Pundits often encourage us to find our tribe, but that has its downsides. Tribal thinking can make us suspicious of outsiders and can lead us to ignore new information and evidence that challenges our existing beliefs and paradigms. Sure, there is safety in sticking with our tribe, but we are unlikely to learn anything new.
Experimental evidence has long shown we are hardwired to be distrustful of others we see as different than ourselves. In a study of adults that were randomly assigned to “leopards” and “tigers,” fMRI studies noted hostility to out-group members. Similar results were found in a study involving five year-old children and even in infants.
Yet in his new book, Tribal, behavioral psychologist Michael Morris suggests a more hopeful view. He points to three tribal instincts—the peer instinct, the hero instinct and the ancestor instinct—that leaders can leverage to pursue common purpose. We can expand our tribe beyond simple conflicts of “us and them,” to forge bonds and move forward as “we together.”
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Humans tend to think about things in a linear way. We assume progress happens step by step—losing a little weight for the summer, putting money into a college fund, growing a business customer by customer. We measure, plan, and execute accordingly. One day follows the next, and we try to make a little progress towards our goals
Yet many have observed that shifts are often abrupt. Hemingway, quite famously, described change as happening, “gradually, then suddenly.” Thomas Kuhn explained how revolutions unfold in abrupt paradigm shifts. Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot described change in terms of Noah effects and Joseph effects, with massive shocks disrupting periods of continuity.
Yet these are more than just interesting observations. For decades, scientists have uncovered the natural forces that underlie how change happens. Once we understand these principles, we can learn to notice the telltale signs and anticipate opportunities before events take us by surprise. That can help us work toward the kind of outcomes we want to see.
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When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was asked about how artificial intelligence will affect the marketing industry, he said, “It will mean that 95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI.”
Anybody who’s used an AI service can see what he means. With a simple prompt, we can use AI to generate ideas, produce creative images and videos, even to test the ideas against real or synthetic focus groups, exactly as Altman says. What he misses is that those things make up comparatively little of what marketing professionals do.
The truth is that creative work has been highly automated for some time, but, statistically, we’re not working any less. The problem is that, while machines can do much of our work for us, they can’t decide what work we want done. That’s why high-level jobs, both now and in the future, will center on identifying, communicating, coordinating, and executing intent.
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I recently read a book by a well-known business thought leader that I have tremendous respect for. Surprisingly, I noticed a factual error and, when I checked her notes, I saw that she cited an article I wrote in Forbes in which I made the same factual error. So it is quite likely that she made the mistake because she put her trust in me.
The error was relatively minor. I wrote that Blockbuster CEO, John Antioco, was fired because of a compensation dispute, when actually he left of his own accord. It was a stupid mistake and, to this day, I’m not really sure of why I made it. But I did so numerous times, in a number of articles and didn’t correct myself until Antioco himself set me straight.
The error wasn’t due to a lack of information. In fact, on some level I knew the real story, but somehow I got the wrong one into my head and it stuck there. The truth is that our minds are incredibly adept at playing tricks on us. Getting facts right has nothing to do with intelligence or ability. We need to recognize how easy it is to fool ourselves and remain vigilant.
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We tend to view revolutionary changes through iconic moments. We can envision Gandhi and his Salt March against the British Raj, Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial, where he told the world about his dream, or Steve Jobs’ return to Apple and inspiring us all to Think Different. Those legendary change leaders provide inspiration to us all.
Yet those moments can also be incredibly misleading, because they only tell us how the story ended, not how it began. We see the triumphs, but none of the struggles, setbacks, disappointments and doubts that they had to overcome along the way. So what we end up with is a cartoonish view, not exactly a lie, but not the truth either.
One thing that I’ve discovered in two decades studying transformational change is that what makes the difference between revolutionary leaders and those poor souls who toiled for years with nothing to show for it was what they learned along the way. One advantage we have is that we don’t have to fail to benefit from their mistakes. Here are three tools to help you.
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For a brief period in the 1980s, “Chainsaw” Al Dunlap was hailed as a corporate folk hero for shutting factories and firing thousands of workers. In reality, he was doing little more than juicing the numbers in the short term to earn hefty bonuses. The SEC later sued him for fraud and he has earned fame as one of the worst CEOs ever.
Yet the myth of the “tough guy” CEO never lost its luster. Ego-driven leaders like Eddie Lampert at Sears and Travis Kalanick at Uber not only terrorized employees, but did lasting damage to their organizations. Cruel policies, such as stack ranking, continue to attract a following even though they’ve long been discredited.
The 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant believed strongly in the notion of dignity, which he defined as treating people as ends in themselves, rather than as means to an end. I’ve found that Kant’s ideas about dignity are helpful for leading an organization—no one wants to be a cog in someone else’s machine. Treat them like one and it’s bound to cost you.
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On October 30, 1938 at 8pm Eastern time, Orson Welles aired his now legendary radio drama The War of the Worlds. Audiences were mesmerized —not just because the story was so compelling, but by the innovative news-style format that blurred the lines between fiction and reality. Many listeners genuinely believed Earth was under attack by Martians.
Yet the panic that ensued wasn’t just due to the style in which the H.G. Wells’ story was presented, but because people were still getting accustomed to the new medium of radio. Few had built up requisite media literacy to discern between fact and fiction. To them, the fake newscast was as real as anything else they’d heard.
Today, we face a similar challenge, on a larger scale. Social media, digital platforms, and foreign influence campaigns have created an environment where misinformation thrives. At the same time, research from Pew finds that only about a third of US adults say they “often” get their news from traditional sources. We need to better discern fact from fiction.
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In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, corporate America began hiring an unprecedented number of DEI executives to ensure inclusive workplaces. Investors began pouring money into ESG funds and President Biden signed into law the biggest investment in clean energy ever. Mckinsey reported progress for the LGBTQIA community in the workplace.
We are clearly in a different era now. Legislators are targeting ESG funds for destruction. Major firms such as Walmart are rolling back diversity policies. Upon taking the presidency, Donald Trump began a full assault on DEI programs. Activists who just a few years ago thought victory was inevitable are now besieged on every front.
This cycle of progress and backlash is so consistent we have a name for it: The failure to survive victory. Every revolution inspires its own counterrevolution. That’s the physics of change. But like the physics of flight—where lift must counteract gravity— the key to overcoming it is to understand its principles and put them to work for your own purposes.
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When Jeff Softley moved his family from Chicago to California, he had no idea what lay ahead. Early on, he took a wrong turn, and before they knew it, he and his wife were completely lost, ending up in a bad neighborhood. The experience was so unnerving that she nearly decided to call it quits right then and there.
Things weren’t much better at work. He had come to run analytics for Experian’s consumer division, also known as FreeCreditScore.com. The basics of the business were to drive traffic to the site by giving consumers access to their credit score and then try to provide them with services such as credit monitoring.
Yet the business was being disrupted by venture-backed fintech startups that didn’t need to turn a profit and could offer many of the same services for free. By the time Jeff arrived, the division had sixteen quarters of declining revenue and things looked bleak. Today, Softley leads a $1.5 billion juggernaut. The story of how he did it is something we all can learn from.
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A little over a decade ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with key members of the IBM Watson team. It was shortly after the system’s triumph over human competitors on Jeopardy! and everyone was trying to put the event in context. Would computers be, as Watson’s Jeopardy rival Ken Jennings joked, our new overlords?
Yet when I spoke to the IBM people, the concept they were most focused on was collaboration. “Now I have the power of the world’s 1000 best cancer specialists standing behind me, guiding me through this case that I’m working on,” Manoj Saxena, who was leading the Watson business at the time, told me.
Today we all have access to systems far more powerful than Watson on our personal devices and we all need to figure out for ourselves what we want that collaboration to be. How can AI systems help us make better decisions? How can it help us achieve more of what we want? When should we rely on our own judgment? The answers are beginning to come into focus.
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