I recently wrote a recommendation that you read Enlightenment Now, by Steven Pinker. I believed it was one of the best and most important books I’ve read in a long time, and I want to say the same thing about Factfulness, by Hans Rosling, Ola Rosling, and Anna Rosling Rönnlund.
Just like Pinker, Rosling[1] contends that in almost every important measure, the world is better off than it ever has been in history and continues to improve. But his book is different in several ways, which is why I view it not as a substitute for EN, but as a complement to it, and a highly readable and fascinating one, at that.
Like Pinker, the Roslings provide a lot of surprising material, but they go one better by letting you test yourself, and then compare your performance to thousands of others, and to the documented truth. Chances are, you will be surprised. Here are a couple of examples:[2]
In all low-income countries across the world today, how many girls finish primary school?
A: 20 percent
B: 40 percent
C: 60 percent
There are 2 billion children in the world today, aged 0 to 15 years old. How many children will there be in the year 2100, according to the United Nations?
A: 4 billion
B: 3 billion
C: 2 billion
How did you do? If you gave chimps in the zoo the same tests, they would average 33% correct. But human audiences tend to do much worse, and the errors are invariably skewed toward the pessimistic side.
These tests are important because they clearly illustrate how many misconceptions the general public in the developed world carry about the state of the world. So many of us have a much darker view of what’s happening in the world than is actually going on. Far from going to hell in a handbasket, it’s getting better in most important measures, including health, wealth, education and violence. But most of us get the facts wrong, and often it’s the more highly educated who are the worst.
So why is that a problem? Isn’t it safer and more prudent to be more worried, rather than less? The problem is that being a hypochondriac at the global level contains some of the same risks as at the personal level. We spend too much on unnecessary remedies, some of which have unintended consequences, and not enough on bigger problems. Second, when we really do find something wrong, others may not listen. Third, it can feed an “us v them” mentality which demagogues are quick to hijack for their own purposes.
Factfulness differs from EN in another important way. Whereas Pinker blames our wrong thinking on those who attack the fundamental ideas of reason, science, humanism and progress, Rosling finds the fault in ourselves—more specifically, how our brains work, explaining ten instincts we all have and how we can work around them. These include:
- The gap instinct: we see the world in binary terms, with rich countries and poor, and a large gap between them. In reality, the vast majority of people live in middle income countries.
- The negativity instinct: we notice the bad more than the good, which is a theme I’ve written about before. And because bad events are most likely to make the news, the well-read may be the most wrongly informed.
- The destiny instinct: the idea that our innate characteristics determine our destinies. “They” have always been this way and will never be able to change.
Each instinct is covered in a separate chapter which also contains useful antidotes and work-arounds. For example, to counter the destiny instinct, Rosling suggests the following:
- Keep track of gradual improvements
- Update your knowledge
- Talk to Grandpa
- Collect examples of cultural change
These and all the other suggestions in the book comprise the tools of factfulness, which I inferred from my reading to be the application of critical thinking to the latest reliable data in order to more clearly understand the true state of things. Rosling, of course, has an even better definition; factfulness is “the stress-reducing habit of carrying only the opinions for which you have strong supporting facts”. If you develop the habit, how can you fail to be a persuasive communicator?
Factfulness is not a function of education, as we’ve seen; anyone can develop it. In fact, Rosling tells an amazing and moving story about how an uneducated African woman saved his life by using aspects of factfulness to deliver a speech that dispersed an angry crowd.
Besides being highly informative, Factfulness is very readable, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has seen any of his TED talks or other videos on YouTube. Rosling’s flair for simplifying and illustrating complex topics shows through on every page. If you want to understand the interplay between international finance and preventing malaria, for example the story about the plot to punch the pharma CEO in the face is worth the price of the entire book.
My tagline is “clear thinking, persuasively communicated.” I can’t think of a better representative of that thought than this book.
[1] Although there are three authors, Rosling writes in the first person and is the principal author.
[2] The answer to both is C. Throughout the book, your safest bet is to pick the most favorable answer.
Kelly Riggs, author of Quit Whining and Start Selling, has teamed up with his son Robby to write Counter Mentor Leadership, which is a timely book on how to lead in today’s 4-Generation workplace. I personally can’t imagine how a father-son relationship could survive writing a book together, but they have somehow managed to pull it off.
I definitely recommend it as an excellent book on leadership, although I say that for different reasons than they would claim, which I will get to in a minute.
The first two sections of the book set the table by describing how today’s workplace has changed, and why leadership may be more challenging than ever. Their premise is that today’s BOSS (Boomer, Old-school Supervisors) leadership model is not effective with KIDS (Know-it-all Digital Self-promoters). Boomers, according to them, still practice the old Taylorian model of command and control management and so they’re out of step with the demands of today’s workplace, with its new technology, distractions, pace of change and complexity.
The main course of the book is section three, in which they introduce their COUNTER Mentor leadership model. The acronym describes the seven tasks of a leader:
- Communicate desired outcomes
- Own the relationship
- Understand different perspectives
- Negotiate the obstacles
- Teach essential skills
- Execute
- Review results
The prescriptions comprise solid, common sense advice for leaders. As with most leadership advice, it’s things you more or less know already but don’t do enough of. Rather than go into detail for each of these parts of the model, let me address two key points that fit the persuasive communication theme of my blog.
First, I strongly agree with Communication as not only the first piece of the model, but as the only one that merits more than 1 chapter—four chapters, in fact. As I’ve put it before with maybe just a light touch of exaggeration, leadership IS communication. As the book puts it, “everything you do is communication, and your people soak it up like a sponge.”
Second, the charge to understand the perspectives of others is absolutely critical.[1] R&R tell us that “understanding is critical to developing a relationship, and relationship is the key to trust.” The key takeaway I got from this is that both sides demand respect, but they define respect differently, which is why open conversations to understand each other’s points of view is essential. The best tool for this is the Counter Mentor 1-on-1 Meeting, which is like a sales call plan for coaching.
As I mentioned earlier, my reasons for recommending the book may differ from theirs. First, while I agree that the Taylorian model doesn’t work, that’s not exactly a new idea. Douglas McGregor called the old style Theory X and the new style Theory Y in his book, The Human Side of Enterprise, in 1960, while a few years’ worth of boomers weren’t even born yet. If bosses are still practicing the old school management today, in my view it’s a personal problem, not a generational problem.
Besides, speaking of generational conflict, we’ve always had generational differences in the workplace. (Remember the song, Signs with its lines, “Long-haired freaky people need not apply” and “Imagine that! Hah, Me working for you!”) I suspect that today’s millennials will become tomorrow’s BOSSes when they get older and get more control.
But those two quibbles are actually good reasons to buy this book and apply its lessons. People constantly need to be re-reminded of old truths, and millennials who take these lessons to heart may avoid the fate of becoming BOSSes as they grow older (yes, it’s going to happen to you before you know it—one day you’ll look in the mirror and see your Mom or your Dad).
So, yes, you need to apply the lessons in this book, but not just because there are 4 generations in the workplace. The leadership model applies regardless of the age of the participants on either side of the equation.
As Kelly and Robby stress, it’s all about respect, no matter how old you are. And I guess that’s how father and son managed to write a book together.
[1] Although they don’t specifically address it in the book, different perspectives also arise from increased diversity and cultural differences, which makes this more important than ever.
I’ve just finished reading The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters, by Tom Nichols. Nichols is a Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval War College, and he is deeply concerned about the dumbing-down of our national discourse, in which the loudest and most simplistic opinions seem to carry far more weight than the carefully nuanced opinions of experts.
As a nation of rugged individualists who believe we’re all created equal, we Americans have always had a healthy skepticism about experts, which was noted as early as 1835 by Alexis de Toqueville almost 200 years ago. I remember one of my high school teachers defining an expert as “someone who learns more and more about less and less, until finally he knows everything about nothing.”
And there have been good reasons for that skepticism. First, expert mistakes have certainly cost us, with Exhibit 1 being the foreign policy elites who have gotten us into trouble from Vietnam to Iraq and many places in between. It’s also hard to trust experts when finding experts who contradict each other is as easy as switching channels, and experts who sell their opinion to the highest bidder or overstep their knowledge to gain attention unfortunately get more attention than those who are more cautious.
But focusing on the mistakes (or other shortcomings) of experts ignores their far more important contributions to our lives. The experts who got it wrong with the Challenger also got us to the moon; the chemists who gave us thalidomide also have saved or improved millions of lives with other drugs; and to give the foreign policy establishment their due, they also helped build the postwar world order that has prevented a war between major powers for over 70 years and has contributed to an unprecedented expansion of prosperity.
When you ignore the contributions of experts and focus only on their failings, you stand to lose far more than you gain, like burning down your house to kill the mouse you saw in your kitchen. So it’s smart to take a careful and informed approach to assessing expert advice. As the saying goes, “if you think an expert is expensive, try hiring an amateur.”
But that’s exactly the problem we’re running into today—we’re paying far more attention to the loud and simplistic amateurs than we should. The backlash against established expertise the problem we’re running into is turning (or already has, most likely) healthy skepticism not only into unhealthy skepticism and cynicism but into aggressive and willful ignorance. We value confidence far more than credentials, which is why we elected a man who says he is the only one who can fix things.
The Internet was supposed to lift us all up, by putting the accumulated knowledge of the world at our fingertips. Instead, according to Nichols it has made us dumber, and I agree with him. Because anyone with a connection can create a slick website and reach the whole world with their opinions, the overwhelming quantity of crap tends to bury the quality. Sturgeon’s Law, which says 90% of everything is crap, is woefully deficient in describing the internet. For most people using it to do “research”, the internet is simply a powerful engine for confirmation bias. As if that’s not enough, Nichols also describes the impact of a higher education system that has misguidedly turned students into “customers”, and the proliferation of talk radio and cable TV stations that cater to every conceivable taste and perspective, so that no one ever has to run the risk of running into an uncomfortable fact.
After I put down the book, I jotted down some notes to try to answer the title question of this blog. (Since I’ve covered some aspects of this problem previously in my blog, what follows combines some of the ideas from The Death of Expertise and some of my previous thinking, and it’s impossible to separate the two. As a rule of thumb, if it sounds smart, credit Nichols.)
What do the experts owe us?
- Don’t overstate your case. Nichols is slightly guilty of this, starting with his title. Death is a pretty strong word, and the word campaign carries a slight whiff of conspiracy theory to it. It’s definitely a trend that many have exploited, but no one is guiding it.
- Stick to what you know. Linus Pauling deservedly won two Nobel prizes, but tarnished his reputation when he touted Vitamin C as a panacea (not to mention dabbling in eugenics).
- Be a foxy hedgehog. From a strong base of expert knowledge, become curious about the rest of the world and get comfortable with uncertainty and disagreement.
- Separate fact from opinions. Be clear in your own mind first, and then explicit about the difference in your public statements.
- Separate analysis from predictions. As Philip Tetlock has shown us, the average expert is just slightly more accurate than a drunk monkey throwing darts when it comes to making predictions.
- Be professional. Professionalism includes the above admonitions plus an obligation to the greater good—of your clients and even sometimes the general public.
What do we owe the experts?
- Look for signs that the expert you’re reading is following the rules above.
- Recognize that when it comes to expertise we are not all created equal. Don’t think that a half hour spent perusing Google returns gives you the right to argue with someone who has devoted their professional life to the topic.
- If you still feel the need to argue with experts (for example, I take issue with some of the ideas that our City’s traffic experts are trying to sell to the public), at least make a serious effort to learn the fundamentals of the topic first.
- Be careful what you put in your mind. If it’s true that you are what you eat, it’s even more true that you are what you read.
- Become a more critical thinker and learn how to identify quality. Here’s a few recommendations for further reading that will better equip you for the task:
o When Can You Trust the Experts? by Daniel Willingham
o Superforecasting, or Expert Political Judgment by Philip Tetlock
o For detecting business and management BS: The Halo Effect…and Eight Other Business Delusions that Deceive Managers, by Phil Rosenzweig, and Leadership BS by Jeffrey Pfeffer
o Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman.
o Curious, by Ian Leslie.
I heartily recommend this book, but the irony of a book about the death of expertise is that those who most need to read it are the least likely to.
For a prince, is it better to be loved or feared? That was the question that Machiavelli asked, and his answer (although much more nuanced about it than generally thought) came down mostly on the side of fear. His prescription for power depended heavily on force and craftiness.
Five hundred years later, the debate still goes on, and it’s just as important as ever. For anyone striving to increase their influence and make a difference, whether within your own organization, for customers, or in the lives of those you care about, it’s a central question that dictates what you do and how you act toward others.
There’s another related question that is just as important: is power something you can grab, or is it given to you by others?
I just read The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence, by Dacher Keltner, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley. Keltner comes down firmly against the idea that power is about fear. He argues that the world has changed substantially since Machiavelli wrote. It’s less violent, organizations are less hierarchical and more egalitarian. He also stresses that “We gain power by acting in ways that improve the lives of other people in our social networks. Our power is granted to us by others.”
If you believe that Keltner is right, your approach revolves around what I call outside-in thinking: focusing on others and striving to find ways to improve their states and contribute to the greater good. You develop your capacity for taking the perspective of others; you give far more than you take; you enhance the power of others by respecting them and listening to them. And as you grow in power, you are aware of the many ways that enhanced power erodes the very attitudes and behaviors that helped to get you there: empathy, humility and self-control.
Read this book and practice its recommendations, and you will become more influential in whatever sphere you participate in—in effect, everyone around you will “give” you the power of influence over their sates.
Or not.
After I read Keltner’s book, I went to my bookshelf and dusted off my copy of Power: Why Some People Have It –and Others Don’t, by Jeffrey Pfeffer, which I reviewed in a previous blog post. Pfeffer argues that Machiavelli is alive and well in corporations today, and you would be naïve not to know this and apply its lessons. I don’t know if he and Keltner have ever debated the issue, but I suspect that if they did, Pfeffer would accuse Keltner of holding on to the “just-world hypothesis”, in which people believe that good people are rewarded and bad people are punished.
The harm of this belief, according to Pfeffer, is that it prevents you from learning real and practical lessons about what really works in the real world, and holds you back from a self-centered quest for personal power and influence. Follow his advice, and you will be able to grab power—because no one is just going to give it to you.
Actually Pfeffer agrees with Keltner that respecting others is a good path to power, but the others he refers to are people who are already in power and have the ability to help you. He also believes that empathy is a crucial skill for acquiring power, so you can figure out what to give them to gain their support.
It could be confusing to read both books, because each author cites impressive academic research to support their points. I believe that interpersonal relationships are complex enough that it is easy to find proof for almost anything you want to look for. Maybe there is some confirmation bias at work in both books, or maybe it’s the nature of these sort of books, which force the author to take a stand for one point of view or the other.
Simply because human nature is so complex, I believe that both hold valuable lessons for increasing your personal power and influence. It’s not either/or, it’s some elements of both approaches, and the relative weight of each is highly situational. It may depend on the culture of the organization where you work, the nature of the problem you are facing, and so many other factors. And don’t forget what Al Capone supposedly said: “You can get more with a kind word and a gun than with a kind word alone.”
It’s also in many ways a personal and an ethical choice. I know—we all know—people who are very “successful” in life despite what we consider to be shady characters and behaviors. For me, if that’s the price to pay for being powerful, I’d rather not be. On the other hand, if you have a larger worthwhile purpose in mind, doesn’t it make sense to pull out all the stops? LBJ was about as Machiavellian as any president we’ve had, and he used his power to push through his Great Society programs.
Do the ends justify the means? I don’t believe anyone can give you those answers. You have to decide for yourself—and live with the consequences.
