Maeda's SIMPLICITY

Representation and Participation

In academia there are many committees as compared with industry. Committees enable the sharing of viewpoints in an open forum of members who are committed to the cause of the committee. If you turn that around however for someone who is not on the committee, from the outside it appears like a closed forum and makes those that are not inside the committee feel less committed to the cause of the committee.

A committee is usually formed of representatives for particular constituent groups. It is the responsibility of the representatives to provide representation, and more importantly to report back to their constituents how they did with enough details such that they feel properly represented but also they know how to become more committed, albeit indirectly.

Minutes are an important tool for sharing the issues discussed in a meeting, knowing who went or didn't go, and when shared openly provide for greater accountability. Starting the meeting with an agenda is important; sharing the agenda ahead of time for feedback is even more important. Finally, executing the meeting in the promised allotment of time is critical.

Even and fair participation is important. Otherwise the viewpoints become skewed and the outcome fails to benefit from the strength of diverse opinions. The leader needs to be careful to solicit opinions from quiet constituents, and at the same time ask for more vocal constituents to grant some extra room for the less vocally-gifted.

A committed core needs to connect with the uncommitted masses. Otherwise the committee has no meaning to exist. Communication in every which way is everything for the leader. Without communication, she is the leader of a team of one -- her own mind.

The Assistant

On the ride from Tokyo to Narita Airport, a co-worker from my past escorted me to say goodbye. He related how his professor at Tokyo University (sort of like the Harvard of Japan) was probably the #1 or #2 people in the world in his subfield of materials science. This professor’s administrative assistant of thirty years had recently died at the young age of 55 from cancer. My friend was still reeling from this news and wanted to relieve some of his pain by relating the story as he and many past students had a deep emotional attachment to her.

As the story went, the professor's assistant had followed this famous professor all the way up from being a junior professor to later becoming a high ranking person in the professor’s field. My friend joked about how people all over the world claimed to not know who the professor was, but everyone sure knew his administrative assistant because she was the one that made things happen logistics-wise for this famed professor. He was loved, not just for his expertise, but the good company he had closest to him as support.

Towards the end of her life in the hospital this professor visited her every day without fail. He canceled all his travel to be with her. And since he was so respected in Japan, he moved his assistant to the highest ranking doctor and service above all other VIPs at the hospital ... yet it did not result in her getting better.

The lesson I took away from this is one that I know by heart. That great people know how to take care of their people. For a great person does not become great by themselves.

3 or 4 vs 5 or 6

In the recent days since the RISD announcement I have been expanding my search for wisdom by meeting with current sitting university presidents as my new hobby. One president told me a funny story about former MIT president Paul Gray who was MIT's president when I was an undergraduate here. He said that Gray told him once, "For any given evening while you are trying to go to sleep, you will realize that you have let down 3 or 4 people or groups on campus. This will be the case daily. What is important once in a while, is for you to let down 5 or 6 to make you realize what a good job you're doing in general." This bit of dark wit certainly made me smile.

Currently at RISD I'm doing something a bit different in the virtual space. There is an internal forum where I am in the midst of connecting with RISD students, staff, and faculty to begin to learn all about RISD. It's funny because one of the staff persons discovered an interesting coincidence along the same vein of my finding MIT in the words SIMPLICITY and COMPLEXITY. She discovered that the current RISD president's name, and my name, are coincidentally connected to the word, "ONE," -- which is the launch point for our internal forum called one.risd:

ROGER MANDLE
JOHN MAEDA
COINCIDENCE?

I certainly felt the strong hand of fate. Oh my.

Forest of Thought

One thing I've learned as I approach the close of my twelfth years as a Professor is that there are a variety of models to aging in the forests of academia. Perhaps my all time favorite MIT professor is Gilbert Strang of the Mathematics department. He once told me in a simple and unassuming voice, "There is no better job than being an MIT Professor." When lost in the meaning of facultyhood, I often turn to Gil's gentle assertion as a point of focus.

As one becomes more mature in one's field, a few tendencies emerge: 1) greed: to dominate the field in a conscious and egotistical manner, 2) nurture: to make room for others by fostering the next generation, 3) apathy: to simply "check out" and rest on one's laurels. Although the first option seems unpalatable, I am of the belief that option three is probably worse. All three types are necessary elements to a great system of knowledge. Because everyone goes through a variety of phases in their lives. Usually greed gets embarassing and apathy or nurture sets in; apathy is sometimes a sign of rest that presages intellectual growth manifest as greed or nurture; nurture however is unique, as sometimes there are people that are always living in this mode all the time.

Here at the Media Lab there is a particular senior Professor I admire that I've had a longtime difficulty trying to understand how he exists. Definitely of the constant nurture variety, this Professor is someone that as he ages only increases in seriousness, yet is the proverbial light that illuminates everyone around him manifest as inspiration -- and at some times, defeat. There are those that simply cannot keep pace with him. For all his potency, he never attempts to usurp power or damage anything around himself. There is something elegant and graceful to his actions that makes him an important species in the faculty forest.

Watching him got me to think that if this Professor were a tree, he is best characterized as a Bonsai tree. Sitting in a spare, limited pot by his own choice. Trimming himself constantly so as not to burden that which surrounds. Cleaning his own roots to ensure that he does not grow out of control.

Meanwhile in the forest there are others that are more like bamboo trees. Constantly spreading out of control and with roots that suffocate surrounding growth. Note that in the forest of wisdom, peace would be undesirable. The advancement of knowledge requires natural processes of survival and evolution.

Those that sit silent are like the rocks. They are inert and take up space but add to the total beauty of the forest.

Growth, control, and repose. These three need to exist in balance to make for a good forest of thought. The difficult task for the caretaker of the forest is to ensure watering the right areas, trimming back unaesthetic overgrowth, being cautious of the growth of weeds, transplanting less-thriving species to find greater strengths, and planting new seeds. But most important, ultimately knowing when to leave the forest alone. Hmmm. I think I see something now. Thank you for listening.

Doing One's Best Work

Red is always right.

Last week I visited my friend Red Burns who directs the NYU ITP. The ITP is a graduate program that is similar to the Media Lab's program, but different in that it leans more towards the artistic side of the equation. If you're looking for a uniquely creative graduate school experience in NY, then ITP fits your bill perfectly.

As usual, within the short span of a conversation with Red I heard something that mattered more than talking for ten hours with anyone else. She said, :

"People do their best work
when they can focus
on their work."

You can often see this effect in students here at the Media Lab. Because we have very few meetings and other structures to limit their creativity, they are free to be let alone and just do their work. The addition of constraints, artificial hurdles to clear, and so forth would make them focus on the perceived extraneous problems at hand -- versus the actual core mission of simply innovating.

Red's wisdom speaks for all types of organizations. The more BS and politics one needs to deal with, the less time they have to focus on their actual mission and meaning in life. One of the reasons I did my MBA was to have the ability to better manage much of the administrivia one acquires with age so that I could have more time to aim on the higher things ... versus just the here and now. Since the future is founded on the present, and the past of course, our ability to distribute levels of interest is critical to consider.

Perhaps a total blue-sky dreamer sits 100 FUTURE / 0 PRESENT / 0 PAST, whereas a completely pragmatic person might be 0 FUTURE / 100 PRESENT / 0 PAST, and an extremely conservative person may sit 0 FUTURE / 0 PRESENT / 100 PAST. If I were to reflect on my own leanings I would say I am a 50 FUTURE / 35 PRESENT / 15 PAST kind of person. I'm firmly grounded in the current tense, and reflective to a point that doesn't keep me too stuck in what happened before, yet I like to sit a majority portion of what I wish to achieve onto the question of what may come. Of course this fluctuates with the happenings of the day and rhythm of the year.

I think that Red's elegant compass for answering the question of "how to focus on your work" is really an important question in your own life, as well as the people that you manage. Red's wisdom has given me focus, so you could say that by just seeing Red, I'm doing better work already. Thank you Red Burns.

Always Keep A Stock of Spare Heads

I've been reading a bunch of books on CEOs and their first "100 days" -- a reference to President FDR's enormously pivotal and successful first hundred days in office. The United States was amidst the crisis of the Great Depression, and Roosevelt's team swiftly brought forward the New Deal as a means to bring greater structure, stability, and finally recovery to the US economy. Opponents to Roosevelt's actions have given the counterargument that although the New Deal may have saved the US, it also vastly tipped the lever of power on the side of the government over the people's will in a manner that seemed undemocratic. I am reminded of the adage "damned if you do, damned if you don't" which underlines the paradox of leadership -- to lead with no action and maintain the status quo leads to criticism for inaction; whereas to lead with all action leads to criticism of affecting unwanted change and doing too much.

Through all the haze of CEO-isms in these books, the one thing I have been able to extract as the core and essential principle is the fact that people are the singlemost important elements in a company. When you think about it, "company" implies that one person is in the company of another. Or an "organization" is a system of people, and certainly not a bunch of computers or other inanimate objects. Human resources are the critical factor to winning a game of basketball (not the basketball itself), to taking a company public (lawyers are people too), to fixing a great bowl of chicken soup (the ingredients do help, but it takes a person to collect those ingredients), and so forth.

Humans have feelings. It is why they are the most difficult resource to maintain within a company. Non-humans are different in maintenance requirements. Computers are happiest when they are plugged in. When they are unplugged, they don't really care (or know) at all that they have been put out to pasture. Sure, resources like a copy machine are the biggest complainers in an organization -- always needing to be massaged and fixed by a human repairperson. But a copy machine has no feelings ... at least yet. Many researchers would like to instill emotions into machines so that our devices can better reason and judge their ways out of complex situations. I find it funny to think how all this effort to make the computer reason ... might ultimately ironically help it (the computer) figure out how to become truly unreasonable. Woah! Scary thought.

When you work with great people, you have trust -- which makes everything truly simple. Great people have a choice as to where and to whom they wish to invest their most precious resource of trust. And since great people are often your most expensive resource to attract, hire, develop, and retain, it would seem that the motto "people first" makes a great deal of sense. When you put another person's interests above your own, and that act of faith is made sincerely, then trust is a natural and implicit outcome of the exchange. A simple idea, but difficult to implement in practice -- why?

There is a famous comicbook character for preschoolers in Japan named Anpan-man. Anpan-man is not in any way a dark, brooding character like the vengeful Batman or has the post-teen angst of a figure like Spiderman. No, Anpan-man is simply a superhero made out of a Japanese roll with sweetened red bean paste as filling called anpan as his head (literally) and he's a guy ... so he's literally anpan-guy ... err ... -man (in reality it would be more accurate to call him anpan-boy).

Anpan-man can fly as part of his repertoire of superhero powers. But his greatest hero-asset is the ability to feed lost, or unenergized, or sad, or any do-gooder (or even do-wronger) by plucking a part of his face off and feeding another person. Immediately, the helpless soul becomes energized and whole; whereas by Anpan-man's sacrifice, he becomes tired and unable to battle crime. Anpan-man is returned back to wholeness by going to the bakery where he was conceived; the baker bakes him a new head and pops it on Anpan-man and he's all good to go again. There are various religious connotations to the Anpan-man persona that can be drawn of course.

But the core principle here is that Anpan-man can be such a giving soul because he has an infinite well of heads (that can be readily baked) from which to heal and help others. Anpan-man as a leader in real life is hard to find because at the end of the day, we all have our insecurities that make ourselves wonder, "If I give away that ... one ... last ... important thing ... I have nothing left ... can I afford to do that?"

My father was (and still is) an Anpan-man style of person in a way that befuddled me when I was growing up. He'd give every single thing he had to anyone around him -- not as a means to curry favor of course, but simply because he felt that it was the right thing to do. That if you had more you could always get by with less. He is still healthy and in the twilight phase of his life, and I recall how I used to find myself frustrated thinking how he gave so much to those around himself throughout life, but the people whose lives he touched rarely came back to him even with a simple word of thanks. I would talk with him about this but he never seemed bothered -- a man of few words and little education, he'd just smile and shrug it off.

Now I realize that perhaps it's because he didn't do it for anybody around him necessarily -- he just did it for himself, and maybe for his family to see so that they might emulate his behavior and maybe instill it in others. It's nearing the end of the year, and I do get a bit sentimental for natural reasons at these times. So I wish to express my sincere thanks to my father for his example of rare leadership in its purest form, and to all parents and guardians that lead their families and friends by best-intentioned examples. My own parents don't access the Web so I relate this story for my own sanity-giving purposes, and to share with you on this sunny day in Massachusetts.

In summary, if you give a piece of your head away like Anpan-man, don't worry as it will either grow back whole, or else you can always reach into your stock of spare heads. To not give a part of your head away to a helpless person would be silly -- otherwise why have a head in the first place?

Openly Prioritize

Wisdom for my breakfast.

While in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago, I had a chance encounter at my hotel with Prof. Patrick Whitney of IIT. It was only a few months back when I was at Patrick's conference and he was so busy hosting the event then that I didn't have the opportunity to talk with him at length. Luckily over breakfast at the hotel, I got a whole lot of organizational wisdom from him as he's really seen it all. My placemat menu was filled with scribbles -- a good sign of a good meal.

Patrick made an interesting distinction between fairness versus policy. His point being that a clear policy usually makes everything open and transparent. It's real socialism at work -- everyone gets the same deal no matter for better or for worse. On the other hand, with a closed process at work it's possible to give different deals to different people because an open policy is thrown out the door -- which can be good or bad depending upon what particular deal you get. In the closed model, the perception of fairness is sometimes possible to attain to a degree, but real fairness is close to impossible to achieve due to the fact that the closed system is really by all metrics simply unfair regardless of how it is dressed up to look completely fair. Note that I don't use the words "fair"/"unfair" with any particular judgement value here. The world is unfair. The realist in me know that well. But the idealist in me likes to believe it could be fair at least on the average ... maybe at least on sunny days?

My breakfast takeaway was that the best model to shoot for appears to be one that is "openly unfair." Hmmmm. I guess a better way to put that is to be "openly prioritizing" (and thus also de-prioritizing) based upon clearly shared values. Bets always have to be made in an organization, and achieving a high degree of comfort around the bets made is pivotal so that the wins and losses are not just the leader's but are shared across the entire organization. Everyone is a winner with a win, and even when you lose it's a win because you retain full awareness that the loss was yours -- versus being put in a situation where you've lost and felt you were helplessly out of the loop from the beginning.

I think that ultimately you never lose when being open as it is the core direction that leads to the elusive 8th Law of Simplicity trust. Trust. Wow! Hard. Something for me to think about over the next few decades. Luckily I might still have a few more years to try and figure this all out ...

Type 1.50 Leader

Nicolas in Austria provided an elegant add-on to my recent post on the Type 1.5 Leader by adding an extra digit of precision with his paraphrasing of Sun Tzu:

As a General you should not
take care too much of your life during a fight,
but not too less too.
Thank you for your lovely addition Nicolas. The paraphrase works fine for me.

Acknowledged

One of the difficulties in acknowledging people for their efforts is that it's easy to forget to acknowledge someone in the process. You often see this in award ceremonies like the Oscar's where a failure to mention "a special someone" can be misinterpreted as a pointed commentary about the winner's state of relationships. I vividly recall in 2000 at the Oscar's when Hilary Swank failed to thank her Chad Lowe (others besides me noticed as well). Perhaps the reason why I was so sensitive to Hilary's mistake was because a similar thing happened to me in 1999.

When I received Chrysler Design Award in 1999 at a swank ceremony in New York I was terribly flummoxed as I felt that I really didn't feel that I deserved the award. So at the podium I acknowledged one of my dear mentors, the late Muriel Cooper, as the more deserved focus of the awarding. Filled with pride that I had made the right kind of acknowledgment, I then sat down next to my wife and realized I had forgotten a certain, errrr, special someone ... sitting ... right ... next ... to me.

In the workplace you can't say "thank you" enough. At the same time, you really can't say "thank you" enough, as each action by an organization is the result of a chain reaction of many parties. To give thanks to every link in the process is often impossible. I guess that is why a leader should in general be thankful. If she is on the average a thankful person, and expresses this gratitude constantly, then the thanks permeates an organization with constancy -- so that as the thanks radiates and propagates outwards it's bound to hit everyone ... if even only glancingly.

So thanks to you for taking the time to read this. And thanks to the situation that allows you to take some time out of your day to visit. I'm thankful for your continued interest.

Towards Being a Type 1.5 Leader

Today I recognized that a good leader is someone that stands for the strengths of her people. When a collective is under attack, she is a shield to protect her people and also a spear to advance the vision forward.

In movies we often see two scenarios: 1) the leader is surrounded by her soldiers as a wall of protection; or 2) the leader is the one that is the first to rush into battle. In the first scenario, the concept is to "protect the leader so that she may survive"; in the second scenario the concept is to "lead the people in the way forward risking her own mind and body." The former method makes sense from a rational standpoint: if the leader is destroyed early on, then there is nobody to lead.

In a sense, the latter method posits a continuous emergence of new leaders such that when the leader at the front is possibly wiped out, that among those that follow there shall be new leaders that naturally emerge to push the front forward even when the original leader is gone. As a child I grew up primarily watching movies where leaders behave in a Type 2 fashion. It's amazing how the kind of movies you watch as a child influence really do influence your adult life behavior :-)

In summary, a Type 2 leader is inevitably the most unprotected person on the planet and is arguably not as smart as a Type 1 leader that is oppositely the most protected person around. A Type 2 leader leads with passion -- which to her followers can be quite a thrill; a Type 1 leader leads with their mind -- which makes much more sense but doesn't make as good of a movie. A Type 2 leader is confident in herself, and not concerned for her well-being. By nature of her passion, she is dangerous to her team as she inspires them to follow her into battle; a Type 1 leader thinks her position out carefully, and is willing to see the team around her take successive hits as team members are moved around strategically by the leader to score the all important winning of the war.

Hmmm. I thought about this once, haven't I? Ah yes, two years ago now. Here it is. It was then that I began to believe that the Type 1 approach was important to consider. Strange how two years later I am re-engaged by the excitement of a Type 2 approach. It must be my Netflix queue. I believe that my only recourse is to Do Both.. Darn. It's never simple, is it?

Wisdom from Ghana

Max Vardon from Ghana wrote me a response to my recent post on Leaders vs Managers that he has allowed me to share with you.

"The difference to me is primarily and simply one of temporal orientation.

The Leader is future-oriented, mapping out a (generally) long-term direction for hir (his/her) team or tribe, and often has abundant personal charisma that inspires hir followers. Typically the effective leader will delegate important (process) components in order to remain free to envision the next stage, whilst reserving the option to lead by example. Essentially too, the notion of 'followers' implies a voluntary, concious and active common alignment of values and/or purpose.

The Manager conversely tends to be focussed on achieving a set (of) goal(s) in the present / here-and-now and typically mobilises resources and motivates hir team towards the target (typically shorter-term) objective(s). The often-expressed need for team-building highlights the initial absence of shared values and objectives common amongst followers.

A Boss on the other hand may be a manager with a 'command and control' mindset as opposed to one with a more participative style.

Of course successful leaders will embody management skills to some extent, as will successful managers also display some degree of leadership abilities but I would submit that if you have to motivate, then you're not leading......!"

Thanks Max!

Leader vs Manager

Ever since I wrote this I have been thinking about the distinction between a leader and a manager. Today on a drive to music school with my daughter we discussed this concept within her world view as the "line leader" for her classroom (meaning that whenever they have to go somewhere in the school, they form a line/queue).

A manager is the person that designs the construct of a line, sets the expectations for the line to form, thinks through how the line might be best composed and prioritized, and ensures that the queue is executed per spec. On the other hand, a leader is the person that is able to take the line forward in an orderly fashion by setting the example for others, providing the vision for how the line fits into the larger scheme of things, and engages the line-followers in a respectful manner. The manager sets up the win with perfection for her team; the leader executes the win with passion. What is common across these two different roles is that both people need to implement or execute their plans in a participatory nature, otherwise they will surely fail. Because in the end, a manager never manages alone; and a leader surely cannot lead alone either.

So in conclusion, to become the hybrid leader/manager is an important goal in life. My own philosophy of do both continues to make sense to me. Sometimes I wish it were all a bit simpler. But then I think it would be less of a challenge and I would be bored instead. So for today, complexity in life wins as the guiding principle.

Deciding About Indecision

Managing people means making decisions. Before one decides on a course of action, they must weigh the consequences of the direction they may take. To overthink the possible outcome leading to so-called "analysis-paralysis"; on the other hand, split-second thinking is the affectionately called "gut decision."

A decision does not have to lead to immediate action. Often times the best decision is to just have a plan. A plan is a set of decisions mapped out in time well beyond the present. The distance that this plan covers forward in time is the difference between immediate (tactics) and long-term (strategic) thinking. A good leader has the skill to develop both types with their team.

Indecision is inaction, which can appear like thought, but often that is not the case. Indecision means the inability to reach a conclusion when many people are counting on you to validate their trust in your leadership. It is okay as a leader to hide your own process of internal analysis from your team as that is what defines you as "thoughtful" versus the much worse case of being "thoughtless."

To fluctuate between different decisions in a public situation is to be avoided at all costs. Thus is the phenomenon of "waffling" with all its negative connotations (so sad for waffles because as a food I love them so). People like/desire decisions -- even if they are imperfect -- which they often are. A good leader make more good decisions than bad ones. For the really really bad decisions she might make, sometimes she tries to fix those that are fixable. But she is ready to accept the fate of a bad decision, and still move forward. Because her people depend on her to do so. She is never indecisive. She just decides.

I now decide to get back to work.

The Good Boss

When a team succeeds at achieving a lofty goal, the good boss credits her team members as being the reasons for success instead of herself. This "boss behavior" enables the team to trust their boss as one who enables their own careers over the boss' own career.

When a team fails at achieving a lofty goal, the good boss owns the failure as her own and doesn't blame the team. This boss behavior enables the team members to take creative risks with their work, and not feel they will be penalized by their boss when/if they fail.

Both boss behaviors require the core attributes of the boss as: 1) being self-assured but not an *sshole about it, 2) keeping the larger goals in mind with priority over the issues that are just local to herself, and 3) facing each day with acceptance of the challenging responsibilities that comes with being the boss.

Reader Aida in Georgia importantly notes, "To me, the qualities of the 'good boss' that you described are the difference between a 'boss' and a 'leader.' Having been a 'boss' and having been a member of team, I make this distinction, and I'd much rather work for a leader than a boss :-)"

Are You In Then Out or Are You Out Then In?

An important part of the role of being a manager is to delegate authority to others. By doing so, you trust that something you might have to be doing yourself gets done by your people so that you can do other things. If "the other things" includes worrying whether the stuff gets done, then you've created twice as much work for yourself by 1) instantiating the work, and 2) fixing the work. If you had just done the work yourself, you might have saved yourself some time. It's always a gamble but a necessary one when you think about it if you want to make things really happen at a large scale.

When the work is performed, the good manager realizes that he/she didn't really do the work and whenever possible, publicly acknowledges the work of others as their work and not the manager's. Indeed he/she instigated the path towards the work, but holding onto the need to retain credit can often be seen as a manager's pathetic attempt to "take credit" from those that could stand to benefit proportionately more from the assignment of credit.

The manager is able to shed the need to own the credit by his/her own intrinsic strength and confidence. How does one stay strong in this manner? As far as I can tell, it's something to do with being an active self-contributor to society separate from their staff. In other words, the hands-on manager doesn't have to be grabbingly hands-on with their staff's work if they are actively hands-on in another supporting, but not conflicting, domain. True strength comes from real strength. The manager needs to be independently capable along some important dimension in order to remain respectable.

However at the other extreme, being completely hands-off with one's staff's work isn't a good idea. Providing an appropriate level of feedback is critical, otherwise a certain desirable depth of work is not achieved (because the manager is usually more experienced and can contribute the secret sauce of "wisdom" which makes everything always better). Any extra attention given by the manager only increases his/her investment and ownership in the work, and thus makes it even harder to cede credit to his/her people when the time to go public with the ideas come.

Thus the manager needs to be involved at the beginning and during a concept's development (on the in), and promote the other's involvement at the very end (on the out). On the other hand if the manager is not involved at all (generally on the out) until the very end of the process to scoop up most of the credit (swooping to the in), then he/she is certainly a poor example of leadership. In my mind, a good leader is first in, then out because he/she is constantly moving forward without needing to wait for the credit and instead distributing it to his/her team.

Administration Versus Creativity

At the airport there are countless occasions when I walk through the book shop and spy some latest self-help book on How to Manage XYZ or 7 Successful Models to Manage XYZ and pause briefly. "Should I get this?" Will it make my life easier? If it makes my life easier, will I be able to save some time and be able to re-invest it into my creative work?

I recall waiting to give the commencement speech at a local art university sitting next to some higher-up wearing a suit. He intimated how as a youth he used to be a punk rocker, was an avid painter, and generally stood *against* the institutions with which he was affiliated. Yet there years later he wore his Brooks Brothers and lamented that he no longer really did anything as a creative professional anymore. Immediately afterwards he gets up in front of the mike and gives some standard institutional line. This event made me wonder thereafter. How do you stay active as a creator but still do the necessary things that can benefit the larger organization?

The solution is to simply outsource the creative activities and brand it as your own. This often happens with scientists and artists as administrators. An active non-administrative career is enabled by having amassed sufficient power to no longer need to do the hands-on activities by oneself, yet still retain the lion's share of the credit. There's nothing wrong with this model of course. It is how the world works. Whether it should work like that or not is certainly not up to me.

Being hands-on runs counter to the need to delegate. Being hands-on and delegating simultaneously implies the annoying phenomenon of micromanaging. Not good. Complete delegation works well when there's mutual respect between the delegator and delegatee. Without such mutual respect however, the delegatee needs to see the delegator in a hands-on mode. This is where a well-intentioned delegator can get into trouble by inadvertently micromanaging the delegatee as a means to gain respect, to only backfire. Sufficiently complex to deem as unsolvable for the moment.

In conclusion, I think I remain a manager that errs on the side of hands-on, with sincere intent to not micromanage, and as an unevolved delegator with respect to my external non-administrative creative work, thus that work tends to ultimately suffer. It is by choice, and certainly not coerced. It is an expression of freedom, within my own constraints.

Student Watches Teacher

I am currently trying to tell my students to sketch more without sitting in front of a computer. I'm surprised by how difficult it has been to get them moving along this dimension. All of them are accomplished artists, yet sitting in front of the computer has rendered some of them paralyzed. And then I turn the focus on myself and reflect on how I spend at least 99% of my time at work with either email communications, face-to-face meetings, Excel spreadsheets, or building presentation materials. I estimate about 0.5% of that time is spent on blogging (the remaining 0.5% is spent eating).

Nowadays the only time I have to freely sketch is on the airplane. I've managed to avoid the growing temptation of using soon available Internet service on the airplane and thus my sketching ritual continues. But I'm (fortunately?) not on the plane every day.

If "boss is waiter", he can't/shouldn't spend his time in the restaurant freely scribbling visual thoughts. Yet student does as teacher does, so I feel the need to make time to draw at work. Maybe I should give up blogging and eating to reclaim that 1% for art ...

Boss Proverb

In Shanghai I learned a simple Chinese saying about the role of a good manager:

Boss is waiter.

It means that a manager's role is to serve his or her team's needs in an ongoing and proactive manner. I'm fairly handy with a water pitcher ...

Leadership160

I am new to the SMS medium and find it purifying to reduce messages to 160 characters in length. I continue to wonder about leadership with the ongoing conclusion:

Good leader needs 2B exemplar on some primary axis (smart, strong, etc), survivable martyr 4 her team, recognize + cultivate strengths in those around her.

It's not simple to achieve these goals.

• Condition 1 posits the need for some core skill that others around her can aspire towards or at least fundamentally respect. Proving possession of such skill without looking like an arrogant jack*ss is the challenge.
• Condition 2 implies that the leader will take on fire for those around her, but can survive the attack. A dead leader isn't nearly as good as a living leader in most cases, thus survivability is key.
• Condition 3 is the ability to accelerate development of people around her so as to exceed the leader's own abilities, and thus serve the betterment of humankind.

But it's good to have goals at least I think.

Keep Moving

I look for inspiration. Constantly. It is not hard to find. It is always there in your surrounds. But depending upon your mood, it is easy to get blind to it.

I find that when you yourself are uninspiring, it is then the hardest state in which to encounter positive inspiration. Seems sort of unfair to yourself, as it means that the rope to pull you out of your own hole disappears as soon as you start to dig it.

This is an argument for remaining positive in general -- it's the best insurance.

A new professor here Ed Boyden explained to me that feeling happy has no discrete mapping in the brain. He went on to say that feelings of depression, and sadness, and so forth map to particular parts of the brain that are dedicated for such introspections. But happiness is not -- it's mapped in a share way to the motor system in your brain.

I've always heard that when you exercise and so forth, it makes you feel happier. I know this by personal experience from my random bits of exercise that I try to sneak in here and there. When you're moving, you're happier. When you're not moving, you shift back inside your own head.

I took this as an argument to think less, and move more.

A team functions better as a group when they experience realizing a common goal together. I've noticed that the beginning of summer ritual we have in the PLW of moving all the desks around into a new configuration often achieves this goal. You can work on software projects and other intangible things together with a difficulty of establishing the value of teamwork. But the simple activity of a shared physical exercise with co-workers can make an extreme difference. Out of the head, into the body, and outwards to others.

Now, out of my head, and moving back into the world.

Reader Morgan Sutherland writes, "A good thing to read, on the topic of happiness, is Bertrand Russell's The Conquest of Happiness." Thank you for the suggestion Morgan.

Switch Now and Often

I seem to spend a great deal of time moving email around in my new administrative role as Associate Director of Research here at the Media Lab. There's something entirely un-creative about managing streams of email -- it seems more the game of being able to constantly switch from context to context repeatedly. By slicing one's mind so thinly, it is clear that carving out a significant space of time to be creative is fairly difficult.

A quick search reveals a quote by legendary entertainer Tina Turner on creativity:

"Sometimes you've got to let everything go -- purge yourself. If you are unhappy with anything ... whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free, your true creativity, your true self comes out."

Countless people have told me that I should engage solely in my creative work, and to not bother with administration. Perhaps it's because as an administrator it is difficult to truly be "free" as Tina states as a necessary requirement for creativity.

I cannot remember the context, but I recall talking to someone in my office who said that he could not seek a more creative path in life because he had to feed his family. Financial constraints do indeed stifle creativity. Paul Rand once gave me some good advice in this arena. So this is not an issue that plagues me anymore. The solution is simply "to work like a maniac" as Rand instructed me to do.

It may sound crazy, but I actually enjoy most aspects of administration. I also enjoy being purely creative too. I am beginning to think that the two activities are mutually exclusive, if they are to be done well. In other words, I don't feel the need to combine the two together anymore. I'm happy to keep them generally separate, and then allow some crossover activity once in a while. For instance I may unnecessarily pimp-out a visual presentation deemed for a staid audience; or I may approach a creative task more boringly business-like than usual. But I think that staying on track in both veins with true seriousness is probably the right way to do things when you can. In other words to do both as both and not as one.

In conclusion, being able to switch tasks and contexts extremely quickly with high accuracy is the way to go I think. Now it's time for me to switch to doing something else ...

Lazy-Faire

The principle of Laissez-faire of "let do" is a freeing philosophy for life in general. I think it to be a mature perspective that embodies the realization that we as individual humans really cannot control the events around ourselves.So why bother trying to "just do it" and instead just let do?

A naive person thinks anything is possible, and will do everything within and outside her capabilities to right an injustice. A wiser person sees problems around her as systemic of the world we live in, and that with reduced physical and mental energy that come with age, she can only address one or two big issues. So she chooses her battles carefully. Laissez-faire on the average is a good strategy for survival. Unseen, unmissed. But still there quietly. Yet a terrible strategy to execute as a leader because you can appear well, simply lazy.

Less management can result in the need for much more in the end. Another obvious lesson for my forgetful mind to remember.

Three P's of Leadership

Needs another P.

At a recent dinner party in London, I sat with Virginia Damtsa and we chatted about models of leadership. We both liked positive leaders, but in particular ones that were proactive and not just entirely passive. Because you can be a golly-gee positive person, but if you don't really do anything then you're sort of worthless to those that hope to follow you. On the other hand, if you're just doing a whole bunch of things proactively and you're terribly negative, all your good work becomes highly undervalued.

When presenting this model to my new team of one Becky Bermont, Becky offered another P of needing to be productive as a leader. And thus the three P's:

• Proactive: Deeply understand the situation. Acting without thought can seem very Jedi, but consensus trumps a light saber every time.
• Positive: Present the collective gains. There's a downside to every upside, and usually everyone knows the puddles by heart.
• Productive: Conclude with the win that works. Advance towards an important goal whenever possible, even if that takes you in an unpopular direction.

Now I go back to try and lead ...

Follow the Leader, To Where?

A peaceful existence is best. To choose to harm no other. And to accept harm from others, knowing that the harm cannot affect you if not acknowledged, can lead to a more sane existence.

However in a position of leadership, the do-no-harm principle has some flaws. Although the individual can lead with peaceful actions, if the surrounds do not move in alignment, the peaceful bubble of the individual at peace with herself can cause harm to those around her. Because in reality, it's hard not to feel harmed. Human beings have nerves all over our body that feel pain for a good reason: survival.

We learn the phrase "following the leader into battle" as a kind of norm for our society and its many tales of the past. In some cases we hear of "following the leader into peace" as in the story of the leader Gandhi.

Newton's 3rd Law tells us that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In that sense, we can always expect pushback in any situation not only in the mechanics of objects, but in our interactions with people as well.

There are cases when intentionally doing absolutely nothing can equate to doing an incredible something. I'm the first believer in such subtleties of happenings in life. But if left completely alone without thought, a case of doing nothing can truly equate to doing nothing at all. And that's a something that can be worse than the sum of all the things that you might have done in the first place.

So in conclusion, when consciously choosing the path of inaction, choose one that can result in real action. But don't assume that nothing will always be something without careful consideration. The way of nothing can be a complex business for sure.

Converge or Diverge

Depends where you stand.

There are certain things you need to do alone. And there are certain things you can only accomplish as a team. Two people can join in strength; one person can break themselves apart, or by superhuman accident can find even greater strength.

What we do together versus solo have specific contexts of worth. To be solo is to be free; to be tied-to-others is to be constrained. An army of soloists by definition needs no management structure. By definition such a "group" is easier to manage, and sometimes accomplishes more than a well-coordinated team. From a probability perspective however, the better bet in most situations is the carefully managed team. The latter takes a lot of work; the former relies on a lot of luck.

There are certain moods in the world that emerge based on global events. They seem to push us in either direction: cohesiveness and unity versus independence and breadth. I realize that I have a preference for neither mode, but recognize the validity of both approaches.

The successful soloist is likely to realize the more creative outcome, whereas the successful team is likely to realize the more meaningful outcome. Hmmm. That doesn't sound quite right. My dear friend and mentor Topper Carew suggests that it's always good to marinate. So here I am marinating ...

setup for failure = setup for success

This week I've wondered about the commonly used phrase of "to be setup for failure." It seems unlikely that such a situation could exist in any organization, because each individual's worth means so much more when they succeed. So why would anyone or any project be "setup for failure"? I then began to think about what conditions might constitute being "setup for success." For some reason, the latter case sounds great! However it is indeed harder to imagine happening than the former. Perhaps it is the lower probability that one might be "setup for success" versus being "setup for failure" that makes most people feel suspiciously setup for failure.

I am a sincere believer in the idea that miscommunication and mistakes are evidence that you are doing something. Especially when you are doing both. Doing something right is highly unlikely. Thus doing something wrong is almost usually guaranteed. If you don't do anything at all, in the short term you win because you do nothing wrong. Which immediately looks better as compared to the person that's messing up all the time because they're trying to get something done for the first time.

Let's consider the conditions for being "setup for success." You are presented with all the money you need, all the support from the people around you, and all the opportunities for you to mine. Having an infinite pile of money is highly unlikely; people around you usually have their own lives, so it's unlikely that their devotion will be infinite; finding the right opportunity, however, is slightly more probable if you don't give up trying to hit at the right moment. So you fail for trying. And hope to get lucky.

Having good luck is proof that you're iterating over and over and over and because you're failing so much, your potential for success increases. But failure usually results in a state of depression that can easily knock ourselves out of the running. For this reason we need thicker skin. We cultivate our tolerance for failure through the upsides in life of good family, good friends, good food, good ideas.

I think the key to maintaining "thicker skin" is by having a full stomach/full mind which is something I too often forget. For that reason, I write my various thoughts here. And I find it interesting how I might be giving a lecture somewhere in the world, and a person in the audience will have remembered for me what I wrote here. Thicker skin. Global mind. More failure. Maybe a little more success because you tried.

Being setup for failure is to be setup for success. This week I plan to rejoice in my various failed trials and actions. I hope your week goes just as well for you too.

Teamwork

Yesterday morning I had a unique encounter at the White House. Within a half hour span I had shook the hand of the First Lady and actor Robert Downey, Jr. I'm not sure how to feel. It was like going to the restaurant at the Ritz Carlton and having an Irish coffee to start the day. I felt truly proud to be an American.

Later in the day, I had a nice discussion with friends about my interest in carrot sticks. We concluded that sometimes it's important in life to have teachers, mentors, managers that are complete *ssholes (i.e. "heavy on the sticks") because then you are often challenged as an individual to rise to a new level. On the other hand, when you have a Gandalf-like boss you are able to have a healing experience (i.e. "heavy on the carrots") and can live in a more cooperative atmosphere lending to greater teamwork. Teams perform well together, but also do poorly together. A lot more can be riding on a team to succeed versus an individual. Failing by yourself can be miserable, but failing as as a team might be even more difficult.

How many sticks and carrots do you need to make a strong team of individuals? In other words, what organizational balance is required to achieve the ultimate kind of teamwork where the result is a team that wins together, and also wins individually? From my lunch conversation we concluded that maybe the recipe is 90% carrots and 10% sticks, where the sticks are subtly blended such that it's sort of a carrot smoothie with an undertaste of stick. Allow me to work on this recipe ...

Carrot Sticks

Maybe it was when I had turned 30. I heard this phrase used by someone, "You've only got so many carrots, and you've only got so many sticks." This phrasing confused me because all I could think of was how the concept made no sense. You've got carrots, and you've got carrot sticks. You seem to have both, so what's the problem again? Gifted with a disturbing level of naivete, it took me two years to understand what I had heard. Ah, I see. There are carrots (rewards) and there are sticks (punishment). But it still took a while. I don't know many people that think of carrots as the ultimate reward. I also don't know any people that beat others in their workplace with sticks as a form of punishment. Metaphors. I get it. I get it.

I work with a lot of incredibly smart people here at MIT. In the beginning, I used to think that if I told them to work harder -- or to at least keep pace with myself -- that they would naturally fall in line. This is how I was raised in a household where my self-employed parents worked 6 (often 7) days a week from 1AM to 6PM in the evening continuously. However I gradually realized that this approach bore no fruit. It is an approach that worked on me, so I naturally thought it would work on others. We often think that what works with ourselves can work with others. I'm human. I make mistakes.

Recently I am aware that there is no better method to manage people than with positive encouragement. It has to be sincere of course, and that's easy when you work with phenomenally talented people like I do everyday at MIT. I think it was last year that I realized that a truly gifted person knows deep down inside that they s*ck ... so at some point they really don't need their boss telling them how much they s*ck. It can truly become counterproductive, as I have learned from being on the receiving end of such a management technique many times in the past.

So in short, I believe that the simplest way to manage great people is to not choose between the carrot or sticks, but to just give them carrot sticks. They're healthy, they're nourishing, they're natural, and they don't leave a mess. And give yourself a carrot stick too. You deserve it for sure!

Comfortably Lost

Our new Director of the Media Lab, Frank Moss, has been meeting with the students here at the Lab to understand how we can improve. The number one topic brought up by a certain constituency of students was "a lack of feedback from their advisors." Such a problem isn't unfamiliar to any academic institution that I've been to. But it's not exactly clear to me that it is can be dismissed as an evil bug, because in some cases it can be a strong feature.

Too much feedback is called "micro-management"; too little feedback is grounds for becoming lost. I'm of the camp that when it comes to creative people, less management is always better. Thus in my own research group, I strive to manage less whenever I can. This may sound easy and like I am intentionally slacking, but it's really not. There are certain ways that I like things and of course want things. But I often remind myself that the students aren't there to manage my needs and wants, but that they have their own needs and wants that naturally need and want to be addressed. It's definitely a process of give and take for both sides. So whenever in doubt, I err on the side of keeping my mouth shut. As a result, I figure that my students spend most of their time in a state of being lost -- but ideally "comfortably lost."

If you're any good as a creative, you'll rarely get feedback from anyone. And if you're even better, you'll never have to listen to feedback even when it comes. Feeling lost is a perk from excelling at what you do, so it's best to get comfortable w ith the feeling. It's also a hit TV show.

Simple Management Advice, Part 2

When working in an innovative organization, what tends to occur is there is usually a larger percentage of folks that innovate (manage "the what") but don't care for the logistics aspects of getting there (managing "the how"). Undoubtedly "the what" is a much more appealing thing to work on as it is where most of the credit for innovation usually lies. On the other hand, "the how" gets you there, but it's also a job that has a certain lack of appeal as it can usually be time consuming in many unrewarding ways. Being of the do both is where I usually try to be, but as all good advice-givers go I forget to take my own advice from time to time.

Toyota has made the crusade for a better "how" famous through its GM-crushing Toyota Production System, but the romanticization of logistics probably appeals to a smaller audience than the one served by the big ideas category. Big, bold ideas are entirely important because they give our society directions as to where we may possibly go. Big ideas by big people are actionable because there are a lot of littler people to make it all happen. Perhaps the key is to be as nimble as the littlest person, but, inside, bigger than the biggest people around you. Ideas plus action; action plus ideas. I think I now have an idea for today, and know what to do with it. I feel better now. Thank you.

Simple Management Advice, Part 1

I don't know if you've read Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I think it's sold a gazillion of them already so you've probably at least seen one somewhere. Being in the airport a lot, and also being involved with the day-to-day management of a research group and also a research consortium, I do admit that I read a whole bunch of these sort of self-help books. Is there anything inside them worth reading? Certainly. Although the number of nuggets you can get from these books is definitely not proportional to how many pages there are. And I realize that it's more about where you are at in your career, than what is written down by the expert as the "expert advice."

Like all academic centers, the Media Lab has an internal survey regarding the efficacy of research advisors like myself. I can't say that I do tremendously better than the average, but I generally do not fall at the bottom of the curve. I find these sorts of data somewhat useful as a point of reflection. Again, it's not what is written down as the evaluation, I find it more useful to reflect as to where you are at.

One of the keys to being a good manager has to be the art of running a good meeting. I learned this when I was a summer student at Texas Instruments. One summer I was assigned to a group where the ceremonial "hour long" group meeting often ran past two hours. Usually the meeting was spent with people bickering about minor things, or else with random conflagrations of self-assertion of the flavor, "I'm right. You're not." And then all h*ll breaks loose. I guess it was similar to the way a professional sportsgame is played today. Then, one summer I was assigned to probably the best group at TI. It was incredible. The one hour meeting actually lasted for one hour. Just this difference alone seemed to make for a better group. I took this heuristic to heart.

Years later, I took the opportunity to ask my research team as to what might be the keys to a successful group meeting. Mind you, at MIT we are in the business of being as cutting-edge creative as possible versus coordinating specific deadlines regarding projects so I'm not certain that the knowledge here is general. I've been in real meetings myself, so I know that we can't always live in a daintily painted rose-colored shed of freeflowing thought. However, I do believe that everyone desires to feel creative, so thus I take the liberty to paint an ideal picture here that many might find at least a teeny bit of utility.

1) Have specific things to decide upon, and then make those decisions on the spot. This creates a specific and tangible deliverable from everyone's one hour investment in time.

2) Have an open discussion that gets unforeseen issues on the table. Everyone should have the opportunity to talk, otherwise the group dynamic will eventually fail. There's too many good ideas in a crowd of people to not capitalize upon by listening to only the loudest mouth.

3) Have a motivational topic to discuss that gets adrenaline going. Perhaps the topic can be about where your team is heading and about the incredible implications of the work that they are doing. Whether fact or fiction-to-become-fact, it's good to know that you're doing the right thing. People should leave the meeting feeling psyched.

4) End on time. I call this the Ping Yang Rule. If people trust that you will end on time, nobody will fidget as a means to coerce you to ending on time. The group's wa remains intact. I think if you can't get 1, 2, or 3, at least get this one right and people will come back to your meetings in the future.

And now, no joke ... I have to go to a meeting.