Leadership, Learning, and Change

Being Attentive to the Big Picture

May 20, 2020

Does it matter what you pay attention to?  Does it matter how much of your attention is focused on details versus the big picture?  Is the dynamic of attention in some way built into the very structure of our brains?

Turns out that the brain of any animal has a particular shared architecture - our brains are structured with two distinct sides and a very small area of connection.  A great deal of research has explored this particular dynamic.  Like most people, you may associate the two-sided dynamics of our minds with an old story of being either artsy or analytic.  But there appears to be something far more profound going on here, and it may be critically important to understand as we find our way through this pandemic and recession.

The two sides of our mind are in constant relationship to our interpretation and projection of the world.  In essence, there are two ways we come to know about something; and each is developed uniquely from the different sides of our brain. 

Researcher Ian McGilchrist has provided an incredible foundation of expansive research in this area.  I would like to highlight the important aspects of his research and ponder this understanding in light of our current situation.

Central to his research is the understanding that attention is central to our being and our hemispheres promote different kinds of attention. “Attention may sound a bit boring, but it isn’t at all. It is not just another ‘cognitive function’ – it is actually nothing less than the way in which we relate to the world. And it doesn’t just dictate the kind of relationship we have with whatever it is: it dictates what it is that we come to have a relationship with.”

The hemispheres are in a battle with each other and the left hemisphere wants us to pay attention to the details that will bring us control, while the right hemisphere wants us to pay attention to the effects of things on the relationships we have with others.  When the left hemisphere is winning, we are paying attention to anything that allows us to gain control, seeing things from narrow and abstract perspectives.  When the right hemisphere is winning, we are paying attention to the context we are in as it relates to others.  Rather than gaining control, we are seeking to build in relation to a broader understanding of diverse needs.

This way of considering attention can be seen in every form of relationship we encounter and experience.  It is profoundly central to the meaning we make of things and of the futures we believe should be created.  At any point in our lives, we may become engrossed in the ideology of what we see as important while totally missing the impact of our ideology on others.  We may also miss whether our ideology is actually even working for us in a broader context than our own family or social group.   We may miss that our focus of attention, our mindset, may be providing a feeling of certainty, but our lives are actually experiencing a smaller and smaller existence.

The unique role of attention has also been recognized in the new digital technologies of the modern “attention economy,” in which the human gaze is increasingly being monetarized and mined as a resource.  Media is being used to capture our minds, to binge-watch, to compulsively solve (play), or to focus our attention to the point of developing a neurotic paranoia of what is presented as evil others.

In a time when media is being used by companies and politicians to “grab” and own our attention, it may be that our capacity to change our attention is central to our capacity to learn and adapt.

McGilchrist likens the dynamic relationship of the two sides of our brains as that of a “master and his emissary.”  Whereas the emissary (left hemisphere) marches out to build and gain control the master (right hemisphere) sees relationships and builds a broader sense of order.  The left hemisphere, by drawing our attention to the things of life, gives us an ability to describe, categorize, and capture.   The right hemisphere develops our capacity to generate moral perspectives, relationships, and flow.  The left hemisphere is responsible for the development of language, the uniquely human tool used for ordering and controlling.  The right hemisphere, however, brings the capacity for using that language creatively. The left hemisphere deals with words literally and can construct old clichés while the right side can use those words to create new metaphors and deeper meaning. The right hemisphere brings us our capacity for music and the arts, ways we uniquely consider the larger contexts of the life we live.

McGilchrist raises a fear that in Western culture, the emissary has come to dominate our patterns of thought.  “My view is that language and the hand (the purview of the left hemisphere – the emissary) have a certain common agenda – that is, they enable us to grasp things: to pin them down and make them useful. And we cannot deny that they have done that in spades. They have helped us to use the world and, by doing so, to develop many of the things of which we are most justly proud, the fruits of civilization. But there is a price for this kind of approach to the world.”

Many people are hoping that our current health and economic crisis, while painfully destabilizing, could be the start of something hopeful, something new.  This could be true. But it assumes that we collectively come to pay attention, in new ways, to the world we have created and how our patterns of thought have brought us to where we are.  It asks us, using McGilchrist’s metaphor, to put the master back in control. 

We must understand how, when the emissary dominates our thinking, we build fragmented realities, where the conversation about a thing is advanced without any consideration of the relationship of the part with the whole, with others.  To build a better world, we must overcome our collective habits of thinking in fragmented ways.  How might this look?

Let’s start with McGilchrist’s big-picture perspective on the differences of our hemispheres.  “I believe the essential difference between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere is that the right hemisphere pays attention to the Other: to whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves, with which it sees itself in profound relation. It is deeply attracted to, and given life by, the relationship, the betweenness, that exists with this Other. By contrast, the left hemisphere pays attention to the virtual world that it has created, which is self-consistent but self-contained, ultimately disconnected from the Other, making it powerful – but also curiously impotent, because it is ultimately only able to operate on, and to know, itself.”

In terms of the crisis we face today, we are seeing evidence that this kind of fragmented thinking, where the emissary is dominating, continues to be a powerful force. 

In the debate regarding opening up the U.S. economy, there are some who want to gain control of the economic hardship by exercising their liberties to open up their communities while giving no spoken attention to the implications of their demands on the lives of others or future risks for the community.  We are also seeing some who seem deeply reliant on using science as a justification to create orders and rules for broad swaths of the population without spoken attention to the unique dynamics of diverse communities.  Both of these are the arguments of the emissary.

Buried in these extremes is an emerging voice of reasoning, with a capacity to see the broad perspective of both the details and the lived effects and to identify the choices and risks that we all must come to grasp.  This is the perspective of the master.

In all of our communities and companies, we are entering a time where there will be forces grabbing at our attention.  Is it overly focused on the narrow?  If so, can we take a step back and ponder the larger implications? 

Our ability to shift our attention may be the most important skill we can bring to this crisis.  We must be able to see the details in the context of the broader perspective.  We must be able to reconsider past assumptions, past structures, and past reasoning, in light of their effects on our communities.

Personally, I have great hope in the future.  Our capacity to invent and create has allowed civilization to build better futures, to overcome challenges of both the natural and human form.  But if we are to overcome the limitations and fragmentation we have created, we must pay attention to more than ourselves, our tribes, and our preferred ways of thinking.  We can only do this, however, by putting the master of our thoughts in its rightful place, overcoming the fragmentation of thought so that we can pursue personal wholeness, collective kinship, and sustainable ecosystems (business/community/environment). 

Adaptive Leadership – Learning from the VUCA perspective.

May 13, 2020

Decades ago, the military realized that their frame of thinking about the conditions of the world needed to shift.  The world was no longer something that could be assessed and analyzed in order to make predictions and strategic plans.  The world had changed and thus the context of leadership had changed.

The military identified four fundamental ways that required leadership to be different.  They found a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA). It may be helpful to explore their insight in the light of our current circumstance and think about core skills that could make each of us more effective in the coming year(s).

The first insight is that the world has become Volatile.  Currently, volatility has been experienced as the sudden onset of COVID 19.  One day everything felt one way and within weeks everything had changed.  And the layers of volatility introduced by this virus continue to threaten our future.  Volatility represents an understanding that in today’s world, you had best always be emotionally prepared for disruptive change.

The second insight is Uncertainty.  Today, it is hard to know exactly what to do because there is so much that we don’t really know.  In the past we would look to experts to tell us about their predictive models; today these models offer limited insight.  While today experts in health and economics bring some clarity to the discussion, they are also quite uncertain about many aspects.  Uncertainty represents that in today’s world, you had best be prepared to be humbled by the challenges.

The third insight is Complexity.  Today, not only are we experiencing the spread of a virus, but the effects are economic, social, and psychological.  To deal with challenges in today’s world, leaders must be able to describe and engage problems as they really are, complex.  Outcomes are unpredictable. Even the most expert opinion is merely a guess at what might work. Multiple systems must be engaged. Making improvements in one area can cause problems in other areas but then trying to fix those areas can make another system worse.  Complexity prepares us for the fact that not only will things not be easily solved, but some of those solutions also will likely not work the next time around.

The final insight is Ambiguity.  Today, relative to the Covid-19 virus, people are already making lots of statements about why one region is “doing better” than another region, or why one county is doing better than another.  But the fact is that it is unknown whether some effort is having an impact, what impact it is having, and what parts of the effort are really responsible for a particular outcome.  Ambiguity tells us that we will have a very hard time, when we do take action, knowing exactly what impact our action has had and whether that impact can be expected again.

Just to be clear, humans don’t like this VUCA world.  Using a car analogy, let me describe the kind of world we have long wanted and perhaps even believed we could create.  We like it when we can predict how long our car will run.  Given that all things break at some point, we want to know what we can do to prevent/control/prepare for them.  We like predictability over volatility.  Second, when our car does have a problem, we like it when we can take it to someone who can tell us exactly what is wrong, how to fix it, and at what cost.  We like certainty.  Third, we really hate it when the person repairing our car calls to tell us that they have found other problems.  It turns out that the initial problem with part A put a strain on part B and it looks like we should fix that too.  We like simple problems that require simple solutions.  Finally, when we pick the car up, we want to have the mechanic tell us, with all certainty, that what they have done with the car has made it good as new.  We don’t want them hedging on the future performance of our car, not really sure if what they did will make the car more reliable.  So, we have a solution to this kind of car experience, if you don’t like this kind of car experience…you lease!  You make your car experience less VUCA.

So, what are the new leadership attributes and skills necessary in a VUCA world?  We will use the same acronym, VUCA, for these:  Vulnerability, Understanding, Connectedness, and Adaptation. 

In my experience with leadership and leaders, vulnerability represents the critical concept of the stance of a leader.  To be vulnerable requires a certain quality of connection with oneself.  It requires that one be grounded, able to emotionally work through the emergence of unpredictable dynamics.  The real goal here for a leader is to make sure that everyone is focused on the challenges, and that the leader has not become an additional problem that others must manage.  Volatility makes us vulnerable, which emerges from a sense of disorientation, fear, and anxiety.  These emotions must be grasped if we are to effectively work through volatile forces of change.

Understanding represents the quality of thinking that is constantly curious.  It resists the emotional yearning for certainty.  Early in life, a mentor taught me that if I were to be a good doctor I would need to see that knowledge is good, understanding is better, and wisdom is best.  He told me that while books and experience may help me to know something, the knowledge is often created by taking things apart and analyzing them.  This is valuable, but we forget that the thing we have come to know exists in a deeper, more complex context.  So, while I may know about all the parts that can create pain in a patient, those parts still exist in the complexity of the patient’s experience of pain.  Understanding is the deeper exploration, not just of what is happening, but why it is happening and what impact it is having on the entire system.  It requires an ability to engage the complexity of a thing to understand it in its real dynamic.  Wisdom is the capacity to take action in light of one’s understanding of complexity.

Connectedness is the ability to bring together that which is being pulled apart or which may never have been connected, in service of creating the potential to overcome.  When we face challenges things often come apart – they fragment.  Relationships are strained, expectations are not shared, groups are formed with a clear sense of those who are insiders and outsiders.  All this fragmentation disables our capacity to work together when our need to work together is most critical.  Today, as citizens, most of us feel the effects of living in a country with fragmented politics.  The lack of any real connection between political parties is putting us all at risk.  At the very time we need to work together, it appears we are becoming more divided.  Leaders must have the ability to bring people into relationship with the complex challenges that are unfolding, and they must bring diverse groups together to increase the capacity to overcome the challenge.

The final attribute is adaptiveness.  Some authors use agility for this final attribute, but I find that people speak about agility as an immediate capacity to shift, to work through something.  I think that in our VUCA challenges, we must do more than just shift, we must change.  We must be willing to challenge mindsets, habits, assumptions, desires, in order to create new capacities and outcomes.  It doesn’t seem to me that, in today’s crisis, we should believe that we just need to be agile to get through this.  Agility is great when thinking and understanding quickly can be accomplished through data collection and analysis. But the ambiguity associated with complexity requires more. Past experience and expertise do not provide a prediction of the future. We must commit to a deeper change.  And, it is in that deeper change where real opportunity exists.  The ultimate goal of adaptation is not just survival, but rather to become more fit and more able to thrive in the midst of a changing world.

Adapt to Disorienting Forces by Building With Others

April 23, 2020

The current global pandemic is profoundly disorienting.  Having never experienced the sudden stoppage of life, the evaporation of what may be 30% of all jobs in the country, and the massive confusion of what it even means to “open up”, we are left in a constant state of unknowing.

On top of that, we are all scrambling to make some sense of the future, a future that begins with present challenges that are different for each of us.  Our needs are as diverse as finding next week’s meals or where to live next month or how to pay the upcoming bills or even how to keep the business alive for another week.  And the answers to those questions won’t be enough to meet the challenges that may be coming the next month.

Why is this so disorienting?  In normal conditions, our minds are wired to focus mainly on two things: what to make of the moment, and what it means for the future.  Consistent with this understanding, a famous psychologist at Columbia University stated that the greatest need of humans is that of orientation – of being able to understand and make meaning so that we can take action towards the future.  But with ever-changing dynamics, it is hard for our minds to generate answers with any sense of certainty.  These uncertainties generate currents of emotions.  Unable to cognitively make sense and provide direction, we are barraged by feelings such as doubt, fear, and anxiety.

So, how do we get oriented in this situation?  In a time of fractured political leadership and world leadership, how do we get oriented together? 

In previous blogs, I have discussed the importance of acceptance, gratitude, and courage in finding our personal stance. It’s also important to consider what it takes to have really valuable human connections.  Our stance must lead us to deepen our capacity to build with diverse others.

In an interview about connections, past Surgeon General Vivek Murthy M.D. provides some valuable insight.  He believes that connection to self, a kind of self-orientation, is a profoundly important place to start.  His response to the question, “Why is connecting with yourself important in connecting with others,” is insightful.

He said, “connection to self, it turns out, is the foundation we need to connect to others.  When we are connected to ourselves, we understand that we have self-worth and we understand that we have value to bring to the world. The truth is that many of us walk around not necessarily believing that or having moments of doubt where we are not sure that we are good enough.  It’s not surprising that that’s the case, because so much around us emphasizes that we are not enough…the truth is that that erosion of confidence in ourselves, in comfort with who we are, can impair our ability to reach out and connect to other people.”

Dr. Murthy's answer emphasizes two components; self-knowledge and self-compassion.

In times of disorientation, a particular part of self-knowledge is essential to our connection with others.  We must develop an awareness of our emotional reactions and be able to use them as an adaptive partner in change. 

In the world of self-knowledge, one author (Jonathan Haidt) describes our emotional and unconscious dynamics as an elephant and our conscious thoughts as the rider.  Using this metaphor, the self-awareness question is:  Are you being hurled about by a wild elephant or are you guiding this powerful potential?

One indication that you are being had by your emotions (the elephant is hurling you about) is that your thinking is becoming rigid and repetitive.  When confronting trying times we have the same reactions and stories about faults, the system, and how clear it is where and what the problems are.  We find ourselves feeling the same frustration or anger and saying the same things.  We demonstrate little curiosity, ask few questions, and offer very little in terms of new ways of viewing the situation or searching for new solutions.  Our emotions are guiding us into stuck ways of thinking.

In the world of self-compassion, author Brené Brown has tapped into the deep need our culture seems to have for self-compassion.  An important observation she provides is how futile it is to attempt to connect with others when we are being judgmental and hard on ourselves.  The judgment of self is hard to limit and often leads to distrust and judgment of those around us.  If we are to be more accessible to others, we must find a way to be more compassionate to ourselves.

So, what can we do?  What practices or habits can help us connect to ourselves and others?

Research has shown that the simple mindfulness practice of focused breathing five to ten minutes a day builds connections between regions of our brain that help us modulate our emotions.  It allows us to better experience our inner rumblings and builds the capacity to slow them down.

Second, it can be very helpful to call a thought a thought.  Rather than saying, I am not doing enough at work, one can say, how interesting, I wonder why I am feeling that I am not doing enough?  Rather than saying, my coworker is wrong-she makes me so angry, I can label it as, I am really aware of feeling anger toward my coworker, I wonder why I feel so strongly about her being wrong?

Labeling requires that we see the connection of our thoughts with our feelings and it gives us the opportunity to then inquire into why they are what they are, if they are productive, and what might we do productively in response to them.   Rather than trying to control our complicated thought/emotion dynamics, we come to see them, accept them, and make choices on how to be with them.  Rather than the elephant driving us, we chose to guide the elephant.  Rather than belittling ourselves for having these emotions, we acknowledge that they are legitimate and need attention.

To be clear here, it is not that the emotions are wrong, it is that they are connected in some way that we are not seeing; they are emerging from deeper assumptions that we hold.  Is our observation about our quantity of work tied to some assumptions we, or others, have about our role?  Are we feeling bound by these but not in agreement with them?  Is our anger toward our colleague embedded in a deeper sense of not feeling safe working with this person?  Is it about more than not agreeing, but rather in not finding a safe way to work together when there is disagreement?

Building connection requires that we have emotional intelligence, a term that has much to do with identifying that intelligence about things we work on is not enough, we must have a quality of intelligence that allows us to assess ourselves and our interactive dynamics that emerge when we are working with others.

This form of intelligence is foundational if we are to connect deeply with ourselves and others in times where we are all feeling the cognitive and emotional effects of being disoriented.

Liberty, Responsibility and the Need to Open Up

April 19, 2020

Social issues are rarely absolute right and wrongs. Rather, they expose the natural tensions we must negotiate.  It is time to open up, no doubt.  The tension is, if we open too soon, we risk massive infections; overwhelming our systems again.  If we open too slowly, we risk further loss of resources (jobs, food, financial systems) and will likely suffer severe damage.

There is also a natural concern that if we overly trust the government or the experts, we give up too much of our liberty.  In many places in the world, there are people concerned that they are losing too much of their right to choose. 

There are countries in the world that have been using this argument from the beginning.  Their governments and cultures have trusted the people.  Their governments worked hard to make sure the people understood their responsibility, and the risks, in controlling the spread of this virus.  As I heard in one interview, “we didn’t need to create a police state to keep this under control.”   A lot of social and occupational behaviors changed, but the government and people worked together.

The U.S. quickly became a hot spot.  Without shutting down, there was no way to stop the entire country from becoming swamped like New York.  Okay, I get it.  But what’s next?  The virus is going to spread, lots of people are going to be infected by it, and we won’t have real control until we get immunizations. So what’s next?

Let’s play this out to make sure we are all dealing with the same truth, not just data and emotions.  Let’s look at both the irresponsible and responsible approaches to our situation.

First, what I would describe as an irresponsible story.

In the exercise of my liberty, I decide to march on my capital, with a hundred other people.  We stand proudly, shoulder to shoulder, and demand that the government give us the opportunity to manage our lives.

Let’s play this scene out in terms of what we know about those crowds and their exercise of freedom.  Of the hundred people, let’s say I am the one who, though I wasn’t feeling so great, took a couple of Advil and marched.

Turns out I was sick with Covid, but because I didn’t wander around too much, I only infected three of my friends.  In seven days, we all marched again.  My three friends, none of whom felt sick at all, each passed the virus to three more people.  How cool, now thirteen of us were exposed to the virus and are now immunized (we hope).  This is the natural course of things!

It's seven days later, the first week of May, and fortunately for us, as we work to immunize each other, these nine people with the active virus are now hanging out with friends and creating small parties.  Each of those nine now spread the virus to three people.  Those twenty-seven folks are a little harder to keep track of, but just like the others, they each now have the opportunity to pass Covid to three more. 

But now, we hear stories that a few people are getting pretty sick.  Yet, we figure, and maybe even some of our national leaders tell us, oh well, that’s the cost of freedom.  It’s now mid-May and we just can’t take this anymore. While some things are opening, it’s just not enough.  We need to stop being afraid of this stupid virus!

The good news is that by the end of May, the chain of exposures has led to now over a hundred folks have been sick in my community, eighty actively infecting, all just from me.  Man! I do good work in service to this virus.

So, what happens to this 100+ people that, in just over a month, I was able to help get infected?

Well, thirty of them did even better than me, no symptoms, and now they are self-immunized.  Good job me!

Another forty of them had mild symptoms just like me.  They all took some over-the-counter meds and went to work (those who could) and kept socializing.  And, like me, they too are now self-immunized.  That’s still good work.

Of the last thirty, the story is a bit more difficult and protracted.  As it turns out, they got pretty sick.  They were really laid out for a couple of weeks and say it still took a couple more weeks to really start feeling normal.  But, hey, that’s nature for ya! Bummer they had it so rough.

Oh, but of those thirty, there are ten where the news is not good at all.  They ended up having to go to the hospital, some for weeks, and of those, two died. 

And within the next couple of waves of infections, what was a hundred infections and ten hospitalizations that took over a month to create, is now being doubled every couple of weeks.  The experts do their projections, the health care system realizes it’s about to be overrun by Covid 19 cases, and the government shuts us down again.

But that doesn’t have to be the story if I exercise my liberty more responsibly.  Because, in the end, what we all agree is that we don’t want the government to shut us down again in September if the systems get overwhelmed. 

There is a saying that guns don’t kill people, people kill people. So, be responsible if you chose to use a gun.  Well, Covid kills people, and we spread Covid, so be responsible for how we are getting used by this virus!

To be responsible, when things open up, I wear a mask.  Why?  Because I don’t want to get people sick!  I am going to wear a mask and keep space between us because I could be spreading the virus and not know it. And, my responsibility is to not risk starting a wave of infections.

Second, as we open up, I am going to limit how many people I spend time with at work and in social settings.  I am going to keep track of who I am around.  And if I start feeling bad, I am going to have access (hopefully) to one of those drive-through testing places and get tested right away.  If the test is positive for the virus, I will stay home. I will call my social contacts (which I intentionally limited) and tell them to stay home for at least 14 days. 

If I don’t feel sick, but one of my social contacts gets tested positive and calls me, I will stay home for 14 days.  Why?  Because I take responsibility for not spreading this virus. 

And, hey, we did all this in the responsible exercise of our liberty.  We are smart and we don’t need the government to give us a law or a proclamation; just good information and data please!

And in the meantime, I will wash my hands and not touch my face, all in service of keeping me from getting sick.  But I am also going to enjoy my life, get back to work, help those in need, and find ways to get my community going again.  I am accepting my responsibility to help us get better.

So, if I want to guard my liberty, I must exercise my responsibility.  If I don’t, then folks will get frustrated because there will be lots of really sick people overwhelming our systems.  And then the government will need to take control, and that always comes with costs…like liberty.