Belief Makers

My friend Jonathan's motto is, "How hard can it be?" Having developed everything from flight simulators to advanced telephony systems to chips that block epileptic seizures to devices that prevent heart attacks, Jonathan's motto has served him well and often confounded people around him. I find his motto incredibly useful, not only in what it helps me to accomplish, but also in how it shapes my thinking.

At the core of 'how hard could it be?' is the notion that things aren't as different as they may appear to be, that there are common themes that unite apparently disparate sets of activities, processes and systems. If you find these commonalities, you can take something that appears complex and difficult and make it simple.

In Any Key
For example, pretty much any music that you'll ever hear (all western music and much of contemporary eastern music) relies on just twelve notes. Just twelve little notes and hundreds of thousands of songs. Roughly speaking, songs are written in either a minor key (dark and sad) or a major key (bright and happy). So, 12 notes time 2 keys gives you 24 possibilities for any song.
Typically, songwriters compose songs in keys that are easy for them to sing or perform. A singer will adjust the key of the song so that the notes match her vocal range. Many guitar players will select a key that's easy to play on a guitar. However, if someone else is going to perform the song, they may want to do so in a key other than the one in which it was written. This requires that the song be 'transposed', moved from one key to another.
If the song were written in the key of A and the singer wanted to sing it in the key of C (which is three steps higher), then all the chords in the song would need to be adjusted by three steps; an A would become C, a D would become F, a C#minor would become E minor, and so on. If you're a pianist who accompanies singers, then doing this kind of transposition is commonplace and for many, quite challenging. Essentially, as you play you perform a kind of musical math in your head, transposing the chord you see on the page to the one that needs to be played.
For me, transposing has always been really easy and people often wonder how I can hear a song, play it, and then begin to play it in whatever key the performer wants. Once I've got the song, I can play it in any key, without even thinking about it.

Now, here's the 'how hard could it be' part: I never actually transpose.
Instead, I learn the song in a manner that is key-less. Rather than hearing an A followed by a C# minor followed by a D followed by an E, I simply hear the first chord of the scale followed by the third chord of the scale followed by the fourth chord followed by the fifth chord. A-C#-D-E becomes 1-3-4-5.

Since I never learn the song in a key in the first place, so I never need to transpose it. I just go from key to key playing 1-3-4-5. There aren't twelve keys nor twenty-four keys; there's just one.

Why We Make Things So Complex
One of the biggest contributors to 'making things harder than they actually are' is branding. Now, I'm not just talking about Pepsi versus Coke, or Microsoft versus Apple, or Republican versus Democrat types of branding. I'm talking about the apparent need of so many to have something uniquely identified as their own creation, invention or discovery. People will latch on to small nuances among otherwise identical situations and call it something. By calling it something, they shift the focus from the multitude of common threads to the isolated exceptions.

This phenomenon seems to be most pronounced in academic circles where one has to simultaneously prove orthodoxy (showing comprehensive understanding of and adherence to the tenets of the field) while providing novel insights and discoveries. The result is making much ado about nothing.

For example, the phrases autism, autism spectrum, and pervasive developmental delay are more brands than they are descriptions of specific conditions or sets of conditions. In fact, one might argue that as descriptions, they're pretty terrible (what exactly is autism?), but as brands they've become quite powerful (more people have a strong response to the word autism than can tell you exactly what it is). Even the phrase Asperger syndrome is named for the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger who, in 1944, described children in his practice who lacked nonverbal communication skills, demonstrated limited empathy with their peers, and were physically clumsy.

So, on the one hand, you have strong brand recognition of autism (and many of its variants) and very little understanding of what autism actually is (almost all treatments are based on interplay with symptoms not core causes). To top it off, you have all sorts of autism treatment protocols whose purveyors are trying to distinguish themselves in the market with branding.

All this mitigates against understanding and effective results.

To be sure, there are differences among various forms of anything. However, most of the differences are not pronounced and certainly not inherent to the brands

Solve Anything, Solve Nothing
In the movie This is Spinal Tap, a mach documentary about a fictitious legendary rock band, the band's leader, David St. Hubbins, has just been handed a copy of the band's latest release, an all black album jacket with no text or photos. His manager tries to explain why an all black album is a great idea comparing it to the Beatle's White album. St. Hubbins comments:
There's a fine line between making something impossible and making it easy. It all comes down to how complex you make the problem, how you frame it. If you spend your time enumerating differences and isolating nuances, then you'll probably be able to make anything impossible. If you look for common threads and filter out insignificant details, then you can do pretty much anything.

Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler."

I'm not advocating oversimplification; however, in a world where so many 'experts' have a vested interest in the complexity of their areas of expertise, it's not likely that you'll find the simple answer there.

The best source for answers is you. Listen to what the experts have to say, do your research, read and study. Then ask yourself, "How hard can it be?"

Happy Monday!
Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Over the past couple of months, I've come to realize how few people actually know what the heck they're talking about. It's taken me a while to accept this realization as I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt (understatement) and there are so many people who are capable of conducting syntactically flawless conversation without ever having a clue as to what they've said. Nonetheless, I think it's time that we do something about it.

This Internet Thing
I was working at AT&T when the executives of the company finally decided that this Internet thing wasn't just a passing fad and that, as a communications company, they might actually need to address the burgeoning Internet market. AT&T was structured as a large bureaucracy with hords of minions and middle managers who were still reading and responding to email using paper; their secretaries would print the email, they would scribble their responses on the paper and their secretaries would type the responses.

Suddenly, everyone at Bell Labs who knew anything about the Internet was asked to educate the bureaucratic masses on what the Internet was, how it worked and what it meant to them and their customers. People gobbled up 'for dummies' books on all things Internet. Meetings were called, task forces created, and everyone started using also sorts of Internet-related words and phrases.

At one of our biggest customer conferences (where each customer represented many millions of dollars of annual business), I helped prepare a speech for one of the executives who would present AT&T's plans for Internet-based business services. Throughout her speech, she had pause to allow time for rousing applause and cheers as customers enthusiastically embraced and endorsed the company's grand vision for Internet services. As she walked off the stage, those of us who had helped her prepare congratulated her on a great presentation. She responded, "I don't know what I said, but they sure seemed to like it!"

The audience response did not go unnoticed. Before you know it, everyone seemed capable of delivering rousing speeches without a clue.

Pod Speak
As the Internet 'strategy' developed, I would attend meetings (more accurately depicted as convocations) where the agenda would bounce along like the ball at a kids' soccer match. Absurd propositions would be put forth with nary an eyelash batted. Intractable conclusions would be reached without anyone voicing an objection or pointing out the 'then a miracle occurs' steps. The business executive who had brought me into these meetings asked me to observe, but not to say anything. He would later ask me to tell him in private what I thought.

At one particularly delusional meeting, I finally raised my hand to voice a comment. The meetings were not ones in which people raised hands; instead, anyone wishing to speak would wait for dead air or simply interrupt. After a few minutes, the woman running the meeting determined that my hand would likely not descend until she asked what I had to say. In a room full of executives clad in Giorgio and Hugo, I stood up in my T-shirt and jeans, and began talking about the various conclusions that had been reached and the relative likelihood of success. I believe I might have used the phrase, "we'll have time travel before then" or something like that.

I spoke for just a few minutes providing some clarification on what was and what was not the Internet, how the business model was different than charging 20 cents a minute for a phone call, and so on. Then I sat down.

After a few moments of silence, I was thanked for my comments. The executive who had brought me in was bestowed an evil eye from the meeting's organizer, and the meeting ramped up again to full pod-speak.

The Execution
After the meeting, I stood outside the conference room taking in the imperial majesty of AT&T corporate headquarters one last time. As I stood there, one of the senior executives walked up to me and asked if I'd accompany him to his office. I said, "Uhmm... sure..." wondering if they did 'wet' work at AT&T. We walked into his office (the kind with its own bathroom and where the secretary had a secretary) and he began to ask me questions about the Internet: not convoluted, high-level questions, but basic nuts-and-bolts questions.

I answered. The more I answered, the more he asked. As we proceeded, I noticed a stack of Wired magazines on his credenza and I started to relax a bit. It seemed that he actually wanted to understand the Internet, not just to know what to say and when to say it.

We talked for about three hours after which he asked to me to attend all sorts of meetings and to speak up whenever I felt like it.

Not Everyone Was Happy
When I showed up at the next meeting, I was greeted with an interesting mix of quizzical expressions and sideways whispers. The meeting's organizer quickly approached me, but then noticed the executive who'd invited me beckoning her with outstretched palm and motioning fingers.

I had become part of the business group of AT&T and was no longer just a researcher.

Pervasive Cluelessness
Lately, I've started to notice more and more cases of aggravated cluelessness. I'm sure whether I'm simply becoming better at diagnosing what's been there all along or if there's been a significant increase.

While picking up some batteries at Radio Shack, I overheard the manager telling a customer about the new Sprint mobile phone plan. He mentioned that Sprint works everywhere that Verizon works (as Sprint has a deal with Verizon) and that the Sprint plan is much cheaper.

Since we rely on Verizon Wireless for everything from telephones to our home Internet connection (we can't get cable or DSL where we live), I asked him if the data capabilities on the Sprint phones worked with the Verizon EVDO high-speed data services. This was a question to which there were three acceptable answers: "yes", "no" and "I don't know". After five minutes of buzz words and references to 3G versus 4G, he stopped, looking at me to see if he'd satisfied my request. I told him that I'd understood everything he'd said, but was pretty confident that he'd not answered what I'd asked.

Shotgun or Rifle?
As I've learned more about autism and its treatment, I've started to realize that Pod-speak is perhaps as pervasive and insidious as it had been at AT&T. For years, there has been no foundational theory or blueprint of the physiological basis of autism; instead, treatments have been developed on a trial-and-error basis; a technique or approach is tried and changes are measured symptomatically.

In the absence of a foundational theory, if you want to start helping people right away, then trial-and-error is the way to go. However, if you're using trial-and-error where your only metrics are symptomatic, then you want to be really disciplined in attribution and tracking of what works and what doesn't.

Unfortunately, although a lot of empirical research has been conducted on the causes of autism, most of the work in autism treatment has been conducted outside the lab, or worse, by PhD's in psychology. What you end up with is fuzzy notions of what works and what doesn't, but no exacting specification of techniques and methods. It's somewhat akin to going a doctor who, not knowing exactly which pill will cure what ails you, prescribes a regimen of 100 pills to be taken daily. She knows that something about the combination works, but she can't pinpoint it.

Similarly, if someone prescribes an all encompassing and pedantic regimen designed to help you a person with autism, it's likely that they simply don't know what they're talking about it. It's not that the regimen won't work per se; it's not that they're ill-intended; it's just that they don't know specifically what works and what doesn't, so they prescribe the whole thing.

The problem is that you can end up in a situation where the burden of doing everything just so you can accidentally get to the something that's working often mitigates against doing anything.

What to Do?
I'm not sure why people seem so keen on being perceived as knowing what they're talking about, but it does seem to have reached epidemic proportions. But fear not, there are things that each of us can do to help.

First, if you ever find yourself saying something so as to sound 'smart' or to not be found out, where the easiest answer is simply to say, "I don't know", then repeat after me... I DON'T KNOW. Say it loud. Say it proud. Say it often. You'll feel better. You really will.

Second, if you ever suspect that someone is saying things that they don't fully understand or about which they're clueless, ask them about it. If they throw up the defenses, thank them for their help and move on.

Third, if you've embraced I DON'T KNOW, then you're perfectly positioned to begin learning and discovering on your own. Surely you can gather lots of data by googling and reading; however, don't confuse collecting data with drawing conclusions. Once you've read and talked and discussed, step back and build your own conclusions one step at a time. If there are missing steps, then conduct your own experiments noticing what works and what doesn't. You'll be amazed at all you can figure out on your own.

Fourth, if you really want to rely on the conclusions of someone else, then ask lots and lots of questions.

In the end, clueless is an artifact of neglect, not stupidity.

Have a thoroughly clued-in Friday!

Teflon

Labels: all blogs, autism, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

I guess you could say that my life is pretty busy. We had friends visiting over the weekend and spent the whole time talking, playing music, hiking, eating and drinking.

Since I usually spend a lot of time over the weekend catching up with all the things I 'intended' to do over the week, I got up at 4:00 on Monday morning to play a little catch up. I wrote my blog, coded a bunch of software, worked out, went out and bought a car, went to some meetings, wrote a white paper, and then drove to New Jersey to have dinner with Jonathan, getting to bed at around 1:30.

Tuesday, I got up early and headed to the offices at Angel Medical Systems to catch up with the folks I've been working with and to sketch out the requirements for a new project. After meeting with everyone and flying through my email, I jumped back into the car and headed up to the Berkshires for band rehearsal. I walked back into the house around 10:00PM and spent some time with Iris and our friend Rebbecca who showed up Monday just before I left for New Jersey.

Today looks to be, well, really busy. I love my life.

Shooting from the Hip
While in New Jersey, I sat at lunch with Jonathan and Rich, one of the guys with whom I work quite frequently. Rich is a really sweet man who's also very cautious. He carefully considers all his words. He likes to collect as much data as possible before making a decision. When you ask Rich a question, he'll often spend five minutes providing background and qualifying his answer before actually stating it.

Jonathan is Rich's boss's boss. In terms of being cautious, he is pretty much Rich's opposite. Jonathan will carefully consider his words, but it's usually a bit after he's said them. Being super busy, he makes decisions with as little information as possible. He's good at answering questions with just one word.

So, as we sat at the table, I asked Rich, "What's one thing that you would change about Jonathan's management style."

Rich looked a bit like a deer caught in the headlights (so to speak), but he went for it. He started... stopped... started... stopped... and then closed his eyes carefully considering how to answer the question. He prefaced his answer with qualifications indicating that he'd not spent enough direct time with Jonathan to provide a good answer and that he felt a little uncomfortable with providing an answer given the fact that Jonathan was his boss's boss.

When he did finally get to his answer, it was really good and insightful. He said that he felt as though Jonathan often put him and others on the spot in meetings, that Jonathan sometimes made him feel stupid. As he said this, he was really clear that it wasn't what Jonathan said that made him feel stupid; it was how he was responding to it. He stayed focused on specifics. His response was really good and earnest.

Jonathan then explained why he conducts meetings the way he does. He has very little time and lots of questions to be answered. He listens to people's responses only long enough to know what his next question is. He then interrupts and asks it. He moves things along quite quickly; it's a style that allows him to accomplish all he needs to accomplish.

Jonathan explained to Rich that, if you want to accomplish a lot of things quickly, then it's important to be comfortable making decisions with less information than you might like to have. It was a really great exchange, and Rich, despite his discomfort, was open and engaged.

Chained to the Music
Rehearsal last night was with a new band that I'm really excited to be playing with. We're developing a really funky kind of R&B sound with an amazing young singer accompanied by bass, drums, guitars and horn section. My friend Scott (whom I've mentioned before) is playing trumpet along with me playing sax.

We have an upcoming gig for which we don't have quite enough original material. So, last night we started working on some cover tunes. We did some Michael Jackson and some Marvin Gaye and some Donna Summer. Really awesome music.

Normally, I would write out all the horn parts for Scott as he 'needs' to see the music in order to play it. However, there'd been no time over the past few days to prepare the music, so last night, I simply made up the parts as we went along. I would play a line for Scott that he would listen to and then play back to me. Once he had it, I would add the harmony and off we would go.

Now, since Scott 'needs' sheet music, you might imagine that this would have been a rather long a laborious task as I spoon-fed each note to Scott. It wasn't. In fact, in most cases, I would play a line once and Scott would immediately play it back. Not only that, but as I added inflections and sforzandos and crescendos, Scott would track them completely, in real time. For a guy who can't play by ear, he was absolutely amazing.

What's Your Bias
Each of us enters the world with thousands of biases. Some are biased towards shooting from the hip and others towards careful preparation. Some of us are biased toward reading music to play it and others towards hearing music to play it. Some of us are biased towards staying in the same situation for decades and others towards changing everything all the time. Some are biased towards their left hand, some their right.

As we grow, our biases become more pronounced. Sometimes, it's simply because doing things one way comes more easily than the other. Sometimes it's because we get more of what we want one way than the other. Sometimes it because we're trained one way versus another. Still, after ten, twenty, thirty or forty years, the biases can be so strong that we no longer see them as such; we start to see our biases as 'just who we are'.

As I think about Rich and Scott, I also think about some of the discussions we've had over the past couple of days and the role of bias. For example, in Joy's More Reflections on Burning Bridges, the question really isn't one of whether or not to burn bridges, it's a question of recognizing your bias. Are you someone who's is afraid to let go of relationships or someone who is afraid to hang on to relationships? In regard to Making Commitments and Other Bad Ideas, it's really a question of a bias: translating commitments into judgment-laden obligation or casually making commitments that you never intend to fulfill.

I think it's a great exercise to recognize and consider balancing our biases. As for me, it's always been so much easier just to hear and play that I still can't read piano music. I think I'm going go buy a book of classical pieces and learn to read.

Biasedly, Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Again, you have heard that it was said to the people long ago, 'Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths you have made to the Lord.' But I tell you, Do not swear at all: either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black.

Matthew 5:33-36

Above all, my brothers, do not swear--not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. Let your "Yes" be yes, and your "No," no, or you will be condemned.

James 5:12

One of the things that I think Jesus got right is that making oaths and commitments is a bad idea. If you want great working relationships and great personal relationships, then I suggest you just drop the practice of making commitments. Here's why...

Commitments are Always Lies

And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black.

Unless you're omniscient or clairvoyant, whenever you make a commitment, you're lying. You can certainly state an intention or make an educated guess as to what you plan to do or who you plan to be, but there's no way you can accurately predict or guarantee 'anything'. To pretend to do so, even with the best of intentions is simply lying.

For some reason, this is easier for us to see with children than with adults. When a child promises that, if you buy him a puppy, he'll care for it (walking it, feeding it and playing with it everyday), it's easy to see that the child is speaking without fully understanding the ramifications of his commitment. When two young teenagers make a statement about their undying love for one another, we simply don't take it seriously. We know that they have the best of intentions, but they don't fully know themselves, let alone what the future will bring.

Commitments Kill Relationships
Even with the best of intentions, commitment has this uncanny way of morphing into obligation.

Obligation: A social, legal, or moral requirement, such as a duty, contract, or promise that compels one to follow or avoid a particular course of action.

Whereas a commitment is simply a well-meaning (albeit misguided) way of stating intent, an obligation is something that takes on a life of its own slowly usurping other aspects of a relationship.

I've mentioned before that, when Iris and I were married, our ceremony included no statement of commitment, no obligations. We simply stated our intent to love each other more each day than the day before.

We did this because we'd witnessed the effect of obligation on relationships. Obligation has a way of taking relationships out of the present (what I want now) and rooting them in the past (what I said then). Obligations are often used to coerce behavior: "You said that, when we got married you'd..."

Would you rather be motivated by love or by obligation? Would you rather be with someone motivated by love or by obligation?

Commitment Invites Abuse
Although you may have the best of intentions when making a commitment, the people to whom you commit may not be as well intended.

I can remember sitting across the table from a venture capitalist as we discussed the terms of a contract between his firm and my company. When we got to one fairly convoluted statement about transactions that would automatically occur under a certain set of circumstances, rather than explaining it to me, he simply said, 'It will be like removing the sleeves from you vest', implying that terms were merely a formality with no real impact.

They weren't.


The Tyranny of the Urgent
Others aren't so much ill-intended as, well, let's say they have an overabundance of external white matter. They have a grasp of isolated details, but they lack the ability to pull them together into a cohesive framework.

I've worked with many business managers who exemplify this phenomenon. Their management style involves asking questions as to the time and materials requirements of individual tasks in isolation. They add up the numbers and determine a schedule and time frame. They ignore or are simply ignorant of other ongoing tasks being performed by the people they're managing. Once a plan is in place, they routinely interrupt the process with spurious 'urgent' tasks and assignments that require 'immediate' attention.

The funny thing is that these managers always seem surprised or disappointed when things don't turn out as 'planned'. Through the process they'll somehow morph time estimates into 'commitments' saying things like, "You said that thus and such would take just a week; it's four weeks later and you're still not done!"

Over the years I've tried to explain to folks like this the difference between work estimates (the number of dedicated hours required to complete a task) and calendar time (the actual time that transpires based on the fact that no one is actually working in a dedicated manner on any one task). But alas, too much external white matter.

The worst managers become somewhat self-righteous and indignant demanding 'accountability' of the people they've neglected and mismanaged. Sigh ...

If you ever find yourself working for someone like this, then I'd suggest Monster.com.


What to Do
Now, you might be thinking, "all this is well and good, but the fact is that we live in a world that requires us to make commitments."

I'll grant that there are circumstances that seem to require commitment on our part, but I would suggest that the ones that truly require commitment and obligation are few and far between. Here are some things I would suggest:

1. Commit to making no commitments.
   
2. Start paying attention to everything you say to see if in fact you're simply stating intention or if you're making a commitment. If you catch yourself making a commitment when none is required, rewind and restate as intention.
   
3. Revisit older commitments that have transformed into obligation. Ask yourself and the person to whom you've become obligated, "how's that working for us?" If it's not, then maybe it's time to rework your obligation together.
   
4. If the opportunity to make a commitment arises, become really clear on not committing but simply stating intention. In many cases, people may walk away. However, you'd be surprised how often a statement of intention is sufficient even in conducting business.
   
5. If you've found commitment to be a positive motivator, then try replacing commitment (backward looking) with resolve (forward looking). Even if you're someone who's often failed to meet commitments, you might find that resolve is a much better way to fulfill your intentions.

Noncommittally, Teflon

Labels: all blogs, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy, relationships

As I read the comment thread on More than You Know, I was inspired by Benevolent Warrior's (BW) commentary on fear.

If one 'chooses to believe it [fear] beneficial,' to embrace fearfulness, or even insist on its necessity, to the extent of not even being open to examining its ramifications, and the belief structures put in place by one to sanction or to idolize choosing fear, vs self trusting, isn't that a curious self-blinding?

I'm presently closely involved with family members, and histories of the adverse ramifications of choosing fear to the extent of being an interference of the bodies built in harmonic functioning of health. Isn't this where all 'dis-ease' is created? within fearfulness, not being at peace, OK? Isn't Stress simply another word for fear? Doesn't the harmonics of healthy functioning become distracted by fear?

As I read the above commentary, I found myself agreeing with BW. Certainly fear never seems to live in isolation. Fear can have tremendous, undesired consequences: failing relationships, declining health, angst, anger, hate, war... you name it. Certainly many of us have spent a lot of time overcoming fear and working towards fearlessness. Yet, as I considered BW's words, something felt a bit off or missing in his analysis.

I then realized that fear is just one of the ways that we manifest unhappiness; perhaps the root cause of these effects (stress, disease, war, etc) is not fear, but unhappiness.

Physiology of Fear
Fear is actually an amazingly useful phenomenon that evolved to protect us from bodily harm. It's likely that we humans would not be here today were it not for fear.

When we become fearful, chemicals like adrenaline and cortisol are released into our bloodstream and hard-wired neural sequences fire in rapid succession. All this results in our bodies undergoing dramatic and rapid change.

Our rate of breathing increases filling our blood with oxygen. Blood is directed away from our digestive tract and into our muscles and limbs to provide the additional energy required to either fight or run away. Our pupils dilate, enhancing our vision. We lose all distraction as our awareness becomes intense and hyper focused. Our reactions and impulses quicken. Our perception of pain diminishes and our immune system mobilizes ready to address any potential invasion.

If you're in a situation where the best solution is to either fight or run away, given the physiology of fear, all things being equal, I'd say that the bear is going catch and eat the calm, meditative guy, not the fearful guy.

Happy Fear
Since fear has got this bad rap, we sometimes use other words to describe it. One of the phrases that we use to describe fear is: a rush. When we watch a scary movie or an intense action sequence, when we ride a roller coaster, when we participate in extreme sports, we cause all that fear physiology to kick in. It's exhilarating. It's exciting. We feel focused and alive. It's a rush.

Some of us can become almost addicted to the physiology of fear. Why? Because it feels really good.

There are plenty of examples where each of us experiences fear happily.

Unhappy Fear
So then, the question is not one of being fearful or not being fearful. The question is one how we experience the fear: happily or unhappily.

When we're unhappy about that which we fear or the experience of fear itself, we start to fight our fear. Muscles that are primed and ready to fight or fly, become tense and rigid. A mind that is hyper-focused on the present situation becomes distracted with thoughts of the past or the future. Our situation becomes that of an automobile stuck in neutral with the gas pedal to the floor. We burn through resources without actually getting anywhere. The engine overheats and eventually seizes.

So What?
So, if you're thinking this article is about 'fear', it's not. It's about what happens when we make a priori decisions about the usefulness and effect of various phenomena. When we decide that things like fear or anger or ADD are not useful (often a euphemism for 'bad'), we miss out on all that we might learn or benefit from them.

In a world where there's so much to learn and so much to manage through each day, it's really easy to categorize various experiences, feelings, activities so that we don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about them. Indeed, doing so makes our lives operate more efficiently. However, the efficiency isn't free.

Happy Saturday!
Teflon

Labels: fear, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

So often, you hear about people entering a new relationship and in the process losing themselves. Over the years, I've had many friends who 'fell' in love. It all started with attraction: not just to appearance, but to looks, intelligence, money, energy, charm, and so on.

Attraction is powerful. Most of us are not able to clearly articulate what it is in another person that attracts us. At best, we can identify elements of attraction (someone's smile or their laugh or their wit), but we can't come up with an overall blueprint of what would make a person attractive to us. Our not being able to clearly identify what it is in others that makes them attractive makes attraction even more powerful, almost magical.

As though attraction were not already powerful enough, most of us would probably describe 'being attracted' as something that happens to us, not something that we do. Indeed, enchantment might be a better word to use when describing our experience of attraction.

Charmed
Now, there are all sorts of challenges that come with being enchanted.

First, being enchanted causes us to focus on the elements of attraction to the exclusion of the elements of repulsion. We're so attracted to his winning smile and confidence that we ignore the times when he seems controlling and rigid. We're so enamored of her warm voice and soft caress that we ignore times when she's unkind to or impatient with others. We build up an image of the other person that is indeed positive, but unbalanced. Unlike seeing flaws in the full light of day and then not judging them, we blind ourselves to them.

Second, being enchanted causes us to ignore or casually dismiss the trail of discarded passions that we abandon along the road to a deeper (and more time consuming) relationship. We put other relationships on the back burner. We put plans on hold. We spend less and less time on other interests.

I have a friend Jeff who is the most naturally gifted musician I've ever met...

When I we were both fifteen or so and just discovered be-bop, I bought some Charlie Parker records. For a fifteen year old, I had a good ear; I could listen to any pop or rock song and write down what was being played. As I listened to Charlie Parker, I was completely blown away. He played so fast and so differently, that I could just barely keep up listening to what he'd played, let alone write it down.

I played the record for Jeff who seemed to kind of space out as though memorized by the music. When the tune ended, he picked up his trumpet and started playing back Charlie's riffs verbatim. He'd never before heard bebop let alone the specific recording and yet...

In a composition class at Berklee College of Music, we would gather weekly to have our compositions reviewed by our instructor and to have them played by students. One week, I wrote a brass quartet that I was really proud of.

After looking at my scribblings for just a few seconds, my teacher looked up at me telling me, "Look, when writing for other instruments, you really need to get a better understanding of the range and capacity each of the instruments. You can't just write something because it sounds good in your head. This trumpet part has intervals that no trumpet player is ever going to be able to play."

Ahh..., little did he know. Jeff was the trumpet player in the quartet that day.

Anyway, a couple of years later, Jeff was enchanted. I don't think that he even owns a trumpet today.

Third, enchanted is a set up for bitterness and resentment. It's not that we don't see the flaws; we simply ignore them. It's not that we forget all that we've given up; we just look away from it. When the enchantment ends, all that stuff comes crashing down on us.

Nothing Personal
Our experience of enchantment is not limited to personal relationships or even to people. We can be enchanted by pretty much anything: big companies offering bright futures and money... owning a big house or an expensive car or a boat... running off to join the Peace Corps... becoming a rock star. You name it; pretty much anything can be the source of our enchantment.

There's a saying: the two happiest days in a boat owner's life are the day he purchases his boat and the day that he sells his boat. With slight modification, this is probably the case in many relationships; couples are happiest when they first get together and after they break up (assuming that the vindictive bitterness thing doesn't settle in.)

Breaking the Spell
The crazy part about the power of attraction is that, even after being burned by it, we'll immediately embrace it again. It's as though we think that the culprit was the object of attraction, not attraction itself.

I have friends who, after freeing themselves from long, unhappy, unfulfilling relationships that began with attraction, almost immediately purchase a ticket for the next ride. Some even use attraction to someone new to help inspire to them break free from someone old. And the cycle continues...

On the flip side, I have friends who are unhappy in their relationships simply because they're 'suddenly' confronted with all the things that they've ignored and denied all along. They 'suddenly' become aware of the less attractive aspects of the other person or that they've 'given up so much'. It's as though their partner tricked them or somehow did it to them.

In the end, as long as you view attraction as something that cannot be understood or something that happens to you, you're, well... you're screwed. Nothing you can do about it.

If on the other hand, you view attraction as something that you can understand and something that you do, then there's hope.

Think about it; there must something in your life to which you were once not attracted, but are now attracted: sushi... girls... guys... books... football... drama.. adventure... math... music... running?

I've been told by lots of people that I'm rather an acquired taste. Acquiring taste is essentially our shaping and changing that to which we're attracted. We do it all the time. It's just that we tend not to do it deliberately or systematically.

If you don't want to buy into owning your sense of attraction, how about simply better understanding it. Next time you go to a restaurant, make a game out of identifying what you find attractive and unattractive in others that you can see and hear. Take turns with your dinner companion(s) identifying what and why. Write it all down and look for patterns as they emerge. If they don't keep playing until they do.

Finally, if you insist on buying into the whole enchantment thing, at least be aware of the trade-offs that you make along the way. Note them. Talk about them. Don't let them slide by hoping that something will change. It won't.

Happy Wednesday!

Teflon

Labels: all blogs, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy, relationships

Last night, I thought more about the 'getting it right' phenomenon I wrote about yesterday in More than You Know. Apparently I was doing much of my thinking while sleeping, because at about 4AM, I suddenly sat up in bed recalling a story about virtuoso jazz pianist Oscar Peterson and virtuoso classical pianist Vladamir Horowitz. As the story goes (whole tone scales playing in the background)...

Horowitz determined that he would to put to rest forever the question of which school of pianists was truly the greatest, the jazz school or the classical school.

Horowitz purchased a copy of one of Peterson's solo recordings and learned to play one of the songs verbatim. Not only did he learn to play exactly the same notes as Peterson, but he also learned to play them flawlessly, even better than the original recording.

Horowitz arranged for a meeting with Peterson. As the two talked about the merits of the schools of music they each represented, Horowitz said to Peterson, I'd like you to hear something. He sat down at Peterson's piano and played the song he'd learned with all the virtuosity and grace of a classical master. When he was done, he turned to Peterson and said, "So, what do you think?"

Peterson who had improvised the original recording, looked at Horowitz and said, "That was great. Play something else."

Getting It Right
Over the years, I've come to realize that no matter what the discipline (music, snowboarding, medicine, business), there are innovators and there are performers. This morning, I came to the
conclusion that the primary difference between innovators and performers is how they feel about 'getting it right'.

Innovators tend not to be too concerned about getting it right. They make lots of mistakes. They're often sloppy in regard to their technique. Their main motivation is pushing the envelope, doing things that haven't been done before.

Performers on the other hand are concerned specifically with getting it right. In fact, not just getting it right, but getting it perfect. Performers may innovate in incremental ways, honing and refining what has been created by others. But in general, their motivations and skills are focused on manifesting the perfect instantiation of something well defined and understood.

Of course, you occasionally encounter someone who is both an innovator and a performer. Bach didn't just compose all those fugues, he could improvise them on the fly. Sean White seems certainly to be redefining the sport of snowboarding while also being the sport's greatest performer. However, people like Sean White and Johann Sebastian Bach seem to be pretty rare.

What's Wrong with Being Great?
Over the years, I've encountered a lot of people who were great performers, but who wanted to be counted among the innovators. In some cases, their being great performers simply wasn't enough for them; they saw being an innovator as somehow better or more prestigious or more important than being a performer.

To some extent, society seems to be of two minds. In the near term, we seem to gravitate to the great performers. However, over the long term, we tend to remember only the innovators. If you were to ask someone about current musicians that he knows, it's likely that all of them would be performers. However, if you were to ask him about musicians from two-hundred years ago, it's likely that he'd list composers, not performers.

The problem with great performers who don't consider being a great performer good enough is that they tend not to be very good at innovating. Getting it right simply gets in the way. Their work tends to be derivative rather than creative, borrowing liberally from what has been done before. When they do 'create', the creation doesn't have the kind of structural integrity found in the work of great innovators. They lack a sense of systemness. They may not even understand the notion of systemness.

In the end, innovation requires a willingness to completely abandon 'getting it right'. In some cases, the path to innovation requires intentionally getting it 'wrong', to break the mold and see what happens. Now, if you're concerned about acceptance or approval or good grades or whatever other rewards come with getting it 'right', then it's likely that you're not going to innovate.

The Innovator's Dilemma
So, how does an innovator deal with the practical aspects of getting it wrong, e.g, not being able to get or keep a job. Well, outside of the simple answer of becoming independently wealthy, one thing that comes to mind is making your passion your vocation and not your occupation.

I have many friends from music school who simply don't enjoy playing music anymore. At twenty, we were all innovators, trying new things and breaking rules. Now that they make their living from music (as teachers, composers, performers or studio musicians), there's very little innovation involved in their work. They're paid to color within the lines and to do so perfectly.

If you put yourself in the position where your livelihood depends on your craft, you're likely to lean towards getting it right. Alternatively, there's always deciding to live on less. It's amazing how much of what we never even considered owning at eighteen becomes absolutely essential at forty.

In regard to More than You Know, Sree commented on the need to get it right being quite deeply seated in most of us. I have to agree that it sure does appear that way. However, from my perspective, it comes at great cost.

OK, I can go back to sleep now.

Happy Tuesday!
Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

I spent Thursday and Friday in New Jersey working with my friend Jonathan and then hanging out together at night. In the evenings I got to reconnect with old friends and meet new friends. In particular, I got to spend time with and get to better know Jonathan's mom and sisters. It was really fun.

What's with All the Questions?
One of the things that I tend to do when hanging out with people (or pretty much any time I'm with people) is to ask a lot of questions. Friday night, as we sat talking in the kitchen of Jonathan's sister Nancy, I started asking questions of Nancy's friend Lori. Nancy goodheartedly quipped something like, "Watch out, here he goes!"

Now, I get that a lot. People notice that I ask a lot of questions and make different assertions as to why.

Some see all my questions as a kind of shtick which is Yiddish for either a contrived and often used bit of business that a performer uses to steal attention (as in 'play it straight with no shtick') or a devious trick or a bit of cheating (as in 'how did you ever fall for a shtick like that?'). Others, see the questions as a way of hiding whatever my agenda might be, making themselves nervous and spending a lot of time on "why did you ask that?" And still others think that I simply don't like to answer questions, so I ask them instead.

Indeed, to the extent that doing something frequently qualifies as shtick, then perhaps shtick it is. However, although I'm aware of various questions that I seem to ask more frequently than others, I'm not aware of any specific pattern or series of questions that I use repeatedly. The agenda part is always funny in that I'm typically simply interested and curious about the other person, not driving towards anything in particular, but just seeing where the questions and answers will take us. I'm not sure why people find it hard to believe that you're just curious about them, but a lot of people do (find it hard to believe).

The Gorge of Eternal Peril
As we talked about my questioning, Jonathan, referring to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, asked, "What's your favorite color?"

In the movie, King Arthur and his crew approach the Bridge of Death that spans the Gorge of Eternal Peril. To cross the bridge, one must correctly answer three questions put forth by the bridge keeper. If answered correctly, one may proceed. If not, one is cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril.

Sir Launcelot
The first to approach the keeper of the bridge is Sir Launcelot.

KEEPER: Stop! Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, 'ere the other side he see.
LAUNCELOT: Ask me the questions, bridge-keeper. I'm not afraid.
KEEPER: What is your name?
LAUNCELOT: My name is Sir Launcelot of Camelot.
KEEPER: What is your quest?
LAUNCELOT: To seek the Holy Grail.
KEEPER: What is your favorite color?
LAUNCELOT: Blue.
KEEPER: Right. Off you go.
LAUNCELOT: Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.

Seeing that Launcelot has crossed safely and that the questions were easy, Sir Robin goes next.

ROBIN: That's easy!
KEEPER: Stop! Who approaches the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, 'ere the other side he see.
ROBIN: Ask me the questions, bridge-keeper. I'm not afraid.
KEEPER: What is your name?
ROBIN: Sir Robin of Camelot.
KEEPER: What is your quest?
ROBIN: To seek the Holy Grail.
KEEPER: What is the capital of Assyria?
ROBIN: I don't know that! Auuuuuuuugh!

Poor Sir Robin is cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. Sir Galahad approaches the keeper.

KEEPER: Stop! What is your name?
GALAHAD: Sir Galahad of Camelot.
KEEPER: What is your quest?
GALAHAD: I seek the Holy Grail.
KEEPER: What is your favorite color?
GALAHAD: Blue. No yel-- Auuuuuuuugh!

When it comes to questions, I think that many of us treat the answers as though getting them 'wrong' might result in our being cast into the Gorge of Eternal Peril. We start to wonder what's really motivating the questioner. We start to second guess our answers. We start to wonder if our favorite color is blue, no yel--auuugghhh.

Dumbing Ourselves Down
Whatever the motivation is, being concerned about getting answers 'right' has this amazing effect of making us stupid. Oftentimes, the answer that first comes to mind is simply amazing, and yet, we're not sure about it, so we say, "I don't know."

Many of us will play a game of 'wait and see' to make sure that it's 'safe' to answer or to say what we think. We know that we have something to offer, but we hold back.

Indeed, there are many times when people who ask questions do so with hidden agenda. There are many times when people are simply performing shtick. Nonetheless, why hold back, denying yourself and others all your brilliance inside that's just busting to get out.

One of the biggest limiting beliefs that many of us have adopted is, "I have to get this right!" I have a couple of alternatives to suggest:

1. Very little that we do is set in stone, irreversible or unchangeable.
2. Getting it 'best' works much better than getting it 'right'. By getting it best, we simply make each answer the best we have at that moment. A moment later, we can get it best again (making it even better.)

Happy Monday!

Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

The other night we sat talking over dinner with our friends Randy and Jenny. Iris spends time in the playroom almost every day with their son Quinn. Iris remarked that just the other day, Quinn had spontaneously shouted, "Aimee, A-I-M-E-E!"

Randy and Jenny were amazed as Quinn doesn't spell nor could they recall how or when he would have learned to spell Aimee.

So what changed?

Jaycees Can't Sing
As we considered what had transpired with Quinn, I recalled having worked with a group of Jaycees in Glen Ellyn, Illinois when I was about 22. As a fundraiser, the Jaycees had decided to produce a musical written by Jaycees and performed by Jaycees. I was hired as the music director.

I sat at the piano one night facing four young business men whose main performance involved a quartet with four-part harmony. Each of them had sheet music in front of them which they had practiced and learned. So, we jumped right into the song.

As we began rehearsing, it was immediately clear that the harmonies weren't all they were intended to be. We started, stopped, started, stopped and then finally I decided it might be best to practice the song first in unison. "Hey guys, let's take it once through with everyone singing the melody."

So, we launched into a rousing chorus of the song singing just the basic melody and... well, what they sang wasn't exactly the melody. In fact, it wasn't exactly any melody.

From all I could discern, every one of these guys was tone-deaf. As I paused the song, pondering how to proceed, out of the corner of my eye at the edge of the Glenbard West, high school stage, I could see the musical's director bent over laughing. Turns out, he knew full well that none of the guys in front of me could 'carry a tune in a bucket' and our current exercise was meant as a bit of a practical joke (on me).

Joke's on Me
I suddenly felt inspired to teach these guys who can't sing, to sing. We tried taking one line at a time over and over. We tried simply humming the song without the lyrics. We tried pretty much anything that I could think of, but still nothing that was sung in any way represented the tune: not for want of trying.

Finally, I pointed to the man directly in front of me and said, "I'm going to play a note on the piano. When I play the note, I'd like you to listen to it and then to hum the same note. Everyone else, I want you to listen to what I play and then listen to what he sings."

I played a G below middle C and waited. The man hummed an Eb just below. I played the G again and waited. The man hummed a Bb just above. I played the G a third time and... E. Then I stopped, scanned the group catching each man's eyes and asked, "OK, I want you to think about this. Is what I played, what he hummed?"

I could almost hear the gears turning as each man pondered the question, eyes glancing back and forth. Finally, one man looked me in the eye, a big 'ahh hah!' spreading across his face, and said, "No!"

One by one, we proceeded with the exercise until each of the guys could here when a hummed note was the same pitch as that being played and when it wasn't. Turned out that none of the guys had ever associated pitch with music. They'd always considered music to be words and rhythm. About an hour later, everyone of them could sing the song, some of them actually singing harmony. They'd simply never connected the dots.

Under-connected Brains
As I learn more about the neurological basis for autism, a common thread is that of brain synchronization. Different parts of our brains are responsible for different activities. When we undertake complex tasks, multiple regions of our brains work together to accomplish them. To do this effectively requires connectivity and timing.

For people with autism, it appears that the timing and coordination of certain parts of the brain doesn't work or doesn't work well. This makes processing of some complex tasks impossible or difficult.

Imagine racing down an entrance ramp onto a highway of fast moving traffic. Let's say that drivers on the ramp pay attention only to other drivers on the ramp, and those on the highway only to others on the highway. Both the ramp and the highway work fine, but when you bring them together, the merging of traffic doesn't work. Not only that, but because the merging doesn't work, both the highway and the ramp stop working as traffic begins to pile up at point of intersection. To work effectively, activity on the ramp and on the highway must be coordinated an synchronized.

Similarly, people with neurological challenges that limit or preclude the synchronization and coordination of various regions of the brain have difficulties with complex tasks. Each processing center works fine. However, crudely speaking, when you bring together multiple centers, the merging of information doesn't work and the resulting pile up causes each independent region to overload.

It appears that the solution to this is simple (albeit perhaps not always easy to implement). The key is to conduct activities that help to improve the coordination of the various parts of the brain. Since the individual parts of the brain are working just fine, once the connections are established, amazing things happen including apparently miraculous strides in learning.

Connecting the Dots
I've often used the illustration:
Oftentimes, when teaching others new skills and capabilities, we use repetition. If someone is slow to 'get it', we repeat and repeat and repeat until they either understand or we determine that they aren't going to understand.

However, if a person simply isn't making the connection between two or more critical elements, you can repeat until we have an efficient and effective public health care plan, and they still won't 'get it'. Repetition without connection doesn't work.

What is likely more useful is to ferret out the places where the connections are not being made, and then to work on connecting the dots.

OK, so that's the simple part. The trickier part is figuring out what connections are missing and how to build the bridges. Depending on the situation, there may be formal evaluations that can help you with that. In other cases, it might be as simple as dialoguing with someone until you find the missing bridge. If you're coaching someone, it may involve simply dropping what's not working and starting to pay close attention to where the connection breaks down. Once you find it, work on bridging the disconnected pieces.

The cool thing is that once the connection is made, all sorts of wonderful things happen and progress can seem miraculous.

If you've struggled all your life with math, it could be that your cognitive abilities are just fine, there are just a few things that don't quite connect yet. If you're a slave to the sheet music never having been able to 'play by ear', it could be that there are just a couple of connections that need to be made and you'll be playing anything you hear. In many cases, there may be a solitary, basic connection or association that's simply missing. Track it down, bridge the connection and voila!

Happy connecting!

Teflon

Labels: all blogs, education, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

So, when it comes to new relationships, new opportunities, new ideas and new adventures, are you the kind of person who jumps first? Or, are you the one who waits to see what others (or the other) will do?

Maybe you're someone who proposes to jump 'together'? Together may be a way to encourage someone to go with you. Together may be a way to manipulate someone into going before you. Together may indicate a willingness to wait or a lack of willingness to go it alone. Some people can appear to go together when in fact they're so good at watching others that their delay is imperceptible.

Of course, you can never really go together unless each is willing to go alone.

Let's Be Friends, You Go First
Over the past few days, Iris and I have had amazing opportunities to experience all sorts of relationships, potential relationships and former relationships. Last night, as we talked over dinner, Iris commented on what she was seeing as a common theme: who goes first?

Who goes first has lot's of variants. For example, some people play who goes first kind of like you would that Olympic 'sport' curling; they don't really push and they don't really pull, they just keep the other person in play with promises and innuendo like brooms brushing ice around a rock. They're not ready to commit, but they're also not ready to let go.

Others play who goes first by running rapidly towards the edge of the cliff where it's either fly or plummet. They run fast enough to inspire confidence, but not so fast as to lose the person trailing them. They race ahead and then pull up at just the last second, allowing the other to pass them. If the other stops, so do they; if not, they follow on.

Others jump, but they have a hidden parachute strapped to their backs.

Some people adopt the business mantra, 'he who goes first loses'. For example, if you're negotiating a salary or a deal or the purchase of a car, whoever clearly articulates what they're willing to pay or what they're willing to take, loses. For many, this is part of the art of negotiation. They hold their cards close to their chests, revealing no more than what is absolutely required to stay in the game.

Some are more manic, pushing hard sometimes and then suddenly withdrawing.

And then there are other people who don't hesitate whatsoever; they seem not to know that there's a game is being played. Cards face up on the table, they say what they want, they tell you what they'll do, and then they go for it.

How do you approach new relationships and opportunities?

Holding Out for More
I think one of the motivators that drives the who goes first game is a form of playing not to lose that is more like afraid that I could have done better. I can't tell you how many people I know who've held off on committing to a relationship because they felt like, perhaps, just maybe, they could 'do better'. It's amazing how the idea of 'doing better' can get in the way of doing great.

We do this in situations from evaluating our significant relationships to purchasing a house to looking for a new job. I've often called it the fruitless pursuit of perfection; the perfect becomes the enemy of the awesome. In in the end, I imagine it's no different than cocaine addiction or golf, always looking for that high or that round that will surpass (or even be as good as) a previous one.

Delaying Execution
Of course, some people are simply full of crap. They're so concerned about what others are thinking about them that they'll say pretty much anything to keep others in the game. They'll promise, they'll cajole, they'll manipulate, they'll distract and they'll misdirect. They'll say whatever it takes to get another chance. "Just one more day... Just one more time... It will be better, you'll see!"

The toughest part of this is that the best players tend to be the most sincere (in the moment). Although many of us believe you can't lie to yourself (it's kind of definitionaly impossible), there are still cases where people have such strong powers of denial so as to be delusional. They could see through their own lies, but, well, they don't.

Tethered
Then there are the people who actually have no intention of ever fully pursuing their stated desires. They speak of them and flirt with them. They race toward the edge as though to jump only to be yanked back at the last moment by whatever it is that ties them down. It could be a previous commitment, a lifestyle, money, comfort or simply what others would think of them.

I know people who for years have talked on and off about starting their own companies. Yet I'm confident that they'll simply never abandon the comfort of a regular paycheck.

I know others who say they want to do more for the people in the world around them, but their stuff (their possessions, their status, their lifestyles, their relationships) always gets in the way.

I have friends who out of concern about what others might think, stay in relationships with their partners even though both of them want out. They don't have the will to make it work, nor do they have the will to leave it behind.

Depressing?
As I read my post to Iris, her comment was, "Wow, this post is really kind of... depressing!"

I hadn't thought of it that way, but I think I can see her point. If in fact, most people don't simply jump in, but instead, feign jumping while waiting for others to go first... well, you could view it as depressing or as an opportunity to grow and change.

So, are you someone who decides to go for something and then goes for it with complete abandon, or do you hesitate waiting for someone else to lead the way? As you take off on a new adventure, do you strap a parachute to your back or ensure that there's a safety net waiting below? Maybe you talk the talk, but your walk is hampered by the tethers that snap you back to your status quo?

In the movie Gattaca, Vincent explains to his brother Anton how he was able to swim a large expanse of water despite his physical limitations and apparent lack of capacity to do so.

You want to know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton: I never saved anything for the swim back.

I believe that we often deny ourselves the best we could experience, simply because we hold back, we watch, we wait, we ration, we save our strength for the swim back.

Happy Tuesday!
Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

Turn this thing around
I will not go quietly
I will not lie down
I will not go quietly

Don Henley, I Will Not Go Quietly

I've recently been doing some work that required me to provide history about myself and the things that I'd done. Since I developed a penchant for being in the present, I haven't done a very good job at cataloging what I've done previously. So, I decided to google myself to determine my history.

Through the course of my googling I found that I'd been awarded nine patents that I was completely unaware of. One of them goes back to work I'd done with an amazing group of people back in the late 80's and early 90's at Bell Labs. I found that I'd even filed a couple of patent applications with Arno Penzias who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1978.

It was fun to research myself as a third party might and my resume now looks way cool. One of the patents I found took me back to an amazing time in the late 80's.

US Patent 5724590 - Technique for executing translated software
In the late 80's, Don Henley wrote a song that became a theme song of sorts for my advanced development group at Bell Labs. This was a point in time where the computer industry was in flux. At that point, IBM was still a computer company that owned the mainframe market and created the PC market. The Apple Macintosh was a relatively new entry in the fray, and a long gone company call Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) owned half of Massachusetts and most of the mini-computer market.

AT&T had recently divested itself of the operating companies that were called the "baby bells". At that time, these companies were named New England Telephone and Illinois Bell and so on. They went on to become companies like Verizon, Cingular and Qwest. The reason AT&T had let go of these subsidiaries was so that it could launch new businesses focused on the burgeoning computer market. Unfortunately, the business minded folks at AT&T had no clue about the computer market. At a point in time where the leaders of AT&T Computer Systems might have purchased either Apple or National Cash Register (NCR) to get into the computer business for about the same price, they purchased… well, they purchased NCR. Sigh…

That Ain't Squat
Anyway, my group of seven engineers had been working on what would have been the next generation computer for AT&T. We had an operating system developed at Bell Labs called UNIX and a new processor developed by a company called MIPS which was later purchased by Silicon Graphics which became the computing engine for many of the high-end special effects companies in Hollywood (movies like True Lies and Apollo XIII). I had a an amazing visionary boss who said, "In order to have a computer that can win as a late entry into the computer market, it's not enough for it to run UNIX applications (of which there were few); it must also run all Windows and Macintosh applications!!"

Now, he was an amazing visionary with a great ability to inspire and somehow manage technology mavericks, but he had no clue as to how he might accomplish this. So, we set out, it never occurring to any of us that it was impossible, just something that we didn't yet know how to do.

As we developed our new computer, we came up with a system that could literally translate the software running on one system and run it on a completely different system in a way where it was impossible for anyone to see any differences. For example, we could run Macintosh applications and Windows applications and Unix applications all on the same computer at the same time.

Now, this isn't like the virtual machines of today that let you run say Windows on a Macintosh. The systems today count on both systems using fairly similar architectures (for example the same processor). In this case, the hardware systems were completely different from one another. (For fellow geeks out there, one was running on Intel x86, another on Motorola 68xxx and yet another on the MIPS R3000.) The other really cool thing was that our translated applications ran much faster after translated than before translated, i.e., our virtual applications ran about 5-times faster than the originals. Even today, the virtual applications are never quite as fast as the originals.

In addition to this, we developed all sorts of advanced media processing capabilities, text readers, voice processing and so on. It was an amazing time and there seemed little we couldn't do. Our little desktop machine could do the work of many computers and was more powerful than a Cray supercomputer.

We called our new computer squat so that no one could say, "That ain't squat."

Everyone Wanted to Help
As word of our little project started to spread, different people began knocking on our door to see if they could help us. It turns our there were whole research departments dedicated to different pieces of what we had done, departments dedicated to speech processing technologies, departments focused on reading text, departments focused on new operating systems, departments focused on compiler technologies (the technology basis for translating applications).

However, in many instances, the offers of help were in fact suggestions that we not use the technology that we had developed, but instead, use the technology developed by the various "helping" organizations. Some of these suggestions were made quite strongly to the point of being perceived as demands. I started to learn about the politics of academia and research.

Essentially, no one believed that a small group of just seven people could have accomplished as much as had and that we should avail ourselves of the work of these much larger organizations. We were open to doing so, but only if what was there actually worked and worked better than what we had. We didn't find much evidence of that and said, "Thank you, no."

Oops... next thing you know, we were the subject of a technology audit by some really high-powered people from the research organization. It was their job to review what we'd done and see whether or not it was real. It was fascinating.

The Inquisition
So one afternoon we were visited by an amazing group of people including Al Aho, Peter Weinberger and Brian Kernighan (the namesake of the Unix program AWK), Larry Rabiner who ran the speech research lab, and Arno Penzias (the head of Bell Labs Research). We walked them through everything that we'd done providing demonstrations, presentations and fielding questions.

To say that these guys really knew their stuff would be a bit of an understatement. They asked specific and insightful questions about various aspects of the project and gave up little in the way of the impressions they were taking away. As we progressed through the afternoon, the folks on our team would check in with one another wondering how things were going.

Finally, as we gathered around a monitor for one of the final demonstrations, Peter Weinberger leaned over to me and softly said, "You know, this is really impressive."

I felt as though I'd been holding my breath for three hours and had finally exhaled. My whole body relaxed in a way that let me know that I'd been carrying a lot of tension.

We were officially audited and approved.

Project Canceled
At the end of 1990 going into 1991, AT&T purchased National Cash Register (NCR) for $7.5 billion. The idea was to quickly enter the computer business by purchasing a cash register company; it ended up decreasing the wealth of AT&T shareholders by between $3.9 billion and $6.5 billion. Anyway, when AT&T made the acquisition, they decided that we didn't need to be developing new computers anymore and to "redeploy" the members of our team.

It was a really amazing group that had a great working chemistry and I had no intention of disbanding it. I made various appeals up the chain of command to no avail. As the deadline approached, I found another organization within the company that had defined some new, funded projects that desperately needed a strong working team with the kinds of skills my team had. Without asking permission, I transferred each of them to that organization.

A few weeks after the transfer was effected, I sat in my office the lone remaining member of my team on the organization chart. My phone rang. When I answered, I heard the voice of the executive assistant to our senior vice president talking into what was clearly a speaker phone surrounded by other people. He said, "Mark, I want you to think very carefully before answering the following question. How is that your team ended up in thus-and-such organization?"

I wasn't particularly good at taking advice, and without hesitation I said, "Because I transferred them there?"

Life After Life
Well, eventually they got over it and I ended up getting a job in the basic research group thanks to the new relationships I'd established through our technology audit. AT&T later ended up selling of NCR and exiting the computer business and then being purchased by one of the operating companies that it had dumped years earlier.

My team ended up doing some amazing work creating a system that was purchased by Apple to move many of their applications from the Motorola 68xxx to the PowerPC and I had a grand time in the research group.

It was nice to think about those times and remind myself of not lying and not going quietly.

Teflon

Labels: all blogs, empowerment, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy

A person who has not made his greatest contribution to science before the age of thirty will never do so.

Albert Einstein

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been trying to figure out why people seem to go stupid as they get older. Sure, we become more knowledgeable and adept at dealing with everyday situations. Some of us garner and dole out wisdom and insight.

Yet, it seems that most of become less creative. More and more of what we do is simply what we did the day before. A solution that worked once is applied over and again. Our new work becomes derivative of our previous work and then simply straight forward replaying of what's in the archives. We live lives of greatest hits and reunion tours.

Why is that?

Holding on Too Tight
In the movie Top Gun, an aircraft carrier's best pilot, Cougar, walks into his commanding officer's quarters after nearly killing himself and his navigator when he panicked losing all perspective including the differentiation of up and down.

CO: Cougar you should be in sickbay. What's on your mind?
Cougar: My wife and kids sir.
CO: We've seen this before...
Cougar: No sir, I'm holding on too tight, I've lost the edge.

Perhaps the reason we lose our creativity is because we start hanging on to what we have, we go into preservation mode. Being creative is much more than thought process. In fact, thinking is much more than a function of the brain. What I've been learning lately is that thinking creatively is a byproduct of brains that developed to control and coordinate complex muscle movement and balance. Our brains didn't evolve to support thinking, thinking is just a side effect.

Being creative is not so much a thought process as it is a side-effect of how we live each day. If we live in a way that is open to change, that goes wherever life will take us, that consistently brings new challenges and stimuli into our everyday situations, our brains develop (continually) one way. If we live in a way that is focused on consistency and stability, that resists new challenges and stimuli, and that clings steadfastly to the river bank, our brains develop in another way.

The brain that is open, flowing and constantly encountering new challenges remains (and perhaps becomes more) creative.

Dying to Think
And Jesus said...

I can guarantee this truth: A single grain of wheat doesn't produce anything unless it is planted in the ground and dies. If it dies, it will produce a lot of grain.

John 12:24, God's Word Translation

This statement enforces a great truth. The grain of wheat may remain in the granary for a thousand years and be preserved, but it is useless there. It neither reproduces, nor is food. It is when it falls into the ground and undergoes dissolution, that it brings forth fruit. It is fruitful by giving itself up.

Commentary from the People's New Testament

I've always found John 12:24 to be quite powerful. It's a great reminder of how limited we become when go into preservation mode.

Over the years, I known lots of people who, having made more money than they could ever spend, decided that they wanted to be remembered for more than that. After years of inactivity, they would try to engage the creative parts of their brains. Some CEO's would become interested in the actual content of the businesses they ran, not just the numbers. Some technologists would suddenly become interested in invention and creating something to benefit the world, not just being recognized for their position or work they'd conducted thirty years prior. Others would invest themselves in causes offering pro bono leadership and management skills to organizations that couldn't otherwise afford them.

The thing is that I've never seen this done well. The CEO's who hadn't been hands-on operators for years, had the authority to make changes, but the changes were not insightful or useful. The technologists, lacking that creative spark and ingenuity, would resort to "collaborating" with younger colleagues to whose work they could attach their names. The business leaders didn't know how to function without support staff, people to build their spreadsheets or create their presentations or print out their emails.

Years of hording and preserving had left them with little in the way of creativity and adaptability.

Willing to Lose
As I think about it, creativity is probably an artifact of adaption and proportional to adaptability. Essentially, adapting to new environments, challenges and stimuli build the thought muscle required to be creative. However, if we find ourselves in positions of preserving, maintaining stability, playing not to lose, then we spend little time adapting.

As for me, I think that in some ways I'm a lot like Mark K and my dad. One of my biggest motivators is not being bored. However, our approaches to not being bored are quite different. I think my dad's and Mark's solution to boredom is to be entertained by others. Mine is to move on to the next thing once I've got the current thing down.

At first I was thinking that I'm not afraid to lose everything, but I'm not sure that that's it. It's not the absence of fear, it's just that I'm so attracted to new challenges and learning, the thought of losing doesn't really occur to me.

I guess that for some people, that would make me stupid.

So What?
OK, so what? I'm not really sure. I just started writing this morning and here I am.

I guess what I'm saying is that letting go, embracing new challenges and opportunities, jumping into arenas where you have absolutely no clue, and forgetting about preservation are all key to staying and becoming more creative. I'm also coming to the conclusion that a word full of creative thinking people is one in which I prefer to live.

What do you think?

Happy Saturday, Teflon

Labels: all blogs, mark tuomenoksa, philosophy