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.
read more…
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.
read more…
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.
read more…
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.
read more…
When asked about how he solves problems, Albert Einstein is purported to have said, “If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would spend 19 days to define it.” Whether he said it or not, it does accurately portray his approach to problems. He would spend years engaging in thought experiments to correctly define the problem before working out the math.
This also underlines a crucial difference between the manager mindset and the changemaker mindset. Managing everyday operations is done in an environment of consensus and predictability. The main task is to execute consistently. Pursuing change, on the other hand, requires us to operate in an environment of uncertainty which requires exploration.
That’s why not all change initiatives can be approached the same way. Some demand communication and coordination across large groups, while others focus on shifting individual behaviors. Still, others rely on collective action, where adoption among some people is necessary to influence others. In each case the solution needs to fit the problem.
Before 1789 the world was ruled by the divine right of kings. The economy was driven by a feudal system of lords, vassals, and fiefs. Your economic prosperity and personal security were based on land ownership and personal loyalty. There was little you could do to change your lot in life, so you just had to accept your place in the world.
Yet 1789 would prove to be an inflection point. The American Constitution and the French Revolution would forever change how the world was governed. The Industrial Revolution, already underway since James Watt’s introduction of the steam engine in 1776, would begin to shift power to a new class of industrialists.
These events unleashed a series of countervailing forces as the European continent struggled to adapt to shifts in technology, economics and identity. These forces would build and clash until eventually things came to a head in the revolutionary year of 1848. Today, we seem to be in a similarly liminal space, as we decide what kind of future we want to live in.
read more…
2024 was an exhausting year. I don’t remember any period that seemed so chaotic. Roughly 70 countries had elections this year, encompassing half the world’s population, which was a record. In just about every one, the vote went against the incumbent office holder. People made clear that they want something different.
We seem to be in that liminal space between one era and another with the four shifts of technology, resources demography and migration putting enormous stress on existing systems. What’s not clear is what comes next. Are we headed for the sort of crypto-libertarian society that people like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk envision, or something entirely different.
Looking back on my writing this year, these things were definitely on my mind. How should we approach transformation? When is change a good idea? Where is AI taking us? Perhaps most importantly, what lies ahead? As you look through this list of what I wrote and what people most responded to, what comes to your mind? Please let me know in the comments.
read more…
“Thinking and writing are inextricably intertwined. When I begin to write, I realize that my ‘thoughts’ are usually a jumble of half-baked, incoherent impulses strung together with gaping logical holes between them,” Fareed Zakaria once wrote. Others have said similar things, but I like how he said it best.
It is especially true when writing books. You can keep an email or a blog post in your head, but tens of thousands of words are too much for a single brain to hold at once. You need to approach writing a book like you would building a ship or a house, starting with a basic structure and then carefully crafting each detail to work together.
That’s why in our climate of digital distractions reading books is more important than ever. Reading, like writing, is a form of thinking. You are not only taking in information, but reflecting on it and forming opinions about it. The slow pace enables that private, intimate dialogue between you and the author. Here is the list the books I spent time with this year.
read more…
Today, we remember Mohandas Gandhi as an icon, but he didn’t start out that way. As a young lawyer, he was so shy he had trouble mustering up the courage to speak in open court. Undisciplined, with a violent temper, it took him years to gain a measure of self control. It would be difficult to look at the young Gandhi and see the man he would grow into.
The truth is that we revere Gandhi today not for some eternal essence, but who he became and that is what we can best learn from. It wasn’t any mysterious, superhuman quality that made him such a legendary figure, but the things he learned along the way and he learned those lessons from the mistakes he made.
He would later write, “Men say that I am a saint losing myself in politics. The fact is I am a politician trying my hardest to be a saint.” He was, in truth, a master strategist, luring opponents into a dilemma that would put them in the impossible position of choosing either surrender or damnation. If you want to pursue change, Gandhi is a model to follow.
read more…
We spend most of our time with people who see things largely like we do. They work in similar industries, have similar educations and live in similar places. When confronted with areas of disagreement, we can usually bullshit our way through it and keep the peace. That’s how we normally go through life.
Yet difficult conversations are sometimes unavoidable. There are fundamental differences in values and perspectives as well as issues surrounding identity and status that underlie and shape every professional and personal relationship. At some point these need to be addressed in order to move forward with any ability to function effectively.
The good news is that there are sound evidence-based principles for how to have difficult conversations and resolve them in a positive way. Three strategies include identifying shared values, addressing status dynamics, and matching the conversation the other person wants to have. Mastering these concepts will help you lead, collaborate, and connect.
read more…
