Why Peace and Harmony Are Bad for Innovation - Research - Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review *
Why Peace and Harmony Are Bad for Innovation *
10:39 AM Friday February 26, 2010 *by Andrew O’Connell Comments (9) *
To me, one of the most disturbing images in literature isn't Big Brother's menacing stare or Anna Karenina's body under the train, but what the Parsee did with his cake crumbs. When I was reading How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin aloud the other night, I was struck by the Parsee's cruelty in sprinkling those stale, tickly crumbs inside the hide of the rhinoceros, who had taken it off to go swimming. They were as exquisitely irritating, Kipling says, as crumbs in a bed. I still feel itchy thinking about it. *
Crumbs in a bed. There are just too many workplace analogies to that. The relentlessly negative economy — that's one. Or the competitor who doesn't have the decency to give up. What's terrible and unfair about life, though, is that a big, persistent annoyance can be just the thing to get people moving and innovating. *Two researchers recently wrote to me about this. Gary R. Carini and Mark G. Dunn, professors at Baylor's Hankamer School of Business, say an "unanticipated exogenous shock or destabilizing force" often seems to be a factor in prompting rapid, enduring, significant change in organizations. Citing examples from wartime as well as from the current downturn, they say they've found that "shocks and surprises did not deter progress, but actually drove it forward." *
Makes sense, and other researchers have reached similar conclusions. Some of the deepest thinking about creativity and innovation comes from Dorothy Leonard of Harvard Business School and Walter Swap, formerly of Tufts, who have written about the value of "creative abrasion," a term they attribute to the auto designer Jerry Hirshberg. It's the process by which "intellectually diverse people generate, vigorously debate, and ultimately implement ideas," Leonard and Swap say in a 1999 article, "How Managers Can Spark Creativity." *
Sounds pleasant enough when they put it like that, all those intellectually diverse people vigorously debating and implementing. But I think business writers, in trying to be helpful, sometimes go too far to avoid negative language and end up censoring themselves. Abrasion is abrasion. Hirshberg himself is more blunt: "Friction can produce wonderful creative sparks," he says. Saj-nicole A. Joni and Damon Beyer probably hit it squarely on the head when they say, flat out, that "a peaceful, harmonious workplace can be the worst possible thing for a business." *
Like most people, I despise the abrasion part of creative abrasion, but I can see its value — in hindsight. To the extent that I've ever been creative, it has usually been because I've had to deal with difficult situations, the psychic equivalent of cake crumbs in the bed. Give me an assignment to innovate and put me in a nice, crumb-free hammock between tall trees, and I'd probably just nod off. *
Andrew O'Connell is an editor with the Harvard Business Review Group. *
Access Original Post:***
http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/02/why-peace-and-harmony-are-bad.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Mind - New Research Focuses on the Power of Physical Contact - NYTimes.com
Mind - New Research Focuses on the Power of Physical Contact - NYTimes.com
New York Times
February 23, 2010 ***
Mind *
Evidence That Little Touches Do Mean So Much ***
By BENEDICT CAREY *
Psychologists have long studied the grunts and winks of nonverbal communication, the vocal tones and facial expressions that carry emotion. A warm tone of voice, a hostile stare — both have the same meaning in Terre Haute or Timbuktu, and are among dozens of signals that form a universal human vocabulary. *
But in recent years some researchers have begun to focus on a different, often more subtle kind of wordless communication: physical contact. Momentary touches, they say — whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm — can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words. *
“It is the first language we learn,” said Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life” (Norton, 2009), and remains, he said, “our richest means of emotional expression” throughout life. *
The evidence that such messages can lead to clear, almost immediate changes in how people think and behave is accumulating fast. Students who received a supportive touch on the back or arm from a teacher were nearly twice as likely to volunteer in class as those who did not, studies have found. A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched. Research by Tiffany Field of the Touch Research Institute in Miami has found that a massage from a loved one can not only ease pain but also soothe depression and strengthen a relationship. *
In a series of experiments led by Matthew Hertenstein, a psychologist at DePauw University in Indiana, volunteers tried to communicate a list of emotions by touching a blindfolded stranger. The participants were able to communicate eight distinct emotions, from gratitude to disgust to love, some with about 70 percent accuracy. *
“We used to think that touch only served to intensify communicated emotions,” Dr. Hertenstein said. Now it turns out to be “a much more differentiated signaling system than we had imagined.” *
To see whether a rich vocabulary of supportive touch is in fact related to performance, scientists at Berkeley recently analyzed interactions in one of the most physically expressive arenas on earth: professional basketball. Michael W. Kraus led a research team that coded every bump, hug and high five in a single game played by each team in the National Basketball Association early last season. *
In a paper due out this year in the journal Emotion, Mr. Kraus and his co-authors, Cassy Huang and Dr. Keltner, report that with a few exceptions, good teams tended to be touchier than bad ones. The most touch-bonded teams were the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, currently two of the league’s top teams; at the bottom were the mediocre Sacramento Kings and Charlotte Bobcats. *
The same was true, more or less, for players. The touchiest player was Kevin Garnett, the Celtics’ star big man, followed by star forwards Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors and Carlos Boozer of the Utah Jazz. “Within 600 milliseconds of shooting a free throw, Garnett has reached out and touched four guys,” Dr. Keltner said. *
To correct for the possibility that the better teams touch more often simply because they are winning, the researchers rated performance based not on points or victories but on a sophisticated measure of how efficiently players and teams managed the ball — their ratio of assists to giveaways, for example. And even after the high expectations surrounding the more talented teams were taken into account, the correlation persisted. Players who made contact with teammates most consistently and longest tended to rate highest on measures of performance, and the teams with those players seemed to get the most out of their talent. *
The study fell short of showing that touch caused the better performance, Dr. Kraus acknowledged. “We still have to test this in a controlled lab environment,” he said. *
If a high five or an equivalent can in fact enhance performance, on the field or in the office, that may be because it reduces stress. A warm touch seems to set off the release of oxytocin, a hormone that helps create a sensation of trust, and to reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol. *
In the brain, prefrontal areas, which help regulate emotion, can relax, freeing them for another of their primary purposes: problem solving. In effect, the body interprets a supportive touch as “I’ll share the load.” *
“We think that humans build relationships precisely for this reason, to distribute problem solving across brains,” said James A. Coan, a a psychologist at the University of Virginia. “We are wired to literally share the processing load, and this is the signal we’re getting when we receive support through touch.” *
The same is certainly true of partnerships, and especially the romantic kind, psychologists say. In a recent experiment, researchers led by Christopher Oveis of Harvard conducted five-minute interviews with 69 couples, prompting each pair to discuss difficult periods in their relationship. *
The investigators scored the frequency and length of touching that each couple, seated side by side, engaged in. In an interview, Dr. Oveis said that the results were preliminary. *
“But it looks so far like the couples who touch more are reporting more satisfaction in the relationship,” he said. *
Again, it’s not clear which came first, the touching or the satisfaction. But in romantic relationships, one has been known to lead to the other. Or at least, so the anecdotal evidence suggests. *
Access Article ***: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/23mind.html
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
New York Times
February 23, 2010 ***
Mind *
Evidence That Little Touches Do Mean So Much ***
By BENEDICT CAREY *
Psychologists have long studied the grunts and winks of nonverbal communication, the vocal tones and facial expressions that carry emotion. A warm tone of voice, a hostile stare — both have the same meaning in Terre Haute or Timbuktu, and are among dozens of signals that form a universal human vocabulary. *
But in recent years some researchers have begun to focus on a different, often more subtle kind of wordless communication: physical contact. Momentary touches, they say — whether an exuberant high five, a warm hand on the shoulder, or a creepy touch to the arm — can communicate an even wider range of emotion than gestures or expressions, and sometimes do so more quickly and accurately than words. *
“It is the first language we learn,” said Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life” (Norton, 2009), and remains, he said, “our richest means of emotional expression” throughout life. *
The evidence that such messages can lead to clear, almost immediate changes in how people think and behave is accumulating fast. Students who received a supportive touch on the back or arm from a teacher were nearly twice as likely to volunteer in class as those who did not, studies have found. A sympathetic touch from a doctor leaves people with the impression that the visit lasted twice as long, compared with estimates from people who were untouched. Research by Tiffany Field of the Touch Research Institute in Miami has found that a massage from a loved one can not only ease pain but also soothe depression and strengthen a relationship. *
In a series of experiments led by Matthew Hertenstein, a psychologist at DePauw University in Indiana, volunteers tried to communicate a list of emotions by touching a blindfolded stranger. The participants were able to communicate eight distinct emotions, from gratitude to disgust to love, some with about 70 percent accuracy. *
“We used to think that touch only served to intensify communicated emotions,” Dr. Hertenstein said. Now it turns out to be “a much more differentiated signaling system than we had imagined.” *
To see whether a rich vocabulary of supportive touch is in fact related to performance, scientists at Berkeley recently analyzed interactions in one of the most physically expressive arenas on earth: professional basketball. Michael W. Kraus led a research team that coded every bump, hug and high five in a single game played by each team in the National Basketball Association early last season. *
In a paper due out this year in the journal Emotion, Mr. Kraus and his co-authors, Cassy Huang and Dr. Keltner, report that with a few exceptions, good teams tended to be touchier than bad ones. The most touch-bonded teams were the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, currently two of the league’s top teams; at the bottom were the mediocre Sacramento Kings and Charlotte Bobcats. *
The same was true, more or less, for players. The touchiest player was Kevin Garnett, the Celtics’ star big man, followed by star forwards Chris Bosh of the Toronto Raptors and Carlos Boozer of the Utah Jazz. “Within 600 milliseconds of shooting a free throw, Garnett has reached out and touched four guys,” Dr. Keltner said. *
To correct for the possibility that the better teams touch more often simply because they are winning, the researchers rated performance based not on points or victories but on a sophisticated measure of how efficiently players and teams managed the ball — their ratio of assists to giveaways, for example. And even after the high expectations surrounding the more talented teams were taken into account, the correlation persisted. Players who made contact with teammates most consistently and longest tended to rate highest on measures of performance, and the teams with those players seemed to get the most out of their talent. *
The study fell short of showing that touch caused the better performance, Dr. Kraus acknowledged. “We still have to test this in a controlled lab environment,” he said. *
If a high five or an equivalent can in fact enhance performance, on the field or in the office, that may be because it reduces stress. A warm touch seems to set off the release of oxytocin, a hormone that helps create a sensation of trust, and to reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol. *
In the brain, prefrontal areas, which help regulate emotion, can relax, freeing them for another of their primary purposes: problem solving. In effect, the body interprets a supportive touch as “I’ll share the load.” *
“We think that humans build relationships precisely for this reason, to distribute problem solving across brains,” said James A. Coan, a a psychologist at the University of Virginia. “We are wired to literally share the processing load, and this is the signal we’re getting when we receive support through touch.” *
The same is certainly true of partnerships, and especially the romantic kind, psychologists say. In a recent experiment, researchers led by Christopher Oveis of Harvard conducted five-minute interviews with 69 couples, prompting each pair to discuss difficult periods in their relationship. *
The investigators scored the frequency and length of touching that each couple, seated side by side, engaged in. In an interview, Dr. Oveis said that the results were preliminary. *
“But it looks so far like the couples who touch more are reporting more satisfaction in the relationship,” he said. *
Again, it’s not clear which came first, the touching or the satisfaction. But in romantic relationships, one has been known to lead to the other. Or at least, so the anecdotal evidence suggests. *
Access Article ***: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/23/health/23mind.html
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Connecting is More Skill than Natural Talent | GiANT Impact
Connecting is More Skill than Natural Talent GiANT Impact
Leadership Wired – Giant Impact *
Connecting is More Skill than Natural Talent *
By John C. Maxwell *
"When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say." ***~ Attributed to Abraham Lincoln *
Seldom do we consider ourselves to be boring or out of touch as communicators, yet oftentimes that's exactly what we are. We may be passionate about our message, but we don't understand how to craft it in a way that resonates with our audience. As a result, others tune us out, and we have difficulty influencing them. *
What Makes People Listen? ***
Before passing along information, great communicators make a connection. They have a handful of qualities that garner the interest and attention of their audience. By harnessing these qualities, communicators earn the right to be heard, and their words carry weight. *
FOUR QUALITIES OF A COMMUNICATOR WHO CONNECTS *
1) Relationships-Who You Know ***
After reading about German experiments with uranium in scientific journals, physicist Leó Szilárd became concerned about the possibilities of the Nazis developing an atomic bomb. Alarmed, the American scientist decided to alert President Franklin Roosevelt. Lacking direct access to the President, Szilárd drafted a letter and then convinced Albert Einstein to sign it. With Einstein's name affixed to it, the letter of warning reached President Roosevelt's desk, and prompted him to form a commission to research nuclear fission. That commission later became the Manhattan Project, which invented the atomic bomb and helped the United States to end World War II.
Leo Szilárd's letter to President Franklin Roosevelt illustrates an important principle of connection: borrowed influence. Szilárd leveraged his relationship with Albert Einstein to get his message to the White House. One of the quickest ways to gain credibility with an individual, a group, or an audience is to borrow it from someone who already has established trust with them. It's the basis of celebrity endorsements, sales referrals, and word-of-mouth advertising. Who you know can open the door for you to connect with someone. *
2) Insight-What You Know ***
Insight also opens the door to connection. Szilárd's impressive credentials as a physicist earned him the respect and consideration of his colleague, Albert Einstein. In turn, Einstein's expertise as a scientist gave him a platform from which to communicate with the leader of the United States.
If you have an area of expertise and generously share it with others, you give people reasons to respect you and develop a sense of connection with you. We tend to listen to people who have specialized knowledge. That's why trial lawyers call upon credentialed witnesses, and universities hire people with advanced degrees to be professors. *
3) Ability-What You Can Do ***
Individuals who perform at a high level in their profession gain instant credibility with others. Basketball phenom LeBron James exuded so much ability as a high school senior that Nike signed him to a $90 million endorsement deal at age 18. On account of his tremendous talent, people who have never met James admire him, want to be like him, and feel connected to him. His ability carries so much influence that people will even mimic his shoe selection.
When people of rare ability speak, others listen-even if the area of their skill has nothing to do with the advice they give. For instance, LeBron James endorses State Farm Insurance. Now, does James have expertise in the insurance industry? Probably not, but he's arguably the best basketball player in the world, and people listen to him because of what he can do. *
4) Sacrifice-How You Have Lived ***
People connect with those who sacrifice for the good of others. For example, each year Gallup conducts a poll to determine the profession most admired by Americans. Since being added to the list of professions in 1999, nursing has claimed the top spot every year but one. The winner in that lone exception? Firefighters, who took first in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center Towers. *
If you have made sacrifices or overcome painful obstacles, many people will relate to you. Notice how much respect is given to veterans of the armed services; we admire them going into harm's way to protect our country. Think about the weight that is given to the words of the civil rights leaders who helped to pave the way for improved race relations in America. Or, consider the regard we have for those who've survived cancer. We tend to listen to people who have persevered through adversity, especially when they've undergone personal costs in order to serve others. *
Conclusion ***
These four qualities of connection are by no means comprehensive. I'm sure you can think of other reasons people connect. The point is that you must take whatever you have, and use it to connect with others. The more methods of connection you have and the better you become at using them, the greater your chance of connecting with people. *
About *
John C. Maxwell is an internationally respected leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold more than 18 million books. Dr. Maxwell is the founder of EQUIP, a non-profit organization that has trained more than 5 million leaders in 126 countries worldwide. Each year he speaks to the leaders of diverse organizations, such as Fortune 500 companies, foreign governments, the National Football League, the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the United Nations. A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week best-selling author, Maxwell has written three books that have sold more than a million copies: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Developing the Leader Within You, and The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader. His blog can be read at http://www.johnmaxwellonleadership.com/.
This article is used by permission from Leadership Wired, GiANT Impact's premiere leadership newsletter, available for free subscription at http://www.giantimpact.com/."
Access Original post: http://www.giantimpact.com/articles/read/connecting_is_more_skill_than_natural_talent/
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Leadership Wired – Giant Impact *
Connecting is More Skill than Natural Talent *
By John C. Maxwell *
"When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say." ***~ Attributed to Abraham Lincoln *
Seldom do we consider ourselves to be boring or out of touch as communicators, yet oftentimes that's exactly what we are. We may be passionate about our message, but we don't understand how to craft it in a way that resonates with our audience. As a result, others tune us out, and we have difficulty influencing them. *
What Makes People Listen? ***
Before passing along information, great communicators make a connection. They have a handful of qualities that garner the interest and attention of their audience. By harnessing these qualities, communicators earn the right to be heard, and their words carry weight. *
FOUR QUALITIES OF A COMMUNICATOR WHO CONNECTS *
1) Relationships-Who You Know ***
After reading about German experiments with uranium in scientific journals, physicist Leó Szilárd became concerned about the possibilities of the Nazis developing an atomic bomb. Alarmed, the American scientist decided to alert President Franklin Roosevelt. Lacking direct access to the President, Szilárd drafted a letter and then convinced Albert Einstein to sign it. With Einstein's name affixed to it, the letter of warning reached President Roosevelt's desk, and prompted him to form a commission to research nuclear fission. That commission later became the Manhattan Project, which invented the atomic bomb and helped the United States to end World War II.
Leo Szilárd's letter to President Franklin Roosevelt illustrates an important principle of connection: borrowed influence. Szilárd leveraged his relationship with Albert Einstein to get his message to the White House. One of the quickest ways to gain credibility with an individual, a group, or an audience is to borrow it from someone who already has established trust with them. It's the basis of celebrity endorsements, sales referrals, and word-of-mouth advertising. Who you know can open the door for you to connect with someone. *
2) Insight-What You Know ***
Insight also opens the door to connection. Szilárd's impressive credentials as a physicist earned him the respect and consideration of his colleague, Albert Einstein. In turn, Einstein's expertise as a scientist gave him a platform from which to communicate with the leader of the United States.
If you have an area of expertise and generously share it with others, you give people reasons to respect you and develop a sense of connection with you. We tend to listen to people who have specialized knowledge. That's why trial lawyers call upon credentialed witnesses, and universities hire people with advanced degrees to be professors. *
3) Ability-What You Can Do ***
Individuals who perform at a high level in their profession gain instant credibility with others. Basketball phenom LeBron James exuded so much ability as a high school senior that Nike signed him to a $90 million endorsement deal at age 18. On account of his tremendous talent, people who have never met James admire him, want to be like him, and feel connected to him. His ability carries so much influence that people will even mimic his shoe selection.
When people of rare ability speak, others listen-even if the area of their skill has nothing to do with the advice they give. For instance, LeBron James endorses State Farm Insurance. Now, does James have expertise in the insurance industry? Probably not, but he's arguably the best basketball player in the world, and people listen to him because of what he can do. *
4) Sacrifice-How You Have Lived ***
People connect with those who sacrifice for the good of others. For example, each year Gallup conducts a poll to determine the profession most admired by Americans. Since being added to the list of professions in 1999, nursing has claimed the top spot every year but one. The winner in that lone exception? Firefighters, who took first in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center Towers. *
If you have made sacrifices or overcome painful obstacles, many people will relate to you. Notice how much respect is given to veterans of the armed services; we admire them going into harm's way to protect our country. Think about the weight that is given to the words of the civil rights leaders who helped to pave the way for improved race relations in America. Or, consider the regard we have for those who've survived cancer. We tend to listen to people who have persevered through adversity, especially when they've undergone personal costs in order to serve others. *
Conclusion ***
These four qualities of connection are by no means comprehensive. I'm sure you can think of other reasons people connect. The point is that you must take whatever you have, and use it to connect with others. The more methods of connection you have and the better you become at using them, the greater your chance of connecting with people. *
About *
John C. Maxwell is an internationally respected leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold more than 18 million books. Dr. Maxwell is the founder of EQUIP, a non-profit organization that has trained more than 5 million leaders in 126 countries worldwide. Each year he speaks to the leaders of diverse organizations, such as Fortune 500 companies, foreign governments, the National Football League, the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the United Nations. A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Business Week best-selling author, Maxwell has written three books that have sold more than a million copies: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Developing the Leader Within You, and The 21 Indispensable Qualities of a Leader. His blog can be read at http://www.johnmaxwellonleadership.com/.
This article is used by permission from Leadership Wired, GiANT Impact's premiere leadership newsletter, available for free subscription at http://www.giantimpact.com/."
Access Original post: http://www.giantimpact.com/articles/read/connecting_is_more_skill_than_natural_talent/
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Can't Put Face to a Name? You May Be 'Face Blind' - Vision - FOXNews.com
Can't Put Face to a Name? You May Be 'Face Blind' - Vision - FOXNews.com
Can't Put Face to a Name? You May Be 'Face Blind' ***
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 *
Unlike most of us, neuroscientist Michael McCloskey finds it more difficult to remember a face than a name. ***
He is "face blind," unable to tell apart the students taking his classes at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore or the colleagues he has worked with for decades. One to two percent of the population suffers from this condition, called prosopagnosia, which adds an extra awkwardness to social situations but does not affect intelligence or general memory. *
"Super-recognizers," on the other hand, are so good at recognizing others that some claim to have never forgotten a face. Last year, researchers tracked down four people who could recall the features of complete strangers — months or years after a casual encounter. One woman spotted a waitress who once served her five years later on the streets of another city; another recalled months later the face of shopper who walked by without a word. *
Some of us are just better at recognizing faces than others, whether in these extreme cases or for the rest of us who fall somewhere in between. New research suggests that we may have evolved the ability to say "hey, I've seen you before" separately from how well we remember names, telephone numbers and other things that do not come equipped with eyes and mouth. *
Jeremy Wilmer, a psychologist at Wellesley College in Mass., challenged 578 women to memorize photographs of several faces and to then pick the same faces out of increasingly difficult lineups. Some could point to the correct face in a crowd of strangers nearly a hundred percent of the time; others did no better than chance. In either case, though, the ability to spot a familiar face did not strongly predict how well they could memorize and recognize abstract pictures or words. *
"We asked if those who are good at face recognition are just 'generally smart,' or if face recognition ability is distinct from other abilities," said Wilmer. "We found that face recognition is highly distinct from other abilities." *
Doing a Double Take ***
But there's a second twist to the study: all of the participants were twins, and identical twins (who begin life as one fertilized egg) seemed almost telepathically connected. If one identical twin was particularly good (or bad) at recognizing faces, chances are that her sister was too. This connection was far weaker for fraternal twin sisters, born from two separate fertilized eggs that grew in the same womb. *
Twin studies are especially useful to help scientists see the effects of genes because the lives of fraternal twins are very similar to the lives of identical twins . Both sets of twins develop together inside the same womb. And twins in both sets experience more or less the same environments as grow up. *
The main difference between identical and fraternal twins is that identical twins share nearly 99 percent of their DNA, while fraternal twin sisters only share about half. Explaining the look-alike twins' uncanny similarity in recognizing faces, then, is a matter of looking at their nearly-identical genes.These genes seem to influence the ability to recognize faces — not only in twins, but presumably in all of us. *
"We found evidence that on average, upwards of 75 percent of the differences between your face recognition ability and that of the next person are due to the genes you inherited from your parents," said Wilmer, whose research strengthens a similar finding published last month by scientists in China and a brain imaging study that showed similar activity in the brains of identical twins looking at faces. *
Smart Genes ***
That face recognition is connected to our DNA is not entirely surprising. General intelligence and other mental abilities such as spoken language and reading have been known for years to be connected to our genes. *
"If you ask how much of our cognitive ability is influenced by genetics, the answer is everything," said Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at the Institute of Psychology in London. *
The difficulty often lies in trying to identify individual genes that have a big influence. "We don't really know where to start looking," said Bradley Duchaine of University College London, who collaborated with Wilmer on the new research paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. *
Plomin searched through the DNA of 7,000 7-year-olds two years ago looking for small differences that might predict their performance on IQ tests . Out of the hundreds of genes he checked, though, even the six genes he identified as most closely connected to high or low IQ each accounted for less than one percent of the differences in test scores. To complicate things further, the genes that Duchaine and Wilmer are looking for — the ones make some people better at recognizing faces than others — might not even be the same genes that allow us to recognize faces in the first place. *
"A spark plug may make a car run, but to say that a spark plug is what makes my friend's BMW go faster than my old beater, that's crazy," said Plomin. *
Nature, Nurture & the Brain ***
Doris Tsao, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, also was not surprised by the connection between face recognition and genes, though she remarked that the connection was unusually strong. *
"We know that babies like to look at faces from the time they are born, and also monkeys as well," said Tsao. "You might suggest that they have some kind of natural disposition for faces and predict there is some kind of genetic basis for this." *
Our brains, it turns out, are hardwired with a special fondness for faces. Scientists like Tsao have identified a pea-sized chunk of neurons called the "fusiform face area." *
Like a digital camera with a face recognition option, this region of the visual cortex is specialized to react to faces in the information sent to the brain by the eyes. *
But this chunk of brain matter is only a small part of the process of facial recognition, which is still poorly-understood. Somehow this tiny region in the brain passes the faces we see along to other parts of the brain which store memories. The memories must then be recalled by some now-mysterious process. *
Studies of how the brain develops tell us that the ability to recognize faces cannot be entirely genetic; environment still plays an important role. Babies born with cataracts have trouble recognizing faces later twenty or thirty years later — even if their eyes were fixed during their first year. *
The developing brain requires repeated exposure to faces early on. The influence of environment also explains why Caucasians tend to have greater difficulty telling apart East Asians than other Caucasians — and vice-versa. Our brains specialize to be extra-sensitive to the different features that we commonly see in the group that we spend time with, an adaptation that could provide an evolutionary advantage in everyday social lives of a tribe. *
This fine-tuning of our brain for certain kinds of faces even seems to be able to cross species. Laboratory monkeys regularly shown photographs of human beings are better able to tell human faces apart; human babies similarly exposed to monkey faces seem to be able to differentiate an unfamiliar primate from one that they have seen before. *
Our brains can even be thrown off by things that we have seen a moment before looking at a face. “If you stare at a distorted, stretched face and then look at an average face, it will appear to be scrunched,” said Ducahine. *
So the next time you bump in to an old friend at a party and feel bad about not recognizing him, there are a lot of things you can blame: your genes, your childhood, even the people you grew up with. *
This article was provided by Inside Science News Service, which is supported by the American Institute of Physics, a not-for-profit publisher of scientific journals. *
Access Original Post *** : http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,587307,00.html?test=latestnews
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Can't Put Face to a Name? You May Be 'Face Blind' ***
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 *
Unlike most of us, neuroscientist Michael McCloskey finds it more difficult to remember a face than a name. ***
He is "face blind," unable to tell apart the students taking his classes at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore or the colleagues he has worked with for decades. One to two percent of the population suffers from this condition, called prosopagnosia, which adds an extra awkwardness to social situations but does not affect intelligence or general memory. *
"Super-recognizers," on the other hand, are so good at recognizing others that some claim to have never forgotten a face. Last year, researchers tracked down four people who could recall the features of complete strangers — months or years after a casual encounter. One woman spotted a waitress who once served her five years later on the streets of another city; another recalled months later the face of shopper who walked by without a word. *
Some of us are just better at recognizing faces than others, whether in these extreme cases or for the rest of us who fall somewhere in between. New research suggests that we may have evolved the ability to say "hey, I've seen you before" separately from how well we remember names, telephone numbers and other things that do not come equipped with eyes and mouth. *
Jeremy Wilmer, a psychologist at Wellesley College in Mass., challenged 578 women to memorize photographs of several faces and to then pick the same faces out of increasingly difficult lineups. Some could point to the correct face in a crowd of strangers nearly a hundred percent of the time; others did no better than chance. In either case, though, the ability to spot a familiar face did not strongly predict how well they could memorize and recognize abstract pictures or words. *
"We asked if those who are good at face recognition are just 'generally smart,' or if face recognition ability is distinct from other abilities," said Wilmer. "We found that face recognition is highly distinct from other abilities." *
Doing a Double Take ***
But there's a second twist to the study: all of the participants were twins, and identical twins (who begin life as one fertilized egg) seemed almost telepathically connected. If one identical twin was particularly good (or bad) at recognizing faces, chances are that her sister was too. This connection was far weaker for fraternal twin sisters, born from two separate fertilized eggs that grew in the same womb. *
Twin studies are especially useful to help scientists see the effects of genes because the lives of fraternal twins are very similar to the lives of identical twins . Both sets of twins develop together inside the same womb. And twins in both sets experience more or less the same environments as grow up. *
The main difference between identical and fraternal twins is that identical twins share nearly 99 percent of their DNA, while fraternal twin sisters only share about half. Explaining the look-alike twins' uncanny similarity in recognizing faces, then, is a matter of looking at their nearly-identical genes.These genes seem to influence the ability to recognize faces — not only in twins, but presumably in all of us. *
"We found evidence that on average, upwards of 75 percent of the differences between your face recognition ability and that of the next person are due to the genes you inherited from your parents," said Wilmer, whose research strengthens a similar finding published last month by scientists in China and a brain imaging study that showed similar activity in the brains of identical twins looking at faces. *
Smart Genes ***
That face recognition is connected to our DNA is not entirely surprising. General intelligence and other mental abilities such as spoken language and reading have been known for years to be connected to our genes. *
"If you ask how much of our cognitive ability is influenced by genetics, the answer is everything," said Robert Plomin, a behavioral geneticist at the Institute of Psychology in London. *
The difficulty often lies in trying to identify individual genes that have a big influence. "We don't really know where to start looking," said Bradley Duchaine of University College London, who collaborated with Wilmer on the new research paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. *
Plomin searched through the DNA of 7,000 7-year-olds two years ago looking for small differences that might predict their performance on IQ tests . Out of the hundreds of genes he checked, though, even the six genes he identified as most closely connected to high or low IQ each accounted for less than one percent of the differences in test scores. To complicate things further, the genes that Duchaine and Wilmer are looking for — the ones make some people better at recognizing faces than others — might not even be the same genes that allow us to recognize faces in the first place. *
"A spark plug may make a car run, but to say that a spark plug is what makes my friend's BMW go faster than my old beater, that's crazy," said Plomin. *
Nature, Nurture & the Brain ***
Doris Tsao, a neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, also was not surprised by the connection between face recognition and genes, though she remarked that the connection was unusually strong. *
"We know that babies like to look at faces from the time they are born, and also monkeys as well," said Tsao. "You might suggest that they have some kind of natural disposition for faces and predict there is some kind of genetic basis for this." *
Our brains, it turns out, are hardwired with a special fondness for faces. Scientists like Tsao have identified a pea-sized chunk of neurons called the "fusiform face area." *
Like a digital camera with a face recognition option, this region of the visual cortex is specialized to react to faces in the information sent to the brain by the eyes. *
But this chunk of brain matter is only a small part of the process of facial recognition, which is still poorly-understood. Somehow this tiny region in the brain passes the faces we see along to other parts of the brain which store memories. The memories must then be recalled by some now-mysterious process. *
Studies of how the brain develops tell us that the ability to recognize faces cannot be entirely genetic; environment still plays an important role. Babies born with cataracts have trouble recognizing faces later twenty or thirty years later — even if their eyes were fixed during their first year. *
The developing brain requires repeated exposure to faces early on. The influence of environment also explains why Caucasians tend to have greater difficulty telling apart East Asians than other Caucasians — and vice-versa. Our brains specialize to be extra-sensitive to the different features that we commonly see in the group that we spend time with, an adaptation that could provide an evolutionary advantage in everyday social lives of a tribe. *
This fine-tuning of our brain for certain kinds of faces even seems to be able to cross species. Laboratory monkeys regularly shown photographs of human beings are better able to tell human faces apart; human babies similarly exposed to monkey faces seem to be able to differentiate an unfamiliar primate from one that they have seen before. *
Our brains can even be thrown off by things that we have seen a moment before looking at a face. “If you stare at a distorted, stretched face and then look at an average face, it will appear to be scrunched,” said Ducahine. *
So the next time you bump in to an old friend at a party and feel bad about not recognizing him, there are a lot of things you can blame: your genes, your childhood, even the people you grew up with. *
This article was provided by Inside Science News Service, which is supported by the American Institute of Physics, a not-for-profit publisher of scientific journals. *
Access Original Post *** : http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,587307,00.html?test=latestnews
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Don't Abandon Ideas That Flop - Research - Harvard Business Review
Don't Abandon Ideas That Flop - Research - Harvard Business Review
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW *
Research*
Don't Abandon Ideas That Flop *
11:15 AM Tuesday February 23, 2010 *by Andrew O’Connell Comments (2) *
Just minutes into its first screening, the ultraserious dramatic film The Room began eliciting laughter. Soon, people in the audience were "peeing in their pants," says a cast member who attended the premiere. It was pretty much a complete flop — in some people's view one of the worst movies ever made. *
So why is it still playing, nearly seven years later? Why was it at my favorite theater, the Coolidge Corner, the other night? *
Because it was a "false negative," to use Henry Chesbrough's term. It was one of those unpromising innovations that turn out, for unexpected reasons, to be great. *
Most of the time, these ideas vanish. After they fizzle, or after someone pulls the plug because of perceived impracticality or lack of strategic fit, they're put away forever. They don't get revived, because even if someone happens to remember them, they're tainted by early failure. *
But "all ideas have value," William Townsend of Jacksonville University writes in "Innovation and the Value of Failure" in a recent issue of the International Journal of Management and Marketing Research. Even the outliers. *
Both Townsend and Chesbrough are concerned about the same issue: Preventing old ideas from disappearing — an especially subtle problem in highly innovative organizations in which dozens and dozens of ideas are tried and abandoned. *
Chesbrough, the influential U.C. Berkeley researcher, has written and spoken about this problem a lot. In a 2004 article, "Managing Open Innovation," in Research Technology Management, he suggests that after terminating a project, a company should carefully watch to see what happens to it. Do developers and customers simply move on, or is there evidence of continuing interest? Are people still messing with it and talking about it? Did it somehow stick in people's minds? He suggests that companies build a "tracking system." If a terminated project continues to show signs of life, reassess its potential. *
The Room's writer-director-star, Tommy Wiseau, did just that, in a sense. He noticed that people thought his movie, which ends with the hero's suicide, was funny. Very funny. So he added a line to the ads: "Experience this quirky new black comedy, it's a riot!" The line was oddly off-key, like everything else about the movie, from the peculiar dialogue to the throwaway subplots to Wiseau's inky black, shoulder-length hair. (To get the full experience, go to a midnight screening in which audience members dress up as characters and throw cutlery and footballs at each other.) *
Just as Margaret Dumont seemed incapable of fathoming what was funny about her characters in the Marx Brothers' movies, Wiseau seems unclear about why people find his movie hilarious. But he must get, to quote Townsend, that a product's "valuation is a function of a consuming group's assessment of utility and not that of the producing organization." *
Often, Townsend suggests, an idea is simply ahead of its time. Companies should regularly revisit their discarded innovations to see whether the rest of the world might have caught up, just as the world is catching up to the sublime qualities of The Room. *
"Innovations should not be discarded," Townsend writes, "since it is inevitable that they will find value in some context." *
Access Original Post: *** http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/02/dont-abandon-ideas-that-flop.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW *
Research*
Don't Abandon Ideas That Flop *
11:15 AM Tuesday February 23, 2010 *by Andrew O’Connell Comments (2) *
Just minutes into its first screening, the ultraserious dramatic film The Room began eliciting laughter. Soon, people in the audience were "peeing in their pants," says a cast member who attended the premiere. It was pretty much a complete flop — in some people's view one of the worst movies ever made. *
So why is it still playing, nearly seven years later? Why was it at my favorite theater, the Coolidge Corner, the other night? *
Because it was a "false negative," to use Henry Chesbrough's term. It was one of those unpromising innovations that turn out, for unexpected reasons, to be great. *
Most of the time, these ideas vanish. After they fizzle, or after someone pulls the plug because of perceived impracticality or lack of strategic fit, they're put away forever. They don't get revived, because even if someone happens to remember them, they're tainted by early failure. *
But "all ideas have value," William Townsend of Jacksonville University writes in "Innovation and the Value of Failure" in a recent issue of the International Journal of Management and Marketing Research. Even the outliers. *
Both Townsend and Chesbrough are concerned about the same issue: Preventing old ideas from disappearing — an especially subtle problem in highly innovative organizations in which dozens and dozens of ideas are tried and abandoned. *
Chesbrough, the influential U.C. Berkeley researcher, has written and spoken about this problem a lot. In a 2004 article, "Managing Open Innovation," in Research Technology Management, he suggests that after terminating a project, a company should carefully watch to see what happens to it. Do developers and customers simply move on, or is there evidence of continuing interest? Are people still messing with it and talking about it? Did it somehow stick in people's minds? He suggests that companies build a "tracking system." If a terminated project continues to show signs of life, reassess its potential. *
The Room's writer-director-star, Tommy Wiseau, did just that, in a sense. He noticed that people thought his movie, which ends with the hero's suicide, was funny. Very funny. So he added a line to the ads: "Experience this quirky new black comedy, it's a riot!" The line was oddly off-key, like everything else about the movie, from the peculiar dialogue to the throwaway subplots to Wiseau's inky black, shoulder-length hair. (To get the full experience, go to a midnight screening in which audience members dress up as characters and throw cutlery and footballs at each other.) *
Just as Margaret Dumont seemed incapable of fathoming what was funny about her characters in the Marx Brothers' movies, Wiseau seems unclear about why people find his movie hilarious. But he must get, to quote Townsend, that a product's "valuation is a function of a consuming group's assessment of utility and not that of the producing organization." *
Often, Townsend suggests, an idea is simply ahead of its time. Companies should regularly revisit their discarded innovations to see whether the rest of the world might have caught up, just as the world is catching up to the sublime qualities of The Room. *
"Innovations should not be discarded," Townsend writes, "since it is inevitable that they will find value in some context." *
Access Original Post: *** http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/02/dont-abandon-ideas-that-flop.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Should Leaders Frighten or Inspire? - Our Editors - Harvard Business Review
Should Leaders Frighten or Inspire? - Our Editors - Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review ***
Our Editors ***
Should Leaders Frighten or Inspire? *
9:27 AM Tuesday February 23, 2010 *
by Sarah Green Comments (6) *
Is it easier to motivate people to change by scaring them or by inspiring them? And is it more effective to marshal data points, or to craft a narrative? *
I'm at the Imagine Solutions conference in Naples, Florida, and change is on everyone's mind. But though we're ostensibly debating issues like health care, the environment, energy, and the economy, I keep picking up on the meta-debate about what kind of leadership these issues require. *
Dean Ornish, for instance, spoke Monday morning about the motivational power of focusing on the positive. He's a doctor who champions preventive medicine (he's the founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute). He lambasted what he called the false choices between what is "fun" and what is healthy, and instead called on medical leaders who focus on the benefits — the fun side effects, as it were — of living a healthier life. And to convince us, he presented intense quantitative data culled from his research: tumors arrested (and by how much), heart disease reversed (and how quickly), genes expressed and unexpressed (with color-coded diagrams.) (Yes, living healthier can actually turn harmful genes "off." But I digress.) *
At the other end of the communication spectrum, but also supporting the goal of a healthier America, was Alexander Tsiaras. Rather than relying on charts and metrics, he showed us videos from his website, TheVisualMD.com, that explained things like blood pressure and heart disease with narrative — terrifying narrative. We watched as blood vessels constricted, as fat cells ballooned, and as concerned-looking doctors shook their heads and frowned at x-rays. Indeed, at more than one point I had to look away — on the big screen, the high-def narrative of disease was so powerful it was practically nauseating. Tsiaras explicitly argued that you need to have a good story to convince people to change — "statistics are soulless," he declared. *
That statement felt slightly awkward coming on the heels of Christopher Hoenig's presentation of his new website, still yet to launch, called The State of the USA. It essentially compiles reams and reams of statistics — in Hoenig's way of thinking, metrics are the only way to know how we're really doing as a nation; those right-track-wrong-track polls just don't cut it. "It's easy to lie with statistics," he quipped, "But it's a lot easier to lie without them." His message was essentially a hopeful one: armed with the metrics (and some really nifty animated graphics) there's nothing the American people can't do! One can almost imagine the whitehaired politicians grumbling, "And we might have got away with it too, it weren't for you meddling kids and your data." *
Combining both approaches fell to the environmental speakers on the docket. David Gallo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution elicited the biggest oohs and aahs from the audience by demonstrating the awe-inspiring camouflaging skills of an octopus. (No mean feat considering that the day also featured a performer who can seemingly bend spoons with his mind. However, perhaps the credit should properly go to the cephalopod.) Gallo then pivoted back to anxiety-as-motivator, talking about water scarcity: if the earth is, say, the size of a basketball, then the volume of water on it is only about the size of a ping pong ball. The amount of fresh water? A tiny dot no bigger than a pinprick. And while he had plenty of numbers dotted here and there throughout — we've explored less than 5% of the ocean, for instance — he evoked some very human stories, too: Every year, about 14 ships the size of the Titanic sink. *
Which of these approaches — fear, hope, data, narrative, or some combination — is more effective when it comes to leading change? *
This is a data point of one, but I was confronted with an immediate test as soon as I left the lecture hall: A tableful of Whole Foods-donated cupcakes each the size of a softball, each topped with a creamy pyramid of cream cheese frosting. I didn't think about how eating one (or six) would tax the health care system. I didn't think about their water footprint or the deforestation required to graze the cattle that produced the milk that eventually became — zomg — that frosting. The voice I heard was Ornish's, and it told me to focus on the positive: by not eating the cupcake, I would actually feel better; healthier; happier. I would have more energy. I wouldn't stress out about the calories. I wouldn't run the risk of smearing delicious, delicious frosting on my blouse in front of Niall Ferguson. *
And it worked. *
Access Original Post ***: http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2010/02/should_leaders_frighten_or_ins.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Harvard Business Review ***
Our Editors ***
Should Leaders Frighten or Inspire? *
9:27 AM Tuesday February 23, 2010 *
by Sarah Green Comments (6) *
Is it easier to motivate people to change by scaring them or by inspiring them? And is it more effective to marshal data points, or to craft a narrative? *
I'm at the Imagine Solutions conference in Naples, Florida, and change is on everyone's mind. But though we're ostensibly debating issues like health care, the environment, energy, and the economy, I keep picking up on the meta-debate about what kind of leadership these issues require. *
Dean Ornish, for instance, spoke Monday morning about the motivational power of focusing on the positive. He's a doctor who champions preventive medicine (he's the founder and president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute). He lambasted what he called the false choices between what is "fun" and what is healthy, and instead called on medical leaders who focus on the benefits — the fun side effects, as it were — of living a healthier life. And to convince us, he presented intense quantitative data culled from his research: tumors arrested (and by how much), heart disease reversed (and how quickly), genes expressed and unexpressed (with color-coded diagrams.) (Yes, living healthier can actually turn harmful genes "off." But I digress.) *
At the other end of the communication spectrum, but also supporting the goal of a healthier America, was Alexander Tsiaras. Rather than relying on charts and metrics, he showed us videos from his website, TheVisualMD.com, that explained things like blood pressure and heart disease with narrative — terrifying narrative. We watched as blood vessels constricted, as fat cells ballooned, and as concerned-looking doctors shook their heads and frowned at x-rays. Indeed, at more than one point I had to look away — on the big screen, the high-def narrative of disease was so powerful it was practically nauseating. Tsiaras explicitly argued that you need to have a good story to convince people to change — "statistics are soulless," he declared. *
That statement felt slightly awkward coming on the heels of Christopher Hoenig's presentation of his new website, still yet to launch, called The State of the USA. It essentially compiles reams and reams of statistics — in Hoenig's way of thinking, metrics are the only way to know how we're really doing as a nation; those right-track-wrong-track polls just don't cut it. "It's easy to lie with statistics," he quipped, "But it's a lot easier to lie without them." His message was essentially a hopeful one: armed with the metrics (and some really nifty animated graphics) there's nothing the American people can't do! One can almost imagine the whitehaired politicians grumbling, "And we might have got away with it too, it weren't for you meddling kids and your data." *
Combining both approaches fell to the environmental speakers on the docket. David Gallo of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution elicited the biggest oohs and aahs from the audience by demonstrating the awe-inspiring camouflaging skills of an octopus. (No mean feat considering that the day also featured a performer who can seemingly bend spoons with his mind. However, perhaps the credit should properly go to the cephalopod.) Gallo then pivoted back to anxiety-as-motivator, talking about water scarcity: if the earth is, say, the size of a basketball, then the volume of water on it is only about the size of a ping pong ball. The amount of fresh water? A tiny dot no bigger than a pinprick. And while he had plenty of numbers dotted here and there throughout — we've explored less than 5% of the ocean, for instance — he evoked some very human stories, too: Every year, about 14 ships the size of the Titanic sink. *
Which of these approaches — fear, hope, data, narrative, or some combination — is more effective when it comes to leading change? *
This is a data point of one, but I was confronted with an immediate test as soon as I left the lecture hall: A tableful of Whole Foods-donated cupcakes each the size of a softball, each topped with a creamy pyramid of cream cheese frosting. I didn't think about how eating one (or six) would tax the health care system. I didn't think about their water footprint or the deforestation required to graze the cattle that produced the milk that eventually became — zomg — that frosting. The voice I heard was Ornish's, and it told me to focus on the positive: by not eating the cupcake, I would actually feel better; healthier; happier. I would have more energy. I wouldn't stress out about the calories. I wouldn't run the risk of smearing delicious, delicious frosting on my blouse in front of Niall Ferguson. *
And it worked. *
Access Original Post ***: http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hbreditors/2010/02/should_leaders_frighten_or_ins.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Investors, SEC Concerned About CEO Succession Planning | Governance Center Blog
Investors, SEC Concerned About CEO Succession Planning Governance Center Blog
Feb 18 2010
The Conference Board
Investors, SEC Concerned About CEO Succession Planning
Excerpts:
"The actions of the SEC and mindset of institutional investors, private equity firms and even ratings firms almost makes it mandatory for public companies to seriously consider how they go about their CEO succession plan in the near future."
Access Post:
http://tcbblogs.org/governance/2010/02/18/investors-sec-concerned-about-ceo-succession-planning/
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Feb 18 2010
The Conference Board
Investors, SEC Concerned About CEO Succession Planning
Excerpts:
"The actions of the SEC and mindset of institutional investors, private equity firms and even ratings firms almost makes it mandatory for public companies to seriously consider how they go about their CEO succession plan in the near future."
Access Post:
http://tcbblogs.org/governance/2010/02/18/investors-sec-concerned-about-ceo-succession-planning/
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
What Motivates Us? - Harvard Business IdeaCast - Harvard Business Review
Recommended listening. Fascinating and surprising too. Insightful, relevant and profitable information for your personal and professional lives.
What Motivates Us? - Harvard Business IdeaCast - Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business IdeaCastWhat Motivates Us?
10:39 AM
Friday February 19, 2010
Audio Track: 15 minutes :55 seconds
Featured Guest: Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
Insightful, relevant and profitable information for your personal and professional lives.
Access Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2010/02/what-motivates-us.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
____________________
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Daniel Pink's Drive - Recommended - Harvard Business Review
Daniel Pink's Drive - Recommended - Harvard Business Review
Daniel Pink's Drive1:27 PM
Wednesday January 13, 2010 by Andrew O’ConnellCiting work by Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School, consultant Tammy Erickson, and many others, Pink, who is also the author of 2005's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, looks at motivation from the viewpoints of both the leader and the led.
To managers, he says that coaxing great performance out of employees is no longer a matter of compensating them lavishly for putting the business first and suppressing their inner selves. It's about satisfying workers' desire for autonomy, which stimulates their "innate capacity for self-direction."
To employees, Pink offers advice on how "type X"es — his coinage for people who prefer external rewards — can enroll themselves in the burgeoning ranks of the "type I"s, driven mostly by inner rewards.
The difference matters: Type I's have better long-term performance and well-being, he argues.
To help with the transition, the book's breezy tool kit section shows, for example, how to identify activities that generate the coveted "flow" state, in which a person's abilities and challenges are perfectly matched. Some of the suggested exercises sound like advice from Al Franken's SNL alter-ego, the self-help guru Stuart Smalley ("Doggone it, people like me!"), but there's certainly no harm in asking yourself, in the spirit of self-knowledge, what motto should be emblazoned on your own personal motivational poster and what's the one sentence that describes who you are.
We could all benefit from figuring out what really gets us up in the morning.
Access Original Post: http://blogs.hbr.org/recommended/2010/01/drive-the-surprising-truth-abo.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
What Motivates Us? - Harvard Business IdeaCast - Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business IdeaCastWhat Motivates Us?
10:39 AM
Friday February 19, 2010
Audio Track: 15 minutes :55 seconds
Featured Guest: Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
Insightful, relevant and profitable information for your personal and professional lives.
Access Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/ideacast/2010/02/what-motivates-us.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
____________________
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Daniel Pink's Drive - Recommended - Harvard Business Review
Daniel Pink's Drive - Recommended - Harvard Business Review
Daniel Pink's Drive1:27 PM
Wednesday January 13, 2010 by Andrew O’ConnellCiting work by Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School, consultant Tammy Erickson, and many others, Pink, who is also the author of 2005's A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future, looks at motivation from the viewpoints of both the leader and the led.
To managers, he says that coaxing great performance out of employees is no longer a matter of compensating them lavishly for putting the business first and suppressing their inner selves. It's about satisfying workers' desire for autonomy, which stimulates their "innate capacity for self-direction."
To employees, Pink offers advice on how "type X"es — his coinage for people who prefer external rewards — can enroll themselves in the burgeoning ranks of the "type I"s, driven mostly by inner rewards.
The difference matters: Type I's have better long-term performance and well-being, he argues.
To help with the transition, the book's breezy tool kit section shows, for example, how to identify activities that generate the coveted "flow" state, in which a person's abilities and challenges are perfectly matched. Some of the suggested exercises sound like advice from Al Franken's SNL alter-ego, the self-help guru Stuart Smalley ("Doggone it, people like me!"), but there's certainly no harm in asking yourself, in the spirit of self-knowledge, what motto should be emblazoned on your own personal motivational poster and what's the one sentence that describes who you are.
We could all benefit from figuring out what really gets us up in the morning.
Access Original Post: http://blogs.hbr.org/recommended/2010/01/drive-the-surprising-truth-abo.html?cm_mmc=npv-_-DAILY_ALERT-_-AWEBER-_-DATE
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Learn to Ask Better Questions - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review
Learn to Ask Better Questions - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review *
Learn to Ask Better Questions *
4:35 PM Tuesday February 16, 2010 **by John Baldoni Comments (15) *
The Conversation *
Every leader I know has at least one need in common: a need to connect honestly with others. One way to help foster improved connections is by asking good questions. Leaders who excel at asking good questions have honed an ability to cut to the heart of the manner in a way that disarms the person being interviewed and opens the door for genuine conversation. *
Whether they are talking to customers, interviewing job candidates, talking to their bosses, or even questioning staff, executives need to draw people out. And so often, it is not a matter of what you ask, it is how you ask it. Here are some suggestions. *
Be curious. Executives who do all the talking are those who are deaf to the needs of others. Sadly, some managers feel that being the first and last person to speak is a sign of strength. In reality, though, it's the opposite. Such behavior is closer to that of a blowhard who may be insecure in his own abilities, but is certain of one thing — his own brilliance. Such an attitude cuts off information at its source, from the very people — employees, customers, vendors — whom you should trust the most. Being curious is essential to asking good questions. *
Be open-ended. Leaders should ask questions that get people to reveal not simply what happened, but also what they were thinking. Open-ended questions prevent you from making judgments based on assumptions, and can elicit some surprising answers. In his autobiography, talk show host Larry King recalls asking Martin Luther King, who had just been arrested for seeking to integrate a hotel in Florida, what he wanted. To which King replied, "My dignity." Using what, how and why questions encourages dialogue. *
Be engaged. When you ask questions, act like you care. Yes, act — show that you are interested with affirmative facial expressions and engaged body language. This sets up further conversation and gets the individual to reveal information that could be important. For example, if you are interviewing a job candidate you want to encourage him or her to talk about not only accomplishments but also setbacks. An interested interviewer will get the person to talk in depth about how he or she rebounded from failure. That trait is worthy of consideration in recruiting. But interviewees will only open open up — especially on sensitive subjects — if you actively show interest. *
Dig deeper. So often executives make the mistake of assuming all is well if they are not hearing bad news. Big mistake. It may mean employees are afraid to offer up anything but good news, even if it means stonewalling. So when information surfaces in your dialogue, dig for details without straying into recrimination. Get the whole story. Remember, problems on your team are, first and foremost, your problems. *
Not every conversation need be on point and under the gun. There will be times when you'll need a more solicitous tone and a more leisurely pace, especially when coaching an employee or listening carefully to a customer concern. There, taking your time might be most appropriate. *
Asking good questions, and doing so in spirit of honest information gathering and eventual collaboration, is good practice for leaders. It cultivates an environment where employees feel comfortable discussing issues that affect both their performance and that of the team. And that, in turn, creates a foundation for deepening levels of trust. *
John Baldoni is a leadership consultant, coach, and speaker. He is the author of eight books, including Lead Your Boss, The Subtle Art of Managing Up.
Access Original Posting ***: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/02/learn_to_ask_better_questions.html
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Harvard Business Review *
Learn to Ask Better Questions *
4:35 PM Tuesday February 16, 2010 **by John Baldoni Comments (15) *
The Conversation *
Every leader I know has at least one need in common: a need to connect honestly with others. One way to help foster improved connections is by asking good questions. Leaders who excel at asking good questions have honed an ability to cut to the heart of the manner in a way that disarms the person being interviewed and opens the door for genuine conversation. *
Whether they are talking to customers, interviewing job candidates, talking to their bosses, or even questioning staff, executives need to draw people out. And so often, it is not a matter of what you ask, it is how you ask it. Here are some suggestions. *
Be curious. Executives who do all the talking are those who are deaf to the needs of others. Sadly, some managers feel that being the first and last person to speak is a sign of strength. In reality, though, it's the opposite. Such behavior is closer to that of a blowhard who may be insecure in his own abilities, but is certain of one thing — his own brilliance. Such an attitude cuts off information at its source, from the very people — employees, customers, vendors — whom you should trust the most. Being curious is essential to asking good questions. *
Be open-ended. Leaders should ask questions that get people to reveal not simply what happened, but also what they were thinking. Open-ended questions prevent you from making judgments based on assumptions, and can elicit some surprising answers. In his autobiography, talk show host Larry King recalls asking Martin Luther King, who had just been arrested for seeking to integrate a hotel in Florida, what he wanted. To which King replied, "My dignity." Using what, how and why questions encourages dialogue. *
Be engaged. When you ask questions, act like you care. Yes, act — show that you are interested with affirmative facial expressions and engaged body language. This sets up further conversation and gets the individual to reveal information that could be important. For example, if you are interviewing a job candidate you want to encourage him or her to talk about not only accomplishments but also setbacks. An interested interviewer will get the person to talk in depth about how he or she rebounded from failure. That trait is worthy of consideration in recruiting. But interviewees will only open open up — especially on sensitive subjects — if you actively show interest. *
Dig deeper. So often executives make the mistake of assuming all is well if they are not hearing bad news. Big mistake. It may mean employees are afraid to offer up anything but good news, even if it means stonewalling. So when information surfaces in your dialogue, dig for details without straying into recrimination. Get the whole story. Remember, problems on your team are, first and foremost, your problems. *
Not every conversation need be on point and under the gun. There will be times when you'll need a more solicitous tone and a more leisurely pace, especially when coaching an employee or listening carefully to a customer concern. There, taking your time might be most appropriate. *
Asking good questions, and doing so in spirit of honest information gathering and eventual collaboration, is good practice for leaders. It cultivates an environment where employees feel comfortable discussing issues that affect both their performance and that of the team. And that, in turn, creates a foundation for deepening levels of trust. *
John Baldoni is a leadership consultant, coach, and speaker. He is the author of eight books, including Lead Your Boss, The Subtle Art of Managing Up.
Access Original Posting ***: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/02/learn_to_ask_better_questions.html
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
How Risky Is Your Board? - Risk Management - CFO.com
How Risky Is Your Board? - Risk Management - CFO.com
CFO.COM – CFO Magazine *
Risk Management *
How Risky Is Your Board? *
The risk of securities litigation is rising, and the boardroom may be the point of greatest vulnerability. *
Kate O'Sullivan - CFO.com US *
February 16, 2010 *
For most companies, the risk of securities litigation ebbed somewhat during the past two years, as the plaintiffs' bar devoted much of its time and energy to complex and potentially lucrative actions against financial-services firms. Now, as the credit crisis wanes, the risk is rising again for nonfinancial companies. Plaintiffs are seeking new targets, observers say, while a reinvigorated Securities and Exchange Commission is also on the prowl, with expanded resources and high levels of motivation following its embarrassing failure to detect Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. *
"Securities class actions will increase not only from the plaintiffs' bar, but with new legislation being talked about and with the SEC having increased staffing and increased budgets, we'll also see increased regulatory actions on top of private securities litigation," says Paul Bessette, co-chair of the securities litigation practice group at law firm Greenberg Traurig. Such common problems as earnings-guidance misses, insider-trading allegations, and accounting infractions will continue to trigger class actions, he says. *
CFOs should also look out for corporate-governance weaknesses, say experts. Such weaknesses are red flags for large institutional investors, which are increasingly serving as lead plaintiffs in securities class actions. *
"Cases where corporate-governance issues are involved tend to be the largest settlements," says Ric Marshall, chief analyst at The Corporate Library, a governance watchdog that rates companies on a range of risk factors for securities litigation. "There is not only a linkage between governance failures and exposure to suits, but also a linkage between governance failures and the severity of the settlement." Nearly all of the top 100 securities class-action settlements since 1996 involve "massive corporate-governance failures," Marshall says, adding that such cases are often accompanied by "tag-along" suits filed against individual directors and executives. *
Two major governance flaws tracked by The Corporate Library are [1] the qualifications of board members and [2] the relationships board members have with each other and with management. The tenure of board members is one of the first places Marshall says he looks for clues about governance weakness. *
"If you have 4 of 10 directors who have been there for 17 or 18 years and the CEO has also been there for 18 years, that's a red flag," he says. "It means these folks have been working together for a long time." While such lengthy service should mean board members are extremely knowledgeable about the business, it may also indicate directors have grown too close to management and feel more aligned with it than with shareholders, says Marshall. *
Two or more directors serving together on other boards is another red flag, because it shows a degree of coziness between those directors that could be problematic. "Overboarding," in which a director sits on more than four boards or the CEO serves on more than two boards, also gives Marshall pause. "It suggests that the director is in demand," he explains. "While that may be reflective of extraordinary skill, it may also indicate that he or she is a bit of a yes person." *
Finally, a review of directors' biographies can help determine whether they should hold the job at all. "If you go back and look at the Lehman Brothers board, you'll see that there were two folks on it who were better suited to being on Broadway," says Marshall. "That was a board whose function was to support and agree with whatever management wanted to do." *
While there is little a CFO can do directly to improve the quality of a board, Marshall suggests reporting the results of regular governance-risk benchmarking to the board. Such a report would include, but not be limited to, benchmarking the board itself compared with competitors or industry leaders. "This is a great, nonthreatening way for CFOs to make the board at least aware of these kinds of concerns," he says. "Sometimes the best way to facilitate a change is to shine a light on the problem." *
Access Original Posting*** : http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14475771
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
CFO.COM – CFO Magazine *
Risk Management *
How Risky Is Your Board? *
The risk of securities litigation is rising, and the boardroom may be the point of greatest vulnerability. *
Kate O'Sullivan - CFO.com US *
February 16, 2010 *
For most companies, the risk of securities litigation ebbed somewhat during the past two years, as the plaintiffs' bar devoted much of its time and energy to complex and potentially lucrative actions against financial-services firms. Now, as the credit crisis wanes, the risk is rising again for nonfinancial companies. Plaintiffs are seeking new targets, observers say, while a reinvigorated Securities and Exchange Commission is also on the prowl, with expanded resources and high levels of motivation following its embarrassing failure to detect Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. *
"Securities class actions will increase not only from the plaintiffs' bar, but with new legislation being talked about and with the SEC having increased staffing and increased budgets, we'll also see increased regulatory actions on top of private securities litigation," says Paul Bessette, co-chair of the securities litigation practice group at law firm Greenberg Traurig. Such common problems as earnings-guidance misses, insider-trading allegations, and accounting infractions will continue to trigger class actions, he says. *
CFOs should also look out for corporate-governance weaknesses, say experts. Such weaknesses are red flags for large institutional investors, which are increasingly serving as lead plaintiffs in securities class actions. *
"Cases where corporate-governance issues are involved tend to be the largest settlements," says Ric Marshall, chief analyst at The Corporate Library, a governance watchdog that rates companies on a range of risk factors for securities litigation. "There is not only a linkage between governance failures and exposure to suits, but also a linkage between governance failures and the severity of the settlement." Nearly all of the top 100 securities class-action settlements since 1996 involve "massive corporate-governance failures," Marshall says, adding that such cases are often accompanied by "tag-along" suits filed against individual directors and executives. *
Two major governance flaws tracked by The Corporate Library are [1] the qualifications of board members and [2] the relationships board members have with each other and with management. The tenure of board members is one of the first places Marshall says he looks for clues about governance weakness. *
"If you have 4 of 10 directors who have been there for 17 or 18 years and the CEO has also been there for 18 years, that's a red flag," he says. "It means these folks have been working together for a long time." While such lengthy service should mean board members are extremely knowledgeable about the business, it may also indicate directors have grown too close to management and feel more aligned with it than with shareholders, says Marshall. *
Two or more directors serving together on other boards is another red flag, because it shows a degree of coziness between those directors that could be problematic. "Overboarding," in which a director sits on more than four boards or the CEO serves on more than two boards, also gives Marshall pause. "It suggests that the director is in demand," he explains. "While that may be reflective of extraordinary skill, it may also indicate that he or she is a bit of a yes person." *
Finally, a review of directors' biographies can help determine whether they should hold the job at all. "If you go back and look at the Lehman Brothers board, you'll see that there were two folks on it who were better suited to being on Broadway," says Marshall. "That was a board whose function was to support and agree with whatever management wanted to do." *
While there is little a CFO can do directly to improve the quality of a board, Marshall suggests reporting the results of regular governance-risk benchmarking to the board. Such a report would include, but not be limited to, benchmarking the board itself compared with competitors or industry leaders. "This is a great, nonthreatening way for CFOs to make the board at least aware of these kinds of concerns," he says. "Sometimes the best way to facilitate a change is to shine a light on the problem." *
Access Original Posting*** : http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/14475771
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Four Ways to Attack the Castle — And Get a Job, Get Ahead, Make Change - Rosabeth Moss Kanter - Harvard Business Review
Four Ways to Attack the Castle — And Get a Job, Get Ahead, Make Change - Rosabeth Moss Kanter - Harvard Business Review
Harvard Business Review *
Rosabeth Moss Kanter *
Four Ways to Attack the Castle — And Get a Job, Get Ahead, Make Change ***
9:16 AM Tuesday February 16, 2010 Comments (7) *
A wise mentor once explained his strategy for getting things done when faced with an impregnable organizational fortress. He likened it to a medieval castle that doesn't want you inside and doesn't want change. *
If you attack the castle head on, he said, you risk all the defenses going up at once. (Picture the moats filling, iron bars clanging down, doors slamming shut, and weapons activated.) *
Or, he said, you can find a way to go around and underneath the castle with small, less visible steps. These don't trigger defenses. They gradually weaken the ground on which the castle sits, until it begins to fall of its own weight. *
Whether you are job seeker or change agent, from inside or outside, it helps to have multiple ways to attack the castle. *
Find other doors. *** A professional seeking a job followed the Castle's stated procedure of submitting an online application. Computers have become the latest castle guards, making it impossible to peer into the castle or find a live person to contact. (On many websites, it is difficult to find out where the company has its head office, let alone get a street address if you want to go in person.) If the front door doesn't work, find a back door. This is where networking comes in handy. That professional found the right friend to ask an insider to pass his materials on, being honest about the fact that the online system had rejected him. Once in the office, he asked not for a job but for a project on which to be tested and learn. He got the project and later the job. *
Befriend the fringes. *** Get to the guards and gatekeepers, and you'll find a way into the castle and its towers. Make friends with staff, the CEO's personal assistant, security guards, or the servers who bring lunch to the boardroom. A hard-driving American executive accustomed to getting his own way in hierarchical situations didn't do that. When he tried to get an exception to the rules of a large, complex association, he berated staff and so alienated them that word got to the board, which encouraged him to resign his membership. In contrast, a rising female professional in a prominent global company befriended top executives' assistants, stopping to chat with them or invite them to lunch. As a consequence, she heard hints of new developments, always got appointments promptly, was a frequent visitor to the executive floor, and was on a fast track for promotion. *
Go underneath. *** Perhaps you pleaded your case at the top but were stonewalled, so to speak. Rather than give up, go down. If you see problems, you can bet others do too. At a German company, a manager who was one of 21 officially designated change agents encountered obstacles at every turn. When a budget crunch found her project on the delete list, she went down the ranks to talk with peers and lower echelon groups who saw the virtues of her project. She gathered hundreds of signatures for a petition supporting the project. Top management caved. The project went forward, and the castle was already changing. *
Go around. *** My mentor did that when he was part of a group trying to get a set of about 7 hospitals to merge. This would improve access for patients to a wider range of high-quality services while eliminating duplication. But each castle defended its ground; in meetings, people nodded at the good idea — but did nothing. So he took matters into his own hands as board leader for one of the hospitals. Secretly, to avoid triggering defenses, he approached the most receptive hospital and worked out a merger. When it was announced, the rest of the castles were not happy. But they fell quickly, finding their own mergers. The change process speeded up. *
In the recession, castle-establishments have become both more defensive and more vulnerable. Even the most heavily fortified increasingly look like glass houses. So go ahead and throw a few stones — such as resumes, new projects, and change plans *
__________________________________________________________________________
Rosabeth Moss Kanter ***
holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. The former Editor of Harvard Business Review (1989-1992), Professor Kanter has been named to The Times of London lists of the "50 Most Powerful Women in the World" and the "Top 50 Management Thinkers in the World". Among her 18 books are influential bestsellers such as The Change Masters, When Giants Learn to Dance, and Confidence. Her latest book is SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good. At Harvard, she is also chair and director of the Advanced Leadership Initiative, a University-wide innovation aimed at deploying a leadership force of experienced leaders seeking to address challenging national and global problems in their next stage of life. *
For more, read Dr. Kanter's regular HBR blog, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter *
Access Original Post: *** http://hbr.org/authors/kanter
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Harvard Business Review *
Rosabeth Moss Kanter *
Four Ways to Attack the Castle — And Get a Job, Get Ahead, Make Change ***
9:16 AM Tuesday February 16, 2010 Comments (7) *
A wise mentor once explained his strategy for getting things done when faced with an impregnable organizational fortress. He likened it to a medieval castle that doesn't want you inside and doesn't want change. *
If you attack the castle head on, he said, you risk all the defenses going up at once. (Picture the moats filling, iron bars clanging down, doors slamming shut, and weapons activated.) *
Or, he said, you can find a way to go around and underneath the castle with small, less visible steps. These don't trigger defenses. They gradually weaken the ground on which the castle sits, until it begins to fall of its own weight. *
Whether you are job seeker or change agent, from inside or outside, it helps to have multiple ways to attack the castle. *
Find other doors. *** A professional seeking a job followed the Castle's stated procedure of submitting an online application. Computers have become the latest castle guards, making it impossible to peer into the castle or find a live person to contact. (On many websites, it is difficult to find out where the company has its head office, let alone get a street address if you want to go in person.) If the front door doesn't work, find a back door. This is where networking comes in handy. That professional found the right friend to ask an insider to pass his materials on, being honest about the fact that the online system had rejected him. Once in the office, he asked not for a job but for a project on which to be tested and learn. He got the project and later the job. *
Befriend the fringes. *** Get to the guards and gatekeepers, and you'll find a way into the castle and its towers. Make friends with staff, the CEO's personal assistant, security guards, or the servers who bring lunch to the boardroom. A hard-driving American executive accustomed to getting his own way in hierarchical situations didn't do that. When he tried to get an exception to the rules of a large, complex association, he berated staff and so alienated them that word got to the board, which encouraged him to resign his membership. In contrast, a rising female professional in a prominent global company befriended top executives' assistants, stopping to chat with them or invite them to lunch. As a consequence, she heard hints of new developments, always got appointments promptly, was a frequent visitor to the executive floor, and was on a fast track for promotion. *
Go underneath. *** Perhaps you pleaded your case at the top but were stonewalled, so to speak. Rather than give up, go down. If you see problems, you can bet others do too. At a German company, a manager who was one of 21 officially designated change agents encountered obstacles at every turn. When a budget crunch found her project on the delete list, she went down the ranks to talk with peers and lower echelon groups who saw the virtues of her project. She gathered hundreds of signatures for a petition supporting the project. Top management caved. The project went forward, and the castle was already changing. *
Go around. *** My mentor did that when he was part of a group trying to get a set of about 7 hospitals to merge. This would improve access for patients to a wider range of high-quality services while eliminating duplication. But each castle defended its ground; in meetings, people nodded at the good idea — but did nothing. So he took matters into his own hands as board leader for one of the hospitals. Secretly, to avoid triggering defenses, he approached the most receptive hospital and worked out a merger. When it was announced, the rest of the castles were not happy. But they fell quickly, finding their own mergers. The change process speeded up. *
In the recession, castle-establishments have become both more defensive and more vulnerable. Even the most heavily fortified increasingly look like glass houses. So go ahead and throw a few stones — such as resumes, new projects, and change plans *
__________________________________________________________________________
Rosabeth Moss Kanter ***
holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. The former Editor of Harvard Business Review (1989-1992), Professor Kanter has been named to The Times of London lists of the "50 Most Powerful Women in the World" and the "Top 50 Management Thinkers in the World". Among her 18 books are influential bestsellers such as The Change Masters, When Giants Learn to Dance, and Confidence. Her latest book is SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good. At Harvard, she is also chair and director of the Advanced Leadership Initiative, a University-wide innovation aimed at deploying a leadership force of experienced leaders seeking to address challenging national and global problems in their next stage of life. *
For more, read Dr. Kanter's regular HBR blog, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter *
Access Original Post: *** http://hbr.org/authors/kanter
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
What your brain knows that you don't | Philadelphia Inquirer | 02/16/2010
What your brain knows that you don't Philadelphia Inquirer 02/16/2010
Philly.com **
The Philadelphia Inquirer **
Posted on Tue, Feb. 16, 2010 *
Book Review *
What your brain knows that you don't *
Reviewed by Gary Stix *
The Hidden Brain ***
How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives *
By Shankar Vedantam *
Spiegel & Grau. 288 pp. $26 *
A beverage station in an office in Newcastle, England, requires workers to pay for coffee, tea, and milk on the honor system. Money is supposed to go into a box - 30 pence for tea, 50 for coffee, 10 for milk. No hovering clerk stands nearby. *
Researcher Melissa Bateson decided to turn this dispensing area into the central prop for a social-science experiment. She tracked how much milk was dispensed each week over a 10-week period and how much cash was collected. During odd-numbered weeks, the box received on average nearly three times as much as it did on even weeks for each liter of milk consumed. *
What gave? On the odd weeks, Bateson affixed a pair of watchful eyes to the sheet of paper that listed prices. On even weeks, the eyes were replaced with a picture of flowers. When quizzed, none of the office workers remembered the images. But the simple presence of an iconic gaze seems to have made a big difference in how they behaved. *
That we think and act under imperceptible influences - and that these forces are often the source of bias and error - inspired Washington Post (and former Inquirer) reporter Shankar Vedantam to write The Hidden Brain. Vedantam, a natural storyteller, moves seamlessly from banal office ritual to the roots of racial prejudice, to group behavior in the south tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, and then on to a deconstruction of the mass psychology of the followers of Jim Jones. *
The Hidden Brain is built around a collection of anecdotes that bolster the thesis that sub-rosa mental sprockets and chains, often programmed to work against our conscious intentions, underlie much of what we do, either as individuals or when massed into groups. *
There is Will DeRiso, an employee of the securities firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, who gets swept along in the panicked dash down the stairs after the plane hits the other Trade Center skyscraper, only to pause midway and deliberate about whether he should go back to fetch remaining coworkers on the 89th floor who dismissed the gravity of their situation. (They later perished.) DeRiso remains at the center of a "complex web of interconnections, with thousands of cables tugging him in different directions." *
Terrorists, in this account, are not wildly deranged, but rather dupes who get sucked into "The Tunnel": a psychological vortex in which a small, cloistered group warps the thinking of an otherwise ordinary individual. Larry Layton, an idealistic but impressionable Quaker, became a member of Jim Jones' People's Temple and readily accepted a mission to kill U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan, who came to Guyana to investigate the cult. *
Like the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, Vedantam serves as a popularizer of the social sciences. Both authors attempt to overturn bedrock assumptions about our everyday world. Gladwell recently chronicled for his employer how an entrepreneurial cowboy such as Ted Turner was really nothing of the kind, but rather survived by wagering relatively inconsequential stakes on surefire ventures. Turner put no cash down for his purchase of the UHF station that became an initial building block of his broadcast empire. *
The success of this type of writing depends on an ability to surprise. Vedantam's premise that our unseen, inner incubuses lead us in unexpected directions is less sure-footed than many of Gladwell's revelations. The notion that our actions derive from a subterranean irrationality is not really news. Freud, Shakespeare, and the ancients based whole careers on this sort of thing. *
Vedantam acknowledges as much but plows on because of his assertion that scientists can now provide better insight into why we go astray. Oddly, he steers clear of many seminal findings in neuroscience and cognitive psychology that have made palpable the idea of unconscious forces that control our actions. *
Recent studies of the brain's so-called "default mode" describe behind-the-scenes mental activity that prepares us to confront future events. Since the 1980s, scientists have known that unconscious brain activity precedes awareness of a conscious decision to initiate a muscle movement - a challenge to the concept of free will. And the housing bubble that precipitated the recent financial crisis was the best evidence yet for the validity of the heuristics and biases documented by behavioral economists, providing elaborate explication for why we so easily succumb to the madness of crowds. *
Perhaps Vedantam avoids this territory because some of it has been well chronicled in other popular books. But doing so misleads because the research he does cite is not embedded in an essential intellectual framework. Ultimately, the findings he ignores have had more influence on our understanding of human behavior than studies on office honor systems. *
The Hidden Brain remains an absorbing journey into the ways mass psychology and inner bias undermine our conceit of autonomy and rational initiative. But Vedantam's coinage of hidden brain as a term that encompasses a revolution akin to the advent of quantum mechanics reaches beyond the evidence furnished here. The subliminal self has always remained central to the endeavors of philosophers and, more recently, brain scientists. *
Gary Stix (http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/mailto:gstix@sciam.com) is a senior editor at Scientific American. *
Find this article at: ***http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20100216_What_your_brain_knows_that_you_don_t.html
setTimeout('showLayer();',200);
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Philly.com **
The Philadelphia Inquirer **
Posted on Tue, Feb. 16, 2010 *
Book Review *
What your brain knows that you don't *
Reviewed by Gary Stix *
The Hidden Brain ***
How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars and Save Our Lives *
By Shankar Vedantam *
Spiegel & Grau. 288 pp. $26 *
A beverage station in an office in Newcastle, England, requires workers to pay for coffee, tea, and milk on the honor system. Money is supposed to go into a box - 30 pence for tea, 50 for coffee, 10 for milk. No hovering clerk stands nearby. *
Researcher Melissa Bateson decided to turn this dispensing area into the central prop for a social-science experiment. She tracked how much milk was dispensed each week over a 10-week period and how much cash was collected. During odd-numbered weeks, the box received on average nearly three times as much as it did on even weeks for each liter of milk consumed. *
What gave? On the odd weeks, Bateson affixed a pair of watchful eyes to the sheet of paper that listed prices. On even weeks, the eyes were replaced with a picture of flowers. When quizzed, none of the office workers remembered the images. But the simple presence of an iconic gaze seems to have made a big difference in how they behaved. *
That we think and act under imperceptible influences - and that these forces are often the source of bias and error - inspired Washington Post (and former Inquirer) reporter Shankar Vedantam to write The Hidden Brain. Vedantam, a natural storyteller, moves seamlessly from banal office ritual to the roots of racial prejudice, to group behavior in the south tower of the World Trade Center on 9/11, and then on to a deconstruction of the mass psychology of the followers of Jim Jones. *
The Hidden Brain is built around a collection of anecdotes that bolster the thesis that sub-rosa mental sprockets and chains, often programmed to work against our conscious intentions, underlie much of what we do, either as individuals or when massed into groups. *
There is Will DeRiso, an employee of the securities firm Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, who gets swept along in the panicked dash down the stairs after the plane hits the other Trade Center skyscraper, only to pause midway and deliberate about whether he should go back to fetch remaining coworkers on the 89th floor who dismissed the gravity of their situation. (They later perished.) DeRiso remains at the center of a "complex web of interconnections, with thousands of cables tugging him in different directions." *
Terrorists, in this account, are not wildly deranged, but rather dupes who get sucked into "The Tunnel": a psychological vortex in which a small, cloistered group warps the thinking of an otherwise ordinary individual. Larry Layton, an idealistic but impressionable Quaker, became a member of Jim Jones' People's Temple and readily accepted a mission to kill U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan, who came to Guyana to investigate the cult. *
Like the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell, Vedantam serves as a popularizer of the social sciences. Both authors attempt to overturn bedrock assumptions about our everyday world. Gladwell recently chronicled for his employer how an entrepreneurial cowboy such as Ted Turner was really nothing of the kind, but rather survived by wagering relatively inconsequential stakes on surefire ventures. Turner put no cash down for his purchase of the UHF station that became an initial building block of his broadcast empire. *
The success of this type of writing depends on an ability to surprise. Vedantam's premise that our unseen, inner incubuses lead us in unexpected directions is less sure-footed than many of Gladwell's revelations. The notion that our actions derive from a subterranean irrationality is not really news. Freud, Shakespeare, and the ancients based whole careers on this sort of thing. *
Vedantam acknowledges as much but plows on because of his assertion that scientists can now provide better insight into why we go astray. Oddly, he steers clear of many seminal findings in neuroscience and cognitive psychology that have made palpable the idea of unconscious forces that control our actions. *
Recent studies of the brain's so-called "default mode" describe behind-the-scenes mental activity that prepares us to confront future events. Since the 1980s, scientists have known that unconscious brain activity precedes awareness of a conscious decision to initiate a muscle movement - a challenge to the concept of free will. And the housing bubble that precipitated the recent financial crisis was the best evidence yet for the validity of the heuristics and biases documented by behavioral economists, providing elaborate explication for why we so easily succumb to the madness of crowds. *
Perhaps Vedantam avoids this territory because some of it has been well chronicled in other popular books. But doing so misleads because the research he does cite is not embedded in an essential intellectual framework. Ultimately, the findings he ignores have had more influence on our understanding of human behavior than studies on office honor systems. *
The Hidden Brain remains an absorbing journey into the ways mass psychology and inner bias undermine our conceit of autonomy and rational initiative. But Vedantam's coinage of hidden brain as a term that encompasses a revolution akin to the advent of quantum mechanics reaches beyond the evidence furnished here. The subliminal self has always remained central to the endeavors of philosophers and, more recently, brain scientists. *
Gary Stix (http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/mailto:gstix@sciam.com) is a senior editor at Scientific American. *
Find this article at: ***http://www.philly.com/inquirer/magazine/20100216_What_your_brain_knows_that_you_don_t.html
setTimeout('showLayer();',200);
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
The science of ever-lasting love
The science of ever-lasting love
The Herald ***
The science of ever-lasting love ***
Friday, February 12, 2010, 18:44 *
THERE is a question on the lips of the kissers on this, the most romantic weekend of the year: is this the start of a life-long partnership? *
Many would love to know the answer to that Valentine's Day puzzle. *
The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show the divorce rate in England and Wales fell in 2008 for the fifth year in succession – and that there are some firm numbers in the science of how and why relationships work. *
Psychologist John Gottman has shown he can predict with 90 per cent accuracy which newlywed couples will remain married and which will divorce four to six years later.
The University of Washington professor – known for his work on marital stability and relationship analysis through scientific direct observations – is also 81 percent accurate in saying which marriages will survive after seven to nine years. *
In Plymouth, psychologist Mathew White draws on Prof Gottman's work to say there are six big reasons why romantic relationships start: proximity, familiarity, attractiveness, similarity, reciprocity and misattribution of emotion. *
"Proximity is fairly obvious," says Dr White, a lecturer at the University of Plymouth. "You need to meet the person. There is the internet but most couples were born in close proximity or work together, for example." *
As for familiarity, the more often you see a face, the more attractive it becomes. "If you reverse a photo of the Mona Lisa, most people prefer it the original way," he adds. *
Attractiveness is about matching like with like: "Most people end up with someone with a very similar level of attractiveness." *
And the same goes for familiarity. "People are attracted to homogeneity: those with the same attitudes and beliefs to their own," Dr White adds. *
Reciprocity is another of the more obvious reasons why we are attracted to another person. "It is difficult to love if we are not loved back." *
Misattribution of emotion requires more explanation – and here comes the science. *
In 1974, psychologists Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron conducted an experiment in which an attractive woman got men to answer a questionnaire immediately after they had crossed a rickety suspension bridge. After each survey she gave them her phone number and said they could call if they had any questions. *
The experiment was repeated at the end of stable bridge. *
"17 per cent of the men called the woman and asked for a date in the experiment which used the safe bridge," says Dr White. "40 per cent of men called the woman after the rickety bridge. *
"That's a huge increase. It's because when we are aroused, we can misattribute the arousal." Similar results were found when a man interviewed women in the same circumstances: they mistook their arousal from the bridge – raised heartbeat and increasing breathing – for the arousal they felt from the attractive interviewer's presence. *
That arousal confusion can happen in more conventional man-meets-woman situations: the feel-good party can turn a lukewarm prospect into a hot date. *
And that might, perhaps, be the first step on the path to a life partnership. *
Are the six rules a fast-forward to a firm and lasting relationship? *
Not necessarily, says Sue Hirons of Plymouth Relate. Once we are attracted, together and attached we need to keep talking and working on our relationship. *
She says couples can find themselves in trouble in their relationships partly because they don't think things through. *
They might not know how to stop the little things that can niggle and which can undermine a relationship leaving it vulnerable to a crisis. *
"People are attracted, they get together and go with the flow," says Ms Hirons, centre manager of the Plymouth counselling organisation. *
"It is when they hit the skids that issues raise their heads. *
"They wait and wait and wait and come for relationship counselling when it almost the point of no return." *
How do things go wrong? *
"When the first child comes along, that can completely change a relationship," says Ms Hirons. *
"Even a couple who have lived together getting married can change the dynamic somehow." *
But there are two headline-grabbers among the relationship shocks. Money is often an issue and increasingly so during the recession, says Ms Hirons, and an affair is the other big shock. *
"If a couple have two of those coming together they can feel that there is no return. But of course there can be a way back, if they want it to work." *
That relationship work ethic is less valued in an increasingly self-centred, throwaway society that looks for quick fixes. *
"There is a feeling that if anything – a relationship even – is not working, you should just go and get another one," Ms Hirons adds. *
"For some people divorce might be the answer. Some people are better off apart and we help them through it. *
"But we need to make sure they aren't taking baggage into the next relationship or they may repeat the story. Starting again is not as easy as it seems. The same problems can come up." *
Back to the positive, then: how can we get rocky relationships back on track and keep stable ones off the bumpy road to a breakdown? *
"Communication," says Ms Hirons. "That sounds flippant, but is so important." *
Early on in a relationship, tackle the simple things and sort out the minor irritations. *
"Flag things that you feel are important: who will cook the meals, who will do the dishes? *
"Inane things like leaving the loo seat up or clothes lying around: those small things can have a massive impact. They can develop and cause the moans and groans that chip away at a relationship." *
Communication should be positive and clear. *
"A woman might say, 'you are not very affectionate'. We assume that our partners know what we mean but what does that mean to her partner? Better to say, 'I would like it if you kissed me when you come home and held my hand while we are watching TV'." *
Other proven tips on staying together – and happy with it – come from Dr White. *
"Idealisation helps in relationships," he says. "Having a positive illusion about your partner, thinking that they are the bees knees, is better than having a totally realistic view." *
Avoiding the Four Horsemen is vitally important, too, he adds. *
That is a not a reference to the male riders in the Biblical Book of Revelation who represent the disease, war, famine and death that herald the end of the world. *
Instead they are the quartet of damaging habits employed during disagreements that can doom a relationship, as outlined by Prof Gottman. They are: contempt, excessive criticism, stonewalling and defensiveness. *
Contempt is characterised by rolling of the eyes, an undercurr
ent of hostility and name-calling. *
Criticism is personal and a character attack. A complaint is about a particular issue and is reasonable: "I was disappointed we couldn't go to the pub tonight because you were late from work." *
Criticism is different and is damaging: "You are always back late so we can never go to the pub. You are always inconsiderate." *
Avoiding an issue through stonewalling can cause resentment and allow problems to grow. *
Constantly making excuses when a partner brings up a problem tells them to back off – we are basically ignoring their feelings. *
Dr White also cites the 5:1 ratio highlighted by Prof Gottman, whose research shows that negative actions are five times more damaging to a relationship than positive ones are in repairing. *
Prof Gottman says the finding suggests that if you do something negative to hurt your partner's feelings, you have to make up for it with five positive things. *
Dr White says that the imbalance between the effects of positive and negative is borne out in other areas of research in psychology. "Losing £100 feels twice as bad as winning £100 feels good," he says. *
There is also the problem of a natural fall-off in relationships, although this appears to be a four-year not a seven-year itch. A 10-year study of 10,000 couples shows that getting together boosts life satisfaction after marriage, which falls away to be back where it started after four years, says Dr White. *
So how do we stop that curve to go back up again? Best ask what all the 'experts' – the psychologists and the counsellor – agree are the masters of the subject: successful couples. *
Don and Doreen Hill, of Higher St Budeaux, celebrated their diamond wedding in the run-up Valentine's Day. *
Their secret is that they "share everything and do everything" including the housework, says Don and, even before he's passed the phone to Doreen I know that they have reciprocity going strong because I can hear her agreeing in the background. *
The two 79-year-olds aren't perfect and they have been known to row. *
"Any couples who say they don't aren't telling the truth," he says. *
"It's normal human interaction," he adds (and Doreen is saying 'yes' in the background). *
The key is how you argue and what you do to resolve the problem, Don says. You have to admit mistakes or faults. "No-one is perfect and when you have an argument you have to forget it and not have grudges." *
Doreen says that they do not have secrets from each other. *
"Maybe we did when we were younger but not for a long time now," she says. *
The positivity is constantly kept up through small acts of helpfulness and occasional gifts. *
"Don sometimes brings me flowers for no special occasion and we like to have a bit of a celebration on Valentine's Day even if we don't go out," Doreen adds. *
Back to the professionals: does Valentine's Day matter? Yes, say Dr White and Ms Hirons. *
They agree, though, that relationships need small gestures of love and affectation and couples should not get hung up on grand occasions. *
"You might think Valentine's Day is commercial and all about cards and presents," says Ms Hirons. "But it helps you focus on what you like about each other. *
"Buy some flowers, get your partner a little present and keep up those small gestures. Grand gestures we can't always keep up." *
And sometimes cementing a relationship can be done with thoughts and words, Dr White suggests. *
Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, although "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind," to borrow a quote from Shakespeare. *
Says Dr White: "Keep thinking your partner is wonderful – and keep telling them they are." *
Access Original Article: http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/features/science-lasting-love/article-1831881-detail/article.html
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
The Herald ***
The science of ever-lasting love ***
Friday, February 12, 2010, 18:44 *
THERE is a question on the lips of the kissers on this, the most romantic weekend of the year: is this the start of a life-long partnership? *
Many would love to know the answer to that Valentine's Day puzzle. *
The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show the divorce rate in England and Wales fell in 2008 for the fifth year in succession – and that there are some firm numbers in the science of how and why relationships work. *
Psychologist John Gottman has shown he can predict with 90 per cent accuracy which newlywed couples will remain married and which will divorce four to six years later.
The University of Washington professor – known for his work on marital stability and relationship analysis through scientific direct observations – is also 81 percent accurate in saying which marriages will survive after seven to nine years. *
In Plymouth, psychologist Mathew White draws on Prof Gottman's work to say there are six big reasons why romantic relationships start: proximity, familiarity, attractiveness, similarity, reciprocity and misattribution of emotion. *
"Proximity is fairly obvious," says Dr White, a lecturer at the University of Plymouth. "You need to meet the person. There is the internet but most couples were born in close proximity or work together, for example." *
As for familiarity, the more often you see a face, the more attractive it becomes. "If you reverse a photo of the Mona Lisa, most people prefer it the original way," he adds. *
Attractiveness is about matching like with like: "Most people end up with someone with a very similar level of attractiveness." *
And the same goes for familiarity. "People are attracted to homogeneity: those with the same attitudes and beliefs to their own," Dr White adds. *
Reciprocity is another of the more obvious reasons why we are attracted to another person. "It is difficult to love if we are not loved back." *
Misattribution of emotion requires more explanation – and here comes the science. *
In 1974, psychologists Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron conducted an experiment in which an attractive woman got men to answer a questionnaire immediately after they had crossed a rickety suspension bridge. After each survey she gave them her phone number and said they could call if they had any questions. *
The experiment was repeated at the end of stable bridge. *
"17 per cent of the men called the woman and asked for a date in the experiment which used the safe bridge," says Dr White. "40 per cent of men called the woman after the rickety bridge. *
"That's a huge increase. It's because when we are aroused, we can misattribute the arousal." Similar results were found when a man interviewed women in the same circumstances: they mistook their arousal from the bridge – raised heartbeat and increasing breathing – for the arousal they felt from the attractive interviewer's presence. *
That arousal confusion can happen in more conventional man-meets-woman situations: the feel-good party can turn a lukewarm prospect into a hot date. *
And that might, perhaps, be the first step on the path to a life partnership. *
Are the six rules a fast-forward to a firm and lasting relationship? *
Not necessarily, says Sue Hirons of Plymouth Relate. Once we are attracted, together and attached we need to keep talking and working on our relationship. *
She says couples can find themselves in trouble in their relationships partly because they don't think things through. *
They might not know how to stop the little things that can niggle and which can undermine a relationship leaving it vulnerable to a crisis. *
"People are attracted, they get together and go with the flow," says Ms Hirons, centre manager of the Plymouth counselling organisation. *
"It is when they hit the skids that issues raise their heads. *
"They wait and wait and wait and come for relationship counselling when it almost the point of no return." *
How do things go wrong? *
"When the first child comes along, that can completely change a relationship," says Ms Hirons. *
"Even a couple who have lived together getting married can change the dynamic somehow." *
But there are two headline-grabbers among the relationship shocks. Money is often an issue and increasingly so during the recession, says Ms Hirons, and an affair is the other big shock. *
"If a couple have two of those coming together they can feel that there is no return. But of course there can be a way back, if they want it to work." *
That relationship work ethic is less valued in an increasingly self-centred, throwaway society that looks for quick fixes. *
"There is a feeling that if anything – a relationship even – is not working, you should just go and get another one," Ms Hirons adds. *
"For some people divorce might be the answer. Some people are better off apart and we help them through it. *
"But we need to make sure they aren't taking baggage into the next relationship or they may repeat the story. Starting again is not as easy as it seems. The same problems can come up." *
Back to the positive, then: how can we get rocky relationships back on track and keep stable ones off the bumpy road to a breakdown? *
"Communication," says Ms Hirons. "That sounds flippant, but is so important." *
Early on in a relationship, tackle the simple things and sort out the minor irritations. *
"Flag things that you feel are important: who will cook the meals, who will do the dishes? *
"Inane things like leaving the loo seat up or clothes lying around: those small things can have a massive impact. They can develop and cause the moans and groans that chip away at a relationship." *
Communication should be positive and clear. *
"A woman might say, 'you are not very affectionate'. We assume that our partners know what we mean but what does that mean to her partner? Better to say, 'I would like it if you kissed me when you come home and held my hand while we are watching TV'." *
Other proven tips on staying together – and happy with it – come from Dr White. *
"Idealisation helps in relationships," he says. "Having a positive illusion about your partner, thinking that they are the bees knees, is better than having a totally realistic view." *
Avoiding the Four Horsemen is vitally important, too, he adds. *
That is a not a reference to the male riders in the Biblical Book of Revelation who represent the disease, war, famine and death that herald the end of the world. *
Instead they are the quartet of damaging habits employed during disagreements that can doom a relationship, as outlined by Prof Gottman. They are: contempt, excessive criticism, stonewalling and defensiveness. *
Contempt is characterised by rolling of the eyes, an undercurr
ent of hostility and name-calling. *
Criticism is personal and a character attack. A complaint is about a particular issue and is reasonable: "I was disappointed we couldn't go to the pub tonight because you were late from work." *
Criticism is different and is damaging: "You are always back late so we can never go to the pub. You are always inconsiderate." *
Avoiding an issue through stonewalling can cause resentment and allow problems to grow. *
Constantly making excuses when a partner brings up a problem tells them to back off – we are basically ignoring their feelings. *
Dr White also cites the 5:1 ratio highlighted by Prof Gottman, whose research shows that negative actions are five times more damaging to a relationship than positive ones are in repairing. *
Prof Gottman says the finding suggests that if you do something negative to hurt your partner's feelings, you have to make up for it with five positive things. *
Dr White says that the imbalance between the effects of positive and negative is borne out in other areas of research in psychology. "Losing £100 feels twice as bad as winning £100 feels good," he says. *
There is also the problem of a natural fall-off in relationships, although this appears to be a four-year not a seven-year itch. A 10-year study of 10,000 couples shows that getting together boosts life satisfaction after marriage, which falls away to be back where it started after four years, says Dr White. *
So how do we stop that curve to go back up again? Best ask what all the 'experts' – the psychologists and the counsellor – agree are the masters of the subject: successful couples. *
Don and Doreen Hill, of Higher St Budeaux, celebrated their diamond wedding in the run-up Valentine's Day. *
Their secret is that they "share everything and do everything" including the housework, says Don and, even before he's passed the phone to Doreen I know that they have reciprocity going strong because I can hear her agreeing in the background. *
The two 79-year-olds aren't perfect and they have been known to row. *
"Any couples who say they don't aren't telling the truth," he says. *
"It's normal human interaction," he adds (and Doreen is saying 'yes' in the background). *
The key is how you argue and what you do to resolve the problem, Don says. You have to admit mistakes or faults. "No-one is perfect and when you have an argument you have to forget it and not have grudges." *
Doreen says that they do not have secrets from each other. *
"Maybe we did when we were younger but not for a long time now," she says. *
The positivity is constantly kept up through small acts of helpfulness and occasional gifts. *
"Don sometimes brings me flowers for no special occasion and we like to have a bit of a celebration on Valentine's Day even if we don't go out," Doreen adds. *
Back to the professionals: does Valentine's Day matter? Yes, say Dr White and Ms Hirons. *
They agree, though, that relationships need small gestures of love and affectation and couples should not get hung up on grand occasions. *
"You might think Valentine's Day is commercial and all about cards and presents," says Ms Hirons. "But it helps you focus on what you like about each other. *
"Buy some flowers, get your partner a little present and keep up those small gestures. Grand gestures we can't always keep up." *
And sometimes cementing a relationship can be done with thoughts and words, Dr White suggests. *
Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, although "Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind," to borrow a quote from Shakespeare. *
Says Dr White: "Keep thinking your partner is wonderful – and keep telling them they are." *
Access Original Article: http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/features/science-lasting-love/article-1831881-detail/article.html
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Friday, February 12, 2010
JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure | Video on TED.com
JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure Video on TED.com
Video: JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure (20:58)
Harvard University, Filmed Jun 2008;
Posted Jan 2010
About this talkAt her Harvard University commencement speech, "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling offers some powerful, heartening advice to dreamers and overachievers, including one hard-won lesson that she deems "worth more than any qualification I ever earned."
About JK RowlingJK Rowling penned the bestselling Harry Potter page-turners -- a spellbinding, seven-installment fantasy of wizards, warlocks and decidedly British texture that brought her from rags to riches. Full bio and more links
Access Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_failure.html
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Video: JK Rowling: The fringe benefits of failure (20:58)
Harvard University, Filmed Jun 2008;
Posted Jan 2010
About this talkAt her Harvard University commencement speech, "Harry Potter" author JK Rowling offers some powerful, heartening advice to dreamers and overachievers, including one hard-won lesson that she deems "worth more than any qualification I ever earned."
About JK RowlingJK Rowling penned the bestselling Harry Potter page-turners -- a spellbinding, seven-installment fantasy of wizards, warlocks and decidedly British texture that brought her from rags to riches. Full bio and more links
Access Video: http://www.ted.com/talks/jk_rowling_the_fringe_benefits_of_failure.html
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
BusinessWorld Weekender: Crazy little thing called love
BusinessWorld Weekender: Crazy little thing called love
Business World ***
Posted on 06:05 PM, February 11, 2010 *
BY JOHANNA D. POBLETE, Reporter *
Crazy little thing called love ***
In Japan, there is a little custom where if you were so inclined, you could hire somebody, a wakaresaseya, to ruin your own relationship -- either the hired professional breaks up with your lover for you, or schemes to provoke your lover into breaking up with you. Before Shannen Doherty made it to reality TV, the Japanese already knew what they were about. Wakaresaseya firms continue to make a living by enforcing separation, guaranteeing 100% success rate, and keeping the Japanese -- who are either too polite and non-confrontational (or too spineless?) to do the honors -- happily single and available. *
One wonders if business goes up before, after, or during Valentine’s Day when love is uppermost in the mind. *
Valentine’s Day, in theory, should be an opportune time to be single. Love is in the air, people are inspired to behave flirtatiously, and traditionally, the 14th (or more accurately, the 15th ) of February was not a day for the lovers, but for those who wished to obtain a lover. Its history can be traced to the pagan festival Lupercalia, which among other things, had maidens running the streets being whipped with the flayed hide of a sacrificial goat -- to promote fertility -- and whose names were drawn from a jar by men in a lottery to pair them up for the duration of the festival, or for as long as they wished to remain in the relationship (one can likely trace the European tradition of hand-fasting from here). *
The turnabout came with Christianity, and the decision to instead honor a saint who supposedly married lovers in secret against the wishes of a despotic Roman emperor who wanted military men loyal to Rome rather than hearth and home. So now we celebrate the state of the union, congratulate the paired up -- the loved -- rather than those who are un-paired, un-loved, or simply have suffered a breakup or a loss of love. Of late, there has been an effort to use Valentine’s Day as an excuse to celebrate any kind of love -- filial, platonic, even self-love. And it is in the last we find a slot for the brokenhearted, those dropped by Cupid’s poisoned arrow, those who may not be in the right frame of mind to look for a new love, and those likely to do bodily damage to the first wakaresaseya they hit upon. *
Love is addictive ***
Why do we fall in love when it leaves us so vulnerable? It is a biological imperative -- our bodies are meant to mate and procreate. Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher speaks of three basic drives, the lust-driven sex drive or libido; romantic attraction, or romantic love, which she believes to be more powerful than libido; and finally, attachment or the deep feelings of union with a long-term factor. Love can start off with any of these three feelings. *
"Some people have sex first and then fall in love. Some fall head over heels in love, then climb into bed. Some feel deeply attached to someone they have known for months or years; then circumstances change, they fall madly in love and have sex. But the sex drive evolved to encourage you to seek a range of partners; romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one at a time; and attachment evolved to enable you to feel deep union to this person long enough to rear your infants as a team," Ms. Fisher maintains. *
The wrench in the works is when a couple severs the connection. Perhaps the attraction wasn’t strong enough to begin with. Perhaps external circumstances conspired to make the love peter out. Perhaps the bond dissolved because of a third party -- even Ms. Fisher admits that the three drives are not necessarily connected to each other, and that one can feel deep attachment to a long-term partner while feeling intense romantic love for someone else, and while feeling a sexual attraction to people unrelated to these other partners. *
There is a subtle and complex system at work in human attraction and mating, and not everything is within our control. Take the phenomena of pheromones, that cocktail of body fluids (sweat, saliva, semen, vaginal fluids, breast milk, blood) inciting lust by scent alone, traveling the neural pathway to the hypothalamus, and initiating the release of sex hormones that fuel erotic feelings and sensations. In Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes? Bodies, Behavior, and Brains -- The Science Behind Sex, Love & Attraction by Jena Pincott (Delacorte Press, 2008), one learns that women prefer the body odors of men who have major histocompatibility complex (MHC) gene variants that are mostly different from their own, because any offspring would inherit a more diverse MHC and stronger immune system. The choice is made subliminally. (So honey, it’s not you, really, that other guy just smelled way better.) *
Research has shown that love/passion has neurological payoffs, a system of reward and motivation involving natural stimulants such as dopamine and oxytocin. As Ms. Fisher sensationally termed it, love is like a drug and it affects the same region in the brain that is stimulated when a person takes a hit of cocaine -- as proven in an experiment where people who professed to be "madly in love" submitted to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. It’s addictive. Love tends to "rewire" the mind. The brain of someone "on love" resembles the drug-addled brain or someone temporarily insane. That said, when love is gone, one can imagine the lover goes into a type of withdrawal syndrome. *
Driven mad by love? ***
"Love sickness" is an outdated term, but there are instances when it seems appropriate. It is acceptable for a lock of hair to be kept as a memento, but keeping a pair of used underwear is deviant behavior. Discreetly looking up the object of one’s affections online is satisfying normal curiosity; stalking the known home and work address is aberrant. Tearing up the photo of the ex in a fit of jealous rage is fairly common; beating up a rival is disturbing. *
Dr. Eduardo Juan L. Tolentino, Jr., Chief of Psychiatry at the Makati Medical Center and one psychiatrist involved in the National Program for Mental Health, is careful in defining what is considered "insane" behavior, although he gives credence to the notion that there is a thin line between normal and abnormal. *
"As a rule of thumb, the thin line is crossed when functionality is already affected... When I say functionality, there’s the biological (sleep, appetite, thinking and energy levels), psychological (emotional behavior), and social (personal network, faith and values)... Generally, to be balanced, there has to be three supports, and that’s work, love and play," he told BusinessWorld. *
Within the bounds of normalcy, the brokenhearted could experience a loss of appetite, sporadic crying jags, and perhaps a few nights of insomnia, but continues to eat, drinks enough to re-hydrate, and goes in to work. Functionality goes by the wayside when pathology sets in. The person stops eating, becomes unproductive, avoids company, starts questioning his own faith and values, and perhaps even attempts suicide. *
Some people respond to rejection or loss by turning workaholic; others become alcoholic, or addicted (sleeping pills included, even legal crutches like cigarettes and coffee), have indiscriminate sex, or worse, lash out. Dr. Tolentino noted that in crimes of passion, a lot the cases turn out to have some psychological problems in the first place. "One of the predictive factors would be past violence. There was no intervention, so why would they change?" he said. *
There’s the temporarily insane and then there’s the sociopath or antisocial personality disorder, which has charm but no conscience nor empathy for others, and falls under cluster B personality disorders, alongside narcissistic personality (the megalomaniacs), borderline personality (unclear boundaries mean they go into very intense relationships and have tumultuous breakups, are very sensitive to rejection and become self-injurious or slashers, substance abusers, very disruptive and sometimes violent), and histrionic (hysterical, melodramatic attention-seekers). *
A person’s background is indicative of whether they’ll be able to cope with the demands of stress, or whether they’ll snap at the pressure. Genetic and developmental predisposition is a factor, as are environmental influences, family background and rearing, a history (or lack) of trauma, abuse or illness. People who have had previous psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse are at risk. Those who have good education and a stable economic or financial status would be at an advantage. *
Love in recovery ***
For the majority, a broken relationship follows the stages of dying. First is denial -- "is it really over?" -- exhibited in lover-like behavior, as though nothing has changed. When confronted -- "it’s over, we’re done" -- anger steps in, fault-finding in a bid to make sense of the failure. Then comes bargaining; a try at reconciliation, promises are made. When bargaining doesn’t work, depression sets in, before, finally, acceptance. *
People tend to vacillate back and forth through the stages, six weeks to six months at the most. The ideal is they move into an integrated stage of both emotional as well as intellectual acceptance, said Dr. Tolentino. The key to recovery is resiliency, which is dependent on the individual’s risk factors and protective factors. A confluence of events could break down one’s coping mechanisms, but for the most part, when faced with a challenging situation, a healthy, normal individual would rally. *
Culture is also a factor. In a suicide prevention regional workshop for members of the World Health Organization in the Asia-Pacific region, the Philippines emerged with the lowest incidence of suicide compared to the likes of Japan, China, and Australia. In studies of coping, Dr. Tolentino said resiliency is highlighted, whether looking into Holo-caust victims, or victims of rape, kidnapping, or violence. *
"We looked at certain protective factors that are innate in Filipinos. One is resiliency. You place a Filipino anywhere, he will adjust and adjust, up to a point when he can no longer adjust -- that’s probably the only time he will commit suicide. Two is social support, which could be both bane and boon, and strong family values. Three is the Catholic faith, which disallows suicide," said Dr. Tolentino. *
"Resilience includes the ability to deduce from a very bad experience something that is good about it. It’s very Pinoy -- buti na lang hindi ka namatay kahit na-Ondoy ka (you’re lucky you didn’t die even if you suffered through Typhoon Ondoy). It’s just saying in another way, in more scientific terms, what exactly is occurring amongst Filipinos... it’s a different perspective," he added. *
"It was good while it lasted" ;"better now than when we’ve got kids to think about"; "I’ll forgive you because forgiving you will be good for me and help me move on" -- these are some of the mantras that the broken-hearted but optimistic use. Verbalization is one method of getting over an ex -- so the self-help books advise -- another is gaining perspective by listing all the things you won’t be missing and would gladly bequeath your ex (his bad jokes maybe?), and what you wish to keep from the relationship (your airline miles, your mutual friends, your dignity maybe?). Unburdening oneself to a sympathetic ear, even writing a no-holds barred "Dear John" letter without actually sending it, are also aids in getting over a bad breakup. *
On Valentine’s Day, when everyone else is hooking up, you may curse the fates that there are match-makers and breaker-uppers, but as yet no surrogate able to go cold turkey for a devastated lover. Dealing with the choices you’ve made is far from pleasant, but there is comfort in how you’re taking care of yourself. And eventually your chosen partner, how your relationship progresses, how you nurture it, (and, if ever, how you’ll bury it), will be your doing. *
It’s not exactly like picking someone’s name out of a jar or hat and deciding to make a go of it. Now that would be crazy. *
"You need to be responsible for yourself. Even in a relationship when they say that two become one, you keep your individuality. Because if there’s co-dependency, that may not even be love, you’re in there because there’s something that you may be getting from the other individual, and the other individual is getting something out of you," said Dr. Tolentino. *
"Each one has to be responsible for himself or herself. Before you can be wholly in a relationship, you have to be able to nurture yourself first. You can’t give of yourself in a relationship if in the first place kulang-kulang ka (you’re lacking). You have to be whole, you have to be mature." *
Access Original Post: http://www.bworldonline.com/weekender/content.php?id=6144
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Business World ***
Posted on 06:05 PM, February 11, 2010 *
BY JOHANNA D. POBLETE, Reporter *
Crazy little thing called love ***
In Japan, there is a little custom where if you were so inclined, you could hire somebody, a wakaresaseya, to ruin your own relationship -- either the hired professional breaks up with your lover for you, or schemes to provoke your lover into breaking up with you. Before Shannen Doherty made it to reality TV, the Japanese already knew what they were about. Wakaresaseya firms continue to make a living by enforcing separation, guaranteeing 100% success rate, and keeping the Japanese -- who are either too polite and non-confrontational (or too spineless?) to do the honors -- happily single and available. *
One wonders if business goes up before, after, or during Valentine’s Day when love is uppermost in the mind. *
Valentine’s Day, in theory, should be an opportune time to be single. Love is in the air, people are inspired to behave flirtatiously, and traditionally, the 14th (or more accurately, the 15th ) of February was not a day for the lovers, but for those who wished to obtain a lover. Its history can be traced to the pagan festival Lupercalia, which among other things, had maidens running the streets being whipped with the flayed hide of a sacrificial goat -- to promote fertility -- and whose names were drawn from a jar by men in a lottery to pair them up for the duration of the festival, or for as long as they wished to remain in the relationship (one can likely trace the European tradition of hand-fasting from here). *
The turnabout came with Christianity, and the decision to instead honor a saint who supposedly married lovers in secret against the wishes of a despotic Roman emperor who wanted military men loyal to Rome rather than hearth and home. So now we celebrate the state of the union, congratulate the paired up -- the loved -- rather than those who are un-paired, un-loved, or simply have suffered a breakup or a loss of love. Of late, there has been an effort to use Valentine’s Day as an excuse to celebrate any kind of love -- filial, platonic, even self-love. And it is in the last we find a slot for the brokenhearted, those dropped by Cupid’s poisoned arrow, those who may not be in the right frame of mind to look for a new love, and those likely to do bodily damage to the first wakaresaseya they hit upon. *
Love is addictive ***
Why do we fall in love when it leaves us so vulnerable? It is a biological imperative -- our bodies are meant to mate and procreate. Biological anthropologist Helen Fisher speaks of three basic drives, the lust-driven sex drive or libido; romantic attraction, or romantic love, which she believes to be more powerful than libido; and finally, attachment or the deep feelings of union with a long-term factor. Love can start off with any of these three feelings. *
"Some people have sex first and then fall in love. Some fall head over heels in love, then climb into bed. Some feel deeply attached to someone they have known for months or years; then circumstances change, they fall madly in love and have sex. But the sex drive evolved to encourage you to seek a range of partners; romantic love evolved to enable you to focus your mating energy on just one at a time; and attachment evolved to enable you to feel deep union to this person long enough to rear your infants as a team," Ms. Fisher maintains. *
The wrench in the works is when a couple severs the connection. Perhaps the attraction wasn’t strong enough to begin with. Perhaps external circumstances conspired to make the love peter out. Perhaps the bond dissolved because of a third party -- even Ms. Fisher admits that the three drives are not necessarily connected to each other, and that one can feel deep attachment to a long-term partner while feeling intense romantic love for someone else, and while feeling a sexual attraction to people unrelated to these other partners. *
There is a subtle and complex system at work in human attraction and mating, and not everything is within our control. Take the phenomena of pheromones, that cocktail of body fluids (sweat, saliva, semen, vaginal fluids, breast milk, blood) inciting lust by scent alone, traveling the neural pathway to the hypothalamus, and initiating the release of sex hormones that fuel erotic feelings and sensations. In Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes? Bodies, Behavior, and Brains -- The Science Behind Sex, Love & Attraction by Jena Pincott (Delacorte Press, 2008), one learns that women prefer the body odors of men who have major histocompatibility complex (MHC) gene variants that are mostly different from their own, because any offspring would inherit a more diverse MHC and stronger immune system. The choice is made subliminally. (So honey, it’s not you, really, that other guy just smelled way better.) *
Research has shown that love/passion has neurological payoffs, a system of reward and motivation involving natural stimulants such as dopamine and oxytocin. As Ms. Fisher sensationally termed it, love is like a drug and it affects the same region in the brain that is stimulated when a person takes a hit of cocaine -- as proven in an experiment where people who professed to be "madly in love" submitted to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. It’s addictive. Love tends to "rewire" the mind. The brain of someone "on love" resembles the drug-addled brain or someone temporarily insane. That said, when love is gone, one can imagine the lover goes into a type of withdrawal syndrome. *
Driven mad by love? ***
"Love sickness" is an outdated term, but there are instances when it seems appropriate. It is acceptable for a lock of hair to be kept as a memento, but keeping a pair of used underwear is deviant behavior. Discreetly looking up the object of one’s affections online is satisfying normal curiosity; stalking the known home and work address is aberrant. Tearing up the photo of the ex in a fit of jealous rage is fairly common; beating up a rival is disturbing. *
Dr. Eduardo Juan L. Tolentino, Jr., Chief of Psychiatry at the Makati Medical Center and one psychiatrist involved in the National Program for Mental Health, is careful in defining what is considered "insane" behavior, although he gives credence to the notion that there is a thin line between normal and abnormal. *
"As a rule of thumb, the thin line is crossed when functionality is already affected... When I say functionality, there’s the biological (sleep, appetite, thinking and energy levels), psychological (emotional behavior), and social (personal network, faith and values)... Generally, to be balanced, there has to be three supports, and that’s work, love and play," he told BusinessWorld. *
Within the bounds of normalcy, the brokenhearted could experience a loss of appetite, sporadic crying jags, and perhaps a few nights of insomnia, but continues to eat, drinks enough to re-hydrate, and goes in to work. Functionality goes by the wayside when pathology sets in. The person stops eating, becomes unproductive, avoids company, starts questioning his own faith and values, and perhaps even attempts suicide. *
Some people respond to rejection or loss by turning workaholic; others become alcoholic, or addicted (sleeping pills included, even legal crutches like cigarettes and coffee), have indiscriminate sex, or worse, lash out. Dr. Tolentino noted that in crimes of passion, a lot the cases turn out to have some psychological problems in the first place. "One of the predictive factors would be past violence. There was no intervention, so why would they change?" he said. *
There’s the temporarily insane and then there’s the sociopath or antisocial personality disorder, which has charm but no conscience nor empathy for others, and falls under cluster B personality disorders, alongside narcissistic personality (the megalomaniacs), borderline personality (unclear boundaries mean they go into very intense relationships and have tumultuous breakups, are very sensitive to rejection and become self-injurious or slashers, substance abusers, very disruptive and sometimes violent), and histrionic (hysterical, melodramatic attention-seekers). *
A person’s background is indicative of whether they’ll be able to cope with the demands of stress, or whether they’ll snap at the pressure. Genetic and developmental predisposition is a factor, as are environmental influences, family background and rearing, a history (or lack) of trauma, abuse or illness. People who have had previous psychiatric disorders such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse are at risk. Those who have good education and a stable economic or financial status would be at an advantage. *
Love in recovery ***
For the majority, a broken relationship follows the stages of dying. First is denial -- "is it really over?" -- exhibited in lover-like behavior, as though nothing has changed. When confronted -- "it’s over, we’re done" -- anger steps in, fault-finding in a bid to make sense of the failure. Then comes bargaining; a try at reconciliation, promises are made. When bargaining doesn’t work, depression sets in, before, finally, acceptance. *
People tend to vacillate back and forth through the stages, six weeks to six months at the most. The ideal is they move into an integrated stage of both emotional as well as intellectual acceptance, said Dr. Tolentino. The key to recovery is resiliency, which is dependent on the individual’s risk factors and protective factors. A confluence of events could break down one’s coping mechanisms, but for the most part, when faced with a challenging situation, a healthy, normal individual would rally. *
Culture is also a factor. In a suicide prevention regional workshop for members of the World Health Organization in the Asia-Pacific region, the Philippines emerged with the lowest incidence of suicide compared to the likes of Japan, China, and Australia. In studies of coping, Dr. Tolentino said resiliency is highlighted, whether looking into Holo-caust victims, or victims of rape, kidnapping, or violence. *
"We looked at certain protective factors that are innate in Filipinos. One is resiliency. You place a Filipino anywhere, he will adjust and adjust, up to a point when he can no longer adjust -- that’s probably the only time he will commit suicide. Two is social support, which could be both bane and boon, and strong family values. Three is the Catholic faith, which disallows suicide," said Dr. Tolentino. *
"Resilience includes the ability to deduce from a very bad experience something that is good about it. It’s very Pinoy -- buti na lang hindi ka namatay kahit na-Ondoy ka (you’re lucky you didn’t die even if you suffered through Typhoon Ondoy). It’s just saying in another way, in more scientific terms, what exactly is occurring amongst Filipinos... it’s a different perspective," he added. *
"It was good while it lasted" ;"better now than when we’ve got kids to think about"; "I’ll forgive you because forgiving you will be good for me and help me move on" -- these are some of the mantras that the broken-hearted but optimistic use. Verbalization is one method of getting over an ex -- so the self-help books advise -- another is gaining perspective by listing all the things you won’t be missing and would gladly bequeath your ex (his bad jokes maybe?), and what you wish to keep from the relationship (your airline miles, your mutual friends, your dignity maybe?). Unburdening oneself to a sympathetic ear, even writing a no-holds barred "Dear John" letter without actually sending it, are also aids in getting over a bad breakup. *
On Valentine’s Day, when everyone else is hooking up, you may curse the fates that there are match-makers and breaker-uppers, but as yet no surrogate able to go cold turkey for a devastated lover. Dealing with the choices you’ve made is far from pleasant, but there is comfort in how you’re taking care of yourself. And eventually your chosen partner, how your relationship progresses, how you nurture it, (and, if ever, how you’ll bury it), will be your doing. *
It’s not exactly like picking someone’s name out of a jar or hat and deciding to make a go of it. Now that would be crazy. *
"You need to be responsible for yourself. Even in a relationship when they say that two become one, you keep your individuality. Because if there’s co-dependency, that may not even be love, you’re in there because there’s something that you may be getting from the other individual, and the other individual is getting something out of you," said Dr. Tolentino. *
"Each one has to be responsible for himself or herself. Before you can be wholly in a relationship, you have to be able to nurture yourself first. You can’t give of yourself in a relationship if in the first place kulang-kulang ka (you’re lacking). You have to be whole, you have to be mature." *
Access Original Post: http://www.bworldonline.com/weekender/content.php?id=6144
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Inside Influence Report
Inside Influence Report
Inside Influence Report *
The Habitual Consumer *
By Steve Martin, CMCT *
Imagine one day you have decided to take in a film at your local movie theater. As you enter the theater the lights go down signalling that the movie is about to begin. You quickly settle down in your seat, make yourself comfortable and start working on the box of popcorn you have in your hand. A short time later and the box of popcorn is empty. *
Few people would be surprised to learn that features such as how fresh and tasty the popcorn was, along with its alluring ‘just popped smell’, were primarily responsible for its rapid consumption. However the results of a recent study suggest that it may not necessarily be the product features that influenced consumption at all but instead a different, non-product related factor. And far from just providing insights into popcorn consumption the study provides some timely reminders to anyone looking to influence others to change. *
Behavioral researchers David Neal and Wendy Wood from the University of Southern California arranged for movie goers to be provided with drinks and popcorn as they entered their local movie theater. Unbeknown to the movie goers half were given a box of fresh popcorn and half were given popcorn that was actually a week old (and decidedly stale). The researchers also identified which of the movie goers were regular popcorn purchasers and which purchased popcorn only occasionally. *
It should come as no surprise that those people who only occasionally purchased popcorn said that they liked the stale popcorn less and ate less of it than those who were given the fresh popcorn. However, even though they said they disliked the stale popcorn, those movie goers who said that they regularly purchased popcorn ate just as much of it as those given the fresh popcorn. The researchers found that this habitual eating of popcorn only occurred in the cinema context. In other words, when the study was replicated in non-movie theater environments the habitual eaters reacted in exactly the same way as the non-habitual eaters – they ate significantly less of the stale popcorn. *
This small study demonstrates an important factor when it comes to understanding how people are influenced and persuaded. Often a behavior is activated not because of an individual’s desire to achieve a particular goal but instead because the specific environment or context they find themselves in triggers such behavior. When sitting in a movie theater, regular popcorn eaters ate just as much unappetizing popcorn by virtue of the fact that they were sitting in a movie theater. Indeed, recent neuroscience studies support the idea that a specific cue or context can activate a resulting behavior regardless of whether such behavior achieves a desired goal (see Yin & Knowlton 2006). *
Given that as much as 45% of an individual’s behaviors and actions are repeated daily and usually in the same context and environment habits are common barriers that the ethical persuader will face when looking to influence others. For example a company looking to persuade consumers to try a new line of products might experience two specific influence challenges. The first is how they can present their products to consumers in the most attractive and persuasive way. The second concerns how to overcome those same consumers’ current purchasing habits. *
Similarly leaders and managers looking to influence and change policies and practices in their organizations may encounter resistance to such change because of deeply entrenched habits and behaviors that have been historically practiced. *
The study authors suggest that people are especially likely to rely on habits and repeated behaviors when they find themselves distracted, time pressured and overloaded with information – features that are all too common in today’s hectic business environment. So what is the advice for the company looking to persuade a habitual consumer to switch to their new product? And what actions should leaders and managers take to ensure that new policies and working practices are successfully executed and not destined to fail due to reliance on outdated but habitual behaviors? *
Neal and Wood provide several useful and timely reminders that could act as a useful checklist for those looking to influence change. *
1. Encourage the voluntary statement of goals and intentions. They suggest that an individual be encouraged to state their goals and intentions and to do so voluntarily so as to promote their own self control, and ownership of, their goals. Regular readers will recognise that the principle of consistency supports such an approach providing that this is done ethically and without coercion. *
2. Encourage a self monitoring process. The authors also advocate a self monitoring approach by encouraging people to record their successes each time they perform a new behavior. Although they do not directly recommend that these successes be publically acknowledged the principle of consistency suggests that the best chance of long standing change occurs when such commitments and actions are made public. *]
3. Change cues. Thirdly they recommend changing or removing any context or cue which is likely to activate an unwanted behavior. In the case of a company seeking to influence consumers to try a new range of products this might include incentivising customers to shop at different times of the day, visit an area of the store they don’t routinely walk through or to try a new store. Leaders and managers seeking to influence changes in working practices may find it useful to make some contextual changes of their own first. For example reorganising seating arrangements in the office or painting the wall a different color may be enough to provide a new cue that helps eliminate an older habit and replace it with a more useful new one. *
4. Focus on one change at a time. Finally, and aligned to the fact that people are most likely to rely on past habitual behaviors to the extent that they are distracted, under time pressure and cognitively overloaded, it makes sense for those looking to effect change to arrange wherever possible for distractions to be minimised. This might require other activities and initiatives to be prioritised or even perhaps put on hold so that ample time can be devoted to change – one change at a time. *
The acclaimed English writer and poet Samuel Johnson said that “The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” Although it may be true that habits are often very strong, arranging for the links (cues) that activate unwanted behaviors to be replaced with other more helpful ones can be an important part of any successful influence strategy. *
Sources: ***
Neal, D.T., Wood, W., & Quinn, J.M. (2006). Habits – A Repeat Performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 15, 198 – 202 *
Neal, D.T., & Wood, W. (2009). The Habitual Consumer. Journal of Consumer Psychology, Volume 19, 579 – 592. *
Yin, J.A., & Knowlton, B.J., (2006). The role of the basal ganglia in habit formation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Volume 7, 464 – 476. *
Access Original Post: http://www.insideinfluence.com/inside-influence-report/2010/02/the-habitual-consumer.html#more
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
Inside Influence Report *
The Habitual Consumer *
By Steve Martin, CMCT *
Imagine one day you have decided to take in a film at your local movie theater. As you enter the theater the lights go down signalling that the movie is about to begin. You quickly settle down in your seat, make yourself comfortable and start working on the box of popcorn you have in your hand. A short time later and the box of popcorn is empty. *
Few people would be surprised to learn that features such as how fresh and tasty the popcorn was, along with its alluring ‘just popped smell’, were primarily responsible for its rapid consumption. However the results of a recent study suggest that it may not necessarily be the product features that influenced consumption at all but instead a different, non-product related factor. And far from just providing insights into popcorn consumption the study provides some timely reminders to anyone looking to influence others to change. *
Behavioral researchers David Neal and Wendy Wood from the University of Southern California arranged for movie goers to be provided with drinks and popcorn as they entered their local movie theater. Unbeknown to the movie goers half were given a box of fresh popcorn and half were given popcorn that was actually a week old (and decidedly stale). The researchers also identified which of the movie goers were regular popcorn purchasers and which purchased popcorn only occasionally. *
It should come as no surprise that those people who only occasionally purchased popcorn said that they liked the stale popcorn less and ate less of it than those who were given the fresh popcorn. However, even though they said they disliked the stale popcorn, those movie goers who said that they regularly purchased popcorn ate just as much of it as those given the fresh popcorn. The researchers found that this habitual eating of popcorn only occurred in the cinema context. In other words, when the study was replicated in non-movie theater environments the habitual eaters reacted in exactly the same way as the non-habitual eaters – they ate significantly less of the stale popcorn. *
This small study demonstrates an important factor when it comes to understanding how people are influenced and persuaded. Often a behavior is activated not because of an individual’s desire to achieve a particular goal but instead because the specific environment or context they find themselves in triggers such behavior. When sitting in a movie theater, regular popcorn eaters ate just as much unappetizing popcorn by virtue of the fact that they were sitting in a movie theater. Indeed, recent neuroscience studies support the idea that a specific cue or context can activate a resulting behavior regardless of whether such behavior achieves a desired goal (see Yin & Knowlton 2006). *
Given that as much as 45% of an individual’s behaviors and actions are repeated daily and usually in the same context and environment habits are common barriers that the ethical persuader will face when looking to influence others. For example a company looking to persuade consumers to try a new line of products might experience two specific influence challenges. The first is how they can present their products to consumers in the most attractive and persuasive way. The second concerns how to overcome those same consumers’ current purchasing habits. *
Similarly leaders and managers looking to influence and change policies and practices in their organizations may encounter resistance to such change because of deeply entrenched habits and behaviors that have been historically practiced. *
The study authors suggest that people are especially likely to rely on habits and repeated behaviors when they find themselves distracted, time pressured and overloaded with information – features that are all too common in today’s hectic business environment. So what is the advice for the company looking to persuade a habitual consumer to switch to their new product? And what actions should leaders and managers take to ensure that new policies and working practices are successfully executed and not destined to fail due to reliance on outdated but habitual behaviors? *
Neal and Wood provide several useful and timely reminders that could act as a useful checklist for those looking to influence change. *
1. Encourage the voluntary statement of goals and intentions. They suggest that an individual be encouraged to state their goals and intentions and to do so voluntarily so as to promote their own self control, and ownership of, their goals. Regular readers will recognise that the principle of consistency supports such an approach providing that this is done ethically and without coercion. *
2. Encourage a self monitoring process. The authors also advocate a self monitoring approach by encouraging people to record their successes each time they perform a new behavior. Although they do not directly recommend that these successes be publically acknowledged the principle of consistency suggests that the best chance of long standing change occurs when such commitments and actions are made public. *]
3. Change cues. Thirdly they recommend changing or removing any context or cue which is likely to activate an unwanted behavior. In the case of a company seeking to influence consumers to try a new range of products this might include incentivising customers to shop at different times of the day, visit an area of the store they don’t routinely walk through or to try a new store. Leaders and managers seeking to influence changes in working practices may find it useful to make some contextual changes of their own first. For example reorganising seating arrangements in the office or painting the wall a different color may be enough to provide a new cue that helps eliminate an older habit and replace it with a more useful new one. *
4. Focus on one change at a time. Finally, and aligned to the fact that people are most likely to rely on past habitual behaviors to the extent that they are distracted, under time pressure and cognitively overloaded, it makes sense for those looking to effect change to arrange wherever possible for distractions to be minimised. This might require other activities and initiatives to be prioritised or even perhaps put on hold so that ample time can be devoted to change – one change at a time. *
The acclaimed English writer and poet Samuel Johnson said that “The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” Although it may be true that habits are often very strong, arranging for the links (cues) that activate unwanted behaviors to be replaced with other more helpful ones can be an important part of any successful influence strategy. *
Sources: ***
Neal, D.T., Wood, W., & Quinn, J.M. (2006). Habits – A Repeat Performance. Current Directions in Psychological Science, Volume 15, 198 – 202 *
Neal, D.T., & Wood, W. (2009). The Habitual Consumer. Journal of Consumer Psychology, Volume 19, 579 – 592. *
Yin, J.A., & Knowlton, B.J., (2006). The role of the basal ganglia in habit formation. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Volume 7, 464 – 476. *
Access Original Post: http://www.insideinfluence.com/inside-influence-report/2010/02/the-habitual-consumer.html#more
***********************************************************************
http://dreamlearndobecome.blogspot.com This posting was made my Jim Jacobs, President & CEO of Jacobs Executive Advisors. Jim also serves as Leader of Jacobs Advisors' Insurance Practice.
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