i-TFTD #148: Who Packed Your Parachute?

Excerpt from Aim for the Heart by Tom Mathews

As a leader, do you honor and appreciate the power of WE? Do you stop to thank and recognize the members of your team? Do you consistently show an attitude of gratitude?

I recently read a great story about Captain Charles Plumb, a graduate from the Naval Academy, whose plane, after 74 successful combat missions over North Vietnam, was shot down. He parachuted to safety, but was captured, tortured and spent 2,103 days in a small box-like cell.

After surviving the ordeal, Captain Plumb received the Silver Star, Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit and two Purple Hearts, and returned to America and spoke to many groups about his experience and how it compared to the challenges of everyday life.

Shortly after coming home, Charlie and his wife were sitting in a restaurant. A man rose from a nearby table, walked over and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!"

Surprised that he was recognized, Charlie responded, "How in the world did you know that?" The man replied, "I packed your parachute." Charlie looked up with surprise. The man pumped his hand, gave a thumbs-up, and said, "I guess it worked!"

Charlie stood to shake the man's hand, and assured him, "It most certainly did work. If it had not worked, I would not be here today."

Charlie could not sleep that night, thinking about the man. He wondered if he might have seen him and not even said, "Good morning, how are you?" He thought of the many hours the sailor had spent bending over a long wooden table in the bottom of the ship, carefully folding the silks and weaving the shrouds of each chute, each time holding in his hands the fate of someone he didn't know.

Plumb then began to realize that along with the physical parachute, he needed mental, emotional and spiritual parachutes. He had called on all these supports during his long and painful ordeal.

As a leader, how many times a day, a week, a month, do we pass up the opportunity to thank those people in our organization who are "packing our parachutes?"

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Opportunities to express our thanks abound every day. We avail of the facilities and services of so many people from morning to night, many of us do not even give eye contact to the bus conductor meticulously handing over our ticket and balance money, or to the helper who picks up the empty coffee cup from the meeting room.

The importance of cultivating an attitude of gratitude has been touched upon here before. Say “Thank you” generously, every time, to everyone. It relieves stress, gladdens hearts and generally does some magic to our circumstances. Try it.

i-TFTD #147

Time for one of those "slightly different tone of thought-provokers"...

#147-1. If you can't dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bullshit.

-Anon

#147-2. The more time you spend in reporting on what you are doing, the less time you have to do anything. Stability is achieved when you spend all of your time reporting on the nothing you are doing.

-Cohn’s Law

#147-3. It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

-Upton Sinclair

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One reason that Scott Adams’s Dilbert is so popular is that the kind of things mentioned above are fairly commonly seen in the corporate world.

I often see cynical views propagated as useful, practical tips. To take a non-corporate example, it seems that some driving school instructors in Mumbai actually suggest to learners that they must drive in the rightmost lane (thus preventing the progress of others in this fastest lane) because then they (the learners) only have to worry about taking care of vehicles on their left side!

Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme" in his 1976 book, The Selfish Gene, to mean "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation", where he also described how ideas or songs, especially mistaken ones, spread amongst people. The concept of computer virus was not known at the time but meme is similar to an idea virus. We need to spread good concepts (a virus-killing virus?) in a similar, self-replicating manner.

i-TFTD #146: Choices and Decisions

Choices and Decisions

by David Allen

Choices are more productive than decisions.

"Decide" embodies the same Latin root as "homicide," "suicide," and "genocide," and in a subtle way carries the same kind of finality and heaviness. There's a sense that decision is a point of no return – no turning back, no recourse, no freedom.

"Choosing" leaves us room to breathe, the openness to live and learn, to course-correct, to change our minds. Whereas deciding tends to frame our thinking as right and wrong, choices allow us to express a preference. Every choice is a decision, and every decision a choice, of course. But one of the greatest obstacles to effectiveness and success is the fear of making a wrong one.

So we can use all the ammunition we can get to support our willingness to make a mistake. Words have great power, and it's a good idea to choose the best ones.

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Amazing how simple words can contain seeds of powerful perspectives. I can choose to decide in the face of unknown factors, or choose to postpone deciding.

i-TFTD #145: Problem Solving to Problem Dissolving

Problem Solving to Problem Dissolving
Excerpted from an article in Artistic Management newsletter

How do you perceive "Problems" and "Problem Solving"?

For some people a problem is like a "hot potato" that needs to be dropped immediately. For some others, it is little more fragile and precious. For this group of people, solving a problem is like finding the right place and right way to drop it without breaking it. For another set, a problem is like a "piece of muck" on the road that you royally ignore and hurry past towards your desired destination. There is another set of people with warrior-like approach, who treat a problem like a wild animal that needs to be hunted. And, for some who are well-versed with the ways of the "motivational industry" define "problem" as an "opportunity", which sounds great but they  have a tough time trying to figure out whether it really means anything.

Whatever be the analogy used, for most people, a problem is an undesired state of turbulence, and problem-solving is the process of taking you out of this state into a more comfortable situation.

There is a fundamental approach with the whole concept of "problem-solving": it assumes a distinct beginning and end of the existence of a problem—when you "solve" a problem, you expect to reach a state which is more comfortable and happier.

Look back and remember the last time you did a real good job of solving a complex problem in your life. What happened next? Was everything really solved? Did you manage to "happily live ever after"? A problem always brings more problems. When you find that VC to fund your start-up, it spawns off a new set of challenges that are more difficult to face. When you find the customer, it opens up a whole new set of problems (delivery, support, keeping customer happy). No matter what problem you solve, if you really do a good job of solving it, it will definitely bring a newer and bigger set of problems.

Now, consider this.

If you look at problems as a hot potato, you will keep getting bigger and hotter potatoes every time you drop one. How many hot potatoes will you drop?
If you look at problems as a muck to be avoided, you will constantly get bigger and stinkier mucks every time you avoid one. How long will you keep avoiding?
If you look at problems as a hunting experience, you will constantly meet more ferocious beasts. How many beasts can you keep slaying?
If you look at problems as an "opportunity"—well nothing much needs to be said about it.

How about looking at problems in this way:

A problem is a situation that you need to get past in order to encounter bigger, better and more desirable problems.

This approach totally changes the way you look at it. There is no end. There is no avoidance. There is no expectation to be comfortable. There is no "happily live ever after". Your whole aim is to get past the present challenge so that you can experience a bigger, better and more desirable challenge.

There is no "problem-solving" here, but "problem-dissolving". You don't try to fix the present situation, but get past one to reach another one to get through.

All our obsessions to learn "problem-solving" arise from the fact that we perceive problems as a threat, and we need something that will immediately kill the threat before it kills us.

That is the reason for all the stress in the corporate world: We have a totally screwed-up approach towards Problems and Problem-Solving.

We need to move from "Problem Solving" to "Problem Dissolving".


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This is not about how to solve problems but how to live life and work. The key is a shift of perspective, the most important aspect of thinking out-of-the-box and generating creative solutions.

One situation where I see this often in my line of work is when someone aspires to a higher role and perceives hurdles in the form of a boss or a policy or nature of assignment. Discussion reveals that the person's perspective is limited to "solving" the problem by working around the hurdle and reaching the goal of getting a different role. And then? What about the preparation for handling the increased responsibilities, meeting the expectations of a new boss, or the other pressures of the new assignment?

Unfortunately, recent research shows that the human mind is almost incapable of conceiving its future state--we are not good at predicting how we would feel in a projected scenario. Many of these studies are described entertainingly in two books I recently read, "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert and "The Happiness Hypothesis" by Jonathan Haidt.

i-TFTD #144: Learning from the Dictionary (reprise)

Some interesting words from wordsmith.org, all avoidable behaviour.

Buggin's turn (BUG-inz turn) noun: Assignment to a position based on seniority or rotation, instead of merit. Also Buggins's turn

misoneism (mis-uh-NEE-izm) noun: A hatred or fear of change or innovation

catachresis (kat-uh-KREE-sis) noun: The misuse of words

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Many liked i-TFTD #18: Learning from the Dictionary hence this reprise (return to a theme).

I hope I am not indulging in catachresis when I say that we should not encourage promotions based on Buggin's turn, and misoneism should be one of the disqualifying criteria for senior leadership roles. 

i-TFTD #143

#143-1. Companies that squelch creativity can no longer compete with companies that champion creativity.
-Hugh Macleod

#143-2. You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

-Pearl S. Buck

#143-3. Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.
-Hugh Macleod

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Enough literature and research studies are now available on creativity and innovation (applied creativity) based on work done in the last few decades in companies such as 3M. There is such a thing as a culture that allows and nurtures innovation. Leaders (the definition in this context is influencers, not persons in managerial positions) today need to be conscious of the first quote above.

Like many i-TFTDs the second one puts a big responsibility on ourselves. One might say, "I do not like this" or "This does not fit with my view" but does that automatically have to mean one would not do what it necessary?

The third reminds us many things that we often ignore: (i) our self-image guides our thoughts and feelings but it is usually different from how others perceive us (ii) our judgement of others is based on our perception of their external behaviour, it could be wrong or incomplete (iii) Changing our inside (a longer and harder process in my view) and changing our outside (quicker and relatively easier, not necessarily easy) could be looked at as two different things. This is related to the second quote above.

i-TFTD #142: Don't Send Your Ducks to Eagle School

Don't Send Your Ducks to Eagle School
by Jim Rohn

The first rule of management is this: Don't send your ducks to eagle school. Why? Because it won't work. Good people are found, not changed. They can change themselves, but you can't change them. If you want good people, you have to find them. If you want motivated people, you have to find them, not motivate them.

I picked up a magazine not long ago in New York that had a full-page ad in it for a hotel chain. The first line of the ad read, "We do not teach our people to be nice." Now that got my attention. The second line said, "We hire nice people." I thought, What a clever shortcut!"

Motivation is a mystery. Why are some people motivated and some are not? Why does one salesperson see his first prospect at seven in the morning while the other sees his first prospects at 11 in the morning? Why would one start at seven and the other start at 11? I don't know. Call it "mysteries of the mind."

I give lectures to a thousand people at a time. One walks out and says, "I'm going to change my life." Another walks out with a yawn and says, "I've heard all this stuff before." Why is that?

The wealthy man says to a thousand people, "I read this book, and it started me on the road to wealth." Guess how many of the thousand go out and get the book? Answer: very few. Isn't that incredible? Why wouldn't everyone go get the book? Mysteries of the mind.

To one person, you have to say, "You'd better slow down. You can't work that many hours, do that many things, go, go, go. You're going to have a heart attack and die." And to another person, you have to say, "When are you going to get off the couch?" What is the difference? Why wouldn't everyone strive to be wealthy and happy?

Chalk it up to mysteries of the mind and don't waste your time trying to turn ducks into eagles. Hire people who already have the motivation and drive to be eagles and then just let them soar.

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A somewhat controversial viewpoint in these days of political correctness where one cannot even openly have the age-old Nature versus Nurture debate. It can be seen as pessimistic but another way to look at it is as an acknowledgement and celebration of individual differences.

Sometimes, in our focus on solving problems of poor performers, we tend to ignore extracting the best out of high performers.

An even better interpretation it is to look at it as personality aspects of the same individual. Instead of focusing on eliminating weaknesses it is better to build on the strengths. This is a management idea gaining force recently, endorsed strongly by Marcus Buckingham (formerly head of Gallup) in his books.