By Nassim Taleb
Before the discovery of Australia, Europeans thought that all swans were white, and it would have been considered completely unreasonable to imagine swans of any other color. The first sighting of a black swan in Australia, where black swans are, in fact, rather common, shattered that notion. The moral of this story is that there are exceptions out there, hidden away from our eyes and imagination, waiting to be discovered by complete accident. What I call a “Black Swan” is an exceptional unpredictable event that, unlike the bird, carries a huge impact.
It’s impossible to predict who will change the world, because major changes are Black Swans, the result of accidents and luck. But we do know who society’s winners will be: those who are prepared to face Black Swans, to be exposed to them, to recognize them when they show up and to rigorously exploit them.
Read more here
Friday, July 5, 2013
Inside Brains of Winners
Everyone knows a name dropper when they hear one. Buzz names like Gates, Jiwei, Jobs, Nooyi, Zuckerberg and Winfrey can give dramatic pause to a conversation and pique collegial interest. But their mere mention can also throw a name dropper under the credibility bus quicker than they can say “My cousin was college roommates with J.K. Rowling’s agent’s sister.”
If you’re in the know, you’ve already gathered that success is more about the brain than ever before. Cognitive neuroscience has revealed and continues to expose the incredible capacities of the human brain, particularly as they relate to success and optimization. When it comes to your professional reputation, having others chatting it up about your super successful brain should be the goal. Here are four brain strategies that people who consistently grasp success claim as their own—and you can, too.
First, develop an Opportunity Radar. An Opportunity Radar is a successful person’s ability to recognize non-traditional paths or circumstances leading to positive outcomes. How do you do that? Make sacrifices to be in the right place at the right time, don’t let your confidence rest only in your salary, don’t just think outside of the box—create your own boxes, some of which you may never use, but that’s OK. You can either stand around in long line to ride the success Ferris Wheel, or figure out how you can build your own thrilling ride by finding the right non-traditional opportunity. Of course, getting on that wild ride may take some nerve. Truly successful brains have risk management figured out to a degree as well. Read on.
You’ll need to calibrate your Optimal Risk Gauge. Successful people know when and how to take risk and they most likely learned much of what they know about risk by doing things the hard way. We’re not just talking entrepreneurial risk, but all kinds of risks: time, relationships, financial, creative. Research amply explains that too little or too much risk leads to dissatisfying failure, but a moderate level of risk appropriately challenges us so we remain motivated, confident, and leave plenty of room for gaining knowledge and insight while we avoid stagnation. That means you‘ll need to find comfort outside of your comfort zone, take inventory of your risk and avoidance patterns, and closely examine what you believe about yourself and your ability to rebound when a plan fails. Are you a renegade or an ostrich? What if you’re new at taking risks altogether? Don’t panic. If you’ve got room for professional growth, knowledge and skill, you’re still positioned well to reach success.
Your Talent Meter, the third factor, will help you unfold a critical part of your success story. You’ve got to have talent, regardless of how you get it. What is sadder than sad is someone believing they’re doing a particular task well and in reality, they aren’t even coming close to being competent (think “American Idol” audition reel here). Academia refers to this pitiful insight as the Dunning-Kruger effect, also known as the Double Whammy of Incompetence. Accomplished people have lively Talent Meters that are always assessing their knowledge and skills, informing them about their success potential from day to day. Knowing your strengths, but even more importantly knowing your weaknesses and not fearing them, is vital to your success. In business world circles, it can be a career-branding faux pas to affiliate with failure, lacking knowledge, or skill deficits. That said, those people who embrace success consistently have their Talent Meters turned on 24/7. They are constantly learning, gathering information, watching for mentors, practicing, reading and rereading, evaluating personal and professional insufficiencies, and fearlessly doing something about all of them when they turn up on the short end of the talent stick. Even better, successful brains will still have room left to spare once they are jammed with new information and skills.
Speaking of information, it’s common to hear the expression of being on “information overload.” To meet with success, your brain needs a Focus Laser, the fourth critical ingredient to a science-focused, success-attaining strategy recipe. A Focus Laser defines much of what your brain is about: attention, intention, motivation, distraction. Successful people are able to use their brains to lock onto a goal in the future and not let other factors distract them from it. Culturally, we could also say we are on “opportunity overload” and fear missing out on something that could possibly be life-changing, even if we don’t know what it is yet. The successful brain stays focused. That means saying no to oncoming opportunities unless they relate to the goal, reducing your commitment load at work and home when possible, learning a prioritization system based on your goal
and personal value systems (and use it), sticking relatively close to budgets, and throw multitasking out the window because your brain isn’t wired for it.
Research is handing over the owner’s manual to our brain at a robust pace, one section at a time. Let’s admit it, name droppers like to talk about their latest e-gadget, but they’ll be talking about your most efficient gadget once you start using it to its fullest. The best part? You already own it—your brain.
Dr. Jeff Brown is an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, and the co-author of “The Winner’s Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success.” His website iswww.DrJeffBrown.com.
Source:Wall Street Journal
If you’re in the know, you’ve already gathered that success is more about the brain than ever before. Cognitive neuroscience has revealed and continues to expose the incredible capacities of the human brain, particularly as they relate to success and optimization. When it comes to your professional reputation, having others chatting it up about your super successful brain should be the goal. Here are four brain strategies that people who consistently grasp success claim as their own—and you can, too.
First, develop an Opportunity Radar. An Opportunity Radar is a successful person’s ability to recognize non-traditional paths or circumstances leading to positive outcomes. How do you do that? Make sacrifices to be in the right place at the right time, don’t let your confidence rest only in your salary, don’t just think outside of the box—create your own boxes, some of which you may never use, but that’s OK. You can either stand around in long line to ride the success Ferris Wheel, or figure out how you can build your own thrilling ride by finding the right non-traditional opportunity. Of course, getting on that wild ride may take some nerve. Truly successful brains have risk management figured out to a degree as well. Read on.
You’ll need to calibrate your Optimal Risk Gauge. Successful people know when and how to take risk and they most likely learned much of what they know about risk by doing things the hard way. We’re not just talking entrepreneurial risk, but all kinds of risks: time, relationships, financial, creative. Research amply explains that too little or too much risk leads to dissatisfying failure, but a moderate level of risk appropriately challenges us so we remain motivated, confident, and leave plenty of room for gaining knowledge and insight while we avoid stagnation. That means you‘ll need to find comfort outside of your comfort zone, take inventory of your risk and avoidance patterns, and closely examine what you believe about yourself and your ability to rebound when a plan fails. Are you a renegade or an ostrich? What if you’re new at taking risks altogether? Don’t panic. If you’ve got room for professional growth, knowledge and skill, you’re still positioned well to reach success.
Your Talent Meter, the third factor, will help you unfold a critical part of your success story. You’ve got to have talent, regardless of how you get it. What is sadder than sad is someone believing they’re doing a particular task well and in reality, they aren’t even coming close to being competent (think “American Idol” audition reel here). Academia refers to this pitiful insight as the Dunning-Kruger effect, also known as the Double Whammy of Incompetence. Accomplished people have lively Talent Meters that are always assessing their knowledge and skills, informing them about their success potential from day to day. Knowing your strengths, but even more importantly knowing your weaknesses and not fearing them, is vital to your success. In business world circles, it can be a career-branding faux pas to affiliate with failure, lacking knowledge, or skill deficits. That said, those people who embrace success consistently have their Talent Meters turned on 24/7. They are constantly learning, gathering information, watching for mentors, practicing, reading and rereading, evaluating personal and professional insufficiencies, and fearlessly doing something about all of them when they turn up on the short end of the talent stick. Even better, successful brains will still have room left to spare once they are jammed with new information and skills.
Speaking of information, it’s common to hear the expression of being on “information overload.” To meet with success, your brain needs a Focus Laser, the fourth critical ingredient to a science-focused, success-attaining strategy recipe. A Focus Laser defines much of what your brain is about: attention, intention, motivation, distraction. Successful people are able to use their brains to lock onto a goal in the future and not let other factors distract them from it. Culturally, we could also say we are on “opportunity overload” and fear missing out on something that could possibly be life-changing, even if we don’t know what it is yet. The successful brain stays focused. That means saying no to oncoming opportunities unless they relate to the goal, reducing your commitment load at work and home when possible, learning a prioritization system based on your goal
and personal value systems (and use it), sticking relatively close to budgets, and throw multitasking out the window because your brain isn’t wired for it.
Research is handing over the owner’s manual to our brain at a robust pace, one section at a time. Let’s admit it, name droppers like to talk about their latest e-gadget, but they’ll be talking about your most efficient gadget once you start using it to its fullest. The best part? You already own it—your brain.
Dr. Jeff Brown is an assistant clinical professor at Harvard Medical School, and the co-author of “The Winner’s Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success.” His website iswww.DrJeffBrown.com.
Source:Wall Street Journal
Saturday, June 22, 2013
Monday, January 14, 2013
The Strategic Plan is Dead. Long Live Strategy.
By Dana O’Donovan & Noah Rimland Flower | 7 | Jan. 10, 2013
Source: Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR)
Take a moment and read these two words: strategic plan. Now close your eyes and picture one. If what comes up is a thick binder, gathering dust on a shelf next to other thick binders from five and ten years past, you’re not alone. We believe that a better understanding of the history of strategy and what caused the demise of binder-bound strategic planning can point the way to re-inventing strategy for the world we live in today. It is important to remember that strategy’s roots are military. Military strategy focuses on setting objectives, collecting intelligence, and then using that intelligence to make informed decisions about how to achieve your objectives—take that hill, cut this supply line.
Historically, the battlefield was a place where you could count on a few constants:
The past was a good predictor of the future. There were years or decades between meaningful shifts in the basic variables, such as the power of a soldier’s weapons or the range of aircraft.
Good data was scarce and hard to come by. Scouts and spies had to risk their lives to find and relay information, and had to be ever on the lookout for enemy deception.
Lines of communication were unreliable at best. Small numbers of clear directives were a tactical imperative.
Not surprisingly, after a couple of millennia, military strategy became well adapted to these constraints.
After World War II, when military strategy came into the business world as strategic planning, so did these constraints. As a result, strategic planners focused on predicting the future based on historic trend lines; invested heavily in gathering all available data; and produced a small number of directives issued from the top, for the rest of the organization to execute.
This approach to strategic planning was a reasonably good fit for much of the business world from the fifties through the eighties. But with the rise of high-tech tools and increased globalization in the nineties, the world began to change, and now it looks quite different indeed. The future is no longer reasonably predictable based on the past—in fact, it is liable to be startlingly different. Good data is easy to access and cheap to acquire. Communication is rapid, indiscriminate, and constant.
The world has become a more turbulent place, where anyone with a new idea can put it into action before you can say “startup” and launch widespread movements with a single Tweet. This has left organizational leaders with a real problem, since the trusted, traditional approach to strategic planning is based on assumptions that no longer hold. The static strategic plan is dead.
This has led to increasingly polarized attitudes about the value of having a strategy at all. Some leaders are valiantly trying to save strategic planning by urging us to focus even more on rigorous data analysis. Others deny the value of strategy, arguing that organizations need agility above all else (an attitude that famed strategist Roger Martin reports hearing with increasing frequency).
We think that what is necessary today is a strategy that breaks free of static plans to be adaptive and directive, that emphasizes learning and control, and that reclaims the value of strategic thinking for the world that now surrounds us. Martin acknowledged this point at the Skoll World Forum in 2010 when he said: “Every model is wrong and every strategy is wrong. Strategy in a way helps you learn what is ‘righter’. People think you can prove a strategy in advance. You can’t.”
The approach we developed in working with our clients at Monitor Institute is what we call adaptive strategy. We create a roadmap of the terrain that lies before an organization and develop a set of navigational tools, realizing that there will be many different options for reaching the destination. If necessary, the destination itself may shift based on what we learn along the way.
Creating strategies that are truly adaptive requires that we give up on many long-held assumptions. As the complexity of our physical and social systems make the world more unpredictable, we have to abandon our focus on predictions and shift into rapid prototyping and experimentation so that we learn quickly about what actually works. With data now ubiquitous, we have to give up our claim to expertise in data collection and move into pattern recognition so that we know what data is worth our attention. We also know that simple directives from the top are frequently neither necessary nor helpful. We instead find ways to delegate authority, get information directly from the front lines, and make decisions based on a real-time understanding of what’s happening on the ground. Instead of the old approach of “making a plan and sticking to it,” which led to centralized strategic planning around fixed time horizons, we believe in “setting a direction and testing to it,” treating the whole organization as a team that is experimenting its way to success.
This approach wouldn’t surprise anyone in the world of current military strategy. Recent generations of military thinkers have long since moved beyond the traditional approach, most notably famed fighter pilot John Boyd. He saw strategy as a continuous mental loop that ran from observe to orient to decide and finally to act, returning immediately to further observation. By adopting his mindset (with a particular emphasis on the two O’s, given our turbulent context), we can get much better at making strategy a self-correcting series of intentional experiments.
To provide structure to this fluid approach, we focus on answering a series of four interrelated questions about the organization’s strategic direction: what vision you want to pursue, how you will make a difference, how you will succeed, and what capabilities it will take to get there.
Source: Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR)
Take a moment and read these two words: strategic plan. Now close your eyes and picture one. If what comes up is a thick binder, gathering dust on a shelf next to other thick binders from five and ten years past, you’re not alone. We believe that a better understanding of the history of strategy and what caused the demise of binder-bound strategic planning can point the way to re-inventing strategy for the world we live in today. It is important to remember that strategy’s roots are military. Military strategy focuses on setting objectives, collecting intelligence, and then using that intelligence to make informed decisions about how to achieve your objectives—take that hill, cut this supply line.
Historically, the battlefield was a place where you could count on a few constants:
The past was a good predictor of the future. There were years or decades between meaningful shifts in the basic variables, such as the power of a soldier’s weapons or the range of aircraft.
Good data was scarce and hard to come by. Scouts and spies had to risk their lives to find and relay information, and had to be ever on the lookout for enemy deception.
Lines of communication were unreliable at best. Small numbers of clear directives were a tactical imperative.
Not surprisingly, after a couple of millennia, military strategy became well adapted to these constraints.
After World War II, when military strategy came into the business world as strategic planning, so did these constraints. As a result, strategic planners focused on predicting the future based on historic trend lines; invested heavily in gathering all available data; and produced a small number of directives issued from the top, for the rest of the organization to execute.
This approach to strategic planning was a reasonably good fit for much of the business world from the fifties through the eighties. But with the rise of high-tech tools and increased globalization in the nineties, the world began to change, and now it looks quite different indeed. The future is no longer reasonably predictable based on the past—in fact, it is liable to be startlingly different. Good data is easy to access and cheap to acquire. Communication is rapid, indiscriminate, and constant.
The world has become a more turbulent place, where anyone with a new idea can put it into action before you can say “startup” and launch widespread movements with a single Tweet. This has left organizational leaders with a real problem, since the trusted, traditional approach to strategic planning is based on assumptions that no longer hold. The static strategic plan is dead.
This has led to increasingly polarized attitudes about the value of having a strategy at all. Some leaders are valiantly trying to save strategic planning by urging us to focus even more on rigorous data analysis. Others deny the value of strategy, arguing that organizations need agility above all else (an attitude that famed strategist Roger Martin reports hearing with increasing frequency).
We think that what is necessary today is a strategy that breaks free of static plans to be adaptive and directive, that emphasizes learning and control, and that reclaims the value of strategic thinking for the world that now surrounds us. Martin acknowledged this point at the Skoll World Forum in 2010 when he said: “Every model is wrong and every strategy is wrong. Strategy in a way helps you learn what is ‘righter’. People think you can prove a strategy in advance. You can’t.”
The approach we developed in working with our clients at Monitor Institute is what we call adaptive strategy. We create a roadmap of the terrain that lies before an organization and develop a set of navigational tools, realizing that there will be many different options for reaching the destination. If necessary, the destination itself may shift based on what we learn along the way.
Creating strategies that are truly adaptive requires that we give up on many long-held assumptions. As the complexity of our physical and social systems make the world more unpredictable, we have to abandon our focus on predictions and shift into rapid prototyping and experimentation so that we learn quickly about what actually works. With data now ubiquitous, we have to give up our claim to expertise in data collection and move into pattern recognition so that we know what data is worth our attention. We also know that simple directives from the top are frequently neither necessary nor helpful. We instead find ways to delegate authority, get information directly from the front lines, and make decisions based on a real-time understanding of what’s happening on the ground. Instead of the old approach of “making a plan and sticking to it,” which led to centralized strategic planning around fixed time horizons, we believe in “setting a direction and testing to it,” treating the whole organization as a team that is experimenting its way to success.
This approach wouldn’t surprise anyone in the world of current military strategy. Recent generations of military thinkers have long since moved beyond the traditional approach, most notably famed fighter pilot John Boyd. He saw strategy as a continuous mental loop that ran from observe to orient to decide and finally to act, returning immediately to further observation. By adopting his mindset (with a particular emphasis on the two O’s, given our turbulent context), we can get much better at making strategy a self-correcting series of intentional experiments.
To provide structure to this fluid approach, we focus on answering a series of four interrelated questions about the organization’s strategic direction: what vision you want to pursue, how you will make a difference, how you will succeed, and what capabilities it will take to get there.
The skills and mindset for today’s strategic planning will come from continuously asking ourselves these questions about our organizations, programs, and initiatives. Once we accept Dwight D. Eisenhower’s sage advice that “Plans are useless, but planning is everything,” we will be ready to adapt to whatever curveballs the twenty-first century sees fit to throw.
Dana O’Donovan (@DanaODonovan) is the COO of Monitor Institute and is fascinated by the border between strategy and execution, where seemingly incremental changes in day-to-day behavior can enable individuals, organizations and collectives to achieve breakthrough social change. Her consulting practice at Monitor Institute focuses on identifying opportunities, developing strategy, designing organizational and activity systems, helping organizations learn, and facilitating groups through periods of transition.
Noah Rimland Flower (@MntrInstitute) works with leaders to achieve large-scale social change through new uses of collaboration, networks, and technology. Over close to a decade of work at Monitor he has combined consulting and research to develop new strategies on issues including education reform, healthy food systems, and climate change.Wednesday, January 9, 2013
Thick problems, thin solutions. — Michael Edwards on NGOs bridging the gap
The rapidly changing world leaves us with more complex, politicised and unpredictable problems. These stem from a number of issues such as growth, equity, sustainability, justice and others. Independent writer and activist Michael Edwards characterises these problems as ‘thick’ and describes the solutions being found as increasingly ‘thinner’.
He suggests that “the solutions promoted by most development agencies are getting ‘thinner’ by the day”, as currently they are ”fixated on speed, growth, numbers and material success; dominated by technology and other ‘magic bullets;’ framed by a philosophy that reduces human values to the competitive culture of the market; and aimed at increased participation in unsustainable economies and polities that are incapable of reconciling different interests”.
However, he does not dismiss thin solutions as irrelevant nor does he view thick problems as insoluble, “just complicated, requiring a conscious effort to link the concrete actions that NGOs support to the broader shifts that give them more long-term influence and impact”.
Altogether, in his article Michal Edwards explores four main issues: “why are problems getting ‘thicker’? Why are solutions getting ‘thinner?’ How can NGOs help to bridge the gap? And what should they strengthen and phase out in order to play this role effectively?”
You can read the entire article, “Thick Problems and Thin Solutions, How NGOs Can Bridge The Gap”, published by Hivos, member of Eurostep, on the former’s website: Hivos
He suggests that “the solutions promoted by most development agencies are getting ‘thinner’ by the day”, as currently they are ”fixated on speed, growth, numbers and material success; dominated by technology and other ‘magic bullets;’ framed by a philosophy that reduces human values to the competitive culture of the market; and aimed at increased participation in unsustainable economies and polities that are incapable of reconciling different interests”.
However, he does not dismiss thin solutions as irrelevant nor does he view thick problems as insoluble, “just complicated, requiring a conscious effort to link the concrete actions that NGOs support to the broader shifts that give them more long-term influence and impact”.
Altogether, in his article Michal Edwards explores four main issues: “why are problems getting ‘thicker’? Why are solutions getting ‘thinner?’ How can NGOs help to bridge the gap? And what should they strengthen and phase out in order to play this role effectively?”
You can read the entire article, “Thick Problems and Thin Solutions, How NGOs Can Bridge The Gap”, published by Hivos, member of Eurostep, on the former’s website: Hivos
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