The Power of Rachel Beckwith’s “big, crazy goal”

Here is one of the posts by Simon Sinek (on July 27, 2011) at his blog, Re:Focus (Simple Ideas to Help You Thrive). Once you read it, I doubt if you will soon forget it…if ever. To check out Simon’s other resources, please click here and you may also wish to visit here.

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Rachel Beckwith

Recently, a 9-year-old girl named Rachel Beckwith died in a pileup on I-90 in Washington state. Her spinal chord was severed and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her life.

June 12th was her last birthday and for her birthday Rachel told everyone that she didn’t want any presents and she didn’t want a party. Instead, she wanted her friends to donate $9 to Charity Water. “Her big crazy goal,” said her pastor, “was to raise $300 so that 15 kids in Africa would have safe, clean water.” At the time of her death, she was $80 short of her goal.

Inspired by her generosity, Rachel’s church publicized her goal on their website…and the donations started rolling in.

When last I logged on, Rachel had raised over $300,000. And her wish to help 15 people will now help over 15,000 people. [I just checked and the current total raised thus far is $1, 243, 223.]

Rachel Beckwith may be the most inspiring 9 year old I know and I’m proud to support her in her dream to give.

If you’re interested in helping Rachel’s cause, visit My Charity Water.

If you’d like to donate to help her parents pay the medical bills, you can visit here to donate.

May we all raise our children to think of others before themselves.

May we all raise our children to by like Rachel Beckwith.

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Simon Sinek teaches leaders and companies around the world how to inspire people. From members of Congress to foreign ambassadors, from small businesses to corporations like Microsoft and American Express, from Hollywood to the Pentagon, he has presented his ideas about the power of why. He is quoted frequently by national publications and is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and BrandWeek. Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action is his first book. To check several of his video presentations, please click here.

The Two-Second Advantage: A book review by Bob Morris

The Two-Second Advantage: How We Succeed by Anticipating the Future — Just Enough
Vivek Ranadivé and Kevin Maney
Crown Business (2011)

The power of prediction-based talent: Intuition on “the other side of complexity”

At least a century ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, “I don’t care a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.” I was again reminded of that observation as I began to read this brilliant book in which Vivek Ranadivé and Kevin Maney explain how and why we can achieve success (however defined) by anticipating the future “just enough.” The book’s title refers to what is often the difference between success and failure. However, with all due respect to the co-authors’ intentions, I do not think the greatest value of this book can be measured in terms of time; rather, in term of proceeding through the simplicity of raw impulse through the complexity of probable implications, multiple perspectives, and potential consequences to “the other side of intuition” at which correct decisions can be made almost spontaneously. The U.S. Airways pilot, Chesley Burnett (“Sully”) Sullenberger III, who successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River off Manhattan, New York City, on January 15, 2009, offers an excellent case in point. Once aware of the circumstances, he made the correct decision with little (if any) consideration of options. The same is true of countless other airline pilots as well as diagnostic surgeons (especially in hospital emergency rooms) and military leaders in combat who quite literally must make life-and-death decisions.

Long before Malcolm Gladwell published an article in The New Yorker that later was developed into a book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), Michael Kami (in Trigger Points, 1988) and then Andrew Grove (in Only the Paranoid Survive, 1999) explained how and why, as Ranadivé and Maney describe it, “judgments made in two seconds are often more accurate than those made after months of analysis.” For decades, we have known – as revealed by a wealth of research in psychology and behavioral economics on the adaptive unconscious — that mental processes can work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information.

However, there is an “if” (a HUGE “if”) and it is this: Those who wish to develop a more predictive brain, one that can quickly process huge chunks of information, and then act upon that information, must be willing to commit the time and the attention required. That’s what Sullenberger demonstrated when deciding to land the plane on the river. Wayne Gretzy always claimed that his advantage was knowing where the puck would go. Larry Bird describes his advantage differently but makes the same point: “When I’m playing basketball, everybody else seems to be moving in slow motion.” It probably took all three about 10,000 hours of highly disciplined, iterative practice under strict, expert supervision to develop that capability…plus some luck such as being in the right place at the right time, with the right support, while developing various skills under the right conditions.

That said, the fact remains that few people are prepared to make such a commitment of time and effort and even if they did, it is possible but unlikely that they could achieve success comparable with what super talents such as Gretzky, Bird, Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan, and Yo Yo Ma have. However, Ranadivé and Maney are convinced (and I fully agree) that many of those who read this book with appropriate can, over time, work their way through the complexity to a point at which they have increased their predictive talent. How? By increasing their knowledge and understanding of previous efforts (i.e. what works, what doesn’t, and why), by strengthening their ability to recognize early-indicators of imminent probabilities (e.g. a quarterback “reading” a defense to know what to do next), and sharpening their ability to identify root causes after recognizing symptoms (e.g. an ER physician diagnosing a stranger who is near death after an automotive accident). The process of personal development that Ranadivé and Maney explain can be completed by almost anyone, anywhere, whatever the given circumstances may be.

A brief commentary such as this can hardly do full justice to the wealth of information, insights, and wisdom that Ranadivé and Maney provide. I also wish to commend them on the lively style with which they present their narrative. To those who read this commentary, I offer two assurances. First, any limits on your development – one that is guided and informed by the material in this book — will be self-imposed. The two-second advantage must be earned and there are no short cuts. Also, the opportunities for applying what Vivek Ranadivé and Kevin Maney offer throughout any organization are unlimited, whatever the size and nature of that organization may be.

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America, a book review by Bob Morris

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America
Christopher Hitchens 
Harper Perennial (2009)

Who was behind “the opaque curtain”?

About this time of year, I re-read brief biographies of my favorite U.S. Presidents such as this one, written by one of the most thoughtful and (yes) thought-provoking and frequently  most controversial of contemporary authors.

This is one of several volumes in the HarperCollins Eminent Lives series. Each offers a concise rather than comprehensive, much less definitive biography. However, just as Al Hirschfeld’s illustrations of various celebrities capture their defining physical characteristics, the authors of books in this series focus on the defining influences and developments during the lives and careers of their respective subjects. In this instance, Thomas Jefferson.

Hitchens suggests that Jefferson “did not embody contradiction. Jefferson [in italics] was [end italics] contradiction, and this will be found at every step of the narrative that goes to make up his life.” It is remarkable to me that Hitchens was able to cover so much which occurred from Jefferson’s birth into relative wealth on April 13, 1743, until his death on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of which he was its principal author. Early on, Hitchens acknowledges what he calls an “opaque curtain” which so often frustrates efforts to “see” Jefferson clearly at various stages throughout his life. Early in the narrative, Hitchens cites several of young Jefferson’s social “fiascos” such as a crass and unsuccessful attempt to seduce the wife of a close friend. Why? First, because they demonstrate that “Jefferson was ardent by nature when it came to females, and also made reticent and cautious by experience.”

Also, because generations of historians have written, “until the present day, as if [Jefferson] were not a male mammal at all.” Later, Hitchens rigorously examines Jefferson’s (yes, contradictory) relationship with Sally Hemings. First, he guides his reader briskly but without haste through Jefferson’s youth, education (College of William and Mary), several years of practicing law, and then the initial phase of his public service when elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses (1769-75). Jefferson aligned himself with the revolutionary faction, writing A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774) which helps to explain, somewhat, his ambivalent attitude toward the colonies’ deteriorating relationship with Britain’s monarch and parliament. In 1770 he began designing and building Monticello to which (in 1772) he brought his new wife, Martha Wyles Skelton. She bore him six children, only two of whom survived into maturity. She died in 1782.

Jefferson was among those who called the First Continental Congress (1774) and as a delegate to the Second Congress (1775-7), he was primarily responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence which was adopted on July 4, 1776. He then returned to Virginia where, as a member of its legislature (1776-9) and led efforts to create a state constitution,then served as governor (1779-81), during which time he proposed that Virginia abolish the slave trade and assure religious freedom. His proposals were rejected. In 1789 George Washington appointed Jefferson secretary of state. In that position he became head of the liberal Democratic-Republican faction (as it was then called) and opposed the more conservative Federalist policies of Hamilton, Madison, and Washington.

He resigned as secretary of state at the end of 1793 to devote himself to his estate at Monticello.

At that time, arguably the most eloquent spokesman for the ideals of the Enlightenment, Jefferson owned about 125-150 slaves, treating them as property because he regarded Africans as inferior beings. In 1796 he was elected vice-president under Federalist John Adams. Four years later, he defeated Adams and Aaron Burr for the presidency. For reasons which are not entirely clear, his arch rival, Hamilton, supported him when the Electoral College vote was tied. The greatest achievements during the Jeffersonian presidency are the defeat of the Barbary pirates which allowed maritime commerce to flourish, the Louisiana Purchase which more than doubled the size of the new nation, and the Lewis and Clark Expedition which generated an abundance of valuable information to guide and inform the inevitable westward expansion. Jefferson retired to Monticello in 1809, concentrating on his scholarly and scientific interests while helping to found the University of Virginia (1825). He designed its campus as well as the Virginia state capitol and several mansions. In 1813 he began what became an extended and remarkably cordial exchange of letters with his former political adversary, John Adams. Both died on the same day, July 4th, 1826.

Here are a few brief excerpts which, I hope, provide at least some indication of Hitchens’ brilliant achievement:

On Jefferson and Thomas Paine: Both “had the gift of pithily summarizing what was already understood, and then of moving an already mobilized audience to follow an inexorable logic. But they also had to overcome an insecurity and indecision that is difficult for us, employing retrospect, to comprehend.”

Re the Enlightenment: “Jefferson was not a man of the Enlightenment only in the ordinary sense that he believed in reason or perhaps in rationality. He was very specifically one of those who believed that human redemption lay in education, discovery, innovation, and experiment.”

On rebellion: In a letter to Abigail Adams, Jefferson observed that “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere.”

Then later, after learning of the bloodshed associated with (Daniel) Shays’ Rebellion, in a letter to Adams’s son-in-law, William Smith: “What signify a few lives lost in a generation or two? The tree of liberty must from time to time be refreshed with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” 

In response, Hitchens suggests that “the key word here must be not `patriots’ but `tyrants’ — since the only candidate for the latter description was the government that Jefferson was [at that time] serving as an ambassador.”

Later, when commenting on the campaign of 1796, Hitchens notes that “Despite Jefferson’s almost Olympian detachment from the process, he was subjected to a series of vitriolic assaults by poster and pamphlet, accusing him of being an atheist, an abolitionist, and a sympathizer with bloody-handed Jacobinism. The element of truth in all three accusations is retrospectively amusing. given their authors’ failure to appreciate Jefferson’s patent genius for compromise.”

As these and other portions of Hitchens’ narrative indicate, Jefferson “contained sufficient ‘multitudes,’ in Whitman’s phrase [from Song of Myself], to contradict himself with scope and generosity. He ranged himself on many sides of many questions, from government interference with the press to congressional authority over expenditures, and from the maintenance of permanent armed forces to the persistence in foreign entanglements….At the end, his capitulation to a slave power that he half-abominated was both self-interested and a menace to the survival of the republic. This surrender, by a man of the Enlightenment and a man of truly revolutionary and democratic temperament, is another reminder that history is a tragedy and not a morality play.”

Thank you, Christopher Hitchens, for writing Why Orwell Matters and now this biography of Thomas Jefferson because, in doing so, you have helped me to appreciate even more the wisdom of Voltaire’s suggestion that we cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.

How to Avoid 3 Common Decision-Traps

Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.

Making decisions is your most critical job as a leader. The more high-stakes a decision is, the more likely you are to get stuck.

Here’s how to avoid three of the most common traps:

1. Anchoring. Many people give disproportionate weight to the first information they receive. Be sure to pursue other lines of thinking, even if the first one seems right.

2. Status quo. Change can be unsettling and it’s easy to favor alternatives that keep things the same. Ask yourself if the status quo truly serves your objectives and downplay the urge to stay in your current state.

3. Confirming evidence. If you find that new information continually validates your existing point of view, ask a respected colleague to argue against your perspective. Also try to avoid working with people who always agree with you.

Today’s Management Tip was adapted from Harvard Business Review on Making Smart Decisions.

To check out the book and join the discussion, please click here.