The blind leading the deaf
Platitudes like “Be the most competitive enterprise”, “Provide customers with the best information to make the buying decisions!”, and “Unlock shareholder value!” are numbing to the ears. Yet sweeping strategy statements like these are often swiftly attached to an organization’s cultural facade–deploying “graffiti artists” to tag everything from interoffice memos to employee’s marquee screensavers–often with the expectation that if touted loud enough, an organization will realize the embodiment of the slogans.
These bumper sticker goals leave employees directionless or even cynical. Why then are executives swept off their feet, glowing with more passion than on their wedding night, when proclaiming these found keys to success? It’s primarily because the messenger has been immersed in the logic and conversations underlining the message for so long that when they speak abstractly, they are simply summarizing the wealth of knowledge in their minds. Frontline employees, however, are not privy to the underlining meaning and consequently hear only slick, opaque phrases that slide in one ear and out the other.
Ultimately, executives touting such messages are blinded, cursed by their knowledge, while the audience is deaf to the passion and depth of the message given. As a result, statements meant to ignite a strategic path all too often fall on deaf ears, only to become meaningless slogans.
A recent Harvard Business Review article (December 2006) addresses the curse of knowledge and the difficulties it poses in uniting employees behind an organization’s goals. The article points to a study conducted by Elizabeth Newton, a graduate student at Stanford University. The study was comprised of a game that assigned people one of two roles: “tapper” or “listener”. The goal was to see if the listener could determine what well-known song the tapper was rhythmically playing on a table. By the end of the experiment, 120 songs were tapped out, but surprisingly only three (2.5%) were guessed correctly.
I tried this experiment with my colleague, John Whittlesey, who, I should note, is a talented opera singer with very well tuned ear. I first tried the “Happy Birthday” song thinking for sure John would pick it up right away. I quickly arrived at the end of my composition and found a confused face staring back at me…hmmm maybe he wasn’t familiar with that one. So I tried another familiar tune and started to jam to the “Flintstones” theme song. Well, it didn’t take more than a glance to see this wasn’t going to work either. It didn’t take any encouragement on my part to find that the tables had turned. John quickly started to orchestrate, with gusto, a wonderful melody of noise. After its completion, I came to find out that it was the “Flintstones” theme song. Why on earth didn’t I recognize a song my ears should have been turned to, having just attempted it myself?
The article uses the study to illustrate what it calls the curse of knowledge; that is, it is impossible for the knowledge base (the tapper) to avoid understanding all of the underlining meaning supporting the knowledge shared (to avoid hearing the tune he’s performing). While the learner (the listener), struggles to decipher the knowledge that seems to be presented with such ease (witnesses a bizarre ritual set to a cacophony of noise that seems to effortlessly entertain the musician) and risks not internalizing the message, but instead relegating it in their mind as a noble-sounding plaque to hang in the organizations lobby.
Though the study means to demonstrate the deafening effect of information imbalance, I don’t believe it completely explains why I was not able to recognize John’s rendition of the “Flintstones” theme song. There was little information imbalance other than perhaps the difference in musical ability; I was familiar with the song, still in my mind from tapping it out moments prior, and familiar with the rules of the game, yet I missed the distinguishing notes all together. There was clearly a disconnect between my external and internal ear. Had I been given the task to orchestrate the “Flintstones” theme song, I would have no problem forming the song accurately in my mind. But if it were necessary to be taken to task to experience first hand, any knowledge shared (which success in the experiment seems to require), then we would still be running around in the buck, ducking from the thunder gods in the sky. So how have we been able skirt the information imbalances that exist between any two people and share knowledge over the millennium? It has been through the use of stories, analogies, anecdotes, and visual cues that have provided the concrete patterns on which to adapt one reality to the next.
In his book “Winning“, Jack Welch states that mission statements should be so real that “they smack you in the face with their concreteness” (Welch 14). He reminds the reader that despite Ben & Jerry’s crunchy granola, hippy, save the world persona, it still has “profitable growth” and “increasing value for stakeholders” as prominent elements in its mission statement. I agree with Jack that too often the reality escapes mission statements, however, no matter how “real” a strategy statement is, it still runs a great risk of becoming trite in the minds of the organization’s employees, who are permitted to escape the knowledge underlining each thought-provoked word.
The HBR article (cited above) used Trader Joes, a specialty food chain, as an example of a company that employs a visual description to bring concreteness to an abstract mission statement. Trader Joes describes its target customer as an “unemployed, college professor who drives a very, very used Volvo”. It’s a simple and exaggerated image, but its use provides the definition needed to bring its employees in tune with its goals. If you’ve been in a Trader Joes, you’ve witnessed customer service and product selection that would seem to fit the preferences of such a fictional customer.
Knowledge, whether conveyed in concise but ultimately complex strategy statements or solicited through an investigation of best practices, requires tangible and concrete stories, analogies, or visuals to ensure an effective translation and adoption. Current knowledge management resources are being invested in efforts focused almost exclusively on capturing knowledge bits from a network of internal or external experts. These efforts are creating repositories of “tappers” blindly dancing to their cacophonies and are cursed to fail.
Neuroplasticity nirvana
English, Spanish, French, Mandarin, Russian–you may be fortunate enough to be fluent in more than one of these languages, however, your ability to learn all of them would certainly seem a daunting task. Yet studies have shown that babies born into multilingual families, some bombarded with more than two languages including those of parents, grandparents and others, are able to easily shape and compartmentalize their minds to distinguish one language from the next–setting a natural course to understanding and speaking many languages with ease.
A decade ago, soon after the results from such linguistic studies were published, parents, with the urge to capitalize on this seeming unique putty like quality of an infant’s brain, ran out to purchase language tapes in the hopes of producing born savants. New research, by Patricia Kuhl, a professor at the University of Washington and a leading expert on early language development, demonstrates why this technique failed the enthusiastic parents. Kuhl’s research strongly suggests that emotional connections are required to shape the pliable minds of infants.
Her study put nine month olds in a room with Mandarin speaking adults who showed them toys while talking to them. After 12 sessions, she found that the babies were able to detect subtle Manderine phonetic sounds that could not be heard by a separate group of babies who were exposed only to English. Kuhl found a more revealing contrast when comparing the initial group with a group of infants exposed to Mandarin solely through the use of sound recordings and videos, without emotional interactions. This group, like those exposed to only English, failed to pickup the subtle phonetic sounds of the language. It has become clear based on this and other research that emotional interaction is required in early intellectual development; so, while an infant may seem stimulated watching Blue’s Clues, it may not have much more of an effect on their cognitive growth than running a vacuum for thirty minutes.
In a broader sense, these studies suggest that our ability to adapt our brain to the environment around us is not contingent upon the environment itself, but rather, our emotional connection to it. This is particularly important given that it is now widely accepted that our ability to shape our brain is not limited to our first few years of devolvement but in fact continues throughout our life. The challenge as we get older is finding new emotional learning experiences, which often become fewer and farther between as our world begins to shrink under the weight of past experiences and cynicism–so don’t bother with the crossword puzzles and Sudoku, they’re not going to help.
Our quest to keep our brains responsive to the changing world around us may not be bound to the world and our experience in it. A piece in Friday’s Wall Street Journal explored the mind’s ability to actively shape one’s brain. The ability to adapt to the changing world and ideas around us, without having to wait for an external emotional source, looks to be a real possibility given the latest studies surrounding the emerging science of neuroplasticity. The article explores a question the Dalai Lama asked while observing a brain surgery at an American medical school: Can the mind shape brain matter? That is, in addition to the brain’s giving rise to the thoughts, hopes, and beliefs that incarnate the human mind, the mind may create physical, manipulative changes to the very matter that created it. Mind over matter…what a thought! The question, however, is not that outrageous when you consider that the Buddhist tradition honors the transcendental happiness which Siddhartha Gautama achieved in becoming Buddha; he reshaped his state of being and unlocked the true nature of reality through a deep state of meditation.
When the Dalai Lama posed this question ten years ago, it was met with a quick and firm rejection: only physical states can give rise to mental states, and a causation from the mental to the physical is impossible. Indeed, it has been found that the brain can physically alter itself based on input from the outside world; for example intensely practiced movements can alter the motor cortex of stroke patients, allowing them to move once paralyzed appendages. Today, however, it seems that the Dalai Lama was on to something.
In an attempt to see how meditation alters activities in the brain, the Dalai Lama allowed neuroscientists to observe whether the internal act of meditation leaves an enduring impact on the brain in Buddhist monks. The study conducted by the University of Wisconsin included eight adept monks (those with over 10,000 hours of meditation experience) and ten volunteers who had a crash course in meditation. The results were astonishing. Not only did the monks have a surge in gamma rays that far surpassed the novas volunteers, but the surge did not subside, even between meditation sessions. Moreover, the more meditation training a monk had, the stronger and more enduring the gamma signal. These gamma rays are believed to be responsible for weaving together far flung, neural activates used to differentiate features of objects such as look, feel, and sound. The study indicated that mental act of meditation, void of environmental stimulation, can leave a lasting alteration on the brains structure and abilities.
The potential for our state of consciousness to physically alter our brain’s composition is great news for all those fearing that it is too late to learn new tricks. It appears as though our ability to adapt is not restricted to our external environment and the shrinking number of novice emotional learning experiences we encounter as we age, but it is unbound by the limitless potential of ourselves.
As we design approaches for sharing and adapting knowledge, it is important that we do not underestimate our seemingly limitless potential to mold our minds to new ways of thinking, not only in a metaphorical sense but a real physical sense as well. It is also important to recognize the importance of emotional connections, whether generated from our interactions with others or internally generated through experiences like meditation.