ALL WE NEED IS...EMPATHY

Here’s how Alexander Solzhenitsyn described empathy:

“If you want to change the world who do you begin with - yourself or others? I believe if we begin with ourselves and do the things we need to do and become the best person we can be we must have a better chance of changing the world for the better.”

The more we study this subject of people and their behaviour and ourselves and our own behaviour, the more we realise we aren’t irrational we’re just rather inconsistent. For instance we might speculate quite dramatically about how someone potentially might behave towards us and we might get cross about their hypothetical potential unreasonableness and end up having a fight in our minds with them.

“I’ll never speak to him again. Bastard!!”

But hang on….you’ve just made this all up. Get back to reality. Step into his shoes. Assume good nature might prevail…what then?

Sam Richards is a brilliant speaker and academic. His “radical experiment in empathy” on TED asks his American audience to imagine how they’d feel if the Chinese invaded the USA on a “peacekeeping mission” but with the generally understood motive of protecting their coal interests. And then switches to making the audience empathise with the Iraqis - yes even the terrorists. It’s compelling. It also shows empathy isn’t always comfortable. Sam asks us to “swap one tiny world for another tiny world” and quotes Dostoyevsky…“Nothing is easier than to denounce the evil doer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him”. If this doesn’t help you want to learn how to empathise then nothing will.

Unlike other psychological areas like creativity, empathy is an area of psychology that is being widely and excitingly explored. An example is the remarkable Brené Brown who’s an academic exploring how people connect with each other. She suggests we’re neurobiologically programmed for human connection and identifies that in this quest for authentic connection people really learn to empathise. Essential to it, though, is an acceptance that life is a bit messy (she confesses, as someone who likes order, she herself finds this disconcerting) and that admitting to and accepting our own vulnerability is essential to good

If you think about that it flies in the face of years of alpha males practising “don’t show fear” and Harvard Business School and others teaching the necessity of displaying confidence. Brené says that in her studies what matters most is not people asking “what’s in it for me?” but the increasing cohort asking a much more important question -  “what’s in it for us?” If she’s right, and I think she is, the implication of this for management is significant.

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

Michael Jordan

Given more people are asking “what’s in it for people like us?” not “what’s in it for me?” this means we’ve got to think more about groups not individuals. Because it’s the group not the individual who’s winning the climb up that greasy pole now.

How to solve problems and make brilliant decisions. (Business Thinking Skills that really work) published by Pearson

WE NEED TO DISRUPT THE WAY WE THINK

You’ll have heard of TED (Technology Entertainment Design) which is the 18 minute speech-bite business of the great, good and not-so-good sharing their ideas with an audience of millions. Biggest thing since pastrami. And more addictive. Check it out.

They came to London and together with the London Business School ran a day with 24 slots. The broad topic was disruption and now I’m knackered but inspired. Nine hours of iconoclasm has that effect. For the longer write-up watch this space. But just for now settle for Andy.

Andy Stefanovich. With a name like that you have an unfair start in life. His biog describes him thus:

“As Chief Curator and Provocateur at Prophet, Andy has earned a reputation as one of the most disruptive and effective advisors in business.”

Imagine a bespectacled, curly headed man of medium height seemingly on ecstasy, tequila and who’s been trained by Tom Peters to do it like him but louder, faster and without pause.

Andy spoke about business just being an excuse for him because it was his way of filling himself up with thoughts and inspiration much like people who go into a museum and in awe of what they see are transformed into a state of museum-mentality which is what we all aspire to since the admission fee to life is our life and with stakes that high not being inspired the whole time is crazy and this applies to holidays too which he takes with his family a month at a time in New York in a kind of erratical-sabbatical soaking up and distilling of that Soho energy and then getting back to disrupting lazy businesses with a storm of ideas and demolition and inspiring people to a better world which they’ll create by inspiring each other through delight demand and design and you try saying all this without taking one single breath no I swear not one and regarding the full stop like the condemned man regards a bullet namely to be at all costs if possible avoided thank you

Andy was brilliant.

Life is uncertain but too full of possibilities for us not to try and make it even better which means disrupting ourselves from comfort to new discoveries.

See. It’s catching.