Tag Archives: United States

August 28, 2013 · 8:32 am

Having A Dream

Today is the 50th anniversary of the “I Have A Dream speech Dr. King gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  I began to write about him and my memories and then I realized I had already done so in 2009.  In reading it again, the thoughts seem appropriate to today as well so here is it once more, albeit slightly edited.

I’m old enough to remember Dr. Martin Luther King and while he didn’t light the fire of the civil rights movement in the US (I’d say Rosa Parks is that hero), he certainly brought the fire to life and tended it well until his assassination (and I remember that as well – how horrible a day it was!).

Martin Luther King, Jr.

What inspired me, a young (then) white kid was his notion of bringing a dream to reality. OK, the words and delivery were pretty inspirational too, even when you read them off a page. Yesterday the Inauguration Committee had a concert on the very place where Dr. King gave his “I Have A Dream” speech to celebrate, nearly 46 years later, a big piece of that speech coming to reality. One can’t help but wonder what Dr.King would have felt and said – he certainly should still be alive – he’d just be turning 80.

Robert Kennedy said “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”  I think that’s great business advice as well, even if George Bernard Shaw had the notion before Bobby.  Mark Twain wrote that “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

So today, I celebrate Dr. King’s dreaming of a better world and making it happen.  Tomorrow, we can watch it become real.  What are you dreaming of?  Can it be real?  Why not?  Or better – why not!!

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November 20, 2012 · 2:57 pm

The Four Minute Mile

Late post today so I’ll make it brief.  I was returning from some morning meetings (hence my lateness) and I heard someone talking on the radio about one crisis or another – geopolitical, financial – who knows.  They kept saying that a fix was “impossible” and spent the better part of the segment explaining why that was so.  I, of course, immediately thought of Roger Bannister.

 

IMG_3913

(Photo credit: I am I.A.M.)

 

Right up until that day in May of 1954, it was thought that running a mile in under four minutes was not humanly possible.  I’m sure there were a lot of sportswriters who pontificated much as did the person on the radio this morning about why that was so.  15MPH for that period of time?  No way.  I’m sure they were doing so right up until Bannister crossed the finish line in under four minutes.  To show it wasn’t some superhuman feat, John Landy finished right behind him – also under four minutes.  Suddenly, the common knowledge – and the mental barrier it imposed – changed.  Miles have been run hundreds of times under that barrier now and the record is 3:43, closer to three and a half minutes than to four.

 

We often do the same thing in business.  A sales goal is not achievable   A product can’t be built.  The person with the qualifications we really think are required for the job can’t be found so we settle on someone lesser.  Four minute barriers we can’t break.  Until we do.

 

I’ve used the Bannister example with groups before to get them to think about how our mental barriers hold us back.  What do you think?

 

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March 22, 2012 · 10:45 am

Me Or Your Own Eyes?

You’ve probably heard some version of the 18th century joke about a wife who, caught by her husband in bed with a lover, denies the obvious and adds: ‘Whom do you believe, your eyes or my words?’ The Marx Brothers used a variant of it in Duck Soup when Chico, dressed up as Groucho, asks “who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Obviously people believed their own eyes since the quote is usually attributed to Groucho.

Groucho Marx

Groucho Marx (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

I thought of that quote as I was trying to explain a report to someone. They kept telling me the same story about what was going on in their business even though the data was saying something quite different.  Who was I going to believe: them or my own eyes?  Or my own data?

One of the big trends these days is a discussion of “big data.”  In a nutshell, almost everything we do these days in business generates data, and most of the managers I know are drowning in the stuff.  Despite that, most of the companies in which these managers work are not what I’d call a data-driven culture.  In fact, they suffer from the same issue mentioned above.  The will often fit the data to the story instead of letting the data help them solve the questions raided in the telling.  McKinsey stated in one of their reports that:

By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.

What’s needed is change management with a goal of developing a data-driven culture. Maybe that’s too strong – how about a culture in which data isn’t subordinated to the role of being used selectively to reinforce or justify bad decision-making?  At some point, people have to learn to trust their own eyes – the data they see – and not the stories they hear.  That’s what I think – you?

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