Mike Lehr's Blog

In business, people often see aggressiveness as a virtue; however, it can be a defect. Exploring this will give us insights into dealing with aggressive personalities in our lives and examples of how different perspectives help in problem solving.

The Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 from the American Civil War, the turning point in that war, is a good initial example.  The Union won this battle over the Confederates but never attacked. That’s because the Confederates relentlessly attacked a different part of the Union line on each of the battle’s three days (see diagram to right) despite the Union being on higher ground and firmly entrenched. Consequently, the Confederates suffered heavy losses and retreated.

In nature, the article, “Unnatural Selection” from the May 23, 2009 issue of The Economist, reports on the work of Laszlo Garamszegi from the University of Antwerp. He found that the aggressive animals were most likely to be caught in traps. The Battle of Cannae from 216 B.C. is a human form of this. Hannibal had tapped into his Roman opponents’ aggressiveness and hubris to lure them into a trap, thus destroying an army twice his size. In American football, the screen pass takes advantage of aggressive defenses by luring them into the backfield.

Thus, aggressiveness alone is defective without intelligence, wisdom or insight. As these examples show, we can defeat aggressiveness by:

• Allowing it to tire itself on extremely difficult tasks
• Giving it “a bone” (a lesser important task) to distract it
• Tapping into its hubris and goading it into wasting time on irrelevant things

In business, we see examples when companies expand too aggressively, thinking they have the “secret,” taking shortcuts and ignoring planning. As a result, aggressiveness produces huge losses for them, just as it did for the Confederates.

In problem solving, seeing the connection among disparate things helps. Recently, I drove home on a road that runs along a creek. People living along this road have driveways running over the creek connecting their houses to the road. The last two years has seen much intense flooding from rain, thus causing extreme damage to the bridges over which their driveways run.

On this particular day, I noticed how vastly improved these bridges have become. For instance, on one steel beams run where wood once did. Another was wider and more arced. Others just looked stronger; I’m sure a construction engineer could have told me why.

While seeing these bridges, muscles came into mind. Exercise tears down our muscles and cause them to return much stronger. Whether it’s a flood destroying a bridge or intense effort destroying our muscles, we experience the rebirth of something stronger. On a larger scale, we saw the destruction of the World Trade Towers compelling engineers to seek ways to make such structures stronger. Earthquakes in Haiti, floods in New Orleans and many other similar disasters produced similar outcomes.

So what is the problem-solving lesson? Perhaps it’s that we shouldn’t fear crises because in reality only they can make us stronger. If it’s true for bridges and muscles, perhaps it’s true for our spirit. Can we really become physically, mentally and emotionally stronger without crises? Can any training replicate the emotions of a real crisis? It’s similar to the difference between training and game day or practice and audition time.

The history of bridges tells us that their design is a product of crises. Perhaps that means our improvement as humans cannot occur without them either. If we were truly successful at eradicating all crises, perhaps we would stop becoming better.

As a result of my post, Dealing with Bosses Who Manage by Email, a reader’s email wanted to know what to do about co-workers who copy their bosses on emails to you. There are two perspectives to keep in mind:

1. For some reason your co-worker believes it’s important to copy the boss
2. Under no circumstances should you assume you know the reason

In general, a co-worker will copy the boss for one or both of the following general reasons:

1. He wants to.
2. He feels compelled to.

For instance, he might want his boss to know that he sent the email, or his boss might have told him to copy him regularly. Even if his boss didn’t say anything to him, the co-worker might be interpreting something about the company’s culture that encourages him to do this.

Again, the general approach if a co-worker is doing something you dislike is to ask him why he’s doing it. There might be a solution. For instance, if he needs to document his requests, he can file them rather than copy bosses. Even if there isn’t a solution, the reason could help you learn something about your boss, the company and your co-worker. However, it’s important to ask in a non-accusatory manner. That’s why you don’t want to presume you know the reason. It could upset you and make asking challenging.

Regardless of whether there is a solution, ask your co-worker if he would stop realizing of course that he might not comply. Still, it’s important that he knows you are aware of what he’s doing. On the other hand, he might comply simply because you asked. This is why it’s important to develop good relationships with all your co-workers, so you can leverage them when you need.

A person who direct messaged me on Twitter suggested I address cooperation and competition on the business-to-business level (B2B). Which is more profitable?

Generally, cooperation will tend to be a better business relationship than competition on just about any level, business or individual. We are social creatures, so we join groups to cooperate with others for mutual benefit. People will tend toward cooperation.

However, in reality, sometimes people cannot cooperate as they would like. Rules, policies and regulations sometimes make it wrong, illegal or expensive. For instance, governments do not allow businesses to cooperate in fixing prices and setting markets.

Where’s the proof that B2B cooperation is profitable? Look at the free market. The mere fact that governments have to pass laws preventing cooperation among businesses indicates that businesses can find it extremely profitable. If cooperation weren’t profitable, would we have to pass laws to prevent it? Furthermore, just look at the legal forms of cooperation in the forms of trade associations and lobbies. Would such cooperation occur if it weren’t profitable?

When businesses engage in competition, it’s like war: uncertain and expensive. Cooperation provides certainty and cost-containment. However, governments don’t allow this because it’s bad for consumers. This is similar to the Roman Emperor who forced two gladiators into mortal combat so he can entertain the crowd. What would happen if the two cooperated and did not fight? That’s why the Emperor had to say both would die if they didn’t.

The whole point of this analogy is to demonstrate that sometimes it’s very difficult to see the profitability of cooperation because many times we establish rules, rewards and penalties to ensure competition rather than cooperation. It becomes even more difficult when we benefit from the competition of others. The difference is often our perspective.

How many times do we hear, “I’m really a people person”? Yet, when people are the problem, we can’t find those folks in the country?

It’s not unusual for employers to say, “My people make my business,” and then in the same breath say “The worst part about running a business is dealing with the employees.”

How many times do we hear salespeople say, “I’m a relationship specialist,” but when it comes to working with their assistants, they stumble over themselves and run to human resources?

How many times do people say they want to get into management, but then pass on their less desirable employees to other departments by giving them satisfactory reviews?

When conversation is light and pleasant, many extroverts mingle with the best, smiling, shaking hands and joking. Yet, how many of them enjoy working with people when they have protracted developmental problems? When we use the term “socialize,” does it even connote people problems?

What does it mean to “work a crowd”? It means meeting people as fast as you can before they dump any problems on you. When was the last time anyone worked a crowd to find out what the problems were?

Yes, computers can be problems, but they are usually quiet about them. Wouldn’t it be neat if people were the same way? Maybe that’s why some people prefer sitting at their desks reviewing the latest figures to see what problems there might be rather than wandering around to see what problems people might have.

Perhaps the next time someone says, “I’m a people person,” we should ask two questions:

1. What was the last people problem you tackled?
2. Why did you enjoy it?

Arbitrariness & First, Second, Third

Arbitrariness is a vital to intuitive problem solving because it’s related to subjectivity which is related to personality and its emotional drivers. Looking at the relationship between arbitrariness and conditionality will help us see this.

For instance, the concept of “first” does not need the existence of another number; however, the concept of “second” is dependent upon the condition that “first” exists, and the concept of “third” is dependent upon the condition that “first” and “second” exists.

House of Arbitrariness & Conditionality

Consider a house. Whereas someone can arbitrarily place the first stone of his house anywhere, the rest is built conditionally around that stone which is called the cornerstone. Ideas and knowledge are also built around cornerstones which we often experience as assumptions. Since knowledge influences how we identify, define and examine problems, our problems will have cornerstones too.

For instance, many of us consider the idea of democracy good. However, if such decision making is absolutely superb, why don’t companies and armies use it where more authoritarian styles dominate? This is because democracy’s cornerstone is placed in a governmental location. If we move that cornerstone to a corporate or military location, we will end up building a more authoritarian-style house.

In problem solving, moving the cornerstone to a new location will help us view our old location from a different perspective. But first, we must challenge ourselves to find the cornerstone of any set of conditions in which we find ourselves and the cornerstone of any set of ideas we are using to evaluate those conditions. That means avoiding an unquestioning, absolutist perspective and employing an inquisitive, arbitrary one.

How many times have we heard, “Nothing breeds success like success?” In a study of the orbital launch vehicle industry by Peter M. Madsen and Vinit Desai the finding was that “organizations learn more effectively from failures than successes.” Their paper was published in the June 2010 edition of the Academy of Management Journal and reported by The Economist online in August.

While it seems logical that we can learn from our mistakes, what’s less clear is whether we learn more from our failures than our successes. However, from an intuitive perspective which accounts for the intense effect our emotions can have on our decision making, the fear of pain is much greater than the joy of gain. This is not only an anticipatory phenomenon but a historical one. In other words, we also learn more from feeling pain than from feeling gain. Moreover, Madsen and Desai found that the lesson learned through failure stayed with the organization longer than the one learned through success.

How do you maximize learning without having to experience a critical or fatal failure? Of the conclusions, one, which applies to intuitive approaches, is “greater flexibility towards meeting set goals.” This would allow employees to learn from smaller failures. They found that organizations which were “too tightly” focused on deadlines and profit margins gave their employees legitimate, implicit approval to discount, ignore or rationalize smaller failures containing valuable lessons.

Therefore, the next time everything goes according to plan, realize that something went wrong. Most likely it will be the failure to learn.

Word choice and phrasing (phraseology) are simple ways we can assess personalities. As I’ve said in previous postings, everything we think, do and say reflects on our personalities in some way. The challenge is determining what.

Understanding the two aspects of any word – definition and connotation – is a first step. Definitions trigger thoughts about words’ meanings while connotations trigger emotions about the impressions they create. Words can have similar definitions but vastly different connotations. A funny riddle expresses this:

Q: What is the difference between escargot and snails?

A: People don’t eat snails.

Phraseology works as an assessment approach because word choice is largely subjective. Yes, we need to consider the context of the conversation, but there is usually plenty of room for subjective inputs. This occurs because many times several words could suffice, but the final choice is intuitive and based upon the connotation the person prefers. For example, consider these pair of words:

• Determined – Stubborn
• Irrational – Passionate
• Focus – Restrict
• Organize – Standardize
• Fun – Undisciplined
• Rigid – Strong
• Stable – Stale
• House – Home
• Flexible – Soft
• Interesting – Fascinating

Many times we can simply discern from people’s phrasing whether they like something. We can also discern much deeper qualities of their personalities. For instance, they can tell us how they might approach a planning endeavor or collaborative effort. They can also tell us the degree to which they are influenced by qualitative or quantitative arguments or by logical or humanistic ones.

Therefore, the challenge is classifying various words according to such groupings as quantitative words versus qualitative ones, logical versus humanistic, individual versus collective, etc. Once we’ve made these classifications, we can correlate people’s personalities along these spectra by examining the dominance of certain words and phrasing.

As is commonly known, viewing the same thing from different perspectives often alters that thing. One time, someone cited 1+1=2 as a “fact” that remained unchanged regardless of perspective. However, it really demonstrates the malleability of facts.

For instance, consider these four true expressions of 1+1:

1. 1+1=2
2. 1+1=10
3. 1+1=11
4. 1+1=1

The first is the normal arithmetic expression we learned in school; however, what we often overlook is that it uses just one type of numeric language called Base 10. The second example expresses the same thing but uses a numeric language called Binary. It’s even more widely used than our recognizable form because it’s the language of computers.

The third expression assumes that “1” is a shape. Imagine adding one spade to another to get two of them. We can express it symbolically as ♣ + ♣ = ♣♣. This is frequently the first “language” used to teach children arithmetic.

The fourth expression is a bit more difficult to see but is frequently used too. Consider the statement that one man plus one woman equals one couple. Another example would be a single drink which we make by adding one part A to one part B. Consider as well that one period of sunlight and one period of darkness equals one day. In these examples each “1” in the equation represents a unique item. In other words, they each represent one of something different rather one of the same thing as in the other three perspectives.

Thus, this exercise helps to train our minds to search for different perspectives and to demonstrate the importance of not just looking at the facts . . . but how they are interpreted.

Glass Half Full? Half Empty?

One of my favorite metaphors to use as a “challenging assumptions exercise” is the “Is your glass half full or half empty” one. The basic assumption is that the choice is one of attitude: if your attitude is positive you will choose “half full,” if negative “half empty.” One of the reasons why I like it is that it can create quite a stir in folks when they see the answer is not quite so clear cut. This is important because viewing problems from an alternate perspective can trigger negative emotional responses that retard problem solving.

For instance, we can disrupt this popular metaphor by asking: Who is more likely to go out and get more water? The answer is the one who views his glass half empty. As we saw with bonus plans, the fear of loss is much more powerful than the joy of gain. Therefore, those who feel that they’ve already lost half their water supply are more likely to secure more water than those who feel they still have half remaining.

I experienced a real life example of this when I was taking a new national sales manager around to the troops. We visited the office of a sales representative who was out. The manager looked around and pointed to a picture of the representative’s four children and wife and said, “I love to see that. It means he’ll be real hungry to sell and support his family.”

This is also why crises are the most effective ways to encourage change. Consequently, if you were a water salesperson, you would be more likely to make a sale if you could get the customer to see his glass as half empty rather than half full.