November 18, 2011
Milgram And The Moral Fiber Of Leadership
September 3, 2011
Weeding Out The Servant-Leader From The Psychopath
Weeding Out The Servant-Leader From The Psychopath
July 9, 2011
How Far Will You Go?
How Far Will You Go?
May 17, 2011
Know What's Right, Do What's Right
And at one point, he says straight-out, integrity takes two things:
1) Know what's right
2) Do what's right
And I'm loving it!
Straight-forward and simple--know and do what's right.
Then he tells me about Gus Lee, a nationally recognized ethicist (and Chair of Character Development at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point) who wrote this book Courage: The Backbone of Leadership.
I was inspired by what I heard and since went back to learn more about his philosophy on the subject.
Lee believes that "leadership is grounded in high character" and that "we think we are looking for managers, but in fact, we need principled leaders."
To drive our "moral courage", Lee says we have 3 powerful resources:
1) Conscience--"that moral, inner voice."
2) Discernment--this is where you work to discern "the higher right" getting past "fear, feelings, and wishful thinking" and of course, our own self interests.
3) Discerning Advisors--we seek the counsel of "the most courageous, high integrity, high character, and principled person or people" you know.
And I would add a fourth important resource, which is religious teachings that can be a steadfast guidepost (especially when coupled with the others as a personal litmus test of whether you are applying them correctly).
Finally, I like Lee's observation that there are three type of individuals when it comes to issues of integrity:
1) Egotists--those who are self-serving.
2) Pragmatists--those who "serve results" or what I would call serving a specified cause.
3) People of Courage--those who "act in the right regardless."
Doing the right thing is not easy (it means putting aside your own interests)!
That's why it takes tremendous courage to be the type of moral person that we all ultimately admire and respect.
Those leaders who act with moral rectitude, these to me are the few and the amazing!
Know What's Right, Do What's Right
March 14, 2011
Watson Can Swim
Watson Can Swim
February 11, 2011
Machine, Checkmate.
It’s the eternal battle of Man vs. Machine—our biggest fear and greatest hope—which is ultimately superior?
On one hand, we are afraid of being overtaken by the very technology we build, and simultaneously, we are hopeful at what ailments technology can cure and what it can help us achieve.
In spite of our hopes and fears, the overarching question is can we construct computers that will in fact surpass our own distinct human capabilities?
This week IBM’s Supercomputer Watson will face off against two of the all-time-greatest players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a game of Jeopardy—at stake is $1.5 million in prize money.
Will we see a repeat of technology defeating humankind as happened in 1997, when IBM’s Supercomputer at the time, Deep Blue, beat Garry Kasparov, world-champion, in chess?
While losing some games—whether chess or Jeopardy—is perhaps disheartening to people and their mental acuity; does it really take away from who we are as human beings and what makes us “special” and not mere machines?
For decades, a machine’s ability to act “more human” than a person has been testing the ever-thinning divide between man and machine.
An article in The Atlantic (March 2011) called Mind vs. Machine exposes the race to build computers that can think and communicate like people.
The goal is to use artificial intelligence in machines to rival real intelligence in humans and to fool a panel of judges at the annual meeting for the Loebner Prize and pass the Turing test.
Alan Turing in his 1950’s paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” asked whether machines can think? He posited that if a judge could not tell machine from human in text-only communication (to mask the difference in sounds being machines and humans), then the machine was said to win!
“Turing predicted that by the year 2000, computers would be able to fool 30% of human judges after five minutes of conversations.” While this has not happened, it has come close (missing by only one deception) in 2008 with an AI program called Elbot.
Frankly, it is hard for me to really imagine computers that can talk with feelings and expressiveness—based on memories, tragedies, victories, hopes, and fears—the way people do.
Nevertheless, computer programs going back to the Eliza program in 1964 have proven very sophisticated and adept as passing for human, so much so that “The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease" in 1966 said of Eliza that: “several hundred patients an hour could be handled by a computer system designed for this purpose.” Imagine that a computer was proposed functioning as a psychotherapist already 45 years ago!
I understand that Ray Kurzweil has put his money on IBM’s Watson for the Jeopardy match this week, and that certainly is in alignment with his vision of “The Singularity” where machines overtake humans in an exponentially accelerating advancement of technology toward “massive ultra-intelligence.”
Regardless of who wins Jeopardy this week—man or machine—and when computers finally achieve the breakthrough Turing test, I still see humans as distinct from machines, not in their intellectual or physical capabilities, but ultimately in the moral (or some would call it religious) conscience that we carry in each one of us. This is our ability to choose right from wrong—and sometimes to choose poorly.
I remember learning in Jewish Day School (“Yeshiva”) that humans are a combination—half “animal” and half “soul”. The animal part of us lusts after all the is pleasurable, at virtually any cost, but the soul part of us is the spark of the divine that enables us to choose to be more—to do what’s right, despite our animal cravings.
I don’t know of any computer, super or not, that can struggle between pleasure and pain and right and wrong, and seek to grow beyond it’s own mere mortality through conscious acts of selflessness and self-sacrifice.
Even though in our “daily grind,” people may tend to act as automatons, going through the day-to-day motions virtually by rote, it is important to rise above the machine aspect of our lives, take the “bigger picture” view and move our lives towards some goals and objectives that we can ultimately be proud of.
When we look back on our lives, it’s not how successful we became, how much money and material “things” we accumulated—these are the computerized aspects of our lives that we sport. Rather, it’s the good we do for our others that will stay behind long after we are gone. So whether the computer has a bigger database, faster processor, and better analytics—good for it—in the end, it has nothing on us humans.
Man or machine—I say machine, checkmate!
Machine, Checkmate.
May 1, 2010
Managing with Integrity
Most professionals know instinctively that they should act with integrity, if only to avoid getting caught. Yet, of course, not everyone does.
Whether it’s Bernie Madoff ripping off investors to the tune of $50 billion or the store cashier helping themselves to $5 from the register, many people make poor ethical decisions.
Given human nature being the way it is, it’s not surprising when people are tempted to do bad things. What is a little harder to understand is when managers, who may have to answer for the conduct of others, look away when they see it happening.
This is the subject of an article in Harvard Business Review (March 2010) called “Keeping Your Colleagues Honest.” According to the article, here are the four “classic rationalizations” that keep managers silent in the face of wrongdoing:
- “It’s standard practice”—or everyone was doing it and so that makes it okay.
- “It’s not a big deal”—some people state it this way, “no harm, no foul.”
- “It’s not my responsibility”—or as the Bible put it, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
- “I want to be loyal”—or don’t be a Benedict Arnold.
HBR gives some suggestions for handling ethical dilemmas in the organization:
- “Recognize that this is part of your job”—“people tend to view ethical conflict as aberrations…[but] that’s just not true….[it’s] a regular part of professional life.”
- “Make long-term risks more concrete”—all too often people get caught up in the moment and want or feel they need to take the easy way out. So a good strategy for helping people to behave more ethically involves pointing out the risks and possible long-term consequences of the behavior.
- “Challenge the rationalizations”—For example: “if this is standard practice, why is there a policy against it? Or if it is expected, are we comfortable being public about it?”
- “Present an alternative”—Some mistakenly believe that ethical choices are not rewarded and are simply “naïve idealism,” and that we “have no choice” sometimes in doing the wrong thing. However, great managers recognize that there is always a choice.
There is no doubt that it is hard for managers to have to stand up for what’s right. There is always organizational pressure to get along, go along, and make things happen.
But in the end, we are accountable for our choices, whether we feel comfortable about it or not and whether they involve action or passivity.
In my experience, most people have a conscience and will try to do what is right. However, it is only a very few who have the self-confidence, the character, and the fortitude to stand up and follow their conscience even when it’s not easy, not convenient, not cheap, not fun, not popular, not beneficial in the short-term or even the long. (And there is not a clear playbook for every situation.)
I believe that making tough choices is our test and our trust in life, to do what we believe is right and ethical. It’s not only our greatest professional challenge but also our greatest personal one, and we cannot rationalize it away.
Managing with Integrity
July 25, 2009
Finding the Meaning In It All
What a great, great article in the Wall Street Journal—Tuesday, July 14, 2009—“A New View, After Diagnosis” about how “cancer patients find meaning in the face of mortality…how can you live knowing that you’re going to die?”
To me, the article was inspiring, hopeful, and courageous.
A new therapy called meaning-centered psychotherapy addresses the question that cancer patients have: “How do I live in the space between my diagnosis and my eventual death.” And it answers the call with the philosophy of the Austrian psychiatrist and holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl, who taught, “people can endure any suffering if they know their life has meaning.”
Meaning-centered psychotherapy works with cancer patients to make “the months or years of life that remain times of extraordinary growth” of “reconnecting with the many sources of meaning in life—love, work, history, family relationships,” and of resolving issues of our past.
Through spiritual well being, we can reduce our anxiety and fear of death and find meaning in life and the legacy we can leave behind.
No, this article wasn’t about work or technology or leadership per se and yet it was about all of them so much more.
How often do we go through our daily lives and question the meaning of it all? (What’s life really all about? What’s it all for? Why do we work so hard? Who really cares? What affect does it have in the end, anyway?)
In fact, all our lives we are searching for and desperately seeking spiritual meaning in what we do.
We are multi-faceted people. We have professional lives, families, friends, community, hobbies, and so forth. And we try to imbue spirituality in what we do every day—to elevate the mundane into the holy—to make the meetings, reports, bills, dirty diapers, dishes, and laundry, meaningful.
Recently, one of my friends who is looking for a new job (in this tough economy) said to me, “I want to find a meaningful job.” And I asked him “what is meaningful to you?” He answered “I’m not sure, but I’ll know it when I see it.”
It seems that we all cognizant of the short time we have here on earth and we want to make the most of it. Yet, despite all the people, activity, and things (“technology toys” or otherwise), we still are not sure what exactly “meaningful” means.
Is the answer really simple and straightforward--is it our good deeds, loving our neighbors as ourselves, and serving our maker? Well yes, of course, but we also have an inherent need to see that there is some positive end-result to our life’s work—a legacy that transcends us. Whether it is through our children and grandchildren that carry onward after us, charitable gifts or trusts that helps feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, or treat the ill, or having a positive influence on the people and society around us—inspiring, motivating, leading, and creating a better world.
Certainly, with a cancer patient, at the crossroads of the life and death, meaning must be found now or lost for all time. Others, not facing imminent death, have more time to explore, experiment, and search for the meaning in their lives. In the end, all of us desire to leave this world with a clear conscience knowing that we did our best, and left the world and the people in it that we touched, better off than had we not lived at all.
Finding the Meaning In It All
April 6, 2008
Total Recall and Enterprise Architecture
Enterprise architecture plays an important role in corporate knowledge management. EA captures, analyzes, catalogues, and serves up information to end-users. In many cases, where more general KM endeavors fail, User-centric EA succeeds because it is a focused effort, with a clear value proposition for making information useful and usable.
Now, KM is being taken to whole new level. And rather than capturing information with clearly defined users and uses, the aim is total recall.
ComputerWorld, 6 April 2008, reports on an initiative for “storing every life memory in a surrogate [computer] brain.”
“Gordon Bello, a longtime veteran of the IT industry and now principle researcher at Microsoft’s Corp.’s research arm, is developing a way for everyone to remember those special moments. Actually, Bell himself wants to remember—well, everything...he wants the ability to pull up any picture, phone call, e-mail, or conversation any time he wants”
“The nine-year project, called MyLifeBits, has Bell supplementing his own memory by collecting as much information as he can about his life. He’s trying to store a lifetime on his laptop.”
“The effort is about not forgetting, not deleting, and holding onto all the bit of your life. In essence, it’s about immortality.”
What about privacy of your personal information?
It “isn’t about plastering a Myspace or Facebook page with information…[It’s] immensely personal...you will leave a personal legacy—a record of your life [on a personal computer].
And Bell is not discerning, he stores painful memories as he does happy ones; this “would actually let people see who he was as a person.”
Certainly people have strived for eternal life from the time of the first man and woman—Adam and Eve eating of the forbidden apple in their quest for immortality—and since with the search for the “fountain of youth” and other elixirs to prolong life. Similarly, people have sought to live eternal by leaving a legacy—whether great men or nefarious one—from rulers and inventors to conquerors and hate mongers. The desire to influence and be remembered everlasting is as potent as the most parch thirst of man.
Bell has gone to extremes collecting and storing his memories—good and bad—from “every webpage he has ever visited and television shows he has watched…video’s of lectures he’d given, CDs, correspondence and an avalanche of photos…he has also recorded phone conversations, images and audio from conference sessions, and with his e-mail and instant messages.”
In fact, Bell wears a SenseCam around his neck, a digital camera that automatically takes a photo every 30 seconds or whenever someone approaches.
“Bell figures that he could store everything about his life, from start to finish, using a terabyte of storage.”
“In 20 years, digitizing our memories will be standard procedure according to Bell. ‘Its my supplemental memory and brain’. It’s one of my most valuable possessions. It look at this thing and think, ‘My whole life is there.’”
So is that what a human life comes down to—a terabyte of stored information?
While maybe a noble effort at capturing memory, this seems to miss the mark at what a human being is really about. A person is much more than that which can be captured by a photo or sound bite of the external circumstances and events that take place around us. The essence of a person is about the deep challenges that go on inside us. The daily struggles and choices we make through our inner conscience—to chose right from wrong and to sacrifice for our creator, our loved ones, our nation, and our beliefs. Yes, you can see the resulting actions, but you don’t see the internal struggles of heart, mind, and soul.
Also, while capturing every 30 seconds of a person’s life may be sacred to the person whose life is being stored, who else really cares? The high-lights of a person’s life are a lesson for others, the minutia of their day are personal for their growth and reckoning.
From a User-centric EA perspective, I believe we should focus KM initiatives for both organizations and individuals from being a wholesale data dump to being truly meaningful endeavors that have a clarity or purpose and a dignity of the human beings being recorded.
Total Recall and Enterprise Architecture
October 10, 2007
First Things First and Enterprise Architecture
- The clock—“our commitments, appointments, schedules, goals, and activities—what we do with, and how we manage our time.”
- The compass—“our vision, values, principles, mission, conscience, and direction—what we feel is important and how we lead our lives.”
The idea here is that we “painstakingly climb the ‘ladder of success’ rung by rung—the diploma, the late nights, the promotions—only to discover as we reached the top rung, that the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.”
“Absorbed in the ascent, we left a trail of shattered relationships or missed moments of deep, rich living in the wake of the intense overfocused effort. In the race up the rungs we simply did not take the time to do what really mattered most.”
What is really important?
Covey sums it up nicely, as follows:
- To live—our physical needs (“food, clothing, shelter, economic well-being, health”)
- To love—our social needs (“to relate to other people, to belong, to love, to be loved”)
- To learn—our mental needs (“to develop and to grow”)
- To live a legacy—our spiritual needs (“to have a sense of meaning, purpose, personal congruence, and contribution” and most important of all to serve and sacrifice for the one almighty G-d)
In case you don’t recognize it, these align nicely to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
http://usercentricea.blogspot.com/2007/08/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-and.html
Maslow “in his last years, revised his earlier theory and acknowledged that the peak experience was not “self-actualization, but “self-transcendence,” or living for a higher purpose than self.
George Bernard Shaw put it this way:
“This is the true joy in life…being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one…being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy…I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can…I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me. It’s a sort of splendid torch which I’ve got to hold up for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
Covey says it this way:
“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”
As an enterprise architect, who works everyday to build a better organization, with efficient and effective business processes, timely and meaningful information supporting the business, and information technology solutions that drive mission execution, I thought it was important to put this important job in perspective. Because in order to be effective in the role as an enterprise architect, we have to realize that “balance and synergy” among the four needs—physical, social, mental, and spiritual—are imperative.
As Covey states: “we tend to see them [these needs] as separate ‘compartments’ of life. We think of ‘balance’ as running from one area to another fast enough to spend time in each one of a regular basis [or not!]…but [this] ignores the reality of their powerful synergy. It’s where…we find true inner balance, deep fulfillment, and joy.”
First Things First and Enterprise Architecture