Where being a geek reaps benefit is in the practice of objectively considering why things are and why things occur the way they do. This applies not only to mathematics, physics, and plinko, but also to basic human interaction. It is there, in the ignoble pursuits of man, that I spend entirely too much time musing. It’s remarkable to watch people and listen to them talk about themselves, their families, their work, their lives. For thousands of years we, as a species, have looked to differentiate ourselves from the rest of the animal kingdom. Ultimately it’s our self-awareness and ability to worry, love, and hate that really separate us from our primate cousins.  And yes, there’s even debate on how far behind us they really are in those areas.

Because we think, act emotionally, have have cognitive abilities allowing us to balance risk reward we have also developed a tremendously large sector of our economic engine that runs entirely off of management consulting, self-help techniques, and social interaction methodologies. Most people in the field apply complex models of human behavior to these fields of study to determine the “best way” to manage people. I find the “experts” like to confuse the issue with lots of new-flavored jargon that they can push as book titles. Once you accept that the experts as just more of us monkeys things become much easier to understand. Regardless of how selfless we think we are, we are all ultimately driven by the basic needs of food, shelter, and social acceptance – nothing more, nothing less. So what, you say!

I have a theory I believe is accurate for the vast majority of the working world. Regardless of position, people will always tend to settle into a work routine that allows them to do as little work as possible while still meeting the expectations of those that control their ability to meet their basic needs (i.e. food, shelter, acceptance). I don’t beleive this results from ill-will, laziness, or lack of talent. I think it’s simply the path of least resistance. In fact, it is after these basic needs are met that inspriration, innovation, and excitment are unleashed. Who hasn’t said “if I could only win the lottery!”  What does that really mean? It means you could stop worrying every day about meeting your basic needs and free you mind and body to think and do creatively. That is why business owners should stop viewing the payroll as a battle between profits and employees and start realizing the profits will come if the workforce is free. As they say, better milk comes from happy cows. 

No amount of training, cheerleading, or complaining will change the final equilibrium if the initial conditions don’t change as well. So, if you want to change an organization, make it more productive, enhance innovation and creative thinking, you have to change the initial conditions within the organization. That requires a hard fought cultural change that starts at the top. The organization must change the expectations and associated accountability, not the individual. When everyone is subject to the new rules, from blue collar line worker to top level management, change will happen – it has to!

So before you go spending lots of time and money buying the next best training session for your people, spend some time litening and looking and talking. Take stock in what really influences the people around you and determine how you can change their initial conditions. If you can do that you can write your own book and start teaching all the other monkeys how to follow suit! Just remember, we’re all monkeys, all the way to the top – so make sure the monkey at the top is the right one. After all, Monkey-see, Monkey-do!

There are examples around us every day that expressly deny the big bat as a fundamental tenant of problem solving. In fact, the most elegant solutions to problems tend to be simple, straightforward, and low in their activation energy. Often, the causes of failure are likewise simple and straightforward. Unfortunately, this makes them insidious, sneaky, and quite often, remarkable.  Success in dealing with what seems an insurmountable obstacle relies in large on your ability to disengage from the emotional moment and challenge yourself to find that insidious, sneaky, and remarkable answer. The reason we have to jump to conclusions is because we haven’t taken the time to build the bridge on which to walk there.

An example for very recent events.  A 737-500 skids off the runway in Denver and injures more than 36 people. Thankfully only two remain in critical condition at the time of this writing and we all hope and pray that they pull through. During the event, an intense fire broke out and people were evacuating in the sub-zero temperatures as fast as they could. Your couldn’t buy this kind of sensational journalistic goldmine if you hand a king’s ransom at your disposal!  Naturally, the media has gone completely nuts over this sensational story.  In fact, I saw an update this morning about how “the black boxes have been located!” I would hope in an aircraft that didn’t break apart and suffered fire damage only in the mid-fuselage that the boxes were exactly where they had been left when the aircraft left the production line.  Oh well, I guess that wouldn’t make for a very exciting headline; “BLACK BOXES STILL BOLTED IN PLACE, ALL HAIL GRADE 5 FASTENERS!!!” Other headlines were already suggesting that known engine problems were to blame. All of the theories and conjecture and conclusions being offered were clearly based on slim factual information to say the least – to their own admission, the black boxes hadn’t even been recovered!

So what’s the point? The immediate response is to look for the big bat that hit this big ball. That way we can blame the individual or group that wielded it, call in the lawyers, watch the settlements roll in, and sleep well at night knowing we’ve done our civic duty to stop those with malicious intent and gross negligence (because how could these things happen without it?). In truth, most cases have no big bat. We don’t yet know in this case what happened but let’s exercise some patience and consider perhaps, just perhaps, this was an unforeseeable accident for which no one’s head should roll. Disengage from the hype and look for the unimpressive players that may have contributed. That’s the only way in which truth can prevail. Anyone practiced in engineering root cause analysis understands this principle. However, a calm, non-accusatory approach can be beneficial in every other aspect of our lives. From strategic business decisions to personal relationships, the big bat is the easy, but rarely correct, explanation.

Remember, hindsight is a wonderful tool to enable growth and improvement but it is too often used as a weapon to assign blame and negligence. Never assume that everyone’s hindsight today would have been your foresight yesterday. A profound vanity and a deep disrespect live in that perspective. 

So back to the fundamental question, what differentiates my words from not only my contemporaries but from all those that came before me. Millions of pages of human history is cataloged in the dusty stacks around the world. How can I expect to find any whitespace at all? My complete and utter aberation to the printed word certainly places me at a disadvantage in answering this question. As such, I have my advantage!  I am clearly too misinformed to know any better.

So I plan on using this blog to expound on a variety of subjects, some of which I know something about and others that are about as familiar to me as Wonder Bread is to the isolated tribes of the Peruvian Amazon basin. Herein lies a perfect example since, as far as I know, Wonder Bread may be their most significant food staple – but that would most certainly ruin an otherwise clever analogy.

After more than a decade of product design and development in environments ranging from the very small start up to the monopolistic DoD I have reached the conclusion that we reach out to new literature, catch phrases, flavors of the month, and evolving corporate vernacular for one reason and one reason only. We are hoping against all hope that someday, somehow, someone will actually hit on a new idea, a radical idea, an idea that no one before us has figured out. That idea, we hope, will be the silver bullet that makes all of our endeavors easy!  That’s why we buy the new books and go to the seminars and listen to the podcasts, AND READ THE BLOGS. The truth of the matter is that what seems new rarely is and what is, is rarely useful.

What is constant is the humanity behind the engineering, the management, the leadership, the product offerings. The catch phrases, acronyms, and “new ideas” only allow us to talk to those who wish to talk about common sense ideas using the new lexicon.  Attempting to understand the underlying human element, the fundamentals that drive the human experience, will always be worth more in the end – or should I say, offer a larger value proposition.

I welcome comments, shared experiences, and rebuttals to anything I say here. I am but one individual, forged from my own experience, open to failure and mistake. However, the basic lessons I’ve learned through my professional life, the kinds of lessons I want to teach my own children, are what I hope to convey. So keep reading and I’ll keep posting.  Who knows, we may all find out together that I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about. That could be as fun as learning something together!

Cheers!