Mike Lehr's Blog

Brian Christian’s article, “Mind vs. Machine,” in the March 2011 issue of The Atlantic covers the Loebner Prize competition which administers the Turing Test to artificial intelligence (AI) programs. This involves an instantaneous form of instant messaging (IM) in which judges have to determine within five minutes whether they are conversing with a computer or a person.

What computers teach us about being human when we attempt to program them to converse is really how formulaic our conversations can be. Therefore, are we really putting any thought or effort into them? The computers sometimes fool the judges, often enough to make us stop and think. When the first such conversational computer arrived, Eliza (more), many people mistook the experience for a human one.

For instance, casual conversation tends to be relatively predictable and easily programmable because it’s driven by the most recent comment. It rarely refers back to prior comments made three, four, ten or more in the past. In other words, we don’t require any knowledge of the conversation’s history to continue it. We don’t need to remember and sort through relevant points to formulate our own ideas. We only need to remember the most current comment.

Returning to what computers can teach us about being human, I was prompted to recall that someone had emphasized to me the importance of “getting down to a human level” when dealing with people. This made me wonder:

If our conversation is programmable and actionable by a computer, can we really be human with one another?

Perhaps this explains why we find some people’s conversations shallow. They’re conversing at a level no better than a computer.

The notion of free will is a byproduct of our conscious, more specifically our ego. It treats emotions as a nuisance which it should control and the unconscious a fantasy which it should  ignore. Yet, these two are fundamental determinants of our personalities which make our choices quite predictable.

In the January 17, 2011 issue of The New Yorker, David Brooks writes in “Social Animal” that “A core finding of this work [cited in the article] is that we are not primarily the products of our conscious thinking.” In other words, we just think we are making choices.

Some people use choice as proof of free will; if we have a choice, we have free will. However, we program computers to make choices all the time. Under one set of criteria, they choose “A,” while under another it’s “B.” They can even make random choices: choosing “A” 65% of the time and “B” 35%. But, do they have free will?

Yes, they are just following coded programs, but we could be following our own program. It’s called personality and is heavily influenced by genetic code. When we understand a computer’s code, we can predict its choices. If it’s too complex, we won’t. The same is true for personality. If we understand it, we can make predictions about a person’s choices. If we don’t, we can’t.

David Brooks describes everyday events that appear choice-filled but are quite predictable. The key is to remember that we are observing a people who 1) believe they have free will and 2) don’t believe they’ve been programmed with a personality.

Related link: Illusion of Free Will Revisited

Even though it spoke primarily to minimizing medical costs, the article, The Hot Spotters, by Atul Gawande in the January 24, 2011 issue of The New Yorker had much relevancy to change management. It covered five tactics to do so and crystallized many of my experiences. This post covers one tactic. Four future posts will cover the others.

The first tactic is picking the right moment. Everything has its time. You don’t paint when it’s raining, for instance. Effecting change is no different. As discussed previously, crises are excellent opportunities for effecting change. In another post, research indicated failure a better teacher than success. Teachable moments are a more moderate and individual form of this.

In organizations, divisions and teams, picking the right moment is more difficult. Here are a few:

• A particularly good or bad performance
• The gain or loss of a large account or piece of business
• Acquisition or sell-off
• Integration of new technology
• Layoffs and budget cuts
• Good or bad press
• Other game changing events

However, these events usually generate much activity in the form of capitalizing on or minimizing these situations. So, we miss tons of opportunities to effect change when we need to be asking:

• “What freshness can we add to keep the momentum going (or minimize the downturn)?”
• “What new actions can we take?”
• “What new ideas can we employ?”

Yes, people will likely squawk about having a lot on their plate, but remember change is about motion. Activity creates motion we can use. You can’t change the direction of something that’s not moving. That’s why you can’t wait for “slow time” to effect change. Besides, it’s usually too late by then.

Other links in this series:

• Change Management – Tactic #2: Strengthen Relationships
• Change Management – Tactic #3: Very Small, Simple Steps
• Change Management – Tactic #4: Repetitiveness
• Change Management – Tactic #5: Request Demonstration
• Change Management – Tactic #6: Guard Employees’ Time

Sometimes we become enamored with technology for its own sake, automatically assuming that the most advanced technology delivers the best. Since the U.S. military tends to be at the fore of technological implementation, observing how strategies and tactics change with technology can be instructive.

Such is the case found in the article, “Air Power on the Cheap,” from the December 11^th, 2010 issue of The Economist which discusses the advantages militaries are discovering with less costly, propeller-drive planes over jet fighters and armed drones:

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• Cheaper to build, fly and maintain
• Greater operational independence; no need for highly technical staffs and systems in support
• Greater reliability and flexibility in assessing targets and minimizing collateral damage

I’ve been fascinated by businesses who succeed with low-tech approaches. They tend to be smaller ones involving tremendous customization, high technology costs to scale the product and markets with relatively small potential. Consequently, it ensures that businesses, especially larger ones, can’t justify the technological investment to drive out smaller competitors.

Translating these needs to a business, we could say the best technology isn’t best when it:

• Costs too much to install, run, maintain and upgrade
• Requires too much training to learn and too much skill to support
• Cannot assess situations better or more flexibly than humans
• Generates returns inferior to low-tech alternatives
• Narrows product and service delivery options too much in situations requiring an integrated, highly customized, multi-faceted approach better served by various low-tech alternatives

The article is a case-study for these points. Furthermore, its examples can trigger insights into how they apply to a specific business.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, who we are (WWA) is different from who we think we are (TWA), an important concept behind intuitive approaches. It can explain many of the contradictions we observe in what people say and do and explain the problems with self-report personality assessments. Awareness of TWA-WWA will help us minimize erroneous conclusions when predicting human behavior.

Who We Are is Different From Who We Think We Are

Whereas TWA resides in our conscious, WWA resides primarily in our subconscious and is much greater. Consequently, TWA only represents the tip of the iceberg in terms of our potential. We often only discover aspects of WWA when we are challenged to learn or face a crisis.

On the downside, TWA holds much of what others (parents, friends, educators, community, etc.) teach us or condition us to believe about the world and us. Consequently, TWA can impede us from doing what we really want to do by causing us to ignore, deny, discount or suppress it. Pragmatically, the TWA-WWA difference will often account for the many errors we find in all kinds of surveys (quality service, market research, etc.). On an interpersonal level, it will account for much of the hypocrisy we see in others.

We learn WWA by listening to what we say, observing what we do and interpreting what we think; we can do the same with others. It works because we cannot consciously control every aspect of what we say, do and think. There are gaps; our subconscious fills them. It’s this “filler” that provides clues to WWA; it’s a matter of learning to read these clues. Many times this can only be done through direct interaction with the person so we can make ancillary observations; something surveys often don’t do.

I’ve had a lot of success solving problems by trying to address the challenges of moving an idea from the abstract to the practical. It doesn’t matter what kind of idea it is – product, process, service or solution – the challenges remain the same. That means examining it from its initial inception (defining it) to its potential implementation (identifying details). I have found that people have the toughest times with the beginning and the end, so I start here.

Moving an Idea from the Abstract to the Practical

First, I ask, “Have they defined the problem correctly?” Obviously, there is no point solving the wrong problem. People tend to define the problem too narrowly. That means they are addressing the wrong problem or restricting their set of potential solutions.

Second, I ask, “Have they identified details with enough specificity?” In most cases, people don’t. Where they see a single step, there are often two, three, five or ten. While it’s impossible and unnecessary to capture all details before implementation, the fact remains that many ideas fail here.

For example, the integration of new technology is often seen simply as a technology problem not a human one; the problem is defined too narrowly. No matter how good the technology, if people don’t embrace it or can’t use it, it’s no good. Often, training is the solution, but if we look into the details of training, we find too often it’s “one size fits all.” Everyone goes through the same training classes. It doesn’t take into account the important detail that employees assimilate technology at different rates. That means wasting training hours on users in which the training is too slow or too fast.

In problem solving it’s important to define the problem correctly, too often it’s too narrowly defined, and to refine the details, often they’re too general.

When leaders try to change organizations, they often overlook that resistance to change serves a very positive, natural role: it protects the group from bad ideas. Just because we want to institute a change doesn’t mean it’s a good one.

Therefore, rather than look at resistance as a byproduct of negative thinkers, we should view it as natural as the ocean tide. People who “resist” organizational change ensure stability and continuity of the group’s culture.

For instance, imagine that any organization could change overnight at any leader’s whim. Now, you as a consumer enter your favorite eatery only to find it radically different. This might be good if the change is good, but what if it isn’t? Moreover, imagine that this company gets a new CEO in another year who changes things again! So now, your favorite eatery is again dramatically transformed.

A good example of where change resistors often serve a positive role is in quality preservation. When they are used to delivering products and services of a certain quality, they will tend to view cost-cutting changes to enhance profitability or to increase volume through price reductions as endangering quality.

What this means for us who are trying to change things is really a change of perspective. It’s not about overcoming resistant to change but rather about promoting change. Focusing on resistance is like focusing on trying to prevent the tide from going out. Singling these folks out as resistors, or worse yet as negative thinkers, only makes our change initiatives more difficult. We need to appreciate that these employees serve a very valuable purpose in preserving the stability of our companies’ brands.

Figure 1: Formal Organizational Power

I continue to receive a steady stream of visits to my original post on this topic, so here’s a follow up. As I mentioned previously management is to leadership what a house is to home. Developing the relational aspects of leadership will further help to define this difference. Let’s begin by looking at two broad types of power in an organization: formal and informal.

The first is the authority given to each job function by the organization as represented by the organizational chart (Figure 1). A job’s title, position in the hierarchy and stated responsibilities give this authority. Thus, people will listen and accept another simply because those are the rules.

The second is the personal influence each person exerts on every other person (Figure 2). In business, we frequently see this as someone having a particular expertise, experience, personality or quality that encourages members to listen and accept him.

Figure 2: Informal Organizational Power

Therefore, while formal power remains the same no matter who has that job (unless the organization changes the rules), informal power varies depending upon the person who is in that job. Often we perceive this as credibility: How much credibility does a person have in the performance of that job?

Management is more about the use of formal power and leadership informal power. Formal power relies upon organizational structure just as a house is a structure. Informal power relies upon personal influence just as a home’s ambiance influences us. Just as two houses can have the same structure but feel differently as homes, two people can have the same jobs but the influence they exert upon others will have a different feel.

In simple terms, management is about using authority well; leadership is about using personal influence well. The latter makes an organization . . . a team.

Other links in this series:

• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference
• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference (Part III)
• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference (Part IV)
• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference (Part V)
• Leadership vs. Management: The Difference (Part VI)