Right Attitudes

Why People under Pressure Choose Self-Interested Behaviors

January 17, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

Pressure can put people in a state of threat. As I’ve examined previously here, here, and here, pressure can undermine people’s ability to make sound decisions.

Under pressure, people can abandon their inhibitions, cut corners, and loosen up their moral standards. In other words, they are more likely to engage in self-centered behaviors as opposed to pursuing the common good.

People adopt moral standards that dissuade them from unacceptable behaviors. Under normal circumstances, they think sensibly about the costs and benefits when making decisions. However, under pressure, people can be depleted of the cognitive resources they need to act ethically and resist temptations. See my article on the much-debated “muscle metaphor” of willpower.

When people are in that state of emotional and psychological anxiety, the brain goes into a defensive mode. With that, they are more likely to engage in self-interested behaviors that they would otherwise avoid, especially if the payoff for such behavior is high, and the odds of getting caught and punished are low.

How Can a Manager Get Important Things Done?

January 13, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Distinguish the Variances That Require a Manager’s Attention

When critical care facilities in hospitals monitor patients’ vital signs, staff nurses are notified only when vital signs go beyond each patient’s pre-programmed range. Unless the monitoring devices sound an alarm, nurses take for granted that the patient’s condition is stable enough and will receive only routine medical attention.

The “Management by Exception (MBE)” method is the notion that a manager’s attention must be focused only on those areas in absolute need of his/her engagement.

As a rule, lower-level managers should handle recurring decisions. Only problems concerning extraordinary matters should be referred to higher-level managers.

This “exception principle” emphasizes that executives at the upper levels of an organization have serious restrictions on their time, capacity, and willpower. They should refrain from being caught up in minutiae that can be handled just as effectively by their junior managers.

A case in point: many companies establish protocols that designate the level of authorization required for purchases. Companies delegate authority carefully, prescribing spending limits for each level. For instance, a team leader’s approval is necessary for purchases of over $1,000. A department manager must approve purchases of over $5,000, the divisional leader for purchases of over $10,000, and the CEO for purchases over $50,000.

Managers Just Can’t Do Everything

The exception principle helps managers focus their attention on more worthy matters that justify their attention. Most managers hesitate to manage by exception because of the very human predisposition to focus on the immediate, tangible, and well-defined problems as against the distant, high-priority, challenging, and abstract problems.

In other words, mangers must distinguish programmed decisions from non-programmed decisions. Programmed decisions are routine activities that are well-defined and can be dealt with by using an established protocol. Non-programmed decisions are exceptional or significant endeavors that involve unfamiliar, one-time, and unstructured problems needing higher-level decision-making.

Idea for Impact: Don’t Get Lost in the Thicket of Trivia

As a manager, there are only a few things that you must do. Focus on those and delegate the rest. But keep an eye on how things are going; you are still accountable for any work you delegate.

Decentralize as much decision-making as possible. Establish protocols and standard operating procedures (SOPs) that empower your staff and enable your organization virtually to run itself.

Identify what deviations constitute as an exception and intervene only to solve significant problems.

Inspirational Quotations #823

January 12, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)

He who influences the thought of his times influences the times that follow.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

If you have ability in a certain area, why not capitalize on it and improve it and use it?
—Wilt Chamberlain (American Sportsperson)

One does not fall “in” or “out” of love. One grows in love.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Our tendency is to be interested in something that is growing in the garden, not in the bare soil itself. But if you want to have a good harvest, the most important thing is to make the soil rich and cultivate it well.
—Shunryu Suzuki (Buddhist Monk, Author)

Appearances often are deceiving.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Clergyman, Aphorist)

When building a team, I always search first for people who love to win. If I can’t find any of those, I look for people who hate to lose.
—Ross Perot (American Businessman)

The obstinacy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinacy of folly and inanity.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
—Zora Neale Hurston (American Novelist)

Getting ahead in a difficult profession requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows. There is no code of conduct to help beginners. That is why some people with mediocre talent, but with great inner drive, go much further than people with vastly superior talent.
—Sophia Loren (Italian Actor)

More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.
—Truman Capote (American Novelist)

Nobody should trust their virtue with necessity, the force of which is never known till it is felt, and it is therefore one of the first duties to avoid the temptation of it.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (English Aristocrat, Poet)

The barrier between success is not something which exists in the real world: it is composed purely and simply of doubts about ability.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

The Boeing 737 MAX’s Achilles Heel

January 7, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Two thousand nineteen was one of the most turbulent years in Boeing’s history. Its 737 MACS (pardon the pun) troubles went from bad to worse to staggering when aviation regulators around the world grounded the aircraft and a steady trickle of disclosures increasingly exposed software problems and corners being cut.

The flaw in this aircraft, its anti-stall mechanism that relied on data from a single sensor, offers a particularly instructive case study of the notion of single point of failure.

One Fault Could Cause an Entire System to Stop Operating

A single point of failure of a system is an element whose failure can result in the failure of the entire system. (A system may have multiple single points of failure.)

Single points of failures are eliminated by adding redundancy—by doubling the critical components or simply backing them up, so that failure of any such element does not initiate a failure of the entire system.

Boeing Mischaracterized Its Anti-Stall System as Less-than-Catastrophic in Its Safety Analysis

The two 737 MAX crashes (with Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines) originate from a late-change that Boeing made in a trim system called the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS.)

Without the pilot’s input, the MCAS could automatically nudge the aircraft’s nose downwards if it detects that the aircraft is pointing up at a dangerous angle, for instance, at high thrust during take-off.

Reliance on One Sensor is an Anathema in Aviation

The MCAS was previously “approved” by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA.) Nevertheless, Boeing made some design changes after the FAA approval without checking with the FAA again. The late-changes were made to improve MCAS’s response during low-speed aerodynamic stalls.

The MCAS system relied on data from just one Angle-of-Attack (AoA) sensor. With no backup, if this single sensor were to malfunction, erroneous input from that sensor would trigger a corrective nosedive just after take-off. This catastrophe is precisely what happened during the two aircraft crashes.

The AoA sensor thus became a single point of failure. Despite the existence of two angle-of-attack sensors on the nose of the aircraft, the MCAS system not only used data from either one of the sensors but also did not expect concurrence between the two sensors to infer that the aircraft was stalling. Further, Lion Air did not pay up to equip its aircraft with a warning light that could have alerted the crew to a disagreement between the AoA sensors.

Boeing Missed Safety Risks in the Design of the MAX’s Flight-Control System

Reliance on one sensor’s data is an egregious violation of a long-standing engineering principle about eliminating single points of failure. Some aircraft use three duplicate systems for flight control: if one of the three malfunctions, if two systems agree, and the third does not, the flight control software ignores the odd one out.

If the dependence on one sensor was not enough, Boeing, blinded by time- and price-pressure to stay competitive with its European rival Airbus, intentionally chose to do away with any reference to MCAS in pilot manuals to spare pilot training for its airline-customers. Indeed, Boeing did not even disclose the existence of the MCAS on the aircraft.

Boeing allows pilots to switch the trim system off to override the automated anti-stall system, but the pilots of the ill-fated Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights failed to do so.

Idea for Impact: Redundancy is the Sine Qua Non of Reliable Systems

In preparation for airworthiness recertification for the 737 MAX, Boeing has corrected the MCAS blunder by having its trim software compare inputs from two AoA sensors, alerting the pilots if the sensors’ readings disagree, and limiting MCAS’s authority.

One key takeaway from the MCAS disaster is this: when you devise a highly reliable system, identify all single points of failure, and investigate how these risks and failure modes can be mitigated. Examine if every component of a product or a service you work on is a single point of failure by asking, “If this component fails, does the rest of the system still work, and, more importantly, does it still do the function it is supposed to do?”

Inspirational Quotations #822

January 5, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

Too austere a philosophy makes few wise men; too rigorous politics, few good subjects; too hard a religion, few persons whose devotion is of long continuance.
—Montesquieu (French Political Philosopher)

Of the things men give each other the greatest is loyalty.
—Ben Hecht (American Screenwriter)

Throw out an alarming alarm clock. If the ring is loud and strident, you’re waking up to instant stress. You shouldn’t be bullied out of bed, just reminded that it’s time to start your day.
—Sharon Anderson-Gold (American Philosopher)

In prosperity we need moderation; in adversity, patience.
—Lee Iacocca (American Businessperson)

He who does not accept and respect those who want to reject life does not truly accept and respect life itself.
—Thomas Szasz (Hungarian Psychiatrist)

Much of the messy advertising you see on television today is the product of committees. Committees can criticize advertisements, but they should never be allowed to create them.
—David Ogilvy (British Advertising Executive)

I believe that traditional wisdom is incomplete. A composer can have all the talent of Mozart and a passionate desire to succeed, but if he believes he cannot compose music, he will come to nothing. He will not try hard enough. He will give up too soon when the elusive right melody takes too long to materialize.
—Martin Seligman (American Psychologist)

People are twice as biased as they think they are, which is precisely why biases are dangerous.
—Morgan Housel (American Financial Journalist, Investor)

Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing; but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet.
—Pericles (Athenian Statesman)

Heaven is at the feet of mothers.
—Persian Proverb

Many have had their greatness made for them by their enemies.
—Baltasar Gracian (Spanish Philosopher, Prose Writer)

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
—Jack London (American Novelist)

If someday they say of me that in my work I have contributed something to the welfare and happiness of my fellow man, I shall be satisfied.
—George Westinghouse (American Engineer)

Labor is a pleasure in itself.
—Marcus Manilius (Roman Poet)

Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.
—Walt Whitman (American Poet)

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
—Barbara Kingsolver (American Novelist, Essayist)

How to Develop a Vision for Year 2020?

January 2, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Four Rules for Priority-Setting

As you think about what you want to achieve in the New Year, consider these four rules for priority setting laid down by the original management guru Peter Drucker in his seminal The Effective Executive (1966; my summary):

Courage rather than analysis dictates the truly important rules for identifying priorities:

Pick the future as against the past;

Focus on opportunity rather than on problems;

Choose your own direction—rather than climb on the bandwagon; and

Aim high, aim for something that will make a difference, rather than for something that is “safe” and easy to do.

How to Develop a Vision for 2020?

The first thing to do before thinking too far ahead in the future is to identify what success really means to you. Ask yourself, “It’s 31-Dec-2020 and the year 2020 is almost over. I am getting ready to celebrate the turn of the year with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?”

Visualize a year 2020 wherein everything has turned out the way you’ve wanted. You have given it your best, worked your hardest, and achieved all your goals. Now write down what you imagine.

Take the time to think through and develop a clear picture of where you want yourself and your work- and personal lives to be in three months, six months, and one year.

This exercise is generally effective at helping folks differentiate between tasks that simply feel urgent or top-of-mind from those that are truly important.

Idea for Impact: Getting clear on your vision will help you create a path that feels the most meaningful, stimulating, and fulfilling to you.

Our 10 Most Popular Articles of 2019

December 30, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Top Blog Articles of 2019 Here are our most popular exclusive features of 2019. Pass this on to your friends; if they like these, they can sign up to receive our RSS feeds or email updates.

Stop Searching for the Best Productivity System. Don’t keep looking for “better” ideas instead of settling on a “good enough” idea and then putting it into rigorous practice.
Charlie Munger’s Iron Prescription. Nothing deceives you as much as extreme passion. Stay away from extreme ideologies until you’ve examined the opposing viewpoint. Don’t ignore the counterevidence.
Do Your Team a Favor: Take a Vacation. When the hardworking manager does go away on vacation, he doesn’t truly get away. By butting in whenever he can, he subtly undermines his team by insinuating that his team members cannot run things on their own.
Fire Fast—It’s Heartless to Hang on to Bad Employees. Ending a bad fit sooner is better than doing it later—it’s better for both the employee leaving and the employees remaining. Many fired employees feel surprised that the axe didn’t fall sooner.
Ask This One Question Every Morning to Find Your Focus. Starting your day by mulling over on “what should I have achieved today to leave the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment?” is a wonderful aid in keeping the mind headed in the right direction.
Benefits, Not Boasts. A tolerable way to promote yourself without sounding boastful: instead of “I have 15 years of experience in this field,” say, “I bring to you 15 years of experience in this field, promising you that, should any problems surface, I will handle them promptly and proficiently.”
Doesn’t Facebook Make You Unhappy? If you find yourself wasting time on social media or getting demotivated, consider using Facebook less or quitting it totally. Shun the narcissistic inclination to publicize the excruciating minutiae of your life to the world. Limiting social media participation can reduce your anxiety about work.
Accidents Can Happen When You Least Expect Them. The “overconfidence effect” is a judgmental bias that can cause you to misjudge the likelihood of positive/desirable events as well as negative/undesirable events.
Don’t One-up Others’ Ideas. A manager who tends to put his oar in his employees’ ideas and “add too much value” ends up killing their ownership of ideas. This diminishes their motivation and performance.
Make Friends Now with the People You’ll Need Later. An essential lesson from Boeing’s 737 MAX debacle: a network of allies and confidants becomes indispensable during a crisis, whether the crisis is self-inflicted or caused by external events.

And here are some articles of yesteryear that continue to be popular:

We wish you all a healthy and prosperous 2020!

Inspirational Quotations #821

December 29, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi

So remarkably perverse is the nature of man, that he despises those that court him, and admires whoever will not bend before him.
—Thucydides (Greek Historian)

Most people repent their sins by thanking God they ain’t so wicked as their neighbors.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (American Humorist)

There is no companion like solitude.
One who knows how to tune himself to the inner silence,
even in the midst of the din and roar of the marketplace,
enjoys a most recreative solitude.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

A spoon does not know the taste of soup, nor a learned fool the taste of wisdom.
—Welsh Proverb

Two things we ought to learn from history: one, that we are not in ourselves superior to our fathers; another, that we are shamefully and monstrously inferior to them, if we do not advance beyond them.
—Thomas Arnold (English Educationalist)

If only we’d stop trying to be happy, we’d have a pretty good time.
—Edith Wharton (American Novelist, Short-story Writer)

Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination.
—Christopher Isherwood (Anglo-American Novelist, Playwright)

In this world, you must be a bit too kind to be kind enough.
—Pierre de Marivaux (French Dramatist, Author)

Never interrupt someone doing what you said couldn’t be done.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.
—George Burns (American Comedian)

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.
—Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher)

There is no real wealth but the labor of man.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)

Unhappy is the fate of one who tries to win his battles and succeed in his attacks without cultivating the spirit of enterprise, for the result is waste of time and general stagnation.
—Sun Tzu (Chinese Military Leader)

Writing is another powerful way to sharpen the mental saw. Keeping a journal of our thoughts, experiences, insights, and learnings promotes mental clarity, exactness, and context.
—Stephen Covey (American Self-help Author)

I think if you have the opportunity to bully your opponent then you have to take that chance.
—Venus Williams (American Tennis Player)

Books I Read in 2019 & Recommend

December 26, 2019 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Management: Bob Fifer’s How to Double Your Profits in 6 Months or Less (1995) obsesses about cutting costs by any and all means possible. Every corporate resource is a cost-center that must be pared down to the bone—unless it brings in business or improves the bottom line. This obscure book has instigated systematic cost-consciousness in many large firms that have bloated cost structures in today’s hypercompetitive business environment. [Read my summary.]
Leadership: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s Hit Refresh (2017) recounts his remarkable empathy-centric revamp of the culture of a company that had become set in its ways. Nadella is an exemplar of a leader as a sense-maker. His narrative arc shifts from a personal memoir to a management how-to, and then to technological futurism. [Read my summary.]
Self-Help: Greg McKeown’s Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less (2014) is an excellent reminder of the wisdom to think through—and act upon—what really matters. “A rich, meaningful life entails the elimination of the non-essential.” A simple life is a good life. [Read my summary.]
Self-Help: Robert Maurer’s One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way (2004) conceives transformative change as a cumulative, gradual process of small improvements. One small step leads to the next, which leads to one more, and so on. “Small Kaizen actions disarm the brain’s fear response … and satisfy your brain’s need to do something and soothe its distress.” [Read my summary.]
Leadership: Singapore Founding Father Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs are The Singapore Story (1998,) From Third World to First (2000,) and One Man’s View of the World (2013.) Lee is one of the most competent leaders the world has ever seen. He was an autocratic pragmatist—a strong-willed, visionary leader who got it done. While considering Lee’s legacy, one needs to acknowledge his incredible achievements while refusing to close one’s eyes to certain lapses. He once remarked, “We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.” [Read about the key lessons that Lee had to teach.]
Science History: Richard L. Hills’s Power from Steam: A History of the Stationary Steam Engine (1989) traces the arc of development of the technique to harness the properties of steam. Steam-powered mechanical devices became the driving force of the Industrial Revolution and led to innovations that became the bedrock of modern civilization. [Read this case study about insights into creativity.]
Management: Julie Zhuo’s Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You (2019) chronicles her experiences from ramping-up into management and getting to know herself better. This excellent primer for novice managers offers many hard-earned insights that only time in the trenches can reveal. “Being a manager is a highly personal journey, and if you don’t have a good handle on yourself, you won’t have a good handle on how to best support your team.” [Read my summary.]
Aviation History: Jon Ziomek’s Collision on Tenerife (2018) analyzes the world’s worst aviation disaster caused by small errors that became linked up and amplified into a big tragedy. He provides a comprehensive picture of the importance of protocols and expounds on how some humans can freeze in shock while others spring into action. [Read my summary.]

See, also, my book recommendations from 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014.

The four books I re-read every year are Benjamin Graham’s Security Analysis and The Intelligent Investor, Phil Fisher’s Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits, and Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People.

You may be interested in my article on how to process that pile of books you can’t seem to finish and my article on why we read self-help books.

I wish you all very enlightening reads in 2020! Recall the words of the American philosopher Mortimer J. Adler, who said, “In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.”

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Distinguish the Variances That Require a Manager’s Attention

Managers Just Can’t Do Everything

Idea for Impact: Don’t Get Lost in the Thicket of Trivia

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

One Fault Could Cause an Entire System to Stop Operating

Boeing Mischaracterized Its Anti-Stall System as Less-than-Catastrophic in Its Safety Analysis

Reliance on One Sensor is an Anathema in Aviation

Boeing Missed Safety Risks in the Design of the MAX’s Flight-Control System

Idea for Impact: Redundancy is the Sine Qua Non of Reliable Systems

Wondering what to read next?

Four Rules for Priority-Setting

How to Develop a Vision for 2020?

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Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?