Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

Are we Living at a Moment When Significant Change is Possible?

“The best way to predict the future is to create it,” said Abraham Lincoln.

The future is hard to predict. Yet, that's not for lack of trying. A thriving trends industry says forecasts are in high demand. Futurists work outward from data and evidence, seeking to identify highly probable events.

While unpredictable in scope, pandemics are undesirable parts of our past and highly probable events. But proceed with caution. Labeling an observation about what's going on “insight” doesn't make it so. Further, insights are not as useful to understanding changing habits, behaviors and attitudes and what will stick as you'd like to think.

It takes time for events to run their course, and the present is squishy. Knowing how things will end, and which end of a developing trend we're going to end up on is very difficult. Hence why sociologists, anthropologists and journalists examine one small aspect of what's happening. Best when from differing perspectives.

It's counter-intuitive, but it's valuable to look at the question: are we living at a moment when significant change is possible? As a historian would. To figure out what could happen, looking at it as a horizon of sorts, is more useful than trying to keep up with the speed of developing events.

 

1970s: battles are a serious thing

Military history used to be a collection of names and dates with a sprinkling of technical details. That's because it was written by tacticians and military professionals. It was an example of what regular people didn't want to know.

Then in the early 1970s, historians discovered that battles where a serious thing. They found that when a society was engaged in battle, it invested all its energies. Rather than being just an unfortunate event to know about, war revealed ways of thinking and doing of the time.

By studying what happened around a battle you could start to peel back people's mindset and infer how things worked. When you have an event significant enough that everyone or most people need to do something about it, the wheels of change set in motion.

Many have compared the current pandemic to a war. This is not like other recessions, they say: we have constrained supply and higher moral demands. Thus, leaders with principles should forego profits for the greater good. At least for a while.

Since we're comparing the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 to a war, let's take a look at how we entered the last major war that was quasi-global in scope: World War II. In Strange Defeat: a Statement of Evidence written in 1940, leading up to the war, historian Marc Bloch says:

The generation to which I belong has a bad conscience. It is true that we emerged from the last war desperately tired, and that after four years not only of fighting but of mental laziness, we were only too anxious to get back to our proper employments... That is our excuse. But I have long ceased to believe that it can wash us clean of guilt.

Bloch taught medieval history at the University of Strasbourg (1920 to 1936), the University of Paris (1936 to 1939), and the University of Montpellier (1941 to 1944). His remarkable life was cut short: shot by the retreating Nazis in June 1944. But his contribution to history endures.

 

Strange Defeat was a sort of autopsy of the France between wars outlining failures in the French mindset. The loss of morale of the soldiers and a failed education of the officers was manifest in both character and intelligence. Focus on testing drained entire generations of originality and initiative or thirst for knowledge, and created an “appreciation only of successful cheating and sheer luck.”

 

Could we have a similar failure in mindset leading up to the pandemic? Could the last economic recession that impacted the world as we know it not be also leading up to a humanitarian crisis? Saving lives comes first, but should we not question expending energy to preserve our previous ways of life?

 

Let's start with a simple assumption.

 

Is it useful to track speed?

This “war” we're fighting is revealing a lot about mindset and how things worked up to this point. Speed is often an obvious, because desirable, element of trends. But is it useful to tracking what will stick? It's complicated, but the short answer is likely, no.

 

A new narrative and way of doing things emerges from events, but is also the product of energy accumulated over time. Occurrences happen within the deep flow of history. Things that change slowly tend to influence people more than we think or suppose. Because they have more staying power.

 

Take technology, for example. The narrative seems to suggest that technology has changed everything. Yet, the pace of human change has not really picked up much. Look for example at movies from the 1980s/90s on.

 

Forget hair styles and clothing, look at themes, the fundamental behaviors, attitudes and habits. They've remained pretty predictable. Where demand goes, that's where attention goes. Investments went to the quick buck, not the sustainable safety nets.

 

What's changed in tangible ways from the 1970s on has been much slower. We hardly saw it happen. But now you have more freedom in the little decisions—what color mask and material do I pick?—and minor things—should I cut the grass every day because I'm bored?—not in important things—every region of the world supports proven strategies to contain the pandemic with policy and collaboration.

 

The value of the changes brought about in the '60s rippled through society in the 1970s. Then things sort of hovered. The past becomes value in the present. Yet, that value started getting diluted over time.

 

People channeled the energy that created the initial wave of change into commerce. Prosperity followed investment in infrastructure, which in turn created constraints and constancy. Governance brought about a new social contract, change got slower in the big things as it stayed fast in the small ones—the ones you can affect directly.

 

Speed is interesting, but itself not as useful to understand how change happens. Further, change is a spontaneous part of how the universe works. However, when people talk about future change, they mean the immediate things that they'd want in the here and now to extend a little farther out.

 

1300s: a period of great progress

History is everything that ever happened to humanity. The difficulty is that there's nothing insignificant, because a small habit or detail like what farmers had for breakfast at the time could help us understand something unexpected.

 

Take for example the Middle Ages. It was a period of great progress. People were very active. Commerce was flourishing. Technology was making new things possible: the ships that took Christopher Columbus in his first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, the compass, our first GPS, the printing press. It was a formidable civilization.

 

What else happened in that great period of time? A great crisis that extended for more than 100 years. Famine, plague, and wars were constantly succeeding each other in waves. It's hard to fathom how people got anything done. Never mind brewing the Renaissance.

 

What innovation could possibly happen as witches were put at the stake, entire crops were lost across Europe due to climate change, half the population emerged from the succession of super contagious plagues (1348 - 1399) and France and England were at war (1337 - 1453)?

 

Consider that at the time, nobody measured anything. Yet, we know so much about what was going on because of the accurate tax and deed records of Italian city state functionaries and diary entries made by contemporary chroniclers about the steep increase in the cost of bread. Everyday things were recorded because it was possible—paper was invented in the '200s, paving the way for the printing press.

 

The plague of 1348 happened on top of years of poor harvest. People were dying of hunger starting with the catastrophic harvests between 1315-1317. For years the climate had been stable and warm seasons guaranteed a plentiful harvest. Suddenly, the climate went crazy with torrential rains and floods across Europe.

 

People were starving. It was a weird crisis—the Pope and the King of France clashed violently. France was the richest, most populated and powerful country in the Christian world. The Pope moved to Avignon and would stay for 70 years. Meanwhile, the vacuum left in Rome created low morale.

 

It was a century of farmers revolts. Yet people continued to trade and grow commerce. In Florence, while artists like Donatello and Masaccio were born and created amazing works, the Ciompi wool workers organized an uprising. It was one of the first protests organized for economic-political purposes in European history.

 

The quality of products continued to improve. A thriving construction industry started building churches and palaces of increasing splendor. Many things also were interrupted and never completed.

 

Siena was a super wealthy city that was projecting an exponential population growth. Its unfinished Cathedral is a clue—a marble wall that leads nowhere on the side was the prelude to a bigger central nave. When the plague came, the work was left unfinished. Today, the Cathedral would still fit everyone in the city. That's how bit they were thinking and projecting!

 

Creating the future

Each of the crisis factors in 1300s also provoked a positive backlash. Those who knew how things were going figured out how to use it to thrive. For example, while famine and plague were tragedies, they didn't reduce buildings to rubble or dissipate estates. Survivors could rest during the worst of the plague, then redirect funds and uses, kick-starting a new chain of innovation.

 

Needs and uses oriented production. Those who stayed with the old ways didn't do well, those who changed with the times made money. Fewer wool workers could charge more for their skills. More money then meant drinking wine at the Osteria—wine making a flourishing profession. Hence more fruit trees and wine cultivation. Extra cash also meant families could afford meat. Butchers become a powerful trade.

 

Animal breeding meant more pasture land and irrigation investment. In the big Po Valley in Emilia-Romagna, milk turned into Parmigiano Reggiano and other fabulous cheese the region still exports today. Savings created demand for clothing not made out of wool at home. Along the luxury brocades, the cotton industry developed to cater to the needs of farmers and laborers.

 

Even war created business. Mercenaries needed horses, saddles, armor, swords, etc. To tax, the state needed records. Hence functionaries, administrators and other intermediaries who became the new middle class. Italy was quite literate in the 1300s. The Italian communes and commercial republics enjoyed relative political freedom conducive to academic and artistic advancement.

 

The facts themselves about the prolonged period of crisis of the 1300s didn't change. What changed in the 1970s is that historians refused to look just at dates and battles, Popes and Emperors. They started looking at events with a higher attention to details.

 

If the conversation is to favor the important, then the war of 1oo years is more important than meal times and buying clothes. But if your question is to understand why people started doing something else entirely after the war, anything can give you a better sense of how the past impacts the present.

 

The first to talk about history as the actions of human beings over time, Bloch believed in a multidisciplinary engagement towards history, blending research with geography, sociology and economics. 

 

Creating the future is the best way to predict it. But if history is to teach us anything at all, it is that knowing human beings is essential to sorting through the catalogue of everything people do. You never know what event will define an age, nor what detail will be relevant.

 

Two implications:

• Just because many small and simple things people start doing may not stick, as is, doesn't mean it's not going to impact change longer term.
• All human actions are part of a larger effort or journey through life.

Studying only the things that seem to be loudest or biggest cuts you off opportunity. Anything can give you a better sense of what's going on. What's in the background is also likely going to have fewer competitors.

The real work is not in sifting data, topics, problems and questions, though that is important. Writing and documenting is a responsibility. But a greater one rests on the decisions you make about what's written and said.

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I've been sharing ideas and perspectives about business and culture in my weekly email to nearly 1,000 new subscribers and growing. I organize issues by theme to minimize overwhelm. Subscribe here, if you're curious about reframing and rethinking business and ideas.

How to Help People Make New Choices

Reframing is a powerful tool in business. A small change of posture can make a big difference. The circumstances of our lives may matter less than how we see them, says adman Rory Sutherland. The global pandemic does provide a context of unprecedented scale (at least in my lifetime) to take a look at how we make decisions.

Coronavirus didn't create many of the issues we're confronting today, it accelerated them.

Companies were wrestling with change for a range of issues before—from hiring, working from home (WFH) and open office, to digital transformation, sustainable business models and innovation.

As individuals, communities and countries we were also wrestling with change—patching what's broken at the moment of need, using workaround around policies and rules that are beyond their usefulness, working faster to lose less ground.

Covid19 lockdowns created a pause of global proportions. Experiences vary based on resources and means, community support, policy, rules and roles. Reality can be so fragmented that we agree on little anymore. Yet, there are many things we have in common with each other.

Sociologist Aldo Bonomi says the situation shines a spotlight on the structural gaps in care. Health has become a value again, but the jury is out on valuing it, creating the appropriate structures and allocating resources where they're missing.

Making sense of what's happening

Many agencies and companies have been releasing trend reports. I've been tracking those in my weekly note that goes out every Friday morning. Things will change—f o r e v e r, say some, not at all, say others.

My take is that some choices that changed short term could stick, other mid-range changes will have longer term implications. “Could” gives you room to act. Change happens slowly at first, then all of a sudden. I've seen this happen in several industries.

There are ways to make sense of what's happening, and methods to keep the pulse of what's going on with your customers and markets. Nobody likes to be blindsided. Assuming is close to not knowing and can also be expensive.

Pick up the phone and talk to customers, suppliers, partners and colleagues. Keep checking in on what they're seeing and doing. Stay open minded and ask open questions.

The focus is on how the other person sees and experiences.

Navigating tensions

I worked on the report for the first batch of key themes from conversations that 119 contributors had with 176 people from 35 countries between late March and mid-April 2020. Keeping an open mind and letting the data speak to you is hard work.

We talked to people from Australia to Azerbaijan, India to Israel, Pakistan to Peru. I talked to people in Italy and the USA—participants signed up on the website. The experiences of engineers, audiologists, taxi drivers, housemaids, nurses, executives, comic book illustrators and many more pointed to 7 areas where change could happen:

1.

CONNECTION: Self-reflection and relationships under lockdown: learning to live with uncertainty—People are adjusting their expectations and we’re now seeing new manifestations of fear, hope, and change.

Why we believe this is important:

For many, the COVID-19 crisis feels like THE most important life-changing time of their lives. But that comes with the pressure of having to figure things out when they feel least in control. How might we ensure that individuals have the emotional support they need to get to the other side? What could encourage self-confidence and a growth mindset? Is this new wave of creative and altruistic energy temporary, or will a spark from a few individuals drive change towards a more mindful society?

2.

COMMUNITY: From “me” to “we”—For many, COVID-19 has created a new or renewed sense of community. As this plays out differently between regions, questions still remain about whether it will last.

Why we believe this is important:

While expressed very differently across regions, what we are seeing worldwide is that in times of global crisis, a strong sense of community brings relief in various forms. This opportunity may come from recognizing these shifts in how people now see their social circles and networks, and/or finding ways to support and prolong favorable aspects (which will differ between regions) of this new sense of togetherness.

3.

COLLISION: Work and family life colliding—Productivity, boundaries and family roles are new challenges for those who are now working from home. Working parents juggle both aspects of their lives, but still find unexpected moments of joy.

Why we believe this is important:

There is an opportunity to help people establish new routines, rituals and mental or physical spaces that help them feel in harmony, or develop mechanisms to better deal with an unbalanced reality.

4.

COMMUNICATION: Calling, messaging, video: the new essentials—People are rethinking the role of Calling, messaging, technology in their lives.

Why we believe this is important:

This is a time for technology to shine – to bring people together in a genuine and authentic way. There is an opportunity to better support those who are new to these technologies, and help understand their unarticulated needs.

5.

COPING: Self-acceptance, re-evaluation, the unexpected—People are appreciating themselves and evaluating Self-acceptance, their consumption patterns in the face of change.

Why we believe this is important:

Will buying behavior now shift more towards filling the emotional vacuum and making aspirational purchases? Will the dilemma of whether to live life as previously or to reboot cause businesses to rethink their strategies? A simple question of ‘who am I?’ is perhaps up for deeper introspection.

6.

CLARIFICATION: Roles, responsibilities and rituals—Increased recognition and appreciation for primary front line workers and an awareness about missing human contribution towards climate, physical environment and nature is evident.

Why we believe this is important:

Appreciation, illumination, and de-stigmatization are silver linings of COVID-19. How might we take advantage of the positive changes to create lasting improvements in our societies? Will this restructuring lead to new taboos and social disparities?

7.

CONFIDENCE: Rethinking trust—The volume of news and views is overwhelming. Who Rethinking trust do we trust? What information is helpful? What is the official government line?

Why we believe this is important:

When the power of trust and guidance goes to non-official groups, people grow uncomfortable. They fear that many pretend to help in order to advance their own agendas. Could a crisis like this require us to be more morally flexible and let natural leaders do their job, regardless of their credentials? How might official and underground leaders come together to lead for a greater good?

I've included the headlines, brief explanation and the why we believe this is important, but you should go ahead and read the details. You'll also notice that many themes overlap—fear and trust, technology and people, hope and uncertainty, connection and re-evaluation.

How people are navigating self-others and community-country tensions is also part of context and can influence choices.

Designing conversations to introduce change

The jobs to be done is a concept the late Clay Christensen put forward to explain why we “hire” a product or service. JTBD forces is a tool (see diagram above) I've been using with clients to explore what is and what could be next. Bob Moesta & Chris Spiek have developed a robust set of resources around the concept.

Choices are the product of four main forces. There are things that push you to make a change, because you're not satisfied with the current product or solution. There are things that pull you because they sound pretty good, so you see upside in changing.

But on the other hand, uncertainty makes you cautious, while force of habit or inertia makes you stay with the current way. Think comfort of what I know when so much is destabilizing. It keeps you going with the flow.

To help people make changes and new choices, you want to address the strongest forces that could keep them rooted to the current ways. A brief explanation:

Push — the struggles people are facing in their current situation. These struggles are strong enough to push people to look for and adopt a better way or solution to the job they want to get done.

Pull — the appeal of a new way or solution. This new way looks good enough to attract people into its orbit.

Anxieties — the concerns and uncertainties people have about the new way or solution. Will this get me what I need?

Habit — anything with business as usual that makes it harder to change. For example, is there risk involved?

Every decision is a journey from what I know, buy and use to what I don't know, could be better, yet I'm not sure if it works. Understanding whether people are in progress on that journey is helpful.

In marketing to businesses, that's how we quality leads. Think about who's making purchasing decisions for a company and the parameters they use to make that decision. Can you help them? A simple example:

Push: “We know we've been having trouble getting visibility into who are our customers and prospects are. What we're doing now gets us there, but it's difficult and fragmented.”

Pull: “Using a software that can help us integrate the data we have in separate systems into a central CRM can really help us. We could see what everyone's working on and where we need help and free resources to do other things.”

Anxieties: “Getting marketing to implement the new solution can help us centralize important data, get higher adoption by sales. We can use our company meeting to see how it’s going.”

Inertia: “What do marketing and sales do today that is desirable in the new system? Is there anything they'd miss from the current methods?”

Inertia is corporate habits, a powerful force.

In marketing to customers, that's how we look at potential innovation. Any time you find a place where people are struggling, you can find an opening for something new. Even better if there are no words for what you're inventing.

Struggle is an indication that you care about something, or you wouldn't be after it. As I look at the themes we found with Not Everyday Life, I see many tensions. Conflict is fundamental to change and innovation. Right now, it's everywhere.

Using the JTBD forces framework has helped me study and promote the switch to new ways of doing things.

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I've been sharing ideas and perspectives about business and culture in my weekly email to nearly 1,000 new subscribers and growing. I organize issues by theme to minimize overwhelm. Subscribe here, if you're curious about reframing and rethinking.

Stop Chasing Your Tail, Make New Sense of What's Happening

How do you make change happen?

I'm not talking about setting out for the big transformative change or the stuff of revolutions. That's also important. But, in the here and now of your life, how do you keep things moving forward?

Another way of asking the same question: how do you get unstuck? Out from autopilot and into creative thinking. Or, facing a crisis, how do you keep anxiety at bay to do what you need to do to keep calm and stay safe?

There's a simple tool you can use to get more of what you want. It can get you clarity, answers and next steps. That tool is asking questions to engage in conversation.

Why too many decisions spoil the day

Have you ever found yourself in front of your office building, or a store with no recollection of how you got there? Are you the kind of person who can buy groceries while on the phone? I won't probe about texting and driving... it's not a good thing. But you get the idea.

Every day, we make hundreds and thousands of decisions, mostly without batting an eyelid. Because we don't even realize we're making so many. What happens is that some decisions you programmed into habits, some you estimate using rules of thumb.

A shopping list, taking a specific route to work, putting the keys in the same place, you may even pick clothes for that important client meeting the night before. On a good day, when things are fairly ordinary, there's only a limited number of situations where you need to make conscious decisions. Some people are really good at focusing on what's important.

Being in autopilot is a fairly common way to operate. Culture influences decision-making to some degree—directly, and indirectly. How you go about doing things (your personal style) and how you see yourself (your identity) include social pressure.

We're not as original as we'd like to think. Yet that can be a good thing. It helps us conserve energy for what's important. But if you want to get better at taking control of your decisions, a good place to begin is to look at the range of possible outcomes.

Your decision-making landscape could have changed drastically by now. Some fundamental things have changed (temporarily). How do you make sense of the world when you're (likely) called to make more new kinds of decisions and are (maybe) anxious about the future?

Humans are sensing machines

The process you and I use to give meaning to our collective experiences is called sensemaking. People are constantly doing things while figuring out what's happening and what it means. This is one reason why companies that organize their messages in a way that follows these natural inclinations get a slice of attention.

Let's think about attention a little further. When we're in unfamiliar environments, some (or many) things change, and we have a chance to make a fresh start. People say this is a reason they love to travel: certain aspects or degrees of their experience change.

Travel is a temporary part of experience, it's like a simulation. You get to test-drive a different life for a period of time. Exposed to another context and culture, you renegotiate your identity based on who you meet and what you work out.

Normally, you and I protect our attention and energy with autopilot to be able to get through the day. Being very tired or feeling a bit listless is probably an indication that your brain was working extra hard in manual mode. That circumstances have changed many parts of your normal routines.

A pandemic or other catastrophic situations require a sustained manual mode. This is why many of the people I've talked to for Not Everyday Life said they felt exhausted, especially in the beginning of the lockdown.

Behaviors, habits and attitudes shift as you deal with new information. Families had to renegotiate roles, routines varied, and the normal flow of information, including social media, went up exponentially. People were trying to get to critical data while the situation was developing. All while trying to keep safe.

Leaders had to make decisions with impact to the people in their spheres of influence—family, employees, partners, collaborators, etc.—and consequences beyond the immediate future. That's a lot of deciding in a short time span. Think of the complexity of knowing what to do and communicating it clearly at the same time. Then there's the messages out there: ads, marketing programs, deals, etc.

Because we're not really good at predicting the future, deciding who to trust and what things to take at face value are also forms of decision making. This is where we try to take shortcuts and go on autopilot to save energy.

Yet, a well-developed ability to make sound decisions has impact on the future. Which is why, on a personal level, it's a good idea to have a system to get back to basics on how to choose for oneself. Whether the choice is a source, or a course of action.

What do you do when something doesn't make sense?

If you're human, you do one of three things. You either (1) ignore it, if you think it doesn't matter. Maybe you get back to it later if it looked interesting, but not relevant to what you're doing now.

(2) You estimate what you think it means. Or, if you've got time and you're not too busy, you (3) try and work out in detail what something actually means. Since this happens hundreds of times a day, this is where your autopilot helps. 

We get really good at deciding which ones of the three to pick from past experience. But this breaks when we face something new. Then, it becomes risky to figure things out on your own. Go down the wrong path, and you're facing a bigger problem.

Alan Arnett is an engineer who became fascinated with how we make decisions and what we do when things don't make sense#. He says we actually split into two functions. The part who ought to know what to do, the grown up part that gets paid loads of money and is trying to get things done.

Then, slightly in the background, is the part that is constantly checking and trying to figure out if we're doing the right thing by comparing what we're doing now with what we've done before.

But with decisions, it's not just you. You've got the situation you're dealing with, the other people involved with you, plus the way you see and deal with things—all happening at the same time. Noticing your reactions and dealing with them is very important to everything you do.

It can go either way. You're checking things and see a problem, you then start arguing with others and trying to avoid it. If you're optimistic and think things will go well, you could go in too fast and still find a stumbling block later on.

This way of thinking is from the mind of an engineer. And I really appreciate it, because it looks at the process and tries to understand where it goes wrong. If you have teenagers at home, avoiding and arguing are familiar reactions.

You can get good at avoiding and arguing, but you don't make as much progress on the thing you'd like to move forward. There's another way of looking at differences that is more constructive—Arnett calls it colliding and creating.

Some things already make sense. They're the things for which we use patterns to figure out what's happening. This is where we store the stories we tell ourselves, the habits we form with our routines, riding a bike, walking down the street, these are all activities that use patterns we already formed.

But there are also situations where we need to make new sense.

This is when we're called to explore the specifics of a meeting, a question or circumstance. Often, we get so caught up on the pattern-seeking side of sensemaking, that we overlook what's different in the thing right in front of our nose.

Trying to solve a problem in one context using what worked in another is a common example of this.

Can I fix it?

Back in the late '80s early '90s I worked with someone who had used this same thought process in the neurological field. Glenn Doman was a physiotherapist who noticed the need for making new sense to rehabilitate people who had lost physical and/or mental function.

Instead of fixing the limb, where the symptom was, he found a way to collide his knowledge with that of a brain surgeon to see what was happening in the brain. He then set out to study how normal development happens to see what what missing and how it could be retrieved or rewritten.

He created a method to connect the two data points. He came up with a developmental profile. What needs to happen on the input side to get the type of output that makes you function as a human being. The key functions.

It's a long story that helped get thousands of brain-injured children better by creating the environmental conditions that would program new patterns in the brain. Working with him changed the way I look at problems.

Doman asked the three fundamental questions Arnott proposes:

1. What are we solving?
2. Where are we heading?
3. How might we get there?

This is the shortcut a medical professional and and engineer have used for over fifty and twenty five years respectively to make new sense of things. I've been using a similar process to break down complex situations and strategize new directions with clients. 

If you're in the middle of something and getting very frustrated and stressed or excited and eager to jump in front of a fast-moving train of thought, you can use questions to slow yourself down and make new sense.

Questions create space. Questions have the power to get you energized or calm and get other people engaged.

What are you hoping to accomplish?

Mike Wagner works with leaders. He's helping them make sense of what we've come to see as the great disruption. The image above is from a webinar he's done recently. Mike uses conversation as a discovery tool to observe what's going on and get people to engage in making new sense.

For example, to help a company understand why they were having more product returns, he listened to dozens of customer service calls. He noted three main types of company representatives' behaviors: those who dominate the conversation, those who believe the client right off the bat, and those who get quickly to a next step.

That seems an obvious range of behaviors. But what's not so obvious is how you help people see what they're doing and how it holds the company back. If you don't know what you're solving, if you can't see the evidence and how reachable it is, you won't get aligned on getting there.

Mike labeled the behaviors. Because it's important to have shared words for understanding what's happening. With new categories, you can create mental models around who says what and what change would look like.

Once you make new sense of a situation, you can figure out how to transition people out of automatic mental patterns and into new mental models. Mike told me he created a program for the reps to practice leading a guided conversation.

Imagine a call starting with: what are you hoping to accomplish? 

Is it confirmatory or exploratory?

Siamack Salari is a leading expert in ethnographic research. For more than twenty five years, he's been pioneering development in qualitative research. He's also the founding contributor of Not Everyday Life.

Our collaboration in steering the 1,000 plus crowdsourced project to make new sense of what's happening is reinforcing the importance of reframing when exploring specifics of a situation.

The job of a researcher and strategist is to help see things through a new lens. If this is your work, what you do is literally to: learn what's a desirable endpoint for the client (the brief), observe what's there (reality) and make new sense of things.

It's critical to set the right expectations throughout. That includes for the role you play.

Siamack says he's been lucky in his career, most if not all the work he's done has been exploratory. That means making new sense to understand a situation. That's where you can ground a program.

It can be tricky if you forget to figure out the main question: is this confirmatory (i.e. validation) or exploratory? Your direct client usually has a bigger client in her/his company. Even when you work with the CEO, the private equity company or the board of directors could be the ultimate client. Yep, that works even in government and media. Direct and indirect interests could collide.

Here are some examples of reframing in brand strategy.

1. Pirelli comes to you and says I want people to buy more tires. You help them by reframing the goal from the point of view of their potential customers: drive around more.

2. Rai3, which is the national education channel in Italy, comes to you and says viewers are complaining, this is proof they need to change programming. You help them reframe the context from the point of view of the audience they want to attract: people who like to think deeply.

3. Illy caffe' says people are saying their coffee is more expensive compared to drip coffee. After you inwardly swallow a cup of amazing espresso, you help them reframe product positioning. Illy is inexpensive compared to Starbucks.

Reframing is about looking at the question differently and asking a better question.

Making new sense to help you move forward

The point is that our pattern-seeking brains can keep us stuck in first gear when we're facing a new situation. Avoiding and arguing can be a career-ending proposition. In a riskier situation, they can get you into dicey spots.

I've spent a lot of time inside companies working on re-imagining brands to revitalize businesses and getting people to believe in them again. I've been involved in responding to major crises. I've also been on the other side of the fence as a consultant and coach to help businesses with digital. 

Engineers and technical people get very excited about the stack. Business people get energized thinking about the business results. Then you've got to think of customers and everyone else in the company. The technology changes, but it's getting people to talk to one another that matters most to success.

A certain amount of friction is useful to create traction, so colliding is favorable to creating. Generations don't matter as much as we think. It really is about being human and figuring out: why are we here? Where are we trying to go?

Back to the original question: How do you keep things moving forward? Which is a more personal way of asking how to make change happen—from stasis or stuck to forward motion.

You can borrow from the tools that work for many disciplines:

• notice—critical in research and structural thinking.
• breathe—critical in meditation, athletics and other kinds of artistic performance but also in life. Even better if you train yourself to do this every time you wash your hands, which now is very frequently.
• question—valuable in strategic work for many disciplines. Asking questions is a way to bypass our pattern-seeking brains and make new sense.
• explore—how to reframe situations from different perspectives. Essential in development work.
• practice—what everyone is here to do. When you do it with intention and the intent to define direction, more practice makes progress.

I came across two essays recently that have reinforced the same sense of fragility we face as humans I have felt during personal and family difficulties: lessons in perspective. The more we are willing to make new sense, the more sense we make.

I'd like to thank Mike and Siamack for prompting this conversation on sensemaking, where grounding outstrips groundbreaking.

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[image courtesy Mike Wagner, White Rabbit Group; here's a link to Mike's video conversation on How to Lead During the Great Disruption]

The Coronavirus Shows Why, if They are to Stay Healthy, Companies Need to Rethink Practices

It was obvious before the pandemic. Companies spent less and less time and effort at the micro level, trying to sort out what's desirable for people. I've heard it from strategists and from qualitative researchers: a mandate to figure how to capture and manage attention quickly.

Understanding, like relationships, take time and commitment to build. But technology moves at a faster pace, enveloping everyone into its speed and growth potential. Hence the widening gap between the things we must choose to do and those we leave on the cutting floor.

It's taken a global pandemic to realize that we don't know what we don't know. In fact, the people who know the most themselves don't know enough with any sense of certainty. Distributed networks all over the world are helping people stay safe and informed better than official channels.

Why is that? Because complexity plus chaos change the game. We had complexity before, of course, even though companies tried to manage for ordered systems. To keep some form of control. Technology had already changed the trajectory of, well, change, making it difficult for creatures like humans to think exponentially.

But with the additional complication of accidental chaos brought about by the crisis the degree of uncertainty has become very high. Hence why the people selling certainty right now are doing so well in getting attention.

Your results may vary

When is efficiency actually detrimental to brand health? You're correct if you're thinking that it could be catastrophic when context changes. Checklists fail outside of their context. They fail when you implement.

In early January, when I naively thought the new SARS emerging in China was like the previous SARS and could be contained, I purchased a ticket to go see my mom for her birthday in late May-early June. British Airways sold me the ticket, but I bought it through American Express. Good thing I did.

When in early March it became obvious that Italy had a problem, I started worrying about my upcoming trip. Due to the uncertainty of the developing situation, however, I did nothing. At the time, BA was offering a voucher, and I didn't know that I would be able to use it within a year if the trip had to be canceled. So I waited.

In April, it had become obvious that the trip was not going to happen. When borders close, one takes a hint. Many airlines were refunding tickets. BA was still holding onto the voucher option. Even when the U.S. government communicated that they were going to fine airlines that did not provide reimbursements.

I reached out to American Express, my travel agent. They told me to wait a few days. I waited and monitored the BA website, no change. After more than one week, I was able to get the refund through American Express. It should not be that hard!

Yet, even with potential sanctions looming, BA had canceled the London-Bologna portion of my trip with no refund and was sticking to its policy. Eventually, the entire flight was canceled and reimbursed.

However, a few days later, I got this message:

It's true, I've been a member of the Executive Club, Silver Status. It's not that easy to get, you've got to spend quite a bit, especially if you don't travel as much for work anymore. Last year I traveled to Italy three times (the status expires every year) to see family and work on a side project. I earned the points. Still, I do feel like a guinea pig on a spinning wheel. One-way loyalty sounds like bribery to me.

But it gets worse. I have no idea when I'll be able to fly again. Because borders are closed, I care about my mother's health, I have no easy access to reliable testing, and neither does she. We have no idea how flight processes will change... and if we'll still feel like flying when so much is up in the air.

Here's the clincher, though. When I got that automated message from the BA Executive Club email system, I cried. Because it reminded me not of how stupid efficiency is in companies that try to save human effort by automating as much as possible. I cried because it reminded me of the widening gap between my desire to see my mother and reality. I can't go.

Take that emotional wake in association with your brand. BA has demonstrated three levels of insensitivity to my needs as a loyal customer with a considerable lifetime value: 1./ giving me just one option, voucher, for as long as possible; 2./ not doing the right thing, i.e. more options, until forced; 3./ not reorganizing marketing processes around the emergency. 

Dear companies, I understand why it's prudent to take a look at marketing budgets when the market contracts. But please, please don't be foolish. Every impression counts. Operations is marketing. Contracts are marketing. Privacy language is marketing. The messages on your website are marketing.

Hence why your results may vary.

What you should do instead

Let's get very real. This is simple, but not easy to pull off. That's why leaders get paid the big bucks. To, hopefully, know the difference between what operating system to adopt when.

So the first question is are you operating in an ordered, complex, or chaotic system? This is actually another good case when you can pick two, just like fast, good, and cheap. I get it, there are tensions to manage: shareholder primacy, stakeholders soundbites, lives are at stake. Could the “pick two” paradigm hold here?

Let's hold onto that question as long as possible so we can find a better answer while we work through the problem. With decision-making, it's useful to understand when decisions need to be made. Timing is everything. Or maybe everything is time. Don't fly blind. Making decisions based on old information is like flying blind.

I've taken some notes from the 90-minute session on complexity that addresses covid-19 challenges to add to my own experience. Every company right now is trying to hold onto previous investments (loss aversion is very human), and figure out what's next, to find a path forward, fast.

Seminars promising answers via trends are selling like hot cakes. Some are interesting, some could be useful. But as a leader, you have the responsibility to provide direction to your company, not a generic company in a generic industry.

How do you know what's going on with your customers/market?

• distribute situational assessment—more ears on the ground. Ironically, that's what a good social media employee policy ten years ago would give you today. If ten years ago you had put in place a mechanism for all employees to listen for trends, ideas, market forces using social (and yes, even help out with customers issues) via personal channels, you'd now have an amazing network of skilled and trusted people you could rely on. Lacking that, hopefully you put in place smart working at your company years ago. Your people also know your business, or they should. Net/net: Companies that have ready access to distributed networks based on relationships of trust right now have an advantage. They can learn more, faster.
• disintermediate (raw) data—you want to get your hands on as much raw data as possible. This means hearing out the 17 percent of people who don't fit your idea of customer or partner. That's the missing data, by the way. Companies rarely get their hands on it. Because the propensity is usually to focus on the low hanging fruit. Innovation is a special project, if it exists at all, not a way of operating. This is the reason why some company people, maybe even some people in your company, decided to join Not Everyday Life. They get that it's important to access raw data, their marketing budget was cut. They joined as individuals, but they'll help their company, or try to if company leaders will listen, of that I'm sure. I was one of those people when I worked in corporate. It's a very lonely place. Net/net: Leaders, find those people in your companies and talk to them.
• embrace granularity and redundancy—when your automated systems are failing the emotional test with customers, you see the importance of people, a redundancy. The people who are taking initiative and have been helping your company through their private social media channels and email accounts are not lone wolves. In fact, quite the opposite. That's how they survived through the frustrating experience of executives rarely listening to them, if ever. They are part of small, informal groups inside your company. Small, distributed groups can coordinate much faster than larger groups, especially in times of chaos/emergency. Because they likely know how to get stuff done when the processes break or make no sense. They're used to going around the bureaucracy to get things done, because they care about customers more that the system does. Net/net: If you're lucky and these people survived inside your company, they're your lifeline. 

Coronavirus doesn't care about your company. It has no body, nor mind. Hence, it's not even an enemy. It survives by mutating in human bodies. Its mechanism to spread is to inhabit the same human bodies companies seem to want to eliminate.

When we don't know what the (real) problems are until much later, we need to capture intelligence in a radically different way. This means operating at several layers at the same time.

But execution looks very different from the example I provided from British Airways. Their three levels are not a good example. That way of operating lacks imagination, and imagination is an actual cognitive process in your brain. It helps you put things together, in a way you cannot do logically.

Distributed cognition is a way to gain different perspectives fast. Use it and you have at least a chance to increase diversity of input in your decision-making. Do try this at home. Results may vary.

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I've been sharing ideas and perspectives about business and culture in my weekly email to nearly 1,000 new subscribers and growing. I organize issues by theme to minimize overwhelm.

Ten Books to Gain Perspective

People have asked more questions in the last few weeks than in the last ten years. They all start with what's the future of—work, cities, travel, faith, science, education, government bodies. Every day brings in new questions, few answers.

But this is not for lack of trying. The questions are just too complex to work out individually. Networks started forming around each of these questions, scientists, academics, researchers are pooling their thinking and experience to make it more difficult for the virus to spread and improve humanity's odds.

People connect on similarities—like language, body of knowledge—yet benefit from differences—such as cultural context, specific experience. You can take advantage of this principle and explore the ideas and experience of others.

You don't need to be part of a specific network to do that, you can learn through books. Human beings have the ability to imagine. Through imagination, you can put things together in your brain in a way that is not possible logically.

In my quest to accelerate my imagination and cognitive process, I've come across several books, articles, and webinars to help gain different perspectives. I've been sharing most of the material in my weekly email to nearly 1,000 new subscribers and growing. I organize those by theme to minimize overwhelm.

But every so often, I like to group books into a list. People find them helpful. For example, recently I shared thought provoking readings to build a better future. Here, I'd like to push a little bit outside my own comfort zone.

Ten books to gain perspective

I've come across these books through a very organic process. Down a rabbit whole on my path to understanding complexity and questions.

1. Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World: Designing for Emergence by Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian and John Seely Brown—thesis: in a world where causality is systemic, entangled, in flux, and often elusive, we cannot design for absolute outcomes. Instead, we need to design for emergence.

Imagination is a big muscle we can flex. John Seely Brown talked about its role in helping you ask the right questions:

“The real key is being able to imagine a new world. Once I imagine something new, then answering how to get from here to there involves steps of creativity. So I can be creative in solving today’s problems, but if I can’t imagine something new, than I’m stuck in the current situation.”

Ann Pendleton-Julian was one of the four members of a conversation on a 90-minute session on addressing covid-19 challenges (via Tim Kastelle). If you're a leader called to make decisions, listening to this could make a real difference in your thinking.

2. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell—thesis: in a world where our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity . . . doing nothing may be our most important form of resistance.

The book came after a talk, you can find the transcript here. I followed many of the citations you'll find in the talk and the book.

3. A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit—thesis: how disaster throws people into a temporary utopia of changed states of mind and social possibilities, as well as the cost of the widespread myths and rarer real cases of social deterioration during crisis.

4. After the Future by Franco Bifo Berardi—thesis: our future has come and gone; the concept has lost its usefulness. Now it's our responsibility to decide what comes next.

Berardi has a European perspective in the way he describes labor. But perhaps it resonates in many parts of the world now:

In the global digital network, labor is transformed into small parcels of nervous energy picked up by the recombining machine. … The workers are deprived of every individual consistency. Strictly speaking, the workers no longer exist. Their time exists, their time is there, permanently available to connect, to produce in exchange for a temporary salary.

He proposes individual actions that can open doors. Specifically to quiet “the proliferation of chatter” to reclaim your attention and thinking. And that is worth considering.

5. One Square Inch of Silence: One Man's Quest to Preserve Quiet by Gordon Hempton and John Grossmann—thesis: sound portraits of nature and the importance of the quality of sound in our lives.

Silence is not only nearly impossible today. Even working from home with everyone on lockdown has the frenetic, incessant grass cutting activity of neighbors and their landscape companies compete in breaking concentration. 

6. Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice by Pauline Olivero—thesis: guide to ways of listening and sounding. 

When you enter an environment where there are birds, insects or animals, they are listening to you completely. You are received. Your presence may be the difference between life and death for the creatures of the environment. Listening is survival!

I've written about John Cage and his work on the sound of silence. Olivero was a performer of his music and focused more on embodiment and improvisation.

7. Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World by Tyson Yunkaporta—thesis: a special way of thinking, of learning to see from a native perspective, one that is spiritually and physically tied to the earth around us, and how it can save our world. Reads like a travel journal.

This as one of the two recommendations from Tim Kastelle in his recent webinar on taking along-term view. I've also been exploring these thoughts in my research about the connection of leaders with their territory in Italian companies, especially in my native region, Emilia-Romagna.

8. The Theology of Hope: On the Ground by Jurgen Moltmann—thesis: thick thinking about hope from a western view and eastern view (and even the more central German/Italian peoples who view context and objects as fairly equal in giving or taking away hope).

Read reviews of the book if you're considering it. It was a recommendation of Dave Snowden, creator of the Cynefin framework. The future is not based on historical events of the past, nor just more of it.

9. The Legacy of Heorot by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, Steven Barnes—what would it take to colonize another planet? The problem of making the trip, the earth animal and plants that you needed take, the psychology of the people involved, leadership, the sexual and ethical morals, the technology are all covered.

This is another Dave Snowden recommendation. The book illustrates how people can learn to adapt, society can change. My take is that there is a moral conversation that needs to happen about the intent.

10. Negotiations 1972-1990 by Gilles Deleuze—traces the intellectual journey of a man widely acclaimed as one of the most important French philosophers. He had a lasting impact on a variety of disciplines, including aesthetics, film theory, psycho-analysis, and cultural studies.

…we’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying.

He wrote the passage above in 1985. Silence makes the space for thinking better, for finding something useful to say. The interviews describe what the philosopher was trying to do with his work.

One more thing

I've mentioned this book before. This is a reading for the brave, for those of you who are willing to get in the mud that follows a war. it talks about profiteers, displacement, and the pain of destruction.

Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II by Keith Lowe—from the close of the war right to the establishment of an uneasy stability at the end of the 1940s. Based principally on primary sources from a dozen countries.

It gives you a dimension of how recovery and rebuilding were not easy nor quick. The war took more than six years out of people's lives, reducing many parts of Europe to rubble, many people to inhuman behavior.

So we should be very careful about using the war metaphor now. War language tries to push accountability onto an “enemy.” A virus is not a sentient being. It's worth choosing more appropriate language, lest the metaphor transfers to the profiteers of this new, imagined war.

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[A network map of a portion of the 6000+ scientists who are collaborating on #covid19 research. This network self-organized/emerged over the last few months. Links represent collaborations in 2020 only via Valdis Krebs]

Find Signal in Noise to Draw Meaning and Make Better Decisions

Cognitive biases, we're not leaving home without them. Well, right now we're not leaving home, period. It's just so interesting that there's an obsession over productivity and time spent on tasks, and yet, so little proportional attention to how what occupies brain waves impacts it.

I don't know if you've ever wondered why are there are so many cognitive biases. There must be some reason they survived through the centuries to modern day. And yes, I'm aware this is a rhetorical question, because cognitive biases help us address key needs in our lives:

• filter and sort information
• organize data
• draw conclusions
• simplify

Let's take a look at each of these first, then we'll talk about how to hedge your bets and avoid blind spots.

Too much information

What's going on now is that we all have too much information from disparate fields and sources to filter and sort through. It is rare that we feel we have too many trusted sources of information, however.

If the goal is turning noise into signal, how do you avoid depending too much on:

• things you notice in your memory
• unusual things that stick out
• change that gets noticed
• details that confirm your beliefs and attract your attention
• easier-to-spot flaws in others

Rather than give in to the brain's natural inclination, save effort in another way. Take a structured approach to figuring out the wheat from the chaff. For example, define elements that are critical to the evaluation, then use assessments made independently and based on facts. 

Use this method through thin and thick in news cycles and over time to assess the credibility of sources. Then perhaps you have a stronger base to start from moving froward.

Not enough meaning

Compounding the sorting challenge comes a need to organize data in a way that makes sense to you. By nature, news and public information are general. It takes more work to make it specific and applicable to you.

If you're in the process of constructing a story of what's going on right now, and how it applies to your company, you could observe how it's easy to:

• find stories and see patterns in sparse data
• fill in using stereotypes, generalities and prior history
• imagine things and people you're familiar with and like, rather than those who are unfamiliar
• simplify probabilities into numbers that are easier to remember
• think you know what others are thinking
• project current assumptions from the past into the future, getting timelines wrong

Resist the instinct to “fill in,” which happens in an instant and is an effortless process. You're rarely aware it's happening at all. You don't know that something is missing because it doesn't reach your attention threshold.

Like rational choice theory, common sense insists people have reasons for doing what they do. Maybe, but predicting what they will do and their reasons is anything but simple. You can only do that when you look back and rationalize or come up with a neat story about what worked and why.

This is a frame problem. But beware of papering over gaps where significant and critical information is missing. It could be a costly proposition.

Need to act fast

Once your mind wraps around a pattern you're tempted to use the emerging story to make decisions. The need for speed and uncertainty don't mix well. Right now, they're both high, which means we're right in the middle of chaos.

Some people do well in chaos, others need to create order to function. When things move fast in real time, order is an illusion. But this doesn't mean you need to jump to conclusions too quickly, either.

If you're feeling a compulsion to draw conclusions, you'll notice the:

• need to act fast to project confidence
• need to focus and favor the immediate, relatable thing vs. the delayed and distant gratification
• desire to complete what you started to get anything done because you already invested time and energy into getting to that point
• motivation to preserve autonomy and status over the desire to avoid mistakes from irreversible decisions
• simple over the complex and ambiguous

It's hard, but with practice it becomes easier to resist the temptation to go from stories into decisions. For example, every company looks at competition in terms of what they do and say. Yet. it's why they do and say it that matters. Often, it takes more digging to uncover why.

Everyone can copy tactics or words, but without looking under the hood, it's hard to copy results. There's a better method to figure out what's going on, and that is observing what customers do.

What to self-reinforce

One thing to remember is that each person has a certain way to look at the world. A point of view and perspective often based on reinforcing what is already known. It's what I call the view from somewhere.

Clarity is a moving target, because you're always competing with the story people have in their heads. Let's not forget how your own story sometimes gets ahead of what's really going on.

If you're keen on keeping yourself honest, you could take the extra step to be mindful that you tend to:

• edit and reinforce memories after the fact
• discard specifics and nuance in favor of generalizations
• reduce events to lists, bullets and key elements
• store memories differently based on how you experience them vs. their informational value

Thus make decisions based on potentially faulty mental models rooted into what was, rather than possible futures scenarios.

To be less wrong, it's useful to engage multiple perspectives, to see lots of possible answers to a question, lots of ways to interpret information, or to see multiple answers and not just one.

When in doubt, run small, low cost experiments to test and learn. Repeat to accelerate understanding.

The will to move forward

Divergent thinking is useful when you're exploring new situations. Typically, this is a skill honed through practice. For example, by applying ideas from different industries and roles to a question.

Beyond the ability to think differently, you also need the will to act differently.

This is the domain of creativity, or the ability to combine different bodies of knowledge and observation into a plan and execution. When you have enough dots to connect, you can see beyond the obvious and get going.

The core issue in companies and governments alike, is the ability to process a lot of information in a timely manner, sort what's important, draw meaning from it, and find a systematic way to make decisions. All good so far. Then nothing good happens. Why?

Because you can have all the expertise, resources, and capacity in the world, but if you have a weak leader whose mental models are more important than the facts, you're stuck.

Or maybe you're leading by committee and there's disagreement on how to move forward. Each person pulls in a different direction. You can have immense wealth, scientific knowledge, and readiness, but if the governance is terrible, you'll have terrible outcomes.

You need the means and the will to make things happen. And this is not just in your head, at the level of reasoning, where you can deal with cognitive biases. It's also in the rolling up of sleeves and building the infrastructure and governance to do what you've thought about. Stick with it long and often enough to learn.

Many organizations and companies have become mechanisms to respond to special interests, or keep things as they are, more or less. This works alright when things hum along, with the occasional speed bump.

But when a crisis hits, that's when you know if you have all the equipment to respond. For example, companies are now discovering that breaking the glass in case of marketing doesn't work so well if what's inside is just fluff.

The opposite if fluff is a decision. In fluid situations like the current one, it's useful also to update your thinking and decisions as more information becomes available. To avoid blind spots, leaders can:

1. Create a structured approach to filter and sort information, organize data, draw conclusions and simplify that will flag cognitive biases.
2. Build a team with divergent thinkers to expand horizons and convergent thinkers to get things done.
3. Create opening for dissent and conversation.
4. Listen to understand what others are saying, having defined the critical attributes that matter in advance.

Bonus points if you use Bayesian inference to update probabilities of things happening as more evidence or information becomes available.

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I send out a chatty weekly email with links to resources to feel less lonely, lead better, and absorb some Italian style in good company.

A Quarantine from Reality: Italian Goes to America, Son Opens a Bank, Helps Rebuild a Community, a City, a State, and a Country

It seems that what's dictating the human agenda right now is fear. Each day we get our rationing of counts—who lived, who died, who told a story. Right out of Hamilton, the show. The avalanche of articles and news alerts seem to indicate that anything goes.

In a business setting, which is what I'm used to, when a new situation like the one we're facing creates a change, the first line of defense from letting it overtake you is what you say to others and your internal conversation.

Because those words are birthing the emotional wake you'll need to live with as you try to wade through the crisis. Nobody knows how things will be as time passes. A sure bet is that they won't be the same as they are today.

So I thought of taking a quarantine from reality. Come with me down history lane.

Italian goes to America, son opens a bank

I came across this story thanks to an exchange on LinkedIn with an expert in behavioral finance from Rome in response to an article someone shared. In fact, he pointed out that the author had mentioned Amedeo Peter Giannini in closing — and with little detail.

It turns out that Giannini, born in an Jose, California, to Italian immigrant parents (his father was from a town near Genoa, at the time still part of the Kingdom of Sardinia), is the inventor of the modern bank and the concept of banking marketing.

Giannini's father bought a farm with his gold rush proceeds and settled to grow fruits and vegetables for sale. He was fatally shot by an employee after a pay dispute, leaving a widow with two children and one on the way. After his mother remarried, Giannini called it quit with school, thinking he could do better in business.

He worked as a produce broker, commission merchant and produce dealer for farms in the Santa Clara Valley, was successful and married well — the daughter of a North Beach real estate magnate.

Retired at 31, he administered his father-in-law's estate. When he became a director of the Columbus Savings & Loan, a business in which his father-in-law had invested, he saw an opportunity to service the increasing immigrant population that were without a bank.

But there was no persuading the other directors, so he quit and started his own bank. He invested everything he had, including his wife's assets in the risky business. The bank guaranteed honest and lower exchange rates than the others to immigrants who sent money home and granted credits for small amounts to those who had little or no guarantees.

That is he set out to do what all the others don't do because “a banker worthy of the name — it was his theory — must not deny anyone credit, provided that he is honest.” Giannini founded the Bank of Italy on October 17, 1904.

The institution for “the little fellow” was in an old saloon in North Beach, the Italian quarter in San Francisco. He went street by street, house by house, to present the services offered by the bank. They say he looked at how many calluses the person who was asking for a loan had on his hands to decide whether to grant it or not.

He opted for popular shareholding, he had dealers, farmers and artisans subscribe to shares and decided to finance the builders who guaranteed good prices to those who wanted to buy a house. Deposits on the first day were $8,780. Within a year, they soared above $700,000 ($13.5 million in 2002 dollars).

When the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires leveled much of the city, Giannini set up a temporary bank, collecting deposits, making loans, and proclaiming that San Francisco would rise from the ashes. He was fast.

They say Giannini took gold and money out of the half-destroyed office of his credit institution hidden in fruit carts similar to those he used to sell vegetables with his parents as a boy. Other stories talk about him hiding the money under rubbish in a trash truck, then later giving employment to the driver's son as a thank you for saving his bacon.

However he moved the money, he used it in the days immediately following the earthquake to travel around the city and lend to those who lost everything. In return, he asked only for a signature and the commitment to return the sum as soon as possible.

While the other banks were struggling to get back on their feet, the confidence of the Californians in the Bank of Italy increased and with it the deposits. In 1912 they already amounted to 11 million dollars. The reconstruction of the city attracted large sums of money, which passed through the bank's coffers.

Amadeo Peter Giannini became the symbol of the desire to rebuild the destroyed city. In 1909, right after legislation made branch banking possible, he opened the first branch of the bank in San Josè, the city where he was born. The Bank of America and Italy were created from a branch of the institution in 1919. In 1934 there were already 423 branches. The bank continued to be profitable.

In 1928 Giannini gave up his share of dividends, equal to over 1.5 million dollars. “A man who wishes to own more than 500 thousand dollars,” he used to say,  “should run to the psychiatrist.”

He was a banker, but also a patron. Giannini was once again able to see far into the future when he started offering loans at low interest rates to the nascent film industry. Fascinated by the educational potential of the new art, he wanted the Bank of Italy to sponsor Charlie Chaplin's “The Kid” in 1920.

A few years later it was the turn of Walt Disney's “Snow White” and “It Happened one Night” by Frank Capra, a director with whom the Italian-American banker made friends. They say Giannini inspired Capra for “It's a Wonderful Life.” In all, between 1936 and 1952, Giannini's bank financed over 500 films, for an amount of over half a billion dollars.

There's much more history in his story.

He bought bonds that helped finance the Golden Gate Bridge during the Great Depression in 1932. Designed by Joseph Strass, the long San Francisco bridge was a great work nobody wanted to finance. Giannini did, at zero interest rate, because he was convinced that the connection infrastructure would help restart the city's economy.

Meanwhile, nationalized in 1927, three years year later the Bank of Italy changed its name to Bank of America National Trust and Saving Association and survived the difficult years of that crisis unscathed.

When Giannini went to add the numbers, he realized that the loans he had granted without guarantee over the years had been repaid over 90 percent. The “bank of emigrants” had given confidence to the poorest, did not lose capital, produced profits and contributed to the development of California. He won his bet: The Bank of Italy had become one of the largest credit institutions in America.

Giannini's bank also faced the years during World War II without too many problems, financing the American war industry. Italy, however, had remained in his heart. After the end of the conflict, the bank advanced the funds necessary for the management of aid for the reconstruction of the Marshall Plan in Italy at zero interest. He also financed many Italian companies directly, including Fiat.

An elderly Giannini resigned from the presidency of his credit institution in 1945. His desk drawers were open that day. “I have nothing to hide,” he said. “And neither does the bank.”

Creating lasting impact

Amadeo Peter Giannini died in 1949 leaving a substantial legacy: A banking giant, two foundations that still bear his name dedicated to medical research and the development of the rural economy and a limited personal wealth, less than $500,000.

The “banker of the Italians” had remained faithful to the theory elaborated before founding his bank: “I don't want to get too rich, because no rich man possesses wealth, but is possessed by it.” A lesson he must have learned as a child when he saw his father die in a fight following a discussion over a one dollar debt.#

I'm just tickled that an obscure reference in a short article could provide such a wonderful trip down history lane. “You've got to lend money to the people who don't have it, at zero interest,”# was the reference. History worth remembering.

[Credit for much of the story goes to Silvia de Bernardin, journalist]

Responding to Emergencies

On Friday, September 21, 2001 there was an explosion in the city of Tolouse, France. Since it happened ten short days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it meant immediate panic about a terror attack.

The public had already been primed in that direction by both politicians and the always-on news cycle. At the time, I had flights to Italy booked 20 days out and, though I didn't know it yet, I would lose my job right before Christmas.

It was a volatile time, marked by ambiguity and uncertainty. Making decisions with a clear head and resolve, and creating a plan to respond in this environment is very hard. But not impossible. This is the time we're in now.

Something happened in a VUCA world

The nature and speed of change were accelerated by what happened on 9/11, an unthinkable act. There was a lot of haziness in the air, with mixed meanings of conditions and confusion over cause and effect. This made the prospect of surprise higher, and decisions harder.

Lack of predictability further increased the level of complexity perceived in the situation. While the world was mourning a great loss of lives, trying to make sense of what had happened and reacting to it, emergency respondents and leaders were making short-term decisions very fast.

The emergency did lead to a crisis, even as so many years out the details have faded. Plans and decisions that followed that crisis stayed with us until the present day, their usefulness for what's next hardly questioned at all.

But here's the thing with crises: No two are exactly the same. Because VUCA. The acronym stands for the more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous multilateral world that came at the end of the Cold War. VUCA is the reason why many of the challenges organizations face today are adaptive in nature.

Strategy gives you power

“To live in a moment that will be in history books is not a particularly pleasant experience; history, though, has another cruelty: those that are not remembered at all.” This is how Taiwan-based tech analyst Ben Thompson opens a recent article on Compaq and coronavirus.

In an incredible feat of ingenuity and hard work, Compaq figured out how to create a version of firmware that made the computer turn on and load the operating system. They deconstructed and reconstructed the code without copying IBM's copyrighted version.

Co-founder Rod Canion says, “[We had] just a bull-headed commitment to making all the software run. We were shocked when we found out none of our competitors had done it to the same degree.” As a result, Compaq grew very fast, hitting $100 million than $1 billion in revenue. It was the largest PC-maker in the world by 1994.

What came next is not as surprising looking back, but worth remembering. Disruption happened—cheaper, good enough, computers entered the market. Compaq tried to compete at that level with the Presario, then to go the virtualization route, which worked for a while.

Then the company started outsourcing service functions instead of investing in them. Get the benefit, without incurring the cost. However, over reliance on intermediaries can backfire. “The real solution is to create your own capability. It takes longer and is more painful, but ultimately, it is more successful,” says Graham Kemp, president of G2 Research Inc. 

Eventually Compaq was folded into HP and disappeared, with huge destruction of value in several directions: Intellectual, human, social, promissory and manufacturing, along with financial. Let's not forget those other capitals, because as Thompson says, “no one even noticed.”

You can imagine your way into the future...

... While there is still time to change. It's an exhortation Max McKeown put front an center in the new edition of The Strategy Book, and for good reason. To excel at strategy, you need to excel at bridging the gap between thinking and taking action.

The best time to make progress toward any future is to prepare. A second best time is now. The opportunity to stop SARS-CoV-2 was late last year. By January, when it was still unclear what was happening, it was already too late.

Too late to stop the global spread of the virus. Too late for Italy to bring back the thousands of people who already died. Too late to be prepared to respond to the emergency in a coordinated manner, one that saves lives and manages uncertainty and ambiguity in the U.S.

But not too late to prepare for the change that will come after the crisis. However, while there's still time to change, there's no time to waste. Strategy gives you power only when you can bridge the gap between thinking (and planning) and taking action.

In a crisis, clarity of action comes from having done the work to identify who needs to be involved based on their circle of competence, who handles communications, what's the chain of command, and what's the process to handle situations that arise.

Because, as I noted in my article on responding to adaptive challenges:

Many leaders don't have enough experience creating full engagement with colleagues, asking deeper questions, connecting insight from difference sources, and doing so in real time. Analysis works well with technical challenges, but is unable to provide the coveted “silver bullet” when it comes to adaptive challenges.

There's often a new, cross-functional team with the skill sets and hard-won experience who engages with a crisis as a first line of response. It's their job to assess the situation, establish communication with experts to handle the emergency and be accountable to keep the public (employees, customers, communities) and leaders informed.

Good communication is clear, concise, correct, current, and curated, and helps prevent outrage. Good preparation involves documenting how you should act to respond in an emergency. Each member of the first response team should have a wallet-laminated card with the essential information.

Usually, this is a tri-fold card with approved protocols on the inside, and useful information on the outside: For example, how to categorize a crisis level, why this card exists, how to use it, important names and contact details. I have souvenirs from my days in chemical manufacturing and IT infrastructure services.

The stepped approach to re-build the future

A little card is not enough to respond appropriately to an emergency. It's useful for the first hour. To be honest, I don't think it goes much further than that. It's designed to take action quickly, engage the appropriate experts, and start the parallel paths of responding to the issues and figuring out what's after that.

When dealing with chemicals and biological issues, there needs to be a more robust document with “action steps.” We had a more detailed, 7-steps accordion card folded into a plastic holder (see images above) with short examples, contact information for experts, and how to handle surprises.

This allowed us to exit the crisis as quickly as possible to debrief and learn how to handle the next one better. The point of preparing is to have a flexible structure that does the heavy lifting on thinking to take action. It's the measured action  that allows you to learn from the past and support the future.

In his Compaq and coronavirus article, Thompson summarizes well how, even when late, different cultures responded differently to the current health crisis. Since the virus spread, “there has been divergence between countries that acted and countries that talked. Taiwan, where I live, is perhaps the best example of the former.”

Italy, where my family lives, has been a glaring example of the latter. There was uncertainty about drastic measures. When the response did happen, it was patchy and did not have the full coordination of the national, regional, and local bodies. Without getting too deep into Italian (or any) politics and current state of things, the response was both ineffective and insufficient.

As a result, Italy — a country that counts as many World Heritage Sites as China (167), at thirty-two times its size, not to mention the natural beauty, culinary wonders, the arts, and so on — is now suffering greatly. Brand Italy will need to reinvest heavily into its future.# Paolo Labicino, former Chief Creative Officer at Ogilvy & Mather Italy, has some ideas.

What can Italy do now to help itself into the future? It can invest in its brand by doing what it should have done in the first place. How a company or nation  behaves is also part of its brand. It lost weeks, and lives, but virologist David Ho says, “we could still make a difference and bring [the situation] under control with hard measures.”

In Informazioni Senza Filtro, notary and writer Carmelo di Marco outlines the stepped approach the Italian government should take (translation/paraphrasing mine):

1. Face the emergency as such — do what needs to be done, communicating clearly with realistic sanctions; the government takes care of the social costs in loss of work (remembering that for many that means staying in business) because people have to eat / have shelter to survive, but also because they need a future to go back to; scientists and experts do their part; citizens do their part.
2. Justify the decisions based on the future — demonstrate how today's (exceptional) decisions feed future prospects; “The central element of this future perspective must be a clear and irrevocable decision to return as soon as possible to the full exercise of the rights, to full respect for the constitutional principles and to the full exercise by the State of all its prerogatives and functions, and no more than one.” An emergency cannot become the new normal (we'll get back to this).
3. Take strategic action — now that we have data on how other countries were able to nip the virus in the bud, we have a new baseline to follow; di Marco says, this also means using the funds so many companies and citizens have collected to both take care of the now and fund the future.
   
4. Form and communicate a realistic vision of the future — not paternalism, no reductionist statements, and none of the other shenanigans that are tempting to politicians.

It's not enough to eliminate fear to be free and healthy. The people affected want to be part of the solution. They want decisiveness and action. Italy, like many Western governments, acted late, at a great social, human, and economic cost. They suffered from overconfidence in their ability to calculate exponential growth.# Hence the cascade effects of non-decisions and poor trade-offs.

Because we did not take action then, now we're at the large-scale economic bailout stage. Barry Ritholtz explains what the bailouts could accomplish. If we're thoughtful and intelligent in our approach. Every day and hour of inaction, indecision and waffling over the remedial steps will cost lives, literally, and livelihoods. Mariana Mazzucato says this is a chance to do capitalism differently.

Thompson adds an excellent thought, “if the real trade-offs to consider are about trading away civil liberties — which is exactly what has happened in Taiwan, at least to some extent — then the imperative to preserve debate about these matters is even more important.”

The ability to talk is the most precious civil liberty. But there are others worth considering, as di Marco says; they were worth fighting and dying for when they were put in place. After a major crisis, it's useful to monitor the remedies you apply, and take action to move towards a future that learns from the past and improves upon it. 

As for the planned trip to Italy back in 2001, it all went well. I lost my job just before Christmas of that year. Two weeks later I started working for a chemical company. I had the opportunity to test the importance of preparation: To separate the signal from the noise, and take purposeful action to respond to the emergency and prepare for the future.

Most of my work today focuses on building resilient brands that can take positive action, building the steps for a better future. Throughout my career, I've learned that how we measure impact is, mostly, wrong.

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I send out a chatty weekly email with links to resources to feel less lonely, lead better, and absorb some Italian style in good company.

Why the Little Decisions we Make Every Day are of Infinite Importance

We earn success a little bit a time, in the moment to moment decisions that in themselves make no visible difference whatsoever, but the accumulated compounding effect is profound.

    Understanding that the effects of small actions build over time helps us do something we may have struggled for years — to start. Whether we want to be healthier or pick a more diverse panel of speakers at conferences, we can make big changes with small steps.

C. S. Lewis# once said, “Good and evil increase at compound interest. That’s why the little decisions we make every day are of infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may go on to victories you never dreamed of.” 

Could you interpret the expression, “the devil is in the details” in this light? Rather than it being about perfection, it's about the small decisions.

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The Most Important Question: How do you Know?

The amount of knowledge we generate and store is growing exponentially. Much of what you learned in school or in the early years of your work has likely changed. It takes a little effort to stay up to date. It costs a lot to stay behind.

The speed at which you need to make decisions has accelerated. This begs for getting your hands on reliable information and knowledge fast. Fortunately, there are also many more ways to gain insights and the skills today. It takes little effort to stay up to date.

But you score no points for trying, effort is a means to an end.  The outcome is learning and improving and you demonstrate that through using your knowledge in practical applications or as a building block for a model of thinking that can serve in sorting out problems.

How do you know?

Much to remember, not enough time. In a 2018 lecture, Alessandro Barbero outlined the difference between memory and history. The topic is complex, but we can make a high-level distinction:

Memory is individual, it's the point of view of one person.

History is the understanding of what happened from all points of view.

In 1996, Barbero received the Strega Prize, the most prestigious literary prize in Italy, and in 2005, the Republic of France awarded him the title of Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He is a historian.

You're likely under the impression that the study of history is a dry series of data points, with the occasional bright spot. That is before you listen to one of his hour-long lectures on any topic.

One you do, you know that reasoning on what happened, all the people who were involved at the time and what they were thinking is the highly engaging. The hour just flies. You don't get to it in school — too much ground to cover, too little time.

Yet, this is why history is important. Reality its complex. To understand what actually happened, a view of the events from above is critical. One of the ways to learn from the experiences of others is to get out of a personal point of view, widen the gaze. This is what history does.

Because it's the sum of all the things that happened to human beings, history answers the question: What really happened? Memory is important, but by its very nature is limiting. It takes into account only one point of view.

In the same ways as it's become difficult to stay up to date on everything, so is teaching and studying history. More things happened and more people were involved. More information is accessible today, but you have a harder time telling which one is the official version and why.

Reality is complex, yet there's a simple way to get good maps and directions: How do you know? Proof can mean a direct citation of a person or document that creates the genealogy of an idea, data point, or statement. Then you go from there.

What are consequences?

Sorting wheat from chaff comes next. In a 1964 lecture, Richard Feynman described his method:

In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it... Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computational results to... experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works...

In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn't matter how smart you are, who made the guess of what his name is... If it disagrees with the experiment, it's wrong. That's all there is to it.

The rigor you use to evaluate the consequences of decisions is what matters, this is the scientific part. The process that produces decisions may look scientific, but may not be. Value of the solution is what matters.

As you decide based on the understanding of something that happened, it's also useful to know that at some point in the past there were different rules. For example, if you spoke to an ancient Greek about democracy, they'd tell you that it means everyone in the city goes up a hill and votes right there and then on an issue. Every citizen (well, except women...)

One more reason to insist on understanding context.