The False Promise of Multitasking

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Young businesswoman sitting at a meeting, using mobilephone.

 

Leadership presence requires being present.
– Scott Eblin

Pressure to be more productive in today’s workplace was been escalating for years. And many of us have a false impression that by attempting to do many things at once, by multitasking, we are being more productive.

Car and Driver magazine wanted to figure out just how dangerous texting and driving can be, compared to drunk driving. So they rented an 11,800 foot airport runway in the middle of Michigan and put Jordan (22 years old) and Eddie (37) behind the wheel.

They rigged up a red light in the middle of the windshield to represent brake lights in front of the driver. A passenger had a little remote control to activate the light randomly and measure their response times. They tested the drivers at both 35mph and 70mph. The average reaction time while sober and paying attention was .54 seconds to start braking. Now they had a sober baseline.

Then they asked the drivers to pick up their smartphone and A) read funny quotes from Caddyshack and then B) text funny quotes from Caddyshack while driving. Reaction times varied of course, but all were worse than the undistracted versions of themselves. Some were considerably worse. Reaction times shown below in distance traveled:

  • Reading Caddyshack quotes: up to 188 feet before reacting
  • Texting Caddyshack quotes: up to 319 feet before reacting

Then they took a break and chilled out on the tarmac to get a good buzz on. They mixed up some vodka and OJ and goofed away an hour or so until the drivers blew a .08 on the breathalyzer. Then they repeated the test. Reaction travel distances shown below:

  • Driving with BAC of .08: add up to 7 feet (at 35 mph)
  • Driving with BAC of .08: add up to 17 feet (at 70 mph)

That’s right. It’s not even close. Reading or texting on your smartphone is way more impairing than driving drunk. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration puts the official estimate at 6x more dangerous than driving drunk. The Car and Driver experiment puts it at more like 16x.

Driving is second nature to most of us. It just requires paying attention and following the traffic rules. Obviously texting impairs that. But what about our work? Active listening, mental processing, creative engagement, and problem-solving all require much higher cognitive and collaborative participation. So, when we are texting and emailing while in meetings, or on conference calls, what’s our impairment level? 20x? 30x?

Or a better question might be “What’s the business opportunity loss when the people in my company are constantly distracted?”

It’s not news to anyone that multitasking is debilitating in many ways. The simple action of switching from one task to another is in itself, a cognitive drain. Not only that, simply attempting to multitask lowers your IQ performance to that of nearly an 8-year old.

And while 8-year olds are definitely creative, they are only creative when they’re paying attention.

Put the phone down and no one gets hurt.

Innovation Hack: Flip the Story

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Pay very close attention. Ready?

Three hikers finish a long hard day on the Appalachian Trail. They trudge into a small inexpensive hotel and ask for a room. The clerk at the counter tells them it’s $30. Great, they each pay $10 and walk down to their room.

The manager wanders in later and asks if there have been any guests. The clerk reports the three hikers and the manager inquires what they paid for the room. The clerk tells him $30, and the manager reminds him they are having a $25 special this evening. The manager instructs the clerk to provide a $5 refund.

The clerk asks the bellhop to return $5 to the hikers. While the bellhop is walking to the room with the refund, he thinks to himself, “I’ve been hauling bags all night and I haven’t had any tips! What are they going to do with $5? I’ll take $2 for myself!”

The bellhop arrives at the room, knocks on the door and returns $1 to each of the three hikers. Each hiker originally paid $10, then had $1 returned. So, they each paid what? Correct, $9.

9 x 3 = 27. 27 + 2 in the bellhop’s pocket = 29. What happened to the other dollar?

One step at a time. Yes, each hiker paid $9. Multiplied by 3 equals 27. 27 plus 2 for the bellhop equals 29. Brain freeze. How is this possible?

The solution often turns out to be more beautiful than the puzzle.
– Richard Dawkins

It’s a fun riddle because the more you persist in one direction in the story, the more it becomes unsolvable. It’s in the telling. If you fixate on each hiker paid $9, then add $2 for the bellhop it’s impossible. It’s really fun to tell this story to kids.

As my friend Jay explains the solution: tell the story in another direction. The three hikers paid $30, got 5 back, and gave 2 to the bellhop, which equals 27. So yes, including the tip they did each pay $9.

We can get wrapped up in the persistent narratives of our work and life every day. At work, at home, at school we build up a narrative bias in which we tell ourselves stories about how things are.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
– Albert Einstein

To break the narrative bias, try telling stories in a different way. For example, when you have to pitch an idea to your colleagues or your boss, first tell it one way, then try it again using completely different words and phrases. Then a third time, with completely different language again. Or when attempting to solve a problem in a group, ask each member to propose a different approach.

We have tried this in many different settings, trying to solve different types of problems, or pitch different ideas. I’ve discovered that not only do the ideas get better with each telling, but people hear them differently. Varying language will land differently on people. They will hear the story in novel ways when you change the language you use. And when you populate the team with people from different expertise and backgrounds, each will naturally have a unique interpretation to contribute.

After all, remember the story of the six blind men describing an elephant? The first one touches the elephant’s side and says, “It’s solid and tall like a WALL!” The second blind man feels the elephant’s trunk and declares, “Not at all. It’s much more like a giant SNAKE!” The third blind man reaches out to the elephant’s knee and states, “You are both wrong, this is much like a TREE!”

And each was partly right, and each was partly wrong.

    ____________________________________________________

Our company Mindscaling, is busy building powerful human and digital learning experiences for companies of all sizes. My new book Small Acts of Leadership, is a Washington Post bestseller! You can grab a copy now. Have a meeting coming up? I love to work with groups large and small. Let’s talk.

In other news, our son and I bicycled across America with two other dads and their teenagers. We published a new book about it called Chasing Dawn. I co-authored the book with my cycling companion, the artist, photographer, and wonderful human jon holloway. Buy a copy. I’ll sign it and send it to your doorstep.

There are those who do the work. And those who take the credit.

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spotlight

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who do the work, and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group. There is less competition there.
– Indira Ghandi

Lisa Fischer might be the greatest female vocalist working today you have never heard of. When she tours with Sting, her voice is so powerful, Sting will often nod to her during shows and let her open up and take a lead. She will improvise beautiful lengthy passages of melody. Her voice is astonishing in range and power.

Lisa has also been the lead female vocalist on every single Rolling Stones tour since 1989. Not only in the background, but sometimes prowling the stage with Jagger and singing lead on Gimme Shelter. She claims when she is emotionally and vocally in harmony with Jagger, the audience vanishes and she feels as she and the band are the only ones in the stadium. You’ve never heard of her.

Judith Hill was in rehearsals with Michael Jackson when he died. She has been singing backup for years for Jackson, Stevie Wonder and numerous others. You’ve never heard of her either. Luther Vandross sang backup on David Bowie’s hit Young Americans. You know Luther. Luther made the big time. But many do not, and nor do they aspire to.

“Some people will do anything to be famous. And there are other people who just sing. For me, it’s not about anything except being in a special space with people. And that, to me, is the higher calling.”
– Lisa Fischer

I’m working with a CEO named Mark (not his real name) right now who is so generous with attribution and credit, that I’m having a hard time interviewing him directly. Every time I ask him a question about how he accomplished this or that project or initiative, he talks about someone else. He says they made it happen. He tells me I should go interview them. So I go talk to that department head or vice president, and every time they tell me it was Mark’s idea, his vision. They tell me they are just executing on the CEO’s idea.

Mark has managed to galvanize the entire organization around a higher goal by constantly giving credit, and constantly giving the spotlight to someone else.

Next time you have a great idea. Give it away. Give it to someone who can deliver on that idea even better than you might be able to.

Have a goal? You can double your odds of success.

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Make_a_PromiseA colleague called me yesterday and said, “I want to talk about commitment.” We had just finished brainstorming an idea over a few days and we both agreed we had something good, quite good, excellent actually. She wanted to have that conversation about accountability, about follow through. Which got me thinking about how to improve the odds of completing anything we set our minds to.

A group of researchers in California did an interesting study in which they randomly assigned people to five different groups. All five groups had to think about and prioritize goals they wanted to accomplish over the next four weeks.

  • All Groups had to think about their goals
  • Group 2 through 5 had to write them down
  • Group 3 had to also write specific action items
  • Group 4 had to also share those action items with someone
  • Group 5 had to also share those action items and progress regularly

Group 1 had a 43% completion rate on the goals they thought about, which is a little better than the 29% who actually complete marathon training schedules and show up at the starting line. But those in Group 5 who had to not only write down their goals, but be specific, and share their progress regularly had a 76% completion rate.

It’s why every support group imaginable exists – from cooking classes to exercise bootcamps to beekeeping clubs. When we build a cohort of supportive peers and hold ourselves accountable to them on a regular basis, success happens.

One of the most simple and effective accountability tools I know goes like:

  1. Write down up to 20 things you want to improve on. It can be anything from making people laugh to doing more pushups to making dinner for your kids. Anything.
  2. Next turn those goals into simple yes/no questions such as, Did you make someone smile today? You can also frame the questions to require a number answer, such as “How many miles did you run today?” No questions requiring elaborate answers. Keep it simple.
  3. Now give those questions to someone who will call you up every day, or twice a week and ask you your own questions.

When you know you have to testify to someone you care about on the goals that you want to accomplish, you will show up, you will do the work, make the difference, and answer that call every day prepared to give answers you believe in.

Specificity + Accountability + Consistency = Results.

Dreaded Conversations…And Avoiding Being One Yourself

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two-women-talking_2Slydial is the app that lets you go straight to voicemail, safe from the possibility that someone might actually answer your call.

One reason Slydial exists is because of the energy vampires in the world. Those people you dread talking to because they leave you depleted, bummed out, frustrated, or annoyed with every conversation. However hopeful you remain, they will figure out how to suck the energy from the conversation. Sure, maybe you use Slydial because you just don’t have the time for a conversation and texting would get lost in translation. But I don’t think that’s the biggest reason it’s so popular.

One of the greatest predictors of your effectiveness, happiness, and success in your work is your capacity to be an energizer, instead of an energy vampire. According to Rob Cross at the University of Virginia, your ability to create energy in the workplace, and with your colleagues around you, is more powerful a predictor of your success over other criteria, including your function, title, department, expertise, seniority, knowledge, intelligence… These are all descriptors. Creating energy is a behavior, and it can be learned.

Think about that for a second, and then ask yourself, “When people leave an interaction with me, do they leave feeling more or less energized?”

Here are a few ways you can make sure you create and magnify energy, instead of draining those around you:

Energizers are present
Creating energy does not require you be an extrovert. It does not mean you need to jump up and down, or stand on a chair and cheer, or high-five your colleagues. It simply means you possess the ability to see opportunities as others describe them, and reiterate those ideas back in a way that conveys you truly understood them.

Energizers open possibilities
Energizers possess the ability to ask provocative questions that open up possibilities and encourage pursuit of action. It means being present and engaged in each conversation. It means building contagious enthusiasm in a constructive way, with emotional fluency. Opening possibilities is about giving those around you the creative latitude to explore ideas that perhaps fall outside of usual organizational boundaries.

Energizers follow through
When we get enthusiastic about something it can be infectious. But remember the difference between enthusiasm and action. There’s nothing more de-energizing than walking away from a meeting feeling fired-up, work diligently on a shared vision, then only to return and find your colleague hasn’t done anything. Energizers follow through on their promises, and consistently demonstrate do-ability of a project by actively contributing.

Energizers add value instead of topping others
I’m sure you have been in a meeting before in which an idea is tossed around. And each person in turn, is trying to outdo the others to look smarter. This is not adding value, this is called topping someone else. This behavior is when you try to sound smarter and more important than someone else and begin to compete, instead of contributing to the conversation. So when someone says, “We went to New York for our vacation.” And then you say, “Oh, we went to Spain.” That’s not building value, that’s trying to top someone else’s contribution.

Energizers use supportive questions
A supportive assertion is when you say, “That’s great!” or “So cool. Love it!” But a supportive question encourages and deepens the conversation. So the next time someone mentions they went to New York for a vacation trying asking, “Wow, that sounds wonderful. What was the most exciting part of the trip for your family?”

Give the Gift of Time

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If only HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive.
—Lew Platt, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard

Everyone is so busy these days, overwhelmed by complexity and uncertainty, that it’s hard to know what to do or who to talk to in order to accomplish daring, and unexpectedly awesome initiatives. And so we create structure, process and teams to solve specific tasks or projects. But team composition, proximity, and facilitation matter a great deal in terms of how productive they eventually become.

London Business School conducted an interesting study in which they asked 1,543 people to answer a bunch of questions about the composition and behavior of the teams they worked on. It turns out that some of the very characteristics that define modern professional teams, are the same characteristics that undermine their success. These trending characteristics include:

Bigger teams: Teams are swelling in size to be (or appear to be) more inclusive, gain greater stakeholder buy-in and leverage more expertise. Teams of 20 people or more is increasingly common, and technology is enabling a good part of swelling headcount. But research from Bob Sutton on scaling excellence demonstrates that honest and engaged collaboration decreases after team size exceeds about 8 people.

Diverse teams: Again, technology enabled, globally dispersed diverse teams are growing rapidly. And with good reason since the ability to leverage expertise throughout the globe is increasingly a powerful component of competitive advantage. But deeply engaged, open collaboration starts with trust. And trust starts with the personal understanding that comes from cultural and emotional fluency. We might get technically proficient collaboration across cultural boundaries, but richer collaboration requires the bedrock of trust. I once met a guy named Marcus who was based in Germany and ran an IT services group, which was based in Silicon Valley. Several times a year Marcus would fly to California for no other reason than to spend time with his team, chatting, having meals, talking about work, but also interacting on a human and personal level. He calls these trips “The Flying Handshake.”

Educated teams: According to the study, teams are increasingly comprised of people with higher and higher education levels. And it turns out, the higher the education among the team members, the more likely the team may devolve into petty arguments. One key to overcoming this obstacle is to require teams to have not only task goals, but also relationship-oriented goals.

The study cites some constructive interventions to help boost the effectiveness and ingenuity of teams, as well as to eradicate “fault lines” within teams, but one leadership trait in particular has a powerful effect in scaling excellence: giving the gift of time.

Company cultures in which leaders regularly give their time to listen to emerging problems, and advise team members of who they might talk to within the company to accelerate solutions is a defining characteristic of successful cultures. Specifically, the study cites Nokia’s cultural tendency for leaders to sit with individual team members and point them in the direction of people throughout the organization which they believe will accelerate results and strengthen inter-departmental collaboration.

The Importance of Showing Up

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ridebikeFrom the kitchen window Christopher could see his wife was getting frustrated. Over and over again, Dana was running awkwardly, hunched over, down the driveway while holding on to the back to Will’s bicycle. At the time, six year old Will was still terrified of riding without his training wheels, or without his Mom holding him up. Christopher watched as his wife and son repeated the same failed routine again.

Finally, Dana came inside exhausted and frustrated. Christopher Reeve said to his wife, “Let me try.” He rolled his wheelchair gently down the ramp outside and onto the driveway where his son was wiping away tears. Christopher spoke to his son slowly. Since the accident his voice had become soft and measured. He told Will to place both hands on the handlebars and hold them steady. He explained by doing this the bike wouldn’t shake as much. He told Will to look up, far ahead, to where he was going and not down at the pedals or the front wheel. He told his son to first place his right foot on the pedal and his left foot on the ground, prepared and poised to push hard.

Will froze. Then Christopher reminded his son that he would never let him do anything too scary or dangerous – that riding a bike was something he knew Will could do. He told Will he was going to count to three, and on three, it was time to go. Christopher counted slowly and when he reached three, Will pushed off hard and rode down and around the driveway. The first time he circled back, his face was a mask of concentration and focus, and the second time around his face only reflected joy.

In his book, Nothing is Impossible, Christopher Reeve writes that before the accident that left him paralyzed he was a whirlwind of activity. He constantly took his family sailing, horseback riding, traveling, hiking and adventuring around the world. He writes that he never really asked if they wanted to go, he just took them. And after the accident he learned to listen. He learned to speak to them where they were, at their level, with a deep sense of empathy.

Christopher writes that prior to his accident he would not have believed that he could teach his son to ride a bike simply by talking to him. Teaching was about showing, demonstrating, and leading the way. But during his recovery process, he learned the power of conversations, words, intention and meeting people at an intersection of where they are ready to learn. Because each day the physicians and care-takers around him would introduce an idea or an activity that he was ready to tackle, or else it would fall unnoticed. It’s all about introducing learning opportunities when people are ready to learn.

An important nuance of excellent leaders is that they have the capacity to recognize when someone else is ready to go to the next level – ready to take on a new challenge. And instead of doing it for them, encourage their heart and prepare them to make that leap. And it starts by simply showing up and being willing to share your skills and experience.

The Power of the Humility Effect

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humilty

“The X-factor of great leadership is not personality, it’s humility.”
– Jim Collins

I’ll be honest. He wasn’t my first pick. Near the top yes, but he didn’t have my vote. Our small selection committee was trying to choose a keynote speaker for a big event and General Stanley McCrystal was on the short list. I think my gut instinct was that while he was indeed a highly decorated and remarkable leader in his own right, he might not connect in a human and honest way with our audience. I was concerned he would be aloof, imperious, unapproachable.

I got it all wrong. From the moment he arrived, General “call me Stan” McCrystal was gracious, funny, insightful, and willing to share his expertise with humility. Backstage before his presentation, he was generous with his ideas and time, and onstage at the beginning of his presentation he made several amusing self-deprecating jokes about his own professional blunders. Immediately, everyone liked and appreciated his presentation. He was polished, but not distant. Provocative, yet not condescending.

Every time I open up Adam Grant’s book Give and Take, I find some new intriguing piece of research and insight. Most recently, I was captivated by Grant’s description of a study called The Joy of Talking. In this case, now I understand the background behind one of the reasons why General McCrystal is so effective. It’s called the pratfall effect. It was a study conducted by Elliot Aronson at the University of California back in 1966. Basically what he discovered is that highly competent, often superior performing people become more likable when they have a social mishap befall them. It makes them more human, more likable.

Which led me to another study about how people make a positive impression in a more common workplace experience such as a professional interview or sales proposal. As Joanne Silvester and her colleagues confirmed, interview candidates who accept personal responsibility for past mistakes are regarded as stronger candidates than those who instead point to external circumstances beyond their control.

Saying, “I didn’t get the deal because I didn’t prepare well enough” will receive a much more favorable impression on others than saying, “I didn’t get the deal because the competitor’s proposal was stronger” or, “I didn’t get the deal because the requirements changed.”

When we accept personal accountability, with a recognition that we have the ability to make a positive influence on events, relationships and circumstances, we are more likely to leave a positive impression on others. We also develop and reinforce the belief and habit that our actions matter. And when we believe our actions matter, we are more likely to make positive, constructive decisions.

The Power of Shared Truth

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A small excerpt from OutThink. Enjoy!challenger

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
– Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

I was sixteen years old at the moment the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded high above NASA Kennedy Space Center in Florida, killing seven astronauts including New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Sadly, because a schoolteacher was on board, there were thousands of children around the country watching the event unfold on live television. In the months following, Richard Feynman, renowned physicist, was asked to help understand what happened in the Challenger disaster.

He not only gave a famous testimony to Congress describing the O-ring failure that led to the catastrophe, he also led a more quiet inquiry conducting interviews of the NASA engineers and leaders. He devoted the latter half of his book What Do You Care What Other People Think? to his experience working on the Rogers Commission. One of his sober conclusions was that the engineers on the front lines building the componentry had a much different perspective than the leaders in the organization regarding assessment of risk.

This recognition of risk disparity started when Louis Ullian, the range safety officer at Kennedy Space Center began an inquiry into whether or not to place destruct charges on manned Challenger, or other manned rocket flights. It was common practice at the time to have remote destruct charges placed on unmanned rockets in case something went wrong. The thinking was it would be safer to remotely destruct an out-of-control rocket, rather than have an out-of-control rocket dangerously explode on the ground. Ullian discovered a 4% failure rate among unmanned rocket flights he researched, and calculated that manned rocket flights, with their much higher safety standards and preparations, had about a 1% failure rate. However, when he inquired with NASA he was advised the official probability of failure for a manned rocket flight was 1 in 100,000. He told this figure to Feynman, who replied, “That means you could fly the shuttle every day for an average of 300 years between accidents – which is obviously crazy!”

Ullian needed a figure to inform his decision of whether or not to place remote destruct charges on manned rockets and settled on 1 in 1000 as a compromise. However, with NASA management estimating 1 in 100,000, Feynman became interested in finding out what the acting engineers believed the failure probability rates were.

Feyman requested a meeting with a group of engineers and began asking questions about how the rockets worked, were assembled, etc., in order to make a probability assessment. After a couple hours he hit on a better idea: ask the engineers in the room what their opinion of the risk was. He said to them, “Here’s a piece of paper each. Please write on your paper the answer to this question: what do you think is the probability that a flight would be uncompleted due to a failure in the engine.” He collected and averaged the answers in the room: 1 in 300.

Feynman went on to observe that unlike airplanes or cars, which are built “bottom up” using integrated systems that have been tried and tested over time, the space shuttle, as a unique vehicle was built “top down.” That is, it was conceived as a whole and built from individual and unique parts assembled to suit a finished product. In calculating the potential failure probability, the NASA engineers had evaluated the potential failure rate of each individual component, and extrapolated a failure probability of 1 in 100,000. This makes complete sense when you consider that individually the failure probability of an engine blade, electrical cable or bolt is vanishingly small.

What the engineers knew innately from their hands-on perspective, was that the failure probability of the dynamically assembled whole structure was far higher. Yet even with that knowledge available in the minds of the engineers, it didn’t come out until Feynman asked the question. In order to get closer to the truth and gain higher aspirations of everyone in the organization, first we have to find the hidden truths. And the hidden truths are at the edges of the organization with the people who are closest to the work – closest to the potential problem.

We have to ask those at the edges what they believe to be the truth. As leaders in the organization we have the obligation to say out loud that we don’t know the intricacies of complex projects, and we expect and demand that those closest to the detail surface publicly any concerns.

Beware the Joy of Talking

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Several years ago, a young professor named James Pennebaker at the University of Virginia conducted a series of experiments with his new classes. He would divide them up into groups for just 15 minutes, and ask them to talk about anything they liked. These groups were comprised of students who didn’t know one another, so as you might imagine they talked about their home towns, how they got to the university, what they were studying, and so on. After the group broke up he would ask them to estimate how much talking each person did in the group, how much they enjoyed their group, and how much they learned from others in the group.

Consistently, those who did most of the talking claimed to have learned the most, and liked their peers the most. It seemed the more they talked, the happier they were about the people around them. In fact, as he repeated the experiment he discovered that the larger the group, the greater the effect and the more the biggest talker liked the group. And the effect diminished as the group got smaller, to the point that in a one-to-one conversation, if someone dominated the conversation they both reported disliking it.

Which leads us to an idea Charles Derber coined as “conversational narcissism.” It’s the kind of conversational trap in which we tend to lead the conversation toward our own interests, ideas and concerns. Someone says their child is playing the trombone, and the narcissist says, “Oh, I used to play the trombone. Let me tell you about it.” And off you go for half of an hour lost in memories of their middle school band.

To leave a conversation with both yourself and other people energized, enthused, and even provoked, use supportive assertions and supportive questions. A supportive assertion could be an evaluation such as “That’s awesome!”, or a comment such as “You should check out this article on that.” But even better is something Derber calls the supportive question, which shows active interested engagement in the conversation. A supportive question encourages and deepens the conversation. So the next time someone mentions their child plays the trombone, try saying, “Wow, that’s a difficult instrument. How did she develop an interest in that?”

(You might also enjoy this in-depth article on Charles Derber’s work)