the paperwork associated with their projects. I have a single folder that I chuck papers into so they don't get lost amidst the other papers on my desk. Another friend of mine has a complicated email filing system that he uses to keep his inbox clean. I just rely on the search function to find the messages that I need. I get by, but I know I waste way too much time looking for things that are scattered all over my desk or computer hard drive.

My utter lack of organization finally got the best of me last week. On my first day back at work after the holiday break, I decided that I needed to prune back my extensive collection of paper piles. I came across this manifesto in one of those piles. The manifesto is a reminder to all creatives (a cohort that I am quick to identify with) that your ideas are worth nothing until they have been made into something that can be shared. It goes on to say that organization allows those ideas to be transformed into something real in the most efficient way possible. Organization saves energy for the creative pursuits that really matter.

The reality of this point came crashing down on me as I took the bias towards action recommended in that manifesto to work on my manuscript. After getting my papers organized by topic, I found a couple of ideas that proved very useful to improving my draft. I would not have found those papers if I hadn't gotten everything into shape first.

That manifesto was written by the founder of a company that runs a website that posts very helpful articles like this one. I need the occasional reminder to just work on something. My paper is almost finished. After getting started, getting a manuscript in shape for submission to the journal is the next hardest part of the process. I keep finding myself working on anything other than the paper. I need to move onto other projects. The sooner I finish up the paper the better. Hopefully, improving my organization will get me to the finish line.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

The Key to Success - Exceptional Automatic Responses

My week has been flush with forays into how our unconscious mind determines, well, pretty much our entire life. I've been reading a book intended for a popular audience, David Brook's The Social Animal, a short ebook on how to increase the probability that we'll succeed in achieving a particular goal, 9 Things Successful People Do Differently, and an academic paper proposing that conscious thought evolved to support the cognitive demands of a social existence. (Now that I can buy books again, I have Thinking, Fast and Slow right next to me. If I could have found it on the shelf at Barnes and Noble, that would have been the first book on my 2012 reading list.) While sitting in my living room trying to corral my stampeding thoughts into either a coherent blog post or review of Brook's book, I had an encounter with my unconscious.

The result of that encounter is the title of this post. The content of my reading has been swirling around in my head, mixing with my obsession with Ericsson, a desire to understand the origins of my behavior, a sense that I want to accomplish something Important, and a discontent with my professional situation. Parts of my brain that I am not aware of have been reconciling all of these various threads. When I started trying to pull all my various thoughts together to write something vaguely intelligent, the aware part of my mind stumbled over this nugget that has been sitting on my mental bookshelf patiently awaiting discovery. I'll delve into the insight before I wander off into my new perspective on how I came to have this idea.

When a musician lies in bed thinking about their ultimate goal, it more than likely involves playing a very difficult and beautiful piece of music in a prominent venue. From that moment, he can start having a very detailed simulation of that experience as a fantasy (this idea comes from the academic paper). There are also steps that he can take to ensure that his skill will rise to the point that he will be able to perform whatever piece of music he aspires to perform (see the ebook, or the HBR blog post). If this musician achieves his ambition, his focus during the performance will not be on making the music. Making the music will be automatic. His fingers will feel like they are acting of their own accord. His mind will be focused on some other aspect of the performance.

Making the music, playing the correct notes at the appropriate time, will be automatic. That's what I mean by exceptional automatic responses. Playing the music isn't something the musician has to think about, like how you and I don't have to concentrate on our fingers when we button a shirt or tie our shoes. Our fingers just know what to do without our input. Playing music automatically basically relies on the same system. It's just a little better developed. Developing the skills required to perform a complex composition automatically are years in the making. The process of the musician's brain that is aware of what it is doing has spent a long time over that part of the brain that controls how to perform music. By spending 10,000 hours focusing on the connections in that part (or, more likely, parts) of the brain, our musician is able to achieve his dream.

Exceptional performance in sports, music, surgery, or other activities that have well defined and predictable standards comes about when somebody commits to developing highly developed automatic responses. What are these automatic responses? They are merely neural networks. Well-defined, honed, and efficient neural networks, but that's what they are (at least that's my understanding). A football player doesn't consciously think about which cut to make or how to respond to a particular situation. They just react unconsciously. Their brain sends a signal to their muscles, but a conscious input is not required to achieve that input. What if you don't compete in an arena that has predictable challenges? How do you practice for an unknown situation? If your job is to solve problems, how to you get better at solving problems?

You work on solving problems, of course. The more you work to consciously solve problems, the better you will be able to resolve them. Eventually, solving a problem won't require conscious effort. You'll be thinking about something else when the solution to your problem suddenly becomes clear. That aha moment came from some part of the brain that was operating while your awareness was on what you wanted for dinner or a conversation with a friend about somebody a mutual friend just started dating. By deliberately working to solve problems, an automatic problem solving function was installed in your brain. Our entire brain does it's thing wherever our awareness is at a particular moment. The problem solving parts work on the problems even when you're not thinking about that problem. Our brain may solve the problem well before we're aware that we've found a solution.

The better we are able to train our brain to work on things when we're not thinking about, the better we'll be able to rely on our associative memory to go deeper into our storehouse of knowledge to find related facts, try a few combinations of those facts, and present us with a solution to a problem that we stopped focusing on hours, days, or weeks ago.

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Finding a new path

Seeing that I started this blog because I thought it would be interesting to record how I went about achieving my New Year's resolutions, it should be about time for me to comment on my 2011 progress and update the banner at the top of the blog with my 2012 aspirations. I have no plans to write a post with a detailed update on whether or not I bought any new books in 2011 (I didn't) or whether or not I look better naked (my wife and I agree that I do). Whether or not I can check off a particular goal before moving on to the next batch belittles what I was trying to accomplish with the resolutions in the first place.

Merely moving onto this year's goals after reviewing last year's entirely skips delving into whether my original motivation for choosing a particular goal was advanced. So I look better naked. Why did I want to look better naked in the first place? Getting more fit would improve my health, but there were elements of vanity and male pride involved as well. I wanted my wife to see me and think about how sexy I looked. I didn't want to look like the other schlubs walking around the neighborhood pool. Plenty of people start off the new year wanting to lose weight, but my choice to write about achieving a particular goal took all the soul and spirit out of writing about the process.

I wrote 80 post last years. Early in the year, I basically wrote about my thinking on various topics with plenty of references to myself through excessive use of the personal pronoun I. By the end of the year I had dropped the personal pronouns for a more general presentation (this was a conscious and deliberate action). I was trying to emulate other blogs. Part of this was just to see if I could do it. Writing from the personal perspective has always been my default writing style when I'm thinking about something. Could I drop that style for something less self-referential? I feel that I managed to do that switch reasonably well, but I don't really like writing blog posts that have the flavor of a textbook.

I've also recently found that there are numerous blogs focusing on the kinds of things that I've been writing about for the last couple of months. Taking risks, pushing your limits, the kinds of actions you should take to reach expert levels of performance, these are very popular topics in leadership and self-improvement blogs. Despite the wealth of general advice on what research has found results in achievement, I haven't found much that actually puts these recommendations to the test (The Dan Plan being a notable exception). I read an ebook last week that was long on tips for overcoming the primitive fears that inhibit deviating from our safe and routine behaviors, but the entire thing felt empty. It was a good pep talk. Nothing more.

I think my recent posts have been in that vein. I've been emulating other writers while writing about topics that are addressed in many other places on the web while offering little more than a dry musing that is really little more than a pep talk. The emotional resonance that The Edge has for me is lost when I don't put the idea in a context of action and application. It's actually pretty easy to write about The Edge as an idea, but it's much more complicated to convey how central The Edge is to a complex web of associations and motivations in my pursuit of something beyond mediocrity.

As easy is the fastest way to an empty mediocrity, I'm going to use this blog to share more than ideas. I'm going to share my efforts to make academic ideas live. Rather than merely write about the skills of disruptive innovators, I'm going to put them into action and see what happens. What does it mean to have a bias against the status quo and how does that manifest itself in somebody's professional life? How will following the advice of Tony Schwartz or some other expert impact my performance? These are not going to be mere experiments for the sake of experimentation. They are going to be purposeful steps in the pursuit of something UNREASONABLE.