The Ruthless Math Of Relationships (Don’t Try This Alone)

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The Ruthless Math of Relationships
(Don’t try this alone)

It felt like I had won the lottery. At least what I imagined that would feel like.
An unexpected windfall of riches and resources suddenly deposited on my side of the ledger.

Work friends threw a farewell party for me and quite the party it was! The venue was stunning. The food was exceptional. The memories flowed in animated conversations.

We were al major shareholders celebrating a long- term investment of time, effort and work relationship that had gone well.

I had given leadership to a bunch of ordinary radicals and visionary misfits who like me were determined to make a difference in this world in the.

While the event was about me and our time together, in so many ways it wasn’t.

Most of us had worked side by side for many years. Others were newer to the scene. So,through it all, we enjoyed fights, jealousies, pettiness, arguments, faith, tears and tragedy, laughter and joy.

You know, – all that messed up pile of human-ness that makes for genuine community.

Some of us watched each other’s kids grow up. At times, we vexed each other beyond words, then managed to pull it from the brink, forgive, reconcile, hug it out, and refocus.

In the end, it was a celebration of compound interest in invested lives.

Here’s the Math Part 

As a kid, I disliked math. It didn’t help that I never had a good math teacher.
Besides, my active juvenile brain was saying “way too boring!”

The irony is that now I work with math every day. I now appreciate the unyielding inerrancy of good math.

Whether you’re arguing a parking ticket, buying truckloads of concrete, or convincing a board of directors these budget numbers really work, you’ve got have the math right or you’re dead in the water.

Math done right doesn’t lie!

One of my favorite math formulas is the one for exponential growth:


A” is the ending amount, “P” is the beginning amount (or “principal”), “r” is the interest rate (expressed as a decimal), “n” is the number of times compounded in a year, and “t” is the total number of years.

It’s the formula for the compound interest that savvy investors have employed for centuries.

Some have called it the eighth wonder of the world.

Let me explain it this way:

There’s a picturesque pond with a small patch of lily pads. The little lily patch doubles every day.

If it takes forty-eight days to cover the whole pond, how many days to cover half of the pond?

Our linear way of thinking screams twenty-four. Wrong!
The answer is forty-seven days.
Compound interest is difficult to grasp because it is difficult to think exponentially. In other words, we think by 1 + 1 + 1 = 3.

The principle of compound interest uses exponential growth, and like the lily pad, it takes forty-seven days to accomplish half of the pond and then BAM!

Only one more day to accomplish what was done in the previous forty-seven.

 So that begs a question. What if we applied the same mathematical law to the social currency of our relationships? 

Here’s the Relationship Part

In her 2014 book “The Village Effect” psychologist Susan Pinker provides compelling evidence of our need to invest in face to face human relationships.

From the flap: “As humans, we’re hardwired to connect with others. Direct contact matters: tight bonds of friendship and love heal us, help children learn, extend our lives and make us happy. Not just any social networks will do: we need real in-the-flesh encounters that tie human families, groups of friends, and communities together.

In one of the lengthiest longitudinal studies ever, Harvard researchers undertook a multi-generational 75-year study. The Grant and Glueck study tracked the physical and emotional well-being of two socio-economic groups: 456 poor men growing up in Boston from 1939 to 2014 (the Grant Study), and 268 male graduates from Harvard’s classes of 1939-1944 (the Glueck study).

Bottom line?

You guessed it.

The clear message that we get from this 75-year study is this:

Good relationships matter, Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Being a world-beater in a chosen field, or having tons of money doesn’t matter a whit in the long run.

Begs the question: Can a precise law of math be applied to the social currency of relationships?

From lived experience, I’d say a resounding “yes”!

Only one minor caveat. Our flawed human nature messes the variables somewhat, but in general, the principle still works fine.

Author James Clear in his book “Atomic Habits” says

“Time will multiply and compound whatever you feed it.” 

That goes for the relationships that matter in our portfolio of relational investments.

Something to Think About. 

What if we asked investment type questions around our relationships?

What is my investment timeline? Am I prepared to be patient?
What is my tolerance for risk here?
Does this investment pay dividends? Am I happy with the results?
Can I ride out a reversal?
Am I comfortable with the costs associated? (time, effort, emotional energy)
What is my strategy for allocation? One-time invest? Regular deposits? Both?
Do I double down, reinvest, buy and hold, or cash out?

Something to Do

Check your list.
See who matters
Do the math
Invest regularly and often

The windfall of rich benefits will astound you!

PS. A deep heartfelt thank-you to all of you who made my farewell such a memorable time for me and my family. I’ll cherish your kindness forever. 

As usual, I’m thrilled if you check in with me.
Call, text, email, smoke signals.
Here to help.

2020: Blessed, Stressed and Downright Hard (Revisiting The BIG WHY)

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2020: Blessed, Stressed, and Downright Hard.
(Revisiting The Big Why ) 

Too soon to debrief 2020?
C’mon, admit it. You’ve been thinking about that as well.
It wasn’t as though you didn’t have a plan. Getting lambasted by massive upheaval has seen a lot of plans, hopes, and dreams go flying out the window.
(not to mention jobs and in some instances, personal and mental health, and well-being)

LEADERSHIP IS HARD 
Finding personal motivation for hanging in there when the going is particularlychallenging is a key to forming resilience.
Having a clear personal reason for leading—a  “Big Why”—is not only a good strategy but it’s the secret sauce for developing sustainable resilience and tenacity that perseveres when resistance arises.
Usually, I’m pretty resilient. My rear-view mirror “take” on this past year is like that great line from the 1976 flick Gumball Rally.
(1st rule of Italian driving)
“What’s a behind me,…. is not important!
For whatever reason, when I face the worst, it fires me up to become positive, driven, and eager to be part of building a better solution.
On the other hand, the monumental difficulties of this last year have caused the empath part of me to be working double overtime.
I need to hit the pause button every once and a while to remind myself and those around me, that there are still a lot of good things going on and we can we live hopefully and with courage in this coming year.

Author Simon Sinek burst onto the public scene making one point: “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” in his TED Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” (52 million views), Sinek lays out his view that the key to bringing change is to “start with ‘why.’” Your inner motivation or purpose is directly linked to rallying others to buy-in to a cause.

START WITH WHY
In the talk he draws a diagram of three circles; the center circle is labeled “why” and two outer rings are labeled “what” and “how.” “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” he says. The key factor for bringing change to the world is not in the strategies (the what) or the tactics (the how) but in the motivation (the why). For Sinek, the key to unlocking change is to find those people who share at the center of their being your same central beliefs and motivations and engage them in joining you.

Leadership, at its core, is about gathering people together to create value, in order to accomplish or produce something worthwhile that needs to be done. That mission is usually focused on a need or pain point that if addressed, benefits everyone, and makes our world a better place.

In this way, leadership is born not of the desire to lead but—at the center of our being—a desire to serve others in light of the painful realities of the world. It flows not from a desire to achieve, succeed, or accomplish, but to serve others at the point of real need and in turn experience that as one’s own calling.

For most of us, this is straightforward enough. For those of us whose leadership is characterized by words like transformation and mission, we are eager to make a difference and meet those needs. It’s a big part of how success is measured on our scorecard.

The prolonged Pandemic threat has had a blunt-force-blessing effect by forcing an examination of the status quo, plus adding some new perspectives.
Existential threats tend to do that.

  • The business world as we know it is transforming and resizing.

  • We’re personally needing to adapt, transform, and resize our worlds as well, to accommodate imposed changes.

  • Relationships have taken on fresh new meaning and value.

  • Simplicity, complexity, and uncertainty seem to cheerfully co-exist everywhere.

  • Usefulness and people’s time have become a new form of currency.

As I engage with executives and leaders, the recurring themes are eerily familiar; Survive, stay together, deal with rampant anxiety, regain a market share, return an organization to sustainability, or even “save the company.” The question before any leader of an organization is to “save the company for what?”

Fact is, the end-user of whatever product or service you work hard to produce, may not care all that much if your organization survives.

What they do care about is if you care about them!

Resilient leaders endure through resistance because of the deep care they have for people in pain in the world and the deep belief that their organization, institution, or company is meant to meet that need. The Big Why (Purpose) is both critical for an effective strategy and vital for forming the resilience to see it through.

It’s All About Purpose 
One of the best statements of “Purpose” comes from the ubiquitous Agent Smith character in Matrix Reloaded. I always liked Smith’s banal politeness, even while he’s trying to kill you.

“There’s no escaping reason, no denying purpose, for as we both know, without purpose we would not exist.
It is purpose that created us,
 purpose that connects us,
purpose that pulls us, that guides us, that drives us;
it is purpose that defines, purpose that binds us.”
Agent Smith

I doubt if Mr. Sinek could say it any better.

Thinking It Through 
How would you describe your personal “Big Why”?
What is your deepest reason for life and service?
What is your motivation for developing resilience as a leader?
How does your ‘Big Why’ help you face the challenges that come from leading and serving other people?

Until next time.
Lorne

 

 

 

 

Habits, Rules and Our Quirky Human Nature

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I don’t watch a lot of television .

That said, one show that gets airtime at our house is called NCIS.
Let’s just say my wife is a fan.

It’s a popular 15 year plus series that follows the escapades of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service’s (NCIS) Washington, D.C. Major Case Response Team, led by Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. 

Team leader Special Agent Gibbs (played by Mark Harmon), is a tightly wound, monosyllabic type with steely blue eyes and a tense jaw twitch that flares whenever he’s pissed off, which is pretty much all the time.

The other notable thing about Gibbs is that he lives by a set of iron-clad rules. His rules, accumulated over time, are his worldview and personal guide for life. Appropriate to the series, they are a sure-fire checklist for solving all sorts of heinous crimes. His team has to get acquainted with his rules pretty quick if they are going to understand Gibbs or survive his highly driven personality.

Gibbs’ Rule #8: “Never take anything for granted.”

It all started when his first wife, Shannon told him that “Everyone needs a code they can live by” After their wedding, Gibbs began writing his rules down, keeping them in a small tin inside his home. Though he uses the tin full of handwritten rules often, we almost never see it.

Gibb’s Rules has spawned its own website and an entire spinoff industry of T-shirts mugs, posters and plaques. See: 

“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.” Thoreau 

Point is, we all have personal rules and corresponding habits that form around them.

I recently poured through the book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhag and skimmed Atomic Habits by James Clear. Both authors make that point that our internal rules and habits are insanely powerful.

No matter if it’s the Ten Commandments or Gibb’s Rules, how we engage with rules and habits governs just about everything. It dramatically impacts our personal well-being, productivity, and overall happiness.

Researcher and author Gretchen Rubin who is best known for The Happiness Project offers some remarkable insights on how we interact with rules, – both our own and those imposed by others. 

Surprise, surprise!
No one size fits all.
We have widely varying responses to rules that shape and govern our lives. 

Rubin outlines four broad categories as a framework of understanding on how we respond to rules. People tend to fall into these four general response categories.

OBLIGERS 

Obligers are great at meeting outer expectations. They deliver projects on time in a dutiful fashion when someone else is counting on them They struggle with inner expectations, such as setting personal resolutions. They become discouraged when trying to adopt new habits because they’ve tried and failed in the past. They need outer accountability to meet inner expectations,” says Rubin. “They do well with deadlines and team supervision.

There are hundreds of ways to build outer accountability, and that’s what obligers need.

QUESTIONERS 

There are Questioners who question all expectations. They will follow the rules, but only if it makes sense. They want to know why they should do something because they have a deep commitment to logic and efficiency. This tendency can be viewed as being disrespectful or insubordinate because they seem like they’re trying to undermine authority. Some workplaces (or families for that matter) reward questioning and some absolutely don’t. Questioners generally need to learn how to ask questions in respectful ways. 


REBELS

Rebels resist all expectations, outer and inner. They do what they want to do in the way and when they want to do it, acting from a source of freedom, choice, and self-expression. When someone else tries to get a rebel to do something, they resist.
“Identity is so important to the rebel,” says Rubin. “For example, a rebel might resist going to a 10 a.m. staff meeting because they hate being told where to go and when to show up.” 

If you’re a rebel, it might just help to be not too self -absorbed with it. Just remind yourself of the example you’re setting or the goals you want to accomplish. 


UPHOLDERS 

Upholders are good at meeting inner and outer expectations. They meet deadlines, thrive under rules and expectations, and keep resolutions without too much of a problem. Rubin is self-admitted upholder, which is why she had an easy time completing her Happiness Project.

While this tendency sounds like productivity perfection, one of an upholder’s issues is that they can be seen as rigid, having a hard time switching gears when circumstances change. They also struggle when they’re in an environment that has an emphasis on flexibility If there is a rule, they don’t break it.”
If you’re an upholder, you thrive under routines and schedules. You can do what you want to do once you decide, says Rubin.


She explains it all beautifully here. https://youtu.be/gBNEVXg2CNU
Grab a coffee and give it a look. Well worth the watch. Recommend.



“If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?” Charlie Brown


Something to Think About

Our personal tendency around rules shapes every aspect of our behavior, so understanding this framework of responses lets us make better decisions, meet deadlines, suffer less stress and burnout, and engage with others more effectively. The framework helps explain why we act and why we don’t act.


Something to Do

Check your personal inventory of rules and habits. Maybe some things need “Kondo-izing”.
The world around us is constantly changing, yet there are things we cling to for no apparent reason other than it’s become a comfortable habit. A self-imposed rule may no longer be relevant.

The better you understand yourself, your own nature, your own temperament, your own habits, your own values, the better you can engage with others and the rules of life. 

Have a great month!

As always, I really appreciate your thoughts, observations, questions and comments.  

We’re doing important things together in this world, so I love hearing about what’s happening for you!  
(or even what kind of coffee you’re enjoying this month)

Drop me a text or an email. I’d like that.

Lorne  604 6174707