Success through values, meaning, purpose, importance, and passion
I posted the following in response to a bunch of articles I've read about a report co-authored by over a dozen science-related organizations describing how reducing funding for science has led to research and the benefits it brings to society leaving the U.S. --- The writing on the wall became apparent to me with the 1993 cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider, when I was getting my PhD in physics. I didn't know the numbers for a cost-benefit analysis, but I couldn't then nor can I now see cancellation as helpful to the U.S. The U.S. would have stayed way ahead of the rest of the world in particle physics and all the accompanying jobs, discoveries, and innovation. Instead we look to the rest of…
Today's post is about one of the most concise yet most meaningful sayings about the workplace I've heard: People join good projects and leave bad management. Besides the poignant humor nearly everyone feels when, on first hearing the phrase, they remember projects they enthusiastically joined only to find their optimism ruined by an intolerable relationship with a manager, it has meaning on many other levels. My goal in this post, as in this blog, is to help raise awareness about a problem and describe solutions. In this case also to publicize the phrase, which I consider useful and funny and not nearly well-known enough for how useful and funny it is. Searching on the phrase links to my first post on this phrase. More importantly,…
I finished a book the other day I'd been meaning to read for at least a decade -- Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, released in 1962. I posted a summary below. I also understood it influenced thought a lot. I had to speak to a few people who were adults when it came out to understand its impact at the time, which they assured me was colossal -- a common-sense bolt out of the blue from a humble woman who simply researched and compiled information anyone else could have. It seems, like Vietnam, one of the major turning points about which the American people began to question their government and find it didn't consistently act in their interests. In fact, it seemed often to work…
My mom grew up on a farm in South Dakota -- the kind where she and her siblings had to walk through snow up to here miles to a one-room schoolhouse. I can't imagine growing up on a farm like that. Her little sister, my Aunt Ellen, visited recently. I don't remember the details of Ellen's learning music growing up, but here's my understanding. She got a hold of a cheap guitar from somewhere, got a record player, and figured out how to play the guitar playing along with records until her fingers bled. I'm pretty sure my grandmother made them all learn music since my mom plays the piano, but I'm pretty sure Aunt Ellen taught herself guitar alone. I don't remember the details…
When someone gets animated others often describe them as emotional: "John is acting so emotional" "Jane got so emotional when Ryan said ..." and things like that. I'd like to suggest an alternative perspective I think you'll find more precise and useful: Everybody feels emotions all the time. What's the difference? When someone sits quietly reading, they aren't acting or feeling unemotional. I suggest the are feeling and acting on emotions as much as anyone. They may feel calmness, relaxation, satisfaction, or something like that, but those are emotions. They aren't feeling no emotion. Emotions motivate you. If you got out of bed this morning, something motivated you and you felt some emotion. No emotion means lying in your bed until you die. An animated…
Yesterday I mentioned I would debut a new page design for joshuaspodek.com. Here it is! You're only seeing part of it now since, deciding we'd rather release something and force ourselves to fix bugs fast than wait and try to get it perfect, we're releasing it in stages. So far you're seeing just the basics Blog and About pages. If we did it right, you can access the whole blog as usual. If not, please send me bug reports or problems. Over the next few weeks we'll open up other sections we've already almost finished. As always, I welcome your thoughts -- praise, constructive criticism, ... whatever.
Life has only one finishing line, which is when you die (I hope I didn't break that news to you). Everything else is a part of life -- no more an end to one thing before than a beginning to something else. That view seems inarguable. Whatever happens to you, no matter how much you like it or not, if you haven't died you'll continue past it. So how can anything be a failure? Sure, you can call any result a failure, but you never have to. If it didn't go your way, you still haven't finished yet, so you can still make something of it. Everyone has had things go the opposite of how they wanted from the most successful person to the least.…
Some things seems obvious after the fact. A trick to success in business and life is making productive and effective things happen. Today's post is not about discovering bartering, which happens all the time. It's about social and business skills -- a major topic of this blog -- and using them to create success. A one-time arrangement is nice. The ability to see opportunities and make them happen makes for a great career and life. Context If things go as planned, the first stage of my new web page will roll out Friday afternoon. I'm excited about how it will look. Nothing crazy. On the contrary -- simple, without changing too much from the current, soon-to-be-old, look. Here's a shot of the old look for…
I've come to enjoy giving presentations, but no way did I start this way. I was mortified to speak in public only a few years ago, well into my thirties. How did I grow and develop to love public speaking? The same way as anyone. Experience. In my life experience means failing and getting back up again. It means overcoming embarrassment and anxiety, risking being laughed at, acting like I know what I'm doing when I don't feel like I do, hoping they don't notice my fear, ... you know what I'm talking about. Maybe it's just me, but I think the quintessential fear of putting yourself out for others to evaluate you is to feel like when you were picked on as a child.…
Two days ago a guy named Satya Narayan Goenka died. Who was Goenka and why should I care? First, I'll mention how I found out about him. I had no experience with meditation when a longtime friend I hadn't seen in a while suggested I try it. The idea made no sense to me because meditation made no sense to me. I didn't know or care about it to that point in my life -- somewhere around 2006. But my friend knew me a long time and I valued her perspective. I decided to try a ten-day meditation retreat, I guess like jumping in the deep end -- these retreats allow no talking, reading, writing, etc for the first nine days. You can leave if…
I try to understand people. I think doing so improves my relationships with them and my understanding of myself. I find feeling compassion for others helps me improve my relationships with them too. Same with empathy. I find taking responsibility for my emotions helps me improve my life and keeps me from blaming others. I see taking that responsibility as improving my life as much as anything. Taking responsibility for someone else's emotions, on the other hand, I see helping no one. Did I just contradict myself? Why do I value compassion, empathy, and responsibility for my emotions but not responsibility for someone else's? "Josh," you ask, "aren't you undermining your compassion and empathy? Are you saying that if you saw a child lost and…
If you read this blog you know I write a lot about beliefs and mental models and how they filter how you perceive your environment and influence your motivations and behavior. If you've read my series on my Model or taken my leadership seminar, you know that models can diverge from what you perceive with your senses and still be more effective than one you consider more accurate. I often illustrate this effect with a few well-known examples, like Men Are From Mars, Woman Are From Venus. I'm not sure how effectively the book helped people, but the model simply and clearly enabled people to see differences between men and women. It worked despite being wildly inaccurate since, in fact, all men and all women…
I didn't mean to write yesterday's post on starting with emotion on exercise, food, and habits. I meant to contrast how I like to exercise with how people who don't exercise seem to and then to tell today's story. People who don't exercise seem to characterize it as torture and dislike it. I see it as fun and rewarding. Sometimes it feels like torture, but only when I know the feeling of exhaustion to follow that I know I'll appreciate more than I dislike the torture. I love being fit. Today I'll share a funny story about it. Context Living by the Hudson River means I can run without having to stop at traffic lights in Hudson River Park, which the city has slowly been improving.…
I find Americans try to get precise and scientific about food and exercise, in contrast to how incredibly unfit the country is. I write "try to" because I don't think they succeed in being precise or scientific. The term carbohydrate, for example, used to have a specific scientific meaning. I think it still does, but I think in standard American usage it means "bad" or "evil," like the term fat used to. But I don't think people know what carbohydrate means, but it sounds technical. Same with Omega whatever fatty acids, free radicals, and so on. Same with exercise. People throw around terms like anaerobic, cardiovascular, and VO2 max like candy, rarely knowing what they mean. Jargon devoid of meaning. More than devoid of meaning,…
I wanted to share an example of effective leadership I once saw. When I was in graduate school, Columbia was considering its policy on allowing the military to have programs like ROTC on campus or not and held hearings anyone in the university could attend to speak their mind. I attended one. The President of the university, Lee Bolinger, ran the event. I had strong feelings about risking militarizing the campus and entered expecting to feel critical of the school and to leave outraged. Instead, I left impressed with Bollinger. I could only conceive then of leadership in the form of command and control so I expected he would try to "lead" participants to an intended outcome. Instead, he acted mostly to moderate. More than anything…
I know some people like working in big companies. They like the feeling of stability, the benefits, the uniformity, I guess. Regular readers know I prefer small companies, especially having co-founded one. Why? Because of big company culture. One incident cemented this perspective for me. I'll tell you the story that made me not like big companies. You may feel I extrapolated too far. Maybe. What turned me off from big companies Co-founding my company was my first experience in business. Before that I was a graduate student. I ran the company as CEO as best I could. Eventually it was no longer a start-up and needed different skills than I had and someone else became CEO. I went to work at a friend's company.…
You don't have emotional intelligence, you were born with it, or you developed it. If you developed it you started sometime, like I did. If you don't have it, you can start too. Here's my start. I don't pretend I'm the world master of emotional intelligence, but I've come a long way and I know anyone else can. I hope sharing the story motivates others. Context Before business school I had barely heard of the concept of emotional intelligence. Since I contrasted emotions with rationality, I considered them irrational and weird, not something to learn about or focus on. Since I connected emotions to feelings, music, art, and romantic comedies, I didn't connect them to behavior. Nor for that matter did I connect behavior to…
Here's an exercise to see your values from a new perspective. I used to do it all the time until I learned my lesson from it, which I'll write at the bottom. Answer the question "how would you improve the world if you could have a magical wish come true?" and follow through to see if the change would, in fact, improve your life. To clarify, I mean a supernatural change outside of what you normally do to improve your life and world. I submit that it's not as easy as you think. Say you had whatever magical powers to change the world however you wanted. Could you improve the world beyond what you could do without the magical powers? Quick answers people jump to…
People struggle over decisions they know will affect others. Their concern for other people sounds important for building and maintaining relationships. Their anxiety, on the other hand, suggests they're missing its source. If they don't know what causes their anxiety, they'll miss the otherwise obvious solution. For some reason, people in challenging situations often withdraw from others. Typical such situations include Figuring out how to tell a client news they don't want to hear You're going to finish late and someone depends on you You broke or lost something someone else values and needs You don't know how to solve a problem Figuring out what restaurant or movie to go to with someone You can come up with plenty of situations They're anxious because they'll…
After yesterday's post on my principle to avoid surprising teammates in business, today I'll mention one of my other top principles in business relationships: I want people I work with glad to have worked with me and wanting to work with me again. Though this one speaks for itself, I think it bears repeating and reinforcing why it works. This principle Puts accountability to the people you work with as one of your top priorities Forces you to think of the team first Forces you to think long-term Forces you to consider other people's values, not just yours Forces you to take responsibility for your relationships, not just to hope for the best Motivates you to communicate with others and check in with them periodically…
I love a surprise birthday party. I love to surprise friends with good news. I once surprised a girlfriend with a Tiffany's necklace. All great experiences. I love surprises with friends. In business I strive not to surprise anyone I work with (competitors I like to surprise)-- not with news I think they don't want to hear, nor with news I think they do want to hear. When I figure out how to involve teammates with information or decisions I often think the words No surprises and it guides me to better outcomes, though sometimes challenging processes. Business opportunities and deals come and go. Relationships last, or they can, at least, if you keep them effective. Not surprising people keeps them wanting to work with…
It's Sunday afternoon. If you didn't know I like watching football. So why am I writing instead of watching? The more relevant question is why I used to watch -- not just football, but anything on TV. When I moved into my apartment almost fourteen years ago I plugged my TV into a coax cable already installed. For some reason, it worked. No cable box, no nothing. I didn't pay for anything, but I got cable quality transmission for regular broadcast channels plus a few cable channels. As long is it was there, why not use it? I had ideas of stopping watching, but having it there made it so easy. So I watched. In time I decreased watching a lot, mainly to nature shows…
Brought to you by the Distinguished Leaders committee of the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of New York (copying the following announcement from that site): Leadership Through Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence In a weekend, learn how to develop your personal leadership skills, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence through the latest advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology. While business schools and corporations are increasingly focusing on personal leadership, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence as foundations for leading others, many MBAs never had the opportunity to take a formal course in personal leadership. Joshua Spodek, MBA, PhD, has developed a two-day weekend workshop in just this area. His experiential course combines advances in cognitive behavioral science, evolutionary psychology, and positive psychology with successful business leadership…
In case anyone was wondering how I was doing on my marathon training, since I hurt my ankle in May and couldn't run on it until August, I thought I might not have enough time to train. Saturday I ran twenty-one miles in hilly Central Park. The bottoms of my feet hurt, but I felt otherwise great. The weekend before I ran twelve miles on each of Saturday and Sunday. The weekend before that I ran eighteen miles. I've been running five or six miles two or three days on weekdays. So I feel good about the full marathon November 3, assuming no injury. I have some blisters and chafing, which can force you to stop even if your heart, lungs, and legs can otherwise…
How can you expect to lead others if you can't lead yourself? This post, like most of mine, is about leadership. If you can't lead yourself, how can you expect to lead others? If you don't understand your emotions and motivations and how to create the ones you want in yourself, how do you expect to do so with others? Alternatively, the better you can lead yourself, the better you can lead others and, for that matter, yourself the next time. Since most of us want to eat differently than we do and others are constantly trying to motivate us to eat like they want us to, eating is a great place to learn leadership skills. Who do you want leading your eating habits, you…
