Feedback Loops

One of the main challenges to the Theory of Evolution is Spontaneous Generation. Not the largely discredited folk theory that life pops up out of nothing, but the nearly undefinable moment when un-living matter becomes Life. It is that instant when some process becomes self-sustaining, self replicating and separate from its environment. Right now for chemical based life, the best guess hypothesis involves the idea of auto-catalytic loops. Auto-catalytic loops are the bio-chemical equivalents of placing a microphone too close to a speaker. If they don't have some sort of regulation, the process soon spins out of control consuming all the available resources, and dies from starvation. So at some point a collection of interconnected loops might have been separated out of the primordial goo, and could have started self replicating and had enough regulators to respond to external conditions. In essence you want feedback loops that create enough, not too much, or too little of something.

Only recently bio-chemists have been understanding the importance of regulators. Some cancers can be thought of as poorly regulated loops. People have long observed patches of DNA that were considered "junk" that produced small RNA strings, or microRNA. It turns out microRNA can act as a regulator for some processes. And some cancers have a genetic origin in these bits of microRNA, either because the microRNA is not restricting the process enough or the microRNA is over restricting the process.

In some ways this is analogous to the ways we communicate in organizations. If leaders under regulate communications, you may compromise your clients' or employees' privacy, or your organizations security. If leaders over regulate communications, leaders may not get important information and may unintentionally foster a culture of blame. I have observed the following unintentional bad communication policies:

Don't tell me you have a problem unless you have a solution. I remember a quality initiative that wanted to include employees. There were two important caveats. First, employees need to solve the problems and second, any problems that involved the provided software tools were off limits. I'm sure the corporate leaders thought they were sending the following message - we care about your work and want to empower you to make it better and easier. The message many employees received was - we won't invest time or money in you, fix your own problems. The end result was employees lost interest in the quality initiative, and stopped telling their managers about problems.

The Performance Improvement Plan is a tool managers use to salvage an employee who is not performing adequately. It is a way to clearly communicate expectations and required actions. It is a way to reform a "bad" employee into a "good" employee. Typically, when an employee is under a performance improvement plan, they are not permitted to apply for any other jobs in the company. The manager is hoping to communicate - we care about your contribution to our organization and would like to help you continue to make a contribution in your current role, and I'm going to be committed to working with you until that happens. The message the employee may receive is - it's my way or the highway. Generally, employees either leave the organization, or stop communicating honestly with their managers and become compliant yes men.

I've also observed some really good practices that regulated communications.

Periodically attend team meetings. Several years ago, I had a vice-president who would attend product review meetings. He didn't attend every one - there were over 20 departments with 3 teams each, but he attended often enough that everyone in the lab knew who he was. This sent two strong messages - I care about what you are doing and regardless of your positions you can talk to me.

Eating in the common Cafeteria can be another effective way to regulate communications. It makes a leader visible. The same vice-president ate at least two days a week in the lab cafeteria. At least two days a week, the vice-president was sending the message, I'm just like you and you can talk to me.

Get rid of the executive bathroom. My Father has a friend who is a plumber. He's a very down to earth guy who speaks in a very direct manner. This is the advice he gave to mutual acquaintance who was starting a machine shop with two partners. If you want to know what your people are doing, don't have an executive bathroom. The message sent when you don't have an executive bathroom, is I'm no better than you, you can talk to me.

What good practices have you seen? Leave a comment.

More information about microRNA:

High Hopes for a New Kind of Gene, Sylvia Pagán Westphal, Smithsonian Magazine, July 2009

Improving Quality in Education

I have a love hate relationship with  formal education. I am very grateful for the things I have learned through my public school, state university education. Formal education is also the reason I absolutely despise James Joyce and John Lloyd Wright. Any desire I may have had to be an English teacher, or an architect was soundly beaten out of me.

I was not a straight A student in High School. If my memory serves me correctly, my worst grade my Senior year was in French. I do remember one meaningful assignment. In the French language there is an archaic verb tense that is only currently used in literature - everyone can read it but almost no one speaks it. It is used for writing certain types of literature, including fairy tales. As part of studying this tense, we were given the very practical assignment to write a fairy tale. I wrote a fairy tale, a three page, complete sentence, fully developed fairy tale. There were grammar errors; there were faulty constructions. There were all the faults you would expect from someone working with only a partial knowledge of a language. But it was a story, and it worked. My assignment floored the French teacher - it was so unexpected.

I think my relationship with that teacher changed after that assignment. Until that assignment, I think I was in her mind a mediocre student who had little potential. (Of course, this may not be fair, she may have been far more aware than my 18 year old mind gave her credit.) There were nine students in the class. I had the lowest grade in the class - I was the bottom. I speculate the teacher had expected me to drop out for three years - it wasn't helping my grade point average, I had met the two year language requirement for some universities. I knew something the teacher didn't - I expected I would need the skill later, I was doggedly working at it because I felt I needed to. And the assignment appealed to me. I have speculated since then with other students from that class about how that teacher would react knowing, I alone remained functionally fluent. I still make mistakes, but I can read and write and make myself understood. That assignment alone was worth the other four years of slogging through.

I currently have two children in the local public schools. Like me, they are not particularly "good" students. They are not very responsive to outside motivation, get frustrated, are prone to day dream, need to move to process some information, and don't complete assignments on time. However, both are very curious, voracious readers. When they have free time, they are likely to be reading a comic book, magazine, newspaper, or novel. And if they aren't reading they are building, drawing, or creating something.

As a parent I want specific things for my children. Call them my "critical to quality" items. You may or may not agree that these are important. I want two things for my children from the public education system:

1. I want my children to love learning at least as much as they did when they entered the school system. I want may children to remain curious, so that they will be life long learners. I can't predict what they will need to know ten years from now, let alone what they will need to know fifty years from now, when I will likely not be around to help them. I can help them acquire the skills that will allow them to find out what they need when they get there, if they have the desire and the skills to be life time learners. I would appreciate if the schools don't beat that desire out of them in the name of education.
2. I want my children to have their specific needs met. Both of my children struggle with small motor skills - this will impact writing, drawing, and keyboarding. One is struggling with the concept of meaningful practice. While, I understand the primary responsibility to provide for their specific needs remains with me as their parent, I would appreciate if the schools could allow the time and flexibility to meet the individual needs of each student.

Here are three modest proposals that I feel would go a long way toward improving the quality of education to meed my critical to quality items:

1. Start classes two, three, or four times per year. I just spent a week walking around with cub scouts as a parent "den walker" volunteer. I observed two excited boys that both interacted with their surroundings in very similar ways. Both boys had trouble following directions - they were excited. Both were trying to follow directions, but often reacted before they had complete information. Both needed to be reminded to wait in spite of their excitement. One child had a disability label, the other did not. One difference was one boy was born before the annual cut off date for school, and one was born after the cut off date for school. They were a year apart in school. One boy was expected to act like boys almost a year older, while the other was being compared to students almost a year younger. While I don't want to discount that disabilities do exist, I am concerned that younger children are more like to be labeled as having a behavior problem. Each month of maturity makes a big difference when you are 5, 6, or 7. How is a student supposed to continue to love learning when they lack the maturity of their "peers" and can't keep up? Similarly, why should a student who is mature enough to be in school have to wait almost a year to start school and risk boredom when they get there? 
2. Encourage different styles of learning. I am an introvert. Often, I need quiet time to quietly work through something to learn it. However, I also benefit from listening to the questions other have and engaging in discussions. When I was in graduate school, I found I benefited greatly from the discussions. I found the things that helped me the most were the questions someone else asked. Teachers need to have the latitude to create crazy tumultuous time with active discussions and confusion, and quiet time for reading and reflecting.
3. Abolish, or at least reduce the number of standardized tests. As part of "no child left behind" in Virginia we have the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests. These tests tell us very little. They don't record any of the factors outside of school that contribute to the score. They don't encourage lifetime learning. They don't tell us which schools or teachers are giving individualized education.  The don't teach meaningful practice or small motor skills. All the SOL tests tell us is how well students can regurgitate bits of fact someone thought was important enough to put onto the test. I suspect we as parents and tax payers can access our schools more readily by walking around a school building while school is in session. You would be surprised at how much you can learn by just listening.

I would love to state these ideas are totally original and I am brilliant, however here is a list of some of the sources for these ideas. Check them out:

• Outliers : the story of success By Malcom Gladwell
• Punished by rewards : the trouble with gold stars, incentive plans, A's, praise, and other bribes By Alfie Kohn
• Never too late : my musical life story By John Caldwell Holt
• Drive : the surprising truth about what motivates us By Daniel H. Pink
• Quiet : the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking By Susan Cain
• Bounce : Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the science of success By Matthew Syed

Do well or win?

Chris Kearns has this wonderful analogy to describe life. Think of life as a sports event - he used soccer, we were in europe after all. There are two teams with two different goals. Your team has a very wise coach - he has set the goal for your team - become the best player you can. He is actively working to help each play improve. The other team has a different kind of coach with a different goal - win. So when these two teams play there are some predictable things that happen. First, the players on your team are trying really hard. Second, your coach is giving everyone  a chance to play regardless of skill or experience. Third, the other team is cheating.

It doesn't matter the other team is cheating. If you believe in karma, the other team will eventually receive a penalty for cheating. And remember, your team's goal is to become the best possible players. If you lose today, there is another game tomorrow. And another on the day after. And another. As your team gets better, they start to win more often. And the other team is isn't learning as fast and doesn't have a deep bench, because only their best players are in the game. This presents an apparent paradox - in order to win in the long run, you have to avoid focusing on winning.

This paradox is important in business. The team that is interested in winning - in business terms, the results oriented team, is not the team that is going to be successful for the long term. The team that will do well for the long run will have leaders that are actively allowing people to develop. Of course this is a scary prospect because it means giving up control. It means you will no longer be the smartest person in the room. It means stepping back from reports and looking at behaviors. It means stepping back from behaviors and looking at motives. And it means you will need to create novel solutions to difficult, perhaps intractable problems. Or as it was put so succinctly, "whosoever shall be great among you, ... be [the] servant of all."¹

1 Mark 10:43,44 KJV