Bubble Up

We are a world of wall builders, partitioners and dividers of space. We long for the security of safe places. We construct these barriers in a vain attempt to control the elements, to keep the rain from dampening the fire, the wind from covering our lives with the inevitable dust. Many of the walls we build are essential for our survival. Many, however, are not. By fortifying the unnecessary walls, we in business and industry huddle in systems that are closed. The consequence: Thinking decays and novelty vanishes.

It’s not enough, however, to say we simply need to change, to tear down the unnecessary so that we can usher in the new, or even the evolved. We also need to understand why it is necessary to change, what we are changing and what we’re changing into.

That was some of thinking that took place at the 2nd Annual Bubble Wrap Competition for Young Inventors this year. Sponsored by Sealed Air Corp, the creator of the famed Bubble Wrap, they received more than 1,400 entries from students from 39 states.

Max Wallack, an 11 year old from Natick, Massachusetts was among 15 semifinalists. Wallack spent months creating Bubble Wrap-filled socks with elastic and fabric fasteners to tie around the wrists of people with carpel tunnel syndrome.
“I wanted to help my grandmother because she had all these cumbersome splints, things that didn’t help at all. Before she has surgery, she was wearing it and it usually helped.”

The contest was administered by the Akron, Ohio-based National Museum of Education and was promoted in schools across the country and was limited to students in Grades 5 through 8. Contest entries had to be original inventions that incorporated the use of clear Bubble Wrap brand cushioning.

The competition encourages the kind of creativity, invention and inventiveness demonstrated by Sealed Air’s founders 47-years ago when they realized a decorative wall covering they had designed actually make good cushioning for items being shipped.

What a better way to encourage and celebrate great invention that to try to encourage others, even children, to take the product and try to reinvent something else out of it.

The real objective of bringing new ideas into your business is to see your place in the world as it is today, based on your current thinking and knowledge, not as it has been in the past or as we might imagine or wish it to be. Once we understand and integrate those new ideas that form today’s thinking, then we can act according to those ideas, opening our groups and organizations to real novelty and innovation.

Imagine that!

Risk vs. Reward

Many companies search for the Holy Grail, the “secret sauce” for sustainability and high growth. Seeking perfection, many companies become anxious and neurotic. They tend to orate and obsess and veer towards the cold canyons of careerism. They tend to expect too much of their lives at work, taking more than they replenish.

Seeking success, on the other hand, rather than
perfection can lead to victory. Successful companies tend to be a chorus, rather than an audience. They consider the viscidities of victory and they are more interested in searching…reaching for ordinary victories rather than extraordinary perfection.

Successful companies, more than perfect ones, find growth opportunities. We can see it in the spiking stock prices of smaller companies and even in the shares of big companies with engaging growth stories. Emerging markets around the world are booming for the same reasons.

Market watchers and investors, like many corporate planners and developers have been waiting for the pendulum to finally swing back in favor of growth stocks, and that seems to be happening. But momentum investors have added fuel to the fire of particular stocks, industries and even parts of the world to push prices even higher.
Of course, opportunity involves risk. A long list of potential threats could bump those growth stories off their rails and send stocks down hard. But successful companies know how to take these peeks and valleys in stride and so far, no problem. Our appetite for risk clearly did evaporate when fixed-income markets blew up over the summer.

Risk is fine if you’re getting paid enough to take it. Investors who bought fixed-income securities tied to the subprime mortgage market certainly weren’t. Citibank who pursued perfection and took more than they replenished crossed the line. Other’s buying the hottest growth stocks today may be crossing the risk-reward line, too.

There’s plenty of good news to support stocks and companies in general and growth stocks and companies in particular. The Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate cut boosted markets by more than one percent the other day. And the world’s economies, as a group, are particularly robust.
But there are plenty of risks, too from the shaky US housing market to oil prices, which haven’t slowed anyone down yet, but they will.

From all of this there is a secret to success and sustainability in growth companies and markets. Oddly enough, it was recently mentioned by Jack Connors who spoke about the agency, Hill, Holiday, Connors, Cosmopulos, Inc. The agency he sold to the Interpublic Group, last year.

According to Connor’s he progressively turned over the reins of his agency and allowed a team to form and build a core staff. “The secret to it is, actually, they like each other. They really enjoy working together. They’re a team. They’re very bright. They go after things together. They radiate mutual trust and respect. Prospects pick that up. It’s a very rare thing to find.”

He’s right, of course. Teams who like each other, trust each other actually work together and sustain each other. They do so by asking three important questions: do you know the risks? Are you getting paid to take them and do you have the right people in place?

Taking Notes

Everything of value I ever learned didn’t come from others, but from listening.

It didn’t come from acerbity or intellect, willfulness or determination. It didn’t come from inventiveness or vision. It didn’t come from hubris, exceptionalism or jovial self-confidence. It came from listening to my life and trying to understand what it was really about, which was often quite different than what I wanted or would have liked it to be.

It can be boiled down to a simple thought: before you can tell your life what you want to do with it, you must listen to what your life is telling you about who you are. You must listen for the truths and values that are at the heart of your identify – not the standards by which you must live – but the standards by which you cannot but live if you are going to live your own life.

It took time and hard-won experience to sense the difference between the protective masks and self-serving fictions I wore and told others to find the experience that allowed me to listen to my life.

It was compounded, I think by the fact that from the first day of school, we’re taught to list to everything and everyone but ourselves, to take notes and gather clues about living from the people and powers around us.

As some of you know, I facilitate business marketing and innovation sessions, and from time to time participants show me the notes they are taking. The pattern is nearly universal: people take copious notes on what leaders say and they sometimes take notes on the words of certain wise people in the room, but rarely, if ever, do they take notes on what they themselves say.

Why? I think it’s because we listen for guidance from everywhere else but within.

I urge you to turn the note-taking around because the words we speak often contain the counsel we are trying to give ourselves. We have a strange conceit in our global business culture that simply because we have said something, we understand what it means. But often we do not, especially when we are speaking from a deeper place than intellect and ego and speak the kind of words that arise when we feel safe enough to speak the truth. At those moments, we need to listen to what our lives are saying and take notes on it, lest we forget our own truth or deny we ever heard it.

Influencing and Changing Behavior

Often, when you ask someone to describe the greatest achievements in their lives, they will inevitably describe a change they made in their behavior.

And when you ask the same person how they accomplished that change, they give you a variety of answers. Some say they changed all at once; others say they couldn’t make the change they wanted to make even though they knew it was in their best interest, and still more say they tried to change multiple times and used different tactics each time before succeeding with a change.

This leads to the insight for a model for change and to identify stages to change, (Prochaska, 1999) and it provides us with an approach to “how to change behavior.”

Stages of change are most successfully understood when used at a specific time, applying each different stage to whatever the unique situation may be. In other words, all behavior is not created equally and thus, not solved the same way.

The most important thing to remember about the stages is that one does not inevitably lead to the next – it’s possible to become stuck at one stage or another, and regress – you can jump forward or backwards at any time.

However, by understanding the stages, and the processes that are useful within each one, you can help move an individual or member of a group through the cycle to action in any given circumstance and improve the overall relationship between those leaders and the team that supports them.

Stages of Change:

1. Pre-contemplation
2. Contemplation
3. Preparation
4. Action
5. Maintenance

If an individual gets through one stage in the cycle, it greatly improves their chances to take effective action on their challenge. The key to success is to recognize at what stage an individual occupies and what are the challenges for them. Research and common-sense confirms that people who are not ready to accomplish change, that is people who are not ready to fully embrace the kinds of change that lead to sustainable personal authority (leadership), autonomy or who occupy an earlier stage but through sheer force of will push themselves into action, inevitably will set themselves up for failure.

It all begins at the beginning or pre-contemplation.

Pre-contemplation:

At this stage, individuals have no intention of changing their behavior, and typically deny that there is a need to change. They will act, but often as a result of external pressures.

Most pre-contemplators don’t want to change themselves, only the people who offer incessant criticism. They often do something because of pressure from others – a spouse who threatens to leave, an employer who threatens to fire them, etc. In the case, individuals may consider change because they feel that it is what someone with greater authority, rank, status or role want them to do.

They want people to stop nagging them. When this fails, pre-contemplators may change, but only as long as the pressure is great and constant. Once it’s gone, they revert to the old patterns.

Pre-contemplators resist change. When the subject comes up, they shift the conversation, when an article is written, they turn the page. They lack information about the issue and they tend to remain ignorant at all costs.

Pre-contemplators are often demoralized as well. They don’t want to think, read, talk or listen about the problem or the change because they feel the situation is hopeless.

Contemplation:

“I want to stop feeling so overwhelmed”. Those are the words of typical contemplators. In this stage, individuals may acknowledge that there is a need to change and may have even begun to think seriously about it. Contemplators work to understand the problem, to see its causes, and to consider possible solutions, but they have indefinite plans to action.

In fact, contemplators may be far from actually making a commitment to action. At this stage, the contemplator may know they are heading down the wrong street, but they are not ready to turn around. This is the nature of contemplation: they know the destination and even how to get there, but they are not ready to go yet.

It is not unusual for contemplators to spend lots of time telling themselves that some day they are going to change. Fear of failure can keep them searching for years for a more complete understanding of their problem or a more sensible solution.

Contemplators want to change but this desire exists simultaneously with an unwitting resistance to it. This ambivalence is understandable since action brings with it a paralyzing fear of failure. Other ambivalences can also prevent change: the search for absolute certainty, waiting for the magic moment, wishful thinking and premature action.

Emotional arousal can move an individual to change. However do not confuse emotion with action. Emotions are necessary and inevitable and they must be respected, but they are not the object of the endeavor.

Preparation:

Most people in the preparation stage are planning to take action within a very short time, and are making the final adjustments before they begin to change behavior. Although they are in the preparation stage and are committed to action, and may appear ready for action, they have not yet resolved their ambivalence. They may still need to convince themselves that taking the action or making the change is what is best for them.

People who wake up in the morning, decide that today is the day and cut short their preparation time lower their chance of success. They would make better use of their time by planning carefully, developing a firm detailed scheme for action and making sure that they have learned enough to carry them through to the completion of this action.

Action:

This is the stage where people overtly modify their behavior. It is the most obviously busy period and one that requires the greatest commitment of time and energy. Changes made are visible to others ad therefore receive the greatest recognition.

The greatest danger here is to equate action with change. Action is not the only time that a person makes progress towards overcoming a problem or embracing change.

Maintenance:

At this stage, people must work to consolidate the gains that they have made in the Action and other stages. Change never ends with action. In maintenance as well as action, commitment is not enough. Environmental controls remain necessary for success.

In many circles, one might argue that ignoring the work of change and simply stating a desired outcome is more efficient to the needs of an organization, as it supports and is central to the task of the organization. If it's a business the primary task is to make money and get things done. This, like so many other biases is only half true, where the effort is to implement sustainable organizational growth. There, to ignore the separate but integrated stages of change is to risk losing vital information and the long-term support needed to succeed.

Humiliation

Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." … I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends failed attempts." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy.”... I'd like to have a word for "the joy of not really knowing what to do next" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a free bottle of water." I've never had the right words to describe tragedy, forgiveness and now that I've entered the topic of this month’s newsletter, I need them more than ever.

For as long as there has been literature, human beings have puzzled over human being. In the Iliad, King Agamemnon says, “I am not to blame. Zeus and Fate and Fury stalking through the night, they are the ones who drove the savage madness in my heart.” This is Agamemmon’s account of his catastrophic decision to seize Achilles’ prize, a slave girl named, Briseis. At the moment he acted, Agamemnon “blazing with anger” had no doubt he was justified. He needed to protect his honor and avoid disgrace. But looking back in the light of the military devastation his decision caused, it seem to him to have been “savage madness,” his reason was distorted, the act was not entirely his, another agency was involved, another mind; one whose purposes he cannot fully understand, but which nevertheless acts through him.

Having words filled with meaning to cover these mysteries of the human condition is something not to ignore.

Consider this, we live in an age when complacency has, at least for the time being, been shaken. Complacency was in a full package of benefits at the end of the last millennium. For example, we thought that we can find our all we need to know about human behavior and motivation by conducting polls, examining democratic votes, balanced decision and judgment in courts of law, choices made in the market place and changing fashion. In short, all human motivation is essentially transparent. We also thought that all human disagreements are in principal resolvable through rational conversation and mutual understanding. That we had reached the end of history and the epic struggle of historical change was over and what is left is basically a homogenizing process of “globalization.” We thought that all serious psychological problems will soon be treatable either by drugs or neurosurgery.

Of course, all of this complacency was changed when the World Trade Center was destroyed. For what are we to make of suicidal fundamentalists who kill themselves along with thousands of innocent adults and children? In addition to the shock and emotional trauma, there was a rip in the fabric of our understanding. We no longer feel confident that we fully grasp the phenomena that confront us. Of course, if one hold onto the complacent picture of human motivation there is nothing this side of human events that will force us out of it. We might say that if we only knew more about the history of degradation of certain peoples, we would eventually come to understand all there is to know about their motivations. We would understand their reasons.

Ironically, this is the view terrorists share. If one reads those who want to blow us up, it is striking how much they try to present themselves as reasonable. “What American is tasting now is only a copy of what we have tasted,” Osama bin Laden said shortly after September 11th. “You are tasting the same for more than 80 years we have tasted humiliation and disgrace.” In other words, according to Mr. bin Laden, we deserve to be attacked, we deserve to be humiliated. No doubt there’s lots to learn about humiliation, but might there not be a further, darker opinion? There’s an opinion by both liberal and conservative leaders that no one seeks to be humiliated. I think this assumption needs to be called into question.

The terrorist thinks it is because his people have been humiliated that he is justified in his acts. But the situation might be reversed. This is, because he takes a certain pleasure in destructive hatred, he has become attached to his sense of humiliation. Thus while it might be true that the terrorist kills out of a sense of revenge, it is also true that the terrorist holds onto his sense of humiliation in order that he should be able to go on killing.

How do we understand someone who is motivated to keep feeling humiliated?

On the surface, the terrorist sincerely believes that he hates his humiliation, and would do anything to get rid of it. He would be furious at the suggestion that, really, he has a hidden longing to stay connected to his sense of degradation. Humiliation is nothing he wants and doing anything to promote it is against his own sense of his best interests. It’s irrational for him to pursue it. And yet this goes to the heart of insight: that human beings tend toward certain forms of motivated irrationality of which they have little or no awareness.

This is genuine unreason at work. And once you can get a glimpse of it and learn how to confront it more effectively, you may be able to see its workings in government and among our elected officials, in business, in the law and closer to home, even in the home.