when we’re personally involved

Daniel Kahneman performed an experiment involving a lottery run with a twist. Half the participants were randomly assigned a numbered lottery ticket. The remaining half were given a blank ticket and a pen and asked to choose their own lottery number. Just before drawing the winning number, the researchers offered to buy back all the tickets. They wanted to find out how much they would have to pay people who wrote their own number compared with people who were handed a random number. 

The rational expectation would be that there should be no difference. After all, a lottery is pure chance. Every number, whether chosen or assigned, should have the same value. An even more savvy answer would be that you should have to pay the people  who write their own number ever so slightly less, because of the possibility that there will now be duplicate numbers that, if chosen, would mean the size of the price would be cut in half. 

Neither of these turned out to be the right answer. Regardless of nationality or demographic group, people who wrote their own number always demanded at least five times more for their ticket. This reveals an important truth about human nature. When we’re personally involved in “authoring” an outcome, we are far more committed to it because we feel we own it. The underlying psychology relates to our need for control, which is a deep-rooted survival instinct.

…The lesson for change leaders? If you want to increase the motivation for (and therefore, speed of) the implementation of change, it pays to involve others in creating the aspiration, even when the answer may already be clear in the mind of the leader…. Change programs whose aspirations phase is characterized by an organization-wide, collaborative effort are 1.6 times more likely to succeed. 

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

profoundly simple

Understanding evolves through three phases: simplistic, complex, and profoundly simple.

William Schutz

As quoted in Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019 by Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

beware of optimism bias

Beware of optimism bias: the expectation that the best possible outcome will emerge. This accounts for why divorce rates in the western world are around 40 percent, yet when you ask newlyweds to rate their likelihood of divorce they are most likely to put it at 0 percent…. It also explains why, as our colleagues Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit describe, “One of the most emblematic outputs of the dreaded strategic-planning process is the ‘hockey stick’ forecast – the line that sails upwards on the graph after a brief early dip to account for up-front investment. These hockey sticks, confidently presented by executives pitching their new strategy, are easy to draw but they don’t score many goals. What tends to happen in reality is that the strategy fails to meet the bold aspirations and is replaced by a new one. 

Being aware of such biases doesn’t help one avoid them. As Dan Ariely, one of the foremost thinkers in the field, declares, “I am just as bad myself at making decisions as everyone else I write about.” Fortunately, however, there are a number of proven and practical tools to minimize biases in decision-making. These include, among others, the following: the “pre-mortem” (generating a list of potential causes for failure of a recommendation and working backward to rectify them before they happen); “red team-blue team” (assigning one person/group to argue for, and one to argue against, a decision); “clean-sheet redesign” (developing a system from only a set of requirements, free from considerations related to current investments or path); and “vanishing options” (taking the preferred option off the table and asking, “What would we do now?”). Importantly, simply ensuring you are engaging a diverse team in decision-making will reap significant rewards – which research reveals can improve decision-making quality by more than 50 percent.

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

creating a vision

In our experience, the hardest part of creating a vision is finding the balance between what is bold and transformational and what is realistic and achievable. The phrase many use for this is landing on a vision that is “tough but doable.” If the vision feels too incremental, cautious, or overly tailored to existing capabilities, it will fail to create momentum or pressure for an organization to push the limits of what is possible and therefore won’t lead to breakthroughs. At the same time, if people see goals as simply “pie in the sky” and beyond reach, they will become disillusioned and give up. 

Often, examining the “art of the possible” can help find the sweet spot. For example, ask what performance would look like if every area operated at the level of the current best practice within the company? What if all of our processes and systems were operating at the top of their technical limits? What if we achieved best practice in the industry on not one, but all key measures?... By considering the art of the possible in this way, leaders can aim high without the goal feeling untethered to reality. 

When managers are planning two or three years ahead, that period is close enough in time to allow them to choose relevant goals and identify specific initiatives to reach them. 

There are advantages in having objectives distant enough to reduce any temptation to rob tomorrow to pay for today – a constant battle for public companies under pressure to achieve quarterly results. 

Scott Keller and Bill Schaninger

Beyond Performance 2.0: A Proven Approach to Leading Large-Scale Change. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2019

laugh often and much

This [quote]... which is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson, has made such an impact on Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos that he hangs it up on his fridge.

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of the intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the beauty in others; to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know that one life has breathed easier because you lived here. This is to have succeeded.

These are the fruits you bear from a life well lived by consciously choosing to do the things you're passionate about -- the things you are called to do that make you "tap dance to work" every day, to borrow an expression from one of the many books about billionaire Warren Buffett.

Bezos can testify: "You don't choose your passions, your passions choose you," he once said. "All of us are gifted with certain passions, and the people who are lucky are the ones who get to follow those things."

Following your passions comes with added benefits: you love coming to work because you love what you do. Buffett said it best: "In the world of business, the people who are most successful are those who are doing what they love."

Marcel Schwantes

"According to Jeff Bezos, This May Be the Best Definition of Success He's Ever Read" Inc. April 24, 2020