Ed Batista

The Five Laws of Library Science

Could you condense your organization's entire purpose into five basic statements? Could you do it in 26 words? And could you insure that those 26 words would last for nearly a century and show no signs of age? S.R. Ranganathan could.

Ranganathan was a preeminent Indian mathematician and librarian who died in 1972 at the age of 80. In 1924 he was appointed the first university librarian of the University of Madras, a position he held for the next 20 years, during which time he supposedly never took a vacation. Among Ranganathan's many contributions to the field, his Five Laws of Library Science, written in 1931, stand out for their brilliance and their brevity:

1. Books are for use.
2. Every person, his or her book.
3. Every book, its reader.
4. Save the time of the reader.
5. The library is a growing organism.

I love so many things about these 26 words, starting with the ethic of service that runs through them, and ending with the metaphor of organization as organism. While we may lack Ranganathan's singular vision, we can still seek to apply his insights. If you were to distill your own organization's purpose down to its essence, what would be the result?

 

Source: Whole Library Handbook 3, page 62 (George Eberhart, 2000)

Photo by George Hodan.

Headaches, Opportunities, Dreams

Headaches are problems that cause pain. The motivation to to resolve them or work around them is to alleviate the pain. We have to find what's broken and fix it.

Opportunities are paths that lie before us. The motivation to prioritize and choose from among them is to fulfill their potential and our own. We have to find what's working and make it better.

Dreams are non-existent possibilities that lie beyond our current reality. The motivation to summon them into existence is to overcome our current limitations and create a better world. We have to forget what we believe to be true and see what happens.

Many--and perhaps most--of our challenges fall into one of these categories, and the key is understanding the task we're facing: Am I curing a headache? Am I pursuing an opportunity? Am I dreaming a dream?

 

Revised April 2021.

Photos by Brandon Grasley, Valeria Everett and Daniel Lobo.

Notice Everything

In a recent post cultural anthropologist Grant McCracken emphasizes the importance of noticing:

Notice everything and pay attention to things that puzzle. Pay attention to things that demand your attention and then refuse your understanding. Pay attention to the failure of attention.

He's writing as an ethnographic researcher, but it's a message that resonates deeply with me as an executive coach.

Everything I do professionally starts with noticing, and that's why I try to notice as much as possible about the people around me. Even--especially--when I don't understand what's happening or why, I need to note that something is happening. In the coaching process, the act of noticing what's happening in the moment is more important than the act of interpreting what happened afterwards.

My interpretations are filtered through my meanings and subject to my biases; they're inherently limited. My observations are constrained by my cognitive abilities, but if I can notice something and communicate it effectively to a client or colleague, we can work to interpret it together, broadening the frame of reference and diminishing the risk of misunderstanding.

It's easy for coaches and consultants to fall into the trap of imagining that we're valued most as interpreters. It makes us seem more important, and it relieves our clients of a burden they're often glad to relinquish. I'd like to believe that I do add value as an interpreter, helping others understand by making meaning, but that role is secondary to my role as observer, as noticer, helping others see what they may have missed.

 

Photo by Jimmie Quick.

T-Groups in India

My only exposure to T-groups has been in the United States, but I've participated in groups with members from France, Hong Kong, Israel and Japan, and the cross-cultural dimension makes the experience both more challenging and more rewarding.

So I was excited to learn that there are several organizations that promote T-groups and other forms of "process work" in India, including the Indian Society for Applied Behavioural Science, Sumedhas, and the Aastha Foundation for Human Learning and Growth.

Many thanks to Gautam Ghosh for enlightening me (and for his kind words about my recent post.)

That's India at night, framed by the pitch-black Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, and the relatively dark regions of Myanmar/Burma, the Himalayas and Tibet, and Pakistan and Afghanistan.

T-Groups, Feedback and Double-Loop Learning

How effective are your interactions with others?  What behaviors enhance your effectiveness, and what behaviors undermine your effectiveness?  How do people perceive you?  What behaviors positively affect the way you're perceived, and what behaviors make a negative impression on others?

Getting answers to these questions is one reason why people participate in T-groups (the T is for "training"), an interpersonal development methodology developed by social psychologist Kurt Lewin.  I recently participated in a T-group as a facilitator, and the experience led me to think further about the underlying mechanisms at work.

Using my post on Double-Loop Learning and Executive Coaching as a starting point, I've employed the same framework to take a look at the feedback process that occurs in T-groups.  (Click on each image below for a larger version.  And all of the graphics can be downloaded in a 5-slide PowerPoint file, 66 KB.)

The first graphic below (here's a larger version) reflects what happens in most of our personal interactions, which can be described as single-loop experiences.  We carry with us a set of underlying assumptions about how we interact with others--for example, we believe that certain behaviors are effective and other behaviors are ineffective--and these assumptions form an implicit strategy that governs the behavioral choices we make in our interactions.  We may observe the success or failure of an interaction, learn from the results, and modify our behavior in some way, but we rarely challenge our most fundamental assumptions.

In contrast, T-groups are an example of double-loop learning in action.  One of the primary activities in a T-group is giving and receiving candid feedback on the effectiveness (and ineffectiveness) of our behaviors.  Because of the trust that develops among T-group participants and the high value placed on candor, this feedback can be disconfirming and even difficult to hear.  It's so much more direct than the feedback we get from other sources that it changes our frame of reference when analyzing our interpersonal effectiveness.

Rather than simply asking what we might have done differently to improve the outcome of an interaction, we begin to see that all our assumptions about what's effective and what's not limit the range of choices available to us and circumscribe how we interact with others.

We start asking questions that challenge these assumptions--some of them turn out to be right, but others turn out to be wrong--and making that distinction allows us to expand our behavioral repertoire and select more effective strategies.  This additional step of identifying and challenging the implicit assumptions that predetermine our interpersonal style is what makes T-groups a "double-loop" experience.  (Here's a larger version of the graphic below.)

To get more specific, let's look at my recent experience in a T-group.  As I note in the graphic below, feedback should be regarded as information that clarifies the costs and benefits of different behaviors, and we should change our behavior only if we decide that it's in our interest to do so, not simply in response to the feedback. But understanding the impact of our behaviors on others (and the resulting costs and benefits to us) can create a powerful motivation to look more closely at the assumptions that frame our behavioral choices.

The feedback I received allowed me to identify a number of assumptions I was making that affect how I interact with others, including...

• I communicate my emotions effectively.
• Others appreciate my goal orientation and firm commitment.
• I speak concisely and at appropriate intervals.

I didn't assess these factors before interacting with others--I simply took them for granted, and as a consequence they were outside my frame of reference when it came to analyzing whether a certain interaction was effective (or not) and why.  (Here's a larger version of the graphic below.)

The next step after identifying our assumptions is to ask questions that challenge them.  In my case, I began asking...

• Am I holding back an emotion that should be expressed?
• Am I putting a task ahead of someone's concerns or feelings?
• Am I diluting my impact by using too many words or speaking too often?

In each case, based on the feedback I was receiving, my answer was "Yes."  These conclusions allowed me to develop some alternative strategies that will expand my range of options when interacting with others.  (See the graphic below--here's a larger version.)  Because these strategies are based on more accurate assumptions about how my behavior impacts others, they're likely to lead to better results (and I'll have a clearer understanding of why a given interaction was effective or not.)

Acknowledgements

T-groups were first developed by Kurt Lewin, and my involvement with them has been through the Interpersonal Dynamics class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  For more information...

• T-Groups, Trust, Leadership and Management
• Kurt Lewin: Groups, Experiential Learning and Action Research

My comments on feedback are based on the work of David Bradford and Allan Cohen.  For more information...

• David Bradford and Allan Cohen on Supportive Confrontation
• Bradford and Cohen's PowerUp

The concept of double-loop learning was developed by Chris Argyris, and I’m indebted to Mark Smith’s explication at Informal Education.  For more information...

• Chris Argyris, Double-Loop Learning and Meta-Work
• Double-Loop Learning and Executive Coaching

Sage Cohen and Peter Drucker on Rapture and Excellence

Where do you focus your energy and attention? Do you struggle to overcome obstacles and tackle problems, or do you ignore them instead, go with what's working, and capitalize on that success?

My friend Sage Cohen recently wrote about training herself to take the latter approach, and it reminded me of one of my favorite pieces of wisdom from Peter Drucker.

First, from Sage's The Mind Whisperer:

In the past, my pattern was to find the one or two things that weren't working in my life and focus obsessively on fixing them. This was a reasonably effective strategy for a time, because I'm a pretty good fixer. But then, thanks to [input from friends], I have stumbled upon a far more revolutionary approach, which is to not engage at all with what's not working; instead, live in rapture with what is working. And in case there's anyone out there who's not yet a believer, I'm here to report from the other side that rapture is a far more enjoyable experience than the have-not frame of mind. I don't know how or why this works, but I have lived through enough repetitions now to know that the not-working stuff simply unwrinkles itself in the background when I refuse to feed it with my upset.

And from Drucker's Managing Oneself:

[W]aste as little effort as possible on improving areas of low competence. Concentration should be on areas of high competence and high skill. It takes far more energy and work to improve from incompetence to mediocrity than it takes to improve from first-rate performance to excellence. And yet most people--especially most teachers and most organizations--concentrate on making an incompetent person into a low mediocrity. The energy and resources--and time--should go instead into making a competent person into a star performer.

I'm struck by the parallel emphasis on harnessing energy and maximizing success by avoiding problems and building on strengths. I know that some obstacles must be overcome and some problems can't be ignored, but far too often  we hamstring ourselves by trying "to improve from incompetence to mediocrity" when instead we could "live in rapture with what is working."

I link above to the reprint of Drucker's article, which is $10 from HBR, but for an additional $6 you can get his 1999 book Management Challenges for the 21st Century, which includes "Managing Oneself" in addition to five other essays on topics such as "Information Challenges" and "Knowledge-Worker Productivity."

Why You Drink

From Le Grand Content, a brilliant and baffling 4-minute animated film by Clemens Kogler and Karo Szmit:

Le Grand Content examines the omnipresent Powerpoint-culture in search for its philosophical potential. Intersections and diagrams are assembled to form a grand 'association-chain-massacre'. which challenges itself to answer all questions of the universe and some more. Of course, it totally fails this assignment, but in its failure it still manages to produce some magical nuance and shades between the great topics death, cable tv, emotions and hamsters.

There's an obvious association with Jessica Hagy's Indexed (she lists Le Grand Content's URL in her blog header), but I'm not sure who's the Chicken and who's the Egg.

Thanks to Paul Hebert for turning me on to Indexed in the first place.

Tom Perkins, Corporate Governance and Diversity

Tom Perkins, co-founder of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, wrote about corporate governance in a recent Wall Street Journal piece that I found both compelling and disappointing. In Perkins' framework, privately held ventures are governed by "Guidance" boards of directors, where "the board's emphasis is on performance, getting the venture up to speed as quickly as possible, and...taking the company public..." According to Perkins, "Few question the effectiveness of this model, as few involved question the desirability of creating shareholder value," and I agree.

But the board's responsibilities change after the venture goes public, Perkins writes:

Once [a] startup becomes a public company, a strange metamorphosis commences. It begins to be assumed that the public investors have different goals than the original backers. The continuing creation of shareholder value--the primary goal of the venture capitalist--while not forgotten, must take its place along side a host of other considerations. Is the company socially responsible? Is it inclusive? Does its board represent the population? Are women and minorities seated around the board table?...

(All of these things, unquestionably, are desirable; I helped effect these kinds of changes on all of the boards with which I have been involved.) [emphasis original]...

Above all, when the venture goes public, the emphasis shifts, with the inevitability of the tides, to obeying the laws pertaining to traded companies. The SEC, the stock exchange rules, and most recently the Sarbanes-Oxley act, come into play. Since directors must be cognizant of these, bit by bit the newly gender and racially inclusive board evolves into a new model: the Compliance board...

Don't misunderstand. A Compliance board is a very, very busy board. It works as hard, maybe harder (because it's all so boring) than a Guidance board. There are so very many matters to comply with, so very many governance (compliance) experts to listen to.

Diversity and inclusionary problems are always there to be discussed. Sarbanes-Oxley audit committee meetings can easily require a five-hour agenda, and require one hour even to summarize for the full board... Inevitably consultants and lawyers take more and more of center stage in the workings of a Compliance board...

Like it or hate it, what I have described is the evolving standard model in corporate America today. Would a Compliance board be able to prevent another Enron? I have the lurking suspicion that directors have to understand the fundamental business to understand when it is going off course... But that's just the old Guidance director in me.

I fully agree with Perkins' overall thesis that we're ill-served by a regulatory regime that compels corporate boards to focus on compliance functions that minimize risk at the expense of guidance functions that maximize returns. (And I'm well aware that making this argument allows Perkins to revisit the H-P pretexting scandal and take a few shots at Patricia Dunn; that's his prerogative.)

But what I find disappointing is the lack of clarity around the issues of inclusivity and representativeness. Despite Perkins' adamant assertion that these qualities are "unquestionably desirable," it's hard not to read the whole piece and sense an implication that they may be drags on financial performance that must be accepted as part of today's politically correct business climate.

If a "newly gender and racially inclusive board" which has evolved from a Guidance role to a Compliance role is now less likely to "understand the fundamental business," does that suggest that the "women and minorities" who were added to the mix are playing token roles rather than adding real value? I don't think Perkins believes this, but his unclear language opens the door to that interpretation.

In my  experience, diversity lends real strength to groups and helps them achieve better outcomes, and that includes boards of directors. Inclusivity and representativeness aren't just PC buzzwords--they're performance-enhancing strategies. But this ideal is dependent on interpersonal candor and truth-telling. Group members must be able to speak freely from their individual perspectives if the group as a whole is to benefit from its diversity. And this requires an honest, heartfelt commitment to these values. Nothing stifles candid discussion about differences faster than the suspicion that the group's "diversity" is mere tokenism.

It's not my intention here to doubt Perkins' commitment to diversity or to impugn his character in any way. I simply want to note that his compelling argument about the dangers of prioritizing compliance over guidance is diminished by a lack of clarity around the value of diversity.

Disclosure: I work for and am an alumnus of Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Perkins rightly cites Enron's board as a body that neglected its compliance duties and notes that former Stanford dean Robert Jaedicke was an Enron board member and chair of its audit panel.

Pat Croskerry on Successful Decision-Making

What elements contribute to successful decision-making? Canadian physician and psychologist Pat Croskerry has explored the conditions under which he and his fellow medical doctors make the most effective decisions, and his findings have implications for the rest of us as well:

The successful decision-maker will be one who has an ergonomically optimized workplace, is well rested and well slept, is not driven by throughput pressures, is aware of the various cognitive and affective biases, and is able to safely blend cognitive intuitive and analytical styles according to the particular task at hand. This last is especially important. It invokes the concept of situational awareness--knowing what has gone before, what is happening now, anticipating what is coming, and then having one’s cognitive engine in the right gear. Occasionally, it may have to be meta-cognitively kicked up a notch to match the situation. [1]

So how might we improve the quality of our own decisions? Some of Croskerry's recommendations are obvious, although we often fail to follow them: Make your workspace physically comfortable. Get enough sleep. Resist "throughput pressures" and take the time you need to think clearly. But he also touches on two topics that require more effort to integrate into our daily routines:

1. Be aware of cognitive biases.

Croskerry suggests that some of our cognitive heuristics--the mental shortcuts we employ in problem-solving--are by-products of evolution:

There are persuasive arguments that we may be hard-wired to respond to certain features of our environment as well as to processing information in predictable ways... If there is any feature of cognitive activity that might influence whether or not our genes get into the next generation, decision-making would appear to be a good bet--presumably good decision-makers have a higher rate of survival. [2]

This suggests that we should take great care to understand and compensate for the biases that stem from our cognitive inheritance:

If we come to accept that certain [cognitive dispositions to respond] are, indeed, hard-wired, there are important implications... If heuristic strategies are the stuff upon which cognition evolved...it places an even stronger imperative on the need for research into de-biasing strategies--finding ways of undoing our innate tendencies that evolved in simpler times and which now may be counter productive in modern medicine. [3]

How to put this into practice?  One place to start is by learning more about the cognitive heuristics and biases that can affect our decision-making. [4] As is so often the case, awareness by itself is insufficient to create change, but it's the necessary first step.

2. Match the appropriate cognitive style to the task at hand.

This raises several questions that require further exploration: What are the different cognitive styles at my disposal? What's my default style? To what extent can I change styles? And how much effort will be required to do so? While we seek to answer these questions, however, one overarching principle can guide our efforts: Learn when to trust our instincts and when to distrust them.

As Croskerry notes, situational awareness is key, and even in a state of heightened perception we may have to "meta-cognitively kick it up a notch" to match our style to the situation. Essentially this means we sometimes need to "think about how we're thinking." Should we go with our intuition? Or should we discount our intuition and be more analytical? And clearly, familiarity with the cognitive biases noted above will help us select the right cognitive style.

 

---

Footnotes

[1] The theory and practice of clinical decision-making (Pat Croskerry, Canadian Journal of Anesthesia, 2005)

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] When Heuristics Go Bad

 

For Further Reading

Seeing What's Not There (The Importance of Missing Data)

Racing Up the Ladder of Inference

Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet (Buster Benson)

Cognitive Bias Codex (Designed by John Manoogian III using Benson's framework)

• Large format paper version (Design Hacks)

Wikipedia's list of psychological heuristics

Strategic decisions: When can you trust your gut? (Interview with Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein)

Conditions for Intuitive Expertise (Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein)

 

Updated May 2022.

Photo by Thomas Guignard.