Feedback, good and bad

Excellence brings the confidence to ask for feedback, constantly. 

Changi Airport's toilets may just be the cleanest in the world.

“There are no two words more harmful in the English language than ‘good job’”.  Thus speaks JK Simmons’ obsessive jazz conductor in Whiplash, the recent film about the hard road to success set in an elite New York music school.  I loved the film, even if I don't subscribe to JK's feedback style.

Feedback’s a funny thing.  Generally if I ask people at work whether they like giving feedback, the answer is almost always a resounding no, followed by an explanation along the lines of “no-one likes giving difficult messages”.  That reaction speaks volumes: it presupposes that feedback is critical in nature. Which, of course, it sometimes is.  It needn’t always be.  

As humans we are conditioned to focus on the negatives. The problems, the weaknesses, the things we’re not very good at.  Working as a development professional in a global law firm, I thought this was something peculiar to lawyers - trained to spot flaws, see risks and identify problems.  Perhaps it is more acute in law (a profession, by the way, with a higher than average incidence of psycopathy, sociopathy and depression) but legal professionals are by no means alone.  From childhood we’re told what not to do; at school we focus overwhelmingly on the things we’re not good at.  We obsess over the ‘C’ in maths yet spend little time focussing on the ‘A’ in art. Through life, whether it’s college, sport or work we’re told to ‘work our weaknesses’ but spend comparatively little time reflecting on our strengths. There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of studies into the causes of depression, yet few studies into the causes of true happiness.  Everyone knows that one in three marriages ends in divorce, yet we spend little time looking at the two in three successful marriages. We rarely ask ourselves: “what went right?”.

Why should things be like this? Behavioural psychologists have spent years studying this trait, developing theories of ‘strengths based learning’ and tools like the Clifton Strengthsfinder 2.0.  Strengths based learning holds that we all have innate strengths which lie within us in unique combinations. That combination of strengths informs the things we are intuitively good at - what comes easy to us - as well as the lens through which we view the world.   Strengths will vary from person to person yet to the individual they will feel natural, even ordinary. So much so that often when we discover our strengths our reaction is disappointment (“that’s not a strength - surely everyone does that?!”).  Yet our strengths - call them talents if you will - define who we are. 

I recently took an online strengths assessment and learned a lot about myself. How I commonly think and feel about stuff suddenly made sense. Including: why random ideas constantly pop into my head; why I have little time for detail but find it easy to see order where others see chaos; why I imagine the future in images and think about strategy in soundbites; why I’m impatient for action; why I revel in taking something good and making it great; why I have little time for mediocrity; and why I should always ensure people focus on my outputs and results because my process is often not pretty.   Crucially I now realise why it was so irritating to be hassled by my parents about how I was revising for school exams, when I intuitively knew that only the result mattered. (I could never understand why a school report containing an ‘A‘ for attainment and a ‘C‘ for effort should be a cause for concern. Now I know it shouldn’t be.)  And happily the assessment told me I should seek out a role where I can generate ideas, think creatively, provide strategic input and contribute to maximising the development of others - pretty much my current job description. 

So what of those things we’re not good at? Can we just ignore our weaknesses?  In a word, no.  Left unchecked our weaknesses can overshadow or even derail our strengths. Strengths based development theory tells us not that we should ignore our weaknesses, but that trying to change them will yield limited results for the effort put in.  Much better to work around them, or use our strengths to develop strategies to mitigate them.  Creative but disorganised? Partner with the most organised person you can find. Forthright but not empathetic? Tell people outright that they need to be clear with you how they’re feeling as you’re never going to figure it out yourself.  

So in a strengths-focussed world is there a place for feedback? Most definitely.  We must acknowledge, manage and mitigate the impact of our weaknesses.  Yet at the same time we must play to our strengths. Find ways to exploit them, opportunities to celebrate them and jobs that allow us to express them.  That way lies motivation, fulfilment and happiness - something to which I can personally attest. 

Feedback works both ways. Of course if there’s an area for improvement then it needs discussion - not necessarily in the language of ‘change’ but perhaps in the language of ‘management’.  But let's not lose sight of what we’re good at. The stuff we do brilliantly, every day.  The stuff we love, the stuff that comes so naturally to us it seems commonplace.  Don’t overlook it: recognise it, embrace it and celebrate it, even in small ways.  In other words, never forget to give positive feedback.  Quite often just two simple words will do: “good job”. 

Bridge Over Troubled Water

A poet and an angel-voiced
messenger, 1970. 

In the summer of 1994 my sister returned home from her first year at Cambridge University. Amongst the Tit Hall hoodies and other paraphernalia of uni life was a 'Best of Simon and Garfunkel" cassette. To my culturally inexperienced sixth-form mind this epitomised cool: classic Americana; folk music from another era; non-mainstream taste - everything I wished I was, yet wasn't. When my mum laughed and told me she and my dad had several of their LPs in her vinyl record collection I immediately sought out the first I could find and rushed upstairs to play it on my record player.  This was still - just - the era of the cube-shaped twin cassette stereo system topped with a turntable.  That day in 1994 I heard my first Simon and Garfunkel song: Bridge Over Troubled Water, the opening track to their 1970 album of the same name. 

When you're weary / Feeling small                                                                 When tears are in your eyes / I will dry them all

Now it is January 2015 and I exit Tin Hau MTR station on my way home from another day in the office. Set to shuffle, my iPhone spontaneously cues up the same song. Downloaded from iTunes, digitally remastered and played through my new Sennheiser headphones the sound quality is crystal clear, yet I can still hear in my mind the background crackle and hiss as if it is my parents' old vinyl copy playing. I close my eyes momentarily and I'm in my childhood bedroom eight thousand miles and twenty years ago. 

I'm on your side / When times are rough / And friends just can't be found         Like a bridge over troubled water / I will lay me down 

I'm walking to the zebra crossing and I can feel emotion welling up in my chest.  This is a love song, no doubt. But from whom, and to whom, I'm not sure. Then right there, as I cross Tung Lo Wan road lost in my own nostalgia-tinged world amidst a crowd of homeward-bound Hong Kongers, I think about Lara and Iliya.  And I know that this is my love song to my daughters.

When you're down and out / When you're on the street                                 When evening falls so hard / I will comfort you 

Lara and Iliya inhabit a world of innocence and wonder; play and fun; confusion and contradiction. They struggle and they learn: about right and wrong, fairness and unfairness, caring and sharing. And in the same way that Lara spontaneously and without looking reaches for my hand as we cross a road or head down a steep flight of stairs, or Iliya instinctively clings to me when we encounter yet another Hong Kong dog, they will look to Anita and I for guidance, protection, and an explanation of why the world is as it is - in all its wonderful contradictory glory. For now, we can give them answers. It won't always be that way.

I'll take your part / When darkness comes / And pain is all around                   Like a bridge over troubled water / I will lay me down

There are questions - spoken or unspoken - that I know will come in time and that I won't be able to answer. Why do people hurt each other? Why doesn't he love me? Why isn't life fair? How do I recover from life's setbacks? I know there will be times when I will want to put myself in their place, to take the blows and fight back on their behalf. Yet I know that it is for them to learn life's lessons and all I can do as their father is offer comfort, security and unconditional love.  To be there for them when they need me, even if they don't know it.  

Sail on silver girl / Sail on by                                                                             Your time has come to shine / All your dreams are on their way                       See how they shine 

I hope that in life both of my daughters find more happiness than pain. I hope that they each, in their own way, learn to shine. I hope they pursue what they love, and are bold enough now and again to turn their backs on conventional wisdom and follow their own path. I know it will be hard, I know at times we'll disagree more than we agree, and I know that sometimes they'll wish I would just go away. But I hope they know I'll always be there, waiting, for whenever they need me.

If you need a friend / I'm sailing right behind                                                     Like a bridge over troubled water / I will ease your mind    

   Like a bridge over troubled water / I will ease your mind

Joining the dots

Trying to remember the Chinese word for something
or other. But where will it lead?

Today I had lunch with my counterpart in the Hong Kong learning and development team of another international law firm.  Simon is unassuming: quiet, thoughtful and understated.  You'd never guess that this year he swam from Hong Kong to Macau, 35km across one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, setting a new world record in the process. Simon has just extended his stay in Hong Kong by another year and now works a four day week. He spends his non-work day studying for a Master's degree in psychology and is starting a not-for-profit initiative to teach domestic helpers how to swim. Our conversation meandered, as it tends to when you're talking to someone interesting. Towards the end he asked me where I go from here. What's next? Where do I want all this lead me? 

An interesting question.  The short answer is I don't know. At the moment I'm having too much fun to think seriously about what the future holds - at least in career terms.  Without much thought I could give several possibilities - a more senior role with HSF, a 'head of' role somewhere, my boss's job one day, freelance consultancy.  Or perhaps a year or two off work - house husbandry, full time father, renovate a house or two.  As I was offering up these disparate possibilities I was reminded of the story Steve Jobs told students during his Stanford University commencement address some years ago about joining the dots. 

Jobs tells about the time he dropped out of college, uncomfortable with wasting his adoptive parents' hard earned cash on an expensive education that wasn't teaching him anything.  As Jobs tells it, he 'dropped in' - liberating himself from a fixed curriculum, he would sleep on friends' floors and attend whichever classes looked interesting. His days were spent sitting at the back of lecture theatres listening, absorbing, thinking about whatever captured his imagination on any given day.  During this time he became obsessed with a series of handwritten posters appearing around campus - each itself a beautiful calligraphic work of art.  The posters led him to join a calligraphy class, through no desire greater than curiosity and the fact that it seemed - in that moment - something worth doing for its own sake. Years later when Apple were producing the first Macintosh operating system - the daddy of all 'windows' type graphical user interface systems - he insisted that users should be able to choose from a wide variety of fonts.  "But why?" his bemused software engineers would ask him, "its just a computer. You're just typing." Steve Jobs knew differently. In his view you were no more "just typing" when you sat down to write at a Mac keyboard than you would be "just writing" when you sit down  to craft a handwritten letter, a poem, or a beautiful piece of calligraphy. Writers were free to choose their own handwriting and in his view it should be no different just because the medium is keyboard and screen rather than pen and paper.  But this story wasn't about fonts or handwriting, it was about joining the dots.  His point was that when he took that calligraphy class he had no idea that many years into the future he would use the knowledge, appreciation and artistic sensibility of his calligraphy class to redefine personal computing. It was only afterwards that he could join the dots. 

Earlier this year Anita and I debated the merits or otherwise of enrolling Lara in a pre-school nursery programme that would be conducted 60% of the time entirely in Mandarin Chinese.  Its a notoriously difficult language to learn as an adult, yet as a three year old Lara seemingly picks it up with ease, happily singing to herself, counting to ten, and pointing out to us the Mandarin words for household objects.  But will she learn enough for it to be of use in her future? Will she study at SOAS, or grow up bi-lingual? Will it lead to a career in international law? Or as a translator at the UN? Or even an MI6 spy? Will she return to the UK in a few years and forget everything she's learned? 

Who knows. And frankly, who cares.  Only when Lara looks backwards fro her future will she know whether she can join these and myriad other dots.  For now, they're random, and I'm convinced that's the way it should be.  The future is unknowable, and it's pointless trying to predict it.  Let's stick to whatever feels like it's worth doing in the moment, for its own sake. Or for no other reason than curiosity and adventure. 

Slow Down!

Lara and Iliya take it slow, Chiang Mai, October 2014.

In July I turned 37. Anita asked me what I wanted to do for my birthday and on a whim I said yoga.  I'm not sure why, it just appealed. Perhaps I'm becoming more aware of my stiff and creaky body when I ease myself out of bed the morning after a big day of exercise. Perhaps its something I read about Ryan Giggs attributing his longevity as a footballer to Yoga (and look what he achieved - ON the field at least). Whatever it was, Anita booked us in for a free taster session and we dutifully trooped down to Pure Yoga in Causeway Bay for Dana's Hatha class.  In a nutshell: the class was great; Dana was very forgiving; we're both hooked; we signed up to a year's membership.  But the thing that blew me away more than anything was how it forced us to slow down. 

I have said it before in this blog: life is fast. Hong Kong life is particularly fast. With so much to see, do and experience, I worry that I won't fit it all in. We fill our mornings and our evenings, our weekends and our calendars.  Yet inside the yoga studio - no sound, no talking, no phones - life slows down. Breathing slows. Movement slows. It feels almost guiltily indulgent. 

Don't misunderstand me: yoga is hard.  I sweat profusely. My body protests at the contorted positions I ask it to adopt. My legs scream in lactic-acid-induced pain after a couple of minutes of Warrior II. There can be no mistaking that it is a thorough workout.  Yet at the same time it is undeniably slow - in stark contrast to so much of life. And perhaps therein lies the appeal. 

In his seminal book "In Praise of Slow", Carl Honore uses Yoga of an example of the counter-intuitive benefits of taking things, well, slowly.  Western exercise philosophy tells us that fast is right, fast is best.  Yet much eastern philosophy says the opposite. Yoga, Tai Chi, and even 'fast' martial arts like Aikido and Karate are based on an underlying philosophy of slowing things down and being aware in the moment - what would currently be labelled with the buzzword 'mindfulness'. 

I can't rate Honore's book highly enough and I'd urge anyone who feels their life is speeding out of control to buy a copy and enjoy a leisurely few hours indulging yourself in his wisdom.  The idea behind going slow isn't to become a slacker, or a layabout, or to be lazy for laziness's sake. Sometimes one needs to go fast, sometimes slow. But Honore urges us to get away from the idea that fast is always best. Its about balance, about finding the right speed for our lives in each moment - what musicians would call the tempo giusto.

Honore's central point is this: we have been conditioned to equate speed with productivity. In our drive to be productive, efficient and competitive we strive constantly to achieve more in less time - none more so that in the workplace, but increasingly at home and in our leisure time.  Yet as Honore points out, this equation is fundamentally flawed: "when everyone takes the fast option, the advantage of going fast vanishes, forcing us to go faster still. Eventually we are left with an arms race based on speed. And we all know where arms races end up: in the grim stalemate of Mutually Assured Destruction."

Nothing, and no-one, is immune form the 'fast is best' mentality - not even children: in the East, and increasingly in the West education starts ever earlier and involves cramming more and more into early years. Children are in a race - often driven by their parents - to hit milestones earlier: talking, walking, reading, writing, swimming, riding a bike, or learning their times tables. Earlier this year Anita and I found ourselves comparing pre-schools for Lara (who had just turned three) based in part on their academic curricula - what would she be learning? And by when? Yet perhaps we should take a leaf out of Plato's book, who several hundred years before the birth of Christ recognised that "the most effective form of education is that a child should play amongst lovely things."

Whether its eating, exercising, reading, working, raising children or having sex, Honore argues there is always a benefit in going slow. Do less; give yourself more time. Focus on quality over quantity.  Its a mantra echoed by all sorts of people, including the dean of Harvard University's undergraduate school - hardly a bastion of laziness or under-achievement. 

Its only when we slow down parts of our life that we make time for the other parts that matter - taking the kids to school, reading them a story, enjoying a slow meal or a good novel, reading, thinking, or simply daydreaming. As Einstein always maintained, we're at our creative best when we give ourselves time to do nothing at all. But perhaps the last word should go to Ghandi:

"There is more to life than increasing its speed."

You've got to make a change...

My job has a strong organisational change dimension to it. This makes my job paradoxically both interesting and challenging for one reason: organisational change is hard won. Whilst organisations consist to some degree of processes, systems and rules, they largely consist of people and behaviours.  And behavioural change is particularly hard won because given enough time behaviours become habits. We all know that old habits die hard: a cliché, but also a truism.  Depending on which dictionary you prefer, a habit can be defined as "a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up", "an established disposition of character" or "an acquired behaviour pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary".  

In fact, behaviours become so engrained over time that we start to confuse behavior with personality –  we persuade ourselves that it is not just what we do, it's who we are.  "I can't change who I am" is a familiar refrain to anyone concerned with behavioural change.  To which the response is: true – but you can change what you do. 

A fundamental issue that needs to be understood by anyone wishing to change behavior is that "making a change" implies it is a one-off event. That in itself is misleading.  Change is a process, something that has to happen continuously, over time, with a degree of consistency and discipline until the new behavioural state is attained.  Some studies have suggested that 30 continual days' worth of the desired behaviour is the minimum required to engrain it as a new habit.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review suggested we could do worse than look to the painter Pablo Picasso for inspiration. Picasso famously said his approach to becoming great at his art was to ensure that he practiced continuously.  For him this meant committing to painting every day. Crucially though Picasso said that rather than have to decide, every day, that he would paint, he decided just once that he would paint every day, and then consciously and deliberately structured his daily routine in such a way that he could easily do so.

This logic can be applied to anything: whether its committing to exercising more, keeping in better touch with friends and family, interacting more with colleagues or giving regular feedback at work.  Constructing a routine, putting in place rituals and setting up your working day so that these things happen as part of your routine as a matter of course mean that behavioural change needn't become a battle of willpower or a matter of self-discipline.  Some of the most famous "change" programmes in the world involve twelve steps, but maybe three steps are all that's required: first, decide what you want to do more of, less of or differently; second, construct a routine and introduce rituals so that it becomes easy for you to do that. Third: enjoy the feeling of change.

Willpower and discipline or routine and ritual? I'd say less willpower is required than we might think, but perhaps a wee bit more creative thinking.   

So the question is, what will you change? 

Reinhold Messner's six lives.

This genuinely feels like a different life - not better,
or worse, but certainly different. Young, free and
climbing in the Pyrenees some time in 2006.

I'm home alone this week. Anita, Lara and Iliya are visiting the Johns clan in Traverse City for two weeks and, short on holiday, I'm limited to joining them for the second week.  What to do?! Faced with some rare time alone I am, as my MBA-holding friend Paul might say,  suffering from analysis paralysis.

It isn't actually even that long since I was last home alone.  Anita took the girls to the US last August, which was less than a year, but seems like a lifetime ago. So today, for the first time in almost a year, I slept in until 9am.  I woke feeling dreadful! I think my body has genuinely adapted to 6.45am starts.  I've realised that this will be a weekend of other strange sensations for me: reading a novel during daylight hours, lazily digesting the morning paper over a bacon sandwich and a coffee in a local cafe, sunbathing without having to supervise small children, simply doing nothing without any pressing requirement to do anything, writing my blog. And there's an equally strange - and certainly lonelier set of experiences to be had - coming home to a silent house and not being able to ask Anita about her day, walking into Iliya's room at 10pm to find an empty cot, waking up this morning to my alarm clock rather than Lara asking for a mango smoothie.  

Time on my own has given me a glimpse back to a previous life - a quieter, more relaxed, more carefree time before children and responsibility and deadlines and bedtimes.  But that life was also less entertaining, less challenging, certainly less full and definitely less fulfilling.  A friend asked me recently whether life with children was better or worse than before.  He's expecting his first child later in the year  so I had to think carefully about my answer. I decided in the end just to be honest. In someways it is worse: less spontaneity, less flexibility, more planning, more responsibility.   But in infinitely more ways it is better - specifically it is richer in ways I still can not adequately define, but can only really be experienced.    

Life goes in stages, and one of the best things about life is knowing that whatever stage you're in right now, you can choose at any time to move into another stage. And - and this is the best bit - you have no idea what that next stage will be like. It can be anything you want!  Reinhold Messner, the famous alpine and Himalayan pioneer, mountain legend and all-round grumpy Italian famously declared that he would live six lives.   Life one was his youth - his rock climbing life.  Life two was his high-altitude life, completed when he realised the pursuit of ever-more challenging and extreme mountaineering (including the first ascent of Mount Everest without oxygen - completed solo no less) was probably only going to end one way. Life three was spent as a polar explorer;  life four was devoted to investigating the myth of the Himalayan Yeti; and life five was lived as a politician, serving a term as a member of the European parliament.   Messner's sixth life will, apparently, be his retirement, which will include amongst other things building a museum and possibly crossing a desert.  An eclectic life-career to say the least.

I like Messner's philosophy because it tells us that we can do whatever we want, and be whoever we want to be.  And that thing - that person, that identity - is dynamic, not fixed.  It can change over time, and that change is within our control.   I don't know how many lives I've had - the first life of my youth, spent studying and learning (often the hard way); my second life as a city worker, lawyer and materialist; my third life of my late twenties and early thirties spent falling in love, getting married, learning to become a climber and a father; and my current life, in which I take my career in a totally new direction, move to Asia and strive to keep everything in balance.  I'm hoping this life will also involve more flexible working, more exploring Asia, more climbing and more adventure.  My next life will hopefully involve buying a mountain retreat, spending as much time with my family in the outdoors as possible, and continuing to learn.  As to what comes after that - who knows.  That is I guess what makes life so exciting.  As Reinhold Messner himself said, if the outcome of the journey is known, then it isn't an adventure. 

Fortunate

Is she making her own luck?

Anita pointed out the other day how lucky we are to be in the position we are in: living in a great city, earning enough to enjoy a comfortable way of life and two beautiful healthy children to share it all with.  I disagreed: I firmly believe you make your own luck - or at least, you take your own opportunities as life presents them to you. In other words, we are where we are primarily because of hard work, not chance.  In idle moments I sometimes trace back my own personal history to work out how I got to where I am (this isn't narcissism: I never expected even five years ago that I'd be living in Hong Kong and coaching high performing lawyers for a living - it is a genuine source of bafflement).  My path no doubt has much in common with many others: working hard to get decent high school and then A-level results led to the opportunity to get a decent degree from a great university, and then a fantastic job at a leading law firm. It was all looking quite conventionally linear until around 2011 when my career path started taking some unexpected twists and turns - all absolutely for the better as it turns out. But thinking in this way allows me to reassure myself that I'm in control - that I am making choices and that Anita and I should not be ashamed to take credit for the work we've put in and the sacrifices we've made to build the life we now live. 

But perhaps I'm missing the point.  The grades would surely have been harder to come by had my parents not instilled in me the value of hard work and perseverance and pushed me towards academic success. Taking things back a step, had I not had the good fortune to have been born into a democratic meritocracy in the late twentieth century rather than, say Bangladesh in the 1950s, things would no doubt have worked out even more differently.  Maybe I'm dancing on the head of a pin, or playing semantic games, but whilst I maintain that you make your own luck, I will concede that on a fundamental level I, like many of my generation born into western capitalist democracies in the late 1970s, am very fortunate indeed.  

This all came to mind because I was clearing some old draft emails at work and found the following. I recall drafting it some time in early 2012, obviously intending to post it on my blog, but for some reason never did. I have a rule never to work on my blog at work - I obviously felt strongly enough about this to make an exception. Anyway, here it is now, in un-edited form.

"Another ten years then. I guess that's it."
 Those were the words of Bonnett Taylor, currently residing in the Tower Street Adult Correctional Facility in Kingston, Jamaica.   He has already served 15 years of a life sentence for murder. He was 27 when he went into prison. This morning when I telephoned him I spoke to a 42 year old.  He'll be 52 before he has any chance of early release.   The phone call took place in the hallway outside Court Number 3 in the Supreme Court building on London's Parliament Square, where moments before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council had, by a majority of four to one, dismissed his final appeal. We had reached the end of the road.
 We had tried to argue – unsuccessfully – that his conviction was unsafe.  That key evidence from a crucial witness was never made available to the jury at his original trial.  That in the absence of that evidence there was nothing to contradict the account of the only alleged eyewitness to the murder. That there was a real possibility that the jury, who convicted after only ten minutes' deliberation, might have reached a different verdict had they heard the missing evidence. That whilst that real possibility remains, the conviction must, by definition, be unsafe.  With the exception of one, the Justices disagreed, and at 11.07am I called Bonnet to tell him we'd lost. It was a call I don't want to have to make again anytime soon. I had no idea what to say, except that we tried our best, and that I was sorry.
 Did he do it? I have no idea. Maybe. Am I convinced he is innocent? If I am being honest, I can't be 100% sure. Am I convinced he's guilty? Absolutely not.  In the taxi back to the office I tried to think back to what I have done in the last fifteen years, a period which represents almost my entire adult life.  Or what I will do in the next ten years whilst Bonnett awaits his first opportunity for parole. What a charmed life we lead.
 One final observation: before hanging up, Bonnet thanked me, repeatedly, for everything I and the rest for the legal team had done for him.  I don't know whether I would have the presence of mind, having just been told that there is no possibility whatsoever of being released from prison for another ten years, to say thank you.