Monthly Archives: July 2017

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Living in the Past

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I read a quote from former US president Bill Clinton today.  “When our memories outweigh our dreams, we have grown old.”  The quotes juxtaposition between memories and dreams intrigued me.

You could intrepret this statement to imply dreams are to live for while memories are the past.  These reminisces  can provide pleasure, but also pain, they don’t lead to action, it is already done.

Weighting Dreams and Actions

On the whole, I very much enjoy remembering my past.  My life has been a happy one and so far my personal goal of attaining maximum happiness and pleasure has been achieved.

Interestingly this was accomplished not by dreaming, but rather by taking action. Of course,  dreams can lead to action, and I am pretty sure that was the underlying assumption Mr. Clinton had when he made the quote.

Without some attempt at realization, dreams are just empty thoughts.  Memories may not move you forward but they derive from dreams that were realized.

Doing Less

If memories require dreams to be acted on, than more dreams than memories implies less action, which is often considered to be an attribute of getting old.

Although, as the population ages this becomes less and less true.  The number of instances of active oldsters (e.g., people over 100 running marathons, doing acrobatics or acting in major films) continues to be on the rise.

These active oldsters have both ample memories and dreams they are aggressively persuing.  This current reality  makes Mr. Clintons quote somewhat an anacronism of the past.

I dream about my future successes and accomplishments and I am actively planning how to achieve them, even after I reach 100 years old.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Skill or Behaviour

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Many organizations, whether business, government, non profit or charitable, consider the skill bar to represent the price of entry, but ability to engage in interpersonal relationships is the prize.

Once it’s clear the minimum skills (knowledge, education, experience) are met, the focus is on relationship capabilities.  That is, the ability to inspire and be inspired by others.

Whether it is joining an organization or moving through successively senior roles the determining factor is how well you interact with others.

Who would you hire?

In this hypothetical scenario you are a hiring manager.  All the cadidates demonstrate through their resume, interview and skill tests they meet your minimum requirements.

Three of the candidates excel in the area of skills, education and experience far exceeding the minimum in these areas. One candidate just meets the skill expectations.

On an interpersonal level all interact well with you during the interview and you include some meetings with other members of your organization and the feedback is favourable.

Of the four candidates one stands out relative to the so called “soft skills” Everyone liked them immediately.  This candidate is the one whom met but did not exceed the knowledge/experience reqiurements. The others are just average in this area.

Who would you hire?

Rhetorical Question

Obviously since this blog allows one way communication only, I am going to provide my answer which I already knew before asking (but I encourage you to think about what you would do).

Hire the candidate that was well liked.  They will far succeed your expectations.  While it is true both knowledge based skills and those underpinned by emotional intelligence can probably be learned, the emotional skills are probably harder to develop.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Do you care

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Have you ever wondered why you behave the way you do?  This is not a simple topic with a multitude of variables driving your actions and motivations.

Today’s post I explore how desires (what you want, what you really, really want) affects behaviour?   Desire or wants occur on an emotional level.

Where does it come from?

Things you want are almost exclusively associated with things you care about.  If you don’t care whether rock and roll is playing on your radio you probably won’t want to buy tickets to a rock concert.

Other variables might influence you to buy concert tickets (e.g., going with a friend or an opportunity to win a prize) but you typically need to care about a topic to want to participate.

Shaping Behaviour

A key underlying driver of behaviour is how invested you are in a topic.  The more you care, the stronger the reaction, that is your desire to achieve and excel.

Obligatory Sports Analogy

If you are a rabid soccer fan you are far more likely to want your team to succeed.  The casual fan enjoys the play but is no where near as invested in the outcome as the enthusiastic fan.

If you are a player and winning really matters to you (you care a lot about the result) your playing behaviour is likely to be aggressive and highly competitive.

If exercise is your what you want, the result can be far less relevant, even irrelevant. Your play will usually match your level of emotional investment.

Knowledge Influencing Action

The next time you are aggressively pursuing something, think about your motivations.  Why do you care?  This approach can help you define a successful strategy to achieve your goal.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Behaving Badly

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Expecting people will practice respectful behaviour toward others is a standard for all societies and cultures.  The challenge, of course, is defining what respectful behaviour is.

To a large extent bad behaviour is in the eyes of the beholder, that is the recipient of the actions.  Difficulties arise because the categorization of the behaviour as bad or acceptable can be largely subjective.

Acceptable Behaviour

Putting the subjective aspects aside there is generally consensus on really bad behaviour, although most of these are extreme. Even the extremes have exceptions though.  For example:

  • violence perpetrated against others or even self flagellation is considered unacceptable
  • full nudity (although not so much at a nudist colony)
  • shouting (except for emergencies when getting attention is practical and accepted)

Extreme examples aside, the following have a very subjective component;

  • not listening, ignoring others, disregarding others needs.  (this is subjective in that one person may feel ignoredor disregarded well another would think nothing of the sort)
  • insults ( one persons insult may be anothers compliment)
  • disreputable appearance ( a beauty to me might be an ugly duckling to you

Meeting Expectations

Ultimately others judge your behaviour when it meets their expectations.  When it does not you may be labled as rude, disrespectful, arrogant and so on.

The resolution to this dilema is the practice of self awareness.  Using a variety of skills to sense others expectations and act accordingly.  The usually results in your being held in high esteem.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Newton’s 3rd Law

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Sir Issac Newton is known (among other things) for defining three physical laws of motion that are the underpinning of classic mechanics.  The third law is sometimes used in behavioural analogies.

Newton’s Third Law of Motion

When one body exerts a force on a second body, the second body simultaneously exerts a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction on the first body.

This is a law (not a theorum) because there is mathematical and experimental proof that it is correct.  In a mechanical sense, this law has numerous practical applications.

How humans behave

The behavioural application of this law ( not proven) states every action has an equal but opposite reaction.  The idea is something like, if you shout at me, you can reasonably expect me to shout back at you (with equal volume).

Conceptually this means you should expect a contrary reaction when you take an action.  For best results, your behavioural strategies should include how to resolve (or at least mitigate) these reactions.

Not Universal

I don’t believe every action I take has an equal and opposite reaction.  That is, outside the laws of physics (e.g. the behavioural space) this law is not universal in it’s applicability.

It does however resonate to a certain level of logic and we should never be surprised when are actions do create a reaction.  This is something it is better to be prepared for, than not.  (Boy scouts will get this.)

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Judging

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When you form an opinion or reach a conclusion about a set of data you are judging.  The process may include both active or passive fact gathering as well as consultation with others.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger

In the late 1960’s, “Lost in Space” was  a popular TV series modeled after the childrens novel “A Swiss Family Robinson” . The TV show was about a family lost in space (in the book they were lost at sea).

The TV family had a robot cleverly called Robbie (Robbie the robot).  The young adolescent member of the family (Will Robinson) often made decisions based on questionable judgements at best.

The flawed judgements were regularly identified by Robbie (the young masters protector)  who would ejaculate the catch phrase “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger”

This became a very popular catch phrase of the time, as sound bites from popular television shows often do.   Of course the audience recognized this as a clue Will was about to suffer the consequences of a bad judgement.

Judging

The act of judging represents a mixing of the objective (facts) and the subjective (assumptions and conclusions).  While we cannot live without making judgements, caution is advised.

Like Will, the  fictional intrepid space traveller, we all run the risk of adverse consequences resulting from our behavioural decisions, which are based on our judgements.

Unlike Will we do not have Robbie the robot around to warn us.  My advise is to think through the potential impacts associated with your judgements.

Consider the worst potential result and be ready to accept it before acting.  If it is unacceptable, reconsider the judgement and your approach.  This could save you some grief.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Buying WEED

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I bought some WEED today.  WEED is the stock ticker on the TSX for Canopy Growth.  My posts typically do not contain specifics about investments, so this is a bit of a change for me, in more ways than one.

Excitement Reigns

I have long been a believer that marijuana should be a freely available recreation drug with no more restrictions on it’s access or use than those for alchohol.

It is certainly a robust debate as to whether alchohol or marijuana is more harmful.  I believe there are strong arguments on both sides.  Regardless I eagerly look froward to the upcoming legalization.

This is not a desire for personal use but rather more about economics and criminality.

For me it is a no brainer to take  the obscene profits from selling this drug from the hands of criminals and put them in the hands of government (although some would argue it’s the same thing)

Growing up, many musicians that I admired were sent to jail, and given criminal records, for nothing worse than smoking marijuana.  To a large extent this was more a warning to their youthful followers than anything else.

Extending my Stock Purchase Guidelines

As regular readers know my investment advice is:

– never buy anything you don’t fully understand (i.e., the product, operations and markets)

– diversify to mitigate risk

– analyze the undelying value before buying

Marijuana stock meets the first two criteria.  Given it is not yet legal and only speculation as the underlying value within the producing companies, this is not a normal purchase for me.

Which brings me to my biggest no-no, investing in something because it feels good.  In this case, for me it feels good and rarely (not often) what the heck, go for enjoyment. (insert sucking inhale noise here).

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Leveraging Bias

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Everyone with a brain has some bias.  This can be unconscious (automatic or implicit) as discussed in yesterdays post.  Or you can be fully aware and elect to believe and act accordingly (or not).

For me having a bias is neither good nor bad, rather it is how you deal with it that is important.  For many bias is often thought of in negative terms.

If your behaviour resulting from personal bias is effective, because you make it so through thoughtful consideration, I see no fault.

Acting automatically on a unconscious bias  without analysis of the consequences, or a regard to results is when problems arise.  This usually creates negative consequences.

The consequences might be immediate or long term, impacting your relationships but probably, sticking to a bias when evidence strongly suggests otherwise does not lead to positive outcomes.

Self Awareness

Behaving with a high degree of self awareness is a good way to mitigate the risks created by. your potentially harmful bias.  You might not change or drop your bias, understanding it and behaving accordingly is all that’s needed.

For Example

You may have a bias to alternate sexual orientation.  Yet interacting respectively with all others (everyone is important) regardless of your bias, should be your chosen behaviour.

When your bias is conscious you can choose how to act.

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Unconcious Bias

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Implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. Typically you are even aware of youhave made an assessment.

This could be as asimple as someone dressed in dirty torn clothes appoaching you on the street.  Thier purpose may be to ask for directions.

Many would unconciously assess this person as a beggar just from their dress and depending on your bias toward street charity, you may take action to avoid them or draw out your money before they even reach you (embarrassing if all they seek is directions).

Consequences

Implicit bias can have positive or negative consequences depending on the context or your perspective.  If the afformentioned example did involve someone seeking a donation and you successfully avoided them, for you the conseqence could be positive.  For the person in need, not so much.

The main drawback to implicit or unconcious bias is your behaviour might not be appropriate or more importantly might not be what would choose to do, given some thoughtful analysis.

This could lead to regret or even second guessing on your part.  What if I had just thought about it, I probably would not have done that.

Conscious Bias

Closely associated with the automatic bias, is the case where a bias is acted on purposefully because the benefits are thought to outweigh the consequences.

Police and customs agents are well known for this approach.  Identifying a smuggler or a miscreant before the crime is committed can be very difficult.

Profiling and targeting based on statistical analysis can be a shortcut  to this identification, although it’s easily seen this approach can catch innocents in it’s net.

Whether concious or unconcious, bias is a behaviour to be avoided as much as possible.  Self awareness and reasoned analysis may take more effort, but as with most things greater effort/better results.

 

Random thoughts – keeping you on your toes

Balancing performance and process

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How well you complete the execution or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function can be measured.  This measure is often refered to as a performance appraisal.

The appraisal can cover performance across a specified period (e.g., six or twelve months) or it can be for a specified task or series of tasks.  (e.g, how well you performed in a soccer or baseball game.)

Process is how you completed the task.  That is a defined series of actions or steps required to achieve the goal.  Often for repeatablility and consistency of performance, process steps are documented.

Achieving Results

The focus of this post is the synergy between performance and process.  Taken together, leveraging both competence and skill  associated with high performance and consistency and quality associated with defined process, the  likelihood of high quality results produced with minimal effort is much greater.

The key is to balance both these concepts.  A clear, simple process will enable a high performer to excel.  It positions medium and low performers for success as well.

Overall, documented processes that are easy to understand provide the framework for performance.  That is not to say high performance cannot be achieved without clear process, but the opportunity for exceptional process is increased.

Another feature of defined process is sustainability.  One characteristic of the North American economy is a higher percentage of employee turnover than 50 years ago.

As employee turnover,  the training effort is lowered  and consistency of results is stable when the processes (how a task is performed) are well defined.