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My full review of Dan Pink’s “Drive”…

…as posted to amazon.com and GoodReads.com.

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I read 39 books in 2009, just “a few” shy of my goal of 50. Thanks to a little nudge from Art Johnson (@artjohnson) and some tips from Julien Smith, I’ve set my 2010 sights just a little bit higher: a book a week, for a total of 52.

I got the list off to a good start this evening when I finished Dan Pink’s latest, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Interestingly, one of the first books I read in 2009 was also one of his, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

Part Three is the “Type I Toolkit”, which includes suggestions, reading lists, and other tools for individuals and organizations to help them become more Type I. As Pink says, Type I’s are made, not born, and this toolkit can help you remake yourself, or your organization, as a Type I.
Perhaps the most damning statement about the current state of affairs comes in the sentence: “Unfortunately…the modern workplace’s most notable feature may be its lack of engagement and its disregard for mastery.”  Longtime readers of my blogs know that mastery is a concept I’ve long thought and written about. Pink’s chapter on mastery in the context of work pulls together many ideas that I’ve struggled with over the years. This chapter alone was worth the price of the book.
All the rest is an excellent bonus.

Part One of the book explores the evolution of the motivation “operating systems” at play throughout human history and how the science of motivation is leading us to version 3.0 of that Motivation OS. Or, at least, how it should be leading us to this new version. I found it fascinating that much of what Pink describes in the book is not new at all, but has been known for several decades.

Known and ignored. Known and actively buried buy those who just couldn’t believe it or didn’t want to accept what it meant for them and their positions of control within organizations. Fascinating reading.

At the end of Part One, Pink delves into the differences between workers who are intrinsically (Type I) and extrinsically (Type X) motivated, and leads right into Part Two, which explores the three elements that make up Type I behavior: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The chapters for each of these elements includes some insight into each, along with practical examples of what they mean.

Part Three is the “Type I Toolkit”, which includes suggestions, reading lists, and other tools for individuals and organizations to help them become more Type I. As Pink says, Type I’s are made, not born, and this toolkit can help you remake yourself, or your organization, as a Type I.

Perhaps the most damning statement about the current state of affairs comes in the sentence: “Unfortunately…the modern workplace’s most notable feature may be its lack of engagement and its disregard for mastery.”  Longtime readers of my blogs know that mastery is a concept I’ve long thought and written about. Pink’s chapter on mastery in the context of work pulls together many ideas that I’ve struggled with over the years. This chapter alone was worth the price of the book.

All the rest is an excellent bonus.

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Sorry for the partial repetition. I posted this full review here to kick off my participation in Robin’s 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge, which I learned about from Jack Vinson’s wrap up of his 2009 reading list.

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2010 01 04 Book Reviews
Life
Work Comments (7) Permalink

The fun is doing something, not winning something

Sell out crowds. Overflow rooms. Young fans looking for autographs after a ‘performance.’ Not things usually associated with a lecturer talking about prime numbers. But such was the case back in January 2007 for 2006 Field’s Medal winner Terence Tao. The New York Times article Scientist at Work – Terence Tao – Journeys to the Distant Fields of Prime gives a profile of this young, talented mathematician, described as a ‘rock star’ and the ‘Mozart of math.’

Though Tao is obviously quite gifted (an understatement), the description of his childhood, and how his parents handled his talent, is very telling as well. [emphasis is mine]

[Terry's father] Billy Tao knew the trajectories of child prodigies like Jay Luo, who graduated with a mathematics degree from Boise State University in 1982 at the age of 12, but who has since vanished from the world of mathematics.

“I initially thought Terry would be just like one of them, to graduate as early as possible,” he said. But after talking to experts on education for gifted children, he changed his mind.

His parents decided not to push him into college full time, so he split his time between high school and Flinders University, the local university in Adelaide. He finally enrolled as a full-time college student at Flinders when he was 14, two years after he would have graduated had his parents pushed him only according to his academic abilities.

The Taos had different challenges in raising their other two sons, although all three excelled in math. Trevor, two years younger than Terry, is autistic with top-level chess skills and the musical savant gift to play back on the piano a musical piece — even one played by an entire orchestra — after hearing it just once. He completed a Ph.D. in mathematics and now works for the Defense Science and Technology Organization in Australia.

The youngest, Nigel, told his father that he was “not another Terry,” and his parents let him learn at a less accelerated pace. Nigel, with degrees in economics, math and computer science, now works as a computer engineer for Google Australia.

What really caught my eye in the article, though, was Billy Tao’s summary of how they approached their kids’ learning:

All along, we tend to emphasize the joy of learning. The fun is doing something, not winning something.

Words to live by.

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2010 01 04 learning
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Who is working for whom?

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Dan Pink‘s new book Drive touches on something that I’ve been thinking about for many years: the role – or lack thereof – of mastery in the workplace. I’ve been going through my archives pulling together my thoughts on the subject over the years and found the following, originally posted in April 2004 under the title “Employee-Employer Relations in a Knowledge Based Economy”.

I’ve long believed that the prevelance of knowledge work in organizations today will (eventually) fundamentally shift the employee – employer relationship. In many ways, knowledge workers will come to be “self-employed” in the sense that they are working to improve themselves and to make an impact on the world at large and not just within the company they happen to be “working for” at the time.

With 401k plans allowing for retirement planning independent of a specific job or pension plan, and for various other reasons that are well documented elsewhere, knowledge workers don’t seem to be staying in the same place for their entire careers anymore. With retirement taken care of, other things today’s employees need to consider include health/life insurance, etc. A truly self-employed knowledge worker also has to worry about the business end of things, such as billing’invoicing, taxes, payroll, etc. etc.

By working “for” a company, knowledge workers are in many ways simply out-sourcing the business end of being self-employed so they can focus on the job itself.

This obviously raises some interesting questions for organizations….

And interesting questions for individuals. Many entrepreneurs have trouble with their fledgling business because they started the business to do what they love to do, not to “run a business”. Finding a company that supports your desire to learn and grow and do what you love while taking care of the business side for you is a good deal.

I don’t think it was a very practical option back in 2004, at least not a widespread one. And it may still not be a practical option for everyone. But I have hope that it is spreading more and more and that companies, as well as individuals, are recognizing the value in this kind of relationship.

How do you see your relationship with your company? With your employees? In your organization, who is working for whom?

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2010 01 03 Life
Mastery
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Learn from all experience, not just the failures

It was not quite 3 years ago when the New York Times announced that James Cameron had signed on with 20th Century Fox to direct Avatar.  I wrote the following not long after that announcement.

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You can – and most definitely should – learn from your mistakes and the mistakes of others, but it is also important to remember that you can learn quite a bit from your past successes.

James Cameron’s most recent film was Titanic, released 10 years ago. From the New York Times story ‘Titanic’ Director Joins Fox on $200 Million Film is the following account:

The making of “Titanic,” Mr. Cameron’s last full-blown Hollywood feature, was the stuff of movie legend. The film, released in 1997, went far over its planned cost to become the most expensive production that had then been made. But it went on to become a historic success, taking in a record-breaking $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office, and also winning 11 Oscars, including an award for best picture.

Mr. Cameron said that he had taken care to avoid the problems he encountered on his last gargantuan production, and that he was already four months into shooting the nonprincipal scenes by the time Fox gave final approval to the project today.

— ‘Titanic’ Director Joins Fox on $200 Million Film

I must admit to being a huge James Cameron fan (my personal favorite of his is The Abyss), so I was happy to see that he is finally directing another feature. But what struck me most in this article was Cameron’s recognition that even though Titanic was a huge (HUGE!) success, there were things that could have been done better. While it is hard to talk about “mistakes” when you have $1.8 billion in box-office, there are still things that can be learned.

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I’m curious to hear how Cameron thinks he did in avoiding the pitfalls from Titanic, and what new ones popped up for him to work around.

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2010 01 02 Deliberate Practice
Film / Movies
learning
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Some initial thoughts on Dan Pink’s “Drive”

I read 39 books in 2009, just “a few” shy of my goal of 50. Thanks to a little nudge from Art Johnson (@artjohnson) and some tips from Julien Smith, I’ve set my 2010 sights just a little bit higher: a book a week, for a total of 52.

I got the list off to a good start this evening when I finished Dan Pink’s latest, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. Interestingly, one of the first books I read in 2009 was also one of his, A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future.

In that previous book, as the title suggests, Pink describes the type of workers that will emerge – actually are emerging – to solve the complex business and social problems now facing us. Taking that as a starting point in Drive, Pink provides some guidance on what will be necessary to “manage” these new types of worker by exploring the what motivates these workers to perform. Or, as the title put its, what drives them.

It comes down to three basic things that people want and need for fulfillment and satisfaction: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Longtime readers of my blogs know that mastery is a concept I’ve long thought and written about. Pink’s chapter on mastery in the context of work pulls together many ideas that I’ve struggled with over the years.

This chapter alone was worth the price of the book. All the rest is an excellent bonus.

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2010 01 01 Deliberate Practice
Life
Mastery
Work Comments (2) Permalink

Don’t judge a new book by an old cover

Is Google making us stupid, as Nicholas Carr and others have told us? I don’t think so. Instead, it is making us differently intelligent. Carr, et al are simply judging this difference, the new type of intelligence, against the old standards.

In his article The War On Flow, 2009: Why Studies About Multitasking Are Missing The Point, Steven Boyd makes the point much more eloquently:

If you use industrial era yardsticks based on personal productivity to try to figure out what is going on in our heads, here, in the web of flow, you will simply think we are defective. We’ll have to learn how to measure the larger scope — the first and second closure of our networks — and distill from our media-based interactions how we influence and support each other. Get away from counting the calories, and get into how it all tastes.

I found Boyd’s article through Jim McGee’s article Asking more relevant questions about focus and multitasking, in which Jim adds his own take on the question of multitasking:

The question is not about whether multitasking is a better way to do old forms of work; it is about what skills and techniques do we need to develop to deal with the forms of work that are now emerging. … One of the useful things to be done is to spend a more time watching the juggling (to borrow Stowe Boyd’s image) and appreciating it on its own terms instead of criticizing it for what it isn’t.

I have to admit I’m a bit old-school, and still have some work to do on my “juggling”. In some ways, I  miss the old days of a “simple catch”. At the same time, I love the challenge that juggling presents and am working my way up to having ever more balls in the air. 

Who knows, one day I may graduate to flaming torches or even chainsaws.

(For a great intro to juggling and how you can apply it to work and life, check out Michael Gelb’s More Balls Than Hands: Juggling Your Way to Success by Learning to Love Your Mistakes.)

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2009 12 03 2.0
Complexity
Life
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Happy Birthday, Dad

On February 17, 1986, shortly after excusing himself from the ice for a breather from the hockey game he was playing with my brothers and some friends, my father collapsed and died from “massive coronary failure”. Had he lived, today would have been his 70th birthday.

Bud - WeddingI usually refrain from writing anything that is overly personal here on this blog, but my dad deserves much of the credit for my interests and my direction in life. The things that make their way onto this blog are things that he and I would no doubt have spent many hours discussing over the years.

My sense of humor, my interest in how things work, and an unquenchable curiosity about the connectedness of everything can be directly traced back to the time he and spent together watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus and James Burke’s Connections on PBS during my formative years. The former gave me an appreciation of why we shouldn’t take anything too seriously, and the latter was the catalyst that eventually led me down the path of complexity and knowledge management.

My appreciation for the importance of doing a job well, and for taking care of the people for whom you are responsible, come from his willingness to take me along on the job – he was a Roadmaster for the Missouri Pacific Railroad. This came in very handy in my early career as an Army officer. Aside from the sorrow inherent in losing a parent so early, I was also saddened by the fact that he didn’t live to see me receive my commission and that he and I never had a chance to swap “war stories” about life as a leader of men.

My greatest sadness from his early death is that he never really got to know my wife, Julie, and that he never had the opportunity to meet his grandkids. I am very happy that Julie and dad did meet, even if only twice and then only briefly. My sons would only have benefited from knowing my dad, and I daresay he would have “corrupted” them even more than I have managed to do on my own. I can only imagine how dad would have reacted to Zeke’s autism, but I have the feeling he would have taken it in stride and treated Zeke just like any other kid.

Although I am saddened by the time I’ve not had with my dad for the past 20+ years, I am very thankful for the time I did have with him. Like any teenager / young adult, I have the feeling I didn’t appreciate him as much as I probably should have at the time. Like any parent of teenagers, I have the feeling that my kids don’t appreciate me as much as I think they should. I can only hope that one day they will look back on this time in our lives and appreciate it as much as I do mine.

So, on this day of thanks giving I would like to say, “Thanks, Dad.”

And Happy Birthday.

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2009 11 26 autism
Life Comments Off Permalink

Autism and the “helicopter parent”

Every now and then someone will write an article – or a comment on an article – that pins the cause of autism on “overprotective” parents. These parents – also known as “helicopter parents” – are so involved in their kids lives, the argument goes, that they warp them into being autistic. (Almost the opposite of the old “refrigerator mother” theory, since this new “cause” is the result of too much – not too little – love and affection.)

flyingwoman1Before I go any further here, let me say emphatically and without qualification that I don’t believe helicopter parents – or any parent, for that matter – can cause autism by spending too much (or too little) time and attention on their kids.

I do think, however, that helicopter parents may play a potentially significant role in the ever increasing number of autism diagnoses.  Consider this definition of helicopter parents from wikipedia:

Helicopter parent is a colloquial, early 21st-century term for a parent who pays extremely close attention to his or her child’s or children’s experiences and problems, particularly at educational institutions…. Helicopters parents are so named because, like helicopters, they hover closely overhead, rarely out of reach, whether their children need them or not.

Who better to recognize early signs of autism and bring them to the attention of a doctor for evaluation. So in addition to “increased awareness of autism” as a possible reason for the increased number of diagnoses, we should also consider that “increased awareness of your child” might be contributing to the number of people who have their children evaluated. Which in turn will lead to a higher number of diagnoses.

The interesting thing here, at least to me, is that once a child is diagnosed as autistic the natural tendency of parents, especially those who are already “helicopter parents”, is to become even more involved in their kids lives, to become more overprotective. The nature and structure of our society, especially our education system, builds on this natural tendency to make it for all intents and purposes a necessity.

The challenge for parents is to figure out how to remain involved, as an advocate, in their child’s life without trying to live their child’s life for them. They need to figure out how to evolve, over time, from being a helicopter parent to a young child to being a slow-parent to a young adult.

If only it were as easy to do as to say.

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2009 11 05 autism
Life Comments (10) Permalink

A systems approach to food and nutrition – Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food”

Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much.

These seven words make up the entirety of the “eater’s manifesto” that is the subtitle of Michael Pollan‘s book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Of course, if the “doing” were as easy as the “saying”, Pollan wouldn’t have needed 200+ pages to explain the three rules embodied in these seven words.

At its core, Pollan’s argument is one for a systems view of food and nutrition and against attempts to reduce the complexity of the “food web” into its various components, each considered in isolation from the other. He points to the Western conception of food, especially our current “food science” and “nutrition industry”, as an example of the dangers of the reductionist view point.

As Pollan himself mentions in the introduction, it seemed to me at first to be a little bit strange for someone to be telling me to “eat food”. I mean, what else would I eat? The answer, as it turns out, is that a lot of what I – and quite probably you – eat is actually what Pollan refers to as “edible food-like substances”.

These food-like substances are, according to Pollan, the result of “nutritionism”, a deliberate effort by food scientists – and the companies that employ them – to break food down into it’s component parts, the macro- and micro-nutrients, so that these nutrients can be efficiently – and profitably – delivered to consumers.

map-in-defense-of-food

The topics on the left side of the mind map above give an idea of how Pollan believes “nutritionism” has led to many of our current health problems, including the epidemic of obesity. He covers these in the first two sections of the book.

The topics on the right side give an idea of  the key points behind the three rules of his eater’s manifesto and how they all work together as a system. He covers this in section 3 of the book.

If you are inclined to systems thinking, Pollan’s argument will make perfect sense. There may be some areas you could nit-pick, but the overall approach is sound. If, on the other hand, you are not a “systems-thinker”, you may very well find yourself a bit confused and uncomfortable. We are, in general, so accustomed to worrying about all the parts of nutrition that it will take a very concerted – and conscious – effort, to “let go” and trust the system.

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The mind map in Mind Manager 6 Pro format.

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2009 11 02 Books
Complexity
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The evolution of a Mind Manager mind map – T&T parent’s guide

To help me plan out the direction and content for the Tramp and Tumble blog over the next couple of months I created a mind map to collect and sort the various topics that I want to discuss there. One of the things that I love about Mind Manager is that it has such a nice looking, and useful, final product that hides all the effort that actually goes into creating the map. After all, the “customer” doesn’t really want to see the sausage being made, do they?

Those who are familiar with mind maps know, though, that creating a good map takes a lot of work; planning, mapping, evaluation, re-arranging, etc. In many ways, this is no different than the process for any good writing: ideas, sketch outline, draft, revise, update outline, update draft, revise, etc.  For those less familiar with the process for mind maps, I thought I’d give a little insight into how the process works for me, at least in this case.

tnt-mind-map-notes

I’ve been accumulating the knowledge that went into this map for several years now, since Ian first started competing in 2005. My first step was to create a list of questions that many parents new to the sport have as they start.

(Side note:  Mind Manager does include a “brainstorming” mode, but I have to admit that for things like this I still prefer to use something a bit more “analog”, in this case my handy-dandy notebook and a set of Sharpie pens.)

The image to the right is a scan of my brainstorming list. I jotted down the main ideas, and sub-topics, as they occurred, going back later to mark them up with some ideas on what would make sense chronologically.

Having this list also gave me some ideas on how I could actually structure the topics in order to provide a somewhat consistent delivery of articles that make sense within a given time period; in this case, a week.

tnt-mind-map-draftThe next step was to convert these topics into a draft map. Again, Mind Manager provides excellent support for taking your brainstorming results and converting those into a draft map; again, I still prefer to do this part with good old pen and paper.

Pulling all of my topics and sub-topics together on this map further helped me find the ideas that should be kept together as part of a “weekly package”. The image on the left is (I’m sure you’ve figured out) my first draft.

From this draft I was able to easily create a map in Mind Manager, using the topics/subtopics in the draft as a guide. Once these were in Mind Manager, it was a simple matter to move the main ideas around to come up with the best organization and chronology. Here’s the final map, as posted on the Tramp and Tumble blog:

If you compare the two, you will see that there are many similarities but also some key differences. And just like any project, there are things from the initial idea that are not present and things in the final product that only showed up when the final draft was prepared.

Now all I have to do is fill in the details.

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2009 09 15 Software
Tools Comments Off Permalink