How I motivated my spouse to clean the living room

Last week while trying to get my husband to clean his stuff out of the living room, I tried to influence him with the idea of a more organized house, with the idea of him as a more organized person, and also with idea of my help. But because it felt wrong — dishonest really — to attempt influence him without him knowing, I decided to be more direct and started my campaign with the words “I want to influence you.” That was about as far as I got. He so loved the idea that I was trying to influence him, that he came over and gave me a hug, and the rest was relatively easy.

I’d like to take the credit for this magic trick, but let’s be honest, there was another motivating factor: we had a new couch arriving. The email of the impending arrival came the same week I was trying to get the cleaning done. That was the real motivation. My influence just helped get it done in a more timely manner. The arrival of the couch meant the completion of the living room, one of the last rooms to be completed in our long renovation saga. It was also about the completion of his idea of home. This was the underlying motivation.

Drive: the book about motivation

Daniel Pink’s new book Drive: the surprising truth about what motivates us, is actually not that surprising for many of us who have worked in the field of education. The work of Deci & Ryan (intrinsic & extrinsic motivations); Carol Dweck (how our beliefs in intelligence affect our view of ourselves as learners); and of course, Mihaly Csikszenmihalyi (the idea of flow.) What Pink does it put it all together in a compelling package and relates it to the world of work. Because of this, I found his book useful in thinking about motivation — and summarize the key components below.

Beyond carrots and sticks – the 3 components of motivation

Here is the twitter version of the book that the author provides (in the Toolkit section – yes, did I mention it was well-packaged?):

Carrots & sticks are so last century. Drive says for 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery & purpose.

That’s it. You don’t have to read the book – it’s about intrinsic motivation – or autonomy, mastery & purpose. Understanding these 3 components will help motivate people for most types of work, he argues, especially work in the “new economy” of the “21st century”. With some types of repetitive work, apparently sticks and carrots still are good motivators (the post office comes to mind.) But for “knowledge workers”, he argues, it’s different — assuming that you compensate people fairly.

• Autonomy – people need autonomy over what they do (task), when they do it (time), who they do it with (team), and how they do it (technique) – (derived from Deci/Ryan plus others)
• Mastery – begins with flow (Csikszenmihalyi) – optimal experiences when the task  is neither too easy or too hard, but just above our level, pushing us to get better. Mastery is a mindset where one sees abilities not as finite or set (Dweck), but as infinite – the anything is possible mindset. However, mastery is painful, requiring grit and deliberate practice (Schon plus others). Mastery is impossible to fully realize – one can always get better.
• Purpose – people need purpose – goals that use profit to reach purpose (social innovations); when we need more than self- interest (hello, non-profit world); the idea of purpose maximization, as opposed to profit maximization.

My questions – But do we always know what we want and need? Will it get us to where we want to go? Or take us to unexpected places? When I’ve been placed on teams that are with people that I don’t like and know is when I’ve learned the most about how to work with people different from myself. It is then when I’ve grown. And sometimes these teams create the most innovative ideas — when we step outside our usual ways of being.

And, let’s be honest: extrinsic motivation matters. I wanted to do my Masters — I choose it as my purpose/task. But if I didn’t have a deadline (i.e. spouse threatening insanity if I didn’t finish), then no, I would not have completed it and graduated. If I didn’t start a blog called the Unfinished Masters, and asked all my friends to read it and keep me on track — then no, I would not have finished.

Yes – autonomy, mastery, and purpose make sense — but do people always know what they want and need? Can everyone function on intrinsic motivation alone? This is where influence comes to play, in defining purpose, in setting deadlines or other forms of extrinsic motivation.

How to motivate

• Understand people’s purpose, or help them shape their purpose and goals.
  Many educators do this at the start of class (see Learning Cycle blog)
• Can you structure the interaction so they can achieve mastery? Achieve a level of performance above what they currently have? (Think how video games are constantly challenging players just above their level. Hard to do sometimes for a mixed group.)
• Give them autonomy on how they reach their goals.

So these ideas are very general, let me try to apply to a couple situations.

Motivating my spouse

• Purpose: My spouse wants an organized, functional and beautiful house. Therefore, position the work on tasks that will make the house more functional, and not just because I’m asking him to clean.
• Autonomy: Within the purpose of organizing/increasing functionality let him choose his task; let him do it his way (technique), on his time (with deadlines of course – the couch was the extrinsic motivation part). And does he get to choose his team? Well, he choose to marry me – so yes.
• Mastery: Will the task have flow? Maybe if it’s a challenge of how quickly we can get it done. Can he believe he can do it — yes; although it won’t require practice, it will require grit.

In writing this outline of motivating my husband, I think it’s more for me than for him.

Motivating my own learning — about wine

• Ever since moving to the Bay Area I’ve wanted to learn more about wine. The grape varieties, the vintners, the regions, etc. My purpose is simple – to become a better Californian and learn about wine.
• Autonomy:I choose to learn about wine by creating a learning module (task). I’d like to try out a new Instructional Design model that I’ve been reading about (technique). I’d like to put it online. My team is myself, and perhaps a couple friends I can cajole into advising as needed. My technique will also involve sampling said wines The time – that’s the hard part — that where I need extrinsic motivation. That’s why I’m writing about this – I’d like to get YOU to help motivate me to complete this by mid-April.
• Mastery: I believe that I am capable of learning about wine; I also believe that I am capable of mastering the domain of wine — and be able to choose wines to go with food, wines to drink at parties, wines as gifts — and maybe more. This will require grit, deliberate practice, and refining my palette for wine. It will also require a drinking buddy.

In the process of writing these points, it becomes clear to me that my challenge is always, will always be the deadline. I love to read and research, but without the extrinsic motivation of the deadline, I would accomplish very little. This essential point is what Pink only touches on — that we need that external structure of deadlines, office spaces where we do our work, the exercise classes — to motivate us to keep focused and keep us going. We often need others to create expectations that we then fulfill. We need that social connection, and sometimes social pressure, to motivate us.

This is a good read. I loved learning about the inner workings of Wall Street from one person’s perspective — and it just that — a biased perspective. He does not hide this fact but that’s in part what makes the book so entertaining. I learned more about how high finance works from reading this book than I have from any financial textbook. McDonald describes from his perspective why Lehman failed, what was done to try save it, and fully lays the blame at the feet of two people: Dick Fuld, CEO and Joe Gregory, COO.

One begins to understand the complexity of the financial instruments involved, the delusional activities of large group of people, and the sheer calamity brought upon this country and the world as a result of these activities. The collapse of Lehman was at the crux of the financial meltdown. Reading this book you realize how much of our financial system runs on faith and trust, and how important it is to have checks and regulations in place that keep that trust and faith in place. Dismantling the Glass-Stegall act was at the root of the most recent chaos — and that blame lies with the Congress at that time. And there is the easy access to credit thanks to the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates low after the 2001 bubble. (Sorry, can’t mention the name of the demi-god Alan Greenspan.)

The book is well-named: A Colossal Failure of Common Sense. However it’s just not the top two Lehman that suffered from this failure, it’s most of the heavy hitters in the system that did. And they should be ashamed of the havoc they wrought.

But we all had a piece of it, however small. I hope our awareness these failures leads to change. We’ll see.

Good book, albeit biased — worth the read.

Full disclosure: Lehman Brothers was a client I worked with and I knew some of the people at the firm.

• In extremely complex situations checklists can solve many problems
• The working world is deep expertise in based in teams
• The volume of knowledge exceeds what one expert can provide
• Don’t turn complex situations into cookbooks, focus in on crucial items
• Create pause points where you can check in
• Allow people to create scripts to follow and share, not recipes
• Have people think about ways things go wrong, and are they prepared for them
• In fields where we think expertise and experience are enough, running up against limits of what we can do (example of lawyers) large volumes of knowledge and we’re making basic mistakes
• We are fundamentally fallible and make mistakes
• In situations of complexity, understand where power should lie – it’s not command and control
• In situations of complexity (i.e., Hurricane Katrina) give power to the peripheries and focus on communication from peripheries to HQ and out again to quickly spread good protocols and ideas (example of Walmart in Katrina)
• Example of VCs and how they make their decisions – different styles of decision making – gut decisions vs. analytical VCs (used checklists). Checklists VCs have higher success rate.
• Goes against our idea of what expertise is suppose to be.

Can’t wait to get it so I can review it in fuller detail.

I’ve recently decided to deepen my understanding of analytics, in part to think about my website and how to better promote it, and secondarily to better understand this new way of thinking about business decisions. So I thought I’d start with this book and a broad introduction to this field.

The Deciding Factor is just that — a broad introduction written for executives by two guys from the Fair Issac corporation (the group that invented the credit score.) The essential gist of this book is that we can use analysis of the tons of data collected about customers/consumers to better understand how to not just make, but to automate decisions. If you’ve ever read the book The Numerati by Stephen Baker, it is the more detailed dive into the new world of data mining and decision making that is governing many business and political decisions.

Quoting Lowell Bryan, managing partner at McKinsey & Gary Hamel author of The Future of Management, the authors bring to our attention that “increasingly the work of managers won’t be done by managers. Instead it will be pushed out to the periphery. It will be embedded in systems.”

The greatest benefit will be seen in retail operations (credit cards, banks, retail stores) — where there is a lot of data on consumer behavior, and where the primary business decisions are being made on the front-lines by retail employees or call-center folks. One of the most interesting examples the authors give is about Best Buy and how they used analytics to better understand the types of customers coming into the store, created personas for each of these behavior types: Barry, the affluent techy enthusiast; “Jill”, the busy suburban mom; “Ray” the price-conscious family man; “”Buzz”, the young gadget fiend. Best Buy then rearranged the layout of the some of its stores to better serve these types. In addition, they trained their front-line employees to ask life-style questions to uncover the needs of each of these types (“how are you going to use this product?”, “Is it for you or someone else?”.)

The three essential components of using analytics is:

1. Developing a Rules-Based System – automating high-volume operations decisions to make the decisions more consistent and increase control (such creating and understanding personas, and creating a set of questions to ask the types.)
2. Using Predictive Analytics Models – creating decision models and frameworks to mathematically evaluate the trade-offs among conflicting objectives then execute decisions; using adaptive control (the process of making the best possible decision to control a complex system based on current knowledge and learn more about how the system behaves.)
3. Connecting Decisions Across Multiple Dimensions - also known in part as cross-selling.

The use of both descriptive analytics – the process of finding relationships/patterns among data (i.e. figuring out the personas as described in the Best Buy example); and of predticive analytics – using what you do know to make informed decisions aobut what you don’t know to predict what might happen in the future – it expresses the future in terms of odds and probabilities.

The descriptions of how to make business decisions using analytics sounds similar to the way one imagines business decisions are currently made. However, there is a difference of degree and of control. In expert-driven decision making, one uses the experts and their experience. In data-informed decision-making, the experts interpret the information into a report and it informs the decisions. In data-guided, a predictive model replaces the unproven assumptions with objective information, and the model provides advisory decisions (methinks this is what happened in the investment banks). Finally in data-driven decision making, the running of analytic models and execution of decision are completely automated. The control is in the rules created to describe the system, whether that be a bank, a electronic store, or credit card business. The problems come in when the system is described incompletely and something unexpected happens.

The gist of this book is that decisions based on analytics are the way of the future. Decisions on how much credit-card increase to give people, whether to approve them for a loan, or what kind of other products can be sold to them are all automated. The rules are set by the business and math people, who interpret the data and create rules based on this interpretation. This feels very much like game-design.

To effectively use analytics you need organizations that have tons of data, and that collect the right kind of data. From this you can derive patterns and understand how to better make decisions, make suggestions based on these analytics. But you have to have good data, and thoughtful people making the rules, otherwise you may end up creating a system that controls you, rather than informs you. It’s a new way of thinking of understanding the world.

This book is a basic introduction to this world — at this point, I feel I need more in-depth thoughtful exploration of how it works best in the web world. Onto the next read.

Upon reading the first chapter of this book I wanted to jump with joy — here was someone articulating my ideas about the kind of skills, mindsets and thinking that is needed in a newly competitive, flat world — where anything that can be digitized will be outsourced.

This new kind of thinking – what he calls “right-brain” thinking has six key aptitudes as described in the Introduction:

1. Design – “to create artistic and emotional beauty”
2. Story – “to craft a satisfying narrative”
3. Symphony – “to combine unrelated ideas into a novel invention” & “to detect patterns and opportunities”
4. Empathy – “ability to understand the subtleties of human interaction”
5. Play – “find joy in one’s self and elicit joy in others”
6. Meaning – “to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning”

Part of this book is focused on describing, defining and supporting each of these definitions. Half of each chapter on aptitudes is devoted to describing the skills to practice in order to become this kind of person – how to create a Portfolio to become more of a right-brain thinker.

What’s important to understand is that Pink does not advocate that we lose our analytical, left-brain thinking in order to become completely creative, right-brain thinkers — but rather we must be both and find an equilibrium between the two.

In the argument for right-brain thinking, there were a couple of  research/studies that I found of interest:

• (25) UCSF Professor Paul Ekman, famous for creating the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) – tested facial expressions all over the world, and these expressions were interpreted similarly by a majority of the people in a group, whether that was in New Guinea or amongst Bay Area college students.
• (52) students who study painting excel at noticing subtle details about a patients condition (from the Yale School of Medicine). So yes, a student has to know their medical stuff, but studying painting makes them better doctors.

What was also insightful was his description of design – that good design is a combination of utility and significance (76). The iPhone designers, of course, got this right. They realized that the cellphone had changed from being a logical device about speed and specialized functions, to being an emotional device — about being able to be expressive and customize, fanciful (81).

Stories help us make sense of the world — and in a world full of facts, what matters is putting these facts in context with emotional impact (101). A wonderful quote from this section is from Alan Kay (famous interface designer) – “scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we’re all just caveman with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories” (107).

Being able to blend concepts to put together two existing ideas non one else thought to create, being a systems thinker, a pattern recognizer is the essence of the symphony aptitude. Techniques to enhance this skill include keeping a metaphor log (what metaphors do you hear daily) or trying to create a 5-line self-portrait.

On the importance of Empathy I’ve written about before in this blog. Research of interest – one study of aphasics (those with damage to the left-side or analytical side of the brain) are exceptionally good lie-detectors, getting about 70% of the lies. In the Porfolio section, he directs us to a website to practice our EQ = empathy quotient.

When writing about Play and Meaning, Pink’s writing seems to become shallower as nothing he writes really grabbed me in these two sections other than we should play and have meaning in our lives. Perhaps I became tired of the writing, or perhaps I’d read too many book on play and meaningful work that nothing seemed new here.

My main criticism of the book is that it peters out toward the end. And the organization of the book breaks the narrative of the reading (he really is a good writer). The Portfolio or skill-building reference sections are disruptive to the reading. Overall though, I find this a good book, quick read and useful. The Portfolio sections contain many good techniques to jump start your creativity. For this alone, I think the book is worth reading. And without a doubt, what Pink gets right is that anything that can be outsourced cheaper and more efficiently will — what stays will be those who can be imaginative and unique  in the world.

Whether the world will reward the skill sets of creative wonks remains to be seen. I think we are still very much in transition from the Information Age of knowledge workers, to what he calls the Conceptual Age of creators and empathizers. All I can do is keep true to my path of trying to create works of beauty, empathy, utility and significance and hope that others are also moving in the same direction.

Second definitions of aptitudes (65-66):

1. Not just function but also DESIGN
2. Not just argument but also a STORY
3. Not just focus but also SYMPHONY
4. Not just logic but also EMPATHY
5. Not just seriousness but also PLAY
6. Not just accumulation but also MEANING

Frans de Waal studies empathy in monkeys — thus this book is biased towards the positive aspects of empathy. He tells stories and anecdotes about animal studies and he also tells, most of which are based on his research or related research. He generalizes some things to humans. He challenges the notion that human society is ONLY competitive, war-like and selfish.

There are 3 key things I got from this book:

• A definition and description of empathy
  • state-matching emotional contagion – innermost/foundational is matching the state of the other – this is done by emotional contagions. It is thought that mirror neurons, mimicry and body mapping/reading all play roles in state-matching (my interpretation)
  • concern for others consolation behavior - 2nd layer is ability to express concern and try to console the other — such as a young child or monkey trying to console a mother who is crying
  • perspective taking targeted helping – this last layer is about the ability to understand what the other needs. Being able to help the other in a specific, targeted way implies the ability to understand their need from their point of view.
• Animal research into fairness and how it links to communal survival
  • The main reason humans seek fairness is to prevent negative reactions upon rejoining the group (think about the CEOs who flew in private jet planes to receive bailouts). We may however, relax our rules about fairness when it comes to a close relation.
  • If you don’t act in a fair manner, others will take note and repay you in kind when you are in need (yes, monkeys do this too!)
  • however, there are way to kill prosocial behavior:
    • pair the monkey with a stranger
    • put the partner who you should be acting fairly towards, out of sight, and selfish behavior emerges
    • others must see the outcome.
• Change in empathetic behavior depends on kinship or group ties
  • As noted in examples above
  • This is not fully explored — I would like to know more about how we promote identification and/or kinship between groups. This dehumanization is the cause of many wars, no?

Though a bit long-winded at times (needs a good edit IMHO!) – this book is worth the effort to read. It’s not scannable, you actually have to read the stories and anecdotes to get the most out of it. Frans de Waal does extrapolate somewhat freely to human behavior, either explicitly or implicitly. The underlying assumption is that we are very similar in base behavior to monkeys, apes, dolphins and elephants — and that might be hard for some people to take.

Some additional quotes I liked:

• Security is the first and foremost reason for social life (20)
• Is war an aggressive drive or driven by power and profit? (25)
• Discussion of body mapping within species and between species (53)
• Plutarch – “if you live with a cripple, you will learn to limp.”
• Mirror neurons – the firing of brain cells when doing and action, and to a similar extent when *watching* another do an action (79)
• lack of distinction between monkey see and monkey do, erasing the line between self and other
• Oscar the cat – who would stay with a dying person at an old folks home — and he always knew when someone was going to die, even before the nurses did!
• Self-protective altruism – helping another shields self from adverse reactions (75)
• petting relieves stress in the monkey/human that is petting or being petted
• identification is a basic pre-condition for empathy (80)
• Do emotions arise from the body (body first theory – “i run, therefore I am scared”) (81)
• Or do emotions in others raise awareness in ourselves (emotions first theory) – leads to emotional contagion concept (monkeys run from those that have experienced a negative emotion like fear from rattlesnake)
• body posture wins out over facial expression in judging emotional states
• but faces still matter – people can’t relate to those with immobilized faces
• self-absorption kills empathy – you have to distangle yourself from the other to pinpoint actual source of feelings –> leads to perspective taking and targeted helping
• VEN cells – go deep in to the brain (are like neurons) and are thought to connect disparate parts of brain (138)
• true cradle of cooperation is the community (182)
• thus human fairness goes hand in hand with communal survival (187)
• inequity aversion (187)
• empathy is understanding another; sympathy is taking action
• Theory of the mind – understanding the state of the other (98)
• 3 ideals of the French Revolution – liberty (US has this bias); equality (Europe has this bias); fraternity (forgotten?)
• the tendency towards social hierarchy/competitiveness undercuts empathy/cooperation – as emphasized in institutions such as in the military and church (political bias)
• cruelty also rests on perspective taking (knowing what will hurt the other the most)
• we often operated in enlightened self-interest
• one cannot expect trust in a society with huge income disparities, insecurities, disenfranchised underclass

At the halfway  point I thought it was a good read. Being an innovative company requires changing the way we work – can most companies do that? Letting go of authority and creative, “hot”, teams is essential. The descriptions of the work environment and culture at IDEO had me thinking about where I wanted to work next. If you want to imagine a place that is hardworking and respects creativity — read this book.

After finishing the book I think the best parts are in the first half — descriptions of how to do brainstorming and how to create hot teams. A good read for those 2 sections.

A couple insightful quotes:

• “too much square footage, like too large a budget can dissipate energy and discourage more immediate emotional connection.” (p.82)
  
• “success at innovation is like putting together the perfect golf swing” – there are 17 things to get right, each one simple on its own, but it’s complex to put together in real time.(p.293)

Overall I enjoyed reading this book, though I found many of the stories repetitive — as if they were cobbled together from many different essays and presentations. It needed a good edit.

Brainstorming Rules:

1. Sharpen the Focus – ask edgy, tangible questions that focus on the customer need
2. Playful Rules – don’t critique or debate ideas, go for quantity, encourage wild ideas, be visual
3. Number Your Ideas – help to set a goal for quantity (i.e., go for 100)
4. Build and Jump – keep the energy up, jump back to an earlier path, encourage small variation
5. The Space Remembers – power of spatial memory, process of capturing ideas (facilitator whiteboard), physical movement around the space
6. Stretch Mental Models – warm-ups, content-related homework (background lecture, toy stores)
7. Get Physical – sketching, mind mapping, diagrams, stick figures, bring in objects, build things, bodystorming

Hot Groups: groups at IDEO are often ad-hoc, often come together on a project-basis and availability. Below are listed types of characters that can be key to “hot” teams.

1. Visionary
2. Troubleshooter – doesn’t suffer fools gladly, fix-it person
3. Iconoclast – contrarian
4. Pulse-Taker – heart person, making a personal connections
5. Craftsman
6. Technologist – a maven
7. Entrepreneur – often goes off and creates sub-teams or companies
8. Cross-Dresser – self-educated, self-motivated, enthusiastic

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