Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin

"Peace and justice are two sides of the..." - Dwight D. Eisenhower quotes from BrainyQuote.com

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Dwight D. Eisenhower Quotes

Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how the “Innovators’ DNA” works. His six-year study surveying 3,000 creative executives and conducting an additional 500 individual interviews. During this study you found five “discovery skills” that distinguish them.

InnovatorS' DNA 

It’s a cognitive skill that allows creativepeople to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas.

Association

Ability to ask “what if”, “why”, and “why not” questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture.

Questioning

bility to closely observe details, particularly the details of people’s behavior.

Observing

lways trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds.

Ability To Experiment

good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn.

Networking

questioning turbo-charges observing, experimenting, and networking, but questioning on its own doesn’t have a direct effect without the others. Overall, associating is the key skill

Best Of All Five

Innovators not only learned early on to think different, they act different (and even talk different).

What makes visionary entrepreneurs such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Ebay’s Pierre Omidyar and Meg Whitman, and P&G’s A.G. Lafley tick? In a question-and-answer session with HBR contributing editor Bronwyn Fryer, Professors Jeff Dyer of Brigham Young University and Hal Gregersen of Insead explain how the “Innovators’ DNA” works. Fryer: You conducted a […]

problemsolving

Problem Solving

teamwork

Teamwork

How Do Innovators Think?

This is a thought pattern in which our emotional reactions, or our feelings, lead us to believe that something is true even when the empirical evidence tells us otherwise. Emotional reasoning is very common in the workplace. If you have ever found yourself thinking, “I know this project will fail because I feel scared,” or “I know my manager must dislike me because I feel unappreciated,” or “I know my colleague has been hiding something because I feel suspicious,” then you have already experienced emotional reasoning.

Emotional reasoning

Recent research described emotional reasoning as a mechanism that “can lead people to take their emotions as information about the external world, even when the emotion is not generated by the situation to be evaluated.” This leads to inaccurate emotional truths which directly contradict any objective, perceptual truths.

Taking our emotions as information

The process involves challenging your emotional beliefs so that automatic thoughts are interrogated before being accepted.<ul><li>Practice validity testing. If you feel sure that your work has not been of the expected standard, you must search for objective evidence to prove that this belief is true.</li><li>Write in a journal. Journaling is a great way to pay attention to your thought patterns.</li><li>Discuss your emotions. If you feel anxious about work, you may struggle to accurately assess your performance. Talking to a trusted colleague or friend about your concerns could give you a much-needed objective view.</li></ul>

How to avoid emotional reasoning

The problem with emotional reasoning is that it can lead to worsening feelings of anxiety, fear or worry in situations that are already stressful.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

The danger of emotional reasoning and using our emotions as proof

Invisible work is not unappreciated or uncompensated work. Instead, invisible work refers to the highly valuable components of our work process that aren’t trackable. Invisible work includes deep observation, listening, daydreaming, listening to our intuition, pondering questions about a challenge or opportunity after a meeting, then reframing those questions.

Invisible work is vital to work production

A 2021 report from Indeed found that 52% of workers are feeling burned out. That's 9% more than a pre-Covid study. At the start of this hybrid work world era, we have an opportunity to stop showing up to work where we cloak our physical selves in uniform and instead show up as our full authentic selves.

We have an opportunity to be our authentic selves

<ul><li>Incentivize it. Give your teams the money and the time to connect with strangers who will spark new conversations and questions and shed new light on old problems.</li><li>Get out of the building. The best engineers push away from their desks and walk the floor</li><li>Take breaks during the day, but also micro-breaks throughout the year.</li></ul>

Ways to make room for invisible work

Creativity strategist Natalie Nixon says that time spent thinking, wondering, or doing something else makes us more creative and productive and, ultimately, innovative. 


productivity

Productivity

career

Career

Your “invisible work” is key to your most productive self

<ul><li>Ask questions!</li><li>"Tell me more about that," or "Open-ended questions" may lead to more insight about the other person.</li><li>Discuss common goals to remind your counterpart that you share some of the same desired outcomes (e.g., common goals for the company).</li></ul>

Get curious

<ul><li>The best way to break the ice and begin a more earnest negotiation is to call out the unspoken fear</li><li>Humor is often a valuable tool</li><li>Being able to laugh-especially at yourself-can make a tough negotiation better</li></ul>

Call it out-or joke about it

<ul><li>Be aware of the silence in the conversation and use it to your advantage</li><li>When there are pauses in the discussion, don't rush to fill them up with words</li><li>Let the silence linger</li><li>You may be surprised at what your counterpart blurts out</li></ul>

Don’t be afraid of silence

<ul><li>Refocus the negotiation on the matters at hand by defining one or two key points at the start of the negotiation.</li><li>This narrows the scope of the conversation so there is less opportunity for the discussion to veer off-topic and get heated.</li></ul>

Fight fire with water

<ul><li>You'll have a stronger negotiating stance if you are willing to walk away from the situation</li><li>If you don't have a walk-away point, you've given up one of your negotiating options</li><li>Insurance against being treated unfairly or having to strike a deal with a jerk</li></ul>

Know Your “Walk Away” Point

The next time you are across the table from someone who's not acting in good faith, there are some ways to shift the situation in ways that may defuse tension, align goals, and give you more of an advantage.

Sometimes, you may find yourself across the table from someone negotiating in bad faith. Here are some tactics that can shift the game in your favor. 


marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

communication

Communication

5 tactics that can help you negotiate with jerks

<ul>
<li>EIR- An important issue that people are reluctant to acknowledge or address.</li>
<li>EIB- An important but unacknowledged feature of how our minds work; an introspective taboo.*</li>
</ul>
We, human beings, are a species that’s capable of acting on hidden motives. Our brains are built to act in our own self-interest while at the same time trying hard not to appear selfish in front of other people. Self-deception is therefore strategic, a ploy our brains use to look good while behaving badly.

Elephant In The Room vs Elephant In The Brain

<ul>
<li>Primate grooming is about politics</li>
<li>By grooming each other they help forge alliances that help them in other situations</li>
<li>This explains why grooming time across species is correlated with the size of the social group, but not the amount of fur</li>
<li>Larger groups have, on average, greater political complexity, making alliances more important but also harder to maintain.</li>
</ul>

Animal Behavior

<ul>
<li>Our ancestors got smart primarily to compete against each other in a variety of social and political scenarios.</li>
<li>Social challenges, such as competition for mates, jockeying for social status, coalition politics (alliances, betrayals, etc.), intra-group violence, cheating, and deception, pit humans against other humans and are therefore competitive and potentially destructive.</li>
</ul>

Competition

<ul>
<li>For sociologists and anthropologists, conventions like queueing are known as norms. They're the rules or standards about how members of a community should behave.</li>
<li>Collective enforcement, then, is the essence of norms. This is what enables the egalitarian political order so characteristic of the forager lifestyle.</li>
</ul>

Norms

<ul>
<li>Norm-evaders and norm-enforcers are locked in a competitive arms race of their own-a game of cat and mouse-pushing each other ever upward in mental ability.</li>
<li>Our norms are only partially enforced, so we need big brains to figure out how to cheat.</li>
</ul>

Cheating

<ul>
<li>The perverse incentives of mixed-motive games lead to option-limiting and other actions that seem irrational, but are actually strategic</li>
<li>Closing or degrading a channel of communication</li>
<li>Ignoring information, also known as strategic ignorance</li>
<li>Purposely believing something that’s false</li>
<li>A general who firmly believes his army can win, even though the odds are against it, might nevertheless intimidate your opponent into backing down</li>
<li>Convince others that you’ve sabotaged yourself.</li>
</ul>

Self-Deception

When we use the term "motives," we're referring to the underlying causes of our behavior, whether we're conscious of them or not.
Reasons can be true, false, or somewhere in between (e.g., cherry-picked). One of the most effective ways to rationalize is by telling half-truths.

Counterfeit Reasons

<ul>
<li>Human beings are strategically blind to body language because it often betrays our ugly, selfish, competitive motives</li>
<li>A cue is similar to a signal, in that it conveys information, except that it benefits only the receiver</li>
<li>An open posture makes a person vulnerable</li>
<li>Much of the thrill and drama of courtship lies in struggling to decipher the other's mixed signals</li>
<li>When we feel comfortable around others, we touch them and allow ourselves to be touched</li>
<li>Eye contact is considered an act of aggression.</li>
</ul>

Body Language

<ul>
<li>We laugh far more often in social settings than when we are alone</li>
<li>It's a vocalization, a sound, and it serves the purpose of active communication</li>
<li>When we laugh at our own actions, it's a signal to our playmates that our intentions are ultimately playful</li>
<li>In other species, laughter occurs even in other species</li>
<li>The danger of laughter is the fact that we don't all share the same norms to the same degree</li>
<li>What's sacred to one person can be an object of mere play to another.</li>
</ul>

Laughter

Speakers strive to impress their audience by consistently delivering impressive remarks.
They're compensated not in-kind, by receiving information reciprocally, but rather by raising their social value in the eyes (and ears) of their listeners.

Conversation

<ul>
<li>We are stuck in a rat race</li>
<li>No matter how fast the economy grows, there remains a limited supply of sex and social status-and earning and spending money is still a good way to compete for it</li>
<li>The easier it is to judge someone based on a particular product, the more it will be advertised using cultural images and lifestyle associations.</li>
</ul>

Consumption

<ul>
<li>While ecological selection (the pressure to survive) abhors waste, sexual selection often favors it</li>
<li>Because replicas are cheap relative to the originals, we'll pay less to see a much wider variety</li>
<li>We find attractive things that could have been produced only by people with attractive, high-fitness qualities</li>
<li>A live performance, or an improvised one, succeeds by putting the artists' talents on full display.</li>
</ul>

<ul>
<li>According to one calculation, for the cost of sending a kid through college in America, you could instead save the lives of more than 50 children in sub-Saharan Africa</li>
<li>The main recipients of American charity are religious groups and educational institutions</li>
<li>When we evaluate charity-related behaviors, gross inefficiencies don't seem to bother us</li>
<li>For example, wealthy people often perform unskilled volunteer work, even when their time is worth vastly more on the open market.</li>
</ul>

Charity

<ul>
<li>If a small amount of useful learning takes place, then sending every citizen to school will result in only a small increase in the nation's overall productivity</li>
<li>Meanwhile, when you're an individual student within a nation, getting more school can substantially increase your future earnings</li>
<li>The top U.S. colleges draw their mystique from zero-sum competition.</li>
</ul>

Education

<ul>
<li>Each party is hoping to earn a bit of loyalty from the patient in exchange for helping to provide care.</li>
<li>In part, it's a simple quid pro quo: "I'll help you this time if you'll help me when the tables are turned."</li>
<li>When choosing between doctors, people typically focus on the prestige of their school or hospital, instead of their individual track records for patient outcomes.</li>
</ul>

Medicine

<ul>
<li>Beliefs are often better modeled as symptoms of underlying incentives, which are frequently social rather than psychological</li>
<li>We don't worship simply because we believe, we worship (and believe) because it helps us as social creatures</li>
<li>A religion is an entire social system</li>
<li>Actions speak louder than words</li>
<li>Rituals of sacrifice are honest signals that are hard to fake</li>
<li>People who believe they risk punishment for disobeying God are more likely to behave well.</li>
</ul>

Religion

<ul>
<li>People do not vote for their material self-interest</li>
<li>Instead, they vote for the candidates and policies that would make them personally better off</li>
<li>We tend to vote for our groups' interests</li>
<li>For our beliefs to function as loyalty signals, we have to believe things that are beyond reason, things that other, less-loyal people wouldn't believe.</li>
</ul>

Politics

<ul>
<li>We ignore the elephant because doing so is strategic.</li>
<li>Self-deception allows us to act selfishly without having to appear quite so selfish in front of others.</li>
<li>Another benefit to confronting our hidden motives is that, if we choose, we can take steps to mitigate or counteract them.</li>
<li>One promising approach to institutional reform is to acknowledge people's need to show off, but to divert their efforts away from wasteful activities and toward those with bigger benefits and positive externalities.</li>
</ul>

Conclusion

A phenomenal book on understanding your own "hidden motivations in everyday life" and why we do what we do. Widely applicable to all parts of life, and the kind of explanations you can't stop thinking about after reading.

Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus we don't like to talk or even think about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain." Such an introspective taboo makes it hard for us to think clearly about our nature and the explanations for our behavior. The aim of this book, then, is to confront our hidden motives directly - to track down the darker, unexamined corners of our psyches and blast them with floodlights. Then, once everything is clearly visible, we can work to better understand ourselves: Why do we laugh? Why are artists sexy? Why do we brag about travel? Why do we prefer to speak rather than listen? Our unconscious motives drive more than just our private behavior; they also infect our venerated social institutions such as Art, School, Charity, Medicine, Politics, and Religion. In fact, these institutions are in many ways designed to accommodate our hidden motives, to serve covert agendas alongside their "official" ones. The existence of big hidden motives can upend the usual political debates, leading one to question the legitimacy of these social institutions, and of standard policies designed to favor or discourage them. You won't see yourself - or the world - the same after confronting the elephant in the brain.

books

Books

Human beings are primates, and primates are political animals. Our brains, therefore, are designed not just to hunt and gather, but also to help us get ahead socially, often via deception and self-deception. But while we may be self-interested schemers, we benefit by pretending otherwise. The less we know about our own ugly motives, the better - and thus we don't like to talk or even think about the extent of our selfishness. This is "the elephant in the brain." Such an introspective taboo makes it hard for us to think clearly about our nature and the explanations for our behavior. The aim of this book, then, is to confront our hidden motives directly - to track down the darker, unexamined corners of our psyches and blast them with floodlights. Then, once everything is clearly visible, we can work to better understand ourselves: Why do we laugh? Why are artists sexy? Why do we brag about travel? Why do we prefer to speak rather than listen? Our unconscious motives drive more than just our private behavior; they also infect our venerated social institutions such as Art, School, Charity, Medicine, Politics, and Religion. In fact, these institutions are in many ways designed to accommodate our hidden motives, to serve covert agendas alongside their "official" ones. The existence of big hidden motives can upend the usual political debates, leading one to question the legitimacy of these social institutions, and of standard policies designed to favor or discourage them. You won't see yourself - or the world - the same after confronting the elephant in the brain.

Kevin Simler is a writer and software engineer currently living in Brooklyn, NY. He's worked for ten years as a programmer, product designer, and engineering director, and continues to advise startups about technology, leadership, and recruiting. 

Kevin Simler

Robin Hanson is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He has a doctorate in social science, master's degrees in physics and philosophy, and nine years of experience as a research programmer in artificial intelligence and Bayesian statistics. With over 3100 citations and sixty academic publications, he's recognized not only for his contributions to economics (especially, pioneering the theory and use of prediction markets), but also for the wide range of fields in which he's been published. He is the author of The Age of Em: Work, Love, and Life when Robots Rule the Earth (OUP 2016).

Robin Hanson

The Elephant in the Brain

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

Direct when a person: <ul><li>Is new in a role </li><li>Is new to the company </li><li>Is new to the client/customer </li><li>Has new job responsibilities or tasks Has new ways of working</li></ul>

Direct when the employee has low competence

Delegate when a person has: <ul><li>Some experience in the role </li><li>A track record or competence </li><li>A sensitive task or client Confidence in their abilities Similar ways of working</li></ul>

Delegate when the employee has moderate to high competence

Develop when the person:<ul><li>Has extensive experience</li><li>Has demonstrated evidence of competency</li><li>Has experienced similar clients or task sensitivities</li><li>Is growing new competences</li><li>Is trying new approaches</li></ul>

Develop when the employee has high competence and high commitment

Have you ever wondered why the head of a baseball team is called the manager and the head of a basketball team is called the coach? (These are the kinds of things I sometimes ponder on long airplane rides.) The answer has to do not just with the obvious differences between [...]

Know When to Manage and When to Coach

The true art of memory is the art of attention

"The true art of memory is the art of attention." - Samuel Johnson quotes from BrainyQuote.com

Samuel Johnson Quotes

People who are successful in big hierarchical organizations are promoted again and again until they reach a level of incompetence.  Then they never get promoted again and are stuck there for life.

The Peter Principle

People will advance in their careers because they have high skills in a specific task. But when they are promoted, these skills are often irrelevant to the new job. For example, a sales rep may be able to sell well, but when they are promoted to sales manager and don't receive training, they may not have the necessary skills to manage other people and might even be despised by their team. As a result, they may work harder to compensate for their lack of skills.

How the Peter principle work

Lawrence Peter and Raymond Hull first introduced the Peter Principle in 1969. Since then, it has been often discussed in the area of leadership. In 2018, researchers analyzed sales workers' performance and promotion practices and found that high-performing sales reps were more likely to be promoted, regardless of their managerial potential which led to high costs to the businesses.

The Peter principle research

The Peter Principle argues that people who have success in big hierarchical organizations are promoted until they reach their own "level of incompetence”. Here they are often stuck for life. Let´s look at the story about David and Diana, two graduates, who first met at a sales training. They were so proud to have gotten a job in which they could actually help people. Little did they know, that they had joined one of the most dangerous organizations in modern America. A special thank you to our patrons: Avigail, Badrah, Cedric Wang, Eva Marie Koblin, Denis Kraus, Don Bone, John Zhang, Julien Dumesnil, Mathis Nu, and all the others!!! You keep us going! If you want to join us, visit http://www.patreon.com/sprouts Read the entire script here. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle#The_Peter_Principle https://www.nber.org/papers/w24343 http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/Papers/pdf/00-04.pdf https://igormroz.com/documents/netflix_culture.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sackler https://drugabuse.com/oxycodone/history-statistics/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/ http://documents.latimes.com/oxycontin-press-release-1996/

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

videos

Videos

The Peter Principle argues that people who have success in big hierarchical organizations are promoted until they reach their own "level of incompetence”. Here they are often stuck for life.

Let´s look at the story about David and Diana, two graduates, who first met at a sales training. They were so proud to have gotten a job in which they could actually help people. Little did they know, that they had joined one of the most dangerous organizations in modern America.
 
A special thank you to our patrons: Avigail, Badrah, Cedric Wang, Eva Marie Koblin, Denis Kraus, Don Bone, John Zhang, Julien Dumesnil, Mathis Nu, and all the others!!! You keep us going!
If you want to join us, visit http://www.patreon.com/sprouts 
 
Read the entire script here.
 
Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle#The_Peter_Principle
https://www.nber.org/papers/w24343
http://www-siepr.stanford.edu/Papers/pdf/00-04.pdf

https://igormroz.com/documents/netflix_culture.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sackler
https://drugabuse.com/oxycodone/history-statistics/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/
http://documents.latimes.com/oxycontin-press-release-1996/

We make educational videos  about psychology, pedagogy and child development. We publish them on Creative Commons so students, teachers and parents can to use for free. To download our videos go to www.sproutsschools.com. To support our work go to www.patreon.com/sprouts

Sprouts

Peter Principle: When People Get Promoted Into Maximum Incompetence

Innovation is about offering value and changing the world. If you innovate to bring a difference in people’s lives, the money will follow eventually. But money shouldn’t be your first agenda.

Make Meaning, Not Money

Your meaning leads to mantra which is the summary of the difference you want to make. Stick to 2 to 3 words mission statement that summarises what you do. The shorter the mission statement the more clearer your path is.

Make A Mantra, Not Mission

Don’t stick to achieving 10% better from your current innovation. Create something new instead of continuously working on the existing product. Don’t limit yourself and stick to the same curve. Move to the next one.

Jump To The Next Curve.

Features of great innovation:<ul><li>Deep – The features and functionalities of great innovation are deep.</li><li>Intelligent – At the same time, great innovation is intelligent. Ford’s MyKey can control the top speed of the car through the key. Quite smart!</li><li>Complete – You can differentiate great products from mediocre by their totality, their completeness.</li><li>Empowering – Innovations that enhance your life and way of working are empowering products. They have the capability to change your life.</li><li>Elegance – An innovation offers a great design and user experience.</li></ul>

Roll The DICEE

Don’t wait for perfection when you innovate. A valuable innovation can have elements of crappiness.So, don’t worry about the flaws. Instead, ship your innovation with revolutionary outcomes. If it’s on the next curve, elements of crappiness don’t matter.

Dont Worry, Be Crappy

Your product may solve a particular problem. And you may have a specific audience in mind. Later, your product could be used & perceived in a new way by people you had never thought of.The positioning of your innovation ultimately comes down to what consumers decide. But don’t worry about that. Allow a hundred flowers to bloom from one seed and cherish a garden.

Let 100 Flowers Blossom

Be ready to polarize people with your innovations. Who says a great innovation doesn’t have critics? Your innovation might make only a small segment of people happy.Apple is a typical example. Those who don’t use an iPhone criticize it for its cost and niche features. But only an apple user has the heart to shell out what they pay for.So, don’t worry if your innovation draws negative attention. Worry if people are indifferent about it.

Polarise People

When you ship your product with a bit of crappiness, you have a scope to improve. Make new versions of your innovation, and then create another better version. Keep evolving to make a great product.

Churn Baby Churn

A great product is both valuable and unique. If your innovation is missing any of these, it might fall into the trope of mediocrity.

Niche Yourself

Naysayers will interrupt and criticize. Don’t let bozos bog down your spirits.Bozos are either the losers themselves or the rich and famous people you might perceive as correct in negating your meaning and mantra. They are still stuck in their curves and don’t appreciate the next curve you are standing at.

Dont Let The Bozoz Grind You Down

Follow the 10-20-30 rule:Have 10 slides to proposition your product. Explain these slides in 20 minutes and use 30 points fonts. With these fonts and 10 slides, you are bound to explain your innovation succinctly—need of the time.

Perfect Your Pitch

Great ideas are not lacking, its the art of innovation that does. Therefore, these 10 tips are recommendedto all entrepreneurs or product owners who are responsible for innovation.

We all come up with ideas everyday. Some od those of those ideas have the potential to revolutionalize mankind. These tips will help many entrepreneurs, thinkers and innovators to go a step further in packaging their ideas, delivering and executing them.

InnovationManagement.se is one of the internet’s preeminent resources for innovation news and best practices, and is consistently recognized as a top-ten innovation blog globally.

business

Business

startup

Startups

The Art Of Innovation | 10 Things To Learn From Guy Kawasaki

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