Month: May 2019

The last two decades have been about building tools to amplify our voices.

But what have we done to define it?

We spend far too much time trying to reach the masses and skip the emotional effort it takes to define what it is we want to say.

You don’t change a million people without first changing one.

And if you can’t change one how do you expect to change a million?

Facilitating really productive group discussions is an art.

If you do them enough, you will begin to notice that there is often one person standing outside the circle.

Why is that?

Well, it turns out that we are making the wrong assumptions about what is actually happening.

Because the story we tell ourselves is…

She doesn’t care.

She thinks she’s too good for this group.

She’s always quiet.

This is just noise in our head.

To get rid of it for next time (and make you a better facilitator), it helps to go test it. So, once the discussion is over ask the person what they were thinking.

What you’ll be surprised to discover is that their noise is always different than your noise. That in fact, our noise is irrelevant. Completely irrelevant to what is going on.

What happens is we often misinterpret the signals others are sending. And we let our biases get in the way.

Subsequently, we build the wrong narrative about people who sit outside the circle.

The culture is made of a set of ideas that dictate how we behave.

The meme is essentially an idea that is replicated and passed from one person to another.

In other words, memes are like an idea virus. Ideas that spread from one person to the next, infecting the host it comes in contact with and causing a change in behavior.

Some memes are stickier than others. Memes have a way of reaching a tipping point that pushes the culture one way or another.

For better or for worse.

The question is, How do sticky memes resist change as they replicate?

Because no idea is ever perfectly transferred from one person to another. We hear what we want to hear. We see what we want to see. We add our own personal bias to any information that we receive.

So, how is this possible?

And when memes do change, how then, can we make them change for the better?

Better knowledge leads to better explanations.

So, take for example the Momo Challenge (Wikipedia link without an image here) that has plagued the culture these last few years.

It turns out that meme was just one giant hoax. An urban legend. A bad idea that spread from person to the next. Until finally, a Kardashian tweeted about it and then you had a tipping point.

What made it dangerous wasn’t the challenge itself. What made it dangerous was that we couldn’t stop talking about it. Which made it a global phenomenon. Which drove more people to look at it.

The message is clear. We need to do a better job to know our memes.

Once we discovered there were these invincible carnivorous entities called germs that could be combated by simply rubbing our hands together underwater, it drove us to wash our hands.

That is a meme we should embrace.

We need more hand washing in our social media-driven culture. And we shouldn’t take 20 years to adopt this practice either.

The story I’m telling myself is if no one reads this post, it’s still an important step in becoming the person I want to be.

The story I’m telling myself when I make a mistake is that I can try again and make it better next time.

The one common thread that all highly resilient people demonstrate is this ability to tell a better story when adversity hits.

Our brain is wired to protect us. And if we can feed it the right narrative it will begin to work as a shield.

When you can learn to tell a better story about adversity and turn it into a learning experience, you’ll have a higher quality of life.

“How do you bridge this gap when the person on the other side doesn’t want the kind of relationship you want?”

The bridge IS the point. You don’t know what will happen when you put in the work when you put the building blocks in place to make magic happen.

We don’t get to decide how someone reacts. We only get the opportunity to do the work and to show that we care. 

With a bridge, we can do it again. And again. And again. Until, maybe, one day, they can begin to see what you see.

In 1809, Ricardo had one rule that has held up well for a couple centuries: Own a thing that you can rent and then you will win the game.

That idea spurred one of the biggest, best selling board games of all time—Monopoly.

Monopoly, also known as the Landlord’s Game, designed by Elizabeth Magie, was created to teach the players the economic hazards of Ricardo’s Law of Rent. 

(The game was then stolen by Charles Darrow who sold it to Parker Brothers. Darrow would subsequently become the first millionaire game designer.)

The point of Monopoly wasn’t to own the board and bankrupt your competition. No, the point was to leave a bad taste in your mouth when you lost. You were supposed to feel frustrated that you couldn’t turn a corner without emptying your pockets.

It used to be a brilliant game. But now, it promotes how we should grab more than our fair share because why not? It’s survival of the fittest.  

We rely too heavily on “I think…” statements.

“I think vacuums on our feet would be a good idea.”

“I think selling oxygen in a can would sell in China.”

“I think an app demonstrating to people how rich you are would make a nice profit.”

These are short sited products. They don’t make anyone better in the long run.

Yes, change doesn’t happen without making assertions. But better understanding leads to more knowledge. More knowledge leads to better explanations.

It’s critical then that we don’t pick the wrong axiom to follow. Because it can lead to ideas that may be a scientific accomplishment (or make a quick buck) but have no impact in the world.

The goal is both. To make things better while making better things. To do that, we need to stop and ask, “I wonder…”

“I wonder if there’s an inexpensive way to provide clean drinking water?”

“I wonder what the world be like if every child had a laptop?”

“I wonder if there is a way to provide a cheap and precise alternative to the $2,000 microprocessor-controlled syringe pumps?

A personal favorite, “I wonder what I could package that nobody would normally want?”

“I wonder…” opens the door for possibility. Better to challenge our notions first before we go about asserting them.

What if we treated today’s major threats of climate change, nuclear weapons and the unraveling of democracy like we did the Cold War?

Here’s another question: Is it because no one pushed the red button we think we can dodge the bullet again?

It’s two minutes to midnight and Atomic Scientists say that tensions for a nuclear war are closer now than they were in the 1950s and ’60s.

Yet, most of us continue to act like this is normal.

Why?

Because of cognitive bias. We say to ourselves:

“That’ll never happen to me.”

“Fake news.”

“Everything is fine.”

That last one particular get’s me. Is everything fine? Really? Or do we want to pretend everything is fine because we don’t want to think we live in an unsustainable world moving towards destruction?

We don’t want to think that our everyday lives are contributing to a culture of global destruction.

Here is the amazing thing about all this. As a collective, we can start working back the clock by making small simple decisions.

Instead of worrying about what is going to happen next week on Game of Thrones, you can spend that two hours reading about the Nuclear Posture Review or understanding the role that people play on climate change or you can become more engaged with the political atmosphere.

You can read about the New START treaty and why we shouldn’t let it expire. You can read about the Paris Accord and why it is a big deal that the US is no longer part of it. You can read about Tom Ferguson’s landmark work on how elections are bought. (You can highly predict who wins an election by simply looking at campaign funding.)

These are small choices that can lead to significant change. The small choices won’t be enough to avoid the consequences of the last 40 years but…

It can roll back the clock.

Because once we begin to understand, we can begin to see. And once you see, you can’t unsee. With enough support, the culture begins to bend and conflicts of interest begin to be exposed.

One drop in the bucket is significant if you get enough people to contribute.

Drip by drip.

One final note: It took 20 years for Ignaz Semmelweis to convince the medical community that by simply washing your hands we can significantly reduce the spread of infection. 20 years! The story he told didn’t resonate with the community. It didn’t compel them to change.

Duck and cover was a silly solution back then and it still is today. But why then are so many of us still in hiding?

It starts with the story of what kind of culture do we want to build. One that we can all be proud of. And then you get the change in behavior. 

Why are there so many Type A hedge fund managers on Wall Street?

It turns out that people with Type A personalities are sorting themselves into Wall Street and Type B’s are sorting themselves out.

As a result, we have created a culture of extremism.

Because the only way to differentiate yourself in a crowd of like-minded individuals is to sound just a little bit further into left field.

Over time, what you have created is an echo chamber.

So here is the question: Are we products of the environment or is the environment the product of us?

Does greed attract Type A personalities to Wall Street? Or is Wall Street a manifestation of the culture of greed?

Does Wall Street produce the Gordon Gekko‘s of the world? Or did the landscape change once they assembled?

I think it’s both.

The internet has made it vastly easier to find people like us. And so, when given the choice, we choose to live with people like us.

And without diversity, we begin to pollute the culture with our toxic rhetoric. Leaving no one to challenge our worldview.

The environment made us and we made the environment.

Spaceship Earth is the idea that everyone in the human race works together towards the greater good.

The problem with this spaceship is that it frequently runs into malfunctions. Systems breakdown (global warming), oxygen levels fall (nuclear weapons), the navigation system has us off course (democracy falling apart)…

So, here is the question: How much of this damage is being caused by unintentional consequences and how much of it is done in full awareness?

It turns out, that both are the problem. That human beings, when given the choice, will often choose to stay in the shadows and keep their heads in the sand. Because once you see the truth you can’t unsee it. And we think this leaves us off the hook. An act of omission.

The second part is, human beings also have a difficult time not acting on their own self-interest. We only live once and we want that one life to be in comfort. An act of commission.

Another way to think about this is what happened on Easter Island. As pointed out by Jared Diamond, What were Easter Islanders saying as they cut down the last tree on the island?

Who cut it down? At what point did they say it is inevitable so I might as well get mine? Who spoke up? Who could predict what was happening? Who failed to warn the others?

We must see what is actually happening and know there is a problem that needs to be solved. And we must proceed through conflicts of interest to do what is ultimately best for the collective.

The risk of doing nothing is far greater than the risk of doing something. Even if that thing we do fails.

We can still try again.

For now at least.