Feeling Groovy

It was interesting, I was reading about how humans have six universal emotions.

These emotions are considered largely involuntary responses to stimuli, and they are:

• Anger
• Happiness
• Fear
• Sadness
• Disgust
• Surprise

As I thought about these out of the six emotions, only happiness is the straight out good one. Hey, who doesn't want to be happy (maybe only an ascetic, but that's because they parodoxically get a type of happiness out of being unhappy)? 

Then, I thought about surprise and that is sort of a toss up--it can be a good surprise or a bad one. Most of the time, people don't like surprises and would rather have an element of control over what is coming, when, and how. So I would throw surprises in the you can keep it pile. 

And while the other four emotions--anger, fear, sadness, and disgust--may be helpful at times (in protecting us physically and emotionally), they all have negative connotations and implications. 

Anger usually means someone has hurt or slighted us. Fear impies that that there is something dangerous or scary to be feared out there. Sadness is the opposite of happiness, so it's a non-starter. And disgust is attributed to something vile or revolting and is usually something we want to get away from as quickly as possible. 

So, six primary human emotions and only one--happiness--makes us feel--happy!

Thinking about emotions as colors, we can feel blue (sad) or fiery red (anger), what about green (with envy)?  Uh, wonder why this emotion was missing from the list, but I would add it as number seven for universal emotions. 

Unfortunately, envy means we feel less than or jealous of the next person, so this is another one that doesn't make us feel very good. 

Maybe then expectations for how much happiness in life we should or can have should be tempered knowling there are six others to keep us busy and feeling--other things. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Feeling Groovy

From Coworker to Killer

People are people, but there are some who walk a fine and dangerous line. 

Some are stable, rational people--those, that we hope we can depend on. 

Others are prime time wack jobs--they are not "safe" and everyone knows to beware of them.

Finally, there are those who are like firecrackers, one step away from explosion--and these can pose a nasty surprise. 

These last two perhaps invoke the fear of someone in the workplace "going postal"--a reference to the 1986 killing by a postal worker of 14 people and then himself. 

In light of the workplace shooting this week in front the Empire State Building, Newsweek (3 September 2012) asks "How to Spot a Workplace Crazy?"

Their default answer--see the Department of Homeland Security's Active Shooter Booklet, which includes a list of 16 "indicators of potential violence by an employee" (page 10) from addiction to depression, over reactions to mood swings, unprovoked rage to paranoia, and more. 

Perhaps, their more genuine answer is that anybody can be the next workplace shooter--and that it is hard to really tell what demons lay in wait inside a person's head or heart or what can set them off.  

They reference  the book, Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, which states: "it can be anybody who's getting completely screwed in the workplace--so that's most workers in this country." 

When people feel a "perceived injustice" or they are "grievance collectors"--harboring hurt and anger at their mistreatment day-in and -out, they may be one step away from dangerous. 

As leaders and managers, we cannot control for everything that people feel or for all their personal struggles and life's circumstances, but we can do our best to treat others fairly, with compassion, to listen to them, and try to accomodate genuine needs.  

I was reminded of this again, recently, when I went with my daughter to a car dealership.  At one point in negotiating for a new automobile, I asked a question about the current odometer reading.  

The Manager yells over to a worker and tells him harshly to get on it and quickly.  It wasn't what he said per se, but how he said it--ordering his subordinate around like a thing, not like a person.  

My daughter turns to me and she is clearly uncomfortable with what she saw.  I asked her about it.  And she whispers to me, "Did you see how they treated the worker? It's not right." 

I couldn't agree with her more. And when the man came back with the information--we thanked him so much for helping us and told him what a good job he was doing getting everything ready--the paperwork and the vehicle.  

Is he going to "go postal" today, tomorrow, or never...I don't know--he seemed nice enough, but if people get pushed too far and their mental state is frayed, anything is possible, and we shouldn't tempt fate--more importantly, we should treat everyone with respect and dignity. 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Charlie Essers)

From Coworker to Killer

Changing Regrets Into Fulfillment

The Guardian (1 February 2012) published an important article called "The Top Five Regrets of the Dying."

The items mentioned were compiled by a palliative nurse caring for patients at end of life. 

The list is a wake up call for many of us who work hard, but in the process perhaps forget the most important aspects of life are the people we love and the pursuit of opportunities to really be ourselves and achieve our purpose.  

Here is the list of top 5 things you can do different in your life before it passes you by:

1. Be your true self--"I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me." 

- Ask yourself what are your dreams and how can you make them happen!

2. Work less--"I wish I hadn't worked so hard." 

- Ask yourself are you living to work or working to live? 

3. Express yourself--"I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings."

- Ask yourself if you've told significant others how you really feel and genuinely worked things out with them.

4. Maintain relationships--"I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends"

- Ask yourself have you been generous with your time, emotions, and material things with family, friends, and others important to you?

5. Seek out opportunities for happiness--"I wish that I had let myself be happier."

- Ask yourself what does happiness even really mean to you and how can you find it amidst the daily grind.

Life is always too short and everyone makes mistakes and has regrets--that's part of being human, learning, and growing. 

But if we can get our priorities straights and set clear goals, perhaps we can leave the world with less bitterness and more fulfillment in lives granted and well spent. 

(Source Photo: here with Attribution to Raspberries1)

Changing Regrets Into Fulfillment

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.

Customer Service Design

I really liked the article in MIT Sloan Management Review (Fall 2010) called “Designing the Soft Side of Customer Service” by Dasu and Chase.

The authors write: “Even in the most mundane [customer] encounters, emotions are lurking under the surface. Your job is to make those feelings positive.”

Wow! That is a pretty powerful statement.

Think about it. How often do you genuinely deliver on that positive experience for your customers versus how often do they come away feeling slighted, taken advantage of, maybe even cheated of the service they know they deserve.

Sometimes of course, there are justifiable reasons why we can’t make a customer happy—maybe the customer is simply being unreasonable or is a knucklehead or maybe even some sort of nutcase. We have to use good judgment when it comes to this.

But often there are other problems that are getting in the way of us delivering on that positive customer experience:

Problem #1: We get caught up in the policies, processes, personalities, and politics of a situation, rather than focusing on the customer and their satisfaction. We forget who our real customers are.

Problem #2: We don’t think like the customer. We don’t genuinely listen to the customer or try to understand where they are coming from or what they even want. We are too busy talking the “company line,” playing defense, or taking an adversarial role. We don’t put ourselves in the other person’s shoes, not even for a minute.

Problem #3: We often don’t put the customer first; we put ourselves first. We are more concerned with not making a mistake, getting into trouble, or maybe don’t want to even work “that hard.” In general, we should, but don’t go the extra mile for the customer, let along deliver on first mile.

The MIT article tells us that we can improve customer experiences by designing-in how we manage the customer’s emotions, trust, and need for control (ETCs), as follows:

• Emotions—have empathy for customers and generate thoughtful interactions that limit negative customer emotions and accentuate positive ones, so that the customer comes away feeling joy, thrill, happiness rather than anger, anxiety and stress.
• Trust—provide consistent performance, a high-level of engagement and follow-up, and clear and open communication. These contribute to building an enduring relationship.
• Control—provide customers with ample information, so they feel “cognitive control” over what is happening to them, and provide customers with the ability to make significant service delivery decisions, so they experience “behavioral control.”

Designing for positive customer ETCs experiences will go a long way to resolving the problems of poor customer service, where we know and stay focused on who our customers are, can think as they do, and seriously deliver on their needs the way you would want your customer needs addressed.

I suppose if I have to sum it up in a couple of words, it’s about being professionally selfless and not selfish in all our customer interactions.

It takes some maturity to get there, but I think it’s why we are here to serve.

Customer Service Design

The Humanization of Computers

The Wall Street Journal recently reviewed (Sept. 10, 2010) “The Man Who Lied to His Laptop,” by Clifford Nass.

The book examines human-computer interactions in order to “teach us about human relationships.”

The reviewer, David Robinson, sums up with a question about computers (and relationships): “do we really think it’s just a machine?”

Answer: “A new field of research says no. The CASA paradigm-short for ‘computers as social actors’—takes its starting point the observation that although we deny that we interact with a computer as we would with a human being, many of us actually do.”

The book review sums up human-computer interaction, as follows:

“Our brains can't fundamentally distinguish between interacting with people and interacting with devices. We will ‘protect’ a computer's feelings, feel flattered by a brown-nosing piece of software, and even do favors for technology that has been "nice" to us. All without even realizing it.”

Some interesting examples of how we treat computers like people:

- Having a heart for your computer: People in studies giving feedback on computer software have shown themselves to “be afraid to offend the machine” if they are using their own computers for the evaluation rather than a separate ‘evaluation computer.’

- Sexualizing your computer: People sexualize computer voices lauding a male sounding tutor voice as better at teaching ‘technical subjects,’ and a female sounding voice as better at teaching ‘love and relationship’ material.

- A little empathy from your computer goes a long way: People are more forthcoming in typing messages about their own mistakes “if the computer first ‘apologizes’ for crashing so often.”

It seems to me that attributing human attributes (feelings, sexuality, and camaraderie) to an inanimate object like a computer is a social ill that we should all be concerned about.

Sure, we all spend a lot of time going back and forth between our physical realities, virtual realities, and now augmented realities, but in the process we seem to be losing perspective of what is real and what is not.

Perhaps to too many people, their computers have become their best friends, closest allies, and likely the biggest time hog of everything they do. They are:

- Doing their work at arms length from computers rather than seriously working together with other people to solve large and complex problems facing us all.

- Interacting virtually on social networks rather than with friends in real life, and similarly gaming online rather than meeting at the ballpark for some swings at the bat.

- Blogging and tweeting their thoughts and feelings on their keyboards and screens, rather than with loved ones who care and really want to share.

We have taken shelter behind our computers and to some extent are in love with our computers—both of these are hugely problematic. Computers are tools and not hideaways or surrogate lovers!

Of course, the risk of treating computers as people is that we in turn treat people as inanimate computers—or maybe we already have?

This is a dangerous game of mistaken reality we are playing.

[Photo Source: http://www.wilsoninfo.com/computerclipart.shtml]

The Humanization of Computers