Evolutionary Provocateur

World Cup Fever, Passion, and Productivity

It is amazing and wonderful to see how many more people have gotten caught up in World Cup fever than ever before...certainly in Canada. For example in 1998, the average Canadian weekday audience was 259,000. The first round of the tournament TSN''s top weekday audience was 842,000 for the Brazil/Croatia game (Globe and Mail, June 21st). The achievement and respect of Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire for their performance empowers their entire country as their teams return home to a heroes welcome. And so they should...

What does this mean to business? Business responses vary. Media coverage varies from detailing the loss of productivity in the billions in the U.K. to IBM's software lab in Canada piping every televised match to the computers of their 2000 workers.

Different responses reveal the different focus of employers. In the spirit of 'If you can't fight them join them', employers gain through employee retention (work-life balance), building morale and company loyalty and using soccer as a focal point for socializing and strengthening communication between workers who might not normally communicate with each other. The global migration of workers introduces cultural/social values that coalesce around soccer.

The other side of being proactive is resignation and the view that the whole thing distracts from more important business. With technology, employees don't need the approval of their employees. Workplaces viewing the World Cup as a distraction from productivity will create friction between those who care and those who might care less. Workplaces are all about the whole person now, not about part of them. The workplace and space that gets that employees perform well when this is recognized...win.

Performance-wise, an article in the New York Times dated May 7, 2006, pointed out that elite soccer players are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year rather than later. The question that Anders Ericsson, from Florida State University, asks is: 'When someone is very good at a given thing, what is it that actually makes him good?' His conclusion is deliberate practice, which could also be thought of as intentional practise, 'of setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback, and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.' Ericsson's team of colleagues will publish the 'Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance' in which they assert that expert performers are made, not born. "I think the most general claim here, is that a lot of people believe there are some inherent limits they were born with. But there is surprisingly little hard evidence that anyone could attain any kind of exceptional performance without spending a lot to time perfecting it."  The operative word is people believe. Free that belief and you can free limitation. A related conclusion in the article points out that 'when it comes to choosing your life path, do what you love, because if you don't love it you are unlikely to work hard enough to get very good.'

Watch Ronaldinho and the rest of the Brazil squad. Their passion for the game keeps them centered totally on the task of performing the technical skills, where they have mastery, while maintaining vision and focus. Sounds a lot like performance of any kind.

How to Release Innovative Thinking

A gifted colleague of mine, Seann Sinclaire, recently alerted me to an interesting bit of scientific research published in Ergonomics, April, 1998 entitled, The impact of flicker from flourescent lighting on well-being, performance and phsyiological arousal.

Flourescent lighting in offices is like water in a tap. You take it for granted without totally appreciating the value. The kind of lighting employees are exposed to has a direct impact on productivity. The study basically stated that the flicker in flourescent lighting negatively impacts alpha brain waves...suppressing them.

Seann summarized the impact like this: 'Alpha is the normal 'parking' state of the brain and is necessary for the normal relaxation response to stress, creative thinking, and creative problem-solving or out of the box thinking critical in todays' business environment. The standard flourescent lighting therefore blocks or severely limits the ability of many individuals to access their creative problem solving abilities. This type of lighing is also inherently stressful because it interfrees with the normal arousal/relaxation response in individuals, and may result in adverse health effects when sustained on a long term basis."

We expect employees to engage and utilize innovative thinking while using lighting that suppresses the brain waves required. Hmm.....

Meanwhile, training is being blamed for poor performance. Most training, like 95-99%, aims purely at the cognitive absorption of concepts that do not deal with the environmental factors that support or limit achievement. When we 'fail' to produce innovative thinking, the focus gets turned to narrow down the source of the problem. In reality, creative problem solving, when applied by management would suggest exploring a full range of possibilities to include lighting, inspiration, receptivity to brilliant ideas in seed form.

To be the change you wish to see, you may have to get out of the office and into the sunlight.

An Inconvenient Truth- Al Gore's Film

Al Gore has done a brilliant job of presenting scientific data in a way that conveys real meaning to anyone who will listen. His timing to draw attention to the connection between action and consequence could not be better, though no doubt it would have helped for his message to have been heard sooner.

It is funny to me that I hear commentary from the boomer generation refer to GenX (and the other labels) moaning about how consequence is not understood, the work ethic is not there. At the same time, when the consequences of our actions are in full view, there is a preference to deny, dispute or deflect the truth. i believe it was either Jesus or Mark Twain who was attributed to saying, "the truth will set you free, but it will piss you off first!" Well here we are.

My father has been banding birds for as long as I can remember. I can remember seeing colorful bands of warblers moving through the bush singing away... 'the voice of Mother Earth' as Rachel Carson put it.

Yet here we are, warning after warning faced with accepting what is in front of us, given the choice to do what we have always done or to do something totally different. Contrary to what might be espoused, this is not about who is right and who is wrong OR who is bad and who is good. We don't have time for egoic sorting tactics that distract energy down separate we/they pathways.

It is about trust in yourself at the deepest level to feel what rings true for you and to respond accordingly. What guides will you use? 

If you have not seen the film, then go, talk about it, feel it, then act.

‘First to a Finish Line He Cannot See’

At the Paralympics in Turin Brian McKeever won two gold medals cross country skiing and a bronze in the biathlon. When he first considered training to compete in the biathlon, he saw it as a sport which “sounded so ridiculous – blind guys with guns” that he figured he should try it. A genetic malfunction took Brian’s sight at McKeever at the age of 19. I love these kinds of role models. You can’t help but ask…

What anchors an achievement of this nature?

• He has made lemonade out of lemons. ‘He believes he sees more than most people do. He notices things happening peripherally that others ignore because they’re too busy looking ahead. And his blindness opens his mind to how he’d been raised and how he wanted to live the rest of his life.’ – (Globe and Mail)

• He has gained mastery of the ability to shift perspective.

• He uses humor in a healthy way. It creates distance from the problem and then offers another way to see things.

Each of these qualities: the ability to see what is not easily seen, the ability to shift perspective on yourself and your situation and not taking yourself so seriously that you can not see the humor in the situation, are qualities that are key in knowing how to use uncertainty to advantage.

Brian’s example also presents us with the realization that being physically blind can EXPAND sight.

Are we really using what we have to absolute advantage?

There is a lot to be said for being able to ‘see’ in more than one way and being able to think more than one way. It also helps to know how to knowingly make the shift. The interesting connection between Brian’s achievement and the opportunity facing companies is the recognition that achievement is as much a reflection of what might be called peak performance but is also known as flow…an athlete’s ability to be in flow. The ability to shift perspective, see the humor in the situation and use it to effectively find a path is pretty potent when you are navigating the uncertainty of these very dynamic times.