While we might enjoy an early morning shell hunt on the beach, boogie boarding in the salty surf, even snorkeling off the coast for a glimpse at a school of fish below the surface, few of us will ever get far beyond the ocean’s shore. Our understanding of the ocean is mostly limited to beach vacations and biology classes.

Supported by decades of deep-sea exploration, oceanographer Sylvia Earle shares her knowledge of the oceanic depths and their impact on us land-dwellers. She’s spent years under the surface, miles down, swimming with silvery eels, getting to know the bottom-dwellers and lurking giants. It’s this other world, this below-the-surface stuff that Sylvia insists profoundly impacts our daily existence.

In the same way most of us only scratch the surface with our ocean-encounters, we’re often only familiar with the most blatant, surface-type discrimination. You know, those really obvious racial slurs and crude jokes. But it’s the miles of discrimination off-the-coast and under-the-surface of our awareness that make up most of discrimination.

According to social-psychologists, we’re often pretty clueless about our own biases. Not all unconscious biases are bad; in fact, we need these gut reactions to survive. For example, if someone’s hair is on fire, we don’t stand there wondering about the flames; we’ve learned that fire is harmful, so we help snuff it out. Our previous experiences have molded our brain so that we can make such split-second decisions.

We rely on these cognitive shortcuts to help us navigate our world. But our snap decisions can get us in trouble when we apply them to people, resulting in unintentional intolerance and discriminatory behavior.

The harmful unconscious biases we have about people often come from incomplete, inaccurate, or biased portrayals of minority groups in our constant stream of media. In fact, social-psychologists note that kids display deeply entrenched stereotypes of blacks, women, and other social groups before age five. Even before they have the cognitive capability to form and articulate their own beliefs, kids are bombarded with bias through peer pressure, mass media, and societal structures.

Research suggests that repeated associations in the conscious mind eventually become unconscious, so an endless stream of biased associations from a variety of outlets easily seeps into our awareness at an early age and inevitably persists into adulthood (unless consciously challenged). No matter how good our intentions are to be fair or unbiased, these multiple biased messages and impressions get in the way.

Being aware of what is under the surface of your awareness–your unconscious biases–is the first step toward combating years of ingrained prejudices. In fact, some social-psychologists say that the best way to rewrite these inaccurate cognitive shortcuts is to be more mindful of them.

What biases or assumptions might be lurking outside your awareness? Become a deep-sea diver.

Think About It
1) Go deeper. Analyze your favorite sitcom or talk show–what unconscious biases and stereotypes are in the screenplay? How do these associations inform how you view yourself, others, and the world around you?

2) What unconscious biases might be serving as barriers to some in your organization? Be mindful of clues to unintentional intolerance. Is there disproportionately high turnover rate among a particular social group? What steps is your organization taking to identify instances of unintentional intolerance?

Practions (Practice + Actions)
1) If meeting agendas, project briefs, company policies, or e-mails about open supervisor positions are always written with a masculine pronoun (“he”), change the language to include both genders.

2) Research a social/ethnic group or environment that you don’t know much about. Accumulating more complete, accurate knowledge about a particular group or issue will help you better discern inaccurate portrayals or unfair associations of them (whether in the media, office, peer group, or your own experience).

It’s Labor Day weekend, and you’ve escaped the crowds in the city to spend time with friends on Long Island. After catching up on the latest news over a leisurely meal, you settle in on the couch downstairs, shrugging off the weight of a rigorous work week and settling into what promises to be a relaxing weekend.

Hands up! You jolt out of dreamy reverie to find a gun in your face as somebody grabs your collar and muscles you off the couch, shoving your face in the carpet. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a couple of guys in uniform and the glaring red numbers on your alarm clock: 6:02 a.m. What is going on? This must be a nightmare.

Since Congress’ immigration law overhaul in 2005, there have been a number of misdirected law-enforcement raids, especially in the Long Island area. Citizens of Suffolk County are especially outraged at the often rash arrests and unwarranted accusations of their friends and neighbors. In one particularly unfortunate scenario in 2007, a dozen federal officials swarmed Peggy Delarosa-Delgado’s home in a 6 a.m. raid; only after rounding up her family in their living room and pulling a gun on their guest did the police realize they were unnecessarily terrorizing U.S. citizens. The man they were looking for had moved out of Delarosa-Delgado’s house several years before.

Incomplete or inaccurate information about other people can foster fear, misunderstanding, and frustration. In this case, a tradition of suspicion of Hispanic immigrants and a failure to do further fact-checking had disastrous results.

Often, law enforcement agents are required to act on a limited amount of information; they use a small slice of evidence to draw conclusions about criminal suspects or to investigate suspicious persons before crimes happen. But underlying biases can color their educated guesses, and they make mistakes. “Predictive profiling” becomes “racial profiling,” and instead of upholding the law, they violate civil rights.

But law-enforcement officers are not the only ones guilty of biased or inaccurate profiling. We also make “educated guesses” based on a limited amount of information.

Research suggests that our media’s biased portrayals of minorities distinctly shape our perceptions of them–sitcoms, TV shows, and news outlets portray blacks and Latinos as criminals in a much higher proportion than the recorded crime statistics. This negative image is replayed over and over, rewritten on neural pathways until it becomes an ingrained belief–one that we’re barely cognizant of as we make decisions about other people.

Studies show that repeated exposure to unfamiliar shapes or images reduces neuron-firing each time we encounter the unfamiliar image. Our brain paves and repaves pathways to help us easily interpret and explain these images. What does that mean? Each time we see the image–say, of a Latino portrayed as a criminal suspect on a forensic science show–it takes less time and less physical energy to recognize, interpret, and associate the image–to profile. Our brain draws from these well-established neural pathways to catalogue our experience and to slip people into neatly constructed categories. In this situation, Latinos are repeatedly associated with criminal suspects, and this colors our judgments of Latinos in our daily interactions. Even if we don’t know that much about a particular person, we make judgments and generalizations from similar interactions–even if they’ve solely been from the movie screen.

It’s not that our cognitive cataloging is always bad. In fact, generalizations help us efficiently navigate our social interactions, our media, the office. But these quick, easy generalizations get us into trouble when we rely on flawed or incomplete knowledge. Our neural structure is built with the blocks of our own experience, and it explains the world in certain ways, giving us windows to some information and not others. Without acknowledging and exploring other perspectives, our limited perspective can’t give us the entire view of the world. And as our world is increasingly connected in economic, political, and social spheres, it’s important to build better, more complete frameworks.

Consider that you might have some inaccurate or incomplete information when it comes to the people around you. It might be difficult to override inaccurate messages and dig up the right information, but it’s worth the impact it will have on your interactions. As our networks in this twenty-first century world get increasingly diverse, incomplete or inaccurate information about people who are different than we are is no longer an option. We can’t escape our previous experience, but we can be mindful of the messages we’ve learned and continuously pursue information about people we don’t know much about.

Time to do some investigation!

Think About It
1) Think about your favorite TV shows–what stereotypes are in the screenplay? How are minorities represented in these media sources? How do these associations inform how you view others?

2) Examine some of America’s beloved films from the past fifty years. How do kung-fu films portray Asians? Do you think westerns provide an accurate representation of Native Americans? How have these representations influenced current perspectives? What do current action films or chick flicks have to say about masculinity or femininity?

3) Can you think of a time when your initial impression of someone was wrong? What surprised you? What if a lot of our first impressions about people are inaccurate?

Poof!

The bunny disappears.

The scarf turns into a dove.

The man’s mutilated dollar is crispy-new.

Unless you’ve been put under a spell by the Harry Potter craze, you probably don’t believe these magic tricks are real. But-admit it-even when you think you’ve got it all figured out (you skeptic, you), the magician surprises you again.

You and the rest of the audience were probably concentrating hard, checking the magician’s sleeves, watching his or her hands. How could you have missed the pivotal point of the trick?

You blinked.

Well, you may have physically blinked from staring so hard, but, most likely, you mentally blinked. You missed some relevant information. Magicians are masters at manipulating and diverting our attention, of making sure we miss that crucial information, but how? They understand how our brains work.

Both magicians and psychologists use a bunch of different terms-”cognitive illusions,” “choice blindness,” “attentional blink,” “selective perception”-to describe what’s happening in the brain when we watch magic tricks, and they’ve done all kinds of crazy studies to reveal how this relates to the huge attentional blindspots we have when it comes to our surroundings.

Take Simon and Chablis’ famous gorilla study, in which they asked participants to focus on counting the number of passes made by a team; the participants’ attention was so riveted on the ball, they didn’t even notice the person in the gorilla suit walking right in the middle of the circle! While we can laugh at the team’s blindness to such an outlandish object in their midst, don’t be fooled-your brain would play the same trick. We perceive and remember only those objects and details that receive our focused attention-even if there is a big hairy gorilla in our face.

Most of the time, we’re unaware of this attention gap. While we have the illusion of grasping it all, research suggests that our brain singles out one particular piece of information and rejects competing information. Eye-tracking studies especially reflect this attention-hopping phenomenon; while we might feel like our eyes are gliding smoothly down a blog post, news article, or this paragraph, our eye is actually fixating every 7-9 characters, moving in a rapid, disjointed way.

In the same way our reading experience belies what actually happens, we’re fooled by what we think we attend to and what we actually attend to. While we think we have a steady stream of conscious experience and attention, our reality is a series of experiential hiccups. We think we’re watching the magician’s movements, but we miss out on key information. And research suggests that we constantly, actively construct the world around us to fill in these gaps according to our assumptions and experience and not necessarily what’s actually happening.

Cognitive scientists call this “selective perception,” and, in fact, we need it to help us function; our brain would burn out from cognitive overload if it had to attend to all the information we encounter every day. Instead, our brain makes quick decisions on what is relevant, what makes the most sense to pay attention to. It’s this handy mechanism that helps us notice, file away, or discard information according to previously established mental models.

This phenomenon affects all of our daily choices. We’re bombarded with all kinds of ideas, attitudes, claims, and soundbites each day, and what we tune into is what shapes our choices and experiences. When we’re looking for a particular thing-a conclusion from a set of data, a negative behavior from a student, an outcome from a meeting-we focus on certain stimuli and completely miss others. We suffer from the attentional blink that causes us to accumulate blindspots to important information.

For individuals and organizations who want to remain relevant by having new, different, and better solutions to pertinent problems, this phenomenon is crucial to understand. Once we’re mindful of our attentional blink, we just might start to pay attention to the stuff we could be missing out on, stuff we don’t yet understand. As cognitive researcher and gorilla-study man Daniel Simons says, “The main thing is knowing that you’ve got limitations.”

Magic is one medium that reveals these limitations. With their mastery of mind-bending illusions, magicians starkly display our cognitive tendency to “blink.” And while there’s really nothing magical about attention, it is increasingly important to consider as more diverse data shows up on our attentional screen from all our various podcasts and blogs and iPhones and other global plug-ins. In our twenty-first century world, that’s one reality that’s not about to vanish.

Don’t miss out on important information-information about your employees, co-workers, or consumers that might just be the key to better employee relations, organizational improvement, or the next big thing. Be mindful-not only of where you’re looking-but also of what you’re paying attention to.

Don’t blink.

Think About It
1) You might be making efforts to make your hiring practices more inclusive and more diverse. But what else are you missing? Are there internal barriers in place that keep new employees from advancing or veteran employees from continuous improvement?

2) Consider a time when you failed. What information might you have been missing that was vital for success?

3) What blindspots might you have when it comes to the people around you? What information could you be missing that might allow you to be a better listener, learner, manager, parent, or friend?

Bad call, ref!

You slam down the Pepsi you’ve been slurping, spilling some in the chips and dip and splattering some on your Vikings jersey. Who did they get to referee this game anyway? A couple of school kids?

Your friend and fellow Vikings-fan Jeff pipes up, noting that the refs called the same play our way last time-but nobody is in the mood to be rational. You chuck a pillow at him, making him spill his Pepsi, while the rest of your friends mercilessly heckle him until he takes back the ridiculous comment.

What is Jeff thinking? Any true Vikings fan would know the refs were the reason for this atrocious game, as well as the team’s 0-6 record thus far-it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with their coaching strategy, less-than-stellar running game, or their three fumbles in the first half. After the group outburst, you notice that, for the rest of the game, Jeff keeps his mouth shut about the calls, limiting his comments to hearty cheers.

Good.

Team alliances are just one binding factor that can cement people in a particular way of thinking and behaving. Once established in a tight group, it’s hard to go against the flow; just look at what happened to Jeff when he offered a logical alternative for why the referee made the call he did. Instead of risking further heckling or group rejection, Jeff shut his mouth.

Social-psychologists would explain this phenomenon as “Groupthink.” It’s our human tendency to try to fit in-to seek belonging with a group of similar people and to preserve group unity by adhering to the ideas, beliefs, and social norms of this group. The problem is, “preserving group unity” means rejecting people and ideas that don’t easily fit in that group.

Research on social identity suggests that this desire to form and preserve groups is built into our nature, and we construct these groups on the most minimal grounds. Our ancestors were more likely to get picked off by a saber tooth tiger if they were alone than if they were hunting in a group. Whether it’s in business conferences, junior high hallways, or the community soccer league, we like to know that somebody’s got our back. Like Jeff, we fear others’ disapproval and rejection, so we quickly learn and conform to group norms to stay “in.” By protecting people like us, we protect ourselves.

Belonging to a group isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It allowed our ancestors to survive. It gives us an identity and a way to interact with the world. But Groupthink becomes a problem in decision-making. Team allegiances and loyalty to group norms become so important that we lose our ability to think clearly and creatively.

Jeff piping up to defend the ref’s call went against unspoken group rules. Instead of entertaining his logical explanation, the group was only interested in a Vikings’ win. But without an alternative perspective, these fired-up fans couldn’t see the reason behind their losses-they wanted to believe it was the result of a string of bad calls.

Groupthink bans different solutions and ways of seeing. We think minimizing conflict is a positive thing, so we strive for comfortable consensus instead of disquieting dissent. We frown at the person in group meetings who stalls decision-making with questions and concerns. We look for desired outcomes in data even when the data contradicts our assumptions. Even in the face of conflicting information, research suggests that we’ll stick with our group and hold fast to our previously established ideas and beliefs.

Without actively inviting alternative perspectives, we get stuck like a scratched CD in the same type of processing and problem-solving, even when it might be necessary or beneficial to critically entertain other ideas. The 21st century presents a variety of problems and perspectives 20th century organizations didn’t have to take into account. It’s these new variables-a more diverse workforce, changing consumer needs, global competition-that organizations should consider when planning and strategizing. Active dissenters and conflicting information are often mistaken as barriers to progress or even personal attacks. But it’s these other perspectives that compel stagnant groups to greater creativity and innovation in a 21st century world, in a world that requires different ways of thinking and doing.

For the sake of belonging and security (or simply avoiding embarrassment), we too often stick to organizational norms and stifle dissenting perspectives. In fact, dissenters may be an organization’s best guard against a slew of unintended consequences-disengaged employees, high turnover rates among particular groups, a decline in creativity and innovation, or company blunders. Employing a variety of perspectives will allow you to see a variety of problems and solutions, equipping your organization to tackle 21st century problems from more effective, efficient, and innovative angles.

How will your organization invite healthy dissent?

Think About It:
1) Is your organization quick to stifle opposition in order to avoid conflict? What tactics can your group use to invite these alternative perspectives and constructive criticism?
2) How you practice a healthy measure of dissent in team meetings?
3) How does your organization invite and respect a variety of perspectives as useful for anticipating a variety of problems and proposing alternative solutions?

Every morning, you wake up at the crack of dawn, slug down a cup of black coffee, and take to the busy highways of North America. While other people zoom back and forth on their way to plush office jobs, you scrape the mangled carcasses of deer, raccoons, even bunnies off the roads all day long. This isn’t a job for just anyone-it takes a hero like you. It takes a roadkill collector.

You’re not likely to quit your day job to pursue a life of roadkill removal, but Discovery Channel star Mike Rowe makes it his job to try out such slimy professions. Why don’t you follow his example? You might say it’s because of the sweat and sludge, but cognitive scientists would say it’s because of your brain.

In his show Dirty Jobs, Mike and his camera crew venture into swamps, sewers, and a variety of mucky environments just to get a handle on America’s indispensable, undervalued jobs. And rather than just observing the work, Mike dives into each task, his untrained hands often bumbling around, making him look foolish and out-of-place next to the practiced professionals.

Through his camera lens, the American public gets a behind-the-scenes look at a smattering of experiences that we’ll probably never have, and we get a new understanding and appreciation for the people and professions that make our lives easier, safer, and cleaner.

In the same way we might keep our hands out of these dirty jobs, we often stay away from perspectives that differ from our own. Diving into other people’s worlds takes hard work-Mike Rowe certainly sweats and suffers through each new job.

Research in the world of cognitive science tells us that when we encounter new ideas, people, and information, our brain has to exert more energy to sort this information out-it doesn’t fit anywhere into our network of previous experiences. We’ve established strong neural networks that explain the world we know, and our efficient brain would rather cling to what is familiar than muster the extra energy necessary to absorb new information and build new neural pathways.

But this extra cognitive energy isn’t just some buzzing in your head-it sucks energy from your body too. It’s why you immediately plop down on the couch after a rigorous day of work, physically exhausted from the cognitive effort you churned out in front of the computer all day.

When we come into contact with unfamiliar beliefs and ideas, the most energy efficient thing to do is ignore them. So instead of jumping feet-first into unfamiliar, seemingly undesirable worlds, we get comfortably settled in our own, sticking to the people, places, and ideas we already understand.

It takes extra cognitive effort, even social bumbling to understand someone else’s perspective-sometimes it feels a bit like one of Mike Rowe’s dirty job escapades. But mindfully entertaining other perspectives can make us more familiar with and understanding of new people, new worlds, and new ideas. In fact, even after Mike Rowe spends a day up to the waist in sludge, both he and his viewers have a new appreciation for the men and women behind dirty jobs.

Who knows? As we also explore unfamiliar worlds, we might be surprised to find those environments more interesting and stimulating than the ones we’ve always known. Diving into other perspectives gives us access to a bank of new ideas. It opens up whole worlds of solutions to explore and helps us move beyond old ways of doing-something every organization needs to survive and thrive in this highly competitive, idea-based twenty-first century.

Follow Mike Rowe’s example, and dive right in!

Think About It
1) What can we learn from Mike’s hands-on approach to perspective?
2) Which people and ideas do we tend to label as less valuable?
3) What mucky areas do you need to dive into in order to better understand and appreciate a different perspective?
4) Can you think of any “dirty job” issues being swept under the rug at your organization? What voices or issues need to be brought to attention that might require a bit of initial discomfort or prolonged effort?
5) How mindful are you of appreciating perspectives and ideas you might not initially understand or agree with?

Check out any news feed, blog, or late night TV show, and you’ll probably hear something about President Obama’s Supreme Court selection Sonia Sotomayor. While in the past, the justices-mostly white males-have been chosen for their judicial record, Obama added a new criterion: empathy.

Empathy? Isn’t that just another word for touchy-feely?

At first glance, empathy in a Supreme Court Justice seems to favor someone irrational, emotional, even activist. But maybe we should dig into this term-empathy-before we make those assumptions.

According to social psychologists, empathy is merely the ability to identify with another’s thoughts, feelings, and attitudes. But we do that all the time, right? When someone makes a judgment call at work that results in a promotion, a new business direction, or even a mistake, we think about what we would have done if we were in their position. The problem is that we drag along all our biases and experiences when making the judgment call.

Often, when we try to be empathetic, we are actually being “empa-centric”-we are still judging their reality while looking through our own lenses. Being empathetic requires us to know the background, beliefs, and experiences of another person; and without a real knowledge of the other’s reality, we are simply guessing at what it’s like to be in their situation. We are bound to be empa-centric.

Cognitive neuroscience further confirms this point; research tells us that both the left and right-brain must work in sync for all our daily decision-making processes. From combing our hair to buying a car, the emotional component of our brain is active in our entire cognitive network. In fact, we fool ourselves when we think we can make strictly logical judgments free of any emotional slant. Even our supposedly logical decisions are shaped by our past experiences and emotions.

As a Latino woman raised in the Bronx, Sotomayor’s unique lens allows her to effectively understand the reality of minorities and low-income folks. When Sotomayor makes a judgment call based on someone’s rights under constitutional law, she fills some huge gaps in the experience of our current Supreme Court. While both conservatives and liberals have questioned his rationale, for President Obama, our Supreme Court becomes more capable in carrying out justice for all when its ability to empathize expands-when more justices can fully understand the oppression, underprivilege, and discrimination which undermine fairness and equality. This doesn’t mean that a white male can’t make good judgment calls on minority issues; it just means it will take more work to get inside that reality, to really know and understand the minority experience.

Next time you catch yourself thinking, “If I were in their shoes,” consider that you might be missing some key information. Because our own set of perspectives and experiences often gets in the way of our ability to be empathetic, we are bound to make mistakes when evaluating other people’s behavior. While we can’t get rid of our lenses, we can commit to trying on new ones. Be mindful of the perspectives you might be missing-and get to know the people and experiences behind them!

Think About It!

1) What role does empathy play in our decision-making?

2) What beliefs and experiences influence your own judgments?

3) Your particular lens already allows you to empathize with some people more than others. With whom do you naturally empathize with? Whose perspective might be more difficult for you to understand?

4) When you are working out a solution in your organization, who is sitting around the table? Whose perspective might you be missing when making the judgment call?

5) Think about a misunderstanding you had with someone. Were you looking at the situation from their perspective or only your own?

A number of years ago, Pacific Power and Light (PP&L), which serves many customers in the Cascade Mountains, was faced with solving an on-going problem that resulted in both an undesirable and unsafe job situation for the PP&L linemen.

In the Pacific Northwest, there are a number of ice storms in the fall and spring. These storms result in the accumulation of a significant ice load accumulating on the power transmission lines. If not removed, this ice will accumulate to the point that the lines will be over-stressed and break. The method used to remove the ice was to send linemen out into the field, have them climb the icy poles and towers and shake the lines with long poles hooked at one end. The linemen hated this job because it meant they would have to go into the woods, climb poles and towers, and shake the lines under extremely unpleasant conditions. A number of them were hurt when they fell from the icy poles and towers.

PP&L had, in the past, conducted a number of “brainstorming” sessions with no positive results. They then turned to a professional resource to organize still another session. He suggested that a diverse group be assembled to look at this problem. Rather than assembling just linemen and their supervisors, the resource insisted that people with a large variety of job functions be convened to look for a more creative way to get the ice off the power lines.

In the “brainstorming” session that followed, were linemen, supervisors, accountants, secretaries, and people from the mail room. Several hours into the meeting the professional resource was beginning to become concerned that this effort would be as unproductive as previous ones. Then, during one of the coffee breaks, he overheard two of the linemen talking.

“I hope we can finally figure out a better way to skin this cat.” said one. “I really hate this job. Why, just last week, I was coming down from a pole, and, when I hit the ground, I was looking eye to eye at one of the biggest, meanest black bears I’ve ever seen. That bear, apparently, was not happy that I had invaded his territory, and chased me for well over a mile before he was satisfied that I would not return.”
Trying to stimulate the group, the resource retold this tale to the rest of the session.

“Why don’t we train the bears to climb the poles. They are so big and so heavy that their weight would probably be enough to shake the wires and knock the ice off.” quipped one of the linemen.
After the laughter died down, the group thought of hundreds of reasons why that was a silly idea (some of the comments referred to the character or parentage of the person suggesting the idea, and will not be repeated here).

Then another of the linemen suggested that although training the bears seemed foolish, perhaps by placing honey pots on top of the poles, the bears would naturally climb the poles to get the honey and, in the process, shake the poles sufficiently to knock the ice off the lines.

After another period of laughter followed by more objections generally centered around the fact that the bears might chose to empty the honey pots in fair not foul weather, one of the more senior, more sarcastic linemen said, “You know all those fancy helicopters those fat cats in the front office fly around in all the time? Why don’t we grab one of those and fly from pole to pole placing the honey pots on top just after an ice storm. That way the honey will be there when we need it, and, besides, it will do those fat executives some good to walk for a change.”

Still another period of laughter followed. Then one of the secretaries spoke for the first time. “I was a nurse’s aide in Vietnam. I saw many injured soldiers arrive at the field hospital by helicopter. The down wash from the helicopter blades was amazing. Dust would fly everywhere. It was almost blinding. I wonder if we just flew the helicopter over the power lines a low altitude, would the down wash from those blades be sufficient to shake the lines and knock the ice off?”

This time there was no laughter – just silence. She had come up with an answer. By valuing diversity and by encouraging divergent thinking, the resource had enabled the group to come up with a possible solution to a problem all wanted solved.

By the way, ever since that meeting, PP&L uses helicopters to fly over the power transmission lines after ice storms. It works beautifully. Linemen are no longer required to climb up ice covered poles to shake the lines.

(Source: Ship 468)

Questions to Entertain
1) What can we learn from this story about the power of diversity with respect to problem-solving (i.e. innovation)?
2) What are some possibles reasons why previous “brainstorming” failed to generate a solution to the problem?
3) There was a positive result in this story. However, at which points in the story could the actions by the people in the group been different which may have prevented the group from discovering a solution to their problem?
4) For creativity (generating novel ideas) and innovation (generating solutions to problems) to flourish, what types of attributes/factors must exist in an an organization and its people?
5) When faced with solving problems in your organization, how mindful are you of bringing together diverse perspectives and experiences together to tackle the problems? And how good are you and others at listening to and valuing everyone’s ideas and stories no matter how ridiculous and off-beat they may sound? Remember, the solution (helicopters) began with a story about a bear.

“It’s pretty simple, ” my son Nicholas said matter-of-factly as he explained the concept of naked singularities. I don’t remember much else of the conversation except words like “black hole” and sucked.” And before your mind goes too deeply into the gutter a naked singularity is a space-time phenomenon, not something out of a middle school sex education class. Oh, I also remember pondering if I was smarter than an 8th grader (bet that same thought is bouncing in your head right now as well).

What struck me as my son talked about the topic of his science class project was his use of the word “simple” in explaining something that defies Einstein’s theory of relativity. Indeed, he made the phenomenon sound simple, though I suspect it is much more complex. He probably thought his old man’s brain would disintegrate into a dust pile if he went into any detail. He’s probably right. When it comes to naked singularities simple will do.

I like most people I know prefer simple over complex. Simple is easier than complex. Sounds better too. Ever heard of a music group called “Complex Minds” or a magazine named “Complexity.” Didn’t think so. Simple Minds and Simplicity are much more inviting sounding names.

A KISSing Problem
There’s no getting around it, we human creatures like simple. We like it so much we created this thing called the KISS Principle – Keep It Simple Stupid! Soothingly simple and succinct, imparting imbecilic status to anyone who might suggest a strategy involving any degree of complexity.
But what if, and pardon me as I suggest a ridiculous notion, the world in which we operate is rather complex and might require complex approaches. No really, stay with me here. Could it be mind-meltingly true that complex environments and issues are more prevalent than we desire? And what happens if attempt to apply the KISS Principle under the condition of complexity? Well, let’s take a look.

First, we must define this thing called complexity. Complexity can be defined as a situation in which one has many variables to consider, and that these variables interact in, often, unpredictable ways.  Other things being equal, an environment with 10 variables is more complex than one with 3 variables. For example, if you have 3 playing cards, there is a total of six different ways you can combine the cards (3 x 2 x 1 = 6). If you have 10 cards then the possible combinations is 3,628,800 (10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x3 x2 x1 = 3,628,800). Think about how complex it might be if you have 100 or 1,000 variables. Get the picture of complexity? With that said, let’s look at how we operationalize the KISS principle.

To apply the KISS Principle (to simplify) means that one must purge some variables.  Well, guess which variables we tend to discard? Often times it’s the ones we don’t understand well. Or the ones that cause us much angst. Sometimes we get rid of variables that do not fit with our perceived reality or mental models. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with eliminating variables – unless those variables we are tossing are crucial to understanding the problem and finding a solution.

For example, what if achieving success requires more than just working hard? Of course, we all know success (defined in this case from a capitalistic perspective) is the result of a combination of factors, some of which are not directly under our control.  For example, having connections can help a great deal in one’s success. Think of the phrase, “It’s who you know.” Having money at your disposal is often beneficial. Hard to “self-actualize” when you’re scrounging for food and shelter. Knowing the right people and having money are powerful factors that could potentially lead to success. I suspect they were key factors that helped George W. Bush and John Kerry get into Yale with “C” averages out high school. How else does one explain how students with average grades are admitted into one of the most prestigious universities in the world. I’m hoping it’s not because they worked so hard for their “C’s.” (That would be scary.)

I bet many factors are involved in the equation for success. Being in the right place at the right time probably doesn’t hurt. Being appropriately tall or short has its place. Studies suggest that being considered attractive is attractive to those you would like to attract in your quest for success. Being born in a certain time period, or in a particular geographic region or country can also be factors that can influence one’s potential success. The list of factors is long.

But somehow, some folks have taken that long list of potential “success” factors, applied the KISS Principle, and mindlessly reduced the list to one factor – hard work.  These well-meaning people walk around saying things like, “You can be anything you want just work hard,” or they’ll tell others to “Pull your self up by your own bootstraps.” The ones who read the Christian bible might even offer up this one to put the final nail into the coffin, “Idle hands are the work of the devil.”

While the message of hard work embedded in these sayings is certainly a positive one, there is a danger in reducing the many factors that can potentially lead to success down to one – because if hard work is the lone factor that leads to success then the lack of hard work (laziness) must certainly be the cause of failure. And here’s the trap door that leads to unintentional intolerance. Once we put the “lazy” label on some one or some group we tend not to be compassionate, understanding or helpful towards that person or group.

Lazy or Something Else?
We have framed laziness as a conscious choice people make, and as such we look negatively upon lazy people (because it’s their choice to be couch potatoes).  We don’t help lazy people. We help those who work hard.  In a sense, we let ourselves off the hook of having to help others, especially others who are strangers to us – the people of stereotypes. We may have some degree of cognitive dissonance (guilt) if we don’t have compassion for and assist those who do not find success because of reasons beyond their control.

No such dissonance torments us if we can label people as slackers who have “chosen” not to walk the road of success – a road fully paved with the blood, sweat and tears of hard work. The non-biblical quote often attributed to the bible is our modus operandi when we confront the “lazy” ones, “God helps those who helps themselves.”

Before anyone misinterprets what I am saying I want to make it clear that I believe in the importance of “hard work,” that it is often a necessary ingredient in the recipe for success.  But it is usually only one of many.  I also want to make it crystal clear that a culture that places great value on “individual choice” and romanticizes the Horatio Alger story can lead individuals within that culture to peel the many layers of the success onion down to one single layer – HARD WORK. And then the blaming and negative comments about “those lazy” people emerge. “If only they would work harder,” the mindless chorus sings.

I suspect that most everyone, in a mindful, reflective state will agree that hard work is just one of myriad factors, some within and others outside our control, that contribute to success. The problem is, as cognitive researchers suggest, we are often mindless, and in our mindlessness our brain efficiently uses our past experiences and acquired knowledge about others to make quick, superficial judgments. This can lead to errors in judgment and errors in “labeling” when we lack sufficient information about a person or situation. Recall that our brain works on an efficiency principle and therefore takes shortcuts whenever it can as a way of conserving precious energy.  It can conserve more energy (use fewer neurons) by reducing the number of factors it must consider in making calculations of a situation. Our brain loves the KISS principle.

Reducing Errors
So what are we to do to reduce potential mistakes in labeling others? Understanding a little of what drives human behavior is a good initial step. First, recognize that we all label using categories and mental models developed through previous experience. Recognizing this natural brain operation is key. Second, remember that our brain, as a means of conserving energy, takes short cuts and simplifies our world for us. Put differently, it minimizes the number of variables it must calculate in any situation. Third, in its desire to simplify, it sometimes discards valuable variables and factors (or does not even perceive them in the first place), potentially leading to mistakes in judgment, perception and interpretation. Our brain tends to filter out any information that might cause more neurons to go online.  This partially explains why we gravitate towards people and ideas that fit our conception of the world and reject other things that do not conform to our mental models. This is the KISS Principle in action.

Wow, it almost seems as if there is not much we can do to better the situation if our brain operates with its own KISS Principle. But there are some things we can do to break from the gravitational pull of simplicity and closed-mindedness. One important thing is to become more aware and mindful of when we are simplifying too much and leaving out important, crucial information. In meetings, be sure to always ask the question, “What if we are missing someone or something that can help us see the situation differently?”

It will be difficult but we can lay down our Blackberry, iPhones and gadgets and listen more intently to differing points of view, and ask ourselves what different conclusions we might draw if we took differing perspectives into account. Stop texting and checking your email every five minutes. I’m pretty sure it won’t kill you to do so, and I’m fairly confident it will make others in the room more appreciative.

We can surround ourselves more often with people who “force” us to consider other factors – factors we would normally not entertain. So, hang out with different people during lunch. Challenging ourselves to move out of our comfort zones and into the comfort zones of others gives us crucial practice in encountering a complex world.

All these things allow us to practice engaging complexity, and not oversimplifying when we do so. They allow us to experience “other” variables and factors, so that we can become more comfortable with the new, novel and different. To get better we must practice what we want to get better at. It’s really that simple (so to speak)! And it doesn’t even have to involve naked singularities.

Questions to Entertain
1) Why does our brain simplify things for us?
2) What are some complex situations you may have oversimplified that led to a wrong conclusion(s)?
3) In what ways might we “simplify” people?
4) What can you do to practice not oversimplifying?
5) How can you get others to understand the idea of, “simplify, but not too much?”

What Do You See?

Old or Young Girl

-If you see an old lady, can you also see a young lady?
-If you see a young lady, can you also see an old lady?

Both are there! Lesson: there are frequently different, and equally valid, ways to read and interpret a situation. The conclusions we draw flow from previous experiences. All that we encounter is understood through the lenses of culture, family, friends, values, beliefs, etc. Our ability and willingness to listen to alternative viewpoints and explanations are measures of open-mindedness which is key to creativity and innovation. If we seek to innovate (i.e., solve problems) better we would be well-served to entertain multiple perspectives.

Questions to Entertain
1) Why do you think some people see an old lady and others see a young lady?
2) How does focusing on certain parts of the image blind you from seeing “something else?”
3) Is it possible to see both the young and old lady simultaneously? Why? Why not?
4) How open are you to suspending a current perception to “see something else?”
5) What might you do to keep from being blinded from other ways of seeing situations?
6) What can we learn from this picture? What insights have you gained?

There was a cowherd boy who took his cows to the meadows every morning and brought them back to the cowshed at the end of the day. One evening, as he was tying the cows up for the night, the boy found that one of them was missing her rope. He feared that she might run away, but it was too late to go and buy a new rope. The boy didn’t know what to do, so he went to a wise man who lived nearby and sought his advice.

The wise man told the boy to pretend to tie the cow, and make sure that the cow saw him doing it. The boy did as the wise man suggested and pretended to tie the cow. The next morning the boy discovered that the cow had remained still throughout the night. He untied all the cows as usual, and they all went outside. He was about to go to the meadows when he noticed that the cow with the missing rope was still in the cowshed. She was standing on the same spot where she had been all night. He tried to coax her to join the herd, but she wouldn’t budge. The boy was perplexed.

He went back to the wise man who said, “The cow still thinks she is tied up. Go back and pretend to untie her.” The boy did as he was told, and the cow happily left the cowshed. This is what the guru does with the ego of the disciple. The guru helps untie that which was never there. Like the cow, due to our ignorance, we believe that we are bound by the ego when, in fact, we are completely free. We need to be convinced of this, however.

Questions to Entertain
1) What do the “ropes” in this story represent? The ego?
2) What “ropes” do you have that keep you tied up from exploring different perspectives?
3) When are “ropes” bad and when are they good?
4) What can you do to untie yourself from your current thinking at least temporarily?
5) How do organizations keep their talent “tied up?” How can organizations untie them ?
6) What can we learn from this story? What insights have you gained?