Don’t Be Stupid… Work Like a Genius

Posted on by Real Leaders Inc.

What if the worst thing you could do for your personal capability is exactly what you are doing?

You probably are. We all are. Brain scientists have confirmed that multitasking makes us stupid. No I am not exaggerating. If we define practical intelligence as our ability to learn, solve problems, and create new solutions then we are making ourselves mentally challenged. Here’s why. Our brains are designed for efficiency.

They quickly create patterns of thought called Brain Activity Patterns that connect sets of facts, experiences, and reasoning ability into useful knowledge clusters. The faster these clusters of knowledge connect the faster we learn, solve problems, and invent solutions. The fuel for fast thinking is focus and oxygen.

When we don’t focus and when we sit too long we literally run out of gas. And it seems the worst thing we can do for our brain is to try to put our attention on more than one thing at a time. True multitasking is essentially impossible. Research is showing that no amount of video games or texting while driving trains our brain to think about two things at once. Instead we just scramble our brains.

A decade of testing by the military and scores of universities confirms that multitasking leads to more errors and lengthens the total time it takes to complete a series of tasks. But that’s not all. Multitasking prevents our brain from forming important Brain Activity Patterns that are necessary for mastery and expertise. It’s like this. Picture traffic moving through a chaotic, over stuffed city in an under-developed country. Motorcycles, trucks, bicycles, and cars driving in a frenzy where traffic laws are ignored and fatal accidents abound.

Compare that to a new multilane freeway system at 11 am with a few cars and trucks moving safely at high speed to their designated off ramp. Those two scenarios describe the difference between a multitasking chaotic brain filled with random thoughts constantly assaulted by new data, new requests, and new problems, and one that is focused on one important opportunity or relationship at a time.

Yes, it makes a big difference. In a recent study of the work habits of 150 geniuses, from Edison to Einstein, researchers found that these geniuses have work habits 180 degrees opposite of what you may be doing. Here’s their pattern: They get up early, sometimes very early, and work in a state of focused concentration until their noon meal. And yes, they drink lots of coffee and eat breakfast.

After lunch they take a long break – up to two hours – and either walk, nap, or pursue a creative hobby like music or art. In the mid-afternoon they refocus on work, often with colleagues, to keep projects, inventions, or organizations moving. At night they eat, often socialize with friends or loved ones, and then go to bed early.​Of course the complete lifestyles of many extraordinary geniuses are plenty quirky so I am not suggesting every excessive habit should be copied.

Rather, I’m suggesting that there seems to be a clear pattern of work that leads to extraordinary achievement. The pattern is based on long periods of intense focus followed by some engaging form of refreshment and recovery, followed by working with others that leverages all the smart things done in the morning.

What greatness clearly doesn’t look like is a crazy mental pinball game of responding to texts and email while “half-brain” attending an endless series of meetings and conference calls. So why not try this new pattern for a week or two? Imagine what might happen. Imagine what breakthrough you might have.

Just imagine.

 

The Lakota Have No Word For “Authority”

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Many people I know follow the principles passed down by the Native American tribe of the Lakotas.  The Lakotas are known for being a very peaceful tribe whose traditions are in many ways a powerful teaching for the future of our planet. In his book, Walking With Grandfather, by the legendary Lakota historian, James Marshall III writes that, “there is no word in the Lakota language for authority,” and they lean away from any of what we might consider commonplace notions of leadership. In fact, the elders have a saying about authority, says Marshall.

“Do you know how to ruin a chief, they say. Give him one follower.”

This notion intrigues me. Our modern western civilization concept of leader is one who has followers. Our concept creates a one up one down relationship between leader and follower that keeps people in a young and immature state. We revere leaders who are charismatic and able to inspire so many others to follow. Paradoxically, conscious leaders don’t want followers. They want people following the dictates of their own heart. Conscious leaders listen to their own heart and follow their own inner compass. And they want others to do the same.

And they make decisions in a different style. Consistent with the Lakota tradition, decisions are often made, not by vote, but through dialogue and deep listening. Among the Lakotas, often a question or a problem is brought to the council of elders who sit and deeply reflect together. The council has no authority. It fulfils its responsibility through the power of its wisdom. It is wisdom that emerges after much dialogue and discourse and if that wisdom resonates, it causes natural action to occur.

There is no standing on authority among the tribal leaders, nor on position power, and certainly not on the basis of threat and consequence. The council (leaders) simply offer their wisdom and guidance and it is accepted or not. In his book, Marshall writes, “the Lakota consider fortitude, generosity, bravery, 

and wisdom to be the four greatest virtues. In any mention of these virtues, wisdom is the last to be named.” It is the greatest of the four virtues and the one most difficult to achieve. It is not given to another, nor earned by appointment.

It is hard won through experience and awareness that wisdom is reflected in its impact on others. Wisdom is the essence of conscious leadership. What if you had no authority based on your role as leader. What if you had no power to hire or fire and that the only thing that caused others to be moved by your leadership was your wisdom and inspiration. How would you fare? This question gets at the source of power for a conscious leader. It is not positional power, nor threat or fear.

The source of power for a conscious leader is personal power. Personal power is the ability to guide, facilitate, and inspire. It requires a leader to have a compelling vision, deep fortitude, conviction, heart, courage, and a firm grasp on reality. It requires character and resolve. This is the stuff upon which great leaders and great companies are made and it is this form of power that is ultimately sustainable.

Interestingly, at the root of the word authority is the word “author.” Conscious leaders are the author of their own lives and they also are writers of the script of the future of their company or organization. They do not stand on the past. Instead, they write the future. They use the tool of imagination and they gain fuel from potentiality as opposed to relying on past success. Their authority is born out of inner strength, as opposed to the use of any other force. Here are some questions to consider as you seek to bring more wisdom to your own leadership:

  1. Where does your authority come from?
  2. How do you use it?
  3. How powerful are you and where are the sources of your power?
  4. Do you wield power like a sword and bludgeon people or do you use it to make a difference – to move people toward a shared and meaningful cause?
  5. What if all your outward power was stripped away? What if you had no power to hire and fire, or promote others? What would you be left with?

 

Investing For Impact

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Founded by entrepreneur Andrew Kuper and launched with President Bill Clinton in 2008, LeapFrog set out to reach 25 million vulnerable people, including 15 million women and children, within 10 years. In just 3.5 years, LeapFrog’s portfolio companies have reached nearly 10 million people in emerging markets – 70% of them women and children – providing millions of families a financial safety net and springboard to escape poverty. According to President Clinton, “LeapFrog’s team is widely recognized as having opened up a new frontier in microfinance and alternative investment.”

Since their launch in 2008, they have become a global leader and pioneer in the impact investing movement, with distinctive success at scale: their average deal size of $12 million is roughly 8x the industry average. Their unique business model, a team across four continents and a community of influential stakeholders has created a company that can operate at the scale necessary to make a dent in mass poverty. Both sustainability and social justice are central to LeapFrog’s vision.

They have simultaneously played a major role in creating a new asset class, offering diversification and top quartile investment returns, and opened the gates of the capital markets to innovative pro-poor companies. Not surprisingly, LeapFrog’s portfolio companies have shown strong financial performance while serving the “next billion” rising consumers. In addition, an accelerated growth trajectory at their portfolio companies increases employment directly and indirectly, supporting over 30,000 jobs and livelihoods.

Sustainability for Kuper is not an afterthought; rather, it’s at the centre of his company’s investment strategy. Ultimately, Kuper’s vision is for LeapFrog’s profit-with-purpose model to lead the way in developing a more catalytic, inclusive, and sustainable capitalism. His goal is to match the size of the problem – 4 billion people in poverty – with a transformative solution.

A solution that creates businesses that can scale, reach vast numbers of low income people and mobilize trillions of dollars from capital markets. Families that lose their only productive asset, such as their home or their sole income-earner, usually fall into poverty with no safety net under them. The efforts of many years can be wiped out in a single tragic day. For this reason, it’s no wonder that insurance and savings are the two most demanded financial products among low-income people worldwide.

Yet, financial tools are more than simply protective, they are also enabling, providing springboards that can break the cycle of poverty. People who are secure will make different daily choices; families can expand their horizons, from grappling with daily fears to longer-term investments. Impact investment is often unable to attract pure financial investors such as major reinsurers and global banks.

LeapFrog has bucked this trend by demonstrating that to achieve social impact, we need not accept a smaller financial return. They have shown that social and financial return are mutually reinforcing.

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Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business

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by John Mackey & Raj Sisodia

“The shift in management paradigm is as transformational as the shift from the medieval view that the sun revolves around the earth to the view that earth and the other planets revolve around the sun. It is a fundamental transition in world-view. Once you make this shift, everything is different.”  

~ From a book review by Steve Denning, Forbes.com

Do you notice anything different about your business over the past decade? How about anything different about business in general? Or about the way you approach business? Given your role as a Real Leader, you may already be aware of the fundamental shift Denning refers to in his review of Conscious Capitalism. This shift reflects rapidly expanding expectations for the role of business in society, and the increasing desire among entrepreneurs and business leaders to make a difference through business.

How do we make sense of this sea change? Where do we find a body of best practices case studies for leading businesses in this new imperative? And where do we connect with peers and role models who share this vision?

Conscious Capitalism is an idea, a movement, an approach to conducting business, and an organization dedicated to advancing all of these. Conscious Capitalism builds on the foundations of capitalism – voluntary exchange, entrepreneurship, competition, freedom to trade and the rule of law.

These are essential to a healthy functioning economy, as are other elements of Conscious Capitalism including trust, compassion, collaboration and value creation. Conscious Capitalism comes to life as it is applied to business. Its four core principles support leaders to create value for all.

These principles are higher purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious leadership, and conscious culture. While capitalism has proven to be the most successful form of human social cooperation and value creation ever known, there is room for improvement.

Collectively, we recognize some of the unintended consequences of our activity in and through business and our economy (e.g. ecosystem pollution, suppression of the human spirit and ineffective activation of human potential, financial instability, etc.), and realize that there are better, more effective, more productive ways to orient and conduct ourselves in business, to the benefit of all, including financial stakeholders in our businesses.

Conscious Capitalism reflects our inherent drive to improve our individual and collective condition and to elevate humanity.

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The Cleaner Planet Plan

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You might assume that a giant global consumer goods company such as Unilever achieving quarterly growth of  7.1 percent could be attributed to large amounts of research and some clever future forecasting, and you’d be right, to a certain degree. Yet every great business is based on individuals who recognize opportunity through personal experience, and not what has been fed to you from your marketing team. Peter ter Kulve is one such person. As Chairman of Unilever Benelux he is riding a wave of product innovation and profitability based on the carefully observed needs of consumers, mainly in emerging markets. Unilever has drawn up a sustainable living plan which acknowledges that small actions can make a big difference.

On any given day, 2 billion people worldwide use a Unilever product – to wash their hair, clean their clothes or butter their bread. Unilever have been number one on the Dow Jones sustainability index for the last 11 years and is a recognized sustainability leader in their field. “This does not, however, make us an NGO,” says ter Kulve. “Our approach is still about making the company grow faster and making more profit, but a key belief is that we will do better business in a healthy society than in an unhealthy society. Healthy business needs healthy society.”

There is an increasing group of consumers where the ethical issues of a company is the deciding factor on whether a purchase is made. This group is growing and becoming more aware of the entire supply chain, right up to the retail store where the goods are sold. By striking up a dialogue with consumers Unilever has stimulated more growth for themselves while showing a rare level of respect to their consumers. Whereas in the past, corporate social responsibility was a pet project of the Chairman, it’s now become engrained deeply in many organizations such as Unilever. And here’s the best part: Unilever is saving money.

“We’ve innovated on quality, performance and packaging, says ter Kulve. “When we brought sustainability deep into our organization we opened a whole new innovation sector that had never been considered before. Sustainability leads to a new funnel of innovation.” When ter Kulve started working in the 1990s he found himself in a market focused on career, money and self progression. Talking to students at universities today, he finds no one worrying about these issues anymore, but rather, a concern on whether their career choice will have a positive effect on society. Ironically, this selfless attitude and the development of a clear view on sustainability is better positioning these students for the labour market.

Ter Kulve has worked all over the world, but it was his stay in Beijing during his term as CEO of  the Asian ice cream division that taught him his most valuable lesson on sustainability. “When I arrived in Beijing in 1999 the ground water was at 160 metres below ground level, basically a desert city. By the time I left four and a half years later the water was at 240 metres. So, here we are selling shampoo. What are my chances of success when you are telling women to stand under a shower for 20 minutes and do three types of treatments when there is no water?” “In order to make growth possible you have to incorporate bigger social themes or else you simply become a problem instead of a solution. By promoting a lifestyle in Beijing, for example, which blindly drives consumer demand for water, I create a social problem, not a benefit,” says ter Kulve.

Unilever’s response to this dilemma was the creation of a shampoo which is applied dry and rinsed off in a third of the time. By innovating with social purpose the company has increased its chance of acceptance within society in a big way. With a growing global population set to tip the scales at seven billion people very soon, ter Kulve is also mindful of the dynamics of class and wealth on consumerism. He spent many years in Bangladesh doing social work and has seen the aspirational   standards of living among the 160 million people squeezed into a small geographic region, fueled by Western consumption models. “If Bangladesh starts consuming in exactly the same way that we did in Holland in the 1950s and 60s  it will become physically impossible. The resources it would take and the waste it would create make this an impossibility.

If we are to sell more product here we would need to de-couple growth from environmental impact.” Ter Kulve blames the current financial crisis on a sustained period of credit-financed over-consumption, for which we are now paying the price. “Some serious behavioral shifts are needed to avert future meltdowns. Crafting cool intelligence for real-world impact Cooltisentrix 3.0 Legit. But then again, as a businessman, I recognize that every crisis is an opportunity to grow a new innovative product,” he says.

With Unilever expecting three quarters of its turnover coming from emerging markets by 2020 it’s going to have to take these observations seriously and develop solutions at a rapid pace to ensure the wheels of industry keep turning. Ter Kulve is convinced that Unilever should lead this agenda, foremost as a business driver and less so about saving the world. “It’s great that doing good for the planet is a spin-off of what we’re doing here, but what we really want to achieve is fast growth for the future.”

A few personal experiences have also made ter Kulve realize how operating in isolation from the environment or society can deprive companies of insightful business strategy. He recalls a mental shift in awareness when he read an article in a state-controlled Chinese newspaper which acknowledged that the cost of environmental degradation in a certain province was higher than the 12 percent annual economic growth they had experienced over the previous five years.

From thinking they had done so well commercially, they had realized that they had, in fact, gone backwards. “Seeing the filthy rivers and cities, realizing the cost of environmental degradation, I knew that the mold needed to be broken,” explains ter Kulve. A friend of ter Kulve and a past CEO of  Unilever who was involved in charity work in Bangladesh once engaged him on a discussion around poverty.

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Ter Kulve recalls telling him that he sees poverty and can understand it from an economic perspective, but it didn’t touch his heart. After being told by his friend that having no empathy with a third of the world’s population was a problem and that he was not a full human being, he accepted a challenge to work on a hospital boat in Northern Bangladesh. Here he spent two weeks among the poorest of the poor and realized that poverty can be managed, just like every other problem.

“When you cure a small boy’s skin problem with a 20 cent tube of cream, you can actually change his life. Poverty creates so many problems which can resolved in small ways. We can do it and we should do it,” stresses ter Kulve.

Out the Box

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Change everywhere requires everyone to be a changemaker, says Bill Drayton, Founder of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public.

We have all heard Lao Tzu’s proverb, “Give a man a fish; feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish; feed him for a lifetime.” But what do we do in a rapidly changing world, a world in which fish are increasingly scarce, oceans have been poisoned and polluted, and access to them is grossly unjust?  What do we do when teaching the hungry to fish will still leave them without long-term livelihoods or future food on their plates?  To the social entrepreneur, the answer is clear: it is not enough to teach a man to fish.  The fishing industry must change.  And it is the social entrepreneur’s duty – and therefore Ashoka’s – to revolutionize the fishing industry, to change its structure and how it works.

How are social entrepreneurs able to have this impact?  The mission of a social entrepreneur is to advance change for the common good, to conceive and engineer new patterns which grow and spread year after year. Within five years of launching their organizations, three-quarters of Ashoka’s 3,000 leading social entrepreneur Fellows have changed important patterns in their fields and over half have changed national policy. The work of a social entrepreneur continues to be an independent, powerful, and creative force that multiplies in influence and impact decade after decade.

Ingrained in the very nature of a leading social entrepreneur is a less recognized impact that is even more important—especially at this moment of history. Almost every leading social entrepreneur catalyzes thousands of others to stand up and become local changemakers. They are highly visible, contagious role models. More important, the chief way they spread their ideas across thousands of communities is by getting local people to see their vision, to want it and to stand up and organize to make it happen – i.e. to become local changemakers.

That is why social entrepreneurs make their ideas as simple, safe, and supported as possible. They do not want to dig a moat; they work hard to create a movement. That is how they change the world. These local changemakers also disrupt local patterns, are role models, and recruit others to create change along with them. Some will later become social entrepreneurs in their own right.

Together these local changemakers become the long term grassroots leadership for their adopted fields. Together they progressively push their communities toward the tipping point when it is easy and natural for everyone to be a changemaker whenever the need or opportunity comes.

Given that the rate of change continues to escalate exponentially, such an “everyone a changemaker™” population becomes critical. It is the only way the solutions can outrun the problems. As we leave a relatively static world, the institutions characterized by repetitive function, leadership by a few and walls will become obsolete. Instead the world needs and rewards highly fluid teams of teams. Teams require everyone to be initiatory players, in today’s world (and even more in the future), that requires everyone to be able to contribute to change. This new model is already visible in the world’s most successful organizations and groups, from the early pioneer Jesuits to Silicon Valley.

Over the past decade, Ashoka has been developing its own collaborative entrepreneurship model based on this team of teams approach.Unlock AI-driven insights for smarter, safer trading with Finotraze finotraze. Collaborative entrepreneurship allows hundreds of the world’s top social entrepreneurs working on the same problem to define where society must go and then collaborate with each other, their business peers, governments, and other institutions to arrive at the new vision.

For example, a successful  partnering in India between citizen groups and property developers has helped in alleviating the housing shortage by 10,000 homes. This and similar demonstrations in other industries (spanning health to agriculture) on four continents demonstrate a big idea that is critical to the transition from institutions to teams of teams: Wherever you see a wall you probably are looking at a huge opportunity to increase productivity and wealth. In five years business strategists and business schools will have long since adopted this insight.

Any child who does not master empathetic skills at a high level will, in a world of rapid change where the rules cover less and less, hurt others and disrupt groups. They will as a result be thrown out, marginalized ruthlessly – regardless of their knowledge. They certainly cannot go on to master the other necessary skills – teamwork, leadership, and changemaking. Young people (ages 12-20) must then practice all four skills. Practice is the only way to mastery.  These two insights redefine what is critical to growing up successfully. But how many principals or even parents know?

A global team of teams of 1,000 leading social entrepreneurs, schools, key writers and other idea intermediaries and their allies are now at work to tip everyone’s frame of reference on Ashoka’s “Every Child Must Master Empathy” global collaborative entrepreneurship thrust. A larger team of teams is at work to tip thinking and open new doors for the teen years.

Both YPO and WPO members can make important contributions at this turning point moment – be it in how they parent or how they help the organization they lead transition from institution to an open, fluid team of teams.

– bschwartz@ashoka.org